Serfdom summary. Serfdom in Central Europe

On February 19, 1861, slavery ended in Russia: Alexander II signed a manifesto on the abolition of serfdom. Meduza asked the educational project InLiberty, which considers that day one of seven key dates in the history of Russia, answer shameful questions about serfdom.

Serfdom is slavery?

Yes, at least for many contemporaries of serfdom. In the famous “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow,” Radishchev wrote: “Farmers and slaves are among us; We do not recognize in them fellow citizens equal to us, we have forgotten the person in them.”

Was there serfdom similar to American slavery? Not really. The law formally (but not always in practice) protected serfs from excessive exactions and violence of the owner. Serfs, unlike slaves, who were in full personal ownership of the owner, supported themselves, giving part of their income - in money or products - to the owners of the land to which they were attached.

The word "slavery" is eventually replaced by "serfdom" and then by the "peasant question." However, this does not change the essence of the matter - if a person can be bought or lost at cards, there is no need to look for complex words to describe his status.

Serfdom was not based on any one law; it developed gradually and eventually became so deeply rooted in the consciousness and everyday life of people that it was very difficult for many to imagine a different state of affairs. This is also why it was so difficult to cancel. It can be said that serfdom was a consequence of the specific situation with property in Russia: all land belonged to the prince and was distributed as remuneration for military or civil service. The peasants who lived and worked on this land were assigned (this is where the word “serf” comes from) to its owner. Serfdom finally took shape by the middle of the 17th century - according to the Council Code of 1649, land owners received the right to indefinitely search for fugitive peasants. This is how the peasants got owners.

The Code has not yet fixed the practice of selling peasants without land, but the state of that time had neither the need nor the desire to prevent it. Already at the end of the 17th century, the sale, exchange or gift of people became commonplace.

How many people in Russia were serfs? Were only subjects of the Russian Empire serfs, or was it possible to buy African slaves?

By 1861 there were 23 million serfs in Russia. There were others - “state”, attached to land that belonged to the treasury, or “appanage”, which belonged to the imperial family. According to the 1857 audit, there were another 29 million people, and in total there were a little more than 60 million living in the country. In some provinces there were almost 70% of serfs, as in Smolensk and Tula, in others there were almost none (in Siberia there were about 4 thousand serfs).

The law did not regulate the ownership of black slaves, although it is known that it was fashionable for aristocratic families in the 18th century to have black servants. However, since the legal institution of “slavery” did not exist in the empire, they were in the position of personally dependent household servants, that is, courtyards. However, some people from Africa also had the status of free people. Everyone knows about Pushkin’s great-grandfather, the “blackamoor” Peter I Abram Petrovich Hannibal, who served the Tsar as a secretary and valet, and then rose to one of the highest general ranks.

You could beat a serf and nothing would happen? What about separating families? What about rape?

Beating serfs was rather in the order of things. The law formally prohibited cruel treatment with serfs, but the government turned a blind eye to this.

Since the time of Elizabeth Petrovna, nobles received the right to punish serfs by exiling them to Siberia, and this was a common practice. In 1827–1846, landowners exiled almost four thousand people to Siberia. Those exiled were counted as recruits, that is, the landowner was free to “cleanse” his possessions of those he did not like, and not lose anything in the process.

Corporal punishment of serfs (especially flogging) was a widespread practice. The Code of Laws of 1832–1845 softened possible punishments serfs - the landowners were left with the following: rods - up to 40 blows, sticks - up to 15 blows, imprisonment in a rural prison for up to 2 months and in a restraining house for up to 3 months, transfer to prison companies for up to 6 months, as well as to recruits and removal forever from the estate and placed at the disposal of the local state administration.

The state punished landowners for abuse of power and peasants for disobedience on approximately the same scale - in 1834–1845, 0.13% of peasants and 0.13% of landowners from the total number of both in the country were convicted throughout Russia.

I don’t want to list the various methods of bullying - suffice it to say that among them are rape, home torture, home shooting range with the direct participation of serfs, baiting with dogs, and so on. But special atrocities and sadism were rather the exception. Here the landowner Daria Saltykova achieved great “success”, having tortured different ways several dozen serfs. Among the favorite means of punishment were flogging, dousing with boiling water, hot curling irons, hair pulling, and beating the offenders with logs.

Catherine II decided to make an example out of the investigation into the Saltykova case. The investigation was conducted against 138 possible killed and maimed peasants; 38 deaths at the hands of Saltykova were considered definitely proven. The Empress herself wrote the verdict - after public punishment At the pillory, Saltykova was placed in a monastery, where she died, having spent 33 years in captivity.

Could a serf be a rich man? How can you describe the standard of living of the average serf? Could he redeem himself and stop being a serf?

History knows examples of peasants who became rich. One of them was the serf Nikolai Shipov, who left behind memoirs (this is very rare). Shipov, apparently, had considerable entrepreneurial talent: together with other peasants from his settlement, Shipov transferred to a quitrent and went to the Bashkir steppes to buy and drive flocks of sheep from there. This brought him such income that he - along with other peasants - offered the landowner a ransom from his dependence. The master refused. Shipov recalled:

“One day a landowner and his wife came to our settlement. As usual, rich peasants, dressed in festive style, came to him with a bow and various gifts; there were women and maidens there, all dressed up and adorned with pearls. The lady looked at everything with curiosity and then, turning to her husband, said: “Our peasants have such elegant dresses and jewelry; They must be very rich, and it doesn’t cost them anything to pay us rent.” Without thinking twice, the landowner immediately increased the amount of the quitrent. Then it got to the point that for each audit soul, more than 110 rubles fell along with worldly expenses. ass<игнациями>quitrent."

The settlement in which Shipov lived paid the landowner 105 thousand rubles in banknotes per year. This is a huge amount - at the prices of the beginning of the 19th century, the time that Shipov talks about, a serf could be bought for 200–400 rubles in ruble notes (Pushchin bought a cart for 125 rubles at that time, and Pushkin received 12 thousand rubles for “Eugene Onegin” fee).

In the book “Conversations about Russian Culture,” Yuri Lotman cites an episode from the memoirs of Nikolai Shipov and writes:

“It is interesting, however, that the landowner strives not so much for his own enrichment as for the ruin of the peasants. Their wealth annoys him, and he is ready to make losses for the sake of his lust for power and tyranny. Later, when Shipov escapes and begins his “odyssey” of wanderings throughout Russia, after each escape, with extraordinary energy and talent, again finding ways to develop enterprises starting from scratch, organizing trade and crafts in Odessa or in the Caucasian army, buying and selling goods from Kalmyks, then in Constantinople, living either without a passport or on a fake passport - the master will literally go bankrupt, sending agents in all directions and spending huge amounts of money from his increasingly scarce resources, just to catch and brutally deal with the rebellious fugitive.”

With the signing of the Decree on free cultivators by Alexander I in 1803, peasants received the right to buy themselves from landowners as entire villages and together with the land. During the reign of Alexander I, 161 deals were concluded and about 47 thousand males, or less than 0.5% of the total peasant population, were freed. Over 39 years, from 1816 to 1854, 957 thousand people received freedom. As historian Boris Mironov writes, in just the first half of the 19th century, about 10% of landowner peasants were freed collectively and individually from serfdom. In 1842–1846, during the period of new modest attempts to legislatively ease the lives of serfs, peasants received the right to buy their freedom both with and without the consent of the landowner, although only if the landowner's estate was sold at auction.

Why did part of society believe that serfs were in the order of things? What arguments could there be for this? Have there been cases where peasants want to remain serfs?

In fact, the conversation that serfdom is immoral and ineffective begins quite early. Catherine II shared the opinion that a person cannot own a person; under Alexander I, the discussion took an even more obvious turn, and by the time of the reign of Alexander II, almost no one doubted the need to abolish serfdom; they argued mainly about the conditions and terms. Another thing is that a hundred years of discussion about serfdom did not lead to tangible results. There were several arguments here: the notorious unpreparedness of people for freedom, the economic complexity of the process (it was unclear where the peasants would get money for ransom), and the size of the empire.

