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Changes in the Russian Economy
in the Seventeenth Century.
The Development of Internal Trade

p Although seventeenth-century Russia was still a feudal state, certain changes had begun to take place in her economy. New lands were being cultivated: the southern steppes in the area of the Don were gradually being settled, Russian peasants were making inroads in the steppes of Bashkiria, while peasants from the north were farming in Siberia beyond the Urals. As the burden of serfdom increased in the central provinces, so the exodus of peasants to the country’s borderlands gained momentum.

p Towns and industrial regions were also developing. Salt-mining in the north was being stepped up and sometimes thousands of hired workers were employed in the mines. The number of craftsmen also grew rapidly and trade flourished accordingly. Craftsmen started producing goods for sale on the market rather than merely to order as before.

p An extremely important feature of Russia’s economic development at this period was the appearance of comparatively large industrial enterprises—manufactories. These were more than mere workshops, they were sizable undertakings where a large number of workmen used hand-driven machines and labour was rationally divided. This meant that the work performed was more rapid and productive.

p The very first of the Russian manufactories was the Moscow cannon foundry, set up at the end of the fifteenth century. Castiron foundries, and iron and copper-smelting plants were opened. The first iron works were built near Tula and Kaluga. There were, it is true, only a few of these manufactories, but they nevertheless bore witness to new trends in the country’s industrial development.

p Yet in the main the country’s economy was still a natural one: all the most important wares were produced on the individual 295 landed estates rather than bought at markets. Nevertheless, a new development was making itself felt, namely the steadily increasing number of people engaged in buying and selling. The peasants used to sell the wares they produced in order to gain money to supply their own holdings with the necessary seeds and implements, etc., and so as to be able to pay taxes to their masters. Meanwhile the craftsmen, whose ranks were steadily swelling, came to the markets to sell their wares and buy agricultural produce. Hired workmen also frequented the markets to buy food, clothes and footwear with the money they had earned.

p In the seventeenth century trade started to make headway and develop as it gradually became a more advantageous undertaking. The landowners sold their surplus produce, gained through the receipt of taxes in kind, at local markets. As soon as the roads became passable at the beginning of winter, sleighs drove out from the landowners’ houses loaded with grain, linen, lard and skins heading for the towns and the markets there. It was in the towns that trade was concentrated. Moscow, Archangel, Nizhny Novgorod and Vologda were all major trading centres. Caviare, salt and salted fish from Astrakhan, canvas and linen from Novgorod, Yaroslavl and Kostroma, leather and lard from Kazan, woodwork and butter from Vologda and furs from Siberia were sold in towns throughout the country and in some cases exported as well. Grain was traded everywhere. In Novgorod on big market days as many as 1,000 cartloads of grain were sometimes sold in a day. These trade ties helped to consolidate the country as an economic whole. Gradually a national market came into being.

p Foreign trade also made great strides at this time. For England, Sweden and Holland, Russia was the gateway to the East—to Persia, and the riches of India. The main port for the export trade was Archangel. The trade route between Scandinavia and the East was along the Northern Dvina and other rivers as far as Vologda, then overland to the Volga and down it to Astrakhan. From the East came silk, rare fabrics, spices, dyes, costly pottery, jewellery and carpets. Russia also exported many goods, such as furs, leather, wax, honey, potash and resin, while imports included fabrics, jewellery, guns, cannon, pistols, wines and sugar. The vast majority of wares which circulated on the Russian market were still those produced on the individual landed estates, which the landowners gained from the peasants either in the form of taxes in kind (obrok) or as a result of the labour services carried out by the peasants on their land (barshchina).

In order to gain more and more advantage for themselves from the peasants’ labour the landowners intensified their oppression of the serfs. They could be sure of the Tsar’s support in this, and the latter issued decrees binding the peasants to their masters’ land 296 and service. A new code of laws or Ulozhenie introduced by Tsar Alexei in 1649 laid the final seal on this bondage, forbidding the peasants once and for all to leave their masters’ estates. The bailiffs on the estates belonging to boyars and the dvoryane (the gentry) made quite sure that all arrears in tax payments were paid and carefully supervised the peasants’ work. Misdemeanours or negligence were punished by the stick, whip, cudgel and incarceration in the landowners’ prison cells, and enforced starvation.

