The single Russian centralized state was not the first state formation of the Russian people. It was preceded by the ancient Russian state, which arose in initial stage feudal relations and different from the Russian state of the XV-XVI centuries. Already in ancient times, the Eastern Slavs inhabited the European part of our country. The chronicle recalls those times when the "Slovenian language in Russia" was represented by different tribes: glades and Drevlyans, Krivichs and Dregovichs, Dulebs and northerners, Slovens and Vyatichs, etc.

In the first centuries of the new era, among the Antes, as the southwestern branch of the Eastern Slavs was called then, inhabiting from the Dnieper to the Danube, there was a process of decomposition of primitive communal relations and the emergence of slavery. Property began, and social stratification was outlined. The Ants entered the era of "military democracy" (F. Engels). On this basis, tribal alliances were formed - the embryos of the future state. The most powerful was the unification of the Antes, achieved in the 70s of the 4th century in the struggle against the East Germans - the Goths and led by God, to whom seventy Antian leaders ("Ricks") were subordinate. Over time, the tribal associations of the Antes become more durable and strong. In the VI century. the ants in the fight against the nomads - the Avars - united under the rule of the ants family: Idar and his sons - Mezhamira and Kelagast. The power of the leader in this family became hereditary.

At the same time, in the 6th century, in the struggle against the Avars in Volhynia, in the Carpathian region, a powerful and extensive union of Antes was created under the leadership of the Duleb-Volynians. It was not just a tribal, but a political union. The ancient tribal name - Duleby gives way to the territorial one - Volhynians. The memory of the struggle of the Ants with the Avars was still fresh in Russia at the time of the chronicler and reached us in the form of a folk tale about dulebi and images, recorded in the "Tale of Bygone Years".

Through the mediation of oriental merchants, this story reached the Arab writers of the 10th century. (Masudi and Ibrahim Ibn-Yakub), who recall how in “antiquity” the Volynians (“Valinana”) “obeyed ... all other Slavic tribes”. In the Masudian "Valinans" we see an intertribal association, and the very name "Valinana" (Volynians) is not tribal, ethnic, but political, derived from the name of the city of Volyn, or Velyny, - a geographical and political center the southwestern lands of the Eastern Slavs, a name that, for more than a millennium, secured the name of Volyn for the entire land.

Absence in the Carpathian region, in Volyn, in Podolia in the 9th-10th centuries. tangible tribal boundaries, leveling material culture, the monotony of the funeral inventory suggests that the Volhynian alliance did not mechanically unite the tribes, but, by rallying, merged them. Therefore, here early, in the VI-VII centuries, tribal, particular characteristics began to disappear, and common features- the result of political unity. According to Masudi, this was "in antiquity", that is, long before the 10th century.

Only at the end of the 20s of the 7th century. (626 or so) "the state of the Volhynians" was defeated by the Avars, who "went to the king of Heraclius and he was not enough".

Remembers the collapse of the "state of the Volynians" and Masudi. He says: “Subsequently, there were strife between their tribes, their order was violated, they divided into separate tribes and each tribe chose a king for itself ...”.

There is no doubt that the "state of the Volynians" of the 6th-7th centuries. - the first East Slavic political association, the first "power" of the Eastern Slavs of the era of "military democracy" - a direct predecessor Kiev state... It is this “state of the Velynians” that can be considered the beginning of Russian statehood.

The phenomena of social life of the Eastern Slavs we examined took place only in a certain territory, in the south-west of Russia, where in the IV-VI centuries. the disintegration of primitive communal relations began and social relations characteristic of "military democracy" took shape. In the north, in the forest belt, social development proceeded at a slower pace, and here, north of Teterev and Desna, relatively backward forest East Slavic tribes lived, occupying vast areas.

In the VIII-IX centuries. backward forest Slavic tribes are advancing to the Middle Dnieper region, which was abandoned as a result of the movements of the Ants to the south, to the Danube and beyond the Danube, and the attacks of nomads.

But here, in the Middle Dnieper region, these forest Slavic tribes did not meet a desert devoid of life. The ancient Ant population continued to inhabit the old places, inhabited Kiev and the adjacent regions, which became the same centers of the Eastern Slavs of the 9th-10th centuries, as they were during the Antes period.

Their backward northern relatives, on whom they begin to exert a great influence from the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e., the ants conveyed their cultural and everyday characteristics, their social structure, historical traditions, their connections. Therefore, the system of "military democracy" that existed among the Ants was quickly passed by the northern Russian tribes, who moved to the Middle Dnieper region and here mixed with their southern tribesmen, who were on the verge of civilization. That is why the Middle Dnieper region within one or two centuries passes through the stage of "military democracy", the pre-feudal period, and enters the era of feudalism.

The path traversed by the southwestern branch of the Eastern Slavs - the Antas, was continued by their neighbors and descendants.

If the ants entered the era of "military democracy", judging by the material monuments and information from written sources, in the first centuries of the new era they left the arena political history disappearing from the pages of writers' essays early middle ages at the beginning of the 7th century. all with the same social system, their descendants both on the Middle Dnieper and on the banks of the Dniester and Volkhov, Western Dvina and Oka in a short time passed the era of "military democracy" and created a feudal world. The fact that "military democracy" was developing in the southwestern part of Eastern Europe even during the times of the Antes, led to the fact that already in Russian, Kiev times, feudalism was developing in breadth and in depth over a much larger territory than the land of the Antes.

In the VIII-X centuries. among the East Slavic and non-Slavic tribes of Russia, in its various parts at different rates, there was a process of decomposition of primitive communal relations and the development of "military democracy". This process, covering a vast area from the coast Lake Ladoga and up to the Danube girls, from the Carpathians to the Oka, there is nothing more than the emergence of feudalism. The emergence of feudalism takes place within the framework of a primitive society, in the world of communities, in a period of decaying patriarchal-clan life.

This process stretches over several centuries and is far from uniform: when feudal Kiev had already counted for many centuries, at the same time in the lands of the Vyatichi, in the Pinsk Polesie, in the land of the Dregovichi, the remnants of the clan system remained for a long time.

Already at the end of the VIII and the beginning of the IX century. as a result of the social development of the Eastern Slavs on the Middle Dnieper, near Kiev, one Russian public education, the so-called "Russian Kaganate", and in the Ladoga area and near Ilmen - another, which received the name of the Arabs "Slavia".

This is how the “first 2 states: Kiev and Novgorod».

In the second half of the IX century. there is a merger of Kiev and Novgorod into a single Kiev state, which the chronicle tradition associates with the name of Oleg. The heyday of Kievan Rus falls during the reign of Vladimir (973-1015). The time of Vladimir is the time of the glory of Russia, victorious wars and campaigns, the exceptional successes of Russia in the international arena and at the same time that period in the history of the people when he himself still plays a big role in the history of his country, when the masses are just beginning to turn into servitude, crushed by the burden of duties , people exploited.

That is why the Russian people in their epics, legends and traditions recall with such love their first capital - Kiev, their glorious Kiev heroes and Vladimir Red Sun, the personification of the "old princes" of the irretrievably gone era of "glorious barbarism" (K. Marx).

Vladimir stands on the verge of two eras. He is the last prince-warrior of retinue Russia of the era of "military democracy", and at the same time, he is the first prince who, with all his activities, prepared the flowering of early feudalism, concealing the elements of the coming collapse of the Kiev state, which falls on the reign of his grandchildren. The times of Vladimir and Yaroslav are the heyday of Kievan Rus.

Over time, especially in the second half of the 11th century, the picture changes dramatically. The times of campaigns to "other countries" in order to seize military booty and collect tribute are coming to an end. The source of the enrichment of the feudalized elite is the exploitation of the population of Russia itself.

The process of seizure of communal lands and lands by the prince and his vigilantes is intensifying. Tribute develops into rent. It is not the tribute from the land that becomes valuable, but the land itself, together with the rural people sitting on it. Expropriation and enslavement turn free members of the community into dependent people. Feudalism is growing in depth and breadth.

The development of productive forces, the development of feudal land tenure and feudal relations, so vividly presented in Pravda of the Yaroslavichi, the growth of the economic and political power of individual regions, headed by large cities (Novgorod, Chernigov, Pereyaslavl, Rostov, etc.) are gradually undermining the unity of Kiev the state.

The boyars who grew up in certain regions of Russia strive to become their sovereign master and, rallying around "their" prince, who found himself here, in the place of his planting, in the land of "father and grandfather", all "life", "gobin", lands and holdings, courtyards and the servants, imbued not with general Russian, but with local "zemstvo" interests, is trying to leave Kiev, which henceforth becomes an obstacle to the independent development of these regions and lands, which will soon turn into principalities, small feudal independent semi-states.

Each region of the Kiev state becomes a nest of boyar estates. The fate of Kiev ceases to interest not only the Novgorod, Rostov, Chernigov, Galician and other boyars, but also the Novgorod, Rostov, Chernigov and Galician princes themselves. They seek to secede from Kiev and create independent principalities.

The lack of an organic connection between the individual Russian lands, the lack of economic community - all this, making the unification of the lands achieved by the Kiev state, fragile and short-lived, was a sign of the coming collapse. And this decay has come.

Feudal fragmentation was an indicator of the development of productive forces, but at a certain stage it also became a brake on their further development, for the growth of industries, trade, cities, for new forms of feudal land tenure and the organization of feudal economy.

She also contributed to the decline of the power of Russia, weakened the Russian land, diminished its international importance, made it the prey of neighboring hostile states and hordes of nomads. Russia “lost entire regions as a result of the intervention of neighboring peoples,” which for centuries fell under the yoke of foreigners.

This is the result of the action of centrifugal forces, tearing apart the Kiev state.

After the death of Yaroslav the Wise, the disintegration of the Kiev state began and its transformation into feudal Rus, which corresponds to feudal fragmentation as a form of organizing state power of the ruling class of feudal lords.

What is the socio-political system of the period feudal fragmentation?

Russia as a single state does not exist. The country is divided into many feudal "independent semi-states".

Their number is increasing and decreasing in size. Their political existence is very fragile. Sometimes they unite under the rule of a fortunate prince, but such unions are short-lived. The princely "kotor" ravages the Russian land. Strife does not stop even when an external enemy attacks the country.

So, we see that the unification of the Russian lands into a single state was preceded by the feudal fragmentation of Russia.

I.V. Stalin in a number of his works emphasized the need to establish a scientific periodization of the history of the USSR. In "Remarks on the synopsis of a textbook on the history of the USSR" I.V. Stalin, S.M. Kirov and A.A. Zhdanov pointed out that “in the summary, feudalism and the pre-feudal period, when the peasants were not yet enslaved, were heaped into one heap; the autocratic system of the state and the feudal system, when Russia was fragmented into many independent semi-states. "

Before proceeding to the analysis of the reasons for the formation of an autocratic system in Russia and the formation of a centralized state in eastern Europe, it is necessary to characterize the socio-economic and political system of North-Eastern Russia during the period of feudal fragmentation and briefly dwell on its history. As comrade Stalin pointed out, the formation of an autocratic system in Russia and the formation of centralized states in eastern Europe are "two different topics, although they cannot be considered divorced from each other."

In the history of North-Eastern Russia and Russia in general, already the second half of the 11th century. characterized by the establishment of feudal fragmentation as a socio-economic and political state system, but since the middle of the XIII century, since the time of Batu's invasion, the feudal fragmentation of lands progresses rapidly, and it continues until the second half of the XV century, when, as a result of the struggle of two opposite tendencies - fragmentation and unions - the latter wins.

K. Marx emphasizes that the last remnants of the former unity of Russia "are scattered with the formidable appearance of Genghis Khan," and when the yoke of the Golden Horde khans was established, then "set the Russian princes against each other, maintain disagreement between them, balance their forces, prevent any of them from strengthening - all this was the traditional policy of the Tatars. "

Golden Horde strove to preserve the "independent semi-states" into which the Russian land was fragmented; in turn, these "independent semi-states" - principalities - "not only were not connected with each other by national ties, but resolutely denied the need for such ties." They were at enmity with each other, fought, mutually devastated cities and villages, weakening and ruining the Russian land in the process of endless and senseless princely strife.

The very term used by I.V. Stalin to designate the principalities in the period of feudal fragmentation - "semi-states". This definition suggests that if the feudal principalities - "independent semi-states" - had the first and main internal function of the state - "to keep the exploited majority in check", then their tiny size, inconstancy of borders, instability of existence, constant division and division, disappearance some and the emergence of others, exceptional weakness in the struggle with an external enemy - do not make it possible to name the independent principalities of the period of feudal fragmentation states in the full sense of the word.

What was the North-Eastern Russia in the period of time we are considering?

The defeat perpetrated by the Tatar-Mongols could not but affect the economy of Ancient Rus. K. Marx points out: “The Tatar-Mongols established a regime of systematic terror, and devastation and massacres became its permanent institutions. Disproportionately small in number in relation to the scale of their conquests, they wanted to create an aura of greatness around themselves and through massive bloodshed to weaken that part of the population that could raise an uprising in their rear. They passed, leaving deserts behind them. "

In another of his work, K. Marx notes: “When Russia was devastated, the Mongols acted in accordance with their mode of production; for cattle breeding, large uninhabited areas are the main condition ”. Marx further points out that when “the Mongols penetrate into Russia ... the Russians flee to the swamps and forests. Towns and villages were burned to the ground. "

The entire east and south of Russia were devastated, devastated and bled. Towns and villages were destroyed and burned, whole regions were desolate, the population was partly killed, partly taken prisoner, partly fled. Those who did not have time to escape remained in the old place, hiding in huts and dugouts, in the thickets of forests and in swamps. The arable land was again overgrown with forest, no cattle grazed in the forest glades and flood meadows, there were no heaps of hay, traces of fires were visible in the places of the villages. On the old trade roads seldom were "guests" - merchants, and Tatar Baskaks with their detachments drove much more often. Volosts of Russia in the south and east, surrounding the cities destroyed by the Tatars, “was a great tree of porostash and many beasts”; from neighboring towns and villages that have survived, they came here to “leave” and “people make money for the sake of their animals and honey”. Since it was dangerous to plow the land, and there was no need, in many places agriculture gave way to fishing, hunting, and beekeeping. Cities turn into “fortified settlements”, trade falls, dozens of crafts for which Russia was once famous disappear. Handicraft techniques become coarser and simplified, products are simplified, ancient craftsmanship is lost and forgotten, artisans are taken to the "full" and settle in different lands of the Golden Horde, cities are desolate. This is how Batu's invasion and the subsequent Tatar-Mongol yoke for the economy of Ancient Russia.

The Tatar-Mongol yoke with all its weight fell primarily on the peasantry and the "black people" of the cities. "Horde exit" (tribute), extraordinary tributes and extortions, all kinds of gifts that the princes were supposed to carry to the khan in the Horde, taxes, tamga, myt, etc., duties (military, road, yamskaya, etc.) along with cruelty, systematic terror and "repeated massacres" (K. Marx), arbitrariness and despotism of the khan and his officials (Baskakov, Darug) - all this, which ruined and oppressed the Russian people, and constituted the "Tatar yoke".

The "Horde exit" amounted to huge sums of several thousand rubles (in rubles at that time). So, for example, the great reign of Vladimir at one time paid seven thousand rubles, the Nizhny Novgorod principality - one and a half thousand rubles. Huge sums were pumped out of the population and ended up in the khan's treasury. The Horde systematically and predatory sucked the juices from the Russian people.

