page_title: Regulamentul Organic
section_title: Countryside
hierarchical_section_title: Regulamentul Organic / Economic trends / Countryside
caption_attribution_description: Foire de St. Pierre a Giourgevo (Valachie), 11 juillet 1837 L'espace laissé vide par des tentes élevées de tous côtés est rempli par une foule animée de curieux et de danseurs au milieu sur le premier plan un groupe de belles filles portant sur la chemise flottante le double tablier serré aux reins par une large agrafe de clinquant et dont les poitrines et les chevelures tressées sont ornées de sequins réunis en colliers ou retombant en grappes de la droite débouchent des musiciens tsiganes l'un danse en accompagnant de ses cris les ronflements de son tambour de basque un enfant grattant une balalaïka les précède en chantant. 1839
context_page_description: Regulamentul Organic was a quasi-constitutional organic law enforced in 1831–1832 by the Imperial Russian authorities in Moldavia and Wallachia. The document partially confirmed the traditional government and set up a common Russian protectorate which lasted until 1854. The Regulament itself remained in force until 1858. Conservative in its scope, it also engendered a period of unprecedented reforms which provided a setting for the Westernization of the local society. The Regulament offered the two Principalities their first common system of government.
context_section_description: The success of the grain trade was secured by a conservative take on property, which restricted the right of peasants to exploit for their own gain those plots of land they leased on boyar estates (the Regulament allowed them to consume around 70% of the total harvest per plot leased, while boyars were allowed to use a third of their estate as they pleased, without any legal duty toward the neighbouring peasant workforce); at the same time, small properties, created after Constantine Mavrocordatos had abolished serfdom in the 1740s, proved less lucrative in the face of competition by large estates—boyars profited from the consequences, as more landowning peasants had to resort to leasing plots while still owing corvées to their lords. Confirmed by the Regulament at up to 12 days a year, the corvée was still less significant than in other parts of Europe; however, since peasants relied on cattle for alternative food supplies and financial resources, and pastures remained the exclusive property of boyars, they had to exchange right of use for more days of work in the respective boyar's benefit (as much as to equate the corresponding corvée requirements in Central European countries, without ever being enforced by laws). Several laws of the period display a particular concern in limiting the right of peasants to evade corvées by paying their equivalent in currency, thus granting the boyars a workforce to match a steady growth in grain demands on foreign markets.
  In respect to pasture access, the Regulament divided peasants into three wealth-based categories: fruntași ("foremost people"), who, by definition, owned 4 working animals and one or more cows (allowed to use around 4 hectares of pasture); mijlocași ("middle people")—two working animals and one cow (around 2 hectares); codași ("backward people")—people who owned no property, and not allowed the use of pastures.
  At the same time, the major demographic changes took their toll on the countryside. For the very first time, food supplies were no longer abundant in front of a population growth ensured by, among other causes, the effective measures taken against epidemics; rural–urban migration became a noticeable phenomenon, as did the relative increase in urbanization of traditional rural areas, with an explosion of settlements around established fairs.
  These processes also ensured that industrialization was minimal (although factories had first been opened during the Phanariotes): most revenues came from a highly productive agriculture based on peasant labour, and were invested back into agricultural production.  In parallel, hostility between agricultural workers and landowners mounted: after an increase in lawsuits involving leaseholders and the decrease in quality of corvée outputs, resistance, hardened by the examples of Tudor Vladimirescu and various hajduks, turned to sabotage and occasional violence. A more serious incident occurred in 1831, when around 60,000 peasants protested against projected conscription criteria; Russian troops dispatched to quell the revolt killed around 300 people.
caption: A peasant fair in the Wallachian city of Giurgiu (1837)
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