The Emergence of an Absolute Monarchy

p After suppressing the peasant war at the beginning of the seventeenth century the dvoryane established an absolute monarchy—this social feudal structure helped to ensure that policies favourable to their interests were pursued. The Romanov dynasty elected to the throne in 1613 was to continue ruling Russia right up to the February Revolution of 1917-

p Once the Polish usurpers had been driven out of Moscow in 1613 boyars from all towns of Russia assembled in Moscow together with representatives of the clergy, landowners and merchants in order to elect a new Tsar and the Zemsky Sobor (land assembly) was convened. It goes without saying, of course, that the peasants took no part in these proceedings. Mikhail Romanov was elected Tsar, since this protege of the boyars was regarded at that particular juncture as a suitable candidate by the dvoryane, the traders and the Cossacks. The dvoryane hoped to enhance their influence in state affairs by having a young inexperienced and none too sharp-witted 16-year-old on the throne.

p Mikhail’s father Patriarch Philaret was at that time a prisoner of the Poles. (During the reign of Fyodor Ivanovich, Ivan the Terrible’s son, Russia began to have her own independent Patriarchs.) Soon Philaret was to return to Moscow and start to rule together with his son Mikhail and it was he who was to play the leading role in the affairs of state.

p Meanwhile peasant rebellions continued to break out in various parts of the country. Mikhail and Philaret meted out cruel punishment to the instigators of the last isolated outbreaks of the peasant revolt.

p The reconstituted Russian state was faced by extremely unfavourable conditions when it came to restoring its territorial integrity. At that time Sweden was still in control of lands that it had seized during the Time of Troubles in the Novgorod provinces, while Poland ruled over Smolensk and the western part of the Russian state.

War against Sweden restored Novgorod to the Russian state in 297 1617, but the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland still remained in Swedish hands along with the Russian towns of Yam, Koporye, Ivangorod and Oreshek, depriving Muscovy of an outlet to the sea.

The Union of Russia and the Ukraine

p The Polish invaders were eventually driven out of almost all the territories they had occupied. Although Smolensk still remained in their hands the Russian state was restored almost to its former size. An event of outstanding historical importance was the unification of Russia and the Ukraine which took place in the middle of the seventeenth century. The Ukraine and Byelorussia had been part of the original Russian state and Kiev, the present-day capital of the Ukraine, was one of the most ancient cities of Rus.

p In the 13th century a large part of the Ukraine was overrun by the Tartars and its inhabitants had to bear the heavy yoke of the Tartar khans. The rest of the Ukraine and the whole of Byelorussia had been seized by the Lithuanian knights. Later Lithuania was to form an alliance with Poland and set up a Polish-Lithuanian state. The Ukraine and Byelorussia became subject provinces, and the Polish, Byelorussian and Lithuanian peasants alike were oppressed by the Polish and Lithuanian nobles.

p In the villages of the Ukraine there were numerous peasants who had had their ears and noses cut off, or gallows branded on their foreheads. The Polish nobles were permitted by law to subject their peasants to such atrocities and even put them to death.

p Polish oppression of other nationalities under their rule was also extremely harsh. The Catholic Polish nobles made a mockery of the language, customs and religious practices of the Byelorussian and Ukrainian peasantry, who were of the Orthodox faith. Religious repression and persecution were widespread, and there were attempts to force people to adopt Catholicism.

p In the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth, uprisings against the Polish landowners and administrative officials broke out in various places. An important part in the struggle against the Polish nobles in the Ukraine was played by the Zaporozhye Cossacks from the area around the Dnieper rapids. The Cossack community was made up of Ukrainian and Byelorussian peasants seeking refuge from Polish nobles; it also included Russian peasants escaping from oppression by the boyars, the dvoryane and the Tsar and state officials.

p In the 1640s and ’50s a large-scale popular rebellion flared up throughout the Ukraine and Byelorussia. The peasants were supported by the Zaporozhye Cossacks and the poorer townspeople.

p The peasant army was led by Bogdan Khmelnitsky, and the 298 war began in earnest in the spring of 1648. The peasants started to settle accounts with the Polish nobles and the local Ukrainian landowners. Bands of peasants came to join Khmelnitsky from far and wide and soon the revolt spread to the whole of the Ukraine and Byelorussia.

p The Russian people supported the struggle of the Ukrainians and the Byelorussians against their Polish overlords. Detachments of Don Cossacks, Russian peasants and townspeople took part in the struggle. The Russian government had long been making a practice of helping the insurgent Ukraine by sending it food and arms.

p Khmelnitsky turned to the Russian Tsar Alexei requesting him to make the Ukraine part of the Russian state. The question was subjected to long and detailed deliberation in Moscow. The Russians were well aware that this would mean Russia fighting Poland on Ukrainian soil; however, the tremendous significance of the union was appreciated and Muscovy finally agreed. Boyar Vassily Buturlin was sent to the Ukraine as the Tsar’s envoy, and a general council or rada was convened in the city of Pereyaslav to make the final arrangements for the union.

p A large number of interested parties assembled for the occasion—Cossacks and their starshina  [298•*  and representatives from many towns and villages of the Ukraine. The deliberations were conducted in an atmosphere of great excitement and were opened with a fiery speech by Bogdan Khmelnitsky, in which he called attention to the sufferings of the Ukrainian people, their hard struggle accompanied by so much bloodshed and the fact that the Ukraine could not stand alone, but should voluntarily unite with Russia. The assembled company voiced unanimous support for his proposal. Thus the Pereyaslav Rada of 1654 decreed that the Ukraine and Russia should unite and "stand as one for all time".

p Such was the outcome of the people’s struggle for the unification of the Ukraine and Russia. This event was to prove of major importance for both peoples in the subsequent history of the Russian state.

p The Ukrainian people was thus freed from political and religious oppression to which the Polish nobles had subjected them. The arbitrary laws of the Polish landowners no longer held good. Despite its inherent cruelty, the Russian system of serfdom unlike the Polish order, did not permit landowners to sentence peasants to death. Thus the oppression of the serfs in the Ukraine was somewhat lightened once the Polish landowners had been driven out.

