In modern Poland, its citizens are equal in rights and have no class differences. However, every Pole knows well the meaning of the word privileged class existed in the state for almost a thousand years, from the 11th century to the beginning of the 20th, when all privileges were abolished in 1921.

History of occurrence

There are two versions of the emergence of the supreme nobility of Poland, the gentry.

According to the first, which is considered more plausible and officially accepted, it is believed that the Polish gentry arose evolutionarily as a result of socio-economic transformations.

The disparate Slavic tribes that lived on the territory of Eastern Europe gradually grew and united into alliances. The largest was called the pole. Initially, at the head of the field was a council of elders, elected from representatives of the most powerful and respected families. In the future, the management of individual territories of the field was divided among the elders and began to be inherited, and the elders themselves began to be called princes.

Constant wars and conflicts between the princes led to the need to create military units. Warriors were recruited from among free people who were not tied to the land. It was from this class that a new privileged class arose - the gentry. Translated from German, the word "gentry" means "battle".

But what is the second version of the emergence of the estate. It belongs to a professor at the University of Krakow, Franciszek Xavier Pekosinski, who lived in the 19th century. According to the scientist, the Polish gentry was not born evolutionarily in the bowels of the Polish people. He is convinced that the first gentry were descendants of the Polabs, warlike Slavic tribes that invaded Poland in the late 8th - early 9th century. In favor of his assumption is the fact that Slavic runes are depicted on the family coats of arms of the most ancient gentry families.

First chronicles

The first mention of the Polish knights, who became the founders of the nobility, was preserved in the annals of Gall Anonymus, who died in 1145. Despite the fact that the “Chronicle and Acts of the Princes and Rulers of Poland” compiled by him sometimes sins with historical inaccuracies and gaps, it nevertheless became the main source of information about the formation of the Polish state. The first mention of the gentry is associated with the names of Meshko 1 and his son, King Boleslav 1 the Brave.

During the reign of Boleslav, the assignment of the status of "lord" to each warrior who rendered the king a significant service was established. There is a record of this dating back to 1025.

King of Polish Knights

Boleslav I the Brave granted the honorary title not only to princes, but also to slaves, although the former demanded a special status for themselves - “monarchs”, which they were especially proud of. Until the end of the 11th century, the lords, they are also knights, they are also the founders of the gentry class, did not have their own land holdings.

In the 12th century, under Bolesław Krivoust, the knightly estate turned from a tumbleweed into landowners.

Europe in the middle of the last century knows knights as warriors of the church, carrying the Christian faith to the pagans. The Polish knights began not as warriors of the church, but as defenders of princes and kings. Boleslav 1 the Brave, who made this estate, was first the prince of Poland, and then the self-proclaimed king. He ruled for almost 30 years and remained in history as a very smart, cunning and courageous politician and warrior. Under him, the Kingdom of Poland expanded significantly due to the annexation of Czech territories. Boleslav introduced part of Great Moravia into Poland. Thanks to him, the city of Krakow, the capital of Lesser Poland, entered the Kingdom of Poland forever. For a long time it was the capital of the state. To this day, it is one of the largest cities in the country, its most important cultural, economic and scientific center.

Piasts

The Piast dynasty, to which King Bolesław belonged, ruled the country for four centuries. It was under the Piasts that Poland experienced a period of the most rapid development in all areas. It was then that the foundations of modern Polish culture were laid. Not the last role in this was played by the Christianization of the country. Crafts and agriculture flourished, strong trade ties were established with border states. The gentry class actively participated in the processes contributing to the development and exaltation of Poland.

Separation of nobility and chivalry

The Polish gentry was a rather numerous and very influential estate. Now it became impossible to enter it just like that, for a knightly feat. Laws on indigenate, adoption and nobilitation were passed. The gentry fenced themselves off from other classes, putting pressure on the king. They could afford it, as for several centuries they became the largest landowners in the state. And in the reign of King Louis of Hungary they achieved hitherto unheard of privileges.

Kosice Privilege

Louis had no sons, and his daughters had no right to the throne. In order to obtain this right for them, he promised the nobles-gentry the abolition of almost all duties in relation to the monarch. So, in 1374, the famous Kosice privilege came out. Now all important government positions were occupied by the Polish gentry.

In accordance with the new treaty, the nobility significantly limited the power of the royal family and the high clergy. The gentry were exempted from all taxes, with the exception of land, but it was also meager - only 2 pennies were charged from one field per year. At the same time, the nobles received a salary if they participated in hostilities. They were not obliged to build and repair castles, bridges, city buildings. During the trips of the royal person through the territory of Poland, the gentry no longer accompanied her as a guard and an honorary escort, they were also relieved of the obligation to provide the king with food and housing.

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

In 1569, the Kingdom of Poland united with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into a single state, the Commonwealth. The political system in the new state is usually called gentry democracy. In fact, there was no democracy. At the head of the Commonwealth was a king elected for life. His title was not hereditary. Together with the monarch, the Seimas ruled the country.

The Sejm consisted of two chambers - the Senate and the Embassy hut. The Sejm consisted of senior government officials and the supreme clergy, and the Posolskaya hut - their elected representatives of the gentry class. In fact, the history of the Commonwealth is the history of how the nobility autocratically and unreasonably ruled their own state.

The power of the nobility over Poland

With a weak monarchy, the Polish gentry achieved enormous influence on the legislative and executive authorities. Historians assess gentry self-government as a precondition for anarchy.

This conclusion is based on the unlimited influence of the gentry on the political and economic processes in the country. The gentry had the right to veto if the king intended to convene a militia, pass any law or establish a new tax, the last word, whether it be or not, always stood with the gentry. And this despite the fact that the gentry class itself was protected by the law on personal and property inviolability.

The relationship of the nobility with the peasants

After joining in the 14-15 centuries. to Poland, sparsely populated Chervonnaya Rus, Polish peasants began to move to new territories. With the development of trade, agricultural products produced on these lands began to be in high demand abroad.

In 1423, the freedoms of the communities of peasant settlers were limited by another law, introduced under pressure from the gentry class. Under this law, the peasants were converted into serfs, obliged to fulfill the panshchina and did not have the right to leave the area where they lived.

The relationship of the nobility with the townspeople

The history of the Commonwealth also remembers how the gentry treated the urban population. In 1496, a law was passed prohibiting the townspeople from buying land. The reason looks far-fetched, since the argument in favor of the adoption of this resolution was only that the townspeople tend to evade military duties, and the peasants assigned to the land are potential recruits. And their urban masters, the philistines, will prevent the conscription of their subjects for military service.

According to the same law, the work of industrial enterprises and trade establishments was controlled by the elders and governors appointed from among the gentry.

Gentry worldview

Gradually, the Polish gentry began to perceive themselves as the highest and best of the Polish estates. Despite the fact that, in the general mass, the gentry were not magnates, but had rather modest possessions and did not differ in a high level of education, they had an extremely high self-esteem, because a gentry is primarily an arrogance. In Poland, the word "arrogance" still does not have a negative connotation.

What was the basis of such an unusual worldview? First of all, on the fact that every nobleman elected to the Government had the right to veto. The then gentry culture even implied a dismissive attitude towards the king, whom she elected at her own discretion. Rokosh (the right to disobey the king) put the monarch on the same level as subjects from the gentry class. A gentry is a person who equally despises all estates except his own, and if the king himself is not an authority for a gentry, let alone talking about peasants and philistines? Their gentry called serfs.

What did this idle part of the population of the Commonwealth occupy their time with? The gentry's favorite pastimes were feasts, hunting and dancing. The morals of the Polish nobles are colorfully described in the historical novels of Henryk Sienkiewicz "Pan Volodyevsky", "Fire and Sword" and "The Flood".

However, everything eventually comes to an end. The autocracy of the nobility also ended.

Poland within the Russian Empire

At the end of the 18th century, part of the territories of the Commonwealth entered. That's when the so-called analysis of the gentry began. This term refers to a set of measures carried out by the Russian government. They were aimed at limiting the undivided and inappropriate, within the framework of state development, the power of the Polish nobility. By the way, at that time the percentage of the noble population in Poland was 7-8%, and in the Russian Empire it barely reached 1.5%.

The property status of the gentry did not reach that adopted in Russia. According to the sovereign Decree of September 25, 1800, those residents of the Privislinsky provinces (as the Polish lands within Russia were called) could be attributed to the nobility, who would be able to provide documentary evidence of their status within two years, dating back to the gentry of 1795. All the rest will be distributed among other estates - peasant, petty-bourgeois and free-growers. During the gentry self-government in the Commonwealth, the gentry class was actively replenished with new members. By the time of joining the Russian Empire, among the gentry there were those who managed to receive this status from the Nobility Assembly, but did not have confirmation from the Heraldry of the Senate. This category was excluded from the list considered for inclusion in the nobility.

After the Polish uprising of 1830-1831, the Senate adopted a Decree on the ordering of the Poles, who identify themselves as gentry, and on dividing them into three categories, followed by reckoning to the nobility.

Since the entry into force of this Decree, it was forbidden for the Assemblies of Nobility to issue certificates of nobility to Poles if the named status was not certified in the Heraldry.

The Poles-gentry, who submitted documents for the nobility, were recorded as citizens or single-palaces. All the rest were registered as state peasants.

The gentry, who were not approved, did not have the right to buy land with the peasants. Ultimately, they replenished the petty-bourgeois class and the peasantry.

The end of the nobility

The era of the Polish gentry ended with the acquisition by Poland (at the beginning of the 20th century) of independence from the Russian Empire. In the new Constitution of 1921-1926. the words "gentry" or "nobility" are never mentioned. From now on and forever in the newly proclaimed Polish Republic, all its citizens were equalized in rights and duties.

CONTROL.

The Russian princes, who owned these regions on the basis of ancient tribal law, like their ancestors of the 11th and 12th centuries, obeying the authority of led. the prince of Lithuania, they pledged to serve him faithfully and pay tribute from their possessions, and he granted them their reigns in the patrimony on hereditary right or sometimes in temporary possession, until "his sovereign will." This destroyed the ancient family property of the princes. By the beginning of the XVI century. they became serving patrimonies, full owners of their principalities, and together with the noblest Russian boyars and Lithuanian nobles formed a landowning aristocracy similar to the Polish and even more influential. Members of this aristocracy, gentlemen, constituted a government council, or happy led. prince of Lithuania, which severely limited his power. Led by privilege. book. Alexander 1492, the Lithuanian sovereign could not, without the consent of the lords, gladly conduct relations with foreign states, issue and amend laws, manage state revenues and expenditures, and appoint to positions; The king recognized the opinions of the glad as binding for himself, and even in case of his disagreement with them, he accepted them for execution "for his own and common good." At the same time, in Lithuania, following the example of Poland, the highest government positions were introduced - orders, which eventually became lifetime possessions hetman, the chief leader of the troops, chancellor, custodian of the state seal, two podskarbiev, finance ministers, zemstvo, in charge of national revenues and expenditures, and outdoor on the palace economy; heads of individual regions, which were previously ruled by Russian princes in agreement with veche cities, were appointed governors, on which depended cashtelans, commandants of cities, assistant governors, and povet elders, the districts into which the voivodeships were divided. So the central and regional administration of Lithuania-Rus approached the Polish one and received an aristocratic system.

