48 such plans were made. Prince V. V. Golitsyn, Tsarevna Sofia Alekseevna’s confidant and Russia’s real ruler during the period 1682—1689, had heard about Charles XI’s resumption of estates and the military allotment system that monarch had consolidated in Sweden, and he proposed a similar system for Russia. Golitsyn proposed the establishment of a regular army to be supported by a poll tax imposed upon the peasantry. Thus, the old service nobility was to be deprived of its right to the occupancy of the service estates and to the serfs who went along with them, and was instead to receive cash payments as compensation for its military service. Had it been realized, this plan would have led to a great reduction in the number of serfs and a comparable increase in the number of tax-paying, or socalled black soil, peasants.'’’® However, a reform of this type was politically impossible in Russia because of the way the social position of the service nobility had changed during the seventeenth century. Members of this group became Increasingly unwilling to report for duty and instead remained on their estates to look after their economic interests. Although the noblemen who held pomest'e did, of course, lose their military importance during this period, they were not willing to relinquish control of these service estates. On the contrary, one very clear trend in seventeenth-century Russian society is the struggle of the service nobility to strengthen its right to the service estates and their serfs in an attempt to achieve parity with those who owned hereditary estates {votchina). The members of the service nobility had for a long time been faced with the problem of how to retain their serfs, since these peasants had a habit of deserting the service estates in large numbers and migrating to the estates of the great magnates, the church, or the monasteries, which usually offered an easier life.®^ The magnates were able to provide economic benefits such as cash loans to serfs who surrendered themselves to their protection. Then, too, there was often less exploitation on the large estates, since supporting the lord of the estate and his people required proportionately less of each peasant household when there were several hundred households to share the burden instead of a mere handful.'’’- In addition, the great estates often produced an agricultural surplus, which was an especially attractive factor for peasants whose crops had failed. There is even reason to assume that productivity was greater on the large estates with their better equipment and their better organization. Since the average pomest'e had no more than five peasant households, even the loss of one household involved an economic setback that was Hellie, 244, and Volkov (1970), 102. The following presentation is based primarily on Hellie, 124—127. For the extent of the landholdings of the Duma magnates, see Hellie, 33S note 42.
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