An Autocracy of Consent

Ian Campbell

The Ulozhenie, issued in 1649 by Tsar Alexei, is frequently viewed as the height of Muscovite autocracy. This autocracy, however, was not as absolutist as it is often perceived to be. The tsar alone could not maintain total control over the vast numbers of boyars and service nobles who administered the Muscovite state from day to day, and in fact Russian nobles frequently disobeyed the tsar’s edicts. Alexei must certainly have been aware of these problems when he called the zemskii sobor that compiled the Ulozhenie along with him. The Ulozhenie shows that Muscovite tsars used several strategies, including rewards and coercion, to placate the noble classes and hold them in check.

The nobles of Muscovy were dependent on the tsar for their livelihoods, but the tsar was equally dependent upon the nobles for the administration of his state. The Ulozhenie itself gives the lie to the “pure autocracy” view in its preamble, as it describes the creation of the code: “The Sovereign, Tsar, and Grand Prince of all Russia Alexei Mikhailovich ordered the boyars Prince Nikita Ivanovich Odoveskii and Prince Semen Vasil’evich Prozorovskii, and the okol’nichii…and the State Secretaries…to assemble everything and write it up in an official report” (1649 Ulozhenie Preamble Hellie). Service and hereditary noblemen administered roads, provided troops for the army, assisted in local government, and were generally indispensable at all levels of the bureaucracy, particularly for a state as large and challenging to administer as Russia. Many things that were not permissible by law occurred simply because communication had not yet reached the level to prevent them from happening; what resources had the tsar to expediently punish disobedient nobles in locations as disparate as Astrakhan or Krasnoiarsk? The tsar had no way of knowing if these men would obey him and do his will. Indeed, the Ulozhenie was crafted in part as a response to the severe rioting and general disobedience of 1648. The most viable option in such an uncertain scenario was to promulgate a legal system that created a multifaceted bind for the noble classes, one that gained their obeisance through fear, obligation, and rewards.

The coercive aspects of the Ulozhenie helped to create the prevalent Western view of Russia as a backwards and barbaric state. Severe punishment was quite prevalent in Muscovite society. Nobles were subject to punishments and humiliations far more stringent than any of their European brethren. Long prison terms could be handed out to any noble for seemingly minor offences: “If someone at the sovereign’s palace court…draws a weapon against someone, but does not wound [him]: imprison that person for three months” (1649 Ulozhenie 3:5 Hellie). Severe corporal punishments were the norm: “If someone at the sovereign’s palace court…proceeds to walk around with handguns and bows, although not to shoot them…beat them with basinadoes” (1649 Ulozhenie 3:7 Hellie). Even high-ranking nobles were subject to the greatest humiliation, enslavement: “If a boyar, or okol’nichii, or counselor verbally dishonors the patriarch: for the patriarch’s dishonor, a boyar, and okol’nichii, and counselor, after investigation, shall be sent as a slave to the patriarch” (1649 Ulozhenie 10:27 Hellie). The ultimate sanction, death, could also be meted out to any noble: “If someone in the presence of his tsarist majesty…wounds someone, and as a result of that wound that person whom he wounded dies: punish that killer himself with death” (1649 Ulozhenie 3:3 Hellie). The most severe of these punishments were levied for treason, or dishonoring the tsar, but a noble could be knouted for something as trivial as “chopping away the ice on the rivers from off the shores and around toll bridges in order to collect the bridge tolls” (1649 Ulozhenie 9:7 Hellie). The implications of these laws are striking; any nobleman could be humiliated or deprived of his livelihood simply by invoking the tsar’s displeasure.

