Volhynian land leases 1

A little while back we became stumped by questions related to the tax-exempt status of Benjamin Buller and other Mennonites even after sixteen years into their land lease, as opposed to others who began paying taxes after seven years (see here).

In an attempt to work through the confusion, we will spend some time looking at land leases from that time and place (roughly). Perhaps what we learn from these leases will help us to make sense of our earlier questions.

Aerial view of Antonovka

We begin with a rental agreement from 1804, kindly translated by Ola Heska and edited and posted online by Rod Ratzlaff (see here).  I encourage you to consult the source for yourselves, since Rod has offered background to and comments on the entire lease. To summarize, the agreement was made between a Polish (Volhynian) judge and nineteen Mennonite heads of household (yes, including a few Bullers). The land in question is near Antonovka (see here and here), and Rod Ratzlaff suggests quite plausibly that it may well be the beginning of that Mennonite village.

Only a few paragraphs are relevant to our questions, so we will focus on them. We begin by quoting the first three paragraphs after the listing of the parties to the contract.

1. The Honorable Antoni Wiczfinski promises to provide the hayfield called Buzyny located by the Wilia river with the adjacent ploughland which will be measured out by a sworn Surveyor, however many voloks are located in this place—starting from the gully called Sadzawka to the border of Kamionka, as will be shown in the Survey.

2. The colonists commit to pay 5 złotys per each morga of hayfield and 4 złotys from each ploughland and from each household; and they will make certain to make payments from each morga of ploughland as well as the hayfield.

3. The period of tax exemption is set for one year only; and in the second year each colonist will pay the Landlord rent in the amount of 20 złotys per volok in the month of November by the Feast of St. Martin.  And in the third year on that day and month they should and will promptly pay a general rent of 5 złotys per morga of hayfield, and 4 zlotys per morga of ploughland, deducting each year a third part from the ploughland for a fallow field as it is customary to do.

Before we go further, we should define and explain several terms. As Rod Ratzlaff (2016) notes, a volok was a unit of area measurement equal to a little more than 44 acres in Poland. The volok was used to determine the amount of taxes due on a given piece of property. This approach to taxation was in contrast to the earlier system, which calculated taxes due based on the size of the household. A second term of interest here is złoty (Polish for “golden”), a standard unit of Polish currency since the Middle Ages. Finally, the term morga (or morgen, a term we have encountered before) is also a unit of area measurement. In Poland, a morga was approximately 1.4 acres, so a volok was equivalent to 30–33 morgas.

Now that we have these details in hand, we are ready to examine the terms of the lease. Paragraph 1 begins by locating the property in question in general terms and specifying that the land under lease will be surveyed. The results of the survey will be expressed, apparently, in voloks.

With the land identified, paragraph 2 sets the amount of rent to be paid. It is not perfectly clear in the paragraph that rent is under discussion, but it becomes evident a little later. In contrast to paragraph 1, paragraph 2 shifts to morgas in setting the rental terms. The amount due annually will be 5 złotys per each morga of hayfield and 4 złotys for each morga of ploughland (tillable land). Clearly, the hayfield was more valuable to the landlord and settlers than the farmland. Does this imply, perhaps, that their livelihood was more livestock-centered than crop-based?

At any rate, paragraph 3 both clarifies and complicates the picture. It speaks first of a tax exemption of one year, followed by rent due the following year of 20 złotys per volok. This mixing of terms and categories is more than a little confusing: in year 1 the renters were exempt from taxes, but in year 2 they had to begin paying rent.

Calculating the rent due in year 2 may shed some light on the question, since the amount due in year 2 is far less than the annual rent payments thereafter. For the sake of the calculation, we will assume that two-thirds of the land was hayfield; that would mean that 22 morgas of each volok being rented would normally generate 110 zlotys (22 morgas x 5 zlotys per volok), while the remaining 11 morgas of farmland would generate 44 zlotys (11 x 4). All together, this would equal a full volok renting at 154 zlotys. However, in year 2 the renters are obligated to pay only 20 zlotys per volok, roughly 13 percent of the usual rental rate.

Before we explore how this might answer our earlier question, we should note one important sentence in paragraph 3:

And in the third year on that day and month they should and will promptly pay a general rent of 5 złotys per morga of hayfield, and 4 zlotys per morga of ploughland, deducting each year a third part from the ploughland for a fallow field as it is customary to do.

The sentence repeats the rental terms from paragraph 2 (5 złotys per morga of hayfield and 4 zlotys per morga of ploughland) but adds an important clarification. The Mennonite renters are expected to use the three-field system, the usual practice of that day in which land was cultivated for two years and left fallow for the third year. Imagine, for example, that a farmer had a total of 15 acres available for tilling; he would plant crops in 10 acres each year and leave 5 acres fallow, rotating which 5 acres were fallow so that the soil had opportunity to regenerate every three years. What this lease states is that the renters did not have to pay rent on the land left fallow each year; they were responsible only for the land expected to be tilled, that is, two-thirds of the land available to the farmer.

That interesting insight into early nineteenth-century Volhynian farming practices aside, how can we explain the relationship between rent and exemption from and payment of taxes from this lease? The key may (may!) be in thinking about what is said regarding years 1, 2, and 3. For the renters, year 1 was the only tax-exempt year; they were liable for taxes every year thereafter. Importantly, however, year 2 was also different from year 3 and following, in that the renters owed only 20 zlotys per volok in year 2 but would be liable for closer to 150 zlotys per volok every year after that.

Why might this be significant? One might theorize on the basis of this evidence that the renters were paying the taxes only in year 2 (year 1 was the only tax-exempt year) and then began paying the taxes and the rent beginning with year 3. In other words, there was a gradual shift from the landlord paying all the expenses in year 1 to the renters paying them all in year 2. One might diagram it as follows:

	landlord	renters
year 1	pays taxes and forgoes rent	Ø
year 2	forgoes rent	pay taxes
years 3–	Ø	pay taxes and rent

If this theory is correct, then we know both the governmental tax rate (20 zlotys per volok) and the rental rates (5 złotys per morga of hayfield, 4 zlotys per morga of ploughland) that were within the realm of acceptable terms at that time. There are additional leases to examine, so everything written here should be regarded as a possible explanation of this lease. That being said, there does seem to be a valid distinction between paying real estate taxes and paying rent, and it seems that the taxes due on leased land may have been included in the total rental payment required.

One final note before we finish. It is also clear from later in this lease that real estate taxes were not the only possibly type of tax. Paragraph 10 reads:

10. The Honorable Landlord assures that he will take utmost care that the colonists’ homes will never be used to house troops. In regards to taxes to the Treasury that the government will impose on them, the colonists will be obligated to pay them.

The lease does not state that the settlers would owe taxes to the royal treasury, but it recognized the possibility and obligated the colonists, not the landlord, to pay them. Interestingly, immediately prior to this statement of obligation is a sentence about the Mennonites not being forced to house troops. The juxtaposition of these two sentences cannot be accidental, and it is probably correct to think that the tax that could be imposed was related to the Mennonites’ exemption from the military and from any direct support of the military. In other words, the lease seems to anticipate the imposition of a tax in compensation for the Mennonite exemption from military participation and support. Whether such a tax was imposed in this situation I do not know, but a similar tax was certainly enacted in other places at other times (e.g., Prussia).

Work Cited

Ratzlaff, Rod, ed. 2016. Antonovka Land Contract, 1804. Translated from the Russian by Ola Heska. Available online here.