Both slavery and serfdom developed as a means of labor for agricultural cultivation; however, as time progressed the status of those slaves and serfs became more property oriented with less societal mobility and less of exclusively a labor force (both growing in force as the years went on). The differences stem from how the institutions were created: tied to their “masters” or to the land. Because the serfs were tied to the land their individual liberties declined as the Russian state centralized- more power was given to the tsars who in turn attempted to add loyalties by giving land that contained serfs to nobles (whose power continued to grow over time, so their control of the serfs also broadened). As time progressed it became more obvious that serfs were no longer self- fulfilled through this (as they could be in the past by selling themselves into serfdom for monetary purposes) as they were both tied more harshly to both the land and their owners,