The peasant reform of 1861, which abolished serfdom, marked the beginning of the capitalist formation in the country.
Main reason Peasant reform resulted in a crisis of the feudal-serf system. Crimean War 1853–1856 revealed the rottenness and impotence of serf Russia. In the context of peasant unrest, which especially intensified during the war, tsarism moved to abolish serfdom.
In January 1857 A Secret Committee was formed under the chairmanship of Emperor Alexander II “to discuss measures to organize the life of the landowner peasants,” which at the beginning of 1858. was reorganized into the Main Committee for Peasant Affairs. At the same time, provincial committees were formed, which began developing projects for peasant reform, considered by the Editorial Commissions.
February 19, 1861 In St. Petersburg, Alexander II signed the Manifesto on the abolition of serfdom and the “Regulations on peasants emerging from serfdom,” consisting of 17 legislative acts.
The main act - “General Regulations on Peasants Emerging from Serfdom” - contained the main conditions of the peasant reform:
1. peasants received personal freedom and the right to dispose of their property;
2. the landowners retained ownership of all the lands they owned, but were obliged to provide the peasants with “homestead residence” and field allotment for use “to ensure their livelihood and to fulfill their duties to the government and the landowner”;
3. For the use of allotment land, peasants had to serve corvee or pay quitrent and did not have the right to refuse it for 9 years. The size of the field allotment and duties should have been recorded in the statutory charters of 1861, which were drawn up by landowners for each estate and verified by the peace intermediaries;
-peasants were given the right to buy out an estate and, by agreement with the landowner, a field allotment; until this was done, they were called temporarily obligated peasants.
The “general situation” determined the structure, rights and responsibilities of peasant public (rural and volost) government bodies and the court.
4 “Local Regulations” determined the size of land plots and the duties of peasants for their use in 44 provinces of European Russia. The first of them is “Great Russian”, for 29 Great Russian, 3 Novorossiysk (Ekaterinoslav, Tauride and Kherson), 2 Belarusian (Mogilev and part of Vitebsk) and part of Kharkov provinces. This entire territory was divided into three stripes (non-chernozem, chernozem and steppe), each of which consisted of “localities”.
In the first two bands, depending on the “locality,” the highest (from 3 to 7 dessiatines; from 2 3/4 to 6 dessiatines) and the lowest (1/3 of the highest) amounts of per capita taxes were established. For the steppe, one “decreed” allotment was determined (in the Great Russian provinces from 6 to 12 dessiatines; in Novorossiysk, from 3 to 6 1/5 dessiatines). The size of the government tithe was determined to be 1.09 hectares.
Allotment land was provided to the “rural community”, i.e. community, according to the number of souls (men only) at the time of drawing up the charter documents who had the right to the allotment.
From the land that was in the use of peasants before February 19, 1861, sections could be made if the peasants' per capita allotments exceeded the highest size established for a given “locality”, or if the landowners, while maintaining the existing peasant allotment, had less than 1/3 of the estate's land left. Allotments could be reduced by special agreements between peasants and landowners, as well as upon receipt of a gift allotment.
If peasants had plots of less than a small size, the landowner was obliged to cut off the missing land or reduce duties. For the highest spiritual allotment, a quitrent was established from 8 to 12 rubles per year or corvee - 40 men's and 30 women's working days per year. If the allotment was less than the highest, then the duties were reduced, but not proportionally.
The rest of the “Local Provisions” basically repeated the “Great Russian Provisions”, but taking into account the specifics of their regions.
The features of the peasant reform for certain categories of peasants and specific areas were determined by 8 “Additional Rules”: “Arrangement of peasants settled on the estates of small-scale owners, and on benefits to these owners”; “People of the Ministry of Finance assigned to private mining plants”; “Peasants and workers serving work at Perm private mining plants and salt mines”; “Peasant peasants serving work in landowner factories”; "The peasants and courtyard people in the Land of the Don Army"; "Peasant peasants and courtyard people in the Stavropol province"; "Peasant peasants and courtyard people in Siberia"; "People who emerged from serfdom in the Bessarabian region."
The Manifesto and “Regulations” were published on March 5 in Moscow and from March 7 to April 2 in St. Petersburg. Fearing the dissatisfaction of the peasants with the conditions of the reform, the government took a number of precautions: it redeployed troops, sent members of the imperial retinue to places, issued an appeal from the Synod, etc. However, the peasants, dissatisfied with the enslaving conditions of the reform, responded to it with mass unrest. The largest of them were the Bezdnensky and Kandeevsky peasant uprisings of 1861.
As of January 1, 1863, peasants refused to sign about 60% of the charters. The purchase price of the land significantly exceeded its market value at that time, in some areas -
2–3 times. In many regions, peasants sought to receive gift plots, thereby reducing allotment land use: in the Saratov province by 42.4%, Samara - 41.3%, Poltava - 37.4%, Ekaterinoslav - by 37.3%, etc. The lands cut off by the landowners were a means of enslaving the peasants, since they were vitally necessary for the peasant economy: watering place, pasture, haymaking, etc.
The peasants' transition to ransom lasted for several decades, on December 28, 1881. a law on compulsory redemption was issued on January 1, 1883, the transfer to which was completed by 1895. In total, by January 1, 1895, 124 thousand redemption transactions were approved, according to which 9,159 thousand souls in areas with communal farming and 110 thousand households in areas with household farming were transferred to redemption. About 80% of buyouts were mandatory.
