A complete analysis of what serfdom was in Russia: how it differed from slavery, why it appeared and whether there were millionaire serfs
When it comes to the fact that Europe became rich due to the fact that it enslaved half the world, there are exclamations that Europe at least kept strangers in slavery, and we used our own as slaves, here we mean serfdom.
✅ So, was there slavery in Russia?
✅ What is the difference between slavery and serfdom?
✅ What was the sophistication and uniqueness of serfdom?
✅ Were there millionaires among the serfs?
✅ And also about the mortgage of that time and about the first officially registered marriage between two men in ancient Russia.
Read about all this in this article.
So, let’s get started.
To begin with, let’s understand the general concepts, so that in the course of the story it is clear what we are talking about here.
What do we mostly know about serfdom?
Serfdom, to put it very briefly and simply, is when the nobles exploit the peasants.
Who are the peasants? The term “peasantry” was first used at the end of the 14th century, and since then it has become a general definition of the rural population. Initially, the peasant class was represented by free farmers. In other words, initially a peasant is a free farmer.
And who are those who exploited them and, in fact, by what right?
A bit of history (very briefly):
Ivan III united the principalities into a single Russian state. If there is a state, then someone needs to protect it – professional warriors are needed.
For military service, the military was paid with land – estates (this is a personal land property granted by the sovereign for service).
Let me briefly remind you (and maybe I will inform someone) that
In 1480, Ivan III (the Great) threw off the yoke of the Horde and expanded his possessions by uniting neighboring principalities and Russian lands. In other words, a single (centralized) Russian state was formed at that time.
Before that, there were East Slavic tribes and Finno-Ugric peoples, a number of which united under the rule of the Rurik dynasty. This happened in the 9th century. This is how Kievan Rus (or Old Russian state or Ancient Rus’) was formed.
Then there were some twists and turns with the division of the territory into separate principalities and appanages, then again followed by the unification of the Russian lands.
In general, as a result, the date of the emergence of the unified Russian state is considered to be the 2nd half of the 15th and early 16th centuries.
And so, we have a state that needs to be defended by someone, for this the defenders were granted land (it was necessary to somehow encourage their work).
Peasants lived and worked on the land, which was granted for service to the military. And since they went to the warrior along with the land, the peasants paid the owners of the land on which they lived a rent (a tax in kind, i.e. they gave away part of the products they produced) and NECESSARILY worked for him. And the nobleman, in turn, could protect and patronize the peasants, provide financial assistance in the form of loans. There was an unspoken social contract: A nobleman serves, defends the country in general, and the land on which the peasants live in particular, from raids and ruin. And the peasant works on the land, feeds it, provides for its livelihood.
It seems to be a perfect scheme! But it’s not that simple. And more on that now.
So, what is serfdom?
Serfdom – from the Old Russian word “fortress“, which meant an act (written or symbolic) that confirmed the power of a person over some thing, so to speak, fixed this thing for a person. The object of serfdom in Ancient Rus was people. In other words, it is the deprivation of a person’s right to leave the one to whom he is assigned (i.e. his master).
Of course, serfdom is a problem that occupies a large place in the national history.
But is it only domestic? Of course not. Feudalism (and the emergence of serfdom is connected with the development of feudalism, and it can exist only in this system of relations) existed not only in Russia, but also in Europe. And serfdom also existed not only in Russia, but also in Europe, another thing is that it appeared there earlier than in Russia and, accordingly, also left. But it was no easier there than it was here.
A bit of history on how it all started.
HOW FEUDALISM AROSE IN EUROPE
If we talk about Europeans, then with the collapse of the ancient (Roman) civilization, small sovereign states (larger or smaller, as a rule, short-lived) began to arise in the regions, and their basis was dependent, but no longer slaves, but peasants. They were free, placed on one land or another, and engaged in agricultural labor. And so, at some point, they began to produce more than slaves, because they were more economically efficient. So they formed the economic basis for the future feudalism.
When, by the 7th-8th centuries, the state of the Franks was formed (what chronologically all began with), this state had to constantly defend its borders from its neighbors. In general, a PERMANENT military force was required, and this force had to be mobile.
At that time, there was also a tribal militia, i.e. all the combat-ready men of a given territory, at the call of their leader, gave up their main activity, took their own weapons in their hands – who had what – and went to a certain point to fight. But as the state expanded, the foot militia had to travel longer distances than before, and since the speed of its movement was about 5 km/h, it was no longer able to keep up with anything. And it seems that we have a huge state, but since the militia does not have time to reach a specific point, it was either not possible to send a large military contingent there, or no one could be sent there at all. Obviously, the fighting strength of such a militia began to decline.
And on top of that, the king had to check the combat readiness of everyone AT the same time. This, too, has become problematic.
And it turns out that the state seems to be getting bigger, but in fact there is less and less military force.
And what is important: a tribal militia of this kind cannot be torn away from the land for a long time, because these warriors, so to speak, are in fact ALL producers of this or that product: everyone weaves, forges, grows, etc. – this is their main occupation, not war.
And what happens? People must be torn from the land – and they are all peasants – and taken on a campaign for an incomprehensible time. And who will sow what at this time? What will they eat when they come back if they don’t loot anything?
Therefore, there was a need for an army that would be in constant readiness without compromising the production of products. Moreover, the troops are heavily armed and can move quickly.
And what is important is that at that time the main part of the economy was accounted for by subsistence farming.
And so it turns out: there is a need for a cavalry, heavily armed, professional army of constant readiness (later it began to be called a knight’s army), but at the same time there is no money.
What should I do? In the VIII century, Charles Martel began to give his people land allotments – benefices. In other words, a person was given a village with peasants. They fed him, at the expense of the resources of this village, they also bought: a horse, weapons for the warrior and his military servants (if the village was large, then he could take several people with him to the war, if small, then he went alone).
