- Attempt a critical analysis of the emancipation of the serfs in Russia in 1861.
Ans. The single most important event in Russian history between the reforms of Peter the Great and the revolution of 1905 was the abolition of serfdom. Emancipation came as a part of a series of reforms known as the Great Reforms undertaken in the wake of Russian defeat in the Crimean War. These reforms touched upon every aspect of Russian life and, in particular, created a whole set of institutions in order to absorb the newly freed peasants into the body politic. Because the effects of the emancipation were so far-reaching many scholars preferred to designate 1861 rather than 1917 as the watershed in modern Russian history. Serfdom as an issue should not be seen in a purely economic context. It must also be seen in the context of the socio-cultural milieu of the time and military control. In the following essay we will firstly explore the extant conditions of serfdom and their ramifications. This will be followed by a discussion on the imperatives leading up to emancipation and its effects.
Imperial Russia was a land of peasants; peasants made up at least 80% of the population. Serfdom emerged as a part of the process of growth and expansion of the Russian state from the 15th century onwards. The origins of Serfdom in Russia can be traced to Kievan Rus of the 11th century. Legal documents of the period, such as Russkaya Pravda, distinguished several degrees of feudal dependency of peasants. In the 13th-15th centuries, feudal dependency applied to a significant number of peasants, but serfdom as we know it was still not a widespread phenomenon.
In the 16th century, when the feudal landholding system was being abolished in western Europe, the enserfment of the mass of population in most of eastern Europe was just beginning; and by the end of the 18th century, when peasants in France were rebelling against the last remaining restrictions of the old feudal system, Catherine II of Russia was putting the finishing touches on what had become one of the most repressive feudal orders anywhere in Europe.
With the territorial expansion of the state in the 18th century, there was a change in the mode of governance towards a more bureaucratic and formalized structure. With the growth of a bureaucratic state there also arose a need to impose a more rigorous rule on the peasantry because three important things needed by the state were drawn from the peasantry – food, taxes and military recruits for the army. However, due the large surplus land available, it now became essential to fix the peasants to the land. The retainers known as the boyars came to be given land on a hereditary basis as patrimonies and a service nobility known as the pomeshchiki came into existence, which held land conditional to military service.
Serfdom was codified in the 17th century, when the first notable restrictions on peasant mobility were placed in the Sobornoye Ulozhenie (Code of Law) of 1649, whereby peasants were completely prohibited from moving from their estates without the permission of their landlord and owed him service, either as corvee or labour service (barshchina), most common in the fertile black earth land; or quit-rent in the form of money or goods, (obrok). While conditions and obligations varied from region to region and even from village to village, peasants were tied legally not only to the estate on which they worked but to the lord’s complete jurisdiction over them. So complete was this authority that they began to be seen not so much as something attached to the land but as the property of the landowner, the latter’s wealth measured not in hectares or villages, but by the number of serfs owned. Obligations of work on manorial land could extract anywhere from three to six days per week and the estate owner could impose any additional obligations he wished, such as an increase in taxes or payments in kind. Resistance was not to be tolerated. The least infringement of the rules could bring swift and often brutal punishment. Peasant allotments, scattered strips carved out of the less productive area of the manorial estate, were seldom large enough to sustain a family. In some areas, such plots could produce enough grain to last for only part of the year, obliging the family to buy on credit, often at usurious rates, until the next harvest and then having to depend on the good will of the landowner to supply seed grain for the next sowing.
Bondage to the person of service nobility emerged later in the 16th century, when Ivan IV (‘The Terrible’) took the title of Tsar. Also, at around the same time, the service nobility began to gain more power over the peasants in return for food, troops and revenue for state service. In return, their power over the peasants increased. Thus, by the early 18th century, the serf was bound to the land and the lord, who enjoyed wide police and judicial powers.
It should of course be noted that there was no universal serfdom in Russia – there were regional differences. In the heartlands of Old Moscow and regions to the west and south of it, there was rigorous serfdom since these were the most fertile lands of Russia and so there arose a need to tie the peasantry to the land. However, in the less fertile lands to the north and east, serfdom was less common. In fact, in Siberia, it was unknown/did not exist.
