Sources from the 11th and 12th centuries (such as the 12th-century Russkaya Pravda) mention their presence in Kievan Rus' and Poland as the smardones.
Sources of the 14th and 15th centuries refer to smerds of Novgorod and Pskov as peasant-proprietors, who possessed lands collectively (communes) or individually and had the right to freely alienate their own allotments.
Also, smerds had to provide labor services and to pay tribute (dan') to the benefit of the city as a collective feudal master.
The change was connected to the dying out of Slavic paganism by that time, as well as to the Islamization of the Golden Horde under Öz Beg Khan (ruled 1313–1341), which fostered the rise of Christian self-identification in the vassal Russian lands that were under Mongol yoke.
The old word smerd continued to be used in a pejorative meaning, often in a situation when a lord spoke to dependent people or even to lesser nobles.