The emergence of Russian statehood is traditionally associated with the emergence of the Old Russian state with centers first in Novgorod and then in Kiev. Marxism believed that the main reason for the formation of the state was the emergence of private property and the class stratification of society. Other currents of political thought do not share this categorical statement. In the history of many peoples of the world, the emergence of the state preceded an intensive process of social differentiation, and then the state as a political institution played an active role in the development of property relations. So among the Eastern Slavs, the formation of the state caused changes in the social and economic spheres.

For more than two centuries in Russia there have been disputes around the "Norman" version of the origin of the Old Russian state. Opponents of this version cannot agree that foreigners brought statehood to Russia. Recently, a point of view has been expressed according to which the "vocation of the Varangians" is recognized, but the "Varangians" themselves are declared not Scandinavians, but Western Slavs who lived on the coast of the Baltic Sea. In our opinion, there is nothing insulting to the national consciousness of Russians (as well as modern Ukrainians and Belarusians) in the very fact of the “vocation of the Varangians”. For many peoples, including European ones, the state arose under the influence of an external foreign factor. Among the theoretical concepts that explain the emergence of the state, there is one that links its formation with the conquest by foreigners. In Ancient Russia, there was no talk of any conquest. Whoever the legendary Rurik himself was - a Scandinavian or a Slav, his descendants became Russian princes. Regardless of the ethnic roots of the Rurikovichs, it cannot be denied that immigrants from Scandinavia lived in the Old Russian political centers- Kiev, Novgorod and others - both before and after the formation of the first East Slavic state. It should also be remembered that, along with the East Slavic tribes of the Polyans, Krivichs, Radimichs, Ilmen Slovens and others, the Finno-Ugric tribes - Chudi, Vodi, Meri and Murom - participated in the creation of this state.

The Old Russian state was formed on the territory along which one of the most important trade routes "from the Varangians to the Greeks" passed in those days. In this regard, the famous American political scientist and specialist in Russian history R. Pipes compared the original Kievan Rus with a giant trading enterprise.

“The Varangian state in Russia,” he noted, “resembled rather the great European trading enterprises of the 17th-18th centuries, such as the East India Company or the Hudson's Bay Company, created for profit, but forced due to the absence of any administration in the regions to become, as it were, a surrogate for state power. The Great Prince was a merchant par excellence, and his principality was essentially commercial enterprise composed of loosely interconnected cities, whose garrisons collected tribute and maintained - in a somewhat crude way - public order. "

During its formation, Kievan Rus was a kind of early feudal federation, consisting of old territories occupied by the tribes of the Eastern Slavs, and new lands developed during the Slavic colonization of the Oka-Volga interfluve. Centralization Kiev state reached its climax during the time of Yaroslav the Wise (1019-1054). By this time, in 988, under Prince Vladimir, the most important event in Russian history had already taken place - the baptism of Rus. As a result, Orthodoxy became the official religion of the new state. Social structure and political institutions ancient Russian society remained undeveloped, the processes of social differentiation and state building were just unfolding. The daily life of most of the Eastern Slavs in the newly created Kiev state has changed little in comparison with the tribal period. The traditions of the former "military democrat" were preserved, which was characterized by the participation of all adult men in the management of the community, the general arming of the population and the public appointment of military leaders. The norms obligatory for all were approved by the national assembly - in the evening.

The veche also survived under the conditions of the early Old Russian statehood. To some extent, it limited the power of the ancient Russian princes. In the northwestern Russian lands - Novgorod and Pskov - the role of the veche was even more important. There were a kind of "feudal republics" in which the princes were summoned and expelled by the decision of the veche. Veche elected the bishop - the head of the local church, the mayor - the head of the civil executive power, and the tysyatsky - the leader of the people's militia, convened in case of military necessity. There was also the so-called Council of Gentlemen, which consisted of representatives of the richest and noble families. This Council performed some government functions and occasionally came into conflict with the veche. Such a socio-political structure of the Lord of Veliky Novgorod was largely due to his economy, in which, due to natural and climatic conditions, not agriculture, but trade and handicrafts played the leading role. The political traditions of the northwestern Russian lands differed from the traditions of the northeastern lands and could have become the starting point of another variant of socio-political development, but this did not happen, since Novgorod and Pskov subsequently fell under the control of Moscow.

Statehood in Ancient Russia was represented only by the prince himself with his retinue. With the help of the squad, the princes controlled their possessions and guarded them from external danger. The institution of private ownership of land in Ancient Russia did not take shape, but a certain social differentiation was outlined among its population. The population was divided into free and not free people. The free ranks were smerds, that is, peasant farmers, who constituted the overwhelming majority. The bulk of unfree people were called slaves. The slaves were in complete submission and dependence on their masters. It was possible to become a slave in various ways: to be taken prisoner, to be sold for money or for debts. Both those who married unfree people and those who were born in such a marriage became slaves. Transitional in its social status form between free smerds and unfree slaves were zakg / yi / and outcasts. However, it is impossible to identify ancient Russian slaves with ancient slaves. They were not at all, like the latter, "talking tools." Serfs had certain rights, in particular, they could participate in trial... This was reflected in the most important source of Old Russian legislation - "Russian Truth", which appeared during the time of the centralized Kiev state.

Social differentiation also took place within the princely squads. From the moment the grand dukes became not the first among other princes, but the full-fledged rulers of the whole country, those who ruled in the localities entered and occupied a privileged position in the grand ducal squad. They formed the so-called senior squad and began to be called boyars. The lowest stratum of the grand ducal squad was the "young squad", which included warriors who were younger in age and less noble in origin. The "young squad" included the prince's squad, which was in his personal service. At first, the squad performed only military functions, then more and more began to take on administrative and managerial functions.

The power of the Grand Duke himself was extensive. Speaking modern language, he was the "supreme commander" and led the army during the campaigns. The Grand Duke stood at the head of the entire system of government of the country and was the personification of the highest judicial power. However, initially in Kievan Rus, no clear mechanisms for the transfer of grand-ducal power were developed. Power belonged not to a specific person, but to the entire family of Rurikovich. More than once, feuds broke out between the sons and other relatives of the deceased Grand Duke over the succession to the throne. In addition, the lifestyle of the princes from the Rurik clan was such that they constantly moved from city to city, from one local principality to another. In these conditions, preserving a single centralized state headed by the Grand Duke of Kiev was a difficult and, as subsequent events showed, an impossible task.

After the death of Vladimir Monomakh in 1125 and the subsequent death of his eldest son Mstislav in 1132 in 1132, civil strife broke out again, which led to the collapse of the united Kievan Rus. The era of appanage principalities began. The largest principality in the west was Galicia-Volynskoe, and in the east - Vladimirsko-Suzdal, which arose on the new northeastern lands, which differed from the old ancient Russian lands in a number of features, as already discussed. The title of the Grand Duke of Kiev was preserved, but his power became nominal. Nevertheless, the struggle for it between the appanage princes continued. However, from the moment when the Vladimir-Suzdal prince Andrei Bogolyubsky, who conquered and ruined Kiev, did not remain to reign here, but transferred the capital along with the grand-ducal title to Vladimir, the separation of the lands begins, on which later the Moscow state arose.

The reason for the collapse of Kievan Rus was not only the struggle for power between the princes from the Rurik dynasty. The reasons for this process were also geopolitical and geo-economic in nature. It was difficult to control such a rather extensive state as Kievan Rus was with medieval management technologies and transport communications. Economically, Kievan Rus was not, and could not be, a single economic system. By the time the Kiev state collapsed into specific principalities, the path “from the Varangians to the Greeks” had lost its former significance.

With the disintegration of Kievan Rus, the character of the princely power in its former northeastern lands changed, and a different principle of prestolonial succession was established. If earlier the power belonged to the entire princely family and could pass to any of its representatives, then in North-Eastern Russia the order of inheritance adopted in most European countries was formed, based on the principle of primogeshury. In accordance with this principle, princely power belonged to a specific person and passed from him to the eldest son. The attitude of the princes to their possessions also changed.

“Previously, the Russian land was considered the common fatherland of the princely family, which was the collective bearer of the supreme power in it,” wrote V.O. Klyuchevsky, “and individual princes, participants in this collective power, were temporary rulers of their reigns. But in the composition of this power, there is no noticeable thought about the right of ownership of land as land - the right that belongs to a private landowner to his land. Ruling their princes in turn, or by agreement between themselves and with the township cities, the princes practiced supreme rights in them; but neither all of them in aggregate, nor each of them individually, applied to them the methods of disposal arising from the right of ownership, did not sell them and did not pledge them, did not give them as a dowry for their daughters, did not bequeath them, etc. " ...

However, the territories of individual appanage principalities into which the North-Eastern Russia, began to be considered the personal, hereditary property of appanage princes. As V. O. Klyuchevsky wrote, "... they (princes) ruled the free population of their principalities as sovereigns and owned their territories as private owners, with all the rights of disposal arising from such property."

