Russian merchants have always been special. Merchants and industrialists were recognized as the most wealthy class of the Russian Empire. These were brave, talented, generous and inventive people, patrons of art and connoisseurs of art.

Bakhrushins

They come from the merchants of the city of Zaraysk, Ryazan province, where their family can be traced through scribe books until 1722. By profession, the Bakhrushins were “prasols”: they drove cattle in droves from the Volga region to big cities. The cattle sometimes died on the road, the skins were torn off, taken to the city and sold to tanneries - this is how the history of their own business began.

Alexey Fedorovich Bakhrushin moved to Moscow from Zaraysk in the thirties of the last century. The family moved on carts, with all their belongings, and the youngest son Alexander, the future honorary citizen of the city of Moscow, was transported in a laundry basket. Alexey Fedorovich - became the first Moscow merchant Bakhrushin (he has been included in the Moscow merchant class since 1835).

Alexander Alekseevich Bakhrushin, the same honorary citizen of Moscow, was the father of the famous city figure Vladimir Alexandrovich, collectors Sergei and Alexei Alexandrovich, and the grandfather of Professor Sergei Vladimirovich.

Speaking of collectors, this well-known passion for “gathering” was a distinctive feature of the Bakhrushin family. The collections of Alexey Petrovich and Alexey Alexandrovich are especially worth noting. The first collected Russian antiquities and, mainly, books. According to his spiritual will, he left the library to the Rumyantsev Museum, and porcelain and antiques to the Historical Museum, where there were two halls named after him. They said about him that he was terribly stingy, since “every Sunday he goes to Sukharevka and bargains like a Jew.” But he can hardly be judged for this, because every collector knows: the most pleasant thing is to find for yourself a truly valuable thing, the merits of which others were not aware of.

The second, Alexey Alexandrovich, was a great theater lover, chaired the Theater Society for a long time and was very popular in theater circles. Therefore, the Theater Museum became the world's only richest collection of everything that had anything to do with the theater.

Both in Moscow and in Zaraysk they were honorary citizens of the city - a very rare honor. During my stay in the City Duma there were only two honorary citizens of the city of Moscow: D. A. Bakhrushin and Prince V. M. Golitsyn, the former mayor.

Quote: “One of the largest and richest companies in Moscow is considered to be the Trading House of the Bakhrushin brothers. They have a leather and cloth business. The owners are still young people, with higher education, well-known philanthropists who donate hundreds of thousands. They conduct their business, albeit on new principles - that is, using the latest words of science, but according to ancient Moscow customs. Their offices and reception rooms, for example, make them want a lot." "New time".

Mamontovs

The Mamontov family originates from the Zvenigorod merchant Ivan Mamontov, about whom practically nothing is known, except that the year of birth was 1730, and that he had a son, Fyodor Ivanovich (1760). Most likely, Ivan Mamontov was engaged in farming and made a good fortune for himself, so his sons were already rich people. One can guess about his charitable activities: the monument on his grave in Zvenigorod was erected by grateful residents for the services provided to them in 1812.

Fyodor Ivanovich had three sons - Ivan, Mikhail and Nikolai. Mikhail, apparently, was not married, in any case, he did not leave any offspring. The other two brothers were the ancestors of two branches of the venerable and numerous Mammoth family.

Quote: “Brothers Ivan and Nikolai Fedorovich Mamontov came to Moscow rich people. Nikolai Fedorovich bought a large and beautiful house with an extensive garden on Razgulay. By this time he had a large family.” ("P. M. Tretyakov". A. Botkin).

The Mamontov youth, the children of Ivan Fedorovich and Nikolai Fedorovich, were well educated and diversely gifted. Savva Mamontov’s natural musicality especially stood out, which played a big role in his adult life.

Savva Ivanovich will nominate Chaliapin; will make Mussorgsky, rejected by many experts, popular; will create a huge success in his theater with Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “Sadko”. He would be not only a patron of the arts, but also an adviser: the artists received valuable instructions from him on issues of makeup, gesture, costume and even singing.

One of the remarkable undertakings in the field of Russian folk art is closely connected with the name of Savva Ivanovich: the famous Abramtsevo. In new hands it was revived and soon became one of the most cultural corners of Russia.

Quote: “The Mamontovs became famous in a wide variety of fields: both in the field of industry, and, perhaps, especially in the field of art. The Mamontov family was very large, and representatives of the second generation were no longer as rich as their parents, and in the third, the fragmentation of funds "It went even further. The origin of their wealth was tax farming, which brought them closer to the well-known Kokorev. Therefore, when they appeared in Moscow, they immediately entered the rich merchant environment." (“The Dark Kingdom”, N. Ostrovsky).

The founder of this one of the oldest trading companies in Moscow was Vasily Petrovich Shchukin, a native of the city of Borovsk, Kaluga province. At the end of the seventies of the 18th century, Vasily Petrovich established trade in manufactured goods in Moscow and continued it for fifty years. His son, Ivan Vasilyevich, founded the Trading House “I. V. Shchukin with his sons” The sons are Nikolai, Peter, Sergei and Dmitry Ivanovich.
The trading house conducted extensive trade: goods were sent to all corners of Central Russia, as well as to Siberia, the Caucasus, the Urals, Central Asia and Persia. In recent years, the Trading House began to sell not only calicoes, scarves, linen, clothing and paper fabrics, but also wool, silk and linen products.

The Shchukin brothers are known as great connoisseurs of art. Nikolai Ivanovich was a lover of antiquities: his collection contained many ancient manuscripts, lace, and various fabrics. He built a beautiful building in the Russian style for the collected items on Malaya Gruzinskaya. According to his will, his entire collection, along with the house, became the property of the Historical Museum.

Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin occupies a special place among Russian nugget collectors. We can say that all French painting of the beginning of the current century: Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse, some of their predecessors, Renoir, Cezanne, Monet, Degas - was in Shchukin’s collection.

Ridicule, rejection, misunderstanding by society of the work of this or that master did not have the slightest meaning for him. Often Shchukin bought paintings for a penny, not out of his stinginess and not out of a desire to oppress the artist - simply because they were not for sale and there was not even a price for them.

Ryabushinsky

From the Rebushinskaya settlement of the Pafnutievo-Borovsky monastery in the Kaluga province in 1802, Mikhail Yakovlev “arrived” to the Moscow merchants. He traded in Kholshchovoy Row in Gostiny Dvor. But he went bankrupt during the Patriotic War of 1812, like many merchants. His revival as an entrepreneur was facilitated by his transition to the “schism.” In 1820, the founder of the business joined the community of the Rogozhskoe cemetery - the Moscow stronghold of the Old Believers of the “priestly sense”, to which the richest merchant families of the mother throne belonged.

Mikhail Yakovlevich takes the surname Rebushinsky (that’s how it was spelled then) in honor of his native settlement and joins the merchant class. He now sells “paper goods”, runs several weaving factories in Moscow and Kaluga province, and leaves his children a capital of more than 2 million rubles. Thus, the stern and devout Old Believer, who wore a common people's caftan and worked as a “master” in his manufactories, laid the foundation for the future prosperity of the family.

Quote: “I have always been struck by one feature - perhaps the characteristic feature of the whole family - this is internal family discipline. Not only in banking matters, but also in public affairs, everyone was assigned his own place according to the established rank, and in first place was the elder brother, with whom others were considered and, in a certain sense, subordinate to him." ("Memoirs", P. Buryshkin).

The Ryabushinskys were famous collectors: icons, paintings, art objects, porcelain, furniture... It is not surprising that Nikolai Ryabushinsky, “the dissolute Nikolasha” (1877-1951), chose the world of art as his career. An extravagant lover of living in grand style, he entered the history of Russian art as the editor-publisher of the luxurious literary and artistic almanac “The Golden Fleece,” published in 1906-1909. The almanac, under the banner of “pure art,” managed to gather the best forces of the Russian “Silver Age”: A. Blok, A. Bely, V. Bryusov, among the “seekers of the golden fleece” were the artists M. Dobuzhinsky, P. Kuznetsov, E. Lanceray and many other. A. Benois, who collaborated with the magazine, assessed its publisher as “a most curious figure, not mediocre, in any case special.”

Demidovs

The founder of the Demidov merchant dynasty, Nikita Demidovich Antufiev, better known under the name Demidov (1656-1725), was a Tula blacksmith and advanced under Peter I, receiving vast lands in the Urals for the construction of metallurgical plants. Nikita Demidovich had three sons: Akinfiy, Gregory and Nikita, among whom he distributed all his wealth.

In the famous Altai mines, which owe their discovery to Akinfiy Demidov, ores rich in gold and silver content, native silver and horny silver ore were found in 1736.

His eldest son Prokopiy Akinfievich paid little attention to the management of his factories, which, despite his intervention, generated huge income. He lived in Moscow, and surprised the townspeople with his eccentricities and expensive undertakings. Prokopiy Demidov also spent a lot on charity: 20,000 rubles to establish a hospital for poor mothers at the St. Petersburg Orphanage, 20,000 rubles to Moscow University for scholarships for the poorest students, 5,000 rubles to the main public school in Moscow.

Tretyakovs

They came from an old but poor merchant family. Elisey Martynovich Tretyakov, the great-grandfather of Sergei and Pavel Mikhailovich, arrived in Moscow in 1774 from Maloyarovslavets as a seventy-year-old man with his wife and two sons, Zakhar and Osip. In Maloyaroslavets, the Tretyakov merchant family existed since 1646.
The history of the Tretyakov family essentially boils down to the biography of two brothers, Pavel and Sergei Mikhailovich. During their lifetime, they were united by genuine family love and friendship. After their death, they were forever remembered as the creators of the gallery named after the brothers Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov.

Both brothers continued their father's business, first trading, then industrial. They were linen workers, and flax in Russia has always been revered as an indigenous Russian product. Slavophile economists (like Kokorev) always praised flax and contrasted it with foreign American cotton.

This family was never considered one of the richest, although their commercial and industrial affairs were always successful. Pavel Mikhailovich spent huge amounts of money on creating his famous gallery and collecting his collection, sometimes to the detriment of the well-being of his own family.

Quote: “With a guide and a map in his hands, zealously and carefully, he reviewed almost all European museums, moving from one big capital to another, from one small Italian, Dutch and German town to another. And he became a real, deep and subtle connoisseur painting". ("Russian Antiquity").

Soltadenkovs

They come from the peasants of the village of Prokunino, Kolomensky district, Moscow province. The founder of the Soldatenkov family, Yegor Vasilievich, has been listed in the Moscow merchant class since 1797. But this family became famous only in the half of the 19th century, thanks to Kuzma Terentievich.

He rented a shop in the old Gostiny Dvor, sold paper yarn, and was involved in discounting. Subsequently he became a major shareholder in a number of manufactories, banks and insurance companies.

Kuzma Soldatenkov had a large library and a valuable collection of paintings, which he bequeathed to the Moscow Rumyantsev Museum. This collection is one of the earliest in terms of its composition and the most remarkable in terms of its excellent and long existence.

But Soldatenkov’s main contribution to Russian culture is considered to be publishing. His closest collaborator in this area was the well-known Moscow city figure Mitrofan Shchepkin. Under the leadership of Shchepkin, many issues were published dedicated to the classics of economic science, for which special translations were made. This series of publications, called the Shchepkin Library, was a most valuable tool for students, but already in my time - the beginning of this century - many books became bibliographic rarities.

The new century for the Russian state was associated with difficult trials associated with crop failures, peasant uprisings, Polish and Swedish aggression. In history, the name of the period from 1598 to 1613. became established as the Time of Troubles. Thanks to the courage and patriotism of the common people, it was possible to expel the foreigners and return peace to the country. But for many years the abandoned fields remained empty, and gangs of robbers roamed the roads, robbing not only merchants, but also every passer-by. Having reigned in 1613 on the Russian throne, Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov reproached the trading people for not providing adequate assistance to the people's militia of K. Minin and D. Pozharsky in difficult times. Often it was necessary to forcibly collect funds from the merchants. In the first years of the reign of Mikhail Romanov, emergency taxes were collected from the commercial and industrial population of the country to replenish the state treasury.

However, the unsuccessful Smolensk War of 1632-1634. had a painful impact on the country's economy, which had begun to revive. Failure of the salt reform of 1646 with the subsequent return of taxes for 3 years led to the ruin of the poor and increased discontent. After a short lull in 1654-1667. a long and grueling war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth began. The copper rebellion, caused by the replacement of silver coinage with copper ones, was brutally suppressed. However, further transformations such as the church reform of Patriarch Nikon and the subsequent schism further intensified social contradictions. The end of the “rebellious age” was the peasant war under the leadership of Stepan Razin - a clear manifestation of dissatisfaction with the increasing enslavement of the peasantry.

Merchants by the middle of the 17th century.

In 1649, the elite of the Russian business world consisted of 13 guests, 158 living room people and 116 cloth hundreds. The guests, in addition to their wealth (their capital ranged from 20 to 100 thousand rubles), retained the rights to foreign trade, acquisition of estates and jurisdiction directly to the tsar. Traders who joined the hundreds were exempt from the townsman tax and excluded from the jurisdiction of local authorities. However, once every 2-6 years (depending on the number of hundreds of members), they, like guests, were required to carry out government assignments: in the customs and tax services, purchasing goods for the treasury, managing state fishing enterprises, etc. By the end of the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, the number of guests was 30, and the number of people in the living room and cloth hundreds was 200 people each. The Black Hundred constituted the lowest stratum of the merchant class. The townspeople - small city merchants - were in the same position as the Black Hundred.

Sloboda people occupied a special position. This was the name given to small traders and artisans who lived outside the city walls in white settlements, uniting into separate corporations based on their profession. Initially they belonged to monasteries and were not subject to state taxes and duties. Accordingly, life in the white settlements was easier, and the Slobozhans constituted serious competition for the townspeople, causing the indignation of the latter. Based on the Council Code of 1649. White settlements were liquidated by confiscating them from the church and transferring them to cities, and residents of White settlements and suburbs were given equal rights.

