Home Page

Chapter 8. Russia: the Muscovy Cycle (1460–1620)

8.1 The Fifteenth Century Crisis

The starting point of our investigation is the second half of the fifteenth century, because only from this date on we have access to reasonably detailed sources on the agrarian history of Russia—the Novogorod scribe books. This does not mean that the demographic-structural analysis of earlier periods of Russian history is impossible. Such an attempt has been made in one of our earlier articles (Nefedov 2002). Although the fragmentary nature of sources allows us at most a hypothetical reconstruction of economic and social dynamics, we believe that a case can be made that prior to the middle of the fifteenth century Russia experienced two secular cycles.

The first, or Kievan, cycle began with the East-Slavonic colonization of territories that eventually became Russia, and ended with a demographic structural crisis of the 1220s–1250s in the Northwest (the Novogorod and Pskov Lands). Other Russian principalities succumbed to the Mongol invasion during the 1240s. The demographic catastrophe of the mid-thirteenth century was followed by sustained population growth during the fourteenth century. By the end of the century we again observe numerous signs of overpopulation in the Novgorod Land. The severe climate and poor soils of the Northwest could support only a relatively sparse population. As a result, it did not take much time for population growth there to reach the limits of subsistence. In Central Russia, unlike in the Northwest, there was still enough land to absorb the growing population. However, during the second quarter of the fifteenth century the rising Principality of Moscow experienced a protracted period of civil war, exacerbated by the Tatar invasions. As a result, the causes of the crisis of the fifteenth century differed between major regions of Russia. In the Northwest the crisis was caused by famines and epidemics, while in the central region the main cause was civil war and external invasions, with famine and disease as secondary consequences of socio-political instability (Nefedov 2002).

What was the scale of the catastrophe? How do we interprete the words of the chronicler, “few people remain in all Russian lands”? According to the archaeological evidence, the finds of leather shoe remnants and birch scrolls in Novgorod cultural layers declined by a factor of two during the first half of the fifteenth century (Izyumova 1959, Konovalov 1966). The implication is that the population declined by a similar factor. As we saw in earlier chapters, dealing with the economic effects of the Black Death, one of the indicators of a demographic catastrophe is a sharp decline of grain prices and growth of real wages. After “the Great Pestilence” in the Northwest prices halved, and labor became very expensive. The daily wage increased to approximately 24 kg of rye (Nefedov 2002).

According to archaeological data, one fifth of villages in the Moscow region were deserted (Yushko 1991:52-53). Population losses were undoubtedly even more severe, because the surviving villages must have also lost population to famines and epidemics. The rate at which stone buildings were constructed in Moscow and Tver declined abruptly by factor of 2.5–3 (Miller 1989). As happened after the Mongol conquest, several chronicles were terminated, creating a gap in the chronicle coverage of Russian history extending to the mid-fifteenth century (Lurie 1994).

The socio-political crisis in the Moscow region was severe and lasted half a century—from the devastating Tatar invasion led by Yedigei in 1408 and the first plague epidemic of 1418 to the end of the internecine war in 1453. The cause of the crisis was the financial collapse of the Moscow Principality. The treasury was empty and the state was forced to devalue currency. During the first half of the fifteenth century the ruble lost 60% of its value. According to the demographic-structural theory, the severe financial crisis had to result in the loss of control by the state. The situation had become so dire that in 1445, when the Great Prince Basil II had to repell a Tatar raid, he could gather together only one and half thousand warriors. As a result, at the Battle on the Nerli Basil II was defeated and captured by the Tatars.

With the Great Prince in captivity, the civil war flared up anew. The Tatar raiding parties crossed the Oka river meeting almost no opposition, plundered the core lands of the Muscovite state, and enslaved peasants “without count.” The multiple causes of the crisis were interconnected and fed upon each other. Economic collapse and reduced taxes lead to military weakness, which resulted in the civil war and external raids. High socio-political instability, in turn, deepened economic decline, caused famine and depopulation. “And they spent the remnants of the Russian land while quarelling among themselves,” wrote the Novgorod chronicler, summarizing the end result of the princely feuds (Lurie 1994:56).

8.2 Expansion (1460–1530)

The crisis of the fifteenth century resulted in a significant decline of population numbers. As a result, during the second half of the century Muscovite Russia experienced economic conditions that were typical for the beginning of a secular cycle: low population density, high land/peasant ratios, high real wages, and relatively low land rents. Foreigners who visited Russia during this period marveled at large forests and an abundance of grain and livestock (Barbaro and Contarini 1873).

As we noted above, real wages were very high during the period following the end of troubles (the daily wage was more than 20 kg of rye). By the early sixteenth century they declined somewhat, but still were at a relatively high level. During the 1520s an unskilled worker in Moscow earned 1.5 denga (0.6 g S) per day (1 denga = 0.395 grams of silver). We need to translate this nominal wage into the real one. The most common grains grown by Russian peasants were rye and oats. One quarter of rye (4 puds = 65.6 kg) plus one quarter of oats (2.7 puds = 44.3 kg) made up the unit known as “yuft’.” Using this grain unit, we can translate the nominal daily wage of 1.5 denga into 11 kg of “grain” (rye and oats). Such a real wage is approximately the same as the one earned by unskilled workers in Germany in 1490–1510, during the expansion phase of the early modern cycle (Abel 1980, Nefedov 2003).

