Reasons for the Emancipation?

Question 1

Economics?

Answer 1

Russia needed industrial development

• Serf owning nobles faced an increasing amount of debt –> Failure to produce grain surplus’ –> 1859: 66% of serfs had been mortgaged as security against landlords
• Serf system discouraged innovation + entrepeneruship among serfs –> Little incentive to improve their productivity –> Agricultural productivity was half of that in Britain and France
• Tax Debt –> Government Debt –> Serfs owed a total of 54 million rubles by 1855
• Tied Serfs could not move into the city, where efficency could be improved

Question 2

Historical perspectives on the reasons for Emancipation (economic)?

Answer 2

Richard Pipes: “The decision to abolish sefdom in 1861 was motivated above all, by economic considerations”

Question 3

Military arguments?

Answer 3

Alfred Rieber –> Serfdom to be abolished to reform the Russian army along Western lines

• Crimean War (‘53-‘56) –> Russia’s forces were in desperate need of reorganisation –> Lost 350k soldiers
• Milyutin reported that many soldiers were forced to fight without boots or basic clothing and 20 k Russian soldiers died as a result
• British Journalist William Harvard Russell (Times Newspaper) –> Russian soldiers were “almost naked”
• Russia could no longer afford a large peacetime army
• Maintaing 25 year conscripts was inefficent and costly
• Milyutin proposed: Conscripts should spend less time on active service
• Favoured a short period in the armed forces for military training
• ## This could have not been possible with serfdom due to potential uprisings + Serfdom to end in 2 or 3 generations anyways

Question 4

Moral and Intellectual Argument?

Answer 4

• Serfdom needed to change on moral grounds
• Westerners believed that bondage was morally wrong and that serfdon was incompatible with humanitarian standards
• Ivan Turgenev —> book “Sportsman sketches” –> Collection of short stories which showed that serfs were normal human beings
• Russian Orthodox church plaued a role in promoting the moral case for emancipation –> Archbishop Innokenty, who in 1857 delivered a famous sermon in which he denounced the institution of serfdom as a sin against God and humanity