¹ Poe, Marshall T. discusses these Western myths about Russia in his ‘ “Russian Despotism”: the Origins and Dissemination of an Early Modern Commonplace,’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1993).Google Scholar

² I think it is appropriate to apply the term ‘bureaucratic’ to Russian administrative practices from the mid- or late-sixteenth century on. Although clearly not yet reaching the heights of Weberian bureaucratic development that the nineteenth century would produce, Muscovite and Imperial Russian administrations fit many of Weber's definitions for bureaucratic structures. They were characterized by regularized procedure, specialized and highly trained staffs, explicitly specified hierarchies and posts, distinct jurisdictions and functions (albeit with significant grey zones and areas of overlap), and constant reference to written norms, records, and orders. For a thought-provoking discussion of this issue,Google Scholarsee Plavsic, Borivoj, ‘Seventeenth-Century Chanceries and their Staffs,’ in Pintner, Walter McKenzie and Rowney, Don Karl (eds), Russian Officialdom: The Bureaucratization of Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill, 1980), 21–45.Google Scholar

³ On Kiev's economic role, see Miller, David B., ‘The Kievan Principality in the Century Before the Mongol Invasion: An Inquiry into recent Research and Interpretation,’ Harvard Ukrainian Studies 10 (1986): 215–40;Google ScholarNoonan, Thomas S., ‘The Flourishing of Kiev's International and Domestic Trade, ca. 1100–ca. 1240,’ in Koropeckyj, I.S. (ed.), Ukrainian Economic History: Interpretive Essays (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Institute, 1991), 102–46.Google ScholarOn its spiritual role see Pritsak, Omeljan, ‘Kiev and All Rus': The Fate of a Sacral Idea,’ Harvard Ukrainian Studies 10 (1986): 279–300.Google Scholar I cannot comment on the relative importance of these various factors, nor will I hazard any guesses about demographic growth or decline. Population figures for Russia are too unreliable to put to meaningful use until the seventeenth century. The best work on Muscovite demography is Vodarskii, Ia. E., Naselenie Rossii v kontse XVII-nachale XVIII veka (Chislennost', soslovno-klassovyi sostav, razmeshchenie (Moscow, 1977).Google Scholar For vastly inflated figures for the early period, see Vernadsky, George, Kievan Russia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1948).Google Scholar

⁴ Vernadsky, Kievan Russia.Google Scholar

⁵ On the late development of a concept of Kiev as a grand princely political entity, see Poppe, Andrzej, ‘Words that Serve the Authority: On the Title of “Grand Prince” in Kievan Rus',’ Acta Poloniae Historica 60 (1989): 159–84;Google ScholarPritsak, ‘Kiev and All Rus': The Fate of a Sacral Idea,’ 279–90.Google Scholar

⁶ For the testaments, see Cross, Samuel Hazzard and Sherbowitz-Wetzor, Olgerd P. (trans, and ed.), The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurenlian Text (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Medieval Academy of America, 1968; rprt of 1953 ed.), e.g. 142.Google Scholar

⁷ Golden, Peter B., ‘Aspects of the Nomadic Factor in the Economic Development of Kievan Rus',’ in Koropeckyj, I.S. (ed.), Ukrainian Economic History: Interpretive Essays (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1991);Google ScholarHanak, W., ‘Some Conflicting Aspects of Byzantine and Varangian Political and Religious Thought in Early Kievan Russia,’ Byzantinoslavica 37 (1976): 46–55.Google Scholar

⁸ Lieberman, Victor, ‘Transcending East—West Dichotomies,’ this vol.Google Scholar

⁹ Pritsak, Omeljan, ‘The Origin of Rus',’ Russian Review 36 (1977): 249–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰ Pritsak, ‘Kiev and All Rus': The Fate of a Sacral Idea.’Google Scholar

¹¹ Hurwitz, Ellen, ‘Metropolitan Hilarion's Sermon on Law and Grace: Historical Consciousness in Kievan Rus',’ Russian History 7 (1980): 322–33.Google ScholarThe presence of universalist Christian elements in Rus’ culture appears to serve more the integrative function that Lieberman describes than the function of consolidating elite privilege that R.I. Moore sees in Western Europe.Google Scholar

