Muscovy Company

“ Verestchagin has the place of honour, and is represented by some excellent pictures of battle scenes, some displaying the French at Moscow. The picture of Abram and Isaac done by Reutern with his left hand has faces that could hardly be better.
[153] The Honourable Russia Company is still patron of four of the English churches in Russia. "A faint legal trace of the ancient privileges of the Muscovy Company survives in the extra-territorial character belonging for marriage purposes to the churches and chapels formerly attached to their factories in Russia."—Sir Courtenay Ilbert. ”

“ The Emperor is a great merchant himself of wax and sables, which with good foresight may be procured to their hands; as for other commodities there are little or none in Muscovy besides those above rehearsed; if there be other it is brought thither by the Turks, who will be dainty to buy our cloths considering the charges of carriages overland.
Our merchants may do well to provide for the Russians such wares as the Dutch nation doth serve them of, as Flanders and Holland cloths, which I believe they shall serve better with less charge than they of Rye or Dorpt, or Revel ”

“ Answer.—It is true that it is fit to trade to the East Indies with a joint stock, and so do the Hollanders; this Act therefore doth not forbid men to trade in a joint stock, if they list, and see it fit; only forbiddeth to constrain men to trade so against their wills; which heretofore in other trades, and at this day in the Muscovie trade, doth turn to the great damage both of the Commonwealth and of the particular persons so constrained to trade. The Muscovie Company, consisting of eight score, or thereabouts, have fifteen directors, who manage the whole trade ”

“ Concerning the tolls and customs of Russia, it was reported to me in Muscovy that the Turks and Armenians pay the tenth penny custom of all the wares they bring into the Emperor’s land, and above that they pay for all such goods as they weigh at the Emperor’s beam two pence of the rouble, which the buyer or seller must make report of to the master of the beam. They also pay a certain horse toll, which is in divers places of his realm four pence of a horse. ”

“ Next unto Moscow, the city of Novogorode is reputed the chiefest of Russia; for although it be in majesty inferior to it, yet in greatness it goeth beyond it. It is the chiefest and greatest mart town of all Muscovy; and albeit the Emperor’s seat is not there, but at Moscow, yet the commodiousness of the river falling into the gulf which is called Sinus Finnicus, whereby it is well frequented by merchants, makes it more famous than Moscow itself. This town excels all the rest in the commodities of flax and hemp; it yields also hides, honey, and wax. ”

“ Once let the vast sums that have invaded Muscovy be put, not to the autocratic purpose of the official rulers, but into factories, mines, city subways and transportation of all kinds, irrigation, canals, agricultural implements and to other productive uses, then capitalistic Russia will stand forth shorn of the Slavophilic simplicities of non-resistance and humility. Labor wars, practically unknown hitherto, yet now beginning, will occur in much greater number and the peasant class, still unified, will be torn asunder by differences in wealth and interests ”

“ It was the grandest sacrifice ever made to national honor by any people. "Who would have thought that a nation would burn its own capital?" said Napoleon.
Strangers are hardly prepared to find Moscow so great a manufacturing centre, more than fifty thousand of the population being regularly employed in manufacturing establishments. There are over a hundred cotton mills within the limits of the city, between fifty and sixty woollen mills, over thirty silk mills, and other kindred establishments, though enterprise in this direction is mostly confined to textile fabrics. ”

“ Which thing was of all the Russians in the rest of their journey so willingly done, that they began to quarrel, yea, and to fight also in striving and contending which of them should put their post-horses to the sled: so that after much ado, and great pains taken in this long and weary journey (for they had travelled very near fifteen hundred miles) , Master Chanceler came at last to Moscow, the chief city of the kingdom, and the seat of the king, of which city, and of the Emperor himself, and of the principal cities of Muscovy, we will speak immediately more at large in this discourse. ”

“ Commerce likewise contributed greatly towards the unification of Russia. For Kiev, trade with economically more developed foreign regions was already of great moment. In Muscovy the importance of trade increased in proportion as forests were cleared, and in proportion as all departments of agriculture experienced a comparatively equable development. The existence of the minor principalities was favourable to the general spread of agriculture, for in their individual territories the princes zealously promoted the cultivation of the soil and the settlement of peasants. ”

“ They were destined, however, to make more rapid progress than other classes of artisans, because the old Tsars of Muscovy, like other semi-barbarous potentates, admired and envied the industries of more civilised countries mainly from the military point of view. What they wanted most was a plentiful supply of good arms wherewith to defend themselves and attack their neighbours, and it was to this object that their most strenuous efforts were directed. ”

“ This may be so in the sense that 400,000 are receiving pay, but lack of fuel or of raw material must have brought many factories to a standstill.
All the big factories have been nationalized. Formerly, although in any one town there might be factories carrying out all the different processes, these factories belonged to different owners. A single firm or bank might control factories scattered over Russia and, so that the whole process should be in its hands, the raw material travelled from factory to factory through the country, instead of merely moving about a single town. ”

“ It is true that the (foreign) capital of Russia was not gradually accumulated as it was in Europe, where the accumulation of capital was effected out of industry, and pari passu with the growth of industry. In Russia, however, side by side with the capital invested in large-scale manufacture, the working capital of home industry (kustar') has continued to exist. Small-scale manufacture carried on in houses, has developed alongside large-scale capitalist manufacture, giving rise to specific investments of capital, technical schooling, and so on. ”

