Urban space in Russia’s magistrate towns, then, was not a single municipal arena,
as is well exemplified by the challenges of day-to-day governance and law and order.
Many central government offices retained jurisdiction over aspects of urban life,
such as the Colleges of Manufacturing and Commerce overseeing workshops and
marketplaces and other government departments overseeing specific populations,
such as postal workers. Policing was formally in the hands of police under the
supervision of the provincial governor, but in practice was done in neighborhoods
as unpaid state service. Principal among these duties was the night guard, selected
from the community. Fundamentally responsible for street safety and law and order
(they hauled in drunks, chased down thieves), men on guard also surveyed for
illegal distilling and maintainedfire safety by checking to see that ovens were not lit
during dry months. Shouldfire (the scourge of towns constructed of wooden
homes) break out, there was no formalfire department; the magistrate kept equip-
ment and all able-bodied were expected to respond to thefire alarm. Townsmen also
maintained city infrastructure (street pavement, bridges); neighborhoods removed
garbage; the magistracy tried to maintain public health by keeping butcher oper-
ations to the edge of town. Echoing Muscovite tradition, taxpaying townsmen were
called upon for such tasks as apportionment and collection of taxes, management of
recruitment, registration of town dwellers, and policing of markets. Merchants with
skills and means served as state accountants, book-keepers, appraisers, inspectors,
managers of liquor and salt monopolies, helpers in tax and customs collections. Boris
Mironov estimates that in thefirst half of the eighteenth century a quarter of
taxpaying townsmen could be drawn away from their own work for such state
service. After 1754, when internal customs were abolished, thousands of merchants
and artisans were freed to engage more energetically in trade, but other service tasks
continued, becoming a source of complaints in townsmen’s responses to the 1767
Legislative Assembly.
The 1720s magistracy reform had created neither an autonomous urban physical
space nor a middle class. City people were still servitors of the state; towns were
mosaics of legal jurisdictions and economic immunities; town councils by and large
enforced policies set by the state. At the same time, some merchants, artisans and
towns prospered in the eighteenth century with a rising economy. Entrepreneurial
merchants took on state business, they won contracts to produce or ship govern-
ment goods, such as weapons, uniforms, or provisions for the army. Some suc-
ceeded in manufacturing, including the Demidov, Evreinov, and Tretiakov
families. Russian merchants still faced the competition of foreign merchants with
better capital and equipment, but protectionist tariffs endeavored to help them.
Catherine II saw cities as central to her mercantilist goals of creating a more
prosperous economy and created in the 1775 administrative reforms a more
autonomous urban community. The reform redefined urban society according to
wealth rather than social estate. It defined by wealth three guilds of“merchants”
(kuptsy), who paid 1 percent of their declared capital as annual tax in lieu of the poll
tax: members of thefirst claimed more than 10,000 rubles in capital; the second,
1,000–10,000 rubles; and the third, 500 to 1,000. They were also freed of
recruitment obligations. Below them were craftsmen (tsekhovye) in guilds that
380 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801