by Mark Leshkevich
[REGNUM] On March 17—Forgiveness Sunday—1861, Alexander II's manifesto on the abolition of serfdom was read out in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The emperor himself announced his will in the capital's Mikhailovsky Manege.
The manifesto's preamble stated that serfdom was "abolished forever," and that peasants and house servants were granted "the rights of free rural inhabitants." The "will" was read out in provincial and district towns for another month.
The Tsar's decision had already become known in the capitals at the beginning of the year. A former serf and "literate scholar" named Fyodor Bobkov left a diary entry about a banquet at the Assembly of Nobility, hosted by the liberal professors of Moscow University on Tatiana's Day. Fyodor served at the table. The progressive historian Mikhail Pogodin (himself the grandson of a serf freed by a kindly master) accepted the glass of champagne offered by Bobkov and proposed a toast:
“The dawn is rising, dear sirs, despite the clouds that occasionally run across the horizon... To the health of our most pious sovereign, Emperor Alexander Nikolaevich!”
The learned peasant Bobkov recalled:
A loud 'hurrah' echoed through the hall... My thoughts were mingling with the same desires and hopes... Suddenly, an unexpected nudge in the side knocked me down to earth and made me remember I wasn't a student, but a waiter. Kuzmich (another waiter) nudged me and said, "Gather up the silver. And be careful no one steals the two bottles of champagne I stole."
From the memoirs of Fyodor Bobkov it follows that for his fellow class members this was “somehow not the same” will.
"TEMPORARY DUTY" FOR 44 YEARS
It is commonly believed that the Tsar's manifesto affected the majority of the population of the Russian Empire. This is not true.
The Manifesto affected just over 23 million subjects of Alexander II. That's how many serfs there were in Russia, according to statistics from 1861. They didn't constitute the majority of the empire's population—34.3% of the 67 million inhabitants.
In Siberia, Pomorye, and the Cossack south, farmers were mostly free—in Vyatka Governorate, serfs accounted for 2.64%, and in Stavropol Governorate, even less—2.41%. But in the densely populated provinces of European Russia, serfs were indeed a significant part of the population: in Smolensk Governorate, over 69%, and in Tula Governorate, 68.9%.
The co-authors of the manifesto—the “liberal bureaucrat” Comrade (Deputy) Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Nikolai Milyutin, the Slavophile Yuri Samarin, and the Moscow Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) —tried to take into account the interests of both farmers and landowners.
The freed serfs received the rights to participate in contracts, courts, trade and property, and they were granted the freedom to marry without the permission of the landowner.
In exchange for the allotment of land allotted to the master, the peasant was required to perform his duties "either through labor or money." Until the termination of this obligatory relationship, they were called "temporarily obligated."
165 years ago, the state gave serfs personal freedom, but retained land dependence, duties, redemption payments, and, for a “transitional period,” the supervision of the landowner and the patrimonial police.
Russia only saw the final abolition of serfdom under Nicholas II. Part of the 1905 reforms included the abolition of redemption payments.
But in 1861, the desire to solve a long-standing problem, which had been approached even under Alexander I, and at the same time maintain social peace, was a difficult task.
DON'T TOUCH THE GROUND
For the nobility, the reform was a shock and the subject of a fierce internal struggle. Most landowners resisted the abolition of serfdom or wanted it to be carried out under the most favorable terms for themselves.
Their letters, notes, and speeches at noble assemblies are filled with anxiety. Land was the main nerve of the dispute.
One of the texts from those years expressed this almost cynically accurately: “Don’t touch the ground during liberation, and everything will calm down.”
The merchant class, on the whole, was more enthusiastic about the reform than is commonly believed. The millionaire entrepreneur Vasily Kokorev openly rejoiced at rumors of emancipation, saying he saw the inconveniences of serfdom every day. This was the voice of the business class, for whom serfdom was a hindrance both economically and morally.
The clergy found themselves in a difficult position. The higher hierarchy often viewed the reform with caution. The parish clergy lived among the people and were the first to sense the peasants' anger, mistrust, and confusion. It was through the church that the manifesto entered the village. Therefore, the church grounds became both the site of the official declaration of freedom and the site of the first peasant doubts.
The attitude of the main “addressees” of the reform was extremely complex.