“ The chief attention of the union is devoted to the questions relating to the organization of production. Following the trustification of industry by the Soviet Government, the union put forward a scheme for the organization within the Supreme Economic Council of special sections devoted to the organization of the building industry, which was in a chaotic state under capitalism. ”

“ They were becoming, in short, a hereditary caste in the town population, and the pleasant Slavophil dream of every factory worker having a house in the country was being rudely dispelled. Nor was there any prospect of a change for the better in the future. With the increase of competition among the manufacturers, the uprooting of the muzhik from the soil must go on more and more rapidly, because employers must insist more and more on having thoroughly trained operatives ready to work steadily all the year round. ”

“ Every factory and works should have a board of management composed of workers in such a way that the majority of members should belong not to that factory in question, but should consist of workers delegated by trade unions of the special branch of industry, by the Soviet of Workers' Deputies, and finally by the local Soviet of Public Economy. ”

“ Now it is evident that absolute exclusion cannot favour industry. The high tariff, it is true, seems to secure a certain market for Russian manufactures; but it results from it that those manufactures, being kept clear of all competition, are worse than stationary; for the manufacturers, whose number is very limited, agree among themselves to turn out exactly the same sort of workmanship, and in the same proportion. Moscow is now the centre of all the manufactures of silk, cotton, and woollen stuffs, shawls, &c. ”

“ Touching the Riphean Mountains, whereupon the snow lieth continually, and where hence in times past it was thought that Tanais the river did spring, and that the rest of the wonders of Nature which the Grecians feigned and invented of old were there to be seen, our men which lately came from thence neither saw them, nor yet have brought home any perfect relation of them, although they remained there for the space of three months, and had gotten in that time some intelligence of the language of Muscovy. The whole country is plain and champaign, and few hills in it ”

“ Nicholas' government watched with concern the increase of the proletariat, but the industrial interests of the capitalists and those of the state itself prevailed over the political fears of the police and the administration. In Russia, as in Europe, there were frequent attempts to prevent the establishment of new factories and thus to hinder an increase in the number of operatives, but the state was compelled to found factories of its own, and had often to support manufacturing industry in defiance of the aristocratic and agrarianising aims by which it was animated. ”

“ In the course of the practical cooperation with the Soviet Government in the work for the strengthening and organization of the nation’s economic life, the professional trades unions have passed from control over industry to organization of industry, taking an active part in the management of individual enterprises as well as in the entire economic life of the country. ”

“ More might be said of the admirable Decorations of this Journey, and how so prodigious an Attempt is made easy; so that now they have an exact Correspondence, and drive a prodigious Trade between Muscow and Tonquin; but having a longer Voyage in Hand, I shall not detain the Reader, nor keep him till he grows too big with Expectation.
Now, as all Men know the Chineses are an Ancient, Wise, Polite, and most Ingenious People; so the Muscovites begun to reap the Benefit of this open Trade; and not only to grow exceeding Rich by the bartering for all the Wealth of those Eastern Countries ”

“ Blacksmiths’ shops and small farms had been started, and young men of the wealthier classes worked in the shops or on the farms, to be in daily contact with the toiling masses. At Moscow, a number of young girls, of rich families, who had studied at the Zurich university and had started a separate organization, went even so far [310] as to enter cotton factories, where they worked from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, and lived in the factory barracks the miserable life of the Russian factory girls. ”

“ The Russian peasants who followed industrial pursuits, before creating their own "domestic system" on the basis of which the true factory system was to develop, first of all passed through the school of the large factories which were based on Government privileges, on the utilization of serf labour, and on the industrial skill of other more advanced countries. ”

“ Wages are decided by free contract; modern machinery is employed; with the aid of foreign capital, great industry and capitalistic enterprise develop. Old Russia is being economically and socially transformed, the former class divisions being replaced by the new segregation into a class of capitalists and a class of operatives. Contemporancously there has occurred a transformation of commerce, and since the beginning of the sixties the locomotive and the steamboat have facilitated the export of grain to Europe. ”

“ So rapid was the evolution of Russian industry, so prompt the adoption of capitalistic methods of production, that no long time elapsed before the labour problem was superadded to the peasant problem. Philosophical historians and other writers could not fail to discern the mighty changes which a the growth of large-scale manufacture was effecting. Hence arose the socialistic and semi-socialistic theories of the narodniki and the early Russian socialists, who hoped to save agricultural Russia and the Russia of home industries from the onslaughts of hungry foreign capital. ”

“ These industrial establishments were non-inclusive of mining works, iron works, &c., and the people employed in them. They were classed as follows:—
The seat of Russian manufactures is principally in the central portion of the empire, in its ancient capital Moscow, and the surrounding provinces. The progress of Moscow itself may be thus briefly sketched, after remarking that in the beginning of 1839 there existed in the government, of which it was the capital city, 1058 manufactories, employing 83,054 work-people. ”

“ Muscovite Russia was a centralized State, based on universal and obligatory service, on the division of the population into classes bound to perform definite tasks—forced labour in the lower ranks, employed in commerce or in manual toil, and all feeding the State treasury; 'men who served' in the upper ranks, employed in the State army or in administrative service, and obliged, from childhood till they drew their last breath, to give the State their whole life's labour. ”