Serfdom in Russia
In tsarist Russia, the term serf meant an unfree peasant who, unlike a slave, originally could be sold only together with the land to which they were "attached". However, this had stopped being a requirement by the 19th century, and serfs were by then practically indistinguishable from slaves. Contemporary legal documents, such as Russkaya Pravda, distinguished several degrees of feudal dependency of peasants. While another form of slavery in Russia, kholopstvo, was ended by Peter I in 1723, serfdom was abolished only by Alexander II's emancipation reform of 1861; nevertheless, in times past, the state allowed peasants to sue for release from serfdom under certain conditions, and also took measures against abuses of landlord power.
Serfdom became the dominant form of relation between Russian peasants and nobility in the 17th century. Serfdom most commonly existed in the central and southern areas of the Tsardom of Russia and, from 1721, of the subsequent Russian Empire. Serfdom was rare in Little Russia, other Cossack lands, the Urals and Siberia until the reign of Catherine the Great, when it spread to Ukraine; noblemen began to send their serfs into Cossack lands in an attempt to harvest their extensive untapped natural resources.
The emperor and the highest state officials feared that the peasants' emancipation would be accompanied by popular unrest, given the reluctance of the landlords to lose their serf property, but took some actions to alleviate the situation of the peasantry.
Napoleon tried to emancipate the serfs when he invaded Russia in 1812, but the French Emperor was ineffective in coping with what he subsequently judged the "barbaric" Russian peasantry. Emperor Alexander I wanted to reform the system but moved cautiously, liberating serfs in Estonia, Livonia, and Courland only. New laws allowed all classes to own land, a privilege previously confined to the nobility. Emperor Alexander II abolished serfdom in the emancipation reform of 1861, a few years later than Austria and other German states. Scholars have proposed multiple overlapping reasons to account for the abolition, including fear of a large-scale revolt by the serfs, the government's financial needs, changing cultural sensibilities, and the military's need for soldiers. Despite their newfound freedom, the peasants lacked an important factoreducationas the literacy rate among them was very low by the 1860s and 1870s, especially considering the countryside. The rate gradually increased since then, so that by 1917 the highest in the country was in Central Russia, more specifically only but about half of its population.
Terminology
The term muzhik, or moujik means "Russian peasant" when it is used in English. This word was borrowed from Russian into Western languages through translations of 19th-century Russian literature, describing Russian rural life of those times, and where the word muzhik was used to mean the most common rural dweller – a peasant – but this was only a narrow contextual meaning.History
Origins
The origins of serfdom in Russia may be traced to the 12th century, when the exploitation of the so-called zakups on arable lands закупы, roleyniye and corvée smerds was the closest to what is now known as serfdom. According to the Russkaya Pravda, a princely smerd had limited property and personal rights and his escheat was given to the prince.From the 13th century to the 15th century
From the 13th century to the 15th century, feudal dependency applied to a significant number of peasants, but serfdom as we know it was still not a widespread phenomenon. In the mid-15th century the right of certain categories of peasants in some votchinas to leave their master was limited to a period of one week before and after Yuri's Day. The Sudebnik of 1497 officially confirmed this time limit as universal for everybody and also established the amount of the "break-away" fee called pozhiloye. The legal code of Ivan III of Russia, Sudebnik, strengthened the dependency of peasants, statewide, and restricted their mobility. The Russians persistently battled against the successor states of the Golden Horde, chiefly the Khanate of Crimea. Annually the Russian population of the borderland suffered from Tatar invasions and slave raids and tens of thousands of noblemen protected the southern borderland, which slowed its social and economic development and expanded the taxation of peasantry.Transition to full serfdom
The Sudebnik of 1550 increased the amount of pozhiloye and introduced an additional tax called za povoz, in case a peasant refused to bring the harvest from the fields to his master. A temporary and later an open-ended prohibition for peasants to leave their masters was introduced by the ukase of 1597 under the reign of Boris Godunov, which took away the peasants' right to free movement around Yuri's Day, binding the vast majority of the Russian peasantry in full serfdom. These also defined the so-called fixed years, or the 5-year time frame for search of the runaway peasants. In 1607, a new ukase defined sanctions for hiding and keeping runaways: the fine had to be paid to the state and pozhiloye – to the previous owner of the peasant.The Sobornoye Ulozhenie of 1649 gave serfs to estates, and in 1658, flight was made a criminal offense. Russian landowners eventually gained almost unlimited ownership over Russian serfs. The landowner could transfer the serf without land to another landowner while keeping the serf's personal property and family; however, the landowner had no right to kill the serf. About four-fifths of Russian peasants were serfs according to the censuses of 1678 and 1719; free peasants remained only in the north and north-east of the country.
