alexander ii, the ‘tsar reformer’ notes

alexander ii, the 'tsar reformer'

motives for reform
- influences on alexander ii
    - zhukovsky
        - his tutor
    - earlier travels around the empire
    - the 'party of st petersburg progress'
        - circle of nobles
    - grand duke konstantin
        - his brother
    - grand duchess elena pavlovna
        - his aunt
    - 'enlightened bureaucrats'
        - the milyutin brothers
        - other intelligentsia members

economic motives to abolish emancipation
- free peasants
- greater incentive to work
- grain surplus
- export of grain providing money for landowners/state
- investment in industry within russia
- mobile peasantry moving to towns to work in industry
- greater prosperity

early reforms in alexander ii's first year
- released political prisoners
- relaxed controls on censorship
- lessened restrictions on foreign travel and university entrance
- cancelled tax debts
- restored some of poland's and catholic church's rights
- started looking into emanic patron in march 1856 but didn't implement it until 1861

1861 emancipation edict
- serfs granted freedom and a land allotment
- landlords compensated by the government
    - kept some lands but open fields given to mir
- freed serfs paid 'redemption payments' to government
    - paid over 49 years for the land
    - serfs to stay within mir until payments paid
    - mir distributed allotments, controlled farming and collected and paid peasants' taxes
- volosts established to supervise mirs
    - volosts ran own cours from 1863
- 'temporary obligation' period
    - theory
        - two year period
        - was to arrange allocations before freedom granted
    - practice
        - around 15% of peasants 'temporary obligated' until 1881

positive and negative results of emancipation
- positives
    - peasants no longer subject to their masters' whim and had free status
    - kulaks did well out of land allocations
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