ABSTRACT
The movement in favour of. the intellectual emancipation of Russian W'Omen originated under Alexander II., whose reign was an epoch of great reforms of political and social order. The spirit of freedom, so long repressed by autocracy, took a free course, and manifested itself with extraordinary force in the new conceptions of the woman's part in society. Marked by a freedom perhaps in some respects too great, especially in family relations, and sometimes in the relations between the sexes, the new ideas claimed complete equality and independence for women, and were the more easily accepted by cultivated society in that men were accomplices, not adversaries. The cause of women thus won-almost at a stroke-in public opinion.
