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Ivan Turgenev's story «Khor and Kalinich» is one of the first works of Russian literature, showing the inner world of the country’s peasants. It could also serve as a vivid illustration of the economic model of the serfdom’s coercion system, says Dmitrii Kofanov, a Post-Doctoral Associate at the University of Pittsburgh and New Economic School’s graduate.This column is part of a joint project of NES and N+1, looking at economic theories in literary works.
The restriction of freedom that was very close to slavery, as well as the cruelty and inefficiency of serfdom, which has restrained the development of Russia for centuries, leave no room for finding any positive features of this institution. It was designed to forcibly seize a share of products produced by peasants. Both the landlords and the state forced them to work. The latter hunted after fugitives and punished rebels, of whom there were many. But could this institution exist based just on brute force?
The story Khor and Kalinich from Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches features a secretive and thrifty serf Khor. Apparently, he has saved up enough money to buy freedom for himself and his family, but he does not use this possibility. Khor understood that his situation was predictable («...I know my master and I know my rent... we have a good master»), while freedom was fraught with risks. He was selling butter and tar, and sharing them with his master. And he is not at all sure whether he will be able to compete with well-established merchants once he himself is a free peasant and has to rely only on his own resources. He doesn’t understand who he will have to obey, who will defend his interests in the face of bureaucrats or in court. Serfdom was unenviable (and Turgenev was its huge critic), but even for those who had the opportunity to legally escape it, the actual alternatives could be too vague and, therefore, unattractive.
The story shows that the serfs, especially those who paid rent – had monetary or in-kind duty to pay, but not labor service – enjoyed much more freedom of action than is commonly thought. And sometimes they used this freedom very successfully. The work by historian Tracy K. Dennison provides many examples of how serfs regularly engaged in trade and invested in land and buildings that brought them income. The famous Savva Morozov, the founder of a business dynasty, bought himself and his family out of serfdom when he was in his fifties. By that time, he was already a successful entrepreneur and had paid a whopping 17,000 rubles in bank notes for himself and his sons.
Although serfs could not officially buy land in their own name until 1848 (Khor and Kalinich was published a year earlier), such deals still happened. They were concluded on behalf of the master, who could provide written guarantees of non-interference in the transaction and renunciation of property rights. This did not fully protect the peasants from the expropriation of their property: ultimately, they were still under the jurisdiction of their master and could not defend their rights and interests in an independent court. This was actually the case of the serf Akim, the owner of an inn in Turgenev's novel The Inn: the landlady sold the inn, built by Akim on a plot of land that was bought by him in her name, to a treacherous visiting philistine. The consent of the serf was not required, since the land and everything on it belonged to the landowner, who, in turn, saw no need to explain anything to the former «owner». Nevertheless, even such risks could not completely suppress the private initiative of the peasants.
Can we call the behavior of such people as Khor rational? What benefits made the elites preserve the institutions of slavery and serfdom, and what made it acceptable for dependent workers to submit to these institutions? The model suggested by Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu and Alexander Wolitzky in the The Economics of Labor Coercion allows us to better understand the economic incentives of this system of coercive labor. It is based on a simple idea: the master (principal) chooses the level of coercion of the worker (agent) based on the latter's productivity and the costs of coercion. The agent, accepting or rejecting the «terms of the contract», proceeds not only from the efforts required of him and his remuneration, but also from the availability of good alternatives (for example, more remuneration or less work). The higher the degree of coercion, that is, the harsher the punishment for trying to leave the master, the lower the motivation to do so. And the higher the benefits of alternative (outside) options, the more attractive the decision to abandon the previous «contract». For example, after buying himself out, an enterprising serf was to bear all the costs associated with the inefficient Russian bureaucracy, but he could become much richer and not depend on the fickle will of the master and his heirs.
Thus, the model of Acemoglu and Wolitzky has two important factors that have differently directed influence on the degree of coercion and make it possible to explain the emergence and disappearance of serfdom and slavery. The first factor is the demand for labor: the higher the price of the goods produced, the more the masters rely on coercion to keep as much of the profit as possible. This is consistent with the popular explanation of the so-called second edition of serfdom in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe: it relates the new serfdom of peasants, which began in the 16th century, with the growth of grain exports to Western countries, which were experiencing an economic upswing and the development of capitalism. Having faced the growing demand for grain, the landlords chose to strengthen control over the mobility and labor of the peasants in order to obtain a larger market surplus.
