60 Muscovite Roots, 1462-1689
B. A. Kali tin of Vladimir, who stated that in the course of no less than 68
years' service he had 'become feeble and deaf, and crippled by many wounds'.^22
Tiu: iia.-sh fate that av.-aitcd these substitutes ·.va~ scme\\^1 haf Qlitigated by the
fact that a fortunate few could rise up through service into t'~anks of the
privileged-whose estate (sos/ovie), though acquiring some trai of a caste,
was not in fact hermetically sealed off to entrants from below..Of greater military significance, and better documented, are the lower-grade
servitors, or s/uzhi/iye lyudi po priboru. The main formal distinction between
them and the privileged s/uzhiliye lyudi po otechestvu was that they owed ser-
vice, and were remunerated, collectively rather than individually. They formed
a category, or more precisely a set of categories, that were as much profes-
sional groups as ranks (chiny). The principal groups were the musketeers
(st rel 'tsy), artillerymen (pushkari), and serving Cossacks (kazaki). Service was
obligatory for all males born into a particular category, and it was next to
impossible to leave it of one's own volition-although in the seventeenth century
men were frequently transferred from one body to another as state needs dic-
tated. In principle service was for life, but it was not full-time~ for as well as
bearing arms lower-grade servitors would engage in economic activities in
order to maintain themselves, since here as elsewhere self-sufficiency was the
goal. What is of particular interest in our context is that the caste spirit which
developed in this milieu generated organized· opposition. Admittedly there is
a risk of over-emphasizing this aspect and forgetting that most of these men,
however discontented, remained loyal soldiers; nevertheless it is certainly
significant that what the metropolitan and provincial nobility either could not
or would not do was achieved in the late seventeenth century by the under-
privileged musketeers. Unhappily for them, their dissident movement was
ruthlessly suppressed by the absolutist state, aided and abetted by elements of
the elite cavalrymen.
A certain rivalry between these two elements of the armed forces was present
almost from the start. One early historian suggests that Ivan IV may have set
up the stre/'tsy, who were drawn from the free (non-servile) population, 'to
obtain a counterweight to the powerful classes of nobility and gentry'.^23 There
is, however, no firm evidence that this was so, and certainly Ivan's principal
motive will have been of a technical military nature: experience in the first
Kazan· campaign demonstrated the need for a professional infantry force
trained in the use of firearms.
Elements of such a force already existed in the so-called pishchal'niki, men
equipped with hand-guns (pishcha/i); their existence is attested in the sources
from 1510.^24 Like the pososhnye, they were levied from the under-privileged
22 AMG ii. 365 ( 1648); cf. ii. 430 (1650), 651! ( 1655), on grounds of poverty Ind sickness respec-
tively.
2J Brix, Geschichte, p. 93.
24 Yepifanov, 'Voysko', p. 344. ;"