In beginning my researches in this interesting field of inquiry, I had no adequate conception of the difficulties awaiting me.  I imagined that I had merely to question intelligent, competent men who had had abundant opportunities of observation, and to criticise and boil down the information collected; but when I put this method of investigation to the test of experience it proved unsatisfactory.  Very soon I came to perceive that my authorities were very far from being impartial observers.  Most of them were evidently suffering from shattered illusions.  They had expected that the Emancipation would produce instantaneously a wonderful improvement in the life and character of the rural population, and that the peasant would become at once a sober, industrious, model agriculturist.

These expectations were not realised.  One year passed, five years passed, ten years passed, and the expected transformation did not take place.  On the contrary, there appeared certain very ugly phenomena which were not at all in the programme.  The peasants began to drink more and to work less,* and the public life which the Communal institutions produced was by no means of a desirable kind.  The “bawlers” (gorlopany) acquired a prejudicial influence in the Village Assemblies, and in very many Volosts the peasant judges, elected by their fellow-villagers, acquired a bad habit of selling their decisions for vodka.  The natural consequence of all this was that those who had indulged in exaggerated expectations sank into a state of inordinate despondency, and imagined things to be much worse than they really were.

     * I am not at all sure that the peasants really drank more,
     but such was, and still is, a very general conviction.

For different reasons, those who had not indulged in exaggerated expectations, and had not sympathised with the Emancipation in the form in which it was effected, were equally inclined to take a pessimistic view of the situation.  In every ugly phenomenon they found a confirmation of their opinions.  The result was precisely what they had foretold.  The peasants had used their liberty and their privileges to their own detriment and to the detriment of others!

The extreme “Liberals” were also inclined, for reasons of their own, to join in the doleful chorus.  They desired that the condition of the peasantry should be further improved by legislative enactments, and accordingly they painted the evils in as dark colours as possible.

Thus, from various reasons, the majority of the educated classes were unduly disposed to represent to themselves and to others the actual condition of the peasantry in a very unfavourable light, and I felt that from them there was no hope of obtaining the lumen siccum which I desired.  I determined, therefore, to try the method of questioning the peasants themselves.  Surely they must know whether their condition was better or worse than it had been before their Emancipation.