THE SERFS
The Rural Population in Ancient Times--The Peasantry in the Eighteenth
Century--How Was This Change Effected?--The Common Explanation
Inaccurate--Serfage the Result of Permanent Economic and Political
Causes--Origin of the Adscriptio Glebae--Its Consequences--Serf
Insurrection--Turning-point in the History of Serfage--Serfage in
Russia and in Western Europe--State Peasants--Numbers and Geographical
Distribution of the Serf Population--Serf Dues--Legal and Actual Power
of the Proprietors--The Serfs' Means of Defence--Fugitives--Domestic
Serfs--Strange Advertisements in the Moscow Gazette--Moral Influence of
Serfage.
Before proceeding to describe the Emancipation, it may be well to
explain briefly how the Russian peasants became serfs, and what serfage
in Russia really was.
In the earliest period of Russian history the rural population was
composed of three distinct classes. At the bottom of the scale stood the
slaves, who were very numerous. Their numbers were continually augmented
by prisoners of war, by freemen who voluntarily sold themselves as
slaves, by insolvent debtors, and by certain categories of criminals.
Immediately above the slaves were the free agricultural labourers, who
had no permanent domicile, but wandered about the country and
settled temporarily where they happened to find work and satisfactory
remuneration. In the third place, distinct from these two classes, and
in some respects higher in the social scale, were the peasants properly
so called.*
* My chief authority for the early history of the peasantry
has been Belaef, "Krestyanye na Rusi," Moscow, 1860; a most
able and conscientious work.
These peasants proper, who may be roughly described as small farmers or
cottiers, were distinguished from the free agricultural labourers in two
respects: they were possessors of land in property or usufruct, and
they were members of a rural Commune. The Communes were free primitive
corporations which elected their office-bearers from among the heads
of families, and sent delegates to act as judges or assessors in the
Prince's Court. Some of the Communes possessed land of their own, whilst
others were settled on the estates of the landed proprietors or on the
extensive domains of the monasteries. In the latter case the peasant
paid a fixed yearly rent in money, in produce, or in labour, according
to the terms of his contract with the proprietor or the monastery; but
he did not thereby sacrifice in any way his personal liberty. As soon
as he had fulfilled the engagements stipulated in the contract and had
settled accounts with the owner of the land, he was free to change his
domicile as he pleased.
If we turn now from these early times to the eighteenth century, we find
that the position of the rural population has entirely changed in the
interval. The distinction between slaves, agricultural labourers, and
peasants has completely disappeared. All three categories have melted
together into a common class, called serfs, who are regarded as the
property of the landed proprietors or of the State. "The proprietors
sell their peasants and domestic servants not even in families, but one
by one, like cattle, as is done nowhere else in the whole world, from
which practice there is not a little wailing."* And yet the Government,
whilst professing to regret the existence of the practice, takes no
energetic measures to prevent it. On the contrary, it deprives the serfs
of all legal protection, and expressly commands that if any serf shall
dare to present a petition against his master, he shall be punished with
the knout and transported for life to the mines of Nertchinsk. (Ukaz of
August 22d, 1767.**)
* These words are taken from an Imperial ukaz of April 15th,
1721. Polnoye Sobranye Zakonov, No. 3,770.
** This is an ukaz of the liberal and tolerant Catherine!
How she reconciled it with her respect and admiration for
Beccaria's humane views on criminal law she does not
explain.
How did this important change take place, and how is it to be explained?
If we ask any educated Russian who has never specially occupied himself
with historical investigations regarding the origin of serfage in
Russia, he will probably reply somewhat in this fashion:
"In Russia slavery has never existed (!), and even serfage in the
West-European sense has never been recognised by law! In ancient times
the rural population was completely free, and every peasant might change
his domicile on St. George's Day--that is to say, at the end of the
agricultural year. This right of migration was abolished by Tsar
Boris Godunof--who, by the way, was half a Tartar and more than half a
usurper--and herein lies the essence of serfage in the Russian sense.
The peasants have never been the property of the landed proprietors,
but have always been personally free; and the only legal restriction on
their liberty was that they were not allowed to change their domicile
without the permission of the proprietor. If so-called serfs were
sometimes sold, the practice was simply an abuse not justified by
legislation."
This simple explanation, in which may be detected a note of patriotic
pride, is almost universally accepted in Russia; but it contains, like
most popular conceptions of the distant past, a curious mixture of fact
and fiction. Serious historical investigation tends to show that the
power of the proprietors over the peasants came into existence, not
suddenly, as the result of an ukaz, but gradually, as a consequence of
permanent economic and political causes, and that Boris Godunof was not
more to blame than many of his predecessors and successors.*
* See especially Pobedonostsef, in the Russki Vestnik, 1858,
No. 11, and "Istoritcheskiya izsledovaniya i statyi" (St.
Petersburg, 1876), by the same author; also Pogodin, in the
Russkaya Beseda, 1858, No. 4.
Although the peasants in ancient Russia were free to wander about as
they chose, there appeared at a very early period--long before the reign
of Boris Godunof--a decided tendency in the Princes, in the proprietors,
and in the Communes, to prevent migration. This tendency will be easily
understood if we remember that land without labourers is useless, and
that in Russia at that time the population was small in comparison with
the amount of reclaimed and easily reclaimable land. The Prince desired
to have as many inhabitants as possible in his principality, because the
amount of his regular revenues depended on the number of the population.
