the term during which the owners could initiate a claim for the return of the fugitive serfs to them. Introduced in the 90s. 16th century after the suspension of the "St. George's Day" (1581) and the introduction of reserved years, when the description of lands and scribes began to be considered as an act that attached peasants to those lands, on which they were found in the reserved years. By decree 24 Nov. In 1597, a 5-year term was set for the search and return of the fugitive peasants to the owners. According to the Code of 1607, a 15-year period of investigation was introduced. Cross. war early. 17c. somewhat delayed the process of enslavement. Under the rule of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, a relatively short 5-year period was again in effect, beneficial not only to large landowners but also to ordinary servicemen of the south. counties, where in the 10-50-ies. 17th century many peasants fled. According to the norms of the legislation on U.L., in order to return the fugitive peasant, its previous owner had to file a claim, having previously learned about the new place of residence and the owner of the fugitive. The old owner did not lose the right to return his serf even after the expiration of the U.L., if the petition was filed within this set time, and the case was not yet considered. For the fugitive peasant, living with a new owner during the U.L. created new serfdom instead of the old one. By decrees of the pr-va, this rule was sometimes violated (for example, with the aim of settling southern cities). In the 1st floor. 17th century service people have repeatedly filed collective petitions with a request to cancel U. l. and in 1639 the period of investigation was increased to 9 years, and in 1642 - to 10 for fugitives and 15 for those taken away by other owners. According to the Cathedral Code of 1649 U. l. canceled and introduced indefinite search for fugitive peasants, which meant they will finish. legal registration of serfdom. In the 2nd floor. 17th century in some cases, the implementation of the abolition of U. l. delayed (for example, in the southern and eastern border strips). Lit .: Grekov B.D., Peasants in Russia from ancient times to the 17th century, 2nd ed., Book. 2, M., 1954; Novoselsky A. A., On the question of the meaning of "lesson years" in the first half of the 17th century, in collection: Academician B. D. Grekov to the day of his seventieth birthday, M., 1952; Koretsky V. I., On the history of the formation of serfdom in Russia, "VI", 1964, No. 6. V. I. Buganov. Moscow.
“But the Russian peasants were slaves before the revolution! They were sold like cattle ”...
The author heard such nonsense not only from semi-literate foreigners. This "deep" knowledge of their own history is characteristic of many former Soviet citizens. And we all read about the famous landowner-fanatic nicknamed "Saltychikha" in Soviet history textbooks.
The most famous domestic murderer
Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova, nee Ivanova, after the death of her husband became a landowner and owner of several estates and about 600 serfs. For the slightest offense, she ordered the serfs to be flogged with rods, often to death. She loved to pour boiling water over the girls, tore out their hair, ordered them to beat them to death with batogs, in late autumn she drove them into a pond and they died of hypothermia.
The serfs rarely complained about the landowners: in the 18th century. the nobles got away with a lot, and the serfs had few rights.
True, Soviet textbooks were silent about the continuation of this story.
Two serfs of Saltychikha, whose wives she tortured to death, managed to escape, get to St. Petersburg, make their way to an appointment with the Empress and tell Catherine II about the atrocities of the sadistic landowner. The Empress was horrified and took this matter under her personal control.
First, Saltychikha was taken under house arrest, in 1764 a criminal case was opened against her. For about a year, they collected evidence and interviewed witnesses, of which there were more than 400 people. The killer denied her guilt, justifying herself by saying that "she was putting things in order in her estate." But there were too many witnesses to the contrary.
The investigator in the case of Saltykova's widow, Volkov, based on data from the house books of the most suspect, compiled a list of 138 names of serfs whose fate was to be clarified. According to official records, 50 people were considered "dead from disease", 72 people were "missing", 16 were considered "leaving for their husbands" or "on the run." According to the testimony of serfs, obtained during the "general searches" in the estate and villages of the landowner, Saltykova killed 75 people, mainly women and girls.
The corpses of the victims were buried by Saltychikha's accomplices in unmarked graves or registered as dead natural deaths.
On an October day in 1768, a noble landowner Daria Saltykova stood for an hour at the pillory next to the Kremlin. Around the noblewoman's neck was a sign with the words "torturer and murderer." Daria Nikolaevna, also known by the nickname Saltychikha, ended up in the place of execution by the verdict of Catherine the Great herself for a series of murders of serfs.
The verdict was drawn up by Catherine II herself, it described in detail both the punishment itself and the details of its implementation.
Saltychikha was stripped of her noble rank. Until the end of her life, Daria Saltykova was imprisoned in an underground prison, without light and human communication. Saltychikha's accomplices also went to hard labor.
Saltychikha spent 11 years in the "penitential chamber" of the Moscow Ivanovsky monastery, then she was transferred to a stone annex, where there was a window. According to witnesses, she remained a vicious brawler even in prison, spitting through the window at passers-by and trying to reach them with a stick. The sadistic landowner Daria Saltykova spent 33 years in prison. She died there and was buried in the cemetery of the Donskoy Monastery.
The Empress put an end to the atrocities of the mentally unstable landowner. But she suppressed the uprising of Yemelyan Pugachev, sending the latter to execution. True, he ordered the quartering to begin with cutting off the head in order to reduce the suffering of Emelyan. A kind of "humanism" of the German princess ...
Uprising at the dawn of serfdom
In the Soviet Union, historians were ordered to represent the uprising of Ivan Bolotnikov in
1606-1607. This was the time of the formation of serfdom.
But the performance, organized by the fugitive serf Ivan Bolotnikov, took place during the Time of Troubles. It was a speech against the power of Vasily Shuisky. Bolotnikov himself declared himself a miracle envoy of the surviving Tsarevich Dmitry, which allowed him to gather under his banners many peasants, Cossacks and nobles. All the rebels were waiting for Dmitry himself, and when he did not appear, they began to run over to the side of Shuisky. As a result, the uprising "collapsed", Bolotnikov himself was seized, blinded and drowned in an ice hole. The abolition of serfdom simply remained outside the brackets.
Who did Stepan Razin want to free
Soviet historians have repeatedly called the uprisings of Stepan Razin and Yemelyan Pugachev "the struggle against serfdom." In fact, Stepan Razin began his war against the then system for other reasons: he avenged his elder brother Ivan, who was hanged by order of the tsar's voivode Dolgoruky for disobeying the tsar's decree. Revenge for the death of his brother and the desire to spread Cossack liberty throughout Russia and served as the reason for the uprising. But soon the love of robbery prevailed over other ambitions. And the predatory campaign of Razin's detachment to Persia had nothing to do with the liberation of the serfs. He did not want to free any peasants in Persia, but only plundered the coastal Persian cities and brought from this campaign the famous Persian princess, sung in a famous song. Stenka Razin was no politician and simply could not hold on to power for a long time, even if he took Moscow. The robber was quartered without any indulgence. Stepan Razin's brother, Frol, chained and brought to the place of his brother's execution, wishing to soften his fate, shouted: "The word and deed of the sovereign!" He knew that the authorities were interested in the treasure rumored to have hidden Razin. Stepan, whose arms and legs had already been cut off, managed to yell: "Be quiet, dog!" Stepan's head was cut off, and Frol was taken to Moscow, wishing to find out the secret of the treasure. They tortured for a long time, but the treasure was not found. After which he was executed, like Stepan.
Russian treasure hunters are still looking for the stolen treasures of Stepan Razin.
"Liberator" Emelyan Pugachev
Unlike Razin, Emelyan Pugachev declared himself a miracle survivor of Peter III and gathered considerable power under the banner of the impostor. However, he again preferred ordinary robbery to the liberation of the peasants. His favorite pastime was, after taking one or another strengthening of the government forces, to hang the commandant. And then rape his wife in front of his bandit army. In this way, Emelyan Pugachev demonstrated his masculine strength. How many serfs did Pugachev free and land them? He had no time to do such "little things". The tales of Soviet historians about the struggle of Razin and Pugachev "against serfdom" do not stand up to criticism.
"The nature of the peasant wars (it is proposed to link not with class antagonism, but with a complex interweaving of social, property, national, religious contradictions and, finally, simply with the" simmering of human passions. "" (History of Russia from ancient times to the end of the 17th century / Ed. Academician L.V. Milova, Moscow, 2007).
Who did the Decembrists want to "wake up"
Russian noblemen who took part in the campaigns abroad against Napoleon gathered in Europe quite fashionable ideas at that time. Including the abolition of serfdom. But the Northern and Southern Societies of the Decembrists could not come to a common opinion on the peasant issue. They planned to overthrow the autocracy and kill the emperor and his family. But will there be future Russia a republic modeled on the United States or a constitutional monarchy modeled on England have never been decided. The peasants wanted to allocate 2 tithes of land and a yard. Although at that time, at least 4 were needed to feed one peasant family. Even Emperor Paul I planned to allocate 15 dessiatines for a family.
