The position of the serf peasantry. The peasant question under Catherine the Great Catherine 2 nobles and serfs

2.4 Serfdom and the monarchy of Catherine II

The reign of Catherine the Great is called the period of “enlightened absolutism,” however, there could not be complete freedom of economic life as long as serfdom was preserved. Catherine's legislation was faced with the task of proclaiming the general principles that were to form the basis of their land relations, and in accordance with these principles, indicating the exact boundaries to which the power of the landowner over the peasants extends and from which the power of the state begins. The determination of these boundaries apparently occupied the empress at the beginning of her reign. In the commission of 1767, bold claims were heard from some sides for serfdom of peasant labor: classes that did not have it, for example, merchants, Cossacks, and even clergy, demanded the expansion of serfdom. These slaveholding claims irritated the empress. It can be assumed that liberation, the complete abolition of serfdom was not yet within the power of the government, but it was possible to introduce into the minds and legislation the idea of mutually harmless norms of relations and, without abolishing rights, to restrain arbitrariness.

The activities of VEO contributed to the introduction of new crops, new types of agriculture, and the development of economic relations. Catherine II also thought about the liberation of peasants from serfdom. But the abolition of serfdom did not take place. The “Nakaz” talks about how landowners should treat peasants: not burden them with taxes, levy taxes that do not force peasants to leave their homes, and so on. At the same time, she spread the idea that for the good of the state, peasants should be given freedom.

The internal contradictions of Catherine's reign were fully reflected in the policy of Catherine II on the peasant issue. On the one hand, in 1766 she anonymously set before the VEO a competitive task on the advisability of providing landowner peasants with the right to movable and land ownership.

But on the other hand, it was under Catherine II that the nobility achieved almost unlimited powers over the peasants belonging to them. In 1763, it was established that serfs who decided “to engage in many willfulness and insolence” must “beyond the punishment due to their guilt” pay all the costs associated with sending military teams to pacify them.

In general, Catherine's legislation on the scope of landowner power over serfs was directed in favor of landowners. By the law of 1765, Catherine introduced the right to exile serfs to hard labor without any restrictions for any time, with the return of the exiled person to the previous owner at will.

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The reign of Catherine the Great is called the period of Enlightened absolutism, because. at this time, Russia as a whole continued to develop along the paths laid by Peter the Great.

However, complete freedom of economic life could not exist as long as serfdom remained. Now it is easy to understand what task faced Catherine’s legislation in establishing relations between landowners and the serfs: this task was to fill the gaps allowed in the legislation on land relations of both sides. Catherine had to proclaim the general principles that were to form the basis of their land relations, and, in accordance with these principles, indicate the exact boundaries to which the power of the landowner over the peasants extended and from which the power of the state began. The determination of these boundaries apparently occupied the empress at the beginning of her reign. In the commission of 1767, bold claims were heard from some sides for serfdom of peasant labor: classes that did not have it, for example, merchants, Cossacks, even clergy, demanded the expansion of serfdom, to their shame. These slaveholding claims irritated the empress, and this irritation was expressed in one short note that has come down to us from that time. This note reads: “If a serf cannot be recognized as a person, therefore, he is not a person; then, if you please, recognize him as a beast, which will be attributed to us from the whole world to considerable glory and philanthropy.” But this irritation remained a fleeting pathological flash of a humane ruler. People close and influential, familiar with the state of affairs, also advised her to intervene in the relations of the peasants with the landowners. It can be assumed that liberation, the complete abolition of serfdom was not yet within the power of the government, but it was possible to introduce into the minds and legislation the idea of mutually harmless norms of relations and, without abolishing rights, to restrain arbitrariness.

To resolve this issue, as well as for the purpose of rational organization of agricultural production, the Free Economic Society was created (1765). One of the oldest in the world and the first economic society in Russia (free - formally independent from government departments) was established in St. Petersburg by large landowners who, in the conditions of the growth of the market and commercial agriculture, sought to rationalize agriculture and increase the productivity of serf labor. The founding of the VEO was one of the manifestations of the policy of enlightened absolutism. VEO began its activities by announcing competitive tasks, publishing “Proceedings of VEO” (1766-1915, more than 280 volumes) and appendices to them. The first competition was announced on the initiative of the Empress herself in 1766: “What is the property of a farmer (peasant), whether it is his land that he cultivates or movable property, and what right should he have to both for the benefit of the whole people?” Of the 160 responses from Russian and foreign authors, the most progressive was the essay by legal scholar A.Ya. Polenov, who criticized serfdom. The answer displeased the VEO competition committee and was not published. Until 1861, 243 competitive problems of a socio-economic and scientific-economic nature were announced. Socio-economic issues concerned three problems: 1) land ownership and serfdom, 2) the comparative profitability of corvee and quitrent, 3) the use of hired labor in agriculture.

The activities of VEO contributed to the introduction of new agricultural crops, new types of agriculture, and the development of economic relations. Catherine II also thought about the liberation of peasants from serfdom. But the abolition of serfdom did not take place. The “Nakaz” talks about how landowners should treat peasants: not burden them with taxes, levy taxes that do not force peasants to leave their homes, and so on. At the same time, she spread the idea that for the good of the state, peasants should be given freedom.

The internal contradictions of Catherine's reign were fully reflected in the policy of Catherine II on the peasant issue. On the one hand, in 1766, she anonymously set before the Free Economic Society a competitive task on the advisability of providing landowner peasants with the right to movable and landed property and even awarded the first prize to the Frenchman Lebey, who argued: “The power of the state is based on the freedom and welfare of the peasants, but the endowment their land should follow liberation from serfdom."

In general, Catherine’s legislation on the scope of landowner power over serfs is characterized by the same uncertainty and incompleteness as the legislation of her predecessors. In general, it was directed in favor of landowners. In the interests of settling Siberia, by the law of 1760, Elizabeth granted landowners the right “for insolent acts” to exile healthy serfs to Siberia for settlement without the right of return; By the law of 1765, Catherine turned this limited right of exile to a settlement into the right to exile serfs to hard labor without any restrictions for any time with the return of the exiled person at will to the previous owner. Further, in the 17th century. the government accepted petitions against landowners for their cruel treatment, carried out investigations on these complaints and punished the perpetrators. During the reign of Peter, a number of decrees were issued prohibiting people of all conditions from making requests to the highest name outside of government agencies; these decrees were confirmed by Peter's successors. However, the government continued to accept peasant complaints against landowners from rural societies. These complaints greatly embarrass the Senate; at the beginning of Catherine's reign, he proposed measures to Catherine to completely stop peasant complaints against the landowners. Once Catherine, at a meeting of the Senate in 1767, complained that while traveling to Kazan, she received up to 600 petitions - “mostly everything, including a few weekly ones, from the landowner peasants in large fees from the landowners.” Prince Vyazemsky, the Prosecutor General of the Senate, expressed concern in a special note: lest the “displeasure” of the peasants against the landowners “multiply and produce harmful consequences.” Soon the Senate forbade peasants from complaining about the landowners in the future. Catherine approved this report and on August 22, 1767, at the same time that the deputies of the Commissions were listening to the articles of the “Nakaz” on freedom and equality, a decree was issued that said that if anyone “is not allowed to petition their landowners, especially to Her Majesty in their own dares to offer his hands,” then both the petitioners and the compilers of the petitions will be punished with a whip and exiled to Nerchinsk for eternal hard labor, with those exiled to the landowners counted as recruits. This decree was ordered to be read on Sundays and holidays in all rural churches for a month. That is, this decree declared any complaint by peasants against their landowners a state crime. Thus, the nobleman became a sovereign judge in his domains, and his actions in relation to the peasants were not controlled by state authorities, courts and administration.

Further, even under Catherine, the boundaries of patrimonial jurisdiction were not precisely defined. The decree of October 18, 1770 stated that the landowner could judge peasants only for those offenses that, according to the law, were not accompanied by the deprivation of all rights of the estate; but the amount of punishment that the landowner could punish for these crimes was not indicated. Taking advantage of this, landowners punished serfs for minor offenses with punishments that were reserved only for the most serious criminal offenses. In 1771, to stop indecent public trading by peasants, a law was passed that prohibited the sale of peasants without land for the debts of landowners at public auction, “under the hammer.” The law remained inactive, and the Senate did not insist on its implementation.

With such a breadth of landowner power, during the reign of Catherine, the trade of serf souls with and without land developed even more than before; prices for them were established - decree, or state, and free, or noble. At the beginning of Catherine’s reign, when entire villages purchased a peasant soul with land, it was usually valued at 30 rubles; with the establishment of a loan bank in 1786, the price of a soul rose to 80 rubles. rubles, although the bank accepted noble estates as collateral only for 40 rubles. for the soul. At the end of Catherine’s reign, it was generally difficult to buy an estate for less than 100 rubles. for the soul. In retail sales, a healthy worker purchased as a recruit was valued at 120 rubles. at the beginning of the reign and 400 rubles. - at the end of it.

Finally, in the charter granted to the nobility in 1785, while listing the personal and property rights of the class, she also did not single out peasants from the total composition of real estate of the nobility, i.e., she tacitly recognized them as an integral part of the landowner's agricultural equipment. Thus, landowner power, having lost its previous political justification, acquired wider legal boundaries under Catherine.

What ways of determining the relations of the serf population were possible during the reign of Catherine? We saw that the serfs were attached to the face of the landowner as eternally obligated state cultivators. The law determined their strength in person, but did not determine their relationship to the land, the work on which paid for the state duties of the peasants. It was possible to develop the relationship of serfs to landowners in three ways: firstly, they could be detached from the face of the landowner, but not attached to the land, therefore, this would be the landless emancipation of the peasants. The liberal nobles of Catherine's time dreamed of such liberation, but such liberation was hardly possible; at least, it would have brought complete chaos into economic relations and, perhaps, would have led to a terrible political catastrophe.

