The Old Russian period (IX-the first third of the XIII century) is the beginning of the history of three fraternal peoples, the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, which developed from a single Old Russian nationality; this is the time of the emergence and subsequent development of the largest multi-ethnic Old Russian state in medieval Europe, whose socio-economic and political system was determined by the development of productive forces lands of the East Slavic ethnic group. Ancient Russia attracted the attention of scientists belonging to various research areas, and its study was often associated with modern problems.
The socio-economic and political history of Ancient Russia is complex and multifaceted. There are relatively few surviving sources. Specialists have always faced the most difficult triune problem: to correctly understand individual phenomena of the historical process, to establish their totality in dialectical interrelation, to determine their essence. Their study is all the more difficult because the study of ancient Russian history was inextricably linked not only with the development of historical science, its methods, the expansion of the source base and the improvement of source analysis, but also with the development of social thought and social life itself in modern and modern times. Therefore, when determining the trends and tasks of studying the genesis of feudalism in Ancient Russia, it is advisable to distinguish three sets of questions: historiography, theory, and practice of studying the problem.
Already in the second half of the 18th century, Russian noble historiography used the concepts of "feudalism", "feudal system", "feudal rule","feuds" -estates, etc. in relation to ancient Russian history1 . Their use reflected the beginning of the study of feudalism as a certain social system in Western European noble-bourgeois science. The historiosophical concept of" enlightened absolutism", formulated in Russia by Catherine II, did not contrast the development of Russia and other European countries, but noted its similarity. 2 However, the ideas of "feudal rule" in Russia, the identification of the fief and the estate turned out to be filled with revolutionary content in the context of the growing crisis of the feudal system, the Peasant War under the leadership of E. I. Pugachev, and the French bourgeois Revolution of the late XVIII century. Therefore, both liberal-noble historiography and (especially) the conservative-noble trend began to limit the concept of "feudalism", identifying it with
1 Antidote (Antidote). Polemical work of Catherine II. The seventeenth century. Book 4. M. 1869, p. 304, 314; Boltin I. Notes on the History of ancient and present Russia by G. Leclerc. Vol. I. SPb. 1788, p. 478-479; vol. II, p. 298-300; Elagin I. Experience of narration about Russia. Book I. M. 1803, pp. 276-277. Here and further only the main directions in the historiography of the problem are outlined.
2 Antidote, p. 289.
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the feudal system and the weakening of monarchical power, referring feudalism only to the oldest period of Russian history. Thus, N. M. Karamzin mentioned feudalism in connection with the Norman conquest, combining the autocratic-monarchical concept with Normanism3 .
Such a limited understanding of feudalism based on one of its external manifestations was one of the reasons that for A. N. Radishchev, N. I. Novikov, and the Decembrists, the autocratic feudal system of Russia, which they denounced and fought, was not associated with feudal relations as a socio-economic system. However, the reality of Russia at that time and the practice of bourgeois revolutions in Europe at the end of the XVIII - first quarter of the XIX century indicated this connection. Therefore, in the program of reforms outlined by him, M. M. Speransky characterized the autocracy as a feudal system: "In the general movement of human reason, our state now stands in the second epoch of the feudal system, that is, in the epoch of autocracy, and, without a doubt, has a direct direction towards freedom." 4 P. I. Pestel, using the works of O. Thierry and F. Guizot, but in a tone of revolutionary denunciation and largely independently formulating the main ideas of the concept, wrote about the existence of the feudal system in all European countries, including Russia 5 .
This very essence of the theory of feudalism in connection with the analysis of the autocratic-feudal reality of Russia and the formation of the revolutionary programs of the liberation movement, as well as the practice of the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, caused the Nicholas reactionary concept of "Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality" to launch an attack on the theory of feudalism in Russia in order to contrast the historical development of Russia and Western Europe, to leave feudalism only last and hide social conflicts behind the pseudo-idyllic picture of All-Russian harmony. This is how one of the leaders of the autocratic-protective direction in historical science, M. P. Pogodin, fulfilled the social order, who wrote:: "The prince dealt with the people face to face as their defender and judge in cases, however, very rare, for which he received a certain tribute.. and the western sovereign was completely separated by his vassals"; the boyars and men "did not constitute a special class, a numerous estate, a strong element, but were only the front row of the princely retinue, guards, and squads"; "the feudal lords of the West, having taken away the land and forced its inhabitants to work for themselves, from the very beginning put themselves in the position of a ruler. in a hostile attitude towards them, and our boyars, having nothing to do with the people, except collecting tribute and the court, lived in good harmony with them. " 6
However, the idealization and archaization of social relations in Ancient Russia was caused not only by the onslaught of official ideology. Noble-bourgeois science selected, without objective criteria, and absolutized, in accordance with the idealistic historiosophical concept, a single phenomenon of the historical process as a whole.
3 Karamzin N. M. Istoriya gosudarstva Rossiiskogo [History of the Russian State].
4 Speransky M. M. Proekty i zapiski [Projects and Notes], Moscow, 1961, p.160.
5 Vosstanie decembristov [The Decembrist Uprising], vol. VII, Moscow, 1958, pp. 295-296.
6 Pogodin M. Research, comments and lectures on Russian history. Vol. III. M. 1846, pp. 500-503. Bourgeois historiography could not reveal the origin, socio-economic content and functions of state taxes. Professors of leading Russian universities taught students not long before the Great October Socialist Revolution: "The Kievan princes in essence represent the defenders of the country, who for a certain fee protect society from the enemy" (Platonov S. F. Lectures on Russian History, St. Petersburg, 1913, p. 73); "for external and internal defense, the prince received various incomes from the population" (Lyubavsky M. K. Lectures on ancient Russian History before the end of the XVI century. Moscow, 1916, p. 126).
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the determining cause of social development. This determined the subjective selection of facts and their corresponding interpretation.
This is the essence of the generic theory that explains the social system of Ancient Russia by family-clan relations. The communal theory, consistently pursued by the Slavophiles, implied an idyllic unity of communities living without social differentiation and class struggle, led by a grand ducal power that performs a generally useful unifying function. This was, according to the Slavophiles, the opposite of the feudal society of Western Europe, with its chivalry, free cities and royal power. In the" Russian society of ancient times", according to I. V. Kireevsky, " you see innumerable small communities spread out all over the face of the Russian land, each with certain rights of its own steward, and each forming its own special concord or its own small world: these small worlds or concords merge into other, larger concords. which, in turn, constitute regional and, finally, tribal agreements, which already constitute one general, enormous agreement of the entire Russian land, which has the Grand Duke of all Russia over it, on which the entire roof of the public building is established, and all the connections of its supreme structure are based. " 7 The backwater theory then only modified the communal theory, and the so-called state school put forward the state, understood as an extra-class institution, as the main cause of historical progress.
For bourgeois historiography of the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, the study of the Old Russian social system presented particular difficulties. Idealistic theories proved to be helpless where objective criteria for analyzing the historical process are particularly important. Therefore, in such studies, the analysis focused on secondary, more often external phenomena of reality, while the absolutization of one of them led to a one-sided representation of it and to selective, illustrative use of sources. Meanwhile, the range of sources introduced into scientific circulation expanded, the methods of studying them became more perfect, and this was one of the contradictions in the development of bourgeois historical science.
N. I. Kostomarov believed that the federal beginning of the "lands", consisting of older cities, suburbs and rural volosts, with the exercise of power over them through the people's assembly-veche, was decisive for the Old Russian period. The prince was chosen by the "land" "for order", "protection", court, "truth", people were divided into free and slaves 8 . According to V. I. Sergeevich, the "veche way of life" characteristic of Ancient Russia is a form of "participation of the people in public affairs"; "the occupation of tables by princes depends on the will of the people"; the volost, "which formed the national assembly", is a city or cities with suburbs; " the entire population is a uniform mass, different layers of which they differed from one another in dignity, not in rights"; there are no estates, the entire free population is simple "people" and noble " men " 9 . Sergeyevich and Kostomarov recognized the existence of categories of dominant and dependent people, but outside the socio-economic system. Generalizing concepts of "people" and" people " smeared the class differentiation of ancient Russian society 10 .
7 Kireevsky I. V. Poln. sobr. soch. Vol. II. Moscow, 1861, pp. 264-265.
8 Kostomarov N. Istoricheskie monografii i issledovaniya [Historical Monographs and Research], vol. 12, St. Petersburg, 1872, pp. 5-67.
9 Sergeyevich V. I. Veche i knyaz [Veche and knyaz]. Russian polity and governance during the time of Prince Rurik. M. 1867, pp. 1, 20 - 32, 41 - 85.
10 Such ideas about the socio-political system of Russia, about the role of the "people", "veche", etc. are firmly embedded in bourgeois literature (Diakonov M. Essays
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Following the reactionary official concept of contrasting the historical development of Russia and the countries of Western Europe, the noble-bourgeois historiography of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also rejected (even as a means of comparative historical analysis or generalization) the theory of feudalism in Russia and only occasionally called individual phenomena feudal. As N. P. Pavlov-Silvansky noted, "the denial of any similarity between Russian antiquity and Western antiquity has become the prevailing preconceived idea, as if a sign of learning and good taste." 11 N. I. Kareev wrote about the same thing: "We did not have feudalism - that was the prevailing point of view of our historiography. Among historians, it was indecent to find feudalism in Russia. " 12
The positivist methodology that prevailed from the 1860s to the beginning of the twentieth century absolutized the meaning of individual facts and their connections, and did not help to reveal the essence of the historical process. Therefore, even the most prominent researchers of that time, V. O. Klyuchevsky and N. P. Pavlov-Silvansky, whose works had a great influence on bourgeois historiography, could not scientifically systematize various social and economic phenomena, which often led to artificial explanations of their connections. According to Klyuchevsky, the state did not exist in Ancient Russia. The form of organization of "Dnieper" Russia in the eighth and thirteenth centuries was its fragmentation "into more or less separate regions, in each of which the political and economic center is a large commercial city, the first organizer and leader of its political life." He considered forestry, hunting and beekeeping to be the mainstay of the economy of that period13 . It followed that " the Kiev boyar of the XI-XII centuries. - a free companion of his prince and, like him, a political vagabond who never took deep roots anywhere";" The boyars also developed the strongest tie to the place - land ownership"; princes and their squads were"migratory birds of the Russian land" 14 . True, Klyuchevsky recognized that the boyars of Russkaya Pravda were "a class of privileged landowners." 15 However, "the economic well-being of Kievan Rus in the 11th and 12th centuries was based on slave ownership"; slave ownership was "the original legal and economic source of Russian land ownership"; "people from high society began to put servants on the land, apply slave ownership to land ownership" 16 .
