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Serfdom was rare in Little Russia (parts of today's central Ukraine), other Cossack lands, the Urals and Siberia until the reign of Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796 ), when it spread to Ukraine [ citation needed ] ; noblemen began to send their serfs into Cossack lands in an attempt to harvest their extensive untapped natural resources.
While slavery has not been widespread on the territory of what is now Russia since the introduction of Christianity in the tenth century, serfdom in Russia, which was in many ways similar to landless peasantry in Feudal Europe, only ended in February 19th, 1861 when Russian Emperor Alexander II issued The Emancipation of the serfs in 1861 ...
In the Austrian Empire, serfdom was abolished by the 1781 Serfdom Patent; corvées continued to exist until 1848. Serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861. [3] Prussia declared serfdom unacceptable in its General State Laws for the Prussian States in 1792 and finally abolished it in October 1807, in the wake of the Prussian Reform Movement. [4]
The code consolidated Russia's slaves and free peasants into a new serf class and pronounced class hereditary as unchangeable (see Russian serfdom). The new code prohibited travel between towns without an internal passport. The Russian nobility agreed to serve in the army, but were granted the exclusive privilege of owning serfs.
Homelessness in Russia has been observed since the end of the 19th century. After the abolition of serfdom, major cities experienced a large influx of former serfs who sought jobs as industrial workers in the rapidly developing Russian industry. These people often lived in harsh conditions, sometimes renting a room, shared between several families.
Serfdom remained in force in most of Russia until the Emancipation reform of 1861, enacted on February 19, 1861, though in the Russian-controlled Baltic provinces it had been abolished at the beginning of the 19th century. According to the Russian census of 1857, Russia had 23.1 million private serfs. [5]
The End of Serfdom: Nobility and Bureaucracy in Russia, 1855-1861 (1976) McCaffray, Susan P. "Confronting Serfdom in the Age of Revolution: Projects for Serf Reform in the Time of Alexander I", Russian Review (2005) 64#1 pp 1–21 online; Moon, David. The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia: 1762-1907 (2001). links
State peasants lived on public land and paid taxes to the treasury. According to the first audit of the tax paying population of Russia (1719), there were in European Russia and Siberia 1,049,000 males (i.e. 19% of the total agricultural population), according to the 10th audit revision (1858) – 9,345 million (45.2% agricultural population).