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Unification with Russia also promoted the overall advancement of the Ukraine and economic, political and cultural ties between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. It was now easier for the two peoples to oppose both their common oppressors in the social hierarchy at home and powerful enemies from abroad. Immediately after the union of Russia and the Ukraine war broke out between Russia and Poland which was to last 13 years. Under the Andruszow treaty of 1667 the Russian state regained the territories seized by Poland at the beginning of the seventeenth century in south-west Russia and secured the Ukraine east of the Dnieper and Kiev (on its Western bank). The Ukraine west of the Dnieper remained in Polish hands.

Stepan Razin

p The seventeenth century saw several large-scale popular uprisings, the most momentous of which was the movement led by the Don Cossack Stepan Razin. The revolt began in the Don area, where peasant fugitives from serfdom and poverty had long since come to settle. In this area there were prosperous Cossacks but the vast majority were poor ones with practically no possessions. The Cossack poor were led by Stepan Razin, an experienced soldier who had seen a great deal of the world having crossed vast tracts of Russia on foot and seen the sufferings of the serfs and their bitter hatred and grudges against the landowners and the tsarist voyevodas.

p The revolt began with an expedition down the Volga in 1667. Razin and his men ambushed merchant and tsarist vessels, seized their cargoes, made short work of tsarist officials and persuaded the majority of the members of the ships’ crews to join their band. The gunpowder and arms looted from the ships also came in extremely useful.

p After wintering on the shores of the Ural River, then called the Yaik, during the spring floods Razin and his men made their way down to the Caspian where they captured convoys of Persian ships laden with rich cargoes. After seizing large quantities of silk, valuables and many oriental luxuries Razin and his men returned to Astrakhan on the Volga. In the meantime news of Razin’s Persian exploit had spread far and wide.

A foreign visitor who met Razin gave the following description of him: "He has a fine countenance, noble bearing and proud mien. He is tall with a weather-beaten pitted complexion. He succeeds in inspiring in his men fear, mingled with respect and admiration. Whatever his commands they are without exception obeyed to the letter.”

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p In 1669 Razin and his men returned to the Don and began to prepare for a new foray. First of all they seized the steppe road leading to Moscow, they set up strong fortified posts on the highroads and waylaid tsarist spies. Wherever they went the local peasantry took up arms, rallied to their local leaders and then came flocking to Razin’s side. In this way his army soon grew from strength to strength.

p In May 1670 the uprising took on a more political character. Razin’s men were no longer just out for booty and came to represent a serious threat to the landowners and the tsarist voyevodas.

p Razin’s forces took the town of Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd) and then Astrakhan. In all the towns which surrendered to Razin the tsarist governors or voyevodas were killed or expelled and their archives, where the charters laying down the landowners’ rights over the peasants were kept, were burnt down.

p Razin and his followers then made their way up the Volga and captured Saratov and Samara (now Kuibyshev). Peasants from the nearby villages flocked to join Razin’s army and rose up against their masters. They were joined by the peasants living on the crown and monastery lands and the Volga peoples—Mordvinians, Chuvash and Mari—who had been subjected to cruel oppression by the tsarist authorities. Soon the uprising had spread to the whole of the Nizhny Novgorod region and even as far as Penza and Tambov. The peasants laid waste the boyar and dvoryane estates, and killed their masters. Throughout the land Razin’s men sent out proclamations calling on the people to take up arms. Important new peasant leaders such as ataman Nechai and the peasant Chirok distinguished themselves. Among the peasant leaders there was even a woman by the name of Alyona, who led a band of seven thousand peasants and was completely fearless in battle. The voyevodas were in terror of her and thought she was a witch.

p The insurgent peasants saw their main aim to lie in wreaking vengeance on their own local masters. They felt that by destroying their houses they were doing away with serfdom for ever. In fact, of course, the peasants’ main enemy was the system of serfdom as a whole with the supreme landowner, the Tsar, at its head. The peasants did not realise that their main enemy was autocracy and were still under the illusion that a hostile Tsar supporting the landowners could be replaced by a good Tsar who would understand the peasants’ needs. But this could never be, the Tsar would always be the defender of the landowners’ interests.

