“About Agriculture” and About “Slave Lifeˮ. The Economic Thinker of Peter the Great's Time About the Peasantry

Abstract

I.T. Pososhkov, an original economic thinker, is one of the most controversial personalities of Peter the Great's time. Apologists pointed to the progressive features of his worldview, to the fact that he put forward an agrarian project that his supposed to lead to the eradication of serfdom. Critics pointed to the conservative sides of this project. Pososhkov himself strongly denied the rights of landlords to peasants, but believed that the sovereign had those rights. At that suggestion, the landlords received the duty to ensure that the peasants were not lazy to their detriment, since that caused the poverty to the peasants, and it was unprofitable for the sovereign. Pososhkov's thinking had quite traditions, the source of which was the idea of the state us a royal patrimony, widespread in Moscow Russia. But Pososhkov's ideas were not accidental. They expressed the direction of public thought, in which a little later the peasant question took a leading place in the socio-political life of the country.