Recruitment and Service in the Ranks 153
another proprietor or community. This practice was due not merely to 'gentry
greed' but also to the state's hunger for manpower. Large numbers of such
documents were issued to those who presented recruits in advance. The pr~c:-
i.ice caused probiems t"or the authorities too, since receipt-holders could decide
when to make use of them, so that officials were unable to foretell what pro-
portion of an intake would be in the form of pieces of paper rather than warm
bodies. (By the end of the century the share of vouchers presented in lieu was
running at about 5-IO per cent. )^47
The government tried to use them as an instrument of social policy. In order
to give landowners and taxpaying communities an incentive to send peasants
to settle underpopulated areas of Siberia, vouchers were awarded as compen-
sation for the loss of their labour power. The first decree to this effect, issued
in December 1760,^48 was long interpreted by historians as evidence of the
autocracy's supposed subservience to the 'landlord interest', and this view
found its way into general textbooks. On closer inspection it is clear that the
measure, which did not apply solely to members of the privileged classes, was
motivated primarily by concern for state interest. Such settlers had to be fitted
out at their donor's expense in the same way as recruits. The decree was one of
several designed to promote demographic and economic growth in regions
along the empire's eastern border. In a similar vein, Catherine II had officials
issue vouchers to proprietors whose fugitive peasants were taken over by the
state or whose recruits lost their lives while on service.^49 It is nevertheless also
true that the practice reinforced the serf-owner's police powers over his
dependants. In theory at any rate he might despatch any of them to be either
colonists or soldiers, and receive in exchange a valuable document that saved
him from having to provide cannon-fodder at a subsequent levy.
A recruit had to satisfy three crude physical requirements: age, height, and
'fitness'. The age limits were at first (1730) defined at 15 to 30, but in 1754
each was raised by five years. Catherine II lowered the age of acceptance to 17,
where it stayed until the era of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1808 it was raised to 19
(but temporarily lowered to 18 in 1811). This 'concession to youth' was offset
by extending the maximum limit of age for a recruit to 36 (1806), 37 (1808),
and 40 (1812), the 35-year limit being restored after hostilities ended in 1815. so
In practice recruiting officers interpreted the regulations flexibly and
sometimes accepted under-age boys or older men.s^1 We need not assume that
bribery was involved in every case, for at that time people often did not know
47 Beskrovnyy, Russkoyo ormiyo, p. 299.
48 PSZ xv. 11166 (13 Dec. 1760); cf. xvii. 12556 (28 Jan. 1766), xviii. 13019 (28 Sept. 1767).
(^49) PSZ xxii. 16681 (I July 1788), xxiii. 16903 (6 Sept. 1790)-!hese were volunteers recruited
during !he war with Sweden (Semevsky, Kres1yane, i. 602); xxiv. 17623 (8 Dec. 1796).
50 PSZ viii. 5622 (18 Aug. 1730), xiv. 10326 (21Nov.1754), §I, xvii. 12748 (29 Sep!. 1766), § 8;
Shchepe!ilJiikov, in SVM iv (I, i, ii). 15, 41, 45, 79, 87. In 1811, in a revival of Peirine practice,
boys as young as 12 were called up, bu1 !hey were sent to military orphanages rather than io
regiments. PSZ xxxii. 25021; Petrov, Russkoyo voyennoyo silo, ii. 318; Shchepe1il'nikov (S VM iv)
p. 154 n.
51 Vyazemsky, 'Zapiska', p. 6; Keep, 'Catherine's Veterans', p. 390.