The Riurikid dynasty and its state organization provided a political framework for Kievan Rus' society. Much of the political activity of Kievan Rus', insofar as it revolved around the ruling dynasty and involved the dynasty’s internal and foreign affairs, may be understood through an examination of dynastic policies and politics. But the princes of the dynasty constituted only one layer or component of Kievan society. They formed interdependent relationships with other social elements. As Kievan Rus' evolved politically under the Riurikids, the peoples of the state expected their princes to regulate relations with foreign neighbors and defend them from attack, to keep trade routes open and secure, and, as Orthodoxy and princely administration displaced tribal customs, to maintain domestic order and enforce legal norms. The princes, on the other hand, demanded that the population pay tribute and other fees, which they used directly or indirectly to support themselves, their retainers, and the Church.
This chapter will examine the characteristics of Kievan society, its economic activities, and the policies and mechanisms adopted by princes and Church hierarchs to acquire revenue from the main body of the society. Finally, it will consider the effects of the dynamic interaction among the Riurikid dynasty, the Orthodox Church, and general populace, effects that in combination transformed the diverse Slavic tribes that made up Kievan Rus' into an integrated society that could and would retain a significant degree of social and cultural cohesion even when the political ties that united its multiple components loosened.
Rural society
The vast majority of the Kievan Rus' population, who both materially supported the Riurikid princes and depended upon them, were peasant farmers (smerdy). Despite variations derived from tribal background, geographic location, and other factors, the peasants of Kievan Rus' shared many characteristics and were regarded as a single undifferentiated social stratum. Among the free members of society, peasant men and women had the lowest social status.
Peasants lived in their own huts with their nuclear families, and farmed their own plots of land using their own tools and livestock. Their households were grouped into rural villages and organized into communes (vervi or miry), which had their roots in the tribal and clannic ties among the population. By the Kievan era, however, the communes had a territorial identity as much as a clannic one. Members of each commune shared common pasture lands, meadows and forests, and fishing and hunting rights. They also, importantly, shared responsibilities for tax payment and other legal obligations.
The lands of Kievan Rus', which these peasants farmed, were located primarily in two climatic zones, the forest belt and the forest-steppe. As their names imply, the vegetation that grew naturally in these regions was forest. The spruce and fir that prevailed in the northern taiga gave way to cedar and birch, then to oak further south. The forestlands were generally well watered. Extensive river systems flowed through them, and they normally received adequate precipitation to sustain agriculture. Their grey and dark grey soils, however, were not particularly rich; fertile black soils were located only west and south of Kiev. Furthermore, the lands of Kievan Rus', most of which were located north of the fiftieth parallel, had short growing seasons.
To accommodate these conditions the Slav peasants most commonly applied a method of farming known as slash-and-burn. To clear a section of forest for cultivation they cut deeply into the bark of the trees and left them to die and dry, then burned them. The resulting ash added to the soil sufficient nutrients to provide a fertile medium for several years. When the nutrients in the soil of one clearing were depleted, the peasants moved their crops to another, which they had prepared in the interim. In some cases, after leaving a clearing fallow for many years, they might clear out the scrub brush and birch trees that had overgrown it and cultivate it once again; this practice is known as a system of long fallow.
The preference for these methods among the variety with which the peasants of Kievan Rus' were familiar was probably based on practical issues. Foremost among them were population density, which influenced a community’s available manpower, and the specific physical character of the land. Because fire did most of the heavy work involved in clearing patches for farming, even tiny hamlets populated by just a few households could apply this method and engage in farming. The peasants were similarly selective in their choice of farm implements. The favored instrument was the sokha. Pulled across the ground by a draft animal or a farmer, the sokha’s forked end, fitted with iron shoes, scratched furrows in the light ash-covered soil of the forest clearings. By fixing the shoes so they were in an almost vertical position in relation to the ground, the farmers were able to maneuver around tree stumps or skip over roots and other impediments that remained in the ground. The Slav farmers also used sickles for reaping, scythes for mowing hay, mattocks, and other implements.
In the forest clearings the farmers generally raised cereal grains: rye in the north, millet in the south, supplemented by wheat, buckwheat, oats, and barley. They also produced other crops, such as peas and lentils, flax and hemp. Peasants maximized their chances for reaping sufficiently large crops by planting twice a year. Archeological evidence suggests that as early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries northern communities were planting both winter and spring crops. Winter rye was typically sown late in the year. The seeds were protected over the winter by an insulating layer of snow and sprouted as the snows melted in the spring. Spring crops were planted after the danger of winter frosts had passed. Once harvested, the grains were stored in pits lined with birch and pine bark or in barns or other buildings.
In addition to grains, peasants raised livestock. Horses, cattle, oxen, pigs, sheep, goats, and poultry were the most common animals in Rus' farmyards. During summer they grazed in the forests or in abandoned fallow clearings; in winter they were confined in buildings and fed hay or feed crops. The surrounding forests also supplied the rural population with berries, fruits, nuts, and mushrooms that supplemented their diets. In addition, the peasants regularly fished nearby rivers, lakes, and streams; hunted for game and fur pelts; and
Kept beehives for the production of wax and honey, which like the fur had both domestic and commercial value.
During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, princes and boyars or high-ranking members of their retinues also claimed ownership of rural landed estates. The intrusion of princes and their boyars into the countryside did not necessarily interfere or compete with peasant farming. The main enterprise on these estates appears to have been raising horses, which were so necessary as mounts in combat. They also raised other livestock, mainly cattle and sheep. Grain and other crop production appears to have been a secondary pursuit. The members of the elite, who continued to reside in fortified urban areas, generally turned their estates over to stewards, who oversaw the operations that were conducted by slaves or indentured laborers. Bishoprics and monasteries, which received estates as gifts from princes and boyars, also began to accumulate landed wealth during this era.
