It is well known that at the dawn of the capitalist era, in less developed countries, but closely connected with the young bourgeois world, there was a return to forms of exploitation that humanity had long passed over, and especially cruel ones. Such are plantation slavery in the New World and the so-called second enslavement of peasants in a number of countries in Eastern and Central Europe. At first and in more developed countries, capitalism generated "bloody legislation against the expropriated" and created "white slaves" in the form of indentured servants and exiles .1

In our view, the two qualitatively heterogeneous phenomena - labor legislation and the second enslavement of the peasants in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries - are connected, one with the West, the other with the East of Europe. Meanwhile, at the turn of the Middle Ages and modern times, there were countries in Europe where capitalist exploitation had not yet triumphed and the second enslavement had not yet been implemented, but where, undoubtedly, there were tendencies to both. The clash of these trends can be observed even within the same farm or estate. In other words, the strengthening of feudal-corvee exploitation took place here in the context of the successful formation of the bourgeois system, and therefore in the future the process of decomposition of feudalism was particularly peculiar. This was the case in 17th-century Sweden, where the noble economy was not yet the subject of research by either Russian pre-revolutionary or Soviet historians .2

Specific historical material relating to the agricultural history of Sweden in the late Middle Ages is of indisputable theoretical interest. The question of commodity production under feudalism and the nature and causes of the second enslavement of the peasants continues to cause controversy. In our textbooks on the history of the Middle Ages and Modern times, as well as in the new edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, it is said that the second enslavement of the peasants was conditioned by the adaptation of the nobility of Central and Eastern European countries to the needs of the Western European market for agricultural products, needs that increased with the development of capitalist relations in Europe .3 This point of view is rejected by some economists and historians: serious objections to this interpretation in relation to the agrarian history of Poland and especially Russia, however, in the period of the XV-XVI centuries, were put forward by such prominent scientists as the late B. D. Grekov4 and S. Kutsheba. Recently, F. Y. Polyansky has made a cursory but very decisive statement against this point of view in the pages of Voprosy Istorii, declaring it even bourgeois!5 .

1 See E. Williams. Capitalism and slavery. Publishing house of Foreign Literature. 1950, p. 30 et seq.

2 For a related topic in the field of political history, see R. Y. Wipper. The first glimpses of enlightened absolutism. (The struggle of the monarchy with the nobility in Sweden, agricultural projects of Charles XI.) "Izvestiya AN SSSR". Series of History and Philosophy, 1947, N 1.

3 See the article "The second enslavement of the peasants". Bolshaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya, Vol. 9. Izd. 2-E. 1951, p. 371; Novaya istoriya, Vol. 1, edited by V. Biryukovich, B. Porshnev, S. Skazkin. Gospolitizdat. 1951, pp. 273, 285. V. F. Semenov. History of the Middle Ages. Uchpedgiz. 1949, p. 388.

4 B. D. Grekov. Peasants in Russia. Book I, ed. 2-E. M. 1952, pp. 5-7.

5 F. Y. Polyansky. On commodity production under feudalism. (Based on the materials of the History of Western European feudalism) "Voprosy istorii", 1953, N 1, p. 40.

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In Sweden (and in Finland, which was part of it), the second enslavement of the peasants did not occur as such: corvee did not become the main type of rent, and the personal freedom of the peasants was preserved. However, if we look closely, we can also observe all the signs of this phenomenon, albeit in a weakened form, as a trend: the introduction and increase of corvee farming, the restriction of land rights and personal freedom of the peasants, the emergence and growth of large-scale landlords 'farms, the expulsion of peasants from the land in order to expand the master's plough and meadow area, the increase in the marketability of landlords' farms, and finally, general growth of noble land ownership. Can all these phenomena be explained solely or mainly by internal reasons, such as the growth of the domestic market? The solution of this question based on the Northern European material should either reinforce or shake the point of view, which is reflected both in the article of the new edition of the TSB on the second enslavement of the peasants, and in our textbooks on the history of the Middle Ages and modern times.

The analysis of this material is, as it seems to us, of a certain scientific interest also because in general lecture courses and textbooks the problem of Swedish and generally Scandinavian feudalism, its formation and decomposition is covered very sparsely.

Finally, it must be borne in mind that it was in the seventeenth century that Sweden's economic development was also of some international importance. Throughout the history of this country, there has never been another era when Sweden was so actively involved in international affairs and influenced the balance of power in Europe. The fate of a number of countries in the 17th century and the adjacent early 18th century was closely linked to the military and political potential of their northern neighbor. It is not without reason that the battles of Breitenfeld and Lutzen, Fehrbellin, Poltava and Gangut remain important historical milestones in the past of the Russian and German peoples. Sweden of the 17th century was a power that dominated the Baltic Sea and owned or controlled the vast majority of its coasts. The " Swedish period "in the history of the peoples of the Soviet Baltic states enjoys the close attention of our scientists, who have already done a lot to expose the overseas invaders and, in particular, the legend of the" golden time " of Swedish rule in the Baltic States .6 For its part, reactionary Swedish and Finnish historiography, whose conclusions are repeated by Western European and American reactionary historians, continues to glorify the Swedish conquest as supposedly beneficial for the peoples of the Baltic States and Northern Germany .7 One of the "proofs" of this" benevolence "is the reference to the" harmony "of relations between landlords and peasants in Sweden itself, to the alleged" unity " of the Swedish kings with the peasantry.

Finding out the true identity of the ruling class of Sweden at that time - the feudal nobility - its economic activities, its attitude to the peasantry should contribute to a correct scientific assessment of the Swedish Baltic Empire of the 17th century and its role in the life of the peoples under its control.

*

Important sources for studying the noble economy of Sweden in the 17th century can be documents of local accounts, correspondence of Swedish magnates with each other and with estate managers, resolutions and legislative acts, minutes of judicial and government institutions (state Council), as well as the noble rank of the Riksdag, and finally, agronomic and legal treatises of contemporaries, travel notes of foreigners. They are used by us in this message.

The development of the agricultural history of Sweden began mainly only after the First World War. The Swedish scientific literature on the subject of interest to us is quite extensive and constantly updated. This literature is valuable mainly for factual and especially statistical material from archives, which sheds light on the agricultural and social development of late medieval Sweden. These are the studies of I. A. Almqvist on the composition and territorial distribution of noble land ownership in the XVII century; H. Svenne-on the economic privileges of the nobility; A. Montgomery - on the history of the working legislator-

6 See J. J. Zutis. The Ostsee question in the XVIII century. Riga. 1946. "History of the Latvian SSR". Riga. 1952. "History of the Estonian SSR". Tallinn. 1952.

7 Such are, for example, the books of E. Hornborg. Sveriges historia. Stockholm. 1940, especially pp. 191-192, 213, 420; his. Finlands historia fran aldsta tid till vara dagar. Malmo." 1948.

