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St. Petersburg had changed greatly from what it was when I left it in 1862. "Oh, yes, you knew the St. Petersburg of Chernyshévsky," the poet Maykov remarked to me once. True, I knew the St. Petersburg of which Chernyshévsky was the favorite. But how shall I describe the city which I found on my return? Perhaps as the St. Petersburg of the cafés chantants, of the music halls, if the words "all St. Petersburg" ought really to mean the upper circles of society which took their keynote from the court.
At the court, and in its circles, liberal ideas were in sorely bad repute. All prominent men of the sixties, even such moderates as Count Nicholas Muravyov and Nicholas Milútin, were treated as suspects. Only Dmitri Milútin, the minister of war, was kept by Alexander II at his post, because the reform which he had to accomplish in the army required many years for its realization. All other active men of the reform period had been brushed aside.