A frequent question encountered in exams in secondary and higher educational institutions: "Describe the nature of the peasant question in Russia." Meanwhile, ask him now for an adult, the majority will not remember anything except that serfdom was abolished in 1861. So, let's look at what the peasant question is together.
From time immemorial
For many years and even centuries, peasants remained an oppressed estate in the Russian state. Serfdom meant the complete dependence of the peasant on the landowner, the man on whose land he lived. In fact, this is a form of slavery, since the peasant could not voluntarily leave this territory, could not have land or a house on it, and was also a “thing” that was sold and bought, both with and without land.
Changes in the position of men began to occur with the accession of the Romanov dynasty. At first they were not very encouraging, on the contrary: Aleksey Mikhailovich made unlimited the time to search for an escaped peasant - the landowner could now regain not only him, but even his descendants, as well as the serf, now he could not leave the estate, even having freed himself - he remained “ strong ", that is, attached to this land (therefore," serfdom "law). Shifts for the better were outlined only under Paul the First.
Paul
Unlike his mother, Catherine the Great, who believed that the peasants were living well in Russia, Paul rightly believed that the life of the common people was rather difficult and it would be nice to somehow try to improve it.
At that time, there were four groups of peasants: specific, landlord, state and factory. For each of them, their measures were thought out. So, for example, specific peasants were offered to give land and help in the economy with new equipment, and to collect taxes according to the new rules. However, there was not enough land for everyone, so it was decided that they could acquire land from private owners. In addition, they were issued passports with which they could go to work.
It was proposed to solve the peasant question in relation to a group of state men as follows: to give each of them 15 acres of land (though there were few such plots, and then fifteen were replaced by eight) of land that would allow a person to feed himself and his family and pay a fee. In addition, payment standards were established. They ranged from three and a half to five rubles in different areas. A decree was also issued that state-owned peasants have the right to enroll as tradesmen and merchants.
The number of factory men at first only increased, since the owners of factories were allowed to buy peasants and assign them to their enterprises inextricably. Nevertheless, making sure that the fate of such people remains unenviable, Pavel signed a decree that only 58 people are allowed to take to each plant, while the rest must be immediately freed from hard work, ranking them as state peasants. This law has made life in this category much easier.
And finally, the last group - the landowners. In their respect, the peasant question was least resolved. The following was done for them: they were forbidden to sell without land, and also to separate families. In addition, one cannot fail to note the April Pavlovsk manifesto of 1797: he forbade making men work on Sundays, and also established a three-day norm for corvee labor. This document to this day is considered almost the main of all that Paul did to solve the peasant question. Nevertheless, there is a lot of evidence (in the form of complaints from peasants and the testimonies of noblemen) that this decree was not respected and the peasants were forced to work as before on a daily basis. However, these were only the first cautious steps, and Paul cannot be blamed for the poor attitude towards the "lower classes." “The ice has broken, gentlemen of the jury!”
Alexander the First
The transformation of his father was continued by Alexander the First. This was probably caused not so much by the desire to free the men from oppression hanging over them, but by the understanding of the need for changes in the country: the population was growing, and agricultural resources, on the contrary, were rapidly decreasing, an urgent transition to a capitalist economy was required, which is why there was something to do with the peasant question. And the first thing that Alexander undertook was to issue a law of 1801, in which he “gave the green light” to peasants, bourgeois and merchants (along with nobles) to acquire land. However, this decree is not considered the main of what the king implemented. His next bill of 1803 is spoken much more.
Freedom Till Ordinance
The decree on free cultivators - that was the name of the law that came out two years after the first. He really was aimed at somehow trying to help the peasants. So, according to this document, the man received the right to redeem himself from the owner, to gain freedom, that is, will (that is why the name of the law is that). Alexander believed that the peasants would begin to free themselves en masse, but this did not happen - the ransom price was not determined, the landowners set it themselves. Of course, they did not want to lose their working hands and they wringed on such a price of release that the unfortunate men could never pay them. The conditions for obtaining the will were just such: paid - you are free, you can’t - return to slavery. In the final analysis, freedom was thus gained by a negligible number of peasants — about fifty thousand.