As to the land rents, we know that the typical size of land worked by peasants in central Russia during the beginning of the sixteenth century was 15 desyatins (16.4 ha). Peasants were required to either pay the quitrent or perform corvée labor for the lord. For example, the corvée duties consisted of working additional three desyatins for the lord (two of which were cultivated in any given year under the three-field system). Thus, under the corvée system a peasant family cultivated 18 desyatins (19.6 ha) and had to pay to the lord the crops from three of them (that is, one-sixth of the total). Eighteen desyatins was a large amount of land, and in the Novgorod Land it was typically cultivated by an extended family consisting of 7–8 members, including two adult men, and employing 2–3 horses. It is probable that large families were also typical of the central region. The typical yield ratios of land sown with rye was 1:3.3; for oats it was 1:3.1.

Table 8.1. Estimated peasant budget (Central Russia).

Assumptions	Local units	Standard units
Total area cultivated	15 desyatins	16.35 ha
Planted with rye	5 desyatins	5.45 ha
Seed input, rye	40 puds	656 kg
Yield ratio, rye	1:3.3	1:3.3
Net harvest, rye	92 puds	1509 kg
Planted with oats	5 desyatins	5.45 ha
Seed input, oats	55 puds	902 kg
Yield ratio, oats	1:3.1	1:3.1
Net harvest, oats	115.5 puds	1894.2 kg
Net harvest, rye + oats	208 puds	3403 kg
Household size	8 persons	8 persons
Per capita net yield	26 puds	425 kg

As calculations in Table 1 show, the estimated per capita consumption for a typical household of 8 persons, cultivating 15 desyatins, was 425 kg. The minimum per capita consumption of grain in Russia is 250 kg per year (this is higher than what we assumed for Western Europe, because we need to take into account higher energetic demands associated with the cold Russian climate). Thus, the consumption level characterizing Russian peasants in the early sixteenth century was quite good, especially when we take into account animal husbandry and forest products.

The reign of the Great Prince Ivan III (1462–1505) “was the most tranquil and happiest time” in the Muscovite land (Soloviev 1989:III:169). Famine, pestilence, and Tatar attacks abated for a time. Government documents of this period contain multiple mentions of new lands brought under plough and the resulting growth of cultivated area (Cherepnin 1960:166). Ivan III conducted two censuses in the Novgorod Land, one during the 1480s and another c.1500. During the period between the censuses the population increased by 14 percent. Thus, population growth rate was on the order of 1 percent per year (AHNWR 1971:48-50). No comparable data exist for the central region, but fragmentary evidence suggests that the number of peasant households in various administrative regions (volosti) or manors (imeniya) increased by a factor of 1.5, 2, or even 3. Integrating these and other data, A. I. Kopanev (1959) concluded that the population of Russia grew by 50 percent during the first half of the sixteenth century, and reached the level of 9–10 mln.

The most densely populated regions were located in Northwestern Russia around Novgorod and Pskov. In the Novgorod Land population increased faster than the cultivated land. For example, the population of the Derevskaya District (pyatina) grew by 16 percent between the two censuses (the 1480s and c.1500), while the amount of cultivated land increased only by 6 percent. The peasant/land ratio in this district was only 7 desyatins, half of what was typical of the neighboring Shelonskaya District. Archaeological studies indicate that the density of settlements in the Derevskaya District during this period (1480–1500) was higher than at any time in the past (Konetskiy 1992:43). Heavy clay soils, never used before, were brought into cultivation. Agricultural intensification is also indicated by the increasing use of fertilizers which becomes widespread during this period (Shapiro 1987:6,14).

8.3 Stagflation (1530-1565)

Population and Economy

Chester Dunning (1997, 1998, 2001) was the first to use the demographic-structural theory in the analysis of Russian history during the sixteenth century. He noted that population growth beyond the means of subsistence in Russia during the sixteenth century led to price inflation (in this following the conclusions of earlier studies, see Blum 1956, Mironov 1985).

Before 1530 the price of grain remained relatively stable, with rye costing around 10 dengas per quarter (6 g of silver per quintal) (AHNWR 1971:21-22). During the 1530s prices began to increase. For example, in 1532 the price of rye in the Iosif-Volokolamsky Monastery (between Moscow and Tver) was 22 dengas per quarter. During the 1543–4, as a result of crop failure, the price increased to 35–40 dengas (Man'kov 1951:104).

Tracing the connection between overpopulation and inflation, however, is complicated by an uneven regional development. Thus, the earliest signs of stagflation appeared in the Northwest well before the central region around Moscow. Before annexation by Moscow the Novgorod Land was dominated by large landowners who exacted heavy rents from their dependent peasants (up to half of the crop). After the annexation, in-kind rents were converted to money rents for the state peasants, significantly lightening the burden on them. On lands given to the military servicemen (pomest’e), however, the press on peasants changed little, and sometimes even increased (AHNWR 1971: 173, 373). Thus, peasants working the land belonging to the gentry had to pay heavy rents of 10–12 puds (180 kg) per person. According to the calculations of historians, grain production on gentry-owned lands in the first half of the sixteenth century in Vodskaya and Derevskaya Districts (pyatina), after deducting the rent, was unable to provide the minimal level of per-capita consumption, 15 puds or 250 kg (AHNWR 1971:III:178). Low levels of personal consumption exposed the population to greater risk of mortality during periodic crop failures. Additionally, the chroniclers noted that in the Northwest epidemics were particularly severe (AHNWR 1971:II:33, Soloviev 1989:III:312). Finally, many peasants may have responded to increasing exactions of the gentry by flight. As a result, between 1500 and 1540 population of the Vodskaya district declined by 17 percent, and in the Derevskaya region by 13 percent (AHNWR 1971:II:290).

