Kievan Rus. About the population of ancient Russia and some household items

Kievan Rus or Old Russian state- a medieval state in Eastern Europe, which arose in the 9th century as a result of the unification of the East Slavic tribes under the rule of the princes of the Rurik dynasty.

In the period of its highest prosperity, it occupied the territory from the Taman Peninsula in the south, the Dniester and the upper reaches of the Vistula in the west to the upper reaches of the Northern Dvina in the north.

By the middle of the XII century, it entered a state of fragmentation and actually broke up into a dozen separate principalities, ruled by different branches of the Rurikovich. Political ties were maintained between the principalities, Kyiv continued to formally remain the main table of Russia, and the Kiev principality was considered as the collective possession of all the Rurikids. The end of Kievan Rus is considered the Mongol invasion (1237-1240), after which the Russian lands ceased to form a single political entity, and Kyiv fell into decay for a long time and finally lost its nominal capital functions.

In chronicle sources, the state is called "Rus" or "Russian land", in Byzantine sources - "Rosia".

Term

The definition of “Old Russian” is not connected with the division of antiquity and the Middle Ages generally accepted in historiography in Europe in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e. In relation to Russia, it is usually used to refer to the so-called. "pre-Mongolian" period of the IX - the middle of the XIII centuries, in order to distinguish this era from the following periods of Russian history.

The term "Kievan Rus" arose at the end of the 18th century. In modern historiography, it is used both to refer to a single state that existed until the middle of the 12th century, and for a wider period of the middle of the 12th - the middle of the 13th centuries, when Kyiv remained the center of the country and Russia was ruled by a single princely family on the principles of "collective suzerainty".

Pre-revolutionary historians, starting with N. M. Karamzin, adhered to the idea of ​​transferring the political center of Russia in 1169 from Kyiv to Vladimir, dating back to the works of Moscow scribes, or to Vladimir and Galich. However, in modern historiography, these points of view are not popular, as they are not confirmed in the sources.

The problem of the emergence of statehood

There are two main hypotheses for the formation of the Old Russian state. According to the Norman theory, based on the Tale of Bygone Years of the XII century and numerous Western European and Byzantine sources, statehood was introduced to Russia from outside by the Varangians - the brothers Rurik, Sineus and Truvor in 862. The founders of the Norman theory are German historians Bayer, Miller, Schlozer, who worked at the Russian Academy of Sciences. The point of view about the external origin of the Russian monarchy was generally held by Nikolai Karamzin, who followed the versions of The Tale of Bygone Years.

The anti-Norman theory is based on the concept of the impossibility of introducing statehood from outside, on the idea of ​​the emergence of the state as a stage in the internal development of society. Mikhail Lomonosov was considered the founder of this theory in Russian historiography. In addition, there are different points of view on the origin of the Varangians themselves. Scientists classified as Normanists considered them Scandinavians (usually Swedes), some anti-Normanists, starting with Lomonosov, suggest their origin from the West Slavic lands. There are also intermediate versions of localization - in Finland, Prussia, another part of the Baltic States. The problem of the ethnicity of the Varangians is independent of the question of the emergence of statehood.

In modern science, the point of view prevails, according to which the rigid opposition of "Normanism" and "anti-Normanism" is largely politicized. The prerequisites for the original statehood among the Eastern Slavs were not seriously denied either by Miller, or Schlözer, or Karamzin, and the external (Scandinavian or other) origin of the ruling dynasty is a fairly common phenomenon in the Middle Ages, which in no way proves the inability of the people to create a state or, more specifically, the institution of a monarchy. Questions about whether Rurik was a real historical person, what is the origin of the chronicle Varangians, whether the ethnonym (and then the name of the state) is associated with them Russia, continue to be debatable in modern Russian historical science. Western historians generally follow the concept of Normanism.

Story

Education of Kievan Rus

Kievan Rus arose on the trade route "from the Varangians to the Greeks" on the lands of the East Slavic tribes - the Ilmen Slovenes, Krivichi, Polyans, then embracing the Drevlyans, Dregovichi, Polochans, Radimichi, Severyans, Vyatichi.

According to the chronicle legend, the founders of Kyiv are the rulers of the Polyan tribe - the brothers Kyi, Shchek and Khoriv. According to archaeological excavations conducted in Kyiv in the 19th-20th centuries, already in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e. there was a settlement on the site of Kyiv. Arab writers of the 10th century (al-Istarkhi, Ibn Khordadbeh, Ibn-Khaukal) later speak of Kuyab as a large city. Ibn Haukal wrote: “The king lives in a city called Kuyaba, which is larger than Bolgar ... Russ constantly trade with Khazar and Rum (Byzantium)”

The first information about the state of the Rus dates back to the first third of the 9th century: in 839, the ambassadors of the kagan of the Ros people are mentioned, who first arrived in Constantinople, and from there to the court of the Frankish emperor Louis the Pious. Since that time, the ethnonym "Rus" has also become famous. The term "Kievan Rus" appears for the first time in historical studies of the 18th-19th centuries.

In 860 (The Tale of Bygone Years erroneously refers it to 866) Russia makes the first campaign against Constantinople. Greek sources associate it with the so-called first baptism of Russia, after which a diocese may have arisen in Russia, and the ruling elite (possibly led by Askold) adopted Christianity.

In 862, according to the Tale of Bygone Years, the Slavic and Finno-Ugric tribes called for the reign of the Varangians.

In 862 (the date is approximate, like the entire early chronology of the Chronicle), the Varangians, Rurik’s combatants Askold and Dir, sailing to Constantinople, seeking to establish full control over the most important trade route “from the Varangians to the Greeks”, establish their power over Kyiv.

Rurik died in 879 in Novgorod. The reign was transferred to Oleg, the regent under the young son of Rurik Igor.

The reign of Oleg the Prophet

In 882, according to chronicle chronology, Prince Oleg, a relative of Rurik, set off on a campaign from Novgorod to the south. On the way, they captured Smolensk and Lyubech, established their power there and put their people on the reign. Further, Oleg, with the Novgorod army and a mercenary Varangian squad, under the guise of merchants, captured Kyiv, killed Askold and Dir, who ruled there, and declared Kyiv the capital of his state (“And Oleg, the prince, sat down in Kyiv, and Oleg said: “May this be the mother of Russian cities “.”); the dominant religion was paganism, although Kyiv also had a Christian minority.

Oleg conquered the Drevlyans, Northerners and Radimichis, the last two unions before that paid tribute to the Khazars.

As a result of the victorious campaign against Byzantium, the first written agreements were concluded in 907 and 911, which provided for preferential terms of trade for Russian merchants (trade duties were canceled, repairs of ships were provided, accommodation for the night), the solution of legal and military issues. The tribes of Radimichi, Severyans, Drevlyans, Krivichi were taxed. According to the chronicle version, Oleg, who bore the title of Grand Duke, ruled for more than 30 years. Rurik's own son Igor took the throne after the death of Oleg around 912 and ruled until 945.

Igor Rurikovich

Igor made two military campaigns against Byzantium. The first, in 941, ended unsuccessfully. It was also preceded by an unsuccessful military campaign against Khazaria, during which Russia, acting at the request of Byzantium, attacked the Khazar city of Samkerts on the Taman Peninsula, but was defeated by the Khazar commander Pesach, and then turned its weapons against Byzantium. The second campaign against Byzantium took place in 944. It ended with an agreement that confirmed many of the provisions of the previous agreements of 907 and 911, but abolished duty-free trade. In 943 or 944, a campaign was made against Berdaa. In 945, Igor was killed while collecting tribute from the Drevlyans. After Igor's death, due to the infancy of his son Svyatoslav, real power was in the hands of Igor's widow, Princess Olga. She became the first ruler of the Old Russian state who officially adopted Christianity of the Byzantine rite (according to the most reasoned version, in 957, although other dates are also proposed). However, around 959 Olga invited the German bishop Adalbert and priests of the Latin rite to Russia (after the failure of their mission, they were forced to leave Kyiv).

Svyatoslav Igorevich

Around 962, the matured Svyatoslav took power into his own hands. His first action was the subjugation of the Vyatichi (964), who were the last of all East Slavic tribes to pay tribute to the Khazars. In 965, Svyatoslav made a campaign against the Khazar Khaganate, taking by storm its main cities: Sarkel, Semender and the capital Itil. On the site of the city of Sarkel, he built the Belaya Vezha fortress. Svyatoslav also carried out two trips to Bulgaria, where he intended to create his own state with its capital in the Danube region. He was killed in battle with the Pechenegs while returning to Kyiv from an unsuccessful campaign in 972.

