Zemshchina

Political term in 16th-century Russia

Zemshchina was in the classical sense, according to the definition of the archaeographer Vasily Storozhev, "land, as a concept opposite to the state, to everything state and sovereign in ancient Russia". This term received special meaning in the 16th century, after the departure of Tsar Ivan the Terrible to the Alexandrovskaya Sloboda in December 1564.