The landed proprietor desired to have as many peasants as possible on
his estate, to till for him the land which he reserved for his own use,
and to pay him for the remainder a yearly rent in money, produce, or
labour. The free Communes desired to have a number of members sufficient
to keep the whole of the Communal land under cultivation, because
each Commune had to pay yearly to the Prince a fixed sum in money or
agricultural produce, and the greater the number of able-bodied members,
the less each individual had to pay. To use the language of political
economy, the Princes, the landed proprietors, and the free Communes
all appeared as buyers in the labour market; and the demand was far in
excess of the supply. Nowadays when young colonies or landed proprietors
in an outlying corner of the world are similarly in need of labour,
they seek to supply the want by organising a regular system of importing
labourers--using illegal violent means, such as kidnapping expeditions,
merely as an exceptional expedient. In old Russia any such regularly
organised system was impossible, and consequently illegal or violent
measures were not the exception, but the rule. The chief practical
advantage of the frequent military expeditions for those who took part
in them was the acquisition of prisoners of war, who were commonly
transformed into slaves by their captors. If it be true, as some assert,
that only unbaptised prisoners were legally considered lawful booty,
it is certain that in practice, before the unification of the
principalities under the Tsars of Moscow, little distinction was made
in this respect between unbaptised foreigners and Orthodox Russians.*
A similar method was sometimes employed for the acquisition of
free peasants: the more powerful proprietors organised kidnapping
expeditions, and carried off by force the peasants settled on the land
of their weaker neighbours.
* On this subject see Tchitcherin, "Opyty po istorii
Russkago prava," Moscow, 1858, p. 162 et seq.; and
Lokhvitski, "O plennykh po drevnemu Russkomu pravu," Moscow,
1855.
Under these circumstances it was only natural that those who possessed
this valuable commodity should do all in their power to keep it. Many,
if not all, of the free Communes adopted the simple measure of refusing
to allow a member to depart until he had found some one to take his
place. The proprietors never, so far as we know, laid down formally such
a principle, but in practice they did all in their power to retain the
peasants actually settled on their estates. For this purpose some simply
employed force, whilst others acted under cover of legal formalities.
The peasant who accepted land from a proprietor rarely brought with
him the necessary implements, cattle, and capital to begin at once
his occupations, and to feed himself and his family till the ensuing
harvest. He was obliged, therefore, to borrow from his landlord, and the
debt thus contracted was easily converted into a means of preventing his
departure if he wished to change his domicile. We need not enter into
further details. The proprietors were the capitalists of the time.
Frequent bad harvests, plagues, fires, military raids, and similar
misfortunes often reduced even prosperous peasants to beggary. The
muzhik was probably then, as now, only too ready to accept a loan
without taking the necessary precautions for repaying it. The laws
relating to debt were terribly severe, and there was no powerful
judicial organisation to protect the weak. If we remember all this,
we shall not be surprised to learn that a considerable part of the
peasantry were practically serfs before serfage was recognised by law.
So long as the country was broken up into independent principalities,
and each land-owner was almost an independent Prince on his estate, the
peasants easily found a remedy for these abuses in flight. They fled
to a neighbouring proprietor who could protect them from their
former landlord and his claims, or they took refuge in a neighbouring
principality, where they were, of course, still safer. All this was
changed when the independent principalities were transformed into the
Tsardom of Muscovy. The Tsars had new reasons for opposing the migration
of the peasants and new means for preventing it. The old Princes had
simply given grants of land to those who served them, and left the
grantee to do with his land what seemed good to him; the Tsars, on the
contrary, gave to those who served them merely the usufruct of a certain
quantity of land, and carefully proportioned the quantity to the rank
and the obligations of the receiver. In this change there was plainly
a new reason for fixing the peasants to the soil. The real value of a
grant depended not so much on the amount of land as on the number of
peasants settled on it, and hence any migration of the population was
tantamount to a removal of the ancient landmarks--that is to say, to a
disturbance of the arrangements made by the Tsar. Suppose, for instance,
that the Tsar granted to a Boyar or some lesser dignitary an estate on
which were settled twenty peasant families, and that afterwards ten of
these emigrated to neighbouring proprietors. In this case the recipient
might justly complain that he had lost half of his estate--though the
amount of land was in no way diminished--and that he was consequently
unable to fulfil his obligations. Such complaints would be rarely,
if ever, made by the great dignitaries, for they had the means of
attracting peasants to their estates;* but the small proprietors
had good reason to complain, and the Tsar was bound to remove their
grievances. The attaching of the peasants to the soil was, in fact, the
natural consequence of feudal tenures--an integral part of the Muscovite
political system. The Tsar compelled the nobles to serve him, and was
unable to pay them in money. He was obliged, therefore, to procure for
them some other means of livelihood. Evidently the simplest method of
solving the difficulty was to give them land, with a certain number of
labourers, and to prevent the labourers from migrating.
* There are plain indications in the documents of the time
that the great dignitaries were at first hostile to the
adscriptio glebae. We find a similar phenomenon at a much
more recent date in Little Russia. Long after serfage had
been legalised in that region by Catherine II., the great
proprietors, such as Rumyantsef, Razumofski, Bezborodko,
continued to attract to their estates the peasants of the
smaller proprietors. See the article of Pogodin in the
Russkaya Beseda, 1858, No. 4, p. 154.
Towards the free Communes the Tsar had to act in the same way for
similar reasons. The Communes, like the nobles, had obligations to the
Sovereign, and could not fulfil them if the peasants were allowed to
migrate from one locality to another. They were, in a certain sense, the
property of the Tsar, and it was only natural that the Tsar should do
for himself what he had done for his nobles.
With these new reasons for fixing the peasants to the soil came, as has
been said, new means of preventing migration. Formerly it was an
easy matter to flee to a neighbouring principality, but now all the
principalities were combined under one ruler, and the foundations of a
centralised administration were laid. Severe fugitive laws were issued
against those who attempted to change their domicile and against the
proprietors who should harbour the runaways. Unless the peasant chose
to face the difficulties of "squatting" in the inhospitable northern
forests, or resolved to brave the dangers of the steppe, he could
nowhere escape the heavy hand of Moscow.*
* The above account of the origin of serfage in Russia is
founded on a careful examination of the evidence which we
possess on the subject, but I must not conceal the fact that
some of the statements are founded on inference rather than
on direct, unequivocal documentary evidence. The whole
question is one of great difficulty, and will in all
probability not be satisfactorily solved until a large
number of the old local Land-Registers (Pistsoviya Knigi)
have been published and carefully studied.
The indirect consequences of thus attaching the peasants to the soil did
not at once become apparent. The serf retained all the civil rights he
had hitherto enjoyed, except that of changing his domicile. He could
still appear before the courts of law as a free man, freely engage in
trade or industry, enter into all manner of contracts, and rent land for
cultivation.