At first, after rewriting the Russian population, the khans instructed their officials, the Baskaks, to collect "yasak" ("exit", tribute). Sometimes the collection of tribute was given at the mercy and then "to pay off the accusations of tribute to the maddening and from that to great harm to people create, hard-working cuts and many souls of the peasant spread out." The tax-farmers were the Tatars and mainly Central Asian merchants. The management of the Baskaks ("oppressors") and tax farmers aroused the hatred of the masses of Russia for the Khan and the Baskaks. The Baskaks knew they were hated and were afraid of uprisings. So, for example, in 1259 they turn to Alexander Nevsky: "Let the guards not beat us up."

In some places in Russia, the Baskaks and other noble Tatars felt themselves firmly and in the deserted land they seized lands and set up their "settlements". So, for example, did the Baskak Akhmat, who ruled in the Kursk darkness, "there is a lot of violence and insult" in Posemye.

In some places in the south and, perhaps, in the east, the Tatars forced the peasants to work for themselves: "let them shout wheat and millet."

Russia was going through hard times.

K. Marx calls the subordination of Russia to the khans of the Golden Horde "a bloody swamp of Mongol slavery ...", which "... insulted and dried up the very soul of the people who became its victim."

The severity of the Tatar yoke is indicated by I.V. Stalin, in his article "Ukrainian Knot", emphasizing that the yoke that "the imperialists of Austria and Germany carry on their bayonets ... is no better than the old Tatar one."

Russia was unable to stop the hordes of Batu, but the boundless plains of the heroically fighting the conquerors of Russia “absorbed the power of the Mongols and stopped their invasion at the very edge of Europe,” wrote A.S. Pushkin, - the barbarians did not dare to leave enslaved Russia in their rear and returned to the steppes of their east. The resulting enlightenment was saved by a torn apart and dying Russia ... ”.

Western Europe owes its salvation from defeat, ruin and decline to Russia.

“No, Russians, like the Huns and Mongols, do not act as conquerors and robbers in political history,” wrote N.G. Chernyshevsky, - and saviors - saviors from the Mongol yoke, which they held back on their powerful va, not allowing him to reach Europe, being her wall, however, subjected to all the shots, a wall that was half-smashed by the enemies ... ”.

Dante and Leonardo da Vinci, Marco Polo and Vasco da Gama, Copernicus and Columbus, Magellan and Chaucer, Gutenberg and Jan Huss got the opportunity to create their wonderful works, do great deeds and perform amazing feats only because Russia saved the rest of Europe from “ bloody swamp of Mongol slavery ”(K. Marx). Neither the Renaissance, nor the era of primitive accumulation and great discoveries and inventions can be understood without taking into account what was accomplished by the Russian people during the Batu invasion.

Destroyed and bloodless, oppressed and disgraced Russia did not surrender. Many years after Batu's invasion, according to the testimony of the traveler Wilhelm de Rubruk, Russian troops attacked the Tatars in the steppes beyond the Don.

The Tatars did not feel safe and in the center of ruined Russia.

"Tribute-exits" and duties, oppression and arbitrariness cause an increase in discontent. This discontent of the Russian people resulted in popular uprisings against the Baskaks and tax farmers. The uprisings broke out in Novgorod in 1259, in 1262 - in Rostov, Vladimir, Pereyaslavl, where the people rose up against the "fierce yearning of besurmensky" and expelled the tax farmers from their cities.

Seeing the persistence of the Russians, the khans were forced to change the form and method of collecting tribute, and from the beginning of the XIV century. to entrust the collection of it to the Russian princes. The Russian land breathed a little easier.

XIV-XV centuries. in the history of North-Eastern Russia are characterized by the growth of feudal land tenure.

The feudal social system is characterized by the combination of large landed property with small farming. Feudal land tenure develops in various ways: grants, "purchase" (purchase), seizures, borrowings, etc. Often the lands of the same owner were located in different places and each separate property was allocated into a closed economic unit.

The source of the growth of feudal land ownership was the "black lands", where once dominated by the capture and labor development of land by peasant communities, who owned everything that they "cleared" from the forest, everything "where the ax, scythe, plow went."

Soon these lands were "perched", taxes were imposed on them, but nevertheless, the actual owner of the land remained the peasant, who agreed that "the land of the Grand Duke" and "Tsar", but added that "rye and rasp" or " ours ", or even noted that" the land of the Grand Duke, but my possession. " And the ownership of the "black lands" was retained for a long time by the peasants.

The next stage in the development of the "black lands" by the feudal lords was their "charm". Boyars and monasteries seized lands by force, subjugated the population by enslavement, received lands as gifts from princes. The enslavement of the rural people was explained by the instability of the economy of the smerd, "orphans", and the impoverished rural people fell into economic and personal dependence on " strong people"- feudal lords. One of the reasons for the enslavement of the peasants by the feudal lords was the fact that if earlier, during the times of large family communities, under the conditions of the dominance of slash farming, the rural people - communes - collectively cultivated the land, clearing the forests, then under the rule of a small family, this last clearing of land was not within the power and she was looking for "soft land", most often was already the property of the feudal lord.

The feudal patrimony is growing and gaining strength. The largest patrimonials were the princes themselves. They owned land both in their own and in neighboring principalities, where most often land was acquired by purchase, as did, for example, Ivan Kalita. Spiritual Kalita in 1328 mentions 54 villages that belonged to him, and Vasily the Dark already owned 125 villages.

The metropolitan, churches and monasteries also owned vast estates that were considered inalienable and assigned to them "forever." Metropolitan land tenure especially expanded by the 15th century, but it began to take shape during the time of Metropolitan Peter, at the beginning of the 14th century.

Monasteries were wealthy landowners. By the end of the 15th century. Trinity-Sergievsky, Kirillo-Belozersky and Solovetsky monasteries became the owners of vast lands. The princes granted the monasteries the land where hermitages and deserts arose, which later became large monasteries. The neighboring peasantry with their lands and estates became monastic. Monasteries bought land, often received land and "contributions", as they called the transfer of their lands to monasteries by petty feudal lords.

The church is turning into a big owner. The Trinity-Sergius Monastery at the beginning of the 15th century, for example, owned several hundred villages in 13 places.

The boyar economy also grew. So, for example, the influential Chernigov boyar Rodion Nesterovich, having traveled to Moscow during the time of Ivan Kalita, received half of the Volokolamsk district as an award.

The peasantry lived in villages, hamlets, villages and repairs. The deserted village was called "wasteland". The size of the villages and hamlets was very small. There were very few villages with a population of 50-100 souls. The village usually had a wooden church and a boyar estate, where the boyar manager and servants lived.

Such a village with a prince or a boyar court was usually the center of a feudal possession. Various lands, fields, reaping, meadows, catches, “onboard outings”, beaver rut, “black grouse”, “gogolian catches”, “overweight”, berry fields, fishing tones, etc. “pulled” to the village.

At the end of the XIII-XIV and the first half of the XV century. the village was primarily an administrative and economic center. At the same time, the village began to play the role of a church parish. The term "village" in those days meant a settlement of the type of a later village, and a populated area or a piece of land in general. So, for example, in one deed of sale we find an indication of the "village of Molitvenskoye", and from the land-survey document we learn that it was a piece of land, "the land of Prayer : "Beklemisheva, Vyakhireva village, Nazarevskaya village", etc. In ancient times, the term "village", "village", "pechishche", covered the concept of "populated place", or "settlement", "housing", "blood union ”, Later the content of the term bifurcates, and it begins to mean, on the one hand, the land, on the other - the village.

In the village, as a rule, there lived serfs, and various servants, and peasants. In more ancient times, in the XIII-XIV centuries, in the villages, the ratio between the number of servants' yards and those of heavy people (peasants) was in favor of slaves; later in the villages the number of heavy-handed people grows, although there are still quite a few slaves. For example, in the village of Stepurino, Pereyaslavl district (15th century), there were 3 servants 'and 6 peasants' yards; in the village of Lykovo - 2 servants and 6 peasants.

Villages, repairs, settlements were drawn to the village as an economic and administrative center. The villages were small, consisted of 1-3 yards, often inhabited by one family. Most of the "chrestians" (peasants) lived in the villages. The term "village" is relatively late, it appeared only in the XIV century. In some documents, a village-type settlement is called "family", which is true. In the letter of Oleg Ivanovich Ryazansky to the Olga Monastery (about 1372), describing the conditions of the 13th century, the term “family” is used instead of the term “village”. This is understandable, since in those days a really one-yard (and not only one-yard) village was inhabited most often by one family. The village of the XIV-XV centuries, usually in 1-3 yards, consisted of a "manor" - "yard", vegetable gardens and pasture. The village had its own lands: arable land, fallow, harvest, hayfields, hunting, fishing and boarding areas - "leave" ("leave"), sometimes a forest. The boundaries of the possessions were not precisely established and were often determined by "where the ax, plow, scythe went". As the land was being developed, the time came when areas of various villages converged, and then borders, “znamenny oaks”, “noticeable” pines and birches, stones and pits appeared.

In the XIII-XIV - the first half of the XV century. In North-Eastern Russia, arable land and mows that belonged to villages were scattered over forest glades and river valleys, often quite far from villages. So, for example, in the XV century. on the Vori River, near Moscow, and along the Vele, Yakhroma and Yakoty rivers, at Dimitrov's, there were reaping, "pulling" to villages that were 10-15 miles or more away from them.

As the population grew, this kind of land became inconvenient due to losses and disputes, and the peasantry tries to collect their land in one area, group them in one place near the village. This phenomenon is especially characteristic of a later time, namely the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The Russian peasant firmly merged with the land he cultivated, with his native meadows and forests, rivers and lakes. But still, villages in those days often changed their owners. So, for example, at the end of the XIV century, about ten years before the invasion of Edigei, a peasant Ivan Lapot settled in one of the villages of the village of Zelenshchina (“village” is used here in the sense of a piece of land) of the Pereyaslavl district, which belonged to Lykov. After the devastation by Edigey (1408), a certain Fedenya with his sons Perkhur and Yurenei sat on the desolate village of Laptev. By the name of its founder, the village began to bear the name Fedenino. In 1435 Lykov gave land to the Makhritsa monastery and Fedenino became a monastery village. After Fedenya, a certain Esaka lived in this village for five years with his children, after him - for four years Maxim Vorobyov, etc. For some 50 years this small one-yard village has changed seven owners who were not relatives. The same was observed in other places as well.

How can this phenomenon be explained? "From the military men and from the robberies" the princely army in their eternal strife "wasted the Russian land"; from "evil people", from robberies and hardships, from extortions and debts, from oppression and violence, the Russian peasants "roamed about" in all directions, looking and not finding "soft" and free land, or at least "good" princes and boyars, died out from poor harvests, hunger strikes, epidemics, were taken away "into the full" by both the neighboring prince and the "evil Tatar".

Often the feudal lords, who owned dozens of villages scattered in different places, did not run their own economy, but were content with collecting the rent. Boyar plowing was small and its size was determined by the needs of the boyar family with servants and servants. This phenomenon was facilitated by the naturalness of the patrimonial economy, the weak development of trade and marketability. Agriculture: bread appears relatively rarely on the domestic market as a commodity.

Speaking about corvee, that is, feudal, serf economy, V.I. Lenin considers the first defining feature of it to be "the dominance of natural economy" and points out that "the serf estate should have been a self-sufficient, closed whole, which is in a very weak connection with the rest of the world."

The naturalness of the economy, its isolation and isolation are especially characteristic of the feudal estates of the late XIII-XIV - early XV centuries.

The bulk of the products produced in the feudal estate by a personally dependent direct producer - a slave, a smerd, an orphan, an old-timer, was intended for their own consumption by the family of the feudal lord and his numerous courtiers, servants, Chelyadins, and not for sale. Everything that was provided by the vast lands of the feudal lord, his lands and "cares", cultivated by the labor of dependent people, everything that was brought in as a natural rent by smerds, orphans, silver coins, izorniks and other forced population of the estate: bread, cattle, meat, fish , game, berries, flax, linen, leather, honey, etc. - all this only partially came to the market in exchange for handicrafts, luxury goods and "overseas things" necessary for the feudal lord; most of the products were absorbed within the fiefdom itself. The abundance of all kinds of slaves, servants, warriors, vigilantes and other servants necessitated large extortions in kind, stockpiling, etc.

But one cannot think that trade was completely unknown to the feudal lords and peasants. If the feudal lord needed money to buy expensive weapons and fabrics, jewelry and spices, etc., etc., then the peasant needed money primarily to pay all kinds of fees and taxes. The peasants traded in agricultural products, fishing and boarding, hunting, and their village handicrafts.

So, for example, the village of Medna near Torzhok, where at the beginning of the 15th century. there was a boyar economy, serviced by slaves and enslaved people ("silvermen"), located on the Tver-Torzhok-Novgorod trade route, already being the property of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery in the middle of the 15th century. turns into a large trading village. The same evolution was experienced by the village of Klement'evo, the donation of Prince Andrei of Radonezh to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery. It was located half a verst from the monastery on the way to Moscow and already in the middle of the 15th century. here lived artisans (icon painters, carvers, turners, etc.) and there were trades. In 1504, there were 134 courtyards in the village of Klement'ev.

By special letters of gratitude, the population of monastic and boyar villages was exempted from trade taxes, while the townspeople continued to pay them, and this gave certain advantages to the villagers who took up crafts and trade. It is necessary, however, to note that this phenomenon takes place only at the end of the period of time we are considering, that is, only in the middle of the 15th century. and later.

The organization and management of the fiefdom was not very difficult. The center of the patrimony, as we have already seen, was the village where the princess or the boyar court stood. Fenced with a palisade (palisade) "boyarsky yard" consisted of residential and utility buildings. Residential buildings were rarely occupied by a prince or a boyar with their families, unless, of course, this village was their permanent residence. The rulers usually lived in these buildings: tiuns, ryadovichs, clerks, grooms, etc.

The living quarters were adjoined by outbuildings: an odrina, where various household implements (plows, plows, scythes, "bagels") were folded, a stable or "slaughterhouse" for cattle, a granary, a cellar, where there were pots of "green wine", "standing honeys" , stored "all kinds of vegetables", pickles, preserves and other "food". Right there, nearby, a "cookery" was erected. On the edge of the estate there was usually a threshing floor with stacks of bread, there was a poultry house, or poultry yard, there were senniki, stables. A soap shop (bathhouse) was located farther from the buildings.

The princely estates were ruled by the "court" or butler.

The huge princely court was served by numerous servants, who were called "servants under the court", or palace servants. These were clerks, clerks, hounds, grooms, gardeners, falconers, beavers, bee keepers, etc. Lands stood out in special "ways": falconer, hunter, equestrian and others, served by special people from among the "servants under the court".

Some of the "servants under the court" were the prince's servants, and the other part consisted of people personally free. For their service, the "servants under the court" first received part of the prince's income, and then, later - the land, which was used and extracted all feudal income. This land was called "manor".

The prince's butlers were in charge of all the "black people": peasants, slaves, etc. They laid out the "tax", monitored the regular performance of corvee work, and the payment in kind and monetary quitrent. In the XIV century. monetary quitrent is still small, but natural quitrent is plentiful and variegated. The peasants, or "orphans," as the peasants were called in northeastern Russia, had to make the quitrent with bread, cereals, cattle, meat, poultry, dairy products, berries, mushrooms, linens, flax, etc.

