Russia under the Old regime

THE GENESIS OF THE PATRIMONIAL STATE IN RUSSIA

Russians, and eliminated the Lithuanian-Polish state as a potential focus of Russian national aspirations.

Thus neither Novgorod nor Lithuania-Poland, notwithstanding their wealth and high level of civilization, were in a position to reunify the Eastern Slavs: the one because of its narrow, essentially commercial outlook, the other because of the divisive religious question. The task devolved by default on the poorest and most backward area of Russia, the so-called 'lowland' located in the north-east, at the confluence of the Oka and Volga.

When the Kievan state had stood at its zenith, the Volga-Oka region was a frontier area of minor importance. Its population then was still predominantly Finnish; to this day nearly all the rivers and lakes here bear Finnic names. Its rise began early in the twelfth century, when the main city of the region, Rostov the Great, became the hereditary property of the cadet branch of the family of Kiev's Great Prince, Vladimir Monomakh. Monomakh's younger son, Prince Iurii Dolgorukii (c. 1090-1157) the first independent ruler of Rostov, turned out to be a very enterprising colonizer. He built numerous cities, villages, churches and monasteries, and by generous offers of land and exemptions from taxes lured to his domain settlers from other principalities. This policy was continued by his son, Andrei Bogoliubskii (c. 1110-74). Careful analysis of the historical geography of the Rostov area carried out by M.K.Liubavskii revealed that already by the end of the twelfth century this was the most densely populated region in all Russia.1 Colonists streamed here from all directions - Novgorod, the western territories and the steppe - attracted by exemptions from taxes, security from nomad harassment and the relatively good quality of the soil. (The Volga-Oka region straddles a belt of marginal black earth with a 0-5 to 2-0 per cent humus content.) The colonists behaved here exactly as they had done several centuries earlier on entering Russia, first building stockades and then scattering around them in small settlements composed of one or two households. The Slavs inundated the indigenous Finns, ultimately assimilating them by intermarriage. The mixture of the two nationalities resulted in a new racial type, the Great Russian, in which, from the infusion of Finno-Ugric blood, certain oriental characteristics (e.g. high cheekbones and small eyes), absent among other Slavs, made their appearance.

The principality of Rostov became in time the cradle of a new Russian state, the Muscovite. Russian historiography traditionally has taken it for granted that the Muscovite state stands in linear succession to the Kievan, and that the sovereignty once exercised by the Great Princes of Kiev passed intact from their hands into those of Muscovite rulers.