# The Spirit of Russia/Volume 1/Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR
LIBERATION OF THE PEASANTRY IN 1861. ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMS
§ 26.
SEVASTOPOL ushered in the epoch of the "great reforms," for the reforms of 1861 and their consequences were thus named. Constitutional government was not introduced, but the peasants were liberated and the administration had to be reformed. Similarly in Austria, the year 1848 heralded the liberation of the peasantry, but the constitution then inaugurated was ephemeral. Similarly after the battle of Jena, Prussia remodelled her administration, but a constitution was not granted until much later.
The majority of the population had in fact hitherto lived as slaves, for the tying of the peasant to the lord's soil, completed under Catherine, was practical slavery.
It is difficult to-day to realise even approximately the nature of Russian serfdom. Those familiar with the history of the institution are apt to confine their attention to its legal and economic aspects. It is necessary to grasp the moral and social implications of serfdom as it affected concrete life. We have to understand that the peasant was in actual fact another's property, soul and body; that the lord could sell his serfs; that down to the year 1833 he could at will break up the serf's family as irrevocably as death breaks it up, by selling an individual member apart from the family—for the serf, bound to the soil, could not follow the one who was sold, as the wives of aristocrats were able at their own charges to follow husbands exiled to Siberia. The sert was money, was part of the natural economy. The landowner could gamble away his "souls" at the card-table, or could make his mistresses a present of them. The slaves were at the ​absolute disposal of the lord, who was free to settle whether a gifted child should become cook, musician, or surgeon. The lord disposed likewise of his slaves' wives and daughters, deciding what couples might marry and what couples might not; the lord's mansion was in many cases nothing but a harem. Terrible is the picture of serfdom given by the best authors in their reminiscences. An attentive reader of the older Russian literature will discern everywhere this peculiar moral and social background. Those who have observed and described Russian village and rural life make express references to the matter. "'Gryzlov,' said D.S., 'Marija Thedorova is making ready to go to Moscow. We need money. When I was driving through the villages I saw a number of children; our chattels have been increasing in number; take measures accordingly!' This signified that Gryzlov was commissioned to visit the villages of D.S., to seize some of the superfluous boys and girls, sell them, and hand the proceeds to the landowner." (Grigorovič, Literary Memories.) In the newspapers prior to 1861, such advertisements as the following were quite common: "For sale, a light carriage and two girls." Widely known was the girl market in the village of Ivanovka. Hither girls were brought from all parts of Russia and were sold even to Asiatic buyers.
Kropotkin, in his Memoirs of a Revolutionist, has recently given a detailed description of the moral effect of serfdom upon the Russian aristocracy. We have indeed to remember that slavery invariably exercises an influence upon slave-owner as well as upon slave. Every variety of slavery is always and universally twofold: as the master is, so is the slave; as the slave is, so is the master. Both slaves and lords have servile souls. Herein lies the curse of slavery, that there exists a hierarchy of slaves, from the tsar at the top to the last village pasha at the bottom, a hierarchy of men who will not and cannot work because they are privileged to use their fellow men as instruments.
Herzen termed serfs "baptized property." Before Herzen's day, Gogol spoke of "dead souls." But Gogol was perfectly right when with all possible force he showed that Christian slavery was based upon the Bible. So Christian and so scriptural was the absolutist censorship that the publication of a Russian translation of Uncle Tom's Cabin was forbidden, lest Russian readers should be struck by the parallel between ​negro slaves and mužik serfs. Despite his close relationships with Nicholas, Žukovskii was forbidden to print the translation of Schiller's Three Words of the Faith—"Man is created free, and is free, even if born in chains." The tragic example of the poet Sibirjakov shows the limits imposed in Russia upon moral and spiritual freedom. Born in chains, what his lord valued in him was not his poetic gift, but his skill as pastrycook, the trade he had been taught. When Žukovskii and others became interested in the poet, and desired to purchase his freedom, compensation to the amount of ten thousand roubles was demanded.
A recognition of the social and moral bearing of serfdom made its abolition a primary demand of persons holding enlightened and humanitarian views. But these considerations were reinforced by economic calculation, which never ceased to demonstrate the comparative unproductiveness of servile labour. Finally, Russian aristocrats and landowners could not fail to understand the meaning of incessant jacqueries, chateau burnings, and assassinations.
