Russia under the Old regime

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family. After hard bargaining with representatives of landed interests, minimum and maximum norms were set for the various regions of the country: landlords whose peasants tilled on their own behalf land in excess of the maximum norms could request to have it reduced; where the allotment fell below the minimum norm, they had to increase it. In the end, Russia's landlords retained approximately two-thirds of the land, including most of the pasture and woodland; the rest was distributed among the one-time proprietary peasants. Because in the eyes of the law both parts were property of the landlord, the peasants had to pay for their share. The government advanced to the landlords on the peasants' behalf 80 per cent of the price of the land, as determined by assessors, which the peasants had to repay over a period of forty-nine years in the form of'Redemption Payments'. The remaining 20 per cent of the purchase price the peasant paid the landlord directly: in money if he had it, in services if he did not. To assure that the 'Redemption Payments' were accurately delivered the government entrusted the property title to the peasant allotment to the commune rather than to die individual household.*

The Act of 19 February 1861 placed the peasant in an ambivalent situation. He was freed from the detested authority of the landlord; thus the single worst feature of serfdom was done away with. But at the same time, he remained in many respects separated from the rest of the population and continued to be attached to the land.

At the time of its promulgation, the Emancipation settlement appeared a success. Only a small group of radical critics found fault with it on the grounds that all the soil should have been turned over to the peasants and that they should not have been required to pay for their allotments. The Emperor of Russia achieved with one stroke of his pen the abolition of bondage which took the President of the United States four years of civil war. In retrospect, the achievement appears less impressive. In fact, after 1861 the economic situation of the Russian peasant deteriorated, and in 1900 he was, by and large, worse off than he had been in 1800. For the rural population, especially in the black earth belt, the second half of the nineteenth century turned out to be a period of progressive decline and demoralization. The crisis had several causes, some traceable to human error, some to factors beyond human control.

To begin with, the imposition of Redemption Payments on one-time serfs on top of their regular taxes placed on them unrealistic burdens. The peasants had extreme difficulty meeting their new fiscal obligations, especially in die areas where corvee had been the traditional method of paying rent and there were few opportunities for making money. To

* The Emancipation Edict left it up to the ex-serf to decide whether or not he wished to buy his share of land. Purchase became obligatory only in 1883.