THE GENESIS OF THE PATRIMONIAL STATE IN RUSSIA
Russians, and eliminated the Lithuanian-Polish state as a potential focus of Russian national aspirations.
Thus neither Novgorod nor Lithuania-Poland, notwithstanding their wealth and high level of civilization, were in a position to reunify the Eastern Slavs: the one because of its narrow, essentially commercial outlook, the other because of the divisive religious question. The task devolved by default on the poorest and most backward area of Russia, the so-called 'lowland' located in the north-east, at the confluence of the Oka and Volga.
When the Kievan state had stood at its zenith, the Volga-Oka region was a frontier area of minor importance. Its population then was still predominantly Finnish; to this day nearly all the rivers and lakes here bear Finnic names. Its rise began early in the twelfth century, when the main city of the region, Rostov the Great, became the hereditary property of the cadet branch of the family of Kiev's Great Prince, Vladimir Monomakh. Monomakh's younger son, Prince Iurii Dolgorukii (c. 1090-1157) the first independent ruler of Rostov, turned out to be a very enterprising colonizer. He built numerous cities, villages, churches and monasteries, and by generous offers of land and exemptions from taxes lured to his domain settlers from other principalities. This policy was continued by his son, Andrei Bogoliubskii (c. 1110-74). Careful analysis of the historical geography of the Rostov area carried out by M.K.Liubavskii revealed that already by the end of the twelfth century this was the most densely populated region in all Russia.1 Colonists streamed here from all directions - Novgorod, the western territories and the steppe - attracted by exemptions from taxes, security from nomad harassment and the relatively good quality of the soil. (The Volga-Oka region straddles a belt of marginal black earth with a 0-5 to 2-0 per cent humus content.) The colonists behaved here exactly as they had done several centuries earlier on entering Russia, first building stockades and then scattering around them in small settlements composed of one or two households. The Slavs inundated the indigenous Finns, ultimately assimilating them by intermarriage. The mixture of the two nationalities resulted in a new racial type, the Great Russian, in which, from the infusion of Finno-Ugric blood, certain oriental characteristics (e.g. high cheekbones and small eyes), absent among other Slavs, made their appearance.
The principality of Rostov became in time the cradle of a new Russian state, the Muscovite. Russian historiography traditionally has taken it for granted that the Muscovite state stands in linear succession to the Kievan, and that the sovereignty once exercised by the Great Princes of Kiev passed intact from their hands into those of Muscovite rulers.
38
Western scholars, too, for the major part accept the Kiev-Moscow line of succession. The issue, however, is by no means self-evident. Kliuchev-skii was the first to stress the fundamental differences between the northeastern principalities and the Kievan state. Subsequently, Miliukov showed that the traditional scheme had its origin in the writings of Muscovite publicists of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries who wished to demonstrate Moscow's claim to all Russia, particularly to the territories then under Lithuanian suzereignty; from them it was uncritically adopted by historians of the imperial period.2 The Ukrainian scholar, Michael Hrushevsky, taking Kliuchevskii's and Miliukov's critique as his starting-point, went a step further, arguing that the legitimate successors to Kiev are to be found in the western principalities, Galich and Volhynia, subsequently taken over by Lithuania, for it was here that Kievan traditions and institutions had been best preserved. Moscow, in his view, was a new political formation.3
Without attempting to resolve the dispute between historians as to which nationality, Great Russian or Ukrainian, has the better claim to Kievan heritage, one cannot ignore an important issue raised by the critics of the Kiev-Moscow succession line. The Muscovite state did in fact introduce basic political innovations which gave it a constitution very different from Kiev's. The root of many of these innovations can be traced to the way the Muscovite state was formed. In Kievan Rus' and in all but its north-eastern successor states, the population antedated the princes; settlement came first and political authority followed. The north-east, by contrast, had been largely colonized on the initiative and under the auspices of the princes; here authority preceded settlement. As a result, the north-eastern princes enjoyed a degree of power and prestige which their counterparts in Novgorod and Lithuania could never aspire to. The land, they believed and claimed, belonged to them: the cities, forests, arable, meadows and waterways were their property because it was they who had caused them to be built, cleared or exploited. By an extension of this thought, the people living on this land were either their slaves or their tenants; in either event, they had no claim to the land and no inherent personal 'rights'. A kind of proprietary attitude thus surfaced on the north-eastern frontier. Penetrating all the institutions of political authority it gave them a character fundamentally different from that found in any other part of Russia, or, for that matter, Europe at large.
The term for property in medieval Russia was votchina (plural, votchiny). It is frequently met with in medieval chronicles, testaments and treaties between princes. Its root, ot, is the same as that of the Russian word for father (otets). Votchina is indeed the exact equivalent of the Latin patrimonium and, like it, denotes goods and powers inherited from one's
THE GENESIS OF THE PATRIMONIAL STATE IN RUSSIA
father. At a time when there were no firm legal definitions of property or courts to enforce one's claim to it, acquisition by inheritance was regarded if not as the only then certainly as the best proof of ownership. 'This thing my father left me' meant 'this is incontrovertibly mine'. The language was readily understood in a society in which the patriarchal order was still very much alive, especially among the lower classes. No distinction was drawn between the various forms of property; an estate was votchina, so were slaves, and valuables, and fishing or mining rights and even one's very ancestry or pedigree. But so too, more significantly, was political authority which was treated as if it were a commodity. This is not in the least surprising if one considers that political authority in early Russia was essentially the right to levy tribute exercised by a body of foreign conquerors, that is, that it was an economic prerogative and little else. Quite naturally, therefore, the testaments of the northeastern princes, many of which have survived, read like ordinary business inventories in which cities and volosti are indiscriminately lumped with valuables, orchards, mills, apiaries or herds of horses. Ivan 1 of Moscow in his last will referred to the principality as his votchina, and as such felt free to bequeath it to his sons. Ivan's grandson, Dmitry Donskoi, in his will (1389) defined as votchina not only the principality of Moscow but also the title of Great Prince. The testaments of the Russian princes fully conformed in their formal, legal aspect to ordinary civil documents, even to the extent of being witnessed by third parties.