Boyars - Apogee
From the 15th to the 17th century, the boyars of Muscovy formed a closed aristocratic class that surrounded the throne of the grand prince (later the tsar) and ruled the country together with him. They were drawn from about 200 families, descended from former princes, old Moscow boyar families, and foreign aristocrats. The rank of boyar did not belong to all members of these families but only to those senior members to whom the tsar granted this title. Below the boyars stood the group of okolnichy. Together these two strata formed the boyar council, which helped the tsar direct the internal and foreign affairs of the state. The decisions of the boyar council, as confirmed by the tsar, were recognized as the normal form of legislation. The boyars and okolnichy generally served as heads of government offices, provincial governors, and military commanders.
By the confidence with which Ivan I inspired the horde, and the terrible war which he waged against his kinsmen, he restored to Russia a tranquillity to which she had long been a stranger. A dawning of order and justice reappeared under a sceptre acquired and preserved by such horrible acts of injustice; the depredations to which Russia had been a prey were repressed; commerce again flourished; and the treasury of the prince was swelled still further by the profit arising from the customs. This great political impulse was so vigorously given, that it was perpetuated in his son Simeon the Proud, to whom Ivan left wherewithal to purchase the grand princedom from the horde, and in whom he revived the direct succession. Simeon having died without children, in 1353, after a reign of twelve years, Ivan II, his brother, purchased the sovereignty with the wealth of Kalita. The people had given to Ivan the surname of The Purse; as much, perhaps, with allusion to his treasures, as to the purse, filled with alms for the poor, which was said to have been always carried before him. At a later period, the constantly progressive riches of the grand princes of Moscow enabled them to enfeoff directly from the crown lands three hundred thousand boyar followers; and next, to keep up a body of regular troops, sufficiently strong to reduce their enemies and their subjects.
Like the Capets, kings of France, did Ivan I, and particularly Dmitri Donskoi, begin the monarchy by restoring the direct succession, in causing, while they lived, their eldest sons to be recognised as their successors. Even before Dmitri had established the principle, the boyars saw the advantages which this order of succession held out to them. Here, as elsewhere, the fact preceded the law. In like manner, about 1430, they maintained this order of succession in Vasili the Blind. Contemporary annalists declare that these ancient boyars of the grand principality detested the descent from brother to brother; for, in that system, each prince of the lateral branch arrived from his appanage with other boyars, whom he always preferred, and whom he could not satisfy and establish but at the expense of the old. On the other hand, the most important and transmissible places, the most valuable favours, an hereditary and more certain protection, and greater hopes, attracted a military nobility around the grand princes. In a very short time, their elevation to the level of the humbled petty princes flattered their vanity, and completed their junction with the principal authority. This circumstance explains the last words of Dmitri Donskoi to his boyars, when he recommended his son to their protection. "Under my reign," said he, "you were not boyars, but really Russian princes." In fact (to cite only some examples), his armies were as often commanded by boyars as by princes, and that, from this epoch, it was no longer a prince of the blood, but a boyar of the grand prince, who was his lieutenant at Novgorod.
When Ivan III married a Greek princess, born in Italy, and the Grand Dukes of Moscovy expanded into Tsars, or Kings, the distance between the subject aristocracy and their sovereigns became remoter still. The boyars rebelled against the insulting change, but the crafty Greek lady prevailed, and her son, educated according to her principles, duly ascended the throne. Again the boyars rebelled ; but the struggle, if bloodier, was even briefer than before, and the depressed patricians emerged from it the submissive slaves of the Veliki Gosudar - Great Sovereign.
By completing the work of his predecessors in destroying the independence of the townships and the appanaged princes, Ivan III, or, as he was called by some historians, Ivan the Great, created the empire of Moscow. The form of government of this empire and all the outward surroundings of power were greatly influenced by the marriage of Ivan to Sophia, daughter of Thomas Paleologus, and niece of the last emperor of Byzantium, who brought to Moscow the customs and traditions of the Byzantine Empire. The first visible and outward sign of the fact that Russia came to regard herself as a successor to Greece, was the adoption of the two-headed eagle, the arms of the eastern Roman Empire, which thenceforth became the arms of Russia. From that time much in Russia was changed and assumed a Byzantine likeness; the change was not effected suddenly, but proceeded during the entire reign of Ivan Vasilieyitch and continued after his death. In the court household the high-sounding title of czar was introduced, and the custom of kissing the monarch's hand. Court ranks were established also: master of the stables, master of the horse, and chamberlains (the latter, however, appeared only at the end of Ivan's reign).
