Decree on assigned peasants Peter 1. Possessed and assigned peasants

In the peasant classes of the historical period of the 18th–19th centuries. a variety of social groups are represented. But compared to the rest, the possession and, of course, assigned peasants attract special attention. It was they who made up the majority of the Russian peasantry in those days, according to the law considered state property, but in fact they were subjected to severe persecution by the Siberian and Ural industrialists of that time.

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The first seeds of capitalism began to sprout in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 17th century. The Great Emperor Alexei Mikhailovich launches the first manufacturing plants, including some in the Urals, which will subsequently become widely known. Serf peasants attached to the manufactory were called “assigned peasants.” At least, the concept itself originated in those times. After all, nascent enterprises needed labor, and in 17th-century Russia, the only faithful workhorse was the enslaved peasantry. The entire stratum of the peasantry of those years was divided into two components:

Serfs.
Black-bearded or state-owned.

Definition of the concept

Assigned peasants are the definition of a social group of the peasant population, which in Russia from the 17th to the first half of the 19th century were called:

Palace ones.
Economic.
State.

These peasants did not pay the poll tax, but instead worked in state or private manufactories and factories. In other words, they were assigned to these enterprises.

In the 17th century, and especially in the 18th, the state often resorted to assigning penny labor to many large Siberian and Ural industrial enterprises. As a rule, the workers whom the government assigned to manufactories and factories had to work in a new place for the rest of their lives, since the assignment was carried out without a specified period. Among those assigned, recruits were often selected and assigned certain positions, for example, craftsmen at metallurgical and mining enterprises.

This group of the peasant class formally remained the property of the Russian Empire, but industrialists took advantage of their labor and punished them in the same way as their own serfs. The Altai mining district was famous for its mining industry, but much of the economy of this region, like many others, was based on the labor of workers assigned to factories.

Distressed condition assigned peasants pushed them into unrest, escape and uprising. Under Peter I, throughout the Russian Empire, assigned peasants began to pay monotonous wages at factories in the summer, when work was in full swing in the agricultural fields. A peasant who had a horse was paid 10 kopecks, and those who did not have a horse received 5 kopecks. Unfortunately, the law was not always properly implemented.

And since, according to the rules, workers had to work for every man in the family, often one able-bodied member had to work for each of his male relatives who were already or could not yet work fully.

Some time after assigning workers to enterprises the state reserved the right to industrialists to punish workers at their discretion. They, in turn, treated this move on the part of the government as enslavement. There is still a great deal of surviving evidence of complaints from assigned workers against manufacturers, and an even more obvious argument is the participation of peasants in anti-state protests, in particular, participation in the uprising of Emelyan Pugachev. Based on this, the workers assigned to various plants and factories in Russia at that time could well be considered ordinary serfs.

The situation of peasants in the 19th century

At the end of the 18th century, the Russian Empire suspended the assignment of state-owned workers to enterprises.

This was largely due to the fact that the Ural uprisings frightened the government, and the number of complaints against manufacturers only increased every year. By 1807, Alexander I was ready to solve the problem of assigned peasants and took a big step towards their complete emancipation.

An impressive part of the workers assigned to production received freedom and could no longer work for factory owners, and only those workers who were required for their continuous functioning remained in the factories themselves.

To the great regret of most of those assigned, such unheard of freedom then spread only to a number of Ural factories. Based on the decree of 1807, the very definition of “assigned peasants” disappears in Russia. However, in general, this fact has little effect on the situation, and it hardly helps the workers at the factories. Those peasants who remained in the factories began to be simply called “essential workers.” Later they were officially united with the "possession peasants". And only after the abolition of serfdom in 1861, Ural and Siberian industrial enterprises began the transition to hiring civilian workers.