p Peasant uprisings kept on flaring up in various parts of the country but the campaign lacked any overall plan for revolutionary action and was not organised well enough. The peasants were inexperienced in warfare and were short of arms. They took with 301 them scythes, cudgels and axes which were to prove sadly ineffective against the Tsar’s cannon.

p The tsarist government sent out an enormous army against Razin, led by experienced commanders. Despite brave resistance, the peasant revolt was crushed. Some of the cruellest reprisals were those meted out in the town of Arzamas, which was literally littered with gallows on each of which hung forty or fifty bodies. Eleven thousand men were hanged in the course of three months.

p The leader of the uprising was also to meet with a sad fate. At first Razin went into hiding in the lands of the Don Cossacks, but some of the richer among them handed him over to the tsarist authorities. He was brought to Moscow and subjected to cruel torture. In June 1671 Razin was quartered alive on the Red Square.

Although the peasant risings of this period failed to do away with serfdom, they served to undermine the strength of the system and shorten its life.

The Formation of the Russian Empire

p In the seventeenth century Russia was a backward country in comparison with the progressive countries of Western Europe. The development of Russia had suffered a severe setback as a result of the Tartar invasion. The cruel Tartar yoke had lasted over two hundred years. Once the invaders had been driven out, towns and villages had to be rebuilt, and local crafts revived. The division of the country into a host of petty princedoms was a problem facing Russia, just as it had been in other feudal states. However, the unification of Russia was a particularly difficult task because of the tremendous size of its territory which was equal to that of many European states put together. Russia lacked any convenient sea ports or developed industry. Neither did she have a properly organised army or fleet, and was thus prey to frequent raids and attacks by foreign invaders which undermined her economy still further.

p It was particularly important that Russia should combat this backwardness at the time when the countries of Western Europe were progressing so rapidly. Otherwise the latter would have subjugated the country and held back her advancement still more.

p At that period the time was not yet ripe for the emergence of capitalism in Russia—the country was still a centralised feudal state, its economy based on serf agriculture. However, important steps forward were taken and significant changes in the administration and economy introduced.

p It was a task of primary importance to restructure the out-dated state apparatus, promote cultural advancement and industrial 302 expansion. Russia needed outlets to the sea in order to set up convenient trade routes with Western Europe and establish firm cultural ties. She was obliged to set up a regular army and fleet to defend herself from her powerful neighbours. These steps were to be taken during the reign of Peter the Great (1682-1725).

p During Peter’s reign, while not overcoming her backwardness altogether, Russia nevertheless made significant advances, thanks to the efforts of the Russian and other peoples of the empire. The gifted and resourceful new Tsar and his councillors were to play an important part in these developments.

p The Russian state had long required a coastline. The White Sea was frozen over and unnavigable for six or seven months of the year and was anyway a long distance from all the main sea routes. The shores of the Baltic were then in Swedish hands and Turkey held sway in the Black Sea. Under Peter Russia embarked on a long, uphill struggle for power in the Baltic.

p Part of the lands bordering on the Baltic, such as the shores of the Gulf of Finland, had in the past been ruled over by the princes of Novgorod. Five centuries before Peter came to the throne 303 pilots from Novgorod had come to the Gulf to meet German merchant vessels at the island of Kotlin (now Kronstadt) and then lead them up the Neva, through Lake Ladoga and down to Novgorod by way of the Volkhov. It was on this part of the coast that Prince Alexander Nevsky had defended the lands of Novgorod in a grim battle against the Swedes on the banks of the Neva in the thirteenth century.

p Peter the Great concluded an alliance with the Poles and the Danes against Sweden, and war with the latter broke out in the autumn of 1700. The Northern War, as it was known, was to last for 21 years. In the early stages, the Swedes, who were better prepared for hostilities, had the upper hand. The Russian forces confronted the Swedes near the fortress of Narva in November 1700, when winter was already at hand. The Swedes who were better shod and armed emerged victorious from this first encounter.

p The defeat at Narva proved an important lesson for both the Russian army and Peter the Great. Intensive work began to equip a new, more proficient army, and new troops were mustered and trained. When it emerged that there was a shortage of metal for weapons Peter gave orders for church bells to be recast as cannon. In this way 300 new cannon were obtained and in the autumn of 1702 Peter succeeded in capturing the heavily fortified Swedish fortress at the point where the Neva flows out of Lake Ladoga, where the ancient town of Oreshek of the Novgorod princedom had stood. To this fortress, which gave him access to the sea by way of the Neva, Peter gave the German name of Schliesselburg (Key-Town).

p These military successes meant that Russia was now in control of the shores of the Gulf of Finland. The foundations for the Peter and Paul Fortress were laid on Zayachy Island near the Northern bank of the Neva. It was near this fortress, built according to Peter’s drawings, that in 1703 he was to found his new capital on the marshy banks of the Neva. It was to be known as Peter’s town, i.e., Petersburg or St. Petersburg, and has since been renamed Leningrad after the founder of the Soviet state.

