SH-
HISTORY OF RUSSIA
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE
RISE OF COMMERCIAL CAPITALISM
BY A \<jJ
PROFESSOR M. N. X POKROVSKY
TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY
J. D. CLARKSON, Ph.D.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, BROOKLYN
COLLEGE, AND
M. R. M. GRIFFITHS, M.A.
-/z-
LONDON
MARTIN LAWRENCE LIMITED
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■2 7 £". -S"^
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CONTENTS
PAGE
Editors' Preface vii
Author's Preface to the English Translation ix
Biographical Sketch xv
CHAPTER
I. Primitive Society 1
II. Feudalism in Early Rus 14
III. Foreign Trade and Towns, to the Fifteenth Century 32
IV. Foreign Trade and Towns, to the Fifteenth Century
(continued) 52
V. Novgorod 76
VI. The Formation of the Muscovite State 89
VII. Ivan The Terrible 109
1. The Agrarian Revolution of the First Half of the Six-
teenth Century 109
2. Publicism and the "Reforms" 119
VIII. Ivan The Terrible (continued) 131
3. The Oprichnina 131
4. Economic Balance Sheet of the Sixteenth Century . 151
IX. The Troubles 161
1. The Feudal Reaction ; Godunov and the Nobility . 161
2. The Rebellion of the Nobles 180
X. The Troubles (continued) 200
3. The "Better" Men and the "Lesser" Men ... 200
XI. Russia of the Nobles 227
1. The Liquidation of the Agrarian Crisis .... 227
2. Political Restoration 240
XII. The Reforms of Peter 257
1. Commercial Capitalism in the Seventeenth Century . 257
2. Mercantilism 276
3. Peter's Industrial Policy 283
4. The New Administrative Machinery 289
XIII. The Reforms of Peter (continued) ....... 308
5. The New Society 308
6. The Agony of the Bourgeois Policy 326
Maps: I. Kievo-Novgorodan Rus 351
II. Muscovite Rus 352
III. Russia (1682-1730) 353
Glossary and Notes 355
Index 375
EDITORS' PREFACE
There are available in English a number of valuable histories of Rus-
sia, covering a wide range of varying interpretations. The products of
the "old masters," from the pioneer and arch-conservative work of the
landlord Karamzin, through the monumental volumes of the Hegelian
Solovyev, to the brilliant synthesis of Klyuchevsky, have all undergone
translation. Nor have writers still living been neglected : the secondary
school text of the conservative Platonov, Academician and tutor to the
brother of Nicholas II, and the essays of the liberal Milyukov, some-
time professor of the history of law and prominent leader of the Con-
stitutional Democratic Party, have likewise been made accessible to the
Western reader. It is true that these translations and the numerous
books of English-speaking authors based on these and other Russian
writers afford but fleeting and unsatisfactory glimpses into the wealth
of historical literature produced in Russia since the dawn of "scientific
history" some four generations ago. It is, however, no less true that the
English reader can, from material already published in English, ac-
quaint himself with at least the general outlines of Russian history as
it appears to most of the various Russian schools of thought.
Yet there is one viewpoint from which the English reader cannot sur-
vey the sweep of Russian history, namely, the viewpoint of the present
rulers of Russia, the Marxists. This circumstance is the more curious
and the more regrettable since there exists in Russian a carefully con-
ceived and elaborated Marxist interpretation of the whole of Russia's
history, written by a competent scholar, a pupil of (Sir) Paul G. Vino-
gradov. Professor Pokrovsky's History of Russia from the Earliest
Times is the outstanding Marxist synthesis of Russian history. The
editors have therefore deemed it worth while to undertake the transla-
tion of this work, which, they feel, merits equal consideration with those
of other Russian historians writing from conservative, liberal, or other
viewpoints ; it is not to be compared with the all too numerous books on
Russian history written, from whatever viewpoint, by untrained his-
torians. Professor Pokrovsky's life and scholarly activity are sum-
marised in the appended Biographical Sketch ; the editors therefore are
here confining themselves to a few comments on the mechanics of the
translation.
This History of Russia was published in 1910-1912, in five volumes,
including some chapters by collaborators; in subsequent editions these
vii
viii EDITORS' PREFACE
chapters were omitted, and the work appeared in four volumes. In the
English translation these volumes have been compressed into two; the
author is preparing additional material to bring the story through
the Revolution of 1917 and the establishment of the Soviet regime.
The English edition has been prepared in close collaboration with the
author, no abridgements or alterations having been made without his
specific authorisation. The original Russian text was naturally ad-
dressed to a public familiar with many details of Russian history and
life unknown to the foreign reader. The editors have therefore been
confronted with the problem of allusions to persons, events, or literary
works that might puzzle the American or English reader ; such passages
they have striven to eliminate altogether, where they felt them unessen-
tial to the text, or to explain in notes. In either case the author was
consulted, to the end that the final product might be authentically Pro-
fessor Pokrovsky's interpretation, uncoloured by the prejudices of the
authors. As all footnotes, whether author's or editors', have been ac-
cepted by the author, no distinction has been made between them ; foot-
note references to Russian texts have been omitted as superfluous to the
English reader.
Certain Russian terms have been retained in the text ; in forming
plurals these terms have been treated as English words. Each has been
italicised the first time it occurs, and, where its meaning is not clear
from the context, an explanation has been inserted in square brackets.
For the convenience of the reader such terms have been brought together
in a Glossary. Russian weights and measures have been retained, and
their English equivalents have been included in the Glossary. Brief
notes on persons, institutions, events, etc., mentioned in the text have
been added if for the English reader more information seemed de-
sirable ; these notes are not intended to take the place of the Index for
general reference. Dates are, of course, old style. The system of trans-
literation employed is that of the Library of Congress with slight de-
partures: ya has been used for ia, yu for in (ye only initial or after
vowels) ; -y for final -ii.
The editors do not, of course, disclaim responsibility for any failure
on their part to convert ideas expressed in Russian into the exactly
corresponding ideas expressed in English ; it may, however, give the
reader more confidence to know that the complete English translation
has been carefully read by the author, and that modifications have been
made to meet his criticisms.
The editors desire to express their appreciation of the aid of all those
who have generously given assistance or encouragement in the various
stages of the preparation of this translation.
The Editors.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION
Every historical work reflects a certain philosophy of life and a cer-
tain period of time. The first book on Russian history to be widely read
and to influence the historical views of the ruling social classes in Russia
was the History of the Russian State by Karamzin (1765-1826) ; it was
written by a noble and landlord at the period when economy based on
obligatory labour — the art of extracting the surplus product from the
peasant by means of extra-economic compulsion — had reached the zenith
of its evolution. But, on the one hand, extra-economic compulsion pre-
supposes as its political integument absolutism ; on the other hand, the
estate based on obligatory labour was closely linked with merchant capi-
tal, the intermediary between this estate and the market ; to become
merchandise what was extracted from the peasant must fall into the
hands of a merchant. Karamzin 's central ideas were the formation of
the autocracy and the formation of the united realm, i.e., the formation
of an absolute state authority and the formation of a market.
Karamzin profoundly believed that the order of things, the origin of
which he was describing, was eternal and immutable. It did not enter
his head that what had had a beginning must also have an end. Yet
this end was already in sight less than twenty years after Karamzin 's
death. The appearance of Russian grain on the world market and the
necessity for the Russian landlord to compete with bourgeois economy
soon disclosed that compulsory labour was disadvantageous. At the
same time peasant revolution, suppressed but not liquidated when the
Pugachev rebellion was crushed, continued to seethe in the depths, and
one tsar after another — Alexander I, Nicholas I, and especially Alex-
ander II — was forced to remind his nobility that at any moment the
volcano might erupt anew. Preservation of that order of things which
to Karamzin had seemed so stable was manifestly threatening the sta-
bility of the rule of the nobility. If the landlords' state was not to fall
victim to foreign competition and peasant revolt, it must renounce extra-
economic compulsion in its cruder forms — obligatory labour and the
right to sell men like cattle, so much per head.
The historical literature of the 'forties, 'fifties, and 'sixties of the
nineteenth century begins to perceive what Karamzin had not seen:
what has had a beginning must also have an end. Parallel with projects
for the liquidation of serfdom arise animated controversies as to the
origin of serfdom. This question — the origin of serfdom — becomes the
ix
x AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION
cardinal question in Russian history for a number of decades. The
autocracy continues to be the hero of the whole historical process, but it
is no longer the basic force of extra-economic compulsion; it is rather
the enlightened guide of national economy, the basic factor of progress.
From the time of Solovyev (1820-1879) every tsar is transformed into
a reformer, and his importance is measured by the number and scope
of the reforms he effected. In these reforms is embodied the whole evo-
lution of Russia. Of revolution nothing is said; the masses of the
people are not the subject but the object of action. In essence the Rus-
sian historiography of the middle of the past century is very reminiscent
of the philosophy of history of the period of the Enlightenment. En-
lightened men with the tsar at their head — a tsar who loves and fosters
enlightenment — do for the people all that is needful. The people have
only to bow down and give thanks.
The estate based on obligatory labour and downright slavery are re-
placed by the Junker estate of Prussian type and by exploitation with
the aid of economic compulsion in its crudest forms. It is still a far
cry to a bourgeoisie of European model, and Russian historical litera-
ture of this period — the period of the "reforms" of Alexander II —
may only very conditionally be called bourgeois. Solovyev, Chicherin
(1828-1904), and Kavelin (1818-1885) are bourgeois only by comparison
with the serf-owning Karamzin. In actual fact they are merely liberal
landlords or their ideologists (Solovyev was not personally a landlord).
The few democrats or semi-democrats of this time — Chernyshevsky
(1828-1889), Shchapov (1830-1876), Kostomarov (1817-1885)— had no
influence on the development of Russian academic learning. Klyuchev-
sky (1841-1911) and Milyukov (1859 — ) proceed from Solovyev
and Chicherin, in less degree from Kavelin, and only in certain details
from Shchapov. Valuing the autocracy, these historians value in no
less degree the united realm. The formation of the Russian empire is
for them, too, the basic fact of Russian history, and they see only its
bright sides. They give no picture of the barbarous enslavement of tens
of peoples, but only the triumphal progress of enlightenment, expand-
ing the area of landlord exploitation over one-sixth part of the land
area of the globe.
In Russian history the period of bourgeois democracy lasted only
eight months [March-November, 1917]. Moreover, it came very late,
when there already existed a revolutionary movement of the workers
and socialist parties. This is the reason why landlord historiography
was in Russia not replaced by a bourgeois-democratic historiography, as
might have been expected and as was the case in other countries — in
France, for example. Russian historiography knows no Michelet. In
Russia landlord historians are succeeded by historians of a new class,
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION xi
thrust into Russian history by the stormy evolution of Russian capi-
talism in the course of the second half of the past century. Almost
without transitional stages the philosophy of the nobility is replaced by
the philosophy of the proletariat. There sets in the Marxist period of
Russian historiography.
In the course of forty years this philosophy — in the form in which it
has been reflected in historical books — has passed through a series of
stages. Marxism is not, as bourgeois publicists think, a dead dogma.
It is the most revolutionary, that is, the most living doctrine in the
world. The Marxism of the 1890 's, especially in the form in which it
was permitted by the tsarist censorship and which has therefore received
the name of "legal Marxism," is almost as alien to us now as is the
Catholic religion. Even the revolutionary Marxism of that time has al-
most ceased to be Marxism for us : examples are Kautsky and Cunow,
from whose books we all studied thirty years ago, and whom no one
now in the U.S.S.R. counts as Marxists. It is true that while history
has gone forward, and very rapidly, these writers have moved back-
ward, and none too slowly, either. Yet it was not without reason that
the works of Kautsky in his best period seemed to Lenin obsolescent
even in 1923 c "Doubtless the textbook Kautsky wrote was a very use-
ful thing for its time," wrote Lenin in On our revolution, one of his last
articles. "But it is time to renounce the idea that this textbook antici-
pated all forms of the evolution of further world history."
Marxism is not a dogma but a guide to action, said the founders of
Marxism; and the experiences of this action have in the most powerful
way been reflected on the guidance. Not in the sense of principles:
fundamentally we all to this day stand firmly on the Communist Mani-
festo of 1848. But history has taught us a far wider application of
these principles to the interpretation of concrete historical facts. For
which of us in 1905 was it not an axiom that the most advanced capi-
talist countries would be the first to become the theatre of socialist revo-
lution? History has shown that it was easiest to effect this revolution
in a country where capitalism already existed but had not yet attained
ultimate dominance. We expected that socialism would come from
Europe to Russia, whereas, on the contrary, it is going from Russia to
Western Europe.
Revolution has been the great teacher which ex cathedra has taught
us how history is to be understood. In 1905 we attended only the first
part of the course ; the second part of the course began in 1917. Until
1905 the class struggle existed for us in books ; in 1905 we experienced
it on our own skins. There was no living historian for whom the experi-
ence of our first revolution was not a break in his life as a scholar, not
excluding the most academic of the Academicians, who after 1905 set
xii AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION
about assiduously to expunge from their works whatever materialistic
explanation of history they contained (many had sinned in this respect
in their youth). But this experience is not to be compared with what
we lived through in 1917-1921. In 1905 we, bookmen, saw with our own
eyes what revolution is. In 1917 we became active participants in one
of the greatest revolutionary catastrophes in the world. And this was
reflected equally on both sides of the barricades. Is the Milyukov of
the 1920 's, the author of The Ruin of Russia, the same Milyukov who
wrote Essays on the History of Russian Culture? Compare the two
books !
During this period were manifested in sharp relief the root differences
between Marxist Russian historiography and its predecessor, the his-
toriography of the landlords, whether landlord partisans of serfdom or
liberal landlords. Both of the latter were in reality far closer to each
other than we are to them. We alone have properly appraised the sig-
nificance of the masses in history — because we have seen these masses
in action. We alone have fully understood the state as a class state —
because we ourselves have destroyed the state of one class and erected
the state of another class; even in the literature of the "legal" Marxism
of the 1890 's it was possible to find the state defined as an extra-class
"organisation of order." We alone, finally, have abandoned the idyllic
picture of the unification of a mass of "backward" peoples under the
"enlightened" guidance of the Russian tsars — because it has become
possible for these peoples to tell how the "propagators of enlighten-
ment" tortured, oppressed, and exploited them, and because the rule of
the proletariat has at last opened the way for the genuine enlightenment
of the non-Russian majority of the population of the former "Russian
empire."
In the realm of historical conceptions there is nothing for us to bor-
row from our predecessors. For us their writings are but collections of
facts. Fortunately, not anticipating our appearance, they did not omit
from their works facts that might be of use to us — as their successors
are doing to-day. But even in the realm of facts we are ever less and
less dependent on them. In recent years there has been among us a
very wide development of the work of editing documents, from the six-
teenth to the twentieth century — and soon we shall be in a position to
write a social history even of Muscovite Rus without giving any thought
to what Solovyev or Chicherin wrote about it ; they did not know what
we know. As for modern and recent history there is no argument. The
history of Russia in the nineteenth century was really created by Marx-
ists; the landlord historians and their epigones had scarcely touched it.
The number of documents for this period edited by Marxists is to the
number previously published as ten is to one.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION xiii
Russian Marxist historiography — the child of the proletariat and of
two revolutions, 1905 and 1917, in which the proletariat was the prin-
cipal actor — is the second basic stage in the study of the Russian his-
torical process. The first runs from Karamzin to Klyuchevsky. The
second can by no means be considered concluded ; the evolution of Rus-
sian historical literature is now proceeding parallel with the evolution
of the Russian Revolution. The author began to write this book as a
political exile at the height of the Stolypin reaction, about 1910. He
concludes it as one of the participants in the socialist reconstruction of
the country which, in 1910, was the Russian empire, and which is now
the first Union of Socialist Republics on our planet. But this socialist
reconstruction itself is only in its infancy. During the period of time
in which this book has been written the author has more than once had
to correct his whole outline. Who shall predict what form this outline
will take after the final triumph of socialism ? One thing may be certain :
every new explanation of the Russian historical process will be more
materialistic, more sustainedly Marxist, than its predecessor. To the his-
toriography of the master class, which treated contemptuously the
muzhik and the "non-Russian subject," unwilling to recognise revolu-
tion and speaking only of "reforms," we shall never turn back.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Michael Nicholaevich Pokrovsky was born in 1868 and attended
one of the best classical gymnasia in Moscow. After the completion in
1891 of his courses under the Historical-Philological Faculty in the Uni-
versity of Moscow, he taught history in Moscow secondary schools ; from
1895 to 1902 he was lecturer in pedagogical courses in Moscow, taking
an active part in the work of the Pedagogical Society. Between 1896
and 1899 he contributed a number of articles on the history of Western
Europe to Readings on the History of the Middle Ages, edited by (Sir)
Paul G. Vinogradov. Like most historians of the period Pokrovsky was
somewhat under the influence of economic materialism, though only
slowly attracted to Marxism. In 1903 he was forbidden by the police to
give public lectures and in the following year contributed to the Bol-
shevik newspaper, Pravda, an article on Idealism and the Laws of
History.
In 1905, roused by the events of that year of revolution, he became
actively affiliated with the Bolshevik Fraction of the Social-Democratic
Party, abandoning formal instruction for revolutionary literary work.
In the winter of 1906-1907 he was elected a member of the Moscow Com-
mittee of the Party, and in 1907 attended the London Congress, where
he was elected a member of the Bolshevik Centre. At the same time he
continued his historical studies, contributing a number of articles to
Granat's History of Russia in the Nineteenth Century, notably the ones
on Alexander I, on foreign policy, on the peasant reform of 1861, and
on the Decabrists. In 1908 he was compelled to emigrate, joining the
''Forward" group in Paris. As an emigre he lectured in the Party
schools at Capri (1909) and Bologna (1911) ; during the war he col-
laborated on the newspapers Golos [Voice] and Nashe Slovo [Our
Word].
His chief work, A History of Russia from the Earliest Times, was
written during this period of exile. The original edition (published at
Moscow, 1910-1912) was in five volumes, including articles on religion
and the Church written by N. M. Nikolsky and V. N. Storozhev ; in the
fourth (Moscow, 1922-1923) and subsequent editions all but Pokrovsky 's
own work is eliminated; the English edition is based on the seventh
edition (Moscow, 1924-1925). In this same period Pokrovsky con-
tributed numerous articles to Granat's Encyclopaedic Dictionary [in
XV
xvi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Russian] and to various periodicals; in 1914 he published the first vol-
ume of An Outline of the History of Russian Culture.
Pokrovsky returned to Moscow in the summer of 1917, taking an active
part in revolutionary work there. Shortly after the ''October" Revolu-
tion he was elected president of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies.
Since the Revolution he has figured prominently in the reorganisation
of higher education in Russia, having served as Vice-Commissar of
Education since May, 1918. He is the organiser (1919) and president
of GUS (State Council of Scholarship in the Commissariat of Educa-
tion), president of the Communist Academy and editor of the Marxist
Historian [in Russian], initiator of the Rabfaks [Workers' Faculties]
and of the Institute of Red Professors. In 1929 he was elected a mem-
ber of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Under his direction have been
published a great number of documents and monographs, particularly
on the history of the revolutionary movement and on foreign policy.
Among his own post-revolutionary publications may be mentioned:
Outline of the History of Russian Culture, 2 vol., 1914-1918 (2nd ed.,
1923) ; France before and during the War (a collection of articles),
1918 (3rd ed., 1924) ; Russian History in its most concise outline (a
textbook highly commended by Lenin), Pts. 1-2, 1920 (7th ed., 1929),
Pt. 3, 1923 (3rd ed., 1928) ; The Diplomacy and Wars of Tsarist Russia
in the Nineteenth Century (a collection of articles), 1923; The Struggle
of Classes and Russian Historical Literature (lectures), 1923 (2nd ed.,
1927) ; Outline of the History of the Revolutionary Movement of Rus-
sia in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 1924 (2nd ed., 1927) ;
Marxism and the Peculiarities of the Historical Evolution of Russia (a
collection of articles), 1925; The Decabrists (a collection of articles),
1927; The Imperialist War (a collection of articles), 1928.*
Not the least important of Pokrovsky 's services to historical scholar-
ship has been his reorganisation of the Central Archives, the journal of
which (Krasny Archiv) he edits.
* An attempt at a complete bibliography may be found in The Marxist Historian
[in Russian], vol. VII (September, 1928), pp. 215-231.
CHAPTER I
PRIMITIVE SOCIETY
The origin of the early inhabitants of Russia and the level of
material civilisation to which they had attained at the dawn of Russian
history offer problems that have divided historians for generations.
One school of thought has held that the early Slavs were utterly
uncivilised; the opposing school has maintained that they had already
attained a high degree of civilisation. The controversy goes back to
the eighteenth century. At that time pessimists, like Prince Shcher-
batov or Schlozer, were ready to depict the Russian Slavs of the tenth
century in colours borrowed from the palette of the travellers who were
then creating the classic "savage," a creature little better than a
quadruped. Shcherbatov pronounced the early inhabitants of Russia
"a nomadic people." "Of course, there were people here," Schlozer
gravely reasoned, "God knows from what times and whence; but they
were people without governance, living like the birds and beasts that
filled their forests." The early Russian Slavs were so much like birds
and beasts that the commercial treaties which they were said to have
concluded with the Greeks were deemed by Schlozer to be forgeries
as naive as any to be found in history. But other scholars regarded
these same early Russian Slavs almost as enlightened Europeans in
the style of their own eighteenth century. "It is not true," optimists
like Boltin replied to Shcherbatov and Schlozer; "the Russians lived
in an ordered society; they had towns, governance, industries and
trade, intercourse with neighbouring peoples, letters and laws." And
Storch, the well-known economist of the beginning of the nineteenth
century, not only acknowledged that the Russian Slavs of Rurik's
time had carried on trade, but even based his explanation of the rise
of the Russian state on this trade and on the political order it created.
Its "first beneficial consequence" was "the building of towns, which
were, perhaps, indebted exclusively to it both for their rise and for
their prosperity." "Kiev and Novgorod soon became entrepots for
the Levantine trade; even from the earliest period of their existence,
foreign merchants settled in both these towns." This same trade
l
2 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
provoked a second and incomparably more important change, from which
first arose a stable political organisation. "The enterprising spirit of
the Northmen, their trade connections with the Slavs, and their frequent
journeys through Russia laid the foundation for the celebrated union,
which subjected a great and numerous people to a handful of foreigners."
And the subsequent history of the Rus of Kiev, the expeditions of the
princes to Constantinople and their struggle with the nomads of the
steppe, Storch explains by these same economic factors, citing Constan-
tine Porphyrogenitus, whose description of the trade caravans annually
directed from Kiev to Constantinople has been popularised by the
Lectures x of Professor Klyuchevsky.
The newly founded and closely reasoned views of Storch have in our
day acquired great popularity, but they by no means convinced con-
temporary pessimists. Schlozer declared Storch 's theory "not only an
unscholarly, but a monstrous idea" ; his only concession was that he began
to compare the Russian Slavs with American Indians, "Iroquois and
Algonquins, " instead of with birds and beasts. Thus the controversy
passed unsettled to the succeeding generation, in which the Slavophils
took the optimistic side, while the Westerners appeared as the successors
of Schlozer and Shcherbatov. ' ' According to the testimony of all writers,
both native and foreign, the Russians of old were an agricultural and
settled people," says Belyaev. "In the words of Nestor, they paid
tribute on hearth and plough, i.e., on dwelling-house and on agricul-
tural implement." The Westerners did not, it is true, go so far as
either to avow the Russian Slavs to be nomads or to compare them with
American Indians. But one cannot fail to note with what manifest
sympathy Solovyev quotes the chronicle's characterisation of the Eastern
Slavonic tribes. ' ' Excluding the Polyans, ' ' says Solovyev, ' ' whose cus-
toms were mild and peaceful, . . . the manners of the remaining tribes
are described by him [the chronicler] in dark colours: the Drevlyans
lived like cattle, slew each other, ate everything unclean, and had no
marriage but the rape of maidens. The Radimiches, Vyatiches, and
Severyans had similar customs; they lived in the forest like wild
beasts, ate everything unclean, spoke shameful things before their
fathers, and before their daughters-in-law; they had no marriage, but
at games between villages the young men persuading the maidens,
ravished them." Solovyev himself was probably well aware that this
was not an objective description of the life of the Drevlyans and
Severyans, but a malicious satire of the pagans by a monkish chronicler,
and of the Polyans' hostile neighbours by a Polyan. Yet he could not
resist the temptation to repeat these accusations, for they agreed much
i Translated by C. J. Hogarth as A History of Russia, by V. 0. Klyuchevsky, Lon-
don and New York, 1911-1926.
PRIMITIVE SOCIETY 3
too well with his own picture of the Slavs. "As is evident," he says
in another passage, "towns were few [among the Russian Slavs]. We
know that the Slavs liked to live dispersed, in clans, for which the forests
and swamps served in place of fortified towns; on the whole way from
Novgorod to Kiev, along the great river-route, Oleg found but two
towns — Smolensk and Lyubech. There is no mention of towns in the
central tract among the Radimiches, the Dregoviches and the
Vyatiches. ..."
If any dispute be long protracted, it is usually not the disputants
alone who are to blame, but the subject of dispute itself. The historical
sources supplied arguments enough, both in favour of a comparatively
high level of economic development and with it of every other phase of
the civilisation of the early Slavs, and equally in favour of a low level
of that civilisation; from one and the same chronicle we learn of the
savagery of the Vyatiches with their brethren, and of the commercial
treaties between the ancient Rus and the Greeks. "What is to be taken
as the rule, what the exception ? What was merely an individual pecu-
liarity of one tribe, and what the common inheritance of all the Slavonic
tribes? In order to answer, we must draw back somewhat from the
arguments exchanged by the two opposing schools. The initial chron-
icler, Nestor, or whatever his name, began his narrative with a catalogue
of the scattered Slavonic tribes. Could we reconstruct the picture of
the economic phases of the civilisation of the Slavs before they became
dispersed, while they still lived together and spoke one language, we
should get a certain minimum, common, of course, to all the Russian
Slavs ; before us would be the background on which Greek and Scandi-
navian influences, Christian preaching, and Levantine trade embroidered
such multi-coloured patterns. With the aid of comparative philology
we can to a certain degree restore this background. Cultural terms
common to all the Slavonic dialects indicate their common cultural
heritage and give some idea of their mode of life, not only "before the
coming of Rurik, ' ' but even before the time when the ' ' Volokhi, ' ' i.e., the
Romans, dislodged the Slavs from the Danube.
Philological data indicate, first of all, one characteristic feature of
that archaic mode of life. The Slavs of old were predominantly, if not
exclusively, engaged in the acquisition of forest products. In all
Slavonic languages the words for bee, honey, and hive sound alike.
Apparently, apiculture is a primitive Slavonic occupation. Indirectly
this suggests the primitive habitat of the Slavs, for apiculture is con-
ceivable only in wooded country. This forest origin of the Slavs is
wholly in accord with other philological indications. The Slavonic name
for a dwelling, dom, is unquestionably related, even though remotely, to
the Medieval High German Zlmber [building timber] and connotes, of
4 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
course, a wooden structure. Masonry, on the other hand, seems to have
been altogether unknown to the Slavs before their dispersion. All terms
referring to it are borrowed. Russian kirpich [brick] is the Turkish
word kerpidz; the ancient Slavonic plinfa [tile] is Greek, as are also the
words for lime, the ancient vapno (from the Greek fia<j>t]) and the
modern izvest (from the Greek ciofieotog, unquenchable). And, whereas
southern and western Europeans have a special word to designate a
stone wall (Latin murus, whence the German Mauer), in Slavonic lan-
guages even to this day no special term for it exists.
Agricultural terms — to plough, to reap, to mow, the words for plough
and harrow and the names of the more important kinds of grain (oats,
barley, rye, and wheat) — are common to all the Slavonic stocks. Com-
mon to them also is the word for bread (zhito) ; most striking of all, this
term (from the same root as zhizn [life] ) is used to designate all food in
general. That is to say, not only did they eat bread, but, as with the
Russian peasant of to-day, bread constituted the basis of early Slavonic
diet, was food par excellence. Should we stop here, the question of
early Slavonic civilisation would no doubt have to be decided in favour
of the optimistic school. But this same study of comparative philology
ruthlessly destroys that pleasant illusion. The enlightened Slav agri-
culturists were to all appearances living in the Stone Age. All the
names of metals among the Slavs are either descriptive 2 or, like the
nomenclature of stone construction, borrowed. 3 The earliest Slavonic
burial-places in Galicia all reveal stone implements; only in the later
ones are the implements of metal.
Here, from the old point of view, we are face to face with an irrecon-
cilable contradiction. According to that view agriculture was one of
the higher economic stages of civilisation; it presupposed two earlier
stages — hunting and cattle-raising. How could the Slavs have passed
through this long evolution without changing even the primitive means
of preparing implements from stone ? Modern economic archaeology and
ethnology enable us to settle this seeming contradiction very easily.
Observation of contemporary savages has shown quite conclusively the
fallacies in the old view of economic development : hunting, cattle-
raising, agriculture. The old idea was based on the perfectly sound
general proposition that man first engages in those forms of economic
activity that demand from him the least expenditure of energy, gradu-
ally passing to ever more and more difficult forms. But the authors
of this theory had in mind only those methods of hunting, cattle-raising,
2 Ruda [ore], something red, whence this word denotes both blood and hematite;
zlato [gold], something yellow and glittering; etc.
3 Serebro [silver], from the old North German silfr — modern German Silber; med
[copper], from the Mediaeval High German Smide [metal ornament]; etc.
PRIMITIVE SOCIETY 5
and agriculture that are met with among so-called "historic," i.e.,
more or less civilised, peoples. From the fact that something is easy
or difficult for civilised man they deduced that it was easy or difficult
for primitive man, i.e., for a savage. But the savage doubtless first
secured his food by means easier than the easiest of our means; he
began by gathering nature's free products, the obtaining of which gen-
erally demanded no labour ; he began by gathering wild fruits, roots, and
similar objects. Like the higher anthropoids, man was at the outset a
" f rugivorous " animal. His animal food probably consisted originally
of shell-fish, snails, and similar food resources, which could likewise be
procured without labour. Certain Brazilian tribes, low in the scale of
civilisation, have to this day not advanced beyond this ' ' collectional "
stage. The sole indication of the activity of the littoral tribes of
southern Brazil consists in enormous heaps of empty shells, stretching
in long rows along the seashore. At ebb-tide the natives go out on the
dry sandy shore, collect the shell-fish brought in by the flood-tide, and
have to be content until the following ebb-tide. This is the sum of
their "hunting." In the amount of labour expended this method of
securing food admits of no comparison with the present-day hunting of
bird and beast or with fishing by the aid of net, hook, and other devices.
Present-day fowlers and hunters by no means belong to the "lower"
tribes. The inhabitants of Western Europe in the Stone Age appar-
ently were hunters, but their implements as found in excavations as-
tonish us by the perfection and even beauty of their finish ; their repre-
sentation of an elk's head or of a drove of horses on a single staff or
the carving of a mammoth in bone would do honour to civilised people.
Hunting is undoubtedly simpler than our agriculture with its application
of animal labour; but the use of horses or oxen is not essential to agri-
culture, nor is it even generally customary.
Much more usual among uncivilised peoples is another form of tillage,
which German investigators have christened Hackbau [hoe culture].
Its distinctive peculiarity lies in the fact that it is carried on entirely by
human hands, almost without implements, since the primitive "hoe"
was nothing more than a forked bough with which the earth was
loosened before the seed was sown. Such an implement is much simpler
than the bow and arrow or the sling and probably was the very earliest
of man's mechanical inventions; the amount of energy demanded by hoe
culture on virgin soil is, of course, considerably less than the amount of
strength that must be exerted to overcome a wild beast. Hoe culture
being easier than hunting, there is every reason to believe that it was
the earliest of the regular methods of obtaining food. It is quite
unconnected with a settled mode of life; on the contrary, it necessarily
presupposes a migratory existence. Since the top soil, which alone is
6 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
accessible to such cultivation, is quickly exhausted, this method of
cultivation demands a comparatively vast extent of land. In early
times hunting was probably auxiliary to hoe culture. The geographical
environment determined further development. Tribes living in regions
abounding in game or fish speedily came to regard hunting or fishing as
a basic occupation and agriculture as auxiliary. On the other hand,
wherever there was a rich supply of vegetative food, agriculture de-
veloped. The theory that cattle-raising grew out of hunting, serving
originally as a means of having a supply of meat constantly on hand, is
false. Hahn has very clearly demonstrated that the domestication
of cattle of the largest and most valuable kind was connected, not with
hunting but with agriculture, and that the ox served, at first, not as a
meat but as a draught animal. The patriarchs of agriculture who
tamed the ox did not even eat beef ; to this day the very oldest agricul-
tural peoples, the Hindus and the Chinese, do not eat it.
If we turn from these analogies and from the indirect evidence of
philology to the earliest written testimony about the Eastern Slavs, to
the earliest texts, we find that they fully bear out our characterisation
of the early Slavs as an agricultural but culturally rather backward
people. Of more or less civilised peoples the very first to come into
contact with the Eastern Slavs were the Arabs, who visited Russia
even earlier than did the Greeks. At least, the first eyewitnesses to
describe the Slavs' manner of life and culture were Arab travellers,
whose narratives may be found in the compilations of the Arab geog-
raphers. One of the most important pieces of testimony of this sort
occurs in the Book of Precious Treasures, by the compiler Ibn-Dasta,
who wrote in the first half of the tenth century, though his sources are
considerably earlier. In view of the importance of this text, we shall
quote from it to illustrate the economic aspects of the civilisation of
the Eastern Slavs, the name of whose capital town is given by Ibn-
Dasta as "Kuyaba," i.e., Kiev. "The country of the Slavs is a level
and forested country ; they live in the forests. They have neither vine-
yards nor ploughed fields. From a tree they prepare a kind of pitcher
in which they have hives for bees, and the bees' honey is preserved.
Among them this is called sidzh, and one pitcher contains about ten
cups. They pasture swine after the manner of sheep. . . . [The narra-
tive continues with a description of the burial customs prevalent among
the Slavs.] For the most part they sow millet. . . . They have few
draught animals, while riding-horses belong only to the one man men-
tioned [the serene ruler]. ... In their country the cold is so severe
that every one digs out for himself in the earth a kind of cellar, to which
he adds a wooden sharp-pointed roof like [the roof] of a Christian
church; and on the roof he lays earth. Into these cellars they move
PRIMITIVE SOCIETY 7
with their whole family ; taking firewood and stones, they kindle a fire,
heating the stones red-hot. When the stones are aglow, they pour water
on them which gives off steam, making the dwellings so warm that they
take off their clothes. ' '
Some things in this tale, which evidently were not sufficiently clear
to the author himself, can be ascribed to simple misapprehension. Thus,
writers have long since noted that for the Slavonic mead Ibn-Dasta
adopts the name given to this beverage among the Bolgars of the Volga,
the nearest intermediaries of the Arabs in their relations with the
Eastern Slavs. Quite obvious, too, is the confusion, in the last lines, of
the Slavonic dwelling, the mud hut, with the bath-house so well known
to us from other contemporary descriptions. At first glance it may
seem that the sharp contradiction of the two phrases, ''they have no
ploughed fields" and "they sow millet," springs from a similar mis-
apprehension. But the mention of "vineyards" in connection with
ploughed fields shows clearly that from Ibn-Dasta 's point of view this
was no misapprehension. By "ploughed fields" the Arab writer under-
stood fields on which agriculture is carried on year in and year out, as
vineyards are cultivated year in and year out. He did not find such
permanent ploughed fields among the Slavs, who lived in the forest and
sowed their millet on new ground each year. This circumstance explains
also our author's statement concerning the backwardness of cattle-
raising among the Slavs. As yet it was only in the initial stage, though
for the twelfth century we have indubitable evidence of the fact that
ploughing with the aid of horses was universal in southern Rus. The
late introduction of cattle-raising and the consequent high price of
cattle have left an interesting trace in early Russian codes of law. In
certain articles of the Russkaya Pravda the word ' ' cattle ' ' is used in the
sense of "money" (analogous is the ancient Roman pecunia) ; but we
know that usually the articles that become money, or units of exchange,
are those for which the demand is great, but of which the supply is
limited. Consequently, in ancient Greece the first coin was an iron bar
(obol), a metal then still rare and costly. In Russia draught cattle
were just as rare and costly in the ninth and tenth centuries as they
had been in the Greece of Homer; in both instances, therefore, all
values were reckoned in terms of cattle. It was for this reason that the
Russkaya Pravda gave so much attention to the increase of cattle 4 and
in addition allotted a conspicuous place 5 to the swine Ibn-Dasta men-
tioned.
The characteristics of the Slavs as a forest people, living primarily
4 In the so-called "Karamzin" copy this subject is allotted no less than eight
distinct articles.
5 Three articles out of eight.
8 HISTOKY OF RUSSIA
by apiculture, are brought out in strong relief by the Arab geographer.
Yet, curiously enough, Ibn-Dasta does not even mention hunting, another
occupation that would seem no less natural in a "forested" country. It
is, of course, difficult to imagine that before the beginning of the tenth
century the Russian Slavs did not hunt at all, but it is obvious that
bee-keeping, swine-raising, and nomadic agriculture truly constituted
the basis of their economy; hunting as an occupation did not attract
such notice as it did in the case of the neighbouring Bolgars, concerning
whom the Arab writer noted that ' ' among them marten pelts constitute
the chief wealth." The Bolgars were already much more active in
Eastern trade, and furs were their principal export. It is probable
that, in connection with this Eastern trade, hunting was acquiring
serious economic importance among the Eastern Slavs. But to make
hunting the basis of their whole economy, as certain authors have done
in recent times, would be rash in the face of direct evidence to the
contrary both from comparative philology and from Arab writers, the
source of the earliest systematic information about the Russian Slavs.
Earliest social organisation is closely related to the means of obtaining
food. This organisation is described by the Initial Chronicle in a famous
passage: "Living alone with his own clan in their own locality, and
ruling alone his own clan" — a characterisation which has served as the
point of departure for many of the more or less fantastic hypotheses
about the primitive social organisation of the Russian Slavs. It was
obvious that this passage referred to some sort of union of relatives,
but it was not so clear what bound the members together, apart from
blood relationships, which in themselves do not prevent people from
living apart and occupying themselves with various matters. Especially
did the idealistic viewpoint of Russian historians — their habit of ex-
plaining all historical changes by changes in the thoughts and feelings
of the historical actors — prevent them from forming a concrete and
precise idea of the "clan" of the Initial Chronicle. Such an intelligent
historian as Solovyev, for example, indulges in long arguments about
the role played in primitive society by the sense of kinship, its gradual
decline, and the consequences. The inadequacy of such discussions was
too obvious, and the "theory of clan life" gave way to other hypotheses
no more valuable. But even before the materialistic viewpoint had
gained the upper hand in the social sciences, the method of historical
analogy, an example of which we have seen above, had permitted con-
siderable clarification of the whole subject. In certain parts of the
Russian plain the natural environment of the ninth and tenth centuries
was preserved almost inviolate until comparatively recently. Such were :
the Great Russian North (the modern province of Archangel) until the
seventeenth century and West Russian Polesia until approximately the
PRIMITIVE SOCIETY 9
sixteenth century. It is very significant that in these two localities,
quite remote from each other and never in communication, we find the
basic unit of economic, and of social organisation in general, absolutely
identical; in the North it bears the name "pechishche," in the "West
" dvorishehe."
"Dvorishehe" and "pechishche" alike are primarily forms of col-
lective landholding, but quite unlike the types of collective landholding
known to us, such as the Great Russian village-commune (mir). In
the mir, as it existed until the beginning of the twentieth century,
collectivism was confined to juridical and financial relationships; the
peasant members of the commune were joint holders of the land and
were jointly responsible for the taxes and dues imposed on it, but they
carried on their economy individually. In dvorishehe landholding we
have a survival of genuine communism. Originally all the inhabitants
of the North Russian dvorishehe, sometimes many tens of workers of
both sexes, lived together under one roof in that large two-storied hut
still to be seen in the North, in the provinces of Olonets or Archangel.
This hut was ' ' a real palace compared with the South Russian hovels, ' '
according to Alexandra Yefimenko, the scholar to whom Russian science
is indebted for the first accurate description of the earliest form of
Russian landholding. Later, perhaps, the group might distribute itself
among several huts, but without changing the economic basis of the
organisation. As before, the whole dvorishehe jointly cultivated the
land as a common holding, and all the workers jointly enjoyed the
products. Its economy was not confined to agriculture. In extant
documents the "dvorishehe" is always mentioned "with fields, hay-
meadows, and with woods and pineforest, and with a bee-tree, with
rivers and lake . . . , with the catching of fish and birds. ..." Every-
thing necessary for the maintenance of life was secured by common
labour ; but the most durable bond of union of the entire population of
the dvorishehe was undoubtedly agriculture, since the group could have
no task more difficult than the clearing away of a piece of forest for
plough-land ; in historic times a field of the customary type was culti-
vated, not with a forked bough but with a plough, and not by manual
labour alone but with the aid of a horse. Neither "fish- and bird-
catching" nor apiculture in themselves required or could create com-
munism ; communism could arise only parallel with agriculture, and it
became more stable as the latter became more complicated and more
difficult. Wandering hunters, as the Russian Slavs have sometimes
been depicted, would have proved great individualists.
Every primitive social organisation grows up on the basis of a common
economic interest. It would be very naive to think of primitive men as
peaceful toilers reverently respecting the fruits of others' labour. No
10 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
family could be sure of enjoying the produce of its labour unless it
could defend it by force from the attacks of neighbours; to use present-
day terminology, the relations between neighbours were ''international."
"And there was no law among them, and clan rose against clan, and
there was great dissension among them, and wars against each other most
frequently," is the Chronicle's description of the condition of the Slavs
before the ' ' calling of the princes. " 6 In actual fact these conditions
remained the norm of inter-family relations even after the coming of
the princes, until economic interests appeared wider than those of the
family and on the basis of which a wider organisation could be formed.
The Russlcaya Pravda ascribed the abolition of blood vengeance to the
sons of Yaroslav the Wise (died 1054), which means that in the time
of Yaroslav, i.e., down to the middle of the eleventh century, blood
vengeance existed ; in other words, private warfare between families
was tolerated. Thus, economic organisation of the family presupposed
military organisation for protection of the products of the family's
economy. Survivals of this military family organisation can be clearly
seen in the Chronicle. For example, in narrating how Svyatoslav (964-
972) vanquished the Greeks and took tribute from them, the chronicler
notes: "he took tribute also for his slain, saying, 'this their clan takes.' "
If we add that, besides visible and tangible foes, primitive man saw
behind every phenomenon inimical to his economy foes invisible, "forces
not of this world," we can form a fairly clear idea of what the primi-
tive great family, the dvorishche or pechishche, was like at the dawn
of historic times. The members of such a family were workers in one
economy, soldiers of one detachment, and, finally, worshippers of one
and the same family gods, participants in a common cult. This gives
us the key to the position of the father of such a family. Least of all was
he the "father" in our sense of the word. The direction of the whole
family economy and the necessary maintenance of military discipline
put tremendous power in his hands. To this real authority his position
as priest of the family cult added all the force of primitive superstition.
The father alone walked with the gods, i.e., with the spirits of ancestors ;
his authority "of this world" was augmented by all the colossal force
of those members of the family "not of this world." Resistance to the
master of the house was out of the question ; the father-master was an
autocrat in the broadest sense of the word. He disposed of all the
members of the family as of his own property; he could slay or sell
son or daughter, as one might sell pig or goat. Hence, in the primitive
family there was no possibility of drawing a line of demarcation between
the members of the family and the slaves, and there was a common name
e The conventional term for the "invitation" to Rurik and his brothers ( 862 ) ;
this incident used to be regarded as the starting point of Russian history. Cf. infra.
PRIMITIVE SOCIETY 11
for both. The ancient Roman familia really denoted "slaves of one
master"; the ancient Russian household was called chad, chadi [chil-
dren] of their lord; and even now the word domochadtsy applies not
only to the relatives of the master of the house, but also to his servants.
The serfs used to call their landlord "little father"; similarly, in the
ancient Russian family the son addressed his father as "lord little
father," as the ancient Russian bondsman styled his master "lord."
And for him the master actually was a lord in our sense of the word ;
he judged and punished his bondsman, not only for delinquencies and
negligence in the seignorial economy, but also for offences against
society. The representatives of public authority could not pronounce
sentence on a bondsman without consulting his lord and master. On
the other hand, they did not feel that they had the right to interfere
with a sentence pronounced by. the lord upon his own bondsman. ' ' And
whatsoever lord, becoming angry, strikes his bondsman or bondsmaid,
and death ensues, the namestniks [local agents of the prince] shall not
try him, nor find him guilty," says the Dvina Charter (fourteenth
century). Written law preserved traces of such rights of the father
in respect to his children down to the time of Peter the Great; his
Military Article did not consider as murder the whipping to death of
one 's child. Popular psychology is even more archaic than written law ;
among Siberian peasants as late as the middle of the nineteenth century
the conviction prevailed that for the murder of a son or daughter the
parents were liable only to penance inflicted by the Church.
The oldest type of state authority developed directly from paternal
authority. Though ramifying naturally, the family might under favour-
able circumstances preserve its economic unity or, at least, its former
military and religious organisation. Thus was formed the tribe, the
members of which were linked by common kinship and consequently by
common authority. This natural growth was often aided artificially by
fate, for, given the constant quarrels, one family might subdue one or
several others. If the victory was complete and decisive, the vanquished
were without much ado converted into slaves; but if they preserved
some means of resistance, the conquerors made a concession. The van-
quished family preserved its own organisation but accepted a subordi-
nate relationship to the conqueror; it was subjected to certain obligations,
viz., tribute (dan), and was converted into the conqueror's subjects
(poddannye — i.e., men under tribute). Similar relations might, of
course, be formed in exactly the same way between two tribes. In this
case, the power of the father-master of the conquering tribe extended
also over the members of the vanquished tribe.
The princes of the twelfth century were not the descendants of local
patriarchal rulers, but newcomers. Whence they came is evident enough
12 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
from their names; in the Rurik, Igor, and Oleg of the Chronicle it is
not difficult to recognise Hrorekr, Ingvar and Helgi. As late as the tenth
century they spoke a language different from that of the native popula-
tion, a language which they called ' 'Russian." Constantine Porphyro-
genitus cites a number of such "Russian" names for the cataracts of
the Dnieper ; they may all be explained through the Swedish language. 7
The philological evidence is so complete that it is quite superfluous to
resort, as many polemicists have done, to the more than doubtful testi-
mony of mediaeval chroniclers; the "Rus" were certainly of Scandina-
vian origin.
According to the Chronicle the relations of the ' ' Rus ' ' with the Slavs
began with the Varangians who came from beyond the sea and took
tribute from the northwestern tribes, Slavonic and Finnish. At first
the population submitted. Later they drove out the Northmen, but
apparently did not feel sufficiently strong to keep them out. The Slavs
were constrained to invite one of the Varangian kunnvngs with his band
to defend them from other bands of Northmen. This cannot be charac-
terised as anything but conquest in its mildest form, where the van-
quished tribe were not exterminated but converted into "subjects."
The story of how Igor (912-945) collected tribute from the Drevlyans
is enough to destroy any doubt as to the nature of his rule. "Behold,
prince," said the druzhina [retinue] to Igor, "what rich vestments and
arms the men of Sveneld have. Let us go for tribute, and thou shalt
gain, and we." This means that it was possible to demand tribute at any
time — as soon as the taker of tribute felt a void in his pocket. Appetite
grows with eating; Igor was unwilling to retire when he had collected
the usual tribute. "Do you go home," he said to the druzhina, "while
I go [for tribute], I will go again." In this case the measure of the
tribute was the patience of the local inhabitants, and for once it did
not endure. "Does the wolf keep company with the lambs," said the
Drevlyans, "he carries off the whole flock if he be not killed; so also
this man, if he be not slain, will ruin all of us." And they sent to him
to say: "Why dost thou come again? Didst thou not take all the
tribute?" Igor did not heed the warning and was slain. His widow
avenged his death cruelly but did not venture to continue his policy.
Reconquering the Drevlyan land, she "established regulations and
terms"; the amount of the tribute was fixed.
The history of Igor gives us an extraordinarily clear picture of the
"rule" of an Old Russian prince over his "subjects." We see that
there can be no talk of any "beginnings of the state," supposedly im-
ported by the princes from beyond the sea. The Russian princes, in
7 Cf. V. Thomsen, The relations between ancient Russ and Scandinavia, and the
origin of the Russian state, Oxford, London, 1877.
PRIMITIVE SOCIETY 13
their homeland beyond the sea, had been patriarchal rulers like their
Slavonic contemporaries. Their Scandinavian name, kunning, means
precisely "father of the big family," from kunne, family. And they
came to the Slavs ' ' with their kin ' ' ; this was an emigration of a whole
tribe, small though it was. It was quite natural that the authority of
these newly arrived princes should assume a clearly patriarchal char-
acter, which persisted not only in the Kievan period but much later
also. The tsar of the Muscovite Rus in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries displays many traits of the "master-father," the Varangian
kunning originally called "to rule the Rus."
With the role of the prince in tribal religion we shall not deal here.
Nor is there need to dilate on the military significance of the Old Russian
prince, or, in later times, of the Muscovite tsar; this aspect bulks too
large in the elementary text-books. Far more important and better
defined for Old Russian law is the peculiarity by which the prince (and
later the Muscovite sovereign) was the proprietor of his whole state in
his private capacity, just as the father of the patriarchal family was the
proprietor of the family itself and of everything pertaining to it. In
the wills of the princes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries this is
such a marked feature that it would be impossible to ignore it; and it
has long been known that Ivan Kalita (1328-1341) made no distinction
between his suzerainty over his capital town of Moscow as prince and
his property rights in his table service as a private individual. But it
would be a great mistake to suppose that this confusion resulted from
decline of the "state significance" of the prince's authority during the
obscure "appanage period" between the fall of Kiev in the thirteenth
century and the rise of Moscow in the fifteenth century. Juridically
this condition held throughout all Old Russian history.
From this blending of private and public right ensued the consequence
that the prince was the proprietor in private right of all the territory of
his principality. Since they were constantly moving from one place to
another, the princes paid little attention to this aspect of their rights.
But when, in northeastern Rus, they had become fixed in definite
localities, this right immediately found practical application. When a
Muscovite peasant of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was asked
on whose land he lived, the usual answer was : ' ' This is the land of the
sovereign grand prince, but of my holding," or, "The land is God's
and the sovereign's, but the ploughed land and the rye are ours." A
private individual could have only a temporary land tenure, for the
prince was the proprietor.
CHAPTER II
FEUDALISM IN EARLY RUS
The social order considered in Chapter I was more primitive than
that existing in Russia at the dawn of historic times. Of that primitive
order only vestiges had been preserved, obstinate and tenacious enough,
it is true, and surviving in out-of-the-way corners almost to our own
day. But the every-day life of early Rus belonged to a later stage of
social development. This later stage, which arose directly from the
relationships which we have called "primitive," Western European his-
torians and sociologists long ago christened "feudalism." Nationalistic
Russian historians, striving to prove that in the history of Russia every-
thing was "unique," original, and unlike the history of other nations,
have even denied the existence of feudalism in Russia and have succeeded
in instilling into more than one generation of the reading public the cele-
brated and now classical antithesis of the Europe of stone and the
Russia of wood — Europe cut up by mountains and seas into many
tiny fragments, in every corner of which sat its "feudal robber,"
stubbornly and successfully resisting every attempt at centralisation ;
Russia, level, uniform over its whole expanse, knowing no feudal castles,
as it knows neither seas nor mountains, and by its very nature, it seemed,
destined to form a single state. This antithesis undoubtedly arose from
contemplation of the landscape gliding past the window of a railway
carriage rather than from scientific study of the social order. It needed
but to ask what feudalism was and what were its distinctive character-
istics for the comparison between the stone castle of the Western
European baron and the wooden mansion of the Russian votchinnik
[hereditary landholder] to fall away. The contemporary science of
history considers neither the building-material nor the presence or
absence of a mountain chain in the landscape as at all significant in
defining the fundamental characteristics of feudalism. It does assign to
feudalism, in the main, three fundamental characteristics: (1) the
dominance of large landholding; (2) the combination of landholding and
political power — a combination so stable that in feudal society it is
impossible to imagine a landholder who was not in some degree a lord
and a lord who was not a landholder; and (3) the peculiar relations
that existed between these landholding lords, namely, a fixed hierarchy
of landholders, according to which on the greatest depended lesser ones,
14
FEUDALISM IN EARLY RUS 15
on these still lesser ones, and so on, the system as a whole resembling a
ladder. The question whether feudalism existed in Russia comes down,
then, to the question: Were these three fundamental characteristics
present in old Russian society ? If so, then one can talk as much as one
likes about the uniqueness of the Russian historical process, but the
existence of feudalism in Russia must be acknowledged.
Large landholding existed in Russia at a very early period. The bulk
of the Russkaya Pravda was composed certainly not later than the thir-
teenth century, while individual articles are much older. Yet in it we
find the large boyar's estate (votchina) with its indispensable attributes
— steward, domestics (menials and craftsmen), and peasants bound
by indebtedness to work on the lord's land ("zakups"). The "boyar"
of the Russkaya Pravda is, first and foremost, a large landholder. The
indirect evidence of the Pravda is directly confirmed in separate docu-
ments; at the end of the twelfth century a pious Novgorodan bestowed
on the Monastery of the Holy Saviour two whole villages "with the
domestics and with the cattle," with the livestock both four-legged and
two-legged. For later centuries indications of the existence of large
estates become so numerous that it is unnecessary to prove the prevalence
of this phenomenon. Yet it is worth while to note the size of estates of
that time and to compare them with those of our own times. In the
registers of Novgorod of the fifteenth century are recorded holdings
of 600, 900, and even 1,500 desyatinas x of arable land alone, not count-
ing meadows, woods, etc. If we take into account that the woods were
frequently measured, not in desyatinas but in versts, 2 and that the
arable comprised only a small part of the whole area, we must conclude
that estates of tens of thousands of desyatinas were not rare in old
Novgorod. In the middle of the following (sixteenth) century the
Troitsa-Sergiev Monastery had, in one locality alone, in the county of
Yaroslavl, 555% desyatinas of arable, which under the three-field sys-
tem, even then prevalent in central Russia, comprised in all more than
1,600 desyatinas ; in addition, it had meadows which yielded annually
some 900 ricks of hay and "woods 9 versts in length and 6 versts in
breadth." And this was by no means the monastery's largest holding;
on the contrary, it was only a small part of its holdings; in the neigh-
bouring county of Rostov the same monastery had, also in a single
estate, some 5,000 desyatinas of arable alone, and 163 square versts of
woods. At the same time in the county of Tver we find a pomeshchik
(i.e., a proprietor, not by inheritance, but of recent creation), Prince
S. I. Glinsky, who held, besides the village in which his mansion stood,
65 hamlets and 61 clearings, in which there were altogether 273 peasant
i 1 desyatina = 2.7 acres.
2 1 verst = 0.66 miles.
16 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
homesteads, more than one and a half thousand desyatinas of arable,
and meadows yielding some ten thousand ricks of hay. Glinsky was an
important lord, a relative of the grand prince ; but two of his neighbours,
bearing names quite unrenowned, had 22 hamlets and 26 hamlets and
6 clearings, respectively; while in the county of Rostov we find a man,
not a nobleman but a simple dyak [a minor official], who held 35 home-
steads of peasants and cottars ploughing altogether some 500 desyatinas
of land.
Not without reason have we passed from the number of desyatinas to
the number of homesteads and hamlets belonging to this or that lord;
otherwise the comparison would not be sufficiently clear. The point
is that we should be greatly mistaken if we supposed that all these
hundreds and thousands of desyatinas belonging to a single proprietor
were ploughed by him for his own use, and that they constituted a single
or even several large-scale economies. Nothing of the sort. Each indi-
vidual hamlet, each individual peasant homestead 3 ploughed its indi-
vidual portion of land, while the estate-owner himself with his bondsmen
was content with a single "hamlet," or with not much more. The
wealthiest landholder mentioned in the registers of Novgorod maintained
an economy of his own only in the village where his mansion stood and
where the amount of land under cultivation was only 20-30 desyatinas.
On that estate of some 5,000 desyatinas, belonging to the Troitsa Monas-
tery, the monastic arable proper comprised less than 200 desyatinas,
although monasteries carried on what was for those times most intensive
cultivation and were more progressive than other landed proprietors.
Here we approach a fundamental characteristic of feudal large land-
holding — the combination of large-scale ownership with small-scale
economy. The revenue of a wealthy lord of that time consisted for the
most part, not in the products of his own arable but in what was
furnished to him by peasants who, each on his own portion, carried on in-
dependent economies. The registers, especially those of Novgorod, give
us an extremely realistic picture of this piecemeal collection of the
large revenues of that time. One landholder received from one of his
homesteads: "of grain a quarter, an equal measure of barley, an equal
measure of oats, % ram, 1 cheese, 2 handfuls of flax, 10 eggs." An-
other, of a more progressive type, took from a similar peasant home-
stead "4^2 dengas 4 or a fifth of grain, a cheese, a ram's shoulder, y 2
sheep, 31/2 handfuls of flax." Not only the products of rural economy
in the narrow sense were thus obtained by the holder of the land, but
3 "Homestead" and "hamlet" were often synonymous ; a one-homestead hamlet was
even typical. The word "homestead" is used in the broad European sense, not in
the American legal sense of 160 acres.
4 100 dengas = 1 ruble.
FEUDALISM IN EARLY RUS 17
also products that we should consider industrial; homesteads of smiths
paid in axes, scythes, ploughshares, frying-pans. It is still more sig-
nificant that personal services were secured in the same way; in the
registers we find whole settlements, not only of grooms and huntsmen
(who might be relatively large landholders) but also of actors and
actresses. The dues (obrok) of these mediaeval artists apparently con-
sisted in the amusements they furnished their lord. The most striking
example of personal services as dues from land, both in Russia and in
the West, was the requirement of military service in return for land.
To refuse to take note of this form of feudal due was impossible ; but,
treating it as different in nature from other dues, Russian historians have
painted the extensive and complicated picture of the so-called "pomestye
system." But the pomestye system represents only an especially vivid
detail of the feudal system in general ; the essence of the latter consisted
in the fact that the landholder ceded to others his right to land in return
for all manner of services and dues in kind.
Ultimately these dues took the form of money; in the registers of
Novgorod we can clearly trace the conversion of natural obligations into
money payments, the initiative being taken by the largest landholder, the
grand prince of Moscow. Simultaneously with the appearance of money,
or only a little earlier, the labour of the peasants on the lord's arable
begins to play a conspicuous part in the series of natural obligations;
as the demesne becomes too large to be worked by bondsmen alone,
obligatory labour (oarshchina) appears. Both money payments and
labour obligations denote the rise of an entirely new phenomenon, un-
known to, or playing a very secondary role in, early feudalism — the rise
of the market, where everything could be bought and sold for money,
and in any quantity desired. Only the appearance of a domestic grain
market could force the landlords of the sixteenth century (whether
votchinniks or pomeshchiks), to apply themselves seriously to inde-
pendent economy, just as at the turn of the eighteenth century the
appearance of an international grain market gave their great-great-
grandsons a fresh impetus in the same direction. Only now did each
extra pud 5 of grain become valuable, because it meant extra silver in the
pocket, and because with silver one could now satisfy all one 's wants, in
such quantity and quality as was impossible with dues in kind. When feu-
dalism was taking root, buying and selling were the exception, not the
rule ; men sold, not for gain but from need ; men sold, not the products of
their economy but the property which until then they had themselves
enjoyed. Sale was often disguised ruin, while purchase was usually the
buying of articles of luxury, since men already had articles of prime
necessity and therefore did not need to purchase them ; buying was not
e 1 pud = 36 lbs. avoirdupois.
18 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
rarely the first step on the road to ruin. Once upon a time the economic
order in which men strove to get along by themselves, buying nothing
and selling nothing, bore the name of "natural economy." The absence
or limited circulation of money and the acquisition of all goods in kind
were taken as its specific characteristics. But the absence of money was
only a derivative characteristic; the essential point was the absence of
exchange as a constant daily phenomenon, without which it is impossible
to imagine economic life as it is to-day. The cardinal point was the
isolation of individual economies and, in application to large landholding,
this period is called by modern scholars the period of isolated votchina,
or pomestye, economy ("manorial," as it is also sometimes called, from
the name of the English mediaeval votchina, the manor) .
"We see that this type of economy has one essential resemblance to the
pechishche or dvorishche which we examined in Chapter I. In both
cases a given economic group strives to satisfy all its wants from its
own resources, without resorting to or needing outside assistance. But
there is also a very essential difference : in the pechishche the fruits of
common labour went to those who laboured, producer and consumer
being fused in one narrow circle ; in the votchina producer and consumer
are divorced, individual petty economies producing and a special group
(the votchinnik and his household of children and domestics)
consuming.
How could such relationships have arisen ? The basis of feudalism as a
universal phenomenon has long since been pointed out by the historical
literature of "Western Europe. Long, long ago it described the process
of the feudalisation of landed property, approximately as follows. At
the very beginning of settled agriculture the land is found in the hands
of those who cultivate it. The majority of scholars agree that the
agricultural population then carried on its economy, not individually
but by groups, and that the land belonged to these groups, that the
initial form of landed property was not personal but communal property.
Little by little, however, communal property disintegrated, giving way
to individual property ; parallel with this disintegration developed differ-
entiation among the inhabitants of the commune. The more powerful
families seized ever more and more land; the weaker lost what was
originally in their hands and fell into economic, and later into political,
dependence on powerful neighbours. Thus arose large feudal propri-
etorship with its distinctive characteristics. For certain countries-
England, for example— the existence of the free commune as the pri-
mary phenomenon, of the feudal estate as the secondary, later phe-
nomenon, is to-day considered proved. In the case of Russia the exist-
ence of the landed commune has long been disputed, and until recent
FEUDALISM IN EARLY RUS 19
times data for the settlement of the dispute have remained extremely
scanty.
One of the most typical characteristics of the commune is, as is well
known, redistribution. Inasmuch as in the commune not one square
inch of land belongs as property to an individual person, the communal
land is redistributed from time to time according to the movement of
population. But in Russia until the sixteenth century only one case
of land redistribution can be shown, and that was effected by a steward
on the initiative, not of the peasants but of the local proprietor. In
other words, feudal relationships already existed here. What preceded
them? The most plausible answer will be that in Russia feudalism de-
veloped directly out of that collective landholding which we have defined
as "primitive" — pechishche or dvorishche landholding. "We shall remem-
ber that this peculiar "commune" was by no means that association of
free and equal agriculturists depicted by certain scholars, the commune
of the early Germans, for example. In the pechishche there was no
individual property, for there was no individual economy ; but when the
latter appeared, the remembrance of equality disappeared. If two
brothers formerly constituting "one family" separated, the pechishche
was divided into two equal halves. But one brother might have three
sons, the other one. In the following generation three of the grandsons
of the one grandfather would each hold one-sixth of the hamlet, but the
fourth grandson would hold a whole half. Such clear-cut examples, it
is true, are rare. In view of the abundance of forest-land 6 any one who
felt cramped in his native pechishche could establish a new ' ' clearing, ' '
which soon developed into an independent hamlet. But cases in which
one-third of the hamlet is found in the hands of one villager and the
remaining two-thirds in the hands of another are quite common in the
registers. The notion of the equal right of every one to an equal portion
of land finds no support, and, we repeat, there was as yet no economic
necessity for such equality.
There are any number of survivals of pechishche landholding on
votchina lands in the sixteenth century. First of all, as might have been
expected, the juridical form of collective family ownership proved far
more persistent than its economic content. Votchina, or hereditary,
land very rarely appears in the registers as the property of a single
individual; far more frequently we find the land held by a group of
6 It has long since been pointed out that the least settled parts of present-day
Siberia offer the best analogy to early Russia in point of the extent of land. In
both cases, to enter into full possession of a portion of land in the midst of the
uncleared, virgin, forest, it was sufficient to "trace round" this portion, putting
marks on the trees surrounding it. Such "tracing" is found both in the Russkaya
Pravda, with its "boundary oak," for the felling of which a large fine was imposed,
and in documents of the sixteenth century, in which this very word "tracing" occurs.
20 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
persons, usually near relatives, but sometimes distant ones. How un-
usual in Muscovite Rus of the sixteenth century was the idea of personal
land ownership is attested by the curious fact that when the grand prince
began to distribute lands as pomestyes in return for service, it did not
enter his head to distribute the land to individual persons, although the
service itself, of course, was personal. The idea of a personal service-
allotment took form only very gradually. In most cases a pomestye was
held originally by a father and his sons, an uncle and his nephews, or by
several brothers, jointly. Sometimes it so happened that an allotment
liable to service was held by a mother and son, and, although the son
was but three years old and obviously could not serve, the land was left
him "until he shall ripen into service"; it was not possible to deprive
the whole family of land because at the moment no member of it was
capable of discharging the military obligation.
But though the juridical form remained, actually, as we have already
seen, the pechishche had long since begun to crumble; signs of this
crumbling are an index of the means by which the large votchina own-
ership of early Russia arose no less significant than the survivals of
collective holding. We have seen how in the course of a few generations
a former "hamlet" is split up into fractions held by members of one
family; but the colossal votchinas of the "princelings" were sometimes
made up of just such fractional, tiny "morsels." 7 Sometimes, thanks
to this crumbling process, the ownership of a piece of land became
divided among persons of the most diverse social position. It would be
very erroneous to imagine that sixteenth-century votchinniks were al-
ways important lords, for a priest, a dyak, a bondsman of yesterday or
even of to-day, might be a landed proprietor. The landowner, as well
as the peasant, might, to rid himself of debt, give himself up in pay-
ment. In such cases, to be sure, not only was the votchinnik not an
eminent man, but he was, of course, not even a large landholder, else
such a fate would not have overtaken him. We have seen that large-
scale ownership was already dominant in the sixteenth century, but this
did not at all mean that every votchina of those times was a large
estate. At the time the registers were composed small property was
still far from having been finally swallowed up, and in these registers at
every step we meet votchinniks, independent, full, hereditary propri-
etors of their land, holding no more land than a peasant might, 10 or 12
~ In the county of Tver, according to the register of 1539-1540, a third of the
hamlet of Bykovo belonged to Prince Boris Shchepin while two-thirds remained in
the hands of the former proprietors, the Davidovs. Mitya Ryskunov had half the
hamlet of Korobyno, while Prince Dmitry Punkov had the other half. Half of the
hamlet of Popovo was in the hands of Fedor Rzhevsky while the other half was
the "votchina of Princess Ulyana Punkova."
FEUDALISM IN EARLY RUS 21
desyatinas of arable in three fields. Such a "landlord" could be con-
verted into a proletarian just as could any peasant. 8
Large-scale ownership in Russia, as everywhere in Europe, grew up
on the ruins of small-scale ownership. What course did this process
take? How were the small proprietors expropriated in favour of the
divers Princes Mikulinsky, Punkov, and other landed magnates, of the
Troitsa, Kirillov-Belozersk, and other monasteries? In the sixteenth
century we see only the last links of the long chain ; it is natural that
they should strike us first, concealing older and perhaps far more wide-
spread forms of expropriation. In the later period one of the most
obvious forms of expropriation was the granting by the sovereign of
settled lands as a votchina. Over a mass of petty, independent economies
was set up one large proprietor, able to appropriate any part of the
revenue of these economies. How simply this was done, a single example
will show. In 1551 Tsar Ivan IV granted to the abbess of the Pokrovsky
Monastery (in the county of Vladimir) twenty-one "black" hamlets, i.e.,
lands belonging in full ownership to peasants who paid nothing but
state taxes. By one stroke of the pen these twenty-one free hamlets
were converted into the feudal property of the Abbess Vasilisa and her
sisters.
This wholly juridical (arch-legal, so to speak) form of the origin of
large-scale ownership is so clear, so simple, and so well known to all,
that there is no need to dwell on it. On the other hand, the love of
the older Russian historians for everything pertaining to the "state"
(not in vain were most of them pupils of Hegel, directly or indirectly)
makes it necessary to emphasise the fact that forcible seizure of the
land of others was by no means always clothed in such a correct garb,
juridically irreproachable. One might have long to wait before the
sovereign granted land; a powerful and influential man could appro-
priate it far more quickly by dispensing with this juridical formality.
Through the registers of the sixteenth century runs a long series of
such cases. For example, two brothers Dmitriev, grooms of the grand
prince, petty landholders, possessed in all a single hamlet. "That
hamlet had a grain field . . . and that grain field G. V. Morozov
took away by force, and now Prince S. I. Mikulinsky has that grain
field. ' ' The same hamlet had a piece of waste ground ; ' ' and that waste
ground I. M. Shuisky took." Or, "the hamlet of Sokevitsyno ... is
deserted, and it was made desolate by Prince M. P. Repnin."
s In this same county of Tver the registrars found a hamlet belonging to a certain
Vasyuk Fomin of which they "gave no description" for a very remarkable reason:
there was nothing to describe. There not only was no economy carried on, but
there was not even any building, and the votchinnik Vasyuk Fomin went around the
homesteads and was fed in the name of Christ.
22 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
A judicial decision of the 1540 's sheds very vivid light on these
dry excerpts from Muscovite treasury records. Complaint is made by
the Spassky Monastery of Yaroslavl, itself of course a large landholder,
but smaller and weaker than Prince I. F. Mstislavsky, the neighbour
sent it by fate. This neighbour's man, Ivan Tolochanov, having de-
scended on the monastery's hamlets, "cast out the monastery's peasants
from the hamlets"; he himself settled in one hamlet and imposed dues
on the others in his own favour. But, ' ' casting out ' ' the peasants them-
selves, the new landholder by no means wished to part with their
property; this he kept for himself, driving out the proprietors almost
naked.
Thus, the existence of the first of the fundamental characteristics of
feudalism — the dominance of large landholding — can be proved for
early Rus, including the pre-Muscovite period, just as satisfactorily as
for Western Europe of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Even more
indisputable is the existence of the second characteristic — the union
of landholding and political authority in one indissoluble bond.
That the great hereditary-landowning aristocracy not only carried on
economy and collected dues but also administered justice and collected
taxes on its own lands is a fact which has never been denied in the
literature of Russian history, for long since too much documentary
confirmation of it was published ; but, owing to the point of view usual
to Russian legal-historical literature, with its emphasis on the "state,"
these rights have always been represented as exceptional privileges,
the granting of which was an exceptional act of state authority. "These
privileges were extended, not to a whole class but to individuals, and
each time on the basis of special charters," says Prof. Sergeyevich
in the last edition of his Antiquities of Russian Law fin Russian].
Nevertheless, two pages further on this same scholar finds himself
compelled to draw his reader's attention to the fact that among those
endowed with such privileges were, not only great men whose names
were written with a "-vich" 9 but likewise mere "Dicks and Harrys."
From this he quite correctly infers that "such grants constituted the
general rule, not the exception," i.e., that the privilege did belong to
the "whole class" of landholders, not to "individuals" as a special
favour of the sovereign. Still another two pages further on this same
author discloses the still more curious fact that the grant might issue,
not from the state authority at all but from any votchinnik. With the
charter of the Metropolitan Jonas to a certain Andrew Afanasyev
9 The suffix to the Russian patronymic. The Christian name and patronymic con-
stitute the usual form of address in Russia; use of the Christian name alone, espe-
cially the diminutive, is derogatory. A servant would address his master as Ivan
Ivanovich, where the master would call the servant Ivashka.
FEUDALISM IN EARLY RUS 23
(1450), which he cites, may be compared a still more pronounced
example of the same sort, the charter of Prince F. M. Mstislavsky
to the same Ivan Tolochanov, whose exploits we have mentioned above.
"Our bailiffs [and other officers] shall not go out [into the hamlets
granted to Tolochanov] for any purpose," writes Prince Mstislavsky
in this charter, "nor shall they make levies on them or judge his
peasants, but Ivan himself or whom he pleases shall administer and
judge, while if justice is to be done between his peasants and our
peasants, our bailiffs shall judge them, and he shall judge with them,
and the perquisites shall be divided into halves, except in cases of murder
and theft, and robbery taken red-handed, and plough taxes ; and who-
ever is at law with him, him I, Prince Fedor Mikhailovich, or whom I
please, shall judge." The editor of this interesting document, Mr.
Likhachev, justly remarks in his preface that this Prince Mstislavsky
not only was not an independent landholder, but did not even occupy
a conspicuous place among the servitors of the grand prince of Moscow ;
he was not even a boyar. It must be added that this land which he
"granted ... to his knight" 10 with these rights was not his by in-
heritance, but had been granted to him by Grand Prince Vasily III
(1505-1533). And in all probability the latter considered delegation
to a still lesser landholder of this "privilege" he had granted quite
usual; not without reason did he himself and his father and his son
give such charters to petty pomeshchiks. From the registers of the
first half of the sixteenth century we have already cited the case of
two grooms of the grand prince who were systematically wronged by
their powerful neighbours, the boyar Morozov and the Princes Mikulinsky
and Shuisky ; in proof of their rights, however, these grooms produced an
immunity granted by "Grand Prince Ivan Vasilyevich of All Rus"
(it is not clear whether it was Ivan III or Ivan IV). A little further
on in the same register we find an immunity bestowed on the holder
of half a village in which there were altogether 30 desyatinas of arable
land. Thus, in Russia as in Western Europe, not only a great lord
but each independent landholder was a "sovereign on his own estate";
Mr. Sergeyevich is quite right when he says, not altogether in consonance
with his original definition of votchina jurisdiction as an exceptional
privilege of individuals, that "long before the binding of the peasants
to the land the population was under the votchina jurisdiction of the
landholders."
From the evolutionary point of view the origin of this "votchina
io This word is employed for syn boyarshy (literally, "son of a boyar"), a Rus-
sian term having no biological significance. It should not conjure up any chivalric
formalities, but rather the mediaeval English "knight of the shire," who frequently
was never knighted.
24 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
law" is quite analogous to the rise of votchina landholding ; as the
latter arose from the fragments of pechishche landholding — the patri-
archal form of landed property — so the former was a survival of
patriarchal law, which had not distinguished political authority from
the right of property. It may even be said that in this case there
was more than "survival"; when the grand prince of Moscow granted
"to his servitor (so-and-so) the village (such-and-such) with all that
pertained to that village, and with the grain of the earth (i.e., with
the winter rye already sown), saving [the punishment of] murder
and robbery taken red-handed," then in quite "primitive fashion" he
was continuing to confound economy and state and was evidently
even regarding his state functions primarily from the economic point
of view, since to liken murder and robbery to "grain of the earth" was
only possible if he saw in the preservation of public security nothing
but revenue from judicial fees. There is no need to insist that this
assigning of especially important criminal cases to the exclusive juris-
diction of the prince's court is, of course, to be explained by the same
economic motives. Murder and robbery incurred the largest fines ;
these were the fattest morsels of a prince's judicial revenue. But, if
generous, a prince might renounce even this lucre ; Grand Princess
Sofia Vitovtovna in a charter to the Kirillo-Belozersk Monastery (1448-
1469) wrote: "my sheriffs and their bailiffs shall not meddle in murder
in any case." There is likewise no need to say that the grant was
itself merely a juridical formality like any grant of land. It only de-
limited the rights of the prince and of the private landholder, as far
as this was possible, for, thanks precisely to the confounding of political
authority and private ownership, these rights threatened to become hope-
lessly entangled. But the right did not always emanate from the prince 's
authority as such ; in disputes about jurisdiction and tribute, votchinniks
appealed, not only to a prince's grant but likewise, again and again,
to the immemorial nature of their rights — to "olden time." It was
thus that, for example, a boyar of Belozersk proved his rights in the
middle of the fifteenth century when the Kirillov Monastery "snatched"
his patrimonial hamlet "from jurisdiction and tribute." What was
true of "jurisdiction and tribute," i.e., of judicial fees and direct im-
posts, was true also of indirect imposts. "We find private toll-houses
not only in princes' votchinas, where they might be taken as a survival
of sovereign rights once belonging to the holder, but also on the domains
of ordinary pomeshchiks whom even a simple Muscovite official, a dyak,
might sometimes outrage with impunity. From a complaint of one
such pomeshchik of Ryazan, Shilovsky, who had been outraged by a
dyak, in the second half of the sixteenth century, we learn that on
his and his brothers' votchina "on their banks they load grain into
FEUDALISM IN EARLY RUS 25
boats ; they take from an okova xl a denga each, and they take toll from
a big boat at 4 altyns 12 each, but from a small boat one altyn, and of that
toll half goes to the Telekhovsky Monastery." Even customs tolls
might be halved with a neighbour, as judicial fees sometimes were.
A "sovereign on his own estate" could not, of course, get along
without the chief attribute of "sovereignty" — military force. Even
the Russkaya Pravda speaks of the "boyar's druzhina" as well as of
the prince's druzhina. Documents of a later time usually give specific
confirmation of the general evidence of the earliest code of Russian law.
In the personnel of the household of a wealthy hereditary landowner
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we find along with cooks and
butlers, huntsmen and buffoons, also armed domestics serving their
lord "on horseback and in full panoply." "As to my men in full
and partial bondage, and under indenture," writes V. P. Kutuzov in
his will (about 1560), "all these men shall be free, and as to the clothes
and gear and sabres and saddles that they have of my giving, these
shall be theirs, and my stewards shall give to my man, Andryusha, a
horse with saddle and bridle, and a quilted hauberk, and a helmet. ..."
Such a druzhinnik of an hereditary landowner by virtue of his profession
certainly stood higher than a simple domestic. He could render his
lord services that it was impossible to forget and could raise himself
to the position of a privileged member of the household, almost of a
free servitor. This Andryusha had, besides his master's, also a "horse
of his own purchase" and some furnishings, and V. P. Kutuzov is very
careful that his executor should not confound this property with that
of the master. To just this category, in all probability, belonged those
bondsmen on wages mentioned in the will of another votchinnik, Prince
I. M. Glinsky. Asking his executor, Boris Godunov, "to give allotments
to my men, according to the books, whatever of my paying went to
them," the testator further says of these men that they are to be set
free "with all that with which they served me"; but it cannot be ad-
mitted that the cook was freed with the kitchen in which he worked, or
the huntsman with the pack of hounds he took care of. Such an expres-
sion might be used only of men who served their lord on horseback and in
full armour; in another will (of Pleshcheyev) the reservation is frankly
made, "not to give them [the bondsmen] horses." Glinsky was more
liberal to his former comrades-in-arms and even bequeathed a hamlet
to one of them as a votchina. But a bondsman might get such a piece
of land from his master even in the latter 's lifetime. According to a
register of Tver of the first half of the sixteenth century, Sozon, a
"man" of Prince D. I. Mikulinsky, occupied one quarter of the hamlet
11 An obsolete measure of volume.
12 An old coin equal to 3 copecks (0.03 rubles).
26 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
of Tolutino. For such a servant settled on a piece of land to become
an actual noble with a small estate was but a step. In the complaint
of the Spassky Monastery against Ivan Tolochanov, twice mentioned
above, he is called the "man" of Prince I. F. Mstislavsky, but the latter 's
father in the charter calls Tolochanov his "knight," i.e., a noble. Thus,
imperceptibly, the higher members of the armed household passed into
the lower stratum of the military-serving class ; on one side of a fine line
stood the bondsman, on the other the vassal.
The existence of such vassalage among Russian large landholders of
the sixteenth century — the existence of free votchinniks performing
military service in return for their land, on their own horses and
sometimes with their own armed bondsmen, not to the grand prince of
Moscow but to "private individuals" — is irrefutably proved by the same
register of the county of Tver which we have more than once mentioned
above. In this book (composed about 1539) are enumerated 574 vot-
chinniks, for the most part petty ones. Of them 230 served the grand
prince, 126 served private proprietors of different categories, and 150
served no one. Of the 126 "subvassals" of the Muscovite feudal aristoc-
racy, sixty served the bishop of Tver, and thirty Prince Mikulinsky.
From other sources we know that metropolitans 13 and bishops had in
their service, not only simple "servants" but also actual boyars. "The
boyars of the prelates," says a historian of the Russian Church cited
by Pavlov-Silvansky, "in ancient times were in no way different from
the boyars of the princes in respect to their origin and social position.
They entered on service to prelates exactly in the same way and on the
same terms as to princes, i.e., with an engagement to fulfil a military
obligation and to perform service at the prelate's court, in return for
which they received from him land in usufruct." On these lands they
might settle their own military servitors, while their own lord, in his
turn, was a vassal of the grand prince. The military druzhina of the
metropolitan had to take the field together with the druzhina of the
grand prince; "in case of war, when I myself, the grand prince, shall
mount my horse, so also [shall] the boyars and servitors of the metro-
politan," says a charter of Grand Prince Vasily I (about 1400). Thus,
in the service of the grand prince of Moscow was set up the same ladder
of vassals as in the service of a mediaeval king of France.
The character of the relationships between the individual rungs of
this ladder — between the free military servitors of the various grades
and their corresponding suzerains — has been studied in detail by the
late N. Pavlov-Silvansky, who summarised the whole of his special la-
is The head of the Russian Church, ranking above archbishops and bishops, bore
the title of "metropolitan" until 1589, when the metropolitan was elevated to the
rank of patriarch.
FEUDALISM IN EARLY RUS 27
bours in his popular little book, Feudalism in Ancient Bus [in Russian].
"The official contract of vassalage was validated by analogous cere-
monies [in Russia] and in the West," says the author. "The ceremony
of homage, which in the feudal period validated the contract of vassal-
age, as well as the early ceremony of commendation, of committing,
consisted in the vassal, in token of his submission to the lord, kneeling
before him and putting his clasped hands in the hands of his seignior;
sometimes, in token of still greater submission, the vassal, kneeling, put
his hands under the feet of the seignior. [In Russia] corresponding
exactly to this ceremony we find the ceremony of beating the forehead ;
the boyar beat his forehead on the ground before the prince in token
of his subjection. In later times the expression Ho beat the forehead'
was used in the figurative sense of an humble request; but in the
appanage period this expression denoted actual beating of the forehead,
bowing to the ground, as is evident from the customary designation of
entry into service by the words: 'beat the forehead into service. . . .'
In the second half of the appanage period the mere ceremony of beating
the forehead was already accounted insufficient for the validating of
the service contract, and to this ceremony was added a church rite, the
kissing of the cross. A similar church oath to bind the feudal con-
tract, sworn on the Gospels, on relics, or on a cross, was performed in
the West as a supplement to the old ceremony of commendation or
homage." "Our boyars' service is so close to vassalage that in our
antiquity we even find terms corresponding exactly to Western ones :
prikazatsya = avouer, otkazatsya = se desavouer." As an example of
the former, the author cites the contemporary formula of the tidings of
the submission of the military servitors of Novgorod to Ivan III : ' ' There
beat the forehead to the grand prince into service the boyars of Novgorod
and all the knights and the men of substance, and having avowed them-
selves they went out from him." A good example of the second term
(disavow) is the story in the biography of Joseph of Volokolamsk of
how this abbot, having a disagreement with the local prince of Volo-
kolamsk, transferred from him to the grand prince of Moscow: Joseph
"disavowed his lord for the great lordship." A passage in the Nikonov-
sky Chronicle has preserved for us the very formula of such a disavowal.
In 1391 Prince Vasily I of Moscow, son of Dmitry Donskoi, having
bought the principality of Nizhny-Novgorod from the Tatars, moved
on that town with his warriors in order to give effect to the "right"
he had just acquired. Prince Boris of Nizhny-Novgorod, having de-
cided to resist to the last ditch, assembled his clruzhina and addressed
it in these words : ' ' My lords and brothers, boyars and others : remember
the kissing of the Lord's cross, how ye have kissed it to me, and our
love and fostering toward you. ' ' At first, the boyars, resenting the rude
28 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
affront offered to their prince, eagerly defended his cause. "We are
all unanimously for thee," declared the senior boyar, Vasily Rumyanets,
"and ready to give up our heads for thee." But Moscow in alliance
with the Tatars was a dread force; resistance to her threatened final
destruction to those who resisted. When the first animation had sub-
sided, the boyars of Nizhny decided that their prince's cause was lost
in any case. They therefore proposed to "disavow" Prince Boris and
to go over to his antagonist. The same Vasily Rumyanets, on behalf
of all, announced to the unfortunate Boris the change of attitude.
"Lord Prince!" he said, "rely not on us, already we are not thine,
and there is none with thee, but we are against thee." In quoting
these words, the historian of Russian feudalism [Silvansky] adds,
"Exactly so in the West, the vassal, renouncing his lord, openly said
to him: 'I will not be loyal to thee, I will not serve thee, and will not
be bound by loyalty. . . . ' "
The case just cited clearly illustrates the peculiarities of the regime
out of which grew Muscovite Rus, and which long survived beneath
the mantle of Byzantine autocracy officially adopted by the Muscovite
state at the beginning of the sixteenth century. All historians have long
been agreed that it is impossible to conceive of a prince of the Kievan
epoch without his boyars. The case of Prince Vladimir Mstislavich
is usually cited as an example. When he undertook an expedition
without the consent of his boyars, they said to him : " Of thyself, Prince,
hast thou devised this, but we do not go according to thy opinion, we
knew nothing of this." But even the "gatherers" 14 of Muscovite Rus
should not be thought of as acting alone ; not without reason did Dmitry
Donskoi, in taking leave of his boyars, call to mind that he had done
everything jointly with them — had vanquished the pagans, had done
deeds of valour with them in many lands, had made merry with them,
and had sorrowed with them — "and you were called, under me, not
boyars but princes of my land." Just as at the head of every feudal state
in Western Europe there stood a group of persons — the sovereign,
king or duke, the "suzerain," with the "curia" of his vassals — so
at the head of the Russian "appanage" principality, and later of the
Muscovite state as well, there likewise stood a group of persons — the
prince, later grand prince and tsar, with his duma of boyars. And
just as the Western European feudal "sovereign" in unusual and
in especially important cases was not content with the counsel of his
immediate vassals, but convoked the representatives of all feudal so-
ciety — the "estates of the realm" — so also in Russia the prince in
14 The conventional interpretation of early Russian history was that the grand
principality of Kiev fell apart in the "appanage period" and that Russia was "gath-
ered" together again by the princes of Moscow, sprung from Ivan Kalita.
FEUDALISM IN EARLY RUS 29
early times sometimes took counsel with his druzhina, and the tsar with
the zemshy sobor [assembly of the land]. We shall later have occasion
to study both of these institutions in greater detail. Meanwhile let us
note only that the roots of the one and of the other — both of the duma
and of the sobor — lie deep in that feudal principle which says that
from a free servitor can be demanded only that service for which he
contracted, and that he can abandon this service whenever he finds
it disadvantageous. Hence any important matter that might have
repercussions on the fate of his servitors could not be undertaken by
the feudal lord without their assent.
How stable was this "social contract" between vassal and suzerain
in feudal society? Mediaeval contractual relations are very easily sub-
ject to idealisation. The "rights" of free servitors are very often con-
ceived in the form of and similar to "rights" as they exist in the
modern state governed by "law." But we know that in this latter
the rights of the weaker are frequently protected only on paper,
while in fact "might makes right." To the feudal state this was
applicable in far greater degree; the contractual relations of vassal
and suzerain were really far more like the norms of present "interna-
tional law," which only he who cannot does not violate. In compacts
between princes it was all very well to write, "To boyars and servitors
our boundaries shall be free at will"; but in practice, ever and anon,
it happened that the prince "plundered those boyars and knights"
who had "departed" from him "and seized their villages and their
homes and took their chattels and all that remained and their cattle."
And no court and no justice could be found against him except by
appealing to another, still mightier, arbitrary power. In feudal society,
far more even than at present, might always took precedence over
right. It is easy to be carried away by a study of the complicated
ceremonial of feudal relations and to think that men who had so
carefully ordered what gestures were to be made in such and such
a case and what words uttered would know just as carefully how to
preserve the reality of their rights. But how they were to defend
their rights from abuses by the feudal lord, when they were to protect
them from the attempts of his lesser servitors, were sometimes matters
beyond their strength. We cannot conclude our study of the juridical
regime of feudal Rus better than by an illustration borrowed from
the same series of court decisions from which we have repeatedly taken
examples above. In 1552 the Nikolsky Monastery was engaged in a
law suit with its neighbours, the Arbuzovs. "There judged us,
lord," write the elders of the monastery in their petition, "according
to the lord tsar's writing, Fedor Morozov and Khomyak Chechenin."
The judges upheld the monastery and found its opponents at fault.
30 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
''And behold," continue the elders, "there came, lord, upon this
hamlet, the Ilyins, sons of Arbuzov . . . and the Ilyins, the men of
Arbuzov . . . , beat and robbed me, Mitrofanov, lord, and Brother
Daniel and Brother Tikhon, and the dyak of the monastery, and the
servitors, and the peasants, and the peasant women they beat and
robbed, and the old-dwellers, 15 lord, who were with the judges on
the land, they beat. And the judge, lord, Khomyak Chechenin, with
the knights who were with us on the land went out to rescue [the injured
old-dwellers], and they, lord, beat both Khomyak Chechenin and the
knights. . . . While the abbot, lord, with the judge, with Fedor
Morozov, barricading themselves, sat it out. ..." It was not always
comfortable to decide a case against the interest of a pugnacious feudal
lord. Western European feudal law clothed this rough law-breaking in
a rather solemn ceremony; a man dissatisfied with a judicial decision
could "repudiate the decision" (fausser le jugement) and challenge
the judge to a duel. In a law suit of the year 1531 the judge rejected
the testimony of one of the litigants, who asserted that a document
referred to by the judge had never been in the case. "And in place of
Oblyazov [the ligitant] his man, Istoma, asked the field with Sharap
[the judge] . . . and Sharap took the field with him." To challenge
the judge to a duel was possible in the Muscovite state even in the
time of Vasily III (1505-1533).
For this reason the contract — a juridical concept — should not be num-
bered among the chief distinctive features of feudalism. Feudalism is
far more a system of economy than a system of law. The state here
merged with the lord's economy; into one and the same centre flowed
dues in kind and judicial revenues, frequently in one and the same
form, rams, eggs, and cheese; from one and the same centre came both
the steward — to redivide the land — and the judge — to decide a dispute
about this land. When the circle of economic interests had extended
beyond the limits of a single estate, the sphere of law likewise had to
be geographically extended. Such extension first took place when out
of the "volosts" [domains] of private landholders grew the volosts of
towns [town-provinces] ; it took place a second time when Moscow
"gathered" all the private votchinniks under her own hand. In both
cases quantitative brought on qualitative change : the territorial ex-
tension of authority changed the nature of that authority ; the ' ' estate ' '
was converted into the "state." The earlier of these conversions
proceeded quite rapidly; on the other hand, it was not very lasting.
The later one was very slowly accomplished; but, on the other hand,
the final formation of the Muscovite state, in the seventeenth century,
is Peasants who had lived on an estate for a long period; their exact status is
uncertain.
FEUDALISM IN EARLY RUS 31
was also the final liquidation of Russian feudalism in its earliest form.
Yet right up to that moment feudal relationships constituted the basis
on which were erected both political superstructures — the volost of the
towns and the votchina of the tsars of Moscow. Both Lord Novgorod
the Great and his successful rival, Grand Prince Ivan III of Moscow,
ruled, as we must steadfastly bear in mind, not a colourless mass of
subjects equally devoid of rights but a variegated feudal world of great
and small "lordships," in each of which sat its petty sovereign, able
behind the forests and swamps of northern Rus to maintain his inde-
pendence no less well than could his Western comrade behind the stone
walls of his castle.
CHAPTER III
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS, TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
The chief economic characteristic of the "feudal" order which we
have just studied was the absence of exchange. The boyar's votchina
of "appanage Rus" was an economically self-sufficient unit. One can
quite justly say of it, as one historian has said, not quite so justly, of
the pomestye estate of the central zone of Russia in the eighteenth cen-
tury, that, if all the world around it should fall away, it would continue
to exist as if nothing had happened. Such a conception of ancient Rus
hardly fits in, of course, with that interpretation of early Russian
history which might be called the conventional one. This interpretation
has already been mentioned, in connection with the views of Storch
and his modern imitators. We shall remember that this school considered
trade — i.e., exchange — the axis around which the whole political history
of the Kievan period revolved, and to which the early Russian "state"
was indebted for its very existence. Such a "philosophy of Russian
history" seems to stand in irreconcilable contradiction to the facts we
have just examined. What significance can trade have in view of the
dominance of "natural economy," uninterrupted for many centuries?
This a priori consideration is apparently so irresistible that one of the
representatives of the materialistic tendency in Russian history, N.
Rozhkov, has brought himself to declare flatly and in entire contradiction
to the "conventional" view that "in Kievan Rus trade was weak.
Natural economy prevailed, and only foreign trade had any influence
on the economic position of the upper strata of society." The simplicity
and plausibility of this view has won the sympathy even of scholars
far removed from the materialistic conception of history. The modern
investigator of The Princely Law of Ancient Rus [in Russian], A.
Presnyakov, justifies his radical departure from Professor Klyuchevsky 's
interpretation, as follows: "It [the customary interpretation] is based
on an extreme exaggeration of the depth of the influence exerted by
trade on the tribal life of Eastern Slavdom." In support of his view
this author gives a rather long excerpt from the works of the material-
istic historian just mentioned.
Nevertheless, a number of phenomena in early Kievo-Novgorodan
history — the social groupings that we find in Kiev and Novgorod, the
forms of authority, so unlike anything before or since, and, finally,
32
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 33
many things in the economic life of this period — all this will be quite
incomprehensible if we agree that in those times trade "was weak"
and stop there. Yet, whether exchange was weak or strong, if we
disregard it, the existence of the town and the "town-province" of
the tenth to the twelfth centuries becomes a pure enigma, whereas their
existence marks the chief distinction between ancient, pre-Muscovite,
Rus and Russia's Middle Ages, the Rus of Moscow.
The Scandinavian sagas even called ancient Rus Gardarik, "the
land of towns" [gorod = town]. That Arab writer of the beginning
of the tenth century, Ibn-Dasta, whom we have already cited, goes
even further. In his words, the "Rus," whom he, like many of the
Arabs, distinguishes from the Slavs, had "neither hamlets nor ploughed
fields" but at the same time had "a great number of towns" and were
"living in ease." This ease the "Russy" obtained by their "sole
occupation" — "by trade in sable, squirrel, and other furs." Ibn-Dasta
does not forget to mention that in payment for its wares Rus "received
coins"; in other words, this was not barter of the kind practised by
various civilised and semi-civilised peoples in their relations with savage
hunters. No, this was regular trade ; in quest of customers Russian
merchants went as far as Baghdad itself, and it was a rare ruler of
eastern lands who did not have a shuba [pelisse] stitched of Russian
furs. Arab writers go into such details in regard to the furs that it
is impossible to doubt the Arabs' immediate acquaintance with this
merchandise and its vendors. That is to say, Ibn-Dasta 's statement, so
astounding at first sight, that the Russians had no hamlets at all, only
towns, is not to be regarded as a pure fable easily explained away by
the writer's ignorance of the question he was treating. Evidently, the
"Rus" of the tenth century appeared to close observers as pre-eminently
an urban people. A slight disregard of historical perspective — and
imagination is ready to draw us a picture of a wealthy country, sown
with great trading centres, with a numerous and relatively civilised
population. But the Arabs, with the unsparing realism of steppe-
hunters just converted into world-traders, are ready to correct us; the
best-informed of them draws a most unsavoury picture of the manners
of Russian merchants when "abroad" in the Bolgar capital. And there
is every reason to think that their manners ' ' at home ' ' were still worse ;
for not only in the tenth century — when Ibn-Fadlan observed his
"Russy," washing together with the same water from one and the
same cup, into which, incidentally, they also spat — but even in the
twelfth century, Russian merchants did not feel the need of written
contracts but ratified all agreements verbally, by the testimony of wit-
nesses. The Russkaya Pravda treats the illiterate trader as the norm ;
34 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
written obligations, "tablets," do not appear before the thirteenth
century.
What mediaeval trade amounted to, and how we should picture the
mediaeval merchant, are not peculiarly Russian problems; nor is it
only Russian historians who have settled them optimistically, in the
spirit of Storch. Trade, like agriculture, used to be regarded in eco-
nomic history as an unfailing mark of civilisation ; the old German his-
torians peopled the innumerable multitude of German towns, large and
small, mentioned in mediaeval charters and chronicles with a "mer-
chantry in the modern sense of the word." For this they incurred
raillery, and justly, in the opinion of Werner Sombart, a modern his-
torian of the economic development of Germany. He acknowledges,
however, that the old historians were entirely right as far as the
number of persons taking part in trade is concerned. In mediaeval ex-
change we encounter the same peculiarity as existed in the rural
economy of the Middle Ages — the dominance of petty enterprises of
artisan type. On this point the modern historian and economist whom
we have just mentioned has collected some figures for Western European
trade in the Middle Ages. The anecdotal quality of these data does
not prevent them from being very significant. In 1222, near Como in
Northern Italy, two merchants from Lille were robbed; their entire
stock of merchandise consisted of 13y 2 pieces of cloth and 12 pair of
breeches. A hundred and fifty years later a similar misfortune overtook
a whole caravan of merchants of Basel on their way to the Frankfurt
fair ; their losses did not exceed 100-200 florins each. 1 This same author
fixes the average capital of a German merchant trading in Novgorod
in the fourteenth century at 1,000 marks silver — "less than 10,000
[German] marks at the present [1902] exchange." It is more than
probable that his contemporary Russian competitor had a like amount
of capital at his disposal. In order to become a member of the very
oldest, largest, and most stable trading association of Novgorod, which
was grouped around the Church of St. John the Baptist, one had to
invest no more than 50 silver grivnas 2 (1,000 silver rubles in present
[1910] currency). To appreciate the real significance of such a "capi-
tal," let us compare it with other data of the same period. Fifty silver
grivnas were equivalent, at the very most, to 150-200 grivnas kun;
while eighty grivnas kun was the highest norm for a penal fine {vira)
in the Russkaya Pravda. But penal fines, worked out case by case,
had in view, of course, not capitalists but representatives of the masses,
peasants and artisans. Eighty grivnas was what the prince exacted
for murder of a druzhinnik, the man he most needed. Let us admit
1 Werner Sombart, Der Moderne Kapitalismus (Leipzig, 1902), Bd. I, p. 173.
2 The grivna was a money of account; the grivna kun was the circulating medium.
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 35
that he deemed it just to punish such a crime, particularly serious in
his eyes, by "confiscation" of the culprit's whole property; then 80
grivnas constitutes the average estimated value of the whole homestead
of a peasant or petty burgher, with all it contained. And a man who
had two and a half times this amount could become one of the first
merchants of Novgorod! Not less illuminating in this connection than
the scale of capital is the scale of transport. For Western Europe
one figure cited by the author quoted above is very significant. The
whole annual carriage across the St. Gotthard pass, even at the end
of the Middle Ages, would need but two present-day freight trains.
For Russia the dimensions of vessels, both river- and sea-going, are
indicative. Some idea of them may be had from certain passages in
Byzantine writers, Russian chronicles, and the Busskaya Pravda. On
the average the Russian "ship" of the tenth to the twelfth centuries
carried 40-60 men. According to Aristov's calculations the smallest
of the types mentioned by the Busskaya Pravda could accommodate some
2,000 puds of merchandise; if their rating in the Pravda corresponds
to their burthen, the largest of them could carry 6,000 puds (about
100 tons). Nowadays the little coasting steamers plying between the
small ports of the Black or Baltic Seas have such a capacity; then
vessels of this size carried on trading relations between world commercial
centres such as Constantinople and Kiev, Lubeck and Novgorod. But
there is every reason to think that Aristov's computation is exaggerated.
He sets out from the assumption that vessels designated by the same
term in early Russia and in modern Russia had approximately the same
dimensions, that the "barge" of the Pravda was the same thing as
the "barge" of the 1860 's, when he wrote The Industry of Ancient Bus
[in Russian]. But this is not by any means necessarily true; in fact,
it is hardly credible. From the citations of Aristov himself it is evident
that they put the "barge" on rollers; to put a boat of even 30-40 tons
on rollers is quite impossible without mechanical devices, and there is
no evidence that there were machines in early Rus. The terms used in the
Busskaya Pravda correspond to the type, not to the dimensions of boats.
Of the dimensions even of Russian "sea-going" schooners (rated in
the Pravda at thrice the "barge") one foreign observer says that they
could float in the shallowest places; in other words, they were simply
big boats. 3
The dimensions of the vessels throw light on the proportions of the
Old Russian war flotillas, which at first sight seem so fantastic. If
Oleg on his campaign of 907 had, according to the chronicle, some
3 Some idea of Old-Russian vessels is also given by the "Viking ships" found
preserved in burial kurgans. One of them, now in Oslo, is 15 metres in length and
3% in greatest breadth; it could accommodate 60-80 men.
36 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
2,000 "ships" and, according to Byzantine data, more than 1,000, this
is not fiction; we hear of "a thousand boats" in genuinely historic
times. But this was precisely a thousand "boats," nothing more. And
the petty scale of trade in general explains the great number of "mer-
chants" in the pages of the chronicle. When we read that in 1216,
in Pereyaslavl Zalessky alone, there were a hundred and fifty merchants
of Novgorod, and in Torzhok, one of the chief transfer points of
Novgorod's trade, perhaps even some 2,000 merchants, we are not in
the least astonished if only we think of the Old-Russian "gost"* as
a man who (like Nekrasov's Uncle Jake) 5 carried his merchandise in a
single cart or, for the most part, in a hamper on his back ; the present-
day pedlar most resembles the typical trader of the Middle Ages,
and not in Russia alone. "Everywhere is presented one and the same
picture ; not counting a few greater merchants, who for the most part,
however, did not engage in professional trade, everywhere we meet a
swarming mass of insignificant and altogether petty traders, such as are
even now seen at petty country fairs or on the highways of remote
provinces, with hamper on shoulders or in a cart harnessed to a single
jade." 6
But not all mediaeval merchandise could be carried on the back,
nor is its small scale the only peculiarity of mediaeval trade. The first
Russian merchants whom the Arabs were able to observe closely imported
into the Bolgar capital, along with the furs of sables and black foxes,
young girls, and in such numbers that from the Arab narratives this
commodity might be assumed to be the chief article of the Russian
export trade of the time. From a description of the miracles of Nicholas
the Miracle-Worker, it is evident that in Constantinople the Russian
merchant was, above all, a slave-trader, while a twelfth-century traveller
met Russian slave-traders even in Alexandria. Russian sources supply
a mass of indirect, and sometimes direct, confirmation of the tales of
foreigners. For instance, the chronicles tell about the hundreds (if not
thousands) of "concubines" of St. Vladimir (972-1015) before his
baptism ; a modern church historian, Golubinsky, quite justly sees in this
a reference, not so much to the personal immorality and the personal
harem of this prince in the pagan period of his life as to the stores of
human merchandise kept by this prince, the greatest Russian merchant
of his time. Likewise, that it was not a question of paganism is proved
by the sermons of Bishop Serapion, a younger contemporary of the
Tatar invasion (he died in 1275). Among the sins that were bringing
4 A merchant trading abroad, as distinct from the ordinary merchant (kupets).
s Cf. Poems by Nicholas Nekrassov. Translated by Juliet M. Soskice. London,
1929, pp. 123-127.
s Werner Sombart, op. cit., p. 174.
