The largest, and most disprivileged, segment of society was of course the peasantry. Apart from the economic problems bequeathed by emancipation, the peasants also suffered from legal discrimination (special obligations like the poll-tax, for example) and subordination to the commune. Despite the reformers’ attempt to inhibit a sudden social transformation of the traditional village, the peasantry none the less did undergo some far-reaching changes. One was a gradual stratification; despite the levelling effect of the commune, the village came to have its own ‘have-much’ and ‘have-nothing’ families, along with the mass of ‘have-littles’. And the families themselves began to change, with the gradual breakup of the patriarchal, extended family and formation of smaller, independent family units. Peasant society also came inexorably to reflect changes in urban culture, as increased contact with the city (especially through seasonal labour) helped to disseminate a new material culture, attitudes, and values to the countryside. Partly because of such changes, but also because of the Universal Military Training Act (which reduced service on the basis of education) and the opportunities open to the literate and schooled, the peasantry began to abandon its traditional antipathy towards the school as a useless luxury. Although the reduction of illiteracy was an enormous task, the new schools did have a distinct impact.
Another group, the workers, had antecedents in the pre-reform era, with some forebears going back to the metallurgical and textile plants of the eighteenth century. The steady, if modest, industrial growth from the 1850s to the 1880s brought a substantial increase in the number of workers, from roughly 700,000 in 1865 to 1,432,000 in 1890. While many of these were seasonal (returning part of the year to cultivate their communal plot of land), a small but growing number had been born in the city or had permanently relocated there. The workers also displayed the explosive volatility for which they would later become so renowned; the St Petersburg textile strike of 1870, a watershed in Russian labour history, heralded the onset of a new era of spontaneous outbursts and, ultimately, more conscious and organized strikes.
The condition and consciousness of women, more generally, underwent a significant transformation during these decades. From the mid-1850s the impact of the women’s movement in the West gradually became apparent, especially among those in élite status groups. By 1866 the first women’s journal appeared, followed shortly after by a ‘Proclamation’ (admittedly penned by a man) and the major infusion of radical women into the revolutionary movement. Still more important was the emergence of female professionals; though banned from the civil service, they appeared in increasing numbers in certain professions (especially teaching), sometimes acquired a Western medical degree, or turned to a popular female career equally popular in the West—monasticism and church service. But all this change had to overcome the opposition of society and regime, which still excluded women from the university and resisted proposals to improve their civil rights. Typical was the failure to reform the laws on divorce and separation, which were highly restrictive and left many women defenceless against abusive spouses and loveless marriages.
The empire’s numerous minorities had long been a subject of intense concern. Although the ‘Great Russians’ comprised a majority (and, together with Ukrainians and Belorussians, nearly three-quarters of the population in European Russia), the empire had a huge and highly differentiated bloc of minorities. Some, like the Ukrainians and Belorussians, were Orthodox by faith and, despite some stirrings in a tiny nationalist intelligentsia, as yet did not pose a serious threat to the territorial integrity of the realm or its internal political stability. And many of the ‘internal’ minorities, located within Russian-dominated areas, had already been Russified to a considerable degree. The government also sought to suppress neo-Slavophile chauvinism, especially demands for repressive measures against various minorities; typical was Alexander’s sharp rebuke in 1869 to Iurii Samarin for his inflammatory book,
