However, there was increasing criticism of the institution of serfdom. The Russian empire had, since the reign of Ivan III, been a largely serf based rural nation. 85% of the populations at this time were peasants and most of those, serfs. A serf was someone who was owned by the Land lord, usually a member of the nobility, the serf would work there land until there death, with very little freedoms and certainly no education.…
Much like those in Germany, Russian Jews benefited from new freedoms granted in the mid-1800s. Over time they were supplied with the opportunity’s to hold middle-class occupations like business ownership, banking, teaching and manufacturing. This however was met with anger from some non-Jewish Russians, however violence was not used. Sadly, the situation for Russian Jews worsened considerably after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Alexander had been of great assistance to the Jews, with some of his reforms improving conditions for Russia’s Jews. It was found Alexander was murdered by socialist revolutionaries, however many Russians considered socialism and anarchism to be Jewish inventions –therefore meaning the Russian Jews…
| * The land given to the peasants was not of good quality, the peasants also had to pay the state long term installments. The peasants were also responsible to the village commune that forced them to pay their installments and not be free of the land. * The local assemblies couldn’t attain much because of the interruption of bureaucrats afraid that it would turn into a self –government. * Alexander’s reform policies led to increasing reform movements that led to a populist group assassinating him, making his son turn against any reform and go back to repression. His reform policies also set the foundation for the fall of Russia’s Monarchy in 1917.…
Alexander ll was seen to be liberal in the early years of his reign as seen in the emancipation of the Serfs in 1861. This gave the Serfs more freedom and basic rights which at this time was a major liberal reform compared to the majority of the previous Tsars, this was by in large Alexander’s greatest reform. The emancipation, he hoped, would lead to greater agricultural output in order to finance the railways, and the beginning of the…
In 1861 was the Emancipation of the Serfs. The Serfs originally belonged to landowners but the Tsar bought land for the Serfs to live on. However, the landowners sold the Tsar bad land for the Serfs to live and work on. This made the Serfs extremely unhappy as they had to start work from the beginning on bad land which they were paying a lot for.…
Alexander ll recognized as the Tsar liberator was known mostly for the emancipation of the serfs. Serfs were the biggest social problem Russia faced as 80% of the population were serfs or state peasants. Serfdom had existed elsewhere in Europe in the 19th century but 1885 Russia was the only major power which kept serfdom. Eventually in 1861 Alexander ll issued an imperial decree which abolished serfdom. This was a huge step for Russia in the 19th century as it showed that they trying to do something about their progression in time. However this did not mean that former serfs were…
The first way the Russian state was more stable in 1881 was the increased freedom of the serfs. Serfdom was abolished in 1861, and although the serfs were not completely free, this was a major step for Russia, and helped them catch up to the western countries. This made the state more stable, because it briefly caused a decrease in the number of occasions of peasant unrest, which had been increasing before the decree was passed. It was hoped that the emancipation of the serfs would mean the peasants were free to leave the land they had been previously bound to, but there were many rules that came with the emancipation decree, which made it hard for the peasants to leave, and also to increase their wealth, due to one rule saying they must pay the landlords labour service of two years before they were truly free.…
After the three partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795, there were many more Jews in the Russian empire. The Pale of Settlement was a region in imperial Russia where the Jews were given permanent dwelling. The leaders of Russia were called Czars and they had complete power over the entire empire. This essay will discuss three Russian Czars, Nicholas I, Alexander II, and Alexander III and the impact they had on the Jews. The different levels of tolerance of these Czars to the Jews greatly influenced the quality of Jewish life at the time.…
Agriculture was a crucial area which needed to be reformed if Russia was to ever be modernised. At the root of the inherently backward Russia was the peasant workforce, who mainly worked in the agricultural sector, which left Russia a world away from other European Countries in terms of industry. ‘Out of the 60 million people in European Russia in 1855, 50 million were peasant serfs’1; this was a huge obstacle to modernisation as it limited. The goal of Emancipation was to release the peasants from the land that they were bound to in order to create an industrial workforce that would drive modernisation. The predominantly agricultural workforce would now work in factories thus changing Russia into an industrial juggernaut, which would be key in modernising Russia. The reform was also crucial as it was the first step in the deconstruction of the Ancien Regime within Russia. Emancipation was key in establishing support for the monarchy, ‘in other countries Serf emancipation took place as a consequence of social and organic change’2, this meant that in Russia the monarchy had…
The terms forbid Russia from having a navy on the Black Sea. Russian defeat induced the emancipation of the serfs by Alexander the 2nd in 1861 where 23 million private serfs were freed. State-owned serfs were freed in 1866. Nationalism was revitalized in the Ottoman provinces, and if not for an Allied victory; the Ottoman Empire would have shrunk dramatically. (Pearce). The Crimean War ended the stability and peace the Congress of Vienna had…
Have you ever heard of Alexander Ilyich Ulyanov? Probably not, but you are not the only one. Most people have heard of Alexander's brother, Vladimir, more commonly known as the great Russian revolutionary Lenin. Vladimir is credited as the man responsible for the Russian Revolution, but his revolutionary cause may have been sparked because of his older brother's death. Therefore Alexander may be just as responsible for the Russian Revolution as Vladimir.…
Due to Nicholas II’s failure to accomplish the citizen’s goals and to negotiate with them, the Russian Revolution began. Peasants struggled…
During the time of Alexander II, the urban working classes hardly existed so there could not be poor conditions for peasantry generally. In freeing the serfs, however, there was a side effect. Serfs fled to the towns and cities looking for work in factories, leading to urbanisation which caused public health problems such as the spread of cholera. In this way, Alexander II carried out a reform that did not help the working class and in turn created poor living conditions for the peasantry. His father, however, showed more interest in developing Russia’s industry which created jobs. He employed Witte to push industrialisation forwards including the expansion of the Trans-Siberian railway. However, like the other tsars, he used the police and army to eliminate any opposition when workers complained about conditions, showing how the peasantry endured great hardship through repression.…
When Alexander II became the Tsar, Russia was in total disarray. Her once widely respected and feared army was humiliated on the battlefields in the Crimean Peninsula, 80% of the people were in poverty and illiterate. Russia was still stuck in the middle ages while the rest of Europe was steaming in through the Industrial Era. Alexander II saw this as a need for change, primarily in response to the Crimean War, however to be able to do this, he also had to change the Russian society, therefore in 1861 he abolished serfdom, becoming the most significant events in Imperial Russian history, giving him the name as the ‘Tsar Liberator’ (Watts, Peter, History Review, 2014). However, although Alexander II’s reforms did pave the way for a more educated,…
The first reason for the revolution in 1905 was the developments in the Russian countryside and how they produced a general unhappiness among the landowners and even the peasants. A long-term social and economic cause was the continuing dissatisfaction of both these groups to the Emancipation reform of Alexander II in 1861. The Landowners did not approve of the act because it denied them the free labour they had access to before the emancipation of the serfs. They had lost their free labour and large amounts of their land. By 1905 many of the Landowners were facing large debts. Although the act did end serfdom in Russia, the peasants were still angry due to the redemption payments they were expected to pay and the poor quality of land they received. They also disliked the fact that they were still tied to the…