This order laid the foundation for the "patrimonial system", according to which the state is identified with the private property of the ruling monarch, and public political power is combined with economic power. Along with appanage princes, some economic rights to part of the lands of their appanages long time retained by the boyars, who were also "patrimonials". V.O.Klyuchevsky writes about the contradiction that arose in this case:

“How could the prince remain the landowner of the entire inheritance next to these also full landowners who owned parts of the same inheritance? With the merger of the rights of the sovereign and the landowner in the person of the prince, this was not only legally possible, but also brought important political benefits to the prince. Together with the right of ownership of land in his inheritance, the prince conceded to the owner his state rights to a greater or lesser extent, thus turning him into his administrative instrument. "

As a result, according to the same Klyuchevsky, “the prince differed from these estates not as a political ruler of the territory from private landowners, but as a common patrimony of an inheritance from partial ones, on the lands of which he retained some patrimonial, economic rights”. This situation existed during the entire specific period, which fell mainly in the times of the Tatar-Mongol yoke. The attack of the Tatar-Mongol hordes on the Russian lands, in contrast to the earlier raids of the nomads, had a serious impact on the subsequent political history of Russia. The former unity of the East Slavic lands finally collapsed. Weakened by the Mongol invasion, the Western and Southwestern Russian principalities were included in the other state entities, first of all, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The northeastern Russian lands became dependent on the Mongol empire, and after the collapse Mongol Empire- from her heiress, the Golden Horde. Russia has retained its Orthodox Christian religion. The presence of the Tatar-Mongols was not constant, they did not leave their garrisons and controlled the conquered territories not directly, but indirectly. But the northeastern Russian principalities lost their political independence. As the modern Russian historian A. Kamensky notes,

“Before, Russian princes themselves went on distant campaigns of conquest, even reaching the walls of Constantinople. Now Prince Alexander Nevsky, who defeated the Swedes in 1240, and two years later the crusaders of the Teutonic Order, had to crawl on his stomach to the Khan's throne, begging for a label to reign. It is quite obvious that the international importance of Russia has fallen, for a long time it turned out to be excluded from world politics. "

The Tatar-Mongol yoke influenced the development of Russian statehood. In particular, the already low role of the Veche in the northeastern lands in this period fades away. Thus, the institution disappears, which to some extent limited the princely power. The Mongols brought with them more brutal methods of government and, according to many researchers, spread the traditions of Eastern despotism in Russia. At the same time, during the Tatar-Mongol yoke, the process of unification of the Russian lands began. The Moscow principality became the center of this association. Gradually, other northeastern Russian principalities were included in it. For some time, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was also dominated by the Eastern Slavs (the ancestors of modern Belarusians and Ukrainians), acted as an alternative to Moscow. But after the adoption of Catholicism by the Lithuanian princes, the principality began to converge with Poland, which culminated in a complete unification with it.

As the northeastern Russian lands were unified, their desire to free themselves from the Tatar-Mongol yoke grew. This finally happened in 1489, and since that time the Moscow state has become an independent and sovereign subject of international law. The Tatar yoke actually strengthened and strengthened the power of the Grand Duke of Moscow:

“If earlier the prince was in the squad“ the first among equals ”, just as the Western European kings of the early Middle Ages were the first among their knights, now the prince was isolated from his entourage by the will of the khan, his suzerain. The label received in the Horde changed the legal status of the prince, making him in fact the governor of the khan in a certain territory. By the time when the composition of noble families was determined in Moscow, from which the ruling elite, the privileged layer of the new state, was formed, the institution of princely power was already sufficiently developed and independent. Contenders for the title of aristocrats, on the contrary, turned out to be more dependent on the prince than could have been if the institutions of princely power and the aristocracy had developed simultaneously. "

Relations between the supreme power and those social strata that could lay claim to aristocratic status remained difficult at subsequent stages in the history of not only the Moscow principality and the Moscow kingdom, but also during the period of the Peter the Great Empire.

"Russkaya Pravda" is a legislative formulation of the political system of the Old Russian state, which combined the features of a new feudal formation in the form of autocracy of the Grand Duke and remnants of old tribal communal relations in the form of a national assembly, or a veche of all free urban residents. At the head of the state was the Grand Duke, who transferred power both by seniority, and by will, and by inheritance from father to son, and thanks to the calling of the prince by the inhabitants of the city - the center of the principality. This variety of forms of inheritance of power speaks of the transitional, unstable nature of ancient Russian society. The Kiev prince exercised full power in the state: he was a legislator, military leader, supreme judge and administrator on the territory of all Russian lands.

The princely squad occupied a special place in the political structure of Kievan Rus. She was not only a military force, but also took a direct part in governing the country. Some princely warriors performed the function of bailiffs ("swordsmen"), others acted as collectors of taxes and fines ("virniks"), and still others carried out assignments in the field of diplomatic relations with other countries. With the help of the squad, the princes strengthened their power, expanded the territory of the state.

The princely squad was divided into senior and junior. The eldest consisted of "men" and "boyars", rich and influential landowners who had their own households, servants, and their warriors. The most respected senior warriors made up a permanent council - the Duma. The prince consulted with them, or "thought", about any important matter. The guards were personally free, and connected with the prince only by the bonds of a personal contract, mutual trust and respect.

The younger squad was called "gridni" or "youths". They lived at the prince's court, served his house, yard, farm, acted in peacetime as stewards and servants, and in wartime as soldiers.

The prince's squad was the main core and core of the army, from which bodyguards, constant companions and advisers of the prince were formed, a kind of "headquarters" that gave commanders to the people's militia during the war. The people's militia was called to arms in the event of extensive hostilities. The prince could call the people to arms only with the consent of the veche. The armed people were organized according to the decimal system (tens, hundreds, thousands). At the head of the people's militia was "tysyatsky", appointed by the prince. Exactly civil uprising("Voi") decided the outcome of the battle.

As already mentioned, "Russkaya Pravda" is one of the main sources of our ideas about the socio-economic structure of Kievan Rus. Even her first article speaks of the presence of class stratification in ancient Russian society. The main criterion for class division was the attitude of the subjects to the prince. On this basis, the Old Russian state was divided into three estates: into princely men, people and slaves.

The highest privileged class in Russia was the "princes men", or "the elders of the city." All of them personally served the prince, made up his squad. Their position was very high at the princely courts. The middle class was made up of "people", that is, free commoners who paid tribute to the prince, thereby forming a taxable estate. Serfs, or "servants", were a serf class, they served not the Grand Duke, but private individuals. "Chelyad" mainly served the princely and boyar courts.

At the beginning of the 12th century, along with the political division of Russian society, an economic gradation associated with property status was also revealed. According to Russkaya Pravda, a privileged stratum of landowners appears among the "princely men", who have come to be called boyars. The boyars consisted of two elements: firstly, the zemstvo boyars, the descendants of the elders of the clans and the military-trade aristocracy, and secondly, the serving princely boyars, the upper layer of princely squads. The Zemsky boyars and the prince's boyars were originally two different feudal groups, which often had completely opposite political and economic interests. With the passage of time, the process of merging the zemstvo and princely boyars took place, as a result of which the entire boyars turned into a single class of large landowners.

The bulk of the rural population of Kievan Rus was made up of smerds. In the historical literature, there are many versions about the social status of smerds, but most researchers agree that the smerds were personally free, led an independent economy, owned property, land and were legally capable people. Smerds paid monetary and in-kind taxes and were sometimes called up for military service.

Gradually, a layer of feudal-dependent population appears in rural areas. The ruined smerd entered into an agreement ("row") with the feudal lord on certain conditions and became a "Ryadovich", or took a loan from the owner ("kupu") and turned into a "purchase". Neither one nor the other could leave the master before fulfilling the terms of the contract.

Despite the fact that the basis of production was the labor of the free peasantry, in the period under review, serfs played an essential role in feudal farms. The sources of servitude were various circumstances: birth from slaves, and sale into slavery, and some crimes, and debt insolvency, and marriage to a slave, and entering the household service without a contract. The right of the master to dispose of the work and personality of the slave was almost unlimited, up to and including murder with impunity.

To a certain extent, the church strove to mitigate the lack of rights of slaves. Along with the secular society in Kievan Rus, there was a large society of "church people": monasticism, "white" clergy, clergy, homeless people, taken care of by the church, etc. All of them were under the subordination, administration and jurisdiction of the church authorities.

With the development of feudal relations, the forms of exploitation of direct producers also changed. To replace the tribute - primary form feudal exploitation - in the XI century came primitive labor rent and rent in products, that is, natural quitrent. The monetary system of tax collection was gradually developed and improved. The process of establishing and spreading feudal relations was accompanied by the formation of patrimonial land tenure and the growing role of the local boyars. This strengthened the power of the feudal lords over the dependent population and, at the same time, weakened the internal unity of the Old Russian state. The separatism of the feudal lords was also supported by the cities that had become stronger by that time. The first signs of the disintegration of Kievan Rus appeared. The boyars, which grew up in the localities, sought to secede from Kiev and create independent principalities.

After the death of Yaroslav the Wise in 1054, the preconditions for feudal fragmentation took shape. For several years, his sons Izyaslav, Svyatoslav and Vsevolod ruled together. But soon their union disintegrated, new feudal strife began, which lasted several decades. In the turbulent events of the late 11th - early 12th centuries, Prince Vladimir Monomakh (1113-1125), who ruled the Pereyaslavl principality located on the border with the Polovtsy, came to the fore. During his reign, several successful campaigns were undertaken in the "Polovtsian Field". Russian squads reached the lower reaches of the Don and the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov, crushing the Polovtsian hordes. Vladimir Monomakh managed to significantly weaken the pressure of the Polovtsy on Russia.

The successful campaigns of Vladimir Monomakh against the Polovtsy brought glory to the Pereyaslavl prince as a wonderful commander, patriot and wise statesman. It is no coincidence that when a popular uprising broke out in Kiev in 1113, local boyars and merchants decided to invite the sixty-year-old prince Vladimir Monomakh from Pereyaslavl to the throne. The grandson of Yaroslav the Wise and the Byzantine emperor Constantine Monomakh, the son of Vsevolod Yaroslavich, Vladimir Monomakh enjoyed great prestige among the people. He was known in Russia as an intelligent, energetic and courageous person. Having become the Grand Duke, Vladimir Monomakh could not but reckon with the just demands of the insurgent inhabitants of Kiev. In 1113, he published an addendum to Russkaya Pravda - the Charter of Vladimir Vsevolodich, which regulated the position of social groups in society. Thus, the process of creating a code of laws "Russian Truth" was completed, which testified to the victory of feudalism in the Russian state. This law eased the position of the urban lower classes, smerds, purchases, rank-and-file servants. Vladimir Monomakh forbade charging too high interest rates on debtors, and forced merchants to reduce food prices. All this for some time eased social tension in society.