As a result of the peasant reform (according to 1878), in the provinces of European Russia, 9860 thousand souls of peasants received an allotment of 33728 thousand dessiatines of land (on average 3.4 dessiatines per capita). U115 thousand. landowners were left with 69 million dessiatines (an average of 600 dessiatines per owner).
What did these “average” indicators look like after 3.5 decades? The political and economic power of the tsar rested on the nobles and landowners. According to the 1897 census in Russia there were 1 million 220 thousand hereditary nobles and more than 600 thousand personal nobles, to whom the title of nobility was given, but not inherited. All of them were owners of land plots.
Of these: about 60 thousand were small-scale nobles, each had 100 acres; 25.5 thousand - average landowners, had from 100 to 500 acres; 8 thousand large nobles, who had from 500 to 1000 acres: 6.5 thousand - the largest nobles, who had from 1000 to 5000 acres.
At the same time, there were 102 families in Russia: princes Yusupov, Golitsyn, Dolgorukov, counts Bobrinsky, Orlov, etc., whose holdings amounted to more than 50 thousand dessiatines, that is, about 30% of the landowners' land fund in Russia.
The largest owner in Russia was Tsar Nicholas I. He owned huge tracts of so-called cabinet and appanage lands. Gold, silver, lead, copper, and timber were mined there. He rented out a significant part of the land. The king's property was managed by a special ministry of the imperial court.
When filling out the questionnaire for the census, Nicholas II wrote in the column about profession: “Master of the Russian land.”
As for peasants, the average allotment of a peasant family, according to the census, was 7.5 dessiatines.
The significance of the peasant reform of 1861 was that it abolished feudal ownership of workers and created a market for cheap labor. The peasants were declared personally free, that is, they had the right to buy land, houses, and enter into various transactions in their own name. The reform was based on the principle of gradualism: within two years, statutory charters were to be drawn up, defining the specific conditions for the liberation of peasants, then the peasants were transferred to the position of “temporarily obligated” until the transition to redemption and in the subsequent 49-year period, paying the debt to the state that bought the land for peasants from landowners. Only after this should land plots become the full property of the peasants.
For the liberation of peasants from serfdom, Emperor Alexander II was called the “LIBERER” by the people. Judge for yourself, what was more here - truth or hypocrisy? Note that of the total number of peasant unrest that occurred throughout the country in 1857–1861, 1340 out of 2165 (62%) protests occurred after the announcement of the 1861 reform.
Thus, the peasant reform of 1861 was a bourgeois reform carried out by serf owners. This was a step towards turning Russia into a bourgeois monarchy. However, the peasant reform did not solve the socio-economic contradictions in Russia, preserved landownership and a number of other feudal-serf remnants, led to a further aggravation of the class struggle, and served as one of the main reasons for the social explosion of 1905–1907. XX century.
The agrarian question in Russia in the second half of the 19th century.
Reform of 1861 and its main stages. The structure of land ownership in post-reform times. Government policy on the agrarian-peasant issue. Peasant movement in the second half of the 19th century. The problem of the level of development of agrarian capitalism in domestic historiography.
Reform of 1861 and its main stages.
Alexander II ascended the throne in February 1855. already a middle-aged man - at 36 years old. The need to abolish serfdom has been long overdue, but after the Crimean War this problem became most acute. An economic crisis was brewing in the country, trade turnover sharply decreased, the economic interest of peasants in their work fell, over the 4 years from 1855 to 1859. There were more than 1.5 thousand peasant uprisings.
Serfdom was fraught with another threat. It showed no obvious signs of its imminent collapse and collapse. Depleting nature and humans, it could exist for an indefinitely long time. Serfdom dictated an extremely slow pace of development for the country. The Crimean War showed the growing backwardness of Russia. In the near future, it was supposed to move into the category of third-rate powers - with all the ensuing consequences.
Abolition of serfdom in Russia.
The abolition of serfdom affected the vital foundations of a huge country. To implement the reform, it was necessary to create a cumbersome system of central and local institutions specifically for the development of peasant reform. Soon after the conclusion of the Peace of Paris, Alexander II, speaking in Moscow to the leaders of the nobility, declared that “it is better to begin the destruction of serfdom from above, rather than wait for the time when it begins to destroy itself from below.” It was expected that the nobles would quickly respond to the king's call. With this in mind, the Ministry of Internal Affairs began developing the main principles of the reform. Projects by Speransky and Kiselev were extracted from the archives. They were accompanied by notes circulating from hand to hand, including Kavelin’s. As a result, officials agreed that the peasants freed from serfdom should be given small plots. For this, the peasants will have to perform strictly defined duties in favor of the landowner.
IN early 1857 was educated Unspoken (secret) committee to discuss the ministerial program. But his activities turned out to be unproductive. Meanwhile, the landowners did not respond to the tsar’s call. Vilna Governor-General V.I. Nazimov managed to persuade local nobles to come up with a proposal to abolish serfdom. But the Lithuanian landowners asked to free the peasants without land, and the ministerial project envisaged liberation with an allotment. Alexander II ordered a rescript to be drawn up addressed to Nazimov, based on the ministerial program. November 20, 1857 Nazimov’s rescript was approved by the king. Lithuanian landowners were asked to elect a provincial committee to develop reform on the terms proposed by the government. The rescript to Nazimov was published.
