Serfdom

SERFDOM

Serfdom is the name of the condition of a peasant who does not enjoy the rights of a free person, but is not a slave. While the slave is an object of the law, the serf is still a subject of the law. The classic definition of serfdom in the Russian context is given in Jerome Blum's Lord and Peasant in Russia (pp. 6–8). Thus a serf is a peasant who (1) is bound to the land; or (2) is bound to the person of a lord; and (3) is not directly subject to the state, but is subject to a lord who in turn is subject to the state (such as it may be). Thus a serf bound to the land cannot be moved by any lord, and is supposed to be a "fixture" on that land regardless of who owns or holds the land. But if a serf is bound to the person of a lord, he essentially begins to resemble a slave in that the lord nearly becomes the owner of the serf: the lord can move the serf from one plot of land to another (or even into his household), and may even be able to sell the serf to a third party. The first and second conditions are mutually exclusive, for a serf cannot be bound to the land and simultaneously bound to the person of a lord. The third condition is most difficult to comprehend, but can arise under one of two circumstances: either state power does not exist (as during the manorial era of Russia in the early period of the "Mongol yoke," from 1237 to 1300 or even 1350) and thus the sole extant conflict-resolution power is exercised by a large estate owner, or the existing state power has abdicated or ceded judicial or taxing authority to the owner or holder of land. The third condition can exist by itself or in conjunction with the first or second conditions.

Whether there was serfdom of the third category in the early Mongol period, after the collapse of Russian princely power and during the period when the sole authority may have been the owner of a large estate (votchina ) or manor, is an issue. While there may have technically been serfdom between 1237 and 1300 or 1350, the reality was certainly such that no peasant knew he was a serf. In those decades most peasants lived on land they considered their own, not on a manor. Moreover, given the reigning system of slash-and-burn (assartage ) agriculture, peasants were accustomed to farming a new plot of land every three years and could freely move away from any manorial lord who was the slightest bit oppressive. Thus no one views any of the peasants of Russia as "serfs" until the second half of the fifteenth century.

Serfdom began as a result of the civil war of 1425–1453, which left much of Russia in ruins. Selected monasteries were allowed to forbid their peasant debtors to move at any time except around St. George's Day (November 26—compare with the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday), the day in the pagan calendar when the harvest was completed and thus debts could be collected. In 1497 the St. George's Day limitation was extended to all peasants; they were bound to the land and could not legally move at other times of the year. Lords were limited to collecting the traditional rent and had no authority over the peasants.

Ivan IV's mad Oprichnina (1565–1572) was responsible for initiating changes in the status of the peasant. Ivan gave his special Oprichnina troops, the oprichniki, control over the peasants living on the lands they possessed, which allowed them to raise their rents to whatever level they pleased. As a result the oprichniki "collected as much rent in one year as previously had been collected in ten." This and other barbarous acts of the Oprichnina resulted in the depopulation of much of old Muscovy as the peasants fled to newly annexed areas (colonial expansion). Certain landholders (pomestie ) then successfully petitioned the government to repeal the peasants' right to move on St. George's Day. In 1592 this repeal was temporarily extended to all peasants. Thus serfdom became the temporary legal status of all peasants.

Limitations were placed on the recovery of fugitive peasants in 1592, but they were repealed in the Law Code of 1649 (Ulozhenie). According to Chapter 11, Article 1, of the Ulozhenie of 1649, any peasants who had been recorded as living on state, court, or peasant taxable lands could be returned to those lands without any time limits. Article 2 stated the same for peasants living on seignorial lands. Thus all peasants in Russia within the reach of the Ulozhenie were serfs. The code also specified how runaways should be returned, and especially what should happen if male and female fugitives married. The Orthodox Church held that marriage was inviolable, so the couple had to be returned to the lord of one of them. The most rational

solution to this problem was that the lord who received a fugitive lost the couple, as punishment for having received the runaway. If the couple was on neutral territory, the contesting lords cast lots; the winner got the couple and paid the loser 10 rubles for the serf he had lost. The serf family was not inviolable, however, and under certain circumstances could be broken up.

Other articles of the Ulozhenie established rules that led to the further abasement of the serfs, ultimately to a change in their status to something resembling slaves. It started with owners of hereditary estates, who were allowed to manumit their serfs (a practice ominously borrowed from slavery) and transfer them from one estate to another. This seemed innocent enough, as the state was primarily concerned about service landholdings and having the serfs there to support whichever cavalryman might be holding it at the moment. Both logical and juridical problems automatically arose when service landholdings were converted into hereditary estates in 1714.

Prior to that time, however, it appears that the process of converting the serf from a peasant bound to the land to a peasant bound to the person of a lord was under way. Between the Ulozhenie and the introduction of the soul tax in 1721, the extent to which this had progressed is disputed. Some transactions appear to have been concealed sales of peasants, for example. After 1721, conditions worsened. Lords were held responsible for the collection of the soul tax, which putatively gave them additional power over the serfs. Then in 1762 lords were freed from twenty-five-year (essentially lifetime) compulsory military service, so that many of them spent most of their lives on their estates and took an interest in the management of those estates. This was the coup de grace, which often

converted seignorial serfdom into near slavery. Serfs were auctioned, traded, moved to wherever their lords wanted them to live, and even compelled to breed. However, lords did not own a serf's inventory, clothing, personal property, and so on. These features increasingly distinguished seignorial serfs from serfs living on state and court lands, who came to be called "state peasants" even though they were still really serfs.

Serfdom was abolished in stages, depending on which category peasants belonged to. In 1861 serfs serving in lords' households (house serfs [dvorovye lyudi], nominally, and probably frequently literally, descendants of house slaves who had been put on the tax rolls in 1721) and possessional serfs (those assigned to work in factories, typically textile and metallurgical, whose output collapsed in 1861) were freed in all respects immediately. Seignorial serfs were immediately freed from landlord control (from being bound to the person of their lord) and were instead bound to the commune (i.e., to the land). This was done to avoid flooding the cities (officials knew the Manchester phenomenon) and to ensure stability (the same officials believed the commune was a stabilizing factor in the countryside). A separate emancipation freed the state serfs and peasants in 1863. Serfdom was finally abolished in 1906 and 1907, when communal control over the former seignorial peasants was abolished and they were allowed to move wherever they desired. Many peasants believed that serfdom was reinstituted when the Soviets collectivized agriculture at the end of the 1920s.

See also: emancipation act; enserfment; law code of 1649; oprichnina; peasantry; slavery

bibliography

Blum, Jerome. (1961). Lord and Peasant in Russia: From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Emmons, Terence. (1968). The Russian Landed Gentry and the Peasant Emancipation of 1861. London: Cambridge University Press.

Field, Daniel. (1976). The End of Serfdom: Nobility and Bureaucracy in Russia, 1855–1861. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hellie, Richard. (1971). Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Hellie, Richard, ed. and tr. (1967 and 1970). Muscovite Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Syllabus Division.

Hellie, Richard, editor and translator. (1988). The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649. Irvine, CA: Charles Schlacks, Jr., Publisher.

Moon, David. (2001). The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia, 1762–1907. New York: Longman.

Richard Hellie