¹² Franklin, Simon, ‘Literacy and Documentation in Early Medieval Russia,’ Speculum 60 (1985): 1–38;Google ScholarFroianov, I.Ia., Kievskaia Rus': Ocherki sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii (Leningrad, 1980).Google Scholar

¹³ Poe, Marshall T., ‘Elite Service Registry in Muscovy, 1500–1700,’ Russian History 21 (1994): 251–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴ Plavsic, ‘Seventeenth-Century Chanceries and their Staffs’;Google ScholarDemidova, N.F., ‘Gosudarstvennyi apparat Rossii v XVII veke,’ Istoricheskie zapiski 108 (1982): 109– 55;Google ScholarUstiugov, N.V., ‘Evoliutsiia prikaznogo stroia russkogo gosudarstva v XVII v.,’ in Druzhinin, N.M. (ed.), Absoliutizm v Rossii (XVII–XVIII vv.). Sbornik statei k semidesiatiletiiu so dnia rozhdeniia i sorokopiatiletiu nauchnoi i pedagogicheskoi deiatel'nosti B.B. Kafengauzja (Moscow, 1964), 134–67;Google ScholarZimin, A.A., ‘O slozhenii prikaznoi sistemy na Rusi,’ in Doklady i soobshcheniia Instituta Istorii (Akademii Nauk) 3 (1955): 164–76.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Halperin, Charles J., Russia and the Golden Horde: The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1985).Google Scholar

¹⁶ The case for Muscovite manipulation of the Horde in pursuing internal rivalries is most strongly articulated in John, Fennell, ‘The Tver Uprising of 1327: A Study of the Sources,’ Jahrbiicherfur Geschichte Osteuropas 15 (1967): 161–79.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Cherniavsky, Michael, ‘Ivan the Terrible and the Iconography of the Kremlin Cathedral of Archangel Michael,’ Russian History 2 (1975): 3–28;Google ScholarKeenan, Edward L., ‘On Certain Mythical Beliefs and Russian Behaviors,’ in Starr, S. Frederick (ed.), The Legacy of History in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (New York, 1994), 19–40.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Ostrowski, Donald, ‘The Mongol Origins of Muscovite Political Institutions,’ Slavic Review 49 (1990): 525–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁹ Alef, Gustave, ‘The Adoption of the Muscovite Two-Headed Eagle: A Discordant View,’ Speculum 41 (1966): 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649. Part I: Text and Translation (trans. and ed. by Hellie, Richard (Irvine, CA);Google Scholarand Hellie's series of articles providing commentary on the 1649 law code: ‘Early Modern Russian Law: The Ulozhenie of 1649,’ Russian History 15 (1988): 155–80;Google Scholar‘Ulozhenie Commentary—Preamble,’ Russian History 15 (1988): 181–224, esp. 183–4;Google Scholar‘Commentary on Chapters 3–6 of the Ulozhenie,’ Russian History 17 (1990): 65–78;Google Scholar‘Commentary on Chapter 11: The Judicial Process for Peasants of the Ulozhenie of 1649,’ Russian History 17 (1990): 3O5–39.Google Scholar

²¹ Tilly, Charles (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, 1975).Google Scholar

²² Lieberman, ‘Transcending East—West Dichotomies,’ this vol.Google Scholar

²³ On military reforms engendered by logistical problems, see Stevens, Carol Belkin, Soldiers on the Steppe: Army Reform and Social Change in Early Modern Russia (DeKalb, IL, 1995).Google Scholar

²⁴ Moore, R.I., ‘The Birth of Europe as a Eurasian Phenomenon,’ this vol.Google Scholar

²⁵ Kaiser, Daniel H., The Growth of the Law in Medieval Russia (Princeton, 1980), 180–1.Google Scholar

²⁶ Keenan, Edward L., talk presented at the Annual Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Philadelphia, November 1994.Google Scholar

