The Peasants in 16th Century Russia
The story I must here tell is a sad one. As a child, I saw the closing days of a regime which, in this humble sphere, only died out of…
From: 1500 C.E. To: 1600 C.E.
Location: Russia
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“The Peasants” from Ivan the Terrible by Kazimierz Waliszewski, 1904.
The story I must here tell is a sad one. As a child, I saw the closing days of a regime which, in this humble sphere, only died out of Russia a little less than half a century ago, and the Emancipation of 1861 was then looked on as a belated act of justice and political wisdom. But, as a matter of fact, it was a premature and hasty measure, for the state of things it ended had only lasted two centuries and a half. Contrary to what had happened in every other European country, the serfdom of modern Russia was not the painful legacy of a barbarous age, but a new fact, coinciding with the country's entrance on the path of European civilization, and the contradictory consequence, in a certain measure, of that new phase of the national existence.
This is an unquestionable paradox. Towards the close of the sixteenth century, when in every European country, and even close by, in Poland, the personal bond between the agricultural population and the landowners was breaking, or slackening, at all events, under the action of the new social and economic laws which were reforming the old feudal world, Russia contrives to forge, all complete, the very chains which have hitherto been non-existent within her borders!
Up to this period most of the peasants dwelling on the land conquered or recovered by Russian colonies in the north-west had been free in theory, at all events and the social condition of the class had even undergone some improvement. These peasants, once called smerdi—a name indicating scorn, if not infamy—(smerdit, to smell nasty), were now known by another generic title, which, while testifying to the lack of corporative differentiation always to be a peculiarity of the social elements of their country, clearly indicated a rise in the social scale. Whether town or country dwellers, tilling the soil or following other avocations, they were all simply called Khrestianié (Christians).
They made up the contingent of agricultural or industrial labourers. As agriculturists, whether working their own land or land belonging to another, their time and their labour were their own. In the first case, they had the free disposal of their property, so long as they paid the taxes imposed by the State or by their own commune. In the second, whether as tenant farmers or metayers, they paid for the use of the ground according to the very varying provisions of their agreements with the owners. These depended on local custom, on the value of the land, and especially on the nature of its judicial tenure.
The land was said to be 'white' free from State taxation or 'black' that is, taxed. The former category belonged to the vottchiny and the pomiéstia, the latter either to the Court or to the peasants themselves. Church lands might belong to either category, according to the concessions conferred on the clergy or the acquisitions made by them.
Leases on the metayage system for the period of crop rotation—three years—or even longer, were common, especially in the north and centre of the country, and those who held them were generally better off than their neighbours.
Other agreements imposed obligations on the farmer, resembling those of the English sveman, such as to cut wood and bring it to the manor-house, and pay certain fines, much like the French formariage, when his daughters married.
It was customary also, at Christmas and Easter, and on some other solemn feast days, for the tenant to make his landlord certain presents. These special dues bore the name of barcht-china (the lord's work), or izdiélié (work), or boïarskoie diélo (the lord's work). They foreshadow the forced service, soon, alas! to be the law of serfdom. But at this period their definite and common reason is to be found in the supplies of money, implements, and seeds frequently received by the farmer from his landlord, and the interest on which he thus returned.
The relative importance of these dues varies greatly, and it is rather difficult to fix their value. In the central provinces, towards the middle of the sixteenth century, the rent of an obja or a vyt—five to six diéssiatines—reached two or three roubles. But very often the charge was paid in labour, the tenant of an obja, for instance, being bound to till a diéssiatine, or one and a half, for the landlord's benefit. And, further, we should have to settle the value of the rouble at that period. It has been reckoned, according to the price of corn, at nearly 100 roubles of our coinage, but this seems a doubtful calculation.
On the 'black' lands belonging to the State these taxes were replaced by imposts and forced service, which occasionally reached a similar value, but were, generally speaking, less heavy. On lands, 'black' or 'white,' belonging to the Church, the expenses connected with working the soil were also much lighter, as a rule.
The tenant, wherever he was, could give up his tenancy when he had settled accounts with his landlord, and the landlord had power to put in a new tenant as soon as the old one's lease had expired. The extreme mobility of the popular existence—a universal feature, hereditary, and accentuated at this period made these migrations matters of frequent occurrence. From the fifteenth century, however, economic necessities had brought about a certain modification of this freedom on both sides. First of all arose a custom according to which no landlord exercised his rights in harvest-time, a moment at which no peasant could dream of using his. This led Ivan III. to fix a period of fourteen days, just after St. George's Day (November 24), for the relinquishment of tenancies and the winding up of accounts with landlords; and in his time the outgoing tenant further paid for his right of habitation (pojiloié) a sum varying, according to the value of the land occupied, between fifty-six kopecks and one rouble six kopecks.
