Russia under the Old regime

199

As far as the monarchy was concerned, a city (gorod) was any locality, regardless of size or economic function, which had in residence a voe-voda (see above, p. 96). From its point of view, the city was a military-administrative outpost par excellence. Muscovite Russia, and even more so imperial Russia had many centres larger, more populous, and even economically more productive than those officially designated as cities which nevertheless did not qualify as such because they lacked a voevoda or his equivalent, and therefore could not perform tie functions which the state required of its cities.

In their internal structure, Muscovite cities did not differ from populated places in the countryside. All were the property of the crown, privately held cities having been liquidated concurrently with alodial land tenure. There was in the cities no private property in land; it was all held conditionally, for which reason there could be no commerce in urban real estate. In all cities large tracts were set aside for the benefit of the servitors who garrisoned them; these were held on the same terms as rural pomestia. Side by side with them, lay properties of the crown and lots inhabited by 'black' people. The tax-paying population was organized, exactly as its rural counterpart, into communities which were held collectively responsible for the fulfilment of state obligations.

Muscovite cities were few and far between, and their populations were small. If one adopts a very formal criterion and counts as cities only places with a resident voevoda, the figure is 63 cities under Ivan m, 68 under Ivan iv and 138 in 1610. If one broadens the definition to include every fortified place maintained at government expense, then the figure in the mid-seventeenth century is 226 cities containing an estimated 107,400 households or 537,000 inhabitants. Moscow at that time had between 100,000 and 200,000 inhabitants, Novgorod and Pskov 30,000 each, and of the remainder none exceeded 10,000; many so-called cities, especially on the frontier, were small fortified places manned by a few hundred soldiers. The typical Russian city in the middle of the seventeenth century had 430 households with an average of 5 inhabitants each." It was a rambling agglomeration of low wooden residential buildings, churches, monasteries and bazaars, set in the midst of vegetable patches and meadows. The streets were wide and un-paved, the river banks unregulated. They always seemed more impressive from a distance than on closer inspection because due to their low population density they were disproportionately large. Olearius wrote that on the outside a Russian city looked like Jerusalem, but on the inside like Bethlehem.

Artisans and shopkeepers constituted only a minority of Muscovy's minuscule urban population. In Muscovy the terms 'urban' and 'artisan-trading' were far from coterminous. Because cities served primarily administrative and military purpose, their inhabitants were mostly service personnel with their families, doendents and serfs, as well as clergy. It is estimated that in the middleof the seventeenth century tiaglo people comprised only 31-7 per centof the inhabitants of Russian cities, while 6o-i per cent were service peronnel, and 8-2 per cent proprietary serfs. In the central provinces, the tiglo people were in a majority; but in the frontier towns to the west, ea; and south, their proportion of the total urban population was anywhee from 85 to 23-5 per cent.7

The traders and artisans were fomed into:ommunities like those in which the majority of farmers werethen living. These were called the 'posad community' (posadskaia obshchia) to distinguish it from the agricultural community called sel'skaia or rest'ianskctia obshchina. In the earlier period, the posad was often a sepaute city quarter, adjoining the fortress, called kreml' or gorod. But by handing out in the mercantile quarters properties to persons "empt from taxation and therefore not part of the posad community th government confused the picture. In the late Muscovite and early imprial periods the posad was more a legal than a territorial entity. It hd no intrinsic connection with the city. Nearly one out of every thre cities in Muscovy was without a posad; conversely, there were posd settlements in the countryside, especially near monasteries. At the:lose of tie sixteenth century, only sixteen cities had five hundred or mre posad households.

In the eyes of the law, the posad onstitutec a legal entity because its members, like those of a rural commnity, bore collective responsibility for the fulfilment of their tiaglo obliations. However, it was in no sense a privileged corporation, as was thi urban ccmmune in the west. The posad bore extremely heavy tiaglo bligations, and if anything, the lot of its members was inferior to thz of rural serfs. These obligations included ordinary and extraordinar taxes, work on fortifications, and (for the more affluent) assisting the uthorities in the collection of taxes and tariffs. An historian of the eightendi-century posad lists its various possible obligations on three pages nd warns that the catalogue is not complete.8 The status of a person blonging to a posad was hereditary and he and his descendants were forldden to have it. As noted, the land on which urban residences stood blonged to the tsar and therefore could not be sold. Except that they lied trade and crafts as dieir vocation and agriculture as an avocationwhereas the black peasants did the opposite, the two groups were bare! distinguishable.

Since 1649 members of posad cormunities enjoyed (along with gosti and members of the two 'hundrec') the exclusive right to produce articles for sale and maintain shop: but the right had little value because all the estates took advantage^ it without bearing their share of the tiaglo. Some groups - e.g. the Sreltsy and Cossacks - were legally