Boyars - Development
The first princes were those who led the army during military operations and governed the lands under their control during periods of truce. In this era, any power was based primarily on force, without which it was impossible to repel external aggression, destroy robbers, or curb the discontent of the subject tribes. The strength of the prince was visibly expressed in the presence of a large combat-ready army of professional warriors personally loyal to the prince.
The boyars-squads in Ancient Rus served as advisers to the prince, to whose opinions he listened, and as comrades-in-arms, on whose strength he could rely when implementing this or that decision. However, the squad in the broad sense cannot be considered as a synonym for the princely council. Researchers agree that only warriors who were part of the senior squad and called boyars took direct part in the implementation of princely administrative functions as advisers.
Being a boyar in the medieval Russian state sometimes meant being the closest not only to the throne, but also to the scaffold. It was the "senior squad" that dominated the veche - the people's assembly that came from the pre-state period of "military democracy". Thus, the first boyars were mainly the prince's functionaries.
Already in the most ancient monuments of Russian history are found evidences of the existence of a special governmental class, or circle of people who were the closest governmental collaborators of the prince. These people were called boyars , and sometimes the prince's retinue , and they constituted his usual council, with which he thought about the arrangement of the land. Together with the princely power, which has a state character, there is also a special military class — the prince's retinue, the prince's men. This was a class of the population closer to the prince, which is also proven by the greater fine imposed in the Russian Truth for the murder of a prince-man, i.e. a retinue member. This position of the retinue member was also the source of his wealth, and the retinue members were generally richer than the rest of the population, with the exception of a few especially rich guests.
The retinue in turn was divided into senior and junior, which also had their own divisions. The eldest was close to the prince, but from this senior squad there were several people, especially important, close to the prince. The senior squad is known under the name of boyars. Their general name was initially ognishchane , later the name of princely men was established for them , and finally, simply boyars. The word boyar meant in general an influential person in the land, a distinguished husband; the best in the sense that the chronicle uses this word, speaking of the Drevlyan ambassadors to Princess Olga: "The best men (20 were chosen), who held the Drevlian land."
The cumbersome system of "polyudye", under which the prince himself spent long months touring his lands and collecting tribute to feed his retinue, required reform. And the prince began to distribute lands to his closest associates, from which they were to feed, equip and arm themselves. These land grants were given to the boyars as hereditary property and became known as "patrimonies" or "votchinas". The name of these land holdings reflected the right to inherit the lands once received from the prince.
A boyar was not only a senior warrior, but probably also a rich man, primarily a landowner, a large owner. There was a difference between the boyars, but only a household one, similar to the division of people in general into the best, average and worst. In the chronicles, some boyars are called lepshie, velikye, etc.; the chronicle contemptuously calls other boyars boyarcy, although here the contempt may relate not to their position, but to their actions. There could also be boyars subordinate to one another; thus, the Pechora Patericon says that Shimon Afrikanovich sent his boyar Vasily; and it is evident that this boyar was a person subordinate to Shimon, and consequently, lower than he. The origin of the persons who made up the prince's retinue was of no essential importance; personal qualities were more important.
With the change of generations, the origin of this property was "forgotten", and each young heir, receiving a "patrimony" from his father, saw himself as a full-fledged owner of this land and did not consider himself obliged to the prince. This is where the boyar class's well-known independence and autonomy from the monarch came from. In their patrimonies, they behaved as holders of all possible rights: they acted as leaders, leaders of armed detachments, tax collectors, policemen and judges.
In the concepts of the people, even in later times, when the class system was stronger in the Russian state, a retinue member and a priest's son and a guest son were conceivable; examples are known of boyars and priests' grandsons and from the Smerdya tribe. There could also be foreigners in the retinue, even from a people with whom Rus' was always at war, for example, the Pechenegs: the Pecheneg Ildey was in the service of Prince Yaropolk and in great honor. The prince was concerned only about the number of retinue members suitable for him, since the strength of the retinue always and everywhere determined the significance, the "honor" of the sovereigns. But in the 10th - 12th centuries, the prince's retinue mainly had to be recruited from the children of the retinue members themselves. The son of a distinguished warrior would in advance dispose of the prince in his favor, who could give him a place in his warriors according to his fatherland, i.e. in accordance with the importance of his father. The grant according to the fatherland, as a well-known formula, runs through all of ancient history. It was assumed that the son was worthy of his father.
