The boyar clan and court politics : The founding of the Muscovite political system - article ; n°1 ; vol.23, pg 5-31

Nancy Shieldskollmann

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Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique - Année 1982 - Volume 23 - Numéro 1 - Pages 5-31
Nancy Shields Kollmann, Le clan des boyards et la politique de la Cour : la fondation du système politique moscovite.
Il ressort du présent article que l'organisation de la politique à la Cour moscovite au XlVe siècle reposait sur les liens de parenté entre les boyards, conseillers du grand prince souverain. Les conditions dans lesquelles Moscou apparut en tant que pouvoir régional au XlVe siècle et certaines particularités de l'histoire familiale de la dynastie des Danilovič favorisèrent la constitution d'une élite politique unie des clans de boyards. On peut situer la naissance des clans de boyards au XlVe siècle et discerner parmi eux une hiérarchie du pouvoir. L'étude des fonctions de chiliarque (tysjackij), qui tombèrent en désuétude en 1373, révèle que c'était sur les liens de parenté avec le clan souverain qu'était fondée la suprématie et suggère ensuite que les crises politiques survenues à la Cour peuvent être analysées surtout comme des luttes entre des factions de boyards.
Nancy Shields Kollmann, The boyar clan and court politics: the founding of the Muscovite political system.
The organization of politics at the Muscovite court in the fourteenth century is shown to have been based on kinship relationships amongst boyars, the counsellors of the sovereign grand prince. The circumstances of Moscow's emergence as a regional power in the fourteenth century and particular aspects of the family history of the sovereign Danilovich family nurtured the development of a cohesive political elite of boyar clans. One can plot the emergence of boyar clans in the fourteenth century, and one can discern a hierarchy of power amongst them. Study of the thousandman post, which fell into disuetude by 1373, reveals that kinship links with the sovereign clan were the foundation of predominance in the hierarchy, and further suggests that court political crises can best be analyzed as struggles amongst factions of boyars.
27 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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• Publié par: CAHIERS_DU_MONDE_RUSSE_ET_SOVIETIQUE
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1982
• Nombre de lectures: 17
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