p The building of the new capital required the labour of thousands of serfs. Despite the severe cold and inhuman conditions the new capital gradually arose. Many of the labourers had to work knee-deep in water and were obliged to wage a grim battle with the elements as they laid foundations in the shifting marshy soil. This town, which cost the lives of numerous serfs and workmen, was to prove tremendously important for Russia’s future. The country had acquired a maritime capital and large trading port, a "window onto Europe".

p In 1707 the theatre of operations was transferred to the Ukraine and in June 1709 the Russians gained a decisive victory at 304 Poltava. The Northern War dragged on until 1721. By the Peace of Nystad Russia received Latvia and Estonia along with the whole coast of the Gulf of Finland around St. Petersburg and part of Karelia. This meant that Russia had gained two more convenient Baltic ports, Riga and Revel (now Tallinn), and become an established Baltic power thus attaining one of her most cherished aims.

To mark the conclusion of the Peace of Nystad Peter laid on lavish celebrations in his new capital and that same year he was also to assume the title of Emperor of All the Russias. The Russian state was to be known henceforth as the Russian Empire, which reflected its emergence as a great power. "After being nonexistent we have started to exist and have now joined the community of peoples politic,” declared Peter’s advisers at the time.

State Reforms Introduced During Peter’s Reign

p During Peter’s reign a large number of social and state reforms were introduced. They were implemented at the cost of a bitter struggle with the reactionary boyars and church hierarchy, and were to play an important part in securing the country’s advancement.

p Before Peter’s reign there had been no regular army in Russia. Troops had been mustered only in case of war. Peter set up a regular army and organised its proper training. The recruiting system was also reorganised. Men in the ranks were recruited from both the peasantry and the urban population. One soldier was recruited from every twenty peasant households, whenever recruits were rounded up. All members of the nobility were obliged to serve in the army. A uniform was also introduced; members of Peter’s guards wore short dark green tunics, comfortable tricorn hats worn low on the forehead and were armed with bayonets.

p Peter had begun to build his fleet before the Northern War broke out while he was making plans for an expedition to the Sea of Azov. At the beginning of the Northern War, when Russia had already gained control of part of the Baltic coast, a new Baltic fleet was built. The first squadron of Russian ships was launched in 1703; it consisted of six frigates (three-mast men-ofwar). By the end of Peter’s reign the Baltic fleet consisted of 48 large warships and 800 galleys and small vessels, and 28,000 sailors.

p Peter was determined that Russia should be as independent of foreign powers as possible and start to produce everything she needed on home soil, relying on her own potential.

p Large new iron works were built near Olonets, Tula and in the Urals. At the Tula armoury thousands of guns and pistols were 305 produced every year. Manufactories for the production of canvas and rope were built to supply the needs of the fleet.

p To provide the necessary manpower, Peter ordered thousands of peasants to be sent as serf workers to these manufactories. Whole villages were assigned to various enterprises which sometimes were as far as three or four hundred miles away and the working conditions were extremely harsh. There was a shortage of skilled workers and so Peter invited foundry workers and skilled craftsmen in the cloth and paper industries from abroad to come and teach their skills to Russian workmen. It was now imperative for the cloth industry to start putting out fine woolen cloth. It was at this period that fine-fleeced Silesian sheep were first brought to Russia and cloth manufactories were set up.

p Before Peter’s reign there had existed a Boyars’ Duma at the court of the Tsar of Muscovy, a large assembly which at the Tsar’s command had discussed various affairs of state. By the seventeenth century this body had already become clearly obsolete and the dyed in the wool Moscow boyars found it more and more difficult to cope with increasingly complicated affairs of state. In 1711 Peter replaced the Boyars’ Duma with a Senate of nine members, hand-picked by the Tsar himself and entrusted with important affairs of state.

p The central administrative organs which had existed in Russia were known as prikazy (or departments) and there were approximately fifty of them. They sprang up intermittently whenever the need arose. They were badly organised and frequently obstructed each other’s work. Peter did away with these too and replaced them with an incomparably more streamlined system of ministerial colleges.

p In Moscow Peter set up a Navigation School where mathematics were taught for the first time in Russia. It was later transferred to St. Petersburg and made into a Naval Academy. Special arithmetic schools were opened in the provinces, along with schools for the study of reading and writing, mathematics, engineering, naval skills, accounting and medicine. All these schools were of a clearly practical bent.

p Peter also gave instructions for an Academy of Sciences to be founded (1724), which were carried out after his death. The first Russian newspaper was printed in Peter’s reign and the first public theatre was opened.

p The reforms introduced by Peter the Great met with strong opposition from the boyars who were staunch defenders of the traditional way of life. One of the methods Peter used against them was forcible Europeanisation of everyday moeurs. He gave orders for his courtiers to cease wearing long Russian robes and adopt short European garments and shave their beards. During a 306 reception in the village of Preobrazhenskoye near Moscow Peter himself started cutting off the boyars’ beards and the long skirts of their traditional robes. Compulsory gatherings of the nobility were organised at the residences of the various Moscow grandees in turn. This Europeanisation drive, however, was to affect only the upper stratum and make little imprint on society as a whole.