For 12 years of his reign, Vladimir Monomakh proved himself to be a strong and strong-willed ruler. He subjugated all the princes to his power, stopped the princely strife, and managed to temporarily suspend the natural process of the disintegration of the Russian state into separate lands.

Vladimir Monomakh is known not only as a prominent commander and a far-sighted politician, but also as a zealous owner and gifted writer. In his declining years, he wrote a very interesting autobiographical "Instructions for Children", in which he shared his reflections on the meaning of life, on relationships between people, gave practical advice about how to run a patrimonial economy. The chronicler wrote about the success of his foreign policy activities: “In the name of Vladimir, the Polovtsians frightened their children in the cradle. Lithuania did not appear from its swamps. The Hungarians built stone cities with iron gates to Great Vladimir they were not defeated. And the Germans were glad that they were far away ... ".

During the reign of Vladimir Vsevolodovich, the economy of the Old Russian state reached a high level. Agriculture developed, new lands were mastered. More than 40 types of crafts were known in the cities. Russian artisans made fine weapons, elaborate locks and other household utensils. The ancient Russian jewelers achieved especially great success. They created true masterpieces using the technique of grain, filigree, cloisonné enamel. Items made of silver and gold gained fame far beyond the borders of the ancient Russian state. Construction and architecture developed. Cathedrals, fortresses, princely and boyar chambers were built. Foreign trade has been successfully developed. Traditional Russian goods in foreign markets were honey, wax, flax, linen fabrics, and various handicrafts. Rus imported silk fabrics, brocade, velvet, precious metals and stones, spices. The imported goods were used to meet the needs of the ruling class of feudal lords and the top of the urban population.

Vladimir Monomakh died in 1125. After him, the unity of Kievan Rus existed while the eldest son of Monomakh, the great Kiev prince Mstislav Vladimirovich, was on the throne. But soon after his death in 1132, in the words of the chronicler, “the whole Russian land was torn apart” into several independent principalities. A period of feudal fragmentation began.

This famous fragment served as the starting point for the creation of the so-called theory of "family life", which prevailed in Russian historical thought throughout the nineteenth century. This theory can be called the leading generalization or the most popular "working hypothesis" of this stage of Russian historiography, aimed at revealing the origins of the social order in the early stages of Russian history.

Its creator was D.P.G. Evers, an outstanding researcher of the Russian history of law, was German by birth, and S.M. Soloviev made it the cornerstone of his largest work, The History of Russia from Ancient Times. Lawyer K.D. Kavelin further developed this concept. According to Evers, Russian society passed from the generic stage to the state state with almost no transitional period. The early Kievan state was just a combination of clans. According to Solovyov, the very fact that the princely family of Rurikovich enjoyed exclusive power over the state machine in the Kiev period is a decisive argument in favor of Evers' theory.

This theory met with strong opposition from the very beginning on the part of the Slavophil historian K. Aksakov. From his point of view, not the clan, but the community, the world were the foundation of the ancient Russian social and political order. Aksakov's opinion was not accepted at that time as a whole, but mainly because of a certain vagueness in his definition of the community.

For further discussion of the problem, a comparative study of the social organization of various branches of the Slavs, as well as other peoples, is of great value. A brilliant researcher in comparative jurisprudence and economic history, M.M. Kovalevsky collected important materials related to the organization of the Ossetians and other Caucasian tribes; he also analyzed the problem as a whole in the light of comparative ethnology. At the same time, F.I. Leontovich studied the social institutions of the Slavic peoples, emphasizing some parallel directions in the history of the Russian and South Slavs, introducing the term zadruga into Russian historiography. Among the names of the younger generation of Russian historians who paid great attention to the problem, A.E. Presnyakov. Recently, some Soviet historians, in particular B. D. Grekov, have considered the problem as a whole, using the works of Friedrich Engels as a theoretical basis - as one might expect.

What is the current state of the problem? There seems to be a consensus in the opinion of scholars that the Russians, like most other peoples, had to go through the stage of patriarchal-clan organization, but in the Kiev period this stage was overcome long ago. There is no direct historical connection between the gens and the state. The unification of clans led to the formation of tribes, but the tribal organization was never strong on Russian soil; moreover, during the period of resettlement, not only the tribes, but also the clans themselves were subjected to breaking. In any case, the constituent parts of Kievan Rus - city-states and specific estates - only partially coincided with the previous tribal division, and in some cases did not coincide at all. So, the ancient Russian state did not grow directly out of the Russian tribes, which were simply an intermediate type of social and political organization. In most cases, the tribe was politically a dead-end entity.

But if the clan cannot be regarded as the basic social link of Ancient Russia, what was it? Of course, not a family in the modern sense of the word. It was too small and weak a group to cope with the difficulties of the primitive economy, especially during the period of migration. And so we come to the problem zadrugi, that is, a "large family" community - a more or less mediating social link between the clan and the family, based on the cooperation of three or more generations. The term is taken from the Serbian language and means "friendship", "agreement", "harmony". In Yugoslavia, the zadruga community is still an existing institution or was so until the last war. According to the Code of Laws of the Principality of Serbia (1844), zadruga "Is a community for living together and owning property, which appeared and established itself in the process of blood relations and natural reproduction" The average Yugoslavian community has between twenty and sixty members (including children). Sometimes the number of members can reach eighty or even one hundred.

Among the Russian peasants, the smaller link of this type, known simply as the "family", survived almost until the 1917 revolution. “The peasant family in our settlement consists of numerous relatives, their wives and children, a total of fifteen to twenty people living in the same house. The elder has great power over the family. He maintains the family in peace and harmony; all members are subordinate to him. distributes the work to be done for each family member, manages the household and pays taxes.After his death, power passes to his eldest son, and if none of his sons is an adult, then to one of his brothers. , the eldest widow accepts his powers.When several brothers live in this way in the same house, keeping the family in unity and harmony, they consider everything that they have as the common property of the family, with the exception of women's clothing, linen and canvas. does not belong to the community.a man in the family or any other member of the family elected by the agreement of all others. The elder's wife oversees the women at work; however, if she is not suitable for the role, a younger woman may be selected. All work is distributed between men and women according to the strength and health of each. " .

In "Russkaya Pravda" there is no mention of zadruga. Instead, the term is used to define a local settlement rope. This same word also means "rope", "cord". It was suggested that the rope in the sense of the community was supposed to emphasize blood relations, or rather the line of generations. In this regard, another concept can be mentioned: snake, The "cord" with which it is connected snake"Relative", "member of the family community." Even admitting that the word rope could originally mean a large family community of the zadruga type, we can emphasize that in the eleventh and twelfth centuries the concept has already changed its original semantic content. It is obvious from Russkaya Pravda that the rope at this time was similar to the Anglo-Saxon guild. It was a neighboring community, bound by the responsibility of its members to pay a fine for a murder committed within the community if the killer could not be found. Membership in the community was free. People could join a guild or refrain from doing so. In a later period of Russian history, the guild changed rural community, also called peace. In "Russian Pravda" the concept peace used to refer to a wider community - a city with a rural area around it. A specific form of the Russian land system was the joint ownership of land by several co-owners (syabry). Like the Vervi, the Syabra Association had to develop from the family community. Syabr or seber - an archaic word whose original meaning seems to be "a family member working with other relatives on family land." In Sanskrit, there are parallel terms: sabha, "relatives", "village community"; and sabhyas, "a member of the village community." Consider also the Gothic sibja and the German sippe, "relatives" (collectively). By its structure, the word seber(note the final "p") is similar to basic kinship terms in Indo-European languages, like pater and mater in Latin; brother and sister in English; brother and sister in Slavic. The more specific word "seber" should be associated with the reflexive pronoun "me". By the way, according to some modern philologists, the Slavic word "freedom" comes from the same root.

Other types of social associations appeared in Old Russian to support trade and industry. There were cooperative associations of artisans and workers, similar to those that later became known as artel(Old Russian term squad derived from friend). The merchants, as we have seen, formed various independent companies or guilds.

A society composed only of family communities can be thought of as essentially homogeneous. All members of the family have an equal share both in the total work and in the production product. This is a miniature "classless" society.

With the breakdown of the back and the emancipation of the family from the clan, with a similar isolation of the individual from society and the formation of territorial communities of a new type, the entire social structure of the nation becomes more complex. Various social classes are gradually taking shape.

The process of social stratification began among the Eastern Slavs long before the formation of the Kiev state. We know that the Sklavens and Antes in the sixth century turned prisoners of war - even of the same race - into slaves. We also know that there was an aristocratic group among the Antes and that some of the military leaders held great wealth. So, we have, among the Eastern Slavs, elements of at least three existing social groups already in the sixth century: aristocracy, common people and slaves. The subordination of some of the East Slavic tribes to foreign conquerors could also be realized in the political and social differentiation of various tribes. We know that the Eastern Slavs paid tribute in grain and other agricultural products to the Alans, Goths and Magyars, as each of these peoples took turns establishing control over part of the East Slavic tribes. While some of the Slavic groups eventually asserted their independence or autonomy, others remained under foreign control for a longer period. Peasant communities, initially dependent on foreign masters, later recognized the power of the local Slavic princes, but their status did not change, and they continued to pay the old duties. So, a difference was established in the position of different Slavic groups. Some of them were self-governing, others were dependent on the princes.