The secret committee was transformed into the Main Committee for Peasant Affairs. The reform began to be developed in an atmosphere of glasnost. By the summer of 1858, almost everywhere, provincial noble committees. At the end of that year, their feedback began to arrive. To consider these reviews and draw up a detailed draft reform, the editorial commissions. By the will of the king, he led them ME AND. Rostovtsev.
Obolensky advised to allocate land to the peasants in the same amount as they owned under serfdom. Only a government-guaranteed ransom can successfully resolve the issue.
Rostovtsev did a lot to direct the work of editorial commissions in a liberal direction. All current affairs related to the preparation of the reform were concentrated in the hands of Comrade Minister of Internal Affairs N.A. Milyutin. Milyutin was close to Kavelin and tried to implement the main provisions of his note. The Slavophile Yu.F. provided him with great help. Samarin, member of editorial commissions.
The landowners were distrustful of the editorial commissions, and Alexander promised that representatives of the nobility would be summoned to St. Petersburg, familiarize themselves with the documents and be able to express their opinions. By August 1859, the project was prepared and the question arose about the arrival of noble representatives. The government decided to summon the nobles to the capital in two stages (first from the non-black earth provinces, and then from the black earth provinces). They were invited 3-4 people each to the editorial commissions and asked to answer the questions asked. The nobles were very unhappy with this turn of affairs. The landowners of non-black earth provinces did not object to the allocation of land to the peasants, but they demanded a ransom for it that was disproportionate to its value. Thus, they tried to include compensation for the quitrent in the ransom amount. They also insisted that the government guarantee the buyout operation.
In addition, the landowners feared that the power of the government bureaucracy would become too strong if it took into its own hands the entire matter of managing the peasants. To neutralize this danger, noble deputies demanded freedom of the press, openness, an independent court and local self-government. In response, the government banned the discussion of the issue of reforms at noble meetings. This ban caused strong unrest among the nobility, especially in non-black earth provinces.
At the beginning of 1860, noble representatives from the black earth provinces gathered in St. Petersburg. Their criticism of the government project was even harsher. They saw in the activities of the editorial commissions a manifestation of democratic, republican and even socialist tendencies.
At this time Rostovtsev died. The Minister of Justice, Count V.N. Panin, a well-known conservative. At each subsequent stage of discussion, certain amendments were made to the draft by the serf owners. The reformers felt that the project was increasingly moving away from the “golden mean” towards the infringement of peasant interests. Nevertheless, the discussion of reform in provincial committees and the call of noble representatives did not remain without benefit. Milyutin and Samarin (the main developers of the reform) realized that it could not be carried out on the same basis throughout the country, that local characteristics must be taken into account. IN black earth provinces home value is Earth , V non-chernozem - peasant labor , embodied in quitrent. They also realized that it was impossible to hand over landowners and peasant farms to the power of market relations without preparation: a transition period was required. They became convinced that the peasants should be freed with their land, and the landowners should be given a government-guaranteed ransom. These ideas formed the basis of the laws on peasant reform.
The cherished dream of the serf owners was to bury the reform one way or another. But Alexander II showed extraordinary persistence. At the most crucial moment, he appointed his brother Konstantin Nikolaevich, a supporter of liberal measures, as chairman of the Main Committee for Peasant Affairs. At the last meeting of the Committee and in the State Council, the reform was defended by the tsar himself. February 19, 1861 Alexander II signed all the laws on reform and manifesto on the abolition of serfdom.
Laws of February 19, 1861: landowner peasants ceased to be considered property - from now on they could not be sold, bought, given, or resettled at the discretion of the owners. The government declared the former serfs “free rural inhabitants” and granted them civil rights - freedom to marry, independently enter into contracts and conduct court cases, acquire real estate in their own name, etc.
The peasants of each landowner's estate united into rural societies. They discussed and resolved their general economic issues at village meetings. The village headman, elected for three years, had to carry out the decisions of the assemblies. Several adjacent rural communities made up the volost. Village elders and elected officials from rural societies participated in the volost assembly. At this meeting, the volost foreman was elected. He performed police and administrative duties. The activities of rural and volost administrations, as well as the relationships between peasants and landowners, were controlled by global intermediaries. They were appointed by the Senate from among the local noble landowners. Peace mediators had broad powers. But the administration could not use peace mediators for its own purposes. They were not subordinate to either the governor or the minister and did not have to follow their instructions. They had to follow only the instructions of the law. All land on the estate was recognized as the property of the landowner, including that which was in the use of the peasants. For the use of their plots, free peasants personally had to serve corvee or pay quitrent. The law recognized this condition as temporary. Therefore, personally free peasants bearing duties in favor of the landowner were called “ temporarily obliged" The size of the peasant allotment and duties for each estate should have been determined once and for all by agreement between the peasants and the landowner and fixed in the charter. The introduction of these charters was the main activity of the peace mediators.
The permissible scope of agreements between peasants and landowners was outlined in the law. The law drew a line between non-chernozem and chernozem provinces. Non-black soil peasants still had almost the same amount of land in use as before. In the black soil, under pressure from the serf owners, a greatly reduced per capita allotment was introduced. When converting to such an allotment, “extra” land was cut off from peasant societies. For additional duties, the peasants were forced to rent these lands from the landowners.