In other words, all the peasants were left alone. Now they were able to run the economy without breaking away from their main business, and the war was already being done by special people for this purpose – the military.
Now everyone could do his own thing: war for those who fought, work for those who worked, prayer for those who prayed. In this way, the first 3 estates were formed, on which the entire medieval society was built. Then there were merchants, who also became a separate estate. But that’s about something else.
HOW FEUDALISM APPEARED IN OUR COUNTRY
In our country, early feudalism began to take shape in the second half of the eleventh century. At the same time, real chivalry was already appearing in Europe at that time (by the way, it appeared in our country only in the 15th century).
A pro-Western reader will say, “Well, I told you Russia is a backward country! Even in those days, everything was stolen, and worthless people were not capable of anything. Look how they lagged behind Europe!”.
So why are we so far behind here, relative to Europe? It’s all about the climate, the conditions in which people lived. For example, somewhere near Novgorod, the land was so unproductive that at that time it was useless to force the peasants to sit still and not go anywhere, because they ate everything they produced. They didn’t have a surplus, they just had nothing to take away from.
We had a different system of dependence, it was based on the old tribal dependence, i.e. it was personal loyalty, and the prince fed his immediate retinue from his table. And it was the prince who owned all the dependent peasants who were in his patrimony, i.e. in his possession.
The fiefdom included ownership rights to:
⏩ Earth
⏩ Built
⏩ inventory
⏩ and on the serfs
Who is a prince?
❗️ A prince is the head of a tribe, clan, the leader of a military retinue, the ruler of a feudal state.
So this prince had retinues, warriors in the service of the prince.
L. L. Shtrykman “The Prince’s Retinue on the Campaign”
The prince could give his retinue some land as a hold. This is how they became boyars, i.e. a boyar was a close confidant of the prince, the highest layer of feudal lords. Roughly speaking, a vigilante without land is just a warrior in the service of the prince, a vigilante with land is already a boyar.
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And I also want to clarify for those who do not know, the words “feudal lord”, “feudalism” are heard all the time – what is it?
❗️ A fief is a land (less often an income or the right to receive an income) granted by a lord (i.e. e. lord, a landowner who had smaller landowners in personal dependence) – a vassal (i.e. a landlord).e. (i.e., the landowner who had received the land under the conditions of military service, monetary or other duties), who in turn could now use and dispose of them.
❗️ Accordingly, a feudal lord is a landowner in the era of feudalism (the owner of a fief).
❗️ And feudalism is the historical period of the Middle Ages and early modern times, the estate-class structure of society (agrarian type, pre-industrial), when the main economic resource was land and it was owned by feudal lords.
Now that the terms have been sorted out, now it should be clearer. Let’s move on.
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So, the prince gave his retinue land as a hold. Peasants lived on this land. Therefore, the land passed to the newly-made boyar together with them. And these peasants began to feed not the prince, but this boyar. They simply paid tribute to the prince in due time. But again, it was not they who gave it, it was the boyar who controlled the territory and paid the prince some kind of contribution to the general state treasury. And also on demand went on a campaign. The peasants who lived on his land clothed, shod, fed, and armed the warrior, i.e. the manor horseman, i.e. the landowner.
At the same time, the landlord did not own the peasants. They were owned by the Grand Duke. The peasant did not belong to the landlord. It’s just that the peasant used to pay a tax to the tsar, but now he pays part of this tax to the landlord so that he could perform military service. In other words, it is the draught population, which has been transferred to the landlord (the obligation, for example, to plough the land and pay taxes). You pay the tax to the landlord, and the landlord can buy himself a horse. sabre, protective weapons (chain mail, armor, helmet, shield) – if he could afford it and went to war.
A warrior in combined armor and a rider in chain mail and leggings.
In fact, our chivalry at that time was very poor. They lived extremely poorly, often could not afford normal armor (it was good if they had a horse and a sabre). But he was a warrior who spent most of his life in military service. For 10 months a year, he was in military service, getting sick and wounded. Just imagine what a sabre can do to a person and how he survives after that (for example, a sabre could cut the neck in half): oblique, lame, chopped, one-eyed, fingerless people dragged out the service until old age.
In general, at that time they were people who were as useful as the peasants!
It is clear that over time, the nobles and landlords did not like this situation very much: they were a concrete military force, a pillar of the throne, laying down their lives and health for generations for the benefit of the country and the tsar. And gradually, they gained serious strength. Certain wealth began to be concentrated in their hands, because from the war, one way or another, they could steal something for themselves, and I repeat, this was a real military force.
SERFDOM
P. Sukhodolsky – “Noon in the Village, 1864
Now let’s move on to how useful people became parasites, and free peasants became semi-slaves.
And let’s figure it out: was there slavery in Russia?
There was slavery in Russia. But these were not the serfs, to whom we shall return.
As soon as you begin to immerse yourself in the history of Russia, you come across “Yaroslav’s Truth” – our first code of laws. It lists a number of categories of the unfree population.
Along with my husband, i.e. a free man, I would like to note that he was a free (legally!) community member, i.e. a member of the community.Legally, he is not tied to the land, but he still has grain thrown into the ground. And in order to go to a new place, he needs to leave this grain. He also has inventory, food supplies, household items – and if you go to a new place, then all this needs to be transported. In other words, a peasant is not a nomad, he is a settled farmer. It is built into the peasant community. After all, in late primitiveness, the beginning of class society, the community regulated the behavior of its members, and a person simply could not exist outside the community.
