In his commercial capacity, the tsar handled a large variety of commodities. These he obtained from three sources: 1. surplus produced by his private domains; 2. tribute from administration and subjects; 3. purchases made for resale. As a rule, any commodity in which the crown acquired a major interest was declared a royal monopoly and withdrawn from public commerce.
The most important of the regalia in the category of surplus from royal domains were cereals, trade in which was a crown monopoly until 1762.
THE MISSING BOURGEOISIE
Vodka, which is distilled from grain [rather than potatoes, as is often mistakenly believed), was likewise a crcwn monosoly until the eighteenth century when the monopoly was turned over to dvoriane. It was dispensed exclusively in licensed shops.
Among commodities derived from tribute, the place of honour belonged to precious furs. These the tsar obtained from the regular tribute (iasak) levied on the inhabitants of Siberia; a tax collected from Siberian merchants requiring them to turn over to the T'easury the best pelt out often in their stock; and contributions of voevoly who had to sell to the Treasury at fixed prices all the furs given them by the populace as part of their 'feeding'. These mountains of skins weie sold either to western merchants resident in Russia or dispatched t" the Middle East and China. Whenever they went abroad. Russian ambassadors took with them trunks filled with furs which, having fiven out the presents, they sold to cover their expenses. Private cbalers were allowed to trade only in the less valuable skins, unfit for ejport.
Many of the goods used in tsarist commene were imported from abroad. The tsar asserted the right "f first refisal on all foreign merchandise landed in the country. Before being ofered to private traders, all such merchandise had to be submr.ted for inpection to tsarist agents who bought whatever they liked on his behalf t non-negotiable prices. A foreigner who refused the price offe-ed could lot sell the merchandise in question to anyone else in Russia Goods obtained in this manner were either used by the tsarist househcld or resod for domestic consumption. This practice enabled the crowa to come the wholesale trade in luxuries. The crown also claimed a monopoly HI the export of certain commodities in great demand abroad, such ascaviar, flax, tar, potash and leather.
Last but not least, the crown made extensive use of regalia, claiming the sole right to commerce in any commodity ilehose. The government rarely failed to impose royal monopolies whenever private initiative demonstrated the existence of a maiket for sone previously untraded item. Thus, for example, in 1650 the governmen learned that the inhabitants of Astrakhan were doing brisk business vith Persia in madder, a plant used in the manufacture of dyes. It immeliately declared madder a state monopoly, ordering it to be lencefortl sold exclusively to the Treasury at fixed prices; the Treasury in turn,resold it to the Persians at negotiable prices. A similar injunction was inposed twelve years later on several commodities which tsarist agents disovered private businessmen had been selling at a handsome profit to westerners: Russian leather, flax, meerschaum and beef fat.4 In practice, any product which entered into commerce became the subjot of a state monopoly. It is difficult to conceive of a practice more fatal to tie entrepreneurial spirit.
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If the crown tightly controlled trade, it may be said to have held Russia's manufacturing industry in exclusive ownership. Apart from iron, salt and coarse cloth, all produced by very primitive domestic methods, Muscovite Russia had no indigenous industries. Its first industrial establishments were founded in the seventeenth centuries by foreigners who had come to Russia with tsarist permission and worked under state licence. Thus, the foundries at Tula and Kashira, from which developed the Russian iron industry, were the creation of Dutch and German mining experts, Andries Winius (Vinius) and Peter Marselis, who in 1632 undertook to furnish the government with weapons. Marselis also laid the foundations of Russia's copper industry. Paper and glass manufactures were founded by Swedes. The Dutch erected in Moscow the first woollen mill. These and other enterprises to which Russia's industry owed its rise were sponsored by the crown, financed by a combination of tsarist and foreign capital and directed by foreign experts. They worked exclusively for the monarchy to which they sold, at cost, whatever share of the production it required. Their profit came from the sale on the open market of the surplus. Although the Muscovite government insisted on foreign licensees training Russians in their arts, the management as well as skilled labour employed in these early establishments came almost exclusively from abroad. Native capital and managerial personnel were as conspicuous by their absence as they would have been in any western colonial dependency.
The monarchy lacked an administration to supervise its commercial activities and such promysly as salt manufacture and fisheries which were dispersed throughout the empire. It therefore made frequent use of the practice of farming out those branches of business on which it claimed a monopoly to individuals on the understanding that from the proceeds they would turn over to the Treasury a fixed annual sum. The surest way of becoming rich in Muscovite Russia was to obtain a concession of this sort. The Stroganovs, peasants who became the richest merchant family of Muscovy, owed their start to a licence to manufacture salt in conquered Novgorod. From this beginning, they gradually branched out into other profitable enterprises, but always operating either under state licence or in partnership with the state.
To supervise the business activities in which it participated directly, the crown relied on experts drawn from the ranks of native and foreign merchants. The highest echelon of such state-employed businessmen were the Moscow gosti, an elite which in the middle of the seventeenth century numbered some thirty persons. Gost' was an ancient word, derived from the same root as gosudar' (p. 77). Originally it designated all foreign merchants, but, like the term 'boyar', from the end of the sixteenth century it became an honorific title bestowed by the tsar. To qualify fcr it, a merchant had to have large capital, because the tsar often exated from gosti deposits which were used to make good any arrears. Ii terms of relative wealth, the Moscow gosti came close to the urban paricians of the west, and in the historical literature they are sometime compared to them, but the analogy is difficult to sustain. Gosti wee not free entrepreneurs; they were royal factors, appointed by the tsar aid working for him. In fact, few ever requested the honour; more ofta than not, they were dragooned. As soon as it came to the attentionof the government that a provincial merchant had accumulated a fortune, he was ordered to move to Moscow and appointed a gost. Th"status was more of an onerous burden than a distinction because of tie risks involved in having part of one's capital tied up as collateral. Firthermore, gosti competed with one another not for goods and customer, but for royal favours, and the income they made was compensator for the services rendered the tsar. Just below gosti, in terms of social staus and economic power, were members of commercial bodies called 'hundreds', namely the gostinaia and sukonnaia sotni.