In 1810, a household serf named Venedikt Malashchev was granted freedom. His owner, Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, had recently died, and her heir, Prince Vorontsov, then manumitted forty of his new serfs in honor of her memory, and in thanks for her bequest. In his later memoir, Malashchev expressed his extreme surprise—he had not, after all, requested such freedom—as well as his deep gratitude to Vorontsov.1 As he recalled, he almost immediately went to the local authorities in Moscow and formally changed his legal social status by registering as not just a resident of the town, but a member of one of its estate-based societies. In thereby exchanging his old identity for a new one, he was fulfilling a legal duty, “for according to the current IMPERIAL decree, people manumitted by their lords, having decided on a way of life, must right away register in a society ... and therefore I was accepted into the society of artisans!”2
Malashchev’s story is one variation on the theme of serf manumission, the fact of which has long been ignored by a historiographical focus on the restrictions of serfdom. Manumission has appeared in the historiography of Russian serfdom, but usually only in two contexts ...
