Excerpts From The Ulozhenie (The 1649 Muscovite Law Code).
The second of the Romanov Tsars, Aleksei Mikhailovich (born 1629, reigned 1645-76) was an able and energetic ruler whose agenda frequently ran in front of his finances. To help pay for construction of the Belgorod Fortified Line, a chain of outpost-settlements guarding Muscovite Russia's southern frontier that had been started by his father Mikhail, Aleksei and his advisers resorted to unpopular measures in the early years of his reign. Among other initiatives, they quadrupled the tax on salt, permitted the sale of tobacco for the first time (while charging exorbitant duties on it), dismissed a number of state employees, and forced others to take reductions in pay. On the downside, a number of the more prominent advisers developed reputations for corruption that were not helped by wage arrears involving the Army. The upshot was the Salt Rebellion of June 1648, less a single-issue protest than a general expression of grievances that resulted in the judicial lynching of several scapegoat officials and a good deal of mob-generated arson damage to Moscow.
Aleksei responded to the unrest by moving to strengthen the foundations of the Muscovite state. In the wake of the Salt Rebellion he convened a meeting of the Zemskii Sobor (Assembly of the Land), a consultative council that included lesser members of the service and the ecclesiastical hierarchies. This body elected a commission charged with drawing up a new and more restrictive legal code. The result was the Ulozhenie (1649), whose 967 articles (divided into 25 chapters) prescribed severe penalties for transgressions against political, religious, and/or social order. It restricted travel abroad, for example, without the express permission of the Tsar. It limited the right of the Church to acquire new lands. And in Chapter 11, part of which is excerpted below, it essentially completed the legal framework for serfdom. Not only did the period in which runaway peasants could be returned to their masters become indefinite, a whole series of refinements to existing practice essentially bound peasants and their offspring to the land. Although subsequent Tsars tinkered with the Ulozhenie and its anti-peasant proscriptions, it remained Russia's basic law code until the revision of the 1830s.
1. What is the significance of removing the statute of limitations on recovering fugitive peasants?
2. How do these articles from Chapter 11 deal with the problems created by peasant households? What happens to the family members and property of apprehended runaways?
3. In the Ulozhenie, was the 'default mode' for peasants assumed to be freedom, or serfdom? What in the excerpts below supports your answer?
4. Why might Tsar Aleksei and the drafters of the Ulozhenie have sought to turn peasants into property? What ulterior purpose(s) might this have served?
Chapter 11: The Judicial Process for Peasants. In It Are 34 Articles.
1. Concerning the Sovereign's peasants and landless peasants of court villages and rural taxpaying districts who, having fled from the Sovereign's court villages and from rural taxpaying districts, are now living under the Patriarch, the Metropolitans, the archbishops, [or] the bishop; or under monasteries; or under boiars, okol'nichie, counselors, chamberlains, stol'niki, striapchie, Moscow dvoriane, state secretaries, zhil'tsy, provincial dvoriane and deti boiarskie, foreigners, or all other hereditary estate owners and service landholders. (1) If those fugitive peasants or their fathers were registered in the cadastral books (2) (submitted by the census takers to to the Service Land Chancellery (3) and to other chancelleries after the Moscow fire of the past year 1626) as the Sovereign's:
Having hunted down those fugitive peasants and landless peasants of the Sovereign, cart them [back] to the Sovereign's court villages and to the rural taxpaying districts, to their old allotments as [registered in] the cadastral books, with their wives, and with their children, and with all their movable peasant property, (4) without any statute of limitations.