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the late E. F. Heckscher-on the question of the so-called reduction-the return of noble lands to the treasury (in his well-known and worthy of special consideration "Economic History of Sweden since the time of Gustav Vasa"); F. Eleskug - on a special group of the rural population of Sweden - the torpars; E. Brenman - on the purchase of state-owned land by the nobility under Gustavus Adolphus and others 8 .

Swedish experts have not yet raised the most important problems of Sweden's transition from feudalism to capitalism and, in particular, the problem of adapting the feudal landlord economy to changes in the productive forces and relations of production, not only in the more advanced countries of Western Europe, but also in Sweden itself, which is of interest to us in this article.

In addition, a number of issues in the Swedish agrarian history of the 17th century are deliberately distorted. Most bourgeois authors are most concerned with "offending" the ruling class of the time, the Swedish nobility. The desire to "smooth out the corners" of the acute class struggle in the rural areas of the 17th century, while lavishing compliments on monarchs and aristocrats-the cruel robbers of the peasantry-also permeates such largely informative works as "The Government and the Peasantry during the Regency under Christina" by G. Wittrock and " The Peasant in History Sweden" by E. Ingers 9 . Bourgeois historians, both Swedish and non-Swedish, are particularly zealous in idealizing the agrarian policy of the kings and their measure of reduction-the return to the crown of lands previously obtained or appropriated by the nobility. Meanwhile, the reduction, while serving the fiscal interests of the noble state, did not fundamentally violate, at least in Sweden itself, the economic interests of the nobility as a class, its official and officer small-scale majority. And even the feudal aristocracy, as E. F. Heckscher showed in his time, was not at all ruined by reduction.

In Sweden, the feudal formation replaced the primitive communal one, bypassing the slave-owning one (although slavery existed as a way of life). A new formation could not have emerged here from the synthesis of feudal elements of the decaying tribal system of the ancient Germans and late Roman land relations and political institutions, since Sweden did not know Roman rule. Unlike in many other countries, the development of feudalism here was not accelerated by foreign conquest .10 Hence, its relatively slow development, the late preservation of slavery as a way of life, the long existence of patriarchal-tribal remnants, and communal property. The natural conditions of Scandinavia - an abundance of mountains and forests, a moraine landscape, a short summer-did not favor the formation of feudal estates with a large master's smell. In medieval Sweden, food rents were almost ubiquitous. This led to the absence of personal serfdom and the comparative weakness of other feudal institutions. Non-economic coercion for the bulk of the peasants was expressed in their class inferiority .11 The peasants had to pay taxes to the king, as well as pay duties not only for the benefit of the landowner, but also for the benefit of the king and the nobility as a whole.

Feudal-noble land ownership in the middle of the 17th century. by the time of its greatest territorial spread, it covered about two-thirds of the entire land in the country, recorded by scribal books (jordebocker). In the agricultural and pastoral-agricultural densely populated areas of the east and south of Sweden, its share was even higher. In the north of the country and in the mountains, feudal estates were negligible. As elsewhere, the size of land ownership among individual nobles was extremely different. The largest in Sweden

8 J. A. Almquist. Fralsegodsen i Sverige under storhetstiden I - III. 1931 - 1947; H. Swenne. Svenska adelns ekonomiska privilegier 1612 - 1651. 1933; A. Montgomery. Tjanstehjonsstadgan och aldre svensk arbetarpolitik. "Historisk tidskrift". H. 3. Stockholm. 1933; E. F. Heckscher. Sveriges ekonomiska historia fran Gustav Vasa, d. I, b. 2. 1936; V. Elgeskog. Svensk torpbebyggelse fran 1500-talet till lagaskiftet, 1945; E. Brannman. Fralsekopen under Gustav II Adolfs regering. 1950.

9 G. Wittrockk. Regering och allmoge under Kristinas formyndare. 1948; E. Ingers. Bonden i svensk historia. I - II. 1943 - 48.

10 For the role of the "military organization of barbarian troops during the conquest itself" in the emergence of feudalism, see K. Marx and F. Schulz. Engels, Soch. Vol. IV, p. 64.

11 It is well known that class inferiority is also a form of non-economic coercion. See V. I. Lenin, Soch. Vol. 3, p. 159.

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the county of Wiesingsborg, which belonged to the Counts of Brahe, by 1632 covered 747 1/2 hemmans, that is, full peasant allotments. Along with this, there were many small nobles who owned only a few, from one to four, hemmans. Noble estates, where the owners themselves or their managers - fochts-lived, were called seteries in Sweden. The feudal nobility had several such empires in the 17th century. Such nobility included the Counts of Oxenstierna, Delagardi, and Brahe. A fairly large landowner, Baron Sh. Rosenhane, the author of a treatise on agriculture, had 8 seteria in Sweden alone; Countess Ebba Leyonhuvud had about the same number, as can be seen from her correspondence preserved in the Delyagardi archive of the State University of Tartu. The Setherii were completely exempt from royal taxes and duties, so the nobles were interested in having as many such setherii as possible. However, in reality, not every seteria was an estate in the full sense of the word. In terms of size, most of the seteria-estates did not differ much from the full-estate peasant economy of this area. This phenomenon was also reflected in the language of the XVII century. Noble estates and peasant courtyards are often called the same - "gard", and the master-owner and the peasant-owner - "husbonde". For the areas with the largest distribution of estates - Upland and Södermanland (Eastern Sweden to the north and south of Stockholm) - Rosenhane determines the size of an average estate of only 30 hectares of arable land and 200 cartloads of hay from meadows 12 . But, of course, there were also larger networks. As early as the 16th century, an average royal estate had to have at least 100-200 hectares of arable land, 100 cows and 20-30 oxen .13

The land of the estates was lost in the mass of peasant farms, landlords and proprietors. The noble lands were fragmented and scattered not only within several parishes or counties, but also in different regions. So, according to the inventory from the Delagardi archive, the possessions of Count Johann Oxenstierna in 1645 were spread over 14 parishes and 110 villages or towns in three regions-Södermanland, Upland and Öster'ötland. Only in 3 villages, the count owned 4 - 5 hemmans (full allotments). In the vast majority of cases, he owned only 1, 1/2, or 1/4 hemman in a given village .14

In such circumstances, the estate was primarily the residence of the landowner and his family, at least in the summer, as well as a reception, control and storage point for in-kind receipts from peasants. This type of noble estates, fully covered by the German term "Grundherrschaft", was inherited from the times of the deep Middle Ages. Quite often, this type of network did not stand out from the routines of the rural community. 15 On the contrary, the noble writers-agronomists of the second half of the XVII century. Rosenhane and Rolamba a model estate of the Gutsherrschaft type was already thought to be independent of the field routines of neighboring peasant communes16 .

The leading branch of the noble economy in 17th-century Sweden, as in eastern Europe, was agriculture. Rosenhane wrote: "Agriculture is the main thing on which the house stands, its maintenance and food. Therefore, the landowner focht must first of all know a lot about this ... " 17 . At the same time, in the western and some southern regions of the country, cattle breeding was no less important, and sometimes even more important; it is not for nothing that the estates themselves in Sweden in the XVI - XVII centuries were often called "avelsgard", which means animal farm.

