Yam Reform in the Moscow State in the 16th Century

Abstract

Referring to a wide range of sources and literature the article discusses the changes that took place in the government communications during the reign of Ivan the Terrible. The article restores the stages of the yam messenger system reform, clarifying and reviewing a number of conclusions already existing in historiography. The author demonstrates that the material state of the posad people and rural tyagletsy was seriously undermined by the increase and development of duty paid in kind as well as monetary yam duty. The author determines the timeframe of the reform, pointing out the gradual character of the changes introduced by the Select Council, and continued after its resignation. The article analyses the social status of yam hunters, and studies their organization that combined features of prikaz management and communitarian self-management. Special attention is paid to the system of yam privileges (administrative, judicial, fiscal, etc.). The author proves that from the legal point of view, they did not differ fundamentally from the privileges provided to other categories of the population and listed in the Charter, and partially Tarkhan, privilege, and tax-exemption charters. The author concludes that the conditions yam hunters lived in were generally difficult and gradually deteriorated, and the transformations caused by the reform had not completed before the beginning of the Time of Troubles.

Keywords

• Ямская гоньба
• ям
• ямщик
• ямская повинность
• Избранная рада
• связь
• Иван IV.