Fixed years: how enslaves farmers

The Introduction of a portion of the years considered took place in Russia in 1597 Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich. However, this event was preceded by a fairly long history. In Russia some time before the above mentioned legislative act there was a system of relationships associated with the so-called Yuri's day. Every year on November 26 was the day of St. George (Yuri), which was finally completed agricultural work.

Already at that time were peasants who worked on their own sites. And those who worked on sections of the landlords and had certain obligations which is made the ‘series entries». If all the terms of the contract were completed by late fall, the employee could in the two weeks before and after St. George's day move on to another “employer”. Recent historical research shows that long before there were so-called fixed years, the peasants had little opportunity to change hosts. This was facilitated by the fact that the terms of the agreements between the landowners and peasants was prohibitively heavy for the workers of the land.

Working with the old records showed that long before had adopted the above-mentioned decree, the peasants did not use their right of passage. Thus, in 1580, in one of the districts of Moscow Russia from 60 farmers by a change of the landlord were able to use only two. But there were enough people who had fled from his master in search of a better life.

By the end of the 16th century their number was such that a decree was passed limiting the rights of the peasant in St George's day and introducing a protected summer in some regions of Russia. In addition, it was determined a portion of the summer. This was the period during which landlords could reclaim a runaway peasants from other owners or to bring back those who left them loose. First, this period was 5 years. In 1607 it was increased to 15 years.

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However, in the period of the Peasant war, when people from enslavement and hunger fled EN masse to the South, formed armed groups that acted against the government, a portion of the summer was not observed due to the fact that the country was in a state of civil war. The government had to make certain concessions and lower temporal bar again to 5 years.

In the 40-ies of the 17th century a portion of the summer has been extended to 9 years, and in 1642 it was found that runaway peasants can be returned within 10 years and to request from another owner for 15 years. In 1649 the Romanov dynasty tried to put in order the legal system of the country, which is characterized by randomness and a lot of conflicting ordinances. The result of this work was Conciliar the code, abolished, including the time limit of the summer. So in Russia there was serfdom. In later periods, except for the impossibility to leave from the landowner, the peasants could be sold to the army, exiled to Siberia or to hard labor.

Russia is not the only state that has passed through enslavement. Almost all European countries had a similar system at home, and about the same time they canceled (in our country – 1861). Western Europe has passed this way earlier, East – later. But in the Kingdom of Bhutan serfs existed until 1956. Although some historians believe the confiscation of passports from workers of Soviet collective farms a kind of enslavement.