A servant is an old word, familiar to many of us from books, phraseological units, and even colloquial speech. Despite the fact that the use of this term in its direct meaning in everyday life today is practically nullified, the phenomenon of farm labor is still reflected in culture and art, therefore it is familiar to everyone. It’s time to understand the meaning of this word.
Origin of the word
Many words in the Russian language are borrowed from other languages. This happens far from the poverty of the Russian language. The Russian borders come into contact with several countries inhabited by different peoples with their own culture and language. Throughout the history of the country, such an arrangement brought both negative and positive changes.
Many researchers believe that "farm laborer" is a word that came to us from Turkic peoples. For example, in the Kazakh language there is a consonant word “batyrak”, meaning a poor person who agrees to engage in any work. Most likely, the Russian language adopted this word in the 16th century, when relations between the Russian and Kazakh peoples intensified.
For all Turkic peoples there are common words that are similar in meaning and sound. Therefore, there are several more versions of the origin of the word "laborer". For example, from the word "batyr", which in Turkic directly means an employee. An interesting version is that the laborer is the changed word "badrak". Badraki called the privileged military estate of the Crimean Tatars, whose representatives in the XIX century were forced to go to Ukraine to earn money.
According to another version, the word "laborer" came to Russia from the Tatar, where the word "kaydak", translated as "single", exists. At that time, they called not only a single man, but also a peasant who did not have his own house and household. To earn a living, such a peasant went to hired work.
What does the word "laborer" mean
A farm laborer is an employee who does not have regular earnings and who is hired for a certain period or season. They have almost no values and property, often they do not have their own allotments, which forces them to engage in hard and low-paid labor. Most often, farm laborers are extremely poor people.
In Soviet times, farm laborers themselves were actively involved in collective farms and campaigned on the rural poor to follow their example. Therefore, it can be said that farm laborers constituted the working proletariat and fervently supported the Bolsheviks, seeing in them the authorities a chance to obtain land and earn a living by agricultural labor.
Currently, in its original meaning, the term is almost never used, it is found only in fiction and scientific literature. In a figurative sense, laborers are called modern workers engaged in heavy (often physical) labor for a low wage.
Examples of use
Today, farm laborers as a population category no longer exist. There remains a word familiar to everyone and used in a figurative meaning, there are still books of art where this word is used. Fellowship was widespread in Tsarist Russia, so writers and historians could not ignore this phenomenon.
How did you work, spend in your leisure time, how did the farm laborers live? The answers to these questions can be found in fiction:
Her children will have to bend their backs along with adult laborers, no one will pardon auction children.
Bells were still clanging near the awnings and near the stables, coachmen were bickering because of places for their horses, farm laborers clung to the fence on all sides, village women and men staring at the lighted windows of the hall, where the silhouettes of the dancers constantly flashed.
There are both poor and laborers in the village who have completely impoverished the peasants, and there are rich people who keep farm laborers, and today these beggars will be given full preference.
Moreover, in literature the word occurs in a figurative sense. For instance:
The Astakhovs literally have laborers, Fedosey and Nadezhda have been working in this farm for almost twenty years, they really have put a breakthrough in labor into it.
Peons in the culture
Since farm labor was widespread, today many people have a surname derived from the word "farm laborer". An example is the actor of theater and cinema Alexander Batrak.
These days, the phenomenon is reflected in films and games. For example, in the online strategy of “The Age of the Clones”, you need to choose the right answers for laborers who have come to hired work and have many questions for the employer.