Most serfs worked on the land. Under labour service the normal arrangement was for the lord’s land to be divided with an area set aside as demesne or landlord area to be farmed by the peasants, but under whatever orders the landlord laid down. This could mean if the landlord was progressive, then the land was enclosed and machinery could be brought in and new seeds developed. Such a landlord might also introduce schools and other facilities on the estate and try to educate the peasantry in western farming methods. The rest of the farm would be handed over to the peasants for their own use. This land was divided by the peasant commune (obshchina or mir), into three large fields worked on a rotation crop system. Each field was divided into strips and each family given strips in each field according either to the number of male workers in the family or the number of mouths to feed. It was this control of ‘their’ land which led to the mistaken, but deep-rooted peasant belief that ‘we belong to the masters but the land is ours’.
Economic organization in peasant Russia centered around the commune, also known as the mir or obshchina. This institution had existed in Russia since the medieval times. However, in Russia, it had lasted longer than the other countries since it satisfied the political, social, economic and cultural needs of the peasantry and the peasants also felt that the commune embodied their world view. The mir was an organization for communal management of village affairs and from this emerged a peculiar system of agrarian relations.
The bureaucratic Russian state found the Mir convenient and encouraged it. The government perpetuated this system as it was felt that obligations and dues could be better collected if done through collective responsibility – Krugovaya Poruka. This fitted in with the autonomous trend among the peasantry i.e. to present a collective front against the world outside, especially the state. The idea of collective responsibility permeated all peasant attitudes. Even when the peasants moved into non-agrarian activities like the army or the industry, they instinctively replicated the commune organization or form of life. For the state, it was easier to collect food, taxes and military recruits from a communal body. Thus the state perpetuated the commune in the 20th century, even after emancipation, and the peasants also continued to believe in the commune. The state also promoted this system for social reasons since it helped to prevent the emergence of a disruptive class of floating landless peasantry
The commune administered itself through an elected village assembly (skhod) which comprised of all the heads of the families of the village, headed by an elder (starosta). The commune was essentially an agrarian organization. The commune partitioned land periodically and the phenomenon of strip-farming was widespread. In a way, this reflected the peasant ideas of equality. This was however a largely unproductive system. Consonant with the Mir was the notion that ownership was ‘un-Christian’ and unjustified and that land should be in the hands of those who actually cultivated it.
From the 18th century onwards with the coming of the money economy and the further expansion of the state southwards towards the Black Sea, some peasants had started to try and break out of the communal restrictions and challenge the authority of the commune.
The other basic peasant institution was the household (dvor). A peasant household consisted largely of blood relatives of two or three generations. However, the basic determinant of household membership was not a blood-tie but total participation in the life of the household or as the Russian peasants put it, “eating from the common pot”. Rural underemployment was partly tempered by peasants’ supplementary employment in crafts and trades (promysly). Generally the head of the household was the father of the family or the oldest kin-member. His authority over other members and over household affairs by custom implied both autocratic rights and extensive duties of care and protection. Both the social prestige and the self-esteem of a peasant were defined by the household he belonged to and his position in it. Women, however in spite of their heavy burden of labour (both household and fieldwork), and their functional importance in a peasant household, were considered second-rate citizens and nearly always placed under the authority of a male. Women had no rights over land; they had rights only over their dowries, which consisted primarily of clothing and kitchen utensils, and occasionally a sheep or a cow.
The system of the commune also eventually led to the social and cultural isolation of the peasant. The enclosed world of the mir represented the close cultural world of the peasant. This did not matter initially when the size of the state was small. However with the expansion and emergence of a bureaucratic state from the 16th century onwards, the state became alienated from the peasants, who formed 80% of the population. The peasants had their own judicial system and law codes to administer their own affairs. So the state’s link was merely the collection of food, taxes and military recruits. It eventually grew into a cultural chasm.
This began with the religious dispute in Russia. In 1666-7, there was a schism in the Greek Orthodox Church in Russia. The Greek Orthodox Church while drawing heavily from Greek traditions, had string indigenous Russian innovations. However, now the Reformed Church purged Greek Orthodox rituals of Russian innovations. So the Reformed Church, which was associated with the state, was not recognized by the large mass of people (called the ‘Old Believers’) leading to a religious divide between the people and the state. This just added to the isolation of the bureaucratic state from the peasants. The final rift came in the time of Peter the Great who had introduced westernization in Russia along German and Swedish lines. He represented modernization of Russia on western lines as a civilizing mission. With this, the rift between the bureaucratic state and the people became a cultural rift. From the time of Peter, the cultural ethos of the court was cosmopolitan, steeped in French and German culture. Peasants soon began to see Peter as anti-Christ as well. Thus, two cultures emerged – the cosmopolitan cultural ethos of the court and the popular Russian culture of the large mass of the common people. By the 18th century, there were two different ways of looking at Russia, reflected in the different words used for ‘Russia’ itself. The words Rus and Russkii had a religious connotation, where ‘Holy Russia’ was the true Christian community under the Tsar. It also referred to the old patrimonial state. The new Latinized words used from the 16th century onwards, Rossiya and Rossiski, represented the westernized, secular, bureaucratic state. However, despite the cultural rift, up to the late 18th century, Russia was able to function as an efficient state and be an effective Great Power.