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 37
divers scourges on the Russian land Serapion mentions the following
one: "... our brethren we plunder, slay, and sell into paganism."
That is to say, even in the thirteenth century Russian merchants did
not hesitate to sell Russian slaves in foreign markets, including both
Musulman and pagan lands. Of the fact that even around 1300 men
went to Rus "to buy girls" we have documentary evidence in the com-
plaint of one such purchaser, a Rigan merchant, against the prince of
Vitebsk, who had put him in prison without reason; for it is obvious
that the arrest had nothing to do with the scarcely respectable purpose
of this Rigan 's journey into the land of Vitebsk, but was simply an
ordinary manifestation of princely tyranny. This trivial case reveals the
fate, not always clear from the chronicles, of those ' ' captives ' ' who were
the inevitable sequel to the princely feuds of those times. When a prince
returned home "having captured domestics," it did not, as is usually
imagined, mean that he and his druzhina had acquired a certain number
of new bond-servants, male and female; rather, it meant that in the
conquerors' hands remained a marketable commodity, perhaps the most
valuable commodity of that time. Hence the Old-Russian feudal lords
coveted "domestics" far more than their peasants' offerings in kind.
For the latter there was no market; for the former there existed even
in those days an "international market," able to swallow up any quantity
of human merchandise. The twelfth-century princes openly avowed their
exploits of this nature, evidently regarding the "capture of domestics"
as a perfectly normal transaction. No less a man than Vladimir Mono-
makh (1113-1125), he who has supplied so many sentimental pages to
the official textbooks, relates how he and his allies "devastated" a
Russian town, leaving in it "neither domestics nor cattle." As we
see, for complete and thorough devastation of Russian provinces there
was not the slightest need for a Tatar invasion. And when a distant
descendant of Monomakh, Michael of Tver (1365-1399), falling on
Torzhok in 1372, led captive to Tver "of men and women an innumerable
multitude, ' ' he was acting not as a pupil of the Mongol conquerors, but
as a perpetuator of an old and respected, genuinely Russian tradition.
The existence of such "merchandise" no doubt further emphasises
the "natural" character of medieval economy; the slave market was
indispensable, precisely because there were no other workers on the
market. But this involves another consideration. How could a man be
made merchandise when nothing else was merchandise? From the cita-
tions just made it is clear that under the economic methods to which
we are accustomed such a miracle could not have been accomplished.
To extra-economic compulsion in the province of production corresponded
extra-economic appropriation in the province of exchange. Not only
human merchandise but also the sable furs and the precious metals that
38 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
circulated on the market of that day were not obtained by way of
exchange with the original proprietors, not even by exchange effected
by deception, violence, or similar "abuses," such as even now occur
in the colonial trade of "civilised" peoples with "uncivilised"; they
were obtained directly, by open violence. The first stage of exchange
was not trade by barter, as economic history was still teaching not so
long ago, but purely and simply "robber trade" (Raubhandel — a term
absolutely scientifically established by the history of economy in our
time). The line which is now so carefully drawn, separating the peace-
ful trader, even though he be unfair, from the plunderer, did not exist
for the naive men of the early Middle Ages. Robber into merchant and
merchant into robber were conversions accomplished with astonishing
facility ; with incomparable realism the Scandinavian sagas, for example,
mention both these professions side by side in connection with one and
the same person without being in the least embarrassed for their hero.
"There was a man of wealth and of illustrious origin, Lodin by name;
he frequently undertook trading journeys, and sometimes engaged in pi-
racy, " runs with truly epic calm a passage of the Heimskringla of Snorre
Sturleson. How simply and naturally this transition from the province
of civil law into that of criminal law was accomplished, a tale from the
same saga will show, a tale which, in view of its striking details, is worth
setting forth at length. The envoys of King Olaf, Karl and Gunnstein,
and their travelling-companion, Thorer "the Dog," arrived in Biarmiya
(the later Zavolochye of Novgorod, along the Northern Dvina) and
there carried on extensive trade with the natives, exchanging fox and
sable furs for goods brought from Scandinavia, and in part for money.
When the trading was ended, and with it the truce which the Northmen
had concluded with the local population for the precise period and
purpose of trade, the travellers immediately began to seek new sources
of lucre. Thorer "the Dog" asked his fellow-travellers whether they
desired to obtain wealth ? Upon their answer, in the affirmative naturally,
Thorer explained to them that wealth was, so to speak, within their
grasp ; they needed but a little boldness. The natives were in the habit
of burying silver articles with their dead, while the idol of their chief
god, Yumala, was all covered with precious ornaments. They had but to
rifle the cemetery and the sanctuary of Yumala, which stood in the cen-
tre of it, and the merchant Northmen would augment their capital con-
siderably. We shall not relate the details — not devoid of drama and
picturesqueness — of this tenth-century nocturnal expropriation. It ended
perfectly successfully, though the retreating Northmen had to wage a
regular battle with the worshippers of Yumala, who, being awakened,
ran to the scene of pillage. Let us note only one detail. On the way
home, Thorer "the Dog," despoiled his fellow-travellers also, so that
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 39
Saint Olaf received from this expedition less return than might have
been expected.
Thus we see that when our old acquaintance Ibn-Dasta writes of
Russian merchants that they "make raids on the Slavs, come upon them
in ships, come ashore and make captive the people, whom they later
despatch to Khazeran and to the Bolgars and there sell, ' ' — he is but de-
scribing realistically what was in his day a quite common affair, and is
not by any means inventing fables. But we also see that the originality
of early mediseval trading must be supplemented by many features, and
that very little remains of the enlightened merchants Storch depicted.
The social setting which was bound to form around "robber trade"
was no more like the setting of present-day capitalistic exchange than
the boyar's votchina of "appanage" Rus was like a present-day rural-
economic enterprise.
The mediseval trader, in setting out for merchandise, "by custom took
with him a sword, ' ' as the Rigans related in their complaint about their
comrade who was injured by the prince of Vitebsk. A treaty of Prince
Mstislav of Smolensk with these same Rigans (1229) contains the stipu-
lation, at first glance very strange, "that the Latin [i.e., the German]
shall not go to war, either with the prince or with Rus, if he himself does
not wish ; likewise the Russian shall not go to war with the Latin [prince] ,
either in Riga or on the Gothic coast [island of Gothland] ; if he himself
wishes, let him go." The aim of the treaty was "to order peace anew"
between Rus and all the "Latin tongue, whoever visits in Rus" [i.e., car-
ries on trade with Rus], because earlier "it was not peaceful to all mer-
chants" trading between Smolensk on the one hand, Riga and Gothland
on the other. The "Latin" and the "Rusin" of the treaty were the Ger-
man and the Russian merchants, men "by old custom" girded with a
sword ; their co-operation in war was valuable to any prince, all the more
so since the wars of the prince were often nothing less than a peculiar
form of "primary accumulation" of trading capital. The merchant
himself also made war very willingly. Nevertheless, however willing
the trader was to fight, a compulsory military obligation might hinder
his trading operations; this is why the Riga-Smolensk treaty stipulates
the consent of the merchant himself as an immediate condition of his
participation in a foreign campaign. On the other hand, once it became
a question of the defence of their own trading community and its in-
terests, the merchants were appealed to first, and there was no doubt of
their willingness; they were a militia ever ready for war. The veche
[town assembly] of Novgorod, having quarrelled with Prince Vsevolod
Mstislavich and foreseeing an inevitable armed conflict, first of all con-
fiscated the belongings of the boyars, the "friends" of the prince, "giv-
ing them to the merchants to equip themselves for war." When Lithua-
40 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
nia unexpectedly fell upon Staraya Russa, the town was defended, not
only by the hastily thronging townspeople but by the landholders of the
neighbourhood, mercenary Scandinavian soldiers, "and whoever was a
merchant, and the gosts." In Novgorod's war with Michael of Tver,
when "by the will of God there was done not a little mischief," there
fell on the field of battle, besides "men of the boyars of Novgorod,"
"many good merchants."
The trader was a military man, merchandise was military booty, and
the place for the safekeeping of merchandise was, naturally, a military
camp. This conception of merchandise is clearly revealed by the ety-
mology of the word tovar [merchandise] ; to the Old Russian chronicler
the primary meaning of tovar was property of any kind whatsoever.
When a villa of Prince Igor Olgovich was attacked, his enemies found
there "many supplies, including much heavy tovar of all kinds, both iron
and copper," so much that it could not be carried off on their carts;
furthermore, that portion of the belongings which was destined for
sale — tovar in the modern sense — was in no way distinguished from the
general mass. The chronicle of Novgorod relates how Prince Mstislav
Mstislavich ("the Bold") attacked Torzhok, seized the followers of
his rival, Svyatoslav, put them "in irons" and seized "the goods of
those whom his hand could reach." Prince Mstislav 's reach was long,
and his rival — or rather, the latter 's father, Vsevolod, since Svyatoslav
himself was a minor — felt his hand. At first he thought of attempting
reprisals, seizing the gosts of Novgorod and their wares. But when
Novgorod, in its turn, replied with the arrest of Svyatoslav and the
remnant of his retinue, Vsevolod made peace (1209) "and Mstislav let go
Svyatoslav and his men, while Vsevolod let go the gosts with their wares. ' '
This utter unwillingness to distinguish consumption value from exchange
value is exceptionally characteristic of the period of natural economy;
but in the connection we are investigating another confusion is still
more characteristic. When St. Vladimir, setting out to war with the
Pechenegs, obtained the consent of the Pecheneg prince to decide the
quarrel by a duel between two warriors, a Russian and a Pecheneg, he
"came to the tovars, sending a herald through the tovars," asking:
Is there not a man who will take upon himself to fight with the Pecheneg ?
Nowhere, perhaps, is politics, as the outward shell of economics, revealed
with such naive simplicity. The economic content of the concept was
brought to light; of the trader girded with a sword the sword alone is
visible, but the ear detects the reason why the sword was needed, betray-
ing a hint of the days when the military camp of a Russian prince was
simply an abode of robbers, a depot for the stolen goods with which
they intended to trade in foreign lands.
This blending of trading depot and barracks persisted for a long
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 41
time after armed force had ceased to be the sole condition of exchange.
In this later stage, though the original acquisition of tovar still de-
pended on violence, its further transfer, at least, was accomplished
in peaceful, legal forms. A Russian historian, Nikitsky, thus describes
the settlement of German merchants in Novgorod : " As places intended
to serve as a safe asylum, both courtyards, the Gothic and the German,
were surrounded by a high fence, the maintenance of which was one of
the most constant cares of the German merchantry. Strong gates main-
tained communication between these foreign citadels and the rest of the
population of the alien and often hostile city. . . . Every precaution
was taken to secure enforcement of the laws designed to maintain order
in the courtyard [Hof]. Special attention was paid to the external
security of the courtyard. Day and night guards defended the court-
yard, and whoever of the knechts neglected his duty paid fifteen kuns,
or his master was held responsible if the neglect was attributable to him.
In addition, in the evening were unleashed large, valuable dogs, which
threatened to tear apart any uninvited arrival. As a storehouse, the
church was the object of special solicitude. Each night two men slept
in it; under no circumstances might they be brothers or companions
or even servants of one and the same master, and he who brought them
into the church in the evening had to lock the door behind them and
deliver the keys to the alderman. Church guard was performed in
rotation and extended similarly to the dwellings, both inside and out-
side the courtyard. Those who kept the latter guard had at meal time
to remind of their impending duty those who immediately followed them.
Besides the internal church guards proper, at the gates of the temple
stood also, throughout the night, a third, who watched lest any of the
natives slip into the vicinity of the church ; fear of them was so great
that it was forbidden, under penalty of scourging, to carry the key so
openly that it might be seen."
It may be thought that all this was simply a matter of tradition, a
survival already devoid of significance, or that such precautionary meas-
ures were necessary only in barbaric Russia, and that the enlightened
West stood much higher in this respect. But let us take the first three
references in the chronicle of Novgorod to the trading journeys of
Novgorodans to that same West. The earliest of them recites the ad-
versity of the elements : ' ' Both themselves were lost, and their wares. ' '
But in the second we meet with social relationships: "In the same year
... a Novgorodan was slaughtered beyond the sea in Denmark." And
in the third these relations take a yet more palpable form: "came a
Swedish prince with a bishop ... to trade ; they had come from beyond
the sea in three boats ; they [the Swedish prince and bishop] were beaten
without any success . . . [we] took their three vessels and slew of them
42 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
[the pirates] some hundred and fifty men. ..." This piratical bishop
once more reminds us of the participation of the mediaeval Church in
mediaeval trade, with all its peculiarities. But usually the representatives
of the Church took to themselves the less active role — not of acquirers,
but of storers of "tovars. " The centre of the German trade citadel in
Novgorod was the Catholic Church of St. Peter. But Orthodox churches,
too, systematically fulfilled the same function. We already know that
around one of them, John the Baptist, was grouped the chief of the
commercial companies of Novgorod, that of the traders in wax. Others
were simply warehouses. In describing Novgorod's colossal fire of 1340,
the chronicler complains of the "evil men," who not only looted what
their brothers had, but slew others over their wares, taking the wares
to themselves, "but even [looted] in the holy churches — which any
Christian, even to the abandoning of his own home, would rescue." In
the Church of the Forty Martyrs "all the wares, whatever they were,
they looted; icons and books they did not allow to be carried out. As
soon as they themselves [the thieves] had run out of the church, every-
thing caught fire, and they slew two guards. And at the Church of the
Holy Virgin in the Market-place a priest was burned ; others say that
they slew him over the merchandise, that the whole church was burned,
both icons and books, but that the fire did not even touch his hair; but
all the merchandise they looted. ' ' For the very widespread prejudice on
the score of the strength and influence of religious feeling in the Middle
Ages this realistic picture of the chronicle's is most instructive. The
practical Germans were right when, not relying on the "sanctity of
the place, ' ' they kept around their church-warehouse good, valuable dogs
and an armed guard.
Unless we keep in mind this combination of war, trade, and robbery,
we shall understand nothing of the organisation of the Old Russian
town. For example, the role of the thousand-man — the commander-in-
chief of the town "warriors" — will remain a complete riddle.
Even without turning to the matter of economic relationships, we can
understand the position of the thousand-man as the person first after
the prince. The Russkaya Pravda, in enumerating Monomakh's col-
laborators in his famous legislation for the relief of debtors, places first
after Vladimir Monomakh himself, "Ratibor, thousand-man of Kiev,
and Prokopy, thousand-man of Belgorod, and Stanislav, thousand-man
of Pereyaslavl. ..." "Izyaslav, " relates the Lavrentyevsky Chronicle,
"sent two men ahead of him to Kiev, to his brother Vladimir and to
Lazar the thousand-man. ..." "Yury of Rostov and the thousand-
man," says the Ipatyevsky Chronicle under 1130, "mounted in silver the
tomb of Feodosy, abbot of Pechersky. ..." We can understand also
how the court of the thousand-man in Novgorod in certain cases super-
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 43
seded the court of the prince. But when we come to differentiate these
cases, and try to fix the competence of the thousand-man, no modern
analogies will help us. We are accustomed to think of a general as an
important person, but should a modern 7 Russian governor-general decide
the lawsuits of business-men, it would seem very strange. Yet the chief
general of Novgorod— the "Ilerzog," as the German merchants called
him— tried just such cases. The thousand-man was the president of the
commercial court, and in this field he was just as independent as was the
lord-archbishop in ecclesiastical cases. "And I, Grand Prince Vsevolod,"
says the charter of John the Baptist, "have established for Saint John
three elders from the men of means, and from the common men a thou-
sand-man, and from the merchants two elders, and they shall judge all
cases pertaining to [the church of St.] John, both of trade and of the
gosts and the trading court; and Miroslav, the posadnik [burgomaster]
shall not meddle with it, nor shall other posadniks, nor shall the boyars
of Novgorod; in what pertains to John they shall not meddle at all."
"And with the prelate's court and with the thousand-man's, w r ith that
it is not for you to meddle . . . ," wrote the Novgorodans in a later
treaty, concluded by the still free city and explaining its "antiquity
and custom" to the Polish king, Casimir IV. Remembering the Rigan
merchant girded with a sword who appeared in the province of Vitebsk
to purchase girls, we shall understand why the head chief of all those
who bore swords was also the head judge of all who traded, on exactly
the same basis on which the commander-in-chief of an army is the highest
judge in a military camp. But if a general was the head chief of all
the merchants, then it is natural that his colonels, the "hundred-men,"
were his vice-chiefs, and that the Old Russian merchants were divided
into "hundreds" just as modern Russian merchants formed guilds.
From a fairly old supplement to the Russkaya Pravda we learn that
these "hundreds" were named after their commanders — "David's hun-
dred," "Ratibor's hundred," "Kondrat's hundred" — like Russian regi-
ments in the time of Emperor Paul, and that they possessed quite definite
territorial significance, for which reason the duty of cleaning the streets
of Novgorod was apportioned by hundreds. It is evident that originally
such a merchant settlement represented something in the nature of the
German Courtyard, the whole population of which was linked by unity
of discipline and command, and that later it was gradually converted
into one of the quarters of the town.
Only in the light of all these facts does the role of the Old Russian
veche become clear to us. The time has long since passed when veche
organization was accounted a specific peculiarity of certain town com-
munities, which were consequently called "veche-towns" — Novgorod,
7 Written in 1910.
44 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
Pskov, and Vyatka. Veche communities began to represent an exception
to the general rule only when that rule had already died out ; they were
the last representatives of an order of things which until the thirteenth
century had been common to all Russia. "Veches assemble in all the
provinces," says Sergey evich. "They constitute the duma of the prov-
ince. . . . Such is the evidence of a contemporary. There is not the
slightest reason to suspect its accuracy. ..." "From about the twelfth
century we have more than fifty private attestations to the veche life of
early towns from every part of the Russia of that time." In order to
bring out in greater relief this institution's independence of the local
conditions of Novgorod, Sergeyevich intentionally omits all data relating
to the veches in the province of Novgorod. And this has by no means
deprived his picture of its vividness ; quite the contrary. ' ' It may even
seem incredible that the accounts given in our old records about the veche
practice of Novgorod and Pskov are scantier than the reports of Kievan
practice. Yet it is so. The Kievan chronicler has left us quite a com-
plete picture of the veche of 1147 ; the Northerners have given us
nothing similar."
The events of 1146-47, described by the chronicle in great detail, and
in places most realistically, are actually one of the most valuable ac-
counts of veche practice that we have. For the present we shall not
touch upon the question of the origin of veche organisation, nor of its
evolution, for it would be very imprudent to think that throughout its
history the veche remained unchanged, as it might seem from reading
the scholar just cited. The Old Russian "republics" began with an
aristocracy of birth but ended with an aristocracy of capital. But in the
interval they passed through a stage which can be called democratic ; in
Kiev this stage falls just in the first half of the twelfth century. In
this period the real master of a Russian town is the people. Let us see
what this signified. Take the Kievan veche of 1146. At it the people
decide the most important of political questions — who shall be prince in
Kiev; before us is a sort of constituent assembly. The representative
of the candidate for the prince's throne — his cousin — is carrying on
negotiations with the veche as an equal with equals. The negotiations
are ended, the parties have made their statements, there remains the
concluding ceremony of the reciprocal oath ; the citizens must swear that
they will bear obedience to the newly elected prince, while the latter 's
representative, and later the prince himself, must swear that they will
honourably fulfil the conditions on which he, the prince, has been elected.
"Svyatoslav [brother of the newly elected prince Igor Olgovich] alighted
from his steed and on that kissed the cross to them in veche assembled ;
and all the Kievans, alighting from their steeds, began to say, 'Thy
brother is prince and thou. ' And on that all the Kievans with their chil-
FOKEIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 45
dren kissed the cross, that they would not betray Igor and Svyatoslav."
Let us consider first the latter of the expressions we have italicised.
What does it mean? Did they bring little children to the veche and
make them kiss the cross? No, those kissing the cross first "alighted
from their steeds"; there could, then, be no minors among them. This
means that the oath to Igor was taken, not only by the heads of families,
"the masters of the house" in modern parlance, but actually by the
whole people, i.e., by all the adult males capable of bearing arms. This
is indisputably evident from the two expressions we have italicised.
The whole scene bore a purely military character ; both negotiating par-
ties sat on horseback and were, of course, armed. Prince Igor was
elected by these "warriors," whose representative, the thousand-man,
was at the same time president of the commercial court ; the town militia
elected the prince. Politically it was precisely this body that represented
the town.
Let us now take the veche of 1147. Only a year had passed, but
during that eventful period a series of changes had taken place in Kiev.
Igor, to whom they had just kissed the cross, was no longer prince ; he
was shut up in the monastery of St. Fedor, while a man popular among
the Kievans, Izyaslav Mstislavich, as a representative of the "stock
of Monomakh," was on the throne. But already discords had arisen
between him and the capital town, and he had gone to war against his
uncle, Yury, without the town militia ; only his druzhina and volunteers
from the burghers had set out with Izyaslav. The war had gone badly ;
the Olgoviches, kindred of the deposed Igor, had taken Yury's part.
Izyaslav has to settle his affairs with Kiev, and he sends envoys to the
veche. They first make sure of the support of the foremost personages in
the town — the metropolitan and the thousand-man, — and then they ap-
peal to the people. When all the Kievans, "from small to great" (we
know now what this means), assemble "to Saint Sophia onto the court-
yard" and "begin as a veche," one of the envoys addresses them in
these words: "Your prince kisses you. I declared to you, he says, that I
intended with my brother Rostislav, and with Vladimir and with Izya-
slav, sons of David [these were relatives of Igor] , to go upon my uncle,
Yury, and I summoned you with me. But you said to me : we cannot
raise hands against Yury, against the stock of Vladimir [Monomakh],
but against the Olgoviches [i.e., against the relatives of Igor] we will
go with thee even with the children. Now I declare to you that Vladi-
mir and Izyaslav, sons of David, and Svyatoslav, son of Vsevolod, to
whom I have done much good, kissed the cross to me ; yet later secretly
they have kissed the cross to Svyatoslav Olgovich [brother of Igor] and
have sent to Yury, and have betrayed me, have wished either to slay me
for Igor's sake or to seize me, but God has preserved me and the honour-
46 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
able cross on which they swore to me. Thus behold, brother Kievans,
now has come what you wished, and the time has come to fulfil your
promise ; go with me upon Chernigov, against the Olgoviches, from small
to great, whoever has a horse, on a horse, and whoever possesses not a
horse, in a boat ; for they want to slay not me alone, but to exterminate
you as well.' And the Kievans said: "We are glad that thee, our
brother, God has saved from great treason ; we will go with thee with the
children as well, if thou wishest." Let us for a moment leave this
fraternisation, in itself highly significant, between the prince and the
veche ; rarely do the two stand out so clearly as two forces quite equal
in rights. But with whom did Izyaslav fraternise? To whom was it
possible to address such a speech : " Go for me, whoever has a horse, on
a horse, and whoever possesses not a horse, in a boat"? Before us again
is the armed town, a people's militia with the rights of a supreme con-
stituent assembly.
Whatever veche we consider, whether it be a south Russian one or
even one of later date, of Novgorod, we find the same general picture.
Rarely, to be sure, will it be so clearly limned as in the case of the
veche which the men of Smolensk organised in 1185 in the very heat
of a campaign against the Polovtsians, when their prince had led them
farther than had been stipulated. But even in Novgorod in 1359 a
political dispute was decided by one of the "ends" 8 of Novgorod in its
own favour only because its inhabitants had had the forethought to go to
the veche in full armour, while their more numerous opponents, not hav-
ing taken this precaution, were "slain and half-captured." The continual
fights at veches, which in the good old times historians naively attributed
to the "turbulence" of the Novgorod "rabble," are best understood if
we think of the veche as a sort of soldiers' meeting — an assembly of men
little accustomed to parliamentary discipline but very much accustomed
to arms and not restrained in the use of that weighty argument. Re-
membering this peculiarity of the Old Russian democracy, we shall
likewise very easily understand why, in disputes with the princes, the
veche alwaj^s proved the stronger, right up to the time when the mili-
tary structure of early Rus changed, and the town militias yielded place
to the peasant-noble army of the grand prince of Moscow. The
veche was the incarnation of that material force on which the prince
directly depended in a struggle with his rivals. The prince's druzhina,
counted usually by hundreds, rarely rising to thousands, was, in a
military sense, something midway between a detachment of body guards
and a general staff. Qualitatively, from the standpoint of military
preparedness, it was the best part of the army, but quantitatively it was
so weak that in Novgorod, for example, the princes never even tried to
s The five "quarters" of Novgorod were called "ends" (kontsy).
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 47
rely on it against the armed veche. Without the town ' ' warriors ' ' it was
not possible to undertake any serious campaign, and their refusal to
obey the prince was in fact the end of his authority; without any
"revolution" in our sense, he ceased to be prince, i.e., military leader.
For, if the veche was an autocratic army, the significance of the exist-
ence of the prince was comprised in the fact that he was commander-in-
chief of this army, an autocrat himself while it obeyed him, but more
powerless than any village elder as soon as it failed him.
The comparison of the prince of Kievo-Novgorodan Rus to a village
elder, "to whom each in the mir is obedient, but all the mir is higher
than he and can replace and punish," is not ours; it belongs to K.
Aksakov. With all its scientific defects, the Slavophil interpretation
of Russian history, due to the peculiar angle of vision from which it
regarded Old Russia, possesses great merit; as long as sixty years ago
it had put an end to that modernisation of the political institutions of
Old Russia which made of the prince a sovereign in the modern sense
of the word. One of the first culprits in this matter of modernisation,
it is true, was a very ancient person — the Kievan chronicler himself,
who in the first quarter of the twelfth century compiled the "initial
digest." The chronicler, a contemporary of Vladimir Monomakh, who
had, in fact, come forward with a broad socio-political programme, and a
pupil of the Byzantine chronographers with their Biblico-Roman con-
ception of state authority, was ready to depict even the first Russian
prince in the form and likeness of the Old Testament rulers and the
emperors of Constantinople. But the Roman empire — the eastern as well
as the western — though, in the opinion of the blessed Augustine, it arose
from a robber band, was in historical times a stable police organisation,
whereas the purpose of the calling of Rurik was acknowledged to be the
establishment of internal "order." Although this purpose is set forth
as though in the very words of those ninth-century Slavs in veche assem-
bled, this literary form must not deceive us. Not a single fact of the
internal arrangements, either of the time of Rurik or of his immediate
successors, was the chronicler able to cite; the little that we do glean
from him can be summed up, as follows: Rurik "hewed a town
on the Volkhov" and repeated the operation in other places, everywhere
"hewing towns" and putting Varangian garrisons in them. Again and
again we come upon Oleg, Igor, and Svyatoslav, but only in the role of
directors of military activity, and only in regard to Olga do we learn
anything of the internal work performed by princely authority ; yet this
internal work came down merely to the establishment of : ' tribute and
dues." Saint Vladimir, it would seem, began the struggle against rob-
bers, and at first unsuccessfully. With his son Yaroslav the Wise
tradition links the appearance of the Russkaya Pravda. But this tra-
48 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
dition found its way into the chronicle very late; in the oldest copies
of the first chronicle of Novgorod it does not appear; and from the
essence of the matter it is quite clear that this collection of judicial
decisions could not be the product of the creative genius of any one
legislator. The most that can be done is to attribute to the "wise"
prince the first of the decisions — it is unknown when and by whom in-
scribed — and even that must be done with all possible reservations, for
the heading, "Justice of Yaroslav Vladimirovich, " cannot be traced
back further than the end of the thirteenth century. Between the death
of Yaroslav and that time two and a half centuries had elapsed; it is
easy to imagine how many legends might arise in that space of time. In the
main, the chronicle gives much the same information concerning Yaroslav
as about his predecessors: he "defeated Bryachislav," "all Belz, "
"went upon the Yatvyags," "went upon Lithuania." At the same time
it is curious that the older the copy of the chronicle, the less we find in it
about Yaroslav, despite the fact that certain items — the laying of the cor-
nerstone of St. Sophia, for example — are repeated twice under different
years. In a word, in order to find a prince-reformer, striving, after a
fashion, to establish order in the land, we have to pass to the first half
of the twelfth century, when, in the person of Vladimir Monomakh, we
find what is in all probability the original of the portrait which the
chronicle has copied in many variants. But Monomakh 's activity,
as we shall see further on, was by no means the norm even for early
Rus in general. It is to be noted that even this consummator of the
Kievan "democratic revolution" of the eleventh and twelfth centuries
valued in himself, first and foremost, the valiant and successful general,
who had accomplished eighty-three major campaigns, not counting minor
ones. Of them he tells in great detail in his celebrated Precept, but
of his domestic activity we find there only the most meagre indications.
In the case of his contemporaries and descendants we do not find even
that much. The most the chronicler tells us is how energetically
this or that prince collected his judicial revenue from fines and fees.
But too much energy along this line gave a prince a bad reputation ;
the population was inclined to regard any increase in the collection of
penal fines as an abuse of power and to compare it with plunder. In-
ternal order the population knew how to maintain itself; when in the
land of Novgorod the court of a veche town had taken final form, the
prince's initiative was removed from it altogether. But even Novgorod
could not dispense with its prince, for "grievous" it was then to the
town to which there remained "no prince at all," as was the case with
Kiev in 1154. But why it was grievous to the town without a prince
is quite definitely explained by the old friend and old enemy of
Novgorod, Vsevolod "the Great" (otherwise known as "Big Nest,"
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 49
1176-1212). "In your land there is a war," he said to the Novgorodans
in 1205, "while your prince, my son Svyatoslav, is little; so behold!
I give you my older son, Constantine. " In the thirteenth century, as
in the ninth, the prince was needed, before all else, to lead the army;
whence one of the gravest charges against a prince was, that he "went
from his regiment before all," as did Vsevolod Mstislavich in 1136.
With especial realism this "military obligation" of the prince is de-
picted in a rather late charter of Novgorod (1307 or 1308) — a treaty
with Grand Prince Michael. In those times, it seems, Novgorod main-
tained, not one but several princes, but all for the same purpose. Of
one of them the charter complains in such expressions as: "they gave
him ... a capital town Pskov, and he ate bread, but when war came,
he departed, deserted the town. ..." Why should they feed a prince
who in war was good for nothing ?
In the fourteenth century, also in Novgorod, a prince answered for
his faults to the veche. Was it always and everywhere so? Were
even Rurik and his immediate successors the "hired guards" of the
Russian land? Was the veche in the democratic form known to us
an immediate offshoot of "primitive democracy," or was democracy,
then as now, the result of a long and stubborn social struggle? The
chronicle's narrative of the calling of the princes makes the decision
of a veche the starting point of all Russian history ; to call the meeting
of the Chuds, Slavs, and Kriviches, which decided to call Rurik and
his brothers, anything but a veche is, of course, impossible. But just
as the characterisation of any prince by the initial chronicler reflected
Vladimir Monomakh, so also the characterisation of the political situation
of the ninth century necessarily reflected the conditions of the twelfth
century. The whole story has undoubtedly been polished, and so much
so that it is almost impossible to get at its historical basis. We know
that they bought off the Northmen, that the first prince whose name
tradition remembered was Rurik, that he came from the north, and
that he "warred everywhere." All the rest may be the imagination
of the compiler, or may equally well be a tale that has strayed; it is
well known that the legend of the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain
is almost word for word the same as the Russian story of the calling
of the princes from beyond the sea. The first documents of Russian
history, such as the treaties entered into with the Greek emperors by
the first two genuinely historical princes, Oleg and Igor, are very con-
vincing; the authenticity of the documents themselves, never disputed,
has long since ceased to be subject to any doubt. It is very remarkable
that neither Oleg nor Igor stands out in them as sole representative of
a definite state, whether called Rus or anything else. Both these
princes are simply called "grand," i.e., senior among the very many
50 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
Russian princes "existing under the hand" of the grand prince; these
other princes are, however, independent, and so much so that they
have their own special diplomatic representatives; they have special
"servitors," whose names are here enumerated. The treaty appears
as the expression of the will of all these princes ("by the wish of our
princes"). But, evidently, this did not suffice to give it legal force
in Russian eyes ; to Oleg 's treaty is added the phrase : ' ' and from all
existing under his [Oleg's] hand in Rus, " while Igor's treaty concludes
the roster of envoys with "and from all the men of the Russian land."
The princes were only the representatives of a certain whole, which
had no intention of alienating all its rights in their favour. The prince
handles current business, but in unusual cases all "Rus," i.e., all the
trading urban population, comes forward ; precisely this meaning of
the word "Rus" is established with perfect clearness by the first of the
judicial decisions inscribed in the Busskaya Pravda, later editions of
which even found it necessary to add this meaning ("burgher") in
parenthesis, as it were, to the term "Rusin," which by the thirteenth
century was not generally intelligible.
The treaties of Oleg and Igor are in themselves sufficient to dispel
any thought of an alleged "great power" founded by the first of these
princes, only to fall apart later into a multitude of petty principalities.
The "grand princedom" of Oleg was a temporary union, in the hands
of a single person, of authority over many independent political units ;
later another such unification of Rus took place under Monomakh and
his son Mstislav. But juridically neither Oleg nor Monomakh ever
abolished this independence ; in all probability it never entered their
heads to do so, any more than it entered the head of a boyar of that
time to deprive of its economic independence even a single one of
the hundreds of peasant homesteads united on his estate. On the con-
trary, the more individual princes there were "existing under the hand
of" a grand prince, the greater was the latter 's importance. Like
the grand prince himself, lesser princes had authority in their capital
towns only in so far as the local population supported them. The
"federal" and "republican" character of the Russian "state" in the
very earliest known stages of its evolution is thus quite definitely
established. In view of the given economic setting we could expect
nothing else. Old Russian towns were by no means markets in the
contemporary sense of the word, economic centres for the surrounding
country. Even Novgorod did not wholly succeed in becoming such a
market ; this most progressive of Old Russian trading centres could
have been taken out of its province without very much affecting the
latter, while its predecessors, the towns of the "great waterway" of
the times of Oleg and Igor, were simply abodes of merchant-robbers,
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 51
far more closely connected with the foreign markets to which these
merchants delivered their wares than they were with the surrounding
country, in relation to which the urban population was a typical parasite.
There was no soil here for a "unitary" state nor, in fact, for any state
in our contemporary sense of the word. Military-trading associations,
at first purely improvised, later ever more and more stable, periodically
produced from their midst leaders who stood out in the eyes of neigh-
bouring peoples in the guise of "princes" of Rus. We do not know
under what conditions the profession of leader in a number of centres
was monopolised by the members of a single family, the descendants
of Igor; but in itself, under the given order of things, inheritance of
the princely profession was just as natural as inheritance of the mer-
chant's, and of the merchant we know from the charter of St. John
the Baptist that he was hereditary. This fact leads to a further con-
clusion ; if the authority of the prince and the profession of trade were
organised on the patriarchal principle of the hereditary estate, it is
natural to suppose that the same principle underlay the whole order
of things in the Old Russian town, and that the Rus, mentioned in
the treaties, was a combination not of individual persons but of families —
something in the nature of the "pechishche" or "dvorishche" which
constituted the basic social unit of rural Rus. A fact supporting the
idea of the patriarchal structure of the earliest urban community is
the existence of those mysterious "town elders" whom we find along
with the boyars in the duma of St. Vladimir (d. 1015). But one ought
not to see in them an elected "board of town elders," as certain
scholars do; the elective principle in the Old Russian town did not
weaken but grew stronger with the course of time. An elective institu-
tion might change its name, but there was no reason for it to die out.
It is another matter if we admit that the "town elders" were the
heads of the pechishches that made up the original town ; then their
gradual extinction, as we shall presently see, is perfectly natural.
CHAPTER IV
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS, TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY (Continued)
Patriarchal life economically was closely connected with natural
economy. The pechishche might persist for centuries or slowly evolve
into a votchina, preserving only its character as an autonomous economic
entity. The town did not offer this fundamental economic condition.
A few pechishches, which had in early times fortified themselves on
this or that happily selected spot and had formed the town aristocracy,
very soon found themselves enveloped by a dense mass of the most
diverse elements, which the old patriarchal organisation could not
assimilate or swallow up, and which with difficulty it held in check for
a time. Some idea of the motley crowd that accumulated in great
centres along the Volga and in the Dnieper basin is given by the story
of an Arab writer about Itil, the Khazar capital. ' ' There are established
seven tribunals: two for the Mohammedans, two for the Khazars, who
judge on the basis of the Mosaic law, two for the Christians living
here, who judge on the basis of the Gospels (!), and one for the
Slavs, the Rus, and other pagans, who judge by the laws of the pagans. ' '
The population of Kiev must have presented similar diversity. The
Germans whom the Polish king, Boleslaw the Fat, brought with him
to the aid of Svyatopolk, on their return to their fatherland related
to their bishop (Dietmar of Merseburg) that Kiev was a very large
town ; it had some four hundred churches and was peopled ' ' by fugitive
slaves and swift Danes," as the Germans called all Scandinavians.
From the Life of Feodosy and the Pechersky Paterik we learn of still
another non-native element in the composition of the population of
Kiev ; there were many Jews, disputes with whom about faith constituted
one of the occupations of Feodosy as noted by his biographer. Reading
such a precious record of manners and customs as the Pechersky Paterik,
we get an extraordinarily vivid and clear presentation of the ethnographic
motley of the Kiev of that time. Within the walls of the Pechersky
Monastery we see, one after another: the Varangian prince, Simon,
who had come from beyond the Baltic Sea; a prince's physician— an
Armenian by birth, competing so unsuccessfully with the native phy-
sicians of Pechersky, who with a monastery cabbage cured the very
strangest diseases, which had nonplussed the Armenian physician ; Greek
artists, who had come in search of work and who to win friendship
52
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 53
related miracles which had befallen them, most flattering to the Pechersky
cloister ; Hungarians from the banks of the Danube, and Polovtsians from
the neighbouring South Russian steppe — in a word whomsoever the
current of trade caught up in its waves. In this motley array of
raiments and persons, of tribes and dialects, there predominated, of
course, men without clan, without tribe. That is, they had clan and
tribe, but they had left them somewhere afar; their natal land had
long since become alien to them, and for the most part they did not
expect to return to it. Family law no longer protected nor hindered
them ; they had but one father-master — trade, and this had brought them
to Kiev. The place of the family organisation, of the pechishche, is
taken by the artificial military organisation, the "hundred," with which
we have already come in contact. Along with the "elders of the town"
appear the ten-men and hundred-men and the thousand-man, and soon
the former are crowded out by the latter.
This process of the decomposition of the old patriarchal units de-
termined the evolution of the veche of Kiev. The democratisation
of the latter did not lie in the fact that the power of the people increased
and the authority of the prince declined. The latter 's rights were
never limited juridically; while he enjoyed the confidence and support
of the "burghers," he might, without hindrance, do whatever he pleased.
From the Kiev o-Pecher sky Paterik we learn that a prince might seize
any man, even from outside his own principality, begin to torture him,
and even torture him to death, seeking after "treasure" to which the
prince had as little right as did the man he tortured. In a military
republic, such as was the old Russian town, inviolability of the person
was quite unknown. When the prince's abuses exceeded the bounds
of his subjects' patience, they simply deposed him and sometimes slew
him, and that ended the matter. In this respect fifteenth-century
Novgorod really differed but little from eleventh-century Kiev. There
had been development, not so much of juridical concepts and political
forms (some changes that may be traced in this field we shall consider
at the end of this chapter) as of the social composition of the masses,
politically incarnate in the autocratic popular assembly. Around the
original kernel of a few merchant clans, the founders of the town,
accumulated a multitude of petty men, common labourers and artisans,
whose memory remains in the names of the Potters' and Carpenters'
"ends" of Novgorod. As early as the days of trouble which followed
on the death of Saint Vladimir (1015), these petty folk were already
playing a certain role; the chronicle relates that Svyatopolk "the
Accursed, ' ' on becoming prince of Kiev, ' ' summoned the men and began
to give to some clothing, to others money, and distributed a great deal."
It was impossible to bribe the merchant aristocracy in this fashion. In
54 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
Novgorod at that time the artisan population was already playing such
a role that Yaroslav (1019-1054), having slain the "eminent men"
who had attacked his Varangian druzhina, was nevertheless able to
assemble a militia of forty thousand, which his antagonists in mockery
called the "carpenters." Kiev at that time was a more conservative
town, and, as we learn from an exceedingly curious description of the
events of the year 1068, the mass of the population was not armed and
organised in military fashion. This was the year of the first great
Polovtsian onslaught on Rus, when the system of defence created by
Yaroslav proved inadequate. The sons of Yaroslav, having gone out
to meet the steppe-dwellers on the River Alta, were completely defeated
and fled with the remnants of their warriors — Izyaslav and Vsevolod to
Kiev, and Svyatoslav to Chernigov. The remnant of the Kievan militia,
having summoned a veche on the market-place, appealed thus to Izyaslav :
1 ' The Polovtsians have scattered over the land ; let the prince give arms
and horses — we shall yet fight with them. ' ' From the compressed account
of the chronicler (who perhaps had not quite accurately conceived the
picture — we must remember that he had a twelfth-century point of
view) it is immediately obvious that the speakers were demanding arms
and horses for themselves. But how could men who had lost their horses
in battle flee from the Polovtsians, and why was it necessary for
merchants, who themselves always went armed, to appeal to the prince's
arsenal? The demand obviously was for the creation of a new army
from those elements of the population which had not previously partici-
pated in campaigns and were not armed. Izyaslav had grounds for not
trusting them, and he did not comply with their demands. For this he
paid with his throne. The Kievans freed his rival, Vseslav of Polotsk,
from captivity and pronounced him their prince, while Izyaslav and
his druzhina had to flee to Poland. Unfortunately, the chronicle imparts
nothing of the order of things established in Kiev after this revolution,
the first in Russian history. It is evident only that in a military respect
the new regime was not strong ; the strata of the population accustomed
to bear arms either stood aside or left with Izyaslav; when the latter
returned seven months later with Polish auxiliaries, he regained authority
without a battle. Deserted by their new prince, who fled to Polotsk,
the Kievans became truly desperate, threatening to burn their town
and abandon the site, thus inviting the immediate intervention of
two other sons of Yaroslav, Svyatoslav and Vsevolod. The town was
thereby saved from destruction, but none the less it had to experience
a most savage repression; seventy men were executed, others blinded
or "destroyed" in some other way, probably sold into slavery. It is
noteworthy that the chronicler does not call those executed "eminent
men," like those whom Yaroslav slaughtered in 1015, but simply "chil-
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 55
dren" or "men." No less significant is a police measure taken by
Izyaslav in anticipation of similar events in the future; he "drove out
trading to the hill." The hill was the very oldest part of Kiev, where
the town aristocracy lived. Up there, in the year 1068, stood the
homestead of the thousand-man Kosnyachek, whom at the time of the
uprising the crowd had sought, and not with good intentions. The
transfer of trading to the aristocratic part of the town was bound to
forestall the formation of a democratic meeting in the market; far
from their homes and surrounded by the dependable element, the popu-
lace was less dangerous and easier to cope with.
But the triumph of the prince's authority could not prevent the de-
composition of the old, patriarchal organisation. Indeed, the prince's
authority, which had established its rights with the aid of an alien
military force, relied on the latter more than on the old town aristocracy.
Izyaslav later, in all his misfortunes (he was expelled from Kiev again
in 1073, this time by his own brothers, Svyatoslav and Vsevolod), sought
aid in Poland (unsuccessfully this time), from the Western emperor, and
even from the pope; but there is no evidence that he had at home
anything in the nature of his own party, or that he tried to create
one. The decline of family law is vividly expressed, moreover, in
judicial usage. To the administration of the sons of Yaroslav — it is
unknown whether before or after the revolution of 1068, but in any
case before the second expulsion of Izyaslav from Kiev — are credited
a number of judicial decisions which put an end to blood vengeance,
and, what is still more indicative, established individual responsibility
for murder in place of the former family responsibility. "If an
ognishchan be killed in a quarrel," says the first of these decisions,
"the murderer shall pay 80 grivnas, while his people shall not pay."
Only for robbery did the whole clan union answer as of old. In addi-
tion, one of the decisions established that an ognishchan might be slain
with absolute impunity, "like a dog," if caught in the act of stealing.
In such case the ognishchan group did not dare to avenge its fellow-mem-
ber, so w r eak had the material strength of the family union become. The
new custom was undoubtedly directed against the clan aristocracy; yet
it compels us to suppose that, having gained a political victory over
the lower social groups, the prince afterward made certain social con-
cessions to these same groups, making peace with them at the expense
of the heads of their social enemies. The scanty data in the chronicle
and other records do not permit a complete restoration of the picture
of the socio-economic process that was decomposing the old society.
Only here and there do we succeed in seeing, now this, now that
corner of it. The chronicle relates that the third of Yaroslav 's sons,
Vsevolod, who survived his two older brothers, in old age "began to
56 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
love the ideas of the young and with them held counsel," from which,
of course, it does not follow that he surrounded himself with immature
youth. The chronicler immediately explains: the "youth" had crowded
out from Vsevolod his "first druzhina," the high born counsellors who
were wont to surround the prince. The author (in this case hardly
the "initial chronicler," but rather one of his sources; he would not
have related evil of Vsevolod), sympathising with those displaced, ex-
plains the people's dissatisfaction with the last of Yaroslav's sons
precisely on the ground of this change. But the grievance of the people,
of course, was not that the town aristocracy had lost power ; the essence
of the trouble lay in the economic conditions, in that strengthening of
commercial and money-lending capital then taking place. A curious
fact in this connection comes to us, not from the chronicle but from
the Pechersky Paterik, in a tale about one of the miracles of St. Prokhor
" Notch- weed. " If we purge this story of the fabulous details about
the sweet bread from notch-weed and the ashes by a blessing from
Heaven converted into salt, there remains the historical fact that the
Pechersky Monastery supplied the poorest classes of the Kievan popula-
tion with meal (apparently not without adulteration) and salt, whereby
it acquired the riches that excited the envy of Prince Svyatopolk, son
of Izyaslav, who replaced Vsevolod on the throne of Kiev. Taking
advantage of this envy, competitors of the monastery, the traders in
salt (obtained from present-day Galicia), who apparently had been
quite crowded out of the market by the monastery, applied to the prince
for the prohibition of monasterial trade. The monk-author insinuates
that they did this for the purpose of establishing monopoly prices on
salt, since relations with Galicia had at that time been made difficult
by a war, and salt was therefore dear. But, besides this, the
protest of petty commercial capital against the incipient large-scale
capital of the monasteries is only too clear. Svyatopolk, himself a very
typical representative of "primary accumulation," took the part of
the petty traders, not disinterestedly but for the quite definite purpose
of compelling the monastery to divide the profits with him. Apparently
it did so ; the upshot of the whole story was that the prince ' ' began to
have great love for the cloisters of the Holy Virgin," and the cloisters
continued to "distribute" salt freely to the people.
That capital was at work, not only in the town but also in a wide
area around it, we can judge from the development of peonage (zakup-
nichestvo) 1 among the rural population. Material was accumulating
for a new explosion, this time more social than political. The signal
was given by the death of Svyatopolk, the friend of the money-lenders,
i The zakup was a peasant bound by indebtedness to work another's land [za
kupu = in return for a loan]. Cf. infra, p. 58.
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 57
of the grain and salt speculators. The details of this second Kievan
revolution (1113) are just as obscure as those of the first. The rebellious
lower groups displayed no more consciousness or organisation than be-
fore. They were at first incited against foreign representatives of capital,
"going upon the Jews and plundering." But from the outset the policy
of provocation was not wholly successful ; the homestead of the thousand-
man suffered along with the Jews ; as in 1068, in the eyes of the people
the thousand-man was a representative of the town aristocracy. Shrewd
men among the latter foresaw that if they allowed the movement to
spread the disturbance would not be confined either to the "Jews" or
to the thousand-man and the hundred-men, but would extend to the
boyars, to the monasteries, and to the widow of the money-lender prince,
try as she might to buy off the Kievan democracy by liberal distribution
of alms from the estate of the deceased Svyatopolk. But now there was
no Polish army at hand, and the masses had long since become accus-
tomed to arms ; as early as 1093 a Kievan regiment had held a veche
during a campaign and had compelled the princes and their aristocratic
marshals to give battle against their wish. It was necessary to effect a
compromise with the urban, and in part with the rural, poorer classes.
It had long been felt that the rural element was also beginning to play
a political role ; in this same year 1093 the leaders of Kievan society
referred to the fact in advising Svyatopolk against the campaign, re-
marking that "the land had been impoverished by wars and fines."
How deeply contemporaries were impressed by the anxiety ruling circles
felt about the peasants is attested by the curious fact that Monomakh 's
well-known remarks about the peasant's arable and the peasant's horse, 2
which every text-book quotes, were reported twice by the compiler of the
initial digest, under 1103 and under 1111, so pleased was he with this
theme. It was time to be anxious about the peasants, and in more
than words. There was need of a mediator between the restless lower
classes and the terrified upper classes of Kievan society, and the most
available man was Vladimir Monomakh, then prince of Pereyaslavl. He
was peculiarly fitted for the role. The upper social classes had long
felt confidence in him ; in 1093 he had made common cause with the
leaders of the Kievan militia, insisting on cautious tactics in opposition
to the opinion of the mass of the Kievan "warriors," who demanded
decisive action. At the same time he knew how to touch the democratic
chord of the Kievans, whom he had called in as mediators in disputes
2 Svyatopolk had urged that spring was not the time to fight the Polovtsians,
for the peasants and their ploughing would be ruined. Vladimir Monomakh replied:
"I am amazed that you are so considerate of the plough horses and do not consider
this: the peasant begins to plough, the Polovtsian comes, strikes the peasant with
an arrow, takes his horse, comes to his village, carries off his wife and children and
all his property. Do you consider his horse and not consider him himself?"
58 HISTORY OF EUSSIA
between the princes themselves; when he and Svyatopolk had proposed
to decide a quarrel "before the townsmen," Oleg Svyatoslavich had
replied roughly, calling the Kievans " smerds," 3 thus playing into the
hands of Monomakh's diplomacy. Of no little service to him also were
his good relations with the Church, the significance of which as an
economic force we have already seen in the case of the Pechersky Mon-
astery. As is quite evident from the chronicle 's narrative, the initiative
in inviting Monomakh came from above. But Monomakh did not leave
Pereyaslavl at once. The chronicler gives this delay and the resultant
negotiations a moral-religious tone; Monomakh, it is said, did not come
to Kiev at once because he was mourning for Svyatopolk but finally
consented in view of evidence that, if he delayed longer, the Kievans
would plunder the monasteries. The spicy propinquity of the monas-
teries to the Jewish money-lenders is, of course, significant ; here historical
verity has laughed up its sleeve at the pious lucubrations of the chron-
icler. But Monomakh probably knew enough about the practical side
of monasteries to understand their dangerous position at such a moment
without special evidence from any one. And the outcome of the negotia-
tions — the celebrated "legislation of Monomakh" — compels us to sup-
pose that the discussions between Monomakh and the representatives
of the ruling circles of Kievan society did not centre on the monasteries.
The "statute" of Vladimir Monomakh has come down to us in a com-
paratively very late edition ; the oldest manuscript of the Russkaya
Pravda in which we find this "statute" is referred to the end of the
thirteenth century, i.e., at least 150 years later than the events of 1113.
In this oldest manuscript the "statute" is very brief; it comprises but
a few lines. In manuscripts of a later time it spreads to such propor-
tions that it becomes in itself a sort of supplementary Russkaya Pravda;
indeed, it is sometimes called "Monomakh's Pravda." It is not, how-
ever, difficult to notice that of the articles ' ' on the zakup, ' ' for example,
only the first constitutes anything in the way of a principle ; it offers
the zakup the right of suit against his master. "If a zakup flies to the
judges to complain of injury from his master, then for that he shall
not be returned into slavery [as for any other flight], and his case must
be examined." The full significance of this innovation we shall under-
stand if we remember that in the sixteenth century the master-creditor
was still the sole judge of his debtor: "whoever keeps a man in money,"
says a charter of Grand Prince Vasily III (1505-1533) to the men of
Smolensk, "he himself shall judge that man and my [officers] shall not
meddle in that." The further articles relating to zakups discuss various
concrete cases of litigation between a peasant and his master. But, judg-
ing from the method by which law was created in ancient Rus — by way of
3 The old and contemptuous word for peasants; cf. infra, p. 60.
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 59
generalisation from individual decisions, case by case, — it is hardly-
probable that all these concrete examples had been foreseen in advance
by the legislator, Monomakh, and by his ' ' druzhina, ' ' the thousand-men
of the most important towns along the Dnieper, assembled around him at
Berestov, near Kiev. Most probably they represent the application of a
fundamental principle to individual cases, i.e., a further development of
Monomakh 's legislation. The later editor, systematising in a perfectly
correct juridical manner all the articles about zakups, brought them into
the one chapter that we now read in the later copies of the Russkaya
Pravda. In all probability, however, the most accurate historically
is the oldest copy, with its brief but comprehensive decisions.
It is, however, time to quote the "statute" in extenso. "On the death
of Svyatopolk, Vladimir [Monomakh] convoked at Berestov his druzhina
— the thousand-men Ratibor of Kiev, Prokopy of Belgorod, Stanislav
of Pereyaslavl, Nazhir, Miroslav, Ivanka Chudinovich, the boyar Olegov
[Prince Oleg Svyatoslavich of Chernigov] ; and at the meeting they
decreed : whoever took money on condition of paying interest on two a
third [i.e., 50% per annum], from him such interest shall be taken for
only two years, and after that the principal only shall be sought, and
whoever takes such interest for three years, he shall not seek the principal.
"Whoever takes 10 kuns interest from the grivna by the year [i.e., 20%],
such interest shall be admitted in case of a long-term loan." Then, in
the majority of copies, come two decisions regulating concrete cases of
indebtedness, interesting because they explain who was the object of
usurious money-lending; both treat of the merchant trading on another's
capital. Especially curious is the first of them. In Old Russian law,
as in archaic law generally, a debtor answered for non-punctual payment
of a debt, not only with his property but with his person. Under nat-
ural economy, as we saw, a man was exchange value par excellence and
consequently the most reliable security imaginable. The transition to
more modern forms of credit everywhere began, as a rule, with the
abolition of this barbarous method of payment. In ancient Rus this
transition is marked by Monomakh 's legislation or by the decrees which
developed immediately from it. Sale into slavery for debt was not
abolished, but it remained, so to speak, only in the law of criminal re-
covery. Now they did not sell every debtor into slavery, but only such
as drank or gambled away, or by gross negligence lost, the merchandise
taken on credit. The "unfortunate" bankrupt, the sufferer from fire or
shipwreck, did not answer for the debt with his person "because this
misfortune is from God, and he is not guilty in it." As the reader sees,
it is not without reason that Monomakh 's "statute" may be compared
with Solon's debt legislation, which "shook off" indenture for debt
from the shoulders of the Athenian debtor of the sixth century B.C.
60 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
Though not going so far, the "statute" developed the law in the same
direction, developing it, moreover, in a revolutionary way, reversing
agreements which even yesterday had been quite legal. Thus the success
of the Kievan masses, who from now on hold complete sway on the
political stage, was consolidated juridically. The veches of 1146-1147,
which we have already studied, give a picture of "popular rule" more
complete than anything in the sources for Novgorodan history.
But it was not only juridically that indenture for debt fell from the
shoulders of the debtor more completely in Athens of the sixth century
B.C. than in twelfth-century Kiev; geographically, too, if it may be so
expressed, the reform of Solon was the broader — not only was it impos-
sible to sell a man into slavery for debt, but "debt sums" could not be
taken from land. In Kievan Rus of the twelfth century the position of
the rural debtor was only somewhat lightened ; he remained indentured
all the same. The chronicle does not make at all clear the participation
of the rural population in the events of the year 1113. That it mentions
the peasants and peons serves as proof that they were not altogether
outside the political arena. But did the peasant have the same rights
as a member of the town democracy, as the merchant? This is very
doubtful, and doubtful not only because it was naturally very difficult
for the peasantry to take an active part in the town veche ; that the
peasant could not go to town to a meeting every day is too elementary
an explanation to be satisfactory, if only because, as we know, there were
analogous conditions both in ancient Greece and in mediaeval Italy.
Yet nowhere do we find such a sharp line dividing the townsman from
the peasant, "town law" from "country law," as in ancient Rus.
The most common name for the masses of the rural population in Old
Russian records is "smerds. " The chronicle quite definitely regards
the peasants as a distinct group of the population, standing lower even
than the very lowest category of townsmen. After gaining the victory
over Svyatopolk the Accursed, Yaroslav the Wise liberally rewarded his
forty thousand militia, already mentioned; he gave "to the elders 10
grivnas each, and to the smerds a grivna each, and to the Novgorodans
10 each to all." It is not important to us precisely how much Yaroslav
gave to any one ; it is important that the chronicler rated each townsman,
without distinction, ten times higher than the rustic, although in Yaro-
slav 's militia their functions were quite identical. Under such condi-
tions, it is evident that, in the eyes of an Old Russian, country origin by
no means served as a mark of respect ; when another chronicler, not a
northerner from Novgorod but a southerner from Galicia, wanted to
sting two of his prince's boyars, he called them "lawless men of smerds'
stock." There is nothing remarkable in the fact that on the lips of the
princes themselves "smerd" was pure abuse, especially obnoxious to
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 61
the townsmen, apparently, as may be concluded from the negotiations
we have cited above between Oleg and Monomakh. When the latter
wanted to show commiseration for a poor peasant, he found for him no
more flattering epithet than ''lean one." But this is everyday, common
parlance, so to speak. The chronicle 's report of the congress of Vitichev
(1100) gives us an example of the official use of the word. Meeting at
Uvetichy, the princes address to Volodar and Vasilka the demand, among
others: "and deliver our bondsmen and smerds. " Thus, in diplomatic
negotiations the peasant proves to be something in the nature of a
bondsman of the prince. The special dependence of the peasants on the
prince is alluded to, not only in this passage but in a whole series of
chronicle texts. When one of Svyatoslav's voevodas [governors] found
two "sorcerers" at Beloozero, before beginning to deal with them, he
asked: "Whose smerds are they?" and, on learning that they were his
prince's, demanded of the population their surrender. Of a Kievan
or a Novgorodan, of a free man, it was not possible to ask whose he was,
while of the peasant it was asked. With Kievans or Novgorodans a
prince could not deal at will, while with peasants he could. In 1229
Prince Michael Vsevolodovich came to Novgorod from Chernigov "and
kissed the cross to all the freedom of Novgorod ' ' ; such was his relation
to the townsmen, while to the smerds he himself "gave freedom for five
years not to pay tribute." In the one case it was the liberty of the
veche, in the other, the liberty of the prince. And if there was any
limit to the latter, it was certainly not set by the liberty of the peasants,
but by the veche, which, in Novgorod at least, accounted itself the
supreme arbiter over the rural population, too. When the Novgorodans
drove out their prince Vsevolod (1136), they listed among his trans-
gressions: "does not watch over the smerd." Finally, the Russkaya
Pravda names a special punishment (a fine of three grivnas) "if any one
torments a smerd without the prince 's word ' ' ; further on it speaks
about the "tormenting" (evidently, torture) of an ognishchan — but here
nothing is said about the prince's word. In other words, the prince had
the right to hand over a peasant to torture whenever it pleased him.
This closer dependence of the peasants on the prince's authority long
ago attracted the attention of scholars, and they have depicted the
smerd, now as the prince's serf, now as a "state peasant." Such
modernisation of social relationships was a logical consequence of mod-
ernisation of the prince's authority; depicting the Old Russian prince
as a sovereign, it was difficult to formulate the relationship of the peas-
ants to him in any other way. On the other hand, the smerd of the
Russkaya Pravda has all the features of a juridically free man ; the
concept of a "state peasant" evidently does not fit in with the setting
of the twelfth century; where there was no state, it is hard to find
62 HISTORY OF EUSSIA
"state property," live or dead. Hence a quite natural reaction and
attempts to prove that the relationship of the peasant to the prince
was the relationship of a "subject," nothing more. Literally this char-
acterisation is quite correct; the smerd was precisely a "subject" [pod
danyi] , but in the oldest meaning of this word, which, as we saw in
Chapter I, meant a man under tribute [pod danyu], one who is obliged
to pay tribute. The smerd is a "tributary"; this is his basic charac-
teristic. When the Yugrians wanted to get around the Novgorodans, to
deceive them they said to them: "And do not ruin your smerds and
your tributes" — ruin the peasants, and there will be nobody to take
tribute from. This basic trait of the smerd at once discloses both the
origin of the class and its enigmatic relation to the prince's authority.
"We know that in early Bus tribute evolved historically out of regu-
larised plunder, if we may so express it ; at first they took as much as
they wished and were able, later they replaced plunder by a regular
annual levy, tribute. At a later period tribute was paid to the town ;
of the men of Pechora, as early as 1096, the chronicle says that they
are "people who give tribute to Novgorod." But from the same
chronicle's narrative about Igor we know that earlier each head of an
armed band collected tribute in proportion to the physical possibility
of doing so ; moreover, at this earlier time, the towns themselves paid
tribute to such chieftains. Novgorod, for example, until the death of
St. Vladimir (and perhaps even longer) apparently paid 300 grivnas
to the "kunning" of Kiev "for the sake of peace." One very ancient
passage from one of the later chronicle digests links the fixing of tribute
with the building of towns: "This same Oleg, " it says, "began to build
towns and fixed tribute through all the Eussian land." Before us is
a very lively picture of the building of fortified points, whence the
newcomers periodically despoil the local population, and whither they
slip back with their booty. From time to time the prince himself "with
all Eus" appears in these fortresses, reckoning up the total of the
"tovar" acquired in the course of the year. Two or three centuries
passed. The town, from an abode of merchant robbers, succeeded in
converting itself into a great centre of population, with four hundred
churches and eight markets, like Kiev. It itself no longer paid tribute
to the prince, but rural Eus paid as of old. "To go for tribute" is, as
of old, a specially princely profession, like commanding the militia. On
occupying another's province, the prince's first business was to send
through it his takers of tribute, who did not hesitate because the popula-
tion had already paid tribute to the former prince. One passage from
the chronicle gives occasion to suppose that the prince not only collected
tribute but also disposed of it, even at Novgorod. The Ipatyevsky Chron-
icle itself, under the date of 1149, thus reports the conditions of the
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 63
truce between Yury Dolgoruky, son of Monomakh, and his nephew
Izyaslav. "Izyaslav ceded Kiev to Yury, while Yury returned to
Izyaslav all the tributes of Novgorod." But we already know that to
"rule" meant to "take tribute"; originally political dependence was
expressed merely by the payment of tribute. Conversely, in early Rus,
down to the close of the Muscovite period, whoever took imposts from
people "governed" them in general. The status of the peasant as a
tributary made him specially a prince's man.
The prince, in the town a hired guard, was master-votchinnik in the
country. Kievan Rus had to resolve this political contradiction. In the
question, which of the two laws, that of town or that of country, should
take precedence in further development, was involved the fate of the
Old Russian "republics." In the final reckoning, as we know, supremacy
remained with the country. Writers have long since noted the connec-
tion between this issue and economic conditions. Prof. Klyuchevsky
establishes in his Lectures two facts, closely interrelated: the decline
in the weight of the monetary unit, the grivna, which is, in his opinion,
explained "by the gradual diminution of the flow of silver into Rus
in consequence of the decline of foreign trade"; and embarrassment
of the foreign trade transfers of Rus "by the triumphant nomads." But
the author of the Lectures was evidently somewhat confused by the
further question involved : why did these nomads, over whom the
princes had triumphed in the tenth and eleventh centuries, themselves
begin to triumph in the twelfth? The decline of external power must
in its turn be explained by internal causes, and our author names two :
"the juridical and economic abasement of the lower classes" on the
one hand, and the "princes' feuds" on the other. But, as we have seen,
the position of the lower classes was not worsened but bettered in the
twelfth century as compared with the eleventh; while the struggles of
Vladimir and Yaropolk, the sons of Syvatoslav, in 977-980, or of
Yaroslav, son of Vladimir, with his brothers in 1016-1026 deserve the
name of ' ' princes ' feuds, ' ' of course, not a bit less than do the quarrels
of Izyaslav with the Olgoviches or with Yury Dolgoruky in the middle
of the twelfth century. With all due respect to Prof. Klyuchevsky 's
method, we must seek another explanation for the economic impoverish-
ment of Kievan Rus, the fact of which he justly perceived. This explana-
tion takes us back to the starting point of the present outline — to
"robber trade," on which the prosperity of the Russian town of the
eighth to the tenth centuries was founded. Extra-economic appropria-
tion had its limits. Predatory exploitation of a country which subsisted
by natural economy could be continued only as long as the exploiter
could find fresh, untouched fields for operation. The "feuds" of the
princes were not casual by-products of pugnacious temperaments; "cap-
64 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
tives" were the basis of trade. But whence was this chief article of
exchange to be taken when half of the country was so closely bound
with great urban centres which protected their lands from injury, while
the other half had already been so thoroughly exploited that "neither
domestics nor cattle" remained? The last "wild" tribe, which neither
Vladimir nor Yaroslav had succeeded in drawing into the compass of
their predatory endeavours, was that of the Vyatiches, but Monomakh
made an end of them. Just as the ancient Spartan ruler had in his
time sought "unapportioned lands," so the Russian princes of the
twelfth century sought lands still unplundered — but sought in vain.
Monomakh sent his sons and his voevodas [generals] against Dorostol
on the Danube, against the Bolgars of the Volga, against the Lechs [i.e.,
the Poles], and against the Chudes, whence they "returned with many a
captive." But the organisational resources of the Old Russian prince
were too weak to support exploitation over such a vast territory; on
the other hand, both the Bolgars of the Volga and the Lechs were
themselves already sufficiently organised to offer resistance and on
occasion to pay in the same coin. The fate of Kievan Rus presents a
certain analogy to the fate of imperial Rome ; both lived on what they
found at hand, and when that was consumed, and they were compelled
to seek out resources of their own, they had to be satisfied with very
elementary forms of economic culture and consequently of every other
phase of culture. Moreover, as in the Roman Empire, the "decline"
was more apparent than real, for in the thirteenth century the Rus of
Suzdal, on the one hand, and the Rus of Novgorod, on the other hand,
passed over to methods of production and exchange which, in compari-
son with the preceding period, represented an undoubted economic
advance.
No one has sketched a more vivid picture of the desolation of Kievan
Rus than has Prof. Klyuchevsky. The facts presented by him relate
in large part to the second half of the twelfth century, in part to the
beginning of the thirteenth. But one of the phenomena noted by this
author — the decline of the princes' interest in the Kievan provinces —
can be traced somewhat further back, to the first half of the twelfth
century, in fact. As early as 1142 there took place between the
Olgoviches, the oldest of whom, Vsevolod, then occupied Kiev, a very
curious dispute about the provinces, during which the younger brothers
expressed great readiness to exchange the Kievan provinces (bad ones,
it is true) given them by their older brother for those same Vyatiches
whom only a quarter of a century before Vladimir Monomakh had finally
mastered. This interest in the Vyatiches is, in its turn, very curious
if we remember theirs was the corner of the Russian land most remote
and least touched by robber exploitation. Vsevolod 's younger brothers
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 65
wanted to get the Vyatiches, not, of course, in order to plunder them,
for this could be most conveniently done from a neighbouring province.
It is evident that the former conception of a prince as first of all a
conqueror, a leader of the hunt for "captives," and, naturally, the
defender of his own lands against foreign huntsmen of the same order,
is yielding place to another conception. This changed attitude of the
prince toward his rights and duties has for some time received atten-
tion from historians. Even Solovyev wrote of the distinction in this
regard between the north-eastern princes of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries and their southern fathers and grandfathers. Inasmuch as the
princes seemed to him to be the sole motive force of ancient Rus, in
the political field at least, for him it became in the main a matter of
changed relationships between the princes themselves. The former fra-
ternal relations between them are replaced by relations of subjection ;
the "fatal word subject in place of prince" was first pronounced by
Andrew Bogolyubsky. The chronicle's words about Bogolyubsky 's
despotism he likewise interpreted in precisely this same sense. But it
is not likely that the conduct of the "despot" of Suzdal in relation to
his Kievan cousins differed much for the worse from the mode of action
of Monomakh's son Mstislav, for example, who subjected his kinsmen
of Polotsk to administrative exile. The princes liked to talk of brother-
hood, but their actual relations by no means rested on such sentimen-
talities; a strong "brother" always dealt as he pleased with a weak
one, stopping neither at murder nor at blinding. Solovyev 's successors
have quite rightly occupied themselves with another aspect of the
"despotism" of Prince Andrew Bogolyubsky. "Prince Andrew was a
stern and wilful master, who always acted in his own way, and not ac-
cording to antiquity and custom, ' ' says Prof. Klyuchevsky ; 4 " . . . wish-
ing to rule without sharing, Andrew hounded his brothers and nephews
and his father's 'foremost men,' i.e., his father's great boyars. " This
author thinks that " Bogolyubsky 's political concepts and governmental
practices" had in significant degree been developed by the social sur-
roundings in which he had grown up and under which he lived. "This
environment was the dependent town, Vladimir, where Andrew passed
the major part of his life." Below we shall see that the political customs
of Vladimir, regardless of the fact that it was a new town and perhaps
owing precisely to this fact, in no way differed from the corresponding
customs of Kiev or even of Novgorod, so that Andrew could not have
derived any new governmental practices from this environment. But
if again we must reject the explanation that Prof. Klyuchevsky gives
to the fact, the fact itself he has again rightly divined ; the originality
of the "new" princes lies in their "domestic policy," in their methods
4 Cf. V. 0. Klyuchevsky, op. cit., Vol. I, Chap. XIV.
66 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
of administering their lands, and not in their "foreign policy," not in
their relations to princes of other, neighbouring lands.
The murder of Prince Andrew is usually represented as a case of
court intrigue. Its proximate causes are sketched in a vein very reminis-
cent of the end of Emperor Paul (1796-1801). Andrew had by his
cruelties stirred up against him his own domestics, his household;
the execution of one of his intimates, Kuchkovich, seemed the drop
that overfilled the cup ; Kuchkovich 's comrades and relatives took venge-
ance for his death. Such is the traditional, text-book treatment of the
affair. Precisely such a concept of the event the chronicler undoubtedly
wished to inspire in his readers, for he himself was a great admirer
of Bogolyubsky, the liberal builder of churches and the inflexible pro-
tector of Orthodoxy against all heresies. But the chronicler's literary
skill — or, more accurately, that of the author of the "narrative" im-
ported into the chronicle — was scarcely adequate to depict this event
in full and at the same time to avoid contradictions. In spite of himself,
while relating the facts in their chronological sequence, he gives a number
of details that are quite incompatible with his general picture. First
of all, we learn that the conspiracy extended far beyond the limits of
the prince's court; Andrew's murderers had partisans and accomplices
even among the "druzhina of Vladimir." This was by no means Prince
Andrew's personal druzhina; later it appears more than once in the
chronicle as something connected with the town, and not with this or
that prince. To judge by the numbers (1,500 men) and by the military
significance ascribed to this druzhina by the chronicle (without it the
town is represented as defenseless), the chronicle is giving the name
"druzhina" to the town militia of Vladimir, the Vladimir "thousand."
Not without reason does the chronicler call this force now "the men
of Vladimir," now "the druzhina of Vladimir," without distinguishing
between these concepts. Thus, to these men of Vladimir the conspirators
appeal immediately after the murder, striving to convince the townsmen
that they were defending not only their own but the townsmen's inter-
ests, too. The chronicler puts into the mouths of the men of Vladimir
the very loyal answer: "you are unnecessary to us." But subsequently
he is compelled to state a number of facts which cannot be reconciled
with this loyalty. "The townsmen of Bogolyubov [the place where the
prince was slain] looted the prince's house . . . gold and silver, gar-
ments and precious stuffs, — property to which there was no limit ; and
much evil was done throughout the provinces ; they looted the houses
of [his officials], and slew them and their children and [officers], and
plundered the houses of the latter, not knowing that it is written : where
there is law, there is also much injury. Even the peasants from the
hamlets came to pilfer. The same thing happened in Vladimir ; they
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 67
did not cease to loot ' ' until the clergy went through the town ' ' with the
Holy Virgin."
Thus we see that the event of June 28, 1174, bears little resemblance
to what happened in St. Petersburg on March 11, 1801. The latter was
an officers' conspiracy, finding support, it is true, in the public opinion
of the whole nobility, but awakening no concern in the masses of the
population, either in St. Petersburg itself or in Russia at large. In the
former we are dealing with an actual popular revolution, just like the
events of 1068 and 1113 at Kiev. Not without reason did the chronicler
deem it necessary immediately after his tale of the town riot to remind
his readers of non-resistance to the prince's authority; he well knew
against whom the riot was directed. The murder of the prince, the
supreme head of the administration, was but the signal for the over-
throw of the administration in general; and there is every reason to
think that Prince Andrew's menials were right when they appealed
to the sympathy of the men of Vladimir. The chronicler does not deny
the factual bases for the popular movement; there had been many
"injuries," and the prince's sword had been misused enough, not in for-
eign wars, as happened in olden time, but in domestic administration.
Thus Andrew's despotism had found expression other than the expulsion
of the "foremost boyars," which might even have pleased the common
people. The burden of his despotism had fallen upon the masses.
Bogolyubsky 's administration was one of the first systematic attempts
to exploit these masses in a new way — not by means of bold inroads
from without, but by way of the slow but sure draining of the land
"by fines and fees." In its results the new method was no better than
the old; the men of Vladimir, who had become acquainted with it
through a twofold experience, first under Andrew, then under his kins-
men, the sons of Rostislav, accurately defined the latters' methods when
they said that they dealt with their principality "just as with a foreign
land." On no account did the men of Vladimir wish to recognise this
new order of things. Two years after the deposition of Andrew a new
revolution burst out in Vladimir, the sons of Rostislav were overthrown
in their turn, and the townsmen secured from their new prince the
execution of their foes with all formality; Bogolyubsky 's nephews were
blinded (some say merely a pretense was made, to appease the agitated
people) and their ally and patron, Prince Gleb of Ryazan, was killed
in prison.
However, extermination of the representatives of the new order
could not remove the causes which had created it. Having laid waste
by its rapacious policy the territory all around it, the Old Russian town
fell, and no one could arrest its fall. Even before the death of Andrew,
at the time of the celebrated siege of Kiev in 1169, the first town of
68 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
the Russian land was defended by Torks and Berendeys, detachments of
steppe nomads hired by Prince Mstislav. When they deserted, the town
could no longer hold out, and the Kievans were overtaken by the fate
they had always so feared ; they themselves became captives. Thousands
of captives, and in particular female captives, were dragged from the
conqueror-town to the slave markets to which it itself had supplied so
much human merchandise in former centuries. But with the destruction
of Kiev the devastated South lost all its interest and significance; the
nominal conqueror of Kiev, Prince Andrew, under whose banner had
marched the army which sacked the "mother of Russian towns," had
not himself gone to the South; far more attractive to him was the
new system of princely administration being consolidated in the North.
The peculiar forms of the military-trading republic endured in the
northwest for three more centuries ; in its vast colonies Novgorod found
an inexhaustible source of "tovar," while its close connection with
Western Europe implied possibilities of new organisational resources.
In the rest of Russia the slow process of decomposition of old, predatory,
urban civilisation into rural was bound to continue. Nothing further
was needed but the ruin of the town, for, as we shall well remember,
the town had brought nothing new into the country. The means of
production remained unchanged ; the only difference was that the prod-
ucts, which formerly the town had unceremoniously seized as far as its
arm could reach, and not infrequently along with the producers, now
remained at home. Novgorod and Pskov here represented an exception.
In them local exchange had developed to such a point that the town
was already something more than a bird of prey (though here, too, this
role remained dominant). In the rest of Russia the town had lived
an independent life, but little concerned with the rural Rus around it.
The Russkaya Pravda, which develops in detail questions of "tovar,"
of money, and of interest, says extraordinarily little about land — so
little, indeed, that some scholars have felt justified in asserting that
the Pravda "does not contain regulations about the acquisition or aliena-
tion of land." As a matter of fact, the Pravda mentions land four
times; about interest rates it contains 23 regulations (in the fullest
copies) ; about bondsmen, 27. How much more frequently than the
landholder did the slaveholder appear in the Old Russian court! The
town, economically alien to the country, was, as we saw, also juridically
cut off from it by an impassable wall. In the town were free men
and a powerful veche, in the country tributaries without rights, whom
the princes "drove" to war, like cannon-fodder it might be said, had
there been cannon then. This term, "drive," is extraordinarily expres-
sive, and by no means accidental ; in the republic of Novgorod it survived
till the last years of her existence. Even under the year 1430 the
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 69
chronicler of Novgorod noted down: ''the peasants were driven to
Novgorod to build a town." Only when unpaid working hands were
needed in large number did the Old Russian democracy bethink itself
of its "smerds. " For their part, the peasants were little concerned
about the democracy and did not stir when Muscovite feudalism advanced
to crush what was left of it.
Owing to the special conditions of her existence Novgorod fell before
her economic role had been played to the end. The southern towns, and
likewise those of the northeast, in so far as they were not simply over-
grown princely manors, were nearer their natural death when their last
hour struck. But just as scarcely any living organism dies a wholly
natural death, so the natural demise of the Old Russian trading town
was hastened on by a series of causes that aided the conversion of
urban Rus into rural. One of these causes, the most immediate, his-
torians have long ago indicated ; it was the sum total of the struggle
with the steppe, ending with the great Tatar pogrom in the thirteenth
century. From the ninth century to the eleventh Rus was on the
offensive against the men of the steppe ; if we compare on the map the
southern defensive lines of Rus under Vladimir and under Yaroslav,
we readily see an advancing southward movement. The culmination of
this advance was Yaroslav 's victory over the Pechenegs (1034) ; in 1068
the sons of Yaroslav were beaten by a new horde from the steppe, the
Polovtsians. From that time on the latter hardly disappear from the
chronicle's field of vision for a single year; even in the middle of the
thirteenth century the Galician-Volhynian chronicle-digest calls them
to mind. The devastations produced by their raids were great, of course,
but it is necessary to remember that in essence they were in no way to
be distinguished from the feuds of the princes. For the Polovtsians,
like the princes, invaded others' lands for captives. If we add that in
the feuds themselves the Polovtsians took a very active part, willingly
hiring themselves out in the service of the princes, and that the princes
by no means hesitated to intermarry with the Polovtsians, so that in the
last analysis it could not be said whose blood flowed in the veins of
any descendant of Izyaslav — then there is not the slightest foundation
for thinking of the Polovtsians as an alien and obscure ' ' Asiatic ' ' force,
as a dark cloud hovering over the representatives of "European civili-
sation," over Kievan Rus. But in so far as Polovtsian raids increased
the devastation quantitatively, they thereby hastened on the fatal end.
Nevertheless, it was not they who dealt the final blow. The men of
the steppe did not know how to take towns ; even w T hen they fell on
Kiev unexpectedly (1096), they could not force their way into it but
had to confine themselves to devastation of the environs. If fortified
centres did fall into their hands from time to time, they were only
70 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
petty ones. Not until 1203 did they succeed in playing the master at
Kiev itself; but it was Russian princes, Rurik Rostislavich and the
Olgoviches, who brought the Polovtsians thither.
A different kind of enemy were the Tatars. Steppe horsemen, moving
about just as easily and freely as the Polovtsians, they had assimilated
all the military technique of their time. As early as their Chinese wars
they had learned to take cities surrounded by stone walls. In the
words of Plano-Carpini, each Tatar was obliged to have with him an
intrenching tool and ropes for the purpose of drawing siege machines.
In an assault on any Russian town, they first of all "encolumned" it —
fenced it around ; after that they began to strike with battering-rams
on the gates or on the weakest part of the wall, striving at the same
time to set fire to the buildings inside the walls ; for this latter purpose
they used, among other things, Greek fire, which it seems they even
perfected somewhat. They had recourse to mines; in some cases they
even diverted rivers. In a word, in point of military skill, as a French
writer has justly remarked, the Tatars in the thirteenth century were
like the Prussians in the middle of the nineteenth. The very strongest
Russian towns fell into their hands after a few weeks', sometimes only
a few days', siege. But the taking of a town by the Tatars meant such
complete and unmitigated destruction as neither the Russian princes
nor even the Polovtsians had ever encompassed, and precisely because
Tatar strategy set itself a more distant goal than simple acquisition of
captives. To support its "world" policy the Horde 5 needed large
money resources ; these it extracted from conquered peoples in the form
of tribute. In order to guarantee the punctual receipt of the latter, it
was first of all necessary, from the military point of view, to make it
impossible for the population to renew the struggle. To destroy the
great centres of population, to drive out their inhabitants, in part to
exterminate them or to lead them off into captivity — all this was admir-
ably calculated to achieve this immediate aim. This is why the Tatars
were such great foes of the towns, and why Baty's onslaught seemed to
the townsman-chronicler the crown of all imaginable horrors. This is
why, likewise, they strove to annihilate all the higher ruling elements
of the population, including the clergy; "the better, well-born men
never expect mercy from them," says Plano-Carpini, while the chron-
icles persistently name among those slain or made captive by the Tatars
"monks and nuns," "priests and priests' wives." Destruction of the
towns and annihilation of the upper classes alike weakened the military-
political organisation of the conquered and guaranteed their submission
for the future. With one blow the Tatar devastation completed a process
which had become manifest long before the onslaughts of the Tatars
6 Literally, camp ; the government of the Mongol khans.
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 71
and which had been produced by economic conditions — the process of
the decomposition of the urban Rus of the tenth to the twelfth centuries.
But the influence of Tatar conquest was not limited to this negative
result. The Tatar Ascendancy not only contributed to the disintegration
of old Rus but also contributed to the integration of a new Rus — the
appanage Rus of Moscow. A few lines above the reader must have noted
that the tendency of the Horde to exploit the subjugated population
as tributaries perfectly corresponded to the new tendencies that we
observed in the princely policy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
But here, too, as in the matter of the conquest itself, the Tatars ploughed
deeper. In the first place, not content with the former policy of collec-
tion, based partly on the appetite of the taker, partly on the strength
of the resistance of the giver, the Tatars organised a regular system
of assessment, which survived the Tatars themselves by many centuries.
The first registers of taxable population are directly connected with the
subjugation of Russia by the Horde ; the first mention of ' ' plough descrip-
tion" — of the direct distribution of imposts by tax units (the "plough"
equals two or three workmen) — is connected with the Tatar tribute of
the thirteenth century; earlier, in all probability, the whole clan paid
in a lump ; for penal fines we know this to be certain, and there is no
reason to think that the "tribute" was paid otherwise. Nothing re-
mained to the Muscovite government but to develop the Tatar system
further, which it did. But the Tatars did not merely introduce technical
improvements in Old Russian finances ; in so far as it was possible for a
force acting from without, they introduced marked changes in social
relationships, once again in the same direction in which the latter had
already begun to develop under the influence of native conditions. In
the classical period of Kievan Rus only the rural population was "under
tribute." The urban population did not pay permanent direct im-
posts ; consequently princely exploitation in the town was expressed
in the form of abuses in judicial penalties. The conquerors of Russia
had no reason to have recourse to such circuitous ways, and in the Tatar
"number" all were reckoned, townsmen and rustics indiscriminately.
In the area of immediate conquest the Horde with no great effort suc-
ceeded in imposing tribute; here the urban population was so weakened
that it could not think of resistance. A different picture is presented
by the large centres of population still inviolate physically, which
submitted to the Horde only from fear of an invasion. The chronicle
of Novgorod presents in an extraordinarily vivid fashion the tax reform
there ; it was not easy for the free men of Novgorod to suffer conversion
into unfree "tributaries." The Tatar tribute-takers appeared here for
the first time in 1257. The chronicler does not record, and probably did
not himself know how, but the city succeeded in ransoming itself from
72 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
the "number," sending good presents to the "tsar" (as they always
called the khan) and, perhaps, liberally bribing the envoys themselves.
But the khan's administration inflexibly pursued its system; whatever
happened, Novgorod must be taken into the "number" with all the rest
of Rus ; two years later the Tatar officials again appeared, and this time
bribes did not suffice. "There was a token on the moon, so that it
could not be seen at all," relates the chronicler. "In the same winter
came Michael Pineshchinich from the Low [the land of Suzdal] 6 with
a false embassy and spoke thus : ' If you do not put yourselves into
the number, behold, already our regiments are on the Low land.' And
the Novgorodans put themselves into the number. ..." But this was
only juridically; the veche, deceived by the "false embassy," had
capitulated in words only. The old order of things was in turmoil
when words began to be converted into deeds, when the Tatar haskaks
came to Novgorod and set about the collection of the tribute. They
began with the provinces, and the mere rumours of what was taking
place there evoked a disturbance in the town ; the provinces of Novgorod
were inhabited not only by peasants but also by many townsmen, arti-
sans and merchants who had purchased land, the svoezemtsy. Now
all without distinction had become tributaries. "When the turn of Nov-
gorod itself came, the disturbance developed into open revolt ; ' ' the
rabble did not wish to give the numbers, but said: we will die honour-
ably for Saint Sofia and for the homes of the saints!"
And men "were made in twain." The upper strata of society, know-
ing what fate awaited them in case of a Tatar inroad, favoured a pacific
issue, submission to the demands of the Horde. The roughly apportioned
method of assessment, at so much from each individual economy, was
very satisfactory to the rich. The Tatar tribute-takers rode through
the streets and counted the houses ; each house, no matter to whom it
belonged, paid one and the same amount. "And the boyars made it
easy for themselves and ill for the lesser ones." Matters had apparently
gone as far as a formal agreement between the "accursed" Tatar
envoy, on the one hand, and the prince, Alexander Nevsky, and the
Novgorod aristocracy, on the other; in case of further resistance of the
"rabble" they had agreed to attack the town from two sides. It is
unknown what averted a collision at the last minute ; according to the
chronicler, it was "Christ's might," but a modern historian looks for
another explanation. The chief cause, it seems, was the solidarity of the
boyars, who felt that for them this was a question of life and death,
that the "savage beasts," coming from the wilderness in the form of
s The Eussian "mesopotamia," lying between the Upper Volga and the Oka,
was downstream from Novgorod and hence was called "the Low"; similarly the
lesser Novgorod is called Nizhny-Novgorod, i.e., Novgorod the Low.
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 73
Tatars, would first of all "eat the flesh of the strong and drink the
blood of the boyars. " The masses of the population were already too
dependent on commercial capital to enter upon an open struggle with
all the capitalists rather than with one of their mutually hostile groups,
as usually happened in such collisions. However it was, the Tatars
finally secured their tribute from the free Novgorodans, and the chron-
icler did not know how to explain it except as chastisement from the
Lord for their sins. With a sigh of regret that even this severe punish-
ment had no effect on the impenitents, he concludes his narrative.
The history of the Novgorod "number" shows how hostile to the
Tatars were the democratic elements of the veche, and the Tatars were
too versed in practical politics not to understand and appreciate this
hostility. A series of events in other parts of Rus clearly disclosed that
the townsmen everywhere, as soon as they had recovered from the imme-
diate effects of the devastation, were ready to imitate Novgorod's stand.
In 1262 the men of the land of Rostov "willed a veche" and drove out
the Tatar tribute-takers from Rostov, Vladimir, Suzdal, and Yaroslavl.
In 1289 the same thing was repeated in Rostov, in which case the soli-
darity of Prince Dmitry of Rostov with the Tatars stands out very
clearly. The alliance, which was already apparent in Novgorod in 1259,
of the "better men" and the prince with the Tatars against the "rabble"
was bound to become, and actually did become, a constant phenomenon.
That in supporting the princes and their boyars in the struggle with
the "lesser men" the Horde would in the end create the Muscovite
autocracy, which would abolish the Horde itself as unnecessary — this
remote prospect was beyond the Tatar politicians' field of vision, a fact
for which there was some degree of justification. The Tatar Ascendancy
established itself in Rus in the first half of the thirteenth century, while
it was not until the second half of the following century that the princes
of Moscow decided to come out openly against the "tsar." A century
and a half of absolute subjection of Rus to the Horde was assured at
any rate.
As we see, then, the Tatar invasion has not without some justification
occupied in national tradition a place that the modern science of history
has been inclined to wrest from it. And this science is right in the
sense that this external shock could bring into Russian history nothing
essentially new. But, as usually happens, the external crisis helped to
resolve the internal crisis and in part supplied the means for its solution.
In conclusion, the reservation must be made that it would be too nar-
row an interpretation to call the economic crisis that undermined Kievan
Rus exclusively external. The reader has probably already noted the
absence in our interpretation of one factor, on which, nevertheless, the
ancient town was, as we have already said, intimately dependent, and
74 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
with which it was more closely connected than it was with the rural
Rus surrounding it. This factor was the foreign market — the consumer
of the wares, animate and inanimate, of the Russian merchant. "We are
not here dealing with the history of European trade and therefore have
no occasion to study in detail the fate of international exchange in the
Middle Ages. But the connection between certain quite catastrophic
events in European trade and Russian history obtruded itself on the
minds of Russian bookmen even of that age. Among the few facts culled
from "universal" history by the first chronicle of Novgorod, the story
of the taking of Constantinople by French and Italian crusaders in 1204
occupies a quite exceptional place. Only of the Tatar invasion does the
chronicle speak at greater length and in more detail ; all other Russian
events are much more sparingly and drily dealt with. It is as if the
author had seen with his own eyes the destruction of the capital of all
Orthodox Christendom — so excited is his imagination by this picture,
about which, however, he had only read in Byzantine chronographies.
It is significant that what might have seemed to be most interesting
for him — the religious aspect, the seizure of the centre of oecumenical
Orthodoxy by the Latins — does not occupy the central foreground. On
the other hand, what is emphasised, and this is not less significant, is
the solidarity of the Greeks and the Varangians who jointly defended
the city. The Novgorodan of the thirteenth century dimly felt the objec-
tive significance of this event. It was the last link in the long chain of
phenomena, which historians of the past designated by the general name
of "crusades," and more recent historians prefer to call "French coloni-
sation in the Levant. ' ' A struggle for eastern markets was in progress.
In the first half of the Middle Ages they were wholly in the hands of
the Arabs and Byzantines, and only through their medium did the North
European Varangians have access to them. Just at this time the Dnieper
and Volkhov became perhaps the most lively trading highway of
Europe; Russia and Sweden were flooded with Eastern coins (all the
Arab dirgems found in innumerable Russian and Scandinavian treasure-
troves are, as is well known, not older than the end of the seventh,
and not more recent than the eleventh century), and matters had gone
so far that, as Russians represented it, it was impossible to travel even
from Asia Minor to Rome except by way of Kiev and Novgorod. In
the chronicle's well-known story about the Apostle Andrew it is said
that Andrew was teaching in Sinope, whence he came to Korsun, "and,
having seen that from Korsun it is not far to the mouth of the Dnieper,
had a mind to go to Rome." But from the eleventh century on com-
mercial Europe, still headed by Varangians, but this time from Western
and Southern Europe, Normans and Sicilians, begins to open its own
route to the East, wresting the monopoly of Eastern trade from the
FOREIGN TRADE AND TOWNS 75
Mohammedans and Byzantine Greeks. The expedition of 1203-1204,
when the chief commercial centre of the Greek East was taken and
plundered at the hands of French knights brought on Italian ships and
guided by the "blind doge," the incarnation of Venetian trading policy,
perfectly characterises the conclusion of the struggle. Now the highway
from the Black Sea to Rome went, not by the Dnieper but through
Venice, while the "great water route from the Varangians to the
Greeks" ended to the south in a commercial blind alley. Now it was
easier for the Varangians to make contact with the Greek countries by
another river, the Rhine. The union of Rhenish towns, as is well known,
was the embryo of the Hansa, which embraced the whole Baltic with
its counting houses; on the extreme eastern periphery of this chain
appeared Novgorod, of Russian trading towns the only one for which
the shifting of world trade routes was more advantageous than preju-
dicial. All the rest of the stopping-places on the great highway of
international exchange were converted into lonely trading villages on a
by-road, and almost at the same time were destroyed by the Tatars. Two
such blows simultaneously even an economically healthy country could
not have borne without a resultant lingering decline, but such a country
would have recovered sooner or later; for early urban Rus, already
internally devitalised by its outworn economic forms, decline was
definitive.
CHAPTER V
NOVGOROD
The fall of Kiev is usually treated as having directly and immediately
caused the centre of Russian history to shift northeastward, to "the
mesopotamia of the Oka and the Volga." But the transition was not
so direct and immediate, as must be apparent to any one not unduly
influenced by the Muscovite point of view — Muscovite in the narrowest
and most precise sense of the word. To a fifteenth-century grand prince
of Moscow and his adherents it no doubt seemed possible and even prob-
able that he had received authority from "our forefather Vladimir
Monomakh" without any intervening stages. Yet, three hundred years
earlier one of the ancestors of this prince, free from the fantastic ideas
that made a former dependent town of Suzdal the capital of the world,
looked at things more realistically. Vsevolod Big Nest saw Kiev's suc-
cessor, not in Moscow nor even in Vladimir, but in Novgorod the Great.
When he sent his son off to this city, he said to him: "My son Con-
stantine! On thee God has placed the seniority among your brothers,
while Novgorod the Great holds seniority among the principalities in
the whole Russian land." Doubtless this story is not unmixed with
legend manufactured in Novgorod itself, but it contains a kernel of
truth, as Constantine himself was to find out; later the Novgorodans
seated him on the grand-princely throne of Suzdal-Vladimir, for at the
moment the Novgorodans were masters in north Rus, just as a hundred
years earlier the Kievans had been in the South.
The causes of this relative stability of the northern trading centre
as compared with its southern rival have been noted in general outline.
In Novgorod trade bore the same predatory character as in the South ;
the same "tribute," i.e., products taken from the immediate producers
by force, constituted the chief article of export. But such means of
acquiring "merchandise" needed an extensive field of operations. There
must be ever new and untouched, or at least only partially touched,
areas to feed this kind of trade. The ascendancy of Kiev was maintained
by exploitation of neighbouring Russian lands and tribes, and when these
had been exhausted, there was no longer anything left on which to live.
But the Rus of Novgorod had a wide colonial domain, embracing the
whole southern littoral of the Arctic Ocean, approximately to the Obi.
Here was a practically inexhaustible store of the objects of exchange
76
NOVGOROD 77
most valuable at that time — first and foremost, furs. Not without rea-
son did the fur trade first acquire a wholesale character in Novgorod.
Nikitsky, the historian of Novgorod's economic life, says: "Furs circu-
lated in trade usually in large quantities, by thousands, half -thousands,
quarters, forties, dozens, tens, and fives, rarely in ones. The more
valuable furs were usually sold in the smaller units, most of all in
forties; the less valuable in thousands, and even in tens of thousands.
Among the more valuable the sources mention especially furs of sable
and beaver, marten and fox, polecat, ermine, and weasel, skins of mink
or river otter and lynx. Among the less valuable appear bear, wolf, and
rabbit furs, and in particular squirrel skins, which were sold in especially
large quantities. The latter must be understood, it seems, whenever the
sources simply mention fur goods as Schon Werk, Bussen Werk, Nauga-
resch Werk." Almost monopolistic sway on the fur market of itself
guaranteed to Novgorod a stable position in the system of exchange that
grew up around the Baltic Sea toward the latter half of the Middle
Ages. But still more important under the conditions of the time was
the fact that in the colonies of Novgorod was to be found almost the
sole source of precious metals in all Rus. "Trans-Kaman," i.e., Ural,
silver flowed both to Western Europe and to Moscow after passing
through the intermediate stage of tribute collected by Novgorod from
the Yugrians and other tribes of the Urals, who had inherited the wealth
of the ancient Biarmiya which had so tempted early Scandinavian
heroes. As late as the end of the twelfth century it was possible to make
expeditions thither that are reminiscent of the campaigns for tribute
undertaken by Igor and his contemporaries. In 1193 the whole militia
of Novgorod perished in the land of the Yugrians, a victim to its own
avarice and to the guile of the natives, who "deceived" the Novgorodan
voevoda, saying to him: ""We will amass for you silver and sables and
all other splendid things ; do not destroy your peasants and your tribute. "
The voevoda believed them, whereas in fact it was warriors that the
Yugrians had amassed. When all was ready, they lured him and his
staff into an ambuscade in which they perished. After this it was not
difficult for the Yugrians to deal with the leaderless fighting-men, who
were exhausted by hunger into the bargain. Only 80 men returned
home; "and there mourned in Novgorod the prince, and the bishop,
and all Novgorod." But individual disasters did not alter the fact
that, by and large, "trans-Kaman silver" regularly entered the treas-
ury of Novgorod. And not without reason was Ivan Kalita, the first
grand prince of Moscow, so eager to secure this particular variety of
Novgorod's tribute. A great part both of his table silver and even
of that of his grandsons and great-grandsons was of Novgorodan origin,
marked with the names of Novgorodan prelates and posadniks. Seizure
78 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
of Novgorod's "tribute-takers" laden with trans-Kaman silver was for
Novgorod's foes as favourite a method of warfare as, for English cor-
sairs of the sixteenth century, was the seizure of Spanish galleons with
gold coming from the New World. When Ivan the Great dealt the fatal
blow to Novgorod, he first occupied the Dvina, hastening to cut off his
antagonist's eastern colonies.
But it was not silver only that came into Novgorod from the east.
We saw that the decline of Kiev, aside from its internal, local causes,
reflected also an external change — the transfer of Mediterranean trade
from the hands of the Byzantine Greeks into the hands of the Italians
and the French. This change robbed of its value the "great water
route" from the Varangians to the Greeks along the Dnieper. But
this was far from being the only artery of Eastern trade in the Middle
Ages. There remained another route, by the Volga to the Caspian Sea ;
the European end of this route, too, lay at Novgorod. One Eastern ware,
silk, even constituted an important article in Novgorod's trade with the
West. Thus that traffic which had long since been choked in the Dnieper
basin continued to hold its own on the Volkhov even 200 years later.
Novgorod was still growing when in southern Rus growth had long
since given way to decay and ruin. From the example of Novgorod we
can judge what Kievan Rus might have become, had its economic re-
sources not been drained in the twelfth century. Herein lies the interest
of the study of Novgorod's history. This interest is augmented by the
almost complete absence (not wholly complete, as certain historians in-
cautiously affirm) of another disturbing factor, the Tatar yoke. It is
of course impossible to allege, as one very renowned scholar has done,
that Novgorod "did not look the Horde's baskak in the eyes." In
analysing the events of the years 1257-1259, we saw that there was a
moment when she "experienced the immediate weight and dread of the
Tatar." But in Novgorod's history this was just for a moment, whereas
the Low land lived under this weight for centuries. In a word, on the
Volkhov we may expect certain social combinations which did not develop
on the Dnieper, although they were the logical sequel to the system of
relationships that had existed in southern Russia.
We have just discussed one example of this further development. We
know that mediaeval trade, both in Russia and in the West, was small-
scale, that the mediaeval trader resembled a contemporary peddler rather
than what we now call a merchant. The attentive reader has noted,
nevertheless, that this comparison is not applicable to Novgorod's fur
trade. One does not carry thousands, and still less tens of thousands,
of squirrel skins on one's back. If Kievan Rus dealt in merchandise on
a large scale, it was in the sole case of human merchandise — slaves. There
are cases where hundreds of slaves were in the hands of a single person.
NOVGOROD 79
One of the princes of Chernigov, for example, had, according to the
chronicle, 700 menials ; it is not likely that these were servants or even
field bondsmen. The Novgorodans were, of course, not squeamish about
menials. The Ushkuiniks, who in 1375 plundered Kostroma and Nizhny-
Novgorod, sold all their "captives," predominantly women, to Moslem
merchants in Bolgary. Just as in the times of Saint Vladimir ! But it
is noteworthy that this article of trade does not stand out in the history
of Novgorod as it had earlier stood out elsewhere. On the other hand
there does stand out a new phenomenon — the accumulation in a few
hands of large capital in the form of money. In 1209 the veche of
Novgorod rose against the posadnik Dmitry Miroshkinich and his
brothers, who, in alliance with the prince of Suzdal, had been striving
to oppress the free city. For this attempt they paid with confiscation
of all their belongings. The veche converted all the "substance" of
the Miroshkiniches into the property of the town ; their villages and
menials were sold ; in addition, their hidden treasures were discovered
and seized. Everything taken was subjected to per capita division, and
to each Novgorodan fell 3 grivnas, i.e., 40-60 rubles in pre-war currency.
But the chronicler says that the confiscations were not without abuses;
certain men "seized hidden things," whatever fell into their hands dur-
ing the disturbance, and thus grew rich. In addition, besides movable
and immovable property and ready cash there were also found in
Dmitry's house "tablets" — bills of exchange of Novgorodan merchants;
these were given to the prince, thus making the private possessions of
the Miroshkiniches state property. If we take all these details into
consideration, we see that in Novgorod as early as the thirteenth century
there were millionaires (if we translate the money value of that time
into that of the present). The mention of "tablets" clearly indicates
the basis of the authority and influence of the greatest family in
Novgorod at that time. But there is another curious aspect to the affair.
In Novgorod Dmitry represented that new financial policy for which
Prince Andrew Bogolyubsky had paid with his life thirty years before.
The Miroshkiniches were accused of making innovations in the exaction
of judicial penalties. In Novgorod financial exploitation must have pro-
duced a still more powerful impression than in Suzdal, accustomed to
princely tyranny ; and yet Dmitry Miroshkinich had succeeded in being
the master for four years (1205-1209). In fact, he survived until his
own ally, Prince Vsevolod Big Nest of Suzdal, surrendered him to the
Novgorodans, saying to them: "Who is good to you do ye love, but
the evil do ye punish." But this was done too late, as the sequel showed.
Svyatoslav, son of the prince of Suzdal and himself prince of Novgorod,
outlasted the posadnik Dmitry by only a year. In 1210 Mstislav the
Bold of Toropets, having heard that Novgorod "suffers violence from
80 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
the princes," appeared in Torzhok and was received with outstretched
arms by the Novgorodans, who immediately arrested Svyatoslav "until
there shall be justice with his father." Soon the latter had to acknowl-
edge that the collapse of Suzdal's financial policy in Novgorod entailed
the end of Suzdal's dominance there. Mstislav seated himself firmly
on the throne of Novgorod, and Vsevolod Big Nest himself concluded a
treaty with him as prince of Novgorod.
The events of 1209 in Novgorod present, as we see, a perfect analogy
with those of 1174 and the following years in Suzdal. But whereas the
Suzdal revolution had no further consequences, that of Novgorod was
the starting point of a remarkable epoch in the history of the town — ac-
cording to the estimate of some historians the most brilliant. "For
Novgorod set in in such days of heroism, glory, and honour, as for Kiev
under Vladimir Monomakh," Kostomarov says of this period. If we
remember that in those days Novgorod set up princes, both at Kiev and
at Vladimir, and that the throne of Novgorod was contested by the most
influential and renowned of the existing descendants of Rurik, it is
hardly possible to add anything to its outward splendour. Unfor-
tunately, showy external events, dazzling the eyes not only of the later
historian but also of the chronicler himself, have left the domestic life
of Novgorod in obscurity. We sense that for approximately forty years
a desperate social struggle seethed in the city, but on the pages of the
chronicle are noted only the most concrete personal results of this strug-
gle in the form of a succession (frequently effected by violence) of
archbishops, posadniks, thousand-men, and other dignitaries. Only
rarely and casually do the causes of the revolution and the social forces
involved stand out. Only once does the chronicler quite clearly disclose
the "class contradictions" in Novgorodan society, and then only at the
very end of the period under consideration. At this time the throne
of Novgorod was occupied by Vasily, a son of Alexander Nevsky. The
Novgorodans drove him out and seated in his place his uncle Yaroslav,
who had just "fled out of the Low land"; thus, although a Suzdalan, he
was now the candidate of the anti-Suzdal party. On learning that the
Novgorodans had expelled his son, Alexander Nevsky went to war against
Novgorod. He was supported by Torzhok, a town economically more
closely connected with the land of Suzdal than with its own metropolis.
