Tsarans

Tsarans

 

feudally dependent peasants in Moldavia. The tsarans lived on the lands of feudal lords, to whom they gave one-tenth of that which they produced and for whom they performed a fixed amount of barshchina (corvée). The tsarans were legally free and had the right to leave their feudal lord, but in fact they were attached to their native villages, where they paid their taxes. In accordance with the reform of 1868 they received small plots of land by redemption, and the term tsarans thus came to mean farmers or peasants in general.