Statistical data

The first recorded case of workers being assigned to production occurred in 1633, and then there were only confined to manufactories and factories no more than three hundred souls. The process of attribution to industrial production in Russian history gained its greatest influence in the 18th century. By its end, this category of the Russian population numbered slightly less than 320 thousand people. As a result, the reform of 1861 freed about 200 thousand possession peasants, to whom Russian Emperor Alexander I finally granted freedom.

what's happened:. Assigned peasants? Pessian peasants? Craft shops? Capitation tax? and got the best answer

Answer from Viktoria[guru]
POSSESSIONAL - serf peasants in Russia in the 18th - 1st half of the 19th centuries. , assigned to possessional manufactories. Possession peasants could not be sold separately from the enterprise. The category of possession peasants was introduced under Peter I in 1721 due to the need to provide workers for the growing large-scale manufacture. The possessional peasants included peasants bought to the “factories”, “eternally given away” by decree of January 7, 1736, and state-owned artisans transferred to the owners of possessional manufactories.
ASSIGNED PEASANTS - in Russia in the 17th - first half of the 19th centuries, state, palace and economic peasants, instead of paying the poll tax, worked in state-owned or private plants and factories, that is, attached (assigned) to them. At the end of the 17th century. and especially in the 18th century. The government, in order to support large-scale industry and provide it with cheap and constant labor, widely practiced assigning state peasants to manufactories in the Urals and Siberia. Usually, assigned peasants were attached to manufactories without a specific period of time, that is, forever. Formally they remained the property of the feudal state, but in practice the industrialists exploited and punished them as their serfs. At the end of the 18th century, the government stopped assigning peasants to factories again. By decree of 1807, assigned peasants at the Ural mining factories began to be freed from mandatory factory work. At the beginning of the 19th century, assigned peasants called “essential workers” entered the category of POSSESSIONAL peasants, which was liquidated in 1861-1863. with the abolition of serfdom.
POLL TAX - a form of tax, tax, which was imposed on all men of the tax-paying classes, regardless of age: both newborns and old people, for the maintenance of the army. The cost of maintaining soldiers was divided by the number of available tax souls.
Craft workshops were a trade and craft corporation that united masters of one or more similar professions, or a union of medieval artisans based on their professional background. In Russia, a system of guilds by profession was introduced during the reign of Peter I, which lasted for almost 200 years. Each workshop had its own administration. Belonging to the workshop could be temporary or permanent. From 3 to 5 years, the craftsman worked as an apprentice, then received the title of journeyman; for the title of master, he had to present an approved masterpiece - a “sample of work.” All workshops in the city were in charge of the craft council.

Possession peasants - who are they?

To boost the economy and industry in a country where serfs belonged to the nobles, there were not enough workers. For this purpose, in the 18th century, a decree was introduced on peasants, who were transferred into conditional ownership of the owner of the manufactory.

Only nobles could buy and own peasants, and this made the task of non-noble factory owners who needed labor more difficult. Fugitive peasants, with acquired working skills, became possession peasants legally.

Who are the possession peasants?

Possession peasants are workers (from serfs) purchased or transferred to the owner of the manufactory on the basis of limited ownership. They could not be sold or transferred to anyone separately from the plant or factory.

Possessed and assigned peasants, what is the difference

State serfs who worked for the payment of the Poll Tax were considered registered peasants. They worked in factories that were privately owned. The main difference between assigned and possessed peasants is that the latter could only be sold together with a factory or plant (usually entire villages). Those assigned could be transferred for eternal use to different manufactories - one by one or by the whole family.

Reform of Peter 1

In 1721, by decree of Peter 1, peasants assigned to manufactories were legalized. For the growing industry in the country, cheap labor was needed. It was Peter the Great, who began to solve the problem of lagging Russian production, who introduced possession rights and identified assigned peasants. These actions raised manufacturing production to a new level.

In the 19th century, assigned peasants were classified as possessions. Possession rights to peasants were abolished with the release of the Manifesto “On the Abolition of Serfdom” in 1861. From this moment on, the country entered a new stage of industrial development in Russia.

