Russia under the first Romanovs from Cambridge history of Russia, volume 1

Urban developments

DENIS J. B. SHAW

The seventeenth century was a difficult period for Russia, as it appears to have been for much of Europe. Yet this is a very broad generalisation, difficult to substantiate from the limited evidence and paying scant heed to geographical and chronological differences. After 1613 Russia was able to enjoy the benefits of a stable dynasty, a situation in marked contrast to the anarchic times which went before. And it was a realm still undergoing vigorous expansion and colonisation. Such discordant processes were naturally reflected in the life of Russia's towns. Fortunately the sources which permit the study of urban developments are richer and fuller for this period than they are for the sixteenth century and they have been better explored by historians. But they are all too often sporadic and uneven, and their meaning sometimes obscure. This chapter will consider a number of facets of urbanism in the period. It will also address two issues, namely the symbolic and religious role of towns and their physical morphology, which do not figure in Chapter 13 on the sixteenth century but which can be profitably studied for both periods taken together.

The urban network

As was the case in the sixteenth century, the legal status of towns in the seventeenth remained uncertain and the places referred to as 'towns' (goroda) in the sources were often fortresses with little or no commercial function, or sometimes they did have a trading function but lacked a posad population.[167] Some 'towns' even had no subsidiary district (uezd), such as the threegorodki (literally, 'little towns') of Kostensk, Orlov and Belokolodsk built on the Belgorod Line near Voronezh in the middle of the century or, it appears, the nearby private town of Romanov which belonged to the tsar's kinsman, boyar N. I. Romanov.[168]Equally other places, like the monastic settlement of Tikhvin Posad towards the north-west, had commercial functions but were not referred to as towns. Adopting a catholic definition of the term, French has argued that there were around 220 towns in Russia at the beginning of a century which witnessed the appearance of about a hundred new ones during its course.[169] Vodarskii, however, argued for a stricter, Marxist definition of a town as a place having both a legal commercial suburb (posad) and a commercial function. On this basis he recognised 160 towns in 1652, rising to 173 in 1678 and 189 by 1722.[170]

The appearance of many new towns in Russia during the course of the seventeenth century is largely explained by the process of frontier expansion and colonisation of new territories. In the west many towns were acquired as the state expanded its frontiers in that direction. To the east numerous new towns were built as the Russian state took control of more and more of Siberia. The first Russian town on the Pacific, Okhotsk, was founded in 1649. Many Siberian towns remained quite small, however. Thus Vodarskii names nineteen principal administrative centres in Siberia for 1699, only thirteen of which were towns by his definition. According to his figures, at the end of the century Siberia had a total of only 2,535 posad households.[171] More significant in terms of town founding was Russia's southern frontier west of the Urals. Here a concerted effort was made from the 1630s to 1650s to set up a series of fortified towns along and behind the new Belgorod and Simbirsk military lines.[172]Subsequently, in the second half of the century, many new towns appeared in the forest-steppe and steppe south and east of these lines.

A number of studies have been made of the broad population data for towns, using the rather richer sources which are available for this period.[173]

The latter include cadastral surveys, census books and associated enumerations which provide statistics on numbers of posad households, most notably in censuses of 1646-7 and 1678-9. Additionally there are enumerations dating from 1649-52 which record the households of traders and handicrafts people, many in 'white places',[174] which were added to the posady of towns as a result of the 1649 Legislative Commission (see below). Also important are enumerations of military servitors and 'able-bodied' personnel undertaken for towns in various years, usually under the auspices of the Military Chancellery (Razriadnyi prikaz). Most notable among these is a military census for 1678.[175] Vodarskii has provided urban household data for 212 towns (plus Siberian towns taken together) for 1630-50, 1670-80 and 1722 based on Smirnov's data for 1646-7 and 1649-52 and on his own analyses for the later dates.[176] Figure 25.1 reproduces his data for towns having 500 or more posad households in the seventeenth century His data for 1722 are omitted. For comparison the table also lists numbers of posad households recorded for the latter part of the sixteenth century where available, based on the study by Eaton.[177]

The data are too uncertain and too scanty to allow solid conclusions to be drawn about urban growth trends, though perhaps the apparent sharp fall in the size of the posad in some commercial centres (Kaluga, Nizhnii Novgorod, Novgorod, Suzdal') between the late sixteenth century and the i640s is worthy of note. Moscow was clearly dominant, as in the previous century, although once again the sources are sparse.[178] In addition to Moscow, the largest towns, with over 1,000 posad households (Vologda, Kazan', Kaluga, Kostroma, Nizhnii Novgorod, Iaroslavl') were all old towns which dated from before the sixteenth century and, apart from Kazan', all having a long history of connection with Muscovy. They were all situated on major river and trading routes. The fall of Novgorod from this group over the previous century no doubt reflects the troubles of the latter half of the sixteenth century and the early seventeenth, together with the problems of accessing the Baltic (see Chapter 13). The disappearance of Smolensk is also significant, connected to its loss to Poland down to the middle years of the century. The wars with

