1 Introduction

Over the last three decades an intensive scholarly discussion has taken place in European historiography about the so-called second serfdom in the territories east of the river Elbe; that is, the early modern re-establishment of peasant bondage in the context of market production and economic globalisation.¹ The results of these debates and of a wave of empirical research questioned the previous hegemonic concept of “agrarian dualism,” that is, the distinction between a long-term trend towards peasant emancipation in Western Europe and the opposite trend in the east, as well as the assumption of absolute power of estate owners over their peasants.² By contrast, more recent research has stressed the high regional diversity within “the East” and painted early modern East-Elbian agrarian relations in a more positive light, ascribing more room for manoeuvre to peasant serfs and portraying them as having a more balanced relationship to their lords.³ In this context, the form of bondage known as “Baltic serfdom” – which, for centuries, appeared to Western observers as the most oppressive form of East-Elbian serfdom – has been questioned and even dispelled as a myth by some historians.⁴ However, a close look at social-historical studies on and from the Baltic, and at primary sources, reinforces the assumption of a particularly harsh bondage in this region. The aim of this chapter is to approach these debates from a life course perspective and to reveal the impact both of serfdom and of peasants’ emancipation on life course regimes.

2 The stabilisation of Peasants’ Life Courses in Western and Central Europe

I start with a brief and simplistic glance at Western European developments. The long-term transformation of feudal domination in Western and Central Europe throughout the early modern period had a profound impact on the life courses of peasants and on social mobility in rural societies. The relative freedom and independence of peasants in the management of daily work routines and the trend towards hereditary possession stabilised both the individual life courses of peasants and the class barriers between the peasantry and the – rapidly growing – sub-peasant social groups of smallholders, cottagers and agricultural labourers.

In early life phases, this is reflected in the decrease of life-cycle service of sons and daughters of peasants. When the institution of life-cycle service emerged in the Middle Ages, presumably already in the ninth century, it represented an exchange of children between peasant households of a more or less homogeneous peasantry.⁵ Farmhands and maids were the sons and daughters of peasants, who were not needed in their own families or who were required or forced to serve in the manor or in another farm. The growing social differentiation of early modern rural societies changed the social origins and the status of servants. Leaving one’s own family at an early age and working and living in the household of an employer for many years became the typical life course trajectory of landless people’s children.⁶ Sons and daughters of land-rich peasants, by contrast, generally remained in their parents’ home until they inherited the holding and became peasants themselves, or until they married off into another farmstead of similar size and status. If both of these strategies failed, they might remain single and living in the family home. The stability of social status continued in later life phases.⁷ When a child of a “full” peasant had taken over a farmstead, he or she would normally keep this position for life or at least until retirement, in places in which the institution of retirement had come into existence.⁸ The typical life course pattern of a peasant in the highly stratified rural societies of early modern Western and Central Europe involved belonging to the peasant class from the cradle to the grave.

The typical life course pattern of children of sub-peasant classes, by contrast, would consist of leaving their families of origin and entering into service at an early age, and working as single live-in farmhands or maids into their twenties or early thirties. When they left service, they usually married and settled down as cottagers and casual day labourers. Servants in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, for instance, “were sons and daughters of labourers, destined to become labourers themselves.”⁹

3 Life Course Regimes in East-Central and Eastern Europe

In most early modern Eastern European regions, agriculture was embedded in feudal manorial systems. In these regions, like in the West, peasant families and households were the basic units of production. However, they had to dedicate considerable parts of their labour power to demesne land, and various degrees of dependency vis-à-vis their manorial lords existed: from relative autonomy in practical labour issues to full serfdom and personal bondage. With respect to life courses, roughly three different types may be distinguished.

