The question of the nature of representation at the Zemsky Sobor of 1598 is one of those on which our understanding of the evolution of the estate-representative institutions of the Russian state in the sixteenth century largely depends. The main source of the council's history gave rise to lengthy disputes about its composition - the approved charter on the election of Boris Fyodorovich Godunov to the tsarship, in which among other participants of the council nobles were named "from the cities of choice"1 . Historians for quite a long time identified the term "choice "with electivity and saw in the elected nobles delegates elected to the council from their seats . 2 V. O. Klyuchevsky was the first to draw attention to the fact that the term" choice "in Russia also meant"the highest rank of the serving provincial hierarchy". Comparing the list of those elected at the Council of 1598 with the boyar list of 1577, he found that 10 people out of 34 members of the electoral council who were included in the list for selection from cities, even 20 years before this council belonged to the capital's nobility. Based on this observation, V. O. Klyuchevsky came to the conclusion: in 1598, " the council list grouped members of the council not only by their official ranks, but by placing people of different ranks in the group of city selection, giving this title the meaning not of an official rank, but of elective representation."3 . According to V. O. Klyuchevsky, the metropolitan service people designated by their ranks in the Approved Charter were not elected representatives of the provincial nobility at the council. V. O. Klyuchevsky's work on Zemstvo councils was an important milestone in the study of these institutions, but his conclusions about the nature of representation at the Council of 1598 were met with caution by some historians. 4 S. F. Platonov wrote, for example: "You can doubt it 1 " Acts collected in the libraries and archives of the Russian Empire by the Arch ... Читать далее