Therefore, the idea that at any moment a peasant could go somewhere, again: to go – where? Into abstract space? Of course, there was a lot of land in Russia, but there was little fertile land that was convenient to cultivate. And so, they say, he can go “somewhere”, start a new farm, build a house and live in the middle of some area – this is all a delusion. A person could cultivate the land only in a collective.
Leaving the community at that time was a very brave move.
For a better understanding, I will give an example: if we take some subtropical area where irrigation agriculture is necessary, i.e. artificial irrigation of the land with the help of artificial canals, reservoirs, where it is necessary to either irrigate or divert water, as in China. For example, a single farmer cannot achieve anything at all, even 1,000 farmers will not be able to achieve anything, but 100,000 farmers will be able to achieve an effective result. They will be able to dig canals, equip flooded rice fields, organize the drainage of water – and only in this case can society work effectively and survive. Otherwise, people will simply die of hunger.
So, in our first set of laws, in addition to a legally free person, we can find:
⏩ Chelyadina is a slave-captive, figuratively speaking, a foreigner. The most archaic, i.e.e. an ancient form of dependency known in Russia. He is a slave in the full sense of the word, who is not recognized as a human being, he has no rights at all, he is completely dependent on his master, and he is considered a thing that can be bought and sold.
This is followed by
⏩ A serf is also a dependent population. They were prisoners, because of a crime committed, debts, or sold into serfdom voluntarily in front of witnesses (to serve until death or until they work off the debt). He has no personal freedom, but unlike a man, he is a human being.
⏩ There were also slaves, but they were recognized as living beings, people, and they had a certain legal status. But they were considered the property of the lord and could be sold and bought.
This is followed by
⏩ A buyer (which, by the way, is one of the main ways to get into slavery) is someone who has borrowed money and gone to work it off. T.e. For the time of working off the debt, he falls into slavery, i.e.e. All the product it produces belongs to the owner. Another thing is that once you got into the purchase, you could stay that way forever. But the children of the purchasers were considered free, because they did not take anything from anyone.
And then there were
⏩ Privates are categories of people who are semi-free. These are those who have concluded a series (i.e. a contract, now they would say “contract” or “contractor”) for such and such a person for a certain period of time.
But I want to point out that we have never had such ferocious forms of slavery as in the Roman Empire.
This system lasted for quite a long time, it lasted until the 15th century. And by the 15th century, we have 2 categories of ordinary people who have some kind of status – the peasant and the serf.
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I would also like to add that late feudalism (not only in Russia!) is characterized by the formalization of wage work as a lack of freedom. And the idea that a wage earner was hired to work but retained personal freedom was alien to feudalism. That is, the employment contract was not like between equal subjects, it was a contract of a person who sells himself into slavery, but receives some benefits for this, and perhaps even in the form of a loan, the salary that the person should receive for the period of employment was formalized. But still, for the duration of this employment, he formally became a slave of his master. Although he could have moved on to another one.
ST. GEORGE’S DAY. “SUDEBNIK”. 1497, Ivan-3
St. George’s Day, S. V. Ivanov
And now we have come to the fifteenth century. At that time, the famous “St. George’s Day” was introduced, with which many people associate serfdom.
In 1497, Ivan-III published the “Sudebnik”, according to which the peasants could now move from the 1st landowner to another ONLY 1 week “before” and “after” the church day of commemoration of the Great Martyr George the Victorious – “St. George’s Day” – November 26. And it was also necessary to pay the owner of the land an “elderly” (this is a kind of duty for the use of the land).
This norm is considered by many as the first step towards serfdom. Allegedly, before that, a peasant could leave at any time, but now only these 2 weeks.
But in fact, this does not take into account the economic cycle: for example, in the midst of the harvest, a peasant could theoretically leave, but what will happen to him then? What will he eat if he abandons everything he has sown or has just begun to gather? There were no supermarkets back then.
In addition, there was no highway in our country at that time, so the sleigh track, which was installed for St. George’s Day, was quite convenient for movement. And since the agricultural work has just been completed, you can be distracted by extraneous matters, for example, moving.
There is an opinion that the Code of Laws of 1497 is not the first legal document that reflected the phenomenon of St. George’s Day. Prior to that, there were other local regulations that were in force in certain territories in which there was a period of peasant refusal (this was called “peasant refusal”). It is different, it is not tied to St. George’s Day, but it is always autumn.
And Ivan-3 does not introduce anything new into the legislation, it simply brings to a single type of legislation for the whole country: a single state – a single legislation.
By the way, this is one of the strengths of our history, the same Sigismund von Herberstein, who under Vasily III was twice an ambassador from the German Emperor to Moscow and was the first of the deepest and most subtle observers of Russian life among foreigners. He was amazed that in the possessions of the Russian ruler there was one religion, one legislation and one measure of scales – he was amazed and delighted. that we have it all.
And if the norm of “St. George’s Day” was formed even before Ivan-3, then the question arises: were there any innovations in the “Sudebnik” of 1497 at that time?
Perhaps the innovation lies in the so-called “elderly”, which the peasant, leaving his owner, i.e. the owner of the land on which he lived (at that time the peasant was not yet a serf and his owner was not the owner of his body and his property), the peasant had to pay a certain sum, it was 25 kopeks in the fields and 50 kopeks in the forests. This is a large sum – it is about the amount of the peasant’s annual rent. which he paid to his landlord or landlord. And this, of course, reduced the possibility of its exit.
Here, apparently, Ivan-3 was guided by the desire to support the small landowner. After all, it is the small landowner at this time who is an ordinary soldier of the mounted noble militia. It is the backbone of our armed forces. That is why our government was interested in the landlord being able to arm himself and equip himself from his estate.