p The European calendar was also introduced. Previously the Russian calendar had gone back to the year of the Creation, but in 1700 Peter adopted the calendar used throughout the rest of Europe.

p Although Peter was unable to make a complete break with the past, important steps forward were made in what still remained a feudal serf-owning society. Russia had become an empire with a stronghold on the Baltic coast and a sea-power to be reckoned with. She now possessed a powerful army and fleet; industry and trade had been considerably expanded. The state apparatus had begun to function much more efficiently and important advances had been made in the sphere of education. The countries of Western Europe were now starting to take notice of developments in this powerful Russian Empire and seek closer ties with it.

These successes were reaped at the cost of tremendous efforts by the common people and, not infrequently, entailed the loss of numerous lives. Tens of thousands perished in the course of the Northern War, at the walls of the fortress of Narva and on Poltava Field. They were drilled in the military arts, worked under great pressure building ships for the new fleet at Voronezh and on the Neva, and died by hundreds and thousands as a result of hunger, disease, damp and dangerous working conditions building Peter’s new capital. It was the common people who made it possible for Peter to open up dozens of new factories, it was they who smelted metal and extracted ore by the light of splinter-torches. The Petrine Empire was built with money wrested from them in the form of crippling taxes and by means of exploitation of the oppressed masses. The consolidation of the Russian Empire benefited above all the dvoryane and the merchant entrepreneurs.

The First Seeds of Disintegration
in the Russian Serf Economy

p Russia’s feudal economy was now starting to hold back the country’s progress more and more, as had been the case in other European countries. New economic relations of a capitalist variety gradually started to take shape within the old framework.

p They were to emerge first of all in the sphere of industry. More and more large manufactories started to spring up, both private 307 ones owned by the dvoryane, and state-owned ones. For manpower they relied in the main on forced peasant labour. Merchants and prosperous peasants also started setting up enterprises, employing workmen on a voluntary basis. So in the sphere of industry there came to exist side by side new, capitalist patterns and old patterns based on compulsory serf labour. This was one of the first signs of the weakening of the serf economy.

p By the middle of the eighteenth century, Russia had a total of some 650 industrial enterprises employing over 80,000 workmen. By the end of the eighteenth century 109 blast furnaces were operating and putting out about 160,000 tons of cast iron a year. For a certain period Russia’s metal industry output was even larger than that of England.

p At the same time there was a marked growth of the towns. It was in the towns that crafts and industry were centred and the towns started to need more and more produce as their population increased. By the end of the eighteenth century, Moscow had a population approaching 200,000 resident inhabitants.

p The feudal landowners started to trade more and more in agricultural produce, which brought them large revenues, subjecting their serfs to increasing oppression in order to squeeze out of them as much agricultural produce as possible. Gradually the natural economy was replaced by a national market with the abolition of internal customs barriers. This new phenomenon was also incompatible with the system of serfdom and served to some extent to undermine it.

p In 1762 the imperial government produced a decree freeing the dvoryane from obligatory state service. Large numbers of the dvoryane went back to their estates and, with their masters on the spot, life for the peasants became still more burdensome and punishments for insubordination still more severe.

p The peasants’ patience was being tested beyond endurance. They were anxious to gain a new life without masters, to farm independently and have their own plots. They started to demand emancipation. At the end of the eighteenth century when the system of serfdom was already starting to disintegrate these aspirations were to spread to ever larger sectors of the peasantry and served to inspire them to revolt.

Unrest had long been rife in the Urals and the Volga valley. All that was needed was a spark to set the fire of revolt ablaze.

The Peasant War Led by Yemelyan Pugachov

p Near the Yaik River in the Urals the situation was particularly tense, at the spot where a hundred years earlier Razin had made a name for himself with his brave forays. A strange rumour started 308 to spread among the peasants and Cossacks in the area to the effect that Peter III, who had been slain at the command of his wife Catherine II (1762-1796), was in reality still alive and in hiding somewhere in the Urals or near the Volga. Soon he would make himself known and make war on Empress Catherine, the’ oppressor of the peasants.

p The man who declared himself Peter III was Yemelyan Pugachov, a poor Cossack from the village of Zimoveiskaya on the Don. He had deserted from the Tsar’s army and seen a great deal of the country and his people’s suffering.

p The Pugachov uprising started in 1773. Peasants and Cossacks discontent with the conditions of serfdom started to flock to his support. In his proclamations and appeals to the people Pugachov promised to free all the peasants from their masters, grant them their freedom for the rest of their lives, give them land, and put the woods and rivers at their disposal. He called upon them to rise up against the dvoryane and all those in the Tsar’s service. He gave orders for the dvoryane who brought about the peasants’ ruin to be captured, slain and hanged.