Posad people and Slobozhans, unlike “peasants,” were called “people” and occupied a higher social position. Cathedral Code of 1649 contained chapter (XIX), which regulated the position of the townspeople. According to the Code, the posad population was separated into a closed class and attached to the posad. All its inhabitants were included in the townsman tax, i.e. were obliged to pay taxes and perform duties, but received the right to trade and conduct crafts, which the peasantry could no longer do. The posad population was attached to the posads, but they were freed from competition from peasants, “servant and spiritual,” who were traditionally engaged in trade and crafts. Now the right to such activities could only be obtained by joining the townsman community. This is how the government simultaneously solved fiscal and competition problems.

Posad people traded actively. In Moscow in 1701 for every 2-3 yards there was 1 trading place. By the end of the 16th century. in Tula, merchants made up 44% of all residents, and together with artisans - 70%. A significant part of the townspeople did not have premises and peddled. They were called hodebshchiki and covered the surrounding villages with petty trade. Trading from trays (huts) was also widespread. A large trade deal required the participation of a large number of trusted persons who would carry out the merchant’s instructions. Russian business practice of the 17th century. has developed various types of such assistants. In large merchant families, they were primarily the younger members of the family - sons, younger brothers, grandchildren, who, on behalf of the head of the house, traveled around the cities of Russia with "bargaining". On these trips, merchant youth became accustomed to the trade and thereby prepared for future independent activity. Gradually, enterprising entrepreneurs emerged from it. Thus, the future guest and builder of Ustyug churches Afanasy Fedotov went through the initial school of trade skills under the guidance of his older brother Vasily, who sent him to Siberia “to become a clerk.” Sometimes within the merchant families, on the basis of extremely complex and intricate family relationships, there was a struggle, unnoticed from the outside, between the “old people” and the “younger people” for independent participation in the common business and capital.

Similar relationships took place in the family of the famous Solvychegodsk Stroganovs. In 1617 Maxim Stroganov brought his grandson Ivan Yamsky from Vologda. For 9 years, Ivan studied the intricacies of commerce. The grandfather sent his grandson “to the Siberian cities with money and goods,” while the grandson purchased “all kinds of purchases” for him. After death in 1624 old Stroganov, Ivan continued to live with his widow and sons, that is, his uncles, still traveling around trading or sitting in the shop at Solya Vychegodskaya. However, in 1626, taking advantage of the departure of his relatives, Ivan bought his own courtyard and moved there along with the goods entrusted to him, trading from then on in his own name. Only after a long lawsuit did Stroganov’s widow obtain a decree to seize the money and goods embezzled from Ivan Yamsky.

"Agents" of merchants

Clerks

It was difficult to set up a large trading enterprise with the strength of one family. We had to resort to outside help, including hiring clerks. They could also be trading people who themselves conducted independent large businesses, but who preferred for a time, for one reason or another, to trade on behalf of a wealthier merchant. Vasily Fedotov, later one of the largest Moscow guests, after the ruin in 1626. from his village, he was forced by robbers to hire himself as a clerk to the wealthy Muscovite Afanasy Levashov.

The concept of “customer” did not always have the same legal content.

At least three types of clerk are known.

The first type is a hired person whom an entrepreneur invites for a certain annual salary (usually up to 30 rubles) to carry out a certain trade order. Sometimes the clerk was hired for one period or another and lived “in hire for fixed years,” sometimes the period was not set at all.

The second type is the clerk, who took over the management of business affairs “out of profit,” and the generally accepted norm was the division of profits between the owner and the clerk in half; this was called taking goods "using-use". The clerk was obliged to return the capital - “the truth,” as they said in the 17th century, and then “to make up the truth,” that is, to give half of the profit to the owner and take the other half for himself.

The third type of clerk is a partner and participant in a trading enterprise. Both parties - the owner and the clerk - added up their capital; at the end of the operations, everyone received their part of the capital back, and the profit was divided in half. In this case, it was assumed that an entrepreneur, for example, a merchant of a hundred living room, in addition to large capital, provided his partner with a number of benefits arising from his privileged position. The bailiff, therefore, enjoyed all the rights that his master possessed, acted on his behalf, and had in his hands the royal charter issued to him. In turn, the clerk offered his own labor for free. Both sides thus benefited.

Possible abuses of the clerk were prevented by the latter’s obligation not to perform “any tricks on the belly entrusted to him (that is, capital and property): do not drink drunken drinks and do not play with grain and ... do not go after wives and do not steal in any way.”

Sidelitsy

Next to the clerks, the inmates took their own place. If the clerk is a free person who often conducts trade himself, then the housekeeper, on the contrary, was temporarily in personal dependence on the owner. This is a “working person” who, for a certain period of time, entered the owner’s yard and gave himself the usual type of residential record (about obligations towards the merchant). Most often, he had to be in the role of a “shopkeeper,” performing specific types of work in a trading establishment.

Peddlers

Below him stood the peddlers, essentially not much different from him. They also lived with a merchant with a “mandatory record” for “lesson years,” and the whole difference was that they traded “on a daily basis” and not in a shop and, of course, on a very small scale.

The lowest category of agents who carried out the merchant’s orders were “people” - workers who came to the entrepreneur not under a contract, but due to personal dependence on him. Sometimes servants were bought from the Don Cossacks, who returned from their raids with a large amount of “living goods”. For trading purposes, they preferred to purchase boys: they were baptized and taught Russian literacy. Many of the boys who grew up and were brought up in the master's house became trusted representatives, occupying the position of full-fledged clerks rather than slaves, and the legal dependence that connected them with the entrepreneur rather strengthened than violated mutual trust and affection.

Business relationship

The basis of legal support for business relations in the 17th century. "right" remained. The faulty debtor was taken daily to the square in front of the order and beaten with rods. Such “extortion” of the debt could not last more than a month, after which (if the debt was not paid) the debtor was at the disposal of the plaintiff. Code of 1649 established a certain standard for working off the debt: a man’s year of work was valued at 5 rubles, a woman – 2 rubles.50 kopecks, and a child – 2 rubles. In addition, such a form of debt repayment as giving “to live” was also widespread. In this case, the personal dependence of the debtor on the merchant was established.

Until the seventeenth century. growth in loans was considered normal in business relationships. But the royal decree of 1626 allowed interest to be charged only for five years, until the interest payments amounted to the loan received. Thus, a loan of 20% was meant. The Code of 1649 completely prohibited interest-bearing loans. This ban, designed to put an end to usurious transactions, did not have “serious success” in practice. The active development of domestic trade led to the government's turn to the policy of mercantilism.

In 1649 The trade privileges of English merchants, previously granted by Ivan the Terrible, were abolished. The formal basis for this was the news that the British “killed their sovereign, King Carlos, to death.”

October 25, 1653 The Charter of Commerce was promulgated. Its main significance was that instead of many trade duties (pavement, skid, etc.), it established a single duty of 5% on the price of the goods sold. The Charter also increased the amount of duty for foreign merchants - instead of 5%, they paid 6%, and when sending goods inside the country, an additional 2%. The New Trade Charter, adopted in 1667, had a clearly expressed protectionist character. He sharply limited the trading activities of foreigners in Russia. For example, when importing goods into a Russian port, they had to pay a duty of 6% of the price of the goods. If they transported goods to Moscow or other cities, they paid an additional duty of 10%, and when selling goods locally, another 6%. Thus, duties reached 22% of the price of the goods, not counting the costs of transporting them. In addition, foreign merchants were only allowed to conduct wholesale trade.

The New Trade Charter consistently protected Russian merchants from the competition of foreign merchants and at the same time increased the amount of revenue to the treasury from collecting duties. The author of this charter was Afanasy Lavrentievich Ordin-Nashchokin. Coming from a seedy noble family, he became the favorite of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and one of the most prominent statesmen of the 17th century. Nashchokin advocated the full development of domestic trade, the liberation of the merchants from the petty tutelage of the authorities, and the issuance of preferential loans to trading partnerships so that they could withstand competition from wealthy foreigners. He took steps to establish trade relations with Persia and Central Asia, he equipped an embassy to India, and dreamed of colonizing the Amur region by the Cossacks. Having been planted in 1665 Voivode in Pskov, Nashchokin creates an elected merchant self-government of 15 people for a court on trade matters; the “elective hut” that was set up also issued loans to low-income merchants. At the same time, he proposed organizing two fairs annually in Pskov, during which residents could trade duty-free with foreigners. Nashchokin, having become a boyar and the de facto head of government, managed to implement a number of his ideas.



Head of the house

In the second half of the 17th century. The Koshkin merchant family operated in Novgorod. These merchants owned six shops and two barns in the city market. In their gardens they grew vegetables for sale. In addition, they had their own mill, where a hired miller worked. The example of their trading house shows that by the end of the 17th century. in the activities of which large merchants began to specialize in the trade of certain goods. From the middle of the 17th century. The Koshkins exported hemp from Russia to Sweden, and iron from Sweden to Russia. A tenth of all the iron that Russian merchants exported from Sweden passed through the hands of the Koshkins. This was the main occupation on which their economic well-being was based. At the same time, they did not abandon trade in other goods - flax, lard, etc. In Russia, the Koshkins bought large quantities of goods for export. Almost every year they went by ship to Stockholm, returned with goods, took them to Moscow and sold them there. Goods exported to Sweden were sold at prices that could be one and a half, two, or even three times higher than the prices that were paid for the same goods inside Russia. Thus, trading profits were high. The cost of a consignment of goods sold as a result of one trip was estimated at 4-5 thousand rubles. Cats invariably sold for more than they bought. They sold their goods in large quantities to the capital's blacksmiths, Moscow merchants, shop owners in the city market, visiting merchants from southern cities, and they sold the goods at retail.

A large merchant often showed greed and stinginess. Usually his wealth was obtained through long and hard work, so he demanded that others take care of his property - it, as he said, “was not found on the street.” He was cruel and showed little compassion in business dealings. He was merciless when it came to profit, he destroyed and ruined his ill-wishers and debtors. He was difficult to deal with his subordinates and dependent people, although at the same time he could appreciate the work of his loyal clerk.

Sometimes a large merchant showed independence in relation to power and self-confidence. When at the end of the 17th century. reforms of the young Tsar Peter began, Gavrila Nikitin negatively assessed his activities in the Black Sea region during the campaigns against Azov. “The devil is carrying him to Constantinople,” he said about Peter. “It’s a pity that the power is lost, but at least he would have disappeared, it wouldn’t be much grief.”

The Koshkin merchants, thanks to their trade in Sweden, to some extent adopted some features of Western European culture. They studied Swedish. Their trade books contained a Swedish-Russian dictionary compiled by someone in their family. Even before Peter’s reforms, Western European chronology was common for them.

Other trading participants. In the 16th and especially in the 17th centuries. the composition of traders became more and more complex. Not only merchants traded, but also boyars, monasteries, service people, townspeople and peasants. Foreigners visiting Russia considered trade to be the national passion of the Muscovites.

In the 17th century the largest merchant was tsar. It was at this time that state trade appeared. Most of all vodka (at that time it was called wine) came to the market from the royal economy, as well as such goods as bread, flax, hemp oil, salt, and sable furs.

The government tried to send trading people abroad. Usually these were ambassadors who not only carried out diplomatic missions, but also had to sell government goods. Under Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, such attempts were unsuccessful. During the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, they become more persistent. The sent merchants had to purchase weapons and metals, enter into agreements with foreigners on the supply of goods necessary for the government. These attempts did not bring much results. Russian merchants had little knowledge of the conditions of Western markets. Therefore, the Russian government used “Moscow trade foreigners” who lived in Moscow and conducted trade there. The embassy order gave them trade orders from the government. They also purchased weapons and military equipment abroad. For military purposes, books on military and engineering art and telescopes were purchased. For the purpose of barter trade with Persia, government agents purchased small, cheap mirrors and materials from foreign merchants. Rare things were bought for the needs of the palace - very expensive materials, silver and crystal dishes, boxes and boxes, carpets, birds and horses.

Some were engaged in trade large landowners- boyars. They were drawn into the bargaining service people, who made up the city garrisons - archers, gunners, etc. A lot of people traded in the city markets townspeople. Usually the artisan was the manufacturer and seller of the goods he made. Played a significant role in trade peasants. They brought agricultural products and products of peasant crafts to the cities. The main place for selling peasant goods was the rural bazaar or fair. Some of these peasants conducted very large trade and actually ceased to be peasants in the strict sense of the word, turning into merchants.

Domestic trade. Although home craftsmen worked on the estates of feudal lords and service people, their products could not always satisfy the needs of a military man, for example, in weapons. These needs increasingly called service people to the market, especially because in the 16th century. In the armed forces of the Russian state, firearms were distributed, which the patrimonial artisan could not make. These weapons had to be purchased. Monasteries turned to the market for various items, and by the beginning of the 16th century. Huge farms have developed. The large number of monks forced the monastic authorities to buy clothes, shoes, dishes, work tools for them, and to erect various premises, purchasing building materials for this. A significant amount of goods (household items) were sold in urban and rural markets, which were bought up by a wide segment of the population.

Moscow artisan shop

Population growth and the ever-widening demand for various goods on the market, especially in large cities, gave rise to a very narrow specialization among artisans: the master usually made only a special type of product. Therefore, among the artisans who produced clothing, in the 16th-17th centuries. Along with tailors, sundress makers, fur coat makers, caftan makers, hat makers, hat makers, cap makers, etc. worked.

In the first place in the city craft was the manufacture of fabrics. This product occupied a prominent place in the market. This craft included the production of clothing and hats. A more modest place was occupied by craftsmen who worked in leather production. However, in almost every city there was a shoe aisle on the market. A large branch of craft was the production of metal products - “iron goods”. At the markets in Pskov and Novgorod, copper products were sold in boiler rows, silver products in silver rows. Woodworking craft occupied a very important place. Wood was the most common and cheapest material from which various household items were made - barrels, sponges, sleds, clamps, etc. All this was presented at urban and rural auctions. Along with the production of wooden utensils, pottery production was widespread. In addition to finished products, semi-finished products were sold in the markets - flax in tattered form, hemp.

Already in the 16th century. In Russia, a territorial division of labor began to take shape in the form of specialization of different regions of the country in the production of a particular product. On the basis of the territorial division of labor, more or less permanent trade relations emerged and developed between different, sometimes remote, regions of the country.