After the death of Svyatoslav, civil strife broke out for the right to the throne (972-978 or 980). The eldest son Yaropolk became the great prince of Kyiv, Oleg received the Drevlyansk lands, Vladimir - Novgorod. In 977, Yaropolk defeated Oleg's squad, Oleg died. Vladimir fled "over the sea", but returned after 2 years with the Varangian squad. During the civil strife, Svyatoslav's son Vladimir Svyatoslavich (r. 980-1015) defended his rights to the throne. Under him, the formation of the state territory of Ancient Russia was completed, the Cherven cities and Carpathian Rus were annexed.

Characteristics of the state in the IX-X centuries.

Kievan Rus united vast territories inhabited by East Slavic, Finno-Ugric and Baltic tribes under its rule. In the annals, the state was called Rus; the word "Russian" in combination with other words was found in various spellings: both with one "s" and with a double one; both with "b" and without it. In a narrow sense, "Rus" meant the territory of Kyiv (with the exception of the Drevlyansk and Dregovichi lands), Chernigov-Seversk (with the exception of the Radimich and Vyatichi lands) and Pereyaslav lands; it is in this sense that the term "Rus" was used, for example, in Novgorod sources until the 13th century.

The head of state bore the title of Grand Duke, Prince of Russia. Unofficially, other prestigious titles could sometimes be attached to it, including the Turkic kagan and the Byzantine king. Princely power was hereditary. In addition to the princes, the grand ducal boyars and "husbands" participated in the administration of the territories. These were combatants appointed by the prince. The boyars commanded special squads, territorial garrisons (for example, Pretich commanded the Chernihiv squad), which, if necessary, united into a single army. Under the prince, one of the boyar governors also stood out, who often performed the functions of real government, such governors under the juvenile princes were Oleg under Igor, Sveneld under Olga, Svyatoslav and Yaropolk, Dobrynya under Vladimir. At the local level, princely power dealt with tribal self-government in the form of a veche and "city elders".

Druzhina

Druzhina in the period of IX-X centuries. was hired. A significant part of it was the newcomers Varangians. It was also replenished by people from the Baltic lands and local tribes. The size of the annual payment of a mercenary is estimated by historians in different ways. Wages were paid in silver, gold and furs. Usually a warrior received about 8-9 Kyiv hryvnias (more than 200 silver dirhams) per year, but by the beginning of the 11th century, the pay for an ordinary soldier was 1 northern hryvnia, which is much less. Helmsmen on ships, elders and townspeople received more (10 hryvnias). In addition, the squad was fed at the expense of the prince. Initially, this was expressed in the form of dining, and then turned into one of the forms of taxes in kind, "feeding", the maintenance of the squad by the tax-paying population during polyudya. Among the squads subordinate to the Grand Duke, his personal “small”, or junior, squad, which included 400 soldiers, stands out. The Old Russian army also included a tribal militia, which could reach several thousand in each tribe. The total number of the Old Russian army reached from 30 to 80 thousand people.

Taxes (tribute)

The form of taxes in Ancient Russia was tribute, which was paid by subject tribes. Most often, the unit of taxation was "smoke", that is, a house, or a family hearth. The size of the tax has traditionally been one skin from the smoke. In some cases, from the Vyatichi tribe, a coin was taken from a ral (plow). The form of tribute collection was polyudye, when the prince with his retinue traveled around his subjects from November to April. Russia was divided into several taxable districts, polyudye in the Kiev district passed through the lands of the Drevlyans, Dregovichi, Krivichi, Radimichi and Northerners. A special district was Novgorod, paying about 3,000 hryvnias. According to a late Hungarian legend, the maximum amount of tribute in the 10th century was 10,000 marks (30,000 or more hryvnias). The collection of tribute was carried out by squads of several hundred soldiers. The dominant ethno-class group of the population, which was called "Rus" paid the prince a tenth of their annual income.

In 946, after the suppression of the uprising of the Drevlyans, Princess Olga carried out a tax reform, streamlining the collection of tribute. She established "lessons", that is, the amount of tribute, and created "graveyards", fortresses on the path of polyudia, in which princely administrators lived and where tribute was brought. This form of tribute collection and the tribute itself was called "cart". When paying the tax, subjects received clay seals with a princely sign, which insured them from re-collection. The reform contributed to the centralization of grand ducal power and the weakening of the power of tribal princes.

Right

In the 10th century, customary law operated in Russia, which is called the “Russian Law” in the sources. Its norms are reflected in the treaties of Russia and Byzantium, in the Scandinavian sagas and in Yaroslav's Pravda. They concerned the relationship between equal people, Russia, one of the institutions was "vira" - a fine for murder. Laws guaranteed property relations, including ownership of slaves (“servants”).

The principle of inheritance of power in the IX-X centuries is unknown. The heirs were often underage (Igor Rurikovich, Svyatoslav Igorevich). In the XI century, princely power in Russia was transferred along the "ladder", that is, not necessarily the son, but the eldest in the family (the uncle had an advantage over the nephews). At the turn of the XI-XII centuries, two principles clashed, and a struggle broke out between the direct heirs and the side lines.

monetary system

In the X century, a more or less unified monetary system developed, focused on the Byzantine liter and the Arab dirham. The main monetary units were the hryvnia (monetary and weight unit of ancient Russia), kuna, nogata and rezana. They had a silver and fur expression.

State type

Historians assess the nature of the state of this period in different ways: “barbarian state”, “military democracy”, “druzhina period”, “Norman period”, “military-commercial state”, “folding of the early feudal monarchy”.

Baptism of Russia and its heyday

Under Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich in 988, Christianity became the official religion of Russia. Having become the prince of Kyiv, Vladimir faced the increased Pecheneg threat. To protect against nomads, he builds a line of fortresses on the border. It was during the time of Vladimir that the action of many Russian epics telling about the exploits of heroes takes place.

Crafts and trade. Monuments of writing (“The Tale of Bygone Years”, the Novgorod Codex, the Ostromir Gospel, Lives) and architecture (the Church of the Tithes, St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv and the cathedrals of the same name in Novgorod and Polotsk) were created. The high level of literacy of the inhabitants of Russia is evidenced by numerous birch bark letters that have come down to our time). Russia traded with the southern and western Slavs, Scandinavia, Byzantium, Western Europe, the peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia.

After the death of Vladimir in Russia, a new civil strife takes place. Svyatopolk the Accursed in 1015 kills his brothers Boris (according to another version, Boris was killed by Yaroslav's Scandinavian mercenaries), Gleb and Svyatoslav. Boris and Gleb in 1071 were canonized as saints. Svyatopolk himself is defeated by Yaroslav and dies in exile.

The reign of Yaroslav the Wise (1019 - 1054) was at times the highest flowering of the state. Public relations were regulated by the collection of laws "Russian Truth" and princely charters. Yaroslav the Wise pursued an active foreign policy. He intermarried with many ruling dynasties of Europe, which testified to the wide international recognition of Russia in the European Christian world. Intensive stone construction is unfolding. In 1036, Yaroslav defeats the Pechenegs near Kyiv and their raids on Russia stop.

Changes in public administration at the end of the 10th - beginning of the 12th centuries.

During the baptism of Russia in all its lands, the power of the sons of Vladimir I and the power of Orthodox bishops, who were subordinate to the Kyiv Metropolitan, were established. Now all the princes who acted as vassals of the Kyiv Grand Duke were only from the Rurik family. The Scandinavian sagas mention fief possessions of the Vikings, but they were located on the outskirts of Russia and on the newly annexed lands, so at the time of writing The Tale of Bygone Years, they already seemed like a relic. The Rurik princes waged a fierce struggle with the remaining tribal princes (Vladimir Monomakh mentions the Vyatichi prince Khodota and his son). This contributed to the centralization of power.

The power of the Grand Duke reached its highest level under Vladimir, Yaroslav the Wise, and later under Vladimir Monomakh. Attempts to strengthen it, but less successfully, were also made by Izyaslav Yaroslavich. The position of the dynasty was strengthened by numerous international dynastic marriages: Anna Yaroslavna and the French king, Vsevolod Yaroslavich and the Byzantine princess, etc.

