The first agitators for democracy among the civil population were the Nihilists, those long-haired, mysterious individuals whose bomb-throwing propensities and dark plottings have furnished so many Western fiction writers with material for romances. The Nihilists, so well described as a type in Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons," were the sons and daughters of the landed aristocracy, the provincial gentry, who went abroad and studied in foreign universities, or, studying at home, imbibed revolutionary ideas through foreign literature. Coming together in small groups, they began to formulate ideas of their own especially adapted to Russian conditions. At first these ideas were of a nonpolitical character and extremely abstract. They wished to go among the ignorant peasants and educate them in the Western sciences. "Going among the people" was a phrase among them which assumed the significance of a program. But with its antipathy toward all forms of learning the Government soon showed its determination to suppress all these efforts at educating the common people, and the youthful agitators were arrested and thrown into prison by the hundreds. As a matter of fact their abstract ideas had made little impression on the ignorant mujiks, and had the Government ignored the Nihilists it is probable that their organization would have died a natural death from lack of success. But the opposition of the police only roused the fighting spirit of the young aristocrats, and they not only became more enthusiastic, but added recruits to their ranks more than enough in numbers to fill the gaps made by those in prison. The persecution by the police, furthermore, forced them to make a secret organization of their loosely knit groups, and this too fired the romantic imaginations of the young people. The fight between the agitators and the police waxed stronger and more bitter. Then one day all Russia was shocked by the news that a Petrograd police chief had had a young woman in prison as a Nihilist suspect disrobed and flogged.