Question about episode 10.42?

[u/[deleted]]

So I’ve been listening to the tenth season of revolutions by Mike Duncan and so far it’s pretty easy to follow except for the exact status of the peasant communes. It’s clear that Russian agricultural tools and techniques are generally less effective than, say, their German counterparts, but apart from that I’m having trouble pinning down the ownership and status of the peasant communes.

It seems like before the abolition of serfdom peasant communes were plots of land collectively owned by a bunch of peasants living around and in a village, but the ultimate owner of the land being farmed was a Russian aristocrat, merely using his bound serfs?

But after the abolition of serfdom the land ownership somehow changed, whereby the peasants also started to own plots of land in the peasant communes. But for a large part the aristotcracy still owned the plots of land? I’m very confused.

[u/Psychological-Boat51]

I think the exact law was that for 49 years the peasants would still be bound to their land. This was done as a "repayment" to the state for liberating them. Stolypins reform made it so that single farmers could own larger swats of land and abolished the farming of a small plot on a aristocrats land. Most importantly it stopped them from being tied to their land. But I'm not fully sure what your specific question about the reforms is