There were cases of completely bizarre logic. In 1803, Dmitry Buturlin, a diplomat and Voltairian, wrote: “There is something so fatherly and tender in mutual relations master and serf, while the relationship between master and hired servant seems to me purely selfish. The free market is an exchange of services for my money, and, having barely paid, I find myself completely freed from any obligation, since I have fulfilled everything I promised. A fleeting transaction that passes without leaving the slightest trace. It carries neither memories of the past nor hope for the future for either side. Our custom dictates that children should be recognized for services rendered by their fathers - that's the past for you. Providing a living for old servants who are no longer working because of their age is the future. All this is much more humane and kinder than a simple money market.”

By the middle of the 19th century, even the secret police joined the discussion between the imperial house and the liberal nobility. Since 1827, created by Nicholas I political police prepares an annual report on the situation in the country for the emperor. If you read these reports in a row, you can clearly see how quickly the attitude towards the “peasant question” changed among the highest Russian bureaucracy:

1. 1827 Several prophecies and predictions circulate among the peasants: they are waiting for their liberator, like the Jews for their Messiah, and gave him the name Metelkina. They say to each other: “Pugachev scared the gentlemen, and Metelkin will mark them.”
2. 1839 The talk is always the same: the tsar wants it, but the boyars resist. This is a dangerous matter, and it would be a crime to hide this danger. The common people today are not the same as they were 25 years ago.<…>In general, serfdom is a powder magazine under the state...
3. 1847 ...The main subject of discussion in all societies was the incomprehensible confidence that Your Majesty would certainly want to give complete freedom to serfs. This confidence instilled in all classes the fear that sudden change the existing order of things, there will be disobedience, unrest and even rioting among the peasants.
4. 1857 Placeless nobles, writers and people of different classes... all enthusiastically glorify the idea of ​​​​the abolition of serfdom. They prove - and quite rightly - that the position of a serf is an unnatural state, contrary to reason and the Christian faith, that a person in slavery ceases to be a person and becomes a thing...

The serfs themselves had different attitudes to what was happening: 23 million people are quite difficult to consider as a homogeneous group. Among the serfs there were more or less enterprising people, more or less ready for a radical change in their daily life, more or less knowing what to do next; there were those who loved their masters and preferred to continue serving.

The peasant reform is called “flawed” and they see this as one of the prerequisites for the revolution. What was flawed about her? This is generally good reform or bad?

The Manifesto and the “Regulations on Peasants” granted personal freedom to serfs, but were compromise (and therefore half-hearted) results of almost four years of work on the bill of provincial committees, a specially established Main Committee for Peasant Affairs and the so-called Editorial Commissions (it was assumed that there would be two commissions - a common and regional, but in fact the work was carried out in one commission, which received the plural in its name from the original plan).

The reform was considered almost flawless for Tsarist Russia: for more or less the first time, completely different people with different ideological views - it was important for Alexander II that the initiative for reform came not from him, but from the nobles. This is how it began: on March 30, 1856, speaking to the district and provincial leaders of the Moscow nobility, Alexander for the first time tries to instill in them this idea: “Rumors are circulating that I want to give freedom to the peasants; this is unfair, and you can say this to everyone left and right; but, unfortunately, a feeling of hostility between the peasants and their landowners exists, and this has led to several cases of disobedience towards the landowners. I am convinced that sooner or later we must come to this. I think that you are of the same opinion as me, therefore, it is much better for this to happen from above than from below.”

This is how the reform begins - not entirely from below, but as much as one can imagine: the role of initiators of the reform is taken by the Lithuanian nobles, partly inspired by the emperor himself through the Vilna governor-general Vladimir Nazimov. On November 20, 1857, in response to the request of the nobles, the emperor sent Nazimov a rescript allowing the nobility to begin developing projects “on the arrangement and improvement of the life of the landowner peasants,” which involved the creation of special committees in the provinces headed by a noble leader.

Laws of February 19, 1861 gave peasants basic civil rights and freed them from humiliating personal dependence on landowners. But the reformers failed to find a simple solution to the land issue. It was assumed that peasants could buy a plot of land from the landowner by receiving a loan from the state for 49 years at 6% per annum. But before the transition to redemption, former serfs were considered “temporarily obligated,” that is, in fact, they “rented” the land from the landowner and continued to pay for it in the form of corvee or quitrent. The transition to land redemption took a total of more than 20 years - since 1883, the remaining temporarily liable people were mainly transferred to forced redemption.

The situation was given additional piquancy by the fact that, having freed themselves from the landowners according to the manifesto of 1861, the peasants remained “dependent” on the peasant community, which regulated them economic activity, often prohibited moving (due to mutual responsibility for paying taxes and redemption payments) and so on.

The opportunity to receive land as real personal property and leave it as an inheritance to one's children had to wait a very long time - until the law of June 14, 1910.

Was the reform “bad” or “good”? You can probably imagine some more correct process with more exact result, but one thing is obvious: after February 19, people can no longer be bought or sold - and this is its main result. They say that the peasants were finally liberated in 1974, when they were first given passports, they say that the reform and its inferiority were the prerequisites for the revolution of 1917 - this is all true, but somewhere there must be a beginning, and this beginning is on February 19, when Slavery was finally abolished in Russia.

Meduza and InLiberty would like to thank Igor Khristoforov, professor at the Higher School of Economics and senior researcher at Princeton University, and Elena Korchmina, a senior researcher at the Higher School of Economics, for their advice

