Parish - what is this? The meaning of the word "volost"

In ancient times, until the XIII century, the Russian lands, as state territories, were divided into lands, volosts, regions, and then on volosts, counties, provinces.

Parish

The lands were organized under the guidance of the trading cities of Russia. History knows the Kiev, Chernigov, Pereyaslav and many other lands. Parishes are principalities, which were constantly divided and divided in old times. During the time of Kievan Rus, efforts were made to unite these principalities in one power.

What is a parish? This is the smallest administrative-territorial unit in the section that existed in the old days. It had the same meaning as the region. The parish or the area sometimes coincided on the borders with the land, if this land was the property of one prince. And usually the parish was part of the land. For example, the land of Kiev had different volosts, which were called, as well as small towns.

In the church Slavonic volosts were sometimes called the authorities. The term "power" had a political concept, which meant the right of possession. And the concept of a parish denoted territory. The region resembles the word "power" and means the land on which this power extends. These terms had such meanings: power denoted the space of possession, and the region - the right of possession. As, for example, it was said in the Gospel of John - "to give them an area of God's children." The volosts already since 1861 were formed for all types of peasants, if I may say so.

The

In Ancient Rus all lands were divided into counties, camps, and those in turn - on roads, volosts, hundreds and so on. Parts of the lands that were divided between the children were called the lots. The destiny - from the word to give (divide). The father shared his possessions and endowed them with his children. This is the share that went to every heir.

Destinations, in turn, were divided into counties. The district was called the administrative-judicial district. The counties were not only in towns, but also in the villages, if the judicial administration was in these villages. Other, more understandable, words, county were called judicial and administrative authority in the village. Even then, county districts in the city or village were called districts. Simply put, a county is a district. On this district, three times a year, the administrator collected alms. It was done and in volost it too (means gathering of the tax).

King

All Russian land was divided into Lesser Russia and Great Russia. These names were the result of coups that occurred in the XII-XIII centuries relative to the Russian population. The whole right side of the Dnieper was called Little Russia, and the left and to the Volga - Great Russia. The supreme power had such titles as the prince, the Grand Duke, the Grand Duke of All Russia, the Tsar. The prince is like the German words konung, kuning, this word was called the representative of the supreme authority on the Slavic lands. The Prince of Kiev was called the Grand Prince. After all, there were princes of different regional cities. The Moscow sovereigns took the title of Tsar. This word is like the abbreviated form of the word "Caesar". It came from writing "Caesar" in Old Slavonic.

Under the king understood the power of the highest authority of local sovereigns. In the days of the possession of Rus by the Tartar Horde, the Tatar rulers were called kings, and then, after the fall of the Byzantine and Roman empires, the rulers of Russia took on a common name - the king.

The title of the king was then understood as the Roman emperor. Under the king understood the independent owner of the land, who paid tribute to no one, did not give anything back. In other words, an autocrat who does not depend on someone else's power.

Titles

If we sum up the scheme for the development of power in Russia, we can consider such titles of this very power. The prince was called the leader of the armed detachment, who was guarding Russia and for this he received a reward - food. It was a position, in fact, hired. But the Grand Duke of Kiev, this is no longer a hired man, but a representative of the clan that owns this land. And finally, the sovereign king is the master of the Russian land and the senior representative of all the princes of Russia, and the supreme ruler.

Need

In ancient times, it so happened that the association in the administrative districts of peasants, the main taxpayers, occurred on the basis of state taxes. This is the essence of the concept of what a volost.

The population of the country was united in the camps and volosts. Such associations were governed by governors and volostels, which were represented on the ground by central government bodies. But, in addition, in every volost, these were their bodies of worldly management. The mundane leadership was carried out through gatherings and councils. Each of the parish councils had an elder or sotsky with pawnbrokers, who monitored the payment of taxes and duties. Such department of worldly self-management was engaged in affairs of the land management of each volost or camp. The duties of the local headman included monitoring the payment of taxes and taxes, assigning free land to new settlers, asking the central government for the needs of his rural municipality, rewarding the peasants with privileges, distributing taxes among all those who could not pay or left the rural municipality. And we had to pay back to the new population census.

Hard times

Such a concept as a parish gradually began to perish with the development of landownership. Some classes of the population began to beg the Tsar for various privileges. They could not be judged, except for heavy criminal cases, and they themselves could judge their peasants. The possessions of such a landowner with all his villages came out of the volost. Such counties and volosts were considered a special judicial-administrative district. But nevertheless, no matter what settlements were called volosts, it remained important that the union in the volost and the camps still occurred on the basis of collecting various taxes and taxes. The electors or other officials came to the elected or appointed posts, and they were engaged, basically, with the registration of all taxpayers, and already in passing they did both the court and other cases in the territory entrusted to them.

The Times of Peter I

Already in the time of Peter I, the lands were divided into provinces, the provinces into counties, and already counties - at the volost, the most unified administrative division. For the first time in Russia, there was a unified system of volost-county-guberniya. And in the case of the peasants who belonged to the landlords, the landlords' estates occupied the place of the volosts. The parish consisted of a number of located rural communities. By the length it was not more than 20 miles. Rural communities also had their own self-government. The village elder, the collector of taxes, who also dealt with the courts in these territories, were elected.

The famous parish

One of the most famous, according to the film "Ivan Vasilievich changes his profession," was Kemskaya volost. The film said that the Swedish king wanted to get this volost from Ivan the Terrible. It is located in the basin of the river Kem, on the shore of the White Sea. The center of the parish was the town of Kem. Once Kemskaya volost was the possession of Martha Boretskaya, who was considered the wife of the posadnik of Veliky Novgorod. Later she gave this volost Solovetsky Monastery. At different times, the Finns and Swedes made devastating raids on the volost. But still Solovetsky monastery, having seized it, managed to build here a large prison for those times and made it a fortress that sheltered the population before the raids of enemies.

If we sum up everything that we considered in this article, namely, the meaning of the word "rural municipality", then we can say with good conscience that the division of the country into administrative territories was caused, firstly, by the possession of these lands, and secondly, by the fact The fact that on these lands it was necessary to collect taxes and dues. Therefore, in order to facilitate this matter, and divided the land into different volosts. In them, as in the smallest administrative associations, peasants were taxed. The volosts are, in effect, forced associations of the population into communities according to local differences.