ABSTRACT
ON March ist, 1881, there occurred a public tragedy that was to have grave repercussions throughout the whole of Russia. Alexander II, whose reign had been joyfully hailed as the dawn of a new age, was murdered by a group of Nihilists just when he was said to have been considering a liberal constitution for the country. The result was a period of grim reaction. The press was kept under rigid control, public meetings and all public discussion of political questions were forbidden; and a censorship, which during the previous decades had been somewhat relaxed, was now imposed on all polemical writings with the rigour of fanaticism.
