Local Resistance in Russia
In contrast to the Portuguese empire, pressures on state power came from within Russia, not outside of it. While conditions had improved for serfs (see Topic 1.6) in Western Europe by the 14th century, the same was not true for the serfs in Russia. Wars during the 14th and 15th centuries weakened the central government and increased the power of the nobility.
As demand for grain increased, nobles imposed harsh conditions on serfs. But Russian serfs had long been oppressed. First the Mongols and later the Russian princes collected heavy tribute and taxes (for services such as protection or to support the government’s army) from the peasants. As a result, the peasants’ debts increased, and over time more peasants lost their lands and were forced into serfdom.
Serfdom, Power, and Control The practice of serfdom benefitted the government because it kept the peasants under control, regulated by the nobility. Serfdom also benefitted the landowners because it provided free labor. Although townspeople were also controlled and not permitted to move their businesses freely to other cities, the serfs were practically enslaved, their labor bought and sold along with the lands of their owners.
As Russian territory expanded west to the Baltic and east to Siberia, the institution of serfdom expanded with it. An agricultural state, Russia kept serfs tied to the land long after the practice had ended, practically if not legally, in Western Europe. For example, Elizabeth I freed the last remaining serfs in England in 1574. In contrast, a law of 1649 chained Russian serfs to the lands where they were born and ensured their service to their landlords, who could buy and sell them and administer punishments. The village communes, called mirs, also controlled even the small landholders among the peasants.
Cossacks and Peasant Rebellions Southwest of Moscow, near the Black Sea, peasants who were skilled fighters lived on the grassy, treeless steppes. Many were runaway serfs who lived in small groups, influenced by the ways of the neighboring nomadic descendants of the Mongols. These fierce Cossack warriors were sometimes at odds with the central, autocratic government of the tsars. However, these fiercely independent warriors could also be hired as mercenaries to defend “Mother Russia” against Swedish, Tartar, and Ottoman forces. The Cossacks were thus important in Russia’s expansion to the Ural Mountains and farther east into Siberia.
A Cossack known as Yemelyan Pugachev began a peasant rebellion against Catherine the Great in 1774 for giving the nobility power over the serfs on their lands in exchange for political loyalty, leaving the peasants without ties or recourse to the state. Falsely claiming to be Catherine’s murdered husband, Peter III, Pugachev gathered a following of discontented peasants, people from different ethnic groups, and fellow Cossacks. At one point, these groups controlled the territory between the Volga River and the Urals. Within a year, though, the Russian army captured Pugachev and the Russian government executed him. The Pugachev Rebellion caused Catherine to increase her oppression of the peasants in return for the support of the nobles to help her avoid future revolts.