Priviley, both general or zemstvo, given to the entire principality, as well as local or regional, in Lithuanian Rus established class rights and relations similar to those that existed in Poland. At the Seym of Gorodel in 1413, which confirmed the unification of Lithuania with Poland, a privilege was issued according to which the Lithuanian boyars, who converted to Catholicism, received the rights and privileges of the Polish gentry; The privileges of Casimir in 1447 extended these rights to the Orthodox nobility. According to these privileges, the Lithuanian-Russian landowners were equalized with the Polish in the rights of ownership of estates and estates and were exempted from taxes and duties, with the exception of some unimportant ones, which had not so much financial as symbolic significance, as a sign of citizenship; the master's peasants were removed from the court of the grand ducal officers and subjected to the jurisdiction of their masters; moreover, the privileges of Casimir forbade the transfer of peasants from the lands of private owners to the grand ducal ones and vice versa; these decrees marked the beginning of the enslavement of peasants in the Principality of Lithuania, following the example of Poland, where serfdom was established as early as the 14th century. General and local privileges gradually equalized the Lithuanian-Russian nobility in rights and liberties with the Polish gentry and gave it the importance of the ruling estate in the principality with extensive power over the peasant population living on its lands, and with influential participation in legislation, court and administration. This position of the Lithuanian-Russian gentry was fixed in the 16th century. legislative code of the Principality of Lithuania, Lithuanian statute. The beginning of this code was laid under Sigismund I by the edition of the Statute of 1529. After this first code was repeatedly revised and supplemented, agreeing with Polish law, as a result of which this code reflected the strong influence of Polish law, mixed in the Statute with ancient Russian legal customs, which were preserved in Lithuanian Rus from the time of Russkaya Pravda. The final version of the Lithuanian Statute was published in Russian under Sigismund III in 1588. According to the second Statute, approved by the Vilna Seimas in 1566, in the Principality of Lithuania, povet gentry sejmiks, similar to the Polish ones, were introduced, which gathered in each povete(county) to elect local zemstvo judges to the estate gentry court, as well as to elect zemstvo ambassadors, i.e. representatives of the gentry, in general, or free, Sejm, two from each county. The Lithuanian Seimas, established by the Treaty of Horodel, initially consisted only of Lithuanian princes and boyars. The privileged position in which this treaty placed the Lithuanian nobility, mostly Catholic, before the Russian Orthodox, prompted the Russian regions annexed to Lithuania to rise against the Lithuanian government, when, after the death of Vitovt (1430), a new strife occurred between the Gediminoviches. In this struggle, the Russian princes and boyars won the rights of Lithuanian nobles and about half of the 15th century. received access to the Sejm, which became general, or rampant, as it was now called. But even after that, the Seim retained its aristocratic character: from the Russian regions, only the nobility, princes and pans appeared on it, who were all called in person and had a decisive vote. In the first half of the 16th century, under Sigismund I, the Russian-Lithuanian gentry waged a noisy struggle with their nobility and sought to be drafted to the general diets. The statute of 1566 arranged a Sejm representation of the Russian-Lithuanian gentry on the model of the Polish gentry Sejm; in the question of the continuation of the Lithuanian-Polish union, she was in favor of eternal union with Poland: the merger of the Russian-Lithuanian Sejm with the Polish one according to the Lublin decrees of 1569 fully equalized her in political rights with the Polish gentry.

The role of the nobility - the nobility and gentry - in the formation and activities of the government and administration of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was outlined in the two previous sections. The nobility, however, despite their political leadership, were more than part of the nation. The bulk of the population, both in Lithuania proper and in the Russian lands of the Grand Duchy, belonged to the peasantry. The third social layer was the urban population. It was neither particularly numerous nor politically influential, but played a significant role in the development of trade and crafts. Jews and Karaites were closely associated with the cities, and were organized into their own communities.

It should be noted that outside this system of social classes there was a group deprived of personal freedom and the personal rights of a slave. From a historical point of view, slaves in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as in Muscovy, were a relic of the Russian social structure of the Kievan period.

With the exception of slaves, the evolution of each of the three main social classes - nobility, peasants and townspeople - has certain similarities. The general trend within each class was to achieve uniformity in rights and duties. In the early period, when the unification of the Western Russian lands under the suzerainty of the Grand Duke had already been completed, the position and rights of various groups of nobles, peasants and townspeople in different parts of the new state were not the same. Later, the government, focusing on Poland, tried to bring the rights of different territorial and individual social groups to a common legal standard. The nobility itself demanded equal rights and privileges. It was the nobility that became the political nation. The only duty recognized by the nobility was military service.

As regards the peasants, the new trend has resulted in the infringement of their rights and a more rigid definition of their duties. This eventually led to the restriction of their freedom. The peasants became an oppressed social class, which was obliged to work for the benefit of the Grand Duke and the nobles and provide them with the products of their labor (in material or monetary terms). Thus, the peasants became "hard people".

The fate of the townspeople in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was strongly influenced by the desire of the Lithuanian government to destroy the remnants of the ancient Russian urban community, which, as you know, was based on the veche. The introduction, according to the Magdeburg Law, of municipal corporations significantly changed the life of cities and the situation of the urban population.

In addition to the social classes mentioned above, two more groups will be considered, one long formed, the other recently formed: the clergy and the Cossacks. They will be discussed below.

Aristocracy

It should be remembered that the aristocracy of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania consisted of princes and untitled nobility.

Most of the princes were descendants of either Rurik or Gediminas, but some of them were descended from "lesser" Lithuanian princes who ruled parts of Lithuanian territory before the reign of Gediminas, or under Gediminas as their overlord. The Glinsky princes were of Mongolian origin.

The roots of the untitled nobility came from the Lithuanian or Russian boyars, who were advisers under Gediminas or under the Russian princes from the house of Rurik (Smolensk, Polotsk, Vitebsk and Kyiv, for example).

The princes had the rights of hereditary sole power in their possessions, as well as power over people living on the lands. The power and prestige of the nobles were based on vast land and wealth. Some of the nobles were more powerful than the princes. Legally, the status of untitled nobles was first based on old customs and traditions. It took on a clearer shape after the union with Poland in 1385 and subsequent agreements with Poland, as well as the adoption of grand princely privileges in Lithuania.

In Poland, "knight's rights" (prawo rycerskie; in Latin - jus militare) freed the nobleman from the power of royal officials, secured hereditary possession of land and established his legal authority in these areas. Each noble family received, according to the Western European model, its own coat of arms. Knightly rights soon spread c. Poland and all the nobility. At first, in Lithuania, only nobles had all the fullness of these rights (plenum jus militare) and full jurisdiction (judicia maiora) within the limits of their possessions.

According to the grand ducal charter of 1387, the Lithuanian boyars were granted the rights and privileges of the Polish gentry, but the rights of the petty nobility in Lithuania at that time were not yet clearly defined. The charter of 1413 granted the Lithuanian boyars the right. have a coat of arms. Each of the forty-seven noble Polish families “adopted” a Lithuanian boyar family, sharing their Polish coat of arms with it.)

The old Russian "boyar" was replaced by the word "pan", which in Old Slavonic meant - a nobleman. The definition of "boyar" still continued to be used, but changed its meaning - in almost all lands, only some representatives of the lower nobility began to be called boyars, with the exception of Smolensk, Polotsk and Vitebsk, where nobles were still meant by boyars.

One of the important privileges of the nobles was the formation during the mobilization of their own regiments (consisting mainly of members of their retinue) under personal command and with their own banners. In accordance with this, they were called "durugovny pans". In addition, the nobles had to obey only the Grand Duke himself and were free from the power of the Grand Duke's advisers and elders.

As for the territorial distribution of the main land plots of princes and untitled nobles, the main “bush” of princely families was located in Volhynia. Huge lands of untitled nobles were located mainly in Lithuania itself and in Podlasie.

Among the princes of Russian origin who inhabited Volhynia were Ostrozhsky, Czartorysky, Vishnevetsky, Zbarazhsky and some others. The Mstislav principality in Eastern Belarus was of great political importance, since it was located on the border territory between Lithuania and Muscovy. The first princes of Mstislavsky (“from Mstislavl”) were descended from Olgerd. At the end of the 15th century, Prince Mikhail Ivanovich Zaslavsky (Zheslavsky), a descendant of Yavnut, the brother of Olgerd, married Princess Mstislavskaya and appropriated the title to himself. In 1526, the son of Mikhail Mstislavsky, Prince Fyodor Mstislavsky, went over to the side of Moscow and took a prominent position among the Moscow boyars. Both of these princely families - Zaslavsky and Mstislavsky - belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church and led a Russian way of life.

Russian princes from another border region - the Upper Oka (the so-called "Verkhovsky cities") recognized the suzerainty of the Grand Duke of Moscow at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries. On the other hand, during the reign of Casimir, some East Russian princes fled from Moscow to Lithuania. The Shemyachichi princes and the Mozhaisky princes, for example, settled in the Seversky lands. They were lured to Moscow, and their possessions were confiscated during the reign of Vasily III.

Many of the most powerful untitled nobles were Lithuanians. Those of them who were Russian in origin were descendants of the ancient Russian boyars. So, Khodkevichi, Volovichi and, probably, Khrebtovichi descended from the Kievan boyars, and Sapieha, apparently, from the Smolensk boyars. According to Lyubavsky, the Ilinichi and Glebovichi were descendants of the Polotsk boyars, but Grushevsky doubts this. It is likely that the Kishki from Podlasie were also of Russian origin, but there is no exact and definite evidence for this.

Many nobles were not only involved in the management and management of their vast lands, but were also interested in education and the arts. They absorbed European culture and were influenced by the spirit of the Renaissance and the Reformation. They collected books, paintings and sculptures in their palaces, founded schools and printing houses.

Nobility

As already mentioned, during the formation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, there was no single noble class in it .. the lands ruled by the Grand Duke were inhabited by medium-sized small landowners who were ready to perform military service when necessary, and who were either members of local defensive organizations , or served at the grand dukes, princes or boyars.

It should be remembered that after the union of Lithuania with Poland, the rights in the privileges of the nobility were determined by the Polish "knight's right", but at first they extended only to the nobles and the highest stratum of the Lithuanian nobility. Only gradually did the nobles gain such rights in the Russian lands of the Grand Duchy.

For a long time, local groups of small farmers and land tenants lived in accordance with their traditions. Some were called nobles, others - servants, others - boyars-gentry. A sizable group were known as "zemyany" (earth-born people). Other names were also used to designate small local associations of landowners and those who were in military service.

The most important were the "earthlings" and the boyars-gentry. The name "zemyanye" was widely used in the Kyiv land, in Volhynia in Podlasie, but there were also "zemyany" in other Russian lands of the Grand Duchy. In the same way, boyar gentry are mentioned in Smolensk, Polotsk, Vitebsk and Kyiv, but they also existed in other regions. The designation "boyars-gentry" corresponded to the name "children of the boyars", used in Muscovite Russia.

In the First Lithuanian Statute, "zemyany" and boyar gentry are referred to as belonging to the class of gentry (First Statute, Section II, Article 10, Section III, Article 11). The word "nobility" is used in the statute as a general concept that defines the nobility. The third Section of the Statute is entitled: "On the freedoms of the gentry."

From the point of view of the state interest, the main function of the nobility was military service. Based on this, the nobility of the Grand Duchy can be divided into two groups according to the principle of a different order of mobilization. Thus, we can distinguish (1) those who served in local regiments (banners), each under the command of a local commander (cornet); and (2) those who served "under the banner" of the nobles; in this case, the nobleman was called "pan horugovny".

The bulk of the gentry served under local banners, which meant that they were subordinate to the Grand Duke, and not to the nobles. Some of the representatives of the gentry had the right to "eternal" possession of hereditary lands. This type of ownership can be compared to a fiefdom in Eastern Russia. Other nobles were granted only limited rights to land - until the end of their lives ("to the stomach"); for “two lives” (“up to two bellies”), that is, for the possession of a nobleman and his son; or “for three lives” (“up to three bellies”), that is, for the possession of a nobleman, his son and his grandson. Such lands were sometimes called estates - the same as in Muscovy. The principle of "donating" land allowed the nobleman to adequately perform military service, which he is obliged to carry out for the state. The owner of "eternal" rights to the land could manage on his land only if he was subject to military service; if he refused to serve, his land was subject to confiscation. Another restriction for the owner of the eternal land was that the Grand Duke could, at his own discretion, transfer his power over the land and its owner to a prince or an untitled nobleman. Only in 1529 did the Grand Duke solemnly promise that neither he nor his descendants would ever transfer the lands of the nobility to princes and nobles.

Based on the foregoing, it becomes obvious that the rights of the nobility to land in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were not as unshakable as the rights of the nobles and the Polish gentry.

The situation changed dramatically after the adoption in 1566 of the Second Lithuanian Statute, which decreed (section II, article 2) that from now on the army will be recruited only with the approval of the Sejm, except in cases of a surprise attack by the enemy. Even in a state of war, no taxes will be collected until the decree of the Sejm. The Grand Duke assured the nobles that their lands; I will not be selected (Section III, Article 4), the Second Statute also allowed the gentry to local self-government and the election of deputies to the Sejm by local assemblies (Section III, Article 5). Thus, the nobility received not only a guarantee of their rights to land, but also the ability to control the formation of troops and the financing of the army.

