Upper Volga and Upper Podvine as part of the Russian State: General and Special Territorial Organization through the Prism of Geoinformation Technologies

Stepanova Yuliya PhD in History Associate Professor, Tver State University 119334, Russia, Tver, Trekhsvyatskaya str., 16/31, office 207 m000142@mail.ru Other publications by this author

 Since 2013, a research group of the Faculty of History of Tver State University (TvSU) and the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences has been investigating the territorial structures of the Upper Volga region and adjacent Upper Podvinya and the Platform at the end of the XV – first half of the XVII century.

The objectives of the study include:

- characteristics of the territorial organization of the studied territory during the Late Middle Ages and early Modern times, including the localization of territorial administrative units, borders, roads;

- characteristics of rural settlement, territorial organization of the peasantry in historical dynamics;

- identification of the features of the historical geography of land ownership in the region.

The territorial framework covers the counties of the Russian state of the late XV – first half of the XVII century – Tverskoy, Toropetsky, Rzhevsky, Novotorzhsky, Belsky, as well as the Tver half of the Bezhetsky Pyatina of Novgorod land.

Geoinformatics has become the leading methodological field in which research is conducted. To date, 7 geoinformation projects have been developed, four of which are presented in the form of web GIS, three more are under development as local GIS. Web GIS are available for viewing on the website of the Laboratory of Historical Geoinformatics of the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IVI RAS) and the NEXTGIS platform. It should be noted that earlier A.A. Frolov developed GIS for the right–bank part of the Rzhev Volodimerova county in the second half of the XVI century ^[20]; A.A. Frolov and A.A. Golubinsky - GIS, including data from sources of the XVI-XVIII centuries on the history of the Bezhetsky Top ^[21]; A.A. Frolov and N.V. Piotukh – historical atlas of the Village Pyatina of Novgorod land ^[22]. Thus, the set of GIS currently covers almost the entire territory of the Upper Volga region and the Upper Podvinye in the modern borders of the Tver region (Fig. 1).

The main sources of the research are the materials of the scribal case (published and unpublished) on Tver, Toropetsky, Kashinsky, Novotorzhsky, Rzhevsky, Belsky counties, Bezhetskaya Pyatina of the Novgorod land of the late XV – XVII century. Unpublished sources are stored in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA, f. 1209), the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian National Library (OR RNB). Assembly material was also used: state, church-monastery, private acts (for lists of sources used, see the descriptions of the web GIS and relevant publications).

The study uses the method of localization of medieval settlements, characterized in scribal descriptions of the late XV – XVII centuries, using later sources. The key ones, occupying an intermediate position between the toponymy of the late XV – XVII century and the modern map, are the materials of the General Surveying of the 1770s (county plans and plans of dachas), which include a large amount of toponymic information that is interfaced with data from an earlier time. Accordingly, important sources of research are the materials of the General Surveying of the Tver and Pskov provinces of the second half of the XVIII century (stored in the RGADA), lists of settlements of the Russian Empire (St. Petersburg, 1859-1862), the topographic boundary atlas of the Tver province (Moscow, 1853) and other cartographic and written sources of Modern times.

The Tverskoy Uyezd in the XVI Century project was implemented in 2013-2015, with the support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR), project No. 14-06-97501. The GIS layers contain data from the scribal descriptions of the county in 1539/40, 1551-1554, 1580 and 1588, as well as toponymic information of the assembly material ^[5]. The study of the territory of the Tver District of the Moscow State is of great importance for understanding the dynamics of the development of the Russian state, as well as the peculiarities of the formation of the borders and structure of the Tver Principality that preceded the district – one of the most important state formations of medieval Russia. The relatively late entry of the Tver Principality into the Moscow state contributed to the preservation of local political institutions in the first decade of the XVI century, and the land holdings of Tver service people until the middle of the XVI century. The territory of Tversky Uyezd of the Moscow state within the borders of the XVI–XVII centuries is located almost on the central section of the upper reaches of the Volga River. The territories of the volosts and camps of Tver Uyezd were localized, continuous localization of rural settlements and wastelands, landholdings of the XVI century was made ^[10].

