assigned to him. The extent to which (or even whether) serfs were sold like slaves before 1700 is still being debated.
The issue was resolved during the reign of Peter I by two measures. First, in 1714 the service landholding and hereditary estate (votchina) were made equal under the law. Second, the introduction of the soul tax in 1719 made the lord responsible for his serfs’ taxes and gave him much greater control over his subjects, especially after the collection of the soul tax commenced in 1724. In the same year, peasants were required to have a pass from their owners to travel. This was strengthened in 1722, and again in 1724. That serfs were becoming marketable was reflected in the April 15, 1721, ban on the sale of individual serfs. Whether the ban was ever enforced is unknown. The fact that it probably was not was reflected in a law of 1771 forbidding the public sale of serfs (the private sale of serfs was permitted) and a 1792 decree forbidding an auctioneer to use a gavel in serf auctions, indicating that the 1771 law was not observed either.
After 1725 the descent of seignorial serfs into slavery accelerated. In 1601 Godunov had required owners to feed their slaves, and in 1734 Anna extended this to serfs. In 1760 lords were allowed to banish serfs to Siberia. This was undoubtedly done to try to ensure calm in the villages. That this primarily concerned younger serfs (who could have been sent into the army) is reflected in the fact that owners received military recruit credit for such exiles.
A tragic date in Russian history was February 18, 1762, when Peter III abolished all service requirements for estate owners. This permitted ser-fowners to supervise (and abuse) their serfs personally. Thus it is probably not accidental that five years later, in 1767, Catherine II forbade serfs to petition against their owners. Catherine, supposedly enlightened, opposed to serfdom, and in favor of free labor, gave away 800,000 serfs to private owners during her reign. The year 1796 was the zenith of serfdom. Paul tried to undo everything his mother Catherine had done. This extended to serfdom. In 1797 he forbade lords to force their peasants to work on Sunday, suggested that peasants could only be compelled to work three days per week, and that they should have the other three days to work for themselves. Paul was assassinated before he could do more.
His son Alexander I wanted to do something about serfdom, but became preoccupied with Napoleon and then went insane. He was informed by Nikolai Karamzin in 1811 that the Russian Empire rested on two pillars, autocracy and serfdom. Emancipation increasingly became the topic of public discussion. After suppressing the libertarian Decembrists in 1725, Nicholas I wanted to do something about serfdom and appointed ten committees to study the issue. His successor, Alexander II, took the loss of the Crimean War to mean that Russia, including the institution of serfdom, needed reforming. His philosophy was “better from above than below.” Using Nicholas I’s “enlightened bureaucrats,” who had studied serfdom for years, Alexander II proclaimed the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, but this only freed the serfs from their slavelike dependence on their masters. They were then bound to their communes. State serfs were freed separately, in 1863. The seignorial serfs had to pay for their freedom, that is, the state was unwilling to expropriate the serfowners and simultaneously feared the consequences of a landless emancipation.
The serfs were finally freed in 1906, when they were released from control by their communes, the redemption dues were cancelled, and corporal punishment for serfs was abolished. Thus, all peasants were free for the first time since 1450. See also: EMANCIPATION ACT; LAW CODE OF 1649; PEASANTRY; PODZOL; POMESTIE; SUDEBANK OF 1497; SUDEBANK OF 1550; SERFDOM; SLAVERY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blum, Jerome. (1961). Lord and Peasant in Russia: From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hellie, Richard. (1967, 1970). Muscovite Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago College Syllabus Division. Hellie, Richard. (1971). Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hellie, Richard, tr. and ed. (1988). The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649. Irvine, CA: Charles Schlacks, Publisher.
Kolchin, Peter. (1987). Unfree Labor. American Slavery and Russian Serfdom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Robinson, Geroid Tanquery. (1932). Rural Russia under the Old Regime. New York: Longmans. Zaionchkovsky, P. A. (1978). The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press.
Soviet industrial enterprises (predpryatie), occupying the lowest level of the economic bureaucracy, were responsible for producing the goods desired by planners, as specified in the techpromfinplan (technical-industrial financial plan) received by the enterprise each year. Owned by the state, headed by a director, and governed by the principle of one-person management (edinonachalie), each Soviet enterprise was subordinate to an industrial ministry. For example, enterprises producing shoes and clothing were subordinate to the Ministry of Light Industry; enterprises producing bricks and mortar, to the Ministry of Construction Materials; enterprises producing tractors, to the Ministry of Tractor and Agricultural Machine Building. Enterprises producing military goods were subordinate to the Ministry of Defense Industry. In some cases, enterprises subordinate to the Ministry of Defense Industry also produced civilian goods-for example, all products using electronic components were produced in military production enterprises. Many enterprises producing civilian goods and subordinate to a civilian industrial ministry had a special department, Department No. 1, responsible for military-related production (e.g., chemical producers making paint for military equipment or buildings, clothing producers making uniforms and other military wear, shoe producers making military footwear). While the enterprise was subordinate to the civilian industrial ministry, Department No. 1 reported to the appropriate purchasing department in the Ministry of Defense.
During the 1970s industrial enterprises were grouped into production associations (obedinenya) to facilitate planning. The creation of industrial or production associations was intended to improve the economic coordination between planners and producers. By establishing horizontal or vertical mergers of enterprises working in related activities, planning officials could focus on long-term or aggregate planning tasks, leaving the management of the obedinenya to resolve problems related to routine operations of individual firms. In effect the obe-dinenya simply added a management layer to the economic bureaucracy because the industrial enterprise remained the basic unit of production in the Soviet economy.
Soviet industrial enterprises were involved in formulating and implementing the annual plan. During plan formulation, enterprises provided information about the material and technical supplies needed to fulfill a targeted level and assortment of production, and updated accounts of productive capacity. Because planning policy favored taut plans (i.e., plans with output targets high relative to input allocations and the firm’s productivity capacity), output targets based on previous plan fulfillment (i.e., the “ratchet effect” or “planning from the achieved level”), and large monetary bonuses for managers if output targets were fulfilled, Soviet enterprise managers were motivated to establish a safety factor by over-ordering inputs and under-reporting productive capacity during the plan formulation process. Similarly, during plan implementation, they were motivated to sacrifice quality in order to meet quantity targets or to falsify plan fulfillment documents if quantity targets were not met. In some instances managers would petition for a correction in the plan targets that would reduce the output requirements for a particular plan period (month, quarter, or year). In such instances they apparently expected that their future plan targets would be revised upward. In the current period, if plan targets were lowered for one firm, planning officials redistributed the output to other firms in the form of higher output targets, so that the annual plan targets would be met for the industrial ministry.
Unlike enterprises in market economies, Soviet enterprises were not concerned with costs of production. The prices firms paid for materials and labor were fixed by central authorities, as were the prices they received for the goods they produced. Based on average cost rather than marginal cost of production, and not including capital charges, the centrally determined prices did not reflect scarcity, and were not adjusted to capture changes in supply or demand. Because prices were fixed, and cost considerations were less important than fulfilling quantity targets in the reward structure, Soviet enterprises were not concerned about profits. Profits and profitability norms were specified in the annual enterprise plan, but did not signal the same
ENVIRONMENTALISM
information about the successful operation and performance of the firm that they do in a market economy. Typically, failure to earn profits was an accounting outcome rather than a performance outcome, and resulted in the