Firstly, parts of East-Central Europe show a development similar to that of the West: a growing social differentiation of rural societies, from large and affluent farmers to small peasants and cottagers, most of them casual wage labourers, all the way down to labourers without any land and the poor.¹⁰ In these highly stratified areas big farmers had both a favourable position vis-à-vis their lords and stable life courses. Children of lower-class families almost exclusively went into life-cycle service, similar to the practices in Western European regions.¹¹ For example, in the Bohemian lands and the western and central parts of today’s Poland, the “life-cycle servant” prevailed well into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.¹² In the region which is today’s central and southern Poland, for instance, in the late eighteenth century more than 20 per cent of the boys aged ten to fourteen and about 40 per cent of young men aged fifteen to twenty-four were live-in farm servants, and a still remarkable but continuously declining number remained in this position into their late twenties and early thirties. In this region, “a significant fraction of young movers left the household of origin to spend an intermediate stage as unmarried farm servant prior to completing other transitions.”¹³ Young women also left home in this region and became farm maids, but to a lesser extent than men: less than 20 per cent in the age group of ten to fourteen, about 25 to 30 per cent aged between fifteen and twenty-four, and only very few in their late twenties and thirties.¹⁴ However, in addition to farmhands and maids in peasant households, who were used both for work on the farmstead and for corvée labour at the demesne, we also find agricultural servants who worked (and lived) directly at the seigniorial estate or on manor farms (Meierhöfe). This was particularly true for dairy production, in which maids lived at the manor and slept in special servants’ sheds or in the stables.¹⁵ Often, the adolescent children of peasants, and particularly those of the sub-peasant classes, were forced to work at the manor for two to five years, due to the institution of compulsory service (Gesindezwangsdienst). When servants were not needed permanently at the manor, they might also eat and sleep at their parental farmstead.¹⁶

Secondly, in the eastern fringe of today’s Poland and in Belarus and Ukraine a household’s labour force consisted almost entirely of a peasant’s family and relatives, while life-cycle service was an exception.¹⁷ The same is true for rural southern Russia, which was characterised by large and complex multigenerational peasant households, which “were entitled to a share of communal land which was periodically (partially) redistributed.”¹⁸ In this system, the size of the land allotted to a family was the flexible variable which was enlarged or downsized by the village community in accordance with the size and composition of each individual family.¹⁹ Therefore, there was no need for an adjustment of the household’s labour force by taking in servants or by employing agricultural labourers.²⁰

4 The Baltic Provinces of the Russian Empire

A third and very distinct pattern prevailed in the Baltic region. The three Baltic governments of the Russian Empire, namely Estland (today’s northern Estonia), Livland (today’s southern Estonia and northern Latvia, both of which were under Russian rule from 1721) and Kurland (Courland, today’s southern Latvia, included in the Russian Empire in 1795), represent a very special case. The agrarian labour relations in this region were characterised by a commercial manorial economy (Gutswirtschaft) based on personal bondage until well into the nineteenth century. The provinces were ruled by a German Baltic nobility whose estates were split up into demesne land and land leased to peasant serfs of Estonian or Latvian ethnicity who were “hereditarily servile” (erbuntertänig) and regarded as the property of the landowners.²¹ Peasants had no property rights at all on “their” land nor any right to move, and were obliged to perform demesne labour.²² The focus of the manorial economy was the export-oriented production of grain, particularly rye. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, grain was exported to Western Europe by water, via several ports, the most important ones being Riga, Tallinn and Pärnu. In the eighteenth century, under Russian rule, the production of rye brandy (vodka) and its export to the Russian lands became dominant.

There has been a long tradition of research on household structures and labour relations in the Baltic region. Research on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has been stimulated by the existence of excellent historical sources. These include head-tax censuses, so-called “soul revisions,” which had been implemented by Tsar Peter i, as part of his state reforms. From 1722 until 1858, ten soul revisions were held more or less uniformly throughout the Russian Empire. In Estonia and in Livonia, the soul revisions of 1782 and 1795 were carried out particularly precisely and thoroughly by the Baltic German nobility, listing the entire population (both genders and all ages) in the German language, and the same is true for Kurland’s first census in 1797.²³ Manorial lords registered all their serfs, village after village and farmstead after farmstead, by name, age, social position, marital status and occupation – when it differed from the category peasant. Moreover, the particularly accurate ones linked two subsequent soul revisions, making a note of why somebody was no longer at his previous place of residence or, vice versa, where somebody had lived previously. As mobility beyond an estate was a rare exception, estate owners maintained an overview of their serfs’ social and spatial moves within the estate, which were usually induced or enforced by the lords themselves.²⁴

Such sources are well suited for the partial reconstruction of individual and family life courses. Most research, however, has done a cross-sectional analysis of one (or more) soul revisions, simulating aggregated life courses on the basis of age. There have only been a few attempts, so far, to follow single individuals over successive revisions, thus partially reconstructing actual life courses.²⁵ In addition to nominal population listing, there is also a rich ethnographic literature dating from the eighteenth century onwards, starting in the 1770s with August Wilhelm Hupel’s “Topographische Nachrichten von Lief- und Ehstland” (Topographic notices from Livonia and Estonia).²⁶

