Which developed along with world civilization. It was the time of the Great Geographical Discoveries (America was discovered in 1493), the beginning of the era of capitalism in European countries (the first European bourgeois revolution of 1566-1609 began in the Netherlands). But the development of the Russian state took place in rather peculiar conditions. There was a process of development of new territories in Siberia, the Volga region, the Wild Field (on the rivers Dnieper, Don, the Middle and Lower Volga, Yaik), the country had no access to the seas, the economy was in the nature of a subsistence economy based on the dominance of the feudal orders of the boyar patrimony. In the southern outskirts of Russia in the second half of the 16th century, Cossacks (from fugitive peasants) began to appear.
By the end of the 16th century, there were approximately 220. The largest of them was Moscow, and the most important and developed - and, Kazan and, and Tula, Astrakhan and. Production was closely connected with the availability of local raw materials and was of a natural geographical nature, for example, leather production was developed in Yaroslavl and Kazan, a large amount of salt was produced in Vologda, Tula and Novgorod specialized in metal production. Stone construction was carried out in Moscow, the Cannon Yard, the Cloth Yard, the Armory were built.
An outstanding event in the history of Russia in the 16th century was the emergence of Russian printing (in 1564 the book "Apostle" was published). The church had a great influence on the spiritual life of society. In painting, creativity was a model, the architecture of that time was characterized by the construction of tent churches (without pillars, holding only on the foundation) - St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, the Church of the Ascension in the village of Kolomenskoye, the Church of John the Baptist in the village of Dyakovo.
The 16th century in the history of Russia is the century of the reign of the "talented villain" Ivan the Terrible.
At the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century, he ruled, great-grandson (1462-1505). He called himself the "Sovereign of All Russia" or "Caesar". Took on a double-headed eagle. Two heads of an eagle said that Russia is turned to the East and to the West, and with one powerful paw the eagle stands in Europe, and the second in Asia.
believed that Moscow should become the third Rome, and all the Russian lands that were previously part of it should unite around it.
In 1497, he publishes the first Russian Sudebnik, a set of fundamental laws. The position of the peasantry was fixed in Sudebnik (peasants had the right to change their place of residence on St. George's Day (November 26), but in fact the peasants were attached to the land. For leaving the landowner, one had to pay "old" - a fee for the years lived. It was about a ruble, but t Since a ruble could buy 14 poods of honey in the 15-16th century, it was not easy to collect it. in the 16th century, almost all peasants become serfs.
Ivan III overthrew the Mongol-Tatar rule (1480) and did so as an experienced politician. He stopped civil strife on, creates a professional army. So, a forged army-infantry appears, dressed in metal armor; artillery (Russian guns "Unicorn" were the best for three hundred years); squeakers (they squeaked - a firearm, but it hit not far, a maximum of 100 m).
Ivan III overcame feudal fragmentation. The Novgorod Republic, together with the Moscow Principality, remained an independent entity, but in 1478 its independence was liquidated, in 1485 it was annexed to the Russian state, and in 1489 Vyatka.
In 1510, during the reign of the son of Ivan III, (1505-1533), the republic ceased to exist, and in 1521, the Ryazan principality. The unification of the Russian lands was basically completed. According to the German ambassador, none of the Western European monarchs could compare with the Moscow sovereign in the fullness of power over his subjects. Well, the grandson of Ivan III, more than anyone in the grand ducal family, deserved his nickname, Grozny.
When Ivan was three years old, in 1533 his father, Grand Duke Vasily III, died. Mother, Elena Glinskaya, the second wife of Vasily III, did not pay attention to her son. She decided to eliminate all pretenders to the Russian throne: the brothers Vasily III - Prince Yuri Ivanovich and Andrei Ivanovich, her uncle, Mikhail Glinsky. Prince Ivan Fedorovich Ovchina-Telepnev-Obolensky became the support of Elena. When Ivan was 8 years old, his mother was poisoned (April 3, 1538). Over the next eight years, the boyars (Shuisky, Glinsky, Belsky) ruled instead of him, they fought for influence over Ivan, but did not particularly burden themselves with caring for the child. As a result, Ivan falls ill with paranoia; from the age of 12 he takes part in torture, and at the age of 16 he becomes the best master of torture. 
In 1546, Ivan, not satisfied with the grand ducal title, wished to become king. Tsars in Russia before called the emperors of Byzantium and Germany, as well as the khans of the Great Horde. Therefore, becoming king, Ivan rose above numerous princes; showed the independence of Russia from the Horde; stood on the same level with the German emperor.
At the age of 16, they decide to marry Ivan. For this, up to one and a half thousand girls were gathered in the tower. 12 beds were placed in each room, where they lived for about a month, and they reported to the king about their life. After a month, the tsar went around the chambers with gifts and chose Anastasia Romanova as his wife, who smiled at him.
In January 1547 Ivan was crowned king, and in March 1547 married to Anastasia. His wife replaced his parents, and he changed for the better.
In 1549, the tsar brought Alexei Fedorovich Adashev, Sylvester, the archpriest of the Annunciation Cathedral, who entered the so-called. They helped launch the reforms.
