This clan-based system of court politics endured by the constant pursuit of equilibrium: when political crises were resolved, for example, winners and losers were both rewarded. In the years around Ivan IVs marriage in 1547, after two decades of struggle, the families of the losing faction (Shuiskie, Mstislavskie) were rewarded along with the victorious Bel'skie and Romanovs with status (honorific roles at Ivan's wedding) and benefits (new families were given boyar status, boyar and similar ranks were distributed to more members ofestablished clans). The number of hereditary boyar clans almost doubled at the end of the minority (from 24 in 1533 to 46 in 1555), and the number of men in boyar or okol'nichii rank accordingly expanded, from about 15 to 55, in pursuit of reconciliation and equilibrium. When he de facto came to power in 1584 and became tsar in 1598, Boris Godunov reconciled with his rivals by expanding the number offamilies and men in high rank; the first Romanov ruler Mikhail Fedorovich did the same in 1613.
Generous distribution of benefits (made possible by imperial expansion) helped to appease the elite in the sixteenth century as state building deprived some great families of power. One strategy of centralization involved reeling back immunities that had been granted to private landholders (lay and clerical) to supplant inadequate bureaucracy and build networks of local support. Such grants exempted a landlord's lands and people from the ruler's taxation, judiciary, or administration. At mid-sixteenth century the state centralized by reclaiming fiscal and judicial immunities as it developed a network of governorships. Until about that time the state also granted territorial appanages with limited sovereign rights to a variety of prestigious families: the brothers of the rulers, princely emigres of Gedyminide heritage from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Patrikeev, Bel'skii, Golitsyn, Mstislavskii) and sovereign East Slavic princes from lands that Moscow had conquered (Shuiskii, Rostovskii). Similarly, in the mid-fifteenth century Moscow created a virtually autonomous appanage for Tatar princes at the Kasimov "khanate," ruled by a branch of the Chinggisid Kazan ruling family. It endured until the 1680s, while a similar enclave in the town of Romanov for some Nogai Tatars lasted until the 1620s. These two Tatar appanages were exceptions where, as discussed in Chapter 6, most appanages were eliminated over the sixteenth century and none was awarded in the seventeenth century to men in the ruling family (fortuitously there were few surviving males). Although the state continued to distribute immunities to political favorites and church institutions well into the seventeenth century, these were deviations from a general trend away from subdivided rule.
Affinitive politics worked well for the small, face-to-face warrior band of the fifteenth century, and they shaped the characteristic institutions of the state in the sixteenth century. The system showed signs of strain, however, as imperial expansion and military modernization demanded a larger and more diversified administration. By the early seventeenth century the highest elite had four "conciliar" ranks, the term derived from the verb dumat'(to consult). The so-called "dumnye" ranks were boyar, okol'nichii, conciliar gentryman (dumnyi dvorianin) and conciliar or state secretary (dumnyi d'iak). The last, representing the most expert chancery heads, were rare bureaucrats in an elite defined by military status. Over the entire seventeenth century there were about fifty state secretaries, and a few (thirteen over the century) even rose to conciliar gentryman, okol'nichii, or boyar status once reserved for the military clans.
That the most talented scribes broke into elite status demonstrates gradual transformation in the elite. As the empire grew and the state modernized to control it and mobilize its resources, the bureaucracy demanded more personnel. As skilled bureaucrats began to impinge on the preserves ofmilitary elite status, military men also invaded their sphere, becoming what Robert Crummey has called "noble officials," literate men who took leadership and judicial positions in central chanceries and important provincial governorships. Some amassed multiple positions for power and income: in the 1620s, for example, Prince I. B. Cherkasskii simultaneously headed the Land Chancery, the Treasury, the Chanceries for Musketeers and New Model army, and the Apothecary. Some developed expertise, such as Prince V. V. Golitsyn in foreign policy and A. S. Matveev and A. L. Ordin Nashchokin in economic policy. Over the course of the seventeenth century at least a fifth of men in the conciliar ranks combined military with civil service, usually adding the latter to the end of a long military career. Half of them spent their careers only in military roles, and a tenth of the boyar elite did nothing but chancery service. In all, as Crummey shows, 60 percent of all boyars served in chanceries at some point. Chancery service was attractive because its location in Moscow kept men in close contact with family factions and networks, because chancery service offered bribes and gifts, and because it could involve real power. This did not mean that the military elite transformed itself into a civil service. Lines of status and economic privileges still separated these spheres. These military men in high chancery leadership continued to lack training in bureaucratic techniques, contributing instead "a tradition of leadership."
Starting in the reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich (1645-76), and particularly as a response to military reform and bureaucratization sparked by the Thirteen Years War (1654-67), the number of men in conciliar rank expanded quickly, particularly at the "conciliar gentryman" level, a door through which new families could join the elite. In Aleksei Mikhailovich's reign, the number of men in the four conciliar ranks rose from about 45 to about 70. In the last quarter of the century political pressures subverted gradual expansion: tsarist succession was hotly contested from 1676 through the 1680s, resulting in weak rulers who distributed ranks to curry favor. The number of men in conciliar ranks after 1676 ballooned to a high of about 160 in the early 1690s, devaluing the status and utility of these ranks. Many of the recipients were mere "courtiers," in Crummey's term. In response, the rank of boyar became more honorific than policy making, the process of consulting and advising became unwieldy, and reforms in the 1680s were suggested (but never implemented) to streamline the elite.
Parallel to such innovation, old traditions at the center of power endured. Aleksei Mikhailovich's inner circle, for example, was shaped around his brother-in-law Boris Ivanovich Morozov, who had been his tutor and who had married a sister of the tsar's Miloslavskii wife. With Aleksei Mikhailovich's second marriage to Nataliia Naryshkina, her clan and its broader clientage came into prominence, including A. S. Matveev, who had been Natalia's guardian. The marriages of subsequent contenders for the throne—Fedor, Ioann, and Peter Alekseevichi—were similarly orchestrated to build their respective factions, as discussed in Chapter 6.