IN PRINCIPLE, all Russian territory belonged to the sovereign; in practice, most of it was controlled by a landowning aristocracy. The members of this class might be secular or monastic, and the estate might be held as a grant from the Tsar (pomestie) or as a freehold patrimony (votchina); but in all cases the relationship between the owner and the peasants working for his benefit was the same. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a crucial period: juridically the peasant on a monastic or private estate had previously been free; he now lost that freedom and became for all practical purposes a serf; in particular, he lost his right to quit the estate at will. The owner, whose land, in the primitive agricultural conditions of the time, was rarely very productive, had every incentive to keep the peasant on the spot, and pressed the government to place legal restrictions on the right of depar-ture. Arbitrary action by the landlords, combined with legislation in the second half of the sixteenth century, gradually subjected most of the peasants on the estates to a system of serfdom which was the most striking characteristic of the old regime in Russia.
I
I A MERCANTILE ECONOMY
Slow Progress in Agriculture
Another characteristic was economic backwardness, an inevitable result of which was increasingly harsh exploitation of human beings. It is true that cultivation on burnt clearings, involving a simple 'nomadism of the fields', had virtually ceased in the seventeenth century, except in a few isolated Regions of northern Russia, where the population was insignificant in rela-wn to the vastness of the forests. Nevertheless the prevailing agricultural technique was still one of small patches of cultivation surrounded by relatively extensive fallows, the former being shifted around everv few Years.
Under this system (perelozhnaya sistema), cultivation was shifted within
a rather small area, which never altered; the ground was worked with a Primitive type of plough which had no fore-wheels; and the fallows were J
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not manured. Nevertheless in the more populous regions of the centre (round Moscow, Yaroslav, Tver, Vladimir, Kostroma and Nijni Novgorod) and the north-west (Novgorod and Pskov), where the fallows were smaller and were brought back into cultivation with increasing frequency, a system of crop-rotation (parovaya-zernovaya sistema) had already come into use, under which the fallows were manured and were cultivated every alternate year. Cultivation had reached a more advanced stage; the primitive plough had given way to one of normal type. This system had begun de-veloping by the end of the sixteenth century. But yields were low on the whole, harvests were at the mercy of the slightest vagaries of the weather, and agricultural progress was slow and very localized.
Stock-raising played only a minor part in this agrarian economy, its principal function being to provide draught and pack animals, except in the western regions (along the Dnieper) and the south-western, where there was a trade in cattle on the hoof and in lard and undressed hides.
The animals, according at least to foreign travellers, were thin and under-fed. But our information about this side of agricultural activity is scanty.
Progress in agriculture was far from being continuous; it was halted and even reversed in periods of recession; war and conquest, and Ivan iv's high-handed intervention whenever he undertook the redistribution of the pomestia, caused a return from intensive to extensive cultivation in a number
of districts.
Urban Growth
But of course agriculture was not the sole occupation of the Russian peas-ant. Russian crafts slowly surmounted the bad times caused by the Mongol invasion. And in the little fortified townships, as in the villages, the pros-perity of the artisan class bore witness to the steady growth of a national market and to the importance of mutual trade in the general economy. An indication of this activity is the number of 'towns' whose Kreml was sur-rounded by a. posad and by slobodas inhabited by craftsmen and merchants;
there were between three and four hundred of these places in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But the figure is putative - at that time any place was a town if the central administration said it was; judged by their population and activities many of these towns were only villages. The important point is, however, that most of them supported other occupations besides agriculture.
The rising tide of trade caused new centres, riady, to spring up in com-pletely rural areas. These, which were situated at points intermediate be-tween village and town, consisted of rows of shops and workshops on the main arteries of communication, and were future towns in embryo. After the decline in urban life following the Mongol invasion, economic recovery began at the end of the fourteenth century. In addition to the towns dating from the kingdom of Kiev, and others which had been created for strategic or political reasons in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, there were now these new communities, the riady, each with its shops, granaries and
FOUNDATIONS OF RUSSIA'S POWER
Gostinni dvor (a bazaar for merchants from elsewhere). In the sixteenth century, most townships of any importance were surrounded by broad earthworks and deep moats which protected the artisan population living outside the Kreml; thus integrated into the whole, the posad ended by virtually becoming the town - a process observable in Yaroslav, Vladimir, Tver, Novgorod and Moscow. Frequent fires, destroying whole quarters at one sweep, disorganized town life; nevertheless timber continued to be used for all building purposes except, in some cases, fortifications. After the great fire of 1658, which demolished much of Yaroslav, stone towers were erected on the ramparts; with the exception of such Lithuanian towns as Vilno, almost the only places defended by stone walls were Novgorod, Pskov, Izborsk, Ladoga and Moscow; in the last named, the merchants' quarter (Kitaigorod) was surrounded by a fortified wall between 1534 and 1538, and the entire posad (Belli Gorod] between 1585 and 1591. New Kremls were built, however at Tula (between 1514 and 1521), Zaraisk (1531) and Kolomna (1525-31).