Beyond the severe individual punishments and humiliations writ large in the Ulozhenie, provisions for guilt by association also existed. The law here was explicit: “If someone commits treason, and after him survive a father, or mother, or brothers, or uncles, or any other member of his clan in the Muscovite state…conduct a rigorous investigation…If it is established conclusively that they knew about the treason of that traitor, punish them with death” (1649 Ulozhenie 2:9 Hellie). The fear of such collective punishment certainly convinced some nobles that it would be best to do the will of the tsar. Punishment for parties who were associated with treasonous nobles greatly raised the stakes of disobedience. A noble who entertained thoughts of treason might well have been dissuaded by the prospect of his entire family line disappearing, for risks that are acceptable when borne by an individual become significantly less so when others can be made to suffer for them as well. Moreover, as Dewey and Kleimola have argued, the punishing of associates compels those associates to be on the lookout for misbehavior: “Sureties…were directly interested in their principal’s behavior and could be counted on to keep him under observation” (Dewey and Kleimola, “Suretyship and Collective Responsibility in pre-Petrine Russia”, 347). Coercive measures such as these played a vital role in gaining boyar obedience, but they did not stand alone, else the nobles would never have consented to the Ulozhenie. Within this law code was also a second, more subtle method of gaining obedience – the extension and codification of a culture of honor and obligation to the sovereign.

Chapter 3 of the Ulozhenie (“On the Sovereign’s Palace Court”) constructs a picture of the tsar as Muscovy’s most honorable citizen. A verbal insult used in the tsar’s presence – not even one directed at the tsar! – led to two weeks’ imprisonment and a hefty fine, for the crime of “failing to respect the honor of his tsarist majesty” (1649 Ulozhenie 3:1 Hellie). Death was the immediate penalty for any person who dared to strike another with a weapon in the sovereign’s presence, while the mere possession of a bow or handgun earned a week’s imprisonment and a severe beating (1649 Ulozhenie 3:7 Hellie). Counterfeiting the tsar’s seal was an offense punishable by death (1649 Ulozhenie 4:1 Hellie). Minor offenses committed at the palace could be punished by the collection of a “double dishonor compensation”, suggesting that the palace itself, as the primary locus of the tsar’s power, had honor. The implications of this culture of honor were twofold, and both worked to ensure the obedience of the noble classes. The first was that the tsar, by virtue of his extreme honor and ultimate goodness, was so high above any other Russian that he was not to be disobeyed. The second, more positive implication was that because every Russian was subject to the great tsar, every Russian could share in his honor. As Kollmann has argued, “Honor accrued to all subjects of the tsar…Honor had a concrete, physical dimension, which demarcated the parameters of the honorable community and located its center in the tsar itself” (Kollmann, By Honor Bound, 187). The tsar was the only source of personal honor for a Russian; to do his will made one honorable; consequently, to disobey or fail the tsar was to lose one’s honor. In a society where disputes about honor were frequent, such considerations must have weighed heavily on potential dissidents.

The Ulozhenie also created incentives for the nobles to cooperate with the tsar. One of the most important of these was the granting of land to all noblemen. The service landholding system, formerly quite chaotic, was regulated by strict laws: “For boyars, 260 acres per man. For okol’nichie and for counselor state secretaries, 195 acres per man. For stol’niki, and for striapchi, and for Moscow dvoriane…130 acres per man. For provincial dvoriane…90 acres per man” (1649 Ulozhenie 16:1 Hellie). The code continued in a similar fashion, guaranteeing set amounts of land for all service nobles. Moreover, provisions were included for the families of these noblemen: “If a dvorianin, or a syn boiarskii…dies in the sovereign’s service in the regiments…grant their wives and daughters maintenance allotments” (1649 Ulozhenie 16:31 Hellie). Even if a service noble died at home, or out of the sovereign’s service, his dependents were guaranteed small parcels of maintenance land, which provided not only a source of income but also an acceptable dowry for widows and unmarried daughters. If a service noble could no longer render service, his allotment remained as before: “Old and wounded dvoriane and deti boiarskie shall possess those service lands for as long as they live” (1649 Ulozhenie 16:61 Hellie). These guarantees of stability and wealth in exchange for dutiful service to the tsar doubtless placated many angry noblemen.

