Mahtra War

The Mahtra War (Estonian: Mahtra sõda) was a peasant insurgency at Mahtra Manor (now in Rapla County, 60 km or 37 mi from Tallinn) in Estonia in the Russian Empire from May to July 1858.

The revolt was suppressed. Fourteen peasants were wounded and seven killed in the conflict, and three later died from their wounds. The military casualties included 13 soldiers wounded and one officer killed. Sixty of 65 peasants were sentenced to death by a court martial in Tallinn. Baltic governor-general Alexander Arkadyevich Suvorov later reduced the sentences of 44 peasants to corporal punishment, 35 of whom were sentenced to exile in Siberia, while the remaining 21 defendants were released.

Historical context

In the Governorate of Estonia, serfdom 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 corvée 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 unrest, including the Mahtra revolt.

The events significantly influenced the work of the committees working on emancipation of the serfs in Russia.

In culture

• Mahtra Peasant Museum (Estonian: Mahtra Talurahvamuuseum) [1], [2]
• Eduard Vilde, Mahtra sõda (The Mahtra War), historical novel (1902; Russian translation: Эдуард Вильде, Война в Махтра, 1950, Tallinn, publisher: Художественная литeратура и искусство)
• Anatoli Garshnek, "Mahtra sõda" (The Mahtra War) (1958), cantata