40 Muscovite Roots, 1462-1689
Discharge was considered a privilege, to be granted only for serious reasons; if
they were medical in nature, applicants had to undergo physical inspection-by
a bureaucrat, not a doctor. u Discharge was also granted, again as a special
favour. to rnen who h;:td flt'."d. or been ransomed, frcm Tatai captivity.
Similarly, home leave was granted 'very rarely, only in the event of some
domestic catastrophe, and provided that no battle was imminent'.^14 One man
was allowed it so that he could search for fugitive peasants, and several others
because their homes had burned down; there were also a few-doubtless influ-
ential individuals-who merely wanted to gel married or to help a kinsman
gather in the harvest.^15
The overwhelming majority of ~ervitors, high and low, were thus in harness
from the age of 15 until they dropped. Yet in principle the Muscovite noble
cavalryman was but a seasonal or part-time soldier, and it is as 'feudal land-
owners' (and serf-owners) that they have entered the history-books. How
much truth is there in the conventional image?
Before turning to the compensation system, two general points deserve to be
made. First, the basic unit in early Russian society at all levels was the family,
which at this time still generally meant an extensive kinship group or clan
(rod);^16 this bond was much stronger than any that may have existed between
men with common economic or professional interests. Second, the degree of
pressure on 'society' exerted by the central vlas( (which from the seventeenth
century we may call 'the state') varied greatly over time. Although the ruler's
power was absolute in theory, in practice the noose was drawn most tightly
whenever the country was involved in a major war or the throne occupied by a
dynamic, determined ruler; it was slackened whenever the autocrat was inca-
pacitated by age or sickness and the court became an arena of open factional
connict. On the other hand, if these struggles led to a breakdown of civil
order, as they did in the second quarter of the fifteenth century and the first
quarter of the seventeenth (and nearly did between 1533 and 1547), privileged
servitors, along with everyone else, were gravely affected by the socio-
economic dislocation: even they had few reserves on which to draw. There
was, then, no 'golden age'. Certainly, conditions eased in the late seventeenth
century, especially after the treaty of Andrusovo ( 1667) and the death of Tsar
Alexis (1676), which was followed by confusion and even a certain political
degeneration at the top; but such benefits as !lowed from this were offset by
11 Ivanov, Opisuni_ye, pp. 39-41; Sta,.,ho::vsky. 'SluLh. sosloviye', p. 18; Torke, 'Adel und Staal',
p. 285.
14 Torke, loc. cit.
ti AMG i. 57, 91, 92 (1614). 125, 127 (1619), 226 (1629); ii. 232-4 (1645).
th This view is not, however, accepted by all modern demographers. Data from the t678 census
suggest that among the taxpaying population there "ere on average 5-6 males per household
(dvor): Vodarsky, 'K voprosu', fl. 122. Among 1he privileged groups household size may have
been lower; but family linkages of rnur'e extended lar beyond the immediate household-as the
rich Russian vocabulary for kinsmen (well over llXl tenm!) suggests.