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The government itself wondered, with deep anxiety, ‘what will happen when the people’s expectations concerning freedom are not realized?’ The answer was not long in coming. Whereas the number of disorders had been low on the eve of emancipation (just 91 incidents in 1859 and 126 in 1860), the announcement of emancipation ignited a veritable explosion of discontent in 1861—some 1,889 disorders. The most serious confrontations took place in the blackearth provinces (about half of the disorders were concentrated in ten provinces) and, especially, on the larger estates. In many villages peasants—incredulous that these could have been the terms of the ‘tsar’s’ emancipation—adamantly refused to co-operate in compiling inventories. As a peasant in Vladimir province explained, ‘I will not sign the inventory, because soon there will be another manifesto—all the land and forests will be given to the peasantry; but if we sign this inventory, then the tsar will see this signature and say: “they’re satisfied, so let it be”’. In many cases military troops had to be summoned to pacify the unruly peasants; among the worst incidents was the bloody confrontation in a village called Bezdna in Kazan province, where the troops panicked and started to shoot, killing and wounding hundreds of unarmed peasants. Although the number of disorders gradually declined (849 in 1862, 509 in 1863, 156 in 1864), the village continued to seethe with resentment and discontent.

Not only peasants, however, would have cause to bemoan emancipation: the former serf-owners were also appalled by its terms. They lost all their police powers, effectively depriving them of any opportunity to force their former serfs to fulfil their old obligations. Nor could squires be certain that they would be able to secure, at reasonable prices, what had earlier been ‘free’ serf labour to cultivate their lands. Most important, the nobles lost a substantial portion of their land; although in theory they received compensation, much of this went to pay off old debts and mortgages (62 per cent of all serfs had already been mortgaged before emancipation). In short, nobles found themselves short of capital and uncertain of labour, hardly a formula for success in the coming decades. Not surprisingly, emancipation provided a new fillip for gentry liberalism and, especially, demands for the formation of a national assembly of notables to serve as a counterweight to the ‘reds’ in the state bureaucracy. In 1862, for example, the nobility of Tver issued an address to the emperor: ‘The convocation of delegates of all Russia is the sole means for achieving a satisfactory solution to the problems that the [emancipation] statutes of 19 February have posed but not resolved.’ Dismayed by the terms of emancipation and by their de facto exclusion from the decision-making process, even the socially conservative among the nobility could give their assent to the political programme of ‘gentry liberalism’.

The Other Great Reforms

Although emancipation was the most explosive and significant reform, the government also undertook to carry out reforms on many of the other fundamental institutions of the realm. In part, this reformist zeal derived from the general ‘Crimean syndrome’, which had seemed to demonstrate not only the evil consequences of serfdom, but the general bankruptcy of the old administrative and social order. In addition, many of the reforms derived from the consensus of liberal officials that not only serfs, but society more generally must be ‘emancipated’ from the shackles of state tutelage, that only this emancipation could liberate the vital forces of self-development and progress. The centralized state had clearly failed to ensure development; freedom thus must be accorded to society. But emancipation itself mandated some changes: abolition of serfdom had eliminated the squire’s authority (which had been virtually the only administrative and police organ in the countryside) and hence required the construction of new institutions.