SC - period slavery

[Jenne Heise]

> > Well, the last mention of slaves in Silesia appears to be in the late
> > thirteenth century; but the Domostroi (Rus, late 16th-Early 17th century
> > depending on which bit you are reading) talks about slaves  and the
> > master's responsibility toward them... I'm not sure when slavery was
> > abolished in Russia, but I would guess post-period.
>
> Thanks. I am curious which sources you are using to say late 16th and
> Early 17th century Russia. Reading this article and my rememberance of
> the class indicated that the slaves were much better treated and that
> the numbers were declining by the 12th and 13th century. It doesn't
> give any dates for when the slavery stopped, though. So I guess it
> could have been held onto much longer than that.

The source I'm citing is _The Domostroi_ (trans. Caroline Pouncy)
subtitled 'Rules for Russian Households in the time of Ivan the Terrible'
section 28, 'If Someone keeps more slaves than he can afford'...
The custom of keeping slaves is also explained in _Bread and Salt_.
Slavery in 16th century Rus was apparently an option to escape debts or
destitution, and so functioned more like indentured servititude than the
Western black slavery of the period. The wholesale slavery by capture in
war had in fact died out by that time... it shows up in Jan Dlugloz's
Annals in the 12th and part of the 13th century, as I recall, with regard
to wars between the Poles and the Ruthenians, but isn't mentioned much
after that.

> For those who might be interested, this article is in the CULTURES section
> of my files and is from Pennsic class notes from last Pennsic:
> Kiev-Slavery-art  (22K)  9/ 8/99    "Slavery in Kievan Rus" by Peotr
> Alexeivich 
>                                        Novgrodski.
> It seems to be well written and contains a number of referances. It
> also appears that the keeping of slaves was often more of a status 
> thing than an economic imperative. In fact the monetary cost of keeping
> slaves could be quite high.

I believe that the author also wrote an article on the topic for the
Slavic Interest Group newsletter, Slovo.

Ob. Cooking reference. In section 29 of the Domostroi the author enjoins
his readers to have the servants set aside some of the dough from bread
baking to make pies and stuff them with whatever meat is to hand... Now,
those would be pies with a risen crust.
Anybody got any idea whether this actually means pies in the sense we use
it-- big tarts, that is-- or if it is roll or pasty-type pockets of dough
with stuff in them. (He also gives suggestions for stuffing for fast days:
'kasha, peas, broth, turnips, mushrooms, cabbage, or whatever God sends'.)

Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.
   "My hands are small I know, but they're not yours, they are my own"