It was possible, on the other hand, by detaching the serfs from the landowner, attaching them to the land, that is, making them independent of the masters, tying them to the land purchased by the treasury. This would have placed the peasants in a position very close to that which was initially created for them on February 19, 1861: it would have turned the peasants into strong state payers of the land. In the 18th century It was hardly possible to accomplish such a liberation coupled with the complex financial transaction of purchasing the land.

Finally, it was possible, without detaching the peasants from the landowners, to attach them to the land, that is, to maintain a certain power of the landowner over the peasants, who were placed in the position of state cultivators attached to the land. This would create a temporary relationship between peasants and landowners; legislation in this case had to determine exactly the land and personal relations of both parties. This method of sorting out relations was the most convenient, and it was precisely this that Polenov and practical people close to Catherine who knew well the state of affairs in the village, such as Pyotr Panin or Sivers, insisted on. Catherine did not choose any of these methods; she simply consolidated the rule of the owners over the peasants as it had developed in the middle of the 18th century, and in some respects even expanded that power.

Thanks to this, serfdom under Catherine II entered the third phase of its development and took on a third form. The first form of this right was the personal dependence of serfs on landowners by contract - until the decree of 1646; Serfdom had this form until the middle of the 17th century. According to the Code and legislation of Peter, this right turned into the hereditary dependence of serfs on landowners by law, conditioned by the compulsory service of landowners. Under Catherine, serfdom received a third form: it turned into the complete dependence of the serfs, who became the private property of landowners, not conditioned by the latter’s compulsory service, which was removed from the nobility. That is why Catherine can be called the culprit of serfdom not in the sense that she created it, but in the fact that under her this right from a fluctuating fact, justified by the temporary needs of the state, turned into a right recognized by law, not justified by anything.

Under the cover of serfdom in the landowner villages, they developed in the second half of the 18th century. peculiar relationships and orders. Until the 18th century In the landed estates, a mixed, quitrent-corvee system of land exploitation and serf labor dominated. For the plot of land given to them for use, the peasants partly cultivated the land for the landowner, and partly paid him a quitrent.

Thanks to the vague definition of serfdom by law, during the reign of Catherine, the demands of landowners in relation to serf labor expanded; this exactingness was expressed in the gradual increase in rent. Due to differences in local conditions, quitrents were extremely diverse. The following quitrents can be considered the most normal: 2 rubles. - in the 60s, 3 rubles. - in the 70s, 4 r. - in the 80s and 5 r. - in the 90s from every revision soul. The most common land allotment at the end of Catherine's reign was 6 acres of arable land in three fields for taxation; a tax was an adult worker with a wife and young children who could not yet live on a separate household.

As for corvée, according to information collected at the beginning of the reign of Catherine II, it turned out that in many provinces peasants gave half of their working time to the landowners; However, in good weather, the peasants were forced to work for the landowner all week long, so that the peasants were able to work for themselves only after the end of the lord's harvest season. In many places, landowners demanded four or even five days of work from peasants. Observers generally found work in Russian serf villages for a landowner more difficult compared to peasant work in neighboring countries of Western Europe. Pyotr Panin, a liberal man to a very moderate extent, wrote that “the lord’s exactions and corvée labor in Russia not only surpass the examples of the closest foreign residents, but often come out of human tolerability.” This means, taking advantage of the absence of a precise law that would determine the extent of compulsory peasant labor for the landowner, some landowners completely dispossessed their peasants and turned their villages into slave-holding plantations, which are difficult to distinguish from North American plantations before the emancipation of blacks.

Serfdom had a bad impact on the national economy in general. Here it delayed the natural geographical distribution agricultural labor. According to our circumstances external history For a long time, the agricultural population was concentrated with particular force in the central regions, on less fertile soil, driven by external enemies from the southern Russian black soil. Thus, National economy for centuries it suffered from a discrepancy between the density of the agricultural population and the quality of the soil. Since the southern Russian black soil regions were acquired, two or three generations would have been enough to eliminate this discrepancy if peasant labor had been allowed free movement. But serfdom delayed this natural distribution of peasant labor across the plain. According to the audit of 1858 - 1859, in the non-chernozem Kaluga province, serfs made up 62% of its total population; in even less fertile. Smolenskaya - 69, and in the black earth Kharkov province - only 30, in the same black earth Voronezh province - only 27%. Such were the obstacles encountered in serfdom by agricultural labor during its placement.

Further, serfdom delayed the growth of the Russian city and the success of urban crafts and industry. The urban population developed very slowly after Peter; it constituted less than 3% of the total tax-paying population of the state; at the beginning of Catherine’s reign, according to the III revision, it was only 3%, therefore, its growth over almost half a century is barely noticeable. Catherine worked a lot about the development of what was then called the “middle class of people” - the urban, craft and trading class. According to her economic textbooks, this middle class was the main conductor of people's welfare and enlightenment. Not noticing the ready-made elements of this class that existed in the country, Catherine came up with all sorts of new elements from which this class could be built; It was also planned to include the entire population of educational homes. The main reason for this slow growth of the urban population was serfdom. It affected urban crafts and industry in two ways.

Every wealthy landowner tried to acquire yard craftsmen in the village, starting with a blacksmith and ending with a musician, painter and even an actor. Thus, serf courtyard artisans acted as dangerous competitors to urban artisans and industrialists. The landowner tried to satisfy his basic needs with home remedies, and with more refined needs he turned to foreign stores. Thus, native urban artisans and traders lost their most profitable consumers and customers in the person of landowners. On the other hand, the ever-increasing power of the landowner over the property of the serfs increasingly constrained the latter in disposing of their earnings; peasants bought and ordered less and less in the cities. This deprived city labor of cheap but numerous customers and consumers. Contemporaries saw serfdom as main reason slow development of Russian urban industry. The Russian ambassador in Paris, Prince Dmitry Golitsyn, wrote in 1766 that internal trade in Russia will not achieve prosperity “if we do not introduce the right of ownership of peasants to their movable property.”

Finally, serfdom had an overwhelming effect on the state economy. This can be seen from the published financial statements of Catherine’s reign; they reveal interesting facts. The poll tax under Catherine was slower than the quitrent, because it also fell on the landowner peasants, and they could not be burdened with government taxes in the same way as the state peasants, because the surplus of their earnings, which could be used to pay for the elevated poll tax, went to the benefit of the landowners, the savings of the serf the peasant was taken over from the state by the landowner. How much the treasury lost from this can be judged by the fact that under Catherine the serf population made up almost half of the entire population of the empire and more than half of the entire tax-paying population.

Thus, serfdom, having dried up the sources of income that the treasury received through direct taxes, forced the treasury to turn to such indirect means that either weakened the country’s productive forces or placed a heavy burden on future generations.

Let us summarize the situation of the peasants during the reign of Catherine II. Despite the desire to give the serfs freedom in the first stages of her reign, the empress was forced to follow the lead of the landowners, and serfdom only became stricter.

The landowners bought and sold their peasants, transferred them from one estate to another, exchanged them for greyhound puppies and horses, gave them as gifts, and lost at cards. They forcibly married and gave away peasants, broke up the families of peasants, separating parents and children, wives and husbands. The infamous Saltychikha, who tortured more than 100 of her serfs, the Shenshins and others became known throughout the country.

The landowners, by hook or by crook, increased their income from the peasants. For the 18th century peasants' duties in their favor increased 12 times, while in favor of the treasury - only one and a half times.

All this could not but affect the mood of the masses and naturally led to the peasant war led by Emelyan Pugachev.

With the enthronement of Catherine II, the time of “Palace coups” ended. The domestic policy of Catherine II boiled down to strengthening absolutism and supporting the nobility - the social support of power.

The reign of Catherine II can be divided into two periods:

1. Before the peasant war E.I. Pugacheva.

2. After the peasant war E.I. Pugacheva.

The first period is characterized by the policy of “enlightened absolutism”:

– concern for the welfare of subjects;

– governing the country according to the laws of a fair monarch in accordance with the ideals of the European Enlightenment;

– strengthening of centralized autocratic power;

– encouragement of industrial and commercial activities.

The beginning of the reforms of Catherine II

In 1763, according to the project of N.I. Panin's Senate was divided into 6 departments, each of which had a specific area of activity. Thus, the power of the Senate was reduced and its work was normalized.

In 1763–1764 A monastic reform was carried out - church lands were secularized (church land ownership was turned into state, secular property). This replenished the treasury and stopped the unrest of the monastic peasants, who had now become part of the state.

In 1764, the hetmanate in Ukraine was destroyed - Ukraine finally lost its autonomy.

In 1767 the Statutory Commission was created. Elections to the commission of representatives from the nobility, townspeople, service people, and state peasants.

The purpose of creating the commission:

– drawing up a new code of laws;

– finding out the mood in society.

For the deputies of the Legislative Commission, Catherine compiled “Instructions” - a compilation instruction from the works of French enlighteners. Catherine II intended to alleviate the situation of the peasants, but her intentions met resistance from the nobility.

The activities of the commission turned out to be ineffective; the deputies were mired in narrow-class demands and were not up to the task assigned to them. Under the pretext of the outbreak of war with Turkey in December 1768, the commission was dissolved.

Provincial reform

In 1775, Catherine II carried out provincial reform.

The purpose of the reform: strengthening local government power and strengthening the position of the nobility.