Kievan society, including the prince and his retainers, depended upon the rural peasantry for food supplies. Agriculture in the northern climates of Kievan Rus' was precarious and its output was never abundant. At times the system failed. In 1024, for example, a drought in Suzdalia caused a severe famine that prompted the population to purchase grain from the Volga Bulgars. Another famine that affected the Rostov region and the town of Iaroslavl' was recorded in 1071. Near the end of the century (1092) the southern part of Kievan Rus' experienced a famine when a late frost destroyed the young crops that were just beginning to grow after a year-long drought. Droughts, floods, early frosts, and even mild winters that left the land without its blanket of snow and allowed the seed to freeze affected agricultural output adversely throughout the twelfth century as well.
But these events were exceptions and, in most instances, only locally significant. More typically, cultivation of the forest zones by means ofthe slash-and-burn method and the light scratch plow, coupled with the storage of grain reserves, met the society’s needs. Contrary to commonly made assertions, these practices did not require large labor forces or abundant livestock, which would have been necessary to haul away tree stumps, pull heavy plows or other equipment, or tend repeatedly planted fields. Rather, the methods selected were well suited to a society whose population was scattered in small communities throughout the vast forested territories that made up Kievan
Rus'. Using them, the rural sector of the society was able to produce a supply of food that was adequate for its own needs as well as for the growing urban population and also sufficient to pay the fees and tribute, much of which was collected in grain and other food stocks, required by the Riurikid princes.
Urban society
Although the vast majority of the population dwelled in the countryside, Kievan Rus' was known for its towns. M. N. Tikhomirov, one of the foremost Soviet scholars on Rus' cities, identified 89 towns in the eleventh century and another 134 that arose in the twelfth. He estimated that, on the eve of the Mongol invasion (1237-40), Kievan Rus' boasted approximately 300 urban centers.1 Although many of them were not true cities but relatively small fortified posts, some were lively diversified centers ofcommerce and crafts as well as of civil, military, and ecclesiastical administration. Foremost among them was Kiev itself, the “mother of Russian cities.”
The largest cities formed around princely strongholds, ecclesiastical seats, and trading posts. Any one or combination of those factors offered opportunities for merchants, master craftsmen, and unskilled workers, who gathered in the vicinity of fortified outposts and produced or exchanged a range of goods and services required by the elite.
Some cities swelled to impressive sizes. Precise numbers for their inhabitants, however, remain elusive. Calculated estimates are frequently based on the land area within a city’s limits, the number of domiciles that area contained, and the number ofpersons per household. Weighing these factors, scholars have offered figures ranging from 36,000 to 50,000 for the population of Kiev at the end of the twelfth century. At either end of the scale Kiev was comparable to Paris and London, whose populations at that time were about 50,000 and 30,000, respectively. Novgorod was also a large city by those standards. Its population grew from 10,000-15,000 in the early eleventh century to twice that size by the early thirteenth century. Chernigov, whose land area has been estimated to have exceeded Kiev’s as well
M. N. Tikhomirov, Drevnerusskie goroda [Ancient Russian towns], 2nd edn. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1956), pp. 36, 39,
As Novgorod’s by the time of the Mongol invasions, may also have had a larger population.
City populations had a more complex social structure than their rural counterparts. At the apex of the social hierarchy was the prince himself. His military retainers formed a layer beneath him. On a par with them were the hierarchs of the Church. These groups constituted the elite of Kievan Rus' society. But the prince and his retainers, whose residences were in the town, and clergymen made up only a relatively small portion of the urban population. The bulk of the residents were merchants, tradesmen, artisans, and unskilled laborers. They too were socially differentiated. Some were foreigners and held a special status. Others were members of the prince’s personal household and may have been slaves. Many, however, were free small-scale traders and craftsmen. Their status was slightly higher than the bulk of the population, free unskilled laborers. Slaves and other dependent laborers made up the lowest social stratum.
Social status was reflected in living quarters. In Kiev the prince and metropolitan occupied palatial dwellings atop the central hill; the working population not directly attached to elite households dwelled primarily in wooden homes in separate sections of the city, located on outlying hilltops or at the base of the bluffs in a district known as the podol or podil.
In Novgorod dwellings were set in courtyards that lined streets made oflogs that had been split in halflengthwise. Their houses were also constructed from logs or timber and built on foundations or decks to protect them from the low, damp ground that was characteristic of the region. Refuse from the inhabitants and their livestock, which were also stalled within the courtyard, typically was simply left in the yard. To provide a relatively dry and clean surface the decaying refuse was covered with twigs; some Novgorodians built log pathways across their yards. Rich and poor lived in these conditions; the sizes of their dwellings, however, varied. The relatively large courtyards and buildings from the eleventh and twelfth centuries probably belonged to members of the social elite whose servants, including craftsmen, lived and worked on their premises.
Commerce and crafts
Most of the urban population in Kievan Rus' was engaged in one of the fundamental elements of the urban economy: intercontinental commerce, domestic trade, and craft production. Of these, the sector of the economy that has, perhaps, attracted the most attention is intercontinental commerce. It had, after all, been the lure of silver and Oriental finery that had brought Varangians to the lands that became Kievan Rus'. The Riurikid princes continued to sponsor and encourage intercontinental trade, which contributed greatly to the wealth and glory oftheir realm. Commerce with Byzantium, Europe, and the Muslim East was a pivotal component in the economy of Kievan Rus' .
The Kievan economy
Intercontinental commerce
Kiev was the main market center for Rus' trade with Byzantium. That trade was already being conducted on a regular basis by the reign of Vladimir, and it expanded after the Rus' adoption of Christianity. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries some elements in the pattern of Rus'-Byzantine trade shifted. Direct princely participation in the trade diminished while princes concentrated more on facilitating commerce by keeping the trade routes open and secure. The trade that in the tenth century had depended upon Rus' flotillas descending the Dnieper and bearing their goods to Constantinople expanded in the following centuries and was supplemented by trade conducted by Greek merchants who visited Kiev as well as other Rus' towns. But while desire for some Byzantine products rose, the demand for others decreased as Rus' merchants adopted Byzantine techniques and manufactured the products domestically.
