Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/167

Rh in twenty-nine administrative districts there were 1,100 jacqueries, many of which were suppressed by the military.

The consequence was that, soon after the issue of the liberation manifesto numerous experts declared that the peasants had been given too little land and that the redemption money had been assessed at too high a figure. Nor was it radical publicists alone, such men as Čerysevskii and Dobroljubov, who spoke of the land hunger of the peasants. Even moderate writers, Kavelin for example, referred to the existence of an acute agrarian crisis, and demanded more land for the peasants. In 1881 (December 28th) the amount of redemption money was reduced. In 1882 the Peasants' Bank was founded, and further mitigations were introduced for the peasantry—although simultaneously the landowners' interests were not neglected for the Nobles' Bank was founded in 1885, and the privileges of the peasants were restricted in various ways on behalf of the landed interest.

Declared opponents of liberation were not intimidated by the February manifesto. Organising their forces, they founded a periodical ("Věst"), placed all possible hindrances in the way of the realisation of the reform, and furthered an agitation on the part of the landlords to secure assistance from the state. Some of the social reactionaries who opposed liberation were advocates of constitutional government, but their thoughts went no further than an aristocratic representation by estates.

The liberation of the peasantry, as actually carried out, was the result of a compromise between the opponents and the supporters of serfdom and between the conflicting plans of the various parties. Whereas the peasants naturally desired their liberation to be accompanied by the assignment to them of the soil they tilled, no more than an infinitesimal minority of landowners favoured this idea. The best of the landowners proposed that liberation if it was to be effected should be accompanied by the granting of land to the peasants in return for compensation payable to the landowner by the peasant by the state, or by both. In the Baltic provinces, liberation was effected without any grant of land, and the peasants had to rent whatever land they needed. Many landowners in other parts would doubtless have agreed to an arrangement of the kind, but even upon this matter there were conflicting currents. Some desired that the enfranchised peasant should have no land of his own at all; others were willing that