Russia under the Old regime

THE ANATOMY OF THE PATRIMONIAL REGIME

bidding them to lodge complaints against landlords unless state security was involved (when they were required to do so) and depriving them of the right to testify in court in civil disputes.

From all that had been said earlier about compulsory service of landlords, it should be apparent that peasant serfdom in Russia was not an exceptional condition, but an integral aspect of an all-embracing system binding the entire population to the state. Unlike the slave of the ancient world or the Americas, the Muscovite serf was not an unfree being living in the midst of freemen, a helot among citizens. He was a member of a social system which allowed no one to dispose of his time or belongings. The hereditary nature of social status in Muscovite Russia, and the absence of charters guaranteeing members of social groups any rights and privileges meant that - from the western European point of view -all Russians lived in a servile condition.* Michael Speranskii, surveying Russia of his time from the perspective of his western education, concluded that it had only two estates: 'slaves of the sovereign, and slaves of the landlords. The former are called free only in regard to the latter.'12 These words were written in 1805, when the legal condition of dvoriane was vastly improved compared to what it had been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

To be sure the peasant was at the bottom of the social pyramid and in some respects (though not all) he was the worst off; but he belonged to a universal system, and his bondage must be viewed as an intrinsic part of it: 'The peasant was enserfed neither to the land nor to the person [of the landlord]: he was enserfed, if one may say so, to the state; he was made a state worker through the intermediacy of the landlord.'13 In at least one respect Muscovite servitors were at a disadvantage compared to their serfs, and that was that unlike them they could not live year round in their own houses, in the midst of their families. How onerous was the status of a servitor may be gathered from clauses in the Law Codes of 1497 and 1550, enjoining landlords from binding themselves as slaves {kholopy) to evade state service. The trading and artisan population, too, was fixed to their occupations and places of residence. In other words, peasant serfdom was only the most widespread and most visible form of bondage which pervaded every layer of Muscovite society creating an interlocking system without room for personal freedom.

* According to Marc Bloch, in feudal France and Burgundy 'the notion arose that freedom was lost when free choice could not be exercised at least once in a lifetime. In other words, every hereditary tie was regarded as being marked by a servile character.' (Feudal Society, London, 1961, p. 261). As concerns the second point, in western practice it was established that only those belonging to groups given royal charters constituted social estates - the peasants who lacked such charters were for that reason not considered to form an estate. (Jacques Ellul, Histoire des Institutions (Paris 1956), II, p. 224).