Liberation of the peasantry was the pious aspiration of eighteenth-century humanists, of masonic and political secret societies, and above all of the decabrists. Not in vain was the death of Pestel; not fruitless were the sufferings of the exiles who languished in Siberia. Nor was it by chance that Prince Obolenskii, a decabrist, returning from exile in 1856, exercised in this matter a decisive influence upon Rostovcev, the counsellor of Alexander II and one of the leading promoters of this reform.
Uvarov's philosophy of serfdom fell with the fall of Sevastopol.
The history of the abolition of serfdom under Alexander II is brief but momentous. There was a fierce struggle between the progressives and the moderates, between the opponents and the supporters of the institution. The emperor's position was difficult, for with two exceptions (Constantine, Alexander's younger brother, and Helena Pavlovna, his aunt) all the members of the court were adverse to the reform.
After the conclusion of peace and the issue of the peace manifesto of 1856, the tsar seized the first opportunity to instruct the delegation of the Moscow aristocracy to consider the possibility of liberating the serfs. Following the path that had been trodden by his father, in 1857 he summoned ​a privy committee, but recognising the futility of this method, upon the first move made by the Lithuanian landowners on behalf of the liberation of the peasantry, Alexander issued a rescript recommending the formation of "preparatory committees" in the various administrative districts, publicity for the question being thus at length secured. The progressive press was not slow to seize its opportunity; in 1858 a central committee was appointed to settle the question; and on February 19, 1861, the manifesto of liberation was issued.
The Russian aristocratic system, the work-shyness whose organisation was centuries old, had been broken down, and the struggle between light and darkness had ended in the triumph of light. The darkness had confused the intelligence of so great a man as Puškin, and had confused even that of Gogol; but speaking generally it redounds to the honour of Russian literature that the leading spirits of that literature were the most efficient adversaries of slavery. Modern literature combated slavery within the depths of the Russian soul. Towards the close of the forties, village life and the mužik became leading topics. The Village, 1846, Anton Goremyka (Anthony the Unlucky), 1848, both by Grigorovič, and A Sportsman's Diary, 1852, by Turgenev, belong to this period.
In his Literary Memories Turgenev tells us how he plunged out of his depth into the "German sea" to emerge purified and reborn, for he could no longer endure home life in Russia. "I had to move to a distance from my enemy, so that I might be able from a distance to hurl myself upon him with greater impetus. My enemy had a definite configuration, a known name: the enemy was serfdom. Under this name I subsumed everything which I should have to fight against to the day of my death, everything I had sworn never to make terms with. . . . Such was my Hannibal's oath, nor was I the only one to make it. I took my way to the west to enable myself to fulfil it better." Alexander II declared that the reading of A Sportsman's Diary had convinced him that serfdom must be abolished. In such matters Alexander was often a prey to self-created illusions, but the act was in itself of no less value even if he and his advisers were impelled ​towards liberation by practical considerations. "It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait until it is abolished from below"—the words of the tsar liberator to the Moscow nobles remind us of Catherine, and ring truer than the reference to Turgenev.
§ 27.
THE favourable results of the liberation of the peasantry were not immediately apparent either to the peasants or to the landowners. The poet Nekrasov used the image of a tightly stretched chain, which snapped under the tension, one end striking the lord and the other the mužik. Both for lord and for peasant, liberation was effected without intermediate stages, and a considerable time had to pass before the peasant accustomed to service and the lord accustomed to command could adapt themselves to new conditions. Moreover, the first economic and financial consequences were in many cases unfortunate for both parties. All such liberations have involved a certain period of disorder and confusion, which has invariably been turned to account by speculators of every kind. Not until a shorter or longer time has elapsed do we find that the ideals and plans for which the reform was brought about are to a certain extent realised.
Thus did it happen in Russia. If we are to appreciate the essential nature of the Russian liberation we must remember first of all that the position of the serfs was not everywhere identical throughout the wide areas of Russian agricultural land. The status of the serfs was very variously regulated, and there were many degrees of serfdom. Speaking generally, there existed the two main categories previously described, but on closer analysis these may be subdivided into as many as twenty varieties. The peasant owed the landowner either personal service and labour (barščina) or else paid him yearly dues (obrok). Work and dues varied according to the locality and the circumstances of the time. The obrok was from twenty to fifty crowns; in some places there existed "half-peasants," as they were termed, who paid their lords only half the dues; and there were other variations. Obrok was paid either in kind or in money. In addition to the dues to his lord, the peasant had to pay local and national taxes (poll tax).
