period of thirty-five years.

When I began, a few months ago, to prepare for publication the results
of my more recent observations and researches, my intention was to
write an entirely new work under the title of "Russia in the Twentieth
Century," but I soon perceived that it would be impossible to explain
clearly the present state of things without referring constantly to
events of the past, and that I should be obliged to embody in the new
work a large portion of the old one. The portion to be embodied grew
rapidly to such proportions that, in the course of a few weeks, I
began to ask myself whether it would not be better simply to recast
and complete my old material. With a view to deciding the question I
prepared a list of the principal changes which had taken place during
the last quarter of a century, and when I had marshalled them in logical
order, I recognised that they were neither so numerous nor so important
as I had supposed. Certainly there had been much progress, but it had
been nearly all on the old lines. Everywhere I perceived continuity and
evolution; nowhere could I discover radical changes and new departures.
In the central and local administration the reactionary policy of the
latter half of Alexander II.'s reign had been steadily maintained;
the revolutionary movement had waxed and waned, but its aims were
essentially the same as of old; the Church had remained in its usual
somnolent condition; a grave agricultural crisis affecting landed
proprietors and peasants had begun, but it was merely a development of
a state of things which I had previously described; the manufacturing
industry had made gigantic strides, but they were all in the direction
which the most competent observers had predicted; in foreign policy the
old principles of guiding the natural expansive forces along the lines
of least resistance, seeking to reach warm-water ports, and pegging out
territorial claims for the future were persistently followed. No doubt
there were pretty clear indications of more radical changes to come, but
these changes must belong to the future, and it is merely with the past
and the present that a writer who has no pretensions to being a prophet
has to deal.

Under these circumstances it seemed to me advisable to adopt a middle
course. Instead of writing an entirely new work I determined to prepare
a much extended and amplified edition of the old one, retaining such
information about the past as seeme