Such was the law. In practice, as may be imagined, many evasions were possible. Labour being scarce and universally sought after, proprietors enticed farmers from one property to another, just like the Sovereigns, on the look-out for 'servants.' Often there were forcible abductions. These were called svoz. Often, too, on divers pretexts, outgoing tenants were called on to pay more than they owed, and thus detained. Yet, liberty, even so fettered and curtailed, was liberty still. What with the dues to his landlord and his commune, the extra charges for judicial proceedings, and the constantly increasing taxes laid upon him, the peasant had a heavy burden. Monsieur Rojkov, in his book on 'Russian Agriculture in the Sixteenth Century' (1899, p. 244), has calculated that the peasant in the northern provinces gave the landlord back one-half of the cereal produce of his holding, and that the other half hardly fed himself and his family for six months. Cattle-raising and some small industries enabled him to make two ends meet, but barely that. Very poor he was, but, like the old Anglo-Saxon ceorl, or the German Markgenosse, he continued to some degree the equal, from the judicial and administrative point of view, of the boïar, the merchant, and the Churchman. The courts of justice were open to him as to others, and such was the equality in this respect, that in a dispute between men of different ranks, amenable, by virtue of their condition, to different jurisdictions, the peasant, like any other subject of the Empire, had a right to choose his judges.
Within his own commune, too, whether rural or urban, he enjoyed a certain administrative autonomy which has taxed the sagacity of quite recent historians, and the nature of which I shall have to indicate more precisely when I reach a more detailed study of the organization of the country.
Finally, as I have just reminded my readers, these peasants were not all husbandmen. The documents of the period frequently divide them into two classes: labourers (pakhatnyié) and villagers (dereviénskiié). What are these villagers who do not dig? In this category we find men registered as millers, tailors, shoemakers. Here again is manifested, once again, that lack of the corporative spirit, that confusion of social atoms, which, save in the Church and even there we shall soon have to go back to the subject keeps the national organization in the outline stage. If many country peasants do not till the soil, the towns hold many who are husbandmen.
In country places the peasants of this first-named category often, though the fact is disputed (see Monsieur Diakhonov's ' View of the History of the Rural Populations in Russia,' 1889, p. 209, and Serguieievitch's ' Judicial Antiquities,' 1903, iii., 133, etc.), belonged to the mysterious class of the bobyli, landless peasants, occasionally tillers, but not on their own account, and in that case agricultural labourers, but trade labourers often, and, oftenest of all, vagabonds pure and simple, lost in the mass of outlaws of every kind Cossacks, wandering jugglers, beggars, and thieves. Those who would differentiate them from the tiaglyié—qualified peasants—are mistaken. Except in the case of lands enjoying a temporary or perpetual, but always an exceptional, freedom by virtue of special charters, the tiaglo (from tianout, to draw, to drag a load) is the universal rule of the period. Everybody pays in some fashion, everywhere, and on everything, and the bobyli, who pay taxes or imposts on the houses they inhabit or the trades they follow, are no exception. They owe nothing for the soil they till, because they till for others, and in this lies the sole difference between them and the ordinary husbandman.
Whether imposed on them by some misfortune or voluntarily accepted, nothing binds them to this comparatively humiliating condition in life. They can always leave it as soon as they find means to do so, and share the common rights once more. In the sixteenth century the proportion of bobyli in the country parts was from 4.2 to 41.6 per cent., the lowest percentage occurring on the lands held by monastic establishments. In the following century, and under the influence of the tumult into which the disputes over the inheritance of the Terrible cast the country, these figures will be quite upset.
In a more and more floating population the monasteries alone, or almost alone, will preserve a regular supply of labour, settling most of these bobyli, together with another class of unqualified peasants, the 'children of the monasteries' (monastyrskïīé diétiénychy), in their own villages and hamlets. These last were peasants of an inferior class, but free in their own person?, and not serfs at all. Were there no serfs, then, in this country, which, till the middle of the nineteenth century, was the last stronghold of European serfdom? Yes, indeed. But in the sixteenth century they formed an almost imperceptible element in the mass of the population.
Waliszewski, Kazimierz. Ivan the Terrible. Translated by Mary Loyd, William Heinemann, 1904.
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