Chapter 7.1.3: The Countryside in the 18th century

It took about 50 years for the countryside to recover from the Great Northern War. The decreased population kept the prices of agricultural products and therefore the income of the manors small.

In the second half of the 18th century the price of grain started to grow and by the end of the century almost doubled. The capital of the Russian Empire, St. Petersburg, became the new main market for the manors. The increase in the price of grain also increased the price of land and manors became attractive for investors again. This increased the push for turning farm fields into manor fields. Innovations in technology and more efficient management was held back by the traditional serfdom system.

From the end of the 1760s onwards, the large-scale construction of fancy manor buildings began, as a result of the Russian economy opening for the vodka production in the Baltic provinces. Vodka production became the main source of income for the manors. By the end of the 18th century the total output of the Livonian Governorate vodka production was 20 million litres annually, which consumed a third of all the grain production.



Õisu manor, 1760s.



Maidla manor, 1760s.



Saue manor, 1770s



Palmse manor, built in the 1780s.



Vääna manor, from the 1790s.


In the 1820s, the price of grain started to decrease. The price of vodka plummeted as well, as a consequence of cheaper vodka production in the interior governorates of the empire.

The Baltic German nobles were very loyal to the Russian Empire whilst also promoting their own identity. Interestingly enough, the first language noble children learnt tended to be Estonian, as they were cared for by nurses amongst the peasants. They learned German later, when mothers started to homeschool the children. Baltic-Germans made up about 1% of the countryside population.


The manor owners had a strong paternalistic mentality when it came to the relations between the farm and the manor. The peasants were seen as utterly incompetent, unable to manage their own affairs, as well as lazy, greedy and indifferent. Manor owners believed that they had the duty to guide the peasants, punish them when they made mistakes and defend them from external threats. In essence, this mindset was not that different from the one used in American plantations.


A good reminder of the situation in the countryside was the so-called Rosen declaration in 1739. A councillor in the Livonian landtag called Otto von Rosen declared that the peasants had been serfs since the conquest of the land, that the peasants, the farms and all the property belonged to the manor and the manor only, that the manor owners had the right to treat the peasants however they saw fit, to inherit or sell them and that there was no limit to the demands that manors could impose to the farms.


The peasants measured their wealth by the amount of land and number of animals they controlled. No one was rich enough to afford luxury items.



Sassi-Jaani farm in the Estonian Open Air Museum, from the 18th century.

The push for the improvement of the social situation of the peasants began in the 1750s. In 1765, on the order of Empress Catherine the Great, the general governor of Livonia George Browne gave a list of demands to the Livonian knighthood. Manor owners had to acknowledge the existence of farm property, limits to the amount of both tributes and manor work were imposed and peasants could be punished only within “Christian and humane limits”. The nobles were divided on the issue. On one hand, they declared that peasants remained “slaves in full accordance to Roman law”, but on the other they accepted the demands. The acceptance was portrayed as a voluntary act of mercy on the side of the nobles and therefore the peasants had to be especially loyal to their lords. This would be a running theme in all the upcoming peasant reforms.


The peasants did not get full property rights however. They were only allowed to keep property and produce to themselves if they did not own anything to the manor, as well as had to acquire a permit from the manor to sell their animals.


During 1783, the head tax was extended to the Baltic provinces. This meant that every soul, peasants included, had to pay a tax to the state. This new law caused confusion amongst peasants, many believed that with it the peasant population got a new lord in the form of the emperor and did not have to listen to local nobles anymore. This caused some insubordination in some manors, which grew the most violent in Räpina, where military units came to restore order.


The head tax was not the only public duty, peasants also had to provide soldiers, transport military units, fix roads, bridges, churches, post offices and schools.


Although the advent of the manufacture or small scale factories had begun in the Swedish era, with water powered sawmills and grain mills, rope weaving sheds and even a glass making manufacture popping up, the wave of opening manufacturers waned by the 1680s. With the beginning of the Russian era, a new wave began.


During 1713-1732 the admiralty workshops were built in the port of Tallinn. In 1734 a paper manufacture was built in Räpina, which later became a factory and is now the oldest still operating industrial enterprise in Estonia.


Räpina paper factory.