ABSTRACT
The period between Karakozov's shot in 1866 and November 25, 1869, when a body was discovered in a pond of Petrovsky Park in Moscow, has passed into history books as the "years of white terror"—an expression first used by the Geneva Bell. Even a liberal pre-Revolutionary historian found the ultimate cause of the Nechayev affair to be this white terror, "the wild excesses of the government, the denial of the freedom of the press, and the terror which our government imposed upon society after 1866." Tsar Alexander once declared to a progressive nobleman that he would sign any kind of a constitution his visitor might desire, if he were not so sure that the country then would fall to pieces. After 1866 most of the progressive bureaucrats who had contributed so much to the modernization of Russia during the preceding decade disappeared from the scene or were relegated to honorific posts of little importance.
