Forbidden Years were part of a tightening of the service obligations of serfs in Russia leading to full-scale serfdom in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. They were first instituted by Tsar Ivan IV (r. 1533-1584) in 1581 as a temporary measure, but eventually became permanent.

Under the provisions of Article 57 of the Sudebnik of 1497 promulgated by Grand Prince Ivan III, serfs were permitted to transfer from one estate to another "once a year, during the week before and a week after St. George's Day in the autumn" (November 26, the Feast of the Dedication of the Church of St. George in Kiev) provided they had fulfilled all corvée

Corvée

Corvée is unfree labour, often unpaid, that is required of people of lower social standing and imposed on them by the state or a superior . The corvée was the earliest and most widespread form of taxation, which can be traced back to the beginning of civilization...

 (barshchina or барщина in Russian) and/or quitrent (obrok or оброк in Russian) obligations and had paid a fee, the pozhiloe (пожилое), to the landlord they were leaving. In Ivan IV's Sudebnik of 1550

Sudebnik of 1550

Sudebnik of tsar Ivan IV , a revised code of laws instituted by his grandfather Ivan the Great. This code can be considered as the result of the first Russian parliament of the feudal Estates type of 1549....

, this right of transfer remained (Article 88), but the pozhiloe was increased and a tax (the transition fee or za povoz - за повоз) was added.

Due to the hardships brought about by Ivan IV's Livonian War

Livonian War

The Livonian War was fought for control of Old Livonia in the territory of present-day Estonia and Latvia when the Tsardom of Russia faced a varying coalition of Denmark–Norway, the Kingdom of Sweden, the Union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland.During the period 1558–1578,...

 (1558-1582), the excesses of the Oprichnina

Oprichnina

The oprichnina is the period of Russian history between Tsar Ivan the Terrible's 1565 initiation and his 1572 disbanding of a domestic policy of secret police, mass repressions, public executions, and confiscation of land from Russian aristocrats...

 (1565-1572), Tatar raids (such as the one on Moscow in 1571) and a series of crop failures and other natural disasters, the Tsar temporarily suspended this right of movement or transfer in an ukaz (decree) issued in 1581. This move, in fact, proved permanent, as it was never lifted. His son's government made this limitation permanent in an ukas of September 1, 1597 (thought on November 24 of that year, it made the statute of limitations

Statute of limitations

A statute of limitations is an enactment in a common law legal system that sets the maximum time after an event that legal proceedings based on that event may be initiated...

 (called "fixed years

Fixed years

Fixed years was the term used in Russian documents for the statute of limitations during which a run-away serf could be sought out and returned to his landlord. They were fixed at five years by an ukaz of Tsar Fedor Ivanovich issued on November 24, 1597...

" - urochniye leta or урочные лета) on the return of run-away serfs five years). The Ulozhenie of 1649

Sobornoye Ulozheniye

The Sobornoye Ulozheniye was a legal code promulgated in 1649 by the Zemsky Sobor under Alexis of Russia as a replacement for the Sudebnik of 1497 introduced by Ivan III of Russia, which is based, among others, on the Third Statute of Lithuania...

did away with this statute of limitations, and this is often seen as the final element of full-blown serfdom in Russia.