In the most populated regions, thus, stagflation began already in the early sixteenth century, and this process was speeded up by the high levels of extraction by the state and the gentry. At the same time, there was significant variation even within the Northwest. The conditions in Bezhetskaya and Shelonskaya Districts were more benign than in the Derevskaya and Vodskaya Districts. The first two districts increased in population between 1500 and 1540. In some locations population grew by 27–45 percent (AHNWR 1971: II: 32–33, 42, 235, 290–291). Stagflation was spatially heterogeneous, and some districts suffered from it more than others.

Documentary sources are much sparser in the central regions, but here too population growth led to the diminution of peasant land allotments. By the middle of the sixteenth century there were instances where two or even three peasant households were sharing the standard allotment of 15 desyatins (Kolycheva 1987:64). At this time an average household in the Borisovskaya District, near Vladimir, had 7.5 desyatins, less than in the Derevskaya District (Kolycheva 1987:64). In the Belozerskiy District there was only 6 desyatins per peasant household, which was insufficient to produce enough grain to last until the next harvest (Prokop'eva 1967:102).

Overpopulation lead to chronic peasant indebtedness. Peasants borrowed from the monasteries (the chief moneylending institution in Russia during this period) and when they could not repay their debts, lost their land. As a result, land held by the church grew dramatically, and towards the mid-sixteenth century the church owned an estimated one-third of all cultivated land in Russia (Zimin 1960:80).

In mid-sixteenth century, after a long hiatus, famines and epidemics reappeared in Russia. In 1548–49 there was famine in the North (Man'kov 1951:31). In 1552 Novgorod and Pskov experienced a terrible epidemic. In Pskov 30,000 people died. In 1556–57 there was another famine in the North (and also in the Trans-Volga region). Peasants left the regions affected by famine and migrated south. By the end of the 1550s 40 percent of formerly cultivated land in the Dvina river were abandoned (Kolycheva 1987:172-174). Kolycheva (1987:172) characterizes the situation as “a highly unstable equilibrium,” precisely as what we would expect during the late stages of stagflation.

The first signs of the impending crisis, thus, are observable well before the start of the Livonian War (1557–82) that is often blamed by historians for the economic decline of the Northern Russia in the second half of the sixteenth century. Russia at that time was not a tightly unified economic system. At the same time as the North suffered from overpopulation and its attendant evils, the Center was still in relatively good shape. In the Trans-Moscow land, for example, population growth continued until 1560, although all cultivable lands had already been brought under the plough (Ivina 1985:233). In 1560–61, however, the Trans-Moscow land experienced a famine. Grain prices rose from 10 dengas per quarter thirty years earlier to 50–60 dengas (from 6 to 26–31 g of silver per quintal). The monks of the Iosifo-Volokolamsky monastery blamed the dearth of land and increased state exactions for this calamity (Ivina 1985:166).

Population growth in the central regions drove the real wages down. In 1520 a day laborer earned 11 kg of grain, in real equivalents, while in 1568 his pay was only 3.6 kg per day (Nefedov 2003). In other words, the real wage declined during this half-century by a factor of three, reflecting population growth beyond the available means of production. A daily wage of 3.6 kg may appear sufficient for subsistence, but we need to take into account that day laborers were hired for restricted periods of time, so that most of the time they were unemployed. Even if we assume a very generous 200 days of paid work per year (a standard assumption for Western Europe), the yearly income would work out to only 720 kg of grain, which was not even enough to support three persons in Russia. In reality, the period of employment in Russia, given its severe climate, was less. For example, in the late nineteenth century the summer pay of day laborers was three times the daily rate at which laborers hired on a yearly basis were paid (Nefedov 2003).

Monastery records provide us with information about real wages for workers hired year-around. The pay of agricultural laborers consisted of an in-kind portion, which equaled 16 puds or 262 kg of grain, and a cash portion (obrok), which in the 1550s was 80 dengas (=118 kg of grain). Thus, in real terms the yearly pay was 380 kg, not enough to support even two people. Later we observe such a low level of real wages during the severe famine of 1588–89. In other words, the level of consumption during the decade of 1550s was as poor as during famine years (Nefedov 2003).

Another indicator of overpopulation and rural underemployment is the flowering of crafts, increase of trade, and growing urbanization. Peasants of the densely populated Derevskaya and Vodskaya districts of the Novgorod Land could not grow enough grain to support their families, and many of them became small-scale traders and artisans. As a result, there appeared numerous settlements in these districts that specialized in handicrafts and trade (Bernadsky 1961:108, AHNWR 1971:I:117-118). By the beginning of the sixteenth century Novgorod became a very substantial city with 5,500 households and about 30,000 inhabitants, 6,000 of which were craftsmen. In other words, almost all of the male adult population were craftsmen (Tihomirov 1962:303-307). Pskov, similarly to Novgorod, had more than 6,000 households and a population of 30,000 (Zimin 1972:120). Seventeen churches were built in Pskov between 1516 and 1533, almost as many as in Moscow (Zimin 1972:123), which, according to the official census had 41,500 households (Herberstein 1988). Ten percent of the population of the Novgorod Land lived in cities, which was probably the upper limit of urbanization, given the low agricultural productivity characterizing this region and period. Both Novgorod and Pskov were repeatedly hit by epidemics. During the reign of Basil III (1505–33) the chronicles mention at least four epidemics in the North, whereas there is no mention of disease in the Center (AHNWR 1971:II:33, Soloviev 1989:III:312).

