The Emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia performed by tsarAlexander II of Russia amounted to liquidation of serf dependence of Russian peasants.
The legal basis of the reform was tsar's Emancipation Manifesto of March 3 (February 19, O.S.), 1861, 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).
The Manifesto granted the full rights of free citizens to serfs and prescribed that peasants would be able to buy the land from the landlords.
See also: Alexander II of Russia: Emancipation of the serfs.
The Emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia performed by tsarAlexander II of Russia amounted to liquidation of serf dependence of Russian peasants.
Originating from the year the Russian Serfs were emancipated, 1861, their impact and relation on the development of revolutionary consciousness in Imperial Russia, was dependent upon two lingering factors–where a newly freed Serf lived, whether a rural or urban setting, and also Russia’s economic condition, it could be either expanding or declining.
Therefore, urban Serfs would be more susceptible to abuse and manipulation at the hands of industrialists and the government in cities of Russia, rather than their previous abuse at the hands of the landowning gentry.
The emancipation was not merely a humanitarian question capable of being solved instantaneously by imperial ukase.
The main point at issue was whether the serfs should become agricultural labourers dependent economically and administratively on the landlords, or whether they should be transformed into a class of independent communal proprietors.
On March 3, 1861, the sixth anniversary of his accession, the emancipation law was signed and published.
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