²⁷ Keenan, , ‘On Certain Mythical Beliefs and Russian Behaviors.’Google Scholar

²⁸ This idea is advanced by Keenan, Edward L., ‘Muscovite Political Folkways,’ Russian Review 45 (1986): 142–3.Google Scholar Muscovites of all ranks further abased themselves, in the eyes of Western observers, when they petitioned the grand prince or tsar by submitting chelobit'ia, literally, by ‘beating their brow’ to the ground, kowtowing. This term dates to the mid-fourteenth century. Sreznevskii, I.I., Slovar’ drevnerusskogo iazyka, reprint edition (Moscow, 1989), Vol. 3, pt 2, cols 1488–89.Google ScholarFor a peculiar recent reading of Russian self-abasement, see Rancour-Laferriere, Daniel, The Slave Soul of Russia: Moral Masochism and the Cult of Suffering (New York, 1995).Google Scholar

²⁹ See Goody, Jack, Thirsk, Joan and Thompson, E.P. (eds), Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200–1800 (Cambridge, 1976),Google Scholarand my ‘The Effects of Partible Inheritance: Gentry Families and the State in Muscovy,’ Russian Review 53 1994): 197–212.Google Scholar

³⁰ For examples in English, see ‘Anti-Brigandage Charters and Decrees,’ in Dewey, Horace W. (comp., trans., and ed.), Muscovite Judicial Texts, 1488–1566 (Ann Arbor, 1966), 23–44;Google ScholarMuscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie), preamble.Google Scholar

³¹ On Assemblies of the Land: Ditiatin, I.I., Rol' chelobitii i zemskikh soborov v upravlenii Moskovskogo gosudarstva (Rostov-on-the-Don, 1905);Google ScholarZaozerskii, A.I., ‘K voprosu o sostave i znachenii zemskikh soborov,’ Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniia 21 (1909): 299–352.Google ScholarOn the on-going tradition of the eighteenth-century: Omel'chenko, O.A., ‘Zakonnaia monarkhija’ Ekateriny II: Prosveshchennyi absoliutizm v Rossii (Moscow, 1993).Google Scholar

³² Russkii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Drevnikh Aktov (RGADA) [Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts], Moscow, fond 210, Prikaznyi stol, no. 51, fol. 198.Google Scholar

³³ A good example is Chicherin, B.N., Oblastnye uchrezhdeniia v Rossii v XVIIom veke (Moscow, 1856).Google Scholar

³⁴ Baron, Samuel H., ‘Who Were the Gosti?’ California Slavic Studies 7 (1973): 1–40;Google ScholarBushkovitch, Paul, The Merchants of Moscow, 1580–1650 (Cambridge, 1980).Google Scholar

³⁵ Dewey, Horace and Kleimola, Ann, ‘Suretyship and Collective Responsibility in Pre-Petrine Russia,’ Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 18 (1970): 337–54;Google ScholarHellie, Richard, ‘The Stratification of Muscovite Society: The Townsmen,’ Russian History 5 (1978): 119–75.Google Scholar

³⁶ Lapman, Mark Charles, ‘Political Denunciations in Muscovy, 1600 to 1649: The Sovereign's Word and Deed’ (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1981).Google Scholar

³⁷ On mutual responsibility in France, lasting into the eighteenth century, see Root, Hilton Lewis, Peasants and King in Burgundy: Agrarian Foundations of French Absolutism (Berkeley, 1983). I cannot comment on the phenomenon elsewhere in Eurasia.Google Scholar

³⁸ Hoch, Steven L., ‘The Serf Economy and the Social Order in Russia,’ in Bush, M. L., ed., Slavery and Serfdom: Studies in Legal Bondage (Cambridge, 1996).Google Scholar On mutual responsibility in Kiev and Muscovy, in addition to Dewey and Kleimola, ‘Suretyship and Collective Responsibility in Pre-Petrine Russia,’ see Dewey, H.W. and Kleimola, A.M., ‘Russian Collective Consciousness: The Kievan Roots,’ Slavonic and East European Review 62 (1984): 180–91,Google Scholarand Dewey, Horace W., ‘Russia's Debt to the Mongols in Suretyship and Collective Responsibility,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 30 (1988): 249–70.Google Scholar

