In the mid-seventeenth century mercantilism (a slight variation on the French Colbertism) came to Russia. The first mercantilist was Fedor Rtishchev, but its major spokesman was A. L. Ordin-Nashchokin. A native of Pskov, Ordin-Nashchokin wrote the Pskov merchant charter of 1665 and the New Trade Regulations of 1667. He advocated Western-style efficiency and gaining an outlet in the Baltic to the West. Inter alia, he was a mild protectionist who advocated keeping as much specie as possible in Russia, which may have been partially responsible for the general decline in the price level between 1663 and 1689.22
The process of enserfment, 1613-49
The Muscovite economy did not provide well for most Russians. As mentioned, there are no useful minerals between the Volga and the Oka and all had to be imported. The thin podzol topsoil is acidic and provides very low yields, in this period three seeds harvested for each one sown. The growing season was too short and the precipitation typically considerably more than would have been ideal. Lesser yields led to famine and starvation, which occurred roughly once in every seven years in Russia.
Most people lived in smoky huts, log cabins with a large brick or stone and mortar stove which vented their lethal smoke into the room rather than
21 Hellie, Enserfment, chs. 10 and 11.
22 See most of the figures in Hellie, Economy.
outside via a chimney, to save heat. One may surmise that most people had very little energy, both because they were gassed six months of the year by their own air-polluting stoves and because of inadequate nutrition. Most people lived at a subsistence level with a life expectancy of less than thirty years. Per capita income was probably less than $600 (£ 350). The median wage for the entirepop- ulation was 4 kopecks per day, and for the 'working class' it was 3 kopecks per day. A smoky hut's median price was 3.25 roubles, or about 100 days' pay.[119] Frequent fires meant that housing was replaced often. As discussed in Chapter 12 above, there was little inside most of the huts: the three-chambered stove (which could be large enough for two people to sleep on the top), benches around two-plus walls of the room to sit and sleep on, occasionally a table, perhaps a trunk for extra clothing and little more.
The vast majority of the population in the years 1613-89 were serfs, perhaps 85 per cent. Of the rest, perhaps 5 to 15 per cent were slaves. Then the clergy, townsmen and military forces comprised around another 2 per cent each. These were of the roughly five million inhabitants in 1613, perhaps nine or ten million in 1689.[120]
For reasons that are still not clear, the Time of Troubles had little impact on the process of enserfing the peasantry. Shuiskii's 1607 decree seems to have gone into limbo, and the legal situation reverted to the decrees of 1592: the peasants were bound to the land with the repeal of the right to move on St George's Day until further notice and the five-year statute of limitations on the filing of suits for the recovery of fugitive serfs. What may be called 'the Soviet' explanation for this was that the government was so terrified by first the Khlopko uprising (1601-3) and then the Bolotnikov uprising (1606-7) that it lacked the spirit to repress the peasants any further. I would be inclined towards another interpretation: the 1592 provisions satisfied those who were running the government, so they were not about to make any changes unless forced to do so.[121]
Other elements, however, were restive with the status quo. In the social stratification sweepstakes, the townsmen held a special place. Their problem was the Russian system of collective taxation. The census takers came around and would find x number of people living in an urban area. Assuming that x number of people lived in the area, the tax collectors assessed the area y roubles until the next census. Problems arose when some townsmen moved away or fled. The tax collectors still insisted that the area pay y roubles, even though there were fewer taxpayers than there had been when the census was taken. As a result, the remaining townsmen began to ask the government to forbid any further people from moving away and that those who had moved away be returned to share in the tax burden. An early example of this was in 1590/1, when the people of Toropets (on the western frontier) asked that their fellow townsmen be forbidden to move. The government complied by extending the forbidden years concept from the peasantry to the townsmen of Toropets.[122]
The Time of Troubles was brutal to the Russian towns. Townsmen were sent scurrying in all directions, much as Ivan IV's savage reign had sent the peasants scattering. By 1613 many towns were completely depopulated.[123] 'Recovery economics' is an important branch of economics, and it is probably correct to infer that Russia had recovered from the Time of Troubles by 1629. The year 1613 became the reference point for urban residence. After then, when townsmen asked that their peers who had departed be returned, the reference point always was back to 1613. By the late 1630s, townsmen were being returned who had fled a quarter-century earlier. This example played a major role in the campaign to have peasants returned who had fled more than five years previously. Also exemplary for the institution of serfdom was the fact that the government in the late 1630s became directly involved in the search for and return of fugitive townsmen.[124] For fugitive serfs and slaves, on the other hand, the government took no role until after the Ulozhenie of 1649.
Monasteries also suffered from the dislocations caused by the Time of Troubles. This recalls the time in the 1450s, when monasteries initiated the limitation of indebted peasants to the period around St George's Day, the very first steps on the road to serfdom. Shortly after 1613 elite monasteries were the first to be heard from on the issue of fugitive serfs. They complained that five years were inadequate for the recovery of their fugitive serfs, and the government extended the time to ten and more years, depending on when the peasants had fled.[125]
Other than these developments, the social stratification front was relatively quiet between the end ofthe Time ofTroubles and the end ofthe Smolensk war. Recovery tookmost ofthe social energy there was, and Patriarch Filaret, father of Tsar Michael, ran a tight ship while he was at the helm of the Russian state between 1619 and 1633. After his death, self-serving and corruption became the order of the day in the Russian government between 1633 and 1648. The ruling elite were occupied with allotting lands to themselves and looting the treasury. Witnessing that orgy of corruption, the members of the middle service class decided that it was time to get theirs. So, in 1637 they initiated perhaps the most famous petition campaign in Russian history for the completion of the enserfment of the peasantry.[126] They enumerated the troubles the five-year statute of limitations on the recovery of fugitive serfs caused them. They noted that 'contumacious (literally, strong) people' (sil'nye liudi) used the statute of limitations to conceal fugitives; once the statute of limitations had expired, the 'contumacious people' would send the fugitives back whence they had come to recruit other fugitives. The only solution, said the petitioners, was to repeal the statute of limitations. The government responded by extending the statute of limitations from five to nine years.[127]
120
Ia. E.Vodarskii reckons the 1678 population at ten million, ofwhom 92 per cent were peasants (V A. Aleksandrov et al.,
123
P. P. Smirnov,
125
Hellie,
126
N. A. Gorskaia et al.,