This gave hope to the Suzdal party in Novgorod itself ; the Suzdal emigre,
Yaroslav, who was enthroned there, took fright and fled. The pre-
ponderant majority of the Novgorodans, headed by the posadnik, firmly
resolved not to yield to Alexander Nevsky. This majority the chron-
icler flatly calls the "lesser" men. "And there kissed the cross to the
Holy Virgin the lesser men — to stand in everything for the good cause
of Novgorod, for their fatherland, to live or die with it ; while the
NOVGOROD 81
knightly men had evil thoughts — to vanquish the lesser men and to
take a prince according to their own will." But it is significant that
the "knightly" men were able to act only by intrigue; they lacked the
spirit to come out openly against the veche even in sight of the Suzdal
regiments. And the marshal of the latter entered into negotiations
directly with the democratic elements and their representative. They
agreed on what we should now call a "change of ministry"; the
posadnik had to resign in favour of another. But he was not surrendered
to Prince Alexander Nevsky, as the latter had demanded ; and, in general,
except for this change of personnel, the veche evidently conceded noth-
ing. Yet Nevsky attached such significance to his victory that he occu-
pied the throne of Novgorod himself, evidently thinking that his son
would not possess sufficient authority. The events just related are alone
sufficient to modify significantly the opinion, very widespread in the
literature on the subject, that the veche communities of Pskov and
Novgorod were exclusively aristocratic in structure.
In the case of Novgorod, indeed, we have a complete picture of the
evolution of the veche, of which we were able to study only the first
stages in the history of Kiev. The patriarchal aristocracy was replaced,
not by an oligarchy of large proprietors but by a democracy of "mer-
chants" and "common people" — of petty traders and artisans, of
"plebes" who by reason of their plebeian outlook were akin to the
peasantry, in relation to which at this moment of elation they were not
so much lords and masters as political leaders, the fighting and conscious
vanguard of these inarticulate masses. Hence the victories of the urban
democracy were accompanied by exemptions for the peasants : the former
won rights; the latter took advantage of this fact to get rid of an im-
mediate material burden. As far as rights are concerned, it was, in the
main, in this period that the Novgorodan veche made its gains. The first
"constitution" of Novgorod that has come down to us — a charter by
which Prince Yaroslav, Nevsky 's brother, kissed the cross "to all Nov-
gorod" — is assigned to the year 1265, but its content is much older.
Besides indefinite allusions to "antiquity and custom," to "fathers and
grandfathers," there is in the charter a definite reference to the father
of this Prince Yaroslav, Yaroslav son of Vsevolod Big Nest.
We do not know the exact content of the charter which the earlier
Yaroslav swore to observe, but it is possible to work out its basic features,
in part from what the chronicle tells us, in part from later charters (of
1265, 1270, 1305, 1308, and other years). From the chronicle we learn
that as early as 1218 the veche wrested from the prince his right to
remove elected town authorities, except "for fault," i.e., by judicial
process. In this year Svyatoslav of Smolensk, who then occupied the
throne of Novgorod, took it into his head to replace the posadnik
82 HISTORY OF EUSSIA
Tverclislav. It is curious that it never entered the head of this prince
from Smolensk to carry out the change on his own authority, without
the knowledge of the veche ; the Old Russian prince was too accustomed
to the idea that in the town the veche was master and that without the
veche it was impossible to act. It was not on this point that the dispute
arose, nor does its interest lie here, but rather in the fact that what
perhaps would have satisfied any southern town did not satisfy Nov-
gorod. The veche enquired of the prince's emissary: ''Of what has
Tverdislav been guilty?" And, learning that the prince had no charge
against him but simply found him inconvenient, the veche refused even
to consider the question, simply reminding the prince of Novgorod's
rule that without fault no one could be deprived of office, and that on
this the prince himself had taken oath to Novgorod. Svyatoslav ap-
parently submitted without dispute, "and there was peace." So the
chronicler concludes the story of this episode, without stating the prince 's
reply. Probably he did not make answer, tacitly admitting that for
him Novgorod 's officials actually were irremovable ; for him, but not for
the veche, which never hesitated to expel by force, not only posadniks
but the princes themselves, whenever they gave offence. In the extant
treaties reproducing this stereotyped rule the details at the same time
disclose the reasons for this rule. The prince could not remove Nov-
gorod's officials, nor could he do anything without them. Without the
posadnik he could neither apportion the provinces, nor judge, nor give
charters. The attempt to act personally in these cases is expressly de-
fined by one of these treaties as taking the law into his own hands : "and
upon taking the law into your own hands, prince, do not meditate." In
all except his special, military function the prince of Novgorod ' ' reigned
but did not govern." A "ministry" governed, a ministry — the posadnik
and the thousand-man — responsible to the autocratic people, being both
elected and removed by the veche.
Since the administration of the provinces lay entirely in the hands of
plenipotentiaries of the town community (". . . as to all the provinces
of Novgorod, them, prince, hold ye not with your own men, but hold
with the men of Novgorod . . ."), and since the prince was deprived of
the possibility of making himself a great force in local feudal society
(neither he, his wife, nor his boyars could purchase lands in the domain
of Novgorod), he had no means of interfering in the domestic life of
Novgorod. To exploit his lands "as though dealing with the province of
another," following the example of Andrew Bogolyubsky, was not to
be thought of in Novgorod.
The norms of public law established in Novgorod about the first half
of the thirteenth century betokened a complete breach with patriarchal
tradition, and herein lies their significance, not only locally, for Nov-
NOVGOROD 83
gorod, but generally, for Russia. Patriarchal ideology recognised no
difference between the master and the sovereign, between property rights
and state authority. In Novgorod's treaties with the princes, however,
this distinction is drawn more sharply than almost anywhere else in
the whole field of Russian history. Novgorod took every measure to
prevent the prince from becoming proprietor either of an inch of Nov-
gorod's land or of a single Novgorodan. Neither he nor his wife nor
his boyars could purchase villages in Novgorod, and any they had pur-
chased they must return. Neither the prince himself nor any of his men
could accept zakladniks [debtors who pledged their person] in the land
of Novgorod, whether peasants or traders. He could trade with the
Germans, but only through the medium of Novgorodans. If any privilege
was accorded him, its limits were nicely defined. Thus, he could go to
Lake Ladoga to catch fish, but only once in three years. He could go
hunting in Rusa, but only in autumn, not in summer. He had the
exclusive right to kill wild boars, but only within sixty versts of the
town ; beyond this limit any Novgorodan could hunt boars. In a word,
the prince of Novgorod had no occasion to deem himself " master" in
the land of Novgorod. To use an old Roman expression, the prince of
Novgorod was the first magistrate of the republic ; this view, apparently,
was current in Novgorod. Not without reason does the chronicler put
in the mouth of Tverdislav, in his dispute with the prince, the phrase :
''And you, brothers, are free both in posadniks and in princes." Be-
tween the prince and the posadnik there was no essential difference;
both the one and the other enjoyed authority only by virtue of its
delegation by the town, and only until such time as the town deprived
them of it.
This breakdown of patriarchal ideology in itself presupposes as an
antecedent phenomenon the breakdown of the patriarchal social order.
This process, which in Kiev became evident in the first quarter of the
twelfth century, had probably begun to manifest itself even earlier in
Novgorod. By the thirteenth century the gradual disappearance of clan
aristocracy and the appearance, on ordinary occasions as well as in
moments of crisis, of petty men of no birth, find expression in a number
of incidents. In relating Novgorod's losses in this or the other battle
the chronicle calls certain of the slain by name, evidently men better
known, the loss of whom was keenly felt. Among these outstanding men
we constantly meet simple artisans — coppersmiths, shieldmakers, silver-
smiths, and other artisans, a tanner's son, a "priest's son." In 1228
two men figured prominently in the deposition of the archbishop and
the restoration of his predecessor ; one the chronicle calls by given name
and patronymic, the other by given name only, and he was a master
armourer, a coppersmith. Four years earlier, when Prince Yury of Suz-
84 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
dal demanded the surrender of the leaders of the opposition in Novgorod,
he deigned to name only four of them with their patronymics, the rest
are designated by diminutive given names. Nevertheless, the veche re-
fused to surrender these petty men, just as it refused to surrender the
greater ones.
In view of what was for those times a tremendous development of
commercial capitalism, this democracy of petty traders and petty in-
dependent producers could not be more than a transitional stage; the
"common people" could but serve as a battering-ram with the aid of
which the bourgeoisie of commercial capitalists crushed the aristocracy
of birth ; all this is fairly obvious if we recall why Novgorod survived the
"mother of Russian towns" and all her other contemporaries. Artisans
might remain masters in an industrial centre, such, for example, as was
Florence of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but such as Nov-
gorod never was. Wholesale trade with the West and wide colonial
enterprises conditioned the concentration of capital in the hands of a
few; the mass of "merchants," preserving for themselves the domestic
market and the transport of foreign merchandise through the rest of
Russia, speedily fell into debt-bondage to those from whom they acquired
their merchandise and without whose help they could not get along.
They formed an intermediate class between the lower social classes and
the upper crust of Novgorodan society, which now consisted, not of the
"order of boyars" alone, not of the feudal aristocracy alone, but of the
boyars and the bourgeoisie, the "men of substance." Thus the former
grouping of social elements, as we find it in the first treaties with
thirteenth-century princes, dividing "all Novgorod" into the older and
the lesser, was replaced by the more complicated grouping found in
fourteenth-century treaties, into boyars, men of substance, merchants,
and common people. Those who two hundred years earlier had
dominated the town and disposed of its destinies were now reduced to
last place in the composition of the autocratic veche.
The social dominance of the propertied classes in the last two centuries
of Novgorod's history found political expression in the so-called "ad-
ministrative council," "council of lords," or simply "lords." Toward
the last years of Novgorod 's life this council even more decisively usurps
the rights of the veche, first of all, of course, in questions which the
"mob" ill understood. By the fourteenth century foreign relations were
wholly in the hands of the "lords"; in their collisions with Novgorod
the German merchants see no one else, and they have left us the most
detailed information about this institution. The law of Novgorod indi-
cates that high justice also had passed into the hands of the aristocracy.
The council granted deeds to lands and waters, directed public works,
participated in the election of administrative officers, and directed mili-
NOVGOROD 85
tary operations. The last official document of free Novgorod is the
edict by which the Novgorodans were bound one and all to stand against
Ivan III, prince of Moscow ; the edict is ratified by 58 seals of members
of the council who, at this concluding moment of their activity, stood
forth as the de facto representatives of the whole town. This was ap-
parently one of the fullest assemblies of the "lords." Yet the German
sources know of occasions when the bounds of the assembly were still
further extended, and in unusually significant fashion ; one document
mentions 300 "golden girdles." Here was all that was wealthiest in
Novgorod ; the council of Novgorod represented not birth, as did the later
boyar duma of the tsars of Moscow, but wealth.
How did the masses of Novgorod react to the rise of this new oligarchy ?
In an industrial centre such a phenomenon would probably have evoked
an uprising of "socialistic" character, "socialistic" in that broad and
nebulous sense in which the word was used by the bourgeois literature
of the last century. Such was the Tumulto del Ciompi in fourteenth-
century Florence. But Novgorod was a town not of artisans but of
merchants, and there the social movement took on a very peculiar char-
acter — risings of debtors against creditors. Of just such a character,
apparently, were the tumults of the year 1418, those tumults which are
described in detail by the chronicle, and which in modern historiography
have served as a general pattern for "the turbulent veche of Novgorod";
in any case they testify to the tension reached by the hatred of the op>
pressed toward the oppressors even half a century before Novgorod lost
her independence. The disturbance began when "a certain man" —
whom the chronicle calls by the diminutive given name, "Stepanko, "
without patronymic, thus marking his plebeian origin — attacked a boyar,
Daniel Ivanovich, on the street and began to summon a crowd, crying
out: "Masters! Aid me against this malefactor!" Instead of seizing
the turbulent fellow the neighbours ran up and seized the boyar, drag-
ging him to the veche, and there "having punished him with wounds
nigh to death," they threw him from the bridge into the Volkhov. The
chronicler says not a word concerning the reputation of Daniel Ivano-
vich, but this is made sufficiently clear by the course of events. When
a fisherman rescued the boyar from the Volkhov and took him into his
skiff, the mob was furiously indignant ; the Novgorodans rushed to the
fisherman's house and looted it. The boyar, just saved from drowning,
obviously could not retaliate immediately; waiting till the veche dis-
persed, he ordered Stepanko seized and began to "torment" him. The
tumult, however, had by no means subsided as the boyar apparently
thought, and the news of Stepanko 's arrest added fuel to the fire. Im-
mediately the veche was again convoked on the Court of Yaroslav ; on the
following day it met again; "and there assembled a multitude of people
86 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
who clamoured and vociferated for many days; we shall go on that
boyar and plunder his house!" The agitation against Daniel Ivanovich
little by little passed into agitation against the boyars in general, and a
crowd of Stepanko's partisans, "coming in full panoply with a banner"
into the most aristocratic quarter of Novgorod, plundered not only the
house of the offending boyar but also "many other houses." The unex-
pected popular uprising at first reduced the boyars to panic terror. The
residents of the invaded section rushed to the archbishop and besought
him to interfere. In proof of their submission to the veche they brought
Stepanko to the prelate ; the archbishop sent him off to the ' ' assembly
of the men" under escort of a priest and of an archbishop's boyar. The
veche received both the embassy and Stepanko, but this did not put an
end to the havoc. The mob not only plundered more boyars' home-
steads, but also passed on to the monasteries, which served as store-
houses for the boyars. That is, there took place in Novgorod what had
only been dreaded in Kiev at the time of the uprising of 1113. An
attack on the principal nest of the Novgorod boyars, Prusskaya Street,
was, however, beaten off, for here preparations had been made for
defence. From this moment a reaction set in ; the rebels were pushed
back to the Torgovaya Storona [the market side of the river], the more
democratic quarter, which had risen en masse in support of Stepanko
and his friends. Soon the Torgovaya Storona was on the defensive,
the bridge across the Volkhov becoming the centre of combat. Here
arrows whistled, arms clashed, and the slain fell "as in war." But ap-
parently the more reasonable portion of the boyars were opposed to
aggravating matters further. The "Christ-eminent people," the "God-
fearing men," persuaded the archbishop to go onto the bridge with a
procession of the Cross and separate the combatants. In the prelate's
wake appeared the boyar council. The prelate again despatched an
embassy to the Court of Yaroslav. This time it had more success; the
veche dispersed, "and there was peace in the town." This outcome had
undoubtedly been prepared by antecedent negotiations; this is evident
from the fact that the archbishop's envoys found already on the Court
of Yaroslav the posadnik and the thousand-man, who, of course, were
not the leaders of the "assembly of the people" which had destroyed the
boyars' homesteads. The archbishop's appearance on the bridge was in
reality only an official ceremony. The feud was stopped by the desire
of the boyars to make use of their success without risking a new skirmish
which might not have ended in their favour.
This flash in the pan neither did nor could produce any change in
social relationships. The merchantry of the Torgovaya Storona could
not get along without the boyars' capital. But inasmuch as such out-
bursts could not be advantageous to the boyars, they carefully canalised
NOVGOROD 87
the energy accumulating in the masses. The ''policy of diversion" was
just as well known to later, strongly capitalistic, Novgorod, as to many
other lands in analogous periods. Simultaneously with the increasing
political insignificance of the masses, we hear ever more and more fre-
quently of colonial enterprises of the only type known to early Rus,
plundering expeditions against border countries inhabited by aliens and
sometimes against neighbouring Russian lands. In the latter case the
conventions were usually observed, the affair taking on the character of
a private enterprise ; Novgorod, as a state, remained in the background.
The chronicle carefully distinguishes between these two types of ' ' colonial
wars": one entry states that the expedition was undertaken "by order
of Novgorod"; another says that the "young men" went "without the
word of Novogorod. " Yet in both cases the chronicle is manifestly
describing a regularly organised expedition, and the names of the com-
manders indicate that they belonged to the aristocracy of Novgorod.
But the former was directed against foreigners, the Norwegians of
Murmansk ; while the latter raided the Volga, thus coming into conflict
with the grand prince of Moscow, and the authorities of Novgorod hoped
to evade responsibility. To be sure, Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoi, dis-
regarding the juridical correctness of Novgorod's position, "broke the
peace with the Novgorodans." Twenty years later Novgorod had to
pay to Moscow 8,000 rubles as compensation for a similar expedition.
But, since the "young men" were finding occupation other than the
destruction of boyars' homesteads, the boyars of Novgorod could not be
persuaded to renounce a policy so advantageous to themselves, though
even a colonial expedition on occasion became a weapon of social strife.
Novgorod's "imperialism" afforded the great bourgeoisie of Novgorod
an opportunity to divert the attention of the masses, to promise the
"common people" an equivalent for the political independence they
were gradually losing. But at times the "common people" were so op-
pressed that no imperialism, no mirages of colonial conquests were of
any avail, and the "younger" men began to seek a more direct means of
redressing their grievances against the "older." The quarter to which
they turned was inauspicious for the independence of Novgorod. In
1340 the Novgorodans quarrelled with Prince Simeon the Proud of Mos-
cow over the tribute which the latter had begun to collect in Torzhok.
As can be conjectured from the sequel, the controversy was not so much
about the collection of tribute as about its apportionment, whether it
was to go into the treasury of Novgorod or into the coffers of the prince
of Moscow. War was in prospect. But the government of Novgorod
very quickly had to lower its tone for a quite unexpected reason ; in
Novgorod the "rabble" did not want to go to war against Moscow.
Meanwhile in Torzhok the most serious measures had already been taken ;
88 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
Moscow's namestniks and collectors of tribute had been fettered and
put in prison. But when the "rabble" in Torzhok learned what was
being done in Novgorod, it rose against the boyars so decisively that the
latter fled to Novgorod. And the namestniks of Moscow were liberated
by that same "rabble.
* j
CHAPTER VI
THE FORMATION OF THE MUSCOVITE STATE
The interval of time from the thirteenth century to the fifteenth is
sometimes set apart as the "appanage" period of Russian history; "the
dismemberment of the Russian land into appanages" thus becomes the
determining characteristic of the period. It is hardly necessary to say
that this presentation is based on the conception of the " unity of the
Russian land" prior to the beginning of the appanage period: Rus
crumbled; later it was "gathered" together again. But we already
know that to speak of a "unitary" Russian state in the Kievan period
is evidence of a confusion of thought. The expression "the Russian
land" was known both to the chronicle and to the poetical productions
of the time, but it denoted the Kiev area and more broadly, since Kiev
held the hegemony of all southern Rus, all the latter as well. From
Novgorod or Vladimir one went "to Rus," but Novgorod and Vladimir
themselves were not Rus. Moreover, this was purely a popular term,
not signifying any definite political idea. Politically, early Rus knew
of a principality of Kiev, of Chernigov, or of Suzdal, but not of a Rus-
sian state. There was therefore nothing to crumble and consequently
nothing to "gather."
Into the antiquated terminology, which originated with Karamzin, an
attempt was made to breathe a new content, now by alleging that at the
beginning of this period there was an especial disintegration of princi-
palities, now by linking with this particular time a marked decline in
the authority of the princes, a loss on their part of all "state ideals"
and their conversion into simple landowners. But we do not know the
minimum dimensions of an independent province in the preceding epoch,
while even in the "appanage" period we see figuring prominently on the
political stage princes of Tver, Moscow, Nizhny-Novgorod, and Ryazan,
ruling over large provinces, no smaller than the former principalities
of Chernigov, Smolensk, or Pereyaslavl. As regards state ideals, these
can be found in embryo in the veche of Novgorod — which for official
historiography was the negation of the state — but by no means among
the old Russian princes. Not even the most outstanding of them rose
beyond a certain foggy conception of "social justice," and all of them in
general accounted the acquisition of thrones the chief goal of a prince's
policy and armed raids on neighbouring provinces a prince's chief oc-
89
90 HISTORY OF KUSSIA
cupation. The only public business which from time to time united
them all was the struggle with the nomads of the steppe, but such union
could never in the slightest degree become stable and lasting. /The mili-
tary alliance of the northeastern princes, under the headship of the
prince of Moscow, against the Tatars at the end of the fourteenth cen-
tury, was no less stable than the unification of southern Rus against the
Polovtsians in the days of Vladimir Monomakh; in this--4:egard-~" ap-
panage" Rus had no cause to envy pre-appanage, TOevan Rus. In
internal administration "to rule" meant the same in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries as in the twelfth or even the tenth century. Both
earlier and later it was a matter of gathering revenues in various forms,
and even contemporaries could hardly have decided who was in this
sense the more energetic "gatherer," Andrew Bogolyubsky or his kins-
man of three centuries later, Ivan III of Moscow.
As we follow the chain of events in t he chron ic! as, we easily perceive
two catastrophes, either of which can be "made to mark a "new period
of Russian history"; one is the,j£allr-of- j^iev in the second half of the
twelfth century, the other the conquest of Rus by the Tatars, in the
thirteenth. The first conditioned the shifting of the centre of the his-
torical stage some degrees north and east, a change that fastened on his-
torical Russia the character of a northern country of a poverty-stricken
nature which it had not had in the mild climate and on the fruitful soil
of the Ukraine./ The second assured that decline of "urban" law and
that triumph of "rural" law which for many centuries determined the
political physiognomy of the future "northern monarchy." But in both
cases the catastrophe was more apparent than real. Both revolutions
had been prepared by profound economic causes — by a shifting of world
trade routes and by exhaustion of the country through predatory methods
of economy. To make either of these catastrophes a "limit of the times"
would be very superficial. And from this point of view one should not
speak of a special "appanage" period of Russian history. The grouping
of feudal units which was destined to replace the town provinces of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, and which has received the name of
grand principality and later state of Moscow, grew up slowly and im-
perceptibly, so that when the men of the seventeenth century became
conscious of the roughly finished edifice, it ,was difficult for them to
answer the question: who began to build it? Kotoshikhin, as is well
knowjy was-inqlined~ tp recor d- Ivan '-fFV]- the Te rrible as the founder _of
the Muscovite state. Later historians pushed the critical moment ever
further and further back into the recesses of time until they came upon
figures so like all their contemporaries that another question arose of
itself: why did they, rather than the others, become the founders of
the new state? The first "gatherer" of Rus, Ivan [I] Kalita — accord-
FORMATION OF THE MUSCOVITE STATE 91
ing to the pages of the school textbooks — emerges from the pen of a
modern historian as "altogether devoid of the qualities of a sovereign
and statesman," so that the formation of the Muscovite state must be
a scribed to __aJnaky— ehanee. "Chance plays a great role in history,"
says this same scholar, V. Sergeyevich. But to appeal to chance in
science is to exhibit a certificate of poverty.
This redact io ad absurdum of the individualist method, which charges
all historical changes to the actions of individual persons and remains in
perplexity when changes are obviously taking place, and yet there are no
persons on the stage — this catastrophe in the domain of historical litera-
ture is nevertheless in itself a great gain for scientific history. The
author we have just cited was able to name, along with "chance," an-
other historical factor, impersonal but none the less absolutely concrete,
which must be substituted for those "^ajth^rjar^-oi-Bas " whom science —
had found bankrupt. MrJ^prcrpypviph apconnts thp minority nfLXkoifrry
Donskoi an especially favourable moment in the development of the
"grand principality of Moscow. "In this circumstance" — that the
"gatherer" was nine years old — "was comprised an extraordinarily fa-
vourable condition for the progressive development of Muscovite terri-
tory. During the minority of a prince the administration was in the
hands of the boyars. . . . The boyars needed rich ' feedings. ' 1 The
fewer the princes, the more of these 'feedings.' The boyars were, then,
the natural partisans of a unificatory policy."
From this, it might seem, it would have been but a step to let the per-
sonalities of the "gatherers" rest in peace and to treat the Muscovite
state of the fifteenth century as a vast association of feudal landholders
which, by virtue of especially favourable conditions, swallowed up all
remaining associations. \But our authorjd oes not venture this step ; he
continues to occupy his reader with the thoughts and deeds of the Ivans,
Dmitrys, and Vasilys, although he has just demonstrated their political
insignificance./;, So strong is the tradition, far older than may be thought
and inherited by our scholarly university historiography from the pre-
historic period of Russian recording of events, that even the Nikonovsky
Chronicle had the Muscovite government carrying on negotiations with
the Kazan tsar, Utemish-Girei, although the chronicle itself had noted
that this "political actor" was but two years old (and would hardly be
carrying on negotiations except with his nurse). But what in the old
Russian chronicler was symbolism noteworthy in its naivete becomes in
a contemporary historical work either artless copying or stupid super-
stition. The reader will not be disappointed, therefore, if on the one
hand we do not pay special attention to the distinctive characteristics of
"appanage Rus" — for these characteristics are found on a more ex-
1 Lucrative posts as provincial governors; cf. infra, pp. 119 et seq.
92 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
tended scale in the Rus of Moscow — and if on the other hand we leave
to the old official textbooks the exploits of the "gatherers" and do not
discuss the question as to whether they were men politically ungifted or
politically talented — the more so since over and above everything else
the scantiness of the data regarding their personal qualities renders the
last question quite hopeless.
Among the impersonal factors which determined the "gathering" of
Rus around Moscow one of the first places was long since assigned to
economics. The original observations along this line, made by Prof.
TOyuchevsky and accessible to all in the pages of his Lectures, were sup-
plemented and further developed by Zabelin in his History of the City
of Moscow [in Russian]. The latter author discusses the question, not in
the narrow compass of the history of "appanage Rus" and the forma-
tion of the principality of Moscow, but somewhat more broadly. He
points to the role of the Moskva-Klyazma trade-route, which united the
industrial region of the Kriviches of Smolensk with the largest centre
in the Volga country of the tenth and eleventh centuries — the "Great
City" of the Bolgars with its fair, the forerunner of those of Makaryev
and Nizhny-Novgorod. In the immediate vicinity of Moscow two nodes
of this route may be observed — o ne on the Rj yjg &khodna (or Vskhodna),
thg jotheg-Qn the Yauza ./ The presence of a numerous population around
tne former is shown by a mass of burial-mounds (kurgans). The com-
mercial significance of the Yauza and of the portage from it to the
Klyazma is still evident in the name of the village, Big Toll-house, a
reminder that a customs-house once existed here. It is significant that
the Yauza is definitely mentioned by the chronicle (under 1156) in
its report of the building of the "town" of Moscow, i.e., of the earliest
Muscovite fortress. Evidently this geographical reference had practical
value for contemporaries. But on the route from western Jius-to the
Volga pmitrtiy- Mnannw ^w«ua_f>n1 y mnp o f the n xidal-points ; it b ecame the
most important of t bxm-jQiily thanks_to_jhe fact that- the old highway
of eastern Jxade was intersected by t.h p ne w rnntp nf wp<afprn trad p j from
Novgorod to southern and eastern Rus, to Nizhny and Ryazan. The
route by the Volga from Novgorod the Great to Novgorod the Low
describes a sharp arc, a goodly portion of which, moreover, was in the
hands of Great Novgorod's nearest neighbour and most constant an-
tagonist, the grand prince of Tver. /The route through Volok na Lame
[Portage on the Lama], which belonged to Novgorod, and then by the
Moskva and the Klyazma, was almost a chord of this arc and far less
dependent on political vicissitudes. The princes of Moscow in early
times seemed very mild and reasonable ; from them Novgorod saw no
immediate danger ; and in the first half of the fourteenth century there
was no more usual political combination than the alliance of Novgorod
FORMATION OF THE MUSCOVITE STATE 93
and Moscow against Tver. In their turn the princes of Moscow found
nothing dishonourable in entering the veche-town "at the will of Nov-
gorod . . . and glad were the Novgorodans to have their wish." "When
the prince of Moscow^ thanks to the adroitness of his policy towarcTtEe
Horde, Wame hprprh'tary grand pr ince of Vladimir, the Novgorod-
Moscow alliance became an economic necessity for both parties : the Rus
of Suzdal, now the Rus of Moscow, could not dispense with European
wares, which, in the main, came by the Baltic route ; while the Novgorod
gost "in the lowlands," in the modern provinces of Moscow, Vladimir,
and Nizhny-Novgorod, as of old could not dispense with the protection
of the grand prince of Vladimir. "And our gost shall trade in the land
of Suzdal" stipulated Novgorod's treaties with the grand princes. But,
it must be noted, the necessity was not equally pressing on both sides.
Whereas Novgorodan traders, in case the Rus of Suzdal was closed to
them, lost their chief market and almost lost their raison d'etre, Moscow
had besides Novgorod another outlet to Western Europe. Under 1356 the
chronicles mention the presence in Moscow of "gosts of Surozh, " traders
from the Genoese colonies in the Crimea. "But, in all probability, even
earlier than this year Genoese traders were already well acquainted with
the road to Moscow, inasmuch as northern trade, which until the
thirteenth century had been directed along the Dnieper to Kiev, had
shifted, being directed along the Don through Moscow ; even before the
Tatar invasion the Don had been extensively used by these same Italian
traders from Genoa, who concentrated their businesses at the mouths
of the Don and in the Crimean towns of Surozh and Kaf a. ' '
The mention of "gosts of Surozh" explains Moscow's rather un-
expected Italian connexions, a monument of which remains to this day
in the Kremlin of Moscow, with its Cathedral of the Assumption built
by Aristotle Fioraventi and its Gates of the Saviour built by the "archi-
tect" Pietro- Antonio "from the town of Mediolano. " And the inter-
national, as well as the local, significance of Moscow is made clear by yet
another, far more important fact. Even in the fourteenth century Ivan
Kalita's capital was becoming a large bourgeois centre, the population
of which was beginning to conduct itself in almost Novgorodan fashion.
Of the size of this population the chronicles give some indication. In
1382, when after Tokhtamysh's attack the slain Muscovites were being
buried, Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoi — who had fled to the North from
the Tatar havoc and who reappeared just at the time of the burial of the
slain — paid a poltina 2 for each forty corpses, spending 300 rubles in all ;
that is, 24,000 men were buried. It is true that this figure would include
not only the^townsmen'liV the narrow sense but also the population of
the immediate vicinity, who had sought protection from the Tatars
2 1 poltina = 50 copecks.
94 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
behind the walls of the town; on the other hand, not all, of course, of
the urban population had been exterminated; on the contrary, one is
led to believe that a great many survived or were led away into captivity.
In 1390 the chronicle notes the great Moscow fire, in which were burned
down some thousands of homesteads; five years later Moscow burned
again, and again "some thousands" of homesteads were burned down.
Judging by all these data, the population of the city toward the end
of the fourteenth century may be estimated at some tens of thousands.
For the Middle Ages, when in all Europe there were hardly three towns
with a population of a hundred thousand, this is not inconsiderable ; in
the Russia of that time, with the exception of Novgorod and Pskov, there
was no town larger.
The numbers of the townsmen of Moscow compel us to modify the
very widespread concept of Moscow as an overgrown prince's manor, a
concept much indebted for its popularity to the same Zabelin we have
just cited. However numerous the household of a prince of Moscow,
it fell far short of the tens of thousands of Moscow's townsmen; and
however tempting it may be to see in the Weavers', Armourers', Bakers',
and Drapers' Lanes traces of the settlements of court artisans, it is
more prudent to see in them the Muscovite doubles of the Carpenters'
or Potters' Quarters of Great Novgorod. In the fourteenth century,
whenever the townsmen of Moscow appear as a political force, they
present an aspect altogether unlike that of a prince's menials. Such a
case was Tokhtamysh's attack (August, 1382), already referred to. . The-
Tatars 4railr^app««r*d-on--tlie_Russian fron ti e rs qu i te - unex pecte dly, and
the Muscovite - authorities, secular and spiritual, had lost their heads.
Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoi, so recently the victor on the field of
Kulikovo, fled first to Pereyaslavl and later, finding even this place too
unsafe, to Kostroma. .He -left, the -metropolitan -i n charg e i n-the-cityj,
but the metropolitan — Cyprian of scarcely honourable memory — was,
of course, still less inclined to military exploits than was the grand
prince himself. To Cyprian Tver seemed a safe refuge, and he decided
.to flee thither. /\The "eminent boyars" also evidently prepared to
follow the example of the prince and the metropolitan, leaving the
townsmen to defend themselves from the foe as best they might./' And j
behold, relates the chronicler, "the men of the town were disturbed ' j
and agitated as though drunk, and they convoked a veche ; rioters, good-
for-nothings, rascals rang all the bells and held a veche; and not only
did they not allow those wishing to leave the city to pass, but they
plundered them . . . they stood at all the city gates, from above they
threw stones, and below on the ground they stood with boarspears and
pikes and with naked weapons allowing no one to go forth from the
city." Later, probably realising that in case of a siege the panic-
FORMATION OF THE MUSCOVITE STATE 95
stricken metropolitan and the boyars, and especially Grand Princess
Eudocia, who was also hastening to get herself out of the city, would be
of no use, the y l et them go but confiscated all their possessions. The
chronicler, whose sympathy, as is evident from this excerpt, was
on the side of the propertied authorities, would have been very glad
to reduce the whole affair to a drunken riot, vigorously emphasising
the bfeaking-into of the boyars' cellars and the plundering of the
"lords' meads." But undoubtedly the "men of the town" were about
serious business ; they were organising that very defence of the city, the
possibility of which the metropolitan and "eminent boyars" had doubted,
and they so organised it that the Tatars, after an unsuccessful assault,
were compelled to resort to craft in order to take the town. On the
wallsfof Moscow Tokhtamysh had perceived, along with old missile
weapons, such innovations of military technique as cross-bows (arbalasts)
and even cannon, which were still novelties even in Western Europe.
All t.hpsp pnginps t.hp hmrr gpnis of Mosco w (the chronicle mentions a
"clothier" named Adam, probably an Italian) ha ndled most successfully.
But against all these Western innovations the Tatars found a Russian
weapon, old and tried. There-^weraj n Tokhtamysh 's army two Russi an
princes, brothers-in-law of Dmitry Donskoi, who undertook to take oath -,
to the men of Moscow that the Tatars would do them no injury if they
surrendered thecity. The townsmen, trusting the word of the princes,
opened the gates; the city was plundered, and the inhabitants slain or
led away into captivity. The whole narrative is a perfect portrayal of •
the relationship existing between the "people" and the "authorities" /
in appanage Rus — between the "builders" and "gatherers," selling their
city to the Tatars, and the "rabble," capable of defending themselves
from the Tatars far better without the "gatherers" than with them.
The events of 1382 are not isolated in Muscovite history. Through
the following two centuries, to the middle of the seventeenth, the towns-
men of Moscow from time to time appeared as a political force, indicat-
ing that the Russian bourgeoisie was far less inarticulate then than at
times nearer our own. "But if the presence of a large commercial centre
with abundant money resources 3 offered a point of support for the
unificatory policy of the principality of Moscow, the active role in this
policy was not taken by the commercial city. Had it been, the result
would have been the formation of a new town province like that of -A ,
Kiev, not a feudal monarchy such, as- w r as the Muscovite state. A priori
it can be assumed that feudal elements played a large part in the
creation of this state, and that in the "gathering of Rus" the large
3 Some idea of these resources is afforded by the levy of 200,000 rubles (some 20
million gold rubles in pre-war currency) made by Makhmet on Vasily [II] the
Dark in 1446.
A
96 HISTORY OF RUSSIA /"
landholders were of determining importance. We have seen that their
importance has been duly appraised by modern science, which, in the
person of Prof. Sergeyevich, has recognised that the real "gatherers
of Rus" were the boyars, who displayed far more alertness and under-
standing than did the nominal founders of the Muscovite state. There
is therefore no need to labour this point. We have already surveyed
„4n detail the political significance of large landholding in early Rus. 4
We know that at the head of each appanage principality stood not a
single person, the prince, but a group of persons, the prince and the
boyar duma, and that this circumstance guaranteed the continuity of
panage policies even when — as frequently happened in appanage
days — the nominal wielder of state authority was not available, whether
because he was a minor, or at the Horde, or in captivity. A struggle
between appanage principalities should be visualised as a struggle be-
tween groups of feudatories defending their own interests at all costs.
In the first episode of the struggle between Moscow and Tver, at the
very beginning of the J^ourteenth century, the princes scarcely appear
on the Russian stage > the}' are far away suing for thrones, for juridical
title to the dignity of grand prince is obtained at the Horde from the
"tsar." The actual struggle on the spot was carried on by the boyars.
The boyars of Tver waged the war with Moscow, and Tver's army was
headed, not by the prince but by the boyar Akinf ■ Moscow 's army was
nominally headed by Ivan (the future Kalita), a younger brother of
Prince Yury, who had gone to the Horde, but he took not a step with-
out his boyars. Some years later Dmitry of Tver led an army against
Nizhny-Novgorod and Vladimir and acquired the throne of the grand
princes. But all this is only the customary symbolism of the chronicle ;
the pretender to the grand princedom was but twelve years old, and
what happened to him was literally the same as what the boyars of
Moscow fifty years later did with their infant princes when, taking
all three grandsons of Kalita (the oldest, Dmitry, the future Donskoi,
was then not yet twelve), they went on a campaign against Moscow's
rival, Prince Dmitry of Suzdal. Nor, under the grand princedom of
Moscow, did the Muscovite feudatories by any means lose this habit of
acting independently ; on the contrary, they became all the more power-
ful and they were all the more numerous, the more extended and the
more powerful became the patrimony of Kalita. In 1446 when She-
myaka, taking advantage of the unsuccessful war waged by Vasily [II]
the Dark with the Tatars, seized Moscow and took Vasily himself captive,
he was faced with the combined resistance of the Muscovite boyars,
headed by the Princes Ryapolovsky. This resistance compelled Shem-
yaka in the following year to return the throne to the opponent he
4 Cf. supra, Chap. II.
FORMATION OF THE MUSCOVITE STATE 97
had deposfi^-asd^iiirtiied. The conventional antithesis of "boyars"
an3 =33 in : vil^?n Tr ~as centrifugal and centripetal forces, respectively, in
the young state of Moscow is one of the most unfortunate survivals
of the idealistic method, which represented the "state" as some inde-
pendent force acting upon society from above. In _ actual fact the
stat e in appanage Rus was, as alwa ys simply a oortain form o £-
-organisation of the dominant social elements, and the princes of Moscow,
for their part, did not think of denying the fact that they ruled their
principality, not alone but jointly with the boyars, as "first among
equals." An even more flattering characterisation of the boyars is
ascribed by the chronicle to Dmitry Donskoi who, it reports, said at
his death: "And you were called with me, not boyars but princes of
my land." Even if this be literary fiction, the advice of his uncle,
Simeon the Proud, to his successors, ' ' hearken to the old boyars, ' ' occurs
in an official document, his will. Similarly, the most practical politicians
of the time, the diplomats of the Horde, unhesitatingly and frankly
recognised that Moscow 's^course of action depended upon the personnel
of the boyar duma.
Granted then that the Muscovite state was the creation of a feudal
society, it was inevitable that in its construction a conspicuous role
should be played by the Church, the greatest of the feudal organisations
of appanage Russia as it was of mediaeval Europe generally. It would
seem impossible to exaggerate the importance of Orthodoxy in the history
of Russian autocracy; yet it must be acknowledged that until the
appearance of the second volume of the well-known work of Prof.
Golubinsky everything that was said on this point was too weak and,
what is more important, beside the mark. The emphasis was laid chiefly
on the influence of ecclesiastical propaganda upon the growth of the"
idea of autocracy. It is true that Moscow's political ideology was, first
and foremost, ecclesiastical ideology ; that the tsar of Moscow was thought
of by his subjects, not so much as a national sovereign, the ruler of a
definite people, aV a ruler of the whole world, the tsar of all Orthodox
Christendom. We may see extraordinarily vivid and clear reflections
of this central idea of Muscovite official publicism; but publicism does
not make history. What^was the role of the-- Church-in the jgrgation
of the objective conditions which called Muscovite tsarism to life ? What
did the Church give, not in word but in deed, as a definite organisation?
How was the policy of the state being created under its influence de-
termined in the interests of this organisation? Here are questions, an-
swers to which were first supplied by the material collected by the
above-mentioned historian of the Russian Church, material itself entirely
objective and devoid of any idealistic elaboration.
Feudalisation of the Orthodox Church had begun long before the period
98 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
now under consideration. Even in the Rus of Kiev and Novgorod the
monasteries were large landholders, and metropolitans and bishops-exer-
cised a large share of political authority ; among other things, they were
the judges over the clergy in all cases in general, arid in a large number
of cases over the whole population in general. >/f3ut, being appointed to
their sees either by the local veche or by the local prince, the Old Russian.
_bishops_ were _ d_epenjieiit-oii these secular political-forces, and we have
already seen how at Novgorod party strife was immediately reflected in
a change of archbishops. The monasteries, on the other hand, frequently
owed their very existence to the princes ; each princely dynasty had its
own monastery, in which the members of this dynasty were buried and,
if anything interrupted their political careers, took the tonsure. Such
a monastery, independent of petty secular authorities, constituted a sort
of prince's manor, and, therefore, of course, offered no political opposi-
tion to the princes. In a word, the dependence of the Church on the
state in the Rus of Kiev and Novgorod had been less than its dependence
in the modern, post-Petrine period only in so far as the Church of the
veche town had been a democratic organisation. The-Chnxch-owedrrts-
emancipation from this dependence to an event most grievous for the
rest of Russia — the conquest of Rus by the Tatars. The supreme political,
centre ef Rus was transf erred Jp_the_Horde. The bishop, except in the
case of Novgorod, became just as independent of the veche of his native
town as dj xl the princeWB ut at the same time he~eealjed tu be dependent
on the prince, at least juridically, for juridically the legal position of the
Church was now defined by the khan's yarlyk. 5 In these charters
granted by "infidel" tsars the privileges of the Russian Church were so
definitely and so broadly consolidated as they had never been under
Orthodox Russian princes ; not without reason were the seven yarlyks of
the Horde cited even by sixteenth-century metropolitans in defending
the rights of the Church from the encroachments of secular authority.
The first of these yarlyks, dating from the thirteenth century, perhaps
thirty, or at most forty years after the catastrophe of the Tatar con-
quest, granted to the Orthodox clergy not only the broadest liberty of
religious profession but also a whole series of "liberties" of a purely
civil character. "Priests, monks and all men of God" were exempted
from all levies, including the Tatar tribute. The privilege was extended
to all Church folk, i.e., including laymen in the service of the Church.
The khan's charters thus established for the Church the most complete
immunity enjoyed anywhere in Europe in the Middle Ages; in this
particular Eastern Orthodoxy had no occasion to envy Western Catholi-
cism. The reasons for such graciousness on the part of the "infidel"
(at first pagan; later, from Uzbek on, Mahometan) conquerors of Russia
5 A letter from the Tatar khan granting or confirming a privilege, etc.
FORMATION OF THE MUSCOVITE STATE 99
toward the Orthodox faith, its representatives, and even toward all in
any way in its service, are quite explicitly set forth in the yarlyks. In
vain does Golubinsky seek to spare the last remnants of ecclesiastical
historical decency by attributing the attitude of the Tatar rulers to
their customary tolerance; the whole question was far simpler. The
yarl yk given to the Metropoli tan Alrvnn (o 1^7^ f nr pra mple, says
\ /"Tsar Jenghiz and the first tsars, our fathers, rewarded the Church
Js folk who prayed for them. . . . " Of course, it was public, official,
<7 "prayer" that was meant, not private prayer; the latter was a matter
for the conscience of the prelate and did not trouble the conscience of
the Horde ; its viewpoint on all matters was strictly practical. What
was important to the khan was that in Russia he should be formally
acknowledged sovereign by those whose voice had weight and authority
in the eyes of the masses. The Tatars understood uncommonly well the
elementary truth that it is possible by arms t>cp#fquer a country but
impossible to hold it by the aid of arms alone.. They could not fail to
appreciate that the Church was putting a±_thpir disposal it s influence
over the faithful, and in return for this it was but natural to reward
the Church w ith privileges. That these privileges hampered the au-
thority of the local secular rulers could not, of course, fail to please
the Horde. The alliance between the Orthc^ies-^hurch_ajid the Taiar__
khan was in the early days equally advantageo us for both sides ': that in
the sequel the alliance would prove" mot 1 *? advantageous for the Church
than for the Horde, the Tatars could not foresee, precisely because, as
politicians, they were too practical. Meanwhile they secured the support
of the greatest political force, permitting them to substitute the spiritual
for the material sword, which it was not convenient to draw from the
scabbard too often. With the exception of Tver, the princes of which
were not on good terms with the Church and were therefore persecuted
by her, we nowhere have before the fourteenth century a great national
uprising against the khan ; an d whpn thp uprising of the princes began . ,
under the headship of Moseow, the Church had already succeeded in
making permanent all the advantages offered to her by the yarlyks.
The Church, for a time in the service of the Tatar "tsar," did not
by any means immediately assume a similar-rtslationship toward the
grand prince, the future-4s ar , of Moscow-: In Russia the question of
secular versus spiritual supremacy could be posed as late as the seven-
teenth century, but in the fourteenth century no such question had
arisen ; Simeon the Proud, to whom the khan handed over 3I.1 the Russian
princes," frankly and simply recommended to his successors obedience in
eYerything. to "our father the prelate Alexis" exactly as he recommended
obedience to the boyars— but to the prelate first. From this will of
Prince Simeon it has been deduced that the Metropolitan Alexis was a
100 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
sort of president of the boyar duma ; but from later published Greek
documents we know that after the death of Grand Prince Ivan II,
Simeon's younger brother, Alexis was de jure regent of the principality
of Moscow, which de facto he probably ruled until his own death in 1378.
This circumstance must never be forgotten when we read of the "serv-
ices ' ' rendered by the Church to the princes of Moscow in their struggle
with their rivals — services, as we shall presently see, not always above
reproach. For example, in 1368 ' ' Grand Prince Dmitry and his father,
the Most Reverend Metropolitan Alexis, lovingly invited to Moscow
'rince Michael of Tver" in order to submit his dispute with Moscow to
an arbitration court; while there they "seized him and arrested the
boyars who were about him," matters evidently having taken such a
course that the Musc ovite g ovaim jnent T headed by Alexis , found it con-
venient and seemly to get rid of its opponent with the aid of this
trap. As often h appened in similar cases, the role of the eighteen-year-
old Grand Prince Dmitry, who even in manhood was not distinguished
for his strength of will, was purely_.symbolic. In collisions of this kind
the dual functions of the metropolitan-regent made Moscow particularly
invulnerable; if she committed a sin, she could herself remit it; what
was more, she could subject her foes, in addition to secular chastisements,
to ecclesiastical punishments of every kind. 5 When the ill-starred Michael
of Tver succeeded in escaping from the Muscovite trap and in raising
against Moscow the inevitable Litliuania r Alexis, not strong enough t-o
injure the prince of Tver physically, attacked him spiritually, excom-
municating him and his allies,. Sometimes it was possible to combine
the operation of the two "swords" — the secular and the spiritual — with
an effect still more striking. So it happened when the holy Sergius ap-
peared in the capital city of Prince Boris of Nizhny-Novgorod, who had
been disobedient to Moscow, and closed all the churches, i.e., laid an
interdict on the whole city, while under its walls soon appeared the
Muscovite regiments ; judging by his biography, Boris was very stubborn
and put much trust in his kinship with Olgerd of Lithuania (he was his
son-in-law), but at this juncture he hastened to yield.
The cases we have cited suggest two hypotheses : first, that Muscovite
policy determined the direction of ecclesiastical policy ; second, that the
fusion of the two powers, spiritual and secular, was the result of an
accidental and personal circumstance, of the position of -Alexis as-metr-o-
politan and as regent of the grand principality of Moscow. But the
first proposition would not always be true, And the second proposition is
false. We have instances of similar fusion under Alexis' successors —
more important cases, at that, in which the guiding role falls to the lot of
the interests of the Church. Such was the history of the metropolitan's
controversy with Novgorod over the "month court," the undoubted
FORMATION OF THE MUSCOVITE STATE 101
prologue Jx) the catastrophe that put an end to Novgorod's freedom; the
subjection of the dioce se^oTNovgor Q_d to the metropolitan of Moscow was
not attained until Novgorod was politically subjected to Moscow.
But in the history of this subjection ecclesiastical matters and inter-
ests are so intertwined that it is quite impossible to imagine the "fall of
Novgorod" apart from ecclesiastical policy. In this the greatest episode
of the "gathering" policy of Moscow's princes it is particularly evident
to what extent, and not merely in ideology, the Muscovite state was
created by the Church. The ideology quite accurately reflected the real
relationships, while, as is hardly necessary to say, the real essence of
the matter lay, not in those ideals of which the Church officially declared
herself the bearer but in the Church as a definite feudal organisation.
First of all, it was on ecclesiastical soil that the severance took place
between Novgorod and her younger brother, Pskov, an event exception-
ally advantageous for Moscow's policy. If the metropolitan of Moscow
exploited the Church of Novgorod, the archbishop of Novgorod stood
in the same relation to the Church of Pskov. The development of this
ecclesiastical struggle gradually led the men of Pskov to desire a separate
archbishop ; this desire, of course, they made known to Moscow, the
ecclesiastical centre. Their request was not granted, for the history
of the "month court" in Novgorod had made the Moscow authorities
ill-disposed toward an increase in the number of veche churches; but
they utilised the ecclesiastical antagonism between Pskov and Novgorod
to make sure of an alliance with the men of Pskov in case of a war
between Moscow and Novgorod. ^Vhen this struggle came under Ivan
.III (1471), success was assured largely by the fact that, whereas the grand
prince of Moscow had entirely at his disposal the forces of all his
vassals, Novgorod was deprived of military assistance from her eccle-
siastical lands ; for the metropolitan of Moscow, by no means for the first
time, openly made common cause with his prince, while the archbishop
of Novgorod lacked the courage to precipitate an open schism in the
Church.^ -Ecclesiastical relationships even gave the final rupture between
Moscow and Novgorod its juridical form; juridically the "worker of
piety," Grand Prince Ivan III, did not march against the veche and
the freedom of Novgorod; he went to re-establish Orthodoxy, which had
been shaken in Novgorod owing to her alliance with the "Latins," per-
sonified by the Polish-Lithuanian King Casimir. This-was~a- crusade^ all
the participants in which were guaranteed the Kingdom of Heaven and
remission of all the sins inevitably connected with war. Metropolitan
Philip and the whole "holy synod" solemnly blessed Ivan III when he
set out on the campaign "as Samuel blessed David against Goliath."
The public opinion of Moscow was thoroughly permeated with this point
of view, and the spirit of a crusade is superbly sustained by the Moscow
I '/
102 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
chronicle: " Infidels know not God from the beginning, but these Nov-
gorodans were in Christianity so many years, and at the end have begun
to desert to Latinism ! The grand prince went upon them, not as upon
Christians but as upon pagans and deserters from Orthodoxy ; they have
deserted not only their sovereign but also the Lord God him&elf. As
formerly his great-grandfather Grand Prince Dmitry armed himself
upon the godless Mamai, so also the Orthodox Grand Prince Ioann went
upon these deserters," relates the chronicler./ 7 And all the motifs of
the individual details of the struggle are reduced to the same basic
level. "This Martha the Accursed," says the chronicler of the woman
who headed the anti-Moscow party, "wanted to seduce the whole people,
to turn them from the right way, and to join them to Latinism, be-
cause the darkness of the Latin seduction had blinded the eyes of her
spirit. ..."
The "darkness" of religious fanaticism actually so beclouds the last
minutes of Great Novgorod that it is hard at first glance to discern the
actual causes of the catastrophe. But they are significant, and they
remind us of those two factors in the unificatory policy of Moscow which
we_ha3»--alrea4y--iK»ted; — These were the boyars of Moscow and the
bnnrffpnkjf nf Mosnnw. who must bv no means be forgotten although,
because of the scantiness of records and the unwontedness of putting
their needs into literary form, they have yielded first place to the men
who knew how to speak "from divinity." Nowhere, it is true, do we
hear their voice ; but the facts speak for them and speak no less elo-
quently than do the chronicles of Moscow. The first great collision
between Moscow and Novgorod, under Grand Prince Vasily I, in 139
1398, was a highly typical "struggle for markets^" For the first time
Moscow made bold to take away from Novgorod the Dvina and all the
North Country 6 the chief source of peltry, of which Novgorod held the
European monopoly.- This was not simply a robber raid; it was a
colonial war in the grand style, in which Moscow acted most cautiously,
evidently expecting to consolidate her seizure of the land. There is
extant a charter of Vasily I to the men of the Dvina ; it is an extremely
interesting one because it shows the direction in which internal relations
were developing in Novgorodan society, and how the policy of Moscow
took advantage of this development. The charter was given primarily
to the boyars and at the outset shows anxiety for their immunity, moral
as well as physical. On the other hand, a boyar might with impunity
not only "insult" a man under his authority but even slay him in a fit
of wrath. Thus we see that, if the lower classes in Novgorod were
inclined to eye Moscow with hope, feudal Moscow was by no means
6 Zavolochye, i.e., the territory beyond the watershed separating the basins of the
Volga and Northern Dvina.
FORMATION OF THE MUSCOVITE STATE 103
inclined to look upon the lower classes with favour ; she was striving to
assimilate those elements of Novgorod society which were markedly
feudal. Yet, out of the mass of "common people" the Dvina charter dis-
tinguishes one element about whose interests Moscow is no less con-
cerned than about the interests of the boyars. This element was the
merchantry of the Dvina. The charter frees the commercial class of the
Dvina, not only from imposts but also from the toils of Moscow's judi-
ciary; they were to be judged either by their own local authorities or
directly by the grand prince himself. The prospects unfolded by Moscow
before the- landholders^ and_. merchantry of the Dvina were so alluring
that a Muscovite party was formed there, which all but succeeded in
effecting a union of Novgorod's wealthiest colony to the grand princedom
of MoscojwJyBut this would have been such a catastrophe for Novgorod
that in the' struggle over the seizure of the Dvina she strained all her
forces and in the end was victorious. The Dyjna andjthe North Country
remained Jpx the tim.ejjL.the hands of the Novgorodans ; Moscow yielded
but for a time, firmly resolving, nevertheless, that postponement-should
_n^t_sj3ell_loss. Twice subsequently Dvina emigres with a Muscovite army
""a ppeared in - the North Country, suddenly, without declaration of war,
plundered, slew, and with their captives took refuge in the domains of
the grand prince. Only strife over the throne of Moscow, in the reign
of Vasily the Dark, checked this colonial war. When Ivan III set out
on his crusade against Novgorod (1471), a special detachment of
the Muscovite army was despatched to the Dvina, which it conquered
without great difficulty ; the Novgoroda n chronicler fr R nkly amisps -4he
men of theJDviiia_ of treaso n. But it was hardly worth while to be much
disturDe^aDoulTthe seizure of one of Novgorod's colonies at the moment
when the metropolis itself, with all its colonies, was about to fall prey
to Moscow. And hardly had this come about than the princes of Moscow
put an end to the commercial independence of Novgorod ; in 1494,
quibbling over an insignificant pretext, Ivan III closed the German
Courtyard in Novgorod, arresting in the process forty-nine merchants
and confiscating merchandise to the value of 96,000 marks silver (about
half a million gold rubles in pre-war money). This did not mean that
trade with the West was terminated, but merely that its centre had
passed to Moscow ; the bourgeoisie of Moscow took the place of the bour-
geoisie of Novgorod at the same time that Novgorod definitively and
irretrievably became the votchina of the prince of Moscow.
The enthusiasm of Muscovite public opinion for the "worker of
piety," Grand Prince Ivan III, had, as we see, a very material basis.
The townsmen of Moscow could not but sympathise with a campaign
which handed over to them the commercial hegemony of Rus. But still
more must the boyars of Moscow have sympathised with a deed in which
104 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
they had been the immediate leaders. \To the bourgeoisie of Moscow
Novgorod was a trade rival, the possessor of dainty morsels whieh
Moscow herself hankered for; similarly, to the boyars a region/rich
in silver was an enviable source of levies and imposts of all kin^; and
it was with good reason that these levies and imposts had made the Dvina
such an. apple of discord-, Moscow's financial exploitation of Novgorod
had begun even earlier than the colonial wars. As early as 1384, after
the devastation of the principality of Moscow by Tokhtamysh, Dmitry
Donskoi had tried to shift to Novgorod part (perhaps the larger part)
of the Tatar contribution, assessing on the Novgorodans the so-called
/ ' blackjeyy_ll (a capitation tax). This time the Novgorodans succeeded
in evading payment, but Moscow did not forget its pretensions and two
years later, having recovered from the Tatar havoc, sent an army to
Novgorod; Dmitry Donskoi succeeded in getting 8,000 (in pre-war
money 800,000 gold) rubles. This contribution served as the starting
point for further disputes ; the Novgorodans regarded it as something
extraordinary and unusual ; the Muscovite government saw in it a prece-
dent, of which it made use ever more and more frequently.- Both Vasily I
and Vasily II demanded the "black levy " ; and toward the end Novgorod
had begun to pay it, apparently without haggling, especially if Moscow
"requested" the levy urbanely and civilly. But the appetite of the
princes of Moscow grew with eating. During the protracted feud be-
tween Vasily II and his uncle Yury and the latter 's sons, Vasily Squint-
eye and Shemyaka, each of the contending princes watched his oppor-
tunity to snatch from the wealthy city something for himself, under
the pretext, however, that Novgorod, while maintaining neutrality in
these domestic feuds of Moscow, had harboured his rivals. It was on
these grounds that Vasily II extorted from the Novgorodans a fresh
contribution of 8,000 rubles just as his grandfather had done. One
cannot but see that the city's resistance to these extortions became ever
more and more feeble; in proportion as "the principality of Moscow"
and "north-eastern Rus" became fused into one concept, Novgorod fell
economically more and more into twofold dependence on the grand prince
of Moscow. On the one hand, Novgorod, as of old, could not get along
without grain from the Low Country; Moscow could always reduce her
to obedience through starvation, and it was vain to hope for help from
any of the/Other princes, because not one of them now dared to oppose
Moscow. On the other hand, the Novgorodan merchant needed the Low
Country as a market, while the Low Country was now a single realm
under the headship of the prince of Moscow ; in case of a quarrel with
Moscow, there was no place where he could either buy or sell. Moscow
understood this and pressed ever harder upon the liberties of the veche,
not because she was conscious of the theoretical incompatibility of the
FORMATION OF THE MUSCOVITE STATE 105
veche with the Muscovite order of things or was even interested in this
aspect of the matter, but because the veche order of things impeded
the financial exploitation of the country. Vasily the Dark had suc-
ceeded in abolishing the sovereignty of Novgorod in fact when, after
the campaign of 1456, which once more showed .. the military wea kness
of the Jho-urgeoisi e. of . Novgorod, he forced the latter to renounce its
"veche charters," in other words, to acknowledge that the urban com-
munity alone could not issue laws without the sanction of the grand
prince. Charters now had force only if the seal of the grand prince
was appended to them. The significance of this limitation becomes quite
clear when we learn that by the same treaty of 1456 the "black levy"
was converted into a permanent tax, and judicial fines, "gifts" from
the provinces, and all traditional imposts were secured to the grand
prince. There was little in principle for Ivan III to add. It is note-
worthy that after his "crusade" in 1471 he left the administration of
Novgorod unchanged. ^ln Novgorod's treaty with him after this war —
the last treaty to be concluded by the still nominally free city — are pre-
served all the stereotyped limitations of the prince 's authority : not to
deal justice without the posadnik, and not to apportion the provinces
without him, and to administer the provinces through men of Novgorod.
All this was of slight moment to the conqueror; his chief interest was
that "justice [i.e., judicial revenues] be not taken from the governors,"
that "fines be not concealed," and that Novgorod divide with him, the
grand prince, the new fines that the "code of Novgorod" introduced;
and over and above this he took a contribution of 15,000 (1,500,000
pre-war) rubles. The chief pretext for future controversy — the transfer
of appellate jurisdiction to Moscow, contrary to the rule of all the
treaties — likewise came down to a financial question, and the Nov-
gorodans knew what they were doing when they proposed to Ivan III,
in return for restoration of the old order, a payment of 1,000 rubles
every four years. But. the. grand prince reckoned, and he was prob-
ably right, that keeping the right to administer justice in the hands of
Moscow would yield still more. The final ruin of the city, expressed
in the transfer to the Lowlands'of 7,000 of the men of substance — the
prosperous bourgeoisie of Novgorod — in part corresponded to the inter-
ests of the Muscovite competitors of Novgorod, in part aimed at rooting
out all resistance to financial exploitation. The area of the "feedings"
of the boyars of Moscow, geographically doubled, now embraced the
richest province of the Russia of that time, and they made such exhaus-
tive use of the possibility opening before them, that thirty years after
the subjection, Grand- _Prin£e_ V asily III, json — of the M wo r ke r — of-
piety, " had to limit the judicial authority of his governor in Novgorod,
fearing that otherwise the land would be made an utter desert.
106 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
The coup d'etat effected in Novgorod by Ivan III was one of the very-
clearest episodes of the "gathering" policy. With the exception of the
struggle with Tver nowhere did open violence play such a role. But
extensive application of open violence did not in itself impart an excep-
tional character to the "conquest of Novgorod." Ivan III did not attack
Novgorod in order to abolish Novgorod's autonomy; he abolished it only
because it prevented him from- being as sovereign at Novgorod as at
MolTcow, i.e., from collecting revenues in the same way. He would
perhaps have left the veche — after his first victory, in 1471, he did not
touch it — had there been any hope of securing from it "observance of
the rights" of the grand prince of Moscow. Only recognition of the
fact that the veche would always be the bulwark of anti-Muscovite sedi-
tion compelled Ivan on this point to depart from that "custom" to
which he so liked to refer, not merely hypocritically, of course. Like all
the descendants of Ivan Kalita he was anything but a revolutionary.
The boyar council, once the ranks of the Novgorod boyars had been
purged, seemed more innocuous, and it was left, though it is true, we
do not know how long ; however it happened, in 1481 a treaty with the
Livonian Order was concluded by this very council, as had been done
of old.
The conservative character of Muscovite conquest was no less clearly
manifest in the subjugation of Pskov, the "younger brother" of Nov-
gorod, in the reign of Ivan 's son, Vasily III. The city had been deprived
by Ivan of all financial rights over the surrounding country ; these
rights passed to the Muscovite sovereign. When Vasily became grand
prince, the "better" men of Pskov, mainly from the ranks of the
bourgeoisie (the landholding aristocracy was not as strong in Pskov as
in Novgorod), were transported to central Russia, and in their place
appeared three hundred merchant families from Moscow and its de-
pendent towns. With them came to Pskov the Muscovite commercial
order of things : customs duties and probably other trade imposts and
dues. Pskov's former privilege of free trade, both at home and in the
lands of the Livonian Order, was destroyed ; and the merchants of Pskov
were put on the same footing as those of Moscow.
But Vasily confined himgelf^to the financial^ej3raojnic--«©«€ft re,s t~ f
Pskov ^(supplemented by the introduction of Muscovite coinage in place
of the native). AnjcLfliter-- h i s ti m e^we-fmdr in Pskovy-as- also in No vgorod,
elected officials. More than that : perhaps in imitation of the former
veche communities, these institutions became widespread in the sixteenth
century over the whole Muscovite state. In any case, it was not the
newly-come Muscovites that introduced a new order of things, but the
reverse; among the judicial elders of Pskov half were elected by the
Muscovite merchants who had been transferred to Pskov. And in this
FORMATION OF THE MUSCOVITE STATE 107
preservation of justice in the hands of the bourgeoisie Muscovite domi-
nance did not cut across the local order, but strengthened what had
independently taken form locally ; in Novgorod, as we know, the people
had long since been removed from the administration of justice, and in
Pskov evolution had proceeded in the same direction. To see here any
conscious preservation of local peculiarities is, of course, not justifiable.
But to remark this conservatism of Muscovite conquest is necessary in
order not to fall into the very widespread error of imagining the "gath-
ering of Rus" as the formation of a unitary state. The political unity
of the "Great Russian people" we find only at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, under the influence of economic conditions much
later than the "annihilation of the last appanages." The Muscovite
state of the seventeenth century was the result of the liquidation of
feudal relations in their earlier form, but the princes of Moscow, down
to Vasily III (d. 1533) inclusive, did not even think of such liquidation,
since they themselves were typical feudal holders. Their sole anxiety
was the punctual receipt of revenues, and their whole administration
regarded the matter in this light. The charters of the early sixteenth
century are nothing more than schedules of levies of the same type
as on any feudal votchina. Compare the charter which Grand Prince
Vasily granted to his "black peasants" with the charter that the Sol-
ovetsky Monastery gave its peasants, and you perceive no differences.
What afterwards became the function of the police state was effected by
the inhabitants themselves; "and they shall seek out a murderer, and
they shall surrender him to the governors and their bailiffs"; and fur-
ther, through their plenipotentiaries, "the older and the better men,"
they shall see that the governor and his bailiffs deal with the man ar-
rested. The grand prince's officials for their part only saw to it that
there was no "self -justice" in the provinces: "and self-justice is this:
who takes a thief redhanded and lets him go, and to the governor and to
his bailiff does not appear and they detect him in that . . . " ; in other
words, self -justice is the attempt to conceal judicial dues. The "ad-
ministration" of the grand prince of Moscow, like the "administration"
of his appanage forbear, was a special form of economic activity — and
only that. When they came to organise on a broad scale the police of
security, they imposed it "on the consciences" of the local inhabitants,
dismissing the governors by reason of their complete unfitness for such
business.
And the provinces themselves, gathered in such large number in the
hands of Kalita's descendants, continued to preserve their former
appanage physiognomy even territorially. The boundaries of these
provinces likewise remained inviolate, and very frequently the same
men administered them. The Obolensk principality in the middle of
108 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
the sixteenth century was still entirely in the hands of the Princes
Obolensky, who had long since become servitors of the prince of Moscow.
The grand prince of Yaroslavl, even after the annexation of Yaroslavl
by Moscow in 1463, remained as a governor of the grand prince of
Moscow, and after his death his son inherited this office. "In 1493, when
the Muscovite voevoda took Vyazma from Lithuania, and brought the
Princes Vyazemsky to Moscow, the grand prince invested them with
Vyazma as their votchina and bade them serve him. " If we add to this
that even in earlier times the independence of the petty appanage princes
was never complete, 7 we shall understand that the mediatised prince,
on ceasing to be an independent sovereign, might not perceive the fact,
continuing to give charters "according to custom like his grandfather
and father" even two generations after his mediatisation. Let us add
that it would be hard for him to explain that he had ceased to be
sovereign ; sovereign he continued to be, inasmuch as every landholder
was a sovereign.
7 External, diploamtic relations, in particular with the Horde, always constituted
a prerogative of the grand prince; the right to begin war and to conclude a peace
independently also belonged to him alone; he also collected the Tatar tribute and
what he did with it concerned him alone,
CHAPTER VII
IVAN THE TERRIBLE
I. The Agrarian Revolution of the First Half of the Sixteenth Century
The earliest historian of Tsar Ivan [IV] ''the Terrible" was Prince
Kurbsky, who wrote while Ivan was still on the throne of Moscow. In
explaining why Ivan ruined the Russian "princelings" "by whole fam-
ilies," Kurbsky sounds the motif: "they had great votchinas; I think
probably for that he destroyed them." Ivan's literary antagonist was
distinguished neither by talent as a writer nor by an especially profound
understanding of what was taking place around him. In mentioning
votchinas as the cause of the extermination of his kinsmen, Kurbsky
hoped perhaps to attain a very limited practical goal — to terrify the
Polish-Lithuanian aristocracy, who at the time the History of the Grand
Prince of Moscow was written were thinking of seating Ivan on the
Polish throne, too. But practical men, just because they lack a wide
horizon, frequently perceive the proximate causes of a phenomenon bet-
ter than do men who look at things through the eyes of an idealistic
theory. A long time was to pass before Kurbsky 's casual remarks about
the causes of the "tyranny" of Ivan the Terrible were appreciated.
Only in the 1870 's did the late Professor Zhdanov of St. Petersburg
adopt the view that the key to the whole tragedy of the oprichnina x
must be sought in the quarrel over land. In the meantime how many
interpretations has not Tsar Ivan's memory had to suffer! From the
most sublime, which, employing Hegel's method, made the autocrat of
^Moscow the tool of a universal spirit in its destructive-creative labour, to
the most realistic, which asserted that sixteenth-century Russia was a
madhouse — let any one of them be applied to Ivan IV, and there is no
tragedy at all.
To-day the agrarian background of the oprichnina may be said to be
a commonplace ; to-day there is no novelty in defending the views of
the sixteenth-century historian [Kurbsky]. To contest them would be
original. "The oprichnina was the first attempt to resolve one of the
contradictions of the Muscovite state order, ' ' says Prof. Platonov, one of
the most cautious of Russian historians; "it shattered the landholding
of the aristocracy as it had existed from antiquity." All hypotheses
about the "personality" of Ivan the Terrible lose importance before this
i(7/. infra, pp. 142 et seq.; see also Glossary.
109
110 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
simple, prosaic fact remarked by contemporaries three hundred years
ago. But this simple, prosaic fact requires explanation no less than
does the most complicated and romantic view of Ivan's "mental state."
Why did Ivan the Terrible need his boyars' votchinas when he himself
had enough such votchinas, when his father and grandfather, in putting
the finishing touches to the Muscovite state, had dwelt in peace with the
holders of these votchinas or at any rate had not gone so far as to ruin
them "by whole families"? The oprichnina was but the culminating
point of a long socio-political process, which had begun long before Ivan
the Terrible, which did not end until long after his death, and which
by its inexorable, elemental nature makes cogitation over "characters"
and "mental states" peculiarly idle. The policy of the oprichnina runs
like a red thread through the reigns of Ivan, Fedor, and Godunov alike,
from the 1560 's right up to the Troubles, with moments of relaxation
and moments of tension, but wholly unconnected with any one 's volition.
Twenty years in advance (in the 1540 's) the approach of the catastrophe
was already so definitely felt that it proved possible for a man 2 who
perhaps did not himself live to see the oprichnina with his own eyes,
to outline its programme. Yet in the 'forties even the "beneficent"
period of Ivan's reign, which Karamzin contrasted with the period of
his "tyranny," still lay in the future. As yet Ivan had not succeeded
in becoming either "good" or "evil," though it had already been
prophesied to him that if he " threatens not the nation with great terror,
then he will not bring law into the land." The nickname "Terrible"
was hovering in the air before the commission of the deeds which were
to secure him this nickname in history.
Ascending the throne in 1533, at the age of three, Ivan IV inherited
from his father and grandfather the votchina of Moscow in the feudal
guise which we have already characterised in detail. The grand prince
of Moscow was suzerain of innumerable landholders, both large and small,
who "held" their lands from him; one might be an appanage prince
who had passed into the service of Moscow, another a petty vassal, a
"knight" who, perhaps, had only yesterday been raised from amongst
the boyars' "servitors," if not their bondsmen, into the service of Mos-
cow. The distinction between these two strata of Moscow's vassals was
quantitatively enormous, but qualitatively they both belonged to the
one category ; theoretically both had agreed to serve their suzerain on
certain conditions, and the removal of these conditions ended their obli-
gation to serve. This was the theory. In practice observance of the
rights of a military servitor was wholly dependent on the good will, on
the strength, and on the ability of him whom he served. The free serv-
itors' celebrated "right of departure," of which one can read to one's
2 "Peresvetov," cf. infra, pp. 123 et seq.
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 111
heart's content in old courses of Russian history, either never existed
or existed in its traditional form right down to the time of Ivan the
Terrible ; the answer to this question will depend on whether or not one
considers this right apart from its connexion with "force." A powerful
prince never hesitated to execute a weak "departer." In 1379 Dmitry
Donskoi's government executed the boyar Velyaminov, who had "de-
parted " from the service of Moscow to that of Tver; at that time the
boyars of Tver and Ryazan passed freely into the service of Moscow, for
the prince of Moscow was stronger than their former suzerains. But
on paper the right of the military servitor to elect whom he would serve
was still recognised in 1537 and even in 1553. Under the former year
the chronicle relates that Prince Andrew of Staritsa, uncle of the grand
prince, who had recently taken oath "not to call away men from the
grand prince," began to send out letters to the pomeshchiks of Novgo-
rod, writing, "The grand prince is young, and the boyars hold the state,
and whom have you to serve ? Come to serve me, and I am glad to make
grants to you." The boyars who then held the state ordered those
pomeshchiks who had been seduced to the "granting" of the prince of
Staritsa to be beaten with the knout and to be hanged "along the Nov-
gorod highway, not together, but all the way to Novgorod." In 1553
these same boyars, during what at the time all believed to be the fatal
illness of Ivan, deliberated whether "to serve the young to the exclusion
of the old," the infant son of the grand prince to the exclusion of the
adult descendant of Ivan III, Prince Vladimir of Staritsa, son of the
man who had tempted the pomeshchiks of Novgorod to their destruction ;
the boyars deemed it possible to exchange their infant suzerain for his
adult rival. But such cases were becoming more and more rare, for by
purely quantitative accumulation Ivan Kalita's patrimony had destroyed
a very essential phase of feudal relationships. The form long survived
the content. On paper the seventeenth-century pomeshchik still "con-
tracted" with the government about the conditions of his life. "He
shall be on an ordinary horse, while with state pay he will be on a good
horse," was inscribed of this or that military servitor in the general
register. The scale of his compensation, whether in land alone or in land
and a money salary besides, determined the quality of his service. The
parties were supposedly still bargaining, but it was only the ritual of
bargaining. In actual fact a pomeshchik dared not refuse the service
that was offered him ; for in the seventeenth century there was not even
for a moment any suzerain other than the tsar and grand prince of
Moscow to whom it would be possible to "depart."
Was this decay of old Russian feudalism confined to juridical rela-
tionships? Given the old economic basis such a modification of the
juridical superstructure would even at first glance seem incomprehensi-
112 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
ble. The independent position of the vassal in relation to the suzerain
was the political equivalent of the economic independence of this vassal's
votchina from the world about him. Sitting in his manor-house, a land-
holder rarely entered into immediate contact with the world — only on
ceremonial occasions, so to speak. For his workaday life he had every-
thing he needed at home. As we see, the origin of the classic pride of
the mediaeval knight was very prosaic. In Russia in the sixteenth cen-
tury (as in the West from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, depend-
ing on the country) there is abundant evidence that the economic inde-
pendence of the feudal votchina was not so great as it had been a century
or two earlier. The most noticeable symptom of this is the feudal land-
holder's desire to receive his revenue in the form of money. It will be
remembered that on the old Russian votchina peasant dues were usually
paid in produce — grain, flax, mutton, cheese, eggs, etc. If we take the
Novgorod registers, which contain data for several successive periods,
we find that only dues in grain persist unchanged; by the middle of
the sixteenth century money had to some extent, and by the end of the
century completely replaced payment in cheese, eggs, mutton, etc. In
this respect the grand prince and his governors did not differ from
other votchinniks; in fact, among them we can trace this appetite for
money to a considerably earlier period. The first charter translating
the natural obligations of a population (Belozersk) into money pay-
ments dates from 1488. It lists both the governor's "feedings" and
the judicial fines in their original form, produce, but immediately sets
down their money equivalents: "for a half shoulder of meat, 2 altyns;
. . . for a ram, 8 dengas," etc. The introduction of money payments
was the occasion for a great number of the extant charters of the begin-
ning of the sixteenth century. Thus the administrative cares of the
Muscovite government had a very real, purely economic, basis.
Votchinniks both great and small strove to get their revenues in a
form less unwieldy than produce intended for immediate consumption.
But this new and more flexible form of revenue — money — would be un-
thinkable under the economic order within the bounds of which the
feudal votchina had taken form. An appanage prince had always
needed money on ' ' ceremonial occasions ' ' : for example, when he was
preparing to despatch the tribute to the Horde, or when he or his sub-
jects bought cloth, wine, or fruits from beyond the sea. Everyday,
workaday needs were satisfied out of their own domestic resources ; for
this purpose money was not necessary. So long as money was but rarely
needed, there was no occasion for desiring to receive revenues in money
form. Thus the feudal votchinnik's adoption of money economy was
only the outward expression of a far greater change. This change con-
sisted in the destruction of the feudal votchina as a self-sufficient eco-
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 113
nomic unit and in the appearance in the market as both buyer and
seller of the landholder, who had formerly been proud of his economic
isolation.
Evidence of a votchina's connexion with the market — a connexion
that was not casual but permanent, normal, so to speak — is first found
in the fifteenth-century code of Pskov, which originated, it is true, in
the economically most progressive region of the Russia of that time.
One of the last provisions of this document deals with the obligation
of an "old izornik" {i.e., a former peasant) to bring horses and carts to
his lord, even though at the termination of his field labours on St. Philip 's
Eve (November 15) he had "renounced" his master. Grain and poultry-
were sent to town, to the market, at the first sledging, but winter might
not begin till after November 15, i.e., after the formal cessation of the
obligations between an "izornik" and his "lord." Then the latter might
find himself in an embarrassing position, with something to sell but no
one to take it to town for him. Protecting the interests of the landholder,
the law of Pskov made the reservation that although the relations
between lord and peasant had formally ended, the former peasant must
none the less fulfil his last economic function ; he must take the products
of his labour to market. "Cartage" is also mentioned in sixteenth-
century Muscovite documents.
Especially valuable is the evidence of the existence of petty, local
markets. Large-scale exchange, even in objects of prime necessity, in
grain especially, had existed even earlier in so far as there had been large
trading centres, like Novgorod, with a numerous non-agricultural popu-
lation. In the sixteenth century, although Novgorod preserved a good
deal of her former importance, her place had been taken by Moscow,
which, in the words of foreign travellers, stretched for almost nine
versts along the course of the River Moscow and in the second half of
the reign of Ivan the Terrible numbered more than 40,000 homesteads,
i.e., not less than 200,000 souls. 3 According to Fletcher, who was there
in the reign of Ivan's son, Fedor, "the citie of Mosko is not much bigger
than the citie of London," while there is reason to believe his assertion
that Moscow was at this time suffering mightily from the Tatar raid
of 1571 and, it must be added, from the general economic crisis that
was desolating all the towns of central Russia. Moscow must have ab-
sorbed a vast quantity of the products of rural economy; and the 700-
800 cartloads of grain that daily entered Moscow along the Yaroslavl
road alone, as related by a foreign traveller, were in all probability no
exaggeration. Yet this was only a quantitative change as compared
*Cf. G. Fletcher, Of the Russe Common Wealth (London, 1591), in Sir E. A.
Bond, Russia at the close of the sixteenth century [Works published by the Hakluyt
Society, No. XX, London, 185G], p. 17.
114 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
with the preceding period, though quantity was already effecting a quali-
tative change in the economy of Moscow. From the point of view of
economic evolution far more interest attaches to the petty urban centres
in central and northern Russia in this same period, the reigns of Ivan
the Terrible and his successor. We shall cite only a few examples.
Toropets of Smolensk, once the votchina of Mstislav the Bold, in the
sixteenth century "was of moderate size and not distinguished by the
prosperity of its trade." None the less in 1540-1541 it consisted of
402 taxable homesteads, as well as 80 of military servitors, 79 shops,
and a population of about 2,400. In Solvychegodsk, in the second half
of the same century, there were about 600 taxable homesteads, i.e., not
less than 3,000 inhabitants, though "these places were distinguished
neither by populousness nor by activity." In a no less backwoods cor-
ner, Kargopol, documents of 1560 tell of 476 taxable homesteads, i.e., at
the very least some 2,500 inhabitants. To the south of Moscow, in
Kashira, at the end of the 1570 's, there were "about 400 homesteads of
townsmen and a considerable market comprising more than 100 shops."
Even the destruction of Kashira by the Tatars, who burned the town
to ashes, did not destroy its commercial significance. In Serpukhov as
early as 1552 a fifth of the town had been deserted, yet there still re-
mained more than 500 homesteads and 250 shops. From this we see
how imprudent it would be to imagine a town of Muscovite Rus as a
fortress peopled almost exclusively with military servitors. However
meagre by modern standards the above figures of the trading-industrial
population, for a mediaeval country like Muscovite Rus of the sixteenth
century one may justly speak of the bourgeoisie as a fairly distinct social
class — a social force, the influence of which could not fail to tell at critical
moments. This influence attained its apogee in the days of the Troubles,
when the bourgeoisie proved strong enough to put forward its own tsar
and to maintain him for several years. But the statesmen of the period
of Ivan the Terrible were already reckoning with this force, and by that
very fact compel the historian likewise to reckon with it.
One of the largest items in the growth of commercial capital was
the trade in salt, which was almost monopolised by the monasteries in
Muscovite, as in Kievan, Rus. The Solovetsky Monastery sold some
130,000 puds of salt annually. The Kirillo-Belozersk Monastery traded
in it "on the Dvina, and in Tver, and in Torzhok, and at Uglich and at
Kimr, and in Dmitrov, in Rostov, and on the Kineshma, and at Vologda,
and at Beloozero with its subsidiary towns and in other places; where
salt is dearer, there they sell," as the monastery's authorities naively
admit their engrossing trade. Certain second-rate monasteries sold as
much as 20,000 puds of salt a year. Along with this the monasteries
carried on an extensive trade in other products : fish, butter, cattle.
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 115
Monasterial storehouses in Vologda stretched for sixty sazhens 4 in
length and eight in breadth. "When, at the end of the sixteenth century,
the Kirillov Monastery transferred its market to a new site, the tsar's
custom-house too had to be moved thither, to such a degre had the
cloister become the commercial capital of the region.
If the monasteries in engrossing salt were almost without rivals, the
rest of society did not lag behind them in engrossing other objects of
prime necessity. In connexion with the monasteries is significant the
commercial role of the clergy, of which there is abundant evidence. To
that priest and cattle-dealer whom N. A. Rozhkov discovered in a six-
teenth-century biography may be added Silvester, archpriest of the
Cathedral of the Annunciation, a person renowned both in history and
in literature, Ivan's mentor in the days of his "beneficence." Urging
his son to be honourable in payments, Silvester adduces truly bourgeois
arguments, to which any medieval merchant would willingly have sub-
scribed: "And when I purchased something of any one I entertained
him kindly: payment without intriguing, and broke bread with him
besides, and friendship forever; and he will sell nothing over my head.
. . . And when I sold something to any one it was all in love, and not
in deceit . . . good men have trusted me in everything, both local men
and foreigners." This participation of a Muscovite archpriest in foreign
trade is interesting because it indicates the circle of his relationships
and acquaintances ; later on we shall see that certain projects of the first
half of Ivan's reign should be linked with this very circle. Foreign
trade was even then not insignificant, which is not surprising if we
remember that the fall of Novgorod had not meant rupture of commer-
cial relations with oversea countries but only concentration of them in
Moscow itself. In the 'sixties was added one more "window to the
West," the route opened by the English along the Northern Dvina,
through Archangel ; but even this of course by no means wiped out the
old route. Fletcher asserts that while Narva was in Russian hands
(1558-1581) there sailed thence annually with flax and hemp alone not
less than 100 ships, "large and small." It is said that some 50,000 puds
of wax, some 100,000 puds of salt, some 100,000 hides were exported
annually. The decline of exports by the reign of Fedor (by two-thirds
or even three-fourths) he ascribes to the failures of Russian foreign pol-
icy; the latter 's connection with commercial interests we shall consider
later. On the score of Silvester it is also worth noting that besides being
himself occupied with trade, he prepared others for the same activity;
many of his pupils, according to his story, "work by hand at various
industries, and many trade in shops; many visit for trade in divers
countries for all sorts of trade." Not without reason was Tsar Ivan's
* 1 sazhen = 7 ft.
116 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
tutor the author of the moderate and accurate, truly petty-bourgeois
Domostroi [household-order] ; he was the founder of commercial educa-
tion in Russia.
Explaining the rise of grain prices in the 'eighties, Fletcher says :
"... the fault is rather in their nobilitie that use to engrosse it, then in
the countrie it self e. ' ' 5 Actually, grain prices in the sixteenth century
rose regularly and inexorably, quite independently of occasional bad
harvests. That landholders were directly interested in grain prices is
shown by the widespread collection of dues in "threshed grain" which
we have already noted.
Dues in grain, or participation of the pomeshchik in a share of the
harvest, were the very simplest means of extracting money from an
estate in agricultural localities, as dues in money were in non-agricultural
regions. In 1565-1568 in the coastal section of Novgorod's territory
threshed grain and a share of the harvest constituted 84.1% of the
whole dues, and money only 15.9% ; in the section to the northeast the
pomeshchiks' revenue in grain in both forms did not exceed 25%, while
money dues supplied more than 75% of their whole revenue. But the
colossal rise of grain prices was bound to excite the pomeshchiks of
agricultural Russia to new and more complicated forms of production.
Even at that time there were men to whom the traditional, petty, peas-
ant economy did not seem productive enough. The petty economy of
the peasant had been calculated to satisfy the needs of his homestead;
to the lord's homestead went the smaller part of the harvest, a quarter
or a third, according to the Novgorod registers of the end of the fifteenth
century. But now it was advantageous for the lord to take into his
own hands everything except what was absolutely necessary for the
subsistence of the workers themselves. In the preceding period the
lord's arable had served only for the satisfaction of the needs of the
lord's homestead and therefore was usually not very great in extent.
However, Nikitsky, the investigator of Novgorodan economy at the end
of the fifteenth century, has noticed quite a sharp change ; ' ' with the
establishment of Muscovite overlordship, " he writes, "the lord's arable
increases considerably." The expanding lord's arable was worked by
the lord's bondsmen. In the chapter on Russian feudalism we had occa-
sion to note the role of bondsmen as military collaborators of their mas-
ters ; now their economic utilisation begins. What proportions this
attained is shown by the will (1545-1546) of Prince Sudtsky, a wealthy
man of the time of Ivan's youth. In this will can be counted not less
than 55 families of bondsmen whom the Prince bequeaths to his wife
and daughters, not counting those he emancipates; among them are 30
families of field hands, who worked the Prince 's arable. Ten years later,
5 G. Fletcher, op. cit., p. 9.
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 117
in the will of another wealthy pomeshchik, we find besides "field serv-
ants" (i.e., bondsmen) indentured field hands, workers bound by way
of a loan. It is curious that the testator disposes of both categories alike,
and quite freely, as his own property, counting them by "heads" like
cattle. Thus one of the roots of serfdom is clearly visible even in the
1550 's.
The labour of bondsmen on the arable was very common in the first
half of the century; according to the computation of N. A. Rozhkov,
on pomestye lands, in the county of Tver in 1539-1540 masters' home-
steads constituted 4.5%, bondsmen's 8.8%, peasants' 86.7% of the total
number of agricultural homesteads. On individual estates bondsmen's
homesteads rose above ten per cent. But despite artificial expansion of
the contingent of "field hands" by indenturing free peasants, the lord's
arable grew more rapidly than the number of bondaged hands em-
ployed on it. Striving with feverish haste to increase the area of land
the revenue from which went wholly to him, the pomeshchik seized not
only upon individual peasant homesteads which had for some reason
become deserted but also upon whole hamlets and clearings. Individual
small landholders could still get along with the labour of bondsmen
despite the expansion of their arable; but the large proprietor in order
to organise his economy had to seek a more extensive reservoir of work-
ing hands. Very quickly he hit upon the idea of extending the natural
obligations of the free peasants dwelling on his lands. The first exam-
ples of the development of barshchina [obligatory labour] are found, as
might be expected, on Church land, in the famous charter of the Metro-
politan Simon which once played such a role in the controversies over
the origin of the Russian landed commune. 6 But the document, which
has only recently been printed in full, has proved to have capital im-
portance in another respect ; it has irrefutably established the existence,
even at the turn of the fifteenth century, of the regularly organised
labour obligation of the free peasants. Barshchina was not burdensome
at first ; for each five desyatinas of his land the peasant had to plough
one desyatina of the Church's land. This represented, however, an
augmentation of barshchina; the occasion for the charter was that the
peasants "plough the arable for themselves much, while the monastery's
arable they plough little." On this estate three-field economy had
already been introduced; its cultivation was, for those times, quite
intensive. Still more intensive economy, likewise accompanied by regu-
ulated labour obligation, is found forty years later on the court votchinas
of the grand prince; in the county of Volokolamsk the court peasants
6 This document cannot, however, be used as proof of the existence of the com-
mune, for the repartition mentioned in the charter was effected, not by the peasants
but by the votchinnik.
118 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
were obligated for each six desyatinas of their land to plough a seventh
for the grand prince, and at the same time the scale of seeding on this
desyatina was accurately defined : " 2 quarters of rye, and of oats double. ' '
The peasants had to manure the grand prince's land at their own cost;
at the same time, not only the number of "piles" of manure to the
desyatina but also the dimensions of each pile were exactly defined.
The estates of middling and petty landholders had to wait a long time
for such a rational economy. But here, too, barshchina appears quite
early; even an investigator who asserts that until the end of the six-
teenth century "barshchina did not exist" cites a number of references
to barshchina estates in the first half of the century, and this number
might be further increased. Along with economy based on indenture
was bound up this other root of serfdom; with its further growth we
shall acquaint ourselves when we study the economic life of Muscovite
Rus of the seventeenth century. To the modern reader, accustomed
to regard "bondage economy" as a synonym for retrogression, it seems
strange to find the first beginnings of peasant bondage bound up with
intensification of cultivation; but the feudal votchina, which knew no
proletariat, could not construct a new system of economy on anything
but involuntary labour in some form or other.
In the period we are now considering, the first half of the reign of
Ivan the Terrible, the agrarian crisis still lay far in the future, and
no one then anticipated the blighting of the incipient economic bloom.
Money and money economy were new ; every one hankered after money.
The fact that grain became a commodity made the land that supplied
the grain also a commodity. Men who desired this latter commodity
were numerous, and seldom in early Rus had land mobilisation pro-
ceeded more briskly than it did in the first half of the sixteenth century.
But the fact that men were purchasing land often and in quantity
meant that some one was selling land, i.e., making himself landless. In
Chapter II we have seen one category of those who were losing land,
viz., the petty votchina landholders, the peasant-proprietors. But they
were not the only ones to make themselves landless; at the opposite
extreme, among the greatest boyar-votchinniks, we notice the same
phenomenon. Two conditions led to the rapid liquidation of the Mus-
covite lat if undia of the time. In the first place, their holders rarely
possessed the ability and the desire to organise their economy in the
new way. Pursuing a career at court and in the army, "the boyar of
the sixteenth century rarely visited his suburban estates, and it is hardly
likely that he ever beheld his distant votchinas and pomestyes." In
the second place, the feudal aristocracy was "under obligations" in
those times, as later ; a great boyar or a mediatised appanage prince had,
by tradition, to maintain an extensive "court," a swarm of parasitic
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 119
menials and a retinue, sometimes, as Kurbsky testifies, of several thou-
sand men. As long as all these people lived without expense on his
peasants' grain, a boyar might not notice the economic burden of his
official prestige. But when many things had to be purchased for money
— money that was ever falling in value from year to year, in proportion
to the growth of exchange economy — it became a grievous burden on
the shoulders of the great landholder. Rozhdestvensky, the historian
of military landholding in the sixteenth century, cites what might be
called a touching episode, which clearly depicts this aspect of the mat-
ter. In 1547 Tsar Ivan betrothed the daughter of one of his most
eminent vassals, Prince Alexander Gorbatov-Shuisky, to Prince I. F.
Mstislavsky, also one of the foremost boyars of Moscow; it turned out
that the bride's mother had nothing to wear to the wedding, for her
husband, on setting off on the tsar's service, i.e., in mobilising his
appanage army, had pawned everything he could pawn, including his
wife's whole wardrobe. In this respect the petty vassal was in a far
more advantageous position ; not only did he not spend money on his
service, but he received money for it. In the course of the sixteenth
century a money wage to the petty military servitor becomes ever more
customary. If we add that a small estate was far easier to organise
than a large one since it was easy to "blend together" two or three
hamlets or clearings and altogether impossible to carry out this operation
over several tens and hundreds of hamlets, and that it was easy for a
petty landholder personally to supervise the obligatory labour of his
peasants and bondsmen whereas a great one had to do it through a
steward who was not loath to become the real master — then we shall
see that in the nascent struggle between large and middling landholders
every advantage economically lay with the latter. In expropriating
the wealthy boyar- votchinnik in favour of the lesser noble holding a small
pomestye, the oprichnina followed the lines of natural economic evo-
lution. Herein lay the first condition of its success.
2. Publicism and the "Reforms"
The political consequences of the fundamental economic fact of the
period, the crisis in large votchina landholding, were very soon felt.
Even in the first half of the sixteenth century the boyars felt the ground
trembling beneath them and took measures to stabilise their shaken
position. These measures and their consequences are very concisely and
expressively described in a government document of the 1550 's. "For-
merly we rewarded our boyars and princes and knights, ' ' this document
makes the tsar say, "gave them towns and provinces as kormlenies
[feedings], and to us from the peasants came great petitions, and the
importunity was ceaseless, that our governors of towns and of townships
120 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
and their [agents], exceeding our edict, inflict on them great fines
and costs ; and from the governors of towns and of townships and from
their [agents] came to us importunity and many petitions, that the men
of the towns and the townships do not submit to their jurisdiction and
do not pay them the kormlenies, and beat them, and therefore between
them arise great calumnies and law-suits. ..." In order to understand
this text it is necessary to have a clear idea what the governors of towns
(namestniks) and of townships (volostels) were in appanage Rus. They
were not at all like the governors of the nineteenth century (gubernators)
or even like the governors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
(voevodas) , just as the appanage prince was not like the tsar of modern
times. For a prince his principality was, above all else, a source of
revenues, in the form of tribute, judicial dues, and such like. These
revenues, in natural form, he could not everywhere collect in person,
and sometimes it was advantageous for him in this or that locality
to farm them out to a lesser feudatory. The latter appears in the role
of the prince's namestnik, a kormlenshchik [feeder], as they called
him, because he fed himself from his office. This was in the full sense
of the word natural administration, corresponding exactly to all the con-
ditions of natural economy. The boyar who farmed the prince 's revenues
went to his province with his whole household. His bondsmen and
petty vassals, his "serving men," became in the province judges, police,
and tax-gatherers. A kormlenie was, consequently, a sort of business
undertaking, and a very lucrative one, if we are to believe a contem-
porary publicist, who asserted that where ten rubles were to be taken
into the tsar's treasury a hundred slipped into the boyar 's pocket. The
official document does not contradict this, painting a picture of savage
extortions, as a result of which "in the towns many peasant home-
steads, and in the townships hamlets and homesteads, were deserted."
Of course, we must not be confused by the usual form of early Russian
documents and chronicles, which represent matters as though the tsar
gave towns and townships as kormlenies ; in the 'thirties and 'forties the
throne of the universal Orthodox realm was occupied by a child, who
could not give anything to anybody. Impoverished votchinniks greed-
ily helped themselves to the kormlenies as the sole means of mending
their affairs, especially after "tributes and dues" had been commuted
into money, and the farmed grand-princely revenues had begun to come
in in the form most advantageous for the farmers. In the colossal abuse
of kormlenies lay those "horrors" of the boyar administration of which
so much is to be heard both from contemporaries and from later his-
torians. In 1547 a popular revolt, the apparent occasion for Which was
the great Moscow fire, united into one huge outburst all the petty
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 121
"resistances to the authorities" referred to in the charter we have cited.
This revolt was by no means a casual disturbance among the ruins of
the fire; the disturbance began on the fifth day after the fire had been
extinguished, while the fact that Prince Yury Glinsky, Ivan's uncle and
head of the Moscow government, and his officials were victims of the
revolt emphasises quite definitely the political causes of the movement.
It must be said that the movement was not local or confined to Moscow ;
its instigators found asylum "in other towns"; the whole Russian land
sheltered them. The "enterprises" of the kormlenshchiks had aroused
every one against them — both the poor, who could get no justice from
them, and the rich, whom the kormlenshchiks systematically robbed. It
is enough to cite an instance of the kormlenshchiks' administrative meas-
ures to make quite clear the attitude of the possessing classes toward
the boyar administration. "The tsar's dignitaries in the towns and in
the townships," relates the same publicist, "in their double-dealing and
diabolical practices have gone so far as to exhume newly buried corpses,
re-interring the empty coffins; they thrust a disinterred dead man,
pierced with a boarspear or hacked with a sabre, and smeared with
blood, into the house of some rich man ; then they find an informer who
knows not God, and having condemned the rich man by an iniquitous
trial they plunder all his household and his wealth." This example
makes very vivid the contradiction of interests between the korm-
lenshchik and the whole population. The former lived, above all else,
on his judicial revenues; the more crimes in his district, the higher his
revenue, whereas to society — and especially to the higher strata — order
and security were the more necessary the more advanced it was eco-
nomically, and we have already seen the tempo at which Russian society
was advancing economically in the days of Ivan the Terrible. That
which destroyed the economic basis of the boyar order likewise raised
up opponents to it; when after the Kazan campaign "the sovereign
rewarded all the land ' ' with kormlenies, he did so in reply to the unani-
mous declarations, not only of the "simple populace" that had revolted
in 1547 but of all save only the boyars themselves. Some of these
declarations have come down to us: the most important part of the
Vaga charter of 1552, for example, is simply a transcription of the
petition of the men of the Vaga themselves, including all the compliments
the petitioners had addressed to their governors, whom they baldly
likened to "thieves, rascals, and other evil men." That other declara-
tions of this kind have not come down to us does not mean that there
were none. Indeed, it was more than a matter of simple petitions ; there
Was an integral, consciously worked-out plan of reform, which found
both private and official expression from the pens of the first Russian
122 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
publicists and in the form of the questions which Ivan addressed to the
Stoglav Sobor. 7
Both the publicism of the 'forties and 'fifties and the "tsar's ques-
tions" are especially interesting because they make it possible for us
to discover the social forces behind the so-called "reforms of Ivan the
Terrible." It has long since ceased to be possible to represent these
"reforms" as the product of the wisdom of the tsar himself and of a
close circle of his counsellors. Participation of the population in the
"reforms," even its initiative in them, has likewise long been acknowl-
edged. But analysis of this fact has usually not been carried beyond
references to the "course of events" and the "force of things." Valu-
able in themselves as a recognition of the material factor as the driving
force of history, these phrases do not, however, suggest the concrete
form in which the "force of things" arrayed itself. The economic
changes we noted at the beginning of this chapter inevitably produced
new social classes or, at least, new social groups. Now it was the mid-
dling landholders, who had successfully adapted themselves to the con-
ditions of the new exchange economy ; now it was the bourgeoisie, strong
of old in Moscow itself, and, thanks to the new economy, acquiring
peculiar importance and influence far beyond the limits of the capital.
We have just seen an illustration of the attitude of these two classes
toward the great feudal landholders, the masters of appanage Rus.
But this attitude is not revealed merely by obscure hints in the sources,
as might have been supposed. It was quite accurately formulated by
contemporaries, and the establishment of this fact is a great scientific
discovery still insufficiently appreciated by the historians who have made
a special study of the sixteenth century, although the suggestion that
there had been conscious planning of the "reforms" — planning that
went far beyond what was actually accomplished — was made in 1876.
Although it would seem self-evident that the tsar's correspondence with
Kurbsky could not have been an isolated fact, for formulation of politi-
cal views on paper and defence of them with the pen could not have
been a habit peculiar to two men, the existence of publicism in the days
of Ivan the Terrible evoked especial scepticism. This scepticism was
supported by the firmly rooted conviction of the general illiteracy of
old Muscovite Rus, but this conviction could not remain unshaken among
those who knew that even under Ivan the Terrible literacy was a pre-
requisite for the holding of certain offices (for example, as head of a
guba, to be discussed below) and who knew the role played in those
7 The "Council of the Hundred Chapters," so-called from the number of its reso-
lutions, was held at Moscow in 1551 to give moral support and ecclesiastical sanction
to the reforms of Ivan IV; it was attended by the higher clergy and high secular
dignitaries.
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 123
times by the men of pen and paper, the dyaks, who frequently seemed
to foreigners to control the destinies of the state. There was, of course,
no "reading public" in our sense, but in any backwoods corner might
be found men able to read and to recount what they had read to their
neighbours. As yet printing was not worth while (a printing press was
set up under Ivan the Terrible for divine-service books only), but any-
thing that found favour circulated widely enough in manuscript to influ-
ence the minds of the upper classes at least. Thus arose a number
of productions, written, as was usual at the time, in the form of a
parable, an apocryphal book, or a moralising historical narrative, em-
bodying a very practical content. It was sometimes a petition sup-
posed to have been submitted to the tsar by some serving man ; now it
took the form of conversations about Russia, carried on by foreign nota-
bles of the time; now tidings of strange lands and rulers in which,
nevertheless, it was not difficult to recognise Ivan IV and the state
of Moscow; now revelations of holy miracle-workers. Many of the
extant productions of this kind are connected with the name of Ivan
Peresvetov, the "emigrant from Lithuania," undoubtedly a legendary
person, though there were real men of that name. A "warrior" who
had traversed the "whole world," who had in his time served "Fordynal
the Czech" and "Yanusha, the king of Hungary," and "Peter, the
voevoda of Wallachia," made an extraordinarily convenient screen for
keen criticism of the order of things in the fatherland ; on the one hand,
he wrote with the authority of a semi-foreigner, who had seen Europe
and who could on occasion allude to conditions there ; on the other hand,
as a foreigner, he was free to sin somewhat against Orthodox tradition.
Peresvetov 's writings all centred around one theme : the causes of
the fall of Constantinople, of the ruin of the Orthodox ruler "Con-
stantine Ivanovich, ' ' 8 and of the success of the infidel ' ' Saltan Makh-
met." The theme was then most popular in Russian literature, but no
one had treated it from his viewpoint. Pious booklets were inclined
to view it as a happy event : heresy had been put to shame, while the
older piety had begun to shine like the sun, and the place of the fallen
second Rome had been taken by Moscow, the third Rome. Decency
demanded the shedding of a few tears over the downfall of the old
capital of the Orthodox realm, but her heiress was ready, and there
was really nothing to weep over. For Peresvetov the fall of Constanti-
nople was a terrible historical example of how states perish when they
are badly administered, when there is no "justice." The "Third Rome"
did not interest him at all; if things were managed in the same way
in Moscow as in Byzantium, Moscow, too, would meet a like fate. Mos-
cow's future political career depended wholly on whether there was
8 Constantine Palaiologus, last of the Byzantine emperors.
124 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
"justice" there. It mattered not that in Moscow "the Christian faith
is good and the beauty of the Church is great " ; "if there is no justice,
there is nothing." And there would be no justice, so long as the appa-
nage method of government was preserved. Peter, the voevoda of Wal-
lachia, into whose mouth were put Peresvetov's very boldest sentiments
(which needed a double pseudonym), particularly criticises Tsar Ivan
for "letting loose private war in his realm": he gives the towns and the
townships to magnates to hold, and the magnates grow rich from the
tears and the blood of Christians. The kormlenshchiks thus appear as the
prime obstacle to the realisation of "justice" in the Russian land. Sul-
tan Makhmet had long since set an example of how to dispense with
kormlenies: though an infidel, he "wrought works agreeable to God, great
wisdom and law he brought into his realm," sending his loyal judges
through all the realm, "paying them salaries from the treasury." "And
judicial revenues he bade to be brought into his treasury" so that the
judges should have no temptation to judge unjustly ; and he gave out
to them law books by which they should judge and rule.
