ABSTRACT
The word 'people'—narod—meant the Russian masses, but by no means all Russians. It referred to the millions of wretched tillers of the soil. Separated from the 'people' by an abyss of education, outlook, and language—the external marks of radically differing social and economic position—was the relatively small but influential body of respectable men who made up what was delicately called Russian 'society'—obshchestvo. This chapter deals with the efforts of the Russian intelligentsia to 'set the people free', as Herzen put it. In 1891, as in 1874, there was a 'going to the people' in which there took part not merely a few hundred boys and girls, but men and women from all sections of the intelligentsia. The leaders of the Liberation Movement thus stood aside from the rise and fall of Russian economic development. They were able to do this simply because they were usually either too well off or too poor to be greatly affected thereby.
