The life of ordinary poor peasants completely depended on two factors: the master and mother nature. The feudal lord imposed taxes (feudal duties), and nature, for its part, also sometimes did not favor: droughts, too frosty winters or rainy summers nullified all the attempts of the peasant to get out of poverty and vegetation.

Only the most industrious and persistent achieved their goal and could improve their position.

What is a feudal bond?

The duties of the peasants consisted in observing several clauses of the agreement, at the conclusion of which the feudal lord undertook to provide the peasant and his family with land for living and sowing the field, as well as to protect his land and estate from attacks by enemies. At the same time, this type of agreement was not a slave-owning one: at any moment the family of a peasant could go to another feudal lord in the service, but the lands that were allocated to him, of course, were taken away.

There were several feudal duties in the medieval history:

• Corvee.
• Monetary dues in favor of the feudal lord.
• Church tithe.
• Other local conditions.

Corvee

This feudal obligation consisted in the compulsory obligation to work in the master's field 2-3 days a week. Sowing and reaping grain, mowing hay, building and repairing buildings, caring for livestock, and many other types of work were a heavy yoke around the peasant's neck.

The feudal lord often violated the terms of the corvée and detained forced laborers at their work: while they bent their backs on the master, grain was sprinkled on their fields, vegetables dried and uncut hay spoiled. Corvee was the most difficult and unprofitable payment for belonging to the lands of a feudal lord, and given that the terms of the contract were constantly violated, this gave rise to unrest and discontent.

church tithe

This feudal duty was the most oppressive: it was impossible to get rid of it by ransom or reduce the percentage of payment, each family was obliged to pay ten percent of its profits from all activities to the church. It is not surprising that the church leaders of the Middle Ages were drowning in luxury.

quitrent

The material payment to his master was another feudal obligation for the right to use his land and protection. The quitrent was of several types:

Monetary: a certain amount of money was paid annually to the treasury of the local master. Peasants received money from the sale of their goods at fairs, which were held every few months. Also, artisans received payment for their work, which they paid dues to the master.

Grocery: payment was made with livestock and poultry products - meat, eggs, milk and manufactured cheeses, honey and wine, vegetables and fruits. Often, for lack of more, they paid in grain from the harvested crop.

Various mixed forms of payment: living creatures, handicraft items - cloth, yarn and utensils, skins of fur-bearing animals or dressed leather

After paying all taxes and obligations, a simple peasant had very little left for his needs, but at the same time everyone tried to work as best and better as possible, so responsible families slowly but steadily improved their financial situation, and some even managed to buy land and free themselves from basic duties.

Certain types of other obligations

There were other duties that were no less difficult:

• The right of the first night is the most insulting obligation that persisted until the time of Napoleon Bonaparte. In some cases, it was possible to buy off this right with a rather large amount of money. In some areas, a “marriage permit” was practiced, according to which it was required to obtain permission from the master (sometimes for a fee) to marry a certain woman.
• The right of a dead hand - if the head of the family, to whom the land was registered, died, it returned to the feudal lord. But quitrent payments were often used if the family, after the loss of the main breadwinner, could continue to process it.
• Military service - in wartime, a man in a bonded family was obliged to stand up for the country, the local region, or go on a crusade.

In different countries and at different times, feudal duties were due to local customs, beliefs and living conditions: somewhere they were more loyal, in other places, on the contrary, they bordered on slavery, violating all human rights, which subsequently caused riots, revolutions and the abolition of feudal law.

The “Regulations” of February 19, 1861 established a number of basic principles for the elimination of duties and the allocation of land to the peasants. The “General Regulations on Peasants Who Have Emerged from Peasant Dependence” proceeded from the recognition of the landowners’ right of ownership to all lands, but established the obligatory fall of peasants with estate and field land (with the exception of those who did not have land before the reform), first for duties, and then for redemption . Preference was given to an "amicable" agreement between peasants and landlords, and the conditions could be very different. If such an agreement was not reached, then strict rules determined by “local regulations” came into play. The reform was based on the principle of gradualism, a favorite hobby of conservatives of all time. Gradually, over two years, statutory charters were to be drawn up, defining the specific conditions for the emancipation of the peasants. After that, the peasants were transferred to the position of “temporarily obliged” until the transition to redemption. Then there followed a period of 49 years of payment of redemption payments (or rather, loans from the state), after which the land plots were to become the full property of the peasants.

