a majority of the population, and according to the census of 1857, the number of private serfs was 23.1 million out of 62.5 million citizens of the Russian empire, 37.7% of the population. The exact numbers, according to official data, were: entire population ; peasantry of all classes ; state peasants ; peasants on the lands of proprietors ; peasants of the appanages and other departments . State peasants were considered personally free, but their freedom of movement was restricted. Russian serfdom depended entirely on the traditional and extensive technology of the peasantry. Yields remained low and stationary throughout most of the 19th century. Any increase in income drawn from agriculture was largely through increasing land area and extensive grain raising by means of exploitation of the peasant labor, that is, by burdening the peasant household still further. % peasants enserfed in each province, 1860 >55%: Kaluga Kyiv Kostroma Kutais Minsk Mogilev Nizhny Novgorod Podolia Ryazan Smolensk Tula Vitebsk Vladimir Volhynia Yaroslavl 36–55%: Chernigov Grodno Kovno Kursk Moscow Novgorod Oryol Penza Poltava Pskov Saratov Simbirsk Tambov Tver Vilna 16–35%: Don Ekaterinoslav Kharkov Kherson Kuban Perm Tiflis Vologda Voronezh In the Central Black Earth Region 70–77% of the serfs performed labour services (), the rest paid rent (). Owing to the high fertility, 70% of Russian cereal production in the 1850s was here. In the seven central provinces, 1860, 67.7% of the serfs were on . See also Slavery in Russia Anna Orlova-Tshesmenskaja Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova Dead Souls, a novel focusing on late serfdom Fugitive peasants Government reforms of Alexander II of Russia History of serfdom Kholop Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century Manifesto of three-day corvee (1797) Obshchina Smerd References Further reading Blum, Jerome. Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (1961) Blum, Jerome. The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe (1978) influential comparative history Crisp, Olga. "The state peasants under Nicholas I." Slavonic and East European Review 37.89 (1959): 387-412 online. Dennison, Tracy. The institutional framework of Russian serfdom (Cambridge University Press, 2011) excerpt Domar, Evsey, and Mark Machina. "On the Profitability of Russian Serfdom". Journal of Economic History (1984) 44#4 pp. 919–955. . Emmons, Terence. The Russian Landed Gentry and the Peasant Emancipation of 1861 (Cambridge University Press, 1968) Gorshkov, Boris B. "Serfs on the Move: Peasant Seasonal Migration in Pre-Reform Russia, 1800–61". Kritika: Explorations