Expansion and Foreign Policy
The navy and the standing army had deteriorated severely in the decade after Peter’s death, but they nonetheless remained a powerful force and consumed most of the state’s revenues—approximately 70 to 90 per cent in any given year during the eighteenth century. Russia concentrated most of its forces along the southern waterways and the borders of the Ottoman Empire, but major resources had to be diverted to deal with other conflicts—for example, those that ended in the defeat of Sweden (1743) and the annexation of the Crimean peninsula (1783).
Of particular import was Russia’s involvement in the Seven Years War (1755–62). Initially, Russia interceded as an ally of Austria and France against Prussia; despite the expense and losses, the campaigns were advancing successfully and, during the final months of Elizabeth’s reign, Russian troops were making steady progress towards Berlin. Peter III, however, suddenly terminated Russia’s participation (whether from blind admiration for things Prussian or from an awareness that the state coffers were empty) and switched sides, to the outrage of his erstwhile allies. Catherine initially repudiated this volte-face in policy, but in a few years took a similar tack—chiefly because the new alignment (including Austria as well as Prussia) provided the only way to secure Russia’s growing interest in Poland.
Prior to the outbreak of war with revolutionary France in the 1790s, however, Russia’s foreign policy focused primarily on the Black Sea. The old chestnut of a primeval Russian ‘urge to the sea’ has long since faded into well-deserved oblivion, but the Black Sea did affect vital national interests—as an outlet to international waters and especially international markets. Although Peter the Great gained a foothold on the Baltic (through the acquisition of Livland and Estonia in 1721), he had had much less success against the Ottoman Empire, leaving the Black Sea out of reach. Thus the strategic waterways that connected the Black Sea with the eastern Mediterranean still traversed territories under Ottoman control. Obviously, any attempt to satisfy these territorial ambitions meant long-term enmity between the Ottoman and Russian Empires. But Catherine did nourish such far-reaching ambitions; at one point, she embraced the vision of southern dominion articulated by her favourite, Prince Grigorii Potemkin, and even spoke of ‘liberating’ Constantinople in the 1780s and making it her new capital.
Fortunately for Russia, however, cooler heads prevailed. Turkish miscalculations helped: when the Grand Vizier declared war on Russia in 1768, he assumed that other European powers would come to his aid. When this assistance failed to materialize and the Porte was left to face Russia on its own, the two powers waged a bloody and exhausting war for six full years. In the end, Russia prevailed and forced the Ottomans to sue for peace at the village of Kuchuk Kainarji on 10 July 1774. The treaty forced Turkey to cede Azov and a small strip of land on the Black Sea to Russia, to recognize the independence of the Crimean peninsula, and to grant passage to Russian merchant ships (but not warships) through the Dardanelle straits. It also empowered Russia to construct a Black Sea war fleet, a concession that greatly enhanced its military firepower on the southern border. The treaty also authorized the Russian ambassador to make representations on behalf of a newly established Orthodox Church in Constantinople, a somewhat vague concession, but one that would loom large in nineteenth-century diplomacy.
Given this sea access to the West both on the Baltic and in the Black Sea, Russian interest in the three partitions of Poland had little to do with sea-power. Rather, it was a reaction to the precipitous decline of a major power, where the domestic political order had been so subverted by external influence that it ceased to be a viable independent state. The decline invited the first partition—by Russia, Prussia, and Austria—in July 1772: Russia obtained mainly what is now Belarus, while Austria and Prussia annexed Galicia and West Prussia respectively, effectively denying sea access for the rump Polish state. The catalyst for the second partition (by Russia and Prussia in January 1793) was a Polish constitution of 1791, which created a hereditary (as opposed to the traditionally elected) Polish monarchy, established an elected legislature, and abolished the liberum veto that had been so destabilizing. After this partition ignited a Polish uprising (led by the hero of the American War of Independence, Tadeusz Kosciuszko), Russia and its allies signed a new series of agreements in 1795 that expunged Poland from the map of Europe.
Population and Social Order
The Russian Empire experienced enormous growth not only in territory, but also in population during the eighteenth century. Natural growth alone accounted for much of this growth—from about ten or eleven million inhabitants in 1700 to about twenty-eight million by the end of the century. The annexation of new territories added greatly to this amount, increasing the total population to over forty million in the 1790s. It was, moreover, an overwhelmingly rural empire: although some estimates run higher, the government’s own censuses consistently show that over 90 per cent of the population belonged to the peasantry and still more lived in rural areas.
These subjects bore multiple identities. All belonged to a specific legal estate (noble, serf, state, peasant, and numerous lesser ones); virtually everyone (the élite excepted) was also attached to a specific location. These social categories, in turn, belonged to one of two large aggregate categories—the podatnye (those disprivileged groups liable for the poll-tax) and the nepodatnye (those exempt). Much more was at stake than the poll-tax: registration in the poll-tax population carried onerous obligations like conscription and corporal punishment that, taken together, formed the great divide in the social order. Women were identified, if at all, by the standing of their fathers or husbands. These identities proliferated unsystematically during the eighteenth century, often leaving little correlation between legal status, wealth, and occupation. Many nobles had neither land nor serfs; most ‘merchants’ neither traded nor produced commodities; and most ‘traders’, juridically were not merchants.
