The main working and creative potential of any country is the people, citizens, and its inhabitants. Not a single government is capable of raising the economy, leading the state to any significant milestones, if there is not the proper number of workers and competent specialists. Those who stood at the helm of the power of the Russian state understood this well. Therefore, even from the time of Yaroslav the Wise and further on, Russian princes, and then emperor sovereigns, who truly cherished the power, tried to form their subjects as much as possible. Peter the Great was especially successful in this regard.
Being not only a great reformer of Russia, inculcating on the Russian soil many of the customs and traditions of the West, Peter did a lot for the formation and development of national industry. From the dense forests, the country made a giant leap into the world of science and technology. However, the same Peter, with all his democracy, became one of the most severe serf-rulers. It was under him that such a form of serfdom appeared as the ascribed peasants and the right of possession, although it was then called a little differently.
Under Peter, the Urals and Siberia and other Russian regions of economic importance are being actively developed. Manufactories are being built, plants whose owners are people of non-noble origin. These are merchants, representatives of other classes who managed to get rich and began to invest their capital in developing industry.
New lands need to be settled, to work at the enterprises under construction. Naturally, all the work was assigned to the people. However, the owners of enterprises could not buy peasants - it was a noble privilege. To provide the developed lands and expanding industry with workers, Peter attributes hundreds of peasants to the enterprises under construction and existing ones.
Thus, ascribed peasants are the definition according to which the so-called state, palace, and economic peasants are called, instead of paying capitation taxes to workers at a private or state-owned enterprise. Peasants were usually attributed to the place of work without a deadline, i.e. forever. It was a kind of another kind of serfdom. In form they were the property of the state. In fact, they were completely dependent on the manufacturers. Their fate was no better than the fate of serfs under the landlords.
Already in the first quarter of the 19th century, ascribed peasants were called indispensable, and then they were included in the so-called post-peasant peasants. They got this name after enterprises that accept money subsidies from the state began to be called sessions.
Consequently, the landowner peasants are a people attached without land to work in manufactories. People were considered something like factory equipment, inventory, they belonged to the enterprise, and not to the owner thereof. And therefore, the owners of manufactories could not sell or exchange peasants working at the enterprise, just as the landowners do it.
Peasants were acquired by whole villages adjacent to factories. The runaway peasant peasants were also considered as dependent if they mastered any skill, learned factory business. Special state decrees stipulated all the subtleties of the relationship between factory slaves and their owners.
Yes, the possessive peasants endured bullying and violence, exploitation oppression no less than their village counterparts. Because artisans, people fled from breeders and manufacturers. In the places of settlement of ascribed or subsession peasants, unrest and armed uprisings broke out. For example, a lot of fugitives from factories took part in the Pugachev movement.
Sessional peasants occupied such a powerless situation until 1840. It was at this milestone that he began some concessions. In the fortieth year, a special law was passed that allowed workers to be freed from some dependence on the enterprise. Then, with the abolition of serfdom, the working people received freedom. However, until 1917, the peasants in certain regions of the Russian Empire were in the same enslaving dependence.