... when it within the peasant spectrum there was such wide variance. When discussing the causes for the different experiences of peasantry across Europe there is one predominant and unavoidable cause, that of serfdom. The peasants of Eastern Europe, in Russia, Romania and eastern Germany for example, were tied to their land through a heavy labour service that they had to pay to their lord. Conversely the peasants in western Europe where for the most part free, able to rent and own their land and therefore exist above the subsistence level that eastern peasantry lived under. These serfs also worked on large inefficient estates compared to the small, modern manors of the west; this 'agrarian dualism'1 had social, economic and political repercussions for those peasants living in the east. Serfdom was a product of eastern lords trying to tie their rural workers to their land, at a time when there was a great ...

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