70
rapidly glancing over what has been done, during a period of revolutionary crisis, not only in order to save and protect artistic treasures bequeathed by the past, to utilize without exception and according to their capacities all the „talent“, in widely opening its doors to „new comers“, to the „young“, in giving confidence to the „unknown“ and the timid, but also to educate the popular masses to the level of art and to imbue it with the powerful, robust and healthy inspiration of the people, in order to rejuvenate and restore it in contact with the latter,—one remains absolutely astounded.
It is, in fact, marvellous that during one of the most violent revolutionary struggles by which Humanity has ever been convulsed, at a time when, surrounded on all sides and whilst struggling against internal revolts maintained by foreign gold, the Government of the Workers and Peasants of Russia succeeded in finding in itself sources of intellectual vitality and positive idealism, sufficient to give the impetus to one of the periods of highest artistic activity that Russia has ever known.
The distance that has been covered in the space of only a few months and in spite of conditions which could, not have been more unfavorable or more painful, in the sphere of public education, is one that can be measured only by comparison with the most fruitful epochs of History.
Universities opened to all desirous of taking up science and no longer reserved only to the holders of diplomas (valueless parchments bestowed only too often by a bureaucratic routine upon mediocrities),—popular courses and confe-
