The Emancipation of the Serfs

In 1857 Alexander created the Secret Committee on Peasant Affairs. The whole process was opposed by
the krepotsniki- defenders of the serfdom- who included members of the royal family, leaders of the
Orthodox Church and many leading nobles.

Editing Commission was created in 1859 to turn their recommendations into legislation

Emancipation Statutes (22 of them) on 19 February 1861. Alexander declared in his proclamation that
the basic aim of emancipation was to satisfy the serfs and landowners alike

The main terms

• Serfdom was abolished and serfs were now legally free to marry, travel, trade freely and vote in
local elections
• The land initially remained in the hands of the gentry, though they had to grant use of their
property and land to each peasant
• Each serf was guaranteed a minimum size of allotment, to be determined later by an assessor. The
land was valued highly, and landowners were compensated by the state immediately.
• 75% of allotments were less than 4 dessyatinas (2.7 acres) in a good soil area, with 5 usually
considered as the minimum to feed a peasant family.
• The freed serfs were to pay back to the state redemption taxes for 49 years including an interest
rate of 6%. Only when these were paid would they have legal title to their land. Alternatively, they
could continue to work 30 or 40 days a year on the Lord’s land
• Peasants were still under the control of the Mir whose power would be strengthened. They were
responsible for paying the redemption tax. Labour services were limited to 40 days per male,
which were to be continued for two years after which they could be converted into a money
payment. The separation by a peasant of his land from the commune could only be done with the
consent pf the mir until the redemption tax was paid. The nobility would continue to play a role in
policing
• Landowners would be compensated for the loss of their land in government bonds but not for the
loss of their rights over their serfs.
• The separation of land by a peasant could only be done with the consent of the mir, until the
redemption tax was paid.
• In 1866 state peasants were given the right to buy land in the same way as the former serfs to
remain tenants. They were allotted plots of land on average over twice the size of the private
serfs.
• The nobility would continue to play a role in the policing
• Landowners would be compensated for the loss of their land in government bond but not for the
loss of their rights over their serfs.
• Household serfs were the worst off because they had no land just their freedom.
 How it was implemented
• After 19 Feb proclamation there was a two-year transitional period during which the obligations to
the land-owner remained as they had been under serfdom but the serfs were now legally free so
they could not be sold.
• Great time was taken over how the land should be distributed to the peasants. Local committees
worked out the are given per peasant.

Consequences
1. Civil unrest in all but one of the provinces affected by the emancipation. There were 647
incidents of peasant rioting in the 4 months following the Emancipation Edict and army troops
were used in 449 cases. Example: In Bezdna a peasant Anton Petrov said he had found by
examining the edict closely that the Tsar really had granted freedom so he urged them to seize
it for themselves. Thousands gathered to support him, 70 peasants died when the army open
fired and Petrov was arrested and executed.
2. Most peasants received slightly less land than they had worked on before (on average, 20%
less). Since the supply of affordable, good quality land available to peasants was limited, many
received strips of land that were difficult to farm and yielded little food or profit. In the Black
Earth region, for example, the allocation was low, so it was difficult for many to make ends
meet. As a result, most peasants had to work for much of the year as hired labour on the
nobles remaining land. Some more enterprising peasants started buying the land of poorer
neighbours, renting land from the nobility and hiring labour. These were known as kulaks.
3. The landowners received above the market value for the land they were handing over to the
peasants. This meant peasants had to pay higher for it. The landowners were able to decide
which part of their holdings they would hand over and so kept the best land for themselves. It
is estimated landlords retained two-thirds of the land while peasants received one third.
4. A sign of economic difficulties facing many peasants was the growing amount of redemption
and poll tax arrears which persisted for the next 20 years. There was little incentive for a
peasant family to invest in their land or change inefficient farming methods because their land
could be taken off them at any time and reallocated when the village population expanded.
5. Landowners also were unhappy. Two-thirds had already mortgaged to the banks before
emancipation. The redemption money wen to pay off existing debts and by 1905 nobles owned
40% less than in 1861, largely because they found their estates unprofitable and slowly sold off
land to their peasants and others. From 1862 to 1905 their landholdings fell from 87 million to
50 million desyatiny.
6. The powers of the Mir were strengthened. They were important for administrative reasons and
for keeping order in the countryside. They were responsible for collecting redemption
payments and the other taxes peasants had to pay. The mir issued internal passports allowing
peasants to travel. The ai was to ensure thousands of free peasants did not star to move
around the countryside with the potential for disorder this would bring. Instead of being tied to
the lord peasants were now tied to the village.
7. Historian Emmons suggests the emancipation back fired by creating a division between the
Tsarist government and the landed gentry (on whom that government relied) and they actually
weakened faith in the Tsar as being capable of leading effective change, and ultimately creating
a desire for ‘popular participation in government.’ The nobility were also disgruntled at the loss
of power, status and influence. A small minority wanted gentry representatives to for a national
commission to prevent bureaucrats from damaging their interests again. Some liberal members
wanted elected representatives from all over Russia to be assembled. The intelligentsia reacted
badly to the terms of the emancipation as they felt the emancipation protected the nobles and
betrayed the peasants, leading to the growth of opposition to the regime.
Interpretations of the emancipation

Interpretation one:
“Military and fiscal reforms provided the impetus for emancipation and continued to
overshadow all other aspects of Russian politics. In the mid-nineteenth century Russia
maintained the largest and most expensive peacetime army in Europe. Based on long-
term serf recruits, the armed forces lacked a trained strategic reserve and thus could not
be expanded in time of emergency. Largely immobile, because of long, exposed frontiers,
an unsettled internal situation, and the absence of modern transportation, army units
could not be rushed to reinforce the regular forces under attack at an exposed position,
like the Crimea, where only a fraction of the men under arms actually fought the enemy.
The huge cost of keeping an army in full readiness meant that sums much needed for
modernizing equipment and building strategic railroads and fortresses could not be
spared. An unsuccessful war like that in the Crimea added almost a billion rubles to the
national debt and shook the monetary stability of the country to its foundations.
Alexander and a few of his military advisers recognized that among all the other evils
spawned by serfdom, an outmoded army and a crippled treasury were the most
intolerable. By liberating the serfs, Alexander could not only free Russia from a moral
blight but furnish it with both a smaller, more efficient standing army with a large ready
reserve and also a modern fiscal system with a European-style budget.17”

Rieber, Alfred J. "Alexander II: A Revisionist View." The Journal of Modern History 43.1 (1971):
42-58. Web.