From the time of Vladimir or, according to some reports, Yaropolk Svyatoslavich, instead of a monetary salary, the prince began to distribute land to combatants. If initially these were cities for feeding, then in the 11th century the combatants received villages. Together with the villages, which became estates, the boyar title was also granted. The boyars began to make up the senior squad, which by type was a feudal militia. The younger squad (“youths”, “children”, “gridi”), who was with the prince, lived off feeding from the princely villages and the war. To protect the southern borders, a policy of resettlement of the "best men" of the northern tribes to the south was carried out, and agreements were also concluded with allied nomads, "black hoods" (torks, berendeys and pechenegs). The services of the hired Varangian squad were basically abandoned during the reign of Yaroslav the Wise.

After Yaroslav the Wise, the "ladder" principle of land inheritance in the Rurik dynasty was finally established. The eldest in the family (not by age, but by line of kinship), received Kyiv and became the Grand Duke, all other lands were divided among members of the family and distributed according to seniority. Power passed from brother to brother, from uncle to nephew. The second place in the hierarchy of tables was occupied by Chernihiv. At the death of one of the members of the family, all the younger Ruriks moved to the lands corresponding to their seniority. When new members of the clan appeared, they were assigned a lot - a city with land (volost). In 1097, the principle of mandatory allocation of inheritance to the princes was enshrined.

Over time, the church (“monastic estates”) began to possess a significant part of the land. Since 996, the population has paid tithes to the church. The number of dioceses, starting from 4, grew. The chair of the metropolitan, appointed by the patriarch of Constantinople, began to be located in Kyiv, and under Yaroslav the Wise, the metropolitan was first elected from among Russian priests, in 1051 he became close to Vladimir and his son Hilarion. The monasteries and their elected heads, abbots, began to have great influence. The Kiev-Pechersk Monastery becomes the center of Orthodoxy.

The boyars and the retinue formed special councils under the prince. The prince also consulted with the metropolitan, bishops and abbots, who made up the church council. With the complication of the princely hierarchy, by the end of the 11th century, princely congresses (“snems”) began to gather. There were vechas in the cities, on which the boyars often relied to support their own political demands (the uprisings in Kyiv in 1068 and 1113).

In the 11th - early 12th centuries, the first written code of laws was formed - "Russian Pravda", which was consistently replenished with articles "Pravda Yaroslav" (c. 1015-1016), "Pravda Yaroslavichi" (c. 1072) and "Charter of Vladimir Vsevolodovich" (c. 1113). Russkaya Pravda reflected the growing differentiation of the population (now the size of the vira depended on the social status of the murdered), regulated the position of such categories of the population as servants, serfs, smerds, purchases and ryadovichi.

"Pravda Yaroslava" equalized the rights of "Rusyns" and "Slovenes". This, along with Christianization and other factors, contributed to the formation of a new ethnic community, which was aware of its unity and historical origin.
Since the end of the 10th century, Russia has known its own coin production - silver and gold coins of Vladimir I, Svyatopolk, Yaroslav the Wise and other princes.

Decay

The Principality of Polotsk separated from Kyiv for the first time at the beginning of the 11th century. Having concentrated all the other Russian lands under his rule only 21 years after the death of his father, Yaroslav the Wise, dying in 1054, divided them among his five surviving sons. After the death of the two younger of them, all the lands were concentrated in the hands of the three elders: Izyaslav of Kyiv, Svyatoslav of Chernigov and Vsevolod Pereyaslavsky (“the triumvirate of Yaroslavichi”). After the death of Svyatoslav in 1076, the Kyiv princes attempted to deprive his sons of the Chernigov inheritance, and they resorted to the help of the Polovtsy, whose raids began as early as 1061 (immediately after the defeat of the Torques by the Russian princes in the steppes), although for the first time the Polovtsy were used in strife by Vladimir Monomakh (against Vseslav Polotsky). In this struggle, Izyaslav of Kyiv (1078) and the son of Vladimir Monomakh Izyaslav (1096) died. At the Lubech Congress (1097), called to stop civil strife and unite the princes to protect themselves from the Polovtsy, the principle was proclaimed: "Let everyone keep his fatherland." Thus, while maintaining the right of the ladder, in the event of the death of one of the princes, the movement of heirs was limited to their patrimony. This made it possible to stop the strife and join forces to fight the Polovtsy, which was moved deep into the steppes. However, this also opened the way to political fragmentation, as a separate dynasty was established in each land, and the Grand Duke of Kyiv became the first among equals, losing the role of overlord.

In the second quarter of the 12th century, Kievan Rus actually broke up into independent principalities. The modern historiographic tradition considers the chronological beginning of the period of fragmentation to be 1132, when, after the death of Mstislav the Great, the son of Vladimir Monomakh, Polotsk (1132) and Novgorod (1136) ceased to recognize the power of the Kyiv prince, and the title itself became an object of struggle between various dynastic and territorial associations of the Rurikovichs. The chronicler under 1134, in connection with the split among the Monomakhoviches, wrote down "the whole Russian land was torn apart."

In 1169, the grandson of Vladimir Monomakh, Andrei Bogolyubsky, having captured Kyiv, for the first time in the practice of inter-princely strife, did not reign in it, but gave it to inheritance. From that moment on, Kyiv began to gradually lose the political, and then the cultural attributes of the all-Russian center. The political center under Andrei Bogolyubsky and Vsevolod the Big Nest moved to Vladimir, whose prince also began to bear the title of great.

Kyiv, unlike other principalities, did not become the property of any one dynasty, but served as a constant bone of contention for all strong princes. In 1203, it was again plundered by the Smolensk prince Rurik Rostislavich, who fought against the Galician-Volyn prince Roman Mstislavich. In the battle on the Kalka River (1223), in which almost all South Russian princes took part, the first clash of Russia with the Mongols took place. The weakening of the southern Russian principalities increased the onslaught from the Hungarian and Lithuanian feudal lords, but at the same time contributed to the strengthening of the influence of the Vladimir princes in Chernigov (1226), Novgorod (1231), Kyiv (in 1236 Yaroslav Vsevolodovich occupied Kyiv for two years, while his older brother Yuri remained reign in Vladimir) and Smolensk (1236-1239). During the Mongol invasion of Russia, which began in 1237, in December 1240, Kyiv was turned into ruins. It was received by Vladimir princes Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, recognized by the Mongols as the oldest in Russia, and later by his son Alexander Nevsky. However, they did not move to Kyiv, remaining in their ancestral Vladimir. In 1299, the Metropolitan of Kyiv moved his residence there. In some church and literary sources, for example, in the statements of the Patriarch of Constantinople and Vytautas at the end of the 14th century, Kyiv continued to be considered the capital at a later time, but by that time it was already a provincial city of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The title of "great princes of all Russia" from the beginning of the 14th century began to be worn by the princes of Vladimir.

The nature of the statehood of Russian lands

At the beginning of the XIII century, on the eve of the Mongol invasion in Russia, there were about 15 relatively territorially stable principalities (in turn divided into destinies), three of which: Kiev, Novgorod and Galicia were objects of the all-Russian struggle, and the rest were controlled by their own branches of the Rurikovich. The most powerful princely dynasties were Chernigov Olgovichi, Smolensk Rostislavichi, Volyn Izyaslavichi and Suzdal Yurievichi. After the invasion, almost all Russian lands entered a new round of fragmentation, and in the XIV century the number of great and specific principalities reached approximately 250.

The only all-Russian political body remained the congress of princes, which mainly decided the issues of the struggle against the Polovtsy. The Church also maintained its relative unity (excluding the emergence of local cults of saints and the veneration of the cult of local relics) headed by the metropolitan and fought against all sorts of regional "heresies" by convening councils. However, the position of the church was weakened by the strengthening of tribal pagan beliefs in the XII-XIII centuries. Religious authority and "zabozhny" (repression) were weakened. The candidacy of the archbishop of Veliky Novgorod was proposed by the Novgorod veche, there are also known cases of the expulsion of the lord (archbishop) ..

During the period of fragmentation of Kievan Rus, political power passed from the hands of the prince and the younger squad to the intensified boyars. If earlier the boyars had business, political and economic relations with the whole family of Rurikoviches headed by the Grand Duke, now they have with individual families of specific princes.

