Russia, now brought into contact with the Western world, showed her inclination to follow in the path of freedom, as well as on other roads to civilization; and besides, though lack of documentary evidence prevents us from offering any exact figures on the subject, the question, according to the agreement of many authorities, affected only a very small proportion of the labouring population.
Yet this period it was which led up to the general serfdom of the whole people. How? By what strange reversal of the natural development of corresponding relations?
Up to a comparatively recent date, the Russian Government of the close of the sixteenth century has borne the heaviest and most terrible responsibility in this matter. Alone, according to the very general belief, on its own initiative, by its own action, it worked this ruinous and far-reaching change in the judicial and social position of the classes affected by it. At the present day this view is generally cast aside. In Russia, as elsewhere, serfdom has been the outcome of time, and of a particular stage in the political and economic history of the country, and there is no necessity for seeking an explanation of the phenomenon in the misty conceptions of the Slavophile doctrine.
According to Kaveline (see his 'Works,' vol. i., p. 630), this phenomenon was the natural, necessary, logical result of the general organization of the country, itself based on the principle of domestic authority, and, as such, was rather beneficial than otherwise in its nature. This power of one man over another, used cruelly sometimes, because the habits and customs of the time were rough, but not really abused on the whole, was limited, in his view, to a sort of guardianship, founded, not on the strength of the guardian who had thus found means to impose his will, but on the feebleness of the ward, whose consciousness of weakness led him to accept an indispensable authority, guidance, and protection.
Granting this hypothesis, we should still have to account for the sudden discovery of a condition of social incapacity which had in no wise been previously revealed, and the coincidence of this new state of things with a period of growth which should rather have prevented or diminished it. The truth, as it appears from historical data, would seem to be very different. In the records of the populations in question during the sixteenth century, two facts rule. One is the rapid disappearance of the peasant proprietor, the other the equally rapid impoverishment of the peasant in general. And behold the results On one side a mass of men, agricultural labourers and others, who, finding they cannot support themselves in any other way, agree to sell their liberty, so that they may not
