Millions of Living DeadFugitives, the Polish Border, and 18th-Century Russian Society
In 1761, Mikhail Lomonosov astutely noted that among other causes of population loss in Russia—such as diseases, murders, and accidents—was the issue of the "living dead" (zhivye pokoiniki): "From border provinces, people leave for other countries, especially for Poland, and, as a result, the Russian Crown loses its subjects." He subsequently compared the Russo-Polish border to a "great hole [velikaia skvazhina] that was impossible to seal" to prevent ordinary people from slipping out of the country. Some fled because of seigniorial demands and conscription, while others, affected by the Schism, moved to the Polish town of Vietka. Finally, he proposed that the Russian government should alleviate the tax burden and eliminate conscription to make borderland residents less likely to flee and use troops to bring the "living dead" back to the empire.1 Lomonosov's concern with population loss was widely shared by his contemporaries and further accentuated by several official reports that mentioned "over a million people" [End Page 269] dwelling abroad.2 Thus in his comments, Lomonosov succinctly captures the essence of a problem that figured on the imperial agenda throughout the 18th century: the existence of a porous western border that created an opportunity for many thousands of Russian subjects to escape and begin a new life in the Commonwealth.
From the 1720s onward, Russian rulers became continuously preoccupied with both the scale of emigration to Poland-Lithuania and the state of the western border. They viewed these issues as intertwined, because imperial subjects would not have been able to leave if the border had been sufficiently guarded. Considerable efforts hence were exerted to restrict departures. At the same time, the population flight abroad revealed the most oppressive features of Russia's social order and prompted government administrators to consider existing policies on noble-peasant relations and Old Believers. The most ambitious and problematic point on the agenda, nevertheless, was to discover ways to return fugitives to Russia.
This article investigates these interrelated processes by focusing on interactions between the authorities and fugitives (peasants, town residents, Old Believers, soldiers), which took a number of forms—such as petitions, deployment of military force, and issuance of amnesties. Considered together, they allow us to understand the "imperial repertoire," the ruling strategies used by Russian central and provincial officials to deal with specific situations that arose because of the problematic border with Poland-Lithuania. As Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper note, "an imperial repertoire" was not "a preset formula for rule" but improvisations and decisions often "shaped by past practices and constrained by context."3 Specifically, we argue that attention to the porousness of the Russo-Polish border and processes associated with it enables us to view the imperial state not as rigid and limited in its capacity to control the population but as experimenting with various approaches and constantly adapting to changing circumstances along the border and within the country.4 [End Page 270]
Likewise, the examination of the western border complicates our understanding of cross-border migrations. Commonly, social historians tend to simplify this issue by presenting it as resistance to oppressive features of the imperial regime and ignoring fugitives' expectations for potential benefits in the receiving country.5 By contrast, historians of borderlands argue that we need to view borders "as historical constructs that empower some at the expense of others," and therefore our task is to understand the effect that borders exert on different people.6 This article demonstrates that ordinary people had motivations and considerations that went beyond resistance and were based on their knowledge of border conditions, advantages, and freedoms available in different places. For those living on the Polish-Lithuanian side, the border represented a bargaining chip that helped them interact with the Russian government at a different level, as independent parties that could make demands and concur with or disregard official orders when they so pleased.
The exploration of the early modern Russo-Polish border also contributes to the growing field of borderlands studies, whose scholars actively research the significance of mapping, treaties, demarcations, negotiations, and violence for understanding processes occurring in European border regions.7 While also paying attention to these issues, this article underscores the competition for "human capital" as one of the key factors that shaped the relations between Russia and Poland-Lithuania and led to the formation of specific social dynamics in the borderlands. The focus on this competition allows us to portray ordinary people residing there both as [End Page 271] historical actors with their own motivations and choices and as human resources vital for the states' economic, social, and military goals.
The article utilizes a variety of sources, such as state laws, government reports, Old Believers' petitions, and cases of fugitives. Its first part investigates the emergence of the western border in the 1720s and the government's attempts to construct a line of defenses to prevent emigration to the Commonwealth. Moving away from the issue of population containment, the second part explores how the Russian government experimented with solutions based on persuasion and force to return its subjects. Specifically, it demonstrates the influence of population flight abroad on the development of the serf question and policies toward Old Believers during the reigns of Anna Ioannovna and Elizabeth Petrovna. The third and final section analyzes how imperial subjects on both sides of the border used legal and illegal means to take advantage of imperial amnesties effective during the 1780s and 1790s to change their formal social estate within Russia.
Russia's Western Border and the Issue of Fugitives in the 1720s–30s
In the spring of 1732, Engineer-Major Gustav von Ludwig received an order to draw up a plan for the Russo-Polish border and identify segments that needed to be strengthened "for the better containment of fugitives." While preparing for this important mission, Ludwig requested copies of previous descriptions and maps of the border. But it turned out that none of the government bodies—such as the Senate, College of Foreign Affairs, and War College—could provide this information. As one of the reports clarified, most of the border between Russia and Poland-Lithuania had not been demarcated for a long time. Although the Treaty of Perpetual Peace of 1686 included several articles on demarcation, both sides agreed to delegate this task to special joint-border commissions, which were to convene in the future.8 By the 1730s, however, little progress had been made, and nobody knew where exactly the border lay.9
Upon his arrival, Ludwig was no less disappointed. Even local inhabitants had only a vague understanding of the actual boundary, as it mostly ran along "great muds," "impassable swamps," and "dense forests." His work proceeded somewhat more easily in lands owned by nobles, whose [End Page 272] territorial claims offered better indications of demarcation. However, left legally unconfirmed, these claims could also lead to conflicts, because both Russian and Polish-Lithuanian nobles asserted rights of possession over the same bits of land along the border, creating a tense atmosphere that was well summarized by Ludwig: "Russians and Poles … have between each other great disputes and ferocious fights."10
It comes as no surprise that this unrealistic mission failed. In October 1732, Ludwig reported: "[having] statements only from one side makes it impossible to determine the border, especially when [many] do not know where it is." In other words, mapping the border was infeasible without its delimitation, which, in turn, required assistance from the Commonwealth. In the officer's pessimistic estimation, the demarcation of approximately 3,000 versts would take up to 30 years and could be executed only if both states collaborated. After reading the report, the Senate requested that Ludwig at least draft a plan of Russian border defenses, but even that proved impossible "without permission to clear forests" in disputed territories.11
Although the problems of population flight abroad and the porous western border could be traced to at least the second half of the 17th century,12 they aggravated and demanded an urgent resolution in the 1720s and 1730s for several interconnected reasons.13 First, the unauthorized movement of peasants and other people within and outside the state borders undermined key domestic reforms, undertaken by the Petrine government between 1718 and 1724, whose major goals were the introduction [End Page 273] of the poll tax and effective mechanisms of social control, such as population censuses and internal passports. Second, the reforms themselves had an unsettling effect on peasants and resulted in the dramatic intensification of their flight. While many moved to the Don, the Urals, and the Volga region where the state's grasp was still weak, thousands from the western provinces escaped abroad.14 The latter trend was especially disconcerting, since these people were not only lost as taxpayers and army recruits but also benefited Poland-Lithuania demographically and economically.
Finally, Polish landowners interested in compensating for their losses after the devastating Great Northern War were actively engaged in attracting Russian peasants by force and incentives.15 Commonly, powerful nobles employed special scouts, who traveled around the country looking for people interested in resettling, then delivered guards and carts to help them transfer. New settlers were granted land and substantial tax incentives to establish households. To gain these benefits, others simply fled from "worse" to "better" landlords, knowing that their former masters were unlikely to recover them by force or court process.16 Some Polish and [End Page 274] Lithuanian landowners sought to conceal their illegal harboring altogether by labeling runaways as free people. For example, according to the inventory books of the Renava estate, Telšiai District (powiat), there were 56 serf and 31 newly arrived families in 1757, whereas all newly arrived families were listed as free people in 1760.17
These observations help us understand why imperial subjects regarded the Commonwealth as a haven where they could move as settlers on beneficial terms and even as free people.18 Other internal Russian factors were no less significant. Serf owners' capriciousness and demands for labor, the persecution of Old Believers, high prices on salt and wine, famine, and conscription motivated many to emigrate.19 For discontented Russians, the situation in Poland-Lithuania and the porous western border constituted an extraordinary opportunity to evade Russia's most oppressive features and begin their lives anew.
