The Sun.
London, England, 1857-12-28 00:00:00

SERFDOM IN RUSSIA.

(From the Correspondent of the Times.)
BERLIN, Dec. 22—For some years past the expect
tation has been growing more and more rife in
Russia, and thence through Europe, that the aboli-
tion of serfdom was soon about to he decreed. As

long as the late Emperor Nicholas was alive the
accession of his successor was looked forward to as

the period for the advent of the new era ; and as
long a►s the war lasted the return of peace was the
event that was to herald in the removal of this in-

cubus on the productive powers of the State. These
periods have come and gone, but serfdom is not
yet abolished ; Alexander I, who commenced the
great work, was cut off suddenly in the midst of his
reforms ; Nicholas was diverted from following
them up energetically by his fatuity for an enor-
mous army, and serfdom is the basis of the Rus-
sian recruiting system. Alexander 11, who at his
accession found the nation at war, was by that cir-
cumstance prevented at that moment from realiz-
ingthe fond hopes that had been entertained of him.
At the conclusion of the peace ho was oven obliged
to take a step apparently in the opposite direction
—viz., to assure the Russian nobility of the inviol-
ability of their agrarian rights, which precluded
the idea of any sudden abolition of serfdom.
Since that period, however, a variety of innova-
tions have been introduced by the Emperor
into the eternal administration of Russia, which
like many others carried out in the reign of his
father, are all converging to the same end
of gradual abolition, though to the eyes of
, foreigners at a distance there often seems to be but
little connexion bet'veen them and the end pro-

