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offices. It was a common story, one that has parallels in Prussia, France and all
other successful early modern states.
51
Other central institutions: the ‘boyar council’ and
‘Assembly of the Land’
The tsar, the court and the prikazy were the central stable elements of Mus-
covite governance throughout the seventeenth century. This being said, there
were two other institutions, quite different in character, that we find in this
era: the so-called ‘boyar council’ (boiarskaia duma) and ‘Assembly of the Land’
(zemskii sobor). Both have been the subject of considerable controversy. Early
historians,with theireyes to the West, sawin them formal counselling and even
representative bodies, the Russian analogues to peer councils and parliaments.
Later historians called these views into question, noting that both terms were
invented by eighteenth-century Russian historians and that there is very little
in law or custom that defined the competence or operation of these bodies.
With this in mind, let us look at what is known about these institutions today.
The phrase boiarskaia duma, though a later coinage, has come to stand for
the regular high councils held at the courts of Kievan, apanage and particularly
Muscovite princes from the ninth to the early eighteenth century.
52
It appears
in no medieval or early modern Russian source. The terms ‘council’ (duma),
‘privy council’ (blizhniaia duma) and ‘tsar’s senate’ (tsarskii sinklit) appear in
Muscovite sources and refer to a royal council of some sort. In early Mus-
covy, dependent service families, not princes or independent lords, staffed the
council. Consistent with this fact, the council seems to have evolved into an
Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1980), pp. 46–75. Also see Bickford O’Brien, ‘Muscovite Prikaz
Administration of the Seventeenth Century: The Quality of Leadership’, FOG 24 (1978):
223–35.
51 On the All-European context, see Marshall T. Poe, ‘The Military Revolution, Admin-
istrative Development, and Cultural Change in Early Modern Russia’, Journal of Early
Modern History 2 (1998): 247–73, and his ‘The Consequences of the Military Revolution
in Muscovy in Comparative Perspective’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 38
(1996): 603–18.
52 The literature on the boyar elite (what we have called the duma ranks of the sovereign’s
court) is immense, while studies of the duma per se are few (largely due to a lack of
sources).Thestandardtreatments,all somewhat dated, are: V. O.Kliuchevskii, Boiarskaia
duma drevnei Rusi. Opyt istorii pravitel’stvennogo uchrezhdeniia v sviazi s istoriei obshchestva,
3rd edn (Moscow: Sinodal’naia tipografiia, 1902); S. F. Platonov, ‘Boiarskaia duma –
predshestvennitsa senata’, in his Stat’i po russkoi istorii (1883–1912), 2nd edn (St Petersburg:
M. A. Aleksandrov, 1912), pp. 447–94; V. I. Sergeevich, Drevnosti russkogo prava, vol. ii:
Veche i kniaz’. Sovetniki kniazia, 3rd edn (St Petersburg, 1908). The best modern treatment
is Bogatyrev, The Sovereign and his Counsellors.
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The central government and its institutions
instrument of the prince’s private administration (his ‘patrimony’ (votchina)).
Officers of the domain (‘chiliarchs’ (tysiatskie) ), ‘major-domos’ (dvoretskie),
‘seal-bearers’ (pechatniki), ‘treasurers’ (kaznacheia)) are identified among his
counsellors. Classes appear among the boyars in the council early on: the
‘privy boyars’ (vvedennye boiare) and ‘departmental boyars’ (putnye boiare), for
example, are distinguished from all others. These men wereprobablyagents of
the prince’s private administration, but this is not certain. The competence of
the council appears to have been extensive but is indistinguishable from that
of the prince. No formal definition of powers is found in any source. Similarly,
nothing is known of the internal operation of the council in the early period.
The princely council underwent considerable development in connection
with the rise of Muscovy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. To the old
Muscovite service families were added immigrants from defeated apanages,
the Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Tatar khanates. These new arrivals
were at first given minor positions in the grand-princely administration and
later, after theyhad been tested, weregivenhigh court rankand served as coun-
cillors. Records of this era permit the identification of most of those holding
these ranks, something impossible in the Kievan and Apanage periods.
