Emancipation Reform of 1861 Facts & Worksheets

Background: Serfdom in Russia

• Before the Emancipation Reform of 1861, Russia was still mostly a farming country with an old system called serfdom. In this system, many peasants were not free. They were tied to the land and under the control of landlords. Only peasants who lived on private estates were considered true serfs. These serfs made up around 38% of the total population. They had to obey their landlords, do farm work, and often give part of their crops or goods. The landlords had great power over their lives.
• Just before 1861, Russian peasants were mainly divided into three categories:
  1. State peasants – These lived on lands owned by the state, many of them under the control of the Ministry of State Property. This group included many non-Russians across the empire.
  2. Crown peasants – These lived on udel lands, which were owned by the royal family or crown.
  3. Estate peasants (serfs) – These lived on land owned by private landlords. They were considered true serfs and had duties both to the landowner and to the state.
• Most peasants lived in small farming households called dvory, grouped into villages known as derevni. If a village had a church, it was called a selo. The villages were run by a local peasant council called the mir (also called obshchina). The mir chose leaders like the starosta (elder) and a pisar (clerk), who spoke for the village in outside matters.
• In central Russia, land in these villages was not owned by the peasants, but by about 100,000 landowners, known as pomeshchiks (like the landed gentry). The mir shared the land among the peasant families and sometimes changed how it was divided to try to keep things fair. But even though peasants worked the land, they were not free to leave the estate where they were born. They had to pay the landowner through work, goods, or part of their crops. By the mid-1800s, landowners were said to take at least one-third of the income or products made by their serfs.

Preliminary Reform Efforts

• Before the major Emancipation Reform of 1861, there were several early attempts to improve the condition of the peasants and reduce the power of serfdom in Russia.
• In the late 18th century, Tsar Paul I made a small move in 1797 by limiting corvée labour (unpaid work done by peasants for their landlord) to three days a week and banning it on Sundays. However, this law was not enforced, and landlords continued to demand hard labour from the serfs.
• In 1801, Tsar Alexander I set up a committee to study the idea of emancipation. The committee had little power, but it did manage to ban the sale of serfs without their families. Later, in the 1820s and 1830s, Alexander I and his advisers, including Mikhail Speransky, Nikolay Mordvinov and Pavel Kiselyov, created plans to free the serfs or improve their living conditions.
• Some reforms helped state-owned peasants, especially under Kiselyov’s work in the Ministry of State Property. However, strong resistance from the noble landowners prevented wider change. Many nobles feared losing their power and wealth if serfdom was weakened.
• During the reign of Tsar Nicholas I (1825–1855), the idea of emancipation was discussed more often. Nicholas himself spoke many times about freeing the serfs, and he did make life better for peasants on state-owned land. However, he did not introduce reforms for serfs owned by private landlords, so most peasants remained under the old system.
• Support for reform grew among educated Russians, especially in the 19th century. Many university teachers, writers and thinkers believed that serfdom was not only unfair but also holding Russia back. They shared their views in books, articles and speeches, helping to create public support for change. This pressure from intellectual circles made it harder for the government to ignore the problem.
• It is also important to note that in some parts of the Russian Empire, serfdom had already been abolished earlier in the century. In the Baltic provinces, Estonia (1816), Courland (1817) and Livonia (1819), peasants were legally freed, although they still faced limits. In Congress Poland, serfdom was ended by Napoleon in 1807, but when Russia took over in 1815, it was largely brought back again. Although these early efforts did not end serfdom across Russia, they laid the groundwork for future reform.

Reasons for Reform

• By the middle of the 19th century, there were many strong reasons why the Russian government felt it had to end serfdom. One major reason was the backward state of the Russian economy. Most of the population were peasants, and nearly half were serfs who could not move freely or improve their work. 
• Farming was slow and old-fashioned because landlords had no reason to invest in better tools or methods, and serfs had little reason to work harder since they did not own the land. This kept Russian agriculture weak and unable to support growth.