What were the mains reasons for the emancipation of Serfs in Russia?
by
lenamal (student)
HI5055: Russia: 1855/1945 Reform, Revolution and War.
Malmontet
Léna
What were the main reasons for the passing of the Edict of Emancipation?
“It became convenient to use serfdom to explain all Russia’s current weaknesses: it was responsible for military incompetence, food shortages, over population, civil disorder, industrial backwardness. These were oversimplified explanations but there some truth in all of them: serfdom was symptomatic of the underlying difficulties that held Russia back from progress.”
At the time Alexander II obtained the position of Tsar, during the Crimean war conflict in 1855, fifty million of the sixty million legal occupants of Russia were serfs. In March 1861, in the face of considerable landowner opposition, the Emancipation Edict was passed: “On the basis of the above mentioned new arrangements, the serfs will receive in time the full rights of free rural inhabitants.” Emancipation proved the first in a series of measures that Alexander II produced as a part of a program that included legal and administrative reform and the extension of press and university freedoms. However, the emancipation of the serfs was not a gift from Tsar only to improve the lot of the peasant. Not only had the servile institution itself long been discussed both theoretically and in its practical consequences.
Various explanations have been put forward for this momentous reform but there has been little agreement among historians. Indeed, there are various opinions as to why the reform process was embarked upon. These various explanations differed on the question whether it was the Crimean War that laid the foundation for the Reforms or the Reforms were the result of a broader process in Russian society. So, in this Essay, I'll explain how the Edict of emancipation was the result of various factors and how these factors may relate to each other between.
In a first part, it is important to see to what extent the emancipation of serfs was the result of a broad process in Russia society. Indeed, it was widely recognized, even by the tsars themselves, that serfdom was morally repugnant. There was an ideological problem with serfdom, and this went back into the early 19th century. Thus, early in the 19th century, under the reign of Alexander I and Nicholas I, was seen appear the emerging Russian intellectual class was very opposed to serfdom. The example the ill-fated Decembrist revolt of 1825, where the abolition of serfdom had been demanded, showed there was a political and ideological background to abolition. In fact, a lot of writers and artists were becoming increasingly interested in the nature of the peasantry, and hostile to the enslavement of such a large part of the population. The Slavophil landowner A. I. Koshelyov said in a memorandum written for the Tsar Alexander II in 1858: “This measure is more necessary for the welfare of our class itself even than for the serfs. The abolition of the right to dispose of people like objects or like cattle is as much our liberation as theirs: for at present we are under the yoke of a law that destroys still more in us than the serfs any human quality.” In this part of the memorandum, the writer explained how the serfdom was not moral. This writing reflects the emergence of these men from the early 19th century, which is opposed to serfdom for ideological reasons. Koshelyov while using arguments of economic self-interest also claimed that the landowners themselves were ceasing that they had a moral right to own other human beings like chattels. At the beginning of paragraph, I spoke about recognition of the immorality of slavery by the tsars themselves. It is possible to think if the writer wrote these words to the Tsar; the idea according to which the serfdom was immoral was widely recognized. Thus, in the edict of emancipation of 1861, Alexander II referred to the work of his predecessors in the domain of the condition of serfs: “These facts had already attracted the attention of our predecessors of glorious memory, and they had adopted measures aimed at improving the conditions of the peasant […] Thus Alexander 1 issued a decree on free farmers, and the late Imperial Russian Emperor Nicholas, Our beloved father, promulgated one dealing with the serfs. In the Western guberniias, inventory regulations determine the peasant land allotments and their obligations. But decrees on free farmers and serfs have been carried out on a limited scale only.”
