tural co-operative societies have renewed the economic life of the country.
V. Intellectual Freedom in Russia and the Russian Censorship
A legend has grown up in England, and still largely obtains, that intellectual freedom does not exist in Russia, that every original thinker has been ruthlessly suppressed. It is true that Russian literature has known many dark days of implacable reaction and has produced many martyrs. But even in those dark days a Gogol or a Tolstoy could not be prevented from giving their message. And the fact is, that before the revolutionary movement of 1905 greater intellectual freedom existed in Russia than even in Great Britain, that revolutionists were allowed almost untrammelled to carry on their propaganda through the written word, that the Russian Empire was flooded with subversive and anarchist literature, and that a young writer's best chance to please a large section of the Russian public was to be sufficiently "advanced" and in opposition to the Government. It is also true that even at the present day publicists and journalists continue to be subjected to the censorship. But so are playwrights sub-
