Russian Social Terms

Russian Social Terms This is a collection of terms and concepts useful for understanding the social history of Russia. The reader should remember that there was nothing like the modern police and bureaucracy, most social relations were local and customary and that the surviving legal terms do not necessarily reflect what people actually did or could get away with. Important terms are in bold.
*Appanage Kievan system in which principalities were exchanged between brothers and cousins.
*Baltic provinces: Serfdom was abolished in the Baltic provinces in 1816-1819. This converted 400,000 serfs into landless laborers.
*Barshchina: Rent paid in labor rather than money (obrok). The French term is corvée. The percent of peasants on barshchina was from 12% to 75% in different regions. It was most common on smaller estates.
*Black Peasants: were free peasants that lived on the "black lands", that is, land that had not been assigned to any landlord. They paid a quitrent to the tsar who claimed to be the ultimate owner of the black lands. Black land was gradually assigned to landlords so that by about 1600 it was common only along the frontiers. They were about 7% of the population in 1680. Affairs were managed by the volost.
*Bobyl: A cottar or landless laborer. They could be agricultural laborers, artisans or engaged in trade or transport. The term first appears in 1500. Their numbers appear to have increased greatly in the XVI. century and to have declined thereafter.
*Boyar: From the time of the Russian Primary Chronicle, a landowner, nobleman or high servant of the ruler. The position was not necessarily hereditary and they were distinguished more by wealth and power than by legal status. The term lasted until the 17th century.
*Boyar's sons: , originally perhaps the younger son of a boyar, it came to be a general term for the lower members of the upper class. The term lasted until the time of Peter the Great.
*Bunt: A peasant rebellion. See Ivan Bolotnikov, Stenka Razin, Khmelnitsky Uprising, Bulavin Rebellion, Pugachev's Rebellion.
*Chetvert: half a desyatin or about 1.3 acres.
*Cossacks: were adventurers who formed semi-military colonies on the southern frontier. They were gradually brought under government control by being hired as soldiers. They were free from serfdom but developed a landowning or officer class called starshina.
*Court Peasants: ("dvortsovye krest'iane") Peasants on land belonging the imperial court. There were 350,000 males in the 1720s, 470,000 in 1797 and over 800,000 males in 1860. By 1780 all court peasants were on obrok.
*Desmesne: A landowner can actively manage his farm ("Gutsherrschaft") or collect rent and allow the peasants to farm as they please ("Grundsherrschaft"). The desmesne was land managed by the landowner. Labor was provided by barshchina or by kholops and kabala peasants.
*Desyatin: 1.092 hectares, 2 chetverts or 2.7 acres. See Obsolete Russian units of measurement.
*Draft: In early times lords would furnish recruits as needed or pay a quitrent. The system was regularized by Peter the Great. A levy was imposed on each settlement every year or two and the lord or mir would select the person. The rate was 1% or less of males rising to 5% in wartime. The term of service was life for most of the XVIII. century, 25 years in 1793, 20 years in 1834 and 12 years in 1855. Soldiers became state peasants after release. Wealthy serfs could buy other serfs as substitutes.
*Druzhina: In Varangian times, the followers of a Viking chieftain. From the XI. century they were given land grants as private property and the richer ones merged into the Boyars.
*Dvor: The household of a peasant, landlord or czar.
*Dvorovye liudi: 1) domestic serfs. In 1858 there were 1,467,378 of these or 6.8% of the serf population. Foreigners claimed that Russians used three or more times as many domestics as in the West. 2) The same term was used for the remaining oprichniks after 1572.
*Dvoriane liudi: lesser servants of a knyaz or other great man who lived in his dvor.
*Dvoryanstvo: By the Table of Ranks in 1722 Peter the Great created an official nobility. All were required to serve the state. Later in the century these people came to be called "dvoryanye". Bureaucrats came to be known as "chinovniki" or 'rank-people'. In 1762 the service requirement was abolished. In 1858 there were 886,782 nobles in European Russia and about 30,000 in Siberia and the Caucasus - about 1/80th of the population.
*Emancipation: see Emancipation reform of 1861.
