Russia under the Old regime

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the Muscovite princes tried to intimidate would-be defectors by harassing them personally and looting their estates. These measures, however, did not have the desired effect, and much stronger devices were introduced under Ivan in. In 1474, suspecting the loyalty of Daniel Kholm-skii, a powerful appanage prince from Tver, Ivan exacted from him an oath that neither he nor his children would ever abandon Muscovite service. The tsar had the metropolitan and another boyar witness the oath; and then, for good measure, he required eight boyars to put up bail of eight thousand rubles which they were to forfeit in the event Kholmskii or his offspring violated the oath. This procedure was repeated on subsequent occasions, the number of guarantors sometimes exceeding one hundred. A kind of collective responsibility binding the higher echelons of the service class thus came into being. With lesser servitors, cruder methods were employed. Upon departing from a prince a boyar required a document certifying the nature of his service and his rank. If Moscow wished to prevent his departure, the chancery in charge of service records could refuse to issue such a certificate, or else it would issue one but deliberately lower the recipient's position and rank: in either event, his career was damaged. Moscow also applied pressure on appanage princes to return to it departed boyars, sometimes using force. As the territory of Moscow grew, safety from the long arm of its prince could be found only in Lithuania. But after 1386 whoever went there automatically became an apostate, because in that year Lithuania was converted to Catholicism - which meant that the tsar felt free to confiscate not only the properties of the defector himself but also those of his family and clan. Curiously, in treaties with other appanage princes, Moscow insisted on the inclusion of the traditional formulas affirming the right of boyars to choose their prince which it no longer observed itself. This was a ploy, designed to assure the unimpeded flow to Moscow of servitors from the independent principalities. Whenever the flow happened to proceed in the opposite direction, Moscow knew how to stop it, treaties or no.

The right of free departure was honoured in name as late as the 1530s, but in reality it had been abrogated several decades earlier. As is the case with nearly all landmarks of Russian social history, the legal record reflects very inadequately the process by which this change was carried out. No general statute exists forbidding free movement of boyars any more than there is one enserfing the peasantry. The practice resulted from a combination of concrete measures taken to frustrate boyar departures, and of occasional ordinances, such as that contained in the testament of Ivan HI in regard to the principality of Iaroslavl: 'the boyars and boyar sons of Iaroslavl... with their votchiny and purchased lands must not leave my son, Basil [111] for anyone anywhere; and from him who