repairing roads annually were another of the unpaid collective service obligations
put on communities. A more formal system of coach stations is cited already in the
1480s by foreign diplomats. Intended only for official messengers or embassies,
Moscow’s system of coach stations was modeled on Mongol practice, taking
the Tatar term“iam”and the model of taxation that paid for it. Initially“coach
service”bureaucrats (iamskie d’iaki) in the Treasury oversaw the building of the
network; by 1516 a separate chancery for the expanding coach service is cited. Since
lines were dictated by the needs of war and diplomacy, thefirst followed existing
roads to the west, to Novgorod, Pskov, Viaz’ma, Dorogobuzh, Smolensk, and
Vorotynsk. When White Sea trade began to prosper with the arrival of English
traders in the 1550s, existing roads were improved and more were developed; coach
stations were set up as far as Vologda and Arkhangelsk. Foreigners found Muscovy’s
road system impressive, as John Randolph observes, since it did allow fast travel
over great distances for government business. Anthony Jenkinson, a mid-sixteenth-
century British traveler, reported that there were coach stops at intervals of 20 to 50
versty(averstaequaled a kilometer). A“tract”was laid out into Siberia by the end of
the sixteenth century and from the late sixteenth century military roads were laid to
southern borders (Tula, Belgorod, Tambov); as control over steppe lands was
stabilized, they became trade arteries. By the seventeenth century coach routes,
with stations every 40– 50 versty, linked Moscow to Arkhangelsk, Novgorod, Pskov,
Smolensk, Nizhnii Novgorod, and key southern frontier towns. Focused on state
needs, the coach system left the private traveler to fend for himself. Furthermore,
whole areas of the realm remained untouched, primarily most northern towns and
most of Siberia. Here communities were held to the traditional obligation of
providing horses and support for the occasional official envoy, but they were not
made to pay the annual taxes and services for a coach system.
Initially Moscow’s coach system was a network of stations with a few coachmen,
supported by a direct tax (iamskie dengi) that was collected in cash already by the
earlyfifteenth century as well as by community contribution. The coachmen’s task
was to summon horses from the community quickly when messengers arrived; the
community’s obligation was to provide horses, food, and feed promptly. These
stations were not inns; the point was speedy, constant communication. Way
stations used river travel where appropriate, but usually went overland for speed.
Dry summer and clear winter days favored travel (as long as forage could be found
in winter); estimates of speed of travel vary widely. Some sixteenth-century foreign
travelers report speeds of 100 to even 200 miles in a day (Sigismund von Herber-
stein, Jerome Horsey) in good conditions; Herberstein reported that his servant
went 400 miles from Novgorod to Moscow in 72 hours! But these speeds are
unusual. Others estimated that Novgorod to Moscow normally tookfive days in
winter, seven to eight in summer; similarly the mercenary soldier to Ivan IV
Heinrich von Staden reported that he traveled from Dorpat to Moscow, 200
miles, in six days. Mail traveled between Arkhangelsk and Moscow using water
and land routes in the late seventeenth century in the summer in eight to nine
days for 700 miles, and in the spring and fall, ten to eleven days. In practice,
however, most travel was probably less speedy. Bad weather, poor road upkeep,
180 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801