THE CONCEPTS «CHIEFDOM» AND «STATE» IN THE EVALUATION OF THE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE EARLY MEDIEVAL EMPIRES OF CENTRAL ASIA

Abstract

The article deals with the evaluation of the political institutions in early medievalCentral Asia. The existing approaches to defining the governing systems of the imperial nomad unions focus on the concepts "chiefdom" and "state", but in both cases researchers have to state an absence of total compliance of the nomadic empires' governing structures to the classical attributes of chiefdom and state, thus constantly making reservations, which blur these concepts. The purpose of the work is to consider the possibility of solving this problem by using a broader "net" of terms determining different political systems and stages in their development in relation to early medieval nomadic empires. The methodological base of the article is the modern conceptions of multilinearity and diversity of the political genesis. The research has resulted in determination of a range of concepts which could better reflect the specificity of political institutions of different nomadic empires or make this evaluation more neutral but providing a clearer understanding of the complexity level of the political organization.