built roads and telegraph stations; they maintained model farms and
agricultural experiment stations similar to those maintained by our state
governments. They maintained schools, bookstores, and libraries:
co-operative stores; hospitals and banks. They provided the peasants with
cheap credit, good seeds, fertilizers, agricultural implements, and so
forth. In many cases they provided for free medical aid to the peasants. In
some instances they published newspapers and magazines.

It must be remembered that the zemstvos were the only representative public
bodies elected by any large part of the people. While the suffrage was
quite undemocratic, being so arranged that the landlords were assured a
majority over the peasants at all times, nevertheless they did perform a
great democratic service. But for them, life would have been well-nigh
impossible for the peasant. In addition to the services already enumerated,
these civic bodies were the relief agencies of the Empire, and when crop
failures brought famine to the peasants it was always the zemstvos which
undertook the work of relief. Hampered at every point, denied the right to
control the schools they created and maintained, inhibited by law from
discussing political questions, the zemstvos, nevertheless, became the
natural channels for the spreading of discontent and opposition to the
régime through private communication and discussion.

To bureaucrats of the type of Pobiedonostzev and Von Plehve, with their
fanatical belief in autocracy, these organizations of the people were so
many plague spots. Not daring to suppress them altogether, they determined
to restrict them at every opportunity. Some of the zemstvos were suspended
and disbanded for certain periods of time. Individual members were exiled
for utterances which Von Plehve regarded as dangerous. The power of the
zemstvos themselves was lessened by taking from them such important
functions as the provisioning of famine-stricken districts and by limiting