In 1556, Ivan IV canceled the feeding of the boyars at the expense of the funds from the management of the lands, which came to their personal disposal after paying taxes to the treasury. Ivan introduces local self-government, the whole state was divided into lips (districts), at the head of the lip was the headman. The labial headman could be elected from the peasants, nobles, he could be influenced.
replaces (duplicates) the boyar duma, orders obey it. The order-"instruction" turns into an order-institution. Military affairs were managed by the Discharge, Pushkarsky, Streltsy Order, the Armory. Foreign affairs were in charge of the Ambassadorial order, state finances - the order of the Great Parish, state lands - the Local Order, serfs - the Kholopy order.
Ivan begins an offensive against the boyars, limits the locality (he himself seated the boyars on the benches around him), creates a new army from the noble cavalry and archers (the nobles serve for a fee). This is almost 100 thousand people - the force on which Ivan IV relied.
In 1550, Ivan IV introduces a new Sudebnik. The nobles receive equal rights with the boyars, it confirmed the right of the peasants to change their place of residence on St. George's Day, but the payment for the "elderly" increased. For the first time, the Code of Law established punishment for bribery.
In 1560, Anastasia dies, the tsar becomes insane and he begins terror against his recent advisers - Adashev and Sylvester, because. it is them that the tsar blames for the sudden death of Anastasia. Sylvester was tonsured and exiled to. Alexei Adashev was sent as governor to (1558-1583), where he died. Repressions fell on other supporters of Adashev. And Ivan IV introduces.
Period - the second half of the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Oprichny terror was announced unexpectedly for both supporters and enemies of Ivan the Terrible.
In 1564, at night, with his retinue, children and treasury, the tsar disappeared from the Kremlin. He went to and declared that he no longer wanted to rule. A month after his disappearance from Moscow, the tsar sends two letters:
One Boyar Duma, Metropolitan, in which he accuses them of betrayal, unwillingness to serve him;
- the second to the townspeople, in which he announced that the boyars offend him, but he has no offense against ordinary people, and the boyars are to blame for everything.
Thus, he wants to show the people who is to blame for all their troubles.
By his sudden departure, he succeeded in making his opponents afraid of uncertainty, and the people went crying to ask the king to return. Ivan the Terrible agreed, but with conditions:
1) division of the country into two parts - zemshchina and oprichnina;
2) at the head of the zemshchina, Tsar Ivan the Terrible, and at the head of the oprichnina, Grand Duke Ivan the Terrible.
In the oprichnina lands, he singled out the most developed regions and boyar lands. Those nobles who were part of the oprichnina army settled on these lands. The population of the zemshchina was supposed to support this army. armed the army and for 7 years with this army destroys the boyars.
The meaning of the oprichnina was as follows:
- the establishment of autocracy through the destruction of the opposition (boyars);
- elimination of the remnants of feudal fragmentation (finally conquers Novgorod);
- forms a new social base of the autocracy - the nobility, i.e. these were people who were completely dependent on the king.
The destruction of the boyars was a means to achieve all these goals of Ivan the Terrible.
As a result of the oprichnina, Moscow weakened, the Crimean Khan burned the Moscow settlement in 1571, which showed the inability of the oprichnina troops to fight external enemies. As a result, the tsar abolished the oprichnina, forbade even mentioning this word, and in 1572 transformed it into the "Tsar's Court". Before his death, he tried to re-introduce the oprichnina, but his guardsmen were dissatisfied with the tsar's policy and wanted stability. Ivan the Terrible exterminates his army, and dies at the age of 54, in 1584.
During the reign of Ivan IV, there were also merits. So, the red-brick Kremlin was built, but the builders were killed so that they could not build such beautiful buildings and temples anywhere else.
Results.
1. During the reign of Ivan IV, the country was destroyed, he actually staged a civil war. The central regions were depopulated, because. people were dying (about 7 million people died unnatural deaths).
2. Russia's loss of foreign policy influence, it has become vulnerable. Ivan IV lost the Livonian War, and Poland and Sweden launched extensive activities to seize Russian territories.
3. Ivan the Terrible condemned to death not only six wives, but also destroyed his children. He killed the heir, Ivan's son, in a fit of rage in 1581. After the death of the prince, Ivan the Terrible thought of abdicating the throne and entering a monastery. He had something to whine about. The weak-minded Fyodor, the son of Anastasia Romanova, the first wife of the tsar, became the heir to the throne. In addition to him, there was still Tsarevich Dmitry, the son of the last, sixth wife, Maria Nagoya, who in 1584 was two years old.
Thus, after half a century of the reign of a tyrant, albeit a talented, but still a villain, power, unlimited by anyone and nothing, had to pass to a miserable person who was not capable of governing the state. After Ivan IV, a frightened, tormented, devastated country remained. Activity brought the country to the edge of the abyss, whose name is.
Boyars
The boyar yards were surrounded by a palisade, and 3-4-storey log towers, "bullets" towered over them; the boyars lived in "svetlitsy" with mica windows, and around there were services, barns, barns, stables, serviced by dozens of yard serfs. The innermost part of the boyar estate was the female "terem": according to the eastern custom, the boyars kept their women locked up in the women's half of the house.