the highest degree of incomplete ownership of the feudal lord over the production worker. Sometimes in the literature, fiefdom is understood as any form of feud. dependencies. K.p. finds legal. expression in 1) attachment of the peasant to the land; 2) the right of the feudal lord to alienate peasants without land; 3) extreme limitation of the peasant’s civil capacity (the feudal lord’s right to part of the peasant’s inheritance and to escheat, the right of corporal punishment, the right of the first night, etc.; peasants lack the right to independently acquire and alienate property, especially real estate, dispose of inheritance, appear in court, etc.). IN different periods history of K. p. and in different countries the role and specific weight of each of these elements were different. Based on certain terms that denoted serfs in Western Europe. right, lies the idea of ​​the personal, literally “physical” belonging of the serf to his master (homines de corpore, Leibeigenen). The idea of ​​alienable property is also embedded in Russian. the concept of “serf”, which began to be used in relation to peasants only from the middle. 17th century, when the practice of selling peasants without land became established. The word "serf" comes from the term "fortress", used in Russia since the end. 15th century to designate documents that secured the rights of alienated property. The expression "K. p.", unknown to laws and regulations, was created in Russian. journalism of the 19th century by modifying the applicable legislation. mat-lah 18-19 centuries. the term “serfdom”, the Crimea defined the privately owned class. peasants From the 18th century Foreign languages ​​have also become widespread in Russia. designations of K. p. - Leibeigenschaft (German) and servage (French), which were understood as synonyms for “serfdom”. In historiography, especially Western, there was a tendency to separate serfs, as unfree, from other categories of dependent peasants, as “personally free.” K. Marx showed that under the feud. in the method of production, the “owner” of the means of production, i.e. the peasant, is always, to one degree or another, personally unfree (see Capital, vol. 3, 1955, pp. 803-04), and K. etc. is only the most complete expression of the unfreedom of the peasant under feudalism. Of great importance for understanding the reasons for the spread (or absence) of peasant ownership and serfdom are the instructions of Marx and Lenin on the connection between this form of feud. dependence with corvee farming, Marx’s indications that serfdom usually arose from corvee labor, and not vice versa (see K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 1955, p. 242; vol. 3, p. 803- 04; V.I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 3, p. 159). The spread of communal property as one of the main forms of feudalism. exploitation during the period of early and developed feudalism was determined by the routine state of agricultural technology and its natural character. The surplus product could be obtained under the condition of the semi-slave dependence of the peasant on the owner of the means of production, who had in a variety of ways non-economic coercion. Hence not only the preservation in a modified form of the old relations of dependence of the serva or colon on their master, but also the spread of this kind of relations to broad layers of previously free direct producers. Produces as it grows. forces and development of commodity money. relations of capitalism already in the period of developed feudalism began to become obsolete and appeared in the period of late feudalism in new soil, at a different stage of development of the world economy and the world market. The main ways of the emergence of K. p. in the early feudal period. Europe had 1) restriction of full ownership of a slave, 2) the transformation of a free peasant-communist into a feudal-dependent, unfree holder. The category of serfs, consisting of serfs, libertines, colons, etc., developed in Spain around the 8th century. Servas in the 6th-8th centuries. initially they differed little from slaves. They were sold with or without land, given as gifts, as dowries. The fugitive serfs were to be returned to certain deadlines . However, the master did not have the right to kill the serf (although he was not responsible for his death during the execution), and the payment for the murder of the serf by a stranger turned from a means of compensating the owner for material losses into a wergeld equal to half a free wergeld. Libertines (freedmen) in the 6th-7th centuries. were, like the serfs, attached to the land and limited in civil rights. legal capacity. In France, the process of enslavement of peasants took place in the 8th-10th centuries. The category of peasantry with the greatest degree of restriction of personal and property rights were the serfs. A number of capitularies issued by Charlemagne and his successors were directed against the escape of the serfs and their concealment, and against the attempts of the serfs to evade the execution of the feud. duties. Throughout Carolingian legislation there is a requirement to search for and return fugitives to their former owners. Servas in the 9th-11th centuries. were transferred and donated along with their allotments (cum hoba sua), that is, they were attached to the land. All in. Italy 8th-10th centuries the main categories of the peasantry (villans, colons, etc.) were in personal - serf or semi-serf - dependence on the feudal lords. In South Italy back in 11 - early. 13th centuries peasants enjoyed freedom of movement. In England, capitalism became established in the 10th and 11th centuries. English village community in laws 10 - early. 11th centuries already acts as a serf. Gebur (serf) was attached to the land and performed corvee duties. The personal dependence of the serf on his master was called "glafordat" here. In Germany, the process of enslavement was already underway in the 8th-11th centuries. In Russia 11-13 centuries. a form of serfdom was the exploitation of rolling (arable) purchases. Some of the smerds were also enslaved. Featured in Rus. In truth, the princely smerd is a feudal-dependent peasant prince. domain - limited in property. and personal rights (his escheated property goes to the prince; the life of a stinker is equal to the life of a serf: for their murder the same fine is imposed - 5 hryvnia). In some countries, K. has not developed (Norway, Sweden). During the period of developed feudalism, the process of enslavement of the peasants intensified, but already at this time the opposite process began - the gradual limitation and partial elimination of the peasantry. The country of “classical servage” was France in the 11th-14th centuries. In the 11th - 13th centuries. Serfs in France numerically prevailed over other layers of the peasantry. They were attached to the land (glebae adscripti), sold, exchanged and given, in most cases with land. The serfs were limited in their rights to buy and sell land and inherit movable property; when leaving the land of the lord, the servant parted with all movable and real estate. The escheat property of the serf passed to the lord (the right of the dead hand - manus mortua). Marriage to a peasant (peasant woman) of another feudal lord was accompanied by the payment of a special duty - forismaritagium. In the conditions of development of commodity money. relations servage became economical. unprofitable, but class. the struggle of the serfs accelerated its abolition. In the 12th-14th centuries. There were frequent cases of serfs leaving their lords without permission. In the 12th-14th centuries. there was an expansion of the right of serfs to sell and buy land, to move from fiefdom to fiefdom. Began in the 13th-14th centuries. the redemption of the servage (the destruction of the right of the dead hand and forismaritagium, the fixation of rent, the increase in ownership rights and freedom of movement) was only within the power of wealthy serfs, because the servage was required to pay all old rents. The redemption of the servage continued in the 15th and 16th centuries, and nevertheless, before 1789, approx. 1.5 million French the peasants still remained in the status of serfs and menmortables. In Germany until the 14th century. there was no single designation for serfs; from the 14th century the term Leibeigenschaft appears to denote serfdom. Contradictory trends in the development of CP are also observed in England. On the one hand, in the 12-13th centuries. Corvee intensified and grew in the 13th century. There was a process of turning Sokmen into serf villans. On the other hand, at the same time there was a commutation of corvee duties. The villans were subjected to brutal exploitation. They were limited in citizenship. rights (exceptio villenagii). Formally, to a certain extent, they were covered by the “protection of peace and justice” carried out by state bodies. power, but in fact they depended almost entirely on the arbitrariness of the feudal lords. In the 14th-15th centuries. Copyright in England was gradually limited and eliminated, although its remnants remained in the status of copyholders. All in. and Avg. Italy in the 11th-12th centuries. The process of liberating serfs from the power of the lords began. In the 13th-14th centuries. Rural communes already existed here, free from private ownership. dependence and property. In the Kingdom of Sicily in the 12th and 13th centuries, on the contrary, the trend of enslavement prevailed, which may be due to the decline of crafts and trade in southern Italy. Laws prohibited sheltering runaway serfs, and a one-year search period was established (special officials, revocatores hominum, returned runaway serfs). The process of development of K. p. in various types was contradictory. parts of Spain. In Leon and Castile 12-13 centuries. in connection with the widespread colonization of new lands, peasants achieved the right to relatively free transition from one landowner to another. In Aragon, at the end. 13th century The Zaragoza Cortes secured the right of feudal lords to dispose of the life and death of their subjects; in the 13th century a number of laws established the serfdom of part of the Catalan peasantry (see Remensy). The abolition of capitalism in Catalonia dates back to the 15th century. For France, England, Spain, North. and Avg. Italy and some other countries are characterized by a gradual restriction and elimination of cultural property towards the end of the period of developed feudalism. Preservation in them in the 14th-15th centuries. Crop farming and attempts to spread it to new layers of the peasantry were, as a rule, caused by the desire of the feudal lords to increase agricultural production. products for sale through the expansion of the corvee domain. But in the economically most developed countries of the West. In Europe, these trends were defeated by the trends of the bourgeoisie. development, active resistance of the peasantry, etc. For a number of countries, Center. and Vost. In Europe, the end of this period was the starting point of the growing development of legal rights. F. Engels called this spread of legal rights during the period of late feudalism “the second edition of serfdom,” because it to some extent repeated the legal. norms of servage - attachment to the land, corvee, etc., although on a completely new basis and in relation to a different circle of lands (in particular to the districts, which did not know “primary enslavement”). Ch. indicators of “secondary enslavement” were the increase in lordly plowing and, accordingly, the growth of corvée, the degeneration of immunity from a system of varying corporate rights into a system of uniform estate rights nobility, development of private ownership of production workers. In explaining the reasons for “secondary enslavement,” two points of view differ: one connects it with the growth of cities and the development of internal affairs. market in Eastern Europe itself. countries, the other - with the emergence of capitalist. production in Western and Northern Europe, which led to a sharp increase in demand for bread) which began to be exported from the countries of the East. Europe. In assessing the significance of the transition to corvee-serfdom. x-wu, the views of historians diverge even more radically: some see in new system manifestation of the initial process accumulation, others - conservation and deepening of feudal-serfdom. relationships at their most reactive. and severe forms. Most historians believe that “secondary enslavement” was a phenomenon that was dual in nature. Each of the two points of view reflects only one side of this phenomenon. In Prussia, non-German peasants found themselves in the communist system back in the 13th century. Serfdom took severe forms in the 15th and 16th centuries. in Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Holstein and Livonia (attachment to the land, unlimited corvee). In Hungary, the Communist Party was consolidated after the suppression of the uprising of 1514. In the 16th and 17th centuries. There is a sharp increase in corvée and labor in the Czech Republic. In the German states, the peasantry intensified after the Peasants' War of 1524-25. Cosmetics acquired distinct forms in Denmark in the 14th and 15th centuries and in Poland and Lithuania in the 16th and 17th