In the first quarter of the 18th century, on the initiative of Peter I, a system of military hospital institutions was created and their organization by private individuals was encouraged. This appeal received endorsement from the bureaucratic nobility and was embodied in the testaments of the famous Petrine diplomat, Prince B.I. Kurakin (1727), and the first Russian State Chancellor, Count G.I. Golovkin (1729). In the detailed regulations attached to his last will, B.I. Kurakin not only delineated the structure of the staff of the hospital, which, along with the church, was to be built in Moscow, the composition of meals and clothing given to the patients and staff, but also outlined their way of life. Besides, the will designated the amount of money required for the construction and maintenance of the Moscow almshouse-hospital, and the source of its acquisition, including interest on capital placed in foreign banks. G.I. Golovkin’s testament also mainly describes how to maintain the hospital church and the hospital in Vysotsky monastery in Serpukhov, where his parents’ remains rested and where he bequeathed to bury himself. The unprecedented comparison of the texts of the two wills with regard to charitable activities has highlighted both the common features of Old Russian piety inherent in these representatives of the political elite of Peter’s time, and the differences in the manifestation of the Europeanism they had adopted. The mentalities of both State Chancellor Golovkin, who never left Russia, and Prince Kurakin, much more Europeanized in accordance with the nature of his service, were still determined by their religious worldview. The latter manifested itself in the concern for memorial services and church building. In addition, Kurakin’s will transferred the vow taken upon himself in front of the icon of Nicholas the Wonderworker to his heir, under the threat of curses and punishment on the day of the Last Judgment if the deceased’s will had not been fulfilled. In both testaments, church benevolence and ancient Christian love for the poor, characteristic of Old Russian piety, were combined with the forms and goals of the charity of the modern period. Its embodiment were the prudently equipped hospitals-almshouses, initiated by the example of the supreme power.

The article examines the prospects and advantages of different organizational forms of trade between Russia and China in the first third of the 18th century on the basis of legislative acts, notes and proposals of Russian merchants, officials and foreign diplomats, documents of commercial establishments. Regular trade between Russia and China was legally sanctioned by the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689. Huge distances and difficulties of the route, the length and danger of the journey, the direct interest of the government in the sale of furs, which came in the form of tribute from the pagan peoples of Siberia, made the state caravan trade the main form of trade between Russia and China. The caravan could also include inhabitants of different cities, who were going to China for their own trade. In 1706, the fur trade was declared a monopoly of the treasury, and merchants and service class were forbidden to trade “soft stuff ” in Siberia and to travel with goods to China. By concentrating the most profitable areas and types of trade in the hands of the treasury, the government sought to increase the flow of funds needed for the Northern War. In 1711, the newly established Senate suggested that Moscow rich merchants should buy off the trade with China by organizing a company for this purpose. This system guaranteed a fixed amount of income for the treasury. However, the largest representatives of the merchant circles of Moscow declined this suggestion, citing insufficient funds and arguing the advantages of free trade with China. In the 1720s merchants again raised the question of free Chinese trade. The Commission on Commerce in 1727 also acknowledged that “no great profit is seen” from the state caravans. Nevertheless, even later (in 1731 and 1734) the government forbade Russian subjects to trade “soft stuff ” in Beijing and in territories subject to China. It was only in 1762 that the state monopoly on trade with China was abolished.

From the late 15th century until Peter the Great’s tax reform, there were kabala bondmen (kholopy), who had lost their freedom by debt and service bondages (kabalas), along with the “full” bondmen that existed from ancient times. The latter were inherited, while the former had to be set free aft er the death of their owner, having formalized a manumission record in the Kholopiy prikaz. The 1649 Sobornoe Ulozhenie clearly distinguished between these two categories of bondmen. From the beginning of the Great Northern War, Peter I ordered to enroll in the army house serfs (dvorovye) fit for military service and set free aft er the death of their owners. Lord’s men could also enroll in military service at will. After the extension of the per capita tax to the “boyar men” it was forbidden to enroll them in service, and the manumission of house serfs with manumission letters was resumed. Unlike legislative norms, the practical side of this widespread social phenomenon has not been adequately studied. The manumission records of house serfs in 1717–1780, preserved in the fonds of the Office of Justice in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Documents, as well as their petitions and the minutes of the Office of Justice allow us to elucidate the circumstances and procedure of manumission of house serfs, collisions that arose in this process, as well as the prospects of their further life. Manumission letters written at home were signed and sealed with the owner’s personal seal and certified by witnesses. In this case, they had to be registered in the serfdom institutions and then submitted to a Hofgericht (nadvorny court) or provincial chancellery to decide on the fate of the manumitted serf. Peter the Great’s tax reform contributed to the erasure of the distinction between old and kabala bondmen. The term kholop (bondman) was soon replaced by the term dvorovyi (house serf), and any house serf could be manumitted. Most of those manumitted again voluntarily signed up “forever” to the old or new master. The Manifesto of 17 March 1775 oriented the manumitted serfs to enter the petty bourgeoisie or merchant state and reflected the actual need to get rid of archaic forms of personal dependence.