Eastern European Serfdom

Timeline

1. c. 1300–1400Feudal kingdoms of Eastern Europe · Eastern EuropeAs feudal noble classes rose in Eastern Europe, manor lords began using customary law and local regulations to restrict peasants' right to leave the land, forming the early institutional prototype of serf dependence.
2. 1451–1460Kingdom of Poland (Kraków) · PolandThe Polish nobility's parliament (Sejm) passed multiple statutes over this decade strictly limiting the number of times peasants could leave the manor each year (usually only once), and stipulated that peasants who fled without a lord's permission must be forcibly returned. This stage marked Eastern European serfdom's transition from customary practice to a formal written legal system.
3. c. 1550–1700Countries of Eastern Europe · Eastern EuropeRussian tsars, Prussian Junker nobles, and the szlachta nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth successively completed the systematic legislation of serfdom. Russia's 1649 Code (Sobornoye Ulozheniye) legally bound peasants to the land in perpetuity, marking the full establishment of the Second Serfdom in Eastern Europe.
4. 1848–1864Countries of Eastern Europe · Eastern EuropeDriven by Enlightenment thought and waves of bourgeois revolution, Austria abolished serfdom by decree in 1848, Russia in 1861 (Alexander II's reforms), and Romania in 1864, bringing the nearly five-century-long institution of Eastern European serfdom to an end.