But astonishment was increased a thousand-fold at study of the reflex
influence for evil upon the serf-owners themselves, upon the whole free
community, upon the very soil of the whole country. On all those broad
plains of Russia, on the daily life of that serf-owning aristocracy, on
the whole class which was neither of serfs nor serf-owners, the curse of
God was written in letters so big and so black that all mankind might
read them. Farms were untilled, enterprise deadened, invention crippled,
education neglected; life was of little value; labor was the badge of
servility, laziness the very badge and passport of gentility. Despite
the most specious half-measures, despite all efforts to galvanize it, to
coax life into it, to sting life into it, the nation remained stagnant.
Not one traveller who does not know that the evils brought on that land
by the despotism of the autocrat were as nothing compared to that dark
network of curses spread over it by a serf-owning aristocracy. Into the
conflict with this evil Alexander II entered manfully.
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