Russia under the Old regime

44

the Russian princes turned into territorial rulers with a strongly developed proprietary sense, their military retainers and the commoners living on their land continued to behave as if Russia were still the common property of the whole dynasty. The former enrolled in the service and the latter rented land wherever they found conditions most attractive. The resolution of this contradiction constitutes one of the main themes of Russia's early modern history. It was accomplished only in the middle of the seventeenth century, when the rulers of Muscovy - by then, tsars of Russia - succeeded at long last in compelling both the military retainers and commoners to stay put. Until then, Russia had sedentary rulers and a floating population. The appanage prince could tax those living in his principality at large but he could not tell his taxpayers what to do; he had no subjects and therefore no public authority. Princes apart, the only landowners in medieval north-eastern Russia were the clergy and the boyars. We shall postpone discussion of clerical holdings to the chapter on the church (Chapter 9), and here touch only on lay properties. During the appanage period, the term boyar meant a secular landowner or seigneur.* The ancestors of these boyars had served in the druzhiny of the princes of the Kievan state. Like them, finding fewer and fewer opportunities to make money from international trade and robbing expeditions, they turned in the eleventh and twelfth centuries to the exploitation of land. The princes, unable to offer them incomes or loot, now distributed to them land from among their large reserves of wild, uncultivated territory. This land was held as votchina, which meant that the holder could bequeath it to his heirs. Article 91 of the Russian law code {Russkaia Pravda, Prostrannaia Redaktsiia), dating from the early twelfth century, states that if a boyar died without sons, his estate, instead of reverting to the Treasury, went to his daughters; a provision which indicates that by this time the boyars were absolute owners of their properties. The boyars apparently relied less than the princes on slave labour. Most of their land was rented out to tenant farmers with a smaller segment being sometimes retained by them for direct exploitation as demesne by domestic slaves or tenant farmers in payment of rent (boiarshchina, or as later contracted, barshchina). Large estates duplicated the princely domains and like them were administered by staffs of domestics organized according to puti. Rich boyars were virtual sovereigns. The administrators of the prince's household rarely interfered with their people, and sometimes were formally forbidden to do so by immunity charters.

* In the early seventeenth century, it came to designate an honorary rank or chin, bestowed on the tsar's leading servitors, at most thirty in number, possession of which entitled the holder to serve on the tsarist Council {Duma). Here boyar will be used throughout in its original sense.

Secular votchiny were alodial property. On the death of the owner, they were divided in equal shares among the male heirs, after provisions had been set aside for the widow and daughters of the deceased. Votchiny could be freely sold. Later, in the mid-sixteenth century, the Muscovite monarchy introduced legislation which authorized members of the votchina-owner's clan to repurchase over a stated period (forty years) properties which he had sold to outsiders. In the appanage period no such restrictions existed. Although boyars almost invariably performed military service (in large measure because income from their estates was inadequate), their land being alod they were not required to serve the prince on whose territory their estate happened to lie. In Kievan Rus', members of the druzhiny were freemen, who chose their own leaders and served them at their own pleasure. This tradition went back to ancient Germanic practices according to which chieftains gathered around themselves temporary bands of volunteers (comites). The freedom to choose one's chief had been prevalent among Germanic peoples, Normans included, until restricted by the bonds of vassalage. In Russia, the custom of free service outlived the dissolution of the Kievan state, persisting throughout the appanage period. The situation of the boyars was not unlike that of the citizen of a modern state who pays real estate taxes to the community or state in which he happens to hold property, but is free to establish legal residence and find employment elsewhere. Customary law guaranteed boyars the right to enrol in the service of the Russian prince of their choice; they could even serve a foreign ruler, such as the Great Prince of Lithuania. Treaties among princes commonly contained articles affirming this right, usually employing a standard formula: 'the boyars and free servitors are free [to choose] among us' (a boiaram i slugam nashim mezhi nas vol'nym volia). A servitor could leave his prince at a moment's notice by exercising his right of'renunciation' or 'disavowal' (otkaz). This fact explains why, in administering their private domains, the appanage princes preferred to rely on slaves and semi-dependent personnel.

The cultivated land exploited neither by the prince nor by the lay and clerical votchinniki, was 'black land', that is, land subject to taxation (in contrast to 'white' clerical and service land, exempt from it). It consisted mostly of arable which the peasants cleared on their own initiative in the forest, but towns and trading posts were often included in this category. The peasants were organized into self-governing communities, whose members did much of the field work in common, and distributed among themselves their tax obligations. The legal status of black land was ambiguous. The peasants behaved as if it were their property, selling and bequeathing it. But that it did not legally belong to them can be seen from the fact that land of peasants who died without male issue was