– Chelobitnaya is an official petition addressed to the monarch. A person requesting a salary raise was expected to describe their merits and accomplishments, so some of such petitions are lengthy and graphic. For Karelia, very few such documents are available, so this, very detailed one, is twice as valuable, – clarified Alexander Bochkaryov.
In 1649, the Olonets Uyezd is established by incorporating Zaonezhye and Lop’ Pogosts of the Novgorod Uyezd (uyezd and pogost are administrative subdivision units of the time). The Olonets fortress was erected and the Voivode position was introduced to head the troops and the local administration at the same time. As the army was strengthened in the neighboring Sweden, the famous Olonets ‘new formation’ regiments were created of local peasants in Karelia.
– It was typical of mid-17th century Russia to have a mixture of civil and military duties. Pod’yachiy-rank clerks had diverse responsibilities and managed the local government paperwork. Some, like Stepan Izhorin, spent more time “in the field” – visiting the troops or communicating with the populace, – the historian narrated.
Alexander Bochkaryov, Junior Researcher of the Institute of Linguistics, Literature and History KarRC RAS (photo courtesy of the scientist)
Stepan Izhorin was presumably enlisted into the chancellery in 1651, and in the first few years actually served without an official salary. From the very start, he was engaged in active work with the population in the Zaonezhye and the more northerly Lop’ Pogosts. The clerk had to search for and return ‘runaway’ peasant families – those who had fled to neighboring regions from famine and high taxes in the 1640s. The official managed to return 430 out of 690 runaway families back to where they belonged. He was then granted a tenure position with an annual salary of 4 rubles. For a comparison: soldiers were paid 60 altyns (21.6 roubles) per year.
In 1654, the Russo-Polish Thirteen Years’ War started. The Olonets regiments were sent to fight the Commonwealth. Stepan Izhorin was assigned to seek out deserters.
– Draft evasion and desertion in the Olonets regiments began from the moment of their formation in 1649. There were many reasons for the desertion, which can roughly be divided into three categories. Firstly, the economic factor – poor salaries and provisions. The second group was socio-administrative factors, partly associated with officials taking bribes during mobilization. Significant problems existed in relationships with foreigners and non-Christians in the commanding staff. The third factor was of military nature – the Russian-Swedish border was largely left unprotected. When the threat of a Swedish offensive arose in 1656, many soldiers left the Grand Duchy of Lithuania without permission to organize self-defense in their native land, – the scholar explained.
Alexander Bochkaryov's Cand.Sci. dissertation, which he successfully defended in 2023, covered the topic of desertion in the Olonets regiments. During the Thirteen Years' War, it amounted to 20–28% of the rank and file.
The search organized by Stepan Izhorin in the Olonets Pogost in the autumn of 1654 resulted in the apprehension of 96 deserters. His work, however, was not limited to searching for runaway soldiers. He was sent to the troops to verify papers – to check whether they contained signs of local officials’ corruption during mobilization. As a result, the number of bribes decreased.
In 1656, Stepan Izhorin found himself at the epicenter of the Russo-Swedish War. He served in the office of voivode stolnik Pyotr Mikhailovich Pushkin, who launched the siege of Kexholm – the reconquest of the former fortress of Korela (in the present-day Leningrad Region), which had been passed to the Swedes as a result of the Time of Troubles. However, a month later, Russian troops had to defend themselves against enemy reinforcements.– Stepan Izhorin was performing staff officer duties and stayed in the siege camp at that time. During a shelling the clerk barely managed to escape. He had to strip naked and swim across the rapid Vuoksa River to the opposite bank, where comrades picked him out of water and rescued him, – said Alexander Bochkaryov.
Once they had "waited out the arrival of the German military forces", Stepan Izhorin was chosen as a courier to deliver Voivode Pushkin's report on the events to the headquarters of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich at the siege camp near Riga – such was the command's trust in him.
Throughout this time, the clerk was in dire need of money, having to provide for his own meals and horses to travel. His salary of 4 rubles was insufficient, and his wife and children "wandered between households". He had the lowest salary among all the clerks in the voivode’s office in 1653. The salaries of Olonets clerks at the time ranged from 4 to 15 rubles.
“Izhorin’s case illustrates that regimental service, despite its prestige, could not only be paid less but also offered no opportunities for earning extra, unlike chancellery work", – notes the author of the article.
Upon the petition, the clerk’s salary was raised to 6 rubles per year. Around the same time, in 1657, he finished his military service: his duties now focused on handling judicial, administrative, and financial matters. Five years later, Stepan Izhorin was promoted to a "certified" clerk, his salary rose to 8 rubles, and subsequently to 12 rubles. He served in this rank until his death in 1670.
As stated in the research conclusions, the analysis of the petition demonstrates that interactions between provincial clerks and the army is a special administrative phenomenon of the time of reforms of Tzar Aleksis and the emergence of the Russian regular army in the mid-17th century.
– This document is a vivid imprint of the era, considering how many crucial issues of that time it raises, – summarized Alexander Bochkaryov.
The historian’s paper “Military service of a provincial clerk in Russian ‘new formation’ regiments in the 1650s” won the KarRC RAS Young Scientists’ competition in the Humanities category.
Alexander Bochkarev recounted that he became fascinated with the seventeenth century during his first years at the Petrozavodsk State University. While studying for his bachelor's degree, he explored the topic related to Swedish history and its involvement in the Thirty Years' War. As a master's student, he turned to the subject of Swedish military legislation and its connection to Russian history of the same period. During his doctoral studies, it became clear that the primary focus should be shifted to the history of Karelia, leading him to choose to study the Olonets regiments. At the same time, the scientist is convinced that studies of local history must be placed within the context of not only Russian history, but European history as a whole.
