With the accession of his son, Alexander II, in 1855, conditions changed. Alexander started his reign with at least an appearance of liberality and issued a wide amnesty to persons who had incurred the displeasure of his father. Most of the members of the Society were released and allowed to resume work in St. Petersburg. Even Shevchenko, who had been singled out for special treatment because of his attacks on the Imperial Family, was released and he too joined his former friends in the Russian capital. As a result, by the end of the fifties, the former members of the Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius had come together again and were prepared to resume their work under conditions as they then existed. Kulish, one of the members of the group, started the work with the appearance of the _Memoirs on South Rus’_ in 1856, but he was refused permission to edit a journal in his own name because of his former connection with the Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius and the exile which he had suffered in consequence. Yet it would be wrong to assume that the new agitation was conducted only by the handful of people who had formed the former group. In Kiev and Chernihiv other Ukrainians, subject to the limitations that were imposed upon them by the Imperial government, tried to work for their people. Popular schools, usually held on Sunday, were opened to teach the illiterate peasants their own language. New writers appeared, such as Marko Vovchok, the pen-name of Maria Markovich, whose husband had been one of the members of the Society. Provincial newspapers appeared, societies were established for the purpose of glorifying Ukrainian culture, thinly camouflaged under the name of South Russia, and many other activities were started. This was the period on the eve of the emancipation of the serfs and it looked as if the new Emperor was going to open a new period in the life of his country. The first years of the reign of Alexander II indeed marked an era of good feeling, and there were wide hopes among almost all classes of society that he would wipe out all the dark memories of the strict reign of his father. It was under this hope that in 1860 there was founded in St. Petersburg the journal _Osnova_, (_the Basis_). Kulish was really responsible for it, although the nominal editor was his brother-in-law, Bilozersky, one of the lesser members of the Society. It called to its staff of writers and assistants all of the leaders of the younger generation, and for about a year there seemed to be a new spring in the Ukrainian movement in Russia.