HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 142

ALEXANDER II on February 19, 1861 (O.S.) and
announced publicly 12 days later. The Emanci-
pation Act was the product of a long process
begun by Alexander II soon after he assumed
the throne in 1855, and the final result shows an
attempt to find a compromise between the goal
of emancipating Russian serfs and preserving as
much as possible the interests of the serf-owning
gentry. The basic provisions of emancipation first
had been outlined in a document known as the
Nazimov Rescript (1857), in which Alexander II
rejected the request of Lithuanian nobles to free
their serfs without land, calling instead for
emancipation with land and for the organization
of peasants into communes. In its final form the
Emancipation Act covered more than 50 million
peasants, of whom 20 million were owned by
private landowners. The act gave land to serfs
employed in farming but not to household serfs.
With the exception of Ukraine, land was given
not to individual peasants but to peasant com-
munities organized around the institution of the
peasant commune ( mir ). The land was not given
freely; peasants were assessed with “redemption
payments” to be paid in installments over the
next 49 years. Individual peasants were given
the option known as the “pauper's allotment,” in
which they would receive only one-quarter of
their allotted land but would not be required to
pay for the land. The Emancipation Act was the
centerpiece of a broader attempt to modernize
Russian society known as the GREAT REFORMS .
Although the Emancipation Act implemented a
major transformation of Russian society with
relatively little violence, disappointment with its
provisions among radical intellectuals and large
sections of the peasantry fueled the rise of a rev-
olutionary movement that shaped Russian poli-
tics for the next half-century.

Elizaveta Petrovna, ca. 1750 (Hulton/Archive)

During her reign, Russia scored important
military and diplomatic victories, most notably
over Sweden in 1743, which brought an end to
centuries of intermittent conflict and added a
large part of Finland (“Old Finland”) to the
empire's borders. Her government continued the
alliance with Austria, established in 1726, but
also established good relations with France, Aus-
tria's traditional rival. In 1756, Russia joined
Austria and France against Prussia and Great
Britain in the Seven Years' War. By 1762, Prus-
sia was on the verge of total defeat, when Eliza-
beth died and her German-born successor, PETER
III , reversed course and gave up the costly gains
Russia had won on the battlefield. She died in St.
Petersburg on January 5, 1762. Ermolova, Maria Nikolaevna

(1853-1928)
actress
Considered to be one of the leading representa-
tives of a romantic style of acting, Ermolova was
born in Moscow, the daughter of a prompter of

Emancipation Act (1861)
The legal document that abolished SERFDOM in
Russia, the Emancipation Act was signed by