The stifling bureaucratic regime of Nicholas I offered a poor opportunity for the development of a new generation. The collapse of the Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius was a heavy blow to the older school of Ukrainian authors and it weighed still more heavily upon the next generation which would have been attracted to it. At the same time throughout Russia the old Romantic school vanished and a new era of prose came into being. It was now the period of Turgenev and Belinsky and it was only natural that the new tendencies would make their influence felt upon the still weak Ukrainian literature. There was another factor that was extremely important. Up to this time the authors had had a personal connection with the old Ukraine in its last phases. Shevchenko knew from his grandfather many details of the Koliivshchina. In his youth there were still living men and women who remembered that revolt, the Sich and the Hetman state. What would be the spirit of the writers who had been born too late to have that personal contact with the actors of the last scenes? That question was still to be answered. By the time that Alexander II had ascended the throne, Russia and all Europe had passed out of the Romantic period. The new school of writing paid attention not to the past but to the present, to the hardships and difficulties of daily life rather than to the stirring deeds of even the recent past. This was particularly true in Russia where for nearly half a century all the writers devoted themselves exclusively to the contemporary scene and to the movement for the liberation of the peasants and the improvement of the conditions of the present. Kvitka had in a way directed the attention of the Ukrainian authors to the rich stores of material that were to be found there but his characters were too idealized, too perfect to suit the next generation. Besides that the predominant idea may well be called the belief in the republican philosopher in homespun. The type appeared in France, in England, in America, and in Russia and of course it would appear in Ukraine. This was a school of thought that definitely emphasized the humanity and the clear thinking of the uneducated peasant. The authors believed sincerely that most, if not all of the evil of life, came from the misthinking and errors of the upper classes. They saw in the peasants, despite their rudeness, a vigor and an intelligence that only required the possibility of free use and development to solve most of the troubles and abuses of the day.