In the crowd of protesters were two well-defined groups.

On the one hand there were the so-called Slavophils, a small band of patriotic, highly educated Moscovites, who were strongly disposed to admire everything specifically Russian, and who habitually refused to bow the knee to the wisdom of Western Europe.
These gentlemen, in a special organ which they had recently founded, pointed out to their countrymen that the Commune was a venerable and peculiarly Russian institution, which had mitigated in the past the baneful influence of serfage, and would certainly in the future confer inestimable benefits on the emancipated peasantry.

The other group was animated by a very different spirit.

They had no sympathy with national peculiarities, and no reverence for hoary antiquity.

That the Commune was specifically Russian or Slavonic, and a remnant of primitive times, was in their eyes anything but a recommendation in its favour.
Cosmopolitan in their tendencies, and absolutely free from all archaeological sentimentality, they regarded the institution from the purely utilitarian point of view.