Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/57

 is the Russian term for villeinage and bondage to the soil, but also for serfdom, the fuller development of villeinage.

In 1597, Boris Godunov finally established villeinage as a legal institution. As regent, the clever boyar was keenly alive to the economic interests of his order and of the church (the monasteries). The peasant must be more efficiently exploited by his lord and by the state, and he was therefore deprived of the right to transfer his services.

The question how and when serfdom, strictly speaking, was introduced has not been fully answered by Russian historians and jurists. I do not believe that the institution originated through direct legislative procedure, and in consequence of state intervention. It was a gradual development. Codification served merely to give a legal warrant to what already existed, though doubtless thenceforward evolution, having become deliberate, advanced with more rapid strides. Among numerous explanations, I would lay especial stress upon the political and administrative centralisation of the new state, and would point to the parallel evolution of the nobility and the peasantry. In Kiev the nobleman was a free servant of the prince, just as the peasant was a freeman; both had the right of free movement; the nobleman could leave his prince to take service with another; the peasant could transfer himself at will to work for another lord, or to become a colonist. In Muscovy free service came to an end; the nobleman was gradually "bound" to service, until at length he became transformed into the bureaucrat. Simultaneously the free peasant was tied to the soil. The prince and his descendants became bureaucrats, the peasant and his children became villeins. This peculiar political process did not come to an end with the year 1597. Under the second Romanov, contracts between peasants and their lords received national recognition in that the duties of the peasant were inscribed on the public rolls and were officially regulated.

The consequences of the new situation soon became clear to the peasantry. Under the leadership of the bold Sten'ka Razin, a Cossack and proletarian revolution was organised in 1670. Peter and his descendants increased the bondage of the peasants to actual serfdom, the peasant becoming personally dependent upon his lord. It is true that simultaneously Peter bureaucratised the nobility more thoroughly than before, making service obligatory upon the nobles.