But as time wore on, the change in the legal relation between the two
classes became apparent in real life. In attaching the peasantry to the
soil, the Government had been so thoroughly engrossed with the direct
financial aim that it entirely overlooked, or wilfully shut its eyes to,
the ulterior consequences which must necessarily flow from the policy it
adopted. It was evident that as soon as the relation between proprietor
and peasant was removed from the region of voluntary contract by being
rendered indissoluble, the weaker of the two parties legally tied
together must fall completely under the power of the stronger, unless
energetically protected by the law and the Administration. To this
inevitable consequence the Government paid no attention. So far from
endeavouring to protect the peasantry from the oppression of the
proprietors, it did not even determine by law the mutual obligations
which ought to exist between the two classes. Taking advantage of this
omission, the proprietors soon began to impose whatever obligations they
thought fit; and as they had no legal means of enforcing fulfilment,
they gradually introduced a patriarchal jurisdiction similar to
that which they exercised over their slaves, with fines and corporal
punishment as means of coercion. From this they ere long proceeded a
step further, and began to sell their peasants without the land on
which they were settled. At first this was merely a flagrant abuse
unsanctioned by law, for the peasant had never been declared the private
property of the landed proprietor; but the Government tacitly sanctioned
the practice, and even exacted dues on such sales, as on the sale of
slaves. Finally the right to sell peasants without land was formally
recognised by various Imperial ukazes.*
* For instance, the ukazes of October 13th, 1675, and June
25th, 1682. See Belaef, pp. 203-209.
The old Communal organisation still existed on the estates of the
proprietors, and had never been legally deprived of its authority, but
it was now powerless to protect the members. The proprietor could easily
overcome any active resistance by selling or converting into domestic
servants the peasants who dared to oppose his will.
The peasantry had thus sunk to the condition of serfs, practically
deprived of legal protection and subject to the arbitrary will of the
proprietors; but they were still in some respects legally and actually
distinguished from the slaves on the one hand and the "free wandering
people" on the other. These distinctions were obliterated by Peter the
Great and his immediate successors.
To effect his great civil and military reforms, Peter required an
annual revenue such as his predecessors had never dreamed of, and he
was consequently always on the look-out for some new object of taxation.
When looking about for this purpose, his eye naturally fell on the
slaves, the domestic servants, and the free agricultural labourers.
None of these classes paid taxes--a fact which stood in flagrant
contradiction with his fundamental principle of polity, that every
subject should in some way serve the State. He caused, therefore, a
national census to be taken, in which all the various classes of the
rural population--slaves, domestic servants, agricultural labourers,
peasants--should be inscribed in one category; and he imposed equally
on all the members of this category a poll-tax, in lieu of the former
land-tax, which had lain exclusively on the peasants. To facilitate the
collection of this tax the proprietors were made responsible for their
serfs; and the "free wandering people" who did not wish to enter the
army were ordered, under pain of being sent to the galleys, to inscribe
themselves as members of a Commune or as serfs to some proprietor.
These measures had a considerable influence, if not on the actual
position of the peasantry, at least on the legal conceptions regarding
them. By making the proprietor pay the poll-tax for his serfs, as if
they were slaves or cattle, the law seemed to sanction the idea that
they were part of his goods and chattels. Besides this, it introduced
the entirely new principle that any member of the rural population not
legally attached to the land or to a proprietor should be regarded as a
vagrant, and treated accordingly. Thus the principle that every subject
should in some way serve the State had found its complete realisation.
There was no longer any room in Russia for free men.
The change in the position of the peasantry, together with the hardships
and oppression by which it was accompanied, naturally increased
fugitivism and vagrancy. Thousands of serfs ran away from their masters
and fled to the steppe or sought enrolment in the army. To prevent this
the Government considered it necessary to take severe and energetic
measures. The serfs were forbidden to enlist without the permission
of their masters, and those who persisted in presenting themselves for
enrolment were to be beaten "cruelly" (zhestoko) with the knout, and
sent to the mines.* The proprietors, on the other hand, received the
right to transport without trial their unruly serfs to Siberia, and even
to send them to the mines for life.**
* Ukaz of June 2d, 1742.
** See ukaz of January 17th, 1765, and of January 28th,
1766.
If these stringent measures had any effect it was not of long duration,
for there soon appeared among the serfs a still stronger spirit of
discontent and insubordination, which threatened to produce a general
agrarian rising, and actually did create a movement resembling in many
respects the Jacquerie in France and the Peasant War in Germany. A
glance at the causes of this movement will help us to understand the
real nature of serfage in Russia.
Up to this point serfage had, in spite of its flagrant abuses, a certain
theoretical justification. It was, as we have seen, merely a part of a
general political system in which obligatory service was imposed on all
classes of the population. The serfs served the nobles in order that the
nobles might serve the Tsar. In 1762 this theory was entirely overturned
by a manifesto of Peter III. abolishing the obligatory service of
the Noblesse. According to strict justice this act ought to have been
followed by the liberation of the serfs, for if the nobles were no
longer obliged to serve the State they had no just claim to the service
of the peasants. The Government had so completely forgotten the original
meaning of serfage that it never thought of carrying out the measure
to its logical consequences, but the peasantry held tenaciously to
the ancient conceptions, and looked impatiently for a second manifesto
liberating them from the power of the proprietors. Reports were spread
that such a manifesto really existed, and was being concealed by the
nobles. A spirit of insubordination accordingly appeared among the rural
population, and local insurrections broke out in several parts of the
Empire.
At this critical moment Peter III. was dethroned and assassinated by a
Court conspiracy. The peasants, who, of course, knew nothing of the
real motives of the conspirators, supposed that the Tsar had been
assassinated by those who wished to preserve serfage, and believed
him to be a martyr in the cause of Emancipation. At the news of the
catastrophe their hopes of Emancipation fell, but soon they were revived
by new rumours. The Tsar, it was said, had escaped from the conspirators
and was in hiding. Soon he would appear among his faithful peasants, and
with their aid would regain his throne and punish the wicked oppressors.
