Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton University Press, 1961).

2

PEASANT COMMUNES AND PRIVATE LANDOWNERS

In Kievan Russia, as in every society that was predominantly agrarian, the relationships between the members of the society must have depended primarily upon the ways in which land was held. But the scanty sources contain only small amounts of factual data about tenures and then only as information incidental to the main themes of the texts. So once again only dim outlines can be made out, and much has to be left to conjecture.

One of the most contested of the many debates that have marked -- and enlivened -- Russian historical writing concerns the origins and growth of the peasant commune and its role in Russian history. It should be pointed out that many of these controversies, during the Imperial regime as well as in the Soviet era, were not (and are not) carried on in academic isolation. They became affairs of much pertinence to the contemporary scene, with important political and philosophical implications, and excited wide interest. This was particularly true of the historiographical brouhaha about the commune. Because much of the sparring was about changes in this institution that took place after the fifteenth century, the issues in the controversy will be discussed in some detail in a later chapter. Here it will suffice to point out that nearly every assertion made about the commune has evoked at least a rebuttal, and often an extended debate. With time, however, a communis opinio doctorum has emerged on many of the controverted points.

It is generally agreed that the Eastern Slavs had left the tribal form of organization long before the Kievan era, save in some peripheral zones where it persisted into the eleventh century. The clans had broken down into free communes. These first communes are thought to have been large family units headed by a patriarch, with several generations living and working together as one household and sharing the fruits of their common labor. They are believed to have been much like the zadruga. the communal form found in the modern period among the South Slavs. This hypothesis is based upon comparative studies of Slavic social history, upon researches on peasant life in more recent times, and upon vestigial evidence provided by certain institutions that persisted in Great Russian village life until recent centuries.

The early Russian great family commune seems to have borne close resemblance to what is believed to have been the primitive form of social organization in the early centuries of the Germanic settlement of Central and Western Europe. This institution was described by Marc Bloch as follows:1 "Terra unius familiae: Bede's words give us in all probability the key to the institution in its primitive form. But we are not to think of the little matrimonial family of our later ages. Ill informed as we are about the history of blood relationships in the dawn of our civilization, there is every reason to think that the group, whose original shell was the manse, was a patriarchal family of several generations and several collateral households living around a common hearth."

Some historians have insisted that the patriarchal commune was the dominant form of rural social organization into the Kievan era. It seems more likely, however, that by the tenth-eleventh century the great family commune had changed, or was in the process of changing, into a territorial commune. The members of this new kind of organization were bound together not by blood, but by propinquity and by common social and economic interests. Each communer lived separately with his wife and children in his own dwelling, pursued his own individual economy, owned his own farm implements and animals, had private rights over the use and disposition of the land he tilled and of its produce, but shared with his fellows in the use of common pastures, forests, and streams, and in the meeting of communal obligations.

Because direct evidence about the history and internal structure of the patriarchal commune is lacking, only surmises are possible about the reasons for its decline. It was suggested in the preceding chapter that in the first stage of systematic agriculture many hands must have been needed for the heavy task of making clearings in the forests and preparing land for sowing. The single family unit -- the conjugal family -- lacked the labor resources for such operations, and so supposedly had grouped itself with kinsmen in a cooperative effort. When rural society had passed through the stage of slash-burn tillage the need for cooperative work no longer existed. Presumably the conjugal units then withdrew from the great family commune, each to run its own economy with its own labor resources. Mme. Efimenko was able to show that this transition from great family to individual family operation had occurred in more recent centuries in the far north of European Russia, when the peasants there had shifted to settled agriculture.3 The natural increase within the patriarchal commune also may have been a factor in its disintegration. Possibly, this form of organization could not operate efficiently when it got beyond a certain size. When that point was reached it broke up and its land was divided among its constituent conjugal families. This presumed evolution in Russia is analogous to what is thought to have happened elsewhere in Europe, where the land occupied by the patriarchal family unit is believed to have been divided into smaller holdings worked by conjugal families.