5 Peasant Life Courses in the Baltic Provinces: A Local Case Study

This chapter examines how serfdom impacted the life courses of the various groups of the peasant population. For a detailed analysis of how life courses and social mobility were intertwined, I selected a number of Estonian parishes. One of these is the parish and estate of Sangaste (Sagnitz) in the Livländische Gouvernement (in northern Livonia, today’s southern Estonia), half-way between Riga and lake Peipus. Sangaste was located in an area of extensive export-oriented agricultural production. It became famous in the eighteenth century (and is still known) for its brandy made from winter rye.²⁷ Its flourishing demesne economy was based on relatively large peasant farmsteads. The soul revision of 1816 registered a serf population of 5,731 persons in 521 households, which means an average household size of eleven.

The social hierarchy which estate owners (or their staff or the parish priest) had in mind when they carried out soul revisions – in Sangaste as well as in the whole region – consisted of three major groups. The highest rank in the serf population was held by the head of each farmstead, the Wirt (or Wirth), and – although to a minor extent – the members of his family.²⁸ The Wirt was responsible towards the lord of the manor for the functioning of the farmstead and particularly for the provision of demesne labour.²⁹ He had no personal rights vis-à-vis his lord and no property rights to “his” farmstead, but he exercised authority over the members of his family and over the servants, including the right to corporal punishment.³⁰ Among Sangaste’s serf population in 1816 about 50 per cent were registered as belonging to the family of the Wirt, who represented the core of the estate’s labour force.

The second group were male and female servants, Knechte and Mägde, and, when they were married, their children. About 90 per cent of all households included male and female farm servants, with roughly four servants per household. Together with their children they made up about 35 per cent of the estate’s labour force, which is a very high proportion compared to the rest of Europe. Servants were the sons and daughters of peasants, of married servants or of Lostreiber (see below), who were shifted between farmsteads according the will of their lord.³¹ Servants were usually hired for one or more years and, in addition to food and lodging, they received a small amount of money, and sometimes even a tiny piece of land for their own use.³² However, they were not allowed to move to another Wirt of their own accord. A Livonian manor law of the 1790s, for instance, stipulated that servants were only allowed to ask for permission to move to another farmstead.³³ In contrast to agricultural servants in Central and Western Europe they did not have the freedom to choose another employer after a contracted term had come to an end. Indeed, while servant work under Baltic serfdom was a form of wage labour, it lacked any element of free wage labour.

The size of the household and the large portion of servants in Sangaste reflects the requirements of the demesne economy.³⁴ To master the burdens of demesne labour and to produce enough food for a large peasant household, a labour force of about four adult men was required on average, usually consisting of two members of the peasant’s family – the head (Wirt) himself and an adult son or brother – and two male servants (Knechte).³⁵ The number of servants was flexible and directly proportional to the number of workable members of the head’s family. Some servants were very young, from four years upwards, and the age group from ten to twenty was relatively large. However, the bulk of male servants was between twenty and fifty years old, with hardly any variation in that wide age range. Service in Sangaste was certainly not life-cycle service.

In all, 44 per cent of the male servants were married, which amounts to almost all of the male servants in the higher age groups.³⁶ Most of them lived in their peasant’s farmstead together with their wives – who worked as maids – and their children, before they became servants themselves elsewhere.³⁷ Being married, however, did not mean that servants had a household of their own. Eighteenth-century Estonian farmhouses usually consisted of only one large room with one common hearth where meals were cooked for all household members. During the nineteenth century, separate chambers for Wirte and their wives were established very slowly.³⁸

The third and lowest social group within the serf population were the so-called Lostreiber, Badstüber and Einwohner.³⁹ This was a heterogeneous group of landless serfs, most of whom were in the higher age groups, with the men being aged between forty and seventy or beyond, whereas the women were in their thirties and upwards. Many of them were widows or widowers or single persons, but there were also married couples with children. They lived as lodgers in farmhouses or in sheds of their own, or in the village’s steam bath hut or in the hut for drying flax – when these were not in use for their proper purpose. Both socially and economically, and sometimes also geographically, Lostreiber lived at the fringe of the demesne economy. They had no access to land or only to tiny plots and were obliged to work on demesne fields or on farmsteads when needed, and when physically able to do so, particularly in times of peak labour demand during summer. Five per cent of Sangaste’s population were counted as Lostreiber, along with a few persons labelled as beggars.⁴⁰

