DUMA

DUMA. The duma was the main institution of government in Russia from the fourteenth century to the 1690s. Often referred to as the "Boyars' Duma" by modern historians, it was called either "duma" or "the boyars" in contemporary sources. It lacked any formal attributes of an institution beyond the name, though custom maintained it at the center of government under the monarch for some four hundred years. The duma was the forum in which the boyar elite of the Moscow principality and later Russia influenced decision making and policy, and its history was closely bound up with the history of that elite.

The origins of the duma seem to lie in the fourteenth century, when the Moscow princes met frequently with the major landholders and warriors of the Moscow principality. Usually six to ten in number, they came from the major aristocratic clans and received the rank of boyar, a designation of honor and status, not administrative or military function. These numbers remained roughly constant until the end of the fifteenth century, when the numbers expanded slightly and a few received the rank of okol'nichii, a sort of junior boyar rank. Most boyars were untitled, but a few princes who moved to Moscow, such as the princes Patrikeev from Lithuania, received boyar rank in addition to their princely title. At the end of the fifteenth century and during the early sixteenth century, a number of princely clans from formerly independent princedoms entered the duma, joining the older families of untitled Moscow boyars.

There were no written rules that governed accession to boyar rank, but historians have reconstructed the governing principles from practice. In theory the prince could appoint anyone to the duma, but in reality he chose from among a relatively small number of aristocratic clans. Though the older males in the clan were normally chosen, not all senior males received the rank. Succession was collateral, that is, a given boyar's brother would acquire the rank ahead of the boyar's son. This meant that the operative family unit was really the aristocratic clan, not just a single lineage. The boyars and the state kept careful genealogical records and also records of service to the grand prince. These were necessary to maintain the system of precedence ranking (Mestnichestvo), which theoretically determined where boyars as well as lesser officials and landholders stood in the service hierarchy. The basic rule of precedence ranking was that a man could not serve at a lower position than his male ancestors. The system was necessarily complex and led to many disputes. From the time of Ivan IV the Terrible (ruled 1533–1584) onwards, tsars increasingly had to suspend precedence ranking during military campaigns.

By the middle of the sixteenth century, the duma grew to some forty boyars and fifteen junior boyars. Most of these were great men, with large estates and luxurious houses, the great commanders of the army, and holders of most of the important administrative and court offices. Wherever their origins, their life now centered on Moscow and the court. They maintained estates around the capital, their houses were in or near the Kremlin, and when in Moscow they were in virtually daily attendance at court. Around them were lesser men who also had landed estates and made up the bulk of the tsar's army, holding the rank of Moscow gentleman. Still further down the ladder were the gentry who served in the army and elsewhere from provincial towns. From the middle of the sixteenth century, alongside the boyars the tsar appointed one or two of the chancellery secretaries to the rank of "duma secretary" as well as one or two of the Moscow gentlemen to the rank of "duma gentleman."

We know very little of the formal procedure of the duma. It met in the main room (the "Golden Hall") of the Kremlin palace. Its proceedings were never written down and in the seventeenth century were considered secret. Historical evidence of its actions comes from narrative sources and from laws with the formula: "the tsar decreed and the boyars assented." In the seventeenth century most legislation on taxation and other internal issues bore this formula, while military decisions were simply a matter of the tsar's decree. The duma also devoted much time to foreign policy, and indeed until 1667 the head of the ambassadorial office was not usually a boyar but a secretary, with the boyars retaining a sort of collective supervision, sending committees to meet with foreign emissaries. The duma was the seat of most of the court politics of the period and was at the center of the endless and murderous factional battles of the sixteenth century, influencing the relationships of the various factions to the monarch. The princes and tsars consulted regularly with the duma (sometimes with a small group within it) and it was an essential component of the theoretical autocracy of the tsars.

The duma stood at some thirty members before 1648, then increased to about sixty-five in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. After the death of Tsar Alexis in 1676, a succession of weak rulers curried favor by granting duma rank. In 1690 there were some fifty boyars, fifty okol'nichii, forty duma gentlemen, and nine duma secretaries. Tsar Alexis had tried to regularize the meetings and assign certain days of the week to certain types of business, but this rule was hard to maintain. The abolition of precedence ranking in 1682 altered the meaning of the ranks, restricting their importance to duma service. In the 1690s Peter the Great gradually ceased to award the rank and called the duma together only infrequently. After 1700 it faded away, to be replaced by new institutions and new systems of rank.

DUMA

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