Pavlov-Silvansky, at the latest historiographical level for his time (following G. L. Maurer, M. M. Kovalevsky, K. Lamprecht, P. G. Vinogradov), noted the predominance in Ancient Russia of the neighboring community-the mark and the volost community, in which he considered the "main basis" of the oldest state system. In the XIII-XVI centuries. he saw the "triumph of the boyars over the community" and therefore attributed the development of feudalism to this period, which he understood as a complex of seigniorial and fief-vassal relations .17 It was a new word in Russian bourgeois historiography. His concept penetrated much deeper into the essence of socio-economic activity.
Public and State system of Ancient Russia, St. Petersburg, 1912, pp. 69-73, 117-136; Vladimirsky-Budanov M. F. Review of the history of Russian Law. 1915, pp. 58-60; Kievan Rus. Collection of articles under the editorship of V. N. Storozhev. T. I. M. 1910, pp. 433-468).
11 Pavlov-Silvansky N. P. Feudalism in Ancient Russia, St. Petersburg, 1907, p. 19.
12 Kareev N. In what sense can we speak about the existence of feudalism in Russia? On the Pavlov-Silvansky theory, St. Petersburg, 1910, p. 6.
13 Klyuchevsky V. O. Soch. Vol. 1. Moscow, 1956, pp. 32-33.
14 Klyuchevsky V. O. Boyar Duma of Ancient Russia. Pg. 1919, p. 4; it is the same. Soch. Vol. 1, pp. 197, 199.
15 Klyuchevsky V. O. Soch. Vol. 1, p. 245.
16 Ibid., pp. 274-275.
17 Pavlov-Silvansky N. P. Uk. soch., pp. 69-72.
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the nature of the master economy of the 13th-16th centuries and class-hierarchical relations, the developed types of which he reasonably compared with identical types in feudal Western Europe.
However, the limited identification of the "main features" of feudalism and the identification by analogy did not allow Pavlov-Silvansky to reveal the system of feudalism as a whole, as well as to establish its genesis and its features in Russia, which ultimately led only to a modification of the scheme of historical development taken from previous schools of bourgeois historiography: "from prehistoric antiquity to the XII century." the "main institution" is the community; from the XIII century to the middle of the XVI century - the boyar region-the seigniory; in the XVI-XVIII, partly XIX centuries-the estate state. At the same time, the quantitative predominance of free neighbor and volost communities before the XIII century turned out to be in Pavlov-Silvansky's own existence, outside the qualitative characteristics of the social system as a whole: "Worldly self-government, starting with the lowest self-governing branches to the highest self-governing union: land, tribe, with a full-fledged national assembly, vechem"; and " alien princes"with squads and posadniks" are an element imposed from above on the system of secular self-government, and the veche retains its sovereign power, summoning princes and expelling them " 18 . On the other hand, the understanding of feudalism as a complex of "basic features" logically led to the idea that the time preceding feudalism thus understood was the "pre-feudal period".19
Positivist methodology and methods of research were the reason for preserving in Russian bourgeois historiography, even in the works of its most talented representatives, the metaphysical fragmentation of individual aspects of ancient Russian historical reality, studying them in limited connections, usually in opposition: prince and veche, prince and squad, prince and smerds, boyars and servants, etc. outside of the class formation process. The state in Ancient Russia was denied or considered outside of its socio-economic and political nature and functions. The analysis of facts did not establish their true content, the study of phenomena - their essence.
Marxist methodology revealed qualitatively new research opportunities and set fundamentally new scientific tasks.: "Pre-Marxian "sociology" and historiography at best provided an accumulation of raw facts, sketchily typed, and an image of individual aspects of the historical process. Marxism has shown the way to a comprehensive, comprehensive study of the process of the emergence, development and decline of socio-economic formations, considering the totality of all contradictory tendencies, reducing them to precisely defined conditions of life and production of various classes of society, eliminating subjectivism and arbitrariness in the choice of individual "dominant" ideas or in their interpretation, revealing the roots of all ideas without exception and all the various tendencies in the state of the material productive forces. People create their own history, but what determines the motives of people and precisely the masses of people, what causes the collisions of contradictory ideas and aspirations, what is the totality of all these collisions of the entire mass of human societies, what are the objective conditions for the production of material life that create the basis for all historical activity of people, what is the law of Marx also pointed out the way to the scientific
18 Ibid., pp. 146-147.
19 Rozhkov N. A. Russian history in comparative historical coverage (fundamentals of social dynamics). Vol. I Pg. - M. 1919, pp. 82-92.
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the study of history as a single, natural process in all its enormous versatility and inconsistency " 20 .
Marx, Engels, and Lenin laid the foundations for the study of the historical process as a change in socio-economic formations, formulated objective criteria for their analysis, without which further fruitful study of history, including the development of the social system in Ancient Russia, became impossible. The Marxist-Leninist methodology revealed the prerequisites for establishing its formation affiliation in the level of development of productive forces and production relations. Without using Lenin's definition of "class" 21, further study of the structure of ancient Russian society became pointless. Finally, the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the state revealed the causality of the appearance of the Old Russian state and showed the content of its functions .22 Marxist-Leninist theory has created fruitful opportunities for materialistic study of the formation of feudal relations.
The Marxist doctrine of the development of feudalism in Ancient Russia went through a relatively long path of formation in Soviet historiography: mastering the main provisions of Marxism, discussing in creative discussions of the late 1920s-early 1930s the content of pre-capitalist formations, such concepts as the Asian mode of production, feudalism, natural economy, rent relations under feudalism, mandatory or compulsory labor, etc. the non-necessity of the slave-owning formation or slave-owning mode of production as prerequisites for the development of feudalism. The development of Lenin's scientific generalizations was of great importance for the development of the Marxist trend in the study of the social system of Ancient Russia. "Serfdom," he wrote, "can and has kept millions of peasants downtrodden for centuries (for example, in Russia from the ninth to the nineteenth century)." 23 In accordance with the terminology of the time, Lenin used the term "serfdom" in this case instead of "feudalism" (cf.in his lecture "On the State": "Each of these major periods of human history - slave - owning, serf-owning, and capitalist-spans tens and hundreds of centuries"24). Lenin attributed to the XI century, the time of Russkaya Pravda, the enslavement of the Smerdas and the existence of the otrabotochnaya system25 . An important role in overcoming the tradition of bourgeois historiography, from Kostomarov to Klyuchevsky, to consider Ancient Russia as a federation, a conglomerate of separate lands, volosts and cities with surrounding lands was played by the introduction into scientific circulation of Marx's definition of the Old Russian state as the "Rurik empire"26 . Creative thought was also stimulated by Marx's characterization of the old Russian political system of the 9th-11th centuries as "a vassalage without fiefs, or fiefs consisting only of tributes" .27
20 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 26, pp. 57-58.
21 See ibid., vol. 39, p. 15.
22 See ibid., p. 73.
23 Ibid., vol. 25, p. 237.
24 Ibid., vol. 39, pp. 71-72.
25 Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 199, 314, 628; vol. 15, p. 131. For more information about Lenin's statements on the history of Ancient Russia, see Sakharov A.M. V. I. Lenin on the socio-economic development of feudal Russia. - Voprosy istorii, 1960, No. 4; his own journal. Lenin on the main stages of the development of the Russian state (before the abolition of serfdom). In: V. I. Lenin and Historical Science, Moscow, 1968. V. I. Lenin's work on sources on Russian history. - Voprosy istorii, 1970, N 4; Mavrodin V. V. Feudalnaya Rossiya v trudakh V. I. Lenin [Feudal Russia in the Works of V. I. Lenin]. - Ibid.; Cherepnin L. V. Some problems of the history of Russian feudalism in the works of V. I. Lenin. In: Cherepnin L. V. Voprosy metodologii istoricheskogo issledovaniya [Issues of methodology of historical research], Moscow, 1981.
26 Marx K. Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century. Lnd. 1899, p. 77.
27 Ibid., p. 76.
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The young Soviet Marxist science showed the methodological inconsistency of neo-Kantianism in historical research (this tradition still continued in the Russian historiography of the 20s28), but positivist views and economic materialism were overcome with difficulty, which was manifested, in particular, in the long-term influence of the theories of Klyuchevsky and Pavlov-Silvansky. already after the Great October, he still depicted the Old Russian period according to Klyuchevsky, considering the first Russian "sovereigns" as "leaders of slave trading gangs" who did not "manage" anything: "Only from the 11th century did the princes begin to gradually take care of "order" in those cities that were formed, little by little, near the slave traders 'camps""urban Russia of the 10th-11th centuries did not yet know social classes"29 . Even towards the end of his creative career, Pokrovsky did not always reveal the content of feudalism as a socio-economic formation and limited himself to derived "political features" according to Pavlov-Silvansky: "The connection of state power with land ownership and the hierarchy of landowners"30 . Therefore, the opinion that "Pokrovsky's interpretation of the problems of the emergence and development of feudalism was essentially Marxist" is not convincing, while his understanding of "the process of decomposition of feudal and the genesis of capitalist relations was largely influenced by economic materialism".31 . It seems that Pokrovsky's understanding of the genesis of feudalism was also determined by economic materialism.
Marxist-Leninist science has overcome the "infantile disease" of quoting, the perception of the creative teaching of Marxism-Leninism as dogma, and not as a guide in the dialectical-materialist knowledge of the laws of history. Most of the participants in the discussions of 1933-1934 were already aware of the existence of feudalism in Ancient Russia. At that time, several conceptual approaches were proposed to determine its content. The absolutization of slavery as the initial form of exploitation presupposed the social structure of Ancient Russia consisting of slaves, slave owners and free community members. A continuation of this idea was the idea of slavery as the initial basis of the feudal lords ' economy, the primary form of enslavement of free community members, and the initial form of exploitation that was transformed into feudal relations .32 But in this opinion, the a priori logical aspect prevailed over concrete historical research, and selective quoting of the works of the founders of Marxism-Leninism turned into a "battle of quotations".
In contrast to this approach, B. D. Grekov comprehensively uses historical analysis, linguistic materials, and archaeological evidence.-
28 Lappo-Danilevsky A. S. Metodologiya istorii [Methodology of history]. 1923; Petrushevsky D. M. Feudalism and modern historical science. In: From the Distant. Pg. - M. 1923; it is the same. Essays from the Economic Historian of Medieval Europe, Moscow-L. 1928; see also: Disput o kniga D. M. Petrushevsky. - Marxist Historian, 1928, vol. 8; Pokrovsky M. N. " New " trends in Russian historical literature. - Ibid., vol. 7.
