THE LARGE AND SMALL CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE OF THE SECRET AFFAIRS ORDER IN RUSSIA IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 17TH CENTURY

In 1654, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich established the Order of Secret Affairs, which functioned until the death of the great emperor in 1676. The Secret Order dealt with political, palace, military, civil, and criminal matters. The purpose of this article is to study a special area in the activities of the Secret Affairs Order - the management of the Large and Small Chambers of Commerce of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The source base was unpublished office records from the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (f. 27 “The Order of Secret Affairs”, Moscow), the memoirs of foreign contemporaries - the German traveler A. Olearius, the Patriarch of Antioch, Macarius, the secretary of the Austrian embassy, who arrived in Moscow in 1675, A. Lizek. Of particular importance are such published clerical documents as “The Books of Persian Goods (1660s - 1670s)”, “The Census Book of the Upper Chamber of Commerce (1675-1676)”. The author came to the conclusion that the appearance of the Chambers of Commerce was associated with t