The Emancipation Of The Serfs

The emancipation of the Serfs in 1862 had significant positive impacts. The main objective of emancipation was to improve the social conditions of the peasants and to establish a development strategy in the Russian economy. Emancipation contributed to these processes in a very significant manner while alienating landowners and reformists.

In any case, significant benefits were to be gained from emancipation from economic and material standpoints. Emancipation paved the way for more efficient agricultural activities and the creation of available labour for the industrialization of Russia. This was entirely needed, given the failure of the Crimean War, by freeing the serfs soon after they paid redemption fees. They then had the freedom to seek work in the new factories. The constant Serfdom was a great obstruction to the modernization of the military, therefore burdening the treasury with unproductive military expenditures. R.A. Fadyet, a military reformer, indicated that “under Serfdom, anyone joining the army is freed. Therefore, one can’t join many people in the military without reorganizing the entire social order. Therefore, it is important that we increase the military establishment during peacetime. ”

Emancipation of the serfs implies that the poorer nobles would be saved from bankruptcy. By the end of 1859, a third of the lands owned by the serfs had already been mortgaged to the noble banks. A majority of the small landowners could not afford to feed the serfs. It can be argued that emancipation was becoming irrefutable, and a majority of landowners were drastically shifting towards the free labour system by employing other people’s serfs. Since the peasant redemption fee would cancel the debts to the gentry, the economic benefits of emancipation were irresistible. The banks would not wait for the peasants to pay them; the state would pay them 80% of the total debt for the lands. Having been freed, the peasants were provided with a period of 49 years within which they were supposed to pay the 20% debts at very cheap rates. Moreover, the remaining debt was to be paid directly to the landowners in cash or through labour. The government would also assist them with generous loans to make it easy to pay the debt.

The serfdom system can be described as a situation where agricultural workers in Feudal Russia cultivated land that belonged to certain landowners. The emancipation of the Serfs occurred for several reasons. Most of which are linked to Russia. The defeat in the Crimean War was a huge failure for Russia as a Superpower. They lost their national prestige as they lost the war to Britain, France, and the Sardine Kingdom. Isolation is not the problem, but when it is a collaborative effort, there is a purpose and objective behind it. This real change has to happen due to the amount of numbers. The Russian peasant made up approximately 80% of the entire Russian population at the time. When such a vast percentage wanted something and was not opposed to using force, then there was a huge problem for the Russian autocracy.

Emancipation can simply be described as “to set free, from social, political and economic restrictions.” In this case, the emancipation in question concerned the end of Serfdom. This was a form of slavery that bound the serfs to the landowners. A serf was an agricultural labourer who was tied to work on certain estates.

Even though Russia had come to depend on the serfs economically, the Serfs were holding the country back. Serfdom presented numerous problems, and Russia was lagging behind the rest of Europe. As indicated earlier, Serfdom was an obstruction of the free flow of labour. Therefore, there were no modern techniques in agriculture. As a result, the noble elites discovered that their estates were becoming less productive. Moreover, they realized that the serfs were becoming more inefficient, and the validity of Western criticism by Western economists opened up their eyes. Moreover, the defeat in Crimea demonstrated that the military needed drastic reforms. This was a challenging process for the Serfdom to survive. Serfs who had served for more than 25 years in the ranks were admitted to the military. Moreover, the abolition of Serfdom was the only solution to the rising number of peasants.

In 1861, the Tsar government decided that the Serfs must be emancipated. As indicated by Alexander in one of his famous speeches to the noble landowners in Moscow, “You understand that the prevailing system of Serfdom should be changed. It is better to start a process of abolishing serf ownership from above than to wait for it to start to abolish itself from below.”

Alexander issued his manifesto for emancipation and proposed 17 legislative measures that would set free the Serfs in Russia. Alexander proclaimed that individual Serfdom would be abolished, and all the peasants would have the capability to acquire land from the noble landowners. The state would then advance the debt to the landowners and recover it from the peasants in 49 years, known as the redemption fee.

The success of the emancipation of the serfs was significant in its accomplishments. The emancipation was a prelude to some of the most sustained programs of sustainable reforms that was experienced by Russia. It also achieved these great changes without violence. It is evident that the only solution that this could have been accomplished was through an absolute ruler of the government. Otherwise, it could not have been achieved in a country ruled by democracy. The only social reform that can be compared to Serf’s emancipation was the freedom of African-American slaves in 1865. Nevertheless, the emancipation of the serfs should be held to a lesser degree. This is because approximately fifty million serfs were set free without any adverse implications.

The significant change falling on the positive side of emancipation was the restructuring of the entire government system. The noble landowners were not happy with the emancipation statute. Even though they received redemption fees, a majority of the landowners were mortgaged to the bank prior to the emancipation. Therefore, the redemption money, in most cases, went to pay most of the debts. In the early 21st century, the nobles owned 40% less land compared to what they held back in 1861. This was attributed to the fact that they found the estates gradually losing their value and slowly sold off the land to the serfs.

The limited success of Serfdom proved to many that the Tsar’s government could not meet the needs of common Russians. Indeed, it contributed to the slow growth of the economy. Agricultural activities were not effective, and the nobles were no longer financially stable. There was a big change in the fact that emancipation established an unforeseen chain of positive events that forever transformed the social and economic life of Russians. The freedom bestowed on the Serfs provided them with an avenue towards industrialization.

Emancipation was a success from the international point of view since the title of the policy demonstrated that Russia was a democratic country that was stepping forward, and the statute was the only path that the rest of the world would have known of. From a political point of view, emancipation was not a success for the Tsar; he lost the support of the nobles, who now backed him due to the fear of violence from the peasants.

While the serfs were freed and opened up the consumer economy for the country, the Tsar was faced with the problem of the peasants fighting for more changes because they had got the terms they were promised at the beginning. The peasants came out with numerous reasonable issues because they were now they were free from Serfdom, which furthered their hopes of more reforms. However, they had already been impoverished by the Tsar with the redemption fee, small pieces of land and lack of better methods of agriculture. However, the conditions were much better compared to what they were before emancipation. After the emancipation, the Tsar lost the ground because he promised the peasants, and now they had ways of criticizing the government, a capability they never had before. The huge advantage of emancipation was that it was a huge transformation that often outweighed the mass disadvantages of the peasants, which were entirely not new; they had not been addressed.

Freedom to the Serfs was one of the biggest social transformations and accomplishments. The Emancipation Statute of 1861 focused on giving freedom to the serfs while at the same time maintaining the satisfaction of the nobles and landowners. However, they turned out to be less efficient, and in most aspects, Serfdom remained. Initially, it was assumed that all private serfs were free and granted individual rights. This included freedom of marriage and owning property, among others. Moreover, village people were allowed to seek other jobs freely.

Reforms initiated by the emancipation statute had significant advantages in Russian social, political and economic spectrums. The impacts were far-reaching compared to any other former Tsar. Alexander II understood the backwardness of Serfdom. Therefore, he decided to introduce reforms with the objective of increasing the status and welfare of the country. All the reforms he introduced had their positive and negative impacts. However, the emancipation of the serfs was the most genuine reform he introduced. Considering the extent of accomplishment of the singular reform, emancipation had long-lasting changes, while other reforms had slight visibility among the society in a short period.