The uprising of December 14, 1825 was planned and carried out ineptly, which is why it immediately failed. The people who planned to begin the liberation of the country with the murder of the tsar and his entire family did not release any of their own serfs, of whom they had many. A coup plot with unclear wholes could bring Russia neither freedom nor prosperity.
Since the "unfinished uprising" began due to disputes over the throne of two heirs - Nicholas and Constantine, a well-known historical anecdote says that illiterate soldiers chanted during the riot:
Long live Constantine and his wife, CONSTITUTION!
The place of serfdom in our history
Was serfdom really “a primordially Russian phenomenon”?
After all various forms dependence of some people on others has always existed in Russia. And the famous "Way from the Varangians to the Greeks" existed not only for the trade in furs, wax and hemp. On this route, they also drove SLAVERS for sale. But were they captured in battles or slaves from other tribes? The case is already very old.
In early Russia, all peasants were free. The gradual subordination of the central government affected all sectors of society.
Serfdom, in the form in which we know it from the Russian classics, existed in Russia for about 250 years. In 1581, St. George's Day was canceled, when the peasant, having paid the landowner, could leave. Serfdom was officially introduced by the Cathedral Code of 1649 under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. In 1649, the Sobornoye Ulozhenie abolished the "fixed summers", the period during which the owners could bring a claim to return the fugitive serfs to them. Thus, an indefinite search for fugitive peasants was secured.
The chronology of the enslavement of Russian peasants looks like this:
1497 - Introduction of restrictions on the right to transfer from one landowner to another - St. George's Day.
1581 - Cancellation of St. George's Day - "reserved summer".
1597 - The right of the landowner to search for a fugitive peasant for 5 years and to return him to the owner - "regular summer".
1607 - The search term for runaway peasants is increased to 15 years.
1649 - Sobornoye Ulozhenie canceled regular summer, search for fugitive peasants becomes indefinite.
The entire 18th century was a gradual strengthening of serfdom in Russia.
Peasants, attached to the land, could not leave their plots during a crop failure, which guaranteed income to the treasury. Only Tsar Alexander II will cancel this lawlessness of the Russian peasant in 1861. Were all Russian peasants serfs? Historians argue: were one third or half of the Russian peasants serfs? There was no serfdom in the North, in Finland, the Baltic states, Siberia and in the Cossack regions.
May 12, 1570 is considered the year of foundation of the Cossacks. By the beginning of the 16th century, the Zaporozhye and Don Cossack troops were formed. By the beginning of the First World War, there were 11 Cossack troops in the Russian Empire. The expression "There is no extradition from the Don" meant that the serf, who had escaped from his landowner and reached the Cossack lands, became a free Cossack and could not be given to his former owner. Thus, the Russian state defended its borders, and the Cossack troops received constant replenishment. The peasants received FREEDOM.
But serfs in Russia could be sold like cattle for 250 years.
Was this phenomenon originally Russian?
In Europe, enslavement of the peasants began in the ninth century.
Feudal lords received land from the monarchs as a reward for their service and other merits. But why did they need land without peasants? Someone had to cultivate this land. Free peasants would not just give up a substantial part of their labor to landowners.
In Western Europe, the serfs were English villans, Catalan Remens, French and Italian servos, and German bollards. In Eastern Europe - Polish claps. Elements of serfdom disappeared in the 16-18 centuries. The most severe forms of serfdom existed in Central and Eastern Europe at the same time. It was abolished in these parts during the bourgeois reforms of the 18-19 centuries. Germany, Poland, Austria-Hungary abolished serfdom only in the nineteenth century.
This is how these principles were formulated in the Northern Lands of Germany:
Nothing belongs to you, the soul belongs to God, and your bodies, property and everything you have is mine.
From the landlord charter, defining the duties of the peasants, Schleswig-Holstein, 1740
In Denmark, serfdom was similar to German. However, in Sweden and Norway it did not work out.
European feudal lords themselves decided whom to marry their vassals. “The right of the first night” (Jus primae noctis, Recht der ersten Nacht, Herrenrecht, Droit de cuissage, Droit de prélibation), according to which, after marriage, a serf girl was deprived of her virginity not by her husband, but by a seigneur, existed in most European countries.
In 1507, the city council of the French town of Amiens passed a new law: "A husband has no right to share a bed with his wife on his wedding night without the permission of his lord, before the lord himself deigns to share a bed with his vassal's wife."
In beautiful France
At the end of May 1358, a peasant uprising broke out in France, called "Jacquerie". The name comes from the contemptuous nickname "Jacques Bonhomme" given to a French serf. During the Hundred Years War, the country was ravaged by both British soldiers and bands of their own robbers from among the Dauphin soldiers. An uprising broke out in the Bovesi region north of Paris. On May 28, a detachment of marauders was destroyed by the peasants. Inspired by victory, the peasants decided to oppose their lords with weapons in their hands. The rebellion spread to Picardy, Ile-de-France and Champagne. The rebels had no plan. They burned down castles, destroyed documents, where peasant obligations were recorded, brutally killed feudal lords and raped their wives, as if in revenge for the "right of the first night." The peasants' slogan was: "To exterminate every noble person to the last."
The uprising began with a hundred people, along the way, like-minded people joined them. At first, there were 6 thousand of them, then more and more peasants joined them. The uprising was led by Guillaume Cal, who had already completed his military service. He was named "General Captain Jacques" and even organized an office.
Simultaneously with the peasants, an uprising of artisans began in Paris, which was led by the merchant Etienne Marcel, who stood at the head of 3 thousand rebels. They broke into the royal palace and killed the closest advisers to King Charles. However, the Dauphin himself, Marcel promised all kinds of protection. But Dauphin Karl chose to secretly flee Paris and begin to gather forces to fight the rebels. The detachments of feudal lords assembled by him cut off the roads along which the French capital was supplied with food. Famine threatened Paris.
Guillaume Cal tried to join forces with the insurgent Parisians, but the citizens of Paris did not open the gates to the peasants. The same thing happened in Senlis and Amiens.
The French feudal lords, recovering from fear, launched a counteroffensive under the leadership of Dauphin Charles. The king of Navarre, Charles the Evil, spoke out against the peasants, trying to seize the French throne in confusion. Charles the Evil summoned Guillaume Calle to his camp, allegedly for negotiations. Believing the "knightly word" of the king, Kal, not ensuring his safety, came to the camp, where he was seized and chained. At the same time, the camp of the rebel peasants was attacked. The peasants, who were left without their skillful leader, were soon defeated. Another noble detachment, going to the aid of Charles, killed 1,300 people, then another 800 people were killed. Three hundred peasants took refuge in the monastery, but Charles's troops burned them alive. The bloody massacre of the feudal lords over the rebels lasted until August 1368 and claimed the lives of more than 20 thousand people.
Guillaume Marcel entered into negotiations with Charles the Wicked, intending to surrender Paris to him, but did not have time: on July 31, 1358, he was killed by supporters of the Dauphin, when he bypassed the posts.
Guillaume Calle himself, the "peasant king" King of Navarre, Charles the Evil ordered to "crown with a red-hot tripod, and then chop off his head.
In good old England
In England in the XIV century the corvée system fell into decay: the feudal lords everywhere replaced it with a monetary quitrent. Some of the peasants became poor and broke and turned into farm laborers. A plague epidemic in 1348-49 devastated most of Europe. In England, up to half of the country's population died out. Food prices have risen. Then the king and parliament in the interests of employers passed a series of laws hostile to farm laborers and all people of hired labor. Thus, the law obliged all able-bodied citizens of both sexes between the ages of 12 and 60 to be hired for the pay that existed before the plague epidemic. For refusal to hire and unauthorized departure from the employer, prison was threatened. According to a law of 1361, workers were outlawed and branded with a hot iron for unauthorized departure from employers.
Exorbitant taxes and the oppression of serfdom led to the revolt of Wat Tyler in 1381. The uprising that broke out in the county of Kent covered many regions of the country and quickly reached London. The rebels, led by roofer Wat Tyler, who had fought earlier in France, where he gained combat experience, seized the capital, and the king himself, who had taken refuge in the Tower, was forced to negotiate with them. These negotiations did not give anything: after all, King Richard II was only 14 years old.
The insurgents' demands read:
1. Loyalty to King Richard.
2. Fight against John of Gaunt - a powerful feudal lord and founder of the Lancaster dynasty.
3. Cancellation of all levies from the working people, with the exception of fifteen (tax in the amount of 1/15 of income).