Moscow: Religion in the Life of a Great City
These towns and cities, dominated by throngs of onion-domes and glitter-ing crosses, bore visible witness less to the power of the tsar than to that of religion. Every quarter had its own church, in many cases more than one;
every street-intersection had its shrines and outdoor icons, with lamps and candles burning before them by night and day. There were shrines and icons too along the city wall or palissade. And from one church tower to another the chimes rang out - marking the time of day, striking up a noisy welcome on special occasions, such as the visit of some notable personage, and warning the population of fires and other calamities. And when night had fallen and the city was silent, the archers on guard at the gates of the Kreml used the names of saints as passwords.
I The rhythm of the working year depended on the Church; all business ceased for the great religious feasts of Easter, Christmas, the Assumption and St Nicholas's Day, and on every Saturday from the moment of the first vesper bell. The Church was unsuccessful, however, in preventing the sale of liquor on these occasions, except for a few years (1652-8) under the Patriarch Nikon. Nor could it interfere with the fair-days, which were fre-quent (eleven a year at Zvenigorod, for instance) and which were always held on a saint's day.
The city's approaches were guarded by fortified monasteries a few miles away to the east and south: powerful bastions against possible Tatar aggression and the ever-present threat of a peasant insurrection. There Were the Andronikov monastery, built of stone between 1410 and 1427, on the lofty band of the Yaouza, dominating the road from Vladimir; the jttonasteries of the Saviour (early fifteenth century, but rebuilt in 1446) and kimonov (founded in 1379) on the left bank of the Moskva - the second of Which was destined to play a decisive role in the agrarian revolts of the seventeenth century; the Danilov monastery, an older foundation (1272),
126 THE BALKANS IN TURKISH HANDS
erected after a victory over the Tatars and overlooking the roads from the southern steppes; and finally the Novo-Dievitchy monastery (1524) in the bend of the Moskva, an advanced post towards the roads from the south-east. By the seventeenth century the Kremlin had lost its military sig-nificance ; the inhabitants of the posads and slobodas depended for their security on external fortifications.
The city of Moscow put on a big spurt of growth in the seventeenth cen-tury. The population, estimated at 41,500 by Herberstein (Charles v's ambassador) circa 1550, had doubled by 1600; but 80,000 is a small figure compared with the population of western European cities at the same time. It was after the Time of Troubles that the Muscovite capital, benefit-ing from the presence of a court, the development of the administration, the creation of a small militia of streltsy, and, above all, the swelling current of trade, became a populous city; by the end of the seventeenth century it had 200,000 inhabitants.
How the People Lived
It has often been asserted that Peter the Great's reign marks a watershed in Russian history, a critical period during which the westernization of the upper classes destroyed the fundamental unity of the Russian people, pro-ducing a chasm between the rulers and the ruled and an antagonism be-tween two mentalities, two ways of life, with disastrous consequences for the country at a later period. But, as we shall point out in Book Four, the cleavage was more apparent than real.
Even in the centuries when the skills of civilization were in their infancy and life had few material comforts to offer, there were big differences be-tween the way of life of the poorer people in town and country, and that of the landowners and merchants. The psychological unity of society was pre-carious, shattered from time to time by violent class hostilities. As for western influences, they had been penetrating in considerable volume from the end of the sixteenth century; no one waited for Peter the Great's advent to go clean-shaven in the Polish manner - a fashion which came in during the period following the Time of Troubles - and the terrible ukase of 1634, which banned the use of tobacco under pain of death, proves that people in Moscow had taken to smoking. Social differences were doubtless little more striking than at the present day, for Russian society was already highly diversified. Undoubtedly, however, the contrast between the richest and the poorest was enormous.
The poorest, who were also the most numerous, lived in little log-built isbas roofed with straw or dried mud, with crude heating arrangements (po chernomou) and no chimneys; the smoke made its way out through the nar-row windows, which, when shut, were covered with the stretched bladders of fishes or cows or sometimes merely with oiled cloth, and admitted little light. In winter the isba gave shelter to the small livestock and poultry.
Tables, with benches fixed along the walls, were the only furniture. Clothes were of linen or coarse woollen cloth, and footgear was fashioned from
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birchbark. Sheepskins were the poor man's only furs. The peasant's table-ware was made of wood or earthentable-ware, his food consisted mainly of cereals and vegetables prepared without cooking, in some cases fermented, salted or dried; cabbage, cucumbers and beet were the main items. Berries and mushrooms were preserved for the winter. Meat and butter were rarely seen, except on feast days, but much fish was eaten. For drinks there was kvas (made from fermented barley) and beer. Dessert consisted ofkisel (fruit jelly made with starch).
The richer peasants lived more comfortably: their isbas were roomier, and their furniture included chests containing clothes of English as well as Russian cloth, often richly ornamented. High leather boots were worn and were the first sign of having risen in the scale of prosperity (two centuries later they were still the first purchase of a peasant who had come to work in town, with his savings in his pocket). Alongside the wooden kitchen utensils appeared others made of copper (stewing pots), iron (saucepans) and pewter (dishes).
