To some extent foreign export trade stimulated Russian industry and production. For example, demand for forest and agricultural products in the north stimulated production of tar and potash (used in textile processing, soap, and glass making). Tar was declared a state monopoly in 1615, its farming generally awarded to English or Dutch merchants. Foreign merchants also invested in rope walks to produce cordage, a crucial commodity for the British navy. Demand for treated leather (iuft') prompted the development of that manufacture in Iaroslavl', Kostroma, and Nizhnii Novgorod, situated close to upper and Middle Volga ports that led both to the Caspian and the White Seas; worked leather production also developed in the Novgorod and Pskov hinterland for Baltic export. Similarly, in that area as well as on Russia's western borderlands, hemp and flax were cultivated for export through Arkhangelsk and the Baltic.
The town-country nexus of trade—by peasants themselves or in the hands of petty traders—was lively despite the autarky of serfdom. Already in the fifteenth century, regional production was developing to serve urban and export demand: fishing, drying, and preserving fish in salt for shipment was a major activity in the lake and river districts north and northwest of Moscow (Pomor'e, Beloozero, Lake Ladoga, the Volkhov and Sheksna Rivers), while the forested north and northwest produced honey and wax. Peasants of the northern St. Cyril-Beloozero monastery's many properties produced salt, fish, tallow, and leather for export or sale across the entire realm. Peasants of the major monasteries in the center, particularly the Joseph-Volokolamsk east of Moscow and Trinity-St. Sergii near Moscow, produced firewood, fish, grain, and salt. The Trinity Monastery maintained shipping fleets on the Volga, Northern Dvina, and Lake Beloozero, trading as far away as Novgorod and Kholmogory. Flax and hemp found peasant producers in a wide swath including Livonia, the Pskov and Novgorod areas, the Smolensk region, Iaroslavl', and Mozhaisk; these areas also produced textiles and leather goods for export. Central and northern towns such as Kostroma, Vologda, and Mozhaisk, where livestock production was more profitable than agriculture, specialized in leather work.
Salt and iron were important products throughout this period. Requiring capital investment and labor, salt (sol') production tended to be developed by big players, such as the Solovetskii monastery in the north and the Stroganov family in the Urals, which got its start in Sol' Vychegodsk. By 1570 the Stroganovs employed 6,000 peasants in ten salt works. Salt production on a smaller scale was also done in the Northern Dvina basin and around Astrakhan. In the fifteenth and sixteenth century iron production was rudimentary but constituted a robust small-scale industry around the realm—in Novgorod, Ustiuzhna Zheleznopol'skaia, Karelia, Iaroslavl', Tver', Vologda, Tula-Serpukhov. Bog ore could be found readily and could be processed with potash produced locally from timber. From it, blacksmiths crafted plows and scythes, kettles, and weapons for use on their estate or sale in towns.
At the same time, the state flexed its muscles to develop productive capacity for its military needs or income, readily drawing on foreign talent. Already by 1446 Russian masters were producing bronze cannon and artillery (as well as cannon balls, gunpowder, and artillery carriages), used to terrifying effect. Russian artillery, for example, forced the capitulation of Novgorod in 1478. Russia boosted its artillery industry after Ivan Ill's 1472 marriage to Sofiia Paleologa from Rome; with this Italian connection, the state recruited engineers for artillery, architecture, and fortifications. Aristotele Fioravanti founded the "artillery yard" in 1479; Italian engineers rebuilt the fortress walls of the Moscow Kremlin and the Novgorod Detinets in the 1480s, and, more famously, rebuilt the Kremlin cathedral ensemble from the 1480s into the early sixteenth century. They introduced innovations in design and structure (iron support rods, brick construction, regular proportions, decorative elements) that transformed Russian stone and brick architecture thereafter.
The state continued to cultivate foreign contributions to its industrial and political development; Ivan IV hired a succession of European doctors and foreign mercenaries (from the Grand Duchy, Crimean Tatars, Ukrainian Cossacks, German, Dutch, and Scots officers) brought expertise to Russia's armies in the sixteenth century. But the next century witnessed an intense push to welcome foreign talents. After invasions by more sophisticated Swedish and Polish armies in the near debacle of the Time of Troubles, the Romanov dynasty pursued military and industrial reform and aggressively recruited foreign expertise. One focus was construction: starting in the 1630s, engineers improved city fortifications, roads, and bridges and constructed secular buildings ofstone. Efforts in shipbuilding were less successfuclass="underline" Dutch expertise was brought in for Volga and Caspian trade in the 1630s and 1670s, but these marine fleets failed to flourish. The most important arena for Russia's patronage of foreign industrial expertise and capital was in military-related metallurgy: blast furnaces and waterwheel generators were produced, far outpacing small local iron smelting.
To mine for ore, process it into iron and steel, and produce weaponry, foreign entrepreneurs were granted favorable terms—advance loans with decades to pay back, tax breaks, access to serf labor, raw materials, and land. From the 1620s state
subsidies and charters went to foreigners for gunpowder factories; in the 1630s Dutch merchant Andrei Vinius—father of Andrei Vinius, postmaster-general, translator, and economic advisor to Aleksei Mikhailovich and his son Peter— founded the Tula iron forge and armament factory using water-powered mills. Wealthy Russians, such as Aleksei Mikhailovich's confidant and brother-in-law Boris Morozov and the tsar's Romanov relatives, also received state support. The state allowed foreigners to hire Russians and even transferred whole villages to their possession as factory labor. The state itself developed ironworks at Zvenigorod and Tula, which produced not only weaponry but iron equipment needed for other enterprises (salt and potash works) and for construction of royal residences and churches.
The state encouraged foreign investment in other industries in the seventeenth century, but they were generally less successful. Glass works, silk production, paper mills, and luxury leather tanning were all launched, but their products proved inferior or more expensive than imported counterparts. Nevertheless, the state's efforts to encourage industry brought hundreds of European entrepreneurs and skilled artisans to Russia, and transferred some skills to Russians in the generations before Peter I, particularly in the iron industry. By 1725 Russia was one of Europe's leading producers of iron.
By the 1670s there were perhaps 3,650 foreign experts in Moscow, about one- fifth of Moscow's adult male population; entrepreneurs and engineers were joined by military officers creating Russia's "new model" infantry and cavalry army. Primarily European, most lived in the "German Suburb"; other ethnic neighborhoods focused on merchants. The German suburb had a German school, one Dutch and three Lutheran churches, and many two-storey European mansions laid out on European-style straight, wide thoroughfares. Arkhangelsk also supported a Dutch church in the 1670s. As Joseph Fuhrmann details, some foreigners, like the Dutch Calvinist Vinius family, converted to Orthodoxy, while others, like the Dutch Marselis family, retained their Calvinism and remained more aloof from Russian culture. Both families, however, served the tsars over generations.