Given this extraordinary social and historical background, we must approach the study of Russian society in the Kiev period. It can be assumed that society was quite complex, although in Kievan Rus there were no such high barriers between individual social groups and classes that existed in feudal Europe the same period. In general, it should be said that the Russian society of the Kiev period consisted of two large groups: free and slaves. Such a judgment, however, although correct, is too broad to adequately characterize the organization of Kiev society.

It should be noted that among the free themselves there were various groups: while some were full citizens, the legal status of others was limited. In fact, the position of some of the free classes was so precarious, due to legal or economic constraints, that some of them voluntarily preferred to go into slavery. So, you can find an intermediate group between free and slaves, which can be called semi-free. Moreover, some groups of the free people were in a better economic position and better protected by the law than others. Accordingly, we can talk about the existence of a high-ranking class and a free middle class in Kiev society.

Our main legal source for this period is Russkaya Pravda, and we must refer to this code to obtain legal terminology that characterizes social classes. In the eleventh century version of Pravda - the so-called Short Variant - we find the following fundamental concepts: husbands- for the upper layer of free, people- for the middle class, smerds - for those with limited availability, servants - for slaves.

In the eyes of the legislator, a person possessed different values, depending on his class affiliation. Old Russian criminal law did not know the death penalty. Instead, there was a cash payment system imposed on the murderer. The latter had to pay compensation to the relatives of the murdered man (known as bot in the Anglo-Saxon version) and a fine to the prince ("bloodwite"). This system was common among the Slavs, Germans and Anglo-Saxons in the early Middle Ages.

In the earliest version of Pravda, the wergeld, or payment for the life of a free person, reached 40 hryvnias. In "Pravda" of the sons of Yaroslav, the princely people ( husbands) were protected by a double fine of 80 hryvnia, while the fine for lyudin(plural - people) remained at the initial level of 40 hryvnia. The penalty to be paid to the prince for the murder smerda set at 5 hryvnia - one eighth of the normal wergeld. Slaves who were not free did not have a wergeld.

From a philological point of view, it is interesting that all of the above terms belong to the ancient Indo-European basis. Slavic husband (can) associated with Sanskrit manuh, manusah; gothic manna; German mann and mench. In Old Russian "husband" means "a man of noble birth", "knight" and also means "husband" in the family plan. People means a community of human beings, which can be compared to the German leute. It turns out that the root of the word is the same as in the Greek adjective eleutheros ("free"). Smerd can be seen in relation to the Persian mard, "man"; mard also sounds in Armenian. The disappearance of the original "s" in the combination "sm" is not uncommon in Indo-European languages. According to Meillet, mard emphasizes the mortality of man (in contrast to the "immortals", that is, the gods). From this point of view, it is interesting to compare the Persian mard and the Slavic death(both words mean "demise").

In the social development of Russia, each of the above terms has its own history. The term "stink" has acquired a derogatory meaning in connection with the verb "stink", "stink." The term "husband" in the sense of a specific social category gradually disappeared, and the boyar class eventually developed from husbands. In its diminutive form, the term man("Little man") was applied to peasants subordinate to the boyar regime. Hence - man,"peasant". Term lyudin(singular) also disappeared, except for the combination commoner.

Plural form people still in use; it corresponds in modern Russian to the word Human, used only in the singular. The first part of this word (chel-) represents the same root that is present in the Old Russian word servants("House slaves"). The original meaning of the root is "genus": let us compare the Gali clann and the Lithuanian keltis.

The upper classes of Kiev society had a heterogeneous source. Their backbone consisted of prominent people (husbands) of the main Slavic clans and tribes. As we know, even in the period of the Antes, there was a tribal aristocracy - “elders of the Antes” (???????? "?????). Some of these elders must have been of Alanian origin. With the rise of princely power in Kiev, the entourage of the prince (squad) became the main catalyst for the formation of a new aristocracy - the boyars.Druzhina in the Kiev period was itself a melting pot. Under the first Kiev princes, its core consisted of the Swedes of the Rus tribe. The Scandinavian element grew when the princes hired new Varangian detachments from However, the princely entourage also absorbed Slavic husbands, as well as heterogeneous adventurers of foreign origin. Ossetians, Kosogi, Magyars, Turks and others are mentioned in various situations as members of the squad. By the eleventh century it had already become Slavic.

Socially, it consisted of various elements. Some of its members held high positions even before joining it; others were below by birth, and some were even the prince's slaves. For these, service in the squad not only opened the way to a profitable place, but also made it possible to climb to the very top of the social ladder.

The retinue consisted of two groups, which can be called senior and junior squads, respectively. Among the highest confidants in the eleventh century, a bailiff is mentioned (fireman), stables (horseman), Butler (tiun) and adjutant (driveway) All of them were originally simply servants of the prince in the management of the court and estates, but later they were also used in the state administration. Term fireman derived from fire, hearth. So, the fireman is a member of the princely "hearth", that is, the economy. Term tiun- of Scandinavian origin; in Old Swedish tiun means servant. In Russia, it meant at first a butler, but later began to be mainly used in the sense of "judge". By the way, it should be mentioned that a similar process of transformation of the prince's servants into government officials took place in England, France and Germany in the early Middle Ages.

Lesser vassals were collectively designated as grid, a term of Scandinavian origin, the original meaning of which was "dwelling", "house". Hence the old Russian word gridnitsa, "house" or"Large room". At first, they were the pages of the prince and the younger servants in the house, as well as servants of the retinue officers. The greedy member is sometimes referred to in sources adolescent, child or stepson, which apparently indicates that they were perceived as members of the princely family, as it actually was. In Suzdal at the end of the twelfth century, a new term appeared for the younger vassals - nobleman, literally "court", from "court" in the sense of princely (and also simply "court"). In imperial Russia of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the term nobleman acquired the meaning of "a man of noble birth."

Since 1072, senior members of the prince's squad were protected by a double fine.

For insulting the dignity of the senior vassal, the offender had to pay the prince a fine four times greater than for wounding a smerd. A qualified defense for insulting the vassals of a prince also existed in German law of this period.

Not all of the Russian upper class served in the squad. In Novgorod, where the prince's power and the duration of his tenure in this post were limited by the terms of the contract, his vassals were openly obstructed to permanent settlement on Novgorod land. So, in addition to the service aristocracy in Kievan Rus, there was an aristocracy by right. Its members are named differently in early sources; for example, "outstanding people" ( men are deliberate)or the best people, also in many cases"City elders" ( city ​​elders Some of them were descendants of the tribal aristocracy, others, especially in Novgorod, became outstanding due to their wealth, in most cases obtained from foreign trade.

Eventually the princely and local aristocracy became known as the boyars. Although some of the local boyars were supposed to be descendants of merchants, and the princely boyars originally created their wealth from the content and awards received from the prince, and from their share in the spoils of war, over time all the boyars became landowners, and the strength and social prestige of the boyars as class relied on extensive land holdings.

It can be added that by the beginning of the thirteenth century, due to the expansion of the house of Rurik, the number of princes increased, and the possessions of each prince - with the exception of those who ruled in big cities- decreased to such a size that the lesser princes of this period no longer differed socially from the boyars. So, the princes by this time can be considered socially and economically only as the upper layer of the boyar class.

In fact, some of the large boyars enjoyed greater wealth and prestige to a greater extent than the lesser princes, and this fact is especially obvious if we see that each of the richest boyars had their own retinue and some tried to imitate the princes by setting up their own courts. Already in the tenth century, the commander Igor Sveneld had his own vassals ( youths), and boyar vassals are mentioned many times in the sources of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The life of a boyar tiun (butler or judge) was protected by law along with the princely tiun.

For all the outstanding political and social position of the boyars, they did not represent any special layer in the Kiev period from a legal point of view. First of all, this was not an exclusive group, since a commoner could enter it through the service channel in the prince's retinue. Second, it did not have any legal privilege as a class. Thirdly, while the boyars, together with the princes, were the owners of large land plots due to their exclusivity, they were not the only landowners during this period in Russia, since land could be sold and bought without prohibitions, and a person of any social group could acquire it. ... Moreover, it was common for a boyar of this period not to sever ties with the city. Each of the large boyars of the princely retinue had his own court in the city, in which the prince ruled. All Novgorod boyars were not only residents of Novgorod, but also took part in the meetings of the city government.

The underdevelopment of the middle classes is usually regarded as one of the main features of Russian social history. It is true that in both the Moscow and the imperial periods up to the nineteenth century, the proportion of people involved in the production of goods and trade, and the inhabitants of cities as a whole, compared to the peasantry, was low. However, even in relation to these periods, any generalizing statement about the absence of middle classes in Russia requires reservations. In any case, such a generalization will not fit the Kiev period. As we have seen (Chapter V, Section 3), the proportion of the urban population to the total population should have been at least thirteen percent in Kievan Rus. In order to assess the significance of this figure, one should approach it not from the point of view of social stratification of the New Age, but in comparison with the modern conditions of that time in Central and Eastern Europe... Although there is no exact demographic data for Europe during this period, it is generally accepted that, at least until the fourteenth century, the proportion of urban residents in Europe in relation to the total population was very low.

The majority of the urban population of Russia undoubtedly belonged to the stratum that can be designated as the lower classes; there is no data that would enable us to establish with sufficient accuracy the relative proportion of the middle classes to the whole population. However, knowing about the spread of the merchant class of Kievan Rus, we can be sure that, at least in Novgorod and Smolensk, the merchant people as a social group were proportionally larger than in the cities of Western Europe at that time.

While in our thinking the term "middle classes" is usually associated with urban the bourgeoisie, you can also talk about the middle classes of rural society. Prosperous landlords with enough land to meet their needs can be characterized as constituting a rural middle class when compared with large estates on the one hand and landless and land-poor peasants on the other. Therefore, we are faced with the question of the existence of such a rural middle class in Russia at this time.

