Emancipation reform of 1861
Encyclopedia
The Emancipation Reform of 1861 in Russia was the first and most important of liberal
reforms effected during the reign of Alexander II of Russia
. The reform, together with a related reform in 1861, amounted to the liquidation of serf
dependence previously suffered by peasant
s of the Russian Empire
. In some of its parts, the serfdom was abolished earlier.
The 1861 Emancipation Manifesto proclaimed the emancipation of the serfs on private estates and of the domestic (household) serfs. By this edict more than twenty-three million people received their liberty. Serfs were granted the full rights of free citizens, gaining the rights to marry without having to gain consent, to own property and to own a business. The Manifesto prescribed that peasants would be able to buy the land from the landlords. Household serfs were the worst affected as they gained only their freedom and no land.
In Georgia the emancipation was postponed until 1864 and on much better terms for the nobles than in Russia. State owned serfs - the serfs on the imperial properties - were emancipated in 1866 and were given better and larger plots of land.
The rural population lived in households (dvory, singular dvor), gathered as villages (derevni, villages with churches were called selo), run by a mir ('commune', or obshchina
) - isolated, conservative, largely self-sufficient and self-governing units scattered across the land every 10 km (6.2 mi) or so. There were around 20 million dvory in Imperial Russia, forty percent containing six to ten people.
Intensely insular, the mir assembly, the skhod (sel'skii skhod), appointed an elder (starosta
) and a 'clerk' (pisar) to deal with any external issues. Land and resources were shared within the mir. The fields were divided among the families as nadel ("allotment") - a complex of strip plots, distributed according to the quality of the soil. The strips were periodically redistributed within the villages to produce level economic conditions. Despite this the land was not owned by the mir; the land was the legal property of the 100,000 or so landowners (pomeshchiks, an equivalent "landed gentry
") and the inhabitants, as serfs, were not allowed to leave the property where they were born. The peasants were duty bound to make regular payments in labor and goods. It has been estimated that landowners took at least one third of income and production by the first half of the nineteenth century.
The need for urgent reform was well understood in 19th-century Russia, and various projects of emancipation reforms were prepared by Mikhail Speransky
, Nikolay Mordvinov
, and Pavel Kiselev. Their efforts were, however, thwarted by conservative or reactionary nobility. In Western guberniya
s serfdom was abolished early in the century. In Congress Poland
, serfdom had been abolished before it became Russian (by Napoleon in 1807). Serfdom was abolished in the Governorate of Estonia
in 1816, in Courland
in 1817, and in Livonia in 1819.
, Alexei Strol'man and Yakov Rostovtsev
- also recognized that their country was one of a few remaining feudal states in Europe
. The pitiful display by Russian forces in the Crimean War
left the government acutely aware of the empire's backwardness. Eager to grow and develop industrially, hence military and political strength, there were a number of economic reforms. As part of this the end of serfdom was considered. It was optimistically hoped that after the abolition the mir would dissolve into individual peasant land owners and the beginnings of a market economy.
Alexander II
, unlike his father, was willing to deal with this problem. Moving on from a petition from the Lithuania
n provinces, a committee "for ameliorating the condition of the peasants" was founded and the principles of the abolition considered.
The main point at issue was whether the serfs should remain dependent on the landlords, or whether they should be transformed into a class of independent communal proprietors.
The land-owners initially pushed for granting the peasants freedom but not any land. The tsar and his advisers, mindful of 1848 events
in Western Europe, were opposed to creating a proletariat
and the instability this could bring. But giving the peasants freedom and land seemed to leave the existing land-owners without the large and cheap labour-force they needed to maintain their estates and lifestyles. By 1859 a third of their estates and two thirds of their serfs were mortgaged to the state or noble banks. This was why they had to accept the emancipation.
To 'balance' this, the legislation contained three measures to reduce the potential economic self-sufficiency of the peasants. Firstly a transition period of two years was introduced, during which the peasant was obligated as before to the old land-owner. Secondly large parts of common land were passed to the major land-owners as otrezki ("cut off lands"), making many forests, roads and rivers accessible only for a fee. The third measure was that the serfs must pay the land-owner for their allocation of land in a series of redemption payments, which in turn, were used to compensate the landowners with bonds. 75% of the total sum would be advanced by the government to the land-owner and then the peasants would repay the money, plus interest, to the government over forty-nine years. These redemption payments were finally canceled in 1907.
