Growth in industry in the eighteenth century responded not so much to
indigenous demand, but to the intensity of government need for a particular raw
material orfinished product. Thus, Peter I invested heavily in war-related industries
(precious metals, shipbuilding, iron and armaments, textiles, saltpeter and sulfur),
using labor forcibly recruited by military recruitment or ascription of state peasants.
But not all industrial production was in state factories; Peter and his successors also
turned industry over to enterprising foreign or domestic entrepreneurs or noble-
men, inspired both by political favoritism and economic theory, providing subsid-
ies and facilitating access to labor. In 1721 merchants were allowed to acquire serfs
for industrial labor in the form of whole villages bonded to their factory (the same
format applied to serfs ascripted to state enterprises). Free labor (vagrants and the
emerging urban class ofraznochintsy, discussed in Chapter 18) who signed on
were converted into serf status in 1736. Merchants’right to purchase serf villages
was rescinded in 1762 in a move that benefited noble entrepreneurs who had
been eagerly moving into industry and manufacturing from the 1740s. Empress
Elizabeth awarded Urals ironworks and lucrative monopolies to favorite govern-
ment ministers, although many lacked the expertise to manage a complex industry.
In 1775–9 Catherine II abolished the College of Manufactures that had previously
provided industrial licenses and opened up manufacturing to all social groups
(nobles, merchants, craftsmen). Wealthy nobility engaged in manufacturing
using a mixed labor force of serfs and hired labor; they also shadow-partnered
with merchants and specialists. Boris Ananich notes that the number of factories
using hired labor (vagrants, serfs, and state peasants who left villages seasonally or
permanently) increased fourfold to around 2,000 in Catherine II’s time.
Metallurgy was in state and private hands. Silver was discovered at Nerchinsk as
early as 1704 and run by state mines, but when copper was discovered in the Altais
in the 1720s, initially the Ural mining magnate Demidov family was awarded a
monopoly. When gold and silver were discovered there in 1745, the state took over
the Kolyvanfields. These Siberian metallurgical complexes were worked by a skilled
officer corps of Saxon engineers (over the century Russian cadets trained in the
capitals joined them) whose titles were equated to grades on the Table of Ranks;
below them were master workers (free workers or state peasants“attached”or
assigned there) who were draftsmen, craftsmen, steelmakers, furnace-men, and
other skilled workers who could be promoted to officer rank. In the mines worked
convict exile labor and local peasants, while“ascripted”(assigned) peasant villages
cut timber for smelting furnaces, produced coal and charcoal, and did cartage. As
Ian Blanchard notes, all was done with military regimentation, with back-breaking
workloads. Over time Nerchinsk and Kolyvan became bustling communities: mine
officials had administrative, civil, and criminal jurisdiction over their populations;
they supported schools for children of master workers and the garrison soldiers who
protected the works, as well as afire service and hospital. Kahan estimates that by
the end of the century about 16,000 skilled workers (some foreign specialists) and
115,000 exile and peasant workers were engaged in these two mining centers. In
1779 – 83, the Imperial family’s administration was shifted to local Treasury boards
and Kolyvan became the center of a new gubernia focused on the mining area.
Fiscal Policy and Trade 319