In addition to solitary peasants, families—and even whole villages, with all their belongings and livestock—set out for Poland-Lithuania.20 So did 53 serfs owned by the nobleman Ul´ian Borozdin, who fled from his villages in Pustorzhev District in 1724.21 A year later, many peasants from Smolensk District fled across the Polish border.22 In some instances, Polish and Lithuanian nobles escorted imperial subjects to their estates. In other cases, they employed market criers to announce that all new settlers from Russia would receive obligation-free leases for a period from 15 to 30 years.23
Precisely in the 1720s, the number of people escaping to the Commonwealth reached catastrophic proportions and wreaked devastation on border districts (uezdy) as testified, among other sources, by collective [End Page 275] petitions from nobles residing there.24 According to one petition, submitted by nobles from Smolensk, Novgorod, Pskov, and other provinces in 1720, a great number of people abandoned their villages and moved to Lithuania: "Because of runaways, many peasant households lay desolate, for which we pay regular and additional taxes and provide recruits and laborers. As there is nothing to pay from the remaining households, not only village inhabitants but also [some] nobles with their wives and children, having abandoned their homes, live by alms."25 In 1723, 21 nobles from the Pskov, Velikie Luki, Toropets, and Pustorzhev districts submitted another petition, also stressing the enormous financial damage caused by the flight of their peasants across the border.26 Not coincidentally, the Senate's review of such collective petitions laid the foundation for the first serious set of measures aimed at the creation and enforcement of defenses along the Russo-Polish border.
In a decree of 8 March 1723, the Senate attempted to address the dire situation along the western border: "The Senate has learned that numerous peasants from many districts take their wives, children, and belongings and run away to Poland." To thwart the exodus, "outposts should be constructed in towns and appropriate places along the border and manned with soldiers."27 As illustrated by the decree, the line of defenses was initially created with the foremost goal of preventing peasant flight and containing Russian subjects within the state boundaries. This approach to the Polish-Lithuanian border distinguishes it from other fortified boundaries, such as the Belgorod, Tsaritsyn, and Orenburg lines, which were constructed with the principal objective of defending Russian territories from military incursions from the south and southeast.28
The War College assigned the execution of this ambitious project to commanding officers of regiments stationed near the border. Lacking clear [End Page 276]
A map fragment showing part of the Russo-Polish Border from Velikie Luki (top) to Smolensk District (bottom)
Source: Atlas Rossiiskii, sostoiashchii iz deviatnadtsati spetsial´nykh kart, predstavliaiushchikh Vserossiiskuiu imperiiu s pogranichnymi zemliami (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi akademii nauk, 1745).
instructions and maps, they turned for this information to border districts' voivodes who were tasked "to report on the number of places where outposts were to be established and the distance between them." The poor organization and absence of a single governing body immensely complicated the creation and maintenance of the border defenses. In one complaint, officers wrote that there were too few sentries to guard all the roads along the border, prompting them to prioritize major ones and obstructing minor paths with abatises (zaseki).29
In the meantime, provincial administrators and noblemen continued to grumble about the large number of fleeing peasants. In late May 1723, the Smolensk vice-governor reported that outposts between Velikie Luki and Smolensk were still unmanned, and peasants encountered no obstacles as they made their way abroad. The Senate dispatched a government official to investigate this alarming situation. According to one report, a stretch of 434 versts at the border (fig. 1) was controlled by the Iaroslavl´ [End Page 277] dragoon regiment. In total, there were 109 outposts guarded by 289 dragoons and 15 officers. Two or three men therefore served at each outpost and sometimes had to carry out their duty on difficult terrain. For instance, two soldiers guarded an outpost near the village of Brui, Smolensk District, and the nearest outposts lay seven versts in one direction and five versts in another.30
Unsurprisingly, such defenses could hardly cover the entire border, let alone prevent people from traversing it. In 1724, a large armed group, with many carts and horses, approached an outpost at midnight. In response to the guards' questions, they called themselves "servicemen" (gosudarevy liudi) who were traveling abroad at the tsar's decree. The guards refused to let them through, offering to let them spend a night in a village nearby. The servicemen "replied that they would cut them, the dragoons, to pieces and scatter their bodies." A skirmish ensued. Peasants from the village and dragoons from a neighboring outpost soon came to the rescue, but none of the trespassers was captured.31 But outpost guards could not always provide such fierce resistance. While leading a group of Russian serfs across the border in July 1724, the Polish noble Jurgilewskii, the head of a large armed band, publicly flogged three dragoons at an outpost near the village of Zalkovo.32 In response to another unsuccessful fight between outpost dragoons and fugitive peasants from Smolensk District, the government had to approve the use of firearms and other weapons in similar situations from then on.33 Furthermore, the Senate received reports about some outpost guards who made no effort to stop runaways and, "as a result, Russia suffers from desolation and delays in tax collection."34
The Senate and War College did not ignore these frequent and vexing reports about the emigration and conflicts in the borderlands. On the contrary, they issued orders to put into place new outposts and abatises and stressed the importance of dispatching additional soldiers and dragoons to secure the border.35 In addition to the extensive length and challenging terrain, a lack of military personnel and relations with western neighbors further complicated the situation. Monthly reports to the Senate included [End Page 278] information about very few apprehended runaways,36 while other accounts unmistakably spoke of tens of thousands of Russian subjects already residing abroad.37 During the War of Polish Succession (1733–35), the War College acknowledged the hopelessness of finding more troops, instead, proposing the employment of local nobles for the western defenses.38
The end of the war brought the possibility for reallocating the troops to the Russo-Polish border. Appointed to assess the current condition of the defenses, Colonel Lavrov informed the War College in 1738 that there were 2,073 soldiers, stationed at 446 outposts, who guarded 1,624 versts stretching from Riga to Little Russia. Considering the current defenses insufficient, Lavrov increased the number of outposts to 530 and located them in such a manner that assigned border guards could ride and meet every day and that all major roads used by large groups of fugitives were under control. The colonel also requested that the War College bring the total number of guards to 4,112 on this part of the border.39 The issue with insufficient military personnel, however, remained unresolved. In 1739, Anna Ioannovna decreed that an additional regiment from the Smolensk garrison should be assigned to outposts from Velikie Luki to Livonia to prevent fugitives from moving abroad.40 As a result, the Russian government improved its capacity to police main roads, but it could hardly control a multitude of small roads and forest paths. The best it could do was to obstruct them with trees.41
In the first half of the 18th century, while Russia's concern with population flight forced it to allocate additional resources to demarcate and enforce the border, Poland-Lithuania and especially its nobility did not share that concern but rather benefited from the uncertainty. The very aspiration of the Russian side to create a formal linear boundary was probably considered unnecessary by the Polish government, which viewed its territory as an inventory of possessions (towns and villages), not as a physical [End Page 279] space delimited by specific boundaries.42 This view was not unique to the Commonwealth but prevalent in Western Europe at the time. In his influential study of the French-Spanish border in the Pyrenees, Peter Sahlins demonstrates that until the late 17th century, territorial boundaries remained unimportant in comparison with the boundaries of jurisdictional competence in the borderland. In the next century, however, the creation of a military border occurred to control violence and prevent possible incursions by neighbors.43
For Russian subjects discontented with seigniorial taxes, and the social order in general, the uncertainty offered an opportunity for a new beginning. No less important were the benefits promised by Poles and Lithuanians that reinforced this opportunity. At the same time, the construction and maintenance of the border exposed the limitations of the Russian Empire in administering its territory and controlling its people's geographic mobility. Solving these intertwined problems required a reexamination of policies toward different population groups.
The Recovery of Fugitives from the Commonwealth, 1730–50s
Reports about many thousands of Russian fugitives already residing abroad prompted the imperial government to consider various methods for effecting their return. In January 1734, Anna Ioannovna made a decisive step in this direction by appealing to all her subjects abroad: "It has become known that not only military deserters but also town residents, peasants, and Little Russians have abandoned their homes and fatherland and moved across foreign borders … where they suffer and wander without observance of and guidance on Christian law." The decree promised amnesty to those runaways who returned to their former places of residence or service within two months after its issuance. But severe punishment awaited all [End Page 280] those who chose to disregard the "empress's mercy" and were captured.44 The decree thus outlined two different approaches to fugitives abroad: a "carrot" for voluntary repatriates and a "stick" for the rest.
