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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.

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Melvyn Bragg

Sarah Hudspith

Simon Dixon

Shane O'Rourke

Simon Tillotson

In Our Time: The Emancipation of the Serfs

The Emancipation of the Serfs

17/05/2018

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Emancipation of the Serfs

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the freeing of a third of Russians from serfdom in 1861.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tsar Alexander II's 1861 decree that freed 30 million Russians from serfdom, an act of reform that followed Russia's defeat in the Crimean War.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1861 declaration by Tsar Alexander II that serfs were now legally free of their landlords. Until then, over a third of Russians were tied to the land on which they lived and worked and in practice there was little to distinguish their condition from slavery. Russia had lost the Crimean War in 1855 and there had been hundreds of uprisings, prompting the Tsar to tell the nobles, "The existing condition of owning souls cannot remain unchanged. It is better to begin to destroy serfdom from above than to wait until that time when it begins to destroy itself from below." Reform was constrained by the Tsar's wish to keep the nobles on side and, for the serfs, tied by debt and law to the little land they were then allotted, the benefits were hard to see. 

With 

Sarah Hudspith
Associate Professor in Russian at the University of Leeds

Simon Dixon
The Sir Bernard Pares Professor of Russian History at UCL

And

Shane O'Rourke
Senior Lecturer in History at the University of York


Producer: Simon Tillotson.

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