29 Pokrovsky M. N. Russkaya istoriya v most szhatomom ocherke [Russian History in the most concise essay]. Moscow, 1920, pp. 28, 30.
30 Pokrovsky M. N. On Russian feudalism, the origin and character of absolutism in Russia. - Class Struggle, 1931, N 2, pp. 81-82.
31 Danilova L. V. Formation of the Marxist trend in Soviet historiography of the Feudal era. In: Istoricheskie zapiski, vol. 76, p. 83.
32 Smirnov I. I. Feudal-feudal society. In: Kovalev S. I. et al. A brief introduction to the history of pre-capitalist formations, Moscow-L. 1934; Bykovsky S. N. et al. Osnovnye problemy genezisa i razvitiya feudalnogo obshchestva [The main problems of the genesis and development of feudal society]. Moscow-L. 1934; Discussion on the report of B. D. Grekov "Slavery and Feudalism in ancient Russia". - Izvestiya GAIMK, M.-L., 1934, vol. 86; and others.
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He concluded that the basis of the economy of Ancient Russia was agriculture, primarily agriculture. This was confirmed by the subsequent development of science. If in bourgeois historiography such a conclusion became final, then for Marxist research, the definition of the system of social production and the forms of division of labor is only the beginning of the analysis of production relations, property relations and, on this basis, the process of class formation instead of the previous descriptive depiction of individual social categories. Noting the decisive importance of large-scale land ownership and feudal forms of exploitation based on non-economic coercion, Grekov established the presence in Kievan Rus of the X-XII centuries of feudal lordly economy, princely and boyar, and noted the feudal nature of the organization of the ruling class and the political system. Studying on concrete historical material the genesis of feudalism as a result of the decomposition of the tribal system, Grekov recognized the presence of slaves in Russia (servants, serfs), but pointed out their difference from the slaves of ancient times .33 Grekov's concept revealed the feudal nature of social relations in Russia. It contained fruitful possibilities for covering the entire feudal formation in the analysis of inter-class and intra-class relations of the ruling class, the free and dependent peasantry, taking into account feudal monopolization of land ownership rights and non-economic coercion .34 Grekov's concept had a great positive impact on researchers and developed successfully under the influence of new works.
The second half of the 30s-50s were the time to test the main provisions and further develop this concept. Its main provisions were deepened, elements of the social structure and their connections were more widely covered. The rise of Soviet archaeology allowed us to raise the problems of the development of the social system in the process of ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs, the development of productive villages, the history of the city and village of Ancient Russia to a qualitatively new level (works by V. I. Ravdonikas, A.V. Artsikhovsky, B. A. Rybakov, P. N. Tretyakov, N. N. Voronin, and a number of other researchers). M. N. Tikhomirov showed the socio-economic structure of the ancient Russian city as a feudal trade and craft center. An opponent of Grekov on many issues, in particular, who assigned a significant role to slavery, but agreed with the concept of feudal development of Ancient Russia, S. V. Yushkov fruitfully studied the ways of forming the ruling class of feudal lords: the consolidation of its various parts by origin, the formation of vassalage and ministeriality, the transformation of tribute into feudal rent .35 He identified the IX-X centuries. in a special "pre-feudal period", for which he considered the existence and struggle of three ways of life - primitive communal, slave-owning and feudal 36 . However, K. V. Bazilevich noted that the concept of the "pre-feudal period", which is not attributed to "any of the existing socio-economic formations, has no historical meaning" 37 .
33 Grekov B. D. The initial period in the history of Russian feudalism. - Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1933, N 7; his. Slavery and feudalism in Ancient Russia. - Izvestiya GAIMK, vol. 86; his own. Was ancient Russia a slave-owning society? - Class Struggle, 1935, No. 3; same name. Feudal relations in the Kievan state. Moscow-L. 1936; his. Kievan Rus. Moscow-L. 1939; et al.
34 Grekov B. D. Kievan Rus ' i problema genezisa russkogo feodalizma u M. N. Pokrovskogo [Kievan Rus and the problem of the Genesis of Russian feudalism in M. N. Pokrovsky]. - Marxist Historian, 1937, books 5-6, p. 47.
35 Yushkov S. V. Ocherki po istorii feodalizma v Kyivskoi Rus ' [Essays on the history of feudalism in Kievan Rus].
36 Yushkov S. V. On the issue of the pre-feudal ("barbarian") state. - Voprosy istorii, 1946, N 7, p. 60.
37 K. Bazilevich Experience of periodization of the history of the USSR in the feudal period. - Ibid., 1949, N 11, p. 70.
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Along with Grekov's concept, there were other research approaches in the late 30s and early 50s. The absolutization of the slave-owning stage of development as mandatory led A.V. Shestakov to the opinion of the slave-owning system of Russia in the VIII-IX centuries, which coexisted with the remnants of the primitive communal way of life and with "the beginnings of a new, feudal formation". P. P. Smirnov wrote about the presence of a slave-owning formation in Russia up to the XII century, reviving the former formal analogies of ancient Russian cities and ancient cities. policies 38 . By the beginning of the 1950s, there was a tendency for class relations to become more ancient, and the struggle was already attributed to the sixth century in three ways: primitive communal, slave-owning (with the "widespread development of the institution of slavery"), and emerging feudal 39 . Under the influence of this trend, the Greeks also began to characterize the VI-VIII centuries. in the history of Eastern Slavs as a period of "semi-patriarchal-semi-feudal"40 .
In the mid-50s - early 80s, the study of the social system of Ancient Russia shows the development of opposite trends. When studying the genesis of feudalism, B. A. Rybakov paid special attention to the definition of the content of the initial stage, describing it as a pre-feudal transition period from the last stage of the primitive communal system to the feudal one with the processes of class formation and the growth of the prerequisites for feudalism: the formation of a neighboring community, the appearance of boyars-feudal lords, feudal forms of exploitation of peasants 41 . I. I. Smirnov continued Grekov's traditions in studying the categories of feudal dependent population 42 . L. V. Cherepnin investigated state forms of exploitation of peasants through tribute as the realization of the feudal state's ownership of land, noting that in the period of early feudalism (X - first half of the XI century), the majority of the population of the feudal state was occupied by the feudal state. the state's supreme ownership of land, and in the period of developed feudalism (from the second half of the twelfth century), 43 the growing patrimonial property was of primary importance.
38 Shestakov A.V. On some issues of historical science. Uchitelskaya Gazeta, 21.V. 1939; Discussion on the report of Academician B. D. Grekov June 4-11, 1939-Marxist Historian, 1939, book 4, pp. 191-94.
39 Dovzhenok V., Braichevsky M. About the time of the formation of feudalism in ancient Russia. - Вопросы истории, 1950, N 8; Довженок В. И. Про дофеодальний період в історії Руси. - Археологія, Київ, 1952, т. VI.
40 Grekov B. D. Genesis of feudalism in Russia in the light of J. V. Stalin's Teaching on the basis and superstructure. - Voprosy istorii, 1952, N 5, p. 43.
41 Rybakov B. A. Formation of the Old Russian state with the center in Kiev. In: World History, vol. 3, Moscow, 1957. Prerequisites for the formation of the Old Russian state. In: Essays on the history of the USSR. The crisis of the slave system and the emergence of feudalism in the USSR. VIII-IX centuries. Moscow, 1958. Review of general phenomena of Russian history in the 9th-mid-13th century. - Voprosy istorii, 1962, No. 4; his own journal. The first centuries of Russian history, Moscow, 1964; his Smerdy. - History of the USSR, 1979, NN 1-2; his. Kievan Rus and Russian principalities of the XII-XIII centuries. Moscow, 1982.
42 Smirnov I. I. Ocherki sotsial'no-ekonomicheskikh otnosheniy Rusi XII-XIII vekov [Essays on socio-economic relations of Russia in the 12th-13th centuries].
43 Tcherepnin L. V. Osnovnye etapy razvitiya feudal'noi sobstvennosti na Rusi (do XVII V.) [The main stages of the development of feudal property in Russia (up to the 17th century)]. Russia. Controversial issues of the history of feudal land ownership in the IX-XV centuries. In: Novoseltsev A. P., Pashuto V. T., Tcherepnin L. V. Puti razvitiya feodalizma [Ways of development of feudalism], Moscow, 1972; see also Shchapov Ya. N. O sotsial'no-ekonomicheskikh ulozhakh v Drevnoi Rus ' XI-pervoi poloviny XII V. In: Aktual'nye problemy istorii Rossii epokhi feodalizma [Actual Problems of the History of Russia in the Era of Feudalism], Moscow, 1970; Kashtanov S. M. Feudal immunity in the light of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of Land Rent. - Ibid.; Rapov O. M. On some aspects of princely land ownership in Kievan Rus. In: The Formation of Early Feudal Slavic States. Kyiv. 1972.
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The development of Grekov's concept led to further analysis of the feudal political structure of a single multi-ethnic Old Russian state, 44 the church as a corporate feudal institution, 45 urban large-scale boyar economy, patrimonial crafts and trade, corporate feudal land ownership in Novgorod land, as well as the formation of extensive land fiefdoms there since the 12th century, 46 the process of class formation based on feudal forms exploitation of personally free and feudally dependent direct producers in the systems of the master economy and the state 47, features of the country's socio-economic development in the periods of early, developed and late feudalism 48 . A comparative historical study of the development of feudalism in Russia and other medieval states has begun .49 The specific historical content of the feudal system in Ancient Russia is being revealed more and more profoundly by a rapidly growing number of diverse studies by historians, archaeologists and philologists, primarily in the RSFSR, Ukraine and Belarus.
Thus, Grekov's concept of the development of feudal relations in Russia in the IX-XIII centuries was confirmed and developed by numerous studies of the 50s-early 80s, and the research directions outlined by her were continued, deepened and significantly developed along with the improvement of the study methodology, while the conclusions were enriched or partially revised with the accumulation of new materials. The fruitfulness of Grekov's concept also manifested itself in the fact that it created prerequisites for revealing the genesis of feudalism in Russia as the formation of a certain socio-economic formation.
But at the same time, other approaches to the study of the social system of Ancient Russia were proposed, suggesting its non-feudal nature or the special significance of slavery, which returned the science to its old points of view. S. A. Pokrovsky, like the researchers of the late 20s and early 30s, believed that slavery was the cause of the economic and political influence of the nobility. At the same time, he supported the opinion of the 40s-early 50s about the existence of a class of large landowners - feudal lords in the VIII-IX centuries. But having identified, like many of his predecessors, the servants and serfs with the slaves, he saw in the development of serfdom in the twelfth century the evolution of slavery .50 According to A. A. Zimin, feudal forms of exploitation in Ancient Russia appeared as a result of the decomposition of serfdom - slavery, in connection with which he concluded that the value of slavery was reduced in the XII century. The free community, according to Zimin, is judicially subordinate to the prince and pays tribute; in the second half of the XI century.
