The revolution was scheduled for the summer. Why, 160 years ago, contrary to all expectations, Russia did not rebel?

"The agrarian issue is the basis of the bourgeois revolution in Russia and causes a rational feature of this revolution."

V.I. Lenin

This was the rare case when the revolution was not only expected by the whole of Russia, but its time was definitely determined. “The people will uncontrollably rise in the summer of 1863,” the Listen of the Executive Committee of the Earth and Will said, and this prophecy was repeatedly duplicated by a variety of people, including from the opposite political flank.

“I feel in some anxious situation, persecuted by the thought of the fall of Russia, to which its improper government and the meaninglessness of management lead!” - The Member of the State Council wrote in the diary of the Serene Prince Menshikov . The cause of these hopes and fears was the liberation of the peasants, or rather, the conditions with which this liberation was arranged.

Alexander II himself, signing in February 1861 the manifesto on the abolition of serfdom, was also not at all seduced about the expected reaction of the released. On the report of the Ministry of Internal Affairs that so far everything is calm in the village, he imposed a resolution: “Now this is so, but when the peasants see that their expectations, i.e. Freedom by their understanding, did not come true, then ... "

About how serfs imagined freedom, the emperor was in detail informed by reports of the III branches: the division of the entire landlord land between peasants and plus 100 rubles in silver (amounts, of course, varyed depending on the province) for every peasant yard. And since nothing of the kind was supposed, in January 1861, meetings of the “power” departments for urgent measures in case of unrest were continuously in the capital.

Indeed, when the peasants read out a manifesto, they at first refused to believe that this was the coveted “will”.

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