12 Rosenhane's treatise was written in the early 50s of the XVII century, but was first published only in our time: S. Rosenhane. Oeconomia. 1944, s. 8. Rosenhane speaks of 20 tons of seeding. Tunna was sown on 1 1/2 tunland, and tunland was somewhat smaller ? in the case of two fields, which dominated in these regions, half of the entire arable land was plowed.

13 P. Nystrom. Avelsgardsprojektet 1555 - 56. "Scandia", b. 9. 1936, s. 241.

14 Delagardi Archive (hereinafter A.D.), vol. "S", ll. 132-133. Rotheringh uppa denn Hog walborne Herren Herr Johann Oxenstierna Axelssons bonder under Horningsholm och Tullegarn.

15 In 1635, at a meeting of the governors in the Chamber of Chambers, it was mentioned that some seteries were cultivated by peasants: under the guise of seteries, some of the nobles exempted their possessions from any taxes to the treasury. During the discussion, it was noted that this is permissible only if the network is old and therefore included in the land konov system "om satherien woro gambla och i lottlaggningarne derfore inforde" (Kammarkollegiets protokoll. I, s. 5).

16 With the manual of agriculture of Rolamba (A. Ralamb. Adelig ofning, 1694) we met mainly in the presentation of E. Heckscher. Sveriges ekonomiska historia. I, b. 2, s. 328 - 329.

17 S. Rosenhane. Op. ed., pp. 24, 53.

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Undoubtedly, the master's economy had greater opportunities for the development of productive forces than the peasant crushed by the seigneurial and tax-paying oppression. Many dozens of agricultural implements listed by Rosenhane, starting with wheeled and wheelless plows, could only be owned by a rich owner. However, the owners of estates, apparently, did not go beyond the use of a three-field crop rotation. It is significant that the Swedish landowners ' guide, Count P. Brahe the Elder's Oeconomia, written at the end of the sixteenth century, was first published in 1677.18 Almost a hundred years later, it continued to be seen as a body of practical agricultural wisdom! Although Rosenhane was familiar with artificial grass cultivation and the threshing of bread by some "machines", the usual two-field and slash farming in Sweden at that time did not cause him to blame. On the contrary, he proudly derived the ancient name of his country from the word "podseka" - "Svearike" from "svedjande".

Noble journalism of the XVII century, objecting to the demand of the taxable estates for the return of part of the noble lands to the treasury, did not stint describing the success of landowner agriculture. The same Rosenhane in his pamphlet of 1650. Junker Pera's Conversation claimed that hundreds of new villages had built not only beautiful houses, but also gardens (unusual for Sweden), fish ponds, ditches (for drainage), meadows and forests were cleared, and watermills were built. But even this ardent ideologue of the landlords did not give them credit for improving their own grain economy.

The peculiarity of Swedish noble production was that it was not limited to the field of agriculture. Advising the farmer to take every possible care of improving his farm, developing horse breeding and sheep breeding, Rosenhane also recommends organizing iron production, cooking tar and tar, setting up mines, harvesting planks, building timber, and so on. Although the participation of the nobility in the metallurgical industry was often limited to renting out a plot of land for a mine or factory to a citizen, the Swedish landowner was well acquainted and connected with this industry. Numerous letters, contracts and invoices in the Delagardi archive for the 30-40s of the XVII century are full of special metallurgical terminology. The Countess of Leyonhoovud, for example, undertook a search for iron ore on her land in the Södermanland region, counting on a plentiful rent from the future mine when it was leased. 19 The estates often had water-powered sawmills. The repeated protests of the noble deputies of the Riksdag against the tar monopoly also indicated their interest in trading in tar of their own production.

Trade and monetary transactions occupied an important place in the life of the Swedish nobles of the 17th century, which at first glance was out of proportion to the limited scale of landowner production proper. In the petitions, complaints, speeches and statements of the nobility to the Riksdag in the 20 - 60s of the century under consideration, a significant, if not predominant, place was occupied by commercial issues.

The main source of commercial operations of the nobility was in-kind income from feudal-dependent peasants. In any case, such an important item of noble trade in the first half of the XVII century, as grain, came mainly in the form of rent. This origin of commercial noble bread is attested by the first point of complaint of this class at the Riksdag of 1631: "First of all, bread - the only thing that a nobleman in this state can collect (att upbahra) - is forbidden to be exported, so they (noblemen - A. K. ) have nothing with which they can collect it. to cover the poverty of their economy, and they, on the contrary, must suffer violence and loss because of this prohibition (caused by crop failure-A. K.)." In the Riksdag of 1632, paragraph 7 of the noble petition stated: "We are also not allowed in many places, especially in the borderlands, to sell and freely trade with foreigners grain or our other income and dues collected by us from the peasants ..." 20 .

From the court books of the Upland region, it can be seen that the peasants carried grain for rent for sale to the capital or other cities, under the name of-

18 P. M. Hebbe. Den svenska lantbruks litteraturen, I, 1939, s. IX.

19 AD, T. "S", ll. 19, 104, 106, 165, etc. Interesting information about the entrepreneurial activities of Count Jacob Delagardi, the "hero" of the Swedish intervention in Russia, is provided in the work of E. Grill. Jacob de la Gardie. Affarsmannen och politikern. 1949.

20 "Sveriges ridderskaps och adels riksdags-protokoll, I. s. 178, 223.

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an hour on ships chartered by a nobleman. Everyone, Rosenhane notes, hurries with the threshing to calculate how much will go for sale and how much for consumption. The intensive grain trade of large landlords is evidenced by the materials of the Delagardi archive and the correspondence of Chancellor Oxenshern. The bread trade was largely designed for export. If the export of grain is not banned in time, his brother wrote to the chancellor in April 1618, then all the grain available in the country will be exported and it will become expensive. The desire to sell grain and other goods abroad as profitably as possible led the Swedish nobles to frequent clashes with the burghers, to complaints from the nobles about the commercial activity of the burghers, and to competition from them. 21 In turn, the taxable estates, complaining about the competition of landlords, had in mind first of all their grain trade. The famous petition of the three taxable estates - clergy, townspeople, and peasants - to the Riksdag in 1650 stated that the Queen did not go along with the estates and did not prohibit the export of bread from a starving country, for fear of harming "those good gentlemen whose income is based on the grain trade"22 .

