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

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62 Muscovite Roots, 1462-1689
By contrast in 1612, at the height of the Troubles, a rank-and-file musketeer
could expect only 2 roubles and 6 measures of rye.^30
The soda: ~·bis of tlie late si11.lee11tlt 1.:e11tu1 y a1.:~de1 atc<l the bend i.uwa1 Js
civilianization. Already the first units, as we have seen, were gr~ted land-in
principle for their use rather than as the property of the communitX concerned;
the officers would then assign individual lots on which the men wtre expected
to build homes, a small subsidy being allotted for the purpose. Residing in a
particular quarter of the town, originally in a separate settlement ('sloboda),
they soon acquired not only vegetable-gardens but also arable land and pasture.
The central authorities looked benignly on this development since it reduced
demands on the Treasury, although it was bound to detract from the men's
military value. Grants of cereals or of cloth for uniforms, and indeed payment
of the annual salary, were often irregular or subject to delay. Sometimes cash
grants would be made only until such time as the musketeer had established
himself in a gainful occupation.^31 Thus in order to survive and support his
family he was obliged to take up some kind of artisanal or commercial activity
as well as to till the soil. One supposes that in general the chance to engage in
such potentially profitable occupations was welcome; many men -will have had
previous experience of such work in civilian life. Some of them rented state-
owned land or facilities (for example, mills) and ran barns, shops, stalls, etc.,
on which a modest fee was payable.
The musketeers' life-style differed from that of other town-dwellers only in
regard to their military obligations. In an interior garrison in time of peace
these were not too onerous. Guard duty lasted 24 hours at a stretch, but
strertsy were seldom called on to perform drill or exercises. Generally they
rendered service within the city precincts or in the immediate environs, for
their earnings were too low to permit extended periods of absence from their
settlements; nor did the central authorities have the means to maintain them
when far from base. Many sixteenth-century Russian towns bore a wholly mili-
tary aspect-not only along the southern border, where this was _to be expected,
but also in the north-west, which suffered so heavily from the Llvonian War and
Ivan I V's depredations. According to census data for 1585-8 the little town of
Ostrov, near Pskov, had lost nearly all the 204 civilian households previously
registered there, whose place had been taken by 120 lower-grade servitors,
most of them musketeers.^32 Data for 1625 show that at Tula military personnel
of this kind ran 111 of 356 trading establishments (31 per cent), including nearly
half the forges, a skill that came naturally to them. They also specialized in
meat and other foodstuffs, clothing, and footwear. Most of these men were
close to the poverty line, possessing only 'shelves' or 'corners' of a shop or
stall, but one, M. Pavlov, became a successful entrepreneur. The closer a town


JO Brix, Geschichte, p. 147, citing AAE iii. 148.
31 Chechulin, Goroda, p. 327.
32 Ibid., p. 91; at Opochka almost half the cultivated land in the town was tilled by service per-
sonnel: ibid., p. 105.

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