The territorial commune that succeeded the patriarchal one was known as the verv' in the Dnieper basin and as the mir in the Novgorod regioN. These names had undoubtedly been used for the patriarchal communes, too. But it is clear from the context of the Kievan law codes that by the time these compilations were drawn up verv' and mir referred to geographical units with definite boundaries. For example, if a prince's man was slain "the verv' within whose boundaries the body lay" had to pay the wergild, or in the case of the recognition of stolen property, the owner could reclaim it immediately if the recognition was within the limits of his own mir.4

The free peasants who lived in the communes were known as smerdy (sing., smerd). Philologists have surmised that this word was derived from an ancient root meaning "man," and that once it may have been used to describe everyone. By the Kievan period, however, it was applied only to the lowest class of freemen and had become associated with the verb smerdeti, to stink.5 The use of the name smerd, best translated, perhaps, as "stinker," is a telling indication of the very low esteem in which the peasant must have been held. It is difficult to imagine that people who were identified by so unpleasant a name could have been considered by their contemporaries to have been of much importance.

The hypothesis that is suggested by philology is borne out by the data found in the limited sources of the Kievan centuries. These point to the conclusion that the new social milieu created in this era by the emergence of princely retinues and bureaucracies, and especially by the growth of private landowning by men of the upper classes, produced a deterioration in the status of the free peasantry. Thus, the earliest known law code, the Pravda or Law of Iaroslav, set a wergild of forty grivnas for the unavenged murder of any free man, whether a member of the prince's retinue, one of his officials, a member of the group called the izgoi, or a Slav (slovenin).6 This listing was apparently designed to cover all free men in the society, so it seems fair to assume that by slovenin was meant the categories of free men not specifically named. This would include the smerdy.7 Iaroslav's Pravda dates from at least the early years of the eleventh century and many of its provisions are believed to be restatements of old customary laws. If these assumptions are correct, then in the first part of the eleventh century, and presumably during the preceding era, all free men were equal in the eyes of the law. In later Kievan codifications, however, this equality was supplanted by class distinctions. The Pravda of the Sons of Iaroslav, dating to the third quarter of the eleventh century, set a penalty of eighty grivnas for the murder of the chief officials of the prince. In the next codification, the so-called Expanded Version, believed to have been made in the early twelfth century, the wergild for the murder of "men of the prince," by which was meant his chief retainers and officials, was also raised to eighty grivnas. But the wergild of other freemen, including the smerdy, remained at forty grivnas.8

The smerdy, as might be expected, appear infrequently in the chronicles of the Kievan period, but some of the few references to them reveal their humble status. The Novgorod annalist in his entry for the year 1016 reported that Prince Iaroslav, after his victory over his brother Sviatopolk, paid each of the men from the city of Novgorod who fought for him ten silver grivnas, but gave only one grivna apiece to the smerdy in his army.9 In 1100 a group of warring princes met for peace talks, and according to the chronicle's account, they instructed the brother princes Vasil'ko and Volodar to return the "slaves and smerdy" whom these two had taken captive. Vladimir Monomakh, Prince of Kiev, who died in 1125, in his testament told his sons that he had protected both the impoverished widow and the smerd from the abuses of more powerful people.10

II

The peasant commune in one form or other was to persist throughout the centuries, and contributed much to giving Russian history a special and unique quality. But even while the verv' and the mir were growing out of the patriarchal commune another kind of landholding emerged that proved of greater significance in the evolution of Russian life. This new form was the private ownership of large tracts of land by members of the governing elite. The first appearance of this kind of tenure cannot with any certainty be dated earlier than the tenth century and its firm establishment took place in the eleventh. Its introduction marks the starting point of the central theme of Russia's subsequent -- and tragic -- history, the subjugation of the peasantry. For now the men who ruled the state added the role of seignior to their repertoire, and thereby reduced the peasants who lived on the lands they made their own into renters, at best, and thralls, at worst.

The most important single source for the story of the introduction of private landowning (as well as for all other parts of Russia's earliest history) is the Primary Chronicle, now often referred to as the Tale of Bygone Years,11 Dating from the first part of the twelfth century, it was based upon earlier annals written in the preceding seventy or eighty years. The Primary Chronicle, then, contains eye-witness, or at least contemporary, accounts for the period from the last years of Prince Iaroslav of Kiev (d. 1054) through the reigns of his sons and grandsons. The entries for the earlier centuries (the chronicle begins with the year 852) were probably drawn largely from oral narratives, and to a lesser extent from Byzantine writings. Many of the happenings recorded for these first centuries were told by the chronicler in conventional epic forms that clearly were borrowed from other early folk literatures. Some of these tales contained the germs of historical truth but the majority of them were brought into Russia from other lands and linked by the story teller to Russian historical personages and happenings. But the chronicle also contains genuine annalistic entries for the early years, often imbedded in the legendary recital. These events were recorded in a matter-of-fact style that contrasts sharply with the poetic style of the literary accounts.12 The annalistic entries, and the nomenclature used in both the historical and fictional reports, provide the largest part of the very slim data on landholding.