In the Principality of Kiev, the boyars, in order to reduce the intensity of the struggle between the princely dynasties, in a number of cases supported the duumvirate (coordination) of the princes and even resorted to the physical elimination of the alien princes (Yuri Dolgoruky was poisoned). The Kiev boyars sympathized with the authorities of the senior branch of the descendants of Mstislav the Great, but external pressure was too strong for the position of the local nobility to become decisive in the choice of princes. In the Novgorod land, which, like Kyiv, did not become the patrimony of the specific princely branch of the Rurik family, retaining its all-Russian significance, and during the anti-princely uprising, a republican system was established - from now on, the prince was invited and expelled by the veche. In the Vladimir-Suzdal land, the princely power was traditionally strong and sometimes even prone to despotism. There is a known case when the boyars (Kuchkovichi) and the younger squad physically eliminated the prince of the “autocratic” Andrei Bogolyubsky. In the southern Russian lands, city vechas played a huge role in the political struggle, there were also vechas in the Vladimir-Suzdal land (there are references to them up to the 14th century). In the Galician land, there was a unique case of the election of a prince from among the boyars.

The main type of troops was the feudal militia, the senior squad received personal inheritable land rights. For the defense of the city, urban district and settlements, the city militia was used. In Veliky Novgorod, the princely squad was actually hired in relation to the republican authorities, the lord had a special regiment, the townspeople made up a “thousand” (a militia led by a thousand), there was also a boyar militia formed from the inhabitants of the “pyatins” (five dependent on the Novgorod boyar families of regions of the Novgorod land). The army of a separate principality did not exceed the size of 8,000 people. The total number of squads and city militia by 1237, according to historians, was about 100 thousand people.

During the period of fragmentation, several monetary systems developed: there are Novgorod, Kyiv and "Chernihiv" hryvnias. These were silver bars of various sizes and weights. The northern (Novgorod) hryvnia was oriented towards the northern mark, and the southern - towards the Byzantine liter. Kuna had a silver and fur expression, the former related to the latter as one to four. Old skins, fastened with a princely seal (the so-called "leather money"), were also used as a monetary unit.

The name Rus remained during this period behind the lands in the Middle Dnieper. Residents of different lands usually called themselves after the capital cities of specific principalities: Novgorodians, Suzdalians, Kuryans, etc. Up to the 13th century, according to archeology, tribal differences in material culture persisted, and the spoken Old Russian language was also not unified, preserving the regional- tribal dialects.

Trade

The most important trade routes of Ancient Russia were:

• the path “from the Varangians to the Greeks”, starting from the Varangian Sea, along Lake Nevo, along the Volkhov and Dnieper rivers, leading to the Black Sea, Balkan Bulgaria and Byzantium (the same way, entering from the Black Sea to the Danube, one could get to Great Moravia) ;
• the Volga trade route (“the path from the Varangians to the Persians”), which went from the city of Ladoga to the Caspian Sea and further to Khorezm and Central Asia, Persia and Transcaucasia;
• a land route that began in Prague and through Kyiv went to the Volga and further to Asia.

P. TOLOCHKO, Doctor of Historical Sciences

For the first time, the question of the population of ancient Kyiv was raised at the end of the 19th century by the historian D.I. Ilovaisky. Citing a number of written reports, he argued that he would hardly be far from the truth if he said that 100,000 people lived in Kyiv in the 12th century. Following D.I. Ilovaisky, the figure of 100 thousand was affirmed - and by other historians. Modern researchers determined the number of inhabitants of ancient Kyiv in different ways - from several tens of thousands to 120 thousand people.

Such large discrepancies in the conclusions show not only the unresolved problem of historical demography, but also the undeveloped methodology for its study. The conclusions of historians, as a rule, are based on chronicle evidence of fires, pestilence, the number of troops that ancient Kyiv sent to fight the enemy, as well as records of foreign travelers, indicating the large size of the city and a significant number of its inhabitants.

Let's look at these testimonials.

In 1015, according to Nestor's report about Boris and Gleb, 8,000 soldiers took part in the campaign against the Pechenegs together with Prince Boris Vladimirovich. This figure, according to Academician M.N. Tikhomirov, is indicative for Kyiv, where one squad of the prince numbered several hundred people.

Titmar of Merseburg, who wrote about Kyiv in 1018 from the words of the soldiers of the Polish king Boleslav, called it a city of 400 temples and 8 markets with an innumerable population.

Under the year 1092, The Tale of Bygone Years reports the following: “In these times, many people die with various ailments, like a verb selling korsts (coffins): like selling korstas from Philippov’s day to 7,000 meat-pushes.”

In 1093, the great Kyiv prince Svyatopolk decided to go on a campaign against the Polovtsy at the head of a detachment of 700 soldiers. These forces were clearly not enough to fight them. “Meaningful verbs,” the chronicler remarks, “if you could add 8 thousand of them, it’s not dashing to eat.” According to a number of researchers, the chronicler's indication of 8 thousand soldiers indicates that Svyatopolk could put up such an army if necessary.

In the battle on the Kalka in 1223, which ended in the defeat of the Russian squads, according to the chronicle, "10 thousand kiyans alone were bent on a shelf."

That, perhaps, is all the statistical data on the population of ancient Kyiv. Since it was they that served many researchers as the source material for demographic calculations, we will dwell on them in more detail.

Let's start with reporting the annals about the number of Kiev soldiers who participated in various battles. This figure usually fluctuates between 700 and 10,000 people. According to the calculations of Academician M.N. Tikhomirov, the ratio of the population of the city and "its" professional "troops can be expressed as six to one. Since Novgorod exhibited 3...5 thousand soldiers in the XII...XIII centuries, its population was 20...30 thousand people. If we accepted the same ratio and assumed that Kyiv in the XII...XIII centuries could put up an army of 10 thousand, then its population should have been estimated at 60 thousand people.

Unfortunately, here we do not have a single figure that would reflect reality, nor do we have the certainty that military units for participation in certain battles were put up only by cities, and not by lands-principalities.

More indicative for determining the population of Kyiv, according to many studies, seems to be the story of the epidemic of 1092: during several winter months, 7 thousand coffins were sold. However, nowhere is there any indication of the special desolation of the city. The statement about the Kiev Sea in 1092, wandering from book to book, is a misunderstanding resulting from an inattentive reading of the annals. In the annals there is no indication that this pestilence was in Kyiv, it is impossible to connect it with certainty with the Kyiv land.

Now about the Kyiv churches. Titmar of Merseburg spoke about 400 churches, the chronicle describing the fire of 1124 calls the number 600. Researchers have repeatedly noted that this information is greatly exaggerated. Of course, 30 years after the introduction of Christianity in Kyiv, there could not have been 400 churches. Kyiv did not have 600 churches even in the XII century. But even if we tried to use these astronomical figures to calculate the population of ancient Kyiv, we would not succeed. Firstly, we do not know how many residents of the city were assigned to one parish church, and secondly, it is quite obvious that here, in addition to large city churches, all the chapels and house chapels that stood on the territory of rich feudal estates are taken into account.

The foregoing convinces us that the written evidence at our disposal can do little to help in finding an answer to the question of what the population of ancient Kyiv was like, solving the problems of the demography of ancient Kyiv. The most reliable data for demographic calculations are found in archaeological sources. Only on the basis of them can one determine the size of ancient Kyiv, the density of its development, and the population.

So, what area did ancient Kyiv occupy at the time of its heyday? In the literature, you can find different figures: from 200 to 400 hectares. None of them are backed by concrete data. We believe that an objectively real figure of the area of ​​ancient Kyiv can be obtained only on the basis of the superimposition of finds, ancient Russian time, on the modern plan of the city. It turned out that the cultural layer of ancient Kyiv spread over an area of ​​about 360...380 hectares.

Extensive archaeological excavations in Kyiv, especially in recent decades, made it possible to determine the density of urban development in the XII...XIII centuries. Taking as a reference several well-researched estates in the Upper Town, as well as in Podil, we found that the average area of ​​one estate was 0.03 hectares. This does not take into account the size of large feudal courts. This is explained by several reasons. First, none of them has yet been excavated. Secondly, not one, but several families lived on each such estate. Therefore, for demographic calculations, it is more important to know the size of the estate of one average family, in which there were 6 people in the Middle Ages.