Elite dynamics

The top level of the Russian social hierarchy was occupied by the appanage princes who were close relatives of the Moscow rulers. Basil II, Ivan III, and Basil III devoted much energy to reducing the appanages belonging to their relatives, but then they bestowed new ones on their junior sons, which tended to perpetuate the appanage system. After a series of victories of Ivan III over Lithuania a number of Lithuanian princes transferred their allegiance to Moscow. These noble houses (such as Vorotynskys, Odoevskys, and Trubetskoys) were considered equal in status to the appanage princes.

The second level of the hierarchy was occupied by “service princes,” who included many descendants of the great princes who ruled the Vladimir-Suzdal Land before the rise of Moscow. Their ancestors voluntarily subordinated themselves to Moscow, and often continued as governors of their ancestral lands after these were annexed by Moscow.

The third level consisted of the “Old Muscovite” boyars, such as Morozovs, Zahar’ins, and Chelyadins. The ancestors of these boyars were the closest henchmen of the Moscow princes when Moscow was still one of the small principalities in the Vladimir-Suzdal land. The Old Muscovite boyars traditionally occupied the most important positions within the government (the equivalent of modern ministries).

The princes and boyars together comprised the magnate stratum of Muscovite Russia. Below them were the “gentry” (dvoryane i deti boyarskie) who served as mounted warriors in the Russian armies. The gentry were further stratified into those who were based in Moscow (the middle rank elites) and the rest, who were based in the provinces. Many of the provincial servicemen were quite poor—they had land with 4 or 5 peasant households (or even fewer) and their style of life differed little from that of the peasants among whom they lived. The overall size of the elite stratum is hard to estimate, but we know that the number of gentry cavalrymen who served on the Oka defensive line during the 1520s was 20,000 (Table 8.2). Thus, there must have been at least that many military elite households.

Table 8.2. Some numerical data indicating elite dynamics (from various sources)

Period		Total	Source
1520s	20,000	South Frontier army	(Herberstein 1988:113)
1560s	100-120,000	Total Muscovite army	(Skrynnikov 1988)
1580s	65,000	S. Frontier army	(Fletcher 2003:77-78)
1580s	80,000	Total Muscovite army	(Fletcher 2003:77-78)
1630	15,000	South Frontier army	(Chernov 1954:125)
1630	27,000	All servitors	(Chernov 1954:125)
1651	39,000	All servitors	(Chernov 1954:125)
1700	23,000	Gentry, owning peasants	(Vodarski 1977:49, 64,73)
1737	46,000	Gentry, owning peasants	(Vodarski 1977)

During the first half of the sixteenth century the Moscow rulers encouraged the expansion of gentry cavalry, who provided the bulk of the army. As a result, the number of gentry servicemen grew very substantially, although we lack reliable data to quantify this growth. By the middle of the century the stocks of available land (with peasants) that could be granted to new servitors were exhausted. In 1540 land granted to the gentry on condition of military service (pomest’e) constituted 58 percent of arable land in the Shelonskaya District of the Novgorod land, but in 1540 it was 98 percent of the total. Similarly, in Bezhetskaya District this proportion grew to 99 percent by 1544 (Chernov 1954:25). As the number of elite servicemen increased, the average size of their land alottments them declined (Table 8.3).

Table 8.3. Percent of gentry servitors in the Novgorod Land with estates (a) less than 150 desyatins, (b) between 150 and 300 desyatins, and (c)more than 300 desyatins in 1500 and 1540.

year	<150 des.	150-300	>300 des.
1500	22	30	48
1540	39	39	22

Sociopolitical instability

We can follow the dynamics of socio-political instability in central Russia by looking at the temporal distribution of coin hoards found in the Moscow region (Figure 8.1). After a small peak during the first half of the fifteenth century (probably reflecting the Fifteenth Century Crisis; however, Russian economy at the time was poorly monetized, and the overall number of hoards is too low to make definite conclusions), the number of hoards per decade fluctuated between 0 and 3, reflecting a generally orderly conditions in the heartland of the Muscovite state. The first jump in hoard numbers is observed during the 1540s and extends to the end of the century. Then came a huge jump during the Time of Troubles, followed by gradual decline, although interrupted by another upsurge around 1700, to a low of the mid-eighteenth century.

Figure 8.1. Time distribution of coin hoards found in the Moscow region, 1400–1750.

The course of the narrative history is largely in agreement with the coin hoard dynamics. The reigns of Ivan III (1462–1505) and Basil III (1505–33) were characterized by internal unity and successful territorial expansion. When Basil III died in 1533, his son Ivan IV was only three years old. During Ivan IV’s minority the state affairs were first directed by his mother, Helen Glinsky, and after her death in 1538 by the boyar duma (the supreme council of the state). The period of boyar rule (1538–47) was wracked by a continuous strife between two noble clans, the Shuiskys and the Belskys. The power changed hands several times and imprisonments, exiles, executions, and murders proliferated (Riazanovsky 2000:145).

The boyars divided among themselves provincial governorships and sharply increased their demands (kormlenie) on the population (Soloviev 1989:III:436, 440). The magnates interefered in the process of distributing the service estates to the gentry. There is documentary evidence that the princes and the boyars seized large tracts of this land as their own (Kobrin 1980:172). The gentry felt themselves squeezed by large landowners, the lay magnates and the monasteries. Litigation for land between the servitors and monasteries became common during the 1540s (Zimin 1960:76, 81).