4. Willingness to fight to the end to achieve the specified goals.
Illiterate peasants and artisans blamed the "bad feudal lords" for all their troubles, remaining loyal to the king. In the negotiations, the young king agreed to satisfy most of the requirements: serfdom was abolished and taxes were reduced. The king ordered the issuance of letters of release from serfdom to the peasants, after which he ordered them to go home. Many well-to-do peasants were delighted and began to leave the capital. But land-poor peasants and laborers led by Wat Tyler, who received nothing, demanded a second meeting with the king. At this meeting, the second program was presented, which spoke about the return of the communal lands by the feudal lords, the abolition of noble privileges and the equality of all before the law. During these negotiations, Wat Tyler was treacherously assassinated by the mayor of London.
By this time, knightly detachments from three counties, where the situation was calmer, formed an army capable of resisting the rebels. It launched a ruthless terror against the rebels, most of whom had already left London. The peasants who had lost their leader were extremely disunited and disorganized. The participants in the uprising were caught all over the country.
Soon all of South England was covered with gallows and chopping blocks. Chief Justice Lord Tressillian passed so many death sentences that there were not enough gallows, and often nine or ten people hung on one crossbar. The terror over the rioters lasted all summer. Individual groups of peasants continued to resist, claiming that they were acting on behalf of the king who signed the charter. Therefore, Richard issued an official decree repealing all of his charters and depriving them of any legal force. "You have always been a slave, and you will remain a slave forever," the decree said. The bloody repression continued. The leaders of the uprising were usually hanged not to the point of being completely strangled, gutted and quartered; the rest were simply hanged or beheaded.
Many gallows were set up in many English cities. The severed heads of the rioters were put on public display. The number of those executed exceeded one and a half thousand. The king easily took back all the promises made to the peasants, starting with the abolition of serfdom.
Now it is difficult to accurately determine the number of rebels who died in battle or were executed on the gallows and chopping blocks. According to the historian J.R. Green, their number reached 7 thousand (while taking into account the fact that the country's population at that time was only about 2.5 million people).
Later in Europe the demand for wool increased. The English feudal lords began to drive the peasants from the arable lands, setting them up for sheep pastures. But someone had to grow grain. Then the eyes turned to Eastern Europe: the plague did not reach the Vistula.
In the freedom-loving Rzeczpospolita
The landowners of Eastern Europe were ready to supply grain to the Foggy Albion, but the level of agricultural culture on their estates was quite low. As a result, the German, Danish, Polish and Austrian nobles had only one way to earn more money - to increase the landlord's arable land and force the peasants to work on it day and night. As a result, a half-forgotten serfdom revived in the eastern part of Europe, and in such forms that new serfs could envy the medieval serfs.
Rzeczpospolita was one of the first to take the path of the "second edition of serfdom". The Polish magnates had a lot of land, and there were enough people, because the "black death" bypassed the Vistula basin. The gentry gradually curtailed peasant rights, until in 1503 the peasants were forbidden to pass from one master to another. By the middle of the 16th century, the Polish peasant spent 5-6 days a week in corvee, and many were completely deprived of their allotments and lived off the rations given by the owner.
In Poland, serfdom was abolished only after the introduction of the Napoleon Code on the territory of the Principality of Warsaw, which included part of the lands of the former Rzeczpospolita. It was he who provided the peasants with personal freedom.
Before that, the power of the lords over their serfs was unlimited. The pans were free to sell or give their "claps" to whoever they wanted. For their claps, the lords were both the court and the executioner. This right was confirmed by many decisions of the Polish Sejm. Until the 18th century, the nobles had the "right of the sword" - the right to execute or pardon their claps. The pans married their serfs to whom they wanted, and used the famous Right of the First Night. The pans had the right to deprive their claps of their property whenever the panamas liked it.
Diplomat Herberstein noted that in Poland "the people are miserable and oppressed by heavy slavery, because if someone, accompanied by a crowd of servants, enters a peasant's dwelling, then he can do whatever he wants with impunity, rob and beat him." The Polish intellectual of the 16th century Andrzej Modrzewski agreed with this: "If the nobleman kills the clap, he says that he killed the dog, because the gentry considers the kmets (peasants) to be dogs." Royal power in the noble republic was conditional, so it was unrealistic to find justice for the cruel lords of tyrants.
By law, the clap could only complain about his lord to the king personally. But how could an illiterate Polish peasant get to the king ?!
Claps defended themselves as best they could. They fled from their masters, killed their tormentors, raised riots. Local peasant uprisings did not stop until the end of the 17th century. The largest was the uprising of 1651, which engulfed Greater and Lesser Poland.
The unlimited power of the lords over their "subjects" was confirmed by many seim decisions. Feudal lords sold or donated their serfs, disposed of their inheritance, and had unlimited judicial power over them. Until the XVIII century. the lords possessed the so-called right of the sword, that is, the right of life and death in relation to their "claps". The peasants defended themselves against the oppression of the nobility by all means. They fled from their masters, refused to perform their duties, and killed their oppressors. Despite the fact that the gentry had a strong coercive apparatus, peasant unrest often broke out. The largest, which swept Great and Lesser Poland, was the uprising of 1651; until the end of the 17th century. local armed uprisings of the peasants did not stop.
An end to this was put by the Napoleonic Wars and the abolition of serfdom in Germany, Austria and Russia, which divided the territory of the Commonwealth among themselves.
In the "patchwork empire" of Auto-Hungary
In this country, the position of serfs was not much different from the neighboring states.
However, the first large-scale reform began only in the 1780s in the Habsburg Empire. At that time, Emperor Joseph II started a large-scale restructuring in the country, which almost led to the complete collapse of his state.
Emperor Joseph II ruled until 1780 with his mother, Maria Theresa. During his travels in Europe, he got acquainted with the work of the French enlighteners and set himself the goal of transforming the empire. He wrote:
"The internal governance of the areas under my control requires a radical change: privileges, fanaticism and mental oppression must disappear, each of my subjects will enjoy their innate natural rights."
While still a co-ruler, in 1765 he forbade the nobles of Bohemia and Moravia to execute their peasants. When, as a result of the first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Austria received Galicia, the Polish gentry was forbidden to kill Ukrainian peasants, beat them and take away their property.
When in 1781 another serf was tortured to death in Galicia, Emperor Joseph II forbade the sale of peasants without land, and after that he even announced the liberation of the peasants from serfdom and the equality of all subjects. The torture of the peasants was punishable by a fine of 50 ducats. In the western regions, peasants could redeem their plots and receive complete liberation.
In 1783, the reformer emperor came to Transylvania, where he communicated with the people. The peasants described their plight in paints. The outraged emperor immediately abolished serfdom in the region.
The emperor left, but the cancellation announced by him never happened.
In 1784, a Romanian peasant named Horia announced that Joseph II had personally instructed him to raise an uprising against the Hungarian feudal lords in Transylvania. The revolt that had erupted cost the lives of many nobles. The uprising was suppressed, Horia and his associates were quartered. The Emperor a year later managed to abolish serfdom in the eastern regions of the empire.
The reforms of Emperor Joseph II created a huge number of enemies for him. The closure of some monasteries turned the clergy against him, the dismissal of all those who did not speak German from public service turned the Italian, Flemish and Hungarian nobles against the monarch, the liberation of the peasants made him enemies of the landowners. Joseph's attempt to tax the Hungarian nobles nearly led to a civil war. In 1789, a rebellion broke out in Belgium: this country came out of the rule of the Habsburgs.
While dying, the emperor unexpectedly canceled all his reform decrees. Leaving only a decree abolishing serfdom.
The revolutionary uprisings that swept across Europe in 1848 forced the Austrian authorities to abolish corvee and other remnants of feudalism.
In enlightened Germany
Germany until 1871 was not a single state. In different German principalities, the order was different. The lands east of the Elbe had access to the sea: they could supply grain to England, France and Holland. But after the Thirty Years War of 1618-1638, many areas of the country were depopulated. The nobles had to supply bread abroad, for which they squeezed the last juices from the German serfs. The land was taken from the peasants and turned into half-slaves. In many lands the owners had the right to sell their peasants without land.
After the revolution of 1848, the frightened authorities began to carry out reforms in Prussia, Bavaria and other lands. In Mecklenburg, serfdom was formally abolished, but actually survived until late XIX century. In the XVII-XIX in Germany, more than 70 percent of the population worked in agriculture. The main agricultural lands of the country were concentrated in the hands of landowners, who were called "Junkers" in the northern and eastern lands of Germany. They owned about 60 percent of the land.
In Prussia, the abolition of serfdom for peasants began by decree of the Stein government in 1807. Only then did the peasants receive the right to freely dispose of their property and to marry without the consent of the landowner. Gradually, the reforms that began in Prussia extended to other German states.
