The tsar did not have complete freedom in the choice of his chief aides and subordinates. He was bound by the peculiar aristocratic custom of mestnichestvo. This was a complicated hierarchy of precedence among aristocratic Muscovite families. They were ranked in a definite genealogical order according to their relative seniority, and, in the course of filling the highest posts in his army and administration, the tsar had to consider not so much the candidate's personal merits as his genealogical seniority as defined by earlier precedents. Mestnichestvo, which hampered the selection of appropriate candidates for high offices, caused endless quarrels among the boyar families and was finally abolished in 1682.
Throughout the 17th century, the social and political importance of the boyars declined. Early in the 18th century, Tsar Peter I the Great abolished the rank and title of boyar and made state service the exclusive means of attaining a high position in the bureaucratic hierarchy.
druzhina
▪ Russian history
in early Rus, a prince's retinue, which helped him to administer his principality and constituted the area's military force. The first druzhinniki (members of a druzhina) in Rus were the Norse Varangians, whose princes established control there in the 9th century. Soon members of the local Slavic aristocracy as well as adventurers of a variety of other nationalities became druzhinniki.
The druzhina was composed of two groups: the senior members (who became known as boyars (boyar)) and the junior members. The boyars were the prince's closest advisers; they also performed higher state functions. The junior members constituted the prince's personal bodyguard and were common soldiers. All the members were dependent upon their prince for financial support, but each member served the prince freely and had the right to leave him and join the druzhina of another prince. As a result, a prince was inclined to seek the goodwill of his druzhina; he paid the druzhinniki wages, shared his war booty and taxes with them, and eventually rewarded the boyars with landed estates, complete with rights to tax and administer justice to the local population.
By the middle of the 12th century, the characteristics of the two groups had begun to change. The boyars, having acquired their own patrimonial estates and retinues, became less dependent on the princes and began to form a new landed aristocratic class. The junior members became a prince's immediate servitors and collectively assumed the name dvoriane (courtiers). During the period of Mongol rule (after 1240), the term druzhina fell out of use. See also boyar.
Moscow, Grand Principality of
▪ medieval principality, Russia
also called Muscovy, Russian Moskovskoye Velikoye Knazhestvo,
medieval principality that, under the leadership of a branch of the Rurik dynasty, was transformed from a small settlement in the Rostov-Suzdal principality into the dominant political unit in northeastern Russia.
Muscovy became a distinct principality during the second half of the 13th century under the rule of Daniel, the youngest son of the Rurik prince Alexander Nevsky. Located in the midst of forests and at the intersection of important trade routes, it was well protected from invasion and well situated for lucrative commerce. In 1326 it became the permanent residence of the Russian metropolitan of the Orthodox church. Muscovy attracted many inhabitants, and its princes collected large revenues in customs and taxes. After a short period of rivalry with the princes of Tver during the reign of Prince Daniel's son Yury (d. 1326), the princes of Muscovy received the title of grand prince of Vladimir from their Tatar overlords (1328). That title enabled them to collect the Russian tribute for the Tatar khan and, thereby, to strengthen the financial and political position of their domain.
The Muscovite princes also pursued a policy of “gathering the Russian lands.” Yury extended his principality to include almost the entire Moscow basin; and Ivan I (Ivan Kalita, reigned 1328–40), followed by his sons Semyon (reigned 1341–53) and Ivan II (reigned 1353–59), purchased more territory.
Dmitry Donskoy (Dmitry (II) Donskoy) (reigned as prince of Moscow from 1359, grand prince of Vladimir 1362–89) increased his holdings by conquest; he also won a symbolically important victory over the Tatars (Battle of Kulikovo, 1380). Dmitry's successors Vasily I (reigned 1389–1425) and Vasily II (reigned 1425–62) continued to enlarge and strengthen Moscow despite a bitter civil war during the latter's reign.
Ivan III (reigned 1462–1505) completed the unification of the Great Russian lands, incorporating Ryazan, Yaroslavl (1463), Rostov (northwest of Vladimir and southeast of Yaroslavl; 1474), Tver (1485), and Novgorod (1478) into the Muscovite principality. By the end of Ivan's reign, the prince of Moscow was, in fact, the ruler of Russia proper. See also Rurik Dynasty.
Tatar
▪ people
also spelled Tartar,
any member of several Turkic-speaking peoples that collectively numbered more than 5 million in the late 20th century and lived mainly in west-central Russia along the central course of the Volga River and its tributary, the Kama, and thence east to the Ural Mountains. The Tatars are also settled in Kazakhstan and, to a lesser extent, in western Siberia.
The name Tatar first appeared among nomadic tribes living in northeastern Mongolia and the area around Lake Baikal from the 5th century AD. Unlike the Mongols, these peoples spoke a Turkic language, and they may have been related to the Cuman or Kipchak peoples. After various groups of these Turkic nomads became part of the armies of the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan in the early 13th century, a fusion of Mongol and Turkic elements took place, and the Mongol invaders of Russia and Hungary became known to Europeans as Tatars (or Tartars).
After Genghis Khan's empire broke up, the Tatars became especially identified with the western part of the Mongol domain, which included most of European Russia and was called the Golden Horde. These Tatars were converted to Sunnite Islām in the 14th century. Owing to internal divisions and various foreign pressures, the Golden Horde disintegrated late in the 14th century into the independent Tatar khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan on the Volga River, Sibir in western Siberia, and the Crimea. Russia conquered the first three of these khanates in the 16th century, but the Crimean khanate became a vassal state of the Ottoman Turks until it was annexed to Russia by Catherine the Great in 1783.
In their khanates the Tatars developed a complex social organization, and their nobility preserved its civil and military leadership into Russian times; distinct classes of commoners were merchants and tillers of the soil. At the head of government stood the khan of the foremost Tatar state (the Kazan khanate), part of whose family joined the Russian nobility by direct agreement in the 16th century. This stratification within Tatar society continued until the Russian Revolution of 1917.
During the 9th to 15th centuries, the Tatar economy became based on mixed farming and herding, which still continues. The Tatars also developed a tradition of craftsmanship in wood, ceramics, leather, cloth, and metal and have long been well known as traders. During the 18th and 19th centuries, they earned a favoured position within the expanding Russian Empire as commercial and political agents, teachers, and administrators of newly won Central Asian territories.