Anxiously he was awaited, and at last the glad tidings came that he had
appeared in the Don country, that thousands of Cossacks had joined
his standard, that he was everywhere putting the proprietors to death
without mercy, and that he would soon arrive in the ancient capital!
Peter III. was in reality in his grave, but there was a terrible element
of truth in these reports. A pretender, a Cossack called Pugatchef, had
really appeared on the Don, and had assumed the role which the peasants
expected the late Tsar to play. Advancing through the country of the
Lower Volga, he took several places of importance, put to death all the
proprietors he could find, defeated on more than one occasion the
troops sent against him, and threatened to advance into the heart of
the Empire. It seemed as if the old troublous times were about to be
renewed--as if the country was once more to be pillaged by those wild
Cossacks of the southern steppe. But the pretender showed himself
incapable of playing the part he had assumed. His inhuman cruelty
estranged many who would otherwise have followed him, and he was
too deficient in decision and energy to take advantage of favourable
circumstances. If it be true that he conceived the idea of creating a
peasant empire (muzhitskoe tsarstvo), he was not the man to realise such
a scheme. After a series of mistakes and defeats he was taken prisoner,
and the insurrection was quelled.*
*Whilst living among the Bashkirs of the province of Samara
in 1872 I found some interesting traditions regarding this
pretender. Though nearly a century had elapsed since his
death (1775), his name, his personal appearance, and his
exploits were well known even to the younger generation. My
informants firmly believed that he was not an impostor, but
the genuine Tsar, dethroned by his ambitious consort, and
that he never was taken prisoner, but "went away into
foreign lands." When I asked whether he was still alive,
and whether he might not one day return, they replied that
they did not know.
Meanwhile Peter III. had been succeeded by his consort, Catherine II. As
she had no legal right to the throne, and was by birth a foreigner, she
could not gain the affections of the people, and was obliged to court
the favour of the Noblesse. In such a difficult position she could not
venture to apply her humane principles to the question of serfage. Even
during the first years of her reign, when she had no reason to fear
agrarian disturbances, she increased rather than diminished the power of
the proprietors over their serfs, and the Pugatchef affair confirmed
her in this line of policy. During her reign serfage may be said to have
reached its climax. The serfs were regarded by the law as part of the
master's immovable property*--as part of the working capital of the
estate--and as such they were bought, sold, and given as presents** in
hundreds and thousands, sometimes with the land, and sometimes without
it, sometimes in families, and sometimes individually. The only legal
restriction was that they should not be offered for sale at the time of
the conscription, and that they should at no time be sold publicly
by auction, because such a custom was considered as "unbecoming in a
European State." In all other respects the serfs might be treated
as private property; and this view is to be found not only in the
legislation, but also in the popular conceptions. It became customary--a
custom that continued down to the year 1861--to compute a noble's
fortune, not by his yearly revenue or the extent of his estate, but
by the number of his serfs. Instead of saying that a man had so many
hundreds or thousands a year, or so many acres, it was commonly said
that he had so many hundreds or thousands of "souls." And over these
"souls" he exercised the most unlimited authority. The serfs had no
legal means of self-defence. The Government feared that the granting to
them of judicial or administrative protection would inevitably awaken
in them a spirit of insubordination, and hence it was ordered that those
who presented complaints should be punished with the knout and sent
to the mines.*** It was only in extreme cases, when some instance of
atrocious cruelty happened to reach the ears of the Sovereign, that the
authorities interfered with the proprietor's jurisdiction, and these
cases had not the slightest influence on the proprietors in general.****
* See ukaz of October 7th, 1792.
** As an example of making presents of serfs, the following
may be cited. Count Panin presented some of his
subordinates for an Imperial recompense, and on receiving a
refusal, made them a present of 4000 serfs from his own
estates.--Belaef, p. 320.
*** See the ukazes of August 22d, 1767, and March 30th,
1781.
**** Perhaps the most horrible case on record is that of a
certain lady called Saltykof, who was brought to justice in
1768. According to the ukaz regarding her crimes, she had
killed by inhuman tortures in the course of ten or eleven
years about a hundred of her serfs, chiefly of the female
sex, and among them several young girls of eleven and twelve
years of age. According to popular belief her cruelty
proceeded from cannibal propensities, but this was not
confirmed by the judicial investigation. Details in the
Russki Arkhiv, 1865, pp. 644-652. The atrocities practised
on the estate of Count Araktcheyef, the favourite of
Alexander I. at the commencement of last century, have been
frequently described, and are scarcely less revolting.
The last years of the eighteenth century may be regarded as the
turning-point in the history of serfage. Up till that time the power
of the proprietors had steadily increased, and the area of serfage had
rapidly expanded. Under the Emperor Paul (1796-1801) we find the first
decided symptoms of a reaction. He regarded the proprietors as his most
efficient officers of police, but he desired to limit their authority,
and for this purpose issued an ukaz to the effect that the serfs should
not be forced to work for their masters more than three days in the
week. With the accession of Alexander I., in 1801, commenced a long
series of abortive projects for a general emancipation, and endless
attempts to correct the more glaring abuses; and during the reign of
Nicholas no less than six committees were formed at different times to
consider the question. But the practical result of these efforts was
extremely small. The custom of giving grants of land with peasants was
abolished; certain slight restrictions were placed on the authority
of the proprietors; a number of the worst specimens of the class
were removed from the administration of their estates; a few who
were convicted of atrocious cruelty were exiled to Siberia;* and some
thousands of serfs were actually emancipated; but no decisive radical
measures were attempted, and the serfs did not receive even the right of
making formal complaints. Serfage had, in fact, come to be regarded as
a vital part of the State organisation, and the only sure basis for
autocracy. It was therefore treated tenderly, and the rights and
protection accorded by various ukazes were almost entirely illusory.
*Speranski, for instance, when Governor of the province of
Penza, brought to justice, among others, a proprietor who
had caused one of his serfs to be flogged to death, and a
lady who had murdered a serf boy by pricking him with a
pen-knife because he had neglected to take proper care of a tame
rabbit committed to his charge!--Korff, "Zhizn Speranskago,"
II., p. 127, note.