Other evidence of estate ownership is supplied by certain articles of the earliest law codes, the Short and Expanded Versions of the Pravda Russkaia, the Russian Law. These codes are believed by some to have been official enactments, but most authorities agree that the extant versions were private legal compilations drawn from a variety of sources. All agree that they are an authentic record of Russian law in the eleventh-thirteenth centuries. The data they provide about private landowning, then, are useful for the period in which the codes were compiled. But they provide meagre bases for the extrapolation of knowledge about earlier conditions of tenure.

In view of this paucity of information it is difficult to determine with any degree of precision when landownership by the ruling class first appeared on Russian soil. Kliuchevskii believed that there was no evidence of it before the eleventh century and that concrete indications of its existence date to the twelfth century. D'iakonov, Stählin, and Kulischer reached much the same conclusion. Eck, with less equivocation, placed the origins in the twelfth century, with churchmen as the first proprietors.13

The view that individual estate ownership began relatively late is based upon the opinion that into the twelfth century the ruling class, both Slavic and Scandinavian, had drawn its income from trade, tribute, and booty. Others, who have asserted that agricultural activity was the chief, or at least a very important, source of the economic power of the upper class, insist on an earlier origin. Khlebnikov claimed that in the ninth and tenth centuries wealth was in the form of landed property. Hötzsch wrote that by the ninth century members of the native Slav aristocracy were owners of estates to which they had inalienable titles. According to Grekov and Iushkov, leading Soviet historians of early Russia, estate ownership began within Slavic society before the Scandinavian conquest, Grekov suggesting that its origins reached back to the sixth century and possibly even earlier.14

In normal circumstances, apparently, the political organization of the tribes into which the Eastern Slavs were originally divided was semi-anarchical. The individual tribe was broken down into a number of communes or groups, each with its own leader or leaders, with frequent armed conflicts marking inter-group relationships. The local leaders formed the tribal aristocracy, but when the entire tribe, or a large part of it, was united in a common effort -- perhaps to resist invasion or to engage in aggressive warfare against another people -- leadership of the combined groups was assumed by a "king." These "kings," who gained their posts through election or heredity, came from the ranks of the local notables.

Early sources reveal the existence of a ruling class of this sort among the Eastern Slavs from the beginning of their recorded history. Jordanes (sixth century) in his account of the war between the Ostrogoths and the Eastern Slavic tribe of the Antes around 375 A.D., told how the victorious Ostrogoths crucified the "king" of the Antes together with his sons and seventy "notables" (primates). Menander Protector (sixth century) wrote that after the Antes had been defeated by the Avars, a Turkish people, around 560, the Antic rulers (archontes) selected one Mezamerus to treat with the victors. He must have been of outstanding importance, for Cotragegus, an ally of the Avars, described him as having gained more power over his people than had any man up to that time. Because of his preeminence he was killed by the Avars, who then once more ravaged the land of the Antes.15

This primitive method of organization persisted on into the first centuries of the Kievan period. The Slavic aristocracy maintained a separate identity as an autochthonous elite, independent of the favor and bounty of the ruling princes. This is made clear by entries in the Primary Chronicle for the middle and latter parts of the tenth century. For example, in 945 Prince Igor of Kiev was killed on a campaign against the Drevlianians, a Slavic tribe living west of Kiev. The Drevlianians then sent twenty of their "best men" to Igor's widow, Olga, to ask her to marry their war chief, Mai. The vengeful Olga, according to the annalist's story, had these twenty emissaries buried alive. Then she sent word to the Drevlianians that she would come to their country if they would provide her with an escort of their "eminent men." The Drevlianians were reported to have sent "the best men who governed the Drevlianian Land." Olga arranged for these men to be burned alive, and then, after further adventures in guile and perfidy, she conquered and destroyed the chief Drevlianian city of Iskorosten, killing some of the "elders of the city" and enslaving others of them. In 987 Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, summoned his own chief followers, who were called boyars, and the "city elders," to aid him in deciding which of the major religions should be adopted by the state. The entry for 996 related that Vladimir invited the "eminent men" of the city, along with city militia officials and Vladimir's own boyars and court officers, to weekly banquets at his palace.16