There is no reason to doubt its presence in the pre-Kiev and early Kiev periods. The people organized in the guild (rope) mentioned in Russkaya Pravda seem to constitute this kind of middle class. It is important that Lyudin's wergeld, like a man of the upper classes (a husband), was equal to forty hryvnias; if he belonged to the prince's retinue, the fine was doubled (eighty hryvnias).

Although the existence of people organized into classes is indisputable, in relation to the tenth and eleventh centuries, it is usually argued that during the twelfth century the old social regime of rural Russia was overturned by the rapid growth of large estates of princes and boyars, on the one hand, as well as by proletarianization and feudal subordination people - on the other. This statement is true only to a certain extent. It is true that the possessions of the princes and boyars expanded rapidly in the twelfth century, but this was also the result of the exploitation of land, until then unaffected by cultivation, and not only by the absorption of already existing farms.

It is equally true that the process of proletarianization of small landowners has been going on since the end of the eleventh century. In the course of it, previously formally independent and free people became contract workers. And again, however, the question arises: can this part of the reasoning be applied to our case without reservations? There is no source of evidence as to which original social group the contracted workers of the twelfth century came from. Some may have been former members of a group of people, but certainly not all. As for the peasants, more or less associated with large land estates, which were smerds and outcasts(see section 8 below), there seems to be very little, if any, connection between them and humans. Already in the twelfth century, smerds existed as a separate group, and probably even earlier. Most of the outcasts were freedmen.

So, there is no direct evidence of the supposed complete disappearance of humans during the twelfth century. Their number could decrease, especially in Southern Russia, by different reasons... A significant number of them, apparently, were devastated by the raids of the Polovtsy and the princely feuds, after which they no doubt had to either move to the cities, or become agricultural workers, either remaining personally free as hired workers, or accepting dependence by contract. In many cases, rural guilds also had to disintegrate. We know from the conditions of "Russkaya Pravda" that the lyudin was allowed to leave the guild under certain conditions. But even in the case of the dissolution of the guild, its former members could rightfully maintain their economy or create smaller associations like sabras.

On the whole, without a doubt, people suffered, they could lose their usual form of social organization, but, of course, a significant number of them continued to exist as an economic group of free landowners, especially in the north. Following the conquest of Novgorod by the Moscow Grand Dukes at the end of the fifteenth century, there followed an order for a census of the rural population in all types of lands. She revealed the existence of a large class of so-called their own land("Owners of land by right"). They had to be people from the class of people.

Turning back to cities, we find the same term people as originally applied to the majority of the urban population. Later, in Novgorod, two groups could be distinguished: live and people("Wealthy people") and young people("Younger people"), which are sometimes called in Novgorod sources black people. Living people made up a significant part of the Novgorod middle class. The scale of group differences in Novgorod society is most clearly visible in the list of penalties for contempt of court contained in one of the paragraphs of the city charter. According to this list, the boyar must pay 50 rubles, living - 25 rubles, the youngest - 10. This Novgorod charter was adopted in 1471, but the old rules and regulations were partially used for its list, and the relationship of the classes indicated in it supposedly represents an ancient tradition ... Merchants are mentioned in Novgorod sources as a group, different from living, but at the same social level. It turns out that the zhizni were not merchants. What was the source of their income? Some may have owned land outside the city. Others could be owners different types industrial enterprises like carpentry workshops, forges, etc.

The composition of the middle classes in other Russian cities was supposed to be similar to that of Novgorod.

As we just saw, the people of the lower classes in the Russian cities of the Kiev period were called "younger people" (young people). They were mainly workers and artisans of various kinds: carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, clothiers, tanners, potters, etc. People of the same profession usually lived in one part of the city that bore the corresponding name. So, in Novgorod, the Gorshechny region and the Plotnitsky region are mentioned; in Kiev - Kuznetsk Gate, etc.

For this period, there is no evidence of the existence of craft guilds as such, but each part of a large Russian city of this time constituted an independent guild (see Chapter VII, Section 6), and the “street guild” or “row guild” in the craft part should was to be not only a territorial community, but in a sense also a professional association.

Wage laborers or laborers also belonged to the lower classes of Kiev society. In the cities, artisans who did not have their own workshops and younger members of artisan families apparently offered their services to anyone who needed them. If many workers gathered together for large-scale work, as in the construction of a church or a large house, then in most cases they formed cooperative associations.

During this period, little is known about wage earners in rural areas. They are, however, mentioned in some modern sources; presumably the greatest need for their help was experienced during the harvest season.

We now come to the smerds who formed the backbone of the lower classes in rural areas. As I mentioned, the term smerd should be compared with Iranian mard ("person"). It is very likely that he appeared in the Sarmatian period of Russian history.

The Smerds were personally free, but their legal status was limited, since they were subject to the special jurisdiction of the prince. That they were free may be best apparent when comparing Article 45 A of the extended version of Russkaya Pravda with the subsequent Article 46. The first says that the smerds can be fined by the prince for the aggressive actions committed by them. In the latter, the slaves are not subject to these payments, "because they are not free."

The fact that the prince's power over the smerds was more specific than over the free is clear from Russkaya Pravda, as well as from the chronicles. In "Pravda" Yaroslavichy smerd is mentioned among people dependent on the prince to one degree or another. According to the extended version of Russkaya Pravda, the smerd could not be arrested or restricted in any way in his actions without the prince's sanction. After the death of the smerd, his property was inherited by his sons, but if there were no sons left, then the property passed to the prince, who, however, had to leave a share for the unmarried daughters, if any remained. This is similar to the “dead hand” right in Western Europe.

It seems important that in the city-states of Northern Russia - Novgorod and Pskov - the supreme power over the smerds belonged not to the prince, but to the city. So, for example, in 1136 the Novgorod prince Vsevolod was criticized by the veche for the oppression of the smerds. The Novgorod treaty with the King of Poland Casimir IV directly states that the smerds are under the jurisdiction of the city, and not the prince. This treaty is a document of a later period (signed around 1470), but its terms were based on an ancient tradition.

Taking into account the status of the smerds in Novgorod, we can assume that in the south, where they were subordinate to the prince, the latter rather exercised his power as head of state than as a landowner. In this case, the smerds can be called state peasants, taking due reservations. Bearing in mind that the term smerd, most likely, appeared in the Sarmatian period, we can attribute the appearance of smerds as a social group to this period. Presumably the first smerds were Slavic "people" (mardan) who paid tribute to the Alans. Later, with the emancipation of the Ants from the Iranian guardianship, power over them could pass to the Ants leaders. In the eighth century, the smerds had to submit to the authority of the Khazar and Magyar governors; with the emigration of the Magyars and the defeat of the Khazars by Oleg and his heirs, the Russian princes eventually established control over them. This sketch of the history of smerds is, of course, hypothetical, but, in my opinion, it agrees with the facts; in any case, it does not contradict any known data.

Whether the land they cultivated belonged to themselves or to the state is a controversial issue. It turns out that in Novgorod, at least, smerds occupied state lands. In the south, there must have been something like the co-ownership of a prince and a stinker in the land of the latter. At a meeting in 1103, Vladimir Monomakh mentions the "smerd farm" (his village). As we have already seen, the son of the smerd inherited his property, that is, his household. However, taking into account that the smerd owned the land he cultivated, it should be noted that this was not a complete possession, since he was not free to bequeath the land even to his daughters; when after his death there were no sons left, as we have seen, the land passed to the prince. Since the smerd could not bequeath his land, he probably also could not sell it.

The land was in his permanent use, and the same right extended to his male descendants, but this was not his property.

Smerda had to pay state taxes, especially the so-called "tribute". In Novgorod, each of their groups was registered at the nearest churchyard(tax collection center); apparently they were organized into communities in order to facilitate the collection of taxes. Another duty of the smerds was the supply of horses for the city militia in the event of a major war.

At the princely meeting in 1103, mentioned above, the campaign against the Polovtsy was discussed, and the vassals of Prince Svyatopolk II noted that it was not worth starting military operations in the spring, since taking their horses, they would ravage the smerds and their fields, to which Vladimir Monomakh replied: “I I'm surprised, friends, that you are concerned about the horses on which the stink is plowing. Why don't you think that as soon as the stink starts to plow, the Polovtsian will come, kill him with his arrow, take his horse, come to his village and take away his wife, his children and his property? Are you worried about the stinker's horse or about himself? " .

The low level of the smerd's social status best demonstrates the following fact: in the event of his murder, only five hryvnias - that is, one-eighth of the fine - should have been paid to the prince by the murderer. The prince was to receive the same amount (five hryvnia) in the event of the murder of a slave. However, in the latter case, the fee was not a fine, but compensation to the prince as owner. In the case of the smerd, compensation to his family should have been paid by the killer in addition to the fine, but its level is not stipulated in Russkaya Pravda.

Over time, the term smerd, as I mentioned, has acquired the derogatory meaning of being of the lower class. As such, it was used by high aristocrats to refer to commoners in general. So, when Prince Oleg of Chernigov was invited by Svyatopolk II and Vladimir Monomakh to attend the meeting, where representatives of the clergy, boyars and citizens of Kiev were supposed to be, he arrogantly replied that "It is not for him to obey the decisions of a bishop, abbot or smerd"(1096)

In the early thirteenth century, the term smerd was in use to refer to the rural population as a whole. Describing one of the battles in Galicia in 1221, the chronicler notes: "A boyar should take a boyar as a prisoner, a smerd - a smerd, a city dweller - a city dweller" .

Serfdom as a legal institution did not exist in Kievan Rus. In the technical sense of the word, serfdom is a product of feudal law.

The subjugation of the serf was not the result of the free play of economic forces, but rather the result of non-economic pressure. Feudalism can be defined as the fusion of public and private law, and the nature of the lord's power was dual. The lord was both a landowner and a ruler. As the owner of the manor, he wielded dual power over both the serfs and tenants on his estate.

