The history of medieval Rus΄ has always been on the edge of the study of medieval Europe, linguistically inaccessible to western medievalists and hard to fit into the patterns of development that seem to be characteristic of the west in those centuries. Yulia Mikhailova seeks to remedy this situation with an analysis of the political structure of the Rus΄ principalities in rigorous comparison with those of the France, England, and Germany in the Middle Ages.

Mikhailova starts with the changes in the understanding of fiefdoms, vassalage, kingship and relations with and among the elites that have reordered the understanding of the Middle Ages in the west. Relying on the work of Susan Reynolds, Timothy Reuter, Gerd Althoff, and others, she operates with a conception of medieval power relationships that is much more flexible and varied than the older literature, dominated by rather abstract conceptions of fiefdom and homage originating in legal and constitutional history. She is also sensitive to the issue of language. In the west there are differences in the description of the relations of rulers and elite subjects depending on the language of the text, Latin or the vernacular languages. In Rus΄, Mikhailova contends, this distinction did not exist because most narrative and other sources are in the Old Rus΄ language, which she takes to be vernacular, as opposed to Old (Church) Slavic. One of her more interesting observations is that the terminology of vernacular western narrative sources for these relationships is broadly similar to the Old Rus΄ terminology, while the Latin narrative texts have a different set of terms.

Students of Slavic languages may find her distinction between Old Slavic and Old Rus΄ to be excessively sharp, but the observation certainly deserves further examination. In addition to the problems of language and terminology, Mikhailova also tries to work out the relations of princes/lords and their “vassals,” their armed retainers and lesser lords. Here she seems on firm ground, as the differences in words cover realities that are remarkably similar in the west and in Rus΄ in the instances that she adduces. The same is true for relations among princes. Since most of the “lords” in Rus΄ had princely titles, the lesser princes functioned more like western “vassals” than like equals. Of course this phenomenon was in large part due to the absence of primogeniture in the Rus΄ principalities. In the west the oldest son usually was the only one to inherit a title, whereas in Rus΄ all the children of a prince inherited a princely title. Clearly some of them would not remain at the pinnacle of the princely hierarchy of power.

The author's argument is clear if occasionally repetitive, but the need to argue the case makes the text rather dense. Mikhailova tries to give examples that are as vivid as possible, but the pages of discussion make for slow going. Most of these examples come from the twelfth century, in spite of the title. The author's focus is actually on the years after the death of Iaroslav in 1054, but mainly on the years after the 1130s. These years provide the best examples for her thesis, but the result is to leave the origins of the system she describes rather vague.

Mikhailova's account of her predecessor historians is brief and concentrates on western scholars. The reader needs to remember that Russian medievalists first looked for Russian uniqueness, in contrast to the western Middle Ages. N. P. Pavlov-Sil΄vanskii and A. E. Presniakov instead looked for parallels and she sees the former as a pioneer. To be fair, the Marxist-universalist scheme of human development, including “feudalism,” also required similarities to the medieval west. The notion of political “disintegration” (razdroblennost΄) that she decries came when Soviet historians compared Rus΄ with the textbook Middle Ages of the early twentieth century, then seen as the story of the formation of centralized (“national”) states. Rus΄, in this scheme, was just backward. Mikhailova is not the first to look for parallels in the west, but she tries to escape from these dilemmas by concentrating on specific structures and political values in her sources, and has found many similarities. Hers is an innovative and potentially productive approach that may very well be successful with further research and discussion.