The corvee was also motley and varied. Since the bread in the XIV century. had not often acted as a commodity, then, quite naturally, the plowing of the feudal lord himself (prince, boyar, monastery) was not great and among the labor duties the peasant's work on arable land was far from the first place. Therefore, the labor rent was very varied. The peasant had to erect buildings in the courtyard of the feudal lord, fence the courtyard with a palisade, fish, beat the beast, mow hay, carry firewood, etc. The boyar's courtyard seemed to copy the prince's courtyard, but everything was smaller and simpler there.

The duties of the peasants were the same both in the princely and in the boyar and monastic households. Of course, they could vary somewhat depending on the owner, and on the locality, and on the size and nature of the farm itself.

The most complete description of the peasants' duties is the so-called Cyprian charter given to the Constantine Monastery in 1391. Wealthy peasants, "big people", had to repair churches, erect "mansions", fence the monastery estate with a palisade, mow and bring hay to the yard, cultivate the monastery's arable land , to fish, to work in the monastery garden, to beat the beavers. Other peasants, poorer - "pedestrians", had to grind rye, bake bread, thresh, grind malt, brew beer, spin flax and mend seines. In addition, the peasants paid the quitrent in livestock and oats, although the quitrent rate was still being established. This was the range of responsibilities of the monastic peasantry. Incidentally, for the first time in the Kiprianovskaya letter, together with the old term "orphans" denoting peasants, the actual name "peasants" is also encountered. Roughly the same duties were borne by the peasants in the lands of the palaces, boyars and nobles.

In the future, there is an increase and regulation of peasant obligations. At the end of the 15th century. in the Novgorod lands, a peasant household (the village of Shutovo) paid annually a natural quitrent: 2 boxes of rye and 2 - oats, a quarter of wheat and barley, a liter of ram, a quarter of a half of meat, cheese, a ladle of butter, half a sheepskin, two and a half handfuls of flax and 5 money.

Speaking of the peasants' obligations, one must take into account that they also bore the "sovereign tax": in money, in kind and in work. The situation of the peasants, as can be seen from the above, was very difficult.

The number of the non-free population was growing all the time. The stratum of "black people", or "black-haired" peasants, who were obliged only in relation to the prince to pay state taxes and bear certain duties, became thinner and thinner; there are fewer and fewer "black lands" on which communities - "volosts" and "graveyards" were still preserved. The number of slaves, silverware, ladles, old-timers is increasing. The peasants were often forced to conclude onerous deals and were obliged to work off or pay interest for a loan ("silver") ("growth"). Such peasants were called "silverware".

"Silver" was divided into "product" and "growth". Some silversmiths, borrowing "silver", were obliged, instead of paying interest, to work off, to carry the "product". "Izdelniki" performed a number of works, including cultivating arable land. Such a "product" was called "silver in arable land."

"Growth silver" provided for "growth", that is, the payment of interest in money, and if interest was paid regularly over the years, this "silver" was called "summer". Silver coins appear in the first half of the XIV century. For the first time, the deposited letter of the widow of Prince Dmitry Konstantinovich of Suzdal to the Vasilyevsky Monastery in 1353 speaks of silver coins, but the institution of silver coins reaches its special development in the 15th century, when bondage becomes one of the main instruments of enslavement.

The obligations of the ladle to their master were of a similar nature. The ladle took the land from the feudal lord and used it (and sometimes from a third, from where the "treasurer") worked it.

"Old-timers" were called peasants who from time immemorial lived on the land of the master and performed all feudal duties. The name "old-timers" was associated with the fact that the relationship between peasants and feudal lords was determined by "antiquity", custom. After 5-10 years of grace, the "newcomers" peasants also became old residents. The old-timers became more and more tied both legally and economically to the land of their master, and their position more and more approached the position of serfs, although formally no one had the right to keep them in place within one principality.

In the feudal economy of the XIV-XV centuries. the labor of slaves was also exploited. Serfs carried a wide variety of duties in the patrimony of their master. There were privileged slaves, slaves-servants: a rural tiun and a housekeeper, a clerk, a breadwinner, etc. Skilled artisans and artisans joined them: blacksmiths, gunsmiths, tanners, jewelers, spinners, weavers, etc., who lived at the courts of princes , boyars and monasteries.

Most of the slaves performed various jobs and was called "sufferers", or "suffering people." They plowed arable land, and they themselves lived either in the boyar's yard, or in special villages ("full of people in the villages") and used for their needs scraps of boyar or princely "oram" of land. Serfs were not much different from the old residents and similar enslaved and enslaved peasants. "Coarse" (full) slaves were not subject to taxation by the prince.

The enslavement grew, although the majority of the peasants still had the right to transfer from one owner to another. The peasant could, having completed the circle of work and fulfilled the obligations, go to another owner. The transition of "tax", or "written", people was difficult only if they left one principality for another. In order to complicate their transition, the princes agreed among themselves not to accept "tax". But the right of the peasants to cross over hampers the feudal lords and they seek to restrict it. Already in 1450, several letters were given, allowing the peasants to leave only two weeks before St. George's day of autumn (November 26) and a week after it, and the peasant had to completely pay off the feudal lord. Thus, it was not so easy for the peasant to leave his master. Usually, the prohibition of the transfer of peasants was, as it were, a special favor on the part of the prince to some feudal lord. So, for example, Vasily Vasilyevich at first forbade the old-time peasants from moving from the lands of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, and then allowed the monastery to return the departed peasants. There are letters prohibiting the exit of peasants in general. The peasants tried to find a way out of the situation by moving from one principality to another, but in mutual agreements starting from the XIV century, as we have already seen, the princes undertake not to accept "written" and "burdensome people."

Feudal forms of domination and subordination are gaining strength and expansion.

Feudal land tenure in the XIII-XV centuries. was divided into two categories of ownership: full ownership and conditional ownership. Fiefdoms (patrimonies) belonged to the lands in possession on the basis of the right of full ownership. The patrimony could be sold, donated, bequeathed, inherited.

The conditional land ownership was the so-called "salary", that is, the land that one feudal lord received from another, richer and more powerful, subject to service, primarily military. This land could neither be sold, nor inherited, nor bequeathed. It was used only as long as they served their master. Termination of service or "departure" to another principality to serve another prince automatically entailed deprivation of "salary".

A similar right to use "salary" was based somewhat later on the local system, when petty feudal lords - "service people" - received land from the prince-sovereign for personal use.

The "salary" system existed in North-Eastern Russia already in the time of Ivan Kalita. So, for example, Ivan Kalita gave Boris Vorkov a village on condition of the service that he was supposed to carry to the Moscow prince.

Large feudal lords in their estates felt themselves complete masters, and not only masters, but also sovereigns, sovereigns-patrimonials. For a long time, such an order was established in which noble and wealthy boyars viewed the entire population of their estates not only as servants and servants, but also as their subjects, in relation to whom they enjoyed the same rights as the prince. They performed judgment and punishment, thus taking over judicial and police functions, collecting judicial fines and tributes, and by this they became true sovereigns.

The established order, which took place in Ancient Russia and earlier, was developed in the XIV century. and was reflected in the so-called "diplomas". The monasteries were the first to receive such letters of gratitude (for example, the diploma of Ivan Kalita to Archimandrite of the Yuriev Monastery Esif 1338-1340, the diploma of the Tver Grand Duke Vasily Mikhailovich and the Tver appanage princes to the Tver Otroch Monastery of 1361-1365, the diploma of Alexander of the Annunciation to the Prince of Ivanovo monastery 1410-1417, etc.). From a somewhat later time, the first letters of gratitude to large secular landowners have come down to us (for example, the letter of gratitude from Grand Duke Vasily Dmitrievich to Ivan Kaftyrev at the end of the 14th century).

Letters of gratitude from princes usually, first, freed the population subject to large feudal lords from paying a number of taxes. So, in the letters of gratitude to the monasteries about the rural population of their estates, duties are listed and it is said: Necessary ... neither bones, nor attendance, nor any other duty, nor the city, nor the city, they put my yard on, neither feed my horse, nor mow my hay, neither to the socialist, nor to the court, nor the tenth, with heavy people do not pull in any protore ... ".

One should not think that, according to these letters of grant, the population of the estates of large feudal lords was exempt from all taxes, as was the case, for example, in the letter of grant to the Yaroslavl Spassky Monastery, which for a quitrent of 2 rubles was exempted from paying taxes from the inhabitants of their lands. Most often, tax exemptions were temporary, sometimes they were exempted for a long time, but only from certain taxes and duties. In all these cases, the feudal lord himself took upon himself the collection of taxes. So, for example, in the letter of gratitude from the Nizhny Novgorod prince Alexander Ivanovich to the Annunciation Monastery it is said: "If a tribute comes and the abbot will pay for them according to his power." Since the tribute and other incomes for the prince were collected by the estate owner himself, it is natural that the "princely men" - marshals, ezovniks, governors, tiuns, volostels and other princely administration, in the name of the prince and for the prince, did justice and punishment, collected taxes and watched over fulfillment by the population of a number of duties, - no longer "entered" the estate and did not interfere in the activities of the sovereign-patrimonial estate. "And the governors and volostels do not enter for anything ...", "neither the makers, nor the traders do not travel for anything" - this is how the feudal lords' rights were formulated. The second feature of immunity was the granting (of a letter of gratitude) to the feudal lord of judicial and police rights. "... Neither my governors send those people, nor do they judge them, nor do they come to them for nothing, oprichnina murder and robbery" - says the above-mentioned letter of gratitude to the Annunciation Monastery. The landowner himself knows and judges his people in everything, "or to whom he will order," and only murder, robbery and thief in the act were in the jurisdiction of the princely court.

For the analysis of cases concerning the interests of different feudal lords, a "mixed (joint) court" is established, which included all the feudal lords or their servants interested in it. "But a mixed trial will happen, and the abbot judges the governors, and the profit is divided in half."

The judicial functions in the hands of the feudal lord were an additional means of his enrichment, since trial accompanied by the collection of duties, fines, etc.

Letters of gratitude turned large feudal lords, who concentrated in their hands the collection of taxes and judicial and police power over their subjects, into real, almost independent sovereigns in their estates. These estates were, as it were, princedoms in miniature, and the boyar himself or the spiritual ruler imitated the prince in everything.

The actions of the princely administration (governors, volostels, closers, etc.), who collected taxes and judged the urban "black people" and the rural population, were usually accompanied by the robbery of princely subjects, if only because this whole crowd of princely servants fed and lived off local population where she "entered". Therefore, it is natural for the desire of "black people" (that is, those who pay state taxes) to get rid of them by moving to the lands of feudal lords who have received letters of gratitude, luring them to themselves, to "whitewashed" (that is, those freed from taxes to the prince) places, any simple people also with the promise of benefits. Such people received the name "mortgages", or "mortgages". Pledging for a boyar who received a diploma, or for a neighboring prince, the peasant, freed from one oppression, from some duties, acquired others. The mortgage had to bear a number of duties in relation to its new owner or serve him, and in the latter case, the position of the mortgagee was close to that of a petty vassal. In Russia there were various forms vassalage. "They beat their foreheads into the service" or "ordered" the grand dukes, that is, feudal lords, different in their wealth, strength and power, became vassals to them. The Grand Duke himself headed the feudal hierarchy, being the head of the "organization of the ruling class."

He was followed by the "service princes", that is, the princes of liquidated or annexed estates-principalities, or "departed" from Lithuania and the Horde ("service Tatar princes"). Many of the "service princes" owned their own lands, but having already received them as fiefdoms from the Grand Duke; sometimes the prince gave them other lands and cities, where they "fed", that is, received part of the income from the population.

They were followed by boyars, "free servants" and "boyar children". "Children of the Boyar" - the descendants of the "emaciated" boyar families; although the possibility is not excluded that this term meant the same thing that in ancient times was called "adolescents", "children", that is, "young squad." In need of protection from the strongest, the boyars and free servants served him, and the largest of them, together with their squads. IN AND. Lenin points out that "local boyars went to war with their regiments." The smallest of this feudal "younger brotherhood" usually had 20-30 acres of land, 2-3 slaves, or even none at all, and such a petty "owner" himself followed the plow. Many of them were engaged in beekeeping, fishing, tar-smoking, petty trade, etc. Most of these small feudal lords were "boyar children." In Novgorod, they were called "their own land".

Fearing violence from the princes and boyars, many of the "boyar children" either gave their land to monasteries and became monastic servants, or went to the prince and turned, being unable to independently carry out military service, into "servants under the court".

The boyar and the "free servant" could serve anyone, quit the service at any moment, "abandon" their prince and go to another, etc., and this did not in the least affect them as landowners, since no one touched even then, if they served a hostile prince.

Only in the event that the city, in the parish of which the boyar's lands or "servants of the free" were located, was attacked, they had to participate in its defense and "sit down" in the siege. This duty was called the "city siege". In addition, the boyars and "free servants" had to, regardless of service, "pull by court and tribute on land and on water." In all other respects, they were free, and the princes in their contracts usually indicated: "but the boyars and servants, who will not be under the court, free will", "but the boyars and servants between us free will".

As you can see, the "servants under the court", which was mentioned above, did not have the right to freely move, and the princes agreed among themselves "servants under the court" "... not to accept in the service."

The prince was not only a feudal lord, but also a ruler, a sovereign. He ruled, relying on the boyars and "free servants" who surrounded him. They carry out military service, manage on behalf of the prince his "fatherland", the principality, are in charge of individual branches of the large and intricate prince's palace economy.

Boyars form a council, with which the prince consults, decides his affairs both as a sovereign and as a feudal lord, creates a court, discusses diplomatic and military affairs.

In peacetime, the Duma meets almost daily. In the morning, boyars come to the prince's palace and "think" with the prince.

The top of the boyars were called "big" or "introduced" boyars. They were followed by the "good" boyars, who were in charge of the "ways", that is, individual branches of the prince's economy or income. There were a hunter (princely hunt), a falconer (falconry), an equestrian, a chaplain, a stolnik and other "ways". The "good boyars" who headed them bore the name of hunters, falconers, equestrians, chaplains, stolniks, etc. "Paths" consisted of lands, farms (farms), villages and villages with their population. The main role in the palace was played by the "court", who had servants at his disposal ("servants under the court") who served the court and the "ways". Among them, from decade to decade, there are fewer and fewer slaves, more and more free people.

Boyars also ruled individual regions of the principality, cities and "volosts". The prince sent boyars to the city and volosts to collect taxes on the spot, judge and rule the land on his behalf.

By the end of the XIII century. land administration is concentrated in the hands of governors who lived in cities, but periodically traveled around their lands, staying in "camps". Later, detours of the governors cease (there remains only the “travel court” of the governor in the Bezhetsk district and in some other places). With the passage of time, volostels appeared everywhere in the camps, at their disposal were "toll people" who helped them in management. Volostels, apparently, did not live permanently in the camps. For stops, they used the churchyards. So, for example, in the "Korzenev stanu" of the Moscow district, the camp of the volostel was in the Kozmodemyansky churchyard. Boyars - "volostels" (in volosts) or "governors" (in cities) for their service to the prince received part of the collection from the population, the so-called "feed". Hence the name of the boyars-rulers "feeding men". The “governors” and “volostels” received “entry feed”, extortions in kind, court fines and wedding taxes (“newly wed ubrus” and “hatching marten”). The prince sent his beloved and honored boyars to such a volost that brought more income, and the boyars often argued among themselves for "feeding" them. The “governors” and “volostels” had assistants (closers), servants who summoned them to court (“righteous”), bailiffs (“bailiffs”) and other “duty people”.