It was the period of the greatest expansion of noble land ownership and noble privileges - the first half of the XVII century, the "golden age" of the Swedish nobility-that was the time of the greatest export of grain in the entire history of Sweden. The price revolution began here in the second half of the 16th century, but its main stage, unlike most other Western European countries, occurred in the first decades of the 17th century .23

The other two main items of noble trade were cattle and iron. This is evidenced by the correspondence of the landowner Countess Ebba Leyonhuvud. In a 1645 letter to her son-in-law's clerk (factor) Ingemar Person, she asked him to find locksmiths and blacksmiths in Stockholm to buy "good and fine" strip iron from her. She undertook to deliver it to Stockholm in the amount of about 20 shiffunts. A certain Johann Gallen, in a letter dated June 16, 1644, from Stralsund, informed the Countess that at the request of her Stralsund "skipper", he, Gallen, issued a certificate of safe delivery to Stralsund from Sweden of 32 oxen belonging to the Countess. Volov was received by the servant of "Herr Legate", that is, Johann Oxenstierna, the Swedish ambassador to the Westphalian peace negotiations. A servant drove the oxen to Stettin. On March 9, 1645, the Countess demanded that Persona send her special meat merchants to buy fattened oxen from her. From the archival materials, it is clear that the manager of Count Yakov Delyagardi sold metal products of the count's production. In the petition of 1650 the tax-paying estates complained that the nobles forced the peasants to sell them the products they were going to bring to the city, and at low prices imposed by the landlords themselves. This meant, in particular, peasant cattle. In the Riksdag of 1652, the Landmarschall (head of the nobility) exclaimed in the course of disputes about duties: "If we have bread, iron, etc., but no merchants, then what is the use!" 24

Despite the fact that trade in agricultural products seems to have played a primary role for the nobility, the share of exported metals - copper and iron-increased more and more with each passing decade in the total volume of Swedish exports. According to Heckscher's estimations25, the share of agricultural and pastoral products exported for the period 1590-1661 decreased (in value) from 34.8% to 1.8%. We do not know what the share of the nobles in the metal trade was, but we can assume that it was not insignificant, because iron was one of the main parts of the feudal rent, the nobles owned many mines and factories, the noble dignitaries were large shareholders in the monopoly company for the sale of copper; the metal industry and metal trade were always of concern to the noble deputies of the Riksdag. In Sweden, there has long been a "mining nobility" - a layer of privileged miners. At the end of the 17th century, Sweden became the largest exporter of iron in Europe and stopped exporting bread, regular import of it from the Baltic States began.

21 Vendels sockens dombok 1615-1645, 1925, s. 93, 142. AD, T. "C", I, 272; Rikskamsleren Axel Oxenstiernas skrifter och bref-vexling, II, d. 3, s. 26, and also s. 223; d. 5, s. 487; d. 8, s. 224; Svenska riksdagsakter fran 1611, I, s. 145, 272-273.

22 Loenbom (publisher). Handlingar till Konung Carl XI-tes historia, d. 10, s. 89.

23 E. Heckscher. Edict. op., d. 1, v. 1, s. 222-226.

24 AD, T. "S", ll. 3, 4, 7, 34, 46, 106. O. v. F. review of "Sveriges ridderskaps och adels riksdagsprotokoll", V. "Historiskt bibliotek". I, 1877, s. XLV.

25 E. Heckscher. Op. cit., d. I, v. 1, annex. V, 2.

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After all, it is not surprising that the correspondence of Swedish nobles in the first half of the century does not contain medieval financial terminology. In the papers of the Delagardi archive, the words "capital", "collateral", "bank", "receipt", "bill of exchange", "interest", "bond", "assignation", "contract", "debit", "credit"are repeatedly found. All these words are of foreign origin, and among the general Gothic text they are written in Latin letters, which indicates their novelty for correspondents. The regulations on customs duties of the first half of the 17th century listed a variety of luxury items. The nobility constantly ordered various products for themselves in the Netherlands. In 1647, a Swedish resident in the Netherlands wrote twice to Count Delagardi about the arrival of the next batch of cargo intended for him at the Danish port of Helsinger. Countess Ebba Leyonhoovud, as can be seen from her correspondence, bought canvas and linen, velvet and lace, glass, paper and newspapers, ship's lead, honey and wax, horses and oxen, peas and rice, crabs and fish, lime, bricks, paint and building stone .26 The scale of duty-free importation of goods by nobles from Livonia worried the government. Nobles have repeatedly clashed with city merchants and artisans not only as sellers, but also as buyers, protesting against the high cost of industrial and imported goods. Landlords were closely associated with cities, especially port cities, such as Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Abo. Therefore, Rosenhane considered the proximity of a large city to be one of the conditions for the profitability of the estate.

The close connection with the market did not in the least exclude the consumer, natural-economic foundations of the noble estate. The existence of such a basis, even for the landowner-entrepreneur Rosenhane, seemed natural and praiseworthy: an exemplary owner should be content with the food that his own farm offers him, and "always try to have something to sell, but not to buy." At the same time, he held up the example of the nobles of Germany and Poland, where in many places the nobleman received the main income from his estate, while he took "nothing but work"from the peasants .27 In other words, the marketability of the Swedish estate and the enterprise of the Swedish landlords seemed to Rosenhana to be less than in the countries of classical second enslavement.

In terms of wealth, the Swedish landlords of the 17th century "caught up" with their richer Western European counterparts. The poverty of medieval Swedish nobles was the subject of ridicule in neighboring countries: Tsar Ivan IV ironically referred to King Gustav Vasa as an "ox driver" and "son of a water carrier"in his letters. Although there have been significant changes in the diet and lifestyle of the nobility since the last decades of the sixteenth century, foreigners in the seventeenth century noticed the modesty, if not the squalor, of this way of life. So, the French diplomat d'To Ogier, in the 1930s, the country house of Count Delagardi, one of the largest Swedish magnates, seemed no better than the dwelling of some merchant or artisan in the Parisian suburbs .28 Two decades later, the English ambassador Whitelock noted that the estates of poor "gentlemen" near Lake Melarn were not much different from peasant farms: these are wooden two-story buildings with a stone foundation, a roof covered with turf, and ... goats grazing on this roof. But the same Whitelock found, and a different picture. During his journey, before reaching Uppsala, he was invited to a rich estate, the most beautiful of all that he had seen on the way from Gothenburg. The stone house was tall and spacious, roofed with copper, which, according to the ambassador, indicated the owner's lucrative service in the mining department. The rooms had many windows, stone and brick floors 29 . The Countess of Leyonhoovud's estate was probably of the same type, as she constantly employed carpenters and masons, locksmiths and glaziers. Most of Sweden's country castles and Baroque palaces were built in the 17th century.

Needless to say, one of the main ways for the Swedish nobility to get rich was by shamelessly robbing neighboring countries. The notorious "poverty" of the Swedish landlords created a particularly favorable environment for cultivation

26 AD, T. "S", ll. 319, 324, 3, 23, 42, 29, 35, 61, 28, 41, 40, 63 - 64, 81. See also the papers in folder N 4.

27 A. Rosenhane. Op. ed., pp. 9, 10.

28 Caroli Ogerii eiphemerides... 1656, p. 228 - 229, 173. However, the same diary is full of enthusiastic descriptions of Swedish mines and factories.

