Property, Labor, and the Village Commune

Abstract

Most of Kozlov’s middle service class had entitlement to annual cash compensations of no more than four rubles per person, and Kozlov’s cossacks and musketeers had no cash or grain entitlements at all. But if paid in their entirety the cash and grain entitlements assigned at Kozlov by January 1639 would have cost about 6000 rubles annually, all of which was supposed to be paid out of the funds in the governor’s treasury (s gorodom). An additional 14,000 rubles were owed for one-time cash and grain settlement subsidies. The district’s total subsidy and compensation bill therefore must have considerably exceeded the funds it had on hand, as local revenue sources were only beginning to be developed, and much of the 12,384 rubles sent down from Moscow over the period September 1635–April 1638 had to be reserved for equipment and the rations money owed the corvee contingents on loan from other districts.¹