Indicative of the incongruity between juridical status and human activity was the special category of raznochintsy, which literally designated people who fitted none of the accepted ranks or grades. The state employed the category in so many mutually exclusive ways that it was virtually devoid of any coherent meaning; the status, which few voluntarily espoused, was essentially an ad hoc juridical trope that the state invoked when its usual categories, themselves highly artificial, were found to be wanting or inappropriate. In the end, the categories that the state used to classify its population were overlapping, contradictory, often incoherent. Still, these juridical categories provide a useful (if crude) map to the social order, helping to identify groups in terms of their relative rights and obligations.
Townspeople and Merchants
Russia’s urban population was, as already suggested, exceedingly small—some 3 per cent according to the official census of the 1760s, slightly more by the end of the century. The overwhelming majority of urban residents belonged to the legal status of townspeople (meshchane), inscribed in the poll-tax (1.24 roubles—almost twice that of peasants) and liable for the attendant disabilities—most notably, conscription and corporal punishment. The term ‘townsman’ itself was misleading; although many engaged in artisan crafts or petty trades, they also supported themselves through agriculture by tilling garden plots, tending orchards, and raising various kinds of livestock.
The élite in urban society held the rank of merchants (kuptsy), the subject of much legislation in the eighteenth century (which culminated in the ‘Charter to the Towns’ in 1785). It was chiefly for purposes of taxation, not economic regulation, that the state divided merchants into three ‘guilds’ (gil′dy). According to the system in place before 1775, merchants had to have disposable capital of over 100 roubles to register in the first guild, 50 roubles for the second, and 10 roubles for the third. The guild status, in fact, said nothing about the volume or form of their commercial activities; once all internal tariffs were abolished in 1754, merchants—regardless of guild—could engage in w
hatever trade they chose, with few restraints. Indeed, ‘merchants’ did not necessarily even engage in commerce; by some estimates, 80 per cent of the Moscow merchants registered in the third guild in 1766 did not engage in trade.
The guild status, however, played a critical role in determining status and obligations. Each guild bore specific responsibilities and had to bear a tax based on their declared kapital. The primary urban service was to participate in the urban magistrate (magistrat), the elected (and mostly unpaid) councils obligated to collect (but not levy) taxes, to keep population records, to oversee town services (for example, fire-fighting, public health, and road construction), and to maintain law and order. Given the relative frequency and popularity of drunken mêlées (kulachnye boi), this last responsibility was important. The magistrates also had to deal with major crises like food shortages and epidemics, as in the Moscow plague riots of 1771. In return, guild members had certain privileges—the right to engage in certain types of commerce, display their wares, hang signs, and a few other modest advantages.
Their status was anything but secure, however. If a merchant’s declared capital fell below the specified minimum, he was obliged either to register in the next lowest guild or even to drop from merchant status into the ranks of the common townspeople. Such downward mobility was exceedingly common. As has been recently demonstrated, only a fraction of merchant families in Moscow and provincial towns remained in the first and second guilds for more than a generation; although a few connived to be elevated into the nobility the great majority dropped into the third guild or the common townspeople.
Catherine clarified the legal standing of merchants after 1775 and, in the process, significantly raised the minimum requirements for guild registration. In contrast to the small sums required earlier, merchants now had to declare 10,000 roubles of capital for the first guild, 5,000 for the second, and 1,000 for the third. Those who lacked such capital had to register either in artisanal guilds or in the general pool of urban commoners. Predictably, the new standard caused the massive demotion of merchants unable to meet the new property qualifications: the number of registered merchants plummeted from over 213,053 in 1772 to 24,562 in 1775, a decline of 88 per cent. However, those excluded from guilds could still trade, since the correlation between legal and commercial status was minimal. Still, those who lost guild status became ordinary members of the poll-tax population, with all the attendant disabilities—taxation, conscription, labour, and hindrances to travel.
The few who remained in the merchant guilds, however, enjoyed important new privileges. One was formal exclusion from the poll-tax rolls, although at the price of paying an annual 1 per cent levy on their capital. Moreover, members of the first and second guilds were exempt from the degradation of corporal punishment, could not be consigned to work in onerous places (such as salt mines), and enjoyed important symbols of social status (for example, the privilege of riding in carriages). And they could buy themselves out of military and civil recruitment. Catherine’s legislation also defined their privileged spheres of commercial activity: the first guild could engage in foreign trade, the second in national trade, and the third in local and regional trade.
Catherine also created a further élite category that included trained professionals, businessmen with capital over 50,000 roubles, wholesalers, shipbuilders, and people deemed ‘eminent citizens’ (imianitye grazhdane, i.e. wealthy merchants who had been elected to serve in an official post). This élite, in recognition of their service, enjoyed a host of privileges that ranked them near the nobility in standing, except for the fact that their titles were not hereditary and they could not own serfs. As one might expect, many of these eminent citizens ultimately obtained those privileges by successfully petitioning for elevation into the ranks of nobility.