There is no direct evidence that the members of this Slavic upper class were landed proprietors in pre-Kievan times. Grekov, however, using sources from the Kievan period deduced that these people did own estates in earlier centuries. He pointed out that the sources refer to large private holdings in the Kievan period without any indication that they represented an innovation. He took this to mean that landownership was such an accepted institution that the chroniclers did not feel that special comment about it was necessary.17 Since there is ample evidence of the importance of settled agriculture among the Eastern Slavs before the coming of the Varangians, it seemed reasonable to him to assume that the native aristocrats must have been supported, at least in part, by land they owned. But the fact that the chroniclers said nothing to indicate that private ownership of large tracts of land was something new can scarcely be accepted as evidence for the long-time existence of this kind of landholding. Nor does the predominance of agriculture as a way of life necessarily support the assumption that the native aristocrats were large landowners. It is quite possible that they gained their power and income entirely from their roles of political, commercial and military leadership in the commune. The fact of the matter seems to be that on the basis of the available information there is no reason to believe that there was private landownership on a large scale in the pre-Kievan era.

Not until the tenth century are there any indications of individual ownership of large land complexes, and then not by the Slavic nobility but by princes of Varangian origin. When the Scandinavians first came into the Russian land they contented themselves with the gains to be won from brigandage, war, and trade. Then they began to shift the source of their income to landed property. In the opening passages of the old Novgorod Chronicle, written in the first half of the eleventh century, the annalist commented bitterly upon this transfer in economic interest. He wrote that in olden times the princes and their retinues had gained their wealth from wars with other peoples. Now, the exploitation of their holdings in Novgorod Land had become the chief means of their enrichment. The chronicler lamented the hardships this had produced among the people.18

The first private landowner mentioned in the chronicles was that formidable widow, Olga. After her defeat of the Drevlianians in 946 she established "residences and hunting preserves" in the conquered territory. The next year she traveled north into Novgorod Land where she collected tribute and appropriated land for her own uses. "Her hunting grounds, boundary posts, towns, and trading posts still exist throughout the whole region" wrote the annalist.19 Most of the other infrequent references in the earliest sources to landed property of the princes occur in connection with the accounts of gifts by rulers, usually to the church, of land or of the income from some of their estates. In 996 Vladimir, on entering the just-completed Cathedral of the Dormition of the Holy Virgin in Kiev is reported to have said "I bestow upon this church of the Holy Virgin a tithe of my property and of my cities." By his property Vladimir meant his personal holdings, which included among other things his landed estates.20 Snorri Sturluson, in his history of St. Olav of Norway, related that Olav, after his deposition in 1028 went to live with his son-in-law Iaroslav, then Prince of Novgorod, laroslav greeted him warmly, and offered Olav as much land as he needed for the maintenance of the men he had brought with him. The monk Nestor, in his biography of Feodosi, abbot of the Monastery of the Caves, written about the end of the eleventh century, reported that Iziaslav Iaroslavich (d. 1078), prince of Kiev, gave villages to that monastery. Iziaslav's son and successor Iaropolk (d. 1086) gave this monastery estates he owned in three districts of his realm. In addition, he gave an annual tithe from his properties to the Church of the Holy Virgin in Kiev. The more plentiful sources of the twelfth century record a number of such gifts by princes to church foundations.21

Another indication of the existence and the expansion of private landowning by princes is provided by references in the Primary Chronicle to royal ownership of certain cities and villages. Vyshgorod is identified as Olga's city, and the annalist also mentioned "her towns" in Novgorod Land and "her village of Ol'zhichi." Vladimir, before his conversion to Christianity, was supposed to have kept a total of 800 concubines in his towns of Vyshgorod, Berestovo, and Belgorod. He founded the last named city and settled it with people from other towns. In order to protect his realm from the invasions of the Pechenegs he built a string of towns along the banks of rivers on the steppe frontier, Peopling them with colonists drawn from the northern and northeastern parts of his realm. Iaroslav established towns along the Ros River where he had settled prisoners captured during his campaign in Volynia in 1031.22 These new towns are believed to have been fortified manorial seats, serving as military and governmental centers for the surrounding countryside. In addition, they were the administrative headquarters for the adjacent landed properties of the princes or of their most important servitors. As time went on merchants and artisans, as in many places in Western Europe, settled in and around these centers and they grew into true towns.

