Russia under the Old regime

88

'pedigreed' (rodoslovnye). They formed a self-conscious and powerful body with the sensitivities of which the most wilful tsars had to reckon.

The pedigreed families and clans established something like a closed shop; they and they alone qualified for the highest ranks or chiny in the tsarist service, those oiboiar, okol'nichiiand dumnyi dvorianin. At the beginning of the seventeenth century nineteen clans, considered the most eminent, enjoyed special privileges enabling their senior representatives to reach the top of the rank hierarchy more or less automatically. Writing in the mid-seventeenth century, Kotoshikhin (p. 75 above), speaks of thirty clans enjoying the exclusive right to the highest posts, including membership in the tsarist council, top administrative offices in the principal towns, judgeships in the major prikazy and important diplomatic assignments. Servitors not inscribed in the genealogical books had to be content with service in the ranks of the cavalry and lesser administrative posts. The monarchy had to honour the system or risk the united opposition of the leading houses of the realm. The tsar could do anything but change the genealogical status of a boyar family; this was regarded as 'patrimony', beyond the competence even of royal power.

The pedigreed boyars not only restricted to themselves the pool of servitors available for high office; they also had a great deal to say about who among them would fill these posts. This they did through the institution of mestnichestvo or 'placement', introduced sometime early in the fifteenth century and formally abolished in 1682. The Muscovite service class, even in its upper ranks, was an amalgam of people of very different background and status; descendants of the Riurikides, whose lineage was as distinguished as that of the reigning house itself and who, had fortune's wheel turned otherwise, could well have sat on the imperial throne; heirs of baptized khans and Tatar princes; boyars whose ancestors had served the Moscow house; boyars of dispossessed appanage princes; a group known as 'boyars' sons' (deti boiarskie), like the Spanish hidalgos usually penniless and landless soldiers. Even among those considered pedigreed, there were great social distinctions. To avoid loss of status and dissolution in a grey mass, the pedigreed families and clans established a ranking system of extreme complexity and refinement which they compelled the monarchy to take into account in making higher service appointments and arranging ceremonial functions at the court or in church.

Each pedigreed clan had its own, internal order of precedence based on seniority. A father was one 'place' ahead of his sons, and two ahead of his grandsons. Seniority among brothers, uncles, nephews, cousins and in-laws as well as among the component families of the clan was regulated by elaborate codes. Whenever members of a given clan were due for a service appointment, great care was exercised to assure that