44 Pashuto V. T. Cherty politicheskogo stroya drevnoi Rus ' [Features of the political system of ancient Russia]. In: Novoseltsev A. P. et al. Drevnerusskoe gosudarstvo i ego mezhdunarodnoe znachenie [The Old Russian state and its international significance]. Features of the structure of the Old Russian state. - In the same place.
45 Shchapov Ya. N. The Church in the system of state power in Ancient Russia. "Same place; same place. Princely charters and the Church in Ancient Russia of the XI-XIV centuries. Moscow, 1972.
46 Yanin V. L., Kolchin B. A. Itogi i perspektivy novgorodskoy arkheologii [Results and prospects of Novgorod archeology]. In: Archaeological Study of Novgorod, Moscow, 1978; Yanin V. L. Novgorod Feudal Patrimony (Historical and genealogical research), Moscow, 1981. Socio-political structure of Novgorod in the light of archaeological research. In: Novgorodskiy sbornik [Novgorod Collection], vol. I (11), Moscow, 1982. An archaeological commentary on Russkaya Pravda. In: Novgorodsky sbornik. 50 years of excavations of Novgorod, Moscow, 1982.
47 Sverdlov M. B. Genezis i struktura feudalnogo obshchestva v Drevnoi Rus ' [Genesis and structure of feudal society in Ancient Russia].
48 Buganov V. I., Preobrazhenskiy A. A., Tikhonov Yu. A. Evolution of feudalism in Russia. Socio-economic problems, Moscow, 1980.
49 Novoseltsev A. P., Pashuto V. T., Cherepnin L. V. Uk. soch.; Novoseltsev A. P., Pashuto V. T., Shchapov Ya. N. Matured problems of typology of the oldest states of our country. In: Problems of socio-economic formations, Moscow, 1975; et al.
50 Pokrovsky S. A. Social system of the Ancient Russian state. - Proceedings of the All-Union Legal Correspondence Institute, Moscow, 1970, vol. XIV.
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the transformation of this tribute into rent has begun .51 This view combined the views of the late 20s and early 30s on feudal forms of exploitation as a consequence of the transformation of slavery with the concepts of Yushkov and Cherepnin. A. P. Pyankov and V. I. Goremykin returned to the view of the 20s and 30s, according to which feudalism in Russia was formed as a result of the decomposition of the slave-owning system among the Eastern Slavs. However, while preserving the conclusion of the Grekov school about the early feudal character of the Old Russian state of the IX-XI centuries, Pyankov writes about the existence of the slave - owning early class structure of the Ants in the VI-beginning of the VII century .52 Goremykina identifies the social structure of Ancient Russia and the early slave states 53, returning to similar opinions of the 30s.
Unlike the above-mentioned researchers, I. Ya. Froyanov does not formally define the socio-economic and political system of Kievan Rus in the XI - first third of the XIII century in two of his books. He refers only to the period up to the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh centuries, when, in his opinion, "the disintegration of tribal relations is mostly completed." 54 Froyanov does not give a qualitative definition of the terms "slavery" and "feudalism"used by him. Therefore, the designation of a formation (or mode of production) becomes a concept without formational concreteness. He considers individual social categories outside the process of class formation. Like historians of the mid-19th and first third of the 20th centuries, he believes that "in the social structure of Ancient Russia in the 11th and 12th centuries, slaves and semi-free people occupied the second place after the free," but he does not see slaves as a class, but as owners of slave-holding fiefdoms-slaveholders, although he writes not about the reduction of slavery, but about its quantitative and quality development 55 . Admitting the appearance of feudal dependents, he does not reveal the socio-economic essence of their situation .56 In his works, feudal lords as a certain social group in the system of social production are not shown; the characteristics of princes, boyars, and squads remain class and class indeterminate.
This position brought the author back to the ideas of more than 50 years ago without defining early class structures, the role of the state and its functions in Kievan Rus. According to Froyanov, princes "constantly moved", the basis of their economy was cattle breeding; polyudye was "a gift given to the prince by the inhabitants of the principality where he was the ruler "57;" princes in Russia of the XI-XII centuries. prospered to a large extent at the expense of feeding - a kind of payment of the free population for their public services"58; the functions of the princely power consisted in "military and diplomatic work", "protection of internal peace and order"; government in the XI-XII centuries was carried out "in the name of the interests of the nobility" and "for the benefit of the nation-
51 Zimin A. A. Serfs in Russia (from ancient times to the end of the XV century). Moscow, 1973.
52 Pyankov A. P. The origin of the social and state system of Ancient Russia. Minsk. 1980.
53 Goremykina V. I. On the problem of the history of pre-capitalist societies (on the material of Ancient Russia). Minsk. 1970, p. 73.
54 Froyanov I. Ya.Kievskaya Rus '[Kievan Rus']. Ocherki sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii [Essays on socio-political history], L. 1980, p. 232.
55 Froyanov I. Ya.Kievskaya Rus '[Kievan Rus']. Ocherki sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi istorii [Essays on socio-economic history], L. 1974, pp. 100-125, 148-158.
56 He writes: "A certain part of the proprietors (smerdov - M. S. ) can be regarded as one of the first detachments of serfs in Russia" (ibid., p.125); "if we call them (rogue freedmen-M. S. ) purely feudal, we would simplify the reality too much. They are mostly semi-free. But there were also those among them who gradually approached the state of serfdom and eventually became serfs" (ibid., pp. 145-146).
57 Ibid., pp. 59, 117.
58 Ibid., 1980, p. 145.
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kind of"59 . Boyars are "first of all leaders who manage society, i.e. perform certain generally useful functions"; they "received feeding as a kind of payment for participating in the management of society", while the druzhina, a non-feudal institution, receives "food and other bribes for their work"; these class-indefinite groups correspond in the XI-XII centuries. "pre-feudal", as Froyanov believes, princely vassalage and immunity 60, although vassalage and immunity reflect precisely feudal social relations. The social system of Kievan Rus of the XI-XII centuries, in his opinion, is a "transition period from the pre-class system to the class one"; "Kievan Rus did not know the established classes" 61 (the process of forming classes is not shown to them).
The Old Russian state, according to Froyanov, did not exist: by the end of the tenth century, there was a grandiose "union of unions" that covered almost the entire territory of Eastern Europe , 62 and here is the opposite statement about "the relationship of East Slavic tribes at the end of the ninth and tenth centuries, as the history of the rise of the Polyansk community, which subordinated the surrounding Slavic tribes" (with reference to opinions of pre-revolutionary researchers I. A. Linnichenko and N. I. Kostomarov)63 . At the end of the 9th-10th centuries, the city-states in Russia, as Froyanov believes, "were built on the tribal basis", and their subsequent development consisted in the formation of "urban (city) volosts", "composed of the main city with suburbs and rural districts"64 , with the people's assembly - the supreme authority, through the creation of a single state. which "the people influenced the course of political life in the desired direction" 65 (since Froyanov does not note qualitative changes in the socio-economic and political system in the first third of the XIII century). If the author makes extensive use of the sources of the 13th century, then his characteristics thus extend to the entire period before the Batu invasion). To confirm and clarify his observations, Froyanov draws analogies, outside of a holistic formational analysis, with the African Bantu and Yoruba tribes, the Eskimos, the Indians of North America, the tribes of Polynesia and Melanesia, the Papuans of New Guinea, ancient Sumer, the Homeric society ,and the ancient Greek polis. 66
The propositions developed by Froyanov return to the thesis of the early 1930s about the slave economy as "one of the most important prerequisites for feudalism in Russia" 67, but not disclosed in its concrete historical content. The characterization of the master's economy based on slave ownership leads to the point of view of Rozhkov and Klyuchevsky and the works written under their influence. Froyanov's opinion on the socio-political system of Ancient Russia returns, with some changes, to the concepts of Klyuchevsky, Pavlov-Silvansky, Sergeyevich, Kostomarov, Pogodin and Slavophiles, as well as to the theories of bourgeois historiography of the second half of the XIX-early XX centuries, in which Froyanov sees "historiographical and historical-sociological prerequisites" of modern research "city-states" of Kievan Rus 68 . Therefore, instead of forms of early class struggle in the process of camps-
59 Ibid., pp. 38, 44.
60 Ibid., p. 32 - 44, 62, 72 - 77, 80 - 89, 110 - 117.
61 Ibid., pp. 44, 89.
62 Ibid., p. 21.
63 Ibid., pp. 21-22; the reference in this passage to the work of A. G. Kuzmin is illegitimate, since there is no mention of the "Polyanskaya community" on the page indicated by Froyanov.
64 Ibid., p. 232.
65 Ibid., p. 184.
66 Ibid., p. 139 - 140, 145, 231, 234, 235.
67 Ibid., 1974, p. 136.
68 froyanov ij To the question of city-States in Kievan Rus (historiographical and historical and sociological background). In: City and State in Ancient Societies, L. 1982.
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feudal society of the X-XII centuries. Froyanov sees intertribal struggle, clashes in the XI century. "tribal leaders with the democratic part of the free population", political conflicts between the prince and vechem 69, as historians wrote in the second half of the XIX-early XX century.
If Froyanov does not formally define it in the mentioned two books on the socio-economic and political system of Kievan Rus, then in the article on the historicism of Russian epics I. Ya. Froyanov and Yu. I. Yudin, referring to the conclusions of Froyanov's previous works, when describing the Old Russian social system, they return to the concept of the "pre-feudal period". As applied to the history of Russia, it was widely used in the mid-30s-early 50s, but it belonged to the IX-X centuries (or to the VI century). to indicate the period when, according to some researchers, primitive communal, slave-owning and feudal ways existed and fought). Froyanov and Yudin refer the "pre-feudal period" to the X-XII centuries, describing it as a transitional period, " separating the primitive communal system from the feudal one." Its contents are disclosed as follows: "Despite the heterogeneity and ranking of ancient Russian society, its typical feature was communality without primitiveness and the resulting communal democracy. At the same time, residual phenomena of the tribal system remained in Kievan Rus'70 . This archaization of the social system also brings historical science back to the long-standing ideas of Pavlov-Silvansky and other authors: the same" community "and" communality "as the main feature of the social system before the XII century; the same static oppositions of the XII and XIII centuries, and the pre-feudal period - to the feudal one; the same" heterogeneity "("and ranking") instead of class characteristics of social groups in the development of the system of social production, property relations and exploitation"communal democracy" - instead of defining the place and functions of the community in the early class and developed class system, specific historical characteristics of the social nature and functions of the state.