The available evidence, then, points to the princes of the Varangian dynasty as the first large-scale private landowners in Russia. They established and increased their holdings by conquest, frontier settlement, and by internal expropriation and colonization. Olga used the first method when she set up her residences and hunting preserves in the land of the Drevlianians. Vladimir and Iaroslav established settlements on the borders of their realms. Olga apparently expropriated the land of free peasant communes in her journey into Novgorod Land in 947. Finally, empty land was available, especially in the forested plain that lay between the Oka and Volga rivers. There the princes carved out large holdings for themselves. In Novgorod Land, however, royalty met with reverses in their efforts to acquire property. After a popular revolt in 1136 the assembly (veche) of Novgorod decreed that only Novgorodians could own land in the territories controlled by the city. The holdings of the prince were transferred to the patrimony of the Cathedral of St. Sophia, and the assembly laid a prohibition against the acquisition, whether by purchase or gift, of real property by the prince, by members of his family, or by his retainers.23

Since the Norsemen were acquainted with the institution of private property in their homeland,24 there is the possibility that they carried it into Russia. It has even been suggested that Kievan Russia was brought under Norse rule directly from Halogaland by men of the landowning class and "was ruled, not by kings, but by hereditary landowners, like parts of Halogaland, and other parts of central and southern Norway."25 Snorri Sturluson's account of the offer of land made by Prince Iaroslav to the exiled Olav of Norway may be an illustration of this carry-over. The impoverished refugee was to be provided with the same form of wealth that he had owned in his native land. But the earliest evidences of the private ownership of large amounts of landed property in Russia cannot be dated before the tenth century, although the Scandinavians had come as conquerors long before. The explanation of this lag might be that the creation of landed estates had to wait until the Varangians had established their rule firmly. That happened in the last quarter of the ninth century. It was perhaps not until that time, not until they had confirmed their hegemony and gained a feeling of permanence in the land they had conquered, that they became landowners.

Landownership by the church began, soon after Christianity became the official religion of Russia, although it probably did not take on large proportions until late in the eleventh century. Christianity had won converts in Russia during the ninth and tenth centuries but only became the religion of the land when Prince Vladimir accepted baptism in the Eastern Church (988 is the traditional date of his conversion). The clerical personnel who came to set up the new state church were of Byzantine origin. They brought with them the methods and traditions of church organization and of church-state relations that had been evolved in the Eastern Empire. Among these were the juridical autonomy of the church, its traditional role of providing asylum for persons who had lost their social status, and its right to own and exploit landed property.

Because the church had not been organized in Russia until Vladimir's conversion, it had not had the opportunity to build up resources with which to support itself. It had to rely at first upon the bounty of the prince for its maintenance. Probably, for the first few years after his baptism, Vladimir personally met the church's expenses as a sort of out-of-pocket expenditure. Then, as was pointed out earlier, he promised to give it a tithe of his "property and of his cities." The provision for the continuance of this source of church revenue was included in the so-called Church Statute of Vladimir which laid down regulations for church organization and jurisdiction. The Prince of Novgorod supported the Cathedral of St. Sophia from the income of his properties until they were taken from him and turned over to the cathedral. And soon after its establishment the church began receiving gifts of land from princes.26

Besides gaining land through gifts, the holdings of the church were extended through the colonizing activities of monastic foundations. Monasteries had come to Russia with Christianity. The existence of twenty are known for the eleventh century, and approximately fifty new ones were organized in the next century. Most of them were located in or near large towns, but in the twelfth century a number were founded in the frontier lands of the Northeast. Many of these colonizing foundations had started as the hermitages of monks who wanted more solitude than they could find in their old monasteries. The reputation for sanctity of these eremites had drawn others to their retreats, and soon a new convent had come into being.