Potentially, the prince of Kievan Rus had the same type of power over the population of his dominions. However, the socio-political regime in the country at that time did not contribute to the development of feudal institutions, and the process of consolidating the manorial power of the princes, not to mention the boyars, never went as far as in Western Europe of the same period. Despite all the encroachments on the part of the princes, the smerds, as we see, remained free.

In addition, there was also a social group of those who could be called semi-free. They were not serfs in the technical sense either, since there was no element of “noneconomic pressure” in the process of their loss of freedom. The relationship between them and their masters was purely economic, since it was a relationship between a creditor and a debtor. As soon as the debt was paid off with interest, the debtor became completely free again.

The peculiarity of the relationship consisted in the fact that the debt of this type had to be paid not in money, but in work, although there was no objection to its payment in money if the debtor unexpectedly acquired a sufficient amount for this.

The commitment could have been taken in different ways and for different reasons. The debtor could be a peasant (an impoverished ludin), a merchant or an artisan who, having taken money to improve his business, was not able to pay with money, and thus had no choice but to pay with his own labor. But he could also be an employee and, in need of money, ask and receive his seasonal or annual pay in advance; the transaction was formalized then as a loan covered by work with interest. Such a debtor (purchase) was actually a contract worker, and such a worker could be hired by the creditor for any job, but most of them seem to become agricultural workers (role purchase). The group itself had to be large enough, since its members were seen as responsible - at least in part - for the failed social revolution of 1113, after which special laws were introduced at the initiative of Vladimir Monomakh in order to improve their situation. Some of these laws applied to loans in general, and some specifically contained a reference to procurement and were included in the extended version of Russkaya Pravda.

The conditions of “Russkaya Pravda” regarding the purchase were aimed at establishing an appropriate balance between the rights and obligations of the employee bound by the contract, on the one hand, and the duty and rights of the creditor - “master” - on the other. So, if Zaku tried to escape from his master, he became a slave to the latter; but if the master treacherously sold him into slavery, then not only the freedom to purchase was automatically restored, but also his obligations to the master came to an end. The contract worker was supposed to sue the master for any unprovoked offense; the master, however, could punish the purchase even by beatings, if “for this there were good reasons", That is, the purchase was careless about the work.

According to the new clauses of Russkaya Pravda, the master could not compel the employee by agreement to perform any work; only work in the relevant specialty could be done by him. So, if the purchase caused damage to the master's horse used in the war, he was not responsible for obvious reasons: caring for the horse of a prince or a boyar used in wartime - often it was a wonderful horse - required the services of a specially trained person. Moreover, the groom of a noble man was usually chosen from among his slaves, and a free man - even a semi-free man - might object to such work. If, however, the damage was caused by the purchase of a working horse - "who worked with a plow and a harrow," as explained in Russkaya Pravda - the purchase had to pay for it. That is, the end of his work obligations was extended depending on the damage caused.

In addition to hired workers, there was another social group, which can also be considered as consisting of semi-free, although not in a strictly legal sense. These were the so-called good luck, men or women who "surrendered" (the Slavic word for this - date) for temporary service to the lord. This was done mainly in times of despair - during a famine or after a devastating war. In this case, the deal was done in terms of charity rather than legal obligation. People in a state of despair received "grace" from the master; money or grain received from him was not considered as a loan, but as a "gift". However, they had to work for this at least a year. Institute summer cottages was also famous among the Baltic Slavs; there, especially in the thirteenth century, he took on a completely different character, approaching slavery.

In concluding this part, we should mention one more category of semi-free people - “freed people” (outcasts). Their position was closest to that of a serf among the social groups of this period. Since they were under the protection of the church, their position will be considered in relation to the “church people” (section 8 below).

The oldest Russian concept for a slave, as we have seen, is servants in plural - servants. The term is found in Old Church Slavonic texts and is also used in Russian-Byzantine treaties of the tenth century.

Another ancient term is rob(otherwise - slave; feminine - robe, later - slave) associated with the verb robotics. In this sense, a slave is a "worker" and vice versa,

In the middle of the eleventh century, a new term appears - slave, which can be compared with Polish clap(in the Polish spelling chlop), "peasant", "serf". The proto-Slavic form was holp; in the transcription used by most Slavic philologists - cholpa.In Russian term slave denoted a male slave. The slave was constantly called slave.

Slavery in Kievan Rus was of two types: temporary and permanent. The latter was known as "complete slavery" (servility is all right). The main source of temporary slavery was captivity in war. Initially, not only the soldiers of the enemy army, but even the civilians captured during the hostilities, were turned into slavery. Over time, more mercy began to be shown to civilians and, finally, by the time of the conclusion of the treaty between Russia and Poland, signed in 1229, the need was recognized not to affect the civilian population.

By the end of the war, the captives were released for a ransom, if any. In the Russian-Byzantine treaties, a ransom ceiling was established in order to exclude abuse. If it was not possible to collect the ransom, the captive remained at the disposal of the person who captured him. According to the "Law of the Judgment by the People", in such cases the work of the captive was considered as the payment of a ransom, and after covering it in full, the captive had to be released.

The rule had to be properly observed in relation to citizens of states with which the Russians entered into special treaties, such as, for example, with Byzantium. In other cases, it could be ignored. In any case, it is important that Russkaya Pravda does not mention captivity in war as a source of complete slavery.

According to paragraph 110 of the expanded version, "there are three kinds of total slavery." A person becomes a slave: 1) if he is sold into slavery of his own free will; 2) if he marries a woman without having previously concluded a special agreement with her owner; 3) if he is hired to serve as a landlord in the position of a butler or housekeeper without a special agreement that he must remain free. With regard to self-sale into slavery, two conditions had to be met in order for the transaction to become legal: 1) the minimum price (not less than half of the hryvnia) and 2) the payment to the city secretary (one nogata). These formalities were prescribed by law in order to prevent the enslavement of a person against his will. This part of Russkaya Pravda does not say anything about female slaves, but it can be assumed that a woman can sell herself into slavery, like a man. On the other hand, the woman was not endowed with the privilege of preserving her freedom by agreement with the master if she married a male slave. Although not mentioned in Russian Pravda, from later legislation, as well as from various other sources, we know that such a marriage automatically made a woman a slave. This must have been an ancient custom, and therefore was not considered worthy of mention in Russkaya Pravda.

In addition to the main sources of the slave population mentioned, the sales agreement can be described as a derivative source. Obviously, the same formalities as in the case of self-sale had to be observed in the case of the sale of a slave. Thus, the minimum price for full slaves was set. There was no minimum price for prisoners of war. After the victory of the Novgorodians over the Suzdal people in 1169, the captured Suzdal people were sold for two legs for each. In "The Lay of Igor's Regiment" it is said that if the Grand Duke Vsevolod took part in the campaign against the Polovtsians, the latter would be defeated and then the female captives would be sold one leg at a time, and the men one by one.

There was no price cap for slaves, but public opinion - at least among the clergy - was against speculation in the slave trade. It was considered sinful to buy a slave for one price and then sell for a large one; it was called "outcast".

The slave had no civil rights. If he was killed, then compensation was to be paid by the killer to his master, and not to the slave's relatives. In the laws of this period, there is no regulation regarding the killing of a slave by his owner. Obviously, the master was responsible if he killed the temporary slave.

If the slave is "complete", then the owner was subjected to church repentance, but this was obviously the only sanction in such a situation. The slave could not bring charges in court and was not accepted as a full-fledged witness in litigation. According to the law, he was not supposed to own any property, with the exception of his clothes and other personal belongings, known as peculium in Roman law (the Old Russian version is an old woman); a slave could not accept any obligations or sign any contract. In fact, many slaves of Kievan Rus had property and assumed obligations, but in each case this was done on behalf of their owner. If, in such a case, the slave did not fulfill the obligation, his owner would pay the loss, unless the person with whom the slave was dealing was not aware that the opposite party was a slave. If he knew of the fact, then he acted at his own risk.

Slaves were used by their owners as domestic servants of various types and as field workers. It happened that they were men and women, skilled in the craft, or even teachers. They were assessed according to their ability and the services provided. So, according to Russkaya Pravda, the amount of compensation to the prince for the murder of his slaves varied from five to twelve hryvnias, depending on what kind of slave the victim was.

As for the end of the slave state, leaving aside the death of the slave, temporary slavery could end after the completion of a sufficient amount of work. The end of complete slavery could come in two ways: either the slave redeemed himself (which, of course, few could afford), or the master could release his slave or slaves by a volitional decision. To this he was constantly urged by the Church, and many rich people followed this advice, freeing slaves posthumously in a special section of the will.

There was also, of course, an illegal way of self-liberation of the slave - flight. Many slaves, it turns out, used this path to freedom, since there are several paragraphs in Russkaya Pravda talking about fugitive slaves. Any person who gave shelter to such a slave or helped him in any way was to be fined.

In Ancient Russia, not only the clergy and members of their families fell under church jurisdiction, but also certain categories of people who either served the Church in one way or another, or needed her support. They were all known as "church people."

The Russian clergy can be divided into two groups: "black clergy" (ie, monks) and "white clergy" (priests and deacons). On the basis of the Byzantine model, it is an established custom in the Russian Church that monks are ordained bishops and, in contrast to the practice of the Roman Church, priests are chosen from among married men.

During the Kiev period, the Metropolitan See in Kiev dealt with the Greeks with two exceptions (Hilarion and Clement). About half of the bishops were, however, of Russian origin. Bishops stood far above the ordinary clergy in power, prestige, and wealth. In later periods it became common to speak of them as "princes of the Church."

