The Emancipation Reform of 1861 in Russia was the first and most important of liberal reforms effected during the reign of Alexander II. The reform amounted to the liquidation of serf dependence previously suffered by Russian peasants. Look up liberal on Wiktionary, the free dictionary Liberal may refer to: Politics: Liberalism American liberalism, a political trend in the USA Political progressivism, a political ideology that is for change, often associated with liberal movements Liberty, the condition of being free from control or restrictions Liberal Party, members of... Alexander (Aleksandr) II Nikolaevich (Russian: Александр II Николаевич) (born 29 April 1818 in Moscow; died 13 March 1881 in St. ... A Peasant Leaving His Landlord on Yuriev Day, painting by Sergei V. Ivanov. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

The legal basis of the reform was the Tsar's Emancipation Manifesto of March 3, 1861 (February 19, 1861 O.S.), 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. Tsar (Bulgarian, Serbian and Macedonian цар, Russian  , in scientific transliteration respectively car and car ), occasionally spelled Czar or Tzar and sometimes Csar or Zar in English, is a Slavonic term designating certain monarchs. ... is the 62nd day of the year (63rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1861 (MDCCCLXI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link with display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar) // January 1 - Benito Juárez captures Mexico City January 2 - Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia dies and is succeeded by... is the 50th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1861 (MDCCCLXI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link with display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar) // January 1 - Benito Juárez captures Mexico City January 2 - Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia dies and is succeeded by... Old Style can refer to: Old Style and New Style dates, a shift from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar: in Britain in 1752, in Russia in 1918. ...

Pre-reform Russia

Imperial Russia was a land of peasants, which made up 90% of the population^{[citation needed]}. There were two main categories of peasants, those living on state lands and those living on the land of private landowners. Only the latter were serfs. 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. Imperial Russia is the term used to cover the period of history from the expansion of Russia under Peter the Great, through the expansion of the Russian Empire from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, to the deposal of Nicholas II of Russia, the last tsar, at the start... Categories: 1911 Britannica | Historical stubs | Feudalism ...

The rural population lived in households (dvory, singular dvor), gathered as villages (derevni, lit. 'wood', larger villages 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 miles) or so^{[citation needed]}. There were around 20 million dvory in Imperial Russia^{[citation needed]}, four in ten numbering from six to ten people^{[citation needed]}. The Russian word mir (мир), besides its direct meanings of peace and world, had some other meanings related to social organization in Imperial Russia. ... The Russian word mir (мир), besides its direct meanings of peace and world, had some other meanings related to social organization in Imperial Russia. ...

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 — a complex of strip plots, distributed according to the quality of the soil. The strips were periodically redistributed (peredely) within the derevni to produce level economic conditions, albeit at the expense of actual efficiency. Despite this the land was not owned by the mir; the land was the legal property of the 100,000 or so land-owners (dvoryanstvo) 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 labour and goods, usually working the land half-and-half for themselves and the land-owner. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (or The Republic of the Two Nations, Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów in Polish; Belarusian: Рэч Паспалі́тая) was a federal monarchy-republic formed by the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania, between 1569... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Russian nobility. ...

The need for urgent reform was well understood in 19th-century Russia^{[citation needed]}, 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^{[citation needed]}. For the periodical, see Nineteenth Century (periodical). ... Count Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky (1772-1839) was probably the greatest of Russian reformers in the period between Peter the Great and Alexander the Liberator. ... Count Nikolay Semyonovich Mordvinov (17 April 1754 — 30 March 1845) was one of the most reputable Russian political thinkers of Alexander Is reign. ... Count Pavel D. Kiselyov (portrait by Franz Krüger, 1851). ...

