Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/59

 peasants, constituting a species of lesser gentry (they were entitled to keep serfs), were known as odnodvorcy, one-farm-men, that is individual farm men, those who owned their farm buildings and land individually and not communally. When the realm extended its frontiers, the military duties of the odnodvorcy lapsed. In Ukraine the Cossacks had similar functions.

Russian serfdom differed from European serfdom in that the earlier mir constitution was retained, but under serfdom the mir and its agrarian communism acquired a different legal and economic significance. Owing to the increasing power of the grand princes and the tsars, the idea became current that the land in its entirety was the property of the sovereign, the usufruct merely being ceded to the landowners and through these to the peasants. In actual fact, however. the landowner possessed the soil jointly with the grand prince, the landowner being the real possessor, not merely of his family estate, but also of the farms of his peasants. Thus the landlord could withdraw a peasant from the community or introduce a peasant into the community at his own will and pleasure.

The centralised state turned the mir to account in fiscal matters by raising taxes from the village community as a whole and not from the individual peasant. Through this joint responsibility the mir became more firmly established and was endowed with a certain power over the individual; but it is an error to hold that the mir really originated out of such joint responsibility. Changes in agriculture likewise promoted an increase in the power and prestige of the mir. With the steady growth of a settled population there resulted an increase in the value of land, although there was not as yet any scarcity of land. In the sixteenth century, fallowing was replaced by the more lucrative triennial rotation of crops, whereby the economic value of the soil was enhanced.

Settlement on the land naturally involved numerous disputes, and these had to be settled by the village community. The tsar was remote, and his servants-were by no means close at hand. Disputes concerning the soil could be most

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