The essence of the reform:

– Russia is divided into provinces, the number of provinces increased from 23 to 50, the provinces are divided into districts;

– a division was made between administrative (governor and provincial government), financial (treasury chamber) and judicial matters, an estate court was introduced, and the Senate became the highest judicial body of the empire;

– the number of cities has increased significantly (all provincial and district centers), a system of local self-government is being formed, in which the priority of the noble class is consolidated;

- collegiums were abolished (with the exception of foreign, military and admiralty), their functions were transferred to local provincial bodies, an order of public charity was created (in charge of schools, shelters, hospitals and almshouses).

Serfdom in the era of Catherine II

Serfdom under Catherine reached its peak, and the crisis of the corvee-serf economy began:

- the situation of the peasants worsened, in a number of cases the peasants were transferred for a month (the peasant was deprived of his land allotment and worked all week on the landowner’s land in exchange for receiving a month’s supply of food from the master;

- a decree was issued allowing peasants to be sent to hard labor;

– peasants were not allowed to file complaints against landowners in the highest name;

– distribution of state peasants to landowners was widely practiced;

– there is a stratification of the village into rich and poor, the ruin of a mass of peasant farms;

– in 1775 the Zaporozhye Sich was liquidated, the Cossacks were deprived of their liberties, and in 1783 serfdom was introduced in Ukraine.

Charters granted to the nobility and cities - 1785

The rights and privileges of the nobility were finally enshrined in the “Charter of Grant to the Nobility”:

– freedom from corporal punishment, capitation tax, compulsory service;

- deprivation of nobility only by court of nobles for a limited range of crimes, and the estates of convicted nobles are not subject to confiscation;

– monopoly right to own serfs;

- the nobility received class self-government (provincial and district noble assemblies and elected leaders of the nobility).

Simultaneously with the “Charter of Grant to the Nobility,” the “Charter of Grant to the Cities” was promulgated:

– creation of a city society functionally similar to a noble assembly, election of a city duma and mayor;

- deprivation of property and the title of tradesman only by court for a limited range of crimes, exemption of eminent citizens and merchants of the first two guilds from poll tax, conscription, and corporal punishment;

– creation of a single “third estate” from various groups of urban inhabitants.

Along with the grants of letters to the nobility and cities, the project “Granted letters to the peasantry” was created - the creation of a full-fledged class of state peasants. But due to the opposition of the nobility to the peasantry, it was not made public.

Economic development of Russia

– Russia remained an agrarian country, in pursuit of profit, landowners increased corvée and quitrents, grain trade expanded, and the stratification of the peasantry intensified;

– small-scale production continues to actively develop, exchange between city and countryside has become wider;

– in 1765, the Free Economic Society was created to disseminate scientific knowledge, including in agronomy;

– the role of manufacturing increased, iron smelting increased, linen and cloth factories successfully developed, the use of civilian labor in industry increased (mainly due to peasant otkhodniks earning their dues);

– farming and monopolies were abolished;

– the specialization of regions increased, fairs gained momentum, the all-Russian market strengthened and expanded;

– foreign trade expanded; Agricultural raw materials (grain, flax, hemp) were exported; wool and cotton fabrics, metals, and luxury goods were imported;

- from 1769, paper money began to be printed in Russia - banknotes (by the end of Catherine’s reign, the ruble exchange rate for banknotes fell to 70 kopecks in silver);

– capitalist relations were emerging in Russia.

The Peasant War led by E. Pugachev (1773 - 1775).

The consistent strengthening of serfdom caused an intensification of the class struggle. Its highest expression was the peasant war led by Emelyan Pugachev (1773–1775).

Causes of the war

– further enslavement of peasants;

- deprivation of the Cossacks of their former liberties;

– deterioration of the situation of mining workers of the Urals, peoples of the Volga and Urals regions;

– strengthening of the absolutist-feudal state in Russia. The uprising began in the eastern regions of the country, where the contradictions were especially tense.

The composition of the movement was heterogeneous

– peasants;

– working people;

- Cossack poor;

– local non-Russian peoples.

The territory covered by the uprising was huge:

– West: Voronezh, Tambov;

– East: Tyumen;

– south: Caspian;

– north: Nizhny Novgorod, Perm.

Progress of the uprising

- in May 1773, Don Cossack E.I. Pugachev, a native of the village of Zimoveyskaya on the Don, escaped from the Kazan prison;

- Appearing near the Yaitsky town, he declared himself Emperor Peter III;

- in September, the rebels took the Tatishchev fortress and a number of other towns;

- Orenburg was besieged, but it was not possible to take it;

– the uprising spread over a vast territory;

– at the beginning of 1774, a turning point began in favor of government troops;

- in the battle for the Tatishchev fortress, the best part of Pugachev’s army was destroyed;

- the rebel army was defeated near Ufa;

- in the mining areas of the Urals, Pugachev creates a new army;

– in May 1774 the Magnetic Fortress was taken;

- having been defeated, Pugachev retreated to the Volga provinces;

– in the summer of 1774 the uprising reached its greatest extent;

– the rebels occupy the cities of Saransk, Penza, Saratov and others;

- near Tsaritsyn the rebels are defeated;

- Cossack elders hand over Pugachev to the tsarist troops;

Causes of defeat

– spontaneity;

– fragmentation of forces;

– disorganization;

– the strength of government forces;

– lack of military training;

– national hatred;

- monarchical illusions.

Features of the uprising

– covered vast territories;

– the anti-feudal movement echoed the national one;

– there were means of command and control;

– there was a program: the destruction of serfdom and the nobility;

- The peasant war did not bring relief to the peasants.

Foreign policy of Catherine II.

The greatest successes during the reign of Catherine II were achieved in foreign policy, which she pursued most energetically.

Main directions of foreign policy

In the second half of the 18th century. The Russian government was solving two of the most important problems for its foreign policy:

1. Secure the southern borders and reach the shores of the Black Sea.

2. Continue the reunification of Ukrainian and Belarusian lands. Count N.I. was at the origins of Catherine’s foreign policy. Panin. In an effort to counteract the hostile policies of France, he organized a union of Northern European states - the so-called. "Northern Accord": Russia, Prussia, Denmark, England with the assistance of Poland and Sweden.

Russo-Turkish War 1768–1774

In 1768, Türkiye, pushed by France, declared war on Russia.

Progress of hostilities:

- fighting took place on the Danube, in Crimea, in Transcaucasia;

- in the summer of 1770, the Russian army under the command of P.A. Rumyantseva defeated the Turks at Larga and Kagul;

– in 1770, Russian troops captured Crimea;

- in June 1770, the Russian fleet under the command of P.A. Spiridov in the Chesme Bay of the island of Chios destroyed the Turkish squadron;

- Russian corps under the command of A.V. Suvorov inflicted a number of defeats on the Turkish troops.

In 1774, the Kuchuk-Kainardzhi Peace Treaty was concluded with Turkey. Russia received the Black Sea coast between the Bug and the Dniester, part of the Kuban and Azov lands, Kabarda, the fortresses of Kerch and Yenikale. Crimean and Kuban Tatars became independent from Turkey.

Foreign policy between the Turkish wars

After the Russian-Turkish War of 1768–1774. and the events that took place in Poland, there is a cooling of Russia’s relations with England and Prussia due to the excessive, in their opinion, strengthening of Russia. Russia rejected England’s request to provide troops to wage war against the North American colonies; moreover, in 1780 it published the Declaration of Armed Neutrality (the right of neutral countries to import their goods into warring countries and defend this right with weapons), which supported the North American colonies fighting for independence and which was an unfriendly act towards England fighting in North America.

In 1780, Catherine II met with the Austrian Emperor Joseph, and a defensive alliance was concluded.

Instead of N.I. Panin, A.A. becomes head of the foreign policy department. Bezborodko, Catherine’s favorite G.A. is beginning to play a major role in foreign policy. Potemkin. The so-called "Greek project": restoration of the Greek (Byzantine) empire with the grandson of Catherine II Konstantin Pavlovich on the throne.

In 1783, the Treaty of Georgievsk was concluded with Georgia (a protectorate of Russia) and Crimea was annexed to Russia. In 1787, the famous journey of Catherine II to New Russia and Crimea took place. All this led to a new Russian-Turkish war.

Russo-Turkish War 1787–1791

In 1787, Turkey demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia, leaving Crimea and stopping interference in the affairs of Moldova. Russia rejected the Turkish ultimatum and a new Russian-Turkish war began.

Progress of hostilities:

– in 1788, Russian troops captured the Turkish fortress of Ochakov;

- in 1789 troops under the command of A.V. Suvorov defeated the Turks at Focsani and Rymnik;

- in 1790, Suvorov’s troops took the strongest fortress of Izmail;

- Black Sea Fleet under the command of F.F. Ushakova inflicted several crushing defeats on the Turkish fleet (Fidonisi, Tenor, Kalikria).

In 1791, a peace treaty was concluded in Iasi: Russia received the Black Sea coast from the Southern Bug to the Dniester, Turkey recognized the annexation of Crimea to Russia and Russian protectorate over Georgia.

Partitions of Poland

In 1763, the Polish king Augustus III died, and the protege of Russia and Prussia, Stanislav Poniatowski, was elevated to the throne.

In 1772, trying to destroy the Austro-Turkish alliance, Russia went for a partial division of Polish lands (1 partition): Austria received Galicia, Prussia received Pomerania and part of Greater Poland, Russia received Eastern Belarus and the Polish part of Livonia.

In 1791, a new constitution was adopted in Poland. In response, Russian and Prussian troops were sent to Poland, the constitution, which strengthened Polish independence, was abolished and in 1793 the 2nd division of Poland took place: Prussia received Gdansk, Torun and the rest of Greater Poland with Poznan, Russia received Central Belarus and Right-Bank Ukraine.

