agricultural; and it is to their fields that they must look for the means of subsistence.  If the fields do not supply enough for their support under the existing primitive methods of cultivation, better methods must be adopted.  To use a favourite semi-scientific phrase, Russia has now reached the point in her economic development at which she must abandon her traditional extensive system of agriculture and adopt a more intensive system.  So far all competent authorities are agreed.  But how is the transition, which requires technical knowledge, a spirit of enterprise, an enormous capital, and a dozen other things which the peasantry do not at present possess, to be effected?  Here begin the well-marked differences of opinion.

Hitherto the momentous problem has been dealt with chiefly by the theorists and doctrinaires who delight in radical solutions by means of panaceas, and who have little taste for detailed local investigation and gradual improvement.  I do not refer to the so-called “Saviours of the Fatherland” (Spasiteli Otetchestva), well-meaning cranks and visionaries who discover ingenious devices for making their native country at once prosperous and happy.  I speak of the great majority of reasonable, educated men who devote some attention to the problem.  Their favourite method of dealing with it is this:  The intensive system of agriculture requires scientific knowledge and a higher level of intellectual culture.  What has to be done, therefore, is to create agricultural colleges supplied with all the newest appliances of agronomic research and to educate the peasantry to such an extent that they may be able to use the means which science recommends.

For many years this doctrine prevailed in the Press, among the reading public, and even in the official world.  The Government was accordingly urged to improve and multiply the agronomic colleges and the schools of all grades and descriptions.  Learned dissertations were published on the chemical constitution of the various soils, the action of the atmosphere on the different ingredients, the necessity of making careful meteorological observations, and numerous other topics of a similar kind; and would-be reformers who had no taste for such highly technical researches could console themselves with the idea that they were advancing the vital interests of the country by discussing the relative merits of Communal and personal land-tenure—­deciding generally in favour of the former as more in accordance with the peculiarities of Russian, as contrasted with West European, principles of economic and social development.

While much valuable time and energy were thus being expended to little purpose, on the assumption that the old system might be left untouched until the preparations for a radical solution had been completed, disagreeable facts which could not be entirely overlooked gradually produced in influential quarters the conviction that the question was much more urgent than was commonly supposed.  A sensitive chord in the heart of the Government was struck by the steadily increasing arrears of taxation, and spasmodic attempts have since been made to cure the evil.