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in the eighties. It is no wonder that Alexander II saidthat he was faced with emancipation from above orrevolution from below.Serfdom in its fullness lasted longer in Russia thanin Western countries because its economic disadvantagesdid not earlier outweigh its advantages; because theincrease of population did not cause sufficiently acuteland shortage among the peasantry until the first half ofthe nineteenth century; because the middle classes wereweak in comparison with the serf-owners; becausehumanitarian and other ideas of the value of theindividual spirit were little developed; because thereaction against the ideas of the French Revolutionstrengthened the vis inertice inherent in any longestablishedinstitution; lastly, because serfdom was notmerely the economic basis of the serf-owners but alsoa main basis of the Russian state in its immense task ofsomehow governing so many raw millions."Serfdom," Nicholas I recognized,''is the indubitableevil of Russian life, but I think it still more dangerousto touch it." Why he thought so was because he agreedwith his chief of police who thus summed up: "Thelandowner is the most reliable bulwark of the sovereign.No army can replace the vigilance and the influencewhich the landowner continuously exercises in hisestates. If his power is destroyed, the people willbecome a flood endangering in time even the Tsarhimself. . . . The landowner is the most faithful, theunsleeping watchdog guarding the state; he is thenatural police magistrate."This ruling position of the serf-owners, i.e. thephereditary nobility and gentry, was the result of a longrocess that culminated in the eighteenth century,beginning with empress Anna in 1730 (cf. pp. 84-85) andreaching its full expression in Catherine the Great'sexplicit adoption of Montesquieu's maxim "point denoblesse, point de monarque," and in her charter of 1785organizing them in an 'estate.'Between 1731 and 1762 the landowners were maderesponsible for the poll tax from their serfs, introducedby Peter the Great and payable by all classes except the142