*Factory serfs: Large-scale metallurgical plants were established in the Urals at the time of Peter the Great. There were few free laborers available to hire. Nobles who built mills transferred their serfs (estimated 31% of factory workers in 1825). State-owned mills were worked by assigned state peasants ("pripisnye peasants") and from at least 1734 a merchant who built a factory would be assigned state peasants. There were 31,383 assigned males in 1719, 312,218 in 1796 and about 201,000 in 1861. Although conditions were harsh factories also attracted a significant number of runaways. Assigned peasants received a wage that was generally less than that of a hired man. Many worked outside of the mills as lumberjacks, carters and other in occupations. Some worked part of the year and had to travel several hundred vests form their homes when needed (this arrangement was mostly abolished in 1807). In the early nineteenth century peasants assigned to merchants became legally "possessional peasants" and had a few more rights than regular serfs. From 1840 many possessional serfs were replaced with hired labor since this increased efficiency and reduced state regulation. Blum's estimate is: (year, number of workers, percent hired): 1767,199300,9%; 1804,224882,27%; 1825,346568,34%;1860,862000,56%. See Renting of serfs, Serfs as hired men.
*Freeing of serfs: A serf could be freed by completion of military service, emancipation by his owner, buying his own freedom, banishment to Siberia and conversion to Christianity by the non-Christian serf of a non-Christian master. They normally became state peasants.
*Freedom of Movement: The right of a peasant to leave his landlord does not have a standard name in Russian or English. It is the inverse of the landlord's right to evict, which was very unusual in Russia. By the Sudebnik of 1497 this right was confined to two weeks around (25 November), at the end of the agricultural year. The peasant gave notice, paid his debts and an exit fee. In 1580 this right was revoked during what were called "forbidden years" (zaprovednye gody). Thereafter about half the years were forbidden and, from 1603, all years were forbidden even though the prohibition was theoretically temporary. See runaway serfs.
*Izgoi: In Kievan times, a person who lost his social position and was taken in by a church or monastery, for which he apparently had to work. These people could be freed slaves, bankrupt merchants, illiterate sons of priests or noblemen who had lost their patrimony. The term disappeared at the end of the Kievan period.
*Kabala: A document in which a peasant acknowledges a debt and agrees to work for the creditor until the debt is repaid. The kabal'nyi chelovek was effectively a peon or debt-slave since it was difficult or impossible to repay the debt. The status, or at least its legal recognition, became more common in the 16th century. In association with the final establishment of serfdom, legislation in 1586 and 1597 significantly changed the institution. Now the peon only became free at his master's death, but the master could not sell or transfer him. The law of 1597 referred to 'kabala slaves'. See zakup.
*Kholop: a slave. For Tatar slave raids see Muravsky Trail and Expansion of Russia 1500-1800. Slaves were a major export during the Kievan period. Opinions vary about its importance since there are no good statistics. Domestically a slave could be anything from a field hand to a tiun (steward, overseer or estate manager). According to Russkaya Pravda the status was hereditary. The child of a master and slave woman became free on the master's death. A free man who married a slave or became a tiun became a slave unless the master chose otherwise. A man could sell himself into slavery, the minimum price being half a grivna. Slaves could buy, sell or own property, but always in the name of their master. By one estimate in the 10th-12th centuries a slave was worth about 2 horses or 17 sheep. By Mongol times the legal status of kholops was somewhat higher and emancipation by testament became more common. Many were assigned land in return for rent which tended to merge them into the general peasant population (zadvornye liudi). Zadvornye liudi paid taxes from 1680 and from 1724 all kholops paid taxes. The three Kievan ways of becoming a slave (selling yourself, marrying a slave or becoming a tiun) were repeated in the Sudebnik of 1497. In the XVI. century slaves were anywhere between 4% and 35% of the peasant population depending on the region with greater numbers in the south (note that the data is poor). In the 17th and 18th centuries they merged into the general serf population. The legal status persisted in Siberia, where serfdom was rare, until 1825.
*Knyaz: or prince was the only hereditary title of nobility in Russia before Peter the Great. It was held by those claiming descent from Rurik or Gedimin of Lithuania or from Tatar or Georgian princes. In 1707 Peter gave the title to Alexander Menshikov, said to be the son of a stable hand. By the second half of the nineteenth century there were 16 princely families.
*Knyazata: Because there was no primogeniture, in Kievan and Mongol times the knyaz class grew larger and their holdings smaller. In late Mongol times the greater knyazs, especially of Moscow, began to gain control of the smaller ones. The class was subordinated or broken up mainly by Ivan the Terrible.
*Kidnapping: There were cases of one landlord kidnapping peasants from another. Ivan Romanov organized armed bands to do this.
*Kormlenie: literally 'feeding'. In Mongol times and before a man was given administration of a city or district and supported himself from what taxes he could collect. The system was abolished in 1555.
*Krestyanin: became the general term for peasant during the Mongol period. It originally meant 'Christian'.
