Manifesto on the three-day corvee year. Manifesto on the three-day corvee

Plan
Introduction
1 Implementation of the Manifesto during the reign of Paul I
1.1 Announcement. The Problem of Senate Interpretation
1.2 Consequences of the Senate Decree of April 6, 1797
1.3 Peasant factor
1.4 Emperor Paul's position

2 Implementation of the Manifesto during the reign of Alexander I
2.1 Speransky's views
2.2 Views of Lopukhin. Conservative victory.
2.3 Turgenev's initiatives
2.4 Some aspects of the implementation of the Manifesto under Alexander I
2.5 Failed confirmation of the Manifesto

3 Implementation of the Manifesto during the reign of Nicholas I
3.1 Kochubey's views
3.2 Introduction of the Manifesto into the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire
3.3 Implementation of the ideas of the Manifesto in the Danube Principalities
3.4 The Manifesto validation initiative and its failure
3.5 Implementation of the ideas of the Manifesto in the Kingdom of Poland and Right-Bank Ukraine
3.6 The fate of the Manifesto in the central regions of Russia
3.7 Correspondence between M. S. Vorontsov and P. D. Kiselev
3.8 Bibikov's Circular (1853) - confirmation of the Manifesto

4 Results of the implementation of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee
Bibliography

Introduction

The implementation of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee (1797-1861) is the process of practical implementation and implementation of the legal prescriptions and norms set forth in the text of the Manifesto of Emperor Paul I of April 5 (16), 1797. This process covered the period from the publication of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee until the abolition of serfdom.

The process of implementing the Manifesto did not achieve its goals and ended in an almost complete failure due to a number of objective reasons, the key of which are:

ambiguous and contradictory wording of this law (it created opportunities for different interpretations of its content); lack of effective mechanisms for monitoring the implementation process; boycott of the norms of the Manifesto by noble and landlord circles; lack of effective " feedback"between the serfs and the authorities (most of the peasant petitions had no prospects); the indecision of the autocracy (the Romanovs were afraid to violate noble privileges, fearing the collapse of their own power).

As part of the process of implementing the Manifesto, from the beginning of the 19th century, high-ranking officials made several attempts to “reanimate” it, that is, official confirmation (V.P. Kochubey, M.M. Speransky, M.A. Korf, D.V. Golitsyn) . But all of them ended in vain until the beginning of the 1850s, when the Manifesto was finally confirmed by the circular of the Minister of the Interior D. G. Bibikov dated October 24, 1853.

In the second quarter of the 19th century, the key ideas of the Manifesto were used in the implementation of reform initiatives in Moldova and Wallachia (reforms by P. D. Kiselev, 1833), the Kingdom of Poland (inventory reform by I. F. Paskevich, 1846) and Right-Bank Ukraine ( inventory reform by D. G. Bibikov, 1847-1848)

1. Implementation of the Manifesto during the reign of Paul I

1.1. Announcement. The Problem of Senate Interpretation

Russian postage stamp "Paul I signs the Manifesto on the three-day corvee", released in 2004 (to the 250th anniversary of the Emperor's birth)

The manifesto on the three-day corvee was officially signed and announced on the day of the coronation of Paul I and Maria Feodorovna in Moscow on Sunday 5 (16) April 1797 in the Faceted Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin. After the announcement, the Manifesto was sent to the Governing Senate, where on April 6 (17) it was heard and measures were taken for publication. The printed text of the Manifesto and the accompanying Senate decree (interpreting the meaning of this law) were sent to all central and regional authorities. The provincial and vicegerent administrations, in turn, sent them to government offices "for announcement, both to the landlords and to the whole people." In total, according to M.V. Klochkov, at least 15 thousand copies were sent around the country.

Senate Decree of April 6, 1797, interpreting the meaning of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee (copy sent to the Penza provincial government)

In the course of the process of announcing the Manifesto on the three-day corvee, discrepancies were revealed in the interpretation of its provisions by various power structures. The text of the Imperial Manifesto contained two norms: 1) a ban on forcing peasants to work on Sundays; 2) the division of the remaining six days of the week equally between the work of the peasant for the landowner and for himself, that is, a three-day corvée. But, in the accompanying decree of the Governing Senate dated April 6 (17), which interpreted the meaning of the Manifesto, only one norm appeared. This Senate decree, sent along with the Pavlovian Manifesto, interpreted the Manifesto as a law prohibiting forcing peasants to work on Sundays, without mentioning the idea of a three-day corvée at all: “The Governing Senate, after listening to His Highest Imperial Majesty’s Manifesto, held on the 5th day of April, signed by His Majesty’s own hand, so that the landlords do not force their peasants to work on Sundays. They ordered: this Highest Imperial Majesty's Manifesto be sent out for announcement both to the landlords and to the whole people [...] ".

The regional authorities of the Russian Empire interpreted the Manifesto of Paul I the way the Senate interpreted it, reporting in their reports that they had received the Imperial Manifesto, which forbade landowners to force peasants to work on Sundays. S. B. Okun called these regional reports “a stereotyped repetition of the Senate wording.” Only the Vologda Governor N. D. Shetnev reported in a report to Prosecutor General A. B. Kurakin that “in pursuance of the Supreme Manifesto on the division of work, it was ordered to the provincial leader to order the county leaders so that they had supervision in their districts, so that between landowners and peasants , according to the power of that Manifesto, six days were divided in works. The exception is also the reports of diocesan administrations. In the reports of the metropolitans and archbishops to the Synod on the receipt of the Manifesto and the nation-wide announcement by local priests, its content is interpreted more extensively: “so that the landowners do not force their peasants to work on Sundays and other things.”

The Decree of the Governing Senate dated April 6 (17), 1797 distorted the meaning of the Manifesto, not mentioning the ideas of the three-day corvee at all. The Senate interpretation of the Pavlovian law diverged from its real content. The Senate interpretation of the Manifesto was accepted by almost all provincial administrations (except for Vologda). This legal conflict was not prevented by Paul I and created problems for the implementation of the norm of the three-day corvee. Following the Senate and the governors, the norm of the three-day corvee was ignored by Russian landowners, who were accustomed to considering serfs as their absolute property. The supreme power could not count on the support of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee by the nobility and landlord circles, since the Pavlovian law undermined their monopoly on the use of the labor of serfs. The Russian landlords, accustomed to independently determine the norms of peasant labor and often practiced daily corvée, ignored both norms prescribed by the Manifesto. The feudal lords not only did not want to establish a three-day corvée on their estates, but also, as before, forced their peasants to work for them even on weekends.

A typical description of the state of affairs in the country in those years was contained in a note "Emancipation of Slaves", prepared in 1802 by the Russian educator and publicist V.F. Malinovsky: “In the most reverent reign of Paul I ... in the vicinity of the capital, the peasants worked for the master not for three days, as he deigned to indicate, but for a whole week; a peasant with a boyar is far to compete ". Senator I. V. Lopukhin wrote to Emperor Alexander I in 1807 that the Manifesto on the three-day corvee had "remained, as it were, without execution" since its publication.