The total amount of land owned by the church, or by any individual church establishment, is unknown, but the existing sources make it clear that by the twelfth century the religious had extensive holdings. This is indicated by the accounts of the often lavish gifts by princes of villages, slaves, and land to the church, and by reference to the internal organization of what were obviously large complexes of church-owned land.27

The nobility formed the third element in the class of large landowners. As was the case with the church, these upper class proprietors owed their holdings, in largest part, to the bounty of the princes. A further similarity is that only a very few indications of noble landownership are found before the last part of the eleventh century.

When the Varangians established their domination of Russia a new elite had come into being that was distinct from the native Slavic aristocracy. It had its origins in the retinue (druzhina) or following of each Viking chieftain. These were the men who served him as aides and counsellors, and who, above all, fought for him. His fame, his power, even his life, depended upon their loyalty and bravery. In the Tale of the Raid of Igor, the great epic of the Kievan age, the bard sang the praises of these men, telling that they were:

. . . swaddled under trumpets, cradled among helmets, nursed at the spear's point.

To them the roads are known and the ravines are familiar; bent are their bows, open their quivers, sharpened their sabres.

Like grey wolves in the field they roam, seeking honor for themselves, and glory for their Prince.28

They served their leader by terms of mutual and voluntary agreement that could be terminated at any time at the wish of either the retainer or the principal. The retainer was free to leave his lord and enter the following of another, and the lord could dismiss a retainer whenever he wanted to.

In return for the services his retainers gave him, the prince, supported and protected them. Originally, they lived with him as part of his household, and depended for their maintenance upon the booty won in the prince's wars and the tribute he exacted. The chronicler in his account for the year 945 told how the men of Prince Igor's druzhina said to their lord, "The servants of Sveinald are adorned with weapons and fine raiment, but we are naked. Go forth with us, O Prince, after tribute, that both you and we may profit thereby." In a later entry he wrote that Prince Vladimir's retinue complained because they had to eat with wooden spoons instead of with silver ones. Whereupon the prince hastened to order that silver spoons be provided "remarking that with silver and gold he could not secure a retinue, but that with a retinue he was in a position to win these treasures, even as his grandfather and his father had sought riches with their followers."28

The increasing ramifications of the ruling families, the heightened internal strife, and the intensification of the fight against the nomads, led to a multiplication in the number of retinues. By the latter part of the twelfth century perhaps as many as 100 princes had their own druzhiny.30 In addition, some of the most important of the princely servitors had their own followings. This happened as early as the tenth century. Sveinald, whose retainers were envied by Prince Igor's druzhina, was himself the most prominent member of that prince's retinue. In the saga of Olav Trygvason, later king of Norway, it was related that when he was a member of Prince Vladimir's retinue he "had himself a great company of warriors at his own costs with the means the king gave him."31 By the latter part of the Kievan era, with the atomization of princely inheritances, it is probable that some of the greater nobles had retinues that were larger than those of the less important princes.

Early in its history the druzhina divided into a greater and a lesser, or senior and junior retinue. The senior group included those who had distinguished themselves in war or in the prince's councils, or who commanded sizable forces of their own which they could put at the disposal of the prince. These grandees filled the highest posts in the military and administrative organizations of the rulers. The retainers who held, the lesser offices in their principal's service, either as men-at-arms or as administrative and manorial aides, were in the junior druzhina. Some of them were sons of senior retinue members, while others were of humble origin and even, like the ministeriales of medieval Germany, of unfree status. They could ascend to the senior druzhina when they grew older or when they became of greater military or administrative value to the prince. Wealth and family connections also aided in rising from the lower to the higher retinue.

A career in the druzhina of a great ruler or lord offered a road to fortune and prominence, no matter what the racial or social origins of the retainer. Until the end of the tenth century the princely retinues were composed mainly of Varangians. In the eleventh century members of the native Slavic aristocracy began to join them. This coalescence of the local nobility with the prince's servitors produced a new aristocracy that was known collectively as boyars, a term that had hitherto been applied only to the chief members of the princely retinues. The first indications of the creation of this new upper class appear in the Primary Chronicle at the end of the tenth century when the term boyars, retinue, elders, and prominent men, began to be used interchangeably.32 From then on the chronicler no longer made any distinction between the native and the princely aristocracy, referring to all the leading men in Kievan social, political, and economic life as boyars. The fusion was completed by the twelfth century except for Novgorod. There the native nobility maintained its separate identity, with its own set of interests that clashed frequently with the ambitions of the princes and their followings.