Even before 1566, the nobility had become a privileged class and their "liberties" were protected by law. The nobleman was an independent person, not obliged, if he did not want to, to live in his possession and freely dispose of it as he pleased. He could visit any foreign country, except those with which the Grand Duchy was at war, stay abroad as long as he liked, and "study the customs of chivalry" (First Statute, Section III, Article 8).

Without proper trial in court, a nobleman had no right to be executed, or subjected to corporal punishment or imprisonment, or to confiscate his property. For insulting a nobleman, the guilty party had to pay more than for insulting an ordinary person. At trial, a nobleman was considered a more reliable witness than a commoner, and in many cases his oath was regarded as decisive evidence.

The Second Lithuanian Statute made the rights and privileges of the nobility even wider, and their protection more effective. For example, it was established that a commoner who slandered a nobleman should be subjected to cutting out of the tongue (Second Statute, Section III, article 18). If a noble was killed by a group of nobles, then only the one who actually committed this murder was sentenced to execution, but if a noble was killed by a gang of commoners, then they were all executed (Second Statute, Section XI, Article 12)

Although the rights and privileges of the gentry grew, the nobles tried to achieve the status of an exclusive, highest group of society, on the one hand, by undermining the positions of the nobles, and on the other hand, by establishing a barrier against the penetration of commoners into the gentry corporation. The first goal was achieved in 1564-1566, the second - in the 1520s.

As we know, one of the main duties of the nobility was military service. It was often difficult to draw a clear line between warriors of noble and simple origin: during the war they became equal. Due to the danger of Tatar raids, service on the southern border required vigilance. Many defenders of the southern frontiers were small landowners or tenants. They were always on the alert and could, in the event of a Tatar attack, hold the defense until the appearance of regular troops. The same situation existed in Eastern Russia. Therefore, Cossack communities were organized there, which were also obliged to serve the government of Poland or Moscow.

The leaders of these small social groups eventually began to demand for themselves the same rights that the nobility had, but the nobles did not want to accept strangers. The government of the Grand Duke was forced to give in to pressure from the nobility and approve clear rules that prevent the entry of non-nobles into the nobility. According to the decision of the council of nobles (in 1522), everyone who claimed the title of nobility had to provide two guarantors, undisputed hereditary nobles from his family, who could swear that they had a common ancestor with the applicant. This procedure was authorized by the Second Lithuanian Statute (Section III, Article 11). The statute adds that if an applicant for nobility cannot provide two witnesses from his own family, he can apply for surety to representatives of other noble families who can confirm his noble origin.

The army register of 1528 contained the names of most of the noble families; accordingly, the gentry in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a fairly homogeneous layer. All families named in the register were considered noble, and no other evidence was required from the members of these families.

Noble estates could be found throughout the territory of the Grand Duchy. In each of the regions, the landed estates of the nobility varied greatly in size. Some of the boyar gentry occupied an intermediate position between the nobles and the lower stratum of the nobility. The majority of the nobility of the gentry class, especially in the southern part of the Kyiv land and Podlasie, had small land holdings. Some nobles could provide only one rider for military service, and this meant that they had only eight or ten services under their control - that is, from twenty-four to thirty peasant households. There were cases when two or three nobles united in order to fulfill the mobilization norm and send at least one recruit to the army.

Slaves (serfs)

Slavery, which existed in Russia during the Kievan period, was kept in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and in Muscovy. There were few slaves, but their labor was widely used, especially on large tracts of land. Usually slaves performed the duties of servants in the master's household. In addition, the owners of large estates, as well as on the lands of the Moscow boyars, many slaves bent their backs in the field. Slaves lived either in buildings right on the field, or in separate houses, side by side with peasant dwellings. Slaves with a family received a monthly ration of food (a month) from their master to support themselves and their families. Agricultural slaves, who lived separately in houses, had small plots of land to run their small economy, although work on the master's fields left almost no time for this. Their incomes were meager, and they also received a month, although less than domestic slaves. All slaves were called servants.

According to the first two Lithuanian statutes, a person was turned into a slave if he was born into a family of slaves, was captured or married to a slave (the First Statute, Section XI, became 13; the Second Statute, Section XII, article 13). The First Statute also established that the execution of a criminal could be replaced by slavery to the one before whom this person was guilty. His children then| also became slaves (Section XI, Article 13).

Legally, a slave was not considered a person, but was the property of his master. The only duty of the owner in relation to his slaves, the law recognized the obligation to feed them during the famine. If a nobleman expelled slaves from his lands during times of famine, and they independently survived somewhere else, they became free (First Statute, Section XI, article 12; Third Statute, Section XII, article 12).

Only Christians were allowed to own Christian slaves; Jews and Tatars were forbidden to buy such slaves. However, the First Lithuanian Statute allowed the Tatar nobles to keep those Christian slaves who had previously been granted to them or their ancestors by the Grand Duke or his predecessors (First Statute, Section XI, Article 6). This privilege was revoked by the Second Statute (Title XII, Article 5).

A large number of slaves were owned only by the nobles, who needed labor to cultivate the land. The nobles could have only a few slaves and used them mainly as household servants. The land of the nobility was cultivated by peasant tenants. Thus, the nobility as a class was not economically as interested in preserving the institution of slavery as the nobles.

The nobles, in turn, did not rely only on slave labor. Slaves worked only in the possessions of the nobles. Most of his income was made up of requisitions (in product or money) from peasants subordinate to him - tenants. The nobles and the nobility sought to place the peasants in an even more dependent position in relation to their masters. They achieved this in the second half of the 15th and 16th centuries, when, in order to prevent the peasants from leaving the lands of the nobleman of their own free will, a significant part of them were attached to the land. Thus, the institution of serfdom was introduced.

The institution of slavery in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as previously in Western Europe, somewhat lost its significance with the introduction of serfdom, since landowners were more interested in receiving income from their lands than in using slave labor. It should be noted that slavery disappears in Poland much earlier than in Lithuania. In the 14th century, most of the former slaves in Poland became peasants, attached in one way or another to the estates of the nobility.

In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the process of replacing slavery with serfdom began in the 15th century and continued until the middle of the 16th century. This paved the way for the complete abolition of slavery.

The close union between Lithuania and Poland, which was proclaimed at the Sejm of Lublin in 1569, greatly contributed to the limitation of slavery in Lithuania.

The Third Statute (1588) decreed that only prisoners of war could henceforth be converted into slavery. However, the children of captives were not considered slaves and had to be settled on earth as serfs, like all other slaves "by inheritance" (Section XII, Article 21). Slaves settled on the earth and tied to it received the status of stepparents - that is, hereditary serfs. As a result of these legislative measures, the number of slaves in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was sharply reduced. Slavery, however, was not completely eradicated. Slaves in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are sometimes mentioned up to 1710.

When evaluating legislative attempts to abolish slavery in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the point of view of increasing the personal freedom of people from the lower classes, we should take into account the simultaneous attachment of a significant part of the peasants to land owned by nobles and gentry. In an effort to improve the condition of the slaves, the government of the Grand Duchy at the same time deprived the peasants of their liberty, the condition of which will be discussed in the next section.

Peasants

Just like the formation of the nobility, the formation of the peasant class in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a complex and lengthy process. Historically, it was based on the diversity of different groups of the rural population, engaged not only in the cultivation of the land, but also in beekeeping, hunting and fishing. There was a significant difference in the land rights of individual groups.

In the Kievan period, both individuals and a united group of ordinary people could own land. In addition, a person could cultivate a piece of land that legally belonged not to him, but to a prince, church or boyars. The tenant of such a plot could use it either by agreement with the owner, or on the basis of ordinary agricultural law, to clear, occupy and cultivate an empty and unoccupied land plot. This right to occupy a plot became known as a zaimka, or labor right.

Free people who cultivate the land that belonged to them or to the community of which they were members were called people. In Novgorod, a person who personally owned land was called a native landowner (i.e., "having his own land"). A widespread form of land use was the collective ownership of the land, the co-owners were called syabry. Co-owners of the land were either relatives or neighbors.

In addition to people and syabrs in the Kyiv period in Russia there was a separate group of farmers known as smerds. In the Mongolian and early post-Mongolian periods, there was no such concept in Central Russia, but it was preserved in Novgorod, Pskov, and also in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Smerds lived on lands owned by the state - that is, on the lands of a prince who was the head of state or city (if it was a city-state, like Novgorod and Pskov).

Along with these clearly defined groups, there was a certain "fluid" class of farmers who did not own sufficient areas of land to ensure their existence, or did not own land at all, and in connection with this they were forced to offer their services to the landowner either as hired workers, or sharecroppers. In Pskov, the latter group was known as the Izorniki (i.e. plowmen). People of this class also had the right to more or less permanent residence on princely or boyar lands in the position of tenant peasants.

There were more definitions of population groups related to agriculture in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and this classification was peculiarly variegated. In the documents of the Lithuanian period, we find familiar terms: people, syabry and smerds. People were sometimes referred to as "black people", which emphasizes their low status. It should be remembered that this name was used in relation to the lower classes in Muscovy and Novgorod. Other definitions that are not mentioned in the documents of the Kievan period, but which were in circulation in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, are peasants (“small people”), kmets and claps. The name "muzhik" ("husband") denoted a person of the lower class (in Muscovy after the 16th century this concept became common). The definition "kmet" was used in most Slavic languages, at first it denoted a noble landowner or knight, later (in Poland and Lithuania) a peasant. The word “khlop” both in the Kievan period and in Muscovite Russia meant a slave. In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, people engaged in other trades had their own designations, for example, beekeepers (beekeepers), fishermen, beavers, and so on.

The main trend in the historical evolution of the peasant class was the gradual loss by the peasants of their land rights. All that land, which was originally owned either personally or on terms of hire by some groups of farmers, would eventually be appropriated by the Grand Duke or nobles. By the end of the 11th century, most of the farmers became peasants - tenants of state or noble lands.

The peasant had to either work for his master, or pay him rent (in produce or money), or both. There were two main taxes that the peasants paid. products: dyaklo and mezleva. Dyaklo was paid in grain (rye, wheat or oats), hay, hemp, flax and firewood. The mezleca tax was a livestock tax - the peasants gave heifers, pigs, sheep, chickens and eggs.

A significant number of peasants were obliged to perform corvée in the possessions of the nobles. They were called heavy people (from the word "tax", i.e. burden). At the height of the agricultural season, all the other peasants were obliged to work for a certain time together with the taxpayers: to mow the grass, prepare hay, harvest grain and plow the land. Such help was called toloka. The usual norm for plowing was six days a year (three days of spring and three days of autumn plowing). An additional six working days were obligatory for grain harvesting (three days for harvesting rye or wheat and three days for harvesting oats or barley). During the harvesting of hay, assistants had to work until the completion of hay harvesting. In addition, all peasants had to take part in the work, the need for which arose due to unforeseen circumstances, for example, to restore the mill dam destroyed by the flood. The peasants were also required to help in hunting and fishing (they had to participate in raids, cast and drag nets, etc.).

For better organization of the work of the peasants and control over the payment of taxes by them, they were divided into groups. Each group was called a "service". In the 15th and first half of the 16th century, the size of the service was not specifically determined either by the number of people or by land area, and varied in different lands and even within the same land. There were services, each of which included from two to ten peasant farms and from two to ten land portages. One Lithuanian portage was equal to approximately 21 hectares. The service, on average, was approximately three peasant farms.

The two main categories of peasants were those who lived on the lord's lands, and those who were tenants in the possessions of the nobility. The peasants of the first category were nominally under the authority of the Grand Duke, but in fact - under the authority of local officials of the Grand Duke, such as the rulers and their assistants. In the large estates of the nobles, the peasants were led by bailiffs and estate managers. In small estates, the nobleman himself often oversaw the work of the peasants.

The distinction between the peasants of the gospodar lands and the peasants of the noble estates was determined by the letter of Grand Duke Casimir of 1447, which prohibited the transfer of peasants from state lands to noble estates and vice versa.

Peasants, regardless of whose land they lived on, were divided into two groups: similar, having freedom of movement, and unlike, attached to the land.

Similar people included people of various kinds: free, in one way or another deprived of the land that they formerly owned or rented; landless agricultural workers; former slaves who were granted freedom by their owners. Settlers from Eastern Russia, Moldova or Poland were also included in this group.

