ABSTRACT
Throughout the period of serfdom – from the late sixteenth century until 1861 – the Russian Empire was an overwhelmingly rural society. 80–90 per cent of its population were peasants, most of whom supported themselves largely, but not solely, by farming the land. Very roughly, half the peasantry were the serfs of the nobility. Nobles, however, made up less than 1 per cent of the empire’s population. Under serfdom, peasants were bound to the landed estates of nobles and, in practice, also to the nobles themselves. They were banned from leaving the estates without the owners’ permission. In addition, serfs were required to serve or pay obligations for or to their estate owners, usually in labour (barshchina) and/or dues (obrok) in cash and kind. In return, serfs received the use of allotments of land. Noble estate owners had considerable administrative and judicial authority over their serfs, and could buy and sell them with or without the land they lived on (Blum, 1961). From an economic point of view, the main feature of serfdom was that it enabled nobles to extract more income from their estates – in the form of their serfs’ obligations – than they would have been able to do if a free peasantry had had the rights to rent land or sell their labour at the best rates they could get in an open market. In an economic sense, therefore, serfdom enabled nobles to get as big a share as they could of the product of peasant labour (Smith, 1968: 3).
