DEPTH STUDIES: To what extent did reforms made by Alex II improve the status of Russian Peasants?

Question 1

What were the lives of peasants like prior to the Emancipation Edict 1861?

Answer 1

• Peasants were the property of land owners.
• They had no right to land.
• Had to seek permission from the noble which owned their land to marry.

Question 2

What were the conditions laid in the Emancipation Edict 1861?

Answer 2

• All privately owned serfs freed - they were able to own property, run their own commercial enterprises and marry who they wished.
• Nobles had to hand over a proportion of their land to peasants.
• State provided emancipation to land owners.
• Peasants had to help pay for compensation through redemption payments.

Question 3

When were state serfs freed?

Answer 3

• 1866.

Question 4

What were the terms of the redemption payments placed on peasants?

Answer 4

• To be paid over a 49 year period at a 6% interest rate.
• Alternatively the peasants had to continue to work on the land of a noble for so many days to compensate for their own land allocations.

Question 5

Who were redemption payments administered by?

Answer 5

• The Mir.
• the group also ensured that land could not be sold before the final redemption payment had been made.

Question 6

By 1905, how much had the proportion of land owned by the nobility decreased to?

Answer 6

• 40%.

Question 7

Why was their opposition to emancipation from landowners?

Answer 7

• Nobility had been struggling to pay off their loans to help cover day-to-day costs.
• Revenue from redemption payments tended to be diverted to pay debts.
• If this failed then estates were broken up and sold off.

Question 8

What opposition was there from peasants to the emancipation edict?

Answer 8

• Peasants were generally allocated poorer quality land - they receive less on average than they had been farming prior to the emancipation edict.
• Peasants struggled to earn enough to meet redemption payments - financial situation made worse by the necessity to pay the rural poll tax.
• Peasants were not totally free as they had to answer to the Mir - decision on which crops were to be cultivated still decided by the village elders/
• It was also the Mir’s responsibility to promote subsistence farming - no incentive for peasants to create a surplus and therefore were reluctant to invest and improve their land.