The Emancipation Manifesto
The legal basis of the reform was the Tsar's Emancipation Manifesto of March 3 1861, accompanied by the set of legislative acts under the general name Regulations Concerning Peasants Leaving Serf Dependence (Russian: Положения о крестьянах, выходящих из крепостной зависимости, Polozheniya o krestyanakh, vykhodyashchikh iz krepostnoi zavisimosti).
This Manifesto proclaimed the emancipation of the serfs on private estates and of the domestic (household) serfs. Serfs were granted the full rights of free citizens, gaining the rights to marry without having to gain consent, to own property and to own a business. The Manifesto prescribed that peasants would be able to buy the land from the landlords.
Read more about this topic: Emancipation Reform Of 1861
Famous quotes containing the word emancipation:
“... women learned one important lesson—namely, that it is impossible for the best of men to understand women’s feelings or the humiliation of their position. When they asked us to be silent on our question during the War, and labor for the emancipation of the slave, we did so, and gave five years to his emancipation and enfranchisement.... I was convinced, at the time, that it was the true policy. I am now equally sure that it was a blunder.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)