(^50) Muscovite Roots, 1462-1689
pleas, and there is supporting evidence: at Bryansk in 1621 starvation among
the local gentry reached such a pitch that several families had to be transferred
elsewhere at state expense.^63 Cases occurred of provincial servitors falling into
slavery, despite a formal ban ( 1641) on the practice.^64 Some cavalrvmen sent to
lambov to work on the defences there found themselves worse.off than the
local musketeers, and besought aid to escape their humiliating precticament.^65
Land allocations in the region were then about 65-110 hclttares per
holding-more than ample, had they the wherewithal to develop this economic
potential. As the century wore on, despite the constant warfare, a modest
improvement evidently took place. A study of the Meshchersk region (in the
forest zone south-east of Moscow) shows that in 1616 49 per cent of gentry
'estates' had no peasant households at all; by 1658 the figure had fallen to
35 per cent, and by 1678 to 8 per cent; those with from l to 3 dependent
households accounted respectively for 18 per cent, 18 per cent, and 37 per cent,
while those with over 25 households rose from 4 per cent to 6 per cent and 9 per
cent.^66 There was, therefore, no massive concentration of property here. Only
at the end of this period did a modest 3 .6 per cent reach the 50-household
norm which servitors generally believed to be necessary for them to go to war
without receiving a cash payment from the state authorities (which in theory
observed a 10-household limit).6^7
We do not have comparable data for the region further south, but V azhinsky is
correct in pointing out that from an economic point of view the deli boyar-
skiye of Voronezh could scarcely be distinguish~d from peasants.^68 A survey
carried out in the 1670s, covering 1,078 gentry servitors in a number of
southern border towns, revealed that they had a mere 849 taxpaying
households between them.^69 A modern study of 1,966 such individuals in the
Belgorod and Sevsk razryady in the late 1690s shows that only 45 (3.5 per cent)
had IO or more peasant households, and so were deemed fit to serve without
supplementary payment; 96.5 per cent fell into the category of 'single-
householders' (odnodvortsy), which would last into the Imperial era.^70 It is
clear from these figures alone that by the late seventeenth century the gentry
militia had lapsed into a critical state.
There were three principal reasons for its decline. One was technological: the
new-model forces, to be discussed in chapter 4, were better armed, trained,
and led; they comprised infantry as well as cavalry, and so were more suited to
fight major wars against Turks, Poles, or Swedes.^71 The second was the
63 AMG i. 142.
64 AMG ii. 231 (1645); Hellie, Enserfmenl, pp. 65-6.
6l Yakovlev, Zasechnaya cher/a, p. 12.
66 Dubinskaya, 'Porn. i vot. zemlevladeniye', pp. 129-30.
67 Hellie, Enserfmenl, p. 50; Presnyakov, Mosk. tsars1vo, p. 65.
68 Vazhinsky, Zemlevladeniye, p. 3.
69 Chernov, Voor. sily, p. 157.
10 Vazhinsky, Zemlevladeniye, p. 67.
(^71) This aspect is fully.covered by Hellie, Enserfmenl, and will not be discussed here.
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(Wang)
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