44 Muscovite Roots, 1462-1689
such sources, since their own laborious procedures made it hard for them to
keep up with the changes continually taking place on the ground. Servitors
died, retired, or transferred; and since land was the only form of investment in
a natural economy, their holdings changed hands with a frequency altogether
su1 μ1 i~ing given the formal restrictions on ownership rights to so much of their
land.
In early modern Russia, as is generally known, land tenure was of two types:
the votchina was a hereditary 'patrimony' and the pomestye a 'fief' granted
conditionally on service. But the Western terminology is misleading unless
used with caution. Earlier historians sometimes wrote as if the owners or
holders of these lands, respectively called votchinniki and pomeshchiki, con-
stituted two distinct and rival classes, the former superior to the latter. This
view is much loo simplistic. Three points are particularly relevant here. First,
in practice many individuals held land of both types: owners of patrimonies
would often be compensated for their service with portions of land on condi-
tional tenure, while land-holders who did well would try to acquire some ter-
ritory they could call their own, since this gave them greater security and
prestige. Second, the distinction between the two types of property was less
absolute than might appear, since from 1556 onwards patrimonial owners
were also compelled to render service, and their liability was assessed by the
same criterion as that of pomeschchiki. Thus service was universally binding
on male members of the elite: no one could escape the watchful eye of the
tsar's officials. This did not, however, prevent noblemen, especially those with
high rank and hereditary tenure, from easing their obligations and eventually
turning the system to their own advantage.
A third factor, applicable to land of both types (though in different degrees),
is that Russian servitors of this era seldom had estates in the Western sense of
clearly delimited, perhaps even enclosed, territories that could readily be worked
as independent agricultural units. The Muscovite land-owner or -holder was
generally faced with a patchwork arrangement of small plots scattered about
the area from which he served, and perhaps other districts as well. His plight
resembled that of the late nineteenth-century peasant, which is more familiar.
In such circumstances it was difficult to establish a homestead ('manor' in
Western terminology) with demesne land tilled for the lord's profit by depen-
dants. True, some such estates had come into being by the seventeenth cen-
tury, such as those owned by great boyars like B. I. Morozov, which have been
thoroughly studied,^38 yet they were not the norm. Even magnates might own
parts of a hamlet, or even of a single peasant hut. It was easiest for a servitor
to establish a farm on unsettled or waste land, which was available in the
central region when this became depopulated during the late sixteenth-century
crisis, and more especially along the expanding southern and eastern frontier.
Muscovite agrarian history is essentially one of a mass of smallholders
thrusting forward into the steppe, pursued by a handful of big entrepreneurs.
JI! D. I. Petrikeyev, Krup11oye kreposlno"ve khozyaystl'O XVII v., Leningrad, 1967.
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