It is interesting to note that the peasant attitude towards serfdom was not one of blind rejection. The peasants did resent the loss of their freedom and there was also the great peasant rebellion of Stenka Razin in 1670-71 in the Volga region. It was also be seen that in war peasants often volunteered to serve because regular recruitment in the army meant that the peasant would lose serf status and become free. Thus, times of war could see great instability in the agrarian system. The peasants however understood the rationale for serfdom. It was necessary for the nobles to raise armies to protect the state and thus serve the Tsar; and so there was a need for serfdom. Thus peasants accepted serfdom as long as it was necessary to defend the country and serve the Tsar.
However, in 1762, a legislation was passed freeing the Russia nobility from this service obligation. They were given the land on a hereditary basis and were not obliged to serve the state in return. Now the peasants reacted because the nobles were no longer bound to serve the Emperor and so there was no justification to bind them to the land. A great peasant rebellion occurred during the reign of Catherine the Great, in 1773-5, under Pugachev, starting in the Volga region. Serfdom was now completely unjustified. Serfdom had been imposed largely to provide an economic basis for the service gentry to enable them to serve the Tsar in civil and military capacities. However, by the late 18th century the gentry had the right to become merely parasitic landlords, while the majority of the peasants were reduced to a state of slavery. The only possible justification for the peasants’ attachment to the land as the peasants understood it was removed.
There were a number of imperatives behind the emancipation which came in 1861. The 18th century was a time of many changes in Europe as well as Russia. This was the age of revolution, be it the French Revolution, American Revolution or industrialization, all of which could have a bearing on Great Power status. States could become more efficient if they could mobilize traditional forces or infuse the people with national spirit. Till the late 18th century, Russia had also been a Great Power. However, in the early 19th century, Britain and France began to move ahead with a new kind of relationship between the state and the people – new forms of state organization and the population came to be closely integrated into the state. This was done through a civic strategy whereby the government created new institutions to link the people and the state as well as a strategy centered on ethnic identity, with an emphasis on cultural factors like a common language and a shared cultural heritage which helped to give the people a sense of national feeling and identity. With this Britain and France were able to create efficient modern nation-states and it became easier to mobilize the people for economic endeavors for industrialization. Citizenship could also help bring together people in a society. Both these could also translate into military effectiveness, thus linking it with Great Power status.
At this time Russia began to lag behind in this regard and this was only made clearer in the Crimean War. Serfdom lay at the heart of this, and this was hampering the modernization of economy and society. Thus serfdom had some economic and cultural disadvantages that now prevented Russia from maintaining its Great Power status. Russian statesmen became aware of the gap between the state and the people, in the era of the nation-state. From Catherine to Nicholas II, there were attempts to bridge this gap. However, neither tackled the key question of serfdom.
It was only with the Crimean War that the need for reforms became urgent. Alexander II (1855-81), who had ascended the throne in 1855, stated in a speech in 1856 that it was better to emancipate the serfs “from above” than wait “until it begins to abolish itself from below”. Indeed, at this time, serf uprisings against their masters were increasing in number and intensity. 144 pomeshchiki were killed by peasants between 1834 and 1854. There was intellectual ferment and revolutionary groups were also demanding reform. Alexander II was not by nature a reformer, but he realized that substantial changes were necessary if the autocratic Russian state were to survive. However, reluctantly, he confronted vested interests and introduced a number of measures, the most far reaching of which was the emancipation of the serfs. Alexander succeeded his father in February 1855 at a difficult moment in the Crimean War to make peace with the invaders. Not until this was achieved, by the treaty of Paris (March 1856), could he turn to domestic affairs.