The size of the allotments was determined by local regulations, of which there were four. One was for 29 Great Russian, Novorossiysk and Belarusian provinces with a communal form of land use. The second is for the three Little Russian (left-bank) provinces with household land use. A special local position was for the Right-Bank Ukraine and the fourth - for Western Belarus and Lithuania. According to the last two provisions, the peasants received all the lands that they had before the reform. This was done for political reasons, since the peasants there were Ukrainians and Belarusians, and the landlords were mostly Catholic Poles. After the uprising of 1863, the peasants of these provinces were immediately transferred for redemption and their allotments increased somewhat (to the previous norms of inventory records).

Local provisions also divided the provinces into three bands (chernozem, non-chernozem and steppe), and within the bands areas were allocated and norms for allotments were established for them. In the steppe zone, a single statutory allotment per male soul was introduced (it varied in different areas from six to twelve dozen). In the rest of the bands in each locality, the highest and lowest norms of allotments were determined. At the same time, the upper allotment was three times larger than the lower one. The law proceeded from the fact that the peasants were given the actual allotment that they used before the reform. In this case, if this allotment was more than the highest norm, the landowner had the right to cut off the “surplus” to this norm. If the actual allotment was less than the lower norm, the landowner was obliged to cut the land

excess to this level.

The landlords set norms in such a size that they could cut off part of the peasants' land for their own benefit. The landlords submitted to the Editorial Commissions underestimated data on the size of the actual allotments of the peasants, and therefore, even after some increase in the higher norms by these commissions, in most provinces, the lands of the peasants were still reduced. The land was also cut off according to additional rules: the landowner could cut off land for himself up to 1/3 of his former estate (up to 1/2 in the steppe zone) even if the peasants' allotments did not exceed the highest norm.

According to official data, the size of the cuts in favor of the landlords in 27 provinces as a whole amounted to 13% of the former peasant allotments before the reform. Research by Soviet historians of archive documents (statutory charters) showed that in reality about 20% of their land was cut off from the peasants, and in some provinces up to 30%. The landlords were given the right to determine for themselves which lands to allocate to the peasants and which to keep for themselves. The landowners cut off the best lands for themselves, and also took such plots in segments that the peasants were forced to rent them at an expensive price. For example, they took away all the pastures and watering holes, without which the peasants could not do, and more often wedged segments into the middle of the peasant field lands. According to the memoirs of one of the statisticians, in the village of Khomuty, Oryol province, the lands of the peasants were in five sections, and it was possible to get to them only through the lands of the landowner. Thus, the landlords got the opportunity to exploit the peasants in bondage.

As a result of the reform, 10 million male souls of the former landlord peasants received about 34 million dess. land or 3.4 dess. per capita. According to the estimates of liberal economists, for a living wage it was necessary to have at least 5.5 dessiatines in the black earth zone. per capita, and in other areas 6-8 dess. The allotments were uneven. Almost 5 of the peasants received up to 2 dessiatines, 28% from 2 to 3 dessiatines, 26% from 3 to 4, and 27% over 4 dessiatins. The poorest were the peasants of the chernozem zone, the northernmost and steppe provinces.

The allocation of land to the peasants was dictated by two reasons. Tsarism was worried that the peasants would continue to pay taxes, which they could not do without land. In addition, the landlords were afraid of losing their working hands, because without the landed peasants they would begin to disperse through the cities and go to the suburbs with lots of land. Taking into account the interests of the peasants required a significant increase in the pre-reform allotments of the peasants, which could be done at the expense of the landowners' latifundia and the organization of the resettlement of the peasants to the outskirts. But the landowners won. The allotments were based on pre-reform, obviously insufficient norms, but at the same time the peasants were robbed, taking away their vital “segments”. When switching over to redemption, the former landlord peasants received the title of peasant proprietors, but in fact they, unlike the landowners, did not receive full ownership of the land. The community was considered the legal owner, but it also did not have the right to sell allotments. With household landownership, peasants also could not sell their plots. A new form of landownership "allotment" was created.

Part of the peasants (461 thousand) received quarter, or donation, allotments, an average of 1.1 dess. per capita. Half of them accounted for the Lower Volga region, and a quarter - for the North Black Earth. 724,000 serfs and 137,000 peasants of small landed nobility did not receive land at all. They were released two years later free of charge, but without a piece of land.

