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Was There Private Property in Muscovite Russia?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Richard Pipes
Richard Pipes*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Harvard University
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Extract

In a recent article in the Slavic Review, George G. Weickhardt undertook to demonstrate that Russia "gradually developed a concept of private property for land which more or less approached that of the English 'fee simple' and that the only significant limitations on individual property in [pre-Petrine] Russia were in favor of the clan rather than the state" (665). This thesis runs counter to virtually the entire historical literature in Russian as well as foreign languages.

Type
Response
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , Summer 1994 , pp. 524 - 530
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1994

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References

1. “The Pre-Petrine Law of Property,” Slavic Review 52, no. 4 (Winter 1993): 663–79.

2. Istoriia SSSR, I (Moscow, 1956), 150, cited b'y A.A. Zimin in Voprosy istorii, no. 11 (1959): 132. This statement appears to be reworking of much more careful statement of L.V. Cherepnin, preceded by the word “juridically.” ( Cherepnin, L. V., Voprosy metodologii istoricheskogo issledovaniia [Moscow: Nauka, 1981], 120 Google Scholar).

3. “Due Process and Equal Justice in the Muscovite Codes,” The Russian Review 51 (October 1992): 463, 479.

4. The fact that pre-eighteenth century Russian legal documents had no term for “property” cannot be dismissed as casually as does Mr. Weickhardt (668). The term imenie, which he cites later on the same page in contradiction to himself as meaning “property,” M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov tells us, applied not to land but to personal property only, including cattle and sometimes housing (Obzor istorii russkago prava, 4th ed. [St. Petersburg-Kiev: Izd. knigoprodavtsa N. la. Ogloblina, 1905], 523–24); this is also the opinion of Shershenevich, G.F.: Uchebnik russkago grazhdanskago prava, 7th ed. [St. Petersburg: Izd. brat'ev Bashmakovykh, 1909], 241 Google Scholar.

5. S.F. Platonov, Ocherkipo istorii smuty v Moskovskom gosudarstve XVI-XVII vv. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoe izd-vo, 1937), 107.

6. R., Besnier in Annates d'histoire economique et sociale, no. 46 (31 July 1937): 328–29Google Scholar

7. Veselovskii, S. V., Feodal'noe zemlevladenie v severovostochnoi Rusi, I (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia Nauk SSSR, 1947), 47–48 Google Scholar, and in Istoricheskie zapiski, no. 10 (1941): 95–116. This prohibition was codified in the Ulozhenie, chap. XVII, art. 42.

8. Ulozhenie, chap. XVII, art. 43–44.

9. Cf. Ulozhenie, chap. XVI, art. 69. Zagoskin, Nikolai, Ocherki organizatsii i proiskhozhdeniia sluzhilogo sosloviia v do-Petrovskoi Rusi (Kazan: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1875), 87 Google Scholar.

10. Ulozhenie, chap. XVII, art. 1. See further Nikolai Zagoskin (Ocherki, 75–77) and Sergeevich, V. (Lektsii i issledovaniia po drevnei istorii russkago prava, 4th ed. [St. Petersburg: Tip. M.M. Stasiulevicha, 1910], 530–32Google Scholar), who enumerate other limitations on the disposal of votchiny in Moscow.

11. Veselovskii, Feodal'noe zemlevladenie, 89.

12. Rozhdestvenskii, S. V., Sluzhiloe zemlevladenie v Moskovskom gosudarstve XVI veka (St. Petersburg: Tip. V. Demakova, 1897), iii Google Scholar. D'iakonov believed that this practice began in Moscow as early as the 14th century (M. D'iakonov, Ocherki obshchestvennago i gosudarstvennago stroia drevnei Rusi, 4th ed. [St. Petersburg: Izd. iuridicheskago knizhnogo sklada “Pravo,” 1912], 250).

13. Rozhdestvenskii, Sluzhiloe zemlevladenie, 59.

14. D'iakonov, Ocherki, 262–63.

15. Polnoe sobranie letopisei (St. Petersburg: Tip. I.N. Skorokhodova, 1904), XIII: 396; Rozhdestvenskii, Sluzhiloe zemlevladenie, 60.

16. Zagoskin, Ocherki, 81–82, 87, 101.

17. Hittle, J. Michael, The Service City (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 34 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. A. Romanovich-Slaviatinskii, Dvorianstvo v Rossii, 2nd ed. (Kiev: Tor. pechatnia S.P. Iakovleva, 1912), 246Google Scholar.

18. Kulisher, I. M., Istoriia russkogo narodnogo khoziaistva, II (Moscow: Kooperativnoe izd-vo “Mir,” 1925), 70–71 Google Scholar.

19. Stashevskii, E. D., Zemlevladenie moskovskago dvorianstva v pervoi polovine XVII v. (Moscow: T-vo S.P. Iakovleva, 1911), 26–27 Google Scholar.

20. Veselovskii, Feodal'noe zemlevladenie, 284.

21. Pomialovskii, M.I. in Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnago Prosveshcheniia, no. 354 (July 1904): 95–97.Google Scholar

22. Kulisher, Istoriia, 67; Veselovskii, Feodal'noe zemlevladenie, 286.

23. Veselovskii, Feodal'noe zemlevladenie, 86–88.

24. Platonov, S. F., Ocherki po istorii smuty v Moskovskom gosudarstve XVI-XVII vv. (St. Petersburg: Izd. la. Bashmakova i Ko., 1910), 135–37Google Scholar; Skrynnikov, R.G. in Istoricheskie zapiski, no. 70 (1961): 223–50Google Scholar; and Zimin, A. A., Oprichnina Ivana Groznogo (Moscow: Mysl, 1964), 306–59Google Scholar. After the liquidation of the Oprichnina in 1572, some owners of the confiscated votchiny were permitted to petition for their return ( Veselovskii, S.B. in Istoricheskie zapiski, no. 10 [1941], 109–11Google Scholar).

25. Peretiatkovich, G., Povolzh'e v XV i XVI vekakh (Moscow: Tip. Gracheva, 1877), 246–53, 170 Google Scholar.

26. Smirnov, Pavel, Gowda Moskovskogo gosudarstva v pervoi polovine XVII veka, 1/2 (Kiev: Tip. A.I. Grosman, 1917), 12–16 Google Scholar.

27. Indova, E.I. in Pavlenko, E.I., ed., Dvorianstvo i krepostnoi stroi Rossii XVI-XVIII vv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), 279–80, 285–89Google Scholar.

28. Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, no. 16, 187, dated 21 April 1785.