In a veiled reference to "Christian law," the empress pointed out her willingness to accept people who digressed from the "proper" spiritual path and turned into "schismatics." Old Believer communities in Poland-Lithuania had grown considerably since the last quarter of the 17th century by welcoming into their midst peasants, soldiers, and other fugitives from Russia's western provinces and left-bank Ukraine. Seeking to lure them back, Anna permitted some Old Believers whose former localities were distant from the border to settle in Ukraine with the proviso that a special list with details on their former statuses and places of origin be compiled.45 Despite acknowledging that a "very low number" of people had returned so far, in July 1734, the empress extended the amnesty for another month and a half. The official stance on fugitives remaining abroad, however, became much harsher: "If within the specified term, [they] do not arrive voluntarily … then couriers from Our regiments will be dispatched for their search and apprehension."46 Doubting the efficacy of amnesties, however, the government began to consider utilizing the troops that were campaigning in the Commonwealth during the War of Polish Succession. Nobles from the border provinces were also in favor of a more aggressive approach.47
At the same time, Anisim Semenovich Maslov, a Senate oberprocurator, initiated a discussion in government circles, arguing for a nonviolent solution to the issue of population flight abroad.48 He was on friendly terms with Avraam Poluboiarinov, one of the empress's secretaries, and enjoyed the patronage of Ernst Johann von Biron. Using these connections, Maslov personally presented a project to Anna Ioannovna in July 1734. Rather than returning fugitives by force, he proposed investigating the motives behind their decision to move abroad in the first place.49 He learned that the situation was dire in Smolensk gubernia, where as early [End Page 281] as January peasants suffered from low grain reserves and sustained themselves by "eating grass and rotten wood." Maslov noted that not only hunger but also high taxes, conscription, and seigniorial exploitation drove peasants to Poland-Lithuania and viewed the solution to this problem in the overall betterment of the social and economic conditions of rural life. Specifically, he suggested canceling the poll tax for peasants residing in the western districts and obligating landlords to help their peasants in need, measures that were to be announced in the next "merciful manifesto" for returnees from abroad. But as these measures had only short-term value, Maslov also insisted on the creation of a general "regulation" that would limit landowners' rights to exploit their serfs:
As the well-being and security of the state are founded on land and naval forces that are not only recruited from peasants but also financed and supplied by their taxes, [we] should view troops and peasants as one human corps. As long as the condition of the peasantry is good, that of the troops will be good as well. To improve their condition … it should be ordered throughout the state that peasants know where and how much to pay to their landlords and which works to carry out, without excesses. So [peasants'] departures will not ruin landlords and bailiffs in the future.50
The empress recognized the significance of this project and ordered the Cabinet of Ministers to form a special commission, with Maslov as a participant, to consider his proposals immediately.51 The discussion of the issue of fugitives abroad thus prompted the government, in the words of Vasilii Osipovich Kliuchevskii, "to boldly pose … the urgent question of the legal regulation of serfdom."52 Nevertheless, the consideration of the project did not proceed smoothly. In his letter to Poluboiarinov, Maslov railed against the protracted debates that revealed the "shame" of their participants—ministers and senators—as this project concerned every one of them: "peasants fare so poorly because neither previously nor now have [ministers and senators] provided assistance [to them]." In Maslov's [End Page 282] opinion, the participants' personal reasons inexcusably hampered the timely resolution of such a crucial state matter.53
On 31 July 1734, the Cabinet of Ministers finished a report that constituted a compromise between the members of the ruling elite on whether to apply a "carrot or a stick" to recover imperial subjects from Poland-Lithuania.54 First, Maslov's proposal to issue a new manifesto was approved. In addition to the pardon, returnees were promised concrete social and economic measures of support from the state and landowners.55 But the Cabinet evidently did not believe in the manifesto's effectiveness and chose to prioritize the solution by force. The presence of the Russian army in the Commonwealth afforded a real opportunity for the mass expulsion of fugitives. The proposal to limit the power of landlords over their serfs continued to be ignored.
Despite this defeat, Maslov persisted. He prepared a draft decree and submitted it for the highest consideration. The Senate was supposed to hold public talks, with elected nobles as participants, to discuss this project and devise measures prescribing that landlords "should keep their peasants in good order, and not treat them recklessly and immoderately, nor burden them with excessive taxes." The empress, however, ordered those involved "to postpone" (obozhdat´) this project and, at the same time, affirmed the Cabinet's proposal to deploy forces to recover fugitives from abroad.56
The Russian troops returning from the War of the Polish Succession were well suited for this task. Foreseeing potential complications, the Cabinet of Ministers instructed commanding officers to act covertly to ferret out fugitives' whereabouts and only then seize as many as possible.57 Five regiments led by Colonel Iakov Sytin were given a particular target, the Old Believers' community in Vietka. In April 1734, an event known as the "first Vietka expulsion" (vygonka) took place, when the troops pillaged and burned Old Believers' slobodas and delivered to Russia almost 14,000 people.58 At about the same time, another regiment stationed in Lithuania succeeded in relocating at least several hundred fugitives.59 Except for [End Page 283] people of unknown origin (nepomniashchie rodstva) sent for settlement to Ingermanland gubernia, the returnees were to be provided with supplies and delivered back to their former localities.60
In relocating the Old Believers, the government sought to attain both religious and demographic goals. Not only was it vital to recover as many as possible of those who had fled, but they also needed to be brought into the fold of the Orthodox Church. According to the senatorial instruction, certain monasteries were to serve as prisons for especially dangerous "schismatic teachers"—such as monks, nuns, and hermits—whom the monastic clergy needed to convince to convert to Orthodoxy.61 But the results of this operation completely defied the government's expectations. While being transferred from town to town, some Old Believers managed to vanish. Others, including "schismatic teachers," ran away after their return or escaped from the prisons. Most importantly, rather than becoming Orthodox, many returnees, as deeply religious people, began to preach in urban and rural areas, thus facilitating the spread of the Old Belief and inspiring many peasants and townsfolk to flee across the Polish border.62
Into the 1750s, the knowledge of this failure lingered among government officials, some of whom recognized the inefficacy of forced relocations to solve the issue of fugitive Old Believers. In 1756, the Senate opined that "there is no way to return them by force," and the College of Foreign Affairs similarly stated several years later: "Expelled by the troops from Poland-Lithuania and returned to their landlords, Russian fugitives not only left [their homes] but also enticed many others [to flee] with them to Poland."63 Additionally, the successful installation of August III as the king of the Commonwealth made such military expeditions unacceptable since they could jeopardize Russia's relations with its western neighbor.64
All this helps us explain a fascinating turn in the policy toward Old Believers that occurred during Elizabeth Petrovna's reign.65 As the prerevolutionary historian Mikhail Lileev noted, the change in the official [End Page 284] approach toward Old Believers and fugitives abroad overall occurred by the force of circumstances and likely stood in contrast to the government's views on the issue. "While some reports mentioned up to a million fugitives in Poland-Lithuania during Elizabeth's reign … the policy on Old Believers, consolidated in the reign of Peter I, could only dissuade rather than encourage their return to Russia." To attract them, the government was forced to reconsider its general policy and make significant concessions to the "schismatics."66
As the most organized groups among fugitives abroad, Old Believers themselves initiated negotiations with the Russian government and submitted at least ten petitions between 1749 and 1762 promising to repatriate if their terms were fulfilled (fig. 2).67 But why did different communities of Old Believers want to return to Russia if they could continue living in Poland-Lithuania? A reading of petitions indicates that their terms of return were quite uniform: (1) permission to settle on suitable lands, preferably near the border and Little Russia's Old Believers' villages in Starodub; (2) their registration as state peasants, merchants, or Cossacks in exchange for the payment of taxes and service; and (3) the guarantee of religious toleration and the right to build churches and practice Orthodox Christianity according to the pre-Nikonian books. The petitions, therefore, suggest that their position abroad was not as secure as it might seem and that the Polish-Lithuanian nobility did not shy away from taking advantage of them when necessary. Also, some Old Believers were forced to live in abysmal conditions lacking farmlands or surrounded by forests and swamps.68 During the Seven Years' War, others complained that Polish nobles ruined and robbed their houses and fields out of fear that the returning Russian army would escort all fugitives back to the empire.69 These petitions thus represented an attempt to secure a better deal that would ensure freedom from religious persecution and improvement in Old Believers' socioeconomic standing.70 [End Page 285]
Fragment of a petition submitted by Vietka Old Believers in 1760 containing their conditions of repatriation
Source: RGADA f. 248, op. 113, d. 1491, l. 54.
Through various channels of communication, the upper echelons of government not only learned about but also began to seriously consider these petitions, as they opened up prospects for the recovery of thousands of imperial subjects.71 Many prominent statesmen contended that the government would benefit from welcoming Old Believers for demographic and financial reasons. On 18 January 1755, for example, Chancellor Aleksei Bestuzhev-Riumin and Vice-Chancellor Mikhail Vorontsov stated pragmatically: "It would be more useful if runaway schismatics returned to the empire and began to pay the soul tax than if they remained in a foreign state and the revenue from them was lost." The College of Foreign Affairs saw little danger in permitting them to use the pre-Nikonian books as long as the authorities monitored their activities.