So, in the 16th century. The Tula-Serpukhov region stands out, where iron ore was mined, processed and from where it was transported for sale to other areas. The processed ore was transported from Serpukhov to Moscow, and there it was bought by residents of northern cities. At the very beginning of the 17th century. residents of Ustyug brought Serpukhov iron for sale to Siberia. The connections between the regions of the country were so strong and regular that in some places (Tver) artisans worked mainly with imported iron.

In the 16th century Yaroslavl acts as a center from where leather goods were transported for sale to the northern regions of the country.

The production of cloth of a higher quality than in peasant home production, and monastic clothing from it, was established in the Trinity-Sergius Monastery. These products were widely sold in Moscow.

The Tver region supplied the country with spoons and utensils. Merchants from the northern districts purchased these products in large quantities in Tver, and then sold them in northern cities and villages. Kaluga dishes were also on sale everywhere. In the north, the largest supplier of utensils - spoons, wooden dishes, ladles, bowls - was the Vologda-Belozersky region. The main center of woodworking craft in the Belozersky region was the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery. There was a turning workshop at the monastery that made spoons (thousands of pieces), staves, and “turned vessels.” Kirillov spoons were famous throughout the country.

Along with trade ties that connected remote areas and urban centers of the country, there were trade ties that connected the city and its immediate surroundings with its villages, hamlets, and monasteries. The townspeople bought raw materials from the peasants (wild animal skins, iron ore and other products of crafts and agriculture), processed them and sold them at the city market. Peasants bought metal products, jewelry, and imported goods in the city.

The goods sold were often not intended for the general population, especially those that were valued for their very high quality. The average resident of Russia did not buy iron products, which were quite expensive, every year. Many basic necessities, similar to those sold but of lesser quality, were produced within the subsistence household peasant economy. Therefore, for the 16th century. The regularity and importance of trade relations cannot be overestimated. They often did not affect the lives of the broad masses of the population.

In the second half of the 17th century. the development of Russian trade has reached a new level. Since the end of the 16th century, the rapid and ever deeper penetration of the Russian population into Siberia and Northern Asia began. First of all, people were attracted here by the rapid enrichment thanks to the hunt for sables, the fur of which was especially highly valued both in Russia and in other countries. In Western Europe it became fashionable. Meanwhile, sable could only be obtained in Siberia. Thus. Russia had a natural monopoly on this product. Trade with Siberia was in the hands of the largest Russian trading houses, the Fedotovs, Revyakins, Nikitins, and Bosykhs. Small merchants and clerks of large traders came to Siberian cities, helped local hunters equip themselves for the hunting season and waited for their return. After a period of hunting, the trader received from the hunter two-thirds of his catch. With a consignment of goods - the “sable treasury” - the merchant set off from Siberia to Arkhangelsk, where foreign ships arrived and where he could sell his goods. With the money he received, he bought foreign goods and with them, as well as various local craft products - household items, he went to Siberia. In Siberian cities at that time there was no artisan population. These cities were fortresses erected in a newly developed country and inhabited by military people. Therefore, Siberian townspeople needed the simplest things - clothes, shoes, dishes, etc. For a long time, Siberia also needed bread, since the local population knew almost no farming. While in Siberia, the merchant sold these goods and again entered into an agreement with commercial hunters regarding the extraction of sable furs.

So in the 17th century. This trade route was regularly used by Russian traders: Siberia - Arkhangelsk and again Siberia. Trade traffic flowed along these routes, connecting internal and external trade. It is noteworthy that this trade promoted not only high-value goods, which is typical of trade in ancient times, but also goods of everyday use.

In the developing internal trade, they were of great importance trade fairs. All of them were at the crossroads of significant trade routes. Some fairs that operated in the 15th-16th centuries ceased to play their former role, since they probably did not survive the intervention and devastation of various regions of Russia at the beginning of the 17th century. In the 17th century Several major fairs grew in size and influence. At this time, there were five main fairs of all-Russian significance: Moscow, where goods were brought from different parts of the country, Arkhangelskaya during the stay of foreign merchants in Arkhangelsk, Irbitskaya(in the city of Irbit), which was on the way to Siberia, Nizhegorodskaya (Makaryevskaya) on the ancient trade route at the confluence of the Volga and Oka, Svenskaya at the Svensky Monastery near Bryansk, where merchants came along the Desna - a tributary of the Dnieper, from the Polish-Lithuanian state and from Turkey.

The Makaryevskaya fair took place annually in July at the monastery of Makariy Zheltovodsky. In the first half of the 16th century. she was transferred here from Kazan. Its significance was determined by the fact that it served as an intermediary point, firstly, in the trade of northern and central cities with southern ones, and secondly, between the European part of Russia and Siberia. The Irbit fair was legalized by the government only in the first half of the 17th century. In the second half of the century, trading shops and other trading places were set up here, and a guest courtyard was built. The fair took place in January, when trade people from the European part of Russia came here. At the end of the century, a connection was established between the Irbit fair and the Makaryevskaya fair.

In the XVI-XVII centuries. in every district of Russia there were many different in size, often small and tiny, rural markets and markets. During the 17th century. their number decreased as they were absorbed by regional markets.

Trade in cities. Moscow as a center of trade inXVIV. The unification of the country and the transformation of Moscow into the capital of the entire Russian state affected its trade importance. Land and river trade routes led to Moscow. Tverskaya Street, leaving the city, turned into a road that led to Tver, and then to Novgorod the Great. Sretenskaya Street continued with the Yaroslavl road and led to Yaroslavl, then to Vologda and Ustyug, from where the route along the Northern Dvina to the White Sea opened. To the east, to Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan, the land road lay through Vladimir. The waterway connected Moscow through the Moscow River and Oka with the Volga, that is, with Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, and Astrakhan. From Moscow through Mozhaisk to Smolensk there was a road to the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian state.

In the second half of the XV - early XVI centuries. From the lands annexed to Moscow, Ivan III and his son Vasily III transferred the richest nonresident merchants en masse to their capital to live, which increased the commercial importance of Moscow. Later, in the XVI-XVII centuries. Only individual merchants, and not large groups of traders, continued to be transferred from the provinces to the capital.

Under Ivan III, guest courtyards were first established in Moscow, where visiting merchants were supposed to live and trade. In the 17th century in the capital there were two guest courtyards - old and new. They contained large scales for weighing large volume and weight of goods. Along the perimeter of the courtyard, two rows of small vaulted benches stretched in two tiers - one above the other. The shops in the guest courtyards and markets were quite cramped; the merchant could barely turn around in a shop crammed with goods. In the second half of the 17th century. There were several institutions in Moscow that dealt with customs duties. Moscow customs collected duties on jewelry, fabrics, furs, metals and other goods. Mytnaya izba - with meat, poultry, eggs, cheese... Pomernaya izba - with grain, berries, mushrooms. Embassy New Customs – with various goods brought by foreign merchants.

Any product could be purchased on the Moscow market. The main market of the capital was located on Red Square. There were numerous trading places here - booths, benches, huts. In addition to permanent (stationary) trade, there was also peddling trade. Along with the main market, there were numerous smaller markets scattered throughout the city. Some of them were specialized in trading certain goods. So, at one of them it was possible to buy a ready-made wooden house and a gate. They were made outside the city, then dismantled, transported on sleighs to Moscow in the winter and sold there.

As a major consuming urban center of the country, Moscow was supplied with food products and handicraft raw materials from its immediate surroundings. Some of the products were brought from afar: fish was brought from the Volga region centers, oil came from Vologda, salt came from the northern regions, honey and wax, wooden utensils were brought from the forest regions of the Upper and Middle Volga region, and vegetable oil was brought from Smolensk. Moscow received a lot of grain from Ryazan. Iron products were brought from Ustyuzhna-Zhelezopolskaya, copper, tin, lead from Novgorod, leather from Yaroslavl, furs from Ustyug and Perm. From the end of the 16th century. Moscow merchants began to travel to Siberia for fur. They brought with them Moscow goods, which were urgently needed by the Russian population of the Siberian region being developed.

A huge amount of Russian and foreign goods were brought to Moscow. Some of them - fabrics, handicrafts, spices, wine, salt, furs, clothing, weapons and other goods of the “Moscow purchase” - were exported for sale to other cities and fairs.

In the 17th century, merchants from all more or less significant cities and shopping centers of the Russian state were represented at the capital's market.

Iron weights (XVIIV.)

Trade in other cities. The development of trade stimulated the life of provincial Russian cities. The merchants who came to them needed food, overnight accommodation, premises for storing goods, and sufficient trading space in the city market. This need forced the construction of specialized buildings in the city - gostiny dvors. Craftsmen from different regions of Russia especially willingly moved to the big city, finding orders for work here. The city market - trading - was located in the central square of the city, near the administrative center and fortress. It consisted of a larger or smaller number of shopping arcades. The row consisted of commercial premises - usually wooden benches. They were placed with their facades facing each other so that the buyer walked along the row and looked at the goods in the shops. The more shops there were, the longer the row was. Only local residents traded in the shops. For the convenience of trading, the rows had specialization - cake, bread, meat. In the middle of the 16th century. In such a large shopping center as Novgorod, stone shops were built. In addition to shops, barns and cellars, cages, huts, closets, sheds, barrel and jug places were used in trade. There were several markets in large cities. Trading shops also stood outside the markets, on the streets, near the merchant’s house. In smaller cities, retail premises were not lined up in rows.

IN Novgorod there were about 4 dozen rows. At the beginning of the 17th century, new rows were built at the Novgorod market that had not existed before - iron, saddle, candle, mitten, book, etc. The rich merchants who traded in foreign goods formed the Great Row. Novgorod merchants exported foreign goods to other cities. With the money of these merchants, the church of Paraskeva Pyatnitsa, the patroness of trade, was maintained at the auction. Rich merchants also traded in the cloth row. The remaining rows were intended for the sale of less valuable goods - the products of local artisans. In the 17th century there were several large living courtyards. There were several foreign guest houses and offices. Still at the market stood the Church of Ivan-on-Opoka. In it, a fee was collected from trading people for weighing goods, but no longer in favor of the temple, as in the days of Novgorod independence, but for the “great sovereign” - the Moscow prince, the tsar.

In the first half of the 17th century. emerged as a large shopping center Yaroslavl. It was located at the intersection of important trade routes between Moscow and northern cities; the Volga trade route passed by it. Merchants traveling from Siberia reached Yaroslavl, and from there they moved to the center of the country. Yaroslavl filled the markets of Pomerania and Siberia with its leather goods, cloth, canvas, and clothing. Yaroslavl merchants conducted large trade with foreigners. In the city there were guest houses of English, Dutch and German traders.

The country had a large number of medium and small cities in terms of trade. An example of an average shopping center was Tikhvinsky Posad in the north-west of the country. In the 17th century there were 6 trading rows at the market. The bulk of the traders were townspeople, surrounding peasants, buyers and visiting traders from more than 40 cities. Tikhvin goods were distributed throughout the rural district with a radius of 200-400 versts.

International trade. Import of goods to Arkhangelsk. In the 17th century, especially in the second half of the century, mainly luxury goods, things for home furnishings, and for the needs of the army were imported into Russia from abroad. The main place for the import of foreign goods was Arkhangelsk, located on the Northern Dvina. Due to the long winter, it was only open to foreign ships for six months of the year. In winter, this city, remote from the center of the country, was as if in hibernation with boarded up shops, empty taverns and workshops, and deserted streets. As soon as the river opened up, along the right bank of which the houses and streets of Arkhangelsk stretched, the city awakened. The governor and his office moved here from the neighboring city of Kholmogor. A guest came from Moscow with his assistants to collect customs duties. Trade people gathered at the beginning of the fair. They brought “Russian goods” - lard, leather, butter, honey, wax, hemp, potash, tar. Timber was floated to the mouth of the river for sale to foreigners. In the summer, foreign ships came to Arkhangelsk through the White Sea and the Dvina. The duration of the fair was set for three months - from June 1 to September 1; in October the Dvina was already frozen. Therefore, in September the Arkhangelsk fair ended its activities.

Over the first half of the century, the number of foreign ships coming to Arkhangelsk more than tripled - from 29 to 80. Then their number decreased due to the policies of the government, which began to patronize Russian merchants, putting foreign traders in a disadvantageous position for them. By the end of the century, the number of foreign ships had increased again to 70. Most of the ships belonged to the Dutch. Usually the ship carried the goods of several merchants.

With the help of a Russian pilot, the foreign ship sailed from the mouth of the Dvina to Arkhangelsk. Here the goods were either transferred to the shore or remained on the ship, where Russian buyers arrived. Goods transported ashore arrived only at the Gostiny Dvor. At the gates of two guest courtyards - Russian and “German” - there were guards who made sure that no one left these courtyards without paying taxes.

The main buyer in Arkhangelsk was the treasury. Usually the guest who was appointed to Arkhangelsk to collect duties was given a list of those goods that needed to be purchased for the treasury. The guest paid for the purchased goods in kind - potash, hemp and tar, the warehouses of which were located in Arkhangelsk. For the royal court, they bought large quantities of silk fabric, non-ferrous metals (gold, silver, tin, copper), writing paper, wine and vinegar, spices and fruits from foreigners. Most of the materials went to the salaries of service people. The paper was received as orders. Spices and wines were also spent on grants.

In accordance with the New Trade Charter, foreigners had to sell their goods in large quantities to Russian traders. However, this order was often violated, and foreign merchants also sold goods at retail in their barns. Trade was largely of an exchange nature. Russian raw materials were exchanged for foreign goods.

In addition to the government, large wholesale buyers from the upper layer of the Moscow merchant class operated at the Arkhangelsk market. Almost all trade with foreigners in this city was in their hands. Such merchants had their own ships on the Dvina, onto which imported goods were loaded. The ships departed upstream the river and went to the city of Ustyug. It was the largest center on the road from Arkhangelsk to Moscow. There was a large market in the city. Foreign goods and fish were brought from Arkhangelsk to Ustyug. From Siberia and Kazan - Asian silk, Persian and Chinese fabrics and specially processed leathers, from the northern Russian cities - lard, oil, leather, hops, which were bought by Russian merchants and exported to the Arkhangelsk fair. Large merchants sold foreign goods in Ustyug. Smaller merchants also did the same. Their area of ​​activity was small. There were also those who, having bought foreign goods, walked with the body around the nearest settlements, through peasant volosts.

