Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/58

32 Serfdom and the disappearance of free service give expression to the fact that the Russians in Muscovy had become a settled population, this being itself connected with their absolute and relative increase in numbers. The peasant's lack of freedom was not everywhere the same either in fact or legally. The state of Moscow owned enormous areas of land, both tilled and untilled. The peasants upon the state or crown lands and upon the private property of the tsars had a position which naturally differed in some respects from that of the peasants upon the boyar's estates, for the relationship of the tsar to the boyars was reflected in the relationship between the boyars and the peasants. Legislation was more directly concerned with the peasants on the crown lands. As time passed, the distinction between the two categories was legally formulated, the main difference being that the peasants on the crown lands were comparatively well to do. Similarly, the peasants upon large estates were better off economically speaking than those on small estates, for the small landlord tended to satisfy his aristocratic needs by means of the more vigorous oppression of a restricted number of peasants.

The differences found expression also in the nature of the burdens imposed. The corvée (barščina, from bojarščina, boyar service), perhaps chronologically the primitive form of service, was harsher than the natural or monetary burden (obrok, rent), which was general upon the crown lands. The latter form permitted a certain freedom of movement. The serf could go to the town to seek work there, and could engage in various occupations, becoming a craftsman, a trader, etc. Not infrequently such a serf was better off than his lord.

In addition to the serfs there were semi-free and free peasants. The peasants on the crown lands, as already explained, were freer than the others. Peasants who had done well in service or who had acquired means were free in actual fact, and in many cases in point of law also. From the sixteenth century onwards, that is from the time when serfdom was definitively established, there existed a special category of frontier peasants in the southern and eastern parts of the realm. These were enfeoffed with land in order that they might guard the frontier, their feoffs being given as a reward for zealous service, and their holdings of land becoming in course of time hereditary private property, increasing in extent. These free