The Old Russian state was formed in the ninth century, the process of its formation was dictated by the developing economic and economic relations, further complicating the social structure, and the smerd is one of the most important characteristics of that era.
Feudalization of Old Russian Society
So, the economic development of the beginning of the IX century in Russia went at a rapid pace. Feudal relations were born, the main value for which was the land and the people working on it. The clan community at the same time is actively disintegrating, now one family is quite capable of cultivating a plot of land, it is being replaced by a neighboring community. Such processes took place both in relation to community land use and land rights; it now belongs to a separate family. On the basis of joint ownership, people used meadows, forests, pastures. However, the tendency to turn these properties into personal ones is becoming more and more visible. So begins to form private land ownership. In this regard, those families where there were a large number of men able to significantly expand the land holdings of their family climbed to the top of the social ladder. Families with a small number of men were forced to be content with a small one. Especially in the seizure of land, warrior leaders succeeded.
The complication of social device
Such a distribution of land resources inevitably led to social stratification among the initially free population. The most prosperous families quickly enough adapted to the new economic and economic conditions and were able to remain free farmers, so smerdy appear. The definition of this term can be expressed in the wording that these are people who have retained personal and economic independence during the period of rapid development of feudal relations. In the early feudal period, such people made up the majority of the population of Old Russian society. However, with the further evolution of the feudal system, many of them lose this status, turning into various kinds of dependent layers of the population. At the same time, smerd is not a homogeneous category of society, among them there are prosperous, called men, as well as “warriors” who had the right and were obliged to participate in wars (an indispensable condition was the need to fully equip themselves for military operations).
The enslavement of free community members
With the strengthening of the state, its privileged strata also strengthened. Since the logic of feudalism requires a constant increase in the exploited population, gradually the large landowners began to be burdened by a large number of free communes. Therefore, stink - it was a kind of threat to the future welfare of the feudal lord, and the latter tried in many ways to turn the former into people dependent on them. And this happened quite often, which was facilitated by the climatic conditions. Crop failures, floods, droughts - all these phenomena led to the fact that once blooming farms of Smerds fell into decay. To feed their families, they were forced to turn to the feudal lords for help, and so fell into bondage with wealthy fellow tribesmen. For borrowed money, seeds, tools, they had to pay.
This could be done in many ways. One part of the debtors concluded a contract with the creditor (“a number” in Old Russian transcription) and worked for it for a certain part of their time, thus fulfilling the debt. These people were called "rank and file". The other part was also paid for the debt (“coupe” in Old Russian transcription), but could no longer leave the creditor until it completely repaid the borrowed property. Such people were called "purchases."
The new meaning of the concept
Nevertheless, after the reckoning, man again became free. Smerd in Ancient Russia is a certain state of a person that characterizes his position in feudal society. This status could be lost forever: if a person was not able to fulfill obligations, then he became a serf, an already incompetent person, only a notch higher than a slave. Subsequently, with historical development, the word lost its original meaning. In Russia of the 16th-19th centuries, stinks are a neglectful designation of people of noble origin, which was used in the circles of the nobility of Russian society.