Recruitment and Service in the Ranks 151
difficult to resolve. The legislators tried, for example, to prescribe limits
beyond which a multiple owner might not associate his holdings. What hap-
pened in practice, though, as in Muscovy, was that the wealrhier owners came
to enjoy certain advantages: not just because they were wealthy and so influen-
tial, but because the state authorities appreciated that they could best provide
the steady flow of recruits required. From the official viewpoint it therefore
made sense to allow donors who wanted to deliver their quota directly to the
War College in St. Petersburg to do so, especially since such recruits might
well be domestic servants rather than field-workers, and so represent less of a
drain on agriculture.^33 In this way donors, usually those with substantial
means, were spared the wearisome and time-consuming process of the skladka;
but the local authorities were left with the tricky job of redrawing unit bound-
aries to take account of their exclusion. Likewise, St. Petersburg residents
were permitted, indeed encouraged, to submit recruits at any time, in advance
of the next levy, whereupon their quota would be correspondingly reduced;
and from the Seven Years War onwards similar privileges were extended to all
donors, who could present such recruits to their provincial chancellery.^34
Hand in hand with this liberalization went an extension of the right to
substitute, for the recruit designated under the selection procedure, an indi-
vidual purchased by the donor or donors for the purpose. Such rights were
more likely to be exercised by landowners, especially wealthier ones, than
urban or peasant communities. Indeed, poll-tax payers (tyaglye) were at first
expressly prohibited from engaging in such a practice, until the ban was repealed
by Peter III (1762).^35 Purchases by communal peasants are authenticated from
the 1730s, and later there was a scandalous case involving villagers in
Yaroslavl' province who, with their proprietor's permission, bought the
inhabitants of another village, who were regularly despatched to the colours in
their stead^36 -as their military slaves, in effect! Sales of substitutes had to be
registered with the authorities, and purchasers were not allowed to buy more
than one man at a time, to avoid speculation; for the same reason serfs could
not be sold within three months of a levy decree, lest such sales be used to
camouflage a black market in recruits.37 Those purchased had to be free men,
not individuals ascribed to some taxpaying community; nor could they be
fugitives or deserters (although foreigners were acceptable). In a serf-based
economy free men were scarce, and accordingly commanded a high price.
'Many a fellow offers to become a recruit for his brothers in the village and
receives for this a decent remuneration', wrote one contemporary. (^3) K This led
the authorities to set a maximum price, first fixed at 360 and later raised to 500
JJ First mentioned in PSZ x. 7394 (6 Oct. 1737); cf. 7435 ( 16 Nov. 1737), 793fl ( 1739).
J4 PSZ xiv. (^10736) (6 June 1757), xvii. 12478 (General Statute on Recruitment, 29 Sept. 1766). I,
§ 7, xviii. 13182 (13 June 1768), xix. 13483 (20 July 1770), § 5.
JS PSZ x. 7169 (6 Feb. 1737), xi. 7997 (3 Jan. 1740), xv. 11413 (22 Jan. 1762).
J6 Aleksandrov, Se/. obshchina, p. 272.
37 Semevsky, Krest 'yane, i. 367-8.
38 Von Hupe), Beschreibung, p. 202.