³⁹ Some of the most powerful statements of this new view of the limits of tsarist autocratic power are found in Daniel Rowland's articles, ‘The Problem of Advice in Muscovite Tales about the Time of Troubles,’ Russian History 6 (1979): 271–2,Google Scholarand ‘Did Muscovite Literary Ideology Place Any Limits on the Power of the Tsar?’ Russian Review 49 (1990): 125–56.Google Scholar A concise and convincing precis of the state of the literature is found in Nancy Shields Kollmann, ‘Honor and Society in Early Modern Russia,’ ch. 5, unpublished manuscript, 1995. I would like to thank her for permission to cite her unpublished work. For my contributions to this view, see ‘The Devil Stole His Mind: The Tsar and the 1648 Moscow Uprising,’ American Historical Review 98 (1993): 733–56.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ For lurid contemporary descriptions of the Oprichnina, see Schlichting, Albert, ‘ “A Brief Account of the Character and Brutal Reign of Vasil'evich, Tyrant of Muscovy” (Albert Schlichting on Ivan Groznyi),’ Canadian-American Slavic Studies 9 (1975): 204–72;Google ScholarStaden, Heinrich von, The Land and Government of Muscovy (Stanford, 1967).Google ScholarFor more scholarly analyses, see Platonov, S.F., Ivan the Terrible, ed. and trans, by Wieczynski, Joseph L. (Gulf Breeze, FL, 1974);Google ScholarGraham, Hugh F., ‘What Do We Really Know about Ivan the Terrible?’ Russian History 14 (1987).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans, by Sheridan, Alan (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

⁴² For examples: RGADA, f. 210, Vladimirskii stol, stlb. 146, 11. 124, 79–89 (1663/4); RGADA, f. 210, Prikaznyi stol, no. 384, 11. 420–1 (1666).Google Scholar

⁴³ On local resistance, see my Autocracy in the Provinces: Russian Political Culture and the Gentry in the Seventeenth Century (Stanford, 1997), chs 5–6.Google ScholarOn rebellions see Avrich, Paul, Russian Rebels, 1600–1800 (New York, 1972);Google ScholarBakhrushin, S.V., ‘Klassovaia bor'ba v russkikh gorodakh XVI-nachala XVII w.’ in his Nauchnye trudy, Vol. 1 of 4, pp. 204–36 (Moscow, 1952);Google ScholarBuganov, V.I., Moskovskie vosstaniia kontsa XVII veka (Moscow, 1969);Google ScholarChistiakova, E.V., Gorodskie vosstaniia v Rossii v pervoi polovine XVII veka (30–40e gody) (Voronezh, 1975);Google ScholarSmirnov, P.P., Posadskie liudi i ikh klassovaia bor'ba do serediny XVII veka, 2 vols (Moscow and Leningrad, 1947–1948).Google Scholar On the Schism see Cherniavsky, Michael, ‘The Old Believers and the New Religion,’ Slavic Review 25 (1966): 1–39;Google ScholarMichels, Georg Bernhard, ‘Myths and Realities of the Russian Schism: The Church and its Dissenters in Seventeenth Century Muscovy’ (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1991).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ RGADA, f. 210, Prikaznyi stol, no. 993, 11. 35–42. (Pigasov case covers 11. 1–107.)Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Ibid., 11. 24–6.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 11. 18–19.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 11. 98.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 11. 105–6.

⁵⁰ Kettering, Sharon, Patrons, Brokers, and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France (New York, 1986), 5.Google Scholar On the interstitial development of new phenomena within old structures, see also Mann, Michael, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760 (Cambridge, 1986), esp. 32, 436.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Kettering, Patrons, Brokers, and Clients, 224.Google Scholar

⁵² For example: Pamiatniki delovoi pis'mennosti XVII veka. Vladimirskii krai (Moscow, 1984), no. 257: 250; no. 261: 252–3; no. 264, p. 254.Google Scholar

⁵³ Armstrong, John A., ‘Old-Regime Governors: Bureaucratic and Patrimonial Attributes.’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 14 (1972): 2–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁴ See my Autocracy in the Provinces, chs 7–8.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Anisimov, Evgenii V., The Reforms of Peter the Great: Progress through Coercion in Russia, trans. Alexander, John T. (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Cherniavsky, ‘The Old Believers and the New Religion,’ figures 7 and 8.Google Scholar