233 and uncle of Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich, I. N. Romanov, whose vast estates were located in the southern regions of the Muscovite state.'*^ It is known that Romanov used violence to increase his wealth by occupying land and confiscating serfs belonging to the service nobility. The service nobility in the town of Elets in southern Russia complained that many of their comrades “have left to live on [Romanov’s] boiar estates {boiarskaia votchina), and (that) others of our brothers, having been ruined and subjected to violence, have been spread in various directions. The discontent of the small and medium landowners (pomeshchiki) was also aroused by the fact that merchants could not, without great risk, “travel with their goods along the roads (on Romanov’s estates), and cannot in general move from village to village or from town to town for their needs.” This interest in the merchants’ freedom of movement was understandable; the merchants served as a conduit between the landowning service nobility and the market.’’® It was through their activities that the surpluses the landowners received from their peasants in the form of rents in kind were transformed into cash. The voevoda of Elets remained passive in this situation, and it is clear from the sources that he did not even report these conditions to the central administration in Moscow. I. N. Romanov and his men were therefore able to do whatever they wished without worrying about interference fromthe local administration.^' At the Zemskii sobor held in Moscow in 1648—1649, the interests of the service nobility {sluzhilye liudi) and the business groups were taken into consideration to a certain extent.’’’^ In the legal code, or Sobornoe ulozhenie, adopted by the assembly in 1649, the service nobility’s right to their service estates (pomest’e) was reinforced, as well as their peasants were legally bound to the estates in a condition of serfdom (otmena urochnykh let). The commercial interests were granted extensive rights to the commodity trade in the cities. Nonetheless, the voevoda administration remained unaltered in character throughout the period. The powerful landowners {sifnye liudi) and the voevodas continued to exploit the service nobility and the merchants. Even the most influential members of the Russian merchant class suffered ” 48 Ocherki (1955), 597. ■*** Chistiakova, 257. Ibid., 256—257. K. V. Bazilevich, “Kollektivnyc chelobit’ia torgovykh liudei i bor’ba za russkii rynok v pervoi polovine XVII veka,” Izvestiia Akademii Nauk SSSR, series VII, no. 2 (1932), 92—93. Chistiakova, 257; see also RBS, XXIII, 33—35. See above, p. 50.
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