Tag Archives: sobornoye ulozheniye

1648: The leaders of the Salt Riot

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On this date in 1648, the ringleaders of a short-lived rebellion over salt taxes were executed in Moscow.

Salt saker image (cc) Greg Bishop

The Salt Riot is exactly what you’d think from its name, right down to being over in a matter of weeks.

Common folk irked at a new salt tax* that made the commodity dramatically more expensive besieged tsar Alexei I at the beginning of June, soon joined by opportunistic Streltsy who hadn’t been paid in a while.

The specific target of their rage was the boyar Boris Morozov, the elder brother-in-law of the teenage monarch, and the true power behind the throne. He accordingly played the traditional role of bad cop to the tsar’s presumptive good cop.

Of course, both guys were really on the same team.

A few days of mayhem, a few boyars’ heads on pikes later, the Streltsy had been bought off and the rioters divided and quashed. Alexei avoided handing over Morozov to the vengeance of the mob, and “exiled” him to a monastery. He would return from “exile” in a few months, once everyone had chilled out and the rising could be taken with a grain of salt.


Salt Riot in Kolomenskoe, by Nikolay Nekrasov.

This passing spasm in the Russian polity left a long-lived and troublesome legacy: one of the demands of the rioters was the convocation of the Zemsky Sobor to hammer out a new legal code.

This happened to be a need for the Russian state anyway, since its rulers were governing by the haphazard issuance of countless ukases nobody could keep straight. So, 1649 saw the promulgation of the Sobornoye Ulozheniye, helpfully rationalizing the lawmaking process.

Win, and win! Except that this legislative milestone also codified serfdom in its most heavy-handed form, formally binding most Russian peasants to their estate without freedom of movement, and making this unhappy condition hereditary. The legal code, and the institution of serfdom subsisted until the 19th century.

* According to The Cambridge History of Russia, the salt tax itself had actually been abolished at the end of 1647, but “other direct taxes were tripled to compensate for the loss of revenue.”

On this day..