The book by Associate Professor of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, Candidate of Historical Sciences N. A. Khachaturian is devoted to the emergence of the States-General in France (1302 - 1314). In essence, it raises a more general problem - about the initial stage of the formation of a class-representative monarchy in this country. In Soviet medieval studies, this topic was not specifically developed in the research plan. In the vast bourgeois literature, in particular in France, the tendency has always prevailed to consider the States-General only in political and legal terms. In this connection, there is a tendency in French medieval studies, which has been particularly growing in recent years, to emphasize the "randomness" of the convocation of the first States-General as a result of Philip IV's desire to impose on his subjects a certain analogue of the English parliament, in the creation of which none of the estates was ostensibly interested. Hence it is often argued that the emergence of the States-General did not play a significant role in the political life of France in the early fourteenth century, and that the real center of the estate-representative system and the opposition of the estates to the king, at least until the middle of the fifteenth century, were in this country the regional and provincial states.

In the light of these concepts, N. A. Khachaturian's work is very relevant. The main goal of the study in the book is the following main questions: was the convocation of the General Election of the President of the Russian Federation held in the first half of the year?

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what is the extent of the involvement of the Crown, on the one hand, and the social forces of the country, on the other; what is the place of the States-General in the process of state centralization? (page 18). Choosing a way to solve this problem, N. A. Khachaturian, like most of her predecessors in Soviet historiography, abandoned the formal legal approach to the problem, seeking to involve in the scope of her research the entire complex of socio-political relations that developed in France at the end of the XIII - beginning of the XIV century.

This new approach, applied to the early history of the States-General, required the author to study a wide range of sources. In addition to carefully analyzed documents relating directly to the early States-General, the book also uses sources such as royal ordinances and government correspondence, charters, numerous chronicles, political treatises and pamphlets of royal legist lawyers, and others. The research is based on a thoughtful and thorough analysis and comparison of all these diverse sources.

After a brief introduction, which gives a general statement of the problem, a critical assessment of the literature of the issue and a characteristic of the main sources, the material devoted to the most important general trends in the socio - political development of France in the XIII - early XIV century follows. The questions of the evolution of the main estates and their relations with the royal power, which are poorly studied in relation to this period, are considered here in the most original way. Relying mainly on the material of royal ordinances, as well as charters granted by the crown to secular feudal lords and cities after the opposition movement of 1314-1316 and meeting the requirements put forward at that time, N. A. Khachaturian convincingly shows that in France there was, although not as open as in England of this period, opposition to the crown, which infringed, although in different ways, the interests of all classes (pp. 52-72). At the same time, the process of state centralization was also beneficial in other ways to a part of the clergy and nobility, especially to the townspeople (pp. 32-36). Thus, the author reveals the impact of the strengthening of central power on the position of all estates, which gave rise to a complex and contradictory attitude on their part to the policy of royal power - a phenomenon characteristic of the period of formation of the estate monarchy in all countries where this form of feudal state existed. Unfortunately, N. A. Khachaturian has not given enough space in the book to the crown's policy towards the peasantry, in which the feudal nature of the state of that time and its centralization are particularly clearly revealed.

The socio-political situation described by the author makes it obvious that there were prerequisites for political conflicts that could lead to the emergence of an all-French class-representative assembly. It was necessary for the king to support his centralizing policy, both in his struggle with the pope and with opposition groups within the country. Therefore, the initiative to convene the States-General came from the Crown. But in potency they were also needed by the estates, at least to express their dissatisfaction with the king. The book emphasizes that, as in most other representative assemblies of medieval Europe, representatives of the peasants and working classes of the city did not participate in the States-General from the very beginning. As deputies from the city estate, either rich citizens - merchants, usurers, members of the municipal administration, or legists-sat in them. The author notes a certain continuity in the structure and organization of the States-General with the tradition of earlier consultative meetings (late 12th - 13th centuries) under the king (most often extended meetings of the royal curia) (pp. 74-79).

N. A. Khachaturian notes the amorphous nature of the States-General, the instability of the principle of representation in them from different estates, and the limited powers of deputies bound by an "imperative mandate" that prescribes them to fulfill the king's will without question (pp. 79-90, 96-105). The author pays special attention to the non-periodic convocation of the States-General, which then and later depended on the initiative of the crown, as well as to the sharp differentiation of the three estates in them, which later became permanently fixed in the division of the states into three chambers, often hostile to each other. This structural feature has led to a relatively weak political influence of the States-General on the entire missile defense system.-

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the length of their history. Justly seeing in such features of this institution a reflection of the alignment of social forces in France at that time, the author at the same time convincingly shows that the States-General were in principle a new institution, firstly, because of their representative nature, and secondly, because of the mandatory participation of city deputies in them (pp. 78-79, 88-90).

