CHAPTER II
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE
I.—THE CENTRAL POWER. II.—PROVINCIAL ORGANIZATION. III.—THE MIÉSTNITCHESTVO. IV.—THE COMMUNE. V.—JUDICIAL ORGANIZATION AND LEGISLATION. VI.—THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM. VII.—THE FINANCES.
I.—The Central Power.
The machine was not built and set in motion in a day. When Ivan the Terrible came to the throne it already boasted a very complicated mechanism and a multiplicity of machinery—the result, it may be, of the ancient organization, domestic in some sort, adapted to the modest existence of the appanaged Princes, as admitted by Monsieur Klioutchevski ('The Council of the Boyards in Ancient Russia,' 1883, 2ndedition, p. 19, etc.), or possibly, as Monsieur Serguiéiévitch asserts, distinct political organs. I cannot here enter into this discussion. There were offices, or rather departments, the numbers of which were perpetually on the increase, and the duties of which were divided in most irregular fashion. This was because their creation and activity corresponded with the progress of conquest and colonization. A certain department—one of the older ones—would have to deal with affairs in a great many provinces. Such was the War Office (razriadnyi prikaz). Another, again, was responsible for the whole of the business of one recently-acquired province. This was the case of the Kazan office, after the capture of that town (Kasanskiï dvorets) the Office of Foreign Affairs (possolskiï prikaz), naturally served the whole Empire. The powers of certain provincial bureaus—those of Moscow, Vladimir, Dmitriév, and Riazan—were restricted to certain fields within the limits of their provinces, and thus combined the distinguishing features of the institutions belonging to the two first categories.
Here, as elsewhere, the disorder of battle was apparent.
To work and control this varied machinery a central spring was needed. Where was it? In the Sovereign's hand? Not so, apparently. At the head of the departments was the Council of Boïars (Boïarskaïa) which bore a pretty close analogy to the 'Council' of the first Capet Kings, or to the curia regia of the Norman Kings of England. Here, as there, it was the product of history, springing from the national association organized in the fifteenth century on the banks of the Oka and the Upper Volga, and consequent on the military formation then adopted. Head of this band, the Prince of Moscow, like