Prior to the transition to redemption, the peasants had to perform temporary duties in favor of the landowner in the form of a cash quitrent or corvée. The period of transition from duties to redemption was not firmly established by the regulations; it stretched from 1863 to 1883 (the law of 1881 established the obligation to switch to redemption for all landowners' estates). By February 19, 1870, 55% of the peasants in European Russia switched to redemption, not counting the western provinces, where all the peasants were immediately transferred to the category of peasant owners. By 1881 15% of the former landlord peasants of the inner provinces remained in the position of temporarily liable.

Temporary duties were essentially the same feudal corvee and dues, the difference was as follows: their sizes were determined by local regulations, small duties were abolished (payments in kind with poultry, berries, mushrooms, etc., additional herding work and outfits), dues were recognized as the main duty (peasants cannot it was without their consent to transfer to corvee if they had previously paid dues, and after two years they could switch from corvee to quitrent without the consent of the landowner). Corvee was limited to 40 men's and 30 women's days from the tax per year, while 3/5 was worked out in the summer half-year, the rest in the winter. The peasants did not work productively in the corvée; the landowners no longer had such power over them. Therefore, the proportion of corvée peasants fell by half in the first two years (from 71 to 35%), and then the reduction continued.

Of great importance was the principle of determining the amount of dues, on which the size of the ransom depended. The government and the tsar himself repeatedly emphasized that they would not even allow a discussion of the issue of buying out the personal dependence of the peasants, which was proposed by the right-wing landowners. But among the new bureaucracy, a circumvention of this principle was found: to make the amount of dues dependent not on the profitability of the land, but on the income of the peasants in the given area. According to local regulations, the highest quitrent was established near St. Petersburg - 12 rubles. From a full allotment, then in non-chernozem provinces (Moscow, Yaroslavl, parts of Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod) - 10 rubles. In the black earth and steppe provinces, the quitrent was set at 9 rubles. Consequently, the quitrent was lower where the land was valued higher. This happened because the quitrent rates were approximately equal to the size of the pre-reform quitrent, and it was higher in the non-chernozem provinces, near the capitals, where it was possible to earn more. And in the black earth provinces, the main income was from the land and the quitrent was lower. Here the landlords were compensated by cuts and the opportunity to receive income from them. The assignment of quitrent according to its pre-reform size was aimed at preserving for the landowner the income that the peasant gave, and not compensation for the land.

A clever fraud was the introduction of the so-called gradation of dues and corvee. This principle came into force only when the peasants received an incomplete allotment. For example, when receiving half of the highest allotment, it would seem that the peasant must pay half the quitrent. But the gradation consisted in the uneven distribution of quitrent (as well as corvee) between the tithes of the allotment. In the non-chernozem zone, 50% of the quitrent was collected for the first tithe received, 25% for the second, and the remaining part of the quitrent was equally distributed among the rest. In the Yaroslavl province, from the highest allotment of four dozen, the quitrent was set at 10 rubles. If the peasants got two dozen, then they paid 5 rubles for the first tithe, as it would have been without the introduction of gradation. The establishment of gradation was beneficial to the majority of landowners, since the bulk of the peasants received plots less than the highest norm. This was especially beneficial due to the fact that the ransom, as we will see below, directly depended on the actual value of the post-reform dues. The peasants of the black earth zone found themselves in the most difficult situation, where the land was cut off in excess of the highest norm.

Feudal estate.

Feudal estate: fiefdom, seigneury (France) and manor (England).
The feudal estate is the main production cell. The estate was formed in the Karasin era, finally in the 9th century and existed throughout the mature capitalism. The feudal estate is based on a peasant community, and the community had a special type of organization:

1. Settlement

2. Usage

Land tenure system- a system that was used by the communities.

1. Slash-and-burn: trees were cut down, stumps were burned.

2. Relog: transition to a new field, leaving the old one.

3. Double field: one is sown and the other is fallow.

4. Three-field: 1 - winter (autumn), 2 - spring (spring), 3 - fallow

5. Multi-field (fruit seed): fertility is restored when the crop changes during sowing.

With a three-field field, the field was divided into sections (wedges). In each wedge, strips were cut, corresponding to the number of peasants and the needs of the landowners. The lanes went through the lane (one for the peasant, the other for the landowner), so that each peasant had land in all natural conditions. Harvested in this way. After that, the hedges were removed from the lanes, and the whole field was grazing. The economy of the landowner was subordinated to the rhythm of the peasant economy, i.e. the economic entity was the community, and the votchina was only a superstructure over this community in order to withdraw the surplus product. Such a system is called open field system after the harvest, the fields were opened; Mediterranean in France - grapes, hedges were not removed, each was processed entirely. The entire organization of production is in the hands of the community, and the means of production are in the hands of the peasants. Therefore, the feudal lord could not influence the production process  foreign economic exploitation.

