30 June, 12:50
The term "feudal fragmentation" has long become a ritual formula in Russian (formerly Soviet) historical textbooks. It is employed to explain the "collapse of centralized states," introducing students into a conceptual framework where political decentralization is automatically equated with decline.
Due to its presentation and semantic context, the term "fragmentation" evokes associations with decay, internecine strife, and vulnerability. However, behind this entrenched term lies a significant deception: political diversity and pluralism are portrayed as chaos, while centralization and submission to a single authority are framed as progress.
In reality, the epochs commonly referred to as periods of "feudal fragmentation" were, in many cases, eras of local liberties, competition among political models, vibrant cultural development, economic autonomy, and institutional experimentation. These were not symptoms of decline but reactions to hypertrophied centralized power that destroyed local communities, erased identities, and sought to subject diverse regions to uniform violence.
Colonial Rhetoric of Centralization
Large empires—be it the French kingdom, Muscovite state, Habsburg monarchy, or the Ottoman Porte—have always justified their legitimacy retrospectively, reiterating one another in reproducing the idea of an original mythical unity that was supposedly broken and had to be heroically "restored." This is a political fiction, where the narrative of "fragmentation" serves as a pretext for expansion and absorption of diverse political entities incapable of resisting aggression.
Take the example of the Muscovite principality. The so-called "gathering of Russian lands" was essentially the military-administrative elimination of Moscow's competitors, each of which had its own dynastic lineage, religious traditions, diplomatic ties, and cultural heritage—Kyiv, Novgorod, Tver, Pskov, Ryazan, Kazan. Each represented a viable alternative to Moscow, and for that reason, had to be destroyed. To disguise this conquest as something more palatable, it was packaged as the "restoration of the unity of Rus'," under the rule of its alleged "historical center"—Moscow.
This same rhetorical mechanism was employed in Soviet and post-Soviet historiography. Periods of polycentrism were framed as phases of weakness following a supposed earlier unity. Meanwhile, processes of conquest and Moscow's usurpation of power were celebrated as heroic victories of order over barbarism. Few historians seemed troubled by the fact that these "fragmented" periods often displayed adaptability, resilience, cultural exchange, and expanded political freedoms among independent polities.
Diversity as a Political Model
In European history, it was precisely the periods of fragmentation that laid the groundwork for political competition, from which later emerged parliamentary institutions, mercantile republics, universities, and legal pluralism. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation—often cited as an example of fragmentation—was a space of political experimentation, comprising principalities, free cities, bishoprics, and overlapping sovereignties. Catholics and Protestants coexisted. Imperial privileges and local law operated side by side. Multilingualism and multiple civic identities flourished.
This kind of "fragmentation" prevented the total suppression and monopolization of power. The alternative to centralism is not chaos, but a negotiated patchwork of local sovereignties, distributed power, and historical compromise. It is not weakness—it is architecture.
Unification as Violence
By contrast, centralization historically proceeded through coercion: the destruction of local institutions, forced religious uniformity, ideological indoctrination, homogenized bureaucracy, and an imperial rewriting of history. Where once dozens of centers shaped law and governance, by the 15th century remained only one capital, one language of authority, one law, and one church. Pluralism gave way to hierarchy. Freedom to subjugation.
It is no surprise that empires benefit from the idea of decentralization as catastrophe. If fragmentation is not only normal but beneficial, then the empire’s very raison d’etre collapses. The legitimacy of alternative systems, cultural autonomies, and local sovereignties becomes undeniable.
Academic Use—or Lack Thereof
The term "feudal fragmentation" is nearly absent from Western academic historiography in its Soviet or Russocentric sense. It carries ideological connotations and lacks analytical clarity. Instead, neutral terms such as:
political decentralization
polycentrism
disintegration of centralized authority
regional autonomy
post-Carolingian pluralism
are used to describe the same phenomena.
Historians focus on institutional transformation, localization of power, rise of communal self-governance, new legal jurisdictions, and negotiated forms of authority.
How the West Describes It
France: After the fall of the Carolingian Empire in the 9th–10th centuries, French historians—from Georges Duby to Marc Bloch—do not speak of “fragmentation,” but of feudalization, reorganization of sovereignty, and emergence of localized law.
Italy: The independent city-states of Florence, Venice, Genoa, Bologna were never described as fragmented—rather, these were golden eras of prosperity and innovation.
Germany: The term Kleinstaaterei (petty statism) is used, but even that is framed as part of the Holy Roman Empire’s laboratory of pluralism, not as failure.
England: The pre-Norman period known as the Heptarchy is studied as part of Anglo-Saxon evolution, not as some dark age of disunity.
Who Coined "Feudal Fragmentation"?
The term is a Muscovite invention, later weaponized by the Russian Empire, Soviet historiography, and today’s centralized Russian state. It was never meant as a scientific category but as propaganda. It justified the conquest of neighbors, suppression of regional autonomy, and ideological homogenization.
What Moscow called “feudal fragmentation” was, in truth, political diversity. In 13th-century Rus’ and Zalesye, princes ruled on behalf of dynasties—not as vassals of a centralized bureaucracy. Autonomy, competition for merchants and artisans, and relatively open migration of talent created a proto-competitive ecosystem of governance models. Centralization destroyed that.
Soviet historiography used this term to justify the disappearance of a supposedly “unified” Rus’ and its mythical “restoration” under Moscow. But no such united state ever existed. Kyiv never passed a crown to Moscow. Moscow was not Rus’.
What Was Moscow Really "Gathering"?
There was no centralized Rus’ to begin with. It was a dynastic confederation.
By the time Moscow emerged, the old system had already been obliterated by the Mongols.
Moscow rose as a client of the Horde, not as a heir of Kyiv.
The so-called “gathering” was violent conquest: Tver, Novgorod, Ryazan, Pskov.
The “Third Rome” myth was a post-facto sacralization of expansion.
No Byzantine emperor acknowledged Moscow as successor.
And yet, Moscow’s narrative pretends that the absorption of trade routes, factor cities, and rival polities was a noble mission to reunite a broken whole. The same logic justified Stalin’s absorption of Eastern Europe “from fascism.”
In Conclusion: From Fear to Opportunity
The formula “fragmentation is bad” is deeply embedded in the consciousness of those shaped by Muscovite and Soviet paradigms. But if we reframe history not as a linear path toward centralization but as an ongoing experiment in coexistence, then decentralized epochs emerge as opportunities, not failures.
The myth of "feudal fragmentation" is not a scholarly term. It is a political metaphor created to justify domination. Debunking it restores dignity to pluralism and reclaims political diversity as a source of strength, not weakness.