1.3. Peasant factor

The serfs also got some idea of the contents of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee, as it was publicly announced in all regions of the country. The Russian peasantry greeted the Manifesto of Paul I with great joy and great hopes. According to N. Ya. Eidelman, the serfs, “(first of all in the capital, but then in more distant lands) quickly felt some kind of change in the top”: “decrees read in churches or reached along with rumors, as if encouraged." "Facilitating decrees, especially the Manifesto of April 5, excited the minds: Pugachevism has not yet been forgotten, faith in the tsar-deliverer is constant." The peasant masses, who learned about the Manifesto, firmly perceived it as an alleviation of their plight, legislatively formalized Russian tsar. “There can be no doubt that this document was perceived by the peasants as a royal sanction for a three-day corvee,” S. B. Okun emphasized.

But the peasantry immediately faced the situation of a direct boycott of the Pavlovian Manifesto by the landowners' circles. “Violations of the law on the“ three days ”and other burdens of serfdom are considered [by the peasants] as disobeying the nobles to the royal will.” Trying to achieve justice, peasants from all over the Russian Empire sent complaints to the sovereign about their landowners who were violating the new law. In their complaints addressed to Paul I, the peasants often referred to the norms of the Manifesto, but did not always understand them in the same way. Everything depended on how the Imperial Manifesto was refracted in the peasant consciousness, how it was interpreted among the people in each specific case.

Corvee. Engraving. 1798

Most of the peasant complaints concerned the fact that the landowners still forced them to work on Sundays. So, the peasants of the Gzhatsk district of the Smolensk province asked Paul I for protection from landlord requisitions and work on holidays. Leon Frolov, a peasant of the Arshad district of the Smolensk province, appealed to the sovereign: “But as it is, from Your Imperial Majesty it is forbidden to work on Sundays and honor them as holidays, and we don’t even spend a single day without master’s work.” Ryazan Governor M. I. Kovalensky reported to Prosecutor General A. B. Kurakin that the peasant Mark Tikhonov, owned by the landowner M. K. Frolov, “pointed to his landowner that he sent him, Tikhonov, to work on Sunday, and when he, not listening, announced to him, Frolov, that it was forbidden to work on Sundays, then he, Frolov, denigrated with swear words allegedly indicated. The serfs of the Vladimir province, complaining to the sovereign about the unbearably high rates of corvée and dues, reported that the landowner “even on Sunday does not allow us to work for ourselves, which is why we come to extreme ruin and poverty, and we have food from alms” (due to lack of time to work on their farm, they often lost their crops, and they were forced to beg in neighboring villages).

Plan
Introduction
1 Prerequisites for the appearance of the Manifesto
2 Reasons for issuing the Manifesto
3 Text of the Manifesto
4 Content inconsistency
5 Relation to the Manifesto of the Contemporaries
6 Advantages and disadvantages of content
7 Manifesto and the Ukrainian peasantry
8 Realization under the Three Emperors
9 Confirmation under Nicholas I (Bibikov's circular)
10 Implementation results
11 The historical significance of the Manifesto of Paul I
12 Manifesto on the three-day corvee and the abolition of serfdom
Bibliography

Introduction

The Manifesto on the three-day corvee of April 5, 1797 is a legislative act of the Russian Emperor Paul I, for the first time legally limiting the use of peasant labor in favor of the court, the state and landowners to three days during each week and forbidding peasants to be forced to work on Sundays. The manifesto had both religious and social significance, since it forbade the involvement of dependent peasants to work on Sunday (this day was provided for them to rest and attend church) and promoted the development of independent peasant farms. The manifesto specifically established that the remaining three working days were intended for the work of the peasants in their own interests.

Revising certain ideas of the Charter of the mother of Paul I Catherine II "on the rights, liberties and advantages of the noble Russian nobility", the Manifesto began the process of limiting serfdom in the Russian Empire.

Signed on April 5 (16), 1797 in Moscow on the day of the coronation of Paul I and Maria Feodorovna, which coincided with Easter.

It was confirmed once - by the circular of the Minister of Internal Affairs D. G. Bibikov dated October 24, 1853.

1. Prerequisites for the appearance of the Manifesto

The corvee economy of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 18th century was the most intensive form of exploitation of peasant labor and, unlike the quitrent system, led to the utmost enslavement and maximum exploitation of the peasants. The growth of corvee duties gradually led to the appearance of a month (daily corvee), and small peasant farming was in danger of disappearing. The serfs were not legally protected from the arbitrary exploitation of the landowners and the burden of serfdom, which took forms close to slavery.

The threat of a serious crisis in agriculture as a result of the undermining of the country's productive forces, as well as the growing discontent of the peasantry, required the legislative regulation of peasant duties and the restriction of serfdom. For the first time in Russia, this idea was put forward by the well-known domestic economist and entrepreneur I. T. Pososhkov in The Book of Poverty and Wealth (1724). Since the 1730s. this initiative is gradually gaining its few, but convinced and consistent supporters in the government structures of the country. The first government project for the regulation of peasant duties was developed by the chief prosecutor of the Senate A. A. Maslov in 1734, but was never implemented. The idea of regulating the duties of serfs was put forward in the reform projects of a number of Russian state and public figures (P. I. Panin, Catherine II, Ya. E. Sievers, Yu. Yu. Broun, K. F. Schultz, A. Ya. I. G. Eizen, G. S. Korob’in, Ya. P. Kozelsky, A. A. Bezborodko, etc.).

Catherine II

During the reign of Catherine II, the problem of legislative regulation of peasant duties finally crossed the threshold of bureaucratic offices and became the subject of public discussion in an atmosphere of relative publicity. New drafts of regulation of peasant duties appear in the country, heated discussions are unfolding. A key role in these events was played by the activities of the Free Economic Society and the Legislative Commission, created by Catherine II. But at the same time, the activities of these structures did not have serious practical consequences and results for the solution of the peasant question. Attempts to legislatively regulate peasant duties were initially doomed to failure due to the harsh opposition of the nobility and landowner circles and the political elite associated with them, as well as due to the lack of real support for reform initiatives from the autocracy.

The only exception was the Livland province, where at first attempts were made to encourage the landlords to independently limit the duties of the peasants on their estates (“Asheraden Peasant Law” by K. F. Schulz, 1764), and then the Russian administration, headed by the Governor-General Yu. Yu. Broun (with the direct support of Catherine II) managed to create a legislative precedent for the regulation of peasant duties, having obtained from the deputies of the Landtag the adoption of a patent dated April 12, 1765. But the implementation of this patent failed (local landlords ignored its norms and continued to exploit the peasants uncontrollably), and peasant unrest swept Livonia. As a result, the era of the Great Empress did not become a breakthrough in solving the problem of regulating peasant duties.

2. Reasons for issuing the Manifesto

Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich (1777)

Even before his accession, Paul I took real measures to improve the situation of the peasants on his personal estates in Gatchina and Pavlovsk. So, he reduced and reduced peasant duties (in particular, on his estates for a number of years there was a two-day corvée), allowed the peasants to go to work in their free time from corvée work, issued loans to the peasants, built new roads in the villages, opened two free medical hospital for his peasants, built several free schools and colleges for peasant children (including disabled children), as well as several new churches.