centuries. In Poland, ser. 17th century the lord had the right to drive the peasant off the land, sell him, dispose of his family and movable property; the peasant was deprived of the right to independently speak in court and complain against his master. In Russia the growth of feudalism. land ownership in the 15th-16th centuries. was accompanied by the attachment of peasants to the land. Old-timer peasants were the most enslaved than others. From ser. 15th century for peasants dept. estates, the right to exit is limited to the weeks before and after St. George’s Day in the fall. Among those subject to this rule were the silver peasants of the North. counties, by the nature of enslavement (for debt) reminiscent of role purchases Rus. truth. The release date specified in the certificates ser. 15th century, confirmed by Code of Law 1497 as a general state. norms, the Crimea also established the size of the exit duty (“elderly”). Code of Law 1550 increased the size of the “elderly” and installed an additional one. duty (“for a cart”). Temporary (see Sacred years), and then an indefinite ban on the cross. exit (1592/93) was confirmed by a decree of 1597, which established a five-year period for searching for fugitives ("prescribed summers"). In 1607, a decree was issued that for the first time established sanctions for the reception and detention of fugitives (a fine in favor of the state and “elderly” for the old owner of the fugitive). Basic the mass of the nobility were satisfied to continue. the timing of the search for fugitive peasants, however, large. landowners of the country, as well as nobles of the south. outskirts, where there was a large influx of fugitives, were interested in short term detective Throughout the 1st half. 17th century nobles submit collective petitions to extend the school years. In 1642, a 10-year period was established for the search for fugitives and a 15-year period for the search for those deported. Cathedral Code 1649 proclaimed the indefiniteness of the investigation, that is, all peasants who fled from their owners after the scribe books of 1626 or the census books of 1646-47 were subject to return. But even after 1649, new terms and grounds for investigation were established, which concerned peasants who fled to the outskirts: to districts along the Zasechnaya Line (decrees of 1653, 1656), to Siberia (decrees of 1671, 1683, 1700), to the Don ( sentence 1698, etc.). Much attention is paid to legislation of the 2nd floor. 17th century paid penalties for accepting fugitives. For the development of K. p. in Russia in the 17th - 1st half. 18th centuries was characteristic: 1) Elimination of differences between departments. layers of the peasantry (enrollment in the tax in 1678-79 in secular estates - backyard and business people, in monastic estates - servants, servants and children, etc.). 2) The merger of enslaved serfs with full ones, the erasing of legal boundaries between serfs (farm and yard) and peasants by turning both of them into revision souls, the elimination of the institution of serfdom (already in the late 17th century, feudal lords were recognized with the right to take baptismal children courtyards). 3) Restriction of peasants’ property rights (prohibition to acquire real estate in cities and counties, etc.) and searches for additional property. sources of livelihood and income (abolition of the right to freely go to work). 4) Further growth of the feudal lord's ownership of the person of the production worker and the gradual deprivation of serfs of almost all citizens. right: in the 1st half. 17th century the actual begins, and in the last quarter. 17th century and the legally sanctioned (decrees of 1675, 1682 and 1688) sale of peasants without land, an average price for a peasant is developed, independent of the price of land, from the 2nd half. 17th century Corporal punishment is introduced for peasants who do not obey the will of the landowner; Since 1741, landowner peasants have been excluded from the oath. 5) Monopolization of serf property in the hands of the nobility. 6) Distribution of basic norms of K. p. for all categories of the tax population. 2nd half 18th century - the final stage of development of the state. Legislation aimed at strengthening the peasantry in Russia: decrees on the right of landowners to send unwanted courtyard people and peasants for exile to Siberia for settlement (1760), to hard labor (1765), and then to straithouses (1775). The sale and purchase of serfs wholesale and retail was not limited by anything, except for the prohibition of trading them during recruitment drives and selling peasants under the hammer. The law provided for punishment only for the death of a serf from landlord torture. In con. 18th century The scope of action of the Communist Party also expanded territorially: it was extended to Ukraine. Under the influence of capitalist development. relations and class. the struggle of the peasantry in the 18th - early. 19th centuries in a number of countries, the restriction and abolition of consumer goods began. In the 80s. 18th century peasants were declared personally free in those regions of Austria. monarchies where serfdom existed (1781 - in the Czech Republic, Moravia, Galicia, Carnivo, 1785 - in Hungary); in 1788 the CPR was abolished in Denmark. Duration The period was occupied by the liberation of the peasants in Germany. states: in 1783 serfdom was abolished in Baden, in a number of states - during the Napoleonic wars (in 1807 - in the Kingdom of Westphalia, in 1807 - in Prussia (the so-called Oct. Edict 1807 - reform of K. Stein , which abolished the so-called “hereditary citizenship” - Erbuntert?nigkeit, as serfdom was called in the Prussian General Land Code of 1794), in 1808 - in Bavaria, etc.); in 1817 - in Württemberg, in 1820 - in Mecklenburg and Hesse-Darmstadt, only in 1830-31 - in Kurgessen and Hanover. At the same time, the abolition of corvee and many others. other feud. duties and rights lingered in many. regions before the revolution of 1848-49, and the redemption of duties ended only in the 3rd quarter. 19th century The cross in Romania was abolished. reform of 1864, which preserved many serf vestiges. Crisis of feudal-serfdom. systems gradually grew in Russia. Despite all the restrictions, the noble monopoly on serfs was undermined. Rich serfs themselves had serfs and had the means to buy their manumission, but the ransom depended entirely on the landowner. In the 19th century In Russia, projects for limiting and abolishing the CP were intensively developed. Partial emancipation is insignificant. the number of peasants was made on the basis of the laws on “free cultivators” (1803) and “temporarily obliged peasants” (1842); according to the reform of P. D. Kiselev of 1838-42 in Belarus, Lithuania and Right-Bank Ukraine, the rent-corvee system of state exploitation was abolished. peasants But only as a result of a fierce and widespread class. During the struggle of the peasants, the government abolished the Communist Party in 1861 (see Peasant Reform of 1861). However, remnants of K. p. were preserved in Russia until the Great. Oct. socialist revolution. Lit.: Marx K., Capital, vol. 1, 3, M., 1955; Engels F., Mark, in his book: Cross. war in Germany, M., 1952; his, To the history of Prussian. peasantry, ibid.; Lenin V.I., Development of capitalism in Russia, Works, 4th ed., vol. 3; his, Serf farming in the village, ibid., vol. 20; Grekov B.D., Peasants in Rus' from ancient times to the 17th century, 2nd ed., book. 1-2, M., 1952-54; Cherepnin L.V., From the history of the formation of the class of feudal-dependent peasantry in Rus', "IZ", vol. 56, 1956; Novoselsky A. A., Escapes of peasants and slaves and their investigation in Moscow. state in the 2nd half. XVII century, "Tr. Institute of History RANION", M., 1926, c. 1; Koretsky V.I., From the history of the enslavement of peasants in Russia at the end. XVI - beginning XVII century (On the problem of “reserved years” and the abolition of St. George’s Day), “ISSR”, 1957, No. 1; Mankov A. G., Development of serfdom in Russia in the 2nd half. XVII century, M.-L., 1962; Druzhinin N. M., State. peasants and the reform of P. D. Kiselev" vol. 1-2, M.-L., 1946-58; Zayonchkovsky P. A., Abolition of serfdom in Russia, 2 ed., M., 1960; Rokhilevich D. A. ., Peasants of Belarus and Lithuania in the XVI-XVIII centuries, Lvov, 1957; Essays on the agrarian history of Latvia in the 16th century, Riga, 1960; Abolition of serfdom in Belarus, Minsk, 1958; Belyaev I. D., Peasants in Rus', M., 1860; Klyuchevsky V. O., The origin of serfdom in Russia, Soch., vol. 7, M., 1959; Pavlov-Silvansky N. P., Feudalism in appanage Rus', Soch., vol. 3, St. Petersburg, 1910; Dyakonov M., Essays on the history of the rural population in the Moscow state in the 16th-17th centuries, St. Petersburg, 1898; Catherine II, vol. 1-2, St. Petersburg, 1881-1901; his own, The peasant question in Russia in the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, vol. 1-2, St. Petersburg, 1888; dependent peasantry as a class of early feudal society in Western Europe in the 6th-8th centuries, M., 1956; Kosminsky E. A., Studies on the agrarian history of England in the 13th century, M.-L., 1947; Barg M. A., Studies in English history. Feudalism XI-XIII centuries, M., 1962; Milekaya L. T., Secular fiefdom in Germany in the 8th-9th centuries. and its role in the enslavement of the peasantry, M., 1957; hers, Essays on the history of a village in Catalonia in the 10th-12th centuries, M., 1962; Konokotin A.V., Essays on agriculture. history of the North France in the 9th-14th centuries, Ivanovo, 1958; Shevelenko A. Ya., On the issue of the formation of a class of serfs in Champagne in the 9th-10th centuries, in the collection: From the history of the Middle Ages. Europe (X-XVII centuries), Sat. Art., (M.), 1957; Abramson M.L., The situation of the peasantry and peasant movements in the south. Italy in the XII-XIII centuries, "Middle Ages", vol. 3, M., 1951; Skazkin S.D., Main. problems so-called "The Second Edition of Serfdom in Central and Eastern Europe", "VI", 1958, No. 2; Smirin M.M., On the serfdom of the peasantry and the nature of peasant duties in the southwest. Germany in the 15th and early XVI century, "IZ", vol. 19, M., 1946; Kareev N.I., Essay on the history of the French. peasants from ancient times to 1789, Warsaw, 1881; Piskorsky V.K., Serfdom in Catalonia in Wed. century, K., 1901; Achadi I., History of Hungarian. serf peasantry, trans. from Hungary, M., 1956; Knapp G., Liberation of the peasants and the origin of agriculture. workers in the old provinces of Prussia. monarchy, trans. from German, St. Petersburg, 1900; Haun F. J., Bauer und Gutsherr in Kursachsen, Strassburg, 1892; Gr?nberg K., Die Bauernbefreiung und die Aufl?sung des gutsherrlich-b?uerlichen Verh?ltnisses in B?hmen, M?hren und Schlesien, Bd 1-2, Lpz., 1893-94; Knapp Th., Gesammelte Beitr?ge zur Rechts-und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, vornehmlich des deutschen Bauernstandes, T?bingen, 1902; Link E., The emancipation of the Austrian peasants, 1740-1798, Oxf., 1949; Perrin Ch.-E., La seigneurie rural en France et en Allemagne, v. 1-3, P., 1951-55. See also the literature to Art. Peasantry. S. M. Kashtanov. Moscow. The question of the existence of serfdom in the countries of the East (as well as the forms of feudal dependence of peasants in general) to the present day. time is not sufficiently developed and causes numerous. disputes. The sources did not reveal any convincing facts about legal enslavement of the peasantry until the 13th century, although factually. limit cross. rights undoubtedly existed. Apparently in the 12th century. serf relations began to develop in Transcaucasia; on the verge of the 12th-13th centuries. they received legal design in Armenian Code of Law by Mkhitar Gosh. The first legislator. registration of attachment of peasants to the land, known in the history of Muslims. countries, dates back to the Mongolian times. dominion - at the turn of the 13th-14th centuries. (label of Gazankhan); however, the decree of Ghazan Khan emphasized the lack of rights of iqta owners to the personality of the peasant ( certain rights for enslaved peasants, for example. in inheritance, was also recognized by Armenian. Code of Law). The attachment of peasants to the land was recorded in the laws on the provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the end. 15th century; legislation confirmed this position until the 19th century. Legislator acts of a number of sovereigns in the feud. India 16-17 centuries. essentially limited the departure of peasants (Akbar's decree of 1583-84; Aurangzeb's decree of 1667-68). In Japan, in 1589-95, under Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a land census was carried out. possessions and the attachment of peasants to the land, eliminated only as a result of the bourgeoisie. revolution of 1867-68 (some historians talk about the “secondary enslavement” of the peasantry in relation to Japan). But in general, in most countries of the East there is no developed barsch. x-va and the working rent associated with it determined the absence of such a legal entity. Institute of K. p., which corresponds to specific system room and a cross. x-va. But this did not mean the existence of complete freedom of transition. -***-***-***- Abolition of serfdom in Russia