The project "Historical atlas of Bezhetskaya Pyatina (Tver half) Novgorod land of the end of the XV – XVII century." was implemented with the support of the RFBR, project No. 20-09-00278, in 2019-2022. It includes the localization of the toponymy of the scribal descriptions of Pyatina in 1498/99, 1545, 1583 and 1626. The borders of the churchyards-districts of the Tver half of the Bezhetskaya Pyatina were reconstructed ^[14]. The GIS reflects the characteristics of the yard of settlements and their belonging to a certain landowner ^[3]. The text of the description of 1545 made it possible to localize the possessions belonging to the landowners of the Novgorod Republic in the second half of the XV century, on the eve of the annexation of the Novgorod land to the Moscow state ^[15]. After the Novgorod Republic became part of the Moscow State , the territories of the volosts were divided among the serving landowners of the Moscow state in the first half of the XVI century . GIS allows us to trace the dynamics of land ownership from the end of the XV century to the 1620s. During the Time of Troubles, the territory of Pyatina was devastated. In the 1620s, a new stage of the visiting of service people began, as a result of which "service Tatars" - representatives of Kazan and Astrakhan clans - received landholdings in Bezhetskaya Pyatiny.  As part of the project, the text of the Bezhetskaya Pyatina scribe book of 1545 was published in a digital environment ^[19].

The project "Toropetsky Uyezd in the XVI-XVII centuries" is supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 22-28-01089. On the basis of the scribe book of the Toropetsky Uyezd of 1540, the localization of the settlements of the Toropetsky Uyezd, located on the western borders of the Moscow state and possessing specific features of territorial organization, population and economy, was carried out. The boundaries of the counties of the county and specific territorial-administrative units of the county – perevar, which united the population engaged in commercial farming (bortnichestvo), were determined ^[6]. The elements of decimal division in the county (tens) are localized. The territorial organization of the peasantry of Toropetsky Uyezd has been studied. It was found out that it was a "nest" settlement system – clusters of villages in 1-3 yards separated by uninhabited spaces. The local land ownership of Toropetsky district was localized, in the XVI century. It covered only the northern part of the county ^{[8; 16]}. The majority of the population of the county in the XVI century was the black-collar peasantry.

A special place is occupied by the project "Tver Karelians in the XVII-XIX centuries: settlement and demography" (implemented in 2017-2019 with the support of the RFBR, project No. 17-01-00429). Tver Karelians are a large ethno–territorial group formed on the territory of the Tver Upper Volga region as a result of several waves of migrations since the XVII century. Karelians settled mainly on the territory of the palace volosts, but they also found themselves on local and monastic ones. Up to the beginning of the XX century . this group preserved the ethno-territorial boundaries, language, features of material and spiritual culture. The objectives of the project included localization in GIS of Karelian settlements in the Upper Volga region on the basis of multi-time sources. GIS includes data on the number of households and population in Karelian settlements. The web GIS includes layers with data from the scribal descriptions of 1646, 1678, the censuses of 1710, 1778, 1859, 1870-1890, the assembly material of the XVII century on the Karelian settlements of Bezhetsky Pyatina, Bezhetsky, Tver, Novotorzhsky counties ^[4]. Accordingly, in terms of historical geography, the study is combined with projects on Bezhetskaya Pyatina, Tver and Novotorzhsky counties. The dynamics of the Karelian settlement in the Upper Volga region has been traced ^[12].

GIS projects on the historical geography of the counties of Rzheva Volodimerova, Novotorzhsky and Belsky are under development.

A single chronological cross-section for a vast territory allows us to get an idea of the territorial-administrative and settlement structure of the region in the period under consideration. The socio-economic processes that took place on the territory of the Upper Volga and Upper Podvinye during the period under study were reflected in the territorial organization, which had both general and specific local features going back to earlier times and revealing the features of the formation of the territorial structure of the Russian state at the end of the XV – first half of the XVII century. 

The volost structure is typical for the majority of the studied large territorial formations: Tver, Toropetsky, Novotorzhsky, Belsky, Rzhevsky counties. It is obvious that basically its volost structure was inherited from the pre-Moscow period. For example, Toropetsky and Belsky volosts are known in the sources of the period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania of the second half of the XV century and international treaties between Ivan III and Alexander Kazimirovich of the beginning of the XVI century. At the same time, the size and configuration of the volosts within one county could be different. In some cases, these historical and geographical parameters are explicable. For example, the volosts of Suzemye, Volovichi and Zahozhye of Tver County, apparently, were actually Tver city volosts, gravitating to Tver (Fig. 2). Their fan-shaped location, to the south of the city, clearly traced as a result of the continuous localization of toponymy in GIS, has similarities with the configuration of the Moscow city camps and the camps of the suburb of Volok Lamsky ^{[23, pp. 33-34]}. Mikulinsky stan-uyezd was formed on the basis of the former specific Mikulinsky principality.

