88 Muscovite Roots, 1462-1689Seredonin on the basis of Russian documents. R. Hellie accepts this estimate,^45
but some present-day Soviet writers offer higher figures: for A. A. Zimin the
total was 'about 150,000' and for I. A. Korotkov 'up to 300,000'.46 The
former estimate can perhaps be iustified if nativl" troQps a..11d non-combatants
are included. ·
What relationship did this military force bear to the tothl population?
Estimates of the latter vary even more widely. The Soviet demog'rapher 8. Ts.
Urlanis thought that the population grew by about 15 per cent in the first half
of the sixteenth century, and by 5 per cent in the second. Allowi~ for terri-
torial changes, he offered the following estimate (millions):
1500 5.8
1550 8.8
1600 11.3^47
A recent Western student, however, believes that after the mid-sixteenth cen-
tury the population actually declined and that it may not have recovered its
1550 level until the late seventeenth century.^48 Unfortunately he offers no
estimate of the total. A. I. Kopanev, who has studied census registers, puts the
figure for circa 1550 a little higher than Urlanis, at 9-10 milliorr, and for the
late sixteenth century at 11-12 million.^49 If one accepts this estimate, and
allows for a balanced sex ratio, one arrives at a military participation ratio
among males (all ages) of 2.0 per cent ('active army') and a theoretical maxi-
mum of 5.5 per cent. This is high, although .of course one has to remember
that for most of those involved their participation was episodic.
By the 1680s the armed forces were about twice as large as they had been a
century earlier, that is to say at least 200,000 strong, of which a little more than
half could be fielded against a foreign enemy. This estimate is based on an
(incomplete) list compiled by the Razryad in 1681, which was a year of relative
peace.^50 The total given in the source is 164,272 exclusive of 50,000 'Cherkas-
sians' (that is, Ukrainians from the Hetmanate) available as auxiliaries.
However, a count of the various items listed produces a figure of 190,938,
made up as follows:
I privileged servitors
2 dependants of above
3 musketeers
4l Hellie, Enserfmenc, pp. 164, 267.19,466
21,830
23,15946 Zimin, Reformy, p. 448; Myshlayevsky, 'Ofitserskiy vopros', p. 13, puts the levy alone (in-
cluding retainers) at 300,000.
47 Urlanis, Rost (1941), p. 190.
48 Eaton, 'Censuses', p. 3.
49 Kopanev, 'Naseleniye', p. 245. P. N. Milyukov thought that within the area of the
eighteenth-century Russian empire there were 10-11 V2 million inhabitants in the mid-sixteenth
century and 15 million at the end of the sixteenth century: Essais, p. 34. Cf. Hellie, Enserfment,
p. 305.
5o 'Rospis' perechnevaya ratnym lyudem, kotorye vo [7)189 g. rospisany v polki po
razryadam', in Ivanov, Opisoniye, pp. 71-92. The figure is accepted by Brix, Geschichte, p. 322;