Toward the end of the sixteenth century, Borys Goudenoff—an ambitious, unscrupulous, but highly-gifted parvenu—got control of the weak-minded Tsar Feodor, ruled during his lifetime, became regent of the empire after his death, and finally a murderer and usurper. To ingratiate himself with the nobility and the Bojars, in 1593 he published an edict (oukase), by which the free tenants were henceforth prohibited from changing their masters or their domicile, and were at once reduced to serfs, adscripti glebæ. This first oppression quickly generated others still more odious, which stopped not till they ended in all the turpitude of chattelhood—-thus justifying the saying of Lessing: "Let the devil but get hold of one single hair, and he soon clutches you by the whole queue." So in 1597 a very rigorous oukase was published concerning the restitution of fugitive serfs, their wives, children and movables. Another oukase, ordering a census of all domestic servants to be taken, transformed into serfs even those who, six months before, had entered private service as absolute freemen. With the exception of the population in the free communes constituting the tsarian domains, all the other rural populations were thus transformed into serfs in the brief space of a few years.
During the seventeenth century, the tsars of the house of Romanoff confirmed these oukases. However, the serfs were not included in the sale of an estate, neither was it permitted to transfer them from one estate to another. There were various specific denominations for the different forms of servitude, according to the nature of the labor, the quantity of produce, or the number of days' service levied by the master.
In 1718, Peter the Great ordered a general census to be taken all over the empire. The census officials, most probably through thoughtlessness or caprice, divided the whole rural population into two sections: 1st. The free peasants belonging to the crown or its domains; and 2dly. All the rest of the peasantry, the krestianins or serfs living on private estates, were inscribed as khrepostnoie kholopy, that is, as chattels. The primitive Slavic communal organization thus survived only on the royal domain, and there it exists till the present day. The census of Peter having thus fairly inaugurated chattelhood, it immediately began to develop itself in all its turpitude. The masters grew more reckless and cruel; they sold chattels separately from the lands; they brought them singly into market, disregarding all family ties and social bonds. Estates were no more valued according to the area of land they contained, but according to the number of their chattels, who were now called souls (duschy). In short, all the worst features of chattelism, as it exists at the present day in the American Slave States, immediately followed the publication of this accursed census.
The rural communes upon the royal domains, however, still preserved their ancient organization and even comparative freedom; but Peter the Great, as well as all his successors, rewarded his favorites, or those rendering public service, with estates or grants of land; and as such grants were taken from the royal domains, in this way hundreds of thousands of free peasants were transformed into chattels. Catharine II. also distributed great numbers of such estates among her favorites, besides confirming all the privileges of the nobility; and so likewise did Paul I. Alexander I. desired to exempt the peasants in this transfer; but Nicholas I. in reality was the first emperor who granted estates excepting therefrom the resident peasantry; he also published an oukase that henceforth no rural communes from the domains shall be granted to private individuals. Paul I., in 1797, reduced the weekly servitude of the kholop to three days, the other three remaining to himself.
Alexander I. desired to emancipate the serfs throughout the whole empire, but only succeeded, and that very partially, in the so-called German or Baltic provinces—where, moreover, the German nobles and landowners succeed in impoverishing the peasants even more after emancipation than they could before. Alexander I. also prohibited the sale of single peasants, either male or female, separate from their families; he forbade their sale in the markets; and no one could purchase or own serfs unless he had at the same time twenty acres of land for each family. But all these tutelary laws were more or less evaded during his reign. He permitted the nobles freely to emancipate their serfs; but very few of them followed the example set by Prince Alexander Galitzine and a few others, and not more than three hundred thousand families were thus set free. Nicholas I. also spoke favorably of emancipation, and even attempted it, but unsuccessfully.
During all this period, military service was a great engine of emancipation. Enlisted serfs were forever free, together with their wives and children. But military service lasted for twenty-five or thirty years, and was often more oppressive than serfdom in the village.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the peasantry now and then avenged their wrongs by isolated murders of the more oppressive masters and their families. Partial insurrections even took place, the most celebrated of which is that of Pugatschoff under Catharine II., which swept over the bodies of slain nobles and officials, from the mountains of Orembourg to the very gates of Moscow.
But the day of justice now dawns upon Russia. The whole Christian world glorifies the efforts of Alexander II., supported by a considerable portion of the nobles, to restore freedom and homesteads to the twenty millions of serfs. The success of the great emancipation movement is beyond doubt, beyond even the possibility of being stopped, although the carrying out of such a colossal revolution requires time and meets with many impediments.
At the example of Russia the tributary nomads of Asiatic Tartary have emancipated their slaves and abjured further enslavement; and Turkey, likewise, has inscribed her name upon the grand roll of emancipating empires.
Thus the whole ancient world shakes off slavery, and attempts to wash away its ancient and bloody stain; while the New World, or at least a part of it, still glories in the barbarous abomination.