All they could do was to contribute in some small way to the foundation of the Universities of Kharkiv and Kiev, which had been started during the reign of Alexander I, largely through the advice and influence of Adam Czartoryski, one of the close friends of the Tsar and an ardent Polish patriot. His influence was rather expended on the problem of Poland and for this reason he had worked energetically in the revival of the University of Wilno in the old capital of Lithuania. For the same purpose he had inspired the foundation of universities in the Ukrainian cities but he had hoped that these would serve as centres of a Polish rather than of a Ukrainian revival. He partially succeeded, for Polish influence in both Kiev and Kharkiv grew rapidly during the years before the Polish revolt of 1831, even though it was from these institutions that many of the early Ukrainian song collectors, archaeologists, and historians were drawn. Besides this, the Russian system did not contain, as the Austrian did, any loopholes for the formation of legal parties or political agitation. Catherine had seen well to this and in fact her attitude was only a legitimate Westernized expansion of the attitude of Tsar Alexis, when his delegates refused an oath to Khmelnitsky at the moment when the Kozaks first accepted the protection of the Tsar at Pereyaslav. Russia was indeed a monolithic state in which no one possessed any real rights except the tsar. The Kozak Host had been an anachronism and it had perished. Now with the Ukrainian revival there was no legal means of recalling the old rights and privileges for any one, much less the peasants living as serfs on the lands of denationalized and foreign masters. The revival of the Ukrainians was, and was destined to remain, a purely cultural revival in a monolithic Russia which proudly had annexed the ancient history of Kiev and considered itself as its legitimate successor. Little Russia seemed to the authorities merely a part of the whole and once all distinguishing characteristics had been removed in law, there was no way of restoring them except as the gift of the tsar or by the disintegration of the country. CHAPTER THIRTEEN _THE SOCIETY OF SAINTS CYRIL AND METHODIUS_ It was impossible under Russian rule to have any immediate hopes for the beginning of definite political activity and this was no more true for the Ukrainian population than for any of the other nationalities of the Russian Empire, including the Russians themselves. Even those scanty means of popular expression which had survived the reforms of the Congress of Vienna and the growth of reaction in Western Europe were here excluded.