The importance of the boyars as the highest class of society fell before an autocratic sovereign; all became equal, all alike were his slaves. The honorable appellation of boyar was bestowed by the grand prince as a reward for services; besides the boyars there was also created a somewhat lower rank - that of the Iokolnitchil [From Iokolo, about, around - persons about the czar.] - the commencement of the Russian hierarchy of ranks. To the time of Ivan Vasilievitch may also be attributed the establishment of bureaus (prikazi) with their secretaries and clerks. But most important and essential of all was the change in the dignity attaching to the grand prince, strongly to be felt and clearly visible in the actions of the deliberate Ivan Vasilievitch; the grand prince had become an autocratic sovereign. Even in his predecessors yhere was an approximation to this, but the first autocrat in the full sense of the word was Ivan Vasilievitch, and he became so especially after his marriage to Sophia. From that time all his activity was consistently and unswervingly consecrated to the strengthening of monarchy and autocracy.
At the time when Ivan IV succeeded his father in 1533 the struggle of the central power against the forces of the past had changed character. The old Russian states, which had held so long in check the new power of Moscow; the principalities of Tver, Riazan, Suzdal, Novgorod-Seversk; the republics of Novgorod, Pskov, Viatka had lost their independence. Their possessions had served to aggrandise those of Moscow. All northern and eastern Russia was thus unitea under the sceptre of the grand prince. To the ceaseless struggles constantly breaking out against Tver, Riazan, Novgorod, was to succeed the great foreign strife - the holy war against Lithuania, the Tatars, the Swedes.
Precisely because the work of the unification of Great Russia was accomplished, the resistance in the interior against the prince's authority was to become more active. The descendants of reigning families dispossessed by force of bribery or arms, the servitors of those old royal houses, had entered the service of the masters of Moscow. His court was composed of crownless princes - the Chouiski, the Kurbski, the Vorotinski; descendants of ancient appanaged princes, proud of the blood of Rurik which coursed through their veins. Others were descended from the Lithuanian Gedimine, or from the baptised Tatar Monzas.
All these princes, as well as the powerful boyars of Tver, Ryazan, Novgorod, were become the boyars of the grand prince. There was for all only one court at which they could serve - that of Moscow. When Russia had been divided into sovereign states, the discontented boyars had been at liberty to change masters - to pass from the service of Tchefnigov into that of Kiev, from that of Suzdal into that of Novgorod. Now, whither could they go? Outside of Moscow, there were only foreign rulers, enemies of Russia. To make use of the ancient right to change masters was to go over to the enemy - it was treason. "To change" and "to betray" were become synonymous: the Russian word izmiyanit (third person singular of "to change") was become the word izmiyanik ("traitor").
The Russian boyar could take refuge neither with the Germans, the Swedes, nor the Tatars; he could go only to the sovereign of Lithuania - but this was the worst possible species of change, the most pernicious form of treason. The prince of Moscow knew well that the war with Lithuania - that state which Polish in the west, by its Russian provinces, in the east exercised a dangerous attraction over subjects of Moscow - was a struggle for existence. Lithuania was not only a foreign enemy - it was a domestic enemy, with intercourse and sympathies in the very heart of the Russian state, even in the palace of the czar; her formidable hand was felt in all intrigues, in all conspiracies. The foreign war against Lithuania, the domestic war against the Russian oligarchy are but two different phases of the same war - the heaviest and most perilous of all those undertaken by the grand prince of Moscow. The dispossessed princes, the boyars of the old independent states had given up the struggle against him on the field of battle; they continued to struggle against him in his own court.
By the 15th century, the situation was different. The Golden Horde itself fell under the attacks of the army of Timur, and split up. Russian princes joined their forces under the leadership of Moscow to stop paying tributes to the Horde. During this time, the boyars were written up to the "boyar books," compiled by the central authorities in Moscow. They recorded the names, positions and functions of the boyars. By then, the boyars were divided into elder boyars and lower-class boyars. The ‘elders’ served the Grand Prince of Moscow personally. Thus, ‘the bed boyar’ (‘postelnichiy’) was the person who visited the prince first thing in the morning and informed him of all the latest news – an important and very influential position. The "stable boyar", meanwhile, dealt with all the matters of providing, feeding, and training the prince's horses; and the "falcon boyar" was in charge of the prince's falcon hunts, and so on.
This accounting was needed because, with the centralization of the state, the number of boyars increased. Many of the former princes came to the service of the Grand Prince of Moscow and became his boyars. The Boyar Duma was formed, which was a kind of government that collectively (but under the leadership of the prince) presided over state issues. The members of the Boyar Duma occupied the highest positions after the prince. They shared almost their entire day with the prince – getting up before dawn, sitting in the Duma from early morning (from 5 o'clock), then attending feasts, hunting with the prince, and so on.
The boyars, who were not included in the Duma, participated in military campaigns, led troops, acted as voevodas in the cities, and so on. But the main change experienced by the Russian nobility after Moscow became the center of power affected the status of their land tenure.
After 1480, when Moscow finally stopped paying tribute to the Golden Horde, the boyars began to pressure the central government outright. Owning their own estates, like the princes owned their duchies, the boyars did not want to part with their independent status – they cared more about it than state affairs. Boyars were constantly involved in career disputes. For example, they refused to go on military campaigns if their position in the army was lower than that of their fathers.
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