Despite these variations, the Rus' consistently exported fur pelts, wax, honey, and slaves to Byzantium. Visitors to Constantinople recorded with admiration the presence and quality of Russian goods they found there. And M. N. Tikhomirov concluded that the number of Rus' merchants conducting business in Constantinople by the year i200 had increased to such proportions that restrictions on them were eased.16 In exchange for their products the Rus' received a wide variety of goods. Luxury items such as silks, satins, brocades, and other rich fabrics, as well as jewelry, glass beads, and bracelets headed the list. Other glass items, such as goblets and other vessels; amphorae filled with wines, olive oil, and naphtha; and combs made of boxwood were also among the Byzantine imports. Spices, fruits, and nuts came to the Rus' lands from Constantinople. The marble used to decorate the Church of the Tithe in Kiev, the Church of the Mother of God in Tmutorokan', and the Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Chernigov was also imported through Byzantium as were glazed tiles and icons.
The flow of goods between Kiev and Constantinople was at times impeded, even interrupted. One source of difficulty was the Polovtsy, who, like the Pechenegs before them, sporadically interfered with the transport of goods across the steppe. Their attacks on the Dnieper during the war against the Rus' at the end of the eleventh century, discussed in the previous chapter, Provide examples of their capacity to disrupt commerce. Later, in the ii6os, the Kievan prince had found it necessary to take unusual measures to protect the flotillas descending the Dnieper. In contrast, in 1184, even though the Rus' princes were once again at war with the Polovtsy, Rus' merchants were freely crossing the steppe and were well-enough informed to tell the Rus' army where to locate its intended enemy. Although the Polovtsy occasionally threatened Rus' trade, they also exchanged goods with Kievan merchants. The Polovtsy regularly supplied horses and other livestock to the Rus', who in return provided grain as well as clothing, weapons, and other manufactured items.
Of greater consequence to Rus'-Byzantine relations than the Polovtsy were factors affecting the political and economic stability of the Byzantine Empire. In the twelfth century political challenges faced by Byzantium posed commercial dilemmas. The market of Constantinople, it will be recalled, attracted the Rus' as well as other merchants because it was a collection point for luxury goods from the Orient as well as the products of the Mediterranean and the Byzantine Empire. Yet as early as the eleventh century the trade routes by which this vast array of items was transported to Constantinople began to be disrupted. Turkish invasions in Asia Minor and subsequent wars between the Byzantines and the Turks disturbed the main land route that had brought Oriental goods through Asia Minor to Constantinople. Alternate routes that avoided Asia Minor were opened. One carried Oriental luxury items by sea across the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea to Egypt. By the late twelfth century such diversions of trade were having an impact on Constantinople. Italian merchants, who had become responsible for most of Constantinople’s western trade, were moving their business to Alexandria in Egypt and the
Crusader states of the Middle East. Donald Queller and Gerald Day, two scholars of the medieval Italian states and Byzantium, have concluded that “by the end of the twelfth century. . . the Byzantine capital was fast losing commercial advantage.”17
A second route also developed. It passed from Central Asia to the north of the Caspian Sea and proceeded to Sudak on the Crimean peninsula before crossing the Black Sea to reach Constantinople. The flow of goods along this route had repercussions on Kievan trade. With their major trading partner offering fewer goods at more expensive prices, Kievan merchants took advantage of the alternate route and met the goods before they reached Constantinople. By the late twelfth century merchant caravans from Kiev were crossing the steppe, in cooperation with the Polovtsy, to the port of Sudak. The activity at Sudak also attracted merchants from the Caucasus and Asia Minor, whose wares (including silver and other metal objects produced in their homelands) were imported by southern Rus' in relatively large quantities during the century preceding the Mongol invasion. Thus, even after Constantinople was sacked by the participants in the Fourth Crusade (1204) and the Central Asian emporium of Urgench was destroyed by the Mongols (1220), Kievan trade activity persisted.
The rerouting of trade resulted also in an expansion of Kievan commercial contacts with central Europe. Kievan merchants not only transferred some of their business from Constantinople to Sudak; they also sold their goods to merchants, including itinerant Jewish traders, who arrived by land from German towns as well as Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary. The intensified use of trade routes between central Europe and Kiev gave economic impetus to the towns of Volynia and Galicia in southwestern Rus'. These principalities, as will be discussed in the next chapter, Correspondingly gained political prominence in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Kiev itself thus became a transit center in trade between central Europe and the northern Black Sea ports. By adjusting to Constantinople’s commercial difficulties and developing alternate trade routes and new trading partners Kiev was able to maintain its commercial activity throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Another potential threat to Kiev’s economic vitality was the growth of a host of other Rus' cities in developing principalities. Yet Kiev remained economically powerful despite physical attacks on the city by its domestic rivals just as it survived the loss of its chief trading partner, Constantinople. Indeed, indicators such as monumental construction projects, the area the town occupied, and the size of its population provide no evidence that Kiev was declining economically in the decades prior to the Mongol invasion. On the contrary, Kiev remained throughout this period a flourishing cosmopolitan city, which not only contained the seats of the senior prince and the metropolitan and was a center for intercontinental commerce, but also was a thriving center for craft production and an entrepot for domestic trade.
Craft production
Craft production in Kiev expanded under the influence of foreign trade and foreign master craftsmen who migrated to Kiev. Evidence of a wide range of occupations has been assembled from archeological artifacts as well as written sources. The Kievan population included blacksmiths and carpenters, potters and leather workers. Jewelers, silver and gold smiths, glassmakers, and bone carvers were also represented.
Military activity generated demand for a range of weapons and other products, virtually all of which were crafted domestically. As horsemen replaced infantry on the battlefield, the nature of weapons and armor also changed. Mounted warriors required sabres and swords with which they could unseat an enemy even as they rode at a full gallop. They needed armor and shields for themselves and equipment for their horses. Craftsmen in the workshops of Kievan Rus' towns were kept busy designing and redesigning armaments, making them light enough for the horses to bear but heavy enough to crush an opponent’s protective armor, and generally supplying the needs of the military forces of their princes.
