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In: Economics

Why did Tsar Alexander II decide to emancipate the serfs? You must include at least 3...

Why did Tsar Alexander II decide to emancipate the serfs? You must include at least 3 reasons

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Expert Solution

Serfdom is viewed as a major institutional restriction on the economic growth of Tsarist Russia, one that persisted well after emancipation occurred in 1861. In 1861 serfdom, the system which tied the Russian peasants irrevocably to their landlords, was banned at the Tsar’s imperial command. Four years later, slavery in the USA was similarly announced as unlawful by presidential order. Tsar Alexander II (1855-81) shared with his father, Nicholas I, a conviction that American slavery was very cruel. This is not as hypocritical as it might appear. The serfdom that had operated in Russia since the middle of the seventeenth century was not slavery. The landowner did not own serf. This contrasted with the system in the USA where the negro slaves were chattels; that is, they were regarded in law as the disposable property of their own masters. In Russia the traditional relationship between lord and serf was on basis of the land. It was because he lived on his land that the serf was bound to the lord.

The Russian system starting in 1649 and the introduction of a legal code which had granted total authority to the landowner to control the life and work of the peasant serfs who lived on his land. Since this included the power to stop the serf from moving elsewhere, the difference between slavery and serfdom in practice was so fine indistinguishable. The purpose of granting such powers to the Russian dvoriane (nobility of landowners) in 1649 had been to make the nobles dependent on, and therefore loyal to the Tsar. They were expressing the loyalty in practical form by serving the tsar as military officers or public officials. In this way the Romanov emperors built up Russia’s civil bureaucracy and the armed services as bodies of public officials had a vested interest in maintaining the tsarist state.

The serfs were just over a third of the population and formed half the peasantry. They were heavily concentrated in the central and western provinces of Russia.


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