The Boyar Duma of Ancient Rus

Referring to the Boyar Duma as the "whirling wheel of ancient Russian administration," Kliuchevsky provides a colossal panorama of public life in Rus from ancient times to the end of the 17th century. The formation of cities around trade centers... of the Great Waterway, the origin and essence of the appanage system in Northeastern Rus, the composition and political role of the Moscow nobility, Moscow autocracy, and the bureaucratic mechanism of the Moscow state of the 16th-17th centuries—all of this is supplemented with a thorough socio-economic analysis. Before the reader of the "Boyar Duma" pass vivid typical figures of ancient Russian history: here is the appanage prince—a miserly master, and the boisterous but tightly gripped by the capitalist fist Novgorodian peasant—a "vechnik," and the Moscow nobleman—a prince, knowing his governmental worth, proud of his Yaroslavl genealogical past and bitterly criticizing tsarist autocracy, here is even the Moscow tsar himself, ruling together with the boyars, sending them on "distant campaigns," and in personal goodwill at a moment of anger pushing them out of the Duma meeting, here is also the "peasant"—the eternal payer, trying to hide, to "get rid of" the payment, but constantly caught by the increasingly frequent fiscal net— the tsar's "orphan."
 
The book can be recommended to a wide readership.