The second partition of Poland led to an uprising led by Tadeusz Kościuszko. The defeat of the uprising led to the 3rd partition of Poland, which occurred in 1795: Austria received Lesser Poland with Lublin, Russia received Lithuania, Western Belarus and the Volyn lands, as well as Courland, the remaining Polish lands with Warsaw went to Prussia. Stanislaw Poniatowski renounced the Polish crown and left for Russia. The Polish state ceased to exist.

Relations with revolutionary France

Catherine II greeted the beginning of the revolution in France calmly, even with some gloating. But as events unfolded, the empress's attitude began to change. After the execution of Louis XVI, Russia broke off all relations with revolutionary France, but did not enter into anti-French coalitions during the life of Catherine II.

During the reign of Catherine II, Russia achieved significant foreign policy successes: it gained access to the Black Sea and significantly expanded its territory, but it was during this period that Russian foreign policy finally acquired an imperial character.

Catherine II's policy last years reign

In the last years of her reign, Catherine, under the influence of the events of the French Revolution, refused to carry out reforms and toughened her attitude towards freethinkers: the publisher and educator N.I. would be subject to repression. Novikov and the author of the book “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” A.N. Radishchev. The creation of a civil society in Russia in accordance with the ideals of enlightenment was postponed.

Results of the reign of Catherine II

– imperial events in foreign and domestic policy;

– strengthening absolutism by reforming government institutions and the new administrative structure of the state, protecting the monarchy from any attacks;

– socio-economic measures for the further “Europeanization” of the country and the final formation and strengthening of the nobility;

– liberal enlightenment initiatives, care for education, literature and the arts;

– the unpreparedness of Russian society not only for the abolition of serfdom, but even for more moderate reforms.

Domestic and foreign policy of Paul I.

Domestic policy of Paul I

In 1796, Catherine II died, and her son Paul, who hated his mother for so long (34 years) did not allow him to reign, ascended the throne. As a result of the conflict with his mother and the events of the Great French Revolution, Paul became completely disillusioned with the ideals of the Enlightenment. Having gained power, he began to inculcate the ideals of the knightly era, considered it the duty of his subjects to unquestioningly obey the monarch and attached special importance to issues of knightly honor and ethics. "Counter-reforms" of Paul I:

- in 1797, Paul issued the “Institution on the Imperial Family,” according to which the decree on succession to the throne was canceled. The decree approved the continuity of power in the ruling dynasty through the male descendant line. This position determined the rejection of the previous practice of imperial councils and the tsar’s desire for maximum centralization of power;

- The collegial system of organizing the central apparatus was replaced by a ministerial system based on unity of command and control from above. This meant the loss of the Senate's role. Paul developed a plan for the establishment of seven ministries - justice, finance, military, maritime, foreign affairs, commerce and the state treasury, but it was fully implemented after his death;

- provincial reform was carried out. The 40 provinces that existed under Catherine were transformed into 41, and the region of the Don Army appeared. At the same time, the administration of 11 outlying provinces was built taking into account national traditions and local characteristics;

- the restructuring of the state system, combined with the bureaucratization of management, entailed the infringement of noble self-government. Administrative and police functions were removed from the jurisdiction of noble assemblies, and in 1799 provincial noble assemblies were abolished altogether;

– in 1798 the upper zemstvo courts were abolished. The decree of August 23, 1800 annulled the right of noble societies to elect assessors to judicial bodies - the participation of elected representatives of the nobility in legal proceedings was limited to the lower zemstvo court;

– Paul’s social policy testified to his ability to flexible maneuver and adapt to the needs of the time, without affecting the very foundations of the feudal-absolutist state. It combined attempts to partially loosen the fetters that were crushing the peasantry and efforts to keep the peasant masses in obedience, ensuring the greatest return from them to landowners and the state. Thus, on April 5, 1797, the Manifesto on the three-day corvee was promulgated, which ordered landowners to use the corvée labor of peasants no more than three times a week. However, the wishes were of a recommendatory nature, and in practice, rarely did any of the landowners comply with the tsar’s “recommendation”;

- the relationship between landowners and peasants was regulated: a ban on selling servants and peasants without land, a ban on selling people at auction in 1798, a ban on splitting up peasant families during sales, replacing the invoice grain tax levied on peasants with a moderate monetary tax, the order to take an oath on allegiance to the sovereign from the owning peasants;

- contradictory trends were emerging - the unprecedented distribution of 600 thousand souls of state peasants into private ownership in less than five years (Catherine II distributed 800 thousand peasants in 34 years), the harsh suppression of peasant complaints against the masters. This was essentially a logical continuation of the serfdom policy of Catherine II;

- fighting the influence of the French Revolution, Paul introduced severe censorship and banned all private printing houses;

– in relation to the nobility, Paul’s policies also faced contradictory trends. On the one hand, the tsar’s concern for strengthening the economic position of the nobility, which was expressed in material power through the credit and banking system, and the creation of a regime of maximum favorability for the nobility in the service (decrees of 1797 and 1798). Another tendency manifested itself in the limitation of class self-government and its absorption by the bureaucratic apparatus;

– the most unacceptable for the nobility were the transformations of Paul I in the army. An ardent admirer of the Prussian military doctrine of Frederick II, three weeks after his accession he issued new infantry and equestrian regulations, restored corporal punishment for officers in the army, and the basic principles of strategy and tactics of Russian military art were forgotten. But at the same time: the end of the “golden age” of robber quartermasters, the equalization of soldiers and officers in service duties and punishments, the establishment of a military orphanage and soldiers’ schools, upon completion of service the soldier receives a plot of land and money.

Pavel was characterized by minute regulation of the duties and private lives of his subjects; police surveillance, censorship of letters, and a ban on the import of foreign books into Russia were introduced. The emperor's policies were contradictory and inconsistent. No one could be sure of the future.

Foreign policy of Paul I

In 1798, Russia joined the anti-French coalition along with England, Austria, Turkey and the Kingdom of Naples. The goal of the coalition was to expel the French from Italy.

Course of events

- in the fall of 1798, a Russian-Turkish squadron under the command of F.F. Ushakova headed to the Mediterranean Sea and in 1799 expelled the French from the Ionian Islands;

– in the spring and summer of 1799, the Russian-Austrian army under the command of A.V. Suvorova defeated the French at Adda, on the Trebbia River and at Novi - all of Northern Italy was cleared of French troops;

- Suvorov’s troops were sent to Switzerland to join the corps of A.M. Rimsky-Korsakov, in September 1799, Russian troops crossed the Alps (Swiss campaign) and, finding themselves surrounded, without help from the Austrians, won a number of more victories, Suvorov was awarded the title of generalissimo;

– Paul I regarded the behavior of the English and Austrian allies as betrayal, recalled Suvorov’s army to Russia and broke the alliance with England and Austria;

- a Russian-French alliance was concluded, preparations began for a joint campaign in India.

The alliance with Napoleonic France and the severance of relations with England were extremely unpopular in Russia: the nobility saw Napoleon as the successor of the French Revolution, and England was the main trading partner and buyer of Russian grain. A sharp turn in foreign policy was one of the reasons for organizing the conspiracy and overthrow of Paul I.

Conspiracy and murder of Paul I

The beginning of the conspiracy is the creation and dissemination of myths about Paul’s madness, undermining the authority of the emperor. The organizer of the conspiracy is St. Petersburg Governor General P.A. Palen, the passive complicity of the heir to the Emperor, Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich.

The reason for organizing the conspiracy was the dissatisfaction of the nobility with Paul’s domestic and foreign policies. The successful experience of palace coups in the 18th century played a role.

On the night of March 11-12, 1801, the conspirators (Count P.A. Palen, General L.L. Benningsen, the last favorite of Catherine II P.A. Zubov and his brothers, guards officers) broke into the emperor’s chambers in the Mikhailovsky Castle, where and killed Paul I. The reign of Alexander I began.

A.S. Lappo-Danilevsky

Catherine II and the peasant question

Artist I.-B. Lumpy

<…>Upon ascending the throne, Ekaterina Alekseevna was aware that “natural law commands her to take care of the well-being of all people”; she sought to set herself a “common goal” - “the happiness of her subjects”; she was interested in both the historical destinies of the Russian people and their current state; she could not be indifferent to the plight of the lower strata of the population, the vague expectations of which were revealed at least in the peasant unrest that occurred at that time in different districts.

During the reign of Catherine II, the peasant question, that is, strictly speaking, the question of how to relate to the serfdom of a person from a person, indeed, received much greater importance: the criteria for its assessment began to become clear; at the same time, the right of the nobles to own serfs, concentrated almost exclusively in their hands, was no longer conditioned by their compulsory service, and serfdom began to increasingly acquire a private law character; Taking it into account, the empress herself raised the peasant question and submitted it to public discussion in Russian society.

When posing the peasant question, Empress Catherine II had, of course, to clarify for herself the points of view from which it was subject to discussion. It cannot be said, however, that the empress adhered to completely homogeneous principles in her views and in legislative policy: when discussing the peasant question in theory, she discovered, especially at first, some inclination to take into account the general principles of justice and law, but in her legislation she was guided by and such political considerations that were far from favorable to its final resolution; increasingly taking them into account, she ended up, under the influence of reaction, taking the question of serfdom off the table and even promoting its further development.