Another useful indication of intraelite competition and fractionation is provided by the dynamics of “precedence” litigation. Precedence (mestnichestvo) was a system of appointments for state positions, based on a hierarchical ranking of boyar families and prior service. Precedence litigations were disputes among the military leaders over service assignments (Kollmann 1999). Before 1540 the were only between three and five litigation cases per decade, but during the 1540s it jumped to 30 (in the Kollmann database, see the solid curve in Figure 8.2). Another huge jump, to over 200, occurred during the 1580s. Thus, the intensity of precedence litigation seems to provide a good leading indicator of intraelite struggles to come.

Figure 8.2. Precedence litigation in Russia, 1500–1700. The solid curve show the dynamic pattern in the database collected by N. S. Kollmann; the broken line gives the dynamics in another databases, collected by Iu. M. Eskin (both sets of numbers are given in Kollmann 1999:138).

The failure of crops in 1546 lead to a famine next winter. When a great fire swept Moscow in June of 1547, it triggered a popular uprising—the first one in the city since the foundation of Moscow Principality. The rioters wrecked mansions of many boyars and killed one of the ruling magnates, Yuri Glinsky. The young tsar Ivan IV took the matters in his hands. He repented publicly in the Red Square and promised to rule in the interests of the people (Riazanovsky 2000:145). In 1549 he convened the “Council of All Lands” (zemskii sobor, an institution similar to the Estates General), which further helped to normalize the situation. The first two decades of Ivan IV’s reign are known as the “good” half of the reign (Riazanovsky 2000:145). The government of Ivan IV undertook reforms of the military and local governement, and adopted a new law code.

Growth of taxation

The “good” half of Ivan IV’s reign also saw prolonged and intense external warfare. On the eastern front, Moscow was successful in defeating and annexing the lands of the Kazan and Aztrakhan Tatars (1552–56). On the western front, the Livonian War (1557–82) against the Poles and Swedes first resulted in some gains, but ultimately ended in defeat and loss of territory. Apart from the geopolitical goals of these wars, they also served the purpose of providing the elites, and especially the impoverished ones, with employment and booty.

These wars were extremely expensive and resulted in a sharp increase of the state’s press on peasants (Figure 8.3). As we noted above, peasant consumption in parts of Novgorod Land was already at the minimum sustainable level (15 puds or 250 kg per year) even before the Livonian War. Extraction of an additional 3–4 puds (60 kg) of grain had to result in famine and epidemics. This is, indeed, what happened in, for example, Derevskaya District (AHNWR 1971:II:Table 36).

Figure 8.3. Dynamics of state taxes in Bezhetskaya District (in kg of grain per household) (Nefedov 2003).

8.4 Crisis (1565–1615)

In 1565 Ivan IV created a separate institution, called the oprichnina (from oprich—apart, or beside), that divided the state, the elites, and the whole society right down the middle (Riazanovsky 2000:150). Ivan established a separate administrative structures for the oprichnina and the rest of the country, zemschina, which continued to be governed by the boyar duma. There were two sets of officials, one for the oprichnina and another for the zemschina. Countryside was also divided into two parts, and many landlords in the oprichnina territory were transferred out, while their lands were given to the new servitors of the tsar, called the oprichniki. Skrynnikov (1996) determined that more than 150 magnates, almost all of them of the princely status, were removed to the Kazan region.

In the beginning there were one thousand oprichniki, but eventually their numbers grew to six thousand. Urged on by Ivan IV the oprichniki instituted a reign of terror against the boyars, their relatives and associates. A number of towns, the best known of which is Novgorod, were devastated by the tsar’s henchmen. “It looked as if a civil war were raging in the Muscovite state, but a peculiar civil war, for the attackers met no resistance” (Riazanovsky 2000:151).

In essense, oprichnina was a coup d’état from above, in which Ivan IV used one segment of the elites (and elite aspirants) to wage civil war against the rest. Once the oprichniki played their role, they were in turn repressed. In 1572 Ivan declared the oprichnina abolished.

It was during this period of intense external and internal conflict (the Livonian War and Oprichnina) when Russia experienced a demographic disaster of the first magnitude. The specific trigger was a poor harvest in 1567. By itself this was not an unusual occurrence—crops failed in medieval Russia on average every 6–7 years. Normally such bad harvests did not result in a famine, because the peasants kept a year’s worth of grain as a precaution. However, the increased press of taxation (Figure 8.3) coming on top of an economic system stressed to the brink by overpopulation, meant that peasants could not afford to keep sufficient grain to tide them over a period of dearth. As a result, a major famine developed in the central regions during the winter of 1567–8. Grain prices increased 8–10 fold. The crops failed again in the next year, the prices remained at the same high level, and famine became worse (Skrynnikov 1975:162, Kolycheva 1987:177). In 1570 famine was followed by the plague. “It was one of those terrible epidemics of the Middle Ages that arrive roughly once a century and leave after themselves almost completely depopulated cities and villages,” wrote E. I. Kolycheva (1987:178). The “Great Famine” continued on during the plague. There were numerous reports of cannibalism (Schtaden 1925:92).