If we compare the development of serfage in Russia and in Western
Europe, we find very many points in common, but in Russia the movement
had certain peculiarities. One of the most important of these was caused
by the rapid development of the Autocratic Power. In feudal Europe,
where there was no strong central authority to control the Noblesse, the
free rural Communes entirely, or almost entirely, disappeared. They were
either appropriated by the nobles or voluntarily submitted to powerful
landed proprietors or to monasteries, and in this way the whole of the
reclaimed land, with a few rare exceptions, became the property of the
nobles or of the Church. In Russia we find the same movement, but it
was arrested by the Imperial power before all the land had been
appropriated. The nobles could reduce to serfage the peasants settled on
their estates, but they could not take possession of the free Communes,
because such an appropriation would have infringed the rights and
diminished the revenues of the Tsar. Down to the commencement of the
last century, it is true, large grants of land with serfs were made
to favoured individuals among the Noblesse, and in the reign of Paul
(1796-1801) a considerable number of estates were affected to the use
of the Imperial family under the name of appanages (Udyelniya imteniya);
but on the other hand, the extensive Church lands, when secularised by
Catherine II., were not distributed among the nobles, as in many other
countries, but were transformed into State Domains. Thus, at the date
of the Emancipation (1861), by far the greater part of the territory
belonged to the State, and one-half of the rural population were
so-called State Peasants (Gosudarstvenniye krestyanye).
Regarding the condition of these State Peasants, or Peasants of the
Domains, as they are sometimes called, I may say briefly that they were,
in a certain sense, serfs, being attached to the soil like the others;
but their condition was, as a rule, somewhat better than the serfs in
the narrower acceptation of the term. They had to suffer much from the
tyranny and extortion of the special administration under which they
lived, but they had more land and more liberty than was commonly enjoyed
on the estates of resident proprietors, and their position was much less
precarious. It is often asserted that the officials of the Domains were
worse than the serf-owners, because they had not the same interest in
the prosperity of the peasantry; but this a priori reasoning does not
stand the test of experience.
It is not a little interesting to observe the numerical proportion
and geographical distribution of these two rural classes. In European
Russia, as a whole, about three-eighths of the population were composed
of serfs belonging to the nobles;* but if we take the provinces
separately we find great variations from this average. In five provinces
the serfs were less than three per cent., while in others they formed
more than seventy per cent. of the population! This is not an accidental
phenomenon. In the geographical distribution of serfage we can see
reflected the origin and history of the institution.
* The exact numbers, according to official data, were--Entire
Population 60,909,309
Peasantry of all Classes 49,486,665
Of these latter there were--State Peasants
23,138,191
Peasants on the Lands of Proprietors 23,022,390
Peasants of the Appanages and other Departments 3,326,084
----------
49,486,665
If we were to construct a map showing the geographical distribution of
the serf population, we should at once perceive that serfage radiated
from Moscow. Starting from that city as a centre and travelling in any
direction towards the confines of the Empire, we find that, after making
allowance for a few disturbing local influences, the proportion of serfs
regularly declines in the successive provinces traversed. In the region
representing the old Muscovite Tsardom they form considerably more than
a half of the rural population. Immediately to the south and east of
this, in the territory that was gradually annexed during the seventeenth
and first half of the eighteenth century, the proportion varies from
twenty-five to fifty per cent., and in the more recently annexed
provinces it steadily decreases till it almost reaches zero.
We may perceive, too, that the percentage of serfs decreases towards the
north much more rapidly than towards the east and south. This points to
the essentially agricultural nature of serfage in its infancy. In the
south and east there was abundance of rich "black earth" celebrated for
its fertility, and the nobles in quest of estates naturally preferred
this region to the inhospitable north, with its poor soil and severe
climate.
A more careful examination of the supposed map* would bring out other
interesting facts. Let me notice one by way of illustration. Had serfage
been the result of conquest we should have found the Slavonic race
settled on the State Domains, and the Finnish and Tartar tribes
supplying the serfs of the nobles. In reality we find quite the reverse;
the Finns and Tartars were nearly all State Peasants, and the serfs
of the proprietors were nearly all of Slavonic race. This is to be
accounted for by the fact that the Finnish and Tartar tribes inhabit
chiefly the outlying regions, in which serfage never attained such
dimensions as in the centre of the Empire.
* Such a map was actually constructed by Troinitski
("Krepostnoe Naseleniye v Rossii," St. Petersburg, 1861),
but it is not nearly so graphic as is might have been.
The dues paid by the serfs were of three kinds: labour, money, and farm
produce. The last-named is so unimportant that it may be dismissed in
a few words. It consisted chiefly of eggs, chickens, lambs, mushrooms,
wild berries, and linen cloth. The amount of these various products
depended entirely on the will of the master. The other two kinds of
dues, as more important, we must examine more closely.
When a proprietor had abundance of fertile land and wished to farm on
his own account, he commonly demanded from his serfs as much labour as
possible. Under such a master the serfs were probably free from money
dues, and fulfilled their obligations to him by labouring in his fields
in summer and transporting his grain to market in winter. When, on the
contrary, a land-owner had more serf labour at his disposal than he
required for the cultivation of his fields, he put the superfluous serfs
"on obrok,"--that is to say, he allowed them to go and work where they
pleased on condition of paying him a fixed yearly sum. Sometimes the
proprietor did not farm at all on his own account, in which case he put
all the serfs "on obrok," and generally gave to the Commune in usufruct
the whole of the arable land and pasturage. In this way the Mir played
the part of a tenant.
We have here the basis for a simple and important classification of
estates in the time of serfage: (1) Estates on which the dues were
exclusively in labour; (2) estates on which the dues were partly in
labour and partly in money; and (3) estates on which the dues were
exclusively in money.
