Nowhere to slake one's thirst

Unless you were traveling through the Baltic provinces or the areas acquired via the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 18th century, you were unlikely to find a tavern in which to slake your thirst or fill your belly.

At least, that is what the Geographical Atlas would have us believe.

One would hope that not too many travelers committed the folly of relying solely on this particular source to navigate the day-to-day challenges of travel through Russia.

Piadyshev and his colleagues placed a mere 29 taverns on the entire atlas, but don't be fooled: there were taverns aplenty, and not just in Kurliand and Volynia. Imperial authorites went to great lengths to control the geography of eating and drinking establishments, and a quick look at a handful of relevant decrees gives us a rough sense of where they were, where they weren't, and why it mattered.

October 1786: Catherine II rules that no traktir, pitejnyi dom, or kharchevnia, should be located in the same building as a school (PSZ I, no. 16,443).
June 1822: The Senate bars drinking establishments located within 5 kilometers of an armaments, saltpeter, or gunpowder factory (PSZ I, no. 29,071).
December 1823: Alexander I decides that, having visited the region and found a disproportionately high number of drinking establishments in the vicinity of the military settlements in Kherson and Ekaterinoslav provinces, he would limit the number of such establishments and fix their locations. He allowed 10 in Kherson district, 46 in Elizavetgrad, 34 in Ol'viopol', 34 in Aleksandrijsk, and 3 in all of Ekaterinoslav province (PSZ I, no. 29670).

In order to understand the logic of the atlas, it is important to remember that these bits of legislation apply to drinking establishments in general. The korchma, translated in this project as tavern, was a genre of drinking establishment - one native to the Baltic provinces and the provinces formed from the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Coffee and tea were rarities in a korchma, as was the sale of food: local custom was to bring your own snacks. A korchma doubled as an inn, with two small rooms for travelers and a saray, or courtyard, for keeping animals and stowing goods.

It just so happens that Piadyshev and his colleagues were preparing their atlas just as the empire's korchma geography was undergoing significant changes:

January 1824: The governor of Grodnen reports that the government's 1811 decision to allow the sale of alcoholic drinks to those who paid a lump-sum tax (2 rubles as of 1821) led to a boom in korchma construction. He recommends a series of measures meant to curb that trend by preventing landowners from building taverns on land acquired at certain times, through certain means, and in certain locations (such as those not contiguous with the rest of their property). (PSZ I, no. 29,752).

The question remains, then, doesn't it: why include so few taverns on the atlas?

There is a potential answer lurking on the map. The active map below shows the eastern end of Kurliand province. (Pan and zoom all you like; refresh your browser to reset the map.)

What does the map tell us?

The taverns - symbolized with orange squares - do not overlap with post stations or post roads.
They are located along carriage roads.
They do not coincide with villages or towns of any kind.

Ah, there's the rub.

Crafty Lt. Colonel Piadyshev is not telling us where all of the taverns are located. He is not even telling us where a specific kind of tavern is located. His maps are giving us the locations of the taverns that existed as stand-alone institutions, outside the spatial context of a village or town.

Or so it would seem. It bears further pondering, does it not?