ranged across European Russia and reached heights of success and depths of failure.
Shorin was the son of agost’and became one himself around 1634; he did not
specialize in one area of trade, but ranged wherever opportunities arose, benefiting
from his government contacts andgost’position, particularly in the 1650s and
1660s. He purchased a lucrative tsarist monopoly infishing in the lower Volga,
and managed afleet of boats to ship thefish up the Volga to Nizhnii Novgorod and
Moscow. To provide preservative for thefish he got into the salt business with the
help of a government loan to start up a salt works and by buying a monopoly of salt
production in the Middle Volga. Shorin owned his own landing dock on the Kama
River for salt shipments and kept a large compound in Nizhnii Novgorod forfish
and salt shipments. He was active in the fur trade, selling sables on credit from the
tsar’s treasury and buying and selling lesser furs not claimed as tsar’s monopoly.
Shorin also organized large shipping expeditions to Russian settlements in Siberia,
bringing clothing, leather, hardware and tools, guns, wax and candles, beads and
trinkets, to be sold in exchange for furs. Shorin also shipped Russian goods to
Arkhangelsk to sell to European merchants not allowed to travel freely in the
interior. In turn he purchased and shipped back to Moscow and Nizhnii Novgorod
European goods: gold and silver thread, satins, velvets, needles, bells, paper, and
silver coins. He kept a hand in eastern trade with warehouses and retail activities in
Astrakhan. Finally, he was involved in grain shipping from his various landhold-
ings. Shorin’s trade was generally wholesale, but he also had over eleven retail shops
in Moscow and elsewhere, sellingfish, salt, grain, hemp, luxury items from Europe
and Persia.
Vasilii Shorin performed the most important tasks assigned togosti; twice he
served as customs collector in Arkhangelsk, a lucrative position for its holders. He
similarly reaped benefits from serving as assessor of the“fifth”tax; he acted as the
tsar’s agent in negotiations with Swedish and Persian traders; he was reprimanded
for his harsh treatment and tough application of customs duties on foreign traders
in Arkhangelsk.
Despite this seeming success, Shorin ended his life crippled by debt. The
infrastructural challenges of carrying on business in Muscovy and of being agost’
combined with the risk involved in major business deals caught up with him. He
repeatedly sustained great losses without insurance. In 1648 a rise in the price of salt
brought popular outrage down on him and on boyars associated with the salt
reform; rioters in Moscow pillaged his house, but he avoided death because he was
on duty in Arkhangelsk. Undaunted, in 1650 he sent a trade caravan to Persia and
India, but met complete disaster, the goods spoiled or stolen by highwaymen and
corrupt officials all along the way. Shorin estimated he lost 17,000 rubles on that
expedition.
Second, he lost big on both sides of Russia’s dearth of credit. He loaned money
that he could never collect, to the tune of 5,000 rubles or more in total, and
borrowed without the ability to repay. By 1655 he owed over 28,000 rubles to
three state departments for services as agost’or for loans he had taken; his political
connections got most of the loans forgiven, but he was still in dire straits. In 1660
he launched another failed caravan to Persia; in 1662 he was again saved from a
Towns and Townsmen 241