The transition in Russia in the 15th century from slash-and-burn farming to arable farming was caused by a demographic explosion, and it became a real Apocalypse for the peasants. The miscalculations of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th aggravated the situation in agriculture, causing the desolation of up to 90% of farms.
Historian Yuri Latov ("Journal of Institutional Research", No. 2, 2012), partly with the help of mathematical methods (the use of this method is also caused by a small number of sources on the topic under study) tried to show how and why a peasant community appeared in the XV-XVI centuries, and the power in Russia finally became autocratic.
The lengthy edition of Russkaya Pravda, the first set of legal norms of Russian civilization, compiled in the second half of the 12th century, contained the 85th article with a somewhat "piquant" wording: "If the stink dies, then the prince's ass; If there will be a daughter in his house, then give part not; If you follow your husband, do not give a part to them. " The expression "ass", which is comical for a modern Russian, meant inherited property during the times of Kievan Rus. As for the content of the term "smerd", there is an opinion that in Kievan Rus this was the name of personally free peasants who owned the land they cultivated as an allod, on the basis of private property. Consequently, the introduction of Article 85 meant that in each generation some part of the peasant allods departed from power in the person of the prince, who could plant other peasants on the liberated lands, but no longer free ones.but personally dependent on the prince.
The Belarusian historian Vyacheslav Leonidovich Nosevich, one of the leading modern Belarusian historians and economists, conducted a cliometric study almost 20 years ago, aimed at finding out how quickly the “encroachment” of peasant land plots could take place with the help of Article 85 of “Russian Truth”. "If we neglect the relatively few cases when part of the escheated allotment went to unmarried daughters," Nosevich wrote, "the answer boils down to a purely mathematical problem - determining the probability that the stinker owner will not leave sons behind."
Nosevich decided that “the most optimal way to solve such a problem is the method of computer modeling. It is possible to simulate the conditions in which families will breed in specific cells-allotments, and the number of descendants for each of them will be determined based on the population of the allotment using a random number generator. For a sufficiently large number of families, the total will correspond to the average probability of the event of interest to us.
The Nosevich model considered the history of 900 land plots (the model was abstracted from the development of new lands, as well as from the influence of any other external factors). “Each of them could belong to one or several small families (parents with children, on average 5 people per family). The expected growth rate depended on the number of families on the allotment: if it was 1, then the increase was maximum, if 2, it decreased by half. With 3 families on the allotment, the expected increase became zero, with 4 or more families - negative (the number of children was less than the number of parents). The maximum coefficient was selected in such a way as to ensure the stability of the total size of the simulated population, and was 1.4% per generation.
When the allotment turned out to be overpopulated (2 or more families), then in a generation one family could move to a neighboring plot, if only it was empty or inhabited by a single family. Nosevich accepted the maximum number of children in a peasant family to be 8.
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Before playing on this model the consequences of the introduction of Article 85, Nosevich "populated" all 900 allotments; then, for 10 generations, their inhabitants freely multiplied and settled, so that the structure of settlement acquired a random character. The resulting picture was in good agreement with the real distribution of families by allotments, as it appears according to the data of medieval inventories (about 7 people per "smoke").
Of the 900 modeled plots, 25-30% were constantly unpopulated (wastelands), for each of the remaining there were from 1.2 to 1.75 small families in different generations (i.e. from 6 to 8 people), in the most average case - 1.4 family (7 people). And now, from the 11th generation, when 928 families were working on 643 plots, Nosevich began to monitor the consequences of the application of the 85th article of "Russian Truth".
Thus, according to the assumptions made in the Nosevich model, in the category of princely property for 6 generations, the 85th article of "Russian Truth" is valid (since the lifetime of one generation is 25-30 years, then we are talking about 150-180 years, i.e. by about 1300) up to 90% of the peasant allods had to pass. For 12 generations (by the end of the 15th century), this share should have increased to 99%.
Nosevich, using the terminology of the concept of “feudalism in Russia”, concludes: the introduction of Article 85 of “Russkaya Pravda” in itself was a sufficient condition for almost complete feudalization for a certain period of time (several centuries).
Perhaps, it is true, the question arises: is not the desire of the princely power to seize the escheat property of all subjects - not only peasants, but also boyars - manifested in Russkaya Pravda? However, the interpretation of Nosevich for the era of Kievan Rus, perhaps, has grounds, since in the same "Russkaya Pravda" there was article 86 "On the boyar's butt and the squad": but there will not be even sons, but daughters to rebel. " Thus, the escheat property of a boyar or a vigilante went only to his descendants - all the same, sons or daughters. Consequently, if the ancient Russian prince granted land to a boyar or a vigilante, then they had to remain privately owned forever. But the land of the peasants was to gradually pass into the hands of the prince,who could then distribute them to his boyars and turn the lands of free peasants into feudal-dependent ones.
