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Catherine II, most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter III. Under her long reign, inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment, Russia experienced a renaissance of culture and sciences, which led to the founding of many new cities, universities, and theatres, along with large-scale immigration from the rest of Europe and the recognition of Russia as one of the great powers of Europe.
Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery, which developed during the Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages in Europe and lasted in some countries until the mid-19th century.
The Romanian leu is the currency of Romania. It is subdivided into 100 bani, a word that means both "money" and "coin" in the Romanian language.
Obshchina or mir, or selskoye obshchestvo, were peasant village communities as opposed to individual farmsteads, or khutors, in Imperial Russia. The term derives from the word obshchiy.
The emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia, also known as the Edict of Emancipation of Russia, was the first and most important of the liberal reforms enacted during the reign (1855–1881) of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. The reform effectively abolished serfdom throughout the Russian Empire.
Unio Trium Nationum was a pact of mutual aid codified in 1438 by three Estates of Transylvania: the nobility, the Saxon (German) patrician class, and the free military Székelys. The union was directed against the whole of the peasantry, regardless of ethnicity, in response to the Transylvanian peasant revolt.
The term serf, in the sense of an unfree peasant of tsarist Russia, is the usual English-language translation of krepostnoy krest'yanin which meant an unfree person who, unlike a slave, historically could be sold only together with the land to which they were "attached". However, this stopped being a requirement by the 19th century, and serfs were practically indistinguishable from slaves. Contemporary legal documents, such as Russkaya Pravda, distinguished several degrees of feudal dependency of peasants. While another form of slavery in Russia, kholopstvo, was ended by Peter I in 1723, the serfdom was abolished only by Alexander II's emancipation reform of 1861.
Road tax, known by various names around the world, is a tax which has to be paid on, or included with, a motorised vehicle to use it on a public road.
Pugachev's Rebellion of 1773–1775 was the principal revolt in a series of popular rebellions that took place in the Russian Empire after Catherine II seized power in 1762. It began as an organized insurrection of Yaik Cossacks headed by Yemelyan Pugachev, a disaffected ex-lieutenant of the Imperial Russian Army, against a background of profound peasant unrest and war with the Ottoman Empire. After initial success, Pugachev assumed leadership of an alternative government in the name of the late Tsar Peter III and proclaimed an end to serfdom. This organized leadership presented a challenge to the imperial administration of Catherine II.
Constantine Mavrocordatos was a Greek noble who served as Prince of Wallachia and Prince of Moldavia at several intervals between 1730 and 1769. As a ruler he issued reforms in the laws of each of the two Danubian Principalities, ensuring a more adequate taxation and a series of measures amounting to the emancipation of serfs and a more humane treatment of slaves.
The government reforms of Peter I aimed to modernize the Tsardom of Russia based on Western European models.
Roma, traditionally Țigani, constitute one of Romania's largest minorities. According to the 2011 census, their number was 621,573 people or 3.3% of the total population, being the second-largest ethnic minority in Romania after Hungarians. There are different estimates about the size of the total population of people with Romani ancestry in Romania, varying from 4.6 per cent to over 10 percent of the population, because many people of Romani descent do not declare themselves Romani. For example, in 2007 the Council of Europe estimated that approximately 1.85 million Roma lived in Romania, based on an average between the lowest estimate and the highest estimate available at the time. This figure is equivalent to 8.32% of the population.
The Serfdom Patent of 1 November 1781 aimed to abolish aspects of the traditional serfdom system of the Habsburg monarchy through the establishment of basic civil liberties for the serfs.
Tax assessment, or assessment, is the job of determining the value, and sometimes determining the use, of property, usually to calculate a property tax. This is usually done by an office called the assessor or tax assessor.
Slavery existed on the territory of present-day Romania from the founding of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in 13th–14th century, until it was abolished in stages during the 1840s and 1850s before the independence of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia was allowed, and also until 1783, in Transylvania and Bukovina. Most of the slaves were of Romani ethnicity. Particularly in Moldavia there were also slaves of Tatar ethnicity, probably prisoners captured from the wars with the Nogai and Crimean Tatars.
Veldamas was a form of landownership in the early stages of Lithuanian serfdom. The term describes a peasant family with its land and other belongings granted by the Grand Duke of Lithuania to his loyal followers, usually as a reward for military service. The peasant retained ownership of his property, including land, but owed taxes and levies imposed by the noble. Veldamas was a middle stage between laukininkas and a serf. The term veldamas is derived from Lithuanian word veldėti, valda and means "to rule something". East Slavic texts loaned the word as велдомы. The term gradually disappeared after the Volok Reform in 1557, but it was still used in Postilė by Mikalojus Daukša (1599) to denote a subordinate.
A laukininkas was a free peasant in the early Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Laukininkai formed the majority of the Grand Duchy's population. They formed communities, called laukas. The term was later replaced by volosts and subsequently laukininkas became known as valstietis, which is a modern Lithuanian term for farmers and peasants.
While slavery has not been widespread on the territory of what is now Russia since the introduction of Christianity in the tenth century, serfdom in Russia, which was in many ways similar to contemporary slavery around the world, only ended in February 19th, 1861 when Russian Emperor Alexander II issued The Emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Emancipation of state-owned serfs occurred in 1866.
Like slavery, serfdom has a long history that dates to ancient times.
State serfs or state peasants were a special social estate (class) of peasantry in 18th–19th century Russia, the number of which in some periods reached half of the agricultural population. In contrast to private serfs, state serfs were considered personally free, although attached to the land. They were liberated in 1866.
References
- Viorel Achim. The Roma in Romanian History. 2004. Budapest: Central European University Press. ISBN 963-9241-84-9. pp. 130–132.
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