From the point of view of abstract religious, moral and natural legal principles, Ekaterina Alekseevna discussed freedom and slavery in the notes that she made for herself before her accession to the throne; in the spirit of the liberal ideas of her time, she, like Montesquieu, wrote, for example, that all people are born free and that “it is contrary to Christian faith and justice to make them slaves.” In general, adhering to views of this kind, the empress had to come to the idea of peasant freedom and to deny the human right to dispose of a person almost in the same way as “cattle”. A serf, in her opinion, is the same person as his master: “if a serf cannot be recognized as a person, therefore, he is not a person, but if you please recognize him as a beast, that will be attributed to us from the whole world to considerable glory and philanthropy. Everything that follows about the slave is a consequence of this godly position and was done entirely for the cattle and by the cattle.” So, the serf is not only a person, but also a “person”: he must be a person endowed with rights: “natural freedom”, even among peasants, should be subject to the least possible restrictions. However, the compiler of the Order could have come to a similar (in the formal sense) conclusion on the basis of the positive legal theory; following Montesquieu, she wrote: “the equality of all citizens consists in everyone being subject to the same laws,” and their freedom in that each of them has the opportunity to do what he “ought to want”; but even from such a point of view, the question of the legality of serfdom arose by itself. His solution, obviously, should have been to liberate the landowner peasants from “enslavement.”

Empress Catherine II herself could hardly, however, dwell on a formulation of the peasant question so radical for her time: in most of the articles of the Order, compiled under the influence of Montesquieu and other writers, as well as in the topic proposed to the Free Economic Society, she speaks out much less decisively .

In the Nakaz project, the empress, it seems, has not yet abandoned the thought of the “will” of the serfs; She began one of his articles with the words: “it can also be established that in freedom ...”, but crossed out what was written, leaving only the article that “laws can establish something useful for the property of slaves”; some of her assumptions, for example, about the establishment in law of conditions limiting entry into serfdom and facilitating its termination, indeed, did not receive further formulation: articles on the prohibition of freedmen from enslaving themselves, on determining in law the amount of ransom for freedom, on the release of the family of a raped woman women, as well as the passage about the establishment of a village court, were not included in the final text; However, it still contained its provisions on avoiding cases of bringing people into captivity; to give peasants freedom to marry; to protect their rights to property; to prescribe by a special law that landowners should set out their exactions with great consideration and take such of them as would be less likely to excommunicate a peasant from his home and family; finally, to avert through the law the “abuse of slavery,” that is, to punish landowners who torture their peasants.

In the formulation that Empress Catherine II considered necessary to give to the peasant issue when discussing it in the Free Economic Society, the idea of emancipating the peasants also did not completely disappear, but was expressed even less clearly, in connection with utilitarian considerations of a state nature; losing sight of the fact that “when someone’s body is subject to another, his property will always be subject to the same,” the patroness of the society, in a letter reported on November 1, 1766, paid special attention to the property rights of the peasants alone; probably influenced by the idea that “agriculture,” so important to the state, cannot flourish where the farmer “has nothing of his own,” and that enslavement kills competition and is therefore unprofitable for the state, she proposed the following topic: “in what The property of the farmer consists: is it in his land, which he cultivates, or in movables, and what right can he have to one or the other for the benefit of the whole people?” Thus, the Empress considered it possible, without prejudging the question of peasant freedom or what right the master has over a serf, to discuss the question of what right a serf has to the land he cultivates and to movables; in the question she posed, moreover, she hardly clearly distinguished between “public benefit” and state interest, which could be understood in a much narrower sense.

This formulation of the peasant question did not foretell its complete resolution, in the sense of the abolition of serfdom, and at best opened up the possibility of taking measures that would only soften the plight of the serfs.

Indeed, under the influence of the political theory she adopted and other circumstances, Empress Catherine II did not dare to dwell on the idea of emancipating the peasants, even gradually - a thought, of course, closely related to the concept of peasant rights: she began to predominantly insist on limiting serfdom alone . In fact, the empress highly valued the theory of the monarchical system, which preached that the nobility should naturally play the role of intermediary power between the supreme power and the people. In accordance with the opinion of “the best writer about the laws,” the empress believed that violation of the prerogatives of the privileged strata of society (les prerogatives des seig neurs, du clerge, de la noblesse et des villes) leads to the establishment of a democratic or despotic state in the country; looking at the nobility as the support of the monarchy, from such a class point of view she would hardly have decided to end his right to own serfs, especially since she herself owed him quite a lot for her accession to the throne. However, recognizing the close connection between the monarch and the nobles, as well as between the nobles and the peasants, the empress willingly referred to other utilitarian-political considerations when discussing the peasant question. In one of her letters to the Prosecutor General, prompted by the Senate’s intention to issue a harsh law against the peasants who killed the landowner, she, for example, points out that people who have no defense “in any laws anywhere”, because of any little thing, can fall into despair, and that “in such cases” one must “be very careful” so as not to speed up an already “pretty threatening disaster”, for “the situation of the landowner peasants is such a critical one that, apart from silence and humane institutions, (their rebellion) cannot be avoided” not allowed"; and “if we do not agree to reduce cruelty and moderate the intolerable situation for the human race, then they will take it against their will, sooner or later.” From this point of view, more political than legal, the empress came to the idea of limiting serfdom, especially since both the highest dignitaries and her associates, Panin, Golitsyn, Sivere and others, at best, proposed mainly private measures of the same kind or half measures.

In fact, not recognizing the possibility of “suddenly making a large number of people freed through general legalization,” the empress began to think mainly not about the gradual implementation of such a reform, but only about limiting serfdom. In the “Inscription” she already spoke in exactly this sense, but at the same time insisted on the most “insensitive” implementation of the proposed improvements: under the influence of Montesquieu, apparently not sympathizing with the confusion of “essential obedience that unites the peasants inseparably with the plot of land given to them ”, with “personal”, she proposed that the commission on state clans find means in order to “ tie the farmers themselves to the land and establish them on it,” mainly those “in which both the owner and the farmer will receive equal profit” and that could “ to make some insensitive, useful correction in the state of the lower kind and to put an end to all sorts of abuses that depress these useful members of society.” However, in one case, Empress Catherine II decided on a measure that actually entailed the liberation of quite a significant number of landowner peasants: in a manifesto dated February 26, 1764, she publicly announced the secularization of church estates. Their selection to the treasury was prepared by a number of previous attempts by the Russian government and was part of the program proposed by Voltaire, which, of course, prompted the empress and gave her the basis, without delay, to begin implementing such a measure, which essentially had a predominantly fiscal and police character. The secularization of spiritual estates, of course, had a beneficial effect on the position of almost a million of the rural population, who began to be equated with state peasants, but it did not introduce anything essentially new into the serf relations that reigned on the rest of the owner's lands.

Empress Catherine II wanted to influence them in a different way, namely by limiting serfdom alone; under the influence of the educational principles of her time, as well as due to political considerations, she sought to weaken it and “put limits” on the power of the landowners regarding their peasants.

In fact, even before the promulgation of the Order, Empress Catherine II tried to implement mainly those of her assumptions about the weakening of “domestic tyranny,” the beginnings of which were subsequently indicated in its printed text. During her travels in the Baltic region, she herself noticed “in what great oppression the Livland peasants live,” and called forth the well-known rules for limiting landowner power, set by the Livland Landtag and published on April 12, 1765; but his rules could only have local significance, and did not have much influence even on the position of the Livonian peasants. From a similar point of view, the question of limiting serfdom was raised in the large commission convened to draft a new code; but the debates of the deputies showed how difficult it was to “put boundaries” to landowner power by legislative means. At the meetings of the large commission, where the owning peasants were deprived of the opportunity to send their deputies, representatives of different strata of society, despite the “cry of serfs,” tried to achieve the right to own serfs; a significant majority of nobles, including people with a certain education, recognized serfdom as a more or less normal phenomenon, consistent with the monarchical form of government and the “disposition of the people,” or did not consider it possible to do without it; they were distrustful of peasant freedom; they pointed out the danger of “instilling in the peasants the mentality of equality” and that only when the lower class is enlightened will it be worthy of freedom, but even in this case they did not know “where to get the land” for which the peasants could get ownership; further, they generally idealized their relationship with the peasants and, in particular, thought that their position was sufficiently secured by the interest that the owners have in maintaining their well-being; Finally, they considered the interference of state power in their relations with serfs to be an offensive violation of their privileges and harmful to the state’s “welfare and peace.”

Under the influence of the mood revealed in the commission, Empress Catherine II should, of course, have felt more strongly the difficulties that lay in the way of implementing her proposed restriction of serfdom; at the same time, the sessions of the large commission were interrupted by the Turkish war, which temporarily diverted the empress’s attention from internal reforms. Under such conditions, she once again changed the formulation of the peasant question: instead of establishing the limits of landowner power, she preferred to narrow the scope of application of serfdom, which could partly also be caused by her desire to form a “third kind of people” (tiers?tat) and, of course, it was much easier to implement in legislation: she tried to primarily reduce the sources of serfdom, but left without significant changes the methods of ending it.

In her Order, Empress Catherine II already stated the rule “except perhaps for extreme state necessity, avoid cases so as not to bring people into captivity”; although she herself did not always observe this rule, for example, when granting populated estates, she still in many cases really tried to enforce it.

