Slavery in Russia

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While slavery has not been widespread on the territory of what is now Russia since the introduction of Christianity in the tenth century, serfdom in Russia, which was in many ways similar to landless peasantry in Feudal Europe, only ended in February 19th, 1861 when Russian Emperor Alexander II issued The Emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Emancipation of state-owned serfs occurred in 1866.^[1]

The Russian term krepostnoi krestyanin (крепостной крестьянин) is usually translated as "serf": an unfree person (to varying degrees according to existing laws) who unlike a slave cannot be owned individually as property, but can't freely live on or move to any other land than the one they are "attached" to without acquiescence of the land owner, whose land they inhabits mostly as share cropping farmers and labourers. This land can then be bought and sold similarly to peasants on land belonging to European nobility like Lords, Earls, Dukes etc.

The 2023 Global Slavery Index estimates that there are 1,899,000 people - approximately 1.26% of the population, currently living in illegal slavery-like conditions in Russia according to Russian law. This includes forced labour, forced prostitution, debt bondage, forced servile marriage, exploitation of children, and forced prison labour most belonging to marginalised groups like undocumented immigrants from the Caucasus and former Soviet states.^[2]