Russia under the Old regime

65

claim to the crown heritage; and even when violating the principle in practice, they did not challenge its general validity. A fifteenth-century Spanish jurist stated succinctly western Europe's feeling about 'seig-neuraP or patrimonial government: 'To the King is confided solely the administration of the kingdom, and not dominion over things, for the property and rights of the State are public, and cannot be the private patrimony of anyone.'9 As for the sanctity of private property, it was axiomatic in western political theory and jurisprudence in the Middle Ages and afterwards; and although periodically abused, it was never seriously questioned until the spread of socialist doctrines in modern times. One of the standard criteria used in western thought for distinguishing a legitimate king from a despot was that one respected his subjects' properties while the other did not.

In Russia such objections to domainial rule were unknown. In a series of letters which he wrote to Ivan IV from his refuge in Lithuania, Prince Andrei Kurbskii, a prominent boyar, assailed the entire notion of the state as votchina. But a recent analysis of the Kurbskii-Ivan correspondence has thrown such doubts on its authenticity that it can no longer be depended on as a source.10 Under the economic conditions prevailing in medieval and early modern Russia the institution of private property could not count on secure grounding either in custom or positive law; and the ignorance of Roman law presented formidable obstacles to its introduction from the outside. No distinction, therefore, was drawn between the king in his capacities of proprietor and sovereign. As Moscow expanded, new territorial acquisitions were at once attached to the Great Prince's private patrimony and there they stayed. In this manner the Russian monarchy emerged directly from the seigniory of the appanage principality: that is, from what had been originally an arrangement for economic exploitation, operating largely with slave labour.

The domainial origin of the Russian state is reflected in the origins of its administrative apparatus. Unfortunately, the Moscow fire of 1626 destroyed a large part of the archives of the central administration, which makes it difficult to determine when and under what circumstances it had been created. Still, enough is known strongly to suggest that it evolved directly from the offices originally charged with the management of the appanage prince's private domain. The dvor of the Moscow prince served for a long time - probably until the middle of the sixteenth century - in a double capacity as the management of the princely estates and the administration of the rest of the principality. 'Until the reforms of the 1550S-1560S,' writes a leading authority on the subject, 'general control over the whole system of local administration [of Muscovite Russia] was exercised by none other than the offices of the prince's household (dvor)... which concentrated in their