Mahtra War ( et, Mahtra sõda) was a peasant insurgency at the

Mahtra Mahtra is a village in Rapla Parish, Rapla County, Estonia. It has a population of 92 (as of 1 January 2010). Between 1991 and 2017 (until the administrative reform of Estonian municipalities) the village was located in Juuru Parish. In 1858 a p ...

estate (now in

Rapla County Rapla County ( et, Rapla maakond or ''Raplamaa'') is one of the fifteen counties of Estonia. It is situated in the western part of the country and borders Järva County to the east, Pärnu County to the south, Lääne County to the west, and Har ...

, 60 km from

Tallinn Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju ' ...

) in

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...

, in the then

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

in May–July 1858. The revolt was suppressed using the regular army, 14 peasants were wounded and 7 killed on site, 3 died later of wounds. The military casualties included 13 soldiers wounded and 1 officer killed. 60 of 65 peasant defendants were sentenced to death by a court-martial in Tallinn. Baltic governor-general Suvorov later reduced the sentences of 44 peasants to corporal punishment, 35 of whom were sentenced to exile in

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...

, while the remaining 21 defendants were set free.

Historical context

In the

Governorate of Estonia The Governorate of Estonia, also known as the Governorate of Esthonia (Pre-reformed rus, Эстля́ндская губе́рнія, r=Estlyandskaya guberniya); et, Eestimaa kubermang was a governorate in the Baltic region, along with th ...

serfdom Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery, which develop ...

was abolished in 1816 (in comparison, in the whole Russian Empire it was abolished in 1861), however the land was not redistributed among the peasants and the ''

corvée Corvée () is a form of unpaid, forced labour, that is intermittent in nature lasting for limited periods of time: typically for only a certain number of days' work each year. Statute labour is a corvée imposed by a state for the purposes of ...

'' labor was preserved (until 1876). The March 19, 1856 manifesto of Tsar Alexander II spoke about further agrarian reforms, but the implementation was slow, and this sparked the unrest, including the Mahtra revolt. The events significantly influenced the work of the committees working on the project of the emancipation of the serfs in Russia.

In culture

*Mahtra Peasant Museum ( et, Mahtra Talurahvamuuseum

*

Eduard Vilde Eduard Vilde ( – 26 December 1933) was an Estonian writer, a pioneer of critical realism in Estonian literature, and a diplomat. Author of classics such as ''The War in Mahtra'' and ''The Milkman from Mäeküla''. He was one of the most revere ...

, "War in Mahtra", historical novel (1902, Estonian title: “Mahtra sõda"; Russian translation: Эдуард Вильде, Война в Махтра, 1950,

, publisher: "Художественная литeратура и искусство") *Anatoli Garshnek, "Mahtra sõda" ahtra War(1958),

cantata A cantata (; ; literally "sung", past participle feminine singular of the Italian verb ''cantare'', "to sing") is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir. The meaning of ...

References

{{European Peasant Wars (19th and 20th centuries) 1850s in Estonia 19th century in the Russian Empire Rebellions against the Russian Empire Peasant revolts Conflicts in 1858 1858 in Europe 19th-century rebellions Rapla Parish Kreis Harrien Military history of Estonia