The Ulozhenie also provided well for hereditary landholders. Most importantly, it unambiguously established the right of boyars to maintain those estates which had been in their families for generations: “The sovereign has decreed and the boyars have affirmed that clan hereditary estates and hereditary estates awarded for service shall be [owned] according to…the statute of the former sovereigns” (1649 Ulozhenie 17:4 Hellie). This right was supported in a later article: “Certain people in the past years held supplemental lands in their ancient and clan hereditary estates…and they raised hamlets and settlements out of their own usufruct possessions…those people shall continue to own those hereditary estates of theirs accordingly, on the basis of the grant charters and the cadastral books” (1649 Ulozhenie 17:18 Hellie). Hereditary landowners were given a certain degree of autonomy to clear and settle their estates (1649 Ulozhenie 17:21 Hellie). In addition to these rights, the Ulozhenie provided hereditary landholders with the same guarantees of security and stability that the service nobles had received. Wives could inherit hereditary estates from their husbands, but were forced to forfeit them to male kin if they remarried (1649 Ulozhenie 17:7 Hellie); moreover, such estates were to be forfeited to male kin upon the widow’s death (1649 Ulozhenie 17:10 Hellie). Several provisions forbade the sale of hereditary lands or strongly impeded such action (1649 Ulozhenie 17:8-10, 13, et. al. Hellie). These laws combined to provide hereditary landholding families with a permanent and stable base of power and wealth by ensuring that hereditary estates stayed within family lines. In return, hereditary landholders had only to obey the tsar. This must have been an extremely palatable arrangement for Muscovy’s elite families.

Having gained guaranteed tracts of land, the most reliable source of income in Muscovite Russia, the noble classes received another strong enticement to cooperate with the tsar. The Ulozhenie’s reforms of the status of peasants and slaves provided noblemen with a huge, stable, and utterly dependent working class. One significant reform was the elimination of the statute of limitations for fugitive peasants: “cart them back…to their old allotments as registered in the cadastral books, with their wives, and with their children, and with all their moveable peasant property, without any statute of limitations” (1649 Ulozhenie 11:1 Hellie, italics added). The Ulozhenie further demanded that no landholder be complicit in illicit peasant movement: “Henceforth no one shall receive others’ peasants and shall not retain them under himself…Collect from those under whom they proceed to live 10 rubles for any peasant per year…give [the money] to the plaintiffs whose peasants they are” (1649 Ulozhenie 11:9-10 Hellie). Earlier, the Sudebnik had made peasant movement very difficult; the Ulozhenie’s severe provisions made it all but impossible. Loopholes for escape from “peasant” status were systematically closed; the landlord and the tsar became the only possible sources of freedom. For example, a peasant could not marry out of that status, but free people rather married into the peasantry (1649 Ulozhenie 11:15-18 Hellie). Escaped peasants claiming to be free could be interrogated, checked for authentic manumission documents, and detained (1649 Ulozhenie 11:20 Hellie). Peasants were explicitly forbidden any upward mobility: “If the plow peasants have shops, and warehouses, and salt boilers in Moscow and in the provincial towns, they shall sell these shops…Henceforth no one other than the sovereign’s taxpayers shall keep shops, and warehouses, and salt boilers” (1649 Ulozhenie 19:5). The Ulozhenie’s laws on peasants, taken as a whole, effectively created a permanent and servile laboring class. Peasants were born peasants, died peasants, and could not hope to be other than peasants. For the nobles, this resolved a dilemma that had long plagued Russian landholders, that of how to hold onto one’s peasants. In exchange for loyal and obedient service to the tsar, nobles received a stable and permanent work force that guaranteed a steady stream of income.

After the institution of the Ulozhenie, Muscovite nobles were faced with a stark and easy choice. To fail to do the will of a strong sovereign meant humiliation, impoverishment, imprisonment, and even death. Cooperation with the tsar, on the other hand, brought a cozy life on permanently-granted land with an obedient and stable work force. To answer Richard Hellie’s question, then, it is no surprise that so few of Muscovy’s noblemen rebelled against their tsar. By acknowledging the power of the noble classes and making concessions to them when necessary, the tsars of Muscovy gained a work force that obediently did their will, creating an autocracy of consent.