Famine, plague, and intraelite conflicts weakened the ability of the state to repel external invasions. In 1571 the Crimean Khan Devlet-Girey gathered together a huge host and invaded Muscovy. The Tatars attacked and burned Moscow, killing hundreds of thousands people. The territory around Moscow and south of it was devastated (Skrynnikov 1975:163, Kolycheva 1987:182). When the Tatars withdrew they carried away with them 100,000 prisoners to be sold on the slave market of Caffa. In the late 1570s the Livonian War entered its final phase, the result of which was the loss of all territories conquered by Moscow earlier in the war, and even loss of some additional towns to the Swedes. The war finally ended with peace treaties of 1582 with Poland and of 1583 with Sweden (Riazanovsky 2000:152).

We can assess the scale of the catastrophe of the 1570s by turning to the best documented region, the Northwest (Nefedov 2003). In Derevskaya District one-third of peasant alottments (obezhi) was deserted due to mortality resulting from famine and plague. Other alottments were abandoned by peasants unable to fulfil their tax obligations. In Derevskaya District three-fifths of alottments were deserted, although it is unknown what proportion was due to mortality, and what to emigration. Parts of Bezhetskaya District lost 40 percent of population to famine and disease. Some idea of what happened in the central region, can be gained from the conditions on the estates belonging to Troitse-Sergiev and Iosifo-Volokolamsky monasteries. Around Moscow, where the impact of the Tatar invasion was the heaviest, 90 percent of previouslly cultivated land was deserted. In the Suzdal District (uezd) the proportion of deserted lands was 60 percent, in the Murom District—36 percent, and in the Iuriev-Pol’sky District—18 percent. Some of these lands were deserted, no doubt, as a result of peasants moving elsewhere. However, the magnitude of such emigration could not have been very great, because the Muscovite frontiers, where land was abundant, were particularly unsafe during the 1570s. The southern frontier saw three major invasions by the nomads, while the Volga region was wracked by a rebellion. Thus, there was no region where peasants could move en mass, and it is likely that the numbers we have just cited bear witness to the huge scale of mortality affecting Russian population during the 1570s (Nefedov 2003).

As usual, the population decline brought in its wake some amelioration of the economic conditions for the commoners. Thus, daily wage increased sharply during the 1570s. The Vologda laborers in 1576 earned 3 dengas per day, while a quarter of grain cost 23 dengas. The real wage, thus was 9.3 kg of grain per day, or 2.5 times greater than a decade before. In Iosifo-Volokolamsky Monastery the real wage of laborers also grew by a factor of 2.5. The pay of skilled workers, such as carpenters and tailors, grew two-fold. Similar wage increases took place in other religious houses (Nefedov 2003).

Another sign of decreased population pressure was the fall of land rents (Nefedov 2003). The quitrent (obrok) on the gentry estates fell by a factor of three, from 10–12 to 3–4 puds puds per “soul”. On the state-owned land the rents were approximately halved. Corvée obligations also declined by a factor fo 2 or 3 (Nefedov 2003).

Thus, the demographic catastrophe of the 1570s led not to increased levels of peasant exploitation, as some historians have claimed, but, on the contrary, a significant lightening of the burden. But this also meant that the ability of the state and the elites to extract resources from peasants, using economic methods, declined in a major way. In real terms, taxes paid by each household shrank 3-, 4-, or even 5-fold, as in the Shelonskaya District around Novgorod. The state revenues from the whole of Novgorod Land were halved by 1576, and in 1583 they were only one-twelfth of the pre-catastrophe level (Vorob'ev and Degtyarev 1986:168).

The gentry servitors were also hard hit. Many estates completely lacked peasants to work the land. Only 7 percent of land was cultivated in the Moscow District (uezd), and 25 percent in the Kolomna District. In the Derevskaya District more than a third of servitors had no peasants (AHNWR 1971:II:71, Kolycheva 1987:184). Lacking resources to support themselves the gentry abandoned their estates. The Muscovite army, the bulk of which consisted of the mounted gentry servitors, lost half of its numbers (Schtaden 1925:99, Skrynnikov 1988:13).

Ivan IV died in 1584. The reign of his son Fedor (1584–98) was a relatively peaceful period, even though Fedor was feeble-minded and the government was again in the hands of the boyars. This interlude between the periods of high political instability, the oprichnina (1565–72) and the Time of Troubles (1604–13) was probably due to the exhaustion of potential warring factions, rather than any lasting solution of the basic contradiction between elite overproduction and declining commoner population.

The root cause of the continuing instability, which eventually led to the state collapse and civil war, known in the Russian history as the Time of Troubles, was the acute shortage of labor, economic distress of the elites, and the financial crisis of the state. The situation was similar to that of Western Europe after the Black Death (see Chapters 2 and 4), where the decrease in the supply of labor that drove wages up and rents down induced the nobility to employ extra-economic, coercive methods in an attempt to maintain their revenues. In England and France these attempts failed, while in Poland and Prussia the elites were successful in enserfing the peasants (see discussion in Section 1.1). Two centuries later in Russia under similar conditions the elites were also able to impose serfdom on the peasants.