Tasked with examining the "laws on schismatics" for the composition of a new law code, Collegiate Councilor Aleksei Iakovlev, however, viewed this matter in a different light. In February 1755, he warned the Senate about the "wicked nature" of Old Believers who would not miss an opportunity to spread the "schism."72 Other senators expressed a similar opinion in [End Page 286] September 1756, stressing the potential dangers of trusting such fugitives, who "stole from their landlords and fell into the schism" and who "upon their return might abuse their freedom." According to the senators' proposal, Old Believers should be permitted to settle on vacant lands and be provided all kinds of support, but when a considerable number of them returned, "it would be possible to hand over seigniorial peasants to their owners and send others where they were supposed to be; because of this, [they] would be unable to sow their schismatic heresy to seduce other simple people."73
At this point, granting religious freedom and other privileges was out of the question for the Senate, as this decision would facilitate the spread of the Old Belief and undermine the property rights of those nobles who lost their peasants to flight. It appears that the realization of this project also came to a standstill because of the objections of Ivan Kostiurin, the deputy governor of Kyiv gubernia, who on 12 September 1756 cautioned against sending Old Believers to their owners, which could hamper the return of others and cause even more people to flee abroad.74
Nevertheless, Old Believers' negotiations bore fruit, and St. Petersburg finally acceded to their requests. In 1761, the Senate instructed Cavalry Captain Dmitrii Popov to facilitate the repatriation and settlement of fugitives from abroad on vacant lands near St. Elizabeth Fort. All returnees had already been granted a six-year tax waiver and the right to register as state peasants or townspeople. After the end of the exemption period, they were to "pay taxes like other Old Believers in Starodub."75 On 29 January 1762, Peter III issued the famous decree "On the Composition of a Special Regulation for Schismatics," which sanctioned their resettlement to designated places in Siberia and, importantly, promised them religious freedom, since "those schismatics are Christians who simply persist in their superstition." The decree explained this decision by referring to the government's past communications with "schismatics who live in Poland and other foreign places," among whom "many desire to return to Russia to practice their faith."76 In December 1762, finally, Catherine II not only confirmed the Old Believers' freedom from religious persecution but also extended the number of places where they could settle and gain a temporary tax waiver.77 The following year, the amnesty was extended to all Russian fugitives abroad.78 [End Page 287]
Conventionally, scholars associate the transition to the tolerant attitude toward Old Believers with Peter III and Catherine's initiatives and commitment to ideals of Enlightenment. For instance, Robert Crummey notes: "Acting on the Enlightenment notion that religious toleration was both morally sound and practically useful, the two monarchs drastically changed official policy toward religious dissenters."79 Likewise, Grigorii Potashenko credits Peter III "who managed to make a decisive showing with respect to the Old Belief question" during his brief reign.80 However, the actual development of this policy was a result of over ten years of complex negotiations between the Russian government and fugitive communities in Poland-Lithuania. At a central and provincial level, imperial officials strenuously deliberated as to which course of actions was the most appropriate and succeeded in convincing Elizabeth to accede to petitioners' appeals and offer tangible benefits to "schismatic" repatriates. A reading of archival files strongly suggests that the empress herself viewed this question as part of a larger issue of fugitives abroad, in whose recovery she showed great interest. When Peter III ascended to the throne, the matter of Old Believers was pretty much decided, and all that was left to do was sign the paperwork.
The Turn to Amnesties, 1779–95
By the 1770s, the government had had sufficient time to assess the efficacy of its change in official policy toward Old Believers and other fugitives abroad. The amnesty of 1762 had resulted in the repatriation of many thousands of people. For example, 14,373 men and women were registered at outposts in a brief period between 31 December 1764 and 3 March 1765.81 For some border provinces, the demographic effects of the amnesty were very significant. For instance, while the population of Elisavetgrad Province totaled 24,267 people as of the early 1760s, it had increased by 13,733, due mostly to the influx of Old Believers from Poland-Lithuania, by the end of the decade. By 1769, however, the migratory flow came to a near halt because of the growing conflict with the Ottoman Empire and raids by the Crimean Tatars.82 Albeit far from comprehensive, these numbers indicate the success of Catherine II's early appeal to her subjects abroad. Even if it [End Page 288] had a considerable impact in localized cases, though, this "success" was modest at best, bringing thousands of imperial subjects back while borderland nobles continued to emphasize that many more chose to remain in the Commonwealth or fled after the amnesty's proclamation.83
The partial success of previous efforts and nobles' ongoing complaints probably explain the empress's decision to issue a new manifesto on 5 May 1779. It invited all imperial subjects—soldiers, recruits, peasants, townspeople, and others—who had fled across the border and never been handed over by neighboring states to return to Russia. The terms of repatriation were exceptional indeed. First of all, returnees were granted a pardon for all crimes other than murder. Moreover, they received a six-year tax exemption to assist them during the initial period of settlement. But most significantly, they gained the right "to choose a way of life"—a social estate (soslovie) that they wished to join upon return. They could enter military service, move to state-owned lands, or register in towns as merchants or townspeople. All these choices were similarly available to serfs, who could also decide to move to their former landlords' holdings. In addition to having fled before the manifesto's issuance, the only other eligibility criterion was that individuals had to repatriate within one year if they lived near the border and two years for those residing in distant places.84 By crossing the border at the right moment, therefore, fugitives abroad gained a rare opportunity for upward social mobility in imperial Russia.
The meaning of this extraordinary amnesty could be easily overlooked if it were an isolated measure. Satisfied with its results, however, Catherine extended the deadline for returnees in 1780: "We saw with pleasure that Our exhortations, founded on humanity and mercy, led many people in hiding to the true path … but because of the expansive nature of Our Empire … [our invitation] could not have time to reach others."85 With minor clarifications, such amnesties were repeated three more times during Catherine's reign, usually in celebration of significant events: the inauguration of the Bronze Horseman in 1782, and the 25th anniversary of Catherine's accession in 1787, and the victory over the Ottoman Empire in 1793.86 Between 1779 and 1795, Russian subjects abroad had almost 11 [End Page 289] years to avail themselves of the opportunity to repatriate and change their social estate.
Several scholars have minimized the significance of Catherine's amnesties, arguing that they failed or yielded results opposite from the one intended. According to Tamara Mamsik, the sheer number of such decrees issued between the 1750s and 1790s speaks of their overall inefficacy.87 Roger Bartlett also notes, "This [policy of recovery] had the perverse effect of encouraging greater flight by serfs who hoped to return and benefit from the same terms."88 Although some people certainly did so, the available fragmentary statistics suggest that thousands responded to Catherine's invitations. The Polotsk Viceregency provided a list of 2,208 repatriates for 1781 and another 3,102 for 1783 and 1784.89 Riga officials informed the College of Foreign Affairs about 3,038 people who arrived between 1793 and 1795.90 These numbers contrast starkly with reports of "millions" of imperial subjects dwelling abroad, but returning some was certainly better than none at all.
Returnees' accounts underscore both the variety of paths that led them to the Commonwealth and the multiple options available to them upon return. Brought to Poland as a little child, Ivan Spasskii had no knowledge of his true origin when he arrived in Polotsk in 1783 and "pronounced his wish to register as a town resident in Kazan." A household serf from St. Petersburg, Sergei Iakovlev, had been drafted in an infantry regiment 26 years before. After campaigning against the Prussians and Ottomans, he deserted while his regiment was in Moldavia. In 1783, he wished to become a Kyiv resident.91 In 1794, the serf widow Matrena Ivanova and her daughter petitioned in Polotsk to be settled on crown lands in the Novgorod Viceregency. Matrena and her husband had fled to Courland 11 years previously. In the same year, Andrei Kolenov, a fugitive musketeer, who had lived in Poland since 1788, said that he wished to resume his military service in Smolensk.92
Individual accounts provide only limited utility in understanding to which social categories returnees preferred to belong. A 1784 report from [End Page 290] the Voronezh Viceregency about the distribution of 411 repatriates, however, compensates for this shortcoming. The majority were registered as town residents (104), "economic" peasants (51), court peasants (33), and single homesteaders (17). Another 8 people became merchants, civil servants, voiskovye obyvateli, or "schismatics." A group of 35 chose to return to their previous places of military service or landlords, and 50 were transferred for registration to other viceregencies. Finally, 69 fled before or after registration, 1 died, 1 was exiled to Orenburg as a person of unknown origin, and 42 remained under examination because the viceregency had not yet received papers confirming their identities.93 Although we can hardly fathom with full confidence a given person's reason for making a specific choice, these data demonstrate most returnees' aspiration to join the categories of Russian society that offered more independence and freedom.
