ABSTRACT
After describing how the arbitrary authority of these functionaries pervades the whole life of the country, the letter continues, " If you could, Sire, like the Sovereign in the fable, pass invisibly over the towns and villages, so as to know what life the Russian people live, you would see its misery, you would see how the governors bring up your soldiers to shoot down the peasants and the workmen. You would see that order, maintained by thousands of soldiers, by legions of functionaries, by an army of spies, that order in the name of which every word of protestation is suppressed, that this order is not order at all, but a state of administra· tive anarchy. · .
