A history of Russia

by Riazanovsky

  The Fall of Kiev: The Reasons

  The decline and collapse of Kievan Russia have been ascribed to a number of factors; but there is considerable controversy about the precise nature of these factors and no consensus concerning their relative weight. The most comprehensive general view, held by Soviet historians as a group and by some others, emphasizes the loose nature of the Kievan state and its evolution in the direction of further decentralization and feudalism. In fact, certain specialists raised the question of whether Kievan Russia could be called a state at all. Aside from this extreme opinion, it has been generally recognized that the Kievan state, very far from resembling its modern counterparts, represented in a sense a federation or association of a number of areas which could be effectively held together only for limited periods of time and by exceptionally able rulers. Huge distances and poor com-

  munications made the issue of centralization especially acute. Moreover, it is argued that Russia, as well as Europe in general, evolved toward natural economy, particularism, and feudalism. Therefore, the relatively slender unifying bonds dissolved, and Russia emerged as an aggregate of ten or twelve separate areas. We shall return to this view when we discuss the question of feudalism in Russia, and on other occasions.

  Soviet historians, as well as some other specialists, also pointed to social conflicts as a factor in the decline of Kiev. They refer in particular to the gradual enserfment of the peasants by the landlords and to the worsening position of the urban poor, as indicated by events at the time of Vladimir Monomakh. Slavery, which Kievan Russia inherited from earlier societies, has also been cited as an element of weakness.

  Another essentially economic explanation of the fall of Kievan Russia stresses trade, or rather the destruction of trade. In its crude form it argues that the Kievan state arose on the great commercial route "from the Varangians to the Greeks," lived by it, and perished when it was cut. In a more limited and generally accepted version, the worsening of the Kievan position in international trade has been presented as one major factor in the decline of Kiev. The city on the Dnieper suffered from the change in trade routes which began in the eleventh century and resulted, largely through the activities of Italian merchants in the Mediterranean, in the establishment of closer connections between western and central Europe on the one hand and Byzantium and Asia Minor on the other, and a bypassing of Kiev. It was adversely affected by the Crusades, and in particular by the sacking of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, as well as by the decline of the Caliphate of Bagdad. The fact that certain Russian towns and areas, such as Smolensk and especially Novgorod, profited by the rearrangement of the commercial map of Europe and the rise of Italian and German cities only tended to make Kievan control over them less secure. Finally, Kiev experienced tremendous difficulty, and ultimately failed, in protecting from the steppe peoples the commercial line across the southern steppe to the Black Sea.

  In addition to the economic and social analyses, one can turn to the political. A number of historians have placed much stress on the failure of the Kievan system of government which they consider a major, possibly decisive, cause of the collapse of Kievan Russia, rather than merely a reflection of more fundamental economic and social difficulties. There is a consensus that the Kievan princely political system did not function well, but no agreement as to the exact nature of that system. Of the two main interpretations, one considers it simply to be confusion worse confounded and a rule of force without broad agreement on principle, while the other gives full credence and weight to the practice of joint clan rule and of

  brother to brother rotation with such further provisions as the equation of the claims of the elder son of a prince to those of his father's third brother, his third uncle. In any case, the system did collapse in constant disputes and endemic internal strife. Pogodin calculated that of the 170 years following the death of Iaroslav the Wise 80 witnessed civil war. Kievan princes have also been blamed for various faults and deficiencies and in particular for being too militant and adventurous and often lacking the more solid attributes of rulers. On this point it would seem, however, that their qualities in general were well suited to the age.

  Towns added further complications to princely rule and princely relations. Towns in Kievan Russia had existed before princely authority appeared, and they represented, so to speak, a more fundamental level of political organization. As princely disputes increased and princely power declined, the towns proceeded to play an increasingly significant role in Kievan politics, especially in determining what prince would rule in a given town and area. The later evolution of Novgorod represents an extreme case of this Kievan political tendency.

  At least one other factor must be mentioned: foreign pressure. While it can well be argued that Kievan economics, social relations, and politics all led to the collapse of the state, the fall of Kiev can also - perhaps paradoxically - be explained primarily in terms of outside aggression. For Kiev had to fight countless exhausting wars on many fronts, but above all in the southeast against the inhabitants of the steppe. The Pechenegs replaced the Khazars, and the Polovtsy the Pechenegs, but the fighting continued. After the Polovtsy and the Kievan Russians virtually knocked each other out, the Mongols came to give the coup de grace. In contrast to the wars of medieval Europe, these wars were waged on a mass scale with tremendous effort and destruction. It might be added that during the centuries of Kievan history the steppe had crept up on the forest, and deforestation has been cited as one development weakening the military defenses of Kiev. There exists an epic Russian tale about the destruction of the Russian land. It tells of the bogatyri, the mighty warriors of Kievan Russia, meeting the invaders head on. The bogatyri fought very hard; indeed they split their foes in two with the blows of their swords. But then each half would become whole, and the enemies kept pressing in ever-increasing numbers until finally they overwhelmed the Russians.

