The Census Books of the Possessions of the Vierkhoturie Saint Nicholas Monastery (1678). Part 1. The Census Book of I. K. Koptev
One of the census books of the land possessions of the Vierkhoturie Saint Nicholas Monastery, dated back to 1678, which was composed by the Vierkhoturie “boyar son” I. K. Koptev together with the small clerks (podiachie) D. Bobaylov and V. Rozhin, is published. Here the scribes recorded not only the “nearer” lands of the monastery, but also those people who settled on them “next to the cloister”, i. e., the peasants, “polovniki” (those who rented land allotments for a part of the harvest), “vkladchiki” (lit. “investors”, a form of villains), mercenaries. The “further” land possessions, including an allotment (“zaimka”) on the bank of the Pyshma river, were “recorded” by another administrators. It is generally known that under the tsar Fyodor Alexeyevich a general census of the monastic land possessions took place in “Muscovy”. No wonder that under the mask of the regular documentary control there loomed a quite different aim, to wit, a potential requisitioning to the State Treasury of “redundant arable lands” and those grounds for which possession the ecclesiastical corporations - within the eyes of the State - did not have any solid juridical foundations. This census included also the Urals and Siberia where the possessions of the Tobolsk archbishop house and of all the monasteries “beyond the stone” were situated. In the 1678 census book wide and variegated evidence for the socio-economic history of the Saint Nicholas monastery is contained. But so far this source was left almost unnoticed by the scholars, unlike that of 1680. This latter book contained the census of the Vierkhoturie district carried out by L. M. Poskochin, and the “Nicholaite” lands were included into the general evidence concerning the district. But then the comparison of the evidence taken from the two almost contemporary census books may provide a historian with unique possibilities for a comparative analysis. This is why a full publication of the 1678 census books is so actual a task. Here we publish only the first part of these, i. e., the census book by I. K. Koptev. The text of the source is provided with a historical commentary. It is mostly concentrated on the prosopography of the persons mentioned.