Noteworthy was the difference between crown peasants or state peasants and the peasants on private estates. In ​1797, for the benefit of the imperial family, certain appanage estates were separated from the crown estates. The peasants upon the appanage estates were in approximately the same position as the crown peasants.
Before 1861 many of the serfs were extremely poor, but not a few were well-to-do, and some were even wealthy. Of the landowners, again, some were rich and some were poor. Not infrequently a serf would become a wealthy merchant or manufacturer, his relationship to the lord, who might be a much poorer man than himself, being thereby rendered unstable. One landowner would have thousands of "souls," in some cases as many as a hundred thousand; others would have but a few hundred; others again would have but two or three serfs, or perhaps no more than one. Two-thirds of all the landowners were in debt to the banks, for serfdom had been ruinous to landlord as well as to peasant.
Prior to 1861 the relationships had been further complicated by the differences in status between the crown and appanage peasants on the one hand and the peasants on private estates on the other. The crown peasants paid obrok, and were in most cases assessed at a lower figure than the private estate peasants. But there were different categories among the crown peasants; and the peculiar position occupied by the odnodvorcy, or one-farm men, has already been described.
Nor must we forget that even before 1861 there existed a certain number of entirely free and independent peasants, men who had been liberated by the crown or by the landowner, men who had purchased their freedom, and so on.
In the year 1860, in the fifty administrative districts of European Russia, the number of male peasants was as follows:—
| Crown peasants | . . | . . | . . | . . | 10,340,000 |
| Private estate peasants | Private estate peasants | . . | . . | . . | 10,340,000 |
| Appanage peasants | Appanage peasants | . . | . . | . . | 870,000 |
Of the total population, 38·1 per cent were private estate peasants, 37·2 per cent were crown peasants and free peasants, and 3·4 per cent were appanage peasants.
The following table shows the percentage distribution of landed property before and after the liberation of 1861:—
| | | | | Before liberation. | Before liberation. | After liberation. |
| Crown estates | . . | . . | . . | . . | 64·4 | 45·6 |
| Private estates | . . | . . | . . | . . | 30·6 | 22·6 |
| Appanage | . . | . . | . . | . . | 3·3 | 1·8 |
| Free peasants and colonists | Free peasants and colonists | Free peasants and colonists | . . | . . | 1·7 | 30·0 |
It must further be remembered that even before 1861 the unfree peasant cultivated a small area of land for himself and his family, paying the landowner for the usufruct or discharging his dues in the form of labour. The land assigned to the peasants in 1861 was about one fifth less than that which they had previously occupied, the reduction being especially conspicuous in fertile regions where land had a high value. On the average each peasant received three to four desjatinas. In the north he was given seven desjatinas, in the steppes ten, in the region of the black earth no more that two desjatinas.
There was one provision in the manifesto of liberation which led to the creation of a new social element of serious import to the formation of a class of peasant proletarians numbering hundreds of thousands. This was the provision that peasants willing to content themselves with one fourth of the amount of land assignable to them ("gratuitous allotments" or "beggarly allotments") would be immediately granted complete freedom by their lords. This scheme was a realisation of some of the older plans of enfranchisement, such as that of N. Turgenev.
When we remember that the peasant had to continue compensatory payments after the liberation, we shall not be surprised that he was discontented.
Finally, it is necessary to point out that the peasant was not granted full private ownership of the land, but could hold it only as communal property. In a sense the power of the mir over the individual peasant was thereby increased, for after 1861 the mir was responsible, not for the taxes alone, but likewise for the instalments of the redemption money.
By the obligation to pay redemption money the peasant was refettered to his lord, this condition of dependence persisting until the redemption money had been paid in full. Thus enfranchisement was in many instances retarded. The government had anticipated widespread disturbances among the peasantry in consequence of liberation, and took military measures accordingly. In actual fact, the peasant revolts which had been so frequent during the reign of Nicholas continued after the liberation. During the years 1861 to 1863 ​in twenty-nine administrative districts there were 1,100 jacqueries, many of which were suppressed by the military.