p Pugachov’s army was soon to capture a number of tsarist fortresses and lay siege to the main town of the Urals, Orenburg. They went on to capture Samara and Krasnoufimsk and besiege Chelyabinsk. After failing to capture Orenburg Pugachov withdrew into Bashkiria.

p Insurgent serfs flocked to join Pugachov; the peoples of the Urals and the Volga valley who had been subjected to particularly hard oppression also joined in the uprising—the Bashkirs, Tartars, Kalmyks, Kazakhs, Chuvash, Mari, Mordvinians and others. Pugachov’s manifestos were written not only in Russian but also in Tartar, Bashkir and other languages. Leaders of these insurgent peoples were to play a prominent role in the uprising, for example the young leader of the Bashkirs, Salavat Yulayev, who was also a poet and wrote songs for the rebel army.

p The serf workers were an important contingent in Pugachov’s army. In that period there was already a large number of factories in the Urals, above all iron and copper works, where cannon and cannon balls were made. The men who made these cannon were competent when it came to using them. At the siege of Orenburg Pugachov’s men proved such good marksmen that the tsarist generals marvelled: "We would never have expected that from the muzhiks.”

p After going into hiding in Bashkiria Pugachov was soon to confront the tsarist army with a still stronger and more menacing force. He crossed the river Kama and captured the factories at Izhevsk and Votkinsk which opened the road to Kazan. Pugachov himself led the siege of Kazan and, outstanding artilleryman 309 that he was, succeeded in capturing the city. The riches of the dvoryane were shared out among the men of the insurgent army. But Pugachov’s success was to prove short-lived, for this peasant uprising, like those that had gone before it, was completely spontaneous and lacking in proper organisation and therefore doomed to failure.

p After abandoning Kazan Pugachov withdrew southwards. The decisive battle of the war was fought out at Sarepta and although the rebel army put up a brave resistance they were not a match for the tsarist army. Rich Cossacks later betrayed Pugachov to the tsarist generals, who sent him chained in a cage to Moscow, where he was executed on Bolotnaya Square in 1775. The only spectators allowed were representatives of the dvoryane.

So ended the peasant uprising led by Pugachov. Although it was cruelly suppressed it was to be of great significance, since it showed the Russian gentry that powerful opposition to the oppressive serf system was growing up among the masses. These peasant uprisings served to erode the serf system more and more, bringing ever nearer the date of its final demise.

Russian Foreign Policy During the Second Half
of the Eighteenth Century

p In the second half of the eighteenth century Russia was still an empire in which the direction of affairs of state was exclusively in the hands of the dvoryane. The interests of that class and the increasing number of merchants demanded further territorial expansion. The serf system was xStarting to disintegrate and the dvoryane were trying to counter this in every possible way, going all out to preserve the old order. They hoped to use the acquisition of new lands to this end as well. The Black Sea coast held out special attractions.

p In 1768 the troops of the Crimean Khan—a vassal of the Turkish sultan—invaded the southern part of Russia and the RussoTurkish War started. The Russians scored major victories under the outstanding commanders Rumyantsev and Suvorov. In 1774 the war ended with the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji.

p The Treaty contained extremely advantageous terms for Russia, and its effect was to give her a firm hold on the northern shore of the Black Sea and a foothold on the eastern shore. In 1783 the Crimean Khan whose independence was now little more than nominal, renounced his claims to power and the Crimea became part of Russia. Thus Russia acquired an outlet to the Black Sea and strengthened her power in the area.

In 1654 when the union of the Ukraine and Russia had taken 310 place, the Ukraine west of the Dnieper and Byelorussia had still remained part of Poland. The Polish economy at this time was very weak and the peasantry was being subjected to particularly savage oppression. Feudal exploitation was also holding back urban development. These features all serve to explain why Poland was unable to prove a match for her powerful neighbours. At the end of the eighteenth century Poland was partitioned by Russia, Austria and Prussia and ceased to exist as an independent state. This was a tragedy for the Polish people. In the course of the partition the Western part of the Ukraine and Byelorussia were also accorded to Russia.

The Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Russia.
Lomonosov

p The eighteenth century was a great age for Russian culture. One of the most prominent figures was Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765) who came from a simple peasant family.

p Lomonosov was to reveal a many-sided genius: he was a talented physicist and chemist, astronomer, geologist, geographer, linguist, historian, poet, painter and engineer. He organised Russia’s first chemical laboratory and discovered the Law of Conservation of Matter. In Lomonosov’s scientific work theory was always closely bound up with practice. He campaigned for the exploitation of mineral resources and a search for new deposits.

p Lomonosov made a large number of discoveries in many different fields of learning. His works in astronomy paved the way to the discovery that Venus has an atmosphere. He invented an apparatus resembling the modern helicopter. Lomonosov also wrote a number of extremely important textbooks such as the first Russian textbook on metallurgy and the first Russian grammar.

p Lomonosov did a great deal for education in Russia and played an important part in founding the first Russian university, which was opened in Moscow in 1755. Two special schools attached to the university were also opened—one for the dvoryane and the other for children of the other free estates, such as the merchant class. Serfs, however, were not admitted either to the schools or the university. Lomonosov championed equal rights of admission for all social classes but the tsarist government made sure no such liberties were introduced.