As we know, in the Kyiv period all farmers (with the exception of slaves) were free. The process of attaching part of the free peasants to the lord's lands or to the noble estates began in Lithuania in the 15th century. Attaching the peasant to the land expanded the privileges of the nobles, especially in relation to their power over their subordinates.

A peasant who lived on the same plot of land as his father and grandfather was considered a stepfather - that is, a hereditary resident in this possession, in fact - a hereditary serf.

According to the First Lithuanian Statute, claims to land could be made within ten years (zemstvo prescription). If during this time a person did not declare his rights to own a particular site, he forfeited them (Section I, Article 27). This principle was applied to peasant allotments both on the gospodar lands and in the possessions of the nobility. By law, all land belonged either to the "crown" or to the nobility. Therefore, if a peasant could not provide official evidence that the piece of land he cultivated was his own, he was deprived of all rights to this land, even if he had lived on it for more than ten years. In addition, he was firmly attached to the service. He could leave with the permission of the nobleman if he found someone who would agree to perform the amount of work required for the service in his place.

Such a replacement could be found in one's own or another service, or among similar ones. A different peasant could also exchange his service with a different one in another service. However, both of these services had to be owned by the same owner.

Such exchanges were not frequent and took place mainly among the peasants living on the Gospodar lands. As for those who lived in the estates of the nobility, the replacement of peasants belonging to different owners could only occur if there was a mutual agreement between these owners. An offer for an exchange of this nature could only come from the owner. Peasants in general could be confronted with a fact without asking their consent.

After all that has been said, it becomes clear that by the middle of the 16th century, most of the peasants in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had become either sovereign serfs or noblemen. The number of similar peasants quickly decreased. The Third Lithuanian Statute ruled that if a free peasant had worked on the lands of the nobility for more than ten years, he had no right to leave, unless he paid a ransom for himself (Section XII, Article 13).

The living conditions of peasants in different lands were not the same. As I.P. Novitsky, the burden borne by the peasants was heavy in densely populated areas and lighter where the population was sparse and the land fertile, especially in the "wild steppe" on the left bank of the Dnieper.

It should be noted that despite the loss of legal rights to the plots of land that they cultivated, the peasants, being serfs, continued to consider the land their own and for a long time entered into various transactions about it, such as exchanging plots of land, leasing , mortgaging or selling land.

In doing so, the peasants acted in the spirit of ancient Russian legal regulations, as well as in the traditions of customary Russian law. From the point of view of the new system in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, such transactions were illegal. However, grand ducal officials allowed such a practice when transactions concerned peasants belonging to the gospodar lands, and if these transactions were not to the detriment of the services. On behalf of the Grand Duke, his officials could always annul any transaction as illegal if it was to the detriment of the interests of the Grand Duke.

In the estates of the nobles, as well as in the lands of the nobleman, there were similar tendencies in relation to the peasant land. However, the peasants who were subordinate to the nobles were in a more dependent position, and one could expect that the nobles, especially small landowners, would control the transactions of their peasants more tightly than the officials of the Grand Duke.

Peasants often united to work the land together. When the family grew and consisted of several generations living in the same household like a friend, it formed a community of syabrs. In the same way, neighbors who were not related by blood to each other could unite. Most often, such communities formed in the forest zone, which was due to economic necessity. Clearing the forest for arable land was beyond the power of the average family; the efforts of more people were required.

The family could also invite outside workers, but not as full members of the household, but on the terms of a certain share in the income.

Small groups could be recognized as officials. the Grand Duke as a separate "service", and large ones were considered for "services" and more.

The authorities were tolerant of the remnants of traditional Russian ideas about the rights of farmers to their lands up to the agrarian reform of the 1550s. and attachment of serfs to permanent peasant farms arranged according to the Polish model.

Townspeople

In the Kievan period, the city was an integral part of the government of a land. One of the forms of government was veche. In Novgorod and Pskov, the people's assembly enjoyed greater influence than the prince and the boyars, and the city became a city-state.

During the Mongol period, the political significance of the city in Eastern Russia was undermined by the efforts of both the Mongol khans and the Russian princes, and the veche was canceled. Only Novgorod and Pskov were not affected by this change. But, as we know, at one time both of these cities, respectively, at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century, were annexed to Moscow.

In Western Russia, the decline of cities also began in the Mongol period. Many of them, such as Kyiv, were destroyed by the Mongols and later looted by the Crimean Tatars. Some of the old Russian cities, such as Smolensk, Polotsk and Vitebsk, escaped destruction and were able to preserve their old structure for a while. Gradually, however, the veche in these cities lost the character of a democratic institution. Boyars and merchants ran affairs on behalf of the entire population.

As we know, the government of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was basically connected with the rights and privileges of the nobility. The political climate in the Grand Duchy was not conducive to the preservation of the constitutional rights of cities. None of the townspeople was allowed to the council of nobles, and there were no representatives of the urban population in the Sejm.

Large cities in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were located on state lands. Small cities belonged either to the possessions of the crown, or to the lands of the nobility. The city was deprived of any participation in political life, although it retained its municipal self-government. Gradually, the old Russian institutions were abolished, and in most cities, in accordance with German law, municipal government began to operate.

The population of cities in Poland and Lithuania was ethnically diverse. In medieval Poland, the kings supported the formation of German colonies in cities and rural areas in order to promote the development of commerce, handicrafts and agriculture. For the same reasons, Russian princes in Galicia and Volhynia invited German settlers to their cities in the 13th and early 14th centuries. The Grand Dukes of Lithuania continued the same policy.

It should be noted that Armenians and Jews settled during the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries in Kyiv and Lvov.

In accordance with the policy of the Grand Dukes, as well as with the natural process of migration, many Germans, Armenians and Jews - merchants and artisans - lived in the 15th and 16th centuries in the Russian cities of Galicia (which at that time belonged to Poland) and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. However, in most of the old Russian towns, Russians still made up the majority of the population.

The Germans who settled in Poland followed German law. Thus, the first infiltration of German law into Poland was associated with German colonization. Later, in the Polish and Russian cities of Poland, German municipal laws began to operate, the provisions of which, for financial reasons, suited the kings quite well. There were several variants of the German municipal codes, the most popular in Poland were the Magdeburg Law and the so-called Chelmno Court. These laws were applied in Poland in a somewhat modified form. From Poland, German law penetrated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where it was usually called Magdeburg Law.

In Lithuania, the Magdeburg Right was first granted to Vilna (1387). During the 15th century, it spread to Trokai, Brest, Lutsk, Kremenets, Vladimir-Volynsky, Polotsk, Smolensk, Kyiv, Minsk and Novogrudok. In the 16th century, many other cities received it, and the last of the Russian cities was Vitebsk (1593).

According to Grushevsky, the Polish government deliberately applied the Magdeburg Law in order to weaken Russian influence in Galicia and pave the way for the denationalization of the Russian population. The Russian positions in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were much stronger than in Poland, and the Lithuanian government failed to withdraw Russians from municipal administrations, except in some cities. However, it tried to at least reduce the representation of Russians in the municipalities.

Magdeburg law was intended only for the townspeople of the Christian faith. The only exception to this rule was made for the Karaites. Jews were excluded] from municipal self-government.

As for Christians, preference was given to Roman Catholics. In Russian cities in Poland, Orthodoxy was infringed in every possible way. In Lvov, the Orthodox were subject to the Magdeburg Law, but they were forbidden to have a position in the municipal government and were allowed to live only in a special part of the city called "Russian Street".

When, at the beginning of the 15th century, Grand Duke Vitovt granted Magdeburg rights to a number of cities in the western part of the Russian lands of the Grand Duchy (the region of Berestye and Podlasie), he specifically excluded Orthodox Russians from the municipalities.

In most of the other cities of the Grand Duchy to which Magdeburg rights were granted during the 15th and 16th centuries, Russians were granted voting rights, but the rule was established that one half of the members of the city council should be Roman Catholic and the other half Greek Orthodox. Since Orthodox Russians made up the majority of the population in many cities, this rule favored the Polish and German minorities.

Under German law, the municipality was a close corporation. Only those who were part of it were recognized as citizens. The Western Russian definition of townspeople is petty bourgeois. The status of a city dweller was acquired at birth and was hereditary. One could become a citizen by being accepted into the corporation by the city council or the craft guild.

Among the townspeople, merchants and artisans can be distinguished. Each merchant had to belong to one of the guilds called guilds. Many townspeople owned land outside the city and received income from agriculture.

The cities that received the Magdeburg Right were free from the intervention of the officials of the Grand Duke in their affairs and were subject to their own municipal government. It was initially headed by a voit appointed by the Grand Duke (often chosen by him from among the nobles) as soon as Magdeburg rights were granted to the city. Voight could transfer the position by inheritance or sell it to another person. Over time, many cities bought the position of a voit, after which the rights of the voit were transferred to the city council (rada).

Initially, it was the voit who chose the council (consisting of six or twelve people, depending on the size of the city) from candidates nominated by the townspeople. The chairman of the council was called the burmeister. He held his post for one year and was chosen by a voit and a council of members of the council. When the council acquired the rights of a voit, the bailiff was elected by the council itself. Soon the elections were replaced by the annual appointment of members of the council to the post of burmeister. The powers of the Rada also included the replacement of those of its members who either resigned or died.

In a number of Western Russian cities, the Rada was responsible only for the municipal management of the city and its well-being. A special committee known as the lava ("bench") was organized to conduct legal proceedings. Lavnikovs (lava members) were appointed by the council. They considered criminal cases as a jury, and the voit or burmister played the role of a judge.

The townspeople were released from many of the duties that were assigned to them, as well as to the peasants, until the receipt of the Magdeburg right. For example, toloki. However, they were obliged to supply their detachment of riders during the collection of troops. In the military register of 1528 we find a long list of names of Polotsk townspeople who were supposed to recruit recruits, and a shorter list of Vitebsk townspeople compiled for the same purpose. In addition, the townspeople had to pay a military tax (serebshchina) and supply workers for the construction of fortress maintenance.

For the right to use the Magdeburg Law, the city had to pay an annual fee to the treasury of the Grand Duke, the amount of which varied from thirty to one hundred gold coins.

In turn, the city was provided with some sources of its own income. The municipality was allowed to arrange a variety of shops and shops in the municipal building (town hall), the rent of which went to the city treasury. Moreover, the municipality could establish its own municipal measure, liquid and bulk products. There was also a small fee for this. Public baths, shops selling aromatic wax for candles, mills and wine shops brought a lot of income. The Grand Duke had the exclusive right to trade in alcoholic beverages, but he could give this trade at the mercy of the city or individual townspeople.

The municipality also enjoyed the right to foreign trade. Foreign merchants were obliged to hand over all imported goods for storage in the municipal warehouse. They were allowed only wholesale trade; retail trade was carried out by the townspeople.

The opinions of historians about the role of the Magdeburg right of life in Western Russian cities differ. Some researchers, for example V.B. Antonovich, consider the introduction of German municipal law an important attempt to strengthen the position of cities and townspeople. Others, in particular, M.F. Vladimirsky-Budanov emphasize the negative aspects of German law.

There is no doubt that under the Magdeburg Law, the status of citizens became more stable and they were freed from many burdensome duties. In addition, some of the Germans who settled in Western Russian cities were talented natives, which had a noticeable effect on the development of handicrafts.

On the other hand, the townspeople had to compete with the nobles. The latter did not have the right to personally take part in trade or handicraft production, but often did this through their proxies. Many craftsmen worked both on the gospodar lands and in the large lands of the nobility, and they were not limited by the guild regulations. The nobles were given the privilege to sell products from their lands abroad and to import goods for personal use from abroad, and these goods were not subject to customs duties. Goods imported in this way were not subject to municipal market restrictions.

As already noted, German law regarding municipal organization did not apply to Jews. Over time, they formed a separate group that influenced the development of trade and crafts in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and in this capacity proved to be much more active and successful than municipal merchants and artisans. This could not but undermine the economic activity of the townspeople.

