The Origins of Autocracy

The pomest'e gradually became more and more adapted to the interests of its holder, and revealed more and more elements of patrimonial ten­ure. With time, there arose the so-called "earned patrimonies." This concept, it seems, was first used in a ukase of 1572, where the clan pat­rimony was contrasted to the "patrimony given by the sovereign." The beginning of the sale of vacant pomest'ia

as patrimonies, with the sole condition that the buyer had no right to transfer them to a monastery, dates from the same period. The practice of selling pomest'ia as pat­rimonies subsequently became widespread in the first half of the seven­teenth century, along with the granting of pomest'ia

as patrimonies as a reward for service. Furthermore, after the "Time of Troubles" [that is, at the beginning of the seventeenth century], a definite norm was es­tablished: an "earned" patrimony was one-fifth of the regular size of a pomest'e. The treasury's need for money and the effort to gain a firmer base of support in the nobility were the causes of the transformation of pomest'ia

into patrimonies, which constantly increased over the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. '⁴

Russian history is left with not a single decade

for the "patrimonial state." There is simply nowhere left to stick it. And, along with it, the "patrimonial-conspiratorial" model of the Russian historical process falls into oblivion. Out of this fundamental contradiction between theory and reality there apparently flows such a massive series of fac­tual contradictions by the author with himself that, in analyzing Pipes's book, my students asked me whether the author himself had read over his own text before sending it to press. I will cite only a few examples. On page 86 we read: "The extension of the domainial order on the country at large was nothing short of a social revolution imposed from above. The resistance was commensurate." On page 173: "Sovereignty in Russia had been built on the ruins of private property, by a ruthless destruction of appanages and other votchiny." And, between these two passages, on page 172: "The Russian state grew and took shape without having to contend with entrenched landed in­terests—an absolutely fundamental factor in its historic evolution" (my emphasis).

On page 85, we read that "state and society engaged in ceaseless conflict" over the course of two centuries (from the middle of the fif­teenth to mid-seventeenth), this conflict being required for the de­struction of the boyars' patrimonies, and on page 172 that, "During the three centuries separating the reign of Ivan III from that of Catherine II the Russian equivalent of the nobility held its land on royal sufferance."

How can we reconcile the absence of entrenched landed interests with the "unending struggle" for their extirpation? Or the strong pat­rimonial boyardom, of which the author himself says that the Duma which it created was "in the fourteenth, fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century . . . pronouncedly aristocratic,"⁴" with tenure of land on royal sufferance? How, in a country where even the ideas of state and society could not exist, could the state and society wage a struggle to the death against each other over the course of centuries? Why did the "patrimonial state," which had for so many years con­spired against private property, suddenly begin to destroy the results of its entire intrigue? I was not able to answer these legitimate ques­tions for my students.