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the first concern of tsarism and intensifiedthe use of force and arbitrary police action ingovernment.These six characteristics inevitably took on varioushues in the course of four hundred years, and in thenineteenth century a seventh appeared—the attempt toimpose uniformity in the greater part of the vast andpolyglot Romanov empire. They may best be illustratedby an outline of the growth and functioning oftsarism through the central institutions of governmentand in its relations to the landowners."In our state of Muscovy the serving men of everygrade serve ... by service from land, and the peasantsplough the tenth ploughlands [a particular form ofservice on one kind of state land] and pay dues, and noone owns land for nothing.'' In these words an edictof the late seventeenth century summed up the greatchange which had been effected by the growth of thecentralized Muscovite state during the preceding twohundred years. The compulsory-service state hadtaken the place of the congeries of competing appanageprincipalities which had made up northern Russiaduring the period of Mongol rule or overlordship(1240-1480) : the military allies of the suzerain grandprinceof Moscow had become converted into the servingsubjects of the All-Russian Tsar. The next chapter willshow (pp. 149-153) how during the same period (1480-1700) serfdom was extended and transformed in such away that it became the dominating fact in the structureof society, much as it had become in most of westernEurope between 1100 and 1300. In Muscovy, however,this development of serfdom was not paralleled by acorresponding growth of political feudalism.On the contrary, political feudalism, if it may be socalled, was disrupted and finally destroyed by Ivan theGreat, Vasily III, and Ivan the Terrible (1462-1584).The preceding period of subjection to the Golden Hordeused to be termed by nearly all Russian historians theperiod of appanage Russia. It was distinguished bywhat may be called political feudalism, although further94