Some of the boyars remained with the prince, and they were "ordered" to do different things: "discharge" (military), "state" (treasury and state archives), "ambassadors" (foreign affairs), "serfs", etc. They headed the "case" , "Order", served by competent experienced servants: clerks and clerks. At the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century. from these "orders" - orders grew "Orders" - institutions. The positions of the boyars were not assigned. After the troublesome palace service, the boyar usually went to "feed", and his place was taken by the "feeding man". They usually changed after a year or two, and sometimes more often.

But some positions were assigned to a noble and noble boyar surname, often becoming hereditary. So, for example, the post of the Moscow tysyatsky was assigned to the family of the Velyaminov boyars.

The villages were ruled by the "settlement", who were often from the number of the prince's not free servants. The prince also had a whole detachment of servants in charge of the smaller affairs of the prince's administration and economy. Various taxes were collected by special persons: tributaries, boar-takers (those who collected taxes - "black pine forest"), underwear (collecting a special tax - "squirrel"), coachmen (collecting "Yam money"), etc.

The scribes and tributaries of the prince made lists of villages and those living in them and determined the amount of tax. Salary unit at the end of the XIII and XIV centuries. there was a "plow" (2-3 people) or a village (also in 2-3 yards). The layout inside the "plow" was the business of the peasants themselves. Scribes and tributaries for their work received "writing squirrel", "muzzle", or "writing money". From the middle of the 15th century. a new unit of taxation appears - "howl" - a burdensome lot, very diverse in the quantity and quality of land.

As for the organization of the army, it was typically feudal.

The bulk of the army of the grand dukes was made up of the squads of small princes and boyars, which consisted of armed horse and foot servants, chelyadinsky, serfs. In addition, there were city militias, recruited from merchants and artisans. An important role was also played by the foot militia of peasants and "black people", collected "from the plow." It often decided the outcome of the most important battles. Increasingly, the importance of the numerous grand ducal squads of their own, consisting of the servants and children of the boyars, is under the control of only the prince and obeyed only his one, while in other squads the soldiers obeyed primarily their direct master and lord - the boyar or the prince.

Relations between the princes were determined by spiritual and contractual charters. By the power of the father, the property of the family - the principality-fatherland - was divided between his sons. According to spiritual literacy, a "row" (order) was established, according to which each son received his share. The widow and her daughters also received a certain share. Established the "seniority" of the eldest son, who, moreover, received certain additional land and income "on the oldest path." The main cities did not go to the section, as well as the burdensome people, and remained in common possession. The Grand Duke was considered the senior prince and was called, regardless of the degree of kinship, "the oldest brother", "in the father's place." Below him, the princes standing were called "brothers", followed by "young brothers", and the name "young brother" did not mean true family relations, but the degree of subordination and the nature of the relationship. If now the all-Russian system of mutual relations and subordination of princes was already established, then in his principality each prince was an independent ruler, and in their contractual documents the princes pledged not to have mortgages in foreign lands, not to send tributaries to them, not to buy villages, etc. In the treaty letters between themselves, the princes first of all pledged to "be for one" ("for one"), mainly in the matter of relations with the Horde and Lithuania. Mutual agreements were concluded against possible enemies in Russia itself.

Within the great principalities - Tver, Nizhny Novgorod, Ryazan - appanage princes were more and more subordinate to their grand duke. By the beginning of the 15th century. appanage princes ceased to play an independent role in the foreign policy of the great principalities and in this area retained only the right to collect tribute for the Horde, and even that was awarded to the Grand Duke. In their internal activities, the appanage princes, it is true, were still independent at that time, and this independence was confirmed by a contractual letter with the Grand Duke. What these small appanage principalities were can be judged at least from the description of the possessions of the appanage prince Dmitry Vasilyevich Zaozersky (XIV - early XV centuries). His possessions consisted of the prince's court - "the tower and the chamber", the church on the shore of the Kubenskoye lake, nearby lay "the whole Chirkov", where all the subjects of the prince and parishioners of the church lived - that was the whole principality.

By the middle of the 15th century. The importance of the Grand Duke of Vladimir increases significantly, and since usually the Moscow princes received the label for the Grand Duke of Vladimir from the Khan, the letters of agreement between the Grand Duke and Ryazan and Tver put the latter in a virtually subordinate position to Moscow. And if at that time in Tver and Ryazan there was a struggle between the great princes and the appanages, which usually ended in the victory of the first, then the growing power of the Grand Duke of Vladimir, to whom various social forces gravitated in the process of uniting the Russian lands, was preparing the liquidation of the great principalities of Tver and Ryazan from all over their feudal political system, since the Moscow prince was a representative of "order in disorder", which ruled in Russia during the period of feudal fragmentation, a representative of "an emerging nation as opposed to fragmentation into rebellious vassal states." ... K. Marx. Secret diplomatic history of the eighteenth century. P. 78.

I.V. Stalin. Op. T. 4.P. 46.

A.S. Pushkin. Op. L .: GIHL, 1935.S. 732.

Literary heritage of N.G. Chernyshevsky. 1928.Vol. II. P. 44.

IN AND. Lenin. Op. T. 3.P. 158.

K. Marx and F. Engels. Op. T. IV. P. 15.

IN AND. Lenin. Op. T. 1.P. 137.

K. Marx and F. Engels. Op. T. XVI, part I. S. 445.

The northwestern Russian lands were, along with those of Kiev and Chernigov, the most ancient center of ancient Russian civilization and statehood. In the XII-XIII centuries. The Novgorod land was the largest economic, political and cultural center of Russia. The Novgorod subcivilization, with all its peculiarities and originality, developed in a single stream and had common foundations with the rest of the Russian lands. The rivalry between Novgorod and Kiev took place from the very beginning of the formation of the East Slavic statehood and had various forms of manifestation.

By the end of the XI century. Novgorodians achieved the right by the decision of the veche meeting to expel or refuse to rule the henchman of the great Kiev prince. As a result, the prince-governor in Novgorod began to partially transform into a representative of the republican government. At the same time, a new type of posadnichestvo was taking shape, also separated from the status of governorship. The peculiarities of the political genesis of Novgorod in the conditions of constant struggle with Kiev contributed to a slowdown in the social and political differentiation of local society, restrained the growth of contradictions in it in the XII-XIII centuries.

In 1136, by decision of the veche, Prince Vsevolod Mstislavovich was expelled from the city and the Novgorod land gained political independence. These events in the literature are sometimes called the "Novgorod revolution". The local princely dynasty did not develop here. Having ceased to be a protege of Kiev, the invited prince becomes the local government, dependent on the veche. Having lost the rights of the governor, he no longer opposes the Novgorod society and the emerging republican bodies, and in this new capacity the status of the prince is even strengthened, his real role in the system of government increases. As Novgorod gained independence, the struggle between various groups in the veche and among the boyars intensified, which required the prince of the art to get along with them and opened up new political opportunities for the prince. Boyar groups were unable to hold on to power without the support of the ruling prince. The prince performed the same functions as other princes, but together with other representatives of the republican administration, limiting and controlling each other. The prince's relationship with Novgorod was based on an agreement with the veche. If the prince violated the agreement, then the veche "showed him the way," that is, expelled, sometimes the prince himself renounced his powers. Until the beginning of the XIV century. the princes changed (since 1095) 58 times and belonged to various princely families.

The supreme authority of the Lord of Veliky Novgorod was the people's assembly - the veche. All free citizens could participate in it. It was their expression of will that ultimately led to the election or displacement of senior officials, sanctioned reprisals against them, changed legislation, made decisions on issues of war and peace, etc. The struggle of various groups of boyars and merchants for prestigious and lucrative government positions influenced the decision veche, however, these groups could not fully control the process of its adoption, control the assembly, since they were not clearly formalized, did not form a somewhat streamlined system with clear dynastic and political orientations.

The highest official in the republic was the mayor, whose elections were held annually. The posadnik could preside over the meeting and direct its work, played the role of mediator between Novgorod and the prince, with whom he judged. This aristocratic position was replaced by representatives of about 40 of the most powerful and noble boyar families.

In the XII century. the post of tysyatsky appears, who represented the interests of the ignorant strata of the free population: merchants, artisans and landowners who did not belong to the boyars. In peacetime, he was in charge of commercial affairs, including the court, carried out police supervision and commanded the militia during the period of hostilities, helping the prince. Together with the mayor, tysyatsky was the guarantor of control over the princely power.

An important role in the republic was assigned to the bishop elected at the veche (from 1165 - to the archbishop). The Vladyka of Novgorod was not only the head of the influential church hierarchy, but also the keeper of the state treasury, together with the prince he was in charge foreign policy, and with the merchant corporation "Ivanskoe hundred" exercised control over the standards of measures and weights, had his own regiment. The archbishop was the most stable figure in the Novgorod administration system, since the mayor and the tysyatsky often represented the interests of the Novgorodian groups opposing each other. He also brought pacification to the veche passions usual for Novgorod.

The ruling elite of Novgorod was represented by the Council of Lords (small pope), which included about 300 people. At the head of the Council was the archbishop, it included a prince, dignified (who were in the given time in office) and old (previously held positions) mayors, thousand, the most noble boyars, church hierarchs, and sometimes Konkhan elders. The council of gentlemen had previously considered the issues brought up at the veche. Representation on the Council was for life.

The entire administrative system of Novgorod was elective. The city consisted of a federation of self-governing regions - ends that were economic, military, and political units. The ends, in turn, were divided into the streets. The entire territory of the Novgorod land was divided into regions - pyatina, each of which was administratively subordinate to one of the ends of the city. Pyatins were split into volosts, and the latter - into graveyards. Veche self-government operated in all administrative-territorial units. Novgorod was the largest trade center not only in Russia, but also in Europe, being part of the Hanseatic League. Nevertheless, the differences in socio-economic, political and cultural processes in Novgorod were determined not by foreign influences and the allegedly greater involvement of Novgorod in Western Christian civilization, but by the deepening differentiation of ancient Russian civilization caused by the specific nature of landscape conditions, features of ethnic development, intra-social contradictions and local traditions. It is characteristic that in the struggle with Kiev and the Vladimir-Suzdal principality, with the formation of internal extreme situations, the banner of opposition was turning to the East Slavic pagan traditions, and not to the European ideas known in Novgorod.

Similar systems government controlled existed in other lands of North-Western Russia - Pskov, Vyatka (with numerous differences in technologies of electoral traditions, terms of office, etc.), one way or another connected with the Lord Veliky Novgorod. Gradually their political systems acquire an increasingly oligarchic boyar character.

The political system of north-eastern Russia in the specific era

9. Features of feudalism in the specific structure of north-eastern Russia of the XIII-XV centuries; fragmentation of state power.

So, the appanage principalities, both in size and in the nature of their ownership and use, came close to the large estates of private owners and church institutions, and on the other hand, large proprietary estates came close to the principalities, for their owners acquired political rights over the population of their estates. Thus, in the political system of northeastern Russia, the most characteristic features medieval feudalism - the fragmentation of state power and its combination with land ownership. In addition to this, it can be pointed out that in our country, as in the West, during the division of state power, a whole hierarchy of sovereigns was formed, differing from each other in the number of their sovereign rights. The highest sovereign of Russia, from whom the Russian princes received their investiture, corresponding to the emperors, western and eastern, was the tsar of Orda, who considered the entire Russian land as his ulus, as one of his possessions. Below him were the great princes - Vladimir-Moscow, Tver and Ryazan, who corresponded to the Western European kings, who received from him labels for the great reigns with all their territories; under the great princes were appanage princes, corresponding to the Western European dukes, subordinate to the great in some respects, and even lower, the boyars-landowners and church institutions, who, as we have seen, enjoyed the state rights of court and taxation in their names. However, only the first three categories of sovereigns had the rights that constitute sovereignty - they are independent, not derivatives. Sovereignty was divided between the khan and the great and appanage princes. Only these sovereigns had the right of diplomatic relations (specific - limited), the right to beat coins, etc. Even the smallest princes enjoyed the right to beat coins. In the Tver Museum there are coins with the inscriptions: Denga Gorodetsko, Gorodetsko, Gorodensko. This Gorodetsky or Gorodetsky money was believed to have been minted by one of the most insignificant Tver appanage princes, namely the Staritsky or Gorodetsky princes. Other non-grand ducal silver and copper money (pools) are also known: Kashinsky, Mikulinsky, Spassk

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From all that has been said, it can be seen that in the Russian antiquity of specific time there were many features that made it akin to Western European feudalism. We meet here the same institutions, the same attitudes and views as in the feudal west ...

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Tatar-Mongol invasion

In January 1238. along the Oka River, the Mongols moved to the Vladimir-Suzdal land. The battle with the Vladimir-Suzdal army took place near the town of Kolomna, on the border of the Ryazan and Vladimir-Suzdal lands. In this battle, the Vladimir army died ...

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lecture fourteen

POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF NORTH-EASTERN RUSSIA IN A SPECIFIC EPOCH

TERMINATION of the activity of city veche.

The Tatar invasion, with all the accompanying consequences, accelerated the very process of life, which led to a decline in value, and then to the final cessation of the activity of urban veche in northeastern Russia. Already in the second half of the XII century, in the era of intensive settlement of the region by colonists from the south, the princes of northeastern Russia tended to become the masters of the country, its masters as its creators and organizers. Let us recall that Andrei Bogolyubsky was already dignified as an autocrat in the Suzdal land and did not want to know either his boyars or the people's veche. Andrei, as you know, became a victim of his internal politics and died from a conspiracy of dissatisfied with his autocracy. After his death, the old veche cities - Rostov and Suzdal - tried to become masters in the country, to plant princes of their own free will and on their own. But they did not succeed in achieving this, because they did not have strong, ancient ties with the rest of the population that had recently arrived, planted on the land by the princes-colonialists, and above all with the suburbs of the Suzdal land. The Vladimir refused to recognize the princes nominated by the Rostovites and the Suzdalites. In the internecine struggle that followed, the old veche cities suffered complete defeat. In the Rostov-Suzdal land, thus, even before the Tatars, the prince became the lord of the position, and the veche receded into the background. The very composition of the population in the Rostov-Suzdal land should have favored the strengthening of the prince at the expense of the veche. This population consisted of inhabitants of small villages and hamlets scattered over great distances. There were few crowded, large settlements, commercial and industrial cities, and therefore the parties of the main cities could not acquire the dominance that they received in other areas of the Russian land. The Tatars completed this political evolution of north-eastern Russia. The cities during their invasion were subjected to terrible devastation, dinner was not fed and impoverished. Due to the decline of industries and trade, they could not for a long time and recover in any significant way. Under such conditions, their inhabitants had to think more about their daily bread, about tomorrow, not politics. With the approval of the Tatar dominion over Russia, the appointment and replacement of princes began to depend on the will of the khan. Therefore, by itself, the most important function of the veche fell - the vocation and expulsion of princes. If there were meetings, it was only in extreme cases, and moreover in the form of a rebellion. “Deliver God,” writes, for example, a chronicler under 1262, “from any languor of Basurmansky people Rostov land: put your rage in the hearts of the peasants, who do not tolerate the violence of the nasty, willingly and expelled from the cities, from Rostov, from Volodymyr , from Suzdal, from Yaroslavl, they will pay for the damnation of madness of tribute ”(Lavrenty). Or under 1289: “Prince Dmitry Borisovich Sede in Ros-tov. Then multiply the Tatars in Rostov, and the citizens of the veche and banishing them, and their estate plundered ”(Resurrection), etc. there was only one left - the prince.

