In these circumstances the Liberals determined to continue the agitation.  The Bulyghin Commission was accordingly inundated with petitions and addresses explaining the wants of the nation in general, and of various sections of it in particular; and when the Minister declined to receive deputations and discuss with them the aforesaid wants, the reform question was taken up by a new series of congresses, composed of doctors, lawyers, professors, journalists, etc.  Even the higher ecclesiastical dignitaries woke up for a moment from their accustomed lethargy, remembered how they had lived for so many years under the rod of M. Pobedonostsef, recognised as uncanonical such subordination to a layman, and petitioned for the resurrection of the Patriarchate, which had been abolished by Peter the Great.

On May 9th a new Zemstvo Congress was held in Moscow, and it at once showed that since their November session in St. Petersburg the delegates had made a decided movement to the Left.  Those of them who had then led the movement were now regarded as too Conservative.  The idea of a Zemski Sobor was discarded as insufficient for the necessities of the situation, and strong speeches were made in support of a much more democratic constitution.

It was thus becoming clearer every day that between the Liberals and the Government there was an essential difference which could not be removed by ordinary concessions.  The Emperor proved that he was in favour of reform by granting a very large measure of religious toleration, by removing some of the disabilities imposed on the Poles, and allowing the Polish language to be used in schools, and by confirming the proposals of the Committee of Ministers to place the Press censure on a legal basis.  But these concessions to public opinion did not gain for him the sympathy and support of his Liberal subjects.  What they insisted on was a considerable limitation of the Autocratic Power; and on that point the Emperor has hitherto shown himself inexorable.  His firmness proceeds not from any wayward desire to be able to do as he pleases, but from a hereditary respect for a principle.  From his boyhood he has been taught that Russia owes her greatness and her security to her autocratic form of government, and that it is the sacred duty of the Tsar to hand down intact to his successors the power which he holds in trust for them.

While the Liberals were thus striving to attain their object without popular disorders, and without any very serious infraction of the law, Revolutionaries were likewise busy, working on different but parallel lines.

In the chapter on the present phase of the revolutionary movement I have sketched briefly the origin and character of the two main Socialist groups, and I have now merely to convey a general idea of their attitude during recent events.  And first, of the Social Democrats.