In 1809, another decree came out, which forbade men to be exiled to Siberia just like that, without investigation. Also, it was impossible to sell them at fairs and not to feed them in starvation. The peasant question under Alexander 1 was marked by numerous attempts to resolve, however, due to the fact that the tsar was quite careful and was afraid to infringe on the interests of the nobility, no particularly active actions were taken.
In the years 1816-1819, a reform was carried out in the Baltic states: peasants received personal freedom, but without the right to own land. Thus, they all the same depended on the landlords - they were forced to either rent land from those, or to farm for them.
Nikolay the First
The solution of the peasant question under Nicholas affected state-run peasants — to a greater extent, and serfs — to a much lesser extent.
The first category was distributed among rural societies, which, in turn, became part of the volost. The volost was characterized by self-government, they had their foremen and heads (the so-called leaders), as well as their judges. The state helped such peasants in everyday life: they were given grain with a crop failure, and land was given to those who needed it, schools for children, hospitals, shops and so on were organized. For the serfs, much less was done - a ban on separation of families, a link to Siberia and a decree on “obligated peasants”. He meant the liberation of the peasant from dependence, while on specially agreed conditions he was given a plot of land for use. He remained on the land of the former owner and was obliged (therefore, “obligated peasants”) to pay him a certain amount for using it. That is, roughly speaking, especially the essence of the peasant question has not changed. But people already sensed, "where the wind is blowing." They were waiting for the complete abolition of addiction, worried. And although there were no riots like the Pugachevsky uprising, the mood of the peasants changed. In the midst of the air was the need to abolish serfdom altogether.
Alexander the Second
Alexander the Second went down in history as a king, who nevertheless made up his mind - it was under him that serfdom was finally abolished (however, the essence of the peasant question did not change too much). He did not hide his conviction that this should ever happen and rightly believed that it was better to carry out transformations “from above” than they would come “from below”.
Reasons for the abolition of serfdom
There were several reasons for such a solution to the peasant question, and they had been brewing for a long time. The last straw was the defeat in the Crimean War: it showed political unpreparedness, even backwardness in Russia. After it, uprisings broke out in some areas of the country.
In addition, the factors that prompted a change in the nature of the peasant question were the inhibition of the growth of industry, foreign and domestic trade, the decline of landlord economy and the need for army reform.
The peasant question in Russia: is it resolved?
Alexander instructed the large landowners-serfs to draw up a plan for resolving the peasant question. For the period from 1856 to 1860. several versions of the program were prepared, now more or less loyal to the peasants. Basically, they sought to take into account the interests of the landlords, so the solution to the problem was delayed - until in January 1861, Alexander gave a clear order to finish this matter as soon as possible - the peasants were worried, and in some places waves of protests flared up. Ultimately, the king signed the manifesto of liberation on February 19, and it was brought to the attention of the people on March 5. This is due to Alexander’s fear of Pancake Day unrest - the content of the document was too contradictory.
The provisions of this manifesto boiled down to the following points:
- All peasants became free people. They were released into the wild without ransom for themselves, but in addition they received from the landowner the so-called house plot, as well as a field plot. The latter was given not personally to every peasant, but to rural societies, which now included peasants. At the same time, the land remained the property of the landowner.
- The peasants could redeem the land. While they used it without a ransom, they were called "temporarily liable", when they bought it out, they became "peasant owners."
- For the use of landlord land, peasants had to either pay or work out.
- All the buildings of the peasant were considered his property.
- The peasants could now do business and enter other classes.