Short story

In ancient Russia, most of the land was taken over by princes, boyars and monasteries. With the strengthening of the grand ducal power, service people were rewarded with extensive estates. The peasants who lived on these lands were personally free people and entered into agreements with the landowner lease agreements(“decent”). At certain times (for example, around St. George’s Day), peasants could freely leave their plot and move to another, fulfilling their obligations towards the landowner.

Gradually, the extent of peasants’ dependence on landowners expanded, and by the end of the 16th century. the free departure of peasants was prohibited; they were attached to their place of residence and landowners (decrees 1592 and 1597). From then on, the situation of the serfs began to rapidly deteriorate; landowners began to sell and buy serfs, marry and give in marriage at will, and received the right to trial and punish serfs (before exile to Siberia).

The difficult situation of the serfs, who sought to escape from the yoke of the landowners, prompted the serfs to resort to murder and arson of the landowners, to riots and uprisings (Pugachevism, and the incessant unrest of peasants in different provinces throughout the first half of the 19th century V.). Under Alexander I, the idea of ​​the need to soften serfdom was expressed in the 1803 law on free cultivators. By voluntary agreement between landowners and peasants, about 47 thousand serfs were freed. The rest of the landowner peasants are approx. 10.5 million souls - liberated on February 19, 1861.

Chronology of peasant enslavement in Russia

Briefly, the chronology of the enslavement of peasants in Russia can be presented as follows:

1. 1497 - introduction of restrictions on the right to transfer from one landowner to another - St. George's Day.
2. 1581 - abolition of St. George's Day - “reserved summers”.
3. 1597 - the landowner’s right to search for a runaway peasant within 5 years and to return him to the owner - “prescribed summers”.
4. 1607 - cathedral code of 1607: the period for searching for fugitive peasants was increased to 15 years.
5. 1649 - the cathedral code of 1649 abolished fixed-term summers, thus establishing an indefinite search for fugitive peasants.
6. - Messrs. - tax reform, which finally attached the peasants to the land.
7. 1747 - the landowner was given the right to sell his serfs as recruits to any person.
8. 1760 - the landowner received the right to exile peasants to Siberia.
9. 1765 - the landowner received the right to exile peasants not only to Siberia, but also to hard labor.
10. 1767 - peasants were strictly forbidden to submit petitions (complaints) against their landowners personally to the empress or emperor.
11. 1783 - extension of serfdom to Left Bank Ukraine.

see also

Notes

Links

• // Small Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 4 volumes - St. Petersburg. , 1907-1909.

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The sale of a yard girl in the painting by artist Nikolai Nevrev “Bargaining. A scene from serf life. From the recent past" (1866; Moscow, Tretyakov Gallery)

Serfdom in Russia is a system of legal relations that existed, starting from Kievan Rus of the 11th century, resulting from the dependence of the peasant farmer on the landowner, the owner of the land inhabited and cultivated by the peasant.

In Kievan Rus and the Novgorod Republic, unfree peasants were divided into categories: smerds, purchasers and serfs. In Tsarist Russia, serfdom spread widely XVI century, officially confirmed by the Council Code of 1649, canceled on February 19, 1861 (March 3, 1861) by the tsar’s manifesto.

Short story

Emergence

In Russian historiography, there are two opposing views on the circumstances and time of the emergence of serfdom - the so-called “decreed” and “undeclared” versions. Both of them arose in the middle of the 19th century. The first of them comes from the assertion of the existence of a specific law at the end of the 16th century, namely from 1592, on the final ban on the peasant transfer from one landowner to another; and the other - based on the absence among the surviving official documents of such a decree, considers serfdom as a gradual and time-extended process of loss of civil and property rights by previously free people.

The founder of the “decree” version is considered to be the famous 19th-century historiographer S. M. Solovyov. It was he who, for a number of reasons, defended the existence of the 1592 law banning peasant migration, or the abolition of “St. George’s Day,” issued during the reign of Tsar Feodor Ioannovich. It should be noted that Soviet historiography actively took the side of S. M. Solovyov on this issue. The preferable advantages of this hypothesis in the eyes of Soviet historians were that it presented social-class contradictions more clearly and sharply, pushing the fact of enslavement more than 50 years into the past.

The “decreed” version was refuted at the very beginning by V. O. Klyuchevsky, who extracted from reliable sources many texts of peasant serial records of the 20s - 30s of the seventeenth century, indicating that even at this time, that is, almost half a century later After the supposed decree on the enslavement of peasants in 1592, the ancient right of peasants to “exit” from the landowner’s land was fully preserved. The order stipulates only the conditions for exit, the very right to which is not called into question. This circumstance deals a significant blow to the position of the “pointers,” both former and their later followers.