Sooner or later, the government believed, the “temporarily obligated” relationship would end and the peasants and landowners would conclude a buyout deal - for each estate. According to the law, peasants had to pay the landowner a lump sum for their allotment about a fifth of the stipulated amount. The rest was paid by the state. But the peasants had to return this amount to him (with interest) in annual payments for 49 years. Based on the amount ransom the profitability of the purchased lands should have been lower. This is approximately what was done in relation to the black earth provinces. But the landowners of non-black earth provinces considered such a principle ruinous for themselves. They lived mainly not from the income from their lands, but from quitrents, which the peasants paid from their outside earnings. Therefore, in non-black earth provinces, land was subject to redemption payments higher than its profitability. Redemption payments took away all the savings in the peasant farm and interfered with| him to rebuild and adapt to the market economy, kept the Russian village in a state of poverty. Fearing that the peasants would want to pay a lot of money for bad plots and run away, the government introduced a number of strict restrictions. While redemption payments were being made, the peasant could not refuse the plot and leave his village forever without the consent of the village assembly. And the gathering was reluctant to give such consent, because the annual payments fell on the entire society. Peasants mutual guarantee and attached to their allotment.
The serf-owners managed to introduce another amendment to the law. By agreement with the peasants, the landowner could refuse the ransom, “give” the peasants a quarter of their legal allotment, and take the rest of the land for himself.
This was not the kind of reform the peasants expected. Having heard about the approaching “freedom,” they received the news with surprise and indignation that they must continue to serve corvee labor and pay quitrent. Suspicions crept into their minds as to whether they had read the real manifesto, or whether the landowners, in agreement with the priests, had hidden the “real will.” Reports of peasant riots came from all the provinces of European Russia. Troops were sent to suppress. The events in the villages of Bezdne, Kazan province, and Kandeevka, Penza province, were particularly dramatic. These and other similar news made a grave impression on the public, especially since it was forbidden to criticize the peasant reform in the press. But by June 1861 the peasant movement began to decline.
The reform did not turn out the way Kavelin, Herzen and Chernyshevsky saw it. Built on difficult compromises, it took into account the interests of the landowners much more than the peasants, and had a very short “time resource” - no more than 20 years. Then the need for new reforms in the same direction should have arisen.
And yet the peasant reform of 1861 was of enormous historical significance. It opened up new prospects for Russia, creating an opportunity for the broad development of market relations. The country has confidently embarked on the path of capitalist development. A new era in its history has begun.
The moral significance of this reform, which ended serfdom, was also great. Its abolition paved the way for other important transformations, which were supposed to introduce modern forms of self-government and justice in the country, and push the development of education. Now that all Russians have become free, the question of the constitution has arisen in a new way. Its introduction became the immediate goal on the path to the rule of law.
The year 1861 is considered a landmark year in the history of Russia - it was then that Emperor Alexander II abolished serfdom. This did not happen suddenly - the prerequisites for the abolition of serfdom appeared a long time ago. Throughout the nineteenth century, unrest grew among the peasants themselves, and the emperor's predecessors tried to somehow resolve the issue, gradually improving and easing the position of the class. Thus, it fell to Alexander II to complete the process that had begun long ago.
How was the reform prepared?
The bill to resolve the pressing issue was not created personally by the emperor. On his instructions, a special committee was established, which included prominent nobles of that era - Muravyov, Panin, Orlov, Milyutin and others. Some of the committee members were skeptical about their own work, others sincerely believed in the need to alleviate the peasant's lot.
One way or another, from 1857 to 1861, the main provisions for the upcoming reform, its essence, were developed.
- It was planned to grant the peasants personal freedom, without forcing them to pay for it in money.
- They planned to provide the peasants with their own land, albeit a small one, so that their newfound will would not deprive them of their livelihood.
- Also, the actual “emancipation” had to take place gradually, over several years, so that the country’s economy would not suffer, losing the mass of its main workers overnight.
Progress of the reform and its consequences
In 1861, the emperor announced the corresponding Manifesto, and also issued a legislative act containing explanations for this manifesto. Starting from February 19, all peasants were considered personally free citizens of the empire and received full rights. Their houses and other buildings became their personal property, and the landowners were obliged to provide a small plot of land to the freed peasants. At the same time, for several years, former serfs were still obliged to work for the benefit of the landowner and only then received the right to leave the allotment and leave their usual place.
The reform had many pros and cons. The latter includes the fact that in practice, while corvée and quitrent were maintained, the life of the peasants remained almost unchanged for a long time. However, now no one could encroach on their personal freedom - and this undoubtedly became an important and long-awaited achievement for the Russian Empire.
The peasant question in the 19th century became a central topic of discussion in all levels of society. Many understood the need to liberate the peasants from the practically unlimited power of the landowner, since, due to the existence of this system, all spheres of society suffered. So, the main reasons for the abolition of serfdom:
. The inefficiency of landlordism
Serfdom not only began to bring significantly less economic benefit to the state, but, considering the general trend, it can be noted that it even brought losses: estates brought less and less income to the owners, some were unprofitable. Therefore, the state had to financially support the bankrupt nobles, who, however, provided the state with people for service.