The ambiguity of this reform, men (and not only they) saw immediately. By and large, nothing has changed in their situation. They were officially declared free, but they continued to work for the owner or pay him a rent (he ranged from eight to twelve rubles a year). "Will" was not quite real. Many historians later noticed that the landowners became even tougher with the peasants, in particular, they began to flog them more. Some scholars believed that the manifesto of Alexander the Second, abolishing serfdom legally and not actually doing anything, was a kind of accelerating factor in the disappearance of this phenomenon. In the history of other countries, according to experts, there were also no cases when serfdom ceased to exist in one day - decades have always led to this. However, the peasants, who, in fact, were lured and deceived, from the realization of this was not easier.
In 1861, nearly one thousand two hundred revolts broke out (for comparison, in the previous five years there were less than five hundred). The people were also indignant at the tricks of the landlords in order to force the peasants to rent their land and work on it: the peasants were allocated plots of land from which it was impossible to go either to the forest, to arable land, or to water, without passing the farm territory . So - rent it and work on it. The men had no choice.
Thus, if one answers the question “Describe the essence of the peasant question,” it is necessary to say first of all that even a decision was made in favor of the landowners. There is evidence that the market value of allotments transferred to the peasants amounted to five hundred forty million rubles. Given all the fraud, the men had to pay eight hundred sixty million - one and a half times more. Where did the poor get their money from? The state granted them a loan, which the peasants were required to repay in 49 years. As a result, the amount ran four times larger than it was originally. How can one not talk about the interests of the landowners who were taken into account here? As a result of the reform, it was they who benefited greatly, while the peasants were doomed to poverty and land shortages for many decades.
Alexander the Third
Alexander the Third also made attempts to improve the lives of peasants, but this was not particularly successful. In addition, the king did not hide that he did not consider the “land issue” to be something out of the ordinary and requiring urgent intervention. However, in order to “smooth out sharp corners” and to quench unrest, in 1881 he passed a law that two years later transferred all “temporarily liable” peasants to “redemption” - thus, it became mandatory to redeem their land from the landowner. However, redemption payments were slightly reduced - albeit insignificantly. The taxes were completely canceled only by 1887.
In 1882, a special Peasant Bank was created, whose task was to help individual peasants and entire societies to acquire land. At the same time, special emphasis was placed on loans specifically to individuals. As a result of this event, there was a rather sharp increase in land prices. At the end of the eighties of the nineteenth century, a law was passed that allowed the very poor to move beyond the Urals, and in 1893 Alexander forbade land redistribution and exit from the community. It cannot be said that all these measures helped the peasant population to live better.
Nicholas II
The peasant question at the beginning of the 20th century, that is, during the reign of Nicholas II, is directly related to the reforms of Peter Stolypin. So, in 1906, a decree was adopted on the possibility of free exit from the community along with part of the land for personal use, a year later they stopped collecting redemption payments. Peasants began to actively move to Siberia and the Far East, where there were free territories.
At the same time, rural communities, on which the predecessors of the last Russian tsar had hoped so much, came to a standstill and failed. It was precisely to prevent the complete impoverishment of the peasantry that Stolypin's economic reforms were directed. Ultimately, the peasant question of the 20th century was marked by an increase in agricultural production, an increase in exports, and a complete stratification of the peasant community.
Interesting Facts
- Serfdom existed not only in Russia, but in our country it lived the longest.
- In Kievan Rus there were smerds (free farmers with the land that belonged to the prince), purchases (smerds who concluded an agreement with the feudal lord) and slaves (slaves). The existence of the latter ended in the reign of Peter the Great.
- More than eight hundred thousand peasants were donated by Catherine to their close associates.
- Some scholars believe that the existence of serfdom was the basis for the development of the Russian state.
- Serfdom did not exist on most of the territory of Russia, while only a quarter of the entire Russian population lived there (these are Siberia, the Caucasus, the Far East, Finland, Alaska and others).
Thus, although it is customary to consider Alexander the Second a “liberator," it cannot be said that the reform undertaken by him significantly facilitated the life of the peasants. The peasant question was resolved slowly, and serfdom left Russia a few decades after its abolition.