Western Feudalism and the Russian Social Order (Polemics with A.A. Gorsky)
Medieval Russia was marked not by a West-European social synthesis of German and Roman origin, but a different one representing a recombination of ancient Russian and Eastern order. This cardinal difference reflected itself not by the end of the 16<sup>th</sup> century, as the Russian scholar A. Gorsky believes, but earlier. Having no feudal basis similar to the European one Russia was condemned to serfdom for centuries.