The class of boyars was formed from the best people among the inhabitants of each land and from the highest members of the princely court of warriors. The best people were called zemstvo boyars in contrast to princely boyars, princely men . The best people are sometimes called "city elders" or "human elders" by the chronicler. Under St. Vladimir, the best zemstvo people (boyars) were called "elders" or "elders", since the chronicler uses the word "startsy" to translate the Latin term - "senatores"; sometimes the chronicler uses the word "elders" to mean all members of the princely duma (i.e. boyars, primarily). It can be argued that the Eastern Slavs from ancient times had among themselves the same class of best people, which the Western Slavs call majores natu, seniores, kmety and other terms. This class is everywhere formed from people who are superior in terms of family seniority (origin, which is why its members are called elders), in terms of power in their society (its members “hold the land”), and finally, in terms of higher economic status (the term “best people” in subsequent history means richer people).
At the time of the formation of this class - from the 10th to the 11th centuries - it was heterogeneous. Not only senior warriors from the newcomers - the confidants of the princes Rurik, Igor, Svyatoslav and their descendants, but also representatives of the tribal nobility of the local Slavic tribes became boyars. In this regard, they were divided into princely and zemstvo boyars, whose rights differed somewhat in favor of the former. Later, there appeared the "putnye" and "vvedennye" boyars, who had an even lower legal status. They did not come from old noble families, but worked their way up to this high position and were something like palace officials.
Until the end of the 12th century, the title of "boyar" was granted or awarded. It was the highest rank at the prince's court. Later, it began to be passed on by inheritance. Despite all the differences in their ranks, the boyars were primarily responsible for military service. They constituted the prince's army and had to appear before the prince with their detachment at the first call. In all the treaty charters of that time, there is such a provision: "And whoever serves which prince, he must fly with the prince whom he serves." For evading military service, the boyars could be punished by the prince.
Until the new government, the prince with his retinue, had become stronger and needed the help of the city nobility (elders, princely men), from which it itself had emerged, the two social forces stood very close to each other. Throughout the 10th century they acted in unison and were very similar to each other, fighting and trading together, discussing the most important questions of legislation together in the prince's duma. But then these two forces, so related in origin, diverged more and more. This mutual estrangement was revealed from the middle of the 11th century under the children of Yaroslav; it was prepared by various circumstances. The princely government was being organized and, having become stronger administratively and militarily, began to need less assistance from the city administration and city regiments.
The reign of Vladimir, when the city elders so often appeared in the prince's palace next to the boyars, was a time of the most intense struggle with the steppe. Then the Kiev government was intensively looking for military men everywhere. But the terrible defeat inflicted by Yaroslav on the Pechenegs in 1036 under the walls of Kyiv, for a time untied the hands of the government on this side. At the same time, the political and economic distance between the princely retinue and the urban aristocracy began to noticeably widen. Official privileges increasingly gave the former the significance of the nobility, reducing the latter to the position of simple townspeople. Trade successes distributed significant working capital in the country, raised the monetary income of the government class in terms of income in kind and weakened its direct participation in the trade operations of the cities.
The emergence of privileged land ownership among the boyars, the signs of which become noticeable from the 11th century, further removed this class from urban society, which owned commercial capital. Thanks to various advantages, official, personal and economic, which did not belong to all members of the retinue to the same extent, the word boyar over time ceased to be a synonym for a princely husband and acquired various special meanings in different spheres of life. Having acquired a closer meaning at the prince's court, the title of boyar expanded outside the governmental sphere: in the language of private civil relations, all service privileged landowners and slave owners were called boyars, regardless of the court hierarchy, due to the close connection of land ownership at that time with slavery.
This is what a boyar is in the Russian Truth, and this word has the same meaning in the monuments of law until the 18th century. Slave ownership was the legal and economic basis of the boyar patrimony. Private privileged land ownership in ancient Rus' developed from slavery. The patrimony of a private owner legally and economically arose from the fact that the slave owner planted his serfs on the land for its economic exploitation; the land was attached to the person, became his property through the fact that people who were personally strong for him were attached to it,constituting his property; the serf became the legal conductor of the right of ownership of land and the economic instrument of the economic exploitation of the latter. In the language of Old Russian civil law, a boyar from the time of the Russkaya Pravda and right up to the decrees of Peter the Great meant something different from what he did at the court of the Old Russian prince and the Moscow prince: here he was the highest service rank, having received the special meaning of an adviser, the prince's permanent "Dumets" or "Dumnik", and there he was a service privileged landowner and slave owner. A serf was called a boyar, a village a boyar village, work on the landowner's arable land a boyar matter, boyarshchina, regardless of whether the landowner bore the title of boyar at court or not.