At first glance, this social hierarchy and classification looks similar to social structures in early modern Western and Central European rural populations. The combination of a peasant family as the stable core of the labour force with servants as an element of medium-term flexibility and a floating group of potential labourers on demand seems to be functional for market-oriented agricultural family production in various contexts. However, there are two major differences. Firstly, the bulk of the labour force consisted of peasant families and servant families. The group of Lostreiber was too small, too old and often not physically suited to fulfil the work of agricultural labourers. Secondly, in the Baltic commercial demesne economy neither the position of Wirt nor that of servant was stable. The social hierarchy of the village population was counterbalanced by the fact that all three groups were serfs without any personal or property rights and that they were equal in that respect vis-à-vis their lords.⁴¹ The ambivalence between social distinction on the one hand, and collective subordination under the lord on the other, is reflected in a limited stability of life courses and in a high enforced social mobility.⁴²

6 Life Courses and Enforced Social Mobility in a Micro-historical Perspective

The following partial reconstruction of life course patterns is based on the linkage of the soul revisions from 1782 and 1795 of the parish of Ambla (Ampel) in northern Estonia, about sixty kilometres southeast of Tallinn. In 1782, this parish consisted of thirty estates (Erbgüter und Beigüter).⁴³ For the following investigation I selected six estates with a total of 2,049 inhabitants, whose owners registered their serfs particularly accurately; and for closer inspection I concentrated on two of them: for close reading, I focused on a rather small one, Reesna, with only 124 souls; and for a minor statistical analysis, I examined the three united estates of Tois, Regaffer and Porrick.⁴⁴

That personal bondage was prevalent in all these estates becomes visible in entries in the soul revisions about serfs who were no longer there in 1795 or, vice versa, who had come to the estate after 1782, and is particularly evident in the way in which the writers of the soul revisions explain why somebody left and somebody else showed up. The main reason was, besides death, the will of the lord. Over and over again, one reads entries such as the following: “A domestic servant, given to me by my father”; “A cook, pledged to the colonel”; “Daughter of the Wirt, given as a gift to Miss Müller”; “Daughter of the Wirt, sold to Major Wrangel in Reval” (Tallinn); “The whole family given to me as a gift by Kurro estate”; “Son of the coachman, now owned by the assessor in the city of Waremsberg, sold to the assessor”; “Wirt, bought from Jämper estate”; or, simply “Wirt, was sold, his wife now Lostreiber”; or “Wirt, was bought from xy.”⁴⁵ However, quite a large number of mainly young serfs, be it daughters or sons of Wirte or male farmhands or maids, took their fate into their own hands and ran away (“weggelaufen,” “verlaufen,” “nach Schweden entlaufen”), although some of them were caught and brought back, or returned voluntarily (“war verlaufen”; “vorher verlaufen”).⁴⁶

Female life courses reveal a further aspect of bondage, namely an exchange of women for marriage between estates, be it daughters or widows of Wirte or of servants. Frequently, one finds entries such as: “married into Noemküll estate” or vice versa “his wife, from Reesna estate” (“nach Noemküll verheiratet”; “Weib, vom Gut Reesna”). One has the impression that a kind of mutual exchange of young women took place between two estates.⁴⁷ In farmstead number five of Koik & Arro estate, in 1782, lived a servant aged forty and his wife, aged thirty, and a younger single servant aged twenty-three. Sometime after 1782, the older servant had died and his widow “was married into Korkus estate” (“ist auf dem Gut Korkus verheiratet”). The Wirt of this farmstead also lost his position sometime after 1782 and was transferred to a Lostreiber hut (“jetzt Lostreiber”), presumably after the death of his wife. The younger servant (aged thirty-six in 1795) became his successor as Wirt and received a wife from Korkus estate (aged twenty-nine) (“29, Weib, vom Gut Korkus”). Our sources do not tell us whether such marriages were forced or voluntary. However, as the mobility of serfs was strictly limited to an estate, and as many of these bride exchanges involved estates further away and not even from the same parish, one might assume that involuntary unions were more likely and that particularly women were shifted between estates, whether they liked it or not.

As already mentioned, I chose Reesna estate to illustrate the life courses of the various groups of serfs. This estate was owned as a hereditary estate (Erbgut) by the “Lieutnant Gustav von Müllern” in 1782 and was pledged to “Baron Matthias Stachelberg” in 1795. The estate was characterised by comparably small households and a low number of servants. It had a serf population of 120 persons in 1782, of whom nine lived and worked at the manor house, while 111 persons belonged to the sixteen farmsteads of the manor. In 1795, the population had risen to 130 persons (six of whom lived at the manor house) and, in addition to the farmsteads, three Lostreiber-positions had been established.

