The introduction of school years is believed to have taken place in Russia in 1597 by order of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich. However, this event was preceded by a rather long history. In Russia, some time before the above legislative act, there was a system of relations associated with the so-called St. George's Day. Annually, November 26 was the day of St. George (Yuri), in which agricultural work was finally completed.
Already at that time there were peasants who worked on their own plots. And those who worked on the landlord plots and had certain obligations, which were formalized by “regular records”. If all the conditions of the contract were met by late autumn, then the employee could move to another "employer" within two weeks before and after St. George's Day. Recent historical studies show that long before the so-called school summers appeared, the peasants had few opportunities to change owners. This was facilitated by the fact that the terms of the agreements between the landowners and peasants were unbearably difficult for land workers.
Work with old records showed that long before the aforementioned decree was adopted, peasants did not exercise their right to transfer. So, in 1580 in one of the counties of Muscovite Rus out of 60 peasants only two were able to take advantage of the change of landowner. But there were a sufficient number of people who fled from their master in search of a better life.
By the end of the 16th century, their number was such that a decree was adopted restricting peasant rights on St. George's Day and introducing protected summers in several regions of Russia. In addition, lesson summers were identified . This was a period during which the landowners could demand the peasants who had fled back from the other owners or return those who had left them free. At first, this period was 5 years. In 1607, it was increased to 15 years.
However, during the Peasant Wars, when people, from enslavement and starvation, fled to the south en masse, formed armed units, opposed the authorities, the summer classes were not respected due to the fact that the country was in a state of civil war. The government had to make certain concessions and lower the time bar again to 5 years.
In the 40s of the 17th century, the summer classes were extended to 9 years, and in 1642 it was found that runaway peasants can be returned within 10 years and recovered from another owner for 15 years. In 1649, the Romanov dynasty tried to put in order the legislative system of the country, which was characterized by randomness and many conflicting decrees. The result of this work was the Council Code, which canceled, including, lesson summer. So serfdom appeared in Russia . In later periods, in addition to the inability to leave the landowner, peasants could be sold to recruits, exiled to Siberia or to hard labor.
Russia is not the only state that has gone through enslavement. Almost all European countries had similar systems in their possession, and at about the same time they were canceled (in our state, in 1861). Western Europe went this way a little earlier, Eastern - a little later. And in the Kingdom of Bhutan, serfs existed until 1956. Although some historians consider the seizure of passports from workers of Soviet collective farms a kind of enslavement.