Peresvetov's pamphlets, as can be judged from a number of indica-
tions, appeared between the years 1545-1548, while the so-called ' ' Tsar 's
Sudebnik [Code] " of Ivan IV was published in June, 1550. This infor-
mation alone suffices to show how closely the publicism of the times of
Ivan the Terrible was bound up with events of the time. But Sultan
Makhmet did not confine himself to centralisation of judicial revenues
alone; he introduced "unity of the treasury" for all his revenues with-
out exception : ' ' and from the towns, and from the townships, and from
the votchinas, and from the pomestyes all revenues he bade to be gath-
ered into his tsar's treasury at every hour," while he paid his collectors
salaries from the treasury. His whole military strength was organised
in just the same way, on salary. The Muscovite state had long since
begun to pass from natural to money economy but had not yet achieved
any such wholesale change of the administrative apparatus as complete
replacement of the feudal state with its vassalage by a centralised mon-
archy with a salaried officialdom. What "Peresvetov" dreamed of was
not to be realised until the eighteenth century. Not until a still later
date could another of our publicist's ideas be realised. He was a great
opponent of bondage ; his hero, Sultan Makhmet of Turkey, ordered all
the records of bondage "burned with fire" and even permitted captives
to redeem their liberty on the expiration of a seven-year term. And
from the lips of a Turkish lord comes a splendid apology of the freedom
of the people as an indispensable condition of national independence :
"In what realm men are enslaved, in that realm men are not brave. . . ."
But Peresvetov was not only a representative of a new economic
philosophy; this was not a feature peculiar to him, and on this head
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 125
he could find comrades even among his most violent opponents. The
hoyars were not averse to taking advantage of money economy, and their
plunderings as kormlenshchiks were a special form of exploitation of
new sources of revenue. Peresvetov was neither a landholder-entrepre-
neur nor a bourgeois from the city. The merchant he regards from the
point of view usual to the medieval consumer : the merchant is a cheater ;
he must be strictly watched ; trade must be accurately regulated ; prices
must be fixed by the state; and, if any one cheats, gives false weight
or measure, or takes a price "more than the tsar's regulation," "such
shall be executed." Nor does the wealthy landholder, whoever he be,
excite Peresvetov 's sympathy. Ivan's magnates are bad, not only because
they grow rich "from the tears and the blood of Christians," but be-
cause in general they grow rich "and are idle." "A rich man thinks
not of war, he thinks of repose; and if even a valiant champion waxes
rich, even he waxes idle. " It is easy to see where all Peresvetov 's sym-
pathies lie; of nothing are his heroes so solicitous as of their "warriors."
Sultan Makhmet "opened his heart to his army and made his whole
army glad. From year to year he gave them the tsar's pay from his
treasury, whoever was worthy of anything, — and to his treasury there
was no end. ..." Peter, the voevoda of Wallachia, exhorts Ivan IV:
"maintain a warrior, as one keeps a falcon — always gladden his heart
and let not sorrow come nigh him. . . . Whatever warrior is terrible
against the sovereign's foe to play the game of death and firmly stands
for the Christian faith, for such warriors exalt their names and gladden
their hearts, and add salaries from the sovereign's own treasury . . .
and admit them to the sovereign's person and trust them in everything,
and hear all their complaints, and love them as a father his children,
and be liberal unto them. ..." Constantinople had fallen because
"Tsar" Constantine's "warriors" had been impoverished and reduced
to beggary. Yet not all military men are equally effective ; the great
vassals of the grand prince of Moscow, who "are called his servitors
because they go out on his service in full trappings, on horseback,
and followed by their men but do not stand firmly for the Christian
faith," only "impoverish" the realm of Moscow. Peresvetov 's ideal is
the warrior who "in humble manner" came to Augustus Cassar, "and
Augustus Csesar for that rewarded him and kept him near him and his
family." In place of sumptuous vassals Peter, voevoda of Wallachia,
recommends a small, but select, mercenary army — "twenty thousand
valiant warriors with firearms." The origin of the "valiant warriors"
matters not: "Whoever for the tsar [Sultan Makhmet] firmly stands
against the foe, plays the game of death, breaks up the regiments of
the foe, faithfully serves, though he be of lesser degree, His Majesty
raises him and gives him a great name. . . . And though it is not known
126 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
of what father they are the sons, the tsar for their wisdom raised them
to high office. ..."
In order to understand these allusions of the first Russian publicist
(Peresvetov was absolutely the first lay publicist in the Muscovite state;
Kurbsky did not begin to write until twenty years later) the modern
reader must remember that the definitive, juridical stabilisation of one
very celebrated Muscovite usage comes just at this period. While seek-
ing economic support in kormlenies, the declining boyar order strove
to find juridical support in mestnichestvo. The essence of mestnichestvo
was comprised in the heritability of relationships between offices ; each
family in Moscow's service occupied a definite position in relation to
other such families, and each member of it, independently of his per-
sonal deserts, could claim a place (mesto) in the service hierarchy cor-
responding to the one his forebears had occupied. In form, of course,
mestnichestvo is bound up with patriarchal concepts — with that "group
principle" which we have already had occasion to mention more than
once ; personal services were not taken into account because neither law
nor manners knew how to distinguish the individual from the family
group. As long as patriarchal concepts held full sway, there was no
need to support them artificially; each knew his own place and did not
encroach on another's. In case of doubt they called on old men to
"remember," and that sufficed. If now, to reinforce custom, men begin
to refer to written documents (and even to fabricate them), it is a sure
sign that the usage had been shaken, and that men were striving to
reinforce artificially what could no longer maintain itself. Modern
research has established almost beyond dispute that like the first
razryadnaya k?iiga [register of service appointments of the highest
grades of the court of Moscow] the Gosudarev Rodoslovets [register of
the most eminent families, which sought to fix the composition of the
aristocracy of Moscow] arose in the 1550 's. What seemed an innocent,
perhaps simply a stupid, remnant of "pre-state" tradition, was in
reality a weapon of the class struggle, an attempt to stem the rising tide
by artificial dikes. If the razryadnaya kniga was a selection, even though
a very partisan one, from authentic documents, the gosudarev rodoslovets
was crammed with tales frankly fantastic, which made all the Muscovite
boyars "eminent foreigners." All boasted among their forebears some
doubtful magnate who had emigrated to the service of the grand prince
of Moscow, from the Germans, from the Lithuanians, at worst from the
Horde. Extremely significant is this epidemic of genealogies just at a
moment when the term "foreign" implied authority, and the "base-
born" gained prestige by referring to their "foreign" origin.
But such artificial props became necessary to the "well-born" only
when the "base-born" made their existence evident in other ways than
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 127
by studied apocrypha and political yarns, when they had become a real
force, sufficiently menacing to be feared by the Muscovite aristocracy.
Though maintaining their control at the centre the feudal boyars were
compelled to surrender their position in the provinces. Reform of the
provincial administration wts the first triumph of Peresvetov's ideas,
and we may well pause over it, not only for its own sake but also because
it throws most unusual and vivid light on the means by which the
admirer of the Turkish Sultan Makhmet, the interlocutor of Peter,
voevoda of Wallachia, expected to ''bring justice into the land."
According to Peresvetov's story the police of security had been
organised by Sultan Makhmet, as follows. If a theft or a robbery occurs
in the army or in the towns "a royal inquest is carried on vigorously
by the ten-men, by the hundred-men, and by the thousand-men"; and
if any of these officers shelters an evil man he is executed. "And for a
thief or a robber under the Turkish tsar there is no prison; on the third
day they execute him, that iniquity shall not multiply ; only for suspects
is there prison until the royal inquest. Karamzin, who regarded Pere-
svetov's pamphlets as "fraud and invention," pointed out in part proof
of his opinion that "this plotter" advised the tsar to "do everything
great and good that was already being done." Generally speaking, this
is quite unjust; we have seen that "Peresvetov's" projects were fre-
quently in advance, not only of Ivan the Terrible but of Muscovite Rus
in general. Yet in this case we really do hit upon something that calls
for explanation ; the police organisation described in the lines quoted
above, with all its characteristics — special authorities to cope with rob-
bery, general inquest, and responsibility of the investigators for the
results of the inquest — already existed in Rus in the 1540 's. Two char-
ters are extant from as early as 1539 : one granted to the Belozersk region,
the other to Kargopol; in both the grand prince "laid on the con-
sciences" of the local population the inquest for robbers and their execu-
tion after the inquest without trial. Herein lay the root difference
between the new and old methods of meting out justice ; formerly all
prosecutions, including those for robbery, were begun on private accusa-
tion and were decided either by the oath of the parties or by the "field,"
the judicial duel. In these prosecutions the local governor "looked to his
lucre," first and foremost seeing to the punctual payment of judicial fees
and fines. Under such circumstances, of course, repression could be only
very weak, even if we ignore those cases, not rare in practice, when the
kormlenshchik simply went shares with the robbers, deeming such reve-
nue more certain that "judicial perquisites," which he might never get.
In both the charters referred to above mention is made of the founda-
tion at Moscow of a special Robbery Bureau ("our boyars to whom cases
of robbery are commended. . . ."). Its local agents were not the
128 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
kormlenshchiks but special "heads," elected by the local population and
assisted by elders, tithing-men, and "better men." Not only Belo Ozero
and Kargopol but also "other towns" had "heads"; this was an all-
Russian reform on a broadly thought-out plan. The reform undoubtedly
hurt the pockets of the kormlenshchiks by taking from them their chief
source of revenue, and contemporaries so understood it. The chronicler
of Pskov, for example, relates that the governors took violent offence at
the new order of things; "there was great dislike by the governor for
the Christians," "to the Christians there was joy and immunity from
evil men." What the boyar-kormlenshchiks lost passed to the pomesh-
chiks, to the middling and small landholders ; the Belozersk charter defi-
nitely indicates that the "heads," who waged the struggle against rob-
bers, had to be taken from among the local knights, and the literate ones
at that, as we have already noted. The elders and tithing-men from
among the peasants were subordinate to them. The new authorities
gained far more than the old lost : the kormlenshchik could initiate a
prosecution only on a complaint; the "guba head" might on his own
initiative put any man to torture and punish a man who confessed under
it. In the whole guba [police-unit] there was no one who was not
dependent on him. Moreover, the old judicial guarantees — duel and
oath — were abolished for cases of robbery, and new ones not introduced ;
the new system was not trial but "inquest"; they hunted robbers as
one hunts wild beasts in the forest and, on finding them, slew them
without further formalities, quite in accordance with Peresvetov's advice
' ' to execute the robber and the thief and the slanderer and every spoiler
without any accounting." If the terror of Ivan's reign consisted in
summary punishments, and not of boyars alone, then Ivan became "the
Terrible" in 1539 when the "tyrant" was but nine years old. But
why did the publicist of the democracy of military servitors need to
knock at an open door almost nine years later? To this there can be
only one answer: the basic ideas of Peresvetov's writings are consider-
ably older than the edition in which they have come down to us; the
story of Sultan Makhmet probably existed in the 1530 's.
Peresvetov's pamphlets were far from reflecting all the economically
progressive currents of their time. They reflected the thoughts and
desires of the "needy warriors," the masses of the petty vassals of the
grand prince of Moscow; but these "warriors" were not the only active
element in the Muscovite social order of the time. We have seen that the
military servitors were suspicious of commercial capital, but its repre-
sentatives could regard the military servitors in no better light. The
political views of the two groups were naturally very different, and it
needed both time and quite exceptional conditions to make possible an
alliance between them. In the days of Ivan's youth this was a thing
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 129
of the remote future. Transfer of local police into the hands of the
pomeshchiks did not at all satisfy the interests of the burghers ; both
then and later, in the seventeenth century, the guba ''head" was, for
them, more often a foe from whom they must defend themselves than
a defender and protector such as Peresvetov described him. The guba
reform had not prevented a revolt of the townsmen of Moscow in 1547.
Something more was needed; just what this something was the towns-
men expressed no less loudly than did the "base-born." It was not
by chance that the Moscow rebellion brought together the tsar and the
archpriest Silvester, whose intimacy with commercial-industrial circles
is so definitely attested by his own words. In all probability, it was he
who edited the "questions" which the tsar addressed to the Stoglav
Sobor and which expressed the programme of the townsmen more con-
cisely, but no less fully, than Peresvetov 's writings expressed the pro-
gramme of the petty military servitors.
As the latter programme found fulfilment in the guba "heads" and
the guba inquest, so from the town programme resulted the "zemsky
reform" of Ivan IV. In 1555 or a little earlier the kormlenshchiks
were withdrawn from the towns and the townships and replaced by
"elected heads." Of the "bourgeois" character of this reform there
can be no doubt, if only because the transfer was immediately accom-
panied by the conversion of every sort of "feeding" into a money due,
the despatch of which to Moscow constituted the first duty of the ' ' elected
heads"; such a tendency could come only from the town. If matters
had ended here, there would still have been no collision of class interests.
But the "elected heads" inherited from the kormlenshchiks their judicial
rights; thus in some places they came to be called "elected judges."
Here was manifest an evident parallelism of town and pomeshchik insti-
tutions. "We have seen that the appearance of guba "heads" was a clear
diminution of the authority of the kormlenshchiks. Was not the appear-
ance of elected judges a limitation, even though only a geographical
one, of the rights of the guba "heads"? In certain cases at least this
was undoubtedly true. The special business of the guba authorities was
the capture of robbers ; but on the Vaga, for example, with the intro-
duction of the "zemsky" elective authorities those who "go about to
steal or to break in, or whoso goes about to slander, or whoso goes about
to commit forgery, or bandits who go about to rob, go about to play
dice, or to commit any such thing, or whoso has intercourse with evil
men" were ordered to be handed over to "their elected heads," who had
all the rights that in other places belonged to the guba "heads." The
plenipotentiary of the townsmen was put on the same footing as the
plenipotentiary of the local landholders and received even broader rights ;
for the guba "heads" dealt only with robbery, but the "elected" with
130 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
all criminal cases without exception. In the north of Russia, where
there were hardly any pomeshchiks, or none at all, there could be no
collision on this score, but everywhere else the struggle between the
military servitors and the townsmen over the control of local adminis-
tration was protracted far into the seventeenth century.
CHAPTER VIII
ivan the terrible (Continued)
3. The Oprichnina
The circumstances under which a rapprochement between the towns-
men and the great feudatories took place are not specifically given in
the sources. We know only the bare facts that the representative of
the bourgeois element, the archpriest Silvester, was in every court con-
flict aligned with the representatives of the old aristocracy, and that
the literary exponent of the latter 's views, Prince Kurbsky, was a great
admirer of the archpriest of the Cathedral of the Annunciation. But
there have survived in the records certain indirect allusions. Through-
out the sixteenth century the Moscow townsmen were closely connected
with the boyar family of the Shuiskys, whose eminence put them in the
first rank of the appanage princes "despoiled" by the descendants of
Ivan Kalita. The family votchinas of the Shuiskys, in the [pre-revo-
lutionary] province of Vladimir, were even then hives of industry; the
family's last historically renowned descendant, Tsar Vasily (1606-1610),
his opponents contemptuously called "shubnik," an allusion to the fact
that his prosperity was based on the labour of the hand-workers who
supplied all Moscow with sheepskin jackets (shubas). The ancestors
of this "shubnik" played a conspicuous political role during the minor-
ity of Ivan IV. In manhood the "terrible" tsar recalled with indigna-
tion how two of the Shuiskys "set themselves up" as his guardians,
"and thus enthroned themselves." The rule of the Shuiskys had con-
tinued "for a great time," regardless of the fact that they evidently
were a great source of irritation to the youth Ivan. When he (or rather
the Shuiskys' opponents, manipulating him) desired to be rid of them,
Ivan Shuisky "summoning all his men and putting them on oath, brought
a host to Moscow," and a palace revolution took place. The Shuiskys'
opponents were arrested and banished; and even the metropolitan was
roughly handled by the mob. A squabble took place in the grand-
prince's dining-room where many boyars were likewise "jostled" and
"pulled about." Ivan IV was at this time in his thirteenth year, so
that he could well remember these events; and despite all the special
pleading of the crowned publicist the historian rarely catches him in a
downright invention. Ivan was too clever for that, and, as far as the
Shuiskys in particular are concerned, his stories are generally confirmed
131
132 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
by other sources. But these stories present the spectacle, not of an
ordinary palace intrigue but of a mass movement; the disorders in the
palace were of course not committed by the princes themselves but by
the intruding mob, the ' ' Judas throng, ' ' which must have been composed
of the burghers of Moscow. Connexions of industrial magnates with
commercial-industrial circles were in themselves probable, while the
fact that these two elements were very soon faced with common foes,
and that in 1547 the townsmen of Moscow beat and slew the Glinskys,
who had ever been the rivals of the Princes Shuisky, supplies strong
factual foundation for this probability. The events of the 'thirties and
'forties, obscure in the chronicles, are most correctly to be regarded as
portents of the great movement that preceded ' ' the reforms of Ivan the
Terrible." The alliance between the townsmen and the boyars may
have been formed at this time, and an alliance so stable that only the
oprichnina could paralyse it — and then only temporarily — and only the
catastrophe of the Time of the Troubles could destroy it.
From a general political point of view there was nothing surprising
in such an alliance. In foreign policy the interests of the Muscovite
bourgeoisie and of the Muscovite feudatories had long coincided, as may
be seen, for example, in the history of Moscow's last conflict with Novgo-
rod ; while the foreign policy of the boyars in the middle of the sixteenth
century, which involved the seizure of the great Volga route by the con-
quest of Kazan and Astrakhan, likewise corresponded perfectly to the
demands of the commercial class. In this foreign policy, for that matter,
the interests of all the dominant social groups temporarily coincided;
the middling landholders looked with envy on the rich black-earth of
the Volga country and would gladly have exchanged for it the exhausted
clay-soil of the counties round Moscow. Indeed, in one of Peresvetov's
writings we find an extraordinarily curious project — the transfer of the
capital to Nizhny-Novgorod; there should be "the throne of a tsar, while
Moscow is the throne for a grand prince." The realm of Kazan seemed
to the pomeshchik publicist almost a paradise, "a heavenly land, fit
for all " ; and he very cynically declares that ' ' such a land ' ' ought to
be conquered even if it "were in friendship" with Rus. Inasmuch as
the men of Kazan were in fact harassing Rus, there was an excellent
pretext for settling accounts with them. Thus three hundred years ago
a sixteenth-century writer ruthlessly shattered the well-known historical
interpretation that makes the interests of state defence the mainspring
of Moscow's whole policy; to Peresvetov this "state defence" was simply
a good pretext for seizing "extremely fit" lands.
On the basis of this community of interests, apparently, was estab-
lished that compromise between the feudal aristocracy, the bourgeoisie,
and the petty pomeshchiks which lasted approximately until 1560 and
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 133
is usually described as the "happy time" of the reign of Ivan the
Terrible. The petty vassals were satisfied, in the first place, by the
establishment of guba institutions and the abolition of "feedings," and
further, in anticipation of allotments of "heavenly" lands, by a large-
scale special distribution of land in the counties round Moscow ; in
1550 a thousand of the better nobles x and knights from the provinces,
who formed a sort of tsar's guard, were given pomestyes immediately
round Moscow. The distribution was of course attributed to military
considerations, but it is easy to see that there were no military reasons
for placing the select part of the army round the capital itself. This
was the moment of supreme tension in the Kazan wars, and from a
strategical viewpoint one might have expected concentration of the best
part of the Muscovite army somewhere round Nizhny. In actual fact
the distribution was a sop to the upper stratum of the pomeshchik class,
nor was the boyar youth cheated of its share; as is well known, among
those who received pomestyes near Moscow was Prince Kurbsky, then
twenty-two years old. The townsmen were satisfied with the "zemsky
reform" and with the transfer to them of the collection of indirect
imposts, effected about this time. Modern historiography has been in-
clined to represent this "credit service" as a peculiar kind of burden,
supposedly very onerous for the Russian merchantry. But complaints
of the burdensomeness of "credit services" are not heard until the
middle of the following century when Russia had become definitely a
nobles' state and the competition of the pomeshchiks in every field had
become intolerable to the commercial class. In essence, the handing over
of the indirect imposts "on credit" was a less burdensome form of farm-
ing the taxes; the tax-farmer assumed the same obligations as the col-
lector ' ' on credit, ' ' but he had to advance a large sum to the government
whereas the credit "head" had the same advantages as the tax-farmer
without expending a single copeck in advance. That some "credit
heads" really were ruined is possible, but tax-farmers, too, were some-
times ruined ; every enterprise has this reverse side. In the majority
of cases, of course, concentration of enormous sums from customs and
tavern levies in the hands of a few merchants immensely facilitated the
concentration of merchant capital. 2
What Kurbsky and Ivan relate, each from his own point of view,
of the organisation of the supreme administration in these years sug-
gests that the compromise extended to the political field. Into the
i The word "noble" has been adopted throughout for the Russian "dvoryanin" ;
it should be understood that these were not titled nobles and that the "boyars" are
not included among them.
2 One of the first cases of handing over customs revenues "on credit" — not to an
individual but to a company of 22 men — dates from 1557.
134 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
personnel of the government were introduced representatives of groups
which hitherto had had no place in the tsar 's ' ' curia ' ' ; along with the
princes and boyars we find our old acquaintance, the archpriest Sil-
vester, and a man sprung from the ranks of the petty military servitors,
Alexis Adashev, whom Ivan, to use his own words, "had taken from the
dung-hill and ranked with the magnates." Adashev 's functions, so far
as we know them, quite definitely indicate that he entered the ruling
group as a representative of the anti-boyar opposition. He was entrusted
with the receipt of "petitions from the poor and the oppressed"; at
the same time he was recommended not to fear "the strong and the
renowned who snatch honour for themselves, and who by their violence
ruin the poor and the impotent." There is no doubt that he had an
intimate share in the liquidation of "feedings" and the celebrated
"reconciliation" of the kormlenshchiks with the people. To the modern
eye, of course, he occupied a rather strange official position; he was valet
de chamore to Ivan IV and washed the tsar in the bath, which supplies
the occasion for speaking of him as Ivan's "favourite" and thus explain-
ing his political significance. But we should not forget that this was
in the heyday of the Middle Ages, and that even at a later period the
household of the tsar could not be distinguished from the administration
of the state. The degree to which everything bore a purely mediaeval
character is shown by the means employed by the archpriest Silvester
to influence Ivan, means on which there is essentially absolute agreement
in testimony from the most diverse sources, from Kurbsky and Peres-
vetov and Ivan himself. The latter 's words about "childish bugbears"
are fully supported by what his opponents say about "nightmare ter-
rors" set in motion by the archpriest to curb the young tsar's manners.
Peresvetov's constant allusions to "magic and sorcery" indicate that this
practice had very soon become well known to quite wide circles. Just
what Silvester frightened Ivan with we do not know. Probably it was
a matter of "visions" and "apparitions"; later, in the Time of the Trou-
bles (1598-1613), as we shall see, these began to be manufactured to
order. In any case, fictitious miracles as a means of attaining the pre-
dominance of one's own political party yield nothing to Ivan Kalita's
successful attempt to use the relics of the Metropolitan Peter as a means
of attaining the political predominance of Moscow over Tver. In this
respect no great change had taken place from the fourteenth century to
the sixteenth.
Introduction into the Muscovite "curia" of new, unwonted elements
was accompanied by some change in the mechanism of administration.
Inasmuch as this change has left no documentary traces (except one
negative one, of which we shall speak later), it is not surprising that
historians have failed to notice it or have paid it little attention. At
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 135
the head of the Muscovite state, as at the head of the appanage prin-
cipality of Moscow, stood the boyar duma, the council of the greatest
vassals under the presidency of the suzerain. Historians have long since
remarked that even from the first half of the sixteenth century there
appear in this council, along with members by position, so to speak (such
were all the former appanage princes and their descendants), members
by appointment, "the knights who are in the duma." It has likewise
long been remarked that in proportion to the expansion of the circle
of obligatory members of the duma, whom it was usual to invite, the
grand prince of Moscow ever more and more frequently manifests a
tendency, in matters especially affecting the grand prince's authority,
to summon not all the members of his duma but only a few. But this
has always been regarded as a manifestation of the personal will of
the sovereign. Without pausing over the question of whether such
was the case before Ivan the Terrible, we can affirm that in the days
of Ivan's youth it was not so. At the head of the administration there
stood not the whole duma but a small conference, in part members of
the duma, in part, perhaps, not members of the duma; but the mem-
bers of this conference were chosen not by the tsar but by some one else.
Later, in the heat of a polemic, Ivan even affirmed that it was purposely
packed with men repugnant to him, but from his words it is clear that
they were repugnant to him by reason of their independent attitude
toward the tsar's authority, and it is possible that this very factor
determined their selection. If Kurbsky's words be taken literally, this
conference was accordingly called the "council of deputies" (or "elected
council"), deputies, of course, of the full membership of the boyar
duma though not always from this membership. Bowing to circum-
stances, the boyars had to admit to it men who did not belong to their
corporation, but as a preliminary they fixed the membership of this
corporation with precision. We have already mentioned that the social
struggle had compelled the Muscovite boyars just about this time to find
artificial support for mestnichestvo usages. One phrase of Ivan's sug-
gests that in this self-defence the Muscovite aristocracy did not confine
itself to ex post facto compilation of razryadnya knigas and the Rodo-
slovets, 3 but that mestnichestvo was given the force of law, binding
on the sovereign himself. Ivan accuses Silvester and Adashev of taking
from the tsar the power to define the precedence of the boyars in the
duma. Sixty years later, in a mestnichestvo dispute, the boyar duma
formally declared that the sovereign can reward only "with money and
a pomestye, but not with otechestvo [hereditary rank]"; at that time
this sounded like an anachronism, a survival of moribund antiquity, but
in the 1550 's it was evidently a living reality. Unless we assume that
3 Cf. supra, p. 126.
136 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
at this time mestnichestvo calculations acquired juridical force, binding
even upon the state authority, and that thus the personnel of the order
of boyars was guaranteed against arbitrary reshuffling from above, we
shall not understand the famous codicil to the Tsar's Sudebnik, which
has evoked so many learned controversies. As is well known, this codicil
runs: "whatever new matters there be, not inscribed in this sudebnik,
as such matters are dealt with on the tsar's presentment and with the
sentence of all the boyars, these matters shall be added in this sudebnik. ' '
Prof. Sergeyevich has drawn from this the conclusion that thenceforth
"the tsar was only the president of the boyar college and without its
consent could not promulgate new laws." He explains this innovation
by the "pretensions" of the elected council, thus evoking the legitimate
perplexity of Prof. Dyakonov: why should this "elected council," i.e.,
a comparatively narrow circle, bother about legislative rights for all the
boyars? Inasmuch as the sudebnik 's formula is frequently repeated
even after the fall of the "elected council," Prof. Dyakonov concludes
that it is futile for Sergeyevich to attach any special importance to it.
But, as we have seen, the "elected council" represented precisely "all
the boyars" or, rather, was their executive organ; the vitality of the
formula only proves how lasting was the gain of the boyar order in
1550 (or perhaps a little earlier; we first meet with the formula in
1549). The oprichnina itself was an indirect recognition of this gain;
the tsar would not have needed extraordinary full powers, had he not
in the usual order of things been bound by the decisions of the boyar
college. The expression "all the boyars" would have no meaning if
the personnel of these "all" had not been defined with precision and
made independent of arbitrary action from above ; thus, the codicil to
the sudebnik indirectly supports the deduction that about 1550 mest-
nichestvo calculations acquired binding juridical force.
As we see, the classic "reform" of Ivan the Terrible must be sought
in the changes that had taken place in the position of the boyar order.
"Reforms" always mean that the ruling class or group, at the price
of more or less serious concessions in details, saves the foundation of
its position. Ivan's boyars made many concessions, and capital ones;
chief among them were the abolition of "feedings" and the introduction
of the commercial priest Silvester and of Alexis Adashev into the
"elected council." On the other hand, the boyar families became a
closed corporation, the membership of which became inviolable for any
one whatsoever, and without the counsel of the full membership of this
corporation the tsar could not undertake what was then the most impor-
tant legislative matter, a supplement to the sudebnik. The boyars dis-
played great political tact; by renouncing many materially advan-
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 137
tageous privileges, they maintained in their own hands the source of
them all, the sovereign authority.
The compromise could endure so long as all the "contracting parties"
could deem their own interests satisfied. That only the boyars had made
permanent gains could not fail to become clear, and in fact soon did
become so. First, apparently, were dissipated the hopes of the middling
and petty pomeshchiks who had expected great and rich favours in con-
nection with the subjugation of Kazan. In the first place this subjuga-
tion proved to be no easy matter ; six years after the fall of their capital
the population of the khanate of Kazan was still offering obdurate resist-
ance, and the Russian towns constructed in the newly subjugated prov-
ince "were besieged by them" all the time. The seriousness of the
rebellion is evidenced by the fact that the insurgents succeeded in
annihilating a large Muscovite army headed by the boyar Boris Morozov,
whom they took captive and later slew. In Kurbsky's words, so many
Russian military servitors perished in the pacification "as is unlike to
truth." The "heavenly land" had cost Peresvetov's comrades dear.
Moreover, the first to enjoy it were not the pomeshchiks but the peas-
ants. Long before the country had been sufficiently pacified to permit
of the establishment of pomeshchik economy, long files of emigrants had
trailed eastward in the wake of the Russian detachments. They per-
ished by the tens of thousands ; but freedom was so alluring, and there
was so little free land left in the central provinces, that destruction of
the vanguard did not check those who followed. From certain symp-
toms we may conclude that the ebb of population to the east began
parallel with the Kazan campaigns, without waiting for their success : by
1552 the town of Serpukhov had already lost about one-fifth of its
taxpayers ; in the same year, the Vaga land with good reason asked and
obtained the right "to bring back its old taxpayers without term and
without fee." At the beginning of the 'fifties the peasant is already
becoming a rare article, which men are striving to bind to their land
by all possible means and to entice from their neighbours' land. The
pomeshchik 's best means to that end was "investment of silver" in
peasants; the prospect of a fat money loan, procurable at home, with-
out going away, was the only thing that could offset the hope of "free
land." The pomeshchiks needed money capital as never before, and
we have clear evidence of what this quest brought them to. The 1550 's
are marked in Russian history by legislation for the relief of debtors
similar to that enacted in Kiev at the beginning of the twelfth century,
except that it now served the interests of a different social class, the
pomeshchiks.
There were two possible avenues of escape. The first had long been
insisted upon by pomeshchik publicists ; rather than borrow from usurers,
138 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
secure money from the treasury in the form of the "sovereign's wages."
"The tsar's liberality to his warriors is his wisdom," Ivan Peresvetov
had written : "a liberal hand never grows poor, and gathers great glory."
The other way out consisted in an exchange of one's desolated pomestye
for another in good working order. The "princelings' votchinas," the
estates of the former appanage princes, abounding in permanently estab-
lished "old dwellers," where weak exploitation of the peasants and low
dues in kind gave no occasion for emigration, must long since have
attracted the greedy glances of the poorer pomeshchiks, threshing about
like fish out of water. How much land was wasted in the hands of these
"idle rich"! But the "idle rich" blocked the first avenue, too. The
"sovereign's wages" were pay for a campaign; no campaigns, no wages.
But the great boyars, who had to mobilise whole regiments at their own
expense, did not look upon war as did those for whom war meant extra
money in the pocket. The Colloquy of the miracle-workers of Balaam,
which represented the point of view of the boyars, preached a peaceful
foreign policy: only "infidels strive in hosts for murder, and for rob-
bery, and for lechery, and for every impurity and iniquity with their
braveries, and of them they boast." Another publicist, akin in spirit
to the author of the Colloquy, rates the "tsar's great wisdom" far higher
than the "tsar's bravery." The elected council resolutely insisted that
defensive wars were to be preferred to offensive ones. The "men brave
and valiant," with whom Prince Kurbsky is much in sympathy, "coun-
selled and urged" Ivan the Terrible after Kazan to begin a great cam-
paign against the Tatars of the Crimea, setting forth, as a moral motif,
the necessity of "freeing the numerous captives" languishing in Crimean
slavery. For the mass of military servitors this was the most uninter-
esting campaign imaginable — difficult, long, and very unremunerative
since it was impossible to reach the Crimea itself, and in the waste steppes
of South Russia there was nothing to be appropriated. On the other
hand, when some of the tsar's advisers, doubtless from the ranks of the
"warriors," raised the question of a campaign in Livonia, promising
easy and rapid seizure of the lands of the former Livonian Order, the
project met with stubborn resistance on the part of the "elected council."
"With bitterness did Ivan IV later recall "what verbal oppression he
suffered" in those days "from the pope Selivester, and from Alexis,"
and from the boyars. "Whatever affliction comes to us, it all happens
because of the Germans"; Silvester explained even the fatal illness of
the Tsaritsa Anastasia as a punishment from on high for the Livonian
War. This "cruel oppression" of the tsar by the boyars, in favour of
a passive, and against an active, foreign policy, could not be kept secret
from wide circles among the military servitors any more than had the
same Silvester's "magic and sorcery."
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 139
The Livonian "War was the first apple of discord cast into the midst
of the social groups that had struck hands before the conquest of Kazan.
At the same time, it disclosed how useless to the lower military servitors
was the modicum of representation in the "elected council" that the bo-
yars had been willing to concede. Stumbling into the midst of the feudal
aristocracy, Alexis Adashev very quickly made a boyar of himself; in
1555 he became formally a member of the boyar college, receiving one
of the higher duma grades, and quietly followed the lead of his high-
born colleagues. This was very keenly felt at the time of the celebrated
conflict of 1553 when Ivan the Terrible had fallen grievously ill —
fatally, it was thought at the time. The boyars wanted to take advan-
tage of his demise to impose on the throne of Moscow a purely feudal
candidate, Vladimir, son of the "rebel" of the 'thirties — the appanage
prince, Andrew of Staritsa. The success of this candidate would have
definitely consolidated the victory gained by the boyars in 1550; a tsar
elected by the boyar corporation, with no hereditary right to the throne,
actually would have been only primus inter pares. It is significant that
later Kurbsky was ashamed of Vladimir's candidacy and repudiated
it; and not less significant is it that the Adashevs favoured it and only
very reluctantly took oath to Ivan's son under pressure from the oppos-
ing party, which was headed by the Zakharins, the future Romanovs.
This was the first instance of an open breach between the tsar and his
"elected council." But this was not so important as the fact that the
mass of the nobility, outside of the high-born, was bound to become con-
vinced that its man in this council had become a boyars' man. Adashev 's
political career ended the very moment he formally entered the ranks
of the Muscovite aristocracy.
War with the "Germans" was a decisive victory for the "warriors"
and, for the first few months, evidently better corresponded to their
expectations than had the conquest of Kazan. The Protestant Reforma-
tion had undermined the political power of the Order of Knights that
ruled Livonia ; from this point of view, therefore, the moment had been
most happily chosen. The absence of almost any formal pretext for
beginning military operations (one could hardly take seriously non-
payment by the bishop of Dorpat of some semi-mythical tribute, which
at Moscow had been forgotten for fifty years) was offset by religious
considerations; the Livonian Germans, "who had deserted the Christian
faith," "taking to themselves a new name, calling themselves Evan-
gelicals, ' ' had in one of their fits of Protestant fanaticism burned, among
other things, Russian icons. Thus, as in the case of the subjugation of
Novgorod, the war was undertaken "for the faith." The objective of
the military operations was Narva which, as we have already indicated,
was then very important to Russia's export trade. In May, 1558, Narva
140 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
was taken, and a week later Syrensk, where the Narova flows into Lake
Chud ; the road from Pskov to the sea was now entirely in Russian hands.
Success encouraged the "warriors." The campaign of 1558 had yielded
enormous booty ; war in a wealthy, cultivated country was not at all the
same as a struggle with men of alien race in far Kazan or as a chase
through the steppes after elusive Tatars. The pomeshchiks were already
dreaming of the permanent conquest of all Livonia and of the distribu-
tion as pomestyes of the wealthy country-seats of the German knights;
in fact, this distribution had already begun. But passage of the whole
southeastern Baltic littoral into the hands of Russia aroused all Eastern
Europe ; neither the Swedes nor the Poles could permit it. The former
occupied Reval (1561). The latter went much further: at first, by the
treaty of Vilna (1559), they bound themselves to defend the holdings
of the Livonian Order against Moscow; later (November, 1561) they
annexed Livonia altogether, guaranteeing it domestic autonomy. The
motives that provoked the interference of Poland were accurately formu-
lated by contemporaries. "Livonia is renowned for its position by the
sea, for its abundance of harbours," we read in a contemporary record.
"If this country shall belong to the king, then to him will belong lord-
ship over the sea. All the aristocratic families of Poland testify to the
advantage of having harbours in the realm ; the prosperity of private
persons has increased extraordinarily from the time when the kingdom
secured control of the Prussian harbours, and now our people yields to
few peoples of Europe in luxury as regards clothes and ornaments, in
abundance of gold and silver ; and the royal treasury grows rich by the
collection of commercial taxes." But if Livonia were ceded, all this
would pass to a "dangerous neighbour." "What Russian commercial
capital was seeking to grasp was equally coveted by Polish capital, and
the latter 's military resources were infinitely superior to those of the
Muscovite Rus of Ivan the Terrible, whose military organisation was
still purely feudal. Even before the direct intervention of the Poles,
when they were merely giving their support, the master of the Livonian
Order, Ketler, had proved able to hold his own against the Muscovite
armaments. Russian victories in this period of the war were assured
only by the colossal numerical preponderance of the armies of Ivan the
Terrible ; where the Order was able to put forward hundreds of soldiers,
the Muscovites had tens of thousands. As soon as the Polish-Lithuanian
troops appeared on the field of battle, Russian progress was retarded,
even though the Polish government evidently hoped to gain its end with-
out serious warfare, by demonstrations alone, and without breaking off
negotiations with Moscow. At the beginning of 1563, by straining all
the forces of Moscow, and under the personal leadership of Ivan him-
self, Polotsk was taken. That the Muscovite government strove to exag-
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 141
gerate the importance of this victory clearly indicates that it was neces-
sary to "maintain morale" at Moscow. The tsar's envoy who went to
the capital with tidings of the victory had to organise in all the towns
along the road solemn prayers with ringing of the bells "that God had
shown his great mercy to the tsar and grand prince, had given his patri-
mony, the town of Poltesk, altogether into his hands." The tsar him-
self returned to Moscow, as he had done after the taking of Kazan. But
all this could not disguise the fact that immediately after this splendid
victory a truce was concluded ; evidently they did not have very much
hope of further successes. When the truce was ended, it was still clearer
that things were going from bad to worse. The best of Moscow's gen-
erals, Prince Kurbsky, with 15,000 men, lost a battle to 4,000 Poles, and
in January of the following year (1564) a whole Muscovite army was
wiped out under Orsha, and all the senior generals perished, including
the commander-in-chief, Prince Peter Shuisky ; the remnants of the army
fled to Polotsk only "with their heads," leaving all their artillery and
baggage in the hands of the foe.
The boyars had not desired the war; now the boyars were losing the
war; clearly this was boyar treason. Quite inevitable was such a train
of thought in the heads of the ' ' warriors, ' ' who were now living in hope
of Livonian lands, as earlier they had lived in hope of the lands of
Kazan. The Terror of the oprichnina can be understood only in con-
nexion with the misfortunes of the Livonian War, as the French Terror
of 1792-1793 with the invasion of the allies. And in both cases indi-
vidual instances were bound to reinforce and exaggerate the mood of
suspicion. Rumours of the treason of the boyars frightened the boyars
themselves ; the block and the stake already haunted them ; on the other
hand, the war itself had been a victory for the petty vassals over the
coalition of boyars and townsmen (who had very soon abandoned the
war party) . All this is sufficient explanation of the emigration of boyars,
instances of which become frequent just at the beginning of the 'sixties.
Here we encounter the very greatest names of the feudal aristocracy of
Moscow: now we hear of a Prince Glinsky's attempt to "depart"; now
surety is taken for Prince Ivan Belsky ; now Prince Belsky himself goes
bail for a Prince Vorotynsky. Naturally, the most profound impression
was produced by the flight to Lithuania in April, 1564, of Prince Andrew
Kurbsky, the Muscovite commander-in-chief in Livonia; in the moral
preparation for the coup of the following January 3 there was perhaps
no moment more decisive. Ivan might now speak of "boyar treason"
with the facts in his hands, as they say.
The objective conditions were as follows: the war in the west, like
the war in the east, had not satisfied the land hunger of the petty vas-
sals, and, in general, had not justified the expectations with which it
142 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
had been undertaken. Foreign policy no longer promised either lands
or money ; both the one and the other must be sought within the confines
of the state. But the state was still ruled by the boyars. They were
the government, and really held matters in their own hands; the tsar
was only a symbol, an ideal magnitude, which in practice neither
helped nor hurt the pomeshchiks. Boyar publicists willingly acknowl-
edged that "by God from on high all had been given over to the anointed
tsar and grand prince elected by God," but, "having given over" all
authority to the tsars, the Lord "bade" them "hold the state and
have authority with the princes and with the boyars." In this respect
ecclesiastical ideology hallowed feudal practice; the Church, as an insti-
tution, needed a strong Muscovite state but by no means a strong Mus-
covite sovereign. On the contrary, for the personal restraint of the
tsar's will new means were offered by the ascetic morality of the
Church; one needs but to read the "correspondence" of Ivan the Ter-
rible to see how carefully the tsar's whole household was regulated by
the archpriest Silvester. Ivan IV learned by personal experience that
it is pleasanter to be a simple, ordinary, secular sovereign — even though
one like Sultan Makhmet of Turkey — than to be a God on earth. And
when he wrote, "The Russian autocracy from the beginning ourselves
do hold over all the men of the realm, and not the boyars and the mag-
nates, ' ' he was uttering, notwithstanding the semblance of historical
allusion, a great new idea, — though perhaps not one that belonged to
him personally, for obscure allusions to Peresvetov are frequent in the
"letters" of Ivan the Terrible, and it is still a question whether the
"letters" themselves represent the product of personal or collective
labour.
There is nothing more unjust than to deny that there was a principle
at stake in Ivan 's struggle with the boyars or to see in this struggle only
political stagnation. Whether Ivan IV was himself the initiator or
not — most probably he was not — yet his "oprichnina" was an attempt,
a hundred and fifty years before Peter's time, to found a personal
autocracy like the Petrine monarchy. The attempt was premature, and
its collapse was inevitable ; but he who ventured it unquestionably ranked
above his contemporaries. The "warriors' " road lay over the dead body
of old Muscovite feudalism, a fact which made the "warriors" progres-
sive, whatever the motives that immediately guided them. The old
votchinas within the realm were now the only source of land at the
expense of which middling pomestye landholding might expand, the
tsar's treasury, the only source of money capital. But to enjoy either
it was necessary to take into their own hands the power that was in the
hands of a hostile group, which held it not only with all the tenacity
of secular tradition but also with all the force of moral authority.
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 143
Peresvetov might have the audacity to declare that politics is higher
than religion, "justice" than "faith," but his rank-and-file partisans
would not have countenanced such a sentiment, much less have expressed
it, and still less have acted upon it. The coup of January 3, 1565, was
an attempt, not to infuse a new content into old forms, but to set up
new forms alongside the old and, without touching old institutions, so
to act that they might serve merely as a screen for new men who did
not have the right to enter these institutions as actual masters. Peter
was bolder; he simply seated his officials in the boyar duma and called
it the Senate, and every one made the best of it. But by Peter's time
the boyars were in the eyes of all already a "riven and falling tree."
A hundred and fifty years earlier the tree had, it is true, begun to lose
its foliage, but its roots were still firmly fixed in the ground and were
not to be torn out at the first wrench.
Denying to the "oprichnina" significance in principle, historians
have, on the other hand, depicted its appearance in most dramatic form.
How Ivan the Terrible, on an unusually solemn expedition, suddenly
left for Alexandrovsk (they generally explain the location of this mys-
terious place that so unexpectedly bobs up in Russian history), how
from there he began to exchange letters with the "people" of Moscow,
and what effect this produced — all this, of course, you have read many
times, and there is no need to repeat the story. In fact, like everything
in the world, the event was much more workaday. Alexandrovsk had
long been Ivan 's summer residence ; in the chronicle we constantly find
him there in the intervals between military campaigns and his very
frequent trips through the Muscovite provinces, on pilgrimage and for
economic purposes. The suddenness of his departure is considerably
weakened by the fact that Ivan IV took with him all his valuable
movables — all the "holy things, icons and crosses, with gold and precious
stones adorned, ' ' his gold and silver vessels, his whole wardrobe and his
whole treasury, and mobilised his whole guard — "the nobles and knights
selected from all the towns, whom the sovereign had taken to be with
him." All these preparations could not have been made in one day,
or in two — especially since the tsar's courtiers were ordered to "go with
wives and with children. ' ' Setting forth, Ivan did not disappear some-
where for a whole month ; the Muscovites knew very well that the tsar
celebrated the day of Nicholas the Miracle-Worker (December 6) at
Kolomensk, that on Sunday, the 17th, he was at Taininsk, and that on
the 21st he arrived at Troitsa to spend Christmas. In a word, this
was the customary itinerary of his trips to Alexandrovsk, except for
the passing visit at Kolomensk, explained by the thaw and the overflow
of the rivers, unusual in December. While the fact that matters moved
so swiftly at Moscow — on the 3rd the courier arrived with the tsar's
144 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
letter, on the 5th the embassy from Moscow was already at Alexanclrovsk
— clearly shows that the month had not been wasted, that while the tsar
was travelling, his partisans had been carefully preparing the dramatic
effect that so beguiles modern historians. If during this month Ivan
the Terrible really grew grey and aged by twenty years, as foreigners
relate, it was, of course, not because he had been quaking all this time
for the success of his unexpected "prank," but because to break with
the whole past was not an easy thing for a man reared and educated
in a feudal environment. Peter was born in a different environment,
and from childhood was accustomed to think and act without reference
to custom. Ivan in his thirty-fifth year had to smash everything; that
was something to grow grey over. That material strength lay in his
hands, that the external, so to speak, physical success of the coup was
assured for the tsar and his new counsellors, — this was so evident to all
that we find not the least attempt at resistance on the part of the old
counsellors. And, of course, not because in their servility they did not
dare think of resistance ; flight from the tsar of all the Orthodox to the
service of the Catholic king of Poland-Lithuania was a leap incomparably
greater than would have been an attempt to repeat what Andrew of
Staritsa had done only thirty years before when he raised the pomesh-
chiks of Novgorod against the Moscow government. But now the boyars
would have had no one to raise against their foes ; the pomeshchiks were
siding with Alexandrovsk, and the Moscow townsmen were now siding
with the pomeshchiks, not with the boyars. The gosts, the merchants,
and "all Orthodox Christendom of the city of Moscow," in answer
to the gracious letter of the tsar, which was read at an assembly of the
higher Muscovite merchantry, "in order that they might retain no
doubt, that there was no wrath upon them and displeasure," unani-
mously replied that they "stand not for the sovereign's evildoers and
traitors and themselves destroy them." And in the embassy despatched
to Alexandrovsk, along with bishops, abbots, and boyars, we find gosts,
merchants, and even simple "common people," who, it would seem, had
no place at all in a matter of state. The Moscow townsmen gave up
their allies of yesterday. For negotiations with them, in all probability,
the future oprichniks had needed a whole month, and their decision
definitively tipped the scales to the side of the coup. What evoked
this decision is easily determined from the sequel; commercial capital
itself was associated with the oprichnina, and this promised advantages
that no amount of protection from the Princes Shuisky could counter-
balance. Soon after the coup we find merchants and gosts acting as
official agents of the Muscovite government both at Constantinople, and
in Antwerp, and in England — in all the "seaboard states," toward which
they yearned so much; and they were all equipped not only with all
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 145
sorts of safe-conducts, but also with "bologodet" [subsidy] from the
tsar's treasury. "Into the oprichnina fell all the chief [trade] routes,
with a great part of the towns located along them, ' ' says Prof. Platonov ;
and here he gives a very convincing list of these towns. "Not for noth-
ing did the English who had business with the northern provinces beg
to be taken into the oprichnina ; not for nothing did the Stroganovs seek
to be included ; commercial-industrial capital, of course, needed the sup-
port of the administration that controlled the country and, as is evident,
did not fear the horrors attendant upon our conception of the oprich-
nina. ' ' Why should capital fear what it itself had helped to create ?
Just as the "reforms" had been the work of a coalition of the bour-
geoisie and the boyars, the coup of 1564 was carried out by a coalition of
the townsmen and the petty vassals. This explains, in all probability, one
peculiarity in the tsar's letter as read at Moscow which hitherto has not
attracted great attention but possesses great interest. In form the coup
was an act of self-defence on the part of the tsar against his great vassals,
who "had begun to betray." But these "treasonous matters" are men-
tioned very obscurely and only at the end of the letter. On the other
hand, the document develops three points in detail. First, the conduct
of the boyars during the minority of Ivan IV — ' ' who committed treasons
and caused losses to his realm before he the sovereign reached maturity."
Second, that the boyars and voevodas "seized upon the sovereign's
lands" and, holding great pomestyes and votchinas, by unlawful means
gathered great wealth. This motif, taken straight from Peresvetov,
envisaged a quite definite fact, which had already led to a partial con-
fiscation of votchina lands three years before the coup. On January 15,
1562, Ivan IV "decreed with the boyars [not with 'all the boyars'!] :
whatever old votchinas are in the possession of the princes of Yaroslavl,
Starodub, Rostov, Tver, Suzdal, Obolensk, Beloozero, Vorotynsk,
Mosalsk, Trubetsk, Odoev, and other serving princes, 4 those princes shall
not sell nor exchange their votchinas." The right of these men to dis-
pose of their lands had been reduced to a minimum ; they could bequeath
estates only to their sons. If there were no sons, the votchina reverted
to the sovereign, who did what was necessary — "ordered his soul," i.e.,
dealt out lands to the Church for prayers for the soul of the deceased,
allotted a portion "for life" to his widow, dowries for his daughters,
etc. What is more, the sovereign confiscated, without compensation, all
votchinas of this category that had been sold fifty or twenty but not less
than ten years before the publication of the edict. The basis for such
an extraordinary measure was that under decrees even of the times of
Ivan III and of Vasily III, father of Ivan the Terrible, princes' votchinas
4 Formerly independent "appanage" princes who had accepted dependence on
Moscow and as boyars rendered military service to the grand prince.
146 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
might be sold only with the licence of the grand prince : a new land-
holder meant a new vassal and, in accordance with widespread feudal
custom, not peculiar to Russia, the suzerain must be asked for his con-
sent. Votchina lands were simply treated as the sovereign's, and arbi-
trary disposal of them as embezzlement of treasury property. Finally,
the third point made in the letter — it, too, occurs in Peresvetov — is the
aversion of the boyars to an active foreign policy; they "did not wish
to take care of all Orthodox Christendom" and did not wish to defend
Christendom against the Crimea, and Lithuania, and the Germans.
These were all themes popular among wide masses, and those who read
or heard the proclamation did not, of course, stop to question why in his
thirties the tsar had a mind to punish the boyars for sins and faults
committed in the days of his youth. Had it been a palace coup organised
from above, these demagogic methods would, of course, be very strange ;
but the point is that in December, 1564 — January, 1565, as in 1547, and
as in the 'thirties under the Shusikys, the masses of the people were on
the stage and must be addressed in a language they could understand.
Yet the content of this proclamation, as of any other, by no means
defined the current policy of those who published it. "When business
negotiations began between Ivan the Terrible and the Moscow deputation
that had come to Alexandrovsk, the tsar put forward demands relevant
to the immediate causes of the coup, demands that had nothing to do
with recollections of the days of his youth. In these demands two aspects
must be distinguished. In the first place, Ivan insisted on fulfilment of
the promise, given freely by the merchantry of Moscow and subscribed
to by the terror-stricken boyars and officials left in Moscow, namely, to
surrender his foes to him unconditionally. In fulfilment of this demand
in February of the same year (the negotiations had taken place, we
shall remember, at the beginning of January) a number of boyars of
old princely families were executed, others given the tonsure, still others
banished for life to Kazan with their wives and children, while the
property of all of them was confiscated. Banishments and executions at
once gave into Ivan's hands a supply of land probably sufficient to
remunerate the immediate participants in the coup d'etat. To secure
them a money salary the tsar and grand prince decreed that for his
expenses a hundred thousand rubles (about 5,000,000 rubles gold, accord-
ing to the reckoning of Professor Klyuchevsky) be taken from the treas-
ury of the land. From this aspect the coup was only the affair of a
small circle, but Ivan was serving the interests of a class. Not all the
pomeshchiks could be satisfied out of the proceeds of a few banishments
and a small appropriation from the treasury chest. The form devised
to satisfy the "warriors" was as old-fashioned as the content of the
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 147
change effected was new. In the state the sovereign could not give
orders without his boyars, the suzerain without his curia; but on his
"domain," in his court economy, he was as absolute as was any votchin-
nik at home. Conversion of half the state, and the wealthiest part of it
at that, into the sovereign's domain made it possible to hold sway over
a vast territory without consulting the feudal aristocracy. "Without
violating the decrees of 1550, he might here do all that he liked, not
only without the assent of "all the boyars" but without that of even
a single boyar; the right of the boyar college did not, of course, extend
to the sovereign's court management. And for the tsar's court, now in-
creased to colossal proportions, a very old name was at first chosen ; the
tsar demanded that "from his realm be set apart an oprichnina." This
was the name given to the estates in former times portioned out to wid-
owed princesses ' ' for life. ' ' Later there came into use the more accurate
and newer term, dvor [court]. In its arrangements this "dvor" was an
exact copy of an old sovereign's votchina, so exact that one modern
scholar has even doubted whether the oprichnina had any institutions
of its own, or whether new men were not simply seated in the old institu-
tions along with the old "clerks," for management of "oprichnina"
(select) matters. While effecting a genuine revolution, the creators of
the oprichnina apparently strove to conceal all juridical traces of it, and
we cannot but see in this fact a conscious purpose, issuing from the same
impulses as were reflected in the tsar's proclamation that we analysed
above. The people needed a scapegoat, and they were assured that the
coup was directed against individual persons, however numerous, the old
order remaining inviolate.
The sovereign's dvor began to expand enormously, but it never came
to embrace the whole country, and the zemshchina, which administered
all that remained outside the limits of the oprichnina, was more than
merely decorative. The best study of the territorial composition of the
oprichnina has been made by Professor Platonov; we shall therefore
describe it in his words. "The territory of the oprichnina," says this
scholar, "taking form gradually, in the 1570 's comprised the towns and
townships lying in the central and northern parts of the state. . . . Rest-
ing to the north on the 'great sea-ocean,' the lands of the oprichnina
cut into the zemshchina like a wedge, dividing it in two. On the east
were left to the zemshchina the Perm and Vyatka towns, the Low coun-
try and Ryazan; on the west the border towns 'of the German frontier'
(Pskov and Novgorod), 'of the Lithuanian frontier' (Veliky Luki,
Smolensk, and others), and the Seversk towns. To the south these two
zones of the 'zemshchina' were connected by the frontier towns and the
' wilderness. ' The Moscow North, the Littoral, and two of the Novgorod
148 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
pyatiuas 5 the oprichnina ruled integrally ; in the central provinces its
lands were interspersed with those of the zemshchina in a patchwork
that is as hard to understand as to describe, ' ' but that can nevertheless
be characterised in a general way. ' ' In the oprichnina administration, ' '
says Professor Platonov in another passage, "were gathered the old
appanage lands." The goal toward which the law of 1562 had striven,
by inches and within legal bounds, was attained three years later, all
at once and by a revolutionary road; the most valuable part of the
territory of the Muscovite state, together with the greatest commercial-
industrial centres, became immediately an appanage of the sovereign
where, unrestrained by the old boyars, the men of the "Peresvetov party"
now began to hold sway. The old authority retained the worst and
poorest regions; it is curious that just as Kazan had become a place
of exile, so the newly-conquered lands in the west were now willingly
ceded to the "men of the zemshchina." The Novgorodan "knights"
from the Obonezh and Bezhets pyatinas, when these were taken into the
oprichnina, received pomestyes around Polotsk, on the recently annexed
and very insecure Lithuanian lands.
The tsar's edict, even in the brief resume preserved in the official
Moscow chronicle (like a great part of the official documents of this
stormy time, the original edict on the oprichnina has not come down to
us), states quite distinctly in whose favour and for what proximate goal
all this shuffling of lands was effected. "And to give to the sovereign
in the oprichnina princes and nobles and knights, of court and town,
1,000 head, and to them to give pomestyes in those towns which he took
into the oprichnina/' says the chronicle. Modern historians have seen
in this something in the nature of the establishment of a corps of
gendarmes charged with the detection of domestic sedition, the protec-
tion of the tsar, and the defence of the realm. But tempting as is this
analogy, one must not yield to it. Police work, and that alone, has always
been the task of gendarmes ; not they — there were too few of them for
that — but the standing army has constituted the material support of the
government. The oprichniks represented something quite different. The
detachment of a thousand knights really constituted a corps of ten or
twelve thousand men, inasmuch as each appeared for service with several
armed bondsmen. Not a single large landholder, even among the former
appanage princes, could have such a retinue ; even two or three together
of the very greatest probably would not have raised so many men.
Besides this mounted detachment there were in the oprichnina infantry as
well — "and he ordered the streltsy to be to him especially," says the
chronicler. To cope with a ' ' domestic foe ' ' such a force would have been
s Novgorod's territory was divided into five pyatinas [fifths] corresponding to
the five kontsy [ends] that made up the town itself.
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 149
more than sufficient ; the grand prince of Moscow was now, in his single
person, the very greatest of the Muscovite feudatories. The oprichnina
army was a logical corollary to the oprichnina dvor of the sovereign,
and, it must be added, the very possibility of forming this dvor had been
conditioned by the existence of such an army; for the novelty of this
part of the edict was not the appearance close to the tsar of a "thousand
heads" but the quartering of them on lands unceremoniously taken
from other holders — ' ' and the votchinniks and pomeshchiks who are not
to be in the oprichnina [the sovereign] bade to be removed from these
towns." A detachment of a thousand had long existed, even from 1550,
and in the coup of January 3, 1565, it had played exactly the same
role as did the Paris garrison in the coup of December 2, 1851. This
tsar's guard, founded, as we shall recall, by the boyar government as
a concession to the upper crust of the pomeshchik masses, had become a
powerful weapon in the struggle of the pomeshchik class against the
boyars themselves. Only by its closeness to the tsar is to be explained
the fact that the "base-born" now standing around him dared so auda-
ciously to raise their hands against their feudal lords of yesterday, and
in the tsar's train this "picked" thousand, moving "after the tsar with
men and with horses, with all service attire," was, of course, the most
imposing part. In all probability, all of them, with the exception of a
few individuals, were taken into the oprichnina corps, so that actually
the latter represented nothing new. And as before, so also after 1565,
along with its military and police significance it continued to have politi-
cal significance; there entered it the "better," i.e., the most influential,
elements of the local bodies of nobles. As Klyuchevsky has explained
in detail, they did not while in the tsar's guard lose contact with the
local communities ; in other words, they were the political leaders of
the pomeshchik class, and distribution of oprichnina lands to them sig-
nified nothing else than that along with the old, boyar-votcliina state,
now more than cut in half, there arose a new, noble-pomestye state.
Clear proof that the coup meant merely the establishment of a new
class regime, of which the tsar's personal authority was only a tool, and
not the personal emancipation of Ivan from the boyar tutelage that had
trammelled him, is the singular assembly that was held in Moscow in the
summer of the following year (1566). On June 28, 1566, the Tsar and
Grand Prince Ivan IV of All Rus "spoke" with Prince Vladimir of
Staritsa, with his archbishops, bishops, and the whole "Holy Synod,"
with all the boyars and officials, with the princes, with the knights and
military servitors, ' ' and with the gosts, and with the merchants, and with
all trading men." The subject of this conversation was a truce proposed
by the Polish-Lithuanian government on the basis of uti possidetis.
Thus, it was proposed that Ivan the Terrible renounce his original goal,
150 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
the seizure of all Livonia. In essence, the question was put : is it worth
while to keep on fighting? And it is significant that Ivan and his new
government did not presume to decide this question upon their own
responsibility but referred it to the judgment of all those in whose name
they ruled. It would, of course, be very naive to imagine that this
"zemsky sobor of 1566," the first sobor whose existence is historically
indisputable, 6 even remotely resembled modern popular representative
bodies ; the very worst of them, if only in theory, speaks in the name of
the "people," a concept alien to feudal Europe. Mediaeval assemblies,
both in Russia and in the West, represented, not the people but ' ' estates, ' '
etats, Stande. From this point of view the important point about the
sobor of 1566 was the role of two "estates" whose political importance
had hitherto scarcely been openly recognised — the petty vassals or ' ' nobil-
ity," and the bourgeoisie. Quantitatively the pomeshchiks even consti-
tuted a majority of this assembly. The Livonian War had been decided
on by the boyars, unwillingly and under pressure from below, and now
they were asking the "warriors" and the "trading folk" whether this
war should be continued. Between 1557 and 1566 lay a wide gulf. The
details of the debates at the sobor, assuming there were debates, have
not come down to us. The one-day sobor was, of course, not summoned
to learn the opinions of those assembled; the pomeshchiks and the mer-
chants were summoned because their opinions were already known, and
it was hoped that the authority of their voices would reinforce the
authority of the declarations of Muscovite diplomacy. The sobor was,
in essence, a ceremonial facade ; the real negotiations took place, of
course, before the sobor met and, apparently, by no means inspired the
government with the confidence breathed by the solemn speeches at the
sobor itself. The sobor decided to continue the war, come what might ;
but in fact negotiations were continued and a few years later terminated
in a truce on the conditions proposed by the Poles. The suzerain Ivan
needed the formal promise of his new, extensive vassalage to "die for
the sovereign on horseback" in case of war, and of the trading men to
give their last red cent if need be. This promise Ivan received, and on
their speeches the military-serving and the trading men kissed the cross.
Whether or not to make the fullest use of this promise was the business
of the government, which was, of course, guided by the views of its sup-
porters, but these views were not ascertained at the sobor.
With the 'sixties terminates, properly speaking, that intensive evo-
lution of class relationships which fills the second third of the sixteenth
century. In rebellion against their feudal lords, inferior landholders
e It was long conventional to reckon this as the second sobor, but it may now
be considered unconditionally proved that the so-called "first" sobor of 1550 is a
legend.
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 151
in 1537 were hanged as rebels along the highways "not together but all
the way to Novgorod " ; in 1566 they were masters of the situation, while
yesterday's lords were now "executed and hanged" as rebels. The
economic revolution, the collapse of old votchina landholding, found
political expression in the accession to power of a upw snpjal o~\*ss~ Of
further struggle within the oprichnina (that there was one, we cannot
doubt) we know nothing. In studying this period of Ivan's reign the
historian is faced with a difficulty similar to that presented by imperial
Rome ; detailed accounts are to be had only from the camp of the boyars,
and it is not surprising that we find nothing there except the "horrors
of the oprichnina." That the pomeshchik regime was terrorist there can,
of course, be no doubt. Under the given circumstances, in the face of
powerful "traitors" and of a foreign foe who was becoming more terrible
every hour, and in whom the "traitors" easily found support, revolu-
tionary governments even of more civilised times have ruled with the aid
of terror. In the sixteenth century terrorism was the usual and accepted
practice. Twenty years before the oprichnina the nobles' publicist de-
picted the way in which his hero and favourite, Sultan Makhmet, dealt
with unjust judges: "the ruler did not accuse them, he only ordered
them flayed alive and said: if they grow new skins, the fault shall be
forgiven them. And their skins he bade to be peeled off, and bade paper
to be nailed on, and bade them to be affixed in the law courts with an
iron nail, and bade to be inscribed on their skins : without such terrors
justice cannot be brought into the realm." Such was the theory. The
practice, exemplified in guba institutions, did not lag behind the theory.
The guba "head" might subject any inhabitant to torture, not only on
direct accusation, but simply on the basis of evil rumours about him.
Simple suspicion that a given person was an "evil man" was enough to
begin to pull his joints out and break his bones, to lacerate his body
with the knout and burn him with fire. This was the norm of criminal
law then generally accepted, and Ivan appealed to it in reply to Kurb-
sky's reproaches of "unheard-of cruelty," writing that if traitors be
not punished, then robbers and thieves cannot be tortured — "then all
realms are in disorder and all are corrupted with intestine quarrels."
4. Economic Balance Sheet of the Sixteenth Century
By the end of the sixteenth century, in the old counties of the Mus-
covite state, middling, pomestye landholding definitely prevailed. Large
votchinas survived only as exceptions. Petty landholding had also been
definitively swallowed up by pomestye landholding. The typical hold-
ing was from 150 to 525 desyatinas, under the three-field system, with
all the characteristics of the "new" economy: lord's arable, money dues,
and peasants bound to the land by unpaid debt. However strange to
152 HISTORY OP RUSSIA
modern eyes, in the first half of the century this had been the economi-
cally progressive type, as we noted at the beginning of the present chap-
ter. Its victory ought to have signified a great economic advance, the
definitive triumph of a ''money" over a "natural" system. In fact,
we see something quite different. Natural obligations, which had been
crystallised into a complicated whole known to us under the name of
"serfdom," reappear in the centre of the stage and this time hold their
ground tenaciously. The free wage-labourer, dreamed of by the nobles'
publicist of the first half of the century and in places actually estab-
lished on more advanced estates, vanishes for two centuries ; Ivan Pere-
svetov has no successors until the nobles of the "Manchester school" in
the 'forties and 'fifties of the past century. The bitter land hunger of
the middle of the century, so vividly expressed in the confiscations of
the oprichnina, would seem to indicate that in the centre of the realm,
at least, a great part of the available lands had already been made use
of. Not so, however: according to the registers of 1584-1586, in eleven
subdistricts of the county of Moscow, there were only 23,974 desyatinas
of arable to almost 120,000 desyatinas of waste, land neglected and aban-
doned, in part grown over anew with forest. Contrast this with the first
half of the century when the forests had been so radically reduced that
around Moscow foreign travellers found nothing but stumps and saw no
"forest beasts" but rabbits, at which they were much amazed, accus-
tomed as they were to think of Muscovy as a forested land abounding
in all sorts of wild beasts. One very authoritative scholar even makes
bold to assert that the retrogression was not merely quantitative, but
that the technique of agriculture declined in Muscovite Rus parallel with
the triumph of middling landholding. "In the majority of these [cen-
tral] counties," says N. Rozhkov, "with remarkable regularity the three-
field system, prevalent in the fifteen-sixties, is replaced toward the end
of the century by a cruder system of fallowing; the sole exception is
the county of Moscow, and that only in part." The pomeshchik, having
crushed the feudal votchinnik in the name of economic progress, himself
very quickly becomes an economically backward type. Such is the para-
dox that concludes the history of Russian national economy in the epoch
of Ivan the Terrible.
Among the economic conditions which toward the end of the epoch
of Ivan the Terrible hampered the development of money economy in
Russia (and this general condition coloured all the details), the most
palpable was the course of foreign policy. The Livonian War, it must
not be forgotten, was a war for trade routes, i.e., indirectly, for markets.
The future was to show that the economic evolution of Russia, in its
tempo at least, was three-quarters dependent on whether or not she suc-
ceeded in establishing direct connections with the more progressive coun-
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 153
t
tries of the "West. Contemporaries understood this and expressed it
quite distinctly. The port of Narva, which remained in Russia's hands
even after the first setbacks of the Livonian War, very seriously per-
turbed her competitors. "The Muscovite sovereign daily increases his
might by obtaining the goods that are brought into Narva, ' ' the king of
Poland anxiously wrote to Elizabeth of England in striving to dissuade
I the English from trade relations with Moscow, ' ' for hither are brought
not only merchandise but also weapons hitherto unknown to him ; they
bring not only productions of the arts, but thither go the artists them-
i selves, by whose aid he obtains the means to vanquish all. Your Majesty
knows not the strength of this enemy and the authority he enjoys over
I his subjects. Hitherto we have been able to vanquish him only because
,he was a stranger to education and knew not the arts. But if Narva
shipping continues, what will remain unknown to him?" All this was
patent to them at Moscow, and inasmuch as the harbour of Narva was
only a narrow wicket to the west, they strove to obtain wide gates by
mastering one of the great ports of the Baltic Sea. But the repeated
attempt to seize Reval (in 1570 and 1577) only led to a war with Sweden,
in which the Muscovite state lost Narva, too, — and not Narva alone but
its Russian suburb, Ivangorod as well ; the Baltic was now hermetically
closed to the Russians. This loss of the principal stake of the war and
the expulsion of the troops of Ivan IV from the Livonian towns he had
occupied at the beginning of the war had great moral significance, though
later historical narratives say a great deal about the campaigns of
Bathory of Poland, and only a couple of words about the war with the
Swedes. The appearance of a Polish army under the walls of Pskov,
the greatest of the commercial centres on the western frontier still in
Russian hands, only marked the close of the whole "Livonian adventure."
In the last years of .his life Ivan the Terrible no longer thought of con-
quests in the west; he was only defending himself and was glad not to
lose his own. Lithuanian detachments burned down Rusa and laid waste
the country round the headwaters of the Volga; it was even anticipated
that Moscow itself would have to be defended from Bathory. Long before
this critical moment, central Russia, and the outer town of Moscow itself,
had already experienced such destruction as no one could recall since
the times of Tokhtamysh. This was the raid of the Crimean Tatars in
1571, which is not sufficiently stressed in modern historiography but was
fully appreciated by contemporaries. It was directly connected with the
Livonian War; the khan of the Crimea had been an ally of the Poles
from the very beginning. Less clear, though none the less real, is its
connexion with the domestic affairs of Russia: the khan was led to
Moscow by four fugitive ' ' knights, ' ' probably acting on commission from
Prince Mstislavsky. In its immediate destructiveness the Crimean raid
154 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
far exceeded all the burning and plundering of the Lithuanian partisans.
The whole outer town of Moscow the Tatars burned to ashes ; and, as we
shall remember from Fletcher's account, seventeen years later it was not
yet fully restored. A number of other towns were overtaken by the
same fate. According to contemporary accounts, in Moscow and its
vicinity alone some 800,000 people perished, and 150,000 were led away
into captivity. The general loss of population must have exceeded a
million, out of a possible total of ten million inhabitants and, at that,
it was the old and most cultivated regions that were subjected to deso-
lation; not for nothing did the men of Moscow long afterwards reckon
from the Tatar devastation as in the nineteenth century men long reck-
oned from " 1812. "
To the devastation wrought by the Tatars must in large measure be
assigned the depopulation, almost sudden, which scholars find in the
central counties, beginning at this very time. "The beginning of the
'seventies of the sixteenth century is the chronological starting point of
the depopulation of a great part of the counties of the centre of Mus-
covy, ' ' says N. Rozhkov, the historian of the rural economy of Muscovite
Rus whom we have already cited more than once. ' ' The weak beginnings
of the ebb of population to be observed in certain of these counties in
the 'fifties and 'sixties are now converted into an intensive, strikingly
acute, phenomenon of the flight of peasants from the central region."
Perhaps the desire to get farther away from the Tatars explains the
migration of the population from the centre to the infertile regions of
northern Rus which is to be observed about this time. The towns along
the newly opened Dvina trade route (it had been opened by the English
in the 'fifties) to Archangel had begun to play a conspicuous role even
in the preceding decade. We frequently see the tsar here on his trips
to the Kirillo-Belozersk Monastery, and he evidently regards them as
something more than stopping-places on his pious excursions ; in Vologda
he laid the foundation of a "stone town" and later made a special trip
to see how it was being built. Apparently this was not merely a fortress
but a tsar's palace, for the sovereign went to "inspect" not only the
"town foundation" but also "all of his the tsar's buildings in Vologda."
Not for nothing did the English here build themselves a house ' ' huge as
a castle. ' ' Around the newly rising urban centres the countryside came
to life ; it was natural that, in the wake of traders and artisans, peasants,
too, trailed hither. But what displaced them from their comfortable
berths? The extent of the depopulation shows that mere dread of the
Tatars is insufficient as an explanation. In those subdistricts of the
county of Moscow where, following the registers of 1584-1586, we have
noted such a preponderance of waste over arable land, there were 2,182
deserted holdings and only 3 clearings to 673% hamlets ; deserted hamlets
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 155
constituted 76% of the total, newly arisen ones only 0.1%. Even this, it
seems, was an improvement; from incomplete data for the same county
(for a smaller number of subdistricts) for the preceding years (1573-
1578) may be counted, in one case 93%, in another as much as 96%,
deserted holdings. Other central counties fared no better ; in Mozhaisk,
for example, on individual estates deserted hamlets constitute 86%, in
Pereyaslavl-Zalessky 50% to 70%. Moreover, the depopulation affected
also the more northerly counties of the centre, which were safe from
the Tatars; of the Tver court hamlets of Prince Simeon Bekbulatovich
(whom Ivan for sport ranked among the tsars of Moscow) half were
deserted in 1580. Between Yaroslavl and Moscow even Chancellor, in
the middle of the 'fifties, had found a multitude of hamlets "remarkably
filled with people." Another Englishman, Randolph, who was in Russia
a little later than Chancellor, also speaks of the dense population of
these localities, while in the 'eighties their compatriot Fletcher was
amazed by the deserted hamlets there. But the Tatars of the Crimea
did not go far north of Moscow; in the raid of 1571 Ivan IV himself
sought refuge from them no farther north than Rostov. Besides, dread
of them must have been particularly strong in the first years after the
devastation, while in the words of the author we have quoted above ' ' the
flight [of peasants from the centre] does not cease until the very end
of the century, as a number of facts convincingly attest." This non-
correspondence, both chronological and geographical, between the "Tatar
devastation" and the area of depopulation compels us anew to seek
other, more potent and less accidental, causes of the latter.
One of these the same author notes in passing. "In the sources,"
he says, "have been preserved curious facts, illustrating the acts of
violence and the plundering of the pomeshchiks and the consequent
well-nigh irreparable injury to the economic value of pomestye land."
Unfortunately he cites only one such fact, but it is an extremely vivid
one. "At the very end of the sixteenth century, in the village of
Pogorelitsy, county of Vladimir, lived 'among the peasants' a certain
Ivan Sokurov. In 1599 Pogorelitsy was granted in pomestye to the
'knight' Fedor Sobolev. The latter, in Sokurov 's absence, appeared at
his homestead and there wrought complete havoc : he took three bonds-
men; led away his horse, cow, ox, and four sheep; took from Sokurov 's
wife one ruble 13 altyns in money (=35 rubles gold) ; and carried off
as much as he could of rye, oats, barley, flax, and 'three bees.' More,
when Sokurov returned, the pomeshchik took possession of his home-
stead, too." The picture of such an expulsion of a peasant from his
nest by a landowner is by no means peculiar to Russia ; about this time
we find a number of similar phenomena in Germany, where a special
term has been coined for them — Bauernlegen. The conditional character
156 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
of pomestye tenure of course has nothing to do with the question, but
it is not hard to imagine how the peasant masses must have reacted to
the goings-on of thousands of such Sobolevs, suddenly invading lands
theretofore untouched by pomestye landholding. And this is just what
happened when the oprichnina, with its shuffling of land, caused a num-
ber of princes' votchinas, with their traditional feudal order of things,
with peasant obligations that were not burdensome and that at the
same time were handed on from generation to generation, to be simul-
taneously converted into pomestyes. Like ants from a disturbed ant-
hill the population ran off from these old cultivated places, seized by
the oprichnina — ran off with no thought but how to save themselves
from the new order of things so abruptly ushered in. It is no accident
that the maximum depopulation of the county of Moscow coincides with
the peak of the oprichnina.
Nor is the oprichnina in and of itself, as a "measure of state,"
involved in the present question, of course; the example we have just
cited does not relate to the oprichnina ; in 1599 the oprichnina was a
thing of the past, and Sobolev probably had never served in it. It is
merely that in the 'sixties and 'seventies a phenomenon common to all
pomestye landholding was augmented to unusual proportions. Preda-
tory exploitation of an estate, the desire to squeeze out of it in the
shortest possible time as much money as possible, are just as character-
istic of Russian pomeshchiks of the sixteenth century as of any "entre-
preneurs" in the early period of money economy. One contemporary
publicist, writing shortly after the Troubles, gives from his own personal
impressions an extraordinarily striking general picture of that unre-
strained speculation, a petty example of which we have just cited. In
his words, at the time of the great famines under Boris Godunov many
not only put their money into circulation but capitalised all their move-
able property, including their wearing apparel, "and gathered into their
granaries all seeds of every grain," thus making a profit of thousands
per cent. To a considerable extent this speculation explained the famines
themselves ; let us recall that even twenty years earlier Fletcher ascribed
the rise of grain prices to engrossing by the pomeshchiks. If our author
is to be believed, there were at the height of the famine great stores of
grain, so that afterward, when civil war had actually devastated the
country, and seeding had been much curtailed, all Russia was fed from
these old stores, which the grain speculators, in order to keep up prices,
had not let out of their hands during the famine. Judging by the
description of society in the time of Godunov as given by this publicist,
cornering grain offered great profits. In his words, even the provincial
nobility, rich in gold and silver utensils, with horses in the stable and
menials in the homestead, "resembled the first magnates and the kins-
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 157
men of the tsar ' ' ; nor was it only among the nobility ' ' but also among
the merchants were men of substance and among the cultivators. ' ' From
the sumptuous attire of their wives and daughters one could not tell
what they were, they wore so much gold, silver, and all other adorn-
ments; "all were boyars at this time."
Given such a state of affairs, it was evidently more profitable to
plunder one's peasants, converting their property into money, than to
carry on regular economy ; this fact, and not any juridical norms,
impelled the pomeshchiks to predatory exploitation of their estates. Reg-
ular economy demanded each year more and more outlaj'S of money
capital, for the value of money fell with amazing rapidity. According
to N. Rozhkov's calculations the ruble of the beginning of the sixteenth
century was approximately equal to 94 rubles gold, and the ruble of the
end of this century to only 24-25 gold rubles ; in less than a hundred
years the value of money had fallen 75%. In Western Europe during
this century it fell as much as 80%, but there was a definite external
cause for this — the discovery of America with its gold and silver mines.
This cause undoubtedly exerted its influence on Russia, too, a fact which ?
shows how mistaken is the opinion that the realm of Muscovy was com-
pletely isolated from the rest of Europe. Moreover, enough facts have
been cited to show how early had begun the economic ' ' Europeanisation
of Russia." The "triumph of cupidity" thus had an entirely objective
basis; more was involved than the "greediness" of the pomeshchiks.
Another cause, in Russia, was the rapid growth of money economy, fos-
tered by compulsory liquidation of the large feudal estates with their
"natural" order of things. Such a mass of land was thrown on the
market that land values fell by almost one third. In the first half of
the century a desyatina of land was worth 0.3 rubles, in the second 0.7
rubles, but when translated into gold money the first figure becomes 28
rubles, and the second only 17.
By the end of the sixteenth century predatory economy, ever tending
to liquidate and convert into money as quickly as possible both stock
and buildings, and even the peasants themselves, as we shall presently
see, was confronted with its own inevitable consequence — a shortage of
labour on the land. The peasantry, stampeded by the new order, scat-
tered from the centre like chaff before the wind — both to the far north,
where grain was cropped only three times in five years, and into the
steppe, regularly visited almost every year by the Tatars of the Crimea ;
most of all, of course, to the Oka and the Volga, to places even then
comparatively safe. One chronicle as early as the middle of the reign
of Ivan the Terrible noted the ebb of population from the counties of
Mozhaisk and Volokolamsk "to Ryazan, and into the Meshchera, and
into the lowland towns, to Nizhny-Novgorod. ' ' In all these regions arose
158 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
new settlements even while the centre was suffering depopulation. The
crisis we have observed was, then, by no means an all-Russian one. It
was above all a crisis of pomeshchik economy just as the first half of the
century had witnessed the crisis of the old votchina economy. The old
votchinas had perished because they were not able to adapt themselves
to the conditions of the new money economy ; the pomeshchiks made too
good use of it, wishing to take at once the maximum that it could offer.
The decline in the value of money drove them forward on this road;
what one could "live on decently" became insufficient in ten years' time.
It was necessary to drain more and more an economy that was already
sufficiently ruined. It was necessary to invest capital in it; but where
get the capital? It was necessary to bind to the estate the working
hands that tended irresistibly to leave it, but how was this to be done
without capital, without the "silver" with which the peasants might
be bound? This dual dilemma faced pomeshchik economy on the eve
of the Troubles. Indeed, at the root of the Troubles lay the attempts
of the pomeshchiks to get out of the blind alley created by their own
rapacity.
Money might be gained through speculation — a game of chance in
grain and in men. From as early as the 1550 's there is evidence to
show that trade in peasants by no means waited for the official estab-
lishment of serfdom. In a petition of this date one pomeshchik
complains of another in the following terms: "I sent my men to effect
the disavowal of two peasants from a homestead in his hamlet, and he
. . . accepted their disavowal and took the pozhiloe [residence fee] ; and
I sent to have those peasants brought to me, but he did not let those
peasants leave him and is holding those peasants by force. ' ' The pozhiloe
was in form a rent for the homestead occupied by the peasant, but by
the middle of the sixteenth century this formality no longer bore any
relation to reality, for the annual rent for a homestead was equal to
one-fourth of the value of the homestead itself. Inasmuch as the resi-
dence fee was, as we have just seen, actually paid by the new master
to whom the peasants passed, payment for the homestead was essentially
masked payment for the peasant himself. This is why documents of the
time call pozhiloe a "fee" and the taking away of a peasant without
pozhiloe taking away "without fee." If the peasant had, in addi-
tion, taken the "lord's silver," the factual difference between him and
the lord's bondsman almost disappeared; "disavowal" on the part of the
peasant was then replaced by "release" on the part of the master.
Indebted peasants were, of course, more easily made the object of specu-
lation. It must be added that the men of Moscow were by no means
such worshippers of legality as they are made out to have been by certain
modern scholars, who even perceive in the evolution of the institution
IVAN THE TERRIBLE 159
of peasant bondage certain features reminiscent of Roman law. The
law of Moscow was still feudal law, i.e., when it did not rest on force,
it meant nothing. A pomeshchik never made any bones about whether
a peasant actually owed him anything or not, and the rates of pozhiloe
established by the sudebnik he observed only when he wished. Docu-
ments are extant attesting that when a lord did not want to release a
peasant, he "threw him into irons" and demanded from him a pozhiloe,
not of one ruble, as the law decreed (50 rubles gold, in the middle of
the century), but five, and even ten rubles (250 and 500 rubles). In
general, it may be regarded as the rule that without the master's consent
a peasant could not "disavow."
"Lord's silver," the peasant's debt to the landholder, was in Mus-
covite Rus not a juridical means of indenturing peasants but a means
of enticing them from other pomeshchiks or an antidote against peasant
flight; the momentary advantage might tempt the less far-seeing and
restrain them from attempts to seek happiness elsewhere. Hence the
abolition of peasant "disavowal" must be regarded, not as the starting
point of peasant bondage but as one of the aspects of the crisis of
pomestye landholding. From the tangled snarl of lawsuits over peasants
which clogged the courts of the time there was no escape except to forbid
"disavowals" altogether, binding the peasants to those on whose lands
they were settled at the given moment. Then would have ceased the
pomeshchiks' destruction of each other, and the money that went into
the struggle to secure labourers might have been otherwise employed.
But as expenditures on the "disavowal" of peasants grew beyond the
power of the pomeshchiks, they were driven to desperate means to get
along without money. Most interesting in this connection is a transi-
tional step to the abolition of peasant "disavowal" which we find in an
unofficial document (the so-called "Code of Fedor"), but borrowed, of
course, from current practice : ' ' write double indentures on the peas-
ants. " Demand for double repayment of the peasants' debt must, of
course, have restrained those who desired to disavow him. But the
peasant had become such a "rare bird" that the wealthier landholders
did not balk even at this; the mass of military servitors therefore pro-
cured a new limitation of ' ' disavowal, ' ' which we find in the well-known
edicts of 1601-1602, the first documentary evidence of peasant bondage.
These edicts limited the number of "taken" peasants to not more than
two, and only petty pomeshchiks could "take" from one another; com-
petition by large landholders was excluded in advance. "Disavowal" by
this time was an exception; as a rule the peasants were settled on the
lands of those owners with whom the registers of 1590-1593 had found
them. Rid of money expenditures on the peasants, the pomeshchik was
at the same time rid of expenditures on the state; in the registers of
160 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
1592-1593 the lord's arable was excepted from assessment. All sorts
of palliatives were devised to appease the money hunger of the nobility,
but the crisis developed with irresistible force and the pangs of hunger
became ever keener. To the pomeshchik a sop from the treasury was not
enough; he needed the whole treasury. In the days of the oprichnina
he had left some power to the boyars, taking for himself only the very
fattest morsels. Now he did not want to leave anything to anybody;
he needed all power for himself.
CHAPTER IX
THE TROUBLES
1. The Feudal Reaction; Godunov and the Nobility 1
The crisis in pomestye economy, like the crisis in large-scale votchina
economy at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was bound to have
political consequences. In the earlier case the political result of economic
revolution had been the oprichnina — the liquidation of the dominance of
the feudal aristocracy in favour of the middling landholders. In the
present case the result of economic reaction was bound to be the revival,
even though partial and temporary, of political feudalism.
In the first place, the feudal aristocracy was not nearly so completely
ruined by Ivan the Terrible as he might have wished, and as certain
modern historians have assumed. "To raise from stones the seed of
Abraham" proved harder in practice than on paper. The mere fact
that all the frontiers of the Muscovite realm, i.e., all its military defences,
had to be left in the hands of the "zemshchina," that is, of the feudal
boyar duma, is significant enough. Nor is it less significant that the
oprichnina, as an institution, predeceased Ivan IV by several years;
and we are hardly surprised when we are told that Ivan the Terrible
"commended" his children — the one, Dmitry, a minor, the other, Fedor,
an imbecile — to three representatives of old boyar families, Ivan Petro-
vich Shuisky, Ivan Fedorovich Mstislavsky, and Nikita Romanovich
Yuryev. It is true that the last-mentioned was closely related to the
dynasty, and that the first two belonged to the most complaisant families
of the old aristocracy, the Shuiskys having gone so far as to serve in the
oprichnina themselves. Yet not one of them had been created by it, and
all of them, according to mestnichestvo reckoning, stood at the very
apex of feudal society. This stability of the hierarchical position of the
old families was but emphasised by the political misfortunes of individual
members of them. The senior representatives both of the Shuiskys and
of the Mstislavskys perish in exile ; yet in the campaign against the Ta-
tars of the Crimea, who in 1591 again threaten Moscow, the commander-
in-chief is the son of the exiled Mstislavsky. The Shuiskys were the
acknowledged mortal enemies of the Godunovs; yet at the head of the
army sent by Boris Godunov against the False Dmitry we find these
i Cf. supra, p. 133, N. 1.
161
162 HISTORY OF EUSSIA
very Princes Shuisky, including the most untrustworthy of them, Vasily
Ivanovich, the future tsar; and the Shuiskys are succeeded in this post
by members of another old boyar family, the Princes Golitsyn. The first
project of a Russian constitution, an historically famous one (the treaty
with Sigismund of Poland, February 4, 1610), puts the boyar duma at
the head of the administration of Russia, and after the defeat of the
partisans of this constitution the old boyar family of the Romanov-
Yuryevs is placed on the throne of the tsars. And under the first
sovereign of this family, the boyar duma has occasion, God knows how
many times, to state that as reward for service the tsar may bestow
"money or a pomestye, but not otechestvo [rank]." The system of
places (mestnichestvo), already tottering in 1555, survived juridically
until 1682, and as a matter of fact even the members of Peter's collegia
occasionally disputed over the question of precedence.
But the oprichnina not only did not kill off the old aristocracy, it
created a new one. Men from the middle nobility, on becoming intimates
of Tsar Ivan, very quickly familiarised themselves with their new station
and became a copy of the high-born order of boyars they had displaced.
A typical example of such feudatories sprung from the oprichnina was
Bogdan Belsky, the "squire" of Ivan the Terrible, close to him, how-
ever, not because of this his official duty but because of other, unofficial
and much less honourable functions. In the last years of Ivan's life, if
we are to believe one of his contemporaries, well acquainted with the
service relationships of the time, Belsky was the "first intimate and
chief counsellor" although he bore no duma title; "the heart of the tsar
was always burning for him. ' ' Resting on such a purely personal foun-
dation, his position could not be a lasting one ; no sooner had Ivan closed
his eyes than Belsky saw himself out of employment. He made an
attempt to take advantage of what was in fact an interregnum ; the one
tsarevich was in swaddling clothes, the other was an idiot; some one or
other must rule in their names — why might not this "some one" be
Belsky? In contrast to the regency of the Shuiskys in the minority of
Ivan the Terrible we see no social force behind this candidate to the
regency. His hope lay wholly in court connections (he was close to the
Nagois, the brothers of little Dmitry's mother) and, probably, in his
own armed servants, with whom later he was to appear in Moscow to
support his candidacy to the very throne of the tsars. At least, otherwise
it is difficult to understand how he succeeded in seizing the Kremlin,
when from the chronicle's narrative it is evident that the military force
(knights and streltsy) was not on his side. The intervention of this
military force decided matters; seeing the artillery directed against the
Kremlin, Belsky surrendered (not without a battle, however, since the
chronicle mentions killed and wounded), but not unconditionally. The
THE TROUBLES 163
victorious side had to be content with his exile from Moscow, at first to
the governorship of Nizhny-Novgorod; later, it appears, he resided on
his votchina, living the life of a wealthy feudatory. Such lenient be-
haviour toward Belsky on the part of the government which dealt se-
verely with the Mstislavskys and the Shuiskys could be motivated only by
fear. The former "squire" of Ivan IV was personally, as a landholder,
so strong a man, apparently, that it was no easy task to reach him on his
estates, and at the same time he was not so dangerous as to warrant
risking new troubles on his account. He never gave up hope of returning
to power, and scarcely was Tsar Fedor (1584-1598) dead than, as we
have mentioned, Belsky again appeared in Moscow "with many people,"
this time reaching straight for the tsar's throne. He was once more to
be convinced that his "household" alone was not enough to make him a
political force; he was again left at the post, and again we see him in
honourable exile. But he still cherished ambitions; having failed to
become tsar, he was ready to content himself with an appanage princi-
pality. On the southern frontier of the Muscovite realm, whither they
had sent him to establish border fortresses against the Tatars of the
Crimea, he conducted himself as absolute master; at his own expense
he maintained the troops more generously than it was possible for the
Moscow government to do; he built fortresses "according to his own
plan " ; he lived in them like a tsar and boasted that Boris Godunov was
tsar at Moscow, and he, Belsky, was tsar here. Here, of course, he
was more dangerous than in the interior of Russia, for now he was the
nearest neighbour of the Crimean Tatars and, as we shall remember, even
in the time of Ivan the Terrible, the Muscovite feudal opposition had
been suspected of treasonable dealings with this foe ; at the same time his
antagonist held power firmly in his hands and was free to act. They
seized Belsky, his "court" was dismissed, his estates confiscated, and he
himself, after ignominious punishment, was "appointed" to "far
places." He appears on the stage again at the time of the False Dmitry,
but this time he did not play for high political stakes.
Boris Godunov had succeeded in disposing of the greatest of the new
feudatories the oprichnina had created. But on a closer examination of
Godunov and his career we see the same familiar traits of a great feudal
seigneur. That this feudatory proved to have a head for politics was an
individual peculiarity, which did not change his objective position. The
tragedy of the fate of Boris lay in the fact that he was woven of contra-
dictions ; resolution of these contradictions terminated in catastrophe.
Our historical literature has persisted in giving Godunov the reputation
of a man who stood for the interests of "the plain service people, who-
soever serve from petty votchinas and pomestyes"; in other words, he
was a ' ' nobles ' ' ' tsar, in contrast to the boyars ' tsar, as Vasily Shuisky
164 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
is usually represented to have been. But to interpret Godunov's whole
policy, from beginning to end, as protection of the interests of the nobles
is to make the end of his reign a complete enigma, for, as we shall pres-
ently see, it was precisely the masses of the nobility that overthrew the
Godunovs. Why, then, did the nobility destroy its own instrument ? For
treason? But in favour of what social class can Boris be said to have
played traitor — Boris who persecuted the boyars almost as much as Ivan
the Terrible had done and who enserfed the peasantry? If his history
unquestionably supplies a number of facts that permit us to speak of his
"nobles' ' policy, we have also a body of evidence from well-informed
contemporary foreigners, who unanimously affirm that "under Boris the
common peasant was better off than under any former sovereign," and
that the peasants looked upon him "as upon God." Had we toward the
end of Godunov 's reign but consulted the nobles themselves, they would
no doubt have declared him a peasants' tsar just as confidently as our
modern historians declare him a representative of the pomeshchik
class. And the boyars were not all and not always his enemies. With
the Romanovs he even had some special agreement, to which, almost more
than to anything else, Boris owed the tsar's throne; with the Shuiskys
an open quarrel broke out, but toward the end, as we have seen, he
trusted them in the matter that was most important for him and for his
whole family. In view of all this, we see that "the tsar of the nobles,"
"continuator of the oprichnina," is perhaps a not altogether untrue, but
all the same a very summary characterisation of so complex a figure as
was this "slave tsar," without any "otechestvo" [hereditary rank], who
had perched himself on the topmost pinnacle of Muscovite boyardom.
Boris began, let us repeat, as one of the magnates of the oprichnina —
like Belsky, if you like, but in a more honourable role. Personal in-
fluence and family position — these formed the starting point of his
career. Second in influence during the last years of Ivan's life (Belsky
had stood first) and brother-in-law of the elder tsarevich, Fedor (who,
though weak-minded, was "competent" and the most likely successor to
Ivan IV), Boris reached by a legal path that goal toward which his rival
had aspired illegally and became a kind of appanage prince, or "prince
of the blood," if you like. Barely two years after the death of Ivan the
Terrible, foreigners were calling him "prince" and "lieutenant of the
empire." A few years later this had become his official title; Muscovite
diplomatic documents style him "imperial brother-in-law and lieutenant,
servant and master of the horse, commander of the guard and lord of the
great states, the realms of Kazan and Astrakhan, Boris Fedorovich. ' ' To
foreigners it was explained that he was "not a standard for any one,"
for he was above all the serving princes, tsars, and tsareviches. He
treated independently with foreign governments, with the Holy Roman
THE TROUBLES 165
emperor, with the khan of the Crimea. One old document, which well
preserves what was said about Godunov among the masses of the people,
ascribes to Tsar Fedor the following words : " 'To you all I say, do not
bother me with any petition, go on any business to petition the great
boyar Boris Godunov, ' thus the Sovereign Tsar and Grand Prince Fedor
Ioannovich was pleased to call him great, 'for I have ordered him to set
the whole realm in order, and to deal out all justice to it, and to punish
for fault and to pardon, and there should be no bother to me at all,' "
and Fedor himself "applied himself to sacred writings, and chanted all
the night." If we take these words literally, it follows that Godunov
was tsar in fact long before his election, an impression confirmed by the
document we have cited, which says of Boris : ' ' The damned fellow has
not the name of tsar, but all the power is in his hands." In reality,
popular fantasy, as always, exaggerated ; Godunov was not quite alone
on the topmost pinnacle of the feudal hierarchy. But there was some-
thing to be exaggerated ; the personal position of Boris Godunov, over
and above support from any social force, is such as we should strive in
vain to match in the history of Moscow, always excepting the case of
Metropolitan Alexis in the days of the youth of Dmitry Donskoi. No
favourite nearer in time to Godunov can be compared to him ; when some
one speaking of Boris to a Muscovite diplomat mentioned the name of
Alexis Adashev, the diplomat was absolutely right in replying: "Alexis
was clever, but this man is not of Alexis' stature." Adashev held his
own by force of intellect and by the support of the social class that had
pushed him forward ; Godunov personally had in his hands such material
strength that he did not fear the fate of Adashev. 2
If from the very beginning the policy of Boris Godunov bears a defi-
nite class impress, it is only because any and every policy is a class policy
and cannot be anything else. Very tempting is the idea of exhibiting the
base-born "tsar's favourite," "the slave and Tatar of yesterday," as the
leader of the base-born small-pomestyed nobility in the struggle with
high-born boyardom; but such a combination would be historically un-
true. Godunov 's opponents strove hard to injure him, after his death,
because he had come "from the lesser servants," but, during his lifetime,
they ascribed to this fact hardly more significance than to the fact that
Boris was "not used to Godly writing," was a man uneducated theologi-
cally, another fact that the opposing party always recalled with satis-
faction. In no feudal society does origin play an independent role, and
the pride of birth of Muscovite boyardom need not be exaggerated; the
"elected council" had suffered in its midst men taken "from the dung-
2 Contemporaries put the revenues of the Godunovs from their lands at 94,000
rubles (2,500,000 in pre-war currency). From their own votchinas they could equip
a whole army.
166 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
hill," and princes descended from Rurik, yes, even of the very oldest
according to the Rodoslovets, had taken service in the oprichnina along
with Vaska Gryazny [Jack the Dirty] and Malyuta Skuratov. The petty
vassals were the first to support Boris in a scuffle, not with the boyar
order, but with a magnate sprung from the oprichnina such as Belsky ; in
1584 the crowd that collected to bombard the Moscow Kremlin was
headed by the Ryazan knights, the Kikins and the Lyapunovs, the future
leaders of the nobility at the time of the Troubles. And they were
aiding not Godunov alone but all "the boyars," i.e., in general they
were for the existing government against an individual usurper. The
first clear and definite case of class struggle occurs three years later, and
again the struggle of the nobility against boyardom as such was not
involved. We have two versions of this affair; the one is undoubtedly
partisan, the other knows the externals but does not know the inner
workings. But in a diplomatic document the Moscow government itself
blabbed out that in 1587 "they sat in the Kremlin-fortress in siege and
placed a strong watch," and that this was done "on account of the
trading louts," who had organised a revolt. This is sufficient in con-
firmation of what the partisan account of the events has to say about the
"popular assembly of a multitude of the men of Moscow," which had
assembled "to slay" Godunov "and all his kin without mercy with
stoning. ' ' It was an anti-Godunov revolt, organised by the townsmen of
Moscow, who were supported not only by the Shuiskys and other "great
boyars" but also by Dionysius, metropolitan of Moscow and of all Rus. All
these circumstances show that it was by no means a matter of more or
less casual street disturbances, but that a coup d'etat had been prepared,
for which both the juridical form and what then passed for political moti-
vation had been thought out. The motivation was that Godunov 's rule was
said to threaten the very existence of the dynasty ; Fedor had no children
and the Tsaritsa Irene, Boris' sister, was to blame. And so the metropoli-
tan, the "great boyars," and "the magnates of the tsar's palace and the
gosts of Moscow and all the trading folk held counsel and bound them-
selves in writing to petition the Sovereign Tsar and Grand Prince Fedor
Ivanovich of all Rus, that he the sovereign be gracious to all the lands
of his realm and take a second bride, and that the Tsaritsa Irene be
pleased to retire into a convent ; and that he take a bride for the sake of
offspring." To make this political conspiracy an episode of palace
struggle within the narrow circle of the Muscovite court aristocracy is
very convenient, perhaps, from the point of view of artistic interest (the
reader probably remembers the scene from Tsar Fedor Ivanovich 3 ), but
historically it is quite incorrect. It would, of course, not have entered
the Shuiskys ' heads to risk their necks in this business, had they not felt
3 Cf. the novel by Alexis Tolstoi.
THE TROUBLES 167
behind them the "popular multitude" which half a century before had
made their fathers the powerful guardians of the little Ivan IV. But
this time the correlation of forces proved to be different. After the first
fright the Godunov government, which had taken refuge in the Kremlin,
made short work of the conspirators; Dionysius was deposed from the
metropolitan throne, the Shuiskys and a number of other boyars were
banished, and six gosts of Moscow were executed. There is no doubt
that the affair was decided, not by the weak will of Tsar Fedor but by
those same "knights" whose presence in the Kremlin is disclosed by the
diplomatic document we have just mentioned. Ivan IV 's old guard,
his oprichnina "dvor," was now loyal to Boris Godunov, who, it may
be said in passing, was its immediate commander.
The clash of 1587 was the greatest event in Moscow's social history in
the interval between the death of Ivan the Terrible (1584) and the
election of Godunov as tsar (1598). It marked the factual disintegra-
tion of the oprichnina, which juridically had ceased to exist some years
before Ivan's death. The oprichnina had been a bloc of the urban
bourgeoisie and the middling landholders; without the townsmen the
coup of January 3, 1565, probably would never have occurred. Pre-
viously the bourgeoisie had been on good terms with the boyars; the
pomeshchik party had made a great gain in tearing it away and trans-
ferring it to their side. Now we find again, as it were, the combination
of 1550 — the "merchant folk" together with the "great boyars." As
it were — because now the initiative belonged rather to the "merchant
folk," while the "great boyars" were acting as a group of separate
families, not as a class; Godunov, you see, was himself a "great boyar"
and had with him a whole boyar party, many "boyars of the tsar's
palace seduced by him," together with the nobles. The significance of
the event does not lie in the revival of a feudal-bourgeois opposition, but
in the appearance of the bourgeoisie as an independent political force.
The Moscow townsmen had probably been disenchanted with their
aristocratic leaders even before the oprichnina; the story regarding
Fedor 's divorce took away the last remnants of their authority, if in-
deed they still had any. The bitter words of the Moscow merchants,
addressed to the Shuiskys — "you have made your peace [with Godunov]
at the price of our heads" — served as the epitaph of the alliance of
boyars and townsmen. It is remarkable that connexions with the
Shuisky family remained; economically these holders of industrial vot-
chinas were more closely connected with bourgeois circles than with
their titled brethren. When the bourgeoisie needed ' ' its tsar, ' ' it sought
him in the ranks of this family. In 1587 that critical moment was still
far in the future; this first political appearance of the "merchant folk"
had a more limited aim. Yet this outbreak was a political event and
168 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
not a palace intrigue as was presently made evident by Boris' foreign
policy. The experience of the Livonian War had made the Muscovite
government very pacific; but in 1589 the Muscovite envoys, sent (and
not for the first time) to negotiate with the Swedes for retrocession of
the Russian towns occupied by the latter, were instructed to talk "on a
big, lofty scale" and to demand "for the sovereign's part Narva, Ivan-
gorocl, Yam, Koporye, Korela without indemnity, without money. ' ' This
was a challenge, and in January of the following year (1590) a Russian
army moved on Narva with Tsar Fedor himself, Boris Godunov, and
Fedor Nikitich Romanov at its head. The Muscovite government de-
clared that it would not make peace without Narva, i.e., without the
restoration of Russia's Baltic trade. Narva was not taken, but in
general the campaign was not a failure, for three other Russian towns
seized by the Swedes, Yam, Ivangorod, and Koporye, passed back into
Russia's hands. This whole chain of events becomes intelligible if we
remember that it was a question of foreign policy that had caused the
townsmen to break with the boyars and to effect a rapprochement with
the "warriors," and that the failure of the Livonian War had been the
first thing to alienate the bourgeoisie from the pomeshchiks. Now
Godunov was trying once more to carry on a bourgeois policy, but cau-
tiously and not persistently; the bourgeoisie was not the chief piece on
his chessboard.