Town	i	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Archangel and Kholmogory		645	i,0i8	263	7i5	835	4	i38
Arzamas		430	2	i35	559	560	—	98
Balakhna		637	—	ii2	66i	642	9	i40
Galich		729	(4i)	46	788	48i	i9	46
Iaroslavl'	259a	2,87i	i74	564	3,042	2,3i0	57	468
Kaluga	723	588	339	i05	694	i,0i5	—	45
Kargopol' and	476	538	20	6	—	666	—	—
Turchasov
Kazan'	598	i,i9i	i,600	200	—	3i0	—	—
Khlynov	247	624	i	26	66i	6i6	20	i42
Kolomna	34	6i5	8	26i	740	352	—	79
Kostroma		i,726	54	4i4	2,086	i,069	—	i06
Kursk		270	396	20	—	538	i04	ii
Moscow		i,22ib	(20,000)b	8,000b	3,6i5	7,043c	—	—
Nizhnii Novgorod	242ia	i,i07	500	666	i,874	i,270	—	600
Novgorod	4i57	640	i,050	i45	770	862	i53	344
Olonets	376	—	—	i55	i55	637	—	—
Pereslavl'-Zalesskii		525	(80)	i04	624	408	—	ii0
Pskov		940	(1,306)	5i	997	9i2	372	i,043
Rostov	16a	4i6	(i5)	i67	552	49i	—	2i7
Simbirsk		—	—	—	i9	504	—	ii4
Sol' Kamskaia		549	9	i46	686	83i	25	20
Suzdal'	4i4	360	(i4)	495	435	5i9	7	596
Torzhok	89a	486	8	58	508	659	—	—
Tver'		345	53	250	497	524	—	ii0
Uglich		447	—	226	603	548	—	49
Ustiug Velikii		744	53	36	—	920	—	ii9
Vladimir		483	58	405	703	400	—	290
Vologda	59i	i,234	i75	363	i,674	i,i96	i3	284
Zaraisk		446	(i27)	65	587	254	—	i

167

That is, a tax-bearing population attached to a legal commercial suburb. Conversely, other towns had a legal posad but lacked commercial activity

168

VP. Zagorovskii, Belgorodskaia cherta (Voronezh: Izdatel'stvo Voronezhskogo univer- siteta, 1969), pp. 211, 227-9.

169

R. A. French, 'The Early and Medieval Russian Town', in J. H. Bater and R. A. French (eds.), Studies in Russian Historical Geography (London: Academic Press, 1983), pp. 249-77; R. A. French, 'The Urban Network of Later Medieval Russia', in Geographical Studies on the Soviet Union: Essays in Honor of Chauncy D. Harris (Chicago: University of Chicago, Department of Geography Research Paper no. 211,1984), pp. 29-51.

170

Ia. E. Vodarskii, Naselenie Rossii v kontse XVII v-nachale XVIII v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), p. 133.

171

Ibid., p. 127; Ia. E. Vodarskii, 'Chislennost' i razmeshchenieposadskogo naseleniiavRossii vo vtoroi polovine XVII v.', in Gorodafeodal'noi Rossii (Moscow: Nauka, 1966), p. 290.

172

D.J. B. Shaw, 'Southern Frontiers of Muscovy, 1550-1700', in Bater and French, Studies, pp. 117-42.

173

P. P. Smirnov, GorodaMoskovskogo gosudarstvav pervoi polovine XVII veke, vol. I, pt. 2 (Kiev: A. I. Grossman, 1919); Vodarskii, 'Chislennost' '; Henry L. Eaton, 'Decline and Recovery of the Russian Cities from 1500 to 1700', CASS 11 (1977): 220-52.

174

'White places' were parts of towns which were free of the normal tax and service obligations.

175

DopAI, vol. ix (St Petersburg: Tipografiia II Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V Kantseliarii, 1875), no. 106, pp. 219-314.

176

Vodarskii, 'Chislennost'', pp. 282-90; Smirnov, Goroda, pp. 32ft

177

Eaton, 'Decline and Recovery', pp. 235-46.

178

Ibid., pp. 250-i.

Key: i. Posad households, C.1550-1590S; 2. Posad households, 1646; 3. Servitorhouseholds, 1650 (figures in parentheses - 1632); 4. Other households, 1646; 5. Posad households, 1652; 6. Posad households, 1678; 7. Servitor households, 1670s (partial data); 8. Other households, 1678 (partial data).

a. Data for i6i0s

b. Data for 1638

c. Data for i700

Sources: Henry L. Eaton, 'Decline and recovery of the Russian cities from 1500 to 1700', Canadian-American Slavic Studies 11 no. 2 (1977): 220-52; Ia. E. Vodarskii, 'Chislennost' i razmeshchenie posadskogo naseleniia v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XVIIv.', in Goroda feodal'noi Rossii (Moscow, 1966), pp. 271-97.

Figure 25.1. Urban household totals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (towns with 500 or more households in the posad in the seventeenth century)