The dependence of the princes on the Tatar khan; the order of princely possession.

But this political force for all that, it did not become independent. In 1243, the Grand Duke Yaroslav Vsevolodovich went to Batu, who, according to the chronicle, received him with honor and said to him: “Yaroslav! Wake you old as all the prince in the Russian language. " The next year, other princes also went to Batu "about their fatherland": "Baty ace honoring me with a worthy honor and letting me go, judging them once to their fatherland" (Lavrenty). The same procedure continued after. As a rule, the khans, both the great and the local prince, affirmed the one who had the right to do so on the basis of ancestral or ancestral grounds, acting in the then customary princely law. As a result, in the 13th century, the princes of the great reign of Vladimir sat in turn: Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, his brother Svyatoslav, son Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky, another son - Yaroslav Tverskoy and the third - Vasily Kost-Romskoy, then the eldest grandson Dimitri Alexandro- vich, next Andrey Alexandrovich, then Mikhail Yaroslavich Tverskoy. Thus, in the succession of the senior grand-ducal table, an approximately old Kiev custom was observed. But in the replacement of all other princely tables, a new, patrimonial order was established, as was already indicated in due time - the transition from fathers to sons, and in the absence of such, to the closest relatives. Thus, for example, after Konstantin Vsevolodovich, Rostov was reigned by his eldest son Vasilko, who was succeeded by his son Boris, etc., in Ryazan, after Ingvar Igorevich, his son Oleg reigned, then his grandson Roman Olgovich, great-grandson Fedor Romanovich, who had no offspring, why his brother Konstantin Romanovich began to reign in Ryazan, etc. Khans for the most part claimed the reign of the one to whom it followed according to custom. But for all that, the khan's sovereignty had not formal, but purely real significance. The princes paid the khan exit from their principalities and gifts for shortcuts to reign. Therefore, in the XIV century, the khans began to give the great reign of Vladi-mir not to those princes whom it followed in order of seniority, but to those who knew how to ask them over, give them more gifts. Thus, for example, in 1341 the sixteen-year-old Moscow prince Semyon Ivanovich left the Horde for the great reign, “and all Russian princes were given under his hand, and gray on the table in Volodimeri” (Resurrection). In 1359, the khan gave the label for the great reign to the young Dimitri Ivanovich Donskoy, whose boyars managed to outbid this yarlyk, who was begging at the same time by the prince of Suzdal Dimitri Konstantinovich. At the end of the XIV century, labels began to be bought from the Khan, not only for the great reign of Vladimir, but also for estates. In this way, for example. The Moscow prince Vasily Dmitrievich bought the label for the principality of Nizhny Novgorod, which was given before to his stepfather, Boris Konstantinovich. In this case, the khan in relation to the princes began to play the same role that the vechea of ​​the main cities in Kievan Rus played, which imprisoned princes quite often without attention to their ancestral accounts.

The power of the Grand Duke of Vladimir until the end of the XIV century.

What mutual relations were established under the Tatars between the princes of north-eastern Russia? Until the end of the XIV century, the grand dukes of Vladimir had a certain power over all other princes, although neither the content of this power, nor its size appear quite definitely according to sources. Chronicles dully say that other princes were "at hand" of the great princes. Above was given the testimony of the summer-writing that all Russian princes were given to the Grand Duke Semyon. About Demetrius Donskoy it is written that he "called upon all the princes of the Russian lands, which are under his rule" (Resurrection). The assistance of the princes allows themselves to be traced in the facts only in the fact that the appanage princes during the all-Russian campaigns stood under the banner of the Grand Duke of Vladimir. The Grand Duke of Vladimir, by all indications, was the representative of all Russian princes before the khan, was originally the only prince who knew Horde, that is, he traveled to plead with the khan for the interests of the Russian land, received orders from him, etc. All these special rights and advantages in connection with the possession of the Vladimir district were the reason for the struggle of the princes of different lines for the great reign of Vladimir.

The last struggle for the great reign of Vladimir took place under Dimitri Ivanovich Donskoy. In 1367, Prince Dimitri Ivanovich founded a stone Kremlin in Moscow and began to bring all the princes under his will, among other things, Prince Mikhail Alexandrevich of Tverskoy. Mikhail, not wanting to obey, turned to his son-in-law Olgerd, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, for help. Several times Lithuanian troops entered Moscow possessions and devastated them. Grand Duke Dimitri Ivanovich sent against them not only the regiments of the princes of the Moscow estates, but also the Ryazan regiments of Oleg Ivanovich, the prince of Prince Vladimir Dmitrievich. Not having time in his business with Lithuanian help, Michael in 1371 went to the Horde and returned from there with a label for the great reign of Vladimir and the khan's ambassador Saryhozha. But Demetrius did not let Michael go to the great reign, he charged Sarykhozhu and then he went to the Horde, gave the khan, the khansh and all the princes there, and again received a label for the great reign. Mikhail, for his part, went to Lithuania again and brought Olgerd against Moscow. In the struggle that followed, Grand Duke Dimitri Ivanovich took his father-in-law Dimitri Konstantinovich of Suzdal with his two brothers and his son, cousin Vladimir Andreevich Serpu-Khovsky, three princes of Rostov, Prince of Smolensk, two princes of Yaros to the battlefield Belozersky, Kashinsky, Molozhsky, Starodubsky, Bryansk, Novosilsky, Obolensky and Tarusa. The struggle ended with Mikhail Alexandrovich recognizing himself as the "younger brother" of Dimitri, equal to Vladimir Andreevich, pledged not to look for the great reign of Vladi-mir under Dimitri, to mount a horse and go to war when the Grand Duke himself or his brother Vladimir Andreevich will mount a horse, or send their voivods if they send a voivode: he pledged to jointly determine his relations with the Tatars, give them tribute or not, fight with them, if it comes to war, fight together against Lithuania, live with Veliky Novgorod and Torzhok as old.

All these details of the struggle for the great reign of Vladimir, as well as the treaty between the Grand Duke Di-mitri Ivanovich and Mikhail Tverskoy, ensuring his obedience to the Grand Duke of Vladimir, show what the power of the Grand Duke Vladimirsky consisted of. This power was military-political. Local princes were obliged to go to war at the call of the Grand Duke, not to conduct any independent foreign policy. The significance of the Grand Duke of Vladimir appears then quite clearly and in the subsequent struggle of Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy with the Tatars and Ryazan. In 1380, Demetrius gathered against Mamai a huge army of 150 thousand people. This army included not only the regiments of the Moscow estates, but also the henchmen of the princes of Rostov, Yaroslavl, Belozersk; and the Tver prince sent his troops with his nephew, Ivan Vsevolodovich Kholmsky. Oleg Ryazans-kiy, out of fear of the Tatars, who did not join the Grand Duke, after the Kulikovo defeat of the Tatars, had to flee to Lithuania for fear of repression, and Dimitri Ivanovich, for disobeying Oleg, took Ryazan away from him. When they then reconciled and concluded an agreement, Oleg recognized himself as the "younger brother" of Dimitriy, equal to Vladimir Andreevich, pledged to be for one against Lithuania, and with the Horde he has the same relations as the Moscow prince. So Oleg became To Dimitri Ivanovich Donskoy in the same subordinate position as Mikhail Tverskoy. To characterize this provision, we can cite some data from the agreement with Dmitry Ivanovich of his cousin, Vladimir Andreevich Serpukhovsky, to whom princes Oleg and Mikhail were equated: “You, my younger brother, Prince Vladimir, to keep my great reign under me is honest and menacing; for you, my younger brother, to serve without disobedience, "and so on.

Emancipation of Ryazan and Tver from submission to the Grand Duke of Moscow and Vladimir.

In the 15th century, the princes of Tver and Ryazan emancipated themselves from submission to the Grand Duke of Vladimir. The great reign of Vladimir could be held formidable and honest only when the grand dukes were representatives of the khan in Russia, enjoyed his authority and military assistance. But by the middle of the XIV century, the Horde weakened, and the great prince not only did not receive support from there, but was already in frequent conflict with the Tatar khans, acted as a leader in the struggle for liberation from the rule of the Tatars. Under such conditions, he was forced by treaties with the princes to consolidate his power and his authority. Treaties are valid only when they can be supported by force at any time. But the Grand Duke of Moscow, although he appropriated the great reign of Vladimir, was not yet in such a position at the end of the XIV and the first quarter of the XV century. His forces were paralyzed not only by the Horde, which at times opposed him with hostility, but also by Lithuania, which at any moment was ready to support the local princes against him. Under such conditions, the princes of Ryazan and Tver began gradually to occupy an independent position relative to the Grand Duke of All Russia. In the agreement concluded with the Grand Duke Vasily Dmitrievich in 1402. Ryazan prince Fyodor Olgovich, although he recognized himself as a younger brother and pledged not to pester the Tatars, nevertheless, for all that, persuaded himself the right to send an ambassador (kilichi) with gifts to the Horde, the right to receive the Tatar ambassador for Christian good with honor, notifying only about everything and about all the Horde news of the Grand Duke Vasily. Even more significant is the treaty concluded with Vasily Dmitrievich of Tver by Prince Mikhail around 1398. In it, Mikhail is no longer called a younger brother, but simply a brother and gives obligations equivalent to the obligations of his counterparty - to be one for the Tatars, Lithuania, Germans and Poles. This mutual obligation is developed in the agreement in this way: if the tsar himself or the Tartar army, or Lithuania, or the Germans, or the Poles, and the Grand Duke of Moskovsky and his brothers mount their horses, will go to the Moscow princes, then Mikhail will send two of his sons, and two brothers, leaving one son with him; if the Tatars, Lithuania or the Germans attack the Tver principality, then the Moscow prince is obliged to mount a horse himself and with his brothers. The Grand Duke, obliging the Prince of Tver, his children and grandchildren not to take love, that is, not to enter into agreements with Vitovt and Lithuania, at the same time, for himself and his brothers undertook not to conclude agreements without the Prince of Tver, his children and grandchildren ... The Tver prince was given complete freedom in relations with the Horde: "A to To the horde, brother, and the path to the king is clear, both for your children, and for your grandchildren, and for your people. " The strife that ensued in the clan of Moscow princes even more contributed to the liberation of the princes of Tver and Ryazan from subordination to them, who during this time closely adhered to the Grand Duke of Lithuania.

Submission to the great princes of Moscow, Tvers-kom and Ryazan appanage princes.

Thus, from the end of the 14th century and during the first half of the 15th century, in north-eastern Russia there was already not one great reign, but three - Moscow, Tver and Ryazan. The great reign of Vladimir was inextricably linked with the Moscow grand reign, as a result of which not only his relatives, but also princes of other estates, for example, Rostov, Suzdal, Yaroslavl, and others, were subject to the Grand Duke of Moscow, and only their relatives were subordinate to the Grand Duke of Tver and Ryazan ... This subordination of relatives to an elder or a grand duke is evidenced by the treaties of these grand dukes with other grand dukes, and the treaties of the grand dukes with younger relatives. The above has already given the obligation of the Grand Duke of Tverskoy to Moscow, to send his sons and brothers to help. This means that the junior appanage princes had to go to war on the orders of the senior. Tver prince Boris Alexandrovich, concluding an agreement with Vitovt in 1427, bluntly stipulated: “To my uncles, brothers and to my tribe - to princes, to be in obedience to me: I, Prince Great Boris Alexandrovich, am free, whom I favor whom I will execute, and my lord grandfather, Grand Duke Vitovt, not to intervene; if any of them wants to surrender to the service of my master grandfather and fatherland, then my lord grandfather and fatherland will not accept; whoever of them goes to Lithuania will lose his homeland - in his homeland I am free, Grand Duke Boris Alexandrovich. " From the treaties of the great princes with appanages, it is clear that listening to the latter was expressed in their obligation to mount horses and go to war when the grand duke himself mounts a horse or sends his sons or other younger brothers, and in the obligation to send a voivode if the grand duke will send their governors. The great dukes received labels from the khans for the whole land, including the inheritance of younger relatives. In 1412, the Grand Duke of Tverskoy Ivan Mikhailovich, to whom the appanage prince Yuri did not want to obey, said: "The tsar's label is given to the whole land of Tver, and Yuri himself is a tsar in the label." Due to this, the appanage princes could not surrender with their ancestors to the subordination of other princes, they were obliged, collecting tribute for the appropriation, to give this tribute to the Grand Duke, and the Grand Duke was already taking them to the Horde. Therefore, Grand Duke Vasily Vasilyevich the Dark and punished in his spiritual will: “As my children begin to live according to business, then my princess and children will send scribes who will describe their inheritance by kissing the cross, impose a yes-new on plows and people, and according to this salary the princess and my children will start giving out to my son Ivan. " So, the appanage princes of northeastern Russia in the military-political respect were subordinate to the Grand Duke of Vladimir until the end of the XIV century, and from the end of the XIV century already to three Grand Dukes - Moscow-Vladimir, Tver and Ryazan, who were independent from each other and determined their relations by agreements, which varied depending on the circumstances of their conclusion. Some researchers, especially Sergeevich, are inclined to look in exactly the same way at the relationship of junior appanage princes to local greats. They admit that the subordination of the younger princes to the elders was not some kind of order, a state-legal custom, that the princes de jure were all equal in rights, and relations of subordination were established between them only by virtue of treaties, depending on the circumstances. of each given moment. But such a concept of inter-princely relations of a specific era can hardly be accepted. If you delve into the content of the agreements-thieves of the older princes with the younger ones, then it is easy to notice that the agreements are trying to guarantee such relations between them, which were recognized as normal, to confirm the state-legal antiquity.

Internal independence of appanages.

The subordination of the younger princes to the great ones was limited to an obligatory alliance against enemies, military assistance, and the contribution of the Tatar exit to the grand ducal treasury, which in turn was due to the fact that the younger princes did not have the right to independent relations with the Horde. But in all other respects the younger princes were free and independent. The treaties guaranteed them the inviolability of their possessions and the full right to dispose of them, not only breaking their ties with the great reign. “You should know your fatherland, and I know yours” - this is the usual article in these treaties. The contracting parties usually pledged not to buy villages in each other's inheritance, not to allow their boyars to do this, not to give letters of gratitude for possession in someone else's inheritance, not to keep mortgages and quitters, to give court and justice to their subjects at the claims of other princes or their subjects, not to send bailiffs to each other and not to judge the courts. Boyars and free servants in these treaties were usually provided with the freedom of transition from one prince to another, and they also kept their estates in the inheritance of the abandoned prince. The princes pledged not to accept written people or numerical ones, as well as servants "under the court" who owned lands: whoever of these servants passed to the service of another prince, he lost his lands in the inheritance of the former prince. The younger appanage princes thus enjoyed complete independence in the internal administration of their principalities. They divided these principalities between their children, singled out "oprichnina" from them for a living after their death to their princesses, bequeathed these principalities to relatives or foreign princes, etc.

Rapprochement of principalities with private estates.

