Not one of the men who formed the Society was connected in any way with any military organization. They were for the most part typical of the university youth. Some of them came from the smaller noble families which had not been completely Russianized but which still retained traditions of the past. Shevchenko was a freed serf. Not one of them would have known or been interested in the type of political underground conspiracy that alone could have carried their program into execution. Thus they could have formed no danger to the Russian state, except insofar as that was based on the oppression of other races and on conditions which were unhealthy and unjust. Of course they were opposed to serfdom, but in one way or another their feelings were shared by large numbers of the Russians, nobles and non-nobles alike. They were taking little active part in any plans for carrying out their policy, except in their aspirations to spread education among the people: education in the Ukrainian language. However when Oleksy Petrov, a student who had overheard some of the glowing discussions in a neighboring room, reported the existence of the society to M. V. Yuzefovich, the supervisor of history, the latter was impressed with the idea that he had discovered a dangerous conspiracy. He hurriedly notified St. Petersburg and orders were given to arrest the entire group. It seemed to the mind of Nicholas I that this was exactly what he had suspected all along and he determined to make an example of the young men. It was relatively easy to catch them, for they were without any suspicion of what was coming. Shevchenko was arrested on April 5, 1847 in Kiev with several others, for they had gathered there for the wedding of Kostomarov. Kulish, who had already received a fellowship to study abroad in preparation for a post in the University of St. Petersburg, was seized on his way to the border. Trials were soon held and the vast majority received sentences of imprisonment or exile. Shevchenko, because of the contents of his poetry, was ordered to serve as a private in a disciplinary battalion of the army in Central Asia and the tsar added in his own hand, “with a prohibition of writing and painting.” He was destined to serve there for ten years and was a broken man at the completion of his service. These arrests broke up the society. The trials revealed very clearly that the young men had taken no definite steps to carry out their ideas. Yet the decrees of the Tsar and the sentences made it very clear that the imperial regime considered it worse than treason to do anything to remind the Little Russians of their independent past or to indicate that in any way they were better off under the rule of the hetmans than under the beneficent rule of the Tsar’s officials. It was but another affirmation of the intentions of Catherine and Peter, and it put a definite stop to any political development in Russian Ukraine for many years.