"The tradition and the guiding principle of the present system, which I can only designate as the principle of gagging. An administration that does not oppress the peasantry is not yet to be thought of. Our peasant needs nothing so much as travelling agricultural teachers. But what would be the end of such teaching? To Siberia direct. Fear of the intelligent classes has already become a mania. Intelligence, if it pleases you, is revolution; only no contact with Liberal elements. The salvation of our people lies in its isolation."
"But that is the régime of a conquered country! Are not the rulers themselves Russians? How can they be so cruel to their own flesh?"
"The police official is no Russian. He is quite free from national sentiment; he is only an oppressor, a detective. Our ministry of the interior is merely a great detective bureau, a monstrous and costly surveillance institution. When the notorious 'third division' was abolished and subordinated to the ministry of the interior it was considered a step in advance. But it was not the ministry of the interior that absorbed the 'third division,' but the reverse. We no longer have administration, but only surveillance, arrest, deportation. Shall I tell you? Our commission worked honestly. It consisted of noblemen, high-minded patriots, who took part in working out a project for the improvement of economic conditions. Only three hundred copies of the report were printed; it was not meant for general circulation. But the result of the labors undertaken at our instance was the arrest of the outspoken, upright critics. Do you consider that an encouragement for patriotic endeavor? Our merchants and our zemstvos have opened, in the last six years, one hundred and thirty-six schools without one kopek of state aid, and with a yearly expenditure of four million rubles. The instinct for what is necessary is therefore present. Our society should only be let alone and we also might go through the same development, perhaps in a slower measure, which Germany has passed through with such momentous success in the last thirty years--from an agricultural state dependent on the weather to a mighty industrial country. But Germany is a constitutional state and we are a police state. Germany has a middle class; we have none, and the formation of such a class is prevented by every possible means. The commercial schools are subjected to annoying conditions because they are under the jurisdiction of the ministry of finance, where, naturally, a different spirit prevails. The commercial guilds are making enormous material sacrifices, spending annually, besides the four millions for maintenance, five additional millions on buildings, only to retain their autonomy, to keep in their own hands the staffs of instruction and inspection, and to possess a greater elasticity of adaptation to local conditions. This sacrifice is overlooked, and the slightest exhibition of free initiative is jealously suppressed."