The boyars also dressed in the oriental style: they wore brocade robes with long sleeves, caps, caftans and fur coats; this clothing differed from the Tatar only in that it was fastened on the other side. Herberstein wrote that the boyars indulged in drunkenness all the days; feasts lasted for several days and the number of dishes was in the tens; even the church reproached the boyars for their indefatigable desire "to saturate the body without ceasing and fatten it up." Obesity was revered as a sign of nobility, and in order to stick out the stomach, it was girdled as low as possible; another sign of nobility was a bushy beard of exorbitant length - and the boyars competed with each other in terms of what they considered corpulent.
The boyars were the descendants of the Vikings, who once conquered the country of the Slavs and turned some of them into slave slaves. From the distant times of Kievan Rus, the boyars had "patrimonial estates" - villages inhabited by slaves; the boyars had their own squads of "combat serfs" and "children of the boyars", and, participating in campaigns, the boyars brought new captive slaves to the estates. Free peasants also lived in the estates: the boyars attracted unsettled singles to their lands, gave them loans for acquiring, but then gradually increased the duties and turned the debtors into bondage. Workers could leave the owner only by paying the "old" and waiting for the next St. George's Day (November 26) - but the size of the "old" was such that few managed to leave.
The boyars were full masters in their patrimony, which was for them "fatherland" and "fatherland"; they could execute their people, they could pardon; princely governors could not enter the boyar villages, and the boyar was obliged to the prince only by paying "tribute" - a tax that had previously been paid to the khan. According to an old custom, a boyar with his retinue could be employed in the service of any prince, even in Lithuania - and at the same time retain his patrimony. The boyars served as "thousanders" and "centuries", governors in cities or volosts in rural volosts and received "feed" for this - part of the taxes collected from the villagers. The governor was a judge and governor; he judged and maintained order with the help of his "tiuns" and "closers", but he was not trusted to collect taxes; they were collected by "scribes and tributaries" sent by the Grand Duke.
The governorship was usually given for a year or two, and then the boyar returned to his estate and lived there as an almost independent ruler. The boyars considered themselves masters of the Russian land; ordinary people, seeing a boyar, had to "beat with their foreheads" - bow their heads to the ground, and meeting each other, the boyars hugged and kissed, as the rulers of sovereign states now hug and kiss. Among the Moscow boyars there were many princes who submitted to the "sovereign of all Russia" and transferred to the service in Moscow, and many Tatar "princes" who received estates in Kasimov and Zvenigorod; about a sixth of the boyar surnames came from Tatars and a fourth from Lithuania. The princes who came to serve in Moscow "incited" the old boyars, and strife began between them because of the "places" where to sit at feasts, and who should obey whom in the service.
The disputants recalled which of the relatives and in what positions served the Grand Duke, kept a "parochial account" and sometimes got into a fight, beat each other with their fists and dragged their beards - however, it happened worse in the West, where the barons fought duels or fought private wars. The Grand Duke knew how to bring order to his boyars, and Herberstein wrote that the Muscovite sovereign with his power "exceeds all the monarchs of the world." This, of course, was an exaggeration: since the time of Kievan Rus, the princes did not make decisions without consulting with their warrior boyars, the "Boyar Duma", and although Vasily sometimes decided the affairs of "thirds at the bedside", the tradition remained a tradition.
In addition, under Vasily III, there were still two specific principalities; they were owned by Vasily's brothers, Andrei and Yuri. Vasily III finally subjugated Pskov and Ryazan and deprived the local boyars of power - just as his father deprived the boyars' estates in Novgorod. In Pskov, Novgorod and Lithuania, the traditions of Kievan Rus were still preserved, the boyars ruled there, and a veche gathered there, where the boyars voluntarily appointed a prince - "whatever they want." In order to resist the Tatars, the "Sovereign of All Russia" sought to unite the country and stop the strife: after all, it was the strife of princes and boyars that destroyed Russia during the time of Batu.
The boyars, on the other hand, wanted to retain their power and looked in hope to Lithuania, dear to their hearts, with its vechas and councils, to which only "noble lords" were allowed. In those days, "fatherland" did not mean huge Russia, but a small boyar estate, and the Novgorod boyars tried to transfer their fatherland - Novgorod - to King Casimir. Ivan III executed a hundred Novgorod boyars, and took away the estates from the rest and freed their slaves - the common people rejoiced at the prince's deeds, and the boyars called Ivan III "Terrible". Following the precepts of his father, Vasily III deprived the boyars of Ryazan and Pskov from their estates - but the Moscow boyars still retained their strength, and the main struggle was ahead.
Peasants
No matter how great the boyar patrimonies were, the main part of the population of Russia was not boyar serfs, but free "black-haired" peasants who lived on the lands of the Grand Duke. As in the old days, the peasants lived in communal "worlds" - small villages with a few houses, and some of these "worlds" still plowed on undercuts - cut down and burned areas of the forest. In the undercut, all work was carried out together, they cut wood together and plowed together - the stumps were not uprooted at the same time, and this aroused the surprise of foreigners who were accustomed to the flat fields of Europe.