Development since Old Russian state until the 17th century

An objective picture of the development of serfdom in Rus' from ancient times to the middle of the 17th century appears as follows: princely and boyar land ownership, in combination with the strengthening of the bureaucratic apparatus, attacked personal and communal land property. Previously, free farmers, communal peasants, or even private land owners - “countrymen” of ancient Russian legal acts - gradually became tenants of plots belonging to the clan aristocracy or the serving nobility.

In the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which united most of the ancient Russian lands, local land ownership was developing as a system of remuneration for military or civil service. A service estate in the Russian state of the 15th - early 17th centuries was a plot of land owned by the state, inhabited personally by free people, agricultural workers - “peasants”, who were obliged to temporarily (as long as the land was registered with the landowner) pay a certain share their agricultural profits, most often in kind, but sometimes in monetary equivalent, not to the state treasury, but to the benefit of the landowner. The distribution of estates was caused by a lack of cash to pay for the services of persons performing military or bureaucratic service to the state.

In addition to the estate received temporarily, under the condition of service, many nobles owned land by right private property, received as a dowry, by inheritance, “acquired”, etc. - “patrimonies”. But the owner cultivated his private land either with the help of hired free workers, or by settling on it persons personally dependent on him - “slaves”. The patrimonial owner did not have the right to resettle peasants from the state estate to his private estates, because the inhabitants of the estate were under no circumstances considered the property of the landowner, but exclusively free state taxpayers, temporarily obliged to replace their direct payments to the state treasury with indirect payments - in favor of the “landowner” , that is, a person who serves the state with his education or military skill, and therefore is taken by the state for maintenance.

Fundamental changes in the position of the peasants came with the accession of the Romanov dynasty. By this time, the period for searching for fugitive peasants had increased from 5 years, announced during the reign of Fyodor Ioannovich in 1597, to 15 years. However, landowners in numerous petitions insist on the right to search for their fugitive tenants indefinitely, and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich goes not only to meet these demands, but much further.

The fact is that in all previous decrees on the period of search for fugitive peasants, it was exclusively about those who left the landowner’s land without making all the necessary payments to the landowner, specified in the serial records, that is, about the return of debtors. The peasant, having paid off his obligations, was free to go anywhere, or stay in place, or completely abandon arable farming and choose another occupation, if his means and skill allowed.

In the Council Code published in 1649, two fundamentally new circumstances appeared. Firstly, an unlimited period of time for searching for fugitive peasants was announced. The master now had the right to return the fugitive himself or even his descendants with all the goods acquired while on the run, if he could prove that it was from his estate that the peasant escaped.

Secondly, even a debt-free peasant lost the right to change his place of residence - he became “strong,” that is, forever attached to the estate where the census of the 1620s found him. In the event of his departure, the Code ordered the forcible return of the previously free person back along with his entire household and family.

In fact, the Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich carried out a social revolution, depriving the majority of the country's population of the right free movement and disposal of oneself, one’s labor and property.

The Council Code of 1649 contains a number of articles that bring the free peasant closer to the corvee slave. His farm is increasingly recognized as the property of the master. Here, although it is still unclear and not entirely confident, there is a glimpse of the peasant as the personal property of the master, which was subsequently established. So, for example, the Code orders a peasant daughter married off while on the run to be returned to her owner along with her husband, and if the husband had children from his first wife, they were ordered to be left with his landowner. This allowed the separation of families, the separation of children from parents.

One of the main shortcomings of the Code, as noted by V. O. Klyuchevsky, was that legislators did not think about regulating the duties of serfs to landowners. This issue was passed over in silence, which led in the future to significant abuses of power by landowners. However, some rights of the serf peasant were still preserved and protected by the Code. A serf could not be dispossessed of land by the will of the master and turned into a servant; he had the opportunity to bring a complaint to court about unfair exactions; the law even threatened to punish the landowner, from whose beatings a peasant could die, and the victim’s family received compensation from the property of the offender. WITH late XVII

centuries, hidden transactions for the purchase and sale of peasants between landowners are gradually coming into practice, serfs are also given as dowries, etc. But it was, after all, about resettlement, the movement of farmers, and certainly together with their family, from one estate to other. The law prohibited the dispossession of peasants. In addition, trade in serfs was prohibited. Chapter 20 of the Code unambiguously stated in this regard: “Baptized people are not ordered to be sold to anyone.”

Punishment of a serf with a whip in the 18th century. From the book by Jean Chappe d'Autroche

Development of serfdom from the end of the 17th century to 1861 From the end of the 17th century and, especially, from century, serfdom in Russia acquires a fundamentally different character than the one it had at its inception. It began as a form of state “tax” for the peasants, a kind of public service, but in its development it came to the point that the serfs were deprived of all civil and human rights and found themselves in personal slavery to their landowners. This was primarily facilitated by the legislation of the Russian Empire, which uncompromisingly defended exclusively the interests of landowners. According to V. O. Klyuchevsky, “The law increasingly depersonalized the serf, erasing from him the last signs of a legally capable person.”

By Senate decree on March 14, 1746, it was determined “from now on, to the merchants, bishops’ and monastic servants, and boyar people and serfs, and those assigned to the merchants and the guild, as well as Cossacks and coachmen and various commoners, who are paid per capita, people and serfs without lands and it is prohibited to buy land in the entire state." On February 26 (March 8), 1764, by decree of Catherine II, the complete secularization of church lands was carried out and about two million souls of monastic peasants came under the jurisdiction of the College of Economy (later they were equated with other state-owned peasants).

Thus, the right to own serfs became a monopoly of the nobility.

Serfdom in the late period

Despite the awareness that serfdom was a social evil, the government did not take any decisive measures to eliminate it. The decree of Paul I, “on the three-day corvee,” as this decree is often called, was advisory in nature and was almost never implemented. Corvee labor of 6 and even 7 days a week was common. The so-called “month” has also become widespread. It consisted in the fact that the landowner took away from the peasants their plots and personal farming and turned them into real agricultural slaves who worked for him constantly and received only a meager ration from the master's reserves. The “monthly” peasants were the most powerless people and were no different at all from the slaves on the plantations of the New World.

Human trafficking continued in Russia until February 1861. True, there was a formal ban on selling serfs with the separation of families and without land, and the right of landless nobles to acquire serfs was also limited. But these prohibitions were easily circumvented in practice. Peasants and serfs were bought and sold as before, wholesale and retail, but now such advertisements in newspapers were disguised: instead of “serf for sale,” it was written “released for hire,” but everyone knew what was really meant. Corporal punishment of serfs became extremely widespread. Often such punishments ended in the death of the victims, but landowners almost never bore any responsibility for the murders and mutilations of their servants. One of the most severe government measures against cruel masters was taking the estate “under guardianship.” This only meant that the estate came under direct control government official, but the sadistic landowner retained ownership and regularly received income from the estate. Moreover, over time, as a rule, very soon, guardianship by the “highest command” was canceled, and the master received the opportunity to again commit violence against his “subjects.”

In 1848, serfs were allowed to purchase real estate - until that time they were prohibited from owning any property. On the one hand, such a permit was supposed to stimulate an increase in the number of “capitalist” peasants who managed to get rich even in captivity, and to revive economic life in the fortress village. However, this did not happen. The decree allowed peasants to buy real estate only in the name of their landowner. In practice, this led to abuses when masters, using formal rights, took away real estate from their serfs.

Serfdom on the eve of abolition

The first steps towards the limitation and subsequent abolition of serfdom were taken by Paul I and Alexander I in 1797 and 1803 by signing the Manifesto on the Three-Day Corvee to limit forced labor and the Decree on Free Plowmen, which spelled out the legal status of freed peasants.

In 1816-1819 Serfdom was abolished in the Baltic (Baltic) provinces of the Russian Empire (Estonia, Courland, Livonia, Ezel Island).

By the end of the reign of Nicholas I, the share of landowner serfs, according to various estimates, decreased to 35-45%. During the reign of Nicholas I, about a dozen different commissions were created to resolve the issue of abolition of serfdom, but all of them turned out to be fruitless due to the opposition of the landowners.

On February 19, 1861 (March 3, 1861), serfdom was finally abolished by the Manifesto of Emperor Alexander II. The main reasons for the reform were the crisis of the serfdom system and peasant unrest, which intensified during the Crimean War.