We examined the mutual relations of the princes of north-eastern Russia in the specific era. Let us now take a look at their relationship to their possessions, to the territories of the principalities and the population living on them. The princes, as we have seen, remained in northeastern Russia the only masters, masters in their principalities. Due to the general impoverishment of the country and the impossibility of living on income from government, the princes occupied a lot of land and fishing grounds in their principalities and developed their palace economy on an extensive scale, for which they attracted a significant part of the rural population to various works and duties. The income from this economy became the main means of their maintenance, and the income from management is only a certain help. Having become a major owner, the prince began to regard his entire principality as a huge economic institution, as a fiefdom, and therefore began to dispose of them like all estates, divide it between his heirs, allocate parts of it for the living of his wife and daughters , sometimes to transfer to sons-in-law, as was the case, for example, in Yaroslavl, where Prince Vasily Vsevo-Lodovich transferred the inheritance to his son-in-law Fyodor Rostislavich Smolensky. As a result of the multiplication of some branches of the princely family and the numerous redistributions of their possessions, over time, such microscopic principalities turned out, which were no larger than any boyar patrimony. Klyuchevsky, on the basis of the testimony of the life of one saint who lived on Lake Kubenskoye, draws one of these principalities - Zaozerskoye in this form: its capital consisted of one princely court, located at the confluence of the Kubena river into Lake Kubenskoye, and not far from it stood "the whole Chirkov ". Thus, you see in front of you an ordinary manor house, no more. Many of the principalities that formed in the Rostov Territory included villages and hamlets spread along small rivers, such as Ukhtoma, Kem, Andoga, Sit, Kurba, Yukhot, etc.

Numerous appanage princes began to resemble patrimonial landowners not only in the size of their possessions, but also in the nature of their activities. Not court and government as such began to fill their time now, but economic concerns, economic affairs; and their usual employees and advisers were not boyars, thinking about the military affairs and the system of the zemstvo, but their clerks, to whom they entrusted individual branches of their general economy. These were: courtyard, or dvoretsky, who was in charge of all the arable lands of the prince with all the people who worked on them, and then good boyars, administrators of paths, or a combination of one or another category of household facilities, which are: steward, in charge of all fishing and fishermen, dexterous, in charge of animal "paths" and trappers, beaver, calyx, in charge of all boarding grounds and bee keepers, equestrian, falconer. Since all these lands were not concentrated in one place, but were scattered throughout the entire principality, then the departments of the worthy boyars were not territorial districts, namely, the paths that cut the principalities in different directions. All these clerks of the prince made up his usual advice or thought, with which he consulted not only about the economic affairs of his principality, but also about those that can be called state. Both private owners and princes in positions were not only free, but also slaves. Treasurers, housekeepers, courtiers, ambassadors, tiuns were all too often serfs, as can be seen from the spiritual letters of the princes, in whom these persons were released. Even in the management of the population, not involved in work on the palace economy, the princes began to dominate a purely proprietary, economic interest. The territories of the specific principalities were administratively divided into counties, with the central cities, and the counties on volosts. Princes were sent to the counties for trial and administration. governors, in the parish volostels or their tiunov. The governor, who was sitting in the central town of the county, repaired the court and council on all matters in the suburban volost, and on cases of murder, razor-fighting and thugs red-handed - within the entire county; ox-steles or tiuns repaired the court and council in the volosts in all matters, except for those that were subject to the court of the governor. Under the governors and volostels, there were executive officials - rulers and informers, bailiffs, podvoyskiye. The main purpose of this department was not so much to ensure public order and individual rights, how much income and maintenance of servants. The governors and volostels repaired the court quite formally, without entering into an internal assessment of the evidence. The court proceeded, so to speak, by itself, according to the established procedures from ancient times, the observance of which was monitored by the judges from the local society, and the judges sat and watched their income, that is, from whom and how much to take court fines and duties. Half of this income was usually received by the princes, and half went to the judges. The governors and volostels, in addition, received food in kind and in money from the population - entry, Christmas, great-day and Peter the Great. The princes sent their boyars and servants to these positions to feed themselves, and therefore did not allow them to remain in their posts for a long time in order to enable all their servants to stay in these lucrative jobs. Looking at the position of governors and volostels predominantly from a financial point of view, the princes therefore easily gave out the so-called non-convicted gramoty, which freed the population of boyar and church estates from the court of governors and volostels and subject them to the court of the owners. This was the same material mercy to the owners, as was the sending of boyars and servants for feeding. The owners of such privileged estates were usually freed from the court of governors and volostels. They were judged by the prince himself or his boyar introduced, that is, specially authorized for that.

Elements of statehood in specific order.

Combining into one whole the features that characterize the relationship of princes to each other, to the territory and the population, some researchers, especially Chicherin in "Experiments on the history of Russian law", come to the denial of state principles in the specific order. According to Chicherin, only private law, and not state law, prevailed in specific life. The princes in their estates did not distinguish between the grounds on which they owned the cities and the entire territory of the domain, on the one hand, and some small item of their daily life, on the other hand, like utensils and clothing, and in their spirits. their wills indifferently blessed their new cities and volosts, icons, chains, hats and fur coats. Relations between princes were governed by treaties, and the treaty was a fact of private law. Therefore, neither in individual estates, nor in the entire Russian land, there was no state power, no state concepts and relations among the princes. They were also absent in the relations of the princes to the population: the princes were the owners of the land, and only contractual relations connected them with the free inhabitants: these residents remained in the principalities as long as they wanted, and the prince could not force them to stay, and leaving them was not seen as treason. But such a characteristic of the specific structure, for all its brightness, suffers from one-sidedness. Gradovsky in "History of Local Government in Russia" rightly pointed out that the princes in their wills, placing nearby cities, volosts, their villages and movable property, transfer different subjects of ownership to the heirs. Villages, for example, and they transfer things entirely as full property, and in volosts only income and management rights. This serves as proof for Gradovsky that in the specific period, there were concepts that went out of the sphere of civil law and had the character of state concepts. In addition to this, it is possible to buy the prince, which was by no means the whole free population of the princes' estates by contractual relations. This applied only to boyars and free servants, for whom the princes pronounced in contracts the right of free transition. But the peasants, written or numerical people who paid tribute to the Tatars and bore various obligations to the princes, the princes kept in their estates and pledged not to call them from each other. In view of this, it is still better to recognize the estates of the northeastern princes as their hereditary property as political owners, and not private ones, although it cannot be denied that in terms of the type of administration and everyday life, according to prevailing interests, this property came close to simple fiefdom. Then, and in the relations of princes to each other, one can notice the beginning of subordination by virtue of the well-known political right of the elders in relation to the younger ones. The treaties of princes did not always re-establish relations between them, but quite often they only sanctioned customary law that was already in force. This political right determined the princely relations and in addition to treaties. All this in total makes it possible to speak only about a certain mixture of state and private law in a specific era, and not about replacing state law with private law.

The Tatar invasion, with all the accompanying consequences, accelerated the very process of life, which led to a decline in value, and then to the final cessation of the activity of urban veche in northeastern Russia.

Already in the second half of the XII century, in the era of intensive settlement of the region by colonists from the south, the princes of northeastern Russia tended to become the masters of the country, its masters as its creators and organizers. Let us recall that Andrei Bogolyubsky was already dignified as an autocrat in the Suzdal land and did not want to know either his boyars or the people's veche. Andrei, as you know, became a victim of his internal politics and died from a conspiracy of dissatisfied with his autocracy. After his death, the old veche cities - Rostov and Suzdal - tried to become masters in the country, to plant princes of their own free will and on their own. But they did not succeed in achieving this, because they did not have strong, ancient ties with the rest of the population that had recently arrived, planted on the land by the princes-colonialists, and above all with the suburbs of the Suzdal land. The Vladimir refused to recognize the princes nominated by the Rostovites and the Suzdalites. In the internecine struggle that followed, the old veche cities suffered complete defeat. In the Rostov-Suzdal land, thus, even before the Tatars, the prince became the master of the situation, and the veche receded into the background. The very composition of the population in the Rostov-Suzdal land should have favored the strengthening of the prince at the expense of the veche. This population consisted of inhabitants of small villages and hamlets scattered over great distances. There were few overcrowded, large settlements, commercial and industrial cities, and therefore the parties of the main cities could not acquire the dominance that they received in other regions of the Russian land. The Tatars completed this political evolution of north-eastern Russia. The cities during their invasion were subjected to terrible devastation, impoverished and impoverished. Due to the decline of their industries and trade, they could not recover for a long time and to any significant extent. Under such conditions, their inhabitants had to think more about their daily bread, about tomorrow, and not about politics. With the establishment of Tatar rule over Russia, the appointment and change of princes began to depend on the will of the khan. Therefore, by itself, the most important function of the veche fell - the vocation and expulsion of princes. If there were meetings, it was only in urgent cases, and moreover in the form of a rebellion. “Deliver God,” writes, for example, a chronicler under 1262, “Rostov land from the fierce languor of Basurmansky: put your rage in the hearts of the peasants, who do not tolerate the violence of the nasty, willingly and expelled from the cities, from Rostov, from Volodymer, from Suzdal, from Yaroslavl, they will pay for the damnation of madness of tribute ”(Lavrenty). Or under 1289: “Prince Dmitry Borisovich Sede in Rostov. Then multiply the Tatars in Rostov, and the citizens of the veche and expelling them, and looting their estate ”(Resurrection), etc. - the prince.

2. The dependence of the princes on the Tatar khan; the order of the princely possession.

But for all that, this political force did not become independent. In 1243, the Grand Duke Yaroslav Vsevolodovich went to Batu, who, according to the chronicle, received him with honor and said to him: “Yaroslav! Wake you old as all the prince in the Russian language. " The next year, other princes went to Batu "about their fatherland": "Baty ace honoring me with a worthy honor and letting me go, judging them, once in their fatherland" (Lavrenty). The same procedure continued after. As a rule, the khans, both the great and the local prince, affirmed the one who had the right to do so on the basis of ancestral or ancestral grounds, acting in the then customary princely law. As a result, in the 13th century, the princes' seniorities sat down on the Grand Duchess of Vladimir in the XIII century: Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, his brother Svyatoslav, son Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky, another son - Yaroslav Tverskoy and the third - Vasily Kostromskaya, then the eldest grandson Dimitri Alexandrovich, the next Andrei Alexandrovich, then Mikhail Yaroslavich Tverskoy. Thus, in the succession of the senior grand-ducal table, an approximately old Kiev custom was observed. But in the replacement of all other princely tables, a new, patrimonial order was established, as was already indicated in due time - the transition from fathers to sons, and in the absence of such, to the next of kin. Thus, for example, in Rostov, after Konstantin Vsevolodovich, his eldest son Vasilko reigned, who was succeeded by his son Boris, etc. offspring, why his brother Konstantin Romanovich began to reign in Ryazan, etc. The Khans for the most part affirmed the reign of the one to whom it followed according to custom. But for all that, the khan's sovereignty had not formal, but purely real significance. The princes paid the khan exit from their principalities and gifts for shortcuts to reign. Therefore, in the XIV century, the khans began to give the great reign of Vladimir not to those princes whom it followed in the order of seniority, but to those who knew how to ask them over, to give them more gifts. Thus, for example, in 1341, the sixteen-year-old Moscow prince Semyon Ivanovich left the Horde for the great reign, "and all the Russian princes were given under his hand, and gray on the table in Volodimeri" (Resurrection). In 1359, the khan gave the label for the great reign to the young Dimitri Ivanovich Donskoy, whose boyars were able to buy this label, which was begged at the same time by the prince of Suzdal Dimitri Konstantinovich. At the end of the 14th century, labels began to be bought from the Khan, not only for the great reign of Vladimir, but also for the inheritance. Thus, for example. The Moscow prince Vasily Dmitrievich bought the label for the principality of Nizhny Novgorod, which was given before to his stepfather, Boris Konstantinovich. In this case, the khan in relation to the princes began to play the same role that the vechea of ​​the main cities in Kievan Rus played, which imprisoned princes quite often without attention to their ancestral accounts.

3. The power of the Grand Duke of Vladimir until the end of the XIV century.

What mutual relations were established under the Tatars between the princes of north-eastern Russia? Until the end of the XIV century, the grand dukes of Vladimir had a certain power over all other princes, although neither the content of this power, nor its size appear quite definitely according to the sources. The chronicles dully say that other princes were "at hand" of the great princes. Above was the evidence of the chronicle that all Russian princes were given to the Grand Duke Semyon. About Demetrius Donskoy it is written that he "called upon all the princes of the Russian lands, which are under his rule" (Resurrection). Aiding the princes allows themselves to be tracked down in facts only in the fact that appanage princes during the all-Russian campaigns stood under the banner of the Grand Duke of Vladimir. The Grand Duke of Vladimir, by all indications, was the representative of all Russian princes before the khan, was originally the only prince who knew the Horde, that is, he went to plead with the khan for the interests of the Russian land, received orders from him, etc. All these special rights and advantages in connection with the possession of the Vladimir district were the reason for the struggle of the princes of different lines for the great reign of Vladimir.

The last struggle for the great reign of Vladimir took place under Dimitri Ivanovich Donskoy. In 1367, Prince Dimitri Ivanovich founded a stone Kremlin in Moscow and began to bring all the princes under his will, among other things, Prince Mikhail Alexandrevich of Tverskoy. Mikhail, not wanting to obey, turned to his son-in-law Olgerd, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, for help. Several times Lithuanian troops entered Moscow possessions and devastated them. Grand Duke Dimitri Ivanovich sent against them not only the regiments of the princes of the Moscow estates, but also the Ryazan regiments of Oleg Ivanovich, the prince of Prince Vladimir Dmitrievich. Not having time in his business with Lithuanian help, Mikhail went to the Horde in 1371 and returned from there with a label for the great reign of Vladimir and the khan's ambassador Sarykhozha. But Demetrius did not let Michael go to the great reign, he charged Sarykhozhu and then he went to the Horde, gave the khan, the khansh and all the princes there, and again received a label for the great reign. Mikhail, for his part, went to Lithuania again and brought Olgerd against Moscow. In the struggle that followed, Grand Duke Dimitri Ivanovich took his father-in-law Dimitri Konstantinovich Suzdal with his two brothers and his son, cousin Vladimir Andreevich Serpukhovsky, three princes of Rostov, Prince of Smolensk, two princes of Yaroslavl, prince Belozinsky, two princes of Yaroslavl, prince Belozinsky to the battlefield. Starodubsky, Bryansk, Novosilsky, Obolensky and Tarusa. The struggle ended with Mikhail Alexandrovich recognizing himself as the "younger brother" of Dimitri, equal to Vladimir Andreevich, pledged not to look for the great reign of Vladimir under Demetrius, to mount a horse and go to war when the Grand Duke himself or his brother Vladimir Andreevich mounts a horse, or send their voivods if they send voivods: undertook to jointly determine their relations with the Tatars, give them tribute or not, fight them if it comes to war, fight together against Lithuania, live with Veliky Novgorod and Torzhok as of old.

All these details of the struggle for the great reign of Vladimir, as well as the treaty between Grand Duke Dimitri Ivanovich and Mikhail Tverskoy, ensuring his obedience to the Grand Duke of Vladimir, show what was the power of the Grand Duke of Vladimir. This power was military-political. Local princes were obliged to go to war at the call of the Grand Duke, not to conduct any independent foreign policy... The significance of the Grand Duke of Vladimir appears then quite clearly and in the subsequent struggle of Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy with the Tatars and Ryazan. In 1380, Demetrius gathered against Mamai a huge army of 150 thousand people. This army included not only the regiments of the Moscow estates, but also the henchmen of the princes of Rostov, Yaroslavl, Belozersk; and the Tver prince sent his troops with his nephew, Ivan Vsevolodovich Kholmsky. Oleg Ryazansky, out of fear of the Tatars, did not join the Grand Duke, after the Kulikovo defeat of the Tatars, he had to flee to Lithuania for fear of repression, and Dimitri Ivanovich for disobeying Oleg took Ryazan away from him. When they then reconciled and concluded an agreement, Oleg recognized himself as the "younger brother" of Demetrius, equal to Vladimir Andreevich, pledged to be at the same time against Lithuania, and with the Horde he is in the same relationship as the Moscow prince. This means that Oleg became to Dimitri Ivanovich Donskoy in the same subordinate position as Mikhail Tverskoy. To characterize this situation, one can cite some data from the agreement with Dmitry Ivanovich of his cousin, Vladimir Andreevich Serpukhovsky, to whom princes Oleg and Mikhail were equated: “For you, my younger brother, Prince Vladimir, to keep my great princess under me is honest and formidable; for you, my younger brother, to serve without disobedience, "and so on.

