Russia under the Old regime

84

commoner could move anywhere they wished in search of better service conditions, virgin land or profitable promysly. For all practical purposes their obligations to the prince were limited to the payment of taxes.

Now in order to fashion their empire on the model of an appanage domain - to make all Russia their votchina in fact as well as in name -the tsars had to accomplish several tasks. They had to put an end to the traditional right of the free population to circulate: all landowners had to be compelled to serve the ruler of Moscow, which meant converting their votchiny into fiefs; all commoners had to be fixed to their places of work, i.e. enserfed. This done, the population had to be divided into occupational or functional groups, each with its stated obligations. An expanded administrative apparatus, modelled on the appanage dvor, had to be created to assure that the social estates in fact fulfilled their various duties. These tasks proved exceedingly difficult to carry out, so contrary were they to the country's habits and traditions. Where there had been unlimited freedom of movement in space and a certain amount of social mobility there was to be none of either. Outright property in land, whether obtained by inheritance or by the clearing of wilderness, was to give way to tenure conditional on royal favour. A country which had been virtually ungoverned, was to come under the watchful eye of a bureaucracy. The extension of the domainial order on the country at large was nothing short of a social revolution imposed from above. The resistance was commensurate.

Following the domainial practice, the rulers of Moscow divided the empire's population into two main estates. Those who served them in a military or administrative capacity comprised the service estate (sluzhiloe soslovie). The others - farmers, artisans, traders, trappers, fishermen and sundry manual workers - formed the estate of 'ft'a^/o-bearers', the word tiaglo designating the load of taxes and labour which the commoners owed the tsar. The two groups were sometimes distinguished as 'big men' (muzhi or liudi) and 'little men' (muzhiki). As during the appanage period, the clergy formed a separate social order, parallel to the secular one. It neither paid taxes nor served.*

The distinction between servitors and commoners was of fundamental importance for the social history of Muscovite and imperial Russia. On the one side of the dividing line stood those working directly for the sovereign, men who (figuratively speaking) formed part of his household. They were not a nobility in the western sense because they lacked the corporate privileges which in the west distinguished nobles from ordinary mortals. Even the most eminent Muscovite servitor could be deprived of life and property at his sovereign's whim. Collectively,

* Moscow also retained the class of slaves (kholofyi), inherited from the past, whose members lived entirely outside the social structure. They will be referred to later in this chapter.