Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

Re:Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐ev... by int_19h on Tuesday March 24, 2020 @01:31PM (#22676629)

If you mean that peasants still had to rely on the land owned by somebody else to survive, then yes. But this had been the case in every country that had serfdom and abolished it, usually until industrialization funneled all those peasants into the cities.

But serfdom is a lot more than that - it's literally treating people as slaves, selling them etc. That part was decisively abolished.

By 1917, when the Revolution happened, peasants' primary concern was access to and control of the land, not personal freedom.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐ev... by rsynnott on Tuesday March 24, 2020 @03:21PM (#22677972)

As I understand it, many emancipated serfs and their descendants were still paying off a substantial tax intended to compensate landowners into the 20th century, often by working for the same landowners. It was clearly an improvement over serfdom, but likely a worse situation than contemporary peasants elsewhere.

[ Parent | on HN ]