– a peasant – but this was only a narrow contextual meaning. History Origins The origins of serfdom in Russia (, ) may be traced to the 12th century, when the exploitation of the so-called zakups on arable lands (, ) and corvée smerds (Russian term for corvée is , ) was the closest to what is now known as serfdom. According to the Russkaya Pravda, a princely smerd had limited property and personal rights and his escheat was given to the prince. 13th to 15th centuries From the 13th to 15th centuries, feudal dependency applied to a significant number of peasants, but serfdom as we know it was still not a widespread phenomenon. In the mid-15th century the right of certain categories of peasants in some votchinas to leave their master was limited to a period of one week before and after Yuri's Day (November 26). The Sudebnik of 1497 officially confirmed this time limit as universal for everybody and also established the amount of the "break-away" fee called (). The legal code of Ivan III of Russia, Sudebnik (1497), strengthened the dependency of peasants, statewide, and restricted their mobility. The Russians persistently battled against the successor states of the Golden Horde, chiefly the Khanate of Crimea. Annually the Russian population of the borderland suffered from Tatar invasions and slave raids and tens of thousands of noblemen protected the southern borderland (a heavy burden for the state), which slowed its social and economic development and expanded the taxation of peasantry. Transition to full serfdom The Sudebnik of 1550 increased the amount of pozhiloye and introduced an additional tax called (, or transportation fee), in case a peasant refused to bring the harvest from the fields to his master. A temporary (, or forbidden years) and later an open-ended prohibition for peasants to leave their masters was introduced by the ukase of 1597 under the reign of Boris Godunov, which took away the peasants' right to free movement around Yuri's Day, binding the vast majority of the Russian peasantry in full serfdom. These also defined the so-called fixed years (, ), or the 5-year time frame for search of the runaway peasants. In 1607, a new ukase defined sanctions for hiding and keeping the runaways: the fine had to be paid to the state and pozhiloye – to the previous owner of the peasant. The Sobornoye Ulozhenie (, "Code of