spend half his time tilling the landowner’s estate. The landowners as a class found it to their interest to prevent the peasants from going to the towns; they therefore resisted all innovation; they desired to maintain the old semi-slave conditions in the villages; they opposed the development of manufacturing industry. Such landowners possessed ancient patrimonial seigneurial domains; very few of them did any work on their own estates, and they lived for the most part like parasites on the backs of the peasants. As a result of this state of affairs, the parties representing the landowners have always been and still are the main props of reaction. These are the political parties that everywhere desire a return to the old order; they want to go back to the rule of the landlords, to restore the landlord-tsar (the monarch), to ensure the predominance of the “blue-blooded gentry,” to effect the complete enslavement of the peasants and the workers. They form what are known as the conservative parties; it would be more accurate to term them the reactionary parties. Since from time immemorial the officers of the army and the navy have been drawn from the ranks of the landed gentry, it is perfectly natural that landowners’ parties should always be on the best of terms with generals and admirals. This is what we find in every country throughout the world.
As an example may be mentioned the members of the Prussian junker caste (in Germany, the great landowners are known as “junkers”) who send some of their sons into the officers’ corps. Similarly in Russia we have our landed gentry, the so-called backwoodsmen, “the aurochses,” like some of the deputies to the duma — Markov the Second, Krupensky, and others. The tsarist council of state was largely composed of members of this landlord class. Most of the wealthy landowners belonging to old families bear such titles as prince, count, etc.; they are the true descendants of ancestors who owned thousands of bondslaves. The landlords’ parties in Russia were: the League of the Russian People; the Nationalist Party, led by Krupensky; the right Octobrists; etc.