Russia under the Old regime

CHAPTER 4

All the people consider themselves to be kholops, that is slaves of their Prince. Sigismund Herberstein, a sixteenth-century German traveller to Russia1 How was Moscow's extraordinary expansion achieved? The answer is best sought in the internal structure of the Moscow state and particularly in the tie connecting its sovereign with his 'land'. After prodigious effort and at great cost to all concerned, the tsars eventually succeeded in transforming Russia into a gigantic royal domain. The system of management which had once prevailed on their private properties was politicized and gradually imposed on the rest of the country, until it came to embrace the whole empire. In this spacious kingdom, the tsar became seigneur, the population his kholopy, the land and all else that yielded profit his property. The arrangement was not without serious shortcomings. But it did give the rulers of Moscow a mechanism for mobilizing manpower and resources which no government of Europe or Asia could duplicate.

The transformation of Russia into its ruler's patrimony required two centuries to accomplish. The process began in the middle of the fifteenth century and was completed by the middle of the seventeenth. Between these dates lies an age of civil turbulence unprecedented even for Russia, when state and society engaged in ceaseless conflict, as the former sought to impose its will and the latter made desperate efforts to elude it.

The domain of an appanage prince represented an arrangement for economic exploitation utilizing slave labour - this was its most characteristic feature. The population was assigned tasks; it worked not for itself but for its prince and owner. It was divided into two basic categories: slaves who did menial labour and slaves who administered and held other positions of trust. Outside the princely domain, the social structure was very different. Here the inhabitants were largely free: boyar and