Sigismund Herberstein – coloured engraving from the edition of “Notes on Muscovite Affairs” – “Russian Horsemen”, 1556
And the estate was small: according to estimates, the small landowner owned the land, on which about 10 peasant families lived. That is, the departure of the 1st peasant family reduced the landlord’s budget by 10%, and the budget was meager. And, apparently, the family of this landlord consumed about the same amount of material goods as a peasant family, because all the income of the head went to 2 horses. It is also good if the head of the family could get hold of booty in a military campaign, but if he was in an army that was being defeated, then he lost what he had. And all this had to be restored. At the same time, he was not entitled to any monetary salary – he had a land salary – this is the usual way of providing for soldiers under feudalism.
Therefore, the elderly provided the landlord with the opportunity to live for a year without reducing his budget. The elderly were supposed to insure the landlord against the fact that he would lose his material base and be lost as a warrior.
At the same time, if we talk about the real transition of a peasant from one possession to another, then it should be taken into account that there is no free land left in the central regions of the country, because at that time agrarian overpopulation was already observed in the area of the near Moscow region. And Moscow arose on just such a patch, with a diameter of about 50 km of more or less fertile land. And it was on such oases of more fertile land that everyone wanted to farm.
But if there was no more space, he was forced to farm in less favorable conditions. And if we take, for example, the modern Vologda Oblast, then agriculture in general was extremely difficult and unproductive.
Of course, everyone wanted to go south to the steppe to the black soil, but in the 16th century it was still not ours. And only at the end of the 16th-17th centuries there began a slow movement to the south, the reconquest of the steppe, which ended at the end of the 18th century with the annexation of Novorossiya and the Crimea – then the agricultural colonization of the whole of Novorossiya became possible.
So, the peasantry was quite strongly drawn to more fertile areas, and all the land was distributed either among patrimonies, or among estates, or among monastic possessions. In other words, there was no free land. In fact, for the majority of Russian peasants, the choice was to live in a given estate or patrimony, or to move to another estate or patrimony.
Here, the peasant is always treated as an independent character. But there is evidence that the peasant was lured or taken away by rich owners from small nobles. How did it happen? Take a large monastery or a boyar who has hundreds or thousands of peasant families in his domain. He is naturally interested in increasing the number of his peasants. Because for feudalism, labor is the main resource.
In the first place, a large patrimony or monastery could grant the peasant certain social indulgences (give a loan or exempt him from the rent for a number of years, and could even pay state duties for it).
In exchange for this, the peasant basically had to work for him for a number of years (3-5 years), for example, to cut down a plot of forest and plough it, i.e. to turn the forest into arable land. Then the peasant could voluntarily leave on these preferential terms.
Or there could have been a more criminal situation, when a boyar or his steward with a group of armed servants came to the village, when a small landowner was on a campaign or in service (and he was in service almost every year from spring to autumn). And he just took away a few peasant families. At first, these peasants submitted to violence, and then they could understand that life in a new place was easier. And when the case came to court, these same peasants could testify under oath that they had voluntarily left their landlord on the same St. George’s Day.
Therefore, most likely, the most common migration was this migration to large possessions.
Thus, the small landlords lost the opportunity to act as warriors, and the state immediately felt this, and the large owners simply became rich.
But it was the small ordinary landowner who was just the faithful support of the sovereign and was personally devoted to him.
Be that as it may, there was no competition for peasants between the feudal lords, large and small, because there was an increase in the population, the development of new territories, and, in principle, there were enough peasants for everyone.
But the Livonian War caused a deep crisis of the Russian state.
At one time, it was believed that the oprichniks robbed and killed everyone, now this opinion has been revised – the role of oprichniki hooliganism was insignificant. The desolation of the entire northwest was connected with another problem, which, unlike the oprichnina, could not be abolished.
And, by the way, many feudal countries have faced the following problem: ➡️ for example, there is some kind of war going on, it is clearly dragging on, there is an idea that you need to exert yourself a little more, make an effort, collect money and warriors , and then we will be able to strike the final blow and defeat the enemy.
➡️ Money is raised, troops are recruited, a blow is struck, but it does not bring victory.
➡️ The next year it was the same: they collected extraordinary taxes, got the army and struck the “last” blow. But again, not victorious.
➡️ A third time, a fourth…
➡️ And then another emergency tax leads to catastrophic consequences: the payer pays with the last of his strength, and at some point the payment forces become exhausted.
➡️ And war, in addition, brings stalemates and plunder. It is clear that a passing army, even its own, wants to eat something, and at the same time the army is not always ready to pay. And there is nothing to say about the enemy army.
Peasants are trying to survive in the current conditions. As a result, the population drops markedly (hunger, disease, resettlement). And by the end of Ivan the Terrible’s reign, a serious agrarian crisis arose.
According to some estimates, because of this, the number of mounted noble troops fell by 2 times, because the landlords could not arm themselves properly.
RESERVED SUMMERS, IVAN IV THE TERRIBLE, 1581
Then the government of Ivan the Terrible introduced the “Reserved Years” (from the word “commandment” – prohibition) – these are the years in which the transition of peasants was forbidden even on “St. George’s Day”, i.e. in a certain district or in a certain region, for a certain time (for example, for 3 years) the resettlement of peasants was prohibited. In other words, it was not a general law for the whole country, it was a local time limit.
But over time, they began to cover the entire territory of the country like patches and gradually merged into one.
LESSON YEARS, Fyodor Ioannovich, 1597
“Peasant on a cart”
And on February 20, 1597, a decree was issued on a five-year term for the search for fugitives (“Lesson Years”).
This measure, again, was aimed primarily at protecting the interests of small landowners.
Legislation on Term Years – Details, Statistics
FINAL FORMALIZATION OF SERFDOM – “CATHEDRAL CODE” 1649, ALEXEI MIKHAILOVICH
Scroll of the Cathedral Code
And so, in 1649, the “Council Code” introduced an indefinite search for fugitive peasants.