Massive building projects that will be discussed below also provided work for a wide variety of laborers: skilled stone cutters who worked in the quarries; artists who carved decorative designs in the buildings’ facades, painted frescoes, made and glazed ceramic tiles, and fashioned mosaics; brick makers; carters; and a range of unskilled workers. The craftsmen of Kiev produced items ranging from cathedrals and bridges to clothing and buttons, from weapons to earrings, from armor to glass beads.
The artisans of Kiev were not all native Slavs. After the collapse of the Khazar Empire, skilled workers migrated from its declining cities to Kiev. Particularly after 988, Byzantine craftsmen also came to Kiev to direct the construction and decoration ofnew cathedrals, including the Church of the Tithe and the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Kiev. These churches, which closely followed Byzantine models, required Greek architects to design them. Artists from Constantinople similarly produced the mosaics that decorated St. Sophia. Byzantine master craftsmen also filled the increasing demand for luxury items generated by the Kievan elite, the Riurikid princes and their retainers as well as the Church hierarchs. Their presence added to the cosmopolitan character of Kiev that had already been created by the mix of Slavs with Varangians and was supplemented by diplomats, merchants, and other visitors from the steppe, the North Caucasus, and Europe.
Domestic trade
The flow of Byzantine goods into Kiev and the production of even more items in the city were accompanied by an expansion of domestic trade among the towns of Kievan Rus'. Much of the fur that the Rus' exported to Constantinople, for example, originated in Novgorod’s northern empire and reached Kiev through Novgorod. Byzantine goods, including delicacies such as nuts, were sent back to Novgorod. Other Byzantine items, notably amphorae containing olive oil and wine, were used not only in Kievan households, but could be found in localities at some distance from the capital. In addition to transporting Byzantine goods beyond Kiev to other Rus' towns, domestic trade provided a means of exchanging items produced within those towns and distributing them throughout the realm of Kievan Rus' . Glass objects produced in Kiev, most prominently glass bracelets, were transported to over two dozen other towns, including Chernigov, Novgorod, and the cities of Rostov-Suzdal'.
Domestic trade was also a vehicle for the transfer of technical skills. Native artisans soon mastered the skills and techniques that foreign craftsmen brought to Kiev. The glassware shipped from Kiev during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, for example, was crafted by Kievan artisans who had borrowed Byzantine techniques, although they had applied them to glass made according to their own formula. Kievan artisans similarly imitated Byzantine methods for glazing pottery and tiles and for producing finely crafted jewelry and other items decorated with inlaid enamel. By the second half of the twelfth century, artisans in other towns had learned the processes and were producing their own glassware, beads, windowpanes, and bracelets in competition with the Kievan artisans. Enameling workshops similarly were established in Novgorod, Vladimir, and other Rus' towns in the twelfth century. Although the art of Byzantine architects and craftsmen dominated the cathedrals constructed in Kiev and Novgorod in the middle of the eleventh century, the wall paintings on Novgoro-dian churches built during the twelfth century were, according to Dimitri Obolensky, in all probability created by Russian artists who had learned technique and iconographic forms from Byzantine mas-ters.18 Thus, by the twelfth century artisans in a variety of Rus' towns were adopting methods borrowed from Byzantium but developed in Kiev during the preceding century.
Articles made from a distinctive reddish-colored slate that came exclusively from Ovruch, a region in Volynia northwest of Kiev, have been vivid indicators of widespread domestic trade. One common item made from Ovruch slate was spindle whorls, used in spinning and weaving. They were manufactured at workshops in the area of Ovruch as well as in Kiev. The spindle whorls, however, have been discovered in large numbers not only in Kiev, but in Novgorod, Polotsk, and towns throughout the Rus' lands. The same type of slate was used in Kiev’s cathedrals as well as in the Church of the Transfiguration in Chernigov. It had other purposes as well. Molds for making other items were fashioned from it. One such mold, used to make belt mounts, was discovered in Kiev. The mold was marked with an Arabic inscription, suggesting that the artisan who owned it may have moved to Kiev from a Khazar town. The Khazar craftsman working in Kiev with materials originating in Volynia reflects on an individual level the more general image of Kiev as a bustling cosmopolitan economic center, sustained by lively commerce and craft production.
Economic activity in Novgorod and Suzdalia
Novgorod was one of Kiev’s main domestic trading partners. It contributed fur and wax that Kiev exported abroad, and it purchased items imported by Kiev as well as goods produced in Kievan workshops. But not all of Novgorod’s trade was tied to Kiev. From its inception Novgorod had served as a commercial link between the Baltic Sea and the Volga River. As the main market for exchanging goods coming from both Scandinavia and Bulgar, it was a chief center of Rus' trade with both Europe and the Muslim East.
In the tenth and eleventh centuries Scandinavian merchants dominated the Baltic trade with Novgorod. Probably in the early and certainly by the middle ofthe twelfth century, they had established their own commercial complex with its Church of St. Olaf on the market side of the city, located across the Volkhov River from St. Sophia. The Scandinavian merchants brought a variety of goods, including woolen cloth, weapons, pottery, and salt to the Novgorodian market. With those items they purchased luxury goods imported by the Rus' from Byzantium and Bulgar: silks and spices, gems and jewelry, and Oriental silver coins or dirhams. Novgorodian merchants who traveled to the markets of Sweden and Denmark conducted similar exchanges.
By the twelfth century, however, the character of Novgorod’s foreign trade was changing. One difference was its trading partners. During the twelfth century German merchants became more prominent than Scandinavians. By the end of the century they too had established a trading depot, Peterhof, inside Novgorod and presented a serious challenge to their Scandinavian competitors. As Germans joined Scandinavians at Novgorod’s market, a second difference in Novgorod’s trade patterns became apparent. The goods imported by Novgorod from northern Europe changed. Some items, such as pottery, jewelry, weapons, salt, and alcoholic beverages, remained standard. But a new item appeared: silver.