Accepting Froyanov's opinion, A. V. Petrov came to the conclusion that Novgorod of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries was "pre - feudal"; that in the second half of the eleventh and early thirteenth centuries, the tribal system in Russia had disintegrated, but the process of class formation was "still only at the very initial stage"; therefore, there was no class struggle yet, but it did take place. the place of "traditional inter-communal rivalry", for example, "sports-type competitions", rivalry of "neighboring communities"71 . A. Yu. Dvornichenko believes that in the XII-XIII centuries. the urban community "is still a single, integral, undivided (so in the text. - M. S. ) into estates. Splits in the community are temporary phenomena, and it is not possible to separate the boyars from it, to present them as a foreign element. " 72 However, these authors do not take into account either the complexity of the structures of ancient Russian society, or the level of development of material and spiritual culture, which coincided stadially with the culture of feudal Western Europe, or the entire system of economic and political relations (including trade and cultural relations).-
69 Фроянов И. Я. Характер соціальних конфліктів на Русі в X - на початку XII ст. - Український історичний журнал, 1971, N 5; его же. Kievan Rus. 1980, pp. 167-184.
70 Froyanov I. Ya., Yudin Yu. I. On the historical foundations of the Russian past epic. - Russian literature, 1983, N 2, p. 92-93.
71 Petrov A.V. To the question of the internal political struggle in Veliky Novgorod of the 12th - early 13th centuries. In: Genesis and Development of feudalism in Russia, L. 1985, pp. 74-76.
72 Dvornichenko A. Yu. On the nature of social struggle in urban communities of the Upper Dnieper and Podvinye in the XI-XV centuries-Ibid., p. 88.
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lytic treaties) that linked Russia, and Novgorod in particular, with other countries in the X-XIII centuries.
The points of view of Goremykina and especially Froyanov were subjected to reasonable criticism in our historiography. The authors noted the lack of proof of their constructions, the selectivity of the plots under consideration, the subjective interpretation of facts, the incompleteness of attracting sources and errors in their use, and the randomness of analogies .73 In turn, Goremykina and Froyanov (from different positions, but equally) reject the main conclusions of studies that continue and develop the traditions of the Grekov school, and Froyanov considers his conclusions proven and refers to them in subsequent works without reservations.
Thus, in modern Soviet historiography, there are opposite trends in the study of Ancient Russia: the continuation of the traditions of the Grekov school and their further development in the analysis of ancient Russian society as an integral feudal system formed as a result of the decomposition of the tribal system, and other lines that assert the significant role of slavery or the idea of a "non-feudal" or "pre-feudal" social system of Ancient Russia. Rus ' and returning science to long-standing opinions (recognition of this system as slave-owning or pre-class, non-class, formationally indeterminate).
An integral part of the progress of historical science is the expansion of the source base: an annually growing fund of archaeological materials on the history of material and spiritual culture, socio-economic history of urban and rural populations, political history of Russia in the IX-first third of the XIII centuries, identification and study of hidden historical information while deepening the analysis of already known legal and narrative sources, The article deals with the etymology and semantics of socio-economic terms of the oldest lexical fund. However, this objectively possible progress in research in the study of the genesis of feudalism becomes valid only with high professional training of the researcher, when the sources and information contained in them are used completely and correctly, and not selectively and with factual errors; when news sources are interpreted objectively, and not subjectively; when the history of texts as monuments of the era that created them is necessarily taken into. Only the observance of truly scientific research principles can contribute to the convergence of different points of view on the problems of the genesis of feudalism in Ancient Russia, and this convergence itself will have an objective basis only if it is carried out with a consistent analysis of the formational content of ancient Russian history and the establishment of elements of socio-economic and political structures in a dialectical functional relationship.
Let us recall a few fundamental points in this regard. Revealing the concept of socio-economic formation, Marx wrote: "In the social production of their lives, people enter into certain relations that are necessary and independent of their will-relations of production that correspond to a certain stage
73 Tcherepnin L. V. Rus', p. 142, 166, 171 - 172, 179 - 180; his own. Once again about feudalism in Kievan Rus. In: Iz istorii ekonomicheskoi i obshchestvennoi zhizni Rossii [From the History of Economic and Social Life in Russia], Moscow, 1976. 49, 57, 75, 90, 145, 171, 191; Kizilov Yu. A. Disputable issues of the history of Old Russian feudalism. - History of the USSR, 1973, N 5; Some problems in the history of the peasantry of the USSR pre-revolutionary period. - Ibid., 1979, No. 3; Pyankov A. P. Uk. soch., pp. 45-47; reviews of V. T. Pashuto (Voprosy istorii, 1982, No. 9), Yu. A. Limonov, M. B. Sverdlov, Ya. N. Shchapov (Istoriya SSSR, 1982, No. 5); Rybakov B. A. Russian Epic and Historical nihilism. - Russkaya literatura, 1985, N 1; Sverdlov M. B. Ob istorizme v izuchenii russkogo eposa [On historicism in the study of the Russian Epic]. - Ibid., No. 2; and others.
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development of their material productive forces. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis on which the legal and political superstructure rises and to which certain forms of social consciousness correspond. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political, and spiritual processes of life in general. " 74 Emphasizing the crucial role of the economic basis for historical development, Marx and Engels also pointed out the opposite effect of the superstructure on the basis. In this connection, Engels wrote: "Political, legal, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc. development is based on economic development. But all of them also have an impact on each other and on the economic basis. It is not at all the case that only the economic situation is the cause, that only it is active, and everything else is only a passive consequence. No, this is interaction based on economic necessity, which ultimately always makes its way. " 75
Developing the Marxist doctrine of formations, Lenin used the concept of social structures to analyze the structure of society during the transition period. He wrote about Soviet Russia in 1921: "We observe at least five different systems or ways of life, or economic orders...: the first is patriarchal farming, when the peasant economy works only for itself or if it is in a nomadic or semi-nomadic state, and we have any number of them; the second is small-scale commodity farming, when it sells products to the market; the third "capitalist is the emergence of capitalists, small private economic capital; the fourth is state capitalism, and the fifth is socialism." 76 But these pre-socialist structures were not a simple sum of different economic systems, but a set of economic relations of previous formations that Russia had passed through by that time, and whose stadially different structures were preserved as a result of the peculiarities of its historical development. Lenin's theory of ways of life allowed us to reveal more deeply the concrete content of the change in socio-economic formations in Russia. In 1914 Lenin wrote: "Anyone who has studied at least a little bit of political economy knows that in Russia serfdom is being replaced by capitalism. There is no other "third" way of the national economy in Russia. " 77 Thus, in historical studies, when describing the patterns of the transition period from one formation to another, it is necessary to define them taking into account the specific historical formation development.
Lenin also emphasized the need to take into account qualitatively new connections and relations of previous economic structures in the entire system of this system. He sneered at the dogmatic, philosophically metaphysical, positivist approach of those who, in the conditions of 1922, did not see the decisive influence of the Soviet state on pre-socialist ways of life. In this connection Lenin wrote: "On the question of state capitalism in general, our press and our party in general make the mistake that we fall into intellectualism, liberalism, muddle about how to understand state capitalism, and look at old books. And there is absolutely nothing written about it: it is written about the state capitalism that happens under capitalism, but there is not a single book in which it would be written about the state capitalism that would exist under capitalism.-
74 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 13, pp. 6-7.
75 Ibid., vol. 39, p. 175.
76 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 43, p. 158.
77 Ibid., vol. 25, p. 156.
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et under communism " 78 . These theoretical propositions are of crucial methodological importance for the analysis of socio-economic structures in the period of changing socio-economic formations. It is necessary to apply such categories of formational analysis as primitive communal (tribal) system, slavery, feudalism in a scientifically grounded manner, instead of using them arbitrarily. At the present stage of studying the social system of Ancient Russia, it is of particular importance to improve the formation analysis, further development of objective criteria in the characterization of its formation certainty.
The genesis of feudalism in Ancient Russia occurred as a result of the decomposition of the tribal system outside the zone of synthesis with the slave-owning formation at the descending stage of its development in the Western and Eastern Roman Empires .79 This typologically brings it closer to the synthesis-free genesis of feudalism among the peoples of Central and Northern Europe, but distinguishes it from the synthesis processes in the countries of Western, Southern and South - Eastern Europe. If this feature facilitates the study of non-synthetic forms of the genesis of feudalism, it also complicates the identification of qualitative changes in socio-economic and political relations in the process of the formation of a feudal formation. Therefore, the problem of the social system of the Slavs before the collapse of the proto-Slavic unity is of particular importance for establishing the initial stage of social development of the Eastern Slavs.
When sixth-century sources describe the Slavs in the vast area from the Middle Sava and Vistula in the west to the Dnieper in the east and the Danube in the south, they have already passed a significant path of historical development .80 The analysis of Byzantine sources, archaeological and linguistic data, as well as comparative historical materials about the Germans of the beginning of AD, who were at the same synchrostadial level, allows us to establish that the social system of the Slavs of the VI-beginning of the VII century was characteristic of a developed military democracy and was at the last stage of pre-class formation .81 The main form of organization of this society was the tribe, which provided for the existence of its members and was the supreme owner of the land .82 The right-duty to participate in the tribal army and the people's assembly as the supreme body of power was an expression of the full rights of tribal members. The equality of their economic and social rights was expressed in the decisive importance of the people's assembly, in the subordination of the Council of elders to it, and in the electability of the prince (military leader).
However, already in the society of military democracy, new trends were outlined at that time. As Tacitus wrote about the Germans, the role of the elders, who themselves decided the less significant affairs of the tribe, as well as
78 Ibid., vol. 45, p. 84.
79 See materials of the discussion on the problem of the genesis and typology of feudalism in Europe; Udaltsova Z. V. Genesis and typology of feudalism. In: The Middle Ages. Issue 34, 1971.
80 B. A. Rybakov Historical destiny of ancient Slavs. V. kN.: History, culture, Ethnography and folklore of the Slavic peoples. 1978 m.; it. A new concept of the prehistory of Kievan Rus (theses). - History of the USSR, 1981, NN 1, 2; his. Kievan Rus, p. 11-107; Sedov V. V. Proiskhozhdenie i rannaya istoriya slavyan [The origin and early history of the Slavs], Moscow, 1979, p. 17 - 100; Trubache V. O. N. Yazykoznanie i etnogenez slavyan [Linguistics and ethnogenesis of the Slavs]. Ancient Slavs according to etymology and onomastics. - Voprosy yazykoznaniya, 1982, NN 4, 5.