From this point of view, the Empress paid special attention, for example, to one of the most dangerous methods of enslavement, namely, the voluntary or forced registration of people during an audit by those who wanted to “take” them and who agreed to be responsible for their payment correctness. The government tried to weaken this kind of principle primarily in relation to those categories of cases that were easier to exclude from the previous note rule. In the project of the orphanage, approved by the highest order in 1763, it was decided that persons of both sexes brought up there, their children and descendants must remain free and cannot be enslaved or strengthened by any particular person under any circumstances; Those brought up in the house were even forbidden to marry serfs. However, the same principles were partly accepted regarding such illegitimate children who did not end up in an orphanage. Already in 1767, regarding the proposal of the Sloboda-Ukrainian provincial chancellery to return to the previous procedure for the registration of illegitimate children for those who will keep them, the Senate ordered that “writing” them in the salary for such persons “wait” henceforth “until the general establishment of that "; in addition, in 1783, it was ordered that illegitimate children born from free mothers be included in state villages, factories and industries upon consideration of the state chambers and at their own request, and in the establishment of rural order on state estates of 1787, illegitimate children not accepted by their mothers were allowed “to education,” to be given to those who wish to accept them, but only for “certain years.” Almost at the same time, a desire to limit the meaning of the note was also revealed regarding young orphans. In the instructions to the suburban governor of 1765, the following rule is found: to give young orphans who do not have food to one of the “local residents” who wishes, but not otherwise than until the age of twenty, and if the teacher teaches the adopted child some skill, then up to thirty years of age. Following this, in 1775, another measure was adopted regarding orphans left without food by their parents: orders of public charity were to take care of them; the above article from the regulation on rural order of 1787 also applied to young orphans deprived of shelter; This means that they were no longer registered in the eternal fortress for their teachers and, after a certain period, could enjoy the rights granted to freedmen, which was explained by one of the later decrees. Similar decrees were made regarding non-local clergy. Already in 1766, it was ordered that the “surplus” remaining for distribution to the churches in the 1754 dispersal and idle churchmen, even those who were included in the salary in the same 1766, should be excluded from the salary, and those fit to be taken into military service, as well as as orderlies, drivers, etc., about the rest who are incapable of any service, and “how many women are with them,” send special statements to the Senate; the decree on the analysis of 1769 no longer contains an order to register homeless clergymen who were not taken as soldiers to the landowners, and after the establishment of the provinces they were willingly accepted for clerical positions, and even later as teachers of public schools, etc. Consequently, the rule about the note has lost its former meaning in relation to the above categories of illegitimate and young orphans, as well as homeless clergy; but such a change could also occur under the influence general principle about the non-recording of freed people, which received a relatively later formulation. However, Empress Catherine II already expressed this rule in 1775, but only in a more specific form, in relation to freedmen. According to one of the unpublished articles of the Order, with the manifesto of March 17, she actually allowed all freedmen “not to register for anyone”; they were given the opportunity to voluntarily choose for themselves either a philistine (as well as a merchant) state or a type of public service; At the same time, it was explained that public places are prohibited from assigning such people to anyone, “despite their sometimes declared own desire.” Finally, in 1783, in a personal decree of October 20, the Empress gave the same rule general meaning: she ordered it to be applied to “free people of different nations” in general, “without excluding clan and law.”

During the revision of 1781–1782, most of the above rules were already taken into account. The government wanted to carry out an audit “with every possible benefit for the people” and instructed the lower zemstvo courts, in case of malfunction and suspicion of concealment, to testify to the tales submitted to them about the population in the districts; examination of the statements compiled by the lower courts was made the responsibility of the state chambers, and in those provinces where the institutions of 1775 had not yet been introduced, the provincial chancelleries. Such supervision somewhat ensured the application of new rules regarding people who were not subject to eternal strengthening, and, perhaps, facilitated the introduction of the subsequent legalizations of 1783–1787.

Almost simultaneously with the weakening of the meaning of the “note,” Empress Catherine II also contributed to the fact that captivity ceased to serve as a source of serfdom, if prisoners of war, no matter what their faith and law were before, accepted Orthodoxy; upon their acceptance of the “Orthodox law,” it was ordered to declare them free people and allow them to choose the kind of life they themselves pleased; however, the above rule received final and general formulation only in a personal decree of November 19, 1781.

During the reign of Empress Catherine II, some methods of communicating serfdom were subject to restrictions: the well-known rule according to which the children of serfs were also recognized as serfs, however, retained its previous meaning; but marriage, as such a method, was subject to quite significant restrictions.

The ancient rule “in robes a slave...”, for example, has lost force in cases where a pupil of an orphanage, contrary to the prohibition, entered into a marriage with a serf, arranged “by some deception” (1763), as well as to pupils of the Academy of Arts or, one must think, and to their descendants (1764); all the people who were released by their landowners with vacation pay, were sent into eternal service to other landowners and married their serfs, but at their request, until the manifesto of 1775, no decision was made and no fortification notes were given for their ownership, they were recognized free with their wives (1780); prisoners of war captured in Poland, but remaining in Russia, after they accepted the Orthodox law with their wives, “even if they were married to someone else’s serfs or girls,” were also ordered to be given freedom (1781). In the above cases, marriage with a serf not only did not impart a serfdom to a free man, but also freed his wife from such a state; however, in some cases this exemption was made somewhat dependent on the payment of withdrawal money to the landowner (laws of 1763 and 1780). It should be noted, however, that the opposite rule: “according to the slave of a slave,” the observance of which some deputies of the large commission insisted on, was subject to only insignificant restrictions: it was deprived of force in relation to pupils released from an orphanage and from a bourgeois school at the Resurrection Monastery; Unlike the pupils of the educational home, brought up in a bourgeois school, in the event of marrying a serf, at least with the consent of the landowner to such a marriage, she could even give her husband a free fortune.

So, we can say that Empress Catherine II somewhat narrowed the methods of establishing and communicating serfdom; but she made almost no change in the means of stopping it; although she was inclined to resolve matters in favor of the will in “doubtful cases,” she refrained from taking drastic measures, perhaps due to the fact that innovations of this kind would have much more affected the interests of the nobility and that the owners at that time were abusing vacation time. will, thus getting rid of the maintenance of their people and peasants, “brought by them on various occasions to absolute powerlessness,” and from paying taxes for them. The methods of ending serfdom at the will of the owners indeed remained almost unchanged: although, for example, duties on the appearance of vacation pay for people released into freedom were abolished, the very release of peasants and the size of the ransom continued to depend on the will of the owner.

The methods for ending serfdom by law also remained without significant changes: while maintaining the previous principles that regulated the way out of it, the government only tried to make better use of some of them. Among usual ways this kind of, for example, entry into military service through conscription, which was very difficult, however, for the population, continued to play a fairly prominent role: peasants who were recruited were supposed to, together with their wives, “be free from the landowners”; but the instruction of the infantry regiment to the colonel of 1764 contains a further conclusion from this rule, namely the decree that children born during the service of their fathers, “like soldiers’ children,” should be “determined by virtue of decrees”; the instructions of the cavalry regiment to the colonel in 1766 formulate the same rule more clearly: such children should be “assigned to schools by virtue of decrees.” In connection with the desire to expand ways of escaping from serfdom, one can perhaps note one of the decrees concerning the provision of freedom in the case of special crimes of the owner, namely the decree of 1763 on the submission of recruiting tales; in essence, it was not an innovation, but without the previous restrictions it represented freedom to ordinary people, who themselves would appear in court and prove that they had been hidden by the landowner. At the same time, the method of ending serfdom, by turning serfs into the disposal of the government, was used somewhat more widely, especially in those cases when the government provided, subject to certain conditions, serfs who had “voluntarily left the fatherland” and those who had run away because of the landowners. , freedom to settle on the outskirts, with their inclusion as recruits, etc. or when it resorted to converting serfs into burghers by purchasing some villages from the owners.

So, we can come to the conclusion that Empress Catherine II stopped at rather modest beginnings regarding serfs: instead of gradually freeing the landowner peasants or limiting serfdom, she mainly somewhat constrained the methods of enslavement, almost without expanding the methods of ending serfdom; Meanwhile, the latter, from a point of view not alien to the empress at the beginning of her reign, seemed most deserving of her attention: she herself, before ascending the throne, dreamed that it would be possible to abolish serfdom, declaring when selling the estate to a new to the owner of the peasants (registered as their previous owner) free; and from later times, news has been preserved of a draft law, by virtue of which all children of serfs born after 1785 were to receive freedom. In reality, however, Empress Catherine II preferred to limit the sources of serfdom rather than expand the means of ending it.

In general, the measures she took were of rather little importance; it was further diminished by the fact that these measures were very poorly implemented.

Thus, Empress Catherine II narrowed the scope of application of serfdom, but left the heterogeneous essence of the serfdom without fundamental changes; contrary to the expectations of the peasants themselves, it even strengthened serfdom and contributed to its further spread.

In fact, Empress Catherine II was not able to bring into a coherent system those contradictory elements that were part of serfdom, thanks to its factual rather than legal development: at that time, the landowner peasant partly continued to remain the subject of rights, but found himself together with the subject and object of rights.

The compiler of the Nakaz herself, of course, valued the “universal feeders” - “farmers” and was aware of the harmful consequences of their “enslavement” for the state; from this point of view, the empress did not want to deprive the landowner of all his rights: according to previous, but now not repealed legalizations, he continued to be recognized in the law as partly a subject of rights. To a certain extent, protecting his life, the law recognized for him, for example, the right to compensation for dishonor and injury, the same as that which was assigned to the state-owned peasant, the right to seek and answer for himself in court, the right to be a witness in court, however, limited by military regulations; in the field of property rights, the law, in repeal of the previous decree, allowed him to farm out wine, if a “reliable” landowner guarantees for him in the correct payment of money. The serf, however, often exercised his rights only depending on the discretion of the landowner; having “property not established by law, but by general custom,” the “subject” of the landowner could, of course, with his permission, possess, use and dispose of property, entering into transactions that, in essence, were not always secured by law; he could even buy serfs in the name of his master, actually owning them and even a populated estate, or enroll, with his permission, as a merchant, etc.; but in the just listed, and in other manifestations of his activity, the landowner peasant could always feel the oppression of the landowner’s power, even in those cases when he took advantage of the organization of the peasant world, or those, however, very meager and rare improvements that the landowner would have decided to introduce in the “decency” and “improvement” of his estate.

In general, having learned very little about the rights of serfs, Empress Catherine II, of course, paid more attention to their state duties, which consisted mainly of paying the poll tax and serving conscription duties; but, sending them as members of the state, the peasants still continued to feel their dependence on the owners, who were obliged, under pain of some liability, to see that they carefully paid taxes and “accurately corrected” other duties.