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Nancy Shields Kollmann
The boyar clan and court politics : The founding of the Muscovite
political system
In: Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique. Vol. 23 N°1. Janvier-Mars 1982. pp. 5-31.
Résumé
Nancy Shields Kollmann, Le clan des boyards et la politique de la Cour : la fondation du système politique moscovite.
Il ressort du présent article que l'organisation de la politique à la Cour moscovite au XlVe siècle reposait sur les liens de parenté
entre les boyards, conseillers du grand prince souverain. Les conditions dans lesquelles Moscou apparut en tant que pouvoir
régional au XlVe siècle et certaines particularités de l'histoire familiale de la "dynastie" des Danilovič favorisèrent la constitution
d'une élite politique unie des clans de boyards. On peut situer la naissance des clans de boyards au XlVe siècle et discerner
parmi eux une hiérarchie du pouvoir. L'étude des fonctions de chiliarque (tysjackij), qui tombèrent en désuétude en 1373, révèle
que c'était sur les liens de parenté avec le clan souverain qu'était fondée la suprématie et suggère ensuite que les crises
politiques survenues à la Cour peuvent être analysées surtout comme des luttes entre des factions de boyards.
Abstract
Nancy Shields Kollmann, The boyar clan and court politics: the founding of the Muscovite political system.
The organization of politics at the Muscovite court in the fourteenth century is shown to have been based on kinship relationships
amongst boyars, the counsellors of the sovereign grand prince. The circumstances of Moscow's emergence as a regional power
in the fourteenth century and particular aspects of the family history of the sovereign Danilovich family nurtured the development
of a cohesive political elite of boyar clans. One can plot the emergence of boyar clans in the fourteenth century, and one can
discern a hierarchy of power amongst them. Study of the thousandman post, which fell into disuetude by 1373, reveals that
kinship links with the sovereign clan were the foundation of predominance in the hierarchy, and further suggests that court
political crises can best be analyzed as struggles amongst factions of boyars.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Kollmann Nancy Shields. The boyar clan and court politics : The founding of the Muscovite political system. In: Cahiers du
monde russe et soviétique. Vol. 23 N°1. Janvier-Mars 1982. pp. 5-31.
doi : 10.3406/cmr.1982.1932
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/cmr_0008-0160_1982_num_23_1_1932ARTICLES
NANCY SHIELDS KOLLMANN
THE BOYAR CLAN AND COURT POLITICS
THE FOUNDING OF THE MUSCOVITE
POLITICAL SYSTEM
chronicle most Next powerful and to the narrative political grand sources prince figures himself, reveal in Muscovy. that the the boyars Documentary, were formed the
a council of advisors to the grand prince and that they per
formed various important functions: they administered justice,
led military campaigns and represented the sovereign in
foreign policy matters at home and abroad. (1) Although schol
ars have devoted much attention to boyars, many questions
remain unanswered, especially concerning how men became
boyars and how boyars formed political groups. This essay
begins to address these issues by presenting some principles
that governed boyar political behavior. It proposes a frame
work for analyzing court politics based on study of kinship
relationships and clans as the fundamental units in Muscovite
politics.
Historians have generally been more concerned with the
development of Muscovite autocracy, its ideology and institu
tions than with the day-to-day workings of court politics. (2)
Interested in the institutions of power, they have debated
such questions as whether the Boyar Duma had a political
competence separate from the prince's authority, and how the
various servitor classes emerged. (3) Analyzing the evolution
of the Boyar Duma in the Muscovite period, scholars have
depicted boyars as an aristocracy manquée - an advisory
council that could have won political legitimacy, but that was
deprived of corporate privileges and political autonomy by
an autocratic sovereign and his lower-class supporters in the
late fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. (4)
This interpretive approach has left its mark on scholars1
opinions of how political relationships at court were struc
tured, and groups were formed. Factions in
court politics are thought to have been organized along class
lines: old families against new, titled against untitled clans.
Political development is depicted in terms of institutions such
as the autocracy, the aristocracy and the Boyar Duma, and
conflict is assumed to have erupted over ideological or class
antagonisms. (5) Consonant with this image of a complex
society, a mix of autocracy and rationality is said to govern NANCY SHIELDS KOLLMANN
how men became boyars. The latter are said to have worked
their ways up through the military ranks, or to have been
rewarded for diplomatic or bureaucratic talent, or to have
been favored by the grand prince; it is agreed that the right
family background and marriage alliances could help, but
they are considered supplemental to the achievements of career
and the value of talent. (6)
But, while the outlines of the development of Muscovy's
political classes have been well established, (7) such modes
of interpretation less satisfactory in explaining
court politics. There is little or no agreement among historians
when they try to analyze the dominant groups or motivations
behind a court political crisis. (8) A new interpretation of
Muscovite society and a methodology suitable to such an
approach, however, promises to provide a more consistent
and satisfactory explanation of court politics. Found in the
works of scholars as various as Hartmut Riiss, Edward Keenan
and V. A. Kuchkin, such an approach rests on an image of
Muscovy as a traditional society in which kinship relations
and personal status were more significant in forming political
factions and shaping political conflict than economic status
and individual achievement. Analyzing politics, such scholars
argue, for example, that marriage ties were political ties,
that boyars and sovereign were not polarized by class strug
gle, and that a keen awareness of the genealogical heritage
of the rulers of Moscow was fundamental to Muscovite historical
and political consciousness. (9) Recent work by Daniel Kaiser
on the legal evolution of Muscovy puts forward a similar
view of non-elite social relations. (10) The evidence unearthed
by collective biographical studies of the Muscovite elite - a
method pioneered by S. B. Veselovskii (11) - supports such
an approach to the analysis of court politics. It allows us
to identify the clans, marriage alliances and kinship groups
upon which political activity was based. (12)
The present article attempts to further this analytical
approach by examining the founding of the Moscow boyar elite
and early influences on its political organization. The founding
clans are identified and a phenomenon is analyzed - the demise
of the thousandman's position (tysiatskii) - that illustrates
the importance of kinship in the workings of Muscovite court
politics.
The consolidation of the elite
Events both internal and external to the Muscovite court
called forth an elite class in Muscovy in the fourteenth
century. That century witnessed the rise of Moscow - along
Riazan* and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania - as with Tver1,
a response to the growing trade activity from the Baltic to
the East along the Volga and Dvina rivers. (13) This political
and economic opportunity gave the sovereign Danilovich clan
the booty, land and income to support a servitor elite of
boyars and their retinues, and thus was a primary factor
in the emergence of the boyar elite. The specific shape of THE BOYAR CLAN AND COURT POLITICS
Muscovite court politics, however, was more influenced by
events internal to the principality of Moscow.
In the fourteenth century Muscovy was but one of several
small princedoms in the Volga-Oka mesopotamia. (14) It was
the patrimonial home of a newly-formed line of the sovereign
Riurikovich clan of princes, descendants of the princes of
Kiev. The rulers of Moscow, the Danilovichi, took their name
from Daniil Aleksandrovich, who lived in the last quarter of
the thirteenth century and was most likely the first prince
of Moscow. (15) Only during the reign of Iurii Daniilovich
(1303-1325) and his brother Ivan Kalita (1325-1341), however,
did Moscow become a powerful regional center and the settled
home of the lineage. (16) The Danilovichi had no standing
army but relied upon the collected retinues of as many ser
vitors as they could support on their tax and booty income.
Their fortified settlement had mere wooden walls until 1366,
and they themselves lived in a complex of wooden buildings,
hardly a palace, until the 1480's and 1490's.(17) There was
no court bureaucracy nor official archive, only a few scribes
and a c