However, enserfment could not resolve the economic problems of the elites. During the reign of Fedor (1584–98) the Russian army consisted of 80,000 cavalrymen, who received annual pay (in addition to service estates). Every year 65,000 cavalrymen served on the southern frontier guarding against the Tatar raids. Not all of these warriors were gentry, but, on the other hand, not all gentry received salary. Thus, by the end of the sixteenth century there were at least three times as many gentry servitors, compared to the regin of Basil III (1505–33), when 20,000 cavalrymen served on the steppe frontier. It is reasonable to assume that the overall numbers of the gentry increased by the same factor (three or more), whereas the commoner population was roughly the same as under Basil III due to the demographic catastrophe of the 1570s. In other words, the social pyramid became extremely top-heavy towards the end of the sixteenth century. It is clear that Russian peasants could not support such great numbers of the gentry, even if they were deprived of all the agricultural surplus that they produced. This contradiction could be solved only by abating the elite overproduction, which is what happened in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Enserfment was not a discrete event; rather it was a process that occurred in stages spread out over many decades. A key period in the evolution of serfdom was the end of the reign of Fedor (1584–98) and the reign of Boris Godunov (1598–1605), when the government, under the pressure from the gentry, issued a number of legislative acts that restricted the movement of peasants and extended the period during which a fugitive serf could be forcibly returned to his master.

Enserfment gave the landowners more power to extract surplus from the peasants. This is, for example, what happened at Iosifo-Voloklamsky Monastery, where the first attempt to increase corvée by 50 percent met with peasant resistance, and had to be rescinded (Koretskii 1970:283-4, Peasant_History 1990:257). Subsequent landlord initiatives were supported by the central authority. In 1601-3 corvée was doubled in many monasteries by the tzar’s edicts.

Because of fragmentary data, no quantitative statements can be made about the conditions of peasants on the servitor estates. However, we know that petty gentry had very few peasants. For example, the average servitor in the Tula region was supported by only four peasant households (Koretskii 1975:86), but he had to equip himself for military service every year. As a result, the majority of servitors were compelled to deprive the peasants of all their surplus, leaving them nothing to build up stores in case of recurrent crop failure.

The Time of Troubles

The socioeconomic situation in the first decade of the seventeenth century was in certain respect similar to that of forty years earlier, although during the 1560s it was the tax press of the state, not the elites, that pushed the peasants to the brink of survival. The trigger again was a very poor harvest resulting from cold and wet weather in 1601. Grain prices started climbing almost immediately. In the spring of 1601 a quarter of rye in the central region cost 30–32 dengas, but in the following fall it was already 60–70 dengas. In February of 1602 the price of grain reached 1 ruble (200 dengas) per quarter (Koretskii 1975:118-9). In 1602 many peasants lacked viable seeds to sow the fields (because the early frosts in 1601 damaged the grain before it was harvested). In the Fall grain prices reached 3 roubles per quarter. Next year, 1603, the weather was good, but the fields were empty of crops and the famine only got worse (Skrynnikov 1988:38). Thus, the catastrophe was not due to “three years of incessant rains” as some authorities have proposed. In reality, bad weather was a major factor only during the first year of famine. Climate served as a trigger, but the explanation of the length and severity of the catastrophe must be sought in the top-heavy social structure that resulted in the relentless oppression of the productive class by the elites.

The great famine of 1601–3 had far reaching effects on the population, the state, and the elites. First, it resulted in vast suffering and an enormous mortality shock delivered to the general population. Avraamii Palitsin reported that 127,000 people were buried in Moscow alone (Palitsin 1955). Another witness wrote that “one third of the Muscovite Tsardom has perished from the famine” (Koretskii 1975:131). Starving peasants attacked the houses of wealthier peasants and servitor manors. Starting in the Fall of 1602 banditry outbreaks became endemic in many regions (Koretskii 1975:208).

Second, it brought about the collapse of the state finances. The government of Boris Godunov took extraordinary efforts to alleviate the suffering of the common people (Dunning 2004:69–70). It attempted to control the prices, but without success. The Tsar then used the state’s grain reserves, selling the stored surplus at half the market’s price and distributing loaves of bread to the poor free of charge. Finally, the government was forced to spend huge amounts of money by giving away coins and bread to the poor in Moscow, Smolensk, Novgorod, and Pskov. In Moscow, for example, the government agents distributed food and money to about seventy thousand people avery day (a large part of whom had migrated from the surrounding countryside). Eventually, these handouts had to be stopped because of depleated treasury (Dunning 2004:70).

Third, the famine created a huge pool of disaffected and desperate counter-elites. Petty gentry were hit by the famine as badly as peasants. Many of them were forced to sell themselves into slavery in order to survive. In 1602 slave sales were nine times greater than in normal years (Dunning 2004:69). The trained cavalrymen, who sold themselves into slavery, were not employed in agricultural or domestic chores; instead, they joined the armed retinues of the magnates as elite military slaves. As the famine lenghtened, the lords found themselves unable to support their large retinues, and many cut the military slaves adrift. These individuals were desperate, “armed and dangerous,” and there were very many of them. According to a contemporary estimate twenty thousand former elite military slaves migrated to the southern steppe frontier, where they joined the ranks of disaffected cossacks and frontier servitors (Dunning 2004:72).

Unemployed military slaves, destitute servitors, runaway serfs, and cossacks from the southern frontier consituted a huge pool of manpower for the subsequent rebellions and civil wars. The first outbreak, the so-called “Khlopko rebellion” was little more than a large band of bandits that operated in the Moscow region in the Fall of 1603. Before they were finally suppressed they managed to inflict a defeat on the government troops sent against them, and kill their commander.

The next uprising (in 1604) was more serious and ultimately successful in toppling the state. It was led by an impostor who claimed to be Prince Dmitrii, the son of Ivan IV. False Dmitrii had started his invasion of Russia with the backing of the Polish magnates, but it is probable that the plot was initiated and secretly supported by certain boyar factions (Bussov 1961:100). The pretender has drawn most of his army from the southern frontier region where a large numbers of frontier cossacks and servitors were recently joined by massive influxes of former military slaves, destitute servitors, and runaway serfs. In April 1605 Tsar Boris suddenly died and the magnate coalition, which he had until then managed to hold together, fell apart. Large segments of the elites went over to False Dmitrii, and he entered Moscow in triumph in June 1605.