. Serfdom hindered the industrial modernization of Russia
Serfdom did not allow a free labor market to develop, and, due to the low purchasing power of the population, it hampered the development of domestic trade. As a result, enterprises had no need to modernize equipment, and the country lagged behind not only in the number, but also in the level of equipment of factories and factories.
. Defeat in the Crimean War
The defeat in the Crimean War also proved the inconsistency of the serf system. The country was unable to provide a worthy rebuff to the enemy mainly due to the internal situation: financial difficulties, backwardness of the country in all sectors. After the defeat in the Crimean War, Russia faced the threat of losing its influence on the world stage.
. Increased peasant unrest
The peasants were dissatisfied with the arbitrariness of the landowners (increased corvée, quitrent) and the additional recruitment of recruits among the serfs. Their discontent manifested itself in the form of active and passive resistance. The first means open uprisings (arson of estates, murders of landowners), which, thanks to the developed local police system, were suppressed quite quickly. Passive resistance was expressed in deterioration in the quality of work, and sometimes in non-payment of rent. It was impossible to cope with this problem under the current conditions, as this phenomenon affected a huge number of peasants.
So, the abolition of serfdom was historically inevitable. In 1858, the Main Committee for Peasant Affairs was created, the program of which, however, provided for the mitigation of serfdom, but not its elimination. On December 4, 1858, a new peasant reform program was adopted: providing peasants with the opportunity to buy out land and creating peasant public administration bodies. To develop peasant reform, Editorial Commissions were created under the Main Committee in March 1859. The work of the commissions ended in October 1860. Next, the project of “peasant reform” was discussed by the State Council (from January 1861). Finally, on February 19 (March 3), 1861, in St. Petersburg, Alexander II signed the Manifesto “On the Most Merciful Granting of the Rights of Free Rural Citizens to Serfs” and the Regulations on Peasants Emerging from Serfdom, which consisted of 17 legislative acts. The manifesto was published in Moscow on March 5 (Old Art.), 1861, on Forgiveness Sunday in churches after mass in St. Petersburg, Moscow and other cities. In the Mikhailovsky Manege, the decree was read out to the people by the Tsar personally. In some remote places - during March of the same year.
Considering the issue of the abolition of serfdom in Russia today, we continue to encounter methodological assessments of the nature, causes and consequences of the reform of 1861, approved by Soviet historiography, we see the desire of scientists to adhere to the concept of reform set forth by the leader of Russian Marxists Ulyanov (Lenin) at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries.
It was presented in a concentrated form by him in a series of articles written on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the abolition of serfdom, in 1911.
Basically, the concept of the reform of 1861 proposed by Lenin boiled down to the following provisions:
The reform, as a “by-product of the revolutionary struggle,” was a consequence of the crisis of feudal-serf relations, as well as the revolutionary situation that arose in 1859-1861.
The immediate reason that forced tsarism to abolish serfdom and take the path of democratic reforms was the Crimean War lost by Russia and the peasant riots that “grew with every decade before liberation.”
The reform was carried out “from above” by the tsarist government and the serf owners themselves, and therefore turned out to be incomplete, massively dispossessing the peasants and economically tying them to the landed estates.
The reform was carried out in the interests of the landowners, who, however, having received huge funds for the redemption of peasant plots, squandered them without rebuilding the economy on capitalist principles and continuing to exploit the peasants economically dependent on them using semi-serfdom methods.
The reform opened a “valve” for the development of capitalism in Russia, primarily in trade and industry, which, having made a tremendous leap over several decades, reached at the beginning of the twentieth century. level corresponding to advanced European countries.
The reform was not completed. The massive dispossession of peasants and the preservation of the remnants of serfdom in the countryside led to the impoverishment of the bulk of the peasantry, its class differentiation, the separation of the rural bourgeoisie (kurkulism) and the rural proletariat (the future ally of the working class in the socialist revolution), as well as the middle peasantry (also an ally of the proletariat, but in bourgeois-democratic revolution).
Assessing the historical events of a century and a half ago from various methodological positions, one can notice that a number of the above-mentioned “Leninist” provisions require clarification from a scientific point of view.
Thus, the modern level of knowledge allows us to differently assess the process of maturation of objective conditions for the abolition of serfdom, which dragged on for more than a hundred years. As is known, the problem dates back to the 18th century, and in the first quarter of the 19th century. feudal relations turned into a serious obstacle to the development of industry, trade and rural entrepreneurship, which even then came under the influence of commodity-money relations. Previously, the crisis engulfed those landowners' estates where corvée farming predominated and in which about 70% of all serf peasants of the empire worked. A striking manifestation of the crisis was the emergence of new forms of corvée - “lesson” and “lunar”, providing for a significant increase in serf exploitation. Those estates in which the villagers were on quitrent were also not in a better position. Since the 20s of the 19th century, arrears in payment of contributions have been growing everywhere. The debt of landowners is also growing, both to credit institutions and to private individuals, to whom they increasingly began to mortgage and remortgage their own “serf souls.” The amount of debt of landowners, whose estates were pledged to credit institutions alone, amounted to 425 thousand rubles on the eve of the reform of 1861, which was twice the annual income of the state budget. However, even under such conditions, feudal-serf relations continued to remain dominant in the central regions of European Russia.