No matter how exceptional, the benefits offered by manifestos only extended to those fugitives who resided abroad. Their counterparts who fled within Russia—the Don region, the Volga region, Siberia, etc.—were subject to state laws and, when captured, were to be returned to their former places of residence. According to the decree of 1754, while lashing was the proper punishment for state and crown peasants, nobles had the right to discipline their serfs as they wished.94 Catherine II's approach toward internal runaways remained consistent with decrees issued by her predecessors, and her manifestos emphasized that only fugitives abroad were eligible for imperial mercy.95
These clarifications did not stop some people within Russia, who also realized the exceptional nature of amnesties both as a means to change their social status and escape the exploitive features of the imperial sociolegal framework. As the timely crossing of the border represented the key criterion for one's eligibility, some attempted to concoct new identities to pass as returnees from abroad.96 In 1784, Kirill Estifeev appeared in Revel (now Tallinn) and "pronounced his wish" to register as a state peasant in St. Petersburg gubernia. He was a former serf from Luga District, from [End Page 291] where he, with his wife and two daughters, had escaped and moved to the Commonwealth several years before. The rest of his account was otherwise unremarkable, except for the following: "Estifeev circumvented all established border outposts and towns and arrived at the Revel Viceregency in a place that has no shared border with the Polish Kingdom." This fact led viceregency officials to suspect that Estifeev could have fled directly from his landlord to Revel. A further examination revealed that another 16 returnees similarly "bypassed outposts and traveled through Pernov (Pärnu) and Dörpt (Tartu) districts in Livonia until reaching Revel."97
The viceregency administration found itself at an impasse. Since these persons did not register at border outposts as they were supposed to, they had no official evidence of ever being abroad. At the same time, all local authorities were commanded to treat returnees "with leniency and mercy" in order not to discourage others from coming to Russia. In response to a request for clarification, the Senate agreed that the returnees' accounts seemed suspicious and that it was necessary to establish their true identities. Meanwhile, they were to receive one-month passes and remain in their current location.98 Albeit incomplete and lacking a resolution, this case underlines weaknesses in identification and procedures that ordinary people could easily exploit. Had the clerks in the Revel Viceregency been less meticulous in their examination of returnees' statements, Estifeev and others would simply have been accepted and enjoyed the benefits granted to returnees.
Another feature that undermined the credibility of the supplicants' narratives in Estifeev's case was the absence of official passes. According to the established procedure, each returnee had to register at a border outpost and obtain a pass (bilet) that served as proof that the person had dwelled abroad and contained information about his/her background and destination as well as an oath of compliance with the law. Border officials' seals and signatures additionally ensured the authenticity of these documents that could be verified upon request.99 In some ways, such passes were similar to the internal passports provided to peasants and townspeople to travel for work in the 18th and 19th centuries. Like passports, passes also became the object of forgery, thereby opening new opportunities for their holders.100 [End Page 292]
While traveling to his residence in Novgorod in 1783, the viceregent Aleksandr Protasov received a petition from several nobles of Kresttsy District (okruga). They complained about "fugitive returnees from Poland" who enticed their serfs to run away in the hope of obtaining passes to "become forever free." For this reason, many of their peasants were looking for guides (provodtsy), and these guides were tempting others to flee. In an attempt to address the petition, Protasov dispatched a squadron of dragoons who managed to arrest seven people carrying counterfeit papers. One of the interrogees, Arefii Alfimov, said that Iakov Matveev, a fugitive peasant, came to his landlord's house in September 1782. Matveev claimed to be a Polotsk town resident and convinced Alfimov to run away, promising to help him register "wherever he wished." They went to Polotsk, where Matveev procured a "paper" in exchange for nine rubles that Alfimov had previously agreed to pay. With this paper, the latter was then accepted into Rybinsk town society.
The second interrogee, Savva Sablin, testified that he had returned from abroad and obtained a pass in Polotsk. There he met Nikifor Luk´ianov, who for some reason gave him a fake seal with an emblem, ink, and wax "to print passports." Luk´ianov asked Sablin to deliver a few letters to his mother and sister in Vyshnii Volochek, where the returnee had been traveling before his arrest. This shady story prompted Protasov to compare Sablin's pass with Luk´ianov's letters, helping him discover that they were written by the same hand. Afterward, the governor immediately sent messages to all border magistracies about the forgery orchestrated by Luk´ianov and Matveev and the need to make sure that all returnees had actually resided abroad. The Novgorod Viceregency then compared the seal seized from Sablin with the imprint on Alfimov's pass and found them to be almost identical. Meanwhile, captured in Polotsk, Luk´ianov confessed to forging passes and was sentenced to 15 blows of the knout, slitting of the nostrils, and exile for hard labor.101
As mentioned above, nobles and peasants in border districts associated amnesties not just with a right to repatriate but also with an opportunity to become "free." Rather than an abstract notion of freedom, they referred to specific terms enabling returning serfs to break ties with their former [End Page 293] landlords and join another social estate.102 The link between amnesties and freedom was especially strong during the uprising in Tver gubernia and the Novgorod Viceregency in the summer of 1780 that broke out after numerous serfs traveled to an outpost situated on the Swedish border, "obtained returnees' passes, proclaimed themselves free, and became disobedient." Although they had initially rebelled because of their landlords' "merciless beatings," they now wished to change their social estates. For example, a few peasants from the village of Stepanovo went to Vytegra to join its town society and 30 serfs from Tikhvin District traveled to Schlüsselburg with the same goal. But the majority intended to use passes to acquire the status of state peasants and continue residing in their localities. The following investigation revealed that over 2,000 peasants received such passes and that the rebels overall were confident in their right to utilize the amnesty and even dispatched three representatives to petition the empress in St. Petersburg to confirm their legal transfer to the state peasantry. The government, nevertheless, viewed this matter differently. After unsuccessful attempts to clarify the amnesty, it quartered troops in the rebellious villages and managed to restore order in early 1781.103
The turn to amnesties in the last several decades of the 18th century illustrates the government's realization that measures of containment could not prevent the flight of imperial subjects. The border was simply too long to be effectively maintained and defended. There were also different ways to traverse it for those who had such an intention. While it was hardly feasible to halt the stream of emigrants, amnesties allowed the government to somewhat balance it with an exodus of people who moved to different parts of the empire. Unburdened by their former origin and status, returnees gained unprecedented advantages and became as "free" as the imperial social structure permitted. Like runaway subjects abroad, their counterparts within the country did not fail to notice a chance for upward mobility afforded by the manifestos and resorted to illegal methods to seize it. All this occurred because of the very existence of the porous western border that allowed people on both sides to negotiate with the Russian state. [End Page 294]
Conclusion
Several decades ago, Michael Khodarkovsky maintained that the early modern border between Russia and Poland-Lithuania "was clearly demarcated, negotiated and agreed upon in written treaties," and as such stood in stark contrast to Russia's southern and eastern boundaries, poorly delimited or not demarcated at all.104 However, this article shows that the situation on the ground along the Russo-Polish border was more complicated than the written treaties would have us believe. In the first half of the 18th century, the border's location was so unclear that neither state officials nor borderland residents could be certain where it ran, let alone situate it on a map. As a result, the border was highly porous, enabling not only solitary persons but also whole villages, with their belongings and livestock, to cross it and move to the Commonwealth.
In some respects, the formation of Russia's western border in the 1720s was atypical for early modern Europe because it developed in response not to an external threat but to internal processes. In his account of the French-Spanish border in the Pyrenees, Peter Sahlins demonstrates that in the first half of the 18th century those states created the military border for security reasons: the prevention of violence and possible incursions by "perfidious" neighbors. The areas along the border were depopulated, and only a couple of paved roads remained to facilitate the control of border crossings.105 Jovan Pešalj likewise describes the creation of the Habsburg-Ottoman border. After the Peace of Karlowitz in 1699, a special joint commission demarcated the border with boundary markers, a number of fortresses were destroyed, and most villages were to remain unfortified. All these measures aimed at discouraging violence by leaving both sides more exposed and vulnerable to retribution. Additionally, both sides agreed to fight banditry and form commissions to resolve border disputes. Similar arrangements were made after the Habsburg-Ottoman wars of the 18th century.106 Unlike these two cases, the Russo-Polish border was essentially created and maintained only on the Russian side, because its neighbors benefited more than suffered from the uncertainty. The only solution that the imperial government was able to find was to seal the border. [End Page 295]
Despite Russia's considerable efforts, the existing measures were of limited utility in preventing hundreds, even thousands, of ordinary peasants from crossing the border when they so wished. Because of the border's porousness, Russia was forced to compete with its western neighbor for "human capital," a competition that shaped the imperial state and society in unexpected ways. The large-scale emigration brought ruin to hundreds of seigniorial villages and disrupted the collection of taxes and recruit levies in borderland provinces. The cumulative effect of emigration required radical actions on the part of the government, prompting it to consider measures of state support for the peasantry and even limitations to nobles' authority over their serfs. During the reigns of Elizabeth and Catherine II, the government further brought into question two foundations of the existing social order: the nobility's right to serf ownership and the Church's monopoly on the practice of Orthodoxy. Proclaimed in decrees and amnesties, promises of religious toleration and a change in one's social estate set in motion thousands of imperial subjects outside and within Russia, thereby testing the framework of serfdom.