If this great feudatory wanted to keep himself in power, there was
no one for him to rely upon except the "warriors." It was not his
personal social position that determined his policy; on the contrary, it
was his policy that conditioned his social sympathies. An occasion to
repay his allies very soon presented itself. In 1591, as we have already
mentioned, the Tatars of the Crimea again appeared under Moscow,
but this time they utterly failed to take the city. The experience of the
preceding Tatar inroad had been turned to good account by the Mus-
covite generals; new means of coping with the horsemen of the steppe
had been worked out which proved most effectual. Contemporaries
ascribed special importance to the "walking town," a movable wooden
fortress on wheels, said to be an invention of Prince M. I. Vorotynsky,
though something very similar had been projected long before in one
of "Peresvetov's" writings. As a means of defending the city, Go-
dunov had greatly strengthened the artillery. 4 In a word, the Tatars
were confronted with a picture very different from that of twenty years
before, and they withdrew without even making an attempt to take the
city. But to repulse them a huge army had already been called out ; all
the service landholders of central Russia, and even of Novgorod and
4 The famous "Tsar-Cannon" has survived as a monument of the skill of Russian
founders of those times.
THE TROUBLES 169
Pskov, had been set in motion. The pomeshchiks, of course, did not
do their duty for nothing ; they were paid for the campaign, paid ex-
ceptionally rapidly 5 for the dawdling Muscovite exchequer, and on an
augmented scale ; so augmented indeed that the service men themselves,
it is said, were amazed and said that in former times a high-born
man had not been given for a difficult campaign and many wounds
what rank-and-file knights were now given for a war that was more like
a manoeuvre, for only the Muscovite vanguard had got a glimpse of
the Tatars, and the main forces had remained far in the rear. If we
remember the significance of the sovereign's money wages to pomesh-
chik economy, we shall realise that Boris could have found no better
way to attach the "warriors" to himself. With good reason was all
grumbling against the state administration stilled for long after this
campaign, a fact attested by authors not at all favourable to Boris.
Disposing of vast personal means (and presumably an enormous
coterie of personal satellites) ; having reconciled, even though only in
part, the bourgeoisie, which was now beginning to raise its head ; having
the full support of the petty vassals, the whole armed force of the
state, — Boris stood so firmly that, it would seem, he could have wished
nothing more. Tsar Fedor was not yet old and might still have chil-
dren; a year later (1592) a daughter was born to him, the Tsarevna
Fedosia (d. 1594). Under a son, who would have been Boris' nephew,
his position as regent would, in all probability, have remained just as
firm as under the father. It would be exceedingly strange if in such a
position a man should begin to "strengthen" himself by means of
crimes — crimes that were very clumsily committed and, as it might
seem, purposely devised to compromise the reputation of Boris Godunov.
However, the preponderant majority of historians accept as trust-
worthy the story that in these very years, with the cognisance, if not at
the direct command of Godunov, the Tsarevich Dmitry, the younger
son of Ivan the Terrible, was murdered — murdered with the purpose of
"clearing Boris' way to the throne." If one needed a special illustra-
tion of the infantile condition of the very important discipline called
"historical criticism" and of the pressure on our historical science of
circumstances and interests that have nothing in common with any
science, no better one could be thought out than the "affair of the
murder of Tsarevich Dmitry."
The first categorical assertion that Boris was the murderer of Dmitry
is found in a source, the most superficial analysis of which is sufficient
to discredit its testimony. In 1606, having been seated on the throne
by means of a coup d'etat, over the dead body of the Pseudo Dmitry,
5 Apparently contrary to custom, the distribution was begun while the troops
were still in camp, without waiting for the end of the campaign.
170 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
Tsar Vasily Shuisky found it necessary to offer juridical and historical
justification for his conduct, to prove that the murder of this tsar had
been an act of "necessary self-defence" and that rights to the throne
of Moscow had belonged to the Shuiskys from time immemorial, al-
though — purely from modesty — they had not hitherto preferred their
claims. For this purpose a whole collection of documents was circu-
lated, of whose falsification nobody, it seems, ever had doubts, and a
little historical tract, very well written, to be sure, was distributed to sup-
ply a "historical introduction," as it were, to these documents. From
these documents it appeared that the "serf, notorious robber, apostate,
heretic, unfrocked monk, Grishka Bogdanov, son of Otrepyev" had
wanted no more no less than to slay the "boyars, and nobles, and offi-
cials, and gosts, and all the better people, and wanted to destroy the
whole Muscovite state to its foundations, and to scorn the Christian
faith, and to destroy the churches, and to build Roman chapels."
Clearly, to murder him was not only permissible, it was obligatory.
The introduction was phrased to confirm the reader in the idea that
there was no one who could rightfully take the place of the murdered
heretic except Prince Vasily Shuisky, "from the beginning of his fore-
bears fearing God and holding in his heart great faith toward God and
unhypocritical truth toward men." If all these qualities had not earlier
gained the pious Prince the throne, the fault had lain in the oppression
"from a certain slave, called Boris Godunov," who "was like unto the
ancient serpent that formerly in Paradise did tempt Eve and our fore-
father Adam and deprived them of the enjoyment of the food of Para-
dise." When in the midst of a text like this one reads that Boris
Godunov sent the murderers to the Tsarevich Dmitry, elementary his-
torical fairmindedness compels one to regard the story with a high
degree of incredulity. This feeling is bound to be heightened when the
reader perceives that, on the one hand, our excellently informed author
is not able to give a single, vivid, concrete detail of the crime but
confines himself to a conventionalised picture of the "murder of an
innocent lad," outside of time and space, and that, on the other hand,
all the other "independent Russian writers of the seventeenth cen-
tury . . . ," as Platonov writes, "speak of Boris' participation in the
murdering of Tsarevich Dmitry reluctantly and very cautiously."
To this analysis of the original accusation against Boris may be added
one more very interesting observation: the further from the event of
1591, the more details about it do we find in literature. The detailed
story of the murder, cited by Solovyev and well-known from text-
books, is to be read in the so-called New Chronicle, a historical compila-
tion on the Times of the Troubles, the definitive redaction of which is no
older than 1630. Forty years after the event more was known about it
THE TROUBLES 171
than an interested and partisan author had been able to collect after
fifteen years ! Such a phenomenon, familiar to every historical scholar,
can have only one explanation; we have here a typical case of the rise
of a legend. Popular imagination supplied what history lacked, gradu-
ally, detail by detail, giving colour to the dry outline of the accusation
originally thrown out without any proofs. Any one who knows the
relations between Godunov and the Romanovs, 6 who occupied the throne
when the history of the Troubles was first written, will not be surprised
that contemporary popular imagination imparted this particular bias.
But for any "independent" Russian historian of the nineteenth cen-
tury, it would, in view of all these facts, seem obligatory to reject
entirely the fiction put in circulation by the Shuiskys' pamphlet, even
if we had no documents, contemporary with the event, that asserted the
contrary. But there is such a document ; the genuine brief on the
murder of Dmitry — the "inquest" held on the hot trail in Uglich by a
commission of the boyar duma — is extant, and in this brief by a series of
depositions (among them those of the uncles of the tsarevich, the Nagois)
it is established that he fell a victim to an unfortunate accident, that he
injured himself while playing a game with his knife. The investiga-
tion, it is true, was conducted by that same pious Prince Vasily Shuisky,
with whose publicist activity the reader is already acquainted; for a
very great sceptic, it may be agreed, this offers grounds for suspecting
the documentary report of the investigation. But, in the first place,
Shuisky was not alone in the investigation, and, if we are to suspect
official documents that Vasily Shuisky had anything to do with, what
confidence does his unofficial publicism deserve?
A hundred years ago a historian, not in academic service but none the
less fairminded for that, drew from all the facts enumerated above
the only possible conclusion, that if we are not to adopt the viewpoint
of absolute scepticism, we must credit the brief of the investigation
rather than the literary records. And he wrote in his book that Tsare-
vich Dmitry perished in 1591 at Uglich by accident. But the public
was not to read such a heresy. Academic science kept strict watch, and
one of its most eminent representatives hastened to cut off the evil at
the root ; at his insistence the offending page of heretical history, already
printed, was torn out of every copy and burned. This scholar's argu-
ment, it seems, was just as simple as it was convincing : if Dmitry was
not a martyr who had innocently suffered at the hands of malefactors,
how could his miracle-working relics have survived? From this we can
see how sagacious Tsar Vasily Shuisky was in converting the younger
son of Ivan the Terrible into a saint and miracle-worker almost on the
day after he ascended the throne (Shuisky became tsar May 18, and
e Cf. infra.
172 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
the relics of Dmitry were in Moscow on June 3). The measure he
had taken proved sufficient to influence the "public opinion," not only
of the beginning of the seventeenth century but also of the times of
Emperor Nicholas I (1825-1855).
As for the "murderer of a saint," Boris Godunov, he, it seems, suf-
fered not so much from pangs of conscience over an evil deed he had not
committed as from doubts — strange enough to our view, although until
lately there were still lone scholars who shared them. There are grounds
for thinking that Boris doubted whether Dmitry actually was dead.
If the personality of the. weak-minded Fedor was in his hands a power-
ful means of maintaining his own power, the little tsarevich might in the
hands of Godunov 's opponents, if given the opportunity, be similarly
used against him. And this peril became the more imminent, the clearer
it became that children could not be expected of Fedor, and that
Dmitry, were he alive, was the sole representative of the descendants
of Ivan Kalita. Rumours that the tsarevich was alive and was some-
where abroad, perhaps in Poland, became current in Moscow even before
Fedor 's death. Only a month after his death a Polish frontier governor
had heard of some sort of proclamation in Dmitry's name that had
appeared in Smolensk. Only in this connexion can be understood
those exceptional measures taken by the Muscovite government, i.e., by
Godunov 's government, in these very days. ' ' On the death of the tsar, ' '
writes Platonov, "the frontiers of the state were immediately closed,
permitting no one to pass them either way. Not only on the high
roads but also on the bypaths they placed a guard, lest any one bring
tidings out of the realm of Moscow into Lithuania and to the Germans.
The Polish-Lithuanian and German merchants were detained at Moscow
and in the frontier cities, Smolensk, Pskov, and others, with their wares
and servants, and all these people received bread and hay even from
the treasury. Official couriers from neighbouring states were likewise
kept under guard and as soon as possible sent back beyond the Mus-
covite frontier by the border governors. At Smolensk they did not
even allow the courier of the Polish governor of Orsha to lead his own
horse to the water-trough, and buying anything in the market was not
to be thought of." Simultaneously with these police measures were
taken extraordinary measures of military defence, and precisely on the
western frontier. "The walls of Smolensk they hastily finished, bring-
ing various building materials in thousands of carts ; to the two generals
already at Smolensk were added four more. The reinforced garrison
of Smolensk not only kept watch in the fortress itself but sent out
patrols in its environs. At Pskov likewise they observed the greatest
precaution." All this, of course, is not to be explained by the desire
of the Muscovites to hold the election of the new tsar ' ' in secret from the
THE TROUBLES 173
eyes of outsiders." They quite definitely were afraid of relations
between some one in Moscow and some one whom they suspected to be
beyond the western boundary of the Muscovite realm; relations, more-
over, which might end in a sudden apparition of foreign troops on the
Russian frontiers. In a word, in 1598 they prepared for what actually
happened in 1604. The "pretender" was not a black speck that sud-
denly appeared on the cloudless horizon of Boris' reign; this dramatic
picture we must leave to Pushkin's tragedy. 7 In actual history the
figure of Dmitry was discernible in the wings the whole time, and
Godunov waited nervously until he should at last make his entry. In
this sense, perhaps, the late tsarevich disturbed his dreams, not in the
form of a "bleeding child," but rather at the head of a Polish-Lithu-
anian host, in the very guise in which he did appear in Rus on the eve
of Boris' death.
These fears explain the unusual circumstances that surrounded Boris
Godunov 's election to the throne in the spring of 1598. This curious
episode has passed through several stages in modern historiography. At
first historians felt unconditional confidence in the very circumstantial
account of this event given in Shuisky's above-mentioned pamphlet; in
it may be found all that Russian readers have been familiar with from
childhood — the bailiffs at whose command the people began to bow and
shout, the spittle as a substitute for tears in dry eyes, and the fines
imposed on those who were unwilling to go to the Novodevichy Mona-
stery to pray Boris to become tsar. But since there were no special
grounds for trusting Shuisky in this question, reason soon got the upper
hand, gossip ceased to be scrupulously believed, and into the centre of
the stage moved the zemsky sobor that elected Boris ; it was emphasised
that in the make-up of this sobor "it is impossible to observe any traces
of electoral agitation or any packing of members." The intriguer, who
had perched himself on the tsar's throne by guile, turned out to have
been legally and regularly elected by a "representative assembly,"
which "was acknowledged as the legal mouthpiece of public interests
and opinions." There is no doubt that Boris' election was an act
juridically quite correct; we shall presently see that it was surrounded
with every juridical formality, perhaps even in superfluous profusion.
No tsar either before or since has so striven to convince his subjects of
his right to reign. But this solicitous argumentation of his rights —
we can in part trace it even in process of evolution and observe how
some arguments are replaced by others that seemed more convincing —
in itself compels us to be somewhat suspicious of what was taking place,
independently of any contemporary pamphlets whatever. No one cares
7 Cf. A. Pushkin, Boris Godunov. Rendered into English verse by Alfred Hayes,
London (1918). Cf. also Moussorgsky's opera, Boris Godunov.
174 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
so much for juridical impeccability as do intelligent and experienced
swindlers. Besides, we have already emerged from the stage of political
development in which "electoral agitation" seems something "in the
nature of packing" public opinion. We are now all very well aware
from personal experience that it is impossible to conceive of any organ-
ised mass action without preliminary agitation, and if the people of
Moscow on February 21, 1598, surged "in the wake of the patriarch"
to the Novodevichy Monastery, it is obvious that some one had taken
the lead in this affair and prepared it. The assertion that there had
been preliminary agitation in favour of this manifestation is therefore
no "slander" on Boris, but the insinuation that it was effected by
measures of a police nature, through bailiffs, is a different matter. It
is this that the lampoon put in circulation by the Shuiskys dwells on.
Other authors, not at all sympathetic with Boris, say only that the
latter had "assistants" (electoral agents, as we say) everywhere and
"strong-talking zealots," whom we should now call agitators. Thus,
there was "agitation," but there was no "packing." Nor could there
be ; it was quite unnecessary, for when the popular manifestations
began, the decision of the zemsky sobor had already been taken and
consecrated by religious authority; on February 18, in the Cathedral
of the Annunciation, they had solemnly prayed the Lord God to grant
to Orthodox Christendom, on its petition, the Sovereign Tsar Boris
Godunov. The vassals great and small (the boyar duma, of course,
attended the sobor in full force) and the Church had already recognised
Boris as tsar when the people set out to beseech him. Godunov was not
content with the social forces usually constituting the "body politic"
of the Muscovite realm — the "estates" represented at the zemsky sobor;
he needed the participation of "all multitudinous popular Christen-
dom." As far as we know, he was the first tsar to summon to his aid
the masses of the people, for the "appeals to the people" of Ivan the
Terrible really were addressed to the upper strata of the merchantry
of Moscow. Boris' action was unusually important for the future but
is no less important in characterising his position at this moment. The
unusually solemn character of the election must have barred the way
in advance to any "adventurers," whom they evidently expected.
Similar anxiety permeates both the very act of election, which has
come down to us in two editions, and the oath the population had to take
to the new tsar — and take in an unusually solemn setting, in the
churches, and during service. Boris' opponents here found new cause
for complaints ; on account of the noise raised by the throngs taking the
oath, it was impossible even to hear the divine chanting in the Cathedral
of the Annunciation, so that devout Muscovites who wanted to pray
were this day left without mass. The zemsky sobor 's "act of election"
THE TROUBLES 175
was placed in the shrine of the Metropolitan Peter, which on this oc-
casion was opened to the public ; this, of course, was interpreted as mani-
fest and intolerable sacrilege. In content both these documents — the
oath and the decision of the sobor — are very curious, especially the latter,
which has come down to us not only in its definitive form but also in a
rough draft. It is remarkable for the abundance of reasons assigned
for the election of Boris ; there are so many of them that they even in-
terfere with each other, and in the definitive edition it was found advan-
tageous to omit some of them. The mere enumeration of them is
interesting ; before us is revealed the series of layers of which by the end
of the sixteenth century the Russian law of succession to the throne was
made up. The oldest layer was appanage tradition, in virtue of which
the "sovereign's vot china," like any one else's, passed by bequest,
though only within the circle of the given family, not to outsiders. The
document notes that Godunov is a "kinsman of the great sovereign" and
alleges that even Ivan IV had appointed Boris his successor in case of
Fedor's death. But the appanage of Moscow had managed to convert
itself into the universal Orthodox realm; its throne could not be dis-
posed of as private property. As a matter of common sense, it was clear
that the Orthodox Church could best determine who was worthy to be
tsar of all the Orthodox; the document asserts that the bishops have
from the Apostles the power, "when met in synod, to establish for their
fatherland a pastor and teacher and tsar." But in 1598 this stage, too,
was a thing of the past, and the decisive argument is the "petition of all
multitudinous popular Christendom," an argument so decisive that at
the end of the document all others are forgotten on account of it.
Kinship with the dynasty, the testament of Ivan the Terrible, and the
decree of the Church in synod, all were forgotten by the editor of the
document ; he remembered only that Boris was an elected tsar, that this
was an innovation, and that this innovation might be objected to in
order to dispute the right of the Godunovs to the throne — the Godunovs,
for, of course, the whole family was elected; the oath was taken to the
whole family, including the "Tsarevna Oxinia [Boris' daughter
Xenia]." In the definitive text of the "act of election" nothing is said
about Tsar Ivan's testament; this bold assertion would have been too
hard to prove. On the other hand, this text lays more stress on the
kinship of the Godunovs with the last descendant of Ivan Kalita through
Irene, sister of Boris and wife of Fedor. That there might be still other
persons having hereditary or some other rights to the throne this docu-
ment does not say; but the oath mentions one such person, and the
mention is startlingly unexpected. We remember that Ivan the Terrible
once, not exactly as a joke, not exactly for the sake of observing for-
malities, set up as special tsar over the "zemshchina" the baptised
176 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
Tatar tsarevich, Simeon Bekbulatovich. He was now a blind old man,
probably himself but poorly remembering that he had sometime been
' ' caliph for an hour. ' ' None the less, Boris found it necessary to ask his
subjects whether they wanted Tsar Simeon to rule the state. One
modern scholar has drawn from this the conclusion that the former tsar
of the zemshchina was, as it were, a serious candidate for the throne at
a certain moment of the electoral campaign. As a matter of fact this
remarkable detail only shows how scrupulously careful the new tsar was
and what measures he took lest perchance even the very dead should
walk. Boris would probably have preferred to mention his real op-
ponents: the children of Nikita Romanovich Yuryev, who were also
kinsmen of Tsars Ivan and Fedor, and of still longer standing than the
Godunovs; and the not exactly living, not exactly dead, Dmitry of
Uglich. But it was impossible to mention the latter officially, for offi-
cially he was in the next world ; and with the Romanovs Boris had some
sort of agreement, even ratified by oath. The essence of this agreement
is not known to us, but one circumstance is significant: the Romanov
version of the history of the Troubles, which found its earliest expres-
sion in an author of unknown name, used by the very well-known
Avraam Palitsyn for his compilation, seeks to lay the blame for violation
of the agreement on Boris, at the same time carefully concealing from
the reader just why Godunov banished the sons of Nikita. It is a sure
enough sign that their integrity could not be proved as indisputably as
this author would have liked.
Thus, as soon as he ascended the throne, Boris felt himself unsteady
on it and strove to find the greatest possible supports, both juridical
and material, for his power. The rule of Godunov had outlived itself ;
as regent he had met no serious impediments to his authority, but
hardly had he become tsar when revolution boiled up under his feet.
According to the generally accepted view, the boyars prepared this revo-
lution. But just at this period we should seek in vain for a united
boyar opposition; had there been one, the affair would scarcely have
ended with such a strange adventure, risky and most unpleasant for the
boyar order itself, as the appearance on the throne of Moscow of the
Pseudo-Dmitry, brought to Moscow by pomeshchiks from the Ukraine
[frontier] in alliance with robber cossacks and Polish adventurers. In
examining Boris ' policy, we readily see that the rift between him and the
dominant elements went much deeper than is usually supposed. If his
policy down to 1598, the policy of Godunov the regent, was still a class
policy in favour of the noble class (though not so much because of his
close connexion with that class as because all the other classes were at
the time opposed to him), the policy of Tsar Boris begins to assume a
THE TROUBLES 177
quite original character, as new and unexpected as the electoral prin-
ciple advanced by Boris was new in the field of public law.
With the exception of the pamphlet circulated by Tsar Vasily, all
authors, whether sympathising with Boris (they are very few) or sym-
pathising with his opponents (they are the majority), testify with one
voice to the extraordinary solicitude, unprecedented in Russia, of this
sovereign for the masses of the population. The partisan of the house of
the Romanovs whom we have just mentioned asserts without any reser-
vations that Tsar Boris "thought much of the poor and the lowly and
there was great mercy from him to such" and that he "was fond of
building for the sake of such people." The clerk Ivan Timofeyev
greatly disliked the "crafty and insidious lover of power"; yet when he
comes to this aspect of Boris' rule, this bilious official, who had care-
fully collected the most odoriferous scandals about the brother-in-law
of Tsar Fedor, pens something like a panegyric to Godunov, nor is it
written without feeling, as though the author were delighted with this
bright isle in the midst of the sea of filth he himself had collected in the
pages of his Annals. The most objective of all the historians near in
time to Boris, the author of the articles on the Troubles in the Chronog-
raphy of 1617, has on his palette hardly anything but bright colours for
Godunov: "made liberal gifts to all . . . many were fed to repletion
from his generous hands . . . blooming like a date-tree with foliage of
good works." If we pass from these general estimates to individual
concrete points of Godunov 's policy, we find one on which a whole series
of writers, both Russian and foreign, agree: Boris sternly prosecuted
extortions and venality. "None of the judges or officials dares take any
gifts from suitors," wrote the French adventurer, Margeret, who had
been in Godunov 's service: "for if a judge is accused either by his own
servants, or by the givers (who rarely report, concealing it in the hope
of winning the case), or by other people, the man detected in extortion
loses all his property and, having returned the gifts, is subjected to
distraint, for payment of a fine set by the tsar, of 500, 1,000, or 2,000
rubles, according to his rank. But a guilty clerk, not too beloved by the
sovereign, is punished with the knout, i.e., flogged with the lash and not
with rods, and around his neck is tied the purse of silver, the fur, pearls,
even the salt fish or other object taken as a present ; then they send the
man punished into exile, with a warning to cease illegality for the
future." "Despite all this, extortions are not exterminated," Margeret
melancholically adds, again agreeing with the Russian author who in-
forms us that though Boris strove very zealously to root out such ' ' unde-
sirable business" as administrative abuses, "yet it was not possible at
all." "We shall not fall to wondering at this; in practice, all police
states have broken their necks over the insoluble task of combining
178 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
"justice" with complete absence of rights on the part of their subjects.
Peter the Great met with no better luck on this road than did Godunov ;
but for the end of the sixteenth century the very ideal of a well-ordered
police state was a forward step.
Our knowledge of Boris ' social and fiscal policy is too fragmentary to
permit us to form a comprehensive judgment of his projects in this field.
Foreigners ascribe to him a very bold design, grandiose for its time,
namely, legislative regulation of the obligations of the peasants to the
landholders. It is reported that he tried to shift the fiscal centre of
gravity to indirect taxation ; in condemning his ' ' ill-smelling gains, ' ' his
opponents give prominence to the increase in the farm of the public-
houses, "and many other farms there were beyond measure." This
remark is interesting, among other reasons, because it discloses the class
relationships existing under Godunov. "We know that there were in
Muscovite Rus two means of collecting indirect imposts, by farm and
"on credit," and that the latter, contrary to a widespread opinion, was
more advantageous for commercial capital. The author whom we have
just cited displays rare understanding of the economic relationships of
his time and, judging by another work of his, was very close to the
townsmen. His disapproval of Godunov 's fiscal policy therefore carries
much weight; the bourgeoisie was not now on Boris' side, and the
Moscow townsmen did not "hold their peace in dread" when the
Godunovs fell ; they were simply completely indifferent to this fact. It
was not their dynasty.
And it had long since ceased to be the nobles' dynasty. In regard to
the pomeshchiks Boris was faced with a problem frankly insoluble. On
the one hand, the ever continuing crisis demanded ever more and more
pumping of silver from the treasury chest into the pockets of the mid-
dling landholder. Boris did his best; on the occasion of his election he
organised a frankly fictitious campaign against the khan of the Crimea
and distributed double wages for it. But this kind of thing could not
be kept up ; the state was living on that same roving peasant whom the
pomeshchiks were unable to bind to their lands. Boris could not make
up his mind to rob the town in favour of the nobles, as was to happen
later, in the seventeenth century; after the events of 1587, at least, the
benevolent neutrality of the bourgeoisie seemed indispensable. The only
other course was to sacrifice temporarily the class interests of the nobles
and to check the peasant dispersion by creating for the peasants toler-
able conditions of existence in the central provinces. By actively colon-
ising the frontiers at the same time, Godunov 's government might hope
to emerge from the crisis in a few years. Meanwhile the hunger of the
pomeshchiks was satisfied by confiscations of the estates of Boris' op-
ponents, by "stealing the homes and villages of the boyars and mag-
THE TROUBLES 179
nates"; in this particular Boris could not and probably did not wish
to depart from the course bequeathed by the oprichnina. The red
thread which runs through the whole second half of the sixteenth
century may be traced through the reign of Godunov also ; hence, upon
a general survey, from a bird's-eye view, as it were, it appears to us, as
it appeared to contemporaries, to be a continuation of the reign of Ivan
the Terrible. But Boris' significance did not lie in the fact that he
was an oprichnik. For him confiscations were not a universal means
of unravelling tangled agrarian relationships ; under the existing cir-
cumstances they were only a continuation of the destruction of the old
votchinas. But one fine day there would be nothing more to destroy,
and catastrophe would be inevitable ; how long it could be warded off
was the only question. Was not Boris too late with his policy of im-
proving the condition of peasant economy? History alone could
answer. Its answer was not in favour of Godunov.
The agrarian question was brought to a head by the famine of 1602-
1604, itself the combined result of speculation in grain by the nobles,
of the depopulation of the provinces nearest the capital, and of acci-
dental atmospheric causes which destroyed the grain. For the pomesh-
chiks the immediate effect of the famine was appallingly advantageous;
parallel with an enormous rise in grain prices (eighty-fold, if we are to
believe the chronographer) there was an extraordinary decline in the
price of working hands; men went into bondage gratuitously, for bread
alone. These cheap bondsmen their masters did not even deign to feed
the year round; keeping them until field labours were over, they then
drove them out to the four winds, with complete confidence that the
spring would find abundant workers still cheaper. The relations be-
tween lord and peasant were already such as to remind us of the
eighteenth century, the classic era of serfdom, even to the bondage
harems. Subsequently the famine was bound to aggravate and actually
did aggravate the crisis, creating an enormous "reserve army" of
roaming folk, ready material for an anti-noble movement, and driving
out in all directions the last "old-dwellers." But no one thought of
the morrow. Godunov 's government made an attempt to feed the starv-
ing, but the undertaking proved too much for the technical resources
of the administration; the sums disbursed by the government sufficed
for about one-third of what a man needed at the established grain prices.
Besides, famine relief was concentrated in the cities; there the needy
congregated in masses, prices were further inflated, and the famine
situation became still more aggravated. Boris was powerless to relieve
the people 's need, but in the effort he completely lost the sympathies of
the pomeshchiks. Any insignificant occasion would have been sufficient
to make the social isolation of Godunov 's regime, long a possibility, a
180 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
fact evident to all. The occasion soon presented itself nor was it an
insignificant one; from Poland, the long-expected Dmitry appeared, at
last.
2. The Rebellion of the Nobles
"Who was the first False Dmitry?" was once considered an im-
portant question in Russian history. That historians no longer give
attention to it is a manifest proof that this science has attained greater
maturity. "For our purpose there is not the slightest need to pause
over the question of the first pretender's identity," writes Professor
Platonov, one of the latest historians of the Troubles. "Whomsoever
we consider him to have been, whether the real tsarevich, or Gregory
Otrepyev, or any third person, our view of the character of the popular
movement raised in his favour cannot be changed ; this movement is
perfectly clear in and of itself." Let us add only the comment that
this author continues to call Dmitry "pretender," even though Solov-
yev two generations earlier had demonstrated quite conclusively that he
did not of himself assume the role of tsarevich, but that others created
the role for him, others called him Dmitry, and he believed it just as
afterwards the masses of the people believed it ; therefore the term
"Alleged Dmitry," coined by Kostomarov, is so much more apt that
we shall employ it. With this reservation, the opinion of the modern
historian of the Troubles may be accepted as definitive, and the question,
"Who was Dmitry?" may be replaced by the question, "Who put
Dmitry forward?"
The earliest version of the answer to this question is to be found in
that same pamphlet of Shuisky's in which Godunov, for the first time
in Russian letters, figures as the murderer of the real son of Ivan the
Terrible. This coincidence is in itself sufficient comment on the value
of the version, but this has not prevented it from becoming the domi-
nant one in our historical literature and from finding its way into all
the textbooks. To make it more plausible, this story was worked into
the fabric of the testimony of "a credible witness," the "delation" of
a certain monk Varlaam, supposed to have fled over the border together
with "Grishka Otrepyev" and to have long accompanied him in his wan-
derings. Undoubtedly he was one of Godunov 's spies, sent to watch Dmi-
try as soon as rumours about him had reached Moscow. For his zeal in
this direction he fell into a Polish prison, but he had already succeeded
in collecting a good deal of information about the future pretender's
Polish connexions; thus his story gives facts and details that, it seems,
have misled modern scholars. In working over this "police spy's
report" the editor of the pamphlet did not eliminate all that he might
have; for example, he preserved a reference to the "privity" of the
THE TROUBLES 181
Slmiskys, a fact important and useful for Godunov's government, which
had ordered the monk Varlaam on reconnaissance, but superfluous, of
course, for the Shuiskys themselves. Aside from a certain carelessness
in finish (a carelessness easily understood since the pamphlet was in-
tended to produce a general impression, and on a wide public which
would not delve into such trifles), the Shuiskys' pamphleteer was able to
give the "delation" a bias in perfect harmony with the general tone of
the work in which it was inserted. Here Dmitry figures as really a
"pretender"; the idea of declaring himself tsarevich is his personal
idea, the product of his personal moral perversity and of the "violent
heresy" into which he had fallen. His chief support and first guides
are Polish pans [magnates], whose purpose is clear — to destroy the
Muscovite state and to introduce into it the "Jesuitical faith." The
"delation of the monk Varlaam" thus augmented the list of documents
intended to justify Shuisky's coup d'etat of May 17, 1606. The
original text of the report of Godunov's spy, let us repeat, presented a
different picture: it made evident Dmitry's long-standing Muscovite
connexions ; it made evident the absolutely exceptional position that
this boy-monk (Dmitry was given the tonsure at the age of 14) occu-
pied in the household of the patriarch of Moscow, who took him with
him even into the sovereign 's duma. But even if we restore the genuine
"delation," removing the bias imparted to it by the pamphleteer (which
is not so easy, for we do not know just what cuts he made), we still do
not, of course, get an accurate and truthful story of the first steps of
the future tsar of Moscow. It is therefore interesting to turn to another
Russian version of the affair; this is a much later one, nor is it free
from official interpretation, but it gives the story that was circulated
widely in Muscovite society ; this does not, of course, guarantee accuracy
in details, but it does remove the one definite bias. In this version the
monk Varlaam is absent altogether ; absent also are the adventures sup-
posed to have attended the joint journey of Varlaam and the "tsare-
vich" from Russia; and there is no "Polish intrigue." Everything is
presented much more simply and plausibly. Dmitry turns to the circle
most likely to interest itself in his fate, to the Russian population living
under Lithuanian rule, which in those days included many outright
Muscovite emigres. Varlaam 's report, in a totally different connexion,
names quite a few of the latter, connecting them in strange and unex-
pected fashion with the ' ' loutish townsmen of Kiev. ' ' This scrap of the
original "delation," accidentally left in by the Shuiskys' pamphleteer,
is fully explained in the later version; among the population of "the
mother of Russian towns," among both natives and newcomers from
the confines of Muscovy, the cause of the Tsarevich Dmitry found its
first proselytes. Soon Kiev becomes a centre whither flows all outlaw
182 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
Rus ; Dmitry is visited by agents from the Zaporozhian cossack brother-
hood and by a deputation from the eossacks of the Don; finally, but
only when he already has a following, the Polish government begins
to take an interest in him. The Poles were not so naive as to be taken
in by a high-sounding name ; but when they sensed real strength behind
the bearer of this name, this strength entered into the calculations of
Polish diplomacy. Likewise it was no accident that Dmitry's party
was formed on the Russian-Lithuanian border ; we have direct evidence
that this region had long been the scene of agitation in his favour,
that rumours of a tsarevich had been circulating here since 1601. Delv-
ing into Dmitry's Muscovite past, so far as it is accessible, scholars
invariably find that every agitation originates with the Romanov family,
the Muscovite family second only to the Godunovs, connected with
them by a certain "vow of testamentary union," but ultimately ruined
by Tsar Boris. No one now considers the accusation and banishment of
the Romanovs to have been utterly unwarranted; there can apparently
be no doubt that a serious conspiracy lay at the root of the matter.
And some modern historians are inclined to link this conspiracy with
the appearance of the Tsarevich Dmitry. Evidently, Godunov's police
did not succeed in arresting (or did not bother to arrest) all the par-
ticipants in the affair; some, perhaps considered unimportant and
secondary, remained at large. Tsar Boris was content to punish the
most influential and popular of the conspirators, calculating, as an
administration often does in like cases, on terrorising the rest. And, as
almost always happens, the calculation went astray. The revolutionary
elements were so numerous and multiplied so rapidly that the remnants
of the conspiracy easily fused into a new organisation, which Godunov
did not succeed in arresting. When its subterranean activities came out
into the open, military measures had to replace police measures. But
this put the odds in favour of the revolution.
The movement against Godunov immediately assumed the character
of a military rebellion, a fact not to be lost sight of for a minute in
appraising its successes. The Romanov pamphleteer, whom we have cited
more than once, is far more intelligent and perspicacious than the ' ' mer-
cenary pen ' ' of the Shuiskys ; he gives a very clear and able description
of the social elements that the Alleged Dmitry, advancing on Moscow
from Kiev, was most likely to meet. The Russian ukraines [southern
frontier provinces], through which he must pass, were the military
boundary of the Muscovite realm; here it was not unusual to see one-
half of the population reaping or mowing, the other half under arms,
guarding the farmer from a sudden raid by the Tatars of the Crimea, an
event hardly more uncommon in these areas than is a good thunder-
storm in summer or a good snowstorm in winter. Pomeshchiks from
THE TROUBLES 183
/
central Russia regarded appointment to these posts as exile and came
hither with extreme reluctance. In order to colonise these areas the
government had to resort to the services of real exiles; as early as the
reign of Ivan IV it had become the custom to commute punishments for
crime, even capital punishment, into exile to these frontier provinces.
Here they strove to utilise every newcomer, especially as a military
element; a man sent from Moscow under arrest was immediately taken
into the sovereign's service, received an arquebus or a horse, and became
a strelets or a cossack. Under Godunov political exiles were added to
this criminal element; they began to send to the Ukraine "unreliable"
men not dangerous enough to be executed and not famous enough to
merit confinement in a monastery. This political contingent increased
with extraordinary rapidity; the ruin of boyar families, first of the
Mstislavskys and Shuiskys, later of the Romanovs, Belsky, and others,
sent to the Ukraine wave after wave of fresh involuntary colonists. All
who were in any way connected with the fallen families, their whole
"clientele," fell into the category of " unreliables, " especially their
"courts," i.e., their military retainers. The author we have mentioned
fixes the number of such exiles (of course, purely offhand, with no pre-
tension to statistical accuracy) at twenty thousand souls. In any case,
a whole army might be mustered from them alone, all the more so since,
of course, they remained armed. Those who were taken directly into
the sovereign's service represented the most untrustworthy of Boris'
subjects; those who did not happen to be taken into the service joined
that mass of men swaying from side to side of the border, who served
the Moscow government when they found it advantageous and instantly
converted themselves into "foreigners" as soon as this advantage van-
ished. The term "cossackdom" is usually applied by historians to this
very mass, which was, however, not by any means amorphous or abso-
lutely unorganised; military organisation is just what it did have and
its elected atamans were able to maintain discipline over their fol-
lowers as well as could any Muscovite general. This, too, was a ready
military force, not a whit inferior to the forcibly recruited garrisons of
the Ukraine fortresses. To draw a line of demarcation between these
men and others in these areas would be an impossible task ; yesterday 's
"free" cossack to-day becomes a cossack in the sovereign's service,
and to-morrow is "free" again. Just as difficult would it be to make
a social distinction between these petty military servitors, who fre-
quently secured small pomestyes, and genuine pomeshchiks, who in
these areas never held large pomestyes. Among the cossacks there were,
of course, wholly democratic elements, fugitive bondsmen, but their in-
fluence should not be exaggerated as is sometimes done. It was not they
who worked out the ideology of the mass of cossacks. When this mass
184 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
became a political force, it did not raise the slogan of freedom for the
serfs, hut a demand for estates, which would, of course, be worked by
these serfs. The cossack was, as a rule, a petty pomeshchik in embryo,
while the petty pomeshchik, of course, had no higher dream than to be-
come a great one. Hence the cossacks and the mass of military servitors,
Peresvetov's "needy warriors," understood one another so well and in
the political outbreaks of the Troubles so often made common cause.
Both the First and the Second Dmitrys were simultaneously the tsars of
the cossacks and of the nobles. And it was only when it had defi-
nitely become clear that there were not enough estates for all, and that
the new military servitors who had come with the "tsareviches" could
become landholders only at the expense of the old ones, that the "nobles
and knights ' ' finally began to offer serious resistance to the ' ' cossacks. ' '
When these rivals had again been crowded back to the Ukraine, there
arose anew that unstable equilibrium from which the Troubles had
begun — and which was to become more stable only in proportion as the
nobility consolidated its grip on Russia.
The appearance of the cossack armaments under Dmitry's banners
was, therefore, the beginning of the rebellion of the nobles, and it was
no accident that from the very first the pretender made promises "to
give the military orders landed estates and to heap riches upon them."
The decline of Boris' popularity among the nobles, then, was evidently
no secret to the Russian emigres in Lithuania ; on the contrary, this was
the very thing they had been speculating on when they revived the
Romanov conspiracy. Had Tsar Boris been on the same terms with
the pomeshchiks as in the year of his accession, it would have been
ridiculous folly to raise a revolt against him. But now Godunov's army
had to be driven into the field, and it was ready to take advantage of
any convenient opportunity to decline battle. If the campaign of the
alleged tsarevich was not wholly a triumphal procession, the explanation
lies, on the one hand, in the mistakes of the immediate leaders, on the
other, in the fact that Boris' military forces were not made up of his
vassals alone. The Muscovite emigres were not free from infatuation
with the West (Dmitry's own Catholic sympathies are only one aspect
of this phenomenon) ; they rated too low the military qualities of the
force that rallied to them unsolicited, the military servitors of the bor-
der and the cossacks, and expected too much of the Polish detachments
they had hired. As a matter of fact the latter cut no great figure,
whereas the former saved the cause ; surrender without a battle,
in the course of the first weeks of the campaign, of a whole series of
Ukrainian fortresses — Chernigov, Putivl, Rylsk, Sevsk, Kursk, Belgorod,
Tsarev-Borisov — put in the hands of the "tsarevich" a number of
bases from which Boris' generals could not dislodge him even in what
THE TROUBLES 185
were for Dmitry the darkest days of the war. In substance, the splen-
did defence of Kromy by the Don ataman Korela decided the campaign ;
here the Muscovite army was definitely convinced that Godunov was not
competent to cope with the "pretender," whence it was but a step to
the conclusion that it was more advantageous to serve the Alleged Dmi-
try than to serve Tsar Boris. On closer examination of the military
operations, beginning with the fall of 1604, we see that every time Dmi-
try meets serious resistance (as under Novgorod-Seversk, for example),
the field is not held by the feudal army, but by the streltsy of Moscow
(later the Guard) and foreign mercenaries, the rudiments of a regular
military force. This fact was soon appreciated by Dmitry himself;
he made haste to take Boris' landsknechts into his service and strove in
every way, and with some success, to win the sympathy of the strelets
army. But for these elements, new to the Muscovite army, the death
agony of Boris' reign would have been of still shorter duration.
Yet there was nothing left but the agony. From the moment the
"tsarevich" appeared in the open, Godunov 's government lost its head
and knew not what to do. Its military measures were most irresolute
and stupid ; it did not concentrate its armies where they were needed ;
it sent smaller armies than were needed ; and it put at their head mar-
shals manifestly untrustworthy, Mstislavskys and Shuiskys and Golit-
S3 r ns. At the same time it vigorously strove to prove to all (and espe-
cially, it seems, to itself) that the "Tsarevich Dmitry" was none other
than Grishka Otrepyev, as though calling the leader of the anti-Godunov
revolution by his real name were enough to put an end to the revolution.
This confusion on the part of their superiors was fully appreciated by
the lower ranks, and the government army had begun to dis-
perse even before Boris' death. At the moment of his death (April 13,
1605) it comprised, aside from the small regular detachments, hardly
any but the most untrustworthy regiments, the local military servitors
of the northern Ukraine, who had not yet had time to go over to the
pretender.
Under such circumstances there was no difficulty in forming a new
conspiracy. There is such definite documentary evidence as to the ele-
ments that composed it as to leave no room for dispute; those who rose
against Godunov were the middling pomeshchiks, who had been his
chief support in the days when he was struggling with his rivals for
power. The cossack movement was now passed on to the upper strata
of the "warriors." Indeed, the chronicle even gives the names of those
who were "in council" against Boris and his son; they were knights
of Ryazan, Tula, Kashira, and Alexin, and foremost among them was
"Prokopy Lyapunov with his brother and with his counsellors." Other
sources name the knights of Novgorod as well as the "towns beyond
186 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
the Oka." But the decisive fact, of course, was that the conspiracy
was joined by the pomeshchiks of the provinces geographically nearest
to the theatre of war. Half the Muscovite realm was actually in Dmi-
try's hands. If the other half had stood as resolutely for the reigning
dynasty, there would have ensued civil war on a grand scale. That
this was objectively possible the reign of Shuisky was to show. But the
other half of the Muscovite realm, where land tenure conditioned on
military service did not prevail, was made up of towns and a "black-
plough" (unbondaged) peasantry, economically and socially linked to
the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie was not at all disposed to sacrifice
itself for the Godunovs. Its relations with Boris had always remained
a "bad peace," which was, of course, better than a "good quarrel,"
such as that in 1587, but which was very far removed from devoted
loyalty. The "tsarevich" had good reason to count on the support of
the townsmen, explaining in his letters that, under Boris, the gosts and
trading folk had not had freedom in trade and customs, and that a third
of their chattels had been taken by Godunov's government. In this
respect both of Boris' policies — both the "noble" one of the first years
and the "democratic" one of the later years — came to the same thing;
whatever the tsar's treasury set about, whether gifts to the pomeshchiks
or "feeding of the hungry," it had to be replenished at the expense of
commercial capital. To save such a regime the townsmen gave not a
single mite nor a single warrior. The collision between the noble con-
spirators headed by Lyapunov, and the detachments still loyal to Boris
of the army besieging Kromy was the last act of the campaign of 1605.
The correlation of forces was such, and so great was the confusion of
the troops still left to the government, that the knights of Ryazan in
alliance with the cossacks scattered them, almost without resort to arms.
The Alleged Dmitry, who had continued to "sit it out" in Putivl,
much to his own surprise received tidings (at the beginning of May,
1605) that there was no longer any one for him to fight. The boyars
who nominally were commanding the now vanished armies and adminis-
tering the country had no other recourse than to acknowledge the pre-
tender. Their political role at this moment was as piteous as at the
height of the oprichnina; again the rebellious nobility was the actual
master of the state, and the boyars, no longer as a class, but simply as
a throng of classic "courtiers," could utilise the moment merely to
avenge on Boris' family what they had suffered in their time from the
"slave tsar," who had raised the base-born above the well-born.
Vengeance was so sweet that one of the best-born, Prince V.
V. Golitsyn, did not refuse the function of executioner; under
his eyes and under his guidance Godunov's widow and son were stran-
gled. But even here the boyars were merely carrying out the designs of
THE TROUBLES 187
others, for the overthrow of the Godunovs was organised by agents of
the "tsarevich" who had come from the army, and its accomplishment
was possible only thanks to the neutrality of the Moscow townsmen, who
not only did not lift a finger in defence of the "lawful government"
but took an active part in the plunder of Godunov's "chattels,"
remembering how the late tsar had taken "a third of the chattels" from
the townsmen.
The similarity between the order of things established at Moscow in
the summer of 1605 and the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible was not
confined to the depressed position of the boyars. Like their fathers just
forty years before, the pomeshchiks who had brought Dmitry to Moscow
made extensive use of their victory; such an orgy of land distributions
and money compensations had not been seen at Moscow for a long time,
not even, indeed, in the days when Godunov was paying special court
to the nobility. According to Tsar Dmitry's secretary, Buchinsky,
the alleged son of Ivan the Terrible distributed in the first six months
of his short reign seven and a half million rubles (at least a hundred
million in modern rubles). Part of this money went into the pockets of
the cossacks and the Polish mercenaries, but by far the greater part
melted away in the form of wages to the Russian military servitors,
whose money salaries without exception were exactly doubled: "who
had 10 rubles pay, to him he bade be given 20 rubles, while whoso had
a thousand, to him two were given." They evidently distributed all
it was possible to distribute; the Russian chroniclers well remembered
that "in this reign of the abominable Unfrocked Monk the abundant
tsar's treasures of the Muscovite realm, gathered over many years, were
exhausted." The author cited ascribes this, in the main, to the greed
of the Polish and Lithuanian men of war; but another contemporary
historian does not conceal the fact that the bounties of the "Unfrocked
Monk" were not poured out on foreigners alone. Of the extraordinary
distributions of land, paralleling the doubled pay, in 1605-1606, such
a mass of documentary evidence has been preserved that we do not need
to depend upon the chronicles; what is significant in the latter is the
identification of "all the towns" (i.e., the knights, the pomeshchiks,
of all the towns) with "all the land"; as in the days of the oprich-
nina, the pomeshchiks were "all the land," because all the land was
held by them. The enormous estates of the Godunovs might at first
satisfy the new masters' greed for land; but there were in prospect
measures of a more general character. They had already begun to con-
fiscate portions of Church land, turning at the same time to the wealth
of the monasteries to fill the rapidly emptying treasury chests ; this cir-
cumstance should be constantly borne in mind when we hear of the
"heresies" of the Alleged Dmitry. And confiscations of boyar estates
188 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
threatened to extend beyond those of the kinsmen of the deposed
dynasty; the fall of Vasily Shuisky, who in the first days of the new
dynasty was condemned and banished, whether for an actual conspiracy
or simply for malicious rumours about the new tsar, was another ominous
reminder of the oprichnina.
Tsar Dmitry certainly recalled to men's minds his alleged father,
and if there was no boyar conspiracy in the first weeks of his reign,
when Shuisky was banished, one was bound to be formed very soon from
the sheer instinct of self-preservation. All the more so since the posi-
tion of the boyars was now less hopeless than it had been forty years
before. Then they could demand justice from Ivan the Terrible- only
with the aid of Lithuania, a course imperiling their own orthodoxy;
now the Orthodox Church itself was quite ready to co-operate with the
boyars against the "Latinising" tsar. In Ivan's time — and this was
most important — the military servitors had been supported by the Mos-
cow townsmen, and the boyars, taken both in front and in rear, had no
place of retreat ; now the townsmen were very soon convinced that they
had no more to expect from Dmitry than from Godunov, and ferment
among the Moscow townsmen became more perceptible from day to day.
Scattering references in the chronicles and other documents throw some
light on the spread of this ferment among the various strata of the bour-
geoisie of Moscow. The small traders, the shopkeepers, and artisans
were not among the malcontents. The silver that found its way into
the pockets of the nobles and of the cossacks was quickly converted
into consumption values, and in the Moscow bazaars trade was brisk.
Here, then, to the great chagrin of pious writers like our old friend the
Romanov pamphleteer, very little attention was paid to the "heresies"
of the "pretender." Here men were not disturbed until on the occa-
sion of the tsar's marriage the unwonted influx of Poles (counting the
household, armed and unarmed, there were some 6,000 of them), taken
together with absurd rumours circulated by conspirators, roused down-
right fear for their skins ; then the bazaars ceased to sell the newcomers
powder and lead. Uneasiness must have developed much earlier amongst
the large capitalists. Among those who had brought the Alleged Dmi-
try to Moscow had been the most democratic elements of the ' ' warriors, ' '
the pettiest pomeshchiks of the Russian South and even those who, like
the cossacks, were only candidates for that status. Even under Ivan
the Terrible the p^tty military servitors had been in the clutches of
money capital, and the Tsar's Sudebnik of 1550 had had to limit their
right to sell themselves into bondage by restricting its exercise to those
"whom the tsar released from service." The indenturing of military
servitors had continued under Godunov; at this period very many
wealthy men, beginning with the tsar himself, ' ' took to themselves many
THE TROUBLES 189
men to serve in bondage," and among these bondsmen were "chosen
swordbearers, strong with weapons in warfare," and at the same time
holding "villages and vineyards." The spread of indentured bondage
was, then, a fact to which the military-serving masses were by no means
indifferent, and which for the lower ranks was wholly undesirable. A
decree of Dmitry's boyar duma (January 7, 1606), considerably re-
stricting indenture by making it purely personal (so that on the death
of the master the bondsman became free), was therefore in harmony
with the policy of the new tsar in favour of the nobles, merely remind-
ing us that he had behind him, not only wealthy pomeshchiks like the
Lyapunovs, but also petty military servitors. With good reason did
the pettiest of the petty, the cossacks, now walk the streets of Moscow,
where in their time more than one of them had experienced bondage,
with shining faces extolling their "blessed sun," Tsar Dmitry. But
this turn of the government's policy could not be pleasing to those who
made a business of money-lending, and the Romanov pamphleteer, who
was close to upper bourgeois circles, severely condemns both the "rob-
ber cossacks" and the fickle Muscovites who hearkened to them.
This new policy manifestly served the interests of the lower strata of
the military-serving masses rather than of the whole class ; sometimes
perhaps it was not without prejudice to the interests of the upper
strata and thereby affected Dmitry's security; the fact that the coup
against him met with hardly any resistance at Moscow itself was not
at all unconnected with the fact that the nobility of the vicinity of the
capital had received fewest of the tsar's favours. The alleged son of
Ivan the Terrible was not merely the tsar of the nobility but, more
immediately, the tsar of a very definite group of the nobility, of the
knights of the Ukraine and from beyond the Oka, as another boyar de-
cree (February 1, 1606) makes apparent. This decree deprived pomesh-
chiks of the right of seeking and demanding back those peasants who
had left them during the years of the famine; "he was not able to feed
his peasant in the famine years, and now he shall not seize him." But
Muscovite emigration had been from north to south and from the centre
to the frontiers ; it was at the expense of the depopulated regions round
Moscow that the ever multiplying estates of pomeshchiks were growing
up like mushrooms in the black-soil of the southern steppe where there
was a shortage of labour. It was not surprising that Dmitry's name was
so popular in the south, popular long after its bearer had been slain and
burned, and his ashes scattered to the winds.
To depose the armed Dmitry seemed far more difficult than to over-
come the Godunovs deserted by their army. The Alleged Dmitry was
genuinely tsar of the military men, and his military suite did not for a
minute forsake him. Through the city he always "went with many mili-
190 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
tary, before and behind him they walked in armour with partisans and
halberds and many other weapons," so that it was "dreadful for all
to see the multitude of gleaming weapons"; in these excursions the
boyars and magnates had no part. And the military men loved Dmi-
try; when conspiracy penetrated the Strelets Quarter, the streltsy slew
the traitors with their own hands ; and on the day of the catastrophe they
were the last to quit the tsar.
But there was a reverse side to the picture. A military man by na-
ture, Dmitry could not sit still. The interests of the southern pomesh-
chiks, who suffered chronically from the Tatars of the Crimea, also
urged him to a campaign — and in the south; the men of Moscow, terri-
fied in the past by Tatar raids, said, not without terror and not without
reproach to the tsar, that Dmitry was "teasing" the khan of the
Crimea, sending him, it was said, a pigskin coat. In the central and
northern provinces men did not feel toward a distant campaign in the
steppe as did men in the south. Meanwhile, such a campaign was daily
becoming more inevitable; Dmitry was actively mobilising his army
and organising enormous magazines at Yelets; thither he ordered the
greater part of the Muscovite artillery, thereby adding to the terror
of the Muscovites, who felt that the tsar "had emptied Moscow and
other cities for that fortress." All these fears were played on by con-
spirators, who systematically circulated rumours that the tsar was "stir-
ring up the race of the Hagarenes" for no good purpose, and for no good
purpose was stripping the centre of the realm of its military forces;
all this was being done to "betray the Christian race" and to facilitate
the seizure of unarmed Moscow by the Poles. These rumours found
favourable soil even in the ranks of the military-serving class; a cam-
paign against the Crimea alienated the sympathies of the northern
pomeshchiks from the Alleged Dmitry. The knights of Belozersk or
Novgorod were not at all pleased with the prospect of going a thousand
versts to fight for the interests of their confreres beyond the Oka. At
the same time, in moving the troops in the direction of the steppe, it was
the northern regiments that were gathered around Moscow, while the
southern ones were waiting for the tsar on the steppe frontier. Three
thousand Novgorod knights turned out to be the military force of the
conspiracy, in conjunction with the "courts" of the boyar conspirators 8
and the townsmen, whom the boyars provided with arms ; these were
sufficient to cope with Dmitry's German guard and even to make the
Moscow streltsy waver. In any case, they sufficed for a surprise attack,
on which the Shuiskys and their companions were counting.
Their calculations were strengthened by the self-confidence of Dmi-
s There is information that on this occasion the Shuiskys in particular mustered
their full strength from their hereditary estates.
THE TROUBLES 191
try, who believed that he "held all in his hands, like an egg, and was
utterly loved by many." This self-confidence had certain objective
bases; the tsar's calculations were not merely evidence of his light-
headedness, they were the result of false political courses, a political
mistake. The history of his accession must have given him a false no-
tion of the specific gravity of the Muscovite boyars; he had not for-
gotten their humble and passive role on that occasion or the absence of
solidarity among them that had been so manifest in the case of Shuisky,
deserted by every one as soon as the tsar's ban overtook him. To Dmi-
try it seemed that there was nothing to be feared from the boyars at all ;
at the same time recollections of his childhood and early youth must
have given him an equally false notion of the correlation of forces within
boyar circles. Brought up by the Romanovs, Dmitry had easily become
accustomed to the idea that they stood at the head of the Muscovite
aristocracy, and that, with them on his side, there was nothing to be
feared from the others. With the Romanovs he had striven to remain
on good terms : Fedor Romanov, banished and given the tonsure by
Godunov, became the Metropolitan Filaret ; Ivan, the only other surviv-
ing brother, became a boyar. The indubitable participation of the
Romanovs in the conspiracy against Dmitry constitutes one of the most
obscure aspects of this affair. It offers some notion of the hostile temper
in Moscow itself toward the end of his reign; even those whom Tsar
Dmitry cherished did not venture to support him. That even in the
mantle of a metropolitan Fedor Romanov remained a boyar and had no
reason to feel particular sympathy for the tsar of the nobility, who had
manifest "Latin" inclinations at that, may also have played a role.
However that may be, those on whose "love" Dmitry had some reason
to reckon actually stood in the ranks of his opponents. For this blow
from behind he was utterly unprepared, and he cannot be blamed for
that.
The decisive factor was the downright tactlessness of Dmitry's Polish
partisans, who throughout his brief history brought him far more trouble
than profit. The mercenaries brought by the Polish guests who gathered
for the wedding of the tsar and his Polish bride conducted themselves
very disreputably, and, as we have seen, they were so numerous that
the rumours of Polish usurpation began to seem justified. In connexion
with all that had gone before, this brought the Moscow mob to such a
nervous pitch that the conspirators began to fear a premature outburst.
It is possible that they had previously intended to make an end of the
tsar during the campaign; now they had to risk the bolder stroke of
reaching Dmitry in his own palace. The confidence the Alleged Dmitry
placed in his intimate servants undoubtedly facilitated matters. It is
noteworthy that the boyar conspirators, in sounding the tocsin in the
192 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
bazaars, did not venture to move the townsmen against the Kremlin
but directed them against the Poles ; for the immediate purpose of mur-
dering the "Unfrocked Monk" they despatched a small detachment, 200
strong and specially selected, which was readily admitted to the very
sleeping-quarters of the tsar because it was headed by the foremost
boyars of Moscow. The chronicles agree in naming Prince Vasily Shui-
sky, who had recently been allowed by the "Unfrocked Monk" to return
from exile, and his brother Prince Dmitry; but they were accompanied
by "many other boyars and magnates." Later we find Mstislavsky, the
Golitsyns, and Ivan Romanov active on the streets of Moscow. Accord-
ing to later narratives Vasily Shuisky had a most direct part in the
murder; in defending him from Tsar Dmitry, "many boyars and no-
bles" are said to have thrown themselves on the tsar. But the Shuiskys'
pamphlet, as well as the Romanovs' pamphleteer, alike skim over the
details of this tragic night ; evidently these recollections brought satis-
faction neither to the one nor to the other.
One would think that in going about this business, which must in-
evitably result in leaving the throne of Moscow vacant, the conspirators
must beforehand have thought over how this vacancy was to be filled.
As a matter of fact, however, they had not done so ; for two whole days
and nights Moscow was without a tsar. In boyar circles they had been
silent about a candidate, an indication how burning was the question.
They might quarrel over it, they feared, on the eve of the event and
thus break up the whole conspiracy. This in itself should dispel the
idea, so widespread in modern literature, of an "aristocratic camarilla,"
a "boyar cabal." A camarilla would have been able to agree to work
in harmony, but here we perceive no accord of opinions or actions. If
any of the conspirators had a definite plan of action, it was Vasily Shui-
sky alone, and he hastened to make use of his advantage. While the
rest of the boyars were confusedly talking about the need of "holding
a council . . . and by common counsel electing a tsar over the Mus-
covite realm," of the need of sending out letters about a zemsky sobor,
as had been done in 1598, — talking, evidently, with the sole purpose of
protracting matters — the Moscow townsmen acclaimed Vasily Shuisky
tsar. That his accession was a sort of conspiracy within a conspiracy,
a complete surprise for the majority of the members of the fancied
"camarilla," is equally attested by Russian and by foreign sources.
The semi-official chronicle of the Troubles, which we have just cited,
after relating the boyars' perplexed talk of a zemsky sobor, con-
tinues: "but certain of the magnates and of the people made haste and
without common counsel elected a tsar from the magnates — the boyar
Prince Vasily Shuisky . . . ; not all had a share in his election, either
in the provinces, or even at Moscow itself. ' ' The author of the Romanov
THE TROUBLES 193
pamphlet gives a consonant version: "by certain small men of the tsar's
palaces Vasily Shnisky was chosen to be tsar ... by none of the mag-
nates disputed, by the rest of the people not entreated." The latter
author is undoubtedly biased on this point, for in 1606 the Romanovs
were rivals of the Shuiskys, as they had been of the Godunovs in 1598 ;
but his bias is expressed in the fact that he denies the people's participa-
tion in the election of Shuisky, and not in the fact that he denies the
boyars' participation. Shuisky "raised himself up without the will of
all the land" inasmuch as not all the estates and not all the provinces
of the Muscovite realm had shared in making him tsar. But the "people"
had been involved, and the meaning of this term is made quite plain by
a foreigner who witnessed the election. "The crown was offered him,"
Conrad Bussow says, "by the inhabitants of Moscow only, loyal fellow-
participants in the murder of Dmitry, merchants, bootmakers, pastry-
cooks, and a few boyars." Shuisky was the townsmen's tsar, as the
Alleged Dmitry had been the tsar of the nobles. Herein was the nov-
elty of his position. There had been more than one tsar of the nobles ;
such had been Ivan the Terrible in the second half of his reign, and
Godunov in the first half of his. But not once had a representative of
the bourgeoisie sat on the throne of Moscow; it remained a question
whether he could keep it when quiet had been restored in Moscow, and
life had resumed its normal course.
The "self-enthronement" of Vasily Shuisky for the moment abso-
lutely stupefied boyar circles, all the more so since, apart from the new
tsar's relatives, the "few boyars" initiated into the second conspiracy
apparently meant none but the Romanovs. Filaret [Romanov], it seems,
was to be patriarch, while Shuisky was to be tsar. Why the agreement
was not kept, and why Filaret had to go to Tushino for his patriarchate
are not questions of great historical interest. Whether in consequence
of the breach between the Shuiskys and the Romanovs or from some
other cause, the confusion of the boyars soon began to pass off; once
there was no question of sharing the Cap of Monomakh, the boyars again
formed the same friendly wall as when they had gone to slay the "Un-
frocked Monk." Since they had not succeeded in setting up their own
tsar, they must insure themselves against the other fellow's, and it
seemed likely that Shuisky, relying on the merchants, would offer less
resistance than had Dmitry, surrounded by the "warriors." During
the coronation ceremony, in the church, was enacted a strange scene, at
first sight utterly unintelligible. The tsar-designate suddenly began to
talk about wanting to take an oath that he would not take vengeance
on any one for what he had suffered in Boris' reign, and that in general
he "would wreak" nothing on any one "without common counsel."
The boyars and others began to tell him not to do so and not to take oath
194 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
on it: "for never had such been done, and he should do nothing new."
But Shuisky did not listen and took the oath.
If we accept the customary view of Shuisky as the boyars' tsar, none
of this can be understood. The boyars had long wished to limit the
tsar's power, to protect themselves against tyranny from above; the
new tsar undertakes to swear he will not be tyrannical, and the boyars
attempt to dissuade him. But if we read Shuisky 's words attentively,
we shall understand what a loophole this astute diplomat had left him-
self. ' ' Common counsel, ' ' both in the general language of that time and
in the particular narrative of Shuisky 's election in the New Chronicle,
which we are citing, is a synonym for "zemsky sobor. " The boyars had
just been appealing to this institution against Shuisky; now he is ap-
pealing to the sobor against the boyars, declaring that he is prepared
to limit his authority, but only by "common counsel," not by the boyar
duma. Thereupon the boyars very naively give themselves away, dis-
closing that they themselves had not been talking seriously about the
zemsky sobor, but merely for the sake of delay. But Tsar Vasily him-
self wished only to frighten the boyars ; in actual fact, of course, it was
no part of his plan to summon the vassals of the Muscovite realm, the
majority of whom were undoubtedly on the side of the murdered Dmi-
try.
In this very first skirmish it was shown that the boyars were the
stronger; in the official copy of the oath circulated in the provinces the
tsar promised "not to hand over any man to death, without judging him
by true judgment with his boyars." Contrary to the opinion of certain
modern historians, this was a colossal gain for the boyars. Even if
Shuisky 's oath merely ratified traditional Muscovite usage, it would
have no less significance than had ratification of mestnichestvo usages
under Ivan the Terrible. But we have no assurance at all that since the
time of the oprichnina political trials had been handled in conjunction
with the boyar duma, "by true judgment"; on the contrary, there is
every reason to believe that they were dealt with by inquisitional (not
judicial) methods, on the model set by guba institutions. The boyars
who had "harassed and chided" the Romanovs at their prosecution
under Godunov were not judges but prosecutors appointed by Boris.
Shuisky 's oath restored judicial process where since the time of the
oprichnina an administrative tribunal had prevailed.
But the oath went further ; it contained limitation of judicial reprisal.
Hitherto the latter had been collective ; the ban fell upon the whole fam-
ily, and all the hereditary estates of the banned family were subjected
to confiscation. Herein, as we saw, had lain the economic significance
of oprichnina policy; hereditary lands had passed en masse into the
hands of the "warriors." Now there was to be an end to these mass
THE TROUBLES 195
confiscations: "hereditary estates, and homesteads, and chattels shall not
be taken from their [the condemneds'] brothers, and wives, and chil-
dren, be they not with them in thought." This substitution of individ-
ual for group responsibility is extraordinarily important from the
sociological viewpoint; but for the present we shall not discuss this
aspect of the matter. Let us merely note that it lends special emphasis
to the boyar character of Shuisky's "constitution"; it was only the
boyars who suffered from confiscation of the hereditary estates of rela-
tives. The authors of the document felt this themselves, and inasmuch
as the new government really rested on the support, not of the boyars
but of the Moscow townsmen, the "boyar" articles of the constitution
received a no less curious supplement : ' ' likewise in the case of gosts and
trading folk, though by trial and by inquest it be a capital offense, their
homesteads and shops and chattels shall not be taken from their wives
and children, be they not guilty with them in that offence. ..."
The Russian "charter of liberties" thus protected the interests of the
boyars on the one hand and the gosts and trading folk on the other.
The nobility, however, it did not affect, and in the struggle with the rebel-
lion of the nobles that immediately broke out afresh, executions and
exile by administrative process were employed at every step. This was
limitation of the tsar's authority, not in favour of "all the land" but
in favour of only two classes, which after all had at the moment no posi-
tive interests in common. They did have a common foe, the middling
and petty military servitors, who through the medium of the tsar's
treasury had exploited the trading folk and through the medium of the
tsar's authority had expropriated the boyars. So long as this common
foe remained unconquered, they managed in some way to maintain an
alliance. But when this foe gave way and the allies had to build anew,
it soon developed that their interests were incompatible. Economic
kinship proved stronger than a temporary political combination, and
in the end the two economically new classes, the townsmen and the
pomeshchiks, made common cause against the representatives of economic
reaction, the boyars. Shuisky's four-year reign was a sort of mariage de
convenance between commercial capital and boyar hereditary landhold-
ing, in which both parties hated and suspected each other but could not
make up their minds to break off the union until an external impetus
compelled it.
The boyars could not break the alliance, if only for the reason that
without the aid of commercial capital they simply could not rule. The
murdered Dmitry had prepared a grievous lot for his foes; upon his
accession the new tsar was confronted with empty treasure chests. ' ' The
tsar who lacks great treasure and valiant friends is like unto an eagle
without plumes and without beak or talons ; poverty and straitness have
196 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
come to all the men of war," and the men of war did not follow Tsar
Vasily. The extraordinary measures to which he was driven in order
to give even minimum pay to the military servitors who did support
him showed to what "straitness" he was reduced. The zealot for Ortho-
doxy, who had just vanquished the "unclean heretic," had to follow in
the latter 's footsteps; laying hands on the monasteries' treasuries and
even on the monasteries' sacristies, he melted down the church utensils
offered up ' ' for the soul ' ' by former tsars. But all this did not suffice,
and if Shuisky's government held out for four years, it was due only
to the ' ' trading folk ' ' ; without the aid of the littoral and lowland towns,
both in men and in money, it would not have survived the first rebellion.
This rebellion, it may be said, inevitably ensued from Dmitry's mur-
der. The brief reaction under Boris (after the pretender's first acci-
dental failure) had cost the frontiersmen who had brought the Alleged
Dmitry to Moscow so dear that they dared not wait for a reckoning
from the Muscovites, who had now vanquished the "Unfrocked Monk."
In the words of a contemporary, the frontiersmen were confident that
the new tsar was preparing for them the fate that Novgorod had experi-
enced under Ivan the Terrible. "One may be astonished," writes Pro-
fessor Platonov, "how quickly and heartily the southern [fortress]
towns rose against Tsar Vasily Shuisky. As soon as news of the preten-
der's death reached the [frontier provinces], Putivl, Livny, and Yelets
immediately fell away from Moscow, and were soon followed by the
whole Ukraine, as far as Kromy. A little later rose the country beyond
the Oka around Ryazan. The movement spread eastward from Ryazan
to the province of the Mordvins. It even crossed the Volga to Vyatka
and Kama into the Perm region. Remote Astrakhan rose. From the
other direction, interference took place on the western frontiers of the
realm, in the districts of Tver, Pskov, and Novgorod. ' ' In October, 1606,
less than six months after Vasily 's accession, the southern insurgents
were already under Moscow itself. The author we have just cited quite
correctly says that "in the Ukraine in 1606 those who rose against
Shuisky's government were the same men who had earlier been active
against the Godunovs." But there were new elements also, and here he
characterises the southern movement of this year as a "revolt of bonds-
men and peasants against their lords." This is precisely the title of
the chapter dedicated to the subject in the New Chronicle. The com-
piler of the latter was, apparently, particularly close to the patriarch's
court, and the light he gives on the southern revolt is undoubtedly bor-
rowed from the patriarch's letters of the period; these letters of the
Patriarch Hermogen have come down to us in the original (or, what for
our purposes amounts to the same thing, the official) version. In them
it is actually said that the "knaves" (in Muscovite official language this
THE TROUBLES 197
term corresponded to "malefactors" in modern police documents) in
their "cursed sheets" (proclamations) "bid the boyars' bondsmen slay
their lords, and promise them their wives and their estates, and they
bid the despicable and unspeakable knaves to slay the gosts and all the
trading folk and to plunder their chattels, and they summon their
knaves to them and want to give them the rank of boyars and voevodas
and other high officials." But this text makes evident the imprudence
of the assertion that the "knaves" posited "as the goal of the popular
movement not only a political but also a social revolution." What kind
of a social revolution would it be to transfer the estates of Shuisky's
partisans to those of their bondsmen who had joined the movement?
The estates would have changed hands, but their internal organisation
would, of course, have remained intact. This stability of the old order
is particularly clear in the other promise of the "knaves," namely, to
make the bondsmen boyars and voevodas and other high officials ; that
is, the whole Muscovite hierarchy was to be taken over, and when the
"knaves" had firmly established themselves near Moscow, it was repro-
duced at Tushino, the "knaves' " capital.
There is no doubt that we are here dealing with twofold demagogy.
In the first place, in raising against the boyars the enserfed population
of the boyars' hereditary estates, the leaders of the rebellion against
Shuisky did not hesitate to make promises, not expecting that they
would have to redeem them and trusting that in case of need the armed
pomeshchiks could easily cope with a peasant revolt if it got beyond
useful bounds. In the second place, in inciting against the "knaves" the
urban bourgeoisie and such of the landholders of northern and central
Russia as were still wavering, the patriarch laid emphasis on just those
aspects of the "knaves' ' programme that were bound to be particularly
odious to these classes. The result was a picture of something very like
social revolution, a picture somewhat premature. The chief fighting
force of the insurgents' army was again made up of those same nobles
and knights of Ryazan, headed by the Lyapunovs and the Sumbulovs,
who had tipped the scales in favour of the Alleged Dmitry in May, 1605.
When Shuisky succeeded (in November, 1606), by way of what were
doubtless grievous sacrifices, in winning over this portion of the rebels,
he was at once able to take the offensive. Along with them, of course,
we find the cossacks; one of the deserters who followed Lyapunov and
Sumbulov was the "cossack ataman Istomka Pashkov," who, with a
retinue of four hundred men, "beat his forehead" into the service of
Tsar Vasily, evidently calculating that this rather than revolt was the
easiest way for him and his comrades to become pomeshchiks. Istomka
Pashkov himself, moreover, was a typical example of that intermediate
class that wavered constantly between the "free cossack" and the "liege
198 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
knight " ; a " cossack ataman ' ' in the chronicle, in official documents he
is noted as a military servitor, and not even as one with a very small
pomestye. The social side of the movement is represented by the for-
mer bondsman Ivan Bolotnikov, after whom the whole rebellion is fre-
quently called " Bolotnikov 's revolt." But how little this meant as yet
is evident from the fact that his former master, Prince Telyatevsky,
was one of the leaders of the same "knave" army. The social move-
ment was beginning to rise — but only later was it to reach flood-tide.
The immediate outcome for Prokopy Lyapunov serves as a good ex-
ample of the motives behind the movement and of the means Shuisky
employed to cope with it. After his betrayal of the insurgents' cause
Lyapunov became a member of the sovereign's duma and together with
his comrade, Sumbulov, was appointed voevoda at Ryazan ; in other
words, Shuisky surrendered Ryazan to the nobles' party, which had
supported the Alleged Dmitry, both before and after his death. Hav-
ing become masters in their own house, the men of Ryazan agreed to
suffer Shuisky at Moscow, and henceforth we see them among the loyal
subjects of Tsar Vasily. Only relatively, as we see, can this be called a
"victory" for Shuisky, even if we overlook the circumstance that he
never recovered the lost Ukraine. One more example of the government
publicism of those days, constituting a good parallel to the pamphlet
we are already acquainted with, may serve as evidence of his critical
position in the first year of his reign. That pamphlet, as we shall re-
member, was issued in the summer of 1606 and confined itself to falsifi-
cation of natural, mundane events. In the autumn, heavenly forces were
brought into play; a certain archpriest, Terenty (whose literary talent
had previously served the Alleged Dmitry, and who later entered the
service of the Polish King Sigismund), disclosed to the Moscow public
the visions that had appeared to "a certain cleric," who wished to re-
main unknown. In the night the holy man, half asleep, half awake,
found himself in the Moscow Cathedral of the Annunciation, and there
he saw an awful scene : Christ Himself, in the presence of the Virgin
Mary, John the Baptist, and all the apostles and saints, who had point
for point the same appearance as when depicted on icons, was meting
out justice to Moscow, its tsar, patriarch, and people. The sentence
was severe, and the people of Moscow, the "new Israel," would for
their numerous sins have been condemned to perdition but for the inter-
vention of the Virgin Mary, who prayed the Saviour to give the Mus-
covites time to repent. At the tsar's command the "vision" was read
in the cathedral, and there can, of course, be not the slightest doubt
that the dexterous and pliant pen of the Moscow archpriest was working,
here as always, in strict conformity with official instructions. Moscow's
position in these days (mid-October, 1606) was really such that there
THE TROUBLES 199
seemed to be no possibility of getting out of it except in a supernatural
way. "The accursed ones," writes Shuisky's official publicist, "plotted
to beset the city round about and to close all the roads, that no one
might go out of the city or into the city, that no one might bring aid
to the city from anywhere; and thus they did. In the city of Moscow
on all men was great fear and alarm; from the beginning of the city
never was there such woe." The "vision," testifying that the Virgin
Mary herself was protecting the city with her prayers, was bound to
raise the spirit of the unfortunate Muscovites, who might now in their
turn expect what the frontiersmen had expected from Moscow on Shui-
sky's accession. To save themselves from such a calamity it was per-
missible to seat more than one of the "knave" voevodas in the duma.
Even after the militia of the southern pomeshchiks and cossacks had
been dissipated by desertions, and the first army from the north (the
streltsy from the towns along the northern Dvina) had come to the aid
of Tsar Vasily, the tsar 's armies were for long unable to crush the rem-
nants of Bolotnikov's militia. Shuisky's generals were beaten off from
Kaluga; Tula, where Bolotnikov later established himself, was taken by
treachery after a long and difficult siege and even then not uncondi-
tionally; the last soldiers of the "knave" army, having surrendered their
leaders, took oath to Tsar Vasily. Yesterday's political offenders to-day
again became military servitors of the tsar and grand prince. It was
quite evident that at the first pretext things would begin all over again.
By the time that Tula surrendered, the occasion was already at hand ;
the capitulation took place on October 10, while since the end of August
the "miraculously saved" Dmitry had been at Starodub-Seversk with
a military force far more terrible as such for the bourgeois tsar than
Bolotnikov's bands had been — with approximately ten thousand regular
Polish cavalry and infantry, headed by the most experienced and tal-
ented Polish condottieri, Rozynski and Lisowski. The march to Moscow
with the first Dmitry had for men of this type served as a reconnais-
sance. Now they "knew the road" and saw that the Muscovite govern-
ment was as weak as ever; it would have been strange not to make use
of this knowledge. In the spring of 1608 the Second Dmitry (whose
identity has interested absolutely no one, not even in his own time)
routed the Muscovite armament sent south against him, and in the sum-
mer of this year Moscow was again in the same position as at the height
of Bolotnikov's revolt. For the capital to be in a state of siege (external
not internal) was becoming the normal condition of this reign.
CHAPTER X
the troubles (Continued)
3. The "Better" Men and the "Lesser" Men
At first sight the last two years of Shuisky's reign (from the summer
of 1608 to July 15, 1610) seem a repetition of the events of 1605-1607,
a new outburst, in the old form and under the old slogans, of the same
civil war. On the stage again appears a Dmitry, juridically identical
with the one who in the autumn of 1604 had entered the field against
Godunov. Again he is supported by the cossacks, loyal to the end, and
by the mass of the petty military servitors, the nobles and knights
of the provinces. The social soil that nourished " pretenderisni " was
absolutely independent of local conditions; everywhere and always,
with the most diverse personal motives and under the most diverse
pretexts, the petty vassals followed Dmitry. The petty pomeshchiks
around Moscow joined the men of Tushino, who were besieging the
Troitsa Monastery, lest their estates be plundered; in Vyatka the com-
mandant of the town and the streltsy "drank a cup in the tavern to Tsar
Dmitry" because they did not want the fighting men to be taken from
their region to Moscow. Even where they were acting as "government
troops" against the "knaves," the provincial pomeshchiks soon made
common cause with the latter. The knights of Kostroma and Galich
arrived under Yaroslavl to fight Lisowski's detachments, then wanted to
carry off the tsar's artillery for the men of Tushino, and a little later
we see them with Lisowski's men destroying Kostroma.
The townsmen, on the other hand, always showed themselves loyal
servants of Shuisky ; when, toward the spring of 1609, victory seemed
to be inclining to Tsar Vasily's side, he himself ascribed this gain to
the men of Vologda, Belozersk, Kostroma, Galich, Vyatka, and "the
elders and townsmen of divers other towns." They did indeed stand
up for him "without sparing their chattels"; Ustyug Veliki alone up
to the spring of 1609 had sent five "hosts" to the aid of the Moscow
government, i.e., it had raised recruits five times and, failing to recruit
a sixth "host" only because there were no men left to take, had fallen
to hiring "free cossack volunteers" for the service of the sovereign. Of
special importance to Shuisky in those years was Vologda, which tem-
porarily replaced besieged Moscow as the centre of foreign trade. There
"all the better men gathered, the gosts of Moscow with valuable wares
200
THE TROUBLES 201
and their treasury, and the tsar's great treasury, sables from Siberia
and foxes, and all kinds of furs," and in addition, "English Germans"?
also gathered there with "expensive wares" and with "fine drink" (im-
ported wines). Even more clearly than in the case of the military servi-
tors who supported Dmitry, social motives definitely superseded local
interests ; not only the local people, the men of Vologda and the Moscow
merchants who had come to Vologda, but also the foreign gosts aided
Moscow. The English merchantry, too, was on the side of Shuisky.
Least of all on the side of this "tsar of the boyars" (as the text-
books have it) were the boyars themselves. By the end of his rule it was
hardly possible to find among Vasily's partisans, aside from his personal
relatives and kinsmen, a single representative of the feudal aristocracy..
The Romanovs and their circle were the first to leave him, and it was
they who took the most extreme steps. Ivan Nikitich Romanov, sent
with an army against the Second Dmitry, became involved in ,a regular
conspiracy, designed to repeat what had happened under Kromy in May,
1605. The conspiracy failed, and the Romanovs' nearest relatives were
banished for it. From exile they soon passed into the camp of Tushino,
where gradually assembled the whole Romanov clan, headed by its senior
member, the Metropolitan Filaret. In Tushino Filaret became patri-
arch, an episode which was afterward deemed so compromising that it
was not mentioned in his official biography; but contemporaries refer
to it so frequently and with such unanimity that there can be no doubt
about the fact itself, even though loyal and pious men, from perfectly
intelligible motives, have striven to explain it in a light favourable to
Filaret Nikitich. The Golitsyns, next in rank to the Romanovs and the
Shuiskys, followed a different course, but they, too, were numbered
among the open ill-wishers of Tsar Vasily; their most eminent repre-
sentative, Prince V. V. Golitsyn, later headed the rebellion that deposed
the Shuiskys. The lesser "princelings," without presuming, like the
Golitsyns, to essay an independent political role, did not eschew the
"knave's" court since the Romanovs by their presence there had given
it a certain respectability. A Prince Shakhovskoi was ' ' servant ' ' to the
"knave," a Prince Zvenigorodsky was steward; the Princes Trubetskoi,
Zasekin, and Baryatinsky sat as boyars in his duma. A Polish spy's
report from Moscow at the end of Shuisky 's reign said that only a few
clerks ' ' act uprightly ' ' toward the tsar, and hardly any of the boyars.
"With a duma so constituted, and with a Romanov as patriarch,
Tushino seemingly differed but little from the capital of the First Dmi-
try. Nevertheless, on closer examination of the army that followed the
second "pretender," we perceive marked differences from that host of
nobles which, in 1605, had brought the First Dmitry to Moscow. The
first of these differences, and the earliest to strike both contemporaries
202 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
and later historians, consists in the predominant role the Poles played
at Tushino. The Romanov pamphleteer, apparently writing at the end
of 1609, while Shuisky was still tsar (that is, before Sigismund's
attempt to seize the throne of Moscow, and therefore before the struggle
assumed a nationalist complexion), none the less discusses this fact at
length and with great pathos. In his words, the Poles, though in the
minority, dealt with the Russian "traitors" as with their own subjects
and, sending them first into battle, took the best part of the booty for
themselves. "We must not, we repeat, see a nationalistic tendency in
this; there was as yet no room for that. Our author's characterisation
of the Poles is in general rather sympathetic; in contrast to the Rus-
sians of Tushino they are depicted as men not devoid of a certain
chivalry : for example, they did not kill their prisoners and did not
permit their Russian comrades to kill them when they acted together in
battle; whereas, when acting alone, the Russian "knaves" committed
the greatest excesses.
And yet, in the description of these "knaves" is revealed another,
and much more curious, feature of the Tushino movement; it presents
a social physiognomy other than what we should expect from a rebellion
of military servitors against a boyar who had been made tsar by the
bourgeoisie. The Tushino detachments are particularly fond of ruining
the wealthy and taking away their possessions. "Where the possessions
were too numerous to be carried off, they destroyed them, chopped them
up, threw them into the water; "they smashed all the entrances and
barriers, so that no one might dwell there." Here we have a picture
strikingly similar to the familiar scene of the destruction of a landlord's
mansion in Russia of the early twentieth century. "When the author
passes to acts of personal violence, we find "many bondsmen abusing
their lords" and slaying them. We shall not torment the reader with a
description of the furies of servile vengeance, but noteworthy in the
highest degree is the author's admission that there were grounds for
vengeance, that the lords had deserved the ferocious hatred of their
slaves. The picture of how the wealthy "live by filthy usury" and
take trouble with the taverns "in order to tempt all the world," and
with the money acquired by extortions and depredations "found
churches of God," and hear not the voices of the poor, "bid them be
beaten on the face and on the breast, and with rods, which are wickeder
than wicked, they break their bones, and to fetters and to dungeons . . .
they condemn them" — this is one of the most vivid pictures, not only
in this pamphlet but in all the literature of the Troubles. But if the
excesses of Tushino could be explained only by bringing to mind all
the social evil that had accumulated in Muscovite Rus by the beginning
of the seventeenth century, it is evident that our author was not con-
THE TROUBLES 203
cerned with the mere rancour, "more malignant than devils," of the
Russians who had taken the part of the "tsarlet" of Tushino. The
rebellion of the lower social classes against the higher, which it would
have been premature to trace in the cossack movements or in Bolotni-
kov's revolt, now really begins to manifest itself under the protection
of the Tushino detachments.
Here the national composition of the latter was not irrelevant;
pomeshchiks in revolt still remained pomeshchiks, and as regards peasant
flights and peasant bondage Shuisky's foe was at one with Shuisky's
partisan. Gathering under Moscow with the cossacks at the most critical
moment — the summer of 1611 — the knights do not for a minute forget
that fugitive peasants and bondsmen must be "given back on inquest to
the old pomeshchiks. ' ' Had the army of Tushino been composed only of
Russian landlords, the Romanov pamphleteer would have had no oc-
casion to describe the scenes we have presented above. The Polish
mercenary detachments were in a different position; though nobles
themselves, they were not bound by community of interests with the
local pomeshchiks since they did not intend to remain in the country.
The dual difficulty of coping with a social movement indirectly sup-
ported by foreign detachments who were parasites in the country could
not but be clear to men observing matters at close range and in such de-
tail as is no longer possible to us, especially when these men were directly
interested in the matter. The patriotism of the Russian pomeshchiks,
which blazed up so brightly in 1611-1612, was not without foundation.
It was, like all patriotism, a special form of class self-preservation.
We shall presently see what special causes after the fall of Shuisky
intensified this feeling and compelled the pomeshchiks to forget all their
differences and to move in serried ranks against the foreigners who had
taken root in the country. But we shall likewise see that this movement,
which was purely the affair of the nobles, was predestined to failure,
whereas the pomeshchik rising of 1612, which relied on commercial capi-
tal, was to triumph. What interest did capital have in the struggle
against the Polish-Tushino army ? Thus far we have accepted as a fact
that the townsmen were on Shuisky's side; but this requires more ex-
planation than the mere fact that the bourgeoisie of Moscow had seated
Tsar Vasily on the throne. Long before 1610 the bourgeoisie had evi-
dence enough that its chosen sovereign was "unlucky," and that on
his account "Christian blood flows ceaselessly."
It is time to analyse this concept of "bourgeoisie," which we have
hitherto employed as self-explanatory. Fortunately our sources supply
sufficient material for the purpose. In standing for Tsar Vasily and
later against Tsar Vladislav, the towns, frequently cut off from their
organisational centre at Moscow, were bound to elaborate their own
204 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
organisation, and to this end they maintained active relations among
themselves. A number of documents relating to their correspondence
with each other are extant; the earliest are the "answers" of the men
of Ustyug to the men of Solvychegodsk at the end of November, 1608.
The starting point for the correspondence between Ustyug and Solvy-
chegodsk was the tidings of the taking of Rostov and Vologda by the
men of Tushino (temporarily even these great towns had submitted
to the "knave") ; the men of Ustyug regarded this event as a manifes-
tation of God's "just wrath upon all the land of Rus" and only trusted
that the distance was perhaps too great for the wrath of God to reach
them. But since an agent of Tushino, Nikita Pushkin, had already
arrived, geographical arguments did not seem particularly consoling
even to them themselves, and they had to console themselves with the
hope that it was still uncertain who would win ("it is not to be guessed
how it will turn out") and encourage themselves with rumours, quite
absurd even then, that Prince M. V. Skopin-Shuisky had "destroyed
Tushino." However that might be, the necessity of taking oath to the
"knave" seemed imminent, a necessity extremely unpleasant in view
of the consequences that had usually accompanied the event in other
towns. In Yaroslavl, when "the rabble with Prince Fedor Barya-
tinsky kissed the cross to the Tsarevich Dmitry," "the better men,
abandoning their homes, fled away." And here, in Ustyug, we find the
"better men" at the head of the anti-Tushino movement; Mikhalko, a
farmer of the liquor monopoly, assumed the role of chief orator at the
meeting, the decision of which is reported in the first of the "answers."
And the bourgeoisie of Ustyug appealed to their social compeers in Sol-
vychegodsk, the "better men of the town and township," recommending
to them in their turn that they talk it over "with the Stroganovs. "
The most complete picture of this intra-urban social struggle, which
presents a perfect parallel to the rural movement described by the
author of the Romanov pamphlet, is supplied by the chronicler of
Pskov. Next to Moscow (after the ruin of Novgorod by Ivan IV)
Pskov was probably the greatest economic centre of Russia at that time.
Class relationships, as they then existed, were there highly developed,
and the succession of classes in power therefore stands out in the
chronicle in peculiarly sharp relief. The antagonism between the "bet-
ter" men and the "lesser" men was here very soon perceptible, and
precisely in connection with the recognition or non-recognition of
Shuisky's government. Even in the days of Bolotnikov's revolt Shuisky
had asked financial aid of Pskov as well as of other towns. The munici-
pal government, the gosts, were ready to give the money, not their own,
of course, but money levied on all Pskov. The "common people" sub-
mitted to the payment very reluctantly and sent to Moscow their own
THE TROUBLES 205
deputies, whom the gosts denounced as seditious ; at Moscow these
deputies established very close relations with the streltsy from Pskov,
who were ■ very soon to desert Shuisky. The voevoda of Pskov, the
boyar Sheremetev, who, like almost all the boyars of the time, was
hostile to Tsar Vasily, played a double role. Officially he was on the
side of the ' ' lawful authority, ' ' of the representatives of the commercial
class, the gosts, who ruled Pskov; sub rosa he was aiding the agents of
Tushino. But as long as the "lesser" men were unarmed, they did not
go beyond "seditious speeches." Matters were brought to a head by
the appearance at Pskov of the streltsy, who had deserted the Moscow
government, and of Tushino detachments in the environs of the town.
The petty military servitors, with whom Pskov's subordinate towns
(the border fortresses) were filled, took oath to Dmitry. In the city
itself the "people," now mustering courage, "seized the better men and
the gosts and threw them into the dungeon." This was in August,
1608. The voevoda who had played a double role followed the gosts to
prison. The "lesser" men, with the streltsy, were masters of the city.
But the democracy of Pskov lacked confidence in its complete victory ;
it seemed to it that even in prison the "better men" were organising
conspiracies against it, and on the first of September were enacted in
Pskov scenes vividly recalling the "September massacres" of the great
French Revolution. When it was rumoured through the city that ' ' Ger-
mans" were coming from Novgorod, hired, it was said, by Shuisky, a
crowd of men of Pskov threw themselves "on the municipal authorities
and on the eminent men of the city and slaughtered those who had
been put in the dungeon ' ' : some they seated on stakes, others they
beheaded, still others they subjected to corporal punishment, and they
confiscated the property of all ; the former voevoda, Sheremetev, was
strangled in prison. All this chastisement was carried out in the name
of Tsar Dmitry. But confiscation did not stop with the property of
those executed ; the democratic leaders appropriated for the city the
treasure of the bishop and of the monasteries and subjected the gosts
to just such a compulsory levy in favour of the Tushino government
as the "common people" had formerly been subjected to in favour of
Tsar Vasily.
Nor did the democratic Terror stop with the September massacres.
A great fire soon occurred in Pskov, during which the Kremlin was
destroyed by the explosion of a powder cellar. "The men of Pskov,
the common people and the streltsy, rushed up crying: 'The boyars
and gosts are burning the city,' and began to drive them into the very
fire with stones as they ran out of the city; and, gathering in the
morning, they began to drag along the eminent nobles and gosts, to
torture and to punish them, and to put them in the dungeon." But
206 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
the petty military servitors soon proved to be poor allies of the petty
bourgeoisie of the town, a fact which the "aristocrats" of Pskov were
able to use to excite the common people against the streltsy. The latter
were driven from the city, and the popular party was deprived of its
armed force ; as a result, for a short time the city passed again into the
hands of the gosts. A savage reaction set in; some of the "leaders of
the assembly" were "given over to execution," others simply "slain."
But the triumph of the wealthy merchantry was ephemeral. In the
first place, they too quickly displayed their true political physiognomy
by proposing to take the oath to Shuisky. Furthermore, those leaders
of the democracy of Pskov who had escaped execution found support
in the mass of rustics, the "smerds" of Pskov, whom we have already
met in the pages of this history. Crowds of peasants appeared on the
streets of Pskov, and with their co-operation the reactionary govern-
ment was overthrown. More than two hundred representatives of the
aristocracy of Pskov, "nobles and gosts," together with "monks and
priests," were again in prison, and their property confiscated. The
host sent by Shuisky to the aid of the ' ' whites ' ' of Pskov came too late ;
the streltsy and the Tushino cossack detachments were in the city once
more, and the tsar's voevoda, Prince V. Dolgoruky, after besieging the
city for a time, retired. The men of Pskov, preparing for further war-
fare, hired Polish detachments ; ' ' Lisowchiks ' ' appeared in Pskov. Never-
theless, the democracy of Pskov is not on this account to be accused of
lack of patriotism; Shuisky 's party had summoned the Swedes to its
aid, though to no avail. First Lisowski, then the "false tsar and knave
Matyushka" 1 and his cossacks, defended the city until 1613. It was
only the victory of the "better men" throughout Russia that tipped the
scales to their side at Pskov, too. The leaders of the popular party
were again arrested and this time despatched to Moscow, where "order"
had finally triumphed.
Within Tushino itself there proved to be a class contradiction, which
threatened the cause of the Second Dmitry with inevitable ruin. The
rising initiated by the middling landholders was in fact assuming the
physiognomy of a "servile revolt." Hence, in contrast to the First
Dmitry, who in the main had relied on the military-serving masses,
the Second Dmitry was, toward the end, supported almost exclusively
by Polish mercenaries and by the cossacks. But the cossacks were
always ready to take the side of the pomeshchiks, if only they, too,
were furnished with land and given a share in the ' ' sovereign 's wages. ' '
The higher military servitors among the Tushino masses were bound
i After the First Dmitry the cossacks fell to turning out "tsareviches" by factory
methods, so to speak; there were tsareviches named "Augustus," Lavrenty, two
Peters, Fedor, Clementy, Savely, Simeon, Vasily, Yeroshka, Gavrilka, Martynka, etc.
THE TROUBLES 207
soon to understand that the Poles represented the chief danger, though
at the same time they represented the chief fighting force of Tushino.
The Patriarch Filaret and the other titled men of Tushino, on the one
hand, and those pomeshchiks and knights who adhered to the Second
Dmitry, on the other hand, were thus confronted with the question of
how to render the Poles harmless without losing their aid, which in a
military sense was invaluable. In such a situation it was quite natural
to appeal from the "knights" who were the masters in Russia to their
government in Poland. It is true, there were among the Polish soldiers
of Tushino not a few emigres, outlaws even from the Polish point of
view, the celebrated Lisowski, for example. It was, of course, impossible
to make them obey the Polish authorities, but it was possible to attract
them to the side of "order" by the hope of legitimation. The others,
who had not broken their ties with the fatherland, the Polish king
could simply order to abandon the "bondsmen" and to aid the pomesh-
chiks. Only one thing was clear: King Sigismund would not interfere
in Moscow's troubles for nothing; it was necessary to interest him in
some way, necessary to make the cause of the Russian pomeshchiks his
cause. Under such circumstances there emerged in the camp of Tushino
at the beginning of 1609 the candidacy of the king's son Vladislav for
the throne of Moscow. In becoming the father of the tsar of Moscow,
Sigismund, of course, would receive the strongest inducement to restore
order in the Muscovite state.
The idea of a Polish candidate for the throne of Moscow was by no
means a new idea. Even in the days of the First Dmitry, before
Shuisky and the Moscow townsmen carried off the prize, the tsar the
boyars desired was this very Vladislav; their agent at Cracow had
been carrying on negotiations along this line, negotiations which were
interrupted without result by the coup of May 17, 1606. In 1608, when
Shuisky 's instability on the throne had finally become clear, the question
bobbed up again, and again the boyars conspired. It is sufficient to
remember the position of the "ruler" in the Polish-Lithuanian state
to understand why the sympathies of the boyars turned in this direction.
Not for nothing were Filaret and his circle the first at Tushino to
remember the Polish candidate. But in these days the boyars were
already so weak politically that alone they could not possibly seat their
own candidate on the throne. Reaction of the mass of the pomeshchiks
against the Tushino "tsarlet," who, without his will and assent, but in
virtue of the inexorable course of events, was becoming the tsar of
bondsmen, lent them unexpected support ; the nobility likewise needed
a new tsar and had no candidate of their own. The desire, identical in
both the controlling groups at Tushino (the boyar opposition to Shuisky
and the provincial nobility), to render the Polish "knights" harmless
208 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
very soon brought about a reconciliation of these two old opponents,
who, it seemed, now had nothing to divide them. In January, 1610,
an embassy representing both groups appeared before Sigismund and
put the question of Vladislav on an absolutely business basis; the
superior elements of the Tushino army renounced their questionable
tsar and bound themselves to make every effort to seat the Polish king's
son on the throne of Moscow.
The Polish king had at this time a special reason for interfering in
Muscovite affairs, and in particular for interfering against Shuisky,
i.e., for Tushino, though of course not for the "knave." The Polish
regular cavalry in the latter 's service had compelled Tsar Vasily, who
had, moreover, been deprived of the support of the majority of his
military servitors, to seek elsewhere an equivalent force to oppose to it.
There was no one for him to turn to except the Swedes. On February
28, 1609, a treaty of offensive-defensive alliance between King Charles
IX and Tsar Vasily was signed in Vyborg; the inevitable consequence
of this treaty was a war between Moscow and Poland since the latter
was then at war with Sweden. From the point of view of Shuisky 's
government this was perfectly reasonable ; the Poles were supporting
Tushino anyway, war was being waged unofficially, and the royal army
was little more to be feared than were such partisans as Rozynski and
Lisowski. And so it turned out; even by the autumn of this year (1609)
King Sigismund had succeeded in collecting no more than 5,000 foot
and 12,000 horse, and the latter were inferior to the Tushino bands.
With these forces the king advanced to Smolensk, which, as a great
commercial centre (its inhabitants were reckoned at 70,000), of course
supported Shuisky 's party. Under Smolensk, the siege of which was
conducted very indolently and unsuccessfully, the envoys of Tushino
met with Sigismund.
The treaty they concluded with Sigismund (it was signed, as a private
agreement, under Smolensk, February 4, 1610, and on August 17 of the
same year, being accepted by the boyars who were ruling Moscow, it
became an official document) enjoys high renown in Russian historical
literature as the first "project of a Russian constitution." Properly
speaking, the first document comprising a limitation of the tsar's power
was Shuisky 's oath; but it had included only negative provisions; it had
defined what the tsar must not do, whereas the treaty of 1610 tried to
define how the tsar must rule. On closer inspection, however, this
document does not at all justify its high reputation. First of all, there
is no "project" here; on the contrary, the authors take every precaution
to avoid the appearance of proposing anything new. Everything must
be done "as formerly"; the reservation is specifically made that "the
former customs and ranks, which were in the realm of Moscow, are not
THE TROUBLES 209
to be altered." Under such circumstances the whole treaty appears, not
a programme for the future but a retrospective survey of Muscovite po-
litical usage, with a manifest attempt to restore in all inviolability not
only what had existed before the Troubles but also what had existed
before the oprichnina. As in the days of the "elected council," it was
proposed to concentrate all power in the hands of the boyars; the tsar
must do nothing without consulting them. "And all that," concludes
the treaty, "shall be done by the sovereign with the advice and consent
of the boyars and all men of the duma ; without the duma and without
its consent such business shall not be accomplished." Reproducing the
substance of Shuisky's oath, the treaty lays special emphasis on the
participation of the boyars in the administration of justice ("whoever
is guilty . . . shall be punished for his fault, having first been con-
demned by the boyars and by the men of the duma . . ."). From
our point of view, of special importance is the control of the budget by
the boyars : ' ' the sovereign 's revenues . . . over and above former cus-
toms, shall not be augmented without consulting the boyars. ' ' But here
too, of course, there was nothing new; earlier, too, taxation had been
within the competence of the boyar duma.
The sole innovation in this treaty, an innovation not very bold but
very remarkable, is the mention of the zemsky sobor as an indispen-
sable participant in legislation: "at Moscow and in the provinces
judicial decisions shall be made and shall be executed according to
former usage, according to the Sudebnik of the Russian realm ; and if
there shall be desire to supplement it for the strengthening of the
courts, the Sovereign shall consult with the duma of boyars and of all
the land, that all shall be just." Prior to the oprichnina legislative
power had been exercised by the tsar and the boyars; now they shared
this power with the nobles, who made up the preponderant majority of
the "council of all the land." Thus did the treaty of 1610 discount the
political changes that had taken place during the sixty years since the
publication of the Tsar's Sudebnik — a hard bargain, if we remember
that during this interval the nobility had seated two tsars upon the
throne of Moscow, and now were about to unseat a third, principally
because the pomeshchiks "do not love" him "and do not want to serve
him." When the Muscovite boyars wielded the pen, the political usage
of the Muscovite state made concessions to the "spirit of the times"
only in the most homeopathic doses. This is particularly clear if we
take into account that the initiative in the summoning of the zemsky
sobor remained entirely in the hands of the boyars (the "desire"
refers only to those who judge, i.e., to the boyars), and that they were
striving to make the personnel of this omnicompetent college more per-
manent than it had been made in the fifteen-fifties. "Muscovite prince-
210 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
ling and boyar families shall not be depressed and abased in rank and
honour by foreign newcomers," said the final text of the treaty. In the
original edition this promise was mitigated by the addition: "men of
lesser station" shall be raised in accordance with personal deserts. As
has often been remarked it is particularly significant that this reserva-
tion was omitted in the official text; that which had been proclaimed
by the oprichniks of Ivan the Terrible, namely, that the sovereign
"like God makes the little great," the Muscovite boyars refused to
acknowledge even thirty years after Ivan's death. To this juridical
inviolability of "great stations" corresponded, of course, guarantee of
their economic basis; Vladislav pledged himself "not to take relatives'
hereditary estates from any one." On this point the restrictive pro-
visions of Shuisky's charter were extended to the new sovereign.
The "boyar rule" for which historians have sought in vain in the
reign of Tsar Vasily was now to begin; nothing offers such convincing
proof of the perplexity of the pomeshchik masses when faced by the
rebellion of their rural inferiors as does the political portion of the
treaty of 1610. Peresvetov's great-grandsons now agreed to hand over
all power to the "idle rich," merely to maintain their own social posi-
tion. This was guaranteed by the treaty on both sides, so to speak, both
from above and from below. From above the pomeshchik obtained the
money capital on which his economy existed ; from below he strove to
attach working hands to this economy. The boyars, on becoming the
government of Moscow, formally promised in the name of Tsar Vladi-
slav "to bid that pay be given . . . according to former custom." Thus,
only the traditional rate of pay was guaranteed, presumably without
taking into account the decline in the value of money. Alteration of
the rate was admitted, but the initiative rested with the boyars: "and
be anything added to any one . . . not according to their desert, or
. . . diminished without fault . . . about this the sovereign shall con-
sult with the boyars and with the men of the duma. " The boyars did
not want the sovereign to make pay a means of increasing his popularity,
as it had been under Godunov and the Alleged Dmitry.
