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The Imperial Emancipations: Ending Non-Russian Serfdoms in Nineteenth-Century Russia

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Shifting Forms of Continental Colonialism

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Abstract

Emancipation in nineteenth-century Russia was directed not only at the ethnic Russian peasantry of the empire’s core provinces, but at peasants, nomads, serfs, and slaves throughout European Russia, as well as in the Caucasus, parts of Central Asia and Siberia. This chapter tracks various sections of the imperial emancipation policy in the context of external commitments, resulting from the Congresses of Vienna and Aix-la-Chapelle, and internal developments, highlighting emancipations in the Baltics, Georgia, the Kazakh steppe, and Kalmykia. Given the transcontinental and multiethnic dimensions, this chapter argues that just as absorbing and modifying different serfdoms served as one of the devices of Russian ‘continental colonialism,’ emancipation itself became a process for furthering imperial control.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Copies of the emancipation decree and additional material appear in RGIA: fond 1268, opis’ 10, delo 61a and 61b. For materials related to the Tiflis reform housed in the Georgian archives, see the holdings of STA: fond 220 and fond 221, containing close to 1150 files.

  2. 2.

    For the geographic distribution of the Russian peasant population within the empire, see the figures in Moon (1999, 56, Table 2.2).

  3. 3.

    This last point is a key argument in Dolbilov (2003).

  4. 4.

    On the Latvian and Lithuanian peasants emancipated by the 1861 law, see Plakans (2011, 221–22). On the ethno-confessional diversities of the serf population affected by the 1861 reform as based on the census (reviziia) of 1859, see Kabuzan (2002, 174–79).

  5. 5.

    The most important exception is Petr Zaionchkovskii’s study of the emancipation that includes a chapter focusing on the post-1861 abolitions in the South Caucasus, the Caucasus, and Bessarabia (1954, 235–51).

  6. 6.

    Recent work in the Russian field is moving in this direction, however. See, for example, Witzenrath (2015), Stanziani (2014), Farah (2013), and Kurtynova-D’Herlugnan (2010).

  7. 7.

    The letter in question dates from 22 November 1857.

  8. 8.

    Opinion (mnenie) of Prince Konstantin Mikhailovich Bagration-Murkhanskii submitted to Viceroy Aleksandr Pavlovich Nikolai, 21 October 1863. See STA, fond 221, opis’ 1, delo 4, folio 19–25b, quote here from folio 19b. (“…zdes’ v Zakavkazskom krae vse nosit svoi osobyi opechatok.”)

  9. 9.

    Viceroy Nikolai provided the titles of the three “projects” in the long cover letter that he sent with the Prince: “(I) Proekt dopolnitel’nykh pravil o krestianakh, vyshedshikh iz krepostnoi zavisimosti v Tiflisskoi gubernii; (II) Proekt mestnogo polozheniia o pozemel’nom ustroistve krest’ian, vodvorennykh na pomeshchikh zemliakh v Tiflisskoi gubernii; (III) Proekt pravil ob ustroistve krest’ianskikh obshchestv i obshchestvennogo ikh upravleniia / i ob otbyvanii simi obshchestvami kazennykh zemel’ i mirskikh povinnostei v Tiflisskoi gubernii.” RGIA, fond 1268, opis’ 10, delo 61a, folio 134–134b.

  10. 10.

    See Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov, ser. 3, vol. 12, no. 8429 (16 March 1892), 173–75: Ob otmene obiazatel’nykh otnoshenii mezhdu otdel’nymi sosloviiami kalmytskogo naroda.

  11. 11.

    For fresh thinking on the similarities and differences between serfdoms in Western and Eastern Europe (and across Eurasia), see Stanziani (2014).

  12. 12.

    On this, see Stanziani (2014), Osterhammel (2014, 698), Bush ([1996] 2013, 2000).

  13. 13.

    For a recent comprehensive account of abolitionism in the long nineteenth century, see Drescher (2009).

  14. 14.