This thesis is more fully confirmed in the final part of the book, which seems to us to be the most interesting. Here we find out the position of individual estates in the States-General of 1302 and 1308, which has never been studied with such completeness and thoroughness before. N. A. Khachaturian uses the" acts of accession " received from deputies. As a result of a thorough analysis of these essentially indirect sources, it becomes clear that the States - General were convened for the first time to deal with issues of a particularly important political nature - the support of the king in his struggle with the pope and the elimination and condemnation of the Templar Order-which clearly went beyond the competence of the provincial states. It is also clear that although the initiative for their convocation came from the king and that their deputies had only an "imperative mandate", in both cases, many of them resisted the plans of the crown, which was broken only gradually, by various grants to the church, feudal lords and cities in exchange for " acts of annexation". Opposition to the government's proposed solutions was particularly strong among the clergy, who for the most part did not want to openly oppose their supreme leader, the Pope. But it also took place among the nobility and even cities in the south that were separatist. The northern nobles and cities, on the other hand, actively supported the crown's policy on the issues discussed, and many cities that were not invited to the States even insisted on their right to participate in them (pp. 134-135).

The author's analysis of the treatises of the legists of the early fourteenth century (G. Nogaret, G. Plesianus, P. Dubois), as a rule, came from the townspeople who actively participated in the meetings of the States-General, where they defended the supremacy of the king, confirms that the emergence of the States-General met not only the needs of the crown, but also a part of the nobility and cities. both within the country and in the fight against pala. The Legists argued, among other things, that the secular people, especially the knights, but also the "people" in general, supported the French king by their "general consent", while the pope acted alone, ignoring the advice of the councils. In these arguments, one can see the germs of medieval theories of the estate monarchy and the conciliar movement, although the legists used the principle of "general consent" only as a means of unconditional support for the royal supremacy, and not at all in opposition to it (pp. 148-155). This interpretation of the principle of "consent" - and we can agree with N. A. Khachaturian - corresponded to the current political situation in France, the main problem of which was the further centralization of the country in spite of still quite strong centrifugal forces. However, the very reference of the legists to the principle of "consent" clearly indicates that the idea of creating an all-French estate assembly reflected the interests of not only the crown, but also certain social groups and, above all, citizens.

Thus, the reviewed book as a whole leaves no doubt about the regularity of the appearance of the States-General, that they had different political functions than the provincial states, and were not at all an artificial superstructure above them. Therefore, no matter how weak the real political influence of the States - General, which usually had only advisory functions (in contrast to the English Parliament of the XIV - XV centuries or the Cortes of Aragon and Castile in the XIII-XV centuries), the very fact of their emergence was important as a reflection of the strengthening of state centralization, the formation of national estates and the formation of France has a new form of state-the estate monarchy.

In general, the book highlights both the general laws of the emergence of common French estate representation with other countries of Western Europe, and the specific features of the latter, related to the specific socio-political conditions of the development of French feudal society. In this way, it also contributes to the development of a broader problem

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medieval estate monarchy as a special form of feudal state, which is still poorly studied from the Marxist point of view. A more general approach to this topic is also outlined in the conclusion, which successfully summarizes the results of the entire study. Unfortunately, this general problem in its comparative-historical aspect is almost not touched upon in the course of its development. This is all the more annoying because in modern French medieval studies, voices are increasingly heard in favor of the same type of French estate monarchy with the German (and not English) version of it, and the provincial states are moving closer to the influential territorial landtags, and the States - General - with the ephemeral and powerless Reichstag of the XIV-XV centuries.

From the context of the book, it follows that despite all the differences between them, the States-General were closer to the English Parliament than to the Reichstag, since the general trends of state development in England and France led to increasing centralization and subordination of individual provinces, while in Germany, on the contrary, to the disintegration into virtually independent territorial principalities. However, N. A. Khachaturian avoids direct comparisons between the organization and functioning of the English Parliament and the States-General. Meanwhile, in the early stages of their history (at the end of the XIII - beginning of the XIV century), one can notice a great similarity between them, which decreases only from the middle of the XIV century, and results in sharp differences in the XV century. The author can also be reproached for paying little attention to the provincial states and their relations with the States-General, as well as to the similarities and differences in composition, competence, and government relations between them and the States-General. A comparison of these institutions could more clearly show the illegality of bringing the former closer to the landtags and the latter closer to the Reichstag.

The historiographical review, which is generally successful and critical of bourgeois historiography, does not clearly and concretely mention the fundamental differences in the methodology of studying the history of medieval representative institutions in Western Medieval studies, on the one hand, and Soviet ones, on the other.

The book is sometimes characterized by excessive dryness of presentation, lack of historical color of the era described in it.

In general, this is an original book that is interesting for researchers of the history of medieval France and for those who study the history and typology of Western European estate monarchies and estate-representative assemblies. It remains to be hoped that this first book of N. A. Khachaturian will be the beginning of her further study of the history of the French feudal state of the XII-XV centuries, which is fraught with many unresolved and even unresolved problems.

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