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Emancipation of the Serfs (Russia), March 3, 1861 [historical document]

Дата публикации: 04 сентября 2007
Публикатор: Научная библиотека Порталус
Рубрика: RUSSIA (TOPICS) - Imperial Russia →
Источник: (c) http://russia.by
Номер публикации: №1188914914


Principal Personages

Alexander, II, Tsar of Russia 1855-1881

Filaret, Metropolitan Patriarch of Moscow, coauthor of the emancipation decree

Yurii Samarin, coauthor of the emancipation decree

Helen, Grand Duchess, liberal reform-minded widow who worked for emancipation of the serfs


Summary of Event

Serfdom developed in Russia as an integral part of the Russian political system. Serfdom meant that the peasant belonged to the land; when title to the land changed hands, the peasant went with it. The landowners, by law and by custom, gained powers over the peasant which made him the owner's chattel. The peasant discharged his formal obligations either by paying cash (obrok) or by giving the owner a stipulated amount of work (barshchina). The owner was expected to maintain the peasant in famine times, to watch over his health and welfare, and in all ways to be a father to him. In practice these conditions meant that the landowner had acquired the power of life and death over his serfs, for whom there was neither recourse nor protection.

Serfdom became the foundation of the Russian economy, and from 1649 until the middle of the nineteenth century the government preserved the principle, although the institution did not go entirely unchallenged. A growing chorus of criticism developed as enlightened landlords and bureaucrats joined the new intellectual classes in condemning serfdom as the most stultifying and barbarous influence in a stagnant country. Moreover, as Russia entered the nineteenth century, inadequacy of serfdom for an industrial society was clearly demonstrated. Even Tsar Nicholas I (1825-1855), whose concept of official nationality made serfdom an essential element in the autocratic order, established commissions to study the peasant problem, and he also made it easier for individual landlords to release serfs from bondage. His son and successor, Tsar Alexander II, benefited from the demand for reform which followed defeat in the Crimean War, and he began his reign by announcing that he intended to change Russia from above in order to avoid change from below.

Alexander II was a conservative who saw that it was necessary to reform the autocracy in order to preserve it. Thirty-seven years of age at his accession, he had had wide experience in government, and had already decided on the need for emancipation. In 1856 he invited the gentry to formulate reform proposals, and in January, 1857, a private committee was formed to pursue the question. The committee was dominated by the reactionary, Prince Orlov, but other more enlightened persons pressed for progress. These included the Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich and the Grand Duchess Helen, as well as Count P. D. Kiselev, Count Nicholas Miliutin, Count Rostovtsev, and the Minister of the Interior, Count Sergei Lanskoi. While the government deliberated, liberal and radical journalists including Herzen in London and Chernyshevsky in Petersburg urged action and for a brief period conservatives and radicals seemed united in bringing a new era into being.

Three years of intensive work produced the emancipation decree which was drafted by Yurii Samarin and the Metropolitan Patriarch of Moscow, Filaret. The decree was signed on March 3 (O.C.: February 19), 1861, and two weeks later it was read out in all the churches of Russia. Serfdom had been abolished. The decree destroyed the landlord's power over the peasant and made the mir, or commune, the basic unit with which the government dealt. The gentry retained something more than half of the arable land, and the peasant communes divided the remainder among their members. The gentry were paid immediately for the land which they gave up, while the peasants were committed to "redemption payments" for forty-nine years. The amount of land assigned to the peasant communes varied from province to province, but in no case was it equivalent to the land the peasant worked under serfdom. Individual peasants, however, were granted the right to contract leaseholds, and they could also work as laborers. In this way it was possible to make up a portion of the deficit which the smaller allotments created.

The flaws in the emancipation were only too obvious. The peasant, though freed from the landlord's control, was still not a legal personality, for the mir had been interposed between the peasant and society. Even more crushing was the realization that the peasants' economic situation was actually worse than before, because the government had substituted economic bondage for legal bondage, and a new outcry against the injustice of the peasants' lot began. When it became clear that Alexander II had not instituted the peasant reform as the first step toward liquidating the autocracy, and as the conservative character of the peasant reform became clearer, a new generation of radicals turned their back on government-sponsored reform, opened new attacks on the Tsar, and began to organize political circles for action. The liberal-minded men of the 1830's and 1840's found themselves out of touch with the new radical generation, and even the venerated Herzen was distressed to discover that he had been by-passed, if not forgotten. Emancipation was only a milestone on Russia's road to modernity, not the end of the journey as many had believed.

FURTHER READINGS




Robinson, G. T. Rural Russia Under the Old Regime. Longmans, Green, and Company, 1932.

Blum, Jerome. Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Centuries. Princeton University Press, 1961.

Florinsky, Michael T. Russia: A History and Interpretation. 2. The Macmillan Company, 1953.
A survey of Russian history which gives details of the emancipation of the serfs and the results which followed


Kornilov, A. A. Modern Russian History. Trans. by Alexander Kaun. 2. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1943.
A modern Russian history book which considers results of the emancipation of the serfs


LeRoy-Beaulieu, Anatole. The Empire of the Tsars and the Russians. 3 vols. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893-1896.
This classic account by a foreign observer is especially useful for its analysis of conditions among the peasantry


Pares, Bernard. A History of Russia. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1949.
One of the best surveys of modern Russia which deals with the emancipation of the serfs and its consequences


Wallace, D. M. Russia. Vintage Books, 1961.
A reprint of a classic work originally published in 1877

Опубликовано на Порталусе 04 сентября 2007 года

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