53
The
evidence suggests that the number of men holding ‘conciliar ranks’ (dumnye
chiny) was small, hovering around fifteen members in the years of Ivan III and
Vasilii III, though it increased in size to about fifty under Ivan IV. In this period
the competence of the duma – or at least of certain members of the council –
is suggested in legislation and legal documents for the first time. The Law
Code (Sudebnik)of1497 directs that the ‘boyars and okol’nichie are to admin-
ister justice’ (suditi sud boiaram i okol’nichim), and it is known from surviving
cases that they did so.
54
In like measure, the duma seems to have had some
legislative authority, as can be seen in the often-repeated Muscovite formula
‘the sovereign orders and the boyars affirm’ (gosudar’ ukazal i boiare prigov-
orili). Despite these hints, the exact boundaries of the duma’s independent
competence, if any, remained unregulated.
53 On the membership of the duma (or at least the identity of those holding duma ranks)
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see: S. B. Veselovskii, Issledovaniia po istorii klassa
sluzhilykh zemlevladel’tsev (Moscow: Nauka, 1969); A. A. Zimin, Formirovanie boiarskoi
aristokratii v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XV–pervoi treti XVI v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1988); Koll-
mann, Kinship and Politics;A.P.Pavlov,Gosudarev dvor i politicheskaia bor’ba pri Borise
Godunove (Moscow: Nauka, 1992); M. E. Bychkova, Sostav klassa feodalov Rossii v XVI v.
(Moscow: Nauka, 1986).
54 Sudebniki XV–XVI vekov, ed. B. D. Grekov (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1952), p. 19. Also see Ann
M. Kleimola, Justice in Medieval Russia: Muscovite Judgment Charters (pravye gramoty) of the
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Philadelphia : American Philosophical Society, vol. 65,
1975).
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Towards the end of the sixteenth century foreigners provided some sketchy
evidence of the operation of the council.
55
They report seeing the council
arrayed during ambassadorial audiences. However, it is evident that on such
occasions the members played highly scripted roles that probably did not
reflect the proceeding of ‘private’ council meetings. According to the English
ambassador Giles Fletcher, central and provincial administrators, as well as
private suitors, appeared before the duma on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fri-
days at seven in the morning.
56
The foreigners generally dismissed the duma
as an ineffectual body, but this is not entirely accurate.
57
The council was very
active during the Time of Troubles and succeeded in imposing an oath on Tsar
Vasilii Shuiskii in 1606. According to Kotoshikhin, a similar oath was taken by
Michael Romanov in 1613, but this is uncorroborated.
58
In the seventeenth century, the competence of the council, as well as its
exact composition and mode of operation, remained undefined – there was
no constitution or even coherent (and inscribed) custom detailing who was
(or should be) on it, or what it was to do (other than deliberate with the tsar).
Kotoshikhin thoroughly describes general congresses of council members in
which affairs were discussed and legislation was considered, affirmed and
sent to the chancelleries for promulgation.
59
He tells us that ‘although [Tsar
Mikhail Fedorovich] used the title “autocrat”, [he] could do nothing without
the boyars’ council’.
60
His son, in contrast, did quite a bit without their council.
He favoured smaller groups of familiars (the blizhnie liudi) over the mass of
courtiers who were coming to occupy the duma ranks.
61
By the second half
of the century, the number of men who held these ranks was in all probability
too large for all of them to serve as councillors, and there is no evidence
that they did so. The duma ranks, as we have said, had turned into a source of
patronage for weakmonarchs and thus the councillors – at least most of them –
were deprived of their council.
The history of the zemskii sobor is just as controversial and murky.