In his socio-political writings of 1770-1780. - "Discourses on the state in general..." And "Nakase" about the management of Russia - he insisted on the need for a legislative settlement of the position of serfs. "Human, Paul wrote, the first treasure of the state”, “the saving of the state is the saving of the people”("Reasoning about the state"); “The peasantry contains all the other parts of society, and by its labors it is worthy of special respect and the approval of a state that is not subject to its current changes”("Order").

Not being a supporter of radical reforms in the field of the peasant question, Paul I admitted the possibility of some limitation of serfdom and the suppression of its abuses.

The beginning of the reign of Paul I was marked by new attempts by the autocracy to find a solution to the problem of the peasant question. The key event of this time was the publication of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee, timed to coincide with the coronation of the emperor.

It is most likely that the immediate reason for the issuance of this law was six collective complaints and petitions of privately owned peasants for unlimited landlord exploitation, submitted to the emperor in Moscow at the end of March 1797, on the eve of the coronation.

Among the objective reasons for the publication of the Manifesto, the following should be singled out:

1) the catastrophic imbalance of relations between the estates that developed in the Russian Empire (serious privileges of the feudal lords existed along with the complete lack of rights of the peasants);

2) the difficult socio-economic situation of the serf peasantry, which is subjected to uncontrolled exploitation by the landlords;

3) the peasant movement (constant complaints and petitions of the peasants, frequent cases of disobedience and armed rebellions).

The key reason for the appearance of the Manifesto was the subjective factor - the role of the emperor's personality. Paul I was aware of the problems of the serfs, was positive about the ideas of some improvement in their situation and was an active supporter of the implementation of such measures, since they corresponded to the image of the "ideal state" in his political doctrine. It was to the political will of Paul I that Russia owed the appearance of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee.

3. Text of the Manifesto

This is how the text of the Manifesto looks like in full (modern spelling):

Manifesto on the three-day corvee

GOD'S MERCY

WE PAUL THE FIRST

Emperor and Autocrat

ALL-RUSSIAN,

and other, and other, and other.

We declare to all OUR faithful subjects.

The Law of God in the Decalogue taught to US teaches US to dedicate the seventh day to it; why on this day we were glorified by the triumph of the Christian faith, and on which WE were honored to receive the sacred anointing of the world and the Royal wedding on OUR Ancestral Throne, we consider it our duty to the Creator and to confirm all blessings throughout OUR Empire about the exact and indispensable fulfillment of this law, commanding everyone and everyone to watch, so that no one, under any circumstances, would dare to force the peasants to work on Sundays, especially since for rural products the six days remaining in the week, according to an equal number of them, are generally shared, both for the peasants themselves and for their work in favor of the landowners, the following, with good disposal, will be sufficient to satisfy all economic needs. Given in Moscow on the day of Holy Pascha, April 5, 1797.

4. Content inconsistency

Russian postage stamp "Paul I signs the Manifesto on the three-day corvee", released in 2004 (to the 250th anniversary of the Emperor's birth)

The text of the Manifesto highlights two main provisions regulating peasant labor in the landlord economy:

The manifesto began with a ban on forcing peasants to work on Sunday: "... so that no one, under any circumstances, would dare to force peasants to work on Sundays ...". This legal norm confirmed a similar legislative prohibition of 1649, which was already included in the Cathedral Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (Chapter X, Article 25).

This provision has not caused and does not cause any controversy. All researchers, without exception, believe that this norm of the Pavlovian Manifesto had the force of a law binding on execution: landowners were clearly forbidden to force serfs to work on Sundays.

This part of the Manifesto was subsequently confirmed and expanded by the decree of Emperor Alexander I of September 30, 1818: in addition to Sundays, holidays were also listed, on which peasants were also forbidden to be subjected to corvée work.

2) the division of the remaining six days of the week equally between the work of the peasant for the landowner and for himself.

Further, the text of the Manifesto indicated the division of the remaining six days of the week equally between the work of the peasant for himself and for the landowner (this was the three-day corvee): , and for their work in favor of the next landowners, with a good disposal, they will be sufficient to satisfy all economic needs.

As a matter of fact, these few lines of the Imperial Manifesto contain one of the brightest and most important events of the short reign of Paul I. This was an important stage in the peasant history of the country. This was the first attempt by the Romanovs to introduce a three-day corvee throughout the Russian Empire.

The three-day corvee, as can be seen from the text of the Manifesto, was proclaimed rather as a more desirable, more rational measure of the landowners' economy. She had the status of an official state recommendation - this was the point of view of the monarch, expressed by him on the day of his own coronation. In other words, the official authorities recognized as sufficient no more than three days of use by the landowner of the labor of serfs.

Can this norm of the Imperial Manifesto be considered a law on a three-day corvee? This question predetermined the almost 200-year-old discussion of researchers (both historians and lawyers). The long existence of the original pre-revolutionary concept (according to which the Manifesto legislated the three-day corvee), begins to undergo a partial revision in the 1910s. and is completely revised in the Soviet period (when the three-day corvee began to be considered a recommendatory norm of the Manifesto). Historians of the Russian diaspora, belonging to the "white emigration", remained on the positions of the original pre-revolutionary historiography, and in the USSR only the point of view of S. B. Okun became a striking exception. On present stage there are no established concepts and there is a polarization of researchers' opinions (although the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences still supports the original pre-revolutionary concept).

In fact, the Manifesto on the three-day corvee, despite the outward contradiction of its content and vagueness of the wording, was a law on the three-day corvee, and not a recommendation to adhere to this norm. The principles of the regime of absolute monarchy, which has reached its apogee, exclude the very possibility of an autocrat giving his subjects extensive and non-binding advice. In this regard, the point of view of Paul I on the distribution of labor of serfs in the landlord economy, officially expressed by him on the day of his own coronation in the form of advice, wishes, or remarks, could not and cannot be considered anything other than the letter of the law.

5. Attitude towards the Manifesto of contemporaries

The publication of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee was welcomed both by the old Catherine's reformist officials (Ya. E. Sievers, A. A. Bezborodko and others) and the future reformers of the first half of XIX century (M. M. Speransky, V. P. Kochubey, P. D. Kiselev and others). Speransky called the Pavlovian Manifesto remarkable for its time.

The court poets sang the law:

The peasants looked upon the lot heavily, He looked at their sweat with blood, He looked and gave them full freedom To be free from work on a holiday; He cut their weeks into parts, So that for three days the corvée sweated, And for three days they reaped their corral; Children and orphans would be fed, And on a holiday they would go to listen to the holy divine law

(fragment of "Ode to Emperor Pavel Petrovich" by S. V. Russov, written on the first anniversary of the reign of Paul I).

