Noble manors in Belarus lands in the pre-reform period: servitude exploitation and patriarchal care of the peasants

Abstract

The article analyzes the traditions of patriarchal care of peasants in a noble estate on Belarusian lands in the prereform period. Patriarchal care is interpreted as a social mechanism that allows maintaining a minimum acceptable level of material security for peasants in conditions of increasing serf exploitation. The term “exploitation” is defined as the process of appropriation by landlords of the results of the labor of the serf peasantry. It is indicated that the mechanism of patriarchal guardianship functioned with significant limitations and was unable to stop the further degradation of labor resources and the economy of serfs.It is noted that the system of landlord farming, formed during the existence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and preserved in its main features on the lands of the “western provinces” of the Russian Empire, was in the process of transformation during the period under study. The local noble estate, under the influence of all-Russian socio-economic and political factors, acquired new characteristics, and at the same time retained its economic and cultural specifics, for example, a low degree of solidarity in inter-verbal communications, which affected the intensity of exploitation of serfs and the nature of care for them.