In Russian and world history, the 17th century is considered a turning point. It turned out to be a kind of watershed between two eras — the Middle Ages and the modern era. This is the century associated with the beginning of the establishment of bourgeois civilization. As the French historian François Crouzet wrote, the 17th century became «an era of crisis that affected man as a whole, in all spheres of his activity — economic, social, political, religious, scientific and artistic, his entire existence — at the deepest level of his vital forces”1. It is not surprising that the turning point century turned out to be a time of «unprecedented contradictions and contrasts”2. All of the above fully applies to Russia, where, however, the beginning of the transition from a traditional society to a modern civilization had its own specifics, which were rooted, above all, in the existence of serfdom and the absence of stable capital necessary for the development of market relations.