In the 16th century, most of the forests had already been cut down and the peasants had to plow on the old undercuts, "wastelands". Now plowmen could work alone; where land was in short supply, the fields were divided into family allotments, but were redistributed from time to time. It was the usual system of agriculture that existed in all countries in the era of the resettlement of farmers and the development of forests. However, in Western Europe, this era of initial colonization occurred in the 1st millennium BC, and it came to Russia much later, so the community with redistribution was long forgotten in the West, private property triumphed there - and collectivism and communal life were preserved in Russia.
Many works were carried out by community members collectively - this custom was called "help". All together they built houses, took out manure to the fields, mowed; if the breadwinner in the family fell ill, then the whole community helped to plow his field. Women together ruffled flax, spun, chopped cabbage; after such work, young people arranged parties, "cabbages" and "gatherings" with songs and dances until late at night - then straw was brought into the house and they settled down to sleep in pairs; if a girl didn’t like the guy she got, then she hid from him on the stove - this was called “dae garbuza”. Children who were born after such a "cabbage" were called "kapustniki", and since the father of the child was unknown, they were said to have been found in cabbage.
Sons were married at 16-18 years old, and daughters at 12-13, and the whole community celebrated the wedding: the groom's village played out a "raid" on the bride's village in order to "steal" her; the groom was called "prince", he was accompanied by a "team" led by "boyars" and "thousands", the standard-bearer - "cornet" carried the banner. The bride's community pretended to be on the defensive; guys with clubs came out to meet the groom and negotiations began; in the end, the groom "redeemed" the bride from the guys and the brothers; the bride's parents, according to the custom adopted from the Tatars, received a bride price - however, this ransom was not as large as that of the Muslims. The bride, covered with a veil, was seated in a wagon - no one saw her face, and that is why the girl was called "not a bride", "unknown". The groom walked around the wagon three times and, lightly hitting the bride with a whip, said: "Leave your father's, take mine!" - Probably, this custom was what Herberstein had in mind when he wrote that Russian women consider beatings a symbol of love.
The wedding ended with a three-day feast in which the whole village participated; in the last century, such a feast took 20-30 buckets of vodka - but in the 16th century, peasants drank not vodka, but honey and beer. Tatar customs responded in Russia by prohibiting peasants from drinking alcohol on all days, except for weddings and major holidays - then, at Christmas, Easter, Trinity, the whole village gathered for a feast-fraternization, "brotherhood"; tables were set up near the village chapel, icons were taken out and, having prayed, they proceeded to the feast. At brotherhoods, they reconciled those who quarreled and created a communal court; elected the headman and the tenth. The volostels and their people were forbidden to come to the brotherhood without an invitation, ask for refreshments and interfere in the affairs of the community: “If someone calls a tiun or a closer to drink to a feast or a brotherhood, then they, having drunk, do not spend the night here, spend the night in another village and they don’t take nozzles from feasts and brothers.”
Bratchina judged by petty offenses; serious matters were decided by the volost - "but without the headman and without the best people, the volost and his tiun do not judge the courts," say the letters. Taxes were collected by the tributary together with the headman, referring to the "census book", where all households were rewritten with the amount of arable land, sown bread and mowed hay, and also indicated how much "tribute" and "feed" should be paid. The tributary did not dare to take more than he was supposed to, but if since the time of the census some owner had died, then until the new census, the "world" had to pay for it. Taxes amounted to about a quarter of the harvest, and the peasants lived quite prosperously, the average family had 2-3 cows, 3-4 horses and 12-15 acres of arable land - 4-5 times more than at the end of the 19th century!
However, it was necessary to work hard, if in former times the harvest on the undercut reached 10-10, then in the field it was three times less; the fields had to be fertilized with manure and crops alternated: this is how the three-field system appeared, when winter rye was sown one year, spring crops another year, and the land was left fallow in the third year. Before sowing, the field was plowed three times with a special plow with a blade, which not only scratched the ground, as before, but turned over the layers - but even with all these innovations, the land was quickly "plowed", and after 20-30 years it was necessary to look for new fields - if they were still in the area.
The short northern summer did not give the peasant time to rest, and during the harvest they worked from sunrise to sunset. The peasants did not know what luxury was; The huts were small, in one room, clothes - homespun shirts, but they wore boots on their feet, and not bast shoes, as later. A literate peasant was a rarity, the entertainment was rude: the buffoons who walked around the villages staged fights with tamed bears, showed "prodigal" performances and "swearing". Russian "foul language" consisted mainly of Tatar words, which, because of the hatred they had for the Tatars in Russia, acquired an abusive meaning: the head - "head", the old woman - "hag", the old man - "babai", the big man - "blockhead". "; the Turkic expression "bel mes" ("I don't understand") has turned into "stupid".
Holy fools
Akin to buffoons were holy fools, fellow Eastern dervishes. “They go completely naked even in winter in the most severe frosts,” a visiting foreigner testifies, “they are tied in rags in the middle of the body, and many still have chains around their necks ... They are considered prophets and very holy men, and therefore they are allowed to speak freely, everything, whatever they want, even about God himself... That is why the people love the blessed very much, for they... indicate the shortcomings of the noble, about which no one else even dares to speak..."
