42 



it r ssi A 



unity of language and religion, and the common 

 idea that no princes must be taken by any Knsiian 

 territory except from among the descendant* of 

 Yaroslav. The natural cent res <>f t lio territory were 

 its fortified towns, which offered a refuge to the 

 population in ease of need. In each town the folk- 

 mote remained supreme ; it decided upon war and 

 peace ; it invited a prince to defend the territory, 

 and the prince, before being recognised as such, 

 bad to sign a covenant (ryad), and to take the 

 engagement to rule according to law. He was 

 bound to keep a band of warriors (drujina) to pro- 

 tect the territory, and was entitled to levy for that 

 purpose a tribute as well as the usual judicial fines : 

 the disputes among the citizens being settled by 

 twelve jurors (six for the defendant and six for the 

 plaintiff), the prince or his deputy had to pronounce 

 the sentence and to levy the fine when the parties 

 applied before the prince's court instead of the 

 I oik mote. The cities usually were divided into 

 sections and 'streets,' corresponding to the trade 

 and artisans' guilds, and each of them had its 

 own self-government; it elected its priests and 

 functionaries, while the folkmote of the whole 

 city elected the posadnik or mayor, the tysiatskiy 

 (miUenarium) or commander of the militia, and the 

 bishop. The fortifications of the cities were mostly 

 built out of the wealth accumulated by the cathe- 

 dral church, which was the exchequer of the city. 

 The guilds of the merchants in larger trading cities, 

 like Novgorod and Pskov, used to carry on trade in 

 the name, and, at the outset, for the benefit of 

 the whole city. The city not the individual sent 

 out its caravans and boats, and it also used to send 

 out parties of young men into the lands of the 

 Finnish tribes to carry on trade, to levy tribute, 

 and to colonise them. In this way Novgorod con- 

 quered the north-east of Russia, and founded 

 there ite daughter-republics of Vyatka, Dwina, and 

 Vologda ; and later on its men crossed the Urals to 

 trade with Siberia. Kieff was recognised as the 

 eldest of the cities, and the eldest of the kin of the 

 princes had to rule at Kieff. But this unwritten 

 agreement was not always obeyed, and consequently 

 numberless petty wars took place between the 

 princes. The country, however, took no part in 

 these wars, with the exception of a few isolated cases 

 always specified in the annals. In each territory 

 there was the chief city (gorod), and the subordinate 

 ones (prigorod), but no traces of submission of the 

 latter to the former can be discovered in the docu- 

 ments of the times, the annals simply mentioning 

 that the prigorods take the same decisions as the 

 gorod. The soil belonged to the freemen who 

 cultivated it; but slavery existed, and there was 

 some trade in slaves, chiefly prisoners of war. 

 A free man who entered into any one's service 

 without agreement and remained in a servant's 

 position for more than one year was also considered 

 kholop or slave, as well as he who sold himself into 

 slavery under the pressure of necessity. Trade 

 prospered at that time, especially at Kieff, which 

 was the great storehouse for trade with Greece and 

 \-ia, and Novgorod (which later on joined the 

 Iliinseatic League) for the trade with Germany 

 and Sejuidinavia. Pskov, Smolensk, and Polotek 

 alo were important centres of commerce. 



During the 10th, llth, and 12th centurie-. liui.-. 

 wan thus covered with a number of free democrat ie 

 republics. But the (Jreek Church already worked 

 hard nt introducing into Russian life the conception 

 of the state and the authority of the monarch. 

 liiHtead of the common-law view of justice as 

 amend* made by the offender for the wrongs he has 

 done to the individual or the community, the 

 church introduced the Roman conception of justice 

 as established by the state, and with it the idea of 

 crnel corporal and capital punishments. At the 



same time it spread education and developed the 

 taste for reading, and ite monasteries were centres 

 of further colonisation. But it also introduced the 

 Byzantine ideas of asceticism and submission, and 

 subsequently it* influence, reinforced by that of the 

 Mongols and the Tartars, contributed to give to 

 woman a suWdiimte position quite contrary to the 

 spirit of the Slav laws. And finally a new power 

 grew up during the same centuries viz. that of tin- 

 ooyarsoTbolar.t. Formerly thev simply wi'rc the chief 

 warriors and counsellors of the drujina ; but later 

 on, as some of them grew wealthier through trade 

 and war, they acquired more and more imix>rtance 

 in the cities as well as in the country. Thitlier they 

 attracted peasants to settle on the free lands, ami 

 gradually reduced them to the condition of tenants. 

 Such was the state of Russian society during tli>i 

 udyelnyi or feudal period before the Mongol inva- 

 sion. Of all the princes who ruled at Kieff during 

 that period Vladimir Monomachus (1113-25) de- 

 serves special mention as a ruler whose paternal 

 authority was recognised by most Russian princes, 

 whom he succeeded in bringing together for the 

 defence of the territory against the 1'olovtsy. 

 With him really ended the supremacy of Kieff, 

 south-west Russia becoming more and more the 

 prey of its nomad neighbours, as well as of its 

 western neighbours, the princes of Volhynia and 

 Galicia. 



Owing to the gradual colonisation of the basin of 

 the Oka and the upper Volga, a new Russian terri- 

 tory had grown in importance in the meantime. 

 Suzdal and Rostov were its chief centres. It differed 

 from south-west Russia in many respects : its in- 

 habitants were Great Russians a hard-working 

 race, less poetical and less gifted, but more active 

 than their southern brethren. Besides, a good 

 many of its inhabitants were peasants settled on 

 the lands of the boyars country -people, not accus- 

 tomed to the folkmotes of old ; and the cities 

 themselves, being of recent creation like Vladi- 

 mir and, later on, Moscow had not those tradi- 

 tions of independence which characterised Kieff or 

 Novgorod. It was therefore easier for the authority 

 of the prince to develop in the north-east, under 

 the guidance of the church and the boyars, with- 

 out being interfered with by the vetrhe. The Suz- 

 dal prince, Andrei Bogolubskiy (1157-74), was the 

 first representative of that policy. He and his 

 ehurchlv advisers founded a new town, Vladimir, 

 on the Klazma, a tributary of the Oka, and sancti- 

 fied it by transporting thither from Kieff an icon 

 of the Virgin, which had come from Constantinople, 

 and was reputed to have been painted by St Luke. 

 He invited many Kieff boyars to settle in the land 

 of Suzdal, and finally he undertook to strike the 

 last blow at the supremacy of Kieff. He induced 

 the land of Suzdal to levy an army, which took 

 Kieff in 1169, plundered and burned it, massacred 

 numbers of its inhabitants, and carried others away 

 into slavery. The supremacy of Kieff was thus 

 ile-troyed, and the land of Suzdal became the Ile- 

 de-France of Russia the nucleus of the future 

 Ku-sian state. Andrei was killed by his own' 

 boyars ; but the Suzdal land continued to grow 

 anil to enjoy prosperity during the next fifty years ; 

 economical, educational, and literary progress were 

 marked, and the Russian territory extended farther 

 eastwards. A rival was given to Novgorod in 

 Nijni-Novgorod, at the junction of the Oka with 

 the Volga. But in the 13th century a great 

 calamity visited Russia; a Mongol invasion sud- 

 denly put a stop to the development of the country 

 ami threw it into a totally new direction. 



For several centuries past the rapid desiccation 

 of central Asia (see ASIA) had been compelling tlie. 

 inhabitants of the high plateau to migrate into the 

 lowlands, and thence westwards towards Europe. 