Knowing the area of ​​the whole city and the size of the conditional estate, we still cannot begin to calculate the number of its inhabitants. To do this, you need to get a few more figures: the area of ​​the city occupied by residential development, and the number of conditional estates located on it.

Thus, it is extremely difficult to determine the density coefficient of urban development in the 11th-13th centuries. The “City of Vladimir” (detinets of ancient Kyiv), which is better studied archeologically than other areas, was inhabited only on 60-70 percent of the total area. In other districts (the city of Yaroslav, Podil, outskirts) the building density was less.

In our calculations, we proceeded from a 60 percent density coefficient, which is the minimum for Western European medieval cities, which, apparently, is close to the real state of affairs in ancient Kyiv. As a result, the following data were obtained: urban development occupied about 230 hectares and had a little more than 8 thousand conditional estates. They could live, provided that the average family in the Middle Ages consisted of six people, about 50 thousand people.

Of course, the proposed calculations cannot be regarded as final. Naturally, none of the figures obtained can be considered absolute. In the future, as the excavations are carried out in Kyiv over wide areas, the accumulation of new data and the improvement of the methods of demographic calculations, they will be refined. However, these clarifications are unlikely to radically change today's conclusions.

Our conclusion about the 50,000-strong population of Kyiv in the 12th...13th centuries, obtained on the basis of an analysis of archaeological sources, finds some confirmation in the statistical data of a later time. It is known that in the large Russian cities of the 17th century, the structure and building density of which did not differ much from the ancient Russian ones, there were from 100 to 150 inhabitants per 1 hectare. Taking the average density figure for ancient Kyiv - 125 people per 1 hectare, it turns out that 47.5 thousand people lived on 380 hectares.

Fifty thousand. Is it a lot or a little? Substantiating the reality of the figures of 100...120 thousand inhabitants, researchers usually refer to the well-known message of Adam of Bremen, who allegedly called Kyiv in the 11th century a "rival of Constantinople."

Such reasoning is quite logical. Indeed, if Kyiv is a rival of the capital of Byzantium, then with its size and population, it should at least approach it. The expression “Kyiv is a rival of Constantinople” has become a textbook, but it does not belong to Adam of Bremen, but to historians who quite freely interpreted his message. Calling Kyiv "a rival of the scepter of Constantinople, the most glorious adornment of Greece", Adam of Bremen, presumably, had in mind not the size, but the ecclesiastical and political significance of the capital of Kievan Rus.

It seems that the comparison of ancient Kyiv with the largest cities of Byzantium is not entirely correct. Their origin, the conditions of socio-economic and cultural-historical life were too different. More justified are the comparisons of Kyiv with the cities of the Slavic and, apparently, the Western European medieval world. According to researchers, the second city of Kievan Rus - Novgorod in the XIII century had a population of 30 thousand people. In the capital of England, London, in the 11th century, 20 thousand people lived, and in the 14th century - 35 thousand people. The largest cities of the Hanseatic trade union of Hamburg, Gdansk and others numbered approximately 20 thousand people each.

As you can see, ancient Kyiv not only did not concede, but also significantly surpassed many cities of medieval Europe. In Eastern Europe, it was the largest urban center.

Information sources:

Journal "Science and Life", No. 4, 1982.

Gentlemen brainy comrades, help me figure it out, please.

As far as I understand, historians estimate the population is not very high.
For example: "With an average area of ​​​​a yard-estate of 400 m2 and a family size of 4-5 people, it turns out that by the beginning of the 13th century about 8 thousand inhabitants lived in Ryazan. By medieval standards, Ryazan is a large city. Suffice it to say that in 12 century, Paris had about 25 thousand inhabitants, and such largest cities in Germany as Regensburg - about 25 thousand, Cologne - about 20, and Strasbourg - 15 thousand." http://nsoryazan.freewebpage.org/oldrzn.htm#1

Everything seems to be true, but...

Russian chronicles report that in 1231 there was a "terrible famine in the spring", "a simple child" killed people and "poison". They ate linden leaves and bark, pine, moss, horse meat, dogs, cats. Many Novgorodians died of starvation. Three mass graves (“skudelnitsy”) were arranged. 3030 people are buried in the first of them. The other two have about 42,000 people. It should be noted that this was not the first year of famine, but the third in a series of unfortunate years.
This case is not unique. In 1230, as a result of a famine in Smolens, 32,000 people were buried in mass graves.

Trying to reason, we come to the conclusion that since the victims in Smolensk and Novgorod were buried, and not lying on the streets, no more than half of the inhabitants of these cities died. Because these were not the first years of famine, it can be assumed that part of the population of cities was dumped "in the village to grandfather", where it was easier to find pasture than in the city. Thus, the population of Smolensk turns out to be at least 70-75 thousand people, and Novgorod at all 85-90 thousand people.

Or, in 1211, there was a big fire in Novgorod and 4,300 households burned down. Despite the fact that not even half of the city burned out, and assuming the average number of the yard is 5 people, as indicated in the first link (although I'm leaning towards the figure of 10 people, there were more in the village, but it will still be more crowded in the city), we can to assume, even based only on this message and not taking into account what has already been written above, that the population of Novgorod itself at that time was at least 45 thousand people.

Here, however, it is worth noting that Smolensk and Novgorod were among the largest cities, so I think that the average population of a Russian city can be taken as 30-40 thousand people. The ratio of urban / rural population even at the end of the 19th century was 1 to 10, so most likely in the 13th century the cities accounted for approximately 5-7% of the total population. We get that the population of an average city + the population of its rural district = at least 430 thousand people.

Where am I wrong? Or is it still right? Why does my, as it seems to me, quite logical reasoning give a figure so different from the common one?

Kievan Rus was first formed in the lands of modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, it was ruled by the Rurik dynasty, and from the middle of the ninth century until 1240 the Russian state was centered around the city of Kyiv. Kievan Rus was inhabited by Eastern Slavs, Finns and the peoples of the Baltic, who lived in the territories along the Dnieper, Western Dvina, Lovat, Volkhva and in the upper Volga.

All these peoples and territories recognized the Rurik dynasty as their rulers, and after 988 they formally recognized the Christian Church, headed by the metropolitan in Kyiv. Kievan Rus was destroyed by the Mongols in 1237-1240. The era of Kievan Rus is considered in history as a stage in the formation of modern Ukraine and Russia.

The process of formation of the Russian state is the subject of controversy among Norman historians. They argue that the Scandinavian Vikings played a key role in the creation of Russia. Their view is based on the archaeological evidence of Scandinavian travelers and traders in the regions of northwestern Russia and the upper Volga since the 8th century.

He also relies on an account in the Primary Chronicle, compiled in the 11th and early 12th centuries, which reports that in 862 the tribes of Slavs and Finns in the vicinity of the Lovat and Volkhov rivers invited the Varangian Rurik and his brothers to restore order to their lands. Rurik and his descendants are considered the founders of the Rurik dynasty, which ruled Kievan Rus. Anti-Normanists downplay the role of the Scandinavians as the founders of the state. They argue that the term Rus refers to the Polans, a Slavic tribe that lived in the Kyiv region, and that the Slavs themselves organized their own political structure.

Early years of Kievan Rus

According to the First Chronicle, Rurik's immediate successors were Oleg (r. 879 or 882-912), who was regent for Rurik's son Igor (r. 912-945); Igor's wife Olga (regent for the young son Svyatoslav in 945-964) and their son Svyatoslav Igorevich (ruled in 964-972). They established their rule over Kyiv and the surrounding tribes, including the Krivichi (in the region of the Valdai Hills), the Polyans (around Kyiv on the Dnieper River), the Drevlyans (south of the Pripyat River, a tributary of the Dnieper) and the Vyatichi, who inhabited the lands along the Oka and Volga rivers.

Since the 10th century, the Ruriks not only took away the subordinate territories and tribute from them from the Volga Bulgaria and Khazaria, but also pursued an aggressive policy towards these states. In 965, Svyatoslav launched a campaign against Khazaria. His enterprise led to the collapse of the Khazar Empire and the destabilization of the lower Volga and the steppe territories south of the forests inhabited by the Slavs.

His son Vladimir (prince of Kyiv in 978-1015), who conquered the Radimichi (east of the Upper Dnieper), attacked the Volga Bulgars in 985; the agreement that he subsequently reached with the Bulgars became the basis for peaceful relations that lasted a century.

