Russia under the Old regime

94

fortunes by securing appointments to provincial posts. As noted, in Muscovy the costs of local administration and justice were borne by the population, and took the form of 'feeding' (kormleniia). Resourcefully exploited, such appointments could enrich in no time. The principal Muscovite provincial officer, voevoda, was a kind of satrap who combined administrative, fiscal, military and judiciary functions, each of which enabled him to extort money. The monarchy was not concerned what uses a voevoda made of his powers, as long as he maintained order and accurately delivered his quotas of servitors and taxes - an attitude essentially not different from that once adopted by the Mongols towards conquered Russia. Unlike the Mongols, however, Moscow was very careful not to allow any voevoda to ensconce himself in power. Offices were assigned on a strictly temporary basis, one year being the norm, one and a half years a sign of exceptional favour, and two the utmost limit. Voevody were never assigned to localities where they owned estates. The political implications of this practice did not escape Giles Fletcher who noted in 1591 that the 'dukes and diaks [secretaries] are... changed ordinarily at every year's end... They are men of themselves of no credit nor favour with the people where they govern, being neither born nor brought up among them, nor yet having inheritance of their own there or elsewhere.''

High civil servants employed in the city of Moscow were paid regular salaries. Heads of prikazy received as much as one thousand rubles a year (the equivalent of $30,000-840,000 in US currency of 1900). Secretaries and scribes received proportionately less. At the opposite end of the spectrum, ordinary dvoriane were given at most a few rubles on the eve of important campaigns to help defray the costs of a horse and weapons, and even for that sura they had to petition.

Service for holders of votchiny and pomestia began at the age of fifteen. It was lifelong, terminating only with physical disability or old age. The great majority served in the cavalry. Military servitors usually spent the winter months on their estates, and reported for duty in the spring. In 1555 or 1556 an attempt was made to set precise norms for service obligations: each 125 acres of cultivated land was to supply one fully equipped horseman, and each additional 125 acres one armed retainer. Apparently this system proved impossible to enforce, because in the seventeenth century it was abandoned and new norms were set based on the number of peasant households which the servitor had in his possession. Adolescents served from their father's land; if this was inadequate, they received a pomestie of their own. Competition over pomestia which had fallen vacant occupied a great deal of the time of dvoriane, who were for ever petitioning for supplementary allotments. Service also could take civilian forms, especially for the pedigreed