The Roots of Obedience: How Serfdom Shaped Russian Authoritarianism
In eighteenth-century Russia, peasants began their days before sunrise in crowded wooden huts, the air heavy with stove smoke and damp earth. Exhaustion from the previous day’s labor was routine, yet work in the master’s fields took priority before any attention could be given to their own plots. Nearly every aspect of life — plowing, marriage, even the freedom to visit another village — depended on the landowner’s permission. Winters were long, harvests unreliable, and famine a recurring threat. Disease spread quickly, punishments were severe, and survival itself rested on obedience.
Such submission was not new. Centuries earlier, the Mongol Yoke displayed complete and unquestionable power. The Mongol Yoke lasted from the thirteenth to fifteenth century. It was a time when Russian principalities were forced to pay tribute to the Mongol Golden Horde and rule with their approval. They built a strict tribute system, which hindered economic growth and local development. Historian Richard Pipes argued that the Mongol conquest did not merely subjugate Russia; it conditioned Russians to equate power with coercion. This set the stage for future exploitations.
Russia faced a problem of endless fertile land but not enough people to farm it. The solution was serfdom, which bound peasants not only to the soil but to the landowners themselves. By the seventeenth century, it was woven deep into Russian life and remained a part of it until the nineteenth century. Even after emancipation in 1861, the legacy of deference, subjugation, and resilience did not just disappear. To understand why authoritarian rule is so rooted in Russian history, one must start with serfdom, a system that shaped the lives of millions and left its stamp on the nation.
Serfdom carved out a rigid social order. At the top stood the Tsar, then were the nobility called dvorianstvo, beneath them came the church, the merchants, townspeople, and at the very bottom were the serfs. When rebellions did erupt, they were crushed with brutal force and changed little. Pugachev’s rebellion (1773-75), for instance, was the largest peasant uprising in Russian history led by a Don Cossack named Yemelyan Pugachev. The Cossacks were free frontier communities who did not live under landlords like the serfs. Pugachev’s uprising consisted of a mixed population, including Cossacks and serfs, united by their desire for freedom and land. Eventually, the rebellion was crushed, and Pugachev faced a gruesome end. He was publicly executed, first beheaded and then quartered. He was displayed as a warning to anyone who might dare revolt in the future, resulting in an even tighter control of the serfs. The lesson for peasants was clear: rebellion meant death; silence meant survival. Generations grew up conditioned to yield and to fear those above them. The abuse did not spare men or women; peasants starved first when famine hit, and disease ravaged their villages. Hardship was constant, and endurance became second nature.
The Russian Orthodox Church further reinforced this culture. For centuries, it preached humility, docility, and the spiritual value of suffering. Submission to earthly rulers, like the Tsars, was framed by the Church as submission to God Himself. Moreover, modern science suggests these pressures do not simply vanish once laws change. Epigenetics, the study of how gene expression can be altered and passed down, reveals that stress, trauma, and hunger can leave biological traces. As anthropologist Connie Mulligan explains, “the effects of early-life adversity impact future health and may be passed on to future generations.” These epigenetic “switches” can make people more fearful, more cautious, and less willing to challenge authority. Stress can even alter how people respond emotionally to others through a process called oxytocin receptor methylation. Early life experiences such as abuse or neglect can alter the receptor, demonstrating how the environment can shape behavior and brain function. Mulligan notes that “DNA methylation is an important epigenetic modification that varies throughout the lifespan and appears to respond to a wide range of psychosocial and biological stressors.” Another example would be the descendants of Holocaust survivors, who have been found to have heightened stress responses. Likewise, research on families that were affected by the Dutch hunger winters from 1944 to 1945 show that their grandchildren display differences in metabolism and emotional regulation. In other words, inequality and chronic stress leave marks not just on societies but on bodies, passing disadvantage from one generation to the next.
As such, children may inherit traits that once helped their parents survive. In the world of serfdom, compliance was a form of protection. Today, those inherited traits may help prevent democracy from taking root in Russia, a legacy that lingers long after serfdom’s abolition.
Russia’s history reveals overlapping traditions of subordination. Serfdom drilled obedience into daily life. The Church turned suffering into a virtue. The Mongol yoke, two centuries under the Golden Horde, taught that rulers hold absolute, unquestionable power. Layered onto serfdom and religious obedience, that legacy built a culture where obedience was valued more than resistance. These forces reinforced one another. Faith taught that obedience was sacred. Tsarist rule proved that resistance was hopeless. Over centuries, these patterns carved deep grooves of acquiescence, etched not only in culture but perhaps in the genetics of Russians as well.
Russia today remains an authoritarian state. Power is concentrated in the hands of the President and his circle, dissent is tightly controlled, and many citizens either endure the existing system or support it. Centuries of serfdom, reinforced by religion and foreign domination, have shaped habits of deference that do not easily fade. This history does not excuse authoritarianism, but it helps explain why it persists. If oppression has been etched into culture and even genetics, breaking this cycle cannot be achieved simply by new laws. It will require time, healing, and a decisive break from patterns rooted in centuries past.
Authoritarianism in Russia is not only about rulers imposing control. It is also about enduring traditions of subjugation that continue to shape how authority is perceived and accepted. Perhaps time will help change this situation. Or perhaps it will remain forever.