Russian, and of the old stamp,[1] he instinctively distrusted all liberal innovations, and the constitutional ideas which came from the West; and his two journeys abroad only intensified his prejudices. On his return from his first journey he wrote:
“To avoid the ambition of Liberalism.”
On his return from the second:
“A privileged society has no right whatsoever to educate in its own way the masses of which it knows nothing.”
In Anna Karenin he freely expresses his contempt for Liberals in general. Levine refuses to associate himself with the work of the provincial institutions for educating the people, and the innovations which are the order of the day. The picture of the elections to the provincial assembly exposes the fool’s bargain by which the country changes its ancient Conservative administration for a Liberal régime—nothing is really altered, except that there is one lie the more, while the masters are of inferior blood.
“We are not worth very much perhaps,” says the representative of the aristocracy, “but none the less we have lasted a thousand years.”
Tolstoy fulminates against the manner in which the Liberals abuse the words, “The People: The Will of the People.” What do they know of the people? Who are the People?
But it is more especially when the Liberal movement seemed on the point of succeeding and achieving the convocation of the first Duma that
- ↑ “A ‘Great-Russian,’ touched with Finnish blood.” (M. Leroy-Beaulieu.)
