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.
The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, was a revolution in the Russian Empire that began on 22 January 1905 with a wave of civil unrest across the empire and ultimately led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy under the Russian Constitution of 1906. The mass political and social unrest, which included worker strikes, peasant revolts, and military mutinies, was directed against Tsar Nicholas II, the nobility, and the ruling class, who were forced to enact reforms including the State Duma and a multi-party system.
Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery, bonded labour, or peonage, is the pledge of a person's services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation. Where the terms of the repayment are not clearly or reasonably stated, or where the debt is excessively large the person who holds the debt has thus some control over the laborer, whose freedom depends on the undefined or excessive debt repayment. The services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined, thus allowing the person supposedly owed the debt to demand services indefinitely. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation.
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. It developed during late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages in Europe and lasted in some countries until the mid-19th century.
The October Manifesto, officially "The Manifesto on the Improvement of the State Order", is a document that served as a precursor to the Russian Empire's first Constitution, which was adopted the following year in 1906. The Manifesto was issued by Tsar Nicholas II, under the influence of Sergei Witte (1849–1915), on 30 October [O.S. 17 October] 1905 as a response to the Russian Revolution of 1905. Nicholas strenuously resisted these ideas, but gave in after his first choice to head a military dictatorship, Grand Duke Nicholas, threatened to shoot himself in the head if the Tsar did not accept Witte's suggestion. Nicholas reluctantly agreed, and issued what became known as the October Manifesto, promising certain civil rights and an elected parliament called the Duma, without whose approval no laws were to be enacted in Russia in the future. According to his memoirs, Witte did not force the Tsar to sign the October Manifesto, which was proclaimed in all the churches.
Corvée is a form of unpaid forced labour that is intermittent in nature, lasting for limited periods of time, typically only a certain number of days' work each year. Statute labour is a corvée imposed by a state for the purposes of public works. As such it represents a form of levy (taxation). Unlike other forms of levy, such as a tithe, a corvée does not require the population to have land, crops or cash.
An obshchina or mir, also officially termed as a rural community between the 19th and 20th centuries, was a peasant village community, or a khutor, 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 of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. The reform effectively abolished serfdom throughout the Russian Empire.
In tsarist Russia, the term serf meant an unfree peasant 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, serfdom was abolished only by Alexander II's emancipation reform of 1861; nevertheless, in times past, the state allowed peasants to sue for release from serfdom under certain conditions, and also took measures against abuses of landlord power.
A kholop was a type of feudal serf in Kievan Rus' in the 9th and early 12th centuries. Their legal status in Russia was essentially the same as slaves. They were sold as any other property of their master until the emancipation reform of 1861. The term kholop was excluded from official use in 1724, but it remains in vernacular use as a type of insult.
Kurbash, also known as Kourbash or Kurbaj, is a whip or strap about a yard in length, made of the hide of the hippopotamus or rhinoceros. It is an instrument of punishment and torture that was used in the Ottoman Empire, most especially in Egypt. It was a tool widely employed by officials for various purposes of the state, including the obtaining of confessions from criminals, the collection of taxes, and the enforcement upon the population of the form of servitude known as corvée labor.
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.
The Mahtra War was a peasant insurgency at Mahtra Manor in Estonia in the Russian Empire from May to July 1858.
The Volok Reform was a 16th-century land reform in parts of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The reform was started by Grand Duchess Bona Sforza in her possessions to increase the revenues of the state treasury but soon was expanded statewide and was copied by other nobles and the Church. The reform increased effectiveness of agriculture by establishing a strict three-field system for crop rotation. The land was measured, registered in a cadastre, and divided into voloks. Volok became the measurement of feudal services. The reform was a success in terms of the annual state revenue that quadrupled from 20,000 to 82,000 kopas of Lithuanian groschens. In social terms, the reform and the accompanying Third Statute of Lithuania (1588), promoted development of manorialism and fully established serfdom in Lithuania which existed until the emancipation reform of 1861. The nobility was clearly separated from the peasants which severely limited social mobility.
Serfdom in Poland was a legal and economic system that bound the peasant population to hereditary plots of land owned by the szlachta, or Polish nobility. Emerging from the 12th century, this system became firmly established by the 16th century, significantly shaping the social, economic, and political landscape of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Serfdom has a long history that dates to ancient times.
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 peasants were considered personally free, although their freedom of movement was restricted.
Events from the year 1797 in Russia
In Russia, from the second half of the 19th to the early 20th century limited means of payment got rather widespread among private individuals - owners of commercial firms, shop owners, owners of profitable outlets at clubs. Sometimes the use of surrogate money resulted in a temporary shortage of state paper bills of small denominations and small coins in some region of the country. But most often the initiators of such unofficial emissions were the desire to get a more concrete economic benefit, for example, when bons that were paid instead of usual wage went then to purchase goods in a trade points organized by the same entrepreneurs.
The economy of the Russian Empire covers the economic history of Russia from 1721 to the October Revolution of 1917.