If we look, first, at the sixteen heads of the peasant households (Wirte) in 1782, we see that six of them were no longer alive in 1795 – an expression of high mortality. Another six had kept their position as Wirt. Most interesting are those four Wirte who changed their position: the first one was transferred to the manor to serve as a herdsman and a coachman (Viehhüter und Kutscher) together with his wife, who was now registered as a herdswoman (Viehhüterin). This couple replaced the previous coachman and his wife, who had been designated for the position of Wirt in a newly established farmstead (neugepflanztes Gesinde). The second Wirt and his wife were demoted and went to work as servants (Knecht and Magd) in another farmstead. The third one was moved, after the death of his wife, to one of the new Lostreiber sheds. The fourth Wirt and his wife remained in their farmstead but handed over the headship to their son, who became the new Wirt. One might see this as a kind of retirement. The retired couple was aged forty-eight (husband) and fifty-three (wife) in 1795, their son and successor was twenty-eight, and his wife was thirty years old. If we include the six deceased Wirte, a total of ten changes in headship took place at Reesna estate between 1782 and 1795. Six of these new Wirte were sons of Wirte, but only two of them became Wirte on the farmstead of their fathers; the other four became Wirte at different farmsteads. Two of the remaining four new Wirte were former servants, one was the coachman mentioned above, and one (and his wife) had been bought from another estate. This shows that servants did have chances to become Wirte, even if the sons of Wirte seemed to have better ones. However, the majority of Wirte’s sons ended up as servants on the estate, were sold to other estates or remained in their father’s or brother’s farmsteads until they reached a higher age. They were usually married and had children of their own.

In 1782, we find only ten male servants in Reesna, two of them “boys” (Jung) aged nine and thirteen, and eight Knechte aged twenty to forty-nine. In 1795, three of these male farmhands were deceased, two had become Wirte, two were now servants on farmsteads other than where they had been working in 1782, two had become Lostreiber, and one had been sold to another estate. Looking at the social background of the same number of servants in 1795, we find one former Wirt, five former sons of Wirte and four former servants, including one boy. Three of these ten Knechte were married with children of their own. There were only eight farm maids in Reesna in 1782. Their life courses differed remarkably from those of male servants: the maids were clearly younger, all of them aged ten to twenty-nine; by 1795, two of them had run away, four had been married into other estates, one had disappeared from the sources, and only one had married the son of a Wirt (who later became a Wirt himself) and thus remained at the estate.

Reesna is certainly too small a sample to allow generalisations. However, the group of the three estates of Tois, Regaffer and Porrick (including Arrohof), which were pledged to and jointly managed by Friedrich Adolph Baron of Dellinghausen in 1795, is large enough for modest quantification. In 1795, the population of this group of estates consisted of seven “free persons” (freie Leute), among which were a “governess from Hamburg” and a “chambermaid from Arensberg” (Gouvernante, Kammerjungfer). Among the 742 serfs there were seventeen “Hofdomestiken,” who lived and worked in the manor house, mainly domestic servants and maids, but also a cook, a coachman and some herdsmen. All others belonged to the different categories of “peasants” (Bauern), even if some of them practised a trade. The soul revisions registered three weavers, three cabinet makers, a gardener, a shoemaker, a miller, a “windmiller,” a smith and a tanner – which points to a remarkable amount of non-agricultural activities.

To analyse these individuals’ social mobility and life course trajectories from 1782 to 1795, I restrict myself to those (male) categories, which are most clearly defined: Wirte (as heads of peasant farmsteads), sons of Wirte, and male servants on farmsteads. The results essentially confirm the observations already made in connection with the Reesna estate. These concern, firstly, the very high mortality in this period and region. Of the seventy-one Wirte in 1782, only forty-seven were still alive in 1795; almost a third (32.4 per cent) had died within these thirteen years. Sons of Wirte show lower death rates, even though this category included very young children (twenty individuals out of 117 died, which is 17.1 per cent). One has to keep in mind, however, that children who were born and died between the two soul revisions were not recorded. Servants (Knechte) showed the highest survival rates (three out of thirty-seven died, 8.1 per cent), which is certainly due to the fact that this category included neither very young children nor elderly persons.