With respect to working hands special measures of precaution had to
be taken; now the landholders of neighbouring Lithuania might be
drawn into competition. Hence the treaty laid it down: "trading and
plough peasants shall not go to Lithuania from Rus or from Lithuania
to Rus. " " Likewise within Rus peasants shall not go away, ' ' and serfs
shall not be given freedom, added the original text of the unofficial
agreement. Very curious is this fear of an emancipatory policy on the
part of the new tsar; the pomeshchiks as it were remembered that
Godunov had once meditated something of the kind. But again the very
prohibition of "going away" merely copied Shuisky's legislation; by an
THE TROUBLES 211
edict of March 9, 1607, it had been provided: "whatever peasants fifteen
years ago were recorded in the registers of the year 101 [1593] shall
remain under whomsoever they were enrolled." At the time, however,
this measure had been directed primarily against the pomeshchiks of the
Ukraine, who ' ' did not want to serve ' ' Shuisky ; in the famine years
they had attracted a mass of peasants whose former masters were now
authorised to seek them out and take them back. In the treaty this
reservation, directed especially against those elements of the nobility
that had been politically hostile to Tsar Vasily, naturally lapsed, and
there remained only the general rule of his edict: "take not another's."
If the treaty slighted the interests of the middling landholders, it
practically ignored the interests of the bourgeoisie; it was deemed un-
necessary to make any reservations except for free trade with Poland
and Lithuania on the old basis. And this was but natural ; the position
of the pomeshchiks was difficult, but the position of the townsmen of
Moscow, by which men judged the bourgeoisie in general, was frankly
hopeless. In the course of 1609 the Tushino detachments closed the
road to Ryazan, and Moscow was without grain; Tsar Vasily 's attempt
to fix a maximum price for grain led nowhere ; it was merely taken
advantage of by speculators, and the "rabble," agitated by the "dear-
ness of bread," expressed itself very definitely in favour of the Tushino
"tsarlet." So definitely that the Polish government had to reckon
with these sympathies of the Moscow "rabble"; it would have been
very glad to remove altogether the now extremely inconvenient figure
of the Second Dmitry, but it could not bring itself to kill him lest his
murder raise the mass of the Moscow populace against the Poles. Any
day the scenes at Pskov might be re-enacted at Moscow, and it was not
for the "better men" of the capital to be over-fastidious in the choice
of allies or to impose any conditions on them.
There is reason to suppose that in concluding the treaty with Sigis-
mund, the boyars and military servitors thought to get rid of both tsars
at once — both the one at Moscow, whom the Moscow townsmen were
now indolently supporting, and the one under Moscow, whom the su-
perior elements of his host were now renouncing. But they had to put
up a while longer with both the one and the other. The "knave" suc-
ceeded in penetrating the designs of his counsellors and fled from
Tushino (in the early part of January) ; in itself this would not have
mattered, but all the cossack detachments left with him. If the treaty
neglected the military servitors and ignored the townsmen, it dealt most
strangely with the cossacks. Their very existence was made dependent
on the permission of the "boyars and men of the duma"; the latter
were to decide whether in future cossacks were "necessary" or not.
This was, it is true, entirely in accord with the "antiquity and custom"
212 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
which the agreement of February 4 preserved; "according to custom"
there was no place for the cossacks in the Muscovite social order. But
here the obsolescence of the boyars' views was promptly punished, and
in a most painful way. Cheated by the Polish-boyar agreement, the
cossacks were all the more bound to value the symbol of the tsar's
authority that remained in their hands, and they resolved to support
the "knave" with all their strength. Only the Polish detachments
fell away from him, and from a military point of view he still remained
a magnitude not to be ignored. Shuisky unexpectedly became a similar
magnitude. In the latter part of February his deposition was just
on the point of being effected at Moscow ; the nobles, headed by the ever
disloyal men of Ryazan and with the active support of Prince V. V.
Golitsyn, gathered an "assembly" against Tsar Vasily and almost
seized the Kremlin. But the Moscow townsmen saw no great difference
between Vasily and these foes of his, and in reply to their summons
they did not stir. After creating some disturbance, the disappointed
nobles went off to Tushino. In this affair, according to the chronicle,
Shuisky displayed great firmness, which was, of course, influenced by
the neutrality of the Moscow townsmen, but still more by the fact that
the Treaty of Vyborg had at last begun to bear fruit. Mercenary
Swedish detachments, under the command of the tsar's nephew, M. V.
Skopin-Shuisky, had cleared the northern roads to Moscow of the men
of Tushino and had by this time reached Alexandrovsk. On March 12
Skopin was already in the city, while a few days earlier Rozynski had
burned the Tushino camp and retired to the northwest with his Poles,
drawing closer to the royal troops operating under Smolensk. For the
first time since the surrender of Bolotnikov at Tula, and after an in-
terval of two years replete with failures, Tsar Vasily was again victor
on the field of battle.
Given the existing state of affairs this could be nothing more than a
respite. The Swedish army, like every European army of the period,
was a mercenary one, recruited from adventurers of all countries, who
served only so long as their wages were paid regularly. But this condi-
tion was the very one that Shuisky had the most difficulty in meeting.
The bourgeoisie of the seaboard contributed as long as the Tushino
danger — and with it the danger of a democratic rebellion — was immi-
nent. In proportion as Skopin cleared the north, its liberality dimin-
ished, and by the summer of 1610 Tsar Vasily again resembled a
"plumeless eagle." In the first battle with King Sigismund's troops,
under Klushino, June 24, Shuisky 's "Germans," who had not received
their pay, went over to the enemy without further ado, and Tsar
Vasily 's war with Poland, and likewise his reign, were at an end.
Contemporaries of course ascribed this turn of affairs, so unexpected
THE TROUBLES 213
after his recent victory, to personal changes, to the fact that the Mus-
covite army was no longer headed by the popular Skopin 2 but by Tsar
Vasily's brother Dmitry, whom no one liked. That the ungifted Mus-
covite commander had to deal with one of the most talented Polish
generals, the hetman Zolkiewski, could not but be reflected to a certain
extent in the course of the battle. But once there was no money, no
ability could have warded off the desertion of the ' ' Germans ' ' ; had the
Muscovites won this battle, they could not have offered another and
would only have secured a new respite, measured in weeks not in
months.
From the strategical point of view there was restored after the battle
of Klushino the same correlation of forces as before the fall of Tushino.
Under Moscow stood the Poles, an organised military force ; opposed to
them stood Shuisky, weaker than ever, deprived of Swedish assistance
and of the support of all the military servitors inasmuch as Lyapunov
and the men of Ryazan were now against him. Now the men of
Moscow could still less afford to delay, for the "knave," too, was in
the field, and his presence continued to agitate the "common people"
of Moscow. The Polish troops were the only guarantee of "order,"
if they would but agree to assume that function ; but they agreed only
under the very definite condition that the Muscovites recognise the
treaty of February 4. The broadsheets of Hetman Zolkiewski con-
stantly impressed this on the public of Moscow; the significance these
broadsheets had in the deposition of Shuisky is evident from the fact
that their argument (on account of Tsar Vasily "Christian blood flows
ceaselessly") was reproduced word for word by the official announce-
ment of Vasily's deposition from the throne. The ruling circles, dread-
ing an alliance between the Moscow populace and the troops of the
Second Dmitry, for a time enacted a comedy, officially representing the
Poles as foes for a week or two even after Shuisky had been "brought
down" and given the tonsure; let Zolkiewski close in on Moscow and
confront the population with the dilemma — either fight the Poles (for
which there were neither means nor forces) or admit them to the city.
At the same time the election of Vladislav must be properly prepared,
inasmuch as the Tushino envoys had not officially been vested with
plenipotentiary powers to treat of the destinies of the throne of Moscow.
In the light of modern research it can hardly be doubted that Vladis-
lav's election was to have been staged with as much solemnity as later
marked the election of Michael Romanov and earlier had marked that
of Godunov ; they had intended to summon all the ' ' estates ' ' of the
Muscovite realm and to ratify the deed by the decision of a zemsky
2 He had died two months before, supposedly "despatched" by Shuisky, but proba-
bly from typhus, and very opportunely for his military glory.
214 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
sobor, but time did not allow. They had to be content with an assembly
of representatives of the estates of Moscow only : for that matter, such
an abridged edition was not unusual in those times and was not ac-
counted illegal even for the election of a tsar; Peter and Ivan, sons of
Alexis, were later acknowledged by just such an abridged sobor (1682).
In these cases the oath of the other towns served as tacit recognition of
Moscow's decision, and in 1610 this condition was observed: "so in all
the Russian land," says the chronicler, "they kissed the cross of the
Lord that they would serve Vladislav, son of Sigismund, in everything."
The traditional description of the following period as an "interregnum"
is a pious deceit; in actual fact, from August 17, 1610, Vladislav was
tsar at Moscow with no less right than his predecessor, Vasily Shuisky,
had possessed.
Tsar Vladislav was in even greater degree than certain of his prede-
cessors a mere symbol of the tsar's power. A minor, he did not come to
Moscow ; but this circumstance did not prevent the Moscow government
from acting in his name with hardly any opposition — hardly any,
because, as might have been expected, difficulties were immediately made
by the Church. The position of the Church at that moment is especially
curious to us, who usually think that the men of Moscow were excep-
tionally devoted to Orthodoxy, and that for them religion was of su-
preme importance. In actual fact, in the Muscovite state the Church
was very closely bound up with the fate of other feudal forces.
Regardless of the antagonism between the large landholders and the
monasteries, the Church was closest to the boyar order, and the ruin of
the latter by Ivan the Terrible very perceptibly diminished the inde-
pendent importance of the Church. The patriarchs of the late sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries were political tools in the hands of the
secular authority and changed with the tsars. Godunov's patriarch,
Iov, gave way to the Greek Ignatius when the Alleged Dmitry seized
power; when the latter was slain by Shuisky, Hermogen became pa-
triarch. The role of Hermogen, a man whom contemporaries call
shallow and weak, easily subject to others' influence, was under Shuisky
quite pitiable. The clergy did not love him, on account of his rudeness
and cruelty to subordinates, while laymen cherished no respect for a
patriarch who was always the humble servant of Shuisky and was ready
to cover all Tsar Vasily 's deeds with the authority of the Church. The
nobles, when they organised an "assembly" against Tsar Vasily in
Shrovetide, 1610, as Hermogen came out to exhort them, "abused him
every way"; they kicked him from behind, threw dirt in his face, took
him by the neck and shoulders and shook him. It was quite natural
that in drawing up the treaty with Sigismund, Hermogen 's wishes were
not consulted ; probably they deemed the Church sufficiently represented
THE TROUBLES 215
in the person of the Tushino patriarch, Filaret Romanov. But when
the treaty entered the official stage, the patriarch of Moscow could not
fail to express himself on it, and he expressed himself adversely. It
is very probable that Hermogen was on this occasion only a screen for
a few great boyars of Moscow, like Prince V. V. Golitsyn, who himself
was not averse to sitting on the tsar 's throne, and for whom, presumably,
Vladislav was only a melancholy necessity. A pretext for putting a
spoke in the wheel of the candidacy the Romanovs had initiated was
immediately found. The tsar of all Orthodox Christendom must, of
course, be Orthodox, but Vladislav had been born a Catholic and had
been baptised in the Catholic rite. It is, we repeat, exceptionally note-
worthy that the Tushino envoys who carried on the negotiations with
Sigismund had not faltered on account of this circumstance ; Peres-
vetov's aphorism, "justice transcends faith," politics must go before
religion, had evidently become a current truth in Muscovite military-
serving circles of the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the treaty
they were content with the promise that the new tsar would not "in any-
thing destroy and dishonour the Christian Orthodox faith of the Greek
law" and with his pledge to "introduce no other faiths." But whether
he himself would, openly and solemnly, join the Orthodox Church, for
which, according to the concepts of the time, a second baptism in the
Orthodox rite would be indispensable — on this point the text of the
treaty was silent, while Hetman Zolkiewski, when the question was put
to him, gave the evasive answer that on this score he had "no instruc-
tion" from the king. With our notions of Old Russian Orthodoxy it is
hard to imagine how the Orthodox took oath to a sovereign who him-
self was not yet Orthodox ; but this undoubtedly took place in 1610, and
it alone is a sufficient answer to those who would like to make religious
motives dominate the conduct of the men of those times. The pa-
triarch's protest did not prevent the election; its only consequence was
the decision to despatch another solemn embassy to Sigismund with the
petition that he permit his son to be baptised in the rite of the Ortho-
dox Church.
Hetman Zolkiewski, who was not only a good general but a clever
diplomat, was able to make splendid use of this circumstance in favour
of Polish policy. On an embassy charged with such important business
it was, of course, necessary to appoint the most respected men in the
realm; and so, as "grand envoys" were despatched to Smolensk the
heads of the most influential boyar families, Filaret Nikitich Romanov,
converted from patriarch to metropolitan again, and Prince V. V.
Golitsyn. The latter was invited to organise the embassy, which was
of course made up of men devoted to him ; thus the only really serious
rival of Vladislav led his whole party out of Moscow. As for Filaret,
216 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
the hetman himself later acknowledged in his memoirs that they wanted
to have him "as a sort of pledge," as the father of another possible
pretender; the candidacy of Filaret's son, Michael Romanov, was even
then in the air. The trip of these influential men to the Polish camp
was exceptionally advantageous for Sigismund; from the point of view
of Russian interests, it was an idle expenditure of time, even apart from
the fact that the Muscovite realm could expect no great advantages from
Vladislav's baptism. For in the council of the Polish king it had long
since (in February) been decided to regard the candidacy of the king's
son as merely an intermediate stage; once it was accomplished, it was
time to strive without delay for the final and really serious goal of the
whole campaign, the union of the Muscovite state and the Polish Re-
public on the same conditions as those on which forty years before
Lithuania had been united to Poland. Then all Eastern Europe would
be converted into one enormous power with Poland at its head and, of
course, under one sceptre ; Sigismund was to become tsar of Moscow
just as he was king of Poland and grand prince of Lithuania. In
despatching the "grand envoys," Zolkiewski had been perfectly well
aware of this plan ; we may imagine how he laughed in spirit at the
Muscovites fussing over the Orthodoxy of a Polish boy, who could make
no difference to Moscow, anyhow.
The contemporary historiography of the Troubles, especially the
works that came from the Romanov camp, fearfully exaggerated the
importance of the "grand embassy." It would almost seem that the
whole destiny of the Muscovite state depended on the "firmness" of
the envoys ; what efforts did not Sigismund and his councillors employ
to shake the "grand envoys" — and all in vain! But one of the mem-
bers of the embassy, Avraam Palitsyn, the cellarer of Troitsa, despite
his Orthodoxy and despite his exaggerated loyalty, could not but admit
that the embassy had done nothing. There had been nothing for it
to do except to sit in Poland in honourable captivity ; juridically Vladi-
slav had long since been recognised by the Russians as tsar, and all had
taken oath to him ; in fact half of his realm was soon in a state of open
rebellion against the new tsar for reasons that had nothing to do with
the Orthodox faith. Vladislav's candidacy had been accepted by the
ruling circles of Russian society under one condition and with one
hope — that the Polish troops would restore "order" in the Muscovite
realm by stifling the social revolt, thus making it possible for the
pomeshchik to receive the tsar's pay punctually and to carry on economy
on his estate, and for the merchant to trade peacefully as in the days of
Boris Godunov, whom in his own day they had failed to appreciate. The
stability of a Polish tsar on the throne of Moscow depended entirely on
whether this condition was fulfilled. And it was very soon manifest
THE TROUBLES 217
not only that Sigismund's government could not satisfy this funda-
mental demand of the possessing classes of Muscovite society, but also
that it and its agents at Moscow were a new ferment of decomposition.
Never yet had anarchy attained such propoitions as in the first months
of Vladislav's reign; moreover the forms this anarchy took were par-
ticularly dangerous, as well for the bourgeoisie as for the middling
landholders.
First of all, at Moscow they had deceived themselves with the hope
that Sigismund would have but to give a command, and the Tushino
"tsarlet," who had exercised such a bad influence on the "common
people" of Moscow and on the bondsmen, would vanish like smoke.
Tushino had vanished, yet the Second Dmitry remained. He had estab-
lished himself in Kaluga with his cossacks, who plundered and deva-
stated all the more as their hope of becoming pomeshchiks waned. As
was to be expected, even the disappearance of the "knave" did not put
an end to this state of affairs. The Second Dmitry was killed, whether
accidentally or not (for history this has very little importance) ; but
Marinka, the widow of the First Dmitry, who was officially the wife of
the Second also, produced a son, and the cossacks began to make every
one within reach of the "knave's" detachments, take oath to him.
Patriarch Hermogen vigorously instilled into his flock that " Marinka 's
son" was "anathematised of the holy synod and of me"; but the pa-
triarch's words had of course even less influence on the cossacks than
on the merchants and pomeshchiks. Tushino, materially destroyed,
threatened to become immortal as a symbol in the Russian land. Nor
were the Polish partisans troubled by the fact that the Polish king's son
now nominally occupied the throne of Moscow; the "Lisowchiks" con-
tinued to plunder just as before, merely transferring the theatre of
their operations farther from Moscow so as to avoid the unpleasantness
of meeting their fellow-countrymen on the field of battle.
What consequences such a state of affairs led to in the field of ex-
change, for example, can be seen from a single instance : in June, 1611,
the men of Kazan complained to the men of Perm that they in Kazan
"took in no money" because "neither from upstream nor from down-
stream did big salt vessels or any other vessels come from any towns."
All Volga trade had ceased even in an object of such prime necessity
as salt, and, of course, a Polish general occupying the Kremlin with a
small detachment could not succour the distress of the men of the Volga.
But matters were no better at Moscow itself. Chronic peril of a pro-
Tushino riot kept Moscow in a chronic state of siege. Some of the
Kremlin gates were closed ; at the others an armed guard was constantly
on duty, vigilantly inspecting every one who entered. Polish patrols
constantly traversed the streets; they even removed some of the police
218 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
barriers lest they impede the operations of the Polish troops in case of
need. By night all movement was stopped. Moreover, however con-
scientiously the Polish officers tried to maintain discipline in their
detachments, the discipline of a mercenary force of those times could
not be strict. The Polish soldiers took anything they fancied in the
bazaars, and if they paid, they paid not what the merchant asked but
what seemed "just" to the soldiers themselves; at the slightest objection
the sword leapt from the scabbard, thus ending the dispute. The result
was that two months after the entry of the Poles into Moscow "the
gosts in the market and the trading folk in the bazaars did not sit
behind their counters [for fear] of the men of Lithuania"; if we take
this police report literally, we might suppose that trade had at that
time ceased altogether in Moscow. In reality the masters probably
merely bolted their shops as quickly as possible and crept out into God's
world whenever one of the "knights" was visible in the neighbourhood.
But it was enough to make them remember with regret the times, not
of Godunov even, but of Shuisky.
The worst sufferers from Polish dominance were its initiators, the
pomeshchiks and the boyars. It is impossible to imagine the bitter dis-
appointment that the authors of the treaty of 1610 must have experi-
enced, they who had been so diligent to secure the inviolability of old
customs. Boyar government did not really last for more than two
months. At the end of this period the duma, which nominally held
everything in its hands, was in reality converted into something like
an advisory council under the Polish commandant of Moscow. The fact
that the latter, Alexander Gonsevski, himself became a boyar by the
favour of the new tsar, was, of course, little consolation to the old
boyars. "To the boyars in the duma thou didst come," these latter
described his conduct to his face, "only, having come, thou didst sit
down, and around thee didst seat thy councillors, Michael Saltykov,
Prince Vasily Masalsky, Fedka Andronov, Ivan Gramatin, and their
comrades, and it was not for us to hear how thou with thy councillors
didst speak and speak again: and what thou badest be done on any
petition, thus they do, and thy councillors sign the petitions. ..."
High-born men were bound to resent especially the duma role of Fedor
Andronov, a wealthy gost of Moscow, who had become a noble of the
duma in Tushino, and under Vladislav was made one of the first men in
the duma. Even his nearest comrades in military-serving circles could
not endure the exclusive confidence that King Sigismund reposed in
this "trading lout." "From Mstislavsky and his comrades and from
us affairs have been taken away," Michael Saltykov (who had in 1610
headed the embassy that concluded the Treaty of Smolensk) complained
to the Polish chancellor Sapieha, "and on such a one the government
THE TROUBLES 219
has reposed its faith." Even his confreres, the townsmen, hated An-
dronov as a renegade to his class, who was serving the tsar of the nobles
against the tsar of the merchants. And the author of a pamphlet of the
time, who was of the townsmen's circle or at least was addressing him-
self to it, finds no words in the Russian tongue to express his contempt
for Tsar Vladislav's treasurer; he takes refuge in Greek. "For our
innumerable sins how does not the Lord abase us, and what punishments
does He not send us, and whom does He not bid to rule over us!" he
exclaims. "You yourselves see who he is, be he a man and it is unknown
who : not of the tsars' kin, nor of boyar estate, nor of the chosen heads of
the host; they say, he is of stinking slaves." And while this "it
is unknown who" held sway, genealogically senior members of the
duma, Prince Golitsyn (brother of the "grand envoy") and Prince
Vorotynsky, were under household arrest as suspects. Such "former
custom" had not been seen since the days of the oprichnina!
But the oprichnina had had a definite social basis; it had rested on
the alliance of the bourgeoisie and the pomeshchiks. We have already
seen how the former felt toward Tsar Vladislav's government. What
the Polish regime meant for the latter is well told by members of the
government itself. "It must be prevented, gracious lord," Fedor
Andronov wrote to Sapieha, "that they distribute pomestyes without
sense ; his grace the lord hetman, and Ivan Saltykov likewise, are giving
writs to pomestyes; while formerly they were given only by him to
whom the tsar gave orders." Michael Saltykov, in complaining of this
same Andronov, wrote: "the men of Moscow are extremely afflicted that
the king's favour and pay have failed, and many men are injured by
divers oppressions and ruin." He also alluded to the senseless dis-
tribution of pomestyes and found that there had been no such shuffling
of land even in the days of the oprichnina: "Tsar Ivan [IV] was a
born tsar, and he did not so," wrote Saltykov, insinuating that the new
tsar might well be more cautious than the born tsar. With good reason,
when the rebelling military servitors assemble under Moscow, do they
demand, before all else, that distribution of pomestyes be carried out
according to former custom as had been done "under former Russian,
born sovereigns, ' ' and that any pomestyes given in the name of the king
or of the king's son, be taken away just like those which the boyars
established in Moscow "had divided among themselves." The pomesh-
chiks petitioned that, over and above a share of land, pay should be
issued punctually by the treasury ; but in fact it turned out that they
could not even count the land-grant their own, for it might be taken
away at any minute by a royal charter issued a thousand versts away.
By the late fall of 1610 it was quite certain that Tsar Vladislav's
councillors would soon be overtaken by the fate the Godunovs had ex-
220 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
perienced in 1605, that they would find themselves socially isolated, with
not a single social class willing to support them. A handful of Polish
soldiers in Moscow was all they could count on. Shuisky, struggling
with his first revolts, had been far stronger ; Moscow had supported him,
and so had all the towns along the Northern Dvina and along the Volga.
All things considered, Vladislav's government was bound to be far
shorter-lived than Tsar Vasily's government. But it does not follow
that its existence had no influence on the course of events in those days.
On the contrary, negatively it played an enormous role. Threatening
the interests of all the ruling classes and not even supported by the
masses of the people, on which Godunov had been fain to rely, it gave
cause for the reconciliation of those elements which had been at enmity
throughout the Troubles. Its heterodox and foreign origin created the
basis for a national-religious ideology, under cover of which an opposi-
tion movement could be organised as never before. Class self-preser-
vation became national self-preservation ; herein lies the meaning of the
events of 1611-1612.
One of the earliest and most interesting examples of this ideology is
the proclamation that appeared at Moscow at the end of November or
the beginning of December, 1610. From a literary point of view it
stands very high, strongly resembling the work of that publicist, sympa-
thetic to the Romanovs, of whom Avraam Palitsyn made use in his
History for the Memory of Future Generations [in Russian], and
whom we have cited more than once. Indeed, it is quite possible that
this publicist and the author of our proclamation (to which some one
later gave the clumsy heading, A New Narration on the Illustrious
Russian Realm, though there is no "narration" in it) are one and the
same person ; both were close to the bourgeoisie ; both, despite their very
great piety, never have recourse to supernatural motifs in their
explanation of events, a practice so common in the literature of the
Troubles. There is also an external resemblance between them; neither
one avoids the rhythmic rhymed prose so well suited to the style of the
proclamation of the time, which could not be read by individual
passers-by (too few of them were literate) but must be read aloud to a
whole crowd by some literate person. If we should succeed in proving
the identity of the two authors, we should have an extraordinarily
curious coincidence ; the first summons to rebellion against Vladislav
would then come from Romanov circles, whence was to come Vladislav's
successor. The fact that there was no mention of the Romanovs in the
proclamation itself is no evidence to the contrary; we must not forget
that in these days Filaret Romanov, one of the ' ' grand envoys, ' ' was ' ' as
a sort of pledge" to the Poles, and any such allusion might cost him
dear. However that may have b°en, in issuing a summons to rebellion
THE TROUBLES 221
against the Polish king's son, the author let slip not a word on the score
of who ought to be seated in his place, though this question was of course
implied.
The central figure in his presentation is Hermogen, and the pamphlet
is all the more interesting as one of the first examples of "the legend
of Hermogen." The author recognised that a direct summons to re-
bellion could not be expected from the patriarch. But in his exposition
he let it be understood that Hermogen was the soul of resistance to the
Poles; "he stands alone against them all . . . like a giant without arms
and without an armament of war." "When this did not produce a
sufficient impression, a further step had to be taken ; letters of Hermogen
appeared, which, however, as the distributors themselves admitted, did
not issue directly from him since the patriarch had "no one to write,
all the clerks and copyists and all the men of the household had been
arrested." Thus was gradually created the legendary figure that
adorns the pages of modern narratives of the Troubles and, it seems,
has little in common with the real Hermogen.
The movement of the ' ■ better ' ' men needed a symbol such as ' ' Dmitry
Ivanovich" had long since become for the "lesser" men; to contrast the
patriarch, the strict guardian of Orthodoxy, with the tsar who ' ' does not
want to be baptised," was undoubtedly to make a very powerful appeal
to wide masses. But it is noteworthy that the Moscow bourgeoisie, from
which the author had probably sprung, and to which, in any case, he
addressed himself, could rise above such plebeian appeals. Some pages
of the New Narration suggest the patriotism of classic antiquity. The
author praises the men of Smolensk, who had continued to resist
Sigismund, because they "want to die gloriously, rather than live dis-
honourably and bitterly." The threatened devastation of "such a great
realm" undoubtedly touches him more than the anticipated corruption
of the Orthodox faith, and in the slogan he throws out for the masses of
the townsmen only one-third is allowed to this faith: "let us stand
together for the Orthodox faith . . . and for our fatherland and for
the inheritance that the Lord has given us." And in repeating this
slogan, he puts "realm" even before "faith." For him, indeed, the
motif of the rebellion is not so much that Vladislav is not Orthodox as
that, in general, nothing is to be expected of Vladislav; the essence of
the proclamation is the disclosure to the Moscow public of the secret of
the Polish conspiracy — annexation of the Muscovite realm. The author
very skilfully uses as an argument the incapacity of the Poles to restore
order in the country. If Sigismund had actually reserved the realm for
his son, would he have permitted such havoc? "Not only does he not
reserve it for his son, but he himself does not wish to live here," and
the Muscovites will be ruled by such men as Fedor Andronov.
222 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
The bourgeois author was somewhat premature in summoning the
Muscovites to rebellion; the sequel was to show that the movement of
the towns could not be concentrated in Moscow, the only town in which
purely military preponderance was unconditionally on the side of the
Poles. The Moscow "barricades" of March 17, 1611, ended in complete
failure; the Poles burned the city almost to ashes and compelled the
surviving population to take oath anew to Vladislav. Nizhny-Novgorod
came to be at the head of the movement, not only because the Volga
traders were more interested than any one else in the restoration of
order, but also for the simple reason that there were no Polish troops on
the Volga, and no one to hinder the movement in its initial stages. The
surprising thing is not that under such conditions the movement of the
townsmen and nobles finally got the better of the Poles (for a handful of
soldiers in the Kremlin could no more stifle an all-Russian rebellion
than it could maintain order in all Russia), but that this movement
needed so much time, almost a year and a half, to get under way. It is
hardly possible to account for this by the purely technical peculiarities
of the time, by the absence not only of railroads but also of any decent
roads at all except water-ways. It is true, events of this kind were
then not measured in weeks, as now, but in months; yet the first army
of the insurgents, the Lyapunov armament, arrived under Moscow in
April, 1611, whereas the first summons to rebellion had been distributed
in December of the preceding year. The causes of the delay must be
sought elsewhere, where contemporaries saw them ; the author of the New
Narration saw the "worst of all" in the fact that "division had taken
place in our land." The two halves of the "better" men, urban and
rural, the townsmen and the pomeshchiks, had for the last four years
been waging a desperate struggle against one another, and it was not
now easy for them to combine for common action. When such common
action was effected in Shuisky's reign, men talked of it as a rarity and
were proud of it. And when the rebellion of the nobility began under
the leadership of the men of Ryazan, Prokopy Lyapunov and his com-
rades expected to find allies among the cossacks and even among the
most democratic elements of the Tushino army rather than among the
burghers. "And let bondsmen come without any doubt and fear,"
wrote Lyapunov at Kazan as late as June, 1611, "they will all have
freedom and pay like other cossacks."
The "zigzag" described by the rebellion against Vladislav, the tem-
porary failure of this rebellion and the temporary disintegration of the
insurrectionary army in July, 1611, is mainly attributable to this cause.
The original rebels, as listed in Lyapunov 's February letter to Nizhny,
were the men of Ryazan "and of Kaluga, and of Tula, and of Mik-
hailov, and all the men of all the towns" of the frontier provinces.
THE TROUBLES 223
Such an armament had, in 1606, failed to take Moscow even when de-
fended by Shuisky with hardly more than the streltsy of the Dvina, and
now the Kremlin was held by regular European troops. The towns
"sympathised" with Lyapunov but for the time being gave him no
assistance. The cossacks were a technically necessary ally, and inability
to appreciate this fact ruined Lyapunov. The cossacks were not con-
sciously class foes of the pomeshchiks, as they had many times proved
during the Troubles. But they wanted to be regarded as equals, whereas
the Ryazan voevoda and his comrades were wholly unwilling to recognise
the cossacks as the equals of the nobles. Though addressing dema-
gogic appeals to the cossacks and even to the bondsmen, 3 when it came
to fixing the status of the masses in rebellion against Vladislav, the
pomeshchiks took almost the same viewpoint as had the boyars in the
treaty of 1610. In the celebrated "decree" of the Lyapunov armament
under Moscow (June 30, 1611) the nobles were willing to guarantee pay-
ment in land and wages in money, not to all the cossacks but only to
those who had long been serving the Muscovite state. Admission to
administrative office was flatly denied to these younger brothers of the
military servitors: "from commissionerships from the towns, and from
the court villages and from the peasant townships the atamans and
cossacks shall be dismissed," the decree provided, "and to the towns
and into the townships shall be sent for kormlenies good nobles, and
with them, to do errands, knights and cossacks and streltsy." For
Lyapunov 's pomeshchiks the cossack was of old a "suitable" servitor,
who was of most use as an orderly to a " good noble. ' ' With the lowest
elements of the Tushino army, whom Lyapunov had decoyed, the decree
dealt still more simply: "peasants and bondsmen," it prescribed, "are
on inquest to be given back to the old pomeshchiks."
This decree so sharply emphasised class interests that it cost the
leader of the nobles' armament his life. When they saw themselves
being edged out of the picture, the cossacks "conspired" and were met
with strict disciplinary measures, including "seating in the water"; an
explosion occurred, and Lyapunov was killed at a meeting of the cos-
sacks. After this the movement of the nobles for the time being lost
its centre, and Vladislav's government was able to hold out for another
year. But the defeat of the pomeshchiks was in a way advantageous
to them; the townsmen finally ceased to fear them, and the towns now
began to hire the knights into their service, thus taking the place of the
First and Second Dmitrys.
Contemporaries have described the state of affairs as it took shape
3 It may be supposed that this was not the first time Lyapunov had done so, and
that Bolotnikov's "sheets" were not distributed without the privity of the noble
leaders of the armament that marched against Tsar Vasily.
224 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
under Moscow immediately after Lyapunov 's death, as follows: "The
old authors of great evil, atamans and cossacks, who had in Tushino
served the false-named tsar . . . slew Prokofy Lyapunov and began to
commit all evil according to their cossack wont." Here the reader,
accustomed to the traditional presentation of the cossacks, expects
descriptions of attempts on Muscovite "statehood"; but the author of
the letters, a military servitor (none other than the celebrated Prince
Pozharsky), knew nothing of cossack anarchism. For him the "all
evil" was comprised in the first place, in the fact, that the cossacks
"dealt mortal infamy to the nobles and knights" and, in the second
place, and principally, in the fact that "the chieftain" of the cossacks,
ataman Zarutsky, "took to himself many towns and court villages, and
peasant townships, and monasteries' estates, and distributed them to his
councillors, nobles and knights, and atamans, and cossacks." The
anarchism of the cossacks was expressed in the fact that they them-
selves took what the nobles' armament had refused them and arbitrarily
made themselves pomeshchiks. To this development the towns were in-
different; but should the cossacks become masters of the situation, they
would become dangerous to the upper strata of the townsmen, too, as
soon as their victory over the nobility began to have political conse-
quences. The cossack leader, Zarutsky, had his own candidate for tsar,
and the son of the Tushino "tsarlet" was a terror to all the "better
men" in the last years of his existence. The cossacks were not par-
ticularly dangerous as long as they were encamped under Moscow, but
a cossacks ' tsar, successor of the Tushino bondsmen 's tsar, was an imme-
diate menace. Dread of this eventuality had compelled the bourgeoisie
to support Shuisky with treasure and men; dread of it now compelled
the towns to assemble their own army, since after the seizure of lands
and treasury by the cossack atamans the military servitors were left
without pay and with the prospect of being deprived of their estates.
As soon as tidings of the catastrophe to Lyapunov had reached the
Volga towns, they immediately resolved "all to be united in counsel";
' ' if the cossacks undertake to elect over the realm of Moscow a sovereign
at their own pleasure, alone, without consulting with all the land, we do
not want that sovereign over the realm." The material basis of this
union of the Volga towns, to which the Dvina towns also soon adhered,
was the treasure collected in Nizhny-Novgorod, not, of course, at the
individual initiative of Minin, but simply because without a military
force the union of the towns was an empty phrase, and a military force
was not to be had without money. Contemporary letters, and the
chronicler as well, describe this hiring of the nobles by the bourgeoisie
with the greatest realism, and see nothing amazing in this simple prosaic
fact. In Pozharsky 's letter to the men of Solvychegodsk the activity
THE TROUBLES 225
of the men of Nizhny is thus described : ' ' In Nizhny-Novgorod the gosts
and all the zemsky townsmen, zealous for God, for the Orthodox
Christian faith, not sparing their possessions, have thought the nobles
and knights of Smolensk and of many other towns to be worthy of a
liberal money wage. . . . Whatever money, masters, was collected at
Nizhny has been distributed to the nobles and the knights and to all the
men of war; and now from all the towns . . . come all men, and peti-
tion all the land for a money wage, and there is nothing to give them.
And it is for you, masters, whatever revenues there are at Solvy-
chegodsk to send to us at Yaroslavl, for wages for the men of war."
"Everywhere hither hurries the assembly," relates the "New Chroni-
cler," "and from many towns men of war begin to gather; the first
comers were those of Kolomna, and the men of Ryazan, after them from
the towns of the Ukraine many men, and cossacks, and streltsy, those
who sat in Moscow under Tsar Vasily, and to all pay is given ; and there
was calm there then among all men." The men of war offered their
hands, the townsmen purchased them with the money they had collected ;
"patriotic fervour" cannot be better translated into the language of
materialistic history than it was by these simple and naive Russian men
of the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Description of the military operations which in the late fall of 1612
led the pomeshchik army, assembled by the townsmen, into the Kremlin
of Moscow is no part of our task. There is no doubt that the successful
issue of the second campaign was decided chiefly by its solid financial
basis. Having undertaken to pay all the men of war, the bourgeoisie
acted handsomely; to the men of Smolensk, for example, they gave "to
the first category 50 rubles each, to the second 45 rubles each, to the
third 40 rubles each, and to none less than 30 rubles." For purposes
of comparison it is worth noting that the provincial knights of Godu-
nov's times had received not more than 6 rubles, and even the "select"
ones (the guardsmen) not more than 15 rubles pay; in former years
only guard officers had received what was now given to military servitors
of the rank-and-file. But it must not be thought that the towns col-
lected the needed sums exclusively from voluntary contributions. The
great bourgeoisie that ruled the towns filled the treasury of the arma-
ment they had assembled in the same way as Shuisky had once filled
his — by compulsory levy. In the case of wealthy capitalists this was
usually a forced loan; in this way, for example, the men of Nizhny
got money from the Stroganovs and their agents. On the petty towns-
folk they simply imposed new taxes, exacting them, as usual, without in-
dulgence, "with the aid of God putting fear on the idle." A delin-
quent might be indentured, be given over into service on a "life writ-
ing," the money for his service being paid in advance, not to him but
226 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
to the town treasury. And this, as a modern historian of the Troubles
justly remarks, is no proof of the personal severity of Kuzma Minin
and his comrades. It was a peculiarity of the social order, the victory
of which brought the Troubles to an end.
CHAPTER XI
RUSSIA OF THE NOBLES
1. The Liquidation of the Agrarian Crisis
The official close of "The Time of the Troubles" does not by any
means mark the real cessation of the Troubles. Michael Fedorovich
Romanov had been on the throne for a long time, but the civil war
and its offspring, the foreign war, still continued. As one modern
scholar, Gautier, has observed, the maximum of destruction was reached
in those very years "when the national and political crisis of the
Time of the Troubles was at an end ' ' and when a ' ' lawful government ' '
had been installed at Moscow for some time. This observer sees the
"devastation" at its height in 1616, if not, indeed, in 1620; only after
the latter date is it at all possible to speak of perceptible and lasting
improvement. Almost fifteen years of civil war could not fail to have
their effect on a country, even if its economy had previously been in
an entirely satisfactory condition.
The Troubles, it seems, were bound to bring to "complete annihila-
tion" the Muscovite Rus that had been undermined by the agrarian
crisis of the sixteenth century. If at the end of the preceding century
the central provinces had been considerably depopulated, in the 'tens
and 'twenties of the seventeenth century "recorders" and "reporters"
sent "to inspect" the land found in places almost a complete desert.
In Gautier 's words, on the estates of the Troitsa Monastery, scattered
in twenty counties beyond the River Moscow (and therefore more or
less characteristic of the general condition of the country), "the extent
of the arable is in the year 1616 one-twentieth what it was in the years
1592-1594; the number of peasants settled on the Troitsa estates de-
creases to less than one-seventh." Even as late as the close of the
1620 's, on those estates in the counties of Moscow, Zubtsov and Klin,
the history of which we can trace, the waste, that is, the land given
up and abandoned, constituted not less than 80%, rising sometimes to
95% ; but the land remaining under cultivation did not exceed 18.7%
of the whole area, sometimes falling to 5.2%. To the south, in the
modern province of Kaluga, for example, things were no better: on an
estate on which in 1592-1593 there had been 161 peasant homesteads,
in 1614 there remained only ten. In the county of Moscow the de-
227
228 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
crease of the arable can be estimated at, on the average, one-third the
amount under cultivation at the height of the crisis that had preceded
the Troubles.
Upon examining the details of this ruin of the countryside, we are,
however, soon in a position to be discriminating in our ideas about
the economic results of the Troubles. Every one was ruined, more
or less; but some more, others less. Thanks to the Troubles and their
consequences, the independent peasantry was bound finally to disappear
wherever there were pomeshchiks. The first phenomenon that strikes
one in studying the Russian countryside of the second and third decades
of the seventeenth century is the enormous growth of cottar home-
steads at the expense of peasant homesteads. If we take the estates
of the Troitsa Monastery as an example — a very good example, as we
saw — we obtain the following figures: in the county of Dmitrov, ac-
cording to the registers of the end of the sixteenth century, there were
on the Troitsa estates forty cottar homesteads to 917 of peasants; the
registers of the 1620 's give 207 homesteads of cottars to 220 homesteads
occupied by peasants. In the first case the cottar homesteads consti-
tute 4.1% ; in the second, 48.4%. For the county of Uglich the cor-
responding figures would be 2.6% and 56.6%. What then were these
cottars? On the ground that the cottar homestead paid only half the
tax exacted from the peasant, Belyaev defined them as peasants settled
on half a vyt 1 [virgate]. Gautier has proved that in the majority of
cases the cottars had no arable at all. For example, he gives an ex-
cerpt from the inventories in 1612 of the estates of the Troitsa Monas-
tery. "The village of Kochyugovo . . . the cottar homestead of Vaska
Antipyev, he had been a peasant, and had been made poor by war and
taxes ; they said he did not plough any arable, it lay neglected, but he
had had three diets 2 of arable." Of other cottars living in the mon-
astery's hamlets it is reported that "they became impoverished through
the Lithuanian destruction, they go around the community and are fed
in the name of Christ." "Idle cottars," "lame roving cottars" — are
epithets met with in the registers at every turn. A cottar, as a rule,
was not a proletarian in our sense of the word ; he was a proletarian
in the ancient sense of the word — not a worker deprived of the tools
of his labour but a peasant deprived of land because he had nothing left
with which to cultivate it. A man maimed in war, or a man whose
last horse had been taken by the military, or whose homestead they
had burned down with all his possessions — all alike fell into this category.
But, on the other hand, the peasant deprived of land could easily
i A variable land measure, reckoned as 6 desyatinas of good land, 7 of medium
land, or 8 of poor land.
2 1 diet = Y a desyatina.
KUSSIA OF THE NOBLES 229
be enserfed. In Russia serfdom rapidly grew up out of the ruin
wrought by the Troubles just as in Germany it grew up out of the
ruin wrought by the Thirty Years' War. We have more than once
noted that the progress of serfdom signified in Russia not so much the
loss of rights by the peasant — in feudal society he was always more
the object than the subject of rights — as the cessation of that gambling
in peasants, so ruinous for the landholders, which had been so char-
acteristic of the preceding period. In that period the peasant had not
infrequently been an object that could be sold, bought, or bartered as
they had bartered, bought, and sold bondsmen. Both at the end of the
sixteenth century and in the middle of the seventeenth the peasant,
already bound to his landlord 3 in one way or another, was the latter 's
property.
Only two changes may be remarked. In the first place, the methods
of binding were changed; in conjunction with the economic results of
the Troubles it is here interesting to note that the loan, which formerly
had been a very widespread means of attaching the peasant to an estate,
now acquires paramount importance. "In official language after the
middle of the seventeenth century," writes Dyakonov, "the term 'loan
contract' completely supplants the old nomenclature of the peasant
'contract.' " Formerly the loan had been an economic necessity to
any well-ordered economy. Thus, in 1598 the authorities of the
Blagoveshchensk Monastery in Nizhny-Novgorod complained to the
Patriarch Iov that the monastery was impoverished and had not the
means to erect buildings, or to pay wages, or to give loans to new peas-
ants. Now the loan becomes a juridical necessity for any peasant set-
tling on the land ; without a loan it is impossible to become a peasant.
The Ulozhenie of 1649 recognises that peasants give "loan and guar-
antee contract." Numerous new articles in this code speak only of
loan contracts with peasants. The old term "contract" becomes a pro-
vincialism, clung to, paradoxically enough, in the economically most
progressive localities ; in the Pskov peasant registers it may be found
even at the very end of the seventeenth century. Everywhere else
after the Troubles, the peasant actually could not set up his economy
without a loan; those not needing a loan were the exception, and the
law of Moscow did not reckon with this exception.
In the second place, and this is incomparably more important and no
less noteworthy, the peasant ever more and more manifests the tendency
to be converted from movable into immovable property. We can ob-
3 For the convenience of the reader the word pomeshchik is here translated as
"landlord," the meaning of the term in modern Russian ; where the original con-
notation of the word is still involved, the Russian word will be retained. See
Glossary.
230 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
serve this interesting process from two angles, — the private and the
official, if we may so call them. In the first place, not only the loan
but also the obligation to live "immobile" under the given landlord,
"steadfastly and without the right to go away," is an unfailing con-
dition of the new type of peasant contract. The peasant's "right to
go away," for the abolition of which the landlords had made so many
demands during the Troubles, both on Shuisky and on Vladislav, had
proved very tenacious and had to be undermined now by private agree-
ments which forced the peasants to renounce their right to leave (i.e.,
to be taken away by another landlord) just as they were forced to accept
the loan. But this did not mean, of course, that the official agitation
ceased. The civil war was not yet over, and the "lawful government"
had scarcely had time to establish itself at Moscow when the Troitsa
Monastery began to search throughout the country for any who had
run away from its estates during the whole period of the Troubles. By
reason of the extent of the monastery's estates the operation assumed
such proportions that it required the sanction of a boyar decree (March
10, 1615), which acknowledged the right of the Troitsa authorities to
bring their peasants back within eleven years of their flight ; the decree
strove to protect the interests of other landlords only if the monas-
tery's fugitives had been living on their lands "twenty years and more."
An eleven-year limit, it would seem, was sufficient ; a limitation of more
than fifteen years was unknown to the law of that time, and later a
ten-year one was deemed satisfactory. But the landholders were striv-
ing to make peasants more immobile than the land itself, and the first
half of the seventeenth century is therefore filled with petitions of
nobles and knights agitating for permission to seek out their peasants
beyond the statutory limitation, if not without any statute of limitations
at all. In 1641 the ten-year limitation on actions for the recovery of
fugitive peasants, which formerly had constituted the privilege of a
few landholders, such as the Troitsa Monastery and the sovereign's
court, was extended to all landlords; in 1649 the Ulozhenie of Tsar
Alexis provided that "fugitive peasants and cottars be surrendered,
according to the registers, to men of all ranks without a time limit."
It is interesting that even after this law, which would seem to be quite
clear, the landlords continued to exact from peasants making new con-
tracts the personal promise "not to go off with any one else." The
peasant who did not give such a promise was not accounted, and did
not account himself, bound. In 1690, almost fifty years after the
Ulozhenie, one peasant settling on a Troitsa estate relates how a land-
lord with whom he had dwelt "about three years" began to demand
of him "written bonds, that he might dwell as his peasant, and not hav-
ing given bonds he left the village."
RUSSIA OF THE NOBLES 231
Thus a free peasant was not juridically impossible in Russia even
at the beginning of Peter's reign; but actually he was so rare an ex-
ception that Muscovite law, crude and summary, registering facts in
the mass, did not take account of this phenomenon, just as it did not
admit that the peasant was capable of carrying on his economy without
a loan from his lord. The "free" peasant, who survived in places,
was not in the least bothered by the fact that the law ignored him, and
under Tsar Alexis he continued to "contract" with his lord just as ho
had done under Ivan the Terrible. Only two years before the Ulozhenie
a Novgorod landlord, Ivan F. Panov, offered to his peasant Ivashka
Petrov, the following contract : "I shall not evict him, Ivashka, and
shall not sell or barter him to any one, and shall not put him in pawn,
and shall not inflict any evil on him, and shall keep him as my, Ivan's,
peasant as other nobles keep their peasants." In case Panov failed
to observe these conditions, "he, Ivashka, shall be free to depart whither
he will." A piece of property that bargains with its proprietor about
the conditions under which it permits him to hold it is, of course, some-
thing contrary to all juridical logic; but the men of Moscow had no
idea of altering their methods in the interests of any logic and con-
sulted their convenience in each individual case.
Immobilisation of the peasantry, usually defined as "the definite
legalisation of serfdom" (although we have just seen that the legal
aspect of the matter was the least complete), was one of the most
sweeping innovations in Russia's economic life in the period after the
Troubles and well exemplifies the nature of their influence. The Trou-
bles did not introduce, nor could they introduce, any economic change.
The first step toward the binding of the peasant on a given estate and
to a given landlord had been taken, if we overlook the "pozhiloe" of
the time of the Sudebniks, in the famous law of November 24, 1597,
which had established a five-year limitation on suits for the recovery of
fugitive peasants. Its basis had been the agrarian crisis and the de-
population of central Russia. The Troubles had merely carried these
two phenomena to the utmost possible limits — and thus furnished the
occasion for making them responsible for all possible consequences.
With the cessation of the destruction, however, the influence of this
cause was bound to diminish progressively. To use a current expres-
sion, the Muscovite state "righted itself" from the Troubles rather
quickly. At the lowest point of the decline (1614-1616), on the above-
mentioned Troitsa estates, in the counties beyond the River Moscow,
the arable constituted 1.8% of the whole area and the waste 98.2%.
But according to the registers of the third and fourth decades of this
century the first figure rises to 22.7%, and the second falls to 77.3%.
In an estate record of the 'twenties "is a reference to the colonising
232 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
activity of the landholders : the great boyar, Prince Suleshov, who had
bought an extensive estate in the county of Pereyaslavl, introduces on
it a new economy — 'founds a new' homestead of the proprietors and
five whole clearings at once." There were landholders who prepared
homesteads beforehand for future peasant colonists: on an estate in
the county of Dmitrov, belonging to S. Larionov, a government official,
there stood at the end of the 'twenties three empty homesteads "estab-
lished anew." By the 'forties this "internal colonisation" had made
great progress : in the county of Pereyaslavl, for example, in 1646 ' ' ap-
peared a whole series of new settlements which formerly (in the time
of the census of the 'twenties) had not been in existence." These set-
tlements included, besides the homesteads of landlords of various cate-
gories and of non-taxable dependent cultivators of the soil, 143 home-
steads of tax-paying peasants with a male population of 439 and 301
homesteads of cottars with a population of 709 men ; about 2,300
desyatinas of land had been ploughed up anew. In Gautier's words,
"the brief economic crisis evoked by the Troubles passed as quickly
as it had arisen."
But the phenomenon we have noted, the immobilisation of the peas-
antry, by no means disappeared ; on the contrary, it was consolidated
throughout the seventeenth century. Evidently the Troubles merely
helped to disclose something the roots of which lay deeper than a stratum
that civil war could wash away. The tension of the agrarian crisis
passed simultaneously with the civil war. Yet the economic prosperity
of the early years of Ivan the Terrible was not to be repeated. There
remained a chronic depression to which pomeshchik economy gradually
adjusted itself and from which recovery set in anew, but not until much
later, not before the end of the seventeenth century. In this respect
the first three-quarters of this century bear the clear imprint of a reac-
tion or, if you like, of a restoration. The latter term is more apt, for
in essence there was a restoration, a revival of the old, a resuscitation
and a reinforcement of those economic features that a century earlier
had seemed lifeless or at least enfeebled.
The peasants of the seventeenth century, bound to the estates, have
probably reminded the reader of the "old-dwellers" of the old boyar
votchinas who dwelt in one and the same hamlet from generation to
generation until scattered by the oprichnina. But there are other points
of resemblance. Payment of dues in kind, which a hundred years earlier
had seemed to be dying out, was exceedingly common in the middle
of the seventeenth century. The boyar N. I. Romanov received annu-
ally from his hereditary estates a ram, a half carcass of pork, a certain
quantity of poultry, and thirty flints* of cow's butter for each vyt.
4 1 fnnt = 0.9 lb. avoirdupois.
KUSSIA OF THE NOBLES 233
The boyar Lopukhin also collected his revenue from his estate near
Moscow in rams and fowls. The peasants of the court villages of the
county of Pereyaslavl likewise discharged their obligations with rams,
lambs' wool, sheepskins, cheeses, and butter. The tenacity with which
obligations in kind persisted on court estates is of special interest; it
will be recalled that in the sixteenth century the first experiments with
rational economy, i.e., with extensive and regular seigniorial ploughing,
were met with on these same court lands. In the seventeenth century
the seigniorial ploughing on such estates was gradually curtailed. In
the court village of Klushino, as late as the 1630 's, there were 250
desyatinas of the "sovereign's arable," but in the 'seventies we find
them added to the taxable peasant lots. In the county of Pereyaslavl
on one court estate the sovereign's arable diminished in the space of
forty years from 546 desyatinas to 249 desyatinas — to a little less than
half ; on another the whole of it had been given over to the peasants
in return for dues. Ultimately, seigniorial ploughing was continued
only on court estates near Moscow, where it was less a business enter-
prise than a means of serving the immediate requirements of the tsar's
numerous court. Elsewhere it was replaced by dues, not in kind, how-
ever, but in money or in "threshed grain." We shall see the signifi-
cance of this fact presently; meanwhile let us note that the phenomenon
referred to was not peculiar to court estates but was common to all
large estates of the time. Even if this absence of rural-economic enter-
prise had been characteristic only of large landholding, we should have
an example of great economic inertia, the survival into the seventeenth
century of an agrarian type well known in the first half of the six-
teenth. But it seems that even the middle-sized economies, which in
the days of Ivan the Terrible had switched over to a new track with
such bewildering rapidity, a hundred years later, had not only not ad-
vanced but had even gone backward. At least, in the only case known
to us, and relating to the county of Kostroma, the seigniorial arable had
declined from a little over 90% in the 1620 's to 16% by 1684-1686.
Different relationships existed in the south, where the pomeshchik
reserved a great part of the plough land for himself; but this was a
very special kind of pomeshchik controlling on the average one peas-
ant's and one cottar's homestead (in the counties of Belgorod and
Putivl), at best three such homesteads (in the county of Voronezh),
and sometimes not even one (in the county of Oskol). Throughout the
enormous extent of these four counties 5 Gautier found, excluding the
monasteries, only one pomeshchik, using the term in its modern sense
s They embraced the eastern part of the province of Chernigov, the whole southern
part of Kursk, almost all of Voronezh and the southeastern part of Tambov, almost
all of Kharkov, and the northeastern part of Poltava.
234 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
of landlord; he had three homesteads of retainers, 11 of peas-
ants, and 5 of cottars, with about 750 desyatinas of land. Moreover,
the number of peasants and cottars on estates in south Russia was not
increasing in the seventeenth century, but decreasing. In one of the
districts of the county of Belgorod there were 146 homesteads of peas-
ants and cottars in 1626, 130 in 1646, and in 1678 there remained but
21. For another district of this county, in the same years, we have
the following figures: 255, 141, and 60. "In actual fact," writes
Miklashevsky, "the number of cottar homesteads of private landhold-
ers had decreased in far greater degree inasmuch as in very many
new settlements of the county the cottars lived on the lord's land." If
we are not hypnotised by the division of Muscovites into "military
servitors" and "taxpayers" — a division purely political and bearing
no relation to economics — nothing will prevent us from identifying, from
the economic point of view, the pomeshchiks of Moscow's southern fron-
tier with peasants. This is virtually what the scholar we have cited
says when he asserts that here "the dominant type was a petty econ-
omy, suggesting modern peasant economy, with only this essential dif-
ference, that the petty landholder of the seventeenth century was assured
of land in abundance, at least in the first half of the century. ' ' It must
be noted that the Moscow government did not allow itself to be hyp-
notised by this division. In 1648 a document was sent to the village
of Bel-Kolodez and the crossroads and hamlets pertaining to it, bidding
the peasants refuse in future service under the pomeshchiks ; they were
to serve as dragoons and at the same time were freed from payment of
various imposts. Each was now obliged to have an arquebus, a pike,
and an axe, but their land holdings were left unchanged. Thus by a
single stroke of the pen taxpayers were converted into military servitors
while their economic organisation remained inviolate.
It remains for us to make general application of the observation to
which we were led by the microscopic "pomeshchiks" of the frontier
counties. Throughout Russia petty landholding of the peasant type
was "dominant," i.e., economically dominant in the seventeenth cen-
tury, surviving the crisis that ruined the pomeshchik-entrepreneur.
When the lord abandoned his arable, it was not left to lie idle; it was
leased by the peasant. We have seen this in the case of court estates;
the monasteries and the private landholders adopted the same practice.
The peasant allotment grew with inexorable regularity, while the lord's
arable at best stood still. At the end of the sixteenth century, at the
height of the crisis, peasant arable in central Russia did not exceed 2.6
desyatinas to the homestead; in the first half of the seventeenth cen-
tury it had already reached 6 desyatinas to the homestead, and in the
second half a little more than 9 in some places. Gautier, from whom
RUSSIA OF THE NOBLES 235
we have taken these figures, sees an offset to this phenomenon in the
fact that the amount of arable per male soul did not increase during
this time but, with the exception of court estates, even diminished
slightly. He perceives in this "a fresh depression of peasant econ-
omy"; but he leaves out of sight the fact that on two and a half
desyatinas it is impossible to maintain any economy at all, while on
six, and all the more on nine, it is possible. The growth of the peasant
homestead, which it would be very shortsighted to explain by financial
influences alone (from 1630 taxes were levied not on the amount of
land under cultivation but on the number of homesteads), is part of the
general picture of economic restoration in the seventeenth century.
The "big household" of appanage times, the direct descendant of the
"pechishche" of the earliest period, is resurrected, significantly enough,
concurrently with the decline of the pomestye [service-estate] and, as
we shall presently see, with the resurrection of the votchina [hereditary
estate]. It was now necessary, because it was the most stable economic
organisation under a regime of natural economy, and Muscovite Rus-
sia was now nearer such a regime than it had been during the preced-
ing hundred years.
This great stability of course did not lead to a "depression of the
level of peasant economy." On the contrary, the best index of the
way matters were tending is the gradual disappearance of cottar home-
steads along with the amazing increase, in some localities, of the num-
ber of peasant homesteads. Gautier has gathered from the registers
such data as the following: in the county of Bezhetsk in the 1620 's
there were computed to be (on the five estates traced by the author)
155 peasant homesteads inhabited by 158 male souls; according to the
registers of the 'eighties, there were 175 6 homesteads inhabited by 5,797
souls ; while in the first case there were 218 cottar homesteads, in the
second only 75, and the number of cottars in them had declined during
these sixty years from 227 to 197. On 18 estates in the county of
Dmitrov in the same period the number of peasants' homesteads rose
from 125 to 611, and the number of cottars' decreased from 83 to 17.
In general, on all the 115 estates investigated by our author, the num-
ber of peasant homesteads increased two and a half times, but their
population increased almost five times ; formerly there were less than
two souls to the homestead, now there were almost three and a half. The
number of cottars' homesteads decreased by one-half, and their popula-
tion remained unchanged.
e This figure is evidently an error for 1,7... All these figures are taken from a
table in Gautier, The region beyond the Moscow [in Russian], p. 259; another table
in the same work (p. 511), based on the same pistsovye knigi [registers] gives the
figures in slightly variant form. Addition of the latter figures gives 154, 157, 1731,
and 5726, respectively.
236 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
Another symptom of the way matters were tending is the ratio of
arable to waste as given in the registers of the 'eighties. In contrast
to what we have seen at the beginning of the seventeenth century, or
even at the end of the preceding one when the crisis was at its height,
the arable now decidedly predominated. Our author cites a number
of estates in the counties of Shuya, Yurev Polski, and Kostroma where
either all the land was under cultivation, with the exception of meadow-
land, and there was no waste at all, or the waste was reduced to the
insignificant proportion of 6-7% of the whole area. On the average
the arable is to waste in the ratio of 2 :1, while in the 'twenties the ratio
had been 1 :5. Not only had the wounds dealt by the Troubles been
healed, but the crisis in pomestye landholding may be said to have
been liquidated by this time; and the element that profited by the
liquidation was not the element that had lost a hundred years before.
The predatory forms of pomestye money economy, which had destroyed
both pomeshchik and peasant, disappeared for some time; they were
destined to be seen anew, though in a totally different economic setting,
during "the Age of Catherine." On the other hand, the peasant,
enslaved as in the appanage period, to a certain degree recovered his
appanage prosperity — the prosperity of a well-fed slave, it is true.
That he was, however, not too discontented with his position is shown
by the rapidity with which the population of central Russia, which had
diminished so considerably in Fedor's reign, grew in the seventeenth
century. From the 'twenties to the 'forties it increased, in various
districts, from 2.3 to 6.3 times; in certain places there was by the
'eighties 7.5 times the population of the years immediately after the
Troubles.
It remains for us to trace one more aspect of this retrogression, this
time not economic but socio-juridical. The triumph of the pomeshchiks
in 1612 was, it would seem, bound to complete the process begun by
the oprichnina and to consolidate its results — to convert all the land
under cultivation into pomestyes. At first sight it was so. No sooner
had the cannonading under the Kremlin of Moscow ceased, than court
and "black" (free peasant) lands began to be handed over wholesale
to the nobles, so that by the spring of 1613 not less than 45,000
desyatinas of court land and some 14,000 desyatinas of "black" land
had been distributed, principally to the leaders of the pomeshchik host,
to its generals and officers. Somewhat later came the turn of the rank
and file ; about 1627 there took place a distribution of pomestyes to the
young nobles who were old enough for service but who were still with-
out land allotments and consequently were living at the expense of
older relatives. The sources for this great distribution and for many
other petty ones that took place at intervals were once again the court
KUSSIA OF THE NOBLES 237
and black lands and, in part, lands confiscated from other landholders ;
but now they confiscated not "princelings' " votchinas (there were
hardly any of these left) but rather those lands which had been granted
by the political opponents, now beaten, of those who had triumphed
in 1612, i.e., granted by the Tushino "knave" and in particular by the
"king and king's son" — the Polish-boy ar government of 1610-1611.
It is particularly noteworthy that the "knave's gifts" were not re-
voked with such regularity as were those of the "king." Tsar
Michael's government could not forget that Tushino had once been the
"nobles' nest," which had fledged the Romanovs. The total amount
of land thus distributed in small lots far exceeded, of course, what the
"early birds" had seized in large morsels immediately after their
victory. Whole townships were distributed, sometimes 300 pomestye
portions at once; in one famous case the amount of arable distributed
in one place amounted to 4,500 desyatinas, in another even to 7,500.
We can hardly estimate the exact total ; we do not know every case
of distribution ; but the total sum would have to be reckoned in hun-
dreds of thousands, if not in millions, of desyatinas.
This, however, was an obvious consequence of the victory won by the
nobility. What is more interesting is that these lands, distributed as
pomestyes were, a generation later, held, not as pomestyes, but as
votchinas. This phenomenon is perceptible enough even in the 'twen-
ties. At this time in one of the districts of the county of Dmitrov
it was possible to count 6 old votchinas and 10 acquired ones, granted
as a result of the two sieges of Moscow, the one under Tsar Vasily and
the other under Michael, "at the coming of the king's son," when the
king's son Vladislav encamped under Moscow. In individual districts
of the counties of Zvenigorod, Kolomna, and Rostov a similar ratio
held between "old" (i.e., inherited) votchinas and votchinas gained
through service. In the county of Uglich out of 114 votchinas 59, again
a majority, had appeared in the first quarter of the seventeenth cen-
tury. In the county of Moscow votchina lands constituted almost two-
thirds of all estates, pomestye lands little more than one-third. In one
county (Luga) votchina landholding makes its first appearance in this
period. Moreover, the tendency was for the best pomestye lands to
be converted into votchinas. Even in these same 'twenties, i.e., long
before the recovery at the end of the century, the ratio of arable to
waste on votchina lands was far more satisfactory than on pomestye
lands; sometimes on votchinas there was ten times more arable under
cultivation than on the pomestyes of the same county.
But this of course does not mean, as the author from whom we have
borrowed these statistics thinks, that votchina economy was more stable
than pomestye; economically the two types, when of similar size, did
238 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
not differ in any respect. Even juridically the distinction was not so
great as we have become accustomed to think through following the
lead of the historians of Russian law, who have very facilely transferred
to feudal Rus the norms of modern bourgeois relationships. Pomestyes
almost always passed by inheritance and were transferred from one
hand to another even in defiance of special prohibitions. For example,
the government strove hard to isolate the pomestye portions given to
foreigners in its service (their number steadily increased in the sev-
enteenth century) ; nevertheless the documents disclose a number of
men, indubitably Russian, but holding foreigners' pomestyes. All that
it had any success in attaining was that "lands should not go out of
service." The holder of a pomestye, like every Orthodox Christian, de-
sired to "order his soul," to make sure that the Church would pray
for him after his death, and, like every landholder, he attained this
end by sacrificing a part of his lands to some monastery or other. This
practice had been common in the sixteenth century ; in the seventeenth
century it became an every-day phenomenon, regardless of a series of
formal prohibitions; and thus a number of pomestye allotments were
fused with monasteries' votchinas. To teach a Muscovite the differ-
ence between "ownership" and "tenure" was no easy task, especially
when the right of property was violated at every step, not only by the
supreme authority, as in the case of every banishment in the times
of Ivan the Terrible or of Godunov, but by any powerful feudatory.
"What I hold is mine until they take it from me"; this juridically
incorrect but psychologically quite intelligible notion was lodged in
the brain of every early Russian landholder, whether he held by votchina
or pomestye tenure.
We shall most readily understand the difference between votchina
and pomestye if we consider, not the obligations to the state incident
to one or the other type of landholding but the economic interests of
the holders. Then we shall readily understand why the favourite type
" in the second half of the sixteenth century was the pomestye, and in
the following century the votchina. In the period of feverish, preda-
tory exploitation of the land they had seized, men had striven to make
a profit out of it as quickly as possible ; then they had abandoned it and
set about exploiting new land. When relationships had again assumed
mediaeval stability, it was natural that there should be a tendency to
secure to oneself and one 's family the land occupied ; and not less
natural was it that this tendency should be first displayed in respect
to the more valuable estates. As pomestye they now took only what
they would not regret abandoning. Little by little, however, to secure
an estate to oneself became just as much a habit of the landholder as
to bind the peasant on this estate, and then the "pomestye element"
RUSSIA OF THE NOBLES 239
in Muscovite landholding, especially near Moscow, "came very close
to extinction." In the county of Borovsk, for example, in 1629-1630,
pomestye lands constituted two-fifths of all the land, and votchinas
three-fifths, while in 1678 the former were only one-fourth of all the
estates, and the latter three-fourths. In the county of Moscow in 1624-5
pomestye lands still constituted 35.4%, but in 1646 only 4.4%.
This juridical restoration would be quite a riddle to us if we did
not appreciate the economic soil that had nourished it. To the resur-
rection of the old type of economy, with dues in kind and weakly de-
veloped seigniorial arable, corresponded the resurrecton of the old landed
right. It was natural that the old type of tenure should be resurrected.
The ' ' old-fashioned ' ' boyar votchinas of the sixteenth century as a rule
had been latifundia; the pomestyes that replaced them had been an
example of middling landholding. In the eighteenth century once more
we find latifundia; their revival falls entirely within the first reigns
of the new dynasty. The very day after the Troubles there began a
regular orgy of great distributions of land, a sort of restoration of
what the oprichnina had upon a time annihilated. In 1619-1620 was
distributed the whole county of Galich, i.e., all of its "black" lands,
occupied by a peasantry still free. Only in rare cases was this pomestye
distribution by small lots; far more frequently we find a whole town-
ship handed over to a single person with a more or less "historic"
name. Here we find the boyar Shein (the commandant of Smolensk
at the time of its siege by Sigismund), and the boyar Sheremetev, and
Ivan Nikitich Romanov, and the Princes Mstislavsky, Buinosov-Ros-
tovsky, and Romodanovsky. The county of Galich, of course, is only one
example : we find a mass of such cases in other places, both before
1620 and after; the greater part, almost 60,000 desyatinas, distributed
in the first months of Michael's reign, passed into large votchinas, and
in the 'twenties and 'thirties it is possible to find a number of cases
when by the tsar's granting there fell into one person's hands at the
same time 300 homesteads of peasants and 1,500 desyatinas of land.
As a result, by the end of the seventeenth century there remained no
"black" lands at all in the region beyond the River Moscow, and from
one and a half to two million desyatinas of court lands had been dis-
tributed among a few persons.
The closer we are to the end of this period, the more grandiose be-
comes the sweep of the process. Even under Tsar Fedor II (1676-
1682) a good half of all the lands granted in his short reign constitute
large distributions. From 1682 to 1700 there were distributed as
votchinas "16,120 homesteads and more than 167,000 desyatinas of
plough land, without counting meadows and woods, which were some-
times given in enormous amounts to favoured holders of votchinas."
240 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
Among the grantees first place is taken by the tsar's kin: Apraxsins,
Miloslavskys, Saltykovs, Naryshkins, Lopukhins. Sometimes at a single
stroke there fell into the same hands, as in the case of the Naryshkins in
1683-4, some 2,500 homesteads and 14,000 desyatinas of land. But this
was nothing in comparison with the latifundia that began to arise under
Peter when Menshikov alone acquired more than three townships, with
20,000 desyatinas. During only eleven years of Peter's reign (1700-
1711), of court lands alone about 340,000 desyatinas of arable land and
27,500 homesteads of peasants were distributed, as against 167,000 desya-
tinas and 16,000 homesteads converted into latifundia in the course of the
preceding eighteen-year period. Thus, the nobles definitely seated them-
selves in the place of the boyars ; and out of their midst arose a new
feudal aristocracy that made possible the flowering of the "new feudal-
ism" of the eighteenth century.
2. Political Restoration
Regeneration of the old economic forms was bound to be accompa-
nied by revival of the old political regime. All the text-books are filled
with descriptions of the "abuses" of Muscovite administration in the
seventeenth century. These are usually represented as the product
of the free "evil will" of the officials of the time. Sometimes phrases
are added about the "lack of culture" of Tsar Alexis' contemporaries,
and the historian deems explanation exhausted if he reminds his reader
of the decline of the "zemsky [autonomous] principle" in local gov-
ernment and its replacement by the "prikaz [bureaucratic] principle."
Not so long ago "bureaucracy" was, in the eyes of the average Russian
intellectual, so universal an explanation of every social evil that to
dig deeper into the "causes of things" seemed a luxury absolutely
superfluous.
To simplify the question it is desirable from the outset to give up
our preconceived ideas about the "prikaz principle." If we understand
the triumph of the latter to mean replacement of local self-government
by a tyrannous bureaucracy, we find no historical facts to support such
an explanation. All those organs of local self-government which were
the product of the sixteenth century remained under the same names
during the seventeenth century right down to the time of Peter, and
in slight disguise till a much later date. No great change, the reader
will agree, could result from the fact that the "zemsky starosta"
began to be called "burgomistr," the "zemsky tselovalnik" "ratman,"
and the " 'zemskaya izba" "magistrat." The guba authorities likewise
survived until Peter, and the fact that in his reign we find a "landrat"
RUSSIA OF THE NOBLES 241
or commissar in place of the " gubnoy golova," marks no change in the
essence of things.
If the evolution of the prikaz principle be taken to mean the forma-
tion of a group of professional officials (in the seventeenth century con-
cerned almost exclusively with finance or diplomacy, jurists being added
much later), this differentiation was effected at the cost of the feudal
regime, not at the cost of "autonomy." Feudal Russia, like feudal
Europe, had known but one division of governmental functions — the
division into spiritual and temporal. Representatives of the one and
of the other, each in their own sphere, performed all those functions
now executed by the most diverse professional officials, — the adminis-
tration of justice, the collection of taxes, the carrying on of diplomatic
negotiations, and the command of the troops. 7 The growing complexity
of governmental machinery, which paralleled economic development,
caused the first three functions to be assigned to separate specialists,
in part of bourgeois origin; only the military command was left ex-
clusively to the feudal aristocracy. This was the "formation of a
bureaucracy," in Russia as in the "West, a fact which can be regretted
only by representatives of historical romanticism, who sigh for the
lost "harmony" of mediasval life. The contemporary reader, bour-
geois or non-bourgeois, has not the slightest reason for joining in these
sighs. The correlation of social forces could not be changed because
the method of operation of these forces became more complicated; the
character of the regime was determined by its class physiognomy, and
not by whether it was effected by "civilians" or by military men.
But the rise of the "prikaz order of things," in this second and
only correct sense of the word, does not constitute a feature charac-
teristic of the realm of the first Romanovs. The enormous influence
of the professional officials, the dyaks, had been remarked by the con-
temporaries of Ivan [IV] the Terrible. In the following reign two
dyaks, the brothers Shchelkalov, had sometimes seemed to foreigners
the very embodiment of the Muscovite government ; in the words of
one Russian contemporary, Boris Godunov was more than a little in-
debted for his rise to one of the Shchelkalovs, a view shared by modern
historians. In the Time of the Troubles, as we have seen, a former
dyak of merchant origin, Fedor Andronov, had for a time ruled the
Muscovite state. The seventeenth century offers more numerous ex-
amples of a similar character, though not a single one so vivid. The
dyaks of Tsars Michael and Alexis were somewhat more unassuming
7 The representatives of the spiritual power in Russia usually exercised this last
function indirectly, through the medium of their boyars; duties as military com-
manders sometimes fell to the lot of the heads of a few monasteries (Troitsa or
Solovetsky).
242 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
than these wielders of the destinies of the realm of Moscow. The cir-
cumstance, which is usually commented on, that under these tsars the
nobles, who had formerly disdained "lean grade," did not look askance
at a dyakship (the best known noble family to make its career in official
posts was that of the Lopukhins) can also be observed in earlier times;
even in 1610 Moscow nobles had petitioned Sigismund to appoint them
dyaks. The examples cited by Kotoshikhin of the power of bureau-
cratic institutions, such as the Bureau of Secret Affairs, in part mark
the first steps in a further development with which we must acquaint
ourselves in more detail when we study the so-called "Petrine reform,"
in part are simply an exaggeration of the authority of the dyaks, — an
exaggeration natural to the pen of a podyak [assistant dyak] author.
In general, the central administration of the Muscovite state makes
no perceptible progress in this direction until the very beginning of
the following century when suddenly, within a few years, the whole
system of the old central administration is destroyed, both duma and
prikazes [bureaux]. The chief reform in the field of local administra-
tion, the establishment of the voevoda's authority, has all the charac-
teristics of a typical feudal institution; the voevoda commands the
troops, administers justice, and collects the taxes. The loss of this last
function is, again, one of the signs of further progress at the very end
of the period we are studying.
We must, then, renounce the simple and easy method of explaining
the "abuses" by reference to the "evil will" of the "bureaucracy";
and on the question of "culture" serving as an antidote to "abuses,"
the United States and France of the present day offer such brilliant
answers that it remains but to apply to the Muscovite state the method
we should apply to them and seek not abuses but illustrations of a
class regime. Setting out on this road, we shall see, first of all, that
there was no inherent antagonism between "autonomy" and "abuses";
that, on the contrary, the former, as it then existed, was a very favour-
able breeding ground for the latter.
The Dvina and Volga regions were the classic land of "zemsky"
institutions in the seventeenth century as they had been in the six-
teenth. The northern and Lowland towns were centres of the Mus-
covite bourgeoisie, in contrast to the southern towns, which were mili-
tary-agrarian centres, behind the walls of which the local agricultural
population took refuge from the foe, and whence the commanding ele-
ments of this population "ruled" the surrounding country. In the
north it was otherwise ; in consequence of the weak development of
large landholding on the infertile soil, unfit for rural-economic enter-
prise, until the eighteenth century there here survived in large measure
a juridically free peasantry, economically enserfed, not by pomeshchiks
KUSSIA OF THE NOBLES 243
but by urban capitalists. Here arose real bourgeois landholding, with
which the nobles' government of the seventeenth century did not know
what to do, accustomed as it was to see the land exclusively in the
hands of military men; at one moment it took from the "gosts" and
traders and all other ranks the hamlets "purchased and mortgaged,"
at another moment it gave them back.
The extent of differentiation within the town population in the
seventeenth century may be shown by two or three examples. In
Usolye, in the second quarter of the century, are found merchants
whose homesteads were valued at from 500 to 1,000 rubles (in modern
money from 5,000 to 10,000 rubles) ; but we must take into account
that, in the then forested north, building materials were literally not
worth a red cent, so that the value of buildings as compared with mov-
ables was not what it is to-day. Not 1,000, but 300 rubles constituted
a real capital, and a large one at that, for the merchant of those times;
in Tobolsk, the chief town of Siberia, no one then had a larger capital.
A man whose house with all its furnishings was worth about 1,000
rubles corresponded to the man worth a hundred thousand rubles at
the beginning of the twentieth century; and God knows Usolye was
no great centre. Ustyuzhna Zhelezopolskaya was still smaller, and
there for the misdemeanour of a "young" man they took only one
ruble and for a misdemeanour of a "trader" five rubles; the higher
members of urban society were just five times greater than the lower
ones. In Nizhny-Novgorod were four categories of the town population,
the highest of which were the "better men," the wholesale traders and
boat-owners, and the lowest the "base men," who, however, had home-
steads of their own ; homeless cottars were not included at all.
We have seen what a notable page in the history of the Troubles
the struggle between these "better" and "lesser" men of the town of
the time had constituted. The Troubles had ended with the victory
of the "better" men, and the organs of zemsky autonomy, both in the
town and in the county attached to it, had passed into their hands.
The most modest of them took advantage of this only for the purpose
of not "bearing tyaglo" [taille] along with the mass of the town popu-
lation, in other words, of unloading on the latter the principal burden
of state taxation. Thus, at Solvychegodsk in the 1620 's there was a
zemsky tselovalnik (in later language, a member of the county board)
who, together with a few others, was not included in the general town
assessment and was not responsible for the town poor. Not, of course,
because he and his comrades were poor men ; on the contrary, they
were local bigwigs, who not only held homesteads but also possessed
salt-boileries, shops, and warehouses in the town, and in the county
had "little fields" and "meadows." Another zemsky tselovalnik, in
244 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
the county of Totma, displayed still more aggressiveness; together with
other "strong men" he seized a number of waste plots and vacant
peasant lots but paid no taxes on them, leaving this for the peasants to
do under the mutual guarantee. When the peasants took it into their
heads to complain of him, he reminded them that the very collection
of taxes was in his hands ; he began to put the complainants to distraint
"in excessive taxes and mir levies" "and beat them without mercy."
The "prikaz" official sent from Totma to examine into the complaints
proved to be on the side of the "strong men," and so openly and shame-
lessly that a commissioner from Moscow had to put him in prison;
whether the commissioner himself did anything, we do not know; in
any case, after his departure matters probably went on as before. There
could, of course, be no question of any control exercised by the "lesser"
men over the "better" men. At Vologda not only the "lesser" men
but even the "middling" men could not obtain permission to "exam-
ine" the zemsky starostas [elders]; the "better" men preferred to
settle everything within their own circle, and friendly and amicable
apportionment of the revenues evidently took the place of control. At
Khlynov matters were still simpler; there the starosta and tselovalniks
simply "assigned" among themselves the monies collected from the
mir [community], continuing to exact them promptly from the tax-
payers. In this way many both in town and country "were impover-
ished and indebted greatly with debts and, abandoning their home-
steads, were scattered asunder." The growth of indebtedness was
fostered by the starosta and tselovalniks, who, among other things,
engaged in usury. The depopulation of Khlynov attracted attention
at Moscow, and the townsmen were permitted to elect examiners for
the purpose of effecting a reform of the zemsky administration of
Khlynov; it remained a question, however, who, under the conditions
existing at Khlynov, might be examiners, and what practical results
such a reform would yield.
The state of affairs that had existed before the Troubles and that
during them had evoked a series of urban outbursts and had made the
Tushino "knave" tsar of all the oppressed and injured — this state of
affairs continued to prevail in Russian towns after the termination of
the "Time of the Troubles." Naturally the social struggle of the
Time of the Troubles was bound to break out, now here, now there, and
the fact that it did not assume the same acute form as it had when all
Russia was in the throes of civil strife does not detract either from
its social meaning or from its interest. In the 1670 's the county of
Ustyug was completely in the grip of the urban capitalists of Great
Ustyug; in a petition the men of the county very graphically de-
scribe the state of affairs at the time. "The peasants were in every-
RUSSIA OF THE NOBLES 245
thing enslaved to them, the townsmen, and by their wealth the zemsky
starostas of the town have in their pride oppressed the peasants, and
treated them as slaves, and by their might and great goods have pur-
chased from our brothers, from the poor peasants, the best hamlets in
the county of Ustyug and have begun in many townships to be the
proprietors, and thence we, the peasants, have grown poor under their
violence, and because of this poverty the peasants work on their [the
townsmen's] hamlets instead of slaves. ..." But here, too, there finally
came a moment when the "strong men" split, and apparently more seri-
ously than anywhere else in a similar case. The starosta of the customs,
himself a large trader, of course, utilising the quite unique pretext of
the passage of a Dutch envoy (we shall not forget that in those days
the Northern Dvina was the highway to Western Europe), assembled
a meeting and at it effected a sort of municipal revolution. The assem-
bled peasants elected their own separate "zemsky starosta of the whole
county, " " and set up a special, paid, new-fangled volost izba beside the
old general zemsky izba of the townsmen." 8 A remarkable peculiarity
of the Ustyug conflict was the fact that the local voevoda took the part
of the "rebels." "We do not know his reasons, but at Moscow the day
was won by the deputies of the countrymen only because they did not
begrudge money, in a single day distributing a hundred rubles each
to the Moscow podyaks; this fact, far more than the voevoda 's leader-
ship of the insurrection, which in itself might have been an accident,
proves that the Ustyug peasantry was backed by an opposition among
the local capitalists; purchasing the support of Moscow with the assist-
ance of this merchant opposition, the men of the county of Ustyug even
subjected the townsmen and acquired the right to fine the "better men"
if they were unwilling to "pay along with the peasants," i.e., if they
did not include themselves in the general assessment.
It must, moreover, be noted that the sympathies of the Moscow au-
thorities for the "lesser" men in town and country was not always
occasioned by the personal greed of these or those "authorities." In
the days of the Troubles the great bourgeoisie of the towns and the
pomeshchiks had been allies, it is true. But hardly had those days
passed and the common menace — the danger of a revolt of the "lesser"
men, supported by Tushino — subsided, than the old antagonism swiftly
revived, and the basic contradiction of interests of these two elements
with respect to the state treasury, of the pomeshchik as payee, of the
bourgeois as payer, was bound to be felt ever more and more keenly.
But guba, and not zemsky, institutions were the chief battleground
s That is, the peasants of the township {volost) set up their own autonomous
organs of administration, independent of the county government controlled hy the
bourgeoisie.
246 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
of the two dominant classes of Muscovite society. We know that this
form of "autonomy" had borne a class character from the very be-
ginning, that the guba head or starosta was always a noble or knight.
But, in the first place, though elected from one definite class, he was
elected by all classes of society except the bondaged peasantry. In
the second place, he did not act alone, but with tselovalniks, who were
always non-nobles; the guba head, a noble, was only the president of
this commission, which was really composed of all classes. His rights
were, as we saw, very broad, but he could not alone pronounce final
decision, and if he unduly offended the interests of the non-nobles,
he exposed himself to the resistance of his democratic colleagues. In
central Russia — a pomeshchik country from time immemorial — these
restrictions on the power of the guba starosta might be, and probably
were, an empty formality. But in the north, where the bourgeoisie
was powerful and strong, it sometimes succeeded, even in the seven-
teenth century, in deposing unpopular guba heads and replacing them
with its own candidates. In Ustyuzhna Zhelezopolskaya in the 1640 's,
the nobles' candidate for guba starosta twice had to give way to the
townsmen's candidate, though he, too, of course, was taken from the
military servitors. Twice the nobles and knights regained the upper
hand, but the third time the conflict was ended by the townsmen gain-
ing the right to elect a separate starosta, who was to administer the
town alone, without the county.
Under such conditions the fact that election by the nobles and knights
alone was ever more and more frequently deemed sufficient, and the
opinion of the townsmen not consulted, acquires special significance;
though sometimes the townsmen participated in the elections, yet their
votes did not count, since a pretext could always be found for declar-
ing their candidate "unfit" to hold guba office. Still more curious
is the evolution of the guba college. The tselovalnik, in the sixteenth
century a colleague of the guba starosta, in the seventeenth is only his
subordinate ; the starosta administers the oath and makes known to him
the orders that come from Moscow. In 1669 the tselovalniks were abol-
ished altogether or, rather, they were converted into prison guards,
for prison tselovalniks, who guarded men under arrest, were retained
until the end of the century. But this office had long since ceased to
interest any one, and in places even in the 'twenties the townsmen "did
not give prison money and did not attend to the prison at all."
This very much surprised the nobles, who felt that, though guba mat-
ters were their business, the taxpayers were bound to bear the expenses
of them as of the nobles' state in general. But for the taxpayers the
guba starosta had long been, not an "organ of autonomy" but a weapon
of class oppression, and naturally their concern was not whether guba
EUSSIA OF THE NOBLES 247
institutions were well served (who cares about the good quality of the
chain with which he is fettered?), but rather how to get rid of them.
Gradually they came to think that a prikaz man would be better, for
at least he would not be directly elected by their foes, the local pomesh-
chiks. Each outburst of desperation on the part of the townsmen was
utilised by the central nobles' government to deprive them of the last
shreds of their autonomy ; a local voevoda received instructions to see
to it that "the guba starosta does not accuse [the townsmen and the
peasants of the county] on an oral report and that he does not for the
sake of his greed commit oppression and inflict fines ; if an oral report
be made against the townsmen and the peasants of the county the
voevoda and the dyak are bidden to inquire into it directly and justly
and to execute the law by the sovereign's edict and by the Ulozhenie,
but if it is an important matter, or one not written in the Ulozhenie,
to write to the sovereign at Moscow."
The naivete of the townsmen's hopes concerning the impartiality of
the "prikaz" men from Moscow is quite apparent. In the 'sixties the
men of one town who had exchanged their guba heads for voevodas thus
characterised one of the latter, one evidently no worse than his prede-
cessors: the voevoda "beats us . . . without inquest and without fault,
and puts us in prison for his avarice ; and taking out of prison, beats
with cudgels half to death without cause and without fault. And in
the past year 172 he, the voevoda, shutting himself up in his home-
stead, beat the tselovalnik of the customs chest, Volodka Selivanov, half
to death and made great loss to the customs revenue. Many traders
who came to deal in salt and fish he injured and ruined, and put in
prison; and many traders who had come he drove out and scattered
the market, and thy customs revenue, Great Sovereign, he stopped ; and
us, thy orphans, elected men, in the end he has ruined with his great
oppression, and taxation, and fining, and murder. ..." This example,
which could be reproduced as often as one liked, is in itself interesting
because in it stands out very distinctly the social class that suffered
from the voevodas' acts of violence. These are not the petty folk who
petitioned against their "zenisky" authorities; these are the authorities
themselves, the zemsky starostas and wealthy merchants, dealers in
fish and salt. The whole bourgeoisie suffered from the nobles' admin-
istration; the higher elements, as in the days of the youth of Ivan the
Terrible, suffered even more than the lower, since they had more to
lose.
In enriching themselves, in using their power to make immediate
material profits, lay the essence of the whole business for the voevodas
and other prikaz men. "When we see a prikaz man beginning his ad-
ministrative activity by taking "entry" from those he administers,
248 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
and then, just like the kormlenshchik of the good old times — the times
not of Ivan the Terrible even, but of Ivan III — beginning to drag out
of these people under his administration all sorts of kormlenies in
kind — rye, barley, wheat, calves, rams, butter, eggs, fish, sheep, hay —
at any or all of these things we are not at all surprised. The reader
has long since become acquainted with the familiar picture of a korm-
lenshchik 's administration. The essence of the administrative restora-
tion, of which the above cases of guba and voevoda tyranny were indi-
vidual manifestations, was the revival of kormlenies.
After the keen criticism of kormlenies that we read in Peresvetov,
after what we know of Godunov 's administration, which tried to realise
in practice the ideal of a police state, the feudal order of things in
the seventeenth century cannot be regarded as a simple survival. The
new "kormlenies" were too universal a phenomenon for that. What
"social conscience," in the person of the nobles' publicist of the times
of Ivan the Terrible, had sharply condemned, the nobles of the seven-
teenth century regarded with the utmost complaisance, as an absolutely
normal affair. Offices of an "elective" character (guba offices, for
example) they considered, not as abuses but as offices just like any
others. The guba starosta was, as we know, to prosecute thieves and
robbers, and worthy historians of Russian law have been seriously con-
vinced that the Moscow government had lost its head over how it should
deal with robbers. With sublime tranquillity it appointed to guba
office a blind man precisely because he was blind. And this was the
general rule. In 1601 it was forbidden to appoint as voevodas and
prikaz men nobles and knights who were not injured, not maimed but
healthy ; a kormlenie, you see, was a reward for service, somewhat in
the nature of a pension; why give it to a healthy man, a man still fit
for "regimental service"? At the very beginning of the period under
consideration, immediately after the Troubles, Moscow had sometimes
bethought itself, as it were, of the Godunov traditions; in the voevodas'
instructions of the 'twenties the voevodas were strictly enjoined "not
to cause any injuries or levy taxes on any one out of avarice and to
plough and thresh grain for themselves, and harvest hay, and not to
take feed for horses, and to distil spirits, and not to bid firewood to
be cut and any obligatory labour to be done, and from the town and
the county not to take food and drink and money for food and drink,
that there be no injuries upon them and no petitioners to the sovereign
for any acts of violence." In the 'seventies, however, on abolishing
a prikaz office, the government unceremoniously imposed on the in-
habitants a due for " voevoda 's revenues," as it might have done in
the first half of the sixteenth century for the "namestnik's feeding."
The famous case related by Tatishchev, in which Tsar Alexis was trying
BUSSIA OF THE NOBLES 249
to find for a favourite noble a town with a "revenue" of six hundred
rubles and found one of only four hundred, is not merely an anecdote.
And probably the story of the same Tatishchev that all the towns had
a fixed tariff, and that whoever paid the price got the town, is also more
than an anecdote.
If we add to all this that on his estates every landholder was the
judge over his peasants in all except guba (chiefly, robbery) cases,
and that in all cases, guba ones included, he had the right of prelimi-
nary investigation as it was then understood (i.e., including torture),
our picture of the "dominance of private law" will need but one final
touch. In the seventeenth century, as in the preceding one, immuni-
ties continued to exist ; that is, there was special jurisdiction for special
categories of persons and institutions. "We have already seen how easily
the least of these privileges — emancipation from the jurisdiction of the
nearest local court — was obtained. It was not impossible to gain a great
one — subjection in judicial matters to the central institutions exclu-
sively. Such a privilege was enjoyed by the posterity of Kuzma Minin,
but it was also given to persons altogether unrenowned. In 1654, for
example, Ivan Kikin and Afanasy Strunnikov, townsmen of the town
of Gorokhovets, received a perpetual and hereditary immunity; using
appanage terminology, "the grand prince or whom he orders" was to
judge them. A similar immunity was enjoyed by all the gosts and
men of the gost hundred; only the tsar or the tsar's treasurer judged
them. Strange as it may seem, a privilege might in a certain sense be
a progressive feature, as we shall see later; such was the special juris-
diction for foreigners, who were tried in the Posohky Prikaz [Bureau
of Foreign Affairs]. The widest immunities, of course, were obtained
by ecclesiastical institutions. The archpriest of the Moscow Cathedral
of the Annunciation tried Church people and peasants belonging to the
cathedral in all cases, not excepting guba cases, and was obliged to
report to the sovereign only if he himself could not decide the case.
It was a rare monastery that did not know how to obtain the same
privilege ; in 1667 it was made general by a Church council, which pro-
vided that according to the rules of the holy fathers Church people,
including the numerous peasantry dwelling on Church lands, were
subject only to the jurisdiction of the Church.
The organs of the central government were less affected by the class
struggle than were the provincial institutions, for in respect to
class the central administration was far more homogeneous. The
bourgeoisie very rarely penetrated into the central institutions, and then
only by losing its immediate class physiognomy. Kuzma Minin, like
Fedor Andronov before him, had to convert himself into a military
servitor in order to take his seat in the tsar's council; from a bour-
250 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
geois zemsky starosta lie became a "noble of the duma." But the
number of such anoblis was insignificant in the Muscovite state of the
seventeenth century, far more insignificant than, for example, in France
of the same period. The democracy of the Muscovite sovereign's duma
was made up of "base born" pomeshchiks and dyaks, two elements
which, as we have seen, then displayed a strong tendency toward fusion.
During the Petrine recovery a wave of this democracy washed away
the last remnants of the old aristocracy; in the boyar lists of the last
years of the duma appeared a variety of names of men scarcely bear-
ing duma ranks, like the celebrated Romodanovsky, and even of "men"
like the no less celebrated Alexis Kurbatov, a former bondsman of
Sheremetev.
The "great destruction" of the Muscovite state at the beginning of
the century had prepared this result long in advance, but it came
tardily rather than prematurely. Mestnichestvo survived until 1682,
and under the first two tsars of the new dynasty the personnel of the
central institutions bore a more archaic character than might have
been expected. The political influence of the old boyar order, as a
social group, was already insignificant in 1610; yet as late as 1668 it
supplied almost half of the entire personnel of the duma (28 out of
62), simply because, as Kotoshikhin testifies, precedence was still given
to "high birth" rather than " learnedness " and personal deserts. The
durability of old prejudices is, perhaps, still better expressed in what
Kotoshikhin says on the score of the hierarchical position of the tsar's
relatives. "And whatever boyars are relatives of the tsar through the
tsaritsa, they do not sit in the duma and at the tsar's table, because it
is a disgrace to them to sit below other boyars, and they are not able
[to sit] above [them], because by birth they are not high." Neither
the favour of the tsar nor even kinship with the tsar could add "ote-
chestvo" to a man ; on the other hand, not only the tsar's favour but just
simple physical propinquity to the source of power gave him a real
influence on affairs. The antinomy of feudal society, where the king
could not seat a marquis below a count, but where both count and mar-
quis alike bowed low to the king's valet-de-chambre, was integrally re-
produced by Moscow's court society of the times of Tsar Alexis. Ac-
cording to Kotoshikhin 's story, highest in the hierarchy of Muscovite
grades, highest in fact and not merely for purposes of display, stood
the postelniks [chamberlains] and spalniks [gentlemen of the bedcham-
ber]. The former made the tsar's bed and slept in the same room
with him, and at the same time kept the seal for the tsar's "hasty
and secret" affairs, i.e., they stood closest of all to that extra-duma
legislation, "edicts of the sovereign," which was destined to crowd out
the obsolescent mechanism of the boyar duma. The spalniks clothed
RUSSIA OF THE NOBLES 251
and booted the tsar in the morning, undressed and unbooted him in the
evening, and in consequence found themselves in the very first ranks of
the tsar's men of the duma. Made boyars or okolniches 9 (according
to their ' ' otechestvo ' ' — this was strictly observed ! ) , they bore the title
of "blizhny [privy] " or "komnatny [chamber] " boyars and okolniches;
they had the immense privilege of unannounced entry into the tsar's
cabinet [Jcomnata], whither the other members of the duma could enter
only when summoned, and they could stage a sitting of the duma when-
ever the tsar needed its sanction but did not wish to share his thoughts
with all of its members. "When the tsar chooses to think of anything
secretly," writes Kotoshikhin, "in that duma are those boyars and
okolniches and blizhnys who have been recruited from gentlemen of
the bedchamber or who have been ordered to come ; while the other
boyars and okolniches and men of the duma do not come into that sit-
ting of the duma for any business."
The central institutions, as was natural under this feudal regime,
were likewise of feudal character. We have not yet had occasion to
discuss the mechanism of the central administration of Muscovy, and
for the reason that the administration of the "votchina" of Ivan
Kalita's descendants did not differ in any essential way from that
of other votchinas, except for the difference that the unusual size of
this "estate" might introduce. It is no accident that "prikaz"
[bureau], the appellation given to a Muscovite ministry, comes from
the same root as the modern " prikazchik" [steward or overseer] ; in
point of the origin and character of their authority the ministers of the
tsar of Moscow did not differ from the overseers of any private votchina.
Nor is this the sole example of the descriptiveness of Muscovite ad-
ministrative terminology. At the end of the sixteenth century the de-
partments of the Bolshoi Prikhod, the ministry of finance of the
time, were, quite characteristically, named for the dyaks who had
charge of them. Later these departments were given geographical
names, but the character of a personal "prikaz" [command] was re-
tained by their further subdivisions until the end of the seventeenth
century. Moreover, the towns and counties were distributed among
them in the most fantastic disorder; not one of these ministries or de-
partments had charge of a definite, continuous territory. On the other
hand, there was not one of them that had no territory at all to admin-
ister; even the Posolsky Prikaz [ministry of foreign affairs] controlled
several towns, and not frontier ones, either.
In the list of Muscovite bureaux of the time of Tsar Alexis, and
even later, institutions of a public character and the different sections
of the tsar's private economy are interlocked in great confusion while
» The oJcolnich ranked next below the boyar in the duma.
252 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
very often functions of both types are fulfilled by one and the same
institution. There was the bureau of the Bolshaya Kazna [Great Treas-
ury], which around 1680 drew together about one-half of all the state
revenues — a real ministry of finance; but it is not to be confused with
the Kazcnny [Treasury] Bureau, which had charge of the tsar's ward-
robe and at the same time controlled a few traders of the towns. The
Bureau of "Gold and Silver Work" was, properly, occupied with the
tsar's gold and silver service, but even under Peter there entered its
competence certain cavalry regiments "of foreign order" — dragoons,
cuirassiers, and lancers. Sometimes this combination of diverse func-
tions in one and the same institution confronts the historian of public
law with a genuine enigma. Why, for example, was the Stable Bureau
charged with the tax on baths? There can be only one answer: at
some time or other both these functions had been entrusted to one and
the same steward ; perhaps he was a clever man, who could handle
much at once, or perhaps they wanted to increase the revenues of the
tsar's master of the horse — a very important person in the Muscovite
realm, like his counterpart the "constable" in the mediaeval kingdom
of France.
In connexion with the political restoration that we are considering,
it is significant that this feature — the blending of the sovereign's own
economy and the administration of the realm — is peculiar both to the
old bureaux inherited by the Romanovs from the times before the
Troubles and to the new central institutions that arose in the seven-
teenth century. It is customary to cite as the typical example of the
nascent bureaucratic organisation the "Bureau of Secret Affairs,"
which arose under Tsar Alexis. Properly, the "secret" of this bureau
lay in the fact that hither "the boyars and men of the duma did not
enter and did not handle affairs." But, on the other hand, the bureau
itself had charge of the men of the duma ; the officials who sat in it, the
"podyaks," were sent with men of the duma when the latter were ap-
pointed as ambassadors, as voevodas of regiments, etc. "And those
podyaks keep watch over the envoys and over the voevodas and on their
return tell the tsar; and whatever envoys or voevodas commit negli-
gence in their affairs, they suffer the tsar 's displeasure ; and they make
presents to those podyaks and respect them above measure, so that
they, being near the tsar, shall praise up their envoys and not report
evil. That bureau was set up in the time of the present tsar [Alexis]
that his tsar's thought and deeds be fulfilled, all according to his liking,
and that the boyars and men of the duma should not handle anything
at all." We have already said that in all probability Kotoshikhin
exaggerated the power of the podyaks of the secret bureau; neverthe-
less the very idea of putting the men of the duma under the control
KUSSIA OF THE NOBLES 253
of men not of the clurna was indubitably a new idea; but this did not
prevent the new bureau from administering, among other things, the
tsar's falconry. Yet the most typical survival of feudal administra-
tion in the seventeenth century was the bureau of the Bolshoi Dvorets
[Big Court; in modern terminology, the Department of the Tsar's
Household]. To the very end of the century it remained the greatest
financial institution of the realm next to the Bolshaya Kazna and col-
lected a number of purely public imposts, both direct and indirect —
customs and liquor duties, the streltsy tax, the post and prisoner taxes
— and along with these it collected the dues from the court villages
and townships.
Among the "survivals" of feudalism with which the Muscovite state
of the seventeenth century is filled, it is impossible to overlook one
that sums up all the rest. We refer to an institution that has acquired
a famous, and not altogether deserved, though quite comprehensible
reputation in modern times, the zemsky sobor. The bitterness that
down to the revolution of 1905 marked the controversy over the zemsky
sobor of early Rus has since evaporated. Nowadays hardly any one
wants to argue as to whether it was something like the constitutional
assemblies of Western Europe or a remote prototype of the official
commissions of the days of Alexander III, whether it was a house of
national representatives or a "consultation of the government with its
own agents." Probably neither the one nor the other modernisation
of the Muscovite "council of all the land" would now find protagonists.
Historians have correctly surmised that it was something unique, not
to be comprehended in the conventions of modern, bourgeois public
law; but in vain they have seen in the zemsky sobors a national pe-
culiarity. It was a peculiarity not native to any one country, but to
all countries at a certain period.
The local peculiarity of Russian assemblies of this sort was, perhaps,
the fact that in Russia they survived, in their crudest and most rudi-
mentary form at that, up to a stage of social evolution at which in
Western Europe either we do not find them at all, or they there assume
a more up-to-date guise. Every mediaeval sovereign constantly acted
on the advice of the council of his great vassals, spiritual and tem-
poral, and in more important cases with the council of all his vassals,
all of whom, of course, were not invited, but only the most influential
and authoritative among them. In the grand principality of Moscow
we know of at least one such assembly, which preceded the campaign
of Ivan III against Novgorod in 1471; Ivan had at that time con-
sulted, not only with the bishops, princes, boyars, and voevodas, but
with "all the warriors." Under the latter, as historians quite justly
surmise, can be understood none other than the petty vassals, the
254 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
"knights." The only innovation that distinguished the first zemsky
sobor in the true sense (the sobor of 1566) from this assembly was the
participation in it of representatives of the bourgeoisie — gosts and mer-
chants.
It is self-evident that the norms of "representation of the people"
and equally the terms "consultative" or "deciding voice" were abso-
lutely inapplicable to any such "duma" [thinking] of the sovereign
with his vassals. The vassals were not the people even in the restricted
sense that the words "people" and "representatives of the people"
have in countries where there is no universal suffrage. The sobor was
really an "instrument" of the sovereign, i.e., something without which
he could not act; here we cannot speak of a "deciding" or a "non-
deciding" voice. A present-day public authority is physically perfectly
well able to act without the consent of the representatives of the people ;
in such case all its actions cease to be in accordance with law, but their
material effect is then even more forcible than normally, for they usually
strive to supplement the lack of law with force. The mediaeval sover-
eign was not at all bound to listen to his vassals ; juridically his declara-
tion of will was quite enough to legalise the step he had taken. But
he lacked the physical possibility of undertaking anything his vassals
did not wish to execute. Any man "has the right" to bind his feet,
but having bound his feet, he cannot move, wherefore not a single
man in his sane mind will try to practise this his incontestable right.
The reader must have already guessed when the end of the mediaeval
"estates of the realm" had to come; it had to come the moment the
suzerain ceased to be dependent on the natural obligations of his vas-
sals, i.e., when he got into his hands a force that permitted him to
purchase services instead of begging them. This is why the definitive
triumph of money economy has always been the critical moment for
the "rights and liberties" of the feudal nobility. Real power then
passes into the hands that have the money, into the hands of the com-
mercial bourgeoisie, which did not need and was not at all interested
in the mediaeval estates, in which the landed nobility were predominant.
Only where landholding became bourgeois, or where the bourgeoisie was
of no importance, were mediaeval institutions preserved, though in altered
form; the former was the case in England, the latter in Poland. In
Russia and in France matters took another course, a more normal one,
it might be said; in both countries the growth of commercial capital
and its influence on affairs coincides with the growth of absolute
monarchy and the decline of those forms of "political liberty" that
were closely connected with natural economy.