In Western guberniyas serfdom was abolished earlier. In Russian Poland, sefdom was 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.^[1] However peasants were still subject to various limitations. Guberniya (Russian: ) (also gubernia, guberniia, gubernya) was a major administrative subdivision of the Imperial Russia, usually translated as governorate or province. ... The term Congress Poland is an unofficial name of the Kingdom of Poland, a political entity that was created out of the Duchy of Warsaw at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, when European powers reorganised Europe following the Napoleonic wars. ... For other uses, see Napoleon (disambiguation). ... Capital Reval History  - Created June 9, 1719  - Treaty of Nystad 1721  - Collapse of empire 1917  - Estonian independence 24 February 1918 Reval Governorate (Ревельская губерния or Revel guberniya) was a governorate of the Russian Empire. ... Coat of arms of Courland Courland (Latvian: ; German: ; Latin: Curonia / Couronia; Lithuanian: ; Estonian: ; Polish: ; Russian: ) is an historical Baltic province now part of Latvia. ...

Emancipation Manifesto

The liberal politicians who stood behind the 1861 manifesto — Nikolay Milyutin and Yakov Rostovtsev — also recognised 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. Nikolay Alekseyevich Milyutin (1818—1872) was a Russian statesman remembered as the chief architect of the great liberal reforms undertaken during Alexander IIs reign, including the emancipation of the serfs and the establishment of zemstvo. ... Iakov Ivanovich Rostovtsev (9 January 1804 (O.S. 28 December 1803) – 18 February [O.S. 6 February] 1860) was a leading figure in the formulation of statutes which effectively emancipated the Russian serfs. ... For other uses, see Europe (disambiguation). ... Combatants Allies: Second French Empire British Empire Ottoman Empire Kingdom of Sardinia Russian Empire Bulgarian volunteers Casualties 90,000 French 35,000 Turkish 17,500 British 2,194 Sardinian killed, wounded and died of disease ~134,000 killed, wounded and died of disease The Crimean War (1853–1856) was fought...

Alexander, unlike his father, was willing to deal with this problem. Moving on from a petition from the Lithuanian provinces, a committee "for ameliorating the condition of the peasants" was founded and the principles of the abolition considered. Alexander (Aleksandr) II Nikolaevich (Russian: Александр II Николаевич) (born 29 April 1818 in Moscow; died 13 March 1881 in St. ...

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, 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. The European Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations or the Year of Revolution, were a revolutionary wave which erupted in Sicily and then, further triggered by the revolutions of 1848 in France, soon spread to the rest of Europe and as far afield as... The proletariat (from Latin proles, offspring) is a term used to identify a lower social class; a member of such a class is proletarian. ...

To 'balance' this, the legislation contained three measures to reduce the potential economic self-sufficiency of the peasants. Firstly a transition period of nine years was introduced, during which the peasant was obligated as before to the old land-owner. Additionally large parts of common land were passed to the major land-owners as otrezki, making many forests, roads and rivers only accessible 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. 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. This was regarded as completely unacceptably 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." ^[2] Redemption payments were finally cancelled in 1907.

Implementation

Although well planned in the legislation, the reform did not work smoothly.

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, combined with the generally poor management skills of the land-owners as well as unfavorable weather conditions, Russia fell into the state of discontent and anarchism that Alexander II had worked so hard to avoid.

Outcome

The legislation neither freed the peasants from excessive external obligation nor greatly reordered their social and economic constraints. 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). Map of Congress Poland. ...

See also

• Stolypin reform
• Judicial reform of Alexander II
• Bezdna Unrest

Image File history File links Wikisource-logo. ... The original Wikisource logo. ... Stolypin agrarian reforms are the agrarian reforms to Imperial Russias agricultural sector instituted during the tenure of Pyotr Stolypin as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister). ... During the judicial reform of Emperor Alexander II, a completely new court system and a completely new order of legal proceedings were established in Imperial Russia The judicial reform of Alexander II is generally considered one of the most successful and the most consistent (along with the military reform) of... Bezdna or Biznä Unrest was an unrest of former serfs after the Emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia in April, 1861. ...

External links

• Emancipation Manifesto, in Russian

References