4. Emancipation of Ryazan and Tver from submission to the Grand Duke of Moscow and Vladimir.

In the 15th century, the princes of Tver and Ryazan emancipated themselves from submission to the Grand Duke of Vladimir. The great reign of Vladimir could be held formidable and honest only when the grand dukes were representatives of the khan in Russia, enjoyed his authority and military assistance. But by the middle of the XIV century, the Horde weakened, and the Grand Duke not only did not receive support from there, but was already in frequent conflict with the Tatar khans, acted as a leader in the struggle for liberation from the rule of the Tatars. Under such conditions, he was forced by treaties with the princes to consolidate his power and his authority. Contracts are valid only when they can be supported at any time by force. But the Grand Duke of Moscow, although he appropriated the great reign of Vladimir, was not yet in such a position at the end of the 14th and first quarter of the 15th century. His forces were paralyzed not only by the Horde, which at times opposed him with hostility, but also by Lithuania, which at any moment was ready to support the local princes against him. Under such conditions, the princes of Ryazan and Tver gradually began to occupy an independent position relative to the Grand Duke of All Russia. In the agreement concluded with the Grand Duke Vasily Dmitrievich in 1402. Ryazan prince Fyodor Olgovich, although he recognized himself as a younger brother and pledged not to pester the Tatars, but for all that, he persuaded himself the right to send an ambassador (Kilich) with gifts to the Horde, the right to receive the Tatar ambassador for Christian good with honor, notifying only about to everyone and about all the Horde news of the Grand Duke Vasily. Even more significant is the treaty concluded with Prince Mikhail of Tver with Vasily Dmitrievich around 1398. In it, Mikhail is no longer called a younger brother, but simply a brother and gives obligations equivalent to the obligations of his counterparty - to be one for the Tatars, Lithuania, Germans and Poles. This mutual obligation is developed in the agreement in this way: if the tsar himself or the Tatar army, or Lithuania, or the Germans, or the Poles, and the Grand Duke of Moscow and his brothers mount their horses, will go against the Moscow princes, then Mikhail will send two of his sons, and two brothers, leaving one son with him; if the Tatars, Lithuania or the Germans attack the Tver principality, then the Moscow prince is obliged to mount a horse himself and with his brothers. The Grand Duke, obliging the Prince of Tver, his children and grandchildren not to take love, that is, not to enter into agreements with Vitovt and Lithuania, at the same time, for himself and his brothers undertook not to conclude agreements without the Prince of Tver, his children and grandchildren ... The prince of Tver was given complete freedom in relations with the Horde: "But to the Horde, brother, and to the king, the path is clear, for your children, and your grandchildren, and your people." The strife that ensued in the clan of the Moscow princes further contributed to the liberation of the princes of Tver and Ryazan from subordination to them, who during this time were closely adjacent to the Grand Duke of Lithuania.

5. Submission to the great princes of Moscow, Tver and Ryazan appanage princes.

Thus, from the end of the XIV and during the first half of the XV century in northeastern Russia there was already not one great reign, but three - Moscow, Tver and Ryazan. The great reign of Vladimir was inextricably linked with the Moscow grand reign, as a result of which not only his relatives, but also the princes of other estates, for example, Rostov, Suzdal, Yaroslavl, and others, were subject to the Grand Duke of Moscow and only their relatives were subordinate to the Grand Duke of Tver and Ryazan. This subordination of relatives to an elder or a grand duke is evidenced by both the treaties of these grand princes with other great princes, and the treaties of the grand dukes with younger relatives. The above has already given the obligation of the Grand Duke of Tverskoy to Moscow, to send his sons and brothers to help. This means that the junior appanage princes had to go to war on the orders of the senior. Prince Boris Alexandrovich of Tver, concluding an agreement with Vitovt in 1427, bluntly stipulated: “For my uncles, my brothers and my tribe, princes, be in obedience to me: lord grandfather, Grand Duke Vitovt, not to intervene; if any of them wants to surrender to the service of my master grandfather and fatherland, then my lord grandfather and fatherland will not accept; whoever of them goes to Lithuania will lose his homeland - in his homeland I am free, Grand Duke Boris Alexandrovich. " From the treaties of the great princes with appanages, it is clear that the latter's obedience was expressed in their obligation to mount horses and go to war when the grand duke himself mounts a horse or sends his sons or other younger brothers, and in the obligation to send a voivode if the grand duke sends his governor. The great dukes received labels from the khans for the whole land, including the inheritance of younger relatives. In 1412, the Grand Duke of Tverskoy Ivan Mikhailovich, to whom the appanage prince Yuri did not want to obey, said: "The tsar's label is given to the whole land of Tver, and Yuri himself is a tsar in the label." Due to this, the appanage princes could not surrender with their ancestors to the subordination of other princes, they were obliged, collecting tribute for the appropriation, to give this tribute to the Grand Duke, and the Grand Duke was already taking them to the Horde. Therefore, Grand Duke Vasily Vasilyevich Dark and punished in his spiritual will: “As my children begin to live according to their inheritance, my princess and children will send scribes who will describe their inheritance by kissing the cross, impose a tribute on plows and people, and according to this salary the princess and my children will start giving out to my son Ivan. "

So, the appanage princes of northeastern Russia in military-political terms were subordinate to the Grand Duke of Vladimir until the end of the XIV century, and from the end of the XIV century already to three Grand Dukes - Moscow-Vladimir, Tver and Ryazan, who were independent from each other and determined their relations contracts that varied depending on the circumstances of their conclusion. Some researchers, especially Sergeevich, tend to look in exactly the same way at the relationship of the younger appanage princes to the local great. They recognize that the subordination of the younger princes to the elders was not any order, state-legal custom, that the princes de jure were all equal, and relations of subordination were established between them only by virtue of agreements, depending on the circumstances of each given moment. But such a concept of inter-princely relations of a specific era can hardly be accepted. If you delve into the content of the agreements between the older princes and the younger ones, it is easy to see that the agreements are trying to guarantee such relations between them, which were recognized as normal, to confirm the state-legal antiquity.

6. Internal independence of appanages.

The subordination of the younger princes to the great ones was limited to an obligatory alliance against enemies, military assistance, and the contribution of the Tatar exit to the grand ducal treasury, which in turn was due to the fact that the younger princes did not have the right to independent relations with the Horde. But in all other respects, the younger princes were free and independent. The treaties guaranteed them the inviolability of their possessions and the full right to dispose of them, not only breaking their ties with the great reign. “You know your homeland, and I know yours” - this is a common article in these contracts. The contracting parties usually pledged not to buy villages in each other's inheritance, not to allow this to their boyars, not to give letters of gratitude for possession in someone else's inheritance, not to keep mortgages and quitters, to give court and justice to their subjects at the claims of other princes or their subjects, not to send bailiffs to each other and not to judge the courts. Boyars and free servants in these agreements were usually provided with freedom of transition from one prince to another, and they also retained their estates in the inheritance of the abandoned prince. The princes pledged not to accept written people or numerical ones, as well as servants "under the court" who owned lands: who of these servants passed to the service of another prince, he was deprived of his lands in the inheritance of the former prince. The younger appanage princes thus enjoyed complete independence in the internal administration of their principalities. They divided these principalities between their children, singled out "oprichnina" from them for a living after their death to their princesses, bequeathed these principalities to relatives or foreign princes, etc.

7. Rapprochement of principalities with private estates.

We examined the mutual relations of the princes of north-eastern Russia in the specific era. Let us now take a look at their relationship to their possessions, to the territories of the principalities and the population living on them. The princes, as we have seen, remained in northeastern Russia the only masters, masters in their principalities. Due to the general impoverishment of the country and the impossibility of living on income from government, the princes occupied a lot of land and fishing grounds in their principalities and developed their palace economy on an extensive scale, for which they attracted a significant part of the rural population to various works and duties. The income from this economy became the main means of their maintenance, and the income from management is only a certain help. Having become a major owner, the prince began to regard his entire principality as a huge economic institution, as a fiefdom, and therefore began to dispose of it like all estates, divide it between his heirs, allocate parts of it for the living of his wife and daughters, sometimes transferring it to sons-in-law, as it was, for example, in Yaroslavl, where Prince Vasily Vsevolodovich handed over the inheritance to his son-in-law Fyodor Rostislavich Smolensky. As a result of the multiplication of some branches of the princely family and the numerous redistributions of their possessions, over time, such microscopic principalities turned out, which were no more than any boyar patrimony. Klyuchevsky, based on the testimony of the life of one saint who lived on Lake Kubenskoye, draws one of these principalities - Zaozerskoye in this form: its capital consisted of one princely court, located at the confluence of the Kubena river into Lake Kubenskoye, and not far from it stood "the whole Chirkov" ... Thus, you see in front of you an ordinary manor house, no more. Many of the principalities that formed in the Rostov Territory included villages and hamlets spread along small rivers, such as Ukhtoma, Kem, Andoga, Sit, Kurba, Yukhot, etc.

Numerous appanage princes began to resemble patrimonial landowners not only in the size of their possessions, but also in the nature of their activities. Not court and government as such began to fill their time now, but economic concerns, economic affairs; and their usual collaborators and advisers were not boyars thinking about military affairs and the system of the zemstvo, but their clerks, to whom they entrusted individual branches of their vast economy. These were: the court, or butler, who was in charge of all the arable lands of the prince with all the population who worked on them, and then the worthy boyars, administrators of the routes, or the aggregate of one or another category of farmland, such as: the steward, who was in charge of all fishing and fishermen, a hunter, in charge of animal "paths" and trappers, a beaver, a chasman who was in charge of all boarding grounds and bee keepers, a groom, a falconer. Since all these lands were not concentrated in one place, but were scattered throughout the principality, then the departments of the worthy boyars were not territorial districts, but precisely the paths that cut the principalities in different directions. All these clerks of the prince made up his usual council or council, with which he consulted not only about the economic affairs of his principality, but also about those that could be called state affairs. Both private owners and princes in positions were not only free, but also slaves. Treasurers, housekeepers, courtiers, ambassadors, tiuns were all too often serfs, as can be seen from the spiritual letters of the princes, in whom these persons were released. Even in the management of the population, not involved in work on the palace economy, the princes began to dominate a purely proprietary, economic interest. The territories of the appanage principalities were administratively divided into counties, with central cities, and the counties into volosts. For court and administration, the princes sent governors to the counties, to the volosts of volostels or their own tiuns. The governor, who was sitting in the central city of the county, repaired the court and council on all matters in the suburban volost, and in cases of murder, robbery and thief red-handed - within the entire county; volostels or tiuns repaired the courts and councils in the volosts in all matters except those that were subject to the court of the governor. Under governors and volostels, there were executive officials - rulers and closers, bailiffs, podvoyskiye. The main goal of this administration was not so much to ensure public order and individual rights, but to generate income and maintain servants. The governors and volostels repaired the court quite formally, without entering into an internal assessment of the evidence. The court proceeded, so to speak, by itself, according to the established procedures from ancient times, the observance of which was monitored by the judges from the local society, and the judges sat and watched their income, that is, from whom and how much to take court fines and duties. Half of this income was usually received by the princes, and half went to the judges. The governors and volostels, in addition, received food in kind and money from the population - entry, Christmas, great-day and Peter's. The princes sent their boyars and servants to these positions to feed themselves, and therefore did not allow them to remain in their posts for a long time in order to enable all their servants to stay in these lucrative jobs. Looking at the position of governors and volostels, mainly from the financial point of view, the princes, therefore, easily issued the so-called non-conviction certificates that liberated the population of boyar and church estates from the court of governors and volostels and subordinated it to the court of the owners. This was the same material mercy to the owners, as was the sending of boyars and servants for feeding. The owners of such privileged estates were usually freed from the court of governors and volostels. They were judged by the prince himself or his boyar introduced, i.e. specially authorized for that.

8. Elements of statehood in specific order.

Combining into one whole the features that characterize the relationship of princes to each other, to the territory and the population, some researchers, especially Chicherin in his "Experiments on the history of Russian law", come to the denial of state principles in the specific order. According to Chicherin, only private law prevailed in specific life, not state law. The princes in their inheritance did not distinguish between the grounds on which they owned cities and the entire territory of their inheritance, on the one hand, and some small item of their daily use, on the other hand, like utensils and clothes, and in their spiritual wills they indifferently blessed their sons with cities and volosts, icons, chains, hats and fur coats. Relations between princes were governed by treaties, and the treaty was a fact of private law. Consequently, neither in individual estates, nor in the entire Russian land, there was no state power, no state concepts and relations among the princes. They were also absent in the relations of the princes to the population: the princes were the owners of the land, and only contractual relations connected them with the free inhabitants: these residents remained in the principalities as long as they wanted, and the prince could not force them to stay, and their departure was not considered treason. But such a characteristic of the specific structure, for all its brightness, suffers from one-sidedness. Gradovsky in his "History of Local Government in Russia" rightly pointed out that the princes in their wills, placing cities, volosts, their villages and movable property next to them, transfer various objects of ownership to their heirs. Villages, for example, and they transfer things entirely as full property, and in volosts only income and management rights. This serves as proof for Gradovsky that in the specific period, there were concepts that went out of the sphere of civil law and had the character of state concepts. In addition to this, it can be added that the princes were not connected with the entire free population of the lands by contractual relations. This applied only to boyars and free servants, for whom the princes pronounced in contracts the right of free transition. But the peasants, written or numerical people who paid tribute to the Tatars and bore various duties on the princes, the princes kept in their estates and pledged not to call them from each other. In view of this, it is still better to recognize the estates of the northeastern princes as their hereditary property as political owners, and not private ones, although it cannot be denied that in terms of the type of administration and life, according to prevailing interests, this property came close to a simple patrimony. Then, and in the relations of princes to each other, one can notice the beginning of subordination by virtue of the well-known political right of the elders in relation to the younger. The treaties of the princes did not always re-establish relations between them, but quite often they only sanctioned the customary law already in force. This political right determined the princely relations and in addition to treaties. All this in total makes it possible to speak only about a certain mixture of state and private law in a specific era, and not about the replacement of state law by private law.

9. Features of feudalism in the specific structure of north-eastern Russia of the XIII-XV centuries; fragmentation of state power.