The Nosevich model can also be used to assess the expected consequences of one of the reforms of Ivan IV the Terrible, who in 1562 issued a decree on the confiscation of escheat estates. As a result, the boyars of the Muscovite kingdom found themselves in the same situation as the smerds of Kievan Rus: their lands had to "flow" over time into the hands of the tsar. Moreover, the "nationalization" of the estates could go even faster, since the autocratic ruler of Muscovy, freely disposing of the life and death of his boyars, had the right to forcibly imprison the boyar who fell into disgrace in a monastery, forbid him to marry, and simply kill (that Ivan the Terrible regularly and did).
Therefore, if this decree were consistently carried out, then the "de-derogation" could be completed in about 2-3 generations - less than a century. Fortunately for the Moscow boyars, the death of Ivan the Terrible stopped the "nationalization" of estates, and after the Troubles of the beginning of the 17th century, the Moscow tsars generally abandoned "formidable" measures against the nobility.
Modeling the transition from slash-and-burn to arable farming in 15th century Russia
The description of the hardships and risks associated with the work of the Russian peasant in the pre-industrial era may be suffering from the "overturning into the past" of the realities of the new era. After all, the information about low and unstable yields (which is cited, for example, by L. V. Milov) refers to arable farming, which until the end of the 15th century was occupied by a small part of the population. So, in North-West Russia it was about 10%. The main part, about 90%, lived in small forest villages (usually no more than 4 yards), doing slash-and-burn agriculture.
This agricultural technology is rather primitive, it involves frequent (after 3-4 years) movement from one forest area to another. However, the available data indicate that it provided fabulous yields of about 10 itself, more than winning against the background of harvests on arable land of itself-3-5. While peasant families wandered through the forest in small groups, burning new plots for arable land, it was difficult to "get" them both for the Tatar robbers and for the princely boyars. There was no dependence on the community, just as there was no need for the community itself.
What made the Russian peasants abandon this truly heavenly way of life, reminiscent of the American frontier of the Wild West in the atmosphere of maximum emancipation of the individual? To explain the "expulsion from paradise", one should recall the interpretation of the Neolithic revolution proposed by D. North and R. Thomas. In a primitive society, common property prevailed, in which access to rare resources (hunting grounds, fishing grounds) was open to everyone without exception. This means that there is a general right to use resources prior to capture and an individual right to use them after capture. As a result, everyone is interested in the predatory consumption of public resources "here and now", without concern for reproduction. The well-known tragedy of the common goods arises.
As long as natural resources were abundant, the negative consequences of common ownership were not a significant problem. However, resource depletion due to population growth led about 10,000 years ago to the first ever revolution in manufacturing and institutions.
D. North and R. Thomas suggested that the main content of the First Economic Revolution (as they called the Neolithic Revolution) was the emergence of elements of private property, securing the exclusive rights of an individual, family or tribe to rare resources. It was precisely the overcoming of the tragedy of common goods that made it possible to stop the decline in the marginal product of labor.
The interpretation of the Neolithic revolution proposed by R. North and R. Thomas explains the “Salins paradox” (named after the anthropologist Marshall Salins who discovered it): primitive tribes that survived until the 20th century, who did not pass the stage of the Neolithic revolution and do not know private property, eat much more satisfying food. what did the people of early civilized societies eat, judging by the archaeological data. The Neolithic Revolution, as it turns out, is not a method of raising living standards, but a way of slowing down its decline.
To explain the transition from abundant slash-and-burn agriculture to poor plowed agriculture, the same logic should be used as to explain the transition from hunting to agriculture. In the 15th century, as evidenced by the data for North-Western Russia, its population almost doubled. The sprawling population quickly filled the once deserted forests, partially destroying them. The peasants were faced with a rapid decline in the marginal product. They had to switch to arable farming, because with an excess number of more forests gave less than arable land. The transition from slash-and-burn agriculture to arable farming occurred by the end of the 15th century rather quickly, in about 50 years. Under intense stress, the peasants desperately needed help. And this help came in the form of the institutions of the centralized state and community. Free labor is a thing of the pastahead was "Eastern despotism."
The concept of the socio-ecological crisis of the 15th century proposed by E. S. Kulpin forces us to make some adjustments to the reasoning of D. North and R. Thomas. Apparently, in a situation of depletion of common goods, the specification of property rights always occurs, but this does not necessarily mean the development of "normal" private property. Collectivist institutions such as the state and the community could also take on the function of regulator of property relations.