The abolition of serfdom took place here during the reforms of the late 18-19 centuries. (1781 in Bohemia, 1785 in Hungary, 1807 in Prussia, 1808 in Bavaria, 1820 in Mecklenburg, etc.)
The abolition of serfdom in these regions gave impetus to development, but the vestiges of serfdom persisted for many years.
Overseas, in the stronghold of the Free World
Many Europeans fled to the United States, just fleeing serfdom in Europe. It was only necessary to drive the Indians from their lands. Or buy these lands for next to nothing. The cheapest way to work on plantations was to import black slaves from Africa. In justification of the white planters, it is worth saying that they did not capture free blacks, but bought captives from local African kings. The hard work on the plantations was not easy, but the fate of the captives in Africa is even worse. During the American Civil War in 1861-65, the liberation of blacks was declared her goal by President Lincoln only at the very end of the war. It began as a WAR ON SEPARATISM. The fact that the first President of the United States, George Washington, himself was a slave owner, was recently recalled by today's President of the United States, Donald Trump. But Americans love to teach democracy to the rest of the world. Often not knowing much about this very world.
So why was serfdom introduced in Russia?
Serfdom was introduced during the reign of Ivan the Terrible and Alexei Mikhailovich according to the European model. Peter I, who took over from the West everything that was needed and not needed, saw in Europe an example of civilization, and therefore with all his might strengthened the institution of serfdom in the Russian Empire. The German princess Catherine II continued his work. Alexander II closed this vile page in our history in 1861, rationally believing that it is better to abolish it from above than the people will cancel it from below. Revolutions, by the way, only PROMOTED the abolition of serfdom in Europe, but they did not solve this problem by themselves. Serfdom was introduced LATER in Russia than in Europe, but LATER and abolished. The constant attempts of our competitors to accuse Russia of "historical serfdom" look like impudent attacks of the next information war. And these wars against our country did not stop for centuries. Suffice it to recall the famous Potemkin villages. After all, this term has entered most of the world's languages. In fact, there were no Potemkin villages. This whole story was invented by Austrian diplomats in order to discredit Empress Catherine II. The Austrians simply SUPPOSED that the sturdy houses of the peasants, which were shown during a trip to Russia, could not exist in reality, and they were specially built by the favorite of the Empress Potemkin. No evidence of such a charge was presented. The name of the Russian Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the GROZNY is translated into European languages \u200b\u200bas "AWESOME". This is part of anti-Russian propaganda from the late Middle Ages. The same English king Henry VIII killed many more people, but did not earn a similar nickname in Europe. On the night of St. Bartholomew alone, more Protestants were killed in France than during the entire reign of Tsar Ivan IV. The French, Spanish and German kings executed incomparably more people than Ivan Vasilievich, but it is his nickname that European stories still translate as "Terrible".
There is no need to look for objectivity and justice where it never was, and could not be.
Serfdom remains a dark page in our history, which for a long time delayed the economic and political development of Russia.
Best of all, the Russian peasant works on his own land, and not on the land of a landowner, collective farm or state farm. It is from the labor of a free man on his own land that his well-being and the wealth of the whole country are formed.
But our country was not isolated from the rest of Europe.
Many misfortunes in the history of Russia could have been avoided if it had lived by its OWN MIND.
At the beginning of the 20th century, after the lost Russian-Japanese war, after the terrorist war unleashed by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks, called in Soviet textbooks the "first Russian revolution" financed by Japanese intelligence, Russia managed to solve the notorious land issue.
The wave of terrorism was halted by the introduction of expedited court-martial courts. During the eight months of the existence of these courts, 683 terrorists were executed by their sentences.
In total, in 1906-1910, military-field and military-district courts for the so-called "political crimes" handed down 5,735 death sentences, 3,741 people were executed.
They were murderers and robbers, their bombs and bullets killed three times more people in the same time. Moreover, most of the victims were casual witnesses to terrorist attacks. During the Tiflis expropriation, when Stalin and Kamo seized more than 300 thousand rubles of state money, 40 people were killed and 50 wounded. Unfortunately, Stalin himself then managed to avoid the famous "Stolypin tie", as the enemies of Russia dubbed the hanging by the verdict of military courts. Stalin's accomplice, Simon Arshakovsich Ter-Petrosyan, nicknamed "Kamo", Stalin will eliminate after the 1917 revolution, as an unnecessary witness of the leader's gangster youth.
The war against terrorists was won by Nikolai II and Stolypin. Those who today condemn Stolypin for a merciless war with the enemies of Russia could just as successfully condemn Russian special forces who destroy terrorists during special operations in the Caucasus. Or do they not see a direct parallel?
The enemies of the Russian state considered the land question their main trump card in the struggle against the autocracy.
But the great Russian prime minister Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin simply calculated that the country had enough free land in Siberia. The resettlement movement to Siberia organized by his order not only endowed everyone with land, but also made the Russian Empire the leader in grain export in the world. Russia will take this place again only in 2016.
"Stolypin wagons" were designed to help displaced people. In one half of the carriage the migrant's family was traveling, in the other they were carrying his livestock. Nobody forced people into these cars. The settlers who did not like their new place could go back.
After the coup d'etat of 1917, the Bolsheviks began to force thousands of prisoners into the "Stolypin wagons". But this was already another era in the life of the country.
The great reformer Pyotr Arkadievich Stolypin, sentenced to death by the revolutionaries, survived ten years from 1905 to 1911. Attempts. He died on the eleventh, when on 1 (14) September 1911 in the Kiev theater he was shot by the Socialist Revolutionary Dmitry Bogrov.
He could not have known that the "Stolypin cars" developed according to his project to help the settlers would be used by the enemies of Russia after his death to transport thousands and thousands of prisoners.
The ideas of liberalism, socialism and communism also came from Europe. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were rabid Russophobes.
Here is what Friedrich Engels wrote about the Slavs:
"Europe has only one alternative: either to submit to the barbaric yoke of the Slavs, or to finally destroy the center of this hostile force - Russia."
These two communist classics especially diverged in the pages of the British press during the Crimean War of 1853-56.
"Kronstadt and Petersburg must be destroyed ... Without Odessa, Kronstadt, Riga and Sevastopol, with emancipated Finland and a hostile army at the gates of the capital ... what will happen to Russia? A giant without arms, without eyes, who can only try to hit his opponents with a blind weight" ...
Muscovy was brought up and raised in the terrible and vile school of Mongol slavery. Even after its release, Muscovy continued to play the role of a slave who became a master. Subsequently, Peter the Great combined the political art of the Mongol slave with the proud aspirations of the Mongol ruler, whom Genghis Khan bequeathed to carry out his plan to conquer the world. "
“The very name Rus was usurped by the Muscovites. Russians are not only not Slavs, but do not even belong to the Indo-European race. They are aliens who need to be driven back across the Dnieper ... I would like this view to become prevalent among the Slavs ”K. Marx, F. Engels (Works, volume 31, Moscow, 1963).
The ideological creations of these people forced them to study Soviet schoolchildren for decades. Of course, the "quotations from the classics" cited here were modestly hushed up.
Not surprisingly, the worst version of serfdom was implemented in Russia after the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917. Capture, carried out during the war for money and on the instructions of the enemy, which is considered a STATE treason throughout the world.
But this will be discussed in the next article.
Lesson summers - the period during which the owners could initiate a claim for the return of the fugitive serfs to them. W. l. introduced in the 90s. 16th century after the suspension of the St. George's Day and the introduction of reserved years. By decree on November 24, 1597, a 5-year term was established for the search and return of the fugitive peasants to the owners. According to the code of 1607, it was increased to 15 years, but in connection with the Peasant War at the beginning of the 17th century. actually not implemented. Under Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, a 5-year term was again in force.
Reserved summers (from "commandment" - command, prohibition) - the period during which in some regions of the Russian state peasant going out on the autumn Yuryev's day was prohibited (provided for by Art. 57 of the Code of Laws of 1497). Reserved summers began to be introduced by the government of Ivan IV in 1581, simultaneously with measures for a general census of lands, which was carried out to determine the size of severe economic ruin in the 70-80s. XVI century
YU ryev day (autumn), November 26, old style, 1) church holiday in honor of St. George. 2) The date with which in Russia the exercise of the right of the peasants' transition from a feudal lord to a feudal lord was associated (see. Peasant Exit), since by this time the annual cycle of agricultural production was completed. work and there was a calculation for the peasants' monetary and natural obligations in favor of their owners and for state taxes. On a nationwide scale, peasant output was limited in the 1497 Code of Laws to a two-week period - a week before and after Yu. D. 1550 Sudebnik confirmed this position. The right to move peasants was temporarily canceled with the introduction of the reserved years (historians date the introduction differently - 1580, 1581 or 1584-85), and then prohibited by legislation of the 90s. 16th century (the extension of the ban on beans and taxed townspeople). The Cathedral Code of 1649 confirmed the ban on the passage of the taxed population.
