BOYAR, or BOIAR, among the Slavic nations, a free landowner independent of any sovereign. It is synonymous with ceck, leek or bajarM, used by several Slavic tribes, such as the Bohemians and Poles. The word Boyar was at first especially used by the Bulgarians, Serbs and Russians and then was adopted by the Mol davians and Wallachians. It represented the highest social condition, corresponding in cer tain respects to that of an English peer. In ancient Russia, the boyars were the next after the princes of the blood, or knazia, who were all originally petty sovereigns. The boyars formed a kind of supreme political body in the state and acted as the council (duma) of the grand dukes. All the higher offices, civil and military, including the lieutenancies in the provinces, were held by them. While Russia was still divided into several petty sovereign ties, the boyars enjoyed the right of choosing for themselves and for their dependents the prince whom they wished to serve and to leave the service at their pleasure, without any pre vious notification. When the grand dukes of Vladimir and of Moscow stripped these petty princes of their sovereign rights and trans formed them from vassals into subjects, the dignity of boyars was granted to their families.
The boyars had their own military retinue and their clients; and their influence on the masses of the people often equaled that of the grand dukes. The sovereign ukases always contained the sacramental words, °ordered by the Grand Duke (subsequently it was by the and approved by the boyars.° Precedence among the boyars was reckoned according to the date of the title which was hereditary, and the observance of it was carried so far that in the 16th and 17th centuries any boyar of an older creation refused to serve under a younger one. This struggle for rank was ended by the Tsar, Alexis Michailovitch Romanoff, who destroyed the official records and diplomas of the boyars, but they retained their place among the nobility. Peter the Great wholly abolished their power and official privileges and the name now remains only as a historical distinction and a recollection of the past, in families which once possessed the dignity. In Rumania boyars still exist, though the title has only the significance of the English gsquire,g or owner of an estate.