Representatives of foreign powers saw in it the beginning of peasant reforms (adviser to the Prussian embassy Wegener, who was present at the coronation of Paul I, where the Manifesto was first read out in public, wrote to his leadership two weeks later that the Manifesto was “the only thing that made a sensation”, “the law, so resolute in this regard, and which has never existed in Russia before, allows us to consider this demarche of the emperor as an attempt to prepare the lower class of the nation for a less slavish state”).

For the Manifesto on the three-day corvée, Paul was sincerely praised by the Decembrists, noting the sovereign's desire for justice (N. I. Turgenev), seeing in him a "bold reformer" (A. V. Poggio), who enjoyed the love of the common people (M. A. Fonvizin).

The Manifesto was greeted with a muffled murmur and widespread boycott by conservative noble-landlord circles (Prince I.V. Lopukhin and others), who considered it an unnecessary and harmful law. Senator Lopukhin subsequently openly warned Alexander I "so that the Decree is not renewed, dividing the work of the peasants into himself and into the landowners, limiting the power of the latter." “It’s good that (the Pavlovian law) remained, as it were, without execution,” Lopukhin wrote to the sovereign, because “in Russia, the weakening of the bonds of subordination of the peasants to the landowners is more dangerous than the invasion of the enemy.”

Alexander Radishchev

The peasant masses saw hope in the Manifesto. They regarded it as a law that officially protected their interests and alleviated their plight, and tried to complain about the boycott of its norms by the landowners.

The criticism of A. N. Radishchev turned out to be prophetic, who, in the article “Description of My Ownership” (1801-1802), argued that in a situation of uncertainty of the legal status of the peasant and landlord, the regulation of peasant duties was and will be doomed to failure from the very beginning (“at the present time, this legal provision a small one will have an effect, because the state of neither the landowner nor the yard is determined”).

6. Advantages and disadvantages of content

The manifesto on the three-day corvee had both undoubted advantages and undeniable shortcomings.

First of all, the very idea of regulating peasant duties, proclaimed in the form of a three-day corvée, can be called an achievement of the Manifesto. In addition, the Manifesto was addressed to "all our loyal subjects", and not just to the privileged classes. Also, the Pavlovian law was issued and signed directly by the emperor, and not by any department of the empire, and was precisely the Manifesto, and not a simple decree, which strengthened its authority and significance. And finally, Paul I timed the publication of the Manifesto to coincide with his own coronation in Moscow on April 5 (16), 1797, putting it on a par with the key laws of his reign. By this decision, the emperor, according to A. G. Tartakovsky, “proved what exceptional state significance he attached to him [the Manifesto], undoubtedly seeing in it a document of a programmatic nature for resolving the peasant question in Russia.” In addition, the serfs became the only estate to receive the emperor's official favor on the day of the coronation.

The main drawback of the Manifesto is the very slippery formulation of the principle of the three-day corvee, as a result of which this norm could be interpreted either as a law or as a recommendation. In addition, having clearly spelled out in the Manifesto a prohibition to force peasants to work on Sundays, its authors, due to inattention or thoughtlessness, did not introduce a similar ban on church and state holidays into it. A certain incident was the fact that the Manifesto, which applied to all the lands of the Russian Empire, officially introduced a three-day corvée in the territory of Little Russia (Left-Bank Ukraine), where, according to the formal tradition, there was a two-day corvee, which would have been legally fixed in this region much more useful and rational. A colossal drawback of the Pavlovian Manifesto was the complete absence of any sanctions for violation of its norms by the landowners (this inexorably reduced the effectiveness of this law and made it difficult to implement).

7. Manifesto and the Ukrainian peasantry

The manifesto on the three-day corvée, which applied to all the lands of the Russian Empire, officially introduced the three-day corvee in the territory of Little Russia (Left-bank Ukraine), where, according to the formal tradition, there was a two-day corvee, which would be legally fixed in this region would be much more useful and rational. But the legislators missed this. This unconditional miscalculation of the Pavlovian Manifesto was subjected to a very subjective and incompetent criticism of a superficial and tendentious nature by many researchers. Many famous historians of the XIX-XXI centuries. argued in their studies that the two-day corvee, which has always existed in Little Russia only as a tradition not supported by any laws, turns out to be actively used in practice even in the second half of the 18th century and, therefore, the Manifesto on the three-day corvee of Paul I for Little Russia was a direct step backwards and worsened the situation of the peasants. V. I. Semevsky, A. A. Kornilov, K. F. Valishevsky, A. P. Bazhova, N. Ya. Eidelman, I. L. Abramova, D. I. Oleinikov and many others could not avoid these mistakes. A similar point of view, despite the complete scientific inconsistency, still takes place.

Little Russian peasant of the XVIII century. Engraving

The assertions that in Ukraine before the appearance of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee, a two-day corvee actually functioned, are absolutely unsubstantiated and testify to a superficial knowledge of the problem. If we compare such concepts with the well-known historical realities of the second half of the 18th century, we get a strange paradox: at the very time when daily corvée often took place on the landlord estates of Great Russia, and almost plantation farming was carried out, the landowners of neighboring Little Russia practiced the use of only two-day barshchina. It is not clear why this side of the issue is very rarely analyzed by researchers. In fact, the two-day corvee was observed by the Ukrainian landowners in the same way as the three-day corvee was observed by the Russian landowners. Simply put, the Ukrainian feudal lords completely ignored this ancient tradition, which was not supported by any laws. Almost all serious pre-revolutionary, Soviet and modern researchers of the history of Ukraine came to such conclusions.

A well-known pre-revolutionary specialist in the history of Little Russia, A. M. Lazarevsky, argued that, despite the fact that the administration of Little Russia considered a two-day corvee (panshchina) to be quite sufficient, the actual use of a two-day corvee by Ukrainian landowners in the second half of the 18th century "was very rare" . Lazarevsky emphasized that the huge number of complaints about the oppression of peasants by the landowners, preserved in the archives, “makes it likely that the size of the panshchina depended on one arbitrariness”, “on the will and temper” of the Little Russian feudal lord.

The studies of the Soviet Ukrainian historian A.I. Putro testify that the use of a two-day corvee took place in the landlord estates of Little Russia only in the 1760s, and later the corvee was no less than three days a week.

The Soviet historian V. I. Borisenko emphasized that in some landlord estates of Little Russia, corvée increased to three to five days a week in the second half of the 18th century.

Giving an objective assessment of the significance of the Pavlovian Manifesto for Ukraine, one cannot but agree with the fair statement of E. P. Trifilyev, who emphasized that the Manifesto on the three-day corvee had a positive significance for Little Russia, since it at least partially paralyzed the violence of local landowners.

However, defending the authors of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee from biased criticism, one should not at all remove from them just accusations of hasty and thoughtless actions, as well as an incompetent and short-sighted approach, inattention to the details of the problem, its regional features. An attempt to legislate on the territory of the Russian Empire such a historical tradition as a three-day corvee should ideally be accompanied by a similar legislative consolidation of the tradition of a two-day corvee in those regions of the country where the latter took place.

