XVIIth century demonstrate distinguished
and complicated feudal tax
cadastre.
They evaluated land estates in two-steps way taking into consid-
eration quantity of productive arable lands measured in a very accu-
rate way. Next step was the evaluation of arable soil quality: good,
medium or poor. After that the data on quality had been recalculated
in exact proportion into special units of agricultural productivity of the
estate.
Land taxes and vassal obligations served as the basement of ad-
ministrative, financial and military life of the Moscow State in the
XVI-XVII th centuries. These duties were determined in accordance
with the quantity and feudal status of land holding and its agricultural
value. The state itself did not carry out
any important economic pro-
jects. Stability of central administration, power and wealth of Moscow
state depended on prosperity of peasantry paying taxes and landlords
serving for the state with their vassal. Surveyors took into considera-
tion feudal status of the land holding they described. The data on agri-
cultural productivity of estates had been recalculated once more into
special tax units (sokha) in order to reflect status of the landlords.
Land cadastre of that period had been the tax cadastre –
evaluation
of settled and exploited lands. It dealt with arable and hayfield lands,
sometimes with fisheries, apiaries, hunting estates of tzars. Virgin for-
ests, empty lands and marches attracted no attention of estate survey-
ors. This situation reflected abundance of agricultural resources and
low density of peasant population. This shows the level of geographi-
cal knowledge of that period: despite the
fact that major waterways
and roads had been described and well-known, contemporaries of Ivan
the Terrible or Boris Godunov seemed to be unaware of endless Rus-
sian forests as foreign ambassadors and merchants had been on their
way to the capital of Moscovy. Contemporary documents showed that
even wealthy native aristocracy could go astray while travelling in the
forests of the Central Russia.
Besides numerous surveys carried out
by the Moscow Administra-
tion of Estates, many wealthy landlords compiled cadastral descrip-
tions of their lands: sovereign Great Princes, Archbishops, monaster-
ies.
The system of a land cadastre of the XVI-XVII th centuries used
the old-fashioned methods of direct land measuring in area units when
67
contemporary European countries began to use land charts and maps.
But there existed a couple of archival documents showing the use of
charts and plans in medieval cadastres.
The general level of mapmak-
ing could be seen from the published translations of books on geome-
try and land measuring, allowed at least to presume the technical pos-
sibility of the brief land mapping of Central Russia. All this proves the
similarity of medieval Russian land cadastres and continental cadastral
system.
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