ON THE QUESTION OF EMERGENCE OF THE PROTO-STATE AUTHORITY - THE INSTITUTION OF THE MILITARY WARCHIEF

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to consider the general causes and conditions of occurrence, as well as the organizational features of the earliest proto-state authority - the institution of the military warchief. The genesis of this institution was due to the crisis of the late clan system. As a factual basis, the article used data on the late clan society of the Germans and Slavs. The author identifies common causes of politogenesis (origin of government). This, in turn, involves consideration of the main power-organizational and political-administrative processes that took place during the decomposition of the late tribal system. The substantial analysis of these processes allows us to establish that the tribal authorities at the last stage of their existence were faced with a crisis of control caused by a profound transformation of the object of management (the tribal community) and the loss of power capabilities of the managing subject. The way out of the crisis of controllability was the creation within the tribe of a constantly operating authority based not on local (communal-clan), but on territorial principle. The socio-economic and political processes of the late clan system caused a situation in which only a military warchief's institute could be such an authority. The territorial organization of the power of the military warchief gives reason to see in this governing body the first proto-state institution, i.e. an institution that contained the organizational beginning of state power. The emergence of such an institution (with a fundamentally different amount of competence) inevitably caused conflicts and regulatory conflicts between it and the old tribal authorities. Strengthening the power of the military warchief occurred in the process of formation of a new socially significant tribal group -druzhina and the emergence of allied tribal formations.