Russia under the Old regime

THE GENESIS OF THE PATRIMONIAL STATE IN RUSSIA

ned the provincial towns. Lest, however, the name 'Kiev state' evoke the image of a territorial entity familiar from Norman history of France, England or Sicily, it must be stressed that it was nothing of the kind. The Norman state in Russia rather resembled the great merchant enterprises of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, such as the East India or Hudson's Bay companies, founded to make money but compelled by the absence of any administration in the area of their operations to assume quasi-governmental responsibilities. The Great Prince was a merchant par excellence, and his realm was essentially a commercial enterprise, composed of loosely affiliated towns whose garrisons collected the tribute and maintained, in a rough sort of way, public order. The princes were quite independent of one another. Together with their retainers (druzhiny) the Norman rulers of Russia formed a distinct caste. They lived apart from the rest of the population, they judged their own members by special laws, and preferred to have their remains buried in separate tombs. Norman administration was carried out in a most casual fashion. During the winter months, the princes accompanied by their druzhiny travelled in the countryside arranging for the delivery of the tribute and dispensing justice. It is only in the eleventh century, when the Kievan state already showed symptoms of decline, that in the larger cities there appeared popular assemblies called veche. Composed of all the adult males, these assemblies gave the prince advice on important policy questions. In Novgorod and Pskov, the veche even succeeded in arrogating to itself legislative authority and forcing the princes to execute its will. But these two cases apart, the prince-veche relationship tended to be informal and unstructured. Certainly one cannot speak of the populace of Kievan Russia exerting any institutional pressure on the ruling elite, least of all in the ninth and tenth centuries, when the veche did not as yet even exist. In the heyday of Kievan statehood, authority was exercised on the model of a pre-modern commercial enterprise, subject to restraint neither by law nor popular will.

Nothing reflects better the relationship of the Normans towards their Russian realm than their failure to work out an orderly system of princely succession. In the ninth and tenth centuries the problem seems to have been solved by force: on the death of the Kievan ruler, prince fell upon prince, and all semblance of national unity vanished until the victor made good his claim to the Kievan throne. Later various attempts were made - none of them successful - to assure a regular procedure of succession. Before his death in 1054, Great Prince Iaroslav apportioned the main cities among his five sons, urging them 'to heed' the eldest, to whom he entrusted Kiev. This device did not work, however, and conflicts persisted. Subsequently, Kievan princes held conferences at which they discussed and sometimes settled their disagreements, including