81 Sverdlov M. B. Social system of Slavs in the VI-beginning of the VII century. - Soviet Slavic Studies, 1977, N 3 (in the same place - historiography of the question). In modern Marxist historiography, there are doubts about the expediency of the term " military democracy "in relation to this social system (for a literature review, see S. D. Kovalevsky On the question of the concept of"military democracy". In: The Middle Ages. Issue 46, 1983).
82 See K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 46, ch, I, p. 481.
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we discussed in advance the issues that were decided by the National Assembly. This created prerequisites for the subsequent restriction of the significance of the tribal people's assembly and its destruction when the ruling class usurped power. Princes (kings, tsars) were elected by nobility, their power was limited to the national assembly. The new trend consisted in the succession of their election from one noble family, followed by the inheritance of personal power. The tribe already had an institution independent of the public tribal authority - a squad that existed on the basis of "friendship", which was determined not only by prestige, but also by a material factor - exemption from physical labor with its replacement by military service. Squads existed among the leaders, also gathered around noble persons, around strong and brave members of the tribe .83
In the tribal society, there were non-antagonistic relations of social inequality. In the patriarchal large family, they arose as a result of the gender and age division of labor and the violation of family ties. These socio-economic processes influenced the development of the social vocabulary of the proto-Slavic lexical fund, which contained almost all the concepts that in feudal society became designations of categories of dependent, socially inferior, subordinate people. A special form of non-antagonistic relations in the tribe was the voluntary offerings of ordinary members of the tribe to the chiefs in the form of gifts .84 Such a gift in the early feudal society turned into a regularly collected tax, retaining the ancient name (with the general designation of state taxes "tribute", "tribute"). The initial form of antagonistic relations, despite the seemingly mild forms of exploitation, was patriarchal slavery. Its source was captivity. Thus, the system of military democracy, despite the continued equality of tribal members, contained the initial forms of such social relations, the subsequent development of which led to antagonistic relations of exploitation, the formation of an early class society, the destruction of the tribal structure, and the emergence of the state.
The study of the tribal structure on the eve of the collapse of the tribal system is important for establishing the formation-forming processes and the beginning of class formation. Thus, in the class societies of Ancient Greece and Rome, slave-owning relations of production became determining social development, the essence of which was the transformation of a captive slave into a thing, a "talking tool", as a result of which he was excluded from the system of civil rights of the community of free persons and became not a subject, but an object of law. In the situation of slaves, " the main thing was that slaves were not considered people; not only were they not considered citizens, but also people. Roman law treated them as a thing. " 85 This system of production relations determined the structure of the slave system, its rights, culture and ideology. The slave-owning system of production relations, the slave-owning mode of production, and the slave-owning way of life developed there as a result of the disintegration of the tribal system were qualitatively different from feudal social relations and the state, law, culture, and ideology determined by them.
The feudal socio-economic formation, which developed directly as a result of the disintegration of the tribal system, took place on a huge subcontinent inhabited by Slavs, Germans, Scandinavians, Balts, Finns outside the zone of synthesis with the decomposing ones
83 Tacitus. Germania, XI, VII, XIII.
84 Ibid., XV.
85 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 39, pp. 74-75.
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slave relations in the Western Roman and Byzantine Empires 86 . Thus, studying the socio-economic history of the Eastern Slavs, it is necessary to consider them in a single context of the historical development of the region of which they were a part.
The content of the transition period among the East Slavic tribes of the VIII-IX centuries was the implementation of trends that emerged during the collapse of the tribal system. The rise of productive forces in agriculture has led to the formation of economically independent small families and neighboring communities. The development of handicrafts and trade contributed to the separation of handicrafts from agriculture, and trade from handicrafts. Part of the tribal centers developed into cities as a center of crafts and trade, and new proto-urban centers appeared with a tendency to turn them into multifunctional cities .87
Chronicle materials about the East Slavic tribes of the period of their independence and then becoming part of the Old Russian state in the middle of the IX-middle of the X century allow us to establish only the main socio-political elements of tribal principalities of that period: the prince, tribal nobility, tribal assembly, simple free population, servants, princely squad, intra-tribal taxation 88 . References to the collection in the IX - first quarter of the X century of a tribute of squirrel or marten fur among the East Slavic tribes from "smoke" 89 suggest that this tribute was collected from the economy of a small family and was the basis of intra-tribal taxation, which was used later, at a new stage of the development of statehood by the Kievan princes. This system of taxation was quite perfect, since the furs of squirrels and martens were used as money 90 . Probably, the social composition of the East Slavic tribes of the VII-IX centuries was quite complex, since then the categories of dependent and inferior populations were already developing. These socio-political elements are mentioned in the sources of the XI century, but their "drains go back to the proto-Slavic period: smerd, serf, servant, boy, child, husband, guest-merchant, gift, thousand and hundred organizations".
This society was qualitatively different from the tribe of the last stage of the tribal system in terms of initial antagonistic relations, social differentiation, and the appearance of an intra-tribal overlay.-
86 Attention to the problems of typology of the genesis of feudalism in Europe, in particular to its non-synthetic forms, has significantly revived in Soviet science over the past 20 years (see Results and tasks of studying the genesis of feudalism in Western Europe. In: The Middle Ages. Issue 31, 1968, as well as a study of the typology of the genesis of European feudalism in the works of Z. V. Udaltsova, E. V. Gutnova, L. V. Cherepnin, V. T. Pashuto, A. P. Novoseltsev, Ya. N. Shchapov, A. R. Korsunsky, V. D. Korolyuk, A. Ya. Shevelenko and others). Formational development from the tribal system to feudal reasonably characterized by M. A. Barg as a "leap". Doubts are raised by the idea of the objective possibility of the Germanic tribes in the IV-V centuries to evolve "either in the direction of the slave-owning system, or in the direction of the feudal one" (Barg M. A. Categories and methods of historical science, Moscow 1984, p. 140). In our opinion, the genesis of feudalism as a result of the disintegration of the tribal system in the conditions of the developed Iron Age among the peoples of the forest zone of Central, Northern and Eastern Europe reflected a general historical pattern that does not imply an alternative development of individual peoples.
87 A large number of special works are devoted to these problems. The latest generalizing research: Sedov V. V. Vostochnye slavyane v VI-XIII vvakh [Eastern Slavs in the VI-XIII centuries]. Moscow, 1982.
88 Mavrodin V. V. On tribal principalities of the Eastern Slavs. In: Issledovaniya po sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii Rossii [Studies on the Socio-political History of Russia]. Obrazovanie Drevnerusskogo gosudarstva i formirovanie drevnerusskoi narodnosti [Formation of the Old Russian State and Formation of the Old Russian People]. Moscow, 1971, pp. 100-109; Pashuto V. T. Letopisnaya traditsiya o "tribal principalities" and the Varangian Question. In: Chronicles and Chronicles, 1973, Moscow, 1974.
89 PSRL. T. I. M. 1962, stb. 19, 24; Novgorod first chronicle of the elder and younger izvodov. M.-L. 1950, p. 109.
90 Historiographical review of the problem: Soviet Historiography of Kievan Rus, L. 1978, pp. 78-84.
91 Sverdlov M. B. Obshchestvennyj stroj slavyan [Social order of Slavs], pp. 50-58.
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In addition to performing general tribal functions, it was one of the means of reproducing and enriching the princely and druzhin elite. Tribal reigns represented a new stage in the development of society, where along with the elements of the former system, full rights and equal rights, early forms of antagonistic social relations and the prerequisites for their further development appeared. An urgent problem remains the continuation of studies of tribal reigning on the basis of archaeological and other materials using comparative historical and retrospective methods. But even now it can be stated that tribal reigns created the prerequisites for the formation of East Slavic, southern, and northern multi-ethnic state formations at the end of the VIII - first half of the IX century .92
Thus, the essence of the transition from military democracy as the last stage of the tribal system to the early class system consists in the struggle between the tribal way of life at the descending stage of development and the new way of life, early class relations, the formative quality of which can be defined as early feudal. During this transition, the prerequisites for the formation of a single Old Russian state were created, the foreign policy expression of which was the subordination of tribal principalities by the Kievan princes through conquests and treaties-rows. This was the usual way of forming early feudal monarchies. Therefore, Marx rightly called the Old Russian state of the IX-XI centuries the "Empire of the Rurikids" 93 .
In the Old Russian state of the mid-9th - mid-11th centuries, with its capital in Kiev, a single material culture was formed in terms of content. The basis of the economy was agriculture, primarily agriculture, the development of which in the forest-steppe zone made it possible to conduct expanded production and alienate the surplus product .94 The development of agricultural techniques probably contributed to the appearance by the end of the tenth century (along with smoke taxation) of a state land tax on the plow (ral), i.e., the area plowed by this tool .95 The soil and climatic conditions of agriculture in the north-west of Russia constrained the possibilities of growth of the rural master's economy, as a result of which the system of "feeding" of the Novgorod boyars in the form of hierarchical distribution of tax collections as a form of rent remained predominant in the X-XI centuries .96 Studies of the 1940s and 80s showed a significant development of crafts and trade during that period, which contributed to the growth of cities as trade and craft centers with secondary administrative-political and military-defensive functions, as well as as administrative-political, domenic centers and fortress cities with secondary trade and craft functions 97 .
92 Shaskolsky I. P. On the initial stages of the formation of the Old Russian state. In: The Formation of Early Feudal Slavic States. Kyiv. 1972.
93 Marx K. Op. cit., p. 77.
94 Dovzhenok V. I. Economic preconditions of formation of the Ancient Russian state. In: The Formation of Early Feudal Slavic States, p. 52
95 PSRL. Vol. I, stb. 65, 82.
96 Yanin V. L. Sotsial'no-politicheskaya struktura Novgoroda [Socio-political structure of Novgorod], pp. 90-91. Archaeological Commentary to Russkaya Pravda, pp. 153-154; Yanin V. L., Rybina E. A. Otkritie drevnego Novgoroda [The Discovery of Ancient Novgorod]. In: Travel to Ancient Times, Moscow, 1983, p. 144.
97 Soviet Historiography of Kievan Rus, pp. 61-77; Soviet Source Studies of Kievan Rus, L. 1979, pp. 96-101; Karlov V. V. On the question of the concept of the early feudal city and its types in Russian historiography. In: Russkiy gorod (Problemy gorodoobrazovaniya) [Russian City (problems of Urban Development)]. Issue 3. M. 1980; Sverdlov M. B. K izucheniyu drevnerusskikh toponimov kak istoricheskogo istochnika [To the study of Old Russian toponyms as a historical source]. In: Auxiliary historical disciplines. T. XIII. L. 1982; Kuza A.V. Goroda v sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi sisteme Drevnerusskogo feudalnogo gosudarstva X-XIII vv. - Kratkiei: posledstviya Instituta arkheologii AN SSSR, 1984, no. 179.
