ABSTRACT
The establishment of the Russian recruitment system was closely tied to the military reforms of Peter the Great. As he began modernizing his state, Peter realized the importance of a standing and well-trained army to achieve his domestic and foreign goals. On 8 November 1699, Peter issued a decree calling for volunteers from “all manner of free men” and promising a generous pay of 11 rubles per year and supplies of food and clothing. Some 11 days later, another decree specified the levy of recruits1 from all estates. The first levy called for one man per 25 households of clergy and rich merchants, one per 30 households of nobles in civil service, one per 50 households of nobles in military service, and a special levy of one man with a horse per 100 households of metropolitan nobility. The recruits were chosen from a landlord’s serfs and slaves.2 Thus Russia’s recruitment system endured with gradual changes, until the period of Great Reforms in the 1860s, drawing conscripts from the servile population of Russia that included serfs, state and church peasants, and townspeople. The recruitment system was appropriate to the social system of tsarist Russia. The peasants, artisans, and other estates (i.e. social castes) subject to the poll tax provided the lower ranks, while the nobility supplied the officers.