Assessment of serfdom in Russian science and social thought

An objective attitude to the problem of serfdom in Russia has always been hampered by strict censorship control. This is explained by the fact that, one way or another, true information about serfdom had a negative impact on state prestige. Therefore, despite the fact that they appeared in print at different times interesting materials, came out Scientific research and quite sharp journalistic works, in general, the history of the era of serfdom turned out to be studied and covered insufficiently. Kharkov jurist Professor Dmitry Kachenovsky criticized slavery in the USA in his lectures, but his many listeners perceived this criticism as Aesopian language. His student, later Odessa mayor Pavel Zelenoy wrote:

“There is no need to explain that every listener clearly understood and felt that, when talking about the suffering of slaves, Kachenovsky meant whites, and not just blacks.”

From the very beginning, there were directly opposite assessments of serfdom as social phenomenon. On the one hand, it was seen as an economic necessity, as well as a legacy of ancient patriarchal relations. It was even argued about the positive educational function of serfdom. On the other hand, opponents of serfdom denounced its destructive moral and economic impact on the life of the state.

However, it is noteworthy that ideological opponents uniformly referred to serfdom as “slavery.” Thus, Konstantin Aksakov wrote in an address to Emperor Alexander II in 1855: “The yoke of the state was formed over the land, and the Russian land became, as it were, conquered... The Russian monarch received the meaning of a despot, and the people - the meaning of a slave-slave in their land.” A. Herzen called Russian serfs “white slaves.” However, the chief of the gendarme corps, Count Benckendorf, in a secret report addressed to Emperor Nicholas I admitted: “In all of Russia, only the victorious people, the Russian peasants, are in a state of slavery; all the rest: Finns, Tatars, Estonians, Latvians, Mordovians, Chuvashs, etc. are free.”

Assessments of the significance of the era of serfdom in our days are ambiguous. Representatives of the patriotic movement modern politics tend to reject the negative characteristics of serfdom as aimed at denigrating the Russian Empire. Characteristic in this sense is A. Savelyev’s article “Fictions about the “dark kingdom” of serfdom,” in which the author is inclined to question the most authoritative evidence of violence against serfs: “Pictures of the distress of the peasants described by Radishchev in “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow,” - a consequence of the author’s clouding of reason, distorting the perception of social reality.” Some researchers are also inclined towards positive assessments of serfdom as a system of economic relations. Some even consider it a natural result of the development of national character traits. For example, Doctor of Historical Sciences B. N. Mironov states that “serfdom... was an organic and necessary component of Russian reality... It was reverse side the breadth of Russian nature... the result of the weak development of individualism.”

However, recently there has been a tendency towards a sharper assessment of both the reasons for the origin of serfdom and the consequences of its two-hundred-year rule for the country. The position of the modern historian and writer B. Kerzhentsev is noteworthy here. He claims: " Objective analysis The history of the origin of serfdom indicates that in the form in which it appeared from the beginning of the 18th century until its abolition - in the second half of the 19th century - serfdom was nothing more than a social arbitrariness of power. Its real reasons lay not in the economic needs of the state, to which serfdom directly contradicted, but in the personal interests of the rulers of the empire, often accidental usurpers on the throne, and the noble bureaucracy surrounding them. Serfdom became a criminal bribe with which the government bought noble support and loyalty.”

Chronology of peasant enslavement in Russia

Briefly, the chronology of the enslavement of peasants in Russia can be presented as follows:

1497 - introduction of restrictions on the right to transfer from one landowner to another - St. George's Day.

1581 - cancellation of St. George's Day - “ reserved summers».

1597 - the landowner’s right to search for a runaway peasant within 5 years and to return him to the owner - “prescribed summers”.

1607 - cathedral code of 1607: the period for searching for fugitive peasants was increased to 15 years.

1649 - the cathedral code of 1649 abolished fixed-term summers, thus establishing an indefinite search for fugitive peasants.

1718-1724 - tax reform, which finally attached the peasants to the land.

1746 - Senate decree "On the non-purchase of people and peasants to merchants and other commoners, who are paid per capita."

1747 - the landowner was given the right to sell his serfs as recruits to any person.

1760 - the landowner received the right to exile peasants to Siberia.

1765 - the landowner received the right to exile peasants not only to Siberia, but also to hard labor.

1767 - peasants were strictly forbidden to submit petitions (complaints) against their landowners personally to the empress or emperor.

1783 - the spread of serfdom to Left Bank Ukraine.

The share of the serf population in Russia according to the revision (census) of 1857-1859

During the preparation of the reform to abolish serfdom, the 10th national census was carried out, which took place from 1857 to 1859. Thus, in 1858, the work of A. G. Troinitsky “On the number of serfs in Russia” was published in St. Petersburg. Then, in 1861, the book “The Serf Population in Russia, According to the 10th National Census” was published. The 1857-1859 census was carried out by the Central Statistical Committee and aimed to establish current lineup population and the share of serfs in it.

It should be noted that the share of serfs in the total population of Russia was different in different parts of Russia. So, in Poland, the Baltic states, Finland, in the territory Central Asia and modern Kazakhstan there were practically no serfs. The proportion of serfs was significantly higher in central regions. If in Russia as a whole the share of serfs on the eve of the abolition of serfdom was 34.39%, then in individual provinces, for example in Smolensk and Tula, it was 69%. Thus, the population for this period was 67,081,167 people, of which 23,069,631 were serfs.

According to the 10th revision in Russia in 1858, there were 65 provinces and regions. Of these, in 56 provinces and regions there were serfs, and in 9 provinces and regions there were no serfs, namely: In three Baltic provinces, the land of the Black Sea army, the Primorsky Eastern Siberia region, the Semipalatinsk region and the Siberian Kirghiz region, as well as in the Derbent region and Erivan provinces. In four provinces and regions (Arkhangelsk, Shemakha, Transbaikal and Yakutsk) there were practically no serfs, there were only a small number (several dozen) of courtyard people (servants), so these provinces and regions can also be excluded from the number of provinces and regions with a serf population. Thus, there were serfs in 52 provinces and regions out of 65.

Serfdom serfdom

(serfdom), a form of peasant dependence: their attachment to the land and subordination to the administrative and judicial power of the feudal lord. In Western Europe (where in the Middle Ages the English villans, Catalan remens, French and Italian serfs were in the position of serfs), elements of serfdom disappeared in the 16th-18th centuries. In Central and Eastern Europe, harsh forms of serfdom spread during these same centuries; here serfdom was abolished during the reforms late XVIII-XIX centuries In Russia, on a national scale, serfdom was formalized by the Code of Laws of 1497, decrees on reserved years and fixed years, and finally by the Council Code of 1649. In the 17th-18th centuries. the entire unfree population merged into serf peasantry. Abolished by the peasant reform of 1861.

