What they cannot voice in words, what is only
palpitating and thrilling through them, is what he must express in
language; and his business is to create men from the universal
tendencies. Nay, more, it is his task to reorganise these tendencies.

This explains the general and lively interest felt in Russia for the
productions of _belles lettres_. This form of literature is regarded
as the mirror of the various phases of that astounding development
which Russia has accomplished during the last sixty years.

First came the reforms of the Fifties and Sixties. Serfdom was
abolished, class distinctions were largely broken up, local
self-government was initiated. So many reforms were introduced in the
departments of Justice, of Instruction, of Credit and Commerce, that
the ground was prepared for a totally new Russia. A vigorous
blossoming of Russian literature coincided with this period of
fermentation. Turgeniev, Gontscharov, Leo Tolstoi, and Dostoevsky
found rich nutriment for their imaginative talent in the fresh-turned
prolific soil of Russian Society. With, and alongside of, them a
number of no less gifted authors throve uninterruptedly, till the
reaction in the second half of the Sixties and in the Seventies fell
like a frosty rime upon the luxurious blooms, and shrivelled them. The
giants were silenced one by one. Leo Tolstoi remained the sole
survivor.

With him none but the epigones, the friends of the people, worked on.
Few writers attained to any eminence. Among such as also won a hearing
in Germany must be mentioned Vladimir Korolenko and Chekhov. These two
belong to the group known as "the Men of the Eighties."

[Illustration: Beggar collecting for a church fund (_After a sketch by
Gorki_)]

These years, which immediately preceded the appearance of Gorki, form
part of the most gloomy period of modern Russian history. Blackest
reaction followed the desperate struggles of the Nihilists in the
Seventies in all departments. At the threshold of the Century stalked
the spectre of regicide, to which Alexander II. was the doomed
victim . . . and over the future hovered the grim figure which banished
its thousands and ten thousands of gifted young intellectuals to
Siberia.

This period accordingly corresponded with a definite moral
retrogression in the ethical condition of the Russian people.

There was a necessary reflection of it in the literature. This era
produced nothing of inspired or refor