Russia under the Old regime

198

seat of anautonomms court, 4. a corporation with legal status, and 5. a centre of self-goveriment.6 Populated centres satisfying the first two elements of this defintion can be found from the beginning of recorded history in every ana of the world; wherever there is organized human life of some kind, ttere are market places, and wherever there is political authoritythere arealso fortified places near by. But it is only in western Europe aid areas olonized by its immigrants that one meets with cities which, in addition, render their inhabitants special legal and administrative services. Tk city as a body of men enjoying rights not shared by the rural populati"n is a phenomenon peculiar to the civilization of western Europe. A so much else, it came into being in the Middle Ages as a by-pioduct of feudalism. The city originally constituted itself into a communiy by virtie of a grant from the feudal lord authorizing a place to be set iside for rade and crafts. Then, as the result of its members undertakhg joint"usiness ventures, the burghers acquired corporate status. As their weilth and power grew, the burghers challenged their feudal loids, transforming their corporate status into self-rule by winning spedal urban laws and courts, separate systems of taxation, and organs of city-govirnment. Essentially, the urban population of continental vestern Eirope gained its rights and transformed itself into a bourgeoisie in the tourse of conflict with the feudal nobility and at this nobility's expense.

The city of the wstern European kind did emerge between die twelfth and fifteenth centiries in north-western Russia, most notably in Novgorod and Pskov vhich were in close contact with the German city-states anc imitatec their institutions. They could also be found on the territory of the Polih-Lithuanian Commonwealth, whose urban inhabitants enjoyed autaiomy based on the law of the Hanseatic town of Magdeburg. But tiese were short-lived exceptions. Moscow could not tolerate privileged sanctuaries from which a genuine urban civilization might ha^e developed because they violated the kingdom's patrimonial constitutbn. Mosctw deprived Novgorod and Pskov of their liberties as soon as it had conqiered them, and it promptly curtailed the guarantees of the burghers of Poland-Lithuania when this area fell under Russian control, long beftre the devastations of the Second World War such once proud metroplitan centres as Novgorod, Pskov and Smolensk de-generatec into see"y large villages; and die city of Moscow owes whatever grandeur it tan lay claim to not to its commercial but to its autocratie and aristocratic heritages.

Although quite inlike its western counterpart, the Russian city was still an institution if considerable complexity in whose history administrative, taatory;nd economic elements overlapped in bewildering fashion.