Little Russia could become the same “pilot region” that it became 1.6 years after the publication of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee, when Paul I imposed a ban on the sale of Little Russian peasants without the land they cultivated (imperial decree of October 16 (27), 1798 ). But history decreed otherwise: the tradition of a two-day corvee in Ukraine, which had no legal force before, with the publication of the Manifesto on a three-day corvee died completely.

8. Realization under three emperors

Alexander I

Nicholas I

The implementation of the norms and ideas of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee, issued by Emperor Paul I, was initially doomed to failure. The ambiguity of the wording of this law and the lack of development of mechanisms for its implementation predetermined the polarization of opinions of government and judicial officials of the country in the interpretation of its meaning and content and led to complete inconsistency in the actions of the central, provincial and local structures that controlled the implementation of this law. The desire of Paul I to improve the plight of the peasant masses was combined with his stubborn unwillingness to see the serf peasantry as an independent political force and social support for the anti-serfdom undertakings of the autocracy. The indecision of the autocracy led to the lack of strict control over the observance of the norms and ideas of the Manifesto and the connivance of its violations.

The Russian landlords treated Pavlov's Manifesto as a formality that could be ignored. Not only did they not want to establish a three-day corvée on their estates, but they still forced their serfs to work even on weekends and holidays, considering their own power over them unlimited. The Pavlovsk law was boycotted in almost all the country's landlord estates. The central and local authorities of Russia turned a blind eye to this, and failed to achieve effective implementation of the norms and ideas of the Manifesto.

The serfs, perceiving the Manifesto as a law easing their plight, tried to fight against its boycott by filing complaints against the landlords with state authorities and the courts, but peasant complaints were not always given due attention.

Thus, the weakness of the edition of the Manifesto, the lack of effective approaches to its implementation, the harsh opposition of the landlord circles and the indecision of the autocracy led to the almost complete failure of the implementation of this law even under Paul I.

The fate of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee under Alexander I was determined by the fact that the autocracy, in fact, put up with the boycott of the norms of this law by the nobility and landlord circles. Individual cases of appealing to the norms of the three-day corvee were the merit of some provincial administrations or provincial noble circles, but not the autocracy. The rare attempts of the Russian officials, if not to control the observance of the norms of the Manifesto, then at least to take into account its very existence, caused constant attacks from the nobility and landlord circles, who convinced the autocracy that the Manifesto on the three-day corvée was an unnecessary and harmful law for the country, which would be better to completely abolish (And V. Lopukhin and others). Desperate attempts to revive the Pavlovian law undertaken by the liberals (M. M. Speransky, N. I. Turgenev) were unsuccessful, and their initiators found themselves in political isolation, having lost the support of the autocracy.

The situation of the open boycott of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee by the noble-landlord circles, with the full connivance of the autocracy, was preserved and continued during the years of the reign of Nicholas I. But at the same time, under Nicholas I, there were attempts to revive the Manifesto on the three-day corvee by reformist government circles (In P. Kochubey, M. M. Speransky, M. A. Korf, D. V. Golitsyn), as well as the use of his key ideas - the regulation of peasant duties - in the implementation of reform initiatives in certain regions - the peasant reform of P. D. Kiselev in Moldavia and Wallachia in 1833, the inventory reform of I.F. Paskevich in the Kingdom of Poland in 1846, the inventory reform of D.G. Bibikov in Right-Bank Ukraine in 1847-1848. The advanced public of the country also insisted on the resuscitation of the Pavlovsk Manifesto (Prince M. S. Vorontsov convinced the Nikolaev reformers that the official confirmation of this law would resolve the problem of peasant duties). “To take as an example and foundation” the Pavlovian law and “directly limit the power of the landowner’s inventory” on an empire-wide scale was offered to Nicholas I in 1842 by the Moscow Governor-General D. V. Golitsyn. A certain achievement of the Nikolaev era was the introduction of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee into the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire (thanks to M. M. Speransky, M. A. Korf), but in the absence of direct support for the autocracy, this factor did not solve the problem of the inaction of the norms of the Manifesto. The regulation of peasant duties as a result of Bibikov's inventory reform covered only 10% of the country's landlord estates.

Confirmation under Nicholas I (Bibikov's circular)

D. G. Bibikov, Minister of the Interior in 1852-1855.

The long-awaited official confirmation of the Pavlovian Manifesto took place only 56 years after its publication. Such a document was the circular of the Minister of Internal Affairs D. G. Bibikov dated October 24, 1853. This circular of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, published at the height of the Crimean War with the blessing of the emperor at the end of the reign of Nicholas, became the second birth of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee.

The text of the circular stated that “the Sovereign ... the highest deigned to command: to confirm to all Messrs. to the leaders of the nobility the indispensable will of His Majesty, so that they themselves strictly observe and in all cases inspire the landowners that ... the duty of the peasants to work in favor of the landowner is positively defined only 3 days a week; then the rest of the days of each week should be left in favor of the peasants to correct their own work.

By order of Nicholas I, a circular was sent to all the leaders of the nobility. D. G. Bibikov, showing initiative and perseverance, also sent this circular to all the governors, ordering them to "relentlessly watch so that the landlords do not violate the law on the 3-day corvee."

But the persistence of individual progressive officials could not overshadow the indecisiveness of the autocracy. Unlike Paul I, Nicholas I did not even dare to issue this decree from own name and make it public and public (Bibikov's circular was of a closed, departmental nature). The secret and limited nature of Bibikov's circular initially doomed its implementation to failure (it was even less successful than the implementation of Pavlov's Manifesto).

The autocracy resigned itself to this again, still trying to avoid strong-willed solutions to the problem of regulating peasant duties.

10. Results of implementation

The manifesto about the three-day corvee did not become a historical breakthrough. The weakness of the wording of this law, the lack of a competent and competent approach to its implementation on the part of government structures, the harsh opposition of the nobility and landlord circles and the indecision of the autocracy led to the almost complete collapse of the ideas of the three-day corvee.

The situation that developed during the implementation of the Pavlovian law clearly demonstrated that the central and local administration of the empire, the vast majority of the ruling class, a significant part of society, as well as the autocracy were not ready for it (the three predecessors of Alexander II did not dare to take on the heavy burden of reformers of serfdom Russian relations).

11. The historical significance of the Manifesto of Paul I

The manifesto on the three-day corvee played a key role in the history of the country - it was the first attempt by the autocracy to limit the growth of serfdom, stop landlord abuses and protect peasant interests, alleviating the plight of the peasantry. The autocratic regime, having legally regulated feudal exploitation and established for it certain norms and frameworks that the Russian landowner had to observe, in fact, took the serfs under its protection, making it clear that it did not consider them the absolute property of the landowners.

The manifesto objectively contributed to some undermining of the position of the institution of serfdom. Together with other state laws devoted to the problems of the peasant question, the Manifesto slowly shook the foundations of serfdom and created the necessary legal framework to deploy further processes of modernization and limitation of serfdom. The Pavlovsk Law, according to the authoritative opinion of Academician S. F. Platonov, became "the beginning of a turn in government activity, which came more clearly in the era of Emperor Alexander I and later led to the fall of serfdom" .

