Williams, Harold Whitmore (1876-1928) Russia of the Russians - London 1914
XI. Peasants and Proprietors
...A Western farmer habituated to the microscopic niceties of intensive culture on small patches of land is astonished at the waste, at the indifference to rich opportunities so often met with on Russian estates. The final break with the traditions of serfdom, the development of individual initiative and of a determination to exploit the resources of the soil to the utmost, to make money by farming instead of depending on barely aided nature, should mean a startling increase of national wealth.
...A great many revolutionaries and so-called Nihilists belonged to landowners' families, and on being released from prison returned to their estates to rest. There was for a long time and still is a close connection between the gentry and the intelligentsia, and many characteristic features of the latter are explicable as a result of this connection. Altogether the contribution of the landed gentry to modern Russian culture has been one of first-class importance.
...A Western farmer habituated to the microscopic niceties of intensive culture on small patches of land is astonished at the waste, at the indifference to rich opportunities so often met with on Russian estates. The final break with the traditions of serfdom, the development of individual initiative and of a determination to exploit the resources of the soil to the utmost, to make money by farming instead of depending on barely aided nature, should mean a startling increase of national wealth.
...A great many revolutionaries and so-called Nihilists belonged to landowners' families, and on being released from prison returned to their estates to rest. There was for a long time and still is a close connection between the gentry and the intelligentsia, and many characteristic features of the latter are explicable as a result of this connection. Altogether the contribution of the landed gentry to modern Russian culture has been one of first-class importance.