    On the Russian contribution to the declarations at Vienna and Aix-la-Chapelle, see Martinez (2012, 32–33, 44–45); for the text of the 1841 treaty, see de Martens (1898, 170–97).

  15. 15.

    On the Brussels Conference, see Mulligan (2013), and Miers (1975), on Martens: Pustogarov (1999).

  16. 16.

    Kurtynova-D’Herlugnan (2010), Morrison (2014), see 282–83 for Russian anti-slavery rhetoric in regards to the 1839 Khiva Expedition; and Huzzey (2012).

  17. 17.

    See RGIA: fond 1180, opis’ 1, delo 125, folio 1–2 (Aleksei Popel’nitskii, “Sud’ba biblioteki redaktsionnykh Kommissii po sostavleniiu zakonopolozhenii o krest’ianakh”) and ibid., folio 13–14b (List of Books Donated to the Library by Grand Princess Elena Pavlovna).

  18. 18.

    For the text of the law, see Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov, ser. 3, vol. 33, no. 39734 (7 July 1913), 733–35: O prekrashchenii zavisimykh otnoshenii poselian Dagestanskoi oblasti i Zakatal’skogo okruga k bekam i keshkelevladel’tsam i ob uchrezhdenii v sikh mestnostiakh ustanovlenii po krest’ianskim delam.

  19. 19.

    On the perception of Siberia as a land without serfdom, see Hartley (2014, 47).

  20. 20.

    See GBUTO GA: fond I-361, opis’ 1, delo 147 [1818]; fond I-361, opis’ 1, delo 148 [1818], fond I-361, opis’ 1, delo 149 [1818], fond I-361, opis’ 1, delo 150 [1818]; and fond I-361, opis’ 1, delo 508 [1819].

  21. 21.

    For correspondence regarding legalizing this form of slavery, see RGIA: fond 1341, opis’ 9, delo 2334.

  22. 22.

    See Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov, ser. 1, vol. 40, no. 30224 (11.2. 1825), 62–64: O priobretenii pokupkoiu ili vymenom ot sopredel’nykh Sibiri kochuiushchikh narodov detei zhenskogo pola dlia voznagrazhdeniia nedostatka v Zapadnoi Sibiri zhenskogo pola.

  23. 23.

    On slavery in these regions, see Mal’tsev (2007).

  24. 24.

    STA, fond 220, opis’ 1, kn. 2, delo 833 (1861), folio 7–7b.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., folio 14–14b.

  26. 26.

    On the ritual practice of confirming the Swedish-granted privileges of the Barons in the eighteenth century, see Laur (2005, 32).

  27. 27.

    For some of these details, see RGIA: fond 1268, op. 10, delo 61a, folio 24–41.

  28. 28.

    RGIA: fond 1291, opis’ 85, delo 22a, chast’ 1, folio 30a–30b: MGI General Matters Department (Departament Obshchikh Del), Letter to Ministry of Finance, 18 August 1884.

  29. 29.

    RGIA: fond 1291, opis’ 85, delo 22a, chast’ 1, folio 58b–59: Letter to Minister of the Interior Dmitrii Tolstoi, 7 February 1885.

  30. 30.

    RGIA: fond 1180, opis’ 1, delo 77, folio 5–27.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., folio 2b–3. The quoted passage here appears in the cover letter that Lanskoi wrote to accompany the note.

  32. 32.

    “Spisok zakonam o krepostnykh liudiakh, izdannym s 1766 po 1855 god,” RGIA, fond 1180, delo 77, folio 28–43.

  33. 33.

    For more on the complexities of ‘colony’ and ‘metropole’ in the late tsarist context, see Sunderland (2010).

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  1. Department of History, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Willard Sunderland

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  1. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale), Germany

    Dittmar Schorkowitz

  2. Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA

    John R. Chávez

  3. Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Philipps University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Ingo W. Schröder

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Sunderland, W. (2019). The Imperial Emancipations: Ending Non-Russian Serfdoms in Nineteenth-Century Russia. In: Schorkowitz, D., Chávez, J.R., Schröder, I.W. (eds) Shifting Forms of Continental Colonialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9817-9_17

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