's Emancipation Manifesto of March 3, 1861 (February 19, 1861 Julian Calendar), accompanied by the set of legislative acts under the general name Regulations Concerning Peasants Leaving Serf Dependence (Положения о крестьянах, выходящих из крепостной зависимости, Polozheniya o krestyanakh, vykhodyashchikh iz krepostnoi zavisimosti).
This Manifesto proclaimed the emancipation of the serfs on private estates and of the domestic (household) serfs. Serfs were granted the full rights of free citizens, gaining the rights to marry without having to gain consent, to own property and to own a business.
The Manifesto prescribed that peasants would be able to buy the land from the landlords.
The implementation of land settlement varied over the vast and diverse territory of the Russian Empire, but typically a peasant had rights to buy out about half of the land he cultivated for himself. If he could not afford to pay it off, he would receive a half of the half, i.e., a quarter of the land, for free. It was called pauper's allotment (bednyatskiy nadel).
Although well planned in the legislation, the reform did not work smoothly. The conditions of the manifesto were regarded as unacceptable by many reform minded peasants; "In many localities the peasants refused to believe that the manifesto was genuine. There were troubles, and troops had to be called in to disperse the angry crowds."
The land-owners and nobility were paid in government bonds and their debts were removed from the money before it was handed over. The bonds soon fell in value; the management skills of the land-owners were generally poor.
in Moscow
and history books give Alexander II the name of "The Tsar Liberator", its results were far from ideal. Household serfs were the worst affected as they gained only their freedom and no land.
The serfs from private estates were given less land than they needed to survive which led to civil unrest. The redemption tax was so high that the serfs had to sell all the grain they produced to pay the tax, which left nothing for them to survive on. Landowners also suffered because many of them were deeply in debt and the forced selling of their land left them also struggling to keep their lavish lifestyle.
The uneven application of the legislation did leave many peasants in Congress Poland
and northern Russia both free and landless (batraks), while in other areas peasants became the majority land owners in their province(s).
The 1861 Emancipation Manifesto affected only the privately owned serfs. The state-owned serfs were emancipated in 1866 and were given better and larger plots of land.
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
reforms effected during the reign of Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
. The reform, together with a related reform in 1861, amounted to the liquidation of serf
Russian serfdom
The origins of serfdom in Russia are traced to Kievan Rus in the 11th century. Legal documents of the epoch, such as Russkaya Pravda, distinguished several degrees of feudal dependency of peasants, the term for an unfree peasant in the Russian Empire, krepostnoi krestyanin , is translated as serf.-...
dependence previously suffered by peasant
Peasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
s of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
. In some of its parts, the serfdom was abolished earlier.
The 1861 Emancipation Manifesto proclaimed the emancipation of the serfs on private estates and of the domestic (household) serfs. By this edict more than twenty-three million people received their liberty. Serfs were granted the full rights of free citizens, gaining the rights to marry without having to gain consent, to own property and to own a business. The Manifesto prescribed that peasants would be able to buy the land from the landlords. Household serfs were the worst affected as they gained only their freedom and no land.
In Georgia the emancipation was postponed until 1864 and on much better terms for the nobles than in Russia. State owned serfs - the serfs on the imperial properties - were emancipated in 1866 and were given better and larger plots of land.
Pre-reform Russia
There were two main categories of peasants, those living on state lands, under control of the Ministry of State Property, and those living on the land of private landowners, with only the privately-owned ones considered serfs. They were an estimated 38% of the population. As well as having obligations to the state, they also were obliged to the landowner, who had great power over their lives. By the mid-nineteenth century, less than half of Russian peasants were serfs.The rural population lived in households (dvory, singular dvor), gathered as villages (derevni, villages with churches were called selo), run by a mir ('commune', or obshchina
Obshchina
Obshchina or Mir ) or Selskoye obshestvo were peasant communities, as opposed to individual farmsteads, or khutors, in Imperial Russia. The term derives from the word о́бщий, obshchiy ....
) - isolated, conservative, largely self-sufficient and self-governing units scattered across the land every 10 km (6.2 mi) or so. There were around 20 million dvory in Imperial Russia, forty percent containing six to ten people.
Intensely insular, the mir assembly, the skhod (sel'skii skhod), appointed an elder (starosta
Starosta
Starost is a title for an official or unofficial position of leadership that has been used in various contexts through most of Slavic history. It can be translated as "elder"...