Entertainment
Fisticuffs were a favorite entertainment: on Shrovetide, one village went out to another to fight with their fists, and they fought to the point of blood, and there were also those who were killed. The court also often came down to a duel with fists - although Ivan III issued the Sudebnik with written laws. In the family, the husband did justice and reprisals: “If a wife, or a son or daughter does not listen to words and orders,” says Domostroy, “they are not afraid, do not do what the husband, father or mother commands, then whip them with a whip, looking because of fault, but to beat them alone, not to punish in public. For any fault, do not beat them in the ear, in the face, under the heart with a fist, kick, do not beat with a staff, do not hit with anything iron and wooden. , can cause great harm: blindness, deafness, injury to an arm or leg. Must be whipped: it is reasonable, and painful, and scary, and healthy. When guilt is great, when disobedience or neglect was significant, then take off your shirt and beat politely with a whip, holding hands, yes, beating, so that there is no anger, to say a kind word.
Education
Things with education were bad for all estates: half of the boyars could not "put a hand to the letter." "And above all, in the Russian kingdom, there were many schools, literacy and writing, and there was a lot of singing ..." - the priests complained at the church council. Monasteries remained centers of literacy: there were kept books that had survived from the time of the invasion, collections of "Greek wisdom"; one of these collections, "Shestodnev" by John the Bulgarian, contained excerpts from Aristotle, Plato and Democritus. From Byzantium came to Russia and the beginnings of mathematical knowledge; the multiplication table was called the "account of the Greek merchants", and the numbers were written in the Greek manner, using letters. Just as in Greece, the most popular reading was the lives of the saints; Russia continued to feed on Greek culture, and the monks went to study in Greece, where famous monasteries were located on Mount Athos.
The priest Nil Sorsky, known for his preaching of non-acquisitiveness, also studied on Athos: he said that monks should not accumulate wealth, but live from "the labors of their hands." The Russian bishops did not like these sermons, and one of them, Joseph Volotsky, entered into an argument with the hermit, arguing that "the wealth of the church is God's wealth." Non-possessors were also supported by Maxim the Greek, a learned monk from Athos, invited to Russia to correct liturgical books: from repeated rewriting, omissions and errors appeared in them.
Maxim the Greek studied in Florence, was familiar with Savonarola and the Italian humanists. He brought the spirit of free-thinking to the distant northern country and was not afraid to tell Vasily III directly that in his desire for autocracy, the Grand Duke did not want to know either Greek or Roman law: he denied supremacy over the Russian Church, both to the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope of Rome. The learned Greek was captured and put on trial; he was accused of incorrectly correcting books, "smoothing out" holy words; Maxim was exiled to a monastery and there, sitting in confinement, he wrote "many books of spiritual benefit" - including "Greek and Russian Grammar".
The Russian Church kept a wary eye on learned foreigners, fearing that they would bring "heresy". Such a case already happened at the end of the 15th century, when the Jewish merchant Skhariya arrived in Novgorod; he brought many books and "seduced" many Novgorodians into the Jewish faith. Among the heretical books was the "Treatise on the Sphere" by the Spanish Jew John de Scrabosco - it was translated into Russian, and it is possible that from this book in Russia they learned about the sphericity of the Earth. Another heretical book, "Six-winged" by Immanuel ben Jacob, was used by the Novgorod archbishop Gennady to compile tables determining the date of Easter.
However, having borrowed their knowledge from the Novgorod Jews, Gennady subjected the "heretics" to a cruel execution: they were put on birch bark helmets with the inscription "This is Satan's army", they put them on horses face back and drove around the city to the hooting of passers-by; then the helmets were set on fire and many "heretics" died from burns. "Six-wing" was forbidden by the church - just like astrological almanacs with predictions, brought to Russia by the German Nikolai from Lübeck; all this referred to "evil heresies": "rafli, six-winged, ostolomy, almanac, astrologer, Aristotelian gates and other demonic kobes."
The church did not advise looking at the sky: when Herberstein asked about the latitude of Moscow, he was answered, not without fear, that according to "incorrect rumor" it would be 58 degrees. The German ambassador took an astrolabe and started measuring - he got 50 degrees (actually - 56 degrees). Herberstein offered European maps to Russian diplomats and asked them for a map of Russia, but achieved nothing: there were no geographical maps in Russia yet. True, scribes and tributaries measured the fields and made "drawings" for accounting purposes; at the same time, the treatise of the Arab mathematician al-Ghazali, translated into Russian, was often used as a guide, probably on the orders of some Baskak.
While in Moscow, Herberstein asked the boyar Lyatsky to draw up a map of Russia, but twenty years passed before Lyatsky was able to fulfill this request. It was an unusual map: according to the Arab tradition, the south was at the top, and the north was at the bottom; not far from Tver, a mysterious lake was depicted on the map, from which the Volga, Dnieper and Daugava flowed. At the time of the compilation of the map, Lyatskaya lived in Lithuania; he served the Polish king Sigismund, and the map was not created out of good intentions: it lay on the king's table when he was preparing a new campaign against Russia. Lithuania and Russia were primordially hostile to each other, but Lithuania in itself was not a dangerous adversary. The greatest evil for Russia was that Lithuania was in a dynastic union with Poland, and the Polish king was at the same time the Grand Duke of Lithuania - not only Lithuania, but also Poland was the enemy of Russia.
