The freeing of the serfs occurred in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century. Although it ended the personal subjection of the peasantry and abolished the feudal obligations of deliveries in kind and services, bringing to a close the feudal and clearing the way for the capitalist form of landholding, this transformation allowed the ex-feudal lords to retain those lands that they had administered themselves in the past by converting into peasant holdings only the so-called rustical lands that had previously been cultivated on their own account by the serfs. The demesne lands, which the feudal owners had managed themselves, were for the greater part cultivated by robot (corvée) labor, and to a lesser extent by those who worked for wages, although some parts were worked by landless peasants to whom they were rented out in exchange for a great variety of obligations. These people received no land when the serfs were freed. The most serious socioeconomic problem of the capitalist century in Eastern Europe was the misery of the masses of landless .peasants as well as of the small and dwarf holders who lived in the shadow of the large estates whose origin was feudal and on which they worked as wage laborers. For this reason it is quite understandable that the origin of the land-tenure system that followed the freeing of the serfs had to become, sooner or later, one of the focal points of historical research.

“Serfdom” is one of those conventions of historical nomenclature which, like “feudal” or “medieval,” are intended to bring together in concept a number of similar elements for common consideration. Very often we are inclined to forget that the elements composing the whole may bear many marks of dissimilarity as well as marks of likeness. We should be on guard, then, not to allow the convenience of conventional terms to blind us to the great variety of characteristics and variations in quality to be found in the thing named. “Serfdom,” just like “feudalism,” means different things at different times and places, and it is well for us from time to time to examine more closely the several manifestations of it to determine if there may be important differences distinguishing one type from the other, even though they all seem to sail under the same colors.

The purpose of the present article is neither to examine in detail the state of research regarding demesne-robot farming and the “neo-serfdom” or “second serfdom” in Poland-Lithuania nor to attempt a definitive explanation of these phenomena. Rather, the author has set out to show the inadequacy of conventional views by reiterating a series of important points already raised by various Polish historians.

In the particular case of Hungary, neo-serfdom is to be seen as an economic, political, and social evolution in which the political power of the nobility, especially that of the gentry, grew considerably; the demesne lands of the lords disproportionately increased at the expense of the serfs' rustical lands; the lords' seigneurial jurisdiction over their peasants increased; and the lords' management of their economy shifted from receiving rents to producing for markets. It was a system of social stagnation in which the evolution of cities and an urban middle class, a potential counterbalance to the nobility, was made impossible, and the serfs had no way out of their degrading environment and status. These conditions developed rapidly after the suppression of the Dózsa revolt of 1514, the greatest peasant movement of discontent in Hungary. As a result, the peasants were bound to the soil. The national Diet of 1547, however, enacted the serfs' right of migration, a freedom which was re enacted several times more.

Scholarly debate in the West, and to a large extent also in the Soviet Union, concerning the fifteenth and early sixteenth-century Russian monk losif (né Sanin) Volotsky (Joseph Volotsky), 1439-1515, has generally centered on his political ideas and the interpretation of his Prosvetitel' (Enlightener, or Illuminator) . The monastic side of his activities is often played down or neglected, even though the most important aspect of his daily life for fifty-five years was his serious pursuit of the monastic and (for thirty-eight years) abbatial vocation. In the provincial Volokolamsk Monastery, which he founded, he not only entered into ecclesiastical politics and composed the didactic apologetics and inquisitional invectives that comprise his sixteen-discourse (originally eleven) Enlightener but also wrote two monastic Rules, which are very important sources for his life and for the religious and intellectual history of his time.

Very few books and studies on Dostoevsky appeared in the first two decades after his death. The year 1900 may be chosen as the turning point, for after that date the number of publications, first in Russian, then in other languages, increased steadily. By the middle of our century the canon of Dostoevsky scholarship was well established, so that hardly any new departures seemed to be possible. Today, whether our attention is focused on Dostoevsky's opinions or on the stylistic devices and structures of his novels, we note that practically every method of approach has already been tried by at least one of our predecessors. Thus Dostoevsky, not unlike Nietzsche, was discovered and appropriated by the first half of the twentieth century. It was then that he grew to the stature he now possesses, and it was then that he was recognized as a forerunner of new trends in European literature and philosophy.

In the years after 1905, Social Democrats in Russia agonized over the form of struggle in which to engage. The defeats suffered in the revolution and the new legal possibilities offered after 1905 led to strains among the socialists and changed considerably the nature of their debates from the prerevolutionary years as each faction attempted to deal with the potential of a legal labor movement and the actuality of continued police repression. Paradoxically the years of “reaction” were also the seedbed of Russian trade unionism. Many Social Democrats, most notably the so-called likvidatory (“liquidators”), believed that the time had come to concentrate on the legal labor movement, to broaden its appeal and deepen its roots among the working class. Others, tied to the traditions of the underground party and the primacy of political work, opposed the new reliance on legal activity. All Social Democrats inside Russia were faced with the reality of economic depression, a decline in labor activism, and political repression. They faced together a strategic dilemma. The deeper they retreated into the underground, the more tenuous their ties with the workers became. Yet the more actively they engaged in trade unionist and other legal activities, the more vulnerable they were to police persecution.

Throughout European history the aristocracy has been involved in reform movements which undermined either ecclesiastical or monarchical power structures. Thus the nobles of southern France in the twelfth century granted protection to the Cathars, and in fourteenth-century England lords and knights offered aid to the Lollards. The support of German princes and knights for Lutheranism is well known, as is the instrumental role played by the French aristocracy in initiating the constitutional reforms which gave birth to that nation's eighteenth-century revolution. The fifteenth-century Hussite reform movement in Bohemia similarly received aid from the noble class. Here, when the Hussites were under attack in 1417 from the authorities, especially the archbishop, sympathetic lords protected Hussite priests on their domains.

During the last months of 1918 profound political and social changes took place throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the dissolution of Habsburg administrative authority in late October, Poles, Ukrainians, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, and Rumanians organized national councils that eventually were to determine the political future of these former subject peoples. Ruthenians living in the northeastern counties of Hungary also participated in this process, and from November 1918 to May 1919 they formed many councils which proposed various political alternatives: autonomy within Hungary, complete independence, or union with Russia, the Ukraine, or the new state of Czechoslovakia. Although these choices reflected the political and cultural allegiances that were traditionally attractive to Ruthenian leaders, the particular international situation in 1919 proved favorable to only one—union with Czechoslovakia.