An introduction to the study of social problems

An analogy to this situation may be found in what happened in Russia during the last years of the reign of Nicholas I, the Iron Tsar (1825-55), and during the first years of his successor Alexander II (1855-81). Nicholas I was the most tyrannical of the Tsars of the nineteenth century. The last period of his reign, writes an historian of Russia, вЂwas one of complete suffocation’. The universities were placed under the strictest police surveillance. The teaching of some subjects was completely forbidden. Philosophy could be taught only as part of Divinity. Even the most loyal Slavophiles were savagely persecuted. Newspapers were forbidden to report new inventions until it was officially declared that they were useful. A special commission examined all music to ensure that no conspiratorial code was concealed in it. The censorship banned expressions like вЂforces of nature’ or вЂthe movement of ideas’. But the greatest crime of all was to discuss the main social problem agitating Russia — the peasants' serfdom ...»