Oprichnina: causes, essence, stages, consequences
Oprichnina - period in the history of Russia (approximately from 1565 to 1572), marked by state terror and a system of emergency measures. Also "oprichnina" was called a part of the state, with special management, allocated for the maintenance of the royal court and oprichniks ("The Tsar's oprichnina"). The guardsmen were the people who made up the secret police of Ivan the Terrible and who directly carried out the repressions.
Already during the first stage of the Livonian War, the tsar repeatedly reproached his governors for insufficiently decisive actions. He found that "the boyars do not recognize his authority in military matters."
In 1564, one of the governors who commanded the Russian troops in Livonia, Prince Kurbsky, betrayed the tsar, who betrays the tsar's agents in Livonia and participates in the offensive operations of the Poles and Lithuanians, including the Polish-Lithuanian campaign against Velikiye Luki.
The betrayal of Kurbsky strengthens Ivan Vasilyevich in the idea that a terrible boyar conspiracy exists against him, the Russian autocrat, the boyars not only want to end the war, but also plot to kill him and put on the throne the obedient Prince Vladimir Andreyevich Staritsky, a cousin of Ivan the Terrible. And that the Metropolitan and the Boyar Duma intercede for the disgraced and prevent him, the Russian autocrat, from punishing traitors, therefore, absolutely extraordinary measures are required.
On December 3, 1564, Ivan the Terrible and his family suddenly left the capital on a pilgrimage. The tsar took the treasury, personal library, icons and symbols of power with him. Having visited the village of Kolomenskoye, he did not return to Moscow and, after wandering for several weeks, stopped in Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. On January 3, 1565, he announced his abdication from the throne in favor of the eldest son of the young Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, because of his "anger" against the boyars, church, voivodship and orderly people. After reading the Tsar's message in Moscow, the situation escalated sharply - thousands of Muscovites came to the Kremlin, furious with the boyars named in the message and the Boyar Duma, there was nothing to do but ask Ivan to return to the kingdom. Two days later, a deputation headed by Archbishop Pimen arrived in the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. persuaded the king to return to the kingdom.
When at the beginning of February 1565 Ivan the Terrible returned to Moscow from the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, he announced that he was once again taking over the government, so that he could freely execute traitors, impose disgrace on them, deprive them of property "without documents and grievances" clergy and establish in the state "oprichnina".
This word was used earlier in the sense of a special property or possession of the widows of deceased princes; now it acquired a different meaning of the personal destiny of the king. In the oprichnina, the tsar separated a part of the boyars, servicemen and clerks and, in general, made his entire "everyday life" special: in the palaces of Sytny, Kormovoy and Khlebenny, a special staff of key keepers, cooks, clerks, etc. was appointed; special detachments of archers were recruited. Special cities were assigned to the maintenance of the oprichnina (about 20, including Vologda, Vyazma, Suzdal, Kozelsk, Medyn, Veliky Ustyug) with volosts. In Moscow itself, some streets were placed at the disposal of the oprichnina (Chertolskaya, Arbat, Sivtsev Vrazhek, part of Nikitskaya, etc.); the former residents were relocated to other streets. The oprichnina also recruited a thousand specially selected noblemen, children of the boyars, both Moscow and city. The condition for accepting a person into the oprichnina army and the oprichnina court was the absence of family and official ties with the noble boyars. They were given estates in the volosts assigned to the maintenance of the oprichnina; the former landowners and patrimonials were transferred from those volosts to others.
In 1571, the Crimean Khan Devlet-Girey invaded Russia. According to V.B. Kobrin, the decomposed oprichnina at the same time demonstrated complete non-combat capability: the oprichniks, accustomed to robbing the civilian population, simply did not come to the war, so there was only one regiment of them (against five zemstvo regiments), after which the tsar decided to cancel the oprichnina.
In 1575, John put the baptized Tatar Tsarevich Simeon Bekbulatovich at the head of the Zemshchina, who had formerly been the Tsarevich of Kasimov, crowned him with a royal crown, himself went to him to bow, called him "the Grand Duke of All Russia", and himself - the Tsar Prince of Moscow. On behalf of the Grand Duke Simeon of All Russia, some letters were written, however, unimportant in content. Simeon remained at the head of the Zemshchina for eleven months: then Ivan Vasilyevich gave him Tver and Torzhok as his inheritance.
The division into oprichnina and zemstvo was not, however, abolished; oprichnina existed until the death of Grozny (1584), but this word fell out of use and began to be replaced by the word courtyard, and oprichnik - with the word courtyard, instead of "cities and governors oprichnina and zemstvo" they said - "towns and governors courtyard and zemstvo"
There is some contradiction in Chaadaev's reasoning about the meaning of history and the historical role of Christianity. Describing the educational role of Christianity, Chaadaev emphasizes universality this process. At the same time, Chaadaev is literally confronted with the fact of the existence of a huge country that calls itself Christian, to which, however, the worldwide process of educating the human race by the religion of revelation has not spread. This country is Russia. Thus, Russia appears for Chaadaev as a problem, on the solution of which the completeness of his teaching is, as it were, tested.
When Chaadaev writes that the worldwide process of educating the human race has not touched Russia, he means that Christianity has not introduced into the country those elements of social life that in Europe objectively form the behavior of an individual and neutralize his willfulness.
The entire first "Philosophical Letter" by Chaadaev is permeated with the thought of the unformedness of Russian life, the absence in it of certain spheres of activity and rules, of anything stable and constant: "Everything disappears, leaving no traces either outside or in us"; and "... even in our cities we look like nomads ..."
It is important to clarify that we are talking about the absence in Russia of skills and stable traditions of life that do not grow naturally from human psychology and common human life, but introduced by Christian education into everyday life and human psychology. Even state relations in Russia are only a copy of family relations, i.e. consanguineous, in this sense natural relationship.
Therefore, “we do not say, for example: I have the right to do this and that, we say: this is permitted, but this is not permitted. In our view, it is not the law that punishes the guilty citizen, but the father punishes the disobedient child. ” Elsewhere Chaadaev writes: "Russia is a whole special world, obedient to the will, arbitrariness, fantasy of one person." And he continues: "Whether he is called Peter or Ivan, that is not the point: in all cases it is the same - the personification of arbitrariness." So, Russia is a world in which the existence of an entire state is determined by the arbitrariness and willfulness of an individual person. This is what Chaadaev has in mind when he writes that Russia did not enter the circle of the process of educating the human race with Christianity and that until now it was left to itself.
Thus, Russia falls on a par with such peoples as China and India, as well as the peoples of the ancient world, which were left to their own devices. Their common feature is that their history is entirely determined by the material conditions of existence - geographic, climatic, etc., and there is no real development. Chaadaev discovers the same feature in Russia: “The forming principle in our country is the geographical element ...; our whole history is a product of the nature of that immense land that we have inherited. " This leads to the fact that “we grow, but do not mature, we move forward along the curve, ie. along a line that does not lead to the goal ”.
Such a movement that does not lead to a goal can only be abandoned as a result of a spiritual effort, such as the impulse of Christianity in Europe. The Philosophical Letters contains thoughts that can be interpreted as a call to orthodox Church take on the role of organizing principle in the types of social development of Russian society. And at the same time, Chaadaev admits that the current state of Russia - “not to be part of humanity” - may have a reasonable meaning that will only become understandable to distant descendants.
In the later statements of Chaadaev, this duality in relation to Russia is being developed. In letters to A.I. Turgenev from 1835, he writes about the advantages of finding Russia outside the turbulent processes taking place in Europe at that time, and the idea of \u200b\u200bthe special role of the Russian tsar, or rather, the Russian despotic state, in the implementation of all-human vocation of Russia.
In Apology of the Madman, Chaadaev, referring to the experience of the reforms of Peter the Great, formulates a paradoxical thought. Since the country previously developed through ideas and institutions, arbitrarily borrowed from the outside by its leaders, then at the present moment it is possible to decisively replace the old borrowed ideas and institutions with new ones, also borrowed. So that, as a result of a free impulse and energetic effort, to transfer the country to a state in which they would still earn independent nor from anyone's arbitrariness and willfulness of the idea of \u200b\u200bduty, justice, law and order. The paradox lies in the very idea of \u200b\u200busing the possibility of arbitrariness in relation to one's own country, to transfer it to a state in which its development would not be determined by anyone's arbitrariness.