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Written sources of the tenth and first half of the eleventh centuries do not equally cover the development of industrial relations. They report, first of all, the formation of a complex princely manor economy - a domain that included courtyards, villages, cities, undefended urban - type settlements - "places", forests. According to the princely domenic charter included in the Short edition of Russkaya Pravda (mid-third quarter of the 11th century), smerdas were exploited in the domain - former personally free peasants, from whom natural rent or domenic taxes were collected in cash. As a result of various kinds of contractual (ordinal) relations, the rank-and-file also fell into various forms of dependence, which was accompanied by feudal non-economic coercion and feudal means of exploitation through the collection of interest-cuts, in-kind services and duties .98 The domenic economy developed by the middle of the XI century was characterized by a variety of forms of exploitation and rent collection, but the defining feature was feudal non-economic coercion. Personal dependence - servitude-integrated captive slaves (transforming the function of captivity, which in the early Middle Ages was a means of mobilizing labor) and the personally dependent local population in a single socio-economic status and legal status of the feudal class-estate. As a special type of feudal dependence, serfdom created forms of the legal and everyday status of serfs that looked similar to that of slaves. But it was qualitatively different from ancient slavery as a production relation, which was based on the transformation of the slave into a "thing", into a producer defining the social basis. 99
The Grand ducal domain of the X - mid-XI century probably differed only quantitatively, but not qualitatively, from the manor farms of the local nobility, including the "best husbands"," deliberate husbands " of the tribal principalities that were part of the Old Russian state. Thus, the lordly rural and urban economy of the 9th - first half of the 11th century, which genetically dates back to the period of decomposition of the tribal system, was based on early feudal forms of exploitation. These production relations determined the process of class formation in the formation of various categories of feudally dependent direct producers and feudal lords as owners of master farms. This socio-economic system became more complex along with the development of forms of both non-economic coercion and economic dependence, accompanied by legally formed non-economic violence, which ensured the collection of rent by the master. In the second half of the XI - beginning of the XII century, serfdom developed as a feudal class-estate; new types of groups of feudally dependent population appeared in agricultural production - purchases (dependent for "kupa") and widows (dependent for "dacha"); in the middle and second half of the XII century. - puschenniki and proschenniki. These social categories ensured the reproduction of the ruling class, the enrichment of the prince, the boyar, the prince's husband, the church, the "master" of the Russian Truth, and from the end of the XII century - and the nobleman.
98 Here and further in the characterization of the socio-economic system of Russia in the IX-first third of the XIII century, conclusions are used: Sverdlov M. B. Genesis and structure of feudal society in Ancient Russia. L. 1983.
99 The use of the term "slave" in relation to serfs is possible as a stylistic device. However, it should be borne in mind that it is descriptive and does not correspond to the essence of this feudal class-estate. It is significant that A. I. Neusykhin, studying the synthetic-free type of the genesis of feudalism in Germany, retained the terminology of sources when designating dependent persons or called them serfs, but did not translate these terms as "slaves" (Neusykhin A. I. The Fate of the free peasantry in Germany in the VIII-XII centuries, Moscow, 1964).
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The study of the composition of the manor economy was the main focus of research on the social history of Ancient Russia. The problem now lies in a more detailed analysis of the formation of this economy, in particular, based on archaeological and comparative historical materials. The formational certainty of these relations and types of exploitation indicates the legitimacy of their characterization as feudal, qualitatively different from tribal and slave-owning ones.
At the same time, a system of class-antagonistic relations developed between personally free direct producers and the serving part of the ruling class, which did not possess land holdings or owned separate courtyards - universal economic complexes with a master's smell. Genetically, such relations also go back to the period of military democracy: to intratribal voluntary offerings to the prince as the head of the tribe with administrative, legal and (later) military functions; to the squad that served the prince, which developed into a permanent hierarchically organized (senior and junior squads) social group that was not directly engaged in material production. During the transition period from the tribal system to the early feudal one, the druzhina reproduced and later enriched itself at the expense of war booty and intratribal fees with a tendency to increase the importance of the latter, realizing the power of the prince, having the function of military protection of the tribe and representing in embryo the apparatus of class violence and administrative and judicial administration. The functions of the druzhina, as well as the developing system of its relations with personally free direct workers, producers, rural and (later) urban populations, are changing as a result of the social upheaval that ended with the usurpation of power by the ruling class and the formation of the state: with the formation of the early class system of oppression and state regulation of inter-class relations, the former possibilities of the druzhina as an organ of violence and coercion have become reality.
The problem of the formation of the state apparatus in Russia and its relation to the service part of the ruling class are still insufficiently studied. Sources point to the multifunctionality of the hierarchical serving princely squad, which combined military and administrative-judicial functions (the highest and middle positions of the state apparatus) in the X-XI centuries and was partially part of the princely court to ensure its socio-political and economic functions (in the latter case, as the center of the princely manor economy - domain). The basis for the enrichment and reproduction of the service section of the ruling class was now the transfer to it of part of the state taxes, judicial vir, sales and duties. As a result, although state-owned in origin, they coincided functionally with feudal rent. This type of exploitation of personally free direct producers was the socio-economic basis of vassal relations between the hierarchically organized service section of the ruling class, whose suzerain was the prince. Marx justifiably called this form of feudal-vassal relations "vassalage without fiefs, or fiefs consisting only of tributes." 100 They developed into sub-feudal feedings; the feudal lord became not only the owner of feudally dependent people and the landowner, but also a member of the service part of the ruling class. Therefore, the old idea of a feudal lord only as the owner of a patrimonial or conditional land possession is limited; it is not taken into account.-
100 Mars K. Op. cit., p. 76.
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It creates multiple forms of exploitation of direct producers in the master economy and in the feudal state, which are uniform in nature and function.
In the process of class formation, there was an integration of groups of the ruling class, different in origin, but close in place in the system of social production. This was due to the growth of land ownership and the number of feudally dependent people in farms belonging to members of the senior squad, as well as during the transition of local nobility to princely service in the squad and in the administrative and judicial apparatus. 101 This integration contributed to the formation of the second half of the XII century. classes-estates of a developed feudal society: the boyars and the military-service class of the nobles (a consequence of the integration of the junior squad and servants of the princely court). They were opposed by antagonistic classes-the personally free rural and commercial-craft urban population. It paid taxes in cash and in kind, and carried out state duties.
The change in the class and legal status of the personally free rural population in the system of developing forms of feudal state exploitation was determined by the place of this social group of the main direct producers in agricultural production, their equal attitude (despite differences in farms under the influence of geographical and soil-climatic factors) to the main means of production - land. The supreme land ownership of the early feudal state was formed when the personally free population did not fully own the land subject to state taxes, with a decrease in its role in the social organization of labor and a reduction in the size of public wealth that it had. As a result of these reasons, the formation of the peasantry (in the broad sense of the term-people engaged in agricultural production)took place in the IX - XI centuries as a class. Its special social and legal status testified to the formation of a personally free medieval class-a class of peasants who were excluded from state administration, exploited by the system of taxes and duties, subordinated to the supreme state jurisdiction, became legally inferior, with limited opportunities for self-government of neighboring communities. The neighboring rural community-marka became the main socio-economic organization of the peasantry. It was preserved and developed throughout the Russian Middle Ages as an integral part of feudal society.
The elimination of elements of the tribal era and the genesis of feudalism were also reflected in the popular consciousness, although it is more characterized by the properties of ordinary mass consciousness, which perceives the external aspects of phenomena and does not reveal their essence (unlike scientific consciousness). One example of such a reflection of social transformations can serve as the Scandinavian sagas recorded in the XIII century. In the saga of King Harald the Fair-Haired, who-
101 The concept of "boyar" as a general name for people of the rich, noble and powerful spread in the X century to the local tribal nobility (men "narochity", "best", "lepshii") and the princely service nobility ("princely men"), co-existing with the former terms. In the XI century, the concept of "boyar" also began to mean local non-service nobility, which reflected the unified social nature of these groups of the ruling class. A. A. Gorsky believes that this understanding of the term needs more certainty: in the X-XI centuries, the concept of "boyars" referred only to serving military-druzhin nobility (A. A. Gorsky). Druzhina i genezis feudalizma na Rus ' [The squad and the genesis of feudalism in Russia]. Voprosy istorii, 1984, No. 9, pp. 26-28). However, the examples given by him are ambiguous, because they can be interpreted more broadly. Regarding other chronicle reports about the boyars of the X-XI centuries, A. A. Gorsky admits that "it is impossible to determine which social group is meant - it is only clear that we are talking about the top nobility of the Old Russian state"; moreover, he believes that in Novgorod at the beginning of the XI century the boyars were separated from the squad the Prince-Viceroy (ibid.).
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the second half of the tenth century united the Norwegian tribes into a single state, and attention is paid to the organization of public administration and its consequences: "Wherever Harald established his authority, he introduced the following procedure: he appropriated all the fatherlands (odal. - M. S. ) and forced all the bonds to pay him taxes, both rich and poor. He put a jarl in each fylke, who was supposed to maintain law and order and collect taxes and taxes. The jarl had to take a third of the taxes and taxes on his maintenance and expenses... King Harald increased the tribute and taxes so much that the jarls now had more wealth and power than the kings had before. When all this became known in Thrandheim, many nobles came to the king and became his men." In the ancestral saga of Bond Egil, the same plots are presented with more attention to the fate of the free Bond peasants: "King Harald appropriated in each fylke all the fatherlands and all the land, inhabited and unpopulated, as well as the sea and waters. All the bonds were to become dependent landholders on him. Loggers and saltmen, fishermen and hunters-all of them were also obliged to obey him. From this oppression many fled the country, and many vast, still empty lands were then settled, as in the east... so it is in the West." The Saga of Olav the Saint contains a similar report that Harald the Fair-Haired "completely appropriated all the land and all the odal, both inhabited lands and pastures, islands in the sea, forests and empty lands, and turned all the bonds into his tenants and settlers"102 .
