Nature's Evil

The trade was distant but simple: British ships sailed around Scandinavia and anchored in the Dvina, unloaded their holds, and exchanged processed hemp for their manufactured goods – broadcloth, ironmongery and guns, for which there was a steady demand in the Russian north. The Dvina Gulf was frozen for many months of the year, and work at sea came to a halt, as did work on land. But hemp processing carried on throughout the year. Russian trade on the White Sea was more of a stimulus to development than Polish trade on the Baltic: hemp promoted equitable development among northern smallholdings, whereas grain led to the enrichment of the nobility and to a second serfdom. 10 With hemp, the investment and quality of human labour was more important than who owned the land. The peasants had free time for other tasks and combined the hemp trade with their traditional economy. Along with hemp and ropes, the English ships filled their holds with seasonal products such as fatback, pelts, tar, beeswax and whale oil. For all its well-remembered sins, the Oprichnina had not established serfdom on its land. The underlying reason for the difference between the fates of the White Sea and the Baltic was the larger share of local labour in the price of hemp and the larger share of land in the price of grain.

Having never known serfdom, the Pomors and other peoples of the Russian north lived in individual farmsteads which were very different from the crowded villages of central Russia. Their fishing and whaling traditions made their way of life distinct from peasant husbandry. They owned spacious plots of land that often remained unfenced, and their extended families developed a non-monetary, non-specialised economy. They had rich resources – fish, grain, hemp, linen, timber – which they alternated as the seasons and custom dictated. They could not trade in these commodities because of the huge distances involved and also because everyone around had the same resources. Under English and later Dutch influences, the Pomors eagerly switched their smallholdings to commerce. Foreign merchants integrated into this cycle, monetising trade and introducing modern goods such as broadcloth and metals. Unusually, these curators changed the resource ecology of the local communities without disrupting their moral economy. Thanks to hemp, the river routes and free trade, the Pomors’ standard of living was higher than that of the most prosperous regions in central Russia.