Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/55

 the duma, the hierarchy, and the higher executive officials of Moscow, together with the serving nobles and the mercantile class. On one occasion only, in 1613, did peasants become members of the sobor.

We cannot here discuss the development of the zemskii sobor, but light is thrown on its significance by the circumstance that its prestige declined with the increasing bureaucratisation and Europeanisation of the executive. Under Tsar Alexis Mihailovič, who favoured Europeanisation, the importance of the sobor sank to zero, and by this ruler the assembly was summoned for the last time in order to confirm the annexation of Little Russia.

It remains uncertain whether the members of the sobor were nominated by the monarch or whether they were elected. It is probable that they were nominated or invited to attend, and that when elections took place it was not for the choice of representatives but in occasional response to some local need. Attendance at the sobor was not an honour but a duty, and was felt to be a disagreeable one, seeing that the members had to maintain themselves at their own expense with no more than occasional assistance from the government.

If some of the successive sobors had exceptional political significance, this arose from the circumstances of the time when they were summoned, and was frequently dependent upon a state of indecision and perplexity. For example, the sobor of 1584 elected Theodore Ivanovič to the throne, and the first Romanov was elected by the sobor of 1613.

Apart from the consideration that the sobor did not meet regularly year by year, but was summoned merely on exceptional occasions, it had just as little in common with constitutionalist assemblies as had the European estates, and each individual sobor varied in its organisation in accordance with the tasks with which it had to deal and the circumstances