So in the popular consciousness reflected: the formation of the state; the emergence of the supreme ownership of the king, in which this state was personified, on land - the entire state territory, inhabited and unpopulated, forests, islands, sea and rivers; the formation of the state apparatus; regular collection of taxes. And all this was pointed out as the reason for the seizure of odal-patrimonial patrimonial possessions with the termination of full land ownership, although these possessions were not taken away by anyone and they continued to exist (already as feudal legal institutions in the modified form of majorat, minorat or the preferred right of patrimonial redemption) throughout medieval Europe and further until the XVIII and even XIX centuries. As another consequence of these changes, the sagas reflected the loss of the concept of complete personal freedom, although people's assemblies-tings-were long preserved in Norway. The sagas also note the enrichment of the highest serving nobility - jarls by collecting a third of state taxes, which is why the local nobility went to the service of the king, that is, the process of integration of local and serving nobility took place. Finally, the sagas record the departure of peasants engaged in both agricultural production and rural crafts from the oppression of the highest royal administration - jarls, evading state taxes and duties, from royal jurisdiction, leaving in search of the former full land ownership and personal freedom. Here, social protest against the initial forms of state oppression is actually indicated as the reason (in fact, one of the reasons) for external and internal peasant colonization. The class nature of these early feudal socio-economic and political transformations remained hidden for the ordinary popular consciousness. But in this case, it is important that the national consciousness reflects the main phenomena of the formation of early feudal society and the state, which occurred on a huge subcontinent, including Ancient Russia, as a result of the decomposition of the tribal system and the genesis of feudalism.
102 Snorri Sturluson. Krug zemnoi [Circle of the Earth], Moscow, 1980, p. 44; Icelandic Sagas, Moscow, 1956, p. 68; Gurevich A. Ya. Svobodnoe krestyanstvo feodal'noi Norve [Free Peasants of feudal Norway], Moscow, 1967, p. 93-94.
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Such a system of relations does not coincide with qualitatively different class relations in the ancient polis. This was reflected in various political structures of the slave state and the early feudal monarchy. The relations between the developing classes in the process of formation and development of the feudal formation are also formationally different from those of the slave-owning classes: the service part of the ruling class, the local nobility, the princely court, and later the church in its subordination and vassal relations with the prince-suzerain, on the one hand, and on the other-the personally free and feudally dependent peasantry. The problem, which has not yet been solved sufficiently exhaustively by our science, consists here in elucidating the socio-economic nature of the ownership (possession) of land by the personally free peasantry under the conditions of the supreme land ownership of the early feudal state , 103 as well as in a comparative historical study of the origin, content and functions of the state form of exploitation of workers in early feudal society.
The development of productive forces, the resulting separation of handicrafts from agriculture, the emergence of small-scale production and the initial forms of commodity-money relations became the main reasons for the emergence of cities as centers of handicrafts and trade, the formation of early feudal classes-classes of artisans and merchants. The early feudal city also served as a political and administrative center, a military fortress, a center for state colonization and subordination of new territories, and a princely domenic center. Under various specific conditions, one of these forms of urban organization has led to the emergence of the city as a multifunctional center with a decisive role for crafts and trade. Initially, Soviet historiography mainly revealed the content of this, the main way of formation of ancient Russian cities. The subsequent development of science and the accumulation of archaeological data allowed us to highlight other ways of forming urban centers, and V. L. Yanin raised the question of the role of urban boyar economy in the genesis of feudal forms of exploitation of the rural population, in the formation of patrimonial crafts and trade in a new way.
Therefore, a comprehensive study of the ancient Russian city with its craft workshops, trade organizations and boyar economy remains an urgent problem. The study of the city as one of the feudal subsystems also sets the task of a more in-depth study of its socio-political organization, konchansky and Ulicansky self-government, which are different in origin, but are unified in the feudal nature of trade and craft, boyar (local nobility) and princely governing bodies, elected and appointed. The development of ancient Russian cities was the reason for the aggravation in the XI-XII centuries of the socio-political struggle both in the city itself and for its self-government within the feudal state. There are also parallels with the development of Western European countries, where identical phenomena took place in the cities of that era. As a result of this struggle, treaties of cities with princes appeared, uprisings of citizens began, and veche meetings became particularly important. In turn, all this qualitatively distinguishes the Russian early feudal city from the slave-owning polis, the illegality of which has already been noted earlier.
103 See the historiography of the question: Sverdlov M. B. Genesis of feudal land ownership in Ancient Russia. - Voprosy istorii, 1978, n 8, p. 40-46; Kopanev A. I. Krestyanstvo Russkogo Severa v XVI v. L. 1978, p. 42-45; Gorskiy A. A. K voprosu o sushchestva chernogo zemlevladeniya na Rus ' v XIV-XV vv. In: Problems of development of feudal ownership of land, Moscow, 1979, pp. 25-31; Sakharov A.M. Feudal ownership of land in the Russian state of the XVI-XVII centuries, ibid., pp. 85-96.
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In the Old Russian state of the IX-XI centuries, there were still socio-economic structures that reflected the previous stage of development: in the IX-X centuries, when there was a transition from the tribal system to the early feudal, the form of political expression of such a transition was tribal rule; from the X century and later - vassal - tributary subordination of non-Slavic ethnic groups. Patriarchal subsistence farming can be considered a special way of life. In the process of external and internal colonization, the peasants sought full ownership of the land they occupied and cultivated, social full rights and freedom from the oppression of the early feudal state. Their aspirations brought only temporary success-until the arrival of the prince's danschik or before the establishment of the prince's churchyard and could not restore the tribal system. These survivals developed under the determining influence of the formative-forming feudal order and also contained the quality of the feudal formation as an integral system that could not be reduced to the sum of its constituent elements .104
The complexes of class-forming industrial relations and the establishment of the main stages of their development in the process of the genesis of the feudal mode of production reveal the content of superstructural elements of the feudal formation, determine the fate of class movements of that period. This struggle took many forms. Attempts to secede, the growth of national taxes and duties with their initial lack of regulation were the cause of uprisings of former tribal principalities: in 913 and 945 - Drevlyans, in 982-Vyatichi, around 984-Radimichi (according to the chronology of the Tale of Bygone Years). It is significant that in 945 the main demand of the Drevlyans was not to separate from the Old Russian state, but to regulate the collection of taxes. It is possible that the uprising contributed to the more rapid implementation of Princess Olga's reforms on the regulation of taxes and the spread of churchyards as rural administrative centers, which, in turn, contributed (along with urban posadnichestvo) to the development of the state system of administrative and judicial administration and the improvement of tax collection.
The largest Ancient Russian state in medieval Europe, formed by the end of the tenth century, was not a conglomerate or" union "of tribes and no longer a "barbarian" state, but an ethnic and social basis for the subsequent development of feudal Russia. Its main features were: territorial division not by tribes, but by churchyards and towns with volosts; the establishment of public power in the form of a princely dynasty, the apparatus of the princely administrative and judicial administration, which included the serving part of the ruling class, with the elimination of the veche as a tribal self-government body; the formation of a regularly levied fixed system of taxes and duties, social- whose economic function was the exploitation of personally free direct producers. It is significant that by the end of the tenth century the Tale of Bygone Years reported an increase in "robberies" (a socially colored name for various forms of popular protest in feudal society) and an attempt by the Kievan Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich to toughen the punishment of "robbers" with the death penalty. And in 1018, Titmar of Merseburg wrote, in accordance with Western European terminology, about the "runaway serfs" in Kiev of the X-beginning of the XI century. about people who fled from feudal dependence.
The introduction of Christianity as an official religion, a necessary element of the new ideological system, became the ideological formalization of the existing early feudal relations in the Old Russian state.
104 For the social side of such a quality of an integral system, see: Afanasyev V. G. Sistemnost ' i obshchestvo, Moscow, 1980, pp. 22-25.
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add-ons. In this connection, the regularity of the spread of the Christian Church in the countries of South-Eastern, Central, Northern and Eastern Europe in the mid - second half of the 9th century is clearly traced. (Bulgaria, Serbia, Great Moravian State), the second half of the X-beginning of the XI century. (Kievan Rus, Poland, Hungary, Norway, Sweden). The Church at that time was a hierarchical feudal organization, a corporate feudal lord. Therefore, the introduction and spread of church organization in Russia was accompanied by an expansion of feudal exploitation. This was reflected in the introduction of tithes as a specific form of feudal rent and in the spread of church land ownership. The Church was organically connected with the princely power, with the ruling class.
The subsequent development of feudalism in Russia consisted in the formation of a developed feudal society of the XI-first third of the XII century (with the initial forms of feudal fragmentation) and in a developed feudal system of the middle of the XII-first third of the XIII century (the period of feudal fragmentation-from the second third of the XII century), in which again parallels are found somewhat earlier development of Western European countries. There were also more complex forms of class struggle: in the XI - beginning of the XII century. there were assassinations of the leaders of the princely domenic administration (as follows from the norms of Russkaya Pravda), peasant uprisings unfolded, suppressed in the central regions and flared up in the more backward north-eastern regions, in the Suzdal land and Belozerye (1024, the second half of 60- x years - 1071, according to the chronology. Tales of Bygone years). The reason for them was crop failures and famine. But they quickly developed into anti-feudal uprisings against the local nobility and the spread of Christianity. The city's anti-princely uprisings also began (as a result of the military defeat of the Polovtsians - Kiev, 1068). Kiev, 1113). During the period of feudal fragmentation, uprisings occurred as a result of inter-class and intra-class contradictions, in the struggle for independence from the grand-princely power, for the formation of the governing bodies of the boyar oligarchy (Novgorod, 1136); as a result of clashes between princely and boyar forces, as a result of the struggle for independence from the grand-princely power, and for the formation of administrative bodies of the boyar oligarchy (Novgorod, 1136). boyar-merchant groups, the growth of feudal exploitation and resistance to it by the urban population or the peasantry (uprisings of the XII - first third of the XIII century in Kiev and Novgorod, in the Vladimir-Suzdal, Galician-Volyn and Smolensk principalities) 105 .
Thus, the achievements of modern Soviet historiography allow us to clearly imagine the development of feudal relations in Ancient Russia. In general, the research approach that was first implemented in the concept of B. D. Grekov is progressing successfully. Moreover, if earlier the analysis of individual basic and superstructural elements of the feudal formation, individual complexes of social relations in Ancient Russia was of primary importance, now it is scientifically relevant to reveal the ambiguity of all elements of the feudal formation in their dialectical relationship, as well as a comparative historical and typological analysis of phenomena. However, the study of these problems can be fruitful only with the consistent use of scientifically based and formatively specific definitions. Only on this basis will the discussion of debatable issues be constructive, concrete and historical, excluding the subjectivism of any constructions.
105 Tikhomirov M. N. Krestyanskie i gorodskie vosstaniya na Rus 'XI-XIII vv. M. 1955; Mavrodin V. V. Narodnye vosstaniya v Drevnoi Rus' XI-XIII vv. M. 1961; Yanin V. L. Novgorodskie posadniki. m. 1962; et al.
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