The centuries-long income from the fur trade helped to create a state that some Russian historians, most prominently Pavel Miliukov, called "hypertrophic" or "hyperactive" (Emmons 1999). However, manifestations of this role of the state were different in different periods and regions. In Novgorod, fur merchants created a primitive republic that was able to sign defense contracts with the prince. In Moscow, the merging of trade and protection went much further, with Ivan the Terrible trading fur himself and granting "privileges" to others. Providing a lion's share of the state's disposable income, the fur trade played its role in financing military campaigns, diplomatic activities, and even religious treaties of the state. Upon the arrival of a Russian envoy to the ruler's court in the southern steppes, he would disburse pelts to the ruler and his nobles. In the seventeenth century, a good present would consist of 40 sable furs, one marten coat, and several other coats of lesser value (Khodarkovsky 2002: 66). Internal consumption of the fur was also significant. When silver was scarce, fur played the role of currency. There were periods when officials of the Muscovite state, officers in the army, and doctors in the court received half their salaries in fur (Pavlov 1972: 102). The profitability of colonies has been a subject of much debate, but there is no doubt that Siberia was very profitable. A Siberian scholar compared the effect of the fur trade on Russia's economy with the flood of silver that came to Europe from the New World in the sixteenth century (see Pokshishevskii and krotov 1951: 57).
After the termination of Hansa shipping from Novgorod, the Siberian pelts were delivered through Moscow to Leipzig, their distribution base in Europe, over land. Though the Hansa had other goods to trade over the Baltic, its collapse in the sixteenth century followed the changing routes of the Russian fur trade. In the 1660-70s, the trade in furs sharply fell, which coincided with the start of the inflation that lasted through the Time of Troubles (Kliuchevsky 1959). With the depletion of animals, trappers and hunters were moving to new areas in the east. Looking for squirrel, beaver, sable, martin, ermine, sea otter, and other wonders of the north, the Russians moved farther and farther into the north-eastern corners of Eurasia, all the way to Kamchatka and then to Alaska. In the late seventeenth century, the state monopolized the export trade in all furs and the domestic trade in sables and black foxes (Fisher 1943: 65). These measures did not help; the trade was in decline. Afanasii Shchapov's statistics of the Muscovite "gifts" to foreign powers demonstrated that, through the seventeenth century, the share of sable in these collections was diminishing (1906: 2/330-2). As he formulated it, the depletion of the "zoological wealth" caused the crisis of the Russian state. Shchapov tells how hunters, dressers, tradesmen, and drivers strove to find new ways of subsistence. The ecological disaster turned adventurists into peasants, a long process that took place over generations, some of whom barely survived the transition. It was equally bad for the Russian state, whose infrastructure was dependent on fur. When hare replaced sable in the Kremlin treasury, the Moscow period of Russian history approached its end.
Fed by the fur trade, the state experimented with new commodities and institutions. Hemp, iron, and, finally, wheat replaced fur in Russian exports. Oprichnina, serfdom, and, finally, imperial bureaucracy became substitutes for the fur trade network. However, the state remained, or strived to remain, hyperactive. Its institutions flourished when they could develop a political economy that provided the resource-bound income that was largely independent of people's labor. These were periods when, as Kliuchevsky put it, "the state grew swollen and the people sick" (1956: 3/12). There were also periods when it was the state that was sick. Establishing their trade with Archangel in 1555, the British were interested in timber, wax, cordage, and other forest products; fur comprised a minor part of the trade (Bushkovitch 1980: 68). King James estimated the value of the region high enough to consider its outright colonization in 1612-13, when the Polish troops and stateless Cossacks took Moscow (Dunning 1989; Kagarlitsky 2003). Then, the Volga merchant, Kuzma Minin, saved Russia from default and defeat by financing the war effort from the revenue of the salt trade, a harbinger of the mining economy to come. When the troubles were over, the hopes for commerce were projected onto the south-west rather than the north-east. Expansionism replaced the prudence of the Muscovite state in respect to the steppes (Boeck 2007). Even more importantly, the state experimented with new practices of controlling and disciplining the population. Wheat, the commodity of the future, required much more labor than fur, and of a very different quality.
In the mid-eighteenth century, the share of fur in Russia's budget was small, but it still dominated the country's exports to China (Pavlov 1972: 119; Foust 1969: 344). Changes in both production and consumption were involved in this decline. Internationally, the Russian fur now competed with North American fur, which was cheaper because of lower transportation costs and customs fees. Moreover, fur was losing out to wool, which was at the peak of its success in Europe and the Americas. Converting a state monopoly into a royal one, Catherine II moved the fur trade from the Siberian Chancellery to the Personal Cabinet - her private treasury (Slezkine 1994: 67). To a certain extent, the collections of the Hermitage were financed from the revenue that came from Siberian pelts. In this enlightened era, the fur trade was discussed in terms of economic mercantilism, which called for state monopolies in colonial trade. In his comments on the Instruction by Catherine II, Denis Diderot wrote that in order to get rich by trade, a state should maintain a monopoly if its source is far away and there is no law in that land. In Russia, that meant Siberia and its fur. Diderot was writing these comments while returning from his visit to St. Petersburg and receiving his salary from Catherine's Personal Cabinet (1992: 135, 159). Even by the end of nineteenth century, the fur tribute comprised more than 10 percent of the Cabinet income (Znamenski 2007: 125).
Sable was gone and squirrel was out of fashion. But then came news from an expedition of Captain James Cook about the sea otter. Cook's sailors traded several pelts on the east coast of Australia for a few glass beads each, and then sold them on to the Chinese in Canton for two thousands pounds. Published in 1784, this story caused new British and French expeditions to Alaska. Catherine the Great commissioned the young, British-trained captain Grigory Mulovsky to head a Russian expedition. George Forster, a participant of Cook's expedition and the author of its best-selling account, agreed to take part in it. But with the start of still another Russo-Swedish war, the expedition was canceled; Mulovsky was killed in action (King 2008). Later voyages found the sea otter in abundance and Chinese customers in waiting. In 1802, Johann von Krusenstern was the first Russian captain to circumnavigate the world, though the reason for his expedition was still the same: fur (Foust 1969: 321). Founded in 1799, the Russian-American Company traded fur for the next half-century, after which quick depletion of the sea otter brought it to a close; the company never made a profit. It was fur alone that attracted the government in St. Petersburg to Alaska and California.