In the manner of exacting the labour dues there was considerable
variety. According to the famous manifesto of Paul I., the peasant could
not be compelled to work more than three days in the week; but this law
was by no means universally observed, and those who did observe it had
various methods of applying it. A few took it literally and laid down
a rule that the serfs should work for them three definite days in the
week--for example, every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday--but this was
an extremely inconvenient method, for it prevented the field labour
from being carried on regularly. A much more rational system was that
according to which one-half of the serfs worked the first three days of
the week, and the other half the remaining three. In this way there was,
without any contravention of the law, a regular and constant supply of
labour. It seems, however, that the great majority of the proprietors
followed no strict method, and paid no attention whatever to Paul's
manifesto, which gave to the peasants no legal means of making formal
complaints. They simply summoned daily as many labourers as they
required. The evil consequences of this for the peasants' crops were in
part counteracted by making the peasants sow their own grain a little
later than that of the proprietor, so that the master's harvest work
was finished, or nearly finished, before their grain was ripe. This
combination did not, however, always succeed, and in cases where there
was a conflict of interests, the serf was, of course, the losing party.
All that remained for him to do in such cases was to work a little in
his own fields before six o'clock in the morning and after nine o'clock
at night, and in order to render this possible he economised his
strength, and worked as little as possible in his master's fields during
the day.
It has frequently been remarked, and with much truth--though
the indiscriminate application of the principle has often led to
unjustifiable legislative inactivity--that the practical result of
institutions depends less on the intrinsic abstract nature of the
institutions themselves than on the character of those who work them.
So it was with serfage. When a proprietor habitually acted towards his
serfs in an enlightened, rational, humane way, they had little reason to
complain of their position, and their life was much easier than that
of many men who live in a state of complete individual freedom and
unlimited, unrestricted competition. However paradoxical the statement
may seem to those who are in the habit of regarding all forms of slavery
from the sentimental point of view, it is unquestionable that the
condition of serfs under such a proprietor as I have supposed was more
enviable than that of the majority of English agricultural labourers.
Each family had a house of its own, with a cabbage-garden, one or
more horses, one or two cows, several sheep, poultry, agricultural
implements, a share of the Communal land, and everything else necessary
for carrying on its small farming operations; and in return for this it
had to supply the proprietor with an amount of labour which was by no
means oppressive. If, for instance, a serf had three adult sons--and the
households, as I have said, were at that time generally numerous--two of
them might work for the proprietor whilst he himself and the remaining
son could attend exclusively to the family affairs. By the events which
used to be called "the visitations of God" he had no fear of being
permanently ruined. If his house was burnt, or his cattle died from the
plague, or a series of "bad years" left him without seed for his fields,
he could always count upon temporary assistance from his master. He was
protected, too, against all oppression and exactions on the part of the
officials; for the police, when there was any call for its interference,
applied to the proprietor, who was to a certain extent responsible for
his serfs. Thus the serf might live a tranquil, contented life, and die
at a ripe old age, without ever having been conscious that serfage was a
grievous burden.
If all the serfs had lived in this way we might, perhaps, regret that
the Emancipation was ever undertaken. In reality there was, as the
French say, le revers de la medaille, and serfage generally appeared
under a form very different from that which I have just depicted. The
proprietors were, unfortunately, not all of the enlightened, humane
type. Amongst them were many who demanded from their serfs an inordinate
amount of labour, and treated them in a very inhuman fashion.
These oppressors of their serfs may be divided into four categories.
First, there were the proprietors who managed their own estates, and
oppressed simply for the purpose of increasing their revenues. Secondly,
there were a number of retired officers who wished to establish a
certain order and discipline on their estates, and who employed for this
purpose the barbarous measures which were at that time used in the
army, believing that merciless corporal punishment was the only means of
curing laziness, disorderliness and other vices. Thirdly, there were the
absentees who lived beyond their means, and demanded from their steward,
under pain of giving him or his son as a recruit, a much greater yearly
sum than the estate could be reasonably expected to yield. Lastly,
in the latter years of serfage, there were a number of men who bought
estates as a mercantile speculation, and made as much money out of them
as they could in the shortest possible space of time.
Of all hard masters, the last-named were the most terrible. Utterly
indifferent to the welfare of the serfs and the ultimate fate of the
property, they cut down the timber, sold the cattle, exacted heavy money
dues under threats of giving the serfs or their children as recruits,
presented to the military authorities a number of conscripts greater
than was required by law--selling the conscription receipts (zatchetniya
kvitantsii) to the merchants and burghers who were liable to the
conscription but did not wish to serve--compelled some of the richer
serfs to buy their liberty at an enormous price, and, in a word, used
every means, legal and illegal, for extracting money. By this system
of management they ruined the estate completely in the course of a few
years; but by that time they had realised probably the whole sum paid,
with a very fair profit from the operation; and this profit could be
considerably augmented by selling a number of the peasant families
for transportation to another estate (na svoz), or by mortgaging the
property in the Opekunski Sovet--a Government institution which lent
money on landed property without examining carefully the nature of the
security.
As to the means which the proprietors possessed of oppressing their
peasants, we must distinguish between the legal and the actual. The
legal were almost as complete as any one could desire. "The proprietor,"
it is said in the Laws (Vol. IX, p. 1045, ed. an. 1857), "may impose on
his serfs every kind of labour, may take from them money dues (obrok)
and demand from them personal service, with this one restriction, that
they should not be thereby ruined, and that the number of days fixed by
law should be left to them for their own work."* Besides this, he had
the right to transform peasants into domestic servants, and might,
instead of employing them in his own service, hire them out to others
who had the rights and privileges of Noblesse (pp. 1047-48). For
all offences committed against himself or against any one under his
jurisdiction he could subject the guilty ones to corporal punishment not
exceeding forty lashes with the birch or fifteen blows with the stick
(p. 1052); and if he considered any of his serfs as incorrigible, he
could present them to the authorities to be drafted into the army or
transported to Siberia as he might desire (pp. 1053-55). In cases of
insubordination, where the ordinary domestic means of discipline did
not suffice, he could call in the police and the military to support his
authority.
* I give here the references to the Code, because Russians
commonly believe and assert that the hiring out of serfs,
the infliction of corporal punishment, and similar practices
were merely abuses unauthorised by law.