  V

  KIEVAN RUSSIA: ECONOMICS, SOCIETY, INSTITUTIONS

  … merry-go-round, moving harmoniously and melodiously, full of joy… This spirit permeates, this form marks everything that comes from Russia; such is our song itself, such is its tune, such is the organization of our Land.

  K. AKSAKOV

  The decisive factor in the process of feudalization proved to be the emergence of private ownership in land and the expropriation of the small farmer, who was turned into a feudal "tenant" of privately owned land, and his exploitation by economic or extra-economic compulsion.

  LIASHCHENKO

  the traditional view of Kievan economy stresses the role of trade. Its classic document is an account of the activities of the Rus composed by the tenth-century Byzantine emperor and scholar Constantine Porphyro-genitus. Every November, writes Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the Kievan princes and their retainers went on a tour of the territories of different tributary Slavic tribes and lived on the fat of those lands during the winter. In April, after the ice on the Dnieper had broken, they returned, with the tribute, down the river to Kiev. In the meantime, Slavs, subject to the Rus, would fell trees, build boats, and in the spring, when rivers became navigable, take them to Kiev and sell them to the prince and his retinue. Having outfitted and loaded the boats, the Rus next moved down the Dnieper to Vitichev where they waited for more boats carrying goods from Novgorod, Smolensk, Liubech, Chernigov, and Vyshgorod to join them. Finally, the entire expedition proceeded down the Dnieper toward the Black Sea and Constantinople.

  Kliuchevsky and other historians have expounded how this brief Byzantine narrative summarizes some of the most essential characteristics of Kievan Russia, and even, so to speak, its life cycle. The main concern of the prince and his retainers was to gather tribute from subject territories, either, as described above, by visiting the different parts of the realm during the winter - a process called poliudie in Russian - or by having the tribute brought to them - povoz. The tribute in kind, which the prince obtained in his capacity as ruler and which consisted in particular of such i
tems as furs, wax, and honey, formed the foundation of the commercial undertakings of the Rus. Slaves constituted another major commodity: the

  continuous expansion of the Kievan state connected with repeated wars enabled the prince constantly to acquire human chattels for foreign markets. The Kievan ruler thus acted as a merchant-prince on a grand scale. His retainers, the druzhina, emulated him as best they could: they helped him gather tribute in winter, and received their share of it, which they took for sale abroad with the great summer expedition of the Rus. Many other merchants from different parts of Kievan Russia with their merchandise joined the princely train to secure protection on the way and support for their interests at the end of the journey. The gathering of tribute, the construction of boats and their sale each spring near Kiev, the organization of the commercial convoy, and finally the expedition itself linked the entire population of the Dnieper basin, and even of Kievan Russia in the large, and constituted the indispensable economic foundation of the Kievan state. With regularity, coins from Byzantium or Bagdad found their way to the banks of the Oka or the Volkhov rivers.

  Constantine Porphyrogenitus' account, it is further argued, explains also the foreign policy of the Rus which followed logically from their economic interests. The rulers in Kiev strove to gain foreign markets and to protect the lifelines of trade leading to those markets. The Kievan state depended above all on the great north-south commercial route "from the Varangians to the Greeks" which formed its main economic and political

  axis, and it perished with the blocking of this route. The famous Russian campaigns against Constantinople, in 860, under Oleg in 907, under Igor in 941 and 944, under Sviatoslav in 970, and in the reign of Iaroslav the Wise in 1043, demonstrate in an especially striking manner this synthesis between trade and foreign policy. Typically, wars began over such incidents as attacks on Russian merchants in Constantinople and ended with trade pacts. All the Russo-Byzantine treaties which have come down to us exhibit a commercial character. Furthermore, their provisions dealing with trade are both extremely detailed and juridically highly developed, constituting in fact an engaging chapter in the history of international relations and international law. Russian commercial interests, it may well be noted, obtained various advantages from these agreements; and they were considered in Constantinople not as private enterprise but as trade missions of the allied Kievan court.

  Full evidence for a history of Kievan commerce goes, of course, far beyond Constantine Porphyrogenitus' narration and even beyond the significant story of Russo-Byzantine relations. Its main points include trade routes and activities in southern Russia prior to the formation of the Kievan state, a subject expertly treated by Rostovtzeff and some other specialists. Attention must also be drawn to the widespread commercial enterprises of the East Slavs themselves long before the time of Oleg, as well as to the fact that at the dawn of Kievan history they already possessed many towns. Saveliev, for instance, estimates that the trade of the East Slavs with Oriental countries, which extended to the borders of China, dates at least from the seventh century a.D. Some Russian weights and measures were borrowed from the east, notably from Mesopotamia, while others came originally from Rome. Similarly, to the west at an early date the East Slavs established trade relations with their closer neighbors and also with some more remote European countries, like Scandinavia. With the flowering of the Kievan state, Russian trade continued to grow, and on an impressive scale. Its complexity and high degree of development find strong reflection, for example, in the eleventh-century legal code, The Russian Justice.

