Till 1861 the Russian people led an embryonic existence within the womb of Holy Mother Russia. A nobility of mixed Mongolian, German, British, French and even Negroid (Pushkin) stock ate, breathed and thought for the people. Most foreigners imagine that the Russian people were “emancipated” in 1861. But this emancipation was only partial, and more apparent than real; for though serfdom had been abolished, there still remained the heavier yoke of the “Mir”—a conservative, iron-bound institution, which has greatly hindered the development of the Russian people by restricting the liberty of the individual. Strictly speaking, the “Mir” was the village or parish, but in an economic sense it was the association of several families under one head. The Slavophil writers, Homiakoff and the brothers Kirieyevaki, with their followers down to Pobyedonszeff saw in the “Mir” a guarantee, not only for the welfare of Russia, but for all the world. They believed the “Mir” to be that economic communism and moral brotherhood which Western Social Democracy is vainly trying to discover in other ways. They held that the “Mir” was destined to assure the future of the Russian people and to afford it the means of solving all the social problems of the world in accordance with the laws of justice and of love. Russian literature is full of poems, treatises, and religious contemplations in praise of it. Even the greatest Russian minds, such as Dostoievski himself, were smitten with this idea. No “Western” doctrine was potent to disabuse the Russians of their fallacy. Nature herself had to come to the rescue, destroy the chimera and lead Russia back to the high road of common sense and progress.