A history of Russia

the Russian Justice and other documents of the time as the muzhi. With the evolution of the Kievan state the retainers of the prince and the regional nobility fused into a single group which was to play for centuries an important role in Russian history under the name of the boyars. After the muzhi came the liudi, who can be generally described as the Kievan middle class. Because of the great number and significance of towns in Kievan Russia, this class had considerable relative weight, more than its counterparts in other European countries at the time or in Russia in later periods, even though apparently it diminished with the decline of the state.

The bulk of the population, the so-called smerdy, remained agricultural and rural. Kievan peasants, or at least the great majority of them, seem to have been free men at the dawn of Kievan history, and free peasantry remained an important element throughout the evolution of the Kievan state, although bondage gradually increased. Indeed several kinds of bondsmen emerged, their dependence often resulting from their inability to repay the landlord's loan which they had needed to establish or re-establish their economy in troubled times. The slaves occupied the bottom of the social pyramid. It may be added that the principal taxes in Kiev were levied on the 'plough' or the 'smoke,' meaning a household, and were gathered only in the countryside and apparently exclusively from the peasants.

A special group consisted of people connected with the Church, both the clergy who married and had families and the monks and nuns, together with others serving the huge ecclesiastical establishment in many different capacities. The Church operated hospitals and hostels, dispensed charity, and engaged in education, to mention only some of its activities, in addition to performing the fundamental religious functions. Still another classification, that of the izgoi, encompassed various displaced social elements, such as freed slaves.

Soviet historians - and, for different reasons, Pavlov-Silvansky and a few other early scholars - considered the evolution of Kievan society in terms of the establishment of a full-fledged feudalism. But the prevalence of money economy in Kievan Russia, the importance of towns and trade, the unrestricted rather than feudal attitude to landed property, the limited and delegated authority of the local magnates, as well as certain other factors, indicate serious weaknesses of any such view and suggest that the issue of feudalism in Russia can be more profitably discussed when dealing with a later period of Russian history.

Kievan Institutions

The chief Kievan political institutions were the office of prince, the duma or council of the boyars, and the veche or town assembly, which have been linked, respectively, to the autocratic or monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic aspects of the Kievan state. While princes in Kievan Russia proliferated, the one in Kiev retained a special position. From the twelfth century he carried the title of the great, or grand, prince. Princely tasks included military leadership, the rendering of justice, and administration. In war the prince could rely first of all on his own druzhina, and after that on the regiments of important towns, and even, in case of need, on a mass levy. Kievan military history, as has already been mentioned, proved to be unusually rich, and the organization and experience of Kievan armies left a legacy for later ages.

In both justice and administration the prince occupied the key position. Yet he had to work with elected as well as his own appointed officials and in general co-ordinate his efforts with the local elements. To repeat a point made earlier, princely government came relatively late and had to be superimposed on rather well-developed local institutions, notably so in towns. The customary law of the Kievan Russians, known to us best through the Russian Justice, a code associated with Iaroslav the Wise, indicates a relatively high development of Kievan society, especially in the fields of trade and finance. It has also attracted attention for the remarkable mildness of its punishments, including a reliance on fines in preference to the death penalty. Canon law came with Christianity from Byzantium. In addition to the direct taxes on the 'smoke' and the 'plough,' state revenue accumulated from judicial fees and fines, as well as from tariffs and other imposts on commerce.

The boyar duma developed, it would seem, from consultations and joint work of the prince and his immediate retinue, the senior druzhina. It expanded with the evolution of Kievan Russia, reflecting the rise of the boyar class and also such developments as the conversion of Russia to Christianity, for the higher clergy found a place in the duma. While it would be quite incorrect to consider the boyar duma as analogous to a parliament - although it might be compared to its immediate predecessor, the curia regis - or even to claim for it a definite legal limitation of princely power, it remained an extremely important institution in its customary capacity as the constant adviser and collaborator of the prince. We know of a few occasions when the senior druzhina refused to follow the prince because he had failed to consult it.

Finally, the democratic element in the Kievan state found a certain ex-

pression in the veche or town meeting similar to the assemblies of freemen in the barbarian kingdoms of the West. All heads of households could participate in these gatherings, held usually in the market place and called to decide such basic issues as war and peace, emergency legislation, and conflicts with the prince or between princes. The frequently unruly veche practice of decision by unanimity, can be described as an application of direct democracy, ignoring such principles as representation and majority rule. The veche derived from prehistoric times and thus preceded princely authority with which it never became fully co-ordinated. In the Kievan period, the veche in Kiev itself played an especially significant role, but there were other vecha in action all over Russia. In fact, the most far-reaching development of this institution was to occur a little later in Novgorod.

The economic and social development of Kievan Russia, and in particular its institutions, deserve study not only in themselves but also as the heritage of the subsequent periods of Russian history. For example, we shall time and again be concerned with the prince, the duma, and the veche as they evolved differently under changing circumstances in various parts of what used to be the Kievan state.

VI

KIEVAN RUSSIA: RELIGION AND CULTURE

Old customs and beliefs have left but the slightest trace in the documents of the earlier period, and no systematic attempt to record the national epic was made until the middle of the nineteenth century. Moreover, it is generally admitted that the survival of folklore has suffered important modifications in the course of time. Under these conditions any attempt to present a comprehensive survey of Russian cultural developments previous to the seventeenth century meets with insurmountable obstacles and is necessarily incomplete and one-sided. The sources have preserved merely the Christian literature, while the bulk of the national epic has been irretrievably lost… The early literary efforts of native origin were hardly more than slavish imitations of the Byzantine patterns.

FLORINSKY

Yet, Kievan Russia, like the golden days of childhood, was never dimmed in the memory of the Russian nation. In the pure fountain of her literary works anyone who wills can quench his religious thirst; in her venerable authors he can find his guide through the complexities of the modern world. Kievan Christianity has the same value for the Russian religious mind as Pushkin for the artistic sense: that of a standard, a golden measure, a royal way.

FEDOTOV

THE Kievan Russians, as we have seen, had two religions in succession: paganism and Christianity. The heathen faith of the East Slavs included a deification of the forces of nature, animism in general, and a worship of ancestral spirits. Of the many gods, Perun, the deity of thunder and lightning, claimed special respect. East Slavic paganism lacked elaborate organization or institutional development. Vladimir's efforts to strengthen it proved to be short-lived, and the conversion to Christianity came quickly and relatively painlessly, although we know of some