"THE COURTYARDS ARE BECOMING BOLD"
Even before 1861, rumors of impending "freedom" were circulating in the villages. A document submitted to the editorial committee by nobles from three provinces (Kharkiv, Tver, and Yaroslavl) stated that the hope of gaining freedom and all the land belonging to the landowners "had become a belief that had embraced the entire people, young and old."
In the spring of 1856, there was talk that freedom would be granted at Alexander's coronation. At the end of 1856, the decree "On the procedure for registering peasants when landowners release them to the rank of state peasants" was perceived among peasants as almost a document of universal emancipation.
It was sold out, passed from hand to hand, and retold. In St. Petersburg, according to contemporaries, about 150 people were arrested and flogged for spreading such rumors.
In October 1857, one of the gendarme officers reported from the Nizhny Novgorod province: "Rumor among the common people about the abolition of serfdom has increased. They speak of it openly and it is the subject of the most impatient anticipation."
The servants, he added, "are becoming insolent." The landowners are afraid to remain in the villages.
Another document, compiled by officials of the Third Section on January 5, 1860, already conveys the irritation among the peasants: one can hear “anger at the landowners,” talk about how the peasants “have been deceived with their freedom for three years now,” and if the sovereign does not take decisive measures, “the peasants have only one way out.”
And finally, here comes the long-awaited will. It was immediately deemed a forgery.
THE RISEN ABYSS
According to contemporaries, this scene was not uncommon: the parish priest gathers the "peasant world" in the church and reads the manifesto. Before this, the district police chief and the marshal of the nobility demanded that he proclaim the law precisely and reassure the people.
But the people are grumbling, there is talk that true freedom means land without redemption, the end of corvee (without any temporary measures), the departure of landowners from the village, the transfer of all the land to the “world.”
There are known cases when the priest answered that there was no other paper; they did not believe him, but did not touch him, believing that “the priest is also in bondage.”
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in 1861 there were 784 unrests in 2034 villages, and in 449 cases it was necessary to call in the troops.
The peasants refused to work, demonstrated disobedience to the patrimonial administration, and were unwilling to accept the charters. They protested against the land parceling and demanded the entire landowner's estate or at least the preservation of the pre-reform allotment.
The aides-de-camp reported from the field: in the Vitebsk province, peasants agreed to work for the landowner for only two weeks, after which they wanted to take ownership of the land and forests, citing the will of the sovereign.
In the village of Bezdna in the Kazan province and Kandeevka in Penza they demanded all the land and the abolition of duties.
In Saratov Governorate, they insisted on transferring land, estates, and forests to the peasants. In Samara Governorate, they wanted to preserve the land they had used before the reform. In Tula Governorate, a typical narrative of the era circulated: the land and forests, "God's and the Tsar's," would become peasant property in two years.
BOUND BY ONE CHAIN
The law relieved landowners of responsibility for the provision and care of former serfs, and placed responsibility for food, taxes, and zemstvo and secular duties on the peasants themselves.
Nikolai Nekrasov reflected this new situation in the post-reform village in his poem "Who Lives Well in Russia." One of the characters, a landowner, says:
“The great chain has broken—
Now we don’t beat the peasant,
But at least it's fatherly
We do not pardon him."
The peasant gained freedom along with the burden of state and social obligations. Instead of the patriarchal authority of the master, the "little peasant" faced the bureaucratic apparatus directly. That's why Nekrasov's peasants complain:
“The great chain has broken,
It broke and fell apart
With one end towards the master,
"Others need a man."
In the 1870s and later, it was precisely this difficult everyday life that would become one of the reasons for the persistent dissatisfaction of the village with the entire post-reform order.
The state abolished serfdom from above, hoping to maintain order. The peasant, however, measured reform from below: with his arable land, his farmstead, his forest, his hay harvest, his corvee day, the amount of his quitrent, and his right to remain where he was.
Russia's most numerous class saw its own, the peasant question, as unresolved. And this problem would come back to haunt them in 1917. The Socialist Revolutionaries, and later the Bolsheviks, who had adopted the slogan "Land to the peasants!", did not aim for balance and consideration of the interests of all classes in the country. The peasants became an instrument of the revolution and one of its main victims.