PURSUIT OF ALBION^241communes with the right to define the status of their inhabitants made
all the difference. Such cities and towns as existed were far sparser than
in the West and enjoyed neither liberties nor immunities. Emigration
was prohibited, except to Jews and other non-Russians. Meanwhile
the state and the aristocracy cooperated in catching and returning run
away serfs. (One significant exception: in the eighteenth century, the
mining and metallurgical enterprises of the Urals grabbed and kept
any loose, breathing male they could lay their hands on. No room for
altruism.)
In general, whenever industry located in empty places, usually to
minimize transport costs (also in connection with canal and road pro
jects), the only solution was to move in forced labor. This was Russia's
school for wastage, an anticipation of the gulag. Even in more densely
setded areas, where casual layabouts and "street people" could be had
for food and booze to do loading, unloading, carting and hauling,
steady work called for servile labor assigned to the job. Entire villages,
often belonging to the state, were moved about in this way.
In the long run, of course, the system failed. Unfree labor would not
work well or honestiy. In the words of a report on the Tula Armory in
1861: "It would seem to be generally indisputable that only free men
are capable of honest work. He who from childhood has been forced
to work is incapable of assuming responsibility as long as his social
condition remains unchanged."^14
This, more than scale of production, explains the giantism of some
of these early enterprises: they needed lots of people because produc
tivity was so low. A better solution was eventually found in the insti
tution of obrok, personal dues paid by serfs detached from the estate to
earn a living elsewhere.* This arrangement allowed the serf to keep
what he made above the obrok, hence encouraged initiative and dili
gence. Some even became entrepreneurs, and the best of these could
become quite wealthy—thus the Elisseeffs, owners of St. Petersburg's
most luxurious delicatessen, later reduced to "Gastronom No. 1" after
confiscation by the Soviets. One of the descendants fled to the United
States, became professor of Japanese language and literature at Har
vard. Many of these successful serfs paid fortunes to buy their freedom
and that of their family, although cunning estate owners often held one
or two children back, just in case the serf became even richer.
The system of servitude, then, was not without its expedients, as the
- The word means a money payment. Sometimes it was used to designate tax pay
ment, sometimes rent.