We do not need to describe the events of the ensuing civil war in detail. Suffice it to say that Dmitrii was overthrown and murdered by a faction of the boyars led by Vassili Shuisky in 1606. Shuisky became the Tsar, but was deposed in 1610. Meanwhile a series of pretenders arose one after another, including another Prince Dmitrii who claimed to have miraculously escaped the death at the hands of the boyars. There was another popular rebellion led by Ivan Bolotnikov, and foreign interventions by the Poles and Swedes (at one point the Russian crown was offered to Wladyslaw, son of the king of Poland). In 1611 the continuing internal infighting and external invasions triggered a powerful unifying response by the Russian elites and people. In 1613 the Assembly of All Land (zemskii sobor) elected Mikhail Romanov, a scion of a prominent boyar clan, to the throne, thus bringing the Time of Troubles to an end.

The famine ended earlier: 1604 was a good year for the crops. The demographic catastrophe had its usual positive effect on the real wages. Servant wages in monasteries increased by 50 percent compared to the pre-famine years (Nikolsky 1910). Rye cost 32 dengas per quarter, which was close to the pre-famine level.

Thus, the years of famine and civil war resulted in another population decline, although its magnitude was probably not as great as that of the 1560s and 1570s. Shrinking population led to labor shortages and increased real wages. However, while after the first catastrophe the real wages increased by a factor of 2.5, after the Time of Troubles the increase was on the order of 1.5. The situation of the peasants became better, and the process of enserfment was de facto rolled back. While all the laws tying peasants to land continued to exist, in practice they were unenforceable. It was very difficult to locate and bring back the runaway peasants. This was a task beyond the resources of most gentry, and no government agencies existed to give them help. Furthermore, once the situation stabilized the government did everything to avoid further agitation among the peasants (Shapiro 1965:67). On the southern frontier, peasants were given a legal right to leave the estates of the gentry (Tihonov 1966:302).

The long and intense civil war shrank the elite numbers. If during the 1580s the numbers of cavalrymen who served every year on the southern frontier was 65,000, in 1630 only 15,000 of elite servitors were able to report for the frontier duty (Table 8.2).

8.5 Conclusion

The end of the internecine warfare c.1450 created favorable conditions for sustained population growth. The second half of the fifteenth century was characterized by abundant land, relatively high consumption levels by the peasants, low grain prices, high real wages, and low levels of craft development and urbanization. Internal peace and order prevailed, while externally the state was invovled in a series of successful wars of expansion.

The first signs of stagflation become visible in the Novgorod Land by early sixteenth century, but in the central regions around Moscow they appear only towards the middle of the century. The stocks of free land for internal colonization have been depleted and land/peasant ratios become increasingly low leading to high grain prices and low real wages and consumption standards. Reports of famines and epidemics became frequent in the chronicles. Peasants migrated towards cities in increasing numbers, towns and cities grew in population, while trade and crafts flowered.

Intraelite competition and fragmentation increased in the middle of the sixteenth century. The increase in the social tensions is manifested in the government’s attempts at social reforms and in decreasing sociopolitical stability—e.g., the Moscow revolt (1547) and the Oprichnina of Ivan IV (1565–1572). The stress of the Livonian War motivated the government to increase the burden of the taxes beyond the sustainable level. Extraction not only of the surplus but of the resources needed for peasant reproduction brought the system to the point of collapse. The triggering event was the two consecutive years of bad harvests (1567 and 1568). Since previous state exaction left peasants no safety cushion, these natural calamities resulted in a terrible famine. Famine was followed by an epidemic and a disastrous external invasion of the Crimean Tatars. Acting in combination these factors resulted in the population collapse of 1568–71.

The severe population decline resulted, as usual, in better standards of life for the commoners. However, the numbers of elites remained very high. Better wages and lower rents, combined with the smaller producing population, lead to a drastic decrease of the elite incomes. The elite landed servitors were the mainstay of the Russian army but at this point the majority of them were unable to equip themsleves and serve on the frontier. The governemnt was thus forced to bind the peasants to land in order to give the servitors better ability to increase the rents. Enserfment resulted in a significant increase in the level of resource extraction from the peasants, especially by petty servitors who had only a few peasants to support themselves.

The sociopolitical instability of the 1560s and 1570s was followed by a relatively peaceful interlude of the 1580s and 1590s. During this period population probably increased, but it was still far below the pre-crisis level. Thus, the basic contradiction between too many elite servitors and too few peasants was unresolved. The press of the landlords on the peasants resulted in the latter existing precariously on the verge of starvation, lacking any reserves in case of a poor harvest. The crop failure of 1601 triggered another massive famine. During the following three years, general population experienced massive mortality, the state depleted the treasury while unsuccessfully trying to ameliorate the effects of the famine, and huge numbers of trained and equipped military personnel were left without any means of subsistence. The result was a bloody and prolonged civil war, known as the Time of Troubles.

This internal struggle resulted in a reduction of elite numbers, but the social equilibrium was not entirely attained. The second demographic catastrophe resulted in another population drop and an increase in the quality of life for the peasants, while the elite incomes again declined. Thus, the economic position of the elites after the Time of Troubles remained difficult.