A completely logical question arises: with what resources did tsarism manage to maintain serfdom and successfully maintain trade and economic relations with the leading countries of Europe until 1861?
We find the answer to it from the Russian historian A. Presnyakov (1870-1929), who, characterizing the era of Nicholas I, used the term “Nicholas imperialism”.
Its essence was that, while still having sufficient strength at that time, tsarism compensated for the narrowness of the internal market in the central regions of the empire by expanding it on the outskirts through militaristic expansion into the Caucasus and Central Asia. Within the Ukrainian lands, the objects of such expansion, first military and then economic, have long been the territories of south-steppe Ukraine, the Northern Black Sea region and Crimea. However, the policy of artificially preserving serfdom, which relied on the strength of the army and military expansion, objectively could not ensure sustainable success.
The economic gap between feudal Russia and the advanced countries of Europe with their highly efficient economies was supposed to lead to the collapse of “Nicholas’ imperialism.” This was confirmed by the defeat in the Crimean War. It not only demonstrated the economic backwardness of the empire, but also, what is much more important, clearly indicated the loss of its position in the international arena. The army lost its power and subsequently was no longer the support of tsarism in solving the problems of foreign and domestic policy. As a result, the state power of the Russian Empire, its international authority and, finally, the system of government itself were under threat. To overcome these crises, it was necessary to reorganize the army, rearm it and build modern communications (railroads) for its movement. In this regard, it was necessary to create a new modern industry, which, in turn, requires civilian workers. But this was hampered by the legal dependence of the peasantry on the landowners. This dependence had to be eliminated as quickly as possible. Ultimately, this set of facts decided the fate of serfdom in Russia. The government was no longer able to listen to the demands of the landowners to preserve serfdom and took the path of its abolition.
Another problem that requires serious revision is the presence of a revolutionary situation in 1859-1861, which, according to Lenin, seriously influenced the government’s decision to abolish serfdom.
In his work “The Collapse of the Second International,” he outlined his vision of the revolutionary situation, the quintessence of which he considered to be the extremely upsurge of revolutionary activity of the masses. In this case, we are talking, first of all, about the masses of the serf peasantry, who showed more interest in the abolition of serfdom. That is why Lenin, recognizing the power of economic development, drew Russia into commodity-money relations, and at the same time noted: “Peasant “revolts,” growing with each decade before liberation, forced the first landowner Alexander II to admit that it was better to liberate “from above,” than to wait until they are overthrown "from below." At one time, this expression served as one of the real confirmations of how much tsarism was afraid of popular anger. Moreover, the terms "from below" and "from above" were read as political. Today, another reading of them is possible. Transmitted by a Russian researcher R. Zakharova, part of Alexander II’s speech to the Moscow nobility sounds like this: “There are rumors that I want to announce the liberation of serfdom. This is wrong. [...] I won’t say that I was completely against this: we live in a time when sooner or later this should happen. […] I think it’s better for all this to happen from above than from below.”
If you carefully read this quote, you will notice that here we are not talking about revolutionary events, but about the objective course of historical development, when the sprouts of new relations, developing in the bowels of the old society (that is, “from below”), have objectively already prepared the ground for the abolition of serfdom . And the government should only legitimize and lead this spontaneous process (“from above”). At the same time, while pursuing reforms, Alexander II sought to preserve the existing form of government by adjusting it to new development trends and thereby strengthen both internal power and the international authority of the empire, which had been shaken after the defeat in the Crimean War. What was the influence of the popular masses on state policy in the field of abolition of serfdom? Let us consider the dynamics of the peasant movement on the eve of the reforms of 1861.
General statistics of the mass peasant movement on the eve of the reform record that within the empire in 1857 there were 192 uprisings, in 1858 - 528, in 1859 - 938 and in 1860 - 354 uprisings.
The data presented indicate a tendency towards a reduction in the peasant movement on the eve of the abolition of serfdom. And its record performance within the Russian Empire, recorded in 1859 (938 performances), was achieved through the people's struggle against wine farming and high taxes on wine (636 out of 938 performances). The same 1,370 speeches that took place in the first half of 1861 occurred after the proclamation of the manifesto on February 19 and the promulgation of legislative acts of reform and cannot be considered to have influenced the government’s decisions to abolish serfdom.
The February 19 Manifesto, written on the instructions of Alexander II by Moscow Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov), gave legal freedom to serfs. “Calling on God for help,” it said, “we decided to give this matter a go. Through the above provisions, the serfs will in due time receive the full rights of free rural inhabitants.” It also explained the mandatory provision of peasants with both an estate and field land, which they had to buy from the landowners. The norms of the manifesto were specified in a number of other legislative acts. The most important of them were: “General provisions on peasants emerging from serfdom”, “Local provisions” for individual areas, “Regulations on the arrangement of household servants”, “Regulations” on the redemption by peasants of land plots allocated to them and a number of other additional rules. A separate provision regulated the formation of bodies for managing peasant affairs and peasant self-government.
When reading the documents on the reform, it becomes noticeable that the process of liberation of the peasants had to occur gradually, stretching over years.
