enough capital. Most peasants in towns, however, simply stayed peasants and
worked in trade. Understandably, in 1767 merchants and townsmen complained
of unfair competition in their cahiers to the Legislative Commission. There was no
single“city”in eighteenth-century Russia, but many varieties, as suggested by
several case studies.
Alexander Kamenskii’s study of daily life in Bezhetsk (about 300 km northwest
of Moscow) before the Catherinian reforms reveals a modest provincial small town.
Bezhetsk’s population was probably no more than 2,000 in most of the century,
perhaps half urban taxpayers and the other half soldiers, peasants, andraznochintsy;
a third of them in 1709 paid no taxes because of declared poverty. The town was
decidedly rural—people grew vegetables and raised small numbers of poultry,
goats, and sheep. Bezhetsk had no major manufacturing, but families produced
foodstuffs and small items for the marketplace. About a quarter of the households
engaged in selling meat,fish, cheese, baked goods and bread, kvas and vegetables,
hides, shoes and boots, clothing, and wax. Others hunted andfished but did not sell
directly; many were laborers.
By contrast, Vologda, Velikii Ustiug, and Tula in the last decades of the
century were less sleepy, as profiled by geographers Judith Pallot and Dennis
Shaw. Vologda was an old Russian town on the route north to Arkhangelsk and
still an important trade nexus in the eighteenth century. By the end of the century
38.7 percent of all Russia’s exports and 16.8 percent imports passed through
here. It and the area’s other main town, Velikii Ustiug, were of modest size, a
population of 7,500–10,000 in Vologda and less than 7,000 in Velikii Ustiug.
Light manufacturing—textile dye work, tanning, brewing, soap production,
tallow making, spinning and weaving of linen, milling rye and timber, metalwork,
boat building—flourished in Vologda and Velikii Ustiug; the latter’s artisans were
known forfine silver work and metalwork. Agriculture provided for local needs
(rye, barley, oats,flax); hunting supplemented the diet. Peasants not engaged in
manufacture or farming hired out for rafting timber downriver, worked on river
craft, or traveled farther for work.
Tula, on the other hand, was capital of a transitional province whose black earth
southern end provided agricultural bounty. Here 80 percent of the rural population
were serfs engaged infield labor (rather than paying quitrent) on noble estates. The
province’s northern end, where Tula was located, tilted towards the manufacturing
economy of the forested center, with handicrafts dominating over subsistence
agriculture. The city of Tula was famous as an industrial center: metallurgy and
armaments had thrived here from its founding in the late sixteenth century. By the
1780s Tula had a population of 25,000, many of whom produced famed Tula
samovars, other ornamental items, tools, and arms. The town also hosted lighter
manufacturing—hats, gloves, silk, rope, tiles—staffed by townsmen and surplus
peasants from the province’s villages.
Small towns like these were the norm across European Russia and Siberia;
imperial conquest added great, vibrant cities. Major Baltic towns joined the empire,
Kyiv thrived on the Dnieper, Kazan and Astrakhan on the Volga, Bakhchisarai in
Crimea. These urban centers reflected the unique historical circumstances, ethnic
Towns, Townsmen, and Urban Reform 383