Moscow remained the centre of Russian commercial life in this period. Some scholars assert that the city's population rose to 200,000 people during the course of the century, but this seems high.[194] The sources are incomplete and ambiguous and the population seems to have fluctuated considerably in any case.[195] A spectacular instance of the latter came in 1654 when the city was devastated by plague, killing up to 80 per cent of the population in the opinion of some.[196] Nevertheless it is clear that the city, with its mixed population and enormous range of occupations and activities, was a focus for trade and production of all kinds. Moreover, Moscow merchants played a major role in linking the various parts of the country's commercial network together, as with the northern trade via Archangel, the Volga trade, that towards the Urals and Siberia, and to a lesser extent that with the north-west and the Baltic.[197]Moscow's role was clearly a reflection of its status as the country's capital and the fact that it was the home of the country's wealthiest merchants.
Outside the Kremlin seventeenth-century Moscow was subdivided into a series of 'hundreds' (sotni) and suburban settlements (slobody) which were the habitations of different social groups. Their exact number appears to have varied through time, and the sources disagree. Accordingto Snegirev, however, they included suburbsbelongingto the court and treasury, those ofthe military servitors, monastic and Church settlements, foreign suburbs and the 'black' suburbs.[198] Basic to the commercial life of the city were the 'black' hundreds and suburbs, the core of the posad community. Whatever may have been the original difference in meaning between sotnia and sloboda, by the seventeenth century the two words were synonymous, designating a settlement populated by people of one status or origin (or sometimes occupation). In principle a sloboda also had one communal organisation, but this was not always the case in Moscow.[199] In 1649, as a result of the Ulozhenie, nineteen private ('white') suburbs with 1410 households were transferred to the 'black' hundreds and suburbs, thus enhancing the significance of the latter to the commercial life of the city as a whole.[200] According to one source, eleven years earlier in 1638 the 'black' and 'white' commercial suburbs together with those belonging to the court and treasury accounted for 48.7 per cent of the city's population.[201] This population formed the core of the city's commercial life.
An important feature of Moscow's economy in the seventeenth century was the extensive 'in house' production for the benefit of the court, government, army and other central agencies. Much of this took place in the court and treasury suburbs located mainly to the west of the Kremlin. The residents of these suburbs had a status which was rather similar to that of minor state servitors, being obliged to supply the court or government agencies with necessary goods and services in return for payments made in money or in kind. Whenever possible, they might supplement their income by producing for the market or in response to private orders. Many court craftsmen, for example, worked for the Armoury, making firearms or other kinds of light weaponry, or engaged in other skilled pursuits like joinery, cabinet-making, icon-painting, map-making and ornamental arts. The Great Palace chancellery was responsible for provisioning the court, whilst those working for the Treasury Court prepared costume and cloth, and also furs for diplomatic exchanges. Treasury craftsmen worked for the various government chancelleries as smiths, carpenters, carriage makers, furriers, coinage makers, builders, brick makers, stonemasons, furriers, costumiers, jewellers, workers in precious metals and gems, cloth makers and so on. To the extent that such craftspeople also produced for the marketplace their relatively privileged situation caused resentment among the 'black' posad dwellers.
Craftspeople among the latter group, working mainly for the market, engaged in a wide variety of pursuits. Thus Moscow had many metalworkers. An inventory of 1641 lists sixty-nine smithies in the Earth Town[202] beyond the Tver' Gate, thirty-five in different parts of the White Town,[203] twenty-nine south of the river in Zamoskvorech'e and various others.[204] Other metalworkers worked in copper, tin, gold and silver, all metals which were lacking in seventeenth-century Muscovy. Carpentry in various forms employed many in the city. For large projects like court or government buildings teams of carpenters were sometimes brought to Moscow from other towns and regions. Workers with hemp and flax and their derivatives were limited in number, perhaps because of the significance of such crafts as rural pursuits, but Moscow did provide a market for some specialists. Workers in leather were many - perhaps 200 in 1638 - whilst there were about 100 furriers.[205] Other significant crafts in the posad included wool-working, working in tallow and wax (there were thirty-five candle makers and ten soap makers in 1638), producing food (about 600 producers and traders of various kinds in 1638, including those working for the court) and cloth (about 250 producers and traders in 1638).
Large-scale activity in the seventeenth-century city was essentially restricted to that under the aegis of the government. It included the cannon foundry, which dated from the fifteenth century but which expanded from the 1620s, the already-mentioned Armoury with its offshoots the Gold and Silver Chambers (palaty), state powder mills, state brickworks, the mints, two paper mills, and others. Such manufactories worked predominantly to state orders rather than to the market.
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