posed : the Russians themselves, however, are so
thoroughly cognisant of their tendency and their
number, that they have at length fixed even the
day when, according to their expectations, the total
abolition of serfdom was to take place. That day
was tfire 18th inst. the fete of the late Emperor
Nicholas, a date which at least has this significance
that it recognises the interest the late Emperor
took in the subject, and it is also a matter of popu-
lar belief that the Emperor Nicholas on his death-
bed urgently recommended this abolition to his son
and heir for speedy execution.
Although the Emperor Alexander has not yet
abolished serfdom in Russia, and although it may
be many years to come before any measure can be
passed that will realise the idea contained in those
words, there is sot the slightest ground for doubt-
ing that he is labouring most strenuously towards
that end, as most of his home measures and his
foreign policy since the peace of 1856 abundantly
prove. Within the last two months, unless a very
generally received report is unfounded, a special
committee has been formed in St. Petersburg,
under the presidency of the Grand Duke Constan-
tine, for the purpose of expediting every measure
in connection with this subject, and the experience
of the last few days shows that its labours have
not been without good results. That the exis
tence of this committee should be kept as secret
as possible will excite no surprise, when it ie
borne in mind that the expectations of twelve
millions of human beings in Russia are just now
at the highest pitch of tension, looking for an
almost immediate deliverance from bondage ; that
local and sporadic revolts of serfs against their
owners are no longer as rare in Russia as
they used to be •, that the spirit of liberty is now
abroad among the people ; that both in Kieff and
in Moscow the students of the universities have
lately made the boldest demonstrations, and
offered resistance to the military and police, and
that in St. Petersburg language has been uttered
at public meetings that reads like the ordinary
clap-trap spoken at the public meetings in Eng-
land. There exists every possible reason of danger
and difficulty for approaching this matter with
the greatest secrecy, forethought, and precau-
tion. The abolition of serfdom is a subject of
much less interest to the philanthropist than
is usually supposed, for the Russian serf, born
and bred in the position of a bondsman, is far
from the wretched being philanthropists think he
must be, and his enfranchisement, while giving
him an opportunity, and perhaps compelling him
to work out his own independence, will, in all pro-
bability, at least in the first generation of these
.mheroie Solavoniarts, proasce them more misery
than happiness. To the economist, however,
any measure mnst be of great interest that imme-
diately affects property valued at hundreds of
millions of roubles, and which promises indirectly
to open up and stimulate the productive powers
of a country larger than all Europe. To the poli-
tician few events can be more momentous than a
fundamental change in an institution which for up-
wards of 200 years has served as the basis of the
whole internal polity of a nation of 70,000,000 of
people. He may well fear lest a too rapid impetus
imparted to the aspirations of these impressionable
Slavonians may bring Europe to witness a flood of
uncontrolled liberty and revolution such as that
produced in 1848 by the well-meant innovations of
Pio IX. in 1846.
As the subject-hide fair to force itself soon upon
the notice and, interest of Europe at large, I send
you herewith a few memoranda as to the nature and
extent of serfdom in Russia, as well as of the mea-
sures that have already taken wi:h a view to its
eventual abolition.
Serfdom has been of various kinds at different
periods of the history of Russia, and at the present
moment the position of the peasant is very various
in different pars of the empire. In the Baltic
provinces ef Esthla,nd and Liefland serfdom has
been entirely superseded by a series of statutes en-
acted by Alexander I. between 1804 and 1819,
which were subsequently amplified in 1849 for
Liefland, and in 1856 for Esthland ; in Courland
no advance has been made on the legislation of
1817, and in this latter province the enfranchise-
ment is not yet complete. In the kingdom of
Poland also 'leases have made the enfranchise-
ment of the bondman dependent solely on his
having the will and the means to pay the commu-
tati al price for his services or the value of the
fee simple of the land he occupies ; on his making
due application to the local official appointed to
arrange these commutations the owner is bound to
accept the prices fixed by the Government sur-
veyor, and accord the serf his freedom. In Poland,
therefore, serfdom is in process of self-abolition ;
and in Russia Proper also serfdom has been
abolished on the domains of the Crown and some
private estates, and has generally of late years been
much modified and mitigated.
Serfdom originated in a ukase issued by Czar
Boris Godunow in 1601, for the purpose of restrain-
ing the nomadic, unsettled habits of his subjects,
who, as many Arab tribes do in the present day,
were constantly changing their places of abode for
more promising localities or more fruitful pastures ;
and he enacted that every peasant should settle
definitively on the land he had cultivated on the
previous Juriew's day. They thus became by this
sole ukase (glebce adscripti) assigned to the soil (in
Russian, Krepostuyi). The administrative mea-
sures necessary for watching over the maintenance
of this stare of things entailed registration and offi-
cial surveillance ; and eventually in the course of
years the lords of the soil, availing themselves of
the inability of the peasants to change their locality,
extorted from them compulsory labour on their own
estates, and even menial services about their own
dwellings. The relation, which had originally been
that of ' privileged villenage," was thus soon con-
verted here and there into "pure villenage ;" and
the two relations exist still side by side in ussia,
and even on the same estate. It took a long
period, however, to break down the vested interest
that the peasant originally bad in the land he cul-
tivated, and which amounted to the whole usu-
fruct:, after deducting a small payment in natura
or in labour. By constant encroachments on the
part of the lords of the soil the state of these vil-
leins sank by degrees into that of " villeins roger-
dant," and " villeins in gross," but the Russian
serf was always a fixture on the estate, from]which
he could be as little separated as the estate from
him. It was not till the time of Peter the Great
that the system of serfdom obtained its present
form, which offers certain features peculiar to
Russia, and different from the villenage that for-
merly existed in England, or the Horigkeit, that
held its ground in Prussia even up to the com-
mencement of this century.
One of these features of serfdom peculiar to Rus-
sia, and which forms the tenure of the larger part
of the land in that country, is of a very commu-
nistic nature ; a whole village or other community
occupies a certain tract of land, from which the
whole number of male peasants pays a fixed poll-
tax to the lord of the manor—that entire body
offering an aggregate liability for the shortcom-
ings of any individual member. The community
among themselves divide the whole area of the
land out into homesteads according to the number
of adult males or married couples among them.
Each such homestead occupied by a man and his
wife, and children, if they have them, is called a
tiaglo, and this one family cultivates the whole of
the tuglo, or as much of it as they can, until the
increase of married couples in the community ren-
ders
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