Poland badly affected Russo-Polish trade, which did not in fact recover until after about 1750.[179]
Eaton has ascribed the apparent fall in the size of the posad in some of the biggest towns (Vologda, Kazan', Kostroma, Nizhnii Novgorod and Iaroslavl') between 1652 and 1678 to general lack of economic buoyancy in the latter half of the century compared to the apparent recovery in the first half. He thus questions those Soviet scholars who took a more optimistic view, regarding the century as the time when the 'all-Russian market' appeared, following Lenin's dictum. It may be that Vodarskii exaggerated the overall growth in the total number of posad dwellers in Russia between the two dates, although numbers do seem to have grown absolutely. The sluggish growth or even stagnation of some of the older towns in central Muscovy was probably offset by greater economic vigour on some of the frontiers.[180]
The official posad dwellers were, of course, by no means the only residents of Russian towns in the seventeenth century. According to Vodarskii, they constituted only 34 per cent of the total urban population in 1646, 44 per cent in 1652 (after the addition of the 'white places'), and 41 per cent in 1678. Of greater numerical significance were the state servitors or military personnel who formed 53 per cent in 1652 and 45 per cent by 1678.[181] Figure 25.1, which shows only the towns with 500 posad households or more, omits some of those with really big urban garrisons. Belgorod, for example, recorded only 44 posad households in 1646 but 459 servitor households in 1650. Kursk recorded 270 and 396 respectively, Sevsk none and 6,017, Voronezh 85 and 1,135, and Astrakhan' none and 3,350.[182] Servitors often engaged in trade and craft activity, especially before 1649, though many were paid and others lived by agrarian pursuits, particularly in the south. In the 1640s the bigger urban garrisons were clearly located in Moscow, along the vulnerable western and southern frontiers, and at three strategic points on the Volga (Nizhnii Novgorod, Kazan' and Astrakhan') (see Map 25.1).
179
PaulBushkovitch,
180
J. Pallot and D. J. B. Shaw,