Russia under the Old regime

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bonded concurrently. As will be described in the chapter on the middle class, in Muscovite Russia commerce was carried on primarily in places set aside for the purpose, called posady. These were sometimes separate town quarters, sometimes suburbs, and occasionally rural settlements. Persons authorized to trade or produce articles for sale were united in communities called posadskie obshchiny, which bore collective responsibility for the tiaglo of its members. A succession of edicts, the first issued in the middle of the sixteenth century, forbade members of posad communities to leave.

The bonding of the black peasants, traders and artisans was largely motivated by the desire to protect the interests of the treasury. In bonding peasants living on votchiny and pomestia, the government had uppermost in mind the well-being of its service class. These peasants were enserfed gradually, by a combination of economic pressures and legislative ordinances. Which of the two causes played the decisive role is a matter of dispute among Russian historians.

Except in the northernmost regions, where he lived in isolation, the Russian peasant never had legal title to the land he tilled; land was monopolized by the crown, church and service class. Traditionally, the Russian farmer was a tenant. As a tenant in a country where natural conditions were unfavourable to agriculture, he was in an economically precarious condition. Upon settling down on a private estate, he customarily entered into an agreement with the landlord (oral in early Muscovy, later usually written down) which specified the payments and services he owed as rent. It was common for the landlord, as part of such an agreement, to offer his tenant assistance in the form of a loan (at 20 per cent interest or higher), seed, livestock and implements. Before he could quit the farm and move elsewhere, the peasant was required to return the cost of this assistance, as well as pay rent for the living quarters he and his family had inhabited, compensation for the losses suffered by the landlord from the peasant's inability to perform winter chores, and sometimes a 'departure fee'. A peasant who left without having settled his accounts was liable to be treated by the authority as a defaulted debtor and if caught to be turned over to the creditor as his slave. Heavily indebted peasants became in effect immobilized. The longer they remained in debt the less opportunity had they of extricating themselves because their debts kept on increasing from the relentless compounding of interest while their incomes stayed more or less stationary. Such indebted peasants, although theoretically free to leave around St George's Day, could rarely take advantage of the opportunity. To make matters worse, in 1580 the government temporarily suspended the right of departures around St George's Day; in 1603, the suspension became permanent. Henceforth, there were no more periods left during