The highest class of government in the principality of the appanage time is designated in the princely charters of the 14th and 15th centuries by the name of boyars introduced and putnye , or putniks . The boyars introduced were the managers of individual departments of the palace administration or palace economy, the butler, treasurer, falconer, steward, cup-holder, etc. Putnye were all palace officials, high and low, who received palace lands and income for travel or food for their service. The boyar introduced was also putnye, because he usually enjoyed such a salary; but as a great boyar, he rose above simple putniks, who were not the main managers of individual departments of the palace economy. The prince, appointing the boyars as the main managers of his palace economy, entrusting them with his household servants and his household affairs, as if introduced these boyars into his palace, so that they were considered as living in the palace. In such cases, the title of "introduced boyar" corresponded in meaning to the later title of boyars of the room or close ones.
Thus, from two elements - the druzhina (service) and the zemstvo (local) - a single boyar class is formed (since the 11th century), when the druzhina (service) members, having settled down, became local landowners, and the zemstvo boyars through the palace services passed into the class of princely men. The princely courts, continuing to exist, prepared new service elements, gradually flowing back into the zemstvo boyars. The word: "dvoryane" (instead of "druzhina" or "grid") appears already in the 12th century: "The townspeople of Bogolyubstii and the nobles plundered the house of the princes" (Ipat. let., 1175). But we have not established the German distinction Dienst-Adel and simply Adel. The boyars of ancient Russia had neither class corporativity nor class privileges.
The zemstvo character of the ancient Russian states prevented the formation of corporativity. Each community (city, volost and even village) had its boyars (as well as middle and lesser people). The zemstvo distribution of classes mainly prevented the formation of corporatism. This was not contradicted by the fact that boyars, properly speaking (i.e. those whose dignity was recognized in the then state - land) were only the boyars of the senior city. The class significance of the boyars is determined by the significance of the community; all the same, the population of the senior community is recognized as boyar (higher) in relation to the population of the junior cities, although the latter have their boyars. The formation of class corporatism was also prevented by the methods of entry into the boyar class, practiced at that time. A boyar was one who occupied the highest place in the service (princely or zemstvo) and acquired more or less rich property. Personal qualities (in the rise in society) prevailed in ancient Slavic societies over birth and heredity. Birth influenced the acquisition of boyardom only in fact, i.e. it was easier for a boyar's son to attain boyardom. For this reason, ancient Rus' did not know family nicknames; the chronicle tells us only the names, sometimes patronymics, of the boyars.
In the absence of corporate status, the boyar class could not enjoy any privileges (exclusive rights). In the sphere of personal rights, although the ognishchane (or princely men) are protected by a double fine for murder (Rus. Pr. Ak. 18, 21, Kar. 1 and 3) and a double sale "for flour", but this applies only to princely men and is explained by their personal relations with the prince, and the prince collects, under the general name of viry, not only a criminal fine, but also a private reward. In the sphere of property rights, monuments ascribe to the boyars the right to own villages (land property), as if belonging to them predominantly. In any case, in fact, land ownership belonged to the boyars more than to persons of other classes. In the sphere of inheritance rights, the boyars are ascribed the privilege of passing on inheritance to daughters, in the absence of sons; but such a right extends not only to the boyars, but also to all free "people", except the smerds.
Under Peter the Great, several estates or classes began to be formed from the former service and taxable classes. When the noble class was initially formed by Peter, it was called the courtiers, then the gentry , following the example of Poland and Lithuania. It was impossible to call it the nobility at that time because in the Muscovite state, the lowest rank of service people was called nobles, and such a name for a boyar would have been an insult. The former Moscow ranks were abolished by Peter by decrees of 1695-1703, but those who had them continued to wear them in the first quarter of the 18th century. A positive measure for the formation of the gentry, which replaced the boyars, should be considered the decree on single inheritance of 1714, by which estates were assigned to the gentry on the right of ownership, i.e. the foundation was laid for the first and most important privilege of the nobility - to own populated property regardless of service. The second act of the formation of the noble class was the manifesto of Peter III of February 18, 1762 on the liberation of the nobles from compulsory service, after which everything with which they were rewarded for service turned into their privileges. The final organization of the estates was given by the charter of Catherine II in 1785, the content of which is based on the petitions of the nobles themselves, declared by them upon the accession of Empress Anna and in the legislative commissions of Elizabeth and Catherine.
The role of the boyars in the political life of the country changed along with the development of the role of princely governance and the overcoming of feudal fragmentation. Boyar governance in real historical practice proved to be ineffective, but this circumstance was an important factor in the formation of national political culture. The centralization and concentration of power in the hands of the monarch appears to be a process conditioned, among other factors, by the objective need to improve the efficiency of public administration.
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