Feudalism in Russia

Abstract

IN approaching the problem of feudalism, the student of Russian history is in a much more difficult position than those of his colleagues who deal with feudalism in the countries of Central and Western Europe. While the student of the history of Romano-Germanic countries has to deal with a definite complex of social phenomena and institutions, the student of Russian history has first to clear the ground in order to be able to ascertain whether the same complex of social trends did exist in Russia at all. The study of feudalism in Romano-Germanic countries has age-long traditions behind it; the study of Russian feudalism began but recently. Until the close of the nineteenth century, students of Russian history were not so much interested in historical parallels with Western Europe; moreover, most of them were apt to discard the possibility of the existence in Russia of feudalism as an organized system of institutions. Such an attitude can be partly explained by the fact that the attention of the leading Russian historians of the second half of the nineteenth century (Solovyov, Klyuchevski) concentrated round the history of Eastern (Muscovite) Russia. It was only when some of them started studying the social history of Western (Lithuanian) Russia in more detail that they were confronted with social trends, the similarity of which to the institutions of RomanoGermanic Europe was so obvious that some comparison between mediaeval Russia and the west became essential. The publication of M. K. Lyubavski's monograph on the provincial administration of the Lithuanian-Russian State (1892) was an important landmark in this connection. This was followed by his second monograph on the LithuanianRussian Seim (1900).2 But the first scholar who discussed the problem of Russian feudalism on more general lines was N. P. Pavlov-Silvanski, in his study 'Feudal Relations in Mediaeval Russia' (1901). He set forth the thesis of a complete similarity between the feudal institutions of mediaeval Russia and those of mediaeval Europe. The ideas suggested in his first study were later elaborated by him in detail in his main work, Feudalism in Russia of the Appanage Period (1910).8 After the appearance of Pavlov-Silvanski's works more attention was devoted