The Crimean War occurred partly because of Nicholas I’s miscalculations, but also because the French and British were looking for opportunities to weaken Russia, whose position in Europe and the Middle East seemed dangerously strong. Military defeat in the Crimea at the hands of the Western powers shocked Russian public opinion and created a mood favourable to change. In this war, Britain and France inflicted defeat on Russia on her own territory. This was not merely a military defeat but also signified the larger weakness of the Russian state and in the organization of society an economy in Russia. This led to the question of reform and the issue of serfdom.
Russian soldiers had fought the war with outdated weapons. This was connected to the fact that Russia had not witnessed an Industrial Revolution. This could also be linked to the fact that serfdom had prevented a change in favour of capitalist production and an agrarian revolution. Agricultural backwardness had not allowed an industrial revolution in Russia and this led to outdated weaponry and transportation. Modern equipment etc. could not be bought from Britain and France due to the financial crisis in Russia. This could again be traced back to serfdom. The army was an immense burden on the state treasury. The Russian army was organized on pre-French Revolution lines. The French Revolution had introduced a system of dual warfare and universal military service, which was cheaper. However, in Russia, there still existed large armies comprising of peasant recruits who served for 25 years. There was no universal military service. Also, once a serf was recruited to the army, he became free. This was a deterrent to increasing the size of the army suddenly in wartime since that would mean that a large number of serfs would have to be freed, and this would disrupt the economic system and agrarian production and led to chaos in the countryside. Thus the only way was to maintain a huge army even in peace times, which increased military costs. A more modern system of revenue collection could not be set up due to the existence of serfdom to deal with the increased military costs.
Once it was decided to introduce reforms, Alexander decided to go further than all the previous Tsars had. He concluded that reform would be meaningless if the issue of serfdom was not tackled, because without this no other reforms could be effective. The argument was that whichever aspect of Russian society was touched, whether civil, military, judicial, economic or political, none of the reforms would be effective till serfdom was tackled. Emancipation it was not seen just as an agrarian reform. In fact, it was seen as the first step to create civic institutions and create a modern state.
In 1861 Alexander issued his Emancipation Manifesto that proposed 17 legislative acts that would free the serfs in Russia. However, shortly before the Act was approved, the Tsar stated that everything that could be done to protect the interests of the landowners had been done. The legislation contained three measures to reduce the potential economic self-sufficiency of the peasants. Firstly a transition period of nine years was introduced, during which the peasant was obligated as before to the old land-owner. Additionally large parts of common land were passed to the major land-owners as otrezki, making many forests, roads and rivers only accessible for a fee. The third measure was that the serfs must pay the land-owner for their allocation of land in a series of redemption payments. The total sum would be advanced by the government to the land-owner and then the peasants would repay the money, plus interest, to the government over forty-nine years.
Serfs were emancipated from their landlord’s tyranny and were given some rights of a citizen. They were still tied to the village commune which enforced the old patriarchal order, and deprived of the right to own land individually and remained legally inferior to nobles and other estates but the groundwork was laid down for development of peasant agriculture. In 1864, local assemblies of self-government called zemstvos were established in most Russian provinces. To preserve the dominion of the landed nobles it was set up at the provincial and district level; below that at the volost and village level, the peasant commune was left to rule themselves with only minimal supervision by the gentry. Judicial reforms in the same year set up independent legal system with public jury trials for all estates except the peasants (who remained under the jurisdiction of local customary law). There were also new laws relaxing censorship (1865), giving more autonomy to universities (1863); reforming primary schools (1864) and modernising the military (1863-75).
The reasons for the abolition of Serfdom were political and military more than economic, and defeat in the Crimean War heightened fears in the ruling circles of peasant unrest. Yet the Peasant Reform of 1861 caused a deep dissatisfaction. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, the peasants had assumed that freedom would be given along with the land. They used the term ‘volia’ for emancipation, which referred to freedom with the land, not just from the land. They believed that land should be transferred to the commune, which would redistribute it among the peasants according to need. However after emancipation, land was divided between the landlords and the peasants, and it was later calculated that on an average, the peasants had 13% less land than before emancipation. This offended the peasants’ age-long sense of fairness.
Secondly, the peasants had to pay for their freedom in the form of redemption dues. This the state had provided for to prevent a revolt by the nobles. Since most of the peasants did not possess the means of paying the compensation money, the government acted as the intermediary and up to 80% of the compensation was paid to the landowners by the government and regarded as a loan to the peasants which had to be repaid to the treasury with interest in 49 years.