But will the new borrowings not overtake the fate of the past borrowings, crossed out by the next powerful act of the supreme will? Here it is necessary to cite the following confession of Chaadaev: “... Whatever happens in the upper strata of society, the people as a whole will never take part in this; crossing his arms on his chest ... he will observe what is happening and, out of habit, will greet his new rulers with the name of the priest ”.
Obviously, the contradictions that Chaadaev's thought about Russia outlines can be viewed as a kind of anticipation of the real problems of the subsequent historical path of Russia.
One of the most important provisions on which the system of Chaadaev's ideas about the essence of man, the meaning of the historical process and the peculiarities of the place in this process of Russia is based is the thesis that man and peoples, on their ownturn out to be on the other side divine word and fall into subordination own bodily nature and surrounding physical (climatic, geographical, ethnographic, etc.) circumstances. And this subordination of man to his own corporeality and physical circumstances becomes the source of world evil.
However, what are the bodily qualities of people and physical circumstances? In their totality, they add up to the material system of the world. But the fact is that, according to Chaadaev himself, the material system of the world is parallel to the system of spirituality arising from the verb of God, and itself arises from the same divine source. Thus, a fundamental contradiction in Chaadaev's concept is revealed. Namely: in it two orders collide - the spiritual as a source of good and the material as a source of evil - while recognizing that both are equally divine. But if the general world order in its unity of the spiritual and material aspects is exclusively divine, then what in the world, in fact, can human willfulness rely on in order to become something real?
And if we admit the opposite, namely, that being left to himself does not exclude the movement towards God, but is a necessary prerequisite for this movement? And in the very nature of man as such is the movement towards God? Allowing this, you have to admit the possibility different ways this movement. But then the unity of world culture will have to be understood as the unity of diverse, relatively independent cultures, i.e. in accordance not with Chaadaev's formula "one and only", but with the formula "inseparable and unmerged." In this case, a slightly different approach to human freedom and a view of world history, an approach that was implemented by Vl. Soloviev in the works of the early and middle period.
Thus, Chaadaev sees the peculiarities of the Russian historical path in the fact that, being Christian in form, Russia has lost the beneficial organizing influence of religion on its social being, it has not assimilated the religious discipline of the West in its public consciousness, and has fallen away from the world historical process, following the paths of the eastern countries, whose social being is determined by the geographical conditions of their existence.
The processes of perestroika also affected the spiritual sphere of the life of Soviet society. The policy of publicity began. Unlike freedom of speech, it meant allowing the authorities to say what they want to hear. Gorbachev himself demonstrated his first experience of glasnost during his first public trip after being elected head of the party. In May 1985, he arrived in Leningrad, where, without the consent of the Politburo, he communicated directly with the population, for the first time openly expressing everything that had previously been discussed only in the highest circles of the leadership. The ban was lifted from critical materials in print, radio and television. These measures allowed in a short time to seriously expand the social base of the reforms.
For the first time, publicity touched regions that were previously closed for criticism (Moscow, Leningrad, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, whose leaders were members of the Politburo), departments (the army, the KGB, foreign trade, finance, the military-industrial complex), topics (ecology, party leadership of culture, etc.).
In the wake of publicity, an update of the compromised official ideology began. It was held under the motto: "More democracy, more socialism!"
The policy of glasnost was criticized from the very beginning by adherents of the old order. For them, this course meant the collapse of the CPSU's monopoly on information. However, it was already impossible to stop the emancipation of consciousness that had begun.
Attempts to move away from "stagnation" in society could not but lead to a rethinking of the historical past. In the wake of preparations for the 70th anniversary of October, a series of publications appeared about previously forbidden pages in the history of the revolution and the Civil War, and then - about the Stalinist repressions of the 30s. The names of Lenin's closest associates, who were destroyed in the course of the internal party struggle, were again openly mentioned. For the first time they started talking about the alternatives not only of building socialism in the USSR, but also of the development of the situation in 1917, about the pages of the history of the Great Patriotic War and etc.
In 1987, a Politburo commission for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression was created. During the first years of work, she reviewed all the "cases" of the country's top leaders, falsified under Stalin. The main opponents of Stalin were rehabilitated and reinstated in the party - N.I.Bukharin, A.I. Rykov, L.B. Kamenev, G.E. Zinoviev, G. Ya. Sokolnikov, L.P. Serebryakov, and others.
In 1989, rehabilitation affected a wider circle of people: the actions of the "triplets" and "special meetings" of the 1930s and early 1950s were declared unconstitutional, their extrajudicial decisions were canceled, and the convicts were rehabilitated.
Then, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a declaration that recognized illegal and criminal repressions against the peoples subjected to forced deportation during the war.
In 1990, the repressions against the peasants during the period of complete collectivization were declared illegal.
The population of the country learned with pain that millions of innocent people became victims of arbitrariness after 1917.
Historical publications have become the most popular in the media.
Publicity has led to the lifting of the ban on many works of art created in previous years.
The ban on the publication of prohibited works of the 20-30s was lifted.
The works of outstanding Russian philosophers, historians, and sociologists returned from the forced "emigration".
The largest event in the literary and social life of the country was the publication by Novy Mir of the multivolume work by A. I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, about the repressive system in Soviet Russia.
For the first time, many saw the light in our country famous works foreign authors.
The artistic life has become varied and interesting. For the first time, viewers had the opportunity to see various areas of contemporary visual arts.
Leading theaters of the country staged new plays by MF Shatrov "The Peace of Brest", "Further ... Further ... Further ...", leaders of the Bolshevik Party.
In the art of music, there has been an increased interest in church music, works by foreign and emigrant authors.
All this led to the enrichment of the cultural traditions of the Soviet era.
Perestroika has changed the role of the media in society. The previously all-powerful censorship (Glavlit) has lost its role. The propaganda department of the Central Committee could no longer order to print or not to print a literary or other work. The liberated press attracted growing interest among the people. The circulation of newspapers and magazines increased (subscriptions for 1987 showed an increase in the number of subscribers to Komsomolskaya Pravda by 3 million people, to Sovetskaya Rossiya - by 1 million). Of greatest interest were the "non-partisan" editions - "Moskovskie Novosti" and "Ogonyok", which also increased their circulation several times.
As glasnost developed, conservative opposition to this course grew stronger. In March 1988, the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya published a large letter from Nina Andreeva, a chemistry teacher from Leningrad, "I cannot compromise my principles." It openly condemned the "borrowing in the West" of the essentially anti-socialist policy of glasnost and perestroika, which, in the author's opinion, was reduced to falsification of the "history of socialist construction", an open revision of Marxism-Leninism in its Stalinist version. Andreeva called for the protection of Stalin and Stalinism.
N. Andreeva's position was actively supported by those representatives of the party leadership who held the same positions. Locally they understood this as the beginning of a return to the old party line.
Only a month later, Pravda published a "reciprocal" editorial, which contained an open and rather harsh criticism of Stalinism, and its defenders were called "opponents of perestroika."
After this article, criticism of the totalitarian system was even more active in the press, and discussions about the ways of development of Soviet society were resumed.
Television has played an important role in the development of glasnost.
However, Soviet society turned out to be largely unprepared for a rapid and radical reassessment of values. The disclosure of previously concealed or concealed facts caused confusion, mental breakdown even among the representatives of the intelligentsia, which was more prepared for changes.
Publicity, contributing to a sharp clash of different points of view, interests, often led to the settling of personal scores under the flag of "the struggle for the truth." For many, it turned into a great emotional and sometimes personal drama. But this did not at all lead to the conclusion that hiding the truth, a new lie would be better in this situation.
Glasnost showed people the Western world with its humanistic values, unusual way of life, and democratic traditions. For many, this was tantamount to opening a window into the world, but at the same time contributed to the formation of a significant part of the population the impression of the hopelessness of their own existence, doom, confidence that life was not lived like that.
Nevertheless, it was precisely on the basis of the glasnost policy in the country by the beginning of the 90s. freedom of speech began to take shape, and the media actually began to turn into the “fourth force”.
The main achievement in the spiritual sphere during the perestroika years was the birth of freedom of speech and independent media.
Lesson summers - the period during which the owners could initiate a claim for the return of the fugitive serfs to them. W. l. introduced in the 90s. 16th century after the suspension of the St. George's Day and the introduction of reserved years. By decree on November 24, 1597, a 5-year term was established for the search and return of the fugitive peasants to the owners. According to the code of 1607, it was increased to 15 years, but in connection with the Peasant War at the beginning of the 17th century. actually not implemented. Under Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, a 5-year term was again in force.
