Emancipation Reform of 1861 - Implementation

Implementation

Mir communities had the power to distribute the land given to newly freed serfs by the Russian government amongst individuals within the community. Due to the community’s ownership of the land, as opposed to the individual’s, an individual peasant could not sell their portion of land in order to work in a factory in the city. A peasant was required to pay off long term loans received by the government. The money from these loans was given to the primary landowner. The land allotted to the recently freed serfs did not include the best land in the country, which continued to be owned by the nobility.

The implementation of land settlement varied over the vast and diverse territory of the Russian Empire, but typically a peasant had rights to buy out about half of the land he cultivated for himself. If he could not afford to pay it off, he would receive a half of the half, i.e., a quarter of the land, free. It was called pauper's allotment (bednyatskiy nadel).

Although well planned in the legislation, the reform did not work smoothly. The conditions of the manifesto were regarded as unacceptable by many reform minded peasants; "In many localities the peasants refused to believe that the manifesto was genuine. There were troubles, and troops had to be called in to disperse the angry crowds."

The land-owners and nobility were paid in government bonds and their debts were removed from the money before it was handed over. The bonds soon fell in value; the management skills of the land-owners were generally poor.