At the end of the XVI – the first half of the XVII century. almost everywhere there is a transformation of the parish structure. However, it was not the same. So, if in Tversky uyezd there is a process of enlargement of volosts, then in Toropetsky the transformation went both along the path of enlargement and fragmentation of administrative units. At the same time, small volosts (Zbutskaya, Struskaya, Kudinskaya, Poretskaya) were formed on the basis of previously existing territories of economic origin, while the large Kazarinskaya volost, which absorbed almost the entire northern part of Toropetsky Uyezd, united lands occupied exclusively by local land ownership.

In the Bezhetskaya Pyatina, the territorial and administrative structure included churchyards-districts, which formed its basis when compiling the Moscow cadastre at the end of the XV century. Throughout the studied period, the pogost structure was preserved. Volosts are also recorded here, but their origin is associated with the landholdings of the period of independence of Veliky Novgorod, belonging to which for the census compilers of the end of the XV century was also a reference information when describing pyatina. The volosts of Bezhetskaya Pyatina are not always interfaced with the borders of churchyards-districts, which clearly shows their localization. For example, the parish of Slezkino, the largest by area in the Tver half of the Bezhetskaya Pyatina, in the Domoskov time belonged to Ivan Loshinsky, included several churchyards-districts. The same can be said about the volosts of Udomlya and Mlevo. However, there are also reverse examples, when there were several small parishes inside one churchyard-district. For example, Malinets, Kostya, Loschemlya in the Mikhailovsky Kostovsky churchyard ^[13]. Accordingly, the sizes of churchyards-districts and volosts in Bezhetskaya Pyatina are extremely uneven. The assembly material on Bezhetskaya Pyatina has been poorly preserved. It seems that archaeological research can help clarify the dynamics of the emergence of settlement centers here and the formation of various territorial units.

In most of the counties under consideration, the settlements of the volosts were "pulled" to the volost centers – as a rule, large villages or churchyards, in / on which the courtyards of the clergy, local landowners, and auctions were located. Such a system is most clearly traced in some small volosts of Toropetsky Uyezd and Rzhevsky uyezds of the XVI century . – the first half of the XVII century . (Toropets: Turskaya, Lyubutskaya, Strezhinskaya volosts; Rzheva: Goryshinskaya, Poddobrinskaya, Leshchinskaya, Kokoshskaya, Sishskaya, etc.), where the only village in the volost with a church was the volost center. However, already in the XVI century. in all territories with the development of local land ownership, new large settlements arise, from which further development of the rural district is underway. This process is most fully reflected in the Tver district of the XVI century, which was almost completely covered by local land ownership. Here, already in the first half of the XVI century, a number of large settlements were distinguished – relatively late centers of estates. In addition to the territorial-administrative units that were the main ones when taking into account the population, there were other forms of territorial organization in the studied region that had different origins.

In Toropetsky Uyezd, these were digests – specific areas whose population was initially employed in the fishing industry (Fig. 3). In the case of Toropetsky Uyezd, this was bortnichestvo. Localization showed that Toropetsky digests were compact territories that were not interfaced with the township division. For example, the villages of Poretskaya Perevara were located in Toropetskaya and Startsova volosts. Digests were recorded on both local and black lands. Scribal materials of the XVI century recorded the decline of the onboard economy, however, a number of territories of the former settlements in the XVII century were already recorded as volosts. With the apparent loss of the original meaning of the territory of the ancient settlements were recorded in a later volost division.

  In addition to perevar, dozens were recorded in Toropetsky Uyezd and in the Tver half of Bezhetskaya Pyatina. The Desyatskys collected taxes from the members of their ten, that is, tens were primarily fiscal units. V.A. Kuchkin explains the origin of the decimal system "from above", that is, at the will of the owners of the land ^[11]. In Bezhetskaya Pyatina, the parish of Udomlya was divided into dozens, which in the pre-Moscow period was the largest possession of the Novgorod archbishop (Fig. 4). Localization of dozens of Udomlya showed that they were relatively compact territories, including 120-150 settlements and about 400-550 villages. It is obvious that the decimal division was relevant for the scribes who conducted the census of 1498/99. However, the placement of a number of villages in isolation from the main territory of the dozen, in our opinion, indicates the erosion of this system. For example, the villages of Kondryshev ten formed two enclaves. A number of villages of Ivashka Sotonin were separated from the main cluster. In the XVI century. dozens in the Bezhetskaya Pyatina are mentioned only sporadically. With the distribution to the estates of the parish of Udomlya, the division into dozens is no longer reflected in the sources ^[15]. In Toropets , belonging to dozens was not taken into account in the scribal materials of the XVI century . However, in the XVII century. in connection with the departure into the past, the decimal division turned out to be relevant. Perhaps it was important for a long time for the local black-nosed peasantry, which was the main category in Toropetsky county in the XVI century. The weak development of local land ownership, serious ruin during the Time of Troubles actualized elements of archaic territorial organization here in the XVII century.   Digests, like dozens, are considered in historiography as a phenomenon inherited from the pre-Moscow period ^[2]. However, the fate of these territorial units within the Russian state turned out to be different, due in general to local specifics.