62
The
phrase itself was coined by the radical Slavophile Konstantin Aksakov around
55 Poe, ‘A People Born to Slavery’,pp.66–7, 103–4.
56 Giles Fletcher, Of the Russe Commonwealth, ed. John V. A. Fine and Richard Pipes (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 34–6.
57 Poe, ‘A People Born to Slavery’,pp.63–6, 101–3, 203.
58 Koto
ˇ
sixin, O Rossii, fos. 184–185v.
59 Ibid., fos. 35v–36.
60 Ibid., fos. 185v–186.
61 Ibid., fos. 36–36v.
62 On the historiography of the zemskii sobor, see L. V. Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory russkogo
gosudarstva v XVI–XVII vv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1978), pp. 5–47, and Peter B. Brown, ‘The
Zemskii Sobor in Recent Soviet Historiography’, RH 10 (1983): 77–90.
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The central government and its institutions
1850.
63
It is found in no Muscovite source. Nineteenth-century Russian his-
torians of a liberal bent tried their best to make out of the thin evidence a
‘proto-parliamentary’ body that – but for the unbridled power of self-seeking
tsars and boyars – might have led Russia to enlightened liberal democracy.
More sober historians, focusing on the evidence rather than projecting their
fantasies on bygone eras, contradicted this rosy interpretation. The battle
continues.
What can be said with confidence is this.
64
Some sort of popular assembly
was first called by Ivan IV and, thereafter, occasionally by his successors. The
regime ofMichael Romanov – weakandattempting to establish its legitimacy–
seemed particularly fond of them (he was ‘elected’ by one), though his father
was not. Though the assemblies (usually called sobory) could be assigned very
specifictasks– forexample,ratificationofthe Ulozhenie of1649 (called‘Sobornoe’
because it was affirmed by a sobor) – they were generally organised by the
government to take stock of opinion on affairs domestic and international.
The composition of the assemblies was never set, though they appear to
have had twosalient characteristics– theywereelite (almost entirelycomposed
of high-born military servitors) and they were ad hoc (the government often
simply gathered servitors and clerics already in Moscow). Some were large –
several hundred delegates; others were small – several dozen delegates. The
assemblies were not regularly conferred according to any schedule. Rather,
they seem to have been called in moments of doubt or crisis. Delegates almost
always supported the government; there was no forceful ‘debate’ as far as we
know. Their exact competence – like the royal council – was never defined in
law or custom, though they were consulted on a wide range of affairs. As we
can see in Figure 19.6, some acclaimed tsars, others declared war, while others
still adopted legislation.
65
Delegates were called as a matter of service obligation (and sometimes
viewed said service as onerous), not as a matter of ‘right’. Neither in years
63 K. S. Aksakov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii K. S. Aksakova, 3 vols. (Moscow: P. Bakhmetev,
1861–80), vol. i,p.11.
64 The following is drawn from: Ellerd Hulbert, ‘Sixteenth-Century Russian Assemblies of
the Land: Their Composition, Organization, and Competence’, unpublished Ph.D. dis-
sertation, University of Chicago, 1970; Hans-JoachimTorke, Die staatsbedingte Gesellschaft
im moskauer Reich: Zar und Zemlja in der altrussischen Herrschaftsverfassung 1613–1689
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974); Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory; Ira L. Campbell, ‘The Composition,
Character and Competence of the Assembly of the Land in Seventeenth-Century Russia’,
unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1984, and Donald Ostrowski, ‘The
Assembly of the Land as a Representative Institution’, in J. Kotilaine and M. Poe (eds.),
Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Russia (London:
RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), pp. 117–42.