Cities of Russia in the XV-XVI centuries. "Guest" and craftsman
The Kievan Rus, which, according to the interested opinion of the Vikings-Varangians, "the country of cities", has gone into the distant past. At the beginning of the 16th century, according to one of the estimates (most likely somewhat overestimated), about 130 urban-type settlements were scattered over the vast territory of the emerging centralized state. This is very sparse for such spaces. This is quite a bit, based on the needs of agricultural and handicraft production. This is very small, given the length of the borders and the need for defense. This is clearly not enough from the point of view of the administrative management of the country.
How were cities grouped until the middle of the 16th century? The Russian state inherited the naturally formed in the XIII-XV centuries. their location is influenced by the mighty Horde factor (the ebb of citizens from the south and southeast, the desolation of a number of cities), sovereign ambitions and internal strife, economic needs (the emergence of cities in colonization zones, on the most important river trade routes), and finally, defense needs. So, in the Novgorod and Pskov lands, quite numerous stone fortress cities were concentrated along the northwestern, western and southern borders. The planned arrangement of the eastern, southern, western borders began in the Russian state in the second quarter of the 16th century. and continued, as its territory grew, for centuries. It is not difficult to notice the condensation in the location of urban centers. They concentrated along the upper and middle reaches of the Volga, in the interfluve of the Oka and Volga, especially along the rivers Moscow, Klyazma, Oka, along the main roads.
The share of the urban population was small and much less than in the developed countries of Western and Central Europe. True, in the Novgorod land, townspeople accounted for about 9% of the total population, and both Novgorod itself and Staraya Russa, even by European standards, should be classified as large and medium-sized cities: in Veliky Novgorod there were more than 32 thousand citizens, in Russa - more than 10 thousand Such a “decent” percentage of citizens should be explained by the position of Novgorod in trade between Russia and Europe: it largely monopolized the role of an intermediary in it and itself exposed the wealth of its northern possessions for export. Large volumes of trade (the city was a slipway point of the Hansa) required developed crafts and many people to service trade. Ties with Livonia and Lithuania fueled prosperity and demographic growth in Pskov. In Russia as a whole, the proportion of the urban population was noticeably lower. In the 70s of the XVII century. it was believed that, minus the feudal lords and clerics, unprivileged townspeople made up just over 7% of the country's working population. For the first half of the previous century, this figure should be reduced by at least one and a half times.
So, there were few cities, their distribution turned out to be uneven, the proportion of the urban population was small. But this is not enough - urban settlements turned out to be extremely unequal in terms of numbers. In Novgorod land, for two "normal" cities there were up to a dozen fortresses-cities, in which the population numbered in a few hundred. The same was the case in other regions. A very modest number of the largest (Moscow was rightly ranked among the largest cities in Europe) and large cities (Tver, Yaroslavl, Vologda, Kostroma, Nizhny Novgorod, Smolensk, Kolomna, Ryazan and some others) absorbed the vast majority of citizens. This had important economic, social and partly political consequences.
What was the status of Russian cities and their working population? The question is very difficult (primarily because of the extremely limited sources), but the answers to it are very different. The first thing to note is the heavy legacy of Horde dependence. The point is not only in the mass and repeated pogrom and ruin of Russian cities, not only in the mass removal of artisans and merchants, but also in the fact that the city initially became the main object of exploitation by the khan's authorities. The great and appanage princes in Russia one way or another inherited these rights. This largely explains the fact that the urban land of taxable citizens was state property - similar to black rural volosts.
Naturally, not only craftsmen and merchants were concentrated in the city. Since the birth of class societies, urban settlements have organically concentrated the functions of political and economic domination over the countryside; accordingly, the political and social elite of society has been concentrated in them. The first settlement of the Novgorod boyars was a city estate, and not a rural residence. Similar phenomena took place in the cities of North-Eastern Russia. But from the XIII-XIV centuries. the historical paths of the northwest and northeast of Russia diverged at this point. In Novgorod and Pskov, a peculiar type of boyar corporate-city state finally took shape (princely power until the middle of the 15th century was of minimal importance). In the principalities of the northeast, on the contrary, by the end of the 14th century, the political institutions of the feudal elite in the city, autonomous in relation to the princely power (the institute of thousands, etc.), came to naught. This does not mean that the feudal lords abandoned their yards in the cities, moving to rural estates. Not at all. City, "siege" courtyards of the feudal lords are an important component in the social topography of the Russian city. The point is different: this elite turned out to be politically disconnected from the burdensome urban population. The princely governor was in charge of the city, judged the black townspeople, monitored the fortifications, the correct collection of trade duties and drinking income, expressing the political will and economic interests of his overlord (not forgetting about his own pocket and status), but not the local feudal elite. The logic of the struggle in the XIV-XV centuries, by the way, often assumed the appointment of a non-local person to the newly conquered center.
