Russia under the Old regime

THE GENESIS OF THE PATRIMONIAL STATE IN RUSSIA

with the western fief-office. They represented, in effect, bonuses given to trusted servants in lieu of money of which the Russian princes were always desperately short.

The absence in medieval Russia of feudal institutions of the western European kind has had profound bearing on the deviation of Russia's political development from the course followed by western Europe. Feudalism is commonly regarded as an order antithetical to statehood; in ordinary speech 'feudal' signifies as much as inward-oriented, disorganized, lacking in public spirit. This usage, made popular by the French Revolution and liberal publicists of the nineteenth century, is not shared by modern historians. The latter are impressed by the hidden centripetal impulses inherent in western feudalism, and by the critical contributions it has made to the growth of modern statehood. Vassalage proved an excellent surrogate for public authority after that authority had declined and in places disappeared following the collapse of the Carolingian Empire. The authority which western kings could no longer exercise in their public capacity, as territorial rulers, they were able at least partly to enforce through personal liens over vassals. At first, feudal authority extended only to the vassals who had personally sworn fealty to the king (vassi dotninici); but in some western countries it was eventually extended to embrace also the vassals' vassals. In this manner through subinfeudation, a chain of command was forged which, though private and contractual in origin, functioned in a manner similar to the public and obligatory. It is from feudal institutions, too, that some of the most important political institutions of the modern state emerged. The feudal curia regis, originally a convocation of royal vassals assembled to give the king the advice which, as lord, he had a right to demand, became in thirteenth-century France a central organ of royal government employing salaried officials. The Estates General of thirteenth-century France and England transformed themselves from ad hoc gatherings, convoked in periods of national emergency, into parliaments which claimed as a right what had once been their obligation. The judiciary systems of England and France likewise grew out of feudal institutions, namely the right of the vassal to an open trial, administered by persons other than his lord. Thus, for all its apparent anarchist tendencies, feudalism furnished western monarchs with a superb set of instruments with which to consolidate their power and organize centralized states. Sovereignty over the persons of the vassals and control of their fiefs could be and in places actually became a means for the establishment of sovereignty over all the people and the territory which they inhabited. The rulers of Germany and Italy proved unable to make proper use of this instrument; those of England, France and Spain succeeded, and from 1300 onwards laid the foundation work of powerful, centralized states. In these three