ring abuses; and during the reign of
Nicholas no less than six committees were formed at different times to
consider the question. But the practical result of these efforts was
extremely small. The custom of giving grants of land with peasants was
abolished; certain slight restrictions were placed on the authority
of the proprietors; a number of the worst specimens of the class
were removed from the administration of their estates; a few who
were convicted of atrocious cruelty were exiled to Siberia;* and some
thousands of serfs were actually emancipated; but no decisive radical
measures were attempted, and the serfs did not receive even the right of
making formal complaints. Serfage had, in fact, come to be regarded as
a vital part of the State organisation, and the only sure basis for
autocracy. It was therefore treated tenderly, and the rights and
protection accorded by various ukazes were almost entirely illusory.

*Speranski, for instance, when Governor of the province of
Penza, brought to justice, among others, a proprietor who
had caused one of his serfs to be flogged to death, and a
lady who had murdered a serf boy by pricking him with a
pen-knife because he had neglected to take proper care of a tame
rabbit committed to his charge!--Korff, "Zhizn Speranskago,"
II., p. 127, note.

If we compare the development of serfage in Russia and in Western
Europe, we find very many points in common, but in Russia the movement
had certain peculiarities. One of the most important of these was caused
by the rapid development of the Autocratic Power. In feudal Europe,
where there was no strong central authority to control the Noblesse, the
free rural Communes entirely, or almost entirely, disappeared. They were
either appropriated by the nobles or voluntarily submitted to powerful
landed proprietors or to monasteries, and in this way the whole of the
reclaimed land, with a few rare exceptions, became the property of the
nobles or of the Church. In Russia we find the same movement, but it
was arrested by the Imperial power before all the land had been
appropriated. The nobles could reduce to serfage the peasants settled on
their estates, but they could not take possession of the free Communes,
because such an appropriation would have infringed the rights and
diminished the revenues of the Tsar. Down to the commencement of the
last century, it is true, large grants of land with serfs were made