Thus, Empress Catherine II could, of course, refer to the fact that landowner peasants remain legally endowed with certain rights and are subject to tax obligations and that they are subject to general jurisdiction in criminal offenses, capital murders, robberies, thefts and escapes; however, it did not escape the fact that the right to own serfs in many respects turned state subjects into landlord "subjects" and came close to the right of private property.

In fact, from the class-political point of view that Empress Catherine II adhered to, she could not weaken the privileges of the nobility, and therefore its “intermediary power” between the “supreme power and the people”: the empress herself reminded the nobility that his “ gratitude, distinction and nobility before the people flows from the single essential need for the indispensable maintenance of it in order”; but, continuing to subordinate the peasants to the landowners, she increasingly turned them from citizens into landowner “subjects”: the landowner was “a legislator, a judge, an executor of his decision and, at his own request, a plaintiff, against whom the defendant could not say anything,” and those subject to him the peasant most often found himself “legally dead, except in criminal cases”; however, even in such matters he easily escaped the government’s control.

Mainly from the same class-political point of view, Empress Catherine II was even ready to strengthen measures to ensure “unquestioning obedience” of peasants to their landowners: she expanded the punitive power of the master over his serfs. By a decree of January 17, 1765, the Empress allowed him for “insolence,” that is, in addition to colonization purposes, to send his “people” to hard labor “for as long as he wants,” and to take them back when wishes, and the court “could not even ask him about the reason for the exile and investigate the case”; she also confirmed the right of the landowner to send his courtyard people and peasants to Siberia to settle as recruits and at any time to give them up as recruits; In the institution on the provinces, she also granted the landowner the right to demand the imprisonment, at his own expense, of a serf in a strait house, but having written down the reason why he was being sent there. Regarding the case of the widow of Major General Ettinger, the empress herself, however, pointed out that “the judicial power must be protected from special entry into it” by landowners in cases that (like, for example, theft and escape) are not subject to domestic investigation and punishment , and expressed the wish that the commission drawing up the draft of the new code “made a provision that it should be done with such people who use severity against a person”; but, despite the statement of the College of Justice, which had already pointed out that there is no exact law “regarding those cases when serfs will soon die” after cruel punishments and beatings, the Empress did not insist on the implementation of her intention and, instead of issuing a law, limited herself to that she instructed the governors to “curb excesses, dissipation, extravagance, tyranny and cruelty.” At the same time, however, by decree of August 22, 1767, having approved the report of the Senate, the Empress had already prohibited serfs, under pain of severe punishment, from filing “illegal petitions against their landowners, and especially in her own hands,” although she herself knew, of course, cases biased interrogations and severe punishments to which they were sometimes subjected.

With the above decrees, Empress Catherine II not so much directly limited the rights or increased the responsibilities of landowner peasants, but rather provided relatively greater scope for landowner power; Thanks to its development, serfdom, which had long been associated with slavery, began to be increasingly equated with the right of private property.

This understanding of serfdom remained, however, without precise formulation in the law, and the empress herself, it seems, did not express it anywhere; but in her time it apparently already enjoyed some recognition, and then penetrated into legislation. Outside observers of the Russian social system, for example, have repeatedly asserted that serfs, or “slaves,” constitute the private “property of their masters, on whom they are completely dependent,” and only pointed out some uncertainty in the concept of the object of such a right: “on serfs, according to them, they sometimes look at it as real estate, and sometimes as movable property”; from the latter point of view, they belong to their owners in the same sense in which household equipment or herds of domestic animals are recognized as their property. The same understanding of serfdom was reflected in one of the later decrees: establishing the rules for the collection of government and private debts personally from debtors and “from their estates,” the Senate, in a decree of October 7, 1792, among other things, stated that “serf-owning people and peasants are and must be included in the number of estates” and that on them “for sales from one to another, deeds of sale are written and executed at serf affairs ... just like for other immovable estates.”

Consequently, we can say that the law gave grounds to equate serfs almost with household equipment that belonged to the estate. From such a point of view, it is natural, for example, that even before the appearance of the above formula, the law had already asserted for the landowner a whole series of rights that stemmed from such an understanding of serfdom. The law recognized, for example, the right of the landowner to dispose of his peasants, and Empress Catherine n did almost nothing to weaken it; on the contrary, she herself gave money to her associates so that they could “bargain” peasant souls for themselves. During her reign, it was possible to buy or sell serfs with or without land, with whole families or separately, on the spot or in the square, which contemporaries themselves called “pure slavery.” In her charter to the nobility, which generally expanded its property rights, the empress granted him the right to “buy villages”; Even regarding the right to sell serfs, which many of the noble deputies were ready to somewhat limit, prohibiting their sale separately with the separation of families, she did not dare to promulgate a general law: with a decree written in her own hand, she only ordered “the confiscation and to all auctioneers” of “some people without land under the hammer not to sell,” which was interpreted by the Senate in the sense that “people without land (i.e., landless) should not be auctioned off,” and not “not sold at all”; she also prohibited the sale of people as recruits; but such a prohibition amounted only to the fact that deeds of sale for peasants could not be made from the time of publication of the decree on recruitment for three months. Empress Catherine II did not introduce such restrictions into the remaining rights granted to serf owners, even into the rights of owners, which were very burdensome for peasants, to influence their marriage, to list them as household servants and to uncontrollably exploit their labor: she almost did not restrict the rights of masters and left the responsibilities of serfs regarding their “sovereigns” is almost completely dependent on custom or on their discretion.

With such broad and at the same time poorly defined rights, the landowner, with the exception of perhaps the right to execute a serf by death, could dispose of his person and property, “possessing them like cattle” and not giving him “power over what he gains”, unless the peasant could not escape or hide what he had accumulated away from the eyes of the master; the empress herself characterized this “order” with the following words: “the landowner, except for the death penalty, does whatever he pleases on his estate.”

The landowner's power over his peasants grew, which means, due to the fact that he was not constrained by almost any responsibilities in relation to them; although Empress Catherine II herself, on the occasion of the “contagion of Pugachev’s villainy,” reminded the nobility about them, she did not do much to more accurately establish them: since 1762, she more than once confirmed the old rule, by virtue of which the landowner had to feed and support his peasants during the famine, and tried to keep him from ruining and tormenting his subjects on pain of being taken into custody, being “bridled” by the governor, or being subjected to other punishment; but measures of this kind achieved too little of the goal and were rarely implemented in reality.

Thus, by limiting the scope of the concept of serfdom, Empress Catherine II, in essence, strengthened its content: based on reasoning about “freedom is the soul of all things,” she came to the conclusion that in her legislation she almost equated the peasant soul with “ soulless things"; Without ensuring the rights of a serf, the empress could not protect him from abuses on the part of the landowner, which sometimes drove him to the complete loss of his “civil rank”, and sometimes to despair.

The compiler of the Nakaz fell into another contradiction: she expressed the rule “to avoid cases so as not to bring people into captivity,” but she herself refused to comply with it; Without stopping the process of strengthening serfdom in Great Russia, it contributed to its further spread, partly to such groups of the population, whose position by law differed from the position of serfs, and partly to new areas of the state territory, where it had not yet had time to establish itself. The law made, for example, a rather strict distinction between serfs and people attached to those privately owned factories that were owned by “possession” rights; although such people, mainly peasants, who received the name “possession”, enjoyed some advantages compared to serfs, and their composition, after the decree of March 29, 1762, should have included “free people hired for a contractual fee”, and not bought , in fact, they were often treated like serfs.

The serfdom could not but affect that part of the peasants who, by law, were free from serfdom, namely state peasants, the number of which increased significantly with the secularization of the estates of the clergy and the accession of single-lords to them (1764), as well as some minor categories population. The state peasants, however, remained relatively free; in one of her handwritten notes, the empress even expressed her intention to “free all state, palace and economic peasants, when the situation is made, what should they do”; but their complete “liberation” did not follow; on the contrary, they too were forced to experience some influence of serfdom. In addition to the fact that the treasury, mainly for fiscal purposes, began to restrict their rights to dispose of land and that the government officials in charge of them transferred serfdom habits to people whom they did not own as serfs, they began to receive it to some of They have a special kind of application: state peasants partly served as a contingent for the formation of a class “assigned” to factories and for grants. Those assigned from the state department, especially to the mining factories, which along with them passed into private ownership, fell into severe actual dependence on the owners, and those granted became, of course, serfs of those to whom they were granted. However, during the reign of the empress

Catherine II, soon after the unrest of the peasants assigned to the Ural factories, the assignment of state peasants to private factories ceased, and many private mining factories were returned to the treasury; the well-known manifesto of May 21, 1779 and some other decrees also contributed to improving the life of peasants assigned from the government department to state-owned and private factories; but the number of grants increased and, despite the empress’s proposal to leave the “men” of the granted villages “free,” they continued to thus fall into private dependence on the owners.