  Whereas the traditional estimate of Kievan economy stresses commerce, a different interpretation emphasizing agriculture has more recently risen into prominence. Grekov was the ablest exponent of this view, and his work was continued by other Soviet historians. These scholars carefully delineated the early origin of agriculture in Russia and its great complexity and extent prior to as well as after the establishment of the Kievan state. In point of time, as mentioned earlier, agriculture in southern Russia goes back to the Scythian ploughmen and even to a neolithic civilization of the fourth millennium before Christ. The past of the East Slavs also testifies to their ancient and fundamental link with agriculture. For example,

  linguistic data indicate that from deep antiquity they were acquainted with various kinds of grains, vegetables, and agricultural tools and implements. Their pagan religion contained the cults of mother earth and the sun, and their different beliefs and rites connected with the agricultural cycle survived in certain aspects of the worship of the Virgin and of Saints Elijah, George, and Nicholas, among others. The East Slavic calendar had its months named after the tasks which an agricultural society liying in a forest found it necessary to perform: the month when trees are cut down, the month when they dry, the month when burned trees turn to ashes, and so on. Archaeological finds similarly demonstrate the great antiquity and pervasiveness of agriculture among the East Slavs; in particular they include metallic agricultural implements and an enormous amount of various grains, often preserved in separate buildings.

  Written sources offer further support of the case. "Products of the earth" were mentioned as early as the sixth century in a reference to the Antes. Slavic flax was reported on Central Asiatic markets in the ninth century, where it came to be known as "Russian silk." Kievan writings illustrate the central position of agriculture in Kievan life. Bread emerges as the principal food of people, oats of horses. Bread and water represent the basic ration, much bread is associated with abundance, while a drought means a calamity. It should be noted that the Kievan Russians knew the difference between winter grain and spring grain. The Russian Justice, for all its concern with trade, also laid extremely heavy penalties for moving field boundaries. Tribute and taxes too, while sometimes paid in furs, were more generally connected to the "plough" as the basic unit, which probably referred to a certain amount of cultivated land.

  Grekov and other Soviet historians argued further that this fundamental role of agriculture in Kievan economy determined the social character of the prince and his druzhina and indeed the class structure of Kievan society. They emphasized the connections of the prince and his retainers with the land, as shown in references to elaborate princely households, the spread of princely and druzhina estates throughout Kievan territory, and nicknames associated with the land. They considered that Kievan Russia was developing into a fully feudal society, in the definition of which they stressed the prevalence of manorial economy.

  It can readily be seen that the evidence supporting the significance of trade in Kievan Russia and the evidence urging the importance of agriculture supplement, rather than cancel, each other. Both occupations, then, must be recognized as highly characteristic of the country. But the interrelationship of the two does present certain difficulties. One view holds that the bulk of population supported itself by agriculture, whereas the prince and the upper class were mainly interested in trade. Other specialists stress

  the evolution in time, suggesting that, while Constantine Porphyrogenitus' account may be a valid guide for the middle of the tenth century, subsequent Kievan development tipped the scales increasingly in favor of agriculture. Furthermore, there is no consensus on the social structure of Kievan Russia which is intimately related to this complicated economic picture.

  Kievan exports, as has already been mentioned in the case of Byzantium, consisted primarily of raw materials, in particular furs, wax, and honey, and also, during the earlier part of Kievan history, of slaves. Other items for sale included flax, hemp, tow, burlap, hops, sheepskin, and hides. In return the Kievan Russians purchased such luxury goods as wines, silk fabrics, and objects of art from Byzantium, and spices, precious stones, and various fine fabrics from the Orient. Byzantium also supplied naval stores, while Damask blades and superior horses came from the east. From the west the Kievan Russians imported certain manufactured goods, for instance textiles and glassware, as well as some metals and other items, such as
Hungarian horses. Russian merchants went abroad in many directions and foreign traders came in large numbers to Russia, where they established themselves, sometimes as separate communities, in Kiev, Novgorod, Smolensk, Suzdal, and other centers. The newcomers included Germans, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Volga Bulgars, merchants from the Caucasus, and representatives of still other nationalities. Russian traders themselves were often organized in associations similar to Western guilds, not to mention less formal groupings. Financial transactions and commercial activity in general enjoyed a high development. It should be added that, in addition to exchange for direct consumption, the Kievan Russians engaged in transit trade on a large scale.

  Internal trade, although less spectacular than foreign commerce, likewise dated from time immemorial and satisfied important needs. Kiev, Novgorod, and other leading towns served as its main centers, but it also spread widely throughout the land. Some of this domestic trade stemmed from the division of the country into the steppe and the forest, the grain-producing south and the grain-consuming north - a fact of profound significance throughout Russian history - and the resulting prerequisites for exchange.

  Commerce led to a wide circulation of money. Originally furs were used as currency in the north and cattle in the south. But, beginning with the reign of St. Vladimir, Kievan minting began with, in particular, silver bars and coins. Foreign money too accumulated in considerable quantities in Kievan Russia.

  Agriculture developed both in the steppe and in the forest. In the steppe it acquired an extensive, rather than intensive, character, the peasant cultivating new, good, and easily available land as his old field became less productive. In the forest a more complex process evolved. The trees had to