Explaining the 16th Century Crisis Using the Demographic Cycle Model
Studying pre-industrial societies, the American demographer of the early XX century, Raymond Pearl, came to the conclusion about cyclical fluctuations in population size - demographic cycles. In his opinion, population growth is described by a "logistic curve": at first the population grows rather slowly, then growth accelerates, but after a while the curve approaches the asymptote, turns and then moves along the asymptote. This means that the population has approached the boundaries of the ecological niche, and starvation mortality has compensated for natural fertility.
Since food resources in pre-industrial societies are stable, as the population grows, per capita consumption decreases accordingly. The “scissors” between the growing population and falling consumption bring society to the brink of collapse, when random external factors (war or crop failures) can lead to a demographic catastrophe - the death of a significant part of the population. After that, demographic pressure drops and a new demographic cycle begins.
The test of R. Pearl's concept comes up against the weakness of historical statistics: if it is still possible to somehow judge about changes in the population size, then there is practically no data on the level of consumption. However, food prices and real wages can serve as a measure of resource surplus or scarcity. This question was later explored in detail by Michael Postan. Analyzing the consequences of the "black death" of the XIV century, he formulated the following chain of causes and effects: population decline leads to the fact that the previous lack of land is replaced by its surplus, there is a shortage of labor; the consequences of a shortage of labor are a sharp increase in real wages (i.e., wages calculated in grain) and a decrease in the value of land (i.e., a decrease in land rent, quitrent and corvee).
Based on the models of foreign historians and demographers, the modern Russian historian S. A. Nefedov gave an economic interpretation of the crisis of the Moscow kingdom at the end of the 16th century. Traditionally, it is customary to explain this crisis by the failures of Ivan the Terrible's policy - the Livonian War and the oprichnina. However, according to the concept of S. A. Nefedov, the mistakes of Ivan IV only exacerbated the crisis that had already begun.
In the first half of the 16th century, the Muscovy was on the rise, as evidenced by a population growth of about 50%. A symptom of overpopulation was the fall in the wages of civilian workers: if around 1520 it was possible to buy about 11 kg of bread with the usual daily wages, then in 1568 - only 4 kg.
The "last straw" was the Livonian War, during which Russia found itself almost "in a ring of fronts", fighting simultaneously with the Livonians, Sweden, Lithuania and Crimea. In 1566 Tsar Ivan IV called the Zemsky Sobor to decide whether to continue the war. European parliaments usually refused in such a situation - remember that the English Revolution began with the refusal of the English parliament to introduce new taxes at the request of Charles I to finance the suppression of Scotland. Since the Russian Zemsky Sobor did not resemble the English Parliament, the members of the sobor, catching the mood of the tsar, almost unanimously spoke in favor of continuing the war and increasing taxes.
"It was a fatal decision," writes Nefedov, "which led to a catastrophe."
After the cathedral in 1566, taxes were about 3.5 poods per capita - twice as much as in the early 1550s. Since already in the middle of the 16th century the peasants began to systematically starve, the withdrawal of grain, which was not enough for food, inevitably led to a catastrophic famine and an outbreak of epidemics. The oprichnina "experiments" of Ivan the Terrible, crop failure and the plague epidemic turned famine during the war into a real Apocalypse.
Historical materials clearly show the increase in hunger and epidemics in the Novgorod region since 1560: in a little over a decade, the share of abandoned farms soared from 9.9% to 93.2%.
During the "search" in 1573, the scribes indicated the reasons for the desolation of the building, the departure or death of the owners: hunger, pestilence, flight from taxes, from the violence of troops moving to Livonia along five roads. Part of the obezh was desolate from the removal of peasants to the estates of the guardsmen.
The study of fragmentary data on the wages of hired monastic workers and on land rent in Russia at the end of the 16th century confirms M. Postan's concept. So, real wages in 1576 exceeded the cost of 9 kg of bread. As for the levies from peasant farms, if in the 1540-1560s the total amount of rent and tax was about 10-14 poods of bread per person, then by 1580-1590 it fell to 2-4 poods - about 5 time.
Thus, “in the period following the catastrophe of the 1570s, the level of exploitation of peasants did not increase (as some historians claim), but, on the contrary, significantly decreased - in full accordance with economic theory.
The history of the catastrophe of the 1570s shows that the actions of the Russian autocratic power not only did not always smooth out the “failures” of the natural-geographical environment, but also often gave rise to even more serious “failures” of the autocracy. Since the despotic power is practically uncontrollable, along with the risks associated with the peculiarities of the natural and geographical environment, in the Middle Ages and modern times, Russians also faced the risks associated with the unpredictability of the behavior of the ruling autocrats.