Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/41

 Rh 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 barchtchina (the lord's work), or izdiélié (work), or boïarskoié 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