Let us now look at the situation of other "church people." The first category among them covers those who in any way participate in church services, but do not belong to the clergy: such are the church singers, the person responsible for putting out candles after the service ( candle gas), as well as a woman baking cereals ( mallet or malt, from the word prosvira On occasion, we may recall that the poet A.S. Pushkin advised those who wanted to get acquainted with the originally Russian language to learn from the Moscow grill(plural of broth).

The second category of church people consists of those associated with charitable institutions supported by the Church, like a doctor ( healer) and other personnel of hospitals, nursing homes, pilgrim hotels, etc., as well as people served by these institutions.

The third category is the so-called outcasts The characteristics of this group, as well as the source and meaning of the term, have been the subject of lengthy debate among scholars. The main difficulty is that this term is used in one sense in the sources of the twelfth century and obviously in a completely different sense in the "Pravda Yaroslav" of the eleventh century. From my point of view, the only way to untie this Gordian knot is formulated in the proverb: we must cut it, that is, admit that the Pravda of the eleventh century and the sources of the twelfth century, using the same words, speak of two completely different social groups. This is not the only known case of such a distinction between Pravda and later sources. For example, the term fireman in Pravda it refers to the prince's bailiff, but in Novgorod sources it is applied to a special group of Novgorod citizens who have no ties with the prince's court.

Rogue We will consider “Russkaya Pravda” in another section (II, below); here we will study only the position of "church people" who are named in this way. The classic definition of this social group is found in the Code of Church Courts (1125-1136) of Prince Vsevolod: “There are three types of outcasts: the son of a priest who remained uneducated; the slave who redeemed himself from slavery; bankrupt merchant. " This is followed by a late copyist's note: "And you can add a fourth type of outcast - an orphaned prince." .

A common characteristic of all these people was that each of them lost his former status and needed to adapt to new circumstances, for which the Church offered him her protection. The term itself outcast can be explained in this sense if we agree to deduce it from the Old Church Slavonic verb goi-ti, which means "to live", and also "to allow to live", "to give a livelihood", "to take care of". From this point of view, an outcast is a person deprived of care, and therefore “in need of care”. In this regard, we must remember that the term outcast or idiosyncrasy (selfishness) also has the meaning of the undeserved gain from the slave trade or, in particular, the redemption price of the slave. Because of this, in a broader sense outcast it was sometimes synonymous with "usury". Bearing in mind the meaning of this term, we can assume that the largest group among the outcasts were freedmen, that the term was originally applied only to them, and only later other similar groups were included in it by analogy.

According to custom, a freedman could not stay with his former master. The obvious purpose of this rule was to prevent the possibility of his secondary enslavement. In most cases, he did not have a means of subsistence and a place to live. The Church offered him both, hiring him in some way or settling him on church land. Thus, we find a group of outcasts in Novgorod under the jurisdiction of the city bishop. Most of them, however, settled in the countryside. In his charter of 1150, Prince Rostislav of Smolensk guaranteed the bishop of this city, among other things, two places, one - "with outcasts and land", and the other - "with land and outcasts." In this case, it turns out that the outcasts were seen as belonging to the estate. Were they permanently attached to the ground in rural areas? Unlikely. Presumably, they paid the Church with money and work for the help they received in the arrangement, but later, apparently, they could go somewhere if they wanted.

From Rostislav's charter, the conclusion can be drawn that the outcasts mentioned there were originally associated with one of the prince's possessions. Yet we do know that the outcasts as a group were under ecclesiastical jurisdiction. In this case, it can be assumed that the outcasts mentioned in the charter had a rather complicated history: initially, they may have been under church care - probably settled on the Church's land, then transferred to the prince's estate, and finally ended up again on church land.

If we admit that the rural outcast retained freedom of movement, then we can assume that they were allowed to move only once a year - after the end of the growing season and after they paid their rent.

The position of a woman in ancient Russia is often presented as complete submission to a man. The women were apparently deprived of any freedom and forced to live in eastern isolation. It is true that the Moscow queens and princesses of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led a reclusive life in their own apartments ( teremakh) in the royal palace, and that the same custom was also practiced in boyar and merchant families, albeit less harshly. The situation was different, however, among ordinary people, and therefore, even relative to the Moscow period, the traditional view of the subordinate position of women in Russia cannot be accepted unconditionally.

With regard to the Kiev period, such a view would be absolutely groundless. Russian women of this time enjoyed considerable freedom and independence, both legally and socially, and demonstrated a spirit of independence in various aspects of life. We see a woman who ruled Russia in the middle of the tenth century (Princess Olga), another, founding a school for girls in a nunnery, which she founded in the eleventh century (Yanka, daughter of Vsevolod I). The princesses send their own representatives to foreign countries (as we know, two members of the Russian peace delegation to Constantinople were women). It is to the woman (the step-mother of Vladimir Monomakh) that the people of Kiev turn to restore peace between the princes (in the event of an emerging conflict between Svyatopolk II and Vladimir Monomakh in 1097).

If we turn to folklore, a warrior woman is a popular heroine of ancient Russian epic poems. Polyanitsa("steppe adventurer) Russian epics reminds us of an Amazon in the classical tradition. And, of course, from a geographical point of view, there is a complete parallel, since both performed their feats in the same region - the lower Don and the Azov region. As we know, the myth of the Amazons reflects an important fact in the social history of the Don and Azov tribes in the Scythian and Sarmatian periods: the predominance of matriarchal forms of clan organization.

The possibility that matriarchy was the basis of social organization among some Proto-Slavic tribes and, in particular, Antic clans, should not be discounted. If this is the case, then the relatively independent position of the women of Kievan Rus can be explained, at least in part, as a consequence of such a tradition. Perhaps it is no coincidence that in the earliest version of Russkaya Pravda, among the relatives who have the right - and should - to avenge the murder of their fellow tribesman, the "sister's son" is mentioned together with the "brother's son."

In general, the Old Russian clan, according to the description of "Russian Truth" and other sources, obviously belonged to the patriarchal type. At the same time, however, the woman was guaranteed certain rights. Let's start with the wergeld - the symbol social value man of that time: woman had wergeld, but in quantitative terms, the fine for her murder was equal to only half of that paid for the murder of a middle-class man - twenty hryvnia instead of forty.

A woman, even a married woman, had the right to own property in her own name. Following the Byzantine example, Russian civil legislation recognized both a dowry, in the sense of money that a woman brings to her husband in marriage, and “premarital gifts” (propter nuptias donatio), that is, a man's gift of property to his bride, which in English is also called "dowry". There are two different terms used in Russian, namely: dowry- in the first sense and vein- in the second. In addition, a married woman could have any other property bequeathed to her by her parents or acquired by her. The usual source of income for a woman, including a married woman, was the results of her handicrafts. According to the so-called "Church Code" by Yaroslav the Wise (copied actually not in the eleventh, but in the thirteenth century), a man stealing hemp or flax grown by his wife, or any linen and fabrics made by her, was fined. According to Russkaya Pravda, after the death of her husband, if he died first, the wife had the right to the property left to her and to other property that he could have. Moreover, the widow was recognized as the head of the family if there were children, and she was entrusted with the management of the estate of her late husband. When the children came of age, everyone had the right to claim their share of the estate, but if they did this, they had to give a certain part of the property to their mother until the end of her days ( possession Speaking of children, it should be noted that daughters inherited property with their sons, with the exception of smerds' families (see section 5 above).

Following the conversion of Russia to Christianity, marriage and family life were placed under the protection and supervision of the Church. And again, in the Kiev period, women's rights were not forgotten. According to the quoted "Church Code", the husband was fined in the case of adultery. The daughter's rights were also protected, at least to a certain extent. If parents forced their daughter into marriage against her will and she committed suicide, they were held responsible for her death.

More broadly, Christianity affected the attitude of Russian society towards women in two ways. On the one hand, Christian doctrine - at least in its Byzantine interpretation - held the woman responsible, through Eve, for original sin. A short review of Bible history taught to Vladimir by Greek missionaries, according to The Tale of Bygone Years, explained that "Humanity first sinned through a woman ... for because of a woman, Adam was expelled from paradise." .

On the other hand, one of the main points of Byzantine Christianity was the veneration of the Mother of God, the Holy Virgin, who protected the feminine principle, giving life to the Savior, and hence the name “Mother of God” or literally “Mother of God”. As explained to Vladimir by the Greek missionary, "After receiving flesh from a woman, God gave the believer the way to heaven." This is how God "took revenge on the devil."

So, the doctrine of the Church humiliated and exalted women and in this sense supported both positive and negative attitudes towards women in Russia. Ascetic monasticism saw in a woman the main source of man's temptation. For the monks and those who were under their influence, the woman was a "devil's vessel" and nothing else. And yet the Church, including the same monks, also spread the veneration of the Mother of God on Russian soil, and not only women, but also men offered constant prayers to her.

Spiritual life defies weighing or measuring, and religious influences are intangible. It can be argued whether the positive or negative aspects of Christian doctrine regarding women have left a deeper impression on the Russian soul. However, it seems plausible that the Russian woman gained more than she eventually lost. It was ancient Russian literature, as we will see (Chapter IX, Section 8), that suffered the most from the deterioration of Eve's position.

With the appearance of the Pechenegs at the end of the tenth century and even more with the invasion of the Polovtsians in the middle of the eleventh century, the steppes were closed to Slavic agriculture. Only in the intermediate forest-steppe zone and in the northern borderland of the steppes could land still be constantly cultivated. The Russian princes tried to protect this borderland from the invasion of nomads with fortification lines, which often did not represent an insurmountable barrier for the Polovtsians, but at least provided some security for the Russian population. Beyond the boundaries of this fortification line, not a single farmer tried to organize any kind of economy, and few Russians penetrated behind it; the exception was the soldiers on campaigns or the Polovtsian prisoners of war.

