Russia under the Old regime

38

Western scholars, too, for the major part accept the Kiev-Moscow line of succession. The issue, however, is by no means self-evident. Kliuchev-skii was the first to stress the fundamental differences between the northeastern principalities and the Kievan state. Subsequently, Miliukov showed that the traditional scheme had its origin in the writings of Muscovite publicists of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries who wished to demonstrate Moscow's claim to all Russia, particularly to the territories then under Lithuanian suzereignty; from them it was uncritically adopted by historians of the imperial period.2 The Ukrainian scholar, Michael Hrushevsky, taking Kliuchevskii's and Miliukov's critique as his starting-point, went a step further, arguing that the legitimate successors to Kiev are to be found in the western principalities, Galich and Volhynia, subsequently taken over by Lithuania, for it was here that Kievan traditions and institutions had been best preserved. Moscow, in his view, was a new political formation.3

Without attempting to resolve the dispute between historians as to which nationality, Great Russian or Ukrainian, has the better claim to Kievan heritage, one cannot ignore an important issue raised by the critics of the Kiev-Moscow succession line. The Muscovite state did in fact introduce basic political innovations which gave it a constitution very different from Kiev's. The root of many of these innovations can be traced to the way the Muscovite state was formed. In Kievan Rus' and in all but its north-eastern successor states, the population antedated the princes; settlement came first and political authority followed. The north-east, by contrast, had been largely colonized on the initiative and under the auspices of the princes; here authority preceded settlement. As a result, the north-eastern princes enjoyed a degree of power and prestige which their counterparts in Novgorod and Lithuania could never aspire to. The land, they believed and claimed, belonged to them: the cities, forests, arable, meadows and waterways were their property because it was they who had caused them to be built, cleared or exploited. By an extension of this thought, the people living on this land were either their slaves or their tenants; in either event, they had no claim to the land and no inherent personal 'rights'. A kind of proprietary attitude thus surfaced on the north-eastern frontier. Penetrating all the institutions of political authority it gave them a character fundamentally different from that found in any other part of Russia, or, for that matter, Europe at large.

The term for property in medieval Russia was votchina (plural, votchiny). It is frequently met with in medieval chronicles, testaments and treaties between princes. Its root, ot, is the same as that of the Russian word for father (otets). Votchina is indeed the exact equivalent of the Latin patrimonium and, like it, denotes goods and powers inherited from one's