Domain- the land on which the feudal lord's economy is conducted; is made up of the sum of the stripes in the margins

Degree of exploitation: It is always a fraction - the ratio of the surplus product to the necessary.

In a corvee economy: surplus product = S of the domain, and the necessary product = the sum of S of the allotment. The degree of exploitation is not >1/3, 2/3 - for oneself, but 1/3 for the feudal lord.

Conclusion: the estate represented a large economy based on small-scale production.

duties of the peasants.

In the 10th century, the peasants leveled off in position; 10-13 centuries in France - serfs.

Serves are peasants who are personally and judicially dependent on the feudal lord.

Personal addiction ( servage ):

1. Menmort - "the right of the dead hand." Upon the death of the peasant holder, legally the land passed to the feudal lord. Economically, it was expressed in the withdrawal of quitrent from the son.

2. Formarage - payment for permission to marry. “The right of the first leg” - the feudal lord, but there was a fee to the feudal lord.

3. Banality - the obligation of the peasant to use the means of production of the feudal lord.

4. Shevazh - total requisition.

5. Servitudes - payment for the use of the almenda.

6. Talya - payments to the feudal lord for holding the land.

Land dependency:

Corvee: ordinary (2-3 days a week work on the field or on the farm) and extraordinary (during the harvesting period, the peasant was torn off from his farm).

In the 13th century - commutation of rent:

1. Developmental - corvee

2. Grocery - natural quitrent

3. Monetary - cash quitrent

Reasons for rent switching:

1. The development of commodity-money relations expanded the needs of the feudal lords and increased their need for money.

2. In the 13-14 centuries, there was an active colonization of new lands in Europe, it was difficult to arrange a corvée economy on them.

3. Crusades and other wars. Part of the peasants received freedom during these wars.

4. Epidemics: in 1348 - the plague; wars reduced the population, devastated the lands,. And the feudal lords could populate these lands only by attracting peasants with favorable conditions: low rent and freedom.

5. Peasant uprisings.

Peasants pay a fixed due - qualification / or chinsh(German). The liberated peasants in the 13th-14th centuries are called in France - Villans. Later they will be called censors. The whole system of fixed dues is a qualification.

The landowner was obliged to provide the peasants with a land plot not for ownership, but only for “permanent use”. The land ceded to the peasants legally continued to be the landlord's property, for the use of which the peasants had to bear duties until a redemption deal was concluded between them and the landowner. Until that time, the peasants were considered "temporarily liable", that is, they remained in their former feudal dependence. But, since no deadline was set for the transition to redemption, this “temporality” from urgent, as previously assumed, turned into indefinite. The sizes and forms of duties, if there is no voluntary agreement between the landowner and the peasants, were also determined by the local "Regulations".

"Regulations" established two types of duties - quitrent and corvée. The size of the dues according to the "Great Russian" "Regulations" ranged from 8 to 12 rubles. for the shower room, depending on the locality. The basis for calculating the dues was its size, which existed on the eve of the reform; if we recall that the peasant dues were paid not only from the income from the peasants' agricultural economy, but also from various non-agricultural incomes, it becomes clear that in paying the quitrent, the peasant paid not only for the use of the landowners' land, but also for the right to dispose of his labor power; the quitrent, thus, was still in the nature of a feudal duty. Naturally, there was no correspondence between the dues and the profitability of the peasant allotment; the highest quitrent (12 rubles) was paid by the peasants of the estates located near St. Petersburg, where, as is known, the land is of very low quality, then came the St. , Kursk and Voronezh, provinces paid 9 rubles.

When calculating the dues, the so-called "gradation" was introduced, which consisted in the fact that the first tithe of the allotment received by the peasants was valued more than the following tithes; therefore, if the peasants received an incomplete allotment, each tithe cost them more than when they received a full allotment, that is, the less land the peasant received, the more it cost him. A particularly sharp gradation was established for the non-chernozem zone; in the chernozem and steppe zones, it was somewhat less. The gradation gave the landowners the opportunity to further increase the discrepancy between the size of the quitrent and the profitability of the land, that is, to further increase the payment for the loss of power over the peasant. And since labor power was valued especially dearly in the non-chernozem zone, it was mainly the landowners of the non-chernozem zone that were interested in gradation. No wonder the "invention" of gradation belongs to the nobles of the non-chernozem strip - the Tver Provincial Committee.

