The chief defect of the new
institutions seemed to me to be the very pardonable habit of attempting
too much, without duly estimating the available resources. This
illustrates a very important national characteristic--intense impatience
to obtain gigantic results in an incredibly short space of time. Unlike
the English, who crawl cautiously along the rugged path of progress,
looking attentively to the right and to the left, and seeking to avoid
obstacles and circumvent opposition by conciliation and compromise, the
Russian dashes boldly into the unknown, keeping his eye fixed on the
distant goal and striving to follow a beeline, regardless of obstacles
and pitfalls. The natural consequence is that his moments of sanguine
enthusiasm are frequently followed by hours of depression bordering on
despair, when he is inclined to attribute his failure to some malign
influence rather than to his own recklessness. When in this depressed
mood the more violent natures are apt to have recourse to extreme
measures.

By bearing in mind this national peculiarity the reader will more easily
understand the strange events which followed close on the heels of the
great reforms which I have just mentioned. Alexander II. was preparing
to advance further along the path on which he had entered so
successfully, when his reforming ardor was suddenly cooled by alarming
symptoms of a widespread revolutionary agitation. Many members of the
young generation, male and female, had imbibed the most advanced
political and socialist theories of France and Germany, and they
imagined that, by putting these into practice, Russia might advance by a
single bound far beyond the more conservative nations and set an example
for imitation to the future generations of humanity! The less violent of
these enthusiasts, recognizing that a certain amount of preparatory work
was necessary, undertook a campaign of propaganda among the lower
classes, as factory workers in the towns and school teachers in the
villages. The more violent, on the contrary, considered that a quicker
and more efficient method of attaining the desired object was the
destruction of autocracy by revolvers and bombs, and several attempts
were accordingly made on the lives of the Czar and his advisers. For
more than ten years, undismayed by these revolutionary manifestations,
Alexander II. clung to his ideas of reform, but at last, in 1881, on the
eve of issuing a decree for the convocation of a Nat