The Origins of Autocracy

[9] Here is a clear example of the dynamics of this abandonment of the land: in the region of Bezhetsk, in Novgorod Province, in 1551, only 6.4 percent of the land was abandoned (grown up to woods); in 1564 this figure was 20.5 percent, and in 1584,95.3 percent (S. G. Strumilin, "O vnutrennem rynke Rossii XVI-XVIII vekov"). As a whole in Novgorod province at the beginning of the sixteenth century, living plowland made up 92 percent of the whole, and, in the 1580s, not more than 10 percent (Makovskii, Razvitie . . .). So much for agriculture. In industry and trade, the differentiation of en­trepreneurs and merchants into the "best" (that is, largest-scale), the "middle," and the "younger" had already gone quite far at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Ac­cording to the data of the Soviet historian E. I. Zaozerskaiia, who studied the posad of Ustiuzhnia Zhelezopol'skaia and the population employed there in metal-working and in the trade in metal articles in 1567, 40 shops there belonged to the "best," 40 to the "middle," and 44 to the "younger" people. "After the passage of 30 years," the author writes, "which were no less difficult for Ustiuzhnia than for the rest of the Russian state, in the census of 1597 in Ustiuzhnia there were no 'best' households, the 'middle' ones did not number more than a dozen, and in addition the census-takers registered 17 empty farmsteads and 286 vacant lots. The posad had become deserted" (E. I. Zaozer­skaiia, U istokov krupnogo proizvodstva v russhoi promyshlennosti XVI—XVII vekov, p. 220).

[10] D. Egorov, "Ideia turetskoi reformats» v XVI veke," p. 7.

[11] No one any longer considered him great or mighty. On the contrary, he was laughed at—both in Asia and in Europe. The khan of the Crimea wrote him when leav­ing burning Moscow: "And you did not come out and did not stand against us and still boast that, forsooth 'I am the sovereign of Muscovy.' Had there been shame or dignity in you, you would have come out and stood against us." And the Polish King Stefan Batory echoed him: "Why did you not come to us with your troops, and defend your subjects? A poor chicken will cover her chicks with her wings against a hawk or an eagle, but you the two-headed eagle (for such is your crest) hide yourself" (Vipper, p. 161).

[12] Ibid., p. 175.

[13] A. A. Zimin, Oprichnina Ivana Groznogo, p. 55.

[14] Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, pp. Ill, 110.