During the tenth century Novgorod had received dirhams from Bulgar and had reexported some of them to Scandinavia. But after the early eleventh century Oriental silver was no longer available. When Bulgar could no longer provide that commodity, Novgorod turned to its new German trading partners to acquire it. During the eleventh century the Novgorodians imported silver coins known as deniers; by the twelfth century the coins were replaced by ingots or small silver bars. There is some evidence that fine Flemish cloth may also have been imported by Novgorod as early as the twelfth century.
A new pattern of trade thus developed between the Novgorodians and German merchants. Novgorod imported silver, woolen cloth, and the other items listed above and exported northern fur and wax as well as items obtained from Bulgar and Kiev. The exchange was so beneficial to both parties and so durable that it remained the predominant trade pattern for the next several centuries.
Novgorod also continued to be actively engaged in trade with the Volga Bulgars during the eleventh century. Although it no longer imported silver dirhams, Novgorod nevertheless exported furs, isinglass or fish-glue, walrus tusks, and some finished products, such as linen cloth and jewelry, in exchange for Oriental luxury products. By the late eleventh century and through the twelfth century, however, Novgorod and Bulgar encountered an obstacle to their commercial intercourse, the principality of Rostov-Suzdal' and its princes, the Monomashichi.
Novgorod-Bulgar trade depended primarily on a route that followed the upper Volga River. By the second half of the eleventh century Prince Vladimir Monomakh and his heirs were establishing their authority in the Rostov-Suzdal' region, through which the upper Volga River flowed. Over the next century those princes tightened their control over the commercial traffic that crossed their lands. They prevented Novgorodian merchants from passing through their realm to reach Bulgar and likewise obliged Bulgar merchants to sell their goods within Suzdalia. Their successful interception of the traditional Novgorod-Bulgar trade along the Volga River route and concentration of it in their own towns contributed to the development of the towns of Suzdalia into lively commercial centers, where Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish merchants from Europe and Byzantium exchanged goods with their Orthodox Rus' and Muslim Bulgar counterparts.
Neither Novgorod nor Bulgar accepted Suzdalia’s interference in their trade without protest. On the contrary, the intrusion into their commercial practices became a source of friction that erupted into overt hostilities on several occasions. Bulgar in particular sought alternative means of acquiring the valuable fur pelts it had previously received from Novgorod and sold to merchants from the lower Volga and the Muslim East. But as its own merchants ventured northward, the princes of Vladimir-Suzdal' doggedly pursued them, cut off their supply routes, and absorbed their northern trading posts. By the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries Bulgar and the princes of Vladimir were engaged in a sharp conflict.
In the meantime Novgorod’s fur exports to the east diminished. Novgorodian and Bulgar merchants nevertheless continued to meet in Suzdalian towns and exchanged western for Oriental products.
Suzdalian merchants also acquired Oriental goods, which they conveyed to western Rus' towns. Novgorod thus continued to receive Oriental glassware, glazed pottery, pepper, and other items, and Bulgar merchants obtained European and Russian goods, but the exchanges were conducted through Suzdalian markets and intermediaries.
The Bulgars remained a link between the northern Rus' and the market centers of the lower Volga and the Caspian Sea. They conveyed the purchases made in Suzdalia back to Bulgar and either sold them there or transported them down the Volga to another market center, Saksin, where merchants from throughout the Muslim world gathered. In the tenth and eleventh centuries the Volga trade route, which drew Oriental goods to the Caspian Sea and up the Volga River through Bulgar to the lands of Rus' , had been dominated by Bulgar and Novgorod. But during the twelfth century Suzdalia physically inserted itself along that route, asserted its control over the passage of goods between those two trading partners, and diverted a significant share of the revenue from the trade between Novgorod and Bulgar to its treasury. Thus, when Kiev’s Black Sea and Byzantine trade suffered some disruption and the Volga route acquired added importance, the economic benefits went to Suzdalia.
Sources of revenue
Trade, both intercontinental and domestic, craft production, and agriculture were the basic components of the Kievan Rus' economy. The food, goods, and wealth produced by activities in these areas supported the individuals engaged in them and their families with enough surplus to maintain the members of the political and ecclesiastical elites. The princes and Church officials and their retainers contributed other services to society: military, administrative, judicial, and spiritual.
The elites employed a variety of means to obtain the revenue necessary to support themselves. When at war, princely armies pillaged the populations of their opponents and thus obtained some income in the form of booty. The bulk of regular, reliable revenue, however, was gleaned through direct tribute or taxes exacted from Rus' society; from commercial profits derived from the sale of goods acquired as tribute or produced on privately owned estates; and from a variety of fees imposed on the population for specific administrative services.
Judicial services and fees
Among the administrative services performed by princes and Church hierarchs, judicial functions became one of the chief means of generating revenue. As Riurikid authority supplanted traditional political leadership, the dynasty’s laws and courts also replaced local custom. The Primary Chronicle contains an account, probably inserted after the 996 date under which it is presented, that reflects the development of the prince’s role in the maintenance of social order and in court procedures. The account relates a discussion between Prince Vladimir and the bishops of Kiev. The bishops were concerned about an increase in the number of homicides (razboi) and asked the prince why he was not punishing the criminals. When Vladimir responded that he was afraid of sinning, the bishops assured him that he had been made prince precisely to punish evil and show mercy to the just. Vladimir, heeding them, then began to punish those responsible for the murders. But the bishops returned to him and advised him to replace his form of punishment with a monetary fine, called a bloodwite, which he could then use to arm his retinue.
