Obrok is a type of tax and rent

Obrok is one of the types of taxes that peasant serfs gave to their master. Natural it was called, if paid with food, money - if money. It was levied to file this with the fact that they created serfs, that is, from "surplus production". Natural loan is a variety of agricultural products (vegetables, grains, wines), goods of artisans. By the 15th century, the corvée has gradually become secondary. The main obor is the obrok.

Obrok as a tax

I must say that the ritual in Russia appeared in the ninth century and was originally natural. The fixation of its dimensions is scheduled for the 14th century. Subsequently, an increasingly important role is played by commodity-money relations, and the obrok gradually begins to be paid in money. Best of all, this practice has taken root in the lands of Novgorod. When in the 16th century corvée appears, a kind of stratification occurs in a peasant environment: landlord peasants paid corvee, while state and monastery peasants pay money. Since the middle of the 18th century, it has flourished in an increasingly lush color thanks to the growth of market relations. He paid more than half of all peasants in all provinces in the European part of Russia (55% in the non-chernozem part and 26% in the chernozem zone). Thus, this obrok is a tax, the size of which was fixed and paid out completely regardless of the opinion and desire of the peasants.

The history of the quitrent

Incidentally, it was the money pledge that was much more profitable for the peasants, because it provided them with relative independence and independence in management. Actually, therefore, all the attempts of especially vulgar landowners to transfer serfs to corvee service caused fierce opposition from the population. In the beginning of the 19th century, waste-growing became more and more popular, serving as the main way of earning money for payment of dues, the size of which grows approximately two-fold (while the peasant allotments are shrinking). Gradually there is a whole system of mixed payments, which included both a money loan and a corvee. In 1861, during the liberation of the peasants, the latter was abolished, replaced with money, and from the beginning of 1863 the peasants began to pay mandatory ransom. Payment of dues to landlords is a thing of the past. All vobrochnye payments thus became redemption.

Another kind of dues

The word "obrok" definition has another: renting vacant lots of land, meadows and forests. This is what they called - "return to the rent". In such a lease, the places for catching ermines, squirrels, bortnik sites, fishing grounds, wild fields and even cultivated lands, suddenly left without plowmen, were leased. If peasants took such empty lands, they received from the state privileges for several years (exemption from all duties, except, in fact, rent, the amount of which was contractual and voluntary). In the cities even places for such a lease were leased to the shops and shopping arcades. Such a rent is a hired payment for the right to use lands and places, and for an exclusively private transaction with the state. Thus, the same term denoted two completely different payments. One - forced to file with the management, the other - a voluntary payment for the lease of land.