Property and Power in Russian Feudalism

Abstract

The totalitarian anomaly was closed by the people’s revolution. However, Russian society never became a typical feudal society with its double cycle leading, through internal transformations resulting from the class struggle, to the evolution of unitary relations of property (cf. Chapter 6). It is seen at first sight. In the second half of the 17th, at the beginning of the 18th and in the second half of the 18th century, Russia underwent strong waves of class struggle, mainly, though not exclusively, in the country. None the less no evolution in the relationships between the owners and the direct producers occurs. And there were among these upheavals huge peasant wars including large territories of the country and lasting for many years (e.g., the Razin or Pugachev upheavals). If the relations of property had remained stable, if no evolution in them had occurred; if, in other words, the basic mechanism of the motion of socio-economic formation had turned out to have been stopped, this would have taken place due to the working of a new significant factor annihilating the macrosocial effects of the class struggle.