Most of the dvoryane were content with the long time frame for search of the runaway peasants. The major landowners of the country, however, together with the dvoryane of the south, were interested in a short-term persecution due to the fact that many runaways would usually flee to the southern parts of Russia. During the first half of the 17th century the dvoryane sent their collective petitions to the authorities, asking for the extension of the "fixed years". In 1642, the Russian government established a 10-year limit for search of the runaways and 15-year limit for search for peasants taken away by their new owners.
The Sobornoye Ulozhenie introduced an open-ended search for those on the run, meaning that all of the peasants who had fled from their masters after the census of 1626 or 1646–1647 had to be returned. The government would still introduce new time frames and grounds for search of the runaways after 1649, which applied to the peasants who had fled to the outlying districts of the country, such as regions along the border abatises called zasechniye linii , Siberia, Don etc. The dvoryane constantly demanded that the search for the runaways be sponsored by the government. The legislation of the second half of the 17th century paid much attention to the means of punishment of the runaways.
Serfdom was hardly efficient; serfs and nobles had little incentive to improve the land. However, it was politically effective. Nobles rarely challenged the tsar for fear of provoking a peasant uprising. Serfs were often given lifelong tenancy on their plots, so they tended to be conservative as well. The serfs took little part in uprisings against the empire as a whole; it was the Cossacks and nomads who rebelled initially and recruited serfs into rebel armies. But many landowners died during serf uprisings against them. The revolutions of 1905 and 1917 happened after serfdom's abolition.
Rebellions
There were numerous rebellions against this bondage, most often in conjunction with Cossack uprisings, such as the uprisings of Ivan Bolotnikov, Stenka Razin, Kondraty Bulavin and Yemelyan Pugachev. While the Cossack uprisings benefited from disturbances among the peasants, and they in turn received an impetus from Cossack rebellion, none of the Cossack movements were directed against the institution of serfdom itself. Instead, peasants in Cossack-dominated areas became Cossacks during uprisings, thus escaping from the peasantry rather than directly organizing peasants against the institution. Rich Cossacks owned serfs themselves. Between the end of Pugachev's Rebellion and the beginning of the 19th century, there were hundreds of outbreaks across Russia, and there was never a time when the peasantry was completely quiescent.Slaves and serfs
As a whole, serfdom both came and remained in Russia much later than in other European countries. Slavery remained a legally recognized institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter the Great abolished slavery and converted the slaves into serfs. This was relevant more to household slaves because Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679.There was a separate class of peasants who could be sold without land, these were dvorovie lyudi, however, unlike slaves in the classical view, their movable property, religious rights and inviolability were officially protected by law, such serfs could, like others, file a complaint with the local administration against their landowner and in the case of success gained almost complete freedom.
Some scholars present the institution of serfdom in the eighteenth century as almost analogous to American slavery, pointing out that the landlords had full power. This is a controversial position, since all legal norms regarding peasants, regardless of their status, point to the protection of their movable property, honor, and religion, while retaining the opportunity for them to personally represent their interests in court. However, landlords could actually personally punish their peasants and some abused this.
The official estimate is that 23 million Russians were privately owned, 23 million were considered personally free and another 3.5 million peasants were under the Tsar's patronage before the Great Emancipation of 1861.
Unlike serfs, state peasants and peasants under tsar's patronage were considered personally free, nobody had the right to sell them, to interfere in their family life, by law they were considered as 'free agricultural inhabitants'
One particular source of indignation in Europe was Kolokol published in London, England and Geneva. It collected many cases of horrendous physical, emotional and sexual abuse of the serfs by the landowners.