❗️It is believed that this formalized serfdom.
✅ Here they made the search for runaway peasants indefinite. Now the peasant was attached to a certain piece of land for life without any chance of changing anything in his life on his own.
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This was recorded in the book “at serfdom affairs” – a fortress or a serfdom act – a transaction made by the serfdom order (usually fixing the transfer of ownership).
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✅ Also, the children of serfs also became serfs, i.e.e. The hereditary dependence of the peasants is established.
✅ It is now possible to marry a serf only with the permission of the master.
✅ And all the property of the peasant was recognized as the property of the landlord.
So, we can say that to ser. In the 17th century, serfdom developed in our country, and it only worsened further:
➡️ First it’ s “Reserved Summers”,
➡️ Then the term of the investigation: first 5 years, then 15, then indefinitely,
➡️ Further, decrees are issued in general on the right to sell peasants without land.
➡️ and Peter I equates peasants with serfs.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that the oppression was constantly intensifying, in the 17th century the nobles still served and the peasants worked.
And then the XVIII century came, Pyotr Alekseevich reigned and under him it was allowed to sell peasants (yes, according to the Council Code of 1649 it was forbidden to sell people).
At the same time, a single mass of serf peasantry was formed, which was divided into two main types of serfs: the serf of the landlord and the serf of the state. Of course, the situation of the state was easier.
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There is a purely demographic example: if we take the ratio of serfs to state peasants under Paul I, then about 75% will be serfs, 25% will be state-owned. And by the time of the abolition of serfdom, it was almost 50%/50%, despite the fact that no new territories with state peasants were annexed in large numbers.
Simply because the infant mortality rate in the state village was somewhat lower than in the serfs. And the state peasant lived a little better than the serf. And here is the result: the state peasantry multiplied much more efficiently in the first half of the nineteenth century than the serf peasantry.
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Let’s go back to the 18th century. There is a concept that throughout Eastern Europe, the authorities made an unspoken agreement with the nobility: the nobility submits to absolute power, in exchange for which it receives absolute power over its serfs (and this treaty worked in Prussia, in the Austrian possessions, and in Russia).
In general, in the epoch of Peter the Great, both absolutism and serfdom were formed in our country, and serfdom acquired the ugliest forms that we know.
DECREE ON THE LIBERTY OF THE NOBILITY, Peter III, 1762
Peter III
But if under Peter the Great all the nobles were obliged to serve, then when he dies without leaving an heir, it turns out that it is not the tsar who rules, but the RULING CLASS, to which the tsar belongs.
Previously, it was not so noticeable, but now it has begun to manifest itself as much as possible. This was shown by a series of palace coups, in which an undesirable tsar could easily be overthrown or killed. And the first role in them was played by the nobles – the guards. It turned out that the Caesars depended on them a little less than completely.
And in general, the nobles considered that they had already served their purpose, and Peter III, although he was on the throne at that time, was directly dependent on them. Therefore, in order to somehow improve his situation, he issued a decree on the freedom of the nobility, which was later confirmed by Catherine II, his wife.
According to this decree, nobles were no longer required to serve.
No, of course they could, if they wanted to, because one could only make a career in the service of the sovereign. But if there was no such desire, then it was possible not to do it.
In addition, there was no particular need for this, because the nobleman owned the land on which the peasants lived, who at that time could no longer leave it. The peasants provided him with absolutely everything. And the nobleman could do whatever he wanted with them, and he would not be punished for it.
I would like to dwell on this point separately and describe in more detail the relationship between the peasants and the nobility.
RELATIONS BETWEEN PEASANTS AND NOBLES
The first thing I’ll start with here is that it was forbidden by law to kill a serf in all years, but it was possible to flog.
⏩ And they flogged EVERYTHING.
Sometimes they were flogged for misdemeanours in such a way that the peasants were then carried out in sheets. They were steamed to death, but no one blamed the landlord for this – he HAS the RIGHT to inflict 5 lashes for a small sin, for example, and for a serious one, let’s say – 20. By the way, you could die from such a quantity. For those who don’t know, a whip is a long whip, the blow of which feels roughly like a hoof blow. They beat me along my back. At the same time, the skin naturally burst there.
If, for example, the landlord himself did not want to flog the guilty peasant, he could take him to a specially trained guarantor, pay him a small sum, and he himself did everything right. But it happened that they were bribed, and for money he could not flog much, but I think this did not make it easier for the peasant.
If we talk about the statistics of flogged, when before the First World War the next conscription was at the medical examination, it turned out that 75% of the peasants were flogged, this was shown by the scars from the flogging on the back.
⏩ Also, the lord could exile a guilty peasant to Siberia without trial or investigation.
At the same time, Catherine II forbade the peasants to complain about the landlords.
To complete the picture, I would like to add that most of the landlords had one house together with the serfs: the lord’s half and the non-lord’s half. And whatever it is, the bar is also about people. They were DIFFERENT, and the peasants were different, and the relationships between them were also different: some barés were great people and treated their peasants very well, not all were like Saltychikha, for example, who after the death of her husband killed people by the dozens. In the end, she was punished for what she had done and exiled to a monastery, because several peasants still managed to escape and, despite the ban, complain personally to Empress Catherine II. This, of course, is out of the ordinary, but in her cruelty, unfortunately, she was not alone. Some landlords even had a menagerie (wolves, bears) into which the guilty peasants were thrown.
⏩ There were cases when, for example, the landlord had a separate house, there were about a dozen girls sitting there, who allegedly wove lace, but in fact he used them for his sexual pleasures, changed them , the children turned out to be serfs – there were no preferences for them.
