A quitrent is one of the types of taxes that serfs gave to their master. It was called natural if it was paid with products, money if it was paid. This fee was levied on what the serfs created, that is, on "surplus production." Natural quitrent means various agricultural products (vegetables, grain, wines), goods of artisans. By the 15th century, corvée was gradually fading into the background. The main requisite is exactly the quitrent.
Dues as tax
I must say that the quitrent in Russia appeared in the ninth century and was originally natural. Fixation of its size is planned for the 14th century. Subsequently, commodity-money relations play an increasingly important role, and the rent gradually begins to be paid in money. Best of all, this practice has taken root in the lands of Novgorod. When corvée appeared in the 16th century, a peculiar stratification occurred among the peasant milieu: landlord peasants paid corvee, and state and monastic peasants paid money. Since the mid-18th century, it has flourished with an ever more magnificent color thanks to the growth of market relations. More than half of all peasants paid it in all provinces in the European part of Russia (55% in the non-chernozem part and 26% in the chernozem zone). Thus, this quitrent is a tax, the size of which was fixed and paid completely independently of the opinion and desire of the peasants.
Charge History
By the way, it was money rent that was much more beneficial to the peasants, because it provided them with relative independence and independence in managing. Actually, therefore, all attempts by especially cunning landowners to transfer serfs to corvee-land caused fierce resistance from the population. At the beginning of the 19th century, otkhodnika became more and more popular, which served as the main way to earn money to pay a quitrent, the size of which increased by about half (while peasant allotments were reduced). Gradually, a whole system of mixed payments is developing, which included both cash rent and corvee. In 1861, during the liberation of the peasants, the latter was canceled, replaced with money, and from the beginning of 1863, peasants began to pay a mandatory ransom. Paying the rent to the landlords is a thing of the past. All installment payments thus became redemption.
Another type of rent
The word “quitrent” has another definition: rent of empty land, meadows and forests to those who wish. This is what they called “return to rent”. Places for catching stoats, squirrels, land for storages, plots for fishing, wild fields and even cultivated land that suddenly were left without plowmen were also leased for such rents. If the peasants took such empty land, then they received benefits from the state for several years (exemption from all duties, except, in fact, rent, the amount of which was contractual and voluntary). In cities even places for benches and malls were leased for such rent. A similar rent is a purely hired payment for the right to use land and places, and for an exclusively private transaction with the state. Thus, the same term denoted two completely different payments. One is a compulsory file from the household, the other is a voluntary payment for the lease of land.