At the same time as the opening of the Editing Commissions in March 1859, a commission for the preparation of the reform of local government under the chairmanship of N. A. Miliutin was set up under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Its programme was co-ordinated with the peasant reform and laid the foundation for the Zemstvo Statute of 1 January 1864. It was only thanks to this co-ordination that the participation of the peasants in the zemstva was secured, as at the time they were still not landowners and therefore did not have a property qualification. The link with the judicial reform consisted not only of the participation of peasants in juries. The reformers created a completely new institution for the realisation ofthe peasant reform - the Peace Mediators, who were called upon to regulate the relations between the landowner and his former serfs by means of drawing up charters and redemption acts for working out the details of the land settlement on individual estates. Although nobles themselves, the peace mediators were not selected by the noble assemblies but were appointed by the state with the help of the local administration. In 1861 it was proposed that in three years' time they would be selected jointly by the nobility and the free peasantry. And although their exclusively noble status did not correspond to the general ideology of the Great Reforms, other principles surrounding their activity, such as openness and the fact that they could not be removed, ensured their independence from the administration and the noble assemblies and prepared the ground for the introduction of the justice of the peace and the new court system in Russia under the Judicial Statutes of 1864.[24]If we add to the above the abolition of corporal punishment on i7 April 1863 (Alexander II's birthday), the military service law of 1 January 1874 and the reform of education, it becomes clear that the Great Reforms opened the way to the creation of a civil society (although the reformers did not use this terminology). They were indeed aimed at the development of the people's national and civic consciousness, at instilling in them feelings of dignity and at overcoming traditions of servitude, which had been embedded in generations of Russian peasants.
Solving the land question was more difficult. It depended on gradualism and amendments over time and was complicated by the critical financial situation of the country after the Crimean War. The reformers themselves clung firmly to the idea of the emancipation of the peasants through the redemption of land. This idea was defined in 1855-6 in the memoranda of D. A. and N. A. Miliutin, K. D. Kavelin and Iu. F. Samarin (the last-mentioned held a slightly different position). However, the first public document which began the preparation for the reform-Alexander II's rescript to General-Governor V I. Nazimov of Vilno of20 November 1857-didnot contain a definite decisionontheland question. It would have been possible to move from it to emancipation based on guaranteed peasant usufract rather than outright property ownership by the peasants. The significance of the rescript was that it made public the government's intention to solve the peasant question, which had been discussed for so long but in secret. Henceforth openness became an independent force on which the reformers relied. In particular, 3,000 copies of the work of the Editing Commissions were immediately published following its meetings.
Throughout 1858 in society, in the periodical press, in the noble provincial committees and in government circles a struggle was waged over different solutions to the peasant question - with land or without land. At the beginning it seemed that the Baltic model (emancipation without land) was winning, the more so because the tsar himselfbelieved in this path which had been tried and tested in the Baltic provinces. However, a series of circumstances (the serious and protracted wave of peasant unrest in the province of Estonia, the rejection by appanage peasants of emancipation without land, the struggles among the fractions in the noble provincial committees) pushed Alexander by the end of 1858 towards the idea of land for the peasants and towards the adoption of the programme of the liberal bureaucracy.[25]
The liberal majority of the Editing Commissions believed that all peasant- farmers must enjoy usufract rights over land from the start of the reform process and ownership rights in time. They projected two types of landhold- ing in Russia's new agrarian sector: large gentry (noble) estates and small peasant holdings. They proposed to attain this goal peacefully, avoiding the revolutionary upheavals that had occurred in the countries of Western and Central Europe, and this was considered one of the principal features of the Russian reform. From the experience of European countries, they pointed to the positive results in France (the creation of small private land-ownership), and the methods of legislative measures in Prussia and Austria, which consisted of redemption of land by the peasants while preserving gentry landholding, yet avoiding the extremes of the Prussian variant - 'concentration of landed property in the hands of a few great landowners and big farmers' and the proliferation of landless agricultural labourers. As a result, the reform was built on the basis of 'existing realities', that is the preservation of much arable land in the hands of the nobility, and of the pre-reform plots in peasant ownership; the calculation of initial obligations and subsequent redemption payments on the basis of pre-reform dues (with a slight reduction); the participation of the state in the redemption operations in the capacity of creditor. The acquisition of full property rights to their plots through redemption payments by the peasants was seen as the reform's final outcome. Redemption was not obligatory for the gentry landowners. Alexander II said: 'While even one noble is against the redemption of peasant plots, I will not allow compulsory redemption.' At the same time the adoption of 'gradual' and 'voluntary redemption', that is of the principle of the 'self-financing' of redemption operations, was explained by the state's difficult financial situation. The reformers recognised that it was impossible at present for the treasury to subsidise the redemption operation, although the longer-term possibility was recognised.[26] Though they had to accept the limits dictated by the contemporary situation, the Editing Commissions created an internal mechanism for the reform which guaranteed uninterrupted progression toward the projected results. The reform was a process: perpetual peasant usufract at fixed rents quite soon persuaded landowners that redemption was in their own interests.
The peasants too had virtually no choice. Having set the aim of avoiding mass proletarianisation, and recognising at the same time that the economic conditions of emancipation were difficult and that the landowners would strive at all costs to crowd out the peasants, the reformers introduced into the law an article which forbade peasants to repudiate the allotments for nine years (this period was subsequently lengthened). The preservation of the obshchina (commune) in its role as a landowner (in addition to its other above-mentioned functions) served the same aim to a significant degree. By preserving the obshchina with its archaic rules about restrictions on peasant land and with joint responsibility for dues, the reformers understood that this would hinder the free development of an independent peasant economy. However, for the start of the reform the preservation of this institution, which was embedded in the organisation of the economy and in the consciousness and everyday life of the peasants, was considered unavoidable. At the same time the idea was not to conserve the obshchina forever. Leaving the obshchina was foreseen under certain conditions and with time this was to be made easier. In the milieu of the Editing Commissions the view predominated that with time obshchina land-ownership would yield to individual ownership, and the administrative functions ofthe village community would be concentrated in the volost'. Only Iurii Samarin gave his unreserved support to the obshchina. Speaking before the deciding vote about the fate of the obshchina, N. A. Miliutin said that 'by mutual consent it had been decided to leave this question to time and to the peasants themselves, . . . and that the legislation and the government had always rejected the adoption of any artificial or imposed measures for such a transition, and that this decision had been approved by the Emperor himself'.[27]
24
Here and below when speaking about the resolution ofthe peasant question in the i86i reform, material from the following works is drawn on: L. G. Zakharova,
25
L. G. Zakharova, 'Znacheniekrest'ianskikh volnenii v 1858 vEstoniivistoriipodgotovki otmeny krepostnogo prava v Rossii', in
27
P. P. Semenov-Tian-Shanskii,