In corvee estates, corvee was preserved even after the reform. The size and procedure for serving the corvée were determined by voluntary agreement; if an agreement could not be reached, then the corvee was served on the basis of the "Regulations". According to the “Regulations on the Great Russian, Novorossiysk and Belarusian provinces”, for each shower allotment, the peasants had to work out 40 days for men and 30 for women per year, and both men and women had to come to work with their inventory - just like before the reform. Corvee service was subject to men from 18 to 55 years old, and women - from 17 to 50, that is, approximately the same as it was practiced on landlord estates until February 19. The service of corvée was also regulated by gradation.

Most of the corvee days (three-fifths) the peasants had to work out in the period from spring to harvest in the fall, which was especially expensive for the peasant to work for himself. The landowner could demand peasants to work on any day, with the exception of holidays, so long as the total number of days per week did not exceed a certain norm. If a peasant could not work due to illness, then other peasants or himself upon recovery had to work for him; if he was ill for more than six months, he could be deprived of his land allotment.

Special institutions - the provincial offices for peasant affairs - were to work out fixed provisions that would indicate exactly what work should be performed by the corvée peasant during the day. For those jobs that could not be transferred to the assigned position, the length of the working day was set at 12 hours in summer and 9 hours in winter.

Corvee peasants were allowed to switch to quitrent even without the consent of the landowner, but not earlier than two years after the publication of the "Regulations" and provided that there were no state and landowner arrears. In addition, the peasants had to declare their desire to switch to quitrent a year in advance.

The collection of dues and corvée duties from the peasants with shortfalls was equated with the collection of state dues and was carried out primarily before all other obligations that lay on the peasants. To pay off the arrears, the property of the peasant could be sold, he and his family members could be forcibly sent to work, his field plot and even the estate could be taken away from him.

Thus, the duties of temporarily liable peasants did not essentially differ from those of serfs; it is the same monetary or labor rent, only more or less regulated by law. Only underwater duty and small requisitions were canceled - poultry, butter, eggs, berries, mushrooms, canvas, wool, etc.

The considered local “Regulations” extended to the central and northern provinces, to the provinces of the Middle and Lower Volga and Ural regions, to three “Novorossiysk” provinces (Ekaterinoslav, Tauride and Kherson), part of the Kharkov province and the provinces of Mogilev and Vitebsk, with the exception of four, the so-called "Inflyants", counties of the latter, adjoining the Baltic region. In these provinces, with few exceptions, communal land tenure dominated; in connection with this, the allotment was assigned to the whole society, which answered with mutual responsibility in the event of a malfunction in serving the duties. In those societies where there was household land use, the allotment was assigned to individual householders, and the latter were personally responsible for the duties.

For the rest of the regions of Belarus and Ukraine and for the provinces of Lithuania, special local "Regulations" were issued.

peasant duties.

The agrarian reform provided for uniform duties for the peasants. The main ones were corvee (panshchina) and chinsh. An additional duty was considered driving - urgent agricultural work associated with harvesting, haymaking, plowing the soil. All members of the family came out to do it. In the house, in order to protect themselves from fire, they left one disabled person. Gwalts differed from osgons in that they were due to extraordinary circumstances - for example, fire, flood. An additional duty was considered a food quitrent - dyaklo.

Those peasants who performed corvée for the use of land were called taxable. From one portage, they had to work two days a week for corvée, four days a year for driving, pay 21 grosz chinsha, give a deaklo in the following amount: two barrels of oats, one hay cart, one goose, two hens, 20 eggs. The peasants who paid for the use of land chinsh were called siege (chinsh). The size of the basic duties of the siege peasants from one portage of good land was 106 groszy, and from the portage of very bad land - 66 groszy. In addition, they carried out 12 days of driving a year, supplied dyaklo in the same size as tax yards.

The third group of peasants were peasant servants. They were subdivided into military peasants (armored boyars, worthy boyars, servants), rural administration (voits, tiuns), servants (cooks, brewers, etc.), fishermen (sedge, beaver, grooms, fishermen, etc.), village artisans ( blacksmiths, carpenters, potters, etc.). Their duties were not strictly specified. For example, armored boyars for free use of land during the war were supposed to "have a good Cossack horse, a pike, a pair of pistols ... and a musket on their belts." Good boyars from 1557 put one horse from two drags to war. But gradually courier service and payment of chinsha became their duties.

After the agrarian reform, the involuntary servants were transferred to the category of peasant gardeners. They received small plots of land. For using it, gardeners had to work out one day of corvée per week in the manor.