Emancipation of the Russian Serfs

Also called: Emancipation reform of 1861, Emancipation Manifesto

After defeat in the Crimean War, Alexander II issued the Emancipation Manifesto granting serfs personal freedom. But they had to buy their land at a high price through the mir, the village commune.

When defeat in the Crimean War exposed Russia’s backwardness, Alexander II undertook reform, saying it was better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for it to be abolished from below. The Emancipation Manifesto of 3 March 1861 (19 February in the Russian calendar) gave personal freedom to more than twenty million serfs on private estates.

But peasants did not receive land for free: they had to buy it through the mir with redemption payments spread over 49 years, and often got less land than before, so discontent persisted. Reforms of local government (the zemstvos), the courts and the army followed. Intellectuals who judged the reforms inadequate launched the “going to the people” (v narod) movement in the 1870s, and radicals assassinated Alexander II in 1881.