Oxford Slavonic Papers (review)

Abstract

746 SEER, 79, 4, 2001 conclusion which could be drawn by a reader is that the termBlizhnaya Duma would reflect better the Muscovite institution previously known as Borskaya Duma. The crucial questions concerning the parameters of influence and power remain largely unanswered. It remains equally unclear whether the author regards the BlizhnayaDumaas a legislative organ of the state. The alternatingspelling of counsellorsand councillorsadds to the confusion since it gives an entirely differentposition to the advisers of a ruler. The phrase, 'ritualisedconsultations'which is used in the title and is repeated throughout the book remains unexplained, creating an understandingthat the members of the BlilznayaDumawere indeed counsellorswith merely nominalpowers. The book makes some helpful contributions, however. The chronological listsof royaladvisersforthe two-hundred-yearperiod of the volume is a useful tool. Bogatyrev's emphasis on the need to distinguish more clearly between the Royal Court and all the advisory bodies which surrounded the Tsars of Muscovy is sensible. Useful observationsare made concerning the Oprichnina of Ivan IV. The author offerssome additional proof for the thesis that while the countrywas divided into two partsit was presentedto the outsideworld as a united state, and convincingly suggests that the political rift between Oprichnina and Zemshchina was less pronounced than has been hitherto understood. On the whole, the book suffers from very poor editing. The lack of consistency in spelling, the omissions from the index and the list of abbreviations (PLDR, pp. 58-59), the alternation between the first person singular and the second person plural in which the book is written and the uncorrected English, at times incomprehensible,seriouslyweaken the impact of the book. HertfordCollege MARIA UNKOVSKAYA Oxford OxfordSlavonicPapers.New Series. Volume 33. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000. 133 pp. Publishedannually,as a singlevolume. /35.OO. THEpresentvolume comprisesfive articles.These include Alan Timberlake's studyof the earlyrecensionsof the Novgorod Chronicle, G. MartinMurphy's analysisof a PolishJesuit dramaof the seventeenth century,WendyRosslyn's account of the workof the 'enlightened'and 'feminist'Mar'yaSushkova,and G. S. Smith's investigation of the transgressive sexuality and (equally transgressive)literarystyleof MarinaTsvetsaeva. Each of these augmentsour knowledge and appreciation of several trends in the history of Russian and Polish literature.The fifth essay in this collection is, however, path-breaking and deservesspecial consideration. In an article entitled 'Early Pomest'eGrants as a Historical Source' (pp. 36-63), Donald Ostrowskire-examines the so-called 'service-tenements' granted by the Russian tsars in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Revisiting awardsthat had hithertobeen considered only as grantsofjudicial immunity, Ostrowskisummarizesand discussesthe contents of 36 chartersof donation. As he indicates, these early grantsofpomest'e tenure were, from the REVIEWS 747 very first, treated as hereditary, were ceded in the expectation that the beneficiarieswould be absentees, and were even, indeed, awardedin the first instance to women. As Ostrowskisuggests, the distinction maintained in the historicalliteraturebetween pomest'e and votchina estates was blurredfrom the very start of the pomest'e's institutional inception in the second half of the fifteenthcentury. There is, however, much which Ostrowski'ssynopsis of individual grants does not elucidate. If these grants of estate were, indeed, ceded in exchange for service, then why were the termsof serviceso seldom laid?If the nature of service was by the late fifteenth century customary and so not needing any detailed elaboration, then this surely presupposes that notions of obligation and of reciprocity of rights were already comprehended in social practice. Likewise,none of the thirty-sixgrantsgiven here clarifyissuesof inheritance. Individual estates might thus (and repeatedly) be ceded to a father and his sons without any furtherdiscussion of the terms of its descent. Others might specify that the lands involved be retained within the family, or, should the beneficiary be a widow, that her lands would devolve to her son in the event of her remarriage. Escheat to the ruler likewise mainly occurred when the originalbeneficiaryhad no male descendantsto whom the propertymight be passed. All this suggests that notions of collective ownership by the clan, kindred or male line attended grants of pomest'eholdings, and that the beneficiaryof such service-holdings(ifsuch they reallywere)was not so much the individualpomeshchik as the largerfamily-groupin which he had his place. Ostrowskidoes not confront these issues.Instead, he appeals to...