The quickening of the zemsky sobor in the first half of the seven-
teenth century was, then, very closely connected with the economic
RUSSIA OF THE NOBLES 255
and political restoration which marked this epoch. Whereas the pre-
ceding century knows only two, at the very most four 10 sobors, in the
course of half a century, in the forty years from 1612 to 1653 we know
of ten sobors (and there would be nothing surprising if still others be-
come known to contemporaries) ; for nine years, from 1613 to 1622, the
sobor functioned annually. But this material invigoration of the institu-
tion was not accompanied by its evolution from primitive forms to more
modern ones. The representatives were not consolidated into class
groups like the separate ''Estates" of Western Europe in the Middle
Ages. In the sobor of 1642 (better known to us than any other) the
military servitors other than the boyars, i.e., the nobles, knights, and
officers of the streltsy, voted in seven separate groups, based mainly on
geography. It was the same with the "third estate," the gosts con-
sulting and voting apart from the headmen of the lesser townspeople.
The representation of the "fourth estate," the peasantry, was distin-
guished by a still more accidental character. The peasantry was not
fused with the "third estate" as in France, and was not separated out
into a special corporation as in the Scandinavian realms. Yet it was
not systematically put aside as in the Polish diet. The peasants (of
course not the serfs, for whom their masters answered, but the ' ' black, ' '
or court, peasants) appear at the sobors, though only very sporadically.
At the sobor of 1682 there were deputies from court villages, never
met with earlier. Deputies of the "black peasantry" must have par-
ticipated in the sobor of 1613, a fact which was long disputed and is
sometimes disputed to this day, but of which there is documentary evi-
dence. There has been preserved a charter inviting the men of Uglich
to send "ten peasants of the county," that they, together with the depu-
ties of the townsmen, should "be free in place of all and every man of
Uglich to speak about state and about local business without any
dread." There are, however, no signatures of peasant plenipotentiaries
on Michael 's election charter ; it is hard to say whether this means that
the peasant deputies for some reason did not get to the sobor, or whether
they were without exception illiterate. 11
Just as undefined was the competence of the sobor, if we approach
it from our point of view. On the one hand, all the Eussian tsars
from Boris Godunov (and perhaps from Fedor I) to Peter were elected,
and elected by a sobor. Recognition of the tsar "by all the land" was
deemed the prime condition of the legality of the tsar's authority from
the point of view of Russian public law of the seventeenth century.
io If we accept the existence of the sobor of 1549 and count as a sobor what took
place at Moscow at the accession of Fedor I in 1584.
ii The signatures of nobles, abbots, and archpriests frequently appear in the char-
ter "in the place of all the men of the county."
256 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
The rebellions against Shuisky were made under the slogan that he
was "made tsar" "without the consent of all the land." The impos-
sibility of organising elections throughout the land was from the very
beginning a great handicap in the candidacy of Vladislav. It would
seem that "supreme constituent power" was in the hands of the zemsky
sobor. Nevertheless, on the one hand, the seventeenth-century Mus-
covites attached little value to this prerogative of theirs. In 1636 the
voevoda of Galich exhausted himself in organising elections to the
zemsky sobor in the county of Galich but, try as he would, he could
not raise more than twenty pomeshchiks, and the deputies of these
twenty had to be sent on behalf of the whole county. Toward the per-
sonnel of the "supreme constituent assembly" (it is true, in 1636 there
was no tsar to be elected) the population bore itself with, it may be
said, outrageous indifference; the majority of the nobles and knights
of Galich, writes the voevoda, "do not vote, holding their peace." On
the other hand, the Moscow government made no bones about ignoring
the demands of the "people's representatives." To the sobor of 1648-
1649, which established the "Ulozhenie," the deputies brought many
petitions. Some of them were respected; others the boyars who ruled
the country declared "capricious," and no one thought of taking them
into consideration.
But both the apathy of the electorate and the indifference of the gov-
ernment become quite comprehensible if we remember that the suzerain
was not obliged to consult his vassals on all occasions. Where his de-
mands did not go beyond the customary circle, he could present them
categorically, and it was not possible to disobey them; having once
recognised a sovereign, his vassals by that very fact obligated them-
selves once for all to execute all his normal commands. The assent of
the vassals came into question only where the demands exceeded the
norm, i.e., when they bore an exceptional character. Here it was not
a matter of demanding, but of asking and sometimes imploring. When
in 1634 Tsar Michael's exhausted treasury needed resources for the
struggle with Poland, and commercial capital was subjected to an ex-
traordinary levy ("fifth money," a 20% tax), and the pomeshchiks
had to agree to something in the nature of a compulsory loan, the tsar's
speech at the sobor was expressed as follows : ' ' This your present direct
donation will be pleasant to God the Maker Himself. The Sovereign
Tsar and Grand Prince Michaelo Feodorovich of All Rus will bear this
your aid ever in memory and never forget, and in future will see that
his sovereign wage is paid in full measure. ' ' The zemsky sobor was ever
the synonym for an extraordinary request; given such a character, it
was hard for it to make itself popular.
CHAPTER XII
THE REFORMS OF PETER
1. Commercial Capitalism in the Seventeenth Century *
In the seventeenth century the domestic and in part even the foreign
trade of Muscovite Rus still bore a handicraft character, almost un-
changed since the days of Kievan Rus. In industry small-scale, handi-
craft production prevailed exclusively. Europeans, who in the second
half of the seventeenth century were no less acquainted with Russia than
we now are with China, knew and valued Russian handicraft; at that
time it filled approximately the place now held by the exhibits of various
"Oriental" bazaars. And in part the round of merchandise was the
same ; Kilburger enumerates cartridge belts and divers articles for the
road — chests, knapsacks, bags, silk scarfs, cowls of camel wool, etc. Very
frequently even the methods of manufacture were borrowed from the
East. A Polish author, who had witnessed the Troubles, wrote of con-
temporary Russian hand- workers : ' ' All the Russian artisans are excel-
lent, very skilful and so intelligent that a thing they have never made
or even seen before they understand at the first glance and execute as
well as though they were accustomed to it from infancy, especially Turk-
ish things — horse-cloths, harness, saddles, swords with gold damascening.
None of these things are inferior to the Turkish." Later they imitated
"Western models just as successfully. The renowned Olearius, who was
in Moscow a quarter of a century later, confirms what has been said about
the manual skill of Russian artisans and their ability to imitate, citing
as an example that their edged and sharp articles were "no worse and
even better than the very best of those that are made in Germany."
"Foreigners who want to keep the secret of their art for themselves
should not practise it in the presence of Muscovites," he adds, and he
goes on to relate how quickly the Russians had penetrated all the secrets
of the iron-founders' art regardless of the fact that the foreign iron-
founders invited by the Moscow government had taken every precaution
to conceal them from the natives.
Some products of Russian handicraft not only were not inferior to
those imported from abroad but even themselves found a market abroad ;
such were, in particular, all kinds of leather work. As early as the
'thirties Olearius speaks of "Russian hides" as an article of export,
* For an explanation of the use of this term cf. Glossary.
257
258 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
mainly from Novgorod. An exceptional reputation was enjoyed by ' ' Rus-
sian leather," which the realm of Moscow seems to have supplied to all
Europe. In de Rodes' time (the 1650 's) it occupied the first place among
Russian exports, and there were sent abroad annually some 75,000 rolls,
amounting to 335,000 rubles (not less than five million rubles gold),
while the total exports slightly exceeded one million rubles. Leather
mittens were another object of wholesale foreign trade ; they were pro-
duced in Moscow by hundreds and sent to Sweden in large quantities.
It must, however, be noted that in the Muscovite realm stock-raising was
then in bad condition, and the hides of Russian cattle were unfit for use.
"The finest and largest hides are collected and bought up by the Rus-
sians everywhere," says de Rodes. "They make use of the sledging-
season, when the engrossers of hides and preparers of leather set out
for Poland, for Podolia and the Ukraine in particular, and there buy up
whatever they can lay their hands on. ' ' Then they soaked the hides till
spring, at which season began the ardent, feverish work of preparing
them for despatch by the spring flood from Vologda, by the Sukhona and
Dvina, to the Archangel fair.
This example shows very clearly that it was only in the field of foreign
trade that commercial capitalism had mastered Russian handicraft.
Within the country the Russian artisan, like the Russian trader, held to
the mediasval viewpoint. Foreigners relate with amazement the cheap-
ness of the products of Russian handiwork: according to Kilburger,
silver buttons were sold at Moscow for as many copecks of silver as the
buttons themselves weighed, a phenomenon which he could explain only
by the fact that the silver used by Russian jewellers was of very low
assay; but it must be said that the silver copeck of the time was also
made of very poor silver. Olearius came nearer to a correct understand-
ing of the matter when he explained the cheapness of Russian products
by the cheapness of foodstuffs in Russia; the artisan did not value his
labour and demanded only that his work should feed him, for which pur-
pose the most insignificant profit was sufficient. If we add that handi-
craft was frequently a subsidiary occupation (the streltsy, for example,
were largely engaged in it as well as in petty trade), the cheapness of
Russian handicraft production becomes perfectly clear. But once West-
ern Europe showed interest in any aspect of this handicraft, large capital
entered the field, and the situation changed abruptly.
Commercial capitalism fame to Russia from the West; to Western
Europe Russia was then a sort of colony. An extraordinarily interesting
illustration of this "colonial" status is afforded by the attempt of the
Dutch, in the first half of the seventeenth century, to make Russia their
"granary." Until recent years very little attention has been paid to
this attempt ; the extremely interesting negotiations on this score between
THE REFORMS OF PETER 259
the government of the Netherlands and Tsar Michael Romanov did not
become known in all their details until the beginning of the present
century.
The ancestor of Russian-Dutch trade was the Reverend Trif on, founder
of the Pechenga Monastery, the most northerly of the monasteries of
Russia. This monastery carried on an extensive industrial economy,
marketing its products — fish, cod-liver oil, etc. — to the Norwegians in
near-by Vardo. A Dutch merchant who chanced thither proved to be
a more profitable customer, and since the Norwegians, jealous of their
monopoly, prevented him from trading in Vardo, he was invited by the
monks to visit them at Pechenga. In the very next year (the incident
occurred just about the time that Ivan the Terrible was creating his
oprichnina) a regular company was formed by merchants of the Nether-
lands, which procured from Philip II of Spain, who still ruled all the
Netherlands, a monopoly of trade with the Russian north. The matter
proved more complicated than the parties had thought. On the Murman
coast there still survived the traditions of "robber trade" of Viking
times, and the first trading caravan from the Netherlands was plundered
by Russians, and its crew slain.
But this did not interrupt relations. Ships from the Netherlands
continued to visit Murmansk regularly, from year to year, and the
cloister of the Reverend Trifon became a great commercial centre. In
the year of the monks' first acquaintance with the Dutch the monastery
numbered only 20 monks and 30 lay-brothers; only five years later
there were 50 of the former and some 200 of the latter, including
workers. To Pechenga came traders from Kholmogory and Kargopol,
while the monastery's fishing-boats pushed even into Norwegian waters,
so that the Muscovite authorities had to intervene to curb the spirit
of industrial enterprise of the anchorites of Pechenga. But what the
latter managed to catch in Russian waters was sufficient to supply a
very wide market; not content with their original correspondents, the
above-mentioned Antwerp company, the Pechenga brotherhood con-
cluded another treaty, this time with a commercial house of Amsterdam.
This may, however, have been the result of a certain northward move-
ment of trade-centres in the Netherlands, for, with the emancipation of
the northern Netherlands from the Spanish yoke, this trade became ever
more and more Dutch in the narrow sense of the word. At the same
time, the ships from the Netherlands ceased to confine themselves to
Pechenga alone and, gradually pushing to the south, reached first Kola
(where in the year of the first coming of the Dutch there were only
three houses, while seventeen years later there was a regular little city,
with its own voevoda and fortress) and later Archangel.
It was to the Dutch, as modern historians have disclosed, that the
260 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
latter town owed its origin. The Norwegians had continued to look
askance at these competitors, while the Norwegian sovereign, who was
also king of Denmark, had special reasons for not encouraging Russian-
Dutch trade on the White Sea; such trade would mean the "circum-
vention" of his customs duties, an abundant tribute hitherto levied on
all ships going to and from Rus by way of the Baltic Sea, through the
Sound. Accordingly, he declared the sea between the coasts of Norway
and of Iceland a "Sound," a "strait," and demanded that ships pass-
ing around Norway through this "strait" must pay customs duties
to the Danes. Since the Dutch refused to acknowledge that the Danes
owned half of the Atlantic Ocean, they were declared smugglers ; Danish
cruisers began to look for "contraband" as far as the Russian coast
itself, for the Muscovite state had no fleet and could only argue with
the Danes on paper. Seeking safety from the Danes, one Dutch captain
ascended the Dvina as far as Cape Pur-Navolok, where then stood only
the Monastery of Michael the Archangel. It was this accidentally dis-
covered harbour that proved far more convenient than the former Eng-
lish landing-place in the Bay of St. Nicholas, where large sea-going
vessels could not enter ; soon in the wake of the Dutch the whole foreign
trade of Moscow passed to the "New Town" of Archangel.
But first place was firmly held by those to whom belonged the honour
of opening the new port. In 1603 an English author wrote: "We [the
English] have in the course of seventy years carried on a considerable
trade with Russia and fourteen years ago still sent thither a great num-
ber of ships ; yet three years ago we sent to Russia four ships, and last
year only two or three. The Dutch are sending thither 30-40 ships, each
of which is twice as large as ours." The importance the Dutch them-
selves attached to trade with Russia is evident from a project submitted
to the States General at the end of the sixteenth century. "The wealth
of our Netherlands is based on trade and navigation," says the author
of this project, "if we do not engage in them, not only can we not get
the means for waging the war [with Spain], but our whole people will
be impoverished, and disorders may break out. Nevertheless, there is no
doubt that God Almighty will not permit this and will not abandon us,
inasmuch as He shows us a new path, which is just as lucrative as sailing
to Spain, and this is the path to Moscow." But, for the Dutch, trade
with Spain meant trade with the New World, with Mexico and Peru,
which in the eyes of the Europeans of the time were fabulously wealthy :
this was the trade that was now to be supplanted by "Muscovy."
Admitting that, like any proposer of such a project, the Dutch author
was somewhat carried away, nevertheless it can hardly be supposed that
the States General was paying serious attention to the mere extravagant
phantasy of a leisured dreamer. When he said that "neither Germany
THE REFORMS OF PETER 261
nor our Netherlands can get along without the trade with Russia," and
that this trade "is a matter of the greatest importance for our country
and its inhabitants," he was evidently saying things that to many
seemed quite reasonable. A quarter of a century later, not individual
promoters but the Netherlands government itself made such a radical
attempt to divert all Dutch trade in Eastern Europe through "Mus-
covy" that the "greatest importance" of the new market for the Nether-
lauds is incontestable. There remained only the question whether the
other party, "Muscovy" itself, acknowledged these relations to be of
the "greatest importance."
In order to understand the origin of this first attempt of European
commercial capitalism to "conquer Russia," we must have in mind the
condition of commercial relations in what was for Moscow the Far West.
By the seventeenth century foodstuffs had been added to commodities
of international exchange; an international grain market was already
beginning to take form. The price of rye in Danzig determined the
cost of living in Madrid or Lisbon. Enormous quantities of corn were
carried annually from the agricultural countries of Eastern Europe,
Prussia and Poland chiefly, to France, Spain, and Italy. The inter-
mediaries in this exchange were the Dutch, whose participation in the
grain trade was measured by thousands of ships, so that for the pros-
perity of the Dutch merchant marine this trade was hardly less impor-
tant than was the far better-known trade with the colonies. "The sea-
borne grain trade is almost exclusively in the hands of our nation," the
envoys of the Netherlands said at Moscow in 1631.
But it was not only the Dutch marine that was concerned ; the Dutch
themselves, who had very largely given up the raising of grain for the
cultivation of vegetables, could no longer feed themselves on their own
grain. But the usual source of grain supply for the new republic had
two drawbacks. In the first place, Prussia and Poland and the coun-
tries along the Baltic coast had already developed their own manufac-
turing industry ; hence by the end of the sixteenth century the products
of Dutch workshops were finding a very poor market there. At least, the
author of the Dutch project we have cited very definitely asserts that
' ' every ship to Russia or from Russia to the Netherlands brings in more
than seven, eight, or even ten ships coming from Danzig, for example,
because the ships bound for Muscovy are laden with valuable merchan-
dise and not with ballast like those going to Danzig, Riga, or France."
Trade with Riga or Danzig then meant an "unfavourable balance of
trade" for the Dutch. This disadvantage was aggravated by a second
condition of Baltic trade, already familiar to us, — the "Sound tolls"
which the king of Denmark levied on every ship entering or leaving the
Baltic Sea. These tolls might have been tolerated for the sake of the
262 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
cheapness of Polish or Livonian grain ; but the price of grain mounted
with extraordinary rapidity in proportion to the increase of its inter-
national importance. "At the beginning of 1606 a last 1 of rye cost
only 16 guldens at Danzig ; in the decade 1610-1620 the price fluctuated
from 45 to 65 guldens ; in September of the following year it rose to 80
guldens, and in 1622 to 120 guldens." In 1628 a last of rye in Amster-
dam had soared to 250 guldens, "and subsequently the price did not
fall but attained an unheard-of height." Here the Dutch bethought
themselves that "the Russian land is great and rich in grain" and that
in Rus "on monastery and other lands constantly lie great stores of corn
and they frequently even rot," as the representative of Maurice of
Orange, the famous Isaac Massa, explained at Moscow.
Massa did not succeed in putting his business through, apparently be-
cause he was too much concerned about his own personal commercial
interests, thus evoking the strong displeasure of all the other Dutch
merchants doing business at Moscow. His plenipotentiary powers were
taken from him, but the negotiations with the Muscovite government
touching the trade in grain were not halted, since they were not a per-
sonal caprice. The whole commercial community of Holland was in-
terested in the matter ; there appeared projects promising unusual
profits from the new enterprise and counter-projects showing that trans-
fer of the Dutch trade from the Baltic to the White Sea would ruin the
Dutch fleet. Finally, in 1636 a formal embassy from the States General
appeared in Russia to conclude a commercial treaty. This embassy's
report gives us an idea of the grandiose character of the designs of the
Netherlands. It was proposed to exploit the Russian grain market on
the colonial principles usual at the time : the Dutch were to receive a
monopoly of the export of grain from Russia. What was more, grain
plantations were to appear in the Muscovite realm ; Dutch entrepreneurs
were to receive the right to go to Russia and there cultivate "new
lands," i.e., lands lying idle, which, the Dutch thought, were extraordi-
narily abundant in the Muscovite realm. Incidentally, it was proposed
to apply the same principles in utilising another valuable raw material
to be found in Russia — the magnificent forests of mast-timber growing
in abundance along the banks of the Dvina and its tributaries. The
advantages to the Muscovite state would, according to the Dutch
projects, be expressed chiefly in tolls on the raw materials exported ;
again and again they tempted the Muscovite diplomats with grandiose
figures of exports, showing, for example, that the Netherlands needed
not less than 200,000 chetverts of grain alone.
But at Moscow they evidently had a better understanding of trade
conditions than the Dutch credited them with; they were not averse to
i 1 last = 120 puds.
THE REFORMS OF PETER 263
making the grain trade a monopoly, but a monopoly of the tsar's. There
was a good precedent for the immediate participation of Eastern Euro-
pean sovereigns in the grain trade: the king of Sweden was the chief
competitor of the Dutch in the Baltic. Moscow was not averse to fol-
lowing this precedent. But why should the tsar bind himself to trade
with the Dutch alone? "To our grand sovereign and his father, the
grand sovereign the most holy patriarch," the boyars and dyaks replied
to the Dutch ambassadors, "the great Christian sovereigns — King
Charles of England, King Christian of Denmark, King Gustavus
Adolphus of Sweden, and other sovereigns — do send their ambassadors
and envoys, and they write in their letters that in their realms there is
scarcity of grain, and that for the sustenance of their subjects there is
insufficient corn." Under such conditions why should the Dutch alone
be permitted to export grain?
Subsequently it was revealed that at Moscow they had some under-
standing of grain prices in Western Europe ; for a first test consign-
ment of 23,000 chetverts, the Muscovite commercial agent, the gost
Nadya Sveteshnikov, fixed such a price that Dutch hopes of cheap Rus-
sian grain immediately faded. The envoys declared that at that price
they could get grain at home. Then Sveteshnikov yielded, but very
little; it was quite clear that of the kegs of gold the Dutch promoter
had dreamed of, the Muscovite sovereign intended to keep half, if not
all, in his own treasury. It goes without saying that in calculating
on keeping the Muscovite grain market in its own hands the government
of Tsar Michael could not agree to Dutch "grain plantations" in Rus-
sia. Dutch traders and others, it replied to the ambassadors, "cannot
be admitted to the Muscovite realm for agriculture, because, if Dutch
traders are permitted to engage in agriculture in the realm of Moscow,
it will be grievous to Russians ; it will evoke disputes about the land
and will work loss to their grain trade." It could hardly have been
more clearly conveyed that it was proposed to keep the profits from the
grain trade for the "Russian men," i.e., for Nadya Sveteshnikov and
his colleagues.
Thus Western European commercial capitalism gave rise to the com-
mercial capitalism of Russia. Like any novice in a similar case, it
proved itself too greedy, and it miscalculated on the grain trade proper ;
its refusal of the Dutch proposals of 1630-1631 brought it no luck at
all, and until the second half of the following century the export of
grain from Russia remained an occasional, sporadic phenomenon. Yet
it must not be supposed that Russian commercial capital expired in such
slight travail ; in a number of other cases it actually succeeded in estab-
lishing, in its own favour, monopolies which were regarded with envy
in Western Europe.
264 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
In the first place, though attempts to establish a regular grain trade
with foreign countries met with no success, yet such occasional trade as
there was became a tsar's monopoly. One of the foreigners we have
cited above gives precise information about this, while another of later
date confirms his story. Up to 1653 the tsar's agents bought up annu-
ally some 200,000 chetverts; a chetvert of rye, including the cost of
transportation to Archangel, came to no more than one ruble, yet it
was sold for not less than 2^-2^4 thalers; since a thaler recoined at
the Moscow mint yielded 64 silver copecks, the net profit to the tsar's
treasury on the grain sold constituted from 60 to 75 per cent. To
await high prices, grain was sometimes kept in storehouses for several
years, as was Moscow's common practice with all her wares. In a
short period, it is said, the monopoly yielded more than a million
thalers, or 640,000 rubles (9,000,000-10,000,000 gold rubles). Yet it
was abandoned before Kilburger's time; "all the grain now remains
in the country, since the distilleries consume it in large quantities,"
writes this author. As a result of the rapid growth of population in the
second half of the seventeenth century the customary supply of whiskey
was insufficient, and purchase abroad (in the Ukraine and in Livonia)
was necessary to enable the tsar's taverns to meet the demand; under
such conditions it proved more profitable to distil the grain into whiskey
than to trade in it.
The treasury's revenue from the state liquor-shops was enormous.
Olearius informs us that there were more than a thousand of these
"privileged" institutions, nor were they small shops: three Novgorod
taverns were farmed for 12,000 thalers (more than 100,000 gold rubles).
And this was in the middle of the reign of that very Tsar Michael who,
when Russia was emerging from the Troubles, was so concerned about
popular sobriety. Collins, court physician to Tsar Alexis, avers that
there were certain taverns, each of which was farmed for ten or even
twenty thousand rubles (some 300,000 gold). Therefore the figures
for tavern revenues given by Kotoshikhin (100,000 rubles a year) seem
very low, to be explained by the fact that Kotoshikhin, as he himself
remarks, took into account only that portion of the spirit monopoly
handled by one bureau, whereas probably many other bureaux had a
hand in this levy. In 1680 the customs and tavern revenues together
amounted to 650,000 rubles (some 10,000,000 gold). Unfortunately, it
is not possible to separate out the customs revenue from the spirit-
monopoly revenue.
But whiskey was far from being the only commodity of trade subject
to monopoly by the tsar's treasury. The first tsars of the House of
Romanov monopolised the sale of practically all the most valuable
articles. "The tsar is the first merchant in his realm," says Collins,
THE REFORMS OF PETER 265
who had lived long in Russia. Enumeration of the tsar's monopolies
gives us an interesting picture of the concentration of Russian exports
that laid the foundation for native commercial capitalism, which, in the
person of Nadya Sveteshnikov, so disheartened the Dutch when they
thought to profit from Muscovite backwardness. Modern readers, per-
suaded that Russian food products did not begin to penetrate the West
until our own day, simultaneously with Russian literature, are not a
little surprised at the exact information given by Kilburger and de
Rodes in regard to the outstanding commercial significance then pos-
sessed by the trade in caviar. In this the Dutch secured what they had
unsuccessfully sought in the case of grain ; the export of caviar was at
an early date concentrated in the hands of a single commercial company,
at first of a Dutch-Italian one, and later, apparently, of a purely Dutch
one, though the chief consumers of Russian caviar were Italy and
Catholic countries in general, which needed food for fast days. In the
1650 's the export of caviar had already reached 20,000 puds a year; by
the 1670 's, when Kilburger wrote, this figure remained almost un-
changed. The tsar's agents delivered caviar at Archangel at a price
stipulated over quite a long period of time ; with the Dutch, for in-
stance, they had a ten-year contract. In the 1650 's the company paid
iy 2 rubles, and twenty years later 3 reichsthalers (almost two rubles)
a pud ; the total value of the exports thus amounted in the first case to
about 30,000 rubles, in the second case to about 40,000 (450,000 and
600,000 rubles gold). They exported pressed caviar only, since they
did not know how to preserve the soft caviar ; for that matter, they did
not prepare the pressed caviar very well, and it often spoiled ; in that
case the gosts who served as the tsar 's commercial agents were obligated
to take it themselves, at one ruble for ten puds. This they sold within
Russia, disposing of it in large quantities to "poor people"; "not for
nothing," as one of the foreigners commenting on this operation adds,
lest any one suspect that the tsar's treasury would give even spoiled
goods to any one for nothing. Along with caviar the tsar's monopoly
included isinglass, the sale of which amounted to 300 puds at a price
of from 7 to 15 rubles a pud, and salmon, the annual catch of which
was more than 200 lasts (some 25,000 puds) ; two Dutch ships came
specially for this every year. The fisheries on the lower Volga were the
business of the treasury to such an extent that the fishermen refused to
sell fish to Olearius and his fellow-travellers, asserting that severe pun-
ishment would overtake them for it; "for that matter," adds Olearius,
"they later very gladly netted us a fish for a few hookers of whiskey."
The most popular of all the tsar's monopolies was that in furs; the
most valuable kinds of furs, sables for example, could be found only
in the tsar's treasury, just as in the case of pressed caviar. De Rodes
266 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
gives, from the Archangel customs records, quite detailed information
about Russia's fur exports. Their total value he fixes at approximately
100,000 rubles, three-fifths of which is for sables (1,500,000 rubles
gold). Yet furs, that ancient Russian product on which the com-
mercial capitalism of Novgorod had thriven, were already beginning to
lose their past importance, for valuable fur-bearing animals could now
be found only in Siberia ; at the same time we begin to pick up inf orma- '
tion about the importation of fur goods into Russia, e.g., from France
fox furs were brought to Archangel. Still more did wax and honey,
another ancient branch of Novgorod's trade, lose importance. These
were now consumed almost entirely at home — wax because large quan-
tities went into church candles, honey because it was consumed in such
quantities by the tsar's spirit monopoly. Therefore these traditional
categories of Russian exports evaded attempts to establish monopolies,
attempts which embraced even "fish teeth" (walrus tusks, which found
a very good market as a substitute for ivory) and oil (which then had
not even a thousandth part of its present commercial importance, but
which could be secured at Moscow only through the tsar's treasury).
On the other hand, the monopolisation of wares coming, as of old,
through Russia from the East assumed tremendous importance; among
them first place was held by the silk monopoly.
"The trade in silk is without doubt the most important of all those
carried on in Europe," Olearius reminds his readers, as he enters on
his narrative about the trip of the Holstein embassy to Muscovy and
Persia. The trip itself was occasioned by the desire of Frederick, duke
of Schleswig-Holstein and Oldenburg — he did not then suspect that he
would be one of the ancestors of the Russian ruling house — to monopo-
lise this most precious commodity in Western Europe just as the Russian
tsar had done in Eastern Europe. Duke Frederick was not the first and
not the last to make this attempt; no princess in a fairy tale ever had
more suitors than the boyars of Moscow had foreigners suing for leave to
pass through the realm of Muscovy to Persia, then the chief export
market for raw silk.
In 1614 had come to Russia the English factor, John Merrick, the
well-known intermediary in the peace negotiations of Moscow with
Sweden which led to the Peace of Stolbovo (1617). From the outset he
expressed the desire of the English crown that English merchants be
permitted to pass freely along the Volga. Merrick was a useful man,
and English aid was never more necessary ; the Russians tried courteously
to dissuade the English, suggesting to them that "it would be dreadful
at the present time for English merchants to go into Persia and other
eastern realms," that on the Volga "many robbers rob," and many Rus-
sian traders had been despoiled, and "now our traders do not go to
THE REFORMS OF PETER 267
Persia." Merrick did not give up, and after the conclusion of the
Peace of Stolbovo he renewed the conversation more insistently. This
time they answered him more openly. ' ' Our Russian traders had become
impoverished, ' ' they told him ; ' ' now they buy from the English at
Archangel certain commodities, cloths for example; these they carry to
Astrakhan and sell them there to the Kizil-Bashi [Persians] , exchanging
them for their commodities, from which they derive profit, and the
treasury likewise; but if the English should go direct to Persia, then
they will not sell their commodities to the Russians at Archangel; they
will carry them direct to Persia, and the Kizil-Bashi will cease to come
with their wares to Astrakhan; they will trade with the English at
home."
In 1629 came a French ambassador, des Hayes Courmenin; he, too,
asked, among other things, that "the tsar's majesty should permit the
French to go to Persia through his realm." The boyars replied that the
French might buy Persian wares from Russian merchants. In 1630 ap-
peared our old friends the Dutch; they likewise did not confine them-
selves to the grain trade — the Dutch monopoly was to extend to Persian
wares. "With their customary preconception of the cheapness of things
Muscovite, they proposed 15,000 rubles a year for the Persian monopoly.
The boyars replied that it was impossible ; they had refused the king of
England (and what a friend he was!) at the petition of the traders of
the Muscovite realm. A little later came Danish envoys, who likewise
carried on negotiations for Danish merchants to be given a road to
Persia. The boyars replied quite laconically that they had not com-
manded that any one be given a road to the land of the shah.
The Holsteiners came nearest to having any luck; they promised to
pay for the Persian monopoly, for ten years, 600,000 yefimoks 2 (some
5,000,000 rubles gold) a year. Evidently Olearius' opinion that there
was no trade more important for Europe than the silk trade was fully
shared by his countrymen. At Moscow the figure proposed seemed
imposing, and consent was unanimous. But it immediately became
apparent that in Holstein theory was stronger than practice, and that
they could reckon better than they could pay. When it came to the
question of payment, it proved that the Holsteiners did not have the
necessary capital, and the grandiose enterprise ended most regrettably
in a diplomatic quarrel between the government of Tsar Michael and
Duke Frederick.
Thanks to the almost continuous water route from Persia to Archangel
— by the Caspian Sea, the Volga, Sukhona, and Northern Dvina — the
transport of silk through Russia offered enormous advantages in com-
parison with its carriage overland. Whereas every bale carried from
2 The yefimok was the German thaler reissued by the Muscovite mint.
268 HISTORY OP RUSSIA
Gilan to Ormuz on the back of a camel cost not less than 35-40 rubles
gold, the same bale by sea to Astrakhan cost no more than one ruble, i.e.,
15 rubles gold. It is not surprising that merchants of the time, influenced
by such figures, should conceive projects no less grandiose than the
Dutch plan of converting seventeenth-century Russia into the "granary
of Europe," a position she was to occupy in the middle of the nineteenth
century. Aside from the cost of freight there might be uncertainty as to
the political relations between the Persian shah and the Turkish sultan,
whereas the realm of Moscow assiduously maintained the very best rela-
tions with Persia. With all this in mind, de Rodes proposed to the
boyar Miloslavsky, father-in-law of Tsar Alexis, the organisation of a
company of the greatest European merchants, which, using the Russian
route, should take into its own hands all the trade with Persia (not
merely the trade in raw silk) and incidentally a good share of the trade
with India and China. Three hundred years before the building of the
Siberian railway and the projecting of the Iranian railway, a Riga
merchant attempted to minimise the results of Vasco da Gama's dis-
covery by making the Volga and Dvina competitors of the great ocean
route to the Far East. Unfortunately for him, de Rodes had only dreams
and no capital, while Miloslavsky, like all the members of the Moscow
government, was not the man to release a bird in the hand for the sake of
two in the bush.
At Moscow they followed the lines of least resistance and did the very
simplest thing that could have been done in the given case. They did
not admit Persians beyond Astrakhan and did not deliver the silk to
Europeans further inland than Archangel, while they observed two
rules : first, they always asked the highest possible price, both for Russian
wares offered in exchange for silk at Astrakhan and for the silk itself
offered in exchange for European manufactures, or still better for ready
cash, at Archangel ; second, they never reduced a price once received.
Among the wares sent to Persia were Russian linen, copper, and especi-
ally sables and other valuable furs. Copper actually cost, including
carriage to Persia, 120 thalers a berkovets, 3 but in Astrakhan the tsar's
gosts, 4 who alone were permitted to trade in it with the Persians, did
not supply it for less than 180 thalers a berkovets. For linen 4-5 thalers
a piece was a good price ; they sold it to the Persian traders for 8-10
rubles ; even against payment in ducats they artificially inflated the rate
of exchange, which was 12 per cent, higher than the customary European
rate. All of this they could do because at Astrakhan trade with the
Persians was strictly forbidden to every one except the agents of the
3 1 berkovets = 10 puds.
4 The greatest wholesale traders, who were granted special privileges by the tsar
and were, in reality, his commercial agents.
THE REFORMS OF PETER 269
government monopoly, the gosts. The Persians had only the alterna-
tives, either not to take at all goods they needed or to pay the price set
by the Moscow gosts. Under such conditions a pud of raw silk, delivered
at Archangel, cost no more than 30 rubles, but it was sold for 45 rubles ;
thus the profit to the tsar's monopoly was 50 per cent. The trade turn-
over, however, was extremely slow; the silk caravan came to Archangel
only once in three years. Its burthen usually amounted to some 9,000
puds at a total value of 405,000 rubles (more than 6,000,000 rubles gold) ;
here they brought only the raw silk, so highly valued in the West at the
time that in France, for example, there was scarcely a place where they
did not attempt to rear the silk-worm; even the king occupied himself
with it at Fontainebleau. The trade in silk fabrics, also brought from
Persia, and to some extent from the still more remote East, was free, and
prior to the 1670 's a number of Persian and even Indian traders lived
at Moscow. Though it did not supplant the world route discovered by
the Portuguese, yet the tsar's trade with Persia was undoubtedly the
greatest commercial enterprise of Muscovite Russia. The Persian cara-
van which the Holstein embassy overtook between Saratov and Tsaritsyn
consisted of 16 large and 6 small vessels. The very largest Volga
"barges" of the seventeenth century went as high as 1,000 lasts (i.e.,
2,000 tons) burthen, and had crews of some 400 men (properly speaking,
tow-men, who hauled the vessel with a hawser when there was no wind).
In the matter of dimensions modern Volga barges probably have not
made much advance over their predecessors of the pre-Petrine period.
It must be noted that for the most part the large vessels on the Volga
were in the service of the tsar's monopoly; two other huge barges that
Olearius met belonged, one to the tsar, the other to the patriarch ; both
were carrying caviar.
We have not yet exhausted all the tsar's monopolies mentioned by
contemporaries; the trade in rhubarb, for example, was also concen-
trated in the treasury ; but the essence of the matter must already have
become clear to the reader. In handicraft Russia, which hitherto had
known only small-scale trade, as well as small-scale production, the
concentration of hundreds of thousands of rubles (millions in gold
rubles) gave rise to commercial capital. But we should be very much
mistaken if we supposed that all this capital was in the hands of the tsar.
Actually it was controlled by the gosts, who in the tsar's name carried
on the trade both with the East and with the West. "The gosts are the
tsar's commercial advisers and factors; they hold unlimited sway over
trade throughout the realm. This selfish and pernicious group, which
is fairly numerous, has a head and elder, and they are all merchants;
among them are several Germans. . . . They are scattered throughout
the realm, and in all places, according to their calling; they enjoy the
270 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
privilege of buying first, even though they may not be acting on the
tsar's account. Inasmuch as they alone, however, are not in condition
to cope with such a widely extended trade, they have in all the large
towns subordinates in the person of two or three of the most eminent
merchants dwelling there, who in the capacity of factors of the tsar
enjoy the privileges of the gosts, although they do not bear the name,
and on account of their private greed everywhere cause divers restraints
of trade. The ordinary merchants observe this and know it very well;
they speak ill of the gosts, and it may be feared that, in case of an
uprising, the rabble will wring the necks of all the gosts. They [the
gosts] handle the appraisal of goods in the tsar's treasury at Moscow;
they control the catching of sables and the collection of the sable tithe in
Siberia, just as they control the Archangel caravan ; and they give the
tsar advice and schemes in the matter of establishing tsar's monopolies.
Day and night they strive completely to stifle trade on the Baltic Sea
and nowhere to permit free trade, in order that their dominance may be
the more stable, and that they may the more easily fill their own money-
bags."
The foregoing characterisation of the gosts by Kilburger, which well
represents, if not the actual facts, at least the impression that these facts
produced upon a very attentive and very well-informed observer, is
splendidly illustrated by the well-known Pskov episode. At Pskov,
under the pretext that the petty traders were tools in the hands of
foreign capitalists, who by lending them money actually converted them
into their commissioners, the gosts monopolised all foreign trade without
exception, thus converting all the second-rate merchantry into their, the
gosts', commissioners. Not one of the local merchants of the second
order had the right any longer to trade on his own account ; they were
all assigned to the great capitalists of Pskov and, receiving loans for
their operations from the zemskaya izba [town hall] , had to deliver there
' ' to the better men, to whom they had been assigned, ' ' all the goods they
purchased. For convenience of control all trade with foreigners was
limited chronologically to two fairs (January 9 and May 9) and topo-
graphically to three bazaars, two for foreign and one for Russian wares ;
goods could be exchanged only at these times and at these places. As a
measure of "protection" to native commercial capital in its struggle
with foreign capital, the Pskov decree of 1665 was, for its time, an
exceptionally bold step, testifying to the great class consciousness of its
authors ; it is no accident that it was connected with the name of Ordin-
Nashchokin, the father of Russian mercantilism. But it also shows the
reverse side of the picture; we see how hard it was for Russian capi-
talism to hold its own in the struggles with the West without artificial
support.
THE REFORMS OF PETER 271
The very methods of capitalistic exchange spelled disaster for trade
of handicraft type, as, taken by and large, Russian trade of the seven-
teenth century remained. ''And the Germans living in Moscow and in
the towns go through Novgorod and Pskov to their own land five, six,
and ten times a year with news of what is being done in the realm of
Moscow, what prices are being paid for wares," bewailed the Moscow
traders in their petition of 1646, "and whatever wares sell dear in
Moscow, these they begin to prepare, and they all act according to their
private information and according to letters, agreeing in concert. ' ' Out-
raged by such an invention of the devil as a postal system, the Russians
go on to cite an exceptionally striking instance of their helplessness
before the wily foreigners. Relying on the high price of raw silk in past
years, the Russian traders had bought up the whole supply of silk from
the tsar's treasury in the expectation of selling it to the "Germans" at a
profit. But on the European market at the time the price of silk had
fallen, and the "Germans" not only did not buy a single bale at the
price which seemed "just" to the Russians but even laughed at them.
"Gracious sovereign," implored the outraged Russian merchants, "have
mercy upon us, thy bondsmen and orphans, the traders of all the realm ;
look upon us, miserable ones, and do not permit us, thy majesty's born
bondsmen and orphans, to be in eternal poverty and destitution at the
hands of these unbelievers ; forbid our trades, ours from the beginning, to
be snatched from us, miserable ones. ' '
The commercial role that the postal system was already playing at
that time is evident from the arguments and projects of de Rodes, who
wrote less than ten years later than the petition we have just cited. He
ascribes the successful competition of the Dutch with the Swedes mainly
to the circumstance that the Dutch correspondence through Riga reached
Moscow more quickly than the Swedish through Narva. He therefore
advises absolute prohibition of the despatch of letters direct from Riga
to Moscow through Pskov and the making of Narva the central post-
office for the whole Baltic littoral; then all correspondence coming to
Moscow from the West by way of the Baltic would be under uniform
conditions. But Russian government circles and the business-men close
to them were in this matter good enough Europeans not to grant the
Swedes the postal monopoly. In 1663 the Muscovite state established its
own foreign post, handing it over for exploitation to a private entre-
preneur, John of Sweden. The post was despatched regularly every
Tuesday to Novgorod, Pskov, and Riga, and was received at Moscow
every Thursday. The Narva route, on the contrary, was completely
abandoned ; here the Swedes suffered a complete defeat. A letter from
Moscow to Riga took not less than 9-10 days, and postage was, to modern
272 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
eyes, incredibly high ; to send one zolotnik 5 to Novgorod cost six copecks,
to Pskov eight, and to Riga ten (0.9, 1.2, and 1.5 rubles, respectively, in
gold). Another foreign route went to Vilna and Konigsberg; letters to
Germany, if sent by this route, took two days. A letter reached Berlin
in 21 days and cost 25 copecks (3.75 rubles gold) per zolotnik. Letters
coming from abroad were first delivered to the Foreign Office ; no secret
was made of the fact that there they were opened and read by the
clerks in order that the government might be the first to know the
foreign news. The concept of the "se*crecy of private correspondence"
was then absolutely foreign not only to the Muscovites but also to their
foreign teachers ; at least, Kilburger writes of this obligatory perlustra-
tion as of a perfectly normal fact.
For the mass of the people, on the other hand, the very existence of
the post long continued to be a highly abnormal phenomenon. "And
they came and cut a hole from our realm into all their lands, that they
might see clearly all our state and business affairs," complained Pososh-
kov as late as c. 1701. "The hole is this: they set up a postal system,
and whether there is profit in it for the great sovereign, God alone knows ;
but how much ruin has been wrought by that post throughout the realm
it is impossible to calculate. And whatsoever is done in our realm is
peddled about in every land ; foreigners alone grow rich from this, while
the Russians grow poor. And on account of the post foreigners, laughs
ing at us, carry on trade, while the Russians strain all their strength
to make a living." Naturally Pososhkov's advice was to "close that
hole up firmly," "if possible altogether abandon" the post, and even
forbid private persons to carry letters with them. Granting the back-
wardness of Pososhkov's views (on the point in question it is interesting
to contrast him with another promoter of the Petrine period, Fedor
Saltykov, whose advice was to establish, along with the out-of-town post,
a city post, at the very cheapest rates), his sentiments cannot be ex-
plained by backwardness alone. Like every weapon of commercial com-
petition, the post still further strengthened the strong and weakened the
weak; since foreign capital was always far stronger than Russian, the
advantages from improved means of intercourse accrued to the former.
In the 1670 's Kilburger could communicate to his reader the astounding
fact that all the trade of Archangel was in the hands of a few men from
Holland, Hamburg, and Bremen, who maintained permanent stewards
and factors at Moscow; the Russians did not go to Archangel. Here he
enumerates a number of German merchants who specialised in the trade
between Archangel and Moscow and never went abroad themselves.
What was more, foreigners had, in his words, penetrated into the college
of gosts, and not only in the capacity of tsar's agents abroad, like Klink
5 1 zolotnik = Yqq funt = 2.4 drams.
THE REFORMS OF PETER 273
Bernhard and Fageler at Amsterdam, but, like Thomas Kellerman, even
at Moscow itself.
For the characterisation of foreign trade it remains to add that
imports as well as exports had, by the seventeenth century, already
assumed mass proportions. The time had long passed when only articles
of luxury were imported into Russia from abroad, as had been the case
in the time of Ivan the Terrible and in part even at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, when we find on the list of imported wares gilded
halberds, apothecaries' supplies, organs, clavichords, and other musical
instruments, carmines, threads, pearls, travelling utensils, mirrors, lus-
tres, etc. Lists of wares imported in the 1670 's furnish the following
figures, for example : in 1671 they imported through Archangel 2,477
tons of herring, in 1672 1,251 tons; in the former year 683,000 needles,
in the second year 545,000 ; 5 tons of dyestuffs of every kind and, besides
this, 809 kegs of indigo; 28,454 reams of paper. Especially significant
of the development of Russia's industry is the importation of iron and
iron wares, bearing in mind that, as we shall see further on, the Musco-
vite realm had at that time its own iron-works, with a very great output.
None the less, without counting iron wares, there were imported through
Archangel in 1671 1,957 bars of Swedish iron, so great was the demand
for this material in Russian workshops twenty years before Peter.
The commercial capitalism of the seventeenth century had an enor-
mous influence both on the foreign and on the domestic policies of the
Moscow government. Until the conquest of the Ukraine (1667), and in
part even until Peter, foreign policy was chiefly interested in the south ;
colonisation of the southern frontier, which had now fallen completely
into the hands of Moscow, furnished the immediate occasion both for
Prince V. V. Golitsyn's expeditions to the Crimea (1687-1689) and for
Peter's expeditions against Azov (1695-1696). The changed orientation
of this policy in connection with the Northern War (1700-1721) was
due mainly to the interests of Russia's foreign trade. De Rocles had
already shown, in the 1650 's, that the traditional route through Arch-
angel was cutting the profits of the capitalists in half at least, since
owing to climatic conditions commercial capital could be turned over
only once on the White Sea (this turnover was accomplished in five
months), but on the Baltic two or even three times (if we reckon the
shipping season of Riga or Libau at nine months, and the turnover with
maximum rapidity at three months). Formally de Rodes was working
in favour of Sweden, but as a matter of fact rather in favour of his native
city, Riga, whose trade was growing very markedly in the second half
of the seventeenth century. From 1669 to 1686 the exportation of flax
doubled (from 67,570 to 137,550 puds) ; exports of hemp more than
trebled (from 187,260 to 654,510 puds, reaching 816,440 puds in 1699) ;
274 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
everything else increased in proportion. The territories that fed the
trade of Riga were : first, Lithuania ; second, the neighbouring provinces
of the Muscovite realm. Economically the city was apparently more
closely connected with these territories than with its juridical "father-
land, ' ' Sweden, to which it then belonged ; Reval, the second Baltic port
after Riga, was in a similar position.
The Swedish government, one of the best bureaucratic governments of
Europe at the time, was perfectly conscious of this fact, as is evidenced
by an interesting decree of Queen Christina (June 3, 1648). By this
decree trade in Reval was given exceptionally favourable conditions, and
every effort was made to attract thither as many foreign merchants as
possible by making it quite simple for them to become citizens of Riga,
and consequently for them to enjoy the commercial privileges given in
such abundance to the local population as against the foreigners. Soon
after the Peace of Kardis (1661) the Swedish government secured "free
trade" between Russian and Swedish subjects. A little earlier, when
the Russians, under the influence of the Dutch, deprived the English
of their trade privilege and closed the English factory at Archangel,
Sweden had attempted to transfer English trade to her own port of
Narva. But all these efforts had accrued to the advantage of Sweden
as a political unit rather than to her Baltic subjects. Liberally granting
to foreigners the privileges enjoyed by burghers of the Baltic towns, the
Swedish kings were very illiberal in granting the privileges enjoyed by
Swedish merchants proper. We have noted the role played in the trade
of the time by the "Sound" tolls collected by Denmark from all ships
entering or leaving the Baltic. The Swedes had secured their abolition,
but for themselves alone ; the men of Riga and Reval continued to pay
them. In the second half of the seventeenth century Livonian grain
exports had begun to increase rapidly (from 2,380 lofs in 1669 to
6,991 in 1686 and 14,939 in 1695). But Charles XI had hastened to
impose high export duties on it in order to create preference for Sweden,
which then needed imported grain. The Baltic ports were as naturally
attracted to the east as they were repelled by their Scandinavian suze-
rain. When Peter began the Great Northern War with a campaign
against Narva, he appeared, as a matter of fact, as the emancipator of
Baltic commercial capital, held captive by Swedish violence. Riga was
bound to become a Russian port, since Russian trade had already out-
grown Archangel; on the other hand, Riga needed to free herself from
Swedish shackles, for otherwise Konigsberg, year by year enticing away
Riga's clients, would kill her, taking advantage of the fact that the
Konigsberg tolls were somewhat lower than the Swedish. Peter was
thrown back to St. Petersburg, after he had failed to master Narva,
THE REFORMS OF PETER 275
while his allies, the Saxons, suffered a great defeat under Riga; the
immediately manifest strategical advantages of an advanced post on the
Neva were bound to secure it primacy even later, when matters were
going more successfully. But from a commercial standpoint, for long
afterwards St. Petersburg could not compete with the natural route
through Riga or even through Archangel; it was necessary to create a
whole list of restrictions on both of these ports — to prohibit the importa-
tion into Riga and Archangel of certain wares, the trade in which St.
Petersburg was to monopolise.
On the other hand, the Russian government strove in every way to
facilitate Riga's competition with Konigsberg, whereas we learn from
one document that the Swedes, who had been so concerned about "free
trade," had in 1690 farmed Riga's whole trade in manufactured goods
to four men, while the rest of the merchantry could trade in manufac-
tured goods only during the fair (from June 20 to August 10). The
famous "reduction," or confiscation from the Livonian nobility of the
crown estates they had seized in past years is usually assigned as the
cause of the transfer of the Baltic provinces, but by no means occupies
first place among the causes that brought on the war. As far as Russia's
conquest of the east coast of the Baltic is concerned, the "reduction"
played no role at all. The Baltic nobility looked, not to the east but to
the south, desiring union not with the Muscovite realm but with Poland.
Patkul, the leader of the nobles' opposition, was much dismayed when
he saw the front of the Russian advance turning toward the west,
toward Narva; he would have preferred to see Peter in Finland. On
the other side, the burghers of Riga evidently did not feel the least
desire to pass from Swedish rule to Polish, and in 1700 it was not so
much the small Swedish garrison that defended Riga from the troops of
King Augustus as the armed citizens, whereas the Livonian nobility, in
the treaty with the same Polish king, proposed to deprive the Rigan
burghers of their immemorial privileges and to hand over the adminis-
tration of the city to the landlords of the environs. The alliance of
the Baltic barons with the Russian government dates from a much later
period, when the nobles' reaction, which in Peter's time temporarily
gave way before the alliance between commercial capital and the new
feudal aristocracy, had gained the upper hand.
Commercial interests on the Baltic Sea determined the combination
of powers at the outbreak of the Great Northern War, a combination
which endured, with interruptions, throughout the war. On such a
basis the alliance between Russia and Poland was just as natural as was
the attraction of Riga toward the Muscovite realm ; both powers needed
for their exports a "free" Baltic Sea, i.e., annihilation of the Swedish
monopoly. On this point Denmark was at one with them, though pri-
276 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
marily in the name of the Sound tolls, which she could not compel the
Swedes to pay, to say nothing of the traditional competition on the
Baltic of the two Scandinavian powers.
On the other hand, the Dutch who, precisely on account of these
Sound tolls, had fled to the White Sea, were bound to be very unsym-
pathetic toward the Russian-Polish enterprise. The mutual relations
between Peter and the Dutch republic during and on account of the
Northern War may serve as the very best illustration of how all
"cultural" influences bow before economic influences in case of conflict.
What, would it seem, could have been stronger than Dutch influence
on the "carpenter of Saardam," who even in his signature slavishly
copied the country that was in his eyes the embodiment of European
civilisation ? Yet in beginning the war he knew that his friends regarded
it more than coldly. Even the promise to halve the customs duties, as
against those at Archangel, did not thaw the ice. "Your present war
with the Swedes is very displeasing to the States," Matveyev, Peter's
representative at The Hague, wrote to the tsar, ' ' and it is quite worthless
to all Holland, because it is your intention to take a port on the Baltic
Sea from the Swede." When the news of the defeat of the Russians
at Narva reached The Hague, it produced "untold joy" there. Peter's
friends, together with the English, did not hesitate even to break up
Peter's alliance with Poland by fixing up a separate peace between King
Augustus and Charles XII. On Denmark, too, pressure was exerted in
the same direction. At the same time, all Peter's tempting promises on
the score of the commercial advantages that Baltic trade held out as
compared to that on the White Sea, owing to the more rapid turnover
of capital (de Rodes' old argument), had absolutely no effect on the
English. The Dutch formally declared to the Russian representative
that they were "bound by old treaties to aid Sweden in everything." It
needed the victory of Poltava on the one hand, the manifest consolida-
tion of the Russian's grip on the shores of the Gulf of Finland on the
other, to effect some change in the attitude of London and The Hague
toward Peter's foreign policy.
2. Mercantilism
Peter's foreign policy, then, was based on mercantilism. Mercantil-
ism, however, is a name given to any economic policy which, setting out
from the identification of wealth with money or with the precious metals
in general, sees in trade, which brings precious metals into the country,
the source of a nation's wealth. The first beginnings of mercantilism in
Western Europe are traced back to the end of the Middle Ages (the
thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries), and its full bloom to the epoch of
Louis XIV. Its theory, however, did not remain unchanged; whereas
THE REFORMS OF PETER 277
early mercantilism had rested entirely on trade in valuable raw ma-
terials, especially from the colonies, in the seventeenth century men
had begun to be conscious of the advantages in the sale of manufactured
goods, especially when the manufactures were worked up from raw
materials of which other nations had little or none. This second stage
of mercantilism, connected with the name of Colbert (and therefore
sometimes called Colbertism) and characterised by protection of native
manufacturing industry, has, as every one knows, survived to our own
time, constituting an integral part of state wisdom as preached by all
conservative parties.
To the Russia of Peter the Great both these stages were familiar.
The first had found juridical expression as early as 1667, in the cele-
brated Novotorgovy Ustav [New Commercial Statute], published at the
instance of Ordin-Nashchokin. The Ustav begins with a characteristi-
cally mercantilist declaration : " In all the surrounding realms free and
lucrative markets are accounted among the first matters of state; they
watch the markets with great caution and in liberty they keep them
for the collection of tolls and goods from all the world." The phrases
about "freedom" and "liberty" must not confuse us; there is here no
question of "free trade" in the eighteenth-century sense of the term,
but rather of abolition of all feudal impediments and levies of a nar-
rowly fiscal character, which had impeded trade for the sake of an
immediate penny profit to the tsar's (earlier the grand-prince's) treas-
ury. A multitude of petty levies, left-overs from appanage times, were
abolished by the Novotorgovy Ustav and replaced by a uniform customs
duty, which aimed less at immediate profit to the treasury than at crea-
tion of a favourable balance of trade ; thus, the duty on foreign spirits
was increased, while precious metals might be imported without any
duty. The importation of luxury articles, "objects of adornment," was
prohibited except by special licence.
In reality the tendencies of the Novotorgovy Ustav represent nothing
new. In France as early as the end of the thirteenth century, lest ' ' men
of no estate should be impoverished," persons having less than 6,000
livres annual income were forbidden to acquire gold and silver utensils,
to order more than four suits of clothes a year, etc. ; in Germany only
knights could wear velvet ; gold ornaments on the hat also constituted
a privilege of the nobility ; and as late as 1699 a servant girl who made
bold to don a dress with a train or one worked with lace risked banish-
ment from the ball to the police-station.
In Russian letters the exponent of the views of this early mercantilism
is Pososhkov, who, though he wrote in Peter's time, partly indeed at
the end of his reign, is essentially characteristic of the second half of
the seventeenth century. In Pososhkov 's opinion "it would not be bad
278 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
if every rank had its own designation : the townsmen, all the merchantry,
should wear their special clothes, so that they should not be like the
military or the official. Now by the clothes it can in no way be told of
what rank a man is, whether townsman, or official, or noble, or bondsman,
and that not only with the military men but also with the tsar's court
there is no distinction." Further on comes a project for uniforming all
the categories of the town population, in which provision is made not
only for the material of which the clothing is to be made, but also for its
cut and colour. Parallel is the advice to forbid the importation of silk
wearing-apparel and foreign spirits. Pososhkov was much disturbed
because foreigners presumed to fix a rate of exchange for Russian money
instead of accepting it at the value stamped on it by the tsar.
As it happened, three-quarters of a century before he wrote his book,
On Poverty and Wealth [in Russian], an attempt to reduce his cur-
rency theory to practice had been made at Moscow. Relatively success-
ful debasement of the currency during the simultaneous wars with
Sweden and Poland had inspired the government with the idea of coin-
ing copper rubles in place of silver. But the attempt to circulate this
fiat money had disastrous consequences: prices soared; private persons
began to bring prodigious quantities of the baser metal to the mint for
coinage; the copper ruble declined to one-seventeenth the value of the
silver ruble. The economic crisis provoked a serious revolt, which was
energetically suppressed ; according to Kotoshikhin, more than 7,000
were executed and more than 15,000 banished.
The "copper ruble" was the most striking episode in the early period
of Russian mercantilism, aiming as it did to gather into the treasury
chests as much gold and silver as possible. But Europe was too near,
and European influences too powerful. Such typical Muscovites as
Pososhkov had already begun to understand that mere "firmness" in
dealing with foreigners did not enrich a country; Pososhkov under-
stood that a rich treasury is possible only in a rich country. "All the
wealth that is in the nation is the tsar's wealth; likewise the national
impoverishment is the tsar's impoverishment," he wrote in one passage,
though, it is true, he was thinking only of a confiscated sable coat that
had rotted in the tsar's treasury. That the wealth of a nation is not
drawn from commercial profits alone was also quite clear to him; in
Pososhkov we find the quite definite transition to industrial mercantilism
of the Colbertist type. He would have been glad to have everything
made at home — "children's toys" and spectacles included — without
buying anything of the kind from foreigners, "not even at half price,"
and was confident that once they set smartly about a business like glass-
ware, for example, "we can fill all their realms." The measures he pro-
poses for the improvement of Russian industry — detailed control over
THE REFORMS OF PETER 279
the good quality of each individual article, fining of "negligent" crafts-
men, etc. — are purely mediaeval. But when he urges the erection of
cloth mills in Russia on the ground that then "those monies will be
ours in Russia," he is at one with contemporary European mercantilists;
perhaps he was even borrowing something from them, passed on by
Russians who had been abroad.
Russian official circles were acquainted with more modern economic
tendencies at first hand from the projects of the Holsteiner, Luberas,
who was vice-president of the Collegium of Mines and Manufactures
under Peter. In one of the memoranda he presented to Peter, this
cultured German official begins with what is really a severe criticism
of the Muscovite order of things, but without naming the Muscovite
realm. "It is well known," he says, "that in certain countries, despite
the fact that a great trade is carried on, the subjects get little benefit
from it. This happens when the inhabitants sell their products in the
raw state ; in this case the subjects of other countries work up the raw
material and derive a great profit, while the former owners earn a
scant subsistence. ... Or when the sovereign either carries on a cer-
tain trade for his own account or permits other men a trade monopoly
for an annual payment; it may seem that thus, at the beginning, the
treasury may gain a little, but in reality the manager of the enterprise
extracts the most profit ; general trade, which flourishes only when it is
carried on freely by private entrepreneurs with the aid of their own
credit and their own individual efforts, experiences great injury to its
regular course. ..." "Acquaintance with the past and with the
present makes it indisputable and clear as day that after the blessing
of God there exist two chief ways, the neglect of which, or attention
to which, conditions alike either the enslavement and ruin of countries
or their prosperity and growth; these are shipping and industry. ..."
As an example, Luberas refers the Russian tsar to his [the tsar's] own
country, "the excellent and indispensable products of which to this day
depend on foreign exportation and are balanced in exchange against
foreign merchandise, in part not necessary at all, since Your Majesty
possesses the possibility of carrying on the like manufactures of his
own."
Luberas could not show just what manufactures it was necessary to
establish in Russia since, as he said, the native specialties of the Rus-
sian realm were unknown to him. Another promoter set about this
task, this time a native Russian whom Peter had sent to England to
build ships, where during his lifetime he was almost arrested by the
English creditors of the Russian government and after his death was
sought for arrest on the tsar's order; this much-suffering man was
named Fedor Saltykov, a grandson of the Michael Saltykov famed in
280 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
the history of the Troubles and a kinsman of the tsar's family through
the Tsaritsa Praskovia, wife of Peter's brother, the weak-minded
Ivac V. In his "declarations beneficial to the realm," written in 1714,
along with a string of the most diverse projects (on the annexation of
Livonia to Russia, on the writing of the history of Peter the Great, on
the education of orphans of both sexes, on a municipal post-office, etc.),
Saltykov sketches a complete plan for creating "workshops" in Russia
for the production of silk brocades, cloth, paper, glass, needles, pins,
white iron, and tar.
Pavlov-Silvansky, the scholar who first published Saltykov's projects,
calls his readers' attention to the fact that by 1714 the government could
draw little that was actually new from the "propositions and declara-
tions." "Peter had begun to look to the production of silk stuffs, glass,
and writing-paper from 1709-1710 on," he writes. "In 1709 Peter
handed over to an Englishman, William Leid, the glass works existing
at Moscow, with the obligation to extend production and to teach Rus-
sian craftsmen the perfected method of glass production. In 1712, at
the order of the government, supplies for the glass business were sent
in from abroad. One young man, a certain Korotkin, Peter despatched
to Holland to study the writing-paper craft, and on his return to Russia
in 1710 lie received an order to build near Moscow a paper mill and
manufactory in the 'Dutch manner,' and several young men were
handed over to him as pupils; immediately afterward Count Apraxin,
on Peter's order (1712), constructed a paper mill at Krasnoe Selo.
The first silk factory was erected in 1714, prior to Saltykov's projects."
We may add that all these "beginnings" of Peter's represented in
themselves nothing new at all. Glass works had existed in the Musco-
vite realm in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. The first
paper mill was built almost as far back as the reign of Ivan the Ter-
rible ; construction of another had been begun at the command of the
Patriarch Nikon (1652-1666), but it had not been completed; while
by the 'seventies of the same century there were in operation two paper
mills, one the tsar's, the other private, belonging to our acquaintance,
John of Sweden, the farmer of the foreign post. The latter mill was
working in the ' ' Dutch manner " ; its products have been preserved,
with watermarks in imitation of the foolscap, the then celebrated foreign
mark. The first cloth factory had been founded by the same John of
Sweden in 1650 ; the first iron-works had appeared even somewhat
earlier ; and if the first needle manufactory in Russia did not arise until
three years after Saltykov's presentation of his projects, that fact does
not, of course, mean that without the advice of this promoter it would
never have appeared.
The theory of Colbertism, in Russia as elsewhere, arose on the basis
THE REFORMS OF PETER 281
of practice ; the theory was an attempt to systematise the practice. "We
have seen that Moscow's export trade at the end of the seventeenth
century presented a system of quite regularly and stably organised
monopolies. Now large-scale industry was striving to adopt the same
system.
At the beginning of the century industrial production in the Mus-
covite realm had, like trade, borne a handicraft character. The tsar's
trade had been the first to take on the character of large-scale com-
mercial enterprise; the tsar's (or court) industrial institutions were
among the first examples of large-scale industry in Russia. Next to the
tsar in the business of creating commercial capitalism in the Muscovite
realm came foreigners ; after the tsar they are the first mill-owners and
manufacturers in Russia. Moreover, like the foreign merchants, native
industrial entrepreneurs operated constantly under the protection of the
tsar's authority and in close alliance with him. From two examples we
can very well see how the tsar's manufactories evolved from branches
of the court economy.
In the court village of Izmailovo, near Moscow, glass production for
the domestic needs of the court had long existed. As the tsar's court
grew, more glassware was needed ; as early as 1668 we find at Izmailovo
a glass works with Russian craftsmen. But court tastes became finer
and were no longer satisfied with the rough work of their own crafts-
men ; only two years later Venetians were assigned to the plant, one of
whom, a certain Mignot, proved to be especially deserving of his reputa-
tion, and the craftsmanship of the Izmailovo works was acknowledged
even by foreigners to be "exquisite enough." The plant continued as
before to serve court requirements ; in the expense books of the Izmailovo
palace for 1677, for example, it is noted that on June 14 there were de-
livered to the Tsaritsa Natalia 25 tall glasses and 25 flat and divers
other glassware. Yet foreigners speak of the Izmailovo glass works
simply as a manuf actory belonging to the tsar, along with another simi-
lar manufactory belonging to a certain Kojet, who in 1634 had received
from the tsar a privilege for 15 years. The difference was only in the
fact that Kojet 's plant produced rough glass, for windows and bottles.
In 1632 the Dutchman, Vinius, received from the tsar a privilege for
the construction of an iron-works, with a guarantee of treasury orders
for cannon, shot, and other iron products, and with the right to export
any surplus abroad; this was, then, a formal agreement between a
foreign entrepreneur and the Russian government. Vinius failed, but
this did not mean the collapse of his enterprise; it merely passed into
other hands. The new proprietor, the Dane, Marselis, still controlled the
plant "as full hereditary property" when Kilburger wrote; he had
only just become the sole proprietor, having bought out three-fourths of
282 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
the enterprise from his son-in-law, Thomas Kellerman; for these three-
fourths Marselis had paid 20,000 rubles (300,000 gold)— i.e., the whole
enterprise was valued at 400,000 modern rubles. They used water
power; the ore was very good and was so easily secured that they did
not take the trouble to pump the water out of the shaft ; when too much
water had collected they simply began to dig in another spot. Accus-
tomed as we are to think of the first Russian plants as devoted exclu-
sively to the supply of "state" demands, we expect to find cannon,
shot, swords, cuirasses, etc., their only product. But a contemporary,
specially interested in Russian industry, asserts that Marselis' cannon
were very poor, though an attempt was made to export them to Holland
(we shall remember that this had been anticipated by the contract) ;
when they were tested, they all burst. This information is borne out
by the complaints of the Moscow government to its agent ; in the words
of the Muscovite diplomats, who before the Dutch Estates accused the
foreign entrepreneurs of divers deficiencies, the Tula plant supplied to
the treasury cannon "much worse than German work." As for small
arms, both Marselis' and the tsar's armoury made only "sumptuous"
ones ; real ones, as of old, were ordered from Holland, where the Moscow
government ordered some 20,000-30,000 musket barrels. Even Peter's
infantry was in 1700 armed with Liege and Maestricht weapons. Of
sword blades "they made [in 1673] few, and they were altogether bad."
As for cuirasses we learn an eloquent detail from a lawsuit between the
mill-owners, Vinius on the one side, Marselis and Akema on the other;
the former accused the latter, among other things, of not making armour
at all at their plants (contrary to the contract about the delivery of
weapons) ; they replied that they had kept an armourer for several
years, "but since the tsar's majesty had no work for him, they had let
him go back abroad." It must be added that at Akema 's plant no
weapons at all were made; this was a wholly "civilian" plant.
What then was produced by these plants, which, as we have been
assured, were founded for the satisfaction of "state" requirements?
The same things as modern factories, i.e., they served the domestic
market. Marselis' plant prepared bar and plate iron, iron doors and
shutters, moulded cast-iron plates for thresholds, and similar articles
which found an ever greater and greater market, thanks to the ever-
growing use of brick construction. Akema 's plant, beside this, prepared
ship anchors (indirect evidence of the wide extension of river ship-
ping) and was especially renowned for its bar iron, "splendid, supple,
and elastic, so that every bar could easily be bent in a circle." The
tsar's iron-works near Klin prepared absolutely the same kind of wares.
In 1677 were credited to income, including a remainder from the preced-
ing year, 1,664 puds of joint-iron {i.e., iron joints for brick construe-
THE REFORMS OF PETER 283
tion), 633 puds of bar iron, 3 barrels of "white" iron, 2,480 ham-
mered nails, 400,100 two-inch nails, etc. Eight years later there were
in the stores 1,901 puds of joint-iron and 1,447 puds, 35 funts of bar
iron.
There were instances in which the tsar appeared as entrepreneur pure
and simple with no relation to the court economy. Collins tells of the
huge rope manufactory built by Tsar Alexis for the purpose of giving
employment to the needy, who, it is said, were brought together there
"from the whole empire"; the needy, working in the tsar's enterprise,
earned their keep so that they cost the tsar nothing. Encouraged by
this experience, which so vividly recalls Michael's anxiety about na-
tional sobriety, Tsar Alexis began "each day to organise ever new and
new manufactures" with workers of the same type, whose scanty pay
was given in kind, while the monies "which the taverns afford him
are in this way preserved. ' '
3. Peter's Industrial Policy
Thus in the Russia of the end of the seventeenth century there were
present all the conditions requisite for the development of large-scale
production: there was capital (though in part foreign); there was a
domestic market; there were working hands. These factors are more
than sufficient to prevent comparison of Peter's factories with arti-
ficially forced hothouse plants. And nevertheless the collapse of
Petrine large-scale industry is a fact just as indubitable as the other
facts we have just stated. The manufactures founded under Peter
failed one after another ; hardly a tenth part of them dragged out their
existence to the second half of the eighteenth century.
A closer examination of this, the first industrial crisis in Russian
history, shows that nothing could have been more natural, and that it is
to be explained by the very fact formerly assigned as the cause of the
rise of large-scale industry in the reign of Peter. It is an absolutely
mistaken opinion that political conditions forced the growth of Russian
capitalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; but it is quite
true that the political framework of a state that was controlled by the
nobles prevented this capitalism from developing. Here, as in other
fields, Peter's autocracy could not create anything, but it did destroy
much; in this respect the history of the Petrine manufactures supplies
a perfect parallel to the picture of administrative havoc so well depicted
by Mr. Milyukov in his book.
"The merchantry of Your Majesty are very few, and it may be said
that already there are none," as an unknown Russian "who was in
Holland" wrote to Peter in 1715. His explanation was the competi-
tion of "exalted personages." But, over and above competition, Peter's
284 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
very method of influencing industry was such as to frighten capital
away rather than to attract it. Even in the Muscovite period industry
had been hampered enough by monopolies and privileges; but both of
these restricted the application of capital negatively, so to speak, by
showing it what it could not do. Peter tried to teach capital what it
must do and where it ought to go, and he executed his task with the
energy and force ever native to him, but with a naivete that might vie
even with the methods of Pososhkov, who made the amount of trading
profit depend on the trader's firmness of character. Commands in the
spirit of Pososhkov (and in the spirit of mediaeval mercantilism in gen-
eral) — for example, that serfs should wear Russian cloth only and
should not dare to wear imported cloth, and in case cloth failed should
sew clothes of kersey, or that no one should dare to wear clothes with
galloon, "for the English are richer than we, and they do not wear
galloon" — were the mildest and most indirect methods employed by
Peter to influence the development of industry.
He was capable of acting far more directly and simply. An edict
to the Senate (January, 1712) prescribed: "so to multiply plants, and
not in one place, so as in five years not to purchase an imported uni-
form, and to give an establishment to the trading men, having collected
a company, whether they are willing or not, and not to assess this plant
heavily so that they should have encouragement to earn in that busi-
ness." "We have heard a good deal about serf labour under Peter; but
of serf entrepreneurs we have heard far less often, and this type is
incomparably more interesting. In 1715 it came to Peter's ears that
Russian leather was not thought much of abroad since dampness soon
spoiled it, thanks to the Russian method of tanning it. Immediately it
was prescribed that the leather be made in a new way, for which pur-
pose craftsmen were despatched through the whole empire; "for this
instruction a term of two years is to be given, after which if any one
makes leather in the old way, he shall be sent to penal servitude and
deprived of all his property."
The results of such paternal care are shown by the well-known fate
of the north Russian linen-weavers. As we know, Russian linen and
linen-cloth went abroad in large quantities. Foreign merchants chanced
to reproach the tsar because the Russians sent them very narrow linen-
cloth, which was disadvantageous in use and therefore was priced far
more cheaply than if it had been broad. Immediately Peter most strictly
forbade the weaving of narrow linen-cloth and linens; but in the huts
of the Russian domestic-workers there was no room to set up broad
looms, and the domestic weaving of linen languished, ruining many
merchants engaged in the marketing of this merchandise. Similar were
the results of prohibiting the men of Pskov from trading in flax and
THE REFORMS OF PETER 285
flax products with Riga, a measure designed to stimulate the trade of
the port of St. Petersburg. That this whole campaign against domestic
weaving was intended to support the large-scale manufactories of linen-
cloth which were then being established (one of them belonged to the
empress) can hardly be doubted.
But Peter lacked the patience to wait until capital began of itself
to flow into the business, and he tried to drive capital into the manu-
facture of linen-cloth with a club. As a result, in place of the tens of
thousands of weavers now ruined, he got only the linen-cloth manufac-
ture conducted by a certain Tamesz ; it is true, this establishment made
goods, as foreigners declared, no worse than foreign goods, but it could
make ends meet only thanks to the fact that it was bolstered up by
having ascribed to it a large village (Kokhma) of 641 peasant home-
steads. A factory that had to be maintained by the labour of serfs
was no capitalistic enterprise. It was flaunted before foreign travellers
as a nursery of Russian craftsmen, but it does not appear that they later
found application for their skill.
Peter firmly believed in the club as a tool of economic development.
"Is not everything done by compulsion?" he asked his imaginary oppo-
nent in an edict of 1723, as usual passing from the tone of legislator
to the tone of publicist ; ' ' already much thanksgiving is heard for what
has already borne fruit. And such is not to be accomplished in manu-
facturing by propositions alone, but must also be compelled, and aided
with instruction, machines, and all manner of means ; and one must be
like a good manager, with compulsion in part. For example, it is
proposed : where they felt fine sledge-covers, there compel them to make
hats (supply craftsmen), so that it is not permitted to sell sledge-covers
if the proposed parts of the hats are not there ; where they make leather,
there hides for chamois and other things made of hides ; and when it is
established, then it may be without supervision." But this "be without
supervision" meant still remaining under inspection, only not of the
central authorities but of the "burmisters of that town" where the
manufacture was established.
The most European measure in this catalogue of compulsions was
the protective tariff; "whatever factories and manufactures are estab-
lished among us, it is incumbent to impose on such imported articles
a duty on everything except cloths. ' ' In fulfilment of this desire of the
edict of 1723 the tariff, published in the following year, imposed on a
large part of the manufactures imported from abroad a duty of 50-75
per cent ad valorem. It is evident that the domestic market must have
reacted to this tariff, since among the wares subject to a high duty was
iron, which for fifty years had been an object of mass consumption.
How rationally the tariffs were worked out is attested by an interesting
286 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
petition of the silk manufacturers, in whose interests silk-weaving had
already been subjected to prohibitive duties. They asked that the im-
portation of silk brocade be permitted again, on the ground that their
own manufacture "cannot soon come into condition to be able to satisfy
all the realm with brocades ' ' ; they deemed it more advantageous to get
into their own hands control over the trade in foreign silk goods, "in
order that we, at our own discretion, might permit the importation of
some brocades and prohibit others." Capital, driven into industry with
a club, sought permission to go back into commerce. . . .
This petition bears the signatures of three of the greatest personages
of Peter's court, Admiral Apraxin, Vice-Chancellor Shafirov, and Peter
Tolstoi. Their enterprise, in point of capital outlay, was most likely
the very greatest in the Petrine period. Something like a million gold
rubles (in modern values) had been invested in it; of this total the
treasury had supplied one-third, not counting the fact that it had pro-
vided the "company" with buildings, materials (we shall remember
that trade in raw silk was a tsar's monopoly), etc. And all this support
was lavished on a branch of production that had minimum significance
for the domestic market, and in view of Peter's medievally mercantilistic
measures against the spread of luxury among the masses ought not to
have had any at all. Meanwhile, in Peter's reign silk factories grew
like mushrooms; in Moscow alone there were five of them, and who was
there that did not rush into this profitable business! Here we meet
ministers of state (like those mentioned above), servants of the tsar's
palace (Milyutin), post-masters (Sukhanov), and Armenian sojourners.
In view of what we already know of Russia's position at that time in
the silk trade of the world, the attractiveness of the idea of selling the
"West silk products instead of silk is quite comprehensible. But it was
a childish fancy for a state in which industry had only just been born
to try to compete with Lyons or Utrecht. The warden of the Moscow
drapers' market officially declared that silks woven in the fatherland
"cannot compare in work with foreign [products], and in price are sold
from the factories higher than foreign ones ' ' ; and in behalf of all the
drapers he asked for free importation of foreign silk stuffs. The whole
enterprise was a typical adventure and soon crashed, although the
treasury had spent large sums on it, and capital had been diverted
from other manufactures.
In a different, but just as unhealthy, way Peter's mercantilism mani-
fested itself in the iron industry ; almost prohibitive duties were imposed
on iron, and at the same time the treasury plants at Tula were wholly
absorbed (from 1715) in the manufacture of the arms needed in such
quantities for the army as reformed by Peter. Supply of the popular
demand was wholly in the hands of privileged monopolist entrepreneurs
THE REFORMS OF PETER 287
like the celebrated Demidov or the tsar's kinsman, A. L. Naryshkin. It
was more advantageous to the treasury, both politically and financially,
to have its own small-arms and its own cannon than to be dependent on
Holland for them. But probably more favourable for the development of
the iron industry in Russia on a large scale had been the times when
Marselis made poor cannon and good frying-pans.
The intensive and compulsory development of Russian manufactures
under Peter had, of course, a third consequence, one long since noted
by historians ; Peter 's reign marks the beginning of the bondage factory.
The advantages of free labour in manufacture were as well recognised
then as in the preceding period; Tamesz was bound by contract, like
Vinius and Marselis in their time, ' ' to hire as apprentices and workmen
free men and not serfs, with payment for their labour of a worthy wage."
But when it was a matter of putting a hundred enterprises into opera-
tion all at once, including some very large ones (Tamesz had 841 work-
ers; at the Moscow cloth factory of Shchegolin's there were 730; at
another, Miklyaev's Kazan cloth manufactory, 742; at the Sestroretsk
arms plant 682; at the Moscow treasury sail-making factory 1,162; etc.),
the small number of free workers available could not be sufficient. On
the other hand, the monopolist entrepreneur was not much interested
in the quality of his products. The quality did not matter, for there
was no one else to buy from. Hence arose a natural tendency to replace
free labour with substitutes, and the government was willing to meet this
effort half way. "By the edict of February 10, 1719, it was prescribed
to send off to the linen-cloth factories of Andrew Turchaninov and his
colleagues, 'for the spinning of flax, the women and girls, who, whether
by the central offices at Moscow or by other provinces, are punished for
their faults.' By an edict of 1721 this measure was made general ; women
guilty of various offences were sent, at the discretion of the Collegium
of Manufactures and Mines, for work in company factories for a certain
term or even for life." The edict of January 18, 1721, permitting
merchants to purchase inhabited hamlets for factories and workshops,
definitely legalised this state of affairs. But if the factory owner could
now carry on his business with the labour of serfs, who prevented the
serf -holder from establishing a factory ? Peter 's measure brought little
advantage to Russian industrial capitalism, but it was one of the fore-
runners, remote enough as yet, of bondage, or landlord, capitalism.
Given a uniform character, and consequently uniform quality of labour,
the landlord's factory had every chance of defeating the merchant's;
and so it turned out in the course of the eighteenth century. By drawing
the string too taut, Petrine mercantilism broke it altogether.
But we should be very much mistaken if we ascribed this outcome to
the individual error of the "Reformer." Even the method by which
288 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
he introduced industrial mercantilism into Russian life was not a per-
sonal peculiarity of his; Pososhkov, a typical representative of the
average Russian bourgeois of the time, attached just as much importance
to "volitional impulse" and recked just as little of the objective condi-
tions as did Peter himself. Brought up on the tsar's monopolies and
surrounded by the conditions of handicraft production, Russian com-
mercial capitalism was very ill-adapted to the wide field of action on
which it found itself at the beginning of the eighteenth century, not led
thither by its own sweet will so much as driven thither by the pressure
of Western European capital ; to the latter fell the lion's share of all the
profits. Whereas in the seventeenth century the maximum number of
ships at Archangel, then the only Russian port, had not exceeded one
hundred, in the year of Peter's death (1725) there were 242 foreign
vessels in St. Petersburg and besides that 170 at Narva, 386 at Riga,
which had now also become a Russian port, 44 at Reval, 72 at Vyborg —
only Archangel itself was deserted, whither came only twelve vessels
from abroad ; from 1718 trade through this port had been hedged about,
in the interests of St. Petersburg, by such difficulties that foreigners had
begun to avoid it. In general, in point of the number of ships, Russia's
export trade had grown in half a century, since Kilburger's times, from
eight to ten fold.
Yet the Russian merchantry at this time were "very few, and it may
be said that there are none at all, for all the trades have been taken away
from the merchants, and there trade in those wares exalted personages
and their men and peasants." This expression of the unknown pro-
moter "who was in Holland" was fully supported, indirectly, by the
"exalted personages" themselves very soon after Peter's death. In 1727,
in the commerce commission of the Supreme Privy Council, Menshikov,
Makarov, and Osterman gave an "opinion," in which they agreed that
"the merchantry in the Russian realm is almost entirely ruined," and
that it was necessary "immediately to establish a commission of good and
conscientious men to consider that merchantry and to seek to heal
this so necessary nerve of the state from the root and from the foun-
dation."
By way of physic it was proposed to repeal certain arbitrary measures
of Peter's, for "the merchantry requires freedom," and in part to
return to Muscovite practice by reopening Archangel. But, and this
was the chief thing, it was proposed to review the industrial enterprises
of the Petrine epoch, deliberating on the factories and manufactures,
"which of them are to the advantage of the realm, and which a burden,"
and for the future to forestall excessive multiplication of such "burden-
some" enterprises by forbidding the merchantry "in future to purchase
hamlets." "And [forbidding] the landlords themselves to trade," the
THE REFORMS OF PETER 289
"opinion" diplomatically added; "but rather to bid them to render
powerful aid to their peasants in industries and in the multiplication
of rural workshops of all sorts. ' ' Giving a few sops to the bourgeoisie,
it was thus proposed to perpetuate trade by eminent personages through
their dependents. Thus appears before us, along with foreign capi-
talists, another social group reaping the fruits of the "reforms"; this
was the new feudal aristocracy, which, under the name the "supreme
lords," began to rule Russia the day after Peter's death.
4. The New Administrative Machinery
So long as Russia was under the control of the nobility, the work of
administration had been directly performed by those who held the
political power ; in the seventeenth century the vassals of the Muscovite
sovereign, the military landholders, had collected taxes, had administered
justice, and had maintained a police system just as they had done a
century earlier, and as, in reality, they were to do two centuries later if
we consider the social meaning of the phenomenon rather than its juri-
dical formulation. The uniform background presented by the regime
of the nobility, however, is very distinctly marred at the end of the sev-
enteenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries; for the shifting of
the economic centre of gravity could not fail to affect the apportionment
of power among the several groups of society. The springtide of com-
mercial capitalism brought with it something absolutely unprecedented
for Muscovite Russia, a bourgeois administration.
Russian historians have long since described how on the border line
between the two centuries, in 1699, the nobles' voevoda, a man who,
in return for service and wounds, had been appointed to his post to
"feed himself to satiety," had to surrender his post to the townsman's
burmister, a man who was something between "the responsible finan-
cial agent of the government" and (but more like this latter) an account-
able steward. But with their customary faith in the miraculous power
of the state, these historians have not been arrested by the fact ; for why
should not the state hand over local administration to the merchants if
it suited its convenience? Had not even Ivan the Terrible boasted that
from stones he could raise up the seed of Abraham ? To make a trader a
judge and administrator was many times easier than this. Yet if we
remember what a gigantic smash had accompanied the transfer of the
administration from the hands of the boyars, i.e., the representatives of
large landholding, into the hands of the nobles, i.e., the representatives
of middling landholding, we shall be able to understand how great a leap
was the transfer of authority, even though only of local authority, into
the hands of men who did not belong to the landholding class at all.
There is, perhaps, no better illustration of the revolutionary, catas-
290 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
trophic character of Peter's reforms than this change, which it has
become customary to explain by meagre considerations of state con-
venience. To deprive one class of power and transfer it to another
simply in order "more reliably to regulate financial responsibility" (as
Mr. Milyukov explains the reform of 1699) — this is something that not
one state in the world has done, simply because not one could do it.
It is true, Petrine Russia did not succeed in making the transfer for
long; in less than thirty years the nobles' state had regained the upper
hand. But even the attempt could not have been made had there not
existed a very special correlation of forces; it needed that alliance of
the bourgeoisie with the foremost members of the landholding class to
which we have already referred. When the new feudal aristocracy had
no further use for its bourgeois ally, the latter had to return to its
former political insignificance. But it immediately became clear that
without this meagre support the "supreme lords" themselves were quite
unable to hold their ground ; coming face to face with the nobility, which
had been pushed into the background, they rapidly had to give way to it,
and the nobles again steadied themselves in the saddle, this time for
almost two centuries.
The alliance of the bourgeoisie and the "supreme lords" even ante-
dated Peter. From 1681 date two projects, rather strange if taken
separately : one of them has long been familiar ; the other, if we mistake
not, was first expounded in detail by Professor Klyuchevsky, though
from the "state" point of view. Both have remained "interesting epi-
sodes ' ' of unknown inception and import. The one aimed at centralising
the collection of indirect imposts throughout the Muscovite realm in the
hands of the capitalists of the city of Moscow. The higher grades of
merchants at Moscow were to set up customs and liquor-excise officials all
over Russia. We need hardly say that our jurist-historians immediately
fell to pitying the poor gosts, who were charged with such a difficult
business, and explained the project itself by "the deficiency of state
arrangements. " But the gosts, in declining the proffered honour, did not
refer to the difficulty of the business but declined on the ground that
they knew no men in the province on whom they could rely — a reply the
meaning of which we shall grasp if we remember Kilburger's account
of the attitude of the provincial merchantry toward the privileged
factors of the tsar; the gosts of course knew even better than did stray
foreigners that the local merchants had a mind to "wring their necks."
In saying that they did not know whom to trust in the provinces, they
were really acknowledging that in the provinces no one trusted them.
It is possible that they were also disturbed over the indefiniteness of
their relations to the local noble administration.
The other project, whether connected with this or not, but advanced
THE REFORMS OF PETER 291
at the same time, was a project for the reform of the local adminis-
tration. "It was proposed to divide the realm into several palatinates
and to set over them available representatives of the Muscovite aristoc-
racy with the power of actual and at the same time irremovable pala-
tines." The projected palatinates were to coincide with the separate
"kingdoms" that had entered into the composition of the Muscovite
realm — Siberia, Kazan, etc. — so that they would be "not the petty
counties into which the Muscovite realm was divided but integral his-
toric provinces." This time the project did not fall through because of
the dissent of those upon whom such difficult functions were to have been
imposed, but for a different reason altogether ; the Church, the guardian
of tradition, rose against it in the person of the Patriarch Ioakim. This
fact alone ought to show that there was no question of restoring boyar
rule, but of doing something absolutely new and, for Moscow, unprece-
dented. Twenty years later, when the voice of the patriarch no longer
meant anything, this new and unprecedented something was moulded
into two institutions, the very names of which negated Muscovite tradi-
tion ; these were the ratusha [town council] and the guberniya [province,
from the French gouvernement].
The project of 1681 was a failure in so far as it was a bold attempt
to concentrate the collection of taxes in the hands of the representatives
of great commercial capital; yet it did not remain altogether a dead
letter. Beginning with the 'eighties, the voevodas and agents of the
central bureaux are systematically removed from the financial adminis-
tration ; not only are the indirect taxes taken from them, but newly
introduced direct ones no longer fall to them ; such was the fate of the
new strelets tax, the assessment of which was fixed by the gosts.
The first extant edict on the ratusha (March 1, 1698) refers to edicts
of similar import issued by Tsars Alexis and Fedor II. The language of
the edict of 1698 leaves no doubt that it was not merely a question of
"financial convenience," but of taking power from one social group and
transferring it to another. And in this sense it was understood by both
parties, both by the nobles' administration and by the townsmen. In
Vyatka, for example, the townsmen not only ceased to pay the voevoda
anything at all but did not even want to sell him foodstuffs at the
customary price, very indelicately intimating to their chief of yesterday
that it was time for him to betake himself out of the town. For their
part, the voevodas replied by collective retirement and attempts at
obstruction ; newly appointed ones refused to go to their posts, and old
ones shunned all business, conducting lengthy correspondence with the
Moscow bureaux on the topic of what they were to do now. As might
have been expected, the poorer townsmen turned out to be on the side
of the voevodas. They did not at all like to pass under the authority of
292 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
the hated gosts, and a number of provincial towns attempted to evade
the innovation (33 out of 70, according to Mr. Milyukov's reckoning).
The government had to make concessions ; in favour of the townsmen they
lowered the amount of taxation originally fixed ; the voevodas and agents
of the central bureaux kept under their administration the localities
where serfdom prevailed. In other words, Russia of the nobles remained
under the administration of the nobles ; bourgeois administration held
its own only in the towns, and the countryside fell under its control
only where there were no landlords, the whole north of the Muscovite
realm being left to the "burmisters. " This Dutch name was, it seems,
the only thing in the whole reform that belonged to Peter personally;
he had then just returned from his trip to Holland.
The principal feature of the project of 1681 was reproduced in full
in the edicts of 1699-1700 ; the administration of bourgeois Russia was
concentrated in the hands of the Moscow merchantry, who this time
evidently found no objections to the "burden" imposed on them. The
Moscow "burmisters" were to control the burmisters of all the other
towns, and the Moscow "ratusha" was to serve as a centre for all levies
based on the new system. In the hands of the plenipotentiaries of the
Moscow bourgeoisie was almost one-fifth of the whole budget, and far
more if we count in all the industrial enterprises of the tsar's treasury,
which were in fact administered by this same bourgeoisie. The system
of monopolies had never attained such development as in the first years
of the eighteenth century. The sale of whiskey had never ceased to
be an exclusive privilege of the treasury; tavern monies comprised the
bulk of the " ratusha 's" budget. From 1705 salt likewise became a
tsar's monopoly, yielding annually from three to five hundred thousand
rubles (three to three and a half millions gold). A little later tar,
chalk, train-oil, tallow, and bristles became treasury merchandise.
As "Whitworth wrote in 1708, "the court here is turned quite merchant
and not content with ingrossing the best commodities of their own coun-
try as tar, potash, rubarbe, isingglass, etc., which they buy at low rates,
and all others being forbid to sell, put it off to the english and dutch
with great profit, but are now further incroaching on the foreign trade
and buy up whatever they want abroad under the name of particular
merchants, who are only paid for their commission, but the gain and
risk is the czar's." 6 In exactly the same way Russian wares were sold
abroad direct, the tsar's "gosts," invested with the new name of "high
commissioners," being sent even as far as Amsterdam. There is no
need to say that, like the gosts of olden times, they traded not only for
the tsar but also for themselves personally, without using any special
6 Whitworth to Harley, April 29, 1708. Sbornik, v. 39, p. 262.
THE REFORMS OF PETER 293
care to distinguish the one function from the other. The influence then
enjoyed by the merchantry in the financial administration may be
judged by the right conferred on the ratusha (1703) to control the dis-
tribution of the sums that passed through its hands. As a result, the
whole financial apparatus of Peter's army was under the supervision
of the burmisters ; they distributed the wages in the provinces and
checked up on the use of their disbursements by the military authorities.
Nevertheless, even for the Petrine era such a state of affairs was too
incongruous to last long. Influential as the bourgeoisie (more foreign
than native) was economically, political power was not in its hands.
The ratusha with its bourgeois centralisation had long had a rival, in
whose name and for whose profit the bourgeoisie was really working.
The project of the "palatinates" of 1681 had no more fallen from the
sky than had the project of an all-Russian "House of Burmisters."
Even in the 1650 's we find on the frontiers of the Muscovite realm
authorities with extraordinary full-powers, and always drawn from the
great aristocracy, close to the tsar's court. Such was Prince Repnin,
who ruled first at Smolensk, later at Novgorod ; when he went to Moscow
for a time, his son assumed the command — just as though it were a
question of a real appanage principality. Such were Prince Romoda-
novsky at Belgorod and the famous B. A. Golitsyn at Kazan, who, in
the words of a contemporary, "ruled all the Low [all the Volga coun-
try] as absolutely as if he had been the sovereign." As befitted feuda-
tories, they were, in the first instance, military authorities — in modern
terminology, commanders of the troops of this or the other area ; but,
in accordance with feudal usage, the military authorities were the
authorities in general. The voevoda of Belgorod administered the towns
ascribed to Belgorod, not only in military but also in financial and
judicial respects. In 1670 several towns of the Smolensk area were
handed over to that of Novgorod, "with all service and with all the
revenues of those towns, and with trial and jurisdiction, both pomestye
and votchina matters."
To a foreigner contemplating the Muscovite order of things from a
bird's-eye view, so to speak, and from whom, therefore, the details of
Muscovite administrative technique could not conceal the essence of the
matter, the order of things established by the end of the seventeenth
century seemed a formal "partition of Rus. " The English seaman,
Perry, who arrived in Russia in 1698, writes that "such of the chief
Lords who were Favourites and commonly were of the greatest Families
in Russia . . . acted as sovereign Princes under the Czar, in the several
Provinces into which the Empire was divided; who had the Liberty to
make use of the Czar 's Name for their Authority in the issuing forth their
Orders, and might be said to have the sole Power of Mens Lives and
294 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
Fortunes in their Hands. And for the Examination of Causes, and for
the Execution of their Orders, each of these Lords, or Princes, held
apart an Office or Court of Justice in Mosco, where these great Lords
usually resided, and to whom there was an Appeal from the District of
all the lesser Towns and Cities in each respective Province. A Bench
of Diacks (or Chancellors) sate as Judges in each of these principal
Offices or Courts in Mosco, whose Business it was to hear and determine
Matters ; and to sign Orders, as well relating to the Treasury, and the
Military, as to the Civil Matters ; and to make a Report from Time to
Time of their Proceedings to their respective Lords, under whose Com-
mand they acted, and the said Lords seldom coming themselves in Per-
son to hear any Causes, the Diacks represented Matters to them in such
Form and Colours, as they thought proper : And beyond which, in
case of any Grievance, there was at that Time no higher Court of
Appeal. Each of these Lords had the sole Power also lodged in them,
to appoint and send Governors to the several Towns and Cities, to which
each Province was again subdivided into lesser Districts. . . . These
Governors . . . had the Power ... to return such sums as they col-
lected . . . into the grand Precause, or proper Office of each Boyar,
residing in Mosco, where the Account of the Collections made in each
Province was made out, (such as was thought fit), with the Account also
of what was expended on the several pretended Occasions, for the Serv-
ice of each respective Province ; the rest sent into the office of the
great Treasury in Mosco, as aforesaid." 7
"On Peter's part the organisation of the 'ratusha' was an attempt
to counteract" this rending asunder of the state by the "chief Lords
who were Favourites"; if we substitute for the symbolic figure of Peter
commercial capital, which at the beginning of the Northern War domi-
nated the situation, this appraisal of Mr. Milyukov's is entirely correct.
At the peak of its power the commercial bourgeoisie crowded Peter's
satraps into the background, and they did not even venture to offer
serious resistance (Perry does speak of some kind of opposition of the
boyars to the institution of the ratusha). But very soon the "chief
Lords who were Favourites" got their way. In 1707 or 1708 8 all the
towns except those that were within 100 versts of Moscow were "as-
signed" among the frontier centres: Kiev, Smolensk, Azov, Kazan,
Archangel, and St. Petersburg.
The guiding principle in the "assignment" of towns is clearly stated
by Tatishchev, a well-informed contemporary. The " gubernators "
i J. Perry, The State of Russia under the Present Czar, London, 1716, pp. 187-
190.
s The year of the institution of the guberniyas is not accurately known — an ex-
ample of how little even the bare facts of the history of the "period of reforms" has
been studied.
THE REFORMS OF PETER 295
tried to get hold of as many as possible of the richest possible towns:
thus, for example, Menshikov ascribed Yaroslavl to St. Petersburg "for
the wealthy merchantry " ; as the person nearest to Peter he received
two of the towns in his guberniya, Yamburg and Koporye, outright as
personal property. For the same reason, Menshikov had begun to get
towns even before the official "assignment" of them by guberniyas;
as early as 1706 Peter had handed over to Menshikov the government of
"Novgorod, Velikie Iraki, and the other towns belonging to them." But
the other " gubernators " were also men very close to the tsar; the
guberniyas of Azov and Kazan were in the hands of the brothers
Apraxin, one of whom, the Admiral F. M. Apraxin, was, next to
Menshikov, closer to Peter than any one else; that of Kiev was given
to Prince D. M. Golitsyn, who later became so famous as the leader of
the "supreme lords" in 1730, and whom Peter especially esteemed; in
Smolensk sat the tsar's kinsman, Saltykov.
We should be very much mistaken if we explained this local concen-
tration of authority in the hands of the tsar's confidants by considera-
tions of expediency — by a desire to be better acquainted with local
matters, to exercise a more direct influence on them, etc. This was out
of the question because it was impossible to be near to the tsar and near
to one's province simultaneously. The gubernators were for the most
part to be found wherever the centre of power was, and during the
Northern War they "usually were with the army." The one who was
most settled in his province was Prince D. M. Golitsyn ; but in place of
Menshikov in "Ingermanland" ruled the "landrichter" Korsakov; in
place of F. Apraxin in the province of Azov ruled Kikin ; in place of
Peter Apraxin in Kazan ruled the vice-governor Kudryavtsev; the
governor of Siberia, Prince Gagarin, whom Peter later had to have
hanged for an unimaginable robbery, was at Moscow for the most part.
The administration through the "Diacks (or Chancellors)" spoken of
by Perry thus continued even after the new division of the country
among the "chief Lords."
All that Peter demanded of them was that they should share their
revenues with the central authorities ; re-establishing the money con-
tributions of the mediasval vassal to the mediasval suzerain, the guber-
nators brought the tsar "gifts." These might be large (up to 70,000
rubles at one time) or small (reckoned in tens of rubles), regular (from
year to year) or extraordinary (on special occasions). 9 Of them all,
the governor of Kazan, Peter Apraxin, most comforted Peter with his
"gifts," sending the tsar in three years 120,000 rubles out of his zeal
(in modern gold currency somewhat more than a million) ; on the other
s On the occasion of Peter's wedding to Catherine the gubernators had to send
fifty rubles from each town.
296 HISTORY OF EUSSIA
hand, under him "were made waste" in the province of Kazan 33,215
homesteads of non-Russian subjects who paid tribute in furs, and
thence it soon proved "impossible to collect not only the extraordinary
but also the ordinary levies — on account of the great increase in the
number of abandoned homesteads." During his administration in the
province of Kiev, D. M. Golitsyn collected in "extra money levies"
500,000 rubles (4,500,000 gold), "and by those burdens and by the extra
levies the province of Kiev was made a desert. ' ' And still Golitsyn was
accounted the best governor!
The "chief Lords" had in their time been opposed to the organisation
of the ratusha. What was the attitude of the bourgeois ratusha toward
the institution of the guberniyas? Here, too, there were attempts at
resistance. The chief inspector of the ratusha, the famous Kurbatov,
protested bitterly against the "rending asunder" and strove to touch the
tsar in his most sensitive spot by pointing to the possible diminution of
revenues under the new order of things. Were it not for the ratusha
there would be no sinews of war, he threatened. It was hard for Peter
to find an answer to his arguments. He who was so soon to create the
bureaucratic regime in Russia now cavilled at the bureaucratism of
the ratusha, referring ironically to the ten receipts every paymaster
must take, and now harped on the outworn theme of the difficulties of
absentee rule. This theme was unapt for the very reason that, as
we have seen, the gubernators were for the most part absentee rulers,
although it is true that they gave themselves no trouble about receipts
or about accounts in general. Kurbatov 's objections merely delayed
matters a little. The sole concession to the bourgeoisie was that Kurba-
tov, the representative and defender of its interests, was made chief of
the guberniya of Archangel, the most bourgeois of them all. Commer-
cial capital and the feudal aristocracy thus delimited their spheres terri-
torially, the latter securing nine-tenths and the former retaining only
one-tenth of the whole territory and of all authority.
Yet this partition could not make a clean sweep. In the first place,
as Mr. Milyukov puts it, Peter "gradually created for himself ... a
special sphere of direct state-economic activity, taking under his per-
sonal direction the exploitation of a number of regalia." In other words,
as in the seventeeth centurj^, the largest economies of private votchinniks
were surpassed by the tsar's economy. Moreover, there remained a city
and the region around it not subject to territorial division ; Moscow and
the adjacent counties could not be included in the partition because they
were at one and the same time the centre both of the new feudal aris-
tocracy and of the greatest bourgeoisie. Since geographically Moscow
coincided with the centre of the tsar's economy, there was nothing more
natural than concentration in the same hands of authority over the
THE REFORMS OF PETER 297
"guberniya of Moscow" and of the management of the tsar's enter-
prises. If we did not become confused by associations evoked by a state
of affairs much later than 1711, if, besides, we were not under the
hypnosis of names, we should long since have found the correct place in
the history of Russian institutions for the Petrine Senate.
This "rare and strange" creation of Peter's, as the old jurist-
historians deemed it, was primarily an assembly of the tsar's responsible
stewards. This is perfectly clear if we read attentively the famous
"points" of March 2, 1711, by which the tsar, then setting out for the
Pruth campaign, 10 defined the activity of the "ruling" centre he had
just created. There were nine "points" in all; here are the last five:
"check bills of exchange and keep them in one place; inspect and ex-
amine the goods whether farmed out by chancellories or guberniyas;
try to farm out salt and take care of the revenue from it ; lease the
Chinese trade, forming a good company ; increase the Persian trade and
show favour to the Armenians as much as possible and make it easy for
them, as far as is fitting, so that they may desire to come in great num-
bers." Kilburger's "college of gosts" had fulfilled the same functions
in its time. The fact that this college now included, along with Vasily
Yershov, a former bondsman who had become "intendant" of the
guberniya of Moscow, a great number of former boyars (not of the
first rank, it is true), is only additional evidence of how all concepts
were mixed up with the displacement of the economic centre of gravity.
The functions of those boyars who happened to become senators were
perfectly consonant with their new role. Of the original personnel of
the Senate, Samarin was General-Kriegs-Zahlmeister, i.e., paymaster-
general of the army; Opukhtin had charge of the silver bazaar, the
Merchants' Hall, etc.; Prince Volkonsky of the Tula arsenals, etc.
Not one of the "supreme lords," such as Menshikov and Apraxin,
entered the Senate; they wrote "edicts" to it, whereas the Senate's
right to send edicts to them was very doubtful. From a number of
Peter's edicts we learn that the gubernators paid not the slightest at-
tention to the orders of the Senate, regardless of the menacing declara-
tion of the edict of March 5 : "we have appointed a Governing Senate,
to which, and to the edicts of which, every one will be obedient as to us
ourself, under pain of severe chastisement or of death, according to the
fault." These words of the creator of the Senate have evidently
produced more impression on later historians than on those to whom
they were more directly addressed. Even after this edict the governors
more than once drove Peter to threaten to deal with them "as is meet
for robbers," and they took not the least notice, understanding very
io After the battle of Poltava Charles XII of Sweden took refuge in Turkey,
whither Peter attempted to follow him in 1711.