Even after the last partition of Poland in 1795, the issue of the population's flight abroad lingered on the government's agenda. As provocatively suggested by Robert Jones, the partitions themselves were partly motivated by Russia's aspiration to recover runaways by incorporating their new homes into the empire.107 Although reintegrated as imperial subjects, the identification of their actual status and return to their former landlords was an immense task that the government had no capacity to implement at the time. Instead, many fugitives remained in their new places of residence, and Polish landlords did not miss an opportunity to register them as their serfs during the 1795 and ensuing population censuses. Rather than challenge them, the imperial government decided to prioritize the maintenance of public order and its economic interests in the newly acquired provinces.108
The story of the Russo-Polish border provides us with a more nuanced image of the Russian state in the early modern period. Rather than the monolithic entity so long privileged in the historical literature, it emerges as a multiplicity of actors, each with their own interests and disagreements.109 When Anisim Maslov attempted to promote his project [End Page 296] for the benefit of the state, other senators and ministers clearly resisted it as an infringement on their rights. Aleksei Bestuzhev-Riumin and Mikhail Vorontsov's argument that Old Believers should be permitted to practice their faith in the empire also encountered opposition, but for other reasons. Eventually, contradictions and disagreements led the government to turn to amnesties as the best way to recover at least some people out of the "millions of living dead" who would otherwise be lost. Thus the analysis of such instances allows us to reconstruct the formation of Russia's imperial repertoire—flexible and changing but constrained by administrative and political factors—toward various processes unraveling because of the permeable western border. [End Page 297]
HSE University
ul. Staraia Basmannaia, 21/4
105066 Moscow, Russian Federation
eakelev@hse.ru
University of Toronto
Room 2074, Sidney Smith Hall
100 St. George St.
Toronto, ON M5S 3G3, Canada
andrey.gornostaev@utoronto.ca
Evgenii V. Akelev, Associate Professor of History at HSE University in Moscow, is the author of Povsednevnaia zhizn´ vorovskogo mira Moskvy vo vremena Van´ki Kaina (Everyday Life in the Moscow Thieves' World in the Time of Van´ka Kain [2012]) and Russkii Misopogon: Petr I, bradobritie i desiat´ millionov "moskovitov" (The Russian Misopogon: Peter I, Beard Shaving, and Ten Million "Muscovites" [2022]).
Andrey V. Gornostaev, Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, is the author of "Trade in Runaway Peasants and 'The Chichikov Phenomenon' in Eighteenth-Century Russia," Journal of Social History 54, 3 (2021): 715–40. His research focuses on social and transnational history in pre-emancipation imperial Russia, and he is currently working on a book tentatively titled Peasants on the Run: Resistance, Mobility, and Governance in Imperial Russia, 1649–1801.
Footnotes
The research leading to this article received funding from the Basic Research Program at HSE University. Evgenii Akelev and Andrey Gornostaev made equal contributions to this work. The authors are especially grateful to Olga E. Kosheleva, Alison K. Smith, Simon Belokowsky, and Kritika's two anonymous reviewers for their support, editorial help, and critical remarks.
1. M. V. Lomonosov, "O sokhranenii i razmnozhenii rossiiskogo naroda," in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii: Trudy po russkoi istorii, obshchestvenno-ekonomicheskim voprosam i geografii 1747–1765 gg. (Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1952), 6:401–2. Among his contemporaries who discussed this issue were Jakob von Sievers, Count Petr Panin, and Count Petr Shuvalov. See V. I. Semevskii, Krest´iane v tsarstvovanie Imperatritsy Ekateriny II, 2nd ed. (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1903), 1:395–96; and V. P. Gritskevich, "Razmery i prichiny massovoi migratsii russkikh v Litvu i Belorussiiu vo vtoroi polovine XVIII v. (po opublikovannym russkim istochnikam)," Lietuvos TSR aukštųjų mokyklų mokslo darbai, no. 32 (1991): 53–68.
2. The reports were certainly exaggerations. See Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov (RGADA) f. 248 (Senat i ego uchrezhdeniia), op. 113, d. 1491, l. 138.
3. Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 3.
4. Although the scholarship on Russia's imperial frontiers and borderlands has grown recently, the 18th-century Russo-Polish border remains largely underexamined. The few available studies have concentrated only on its part in the Dnieper region. See Mikola Krikun, Administrativno-teritorial´nii ustrii pravoberezhnoi Ukraïni v XV–XVIII st.: Kordoni voievodstv u svitli dzherel (Kyiv: Akademiia nauk Ukraïni, 1993), 135–76; and Oksana Mykhed, "Not by Force Alone: Public Health and the Establishment of Russian Rule in the Russo-Polish Borderland, 1762–85," in Borderlands in World History, 1700–1914, ed. Paul Readman, Cynthia Radding, and Chad Bryant (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 123–42.
5. P. K. Alefirenko, Krest´ianskoe dvizhenie i krest´ianskii vopros v 30–50kh godakh XVIII veka (Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1958); V. P. Gritskevich, "Massovaia migratsiia russkikh v Litvu i Belorusiiu v pervoi polovine XVIII v. kak forma klassovoi bor´by protiv usileniia krepostnicheskogo gneta (po opublikovannym russkim istochnikam)," Lietuvos TSR aukštųjų mokyklų mokslo darbai, no. 24 (1984): 69–83.
6. Jared Orsi, "Construction and Contestation: Toward a Unifying Methodology for Borderlands History," History Compass 12, 5 (2014): 440.
7. Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Maria Baramova, Grigor Boykov, and Ivan Parvev, eds., Bordering Early Modern Europe (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2015); Daniel Power and Naomi Standen, eds., Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700–1700 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999); Charles Maier, Once within Borders: Territories of Power, Wealth, and Belonging since 1500 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2016); Omer Bartov and Eric D. Wietz, eds., Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013); Michiel Baud and Willem Van Schendel, "Toward a Comparative History of Borderlands," Journal of World History 8, 2 (1997): 211–42.
8. RGADA f. 248, op. 22, d. 1428, ll. 215–16, 232 ob.–33 ob.; Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii (hereafter PSZ) (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia vtorogo otdeleniia Sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva kantseliarii, 1830), no. 1186 (arts. 3, 7, 16, 17), 2:773–76, 780–81.
9. The situation remained virtually unchanged by the mid-18th century (PSZ, no. 9254, 2:509–10).
10. The demarcation was supposed to proceed according to nobles and other residents' documents and statements about the position of the border (RGADA f. 248, op. 22, d. 1428, ll. 225–25 ob.).
11. Ibid., ll. 225–25 ob., 227, 231–33.
12. Petr Prudovskii is correct in pointing out that the roots of the problem afflicting the Russo-Polish border can be found in the years following the Truce of Andrusovo ("Sud´ba pol´sko-litovskikh plennykh po Andrusovskomu peremiriiu 1667 g. i migratsii naseleniia mezhdu Rossiei i Rech´iu Pospolitoi," Slavianovedenie, no. 4 [2021]: 33). However, the emigration of Russian subjects to the Commonwealth occurred in preceding decades as well. Chapter 11 of the 1649 Law Code contains several articles on fugitives returning from abroad (A. G. Man´kov, ed., "Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 goda," in Rossiiskoe zakonodatel´stvo X–XX vekov: Akty Zemskikh soborov [Moscow: Iuridicheskaia literatura, 1985], 3:157). For an English translation, see Richard Hellie, ed., The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649, vol. 3 (Irvine, CA: Charles Schlacks, 1988).
13. In 1736, the Senate compiled a list of all relevant decrees on the Russo-Polish border and associated matters, such as population flight and border enforcement. It shows that no decree was issued between the Treaty of Perpetual Peace of 1686 and the decree of 8 March 1723, as discussed below (RGADA f. 248, op. 7, d. 397, ll. 320–27). A reading of the PSZ also confirms that the western border did not figure in the Russian government's agenda until 1723.
14. On the issue of peasant flight in the first half of the 18th century, see E. V. Anisimov, "The Struggle with Fugitives during the Reform Period," trans. Hugh F. Graham, Soviet Studies in History 28, 1 (1989): 59–77; E. I. Zaozerskaia, "Begstvo i otkhod krest´ian v pervoi polovine XVIII v. (K voprosu o nachal´nykh formakh ekspropriatsii sel´skogo i gorodskogo naseleniia v Rossii)," in K voprosu o pervonachal´nom nakoplenii v Rossii, XVII–XVIII vv. (Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1958), 144–88; and Alefirenko, Krest´ianskoe dvizhenie. On peasant migration to the Urals and Volga region, see N. V. Kozlova, Pobegi krest´ian v Rossii v pervoi treti XVIII veka (Moscow: Moskovskii universitet, 1983); T. P. Bondarevskaia, "Beglye krest´iane Srednego Povolzh´ia v seredine XVIII veka," in Krest´ianstvo i klassovaia bor´ba v feodal´noi Rossii (Leningrad: Nauka, 1967), 385–98; Andrey V. Gornostaev, "Peasants 'on the Run': State Control, Fugitives, Social and Geographic Mobility in Imperial Russia, 1649–1796" (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2020), chap. 2. On runaways in Moscow, see Christoph Schmidt, Sozialkontrolle in Moskau: Justiz, Kriminalität und Leibeigenschaft, 1649–1785 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1996). On peasant migration to the Commonwealth, see Robert E. Jones, "Runaway Peasants and Russian Motives for the Partitions of Poland," in Imperial Russian Foreign Policy, ed. Hugh Ragsdale (New York: Woodrow Wilson International Center, 1993), 103–18; and Angela Rustemeyer, Dissens und Ehre: Majestätsverbrechen in Russland (1600–1800) (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2006), chap. 6.
