The question put by the Society of Political Economists could not, therefore, possibly have received any other answer than that given to it by the majority of the authors who sent in papers to the Society. Serfdom was rapidly becoming a burden on the manorial lords themselves, as many of them began to be conscious.
The barons of the Baltic shore were the first to understand the advantage which the liberation of the serf, followed by a resumption of the ground he owned, would have on their class interests. The nobility of Toula and Riasan, as well as that of Dinabourg, Petersburg, and Czarskoie Selo, seemed also to become conscious of this fact, for they petitioned the Emperor Nicholas to establish local committees who might prepare the outlines of a new emancipation act. Among the nobles immediately surrounding the Czar, Prince Mentchikov expressed his opinion of the desirability and advantage of freeing the peasant and at the same time of enriching the landlord by leaving in his hands all those shares in the common ground which had been held by the peasants.
The interests of the nobility certainly required the establishment of a class similar to that of the English labourers, but the peasants were naturally averse to any change which would lessen their hold on the soil. In 1812 a peasant rising took place in the Government of Pensa, the revolted serfs expressing their wants by the old motto "liberty and Land." In 1826 again the same motto was the watchword of another rising, this time provoked by a rumour that land and liberty would shortly be secured to the serfs.
Under the influence of this clear expression of the people's wants, the Government of Nicholas abandoned all idea of emancipation which was not to be followed by the endowment of the peasant with land. Not daring, as he openly acknowledged to lay hands on the sacred rights of private property by liberating the serfs and making them free owners of the soil, Nicholas proposed to alter the existing condition of the serf by making him a sort of copyholder or perpetual tenant of small parcels of manorial ground, on condition of the payment of perpetual rent. In the Polish provinces, such copyhold tenures, very like the French censives, were already in existence. The Government, therefore, only extended a system which already existed when, in 1842, they ordered the preparation in each manor of a sort of registry, called "inventory," in which the amount of payments in kind and money, made by the serfs to the landlord, were to be inscribed, in order that in future no other levies might be made.
Neither of these two schemes for amending the untenable position of the serf was good enough to obtain the approbation of those to whom, at this time, actually belonged the guidance of pubic opinion. It will be to the eternal honour of the Russian press that it constantly preached in favour of a reform which would at once liberate the serf and make him legal owner of the shares of manorial ground which were already in his possession.
Among the persons directly implicated in the insurrectionary movement of the 24th of December 1825, two, Pestel and Jakoushkine, had already declared themselves to be supporters of such a scheme.
The diffusion of socialist ideas greatly contributed to strengthen among the literary class the persuasion that it would be impossible to liberate the serf otherwise than by endowing him with land. The well-known plot which was organised by Petroschevsky, among its other aims, had that of allotting parcels of ground to the liberated serf. The great exile Herzen, in a Russian newspaper then published in London, openly expressed his opinion that the common ownership of the land should be retained in the hands of the enfranchised peasant; and among the many schemes of emancipation, which circulated in the form of manuscript during the latter part of Nicholas's reign, more than one advocated the necessity of retaining the ancient ties which bound the peasant to the soil by making him the legal owner of his share in the open fields.
The "providential mission" of the Czar Alexander the Second was therefore disclosed in a state of society which was already prepared to accept the general outlines of a social reform, the end of which would be not only to liberate, but also to enrich, the peasant. As soon as Alexander ascended the throne rumours began to be circulated as to the approaching abolition of serfdom. The unexpected death of his father placed him on the throne at a moment of great and general depression, occasioned by the defeat of the Russian military forces under the walls of Sebastopol. The young Emperor made an eloquent appeal to the patriotism of his subjects, inviting them to increase the means of defence by a voluntary levy of a kind of militia, known under the name of Opolchenie. This measure strengthened the belief in the nearness of social and political reforms. The peasants, enrolled in the self-raised regiments of the militia, began to think that their more or less voluntary sacrifice of life and fortune would he rewarded by a complete liberation from the ignominious bonds of personal servitude. Crowds of serfs asked to be admitted into the militia, expecting to attain freedom in this way.
When the Peace of Paris was signed, and the peasants of the militia were ordered to return to their daily tasks, they openly expressed their belief that the charters by which the Emperor had liberated them from bondage were concealed by their landlords.
