Slavery in History

by Adam Gurowski

The Poles and Russians were unaffected by feudalism in any of its social or constructive developments. Up to the seventh and eighth centuries, the Poles continued to elect their chiefs from all classes of the people—merchants and workmen. The prince or chief Leschko was a merchant; while Piast was a wheelwright, and became the founder of a long line of kings. But wars created the men of the sword, or nobility; and then in Poland, as everywhere else, the nobles began to encroach upon the rights and property of the weak, and to oppress the agriculturists, the free yeomen (kmets, kmetones), and the husbandmen (gospodarsch); but neither of these were ever transformed into chattels. When the Poles became a distinct historical nation, chattelhood was disappearing from Europe. Their contests were principally with other Slavic nations and with the Germans; and no traces are to be found of the enslavement of prisoners of war. Their heathen neighbors were the Prussians, the Iadzwingi, and Lithuanians; and captives made among them were used either in public labors or strictly in domestic service, as were also prisoners of war in after-times made from the Tartars and Turks. When these prisoners became Christians, their chattelhood was at an end.

The name for a war-prisoner is niewolnik, "one deprived of the exercise of his will." When the Polish agriculturists were subjugated by the nobles, and their condition became that of villeins, or adscripti glebæ, they began to be called kholop (a name most likely borrowed from the Russian), also poddany, "subject;" and the rural relations had the general name of poddanstwo, "subjection."

The Biblical narrative of the curse of Noah upon Ham furnished an easy justification for reducing the people to bondage. Peasant (kholop) and Ham became synonymous in the mouths of the nobles and the clergy, who generally sprang from the nobility. The oppression of the nobles was absolute during the domestic wars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The people resisted, but after various partial but bloody struggles, the peasantry were subjected. In the royal domains the old yeomen (kmetones) still preserved their lands and some of their rights, and to the last days of Poland, the peasantry of the domains never became, either legally or in fact, adscripti glebæ. Casimir the Great, a Polish king of the middle of the fourteenth century, protected the rights of the peasantry against the oppressions of the nobles, and advised the peasants to defend themselves with flint and steel. He won the name of "king of the poor oppressed peasants" (krol khlopkow): perhaps it was the gratitude of the oppressed which conferred this title upon him, or perhaps it may have been a sneering epithet applied by the nobles. Goading indeed was the oppression of the nobles, and crushing in the extreme the servitude of the peasantry; but it never reached the point of chattelhood, excepting in rare cases of absolute lawlessness.

The kmetones, or free yeomen, and the husbandmen still generally remained in possession of the lands which were once their immediate property, but now only as possessors at the pleasure of the master—paying him a rent or tribute, in kind or labor, and deprived of the right of changing their domicile. The master could, at pleasure, elevate the tenant to a freeholder, or emancipate any of his household servants. The cities did not furnish such a sure refuge for runaways as did the cities in other parts of Europe. Military service, here as elsewhere, gave perpetual liberty to the bondman.

The Polish nobility had supreme sway, and were all in all; they constituted the nation, the legislators and the sovereign—even the kings being controlled by the nobles and their interests. The nobles have paid dearly for their tyranny and oppression, as they themselves now admit that serfdom was the principal cause of the downfall of Poland.

After the dismemberment of Poland, Friederich Wilhelm III. restored personal liberty to the peasantry in the parts of the kingdom which were allotted to Prussia; in the Austrian portion, the condition of the peasantry was ameliorated and their personal liberty partially restored by Joseph II.; while that part of Poland which, at the end of the eighteenth century, was annexed, or rather reannexed, to Russia—as Lithuania and the Russian provinces—came under the control of the regulations prevailing in the empire. In Poland proper, all the peasantry are now free and enjoy full civil rights; and even the soil tilled by the peasants will soon be fully freed from every kind of predial servitude attached to its possession: and thus the peasantry will recover at least a part of the property taken from them by violence or subterfuge long centuries ago.

The Slavonians in what is now called Russia proper—from Lake Peypus and the Waldai Heights down to the banks of the Dnieper—lived, from time immemorial, in villages; these, again, were formed into smaller or larger districts (obschtschestwo, wolost), which elected for themselves their chiefs or heads (golowa).

Among the few cities in Russia, the great republican and commercial emporiums of Novgorod and Pskoff—well known and flourishing at the dawn of the mediæval epoch—formed the centres of that Slavic region. No nobility existed then, no slaves, and no bondmen. In 862 the republicans of Novgorod, distracted by domestic feuds and party dissensions, invited a Scandinavian, Nordman, or Variægue leader, called Rurick, to take upon himself the government of their republic. Rurick and his followers extended the Variægue supremacy as far as the southern region of the Dnieper, and Kieff became the capital of the Russian empire. At the commencement of this Variægue rule, no positive change was introduced into the internal organism of society, or the condition of the population. Rurick and his descendants were elected or confirmed by the Slavonic people, and he governed the cities and districts through his companions-in-arms or lieutenants. These, together with the direct descendants of Rurick, under the various designations of princes (kniaz and mouja), vassals, and warriors, were the founders of the Russian nobility. This, however, could not be called feudalism, as these functionaries corresponded somewhat with the counts and missi dominici, or lieutenant-deputies of Charlemagne. The grand-princes or grand-dukes of Kieff made war upon various tribes, mostly those of Mongolian or Tartar origin, and swept south of the Dnieper along the shores of the Black Sea down to the Caucasus; they repeatedly invaded the Byzantine empire, sometimes reaching even the suburbs of Constantinople. Then the war-prisoners and captives became domestic chattels, and chattels were also purchased from neighboring tribes and imported into Russia.