Mestnichestvo

According to eminent Russian 19th-century historian Vasily Klyuchevsky, "you could beat a boyar up, you could take away his property, you could expel him from government service, but you could never make him accept an appointment or a seat at the tsar's table lower than what he is entitled to.

"[1] Because of the mestnichestvo, otherwise qualified people who could not boast of sufficiently extended ancestry had no hope of getting an important state post.

With the developing autocracy, where the core principle was the creation of a central bureaucracy reporting directly to the tsar, the role of the mestnichestvo was progressively reduced.

Moreover, increasing defense needs required that the top military posts be occupied by capable officers, not ancestry-proud but inept boyars.

Tsars were able to make appointments outside the mestnichestvo system which created positions as bez mest, or "without [reserved] places".