Local residents brought surplus subsistence products to Arkhangelsk to exchange for foreign goods. They were hired on ships that sailed along the Northern Dvina, worked as cab drivers transporting goods, pilots on foreign ships, and loaders. To transport goods from ships ashore to the city, barrels were needed. This stimulated the cooperage industry in Arkhangelsk. The Dvina-Belomorsky route was perhaps the busiest trade route in Russia in the 17th century.

Trade on the western border. In western Russia, overland trade was carried out through Novgorod and Pskov. From the 16th century Due to the opening of the trade route through the White Sea, long wars and the oprichnina pogrom that Ivan the Terrible organized in Novgorod and Novgorod land, the importance of these ancient trading centers decreased. In the second half of the 17th century. both of these cities played the role of shopping centers for the local area. As before, trade with the German city of Lübeck developed in Novgorod and Pskov. However, from the middle of the 15th century. The Hansa entered a period of decline. This decline became especially clear in the 16th century, when world trade routes shifted to the Atlantic Ocean due to the discovery of America. Sweden, England, and the Netherlands began to play a significant role in Novgorod trade.

Many Swedes lived in Novgorod. Their goods were mainly glass and metals (iron, copper, lead and tin). Unlike trade in Arkhangelsk, Novgorod merchants often traveled to Sweden, to Stockholm. The Russian ships that sailed the Baltic Sea were small. They usually accommodated about ten people or more. Trips to the “Svei Germans” for trade were so common that residents of the city of Olonets from

Novgorod land, only thanks to their trade with the Swedes had money to pay taxes. Fish and meat went from Olonets to Sweden. Often, without significant money, many Russian merchants borrowed money from the Swedes, bought goods in Russia with it, and then sold them in Sweden at a low price, making a very small profit. This greatly interfered with Russian trade, as it brought down prices for Russian goods on the Swedish market.

In general, foreign trade that went through Novgorod and Pskov was not particularly significant. The Swedish government would like Russia's foreign trade to be reoriented from the White Sea to the Baltic Sea. It even specifically lowered duties on Russian goods in order to stimulate their import into its country. However, the Russian government did not agree to such a change in the foreign trade system, since it did not have Baltic territories and access to the Baltic Sea

On the western border of Russia, an important trading point through which foreign trade went was Smolensk Through this city there were connections with Poland and Lithuania. Since with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in Russia in the 17th century. There were most often hostile relations, trade in this direction did not receive much development.

Southern and southeastern directions of trade. Through the southern city Putivl Greek merchants came to Russia. They also traded in Putivl, but most often moved with their goods to Moscow. In the eyes of the Russian government, the Greeks were fellow believers, persecuted in their land by the conquering Turks. They played the role of ambassadors from the Patriarch of Constantinople and were informants about foreign events. Thanks to these circumstances, the Greeks enjoyed special advantages

compared to other foreign merchants. Their goods were transported from the border on special carts with escorts. They received free maintenance from the government for the entire duration of their stay in Russia. Every year between 50 and 199 Greek traders came to the country. They carried things that were used for the needs of the palace: precious materials and stones, pearls, jewelry, expensive weapons, horse harnesses.

Astrakhan was like a gateway to Russia for Asian goods. Goods were brought here across the Caspian Sea and along the Volga from Persia, the Central Asian states of Bukhara and Khiva, as well as from India, trade with which was just beginning in the 17th century. There was a vast caravanserai in the city, surrounded by a stone wall with several gates. A two-story building was built here for Armenian merchants. There was also a wooden living quarters for Indian merchants here. Nearby there was a stone building that served as a warehouse and trading post. The main product was raw silk of various varieties, in particular, expensive “white silk” and cheaper “yellow silk”. It was mainly intended for export to Western European countries. Foreign merchants also brought oriental fabrics to Astrakhan, as well as finished products - tablecloths, towels, scarves, sheets, carpets, hats, jewelry, earthenware, dried fruits, spices. All these were items of high value. Foreign merchants exported from Russia to Asian countries sables and cheaper furs, walrus ivory, Western European silk fabrics, and a huge number of small mirrors brought to Russia from abroad.

In the second half of the 17th century. Quite a lot of merchants went to Persia for trading purposes. Therefore, ships for trade trips across the Caspian Sea were manufactured in a special yard in Astrakhan. They were called beads and were equipped with cannons for protection from robbers . Twice a year, in spring and autumn, a bus with traders set out on a trip. Upon arrival in Persia, the goods were sold off. Going back, the ship took on board merchants - immigrants from Central Asia, who wanted to get to Russia with their goods.

In the 17th century Russia began to trade with China through Siberia. In the middle of the century, an embassy was sent to this country to find out what goods could be bought there and establish trade relations. Since the 70s official trade with China began. Furs purchased from Siberian traders were sent in caravans to China, where these goods were exchanged for Chinese ones. Private trade also began to develop. In the 90s there was already a Russian colony in Beijing. Mostly materials were brought from China.

Moscow – the center of foreign trade. Arriving in Moscow, foreign merchants had to present their goods to the Big Customs, where these goods were inspected and duties were collected from the merchants. Before the adoption of the trade charter, customs taxation was varied and had a heavy impact on trade. In addition to the main duty, there were many small fees in favor of the treasury and customs personnel - clerks who kept documentation, porters, janitors, Cossacks - hired people who performed various services, and others. When registering goods at customs, the merchant was charged a “record duty,” when transporting goods to the scales for weighing, a “business duty,” when unloading goods, a “dump duty,” and a special fee was charged for weighing.

After paying duties, foreign goods were transported to Gostiny Dvor, where wholesale trade was carried out. There were several such trading yards in Moscow: in the very center - Old, New, Persian, at a distance from the center - Swedish, Lithuanian, Armenian, Greek.

Moscow had quite lively trade relations with Lithuania after Vasily III included Smolensk into the Russian state. Lithuanian merchants brought materials to Moscow, especially jewelry and jewelry, and bought wax here. Russian merchants brought sables to Lithuania.

Of all the Western European merchants, the British played a special role in Moscow trade. From the 16th century In England, an association of local merchants was organized - the Moscow Company - which traded with Russia. The English Gostiny Dvor was established in Moscow. English merchants brought to Moscow mainly fabrics, as well as metals, especially tin, lace, pearls, and jewelry.

At the end of the 16th and especially in the 17th century. Along with the British, Dutch merchants were active in Moscow.

In Moscow trade, the southern direction remained important - contacts with Persia, the countries of Central Asia, Crimea, and Turkey. As before, fine fabrics, ceremonial weapons, and luxury goods were brought from different countries. Cheaper goods were items of Tatar craft exported from Crimea - shoes, saddles, items of clothing. The main item imported from the steppes were horses. They were driven to Moscow for sale in huge herds of thousands of heads.

In the 16th century The commercial importance of Moscow grew, it overtook Novgorod in its importance. At the beginning of the 17th century. Due to the internal war in the country, Moscow as a center of foreign trade experienced a decline. Later, her position strengthened and grew significantly. In the second half of the 17th century. Trade connections from different regions of Russia reached Moscow.

In the XVI-XVII centuries. Along with foreign trade, which retained its importance, the role of domestic trade gradually grew. This indicated that the country’s commercial development was rising to a new level: the ratio of the importance of foreign and domestic trade was changing. Internal trade gradually began to prevail. In the total mass of goods that traders brought to the market, along with precious items, household items of everyday use play an increasingly important role.

Prechistenka was formed in the city, one might say, by accident, due to the fact that the Novodevichy Convent was built in 1524. At the end of the 16th century, there was a road leading to the convent. Soon, urban buildings arose along this path and the new street was given the dissonant name - Chertolskaya, in honor of the Chertoroy stream, which flowed nearby. Prechistenka owes its sonorous name to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.

The road leading to the monastery of the Most Pure Mother of God could not have a name associated with devils, so in 1658, by decree of the tsar, the street was renamed Prechistenskaya, and the Chertolsky gate of the city, located at its beginning, was renamed Prechistenskaya. Over time, the long street toponym was shortened to Prechistenka.

The street, having finally received a “shameless” name, soon became the center of attraction for the Moscow nobility. From the end of the 17th century, estates appeared here that belonged to the aristocratic families of the Lopukhins, Golitsyns, Dolgorukys and many others. Most of the mansions built at that time have retained their original architecture to this day. In addition, the names of the aristocratic inhabitants of Prechistenka were immortalized in the names of the lanes: Vsevolzhsky, Eropkinsky, Lopukhinsky and others.

In the 19th century, Moscow was considered a quiet patriarchal city with a population of 250 thousand people (since the 30s of the 19th century, the number reached 300 thousand).

Neither the pompous luxury of St. Petersburg, nor the capital's high society balls and receptions - in a word, a big village.

Alexander Pushkin, describing the arrival of the provincial Tatyana at the house of her Moscow aunt, emphasized that the girl had to travel every day “to relative dinners” in order to be introduced to “her grandparents.”

D.N. Kardovsky. Ball at the St. Petersburg Noble Assembly. 1913

Wikimedia Commons

Maintaining family ties was extremely characteristic of noble Moscow: here everyone was each other’s aunts, nephews, cousins. Relatives constantly visited each other and discussed the latest family news. It is interesting that this was done, as a rule, over a cup of tea: the Moscow nobility preferred this drink, while in St. Petersburg the nobility loved to drink coffee. As for food, Russian cuisine was not held in high esteem by Moscow nobles, who were more fond of German, English, French and Italian dishes. Moreover, on noble tables there were always forks, which until the end of the 19th century remained unconventional cutlery in merchant houses.

The older generation of Moscow aristocrats felt quite comfortable in the city: they have the necessary connections, someone to chat with and play cards with, but at the same time they are not disturbed by the bustle and noise of the capital.

However, young nobles were often bored in such a patriarchal and too calm environment for them.

This contrast between social life in Moscow and St. Petersburg became especially noticeable in winter, when one could only diversify one’s leisure time with Christmas fortune-telling.

No less remarkable is the Church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi, the house church at the Tretyakov Gallery, where the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir is constantly kept, and on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, Rublev’s “Trinity” icon is transferred here. And that’s not all: the Moscow merchants honored Orthodox traditions, and rich merchants considered it a good cause to donate money for the construction and restoration of churches.

Merchants also knew how to relax. Only the sedate merchants of the Golden Head could drink tea so beautifully.

“Here to the right, at the wide-open window, a merchant with a thick beard, wearing a red shirt for lightness, with imperturbable composure destroys the boiling moisture, occasionally stroking his body in different directions: this means it suits his soul, that is, along all the veins. But to the left, an official, half-covered with eranium [geranium], in a Tatar robe, with a pipe of [factory] Zhukov tobacco, either takes a sip of tea, or takes a drag and blows out rings of smoke.”

By the way, sugar was never added to tea, since it was believed that this spoiled the taste of the drink: it was always drunk only with sugar.

B.M. Kustodiev. Moscow tavern. 1916

Wikimedia Commons

Of course, merchant families did not only relax at home. Traditional entertainment was fairs and festivities that took place along the main Moscow streets around the Kremlin, in Sokolniki and Maryina Roshcha, as well as in the then suburbs - in Tsaritsyn, Kuntsevo, on Vorobyovy Gory, Kolomenskoye and Arkhangelskoye. The nobles went to their country estates for the summer, so no one stopped the merchants from listening to regimental bands, having fun with gypsies and watching fireworks in the evening.

By the middle of the 19th century, theaters began to become fashionable among merchants. Moreover, plays of a dramatic or comedic nature, reminiscent of fair performances on everyday themes, were especially popular.

But operas and especially ballets - due to the strange costumes and behavior of the actors on stage - were not understood and disliked by the merchants.

Gradually, the merchants of Zamoskvorechye began to adopt the attributes of noble life and organize gala dinners and balls in their homes. However, even here it could not do without bourgeois specifics. The merchants' houses were divided into two parts - the front part and the living part. The front part was usually furnished as luxuriously as possible, but not always tastefully. An interesting feature was that all the window sills in the front rooms were lined with different-sized bottles with liqueurs, tinctures, honey, etc. Because of this, the windows did not open well and the rooms were practically not ventilated. The air was freshened by fumigating the premises with mint, vinegar or “tar” (a lump of resin in a birch bark bag, on top of which a smoldering coal was placed).

As time has shown, Moscow remained faithful to merchant traditions. The rapid development of industry in Russia after the abolition of serfdom led to the strengthening of the petty-bourgeois class, whose representatives became factory owners and entrepreneurs. So the merchants began to displace the nobility from Prechistenka.

Since the middle of the 19th century, noble estates were actively bought up by the new bourgeoisie.

Instead of old noble families, new, merchant ones began to appear on Prechistenka: Konshins, Morozovs, Pegovs, Rudakovs. At the same time, the appearance of the street changed: classic mansions were rebuilt into more magnificent and pompous ones, so that it would be “expensive and rich.” “The new houses stun the passerby with all the unbridledness of their clearly perverted and stupid taste and force them to shed late tears for the dying, if not completely dead, beauty of the capital,” this is how the Architectural and Artistic Weekly wrote about these events in 1916.

Connection of centuries: Studies on source studies of the history of Russia before 1917. In memory of Professor A.A. Preobrazhensky: collection of articles / resp. ed. A.V. Semenova; Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Russian History. M.: “Russian Political Encyclopedia” (ROSSPEN), 2007. 446 p. 28 p.l. 20.57 academic sheets 500 copies

Materials about merchant life in medieval Moscow

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Keywords

Time scale - century
XVII XVI XV XIV XIII XII

Bibliographic description:
Perkhavko V.B. Materials about the merchant life of medieval Moscow // Connection of centuries: Studies on source studies of the history of Russia before 1917. In memory of Professor A.A. Preobrazhensky: collection of articles / Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Russian History; resp. ed. A.V. Semenova. M., 2007. P. 51-86.