2. Similarly, if hereditary estate owners and service landholders petition the Sovereign about their fugitive peasants and about landless peasants; and they testify that their peasants and landless peasants, having fled from them, are living in the Sovereign's court villages, or in rural taxpaying districts, or as townsmen in the urban taxpaying districts, or as musketeers, cossacks, gunners, or any other type of servicemen in the trans-Moscow or in the frontier towns (5); or under the Patriarch, the Metropolitans, the archbishops or bishops; or under monasteries; or under boiars, okol'nichie, counselors, chamberlains, stol'niki, striapchie, Moscow dvoriane, state secretaries, zhil'tsy, provincial dvoriane and deti boiarskie, foreigners, or any other hereditary estate owners and service landholders:
Return such peasants and landless peasants after trial and investigation on the basis of the cadastral books the census takers submitted to the Service Land Chancellery after the Moscow fire of the past year 1626, if those fugitive peasants of theirs, or the fathers of those peasants of theirs, were recorded [as living] under them in the cadastral books, or [if] after those cadastral books [were compiled] those peasants, or their children, were recorded in new grants [as living] under someone on the land-allotment or land-transfer registries. On the basis of the cadastral books, return fugitive peasants and landless peasants from flight to people of all ranks, without any statute of limitations.
3. If it becomes necessary to return fugitive peasants and landless peasants to someone after trial and investigation:
Return those peasants with their wives, and with their children, and with all their movable property, with their standing grain and with their threshed grain. (6) Do not impose a fine for those peasants [on their current lords] for the years prior to this present Law Code.
Concerning peasants who, while fugitives, married off their unmarried daughters, or sisters, or kinswomen to peasants of the estate owners and service landholders under whom they were living, or elsewhere in another village or hamlet:
Do not fault those owners and landholders. Do not use the [fugitive] status of the women as a basis for handing over their [new] husbands to their original estate owners and service landholders. Until the present decree, no rule by the Sovereign prohibited anyone from taking in peasants [to live] under him. The statutes and limitations mandated only the recovery of fugitive peasants. Moreover, in the many years since the census takers [did their work], the hereditary estates and service landholdings of many hereditary estate owners and service landholders have changed hands.
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9. Concerning peasants and landless peasants registered under someone in the census books of the past years 1645/46 and 1646/47. If after [the compilation of] those census books they fled from the people under whom they were registered, or if they proceed to flee in the future:
On the basis of the census books, without any statute of limitations, return those fugitive peasants and landless peasants, and their brothers, children, kinsmen, and grandchildren with [their] wives and with [their] children and with all [their] movable property, and with [their] standing grain and with threshed grain, to the people from whom they fled. Henceforth no one shall ever take in anothers' peasants and shall not retain them under himself....
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20. If any people come to someone on [his] hereditary estate and service landholding and say about themselves that they are free; and those people desire to live under them as peasants or landless peasants: those people whom they approach shall interrogate them. What kind of free people are they? And where is their birth place? And under whom did they live? And whence did they come? And are they not someone's fugitive slaves, and peasants, and landless peasants? And do they have manumission documents? (7) If they say that they do not have manumission documents on their person, service landholders and hereditary estate owners shall find out about such people accurately, whether they really are free people. Having investigated accurately, bring them in the same year for registration to the Service Land Chancellery in Moscow....
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Notes:
1. Various non-peasant divisions of the Muscovite social/service hierarchy, split into church and secular ranks and listed in each broad category by decending order of importance. The precise distinctions involved are outside the scope of this class.
2. Cadastral books record the value, extent, and ownership of land for tax purposes.
3. The Service Land Chancellery administered landholdings in the Muscovite state.
4. Muscovite Russia and its successor states distinguished between "immoveable property" (i.e. real estate) and "moveable property" (non-real estate possessions, for peasants including draft and barnyard animals, implements, and household possessions).
5. In other words, peasants could not try to escape their owners by joining the Muscovite standing armies.
6. In other words, unscrupulous landlords could not kidnap peasants, force them to till crops, and if caught, still pocket the proceeds of the ill-gotten harvests.
7. Muscovy had a long tradition of slavery, much of it voluntary and entered into as a way of escaping debt. Owners who manumitted (freed, absolved, or emancipated) their slaves were supposed to provide documentation proving the latter had not simply run away.
Source: The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649. Part 1: Text and Translation, trans. and ed. by Richard Hellie (Irvine, CA: C. Schlacks, Jr., 1988). Minor syntactical emendations and annotations by Jon Bone. For additional excerpts see http://lamar.colostate.edu/~aksmith/ulozh.html