The consequence was that, soon after the issue of the liberation manifesto numerous experts declared that the peasants had been given too little land and that the redemption money had been assessed at too high a figure. Nor was it radical publicists alone, such men as Čerysevskii and Dobroljubov, who spoke of the land hunger of the peasants. Even moderate writers, Kavelin for example, referred to the existence of an acute agrarian crisis, and demanded more land for the peasants. In 1881 (December 28th) the amount of redemption money was reduced. In 1882 the Peasants' Bank was founded, and further mitigations were introduced for the peasantry—although simultaneously the landowners' interests were not neglected for the Nobles' Bank was founded in 1885, and the privileges of the peasants were restricted in various ways on behalf of the landed interest.
Declared opponents of liberation were not intimidated by the February manifesto. Organising their forces, they founded a periodical ("Věst"), placed all possible hindrances in the way of the realisation of the reform, and furthered an agitation on the part of the landlords to secure assistance from the state. Some of the social reactionaries who opposed liberation were advocates of constitutional government, but their thoughts went no further than an aristocratic representation by estates.
The liberation of the peasantry, as actually carried out, was the result of a compromise between the opponents and the supporters of serfdom and between the conflicting plans of the various parties. Whereas the peasants naturally desired their liberation to be accompanied by the assignment to them of the soil they tilled, no more than an infinitesimal minority of landowners favoured this idea. The best of the landowners proposed that liberation if it was to be effected should be accompanied by the granting of land to the peasants in return for compensation payable to the landowner by the peasant by the state, or by both. In the Baltic provinces, liberation was effected without any grant of land, and the peasants had to rent whatever land they needed. Many landowners in other parts would doubtless have agreed to an arrangement of the kind, but even upon this matter there were conflicting currents. Some desired that the enfranchised peasant should have no land of his own at all; others were willing that ​he should be granted a small allotment; others proposed a partial enfranchisement with a definite legal formulation of peasant right. The manifesto of 1861 aimed at meeting the landowners' wishes as far as possible.
Serfdom was abolished, and agrarian difficulties, which still persist, were the sequel of enfranchisement.
§ 28.
THE liberation of the peasantry rendered necessary a reform of the entire administration.
The landowner had lost his patriarchal and patrimonial status. He was no longer the privileged hereditary official of the tsar, the direct and indirect controller of the peasant, lord and economic exploiter. The demands of the decabrists, their constitutionalist designs put forward as supplementary to the liberation of the peasantry, the demands of N. Turgenev and Pestel, were partially realised under Alexander.
The first administrative effect of liberation was a mitigation of corporal punishment. In 1863, running the gauntlet, the use of the lash, and the branding of criminals were simultaneously abolished. The use of the cane was continued, not until 1904 did the volost courts cease to inflict sentences of caning, but the practice persisted in the penitentiaries. For women corporal punishment was abolished, except in the case of administrative exiles.
In the year 1864 the new judicial procedure and the local government of the zemstvos were introduced.
Prior to 1864, state courts of law had indeed existed, but the nobility and the landowners had acted as judges, whilst the courts of first instance were in the hands of the police. It can readily be imagined how, in these conditions, justice was administered. The most important element in reform was the establishment of publicity in legal procedure. The judiciary was made independent of the executive, judges being declared irremovable. Justices of the peace were appointed and trial by jury came into use.
The general effect of these reforms in the administration of justice may be gathered by the delight with which the opening of the new courts was everywhere hailed by the public, ​as in St. Petersburg on April 17, 1866. Some time, of course, elapsed before the new system was in full working order, and in certain regions its introduction was extremely slow. It was not installed in Kiev until 1881!
The zemstvo constitution was likewise brought into force by gradations only, and in no more than thirty-four of the administrative districts in European Russia. The worst feature of the change was that absolutism and centralism endeavoured to maintain and to extend their wonted predominance. The lack of local efficiency furnished adequate cause for absolutist centralisation.
