The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia

1762-1907

David Moon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138135864
• eBook ISBN: 9781317886150
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

In February 1861 Tsar Alexander II issued the statutes abolishing the institution of serfdom in Russia. The procedures set in motion by Alexander II undid the ties that bound together 22 million serfs and 100,000 noble estate owners, and changed the face of Russia. Rather than presenting abolition as an 'event' that happened in February 1861, The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia presents the reform as a process. It traces the origins of the abolition of serfdom back to reforms in related areas in 1762 and forward to the culmination of the process in 1907. Written in an engaging and accessible manner, the book shows how the reform process linked the old social, economic and political order of eighteenth-century Russia with the radical transformations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that culminated in revolution in 1917.

 

 

 

 

 

PART ONE

BACKGROUND

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

On 19 February 1861 Tsar Alexander II signed into law the Statutes abolishing serfdom in the Russian Empire. The reform directly affected around 22 million peasant men, women and children, and around 100,000 noble estate owners to whom they belonged as serfs. The magnitude of the reform is demonstrated by the fact that, on the eve of the reform, serfs of noble estate owners made up around 35 per cent of the Empire’s total population. The abolition of serfdom was not, however, a single ‘event’ that took place in early 1861 and led to the immediate ‘emancipation’ of the serfs. Rather, it was a process spread out over several decades (Kolchin, 1996: 52–5; Mironov, 1996: 335–46). It is argued in this book that the process of abolishing serfdom in the Russian Empire lasted almost a century and a half, from 1762 to 1907.

In 1762 Tsar Peter III enacted two reforms that, with the benefit of hindsight, can be seen as precursors to the end of serfdom 99 years later. The first was the abolition of compulsory noble state service, sometimes called ‘the emancipation of the nobility’ [Doc. 1]. This measure ended the original rationale behind serfdom. For at least two centuries prior to 1762 nobles had been obliged, at least in principle, to serve the state. Most nobles served either as officers in the armed forces or officials in the civil bureaucracy. In return, state servitors had originally been paid in land. Between the late sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, the Russian state had ensured its servitors had a labour force to cultivate their land – and thus provide them with an income – by binding peasants to it, thereby creating the institution of serfdom. Peter III’s act in 1762 ended this hierarchy of service in which nobles served the state and serfs served the nobles. After 1762 noble state service was voluntary, and nobles were free to live where they chose. The peasants on their estates, however, remained bound to the land, and were still serfs.

Peter III’s other act in 1762 that indirectly concerned serfdom was the secularization of the estates and peasants of the Russian Orthodox Church [Doc. 2]. Peasants who lived on nobles’ estates – the serfs – were only a part of the total peasant population. Another part were peasants who lived on church estates. They served monasteries and churches in much the same way as serfs served nobles. In 1762 Peter III converted the church’s land and peasants into state lands and peasants. Thus – and this was Peter III’s motive – the immense landed wealth of the Russian Orthodox Church now belonged to the state. However, if the state could take land and peasants from the church, then in theory it could also take the nobles’ estates and serfs away from them, thus abolishing serfdom.

Throughout the rest of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries, the ‘peasant question’ – in particular the future of serfdom – was the subject of considerable discussion inside the government and among wider society. Over the same period the government enacted further reforms that touched on serfdom directly or indirectly.

The culmination of this process of discussion and reform was the Statutes of 1861, which set in motion a complex, three-stage process to undo the ties that bound the serfs and noble estate owners to each other. The details will be explained later. Suffice to note here that during the first two stages, relations between the freed serfs and estate owners were regulated by law. In the third stage, the former serfs bought part of the land from the estate owners in a process known as ‘redemption’. The government paid compensation to the estate owners, and the former serfs repaid the government in ‘redemption payments’ spread over 49 years. The ‘redemption operation’ came to an end when Tsar Nicholas II’s decision to write off the freed serfs’ outstanding redemption payments came into effect on 1 January 1907 [Doc. 28]. The previous year, the former serfs – or more likely their children and grandchildren – had regained the legal right of freedom of movement, which their forebears had lost in the late sixteenth century with the onset of serfdom.

HISTORIANS AND THE ABOLITION OF SERFDOM

The majority of the works cited in this book were published in the former Soviet Union, Western Europe and North America in the second half of the twentieth century (Gleason, 1994). Historians working in the Soviet Union from the early 1920s until the end of the 1980s were constrained by an official interpretation of history that was imposed by the ruling Communist Party. It was based, crudely, on the writings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilich Lenin. As a result, most Soviet historians emphasized social and economic rather than political and intellectual history, stressed the role of ‘class struggle’, and presented the history of tsarist Russia as leading inevitably towards revolution and the triumph of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in the revolution of 1917.