Thirdly, emancipation had reinforced the strengthening of the peasant commune in the countryside. The peasant was subordinated to the control of the commune since the payment of the taxes and redemption dues was through the commune. The peasants also did not achieve equality before the law, or real personal freedom. Their land was held not by them but by the village commune, which controlled land utilization. The peasant was not allowed to leave his village without the authority of the community, and all the households of the village were jointly liable for taxes and for redemption dues. Also, the peasants would have no control over their land allotments, i.e., they could not buy, sell or mortgage it, till all the payments were made. Thus, we see that the land problem was never really solved and the “peasant problem” continued as before, and greatly contributed to the fall of Tsarism.
However, by and large peasant response was further rebellion. Abraham Ascher has shown that the number of peasant uprisings increased in the period after emancipation. From 1825-55, there were over 600 peasant uprisings. However, in the first 4 months after February 1861, there were 648 peasant uprisings. The total number of uprisings in 1861 was 1176. We can see one revolt as an example of the peasant attitudes – the Bezdna revolt in the Kazan province in East Russia
The peasants however distinguished between the landlord and the Tsar. After emancipation, they broke out in revolt under the assumption that the Emperor had granted them volia but the landlords had subverted his order and thus prevented them from getting full freedom. Many peasants still retained their firm faith in the Tsar and simply did not believe in the genuineness of the reform; they believed that the landowners, civil servants and the clergy had twisted and distorted the royal will. There were in fact widespread rumours that the Reform as published was not final and that another reform would be introduced in 2 years that would bring complete emancipation. From now on, the peasants had a feeling of being cheated. They had always felt that land should be with those who actually cultivated it and the demand for land now became central to peasant consciousness.
There is a great variety of interpretations on the origins of the reforms. Before the revolution liberal Russian historians attributed a crucial role in launching the emancipation to the pressure of an aroused public opinion and the desire for reform which was in the air. According to most Soviet historians, the fear of peasant disorder forced an unwilling autocrat to grant reforms in order to head off a revolutionary upheaval. This interpretation, in modified form, has found wide acceptance in Western literature. More recently a number of American scholars have suggested that by abolishing serfdom the autocracy sought to free Russia’s vast human and material resources, stimulate the economic development of the country and in a word catch up with the West. This is a more sophisticated variation of the vague thesis that the Crimean defeat exposed Russia’s weakness and something drastic had to be done to correct it. Now we can also attempt to identify the issue which at the time made the decisive impression on the mind of the autocrat who was after all the sole initiator of the reform.
Just as it is desirable to narrow down the range of probable motives, so it is equally important to explain why these and not others which in retrospect may seem just as valid, persuaded the autocrat to adopt a particular course of action. Thus, in seeking the underlying motives for reform, it is essential to re-examine Alexander’s reaction to Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War which posed a direct challenge to the long-established traditions of the autocracy. Despite the relatively restricted area of military operations in the Crimean War, Russia’s defeat was a catastrophe for the autocracy. The Russian army, which had treated East Central Europe as its own parade ground, saw its vaunted reputation crumble, burying beneath it the ruins of the conservative coalition. Russian finances were thrown into chaos. High government officials foresaw the need for a thorough overhauling of state and society. The initiation, direction and extent of these changes depended, of course, on the attitude of the new tsar, Alexander II. At first, Alexander, although in close touch with the military situation did not fully grasp the seriousness of his position and still hoped to salvage something from the debacle. Alexander slowly began to recognize how radically Russia’s position had been altered by defeat in the Crimean War. Alexander clearly saw that his duty was to reorganize the army so that it could fight on equal terms against a European coalition. He quickly came to realize that a thorough and effective army reform involved far more than carrying out superficial changes. Soon after the war, he ordered the indefinite suspension of recruiting under the old system, thereby clearing the way for a basic change in the nature of the Russian army after the emancipation of the serfs. To overcome Russia’s military weakness he had to smash the rigid social system which had been created for the same reason it was about to be destroyed.
Although well planned in the legislation, the reform did not work smoothly. The land-owners and nobility were paid in government bonds and their debts were removed from the money before it was handed over. The bonds soon fell in value, combined with the generally poor management skills of the land-owners under the new conditions there were severe money problems and extensive land sales. Many peasants also felt economic difficulties. The hard money demands of redemption payments and taxes pulled many into unfavourable situations, forcing them to work for the old land-owners, or more successful peasants, or even leave the land to find work elsewhere. The legislation retained the village commune as an official administrative force. The strain on the mir of new economic disparities was intense. More wealthy peasants could lend money at high interest rates, use their neighbours as paid labour and expand their land holdings. Successful peasants came to be called kulaks.
