They brought to Russia silk, cotton, linen, processed hides, sabers, dyes, spices and
gems, and Turkish horses.
Most of Russia’s eastern trade in the seventeenth century went through Russia’s
great emporium in the east, Astrakhan, designated by the New Commercial Code
of 1667 an official customs gate; in the seventeenth century in volume of trade it
rivaled Arkhangelsk. Russian merchants from Moscow, Nizhnii Novgorod, Kazan,
and other Volga towns brought goods to Astrakhan down the Volga, sailing with
the current in the summer; return trade made the journey north in late summer,
rowed in boats owned by Astrakhan merchants. They awaited winter freeze in
Nizhnii Novgorod, and in winter some goods proceeded overland to Moscow.
Russian merchants sold the familiar local products (processed hides, linen, wooden
utensils, furs, honey, and caviar) and transit goods (European woolen cloth,
finished clothing, leather goods, and hats).
At Astrakhan, Persian, Armenian, and Indian merchants sold Persian silks and
leather goods, raw silk (for production by Moscow artisans), rugs, cottons, and
velvet. To encourage trade, from the 1630s Russia maintained afleet of armed
barges to ferry traders and goods safely across the Caspian, fearing Cossack raids. In
addition to a trade center (gostinnyi dvor) for Russian merchants, Astrakhan hosted
three other such centers, for resident Indian, Armenian, and Muslim traders
(Persian and Central Asian).
Armenians played a particular role in eastern trade into Russia. They had been
engaged in Volga trade for centuries before the Ottoman and Safavid empires, and
in those empires they enjoyed religious tolerance and autonomies. The Armenians
cited as resident in Astrakhan as early as 1616 were probably the so-called New
Julfa Armenians from Persia. Shah Abbas (1587–1629), in the midst of war over
Armenia with the Ottomans (1604–5), had forcibly transferred many Armenians
from Julfa to a diaspora suburb of New Julfa near Isfahan and had given them trade
privileges. Capitalizing on their common Christianity, Julfa Armenians cultivated
good relations with Russia. In 1659, for example, an eminent Julfan merchant of
the Shahrimanian family gave a fabulous golden throne, studded with gems and
diamonds to Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich; it was subsequently used in Russian
coronation ceremonies. Armenians in Astrakhan were affluent enough to erect
stone churches; by the mid-eighteenth century they had compiled a commercial
code by which they regulated their community in their own courthouse.
Since the arrival of the British, they and many others—Dutch, Swedes,
Germans—had wooed the Russian government for exclusive transit rights along
the Volga. When the great German scholar Adam Olearius visited Russia in the
1630s–40s, he served in an embassy for Schleswig-Holstein Duke Frederick III,
who hoped to win such a monopoly for his ambitious realm. In 1619 the Persian
Shah granted the Dutch rights to export silk through Russia, but Russia jealously
controlled that trade, limiting them to markets in the north and Moscow, con-
signing silk trade from Astrakhan north on the Volga to Russian merchants. At the
same time, the Dutch worked closely with Armenian merchants in worldwide
trade. Thus, when in 1667 Russia awarded a trade monopoly of silk and some
other Iranian and India goods to the Christian Armenians, the Dutch were
Trade, Tax, and Production 193