The Origins of Autocracy

Furs and wax are taken from there to Germany . . . and saddles, bri­dles, clothing, and leather from there to Tataria; weapons and iron are exported only by stealth or with special permission. . . . However, they export broadcloth and linen garments, axes, needles, mirrors, sad­dlebags, and other such goods."

W. Kirchner, a German historian, notes that after the conquest of Narva in 1558, Russia became practically the main center of Baltic trade, and one of the centers of world trade. Ships from Liibeck, ig­noring Riga and Revel, sailed for the port of Narva. Several hundred unloaded there annually, including vessels from Hamburg, Antwerp, London, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and even France.'²

This is confirmed by extensive data indicating that the Russian economy grew significantly in the first half of the sixteenth century. Expansion was marked by intensive growth of the new peasant and urban proto-bourgeoisie, migration to the cities, rapid urbanization, development of large-scale manufacturing, and considerable capital formation. We know, for example, that at this time there appeared in the Russian North a multitude of new towns (KargopoF, Turchasov, Tot'ma, Ustiuzhnia, Shestakov). An even greater number of major fortresses were built (Tula, Kolomna, Kazan', Zaraisk, Serpukhov, Astrakhan', Smolensk, and Kitai-Gorod in Moscow). I am not even speaking of the scale of construction of less significant fortress-cities (Elets, Voronezh, Kursk, Belgorod, and Borisov in the South; Sa­mara, Ufa, Saratov, and Tsaritsyn in the East; and Arkhangel'sk and Kola in the North). In the sixteenth century, urbanization became a truly national phenomenon. Some observers even got the impression of a mass migration of the rural population to the cities. In 1520 resi­dents of Narva wrote to Revel:

ll.S. Gerbershtein, Zapiski о moskovskikh delakh, p. 91.

12. W. Kirchner, "The Rise of the Baltic Question." The modern British historian T. S. Willan reports facts which indirectly confirm the extreme importance of the Mus­covite trade. It turns out that the attractiveness of the Russian port was so great that it became a constant subject of argument on the part of free merchants—"crafty per­sons," as the lawyers for the Moscow Company, who were trying to close the Russian trade to outsiders, called them in a complaint to the royal privy council in 1573. The craftiness of these outsiders consisted in the fact that their vessels passed through the sound with an official destination of Danzig or Revel', when in fact they were going to Narva. This means that the magnetic qualities of the Moscow trade were at that time strong enough to justify the high risk of violating the monopoly (T. S. Willan, "The Russia Company and Narva, 1558-81").

Soon there will be no one in Russia to take the plow any longer, for all are running to the cities and becoming merchants. . . . People who two years ago were carrying fish to market, or were butchers, old-clothes dealers, or market gardeners, have become extremely rich merchants and money-lenders and deal in thousands of rubles.¹'⁴