Michael Chen, For Every Action…The Nobility’s Response to Emancipation

Alexander II would set Imperial Russia on an inevitable course towards self-destruction as he authorized the Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861, the first of his Great Reforms.  In one of history’s classic examples of a well-intentioned action leading to inevitable disaster, the tsar inadvertently caused the ruination of Russia in an effort to reform.

The Emancipation was, for all intents and purposes, a good idea that, if prosecuted properly would have resulted in Russia’s successful transition into a free-labor society on par with the rest of the Great Powers of 19^th century Europe. Unfortunately the matter was not prosecuted properly, the autocracy seemed intent on making reform as difficult and revolution as inviting as possible.  The first key to understand how emancipation led to the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 is to understand the concept of the social contract that existed between the tsar and his nobles.  “The government looked to nobles to do it’s bidding and execute its policies; in return, they expected the autocracy to protect their special interests and privileges,” but the emancipation represented a breach of this social contract, “It was this political as well as moral betrayal rather than economic crisis that underlay both the acute social conflict in the countryside and the nobility’s desertion of the autocracy in the revolutionary situations of 1905 and 1917.”[1]

Alexander II had seriously miscalculated the intrinsic value of the aforementioned social contract in maintaining his power.  And, not only had the tsar betrayed this informal trust that lay as the foundation for autocratic power, he had betrayed it completely.  Although members of the nobility had initially been asked for their views on how emancipation should be enacted, the final legislation was written and passed without any consultation between the tsar and the first estate.  The nobles’ abandonment of the tsar, a logical response for the tsar’s freeing of their serfs, left the autocracy without an intermediary to the people.  As a result, the autocracy became even more defensive and withdrawn, the nobles angrier and more alienated by the seemingly callous tsar and the peasants angry over a landless emancipation. 

In effect, Alexander II’s process of emancipating the serfs had unwittingly doomed his nation to Revolution when the social strife boiled over in 1905 and later in 1917.  In another cruel twist of fate, only days before Alexander II was to sign the first Russian Constitution affirming individual rights, the terrorist group The Will of the People would assassinate him.  The tsar would not live to see the ultimate and ill fated effects of his reforms.