496 Chapter 25below.” The thirty-year reign of Nicholas I had seen
556 serf rebellions, an average of more than one upris-
ing per month; in the first years of Alexander’s reign,
the rate increased to 80 peasant rebellions per year. In
1857 the new czar named a secret committee, headed
by his liberal adviser Nikolai Milyutin, to prepare for
emancipation. Alexander II followed the advice of the
Milyutin Commission and issued an edict (ukase) of
emancipation in March 1861 on the same day that
Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office as president of
the United States. The details of emancipation were so
complex that they required nearly five hundred pages.
The basic provision ended serfdom, freeing 22,192,000
people, the majority of the Russian peasantry. Another
obliged the serf-owners (most of whom opposed eman-
cipation) to give the serfs land as a part of the emanci-
pation. Serfs obtained “the full rights of free rural
inhabitants,” their homes, and arable land. Landowners,
however, kept title to the land until the former serfs
gradually paid for it. In the interim, the imperial gov-
ernment compensated landowners with bonds, and for-
mer serfs were obliged, through collective village
obligations, to make the redemption payments on these
bonds. Until the completion of redemption payments,
peasants owed some labor to their landlords and shared
their village’s obligation. Emancipation began with en-
lightened principles but perpetuated involuntary servi-
tude (see document 25.4).
Alexandrine liberalism went beyond the emancipa-
tion edict of 1861. Alexander II did not grant a consti-
tution or a parliament, but his reforms made them
logical expectations. In 1864 he created elective district
assemblies (zemstva) with powers of local government.
The zemstvawere chosen by a three-class franchise simi-
lar to the voting for the Prussian Landtag,and legislation
had to win the approval of the provincial governor, but
this still left the assemblies a role in public health, edu-
cation, and transportation. Educational reforms flowed
from local self-government. Between the creation of the
zemstvain 1864 and the end of Alexander’s reign in
1881, 14,500 new schools opened in Russia. The tsar
encouraged this trend by extending freedom to the uni-
versities. In 1864 the imperial government also re-
formed the judiciary and the criminal code. The new
edicts, based on the principle of equality before the
law, created an independent judiciary with a profes-
sional bar, abolished corporal punishment, and intro-
duced the jury system in criminal cases.
The reforms of 1861–65 whetted the Russian ap-
petite for further liberalization. During the remaining
sixteen years of his reign, Alexander disappointed those
who wanted more. He granted self-government to the
cities in 1870 and reformed the army, reducing the term
of service from twenty-five years to nine in 1874. But
his liberalism stopped short of full westernization. He
brought Russian institutions near to the level of the
Austrian Empire, but not to Anglo-French standards.
He began the economic modernization of his empire
but did not bring it into the industrial age. A tragedy of
historical development is that those who begin to mod-
ernize a backward country often awaken expectations
that they cannot fulfull. The czar liberator became
caught in this trap of rising expectations. He amelio-
rated the strict rule of Poland and amnestied thousandsPeasant population 1858 Census
Serfs on private-owned estates 20,173,000
Serfs on imperial lands 2,019,000
Total serfs 22,192,000
Peasants on state lands 18,308,000
Peasants from state lands working in factories and mines 616,000
Peasants from state lands allowed to work in private factories 518,000
Peasants freed by military service 1,093,000
Total peasants 20,535,000
Source:P .I. Lyashchenko, History of the National Economy of Russia(New York: Macmillan, 1949) and Francis Conte, ed., Les Grands dates de la Russie et de
l’URSS(Paris: Larousse, 1990), p .131.TABLE 25.1Serfs and Peasants in Imperial Russia, 1858