⏩ Some landlords combined ballet with a brothel. The amount of moral suffering that these serfs endured is hardly imaginable.
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It’s like infant mortality, which was terrible in the 19th century: only half of newborns reached the age of 15. But this mortality was treated as an everyday phenomenon. This did not evoke any responses in literature, music, for example (although folklore reflected this). But on the whole, it remained in the shadow of high noble culture.
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⏩ In the same way, the landlord could sell the peasants, and sell them, dividing the family: the wife in one direction, the husband in the other, the children in the third, almost like greyhounds.
In other words, people were on the verge of becoming slaves.
They differed from slaves only in that, for example, in Rome a slave did not have the right to have a family. Of course, he could cohabit with a slave girl, but that wasn’t considered a family because they weren’t originally considered human.
And the serf peasant had a normal, official family – they were married in the church. He could have property and even real estate of his own. For example, the hut he cut down was HIS hut.
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By the way, about the landlord’s foolishness and complete power over the serfs: in 1811, the 1st landlord in a strong drunken mood arranged a joke: he married his serf men. This is apparently the first same-sex marriage registered in world history. And the Synod did not know what to do with it (historian Pavel Lvovich Yudin found the interrogations of the priest, in which he said that he did all this under threat, otherwise he would have had a bad time).
That’s how the landlords amused themselves.
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⏩ The serfs could not learn: who would teach the serfs on an industrial scale? No one will. T.e. The bulk of the population was grey, and since it was grey, it was impossible to employ them as skilled labour, because they could neither read nor write, they could not be put to the machine. Therefore, the bulk of the peasants were engaged in agriculture or small crafts.
The bulk of the landlords’ farms were very small. And where there were a lot of people, there were more resources – the economy was subsistence. Somewhere there were some crafts, some kind of manufactory, for example, girls were weaving, spinning and weaving something. If you managed to sell something from above, it was good. In fact, this is what the landowner lived on.
And, of course, we did not have any revolutionary breakthroughs or discoveries in agriculture at that time, because the landlords did not need them at all. And it was impossible to do it. For this purpose it was necessary to unite several landlords’ farms into one large latifundia (land holdings occupying a large area), but then it would be necessary to leave one landlord and ruin all the rest. Who would do that? The nobles were the ruling class at that time, naturally they didn’t want that.
To put it crudely, the nobility hindered the development of the country, they turned into parasites who sat on the neck of their people, exploited them, doing harm to the bulk of the population (which was 85%) and kept this population in a bestial state.
However, there were also prominent people among them who used the free leisure provided by the peasants to make a career serving the Motherland.
⏩ The landlords made extensive use of the free labor of serfs. As an example, all the noble estates that we are now admiring were created BEFORE THE ABOLITION OF SERFDOM. Not a single manor complex was created after the abolition of serfdom! And most of them began to intensively wither and even maintain their own estate complexes in conditions of free hired labor, even very rich landlords could no longer to the extent that they did before the abolition of serfdom.
After all, the amount of peasant labor that the landlord used for his whims was gigantic. That is, not only did the peasants grow grain and bring food to the landlord’s estate, but they also sprinkled sand on the paths, dug canals, built some pavilions, did landscaping – and all this for free.
On the other hand, the feudal epoch always gives rise to high culture: it is a very refined, very complex, beautiful culture.
The same Winter Palace
Winter Palace
In our country it is also the fruit of the feudal culture, and our former landlord estates are also the fruit of this culture.
Manor
After all, the goal of a nobleman’s life was not to accumulate, not to increase his estate, but the goal was ostentatious luxury, the opportunity to live his life with dignity.
It is not necessary to serve your ruler well, the main thing is to dress according to your rank, receive guests, and build a residence worthy of yourself.
❗️ But it is necessary to remember by whose hump all this was achieved.
And what about the peasants?
Of course, they did not look at it all meekly, although they had few opportunities to fight their situation. Yet they had several ways of protesting against such a life.
⏩The first is escape. But when the peasant dared to escape, he lost his means of subsistence, and then the question arose: how would he survive further? And this applies not only to Russia. In a number of European countries (the Balkans, Southern Italy, certain regions of Spain, etc.) a special social phenomenon is emerging – robbery. On the one hand, robbery becomes a form of social protest and, on the other, a form of survival for people who have severed ties with their social environment.
On the other hand, it was possible to flee to the outskirts. For example, Siberia did not formally know serfdom and it was possible to go beyond the Urals. But at the same time, it was necessary to eat something on the road, and then it was necessary to create a new farm: it was necessary to clear the forest for several years, sow something, live on something, take draught cattle somewhere – this was a serious problem.
It was possible to run to the Cossacks. But the Cossack society is in the end. The 17th and early 18th centuries showed a tendency to withdraw into themselves, they no longer accepted the people who walked around, the Cossacks gradually integrated into the system of the estate absolutist state as a special military service class, and those who had already arrived on the Don became either farm laborers for more or less rich Cossacks, or “naked Cossacks”. In general, the opportunities to flee to the Don became much smaller.
Therefore, in percentage terms, a small minority decided to escape.
⏩ The second, and this is their main way of protest, the peasants expressed in the following way: from the note of a landowner, an officer: ” Laziness, deceit, lies, theft seem to be hereditary in them. Drunkenness, delicacy, superstition, note, whisperers are their best pleasures.
They deceive their master with feigned illnesses, old age, poverty, false sighs, in work – laziness, they steal what has been prepared by common labors, they do not want to tidy up, cleanse, smear, dry and mend them.
In the offspring of cattle and poultry, from the neglect of the Pomeran, inventing various cases, they lie.
