The Noble Servitor and His World 47in Moscow district classified as 'waste' doubled, from 54 to I08.^4 M During and
after the Troubles the pendulum began to swing the other way. Lavish grants
were made of land on patrimonial right,^4 ~ from which the metropolitan nobles
apparently did be!;t. !\.1uch Ciov.·n land ~-as distriUuic:U, a11U po1neshchiki were
permitted to convert part of their land to patrimonial tenure. '^0 The ratio of
service to patrimonial land was highest in the southern border region; overall
the latter are thought to have had the greater share-a reversal of the situation
that had obtained one hundred years earlier.^51
The process whereby servitors were turned into landlords, still in an initial
phase, was economically beneficial in so far as it gave these men a stake in
their lands, which they had first treated much as conquered territory.
However, from the standpoint of the peasants it was a catastrophe, since they
were debased to the condition of serfs. The gentry took the crude view that
their land was of no use to them without a plentiful supply of labour, and that
this could be assured only by degrading their dependants into human chattel.
This tragic development is so familiar that we may restrict our discussion of it
to three points which show that the military context exerted a decisive influ-
ence on events.
First, it was the misconceived Livonian War that lay at the origin of the
sixteenth-century crisis. This fact would seem banal were it not for the disposi-
tion of so many historians to overlook it. The war touched off the wave of
terror and destabilized the precarious agrarian economy; this in turn led many
landlords to increase the rent demanded from their peasants (which they were
permitted to collect in person). Since neither the secular nor the ecclesias-
tical authorities acted to limit this pressure, the peasants responded with
passive resistance and mass flight; this in turn prompted measures to tie those
who remained to their owners; and finally these measures did much to provoke
peasant rebelliousness in the Troubles-in short, a vicious circle of monstrous
proportions. While 'gentry greed' was certainly a factor in the imposition of48 Smirnov. Ocherkt, p. 411. The gaps in the census data make ii hard to e•aluate the turnover
rate among landowners during the oprichnina. Using the pistsovye knig1, Got' ye stated (Zamosk.
kray, p. 284) that, out of 152 patrimonial properties in Moscow distrkt in 1565, 45 were still in the
same hands 20 years later: of the rest 33 passed to kinsmen and 74 to non-kinsmen. This suggests
considerable disruption. Figures for Kolomna and Tver' dislricts show greater stability, as one
might expect. A more recent student of the problem condudes that between 1564 and 1584 no less
than 456 patrimonies ceased to exist, most of their land being pledged to monasteries: Veselovsky,
Feod. zemlevladeniye, p. 96.(^49) For example, IKhilkov] Sbornik, p. 50: grant to boyar Ye. A. Svechin ( 1614). who "a' allowed
to convert 110 of hi\ 550 quarters into a patrimony. In 1626 A. 1\1. l.·,m got 600 quarters: AMG i.
- In 1632 622 moskol'skiye dvoryane (^2 /.1 of the total) owned 94, IUO quarte" of patrimonial
land of which 1he source is known; of thi' 41,200 quarter' (44 per ccnl) had been 'granted' or
'earned', 11.700 ( 12 per cent) inherited, and 18,400 (20 per cent) bought; 121 men had no
patrimonial land at all, and for another 97 thi' accounted for 20 per cent or le" ol their property.
Stashevsky. Ze111/evfade111ve, p. 17.
lll AMG i. 176, 178, 188, 200; Maslov>ky, 'Porn. voyska", p. 8.
<1 Hellie. Enserfmenr, pp. 40, 57: however, Eaton, 'Cemme,·. p. 81, put' the po111es1'_1·a"s
share in the late sixteenth century a1 only 'o: cf. Rti'>s, Adel, pp. 30, 59.