Does the above mean that there were no institutions of self-government in the city? Not at all. It is known for certain about the city militias, namely the townspeople, and not the county corporations of the service feudal lords. The chronicles mention city granaries and some other buildings of a public nature. All this required organization and management. They are well known according to information from the end of the 14th-mid-16th centuries. forms of class grouping of townspeople according to their occupation. Small merchants, artisans, gardeners, persons engaged in servicing trade and transport, united in the 16th century. on a territorial basis in hundreds and fifty. It is possible that this was the case in the past as well. At least centurions and tenths are known in many cities. In any case, however, such formations were based on a territorial and not a professional principle. At that time, Russia did not know craft workshops in its pure form.
On the other hand, Russian society was well acquainted with the professional organizations of large merchants. They traded throughout the country, often abroad, uniting in special corporations of guests and clothiers. These persons enjoyed great privileges, and in a number of respects their status approached that of the boyars. No wonder the transition from one group to another happened in the 15th and 16th centuries. Here are the representatives of the guests and headed the institutions of self-government of taxable citizens. We probably know about this for the first half of the 16th century, but, judging by indirect indications, this practice arose no later than the middle of the 15th century. It is possible to outline the functions of such institutions. From the point of view of the state, the most important was the regular payment of taxes and the serving of duties (construction, city, etc.). Special representatives of the princely government oversaw this, but the apportionment between the hundreds and within them was given into the hands of the self-government. The management of public buildings and insurance stocks, the improvement of streets and roads, control over the participation of citizens in hostilities during a siege or in a princely campaign, and finally, control over the fact that township land does not drop out of the tax - such is the probable circle of concerns of city government.
In purely political terms, taxable citizens did not have legal ways to influence princely power. This does not mean at all that they did not have political positions and did not influence the course of the political struggle. Influenced and, moreover, sometimes very significantly. We only recall a few episodes. In the 30-40s of the XV century. the position of the Muscovites more than once influenced the outcome of the clashes of the rival princes. The indignation of the townspeople prompted Ivan III to continue the decisive struggle for the elimination of dependence on the Horde in the autumn of 1480. Finally, the Moscow uprising of 1547 gave impetus to the beginning of reforms in the middle of the 16th century. In moments of crisis in the course of political life, the townspeople exerted a noticeable influence on the outcome of clashes. Including because the cities were the main arena of the political struggle of princes and principalities.
Even before the reforms of the middle of the XVI century. changes are planned in the management of urban life. Certain affairs connected with military-defense and financial functions are withdrawn from the grand ducal governors in a number of cities. They were handed over to city clerks appointed by the Grand Duke, usually from among the local feudal lords.
Did the available cities provide a sufficient level of handicraft production? Yes and no. The affirmative answer rests on the fact that the gradual formation and development of local and regional markets took place in the 15th-mid-16th centuries. and, of course, did not end at all at this time. Interregional and especially foreign trade was of great importance. The number and specialization of urban crafts as a whole provided the villagers with the necessary set of items for industrial and household purposes. But the network of cities was so rare (in Western Europe, the average distances between medium and small cities were measured at 15-20 km) that the peasants had to overcome many tens, and sometimes hundreds of miles, to buy and sell in the city. In part, this was made up for by an increase in extra-urban rows, settlements, and settlements with a weekly or less frequent marketplace, and in part, by the development of village crafts in a peasant family.
There were several dozen professions in the cities. The production of foodstuffs, leather processing and tailoring of shoes, everything related to horse life, blacksmith and jewelry crafts, coinage, production of high-quality and mass-produced utensils, building materials, carpentry, construction, etc. were well represented. Of particular note is the production of weapons. Protective armor, chopping, piercing, throwing weapons, longbows, various arrowheads (including armor-piercing), crossbows - all this, made by skilled Russian artisans, was in great demand both inside and outside the country. No wonder these products belonged to the "reserved goods", which were forbidden to sell to the southern and eastern neighbors. At the end of the XV century. in Moscow, a state manufactory arose for the manufacture of cannons, squeakers and other firearms. In general, the country covered its needs for weapons and military equipment with its own production. However, the experience of the first half of the XVI century. revealed a lot of bottlenecks here. Some concerned the organization of the army in general and, in particular, infantry armed with firearms (see below). Others directly followed from the limited possibilities of crafts and crafts in the country, implying the importance of improving professional skills, increasing the import of necessary materials, tools, etc. Hence the strong need not just to preserve, but to expand economic ties with the countries of Western and Central Europe. Just one example. Russia of that era did not have deposits of non-ferrous and noble metals, sulfur, iron was mined only from poor swampy ores. Various types of weapons, silver coins, mass-produced, inexpensive varieties of cloth - all of the above were very important Russian imports in maritime and land trade. The dependence of the country at this point was of strategic importance and was recognized even by Ivan III. But decisive steps in this direction were yet to come. The government will still involve Russian merchants and artisans in discussing the acute problems of trade, war and peace. In the meantime, according to the perceptive imperial ambassador, Baron S. Herberstein, who twice visited Russia under Vasily III, “the common people and servants for the most part work, saying that it is the master’s business to celebrate and refrain from work ...”
