Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton University Press, 1961).

FOREWORD

I owe many lasting debts of gratitude for the counsel and support I have received at every stage in the writing of this book. Professors Hans Rosenberg of the University of California, Berkeley, Norman F. Cantor of Columbia, Cyril E. Black, Robert R. Palmer, and Joseph R. Strayer of Princeton, Evsey D. Domar of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Albert Parry of Colgate University, were good enough to read parts or all of the manuscript. I have benefited much from their judgments and their suggestions. The late Dr. Vladimir Gsovski, Chief of the European Law Division of the Library of Congress, was always ready to place his encyclopedic legal knowledge at my disposal. Dr. Vladas Stanka of the Arctic Institute of America gave generous help in the analysis of old sources. Grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and from the Council of the Humanities of Princeton University freed me for three terms from teaching obligations, subsidies from the Princeton University Research Fund and the American Philosophical Society allowed me to work on the book during the summers, and a grant from the American Council of Learned Studies aided in its publication. Much of the research was done at the Library of Congress, where the unfailing kindness and cooperation extended me by the Library's staff made my task far easier than it might have been. I am particularly indebted to General Willard Webb and Mr. Gordon W. Patterson of the Stack and Reader Division, and to Dr. Sergius Yakobson, Dr. Paul L. Horecky, and Mr. John T. Dorosh of the Slavic and East European Division, for their friendship and their patience. I am indebted, also, to Mr. John B. Putnam of the Princeton University Press for his valued editorial assistance, and to Mr. Isser Woloch for making the index. Finally, special thanks are due to Thomas and Barbara Moriarty whose hospitality did so much to make my stays in Washington enjoyable.

A few words seem necessary about some of the technical features of the book. Short titles have been used in the footnotes; full citations and place and date of publication are provided in the List of Works Cited. A glossary at the end of the book gives the meanings of the Russian terms and the American equivalents of the weights and measures that appear in the text. Most of these words are italicized, but certain ones that occur frequently and that have become familiar to readers of Russian history, such as mir, guberniia, obrok, barshchina, pomestye, pomeshchik, and a few others, are printed in roman type. Dates are all according to the Julian calendar, or the "old style," used in Russia until 1918.

Jerome Blum