The Slavophils thus remained merely a small literary party, which probably did not count more than a dozen members, but their influence was out of all proportion to their numbers.  They preached successfully the doctrine that the historical development of Russia has been peculiar, that her present social and political organisation is radically different from that of the countries of Western Europe, and that consequently the social and political evils from which she suffers are not to be cured by the remedies which have proved efficacious in France and Germany.  These truths, which now appear commonplace, were formerly by no means generally recognised, and the Slavophils deserve credit for directing attention to them.  Besides this, they helped to awaken in the upper classes a lively sympathy with the poor, oppressed, and despised peasantry.  So long as the Emperor Nicholas lived they had to confine themselves to a purely literary activity; but during the great reforms initiated by his successor, Alexander II., they descended into the arena of practical politics, and played a most useful and honourable part in the emancipation of the serfs.  In the new local self-government, too—­the Zemstvo and the new municipal institutions—­they laboured energetically and to good purpose.  Of all this I shall have occasion to speak more fully in future chapters.

But what of their Panslavist aspirations?  By their theory they were constrained to pay attention to the Slav race as a whole, but they were more Russian than Slav, and more Muscovite than Russian.  The Panslavist element consequently occupied a secondary place in Slavophil doctrine.  Though they did much to stimulate popular sympathy with the Southern Slavs, and always cherished the hope that the Serbs, Bulgarians, and cognate Slav nationalities would one day throw off the bondage of the German and the Turk, they never proposed any elaborate project for the solution of the Eastern Question.  So far as I was able to gather from their conversation, they seemed to favour the idea of a grand Slavonic Confederation, in which the hegemony would, of course, belong to Russia.  In ordinary times the only steps which they took for the realisation of this idea consisted in contributing money for schools and churches among the Slav population of Austria and Turkey, and in educating young Bulgarians in Russia.  During the Cretan insurrection they sympathised warmly with the insurgents as co-religionists, but afterwards—­especially during the crisis of the Eastern Question which culminated in the Treaty of San Stefano and the Congress of Berlin (1878)—­their Hellenic sympathies cooled, because the Greeks showed that they had political aspirations inconsistent with the designs of Russia, and that they were likely to be the rivals rather than the allies of the Slavs in the struggle for the Sick Man’s inheritance.