Now it had been humiliated. By an odd twist of fate, defeat in the war proved of value to the new Tsar. Although he had been trained for government from an early age, foreign observers had remarked on how diffident and unsure he appeared.
The war changed all that. Coming to the throne in in the middle of the conflict, Alexander II was unable to save Russia from military failure, but the humiliation convinced him that, if his nation was to have stability and peace at home and be honoured abroad, military and domestic reforms were vitally necessary.
The first step on that path would be the removal of serfdom, whose manifest inefficiency benefited neither lord, peasant, nor nation. Alexander was right in thinking the time was propitious. It had long been appreciated that some land reform was necessary. To the social and economic arguments were now added powerful military ones. As long as its army remained strong Russia could afford to ignore its backwardness as a nation. Few now had reasoned objections to reform.
Serfdom was manifestly not working. It had failed to provide the calibre of soldier Russia needed. These words have often been quoted. This was evidence of the remarkable power and influence that the tsar exercised as absolute ruler.
Over the next five years, thousands of officials sitting in a range of committees drafted plans for the abolition of serfdom. When their work was done they presented their proposals to Alexander who then formally issued them in an Imperial Proclamation. When it was finally presented, in , the Emancipation statute, which accompanied the Proclamation, contained 22 separate measures whose details filled closely printed pages of a very large volume. Alexander declared that the basic aim of emancipation was to satisfy all those involved in serfdom, serfs and land owners alike:.
Called by Divine Providence We vowed in our hearts to fulfil the mission which is entrusted to Us and to surround with Our affection and Our Imperial solicitude all Our faithful subjects of every rank and condition. Impressive though these freedoms first looked, it soon became apparent that they had come at a heavy price for the peasants. It was not they, but the landlords, who were the beneficiaries. This should not surprise us: after, it had been the dvoriane who had drafted the emancipation proposals.
The compensation that the landowners received was far in advance of the market value of their property. They were also entitled to decide which part of their holdings they would give up. Unsurprisingly, they kept the best land for themselves.
The serfs got the leftovers. The data shows that the landlords retained two-thirds of the land while the peasants received only one-third. So limited was the supply of affordable quality land to the peasants that they were reduced to buying narrow strips that proved difficult to maintain and which yielded little food or profit. Moreover, while the landowners were granted financial compensation for what they gave up, the peasants had to pay for their new property.
Since they had no savings, they were advanced per cent mortgages, 80 per cent provided by the State bank and the remaining 20 by the landlords. This appeared a generous offer, but as in any loan transaction the catch was in the repayments.
The peasants found themselves saddled with redemption payments that became a lifelong burden that then had to be handed on to their children. The restrictions on the peasants did not end there. To prevent emancipation creating too much disruption, the government urged the peasants to remain in their localities. This was easy to achieve since, for obvious reasons, the great majority of the ex-serfs bought their allotments of land from the estates where they were already living.
It was also the case that the land available for purchase came from a stock of land granted to the village and was then sold on to individual peasants. A further aid to the authorities in maintaining control was the reorganisation of local government, which was one of the key reforms that followed in the wake of emancipation.
The motive was not cultural but administrative. The mir would provide an effective organisation for the collection of taxes to which the freed serfs were now liable; it would also be a controlling mechanism for keeping order in the countryside. 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 their survival. Land owners also suffered because many of them were deeply in debt, and the forced selling of their land left them struggling to maintain their lavish lifestyles. With little food and in a similar condition as when they were serfs, many peasants started to voice their disdain for the social system.
Lastly, the reforms transformed the Russian economy. The individuals who led the reform were in favor of an economic system similar to that of other European countries, which promoted the ideas of capitalism and free trade.
The idea of the reformers was to promote development and encourage private property ownership, free competition, entrepreneurship, and hired labor. They hoped this would bring about an a more laissez-faire economic system with minimal regulations and tariffs. Soon after the reforms, there was a substantial rise in the amount of grain production for sale.
Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Search for:. The Emancipation of the Serfs Learning Objective Determine the effectiveness of the emancipation of the serfs. Serfdom was abolished in , but its abolition was achieved on terms not always favorable to the peasants and increased revolutionary pressures.
The Emancipation Manifesto proclaimed the emancipation of the serfs on private estates and by this edict more than 23 million people received their liberty. Through emancipation, serfs gained the full rights of free citizens, including rights to marry without having to gain consent, to own property, and to own a business.
Key Terms revolutions A series of political upheavals throughout Europe in that remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history. For a solid part of Russian history — starting from the midth century, and until the abolition of serfdom in — peasants were tied to their land. In the wake of the French Revolution, that proclaimed personal freedom as a basic human right, serfdom needed to be abolished.
Emperor Nicholas I organized at least ten secret committees discussing the abolition of serfdom — during his whole reign, from , and until his death, in He understood that peasants must own their land above all, and pleaded with his son, Alexander II, not to deprive them of that, lest it lead to a national disaster. The abolition of serfdom was also deemed so necessary because in the s and s, especially after the devastating Eastern War, peasant uprisings and revolts had increased in number.
The fuse had already been lit. But the landlords were in a perpetual financial crisis. In , a plan of the reform was drafted, but the landlords, members of the committee for the reform, opposed it strongly, and by , the plan was amended in favor of the landlords. The peasants were given freedom without land — the worst scenario that Nicholas warned about. The Emancipation Manifesto was signed on February 19, The peasants gained personal freedom. For self-support, they gained small plots of land about 3,5 hectares that the state bought from the landlords.
These small plots, however, were loaned to the peasants by the state on a 5,6 percent annual interest. The landlords took the best lands, leaving their peasants with infertile or swampy plots.
Freedom for peasants was only in their newly installed communal self-governance. In all other respects, their lives remained unchanged. The landlords were pushed, too. The state paid them for their former serfs in bonds stock papers that could be cashed, but cost much less than their nominal value.
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