The system of rural settlement throughout the studied territory has common features. It is characterized by the dominance of small settlements – villages of 1-3 yards in size, densely covering both the basins of large and small rivers and lakes, and watershed spaces. These features are most pronounced in Tver District, which is characterized by a high degree of development of watersheds (Fig. 5). However, even here in the XVI century there were microregions in which active development was recorded directly by scribal materials of this time. For example, in the Sheysky camp at that time there was an active development of watersheds within the monastic land ownership, for which pochinok was the predominant type of settlement. The location of localities in some cases explicitly marks roads. Thus, in the Tver half of the Bezhetskaya Pyatina, settlements were concentrated along a major road passing through Pyatina from north to south –southeast, and connecting the territory of Pyatina with the Ladoga region in the north and Tver lands in the south.

Another type of settlement was identified in the west of the studied territory, in the Upper Podvinye and on the Volga-Dvina watershed. First of all, poorly developed areas were identified in Toropetsky, Belsky and Rzhevsky counties, where not only swampy areas that were unsuitable for economic activity were located, but also large woodlands – the remains of the chronicle Okovsky forest. According to L.V. Alekseev, the mass deforestation in the Smolensk land occurred only in the XV – beginning of the XVI century. ^{[1, p. 38]}. Let us pay attention to the fact that on the territory of the medieval Belsky land there are almost single archaeological monuments of the pre-Mongol period. Active development of this territory according to archeology dates back to the Late Middle Ages and early Modern times. In the XVI century, only four volosts and, accordingly, the same number of large villages – volost centers were allocated as part of the vast Belsky Uyezd ^[2].

Secondly, the feature of the territorial organization of the population in the west of the studied territory was the "nest" type of settlement. The "nests" of settlements were clusters of small villages scattered in small groups at a considerable distance from each other, separated by spaces of uninhabited territory. In total, 137 such clusters were identified in the Toropetsky district of the XVI century. Localization demonstrates their different sizes and uneven distribution on the territory of the county (Fig. 6). Mapping shows that the best "nest" settlement structure was developed directly in the basin of the Western Dvina and its small tributaries – an area developed in ancient times ^[16]. A number of "nests" of bee-hunter settlements have been recorded. Probably, the destruction of the "nest" settlement system occurred both in connection with the spread of local land ownership and with the decline of the onboard fishery, which was observed throughout the XVI century. After the considerable devastation that the territory of Toropetsky County underwent during the Time of Troubles, only the remnants of the "nest" system are recorded – single small clusters.

The placement of various types of land holdings in the studied territory has a number of local features. Local land ownership was formed early enough on the territory of Tver, Novotorzhsky, Rzhevsky counties and Bezhetskaya Pyatina. However, in the Tver District in the XVI century. archaic elements of the land organization were preserved. So, in the middle of the XVI century. the princes Mikulinsky continued to own territories that were the patrimony of representatives of their kind during the independence of the Tver Principality. This contributed to the preservation of the land organization and relations between local landowners and their "masters" on the territory of the stan-uyezd during the Moscow period. Sources show that not only connections were preserved, but also the land holdings of the service people of the Mikulin princes themselves. Such are the possessions of the Neklyudovs, Sablins, Tyukhins, Epishevs. Their geographical position remained unchanged throughout the XVI century, and in some cases in the XVII century, which is reflected not only by scribal descriptions, but also by the assembly material ^[9].

In Bezhetskaya Pyatina, as a result of confiscation from Novgorod owners in the last quarter of the XV century, large volosts were divided among numerous landlords into relatively small estates. Thus, the Boyarschina parish in the Nikolsky Udomelsky churchyard, which belonged to Fyodor Yuryev, was divided between the service people of the Yurenevs, the Posokhovs, the Kolachevs; the Polyana parish of Fyodor Yuryev – between the Kurtsovs, Paisovs, Korotnevs, etc. Until the middle of the XVI century, there was only one large compact parish of Udomlya – the former vladychnaya. Since the 1560s, it has also been distributed to estates ^[14].