29 B. Whitelocke. Jornal of Swedish Embassy. V. I. 1855, p. 192 - 194.

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aggressive aspirations of "Carolina" adventurers.

The feudal class already had considerable sums of money at its disposal. We are convinced of this by the 616,000 riksdaler paid by nobles who bought land from the treasury in 1622-1632 alone, mostly in cash; the presence of 22 families among the nobility in the middle of the 17th century with an annual land income of more than 9,000 dalers in silver; and the distribution of shares among the nobility of monopoly companies that were being created at that time. Swedish nobles at the end of the 17th century were the largest depositors of the Stockholm Estates Bank, whose deposits reached almost half of the amount of the Amsterdam bank's deposits by the 1990s .

*

So, the feudal estate in Sweden in the XVII century was already deeply involved in commodity-money relations, moreover, it was a somewhat entrepreneurial economy that worked for sales. But in the seventeenth century the plantation farms of the West Indies, the serf farms of Denmark, Prussia, and the Baltic States, and the capitalist farms of the English gentry were also entrepreneurial, although to varying degrees. Commodity production on a more or less large scale is possible under conditions of a wide variety of modes of production, and under conditions of feudalism-under all types of feudal rent .31 What was the nature of exploitation in the Swedish estate of the time we are interested in?

In the sources, the expression "seteria and its (or adjacent) corvee peasants" (dagsverksbonder, sateribonder) is very common. "Peasants under the empire" and" peasants on the estate " are also found in the privileges of the nobility, in the protocols of the Riksdag rank of nobility, and in the correspondence of A. Oxenshern. These landlords were mainly working rent holders and lived near the estate-no further than the so-called "reserved mile" (about 11 km), which exempted them from all or almost all taxes and duties in favor of the treasury. But most of the landlords ' peasants did not pay such a weekly corvee, working only for about 20 to 30 days a year, largely by carriage, which was to be expected under the rule of natural rent. In Rosenhane's eyes, the corvee duties of the landlord peasants were a normal part of the estate. Rosenhane advised Vogt to keep a special notebook and record in it the winter transportation of peasants, as well as the number of days they worked and the nature of the work done. Further, he recommended that Vogt be present when the peasants perform household tasks, arrange them for work and monitor its proper performance, noting what is done on each of the days of the week. It is also advisable to make notches on a special stick to account for the work of each peasant. Rosenhane suggested that the Vogt regularly convene meetings of peasant holders to determine their duties and dues; he also recommended that the local Vogt have shackles and handcuffs ready, and keep the keys and locks to the punishment cells and home prisons with him .32

It should be recalled here that until the seventeenth century, corvee occupied a very small place in the feudal rent of the mass of Swedish peasants. The tendency to increase corvee duties that emerged in the late Middle Ages is clearly the same as in the rest of the Baltic countries.-

30 Here is an excerpt from a letter from Chancellor Oxenstierna to his son Johann in Germany, dated June 19, 1647: "We have decided to establish a ship company here and start our own shipbuilding in this kingdom, which has already begun in the autumn and is now being vigorously conducted. We have divided (the capital) into 64 parts. I have 4 shares, my daughter has 2 shares, and your sister Karin has 2 shares. I have ordered your clerk, Ingemar (Person, correspondent of the Graphia Leiohuvud. - A. K.), to take two shares on your behalf. If that suits you, fine. If you have any objections, I can easily put them in someone else's hands" (Giorwell (editor). Bref ifran grefve Ax. Oxenstierna till grefve Johan Oxenstierna. II, s. 402).

31 It is hardly possible to deny, as does F. Polyansky ("On Commodity Production under feudalism". Voprosy Istorii (Voprosy Istorii, 1953, No. 1, p. 48) explains the character of commodity production on the basis that "it was based on the exploitation of the peasants by the corvee or on their rent payments." In order to become a commodity, the product must be transferred through exchange into the hands of the person to whom it serves as use value. A commodity without commodity production is, from our point of view, a case of primitive robber trade, which is of secondary importance under feudalism.

32 S. Rosenhane. Op. ed., p. 29, etc.

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this leads to the second enslavement of the peasants. In the first half of the 17th century, when a large number of taxable and crown peasants became dependent on the landlords, the increase in corvee was the main form of strengthening feudal exploitation. Therefore, the government's fixing of corvee duties in 1651-1652, which in many other countries later (in the eighteenth century) meant a certain restriction of landlord oppression, in Sweden, where the majority of peasants became dependent on landlords only at the end of the Middle Ages, on the contrary, legitimized the strengthening or even beginning of corvee exploitation for a significant part of the peasantry.

It is impossible to imagine a Swedish noble estate in the middle of the 17th century without the use of hired labor. Noble estates and manors have the most servants and employees, according to the" Palace Charter " (Gardsratt) of 1671. The first in the history of Sweden, a special decree of 1664 on hired workers was adopted at the request of the nobility, first of all. Rosenhane lists the following professions among the estate's employees:: gardeners, hop growers, blacksmiths, carpenters, grooms, grubbers, diggers, carpenters and "other similar working people". In another place, he names a clerk and an accountant. In his treatise, there are constantly references to "guys" and" girls " without specifying their occupation. In Wieselgren's publication, we find a list of "household people" who were on the salary, apparently in cash, of Count Delagardi in 1639. These include the chamberlain, tax collector, overseers, house preacher, tutors, room servants, castellan, valet, scribes, cupbearer, storekeeper, bakers, gardener, footmen, drawing-room servants, and gunslingers. Separately listed are the employees who received in-kind support from the master, "statfolk": saddler, wheelwright, coachmen and tutors, grooms, blacksmiths. In the Riksdag of 1640, the nobility asked for the release of the following employees and employees: tailors, shoemakers, diggers, woodcutters, millers, brickmakers, shooters, fishermen, gardeners, hop growers, gunsmiths, carpenters .33

The published volumes of the Acts of the Riksdag and the Protocols of the Riksdag contain many statements and references to workers and servants.

Almost every letter from the Countess of Leyonhoovud to Person referred to orders and settlements with artisans and craftsmen. For example, in a letter dated June 26, 1645. On October 16 of the same year, she expressed dissatisfaction with the work of the carpenter who had been hired to work for her: if he did not work faster, she would find another one. The letter shows that the carpenter's payment was made in cash and in kind. In letters dated January 17 and 25, 1646, we learn that the Countess intends to sign a contract for the construction of a ferry; from February 8, that she often has to deal with passing craftsmen, in this case carpenters. Glazier, bricklayer, coppersmith, locksmith - these are the Countess's frequent contractors, as can be seen from the invoices sent by her to Persona in 1646, and from a letter dated June 12, 1647. By the way, the accounts once again indicate that the masters worked with the iron received from the Countess herself in strips and ingots. Some of the artisans were approaching the artel workers. Such are carpenters and masons. Sometimes they are just peasant youth who have come out to work and are ready to take on any job. May 24, 1645 the Countess was referring to a message from Person that he had 10 Dalekarlians (Dalekarlian is a region in Sweden) offering their services for logging or anything else. Neither the Countess nor the manager of her son-in-law's estate needed loggers at that time. But the Countess had to dig a pond for carp. If these people were willing to take the job, the letter said, then Person would send them to her. The letter also said that there was work to be done on the Countess's other estate, Eckebuhof, but that it could only be started there in the Countess's presence. She offered the Dalekarlians to work for her on the pond digging for the time being, and then promised to make a new contract with them. 34

In the letters of Countess Leyonhuvud, Johann Oxenstierna and his father, Chancellor Oxenstierna, kept in the Delagardi Archive, to

33 A. Stiernman. Samling utaf kongliga bref... III. 1753, s. 852; S. Rosenhane. Op. ed., pp. 24, 28; Vieselgren (publisher) Delagardiska archivet, d. 6, s. 133-134; " Sveriges ridderskaps och adels riksdagsprotokolb, III, s. 25.

