Time of Troubles, such that by the end of the seventeenth century another 110
towns had been created or acquired in territorial expansion, in Siberia and particu-
larly on the southern and southwestern steppe frontiers.
Such a pattern of development meant that the Russian empire was a realm of small
towns (under 5,000 in population); none (other than Moscow) larger than 15,000 in
population by the late seventeenth century. Serfdom contributed to this, as peasant
villages produced for the landlord and their own needs and created relatively little
demand for urban market goods. Most of Russia’s towns were more military than
commercial. All towns served administrative functions for the state; they were headed
by governors to collect tax and oversee defense and the criminal law. Otherwise, most
cities performed military functions for the state; trade and handicrafts were minimal
and often were in the hands of military men (musketeers, Cossacks, artillery), not a
specifically urban populace. Towns on Russia’s western border in the seventeenth
century, as J. M. Hittle has shown, were composed of as much as 71.2 percent
military servitors; the percentages were even higher on the southern (85.3 percent)
and eastern (87.3 percent) borders. Other towns, located in the more densely settled
center or on key trade connections, were commercial-administrative centers, with
fewer military residents: in the north, only 23.6 percent of town households were
military servitors, in central Russia only 13.9 percent.
Commercial towns were full of shops selling produce purchased wholesale from
the countryside by petty merchants or manufactured items produced in the town
itself. Early modern Russian towns differed from their European counterparts in
that they tended not to develop large-scale industry; substantive manufacture grew
up in rural settings, near the sources of raw materials and peasant labor and often
under the auspices of landlords. In towns artisan work was done in small-scale
workshops in many specialties, including carpentry, tailoring, leatherwork, candle
and soap production, pottery, and weaving. Goods were usually presented in
“rows”organized by specialty: in 1583 Novgorod had 1,800 shops in 42 rows,
while in 1586 Pskov had 1,230 shops in 35 rows; at the end of the century Kazan
had 368 shops and 240 smaller trade operations. The biggest trade centers by the
mid-seventeenth century supported great emporia: in 1638 Moscow had 2,367
artisans and Novgorod about 2,000; in the 1670s the upper Volga customs depot of
Iaroslavl’also had about 2,000 artisan households. Most towns, however, were
more modest—Nizhnii Novgorod, Viatka, Kostroma, and Vologda all had 1,000
or more, while the iron production center of Serpukhov had only 331 artisan
households.
Most Russian towns were founded on key river junctions for trade; a geograph-
ical peculiarity of Eurasia made them easily defensible. Major rivers from central
Europe to Siberia characteristically have a high bank (the Vltava, Danube, Dnieper,
Volkhov, Moskva, Dniester, Don, Volga, Ob, Irtysh, Lena, Enesei), where a citadel
might be placed and defended. The other bank is usually low andflat, easily
accessible to river transport, historically developing as a town’s trading emporium,
as in Prague, Budapest, and Novgorod. In other towns the trading district devel-
oped outside the fortress walls, and the city grew in concentric circles from the
fortress center. Moscow (Figure 11.1) is the classic example of such a circular city,
236 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801