Reserved summers (from "commandment" - command, prohibition) - the period during which in some regions of the Russian state peasant going out on the autumn Yuryev's day was prohibited (provided for by Art. 57 of the Code of Laws of 1497). Reserved summers began to be introduced by the government of Ivan IV in 1581, simultaneously with measures for a general census of lands, which was carried out to determine the size of severe economic ruin in the 70-80s. XVI century
YU ryev day (autumn), November 26, old style, 1) church holiday in honor of St. George. 2) The date with which in Russia the exercise of the right of the peasants' transition from a feudal lord to a feudal lord was associated (see. Peasant Exit), since by this time the annual cycle of agricultural production was completed. work and there was a calculation for the peasants' monetary and natural obligations in favor of their owners and for state taxes. On a nationwide scale, peasant output was limited in the 1497 Code of Laws to a two-week period - a week before and after Yu. D. 1550 Sudebnik confirmed this position. The right to move peasants was temporarily canceled with the introduction of the reserved years (historians date the introduction differently - 1580, 1581 or 1584-85), and then prohibited by legislation of the 90s. 16th century (the extension of the ban on beans and taxed townspeople). The Cathedral Code of 1649 confirmed the ban on the passage of the taxed population.
Oprichnina: causes, essence, stages, consequences
Oprichnina - period in the history of Russia (approximately from 1565 to 1572), marked by state terror and a system of emergency measures. Also "oprichnina" was called a part of the state, with special management, allocated for the maintenance of the royal court and oprichniks ("The Tsar's oprichnina"). The guardsmen were the people who made up the secret police of Ivan the Terrible and who directly carried out the repressions.
Already during the first stage of the Livonian War, the tsar repeatedly reproached his governors for insufficiently decisive actions. He found that "the boyars do not recognize his authority in military matters."
In 1564, one of the governors who commanded the Russian troops in Livonia, Prince Kurbsky, betrayed the tsar, who betrays the tsar's agents in Livonia and participates in the offensive operations of the Poles and Lithuanians, including the Polish-Lithuanian campaign against Velikiye Luki.
The betrayal of Kurbsky strengthens Ivan Vasilyevich in the idea that a terrible boyar conspiracy exists against him, the Russian autocrat, the boyars not only want to end the war, but also plot to kill him and put on the throne the obedient Prince Vladimir Andreyevich Staritsky, a cousin of Ivan the Terrible. And that the Metropolitan and the Boyar Duma intercede for the disgraced and prevent him, the Russian autocrat, from punishing traitors, therefore, absolutely extraordinary measures are required.
On December 3, 1564, Ivan the Terrible and his family suddenly left the capital on a pilgrimage. The tsar took the treasury, personal library, icons and symbols of power with him. Having visited the village of Kolomenskoye, he did not return to Moscow and, after wandering for several weeks, stopped in Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. On January 3, 1565, he announced his abdication from the throne in favor of the eldest son of the young Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, because of his "anger" against the boyars, church, voivodship and orderly people. After reading the Tsar's message in Moscow, the situation escalated sharply - thousands of Muscovites came to the Kremlin, furious with the boyars named in the message and the Boyar Duma, there was nothing to do but ask Ivan to return to the kingdom. Two days later, a deputation headed by Archbishop Pimen arrived in the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. persuaded the king to return to the kingdom.
When at the beginning of February 1565 Ivan the Terrible returned to Moscow from the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, he announced that he was once again taking over the government, so that he could freely execute traitors, impose disgrace on them, deprive them of property "without documents and grievances" clergy and establish in the state "oprichnina".
This word was used earlier in the sense of a special property or possession of the widows of deceased princes; now it acquired a different meaning of the personal destiny of the king. In the oprichnina, the tsar separated a part of the boyars, servicemen and clerks and, in general, made his entire "everyday life" special: in the palaces of Sytny, Kormovoy and Khlebenny, a special staff of key keepers, cooks, clerks, etc. was appointed; special detachments of archers were recruited. Special cities were assigned to the maintenance of the oprichnina (about 20, including Vologda, Vyazma, Suzdal, Kozelsk, Medyn, Veliky Ustyug) with volosts. In Moscow itself, some streets were placed at the disposal of the oprichnina (Chertolskaya, Arbat, Sivtsev Vrazhek, part of Nikitskaya, etc.); the former residents were relocated to other streets. The oprichnina also recruited a thousand specially selected noblemen, children of the boyars, both Moscow and city. The condition for accepting a person into the oprichnina army and the oprichnina court was the absence of family and official ties with the noble boyars. They were given estates in the volosts assigned to the maintenance of the oprichnina; the former landowners and patrimonials were transferred from those volosts to others.
In 1571, the Crimean Khan Devlet-Girey invaded Russia. According to V.B. Kobrin, the decomposed oprichnina at the same time demonstrated complete non-combat capability: the oprichniks, accustomed to robbing the civilian population, simply did not come to the war, so there was only one regiment of them (against five zemstvo regiments), after which the tsar decided to cancel the oprichnina.
In 1575, John put the baptized Tatar Tsarevich Simeon Bekbulatovich at the head of the Zemshchina, who had formerly been the Tsarevich of Kasimov, crowned him with a royal crown, himself went to him to bow, called him "the Grand Duke of All Russia", and himself - the Tsar Prince of Moscow. On behalf of the Grand Duke Simeon of All Russia, some letters were written, however, unimportant in content. Simeon remained at the head of the Zemshchina for eleven months: then Ivan Vasilyevich gave him Tver and Torzhok as his inheritance.
The division into oprichnina and zemstvo was not, however, abolished; oprichnina existed until the death of Grozny (1584), but this word fell out of use and began to be replaced by the word courtyard, and oprichnik - with the word courtyard, instead of "cities and governors oprichnina and zemstvo" they said - "towns and governors courtyard and zemstvo"
There is some contradiction in Chaadaev's reasoning about the meaning of history and the historical role of Christianity. Describing the educational role of Christianity, Chaadaev emphasizes universality this process. At the same time, Chaadaev is literally confronted with the fact of the existence of a huge country that calls itself Christian, to which, however, the worldwide process of educating the human race by the religion of revelation has not spread. This country is Russia. Thus, Russia appears for Chaadaev as a problem, on the solution of which the completeness of his teaching is, as it were, tested.
When Chaadaev writes that the worldwide process of educating the human race has not touched Russia, he means that Christianity has not introduced into the country those elements of social life that in Europe objectively form the behavior of an individual and neutralize his willfulness.
The entire first "Philosophical Letter" by Chaadaev is permeated with the thought of the unformedness of Russian life, the absence in it of certain spheres of activity and rules, of anything stable and constant: "Everything disappears, leaving no traces either outside or in us"; and "... even in our cities we look like nomads ..."
It is important to clarify that we are talking about the absence in Russia of skills and stable traditions of life, which do not grow naturally from human psychology and common human life, but are introduced by Christian education into everyday life and human psychology. Even state relations in Russia are only a copy of family relations, i.e. consanguineous, in this sense natural relations.
Therefore, “we do not say, for example: I have the right to do this and that, we say: this is permitted, but this is not permitted. In our view, it is not the law that punishes the guilty citizen, but the father punishes the disobedient child. ” Elsewhere Chaadaev writes: "Russia is a whole special world, obedient to the will, arbitrariness, fantasy of one person." And he continues: "Whether he is called Peter or Ivan, that is not the point: in all cases it is the same - the personification of arbitrariness." So, Russia is a world in which the existence of an entire state is determined by the arbitrariness and willfulness of an individual person. This is what Chaadaev has in mind when he writes that Russia did not enter the circle of the process of educating the human race with Christianity and that until now it was left to itself.
Thus, Russia falls on a par with such peoples as China and India, as well as the peoples of the ancient world, which were left to their own devices. Their common feature is that their history is entirely determined by the material conditions of existence - geographic, climatic, etc., and there is no real development. Chaadaev discovers the same feature in Russia: “The forming principle in our country is the geographical element ...; our whole history is a product of the nature of that immense land that we have inherited. " This leads to the fact that “we grow, but do not mature, we move forward along the curve, ie. along a line that does not lead to the goal ”.
Such a movement that does not lead to a goal can only be abandoned as a result of a spiritual effort, such as the impulse of Christianity in Europe. The Philosophical Letters contains thoughts that can be interpreted as a call to the Orthodox Church to assume the role of organizing principle in the types of social development of Russian society. And at the same time, Chaadaev admits that the current state of Russia - “not to be part of humanity” - may have a reasonable meaning that will only become understandable to distant descendants.
In the later statements of Chaadaev, this duality in relation to Russia is being developed. In letters to A.I. Turgenev from 1835, he writes about the advantages of finding Russia outside the turbulent processes taking place in Europe at that time, and the idea of \u200b\u200bthe special role of the Russian tsar, or rather, the Russian despotic state, in the implementation of all-human vocation of Russia.
