What we need just now is an honest, frank, and—most important—truthful word about our common people [narod]. The people are now coming onstage, called to social life by the legislation of February 19 [1861]. What is this people, this unknown land of which we have vaguely heard and to which, it seems, we have been drawing near? What is this new element in Russian life that soon will renew our social life? What, in a word, is this Russian peasant community [zemstvo]?