L-15

Part III Era of Great Reforms (1)

1. Emancipation of the Serfs

Introduction

A. Historiography

B. Sources

C. Themes

1. Emancipation

A. Watershed

1. Cataclysmic Event

2. Turning point: Toward a new social order

3. Comparison of pre-reform and post-reform

4. Russia’s 1861 as France’s 1789

B. Emancipation: Impediments

1. Great power status

2. Fear of social turmoil

3. Serfdom too integral

4. Fiscal: how to finance?

C. Why Emancipation? Four Theories

1. Imperatives of Economic Modernization

2. Revolutionary Situation

3. Triumph of Liberal (Western) Humanitarianism

4. Military Defeat: Crimean War

C. Why Emancipation? Four Theories

1. Imperative of Economic Modernizationa. Arguments

• Nobility disenchanted• Crisis of serf economy

b. Critiques• Little evidence• State disinterest in industrialization• Contrary evidence: serfdom had adapted

C. Why Emancipation

2. “Revolutionary Situation”

a. Thesis: preempt social revolution• Police reports on peasant “mood” & expectations• Upsurge in peasant disturbances• Alarmist reports of nobility

b. Critiques• Police exaggeration, poor information• Upsurge followed public decision• Fear among squires, not government officials

Police Reports on Peasant Mood

Rumors about changes in their status, which began to circulate about there years ago throughout the whole Empire, have created tension between landlords and serfs, for whom this matter represents a question of life or death.” (1857)

“As the landlords put it, the peasants have stretched out their hands and will simply not be pacified. Most of them understand freedom in the vulgar sense of being free to do whatever they wish, with no laws or restrictions; and they are convinced that the land and their houses belong to them.” (1858)

Police Reports on Peasant Mood

First Serf: “They say that we will soon be free.”

Second Serf: “Probably like the state peasants.”

First Serf: “No, that’s just it—completely free. They won’t demand either recruits or taxes; and there won’t be any kind of authorities. We will run things ourselves.”

Upsurge in Peasant Disorders

Years Total Annual Average

1800-25 261 10.4

1826-1855 674 22.5

1856-60 474 99.8

C. Why Emancipation?

3. Triumph of Western Humanitarianism

a. Argument• Widespread dissemination of values, ideas• Strong impact on gosudarstvenniki

b. Critique• Ideas around for long time, but why now?• Actually not shared by the rank-and-file nobility

Police Report on Gentry Attitudes toward Serfs (1857)

“The majority of the gentry believe that our peasant is too uncultured to understand civil law; that, in a state of freedom, he would be more vicious than any wild beast; that disorders, plundering, and murder are almost inevitable; and that in many provinces—especially along the Volga—the terrible times of the Pugachev Rebellion are recalled.”

C. Why Emancipation?

4. Crimean War Debaclea. Motives

• Psychological shock of defeat• Wartime memoranda

b. Why Focus on Serfdom?• Barrier to universal military training• Lack of infrastructure, esp. railways• Key to social and economic backwardness• Cause of state insolvency, financial collapse and defeat

c. Larger Ideology: Emancipation (raskreposhchenie) of all society

Wartime Memoranda (Zapiski)

Westerner Kavelin: “Most people are convinced that Russia’s natural conditions should make it one of the richest countries in the world; yet it would be hard to find another state where there is less capital, where poverty is so ubiquitous among all the classes of people.”

Slavophile Iurii Samarin: “We were vanquished not by the foreign armies of the Western alliance, but by our own internal weaknesses, which are due to serfdom.”

D. Actors

1. Arbitrator: Alexander II

2. Abolitionists:a. Military

b. Liberal gosudarstvenniki (N. Miliutin et al.)

c. Courtiers (GD Konstantin Nikolaevich, GD Elena Pavlovna

d. Compliant officialdom: Rostovtsev and Panin

e. Obshchestvo: public opinion

3. Anti-abolitionistsa. Bureaucratic elites

b. Police

c. Provincial Gentry

Alexander II

Praise of “Tsar-Liberator”

Alexander II: Visits Peasant Hut

S.S. Lanskoi

Nikolai Miliutin

General Ia. E. Rostovtsev

Viktor Nikitich Panin

Iurii F. Samarin

Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna

Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich

E. Politics of Emancipation

1. Emancipation denied (1855-Mar. 1856)

2. Commitment, secrecy (Mar. 1856-Nov. 1857)

3. Engineering Assent (Nov. 1857-1858)a. Nazimov Rescript and aftermath (Nov 1857)

b. Public response

4. Reform from Above (1859-61)a. SPB: Main Committee, Editorial Committee

b. Gentry Rebellion: provincial deputies to SPB

c. Final Revisions, Promulgation 1861

State Council: Final Review of Emancipation

Emancipation Proclamation

F. Terms of Emancipation

1. Volia (personal freedom)

2. Landa. 3-stage mechanism: inventories, “temporary

obligations”, and “Redemption”

b. Land shares and terms

3. Commune

4. Conclusions

Leo Tolstoy as Peace Mediator

Tolstoy as Peace Arbitrator

Tver: Peace Arbitrators Subjected to Administrative Penalties

Ustavnaia Gramota: Peasant-Squire Agreement

Cut-offs: Land Shares Lost by Former Serfs

Area Number of Provinces

Average Share of Land Lost (%)

Non-Black Soil 15 10

Black-Soil 21 26

All 36 18

Geographic Patterns of Cutoffs

Decreased:

Yellow: under 20%

Pink: 20-40%

Brown: over 40%

Increased:

Green: under 20%

Purple: over 20%

Over-valued Land Shares

Area 1860 Value (millions of

rubles)

Redemption Value

(millions of rubles

Difference (millions of

rubles)

Percent increase

Black Soil 218 342 123 57%

Non-Black Soil

155 342 187 121%

G. Reaction to Emancipation

1. Radical intelligentsia

2. Nobility: from dismay to liberalism

3. Peasantry: from disbelief to disobedience

Peasant Disorders1859-1866

Year Number of Violent Disorders

1859 91

1860 126

1861 1,889

1862 849

1863 509

1864 156

1865 135

1866 91

Anton Petrov and the Peasants of Bezdna

H. Extension to Other Peasant Categories

Peasant Categories: Different Deals

Category Average Allotment (acres)

Serfs 4.0

Crown peasants 14.0

State peasants 19.9

I. Conclusions

1. Decision by the state and for the state

2. Strong constraints (fiscal, social, political)

3. New politics

4. Long, complex, conflicted process

5. Political, not economic, decision

6. Gradualism: adoption, implementation