*Magnates: The great southward expansion under the Romanovs led to the granting of large numbers of serfs, often to court favorites. Between 1740 and 1801 over 1,304,000 souls (=adult males) were granted. Catherine the Great gave away 800,000 peasants of both sexes. Alexander Vasilchikov, one of Catherine's lovers received 7,000 peasants for his troubles.
*Mestnichestvo: In the 15th-17th centuries, the rule that posts were granted in proportion to the length of time that a boyar's family had served Moscow, the longest-serving clans getting the highest posts. It was formally abolished in 1682.
*Military colonists: reserve soldiers who supported themselves by farming. Established by Alexander I, the system did not work very well.
*Mir: or peasant commune. The degree of continuity between the volost and mir is uncertain. Its main business was repartition of land. It also had local police functions and was recognized by the government. See volost, Stolypin reform, Kolkhoz.
*Monastic lands: By the 12th century the church, especially monasteries, held much land, but the exact amount is uncertain. Once established, church ownership was perpetual. Under the Mongols church lands were exempt from taxation. Monasteries were important in colonizing the frontiers. Around the time of Ivan IV people would protect their lands by giving them to the church in exchange for a life tenancy. Scattered data from the 16th century give the percent of land held by the church as 25%, 36%, 12%, 41%, 5% and 1% for different regions. The Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius held over 200,000 desyatins in the 16th century. Tax exemption ended in 1584. The expansion of monastic lands slowed after 1600 because of government policy and the reduction in the number of votchiniks rich enough to make gifts. At the Second Revision of 1747 the church held over 900,000 males, of whom 728,736 belonged to monasteries. Between 1701 and 1763 control of church lands was shifted between state and church several times. In 1764 church lands were secularized, 252 monasteries closed and church peasants became state peasants.
*Neo-serfdom or "second serfdom": In the West serfdom reached its maximum it the high middle ages and declined at about the time of renaissance. As it disappeared in the West, after about 1500 serfdom became common everywhere east of the Elbe River and similar institutions developed in the New World. All of these peasants were emancipated in the period 1770-1890.
*Obel'nye votchinniki: these few people were the freest commoners in the Empire. They owned their own land, paid no taxes and were not drafted. Some were the descendents of Ivan Susanin, others were descendents of a priest who cured Boris Godinov and others from people who had helped Michael Romanov's mother.
*Obrok: Rent paid in money or goods rather than labor (barshchina)
*Odnodvorsty: were the poorest class of landowner, many of whom did their own farm work. Many were descended from frontier guards in the Belgorod line area. They were added to the state peasants by Peter the Great except for a few who entered the dvoryanstvo. There were 453,000 males in the 1740s and 1.9 million by the 1850s.
*Oka River: The Kievan lands south of the Oka were depopulated during the Mongol period. Tatar raids kept most Russians north of the Oka until about 1550.
*Oprichnina: between 1565 and 1572 Ivan the Terrible killed many of the greater lords and transferred their lands to new men.
*Poland: In the annexed Polish lands serfs retained the legal status they had under the commonwealth which was slightly better than in Russia.
*Polovnik: A sharecropper who paid one third to one half his crop to the landlord. More common in the north, they gradually merged into the general peasant population. There were less than 3,000 people with this legal status in the 1850s.
*Pomestye: land held in return for service, as opposed to votchina. The earliest surviving reference is from 1328 (the practice is probably not Kievan). It became increasingly common from the later 14th century as the Muscovite state grew more powerful. In the later 15th century these grants came to be called "pomestye" and their holders "pomeshchiki". Pomestye grants were usually small (200-600 chetverts of arable) to keep the pomeshchiks dependent on the crown. By 1600 or so pomestyes were centered in the conquered Novgorod lands and the new-won lands south of the Oka River. Votchinas were not unusual in the old-settled area north of the Oka, while the far north was mostly black lands. The eastern area around Kazan was as mixture of pomestyes, state land and native tenure. From around 1550 pomestyes were supervised by the "pomestnyi prikaz". From 1556 both pomeshchiks and votchiniks were required to supply one mounted warrior per 300 chetverts of arable. Pomestshchiks were given irregular payments since their land was not always enough to support their military duties. Before 1600 there was frequent turnover in pomestye owners, but by 1700 they had become hereditable for most purposes. In 1714 the legal distinction between pomestye and votchina was abolished.
*Repartition: The custom of periodically redividing land of the mir to take account of changes in family size. Originally rare, it became increasingly common in the 18th century and was nearly universal by the mid-19th century.
