>>18409979

Yes. So it was in Muscovy. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Western Europe (the Netherlands, England, etc.) began to urbanize and industrialize. They needed food but didn't have the land to grow it. Western demand for grain skyrocketed. Polish and Russian nobles realized they could make a fortune by exporting wheat and rye. To maximize profits, they needed cheap, controlled labor. Since there wasn't a "free market" for labor, they forced the peasants to work more days for free (the corvée system) and legally bound them to the land to prevent them from leaving for better jobs.

In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the nobility (Szlachta) held almost all the power. The King was elected and intentionally kept weak. Without a strong central government to protect the rights of the lower classes or "check" the lords, the nobility passed laws that effectively turned peasants into property.

In Russia, the situation was the opposite but led to the same result. The Tsars (like Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great) needed a loyal military class. Since the state was cash-poor, the Tsar "paid" his nobles with land. To make that land valuable, the Tsar gave the nobles absolute control over the people living on it.

In the West, if a peasant hated their lord, they could often flee to a city ("City air makes you free"). In Poland and Russia there weren't enough large, independent cities to offer an alternative life for runaway serfs and the nobility often actively passed laws to stifle the growth of the merchant class, viewing them as rivals for power. This left the peasants with nowhere to go.

The tragedy of the Second Serfdom is that it helped the East flourish economically in the short term, but it created a massive social divide and industrial lag that would haunt both Poland and Russia well into the 20th century.

>>18409979

Land was abundant on the East, but labour was scarce. This made labour more valuable than land itself. Hence the need to own it. When land is "infinite" and people are few, the only way to get a workforce is to take away their freedom to leave. The land was worth nothing without people to work it.


In Western Europe, land was scarce and the population was high. If a peasant quit, there were ten people waiting to take their place. Landlords didn't need chains; they just needed a lease.

In Russia and Poland, if a lord treated a peasant poorly, the peasant could simply walk 50 miles into the vast wilderness (the Steppes or the frontier) and start their own farm. There was so much "unclaimed" land that labor had all the leverage.

To extract wealth, the ruling class had to "fix" the market. Since they couldn't make land scarce, they made labor "immobile" by passing laws that tied the peasant to the soil legally and physically.

A similar pattern can be seen in the Americas with the employment of slaves. While Second Serfdom and Atlantic slavery are different systems, the underlying economic engine was remarkably similar.

As the global economy grew, the value of the output (grain or cotton) increased. This gave the elites an even greater incentive to squeeze more labor out of their workers. By the 18th century, Russian serfs were being sold in newspapers alongside horses and furniture, a far cry from the "protected" peasants of the early Middle Ages. This explains why the system didn't just "fade away" naturally: it was too profitable for those in charge.

Sex with Polka

Damn, thanks for the explenation. How much of the percentage of the population in Russia/Poland were serfs before abolishnent?

Weird how you can be so brutal to your own people.

>>18410039

>Russia (before 1861 emancipation)

By the mid-19th century, peasants composed a plurality of the population, and according to the census of 1857, the number of private serfs was 23.1 million out of 62.5 million citizens of the Russian empire, 37.7% of the population. State peasants were considered personally free, but their freedom of movement was restricted.

~50–60% of peasants were privately owned serfs
Others were:
state peasants (owned by the state, somewhat freer)
crown peasants

>In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (before partitions, late 18th century):

~70–80% of the population were peasants. Of those, the vast majority were serfs or semi-serfs
One notable thing is that the noble class in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was HUGE compared to the rest of Europe. Society was dominated by the Szlachta (about 8–10% of population).

Poland-Lithuania: more pervasive serfdom (larger share of society)
Russia: somewhat smaller share, but often more legally restrictive and harsher by the 18th–19th century

One note though:

Western Europe still had serfdom for a while, inequality, and coercion (especially earlier). In Western Europe, serfdom didn't die by a single decree; it withered through economic shifts, plagues, and legal loopholes, often replaced by systems that were "free" in name but coercive in practice. Many peasants transitioned into tenant farmers, sharecroppers, or wage laborers. These systems still involved dependency, debt, and limited mobility.