Thus, in the manifesto of February 19, in particular, it was stated that until the peasants were completely transferred to ransom, the landowner retained ownership of all lands belonging to the peasants, including peasant plots. “Using this land ideal,” the manifesto noted, “the peasants must fulfill the duties stipulated in the provisions for the benefit of the landowners. In that state, which is transitional, the peasants are called temporarily obligated,” that is, the peasants remained temporarily obligated until the conclusion of the redemption transaction. In fact, this meant for the peasants maintaining their dependence on the former serf owners and continuing to perform corvée in favor of the latter. And although the government demanded that the landowners complete the complete transfer of peasants to redemption over the next three years after the abolition of serfdom, i.e. until 1864, but in reality this period reached 9-25 years.
So, the abolition of serfdom became an urgent need of the time, an important government measure to restore the state power of the Russian Empire. As I. Gurvich noted, “the liberation of the peasants became a means of attracting domestic and foreign capital in Russian industry.”
However, it was impossible to do this without affecting the interests of the nobility. In the current conditions, Alexander II and his government, caring for the interests of the state and preserving the existing form of government, decided to deal a sensitive blow to the nobility: by abolishing serfdom, that is, freeing up labor for the future modernized industry, the government also sacrificed the nobility in the interests of state, to what extent it sacrificed peasants in the interests of the nobles.
serf war peasant reform
Personal liberation of peasants. Education of rural societies. Establishment of peace mediators. Since the publication of the laws, landowner peasants have ceased to be considered property. From now on, they could not be sold, bought, donated, or relocated at the discretion of the owners. The government declared the former serfs "free rural inhabitants", granted them civil rights - freedom to marry, the right to independently conclude contracts and conduct court cases, acquire real estate in their own name, etc.
Alexey Kivshenko. Reading of the 1861 Manifesto by Alexander II on Smolnaya Square in St. Petersburg
The peasants of each landowner's estate united into a rural society. They resolved their general economic issues at a village meeting. The village headman, elected for three years, had to carry out the decisions of the assemblies. Several adjacent rural communities made up the volost. Village elders and elected officials from rural societies participated in the volost assembly. At this meeting, the volost foreman was elected. He performed police and administrative duties.
"Volost Court". Zoshchenko Mikhail Ivanovich
The activities of rural and volost administration, as well as the relationships between peasants and landowners, were controlled by global intermediaries. They were appointed by the Senate from among local landowners. Peace mediators had broad powers and were not subordinate to either the governor or the minister. They were to be guided only by the dictates of the law. The first composition of the world mediators included many humane-minded landowners (Decembrist A.E. Rosen, L.N. Tolstoy, etc.).
Introduction « temporarily obliged» relationships. All land on the estate was recognized as the property of the landowner, including that which was in the use of the peasants. For the use of their plots, free peasants personally had to serve corvee or pay quitrent. The law recognized this condition as temporary. Therefore, personally free peasants bearing duties in favor of the landowner were called “ temporarily obliged».
The size of the peasant allotment for each estate should have been determined once and for all by agreement between the peasants and the landowner and recorded in the charter. The introduction of these charters was the main activity of the peace mediators.
The permissible scope of agreements between peasants and landowners was outlined in the law. A line was drawn between non-chernozem and chernozem provinces. Non-chernozem peasants still have approximately the same amount of land in use as before. In the black soil, under pressure from the serf owners, a greatly reduced per capita allotment was introduced. When recalculating for such an allotment, peasant societies were cut off " extra» land. Where the peace mediator acted in bad faith, among the cut off lands there were lands necessary for the peasants - cattle runs, meadows, watering places. For additional duties, the peasants were forced to rent these lands from the landowners. "Segments", which greatly constrained the peasants, poisoned relations between the landowners and their former serfs for many years.
Redemption transactions and redemption payments. Sooner or later, the government believed, “ temporarily obliged“The relationship will end and the peasants and landowners will conclude a buyout deal - for each estate. According to the law, peasants had to pay the landowner a lump sum for their allotment about a fifth of the stipulated amount. The rest was paid by the state. But the peasants had to return this amount to him (with interest) in annual payments for 49 years.
In principle, the ransom amount should depend on the profitability of the purchased lands. In the black earth provinces this is approximately what was done. But the landowners of non-black earth provinces considered such a principle ruinous for themselves. They had long lived mainly not on the income from their poor lands, but on the quitrents that the peasants paid from their outside earnings. Therefore, in non-black earth provinces, land was subject to redemption payments higher than its profitability. The ransom payments that the government pumped out of the village for many years took away all the savings in the peasant economy, prevented it from rebuilding and adapting to the market economy, and kept the Russian village in a state of poverty.
Fearing that peasants would not want to pay big money for bad plots and would run away, the government introduced a number of strict restrictions. While redemption payments were being made, the peasant could not refuse the allotment and leave his village forever without the consent of the village assembly. And the gathering was reluctant to give such consent, because the annual payments went to the entire society, regardless of the absent, sick and infirm. The whole society had to pay for them. It was called mutual guarantee.
Peasant unrest. Of course, this was not the kind of reform the peasants expected. Having heard about a loved one " will“, they received the news with surprise and indignation that they must continue to serve corvee labor and pay quitrent. Suspicions crept into their minds as to whether the manifesto they had read was genuine, whether the landowners, in agreement with the priests, had hidden “ real will" Reports of peasant riots came from almost all provinces of European Russia. Troops were sent to suppress. The events in the villages of Bezdna, Spassky district, Kazan province, and Kandeevka, Kerensky district, Penza province, were particularly dramatic.