Although the right of self-government given to the cities looked good on paper, in fact the municipal government was controlled by the voit and his entourage; and in those cities where the position of voit was bought, several wealthy families close to the Rada really ruled. Members of the Rada derived significant profit from the management of municipal industrial and commercial institutions. As M.F. Vladimirsky-Budanov, the Rada subjugated the public spirit of the townspeople and curbed their initiative. She concentrated municipal power and wealth in her hands. In addition, in many cities the Rada proved to be an instrument of suppression of the Russian population and the Orthodox faith.

Jews

Jews made up a significant part of the population of Poland and Southwestern Russia in the early Middle Ages. At that time their number was small. When the Grand Dukes of Lithuania occupied Volyn and Kyiv, the Jews did not leave their acquired places. At the end of the XIV century, some of them settled in Vilna.

At the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, thousands of Jews came to Poland from Germany, Bohemia and Moravia to escape the oppression and persecution they were subjected to there. Some of them moved from Poland to Lithuania, but the resettlement of Jews to Lithuania became massive only after the Union of Lublin in 1569.

The legal status of the Jews in Poland was determined by the Great Charter of King Casimir of 1367 and subsequent decrees. Jews were granted extensive personal, religious and economic rights. Later, on the basis of the Great Charter Casimir, Grand Duke Vytautas granted similar privileges to Lithuanian Jews.

The benevolent policy of the Lithuanian Grand Dukes towards the Jews changed dramatically in 1495, when Grand Duke Alexander expelled all Jews from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and confiscated all their property. The true motive behind this brutal measure is unknown. Most of the Jews moved to Poland. Eight years later, all of them were allowed to return, and in 1507 Grand Duke Sigismund I issued them a new charter confirming Vitovt's charter. The Jews were given back all the houses, shops, gardens and meadows that they owned before the confiscation. From those whom they lent before the deportation, the Jews could demand the payment of debts.

On the basis of charters issued to them at various times by the Grand Dukes, Jews were allowed to carry out all commercial transactions, own shops and usury offices, and trade in alcoholic beverages. They paid the same taxes as the townspeople.

The Grand Duke of Lithuania preferred to let the Jews collect customs duties and taxes on the alcohol trade, since they were always skillful and accurate in their payments to the treasury. In addition, the Jews could lend large sums of money to the Grand Duke when he needed money, and he almost always needed it. Not many Jews at that time had enough personal capital, but they could pool their resources. Even poor Jews sometimes had their small share of every transaction.

The Jews were organized into self-governing communities, each centered around a synagogue or cemetery. The members of the community elected the elders, who constituted the community council headed by the rabbi. This council had the authority of the court in litigations between Jews. Disputes between a Jew and a Christian were dealt with by officials of the Grand Duke.

According to the Third Lithuanian Statute, a Jew who killed another Jew was to be judged by a Jewish court in accordance with Jewish law. If the killer was not a Jew, then he was handed over to the officials of the Grand Duke to be executed.

Speaking about the position of the Jews in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, we must distinguish between the early period, preceding the influx of masses of Jews from Poland (for example, before the Union of Lublin in 1569), and later times. In the early period, the Jews had not yet formed a distinct isolated group. In the Russian cities of the Grand Duchy, many of them were familiar with the Russian language and often bore Russian names.

The expulsion of Jews from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1495, despite the measures taken in 1503, was a heavy economic and psychological blow for them. In Poland, where most of the exiles moved from Lithuania, they could only count on the help of their co-religionists who had migrated from Germany, and they had a multifaceted influence on them. They learned Yiddish, which was spoken by the German Jews. In general, the exile of 1495-1503. became a psychological trauma for the Jews and embittered them in relation to the Lithuanian system of government. This exile convinced them of the urgent need to join forces in order to survive by all possible means. Despite this, they resumed their former occupations and restored relations with their former neighbors.

Only after the Union of Lublin in 1569, due to the intensive resettlement of thousands of German Jews from Poland to Lithuania, their position in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania changed, and Yiddish became the language of all Jews both in the Lithuanian and Russian regions of the Grand Duchy.

Karaites

Karaimism is a Jewish faith that differs in many respects from rabbinic Judaism. The Karaites do not recognize the authority of the Talmud. Nowadays, there are very few Karaites, and their religion is dying. However, in more distant times, Karaism was a powerful religious trend, and the period from the 8th to the 12th centuries was a time of wide ideological and territorial expansion of Karaism. This doctrine was quite viable as early as the 15th and 16th centuries, but more on this will be discussed in the next volume. Now we are interested in the position of the Karaites in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

The Lithuanian branch of the Karaites from a historical point of view is a fragment of an earlier expansion of Karaite proselytism among the Turkic peoples in Central Asia and South Russia, especially among the Khazars and, later, the Cumans. New converts to Karaism adopted Hebrew as their main religious language, but in everyday life they spoke their native Turkic. Although sometimes in religious rituals Turkic was used along with Hebrew. The spoken language of the Lithuanian Karaites is close to the Polovtsian (Kuman) dialect.

It is usually assumed that the Karaites came to Lithuania and South Russia at the end of the XIV century - that is, in the same period as the Tatars. However, there is evidence that some Karaite settlers settled in the Russian regions of the Grand Duchy much earlier, before the Lithuanian expansion. They probably came from the Crimea and the North Caucasus.

Since Karaism is a variety of Judaism, and the religious language of the Karaites was Hebrew, the documents of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania did not distinguish between rabbinical Jews and Karaites. This makes studying the history of the Karaites of that period especially difficult, since in many cases it is not clear who is meant by "Jews" in any particular case. As a result, a fairly large number of researchers generally missed the Karaites from their field of vision. We do not find any mention of them in the works on the Grand Duchy of such prominent historians as M.K. Lyubarsky, M. Grushevsky and S. Kutzheba. The Lithuanian government, however, had a clear idea of ​​some of the distinguishing features of the Karaites, including their military prowess, and tried to use these Turks by blood and speech as warriors:

At the end of the 14th century, many Karaites were settled in fortresses along the northern and northwestern border between Lithuania and the Livonian Knights to protect the Lithuanian border from the Germans. The Karaites were also entrusted with the protection of the entrance to the bridge connecting the Trokai fortress (located on an island in the middle of the lake) with the shore.

It should be noted that the Karaites were the only non-Christians in the Grand Duchy who enjoyed all the benefits of the Magdeburg Law. However, they did not mix with the Christian community of Trokai, but were organized into a separate community. The Trokai Karaites were given the right to elect a voit, whose position was confirmed by the Grand Duke and who was subordinate to the Grand Duke. Voight acted as a judge in litigations between the Karaites living in Trokai and those who lived in other cities of the Grand Duchy, for example, near Lvov. In a lawsuit between a Karaite and a Christian, the issue was considered by the joint court of the voit and the Trokai governor. The Karaites received half of the income coming from municipal institutions. Like the Christian townspeople in the municipalities under the Magdeburg Law, the Karaites were exempted from a number of taxes and duties.

In addition to Trokai, Karaite settlements existed in Grodno, Lutsk, Smolensk, Starodub, Zhitomir, Kyiv and a number of other cities of the Grand Duchy. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Karaites provided the Lithuanian and Polish governments with invaluable assistance in the wars against the Crimean Tatars and the Ottoman Turks. The heavy losses they suffered in combat battles must have seriously hindered the increase in the number of Lithuanian Karaites. The Swedish historian Gustav Peringer, who studied the Karaites in 1690, noted that their numbers were small because they were accustomed to go to war at a very early age.

In his “Treatise on the Two Sarmatians” (1517), the Polish writer Maciej from Mechow (Matvey Mechowski) says that in Russia (i.e. in Western Russia) Jews (he means Karaites) “are not usurers, as Jews in Christian (i.e., Roman Catholic) lands, but artisans, farmers and wholesale merchants, who are often paid off to collect customs duties and state taxes. Some Karaites served in the administration of the Grand Duchy. They took an active part in Eastern trade, and some of them had business relations with Warsaw, Danzig (Gdansk), Riga and Smolensk.

Despite the military service of the Karaites and their great benefit to the Lithuanian state, the eviction decree of 1495 concerned them to the same extent as rabbinic Jews. It is usually assumed that most of the Karaites went to the Crimea and returned to Lithuania in 1503. mentions a number of officials, gatekeepers, musketeers and "Cossacks" with typical Karaite names. This suggests that the decree on eviction did not apply to many Karaites.

Approximately 10% of the population, in some regions, for example in Samogitia, there were about 12% of nobles.

In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Evolution

Privilege

After the distribution of state land, the Grand Duke became dependent on large feudal lords, who began to demand more freedoms and privileges. The nobles gained administrative and judicial power in their domains and increased their participation in state politics. The legal status of the nobility was based on several benefits granted by the Grand Duke:

• In 1387, Jagiello granted privileges to nobles and soldiers. They received personal rights, including the right to inherit and dispose of land, as well as estates inherited from their ancestors or received as a gift from the Grand Duke. At the same time, the nobles had the duty to serve in the army, participate in the construction of castles, bridges, roads.
• In 1413, Vitovt and Jagiello signed the Union of Horodil. The union renewed the Polish-Lithuanian union and created a common Sejm, guaranteed the right to inherit the lands donated by the Grand Duke. Forty-seven Lithuanian noble families received Polish coats of arms. Most of veldamai became fortresses.
• The privilege of Jagiello in 1432 essentially repeated the previous acts. Military service remains the main vehicle for obtaining land.
• The privilege of May 6, 1434 was granted to the Catholic and Orthodox nobility. They were given guarantees of free disposal of their land. Importantly, the law also prohibited persecution without a fair trial.
• In 1447, Casimir IV limited the appointment of positions in the Catholic Church or state institutions to people from Lithuania. Some nobles were released from their obligations to the Grand Duke. This privilege also marked the beginning of serfdom in Lithuania, as the peasants were removed from the Grand Duke's jurisdiction.
• In 1492, the privilege of Alexander the Jagiellonian renewed the privilege of 1447, and several more provisions were added, the most important of which was the limited rights of the Grand Duke in relation to foreign policy. The Grand Duke became dependent on the Rada. Without the consent of the Rada, not a single high-ranking official can be removed from his post. Appointment to lower state posts was to take place in the presence of the voivods of Vilnius, Trok and other voivodeships. The privilege also forbade the sale of various state and ecclesiastical positions to the nobility. Thus, the Grand Duke was deprived of the opportunity to use the conflicts between the higher and lower nobility, making a profit through the sale of his posts. This privilege also meant that city dwellers could not become officials.
• In 1506, Sigismund I confirmed the position of the Rada in state policy and the restriction of paid transition to the noble class.
• On April 1, 1557, Sigismund II Augustus initiated the agrarian reform, which completed the formation of serfdom. The implementation of serfdom deprived the peasants of land ownership, and also deprived them of personal rights, making them completely dependent on the nobles.
• The Union of Lublin in 1569 created a new state, the Commonwealth. The nobility was given the right to elect a common ruler for Poland and Lithuania.
• The third, published in 1588, further expanded the rights of the nobles. Now laws could only be passed by the Sejm of the Commonwealth. The nobility was granted tax exemption, legal and administrative privileges. The statute completed the division between the nobility, peasants and townspeople. Most of the rights of the nobility were preserved even after the third partition of the Commonwealth in 1795.

Ties with Poland

The processes of Polonization and Russification went along with the Lithuanian National Revival process, which also started at that time. Although the lower classes were the driving force behind this movement, a number of nobles re-embraced their Lithuanian roots.

After gaining independence, during the interwar years, the Lithuanian government carried out a land reform that imposed restrictions on the area of ​​possessions. It should not exceed 150 hectares. There was a confiscation of land from those nobles who supported the Poles during the Polish-Lithuanian war. Many representatives of the Lithuanian nobility emigrated to Poland during the interwar period and after the Second World War, many were deported to Siberia during the years of Stalin's repressions - 1953, many estates were destroyed. The Lithuanian Nobility Association was established in 1994 .