The early Rurikovichs also helped out their neighbors in the south and west: in 968, Svyatoslav saved Kyiv from the Pechenegs, a steppe tribe of nomadic Turks. However, he was going to establish control over the lands on the Danube River, but the Byzantines forced him to give up this. In 972 he was killed by the Pechenegs when he was returning to Kyiv. Vladimir and his sons fought many times with the Pechenegs, built border forts, which seriously reduced the threat to Kievan Rus.

Rurik's heirs and power in Kievan Rus

Shortly after the death of Svyatoslav, his son Yaropolk became the Prince of Kyiv. But conflict broke out between him and his brothers, which prompted Vladimir to flee Novgorod, the city he ruled, and raise an army in Scandinavia. Upon his return in 978, he first became related to the prince of Polotsk, one of the last non-Rurik rulers of the Eastern Slavs.

Vladimir married his daughter and strengthened his army with the prince's army, with which he defeated Yaropolk and seized the throne of Kyiv. Vladimir outmaneuvered both his brothers and the rival non-Rurik rulers of neighboring powers, gaining for himself and his heirs a monopoly of power throughout the region.

Prince Vladimir decided to baptize Kievan Rus. Although Christianity, Judaism and Islam have long been known in these lands, and Olga personally converted to Christianity, the population of Kievan Rus remained pagan. When Vladimir took the throne, he tried to create a single pantheon of gods for his people, but soon abandoned this, choosing Christianity.

Renouncing his many wives and concubines, he married Anna, the sister of the Byzantine Emperor Basil. The Patriarch of Constantinople appointed a metropolitan for Kyiv and all Russia, and in 988 the Byzantine clergy baptized the population of Kyiv on the Dnieper.

After the adoption of Christianity, Vladimir sent his eldest sons to rule over different parts of Russia. Each prince was accompanied by a bishop. The lands ruled by the Rurik princes and subordinate to the Kievan church constituted Kievan Rus.

The structure of the Kievan Rus state

During the 11th and 12th centuries, Vladimir's descendants developed a dynastic political structure to govern the ever-increasing realm. However, during this period there are different characteristics of the political development of the state. Some argue that Kievan Rus reached its apogee in the 11th century. The next century saw a decline, marked by the emergence of powerful autonomous principalities and warfare between their princes. Kyiv lost its centralizing role, and Kievan Rus collapsed before the Mongol invasion.

But there are opinions that Kyiv has not ceased to be viable. Some argue that Kievan Rus maintained its integrity throughout the entire period. Although it became an increasingly complex state, containing numerous principalities that competed in the political and economic sectors, dynastic and ecclesiastical ties ensured their cohesion. The city of Kyiv remained a recognized political, economic and ecclesiastical center.

Establishing an effective political structure became a constant challenge for the Rurikids. In the 11th and 12th centuries, princely administration gradually replaced all other rulers. Already during the reign of Olga, her officials began to replace the leaders of the tribes.

Vladimir distributed the regions among his sons, to whom he also delegated responsibility for tax collection, protection of roads and trade, as well as local defense and territorial expansion. Each prince had his own squad, which was supported by tax revenues, commercial fees and booty captured in battle. They also had the authority and means to recruit additional forces.

"Russian Truth" - a code of laws of Kievan Rus

However, when Vladimir died in 1015, his sons engaged in a power struggle that ended only after four of them died and two others, Yaroslav and Mstislav, divided the kingdom among themselves. When Mstislav died (1036), Yaroslav became completely in control of Kievan Rus. Yaroslav passed a law known as "Russian Truth", which, with amendments, remained in force throughout the era of Kievan Rus.

He also tried to put dynastic relations in order. Before his death, he wrote a "Testament" in which he handed over Kyiv to his eldest son Izyaslav. He placed his son Svyatoslav in Chernigov, Vsevolod in Pereyaslavl, and his younger sons in small towns. He told them all to obey their elder brother as a father. Historians believe that the "Testament" laid the foundation for the succession of power, which included the principle of transferring power according to seniority among the princes, the so-called ladder order (when power is transferred to the eldest relative, not necessarily the son), the specific system of land ownership by side branches of heirs and dynastic power of Kievan Rus. Having appointed Kyiv to the senior prince, he left Kyiv the center of the state.

The fight against the Polovtsians

This dynastic system, through which each prince kept in touch with his immediate neighbors, served as an effective means of protecting and expanding Kievan Rus. He also encouraged cooperation between the princes if danger arose. The invasions of the Polovtsy, the Turkic nomads who moved to the steppe and ousted the Pechenegs in the second half of the 11th century, were opposed by the concerted actions of the princes Izyaslav, Svyatoslav and Vsevolod in 1068. Although the Cumans were victorious, they retreated after another encounter with Svyatoslav's forces. With the exception of one border skirmish in 1071, they refrained from attacking Russia for the next twenty years.

When the Cumans resumed hostilities in the 1090s, the Ruriks were in a state of internecine conflict. Their ineffective defense allowed the Polovtsy to reach the outskirts of Kyiv and burn the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, founded in the middle of the 11th century. But after the princes agreed at the congress in 1097, they were able to push the Polovtsy into the steppe and defeated them. After these military campaigns, relative peace was established for 50 years.

The growth of the Rurik dynasty and the struggle for power in Kievan Rus

However, the dynasty grew, and the system of succession required revision. Confusion and constant disputes arose in connection with the definition of seniority, the rights of side branches to destinies. In 1097, when internecine wars became so serious that they weakened the defense against the Cumans, the princely congress in Lyubech decided that each appanage in Kievan Rus would become hereditary for a certain branch of heirs. The only exceptions were Kyiv, which in 1113 returned to the status of a dynastic possession, and Novgorod, which by 1136 approved the right to choose its prince.

The congress in Lyubech ordered the succession of the throne of Kyiv for the next forty years. When Svyatopolk Izyaslavich died, his cousin Vladimir Vsevolodovich Monomakh became the prince of Kyiv (1113-1125). He was succeeded by his sons Mstislav (ruled 1125-1132) and Yaropolk (ruled 1132-1139). But the Lubech Congress also recognized the division of the dynasty into separate branches and Kievan Rus into various principalities. The heirs of Svyatoslav ruled Chernigov. The principalities of Galicia and Volhynia, located southwest of Kyiv, acquired the status of separate principalities at the end of the 11th and 12th centuries, respectively. In the twelfth century, Smolensk, north of Kyiv on the headwaters of the Dnieper, and Rostov-Suzdal, northeast of Kyiv, also became powerful principalities. The northwestern part of the kingdom was dominated by Novgorod, whose strength was based on its lucrative commercial relations with the Scandinavian and German merchants of the Baltic, as well as on its own vast territory, which extended to the Urals by the end of the 11th century.

The changing political structure contributed to repeated dynastic conflicts for the throne of Kyiv. Some princes, having no claim to Kyiv, focused on developing their increasingly autonomous principalities. But the heirs of Vladimir Monomakh, who became princes of Volyn, Rostov-Suzdal, Smolensk and Chernigov, began to get involved in succession disputes, often caused by the attempts of the young to bypass the older generation and reduce the number of princes eligible for the throne.

Serious civil strife occurred after the death of Yaropolk Vladimirovich, who tried to appoint his nephew as successor and thereby aroused objections from his younger brother Yuri Dolgoruky, Prince of Rostov-Suzdal. As a result of discord among the heirs of Monomakh, Vsevolod Olgovich from Chernigov sat on the Kyiv throne (1139-1146), taking a place on the Kiev throne for his dynastic branch. After his death, the struggle resumed between Yuri Dolgoruky and his nephews; it continued until 1154, when Yuri finally ascended the throne of Kyiv and restored the traditional order of succession.

An even more destructive conflict broke out after the death in 1167 of Rostislav Mstislavovich, the successor of his uncle Yuri. When Mstislav Izyaslavich, Prince of Volyn of the next generation, tried to seize the throne of Kyiv, a coalition of princes opposed him. Led by Yuriy's son Andrei Bogolyubsky, he represented the older generation of princes, including also the sons of the late Rostislav and the princes of Chernigov. The struggle ended in 1169, when Andrew's army expelled Mstislav Izyaslavich from Kyiv and plundered the city. Andrei's brother Gleb became the prince of Kyiv.

