consistentfiscal policy that smaller, more developed states like England were
developing, what John Brewer called the“sinews of power”for eighteenth-century
England and that Charles Tilly underscored as key to early modern state building.
But the last decades of the seventeenth century did witness self-conscious economic
reforms that tried to exert more control over the national economy.
PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRY
Russia’s townsmen were not renowned for theirfine work. Except in rare cases,
such as thefine silk weavers of Astrakhan, who were Armenian craftsmen, or those
who wove tapestries, painted icons, and crafted jewelry in the Armory at the
Kremlin, the quality of early modern Russian artisanal work was rudimentary, to
judge by foreigners’comments. There were no guilds to ensure high standards and
foreign goods were so expensive and so distinctive that the common artisan had no
incentive to emulate them. Russia’s early modern productive industries were in raw
and semi-finished materials more thanfinished products, produced by semi-skilled
peasants and townsmen.
To some extent foreign export trade stimulated Russian industry and produc-
tion. For example, demand for forest and agricultural products in the north
stimulated production of tar and potash (used in textile processing, soap, and
glass making). Tar was declared a state monopoly in 1615, its farming generally
awarded to English or Dutch merchants. Foreign merchants also invested in rope
walks to produce cordage, a crucial commodity for the British navy. Demand for
treated leather (iuft’) prompted the development of that manufacture in Iaroslavl’,
Kostroma, and Nizhnii Novgorod, situated close to upper and Middle Volga ports
that led both to the Caspian and the White Seas; worked leather production also
developed in the Novgorod and Pskov hinterland for Baltic export. Similarly, in
that area as well as on Russia’s western borderlands, hemp andflax were cultivated
for export through Arkhangelsk and the Baltic.
The town–country nexus of trade—by peasants themselves or in the hands of
petty traders—was lively despite the autarky of serfdom. Already in thefifteenth
century, regional production was developing to serve urban and export demand:
fishing, drying, and preservingfish in salt for shipment was a major activity in the
lake and river districts north and northwest of Moscow (Pomor’e, Beloozero, Lake
Ladoga, the Volkhov and Sheksna Rivers), while the forested north and northwest
produced honey and wax. Peasants of the northern St. Cyril-Beloozero monastery’s
many properties produced salt,fish, tallow, and leather for export or sale across the
entire realm. Peasants of the major monasteries in the center, particularly the
Joseph-Volokolamsk east of Moscow and Trinity-St. Sergii near Moscow, pro-
ducedfirewood,fish, grain, and salt. The Trinity Monastery maintained shipping
fleets on the Volga, Northern Dvina, and Lake Beloozero, trading as far away as
Novgorod and Kholmogory. Flax and hemp found peasant producers in a wide
swath including Livonia, the Pskov and Novgorod areas, the Smolensk region,
Iaroslavl’, and Mozhaisk; these areas also produced textiles and leather goods for
202 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801