sury. Since both power groups had an interest in depriving peasants of the right to change their abode or employer, laws and custom slowly established serfdom as a widespread custom - finally fixed by the 1649 Code of Laws instituted by Czar Alexei. None but noblemen might own estates worked by servile labor. It should be noted that the nobility itself was essentially a class of serving men, holding land under a form of imperial tenure which obliged them to give service to the state - while being supported by the labor of their serfs.
Although known as a Western-oriented "modernizer," Peter the Great (died 1725) confirmed this system. Indeed, his reforms refined the need for serfdom. Peter imposed upon the nobility more precise and far-reaching duties of service. In 1718 he introduced a poll tax on all classes save the nobility and certain select groups - a state revenue tax on every living male. The end result of this poll tax, particularly onerous on large families, was to reduce the remaining peasantry to a level of fiscal indebtedness to the state equivalent to formal serfdom in all but name and certain governance differences. These became known as "state peasants."
Russian census figures from the late 1700s (excluding Baltic and newly-acquired Polish territories) find serfs comprising 53% of the population, state peasants an additional 45%. As Russia approached the turn-of-the-century in 1796, only 1,300,000 people lived in urban centers - as opposed to 10,700,000 rural inhabitants. Industrial development in the Empire was at the infantile stage; agriculture was the foundation of the national economy. Yet, as calculated in 1834, 45% of all serfs were owned by only 2320 landowners - a disproportionate allocation of resource that found the majority of landowners holding 10 or fewer serfs. As will be noted, then, few landowners had reason to be active proponents of serfdom; the "benefits" of the institution we...