Such were the legal means by which the proprietor might oppress
his peasants, and it will be readily understood that they were very
considerable and very elastic. By law he had the power to impose any
dues in labour or money which he might think fit, and in all cases
the serfs were ordered to be docile and obedient (p. 1027). Corporal
punishment, though restricted by law, he could in reality apply to any
extent. Certainly none of the serfs, and very few of the proprietors,
were aware that the law placed any restriction on this right. All the
proprietors were in the habit of using corporal punishment as they
thought proper, and unless a proprietor became notorious for inhuman
cruelty the authorities never thought of interfering. But in the eyes
of the peasants corporal punishment was not the worst. What they feared
infinitely more than the birch or the stick was the proprietor's power
of giving them or their sons as recruits. The law assumed that this
extreme means would be employed only against those serfs who showed
themselves incorrigibly vicious or insubordinate; but the authorities
accepted those presented without making any investigations, and
consequently the proprietor might use this power as an effective means
of extortion.
Against these means of extortion and oppression the serfs had no
legal protection. The law provided them with no means of resisting any
injustice to which they might be subjected, or of bringing to
punishment the master who oppressed and ruined them. The Government,
notwithstanding its sincere desire to protect them from inordinate
burdens and cruel treatment, rarely interfered between the master and
his serfs, being afraid of thereby undermining the authority of
the proprietors, and awakening among the peasantry a spirit of
insubordination. The serfs were left, therefore, to their own resources,
and had to defend themselves as best they could. The simplest way was
open mutiny; but this was rarely employed, for they knew by experience
that any attempt of the kind would be at once put down by the military
and mercilessly punished. Much more favourite and efficient methods were
passive resistance, flight, and fire-raising or murder.
We might naturally suppose that an unscrupulous proprietor, armed with
the enormous legal and actual power which I have just described, could
very easily extort from his peasants anything he desired. In reality,
however, the process of extortion, when it exceeded a certain measure,
was a very difficult operation. The Russian peasant has a capacity
of patient endurance that would do honour to a martyr, and a power of
continued, dogged, passive resistance such as is possessed, I believe,
by no other class of men in Europe; and these qualities formed a very
powerful barrier against the rapacity of unconscientious proprietors.
As soon as the serfs remarked in their master a tendency to rapacity and
extortion, they at once took measures to defend themselves. Their first
step was to sell secretly the live stock they did not actually require,
and all their movable property except the few articles necessary for
everyday use; then the little capital realised was carefully hidden.
When this had been effected, the proprietor might threaten and punish
as he liked, but he rarely succeeded in unearthing the treasure. Many
a peasant, under such circumstances, bore patiently the most cruel
punishment, and saw his sons taken away as recruits, and yet he
persisted in declaring that he had no money to ransom himself and his
children. A spectator in such a case would probably have advised him
to give up his little store of money, and thereby liberate himself from
persecution; but the peasants reasoned otherwise. They were convinced,
and not without reason, that the sacrifice of their little capital would
merely put off the evil day, and that the persecution would very soon
recommence. In this way they would have to suffer as before, and have
the additional mortification of feeling that they had spent to no
purpose the little that they possessed. Their fatalistic belief in the
"perhaps" (avos') came here to their aid. Perhaps the proprietor might
become weary of his efforts when he saw that they led to no result, or
perhaps something might occur which would remove the persecutor.
It always happened, however, that when a proprietor treated his serfs
with extreme injustice and cruelty, some of them lost patience, and
sought refuge in flight. As the estates lay perfectly open on all sides,
and it was utterly impossible to exercise a strict supervision, nothing
was easier than to run away, and the fugitive might be a hundred miles
off before his absence was noticed. But the oppressed serf was reluctant
to adopt such an extreme measure. He had almost always a wife and
family, and he could not possibly take them with him; flight, therefore,
was expatriation for life in its most terrible form. Besides this, the
life of a fugitive was by no means enviable. He was liable at any moment
to fall into the hands of the police, and to be put into prison or sent
back to his master. So little charm, indeed, did this life present that
not infrequently after a few months or a few years the fugitive returned
of his own accord to his former domicile.
Regarding fugitives or passportless wanderers in general, I may here
remark parenthetically that there were two kinds. In the first place,
there was the young, able-bodied peasant, who fled from the oppression
of his master or from the conscription. Such a fugitive almost always
sought out for himself a new domicile--generally in the southern
provinces, where there was a great scarcity of labourers, and where many
proprietors habitually welcomed all peasants who presented themselves,
without making any inquiries as to passports. In the second place, there
were those who chose fugitivism as a permanent mode of life. These
were, for the most part, men or women of a certain age--widowers or
widows--who had no close family ties, and who were too infirm or too
lazy to work. The majority of these assumed the character of pilgrims.
As such they could always find enough to eat, and could generally even
collect a few roubles with which to grease the palm of any zealous
police-officer who should arrest them. For a life of this kind Russia
presented peculiar facilities. There was abundance of monasteries, where
all comers could live for three days without questions being asked, and
where those who were willing to do a little work for the patron saint
might live for a much longer period. Then there were the towns,
where the rich merchants considered almsgiving as very profitable for
salvation. And, lastly, there were the villages, where a professing
pilgrim was sure to be hospitably received and entertained so long as he
refrained from stealing and other acts too grossly inconsistent with his
assumed character. For those who contented themselves with simple fare,
and did not seek to avoid the usual privations of a wanderer's life,
these ordinary means of subsistence were amply sufficient. Those who
were more ambitious and more cunning often employed their talents with
great success in the world of the Old Ritualists and Sectarians.
The last and most desperate means of defense which the serfs possessed
were fire-raising and murder. With regard to the amount of fire-raising
there are no trustworthy statistics. With regard to the number of
agrarian murders I once obtained some interesting statistical data, but
unfortunately lost them. I may say, however, that these cases were
not very numerous. This is to be explained in part by the patient,
long-suffering character of the peasantry, and in part by the fact that
the great majority of the proprietors were by no means such inhuman
taskmasters as is sometimes supposed. When a case did occur, the
Administration always made a strict investigation--punishing the guilty
with exemplary severity, and taking no account of the provocation to
which they had been subjected. The peasantry, on the contrary--at least,
when the act was not the result of mere personal vengeance--secretly
sympathised with "the unfortunates," and long cherished their memory as
that of men who had suffered for the Mir.