Prince Andrew personified the growing tension between the increasingly powerful principalities of Kievan Rus and the state center in Kyiv. As prince of Vladimir-Suzdal (Rostovo-Suzdal), he focused on the development of the city of Vladimir and challenged the primacy of Kyiv. Andrei persistently advocated that the rulers in Kyiv should be replaced according to the principle of seniority. However, after Gleb died in 1171, Andrei was unable to secure the throne for his other brother. The prince of the Chernigov line, Svyatoslav Vsevolodovich (reigned 1173-1194), took the throne of Kyiv and established a dynastic peace.

At the turn of the century, the right to the throne of Kyiv was limited to three dynastic lines: the princes of Volyn, Smolensk and Chernigov. Since opponents were often of the same generation, and yet the sons of former grand dukes, dynastic succession traditions did not make it very clear which prince had seniority. By the mid-1230s, the princes of Chernigov and Smolensk were mired in a long conflict that had serious consequences. During the hostilities, Kyiv was devastated two more times, in 1203 and 1235. Disagreements revealed a divergence between the southern and western principalities, which were mired in conflicts over Kyiv, while the north and east were relatively indifferent. Conflicts between the Rurik princes, exacerbated by the lack of cohesion of the parts of Kievan Rus, undermined the integrity of the state. Kievan Rus remained practically defenseless against the Mongol invasion.

Economy of Kievan Rus

When Kievan Rus was first formed, its population consisted mainly of peasants who grew cereals, as well as peas, lentils, flax and hemp, clearing forest areas for fields by cutting and uprooting trees or burning them with a slash-and-burn method. They also fished, hunted and gathered fruits, berries, nuts, mushrooms, honey and other natural products from the forests around their villages.

However, trade provided the economic basis for Kievan Rus. In the 10th century, the Rurikovichs, accompanied by squads, made annual detours of their subjects and collected tribute. During one of these raids in 945, Prince Igor met his death when he and his people, collecting tribute from the Drevlyans, tried to take more than they were supposed to. Kyiv princes collected furs, honey and wax, loaded goods and prisoners onto boats, which were also taken from the local population, and along the Dnieper they got to the Byzantine market of Kherson. Twice they undertook military campaigns against Constantinople - in 907 Oleg and in 944, less successfully, Igor. The arrangements obtained as a result of the wars allowed the Rus to trade not only in Cherson, but also in Constantinople, where they had access to goods from almost every corner of the known world. This advantage allowed the Rurik princes of Kyiv to control all traffic moving north from the cities to the Black Sea and neighboring markets.

The path "from the Varangians to the Greeks" ran along the Dnieper north to Novgorod, which controlled the trade routes from the Baltic Sea. Novgorod goods were also transported east along the upper Volga through Rostov-Suzdal to Bulgaria. In this center of trade on the Middle Volga, which connected Russia with the markets of Central Asia and the Caspian Sea, the Russians exchanged their goods for oriental silver coins or dirhams (until the beginning of the 11th century) and luxury goods: silks, glassware, fine ceramics.

Social strata of Kievan Rus

The establishment of the political dominance of the Rurikovich changed the class composition of the region. The princes themselves, their squads, servants and slaves were added to the peasants. After the introduction of Christianity by Prince Vladimir, along with these estates, the clergy arose. Vladimir also changed the cultural face of Kievan Rus, especially in its urban centers. In Kyiv, Vladimir built a stone church of the Most Holy Theotokos (also known as the Church of the Tithes), surrounded by two other palace structures. The ensemble formed the central part of the "city of Vladimir", which was surrounded by new fortifications. Yaroslav expanded the "city of Vladimir" by building new fortifications, which turned out to be part of the theater of operations when he defeated the Pechenegs in 1036. The Golden Gates of Kyiv were installed in the southern wall. Within the protected area, Vladimir built a new complex of churches and palaces, the most impressive of which was the brick Hagia Sophia, where the Metropolitan himself served. The cathedral became the symbolic center of Christianity in Kyiv.

The introduction of Christianity met with resistance in some parts of Kievan Rus. In Novgorod, representatives of the new church threw the idol of the god Perun into the Volkhov River, as a result, a popular uprising broke out. But the landscape of Novgorod quickly changed with the construction of wooden churches, and in the middle of the 11th century, the stone Hagia Sophia. In Chernigov, Prince Mstislav built in 1035 the Church of the Transfiguration of Our Savior.

By agreement with the Rurikids, the church became legally responsible for a range of social and family acts, including birth, marriage, and death. The ecclesiastical courts were under the jurisdiction of the priests and enforced Christian norms and rites in the larger community. Although the church received income from its courts, the clergy were not very successful in their attempts to convince the people to abandon pagan customs. But to the extent that they were accepted, Christian social and cultural standards provided a common identity for the different tribes that made up the society of Kievan Rus.

The spread of Christianity and the construction of churches strengthened and expanded trade relations between Kyiv and Byzantium. Kyiv also attracted Byzantine artists and artisans, who designed and decorated early Russian churches and taught their style to local students. Kyiv became the center of handicraft production in Kievan Rus in the 11th and 12th centuries.

While architecture, mosaic art, fresco and iconography were the visible attributes of Christianity, Kievan Rus received from the Greeks chronicles, lives of saints, sermons and other literature. The outstanding literary works of this era were the Primary Chronicle or The Tale of Bygone Years, compiled by the monks of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, and the Sermon on Law and Grace, compiled (circa 1050) by Metropolitan Hilarion, the first native of Kievan Rus to head the church.

In the 12th century, despite the emergence of competing political centers within Kievan Rus and repeated sacks of Kyiv (1169, 1203, 1235), the city continued to flourish economically. Its population, estimated to have reached between 36,000 and 50,000 by the end of the 12th century, included princes, soldiers, clerics, merchants, artisans, unskilled laborers, and slaves. Kyiv artisans produced glassware, glazed ceramics, jewelry, religious items and other goods that were sold throughout the territory of Russia. Kyiv also remained a center of foreign trade and increasingly imported foreign goods, exemplified by Byzantine amphoras used as vessels for wine, to other Russian cities.

The spread of political centers within Kievan Rus was accompanied by economic growth and an increase in social strata, characteristic of Kyiv. Novgorod's economy also continued to trade with the Baltic region and with Bulgaria. By the twelfth century, artisans in Novgorod had also mastered enamelling and fresco painting. The developing economy of Novgorod supported a population of 20,000 to 30,000 by the beginning of the 13th century. Volyn and Galicia, Rostov-Suzdal and Smolensk, whose princes competed with Kyiv, became much more economically active on trade routes. The construction of the brick Church of the Mother of God in Smolensk (1136-1137), the Assumption Cathedral (1158) and the Golden Gates in Vladimir reflected the wealth concentrated in these centers. Andrei Bogolyubsky also built his own Bogolyubovo palace complex outside Vladimir and celebrated the victory over the Volga Bulgars in 1165 by building the Church of the Intercession next to the Nerl River. In each of these principalities, the boyars, officials, and servants of the princes formed local land-owning aristocracies as well as consumers of foreign-made luxury goods in Kyiv and their own cities.

Mongol Empire and the collapse of Kievan Rus

In 1223, the troops of Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire, reached the steppe in the south of Kievan Rus for the first time. they defeated the combined army of Polovtsians and Russ from Kyiv, Chernigov and Volhynia. The Mongols returned in 1236 when they attacked Bulgaria. In 1237-1238 they conquered Ryazan and then Vladimir-Suzdal. In 1239 the southern cities of Pereyaslavl and Chernigov were devastated, and in 1240 Kyiv was conquered.

The fall of Kievan Rus happened with the fall of Kyiv. But the Mongols did not stop and attacked Galicia and Volhynia before invading Hungary and Poland. In the lower reaches of the Volga, the Mongols founded part of their empire, commonly known as. The surviving Rurik princes went to the Horde to pay tribute to the Mongol Khan. Khan assigned to each of the princes of their principality, with the exception of Prince Michael of Chernigov - he executed him. So the Mongols ended the collapse of the once strong state of Kievan Rus.

Demography

All early medieval authors who wrote about the Slavs noted their extraordinary abundance. But these reviews must be taken in the context of a sharp decline in the Western European population in the early Middle Ages due to wars, epidemics and famine.

