V.O. Klyuchevsky. Boyar Duma of Ancient Russia. Боярская Дума Древней Руси.

Doctoral dissertation of V.O.Klyuchevsky, the most important research on the history of the Russian state apparatus.

Published by Literary and publishing department of the People's Commissariat for Education, Peterburg 1919.

Soft cover, 543 pages. In Russian.

Approx. size 160 x 230 mm.Weight more 530 g ( 1 lb 3 oz).

The study covers the entire centuries-old period of existence of the Boyar Duma from Kievan Rus of the 10th century to the beginning of the 18th century, when it ceased its activities due to the creation of the Senate in 1711. The author considered the Boyar Duma the flywheel of the Muscovite state, a constitutional institution "with extensive political influence, but without a constitutional charter, a government place with a wide range of affairs, but without an office, without an archive." The lack of an archive of the Boyar Duma posed enormous difficulties for the historian, he had to look for traces of the activities of this state body in all the variety of documentary sources, and above all in the grand ducal and royal decrees and order documentation. Collecting bit by bit information about the activities of the Boyar Duma for many centuries, V.O. Klyuchevsky compiled from them a monolith of strictly scientific conclusions, which were a great achievement of domestic science and became the basis for further research in the history of the Russian state apparatus.

Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky (1841 – 1911) was a leading Russian Imperial historian of the late imperial period. Also, he addressed the Russian economy in his writings.

Condition-see scans .