The Old Russian period (IX-the first third of the XIII century) is the beginning of the history of three fraternal peoples, the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, which developed from a single Old Russian nationality; this is the time of the emergence and subsequent development of the largest multi-ethnic Old Russian state in medieval Europe, whose socio-economic and political system was determined by the development of productive forces lands of the East Slavic ethnic group. Ancient Russia attracted the attention of scientists belonging to various research areas, and its study was often associated with modern problems. The socio-economic and political history of Ancient Russia is complex and multifaceted. There are relatively few surviving sources. Specialists have always faced the most difficult triune problem: to correctly understand individual phenomena of the historical process, to establish their totality in dialectical interrelation, to determine their essence. Their study is all the more difficult because the study of ancient Russian history was inextricably linked not only with the development of historical science, its methods, the expansion of the source base and the improvement of source analysis, but also with the development of social thought and social life itself in modern and modern times. Therefore, when determining the trends and tasks of studying the genesis of feudalism in Ancient Russia, it is advisable to distinguish three sets of questions: historiography, theory, and practice of studying the problem. Already in the second half of the 18th century, Russian noble historiography used the concepts of "feudalism", "feudal system", "feudal rule","feuds" -estates, etc. in relation to ancient Russian history1 . Their use reflected the beginning of the study of feudalism as a certain social system in Western European noble-bourgeois science. The historiosophical concept of" enlightened absolutism", formulated in Russia by Catherine II, did not contra ... Read more