Article text

V.B. Perkhavko

MATERIALS ABOUT MERCHANTS' LIFE OF MEDIEVAL MOSCOW

The everyday side of life of merchants in the Russian Middle Ages (especially for the period before the 17th century) remains insufficiently studied. And primarily due to a very limited source base. In written sources of the XII-XIV centuries. There is practically no evidence about the living conditions of the first representatives of the Moscow merchant class. Only from the end of the 15th century. Laconic references to the estates of Moscow merchants appear (for example, about the courtyard of the Vesyakov Surozhan guests when describing the fire at Bolshoi Posad). Therefore, in the process of reconstructing the merchant life of that early period, one has to rely mainly on archaeological materials, which are widely used in the study of trade in medieval Moscow. When identifying complexes that could have belonged to merchants among the remains of excavated dwellings, archaeologists rely on finds of imported items, imported coins, and trade equipment. As a result of archaeological excavations in Zaryadye, the remains of a 16th-century merchant estate were discovered: metal weights, a steelyard; wooden tally tags; fragments of Central Asian, Tatar and Arab pottery; knives with marks of Western European craftsmen; several lead trade seals attached to rolls of cloth.

Only since the 17th century. When localizing merchant estates in Moscow, you can use materials from census books, as well as city plans. So far, no traces of scribal descriptions of the Russian capital of the 16th century have been discovered. They were preserved only for a later period, after the Troubles of the early 17th century. The earliest census of Moscow households that has reached us, dating back to 1620 and having no beginning, contains laconic information about the owners, location and general size of estates. I.E. Zabelin published extracts from the duty books of the Printed Order of 1620 and a description of the city rows of 1626 with information about trading shops. The census book of the Kadashevskaya settlement of 1630-1631 was also published. The Moscow census book of 1638 records the composition of the city militia with a list of weapons. Only fragmentary written evidence has reached us about the way of life and life in the family circle, the spiritual interests of the trading people of Moscow, without reconstruction of which it is impossible to give a complete picture of the merchant world of the Russian Middle Ages.

The houses of merchants, as well as other representatives of the Moscow population (boyars, artisans), were built in the 12th-14th centuries. exclusively made of wood. The oldest (according to written evidence) merchant stone house was built in Moscow by the founder of the famous Tarakanov dynasty. According to the Lvov Chronicle, in 1471, “The Torokan merchant built brick chambers for himself in the city of Moscow near the city wall at the Frolov Gate, one year and the next.” According to V.P. Vygolov, the use of the verb “to reduce” when describing the construction of chambers indicates “the presence of vaulted ceilings in them.” He also refuted the opinion that has spread in the literature about the localization of the Tarakan estate to the left of the Frolov Gate at the entrance to the Kremlin. There in 1485-1486. The stone chambers of the infuriated family of visiting Surozhans, the Khovrins and Golovins, appeared. Opposite his courtyard, the Grand Duke's treasurer V.G. Khovrin built a house stone church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross around 1440, and after its destruction in a fire - a new church of the same name, using the technique of mixed stone and brick masonry. In the Kremlin until the end of the 15th century. Other richest Moscow merchants also lived - the Antonovs, Afanasyevs, G. Petrov, resettled by order of Ivan III in the 1490s. to the landing. In a number of provincial cities (for example, in Veliky Ustyug and Murom), representatives of the merchant class retained small siege yards in the fortress even in the 17th century.

Unlike Western European countries, stone construction in medieval Rus' did not become widespread. Until the 17th century In Russian cities, mainly a few defensive structures and religious buildings were erected from stone and brick. The latter stood out noticeably against the background of the surrounding wooden residential buildings, which especially suffered from frequent destructive fires, but cost the townspeople much less. Stone construction required much more money than assembling houses and other structures from wooden frames, which were usually sold ready-made. The customers of urban stone churches, along with feudal aristocrats, were sometimes representatives of the merchant elite. In the second half of the 15th century. some of the eminent guests (V.D. Ermolin, Khovrin-Golovin) even acted in Moscow as construction contractors. Obviously, this kind of contract work was both profitable and prestigious for them, as has been pointed out more than once in the literature.

Of course, not only the house, but also the table of a wealthy merchant was noticeably different from the diet of the ordinary trade and craft population. The rich Moscow guest Dmitry (monastically Dionysius) Ermolin, who in his declining years took monastic vows at the Trinity-Sergius Monastery under Abbot Dosifei (1446-1447), protesting against the monastic order and the provisions of the communal charter, refused to participate in the common, rather modest and monotonous meal . “What should the Imam do, since I cannot eat your bread and stew? And you know yourself, as if you grew up in your own homes, you don’t feed on such food,” Elder Dionysius explained his behavior (“The Tale of Dmitry Ermolin” from the III expanded Pachomiev edition of “The Life of Sergius of Radonezh”). When bread, honey, beer, fish and other dishes were brought from the refectory directly to his cell, he threw away the food, saying with disdain that “our dogs are like that... they didn’t eat.”

Only isolated references to the rural estates of wealthy merchants, which appeared no later than the 14th century, have survived. The earliest evidence of merchant land ownership in the Moscow principality dates back to the era of Dmitry Donskoy, when the villages of the Muscovite-surozhan Nekomat are mentioned. Under 1375, the chronicles contain a message about the flight from Moscow to Tver of the son of the thousand, Ivan Vasilyevich Velyaminov, who had fallen out with the Moscow prince, and the wealthy guest-surozhan Nekomata (judging by the name, apparently of Greek origin). Soon Nekomat went to the Golden Horde to get a label for the great reign for the Tver prince Mikhail Alexandrovich. He successfully completed the assignment of the new benefactor, returning to Tver in July 1375 with the khan's label and the Horde ambassador Achikhozheya. But in August, Dmitry Ivanovich defeated the troops of Mikhail Alexandrovich and forced him to renounce his great reign, then ordered the confiscation of the villages of Ivan Vasilyevich and Nekomata, and later executed the traitor-defectors themselves.

Having paid with his own head for political intrigues, Nekomat, of course, was far from the only landowner from the merchant community. With those known in the 15th century. The names of a number of villages near Moscow are associated with merchant surnames - Salareva, Tropareva, Khovrina. The deed of sale from 1491-1492 has been preserved. for the acquisition by Dmitry Vladimirovich Khovrin from the guest-surozhan Fyodor Danilovich Salarev of the village of Krasulinskaya in the Moscow region. Several large land holdings in Dmitrovsky district - the villages of Staroe Ermolinskoye, Kunoki, Spasskoye-Semenovskoye - belonged to the wealthy merchant dynasty of the Ermolins. Being engaged in trade affairs and often going on long trips, the Surozhan guests, of course, did not have the opportunity to permanently reside in their own estates and entrusted control over the fulfillment of feudal duties by the peasants to their servants-managers or village elders.

The literature has long been discussing the question of whether Moscow guests, Surozhans and cloth workers of the 14th-15th centuries. special merchant corporations with certain privileges, like the guests - members of the drawing room and cloth of the hundreds of the 17th century? If M.N. Tikhomirov, for example, answered it positively, then V.E. Syroechkovsky, A.M. Sakharov, L.V. Cherepnin showed a certain caution and skepticism when considering this problem. And although no documents (charters) have been preserved in which their rights would be legally formalized, judging by indirect evidence, the beginnings of a corporate organization clearly existed among the Surozhans. Its members had certain responsibilities towards each other, enjoyed benefits and privileges (for example, the right to acquire land holdings), obviously organized common feasts (fraternal feasts) together, and built churches. Such a patronal merchant temple in Moscow at that time was the Church of St. John Chrysostom, located in the later White City in the monastery of the same name, known since the beginning of the 15th century. According to the chronicle, in 1479, Ivan III laid the foundation for a new stone church of St. John Chrysostom in Moscow, ordering the dismantling of the “formerly wooden building that stood on this site... which was originally the church of Moscow guests.” Why did it become desolate by that time, according to the chronicler, “beginning to become impoverished”? Obviously, Moscow's eminent merchants, for some reason, stopped considering it their patronal church and refused to contribute money for its maintenance.

In the 16th century The merchant life of Moscow, while maintaining continuity with the previous century, did not undergo significant changes. Wooden buildings still predominated in the trade and crafts district of the capital of Russia, and houses made of stone and brick were a rarity. At the base of the now restored building of the English Embassy Court on Varvarka, apparently, the remains of the stone structure of the Moscow guests Yuri Urvikhvostov and his nephew Ivan Bobrishchev from the Ontonov family have been preserved. The folk form of the name Yuri - Yushka - is imprinted in the name of the nearby Yushkov Lane. As restoration architects suggest, the original design of the Ontonovs' stone chamber, dating from the late 15th to early 16th centuries, could have been erected under the direction of the Italian architect Aleviz Fryazin. Apparently, it was not particularly different from the building of the neighboring Old Merchant's Court, described in 1669: “A stone shed, 6 fathoms long, is partitioned into two dilapidated parts... Under the same canopy is a cellar... Near the canopy cellar, a storage room is partitioned into two... " Another earlier description of it is contained in a document from 1643 entitled “Repair of the merchant's court that was the money court.” It mentions, in particular, the back porch of the room's entryway, stoves in two chambers and in the basements. In the basement under the Ontonovs’ residential building, as in the stone basements of merchant churches, valuable goods were clearly stored. Even during their time, the courtyard apparently included an orchard; in the middle of the 17th century. it consisted of 21 apple trees, 11 pears, 22 cherries.

The stone house of Yu. Urvikhvostov was not the only merchant residential building made of stone in Moscow in the 16th century. According to the testimony of the loose book of the 17th century. Trinity-Sergius Monastery, in 7057 (1548/49) “Ivan Kuzmin, the son of Yakovlev, gave the deposit his yard in Moscow in the Chinese city, near the settlement of Ivan Tretyakov, and in the yard there is a mansion: an upper room of three fathoms and a wall, and a canopy, and stone flooring with a cellar underneath; given to that courtyard is written in the patrimonial book in Moscow, chapter 14.” In all likelihood, this wealthy townsman from Kitay-Gorod kept the most valuable things in his stone chamber, and expensive goods in the cellar-basement underneath. Traces of some kind of stone structure from the 16th century. in the form of details of ceramic decor, archaeologists discovered during excavations of a merchant estate, presumably belonging to the famous Tarakanov family of guests.

As we can see, although quite rarely, representatives of the merchant elite of the capital of Russia built in the 16th century. residential buildings were made of stone and brick, which required considerable funds. In Moscow, they acted as customers and builders of stone structures from the 15th century. only representatives of the richest and most privileged group of merchants—guests from Surozh, who were engaged in trade with the Crimea, the Horde, and Byzantium and amassed significant capital.

However, wooden buildings still predominated in the development of the Moscow suburb. In Kitai-Gorod there was the estate of the clerk and merchant Anfim Silvestrov, as evidenced by the white letter of Ivan IV dated April 15, 1556 to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery to the Lobanovsky yard in return for another monastery yard transferred to him: “Behold, the Tsar and Grand Duke Ivan Vasilyevich are all To Russia you granted the Troetsky Sergius monastery to Abbot Jasaph and his brothers: that they had a courtyard in Moscow, in the New City, in Bogoyavlensky Lane, from Ilyinsky streets to Nikolskaya street on the left side, twenty fathoms in length and half a fathom, and across fourteen fathoms; and that yard was taken from them and given to Onfim Seliverst's son, and Abbot Joseph and his brothers, in that place of their yard, were given a yard in the same Bogoyavlensky lane, with Ilyinsky streets on the right side, Lobanovskaya Ivanov's son Sliznev, cloth tax, in length forty fathoms with half a fathom, and across nine fathoms without elbows, and in another place in the garden eight fathoms.” It is unclear, however, where the new Anfim courtyard with a total area of ​​287 square meters was located. fathoms: in front of the Epiphany Monastery or behind it, if you move from Ilyinskaya to Nikolskaya Street. Maintaining business contacts with the royal treasurer Kh.Yu. Tyutin, who came from a merchant environment, A. Silvestrov acted as a witness during the execution in 1550/51 of his charter of exchange with the Trinity-Sergius Monastery for the Moscow courtyard, also located in Bogoyavlensky Lane ( “Khozeya put his hand on the note and Alfim listened to the hand of the attribution.”

Comparing the descriptions of wealthy townspeople's courtyards in Moscow, Kaluga, Vologda and Pereyaslavl-Zalessky from the “business record” dated December 6, 1577 of Nikita, Semyon and Maxim Stroganov, it is easy to notice their uniformity. The courtyards differ only in the number of wooden huts, upper rooms, cages, and closets. The kitchen (cookhouse), as a rule, was located in a separate courtyard building. Household supplies were stored in barns, cages, cellars and glaciers. Cattle were kept in barns and stables. The upper room, the canopy, and sometimes the barns were placed on the basement. A wealthy person from a trade and craft environment preferred to go to his own bathhouse (soaphouse). In the suburbs, merchants used the mowing fields needed to keep horses and other livestock. Thus, outside the village of Menshie Atary near Kazan, according to the scribe books of 1565-1568, “the meadows are mowed by Kazan guests from different cities.” Among them were translators from Moscow. Wealthy Moscow guests and members of the Living Room of the Hundred sometimes owned yards not only in their hometown, but also in other places where they were engaged in trading.

According to Stefan Geys (Giesen), a member of the retinue of the imperial ambassador Nikolai Varkoch, who visited Moscow at the end of the 16th century, there were up to 1,500 churches there: “Even other rich merchants and boyars build churches in which they correct their rituals, just like theirs.” it's supposed to." Under Vasily III, in the first quarter of the 16th century, the church of St. Athanasius of Alexandria in the Kremlin was built by Bobynina's guests, the Church of St. Barbarians in Kitay-Gorod - Ontonovs (Antonovs).

