The Liberalization of Russia-Take 1: The Zemstovs

The emancipation of the serfs was not the only substantial reform enacted by Alexander II in an effort to liberalize Russia.  Although Alexander was devoted to the autocratic tradition he knew that it was necessary to modernize Russia in order to keep up with a rapidly growing western economy and society.  Knowing that the political infrastructure of Russia was becoming inefficient he made attempts to make local government more efficient.  One way of doing this was enacting what is known as zemstvos. Zemstvos were organs of self-government that were made up of representatives elected by the population.  It is important to note, however, that the representatives represented members of three groups: nobility, townsmen, and peasants.  The number of representatives that each group could elect to a zemstov was dependent on the value of property owned by each group.  It can be deduced then that the electoral power primarily lay with the nobility which, therefore, fueled animosity between classes.

Alexander II's attempts to liberalize Russia worked but not in the way that he had planned.  Marxist philosophy discusses the necessity of class warfare in order to eliminate social hierarchy.  The institution of the zemstvo was an attempt to democratize local government in order to make it more efficient but, like serf emancipation, came off to the overall population as another concession to the nobility and resulted in more animosity towards the tsar, the wealthy class, and democracy.


Zemstvo Having a Dinner by Grigoriy Myasoyedov

The Emancipation of the Serfs

Prior to the year 1900, Russia was experiencing a degree of inefficiency pertaining to both economy and politics.  By the time Tsar Alexander II assumed the throne in 1855, Russia was embroiled in the Crimean War (which it suffered an embarrassing defeat only a year later), there were land and food shortages, and dissent was growing among the masses.  The institution of serfdom had been in place since its the enactment of the Ulozhenie in 1649.  Many of Russia's internal struggles were considered, by many, to have roots in serfdom.  In 1856, Alexander declared that "the existing condition of owning souls cannot remain unchanged. It is better to begin to destroy serfdom from above than wiat until that time when it begins to destroy itself from below."  Although Alexander II liberated the serfs from being tied to the land, the serfs were still largely downtrodden due to the taxes imposed on them as a means reimbursing the boyar class. This bait and switch aided in peasant resentment towards the tsar. Prior to serf emancipation, the peasants believed that the boyar class was entirely responsible for their suffering and that the tsar was unable to save them.  The move to burden the peasants with heavy taxation in favor of the boyar class fueled a revolutionary atmosphere at the turn of the 20th century.

This is a painting by Boris Kustodiev (1907) depicting muzhiks listening to the proclamation of the Emancipation Manifesto of 1861 

Citations

• http://www.historytoday.com/michael-lynch/emancipation-russian-serfs-1861-charter-freedom-or-act-betrayal