) and a 'clerk' (pisar) to deal with any external issues. Land and resources were shared within the mir. The fields were divided among the families as nadel ("allotment") - a complex of strip plots, distributed according to the quality of the soil. The strips were periodically redistributed within the villages to produce level economic conditions. Despite this the land was not owned by the mir; the land was the legal property of the 100,000 or so landowners (pomeshchiks, an equivalent "landed gentry
Landed gentry
Landed gentry is a traditional British social class, consisting of land owners who could live entirely off rental income. Often they worked only in an administrative capacity looking after the management of their own lands....
") and the inhabitants, as serfs, were not allowed to leave the property where they were born. The peasants were duty bound to make regular payments in labor and goods. It has been estimated that landowners took at least one third of income and production by the first half of the nineteenth century.
The need for urgent reform was well understood in 19th-century Russia, and various projects of emancipation reforms were prepared by Mikhail Speransky
Mikhail Speransky
Count Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky was probably the greatest of Russian reformers during the reign of Alexander I of Russia. He was a close advisor to Tsar Alexander I of Russia and later to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, he is sometimes called the father of Russian liberalism.-Early life and...
, Nikolay Mordvinov
Nikolay Mordvinov
Count Nikolay Semyonovich Mordvinov was one of the most reputable Russian political thinkers of Alexander I's reign. He is associated with the reforms of Mikhail Speransky, who he advised on the ways to improve the performance of the national economy.Mordvinov was an admiral's son and started his...
, and Pavel Kiselev. Their efforts were, however, thwarted by conservative or reactionary nobility. In Western guberniya
Guberniya
A guberniya was a major administrative subdivision of the Russian Empire usually translated as government, governorate, or province. Such administrative division was preserved for sometime upon the collapse of the empire in 1917. A guberniya was ruled by a governor , a word borrowed from Latin ,...
s serfdom was abolished early in the century. In Congress Poland
Congress Poland
The Kingdom of Poland , informally known as Congress Poland , created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, was a personal union of the Russian parcel of Poland with the Russian Empire...
, serfdom had been abolished before it became Russian (by Napoleon in 1807). Serfdom was abolished in the Governorate of Estonia
Reval Governorate
The Governorate of Estonia or Estland, also known as the Government of Estonia or Province of Estonia, was a governorate of the Russian Empire in what is now northern Estonia.-Historical overview:...
in 1816, in Courland
Courland Governorate
Courland Governorate, also known as the Province of Courland, Governorate of Kurland , and Government of Courland , was one of the Baltic governorates of the Russian Empire, that is now part of the Republic of Latvia....
in 1817, and in Livonia in 1819.
The shaping of the Manifesto
The liberal politicians who stood behind the 1861 manifesto - Nikolay MilyutinNikolay Milyutin
Nikolay Alexeyevich Milyutin was a Russian statesman remembered as the chief architect of the great liberal reforms undertaken during Alexander II's reign, including the emancipation of the serfs and the establishment of zemstvo.-Early life:Nikolay Milyutin was born in Moscow, Russia on June 6,...
, Alexei Strol'man and Yakov Rostovtsev
Yakov Rostovtsev
Iakov Ivanovich Rostovtsev was a leading figure in the formulation of statutes which effectively emancipated the Russian serfs.Born in St Petersburg, Russia, Rostovtsev became a career soldier, and was a young officer at the time of the 1825 Decembrist revolt...
- also recognized that their country was one of a few remaining feudal states in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. The pitiful display by Russian forces in the Crimean War
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
left the government acutely aware of the empire's backwardness. Eager to grow and develop industrially, hence military and political strength, there were a number of economic reforms. As part of this the end of serfdom was considered. It was optimistically hoped that after the abolition the mir would dissolve into individual peasant land owners and the beginnings of a market economy.
Alexander II
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
, unlike his father, was willing to deal with this problem. Moving on from a petition from the Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
n provinces, a committee "for ameliorating the condition of the peasants" was founded and the principles of the abolition considered.
The main point at issue was whether the serfs should remain dependent on the landlords, or whether they should be transformed into a class of independent communal proprietors.
The land-owners initially pushed for granting the peasants freedom but not any land. The tsar and his advisers, mindful of 1848 events
Revolutions of 1848
The European Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, Springtime of the Peoples or the Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848. It was the first Europe-wide collapse of traditional authority, but within a year reactionary...
in Western Europe, were opposed to creating a proletariat
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
and the instability this could bring. But giving the peasants freedom and land seemed to leave the existing land-owners without the large and cheap labour-force they needed to maintain their estates and lifestyles. By 1859 a third of their estates and two thirds of their serfs were mortgaged to the state or noble banks. This was why they had to accept the emancipation.