In speaking of the serfs I have hitherto confined my attention to the
members of the Mir, or rural Commune--that is to say, the peasants
in the narrower sense of the term; but besides these there were the
Dvorovuye, or domestic servants, and of these I must add a word or two.
The Dvorovuye were domestic slaves rather than serfs in the proper
sense of the term. Let us, however, avoid wounding unnecessarily Russian
sensibilities by the use of the ill-sounding word. We may call the class
in question "domestics"--remembering, of course, that they were not
quite domestic servants in the ordinary sense. They received no wages,
were not at liberty to change masters, possessed almost no legal rights,
and might be punished, hired out, or sold by their owners without any
infraction of the written law.
These "domestics" were very numerous--out of all proportion to the work
to be performed--and could consequently lead a very lazy life;* but
the peasant considered it a great misfortune to be transferred to their
ranks, for he thereby lost his share of the Communal land and the little
independence which he enjoyed. It very rarely happened, however, that
the proprietor took an able-bodied peasant as domestic. The class
generally kept up its numbers by the legitimate and illegitimate method
of natural increase; and involuntary additions were occasionally made
when orphans were left without near relatives, and no other family
wished to adopt them. To this class belonged the lackeys, servant-girls,
cooks, coachmen, stable-boys, gardeners, and a large number of
nondescript old men and women who had no very clearly defined functions.
If the proprietor had a private theatre or orchestra, it was from this
class that the actors and musicians were drawn. Those of them who were
married and had children occupied a position intermediate between
the ordinary domestic servant and the peasant. On the one hand, they
received from the master a monthly allowance of food and a yearly
allowance of clothes, and they were obliged to live in the immediate
vicinity of the mansion-house; but, on the other hand, they had each a
separate house or apartment, with a little cabbage-garden, and commonly
a small plot of flax. The unmarried ones lived in all respects like
ordinary domestic servants.
* Those proprietors who kept orchestras, large packs of
hounds, &c., had sometimes several hundred domestic serfs.
The number of these domestic serfs being generally out of all proportion
to the amount of work they had to perform, they were imbued with a
hereditary spirit of indolence, and they performed lazily and carelessly
what they had to do. On the other hand, they were often sincerely
attached to the family they served, and occasionally proved by acts
their fidelity and attachment. Here is an instance out of many for which
I can vouch. An old nurse, whose mistress was dangerously ill,
vowed that, in the event of the patient's recovery, she would make a
pilgrimage, first to Kief, the Holy City on the Dnieper, and afterwards
to Solovetsk, a much revered monastery on an island in the White Sea.
The patient recovered, and the old woman, in fulfilment of her vow,
walked more than two thousand miles!
This class of serfs might well be called domestic slaves, but I must
warn the reader that he ought not to use the expression when speaking
with Russians, because they are extremely sensitive on the point.
Serfage, they say, was something quite different from slavery, and
slavery never existed in Russia.
The first part of this assertion is perfectly true, and the second
part perfectly false. In old times, as I have said above, slavery was a
recognised institution in Russia as in other countries. One can hardly
read a few pages of the old chronicles without stumbling on references
to slaves; and I distinctly remember--though I cannot at this moment
give chapter and verse--that one of the old Russian Princes was so
valiant and so successful in his wars that during his reign a slave
might be bought for a few coppers. As late as the beginning of last
century the domestic serfs were sold very much as domestic slaves
used to be sold in countries where slavery was recognised as a legal
institution. Here is an example of the customary advertisement; I take
it almost at random from the Moscow Gazette of 1801:--"TO BE SOLD: three
coachmen, well trained and handsome; and two girls, the one eighteen,
and the other fifteen years of age, both of them good-looking, and well
acquainted with various kinds of handiwork. In the same house there are
for sale two hairdressers; the one, twenty-one years of age, can read,
write, play on a musical instrument, and act as huntsman; the other can
dress ladies' and gentlemen's hair. In the same house are sold pianos
and organs."
A little farther on in the same number of the paper, a first-rate clerk,
a carver, and a lackey are offered for sale, and the reason assigned is
a superabundance of the articles in question (za izlishestvom). In some
instances it seems as if the serfs and the cattle were intentionally put
in the same category, as in the following announcement: "In this house
one can buy a coachman and a Dutch cow about to calve." The style of
these advertisements, and the frequent recurrence of the same
addresses, show that there was at this time in Moscow a regular class of
slave-dealers. The humane Alexander I. prohibited advertisements of this
kind, but he did not put down the custom which they represented, and his
successor, Nicholas I., took no effective measures for its repression.
Of the whole number of serfs belonging to the proprietors, the domestics
formed, according to the census of 1857, no less than 6 3/4 per cent.
(6.79), and their numbers were evidently rapidly increasing, for in the
preceding census they represented only 4.79 per cent. of the whole. This
fact seems all the more significant when we observe that during this
period the number of peasant serfs had diminished.
I must now bring this long chapter to an end. My aim has been to
represent serfage in its normal, ordinary forms rather than in its
occasional monstrous manifestations. Of these latter I have a collection
containing ample materials for a whole series of sensation novels, but
I refrain from quoting them, because I do not believe that the criminal
annals of a country give a fair representation of its real condition. On
the other hand, I do not wish to whitewash serfage or attenuate its
evil consequences. No great body of men could long wield such enormous
uncontrolled power without abusing it,* and no large body of men could
long live under such power without suffering morally and materially from
its pernicious influence. If serfage did not create that moral apathy
and intellectual lethargy which formed, as it were, the atmosphere of
Russian provincial life, it did much at least to preserve it. In short,
serfage was the chief barrier to all material and moral progress, and
in a time of moral awakening such as that which I have described in the
preceding chapter, the question of Emancipation naturally came at once
to the front.
* The number of deposed proprietors--or rather the number of
estates placed under curators in consequence of the abuse of
authority on the part of their owners--amounted in 1859 to
215. So at least I found in an official MS. document shown
to me by the late Nicholas Milutin.