At the end of the 16th-17th centuries, the peasant agricultural colonization of Siberia began. As a result of the strengthening of the enslavement of peasants in the center of Russia, the resettlement movement of peasants to Siberia grew. The Russian peasantry created agriculture here (before that there were only weak beginnings of it in the West Siberian Tatars, southern Mansi, Kachin, Buryats, etc.). The government used free peasant colonization, organizing «sovereign settlements» and planting the peasantry on «sovereign arable land» (processing in favor of the treasury of a certain number of tithes or handing over in the form of a certain rent parts of the crop). The government also forcibly resettled peasants from Russia, from the «black lands», from each plough to a certain number of people, practiced exile «to arable land» and, finally, called for «hunting, walking people» to settle in Siberia. These measures were supposed to lead to the development of agriculture in Siberia, reducing the expensive import of bread from Russia. All the arable and tilled peasantry were in the position of state peasants. Serfdom arose only in the land holdings of churches and monasteries that were founded in Siberia; in the 18th century, peasants were assigned to factories in Altai and Nerchinsk factories.