Russia under the Old regime

THE ANATOMY OF THE PATRIMONIAL REGIME

the Troitse-Sergeev monastery to prohibit peasants of several of its villages, specified by name, from moving elsewhere. These measures were exceptional. However, as early as the middle of the fifteenth century, Moscow began to circumscribe the time of the year when peasants were authorized to exercise the right of departure. Responding to complaints of landlords that peasants were quitting them at the height of the agricultural season, the crown issued edicts limiting the period when departures could take place; this was set usually at one week before and one week after the autumn St George's Day (26 November Old Style or 4-7 December New Style), by which time all farm work would have been completed. The Law Code of 1497 extended the applicability of this date to all the territories under Moscow's rule.

Two events in the third quarter of the sixteenth century compelled the government to take drastic measures to stop further peasant movement. One was the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan, which opened up to Russian colonization much of the black earth belt, previously controlled by nomads. The peasants immediately seized the opportunity and abandoning the forest in droves, poured on to the virgin soil to the east, south-east and south. The depopulation of the central areas of Muscovy was already well under way, when in 1564 Ivan iv introduced the oprichnina. Although it was directed at the boyars, the majority of the victims of this - as of any other - terror, were ordinary people, in this case, peasants living on estates confiscated from boyars and turned over to the oprichniki. To escape their clutches, more peasants fled to the newly conquered lands. The exodus continued for three decades with the result that large stretches of central and north-western Russia, traditionally the most densely populated, were left half-deserted. Land cadasters conducted between 1581 and 1592 recorded many villages deserted and reverting to forest, arable converted into pasture, churches which once had reverberated with chant standing empty and silent. Depopulation on this vast scale created a major crisis for the state and its servitors. Uninhabited villages neither paid taxes to the treasury, nor provided the labour necessary to release the service class for war. Particularly affected were the rank-and-file dvoriane, the monarchy's favoured class. In the competition for working hands which grew keener the more peasants fled from the central provinces, dvoriane usually lost out to monasteries and boyars who attracted peasants with better terms. The monarchy could not stand by idly and watch the foundations of its wealth and power erode, and so it began to issue decrees designed to prevent further peasant departures.

The first to be fixed to the land were the black people. Beginning with the 1550s decrees were passed forbidding peasants in this category to move. The trading peasants and artisans - also considered black - were