The towns were granted certain liberties somewhat later than the rural districts. The liberal aims of the townsmen had aroused considerable anxiety in the government, and the new towns' ordinance was not promulgated until 1870. A trifling humanisation of the military system in the spirit of the peasant enfranchisement was an even later reform. The serf had been sent into the army at the caprice of his lord. Once enrolled he had to serve for twenty-five years and to learn his duties under persons whose system of instruction was enforced by blows. The landowner selected for military service the sons of those peasants who were on his bad books. Further, his power in this matter had a money value, for the wealthier peasants and townsmen could naturally secure exemption by payment.
Arakčeev's military colonies were abolished in 1857. In 1874 universal obligation to military service was established, the term of service being reduced to fifteen years, of which seven had to be spent on active service. From among men who had attained military age, those actually required were selected by lot. Men of education were exempt.
In the finances, too, more order was secured. From 1862 onwards financial designs and the budget were made public, general attention being thereby directed to the problem of how health was to be restored to the chaotic national finances. After 1866, financial reports were published.
Certain reforms of taxation were made: the disastrous system of farming out the right to grant licences for the sale of alcoholic liquors was done away with in 1863, and in 1880 the salt tax was abolished; but the burden of taxation was increased on the whole.
Nevertheless it proved impossible to do away with a deficit ​during the reign of Alexander II. The Turkish war had been costly; it was necessary to accelerate railway development; money was needed for schools and for new institutions in general. In the year 1855 the regular revenue was 264,000,000 roubles; in 1888 it had risen to 651,000,000 roubles. At the close of Catherine's reign, the national debt amounted approximately to 215,000,000; when Alexander I died the figure was 1,345,000,000; under Nicholas and his successor, although the finances were better administered, the increase in the debt was stupendous.
Educational reform likewise ensued. In 1863 a new studies' ordinance was issued for the universities, granting the academic senates fuller autonony and comparative freedom of teaching. The Nicolaitan regime was abandoned at the universities shortly after the accession of Alexander II. In the autumn of 1856, the faculty of law was once more allowed to resume the teaching of the constitutional law of European states, which had hitherto been banned; more attention could be paid to philosophy; were it only for practical reasons, educational policy was compelled to aim at the production of more efficient state servants and at the fuller elaboration of teaching energies. The students secured greater freedom, and in 1861 the obligation to wear uniform was abolished. The new statutes did not permit the formation of students' associations. Two additional universities were founded in the reign of Alexander II, that of Odessa in 1864 and that of Warsaw in 1869.
More was done than during the reign of Nicholas to promote the development of middle and other schools; but owing to financial stringency public elementary schools, Russia's chief need, received less help than was universally demanded, and was desired even by the government. The newly founded zemstvos worked with especial energy on behalf of elementary schools, and the general interest in popular education brought notable educationists and authors into the field, such men as Pirogov, Usinskii, Stojunin, Vodovozov, N. H. Kori, and also L. N. Tolstoi. The Russian public elementary school really came into existence solely as the outcome of the liberation of the peasantry. Before the liberation, the state was exclusively interested in the education of aristocrats and officials. A few writers, theologians in especial, boast that popular education was carried an in prepetrine Russia, but this assertion is erroneous.
​The cadet schools were also improved.
An entirely new feature of this epoch was the inauguration of public education for women. After serfdom had been abolished it was necessary that the daughters of the growing class of cultured persons and the daughters of the nobility should have better tuition. There was an increasing demand for women teachers, women doctors—for skilled workers, without distinction of sex. Middle schools for girls (gimnazijas and progimnazijas) were established in 1869. Higher university training was rendered possible for women, at first by special courses, and subsequently (1878) by free admission of women to the universities. Before long, however, reaction became apparent in this field.
In general terms it must be said that all these "great reforms" were seriously defective because they were mere half-measures. The power of the centralised bureaucracy remained intact. The ancient caste system continued in operation, and thus the liberation of the peasantry failed to do all that progressive intelligences had anticipated. The segregation of classes which had characterised the Muscovite state persisted. The customs that had been established for centuries still dominated society.
* ↑ Serfs acting as domestic servants had to be liberated within two years of the proclamation. The peasants were ordered to pay their lords the compensation due for emancipation in instalments spread over forty-nine years. The government, however, paid off the totals to the landlords in its own bonds, and collected the instalments from the peasants.
* ↑ The desjatina is 2·7 acres.
* ↑ The appointment of justices of the peace to deal with minor offences was not universalised, being restricted in practice to the larger towns.