Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/38

 14 functions too. They were free from taxes, like the vottchiny, but burdened with the heaviest impost of all, that of forced service. They bore some analogy to the feudal holdings of the West, but differed from them in that, far from the service being a freely accepted condition and charge on the fief, the fief, in this case, was the consequence, the reward, of an arbitrarily imposed service. To sum it up, there was no aristocratic or corporative position here. There was pay, emolument in kind. And, further, there was a deliberate intention to gradually assimilate the ancient appanages and freehold lands to this new type of property, and the vottchinniki to the pomiéshtchiki of the new régime.

The new territorial holdings, uncertain both by their mode of constitution and their slight chance of permanence, remained within very small proportions. Some did not cover more than 30 diéssiatines (about equal to a French hectare, or 2½ acres, English), and even within these limits their bestowal was often delayed, or purely fictitious. Towards 1570, out of 168 'children of boïars'—the term used to describe the fallen descendants of those high functionaries who had been unable to transmit the titles of the posts they had held to their heirs—out of 168 of these young men, borne on the service' lists at Pootivl and Rylsk, 99 had been given nothing, because there was no post to give. And at the same time, and for the same reason, a certain pomiéshtchiki, very well provided for on paper, had not received 74 diéssiatines out of the 80 conferred on him!

Hence, in matters of household life, lodging, food, clothing, the mass of the sloojilyié lioodi were scarcely distinguishable from the common peasantry. Their condition sometimes appears even lower. The dwellings of a few great men, holding high posts, and well paid accordingly, were the only ones which, though invariably built of wood, presented an imposing appearance, with their many pavilions clustered against a central block, their covered outer staircases, their projecting galleries, their elaborate roofs, and huge outbuildings. In most cases these palaces were replaced by isbas, which, with their wooden floor, daily washed, scraped, and swept, the truss of hay by the entry to wipe the visitors' feet, and a certain display of plate, more often pewter than silver, in the first room, had no lordly quality about them.

The difference between the boïar and the peasant was more especially marked by the number of servants the former thought himself obliged to keep—cooks, bakers, gardeners, tailors, workmen of every kind. Other daily guests he had, higher in degree, but rather less important, whose only function was to follow the master, on foot or horseback, whithersoever he went, and keep him company on his travels, in his business,