The Riurikids manifested their concern with the establishment of legal norms and the maintenance of order by issuing a law code, known as Russkaia Pravda. The first version of the law code, known as the Short Pravda, was codified by Prince laroslav Vladimirovich. Later in the eleventh century his sons, Iziaslav, Sviatoslav, and Vsevolod, added a second portion to the Short Pravda. As new situations arose in the evolving society, additions were made to the Russkaia Pravda until in the thirteenth century the revised law code, known as the Expanded Pravda, assumed a stable final form.
The added clauses, many of which dealt with commerce, inheritance, slavery, and indentured servants, reflect circumstances and concerns that were becoming sources of conflict in the increasingly complex society and required adjudication and a determination of new standards. The variations in the successive versions of the Russkaia Pravda also reflect a corresponding expansion of princely judicial responsibilities and incomes, which, as the chronicle tale suggests, could be applied to meet their growing administrative and military expenses.
There were two main ways in which the prince and his officers benefited financially from controlling the judicial system. One method was to collect fines from those found guilty of crimes. A monetary fine or a bloodwite was referred to in the chronicle tale, which also suggested that it had been a traditional form of punishment before the time of Vladimir’s reign. Daniel Kaiser, however, has demonstrated that the customary retribution had been a form of revenge undertaken directly by relatives of the victim.19 Indeed, the Short Pravda recognized vengeance as an acceptable legal response to murder. Monetary compensation was offered as an alternative if there was no appropriate family member to act as the avenger; it was also the norm for other crimes. But when the victim of a crime such as murder, assault, or theft was a member of the prince’s household, his steward or stable master, a peasant on one of his estates, or one of his common slaves, the Short Pravda prescribed as punishment a fine levied on the offender and paid to the prince. The code also detailed the division ofthe fines collected; a small portion went to the sheriff, a tithe went to the Church, and the remainder went to the prince.
Under the terms of the Short Pravda, princely revenue from legal suits was relatively minor. The princes issued the law, which confirmed and standardized norms for the amount ofcompensation and clarified procedures for apprehending suspects and determining guilt in the prince’s court. But most types of cases covered by the Short Pravda were treated as matters between the offender and the victim. By the time the Expanded Pravda was codified, however, the practice of paying fines to the princes for crimes including murder, assault, and destruction of property had filtered into the statutes and become a standard form of punishment that sometimes supplemented and sometimes replaced compensation to the victims.
The amounts of the fines prescribed in the Russkaia Pravda provide some indication of the social structure in Kievan Rus'. Fines paid to the prince for the murder of his palace or stable steward were twice as high as those required for a page, groom, or cook. A farm steward, craftsman, tutor, or nurse ranked below the latter group; the value of peasants and slaves was even less. The lowest place in the social hierarchy was a female slave. Women in general had a lower status than men. Although murder trials were to be conducted in the same manner regardless of the gender of the victim, the fine assessed for the murder of a woman was half the amount demanded for the murder of a man. Women’s property rights also differed from those of men. Women could own their own property, which they received in the form of gifts or dowries; the latter were considered to be their shares of the family’s estate. Thus, if the male head of a household died, his sons inherited his estate. But they were legally obligated to arrange marriages for their unmarried sisters and provide their dowries. Among the upper classes, daughters could inherit their fathers’ property, but only if there were no surviving sons.
The second method of obtaining income from legal procedures was assessing fees for the performance of judicial services. The Short Pravda, for example, indicated that a bloodwite collector and his assistant regularly traveled around the country to collect fines. While making their rounds, they were entitled to receive provisions from the local populace as well as a cash fee. But even as the law allowed these officers of the prince’s court a salary and provisions, it ordered them to complete their tasks in each locality within a week, thereby ensuring that they would not abuse or overburden the local population.
The Russkaia Pravda identified other judicial officials who received fees for their services; they included judges, sheriffs, and scribes. In addition, the code recognized specialized officials, skilled in the technique of administering the “iron ordeal.” This was a torture designed to determine the accuracy oftestimony, and was found most useful when no verifying witnesses were available. If the application of a hot iron on a person’s flesh failed to cause a burn, his statements were accepted as truthful. In most instances, however, swearing an oath was sufficient for testimony to be accepted as truthful. Officers of the court also collected fees for administering the oath.
Ecclesiastical courts
While Prince Vladimir I and his heirs assumed responsibility for introducing a law code, enforcing it, and judging and punishing offenders, their authority in these matters and their right to exercise juridical power were upheld, as suggested by the chronicle tale, by officials of the Orthodox Church. The Riurikids also shared judicial functions with the Church, which not only became responsible for converting the pagan population, but assumed the tasks of introducing Christian norms of behavior and enforcing conformity to them. The princes thus turned over to the bishops responsibilities for rooting out pagan customs and establishing new standards and rites in spheres of human conduct guided by religion and related primarily to family life. These were not trivial tasks.
The primary judicial interests of the Church were to enforce Christian legal and social norms and to adjudicate matters involving its own people, i. e., clergy and individuals who worked for the Church. Although Christianity became the official state religion in 988, it was not readily accepted by the general populace, who remained loyal to their pagan gods, influential priests and shamans, and to the customs and rituals that gave meaning to the most basic human activities. The establishment of the Christian Church and the distribution of clergy around Kievan Rus' placed pressures on the Slav population not only to abandon their religious beliefs, but to break longstanding traditions, alter the basic patterns of their daily lives, and accept instead Christian norms of behavior.
In extreme cases the reluctance to accept Christianity took the form of open rebellion. The uprising in Novgorod, which occurred when Christianity was introduced, has already been noted. Other uprisings broke out during times of social stress, as during the famines of 1024 and 1071. Such outbursts, although isolated and quickly suppressed, reflect a persistent reluctance to accept Christianity.