34 AD, T. "S", ll. 57, 66, 68, 69, 74, 81, 84. Also folder No. 4, letter of May 24, 1645, vol. "S", l. 54.

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Agricultural workers are hardly mentioned per person. This is not surprising, since their correspondent, being a commercial agent, obviously did not deal with this side of the case: it was the local vogts 35. Rosenhane's treatise, written in the early 60s of the 17th century, says much more about hired labor than about any other: among the conditions necessary for starting a farm, a faithful and careful vogt, good workers, a housekeeper and female servants, horses, cattle, and inventory are named - only the peasants are not named- corvees. The combination of " master and worker "occurs much more often than"master (master) and peasants". For example, " it is bad when a nobleman allows himself to be taught a Vogt or workers." Rosenhane recommends keeping as few permanent employees as possible, only those who are absolutely necessary for performing agricultural work. For threshing, uprooting, and brick-making, as well as for gardening, construction, and handicrafts, he suggests attracting day laborers or hiring workers for piecework. 36

The situation of wage-earners, not only on the estates of nobles, but also among well-to-do peasants and townspeople, in seventeenth-century Sweden, as is typical of the era of primitive accumulation, was more difficult than that of the feudally dependent, but independently managing peasant .37 In the 1930s, there was an urgent need (mainly in noble circles) for a special charter for hired workers and servants, which in itself indicated the increased importance of hired labor and the desire of landlords to further enslave hired workers. The charter, which was never adopted at that time, was supposed to contain instructions on the maximum salary of employees, on their duties and on the limits of the power of the owners over them. In 1664, separate regulations and the current practice of hiring were first consolidated in the "Ordinance on Servants and Employees" 38 . The poor, the indigent, could be out of service no more than eight specific days a year (after St. Michael's Day-September 29). If during these days he did not find a new owner, he was immediately taken into the army 39. If he / she did not show up for work within eight days after the conclusion of the contract, the employer had the right to force him / her to do so. No one could take a servant without making sure that he was released by his former master. Having agreed to a certain remuneration, the employee no longer dared to insist on its increase. A "negligent" employee could be punished by the owner 40 . Before the expiration of the term of employment, usually one year (the authorities were negative about hiring day and weekly workers), the employee could not leave the owner. Formally, however, the latter could not dismiss the employee either. The employee had to notify the owner about his desire to leave the service two months before the expiration of the employment period, otherwise he had to stay with this owner for another year. The salary had to consist of money and clothing, or the food equivalent of a sum of money. It was strictly forbidden to demand payment for labor by land, that is, by providing a land plot for use. This persecution of the old Scandinavian practice of husmen"tenants" meant, in particular, discrimination against peasant employers in the interests of the nobles. The latter freely put small holders for working off-torpars (see below) - on the land near the estate, ostensibly as their employees, who were not subject to either conscription or tax taxation by the treasury.

In the estates of nobles, the position of hired workers was, of course, more disenfranchised and dependent on the owners than in the estates of peasants and burghers. Even the bourgeois historian Montgomery admits that the workers of the nobility were "close to serfs" in their position . The most

35 The exception is the letters to the Person of A. Oxenshern dated March 20, 1644 and I. Oxenshern dated April 13, 1646 (AD, folder No. 4).

36 S. Rosenhane. Op. ed., pp. 6, 22, 41, 52.

37 The great question of the composition, position, and stratification of the Swedish peasantry cannot be dealt with in this article.

38 "Sveriges ridderskaps och adels riksdagsprotokoll", II, s. 201; Stiernman. Op. ed., III, p. 242. " Kongl. May-ts Stadga och pabudh om tienstefolck och legohjon".

39 In the cities, servants of both sexes were required to report to the workhouse, where they were given employment "for a fee."

40 In one of Upland's court books, in 1638, there is a case of a farmhand dying from a beating by his master. Laglasaren Per Larssons dombok. 1937, s. 137.

41 See A. Montgomery. Review of the book by E. Heckscher. Sveriges ekonomiska historia. I. "Historisk tidskrift". H. 3. 1936, s. 334.

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This is clearly shown in the Palace Charter of 1671 on servants and employees of the nobility .42 The nobleman himself punished thefts of up to 15 dalers. He had the right to apply the following punishments: imprisonment for up to a month on bread and water, the imposition of monetary fines for those servants and workers who received payment in money, and finally, flogging with rods. The barin's jurisdiction received a special name in the Charter of clearly German origin-gardsfridh.

It is not without reason, apparently, that the seventeenth-century progressive jurist Schernheck found it necessary in his essay on the ancient law of the Swedes to emphasize the difference between the hired servants of his time and the slaves of the early Middle Ages (both were covered by the Latin word servi). The Swedish tjanstetvang of the 17th century is not without its similarity to the Prussian Zwangsgesindedienst - the unconditional compulsory service of peasant teenagers in the landowner's house. 43

An intermediate position between the corvee peasants and the hired people was occupied by small holders, tenants for working off-local torpari, sateritorpare. Referring to the Russian countryside after the abolition of serfdom, Lenin wrote that the term "working-off" "is more consistent with post-reform relations." 44 In Sweden, where there was no serfdom of the peasantry, corvee and mining operations had the same name "dagsverken" and formally represented the same thing. Nevertheless, the actual difference between a peasant who performed corvee duties and a torpari who worked as a laborer existed even then .45 This difference was especially striking in Finland, where contemporaries directly likened torpars, who worked on the estate almost daily, to farmhands .46

First of all, it should be noted that the peasants ' corvee duties usually represented only a part, and a smaller one at that, of their feudal rent, while the torparian's main duty was to work off the land. Eleskug's reference to the predominantly natural-money nature of payments made by many torpars of the Småland region is not significant precisely because Småland is a forest, moraine, and cattle-breeding region, and it is by no means characterized by a highly developed master's economy .47 Further, a peasant is an old-timer or a new holder of an old, only temporarily neglected yard, while a torpari is a new settler or a long-time holder of a landowner, but in a newly allocated place. The landowner peasant, even if he did not have ownership rights to the land, was still more often bound to it by the hereditary nature of holding, by the tradition of his relations with the landowner, by his place in the community, than the torpary48 . Finally, the very content of torpara's work distinguishes him from the peasant who went out to corvee with his own draft or with his own farmhand, and often put a farmhand in his place. Torparia's workings were not carried out by him on his own draft and without the help of auxiliary labor, not even with his own equipment. The same Eleskug notes that not only the means of production, but sometimes the food torpari received from the lord's yard 49 .

