ABSTRACT
From roughly the mid-fifteenth century, a centralized monarchy developed in the Moscow region of the Russian lands, and the building of the Russian service state got underway. Critical to the monarchy’s accumulation of powers was the linking of noble status, including the possession of land and serfs, with service to the prince. Although a core of great noble families held patrimonial lands in hereditary tenure, the majority of nobles possessed landed estates on condition of service. By the mid-sixteenth century, all nobles, including holders of patrimony, performed obligatory service and, following the conquest of the khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia, Muscovy joined the ranks of the world’s multiethnic, multiconfessional empires.