12. Manifesto on the three-day corvee and the abolition of serfdom

In the six and a half decades separating the Manifesto on the Three-Day Corvée (1797) from the Manifesto on Land and Freedom (1861), that is, from the beginning of the process of legislative restriction of serfdom to its complete abolition, about 600 normative state acts were issued, with the help of which the autocracy tried to find a solution to the problem of the peasant question. But all these measures, the vast majority of which were weak and half-hearted, did not produce effective results. “The legislature,” according to V. O. Klyuchevsky, “as if did not notice its legislative sterility.” The Russian Empire needed serious modernization, not cosmetic reforms. All these years, the question of the abolition of serfdom was on the agenda, and they did not even dare to limit it, as Paul I had previously tried to do, proclaiming a three-day corvee in the country.

Serfdom existed in Russia much longer than in all other European countries. The Romanovs unsuccessfully and ineffectually addressed the ideas of its abolition for almost a whole century. K. Marx rightly noted that the government of Imperial Russia, with its endless attempts to resolve this issue, too often "evoked the mirage of freedom before the eyes of the peasantry." Catherine II, Paul I, Alexander I and Nicholas I were unable to show firmness and take on historical responsibility for the elimination of serf relations, although each of them sincerely desired this. Theoretical protests against the institutions of serfdom in the spirit of the ideas of the Enlightenment, which appeared in the draft version of Catherine's "Instruction", caused a storm of indignation in the conservative circles of the ruling elite and were soon nullified by the Great Empress herself, who, until the end of her reign, never addressed them again. and, even dying, called them "an encyclopedic infection." The idea of abolishing serfdom did not leave Paul I, who was convinced that real and serious reforms in this area would inevitably deal such a powerful blow to the autocracy that the imperial power could not cope. Alexander I did not give a chance to implement the initiatives of M. M. Speransky. Nicholas I allowed to regulate peasant duties and limit serfdom only in Right-Bank Ukraine, the Kingdom of Poland, Moldavia and Wallachia, without daring to affect the interests of Russian landowners. Even sincerely sympathizing with their reformer protégés, respecting and understanding their activities and initiatives, the Romanovs (fearing the prospect of losing their own power) did not dare to provide real political support to their progressive officials and go to the end, protecting them from attacks and harassment by the power of their own power. conservative circles. The direct initiators of the reforms often faced humiliating resignations, years of disgrace and forced inaction, or crippled lives. The autocracy was too afraid of losing the support of the ruling class and, together with a few loyal supporters and unpopular liberal reformers, remaining in complete political isolation (the brutal murder of Paul I served as a colorful warning to his successor sons), but about the possibility of direct reliance on the masses and the construction of a political regime "People's monarchy" was out of the question. Between the modernization of the country and the preservation of all the fullness and inviolability of their own power over the vast empire, the Romanovs inevitably chose the latter and were in no hurry to implement reform initiatives. It took a catastrophic defeat in Crimean War so that in a situation of the most severe national crisis and international isolation of Russia, yesterday's ideologists of conservatism, who condemned all reform initiatives, renounce their subjective dogmas and themselves turn to the young Emperor Alexander II with an appeal: “The former system has outlived its time. Freedom is the word that should be heard at the height of the Russian throne ”(these words belonged not to the democratic opposition, but to one of the most odious figures of the Nikolaev era, MP Pogodin). “Sevastopol hit stagnant minds,” as V. O. Klyuchevsky would later say.

Alexander II

On February 19, 1861, Emperor Alexander II put an end to many years of disputes about the problem of serfdom by signing the Manifesto on Land and Freedom. S. B. Okun rightly noted that when compiling the Local Regulations of 1861 for the Great Russian, Novorossiysk and Belarusian provinces, the Manifesto on the three-day corvee and Bibikov’s circular formed the basis of chapter III “On the duty of the product (corvee)” . After the abolition of serfdom, the three-day corvee for the first time on an all-Russian scale began to be implemented on the estates, where the peasants were transferred to the category of temporarily liable.

Having announced to the millions of serfs of the vast empire about the fall of the shackles of slavery, the Manifesto of Alexander II persistently presented this measure as the fulfillment of "the testament of our predecessors", as the implementation of the will of the former monarchs of the Romanov dynasty. However, in the text of the Manifesto on Land and Freedom, only the decree on free cultivators of Emperor Alexander I and inventory reforms of the Nicholas era were mentioned. The Manifesto on the three-day corvee did not appear at all in the text of the Manifesto on Land and Freedom, the name of Emperor Paul I was also not mentioned. The initiators of the peasant reform of 1861 did not consider it necessary and possible to pay tribute to the Russian autocrat, who, having issued the Manifesto on the three-day corvee, began the process of legislative restriction of serfdom in the country. Among the nobility and landlord circles, the time of Paul I was strongly associated with the attack of the autocracy on noble privileges, and Alexander II, apparently, did not want to annoy the noble class by mentioning the name of his grandfather. So, with the light hand of the authors of the Manifesto on Land and Freedom, for a long time the decree on free cultivators of Alexander I was considered the law that created a precedent for restricting serfdom by the state, and not the Manifesto on the three-day corvee of Paul I, which was such in reality. The “Pavlovian theme” (not only regicide, but also reforms, transformations of Paul I) remained undesirable and semi-forbidden for a long time. scientific research. Only at the beginning of the 20th century, researchers gradually began to recall that the beginning of the restriction of serfdom was laid by the imperial Manifesto on a three-day corvee. Modern historical science also proceeds from this.

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The manifesto on the three-day corvee of April 5, 1797 is a legislative act of the Russian Emperor Paul I.

The Manifesto on the three-day corvee of April 5, 1797 is a legislative act of the Russian Emperor Paul I, for the first time since the advent of serfdom in Russia, legally restricting the use of peasant labor in favor of the court, the state and landowners to three days during each week and forbidding peasants to be forced to work in Sunday days. The manifesto had both religious and social significance, since it forbade the involvement of dependent peasants to work on Sunday (this day was provided for them to rest and attend church) and promoted the development of independent peasant farms. The manifesto specifically established that the remaining three working days were intended for the work of the peasants in their own interests.

Signed on April 5 (16), 1797 in Moscow on the day of the coronation of Paul I and Maria Feodorovna, which coincided with Easter.

Prerequisites for the appearance of the Manifesto.

The threat of a serious crisis in agriculture as a result of the undermining of the country's productive forces, as well as the growing discontent of the peasantry, required the legislative regulation of peasant duties and the restriction of serfdom. For the first time in Russia, this idea was put forward by the famous economist and entrepreneur I. T. Pososhkov in The Book of Poverty and Wealth (1724). Since the 1730s. this initiative is gradually gaining its few, but convinced and consistent supporters in the government structures of the country. The first government draft of the regulation of peasant duties was developed by the chief prosecutor of the Senate A. A. Maslov in 1734, but was never implemented. The idea of regulating the duties of serfs was put forward in the reform projects of a number of Russian state and public figures (P. I. Panin, Catherine II, Ya. E. Sievers, Yu. Yu. Broun, K. F. Schultz, A. Ya. I. G. Eizen, G. S. Korob’in, Ya. P. Kozelsky, A. A. Bezborodko, etc.).