The lower classes in town lived like those in the country. But the exercise of a particular craft or trade sometimes caused modifications, in cases where the family dwelling incorporated the shop or workroom; the latter had better illumination. The more prosperous inhabitants of the posad, whether craftsmen or merchants, lived in larger houses - sometimes of two storeys, and having chimneys (whence the name bielaia isba, white isba};
and the windows had panes of mica or even glass. The living room was decorated with carved chests reinforced with decorative ironwork and con-taining silk clothes, blankets, and fox and marten furs. Utensils were of metal (copper, iron and tin); sometimes even gold and silver, as in the Stroganov household at Solvytchegodsk, but this was uncommon. As a rule, one corner of the room was set aside for prayer and was hung with icons. The owner's working hours were spent outside the home, in a workshop or business establishment nearby.
The expansion of business and the crafts, in this period when the cities of Muscovy were growing at a quickened tempo, increased the numbers of a middle class which had become detached from the countryside, looked at life from, a town-dweller's point of view and was regarded as a model by the peasant masses.
Novgorod, which had been the pacesetter in the arts, performed the same function in the social field with the Domostroi, a sixteenth-century nvanual for householders which gives an ideal picture of life as conducted m a well-to-do town family, and the social and religious observances with which such a family should comply. This treatise, which derives from Byzantine literature both in its didactic moralizing and in its form, was adapted and completed in Moscow by Sylvester, priest of the Church of the Assumption; and although it expresses an ideal of austerity, industry and piety which was not for everybody, and which no one could have realized in its entirety, it possesses an undeniable historical value. In his own composition, Instruction to his Son, which he appended to the treatise,
128 THE BALKANS IN TURKISH HANDS FOUNDATIONS OF RUSSIA'S POWER 129 Sylvester describes a style of conduct which, in its prudent egoism, its
re-conciliation of morality with self-interest and the pursuit of a tranquil life, would seem to be closer to reality.
The Upper Classes
In the houses of the gosti, and in those of the nobles (called 'palaces', but they were really large timber-built houses), touches of western luxury, indicating Polish or German influence, were visible in the details of furni-ture and decoration: carved tables; chairs (both upright and easy); pic-tures, even portraits. But the well-to-do classes differed from the people not so much in the comfort of their lives as in the way they spent their time and, despite violent opposition from the Church, in their greater freedom to indulged in worldly pleasures. Except in Moscow and its environs, how-ever, there was little change. Only the capital with its foreign residents, its diplomatic contact with foreign governments, and the commercial inter-course by which the needs of the court and the wealthy Muscovites were supplied, was open to the outside world; it thus became the theatre of open conflict between the partisans of tradition and the continually increasing number of those who succumed to the lure of an imported modernism.
But both parties to this conflict affected the badges of wealth which dis-tinguished them from the common herd: silk blouses, ceremonial dress stiff with gold and silver brocade, embroidery, heavy fur pelisses, knee-boots of red leather; their women went in for elaborate hairdressing and heavy make-up, and wore kokochniki embellished with pearls and precious stones. Western clothes were rarely to be seen; so were clean-shaven faces;
to this extent the boyar resembled the moujik. The difference was not in the design and cut of the clothes but in the quality of the materials. The gulf between the outward appearance of the rich and the poor was doubt-less greater in the seventeenth than in the succeeding century, when the difference came from the nobility's adoption of western fashions.
The Position of Women
A shadow lay over half the population: women, weighed down by the doctrine of original sin and by legislation enacted by men, possessed no rights and were subordinated to the will of fathers and husbands. The injunctions of the Domostroi provide a convincing reconstruction of the atmosphere governing married life:
If the husband finds that order has been disturbed by his wife or servants, or that the rules prescribed in this book are being disregarded [rules for household management and control of the servants], he should speak the language of reason to his wife and instruct her. If with docile heart she amends her conduct to con-form with her husband's teaching, he should love and reward her.
If the wife or son or daughter do not pay attention to the words or instructions of the father of the family, if they do not listen to them with respect and fear, if they do not do what they are ordered by husband, father or mother, they should be whipped in proportion to their offence.
On the other hand, however grave their offence, they should not be struck on the ear or face, or with a stick or any instrument of iron or wood. . . . You should administer punishment with a whip, and watch where you are striking; that is reasonable, and terrible, and beneficial to health. If some grave fault has been committed, such as to excite anger, some act of glaring and inexcusable dis-obedience, or of negligence, the culprit's shirt should be removed and his hands held, and he should be whipped, without excessive violence, in accordance with his fault, and when you have finished striking him you should speak a few kind words to him.
A wife, ranked with minors and servants, had to obey the head of the family. Nevertheless her position differed greatly according to whether the family lived in town or country, and was rich or poor. Women took part in agricultural work; besides, the continual migrations of peasants put large numbers of families on the roads, severing them from their original sur-roundings; both these factors gave women a certain freedom and authority, though just how far this went it is impossible to say.
Moreover, when some of the men were away, women participated in the village assembly on their behalf. Woman's position of inferiority, born of the discredit cast on her by religion and in many cases aggravated by the
Moreover, when some of the men were away, women participated in the village assembly on their behalf. Woman's position of inferiority, born of the discredit cast on her by religion and in many cases aggravated by the