Heraldry

The most ancient heraldry has the motif of crossed arrows. As a result of the conclusion

The external international position of the state has changed significantly under the influence of the Time of Troubles, it has become incomparably more difficult than before. For a century and a half, the old dynasty steadily pursued a foreign policy in one direction, acted offensively, slowly but constantly expanding the territory of its state, collecting the scattered parts of the Russian land. As soon as the political unification of Great Russia began to be completed, the further tasks of foreign policy immediately became clear. Grand Duke Ivan III, picking up the last independent Russian worlds, at the same time declared in the fight against Poland that the united Great Russia would not lay down its arms until it had returned all the other parts of the Russian land torn off by its neighbors, until it had gathered all the people. His grandson, Tsar Ivan, sought to expand the territory of the Russian state to the natural geographical boundaries of the Russian plain, occupied by hostile foreigners. Thus, two foreign policy tasks were put on the agenda: the completion of the political unification of the Russian people and the expansion of the state territory to the limits of the Russian plain. The old dynasty did not solve either one or the other task, either national or territorial; however, significant progress has been made along the way. The grandfather and father of the Terrible turned back the lands of Smolensk and Seversk, thus breaking through to the Dnieper. Grozny himself first turned in the other direction, seized the middle and lower Volga region, expanding the eastern borders of the state to the Urals and the Caspian. Less successful was his further movement to the west. From this side, he wanted to acquire Livonia, to advance the borders of the state to the Baltic Sea, i.e. to its eastern shore, as a natural boundary of the plain. But he failed to master the entire course of the Western Dvina, and in the fight against Batory, he even lost the ancient Russian cities along the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga: Yama (Yamburg), Koporye, Korela (Kexholm) and Ivan-Gorod. His son, Tsar Fyodor, after a new war with the Swedes (1590-1595) recovered his father's losses and stayed on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, the ancient Votskaya Pyatina of V. Novgorod, to which these cities belonged. The Time of Troubles again threw the Muscovite state from the western positions occupied by it in the 16th century. The Poles, having torn off the Smolensk and Seversk regions from him, cut off Moscow from the Dnieper, and the Swedes knocked it off the shores of the Baltic Sea. The first king of the new dynasty was forced to cede to Sweden under an agreement in Stolbov (1617) the named cities and also Oreshek (Shlisselburg), and to Poland under an agreement in Deulin (1618) the lands of Smolensk and Severskaya. Moscow was again forced to retreat far from the cherished western borders. The new dynasty started badly: it not only abandoned the national cause of the old dynasty, but also lost much of what it inherited from it. The external position of the state was further worsened by the disdain with which its neighbors had begun to treat it since the time of the Time of Troubles. The Moscow boyars in 1612 wrote in the district charter for the cities: “Enemy is tearing the Muscovite state from all sides; we have become a disgrace and reproach at all the neighboring sovereigns. The new dynasty had to strain the people's forces even more than before in order to return what was lost: this was its national duty and the condition for its stability on the throne. Since her first reign, she has been waging a series of wars aimed at defending what she owned, or regaining what was lost. Popular tension was intensified by the fact that these wars, defensive in origin, by themselves, imperceptibly, in spite of the will of Muscovite politicians, turned into offensive ones, in a direct continuation of the unification policy of the former dynasty, in the struggle for such parts of the Russian land, which the Muscovite state has not yet owned until now. International relations in Eastern Europe then developed in such a way that they did not allow Moscow to take a breath after the first unsuccessful efforts and prepare for further ones. In 1654, Little Russia, which rebelled against Poland, surrendered itself under the protection of the Moscow sovereign. This involved the state in a new struggle with Poland. So a new question arose - little Russian, which further complicated the old complicated Smolensk and Seversk accounts of Moscow with the Commonwealth. The Little Russian question was the starting point of Moscow's foreign policy from the middle of the 17th century. He turns us to the history of Western Russia. But I will touch on it only enough to clarify the conditions for the origin of this question. These conditions were revealed at the very beginning of the event that aroused him. In 1648, the centurion of the Little Russian registered army Bogdan Khmelnitsky raised Zaporozhye against the Commonwealth. He was unanimously supported by the Little Russian peasantry, who rebelled against their masters, the Polish and Polonized Russian pans. Registered Cossacks also went over to the side of Bogdan, and a formidable force was formed, with which Khmelnitsky in some five or six months had almost all of Little Russia in his hands. What was the Commonwealth, what place did Little Russia occupy in it, how did the Polish lords find themselves in Little Russia, how did the Little Russian Cossacks arise, and why did the Ukrainian peasantry join them in the uprising - that's what you need to find out in order to see the roots of the Little Russian movement of 1648.

Western Russia

The question of the reunification of Western Russia was the most difficult matter of Moscow's foreign policy in the 17th century. It was intertwined from various difficulties that gradually developed in that Russia from the political deal between the Polish lords and the Grand Duke of Lithuania Jagail at the end of the 14th century. By virtue of this deal in 1386, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, together with the hand of the Polish queen Jadwiga, received the Polish kingdom. The deal was based on mutual calculations of the parties: Jagiello hoped, having become king and converted to Catholicism with all his people, to find support in Poland and the pope against the dangerous Teutonic Order, and the Poles wanted to take the forces and means of Lithuania and especially Western Russia through Jagiello, Volyn, Podolia, Ukraine. So the neighboring states of Lithuania and Poland were united by a dynastic connection. It was a mechanical connection of two heterogeneous and even hostile states, rather a diplomatic intrigue, calculated on mutual misunderstandings, than a political act based on the unity of mutual interests. Nevertheless, this event made important changes in the position of Western Russia. The conquest of this Rus by the Lithuanian princes was accompanied by the subordination of Lithuania to Russian influence. At the beginning of the XV century. the Russian regions that became part of the Principality of Lithuania, the lands of Podolsk, Volyn, Kyiv, Seversk, Smolensk and others, both in space and in population, significantly exceeded the Lithuanian state that conquered them. In terms of its tribal and cultural composition, this Lithuanian-Russian principality was more Russian than a Lithuanian state. The Russian language and Russian law, Russian customs, together with Orthodoxy, had been spreading among half-savage pagan Lithuania for about a hundred years. The cultural rapprochement of the united peoples under the predominant influence of the more developed of them Russian went so successfully that for another two or three generations, and by the beginning of the 16th century. one could expect a complete merger of Lithuania with Western Russia. From the time of the unification of Lithuania with Poland, Russian influence in the Principality of Lithuania began to be supplanted by Polish, which penetrated there in various ways. One of them was the diets, which decided the common affairs of both allied states: the Lithuanian-Russian nobles, meeting here with the Polish lords, got acquainted with their political concepts and with the orders that prevailed in Poland. On the other hand, the Polish influence was carried out to Lithuania-Rus by letters of grant from the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, which were called privileges and established in Lithuania the same order of government, the same rights and relations of estates that prevailed in Poland. Penetrating in these ways, the Polish influence profoundly changed both the structure of government and the structure of society in the Russian regions that became part of the Lithuanian principality.

Control

The Russian princes, who owned these regions on the basis of ancient tribal law, like their ancestors of the 11th and 12th centuries, obeying the authority of led. the prince of Lithuania, they pledged to serve him faithfully and pay tribute from their possessions, and he granted them their reigns in the patrimony on hereditary right or sometimes in temporary possession, until "his sovereign will." This destroyed the ancient family property of the princes. By the beginning of the XVI century. they became serving patrimonies, full owners of their principalities, and together with the noblest Russian boyars and Lithuanian nobles formed a landowning aristocracy similar to the Polish and even more influential. Members of this aristocracy, gentlemen, constituted a government council, or happy led. prince of Lithuania, which severely limited his power. Led by privilege. book. Alexander 1492, the Lithuanian sovereign could not, without the consent of the lords, gladly conduct relations with foreign states, issue and amend laws, manage state revenues and expenditures, and appoint to positions; The king recognized the opinions of the glad as binding for himself, and even in case of his disagreement with them, he accepted them for execution "for his own and common good." At the same time, in Lithuania, following the example of Poland, the highest government positions were introduced - orders, which eventually became lifetime possessions hetman, the chief leader of the troops, chancellor, custodian of the state seal, two podskarbiev, finance ministers, zemstvo, in charge of national revenues and expenditures, and outdoor on the palace economy; heads of individual regions, which were previously ruled by Russian princes in agreement with veche cities, were appointed governors, on which depended cashtelans, commandants of cities, assistant governors, and povet elders, the districts into which the voivodeships were divided. So the central and regional administration of Lithuania-Rus approached the Polish one and received an aristocratic system.

Russian-Lithuanian and Polish nobility

Priviley, both general or zemstvo, given to the entire principality, as well as local or regional, in Lithuanian Rus established class rights and relations similar to those that existed in Poland. At the Seym of Gorodel in 1413, which confirmed the unification of Lithuania with Poland, a privilege was issued according to which the Lithuanian boyars, who converted to Catholicism, received the rights and privileges of the Polish gentry; The privileges of Casimir in 1447 extended these rights to the Orthodox nobility. According to these privileges, the Lithuanian-Russian landowners were equalized with the Polish in the rights of ownership of estates and estates and were exempted from taxes and duties, with the exception of some unimportant ones, which had not so much financial as symbolic significance, as a sign of citizenship; the master's peasants were removed from the court of the grand ducal officers and subjected to the jurisdiction of their masters; moreover, the privileges of Casimir forbade the transfer of peasants from the lands of private owners to the grand ducal ones and vice versa; these decrees marked the beginning of the enslavement of peasants in the Principality of Lithuania, following the example of Poland, where serfdom was established as early as the 14th century. General and local privileges gradually equalized the Lithuanian-Russian nobility in rights and liberties with the Polish gentry and gave it the importance of the ruling estate in the principality with extensive power over the peasant population living on its lands, and with influential participation in legislation, court and administration. This position of the Lithuanian-Russian gentry was fixed in the 16th century. legislative code of the Principality of Lithuania, Lithuanian statute. The beginning of this code was laid under Sigismund I by the edition of the Statute of 1529. After this first code was repeatedly revised and supplemented, agreeing with Polish law, as a result of which this code reflected the strong influence of Polish law, mixed in the Statute with ancient Russian legal customs, which were preserved in Lithuanian Rus from the time of Russkaya Pravda. The final version of the Lithuanian Statute was published in Russian under Sigismund III in 1588. According to the second Statute, approved by the Vilna Seimas in 1566, in the Principality of Lithuania, povet gentry sejmiks, similar to the Polish ones, were introduced, which gathered in each povete(county) to elect local zemstvo judges to the estate gentry court, as well as to elect zemstvo ambassadors, those. representatives of the nobility, in general, or free, Sejm, two from each county. The Lithuanian Seimas, established by the Treaty of Horodel, initially consisted only of Lithuanian princes and boyars. The privileged position in which this treaty placed the Lithuanian nobility, mostly Catholic, before the Russian Orthodox, prompted the Russian regions annexed to Lithuania to rise against the Lithuanian government, when, after the death of Vitovt (1430), a new strife occurred between the Gediminoviches. In this struggle, the Russian princes and boyars won the rights of Lithuanian nobles and about half of the 15th century. received access to the Sejm, which became general, or rampant, as it was now called. But even after that, the Seim retained its aristocratic character: from the Russian regions, only the nobility, princes and pans appeared on it, who were all called in person and had a decisive vote. In the first half of the 16th century, under Sigismund I, the Russian-Lithuanian gentry waged a noisy struggle with their nobility and sought to be drafted to the general diets. The statute of 1566 arranged a Sejm representation of the Russian-Lithuanian gentry on the model of the Polish gentry Sejm; in the question of the continuation of the Lithuanian-Polish union, she was in favor of eternal union with Poland: the merger of the Russian-Lithuanian Sejm with the Polish one according to the Lublin decrees of 1569 fully equalized her in political rights with the Polish gentry.