The origin of the local torpars could be different. Among them were landless people who agreed to work out in exchange for renting them a plot of arable, or even one meadow land with the right to use almenda as well. But they could also be recent full-fledged peasants, even former tax-paying peasants-owners who were forced by the landowner to sell their allotment or were driven from it. Almqvist gives many similar examples. So, from two full allotments there were 6 - 8 thorps. Lagerstedt describes seteria in the field of

42 Stiernman. Edict. op., III, sto. 852 et seq. Gardsratt eller Husdisciplin, som efter Kongl. Maijitz nadige tillatelse af Ridderskaipet och adelen widh theras garder och hushaldningar brukas ma.

43 See Stiernhook. De jure sveinum ac gothorum vetusto. Holmial. 1672, p. 201; "The emancipation of the peasants in the West and the history of land relations in Germany". Edition of M. Vodovozova, Moscow, 1897, p. 101.

44 V. I. Lenin, Soch. Vol. 3, p. 160. Note.

45 The very term "torpari" is not new. Before the 17th century. it was used in the sense of a new settler on virgin land, on almenda, and also in the sense of the owner or holder of a small, usually quarter allotment. This meaning was preserved in the period under study, but it was replaced by the new concept of "local torp", which corresponded to the birth of a new social stratum.

46 P. Torne. Inverkningar av forlanings-vasendet pa jordbesittningsforhallandena fore och efter reduktionen. "Historisk. tidskrift for Finland". 1916, H. 4, s. 224 - 225.

47 See V. Elgeskog. Svensk torpbebyggelse fran 1500-talet till laga skiftet. 1945, s. 71 - 72.

48 Vendels sockens dombok 1615 - 1645, s. 89. Torne. Decree Op. H. 2, s. 97-98.

49 V. Elgeskog. Op. ed., p. 68.

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Södermanland, as a result of the formation of which 15 development torpedoes grew on the site of 3 peasant hemmans 50 . Sometimes the peasants did this just to get rid of the recruitment process: torpari, as already noted, among the servants and employees of a nobleman were considered "reserved" (forsvars-olket), were not subject to conscription for military service.

Later, in the second half of the 18th and 19th centuries, the landlord torpari became close to the rural proletariat. Torpari began to be called farmhands with an allotment. In the XVII century, they still represented a special layer of peasant holders. Deputies of the tax-paying estates in the Riksdags of 1638, 1642, 1643, 1644, 1645 and other years just caught the nobles that they were hiding their peasants from recruitment under the guise of a "reserved" contingent of servants and workers, exaggerating the size of both their employment in the lordly economy and their food allowance to them .51

In the 17th century, the amount of work performed by all types of labor used in the noble economy increased. Complaints about the increase in corvee duties became particularly frequent mainly in the first half of the century. Throughout the century, the number of local torpars grew. Finally, in the last decades of the 17th century, especially after the reduction, the share of the total number of employees increased significantly. We do not have direct digital data to address the question of the predominance of a particular type of labor force in a Swedish estate in the mid-17th century. Heckscher confines himself to pointing out that the estate's fields were cultivated not only by corvee farmers. Very important is the opinion of the noble ideologist Rosenhane, who considers it unprofitable in the conditions of Sweden to cultivate the estate only by homestead peasants-corvees, "like farmhands" (by peasants, he probably also means torpari-laborers, about whom he does not specifically speak). This method, according to Rosenhane, which is very common in Osprey (a Danish province that has belonged to Sweden since 1658) and Livonia, either ruins the peasants or leads to poor and careless management of the estate .52 On the other hand, the number of regular farm labourers, both working "for grub" and in particular being on a salary, was small even on large estates. For example, in the estate of the Counts Delyagardi Lekke, their number rose from 6 to 16 in 1653-1659 . Wage labor in agriculture was widely used mainly in temporary, seasonal jobs, especially in grain harvesting, for which a large number of poor peasants arrived from Finland every year54 . Svenne concludes that the poor nobles, who were the majority of them, had very limited opportunities to profitably use the corvee labor of the peasants. This conclusion is consistent with our ideas about the English small fiefdom, based on the research of E. A. Kosminsky. We cannot therefore agree with Heckscher that the landlords turned to wage labor only because they lacked the peasants ' labor duties. As can be seen, in particular, from the debates in the Riksdag's nobility ranks during the discussion of the corvee ordinance in 1652, the nobles were quite willing to accept monetary commutation of the duties of that part of their peasants who lived far from their estates. 55 Although wage labor did not dominate the Swedish estate, in the second half of the century it already became its usual and indispensable accessory. According to Rosenhane, even renting out the estate did not relieve the landowner-if he continued to live here, from the need to keep his farmhands. When renting out an estate, the landowner had to have people to prepare firewood, fish, etc.

50 Link to the original Almqvist that is not available to us. See V. Elgeskog. Edict op.. page 69; T. Lagerstedt. Hur bondebygd blev herrgard. Meddelanden frun Uppsala universitetets geografiska institution. 1941, ser. A. N 28, s. 53 - 58.

51 See C. Forssell's example of a torparian of the 1930s. Statistik ofver Sverige 1833 s. 325 - 326; Svenska riksradets protokoll, VII, s. 136; IX, s. 43; X, s. 303; XI, s. 14.

52 E. Heckscher. Edict. op., d. 1, v. 2. p. 325; S. Rosenhane. Op. ed., p. 51.

53 E. Heckscher. Edict op., d. 1, bil. III, 7.

54 Svenska riksradets protokoll, XVI, s. 240.

55 We judge Svenne's work, which is not available in Moscow libraries, by its presentation and references, in particular by G. Wittrock. Regering och allmoge under Kristinas formyndare. 1948, s. 442. See also J. Soderberg. Utkottsmotet 1651 och riksdagen 1652, 1877, s. 53-54. See also M. A. Barg. The evolution of feudal land ownership in England of the XI-XIII centuries. Voprosy Istorii, 1953, No. 11, pp. 104-105.

