So radical a revolution could not be effected without bringing with it serious perturbations. It is enough to recollect what we have said of the venality of the public functionaries, in order to guess what the Bessarabians must have had to endure at the hands of that multitude of Russian employes who took up their quarters in the towns and villages. The intrigues and pettyfogging artifices of these men complicated more and more the already numerous lawsuits; and the daily increasing perplexities in the relations between the landowners, the freedmen, and the serfs, overthrew all the elements of the national wealth. To all these causes of disorganisation were added the military occupation of the country in the time of the Turkish war, and this was the more onerous because the rich procured themselves exemption for money, and the whole burden fell on the petty proprietors and the peasants.
When the country fell into this state of exhaustion, the boyars were not slow to remonstrate: and they did so with such vehemence, on the occasion of the journey of the Emperor Nicholas, in 1827, that he resolved to have a commission appointed, to report to him at St. Petersburg, on the grievances of the province. The election of the commissioners took place immediately; but as the boyars revived their old pretensions, whilst the government strenuously adhered to its system of political unity, it was not possible to come to an understanding respecting the ameliorations to be introduced into the administrative regimen. The elections, after being frequently annulled and recommenced, produced no result, and the last commission named was finally dissolved without having been able to repair to St. Petersburg.
All these long altercations necessarily produced asperity in the relations of Bessarabia with the superior administration, and at last the imperial government, weary of these discussions, was ready to take any measure to reduce the Moldavians to the most absolute political and administrative nullity, even to the prejudice of the national prosperity. To this end it was determined to cut off the last means of influence which serfdom afforded to the boyars, by issuing an ukase, by virtue of which all serfs were declared free, with the right of residing where they pleased. The consequences of this abrupt emancipation were, of course, disastrous to agriculture. Urged by intrigues, or by the chimerical hope of bettering their physical condition, the serfs abandoned their old abodes to settle elsewhere, and chiefly on the lands recently acquired by the Russians. In this way many villages were left deserted, the lands remained untilled, and the landowners found themselves suddenly deprived of the hands necessary for their work.