15. Norman Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 1:378. By using force and incentives to acquire people from Russia, the szlachta probably acted according to an established pattern of relations in the Commonwealth, with the competition for labor at its core. Robert Frost notes that Polish nobles used similar tactics within the Commonwealth after the Deluge (Potop) (After the Deluge: Poland-Lithuania and the Second Northern War 1655–1660 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003]).
16. D. L. Pokhilevich, Krest´iane Belorussii i Litvy v XVI–XVIII vv. (Lviv: Izdatel´stvo L´vovskogo universiteta, 1957), 97–98. Like Russia, the Commonwealth sought to discourage the sheltering of fugitive peasants by threatening those who harbored them with hefty fines. From the late 16th to the late 17th century, for instance, the Sejm issued at least 42 decrees against peasant flight (V. B. Antonovich, "Predislovie," Arkhiv iugo-zapadnoi Rossii 2 [1870]: 27–28).
17. M. A. Iuchas, "Naemnyi trud v krest´ianskom khoziaistve pomeshchich´ei derevni Litvy vtoroi poloviny XVIII v.," Istoriia SSSR, no. 1 (1967): 100.
18. M. V. Dovnar-Zapol´skii, Stranitsa iz istorii krepostnogo prava v XVIII–XIX vv. (Moscow: I. D. Sytin, 1906), 9; Gritskevich, "Massovaia migratsiia," 79–80.
19. Semevskii, Krest´iane, 1:395; Andrey V. Gornostaev, "Escaping Russian Serfdom: Peasant Flight to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Eighteenth Century," in Mobility in the Russian, Central and East European Past, ed. Róisín Healy (New York: Routledge, 2019), 74–75; Gritskevich, "Razmery i prichiny," 61–68.
20. Between 1702 and 1731, serf owners residing in western provinces submitted at least 71 complaints about peasant flight, raids, and other issues. Over 50 complaints date from 1719, when the active phase of the Great Northern War was already finished. See Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi imperii (AVPRI) f. 79 (Snosheniia Rossii s Pol´shei), op. 1, d. 21 (1731).
21. Ibid., l. 27.
22. PSZ, no. 4695, 7:445–46.
23. AVPRI f. 79, op. 1, d. 24 (1741), ll. 10–10 ob.; V. B. Antonovich, "Predislovie," 32–33.
24. For the discussion of published materials that draw a similar image of massive migration out of the empire, see Gritskevich, "Massovaia migratsiia," 73.
25. AVPRI f. 79, op. 1, d. 37 (1720), ll. 69 ob.
26. RGADA f. 248, op. 13, d. 699, ll. 27–28 ob.
27. Ibid., ll. 5–5 ob.; PSZ, no. 4181, 7:29–30.
28. It is noteworthy that these were not official borders negotiated with other states but rather fortified lines separating Russia from open frontiers. See V. P. Zagorovskii, Belgorodskaia cherta (Voronezh: Voronezhskii universitet, 1968); N. N. Petrukhintsev, Tsarstvovanie Anny Ioannovny: Formirovanie vnutripoliticheskogo kursa i sud´by armii i flota 1730–1735 (St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2001), 128–31; and Ihor Stebelsky, "The Frontier in Central Asia," in Studies in Russian Historical Geography, ed. J. H. Bater and R. A. French (London: Academic Press, 1983), 1:143–73. Brian Boeck argues that, once constructed, the Belgorod Line was also utilized to prevent the migration of peasants and slaves into the Don region ("Containment vs. Colonization: Muscovite Approaches to Settling the Steppe," in Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History, ed. Nicholas B. Breyfogle, Abby Schrader, and Willard Sunderland [New York: Routledge, 2009], 41–60).
29. RGADA f. 248, op. 13, d. 699, ll. 19–21, 24, 92 ob.
30. Ibid., ll. 21 ob., 82–83 ob., 86–93.
31. Ibid., l. 92 оb.
32. Ibid., l. 72.
33. PSZ, no. 4695, 7:445–46.
34. RGADA f. 248, op. 13, d. 699, ll. 64 ob.–65.
35. See, e.g., ibid., ll. 74, 78–79, 80, 110–11, 390. Decrees include PSZ, no. 4489, 7:275–76; no. 6181, 8:924; no. 6899, 9:754–55; and no. 7541, 10:443–44.
36. For instance, only eight men and eight women were captured on the border stretch between the Dnieper and Lovat´ rivers in Velikie Luki Province in April 1729, and another 18 people were apprehended in May 1729 (RGADA f. 248, op. 7, d. 397, ll. 2–2 ob.).
37. In 1733, Johann Bernhard Weisbach, the governor-general of Kyiv gubernia, informed the College of Foreign Affairs that his scouts in Poland discovered 13,164 households predominantly populated by Little Russians in small towns and villages near Chyhyryn (AVPRI f. 79, op. 1, d. 13, ll. 42–44). In July 1734, Anna Ioannovna received another report that listed many thousands of households in right-bank Ukraine settled entirely by Russians (Sbornik Imperatorskogo Russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva [hereafter SIRIO], 108 [1900], 285–86).
38. RGADA f. 248, op. 7, d. 397, l. 77.
39. Ibid., d. 405, ll. 700–5; PSZ, no. 7260, 10:152–55.
40. PSZ, no. 7807, 10:778.
41. RGADA f. 248, op. 7, d. 405, l. 700 ob.
42. In an examination of the Polish-Ottoman treaty of 1680, Jovan Pešalj shows that the demarcation documents created by the two states' commissioners were quite asymmetrical. While the Ottomans focused on establishing the borderline, the Polish document was less precise, with few topographical marks and mostly the names of villages belonging to each side, whose borders were state boundaries ("The Distinctiveness of the Habsburg-Ottoman Border in the Eighteenth Century," in Bordering Early Modern Europe, ed. Maria Baramova, Grigor Boykov, and Ivan Parvev [Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2015], 26–30).
43. Sahlins, Boundaries. However, Dariusz Kołodziejczyk notes that historians should be cautious in their examinations of different border arrangements, because the development of the border in the Pyrenees does not provide a universal template for other European countries ("Between Universalistic Claims and Reality: Ottoman Frontiers in the Early Modern Period," in The Ottoman World, ed. Christine Woodhead [New York: Routledge, 2012], 205–19).
44. RGADA f. 248, op. 7, d. 397, ll. 29–50; PSZ, no. 6534, 9:245–56. The decree also mentions the amnesty of 1732, which applied only to fugitive military personnel.
45. PSZ, no. 6555, 9:287.
46. PSZ, no. 6586, 9:350–51.
47. RGADA f. 248, op. 7, d. 397, l. 64.
48. On Maslov's career and work, see Istoriia Pravitel´stvuiushchego Senata za dvesti let 1711–1911 gg., ed. A. N. Filippov et al. (St. Petersburg: Senatskaia tipografiia, 1911), 1:80–83, 603–7; D. O. Serov, Administratsiia Petra I (Moscow: OGI, 2007), 56; and G. O. Babkova, "'Blizhaishii konfident': Neformal´nye sviazi v biurokraticheskoi srede v Rossii XVIII v.," Cahiers du monde russe 60, 1 (2019): 65–67.
49. RGADA f. 11 (Perepiska raznykh lits XVII–XIX vv.), op. 1, d. 619, l. 14.
50. "Proekt deistvitel´nogo statskogo sovetnika A. A. Maslova," SIRIO 108 (1900): 288–91. Although scholars are familiar with Maslov's project, they have examined it separately from the issue of fugitives in Poland-Lithuania that led to its emergence in the first place. For example, see V. N. Stroev, Bironovshchina i Kabinet ministrov: Ocherk vnutrennei politiki imperatritsy Anny (Moscow: Tipografiia Imperatorskogo moskovskogo universiteta, 1909), 1:106–10; S. M. Troitskii, Finansovaia politika russkogo absoliutizma v XVIII veke (Moscow: Nauka, 1966), 45–46; and N. N. Petrukhintsev, Vnutrenniaia politika Anny Ioannovny (1730–1740) (Moscow: Rosspen, 2014), 172–74.
51. SIRIO 108 (1900): 288.
52. V. O. Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia (Moscow: Mysl´, 1989), 4:289.
53. RGADA f. 11, op. 1, d. 619, ll. 30–30 ob.
54. PSZ, no. 6609, 9:380–83.
55. The manifesto was issued on 2 August 1734 (PSZ, no. 6612, 9:388–90).
56. RGADA f. 11, op. 1, d. 619, ll. 21–22. This project can be located among the papers of Poluboiarinov, in whose hand the note obozhdat´ was written in the margin.