Reasons for issuing the Manifesto.

In his socio-political writings of 1770-1780. - "Discourse on the state in general ..." and "Instruction" on the management of Russia - he insisted on the need for a legislative settlement of the position of serfs. “A person,” Paul wrote, “is the first treasure of the state”, “the saving of the state is the saving of people” (“Discourse on the State”); “The peasantry contains all the other parts of society, and by its labors it is worthy of special respect and the approval of a state that is not subject to its current changes” (“Instruction”).

Not being a supporter of radical reforms in the field of the peasant question, Paul I admitted the possibility of some limitation of serfdom and the suppression of its abuses.

It is most likely that the immediate reason for the publication of this law was six collective complaints and petitions of privately owned peasants for unlimited landlord exploitation, submitted to the emperor in Moscow at the end of March 1797, on the eve of the coronation.

Among the objective reasons for the publication of the Manifesto, the following should be singled out:

the catastrophic imbalance of relations between the estates that developed in the Russian Empire (serious privileges of the feudal lords existed along with the complete lack of rights of the peasants);
the difficult socio-economic situation of the serf peasantry, which is subjected to uncontrolled exploitation by the landlords;
peasant movement (constant complaints and petitions of the peasants, frequent cases of disobedience and armed rebellions).

The key reason for the appearance of the Manifesto was a subjective factor - the role of the emperor's personality. Paul I was aware of the problems of the serfs, was positive about the ideas of some improvement in their situation and was an active supporter of the implementation of such measures, since they corresponded to the image of the "ideal state" in his political doctrine. It was to the political will of Paul I that Russia owed the appearance of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee.

Text of the Manifesto

This is how the text of the Manifesto looks like in full (modern spelling):

________________________________________________________________________________

Manifesto on the three-day corvee

GOD'S MERCY

WE PAUL THE FIRST

Emperor and Autocrat

ALL-RUSSIAN,

and other, and other, and other.

We declare to all OUR faithful subjects.

________________________________________________________________________________

Content inconsistency.

Russian postage stamp "Paul I signs the Manifesto on the three-day corvee", issued in 2004 (on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the emperor's birth)

The text of the Manifesto highlights two main provisions regulating peasant labor in the landlord economy.

Prohibition to force peasants to work on Sundays.

The manifesto began with a ban on forcing peasants to work on Sunday: "... so that no one, under any circumstances, would dare to force peasants to work on Sundays ...". This legal norm confirmed a similar legislative prohibition of 1649, which was included in Cathedral Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich(Chapter X, Article 25).

The division of the remaining six days of the week equally between the work of the peasant for the landowner and for himself.

The three-day corvee, as can be seen from the text of the Manifesto, was proclaimed rather as a more desirable, more rational measure of the landowners' economy. It had the status of an official state recommendation - it was the point of view of the monarch, expressed by him on the day of his own coronation. In other words, the official authorities recognized as sufficient no more than three days of use by the landowner of the labor of serfs.

Can this norm of the Imperial Manifesto be considered a law on a three-day corvee? This question predetermined the almost 200-year-old discussion of researchers (both historians and lawyers). The long existence of the original pre-revolutionary concept (according to which the Manifesto legislated the three-day corvee) begins to undergo a partial revision in the 1910s. and is completely revised in the Soviet period (when the three-day corvee began to be considered a recommendatory norm of the Manifesto). Historians of the Russian diaspora, belonging to the "white emigration", remained on the positions of the original pre-revolutionary historiography, and in the USSR only the point of view of S. B. Okun became a striking exception. At the present stage, there are no established concepts and there is a polarization of researchers' opinions (although the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences still supports the original pre-revolutionary concept).

Attitude to the Manifesto of contemporaries.

The publication of the Manifesto on the three-day corvée was welcomed by both the old Ekaterininian reformist officials (Ya. E. Sievers, A. A. Bezborodko, etc.) P. D. Kiselev and others). Speransky called the Pavlovian Manifesto remarkable for its time.

The court poets sang the law:

The peasants took a hard share,
Looked at their sweat with blood,
He looked up and gave them full freedom
Free on a holiday to be away from work;
Cut into parts of their week,
So that three days of corvee sweat,
And for three days they reaped their pen;
Children and orphans would be fed,
And on a holiday they would go to listen
holy divine law

- a fragment of "Ode to Emperor Pavel Petrovich" by S. V. Russov, written on the first anniversary of the reign of Paul I.

Representatives of foreign powers saw in it the beginning of peasant reforms (adviser to the Prussian embassy Wegener, who was present at the coronation of Paul I, where the Manifesto was first read out in public, wrote to his leadership two weeks later that the Manifesto was “the only thing that made a sensation”, “the law, so resolute in this regard, and which has never existed before in Russia, allows us to consider this demarche of the emperor as an attempt to prepare the lower class of the nation for a state of less slavery.

For the Manifesto on the three-day corvee, the Decembrists sincerely praised Paul, noting the sovereign's desire for justice (N. I. Turgenev), seeing in him a "bold reformer" (A. V. Poggio), who enjoyed the love of the common people (M. A. Fonvizin).

The Manifesto was greeted with a muffled murmur and widespread boycott by conservative noble-landlord circles (Prince I.V. Lopukhin and others), who considered it an unnecessary and harmful law. Senator Lopukhin subsequently openly warned Alexander I "so that the Decree is not renewed, dividing the work of the peasants into himself and into the landowners, limiting the power of the latter." “It’s good that (the Pavlovian law) remained, as it were, without execution,” Lopukhin wrote to the sovereign, because “in Russia, the weakening of the bonds of subordination of the peasants to the landlords is more dangerous than the invasion of the enemy.”

Alexander Radishchev

The criticism of A. N. Radishchev turned out to be prophetic, who, in the article “Description of My Ownership” (1801-1802), argued that in a situation of uncertainty of the legal status of the peasant and landowner, the regulation of peasant duties was and will be doomed to failure from the very beginning (“at the present time, this legal provision small will have an effect, because the state of neither the landowner nor the yard is not determined”).

Advantages and disadvantages of content.

The manifesto on the three-day corvee had both undoubted advantages and undeniable shortcomings.

First of all, the very idea of regulating peasant duties, proclaimed in the form of a three-day corvée, can be called an achievement of the Manifesto. In addition, the Manifesto was addressed to "all our loyal subjects", and not just to the privileged classes. Also, the Pavlovian law was issued and signed directly by the emperor, and not by any department of the empire, and was precisely the Manifesto, and not a simple decree, which strengthened its authority and significance. And finally, Paul I timed the publication of the Manifesto to coincide with his own coronation in Moscow on April 5 (16), 1797, putting it on a par with the key laws of his reign. By this decision, the emperor, according to A. G. Tartakovsky, “proved what exceptional state significance he attached to it [the Manifesto], undoubtedly seeing in it a document of a programmatic nature for resolving the peasant question in Russia.” In addition, the serfs became the only class to receive the official mercy of the emperor on the day of the coronation.