65 Ostrowski, ‘The Assembly of the Land’, pp. 135–6.
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Year Primary activity
1613 Chose Michael as tsar
1614 Advised on stopping movements of Zarutskii and the cossacks
1616 Discussed conditions of peace with Sweden and a monetary levy
1617 Advised on a monetary levy
1619 Advised on raising of Filaret to the patriarchal throne
1621 Advised on war with Poland
1622 Advised on war with Poland
1632 Advised on the collection of money for the Polish campaign
1634 Advised on the collection of money and on the Polish campaign
1637 Advised on an invasion of the Crimean Khan Sefat Girey and the
collection of money
1639 Advised on response to Crimean treatment of two Muscovite envoys
1642 Recommended support of Don cossacks in relation to the taking of
Azov
1645 Chose Alexis as tsar
1648 Advised the composition of a new law code
1648–9 Approved the new law code
1650 Advised on the movement of people into Pskov
1651 Advised on Russo-Polish relations and Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi
1653 Advised on war with Poland and support of Zaporozhian cossacks
1681–2 Advised on military, financial and land reforms
1682 Chose Peter as tsar (27 April); chose Peter and Ivan as co-tsars (May)
1683–4 Advised on peace with Poland
Figure 19.6. Seventeenth-century ‘Assemblies of the Land’ and their activities
without assemblies, nor in the year they were extinguished finally, was there
any protest or even mention of them in Muscovite sources. Foreigners, who
were often careful observers of Russian politics, very rarely note them and
when they do attribute little importance to them.
66
Concluding remarks
In the end, the seventeenth-century Muscovite state proved to be quite robust.
Even after it was almost totally taken apart in the maelstrom of the Time of
Troubles, the triptych tsar–court–prikazy re-emerged rapidly and in full form.
The ruling class wasted no time or effort on costly government experimenta-
tion in 1613. It simply picked itself up and got downto business. And its business
was rule, plain and simple. For the tsar, his court and the men of offices, the
66 Poe, ‘A People Born to Slavery’,pp.66–7.
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The central government and its institutions
entirepoint of the state was to rule over others and live offthem. Never was this
point seriously questioned. One must admire the single-minded purpose this
sort of concentration bespeaks. While other early modern states (whatever
their form) might pursue any number of goals – fostering science, patronising
the arts, educating the public, spreading the Good Word – the Muscovite elite
focused nearly all its energy in ruling others or conquering others so that they
might rule them. Domination was their raison d’
ˆ
etre.
As the century closed, this focus was, for good or ill, lost. Peter and his
cohort were enamoured of a different vision of the state and its goals, one that
was as new to Russia as it was profoundly alien to the Muscovite spirit. Aleksei
Mikhailovich could no more have said he was the ‘first servant of the state’
than he could have sworn off the Orthodox faith. He could not serve the state
because he owned the state. It was his instrument to do with as his master –
God in Heaven – commanded. Neither could his servitors have said they were
serving anything like the ‘common good’. Such a thing was impossible, for
they were honourable men and truly honourable men served only God and
his representative, the tsar. As for the rest – all those who were neither tsars
nor servants of tsars – they just did not matter.
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20
Local government and administration
brian davies
There were two important developments affecting local government in the
period 1613–89. The first was the spread of the town governor system of local
administration. In the sixteenth century annually appointed town comman-
dants (godovye voevody) with some civil as well as military authority had been
found in some districts on the southern and western frontier. But by the 1620s
most districts were under commandants turned town governors (gorodovye
voevody), with staffs of clerks and constables, and exercising authority over the
guba and zemskii elders, fortifications stewards, siege captains and other local
officials. Responsibility for most aspects of defence, taxation, policing, civil
and criminal justice, the remuneration of servicemen and the regulation of
pomest’e landholding at the district level was now concentrated in the town
governors’ offices. The second development was the increasing reliance of
town governor administration on codified law, written instructions and regu-
lar reporting and account-keeping. This enhanced central chancellery control
over local administration and partly compensated for the avocational nature
of town governor service.
