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Updated: May 25, 2025
His wife's relations formed the court of Vasili, became his companions and advisers, boyars vying with each other for the privilege of waiting upon his table or assisting at his toilet. But the office of adviser was a difficult one. To one great lord who in his inexperience ventured to offer counsel, as in the olden time of the Drujina, he said sharply: "Be silent, rustic."
There was first the Prince. Then his official family, a band of warriors called the Drujina. This Drujina was the germ of the future state. Its members were the faithful servants of the Prince, his guard and his counselors. The Prince and his Drujina were like a family of soldiers, bound together by a close tie.
Each Prince with his Drujina must be always ready to lead an army in defense of the Mongol cause if required; and, last of all, the poll-tax bore with intolerable weight upon everyone, rich or poor, excepting only the ecclesiastics and the property of the Greek Church, which with a singular clemency they exempted.
In "Old Russia" a close and fraternal tie bound the Prince and his Drujina together. It was one family, of which he was the adored head. What characterized the "New Russia" was a growing antagonism between the Grand Prince and his lords or boyars. This developed into a life-and-death struggle, similar to that between Louis XI. and his nobility. His elevation meant their humiliation.
The body was divided into three orders of rank: first, the simple guards; second, those corresponding to the French barons; and, third, the Boyars, the most illustrious of all, second only to the Prince. The Drujina was therefore the germ of aristocratic Russia, next below it coming the great body of the people, the citizens and traders, then the peasant, and last of all the slave.
The old system of "colleges," or departments, established by Peter the Great was removed and a group of ministers after the European custom constituted the Tsar's official household, or what would once have been called his Drujina. In the very first year of this reign there began an accession of territory in Asia, which gravitated as if by natural law toward the huge mass.
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