A decree on a three-day corvee was issued on April 5, 1797.

As you know, Alexander II finally abolished serfdom in Russia. However, before him there were also reformers on the throne who tried, if not to completely abolish serfdom, then at least to limit it and get rid of harmful elements.

One of these acts is the Manifesto on the three-day corvee, published by Paul I in 1797. This document stopped the arbitrariness of the nobles and the royal court in relation to the serfs.

From now on, the corvee was allowed to work out only three days a week, and it was also forbidden to drive serfs to corvee on Sundays. Sunday was meant for rest and church attendance, and the remaining three days for the peasant to work for himself.

Reasons for writing the Manifesto

The corvée that had existed in the Russian state since the time of Russkaya Pravda gradually became heavier: the number of duties increased, the peasants were forced to work more and more for the master, and they were severely punished for infractions. Serfdom was in many respects equal to slavery. Such an attitude towards the estate, which with its labor supports the rest of society, from small landlords to the royal court, threatened to undermine the productive forces of the state.

Therefore, since the era of Peter I, prominent economists and statesmen have been creating projects to limit corvée. However, these projects have not been implemented so far. The immediate reasons for the creation of the Manifesto are divided into objective and subjective. The objective ones are mainly:

Strengthening landlord arbitrariness and peasant oppression;
The catastrophic inequality of peasants and nobles in rights - the lack of rights of the former and significant privileges for the latter;
The growth of mass peasant movements, ranging from collective complaints to the tsar from the peasants and ending with armed uprisings.

Six such complaints were submitted to Paul in March 1797, on the eve of the coronation. The main subjective reason is the personality of the king himself, who was, if not a full-fledged liberal, then an ardent seeker of justice. Long before his accession to the throne, he equipped two of his estates - Gatchina and Pavlovsk, guided by the same considerations as in the Manifesto: he introduced not even a three-day, but a two-day corvee, built several free schools and hospitals, several churches, allowed the peasants to free from corvee time to go fishing.

Consequences of the Manifesto

The manifesto on the three-day corvee, despite its progressive nature (especially since it was the first document of its kind in Russia), led to contradictory results.

In general, it could be expected that the situation of the peasants would improve significantly and serfdom would acquire a “human face”.
But at the same time, the vague wording of the Manifesto and the lack of the legal status of a gentleman and a serf made the decree “optional” for execution: it follows from it that the three-day corvee is seen by the king as sufficient to meet the needs of the nobles, so its text sounds like an official recommendation - and no more. A direct ban is indicated only for work on Sundays. Historians and jurists still debate whether the Manifesto was a decree at all; but most scholars nevertheless came to the conclusion that the royal document could not have been simple friendly advice.
For some unknown reason (most likely, in a hurry or thoughtlessness), the compilers of the document only included a ban on corvée on Sunday, missing state and church holidays. This oversight was corrected only by Alexander I in 1818.
Paradoxically, the Manifesto, in fact, ordered to worsen the situation of the peasants of Little Russia, because in this region a two-day corvée was traditionally practiced. This fact was subsequently used by Ukrainian nationalists as compromising evidence against Russian authorities(both imperial and modern); however, it is quite clear that this omission also occurred due to thoughtlessness.
For all its shortcomings, the Manifesto, like the decrees that followed it, undermined the foundations of serfdom and laid the ground for further transformations, up to

The social history of the 18th century in Russia is characterized by tendencies to strengthen serfdom, as well as to increase the role of the nobility. The final consolidation of the serfdom took place during the reign of Catherine the Great. Her son, Emperor Paul 1, understood that such a trend carries many risks for state development. It was he who took the first law in the history of Russia, limiting the number of days per week for peasant owners in which they can use the labor of their serfs. The article is devoted to the description of the reasons for the adoption of the Manifesto on the three-day corvee, its main points, as well as the analysis of the results of the adoption of this document.

Reasons for acceptance

Even before becoming emperor, Paul 1 showed by his own example how attitudes towards the peasantry could be changed: he introduced a two-day corvee on his lands and allowed the peasants to engage in other trades, including trade. When Emperor Paul 1 began to think about the fact that the lack of rights of serfs could create a number of problems for the state system of Russia. There were a number of reasons for restricting corvée:

position of the nobility and peasantry. The majority of the population were disenfranchised peasants, at the same time, the nobles for several centuries have become a very strong and influential estate.
exploitation of the peasantry. Corvee was not limited, there were no laws that would force the landowners to reduce the days of working off.
Riots and uprisings. The difficult situation of the peasantry led to a great surge of social indignation, which began peacefully (petitions, complaints), but due to the lack of measures, they could turn into active protests.
Lack of motivation among peasants. Due to the marriage of time, the peasants did not have the opportunity to develop their plots, which manifested itself in the form of low yields.
Religion. This is not the main factor, but the fact that, due to lack of time, the peasants worked on Sunday, this undermined their faith in the ideals of Orthodoxy.

Considering all this, on April 5, 1797, Paul 1 adopted a document that went down in history as the "Manifesto on the three-day corvée."

The essence of the manifesto

This Manifesto contained two main provisions:

It is forbidden to force a peasant to work on Sunday.
The remaining six days of the week had to be divided in half: three days the peasant worked for the landowner, three for himself.

Further among historians there are great discussions. After all, in fact, in the Manifesto on a three-day corvee, the norm of 3 by 3 was proclaimed as a recommendation. Because of this, some landowners continued to use their system, only leaving Sunday to the peasant. However, given that the text is called the Manifesto, and was adopted by an absolute monarch, it means that it had the character of a binding law. According to the norms of the Russian Empire, a decree signed by the emperor was considered binding, even if it did not contain information about the punishment.

The reaction of the population

Many Russian officials, including those from the generation of the "Catherine" era, welcomed the manifesto with joy, calling it "a new stage in the life of Russia." Representatives of foreign states (for example, a representative of the Prussian embassy, Wegener), who were at that moment in the country, expressed support for the emperor, saying that this was the beginning of peasant reforms. In the 1820s, the Decembrists called the Manifesto about the three-day corvee one of the most progressive in relation to the peasantry.

Manifest Results

The main problem of this Manifesto was that it was perceived ambiguously, sometimes even contradictory. In fact, there was no control over its execution. That is, many landowners really perceived it as a recommendation. In addition, in some regions of the Russian Empire there was a two-day corvee, now the landowners received official permission to increase it.

Despite several negative points, in general, the Manifesto on the three-day corvee can be considered progressive. Part of the peasantry was able to take advantage of this law, working hard in their three days, earning capital. Some peasants spent their free time on crafts, becoming, for example, merchants.

If we analyze the results of the Manifesto as a whole, then we can say that at the local level it did not bring the desired results, since it was not mandatory for implementation. If you look from the standpoint of the entire history of Russia, that is, in fact, at the global level, then this Manifesto was the first attempt to eliminate serfdom. That is why it is called the first constitution of Russia.