Other leading occupations of the period were hunting, fishing, cattle raising, and apiculture, as well as numerous arts and crafts. Carpentry was especially well developed, while tannery, weaving, work in metal, and some other skills found a wide application in providing for the basic needs of the people. Certain luxurious and artistic crafts sharply declined, largely because of the poverty characteristic of the age, but they survived in some places, principally in Novgorod; with the rise of Moscow, the new capital gradually became their center.
The Question of Russian Feudalism
The question of the social structure of appanage Russia is closely tied to the issue of feudalism in Russian history. Traditionally, specialists have considered the development of Russia as significantly different from that of other European countries, one of the points of contrast being precisely the absence of feudalism in the Russian past. Only at the beginning of this century did Pavlov-Silvansky offer a brilliant and reasonably full analysis of ancient Russia supporting the conclusion that Russia too had experienced a feudal stage. Pavlov-Silvansky's thesis became an object of heated controversy in the years preceding the First World War. After the Revolution, Soviet historians proceeded to define "feudal" in extremely broad terms
and to apply this concept to the development of Russia all the way from the days of Kiev to the second half of the nineteenth century. Outside the Soviet Union, a number of scholars, while disagreeing with Pavlov-Silvansky on important points, nevertheless accepted at least a few feudal characteristics as applicable to medieval Russia.
Pavlov-Silvansky argued that three traits defined feudalism and that all three were present in appanage Russia: division of the country into independent and semi-independent landholdings, the seigniories; inclusion of these landholdings into a single system by means of a hierarchy of vassal relationships; and the conditional quality of the possession of a fief. Russia was indeed divided into numerous independent principalities and privileged boyar holdings, that is, seigniories. As in western Europe, the vassal hierarchy was linked to the land: the votchina, which was an inherited estate, corresponded to the seigniory; the pomestie, which was an estate granted on condition of service, to the benefice. Pavlov-Silvansky, it should be noted, believed that the pomestiia, characteristic of the Muscovite period of Russian history, already represented a significant category of landholding in the appanage age. The barons, counts, dukes, and kings of the West found their counterparts in the boyars, service princes, appanage princes, and grand princes of medieval Russia. Boyar service, especially military service, based on free contract, provided the foundation for the hierarchy of vassal relationships. Special ceremonies, comparable to those in the West, marked the assumption and the termination of this service. Appanage Russia knew such institutions as feudal patronage, commendation - personal or with the land - and the granting of immunity to the landlords, that is, of the right to govern, judge, and tax their peasants without interference from higher authority. Vassals of vassals appeared, so that one can also speak of sub-infeudation in Russia.
Pavlov-Silvansky's opponents, however, have presented strong arguments on their side. They have stressed the fact that throughout the appanage period Russian landlords acquired their estates through inheritance, not as compensation for service, thus retaining the right to serve whom they pleased. The estate of an appanage landlord usually remained under the jurisdiction of the ruler in whose territory it was located, no matter whom the landlord served. Furthermore, numerous institutions and even entire aspects of Western feudalism either never developed at all in Russia, or, at best, failed to grow there beyond a rudimentary stage. Such was the case, for example, with the extremely complicated Western hierarchies of vassals, with feudal military service, or with the entire phenomenon of chivalry. Even the position of the peasants and their relationship with the landlords differed markedly in the East and in the West, for serfdom became firmly established in Russia only after the appanage period.
In sum, it would seem that a precise definition of feudalism, with proper
attention to its legal characteristics, would not be applicable to Russian society. Yet, on the other hand, many developments in Russia, whether we think of the division of power and authority in the appanage period, the economy of large landed estates, or even the later pomestie system of state service, bear important resemblances to the feudal West. As already indicated, Russian social forms often appear to be rudimentary, or at least simpler and cruder, versions of Western models. Therefore, a number of scholars speak of the social organization of medieval Russia as incipient or undeveloped feudalism. That feudalism proved to be particularly weak when faced with the rising power of the grand princes and, especially, of the autocratic tsars.
Soviet historians require an additional note. Starting from the Marxist emphasis on similarities in the development of different societies and basing their periodization on economic factors, they offered an extremely broad definition of feudalism in terms of manorial economy, disregarding the usual stress on the distribution of power and legal authority. Thus, they considered Russia as feudal from the later Kievan period to the second half of the nineteenth century. The Soviet approach, it may be readily seen, did little to differentiate between the appanage period of Russian history and the preceding and succeeding epochs.
Appanage Society and Institutions
The social structure of appanage Russia represented, of course, a continuation and a further evolution of the society of the Kievan period, with no sharp break between the two. The princes occupied the highest rung on the social ladder. The already huge Kievan princely family proliferated and differentiated further during the centuries which followed the collapse of a unitary state. The appanage period naturally proved to be the heyday of princes and princelings, ranging from grand princes to rulers of tiny principalities and even to princes who had nothing to rule and were forced to find service with their relatives. It might be added that in addition to the grand princes "of Moscow and all Russia," grand princes emerged in several other regional centers, notably Tver and Riazan, where the lesser members of a particular branch of the princely family paid a certain homage to their more powerful elder. The expansion of Moscow ended this anarchy of princes, and with it the appanage period.
Next came the boyars, followed by the less aristocratic "free servants" of a prince who performed a similar function. The boyars and the free servants made contracts with their prince, and they were at liberty to leave him and seek another master. The boyars had their own retinues, sometimes quite numerous. For instance, in 1332 a boyar with a following of 1,700 persons entered the service of the grand prince of Moscow, while shortly