I apologize if this has been asked about before, feel free to delete it if I've violated any rules. Also, apologies for any formatting issues, as I am on mobile.
I'm currently reading "A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution" by Orlando Figes. He's currently talking about the disconnect between the crown and the aristocracy, and the peasantry, and how the emancipation of the serfs in Russia led to the beginning of a capitalist approach to agriculture. (I hope that's clear, I can go into more detail if needed.)
At one point in the text, Figes makes this comment: "Most of the squires...proved incapable of transforming their landed estates into viable commercial farms once the Emancipation had deprived them of the prop of free serf labour and forced them into the capitalist world." Okay, that makes sense. But then he continues, "They could not follow in the footsteps of the Prussian Junkers."
That's it. No further explanation or context given. I'm sure many of his readers are familiar with the agricultural systems of the Prussian Junkers, but I'm definitely not. Google searches led me to random papers on paywall-restricted sites like JSTOR, but no concise explanation for laymen like me.
So my (long-winded) question is this: what did the Prussian Junkers do re: emancipation of serfs and adapting their agricultural economy to a more capitalist system? And why could the Russian landed gentry not follow in their footsteps?
(Not sure what citation method you all prefer. My quotes come from the first American edition of Figes' book, from Viking in 1996. Pages 46-47.)
Thank you, everyone!
A good history of the development of rural Prussia in the Early Modern Era through the middle of the 19th century is William H. Hagen's Ordinary Prussians: Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers, 1500 -- 1840 (Cambridge University Press, 2002). Hagen argues that Junkers embraced commercial agriculture. According to Hagen, capitalist agricultural production emerged in symbiosis with traditional village life (19). Prussian Absolutism did not necessarily oppress the peasant class, and it actually gave them the tools to peacefully resist local aristocratic rule: peasants could access royal courts to enforce existing rights and privileges, guarding against the degradation of their status (651). Junkers were quite willing to embrace new economic ideas, and the nature of the Prussian state was such that common people in rural areas did not need to resort to violence. I know this answer is not terribly detailed: I haven't read Hagen in a long time and I'm working from old notes, but the a good answer to your question would lie in his work, though his book is a tome of over 650 pages.