298 HISTOEY OF RUSSIA
well that words accomplish nothing. Historians, paying most attention
to the title of the institution and to the first point of Peter's instruc-
tions ("deal out true justice," etc.), have worn themselves out talking
about the rare and strange institution, alleged to have been borrowed
from Sweden. In fact, the Senate of Peter the Great had nothing in
common with the Swedish, aristocratic and genuinely "governing,"
Senate except the name.
It would not have been at all surprising had the tsar's stewards been
invested with wide judicial and administrative powers at the beginning
of the eighteenth century, since at the end of the century it was nothing
to convert the tsar's valet-de-chambre into prime minister. Opposition
to the Senate could appear only in case it, like the ratusha, acquired a
social significance and became a weapon of the bourgeoisie in its strug-
gle for power with the nobility. But the bourgeoisie's centre, such
as the ratusha had been, had by the time of the Senate's appearance
been definitely destroyed; the "supreme lords" had "rent asunder"
among their guberniyas all that the merchant administration had man-
aged to get together. Reform of the Senate itself was necessary only
when the "supreme lords" had entered this institution, in which origi-
nally they had not been represented and had been little interested.
But even before this final note in Peter's administrative reforms had
been struck, the fierce hatred of the middling and petty military servi-
tors had been earned by the fiscals, an instrument of senatorial
administration possessed of two basic features : in the first place, this
institution was actually, not in name alone, borrowed from the West;
in the second place, a large share of influence on affairs was left, though
indirectly, in the hands of non-nobles. The name "fiscals" is so defi-
nitely associated with the idea of secret investigation and espionage
that it is not so easy to discover the real meaning of this institution.
Nevertheless, taking it as it is depicted in contemporary documents,
particularly in the instruction of March 17, 1714, which put the finish-
ing touches on the fiscal's office, it is not hard to see that in Peter's
imagination there was floating, in rather nebulous form, something in
the nature of the modern public prosecutor.
The fiscal was the representative of the public interest, protecting
"the people's interests" against encroachments on the part of private
persons. Hence his jurisdiction included not only "extortions and
peculation" but also all cases in which no private person had occasion
to intervene. If a traveller was murdered, or if an estate was left with-
out an heir, the investigation, or the protection of the untended estate,
was the business of the fiscal. In Muscovite Rus the public interest as
such had had no guardian of its own ; the nearest approach to the fiscals
were the "guba heads," but they had protected the interests, not of
THE REFORMS OF PETER 299
society as a whole but only of the local population, whose organs they
were. But these functions of the fiscals, which had been inspired by
acquaintance with European customs, were sloughed off or relegated
to the background even in Peter's time, as soon as the office of public
prosecutor appeared under its own name [procuratura].
In the imagination of contemporaries and in the memory of pos-
terity was far more vividly imprinted the other task of the fiscals, the
attempt to increase the tsar's revenue; their method was very original,
consisting not in securing new sources of revenue, but in doing away
with the drain on the revenue arising from abuses and peculation. Yet
the old method of increasing the revenues did not wholly vanish from
the practice of the fiscals; the famous Nesterov in his "report" enumer-
ates among his services, not only the disclosure of abuses but also his
project of founding a merchant company to protect the interests of the
native merchantry from the competition of foreigners. But this is only
one of the points in the ' ' report, ' ' and the last one at that ; in the rest,
it is a question of detecting or anticipating stealing, whether from the
tsar's enterprises (e.g., velvet entrusted to an agent for sale) or from
the state treasury (e.g., from the mint) ; nor is it evident that this
servant of Peter the Great was aware of that imponderable distinction
between what was the sovereign's and what the state's under the regime
of an absolute monarchy, a distinction which our jurist-historians have
drawn with such subtlety. The tsar 's fiscal, with the indef atigability of
a bloodhound, pursued equally the theft of the tsar's velvet and the
bribes that the court judge, Savelov, had taken, striving to convert this
hunt for grafters into an hereditary profession. "They are a common
company of nobles," Nesterov complains of his colleagues, "while I,
thy slave, have been mixed among them alone with my son, whom I am
accustoming to the office of fiscal and have as a clerk. ..." And from
this same passage of the "report" we learn, incidentally, that only this
one non-noble fiscal took his business seriously; the rest, the "company
of nobles," "avoiding service and errands, flive themselves like down-
right parasites in their own hamlets and care about them and not about
their duties as fiscals." Granted that this former bondsman was on
this occasion finding fault with his former masters, yet Peter's edicts
themselves testify that the tsar did not esteem the nobles as guardians
of the tsar's revenues.
The office of fiscal was at once thrown open to the bourgeoisie. "Select
the chief fiscal, a clever and good man, of whatever grade he be," reads
Peter's first detailed command about the new office (the edict of March
5, 1711; in the edict of March 2 fiscals are only mentioned). In ac-
cordance with this requirement (to select without reference to grade),
the first chief fiscal was taken from among the secretaries of the Pre-
300 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
obrazliensk Bureau, Peter's police department. The men of rank
immediately adopted obstructive tactics against their superintendent
of no standing, and with such success that the new chief fiscal, appointed
in April, 1711, by August had no subordinates, no chancellory, not even
office room. But Peter, or rather the bourgeois circles that had not yet
lost their influence over him, were not deterred, and even the edict of
March 17, 1714, requires that at least two of the fiscals attached to the
Senate should be of the merchantry; in exactly the same way some of
the posts as fiscals in the provinces had to be given to the bourgeoisie.
In one of the later edicts of the Senate we actually find that municipal
fiscals were to be "elected of the provincial fiscals and of all the mer-
chant folk of the town."
As a matter of fact Nesterov was the last chief fiscal not drawn from
the nobility; his place was taken by a noble, a colonel of the Guard.
But when the bourgeoisie first appeared in the guise of defender of the
public interest and comptroller of the nobles' administration, it in-
evitably provoked the men of rank to an outburst of rage difficult to
describe; only the original words of an orator who had absorbed all
the nobility's rancour against the new institution can give any idea of
their feelings. In his famous Lenten sermon (1712) Stefan Yavorsky
sounded frankly revolutionary notes: "The law of the Lord is pure,
but the laws of man mayhap are impure. What kind of a law is it, for
example, that sets up a superintendent over a court and gives to him the
freedom that whom he wishes to accuse, he accuses, whom he wishes to
dishonour, he dishonours ; and to lay calumny on a privy judge is free
to him. Not so ought it to be : he sought my head, laid calumny on me,
and did not bring proof — now let him lay down his own head ; he spread
a net for me, let him be taken in the toils ; he dug a pit for me, let him
fall into it himself, the son of perdition. . . . Whatever objection you
make to him [the fiscal] he considers as an insult to his honour." This
rather original theory of the criminal responsibility of the prosecutor
in case of the defendant's acquittal was actually put into practice; the
edict of March 17, already cited, provides for fiscals a "light fine" for
unintentional mistakes, and a penalty equal to that which the person
accused would have been subject to in case of proven malicious intent
on the part of the fiscal. But this meant the conversion of the fiscal 's
inquest into a sort of duel between the investigators of abuses and the
"abusers": either you me, or I you. Heroes, fanatics of their fiscal
duty like Nesterov, were as rare here as everywhere. This point of the
edict of March 17, 1714, was a great victory for the nobility over the
bourgeoisie — the beginning of the end of bourgeois administration in
general.
Although doomed, this administration was able, if we are to believe
THE REFORMS OF PETER 301
certain very authoritative statements, to deal one more blow to the old
nobles' administration. Vockerodt, who wrote not more than twelve
years after Peter's death (he was, consequently, almost a contemporary
and in any case had heard much from contemporaries), thinks Nes-
terov's reports as fiscal the starting point of Peter's greatest administra-
tive reform, the introduction of the "collegia." He presents the matter
as follows: for the first thirty years of his life Peter "cared little or
nothing" about the internal administration of the realm, being com-
pletely absorbed in the reform of the army and creation of a fleet. It
was not foreign policy alone, as we are wont to think, that urged him
on in this direction ; Peter was conscious, says Vockerodt, ' ' what signifi-
cance a standing army has for autocratic power." We shall presently
see that in this passing observation the Prussian diplomat "briefly,
clearly and as usual intelligently" (the characterisation that Mr.
Milyukov gives Vockerodt) had noted one of the cardinal lines of Peter's
policy. Thus, Peter, who for the first thirty years of his reign had not
concerned himself with questions of internal administration, first turned
his attention to it when it had become utterly chaotic ; and what first
opened the tsar's eyes, according to Vockerodt 's assertion, was a memo-
randum composed and submitted by Nesterov in 1714. At that time
Peter may have been persuaded that the reform of the army and the
fleet on European models had yielded splendid results; it was most
natural that he, a military instructor and marine engineer, should con-
ceive the idea that, by applying the same methods in the field of civil
administration, he might easily make it a masterpiece just as he had
the Baltic fleet or the Preobrazhensk grenadiers. Since Sweden had
been the nearest exemplar in military and naval matters, it was no less
natural that he should turn thither for models of administration also.
So he sends to Sweden (with whom he was then still at war) a trusted
man, giving "money on money," to secure, to purloin, so to speak, the
statutes and regulations of Swedish administrative institutions, as one
might purloin the plan of a fortress or the model of a ship. When this
peculiar spy returned to Russia with his booty, the documents secured
were hastily translated into the Russian language, and there were
created in Russia a number of administrative organs presenting an
exact copy of the Swedish ones. Since instructors invited from abroad
had played a conspicuous role in military and naval matters, they now
hastened to find some more instructors; a large number of foreigners,
especially Germans, were invited to serve in the newly founded "col-
legia." It soon developed, however, that those who had been invited
were ill acquainted with Swedish technique, and what was still more
important, that good administration requires more than technique.
Moreover, the new central institutions proved to be an island in the sea
302 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
of old "prikaz" Rus, for the provincial administration remained un-
changed. All this compelled Peter to bide his time in the further de-
velopment of the new institutions and even to undo much that he had
done. The "collegia" preserved their names, but their system reverted
in many respects to the former, Muscovite type, while at the same time
Peter energetically set about a re-working of the local administration.
This much simplified and even naive interpretation has been so re-
touched by modern historians as to destroy the classic clarity of the
picture sketched by Vockerodt. We know now that the introduction of
the "collegia" was not such a childishly simple operation as he repre-
sented it to have been ; that Peter had at his disposal, not only the re-
ports of his spy but a number of detailed projects of divers origin ; that
the "collegia" were not introduced suddenly, as though by a military
command; that several years elapsed between the first idea of the "col-
legia" and the realisation of this idea; finally, that the civil instructors
invited from abroad were no worse than the military ones, and among
them we find such men as Luberas and Fick, on whose administrative
ideas political circles of the time depended long after Peter's collegiate
reform. But, in complicating the picture, in correcting its rough con-
tours, modern scholars have not annihilated Vockerodt as completely as
might seem to be the case. Even now we must acknowledge that the
starting point of the reform was the administrative chaos, which actu-
ally did attain its apogee in 1714, and that in the disclosure of the situa-
tion to Peter his bourgeois administration, represented by the fiscals,
really must have played a great role.
The only enduring result of the reform, as Vockerodt particularly em-
phasises, was the introduction into Russian fiscal administration of those
methods of strict accountability "which exist in commercial establish-
ments. ' ' At the instigation of commercial capitalism the reform had been
undertaken ; under its tutelage it was consolidated ; to recognise the
"collegia," quite apart from their salaried bureaucratic personnel, as
part of that same "bourgeois administration," it is not necessary even
to refer to the share in their system allotted to the interests of capital-
ism and capitalists. The "collegia" were the highest organs of the cen-
tral administration, corresponding to modern ministries; but whereas
under Nicholas II both trade and industry were content with a single
ministry (and until shortly before the Great War with a single depart-
ment of the one ministry), under Peter not only did there exist separate
"collegia" for trade and industry, but an attempt was made to create
a special ministry of factories, the "Collegium of Manufactures,"
apart from the Ministry, or Collegium, of Mines. If we add that finance
and accounts were allotted three entire central institutions (the Kam-
mer, Staats, and Revision Collegia) or as many as all foreign policy
THE REFORMS OF PETER 303
taken together (Foreign, War, and Admiralty Collegia), but that for
public instruction and even for police there were no central institutions
at all (among the "collegia" there was none corresponding to the Min-
istry of the Interior), the comparison with a "commercial house" does
not seem overdrawn.
Perhaps there is nothing more remarkable about the collegiate reform
than that it grew out of anxieties about trade. A collegium appears
under Peter's pen for the first time in the edict of January 16, 1712,
which says: "found a collegium for commercial matters and administra-
tion, in order to bring them into better condition, for which are requi-
site one or two foreigners (whom it is requisite to make content, that
they may show truth and zeal in that) sworn to establish a better order
of things, for it is incontrovertible that their trade is incomparably
better than ours." For this first Russian collegium Peter's represen-
tative at The Hague was charged specially to seek out bankrupt Dutch
merchants, since it was assumed that those "to whom any injustice had
been done in their fatherland" would, in the first place, more willingly
enter foreign service and, in the second place, more zealously serve their
new sovereign, having no interest in concealing from him the secrets of
the commerce of their fatherland. As a matter of fact, however, they
did not succeed in realising this most original collegium of bankrupts,
and the Commerce Collegium was organised on the Swedish model, with
the aid of the same Fick and Luberas.
That it was the fleet and the army that led Peter to the idea of
"collegia" is another point on which, apparently, Vockerodt is not to be
corrected ; in proof he needed only to refer to the famous edict prescrib-
ing that the regulations of all the ' ' collegia ' ' should be drawn up on the
model of the Admiralty. What is good on shipboard cannot be wrong
anywhere. But this subjective aspect of the collegiate reform does not
prevent it from having been objectively a tool of the selfsame com-
mercial capital that was served by the whole Petrine reform in general.
However, the "collegia" came too late for the bourgeoisie to be able to
make use of them. We shall presently see that in contrast to the
ratusha, which was in merchant hands for a number of years, the
"collegia" were not in them for one moment, and that the "supreme
lords" did not have to "rend asunder" the new institutions simply
because they immediately became masters in them.
But this was the practical aspect of the matter; it is of exceptional
importance that in theory the collegiate reform constituted a great con-
cession to the public opinion of the nobility, so unceremoniously dealt
with in 1699. In introducing the new institutions, Peter, as we saw,
was consciously guided by technical considerations, and unconsciously
was serving the interests of that economic force that was driving Russia
304 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
into Europe, irrespective of any one's subjective plans and intentions.
But when he begins to explain the reform to his own subjects, we hear
notes, quite unexpected and in harsh dissonance with all that we are
accustomed to expect when we think of Peter the reformer. The fanat-
ical worshipper of the cudgel, confident that everything depends on
giving good orders and seeing that they are executed, suddenly begins
to worry about what his subjects will say of him. Wherefore are the
colleges being introduced? "Lest intractable men should slander and
say that the monarch commands this or the other by force and out of
caprice rather than by justice and by truth," is Peter's answer through
the mouth of Feofan Prokopovich. For thirty years this man Peter
had been convinced that by force he could do anything ; now he talks of
not wanting to be reproached for using violence.
Captivated by his own argument, Peter's secretary (such was, of
course, Prokopovich when he wrote this preface to the Ecclesiastical
Regulation) launches on nothing more nor less than a critique of per-
sonal power in general and a laudation of political liberty. ' ' The truth
is more certainly discovered by corporate counsel than by a single per-
son. ..." And what is most important, "A collegium has the freest
spirit for justice : not as under a sole ruler is the oppression of the
strong to be feared." But what would have happened to nine-tenths
of Peter's edicts without dread of the "oppression of the strong"?
What is most interesting is that these were not mere words. In organ-
ising the Collegium of Justice, Peter recalled that it "relates to all the
realm" and that there might be "reproaches that they had chosen some
one out of partiality"; therefore it was prescribed, in the first place, to
elect its members "by all the officers whoever are here" and, in the
second place, "to pick out a hundred of the better nobles, and they
likewise ' ' should elect three members of the Collegium of Justice. When
later, in 1730, the nobility talked about "balloting" by all the nobles
for the members of the Senate they had a splendid precedent at hand ;
did the Senate "relate to all the realm" any less than did the Collegium
of Justice?
But so far these were only concessions in favour of the nobility — and
not made by the bourgeoisie ; who wielded authority in the new institu-
tions is sufficiently evident from the roster of presidents of the "col-
legia." At the head of the War Collegium stood Menshikov, of the
Admiralty Apraxin, of Foreign Affairs Golovkin, of the Kammer Col-
legium Prince D. M. Golitsyn, of the Commerce Collegium Peter Tolstoi ;
if we add to these the most influential senators, Musin-Pushkin, who
became president of the Staats-Collegium, and Prince Yakov Dolgoruky,
who occupied the same post in the Revision Collegium, then the roster
of the "supreme lords" who had been controlling Rnssia as "guberna-
THE REFORMS OF PETER 305
tors" is almost entirely coincident with the roster of the new ministers.
The only exception is the president of the Collegium of Mines and
Manufactures, the celebrated Bruce; and this exception is no less to
be remarked than was the fact that the "guberniya" of Archangel had
been left in the hands of Kurbatov. There still remained a little corner,
territorial in the earlier case, organisational in this case, in which the
"supreme lords" did not venture to exercise direct control. But Bruce
was a more complaisant man than Kurbatov and even easier to get along
with. He flatly refused appointment as a member of the "privy coun-
cil" on the ground that he was a foreigner. And one of Peter's edicts
inadvertently reveals why the ministry of factories and works was
turned over to this modest man; in 1722, in taking the "collegia" from
their former presidents, the emperor remarks that this change should
include the Collegium of Mines — "and I know not a man out of the
ordinary." Bruce was not a politician but simply a good technician ; it
was not easy to find any one to replace him, and at the same time he
was in no one's way. His presence among the presidents of the "col-
legia" did not mar the general picture of the "supreme lords" holding
sway over Russia through the "collegia."
The "rending asunder" of the national inheritance was bound to be
continued without hindrance, although in a different form. The famous
case of Shafirov reveals a bit of collegiate economy in the first years
after the reform. The introduction of accountability had, as we know,
been one of the very strongest points of the reform. But it sufficed to
put at the head of a collegium the "Most Serene Prince" for it to be
removed from all control; Menshikov promptly demanded for his de-
partment everything that was appropriated for the whole army, and
to demands that he "give accurate account of receipts and expendi-
tures" he replied with contemptuous silence. Meanwhile, the army
never attained its full complement, with the result that each year large
surpluses remained at the disposal of its commander-in-chief. But the
attempt to penetrate the secret of the use to which they were put al-
most cost Shafirov his head. Upon his banishment from the personnel
of the "supreme lords" the last man retired who both by his origin
(Shafirov was of a Jewish merchant family) and connexions stood
closest to the bourgeoisie. The feudal character of the supreme admin-
istration became purer than it had ever been, while the distinction
between the "old" aristocracy, represented by the Golitsyns and Dol-
gorukys, and the "new," represented by the Menshikovs and Tolstois,
never was so great as to create grounds for a political realignment.
But under such conditions the new institutions were bound very soon
to become bankrupt, not in consequence of technical causes, as Vockerodt
thought (the ignorance of the hastily hired German officials and the in-
306 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
adaptability of the central administration to the local), but for purely
social causes. Recognition of this bankruptcy led to what was, chrono-
logically, Peter's last reform, the reformation of the Senate and "col-
legia" in 1722. Officially, of course, this change was motivated by
considerations of state advantage ; the edict of January 12, 1722, begins
by describing how difficult is the task of the Senate and of the senators,
and how impossible it is to be president of a collegium and a Senator
at one and the same time. The direct conclusion following from this,
it would seem, was that the presidents must be released from their
"labours" in the Senate; this was done in the cases of Menshikov,
Golovkin, and Bruce. They were released from the obligation of attend-
ing the Senate at the usual time but were left complete masters at
home, each in his own collegium. But Golitsyn, Tolstoi, Pushkin, and
Matveyev (president of the Collegium of Justice) were rather unex-
pectedly treated in just the opposite way; they were "released" from
command in their "collegia" but were left seats in the Senate. In other
words, the real one-man power wielded by each of them (it is hardly
necessary to explain to the reader that the "collegiate character" of
the Petrine institutions was just as much an empty form as was the
collegiate character of the later bureaucratic "board") was taken from
them, and they were left one vote each in an institution where the most
important questions of state were jointly deliberated. This simply
meant, as when in later times a minister was appointed a member of the
Council of State, honourable discharge. Those contemporaries who,
like foreign diplomats, were closely observing the course of events were
never so naive as to accept, as do modern historians, the edict 's explana-
tion at its face value. "The tsar has dismissed from office almost all
the presidents of the collegia or councils," the French ambassador
Campredon informed his government. "All these lords are senators, and
henceforth they will simply sit in the Senate, before which formerly
they supported their opinions."
Though he did not realise that the nobility was recovering lost ground,
Peter did see one thing clearly : that he could not rely on that group of
men with which he was accustomed to deal ; that its interests differed in
some fatal fashion from the interests of the business he had in hand;
that these men were not accelerators but brakes, if not indeed conscious
foes of his undertakings ; that under his eyes feudalism, revived by the
seventeenth-century restoration, was struggling with the new economic
forms brought in from without ; that of course what was native would
assimilate to itself what was brought from the West, and not the other
way about ; that his whole attempt was condemned to failure in advance.
Meanwhile, the requirements of this same business compelled him to go
to Persia, two thousands versts away. And it is significant that whereas
THE REFORMS OF PETER 307
on going away in 1711 he created an organ of administration — the Sen-
ate, — on going away in 1722 he left behind him an organ of supervision
■ — the office of procurator-general.
History has subsequently made of the procurator-general a sort of
vizier, a minister of all affairs, or, if you like, the tsar 's chief burmister.
But this was not at all what Peter had in view for him. His procurator-
general, as sketched by the instruction of April 27, 1722, administers
nothing. He merely watches, watches diligently the sly and lazy slaves
who bear the title of senators and privy councillors — both that they
should not waste their time, should work "truly, zealously, and in or-
derly fashion," and that they should not forget the rules laid down for
them by Peter, should act "according to the regulations and edicts,"
and not in appearances only ("not on the table only should accomplish
business but in real action should execute the edicts"), and especially
that they should not steal or be venal ("that the Senate in its calling
should act righteously and unhypocritically"). In the person of the
procurator-general Peter hoped to have a telescope, with the aid of
which he might from Astrakhan and Derbent follow the last red cent
that fell from the treasury chest into the pockets of the "lords of the
Senate." Thus he defined the new office, "our eye," and threatened
this living telescope with the most severe fate if it functioned badly.
It was no accident that this office was intrusted to a man comparatively
young and not particularly outstanding in the ranks of the statesmen,
yet on the other hand in unusually close relations with the tsar; this
was P. I. Yaguzhinsky, who seems for several years to have occupied
under Peter the position which, according to common conviction,
Menshikov had earlier occupied. When in France in 1717, Peter had
not parted with him for a moment and all the time had not taken his
eyes off him.
But the young tsar's favourite was, it seems, too weak for this role of
universal examiner. Upon his return from Persia, Peter decided to take
the business of supervision directly into his own hands. Vockerodt re-
lates that Colonel Myakinin, the new chief fiscal, was established in one
of the rooms of the palace nearest the tsar's bedroom, and this chief of
the whole inquisitional system was made the chief and constant adviser
of the emperor. In long conversations with him Peter insisted on one
thing — the rooting out of all abuses. Every one's life hung on a hair,
even Menshikov 's and Catherine's. But this plan of universal exter-
mination reeked too much of madness to yield any practical results. It
merely indicates that by this time it was not Peter's physical health
alone that had been worn out, and that the catastrophe of January 28,
1725, came in the nick of time.
CHAPTER XIII
the reforms of peter (Continued)
5. The New Society
The triumph of commercial capitalism over feudal Russia, however
temporary and unstable, was necessarily accompanied by great changes
in the customs of Russian society. Superficially the transformation was
probably sharper than any that Russian society had experienced in the
whole thousand years of its history ; it appears particularly striking if we
view the Russian social pyramid from above. At its very apex had
formerly strutted something in the nature of a living icon, in strict
Byzantine style, making its slow and solemn appearances before the
eyes of the reverent throng, only to withdraw immediately into the
obscure depths of the terem. In its place was now seen a nervous figure,
active, bustling, in a working-jacket, constantly among men, constantly
on the street. Nor was it possible to distinguish where the street ended
and the tsar's palace began, for both were equally indecorous, noisy, and
drunken ; both were frequented by a motley and unceremonious throng,
in which the tsar's minister in gilt caftan and ribbon of St. Andrew
rubbed elbows with a Dutch sailor come straight from his ship or with
a German shopkeeper come straight from behind his counter.
It is true that the further one went from the palace, the less this
change was felt. The military servitor donned a German costume rather
willingly, and somewhat less willingly shaved his beard; but though he
now sat in a collegium of foreign pattern, he was fain as of old to
engage in the traditional disputes over precedence. At home he ob-
served the rules of the old decorum; if he ever admitted the street, it
was only with great reluctance and at the strict command of the tsar.
Below the military servitors came the dense mass of "schismatics and
bearded men ' ' ; even in their outward appearance they remained unaf-
fected by the changes about them and for a hundred and fifty years,
down to the novels of Pechersky and the comedies of Ostrovsky, they
preserved their "customs" inviolate. Nor could any change at all be
discerned in the multi-millioned muzhik masses ; the new order had not
lightened the old bondage yoke, while the new "capitalistic" barshchina,
with its more subtle means of exploitation, still lay far in the future.
The "court" was more affected than was the "town," while the country-
308
THE REFORMS OF PETER 309
side was changed not at all ; the ' ' court ' ' was the centre, the ' ' town ' ' the
theatre of the economic revolution. "We shall, of course, not fall to
talking of "Petrine culture" as a new era for the whole Russian people,
which was not to be "Europeanised" until the second half of the nine-
teenth century; yet the task of tracing the influence of this economic
change even on "manners" and "customs" is not devoid of interest.
It is all the more interesting in that we have here a succession of phe-
nomena which does not constitute a national peculiarity of the Russian
people. There is a photographic likeness between what took place in
Russia at the beginning of the eighteenth century and what Western
Europe had experienced in the sixteenth century. Despite the lapse of
two centuries and despite their own ignorance of Europe's past, Peter's
Russian contemporaries reproduced, even to details, the Italian and
Flemish "Renaissance."
Let us take Taine's classic description of the Renaissance. "The pic-
turesque festivals held in all the towns, the solemn entries, masquerades,
cavalcades, constituted the chief pleasure of the people and of the sov-
ereigns. . . . When you read the chronicles and memoirs, you see that
the Italians liked to make life a lavish holiday. To them all other cares
seemed stupidity. ' ' x We must not be confused by the general defini-
tion, "Italians"; among the examples cited by our author flash the
names of Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan, Cardinal Pietro Riario, Lo-
renzo Medici, Popes Alexander VI and Leo X. The "Italians" who were
striving to convert their life into a lavish holiday were, once again, the
"court" and, in part, the "town"; the Italian peasantry lived then
just as it did two hundred years earlier or two hundred years later.
Take the memoirs of any contemporary of Peter's reforms who had
opportunity to observe Russia "from above," even though it be the
famous diary of Bergholz. It makes us feel that the Russians, like the
Italians of the sixteenth century, had decided to make their whole life
a continuous festival and to deem all else stupidity. From a rout at
the Summer Garden we pass to a ball at the palace ; from the ball to the
launching of a new ship, worth ten balls ; from the launching of the ship
to the masquerade on the occasion of the Peace of Nystadt. It is incor-
rect to say "to the masquerade," for there were several of them, and
each lasted several days. A thick pall of vinous fumes hangs over this
detailed and loquacious odyssey of the Holstein court at St. Petersburg
as related by Bergholz; not without a sigh of relief does he sometimes
(so rarely!) inform us that "to-day we were permitted to drink as
much as we wished," for usually one was obliged to drink as much as
the tsar wished. Lorenzo the Magnificent, vainly striving to procure an
elephant for one of his processions, might have envied Peter, at whose
i H. Taine, Philosophie de Vart, Vol. I, p. 175.
310 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
service was a whole menagerie. And probably no Italian prince could
have staged such a masquerade as the Russian winter gave Peter when
a whole fleet passed through the streets of Moscow on sleighs. The tsar's
own carriage presented an exact copy (in miniature) of the newly-
launched Fridemaker, the greatest ship of the Russian fleet. On it
were several young boys executing all the naval evolutions "like the very
best and most experienced boatswains." At Peter's command they set
the sails as the direction of the wind required, "which proved good
assistance to the 15 horses that dragged the ship." It was armed with
8 or 10 real cannon, with which Peter fired salutes from time to time ; he
was answered from a similar "ship" by the hospodar of Wallachia, who
came at the end of the parade. There were about 60 sleighs in all — 25 of
ladies and 36 of men ; the very smallest were drawn by six horses. This
"serious" or "genuine" masquerade was preceded by a mock proces-
sion of the "prince-pope" with his cardinals and Neptune, the god of
the sea. "All things considered, the emperor amused himself in truly
regal fashion." We need not inquire how much this pleasure cost the
sovereign who liked to say that "a copeck saves a ruble." It was not
the first diversion of the kind within a very brief space of time ; only a
few months before, also in celebration of the Peace of Nystadt, there had
been a lavish masquerade at St. Petersburg, likewise lasting several days
and taking place alternately on dry land and on the Neva. Some thou-
sand masks participated. The ladies were dressed as shepherdesses,
nymphs, blackamoors, nuns, harlequins, scaramouches; they were pre-
ceded by the empress with all her maidens and ladies of honour in the
costumes of Dutch peasant women. The men went in the costumes of
French wine-growers, Hamburg burgomeisters, Roman warriors, Turks,
Indians, Spaniards, Persians, Chinamen, bishops, prelates, canons, ab-
bots, Capucins, Dominicans, Jesuits, ministers in silk mantles and enor-
mous periwigs, Venetian nobles, ship-carpenters, miners, and, finally,
Russian boyars in high sable caps and long brocade garments, "likewise
with long beards and riding on tame live bears." Behind them, closing
the train, the tsar's jester, "giving a very natural representation of a
bear, ' ' whirled in a huge squirrel-wheel ; then came an Indian Brahmin,
bedecked with cowries, in a hat with the widest of brims, and American
Indians covered with variegated feathers. For two hours this procession
passed before the eyes of the Petersburgers, who from small to great
had gathered on the Senate Square ; at its head was the tsar himself,
indefatigably beating on a drum, clad now as a Dutch boatswain, now
as a French peasant, but not leaving off with his noisy instrument in
any costume.
Bergholz many times repeats that everything in the procession was
very "natural." Among other masks, for example, was Bacchus "in a
THE REFORMS OF PETER 311
tiger's skin, bedecked with, the clusters of the vineyard." "He gave a
very natural representation of Bacchus; he was an unusually fat, short
man with a very full face; they had made him drink unceasingly for
three days before, giving him no time to sleep." Here the health of
the wretched Bacchus was sacrificed to "art." But Peter loved to jest
at others' expense and simply for the sake of the joke, with no thought
of consequences. During the river part of the masquerade his renowned
"prince-pope" was drawn across the river on a special machine, con-
sisting of a raft on which was placed a cauldron full of beer ; in the mid-
dle of the cauldron, in an enormous wooden cup, floated the unhappy
"mock patriarch," while behind, in barrels, floated the no less unhappy
cardinals, more dead than alive. When the "machine" reached the
shore, and its passengers had to be disembarked, those to whom the tsar
had entrusted this operation overturned, by his special command, the
cup with the prince-pope, who received a beery bath. At a dinner at
Chancellor Golovkin's "the tsar amused himself with the tsaritsa's chef,
who was serving at table ; when he put a plate of food before the tsar,
the latter seized him by the head and made horns on his head." This
was a delicate allusion to the fact that the chef's wife had been un-
faithful, a circumstance which Peter had signalised at the time by
ordering a pair of stag's horns hung over the door of the chef's dwelling.
The butt of the tsar's jests did not take them very patiently, and the
tsar's orderlies had to restrain him. He struggled, and not in jest;
once he seized the tsar by the fingers so hard as almost to break them.
Such scenes were constantly taking place between Peter and this man,
Bergholz was told; nevertheless, Peter fell to teasing him whenever he
saw him. Twenty years earlier Korb had witnessed a similar but still
more expressive scene. The incident occurred at a "sumptuously given
feast, ' ' with the envoy of the Holy Roman Emperor as host. Among the
aristocracy invited along with the tsar was the boyar Golovin, who
"nourished an innate aversion to salad and the use of vinegar; the tsar
bade Colonel Chambers squeeze the boyar as hard as possible, and him-
self began forcibly to thrust salad into his mouth and nose and to pour
in vinegar until Golovin had a violent fit of coughing and the blood
spouted from his nose."
In the sixteenth century the head of the Christian Church in the West
had found pleasure in watching "devil's jokes" with Fra Mariano and
the presentation of a comedy, the mere subject of which made Rabelais'
countrymen blush. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the head
of the oecumenical Orthodox realm took special delight in making sport
of ecclesiastical rites. We have already made passing mention of the
"prince-pope"; his appearance with his College of Cardinals was the
very choicest number in the masquerade described by Bergholz. The
312 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
college consisted of the "greatest and most dissolute drunkards of all
Russia, but all men of good birth at that." We shall not repeat the
naive explanations of this ritual which Bergholz borrowed from the
lips of Peter's courtiers, namely, that it was something between a satire
on drunkenness (the tsar's court of the time might itself well have
served as the incarnation of such a satire) and a mockery of the Catholic
Church (with which Peter had nothing to do). The testimony of a man
who had witnessed the foundation of the "mock college" leaves no doubt
that Catholicism was in no way involved. "Now one must not forget
to describe in what way the play patriarch was set up," Prince Kurakin
begins his description of Peter's pastimes in his History of Tsar Peter I
[in Russian]. And though Kurakin strives to soften the impression with
reservations, such as that "the attire was made in some sort jesting, and
not just like the patriarch's trimmings," yet he could not leave unmen-
tioned that "in place of the Gospels was made a book in which were
several flasks of whiskey," and that a caricature of the patriarch's
solemn riding of an ass on Palm Sunday was one of the chief sports ; on
that day they rode the "patriarch" on a camel "into the garden by the
bank to the French wine-cellar."
Another eyewitness, Korb, has left us a still more vivid description of
one of these ceremonies. On February 21, 1699, the "patriarch" conse-
crated Lefort's palace, reproducing in every detail the Church ritual;
instead of burning incense they smoked tobacco, while two pipes placed
one across the other served in lieu of a cross during the consecration.
This latter circumstance produced an exceptionally powerful impression
on the pious Catholic; "who will believe," Korb concludes his account
"that a cross thus fashioned, the most precious symbol of our redemp-
tion, should be the object of laughter?" But men more familiar with the
facts would have believed more than that. Insult to the Gospels and to
the cross was the most innocent part of the "mock" ritual. Just as in
his time a spectator of a comedy presented in the pope's theatre had not
ventured to report its content but had only hinted at the impression it
produced on the spectators, so Prince Kurakin did not venture to
describe in detail the ceremony of the consecration of the "patriarch."
"In such terms," he says briefly, "as we do not find it meet to expatiate
on, but we may briefly say, — drunkenness, and lechery, and every de-
bauchery." Yet this author is a great realist in describing the tsar's
pastimes and cites examples of Peter's "jests" that it would be unseemly
to repeat nowadays. One may imagine what it was that even he found
it necessary to be silent about!
Were Peter's "humoristics" simply the fruit of cynicism and coarse-
ness, as the sober-minded German Vockerodt thought? During the Re-
naissance jests at monks passed into earnest denial of Church tradition.
THE REFORMS OF PETER 313
Men laughed at sacred things because in the depths of their souls they
had already ceased to account them sacred. When the popes sensed this,
they ceased to play with fire ; then the Jesuits appeared, and at the papal
court jests at monks disappeared. But humanism was not confined
to the papal court ; outside of it there was room enough for the triumph
of the "secular mood," and its expression was not confined to jests. Did
this serious side of religious freethinking affect Peter himself? Con-
temporaries describe him as a man who, in this field, observed the old
customs, did not omit Church services, liked to accompany the chanters
in the choir, and never entered a church in a German periwig ; this was
the only occasion on which the tsar himself forsook the Western fashion
he had introduced. But when it was a matter of more than harmless
concessions to usage, when usage clashed with practical necessity, Peter
proved himself a freer thinker than might have been expected of a man
of such conservative habits. During the campaign of 1714 Peter's com-
missariat deemed it the part of piety to feed the soldiers on lenten fare
during the Fast of St. Peter. Contemplating the results of this piety,
Peter wrote to Kikin, the man responsible: ''Your pious order — for five
weeks rotten fish and water — the soldiers have obeyed for two weeks,
whence little short of 1,000 men have fallen ill and have been lost to the
service ; wherefore I have been compelled to stop your law and to give
them butter and meat. . . . True, if the Swedes were to be thus fed,
matters would be tolerable ; but I am not a stepfather to our men. ' '
Toward the raskolniks [schismatics], who depicted Antichrist and his
host in the uniforms of Peter's Guard, Peter had no reason to be par-
ticularly well-disposed. But the schism was powerful among the mer-
chantry, a fact with which the tsar had to reckon, ready as he was to im-
port even bankrupt merchants from abroad. On being informed that Old
Believing merchants were "honourable and diligent," Peter expressed
a sentiment, abridged perhaps but hardly invented by his historian: "if
they are really such, then for my part let them believe what they will ;
when it is impossible to turn them from superstition by argument,
neither fire nor sword will avail ; as for being martyrs to stupidity, they
are not worthy of the honour, nor will the state have profit. ' ' The schis-
matics of the R. Vyg were given formal permission to worship according
to the old books, under the condition of working in the Povenetsky mills ;
this was probably the first case of religious toleration in Russia in respect,
not to "heretical" teaching but to a "sect" arising within Orthodoxy.
The declaration in the famous edict of 1702 about the tsar's unwilling-
ness to "constrain the human conscience" was not an empty phrase,
and we have an example of what was, for those times at least, the
tolerant attitude of Peter and his government toward formal "free-
thinkers." A Moscow physician, Tveritinov, loudly said — and not only
314 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
said but wrote and offered his writings to be read — such things as : ' ' An
icon is only a painted board without the power of working miracles;
if you throw it in the fire, it will burn and will not save itself " ; "it is
not meet to bow to a cross, which is only soulless wood, having no power
at all"; "monkish celibacy is not kept in the sense of Holy Writ." The
spiritual authorities, headed by Stefan Yavorsky, guardian of the patri-
archal see, of course brought the bold doctor to book. Yet not only was
he not burned as a result of the inquiry, as he undoubtedly would have
been fifty years earlier, but he even received attestation of his Orthodoxy,
after formal penance, it is true. In the Senate, where Tveritinov's case
was discussed, his spiritual prosecutors had to listen to things that were
very unpleasant to them. "Monkling — rogue!" the senators shouted
at the monk who accused the physician, "thou hast sold thy soul for a
flask of wine." The Metropolitan Stefan himself was unceremoniously
expelled from one session of the Senate on the ground that he was not a
senator, and that there was no place for him at the trial (of a heretic,
let us note). On the score of monasticism the emperor himself, toward
the end of his life, expressed opinions that would probably have been
very displeasing to Yavorsky, had he been alive. If not the origin, at
least the spread of monasticism he was inclined to attribute to the
"bigotry" of the Greek emperors, "and particularly of their wives,"
and to the fact that, making use of this bigotry, "certain rascals came"
to them. "This gangrene among us was to spread at first under the
protection of the Church monarchs, but still the Lord God has not so
deprived former rulers of blessings, as the Greeks."
The breach with tradition was of course bound to be more strongly
expressed in literature than in life. Specialists have long since noted
the realism and secular mood of the Russian narrative of the seventeenth
century. The mediaeval writer, like the mediaeval artist, knew only the
abstraction, and not the living man; he was interested in examples of
good life, not of human personality. Interest in the individual, "indi-
vidualism," constitutes one of the most marked features of both the art
and the literature of the "Renaissance." Russia's artistic literature of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was only translation and imita-
tion ; the more genuine mood of Russian society may be found only in the
historical works of the period. Even the historians of the Troubles,
writing in the first half of the seventeenth century — the Pseudo-
Palitsyn, Katyrev-Rostovsky, and especially the author of the pertinent
chapters in the so-called " chronography of the 2nd edition" — are not
interested in their heroes as abstract moral examples but as perfectly
concrete beings.
Prince Katyrev-Rostovsky was the first to wish to collect data about
the physical appearance of Russian sovereigns, beginning with Ivan the
THE REFORMS OF PETER 315
Terrible, and he tried to characterise each of them individually. Far
higher than he in this respect stands the chronography of 1617. In it
Godunov, the Alleged Dmitry, and Hermogen are almost living men.
You can feel Dmitry's impetuosity and impatience, his loquacity and
lively intellectual interests. And in order to sustain the classic type of
the "heretic and unfrocked monk," the author — who in the depth of his
soul was probably very disturbed because he was writing what was not
mee t — has to lavish vilification that is absolutely out of harmony with
the facts he himself adduces. Over Patriarch Hermogen he could not
restrain himself and in place of the stereotyped model of a " sufferer for
the truth," gave a portrait which is, it is true, an excellent explanation
of Hermogen 's fate, but which might well cause scandal even in centuries
other than the seventeenth. "Not sweetly speaking," "in manners
rough," "not quick to distinguish good and evil, but diligent in flattery
and double-dealing," "heeder of rumours" — such realistic features in
the physiognomy of a near-saint so troubled one of the later editors of
the chronography that he found it necessary to accompany the charac-
terisation with an extended refutation, in which he proved that "this
writer wrongly said all these things about this holy man about Ermo-
gen. ' ' But fortunately he did not destroy the characterisation itself.
The realism of Kotoshikhin is so well known that we need not dwell
on it. From our present point of view he is interesting, among other
reasons, in that he is the first to attempt to explain historical changes
as the result of the activity of individuals. To him the rise of the
Muscovite state is a matter of the personal policy of conquest pursued
by Ivan the Terrible; and, if Tsar Alexis was not made to grant a
charter limiting his power, it was because of his personal character —
"they thought him most quiet." In the writings of the greatest historian
of the Petrine epoch, Prince B. I. Kurakin, we find the same method,
on an incomparably grander scale. The History of Tsar Peter I plunges
us fairly into the midst of a "renaissance," just as did Peter's masquer-
ades. Prince Kurakin 's passion for Italian citations is quite in keeping
with this spirit. When you read his work the image of the great Italian
historian inevitably rises before you ; and perhaps there is no better way
of measuring the relative profundity of the Renaissance and of its
remote and unconscious Russian imitation than to compare Machiavelli's
History of Florence with Kurakin 's History. The former, despite its
seeming dryness and restraint, describes with arresting dramatic effect
how the Florentine people gained their freedom — and lost it. The latter,
just as soberly, concisely, and accurately, sketches divers "accidental
men," seizing power by intrigues and, thanks to the intrigues of others,
losing it. In the former, a vast amphitheatre, suited, if you like, to
ancient Rome ; in the latter, a petty domestic scene. And thanks to its
316 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
restricted proportions, thanks to the insignificant number of persons in
action, the latter was better adapted to treatment from the individualistic
point of view. In Machiavelli parties and, still deeper, classes, are too
clearly evident behind the individuals; with good reason has he become
one of the forerunners of modern "economic materialism."
There is no historian further from the idealisation of reality, more
"materialist" in his cosmic philosophy, than Prince Kurakin; but there
is no room in his philosophy for economic interpretation. He knows no
other motives than the egoistic, no other sources of social changes than
personal will. If he has to explain the mutiny of the streltsy, it is, of
course, the intrigues of the Tsarevna Sofia. But since Sofia was a
' ' princess of great mind, " " never was there such wise rule in the Russian
state. ' ' Both the economic and the cultural development of the Musco-
vite realm at the end of the seventeenth century are to be explained by
this fact and by nothing else. ' ' The whole realm came during her reign,
in the space of seven years, into the flowering of great wealth. Com-
merce and crafts of all kinds likewise multiplied ; and learning began to
restore the Latin and Greek languages." Peter loved foreigners; this
similarly is due to the personal influence of Prince Boris Golitsyn. "He
was the first to consort with foreign officers and merchants. And out of
this his inclination toward foreigners he brought them openly to the
court, and the tsar's majesty took them into his favour." Men began to
wear German clothes ; again Kurakin is able to identify this change with
an individual 's name : ' ' There was an English trader Andrew Krevet,
who bought his majesty all kinds of things, ordered them from abroad,
and was admitted to court. And from him men first learned to wear
English bonnets, such as Sirs wear, and under-jackets, and swords with
belts." Might it not seem that there is nothing less individual than
drunkenness and debauchery ? Yet here, too, Kurakin has no difficulty in
finding the culprit. "At that time the so-called Franz Yakovlevich Le-
fort came into extreme favour and confidence through amorous in-
trigues. The aforesaid Lefort was a diverting and prodigal man, what
you might call a French debauche. And ceaselessly he gave dinners, sup-
pers, and balls at his house. And here in this house it began to come to
pass that His Majesty the Tsar consorted with foreign ladies, and his first
amour was with a merchant's daughter named Anna Mons. True, the
girl was passable and intelligent. Here in the house [of Lefort] began
debauchery and drunkenness so great as can not be described; for three
days, shut up in that house, they were drunk, and it befell many to die
therefrom. And from that time to this date and till now drunkenness
continues and has become the fashion among great houses. ' ' And it does
not enter Kurakin 's head that it was not from Lefort that the old
"prince-cassar, " F. Y. Romodanovsky, was "drunk by She whole day,"
THE REFORMS OF PETER 317
or the tsar's uncle, Leo Naryshkin, who was " incontinent in drinking,"
had learned to drink.
This individualism of the period of the reforms found expression in
law as well as in literature, or rather, in two laws, both of which may be
said to be more literature than law, for both remained dead letters. These
are the law of 1714 on primogeniture and the edict of 1722 on the suc-
cession to the throne. Undoubtedly both measures were outwardly
related since Petrine primogeniture, as is well known, meant not
inheritance of the whole property by the oldest son but inheritance by
one of the sons at the father's discretion, to the exclusion of the rest.
In this right of the father to dispose of his property at his discretion lay,
in the opinion of Peter and his councillors, the whole essence of the
institution. An extant memorandum, supplying Peter with information
about the English system, asserts that "by the common law of the Eng-
lish land fathers can cut off and remove from their children all lands
which are not appointed to them by will or otherwise, and they can leave
all to one son only and nothing to the others, which keeps children in
duty and obedience." The manifesto of 1722 merely reproduces this
opinion (absolutely erroneous, it need hardly be said) about the "com-
mon law of the English land, ' ' when it says : ' ' that always it may be at
the will of the reigning sovereign, to appoint the succession to whom he
wishes, and to replace the designate again, on seeing any worthlessness,
that his children and descendants fall not into such evil as written
above, having this curb on them." Here is a correspondence so literal
that we do not even need the references in this edict to the law of 1714 to
see the connexion; in both cases Peter felt it important to extend the
limits of paternal authority, without bothering in either case about the
customs operative in the Muscovite realm. In the Muscovite realm
neither the hereditary estate nor the tsar's throne could be disposed of
at personal discretion. In electing Michael to the throne they had in
effect elected the Romanov family, and the oldest son of the family auto-
matically, so to speak, had become sovereign on the death of his father.
This automatism seemed to Peter a "bad, old custom," though it was
the very thing that lay at the basis of English primogeniture, which he
valued for what was not in it ; and he strove to convert family property,
such as land was in Russia, into personal property, like moveables,
chattels and money. In this penetration of bourgeois views into the
sphere of inheritance of land and succession to the throne, into the very
heart of feudal law, so to speak, lies the enormous cultural interest of
both these abortive laws. Nor was the borrowing altogether unconscious ;
when the edict of 1714 was being prepared, Russian agents abroad had
been required to report on the "inheritances and division," not only of
"noble," but also of "merchant families."
318 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
The ' ' individualism ' ' of the Petrine epoch should, however, not deceive
us any more than the individualism of the Italian Renaissance. Litera-
ture, which is permitted to idealise everything, may, of course, represent
the heroes of the Renaissance, not only as bold and beautiful, but also as
refined and elegant, profound and cultured even to the eyes of a twen-
tieth-century reader. The historian has no such right ; he has to state that
the pleasures of this period were extremely coarse, as we have seen, that
the philosophy of the humanists was a mixture of the most naive preju-
dices, bequeathed by the Middle Ages, with hastily garnered and ill-
digested fragments of classical wisdom, and that the most resplendent
signors, though patrons of humanism, sometimes did not know how to
write. Fortunately, there are no such prejudices with respect to the level
of Petrine culture ; indeed, we are accustomed to regard the Academy of
Sciences of those days with even more scepticism than it perhaps deserves.
The scientific interests of Peter himself — if one may speak of such things
— did not go beyond the collecting of "monsters" and "experiments"
like the attempt to create a race of tall men by marrying an ' ' exception-
ally tall" Finnish woman the tsar had secured somewhere to a French
giant who appeared in show-booths for money. To the reformer of
Russia the trade of barber, which in those simple days combined the
functions of both dentist and surgeon, did not seem beneath his dignity ;
next to a yachting trip or work with an axe or at a turning-lathe, nothing
seems to have given Peter such pleasure as pulling teeth. Since it
apparently gave his patients somewhat less pleasure, the tsar's orderlies
were charged with the delicate duty of finding him opportunities to
exercise his skill as a dentist. Bergholz relates with what difficulty he
managed to save his own teeth when he had the imprudence to complain
of a toothache in the presence of one of these scouts. The tsar was not at
all squeamish about his patients' social status and honoured with his
professional visits not only courtiers or foreign merchants but even their
servants. No less than pulling teeth did he like to let water from those
suffering with dropsy.
The milieu surrounding Peter was still more primitive in this respect.
Though to the end of his life Peter's writing was frightfully illiterate,
even from the Old Russian viewpoint, he always loved to read, and in
languages other than Russian. He followed attentively the Dutch news-
papers of the time, noting in them what interested him, and ordered books
from abroad. The two persons who stood next to him in rank, Catherine
and Menshikov, were most likely wholly illiterate; at least, contempo-
raries insist that in the art of writing Menshikov had not advanced
beyond ability to write his family name ; as for Catherine, legend has it
that when she had become autocratic empress, her daughter, the Tsarevna
Elizabeth, signed her edicts for her. Let us repeat, hardly any one will
THE REFORMS OF PETER 319
seek to exaggerate the culture of Petrine society ; but it is hard for us to
visualise the simplicity of the manners of the time. The titles of minis-
ters, field-marshals, and "cavaliers" involuntary hypnotise us, and we
are inclined to see something "European" in Peter's court. Contem-
porary Europeans, as in the case of the Germans, though they themselves
might not have made much progress in external culture, must have easily
rid themselves of this illusion. Take, for example, a scene described by
that same verbose Holstein gentleman-of-the-bedchamber who was so
fond of describing Peter's masquerades. "All the aristocracy of Russia"
was assembled at a banquet at Prince Romodanovsky's. After the tsar
had left, a quarrel broke out between the "prince-cassar" and one of his
guests, Prince Dolgoruky; one reminded the other of some old offence,
and Dolgoruky refused to drink when invited by Romodanovsky. ' ' Then
both old men, freely exchanging the most repellent insults, clutched each
other by the hair and for a good half hour pounded each other with their
fists, while none of those present interfered or tried to separate them.
Prince Romodanovsky, who was very drunk, was worsted ; then he called
the guard and, master in his own house, had Dolgoruky arrested. When
the latter was released, he refused to go out from under arrest and, it is
said, demanded satisfaction from the emperor. But the affair will, of
course, blow over, because such drunken fist-fights happen too often and
are not even talked about." In fact, the picture of the tsar's ministers
clutching each other by the hair occurs again in the pages of Bergholz's
diary; this time the incident happened in the presence of the duke of
Holstein, who, understanding the customs of the country, turned away
and pretended not to notice. Korb gives us an almost identical scene be-
tween Romodanovsky and Apraxin, Peter's future admiral-general; but
the latter, under the fresh impression, it must be, of his foreign acquaint-
anceships, acted more "in European style"; he drew his sword, which
terribly frightened Romodanovsky, who was accustomed to having the
affair end with fists.
After such scenes as this, we are scarcely impressed by the spectacle
of Peter's daughter Praskovia receiving foreign visitors while dressed
only in her shift; while the "princess" extended one hand to be kissed,
with the other hand she covered her nakedness with a cloak hastily taken
from one of the court ladies. On another occasion, in the apartments of
the same tsarevna and her sister Catherine, Duchess of Mecklenburg, a
king of some kind, who had just received 200 blows with rods, was deemed
worthy, as if nothing had happened, of the honour of playing with their
Highnesses. The famous "cudgel of Peter the Great" begins to outline
itself in its real setting. With men so "simple" other men than Peter
would not have stood on ceremony. Contemporaries have noted only
cases in which the cudgel affected very noteworthy persons, or when the
320 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
consequences of its application unexpectedly proved tragic. "When the
tsar suddenly despatched to the next world a soldier who had stolen a bit
of copper during a fire, it caused talk in the city ; the incident astounded
foreigners, the Saxon resident Lefort, for example, who retails it.
But Lefort is scarcely correct in drawing the conclusion that Peter was
"not distinguished by a humane character"; that is, of course, true, but
the particular instance was not at all exceptional. The tsar's intimate
servant, the turner Nartov, cannot deny himself the satisfaction of
recalling how the cudgel used to play along the back of Menshikov and
other titled personages. "I have often seen," he relates, "how for the
fault of men of high rank the sovereign prepared a cudgel here [in the
turner's shop], how afterwards they came out into other rooms from the
sovereign's direction with a merry appearance so that outsiders should
not notice anything and on that same day were honoured by admission
to his table." And a naive provincial like Syrensky, the burgomeister
of Novgorod, who had become acquainted with court life, might let slip
the opinion : "those who dwelt with Christ lost their heads, but those who
dwell with the tsar lose both their heads and their backs." Yet the
members of Peter's court, and Peter himself, deemed the cudgel the very
mildest form of punishment or, rather, no punishment at all but, so to
speak, a reminder of the possibility of punishment. "Now for the last
time the cudgel," said the tsar to Menshikov after one of the "privy"
scenes described by Nartov, "in future, Alexander, beware!"
This crudity proves on examination to have noteworthy features.
Consider one of the scenes to be witnessed at festivals in the Summer
Garden. "Presently came several evil apostles, inspiring almost every
one with dread and alarm ; I mean a half dozen or so grenadiers of the
Guard, who, in pairs, were carrying on hand-barrows basins of the com-
monest grain alcohol, which gave off such a powerful odour that many
sensed it while the grenadiers were still in another walk, more than a
hundred paces away. "When I saw that many people immediately fled
as though they had seen the devil, I asked a friend standing beside me
what had happened to these people that they disappeared so hurriedly.
Seizing my arm, he pointed out some advancing youths, whom I had not
at first noticed, and we began to run with all our might, which was very
prudent, inasmuch as soon afterward I met several men who complained
bitterly of their misfortune in being unable to get the taste of whiskey
out of their throats. Since I had already been warned that there were
many spies to see to it that all received the bitter cup, I did not trust a
single person but pretended to be suffering even more than they. But
one conscienceless rogue knew how to verify whether I had drunk or not
and asked me to exhale. I replied that it was useless since I had rinsed
my mouth with water, to which he retorted that I should not tell him
THE REFORMS OF PETER 321
such a story ; he knew that nothing would help ; ' even though you put
cinnamon or cloves in your mouth, for not less than 24 hours the mouth
would smell of whiskey all the same, and you would not get rid of the
taste for a still longer time'; he added that I, too, should experience it in
order to be able to tell of these festivals in the best possible way. I
declined with thanks, mentioning the fact that I absolutely cannot drink
whiskey ; all would have been vain, had it not been for my good friend,
who was pretending to be a fiscal in order to tease me. But if any one
falls into the clutches of a real fiscal, neither pleading nor tears will
help him; he must submit, even to the point of standing on his head.
Nor are even the daintiest ladies free from this obligation, for the
tsaritsa herself sometimes drinks with the others. Majors of the Guard
followed the tub of whiskey everywhere in order to compel any to drink
who had not obeyed the simple grenadiers. One must drink the health
of the tsar from the cup offered by one of the rank and file ( it will hold a
good beer glass, but they do not pour it equally full for everybody) ; they
call it the 'health of our colonel,' but it is one and the same thing.
When I later made inquiry why they use [for this purpose] such a
nasty product as this whiskey, they answered that it is done partly be-
cause the Russians prefer this common grain alcohol to all the Danzig
and French whiskeys in the world. Another reason is love for the
Guard, which the tsar cannot flatter enough, for he often says that
among his Guardsmen there is not one to whom he could not trust his
life freely and without danger."
The Guard made up the inevitable background of every festival. Both
at the Summer Garden, where the court made merry, and on the
Tsaritsyn Meadow might constantly be seen its dark green square, varie-
gated with the red collars of the Preobrazhensky Regiment and the blue
of the Semenovsky. And in their midst was frequently conspicuous the
tall figure of the tsar, regaling himself with the w T hiskey of his soldiers
before they went to regale the ministers and chamberlains with their
beverage. To these guests on the Tsaritsyn Meadow Peter was more
attentive than to the guests at the Summer Garden. The latter must
quietly submit to the tsar's whims — drink what the tsar bade them,
dance when he wished it. Very often Peter withdrew from the rout to
rest (he always slept during the day) or on some business or other ; but
on his return he wished to find the merriment in full swing. At all the
exits of the Summer Garden were placed sentries of the Guard, who let
no one leave on any pretext. During one of these balls under arrest, it
rained in bucketsful ; the covered galleries were too small to accommodate
all the guests, and many of them were drenched to the skin. But whereas
at the Summer Garden all had to await the tsar's pleasure, and the ball
could not end without his command, on the Tsaritsyn Meadow the tsar
322 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
had to wait patiently until the whole military ceremony had ended. On
his name-day, June 29, 1721, Peter was very distraught about something ;
his head was shaking and his shoulders twitching, with him always a
sign of strong agitation ; he scarcely looked at the courtiers assembled to
greet him and went straight past to the Guard's square. Nor could he
stay long there; he wished to leave when he had heard the first salute.
But the Guard was to repeat the salute three times; Menshikov caught
up with the retiring tsar and reminded him of the fact ; Peter turned and
remained till the end of the salute.
In our historical literature is firmly rooted the characterisation of
Peter the Great as the "craftsman-tsar." In fact, a tsar in the ship-
yards, with axe or plane in hand, is a picture far more unusual and
therefore more effective than a tsar on the parade-ground. But if we
are not striving for effect, we must admit that Peter became a soldier
long before he became a craftsman, and that in his time he had studied
the science of the drum with no less zeal than he later studied the trade of
ship-carpenter. Nor did the latter ever crowd the former out of his
head. Immediately on his return from his first trip abroad, with the
memory of the Saardam shipyard still fresh in his mind, Peter set off
to inspect his troops before he had seen the tsaritsa and the tsarevich,
and as soon as he had arrived in the German Suburb. "As soon as he
was convinced how far these hordes were from being real warriors, he
himself showed them various gestures and motions, teaching these dis-
orderly masses what bodily carriage they must strive for by bending his
own body."
To the end of his life the drum remained his favourite instrument. All
his pleasures bore a distinctly military stamp; they all "smelled of
powder." In proving that the tsar had enough resources to continue the
Swedish war in 1710, the Austrian resident Pleyer cites the considera-
tion that "for two years not a single powder-mill has been working
because there is still a great supply of powder in perfect readiness,
despite the fact that in the instruction of recruits, as soon as they learn
to handle firearms, there occurs incessant and violent shooting ; when
the tsar is present, or the heir, or Prince Menshikov, whether at Moscow
or in the country, after almost every dinner, at every toast to any one's
health, during a ball or a dance, on name-days and birthdays, or on the
occasion of the most insignificant victory, muskets are fired incessantly."
Descriptions of Peter's lavish fireworks reoccur throughout contemporary
memoirs ; they were admired, too, by men like Prince Kurakin, who was
well acquainted with Europe. Whether the tsar banqueted at Lefort's,
or a ship was launched, or there was a masquerade through the streets
of Moscow, we hear a ceaseless discharge of cannon. At the New Year
festival in 1699 "a salvo of twenty-four cannon marked every solemn
THE REFORMS OF PETER 323
toast." One of the foreign diplomats regarded this waste of powder
on the air as a serious item of expenditure imposing a real burden on
the state budget.
Whenever Peter made merry, he was far more the boisterous soldier
(the drunken landsknecht, if you like, for we are not so far from the
Thirty Years' War) than the tipsy craftsman. Wielding the cudgel
when sober, in his cups Peter was prone to reach for the sword. At a
banquet at Lefort's, toward the end of the dinner, becoming provoked at
the voevoda Shein, ' ' the tsar became so incensed that, dealing blows indis-
criminately with his drawn sword, he reduced all his dinner-companions
to terror; Prince Romodanovsky received a slight wound in the finger,
another in the head; Nikita Zotov [the 'mock patriarch'] was injured
in the arm by a backhand movement of the sword ; a far more disastrous
blow was preparing for the voevoda, who undoubtedly would have fallen
by the tsar 's right arm, steeped in his own blood, had not General Lef ort
(to whom almost alone this was permissible), clasping the tsar in his
arms, averted his hand. The tsar, however, fell into violent displeasure
that there should be any one who dared to interfere with the conse-
quences of his perfectly just wrath, immediately turned around, and
dealt the meddler a heavy blow in the back; there was only one person
who could straighten matters out, he who held first place among the
Muscovites as regards the tsar's attachment to him. They say that this
man was raised by destiny from the lowest milieu to a pinnacle of power
envied by all. He succeeded in so softening the tsar's heart that he
refrained from murder, confining himself to threats. This violent storm
was succeeded by pleasant and clear weather. ' ' The beneficent sorcerer,
whom Korb does not name, was Menshikov ; the passage we have cited is
one of those on which is based the familiar notion of the character of
the relations between Peter and his "Alexander."
Were this love for the military and these soldier's habits merely a
matter of personal inclination, or do they represent a conscious tendency
on Peter 's part ? We must not forget that the world had not yet known
the "great Frederick," who "made all kings corporals"; the soldier's
trade was not yet the king's trade par excellence. Of preceding Russian
tsars not one, except the Alleged Dmitry, had liked military things.
Peter's childhood must have played a certain role, passed as it was under
the impression of the long wars of Tsar Alexis, just terminated; most
likely previous tsareviches had not had so many military playthings.
The struggle for the Ukraine and the war with Sweden were bound to
stir deeply the military instincts of Moscow 's high society, dormant since
the Troubles. Yet, besides instincts, contemporaries or near-contempo-
raries saw a serious political aspect in Peter's militarism — and not the
one usually advanced. We have already made passing mention of
324 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
Vockerodt's remark that Peter "was sufficiently convinced from experi-
ence what a strong support to monarchical power a regular army offers,"
and that for this very reason he "devoted himself in particular and with
all zeal to the improvement of his troops. ' ' Vockerodt assigns only second
place to the influence of military needs in the narrow sense. As is well
known, the old prejudice that Peter was the creator of a regular army in
Russia has long since been abandoned; the first regiments "of foreign
order ' ' appeared in Russia under Tsar Michael ; during Peter 's minority
these regiments, together with the streltsy, who also were a standing army
rather than a feudal militia, made up the bulk of the Russian army.
True, this was an inferior regular army, probably like the Turkish or
Persian soldiers of the first half of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless,
there were professional soldiers in Russia before Peter's time, and
Peter's Guard represented nothing new from the standpoint of military
technique. Nor was its establishment connected with military technique.
Let us trace its gradual development, as it stands out in strong relief in
Kurakin's History. At first there were 300 "playmates"; these were
organised in sport ; it is not likely that there was any serious calculation
behind it. But in the collision with Sofia the "playmates" proved to be
a force that could be relied on, especially since his opponent 's adherents
among the streltsy also numbered only a few hundred. Thus, "on his
return from the Troitsa campaign of the year 7197 [1689]," i.e., after
his flight from Preobrazhensk to Troitsa and the settlement of accounts
with Sofia and her supporters, Peter "began formally to recruit his two
regiments, the Preobrazhensky and the Semenovsky. ' ' For the seventeen-
year-old tsar they remained playthings; but for his mother's kindred
and for B. A. Golitsyn, the real author of the coup d'etat of 1689, they
were a serious military and police force, capable of being opposed, in
case of need, to the unreliable streltsy. Ten years later it fell to the lot
of the Guard to play this very role. From their inception the Preo-
brazhensky and Semenovsky Regiments were needed against the domestic
foe ; it was only later that they moved against a foreign foe.
This origin of the Guard explains its significance under Peter. The
Guard officers played a role very like that of the gendarme officers of the
time of Nicholas I. All the more or less intimate investigations into
peculation and other abuses committed by persons very close to Peter
were made with their assistance. Thus, the fiscal 's report against Prince
Ya. F. Dolgoruky was examined by a commission consisting of Major
Dmitriev-Mamonov, Captain Likharev, Lieutenant-Captain Pashkov, and
Lieutenant Bakhmetev. Before the establishment of the procurator-
general, Peter had thought of making the staff officers of the Guard into
an organ to supervise the whole Senate. Majors of the Guard were to
attend sessions of the Senate and see that the senators carried on business
THE REFORMS OF PETER 325
properly ; if they saw anything ' ' contrary to this, ' ' they might arrest the
culprit and take him to the fortress. 2 It is not surprising that the mem-
bers of the Senate "rose from their places before a lieutenant and con-
ducted themselves toward him with servility, ' ' as the agent of Louis XV
remarked with amazement; he had some ground for finding that the
"dignity of the empire" was "abased" thereby.
But the servility of senators before a lieutenant was nothing compared
with the position in which provincial administrators were placed. The
Guard officers, when sent to the provinces, had the right, in case their
demands were not fulfilled, ' ' to chain by the legs the governor as well as
the vice-governor and other subordinates and to put a chain on their
necks and not to set them free until they prepare" the reports demanded
by the Guardsmen. Later a similar right was bestowed not only on
officers but even on non-commissioned officers. The picture that Moscow
(no backwoods corner!) presented under the yoke of non-commissioned
officers is vividly portrayed in a letter of the well-known Petrine diplo-
mat, Count Matveyev. "A non-commissioned officer sent here from the
Kammer-Collegium, Pustoshkin by name," he relates, "caused an atro-
cious commotion and made havoc of the whole chancellory, and all the
administrators here, except those of the War and Justice Collegia,
he humiliated with chains not only on their legs but on their necks.
Among them the local vice-governor, Master Voeikov, merely replied to
the commissioner that he was willing to be put in chains but that he
should be told his fault ; which he, Pustoshkin, dared not do without the
order of the "War Collegium. Nevertheless, he, the vice-governor, is kept
by him, Pustoshkin, in the chancellory of that province just as straitly
as the rest. ... I, visiting those prisoners out of Christian duty, verily
with tears did see in the chancellory of the province here a multitude
of children and women and honourable individuals, and floods of tears
surpassing outright penal establishments." This was at Moscow, and
the man chiefly injured was a vice-governor and brigadier, who found
an intercessor in the person of an intimate of the tsar, a man who had
recently been envoy at the court of one of the great powers, as Holland
then was, a man who was almost one of the "supreme lords." What
men suffered in remote provinces may be judged from the complaint of a
Vyatka official against the "soldier," Netesev. This Netesev, relates the
official, "comes into the chancellory drunk at hours not appointed . . .
at two or three o 'clock at night and beats the corporals of the guard and
the sentries with a stick, and, without declaring any fault and without
any reason, holds us under arrest in the watch-house and at other times
2 Even then, according to Vockerodt, the Fortress of Peter and Paul played less of a
military than a police role; it never defended any one or anything, but it was "a
sort of Bastille."
326 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
in chains, and, seizing on inhabitants of Vyatka, as well townsmen as
countrymen of the better sort, ex-burmisters and [other officials] . . .
keeps them under guard beneath the local government office and in
chains, where heretofore robbers were kept, and takes bribes." "This
soldier," adds Bogoslovsky, from whom we borrow these tales, "had at-
tained a sort of intoxication with authority, which in his case seems to
have coincided with intoxication with whiskey. Repeatedly he made
boastful speeches that, 'coming to the chancellory, he would fetter and
torture to death the chancellor and his secretary ; and if they would not
put themselves in irons, he would beat them with those irons and break
their heads open.' The wife of the secretary he threatened to cut up
with his sword into small pieces and swore to fulfil this his intention,
kissing the image of the Saviour in the presence of witnesses."
Bourgeois on the surface, Petrine society continued to be military at
the core. The mention of "soldiers" may have inspired in the reader
the illusion that we were speaking of something new, of a sort of military
democracy. Nothing of the sort; the kernel of Peter's Guard was com-
posed of "princes and simple nobles." This vital fact had at once
impressed itself on foreign observers, who strove to explain it according
to their lights. "He is gracious with all," says the French diplomat
Campredon, "and pre-eminently with the soldiers, most of whom are
children of princes and lords, who are serving him as a pledge of their
fathers' loyalty." In fact, even under Peter, the nobility had begun
to elaborate the central organ which was to aid it in resuming authority
under his successors. The thin bourgeois veil had no more changed the
nature of the Muscovite state than had the German cloak changed the
nature of the Muscovite man. When Peter died, only the small group of
"supreme lords," devoid of social support among the masses, stood
between the nobility and power. The "supreme lords," having failed to
create a bourgeoisie, were like a staff without an army, while the old
military-serving class, clad in the Preobrazhensky uniform, merely
awaited a convenient moment to "break the lords' heads for them."
6. The Agony of the Bourgeois Policy
The military force very quickly managed to make itself a political
force. Scarcely had Peter closed his eyes in death when the Guard was
master of the situation. Without the consent of the Guardsmen no one
could ascend the Russian throne, so lately filled by "their colonel."
The impact of commercial capitalism on Russia had cost her very dear ;
nor were Russia's losses to be measured by her expenditures in men and
money. No "active policy" can ever dispense with such outlays, and in
this particular Russia in 1725 did not differ essentially from France at
the moment of the death of Louis XIV, from Prussia at the close of the
THE REFORMS OF PETER 327
Seven Years ' War, or even from England at the end of her struggle with
Napoleon. The population had been ruined and had scattered. The
effects were felt long before the close of the war; by 1710 the loss of
population, as compared with the last pre-Petrine census, has been calcu-
lated by Mr. Milyukov as reaching 40% in some places. However unre-
liable the statistics of the time (even contemporaries had no confidence
in the census of 1710), they give a fairly definite general impression,
especially where they are supplemented by comments. Of the province of
Archangel the official document remarks that "losses of homesteads and
their inmates have appeared because the men have been taken as recruits,
as soldiers, as carpenters, to St. Petersburg as workers, as settlers, as
smiths." Of the 5,356 homesteads "lost" in the Shekhona country,
1,551 had been abandoned because of conscription for the army or for
labour on public works, and 1,366 because of flights. To foreigners it
seemed that the central provinces had been absolutely depopulated
thanks to the Northern War; and though this opinion must be taken
with the same reserve as the assertion of these same foreigners that the
clay-soil near Moscow was among "the best lands in Europe," this sum-
mary impression was not pure fantasy. A document of 1726, which bears
the signatures of almost all the "supreme lords," accepts unquestion-
ingly the following "reasons" for non-payment of the soul tax: "since
the census many peasants who were able to earn money by their labour,
have died and been taken as recruits and run away . . . while of those
who now by labour can get money to meet the state taxes there remain
but a small number." Nor did the "supreme lords" dispute a reference
to the decline of peasant economy: "besides that, for several years now
there have been crop failures, and in many places the peasants sow little
grain, and those who sow are compelled to sell the grain in the ground to
meet state taxes, and hence they go running into far places where it
would be impossible to seek them out." Yet in this second quotation we
already have an explanation of peasant ruin by other than political
factors ; for obvious reasons the official document is silent about the social
causes, which were, however, clearly evident to foreigners, who, in ac-
counting for the depopulation of central Russia assigned to the ' ' savage
dealings of the masters ' ' as much weight as to the Northern War.
The bankruptcy of Peter's system lay not in the fact that "at the price
of the ruin of the country Russia was raised to the rank of a European
power" but in the fact that, regardless of the ruin of the country, this
goal was not attained. Foreigners in Russian service rated the might of
Peter's empire far lower than did foreigners looking on from a
distance, or than later historians have done. Field-Marshal Munnich, in
an intimate conversation with the Prussian envoy, Mardefeld, did not
conceal from him that the Russian troops were in a very lamentable
328 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
condition : the officers were good for nothing ; among the soldiers were
many untrained recruits ; there were no cavalry horses at all — in a word,
had there appeared another opponent like Charles XII, he might with
25,000 men have settled accounts with the whole "Muscovite" army.
And he said this only two years after the Peace of Nystadt, so brilliantly
celebrated! The fleet was no better off; only the galleys were worth
anything, and while they were very practical for a little war in the
fiords of Finland, they were not fit for the open sea. For the sake of
speed, ships were built of green wood ; they rotted with extraordinary
rapidity in the fresh waters of the Kronstadt haven. This was one of the
chief reasons for Peter's attempt to transfer his fleet base to Rogervik
(later "Baltic Port," near Reval), situated close to the open sea, where
the water was salt. But Peter's engineers could not cope with the large
waves ; every violent storm swept away all the fruits of their toil, so that
the construction of Rogervik became synonymous with the labours of
Sisyphus. The personnel of the fleet was no better than its materiel.
Peter was soon disappointed in his foreign-trained "midshipmen" and by
the end of his reign was no longer sending them abroad to study. The
condition of the sailors is best indicated by a report one foreign diplomat
made to his government, a report made at the very time of the magnifi-
cent masquerades in celebration of victory over the Swedes. "By way
of anticipating disorders and preserving tranquillity the number of the
guard in the residency here was doubled. I was told that the cause of
the multiplicity of precautions taken on this occasion lay in the fact that
a very considerable number of sailors, whose wages, despite the order
given by the tsar before his departure that they should be paid off, had
not been paid, and who had not a piece of bread, had conspired to gather
in a crowd and loot the houses of the inhabitants of the residency here."
At the same time Russia was on the eve of a new war. Commercial
capitalism, which had forced Peter to fight for twenty years for the
Baltic Sea, now drove him to the Caspian. Ere the Peace of Nystadt
was concluded, Peter had already prepared a new detailed map of the
latter sea, for which the French Academy elected the tsar to membership.
The officers who made the map brought, as foreign diplomats said, the
important information that the chief centres of silk production lay near
the border of the tsar's dominions. "Here they all flatter themselves
with the hope that since the Persians have not a single naval vessel, it
will be possible to attract a great part of the silk trade here and to
extract great revenue from it, ' ' the Prussian envoy wrote to his king. It
was only the Prussian diplomat who discovered this America ; the Russian
court had of course never forgotten that "greatest trade in Europe"
after which there had been so many seekers in the seventeenth century.
Peter's Persian campaign was the inevitable complement to the silk
THE REFORMS OF PETER 329
manufactories he had planted. A year later it was being talked of quite
definitely. ' ' The tsar wishes, for the safety of his trade, to have a port
and fortress on the other side of the Caspian Sea and desires that the
silks, which are usually sent to Europe through Smyrna, should hence-
forth go to Astrakhan and Petersburg, ' ' wrote another diplomat in 1722 ;
soon afterward he heard a similar explanation from the lips of Peter
himself, except that the tsar naturally spoke, not of seizure of the silk
trade by the Russians but of "freedom" for this trade.
Hardly had the military operations against the Swedes been brought
to a close than the troops engaged in them began to be drawn off toward
Moscow, and thence onward to the banks of the Don and the Volga. On
the latter rapidly grew up a military and transport fleet, for service of
which 5,000 sailors were transferred from Kronstadt through Moscow to
Nizhny Novgorod. As usual, there was no lack of pretexts for war. At
Shemakha the tsar's "gosts" had been robbed of anywhere from fifty
thousand to five hundred thousand rubles ; later three million was men-
tioned. Moreover, the tsar's "gost" was so near to being a government
official that it was impossible not to view the incident as downright dis-
respect for the dignity of the Russian sovereign. True, the plunderers
were rebels against their own sovereign, the shah of Persia ; but all the
less reason had he to be angry at the appearance of Russian troops in his
dominions. It was for him, in the last analysis, that they were restoring
order ; he was bound to appreciate this fact, and at the Russian court it
was even hoped that perhaps the shah would freely assign the silk
monopoly to Russia, out of pure gratitude.
All these iridescent hopes, however, were bound soon to fade. If not
the Persian government itself (which at the time it was not easy to find,
as several pretenders were struggling for the throne), then its vassals on
the shores of the Caspian Sea, in alliance with the mountaineers of
Daghestan, offered the Russians desperate resistance. The Caspian fleet
turned out no better than the Baltic ; most of it was destroyed by storms.
The climate was a foe deadlier than storms and the Persians ; diseases and
horse murrain raged in the Russian camp. Peter, who had set out on
the campaign in the spring of 1722, returned to Moscow in the following
Januarjr; his very meagre conquests had cost "15,000 horses, more than
4,000 regular troops, without counting a far greater number of cossacks
and a million rubles." But these immediate losses were nothing in
comparison with those the future threatened.
Russia's rival for the silk trade, Turkey, understood Peter's Caspian
expedition as a direct threat to her ; one war involved another, and that
incomparably more dangerous. "I can, as it seems to me, assure Your
Majesty," Campredon wrote to Louis XV in April, 1723, "that, however
the Russians boast and with whatever obstinacy they throw dust in one 's
330 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
eyes, they are unable to support a war against the Turks, whether on the
Persian front or on that of Azov. The Russian finances are bad, and
hunger is making itself ever more strongly felt. The cavalry is without
horses, for they all perished in the last campaign, and the troops have
not been paid for 17 months, something that never happened in the last
war." The fact of non-payment of wages to the troops, at first sight
improbable, is fully borne out by Russian documents; on February 13,
1724, the Senate reported to the sovereign that "many officers, mostly
foreigners, but likewise Russians with small estates or none at all, on
account of non-payment of their wages for the past year have fallen into
such straits that they have consumed their own equipment. ' ' By the end
of the reign even those on whose account the whole country was starving
were themselves starving !
On men inclined to pessimism, such as the Saxon resident Lefort, for
example, Peter at this time produced the impression of a man who had
renounced everything and had taken to drink from grief. "I cannot
understand the state of this realm, ' ' Lefort wrote six months before the
emperor's death ; "for the sixth day the tsar has not left his room and is
very unwell because of a spree on the occasion of the laying of the corner-
stone of a church, which they christened with 3,000 bottles of wine. . . .
The masquerades are near at hand, and men are talking of nothing but
pleasures, while the nation weeps. . . . They pay neither the troops nor
the fleet nor the collegia nor any one whatsoever ; every one is grumbling
terribly. ' '
The death of the reformer was a worthy finale to this festivity in the
midst of plague. As is well known, Peter died of the effects of syphilis,
probably contracted in Holland and ill-cured by the doctors there. For
that matter, given the Homeric drunkenness of Peter's court, the best
doctors could scarcely have helped him. For the tsar death came quite
unexpectedly, though outside observers had long been prepared for the
catastrophe ; and the temper which he displayed may very well shake the
legend of "men of iron." "In the course of his illness, he fell off
strongly in spirit, feared death frightfully, but at the same time ex-
pressed sincere repentance," writes the French envoy in his detailed
relation of Peter's last days. "By his express command they set free all
those imprisoned for debt, most of whom he ordered discharged out of his
personal resources. The rest of the prisoners and all in penal servitude,
except murderers and state criminals ( ! ) , he likewise ordered set free ; he
ordered prayers for himself in all churches of divers religions and re-
ceived the Sacrament three times in one week." He was ill long enough
to have been able to draw up a will, which would have been the logical
sequel to his law on the succession to the throne. But his fear of death
was so great that he lacked the spirit to set about it, and those around
THE REFORMS OF PETER 331
him to remind him of it. They recollected it when Peter was already
almost in his agony, but in the scrawls produced by his trembling hand
they could distinguish only two words: "give all. ..." To whom re-
mained unknown.
Thus, the day after the death of the first emperor of Russia the throne
became elective. Neither in theory nor in practice was there so much
novelty in this as we might suppose. The first tsars of the House of
Romanov had usually been ' ' elected ' ' to the throne by a zemsky sobor ;
at least the formality of election was preserved even at Peter's accession
to the throne. When the ' ' Holy Synod and the High Governing Senate
and the Generality in unison bade" the Russian people bear obedience
to the widow of the deceased, the Empress Catherine I, it was not so
much a new form as simply new words to designate an assembly of
essentially the same composition as the one which in 1682 had elected
Peter himself, and which had consisted of the "Holy Synod," the "boyar
duma," and the "Moscow estates." The innovation lay in the fact that
previously, from Alexis on, the election had been really only a form
because the heir was known to all ; now, although there was no lack of
an heir, in passing him over they elected a person who had no rights to
the throne at all. And those who did the electing were not those who by
tradition had the power and in whose name the manifesto was written,
but, once more, persons who had no formal right of election. "Senate,
Synod and Generality" was written at the dictation of the Guard, which
at this moment of universal dissatisfaction was the most dissatisfied and
most dangerous force.
Foreign diplomats are in general agreement in their versions of the
events that took place in the palace on the night of the 27-28th of
January, 1725. When the Guard officers took leave of their colonel, who
had already lost consciousness, their seniors (according to some reports,
on their own initiative; according to another version, led by the "reichs-
marshal," Prince Menshikov) betook themselves to Catherine and "took
an oath of loyalty" to her. That this was not an oath as loyal subjects is
clear from the fact that Peter was still alive at that moment ; the "oath"
evidently consisted in the promise of the Guardsmen not to forsake their
lady colonel. Reassured by this promise, she acted in accord with the
dictates of expediency; for even after the visit of the Preobrazhenskys
to Catherine, which was of course immediately echoed in court circles,
there were bold men who asserted that the lawful heir was the son of the
executed Tsarevich Alexis and grandson of the first emperor, the future
Peter II; and among these men were the great majority of the "supreme
lords." Only Menshikov, Tolstoi, and Admiral-General Apraxin were
resolutely opposed to his candidacy; and if Tolstoi's position may be
easily explained by his sombre role in the affair of Alexis, the conduct of
332 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
the chief of the land army and of the commander-in-chief of the Russian
fleet can hardly be reduced to personal motives alone. They were driven
in a definite direction by the public opinion of the groups they headed.
What the army expected from Catherine becomes absolutely clear as soon
as we learn the promises she gave in exchange for the Guardsmen's
"oath of loyalty." "The empress declared fr<5m the very beginning that
she would pay them their wages out of her own treasury." More than
that, she "took the precaution in advance to send money to the fortress
to pay wages to the garrison, which, like the other troops, had not re-
ceived them for sixteen months. ... In order to make them still better
disposed toward her, the tsaritsa ordered distribution of moneys to all
the regiments over and above their wages ; soldiers engaged on various
labours were ordered to cease their labours and betake themselves to their
stations, supposedly to pray God for the sovereign."
The skill with which Catherine conducted herself at this odd auction
for the moment roused foreign observers to extraordinary enthusiasm
and inspired them with an exceedingly exaggerated notion of the capa-
bilities of the new sovereign. She "may in all justice be called the
Semiramis of the North and an astonishing example of miraculous good-
fortune," Campredon wrote of the event of January 28. "Without high
birth, without any support except her personal deserts, unable even to
read or write, she has through long years enjoyed the love and confidence
of the most august monarch, a man least of all mortals subject to any
lasting influence, and after his death she has been able to make herself
autocratic sovereign, to the general enthusiasm of all and without the
least shadow of opposition, at least so far, to her good fortune." To
oppose would have been very risky, when Prince Menshikov frankly
threatened to slay any one who dared to oppose the proclamation of
Catherine as reigning empress, and "the Guard officers, intentionally
stationed in a corner of the hall" where the Synod, Senate, and Gener-
ality were holding counsel, "said the same thing."
The personal role of the sovereign began to seem less significant, even
to the most enthusiastic, when they inspected her administration more
closely. Of all Peter's functions that which suited his widow best was,
strange as it may seem, the role of colonel. Here she strove with excep-
tional energy and not without success to replace the late emperor. When
her daughter Anna was married to the duke of Holstein (they had been
betrothed in Peter's lifetime), Catherine did not attend the wedding
because of mourning ; but mourning did not prevent her from appearing
at the military part of the ceremony. On foot she made the circuit of
the ranks of the Guardsmen, drawn up as usual on the Tsaritsyn Meadow,
of course drank whiskey to their health and distributed roast beef to
them. The soldiers "greeted her with enthusiastic shouts, throwing up
THE REFORMS OF PETER 333
their caps." But gradually contemporaries began to find that the em-
press was attracted overmuch by this side of her task. Six months after
her accession, Campredon, who had been so enthusiastic about her, began
to find that the empress might lose "both the respect and the advan-
tage merited by her great gifts," thanks to her "distractions." "These
distractions consist in almost daily carouses, lasting all night and a good
part of the day, in the garden with persons who on account of their
service obligations have to be always at court." Catherine rarely went
to bed before four o 'clock in the morning, and her constant condition of
drunken stupor excluded all possibility of busying herself with ' ' affairs
of state."
Foreign men of affairs, who had had occasion to observe Peter closely
during his trips abroad, had not had a high opinion of the efficiency of
the reformer himself in this field. The French official put in charge of
Peter during his journey to Paris could not understand when the Russian
tsar busied himself with politics, and finally came to the conclusion that
among the Russians political questions were probably decided during
dinner, over a bottle of wine. In reality, these matters had been decided
by the "supreme lords" quite independently; if the matter did not
relate to the army or the fleet, Peter interfered only sporadically, chiefly
at moments when the machine had begun to squeak badly and threatened
to stop altogether. To expect even such sporadic interference from
Catherine would have been nonsense. The necessity for a real sovereign
along with the nominal one was recognised by men who knew the empress,
apparently even at the very moment of her accession; even then there
were rumours of some kind of a "special council, vested with a certain
authority," which would prevent Catherine from being "entirely auto-
cratic. ' ' At that moment, however, she was supported by the army and
the fleet, by Menshikov and Apraxin ; talk of a " council ' ' was not ener-
getically supported by any one. But Peter's autocracy had offered too
negative results for men to put up readily with a simple continuation
of it when the official wielder of it was manifestly incompetent to
maintain even outward decorum.
Not at all in the name of a return to tradition, as it is usually pre-
sented, but, on the contrary, in the name of the "Europeanisation" of
political forms, the opposition which had smouldered in Peter's time
burst out in bright flame in the reign of Catherine I. If during the
reformer's lifetime matters had not gone beyond bold speeches, such as
the declaration of a captain of the fleet that the tsar, properly, had no
right to give orders without consulting the zemsky sobor, his successor
had to deal with far more than simple talk. During military salutes, of
which in the empress' presence they were as liberal as in the reign of
the late emperor, balls began to whistle from muskets "accidentally"
334 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
loaded; men fell killed and wounded, and, as though by design, at two
paces from Catherine. In the torture-chambers they were constantly
torturing some one, whether soldiers of the Guard, or "two aristocratic
ladies, brought from Moscow in fetters," or the brother of the Grand
Duke's tutor. Romodanovsky, son of the " prince-csesar, " who had
inherited from his father the office of chief of the secret political police,
told his cronies that he was no longer able to bear the horrors he had to
witness. It was impossible to place unconditional reliance even on their
chief support — the army. Besides individual officers and soldiers, whole
armies fell under suspicion, like the Little Russian army, whose com-
mander, Prince M. M. Golitsyn, very popular with his subordinates, was
deemed one of the most untrustworthy; in February, 1726, they had to
change the garrison in the Peter and Paul Fortress. They had to con-
ciliate at least some of the malcontents and try to mollify the discontent
of the rest. In this setting arose an institution, the significance of which
has hitherto not been very intelligible to Russian historians, though con-
temporaries understood it perfectly and at once — the Supreme Privy
Council.
The "points" presented to the Empress Anna in 1730 were clearly
foreshadowed in February, 1726. The well-known "opinion not in
edict," which supplied the constitution of the Supreme Privy Council,
really puts matters more generally and more simply than do the cele-
brated "points." In place of enumerating the cases in which the
empress cannot act independently, the "opinion" generalises all possible
cases : " no edicts shall be issued until they have been absolutely settled
in the privy council." Edicts were to be issued with the formula:
"given in Our Supreme privy council"; in the same way all kinds of
"reports, memoranda, or presentations" must be subscribed, "for sub-
mission to the Supreme privy council." Thus, in the eyes of the subjects
power was locked up in a very solid casket, and the public had gradually
to get used to the fact that the sovereign did not rule directly, and that
the sovereign's commands had force only when clothed in a certain
constitutional form.
From the very beginning, however, it was perfectly clear that in itself
this form could not satisfy any one. Menshikov agreed to the formation
of the Council without much dispute, it seems, because he valued the
reality of power far more than the parade ; as one making a concession,
he demanded full autonomy for himself at home in the War Collegium,
where formerly the Senate had wearied him with its attempts at super-
vision and control. But just because matters had not changed much in
comparison with the preceding period, such a change was not enough for
the public. In order to accustom it to an aristocratic constitution on the
English model, it was necessary to demonstrate its practical advantages.
THE REFORMS OF PETER 335
Otherwise its "English" form could only compromise it. From the very
first day, it may be said, the ' ' supreme lords ' ' 3 could not but sense that
the Council would have to fight for its existence. Officially the Council
was established on February 9, and an edict about it was sent to the
Senate; the Senate did not receive the edict and had its usher in the
most insulting way "throw" it into the chancellory of the new institution.
This was one of those moments when even in dry chancellory corre-
spondence is felt the tempo of drama — or rather of comedy: for the
moment when the secretary of the Council thrust the edict into the bosom
of the Senate's usher undoubtedly belongs to the latter genre.
The social group closest to the supreme lords in point of its official
position, Peter's "generality," manifestly did not desire to recognise the
"English" constitution, which made a few men, who only yesterday had
sat in their midst, their masters. Harsh measures were applied to the
Senate; it was deprived of the title of "Ruling" and remained only
' ' High ' ' ; what was far more important and more noteworthy, the Senate
was deprived of an independent military force ; under the pretext of
economy (it was then a universal pretext) the "Senate Company" was
abolished, 10 couriers being left to the Senate ; finally, a number of new
senators were appointed, as in England new peers are appointed to
subdue a disobedient upper house, and appointed without reference to
their hierarchical rank or to the dignity of the Senate. In official cor-
respondence the Senate was gradually equated with "the other collegia" ;
and for any negligence on the part of senators their pay was withheld
just as it was from the small fry of the chancellories. In a word, the
Council exacted full satisfaction. But the collision with the Senate was
merely symptomatic of the general state of affairs. Neither the "supreme
lords" nor the "generality" directly represented any social class; the
significance of the Supreme Privy Council and its fate become clear to
us only when we discover the class implication of its policy. Then we
shall see that the regime of the "supreme lords" was the finale of the
Petrine reform. During Dmitry Golitsyn 's administration of Russia 4
the wave of bourgeois policy reached its last crest. From the moment of
the fall of the supreme lords sets in a continuous ebb-tide ; by his con-
stitutional projects Golitsyn himself testified to the fall of the system of
which he was fated to be the last representative.
The bourgeois policy of the Supreme Privy Council was very early
evident — even before the fall of Menshikov. As early as December 20,
3 As members of the Council were appointed Menshikov, Apraxin, Golovkin, Tol-
stoi and D. Golitsyn; Ostermann was added a little later. The duke of Holstein
substituted for Catherine. Yaguzhinsky, who attended the first meetings, soon left
and became the sworn enemy of the supreme lords.
4 He was in fact the head of the Privy Council in the two-year interval between
the banishment of Menshikov and the death of Peter II in 1730.
336 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
1726, on the initiative of Menshikov, Ostermann, and Makarov, it was de-
cided to organise a commission to consider the condition of the Russian
merchantry and to devise means of improving it "to the profit of the
realm. ' ' And as an earnest of the great and rich favours that the mer-
chantry might expect from this commission, the empress, on the report
of the same persons, "was pleased to decree: for the sake of developing
the merchantry every one shall be permitted from the coming year 1727
to trade to the town of Archangel without interdiction." The reasons
for the measure were set forth in detail in the ' ' opinion ' ' submitted to the
Senate by the Kammer and Commerce Collegia and by the Chief Magis-
tracy. This "opinion" is one of the most intelligent documentary ex-
pressions of Russian mercantilism of the early eighteenth century. In
great detail it proved that in the province of economics Peter's cudgel
had merely compelled superfluous and unproductive expenditures and,
consequently, had served no purpose except to retard the accumulation
of capital. "Commerce ought to be in all freedom; whatever merchants
are able to trade to any port ought not to be forbidden to do so " ; any
one who can make a profit by transporting his wares to St. Petersburg
will take them there in future, and if any artificial pre-eminence can be
created in favour of the capital, it is by making the import duties every-
where lower than at "the town" (as the document very remarkably
calls Archangel, which to the pre-Petrine bourgeoisie was "the town"
par excellence). To forbid the importation of wares into "the town,"
as Peter had done, was sheer nonsense. The official document of course
did not express itself so definitely ; but the idea was precisely that. It is
worth remarking one detail; among the wares that enter Archangel the
'opinion" has grain in mind. "In return for such exported grain great
capital came into the Russian realm from foreign countries because of
the peasants' labour"; Peter's prohibition of grain exports had deprived
of this "capital" the "peasants who in certain littoral towns and in
Vyatka paid their taxes for the most part by selling grain." So early
appears an anticipation of agrarian capitalism, and, what is most note-
worthy, in the region where there was no serfdom ; in converting them-
selves into factories for the production of grain for export, the landlords'
estates of the second half of the eighteenth century were only following
in the footsteps of the "black plough" [state] peasantry.
It need hardly be added that abolition of the privileges of St. Peters-
burg in the matter of exports was from the economic point of view a
progressive, not a reactionary, measure, all the more so since we know
that St. Petersburg had been founded out of military, not commercial,
considerations. But Menshikov 's policy was by no means focused on
bourgeois interests, and we shall be able to form a real estimate of it only
if we acquaint ourselves with a series of measures the Supreme Council
THE REFORMS OF PETER 337
took relating to the soul tax. This financial innovation of Peter's, as is
well known, had meant not so much a revolution in financial technique as
an extraordinary intensification of the tax burden. The fact that the tax
was now assessed on souls of male sex instead of on homesteads would be
very expressive of Peter's individualism, had the money been collected
from the "soul," if, in other words, the tax had been individual. But
such was not the case at all ; the tax was, as of old, imposed in gross on
the whole hamlet, and within the hamlet was distributed according to the
number of economies there ; only the total amount was determined by the
number of "mouths" of male sex in the hamlet, not excepting decrepit
old men and nursing babes. This method of reckoning simplified matters
in the extreme ; no disputes such as those that had formerly taken place
under the homestead census (over what was a homestead, what not) were
possible ; there could be no dispute about the number of workers, the
relative strength of the taxable homesteads, and such like, for every male
paid whether he was a worker or not.
The psychological explanation of the reform must then be sought not in
the domain of bourgeois economy but in a circle far closer to Peter — the
army. The whole male population of the country was divided into serving
soldiers and paying soldiers; according to Peter's idea, the latter must
support the former directly. To this end the collection of the soul tax
in each "guberniya" was concentrated in the hands of the military
authorities; from each regiment in a definite locality was detailed a
" command," headed by an officer, which exacted the tax with military
despatch and punctuality. These military peculiarities of the new
financial system were the most grievous to the population.
When the Supreme Privy Council, influenced by the considerations of
which examples were given at the beginning of this chapter, decided to
carry out a "relief of the peasantry in the payment of the soul tax," it
began by removing the military collectors from the hamlets. ' ' Whatever
staff officers and subalterns and men of the rank and file are in per-
manent quarters for the collection of the soul tax and on expeditions for
various levies . . . shall go to their commands immediately," says the
journal of the Supreme Council for February 1, 1727. Officially the
collection passed from the hands of the military into the hands of the
civil authorities— from the "staff officers and subalterns" to the "voe-
vodas," who under Peter had lost the last vestiges of their former sig-
nificance and had preserved a purely etymological connection with mili-
tary (voenny) affairs. But the voevoda could not replace the military
collector, who had travelled through the province and exacted the soul
tax from the peasants directly ; herein had lain the burdens of the former
system. The civilian authorities could retain only general supervision;
to whom the functions of the "staff officers and subalterns" really passed,
338 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
is stated with absolute definiteness in an edict of February 22 of the same
year, which sums up all the "favours" shown by the Supreme Council.
By this edict a special commission was empowered to examine the
question of the soul tax and to change the rate ; but the tax imposed on
the peasants ' ' the landlords themselves shall collect, and in their absence
their stewards [and other agents] shall be constrained to pay." One of
the most important of the landholder's rights, the right which had been
so effective in enserfing the peasants but which, thanks to Peter's finan-
cial reforms, had become a fiction, once more became a reality. The
military landlord, who for twenty years had been regarded as cannon
fodder, became once more the "financial agent of the government," as
modern historians delicately and elegantly express it; it would be more
correct to say that once more he became a sovereign in miniature, for so
long as serfdom existed there could be no control over the way in which
this "agent" collected the taxes from his peasants. Of course, Peter
had not intentionally pared down the powers of the nobility in this
respect; theoretically the local authority of the nobility was even in-
creased in his reign.
But how could these theoretical rights be put into practice by the
military landlord, who on account of the "active policy" served "without
leave" until overtaken by senility, without seeing his home for years at
a time ? Under Peter retirement had been permitted only in case of utter
inability to continue service. All served "without leave," from the
highest to the lowest ; the septuagenarian field-marshal, B. P. Sheremetev,
several times asked the sovereign to let him go to Moscow to arrange his
affairs but was not even honoured with a reply. If Peter was so strict
with a field-marshal, it is easy to imagine what the service of simple men
of no rank was like. Not only was service burdensome ; to the noble of
those days, with his habits, it seemed humiliating as well. In the Mus-
covite period he had offered himself for service with a detachment of
armed bondsmen, whom he commanded ; if he was subordinate to the
senior commander, the latter was always a fellow noble. Peter's statute
forbade men to be made officers and given command unless they had
previously served in the ranks and "knew the soldier's business from the
foundation." The noble newly taken into service had to pull in the collar
along with his own serfs, and sometimes fell under the command of one
of them who had been made a non-commissioned officer for distinguished
service. Service alone did not suffice for promotion ; one had to study.
Non-fulfilment or poor fulfilment of service obligations was punished
most severely; Peter's phrases about "sharp torture for negligence"
must be understood quite literally. Noteworthy in this respect are the
memoirs of one military servitor of the time, Zhelyabuzhsky, a genuine
martyrologist of the military-serving class. There we find on every page
THE REFORMS OF PETER 339
notes, such as: Colonel Moksheyev was beaten with a knout because he
had released a schismatic ; in 1699 Divov and Kolychev were beaten with
lashes because Divov had given Kolychev 20 rubles in money and a cask
of wine to escape reporting at Voronezh for shipbuilding. In 1704
Prince Alexis Baryatinsky was beaten with lashes at Preobrazhensk for
not reporting men eligible for service, while Rodion Zernovo-Velyaminov
was beaten with rods for not registering in time. Non-appearance on
service was punishable, under a law of 1714 by confiscation of all one's
property, under a law of 1722 by "political death." No regard was had
for person, and prompt punishment was exacted for violation of the
statutes, whether small or great. In the same year, 1704, according to
Zhelyabuzhsky 's diary, the voevoda Naumov was beaten unmercifully
with rods for having failed to shave his beard.
This is the reason why with the "favour" to the peasants, at which the
peasants were perhaps not the most delighted, there was closely linked a
promise of favour to the nobles, who undoubtedly appreciated it at its
true value. "When circumstances permit, two parts of the officers and
sergeants and rank and file, who are of the nobility, shall be dismissed to
their homes in order that they may inspect their hamlets and bring them
into proper order"; their duties were meanwhile to be performed by
foreigners and men without service estates. This idea of exempting the
military-serving nobility was ascribed by foreign diplomats to Menshikov.
The commander-in-chief of the military force was, perhaps unconsciously,
representing the interests of the military class.
The fall of Menshikov was, then, much more than a court revolution
of little interest for the historian. An exceptionally typical represen-
tative of "primary accumulation," Menshikov combined in his own
person the powerful feudatory and the great entrepreneur, and it seems
the latter frequently predominated. In the documents of the period we
incessantly find "His Serene Highness," now selling pitch, now coining
his old silver, at enormous profit to himself ; he had several factories ; he
farmed the fisheries in the White Sea. At the same time he was sur-
rounded by a sort of court (the papers relating to his exile mention
Menshikov 's free followers) and had his own soldiers, who evidently
caused some anxiety to those who banished the prince. But it does not
appear that these soldiers, or any soldiers and officers at all, stirred in
favour of the banished man ; the army, it seems, was too well aware that
its generalissimo was most concerned with filling his own pocket. Since
there was, among his opponents, no lack of popular generals, like M. M.
Golitsyn or V. V. Dolgoruky, it was natural enough that the military-
serving nobility decided to play a waiting game and see what the
"supreme lords" would do when they had got rid of the real autocrat.
The removal of Menshikov was bound to establish a formal oligarchy,
340 HISTORY OF RUSSIA
for at this time the Russian throne was only nominally occupied. The
long foretold death of Catherine I was not long in coming; Peter II,
who replaced her in May. 1727, and who as early as 1725 had been the
candidate of a majority of the supreme lords, had, in the words of the
English diplomat. Rondeau, one dominant passion — hunting. 3 The fact
that this thirteen-year-old boy. who looked all of eighteen, matured very
early, offered an additional means of ruling him — through women. Here
the supreme lords — or their daughters — had only one rival : the Tsarevna
Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, pleased the young emperor
better* than did any one else around him. But they had little cause for
worry: at that time Elizabeth (she herself was only eighteen) had one
dominant passion — to say nothing of others — the passion for dress. Poli-
tics were absolutely foreign to her; at the most critical moment she
thought only of sending to her political rival to complain that the court
chef did not send her cooks pepper and salt. Menshikov had made the
first attempt to supply Peter II with a wife who would watch over the
interests of her family ; but he went about it so crudely, and the princess
was so uninteresting that the attempt was an utter failure, and, it seems,
even hastened on the catastrophe which it had been designed to ward off.
Dolgoruky almost succeeded where Menshikov had failed ; his plans were
thwarted by a pure accident, for in 1730 Peter died of smallpox on the
eve of the day appointed for his wedding with Princess Catherine Dol-
goruky. This event necessarily terminated the attempts of the supreme
lords to secure themselves by "family' 7 means; they had to resort to
other courses. Here success was wholly dependent on the attitude of the
noble public toward the rule of the Supreme Privy Council. This atti-
tude in its turn was determined by the policy pursued by the supreme
lords during the reign of Peter II.
The real head of the Council during this period was, as already men-
tioned, Prince Dmitry Golitsyn, former "gubernator" of Kiev, later
President of the Rammer Collegium, and one of the most important of
the ""supreme lords" of the Petrine period. Contemporaries deemed him
the head of the "Old Russian party": modern scholars, correcting this
mistake, have begun to emphasise his education on the "Western model
and his "Western acquaintanceships. That Golitsyn was not the head of
an "Old Russian party" is, of course, true; no such party existed. But
it is noteworthy that he, one of Peter's closest aids, did not like foreign
languages, 
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