In the Abyss lived a peasant sectarian Anton Petrov, a quiet and modest man. He read from " Regulations"February 19" secret meaning" and explained it to the peasants. It turned out that almost all the land should go to them, and to the landowners - “ ravines and roads, and sand and reeds" From all sides former serfs went into the Abyss to listen to “ about real will" The official authorities were expelled from the village, and the peasants established their own order.
Two companies of soldiers were sent to the Abyss. Six volleys were fired at the unarmed peasants who surrounded Anton Petrov's hut in a tight ring. 91 people were killed. A week later, on April 19, 1861, Petrov was publicly shot.
In the same month, events took place in Kandeevka, where soldiers also shot at an unarmed crowd. 19 peasants died here. These and other similar events made a grave impression on society, especially since it was forbidden to criticize the peasant reform in the press. But by June 1861 The peasant movement began to decline.
The importance of peasant reform
The historical significance of the liberation of the peasants. The reform did not turn out the way Kavelin, Herzen and Chernyshevsky dreamed of. Built on difficult compromises, it took into account the interests of the landowners much more than the peasants. Not that on " five hundred years“, and its positive charge was only enough for about twenty. Then the need for new reforms in the same direction should have arisen.
But still peasant reform of 1861 was of great historical significance. It opened up new prospects for Russia, creating an opportunity for the broad development of market relations. The country has confidently embarked on the path of capitalist development. A new era in its history has begun.
Great was the moral the importance of peasant reform which ended serfdom. Its abolition paved the way for other major changes. Now that all Russians have become free, the question of the constitution has arisen in a new way. Its introduction became the immediate goal on the path to the rule of law - a state governed by citizens in accordance with the law and every citizen finds reliable protection in it.
We must remember the historical merits of those who developed the reform, who fought for its implementation - N.A. Milyutin, K.F. Samarin, Ya.I. Rostovtsev, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, K.D. Kavelin, and earlier - A N. Radishcheva. We must not forget the merits of outstanding representatives of our literature - A. S. Pushkin, I. S. Turgenev, N. A. Nekrasov, etc. And, finally, the emperor’s undeniably great merits in the matter liberation of peasants.
Makovsky Konstantin Egorovich "Peasant lunch in the field.", 1871.
Document: General provision on peasants who emerged from serfdom on February 19, 1861.
The main provisions of the peasant reform of 1861:
1. Serfdom for peasants settled on landowners’ estates and for domestic servants is abolished forever, in the manner specified in these Regulations and in other Regulations and Rules published together with it.
2. On the basis of this Regulation and general laws, peasants and courtyard people who have emerged from serfdom are granted the rights of free rural inhabitants, both personal and property...
3. The landowners, retaining the right of ownership of all the lands belonging to them, provide, for the established duties, for the permanent use of the peasants their estate settlement and, moreover, to ensure their life and to fulfill their duties to the government and the landowner, that amount of field land and other land, which is determined on the basis specified in local regulations.
4. For the allotment allocated, on the basis of the previous article, peasants are obliged to serve in favor of the landowners the duties determined in local regulations by work or money.
5. Land relations arising from this circumstance between landowners and peasants are determined by the rules set forth both in this General and in special local provisions.
Note. These local provisions are: 1) For the thirty-four provinces of Great Russia, Novorossiysk and Belarus; 2) for the Little Russian provinces: Chernigov, Poltava and part of Kharkov; 3) for the provinces of Kyiv, Podolsk and Volyn; 4) for] the provinces of Vilna, Grodno, Kovno, Minsk and part of Vitebsk...
6. Allotment of land and other land to peasants, as well as subsequent duties in favor of the landowner, are determined primarily by voluntary agreement between landowners and peasants, subject only to the following conditions:
a) that the allotment provided to peasants for permanent use, to ensure their daily life and the proper performance of state duties, is not less than the size determined for this purpose in local regulations;
b) that those duties of the peasants in favor of the landowner who go to work are determined only by temporary contracts, for periods not exceeding three years (and it is not forbidden, however, to renew such contracts if both parties wish, but also temporarily, not longer than for a three-year period);
c) so that in general transactions concluded between landowners and peasants are not contrary to general civil laws and do not limit the rights of personal, property and status granted to peasants in these Regulations.
In all those cases where voluntary agreements between landowners and peasants do not take place, the allotment of land to the peasants and the administration of duties by them are carried out on the exact basis of local provisions.
7. On these grounds, “statutory charters” are drawn up, in which permanent land relations must be defined between each landowner and the peasants settled on his land. The preparation of such statutory documents is left to the landowners themselves. Both for the preparation of these, and for their consideration and implementation, two years are assigned from the date of approval of this Regulation... .
8. Landowners, having allocated land to peasants for permanent use for established duties on the basis of local regulations, are not obliged in the future in any case to allocate them with any additional amount of land...
9. Peasants who have emerged from serfdom form rural societies for economic affairs, and for immediate administration and justice they are united in volosts. In every rural community and in every volost, the management of public affairs is given to the world and its elected on the grounds set out in these Regulations...
10. Each rural society, both with communal and with plot or household (hereditary) use of land, is mutually responsible for each of its members in the regular service of government, zemstvo and worldly duties...