Soldiers of the Tsar. Army and Society in Russia, 1462-1874 - John L. Keep

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The Noble Servitor and His World 51
improved security situation on the southern border after the construction of
the Belgorod and other fortified lines (notably the lzyumskaya, built in
1679-81) and the acquisition of the left-bank Ukraine by the treaty of
.A.ndruscvc. The gentry helped to curb th~ Tataf ih1 ccti., anU in so doing
deprived themselves of much of their raison d'etre. The Thirteen Years War
engaged them fully and inflicted heavy casualties, notably at the battles of
Konotop and Chudnovo (June 1659, October 1660).^72 The bloodletting sapped
their vitality and, apart from its effect on morale, reduced their military
usefulness. Increasingly the government preferred to use gentry cavalrymen as
part of a mixed force containing musketeers and other low-grade servitors. 73
Moreover, during the emergency many privileged servitors were simply assign-
ed to these units, despite the loss of status which this entailed (see ch. 4). By the
late 1680s, when two offensives were launched against the Crimea, the gentry
militia supplied only 8,000 to 11,000 men, less than l 0 per cent of total effec-
tives.^74
The third reason for the Ievy's decline was administrative. The Razryad
officials found it ever harder to cope with their tasks now that many senior
nobles, and some provincials too, were accumulating wealth and changing
their life-style. A characteristic problem, which demonstrated that the unsoph-
isticated gorod service organization was breaking down as social differentia-
tion increased, was that servitors acquired property in districts other than the
one where they were enrolled and then claimed that they were, or should be,
registered there instead. The Razryad bureaucrats were not encouraged to
develop the horizontal communication that would have been required to check
how much service was being rendered and to reward it fittingly.^75
The process of .'civilianization' was uneven-chronologically, regionally,
and socially. Chronologically, it gathered pace during those years when the
country enjoyed relative peace and stability, notably after 1667. Regionally, it
was furthest advanced in the central districts, where so much land passed into
the hands of the metropolitan nobility. And socially, it was this group which,
with its wealth and influence, could secure non-military appointments or
choose to live for part of the year on their estates, while hard-pressed provin-
cials had no choice but to soldier on. It must be stressed that the decline of the
levy did not mean a diminution of the ordinary gentryman's military role,
since he was called on to fight in other capacities. One nineteenth-century
military historian wrote that 'the pomest ye system weakened the servitors'
military character; an easy idle life [on their lands) undoubtedly attracted them
more than onerous service, full of deprivation and hardship. '^76 This is to retro-
ject an eighteenth-century situation into an earlier era, when it was true only of
a relatively small privileged section of the noble elite.
72 Hellie, Enserfment, p. 217.^73 Stashevsky, 'Smeta', pp. 64-87.


(^74) Chernov, Voor. sily, p. 195; Hellie, Enserfment, p. 272; the figures are in some doubt,
however.
75 Novosel" sky, 'Raspad', p. 223; cf. AMG ii. 164 (1639).
76 'Petr Vel. i yego armiya', p. 232.

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