So, the appanage principalities, both in size and in the nature of their ownership and use, came close to the large estates of private owners and church institutions, and on the other hand, large proprietary estates came close to the principalities, for their owners acquired political rights over the population of their estates. Thus, in the political system of northeastern Russia, the most characteristic features of medieval feudalism were manifested - the fragmentation of state power and its combination with land ownership. In addition to this, it can be pointed out that in our country, as in the West, during the division of state power, a whole hierarchy of sovereigns was formed, differing from each other in the number of their sovereign rights. The highest sovereign of Russia, from whom the Russian princes received their investiture, corresponding to the emperors, western and eastern, was the tsar of Orda, who considered the entire Russian land as his ulus, as one of his possessions. Below him were the great princes - Vladimir-Moscow, Tver and Ryazan, who corresponded to the Western European kings, who received from him labels for the great reigns with all their territories; under the great princes were appanage princes, corresponding to the Western European dukes, subordinate to the great in some respects, and even lower, the boyars-landowners and church institutions, who, as we have seen, enjoyed the state rights of court and taxation in their names. However, only the first three categories of sovereigns had the rights that constitute sovereignty - they are independent, not derivatives. Sovereignty was divided between the khan and the great and appanage princes. Only these sovereigns had the right to diplomatic relations (specific - limited), the right to beat coins, etc. Even the smallest princes enjoyed the right to beat coins. In the Tver Museum there are coins with the inscriptions: Denga Gorodetsko, Gorodetsko, Gorodensko. This Gorodetsky or Gorodetsky money was believed to have been minted by one of the most insignificant Tver appanage princes, namely the Staritsky or Gorodetsky princes. Other non-grand ducal silver and copper money (pools) are also known: Kashinsky, Mikulinsky, Spassky and others. As for private landowners and ecclesiastical institutions, they did not achieve in Russia the sovereign rights that their Western brethren acquired for themselves. As you know, in the west, many feudal lords usurped sovereign rights for themselves, were called sovereigns by the grace of God, minted coins, conducted diplomatic relations, etc. The newest researcher of the Russian appanage system Pavlov-Silvansky gave the following explanation to this difference between our order and the order of the West: “In our country, just like in the West, the earth had to disintegrate uncontrollably, divide into small independent worlds. But at the moment of the overdue division of the country, we had many aspirant princes with hereditary sovereign rights. They replaced in our country the Western feudal lords who seized sovereign rights: division from above prevented division from below; the enchantment of the earth warned her of the charm ”. In this explanation, the named historian, in my opinion, correctly noted the essence of the matter, although he did not finish it to the end, because this did not agree with his other Veglyads. The princes became territorial sovereigns in Russia before the boyar land tenure was created, which developed already under the cover of and depending on the princely power. Meanwhile, Pavlov-Silvansky, sharing the theory of the "zemstvo boyars," thinks that boyar land tenure was created in our country earlier, or at least independently of the princely power.

10. The origin of feudal relations in Russia.

How, then, was the order created in Russia, close to Western European feudalism? In the previous lecture, one of the main reasons that gave rise to this order was noted, the domination of natural, agriculture, which was established in Russia with the arrival of the Tatars, in connection with the depletion of the people's capital. This circumstance, as we have seen, forced the princes to engage mainly in the business that the landowners - the rural proprietors - are engaged in, for otherwise the princes had nothing to live on; the princes thus approached the private landowners. On the other hand, having no money to distribute salaries to their servants and church institutions, the princes willingly sacrificed their rights over the population of their estates in their favor, granted them immunities, various privileges and exemptions, thus bringing them closer to the sovereigns. But is it possible to dwell on this reason alone in explaining the origin of Russian feudalism? Historians-economists tend to be content with this one reason and ignore others, which have been put forward by historians of law and culture. We cannot ignore these reasons of internal, spiritual nature. What made the princes divide the territory of the state into appanages? Economic needs, the need for intensive agricultural labor - economists will answer us. But for this, let's say to them, it was not at all necessary to divide the most state power... It was enough for the senior prince to place the younger ones on the estates, preserving all his state rights over the population of the domains and granting the younger princes only the economic exploitation of the lands, in extreme cases, the governor's power in the domains. If the princes shared the very state power, then this nevertheless stemmed from their political underdevelopment, from their lack of the view that the highest state power, in its essence, could not be the subject of family division. Sharing state power, the princes obviously looked at it as a subject of private ownership. This also explains in part the fact that they shared it with their boyars. To welcome the boyar for his service, there was no need to necessarily give him immunity. In order to grant that which gave immunity, in essence, it was enough to make the boyar a governor or a volostel on his estate, give him princely income and provide some benefits to the population of his estate. But the princes usually went further and forever retreated from their rights in relation to the population of such estates, obviously not appreciating these rights not only from the economic, but also from the political and legal point of view. Therefore, the opinion of those historians who deduced feudalism from the general state of culture of a certain era, not only economic, material, but also political, legal, and spiritual, seems to be more correct.

11. Collateral and patronage.

On the basis of the above-described order and in connection with the general conditions of culture in Russia, phenomena developed that had an analogy in the phenomena of the feudal era in the West. These phenomena must, first of all, include mortgaging. Once the distinction between the sovereign and the private owner in his state was obscured in practice and in the public consciousness, then naturally the concept of a subject should also become obscured. Free persons began to consider themselves entitled to surrender to citizenship not only to numerous princes, but also to individuals and institutions, to be pledged, as they said then, not only for different princes, but also for boyars, rulers and monasteries, if this promised them any benefit ... And this benefit was seen all the time, for the princely power, weakened by division and specific fragmentation, often turned out to be unable to provide the private person with the necessary protection and means of livelihood. In Russia, therefore, the same thing began to happen as in Western Europe in the era of the weakening of royal power, when the weak sought protection by means of advice to strong landowners and church institutions. The analogy in this respect went so far that in Russia, as well as in the West, people began to form names.

It was said above that the boyar estates were under the sovereignty of the territorial prince, and not the one to whom their owner was serving at that time, they pulled court and tribute on land and water. But this rule began to be violated over time. The owners began to be mortgaged for the princes, to whom they entered the service with the estates, just as in the west the owners did with their feuds, who were once also under the rule of territorial sovereigns. This created a terrible confusion of relations, which the princes tried to resist with treaties. In these treaties, they confirmed that the boyar estates should remain under the sovereignty of the territorial prince, pull court and tribute on land and water, that princes should not keep villages in other people's estates, buy and accept gratis, should not give letters of gratitude to someone else's lot, judge there is a tribute to take and in general "do not intervene in someone else's business." But by all indications, the princes did not manage to eradicate this phenomenon, and the transition of owners with estates to the citizenship of other princes continued. Such transitions are ascertained from sources even at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century. So, in 1487, a certain Ivashko Maksimovich, the son of the Looker, beat the Grand Duchess Sophia with his forehead "and with his patrimony, with half the village of the Looker, which is in Murom in the Kuzemsky camp, with everything that was drawn to his half." Bearing in mind such cases, Ivan III wrote in his spiritual charter of 1504: “but the boyars and the children of the boyars Yaroslavsky, with their estates and with purchases from my son Vasily, will not leave anyone anywhere”. In 1507, the famous abbot of the Volokolamsk monastery, Joseph Sanin, who founded his monastery in the patrimony of Prince Boris Vasilyevich of Volotsk and, with his assistance, having quarreled with his prince, "abandoned his sovereign into a great state", under the high hand of Grand Duke Vasily Ivanovich. When Joseph was rebuked for this, he referred to precedents. “In our years,” he said, “Prince Vasily Yaroslavich had a Sergiev monastery in his patrimony, and Prince Alexander had a Kamensky monastery in Fyodorovich’s patrimony, and the princes of the Zasekinsky had a monastery of the Most Pure ilk on Tolza in their patrimony”; And so the abbots of these monasteries beat the grand duke Vasily Vasilyevich with their foreheads, and he "took those monasteries into his state, but did not order those princes to enter those monasteries for nothing." And in ancient times, the compiler of the life of the Monk Joseph notes in this connection, “they resorted to great offenses from the lesser ones.” Individuals were pledged not only for the princes, but also for the boyars, for the lord and monasteries. Thanks to this, the wealthy boyars had whole detachments of servants who served them at court and in war, and which, thus, represent a complete analogy with Western European vassals. Boyarin Rodion Nestorovich, having come from Kiev to the service of the Grand Duke Ivan Danilovich Kalita, brought with him 1600 people of the squad. Then the noble Moscow boyar Akinf Gavrilovich Shuba, offended by the honor given to the visiting boyar and not wanting to be under Rodion in the lesser ones, went to the service of Mikhail Tverskoy and took 1300 servants with him. Ivan III, having taken Novgorod, first of all dissolved the great princely and boyar courts in Novgorod and distributed the estates to the princely and boyar servants. But in the Tver principality, servants who served with their estates to the boyars existed even under Grozny. As in the west, many service people in the specific era were laid down for the clergy - the metropolitan, the rulers and monasteries. The metropolitan and the bishops had boyar children in the later era of the Moscow state, until the very beginning of the 18th century.

If in a specific time, therefore, there was no idea of ​​citizenship, in our sense of the word, then there is nothing surprising if private persons were given over to the patronage of the prince of the territory where they lived - to their own sovereign. This fact is impossible at the present time, in the present state, where it is assumed that the sovereign is the same patron for everyone. But at that time they did not think so, and therefore many persons were surrendered under the special protection of the prince, in munde-burdium regis, as they said in the West, they received the right to sue only in front of him, etc.

12. Transitions of boyars and servants; salaries and feeding.

Due to the vagueness of the idea of ​​citizenship between the princes and their boyars and servants, the very contractual relations that were established between them at a time when the princes were not territorial owners and the boyars were not landowners continued to be preserved. This or that boyar and servant served the prince not because he was obliged to serve him as the sovereign of the country, but because he "ordered" him to serve, finding it beneficial for himself. And this is true both for the passing boyars and servants, and for the sedentary ones, for the latter could always leave their prince. The right of free transition of boyars and servants was undoubtedly the legacy of the former squad life of Kievan Rus. But if it held out for so long in the specific era, already when the boyars were settled, it was only because in this era the idea of ​​citizenship did not become clear.

On the basis of contractual relations between princes and boyars and servants, phenomena developed that corresponded to the Western European distribution of benefits. Boyars and servants came to one or another prince to serve, beat him with a brow (Western European homagium), and he gave them a salary, a beneficium, which they received as long as they served. In the west, most of the land was distributed as a benefit. And here the princes distributed to some servants palace lands, plots of their domains, which were in charge of the courtyards, corresponding to the western majordoms, counts palatine, etc. In the spiritual charter of 1388, "villages and settlements" are listed for the servants. Another letter mentions "villages - princely salary", the time of the award of which dates back to the beginning of the 15th century. And just like in the west, the princes took these lands away from their servants if they left them. About one of these servants who conditionally owned the village granted to him, about Boris Vorkov, Ivan Kalita speaks in his spiritual book of 1328: “Even if he has my son to serve, the village will be behind him; Should they not serve, the village will be taken away. " In agreements among themselves, the princes agreed on these servants: and whoever leaves those inheritances ... is deprived of the land. " But due to the peculiarities of our country, the land for a long time was not the main object of distribution of benefits. There was plenty of land everywhere, it had little value for the princes, and the boyars and servants occupied it a lot without any conditions, according to the tacit or public admission of the princes. The developed patrimonial boyar land tenure for a long time excluded the need for the distribution of land as a benefit or, as we said, an estate. In Russia, in specific times, another form of benefit was predominantly developed - the distribution of posts as a salary for service, feeding, that is, not a fief-terre, but a fief-office. Therefore, in the charters of our princes, we use the following expressions: “I granted the nurserymen to feed them for their departure to us,” that is, for joining the service; or: “I have granted Ivan Grigorievich Ryl ... by the Luza volost (that is, the Luza volost) for their leaving for us to feed. And you, all people of that volost, honor them and listen, but they know you, and judge and go and rule your tiune with you, and get income according to the punishment list. " Feeding in the volosts became a common feature of free boyars and servants. "And free servants will be free, who have been in feeding and in argument with our father and with us." These feeding in the west, as you know, became hereditary fiefs: there the dukes, our governors, counts, our governors, vice-graphs or viscounts, our volostels, became the hereditary owners of their positions and the incomes associated with them. But in our country, feeding did not become not only hereditary, but even lifelong, it was usually given for years and in general for short periods. The reason for this was the poverty of our princes, who did not have the opportunity to feed all their servants at once, but had to observe a certain queue in this respect, and besides, there was no connection between official feeding and land tenure. In the west, besides income, the breeders received a certain land allotment for a position, and this allotment, becoming, like all fiefs, over time hereditary, pulled along the position itself. In our specific era, as has already been said, the boyars and servants needed little land, provided with patrimonial land tenure, and therefore we did not develop phenomena similar to the above.

13. Features of feudalism in the views, language and life of the specific era.

From all that has been said, it can be seen that in the Russian antiquity of specific time there were many features that made it akin to Western European feudalism. We meet here the same institutions, the same attitudes and views as in the feudal west, sometimes in full development, sometimes in less definite features. In our letters there are phrases that are, as it were, a literal translation of the corresponding Latin texts. For the most important feudal institutions in Russian antiquity, there were special terms corresponding to Western European ones. Our commandants were called pawns; to denote feudal commendation, the words "ask," were used. The Russian vigilante, like the German one, was called a husband; a boyar, just like a vassal, is a servant of the lord of the Grand Duke. We had the special word salary to denote benefit; this word in our country was as widespread as in the West the word benefit, flax. The salary was also called the land granted to conditional possession (estate), and the position, and immunity benefits. With the similarity of the socio-political system, the similarity of everyday life is also noticed. The spirit of discord, particularity, freedom and independence soars in the Russian society of the specific era, as well as in the western feudal one. Feudal freedom and independence led us in the same way as in the West, to violence and arbitrariness, especially on the part of the boyars, who often undertook predatory attacks on each other. A characteristic feature of Western feudal lords was their military profession, their martial spirit. This trait was expressed in chivalry. Our boyars and princes have largely lost the knightly features that were characteristic of their predecessors and are so vividly outlined in the Lay of Igor's Regiment. Nevertheless, they were all warriors. During the constant internecine feuds, all of them often had to fight at the head of the detachments of their servants and people. The spiritual masters did not go out on their own, but instead sent their own governors, who were led by their servants. One of the typical features of Western feudalism is, in the usual view, a fortified castle with loopholes, moats, and drawbridges. There were no stone castles in appanage Russia. But stone castles were replaced by fortified towns on the hills, on the elevated bank of the river, or on the old Meryan mounds. These princely towns and kremlin met the same needs as the western feudal castles. Our spiritual masters also erected fortifications. Monasteries were built in the same way as princely kremlins, usually near a lake or river. Both were surrounded by walls of homogeneous architecture with towers, loopholes, gates. The boyars of the XIV-XV centuries did not have such fortifications, but each boyar estate, even in later times, in the XVII century, was an armed camp surrounded by a palisade. This means that in this case the difference between Russia and Western Europe was not so much qualitative as quantitative.

Western European feudalism generally went much further in its development than Russian feudalism. In Russia, that feudal system did not develop, those strictly outlined legal institutions, customs, concepts, that everyday ritual that can be observed in Western countries in the Middle Ages. Russian feudalism in its development did not go beyond the primary, embryonic forms, which failed to harden and consolidate. The reason for this is the shaky social soil on which it was created, the mobility of the population in a continuously colonizing country, on the one hand, and on the other hand, intense pressure from the outside, which awakened the instincts of national self-preservation and caused the state principle to life and creativity in the real, true sense of this. the words.

Literature.

1.V.I.Sergeevich. Veche and the Prince (Russian legal antiquities. T. 2. SPb., 1893).

2.BN Chicherin. Experiments on the history of Russian law. M., 1858.

3. V.O. Klyuchevsky. Boyar Duma of Ancient Rus. M., 1909. Ed. 4th.

4. N.P. Pavlov-Silvansky. Feudalism in ancient Russia. SPb., 1907 Compositions. T. 3.SPb., 1910.