And if anything remains obscure in _Virgin Soil_, the English reader must remember that Turgenev was writing under special difficulties. There must always be a little vagueness in one's speech, when _Silence_ is written in an official writing above the doors. Anonymous Russia! Anonymous Russia had arisen to mine the doors: the doors must be shattered by secret hands that Europe might for once gaze through. It was for Turgenev's breaking of this _Silence_ that Tolstoy was forbidden to speak when Turgenev had been carried to his tomb. It was for Marianna's transgression against this _Silence_ that Turgenev has glorified her in _Virgin Soil_. * * * * * What was the Nihilist party of the 'seventies? It began, as we have said, with the Socialistic movement of "going to the people." This movement, again, was the natural outlet for the many liberal ideas which, germinating in "advanced" heads, had been gathering in intensity with each generation. With the liberation of the serfs Alexander II.'s liberal policy had abruptly ended. To understand Russian politics is to know that though there are many cliques there are only two great parties, the one orthodox, the other unorthodox--the party of Governmental Action, and the party of Liberal Ideas. There are no safe politics in Russia outside the official world. If you can win over the officials to your plans in various local work, well and good; if not, your efforts are labelled "subversive"; and it is thus that, sooner or later, every disciple of liberal ideas finds himself placed in direct opposition to the Government. Though there are many liberal-minded men among the officials, still, in Solomin's words, "the official is always an outsider," and therefore it is that the unofficial thinking part of Russia--the writers, the professors, the students, the press, and the more intelligent of the professional world--form an unorganized but permanent opposition. To this party gravitate naturally the discontented spirits from all classes--nobles, military men, those who have been hardly dealt with, and those who have an axe of their own to grind--the Markelovs, and the Paklins. Accordingly, the autocracy, by the solid, impermeable front it has presented for twenty-five years to reform and to the education of the peasants, may be said to hold the varying opposition together. The action of the Government, too, in forbidding the public to comment on such matters as the late strike of factory hands in Petersburg, where also the masters were "forbidden" to yield to the men's demands, constantly creates a hostile public. And it was in this manner that the Nihilist party of the 'seventies was formed.