SERFDOM

SERPLE RIGHT (serfdom), a form of peasant dependence: their attachment to the land and subordination to the administrative and judicial power of the feudal lord. In Western Europe, where in the Middle Ages the English villans, Catalan remens, French and Italian serfs occupied the position of serfs, elements of serfdom disappeared in the 16th-18th centuries. In Central and Eastern Europe, during these same centuries, the most severe forms of serfdom spread; here serfdom was abolished during the bourgeois reforms of the late 18th and 19th centuries. In Russia, on a national scale, serfdom was formalized by the Code of Laws (1497), decrees on reserved years and fixed years, and finally by the Council Code (1649). In the 17th and 18th centuries, the entire unfree population of Russia merged into the serf peasantry. Serfdom in Russia was abolished by the peasant reform (1861).
Serfdom included a prohibition on peasants leaving their land plots (runaways were subject to forced return), hereditary subordination to the administrative and judicial power of the feudal lord, and deprivation of peasants' right to alienate land plots and purchase real estate. Sometimes the feudal lord had the right to alienate peasants without land. Serfdom presupposed the presence of a strong state power capable of ensuring its basic norms. Most often, serfdom arose in the process of expanding master's farms and corvée, focused on the production of products for sale; Attaching peasants to the land was intended to prevent their flight. In some cases, the prerequisite for serfdom was the desire of the state to attach peasants to the place of payment state taxes
(either natural or monetary dues in favor of the feudal lords).
During the period of developed feudalism, in the 10th-15th centuries, some elements of serfdom (prohibition of leaving, hereditary personal subordination to a lord, limitation of civil rights) developed in Western Europe in relation to certain categories of peasantry in a number of regions (villans of Central England, remenses of Catalonia, French and southern Italian servi, Central Italian and Northern Italian colones and massaria, South German Leibeigenen). Most of The rural population remained outside of serfdom. The peasants' duties to their master were dominated by the forms of cash and kind rent. In the 13-15 centuries, the absolute majority of Western European peasants were freed from the norms of serfdom. In the 16th-18th centuries in Western Europe, elements of serfdom disappeared completely.
In Central and Eastern Europe, serfdom in these centuries turned into the main element of social relations in agriculture. The development of entrepreneurial landownership, designed for the production of marketable products, the growth of corvée, and the political dominance of the nobility in these countries determined the spread of the “second edition of serfdom” in East Germany, the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. In East (Saelbe) Germany, serfdom arose after the defeat of the Peasants' War (1524-1526) and was fully developed after Thirty Years' War(1618-1648). It took on especially severe forms in Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and East Prussia. At the same time, serfdom was spreading in the Czech Republic. In Hungary, serfdom was enshrined in the Code of 1514 (Tripartitum), issued after the suppression of the Dozsa Gyorgy uprising (1514). In Poland, serfdom developed in the mid-15th century. Its norms were included in the Piotrkow Statute (1496). In Eastern European countries, serfdom extended to the bulk of the peasants. It implied multi-day (up to 6 days a week) corvee labor, the deprivation of peasants of most of their ownership, civil and personal rights, and was accompanied by a reduction in peasant arable land or the dispossession of some peasants and their transformation into serfs or temporary land users. In the 17th century, serfdom spread to the Balkan countries conquered by the Ottoman Empire. Serfdom here pursued the goal of ensuring the collection of state taxes.
The dominance of serfdom in the late Middle Ages hampered the development of the productive forces of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The abolition of serfdom took place here during the reforms of the late 18th and 19th centuries: 1781 - in the Czech Republic, 1785 - in Hungary, 1807 - in Prussia, 1808 - in Bavaria, 1820 - in Mecklenburg. However, remnants of serfdom persisted even after these reforms. In most countries of the East, serfdom was not widespread. At different periods in some countries there was an attachment of peasants to the place where taxes were paid, which gave rise to the right to search and forcibly return fugitive peasants (Iran and its neighboring countries in the 13-14 centuries).
Serfdom in Russia
In Russian historical science, it is customary to distinguish serfdom as a system of social relations from serfdom as legal form their expressions. The features of serfdom can be traced in Rus' from the 11th century, but until the end of the 16th century the serf form of feudal dependence covered separate categories rural population. In the 12th century, similar in nature to serfdom, was the exploitation of rolled (arable) purchases and smerds in corvee. According to Russian Pravda, the princely smerd is limited in property and personal rights (his escheated property goes to the prince; the life of a smerd is equal to the life of a serf: the same fine is imposed for their murder - 5 hryvnia).
In the 13th-15th centuries, relations of dependence extended to a significant number of peasants, but the severity of serfdom was relatively small. Since the middle of the 15th century, for some categories of peasants of certain estates, exit was limited to the week before and after the autumn St. George's Day. The exit period specified in the charters of the mid-15th century was confirmed as a national norm by the Code of Law (1497), which also established the amount of exit duty (for the elderly). The Code of Law (1550) increased the size of the elderly and established an additional fee (for the carriage). The temporary (reserved summers) and then permanent ban on peasant exit was confirmed by a decree of 1597, which established a five-year period for searching for fugitives (prescribed summers). In 1607, a decree was issued that for the first time defined sanctions for the reception and detention of fugitives (a fine in favor of the state and a penalty for the old owner of the fugitive).
The bulk of the nobility were satisfied with long periods of time to search for runaway peasants, but large landowners, as well as nobles of the southern outskirts, where there was an influx of runaways, were interested in short terms of search. Throughout the first half of the 17th century, nobles filed petitions to extend the school years. In 1642, a ten-year period was established for the search for fugitives and a fifteen-year period for the search for foreign peasants taken out by landowners. The Council Code (1649) established the indefiniteness of the search for fugitives - all peasants who fled from their owners after the compilation of the scribe books of 1626 or the census books of 1646-1647 were subject to return. But even after 1649, new terms and grounds for investigation were established, which concerned peasants who fled to the outskirts: to areas along the notch line (decrees of 1653, 1656), to Siberia (decrees of 1671, 1683, 1700), to the Don (sentence of 1698) . The nobility sought to ensure that the search for fugitive serfs was carried out at the expense of the state. The legislation of the second half of the 17th century paid much attention to punishments for accepting fugitives.
In Russia in the 17th - first half of the 18th centuries, differences between individual layers of the peasantry were leveled out; the merging of enslaved slaves with full ones took place, the legal boundaries between slaves and peasants were erased by turning both into “revision souls”, the institution of servitude was gradually eliminated (at the end of the 17th century, the right of masters to take peasant children into servants was recognized); restrictions on peasants' property rights increased (prohibition of purchasing real estate in cities and counties) and the search for additional sources of livelihood and income (abolition of the right to freely go to work). The rights of the landowner to the personality of the worker expanded, and gradually the serfs were deprived of almost all civil rights: in the first half of the 17th century, the actual, and in the last quarter of the 17th century, the legally sanctioned (by decrees of 1675, 1682 and 1688) sale of peasants without land began, the average price of a peasant was formed , independent of the price of land, from the second half of the 17th century corporal punishment was introduced for peasants who did not obey the will of the landowner. Since 1741, landowner peasants were removed from the oath, the monopolization of serf property in the hands of the nobility took place, and serfdom extended to all categories of the tax population. The second half of the 18th century was the final stage of development state legislation, aimed at strengthening serfdom in Russia: decrees on the right of landowners to exile servants and peasants to Siberia for settlement (1760) and hard labor (1765), and imprisonment (1775). The sale and purchase of serfs without land was not limited by anything, except for the prohibition of trading them three months before the recruitment (1766) and during the confiscation or sale of estates at auction (1771); it was allowed to separate parents and children (1760). The law provided for punishment only for the death of a serf from landlord torture. Revisions played a significant role in the development of serfdom (especially the first of them, carried out in 1719). At the end of the 18th century, serfdom was extended to Ukraine.
In the 18th century, serfdom became the main obstacle to the development of Russia's productive forces and hindered cultural and social progress. In the first half of the 19th century, the solution to the whole complex social issues rested on the problem of the abolition of serfdom. The nobility's monopoly on the ownership of serfs was being undermined. According to the decree of 1841, only persons who owned inhabited estates were allowed to have serfs. The development of capitalist relations led to the emergence of a layer of “capitalist” peasants who had the means to buy their freedom, which, however, was entirely dependent on the landowner. In the first half of the 19th century, projects for limiting and abolishing serfdom began to be developed in Russia. In 1808 it was forbidden to sell serfs at fairs, and in 1833 it was forbidden to separate members of the same family during the sale. The emancipation of a small number of peasants was carried out on the basis of the laws on free cultivators (1803) and temporarily obliged peasants (1842). Serfdom was abolished during the peasant reform of 1861. However, the remnants of serfdom (landownership, labor, stripes) remained in Russia until the 1917 revolution.

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Serfdom is a form of dependence of peasants: their attachment to the land and subordination to the administrative and judicial power of the feudal lord. In Western Europe, where in the Middle Ages the English villans, Catalan remens,... ... , where in the Middle Ages the English villans, Catalan remens,... ...

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The form of dependence of the peasants: their attachment to the land and subordination to the administrative and judicial power of the feudal lord. In Western Europe (where in the Middle Ages English villans, French and Italian serfs were in the position of serfs), elements of K... Legal dictionary

Serfdom, serfdom, a form of dependence of peasants: their attachment to the land and subordination to the judicial power of the landowner. In Russia, it was formalized on a national scale by Code of Law 1497, decrees of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. about protected areas... ...Russian history

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