The sphere of influence of serfdom was not limited, however, to the fact that it affected state peasants: thanks to some decrees of Empress Catherine II, it was established in new areas. In 1775, for example, the Belarusian governor-general submitted a report to the Senate that in the Belarusian provinces entrusted to him “between those who have the right to use immovable estates, there are sales and various serf transactions, through which people and peasants are transferred to other adjacent and remote provinces"; in view of the fact that “the Belarusian nobility has long been in the habit of selling peasants without land” (with the possible exception of peasants who fled from Russia), such transactions aroused the suspicion of the governor-general whether the owners, under the guise of their own peasants, were selling those fleeing from Russia; reporting his suspicion to the Senate and pointing out that transactions of this kind could lead to other abuses and difficulties, the governor-general proposed, until the end of the analysis of the fugitives prescribed by the government and until a future resolution on them, to prohibit the sale of peasants without land “for removal to Russia,” allowing it “only within these provinces.” After considering the report of the Belarusian Governor-General, the Senate, however, came to a different conclusion: on the basis that “according to the poster published in Belarus, the inhabitants of those provinces and owners, no matter what their family and rank, were accepted into the citizenship of Her Imperial Majesty , and they are given the right to enjoy the same privileges that all the Russian nobility enjoy,” he did not consider it possible to take away their freedom to sell people without land. Thus, the right to sell people without land was extended to the owners of the Belarusian provinces, which accordingly increased, of course, the serfdom of the Belarusian peasants on them. Soon the government approved it in the Little Russian provinces. The Little Russian powers had long sought to turn the peasants into “their eternal subjects” and managed to procure for themselves the well-known universal of April 20, 1760, which they called “an order not to transfer subjects from their ownership to another possession.” The Russian government, accustomed to serfdom, did not hesitate to equate the Little Russian provinces with the Great Russian ones in this regard: Empress Catherine II herself considered maintaining the autonomy of Little Russia “stupidity” and did not sympathize with the peasant transitions, and during the Rumyantsev census, “simple Little Russian people,” according to one contemporary, had already come to the conclusion “that he deserves nothing more than to be recorded in the fortress, following the example of the Great Russian peasants.” However, by the well-known decree of May 3, 1783, Empress Catherine II seems to have had in mind the introduction of a poll tax in Little Russia rather than the establishment of serfdom here in its entirety; but her command to every villager in the governorships of Kiev, Chernigov and Novgorod-Seversk to “remain in his place and rank” naturally led to the establishment of serfdom; the government itself recognized the Little Russian peasants as also strong to those owners on whose lands they were settled and under whom they were registered in the fourth revision; but the sale of peasants without land did not receive final recognition here; it was banned after the death of the empress, by decree of her successor. The process of spreading serfdom finally captured the southern Russian regions: in the same decree of 1783, the rural population of Slobodskaya Ukraine, soon after the establishment of a commission to transform the suburban regiments into a special province in 1765, having lost the right of transition, was equated with Little Russian landowner peasants, and soon after the death of the empress, a decree was issued, almost in the same terms as the decree of May 3, 1783, which prohibited “willful movements of villagers from place to place” on the southern outskirts; in order to “establish the property of each owner for eternity” and put a barrier to the escape of peasants “from the innermost provinces”, the decree of December 12, 1796 extended serfdom to the provinces: Ekaterinoslav, Voznesensk, Caucasus and the Tauride region, as well as the Don and to Taman Island.

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2. Catherine II’s policy towards the serfs.

Under Catherine II, the process of turning serfs into slaves begins (as she herself called them: “If a serf cannot be recognized as a person, therefore, he is not a person; then, if you please, recognize him as a beast, which will be attributed to us from the whole world to considerable glory and philanthropy.” ). The darkest side of serfdom was the unlimited arbitrariness of landowners in disposing of the personality and labor of serfs; a number of statesmen of the 18th century spoke about the need to regulate the relations of peasants to landowners. It is known that even under Anna, the legislative regulation of serfdom was proposed to be carried out by the Chief Prosecutor of the Senate Maslov (in 1734), and Catherine herself spoke out against slavery, recommending “to prescribe to landowners by law that they dispose of their exactions with great consideration,” but all these projects remained only good wishes. Catherine, who ascended the throne at the request of the noble guard and ruled through the noble administration, could not break her ties with the ruling class. In 1765, official permission followed for the sale of such peasants without land (which proves the predominance at this stage of attachment not to the land, but to the landowner) and even with the separation of families. Their property belonged to the landowner; they could carry out civil transactions only with his permission. They were subject to the landowner's patrimonial justice and corporal punishment, which depended on the will of the landowner and was not limited by anything. On August 22, 1767, the Empress issued a decree “On keeping landowners and peasants in obedience and obedience to their landowners, and on not submitting petitions into Her Majesty’s own hands,” in which peasants and other people of the non-noble class were forbidden to submit petitions to Her Majesty, “a. ..if...the peasants do not remain in the obedience due to the landowners, and, contrary...to their landowners, they dare to submit petitions...to the Imperial Majesty,” then it is ordered to flog them with a whip and send them to hard labor, counting them as recruits, so as not to cause damage to the landowner. Catherine's legislation on the scope of landowner power over serfs is characterized by the same uncertainty and incompleteness as the legislation of her predecessors. In general, it was directed in favor of landowners. We saw that Elizabeth, in the interests of settling Siberia, by the law of 1760, granted landowners the right “for impudent acts” to exile healthy serfs to Siberia for settlement without the right of return; Catherine by law of 1765 turned this limited right of exile to a settlement into the right to exile serfs to hard labor without any restrictions for any time with the return of the exiled person at will to the previous owner. With this law, the state actually refused to protect the peasants from the arbitrariness of the landowners, which naturally led to its strengthening. True, in Russia the nobles were never given the right to take the lives of serfs, and if the case of the murder of serfs came to trial, the perpetrators faced serious punishment, but not all cases reached the court and we can only guess how difficult the life of the peasants was, after all, the landowners had the official right to corporal punishment and imprisonment at their discretion, as well as the right to sell peasants. The peasants paid a poll tax, carried state duties and feudal land rent to the landowners in the form of corvee or quitrent, in kind or in cash. Since the economy was extensive, the landowners saw the possibility of increasing income only in increasing corvee or quitrent; by the end of the 18th century, corvee began to reach 5-6 days a week. Sometimes landowners generally established a seven-day corvee with the issuance of a monthly food ration (“mesyachina”). This in turn led to the liquidation of the peasant economy and the degradation of feudalism to a slave system. From the second half of the 18th century, a new category of peasants appeared - “possessional”. The lack of a labor market forced the government to provide labor to industry by attaching entire villages (peasant communities) to factories. They worked their corvee for several months a year in factories, i.e. were serving a session, which is where their name came from - sessional.

Thus, in the first half of the 18th century, and especially after the death of Peter I, the widespread use of forced labor of serfs or assigned state peasants became characteristic of the Russian economy. Entrepreneurs (including non-nobles) did not have to rely on the free labor market, which, with the intensification of the state’s struggle against runaways, freemen and “walkers” - the main contingent of free working people - had significantly narrowed. A more reliable and cheaper way to provide factories with labor was to purchase or add entire villages to enterprises. The policy of protectionism pursued by Peter I and his successors provided for the registration and sale of peasants and entire villages to the owners of manufactories, and above all those that supplied the treasury with products necessary for the army and navy (iron, cloth, saltpeter, hemp, etc.) . By decree of 1736, all working people (including civilians) were recognized as serfs of factory owners.

By decree of 1744 Elizabeth confirmed the decree of January 18, 1721, which allowed owners of private manufactories to buy villages for factories. Therefore, in Elizabeth's time, entire industries were based on forced labor. So, in the second quarter of the 18th century. Most of the factories of the Stroganovs and Demidovs used exclusively the labor of serfs and assigned peasants, and the enterprises of the cloth industry did not know hired labor at all - the state, interested in the supply of cloth for the army, generously distributed state peasants to the factory workers. The same picture was observed at state enterprises. Census of working people at Ural state factories in 1744-1745. showed that only 1.7% of them were civilian employees, and the remaining 98.3% were forced to work.

Starting from the era of Catherine II, theoretical research was carried out (“solving the problem” in the Free Economic Society about “what is more useful for society for the peasant to own land, or only movable property and how far his rights to one or another property should extend” ), projects for the liberation of peasants A.A. Arakcheeva, M.M. Speransky, D.A. Guryeva, E.F. Kankrin and other public figures) and practical experiments (for example, the decree of Alexander I of 1801 on permission to buy and sell uninhabited lands to merchants, petty bourgeois, state-owned peasants, landowners, released into freedom, the decree on free cultivators, which allowed the landowners themselves, in addition to the state, change their relations with the peasants, the decree on obligated peasants, the reform of state peasants by Count P.D. Kiselev), aimed at finding specific ways to ensure minimal costs for introducing new institutions and reforming Russian Empire generally).

The enslavement of the peasants hampered the development of industry, deprived it of free labor; the impoverished peasantry did not have the means to purchase industrial products. In other words, the preservation and deepening of feudal-serf relations did not create a sales market for industry, which, coupled with the absence of a free labor market, was a serious brake on the development of the economy and caused a crisis in the serfdom system. In historiography, the end of the 18th century is characterized as the culmination of serfdom, as the period of flourishing of serfdom, but inevitably the culmination is followed by a denouement, the period of flourishing is followed by a period of decomposition, and this is what happened with serfdom.

State and noble land ownership had one common feature associated with the emergence of a new form of land use: all land convenient for field farming, which was owned by the state, was given to the peasants for use. At the same time, the landowners usually gave a certain part of the estate for use to their peasants for rent or corvee: from 45% to 80% of the total land, the peasants used for themselves. Thus, feudal rent took place in Russia, while throughout Europe the norms of classical rent were spreading with the involvement of commodity-money relations, with the participation of subjects of rent relations in trade turnover and market relations.

Exiled. Despite all the persecution, Moscow University and its progressive figures continued to influence the development of culture, education, school and pedagogical thought in Russia. Pedagogical activity of I. I. Betsky. In the second half of the 18th century, the cruel exploitation of serfs by landowners was taken to extreme limits. The class struggle between peasants and...

...", since "innocently from the impudence of another, the one who suffered a blow tries with all his might to repay it with an even defeat to his enemy." This principle, says Desnitsky, “is strictly observed in almost all enlightened powers.” In Russian literature in the second half of the 18th century, there were often calls to strengthen the punishment for theft, and they came from both representatives of the nobility and...