The authorities do not know the measures of spending money and bread, they do not like the remnants of the future tense, as if they are deliberately trying to bring ruin and do not look at those who are assigned to do what, so that they can correct them correctly in due time.
They do not remember the mercy shown to them in the reward of bread, money, clothing, cattle, and freedom, and instead of gratitude and merit, they enter into rudeness, laziness, malice, and cunning.
They do not feel God’s punishment for hunger, misfortunes, sickness, death itself, in the resurrection of the dead and the future judgment of retribution for everyone according to their deeds, and they consider their death for rest.”
I think that the last words: “they consider their death for peace” say a lot about the lives of these people.
And if you think about it, how else should a person behave, on whom nothing depends? And even if he is a diligent, thrifty farmer, who cares about his own well-being, then all this can be taken away by the landlord in an instant: he can simply be sold to another landowner (and it is not yet known what kind of person he will be – what if some drunkard or a prisoner is caught – then all the efforts, and life in general, will go to waste).
Therefore, the only sensible course of action was to enjoy the benefits of life that were now available: to try to work less and eat more if possible. Thus, people tried to save their strength in order to survive in these conditions.
⏩ The third way of protest is rebellion. But the peasants understood that there was practically no chance for a crowd of rebellious peasants to survive against a regular army. Therefore, the only possibility for the rebellious peasants to live in this state for any length of time is to become robbers. And it is characteristic that during the Pugachev uprising – the most meaningful, conscious peasant uprising in our history – the peasants joined Pugachev only after he came to their territory. They did not revoltin advance, before the arrival of the bulk of Pugachev’s army.
There were also major uprisings of Razin, Bolotnikov, and Bulavin.
Vasily Fomichev – “Pugachev on Sokolovaya Mountain”, 1949
In general, the peasants used every opportunity to defend their rights. In principle, the tools to restrain the most insane landlords existed even within the framework of the feudal system, but they required enormous efforts from the peasants in order to set these mechanisms in motion.
3-DAY CORVÉE, PAUL I, 1797
So, the screws were tightened no further, the peasant was not much different from the slave in his position. And peasant grievances are gaining momentum. Serfs more and more often began to arrange lynching of their sadistic lords (for example, Field Marshal Mikhail Fedotovich Kamensky or Count Arakcheev’s mistress Shumskaya (Minkina) herself, by the way, is one of the former serfs). Also, the tsar and the landlords were frightened by Pugachev’s rebellion.
Paul I also saw a terrible example in the French Revolution, during which the king and queen and many other nobles were beheaded. Paul I was very horrified by this (during the French Revolution, in 1792, the centuries-old French monarchy was overthrown).
And he publishes a Manifesto on the three-day corvée.
Now serfs had the right to work for the benefit of the court, the state or the landlords – 3 days a week (before that, in some regions the corvée could reach up to 7 days a week), it was forbidden to force them to work on Sundays (this day was provided for rest and attendance at church). And the remaining 3 days the peasants worked in their own interests.
And especially cruel nobles (those whose serf mortality was off the scale) were proclaimed insane.
DECREE ON FREE FARMERS, ALEXANDER I, 1803
Further, the war with Napoleon showed that serfdom really slowed down the country. Suddenly, it turned out that in Europe, in the same revolutionary France, where there was not a single serf left and people were MOTIVATED in a completely different way. And it seems that there were not many people in France compared to the rest of Europe, but this France managed to put the rest of Europe on its ears and take over most of it.
⏩ Therefore, Alexander I issued a decree on free farmers, according to which the landlords received the right to set serfs free with land for ransom. True, less than 1% of the peasants were freed in this way. Nevertheless, the half-measure of easing the lives of the peasants was adopted.
⏩ Also, in the western provinces of Courland, Estonia, Livonia and on the island of Ösel, serfdom was abolished.
In the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, there was a constant increase in the number of peasant uprisings, primarily in the form of murders of landlords.
ABOLITION OF SERFDOM, Alexander II, 1861
Boris Kustodiev – “Reading the Manifesto”, 1909
And then, by the end of the reign of Nicholas I, by the 1950s, industrial capitalism was actively developing in Europe, because there was no longer serfdom. There, by the way, serfdom was abolished in different ways at one time – it even happened that peasants were simply driven off the land without anything. Nevertheless, the development of industrial capitalism led to the fact that in the Crimean War we found ourselves absolutely powerless in the face of the armies of the West. They turned out to be TECHNICALLY head and shoulders stronger than us.
Under Alexander II, it turned out that it was no longer possible to delay – it was high time to abolish serfdom. Another thing is that it was too late, i.e. the historic chance had already been missed for 50 years.
It was only in 1861 that it was finally abolished. In his decision, Alexander II proceeded not from making the labor of the peasants more efficient, but from pleasing the landlords as best as possible, provided that it was time to abolish serfdom.
At the same time, peasants received personal freedom and the status of temporarily obliged. This meant that they were obliged to perform all duties in relation to their owners, but the landlords lost the right to buy, sell, transfer them to the courtyard and punish them.
In general, the peasants were lowered, but they were not just released, but into forced mortgages. The peasant had to pay redemption payments for 49 years.
Their amount consisted of the price of the land. Land cost differently in different localities. But the price of land was calculated not on the basis of its yield, but on the market value. Therefore, the most expensive land was around St. Petersburg, because it is the capital, but nothing grew on it. And somewhere in the black earth region, the price was much lower and everything grew perfectly on it.
But since in the south, where land was of great value (not to be confused with price!) because of its yield, and it was the landlord who had the right to dispose of what land the peasant would receive, then, of course, he gave them the land that was the worst. As a result, peasants in the south received very small plots; And in the north, on the contrary, where the land was less fertile, the landlords tried to squeeze as much land as possible into the peasants, because the amount of redemption payments depended on the percentage of land received by the peasants. The more land a peasant receives, the more payments he pays.
