Serfdom in Russia

Uncommon card · No. 84193

In tsarist Russia, the term serf (Russian: крепостной крестьянин, romanized: krepostnoy krest'yanin, lit. 'bonded peasant') meant an unfree peasant who, unlike a slave, originally could be sold only together with the land to which they were "attached". However, this had stopped being a requirement by the 19th century, and serfs were by then practically indistinguishable from slaves. Contemporary legal documents, such as Russkaya Pravda (12th century onwards), distinguished several degrees of feudal dependency of peasants. While another form of slavery in Russia, kholopstvo, was ended by Peter I in 1723, serfdom (Russian: крепостное право, romanized: krepostnoye pravo) was abolished only by Alexander II's emancipation reform of 1861; nevertheless, in times past, the state allowed peasants to sue for release from serfdom under certain conditions, and also took measures against abuses of landlord power. Serfdom became the dominant form of relation between Russian peasants and nobility in the...

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