Volok (, , , ) was a late medieval unit of land measurement in the

Grand Duchy of Lithuania The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a sovereign state in northeastern Europe that existed from the 13th century, succeeding the Kingdom of Lithuania, to the late 18th century, when the territory was suppressed during the 1795 Partitions of Poland, ...

Kingdom of Poland The Kingdom of Poland (; Latin: ''Regnum Poloniae'') was a monarchy in Central Europe during the Middle Ages, medieval period from 1025 until 1385. Background The West Slavs, West Slavic tribe of Polans (western), Polans who lived in what i ...

and later, the

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, also referred to as Poland–Lithuania or the First Polish Republic (), was a federation, federative real union between the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ...

. It was equal, on average, to in Lithuania or to in Poland. It was subdivided into 30 or 33

morgen A Morgen (Mg) is a historical, but still occasionally used, German unit of area used in agriculture. Officially, it is no longer in use, having been supplanted by the hectare. While today it is approximately equivalent to the Prussian ''morgen' ...

s. Volok was also a unit that determined taxation and other duties to the state. Previously, taxes and duties were based on the number of households (see, for example, 1528 census of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that recorded households as a measure of military duty) or number of horses/bulls needed to work the land. Such system was not exact: households varied greatly in size and in wealth. Therefore, the introduction of voloks marked an important transition to taxes based on area (width times length). In Lithuania, it was introduced during the

Volok Reform The Volok Reform (; ; ) was a 16th-century land reform in parts of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Lithuania proper, Duchy of Samogitia and parts of White Ruthenia). The reform was started by Grand Duchess Bona Sforza in her possessions to increase th ...

that began in 1547. Officially, voloks were abandoned as a unit after the

emancipation reform of 1861 The emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia, also known as the Edict of Emancipation of Russia, ( – "peasants' reform of 1861") was the first and most important of the liberal reforms enacted during the reign of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. T ...

, but survived in everyday use until the introduction of the

metric system The metric system is a system of measurement that standardization, standardizes a set of base units and a nomenclature for describing relatively large and small quantities via decimal-based multiplicative unit prefixes. Though the rules gover ...

in 1921.

References

Units of area Obsolete units of measurement Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Grand Duchy of Lithuania {{Poland-stub