On the Question of the Practice of Increasing Peasant Payments in the Process of Emancipating Serfs in the St. Petersburg District

In the process of implementing the peasant reform of 1861 and carrying out the redemption operation, the basis for determining the size of peasant allotments and payments was the articles of Local regulations, which regulated the procedure for allocating land to peasants and establishing the amount of duties, depending on the pre-reform situation and local norms. Deviations from these rules, contained in charters and redemption documents, were relatively rare in the province and on the periphery of the capital provinces. They were considered in the Provincial presences for Peasant Affairs and the Main Redemption Institution. At the same time, cases of a significant increase in post-reform peasant payments «in excess of the norm» were quite common in the metropolitan St. Petersburg district and became the subject of special discussion in the Ministry of Finance and Internal Affairs. The article considers examples of increasing the size of peasant payments during the implementation of the peasant reform in 1861–1863 and the subsequent redemption operation. The decisions taken on this issue later became a precedent in the practical Implementation Of the redemption operation.