The second factor – the availability of an outside option – has the opposite effect. The more accessible and attractive it is, the weaker the coercion, which becomes less profitable due to rising costs. The logic here is not so obvious. One could expect the opposite effect: the master would try to coerce the workers, striving for a better life. Such a counterargument, at first glance, follows from the famous Domar’s hypothesis according to which the introduction of serfdom in Russia in the 16-17th centuries was caused by a shortage of labor relative to the amount of land. There was so much of it that the peasants always had the opportunity to escape from the coercion of landlords to free territories or to another landlord, so the authorities sought to bind the workers to the land.
The feudal gives instructions to the peasants, Queen Mary's Psalter
Queen Mary Master / Public domain
However, in fact, there may be no contradiction between the two approaches, and the degree of coercion depends on its «profitability» in certain circumstances. In the model of Acemoglu and Wolitzky, masters can reduce the attractiveness of outside options for employees through harsh coercion. According to this logic, the large amount of land in Russia only encouraged the elites to bind peasants to the land, as their marginal productivity increased: each serf could cultivate more land.
Combining Domar's hypothesis and the model of Acemoglu and Wolitzky helps to find an answer to the most important question in the history of serfdom in Europe: the discrepancy between Western and Eastern Europe after the plague epidemic of the mid-14th century, which cut the European population by half. In the West, the epidemic was followed by the elimination of the remnants of serfdom, as it is believed that labor became more expensive, allowing peasants and agricultural workers to demand much better employment conditions. This did not happen in Eastern Europe, and re-enslavement began by the 16th century.
It is likely that the Eastern European landlords initially had more control over their peasants and were able to unite to counteract the migration of workers, and could also exert pressure on the authorities to strengthen serfdom (as discussed, for example, in Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty). This fits into the logic of the Acemoglu and Wolitzky model, based on the ratio of two effects that make up the «profitability» of coercion. Prices for agricultural goods rose everywhere, but in Western Europe, primarily due to the development of cities with thriving trade and crafts, peasants had much more attractive alternatives to working for landowners, and coercion would not help achieve the desired effect.
From the point of view of the availability of outside options, in the Russian Empire, in the worst situation were the serfs who served their masters and were most bound to them. They often did not know how to plow the land, and they were not even entitled to get any of it as part of the serfdom abolition reform. And if they couldn't get any craft skills, it was very difficult for them to find another occupation. It is not surprising that Firs from Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, a devoted servant who continued living on the estate, calls the serfs' release in 1861 a «misfortune.»
According to the model of Acemoglu and Wolitzky, coercion ultimately reduces the well-being of both workers and society as a whole. The more effort a worker puts in, the more profitable it is for the masters to have forced labor, because otherwise they would have to pay more. This demotivates workers to increase productivity. And it is more profitable for workers to deal with less demanding masters, because in this case they are less subjected to coercion. The lag of the Russian Empire behind the advanced economies of that time fits perfectly into this model.
Although, according to modern research, the abolition of serfdom in the Russian Empire generally increased agricultural productivity and the standard of living of peasants, as well as accelerated industrial growth, hardly all peasants and landlords were satisfied with the results of the reform. And again, we find traces of this in the Russian classic literature. In Nikolay Nekrasov's poem Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia?, wandering peasants, after listening to the landowner's complaints about the worsening state of his household and peasants’ well-being after the abolition of serfdom, concluded:
Yes, the chain has been broken,
The strong links have snapped,
And the one end recoiling
Has struck the Pomyéshchick (landlord),
The other – the peasant.
Dissatisfaction with the results of the reform was common among the peasantry. Conflicts related to the distribution of land (especially between former serfs and landlords), the administration of duties and the payment of taxes broke out with triple force in 1905, and then in 1917. No matter how much the peasants were burdened by serfdom, getting free of it and breaking ties with the landlords proved to be difficult and fraught with many problems for them. The tragic events of the early 20th century revealed the grave legacy of serfdom, which Turgenev considered not only immoral and unfair, but also an obstacle to the country's development.
