The economy, trade and serfdom

The Russian economy in the period 1613-89 was quite sophisticated. All commerce in Russia was based on cash or barter. Russia had no banks until the middle of the eighteenth century, and the merchants were not Rothschild-types who could proffer loans to the government or to each other. The Muscovite economy did not provide well for most Russians. Lesser yields led to famine and starvation, which occurred roughly once in every seven years in Russia. Monasteries also suffered from the dislocations caused by the Time of Troubles. The Odoevskii legislative commission was one of the most efficient in Russian history. The commission extracted the most relevant provisions from the statute books and grouped them into what became the twenty-five chapters of the Law Code of 1649 (Sobornoe Ulozhenie), the important written monument in all of Russian history before the nineteenth century, with perhaps the exception of the chronicles. The evidentiary bases for the status of slavery and serfdom differed dramatically.