Rich merchants-translators from Pskov, Novgorod the Great and other cities also took part in the stone construction of Moscow with religious buildings. A member of the Living Hundred, Savva Emelyanovich Vagin, who moved to the capital, probably from Sol Galitskaya, built a stone church of St. in 1595. Great Martyr Nikita for the River Yauza, on the Lousy (Shviva) Hill. The text of the construction inscription has been preserved: “In the summer of 7103 the temple of the great holy martyr Nikita was completed by the Moscow resident of the living room of the hundred, merchant Savva Omelyanov, son of Vagin.” But in the Piskarevsky chronicler, in an entry under 7106 (1597/1598), the initiator of the construction of the church is named Dmitry I. Godunov, and the name Vagin is not mentioned at all: “In the days of the pious Tsar and Grand Duke Feodor Ivanovich of All Russia, at the petition of the boyar Dmitry Ivanovich Godunov , a stone temple was erected in Moscow behind the Yauza: Nikita the Martyr of Christ." Perhaps boyar Godunov petitioned for the construction of the temple at the request of the merchant Vagin, who became its builder-clitor.

The life and cultural appearance of the trading people of Moscow in the 17th century, in contrast to the later era of the 18th - early 20th centuries, also remain poorly studied in Russian historiography. This topic was touched upon only in a number of generalizing works on the history of culture, merchants and entrepreneurship in Russia. Meanwhile, it would be interesting to determine the place of the capital’s merchants in the development that began in the 17th century. the process of “secularization” of Russian culture, which was accompanied by a noticeable growth of secular and democratic elements. And the cultural creations of that transitional period were bound to reflect the tastes and demands of the elite of the Moscow townspeople, their ideas about the surrounding world and beauty. When studying this process, one cannot help but take into account the property and social heterogeneity of merchants in the 17th century. The leading positions in trade and entrepreneurial activity in Russia in the 17th century were occupied by the most privileged and wealthy group of Russian merchants - the guests. They surpassed other merchants in terms of capital, volume of goods turnover, and social influence, being engaged in trade along with trade and investing in industrial production.

One of the most characteristic external signs of the new stage in the development of the country’s culture was the proliferation, along with temples, of stone buildings for secular purposes, often built not only by the feudal nobility, but also by representatives of the wealthy merchants. Having accumulated significant funds through large-scale trading operations, they, imitating the aristocracy, invested them in the expensive construction of brick residential buildings. Standing out against the backdrop of the then prevailing wooden buildings in Moscow, such tall and spacious merchant chambers immediately caught the eye.

The Nikitnikovs, one of the richest and most famous merchant families of the 17th century, who came from Yaroslavl, became widely famous. Their ancestor, Nikita, lived there in the 16th century. The family trading business was continued by his son Leonty, and then by his grandchildren Grigory, Pavel, Tretyak, Nikita, whose visiting court existed at the end of the 16th century. in Kazan. The most successful was Gregory, who was elected zemstvo head of Yaroslavl while still young. He repeatedly contributed large sums to the treasury of the Second Militia in 1612. The Yaroslavl court of the Nikitnikovs was located near the Uglitsky Gate and the Spassky Monastery, near the shopping arcades. Near the house, Gregory built a wooden Church of the Nativity of the Virgin. Nearby, on the banks of the river. Kotorosli, there were fish and salt barns that belonged to him. Grigory Nikitnikov, being a guest since 1613, was engaged in large-scale trade in fish and salt along the Volga and Oka, where in many cities (Astrakhan, Kazan, Kolomna, Nizhny Novgorod, etc.) he had courtyards, warehouses and shops, including in the Sukonny, Surozhsky, Serebryany and Shapochny rows near Red Square in Moscow, where he moved by tsar’s order in 1622. He often had to perform various government duties: customs head in several cities, collector of the “fifth money” from the trade and craft population, participant of zemstvo councils. He allocated money on credit and to the treasury to pay salaries to military men, demanding their return on time. By order and with the money of Grigory Nikitnikov in 1631-1634. in Moscow, in Kitai-Gorod, in the courtyard of his estate, a stone Trinity Church was erected, which was not only a house church, but also a parish church. Next to it were the stone chambers of Grigory Nikitnikov.

From his marriage to Euphrosyne, Gregory had a son, Andrei, and daughters, Anna, Domnika, and Maria. Andrei Nikitnikov and his wife Marfa Mikhailovna Kosheleva had a son, Boris, and a daughter, Tatyana. Maria Nikitnikova and her husband, merchant Vasily Bulgakov, named their son Grigory in honor of his grandfather. A family tragedy was the death around 1648 of his father’s closest assistant, Andrei, a literate man with artistic taste. Shortly before his death, he put into the Trinity Church a memorial book containing the names of 154 representatives of the Nikitnikov family (82 males and 72 females), decorated with colorful headpieces and now stored in the manuscript department of the State Historical Museum (Moscow). Grigory Nikitnikov himself died in 1651 and was buried not in the chapel of the Trinity Church, but in the Spassky Monastery in Yaroslavl, where before his death he was tonsured under the name Gerasim. According to his will, he transferred all capital, real estate and trades to the undivided ownership of his grandchildren Boris Nikitnikov and Grigory Bulgakov (on his father’s side), who died quite early. Boris was distinguished by his education; in 1653 he was still listed as a member of the Living Hundred, and died the following year. Grigory Bulgakov in 1649-1650. was in the sovereign service in Arkhangelsk and Kholmogory. The only successor to the family commercial and industrial enterprise became in the 60s and 70s. XVII century great-grandson of Grigory Nikitnikov - Ivan Grigorievich Bulgakov. He completed the interior decoration of Trinity Church. The Nikitnikovs had a home collection of Russian old printed books - “Conversations of John Chrysostom”, “Minea”, “Trefola”, “Code of Judicial Affairs” (Council Code of 1649), etc. Boris donated some of them after the death of his grandfather to various churches and monasteries, where money was also deposited to commemorate ancestors. The Nikitnikov family is also recorded in the synod of the Vvedensky Monastery in Tikhvin.

These are the impressions that the Moscow house of the wealthy guest Grigory Leontyevich Nikitnikov evoked from Archdeacon Pavel of Aleppo, who came in the middle of the 17th century. to Russia from Syria: “We saw in Moscow the luxurious dwelling of this merchant, which is larger than the chambers of ministers. He built a wonderful church, the like of which we have not seen even in the king’s.” We are talking about the most beautiful five-domed Trinity Church in Nikitniki, built of brick and tastefully decorated with carved white stone (keel-shaped kokoshniks, figured platbands, semi-columns, portals) and polychrome glazed tiles. It is well preserved, unlike the chambers dismantled back in the 17th century. For the first time in the practice of Moscow religious architecture, a tented bell tower was included in the structure of the temple with an emphasized asymmetrical composition. The team of stone carvers who participated in the construction of the royal Terem Palace in the Kremlin was clearly involved in its external design. The basement of the church was used to store goods, and its southern chapel of Nikita the Warrior became the family tomb of this famous merchant family, which originated from Yaroslavl. The interior decoration of the temple was completed by the mid-1650s, after the death of G.L. Nikitnikov, his grandchildren. Icons for the temple were commissioned from the most famous icon painters of that time, including Joseph Vladimirov (“The Descent of the Holy Spirit”) and the iconographer of the Armory Chamber Simon Ushakov (“The Great Bishop,” “The Savior Not Made by Hands,” etc.), whose stone mansion was located nearby. When painting the walls of the Trinity Church, the masters were the first in Russia to creatively use engravings from the Piscator Bible, recently published in Holland, as samples (rather, iconographic diagrams), and on one of the frescoes they depicted a group portrait of the Nikitnikovs of 11 people.

On Ipatievskaya Street, five fathoms from the Nikitnikovs’ estate, near the Church of Pope Clement, at the Varvarsky Gate, there was the courtyard of another richest guest, Vasily Grigorievich Shorin. Its length reached 43 fathoms, and its width was 16-24 fathoms. On it, at a short distance from the temple, there was some kind of “stone building”, which most likely had an economic purpose and therefore was not called chambers in the building book of 1657. Shorin owned several smaller courtyards, located nearby, on illegally seized church land. His people, including shoemakers, lived there in wooden huts. Back in 1644, V.G. Shorin filed a petition regarding the reconstruction of the stone chapel of the Church of the Renewal of the Resurrection of Christ, which is in Kitay-gorod, near his Vasilyev’s courtyard. The Shorins' home temple is considered to be the Church of Dmitry of Thessaloniki, which was located on the territory of their estate, in which stone housing appeared over time. They, it is assumed, could also have ordered the renovation of the Church of Clement at the Barbarian Gate. In 1695, boyar F.P. Sheremetev and okolnichy I.A. Matyushkin lived next door to their stone house on Ipatievskaya Street, which was in fair condition at the beginning of the 18th century.

The Shorins came from Vyazma, from where in 1610 the Great Grigory Shorin and his son Bogdan came to trade in Novgorod. In the middle of the 17th century. V.G. Shorin, mentioned as a guest since 1641, having increased his inherited capital, already occupied a strong position in the commercial business, owning not only numerous shops in Moscow, Astrakhan, and other cities. Considering the huge demand for tanned leather, the resourceful merchant started his own production (tannery) in Nizhny Novgorod. He stood at the origins of the monetary reform of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in the 50s. XVII century In the Galitsky and Kolomna districts, Shorin owned over 50 peasant households, several villages in the Ustyug district, in the Solya Vychegda region, inhabited by black-growing peasants, for which he had to make payments to the sovereign treasury. Some of them passed to him in the 70s. XVII century after entering into a second marriage with the widow of N. Revyakin, a member of the Living Room Hundred. The local peasantry, dissatisfied with the concentration of land in the hands of the eminent merchant, sued Shorin more than once with varying success. At the request of a townsman from Veliky Ustyug, S.F. Yakushev, in 1676 a criminal case was opened regarding the removal of a hut belonging to the plaintiff from the village by Shorin's people.

V.G. Shorin's clerks traded in Moscow, Vologda, Veliky Ustyug, visited the cities of the Volga region and Siberia, and eastern countries. The family of one of them, “Lari Shevyrev, the Moscow merchant Vasily Shorin,” was commemorated in the Svensky Monastery, where the owner, apparently, more than once sent him with goods to the fair. Having acquired considerable influence in government circles, V.G. Shorin twice held the post of customs head of Arkhangelsk, in 1676 he was listed as the head of the guests, and more than once spoke out in defense of the interests of the domestic merchants. He, like the guest Fyodor Yuryev, was sent from the patriarchal table of Joachim on August 15, 1674, on the feast of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, a treat - “steam sterlet”. Shorin also participated in the construction of the first Russian military three-tier sailing ship "Eagle". The life of this rich man was not idyllic; troubles befell him more than once. During the Salt (1648) and Medny (1662) riots, the courtyards, shops and warehouses that belonged to him were destroyed and devastated by the rebellious Moscow people. Later, Shorin's trade caravan sailing along the Volga was plundered by the Cossacks of Stepan Razin. In the end, a significant part of his property (shops, a cellar, a stone tent in Astrakhan) was transferred to the treasury “for many arrears” in paying taxes. Obviously, the shaky financial condition explains V.G. Shorin’s modest contribution to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, made on December 13, 1676: “golden velvet on worm-like earth in the measure of 9 arshins to two tops.” At one time there was even an opinion among historians that Vasily Grigorievich died in 1680 in complete poverty and obscurity. But, as we managed to find out with the help of new archival materials, his son Fyodor (guest since 1666) and grandson Mikhail had the opportunity to continue, albeit not on such a scale, the work of their father and grandfather. Back in 1675, M.F. Shorin was awarded the rank of guest “for the many services of his great-grandfathers and grandfather and uncle and father, and for honor and for the fatherland.” In an effort to strengthen her influence among the Moscow trade elite, in January 1687, on the occasion of the “Eternal Peace” concluded with Poland a little earlier, Princess Sophia, by a special decree, granted its most prominent representatives cash and land salaries, including 750 quarters (210 hectares) land and 85 rubles - to Mikhail Fedorovich Shorin. Funeral records of the Shorin family are available in the synodics of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, the Trinity Church in Nikitniki, and the Nikitsky Monastery in Pereslavl-Zalessky. The most complete record of the family of “the guest Grigory Shorin and the son of his guest Vasily Shorin” from the synodik of the Assumption Cathedral lists 40 male (27) and female (13) names, including 16 who took monastic vows and 14 who died in infancy.

Participant of the Zemsky Sobor in 1598, guest of Menshoi Semenovich Bulgakov, who lived in the stone chambers at the very beginning of the 17th century. built the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Kitai-Gorod. It became the home church of this merchant family, as evidenced by the entry in the building book of 1657: “...To the church besides Bakhteyar and Rudelf Bulgakov (sons of M. S. Bulgakov. - V.P.) there was no one in the parish; and how Bakhteyar and Rudelf were alive and they laid their parents to the church, and they themselves were buried in the same church, and after Bakhteyar and Rudelf the Bulgakovs there were no relatives left.” When interviewing the neighbors of the “okolnichy, Boris Ivanovich Pushkin said: on the Varvarsky Cross, the Church of the Resurrection of Christ, the building of Menyav Bulgakov, is next to his yard, but Menshov has a stone canopy in his yard, and who built that canopy and how long - he doesn’t know.” At the entrance to the Bulgakov estate, marked, along with a few courtyards of the nobility, on “Peter’s Drawing” (circa 1597-1599), there was a guard hut.

The courtyard of “deacon Olmaz Ivanov,” mentioned in the deed of 1647, was located in Kitai-Gorod, “in the parish near the Vedenya of the Most Pure Mother of God Zolotoverkho.” Almaz (Erofey) Ivanovich Ivanov (?—1669) came from the Chistye merchant family. His family is recorded in the synod of the 17th century. Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. Traded with eastern countries and knew several foreign languages, the guest eventually became a Duma nobleman and head of the Ambassadorial Prikaz, making a significant contribution to the activities of the Russian diplomatic department. As part of the Russian embassies, Almaz Ivanov traveled to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden. Member of the Dutch embassy Nicolaas Witsen met with him more than once in Moscow in 1665. And here is how the envoy of the Austrian emperor Augustin Meyerberg, author of the essay “Journey to Muscovy”, characterized Ivanov: “...Coming from parents of a simple rank, he was happily engaged in trade. Then, being familiar with foreign lands, during the correction of many embassies, he showed so many examples of cunning, deceit, and resourcefulness that he was awarded the position of caretaker of the secret archives of the kingdom, of foreign ambassadors and rapporteur of their embassies.” There is evidence of donations from A. Ivanov, who owned a collection of printed books. According to the information in the contribution book of the Rostov Boris and Gleb Monastery, “in the summer of 7170 (1662) August on the 23rd day, the Duma clerk Almaz Ivanovich and his son, clerk Dmitry Yarofeevich, according to his good warm faith, for his long-term health, gave three books in tetratech: the book of the apostle in ten printed and a multi-layer scroll book at half-ten printed and a printed grammar book at half-ten...” .

