The Struggle for Survival 191
townspeople, who resented the obligation to provide such accommodation
(known as postoy).^98 Probably only a small proportion of troops were
quartered in the towns. Those in country districts, except in the Baltic pro-
vinces,^99 were billeted on peasants, as in Peter's day. for most of the year; nor-
mally a company would u(l.upy an area comprising several villages or hamlets.
They left these quarters for summer training and on campaigns. From 1764
they generally returned to the same area each autumn, instead of being con-
tinually relocated; this must have given the soldiers' lives a greater element of
stability.
It was, however, less desirable for their peasant hosts (khozyayeva),
especially in the western provinces where most troops were stationed. For they
had to share their already crowded huts with armed strangers, and also provide
premises for the regimental and company offices, stores, stables, and the like.
All this involved them in considerable expense and inconvenience. Conflicts
were frequent. Already in 1724 Pososhkov complained that
soldiers and dragoons behave so roughly in their quarters, and commit such frightful
abuses, that their number is beyond calculation. Where they are accompanied by their
officers, their conduct is even worse. They brazenly chop wood for their fires and cut
down trees if there is none available ... And for that reason many [peasants) are no
longer content to remain in their homes.^100
Forty years later a senior officer stated that country folk who provided billets
looked on soldiers 'as bears who come and go': he even argued that their
mutual hostility endangered the empire's social cohesion.^101 He exaggerated,
but the idyllic image presented by some military writers of the soldier tenant
aiding the farmer's wife as she went about her household tasks and courting
her marriageable daughter was equally far from the truth.
The reason why their relations were so antagonistic also explains why the
authorities could tolerate such extensive cohabitation without too much fear
that the troops might be infected by peasant grumbling and rebelliousness.
This reason was that the soldiers were subject to their own military jurisdic-
tion. Run-of-the-mill conflicts with civilians were heard either by the unit com-
mander or by joint courts in which the military element or interest pre-
dominated.102 Russia thus had the equivalent of the Spanish fuero militar,
although it was less formalized. Confident of support from above, the men
naturally identified with the military 'estate' to which they had been ascribed(^9) " 'Nakaz Venevskikh zhiteley' [to Legislative Commission of 1767), SIRIO 93 (1894), p. 241,
§ 17; Knabe (Struktur, pp. 143-5) offers a detailed study of lownsmen's complaints to the
assembly on this issue; cf. Hillie. Service City, p. 161.
(^99) Here nobles were wealthier and may also have welcomed the added security which the
troops provided; they built so-called Quartierhiiuser with stabling as appropriate. Von Hupe!,
Beschr'!J_bung, p. 136.
100 PoSQshkov, Kniga, p. 44.
101 Gen. Khrushchev, memorandum of 1764 cited by Dubrovin, Suvorov, p. 132. Duffy's pic-
ture (Russia's Mil. Way, p. 130) is altogether too serene.
102 PSZ vii. 4535 (26 June 1724), §§ 11-12; Meshcheryakov. Suvorov, i. 145.