*Runaway serfs: Because of the low population density and open land on the frontiers, peasant movement was more common than in Western Europe. Because competition between landlords tended to lower the rents that were needed to support pomeshchik horsemen, both government and landlords tried to restrict freedom of movement. As Tatar raids declined the main direction of movement was southward. Because of poor communications, once a fugitive had gone a reasonable distance he was hard to find and bring back. A pomeshchik on the frontier with a land grant who needed labor would not usually ask too many questions. Unless the peasant went all the way to the steppe and became a cossack, he would usually have to make a deal with a new landlord. Since he could not easily carry his house, tools or seed corn, he would have to get these from the new landlord under unfavorable terms. The government vacillated between protecting the tax-paying landowners in the old-settled regions and the frontier pomeshchiks who needed peasants to support their military duties. During the Time of Troubles there was a major southward population movement, much of it illegal, then the legal ending of freedom of movement in 1603 and soon after a southward movement of the frontier which created a population vacuum and therefore a demand for runaways. In 1581-92 a cadastre was made listing the residence of each adult male peasant which made it easier to prove fugitive status. Five years later it was ruled that any runaway that had been gone for more than five years could not be brought back unless there had been an official complaint. In 1604 the period of recovery was increased to 15 years, that is, to the last cadastre. In 1642 it was set at 10 years. In 1649 the Sobornoye Ulozheniye abolished the time limit, bound all members of the household (previously only the head of household was bound) and bound pomestye peasants to the pomestye while binding votchina peasants to the votchinik. At times there were mass flights from individual estates. A law of 1661 required a lord caught harboring runaways to give the losing lord one of his peasant families and 10 rubles for each year the peasant had been on his land. In 1664 this was raised to four families and 20 rubles. Between 1719 and 1727 incomplete official figures counted around 200,000 fugitives. Decrees in 1722-36 allowed factory owners to keep runaways if they paid the former owner.
*Sale of Serfs: In the mid 18th century a male serf sold for about 30 rubles, rising to 70-100 rubles in the 1780s and at least 100 by the 1790s. In 1820 Alexander I sent a document to the Council of State saying that he thought the sale of serfs without land had been forbidden. The Council searched the laws and reported back that it was not forbidden.
*Serebrenik: A term for peon or debt slave which first appeared in 1253. See zakup and kabala.
*Serf artists: Grigory Potyomkin purchased from Count Razumovsky a 50-piece serf orchestra for 40,000 rubles. Taras Shevchenko was born a serf, learned to paint and was freed.
*Serf businessmen: A serf on obrok could sometimes run his own business. In 1795 a serf textile manufacturer purchased his freedom for 135,000 rubles.
*Serf concubines: must have been common but left few records. There was a widely known girl market at Ivanovo. Ivan Turgenev is said to have bought a serf girl from his cousin for 700 rubles.
*Serfs as hired men: With the permission of his master, or government official if he was a state peasant, a serf could work for a wage. These people behaved like ordinary wage workers except for their obligation to pay obrok.
*Renting of serfs: Especially in White Russia, serfs could be leased to businessmen, or to a labor contractor who in turn rented them out.
*Revision Soul: A male peasant, so called because they were recorded on the 'revision' (=census) which served as legal proof of their serf status.
*Siberia: Serfdom was very rare in Siberia, but the natives had to pay tribute called yasak, usually in furs. In the 18th century a landlord could have his peasants exiled to Siberia.
*Smerd: Originally a free peasant or commoner. By Kievan times it was applied only the lowest class of freeman and seems to have given rise to the verb "smerdit', to stink.
*Starozhil'tsy: 'Old inhabitants' as opposed to 'newcomers' (novoprekhodtsy). To attract new peasants, landlords would offer newcomers exemptions for a number of years. Starozhiltsy had to pay higher dues but probably formed wealthier and more established part of the village.