On Bersenevka (modern Bersenevskaya embankment of the Moscow River) in the middle of the 17th century. A new house was built from oversized bricks for Averky Stepanovich Kirillov (1622-1682), who was initially referred to in documents as “Averko Stepanov” and who became a rich man from among the tax collectors of Sadovaya Sloboda. The Armory Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin houses an altar cross with painted enamel and gold carvings, placed in the Trinity Cathedral of Bersenevskaya Sloboda on August 1, 1658 by the sovereign gardener Averky Kirillov in memory of his parents. With his financial participation, the parish stone church of the “Life-Giving Trinity, in Sadovniki, behind Berseneva” was clearly built; To expand the church cemetery, A.S. Kirillov gave up “the two courtyards of his brothers” and gave the huts that stood on them to the sexton and the church watchman. And the next year, bypassing the Living Hundred, he was enrolled in the corporation of guests. “The family of the guest Averky Stepanov, and Mikhail Pirimov the gardener,” recorded in the memorial book of the Novospassky Monastery, has 33 names (including 13 babies, 2 murdered, 9 monastics). A.S. Kirillov donated two printed books to the distant Anzersky monastery on the Solovetsky Islands - “The Teachings of Ephraim the Syrian” and “The Climacus”.

Kirillov owned courtyards and shops in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Vologda, potash industries, lands and villages with peasants. Expanding his business activities, in the early 1660s. he received the use of plots for the construction of salt mines in Solikamsk and land along the river. Usolka, and soon purchased it for 1000 rubles. a large estate near Moscow, assigned to him in 1666 by a special personal decree of the Boyar Duma. Kirillov was well known in government circles. For example, his report on Armenian-Russian trade, compiled for the Ambassadorial Prikaz, has been preserved. In 1677, he was recruited into public service with the rank of Duma clerk, a rare case for a representative of the merchant class. Managing the orders of the Great Treasury, the Great Parish, the Great Palace, and Novgorod, Kirillov dealt with issues related mainly to industry, trade and finance. During the famous riot in May 1682, he was killed by enraged archers, who wrote on a pillar placed in the middle of Red Square, along with the names of other victims, the “guilt” of this extraordinary figure from the merchant community: “He took great bribes and committed all kinds of taxes and lies.” It is difficult to consider this accusation fair in relation to Kirillov, because the clerk seemed to be distinguished by his incorruptibility. A little later, having strengthened her power, Princess Sophia dealt with the troublemakers and ordered the Streltsy “pillar” with the shameful inscription to be torn down. A.S. Kirillov, like his wife, who also passed away at the age of 60, was buried under the northern porch of the Church of St. Nicholas on Bersenevka, where gravestones were found during the autopsy. On one of the tombstones there is an inscription: “In the glory and praise of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the servant of God, the Duma clerk Averky Stefanovich Kirillov, lived 60 years from his birth and from the beginning of the world in the summer of May 7190 on the 16th day, died as a martyr in memory of our reverend father Theodore the Sanctified ". Their son Yakov Averkievich became a guest and clerk, who made large contributions to the Donskoy Monastery and accepted the great schema there in 1693 under the name Jonah; his family is recorded in the synod of the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin.

The stone two-story chambers of Averky Kirillov are still preserved (in a rebuilt form, however), reminiscent of their first owner. According to the information from the construction book of 1657, “...in that garden, next to his Averkiev’s yard, his Averkiev’s tent was built again...”. It is confirmed by a simultaneous inscription placed around a carved cross on the ceiling lamp in one of the corner rooms of the first floor: “This holy and life-giving cross was written in the year 7765, and that year the chamber was repaired (according to another version, delivered— V.P.)" . Even then, the owner of the chambers, who was still listed as a gardener, achieved a high property position through trading operations.

This rich Moscow house, furnished and arranged in a Western European manner, made a vivid impression on the Dutchman N. Witsen, who visited Moscow in 1665: “I visited Averky Stepanovich Kirillov, the first guest, who is considered one of the richest merchants. He lives in the most beautiful building; it is a large and beautiful stone chamber with a wooden top. In his courtyard he has his own church and bell tower, richly decorated, a beautiful courtyard and garden. The situation inside the house is no worse; the windows have German painted glass (stained glass). In short, he has everything you need for a richly furnished home: beautiful chairs and tables, paintings, carpets, cabinets, silverware, etc. He treated us to various drinks, as well as cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, nuts and transparent apples, all served on beautiful carved silver, very clean. There was no shortage of carved cups and cups. All his servants are dressed in the same dress, which was not customary even for the king himself. He treated us very kindly, talked about the recently appeared comet; Russians talk about this incorrectly. He showed us a book of predictions of the future, translated into Russian, as if it contained true predictions, and asked my opinion about it.”

Several stone chambers were erected by Yudina merchants during the reign of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich. They stood in the Moscow estates of the brothers Andrei, Vasily and Ivan Afanasyevich Yudin, the sons of the “Moscow guest Afanasy Ivanov son of Yudin,” whose family is recorded in the synod of the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin. The yard with a stone residential building passed from Andrei Afanasyevich to his son Ivan, who in 1642 made claims to the real estate and other valuables of his deceased cousin Grigory Ivanovich, whose mother Aksinya was still alive from a family of boyar children. Some of this property was claimed by their more distant relatives - member of the Living Hundred Vasily Grigorievich Yudin and his sister Marfa. Justifying their rights, both sides presented their own genealogical paintings to the authorities (perhaps the earliest reconstructions in the field of merchant genealogy in Russia). Aksinya Yudina, who had lost both her husband and son, also did not want to be left in old age without a means of subsistence and addressed petitions to the tsar. In connection with this complicated property dispute about the escheated inheritance, the apprentices of the Order of Stone Affairs, the forest trenchers of the Novgorod hundred and the merchants of the iron rows, at the direction of the authorities, assessed the property: “... The price to Vasiliev and Ivanov and Grigoriev yard of the Yudins for a stone building is 1910 rubles 30 altyns; and for any wooden courtyard building and huts and sheet roofing and town (fence - V.P.) and garden and courtyard land 1300 rubles; in the plate windows there are 40 iron grates, the price is one ruble per grate; there are 20 iron shutters at the windows, the shutter is priced at a ruble; three iron doors, price osmi rublev per door...” It seems that it was in this stone house that the icon-painting workshop of the famous “isographer” of the 17th century was originally located. Simon Ushakov, to whom later, in 1673, the estate of the guest Ivan Chulkov with stone chambers was transferred.

The abundance of barred mica windows in the merchants' chambers is striking, the owners of which, with the help of iron doors and bars, sought to protect their property from looting. But inside such stone chambers, as noted in the treatise of the Czech Jesuit Jiri David “The current state of Great Russia, or Muscovy” (1690), it was a little dark “partly because of the thick walls, partly because of the disproportionately small windows.” In the petition of a member of the Living Hundred, Ivan Andreevich Yudin, unfortunately, it is not indicated where the “Church of the Resurrection of Christ, the building of his Yudin parents, without a parish,” was built and from what material. It was located within the Yudin family estate or next to it (“in Paneh”, near the Pansky courtyard) and actually became their home church, in which Patriarch Filaret performed the funeral service for the guest Ivan Afanasyevich Yudin back in 1628.

The Barefoot (Bosovo) came from Veliky Ustyug. While for six years in the sovereign's service “in Perm near Medny and near the mountains,” Kirill Alekseevich Bosov (Bosovo), who became a guest on July 5, 1646, “for Moscow life he put up stone blankets and protected him from firefighting” and became related to the princely originally from Myshetsky. His daughter Anna became the wife of Prince Ivan Danilovich Myshetsky and, having become a widower, sold in 1674/1675 to the guest Vasily Ivanovich Grudtsyn-Usov the family estates in Ustyug and Usolsky districts, which she inherited from her father and from her uncle Vasily Alekseevich Bosykh.

From the list of money of a member of the Living Hundred, Maxim Ilyich Tverdikov, spent by his aunt’s husband, clerk Andrei Galkin (November 28, 1671), one can find out that 70 rubles were paid for a brick for church construction, from which “the guest Ivan Savin’s son Khudyakov made his chambers ". Sometimes utility rooms were built from stone in merchant estates. The yard “with a shed and a garden” of the guest Maxim Grigorievich Tverdikov in Kitay-Gorod, as escheat property, passed to his niece Praskovya Grigorievna Galkina (nee Tverdikova), the wife of the sovereign clerk Andrei Galkin. But after the great fire of 1668, only the “storage shed in the stone cellar” survived from this yard.

After the death of the guest Fyodor Mikhailovich Nesterov (Neustroyev), a native of Yaroslavl, “his yard remained in Barashi with stone floors and with all kinds of wooden mansion and courtyard buildings, and a country yard in Krasnoe Selo, and silver and tin and copper utensils, and all kinds of home factories, and in the shops in Surovsky Row... goods and money.” According to a separate charter dated September 5, 1698, the estate with stone and wooden buildings in Barashskaya Sloboda passed into the possession of his two sons - Ilya and Alexei, and their brothers Ivan Bolshoy, Ivan Menshoy and Vasily received the rest of the family real estate, money and goods inherited from father. The Church of the Entrance to the Temple of the Blessed Virgin Mary was associated with this merchant family, where the patriarch came to the burial of F.M. Nesterov on October 15, 1690. Another guest, Maxim Afanasyevich Chiryev, from Moscow, “built stone floors with money from the belongings of his father-in-law Zakharya Kuzmich,” so he bequeathed them at the beginning of the 18th century. to his wife Tatyana Zakharyeva “with all the courtyard buildings and a garden.”

The Ushakov brothers from Yeniseisk - Ivan (member of the Gostinaya Hundred since 1683, guest since 1685) and Alexey (member of the Gostiny Hundred since 1686), who were engaged in large trade in bread and salt making in Siberia, carrying out government wine contracts, at the direction of the authorities moved in 1689 to Moscow, where they had their own yard. After the death of Ivan Ushakov (between 1694 and 1697), an investigation began into his insolvency. The Order of the Great Treasury and the Siberian Order brought claims against Alexei Ushakov for huge sums. And in September 1698, by order of the Great Treasury, the Moscow courtyard of the Ushakovs with stone chambers was confiscated to pay off the debt for contract wine, valued (obviously, together with movable property) at 29,336 rubles. 30 altyn 5 money.

About the appearance and internal layout of such rich urban housing of the late 17th century. can be judged from the materials of the case of 1694-1701. about the theft in the Discharge Order of gold award coins, the purchase of which was carried out by members of the Living Hundred Evtifey Lavrentyev and his son Afanasy Evtifeyev, who owned shops in the Silver Row of Moscow. In the price notice dated January 24, 1695, “the courtyard of Afonka Evtifeev with all the mansion’s wooden and stone buildings was registered and the drawing was assessed and made.” This is what his two-story stone chambers looked like on Yakimanka: “And the plank structure, according to the inspection of the Stone Order of the apprentices, is 9 fathoms long without an arshin, across 5 fathoms without a yard, height half-3 fathoms. The walls are half 3 bricks high, there are 4 warm living spaces below. Dining room - length 4 fathoms, across 3 fathoms with an arshin, rolled ceiling, 10 windows with bars. The coal-plate is half-3 long, 2 fathoms across, it has 5 windows. Attached to it is a shed and a fireplace in Polish style on connections, there are 3 windows, the length is half 3, across 2 fathoms without even a row. Near the locker there is a storage shed, in it there is a valuable stove, the length is 2 fathoms without half an arshin, across 4 arshins with a vault. On that canopy there is a bedroom, the same length as the lower canopy, a rolled ceiling, a tsenin stove, a stone shoot from the lower entryway, 2 butts.” As you can see, the walls of the house were made of two and a half rows of bricks; it was heated by two stoves lined with glazed tiles. A stone staircase led to the upper floor, where the owner's bedroom was located. The drawing shows two entrances to the building. The length of the yard reached 75 fathoms. There was enough space on it for a gate hut with a canopy, and for a cookhouse (kitchen), and for a stable with three stalls, and for a garden, and for a vegetable garden, and even for a pond. All this was initially priced at 570 rubles. 16 altyn 4 money, including “a stone building worth 265 rubles.” In the second price list, drawn up on April 5, 1695, the cost of A. Evtifeev’s yard buildings and land was reduced to 305 rubles. 16 altyn 4 money, but they are not described in such detail: “...A mansion building on stone floors: a roof covered with planks, an oak cellar with a cellar, a stable near the cellar, a canopy behind that cellar. A gatekeeper's hut with a canopy under one roof. Cook's room with storage room, well for two [ 78 ] re...". And on his father’s estate in Kadashevskaya Sloboda there were only wooden residential and utility buildings. According to the testimony of the Dutch merchant Isaac Massa, who first visited Russia in 1601-1609, “in Moscow every merchant, even not a rich one, keeps horses and moves from one street to another on horseback.” For wealthy merchants, traveling on foot even a short distance was considered shameful. This information is confirmed by the presence of stables on merchant estates. On the eve of the “Salt” riot of 1648, the Duma clerk Nazariy Chistoy, who came from among the guests, rode on a horse from the Kremlin to his house, located nearby in Kitai-Gorod.

In April 1696, the patriarchal peasants Klim and Nikita Kalmykov, despite the resistance of Patriarch Joachim, were finally enrolled in the Living Hundred. In his Moscow estate, Klim Kalmykov started the construction of stone housing.

