In the year of the liberation, only 140,000 landowners possessed serfs. But of these "landowners," from 3,000 to 4,000 owned no land, so that their serfs were merely personal servants.
It must further be remembered that even before 1861 the unfree peasant cultivated a small area of land for himself and his family, paying the landowner for the usufruct or discharging his dues in the form of labour. The land assigned to the peasants in 1861 was about one fifth less than that which they had previously occupied, the reduction being especially conspicuous in fertile regions where land had a high value. On the average each peasant received three to four desjatinas. In the north he was given seven desjatinas, in the steppes ten, in the region of the black earth no more that two desjatinas.[1]
There was one provision in the manifesto of liberation which led to the creation of a new social element of serious import to the formation of a class of peasant proletarians numbering hundreds of thousands. This was the provision that peasants willing to content themselves with one fourth of the amount of land assignable to them ("gratuitous allotments" or "beggarly allotments") would be immediately granted complete freedom by their lords. This scheme was a realisation of some of the older plans of enfranchisement, such as that of N. Turgenev.
When we remember that the peasant had to continue compensatory payments after the liberation, we shall not be surprised that he was discontented.
Finally, it is necessary to point out that the peasant was not granted full private ownership of the land, but could hold it only as communal property. In a sense the power of the mir over the individual peasant was thereby increased, for after 1861 the mir was responsible, not for the taxes alone, but likewise for the instalments of the redemption money.
By the obligation to pay redemption money the peasant was refettered to his lord, this condition of dependence persisting until the redemption money had been paid in full. Thus enfranchisement was in many instances retarded. The government had anticipated widespread disturbances among the peasantry in consequence of liberation, and took military measures accordingly. In actual fact, the peasant revolts which had been so frequent during the reign of Nicholas continued after the liberation. During the years 1861 to 1863
- ↑ The desjatina is 2·7 acres.
