Seltso (Polish siołko), or weight(s) (wies) - an isolated small
village, a historical type of settlement in Russia (in the Russian
Tsardom and the Russian Empire) and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,
since the 16th century - a rural settlement without a church, but
although with one landowner's yard and a number of outbuildings,
sometimes with a chapel.
In addition, before the revolutions
(coups) of 1917 in Russia, a village was called a landowner's house and
several peasant huts in which the landowner's servants lived. In the
famous dictionary of V.I. Dahl it is indicated that Seltso, selenko,
thief. - a village, a settlement, especially a lordly one, more like a
lordly house, and Selishko, a poor village, but with a church, often
already abolished. A deserted village without inhabitants (“unsettled”,
“empty”, “wasteland”) was called a settlement.
In the Scribe Book of 1585-1586, the Cherkizovsky patrimony of
Tsarevich Ioan Ioanovich (son of Ioan Vasilyevich “the Terrible”) is
recorded as “... the wasteland that was the village of Mashkino... and
besides, two wastelands were allowed into the arable land of the
village: the Pestovo wasteland, and the Gorbunovo wasteland...” .
From the 17th to the beginning of the 20th century in Russia, a
village was a small rural settlement without a church (sometimes with a
chapel), but with at least one landowner’s courtyard and several peasant
huts, in which, as a rule, servants and workers of the landowner lived,
for example Serednikovo. After the construction of the church, the
village acquired the status of a village.
In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a village was an isolated small
farmstead. The village was a direct subdivision of the volost. In
historical documents, seltso is most often found in the Smolensk land,
but there are many references to it in other regions of Western Rus'.
The village drew (paid tribute), along with villages, directly to
the Gospodar's or master's courts, or was part of the general
composition of the volost: tax and service people of some Gospodar's
courtyards sometimes lived exclusively in small villages assigned to the
yards. The village very often consisted of only one or two smokes
(rarely up to five households, services or lots) and was very sparsely
populated: in some villages there was only one person, in others - one
family with brothers, in others - the “children” of such -That. On the
other hand, there were old villages, where the primary family, the
founder of the village, grew, and in one village several smokes or huts
appeared, with new families living in them.
According to the
difference in duties, villagers are called in the acts service, armor,
shield, stable, tax, duty, data, and the like; The acts also indicate
that sometimes a number of small villages perform one service together.
A deserted village without inhabitants (“unsettled”, “empty”,
“wasteland”) was called a settlement. The village becomes “empty”,
“wasteland”, when there is no “heir”, “fatherfather” who would live in
it and continue to cultivate the land. A wasteland village appears when
the peasant family that lived in it dies out, or when a free person, a
wanderer, leaves the ruler’s or master’s estate, or when the
“fatherfather” runs away; in these cases, the village becomes
“unsettled”, the land lies uncultivated and turns into a wasteland
settlement.
However, the village could become an empty village
without the peasants leaving for another land: with the existence of the
forest, fallow (lyadinaya) system of agriculture, the forest tillage, or
lyada, occupied by the roller, was depleted after several years of
intensive exploitation, and the roller, of necessity, left his village
and moved to another place to take the “novelty”; in all such cases, the
old lyada and the village turned into “lyadishche” and “selishche”,
until the rolnik again occupied his old village, which continued to be
called that way in subsequent times.
A village became a
settlement even in those cases when the landowner himself transferred
people to another place, and occupied their own settlement as a yard.
The wasteland continued to be called a settlement, and after it was
populated again by way of tribute from the ruler or by private
transaction of the land owner, it became a “donkey” settlement.
Sometimes the settlement meant “settlement”, sometimes it meant
individual courtyards and generally villages that were drawn to the
Gospodar’s castle as its volost. Finally, villages generally meant
peasant villages that belonged to granted or purchased estates.