impede land consolidation and enclosures. ii) The question is an important one, in the context of the Gerschenkron-Gregory debate: (1) First, to repeat: Since Gerschenkron focuses exclusively on Post-Emancipation peasant agriculture under traditional communal farming, within the obshchina-mir system, he certainly gives the reader the impression that the government had sought to protect and promote this system, if for fiscal and administrative reasons, to be considered later. (2) On the other hand the statistics that Paul Gregory provides make sense and they do make sense only if a significant proportion of – – agricultural production, after 1880, took place outside the regime of communal agriculture. (3) though we should also reflect that historically communal agriculture elsewhere had not prevented agricultural growth. iii) What government emancipation policies did to promote enclosures, even if unintentionally: (1) Government compensation in the form of redemption bonds for only 80% of assessed value, of the land plus capital in the form of servile labour, meant that the serf seeking both personal redemption (liberation) and secure property rights, had two choices: to borrow or some other way acquire the remaining 20% of the capitalized value to secure both land and liberty, or yield to the landlord anywhere from 35% to 75% of his tenancy lands (i.e., in the form of those interspersed and scattered plough strips in the great open fields. (2) As we saw earlier, peasant transfers to landlords of such Open Field tenancy lands: amounted to 13% of agricultural lands in the Russian Empire, minus Poland (where the peasantry clearly had made very substantial gains. such transfers to enclosing landlords was 23% in Ukraine and were as high as 41% in the Volga region: from Saratov to Samara (Kuibyshev ) clearly indicting (at least, to me) that where the prospects for commercialized agriculture were high, and where land productivity was higher, the landlords engaging in Emancipation (with Redemption bonds) had much stronger incentives to encourage or force servile tenants to cede lands to them (3) The question of intermixing demesne (domain) and peasant tenancy strips: As I also argued though admittedly without conclusive evidence one effect of Peasant Emancipation under the Redemption Laws was – –
impede land consolidation and enclosures. ii) The question is an important one, in the context of the Gerschenkron-Gregory debate: (1) First, to repeat: Since Gerschenkron focuses exclusively on Post-Emancipation peasant agriculture under traditional communal farming, within the obshchina-mir system, he certainly gives the reader the impression that the government had sought to protect and promote this system, if for fiscal and administrative reasons, to be considered later. (2) On the other hand the statistics that Paul Gregory provides make sense – and they do make sense – only if a significant proportion of agricultural production, after 1880, took place outside the regime of communal agriculture. (3) though we should also reflect that historically communal agriculture elsewhere had not prevented agricultural growth. iii) What government emancipation policies did to promote enclosures, even if unintentionally: (1) Government compensation in the form of redemption bonds for only 80% of assessed value, of the land plus capital in the form of servile labour, meant that the serf seeking both personal redemption (liberation) and secure property rights, had two choices: to borrow or some other way acquire the remaining 20% of the capitalized value to secure both land and liberty, or yield to the landlord anywhere from 35% to 75% of his tenancy lands (i.e., in the form of those interspersed and scattered plough strips in the great open fields. (2) As we saw earlier, peasant transfers to landlords of such Open Field tenancy lands: amounted to 13% of agricultural lands in the Russian Empire, minus Poland (where the peasantry clearly had made very substantial gains. such transfers to enclosing landlords was 23% in Ukraine and were as high as 41% in the Volga region: from Saratov to Samara (Kuibyshev ) clearly indicting (at least, to me) that where the prospects for commercialized agriculture were high, and where land productivity was higher, the landlords engaging in Emancipation (with Redemption bonds) had much stronger incentives to encourage or force servile tenants to cede lands to them (3) The question of intermixing demesne (domain) and peasant tenancy strips: As I also argued – though admittedly without conclusive evidence – one effect of Peasant Emancipation under the Redemption Laws was
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