In order to take into account the number of people in the country who must pay the per capita tax, a census (audit) of the population was conducted for the first time in the history of Russia. These lists were called revision tales. In 1724, passports were introduced, which allowed the state to provide a system of control over its subjects and limit the possibilities of movement around the country.

Demidov factories. During the time of Peter I, one of the largest private owners of manufactories was Nikita Demidov. He produced iron at the Ural Nevyanovsky factories, which he sold to the state for the needs of the army. Runaways were often used at Demidov's factories. In this way they evaded justice, and Demidov did not pay taxes for them, because they were not accounted for anywhere. The life of such workers was very difficult. They lived in basements that could easily be flooded if a government check on the number of workers suddenly came.

Tsar Peter I encouraged the development of private manufactories, the owners of which were close to him. Their owners were allowed to buy entire villages, own them and use the peasants of these villages to work in factories. Such peasants began to be called sessional(from the word “possession” - I own). “Eternally given” were the students who were enslaved by their owners “in payment” for training in blue-collar skills.

Lecture text.

Lecture 26. Domestic policy of Peter I.

Basic concepts:

Magistrate; “assigned peasants”; "possession peasants"; magistrate; mercantilism; protectionism; fiscals; collegiums; assemblies;

The development of the entire country depended on the development of the economy. Anisimov called what happened in the 18th century “industrialization in Petrovsky style.” Reforms in industry took the leading place in Peter's reforms.

Peter encouraged the development of trade and industry. By the beginning of Peter's reign, there were only 15 large manufactories. From 1700 to 1725, about 200 enterprises were created. The main attention was paid to metallurgy. Its center moved to the Urals, where the Nevyansk plant was the first to be built. Weapons, anchors, nails, etc. were produced at the Ural factories and at the Sestroretsk plant in St. Petersburg. In 1704, a silver smelting plant was built in distant Nerchinsk.

The Arsenal and the Admiralty Shipyard grew up in the capital. Only during the life of Peter 1, 59 large and more than 200 small ships were built in St. Petersburg. The fleet needed canvas, and the army needed uniforms. These and other products were produced by sailing-linen, cloth and leather factories. In 1725, there were only 25 textile enterprises in Russia. There were rope and gunpowder manufactories, cement factories, paper factories, and even sugar factories.

The government protected the country from supplies from abroad of those goods that were produced in Russian factories. Such goods were subject to heavy duties. At the same time, the export of Russian goods increased.

In manufactories, forced labor of serfs and state peasants purchased and assigned to them was widely used.

The creation of merchant "companies" and the expansion of trade relations with foreign countries were encouraged in every possible way. Those merchants who exported goods on their own ships were entitled to significant tax benefits.

The main burdens of the transformations of Peter's time fell on the shoulders of the peasants. Many new duties arose. These include mobilization for the construction of cities, fortresses and ships, conscription, permanent conscription. Submarine conscription became even more burdensome than before.

It was known that landowners were hiding the number of their households in order to reduce taxes. Peter, at the suggestion of profit-makers (people who came up with ways to replenish the treasury), moved on to collecting taxes not from the courtyard, but from the male soul. In 1718, a capitation census was started. In 1722-1724. conducted an audit (verification) of the results of this census. The audit discovered the concealment of a million male souls. In the spring of 1724, a more or less exact figure of the revision souls finally became known - 5.4 million. The tax levied on the peasants went to the maintenance of the land army, the tax from the townspeople - to the maintenance of the fleet.

As a result of the audit and the associated tax reform, a passport system was introduced in the country. Now every peasant, going to work at a distance of more than 30 miles from his home, was required to have a passport with him. The passport indicated the deadline for the peasant's return.

The passport system made it easier for teams of detectives to combat the flight of peasants. Every peasant who did not have a passport and was away from his home was subject to detention.

In 1703, Peter issued a decree on “assigned peasants,” who were assigned to manufactories to work at the expense of state taxes. In 1721, there was a decree “on possessional peasants.” Business owners were allowed to buy peasants to work with.