The Russian Peasants' Reaction to the Emancipation of 1861

Abstract

\[ VERY few people realize that the reform of 1861 had to solve V not one peasant question but 111,555 peasant questions, according to the number of landed estates possessed by the nobility, where the natural, economic and social conditions were as diverse as the peasant occupations. Most peasants, of course, tilled the soil, but large groups were occupied in trade and other industries, ranging from hunting and fishing to work in factories, and from carpentry and bricklaying to icon-painting. The economic condition of the serfs depended on the personality of their lords and stewards, on the size of the estates (exploitation was usually worse on the smaller estates), on the system of exploitation. In general, the peasants paying obrok (quit-rent) were better off than those who worked in the landlord's field (barschchina); on some estates a mixed system of obrok and barshchina was in use. After Paul I's manifesto of April 7, 1797, the government considered a three-day barshchina as the norm, but in fact there was no government control over the serfs' working conditions, and some greedy landowners demanded four, five or, exceptionally, six days of barshchina from their serfs. The size of the serfs' land allotments for their own use varied greatly: before 1861, the average size in the Poltava province was 2 desiatinas (5.4 acres) per soul (i.e., every male serf), in the Vologda province, 8.7 desiatinas or 23.5 acres. To disentangle these 111,555 knots was a task of tremendous difficulty. The government could not simply liberate the serfs and give them all the arable lands which legally belonged to the landlords, just as President Lincoln could not confiscate all the