State Peasants and Interstitial Categories
The category of state peasants was a catch-all term to identify those living on state lands and owing dues to the state rather than to private landlords. Most state peasants lived in agricultural settlements as members of a repartitional commune, but some, like the odnodvortsy (homesteaders) in the south, functioned as family units. As for economic activity, most were primarily engaged in agriculture. In the north, working in heavily wooded territory and handicapped with poor soil and extensive frost, state peasants supplemented—and even replaced—agriculture with other activities, such as fishing, trapping, beekeeping, and logging. In the case of those who lived near waterways and canals, many worked on barges, hauling them downstream with teams of rope-pullers working each side of the river. And state ‘peasants’ living along the White Sea worked mainly as commercial fishermen and whalers. In areas where the state sought to foster industrial growth it assigned some state peasants to factories and plants, where, as ‘ascribed’ (pripisnye) peasants, they had to supply a stipulated amount of labour each year. In short, the umbrella category of ‘state peasant’ was primarily a definition of tax and other obligations, not a coherent economic or social classification.
One important subgroup of state peasants had formerly belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church—primarily monasteries, occasionally to parish churches. Despite recurrent attempts by Peter the Great and his successors to sequester or at least exploit this population, the Church succeeded in retaining ownership and limiting any exactions by the state. In 1762, however, Peter III secularized the Church’s landed estates and transferred its peasants to state jurisdiction. Although Catherine temporarily rescinded that edict, in 1764 she confiscated these lands and peasants once again. She then converted this population into a special category called ‘economic peasants’ (named after the ‘College of the Economy’ established to administer them), essentially just another of the myriad subgroups within the larger aggregate of state peasants.
The peasant population also included a congeries of other smaller social units. One category, bridging the status of state and seigneurial peasant, was the ‘crown’ (dvortsovye) peasants, who lived on crown land, held this hereditary status, and owed dues to the imperial family. A substantial population (over half a million males, or 5 per cent of the peasantry), these peasants were administered by a governmental agency and hence were more approximate to state than seigneurial peasants. Yet another special category was the ‘possessionary’ (possessionnye) peasant, who was ‘possessed’ by a factory or plant: declining to extend the noble privilege of owning serfs to other social groups, the government permitted industrial enterprises (not their owners) to purchase unfree labour.
Regardless of juridical status, most peasants did not occupy themselves exclusively, or sometimes even primarily, with field work. Even in agricultural communities, peasant households spent the long winter months indoors, repairing tools, tending animals, and threshing or milling grain. A substantial proportion of peasants hired themselves out for seasonable labour and participated actively in rural fairs. So many peasants engaged in the local and regional markets that the law designated them as ‘trading peasants’, who legally remained members of the peasantry, but whose long-term presence in commerce had become a recognized fact.
Serfs
If any population did roughly correspond to our conception of the primordial peasant wedded to the land, it was the serfs. According to the poll-tax census of the 1760s, Russia had 5.6 million male serfs (56.2 per cent of the peasant population). For all practical purposes, Russian serfs were invisible to Russian law and justice: subject to their squires (who collected dues, designated recruits, and meted out punishment), the serf had virtually no identifiable status in the imperial system. It is, in that sense, ironic that the Russian term for serfdom—‘serf law’ (krepostnoe pravo)—was distinctive precisely for the absence of ‘law’ to regulate the mutual relations between squire and serf. In this legal vacuum nobles could—and did—modify the obligations of serfs at will, not to mention sell and relocate them. By the late eighteenth century Russian ‘serfdom’ bore less in common with Old World serfdom than with New World slav
ery.
Some developments did, however, work in the serfs’ favour. In purely economic terms, the poll-tax (set at 70 copecks per male soul in the first half of the century) remained at the same level—notwithstanding the sharp inflation of succeeding decades. In real terms, then, the material burden of the poll-tax declined substantially. In addition, the natural growth of the population diminished the per capita burden of other obligations, especially recruitment, but also such duties as portage and temporary road work. And, given the exigencies of state service, many nobles had little opportunity to meddle in the daily lives of their peasants. If a recent historian’s findings for the village of Petrovskoe in Tambov province are typical, or even widespread, some serfs exercised considerable collective control over their working and life routines.
Still, the second half of the eighteenth century marked a major deterioration in serfs’ legal status. Many squires, as we shall see, had strong incentives and new opportunities to intercede in village life, encroach on its quotidian autonomy and assert new powers of regulation and control. Peasant communities, moreover, had few legal mechanisms of resistance; no longer full-fledged subjects (ceasing, after 1741, to take an oath of allegiance to the sovereign), serfs—in contrast to state peasants—did not even have the right to petition the emperor. Except for serious crimes or disputes involving other estates, the landlord exercised virtual private-law authority on his estate. He had final authority over serf marriages, although as a practical matter these were typically arranged by the peasant families and councils of elders. When an important piece of legislation filtered down to the locality it was often the landlord’s responsibility to have it read aloud by the local priest, bailiff, or scribe. And, in moments of ‘disobedience’ and rebellion, the landlord could summon governmental authorities to send police or troops to restore order and punish the intransigent.
Russia A History Page 17