Next to his two-story stone chambers at the Pokrovsky Gate, a member of the Living Hundred, Mikhail Semenovich Sverchkov, in 1696 commissioned the master Peter Potapov to build the Church of the Assumption on Pokrovka, built in the “Naryshkin” baroque style two years later. Unlike the church, which was destroyed in the 20th century, M.S. Sverchkov’s house has survived to this day. In the capital and other cities of Russia at that time, wealthy representatives of the merchant class built stone churches not only at their estates. Guest Ivan Matveevich Sverchkov, who died in 1703, was referred to as a “temple builder” in the 80s. XVIII century the priests of the Church of the Assumption on Sretenka and the St. Nicholas Church, “at the Myasnitsky Gate”, in whose possession, according to the will, were two of his shops. Back in 1644, his father, a member of the Living Hundred, Matvey Sverchkov, received a blessed letter “for the three thrones of the stone church in Moscow, at St. Nicholas’s in Myasniki, in the name of the appearance of the Icon of the Most Pure Mother of God, also on Tolga, and within St. Apostle Matthew, and St. Martyr Ivan Rylsky." A brief memorial record of the Muscovite family of the merchant “Matthew Ivanov son of Sverchkov” (“Ivan in the monastery of Joseph. Monks of Pelageya”) is available in the synodik of the late 17th century. Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery. And in the Church of St. Nicholas in Myasniki in 1692, in the presence of the patriarch, his son, guest Semyon Sverchkov, was buried.

Another eminent merchant Sophrony Fedorovich (Tomilo) Tarakanov clearly participated in the construction or allocated money for the maintenance of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, located on Vvedenskaya Street in Kitay-Gorod, next to his yard. On a large stone there was the following inscription: “On the 17th day of February 7147 (1639), in memory of the holy great martyr Theodore Tyrone, the servant of God, the guest Zephanius Fedorov, son, died, nicknamed Tomila Torokanov, and his memory is deka...” The text on a smaller stone about the death of his wife. On the inner altar wall, above the altar, in the chapel of St. Maxim the Confessor of the Church of St. Maxim the Blessed on Varvarka On June 20, 1699, a memorial inscription was made for the family of its “temple builder”: “The family of the living room of the hundred builder of this church, Maxim Filippov, son of Verkhovitin. Ermil, Peter, Philip, Martha, Maxim, Natalia, Joseph the schema-monk, Ermil the drowned, Ivan, Matrona, Akinfia, Autonomous, Andrei, Agathia, Fevronia, Theodore, Thomas, Michael, Paraskeva, Peter, Glyceria and their relatives." The merchant Maxim Sharovnikov also participated in the construction of this temple. The stone church of the Great Martyr George, in Vspolye, was built in 7181 (1672/1673) by “the Moscow guest Semyon Potapov for the sake of eternal remembrance, under the power of the Great Sovereign Tsar and Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich of All Great and Little and White Russia, the autocrat, and with the blessing the great lord, holy patriarch Pitirim of Moscow and all Russia." Thanks to the guests Filatiev, immigrants from Arkhangelsk, in the 1680s. In Kitai-Gorod, the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, “that of the Great Cross,” appeared at the Ilyinsky Gate. On May 3, 1692, the patriarch went there “to bury the body of guest Ostafy Filatiev,” who during his lifetime was engaged in purchasing and selling sables on behalf of the treasury.

But in the capital of Russia, it was not house churches that predominated, but parish churches (“secular buildings”), erected with donations from all parishioners. The guests (M.S. Bulgakov, M. Erofeev, G.L. Nikitnikov and Yudin) were the sole patrons of only four of the 45 churches of Kitay-Gorod in the first half of the 17th century. With the funds of the residents of Kadashevskaya Sloboda, with the financial support of the guest Kodrat (Kodratiya, Kondrat Markov) Markovich Dobrynin, a native of Balakhna, and his son Login, in 1687, the architect Sergei Turchaninov built a stone church of the Resurrection of Christ in Kadashi, for which a number of icons were ordered, in including "Codraty Apostle". K.M. Dobrynin was registered in the temple synodik, and the patriarch himself came to his burial in the same church on March 12, 1692. And in Tolmachevskaya Sloboda, the Dobrynins built a stone church dedicated to the Feast of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, with a chapel of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker (Nikolo-Tolmachevskaya Church). Guest Login Dobrynin, whose family is recorded in the synod of the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin, also bequeathed to transfer to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery “a German bull and a cow.”

From the end of the 17th century, imitating the feudal nobility, eminent merchants began to order epitaphs for the tombstones of loved ones. In 1690, by order of the “guest son” Maxim Labozny, the famous poet Karion Istomin composed a short (5 couplets) poetic inscription on the tomb of his wife Theodosia:

The traveler looked at this coffin and became wise (,)

Here is the body of an honest wife, rely on

Feodosia, Labozna Maxim

The son's living room, in honesty we say.

Those who are sure to rise from the dead,

Please, and asks, to remember the soul.

God, grant him eternal glory (,)

Guide us to walk on the right path.

Maya died on the sixth day (,) at the hour of the tenth (,)

Seven thousand one hundred year ninety osm.

In merchant spiritual letters one can often find instructions to executors to donate large sums of money to churches and monasteries. For example, guest Gavrila Romanovich Nikitin bequeathed in 1697: “In Moscow, to the Church of Gregory the Theologian, which is on Dmitrovka, 100 rubles for a church building. To Solya Vychegotskaya to the Church of the All-Merciful Savior to commemorate her parents 200 rubles. To Charanda to the Church of the Supreme Apostles Peter and Paul, where his parents, the Gavrilovs, lie, 100 rubles for the church building.” And in the will of the guest Ilya Fedorovich Nesterov, drawn up on May 1, 1697, 500 rubles were allocated for the posthumous commemoration of his soul. A member of the living room of the hundred, Andrei Prokofievich Sveshnikov, clearly donated to the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Putinki on Dmitrovka, as evidenced by the memorial inscription of his family on the southern wall of the church.

Rich merchants of Moscow built bricks in the 17th century. most often not temples and chambers, but shops and warehouses. Representatives of only one branch of the Yudin merchant dynasty in 1642 owned 29 shops in Kitay-Gorod, including 13 stone ones. In the third quarter of the 17th century. in Moscow, the construction of a stone cellar cost 130 rubles, the annual rent for one stone shop reached 40 rubles. Wooden benches cost three to four times less (on average 25-30 rubles), but more expensive goods could be destroyed in them by fire. To extinguish large fires, of course, there were not enough wooden tubs with water, which were usually placed on the roofs of shops. The icons hanging in the shops did not save us from them either. As attested in the Brief Moscow Chronicle of the second edition, in 1605 in Moscow “rows of great importance (weight) were burning. V.P.), vomited the potion (gunpowder.— V.P.), in the Moscotilny row, 80 shop people were killed in one row, and according to estimates, up to three hundred people were killed in all rows.” According to information from Jiri David, already mentioned above, “merchants who suffered in the past (1683.— V.P.) year, great losses, when their shops burned to the ground, now they are building stone ones.” At the very beginning of the 18th century. the price of one stone shop in the center of Moscow, in Kitai-Gorod, varying from 300 to 1000 rubles, averaged 500-600 rubles, that is, it was close to the cost of a brick residential building.

According to Article 26 of Chapter IX of the Council Code of 1649, it was prescribed that on Saturday the trading rows should be closed three hours before the evening, and on Sundays “the rows should not be opened and the rows should not be traded in anything, except foodstuffs and horse feed.” It was also forbidden to trade in shops during the religious procession. The shops in the rows had to be guarded by their owners or tenants in turns from dashing people. In Moscow, for example, at night, angry chained dogs ran along shopping arcades. But neither stone shops, chambers and cellars, nor iron doors and bars on windows could completely protect merchants from theft of goods and other valuable property.

At the beginning of the 17th century. Stone buildings in merchant yards in Moscow were still quite rare. And in this regard, the compiler of the explication of “Sigismund’s” plan for Moscow in 1610 noted: “No one is allowed to build from stone or rubble, except for a few of the nobility, and the leading merchants can build storage facilities in their homes - small and low, in which they hide the most valuable during a fire." The construction of houses and commercial premises from stone and brick became more widely practiced by the capital's merchants after the events of the Time of Troubles and the severe fires of 1626 and 1633. It was also facilitated by the creation at the end of the 16th century. The Order of Stone Affairs, which had at its disposal both master masons and building materials. On the stone development of the Moscow suburb in the 17th century. The Solyanoy (1648) and Medny (1662) riots were also influenced, during which the rebellious commoners destroyed the courtyards and shops of eminent guests (clerk Nazariy Chisty, a native of the merchant environment, Semyon Zadorin, V.G. Shorin and others). The benefits provided to builders of stone housing in Moscow in the last years of the reign of Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich also played a role, when those who wished could receive government-issued building materials with a ten-year installment plan for their payment.

As a rule, representatives of the capital's merchants participated in meetings of royalty and foreign embassies. In 1635, when Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich was returning from his village of Taininsky, the guests and “the living room of hundreds of merchants and black hundreds of all sorts of people with bread were ordered to meet behind the settlement, where they had met him in advance.”

For faithful service in the collection of customs and tavern duties, trade transactions profitable for the treasury and the fulfillment of farming obligations, the tsarist government sometimes gave merchants as an incentive, along with cash salaries, additional gifts in the form of expensive overseas cloth, satin, marten and sable furs, and sometimes a silver coin. utensils with personal inscriptions. The Armory Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin contains, in particular, silver ladles granted to guest Ivan Guryev “for an instrument” at the Moscow customs in 1676, and to Filat Khlebnikov, a member of the Living Hundred, for profit in collecting tavern and customs money in Perm, Solikamsk and Cherdyn (1698 G.).

In turn, the merchants tried to appease the king and the royal court with rich gifts. A member of the Living Hundred, Ivan Bulgakov, presented Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1656 with a saber in a scabbard, made in Istanbul from damask steel and richly decorated with inlay, notching, niello, gold, and jade. The financial status of ordinary merchants did not allow them to make such precious gifts. Famous merchants imitated the feudal aristocracy in their everyday life, were drawn to it, and sought to enlist its support. Foreigners drew attention to this circumstance, in particular, the Saxon diplomat G.A. Schleissinger, the author of the work “A Complete Description of Russia,” who visited Moscow in 1684-1686: “And when the wives of noble gentlemen give birth, they send to the richest merchants and inform them that God has blessed them with a son or daughter. And the merchants know how to understand this, they go to them, wish the young mother all the best, pass on their kiss and present a gift wrapped in paper as a sign of attention, and then leave with a deep bow. The one who gave the most will be especially kind to the owner and can always easily come to him.” According to the observations of Adam Olearius, the governors of the district cities organized feasts for rich merchants two or three times a year in order to receive expensive gifts from them.

Not only in the volume of trade operations, but also in the way of life, the elite of the capital's merchants differed from the ordinary townspeople. As noted in the explication of Sigismund’s plan for Moscow in 1610, “local merchants are very knowledgeable and prone to trade transactions, very roguish, but somewhat more decent and civilized than other residents of this country.” Guests and other wealthy merchants were invited to ceremonial dinners with the patriarch and great sovereign Filaret Nikitich. In particular, on October 19, 1623, “guests Nadezh Svetechnikov, Nazarene Chistoy” dined with him, and on December 9, “guests Ivan Yudin and merchant Mikhail Tsybin and his comrades.” And on December 21 of the same year, when Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich was present at the patriarchal dinner, “Moscow guests Ilya Yuryev, Ivan and Vasily Yudin, Grigory Tverdikov, Rodion Kotov, Ondrey Yudin, Bakhteyar Bulgakov, Nadya Sveteshnikov, Yuri Beloshnikov, were eating at the table at the table. Smirnoy Sudovshchikov, Grigory Shurin (Shorin. - V.P.), Ivan Sverchkov, Smirnoy Eroksalimov,” and they were served such dishes as “autumn caviar, black pike fish soup, salted salmon, beluga fish, Shekhon sturgeon.” Guests and members of the Living Room of the Hundred could also be met at royal receptions in the Kremlin. They, maintaining close ties with the boyar environment and the administrative bureaucracy, sought in every possible way to imitate the feudal aristocracy in everyday life and in this regard were much closer to it than to the ordinary townspeople of Moscow. And the top merchants were united with small traders only by some professional traits and origin, but not by home life.

Cm.: Latysheva G.P. Trade relations of Moscow in the XII-XIV centuries: (based on materials from archaeological excavations of 1959-1960 in the Moscow Kremlin) // Antiquities of the Moscow Kremlin. M., 1971. S. 213-229. (Materials and research on the archeology of the USSR; No. 167); Kolyzin A.M. Trade of ancient Moscow (XII - mid-XV centuries). M., 2001.

Belenkaya D.A., Rozanova L.S. Knives with stamps from Zaryadye // Antiquities of the Slavs and Rus'. M., 1988. pp. 24-25.

PSRL. St. Petersburg, 1910. T. 20. Part 1. P. 282; Similar news is placed in the Sofia II Chronicle. See: Ibid. St. Petersburg, 1853. T. 6. P. 191.

Vygolov V.P. Decree. op.; compare: Zabelin I.E. History of the city of Moscow. M., 1990. P. 194; Skvortsov N.A. Archeology and topography of Moscow. M., 1913. P. 169.

Cm.: Florya B.N. Changes in the social composition of the population of the Moscow Kremlin at the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th centuries // Medieval Rus'. M., 1996. Issue. 1. pp. 111-119.

Perkhavko V.B. Merchants and stone construction in Moscow in the second half of the 15th - 16th centuries // Russian merchants from the Middle Ages to the New Age. Scientific Conference. Moscow, November 2-4, 1993: Abstracts of reports. M., 1993. P. 15-17; It's him. Architect and scribe Vasily Ermolin. M., 1997; It's him. Moscow merchant-builders of the 15th century // OI. 1997. No. 4. pp. 3-13.

ASEY. M., 1952. T. 1. S. 444-445, 596, 601, 630; Syroechkovsky V.E. Surozhan guests. M.; L, 1935. S. 27-29, 112.

Cm.: Sakharov A.M. Cities of North-Eastern Rus' of the XIV-XV centuries. M., 1959. S. 164-167; Syroechkovsky V.E. Decree. op. pp. 37-39; Tikhomirov M.N. Medieval Moscow in the XIV-XV centuries. M., 1997. S. 180-184; Cherepnin L.V. Formation of the Russian centralized state in the XIV-XV centuries. M., 1960. S. 415-421.