Russia under the Old regime

THE GENESIS OF THE PATRIMONIAL STATE IN RUSSIA

of income; one official assumed charge of the apiaries, another of the orchards, another yet of the falcons (which were used not for amusement but for hunting). An income-producing property was called put' and the officer in charge of it, putnji boiarin or putnik. A putnyi boiarin had assigned to him villages and promysly, revenues from which he used to support himself and his staff. Administrative functions of the dvor were organized along economic lines: that is, the putnyi boiarin administered and judged the slaves and other peasants employed in his particular branch of the economy. He enjoyed the same authority over the inhabitants of the villages and promysly assigned to him for his personal support.

Outside the princely domain, administrative responsibilities were held to a minimum. Lay and ecclesiastical landowners enjoyed extensive immunities which allowed them4o tax and to judge the population of their estates, while the black peasants governed themselves through their communal organizations. In so far, however, as it was necessary to perform certain public functions (e.g. tax gathering and later, after Mongol conquest, collection of the tribute), these were entrusted to the dvoretskii and his staff. The prince's household administration thus served in a double capacity; its principal task, managing the princely domain, was supplemented, when so required, by responsibilities over the principality at large - an essential characteristic of all regimes of the patrimonial type.

As one might expect, the slaves entrusted with administrative duties soon differentiated themselves from those employed in manual labour and formed a caste placed somewhere between freemen and bondmen. In some documents the two categories are distinguished as prikaznye liudi (commissioned men) and stradnye liudi (labouring men). By virtue of their responsibilities and the power that it gave them, the former constituted a kind of lower order of the nobility. Atthe same time, they had no confirmed rights whatever and their freedom of movement was subject to severe restrictions. In treaties between appanage princes it was customary to insert clauses pledging the parties not to lure away members of their respective household staffs, referred to by such names as slugi pod dvorskim (servants under the steward), dvornye liudi (household men), or, for short, dvoriane ('householders'). This group later became the nucleus of the basic service class of Muscovite and imperial Russia.

So much for the personal domain of the appanage prince. Outside his domain the appanage prince enjoyed precious little authority. The inhabitants at large owed him nothing but taxes, and could move from one principality to another with perfect ease. The right of freemen to roam about the land of Rus' was firmly rooted in customary law and formally acknowledged in treaties between princes. Its existence, of course, represented an anomaly; for whereas, after approximately 1150,