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down to the serf's hut. From small circles of mostlywell-born officers secret societies were formed, partlyunder masonic influences. They were spared despitethe reaction during Alexander's last five years, and onhis death (December, 1825) they took to arms in theDecembrist rising (cf. pp. 85-86).The rising was promptly, but bloodily, suppressed.The effect on his successor, Nicholas I (b. 1796), wasthat he became even more of a parade-ground martinetand believer in the necessity for strong, inquisitorial, ifostensibly paternalistic, rule. The severity of the punishmentsmeted out, not only to the participants but to allwho were suspected of the slightest collusion or sympathywith liberal ideas, created a gulf between the autocracyand a large section of the intellectuals. 1 This was steadilywidened during his reign (1825-55), in proportion asNicholas strove to abolish "the pernicious luxury of halfknowledge" and succeeded in transforming Russia intothe ' police state' par excellence (cf. p. 112), which culminatedin the ice cap of repression following the 1848revolutions.The policy of Nicholas was primarily negative incharacter, and it was not until 1848 in all directionscarried to extremes. Its positive aspect, the officialcreed of "Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality," hada wider appeal than often allowed, but it bred nothingbut repulsion in the young intelligentsia of all classes,especially because it was based on a repudiation of theidea of progress. In consequence, the effect on theyoung generation was not to banish independent thoughtand exclude the virus of ' dangerous' Western ideas, butto drive them underground, to make literature thecryptic medium of social and political thought, and toput a premium on extreme views.Between 1830 and i860, apart from the great influenceof German thinkers already mentioned, the French1A vivid picture of the post-Decembrist generation of radicals is givenin the first three volumes of Herzen's Memoirs (translated 1924), describinghis early life in Moscow and the university, his two exiles to theprovinces, and Moscow in the forties (written 1852-53; 1859). Herzenis a ma8terof Russian prose. The two-volume translation by J. D. Duff(New Haven, 1923) is first-rate, but it goes only to 1838.350