Early Development. 261 



2. Development of Forest Policy. 



The first record of attention to the woods as a 

 special property dates from Michael, the founder, and 

 Alexis, the second of the house of Romanoff, the 

 former becoming Czar in 1613, the latter in 1645. 

 He it was who began to introduce Western civilization. 

 He confined himself, however, to regulating property 

 rights, which up to that time had remained somewhat 

 undefined, the forest, as elsewhere, being considered 

 more or less public property. He issued deeds of 

 ownership, or at least granted exclusive rights to the 

 use of forests, somewhat similar as was done in the ban- 

 forests. Soldiers alone were permitted to help them- 

 selves, even in private forests, to the wood they required. 

 Protection against theft and fire was also provided. 



The peasants, being serfs, were bound to the glebe, 

 and had, of course, no property rights, being main- 

 tained by the bounty of the seigneurs. 



Alexis' successor, the far-seeing Peter the Great, 

 who in his travels in Germany and other European 

 countries had, no doubt, been imbued with ideas of 

 conservatism, inaugurated in the end of the 17th 

 and beginning of the 18th century a far-reaching 

 restrictive policy, which had two objects in view, 

 namely economic use of wood, which he had learned 

 to appreciate while playing carpenter in Amsterdam, 

 and preservation of ship timber, which his desire 

 to build up a navy dictated. All forests for 35 miles 

 alongside of rivers were declared in ban, and placed 

 under the supervision of the newly organized Adminis- 

 tration of Crown forests. In these banforests, the 