The population’s unwillingness to internalize Christian precepts and live according to Christian morality was expressed in a variety of other, more passive ways as well. Only gradually did women stop edging their clothing with borders decorated with pagan symbols or give up wearing bracelets, necklaces, and headdresses with similar designs worked into them. Marriage ceremonies provide another example. Whereas marriage was an important sacrament for Christians, the chronicler, himself a monk, recorded with dismay and repugnance that several of the Slavic tribes of Kievan Rus' , the Radimichi, Viatichi, and Severiane, whom he characterized as living in the forest like beasts, practiced polygamy; he wrote, “there were no marriages among them, but simply festivals among the villages. When the people gathered together for games, for dancing, and for all other devilish amusements, the men on these occasions carried off wives for themselves, and each took any woman with whom he had arrived at an understanding. In fact, they even had two or three wives apiece.”20 DAniel Kaiser noted that, according to late eleventh-century canonical texts, church “marriage among ordinary folk had made no headway whatever because the chief competition, the festival dances, continued to dominate marriage arrangements.”21 In the place of Christian ceremonies and norms, customs such as bride abduction and bigamy continued to be practiced in the twelfth century.
Traditional death and burial rites similarly violated Christian norms. The chronicle noted that Slav tribes practiced cremation. After burning the deceased, relatives would place a vessel containing the bones on a road post. The Viatichi, according to the chronicler, continued that practice at the time he was writing although others, such as the Krivichi, had abandoned it. Other information suggests that peasants commonly displayed their reverence for dead relatives by keeping their bones in special places ofhonor in their homes. The Christian Church, however, insisted upon use of its own burial customs. Its concern was to perform the holy sacraments and facilitate redemption. But that concern clashed with traditional practices. As a result of this cultural conflict, Christian burials took place, but grave robbery, presumably to recover the bones, was common.
Other remains of disinterred corpses may have been used in potions concocted by pagan magicians. References from twelfth-century Novgorod indicate that Orthodox women whose children had become seriously ill consulted pagan priests, who used special charms to ward off disease. Such evidence suggests that, even after local populations had formally accepted Christianity, frightening and stressful circumstances could induce individuals to fall back on their pagan heritage.
To aid the Church in its operations, the Riurikid princes formally transferred jurisdiction over family life and related spheres of social conduct to the Church. Although the acts of transfer were recorded in documents known as Church statutes or charters, it is not known precisely when the Church acquired its judicial authority. The statute of Prince Vladimir I, which also assigned a tithe of the prince’s revenue to support his new Church, recognized the establishment of Church courts and gave the Church exclusive legal jurisdiction over its own people. Another charter, known as laroslav’s statute, gave Church courts jurisdiction over many aspects of family law. But because the earliest surviving copies of both Vladimir’s and Iaroslav’s statutes were written centuries after the documents were purportedly originally composed and because at least some elements in them do not appear to relate to the tenth and eleventh centuries, caution must be used in describing the Church’s role in social and judicial matters in Kievan Rus' on the basis of them exclusively. Other princely charters, attributed to Princes Vsevolod Mstislavich of Novgorod (ruled 1117-36) and Rostislav of Smolensk (ruled 1127-59), similarly assigned matters involving disputes over family affairs and sorcery to the local bishops.
Although the original contents and dates of all these charters remain elusive, although the charters may have been altered over the centuries, and although the surviving copies may not reflect the arrangements originally made between the princes and the bishops, it nevertheless seems probable that the Church courts acquired jurisdiction over specific spheres of social activity during the Kievan era. Furthermore, it is generally acknowledged that during the eleventh and twelfth centuries the number of dioceses within the Rus' metropolitanate increased. During laroslav’s reign new bishoprics were created in Chernigov and Pereiaslavl'. Rostov also received its own bishop in the eleventh century, and another was appointed to Smolensk in 1136-37. As new bishoprics were established, princes of each region appear to have issued charters that authorized the creation of Church courts and defined their purviews. In the case of Novgorod, where a bishopric and its courts had existed since the late tenth century, the charter attributed to Vsevolod authorized changes in the prince’s role and functions. The Church courts generally became responsible for enforcing Christian law, related to marriage, bigamy and polygamy, incest, rape, bride abduction, and other family matters including rights of inheritance. They also became instrumental in suppressing the pagan priesthood, sorcerers, seers, and witches. And in conjunction with the division of judicial responsibilities between secular and ecclesiastical courts, princes also transferred corresponding revenues derived from court fees and fines to the bishops.
The Church with its courts gradually had an impact on Rus' society. As princes and bishops extended their authority to regions well beyond Kiev, not only were monumental cathedrals erected in episcopal and princely capitals, but modest churches in pogost or parish centers were also scattered throughout the countryside. The extension of ecclesiastical influence placed stronger pressures on the populace to adopt Christian norms of behavior as well as to accept conversion formally. During the twelfth century various indicators, including the popular use of Christian rather than pagan symbols in dress and decorative apparel, signaled that Christian culture was gradually taking hold in Rus' society.
Commercial fees
Princes and Church officials thus shared judicial responsibilities; both political and ecclesiastical treasuries also received revenue for performing those functions. Another realm of social activity that generated income for the ruling elite was commerce. Riurikid princes set and collected customs fees and transit duties. They imposed sales taxes on selected items, as exemplified by a salt tax decreed by Prince Sviatopolk shortly before he died in 1113. They also assumed responsibility for maintaining order in urban marketplaces, which depended in part on eliminating fraud and ensuring that the goods sold were weighed and measured accurately.
Some evidence suggests that Riurikid princes transferred responsibility for safeguarding the weights and measures as well as the fees for using them in commercial transactions to the bishops. Several statutes contain statements that the princes entrusted scales and weights as well as standard measures to the bishops. But because of the problems of dating these charters, it is not known ifthe princes mentioned actually made such assignments. The statute of Vladimir I contained such a clause, but the earliest extant copy of it dates from the late thirteenth century, and it has not been determined when the particular article concerning weights and measures became a part of the document. The charter of Prince Vsevolod of Novgorod made a similar assignment. It also indicated that in a case of fraud or cheating the bishop shared fines and property confiscated from the offender with the Church of St. Ivan, which was affiliated with the wax merchants’ association, and the city of Novgorod.