Nevertheless, a number of Soviet historians produced important work on the subject of this book. The most prominent was Peter Zaionchkovsky. His major book, The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia, has been translated into English (Zaionchkovsky, 1978). In contrast to many Soviet historians, Zaionchkovsky paid due attention to political history and the role of the state bureaucracy in the abolition of serfdom (Saunders, 2000a). In addition, Zaionchkovsky supervised a number of postgraduate students, Russian and Western, who went on to produce significant work on the abolition of serfdom. Zaionchkovsky’s students included such prominent scholars as Terence Emmons, Daniel Field, W. Bruce Lincoln and Larisa Zakharova (Zakharova, 1998: 16–17).

Both Soviet and Western historians drew on the considerable scholarship of historians working in the Russian Empire in the decades prior to 1917. Historians such as Vasilii Semevskii and his colleagues and students produced pioneering studies of the peasantry and the ‘peasant question’. In 1911 a six-volume work entitled ‘The Great Reform’, which contained essays by many major scholars, was published in Moscow to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Statutes (Dzhivelegov, 1911).

THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

In order to understand the abolition of serfdom, it is necessary to consider the origins of the institution, the ways it linked the nobility and the state, and how it operated in the villages. Although the main focus of this book is on the Russian part of the multinational empire, some attention is paid to the non-Russian western borderlands (the Baltic provinces, Lithuania, Belorussia and Ukraine). All these are discussed in Chapter 2. The range of motives for reforming and abolishing serfdom are analysed in Chapters 3 and 4. Rural reforms enacted between 1762 and 1855 are discussed in Chapter 5. One of the major concerns of the tsars was their empire’s international status and the armed forces that supported it. The connection between Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War of 1853–56, the need for military reform, and the decision to abolish serfdom is explored in Chapter 6. Once the decision had been taken, it took several years to prepare the reform. This is the subject of Chapter 7. Chapter 8 seeks to explain the terms of the Statutes of 19 February 1861. Responses to the reform and its implementation in 1861–63 are the subject of Chapter 9. The reform process over the years 1863–1907 is examined in Chapter 10, and the wider impact of the reform on the economy, society and politics of the Russian Empire is discussed in Chapter 11. Concise conclusions and an assessment of the reform process and its aftermath are presented in Part Three.

Throughout the book, more attention is paid to peasants than nobles, but the treatment of the nobility is still out of proportion to their small numbers. While the book discusses social and economic aspects of the process of abolition, centre stage is taken by the relationship between the imperial Russian state and its nobles and peasants.

PART TWO

ANALYIS

CHAPTER TWO

SERFDOM IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE

Throughout the period of serfdom – from the late sixteenth century until 1861 – the Russian Empire was an overwhelmingly rural society. 80–90 per cent of its population were peasants, most of whom supported themselves largely, but not solely, by farming the land. Very roughly, half the peasantry were the serfs of the nobility. Nobles, however, made up less than 1 per cent of the empire’s population. Under serfdom, peasants were bound to the landed estates of nobles and, in practice, also to the nobles themselves. They were banned from leaving the estates without the owners’ permission. In addition, serfs were required to serve or pay obligations for or to their estate owners, usually in labour (barshchina) and/or dues (obrok) in cash and kind. In return, serfs received the use of allotments of land. Noble estate owners had considerable administrative and judicial authority over their serfs, and could buy and sell them with or without the land they lived on (Blum, 1961). From an economic point of view, the main feature of serfdom was that it enabled nobles to extract more income from their estates – in the form of their serfs’ obligations – than they would have been able to do if a free peasantry had had the rights to rent land or sell their labour at the best rates they could get in an open market. In an economic sense, therefore, serfdom enabled nobles to get as big a share as they could of the product of peasant labour (Smith, 1968: 3).

THE RUSSIAN STATE, THE NOBILITY AND SERFDOM

The origins of serfdom in Russia lay in the process of binding peasants to the landed estates of the nobility by the state, which began in the fifteenth century, but developed most rapidly between 1580 and 1649. Terms in the law code of 1649 laid down that serfs (and other peasants) were bound to the land they lived on in perpetuity, and were permanently liable to be caught and returned if they fled. The main reason why the state bound a large part of its peasant population to nobles’ land was to support its military forces. This requires some explanation. The state needed armed forces that were powerful enough to maintain its power inside Russia, and to defend and expand its borders. In the south and east, in the fertile steppe regions, the Russian state came up against the Tatars and other nomadic peoples. In the west, Russia bordered the states of east-central Europe. The Russian state lacked the financial resources to pay adequate salaries to its military servitors. Nor did it have a sufficiently large or effective administration to raise the necessary money through taxation or other means. One resource it did have in large quantities was land. From the sixteenth century the state paid its servitors, both military and civil, with grants of land. Since landed estates were of little value unless they had labour to farm them, and since the estate owners were away serving the tsar, the state gradually bound peasants to the land, and ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables and Map
• Introduction to the Series
• Note on Transliteration
• List of Abbreviations
• Author’s Acknowledgements
• Publisher’s Acknowledgements
• Chronology
• Map
• Part One Background
• Part Two Analysis
• Part Three Conclusion and Assessment
• Part Four Documents
• Glossary
• Who’s Who
• Guide to Further Reading
• Bibliography
• Index