48 Muscovite Roots, 1462-1689
serfdom, their self-interested behaviour was itself the product of Russia's
cultural isolation and, more immediately, of the military burden which the
government imposed-only part of which could be justified as necessary for
the defence of the country's essential int('rl'.'sts. ·
The second point relates to the 1630s and 1640s, when the privileged servitors
became obsessed with halting the drain of peasant labour. In se.eral collective
petitions they urged the tsar first to extend the prescriptive term within which
runaways, once discovered, could legally be returned to their former masters,
and then to extend this period indefinitely-a step that was taken, under their
pressure, in 1649.^52 This was a striking political innovation: the first time that
the 'middle-class' elements of Russian society articulated demands in an
organized way. The opportunity to do so was afforded them by annual
mobilizations of the levy to ward off Tatar attacks. Such occasions did not
occur at other junctures before this period, when the southern border was
quieter, or after it, when the levy mattered less militarily.
Repeal of the statute of limitations did not solve the gentry's problems, for
peasants continued to flee and their masters were soon appealing to the
authorities for help in tracking them down. The government's response was
ambiguous, since it had to balance sympathy for the landed interest against the
country's security needs.^53 Not until the mid-l 660s, under the threat of a
general uprising in the border region, were so-called 'investigators' (syshchiki)
sent out, armed with special powers and posses of troops, to bolster the pro-
prietors' claims. But thereafter on at least three occasions a period of statutory
limitation for the return of runaways was reintroduced, and on another four
occasions between 1684 and 1698 punishment of fugitives was temporarily
suspended. The authorities silently tolerated their recruitment as lower-dass
servitors (for example, Cossacks), whereupon they became ineligible for
return. On the other hand, when major campaigns loomed in the south and the
frontier servitors' co-operation was essential, concessions were made to their
demands-sometimes at the expense of the metropolitan nobility.
Undeniably servitors as a whole succeeded in consolidating their social posi-
tion during the seventeenth century at the expense of the peasants and the
state. It is also clear that the high-ranking groups did best, and that this went
hand in hand with growing social stratification within the elite. In the sixteenth
century even metropolitan nobles had often fallen into debt on account of
their military obligations;^54 political harassment, added to the fluctuations of
12 The classic study of these petitions is P. P. Smirnov, 'Chelobitnyc dvoryari i dctey boyar-
skikh vsekh gorodov v 1-oy polovine XVII v.', Chteniya 254 (1915), I, pp. 1-73. On the Land
Assembly sec our 'Decline of the Zemsky Sobor', SEER 36 (1957/8), pp. 100-22. R. Hcllic is
preparing a critical edition of the Ulozheniye. For the cnserfment process see chs. 4-7 of Hellic's
Enserfment and, for documents, R. E. F. Smith, The Enserfment of the Russian Peasantry,
Cambridge, 1968. Torke, Staatsbedingte Gesel/schaft, analyses thoroughly the gentry's limitations
as an autonomous social force.
lJ The interpretation offered by Novosel" sky, 'Pobegi', is preferable to that offered In the more
recent study of Man· kov, Razvitiye. Cf. now also Torke, 'Adel und Staat', p. 284.
l• One boyar who possessed several patrimonial estates had to pawn his wife's clothes in order
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