Moscow University had three faculties: philosophy, law and medicine. Unlike other universities, it possessed no faculty of theology. It was soon to become a leading centre of Russian science and culture.

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The First Summons to Revolution and Opposition to Serfdom

p At the end of the eighteenth century the Russian Empire appeared to be at the height of its power and advancing rapidly. This feudal empire now stretched from the White and Baltic Seas in the north to the Black Sea in the south. It now had a wellorganised civil service, and an army and fleet which had won considerable fame in recent battles. The Empress Catherine II who had been on the throne for over thirty years remained true to her noble blood and staunchly defended the interests of the landowning class: exploitation of the serfs and privileges for the nobility became more entrenched than ever during her reign.

p Soon after suppressing the Pugachov Revolt, the Empress published the "Letter of Grace to the Nobility" (1785) which served to uphold and systematise all the nobility’s rights. This charter of Catherine II laid down that the members of the nobility were a class apart possessed of the privilege to own peasants as just £0 many chattels. They could only be called to account at the court of the nobility. The dvoryane felt themselves regular tsars on their own estates, treating the peasants as they saw fit, buying and selling them, making presents of them and using them as gambling stakes.

p However, this might and brilliance of feudal Russia was undermined from within by the subsequent course of history. Serfdom was to hold back industrial development, the setting up of new factories and the introduction of machinery. It also stood in the way of the introduction of hired labour, and cultural development. Serfs were given no access to education and talented inventions were destined to be lost in obscurity.

p Bourgeois revolutions had already taken place in England and France by this time and capitalism was developing apace complete with hired labour and the emergence of a new class, the proletariat. Absolutism had already been uprooted in these advanced countries, while in Russia autocracy was still deeply entrenched and all legislation was directed towards promoting the interests of the serf-owning nobility.

p Yet there was a vast and growing potential to be explored in this country, which was developing apace despite the brake serfdom imposed. A steadily growing awareness of the need to do away with serfdom and autocracy was to be found among Russia’s finest and most progressive sons.

p In 1790 a copy of a new publication with the modest title Journey from Petersburg to Moscow was handed to the Empress. The name of the author was not printed on the cover. On reading its pages Catherine found herself face to face with revolutionary protest. The author of this work brought his compatriots a 312 powerful and impassioned account of the evils and injustices of serfdom. He referred to the landowners as "gluttonous beasts, insatiable leeches”. He described a landowner who had been growing rich thanks to the sweat and blood of his peasants in the following terms: "Barbarian! You are not worthy to bear the name of citizen. Your riches are the fruit of plunder. Call him a thief, destroy his farming implements, burn down his threshing barns and granaries and spread ashes over his fields where he enacted his tortures.”

p The author called for the complete abolition of serfdom and for the liberation of the peasants; he acknowledged the peasants’ right to revolt against their masters. The book was also aimed against autocracy and its author’s views were plainly republican: he considered that power should be in the hands of the people and regarded the Tsar as a "villain, than whom there is none more cruel”. In short, this anonymous author was calling for the abolition of autocracy.

p On reading the work the Empress declared it to be a revolt in itself, and that the author was more dangerous even than Pugachov. She gave orders for the man who had been selling the book to be arrested, and the latter under torture betrayed the name of its author, Alexander Radishchev. He was born in 1749 into a nobleman’s family and been sent to study abroad. Back in Russia he had worked as assistant director of the St. Petersburg Customs House.

p Catherine had Radishchev imprisoned and at his trial he was condemned to death. However the Empress was loath to carry out this sentence. She maintained close contact with various European philosophers and posed as an enlightened monarch. What would they say of her in Europe? Finally, instead of having Radishchev executed Catherine had him exiled to Eastern Siberia for ten years in the remote fortress of Him.

p Radishchev spent six grim years in exile. Meanwhile in St. Petersburg his friends took up his case and eventually succeeded in having him released before his sentence was up. After his return to St. Petersburg Radishchev started work on a commission drafting new laws. However, he wrote such a radical draft law that his employers almost immediately succeeded in having him sent into exile in Siberia a second time. Already ill and a broken man Radishchev was unable to hold out any longer and in September 1802 he committed suicide by taking poison.

Alexander Radishchev was the first person in Russia to speak out against autocracy and serfdom. He did not confine his criticism to isolated aspects of the system, as was common practice among other progressive men of that period, but called for total abolition of the system as a whole by means of a nation-wide uprising.