A fundamental characteristic of the druzhina had been that its members had lived with their principal and had been entirely dependent upon him for their support. In the eleventh century this system began to be discarded in favor of grants of land made by the princes to their followers. This change is probably attributable to the greater size of the retinue, making it too expensive for a prince to maintain it out of his own income, and to the fact that the wealth of the princes was increasingly in land rather than in the more liquid form of war booty and tribute.

The prince, of course, expected the followers to whom he gave land to continue in his retinue, and to perform all the duties that had been demanded of them when they had been part of his household. But the Kievan man-at-arms, unlike his analogue in medieval Western Europe, did not receive this land as a fief to be held on condition of his continued service to his principal. Instead, he became the outright owner of the property. If he decided to leave the prince's service he kept the land, and owed no obligation for it to the prince who had given it to him. Thus, it was possible for a man to be a member of the druzhina of one prince, and own land in the realms of one or more other rulers in whose retinues he had formerly served. On his death his property was divided according to the directions he gave in his will; if he died intestate it was divided equally among his heirs; and if he left no sons, daughters could inherit.33

Given these conditions, it was inevitable that the retainer who was granted land should assume a far more independent position than he had hitherto enjoyed. For now he was no longer dependent for his living upon the prince's continued bounty. His income, his power, and his social prestige became based increasingly upon the possession of real property. As could be expected, the first to break away from immediate dependence upon the prince were members of the senior druzhina. The lesser servitors found it more difficult to leave the court, so that their settlement on the land proceeded more slowly."

References in the chronicles to boyar-owned land complexes are extremely infrequent before the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Then they begin to be mentioned more often, especially in connection with the destruction of boyars' villages in the wars between the princes. In addition, the Expanded Version of the Russian Law is informative with respect to noble landownership. In the earlier Pravda of the Sons of Iaroslav only the properties and manorial personnel of the princes are mentioned, but in the revised and enlarged edition, dating presumably from the early twelfth century, the boyar appears along with the prince as a great private landholder.35

There is no reason to believe that by the end of the Kievan era private ownership by princes, boyars, and the church had become so widespread that most of the land belonged to them. It seems much more likely that the largest part remained in the hands of the independent peasant communes. But it is certainly clear that well before the end of the Kievan period private ownership of large landed properties had hecome common among the topmost levels of Kievan society; that the land they owned either had been taken from the peasant communes or else had been newly colonized; and that the properties of some of these landowners must have been extensive rural economies. It is to a survey of the way in which these large complexes were run and of the labor force that worked them that we now turn.

Notes

1 In Cambridge Economic History, I, 268.

2 Cf. Grekov, Krest'iane, pp. 59-74.

3 Efimenko, Izsledovaniia, pp. 217-220.

4 Pravda Russkaia, Short Version, sect. 13, 20; Expanded Version, sect. 3.

5 Grekov, Krest'iane, pp. 15-17.

In contemporary Polish and Lusatian documents the peasant was referred to as smard and smurd, respectively. Tymieniecki, "Le servage en Pologne," p. 12.

6 Short Version, sect. 1.

7 Grekov, Kievskaia Rus, pp. 69-70.

8 Short Version, sect. 19. The Pravda of Iaroslav and the Pravda of his sons are together known as the Short Version. Expanded Version, sect. 1, 3.

Section 3 of the Expanded Version of the Pravda referred to the classes for whom the wergild was forty grivna as liudi. By this term was meant the commonalty, both rural and urban. (Vladimirskii-Budanov, Obzor, pp. 35-37; Goetz, Russische Recht, 11, 32.) Vernadsky, however, excludes the smerdy from the ranks of the liudi, claiming that by the latter term was meant those men who held enough land to guarantee them a comfortable living and a social position superior to that of the mass of the rural population whom he calls the smerdy. (Vernadsky, Kievan Russia, pp. 136, 141.) But the term liudi was used in the Pravda of the Sons of Iaroslav and in the Expanded Version as a designation for the members of the territorial commune. (Short Version, sect. 19; Expanded Version, sect. 7.) The smerdy were certainly members of these communes; e.g., one of the articles in the treaty made in 1270 between Novgorod and the Prince of Tver stated that "the merchant shall remain in his hundred, and the smerd shall remain in his commune" (SGGD, I, no. 3), and in charters and treaties of the succeeding centuries the mass of the peasantry were often referred to as liudi. (Sergeevich, Drevnosti, 1, 232-233.)