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As might be expected, along with the growth in the use of wage labor and the strengthening of market relations in seventeenth-century Sweden, new forms of rent - the beginnings of capitalist land rent-are also becoming widespread. The same Rosenhane considered farming by the landowner himself to be the best, but far from the only way to extract income from land ownership. He counted several such methods. First, it was possible to be content with the dues from their lands and not have any economy; secondly,to rent out the dues from their lands, that is, to buy them off, and receive them directly in money. Having an estate-seteria, it was also possible to rent it out for money or use. For Rosenhane, renting out an estate in cash was already a familiar, quiet way of generating income, although it had a number of major drawbacks. More common, according to the same source, was the surrender of the estate to the executive committee by the beginning of the 60s. Under this system, the owner and tenant each delivered half of the required seed material. Then the tenant worked the fields with his own men and means, sowed and reaped, and the harvest was divided in half directly in the field or on the threshing floor by lot. If the nobleman had his own peasants on the estate, he usually provided their labor in the amount of several working days to help the tenant, and in return left for himself one tunland of wheat or oats, which, however, the tenant had to work on an equal basis with other fields. Cattle and hay are treated differently, Rosenhane adds. Sometimes several peasants took over the long-term lease of the estate at once .56

The system of sharecropping, in which the land owner supplies a part of capital (for example, cattle) in addition to land, is, as Marx pointed out, a transitional form to capitalist land rent .57 Rosenhane, as we have seen, assumed that the tenant himself exploits the labor of the labourers. He also noted that the tenant needed to create conditions for obtaining "daily bread and honest profit." He recommended setting the lease term shorter, for 1-3 years. Often such a large tenant of the estate was also its manager: This was the case with Eric Larson at Count Jacob Delagardi's in the 1940s and Christer Persona at the Herningsholm estate at Count Johann Oxenstierna until 1643. These tenants corresponded with the landowners and clearly stood out from the mass of peasant holders: the chancellor of A. Oxensherne himself informed his son in 1643 that the Person was delaying the rent due from him .58 In Sweden, we find social types close to the English bailiff , the first form of the capitalist farmer, and the French manager, who became, in Marx's phrase, a businessman .59

Thus, in the Swedish noble estate of the 17th century, two tendencies emerged and collided: to turn into a serf economy of the Eastern Baltic, Junker type, and to turn into a freelance economy of the English gentry. Analogies "in both directions" have already been made by bourgeois historians - Ternet, Montgomery, Heckscher - but the opposite of the objective social content of both trends has escaped them. In the specific conditions of Sweden at that time, neither one nor the other could have triumphed.Swedish authors, for example, Andersson, whose work is published here, refer to the original legal traditions of the Swedes, who allegedly saved their peasantry from enslavement. Naturally, this explanation cannot satisfy us. It should be noted that the transition to large-scale corvee grain farming, which is a common economic prerequisite for the second enslavement of the peasants, was hindered in Sweden by natural conditions - terrain, soil. The cultivation of grain crops here was extremely labor-intensive, and with the deterioration of market conditions in the middle of the XVII century. interest in it among the landlords was to temporarily weaken, especially in view of the competition of Eastern European bread - the product of serfdom with free labor. In addition, the Swedish nobles themselves - owners of Latvian and Estonian estates - received considerable profits from the sale of this bread. It is possible that all these circumstances would not have stopped the serfdom aspirations of the Swedish feudal lords, if the peasantry itself had not joined the struggle for land and freedom. The class struggle of the peasantry in Sweden day-

56 S. Rosenhane. Edict op., p. 49, 6, 47 - 48, 51.

57 See K. Marx. Capital, vol. III, 1953, pp. 815-816.

58 S. Rosenhane. Op. ed., p. 50, AD, vol. "S", l. 106; Glorwell. Op. 1, pp. 108, 88-89.

59 See K. Marx. Capital, vol. 1, 1951, pp. 746, 748.

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This was greatly facilitated by the fact that the Swedish peasant, like the Norwegian peasant, was never in personal serfdom. The preservation of a number of pre-feudal democratic institutions is also associated with those" traditions " that are highly idealized in Swedish literature. No less significant was the very late and relatively widespread (even in comparison with Norway)development of the Russian economy. preservation of pre-feudal peasant land ownership. As early as the beginning of the 17th century, Swedish tax-paying peasants owned, by right of inheritance, about half of the entire land in the country. In this sense, the agrarian relations in Sweden and Finland resemble to a certain extent the relations that existed in the Russian North.

If the feudal tendency could not prevail in Sweden, the triumph of bourgeois relations in its agriculture was all the more impossible in the seventeenth century. To do this, it was necessary to have a much more developed capitalist industry (manufactory), and a longer "preparatory work" of commodity production was necessary. No more than 5% of the population of seventeenth-century Sweden lived in cities; in rural areas, subsistence exchange was still widespread, and the level of agriculture, despite receiving good harvests from small areas, was significantly lower than in sixteenth-century England. Under these conditions, even the relatively progressive form of exploitation - wage labor-was partially used for old, consumer purposes.

From the collision of both trends - corvee and freehold-in the XVII and especially in the XVIII centuries, a certain "middle" way was born - the cultivation of estate lands by semi-feudal holders for working off, torpari 60 . With the help of this intermediate form of labor exploitation, the noble estate, as the subsequent agricultural history of Sweden showed, was able to adapt well to the development of capitalist relations and strengthen its position for a long time. Even at the beginning of our century, V. I. Lenin noted the" very strong weight " of the aristocracy in Sweden. . Torpari, as a large segment of the rural population, remained here until the XIX century, and in Finland - until the XX century. This, as well as other features noted above (the absence of personal serfdom, the belated growth of noble land ownership and landlord economy, the importance of noble industry) led to the fact that the decomposition of feudalism and the development of capitalism in Swedish agriculture in the XVIII-XIX centuries were very peculiar and did not fit into the "classical" framework of the Prussian or American way. Until a special Marxist study, or rather a series of studies of this process, the most important stage of which was the violent and radical breaking up of the rural community, beginning in the middle of the eighteenth century, it can only be argued that the path taken by the development of capitalism in Swedish agriculture provided the feudal nobility with the best opportunities and the least losses in For the poorest strata of the peasantry, this was the path of ruin, landlessness, starvation, alcoholism, and emigration. The co-existence of various forms of exploitation of the peasantry, a painful state of transition from which the post-reform Russian countryside was saved only by the socialist revolution, lasted in Sweden for about two centuries. It was mitigated only by the fact that the proportion of landlords in Sweden was less than in Russia, and that there was no autocracy, representative institutions with the participation of peasant electorates were preserved .

This outlines the prospects for further agricultural development in Sweden beyond the 17th century. Returning to the question raised at the beginning of the article, we can only confirm in relation to Sweden the correctness of those historians who see the strengthening of corvee-serfdom tendencies in a number of feudal countries of the XVI - XVIII centuries. Ultimately, it is a consequence of the capitalist development of their neighbors, especially the Netherlands for Sweden.

60 The importance of mining operations in 18th-century Swedish agriculture was noted by J. J. Zutis in the preface to J. Andersson's History of Sweden, p. 14.

61 See V. I. Lenin, Soch. Vol. 20, p. 399.

62 See Lenin's remarks on the identical Swedish "old Finnish constitution". V. I. Lenin, Soch. Vol. 5, p. 284.

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