In the border Toropetsky and Belsky counties, local land ownership did not have time to become widespread. By the 1540s, in Toropetsky Uyezd, local land ownership had spread only to the northern part of the uyezd, while most of the territory was inhabited by the black-collar peasantry. In the first half of the XVII century, local land ownership was already localized in the central part, but, apparently, it still did not cover the entire county.

It is difficult to judge about the development of land ownership in the Belsky district in the XVI century, since descriptions of this time have not been preserved. However, the censuses of the second half of the XVII century, characterizing the county after the final entry into the Russian state, indicate the preservation of the land ownership of the local gentry here. Some gentry families preserved their possessions here until the XIX century .

The monastic land ownership in the studied territory is extremely unevenly distributed. It accounted for a significant share in Tver District in the XVI-XVII centuries. Here it referred not only to the large Trinity-Sergiev, Simonov, Alekseevsky and other Moscow monasteries, but also to numerous local monasteries. The concentration of monastic land ownership is observed in the northern part of the county, where several dozen monasteries arose during the XIV-XVI centuries. In other parts of the Upper Volga region and in the Upper Podvinye, monastic land ownership did not receive such development. It was relatively small in Bezhetskaya Pyatina. The confiscated lands of the Arkazhsky and Khutynsky Novgorod monasteries were transferred to secular landowners. In the XVI century. as part of the monastic land ownership in Bezhetskaya Pyatina were the possessions of local small monasteries. The share of monastic land ownership in Toropetsky, Novotorzhsky, Rzhevsky counties was very small. In the Rzhevsky District, a relatively large enclave was only the possession of the Iosifo-Volokolamsk Monastery, which included part of the Ostashkov settlement (the future Ostashkov); in Novotorzhsky, the possession of the Trinity–Sergius Monastery centered in the village of Medna, which arose in the XV century. It is obvious that the border situation did not contribute to monastic life on the western outskirts of the Russian state.

Scribal materials of the first half of the XVII century reflect the significant desolation of the studied territory. Desolation is recorded along the main roads. In some large desolate territories in the middle of the XVII century. new palace volosts were formed. Some of them were repopulated by immigrants "from beyond the Swedish border" in the second half of the XVII century, for example, Osechenskaya in Bezhetskaya Pyatina, Prudovskaya in Bezhetsky Verh, Zaborovskaya in Derevskaya Pyatina, Pogorelets in Tver District, etc. ^[18]. The involvement of sources of the second half of the XVII century will allow us to study in more detail the further transformation of the territorial organization of the studied region.

Thus, the use of geoinformation technologies allowed us to clarify the ideas about the territorial organization of a significant part of the Russian state, which consisted of the counties of the Upper Volga and Upper Podvinya. The revealed geographical parameters of various territorial associations, due to the specifics of land ownership and economy, showed that often these associations existed simultaneously on the same territory. Some of them lost their significance in the XVII century, others were actualized. Archaic features of the land organization existed throughout the studied period practically throughout the studied territory, but they were most fully preserved on the western outskirts of the Russian state, in the Podvinye and on the Dvina-Volga watershed, in the form of a "nest" settlement system, digests and tens.

Fig. 1. The territory of the Upper Volga and Upper Podvinsk as part of the Russian state of the late XV – XVII century.

Fig. 2. Division into volosts in Tver (according to the description of 1551-1554) and Novotorzhsky (according to the description of the 1620s) counties and into pogosts-districts in the Tver half of the Bezhetskaya Pyatina (according to the description of 1545).

Fig. 3. Volosts and perevars of Toropetsky county according to the description of 1540: Perevars: 1 – Toropetskaya, 2 – Poretskaya, 3 – Lashirskaya and Kudinskaya and Medenskaya and Yazvetskaya, 4 – Zbuttskaya, 5 – Zimetskaya, 6 – Vshonskaya, 7 – Solovskaya, 8 – Benskaya, 9 – Verezhunskaya, 10 – Dankovskaya, 11 – Serezhskaya, 12 – Zhelinskaya, 13 – Strezhinskaya, 14 – Panteleevskaya, 15 – Bolobinskaya, 16 – Lobinskaya, 17 – Zamoshskaya.

Fig. 4. Dozens of the parish of Udomlya according to the scribal book of 1498/99.

Fig. 5. The result of localization of the toponymy of the scribal descriptions of the Tver District and the Tver half of the Bezhetskaya Pyatina of the 1540s - 1550s.

Fig. 6. "Nests" of settlements in Toropetsky uyezd according to the description of 1540