by their self-immolation for their principles, Europe knew that there was no liberty in Russia save in its prisons, and that the bloody reprisals that followed were those of Marianna's brothers, who saw her helpless in the hands of a great gendarmerie─a gendarmerie that had long shamelessly abused the power it held, that had silenced brutally all who had protested, all, all the independent spirits, all their great writers, all their men. Marianna, Marianna herself must seek the prison. Turgenev foresaw this, and Virgin Soil tells of her preparation for the ordeal, of the why and the wherefore she went on her path.
And if anything remains obscure in Virgin Soil, the English reader must remember that Turgenev was writing under special difficulties There must always be a little vagueness in one's speech, when Silence is written in an official writing above the doors. Anonymous Russia! Anonymous Russia had arisen to mine the doors: the doors must be shattered by secret hands that Europe might for once gaze through. It was for a transgression of this perpetual Silence that the crowd was forbidden to speak, when Turgenev was carried
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