ABSTRACT
The Ulozhenie, the basic law of the Russian tsardom on which the estates of the realm agreed in 1649, offers a symbolic picture of society starting with God, going on with the honour of the tsar and ending with the Cossacks on the borders. 1 There is a whole chapter on peasants, who in 1649 finally were ‘assigned to the soil’, but remained personally free. It was not legal to sell them, but the soil might be sold with peasants ‘fixed’ to it. Since Orthodox people were not allowed to serve under Muslims, corresponding to the long process of degrading the peasants beginning in the seventeenth century and ending formally in 1713, Muslim lords in Russia lost control over their Orthodox peasants. 2