9 Novgorodskaia pervaia letopis, p. 175.

10 Letopis po lavr. spisku, pp. 243, 264.

11 Ibid. English translation by Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor, Russian Primary Chronicle. Citations are made here from this translation except where references 10 the Russian text are necessary, e.g., for nomenclature.

12 Stender-Petersen, Die Varagersaga, pp. 29-32, 36, 38-39; Russian Primary Chronicle, pp. 23-30.

13 Kliuchevskii, History, I, 185; D'iakonov, Ocherki obshchestvennago . . . stroia, pp. 74-75; Stahlin, Geschichte, I, 68-69; Kulischer, Russische Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1, 38-40; Eck, "Le grand domaine," p. 94.

14 Khlebnikov, Obshchestvo, p. 102; Hotzsch, "Adel und Lehnswesen," pp. 544-545; Grekov, Krest'iane, pp. 93-94; Iushkov, Ocherki, pp. 143-144.

Jordanes, Romana et Gettica, p. 121; Menander, Fragmenta, pp. 5-6.

16 Letopis po lavr. spisku, pp. 54-58, 104, 123; cf. Odinetz, Vozniknovenie, pp. 14-17; Hrushevsky, Geschichte, 1, 376-377, 384-386; Laehr, Die Anfange, p. 11.

17 Grekov, Krest'iane, p. 105.

18 Novgorodskaia pervaia letopis, p. 104.

19 Russian Primary Chronicle, pp. 81-82.

The boundary posts were markers bearing Olga's device, setting off her property from the neighboring land. (Rybakov, "Znaki," p. 229.)

20 Letopis po lavr, spisku, p. 12a; cf. Golubinskii, Istoriia, 1, i, 509; art. 3 of Vladimir's Church Statute in Vernadsky, "The Status of the Russian Church," p. 306.

21 Heimskringla, p. 423; Goetz, Das Kiever Höhlenkloster, p. 129; Letopis po Ipat'evskomu spisku, p. 338; Russian Primary Chronicle, p. 169; v. pp. 37, 45, for 12th century data.

22 Russian Primary Chronicle, pp. 81-82 (946, 947 A.D.), 94 (980 A.D.), 119 (988 A.D.), 136 (1031 A.D.).

23 Grekov, Feodal'nye otnosheniia, p. 81; Iushkov, Ocherhi, pp. 49-50.

24 Cf. Wührer, Beiträge, pp. 46-47, 51, 61.

25 Chadwick, Beginnings, pp. 20-21, 24-25.

26 Gorchakov, O zemelnykh vladeniiakh, pp. 46-47; Goetz, Staat und Kirche, pp. 11-12, 133, 139; Golubinskii, Istoriia, 1, i, 511, 513, 520, 621-627; Grekov, Krest'iane, p. 103.

27 Cf. Letopis po lavr. spisku, p. 340; Golubinskii, Istoriia, 1, i, 522n.; Grekov, Feodal'nye otnosheniia, p. 80; Goetz, Staat und Kirche, pp. 142, 146; idem, Das Kiever Höhlenkloster, pp. 132, 133.

28 Cross translation in Gregoire, Jakobson, and Szeftel, La geste du Prince Igor, pp. 153-155.

29 Russian Primary Chronicle, pp. 78, 122.

30 Stahlin, Geschichte, 1, 68.

31 Heimskringla, p. 129.

32 Cf. Letopis po lavr. spisku, pp. 105-106, 123-124 (987 and 996 A.D.).

33 Medieval Russian Laws, sect. 91-95, pp. 51-52; Hotzsch, "Adel und Lehns-wesen," p. 546; Grekov, Krest'iane, p. 267.

34 Grekov, Krest'iane, p. 109; Vernadsky, Kievan Russia, pp. 139, 169; Iushkov, Ocherki, p. 145.

35 Medieval Russian Laws, sect. 14, 46, 56-68, 64, 66, pp. 38 ff.; sect. 91-95, pp. 51-52.