Serfdom in Russia

In tsarist Russia, the term serf (Russian: крепостной крестьянин, romanized: krepostnoy krest'yanin, lit. 'bonded peasant') meant an unfree peasant who, unlike a slave, historically could be sold only together with the land to which they were "attached". However, this stopped being a requirement by the 19th century, and serfs were practically indistinguishable from slaves. Contemporary legal documents, such as Russkaya Pravda (12th century onwards), distinguished several degrees of feudal dependency of peasants. While another form of slavery in Russia, kholopstvo, was ended by Peter I in 1723,^[1] serfdom (Russian: крепостное право, romanized: krepostnoye pravo) was abolished only by Alexander II's emancipation reform of 1861; nevertheless, in times past, the state allowed peasants to sue for release from serfdom under certain conditions, and also took measures against abuses of landlord power.^[2]

Serfdom became the dominant form of relation between Russian peasants and nobility in the 17th century. Serfdom most commonly existed in the central and southern areas of the Tsardom of Russia and, from 1721, of the subsequent Russian Empire. Serfdom was rare in Little Russia (parts of today's central Ukraine), other Cossack lands, the Urals and Siberia until the reign of Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796), when it spread to Ukraine^{[citation needed]}; noblemen began to send their serfs into Cossack lands in an attempt to harvest their extensive untapped natural resources.

The emperor and the highest state officials feared that the peasants' emancipation would be accompanied by popular unrest, given the reluctance of the landlords to lose their serf property, but took some actions to alleviate the situation of the peasantry.^[2]

Emperor Alexander I (r. 1801–1825) wanted to reform the system but moved cautiously, liberating serfs in Estonia (1816), Livonia (1816), and Courland (1817) only. New laws allowed all classes (except the serfs) to own land, a privilege previously confined to the nobility.^[3] Emperor Alexander II abolished serfdom in the emancipation reform of 1861, a few years later than Austria and other German states. Scholars have proposed multiple overlapping reasons to account for the abolition, including fear of a large-scale revolt by the serfs, the government's financial needs, changing cultural sensibilities, and the military's need for soldiers.^[4]