Military settlement

Military settlements (Russian: Военные поселения) represented a special organization of the Russian military forces in 1810–1857, which allowed the combination of military service and agricultural employment.

The beginning of the reform

Military settlements were introduced by Alexander I for the purpose of creating a reserve of trained military forces. The first military settlement was established by Count Alexei Arakcheyev in 1810 in the Klimovichi uyezd of the Mogilev guberniya. The organization of military settlements had been underway on a large scale since 1816. In 1817, Count Arakcheyev was officially appointed head of all the military settlements in Russia.

Internal organization

The quartered military forces were being formed from among married soldiers, who had already served in the army for no less than six years, and local men (mainly, peasants) between 18 and 45 years of age. Both of these categories were called master settlers (поселяне-хозяева). The rest of the locals of the same age, who had been fit for military service, but had not been chosen, were being enlisted as assistants to their masters and were a part of reserve military subdivisions. The children of the military settlers were being enlisted in the cantonists at the age of 7. Upon reaching the age of 18, they were transferred to the military units. The settlers would retire at the age of 45 and continue to serve in hospitals and other establishments.

Each military settlement consisted of 60 interconnected houses (дома-связи) with a regiment of 228 men. Each such house had four masters with indivisible household economy. The life in a military settlement was strictly controlled. The peasants had to undergo military training, which caused tardiness and unseasonableness in agricultural activities. Corporal punishment was a common phenomenon. Military settlements were being created on fiscal lands (казённые земли), which would often provoke riots among the state-owned peasants (казённые крестьяне), like the ones in Kholynskaya and Vysotskaya volosts of the Novgorod guberniya in 1817 and among the Bug Cossacks in 1817–1818. Alexander I, however, stood his ground and announced that "military settlements will be created, even if we have to pave the road from Saint Petersburg to Chudov [today’s Chudovo; some 100 km away from Petersburg] with dead bodies". By 1825, Russia had already built military settlements in Petersburg, Novgorod (along the Volkhov River and near Staraya Russa), Mogilev, Sloboda Ukraine, Kherson, Ekaterinoslav and other guberniyas. They made up for almost one fourth of the Russian army (one third, according to other accounts) and accumulated some 32 million rubles worth of savings, but still were not able to satisfy the army’s recruiting needs.

Riots in military settlements

Military settlements never became an anti-resistance tool in the hands of the government, on the contrary, they turned into resistance hotbeds themselves. In June 1819, the Chuguyev regiment uprising took place amidst the Sloboda Ukraine military settlement, which would then spread over to the Taganrog regiment okrug a month later. The rebels were demanding from the government to let them be what they had been before the reform, capturing their confiscated lands, beating, and ousting their superiors. Count Arakcheyev was put in charge of the punitive expedition, which would result in the arrest of more than 2,000 men. 313 people were subjected to military tribunal, 275 of which (204, according to other accounts) would be sentenced to corporal punishment by 12,000 strikes each with metal rods (шпицрутены). 25 men are known to have died during the execution of this sentence; the rest were transferred to Orenburg.

In July 1831, one of the largest military riots in the Russian army of the 1st half of the 19th century took place in a military settlement near Staraya Russa. It was caused by cholera outbreak, which would in turn provoke a number of "cholera riots". The military settlement was overrun by the rebels, who then court-martialed their superiors and executed them. The rebellion spread over the majority of military settlements of the Novgorod guberniya. The battalion, sent by the government to pacify the rebels, took the side of the insurgents. Soon, the authorities suppressed the uprising and severely punished those who took part in it. A third of the local villagers who had participated in the rebellion were subjected to running the gauntlet and exiled to Siberia. Many people were sent to katorga to the fortress of Kronstadt.

Abolition

In 1831, many military settlements were renamed to okrugs of the plowing soldiers (округа пахотных солдат), which would lead to an actual elimination of most of the military settlements. In 1857, all of the military settlements and okrugs of the plowing soldiers were abolished.