*State Peasant: or treasury peasant. A peasant not under a private landlord. Various groups were gradually reassigned to the legal status which was first used in 1724. They were 19% of the peasant population in 1724, 39% in 1796 and 52% in 1858. They could be anywhere from 10% to 82% of the population and were most common in the north, Siberia and along the Volga-Ural axis. The meaning of this legal term varied and did not always include all non-seigniorial peasants. Non-seigniorial peasants included: the remnants of the black peasants (5 million males in 1838); odnodvortsy (1.9 million males in the 1850s); descendents of "voiskovye obyvateli" who had been frontier guards mainly in the Kharkov area; minor nobles in the Polish provinces who could not document their status; "Panzer boyars", a small group of military servitors in Lithuania; peasants on secularized monastic land; peasants on Polish estates confiscated after the annexation which had not been leased to arendators; freed serfs; townsmen who took up farming; clerics who had left the church; many discharged soldiers; foundlings; foreign colonists (449,553 in the 1850s) like the Volga Germanss; Obel'nye votchinniki; polovniki; court peasants; Stable peasants (40,000 in 1760) who supported the cavalry; falconers (about 1,000 in the 1780s, the last 102 joined the regular state peasantry in 1827); "ship forest peasants" were mostly Muslims of the middle Volga who had to cut timber for the navy (943,000 males in 1811, reduced to 120,000 in 1817 and abolished in 1859); military colonists (571,989 males in 1859); "Yamshchiki", teamsters who hauled mail and government officials (45,000 males in the 1760s); Cossacks and Siberian natives. They paid a quitrent, the soul tax and were drafted on the same basis as serfs.
*Svoyezemtsy: landowners with very little land who often did their own farm work. From Mongol times, they were most common in the Novgorod area.
*Taxation of peasants: In Kievan times taxes were paid by the volost. By the 16th century taxes in labor and goods were replaced by money and greatly increased. From the 13th century taxes were based on land recorded in cadastres called "pistsovye knigi.". The system broke down during the Time of Troubles. New registers were hastily made in 1613, proved inadequate, and had to be adjusted. In 1647 a tax was placed in each peasant dvor and in 1680 extended to kholops who had their own dvor. In 1724 Peter the Great introduced the soul tax on each adult male who was not a noble or cleric. It was paid by the landlord, or commune for state peasants. It was fixed until the next "revision" or census, so that the dead paid taxes ("dead souls"). The soul tax was about 0.7 rubles in the 18th century, 1 ruble in 1784, 1.26 in 1797 and 1.86 from 1839.
*Tiaglo or Tyaglo: From Mongol times, a unit of tax assessment approximating a household, but adjusted for various reasons.
*Vodka: At the end of the 18th century there were 23,000 distilleries in Russia. In 1860 there were 6,080 larger ones. They employed from 70,000 to 100,000 people.
*Volost: The peasant commune from ancient times. The volost chose its own officials, managed the common lands, admitted newcomers, had local police power and paid a tax which it distributed among its members. Volosts were broken up when black lands were assigned to landowners. With the rise of serfdom there was a tendency to bind peasants to their volosts. See Mir.
*Votchina: a privately owned estate as opposed to pomestye. It originally meant inherited property as opposed to kuplia or bought property. In Mongol times or before princes described their lands as "votchina". In 1516 we find the first use of the word in the sense of private estate and by the end of the century it became the standard term for the opposite of a pomestye. Votchniks were required to serve the state from 1556, but this duty was not connected to their votchinas. The number of votchinas and their sizes decreased in the 16th century as the pomestye system expanded. Grants of votchinas increased after 1600. The legal distinction between votchina and pomestye was abolished in 1714.
*Voluntary Slave: (volnye kholopy or dobrovolnye posluzhiltsy). These people voluntarily made themselves kholopy and could renounce the status at will. This exempted them from direct taxes and government service. The status was legislated against in the 16th and 17th centuries. A decree of 1597 ordered that anyone who had served as a voluntary slave for more than six months would become a kabala slave. The institution seems to have died out after about 1690.
*Vyvoz: or 'exportation' of peasants. With the consent of the three parties a peasant could be transferred from one lord to another. The gaining lord paid the peasant's debts and exit fee. If the losing lord refused the matter could be reviewed by a court. Since the gaining lord had to pay and offer better terms this usually moved peasants from poorer to richer landlords. The government tried to interfere with the practice since it weakened the smaller pomeshchiks who were needed for military service. Illegal or semi-legal vyvoz merged into kidnapping and running away.
*Zadvornye liudi: In the 16th century a kholop who lived away from his master's dvor and paid the equivalent of rent. Some free peasants took this status to avoid taxation.
*Zakup: In Kievan times, a person held in bondage until he repaid a debt. According to the Russkaya Pravda, if he stole or tried to flee he became a permanent slave. He could not normally testify in court. If his lord tried to sell him into slavery he was freed. The lord had to pay a fine if he beat him without cause, or tried to sell the indenture to a third party or took his personal property. The term disappeared at the end of the Kievan period and was replaced with serebrenik and kabala. The Russkaya Pravda also mentions "vdachi" who worked for a fixed time to pay off a loan and "riadovichi" who seem to have made some kind of contract.

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