The spread of town governor administration
The universalisation of gorodovyi voevoda administration had been a response
to the breakdown of the political order in the Time of Troubles. On the
one hand, the spread of town governor administration across the southern
frontier in the late sixteenth century had helped to fuel the Troubles: mass
discontent with the heavy burdens of defence duty and agricultural corv
´
ee on
the ‘Sovereign’s tithe ploughlands’ had led to the overthrow of several south-
ern frontier town governors and placed much of the south in the hands of
the First False Dmitrii and successor insurgents. On the other hand, after the
disintegration of Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii’s regime in 1608 the tasks of defeating the
rebels and foreign invaders and re-establishing strong central authority fell by
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Local government and administration
default to other town governors, notably P. P. Liapunov of Riazan’ and D. M.
Pozharskii of Zaraisk, who had the military experience and political connec-
tions to lead the governors and lesser officials of the towns of the north-east
into forming an army of national liberation and a provisional government. In
coalition with certain boyars and cossack leaders Pozharskii’s army drove the
Poles from Moscow (1612) and restored the Russian monarchy under the new
Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich(1613).Itwasnatural that the newRomanov monarchy
should see its continued survival in the utmost centralisation and militarisa-
tion of provincial government – the logical agents of which were the town
governors, appointed by and accountable to the central chancelleries, selected
from the court nobility, and given broad authority over district military, fiscal,
judicial and police affairs. Upon Tsar Michael’s accession his government was
supposedly deluged with collective petitions from the provinces, ‘from many
towns, from the dvoriane and deti boiarskie and various servicemen and inhab-
itants’, begging that town governors be placed in charge of their districts,
for ‘without town governors their towns would not exist’.
1
Whether these
petitions really represented local will or its ventriloquism by the central gov-
ernment cannot be determined, but three days later the central government
authorised the general restoration and expansion of town governor rule, to all
districts in need of town governors. Whereas town governor administration
had been confined mostly to the western and southern frontiers before the
Troubles, it came to prevail throughout the centre and north as well by the
1620s. By 1633 there were 190 governors’ offices, and 299 by 1682.
2
After 1613 most of the local administrative organs common before the Trou-
bles were liquidated or were absorbed into town governor administration.
The title of vicegerent (namestnik) was still used at court as a ceremonial
honorific, but vicegerents no longer governed in the provinces. The fortifica-
tions and siege stewards declined in number and became subordinate officials
(prikaznye liudi) of the town governors’ offices. Customs and tavern adminis-
tration remained in the hands of elected community representatives or tax-
farmers, but they came under the supervision of the town governors, who
supervised their operations and gave them quarterly or annual accountings.
District-level and canton-level elected zemskii offices for tax collection and jus-
tice continued to exist in the north, but most of them were subordinated to the
town governors, so that zemskii officials no longer dealt with the chancelleries
1 P. Ivanov, Opisanie gosudarstvennogo razriadnogo arkhiva (Moscow: Tipografiia S. Silivan-
skogo, 1842), pp. 156, 209.
2 N. F. Demidova, Sluzhilaia biurokratiia v Rossii XVII v. i ee rol’ v formirovanii absoliutizma
(Moscow: Nauka, 1987), p. 31.
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directly but only through their local governor; the more important kinds of
court cases traditionally heard in the district-level zemskii court were now held
in the governor’s court, which also became a court of second instance over
those matters still heard in zemskii courts; and the tax-collection activities of
zemskii officials were subject to especially tight control from the governor’s
office, for the governor had the authority to beat zemskii officials under righter
(pravezh), that is, in the stocks, for any tax arrears or irregularities and the
tendency was towards requiring zemskii collections to be turned in to the
governor’s office.
