CONTENTS The Evolution of Russia Scope and Purpose of the Present Essay; The Russian Country; The Russian Race; Russian History; The Russian Autocracy; The Agrarian Communes; Social Classes in Russia; Russian Serfdom Russian Nihilism and its Literature The Word "Nihilism"; Origin of the Intellectual Revolution; Woman and the Family; Going to the People; Herzen and the Nihilist Novel; The Reign of Terror; The Police and the Censor Rise of the Russian Novel The Beginnings of Russian Literature; Russian Romanticism.- The Lyric Poets; Russian Realism: Gogol, its Founder Modern Russian Realism Turgenev, Poet and Artist; Gontcharof and Oblomovism; Dostoyevsky, Psychologist and Visionary; Tolstoy, Nihilist and Mystic; French Realism and Russian Realism Emilia Pardo Bazn (1852-1921) stands as perhaps the Spanish speaking world's greatest woman novelist. Along with Galdos and Clarn she was one of the three most important writers of late 19th century Spain. An intellectual of astounding breadth, she was the leading exponent of the Naturalist literary school in her country - as attested by her numerous theoretical writings on the subject - and was an outspoken feminist. Her many novels introduced Naturalism into Spanish literature. The Swan of Vilamorta (originally published in 1891) was among those about social decay in her native Galicia.