57. PSZ, no. 6609, 9:382.
58. M. I. Lileev, Iz istorii raskola na Vetke i v Starodub´e XVII–XVIII vv. (Kyiv: Tipografiia G. T. Korchak-Novitskogo, 1895), 302; N. N. Petrukhintsev, "Razgrom Vetki," Rodina, no. 7 (1999): 41–44.
59. Grigorii Potashenko, Staroverie v Litve: Vtoraia polovina XVII–nachalo XIX vv. Issledovaniia, dokumenty i materialy (Vilnius: Aidai, 2006), 132.
60. PSZ, no. 6691, 9:481.
61. PSZ, no. 6802, 9:571–75.
62. Lileev was the first to point out this unexpected consequence of the first expulsion, and Iurkin recently came to the same conclusion. See Lileev, Iz istorii raskola, 328; and I. N. Iurkin, "'Ot goroda do goroda na prezhniia zhilishcha' ('Vygonki' beglykh iz-za pol´skoi granitsy v 30-kh godakh XVIII v. i rasprostranenie staroobriadchestva)," Staroobriadchestvo: Istoriia, kul´tura, sovremennost´, no. 8 (2000): 29–32.
63. RGADA f. 248, op. 113, d. 1491, ll. 28, 47.
64. A. S. Riazhev, "Prosveshchennyi absoliutizm" i staroobriadtsy: Vtoraia polovina XVIII–nachalo XIX v. (Toliatti: Toliatinskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2006), 1:95.
65. Because of such considerations in 1736, for example, the Russian government disallowed nobles' raids to recover fugitives abroad (PSZ, no. 6982, 9:844–49).
66. M. I. Lileev, Iz istorii raskola, 504–5.
67. RGADA f. 342, op. 1, d. 69, ll. 60–60 ob., 64–64 ob., 72–75; f. 248, op. 7, d. 425, ll. 422–25; op. 113, d. 647, ll. 2–9; d. 1491, ll. 4–4 ob., 31–31 ob., 35–35 ob., 42 ob.–43, 54–55. On these negotiations, see Riazhev, Prosveshchennyi absoliutizm, 1:98–104; Evgenii Akelev, "Politika rossiiskogo pravitel´stva v otnoshenii zarubezhnykh staroobriadcheskikh obshchin v 20–60-kh gg. XVIII v.," in Staroobrzędowcy za granicą 2: Historia, religia, język, kultura, ed. Doroty Paśko-Koneczniak et al. (Toruń: Pracownia Wydawnicza Eikon, 2014), 183–94.
68. RGADA f. 248, op. 113, d. 1491, l. 6.
69. Ibid., d. 647, l. 7.
70. Another community of Old Believers similarly negotiated with the Austrian government in the last quarter of the 18th century. See M. N. Saiko, "Vozniknovenie staroobriadcheskikh poselenii na Bukovine (70-e–80-e gody XVIII v.–nachalo XIX v.)," Staroobriadchestvo: Istoriia, traditsii, sovremennost´, no. 1 (1994): 31–50.
71. For example, the 1749 petition mentioned over 25,000 people who wished to repatriate (RGADA f. 248, op. 7, d. 425, ll. 422 ob.).
72. Ibid., op. 113, d. 1491, ll. 82–85 ob.
73. Ibid., ll. 27 ob.–28 ob.
74. Ibid., ll. 36–36 ob.
75. PSZ, no. 11265, 15:724–25.
76. PSZ, no. 11420, 15: 894–95.
77. PSZ, no. 11720, 16:126–27; no. 11725, 16:129–32.
78. PSZ, no. 11815, 16:247–48.
79. Robert O. Crummey, Old Believers in a Changing World (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2011), 161.
80. Potashenko, Staroverie v Litve, 135.
81. AVPRI f. 80 (Varshavskaia missiia), op. 1, d. 889, l. 2.
82. V. M. Kabuzan, Zaselenie Novorossii (Ekaterinoslavskoi i Khersonskoi gubernii) v XVII–pervoi polovine XIX veka (1719–1858) (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), 102–5.
83. N. N. Firsov, Vopros o beglykh i razboinikakh, podniatyi v Komissii dlia sostavleniia proekta Novogo Ulozheniia (1767 g.) (Kazan: Tipografiia Imperatorskogo universiteta, 1890).
84. As compensation, serf owners received recruit waivers for the next conscription cycle (PSZ, no. 14870, 20:817–19). On the significance of amnesties in the context of Russia's population policy, see Alison K. Smith, "'The Freedom to Choose a Way of Life': Fugitives, Borders, and Imperial Amnesties in Russia," Journal of Modern History 83, 2 (2011): 243–71.
85. PSZ, no. 15006, 20:932–33.
86. PSZ, no. 15488, 21:650; no. 16551, 22:863; no. 17149, 23:460.
87. T. S. Mamsik, Pobegi kak sotsial´noe iavlenie: Pripisnaia derevnia Zapadnoi Sibiri v 40–90-e gody XVIII v. (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1978), 128–29.
88. Roger Bartlett, "Cameralism in Russia: Empress Catherine II and Population Policy," in Cameralism in Practice: State Administration and Economy in Early Modern Europe, ed. Marten Seppel and Keith Tribe (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2017), 81.
89. RGADA f. 248, op. 51, d. 4303, ll. 18–216; op. 52, d. 4384, ll. 290–543, 899 ob.
90. Ibid., op. 58, d. 4815, ll. 86–303.
91. Ibid., op. 53, d. 4427, ll. 80, 137.
92. Ibid., op. 58, d. 4815, ll. 298–99 ob., 118 ob.
93. Ibid., op. 53, d. 4427, l. 723 ob.
94. PSZ, no. 10233, 14:75–85.
95. For example, the 1775 Gubernia Instruction contained several provisions specifying that provincial officials, townsfolk, and villagers had to report and apprehend any unknown individuals, who were then to be delivered to their former localities (PSZ, no. 14392, 20:251–52, 254–55.
96. Of course, earlier amnesties provided similar opportunities to invent new identities. In 1774, for example, the notorious fugitive Emel´ian Pugachev claimed to have been born in Poland so that he could take advantage of the amnesty (Evgenii Trefilov, Pugachev [Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2015], 32–33).
97. RGADA f. 248, op. 52, d. 4384, ll. 199–200, 207.
98. Ibid., ll. 207–207 ob., 235.
99. On the procedure, see Smith, "Freedom to Choose," 252–53.
100. On internal passports, see Simon Franklin, "Printing and Social Control in Russia 1: Passports," Russian History 37, 3 (2010): 208–37; V. G. Chernukha, Pasport v Rossii, 1719–1917 (St. Petersburg: Liki Rossii, 2007). On passport forgery, see O. E. Kosheleva, "'Bez pashportov i s vorovskimi pashporty,' ili mozhno li obmanut´ gosudarstvennyi kontrol´?," in Obman kak povsednevnaia praktika: Individual´nye i kollektivnye strategii povedeniia, ed. O. I. Togoeva and Kosheleva (Moscow: Institut vseobshchei istorii Rossiiskoi akademii nauk, 2016), 323–43.
101. RGADA f. 248, op. 113, d. 381, ll. 1–2, 25.
102. David Moon argues that serfs often understood the word "freedom" (volia) as a practical opportunity to be free from their landlords (Russian Peasants and Tsarist Legislation on the Eve of Reform: Interaction of the Peasants and Officialdom, 1825–55 [London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992], 171).
103. RGADA f. 248, op. 113, d. 331, ll. 1–159. For a more detailed account of this uprising, see A. V. Gornostaev, "Bilet v novuiu zhizn´, ili o tom, kak iakoby vernut´sia iz-za rubezha," Kazus: Individual´noe i unikal´noe v istorii, no. 13 (2018): 314–20.
104. Michael Khodarkovsky, "From Frontier to Empire: The Concept of the Frontier in Russia, Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries," Russian History 19, 1 (1992): 117. Alfred Rieber repeats this view in The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands: From the Rise of Early Modern Empires to the End of the First World War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 54.
105. Sahlins, Boundaries.
106. Pešalj, "Distinctiveness," 22–26.
107. Jones, "Runaway Peasants."
108. L. E. Gorizontov, "Raskol´nicheskii klin: Pol´skii vopros i staroobriadtsy v imperskoi strategii," in Slavianskii al´manakh, ed. T. I. Vendina (Moscow: Indrik, 1998), 145–46.
109. On the importance of revisiting relations between the state and society, see the discussion in Paul Bushkovitch, "Change and Culture in Early Modern Russia," Kritika 16, 2 (2015): 302; and Nancy S. Kollmann, "A Deeper Early Modern: A Response to Paul Bushkovitch," Kritika 16, 2 (2015): 319.
