Russia. A History

The Moscow-based sovereign’s court became increasingly high born in the aftermath of the oprichnina and Ivan IVs death when the many low-born families that Ivan IV had patronized in the dvor were relegated to provincial service, while the highborn families who had served in the oprichnina

or the regular government (zemshchina) remained in Moscow. Socially, the impact of sixteenth-century policy was not to destroy a ‘feudal’ élite or raise up ‘new men’, as has been often held, but rather to consolidate the landed military élite in the centre into Moscow-based and regional ‘corporations’, divided by status, wealth, and duties.

One reason that the grand princes assiduously cultivated regional solidarities is that they came to use such communities for local administration. Traditionally, Muscovy had ruled through governors (namestniki) in the larger centres and local officials (volosteli

) in smaller communities who collected taxes and administered the lands and, in return, received kormlenie (‘feeding’, i.e. material support) from the local populace. Starting in Ivan III’s time, however, the state began to create specialized officers to collect specific taxes and duties—for example, officials to collect taxes for urban fortifications. In the late 1530s the state gave authority over local law and order to ‘brigandage elders’, who were elected by local communities; in the mid-1550s it gave tax-collection authority to boards of taxpayers—peasants or townsmen—elected by their communes. In the centre governors were in effect abolished. The result was not only better local government and higher revenues but also the strengthening of community solidarities in many parts of the realm. In the centre and northwest, landlords became a pillar of the tsar’s administration. They ran the brigandage system and oversaw tax-collection by peasant communes. In the north communal organization was the beneficiary; communes took on all these roles in the absence of gentry to do brigandage work. The work of overseeing was provided by chancery offices in Moscow. The oprichnina and other economic and political dislocations of the 1560s-80s, however, dealt a harsh blow to gentry and to peasant communes in the centre and north-west, and going into the seventeenth century the principle of local representation in governance, except in the north, was severely compromised. A system of governors returned, but the social solidarity of regional gentry communities endured into the seventeenth century.

Many places in the realm, however, stayed outside these administrative reforms and their attendant social impact. As we saw in the Smolensk lands, for example, the indigenous élite retained privileges and social structures of the grand duchy of Lithuania. In non-East Slav areas—western Siberia, the middle Volga, the tundra reaches of the Lapps and Nentsy—the Russians maintained a traditional tribute system (iasak

), paid in furs, other goods, and some services and collected by local élites and communities. Where local forces were lacking, Moscow sent specially appointed officials (danshchiki) to collect the annual payment and otherwise left the status quo untouched. (The iasak was phased out as the basis of taxation in Siberia only between 1822 and 1917.) Similarly in major cities on strategic borders (Novgorod, Pskov, Kazan, Astrakhan, Tomsk) governors exercised overall authority, since there was little social basis here for local fiscal or criminal administration. At the same time numerous servitor units stationed here, such as Cossacks, Streltsy (musketeers), and ‘privileged hetman’ (belomestnye atamany

), enjoyed autonomies and communal landholdings as regimental units and ran their own affairs collectively.

Not surprisingly, Muscovy did not constitute a uniform legal community. Many legal codes served these various communities. Ecclesiastical law codes came to the Rus lands from Byzantium. The most significant compendium, known as the ‘Rudder’ (kormchaia kniga), was a collection of Byzantine secular and ecclesiastical codes. For day-to-day affairs communes and landlords apparently used the Russkaia pravda, a compendium of customary law from the Kievan era that still circulated in Muscovite lands (a new redaction was even compiled in the early seventeenth century). The grand princes and boyar council promulgated three law codes (1497, 1550, 1589) as procedural handbooks for judges. The 1589 edition was suited to the social structure and economic patterns of the north; contemporary sources also refer to separate law codes in use for the Perm lands (zyrianskii sudebnik).