Cities

The strengthening of the nobility in the Principality of Lithuania was accompanied by the decline of the ancient cities of Western Russia. In the old Kievan Rus, the regions with their volost cities constituted whole lands, which were subject to the decisions of the veche of the older cities. Now, with the introduction of the gospodar orders, the regional city broke away from its region; the place of the vecha was replaced by the voivode appointed by the Grand Duke with his henchmen, elders, castellans and other rulers; Zemstvo-city government was replaced by the crown. At the same time, the suburban lands, which were in the communal use of the cities, were distributed by the grand dukes into private possession with the obligation of military service. Serving landowners, boyars and earthlings, formerly part of urban societies, now with their privileges of the gentry, they separated themselves from townspeople (place in Polish city, posad), commercial and industrial urban population, and began to leave the cities, settling in their estates and length of service, granted estates. The ancient regions of the veche Russian cities gradually decomposed into princely and pan estates, and the exhausted veche city remained alone among these alien and often hostile owners who plundered its original volost; his voice always closed within its walls, not reaching its suburbs. Grand princely police officers, governors, castellans and elders oppressed the townspeople. In order to bring the cities of Western Russia out of decline, the Polish-Lithuanian sovereigns gave them German city self-government, Magdeburg Law, which in the XIII and XIV centuries. penetrated into Poland along with the German colonists who then flooded the Polish cities. Back in the XIV century. this self-government was introduced in the cities of Galicia, which was annexed to Poland by King Casimir the Great in 1340; from the half of the fifteenth century Magdeburg law spread to other cities of Western Russia. Under this right, the townspeople received some trade privileges and benefits for the administration of state duties and were exempted from the jurisdiction of governors and other government officers. According to the Magdeburg law, the city was governed by two councils, or colleges, lava, whose members (lavniki jury) presided over by a king-appointed Vojta(German Vogt) tried the townspeople, and Rada with selected citizens gladtsami(ratmans) and burmisters at their head, who were in charge of household affairs, trade, improvement and deanery of the city.

Union of Lublin

The political influence of Poland on Lithuania, bringing the Lithuanian-Russian state system closer to the Polish one, in the 15th and first half of the 16th centuries. somehow supported the dynastic union of both states, which was repeatedly renewed by new treaties, sometimes having separate sovereigns, sometimes united under the rule of one. In the XVI century. a new combination of circumstances took shape, which consolidated the Polish-Lithuanian union and imparted more unity to the united states; this combination was accompanied by extremely important consequences for the whole of Eastern Europe and especially for Southwestern Russia. I mean the great schism in Western Europe in the sixteenth century; church reformation. It would seem that what Eastern Europe had to do with some German doctor Martin Luther, who in 1517 started some kind of dispute about the true source of the dogma, about salvation by faith, and about other theological subjects! Nevertheless, this ecclesiastical coup in the West did not go unnoticed in Eastern Europe either; he did not touch her with his direct moral-religious consequences, but touched her by reflection or as a distant echo. Famous free-thinking movements in the Russian church society of the 16th century. had a fairly close connection with the reformation and were supported by ideas coming from the Protestant West. But I hesitate to say where the Reformation had a stronger effect on international relations, in the West or here, in the East. From this side, it is an important fact in the history of the Russian state. In general, I accept with great reservation the idea that ancient Russia lived completely apart from Western Europe, ignoring it and being ignored by it, did not exert on it and did not perceive any influence from it. Western Europe knew ancient Russia no better than the new one. But as now, three or four centuries ago, Russia, if it did not understand the course of affairs in the West, as it should, then sometimes experienced its consequences on itself more strongly than it was necessary. This happened in the 16th century. In order to strengthen the dynastic connection between Lithuania and Poland, the Polish government, headed by the clergy, undertook an intensified propaganda of Catholicism among Orthodox Lithuanian Rus. This propaganda was especially intense under the third Jagiellon - Casimir, about the middle of the 15th century. and immediately provoked a strong rebuff from the Orthodox population of Lithuania. Thanks to this, already at the end of the 15th century. the disintegration of the Lithuanian principality began: Orthodox Russian and even Lithuanian princes began to move away from Lithuania to serve the Grand Duke of Moscow. The Reformation drastically changed relations. Protestant teachings found receptive ground in Poland, prepared by close cultural ties with Germany. Many Polish youth studied at Wittenberg and other German universities. Three years after the dispute in Wittenberg, in 1520, the Polish clergy gathered in Petrokow and forbade the Poles to read German Protestant writings: they were so quickly and successfully distributed here. Supporting the clergy, the Polish government at the Torun Congress of the same year issued a decree threatening with confiscation of property and eternal exile to anyone who would import, sell and distribute in Poland the writings of Luther and other Protestants. These strict prohibitions were strengthened: after a few years, the threat of confiscation was replaced by the threat of the death penalty. But all this did not help. Protestantism was taking over Polish society; even the Bishop of Kyiv Pac openly preached the Lutheran way of thinking. From Poland and other neighboring countries, Protestantism also penetrated into Lithuania. About half of the 16th century here, in 700 Catholic parishes, barely a thousandth of Catholics survived; the rest of the parishioners converted to Protestantism. The Prussian Teutonic Order fell away from the Roman church in 1525, along with its master, Albert, who took the title of duke. Translations of Protestant writings into Lithuanian began to appear in this order. The main propagator of Protestantism in Lithuania was Avraham Kulva, a Litvin who studied in northern Germany and received his doctorate there, who later found himself a successor in the German priest Winkler. Both of these preachers spread Lutheranism. Calvinism was even more successfully inculcated there, supported by the influential Lithuanian magnate Nikolai Radziwil the Black, the cousin of Queen Barbara, first the secret, and then the explicit wife of King Sigismund-August. At the beginning of the second half of the XVI century. the vast majority of the Catholic nobility had already converted to Protestantism, drawing along some of the Lithuanian-Russian Orthodox nobility - the Vishnevetskys, the Khodkeviches, and others. These successes of Protestantism prepared the Union of Lublin in 1569. Protestant influence weakened the energy of Catholic propaganda among Lithuanian Rus. The last Jagiellons on the Polish throne, Sigismund I and Sigismund II August (1506-1572), were indifferent to the religious struggle that ensued in their united state. Sigismund-August, a soft and idle reveler, brought up among new trends, as far as his state position allowed him, even patronized new teachings, he himself gave out Protestant books from his library for reading, in the court church allowed sermons in the Protestant spirit; it was all the same to him when leaving the palace on a holiday, where to go, to the church or to the church. Patronizing the Protestants, he also favored the Orthodox; In 1563, he explained the decision of the Seim of Gorodel, which prohibited the Orthodox from holding state and public positions, in such a way that the explanation was tantamount to abolition. With the weakening of Catholic propaganda, which was supported by the previous kings, the Orthodox population of Lithuania ceased to be fearful or hostile towards the Polish government. This change in popular mood made it possible to continue the political union of Lithuania with Poland. Sigismund-August was approaching death childless; with him the Jagiellonian dynasty died out, and, consequently, the dynastic union of both states ceased by itself. While Catholic propaganda, patronized by the Polish government, acted very tensely in Lithuania, the Orthodox Lithuanian-Russian population did not even want to think about prolonging the union. An alarming question was raised about Lithuania's further relations with Poland. But thanks to the religious tolerance or benevolent indifference of Sigismund-August, the Orthodox have ceased to be afraid of this thought. Opposition to the extension of the union could be expected only from the Lithuanian nobles, who were afraid that they would be crushed by the Polish gentry, the ordinary nobility, and the Lithuanian-Russian nobility, precisely because of this, desired an eternal union with Poland. In January 1569, the Diet met in Lublin to resolve the issue of extending the union. When opposition to this was discovered on the part of the Lithuanian nobility, the king attracted two of the most influential magnates of Southwestern Russia to his side: they were Prince Rurikovich. Konstantin Ostrozhsky, governor of Kyiv, and Gediminovich Prince. Oleksandr Czartoryski, voivode of Volhynia. Both of these nobles were leaders of the Orthodox Russian-Lithuanian nobility and could cause a lot of trouble for the king. Prince Ostrozhsky was a powerful specific owner, although he recognized himself as a subject of the king; in any case, he was richer and more influential than the latter, he had extensive possessions that captured almost the entire current Volyn province and significant parts of the provinces of Podolsk and Kyiv. Here he had 35 cities and more than 700 villages, from which he received income up to 10 million zlotys (more than 10 million rubles with our money). These two magnates carried away the southwestern Russian nobility, already gravitating towards gentry Poland, and the Lithuanian followed, which decided the question of the union. At the Lublin Diet, the political union of both states was recognized forever inseparable even after the suppression of the Jagiellonian dynasty. At the same time, the united state received its final arrangement. Poland and Lithuania were united as two equal halves of a single state, called the first crown, second principality, and both together were called Rech Commonwealth(republica). It was a republican elective monarchy. At the head of the administration was the king, elected by the general diet of the Crown and the Principality. Legislative power was vested in the Sejm, which was composed from zemstvo ambassadors, those. deputies of the gentry, only the gentry, and the Senate, which consisted of the highest secular and spiritual dignitaries of both parts of the state. But under a common supreme government, whose organs were the Sejm, the Senate and the King, both allied parts of the Commonwealth retained a separate administration, had special ministers, a special army and special laws. For the history of Southwestern Russia, the most important were those decisions of the Lublin Seim, according to which some areas of this Russia, which were part of the Principality of Lithuania, went to the Crown: these were Podlyakhia(Western part of the Grodno province.). Volyn and Ukraine(the province of Kyiv and Poltava with a part of Podolsk, namely with the Braslav Voivodeship, and with a part of Chernihiv). Under such circumstances, the Lublin Union of 1569 took place. It was accompanied by extremely important consequences, political and national-religious, for Southwestern Russia and all of Eastern Europe.

Consequences of the union

The resolutions of the Sejm of Lublin were for Western Russia the end of the dominion of the Gediminids and the Polish influence that they exercised there. The Poles achieved, which they had been seeking for almost 200 years, the eternal connection of their state with Lithuania and the direct annexation to Poland of the regions of South-Western Russia, tempting in terms of natural resources. The Gediminids, under Polish influence, destroyed a lot of antiquity in Russia subject to them and introduced a lot of new things into its structure and life. The regions of the old Kievan Rus were ruled by the princely family of Rurikovich with their retinues in agreement with the senior veche cities of the regions, having, with the weak development of private land ownership, fragile social and economic ties with the regional worlds. Under the Gediminids, this unsteady government class was replaced by a sedentary aristocracy of large landowners, which included Russian and Lithuanian princes with their boyars, and with the strengthening of the Sejm order, the military class of small landowners, ordinary nobility, and the gentry began to take over this aristocracy. The ancient regions, or lands of Kievan Rus, which were drawn to their older cities as political centers, in Lithuanian Rus were divided into administrative districts of grand princely officers, united not by local centers, but by a common state center. Finally, the senior cities of the regions themselves, through their eve representing their regional worlds before the princes, were cut off from these worlds by the grand ducal administration and private land ownership, and the replacement of the veche system by Magdeburg law turned them into narrow-class petty-bourgeois societies, enclosed in a close urban settlement, and deprived zemstvo significance, participation in the political life of the country. The dominance of the gentry, life, and in some places hereditary orders, and Magdeburg law - these are the three news brought to Lithuanian Rus by Polish influence. The Union of Lublin, by its consequences, announced an intensified effect of the fourth news, previously prepared by Polish influence, - serfdom.

Settlement of the steppe Ukraine

From the half of the 16th century the long-empty middle Dnieper region is noticeably populated. The free steppes there themselves attracted settlers; the successes of serfdom in Lithuania supported and intensified this migration flow. By the beginning of the XVI century. several ranks of the rural agricultural population were formed here, differing in the degree of dependence on the owners, starting with peasants, inveterate and unstoppable, settled with a loan from the owner or without a loan and retained the right of transition, and ending involuntary servants, serf yard farmers. In the era of the first and second Statutes (1529-1566), as the political growth of the gentry, these categories were more and more equalized in the direction of the least freedom. The union of 1569 accelerated the movement in this direction. Under the electoral kings of the Commonwealth, legislation, as well as the direction of the entire political life of the country, came under the direct influence of the Polish-Lithuanian gentry, the ruling class in the state. She did not fail to take advantage of her political predominance with regard to the rural population subject to her. With the annexation of Russian regions on both sides of the middle Dnieper to the Crown, the Polish administration began to settle here, displacing the native Russian, and under its cover the Polish gentry moved here, acquiring land here and bringing with them Polish serfdom, which had already received sharp outlines. The native Lithuanian-Russian nobility willingly adopted the landowning concepts and habits of their new neighbors from the Vistula and the Western Bug region. If, in the interests of the treasury, the law and the government still somehow looked after the land-draft relations of the peasants to the landowners, then the personality of the peasant was completely left to the discretion of his pan-knight. The gentry arrogated to themselves the right of life and death over their peasants: to kill a serf for a gentry was like killing a dog - this is what modern Polish writers say. Fleeing from captivity, which was tightened like a strong noose on the peasant, the rural population intensively ebbed from the interior regions of the Crown and the Principality to the boundless steppes of Ukraine, descending lower and lower along the Dnieper and the Eastern Bug, where the gentry had not yet managed to get through. Soon landowner speculation began to take advantage of this movement, giving it new strength. Pans and gentry begged for lifetime possession of starostvos in the border Ukrainian cities, in Braslav, Kanev, Cherkasy, Pereyaslav, with vast suburban wastelands, procured and simply captured the unmeasured expanses of the steppe and hurried to populate them, luring the fugitive burghers and peasants with generous benefits. The Ukrainian steppes were then disposed of, as in recent times the Bashkir lands or lands along the eastern coast of the Black Sea. The most noble and high-ranking people, the princes of Ostrozhsky and Vishnevetsky, pans Pototsky, Zamoysky, etc., were never ashamed to zealously participate in the plundering of state deserts along the Dnieper and its steppe tributaries to the right and left. But the then land speculators still acted more conscientiously than their late Ural and Caucasian imitators. Thanks to them, the steppe Ukraine quickly came to life. In a short time, dozens of new towns, hundreds and thousands of farms and villages arose here. Simultaneously with the settlement, the steppes were strengthened, without which it was impossible. Ahead of the chain of old cities, Braslav, Korsun, Kanev, Pereyaslav, rows of new castles lined up, under the cover of which small towns and villages arose. These settlements, in the midst of a constant struggle with the Tatars, formed into military societies, reminiscent of those "heroic outposts" that were still in the 10th-11th centuries. the steppe borders of Kievan Rus were fenced off. From these societies, the Little Russian Cossacks were formed.