In general, from the very beginning the peasants found themselves in a very unbalanced position. This, by the way, is where the property stratification of the population began.
20% of the value of the land was paid by the state, the rest was to be paid by the peasants.
Due to the fact that subsistence farming prevailed, the peasants had to continue to work off the corvée on the landlord’s land, i.e. they worked off part of the debt with the same corvée. In addition to their main activity, they were also forced to engage in some kind of craft, to go to the city to work (get a job as small artisans, loaders, engage in private cabbing, prostitution, and so on) in order to save money to pay these redemption payments.
By 1906, when the redemption payment was finally stopped after the revolution of 1905, it turned out that the peasants had paid 294% for the land! That is, all the juices were naturally sucked out of them.
And they would have continued to do it, but people were brought to the point.
And such a point turned out to be the Russo-Japanese war, when these same peasants were sent to another state to be used there as cannon fodder. From 1904 to 1905 there was not a single battle won at all, only defeats. That is, cripples returned home, unable to work, and some did not return at all.
This is followed by Bloody Sunday. The beginning of the 1st Russian Revolution. Monstrous riots all over the country. And the government was forced to abolish redemption payments, and they would continue to take them in the future.
Redemption payments were abolished in 1907. Thus, the First Russian Revolution put an end to the DIRECT consequences of serfdom.
In general, serfdom was a long, important stage in our development. Until the end of the eighteenth century, it did not hinder the development of the country, and from the moment when the universal steam engine in England made capitalism a system that has clear advantages over feudalism, from that moment serfdom became a weight on its feet. And the sooner it was abolished, the better. There is an opinion that if serfdom had been abolished in the first quarter of the 19th century, the history of Russia would have taken a different path, along a less traumatic path.
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SERF MILLIONAIRES
Former serfs: M. Shchepkin, the Morozovs, S. Abrikosov with his granddaughters, P. Gubonin
I want to end my story on a positive note, so to speak. No matter how hard and hopeless the life of the serfs was, some still managed to make their way into the world, and even become millionaires and found their own dynasties.
Here are some of them:
✅ Pyotr Gubonin (merchant, industrialist, philanthropist)
✅ Stepan Abrikosov (entrepreneur, founder of a commercial and industrial dynasty that founded a confectionery factory in Moscow).
✅ Vasily Tropinin (artist)
✅ Mikhail Shchepkin (actor, one of the founders of the Russian acting school)
✅ Pyotr Smirnov (philanthropist, entrepreneur, progenitor of the “Smirnoff” trademark)
✅ Nikita Demidovich Antufiev (industrialist, founder of the Demidov dynasty)
✅ Savva Morozov (entrepreneur, philanthropist, founder of the Morozov dynasty)
I am not going to describe the path of their formation now, it seems to me that this is a separate topic, the article has already turned out to be long. I will only briefly touch upon the biography of some of them.
Pyotr Ionovich Gubonin was born in 1825 into a serf family, and eventually became a merchant of the 1st guild, an industrialist and a patron of the arts. In 1872, he was even granted the title of nobility! And in 1875, he became a full state councilor, which gave hereditary nobility to his sons. That is, it turns out that he founded a noble family with his work and efforts.
He was also awarded the Order of St. George. St. Stanislaus, St. Anna, St. Vladimir. His merits were recognized even abroad. He was awarded foreign awards: Serbian, Montenegrin, Austrian, and Persian orders.
Thanks to him, many railway lines of various directions were built in Russia. He financed the construction of hospitals, theological seminaries and churches, including the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
Stepan Abrikosov was born in 1737. Being a serf of the landowner Levashova, he supplied delicacies and sweets to her table. Then, with the permission of the landowner, he moved with his family to Moscow for rent, where he opened a grocery trade and began to produce jam and marshmallows from apricots in the created family workshop. Later, he bought his freedom, registered as a Moscow merchant of the 3rd guild of the Semyonovskaya Sloboda. Abrikosov received his nickname and then surname for the art of making sweets from apricots.
After Stepan’s death, the business passed to his son Alexei, who managed to create a real confectionery empire. Its rightful heir was the Babaevsky Concern, which inherited many traditions of apricot sweets production.
Vasily Andreevich Tropinin was born in 1776 in the family of a serf. From early childhood, Vasily drew people, skillfully depicting their characteristic features. The serf Tropinin went to Count Morkov together with his daughter’s dowry. Noticing the obvious talent of their ward, the Morkovs sent the young man to study at the Imperial Academy of Arts. The young artist quickly became popular in the capital after performing several portrait works for aristocrats.
A great many enlightened and noble people, having learned that the painter Tropinin was a serf, were extremely indignant at this. The young nobles, with whom Count Morkov had various dealings, considered it their duty to publicly demand from him the freedom of a talented serf. But Morkov did not want to lose his personal artist. Nevertheless, in 1823 Tropinin was released, and soon he received the official status of an artist-academician.
Mikhail Semyonovich Shchepkin was born in 1788 in the family of a serf. In 1805, with the permission of the landowner, Mikhail appeared on the professional stage for the first time, and his talent was highly appreciated by sophisticated audiences. The outstanding artist was the favorite of thousands, but he remained dependent on his masters in everything.
Prince Repnin-Volkonsky organized a performance that made it possible to buy the serf Shchepkin from the Wolkensteins by subscription. Subsequently, the actor worked at the Moscow Maly Theater, and became one of the founders of the Russian acting school.
That’s not all, of course. There were talented people in Russia at all times and in different classes. Another thing is that not everyone managed to make it in the world. But as life has shown, talent, hard work, effort and luck can lift people from different social strata, even from the very bottom.
That’s all for now.