Smerd is a free man in Old Russian society

The Old Russian state was formed in the ninth century, the process of its formation was dictated by the developing economic and economic relations, the further complication of the social order, and the smerdy is one of the most important characteristics of that epoch.

Feudalization of Old Russian society

So, the economic development of the beginning of the IX century in Russia was going on at a rapid pace. Feudal relations arose, the main value for which was the land and the people working on it. The clan community is actively disintegrating, now one family is fully capable of processing a plot of land, the neighboring community is replacing it . Such processes have also occurred with respect to communal land use and land rights, it now belongs to a separate family. On the rights of joint ownership people used meadows, forests, pastures. However, there is a growing tendency to turn these domains into personal ones. So begins to form private land ownership. In this plan, at the top of the social ladder, those families, where there were a large number of men who were able to significantly expand the land holdings of their family, climbed up. Families with a small number of men were forced to settle for small. Particularly in the seizure of lands, warrior leaders succeeded.

Complicating the social order

Such a distribution of land resources inevitably led to social stratification in the environment of the initially free population. The most prosperous families quickly adapted to the new economic and economic conditions and were able to remain free farmers, so there are smerds. The definition of this term can be expressed in the formulation that these are people who retained their personal and economic independence during the period of rapid development of feudal relations. In the early feudal period, such people were the majority of the population of Old Russian society. However, with the further evolution of the feudal system, many of them lose this status, turning into various dependent layers of the population. At the same time, the smerd is not a homogeneous category of society, among them are the well-off, called men, as well as "warriors" who had the right and were obliged to participate in wars (the prerequisite was the need to fully equip themselves for military operations).

The enslavement of free community members

With the strengthening of the state, its privileged strata also grew stronger. Since the logic of feudalism requires a constant increase in the exploited population, then gradually large land owners became burdened by a large number of free community members. Therefore, the smerdy - it was a kind of threat to the future welfare of the feudal lord, and the latter tried in many ways to transform the first in dependent on them people. And it often happened, which was facilitated by natural and climatic conditions. Crop failure, floods, droughts - all these phenomena led to the fact that once flowering farms of smerds fell into decay. To feed their families, they were forced to turn to feudal lords for help, and so they fell into bondage to rich fellow tribesmen. For borrowed money, seeds, tools, they had to pay.

This could be done in different ways. One part of the debtors concluded a contract with the creditor (the "row" in the Old Russian transcription) and worked for it a certain part of their time, thus fulfilling the debt. These people were called "ryadovichi". The other part also paid for the debt ("bath" in the Old Russian transcription), but could not leave the creditor until it fully repaid the borrowed property. Such people were called "purchases".

A new meaning of the concept

Nevertheless, after reckoning the person again became free. Smerd in Ancient Rus is a certain state of a person, characterizing his position in feudal society. This status could be lost forever: if a person was not able to fulfill obligations, then he became a slave, already an incomplete person, only a step above the slave. Subsequently, with historical development, the word lost its original meaning. In Russia XVI-XIX centuries smerd is a disparaging designation of people of non-common origin, used in the circles of the nobility of Russian society.