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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Most European early-modern states transitioned from composite monarchies into centralized ones. Essentially, composite monarchies were “more than one country under the sovereignty of one ruler.” As Moscow expanded and acquired the surrounding principalities either by inheritance or force, its grand princes enacted a series of legal and administrative reforms to dissolve the differences among its territories and create a centralized monarchy. These political reforms began under Ivan III, who instituted a standardization of Muscovite legal practice and formalized a defined system of social precedence, mestnichestvo, which accorded high rank to his newly acquired provincial elites within the Muscovite social system. Change could not happen overnight, and further legal reforms by Ivan IV, in addition to new religious reforms to eradicate differences of practice among his subjects, centralized the Grand Prince's political and religious authority.
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34. For a discussion of monastic privileges in the sixteenth century, see Veselovskii, S. V., “Monastyrskoe zemlevladenie v moskovskoi rusi vo vtoroi polovine XVI v.,” Istoricheskie zapiski, Vol. 10, 1941, pp. 95–116.Google Scholar
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57. Non-Russians in this case were “Tatars and other high non-Russians” (ili Tatarovia ili inye vsiakie inozemtsy). Ulozhenie, XIV: 3, p. 97–98.Google Scholar
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73. The archimandrite was from Sviiazhsk's Bogoroditsii Monastery, Narodnoe antitserkovnoe dvizhenie v Rossii XVII veka: Dokumenty Prikaza tainykh del o raskol'nikakh, 1665–1667 gg. (Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1986), pp. 61–62, 120–121, 143–146. Aleksandr Vasil'ev‘s family was burned by their fellow villagers in Arzamas province. RGADA, f. 159, Prikaznye dela novoi razborki, op. 3, Novgorodskaia chetvert’, d. 448, ll. 25–28, no later than 12 October 1675.Google Scholar
74. The Novgorodskaia chetvert' instructed the governor of Arzamas that if any other “schismatics or fascinated people” (raskolniki i prelesnye liudi) were uncovered doing “an evil thing” (zloi del), then they should be imprisoned in an isolated cell. RGADA, f. 159, op. 3, d. 448, ll. 29–30, 13 October 1675. Arzamas's governor reported with alarm the discovery of Old Believers in his province, which he feared would induce more violence among the local peasantry. RGADA, f. 159, d. 563, ll. 93–97, 12 May 1676.Google Scholar
75. With the inconsistent extant records it is difficult to make a direct comparison, but 176,580 peasants in 1678 in Kazan' and Simbirsk provinces were iasachnye luidi versus only 31,260 serfs in 1662–1672. Alishev, Istoricheskie sudby narodov Srednego Povolzh'ia, p. 96. By the end of the eighteenth century, only 32% of the peasantry in Kazan' province were serfs, while the remainder were state peasants. Janet M. Hartley, A Social History of the Russian Empire, 1650–1825 (London: Longman, 1999), p. 19.Google Scholar
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77. In 1664, four Tatars in service from the village of Elkovka in Simbirsk received the right to their village, which they attempted to legally give to the village's remaining iasachnye Tatars. The petitioners wrote that they only entered the tsar's service to be awarded land so the village Tatars would no longer be “exiled or convicted” and no longer “be questioned” by Muscovite authorities. Martynov, Seleniia Simbirskogo uezda, 25 May 1664, pp. 184–185.Google Scholar
78. Grekov and Lebedev, Dokumenty i materialy po istorii mordovskoi ASSR, I, #115, 1 March 1667, pp. 320–321.Google Scholar