Worse were population pressures. Strong growth created more families who could, under the law, demand a share of the mir’s land. This created ever smaller and less economic plots. The deeply conservative nature of the mir also inhibited new agricultural methods or capital investment. The government had run out of alternatives to deal with the problem. Territorial expansion was not possible since in the 20th century there was a precarious balance of power in Europe. Emigration by peasants was difficult since this was discouraged by the commune. Since the dues and taxes had to be paid collectively by all the peasants, the migration of some peasants would increase the burden on the others. Moreover, the peasants themselves did not want to move to lands with a culture different from their Greek Orthodox beliefs. The peasantry was too backward and conservative to shift from extensive to intensive agriculture. The industry was also not developing fast enough to absorb the rural population. Thus the problem of land remained and led to revolutionary unrest.
There is however no consensus on the issue of whether or not peasants were more prosperous after emancipation. Some peasants were becoming prosperous. However, most of them became poorer under the burden of the redemption dues. These were finally reduced in 1882; they were abolished in 1906.
Alexander’s reforms also did not satisfy liberals and radicals who wanted a parliamentary democracy and the freedom of expression that was enjoyed in the United States and most other European states. The reforms in agricultural also disappointed the peasants. In some regions it took peasants nearly 20 years to obtain their land. Many were forced to pay more than the land was worth and others were given inadequate amounts for their needs. The legislation neither freed the peasants from excessive external obligation nor greatly reordered their social and economic constraints. The uneven application of the legislation did leave many peasants in Poland and northern Russia both free and landless (batraks), while in other areas peasants became the majority land owners in their province.
There is also the question of whether emancipation led to an increase in revolutionary consciousness among the peasantry which may have contributed to 1905 or even 1917. Some have argued that a landless proletariat had come into existence by the early 20th century. However local studies have shown that this is only a one-sided picture. Links between emancipation and labour supply for industry has also been drawn. However it has been seen that labour was available in abundance even before emancipation.
The Emancipation of Serfs was a part of a series of reforms known as the Great Reforms, undertaken by Russia. A brief look at these will help us to understand better the context of emancipation in 1861. Local governments were developed to replace the collapse of power of the wealthy land owners. The military was reformed and one of the most important changes made to it was to shorten the required time of service for peasants from 25 years to 6 years. The judicial system was also reformed. The legal profession was created, open trials and equal treatment under the law was instigated. However, the reforms to the legal system did not apply to the peasants. The education system also grew. The Ministry of Education created a national system of primary schools beginning in 1864. Alexander II, who succeeded Nicholas I in 1855, was a conservative who saw no alternative but to implement change. Alexander initiated substantial reforms in education, the government, the judiciary, and the military. In 1864 most local government in the European part of Russia was organized into provincial and district zemstva which were made up of representatives of all classes and were responsible for local schools, public health, roads etc. In 1870 elected city councils, or duma were formed. In 1864 the regime implemented judicial reforms. Other major reforms took place in the educational and cultural spheres. There was a social restructuring that required a public discussion of issues and the lifting of some types of censorship. In the financial sphere, Russia established the State Bank in 1866, which put the national currency on a firmer footing. Military reforms were also undertaken.
Thus we can see that emancipation was one of the most significant events of modern Russian history and cannot be understood simply in terms of its economic dimensions. Its ramifications were immense, though we should not attempt to draw a linear correlation between the emancipation of serfs in 1861 and any growth of revolutionary consciousness among the peasantry or the agrarian question at the time of the collapse of the Tsarist autocracy in 1917.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Nicholas V. Riasanovsky – A History Of Russia
- Orlando Figes – A People’s Tragedy (The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924)
- Orlando Figes – Natasha’s Dance (A Cultural History Of Russia)
- Lionel Kochan And John Keep – The Making Of Modern Russia
- Alec Nove – An Economic History of the U.S.S.R.
- Robert Service – A History Of Modern Russia (From Nicholas II To Putin)
- Teodor Shanin (Ed.) – Peasants And Peasant Societies
- Peter Gatrell – The Tsarist Economy, 1850-1917
- Martin A. Miller (ed.) – The Russian Revolution
- Alfred J. Rieber – The Politics Of Autocracy, excerpted in Terence Emmons (ed.) – Emancipation Of The Russian Serfs
(http://www.stetson.edu/~psteeves/classes/grrefrieber.html)
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