To 'balance' this, the legislation contained three measures to reduce the potential economic self-sufficiency of the peasants. Firstly a transition period of two years was introduced, during which the peasant was obligated as before to the old land-owner. Secondly large parts of common land were passed to the major land-owners as otrezki ("cut off lands"), making many forests, roads and rivers accessible only for a fee. The third measure was that the serfs must pay the land-owner for their allocation of land in a series of redemption payments, which in turn, were used to compensate the landowners with bonds. 75% of the total sum would be advanced by the government to the land-owner and then the peasants would repay the money, plus interest, to the government over forty-nine years. These redemption payments were finally canceled in 1907.
The Emancipation Manifesto
The legal basis of the reform was the TsarTsar
Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...
's Emancipation Manifesto of March 3, 1861 (February 19, 1861 Julian Calendar), accompanied by the set of legislative acts under the general name Regulations Concerning Peasants Leaving Serf Dependence (Положения о крестьянах, выходящих из крепостной зависимости, Polozheniya o krestyanakh, vykhodyashchikh iz krepostnoi zavisimosti).
This Manifesto proclaimed the emancipation of the serfs on private estates and of the domestic (household) serfs. Serfs were granted the full rights of free citizens, gaining the rights to marry without having to gain consent, to own property and to own a business.
The Manifesto prescribed that peasants would be able to buy the land from the landlords.
Implementation
Mir communities had the power to distribute the land given to newly freed serfs by the Russian government amongst individuals within the community. Due to the community’s ownership of the land, as opposed to the individual’s, an individual peasant could not sell their portion of land in order to work in a factory in the city. A peasant was required to pay off long term loans received by the government. The money from these loans was given to the primary landowner. The land allotted to the recently freed serfs did not include the best land in the country, which continued to be owned by the nobility.The implementation of land settlement varied over the vast and diverse territory of the Russian Empire, but typically a peasant had rights to buy out about half of the land he cultivated for himself. If he could not afford to pay it off, he would receive a half of the half, i.e., a quarter of the land, for free. It was called pauper's allotment (bednyatskiy nadel).
Although well planned in the legislation, the reform did not work smoothly. The conditions of the manifesto were regarded as unacceptable by many reform minded peasants; "In many localities the peasants refused to believe that the manifesto was genuine. There were troubles, and troops had to be called in to disperse the angry crowds."
The land-owners and nobility were paid in government bonds and their debts were removed from the money before it was handed over. The bonds soon fell in value; the management skills of the land-owners were generally poor.
Outcome
Although the emancipation reform was commemorated by the construction of the enormous Alexander Nevsky CathedralAlexander Nevsky Cathedral, Moscow
The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Moscow was the largest of a series of cathedrals erected in Imperial Russia in commemoration of Alexander Nevsky, the patron saint of Emperors Alexander II and Alexander III...
in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
and history books give Alexander II the name of "The Tsar Liberator", its results were far from ideal. Household serfs were the worst affected as they gained only their freedom and no land.
The serfs from private estates were given less land than they needed to survive which led to civil unrest. The redemption tax was so high that the serfs had to sell all the grain they produced to pay the tax, which left nothing for them to survive on. Landowners also suffered because many of them were deeply in debt and the forced selling of their land left them also struggling to keep their lavish lifestyle.
The uneven application of the legislation did leave many peasants in Congress Poland
Congress Poland
The Kingdom of Poland , informally known as Congress Poland , created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, was a personal union of the Russian parcel of Poland with the Russian Empire...
and northern Russia both free and landless (batraks), while in other areas peasants became the majority land owners in their province(s).
The 1861 Emancipation Manifesto affected only the privately owned serfs. The state-owned serfs were emancipated in 1866 and were given better and larger plots of land.
Further reading
Boris B. Gorshkov. A Life Under Russian Serfdom: Memoirs of Savva Dmitrievich Purlevskii, 1800-68. Budapest & New York, 2005 Boris B. Gorshkov. "Serfs on the Move: Peasant Seasonal Migration in Pre-Reform Russia, 1800-61". Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History (Fall 2000):627-56 Boris B. Gorshkov. "Serfs, Emancipation of" Encyclopedia of Europe, 1789-1914 John Merriman and Jay Winter, eds in chief New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006- Hunt, Lynn, et al. The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures, Vol. C Since 1740. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008.