ON THIS DAY ·
Bezdna unrest
12/24 Apr 1861 — Anton Petrov tells peasants that the emancipation statutes promise them land that officials are concealing. Thousands gather around him at Bezdna. Troops fire on the unarmed crowd; their general reports 51 dead, while other counts reach 70–100 or more. Petrov is court-martialled and shot a week later. This memorial marks the reform's first victims.
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The moment in context
The Crimean War exposed weaknesses that reached far beyond the battlefield. Follow the arrow across the Black Sea to the British and French landing in 1854. Russia lost at least 450,000 soldiers, mostly to disease. About half its peasants were bound to landlords, and a serf became free upon completing military service. To avoid releasing men back to civilian life, the army kept conscripts for as long as twenty-five years. It consequently lacked a reserve of trained former soldiers to recall in an emergency. Serfdom tied up money as well: landlords had pledged two-thirds of their serfs as security for state-bank loans, and by 1857 the banks were short of funds. Emancipation was a calculation about state survival as well as a moral choice.
From Great Reforms of Alexander II, chapter 1 of The Russian Revolution, 1855–1924 (JUL 1878).
The place: Bezdna unrest — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — Defeat on home soil. Sevastopol fell in September 1855 after an eleven-month siege. Britain and France could supply their forces by sea, while Russia had to rely on…
- The turn — The Emancipation Manifesto, 19 February / 3 March 1861. On 19 February / 3 March 1861 the Manifesto changed the legal status of more than a third of European Russia’s people. Landlords had governed and…
- What it changed — A free peasantry in debt. Peasants became free while owing redemption payments, annual installments repaying the state for land. Arrears accumulated in many provinces until…
Then ask the room: Did the Great Reforms make revolution in Russia less likely or more likely? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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