Urochnye summer: how zakreposhali peasants

The introduction of the learned years is believed to have taken place in Russia in 1597 by the order of Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich. However, this event was preceded by a rather long history. In Russia, for some time before the above legislative act, there was a system of relations connected with the so-called Yuryev's day. Annually on November 26, St. George (Yuri) was celebrated, in which agricultural work was finally completed.

Already at that time there were peasants who worked on their own plots. And those who worked on the landowners' land and had certain obligations, which were formalized by "order records". If all the terms of the contract were fulfilled by late autumn, the employee could switch to another "employer" within two weeks before and after the St. George's Day. Recent historical studies show that long before the so-called "summer lessons" appeared, the peasants had few opportunities to change their owners. This was facilitated by the fact that the terms of the agreements between the landowners and peasants were beyond burdensome for the toilers of the earth.

Working with ancient records showed that long before the aforementioned decree was adopted, the peasants did not use their right of transition. So, in 1580 in one of the counties of Moscow Rus, out of 60 peasants only two could use the change of the landowner. But there was a sufficient number of people who fled from their master in search of a better share.

By the end of the 16th century, their number was such that a decree restricting peasant rights on Yuryev's day and introducing protected summers in a number of districts of Rus was adopted. In addition, we have determined the lessons of the summer. This was the period during which the landowners could demand back the fleeing peasants from other owners or return those who left them to freedom. At first this term was 5 years. In 1607, it was increased to 15 years.

However, during the peasants' wars, when people from the enslavement and famine massively fled to the south, formed armed detachments, opposed the authorities, the summer was not respected because the country was in a state of civil war. The government had to make certain concessions and reduce the time limit again to 5 years.

In the 40s of the 17th century, the tentative summers were prolonged to 9 years, and in 1642 it was established that fugitive peasants can be returned within 10 years and claimed from another owner within 15 years. In 1649, the Romanov dynasty tried to put in order the legislative system of the country, which was characterized by chaotic and many contradictory decrees. The result of this work was the Cathedral Code, which, among other things, canceled the summer lessons. So in Russia there was a serfdom. In later periods, in addition to being unable to escape from the landowner, peasants could be sold into recruits, sent to Siberia or to hard labor.

Russia is not the only state that has gone through enslavement. Virtually all European countries had similar systems in their own country, and at about the same time they were abolished (in our country - in 1861). Western Europe went this way a little earlier, Eastern - a little later. And in the Kingdom of Bhutan, serfs existed until 1956. Although some historians consider the seizure of passports from the workers of the Soviet collective farms as a kind of enslavement.