Russia under the Old regime

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mining them only in the eighteenth century. The shortage of money was sufficient cause to have prevented the emergence in Russia of a moneyed class comparable to the western bourgeoisie of the classical age of capitalism. But this point conceded, the problem is by no means settled. For Russia at all times was a country whose inhabitants had a remarkable penchant for trade and manufacture; where indeed the natural poverty of the soil compelled them to become businessmen. One must not be misled by statistics indicating that under the old regime nearly the entire population of Russia consisted of either dvoriane or peasants. The social categories of old Russia were legal in nature, and designed to distinguish those who paid taxes from those who rendered full-time service, and both from the clergy which did neither; they were not meant to define economic occupations. In fact, Russia always had a much larger proportion of its inhabitants engaged in trade and manufacture than the official census figures indicate. It is probably true to say that when its state was in the process of formation (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries), proportionately more of Russia's inhabitants pursued non-agricultural activities part-time or full-time than was the case in any other European country. Western travellers to Muscovy were invariably struck by the business enterprise of its citizenry. Johann de Rodes, a Swedish commercial agent, noted in 1653 that in Russia 'everyone, from the highest to the lowest, practises [trade]... No doubt, in this respect this nation's zeal almost excels that of all the others...n Twenty years later a German visitor, Johann Kilburger, made similar observations: no one was better suited to trade than Russians, because of their passion for it, their favourable geographic location, and their very modest personal wants. He believed that some day Russians could become a great commercial nation.8 Foreigners were especially impressed that in contrast to the west, where trade was regarded as an occupation below the dignity of the nobility, in Russia no one disdained it: 'All the boyars without exception, even the ambassadors of the Great Prince to foreign sovereigns everywhere occupy themselves with commerce,' wrote another seventeenth-century traveller, 'they sell, buy, and barter without hypocrisy and concealment.'3

This intense trade activity was not quite equalled by Russia's industrial development. But even that was never quite as negligible as is generally supposed. In the eighteenth century, Ural foundries, working mainly for the English market, smelted the largest quantity of iron in Europe. The cotton spinning industry, the first in Russia to be mechanized, produced in the 1850s more yarn than that of Germany. All through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Russia had a bustling cottage industry, whose enterprising leaders differed little from self-made entrepreneurs of the Americas. The surge in all branches of heavy