iderable restrictions on the freedom of
action of the individual members. Accordingly it was assumed that the
rural Commune, being inconsistent with the modern spirit of progress,
would find no place in the new regime of liberty which was about to be
inaugurated.

No sooner had these ideas been announced in the Press than they
called forth strenuous protests. In the crowd of protesters were
two well-defined groups. On the one hand there were the so-called
Slavophils, a small band of patriotic, highly educated Moscovites, who
were strongly disposed to admire everything specifically Russian, and
who habitually refused to bow the knee to the wisdom of Western Europe.
These gentlemen, in a special organ which they had recently founded,
pointed out to their countrymen that the Commune was a venerable and
peculiarly Russian institution, which had mitigated in the past the
baneful influence of serfage, and would certainly in the future confer
inestimable benefits on the emancipated peasantry. The other group was
animated by a very different spirit. They had no sympathy with national
peculiarities, and no reverence for hoary antiquity. That the Commune
was specifically Russian or Slavonic, and a remnant of primitive
times, was in their eyes anything but a recommendation in its favour.
Cosmopolitan in their tendencies, and absolutely free from all
archaeological sentimentality, they regarded the institution from
the purely utilitarian point of view. They agreed, however, with the
Slavophils in thinking that its preservation would have a beneficial
influence on the material and moral welfare of the peasantry.

For the sake of convenience it is necessary to designate this latter
group by some definite name, but I confess I have some difficulty in
making a choice. I do not wish to call these gentlemen Socialists,
because many people habitually and involuntarily attach a stigma to
the word, and believe that all to whom the term is applied must be
first-cousins to the petroleuses. To avoid misconceptions of this kind,
it will be well to designate them simply by the organ which most
ably represented their views, and to call them the adherents of The
Contemporary.

The Slavophils and the adherents of The Contemporary, though differing
widely from each other in many respects, had the same immediate object
in view, and accordingly worked together. With great ingenuity they
contended that the Communal system of land tenure had much gre