loans or upkeep. In a move that worsened the indebted person’s situation but
helped to stabilize the gentry’s labor force, decrees of 1586 and 1597 made such
loans terminal only with the death of the master. There were other categories of
slaves in Muscovy, such that historians estimate that in sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century Muscovy up to 10 percent of the population was enslaved. Although
foreign prisoners of war were enslaved, as a rule slaves (kholopy) in Muscovy were
fellow Russians, locals who had sold themselves into slavery to escape poverty.
Richard Hellie called slavery in Muscovy a social safety net. Slaves worked as
domestics orfield hands, or accompanied their landlords to war (datochnye liudi).
They often lived side by side with serfs in a landlord’s village or household; legally
the property of their owners and exempt from taxation, they nevertheless blended
into the population. In 1723 with the introduction of the head tax, slavery was
abolished and these people were folded into taxpaying serfdom.
The state’s response to the devastation of the peasant economy was to limit
peasant mobility, by declaring from 1580“forbidden years”(intended to be a
temporary abrogation of the right to move) and by compiling from the late
sixteenth century cadasters to register urban and rural taxpayers. “Forbidden
years”were announced regularly, becoming de facto permanent by 1603. Cadasters
from 1592 became a benchmark when in 1597 a decree established that landlords
could chase down any peasant registered to them within the pastfive years, creating
a“statute of limitations”in which landlords could claim runaways. From the 1590s
to the 1640s gentry repeatedly submitted collective petitions complaining of
peasantflight and unfair competition from large landlords, and the state responded
by extending the statute to nine years and in 1642 to as many asfifteen. The 1649
Lawcode abolished the limit entirely, ending legal peasant mobility.
The 1649 Lawcode not only tied landlords’peasants to their lands, but also tied
townsmen and non-serf peasants to the communities in which they were registered.
This result explains the seeming irony that the gentry were being awarded afixed
labor force just at a time when they were being militarily eclipsed by new model
infantry and cavalry. Binding peasants and townsmen to lords and land was a
political, not economic, choice: it ensured the loyalty of the traditional elite and it
created a de facto local administrative system over the most densely populated areas
of the realm.
To fully exploit the taxpaying population, the state transformed taxation. In
addition to new dedicated taxes (to pay for new model troops and fortifications, to
redeem captives), special levies (for military reforms and wars), and state monop-
olies (particularly on alcohol sale), the state changed the bases of direct taxes. Until
the mid-seventeenth century they had been assessed on the amount and quality of
the land a household farmed, which allowed someflexibility in assessing a given
family’s burden. In 1647 the state shifted to aflat rate per household for special
levies, and in 1679 the household became the basis of direct taxes as well, supported
by new cadasters. The more lucrative head tax on individual males was declared in
1718 and put into effect in 1724 after a nationwide census (thefirstreviziia). Thus,
after 1649, East Slavic peasantry and townsmen were bound to their landlord’s
estates or state and crown peasant villages.
224 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801