underscore the possibility of access to the ruler. Thefirst grouping would be his
inner circle—kinsmen, boyar in-laws, and his closest other advisors. They would be
encircled by the rest of the boyars and church hierarchs resident in the Kremlin,
most notably (if not in the inner circle) the head of the Church (metropolitan of
Moscow, elevated to patriarch in 1589) and on occasion perhaps the highest of
merchants (gosti) and state secretaries (d’iaki) who had access to court and were
even given the rare right to own land. With changing marriage alliances and
expansion of the boyar elite, there was a lot of interchange between these two rings.
Next out, still very close to the ruler, would be military servitors who constituted
the senior officer corps, called the“Sovereign’s Court”in the mid-sixteenth century
and men“of the Moscow list”by the seventeenth. Perhaps of equal status, but
living in a clerical, non-secular world, in this circle would also be church hierarchs
(archbishops, bishops, abbots of the 3–5 richest monasteries). In the next circle
would be provincial gentry, organized in regional corporations around towns in the
heartland. These men served as military officers and local governors. Members of all
these circles enjoyed the highest status and economic position in the realm; they
could own family land outright (votchina), they received service-tenure land from
the state (pomest’e), and they could possess serfs. They enjoyed the honorific
privilege of using the patronymic in their names and of calling themselves“slaves”
when they petitioned the tsar.
The next circle marks a step out in social and economic privilege. These were
semi-privileged military groups who did not pay taxes, but could not own land
and serfs. They were engineers, musketeers, Cossack regiments in garrisons, and
most bureaucrats in central chanceries and local governors’office. They too
called themselves“slaves”butdidnotuseanhonorific patronymic in official
address. Perhaps in this circle would also go other relatively privileged groups,
such as European foreigners in military service and the members of lesser, but
still untaxed, merchant associations. Next comes those people who called
themselves the tsar’s “orphans” when they petitioned, taxpayers of several
types: townsmen, peasants belonging to the ruling family and those belonging
to the state, serfs owned by an ecclesiastical or secular landlord. In this circle
also belong theiasak-paying natives of the Middle Volga, Siberia, and the
steppe. Beyond these circles might be a circle of personal, indentured servants,
whopaidnotax(kholopy), a status eliminated in the early eighteenth century.
Outside the circles, two exceptions through the seventeenth century, the Don
Cossacks and the Hetmanate: self-governing, they stood in vassal relation to the
tsar, and their populace turned to those respective hetmans, rather than the tsar,
for grievances and aid.
Such a graduated circle suggests both real differences in wealth, power, and
prestige and also essential equalities shared by the ruler’s subjects. All lacked legal
definitions of corporate estates or personal rights. All served, all had honor, all
could petition the ruler, and all—women, serfs, slaves, and non-Russians alike—
could participate in legal proceedings as plaintiffs, witnesses, and sureties. They
were connected to the ruler, each group receiving its own special deal with the
sovereign.
208 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801