21 Rozman, Urban Networks in Russia, pp. 33-42, 56-66.
22 Richard Hellie, 'Foundations of Russian Capitalism', SR 26 (1967), 148-54.
example between Vologda and Iaroslavl', where 'there are in sight fifty derevni or villages at the least, some half a mile, some a mile long, that stand vacant and desolate without any inhabitant'. According to Fletcher, his informants, some better travelled than he, assured him that 'the like is in all other places of the realm'.[80]
Whether or not Fletcher exaggerated, other evidence confirms his general picture of economic and social depression in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Thus Eaton has estimated that the average number of urban taxpaying households per town declined from 231 to 151, orby35 per cent, between about 1550 and the 1580s; in 25 towns for which household data are available for both periods he calculates an overall decline of 61 per cent.[81] Kolomna, which is believed to have had a population of up to 3,000 in the 1570s, had only 12 urban taxpaying households whilst 54 dwellings were recorded as empty and there were 249 vacant lots. Serpukhov in 1552 had 623 taxpaying households and 143 vacant lots; Murom in 1566 recorded 587 and 151 respectively, and by 1574 only 111 taxpaying households, 157 empty dwellings, and 520 vacant lots.[82] Economic depression is believed to have struck the north-west especially hard, since this was the region where much of the warfare and disorder occurred. But there can also be little doubt that matters varied regionally and that the losses incurred in the centre and the north-west were to some degree balanced by gains on the new peripheries. Voronezh, for example, was founded in 1585 and by the time of its first cadastre in 1615 it had a population of over 800 households including those of 76 urban taxpayers and 87 monastic dependents, most of the latter engaged in trade and crafts. The town had 63 trading stalls (lavki) and half stalls, 23 of which were run by state servitors.[83] Clearly many of the inhabitants of the town had migrated from further north, perhaps in part fleeing from economic difficulties being experienced elsewhere in the country.
Urban society and administration
In much the same way that de Vries regards early modern European cities as points of co-ordination for a whole range of social activities,[84] Russian towns (other than the most insignificant) were multifunctional nodes performing a series of vital tasks in the developing and expanding state. Thus they were administrative centres, points of control over the surrounding territory. They were military and defensive nodes, directed against both internal and external foes. They were commercial foci at various scales. Most ofthem had handicraft and manufacturing activities. All had a religious role. And not a few had intensive gardening and even agrarian functions. Towns were not only vital to the needs of the state but they also had a significant part to play in wealth creation. They were thus places in which many social actors were keenly interested.
The multifunctional character of the town was reflected in its physical morphology.[85] The typical sixteenth-century Russian town had a fortified core, usually called the kremlin (kreml') or gorod, which contained the major administrative and military offices and sometimes the residences of the elite or even of a portion of the population. Outside this was the commercial suburb or posad, often again walled and sometimes subdivided by walls into various sections. Beyond the posad, and either adjacent to it or at times separated from it by open space, there might be other suburbs (fortified or not, and sometimes referred to by the term slobody). Occasionally the whole settlement or a major part of it might be contained within a single wall which was sometimes described as the ostrog.[86] The typical town therefore had a cellular structure. The morphology of the town will be further explored in Chapter 25.
Urban social structure was usually complex. Towns with any degree of commercial life generally had a population of'taxpaying' or posad people. This part of the population earned its basic livelihood from handicrafts, trade and similar activities and, for the privilege of being allowed to pursue these activities in towns, they were subject to a tax burden (tiaglo) imposed by the state. As well as paying taxes, the tiaglo might include the obligation of performing various services, such as acting as customs officials, guards, watchmen and the like, which obligations could be exceedingly troublesome. The tiaglo was generally imposed on the taxpaying community as a group (sometimes structured into several groups) who were then obliged, by means of an assembly (skhod) or other mechanism to elect officials to administer the burden. The posad community, however, was by no means a group of equals. Rather members were differentiated according to their wealth. At one extreme, in Moscow, were the gosti, the richest and most significant merchants in the realm who were engaged in state service at the highest level. Also wealthy and performing important tasks forthe government were members ofthe Moscow 'hundreds' - by the late sixteenth century, the gostinaia sotnia (merchants' hundred) and the sukonnaia sotnia (cloth hundred). Most members of the posad were divided into three ranks (stati) according to their wealth, but the details seem to have varied from town to town. Also resident in the posad in many cases were cottars (bobyli), labourers and others who seem to have earned a living through lowly trading activities, acting as yard keepers, through casual labour and by other means. These people do not appear to have been full members of the posad community but paid a quit-rent (obrok) to the state. Posad people were most common in towns of the north-west, north and centre although, as we have seen, many in the centre had fled south by the latter part of the sixteenth century. There, however, they often joined the service ranks, a social transition made much easier by the fluid life of the frontier.
Members of the posad, and the land that they occupied, were designated 'black', meaning that such persons were liable to the tiaglo. But not all traders and craftspeople in the sixteenth-century town were designated 'black'. Others were 'white', meaning that they lived in suburbs owned by members of the higher nobility, middle-ranking servicemen, the Church, monasteries and others. Such people were relieved of the tiaglo on the grounds that they owed their obligations not to the state but to their lords. Many towns had such 'white' suburbs (often called slobody), which were in many ways the remnants ofpast political subdivisions in Russia when princes, monasteries, high churchmen and others customarily derived income from their urban possessions. From the time of Ivan III the tsars had been trying to eradicate them on the grounds that they denied important revenues to the state, while the 'black' people generally resented them because of their tax privileges and the unfair competition which they consequently promoted. Also a problem for the tsars were the private towns, often situated on monastic or patrimonial estates. Smirnov calculated that there were about fifteen fortified private towns in the sixteenth century, reduced to about ten in the first half of the seventeenth.[87]
80
Giles Fletcher, 'OftheRusse Commonwealth', in Lloyd E. Berry andRobert O. Crummey (eds.),
83
L. B. Veinberg and A. A. Poltoratskaia,
85
French, 'The Early and Medieval Russian Town', pp. 268-74; L. M. Tverskoi,