Table 2.1 summarises the position changes of the surviving Wirte, sons of Wirte, and Knechte (male servants). In these estates, too, social positions were not stable. Hardly two-thirds of Wirte kept their status, and there was a real risk of being downgraded to the position of servant.⁴⁸ Servants, in turn, had serious chances to become or replace Wirte, even if two-thirds of them kept their status. Sons of Wirte had equal chances to become Wirt or servant, but they had a third option as well, namely to remain “son” even at an advanced age and even when they were married and had children of their own. Whether or not one retained one’s social status was hardly foreseeable, as it depended on the will of the lord. The life courses of the serf population were shaped by unforeseen social rise and descent, as the “lords played … providence.”⁴⁹

In addition to these status changes, soul revisions reveal the clear impact of age on work status in the case of very young and very old serfs. Below age fourteen, almost all farmhands were not denoted as “servants” (Knecht or Magd) in the soul revisions, but as “boy” (Jung) or “foster child” (Aufzögling), or as “nanny” (Kinderwärterin), in the case of a nine-year-old girl who took care of the two children of a Wirt, aged two and four. Elderly persons often figure as “old man,” “old hag” or “old broad” (alter Kerl, altes Weib). Such terms seem to denote persons who were no longer fully usable in the labour process. From about age fifteen onwards, one might occupy the position of a farm servant, and from about twenty years of age onwards the status of Wirt or Wirt’s wife, as long as one could maintain one’s working power – or, rather, as long as one could meet the expectations of the lord.

7 The Impact of Peasant Liberation on Social Mobility and Life Course Transitions

The period 1782–1795 has been characterised as “the height of Baltic serfdom”⁵⁰ (Erbuntertänigkeit; Leibeigenschaft). What changed with peasant emancipation? The abolition of serfdom in the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire was a complicated and lengthy process, which started in 1816 (Estonia), 1817 (Courland) and 1819 (Livonia), and was not completed before 1863.⁵¹ There were two main obstacles to full freedom, which were only gradually let go of: firstly, “all the farmland remains in the ownership of the landlords.”⁵² Peasants’ access to land became regulated by lease contracts, which still forced them to spend a considerable part of their labour power on manor land. Secondly, their freedom of movement remained strictly limited and was only extended step by step over several decades: first, they were granted free movement within the parish; then within the court district; then within the entire province (in Estonia with the exception of towns and cities); and, finally, in 1863 they were granted the right to move freely in the whole Russian Empire. Nevertheless, the family-land bond became strengthened during this long period of transition and, from 1849 onwards, peasants were entitled to buy land from their landlord and to acquire full ownership.⁵³ What did this mean for the social mobility and life courses of peasants and servants?

To answer that question, we can draw on research by two Estonian scholars, Juhan Kahk and Halliki Uibu, cited above, who linked the 1816, 1834 and 1850 soul revisions of various Livonian and Estonian parishes, including the parish and estate of Sangaste, which I dealt with above. Table 2.2 compares the social mobility from 1816 to 1834 and from 1834 to 1850, thus covering a large part of the transition period towards peasant emancipation. It shows a clear trend towards stabilisation of status and a reduction of social mobility. The proportion of Wirte and their sons who kept their position increased significantly, while the share of those who experienced downward mobility towards servant or Lostreiber positions declined. Vice versa, the chances for servants to become Wirte deteriorated considerably. In other words, “[t]he social boundaries between the categories of the peasantry strengthened.”⁵⁴ One might describe these changes as a process of class formation in the transition from feudal to bourgeois labour relations. The lines between Wirte and servants became less porous than they were in serfdom. Life courses now unfolded within classes, while life course transitions between status groups became an exception.

To sum up: the sources used in this chapter, and the application of a life course perspective, indicate that the form of bondage known as “Baltic serfdom” was no myth. Oppressive serfdom shaped social relations in the rural societies of the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire well into the nineteenth century. This implied an insecure social position for peasant Wirte, who lived under the threat of becoming downgraded to the position of servant or Lostreiber, if they did not meet the expectations and demands of their lords. However, this also implied chances for upward mobility for farmhands (Knechte), who might gain the position of peasant head of a farmstead (Wirt). Both shifts in position, however – reflecting both downward and upward mobility – depended primarily on decisions by the lord of the manor and only secondarily – if at all – on the individual aspirations of serfs. The peasant liberation of the nineteenth century, in sharp contrast to the previous period, stabilised individual life courses as well as social class inequalities.