278 I. T. Pososhkov portrayed the conditions of the serfs in a way that coincides with the picture provided by the text of the instruktsiia. He wrote that “the landlords place an unbearable burden on their peasants, for there are some noblemen who are so inhuman that they do not, during the work period, give their peasants one day to produce anything for themselves.” The landlords acted according to a maxim—“Don’t let the peasant become prosperous, but shear him like a sheep right down to the hide!”—which, continued Pososhkov, meant that “they devastate the realm, for they skin [the peasants] to such an extent that no one is able to retain even a goat, and from such suffering they leave their houses, and some flee into the country {v ponizovye mcsta), some to the Ukraine, and some abroad, and in this manner populate foreign lands and leave their own land deserted.” Pososhkov suggested that the tsar should set a limit, by means of an ukaz, for the rent {obrok) and the number of days of service (barshchina) landlords were to be allowed to demand of their peasants “so that it will be bearable for [the peasants] to give tax to the state and pay the landlord, as well as feed themselves without suffering. A closer study of the sources reveals, however, that Pososhkov’s portrayal of the situation is not entirely in keeping with the historical realities. There are many witnesses to the fact that the enserfed peasants were often subjected to vicious economic exploitation and brutal treatment by their landlords, but the landlords did not, during this period, steadily increase the rents without regard to whether their serfs were being ruined. Such a practice would not have been in their interest, nor, for the reasons presented below, was it possible. lu. A. Tikhonov, who has studied the development of feudal rents on nobiliar estates during the last part of the seventeenth and the first part of the eighteenth centuries, has shown that there were no margins available which would have allowed landlords to undertake a general increase of rents during the period and that this did not in fact occur. Up until the 1720s, the state tax burden on the peasantry increased five times over, thus reducing any possibility estate owners might have had for increasing their incomes fromrents. According to Tikhonov: a previously unknown increase in taxation, the taking of a significant number of workers from the estate owner’s village, and the costs for their support set, for a time, a limit to any increase in the estate owner’s exploitation (of the serfs). The interests of the landlords, in their capacity as private landowners and owners of enserfed peasants, came into conflict with the absolute monarchy’s ” 228 229 Pososhkov, 177—178. lu. A. Tikhonov, Pomeshchich'i krest'iane v Rossii. Feodal’nuia renta v XVIInachalc XVIII v. (Moscow, 1974), 303. 228
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