Demographic statistics of the 9th - 10th centuries for ancient Russia is extremely conditional. Figures were given from 4 to 10 million people for Eastern Europe as a whole (including for the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland - 2.5 million) [ History of the Peasantry in Europe. In 2 vols. M., 1985. T. 1. S. 28]. It should be borne in mind that the Old Russian population included more than two dozen non-Slavic peoples, but in percentage terms, the Eastern Slavs undoubtedly prevailed. The density of the population as a whole was low and varied in different parts of the country; the greatest concentration fell on the Dnieper lands.

Demographic growth was hindered by a number of natural and social factors. Wars, famine and disease took, according to researchers, about a third of the population. The Tale of Bygone Years preserved the news of two severe hunger strikes in the 11th century, which caused major popular unrest in North-Eastern Russia (True, hunger strikes caused by climatic conditions become common only in the period from the end of the 13th to the beginning of the 17th century, when there was a certain deterioration in the climate towards cooling and aridity.) According to Arab writers, famine in the Slavic lands in the 9th-12th centuries. arose not from drought, but, on the contrary, due to the abundance of rains, which is fully consistent with the climatic features of this period, marked by general warming and humidification.

As for diseases, the main cause of mass death of people, especially children, was rickets and various kinds of infections. The Arab historian al-Bekri left the news that the Slavs especially suffer from erysipelas and hemorrhoids (“there is hardly anyone free from them among them”), but its reliability is doubtful, since there is no strict connection between these diseases and the sanitary and hygienic living conditions of that time does not exist. Among the seasonal diseases among the Eastern Slavs, al-Bekri singled out the winter runny nose. This very banal malaise for our latitudes struck the Arab writer so much that it wrested from him a poetic metaphor. “And when people emit water from their noses,” he writes, “their beards are covered with layers of ice, like glass, so you need to break them until you get warm or come to your home.”

Due to high mortality, the average life span of an Eastern European was 34–39 years, while the average female age was a quarter shorter than that of men, as girls quickly lost their health due to early marriage (between 12 and 15 years). The result of this state of affairs was a small number of children. In the ninth century Each family had an average of one or two children.

In the absence of populous cities, which at a later time weakened the marriage isolation of peasant society, the circle of people in Slavic settlements who entered into a marriage union was very limited, which had a bad effect on heredity. To avoid genetic degeneration, some tribes resorted to bride kidnapping. According to the chronicle, this method of marriage was customary among the Drevlyans, Radimichi, Vyatichi and Northerners.

In general, rather slow demographic growth became noticeable only in the 10th century, when the population density increased markedly, especially in river valleys. Caused by the development of the productive forces, this process, in turn, stimulated their further progress. The increased demand for cereals influenced the transition in agriculture from the plow to the plow in the forest-steppe zone and from the plow to the plow in the forest, with the simultaneous introduction of a two-field system. And the arrival of workers contributed to more extensive clearing in the forests and the plowing of new lands.

With the growth of the population, the ancient Russian landscape also gradually changed. The forests of the Priilmenye region thinned out to a large extent precisely after Slavic settlers were added to the mass of the native Finnish population. And in the Northern Black Sea region, where pine forests were reduced by the Scythians and Sarmatians, with the placement of East Slavic tribes here, the forest border receded even further to the north.

Ethnic composition

The Russian land was divided ethnically into Rus - the inhabitants of the Russian / Kyiv land proper, Slovenes - East Slavic tribes subordinate to the Rus and languages ​​​​(languages) - national minorities: Finno-Ugric and Baltic peoples. Each of these groups, in turn, was a motley world of tribal characteristics and assimilation processes. Archaeological studies of the Middle Dnieper showed that “in the land of the glades (Kyiv land. - S. Ts.), as a whole, there was no predominance of any one archaeological culture. The glades themselves are perhaps the most mysterious tribe in terms of archeology. The territory of their alleged residence is a picture of a mixture of ethnic groups and cultures, a kind of “marginal zone”” [Korolev A.S. The history of inter-princely relations in Russia in the 40s - 70s of the X century. M., 2000. S. 36]. The East Slavic element here coexists with the West Slavic ("Varangian" and Moravian), Alanian and Turkic monuments.

The power of Igor embraced, in addition to the Middle Dnieper, the tribal territories of the Drevlyans, Krivichi (Smolensk), Dregovichi, Northerners, Uglichs, Tivertsy, Dulebs (Volhynians), White Croats, Radimichi. All these tribes mixed with each other and with their foreign-speaking neighbors in all sorts of combinations. The Uglichs and Tivertsy were gradually absorbed by the Turkic-speaking steppe. The Drevlyans disappeared in the mass of inhabitants - Volhynians, Dregovichi and Alano-Turkic inhabitants of the Kyiv land. Smolensk Krivichi, Dregovichi and Radimichi absorbed the Balto-Finnish tribes of the Upper Dnieper, Ponemanye and the Volga-Klyazma interfluve. The northerners merged with the Iranian-speaking inhabitants of the Dnieper left bank*. Dulebs and White Croats maintained ties with Western Slavs - Poles, Moravians, Czechs. In general, tribal differences were erased in the south much faster than in the north.

*The skulls of the Slavs on the left bank of the Dnieper resemble the skulls from the burials of the Saltovskaya culture (Alekseev V.P. Anthropology of the Saltivsky burial ground. // Materials from anthropology of Ukraine. Kiev, 1962. P. 88). A number of local water names indicate that the native, pre-Slavic population of these places were the Balts and Sarmatians (Toporov V.N., Trubachev O.N. Linguistic analysis of the hydronyms of the Upper Dnieper region. M., 1962. S. 229, 230).

social division

The social stratification of the ancient Russian society of the tenth century, on the contrary, was distinguished by great simplicity. The division of the population by place of residence into townspeople and villagers was barely visible and was very arbitrary, since the cities were still a special kind of tribal settlements, "fenced places", and the bulk of their inhabitants continued to farm. Just as unsteady and blurred were the boundaries between the primary professional groups. A warrior, a merchant, an artisan, a farmer could exist in one person, only with a certain preponderance of one of these occupations. Social levels were almost indistinguishable: rich, poor, etc.

The class formation of society was much more clearly outlined. The distinction here was made along the most noticeable, but also the most general line, which was determined by the presence or absence of personal freedom in a person. According to this section, the ancient Russian population was divided into free people and slaves.

Free people were called men, without distinction between rich and poor, noble and humble. The nobility, however, was called the best men, but only in the sense of aristocracy, the nobility of the breed; "better" did not mean "freer", "privileged". Old Russian freedom was a product of a tribal society and was conceived in terms that were characteristic of this society. The bearer of freedom was a social group, most often a community, which was, as it were, a collective womb that produced free people; the individual was free insofar as from birth he recognized himself as part of a free collective. Staying in the community brought up not an inner sense of personal freedom, but a corporate consciousness of belonging to the class of the free. Equality of status was felt only in communication with their own kind. Old Russian man believed his freedom by the freedom of others and was completely alien to any attempts to self-determine his position in the group as a self-sufficient person. As a result, he felt himself not essentially free, always equal to himself and other people, regardless of external circumstances, but free - not knowing any other master over himself, who would constrain him in actions, except for custom. The criterion of freedom, therefore, has always been external in relation to the individual: I am free, because, firstly, I am recognized as such by free members of the community and, secondly, my will cannot be grossly infringed upon by another person.

The loss of contact with the community turned the husband into an outcast. The very etymology of this word - “obsolete”, “social exile”, “devoid of care” (from the Slavic Goiti - “to live”, as well as “let live”, “take care”) - shows that the freedom of the outcast was under serious threat. Understanding this, society took outcasts under its protection. They were given the right to live in the territory of a foreign community, taking advantage of the position of a free person.

Slaves made up a large part of the population of the Russian land. In their overwhelming majority, these were foreigners who were captured in full. To designate a captive slave in Russia, a special term chelyadin was used, in the plural - servant. The enslavement of their compatriots, free husbands, took place in exceptional cases, when Russian law provided for the forcible deprivation of the rights of a free state as a criminal punishment for especially grave crimes.

Between freemen and slaves there was a thin intermediate layer formed by freedmen and other former slaves who, in one way or another, regained their freedom. Although formally free, they, however, like outcasts, needed the patronage of society or influential people, and therefore for the most part remained in the service of their former masters, being listed in the category of senior servants.