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For long a certain degree of mobility, as has been noticedearlier (p. 23), was encouraged or necessitated by thenature of forest economy and by the prevailing agriculturaltechnique. In the early centuries the evidenceis insufficient to decide whether compulsion by theprinces and their chief retainers and by merchantadventurersor the voluntary co-operation of freemenplayed the bigger role in colonization; but it is undoubtedthat the special advantages, economic andmilitary, that the former offered were essential factorsin the settling of what became the core of Muscovy.For the two centuries after 1350 the monasteriesplayed an important part as centres of new settlement,especially to the north of the Volga (see p. 182), butthereafter they were not, except in the middle Volga,conspicuous. Missionary activity in advance of occupationor conquest was a rare exception, and later there wasnothing corresponding to the colonizing work of thechurches for instance in New Zealand.From the sixteenth century onwards the despoticcharacter of tsarism became a decisive and ubiquitousforce. From the seventeenth the landowners acted asthe other most powerful agency in internal colonization,until the emancipation of the serfs in 1861; for, as theRussian word for serfs signified, they were bondmen,bound to do their master's will wherever he might movethem. Grants of land by the tsar, without or moreusually with serfs, and of exploiting rights (mines orfactories) swelled the labour army of the landowners,who used it to people the new lands that fell to them inthe rear of the advancing frontier. The most advancedfrontier regions were the hunting ground of the individualpioneer, followed by the state with militarycolonists working the land but bound to service asgarrison or field troops, the lesser 'men of service* whoin course of time developed for the most part intovarious categories of fairly independent state peasants.Against the twin forces of tsarism and serfdom therewas perpetual and intense reaction, and for long the mostprevailing expression of individual initiative in colonizationwas simple flight. Escape from the religious48