Our Notes & References

An exceptional copy of this acute and balanced analysis of one of Imperial Russia’s most important reforms. Probably the author’s own copy, luxuriously bound. The cypher AC and the arms on the binding, being a sword and two fleurs-de-lis and identical to those of Joan of Arc, refer to the author’s family, the Courtois d’Arcollieres.

Courtois’ text meticulously documents the changes wrought by the 1861 emancipation of the serfs, which was the “single most important event in Russian history between the reforms of Peter the Great and the revolution of 1905” (Rieber) and gave Alexander II his name of ‘Tsar-Osvoboditel’ [Tsar-Liberator].

As secretary to the French Ambassador to St. Petersburg just at the moment of the reform, Courtois had the opportunity to observe the Russian society, and cared to include in his work first-hand accounts of the reaction of the serfs themselves. Interestingly, especially as Alexander II himself owned a copy of the book, Courtois excoriates the Russian bureaucracy for nearly seventy pages and criticises the laziness and indifference of Russia’s chinovniks (civil servants). In contrast, he praises Alexander II’s government and how “a new day rises over Russia, and emancipation will have been its dawn” (p. 72). Commenting upon contemporary debates between the Slavophiles and Westernisers on the essential nature of Russia herself, de Courtois also gives the diplomatic response that emancipation would simply free Russia from “the half-Asian, half-European rut in which it has been stuck for so long”.

The rest of the book makes for a valuable primary source as it describes, in great detail, the system of redemption under which the emancipated serfs were to buy their land from their former masters, as well as the new property rights which they obtained by the decree of 1861. Courtois also analyses the political economy of emancipation and the subsidies distributed to small landowners (with fewer than 20 “souls”, who made up two-thirds of the landowning class), amounting to 5 million rubles.

Far from being a servile praise or a propaganda work, Courtois’ book is a valuable reminder that the emancipation had a more ambiguous character than is often remembered: throughout the first half of 1861, peasants’ refusal to perform their residual duties and make the required payments was “regarded as criminal disobedience and followed by measures of coercion and punishment” (Pushkarev, p. 205). Courtois does not merely pander to the Emperor, but recognises that the effects of emancipation would be complex and unpredictable — for example, peasants with rich and kind lords would be materially worse off after emancipation (p. 131). He also gives a first hand account of the reaction of the people to the Emperor’s declaration: “the crowd listened; no cheers broke out… the muzhiks read, made the sign of the cross, and rode off in silence” (p. 136).

Courtois didn’t publish much; he had written comedic plays before this work, including one which premiered in the St. Petersburg imperial theatre, and the Russica catalogue, which doesn’t show our work, includes the 1866 La Scène française en Russie.

This is the second edition, just a year after the first, by the same publishers.

Provenance

The author (arms and cypher to binding).

Bibliography

Not in Cat. Russica; Pushkarev, Sergei G. 1968. ‘The Russian Peasants’ Reaction to the Emancipation of 1861′. The Russian Review 27 (2): 199–214; Rieber, Alfred. 2019. The Politics of Autocracy: Letters of Alexander II to Prince A. I. Bariatinskii. 1857–1864. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.