But the great ends at which the reformers aimed, the liberation, that is to say, of the peasant from all personal dependence on the manorial lord, and the securing to him the right of possessing land in common, were nevertheless attained.
The law of February 19, 1861, was the beginning of a new era --an era of democratic development, as well as of economic and social growth, for the immense Empire of the Czars. For there is no doubt about the vast influence which the law of 1861 has exercised in all directions. It is that which made more than twenty millions of people at once the free disposers of their own destinies and the communistic owners of the land. Villein services, rents in kind and in money, feudal monopolies, and manorial jurisdiction, ceased to exist, and the peasant became the member of a self-governing body, or the Mir. The ideas of social justice and of equality before the law -- ideas hitherto cherished but by a few dreamers such as Radischev and Herzen, or revolutionists like those so-called "Decembrists," who organised the rebellion of December 24, 1825 -- made their triumphant entry into the Russian world, working a complete change in the organisation of public schools, admitting the son of the peasant to sit side by side with the son of the nobleman and the merchant in the same grammar school and the same university, revolutionising both official circles and the drawing-room, admitting to both persons of low. birth but high education.
The emancipation of the serf certainly was not carried out without some loss to the land-owning gentry, but the squire soon recovered from the state into which he was brought by his inexperience in the management of his estate without the help of unpaid servants. Capital was invested in land; agricultural machines were introduced; the yearly income began to rise rapidly, and with it the value of the land was augmented. It was partly enhanced by the fact that it was thrown open to the free purchase of all classes of society, while previous to the reform the higher class alone was entitled to own it. Instead of abandoning the tillage of the fields, according to the expectation of some pessimists, the liberated serf soon became the regular farmer of the lands possessed by the gentry, and entire village communities have been seen during these last few years renting, under conditions of mutual responsibility, the land of a neighbouring estate.
If we investigate the indirect results of the great reform accomplished by the Emperor Alexander, we are first struck by the fact that it involved the necessity of a complete change in provincial administration. Justice and police had hitherto been in the hands of persons elected by the nobility. This could no longer be tolerated the moment the serf was liberated from his previous subjection to the noble and squire. A system of provincial self-government, based on the principle of representation of the whole land-owning class, both private proprietors and those possessing land in common, was introduced in its stead. The organization of justice was completely changed, learned jurists occupying the place of the ignorant magistrates of old who had been appointed by the provincial gentry. The people, as members of juries, were admitted to a share in the exercise of criminal justice. The transformation of the medieval State into one that answered to the requirements of modern civilisation would have been completed if the Liberator of millions had not been slaughtered on the very day on which he had undertaken to give a constitution to his people.
Years of violent reaction have followed. The feudal party, whose secret designs had been defeated by the mode in which emancipation had been effected, again got the upper hand; and modern Russia now looks back to the period of 1861 as the golden age of Russian Liberalism. It is in the work of the men who were directly engaged in carrying out the great reform that Russian Liberals seek consolation and help; and the Nineteenth of February has become for them a day of general and of grateful commemoration.
NOTES:
1. Compare V. Somevsky, "The Peasant Question in Russia during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century", Petersburg, 1888.
2. "The Village from Petersburg to Novgorod."3. See his work, entitled "The Fall of Bondage in Russia,"Petersburg, 1883.
