Comparing Slave and Serf Emancipations
Analyzing the Liberation of Slaves and Serfs Reveals Differances
Oct 24, 2009
The two great emancipations of the 1860s occurred in Russia and the United States. In Russia, Tsar Alexander II issued a manifesto in 1861 freeing most of Russia’s serfs. Abraham Lincoln’s first act in 1863 was to sign the Emancipation Proclamation that freed all slaves within the non-occupied Confederate South. Each action was born out of specific motivations and although there were many similarities, the differences were significant.
Emancipation of the Serfs
The “problem” of serfdom had been acknowledged by many Russian rulers. It would not be addressed until Alexander II became tsar, inaugurating an extensive reform movement that included the military, judiciary, and the bureaucracy. It was his efforts to free the serfs, however, that earned him the title Tsar Liberator.
Unlike the emancipation of American slaves, Alexander’s manifesto required that serfs receive land that they could call their own. On the surface, this was a good thing. Freed serfs, however, received the worst land parcels from their former owners and in many cases these allotments were inferior to the private land plots serfs had been allowed to use while still in bondage.
Additionally, serfs were required to reimburse the government for the cost of their freedom since the manifesto compensated owners for the lost assets represented by the emancipation. The repayment plan, abandoned in 1905, was to last for forty-nine years. Serfs held by the state were not affected by the emancipation while household serfs, though liberated, were often forced to find work in factories and mines.
Emancipation of the Slaves
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was not driven by any reform ideals or humanitarian concerns. The Proclamation, which cost Lincoln bipartisan support in the North, was tied to military goals. Only slaves in Confederate states were affected. No slaves in Union occupied territory were freed, including those in the Border States.
Emancipation did not include land or compensation to any affected party. Political participation was not part of slave emancipation, nor would it be addressed in the later Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. After the end of the Civil War and the close of Reconstruction, freedmen often found themselves in a new bondage as sharecroppers or tenant farmers. Land acquired during the war, such as the “forty acres and a mule” allotments granted by General Sherman, were revoked.
Top-Down Emancipation
Both Abraham Lincoln and Tsar Alexander II wanted to affect significant social changes from the “top down.” Russia had witnessed its share of peasant revolts, the most devastating occurring under Catherine the Great, the Pugachev Revolt. Additionally, the 1860s in Russia, despite the liberalism of Alexander (or because of it) witnessed an increase in radicalism and revolution. Revolutionary minded students were taking their agendas to the illiterate peasants as part of an effort of “going to the people.”
Although Lincoln’s emancipation was motivated by grand strategy, he was mindful of the effects of slave revolts. In 1859 he publicly condemned the John Brown raid on Harpers Ferry. Once the step toward emancipation was taken, however, Lincoln was mindful of the necessarily slow process. Blacks were enlisted into the Union armies in large numbers and the question of black male suffrage was openly debated by 1865.
In the end, both emancipations failed to deliver real freedom and equality. In both cases, Russian peasants and American freedmen expressed the view that real emancipation was just around the corner.
Sources:
- Gabor S. Boritt, Lincoln the War President: the Gettysburg Lectures (Oxford University Press, 1992)
- David MacKenzie and Michael W. Curran, A History of Russia, the Soviet Union, and Beyond (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1993)
- W. E. Mosse, Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia (Collier Books, 1962)
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