Service Conditions
The Muscovite government was chronically short of cash and so did not often pay the streltsy well. While "entitled" to something like four rubles a year in the 1550s, they were often allowed to farm or trade in order to supplement their incomes. This reduced their combat effectiveness and often their desire to go on campaigns (since a season on campaign meant loss of income). Streltsy and their families lived in their own neighborhoods or districts settlements and received money and bread from the State Treasury. In certain locations, Streltsy were granted strips of land instead of money. The Streltsy settlement in Moscow was located near where the main campus of Moscow State University now stands.
Read more about this topic: Streltsy
Famous quotes containing the words service and/or conditions:
“Night City was like a deranged experiment in Social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you’d break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone ... though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)