The Traditional Economy

Prior to the mid 16th century, a landowner produced food mainly to satisfy his household needs, to feed his livestock, and to provide seed for the next harvest. Time-consuming military duties, as well as lack of markets and cash, discouraged noblemen from engaging in commercial activities.

It was not uncommon for a well-off peasant, of which there were many, to work a twenty-to-thirty-acre plot, own one or two horses or oxen, two or three cows, some pigs, and dozens of chickens and geese. An average Ukrainian’s daily diet consisted of about 0.6 kilogram of bread and 2.5 liters of beer. Other common foods were kasha, cheese, eggs, and, when in season, fruits. Meat was eaten only rarely, usually during major holidays. The diet of the average nobleman was much the same except that his family consumed more meat, and sometimes such delicacies as imported spices, raisins, and figs appeared on his table. Sweets were rare and even wealthy noblemen could afford wine only on festive occasions. Even in the best of times, many of the poorer peasants and urban laborers went hungry. Because of poor hygienic conditions, the infant mortality rate was high and the median age was still only about 25–30 years.

For the towns, the 14th–15th centuries were also a time of well-being. Because they were a good source of income and potential allies against the nobility, Polish and Lithuanian rulers founded new towns and expanded existing ones.

In the early 15th century, Lviv, with approximately 10,000 inhabitants, was the largest city in Ukraine (Kiev, exposed to Tatar attacks and bypassed by shifting trade routes, had only 3000 inhabitants). Lviv’s large population supported thirty-six different professions, grouped in fourteen guilds. Introduced in Ukraine by German immigrants, the guilds were craftsmens’ organizations that protected the interests of their members and controlled the quality and quantity of the wares they produced. In Lviv alone, there were over 500 master craftsmen enrolled in their own or related guilds. Because the towns needed food for their growing populations and the countryside desired finished products, local trade – the mainstay of commerce – was conducted at regularly scheduled trade fairs. Foreign trade also prospered, especially in Western Ukraine, because such towns as Lviv and Kamianets lay astride Europe’s main trade routes to Crimea and the East.

Yet, despite their growth, urban centers were still relatively scarce in Ukraine. In relatively populous Volhynia, for example, there was only one town per 300 sq. km. Not only their scarcity but also their ethnic composition limited the role of the towns in the lives of Ukrainians. The numerous foreign immigrants – Germans, Jews, Poles, Armenians, and Greeks – who were brought in by rulers to develop the towns in Ukraine soon formed a majority of the urban population, especially in the larger cities like Lviv. Most numerous were the Germans and Poles, whose religion, Catholicism, soon predominated in the towns. After Poland annexed Galicia and, later, the rest of Ukraine, linguistic and cultural Polonization spread rapidly among the urban populace.

For Ukrainian townsmen this led to severe restrictions. Arguing that the town laws applied only to Catholics, the Polonized urban elite excluded Orthodox Ukrainians from offices and courts. It also limited the number of Ukrainians that could reside in the city. For instance, in Lviv, only thirty Ukrainian households, confined to the small, cramped Ruthenian street (Rus-ka ulica), were allowed within city walls. Even Orthodox religious processions were banned in city streets and Orthodox burghers were forced to pay for the support of Catholic priests. In short, the towns became – and remained for centuries – foreign territory for most Ukrainians. The great grain boom

During the 16th century, much of Europe was bustling with economic activity. Its population grew by leaps and bounds. And so did the price of food. Between 1500 and 1600, the so-called price revolution, exacerbated by the influx of silver and gold from the New World, led to unprecedented increases of 400–500% and, in some areas, even 800–1000% in the price of food products. As the crowded cities of the West clamored for wheat, the landowners of Eastern Europe, especially those of the vast Commonwealth, responded. Ever-increasing shipments of grain flowed from the northern and central areas of the Commonwealth via the Vistula River to Gdansk on the Baltic Sea and then to Holland for distribution throughout Western Europe. Meanwhile, in the southern regions of the Commonwealth, such as Podilia, out of reach of the Vistula River route, great herds of cattle were raised and driven to southern Germany and Italy. The great East European food rush, in which Ukraine was to play a very prominent role, was on.

To produce food more efficiently and in greater quantities, nobles began to transform their land holdings into commercially oriented food plantations or estates called folwarki (filvarky in Ukrainian). It no longer made economic sense for them to collect slowly increasing rents from small, inefficient, peasant holdings.

To encourage colonization, Polish or Polonized magnates whose connections in court helped them obtain grants of vast, empty Ukrainian lands, invited peasants to occupy these lands. To make their offers more attractive, the magnates offered the lands as slobody (that is, areas that were freed from all obligations and rents for periods of fifteen to thirty years). Thus, in the sparsely populated Dnieper River basin the appearance of the folzvark (estate) system was postponed. When it did appear, it was greatly modified so as to fit local conditions.