An important element in the populations of many towns (and also designated 'white') were the military men, for the most part members of the lower-ranking service contingents, including musketeers (strel'tsy), cossacks and others. Unlike middle-ranking servitors (deti boiarskie and others), the lower ranks either had no land and were paid in cash or kind, or they held land in communal fields with others in the same group. Few had serfs or other dependents. Moscow had a large element of service people in its population. They were less common in the north and parts of the north-west, but very common in the southern frontier towns where they often constituted the biggest element of the urban population. Here, in addition to their military duties, servicemen engaged in agriculture with their families, and many engaged in trades and crafts as well. They settled in their own suburbs close by the fortified towns where they were administered by their own regimental structures and communal organisations.
Towns also had other groups in their populations. Members of the clergy, monks, monastic and church servitors were an important element, in addition to the already-mentioned monastic dependents living in 'white places'. Moscow naturally contained all social ranks, from the tsar downwards. The social elite tended to live in the capital where they maintained their homes but also held estates elsewhere. Their life in the city was eased by the ministrations of dependents - serfs, slaves and others. Some other towns, Kazan' for example, also had members of the middle-ranking service class living in town where they had services to perform. It was more common, however, for such groups to live on their country estates, but they were generally required to maintain dwellings ('siege dwellings') in town, officially for occupation during times of disturbance or conflict. The dwellings were usually cared for in the absence of the owner by a housekeeper (dvornik), often a slave or other dependent who frequently engaged in commercial activity. Other groups included non-Russians (European soldiers, ambassadors, merchants and some others in Moscow; European merchants in some other places, notably Archangel and Vologda; Tatar and other minority representatives and groups in Moscow, Kazan', Astrakhan' and other towns), and non-official elements (runaways, beggars, criminal groups).
There is no sense in which the disparate members of the urban population constituted an 'urban citizenry' or could provide any unified political voice or identity for the town. Each group was administered separately, with different interests, and the only unity was provided by the town governor who represented the tsar and whose remit extended over the nearby region as well as the town. In this sense, then, the town barely represented a separate entity from its surrounding milieu, was disunited within itself and fell very much under the aegis of the state. Liberal scholars of the past thus lamented the lack of commercial opportunity, entrepreneurial spirit and civic freedom which, they believed, flowed from the imposition upon towns of the centralised, Muscovite model of control rather than a more 'democratic' model like the one they postulated for early Novgorod.[88]
From the point of view of a hard-pressed and financially constrained Muscovite state, however, strict control had many advantages. The problem was that the state was barely in a position to enforce it. The sixteenth century was a time of transition between the fragmented polity which had characterised the post-Mongol period and the more centralised system inaugurated by Peter the Great. As towns had been absorbed by the expanding Muscovite state their princes or other rulers had been replaced by the tsar's representatives (namest- niki), often members of the Muscovite elite. The latter were maintained by a system of 'feedings' (kormlenie) or payments and provisions derived from local sources. Similar payments were made to subordinate officials. As centralisation proceeded, these payments were regulated more strictly, and certain of the functions of the namestnik were transferred to other centrally appointed officials. But some namestniki proved disturbingly independent, incompetent and corrupt, influenced by oscillations in the power of elite families at court. From the 1530s, therefore, various reforms were inaugurated. The first, the guba reform (1538-9), removed the duty of suppressing lawlessness and disorder from the hands of the namestniki into those of elected local officials. A new law code (1550) regulated provincial administration. The 1550s witnessed the inauguration of new local officials to oversee tax collection and civil administration and then, in 1555-6, the abolition of kormlenie and with it provincial administration by the namestniki.[89] What eventually replaced the latter was a system of administration by military governors (voevody) based on the towns and responsible for civil and military affairs within their towns and the surrounding districts (uezdy). Military governors were usually members of the service class rather than of the central elite. The new system was pioneered on the southern frontier before the end of the sixteenth century. However, strict and systematic central control of the towns and their subsidiary districts was vitiated, among other things, by the chaotic structure of central government departments (prikazy) which supervised different facets of urban life, and towns in different locations, in a seemingly random fashion. This was a problem which was to persist until the reforms ofPeter the Great.[90]
Urban and regional commerce
The great majority of Russians during this period were peasants, involved in a largely subsistence economy and resorting to the market only where it became necessary to earn money to pay taxes and duties or to purchase essential goods. Many town dwellers also supported themselves to greater or lesser degree by engaging in agriculture and various kinds of primary production. Wealthy landowners, including those engaged in political, administrative, military and other tasks in Moscow and lesser towns, could often rely on their serfs and other dependents to supply their needs from their country estates. Other urban dwellers, however, including many administrative and military personnel, clergy, merchants, traders and craftsmen, were more or less dependent on the market. The rise and growth of towns, and particularly the stimulus provided by the burgeoning state and its growing needs in raw materials and manufactured goods, were important impulses to market and commercial activity. Especially significant in this regard was the role of Moscow, as commercial as well as political and administrative centre of the country and, as has been seen, dominant over all other towns in the realm. The major communications routes (rivers and roads) radiated from the capital to all the populated parts of the territory, and also beyond via ports and frontier posts. A number of scholars have thus seen the basis for an 'all-Russian market' with Moscow as its nodal point being established in this period.[91] The significance of the international market place in Russia's development, whilst impossible to establish with any certainty because of scanty evidence, should probably not be exaggerated. Whilst Russian state-building was clearly partly a response to the dangers and challenges posed by potential or actual enemies beyond the frontiers, the country was unable to benefit fully from the expanding commercial network based on Western Europe and the North Atlantic which was becoming apparent about this time.[92] Not only was Russia geographically peripheral to many of the new developments, but access was hindered by poor communications and its limited coastline.[93]
88
J. Michael Hittle,
89
Janet Martin,
90
Tikhomirov,
91
92
I. Wallerstein,
93
But for a positive assessment of the situation before the 1560s, see D. P. Makovskii,