79. To ensure this policy, the Prikaz also notified the current governor of the change in policy. RGADA, f. 1103, Arzamasskaia prikaznaia izba, op. 1, d. 25a, 1682. This policy is a change from the desires of local beekeepers in Nizhegorod, Kozmodem'iansk, and Kurmysh provinces during the 1660s. Then those apiarists petitioned their landlord, the Makar'evskii Zheltovodskii Monastery in Nizhnii Novgorod, asking for privilege of paying their tribute in cash rather than honey. They wanted to sell their honey directly to merchants, rather than allowing the monastery to profit as the middleman. Akty iuridicheskie, ili sobranie form starinnago deloproizovodstva (St Petersburg, 1838), #202, 211–214, 23 June 1663 (Nizhegorod), 23 June 1663 (Kozmodem'iansk), and 20 June 1664 (Kurmysh).Google Scholar
80. Hartley, Social History of the Russian Empire, pp. 20–21; David Moon, The Russian Peasantry 1600–1930: The World the Peasants Made (London: Longman, 1999), p. 79.Google Scholar
81. The Mordvins of the village of Maloe Moresevo in Alatyr' petitioned the tsar in 1680 about losing their land to Russians. The state's reply informed the Mordvins that they had no reason to complain because they were supposed to claim their new land in the village of Mokshalev in Saransk province. RGADA, f. 1103, op. 1, d. 24, January 1681. Other Mordvin villages, such as that of the elder Rozan Siavashev in Arzamas province, received instructions detailing their move from the interior of the Volga Region to their new home along a river outside of the city of Saransk. RGADA, f. 281, op. 7, d. 10824, February 1683. For a discussion of monastic landholding among the Maris' traditional lands, see Ivanov, A. G., Ocherki po istorii Mariiskogo kraia XVIII veka (Ioshkar-Ola: Mariiskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1995), pp. 80–106.Google Scholar
82. The Mordvins protested the arrival of Russian peasants who were seizing their lands. RGADA, f. 281, op. 1, d. 291, 5 January 1645; and RGADA, f. 281, op. 1, d. 277, 16 February 1688,11. 1–5.5.Google Scholar
83. Overall, from 1624–1626 to 1721, there was a 33% decline in Mordvin households in three representative districts (stany) of Alatyr' province (Nizsurskii, Verkhalatyrskii, and Verkhosurskii). A. Geraklitov, Alatyrskaia Mordva po perepisiam 1624–1721 gg. (Saransk, 1936), pp. 15–24.Google Scholar
84. The change against monastic landholding was more common in the northern Middle Volga than in its southern portions, where the state continued to support monastic landholding. For example, in 1686 the state supported the claim of the Savvo-Storozhevskii Monastery of Simbirsk against its Tatar peasants in Voznesenskoe, who tried to get released from monastic supervision. RGADA, f. 281, op. 8, d. 11557, 26 July 1686.Google Scholar
85. For the Muslim Murzii Tatars, see Polnoe sobranie zakonov Russiiskoi Imperii (PSZ), Series 1, 45 vols (St Petersburg: Tipografiia i obdelenie sobstvennoi ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva Kontseliariia, 1830), Vol. 2, #823, p. 267, 21 May 1680; #867, pp. 312–313, 16 May 1681; and #870, p. 315, 24 May 1681. Following the offers to Muslim Tatars, nearby animist Mordvins were offered incentives for conversion to Orthodoxy on 16 May 1681. see Mozharovskii, Apollon, “Po istorii prosveshcheniia Nizhegorodskoi mordvy,” Nizhegorodskiia eparkhial'nyia vedomosti, Vol. 16, 1890, pp. 664–665.Google Scholar
86. PSZ, Vol. 2, pp. 467–468, 23 September 1682.Google Scholar
87. For example, Metropolitan Adrian of Kazan' warned Archimandrite Misail of the Maloiunginskii Monastery in Kozmodem'iansk to watch all of the converted peasants on the monastery's estates. Grekov and Lebedev, Dokumenty i materialy po istorii Mordovskoi ASSR, Vol. 2, #208, 16 November 1687, p. 72.Google Scholar
88. Islaev, F. G., Pravoslavnye missionery v Povolzh'e (Kazan': Tatarskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1999), and Werth, Paul W., “Coercion and Conversion: Violence and Mass Baptism of the Volga Peoples, 1740–55,” Kritika, Vol. 4, 2003, pp. 543–569.Google Scholar
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