Even without formal serfdom:

Workers could be tied down by contracts, debt, or lack of land. In England, laws like the Statute of Labourers (1351) tried to:

>Cap wages
>Restrict movement

Later, enclosure movements meant:

>Peasants lost access to common land
>Many were forced into wage labor under harsh conditions

So while legally freer, many people were still economically trapped.

Even in places like England, freedom was limited for many rural laborers.

So yes, the West became freer earlier, but not uniformly or instantly .The West slowly loosened coercive labor systems. The East reinforced them during the same period.

Also “City air makes you free” was not universally applicable (it was mostly medieval Germany thing) and often legally complex. Russia had similar laws up to 17th century when laws became harsher: if a serf haven't been caught for 5 years, he was free.

>>18410114

Russian "escape" laws (the Ulozhenie of 1649) eventually abolished the time limit for catching runaway serfs entirely, making the search for them "eternal."

Serfdom ended in western Europe in the 13th century, the fact it was still around in eastern Europe the 19th century is a significant difference from the west, however this might be attributed to a different environment than some inherent inhumanity among the Slav. Cooler and continental with lower population density, lower crop yields and larger costs for freight, the monetary economy gradually supplanted serfdom, spreading out from more prosperous areas while serfdom persisted in a few isolated areas late game.

>>18410080
>One notable thing is that the noble class in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was HUGE compared to the rest of Europe. Society was dominated by the Szlachta (about 8–10% of population).
This is true, however, there was massive wealth inequality amongst Szlachta as well. Many of them were about as wealthy as peasants.

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>>18410080
>Society was dominated by the Szlachta (about 8–10% of population).
That's only a very rough estimate, as in PLC there was not an institution of heraldic authority (think French College d'arms) put in place, in other words nobles didn't want to be counted and subsequently taxed ruled over, because they feared what they called 'Absolutum Domunium' (Latin was a very important language in PLC as it was a language of administration till the state's end) absolute monarch power. They knew what happened in France and what was the fate of French nobles. That's why a noble was someone who was deemed so by other nobles. You could be peasant, merchant or even jew (after conversion) and become Polish noble and that's why it's so hard to pinpoint how many noblemen there really were.

>>18411131
Poland is somewhat underrated. I had no idea that they used Latin for so long.

>>18411221
Polish diplomats continued to use Latin in foreign dealings long after French had become standard.
It really was a fascinating country, one of my favorites to read about.

>>18411237
I actually think their alphabet is somewhat cucking them. Even their literature is great but the alphabet makes foreigners, including other Slavs like me, shy away. I have no idea why not use a Slovene or Slovak like alphabet.

>>18409979
Not really in the old part of the crown, yes in the eastern territories

>>18410000
The thing is that peasants who actually were forced to work on folwarks were the one that owned land as you paid tax to your landlord by labour , not coin. They have also acess to common grounds, like forest and pastures. In coin starved economy it offered peasants reliable survival.
Richer peasant owned more ''free'' labour to his noble. It lead to peasants sending hired hands to work it out, some peasants even rented land from nobles and have their own hired hands work on it. That in old part of the Crown.
There were also plenty poorer nobles who worked their own land by their own hands. Or working together with their own serfs.

In the east it was different. With plenty of land grants it lead to sort of colonial economy and dreaded Arenda System.
It was leasing land(and peasants) for a fixed sum of money to ''investors'' mostly jewish origin. It worked as well as you can expect.

>>18411131
>You could be peasant, merchant or even jew (after conversion) and become Polish noble
I remember reading something about how the nobility would basically test each other by exceptionally strict social convensions and behaviour (including knowledge of Latin) to see whether the other person was truly blue blooded, or just some commoner posing as a noble. There was even a book calling out various people who had claimed to be nobles, but failed to behave appropriately at some point, thus leading the author to believe they were filthy commoners and liars.
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_generationis_plebeanorum

These comparisons are always farsical because there was hardly any capable foreign threat in the Americas unlike Slavic lands where the word for security is quite literally combination of two words “without harm” signifying the mentality of the ever present pitched battle or raid looming overhead putting a serious damper on colonies, enterprises and infrastructure let alone cheapness of human life.