were free to move and land was available, this political economy made sense. Even
when Russian and Ukrainian peasants began to move into the more fertile steppe
lands, they used a similar practice of“field-grass husbandry,”clearing and farming
patches of prairie, then moving on.
Peasants also relied on many communal labor practices. Communities joined
together to clear afield, to sow and harvest grain, thresh and glean. Sources of
water, meadows for hay, pasture for grazing, forest for timber, rivers and ponds for
fishing were all managed by the collective. Families worked their own land but it
was usually identified as narrow strips within a larger communal arablefield.
In the sixteenth century, as more peasants fell under the control ofpomest’e-based
gentry and as the state was raising its demands for taxes and services, peasants in the
center found their mobility constrained. They were forced by debt or“forbidden
years”to stay put. In such situations, many adopted a two-field or three-field
system, in which plantings rotated annually amongfields and onefield was left
fallow to restore itself. In the three-field system, onefield was planted in spring with
fast growing grain (barley and oats in the north and mixed forest, wheat in the
steppe lands) and harvested in August. In late summer anotherfield was sown with
winter rye, to be harvested a year later in July. In the following year, the fallow was
used and plantings rotated amongfields. Although as peasants moved south and
southeast into the steppe, the growing season became longer and climate and soil
more hospitable, it never extended long enough to provide two plantings in one
season, as the more moderate European continent enjoyed. Steppe land was not
without its agricultural risks, as drought was a regular threat. Thus East Slavic
peasants in most settings supplemented their diets with forest products where
available, as well as handicrafts, livestock, and trade.
The commune was the fundamental living situation for Muscovy’s Russian
taxpaying classes, whether rural peasants (serfs or crown and state peasants) or
townsmen. While East Slavic farmers had always worked together for some needs,
a more embracing collective management of village life emerged only from the
Figure 10.1Augustin von Meyerberg’sAlbum(1663) of his embassy to Russia depicted the
cultivatedfields, homes, and churches through which they traveled from the Baltic coast to
Moscow with impressive accuracy; here the large peasant villages of Spasskoe and Klin on
the approach to Moscow. General Research Division, The New York Public Library.
226 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801