Istilah hamba tani (yang berarti petani-petani yang tidak bebas) di Kekaisaran Rusia adalah terjemahan dari istilah krepostnoi krestyanin (крепостной крестьянин). Sistem perhambaan tani di Rusia bermula dari masa Rus' Kiev pada abad ke-11. Dokumen hukum dari masa itu, seperti Russkaya Pravda, membedakan beberapa tingkatan dependensi feudalpetani.
Perhambaan tani merupakan bentuk hubungan antara petani dan bangsawan yang sering ditemui pada abad ke-17. Sistem perhambaan tani paling umum tersebar di wilayah tengah dan selatan Kekaisaran Rusia. Sistem perhambaan tani sebelumnya tidak pernah diberlakukan di wilayah utara, Pegunungan Ural atau Siberia, tetapi pada masa kekuasaan Maharani Katarina yang Agung, usaha-usaha mulai mengirim hamba-hamba tani ke wilayah tersebut untuk memperoleh sumber daya alam.
Tsar Alexander I ingin mereformasi sistem tersebut, tetapi ia menghadapi rintangan yang besar. Hukum-hukum baru memperbolehkan semua golongan (kecuali hamba tani) untuk memiliki lahan, sebuah hak yang sebelumnya hanya diberikan kepada bangsawan.[1] Perhambaan tani akhirnya dihapuskan oleh sebuah dekret yang dikeluarkan oleh Tsar Alexander II pada 1861. Para cendekiawan telah mengajukan beberapa hipotesis mengapa ia menghapuskan sistem ini, seperti ketakutan bahwa para hamba tani akan memberontak, kebutuhan keuangan pemerintah, perubahan kebudayaan, dan kebutuhan akan prajurit-prajurit baru.[2]
Referensi
^Susan P. McCaffray, "Confronting Serfdom in the Age of Revolution: Projects for Serf Reform in the Time of Alexander I", Russian Review (2005) 64#1 hlm. 1-21 in JSTOR
^Evsey D. Domar and Mark J. Machina, "On the Profitability of Russian Serfdom", (1984) hlm. 919
Bacaan tambahan
Blum, Jerome. Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (1961)
Blum, Jerome. The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe (1978) influential comparative history
Dennison, Tracy. The institutional framework of Russian serfdom (Cambridge University Press, 2011) excerptDiarsipkan 2014-04-29 di Wayback Machine.
Domar, Evsey, and Mark Machina. "On the Profitability of Russian Serfdom". Journal of Economic History (1984) 44#4 pp. 919–955. JSTOR2122113.
Emmons, Terence. The Russian Landed Gentry and the Peasant Emancipation of 1861 (Cambridge University Press, 1968)
Gorshkov, Boris B. "Serfs on the Move: Peasant Seasonal Migration in Pre-Reform Russia, 1800–61". Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History (Fall 2000) 627–56
Gorshkov, Boris B. "Serfs, Emancipation of" in Encyclopedia of Europe, 1789–1914. John Merriman and Jay Winter, eds. in chief. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006
Hellie, Richard, Slavery in Russia, 1450–1725 (1984)
Hoch, Steven. "Did Russia's Emancipated Serfs Really Pay Too Much for Too Little Land? Statistical Anomalies and Long-Tailed Distributions". Slavic Review (2004) 63#2 pp. 247–274.
Hoch, Steven. Serfdom and Social Control in Russia: Petrovskoe, a Village in Tambov (University of Chicago Press, 1986)
Hoch, Steven and Wilson R. Augustine. "The Tax Censuses and the Decline of the Serf Population in Imperial Russia, 1833–1858". Slavic Review (1979) 38#3 pp: 403-425.
Kolchin, Peter. Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (1987).
Lust, Kersti. "Kiselev's Reforms of State Peasants: The Baltic Perspective", Journal of Baltic Studies (2008) 39#1 pp 57–71.
Lust, Kersti. "The Impact of the Baltic Emancipation Reforms on Peasant-Landlord Relations: A Historiographical Survey", Journal of Baltic Studies (2013) 44#1 pp. 1–18.
McCaffray, Susan P. "Confronting Serfdom in the Age of Revolution: Projects for Serf Reform in the Time of Alexander I", Russian Review (2005) 64#1 pp 1–21 JSTOR3664324.
Mironov, Boris. “When and Why was the Russian Peasantry Emancipated?” in Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage Ed. M.L. Bush. (London: Longman, 1996) pp. 323–347.
Moon, David. Abolition of Serfdom in Russia: 1762–1907 (2002)
Moon, David. The Russian Peasantry 1600–1930: The World the Peasants Made (London: Longman, 1999)
Nafziger, Steven. 'Serfdom, emancipation, and economic development in Tsarist Russia" (Working paper, Williams College, MA, 2012). onlineDiarsipkan 2014-04-29 di Wayback Machine.
Rudolph, Richard L. "Agricultural structure and proto-industrialization in Russia: economic development with unfree labor". Journal of economic history (1985) 45#1 pp: 47–69. JSTOR2122007.
Stanziani, Alessandro. "Revisiting Russian Serfdom: Bonded Peasants and Market Dynamics, 1600s–1800s". International Labor and Working-Class History (2010) 78#1 pp: 12-27.
Viaene, Vincent, Wayne Thorpe, and H. G. Koenigsberger. "Reassessing Russian Serfdom". European History Quarterly (1996) 26 pp. 483–526.