Marking Time 335group).^68 If veterans were living at home, cared for by relatives or left to their
own devices, they qualified for an annual pension or a once-and-for-all grant.
A select few were accommodated in one of two home~ for old soldiers ir.
:St. Petersburg and Moscow.^69 Such residents did not qualify for a pension,
whereas those in invalid companies did (and received pay at a reduced rate as
well). Between 1825 and 1854 less than 13,000 veterans in all received pensions.
The total amount expended on them came to 232,000 (silver) roubles,
equivalent to 44 per cent of that expended on pensions and grants to invalid
officers, who were only 18 per cent as numerous.^711 On paper pension payments
ranged from 50 roubles a year for a lightly wounded private in an invalid com-
pany to 200 roubles a year for a severely crippled (uvechnyy) NCO living at
home.^7 ' The capital from which these payments were made, along with those
to officers, was augmented by about 20 million silver roubles during the
reign.72 Pensions were a favour, not an entitlement. It is not clear whether all
the discharged wounded received them (or fractions of the designated sums).
In 1854, when war casualties were on the rise, pensions expenditure was less
than half a million silver roubles, compared with an overall military budget of
178.6 million.^73 The total number of veterans must have been in the hundreds
of thousands-one foreign source offers an estimate of 660,000^74 -but it is not
known how many of them were wounded or injured.
Another form of veterans' aid was assignment to the internal security forces
as prison guards, escorts, etc., or to government officers as messengers.^75
Again, no statistics are available of the number so employed, who if wounded
drew full army pay. The cost of this assistance, which no one bothered to
calculate, ought to be added to pensions expenditure to arrive at a true overall
figure. It may be said, however, that only a modest step forward had been
taken towards providing veterans with adequate social security.
Before indicting the government for its meanness one must remember that
military expenditure was already cripplingly high and that money still played a
68 II PSZ ii. 1592 (6 Dec. 1827), § 38; iv. 3333 (12 Dec. 1829); Berezhkov, in SVM xiii(i), 94.
69 lJhe Chesme home in St. Petersburg, set up in 1830, had space for 400 men (and 16 officers),
but this total was not reached until some year> had elapsed; the lzmaylovsky home in Moscow
attained this total in the 1840s, but in 1850 its capacity was reduced to a mere 100 veterans from
the ranks: Berezhkov, in SVM xiii(i), 121-2. The homes were financed from interest on a capital
sum which, after several private bequests as well as alloca1iom hy various state bodies, reached I
million roubles by 1855. A third home, founded by Paul I. now catered for veteran sailors only.(^70) Ibid., p. 129. These data are incomplete and do not lend themselves readily to analysis by
recipient's rank. The figure of 232,000 roubles may exclude om:e-and-for-all grants and payments
to soldiers' dependant siblings (cf. p. 94) and widows (cf. II PSZ x(i). 8154 (23 May 1835); xiii(ii),
11546 (20 Sept. 1838) ). but these expenditures were probably quite small. On the other hand an
additional 180,000 roubles were spent between 1825 and 1854 on officers' families, and 884,000
roubles on the care and schooling of their orphaned children. 71 Ibid., p. 117.
72 Ibid., i). 129, and app. 8 (the figures are hard to reconcile).
73 Ibid., p. 129; id., '1st. ocherk', p. 58; Min. finansov, 1802-1902, i. 628.
74 'Memoire sur la situation de la Russie' [Dec. 1845). MAE, M et D, vol. 43 (1835-48), r. 226•.
7~ II PSZ ii. 1428 (Sept. 1827); v(i), 3505 (25 Feb. 18J0); vi(i), 4282 (22 Jan. 1831); vii. 5131
.(4 Feb. 1832); viii(i), 5981 (16 Feb. 1833).