Origin of the Cossacks

The Cossacks constituted a layer of Russian society, once widespread throughout Russia. Back in the 16th century. Cossacks were hired workers who labored in the peasant households of people, without specific occupations and permanent residence. Such was the original general meaning of the Cossack. Later, this wandering, homeless class in Muscovite Russia was given the title free walking people or freemen. This people found especially favorable ground for development in the southern regions of Russia, adjacent to the steppe, the conditions of which gave it a special character. When the storm of the Tatar pogrom began to be forgotten, a chronic petty struggle ensued between the Russian steppe borderlands and the Tatars roaming the steppes. The fortified frontier towns served as starting points and strongholds for this struggle. A class of people formed here, with weapons in their hands, leaving for the steppe for fishing and animal trade. Brave and poor people, these armed fishermen and hunters, one must think, received funds for their dangerous trades from local merchants, to whom they sold their prey. In this case, even here they did not lose the character of farm laborers who worked at the expense of their masters. As warriors accustomed to the steppe struggle, they could also be supported by local princely governments. These people, in constant clashes with the same Tatar steppe miners, adopted the Tatar name of the Cossacks, which then spread to free homeless laborers in northern Russia. In the eastern strip of the steppe south, such clashes began earlier than anywhere else. That is why, I think, the oldest news about the Cossacks speaks of the Ryazan Cossacks, who rendered their city a service in a clash with the Tatars in 1444. In Moscow Russia, back in the 16th-17th centuries. repeated phenomena that could arise only at the birth of the Cossacks. In dozens of steppe counties of the 16th century. we come across notes about one or another seedy district son of a boyar: “He wandered into the steppe, went down to the Cossacks.” This does not mean that he was enrolled in any permanent Cossack society, for example, on the Don; he simply found random comrades and with them, leaving his service and the estate, went to the steppe to take a walk in the wild, to temporarily engage in free steppe trades, especially with the Tatars, and then return to his homeland and settle down somewhere. The tenth of Yelets in 1622 marks a whole batch of Yelets landowners who abandoned their estates and went to the Cossacks, and then ordered into the boyar courts as serfs and servants to the monasteries. The original homeland of the Cossacks can be recognized as the line of Russian cities bordering the steppe, which went from the middle Volga to Ryazan and Tula, then breaks steeply to the south and rests on the Dnieper along the lines of Putivl and Pereyaslav. Soon the Cossacks took another step in their attack on the steppe. That was the time of the weakening of the Tatars, the division of the Horde. The city Cossacks, and first of all, probably, the Ryazan ones, began to settle as military-trade artels in the open steppe, in the region of the upper Don. The Don Cossacks should hardly be considered the prototype of the steppe Cossacks. At least in the second half of the 16th century, when the Zaporozhye Cossacks were just beginning to settle into a military society, the Don Cossacks were already settled. It also included baptized Tatars. A petition of such a newly baptized from the Crimean Tatars has been preserved. In 1589, he left the Crimea for the Don and served the sovereign of Moscow there for 15 years, “he taunted the Crimean people against the Crimean people and against the Crimean uluses to fight against the Don Cossacks, and from the Don he came to Putivl.” He asks the sovereign to free his court in Putivl from taxes and duties, “whitewash” and order him to serve the royal service together with the White Palace.

Little Russian Cossacks

News about the Dnieper Cossacks comes later than Ryazan, from the end of the 15th century. Their origin and original public appearance was as simple as elsewhere. From the cities of Kyiv, Volyn and Podolsk regions, even from the upper reaches of the Dnieper, parties of miners went out to the wild steppe to “cossack”, hunt for bees, fish, animals and Tatars. In the spring and summer, these Cossacks worked on the “withdrawal”, fishing grounds along the Dnieper and its steppe tributaries, and for the winter they gathered with their prey to the Dnieper cities and settled here, especially in Kanev and Cherkasy, which became the early and main dens of the Cossacks. Some of these Cossacks, as in northern Russia, were hired as laborers to the philistines and landowners. But local geographical and political conditions complicated the fate of the Ukrainian Cossacks. It fell into the very whirlpool of international clashes between Russia, Lithuania, Poland, Turkey and the Crimea. The role that the Dnieper Cossacks had to play in these clashes gave it historical significance. I just spoke about the intensification of the colonization of the Dnieper region, which replenished the local Cossack population. This was a people needed for the region and the entire state, but restless, creating many difficulties for the Polish government. The steppe industrialists, accustomed to fighting, provided the best defense for the country from Tatar raids. But it was a double-edged sword. One of the steppe seasonal trades, even the main trade of the Cossacks, was their retaliatory raids on the Tatar and Turkish lands. They attacked both from land and from the sea: at the beginning of the 17th century. light Cossack boats smashed the Tatar and Turkish cities along the northern, western and even southern shores of the Black Sea, penetrated into the Bosphorus, to Constantinople. In retaliation, the Turks threatened Poland with a war, which the Poles feared most of all. As early as the beginning of the 16th century. a plan was drawn up in Warsaw on how to make the Cossacks harmless, without preventing them from being useful. The plan was to single out the most trustworthy part from the disorderly and ever-growing mass of Cossacks and take it to the state service with a salary and with the duty to defend the Ukraine, and turn the rest to their former way of life. However, there is news of Cossack companies recruited for the border guard service at the very beginning of the 16th century. Probably, this was one of the temporary experiments in the formation of the border guards from the steppe armed miners. Only in 1570 did they make up a permanent detachment of 300 full-time, or listed, registered Cossacks, as they were later called. Under Stephen Batory, the staff was increased to 500, then gradually rose and, finally, in 1625 brought to 6 thousand. But the growth of the Cossack state did not in the least diminish the provincial Cossacks. These illegal Cossacks, mostly peasants, the local rulers and pans tried to return to the "embassy", the peasantry, to their abandoned duties; but the people, who had already tasted the Cossack will, resisted and considered themselves entitled to disobey, because the same government that drove them, like peasants, under the pan yoke, during the wars turned to them for help and called them under the banners not on the payroll but tens of thousands. Such a duplicitous course of action of the government instilled bitterness in the supernumeraries and prepared an explosive mass from them, which easily flared up in a fire, as soon as an efficient leader appeared. Meanwhile, on the lower Dnieper, a Cossack nest was growing, in which Ukrainian Cossack discontent found refuge and a nursery, processing it into open uprisings. That was Zaporozhye.

Zaporozhye

It arose imperceptibly from the fishing Cossacks, "Cossacks in the field", in the steppe. Cossack inhabitants of the border towns of the Ukraine descended along the Dnieper far to the bottom, beyond the rapids. Prof. Lyubavsky suggested that the embryo of the Zaporizhzhya Sich was a large Cossack artel that hunted beyond the thresholds near the Tatar nomads, and he finds traces of it already at the end of the 15th century. When the city Cossacks began to be subjected to restrictions from the Polish government, they fled to the familiar Zaporozhye places, where neither Polish commissars nor execution squads could get through. There, on the islands that the Dnieper forms, breaking out of the rapids into the open steppe and spilling over into a wide channel, the fugitives set up fortified battles. In the XVI century. the main settlement of the Cossacks arose on the island of Khortitsa, closest to the thresholds. This was the once famous Zaporizhian Sich. Later, it was transferred from Khortitsa to other Zaporozhye islands. The Sich represented the appearance of a fortified camp, surrounded by blockages of wood, notch. It was equipped with some artillery, small cannons taken from the Tatar and Turkish fortifications. Here, a military-industrial partnership was formed from familyless and heterogeneous newcomers, calling itself "the chivalry of the Zaporizhian army." The Sich people lived in brushwood huts covered with horse skins. They differed in occupations: some were mainly miners, lived on military booty, others hunted more with fish and animals, supplying the former with food. Women were not allowed in the Sich; married Cossacks, sit, nests, they lived separately in winter quarters and sowed bread, supplying them to the Sich. Until the end of the XVI century. Zaporizhzhya remained a mobile, changeable society: for the winter it dispersed to Ukrainian cities, leaving several hundred people in the Sich to guard artillery and other Sich property. In calm times in the summer, up to 3 thousand people were present in the Sich, but it overflowed when the Ukrainian embassy became unbearable from Tatars or Poles and something was started in Ukraine. Then everyone dissatisfied, persecuted or caught in something, fled beyond the thresholds. In the Sich, they did not ask the stranger who he was and where he came from, what faith, what kind of tribe: they accepted anyone who seemed a suitable comrade. At the end of the XVI century. in Zaporozhye, signs of a military organization are noticeable, although still unstable, established somewhat later. Military Brotherhood of Zaporozhye, kosh, ruled by the ataman elected by the Sich Rada, who, with the elected Yesaul, judge and clerk, constituted the Sich foreman, the government. Kosh was stationed in detachments, kurens, of which there were then 38, under the command of elected kuren chieftains, who were also ranked among the foremen. The Cossacks valued comradely equality most of all; everything was decided by the Sich circle, glad, Cossack colo. This colo acted easily with its foreman, chose and replaced it, and executed those who disagreed, put it in the water, pouring a sufficient amount of sand into its bosom. In 1581, a noble pan from Galicia, the reckless adventurer Zborovsky, came to the Sich to incite the Cossacks to raid Moscow. The chivalry, bored by idleness and lack of money, gladly accepted the pan's idea and immediately elected him as hetman. On the campaign, the Cossacks themselves molested him, inquiring when, God willing, they would return from Moscow in good health, if he had any other business on which they could make good money, but when, having abandoned Moscow, he offered them campaign in Persia, they almost killed him, quarreling among themselves. This pursuit of camp earnings, easier for robbery and booty, intensified as the Cossack people accumulated by the end of the 16th century. These people could no longer subsist on the steppe fish and animal trade and wandered in thousands along the right-bank Ukraine, robbing the townsfolk. The local authorities could not sell these unemployed Cossacks anywhere, and they themselves did not know where to go, and willingly followed the first leader who called them to the Crimea or Moldova. Of these Cossacks, gangs were formed that attacked the Muscovite state when the Time of Troubles began there. Raids on neighboring countries were then called "Cossack bread" in Ukraine. The Cossacks didn’t care about anything other than booty, and they responded to Zborovsky’s speech about devotion to the king and the fatherland with a common proverb: poke zhyta, sweats of life- until then, it lives, as long as there is something to feed on. But the Cossacks did not all get by with a foreign land, Crimean, Moldavian or Muscovite: already in the 16th century. the turn came to the fatherland. Being inexhaustibly completed from the accumulated mass, Zaporozhye became a hotbed on which Cossack uprisings were brewed against the Commonwealth itself.

So, the Union of Lublin brought three closely related consequences to Southwestern Russia: serfdom, increased peasant colonization of Ukraine, and the transformation of Zaporozhye into an insurrectional refuge for the enslaved Russian population.