In the XV - the first half of the XVI centuries. in the Russian state Agriculture remained the main occupation. There was three-field crop rotation . In the cities, the old craft professions lost during the period of the Tatar-Mongol invasion were quickly restored, and new ones arose.
feudal nobility The Russian state consisted of: servants (former appanage) princes; boyars; free servants - medium and small feudal landowners who were in the service of large feudal lords; boyar children (medium and small feudal lords who served the Grand Duke). Remains a big feudal lord church , whose possessions are expanding due to the seizure of undeveloped and even black-mowed (owned by the state) lands, and through donations from boyars and local princes. The Grand Dukes are increasingly beginning to seek support in the nobility entirely dependent on them, which was formed primarily from "servants under the court".
Peasantry divided into: black-mallowed - the rural population dependent on the state, bearing in-kind and monetary duties in favor of the state; privately owned - living on lands owned by landowners and votchinniks. By right of ownership, the master owned serfs (at the level of slaves). The top of the servility was the so-called. big serfs - princely and boyar servants. Kholops planted on the ground, as well as receiving working cattle, equipment, seeds from the landowner and obliged to work for the master, were called sufferers .
bonded people - one of the varieties of serfs that arose in Russia from the middle of the 15th century. in connection with the receipt of a loan under the obligation to work off interest in the creditor's economy, which created a temporary (until the payment of the debt) servile dependence of the debtor ( bondage - a form of personal dependence associated with a loan). At the end of the XV century. appeared beans - impoverished people (urban and rural), who did not bear the state tax, received housing from feudal lords, churches, or even from the peasant community.
In the XV century. a special class appears - Cossacks , protecting border regions on a par with the regular army.
Russian city
Urban population Russia was divided into city (fortress-detinets fenced with a wall) and a trade and craft shop adjoining the city walls Posad . Accordingly, in the peaceful years, the part of the population free from taxes and state duties lived in the fortress - representatives of the feudal nobility and their servants, as well as the garrison.
Russian city and townspeople in the 16th century .
3.1. General characteristics. At the beginning of the XVI century. On the vast territory of the Russian state, there were about 130 urban-type settlements. Of these, only Moscow (130 thousand) and Novgorod (32 thousand) can be attributed to fairly large cities, Tver, Yaroslavl, Vologda, Kostroma, Nizhny Novgorod and a number of others were significant urban centers, while the majority retained their rural appearance. The total urban population did not exceed 300 thousand people.
3.2. Economic development. Cities became centers of crafts and trade. Potters and tanners, shoemakers and jewelers, etc., produced their products for the market. The number and specialization of urban crafts as a whole met the needs of rural residents. Local markets are forming around the cities, but since For the bulk of the peasants, it was too far and inconvenient to get to them, then they produced a significant part of the handicraft products themselves.
Thus, the subsistence nature of the peasant economy, the general economic backwardness of the country stood in the way of the formation of market relations.
At the end of the XV century. in Moscow, a state manufactory for the manufacture of cannons and other firearms arose. But it could not fully cover the needs of the army in modern weapons. In addition, Russia did not have explored deposits of non-ferrous and noble metals, sulfur, iron was mined only from poor swampy ores. All this made necessary both the development of our own production and the expansion of economic ties with the countries of Western Europe. The volume of foreign trade of that era was directly dependent on the success of maritime trade.
3.3. Urban population. The population of cities ("townspeople") was quite diverse in composition and differentiated by occupation.
3.3.1. Craftsmen, small merchants, gardeners united on a territorial basis in hundreds and fifty. Russia did not know craft workshops in their pure form.
3.3.2. Merchants united in corporations of "guests", "cloth workers", etc., who had great privileges, and in a number of ways their status approached that of the boyars - they did not pay taxes, members of some of these corporations could own land with peasants. It was from them that the leaders of the city self-government were elected, in charge of collecting taxes and organizing the serving of various duties.
3.4. However, the general management of the cities was in the hands of the grand duke's power and was carried out through its governors. City land was considered the property of the state. On the whole, in Russian cities, an "urban system" similar to that in Western Europe did not take shape; the urban population became more and more dependent on the state.
By the end of the XVI century. There were about 220 cities in Russia. The largest city was Moscow, whose population was about 100 thousand people (in Paris and Naples at the end of the 16th century 200 thousand people lived, in London, Venice, Amsterdam, Rome - 100 thousand). The rest of the cities of Russia, as a rule, had 3-8 thousand people each. In Europe, the average size of the city of the XVI century. numbered 20-30 thousand inhabitants.
In the XVI century. the development of handicraft production in Russian cities continued. The specialization of production, which was closely connected with the availability of local raw materials, still had an exclusively natural-geographic character. The Tula-Serpukhov, Ustyuzhno-Zhelezopolsky, Novgorod-Tikhvinsky regions specialized in the production of metal, the Novgorod-Pskov land and the Smolensk region were the largest centers for the production of linen and canvas. Leather production was developed in Yaroslavl and Kazan. The Vologda Territory produced a huge amount of salt, etc. Throughout the country, large-scale stone construction was carried out at that time. The first large state-owned enterprises appeared in Moscow - the Armory Chamber, the Cannon Yard. Cloth yard.
A significant part of the territory of the cities was occupied by courtyards, gardens, vegetable gardens, meadows of boyars, churches and monasteries. In their hands were concentrated monetary wealth, which was given at interest, went to the purchase and accumulation of treasures, and was not invested in production.