The problem of serfdom in Russia during the first quarter of the 18th century in the light of the history of concepts

The paper develops a practically-oriented pattern for studying the history of public thought with the help of methods of present day's history of concepts. To solve this task, the author postulates the principle of variety of genres of historical sources and the principle of a focused study of the system of social and political concepts within certain thematic fields. The practical implementation of these principles is exemplified in the comparative analysis of meanings and contexts of the use of concepts 'freedom', 'slavery' and 'property' in public and non-public texts which were created by the authors of the first quarter of the 19th century to deliberate upon the problem of serfdom. The analyzed sources include articles from journals like VestnikEvropy, Syn Otechestva, Arkhiv istoricheskii i politicheskii; archival papers of O.P. Kozodavlev, M. Balugyanskiy, A. Druzhinin, as well as peasants' addresses regarding 'freedom from slavery'. The study resulted in determining the peculiarities of the use of the concepts 'freedom', 'slavery' and 'property' in public and non-public communication in different social groups of Russian society of the first quarter of the 19th century. For public texts, it is characteristic to affirm the historical genesis of 'slavery' in different countries of the world, to morally disapprove of ' slavery' and to support the natural character of ' freedom'. At the same time, the j ournals were writing about the buyout of slaves in Asia and Africa and about laws regulating the liberation of peasants. All this was contributing to the emergence of two main scenarios of possible liberation in the minds of Russian readers: either by the buyout on the side of peasants, or by the liberating law on behalf of the state power. In texts of projects that were devoted to the softening or cancellation of serfdom, 'property' was emerging as a key concept in connection with the concept 'slavery'. Gradually, the authors were moving from the unconditional recognition of the 'freedom' of a person to the question of contractual relations between peasants and owners of the land. In such a context, one of the ways to cancel the personal dependence of peasants upon their masters was the project of granting the right to buy land with peasants to other, non-noble social groups of Russian society. On the level of peasants' addresses 'slavery', however, was not an abstract category used to describe peasants' status in general, but a concrete term used to stress the inhuman character of punishment, the illegal status of possession by the non-nobles, or any other circumstances that gave peasants a chance to submit a petition to grant them 'freedom'.

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