In Apology of the Madman, Chaadaev, referring to the experience of the reforms of Peter the Great, formulates a paradoxical thought. Since the country previously developed through ideas and institutions, arbitrarily borrowed from the outside by its leaders, then at the present moment it is possible to decisively replace the old borrowed ideas and institutions with new ones, also borrowed. So that, as a result of a free impulse and energetic effort, to transfer the country to a state in which they would still earn independent nor from anyone's arbitrariness and willfulness of the idea of \u200b\u200bduty, justice, law and order. The paradox lies in the very idea of \u200b\u200busing the possibility of arbitrariness in relation to one's own country, to transfer it to a state in which its development would not be determined by anyone's arbitrariness.
But will the new borrowings not overtake the fate of the past borrowings, crossed out by the next powerful act of the supreme will? Here it is necessary to cite the following confession of Chaadaev: “... Whatever happens in the upper strata of society, the people as a whole will never take part in this; crossing his arms on his chest ... he will observe what is happening and, out of habit, will greet his new rulers with the name of the priest ”.
Obviously, the contradictions that Chaadaev's thought about Russia outlines can be viewed as a kind of anticipation of the real problems of the subsequent historical path of Russia.
One of the most important provisions on which the system of Chaadaev's ideas about the essence of man, the meaning of the historical process and the peculiarities of the place in this process of Russia is based is the thesis that man and peoples, on their ownturn out to be on the other side divine word and fall into subordination own bodily nature and surrounding physical (climatic, geographical, ethnographic, etc.) circumstances. And this subordination of man to his own corporeality and physical circumstances becomes the source of world evil.
However, what are the bodily qualities of people and physical circumstances? In their totality, they add up to the material system of the world. But the fact is that, according to Chaadaev himself, the material system of the world is parallel to the system of spirituality arising from the verb of God, and itself arises from the same divine source. Thus, a fundamental contradiction in Chaadaev's concept is revealed. Namely: in it two orders collide - the spiritual as a source of good and the material as a source of evil - while recognizing that both are equally divine. But if the general world order in its unity of the spiritual and material aspects is exclusively divine, then what in the world, in fact, can human willfulness rely on in order to become something real?
And if we admit the opposite, namely, that being left to himself does not exclude movement towards God, but is a necessary prerequisite for this movement? And in the very nature of man as such is the movement towards God? Having admitted this, it will be necessary to admit the possibility of different ways of this movement. But then the unity of world culture will have to be understood as the unity of diverse, relatively independent cultures, i.e. in accordance not with Chaadaev's formula “one and only”, but with the formula “inseparable and unmerged”. In this case, a slightly different approach to human freedom and a view of world history, the approach that was implemented by Vl. Soloviev in the works of the early and middle period.
Thus, Chaadaev sees the peculiarities of the Russian historical path in the fact that, being Christian in form, Russia has lost the beneficial organizing influence of religion on its social being, it has not assimilated the religious discipline of the West in its public consciousness, and has fallen away from the world historical process, following the paths of the eastern countries, whose social being is determined by the geographical conditions of their existence.
The processes of perestroika also affected the spiritual sphere of the life of Soviet society. The policy of publicity began. Unlike freedom of speech, it meant allowing the authorities to say what they want to hear. Gorbachev himself demonstrated his first experience of glasnost during his first public trip after being elected head of the party. In May 1985, he arrived in Leningrad, where, without the consent of the Politburo, he communicated directly with the population, for the first time openly expressing everything that had previously been discussed only in the highest circles of the leadership. The ban was lifted from critical materials in print, radio and television. These measures allowed in a short time to seriously expand the social base of the reforms.
For the first time, publicity touched regions that were previously closed for criticism (Moscow, Leningrad, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, whose leaders were members of the Politburo), departments (the army, the KGB, foreign trade, finance, the military-industrial complex), topics (ecology, party leadership of culture, etc.).
In the wake of publicity, an update of the compromised official ideology began. It was held under the motto: "More democracy, more socialism!"
The policy of glasnost was criticized from the very beginning by adherents of the old order. For them, this course meant the collapse of the CPSU's monopoly on information. However, it was already impossible to stop the emancipation of consciousness that had begun.
Attempts to move away from "stagnation" in society could not but lead to a rethinking of the historical past. In the wake of preparations for the 70th anniversary of October, a series of publications appeared about previously forbidden pages in the history of the revolution and the Civil War, and then - about the Stalinist repressions of the 30s. The names of Lenin's closest associates, who were destroyed in the course of the internal party struggle, began to be openly mentioned again. For the first time, they started talking about the alternatives not only of building socialism in the USSR, but also of the development of the situation in 1917, about the pages of the history of the Great Patriotic War that were previously closed for discussion, etc.
In 1987, a Politburo commission for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression was created. During the first years of work, she reviewed all the "cases" of the country's top leaders, falsified under Stalin. The main opponents of Stalin were rehabilitated and reinstated in the party - N.I.Bukharin, A.I. Rykov, L.B. Kamenev, G.E. Zinoviev, G. Ya. Sokolnikov, L.P. Serebryakov, and others.
In 1989, rehabilitation affected a wider circle of people: the actions of the "triplets" and "special meetings" of the 1930s and early 1950s were declared unconstitutional, their extrajudicial decisions were canceled, and the convicts were rehabilitated.
Then, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a declaration that recognized illegal and criminal repressions against the peoples subjected to forced deportation during the war.
In 1990, the repressions against the peasants during the period of complete collectivization were declared illegal.
The population of the country learned with pain that millions of innocent people became victims of arbitrariness after 1917.
Historical publications have become the most popular in the media.
Publicity has led to the lifting of the ban on many works of art created in previous years.
The ban on the publication of prohibited works of the 20-30s was lifted.
The works of outstanding Russian philosophers, historians, and sociologists returned from the forced "emigration".
The largest event in the literary and social life of the country was the publication by Novy Mir of the multivolume work by A. I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, about the repressive system in Soviet Russia.
For the first time, many well-known works of foreign authors were published in our country.
The artistic life has become varied and interesting. For the first time, viewers had the opportunity to see various areas of contemporary visual arts.
Leading theaters of the country staged new plays by MF Shatrov "The Peace of Brest", "Further ... Further ... Further ...", leaders of the Bolshevik Party.
In the art of music, there has been an increased interest in church music, works by foreign and emigrant authors.
All this led to the enrichment of the cultural traditions of the Soviet era.
Perestroika has changed the role of the media in society. The previously all-powerful censorship (Glavlit) has lost its role. The propaganda department of the Central Committee could no longer order to print or not to print a literary or other work. The liberated press attracted growing interest among the people. The circulation of newspapers and magazines increased (subscriptions for 1987 showed an increase in the number of subscribers to Komsomolskaya Pravda by 3 million people, to Sovetskaya Rossiya - by 1 million). Of greatest interest were the "non-partisan" editions - "Moskovskie Novosti" and "Ogonyok", which also increased their circulation several times.
As glasnost developed, conservative opposition to this course grew stronger. In March 1988, the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya published a large letter from Nina Andreeva, a chemistry teacher from Leningrad, "I cannot compromise my principles." It openly condemned the "borrowing in the West" of the essentially anti-socialist policy of glasnost and perestroika, which, in the author's opinion, was reduced to falsification of the "history of socialist construction", an open revision of Marxism-Leninism in its Stalinist version. Andreeva called for the protection of Stalin and Stalinism.
N. Andreeva's position was actively supported by those representatives of the party leadership who held the same positions. Locally they understood this as the beginning of a return to the old party line.
Only a month later, Pravda published a "reciprocal" editorial, which contained an open and rather harsh criticism of Stalinism, and its defenders were called "opponents of perestroika."
After this article, criticism of the totalitarian system was even more active in the press, and discussions about the ways of development of Soviet society were resumed.
Television has played an important role in the development of glasnost.
However, Soviet society turned out to be largely unprepared for a rapid and radical reassessment of values. The disclosure of previously concealed or concealed facts caused confusion, mental breakdown even among the representatives of the intelligentsia, which was more prepared for changes.
Publicity, contributing to a sharp clash of different points of view, interests, often led to the settling of personal scores under the flag of "the struggle for the truth." For many, it turned into a great emotional and sometimes personal drama. But this did not at all lead to the conclusion that hiding the truth, a new lie would be better in this situation.
Glasnost showed people the Western world with its humanistic values, unusual way of life, and democratic traditions. For many, this was tantamount to opening a window into the world, but at the same time contributed to the formation of a significant part of the population the impression of the hopelessness of their own existence, doom, confidence that life was not lived like that.
Nevertheless, it was precisely on the basis of the glasnost policy in the country by the beginning of the 90s. freedom of speech began to take shape, and the media actually began to turn into the “fourth force”.
The main achievement in the spiritual sphere during the perestroika years was the birth of freedom of speech and independent media.