As the society of Kievan Rus' became more complex and its economy expanded, the functions of both the Riurikid princes and Orthodox Church officials broadened. They provided the guidelines for the orderly conduct of economic and social activities and the power to enforce conformity to prescribed standards. They also benefited from their expanded roles. They collected transit and customs duties on the transport and sale of goods, and additional fees for weighing and measuring the items at time of sale. They exacted other fees and fines when they were called upon to resolve disputes in court. Such sources of revenue provided not only the means to pay for the prince’s military retainers, as recorded in the chronicle tale, but also for the princes’ and Church’s growing administration and for the officers appointed to perform the tasks derived from the additional responsibilities.
The golden age and its aftermath
Combined, the tribute, commercial profits, and fees assessed on specific segments of Rus' society provided the Riurikid princes with the revenue necessary to support themselves and their military retainers or armies, as well as the Church. In return, the princes provided their subjects with protection and the priests offered spiritual guidance. Together they transformed an agglomeration of settlements surrounding forts, trading posts, and sites for worship into a dynamic state dotted with economically thriving cities adorned with architectural monuments, which heightened the prestige of the members of the secular and ecclesiastical elites who sponsored their construction.
The effects of the mingling of the Riurikid dynasty, the Orthodox Church, and the eastern Slav society were dramatic. By the reign of Prince laroslav the Wise, Kievan Rus', especially in its urban centers, was experiencing a Golden Age. This era was marked by an unusual degree of political unity and peace. The first version of the Russkaia Pravda and the construction of the Church of St. Sophia with its school and library have been identified as its great achievements. So also have the church statute attributed to laroslav and his Testament, in which he left his sons not only portions ofhis realm, but also principles to serve as guides for dynastic tranquility. A spirit of optimism and confidence in the burgeoning new Christian nation also found expression in the literature of this period. The “Sermon on Law and Grace,” composed c. 1050 by Hilarion, the first native of Kievan Rus' to become metropolitan of the Church, is a prominent example. In it Hilarion celebrated Kievan Rus' and its princes Vladimir I and laroslav. Under their inspired guidance Kievan Rus' had become the most recent nation to join the Christian community. Proud of its heritage, it could rejoice in its own achievements and look forward to its future salvation.
Although neither political unity nor peaceful relations would remain stable, other factors identified with the Golden Age would have lasting influence on Kievan Rus'. The emphasis on literacy, education, and piety, so evident in Iaroslav’s era, reverberated in the “Instruction” left by Prince Vladimir Monomakh (d. 1125) to his “sons or whoever else reads” it. In this document Monomakh urged his sons to “forget not what useful knowledge you possess, and acquire that with which you are not acquainted, even as my father [Vsevolod], though he remained at home in his own country, still understood five languages.” But more important even than earthly knowledge, in Monomakh’s view, was “the fear of God,” which would guide his sons to rule justly and mercifully as good Christians.8
The law code introduced by laroslav the Wise was repeatedly adapted to the changing social and economic conditions of the next two centuries and was adopted virtually throughout the realm. The Expanded Russkaia Pravda, as it emerged in the thirteenth century, survived as the legal norm for the Russian principalities through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, long after the state of Kievan Rus' had disappeared.
The churches and other monumental structures with which Prince laroslav enhanced Kiev similarly became a model and standard for his descendants who sought to elevate the stature of other Rus' towns. Prince Vladimir I, stimulated by the adoption of Christianity, had introduced the practice of princely patronage for constructing churches. With the exception of the Church of the Tithe, most of the cathedrals built in his era were made of wood. But as the Riurikids consolidated their authority and began to accumulate greater wealth, they undertook the construction of more expensive masonry monuments.
Vladimir’s sons, like their father, demonstrated both their power and their piety by sponsoring the construction of masonry churches. Prince Mstislav, who had built a church in Tmutorokan' in 1022, initiated the construction of the Church of the Transfiguration of Our Savior in Chernigov (c. 1035). Although the church was not yet finished when he died in 1036, Mstislav was buried there. Prince Iaroslav, who assumed full control over Kievan Rus' after Mstislav’s death, lavished his attention on Kiev. Perhaps to remind the Rus' community that it was Kiev, not Chernigov, that was their political
The Russian Primary Chronicle, Appendix I, pp. 2ii, 215.
And ecclesiastical capital, he undertook, as noted in chapter 2, A series of major building projects after the successful repulsion of the Pech-eneg attack of 1036. He began the construction of new walls that made the area of the fortified upper city almost ten times larger than it had been. The walls contained several entryways, but the main one was the Golden Gate. The gate itself was an imposing structure built of stone and consisting of two tiers. The lower section included the archway that was the entrance to the city; over the arch was a platform, a defensive parapet. The second tier consisted of the Church of the Annunciation (Blagoveshcheniia), whose cupola, covered in a gilded copper leaf, probably gave the entire structure its name.
Within the city gates Iaroslav constructed a magnificent architectural ensemble around a central square. Facing it were the palaces of both the prince and the metropolitan. The Churches of St. George and St. Irene also formed parts of the central complex. But the dominating structure of the complex was the Cathedral of St. Sophia, built on the site ofthe victory over the Pechenegs. The main Cathedral of the Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church in Kievan Rus', St. Sophia was not only large, but also was richly decorated with mosaics and frescoes, slate and marble. It was built in general according to standard Byzantine architectural models; but it assumed a distinctive style with the striped design on its walls created by the alternation of exposed layers of brick with others covered by mortar, the addition of two apses to the standard three, two tower staircases, and a crown of no less than thirteen cupolas. Progressing from the outer edges to the center, the cupolas rose higher and higher, mounting to a peak that seemingly stretched infinitely upward. This was the church that came to symbolize Orthodoxy in Kievan Rus'. In combination with other edifices built in this era it inspired the archbishop ofBremen to write in the middle of the eleventh century that Kiev was a jewel in the Orthodox world, rivaling Constantinople itself.
World History