For some time the guba constabulary offices for policing and investigating
felonies were permitted greater autonomy, for Moscow saw some advantage
in keeping the defence of the community against banditry and violent crime in
the hands of elected community representatives – especially as those elected
as chief constables were supposed to be the communities’ ‘best men’, ideally
prosperous dvoriane or deti boiarskie, reporting their investigations directly to
the Robbery Chancellery (Razboinyi prikaz) at Moscow for pronouncement
of verdict. Besides reducing the need to send down special inquisitors from
Moscow, this would have the advantage of shifting blame for policing failures
from state officials to communityrepresentatives. Moscow’s preference for the
continued independence of the guba system was indicated in the 1649 Ulozhenie
and 1669 New Decree Statutes as well as in a 1627 decree that announced that
guba chief constables should be elected in all towns. But this came up against
fiscal and manpower concerns: maintaining guba offices cost the community
additional taxes, and in wartime prosperous dvoriane and deti boiarskie were
needed in the army, not at home performing constabulary duties which could
be assumed by the town governors or, in worst cases, by inquisitors from the
Robbery Chancellery. The guba system was therefore not expanded; the town
governors increasingly sought to subordinate the guba officials de facto; and
in 1679 all guba offices were closed.
3
Enhanced control through improved
record-keeping
Town governor administration operated under closer central chancellery con-
trol than had vicegerent administration in the previous century because the
town governors’ offices were held to higher expectations of written reporting
3 V. N. Glaz’ev, Vlast’ i obshchestvo na iuge Rossii XVII v.: Protivodeistvie ugolovnoi prestupnosti
(Voronezh: Voronezhskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2001), p. 141.
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Local government and administration
and compliance with written instructions. The town governors were guided in
their general or long-term responsibilities by written working orders (nakazy),
and in more particular and non-routine matters by decree rescripts from the
chancelleries; they were expected to submit frequent reports, even if all they
had to relate was their progress in implementing relatively routine directives;
and they had to maintain an increasingly wide range of rolls, inventories, land
allotment and surveying books, court hearing inquest transcripts and account
books for various indirect and direct revenues. Inventories of the archives of
governors’officesgenerallyshowasignificant increaseintherateofrecordpro-
duction, especially from mid-century. This reflected the increasing demands
upon the governors’ offices by the central chancelleries, but also the demands
upon them from the community in terms of litigation and petitioning of needs
and grievances.
4
Because the primary purpose of the governor’s office was to gather and
systematise information to facilitate executive decision-making in the central
chancelleries and duma, the clerical staffing of the governor’s offices was a cru-
cial concern. It was the governor’s clerks (pod’iachie) who produced, routed
and stored all this information and kept order in the town archive and treasury.
The clerks also performed important tasks in the field – supervising corv
´
ee,
conducting obysk polling at inquests, conveying cash to and from Moscow,
or surveying property boundaries. In some districts the governor’s clerical
staff was too small, too inexperienced or too poorly remunerated to maintain
the flow of information required by the chancelleries. The smaller governors’
offices might have only one or two clerks in permanent service and so be
forced to turn over some tasks to public notaries or even press passing trav-
ellers into temporary clerical service. In the 1640s the clericate of the provincial
governors’ offices officially numbered no more than 775, slightly fewer than
the number of clerks staffing the central chancelleries.
5
However, the total
clerical manpower at work in provincial administration may have been sig-
nificantly larger because this total does not include the clerks serving in the
customs, liquor excise, guba and zemskii offices. Furthermore, the small cler-
ical staffs of the smaller governorships could be compensated for by making
these governorships satellites of the larger offices found in the bigger towns of
the region or the capitals of regional military administrations (razriady).The
4 On record-keeping in the governors’ offices, see: N. N. Ogloblin, ‘Provintsial’nye arkhivy
v XVII veke’, Vestnik arkheologii i istorii izdavaemyi Arkheologicheskim institutom 6 (1886):
74–206; D. Ia. Samokvasov, Russkie arkhivy i tsarskii kontrol’ prikaznoi sluzhby v XVII veke
(Moscow, 1902); N. N. Ogloblin, ‘Obozrenie stolbtsov i knig Sibirskogo prikaza’, 4 parts,
ChOIDR 2 (1895): i–viii and 1–422; 1 (1898): 1–162; 3 (1900): i–iv and 1–394; 1 (1902): 1–288.
5 Demidova, Sluzhilaia biurokratiia,p.37.
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