In a sense, the steppe can be likened to the sea. With sufficient forces it could be blocked, but it was impossible for the Russians and Polovtsians to control or guard every part of it. The Polovtsian horde made annual detours of the steppe, people followed their grazing horses and cattle; the space near the nomads' tents was closed to any outsider, but the rest of the steppe was no man's land, at least periodically.

It was - field ancient Russian epic poems, the scene of the heroic deeds of Ilya Muromets and other Russian legendary heroes, as well as the actual battles that took place - the exploits of thousands of real Russian soldiers - victorious, like Vladimir Monomakh, or the defeated, like Novgorod-Seversky Igor. Covered feather grass and rich in animal life, but also in Polovtsian archers, the steppes had an attractive power for adventurers, scaring away the weak. This is poetically and succinctly described in "The Lay of Igor's Campaign" at the end of the twelfth century and hardly less poetic, but more refined in "Taras Bulba" by N. V. Gogol seven centuries later.

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this no-man's land became a habitat for Ukrainian and Russian Cossacks, who eventually organized themselves into strong military communities "troops", among which the Zaporozhye (above the Dnieper rapids) and Don troops (the last in the lower Don region) were the two most important.

In the Kiev period, a similar community was founded on the lower Dnieper. Its members were known as brodniki.Term brodnik(singular) must be associated with the verb wander, the original meaning of which in Old Russian is "to wade"; hence the word ford- the place of passage on the water. From an economic point of view, the purpose of wading is net fishing. So, brodnik means "fisherman".

The Brodniks lived outside the borders of both the Kiev state and the Polovtsian community, although perhaps at times they recognized the power of some of the Polovtsian khans as a temporary political weapon. Little is known about the organization of their community. It may have started as a fishing association and later acquired some military features. Presumably, similar communities also existed in the regions of the lower Dniester and Danube.

The wanderers' choice of rivers may be partly due to the fact that the rivers provided them with abundant food, and partly to the element of protection they gave them against nomads. In their campaigns, the nomadic armies tried to follow the watersheds.

From time immemorial, the Proto-Slavic and Antic tribes lived in contact with other national groups. Not once before the Kiev period did the Slavs colonize the entire territory of Western Eurasia, and even in the Kiev period the Russians were unable to populate the entire territory politically subordinate to them. Moreover, the "Russians" of the ninth and tenth centuries themselves represent an ethnically mixed group, owing to the presence of the Swedish element.

Nevertheless, new bands of Scandinavian warriors, hired from time to time by Russian princes, steadily increased the Scandinavian element, and their flow dried up only at the end of the eleventh century. Some of the Varangians remained in Russia only temporarily and should thus be regarded as strangers rather than national minorities. Others, who settled in Russia permanently, followed in the footsteps of the ancient Swedish tribe Rus and quickly disappeared into the Slavic sea. So, although in Kievan Rus there were a significant number of people of Scandinavian origin, they never constituted any national minority.

The Finns were the largest national minority in the Kiev period. Various Finnish tribes have occupied the northern and eastern regions of Russia since time immemorial. Some of them were ousted from their places by the process of Slavic colonization, others were completely Russified. The Suzdal principality in particular became a melting pot, and from the mixture of Slavs and Finns, the core of the so-called “Great Russian” branch of the Eastern Slavs was formed in order to take over the leadership of the Russians during the Moscow period. Many of the national characteristics of the Great Russian must be explained by the Finnish element in his blood.

While some Finnish tribes disappeared in the course of the Slavic expansion, many others were able to maintain their identity, although one by one they had to join the Russian federation, with the exception of the western Finns in Finland, which were eventually conquered by the Swedes.

According to the story of the "call-up of the Varangians", the latter were invited jointly by the "Russians" (Rus), Slovenes, Krivichs and three Finnish tribes - the Chudyu, the Merya and the whole. At that time, in the middle of the ninth century, there was a strong Slavic-Finnish federation in Northern Russia. Chud and Merya are also mentioned as participants in Oleg's Byzantine campaign in 907. This is the last mention of the Merya, which were completely Russified during the tenth century.

With the conversion of Rus to Christianity, the Finnish tribes, who lived in close proximity to the Russians, were ultimately baptized; other, mostly small, tribes in more remote areas remained pagan for a long time, some of them were unconverted even by the time of the 1917 revolution. Rus. As a result of the conversion of the Eastern Finns to the Greek Orthodox faith, and the Western Finns to Roman Catholicism (later to Lutheranism), a religious and cultural barrier was established between the two branches of the Finns, which has existed to the present day.

Lithuanians should be mentioned here after Finns. Already in the eleventh century, the Lithuanian tribe Goliad (Galindi) lived in Central Russia, in the basin of the Ugra and Protva rivers, both of which were tributaries of the Oka. According to the Tale of Bygone Years, the Goliad were defeated by Izyaslav I in 1058. After that, they gradually merged with the Russians. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Russians also came into contact with the Yatvingians, one of the main Lithuanian tribes who lived between the Russians and the Poles. Some Yatvingians were conquered by Vladimir I and Yaroslav I; others were subdued by the Volyn prince Roman at the end of the twelfth century. It seems, however, that even those Yatvyag clans, which had to recognize the superiority of the Russian princes, managed to preserve their national identity.

While the Finns and Lithuanians constituted an important part of the ethnic background of Northern, Northwestern and Eastern Russia, the Jews, although significantly less numerous, played an important role in the life of Southern Russia. Jewish colonies have existed in the Transcaucasian region, on the Taman Peninsula and in the Crimea since at least the 5th century AD. e., if not earlier. In the eighth and ninth centuries, Jewish missionaries were active in Khazaria, and around 865 the Khazar kagan and many of his nobility were converted to Judaism. So, a significant number of Jews who settled in South Russia during this period must have been of Khazar origin,

Apart from the Taman Peninsula, from which the Russians had to leave at the end of the eleventh century, and the Crimea, which they left a century earlier, Kiev was the main center of Judaism in ancient Russia. A Jewish colony has existed there since the Khazar period. In the twelfth century, one of the city gates of Kiev was known as the Jewish Gate, which is evidence of Jewish ownership of this part of the city and a significant number of them in Kiev.

Jews played a significant role in both the commercial and intellectual life of Kievan Rus.

At least one of the Russian bishops of this period, Luka Zhidyata from Novgorod, was, as we can assume, of Jewish origin. Judaism had a strong influence on Russians during this period, as a result of which Russian bishops, like Hilarion of Kiev and Cyril of Turov, paid considerable attention to the relationship of Judaism with Christianity in their sermons.

While the presence of Jews in southern Russia was, at least in part, the result of Khazar expansion, the Russians were in direct communication through Tmutarakan with the people of the Caucasus, especially the Yases (Ossetians) and Kosogs (Circassians). As we know, both of these peoples recognized the suzerainty of Svyatoslav I and later Mstislav of Tmutarakansky (respectively in the tenth and eleventh centuries). Kosogi constituted an important element in Mstislav's squad, and he settled some of them in the Pereyaslavl region. No doubt some of the Yass warriors also joined his retinue. It is against this background that we can interpret the term outcast in Yaroslav's Pravda. The term appears in the introductory part of the code, in the list of people worthy of a normal wergeld. It is obvious that the outcast mentioned here belongs to the upper stratum of the middle class and has nothing to do with a freedman under the protection of the Church, although the latter is also called an outcast. Vladimirsky-Budanov considers the outcast of "Russian Pravda" as a member of the princely squad, and he, of course, is right, he just does not explain the source of either this category of princely vassals, or the term itself. The only clue to the meaning of this term is its place in the list. The outcast is mentioned between the (Kiev) Russian and (Novgorod) Slavs. The term, in this case, had to have an ethnic meaning, and since there was no Slavic tribe under this name, the outcast had to be of non-Slavic origin.

Until now, we have been on solid ground; only my hypothesis follows. In my opinion, the term outcast can be deduced from the Ossetian word izkai, which means "stranger", "mercenary" and also "employee". If this is so, then the outcast should have been a princely "mercenary" - a member of the squad - of Ossetian or Kosogian origin.

After the death of Mstislav in 1036, his possession was inherited by Yaroslav, and, presumably, most of Mstislav's vassals were included in Yaroslav's retinue, as a result of which they were guaranteed the same wergeld as the members of the squad. Just in 1036, the "Pravda Yaroslav" was probably revised, and it was at this time that the term outcast .

WITH At the end of the eleventh century, detachments of Turkic warriors and entire Turkic tribes were hired by Russian princes as auxiliary troops against the Polovtsians. Some of these Turkic groups, such as black hoods, berendei, kui and many others, permanently settled in southern Russia. They were usually called "their pagany".

Among them all, the black hoods that settled in the Ros River region south of Kiev were in closest contact with the Russians. In the middle of the twelfth century, they even played an important political role, supporting Prince Izyaslav II against his opponents. Presumably, all these Turkic tribes retained their traditional tribal organization.

In addition to the "loyal Turks", small groups of independent Turkic peoples - the Pechenegs and Polovtsians - were repeatedly brought to Russia as prisoners of war or mercenaries and slaves. The settlements of the Pechenegs and Polovtsians are mentioned in Russian sources and left toponymic traces. It is in this connection that the term hop in Pravda of Yaroslav's sons.

The term is mentioned in the list of various categories of people subject to the jurisdiction of the prince, for the murder or injury of which the prince was supposed to pay fines. Paragraph 26 of the short version of Russkaya Pravda reads: "For smerd or hop - five hryvnia. In the corresponding section of the extended version of Russkaya Pravda" slave("Slave") is read instead of hop, and therefore the spelling hop usually considered a copyist's error. This explanation is hardly acceptable. This part of Pravda clearly deals with the standard social couple mentioned in Byzantine legal textbooks: the peasant ( smerd) and the shepherd ( hop).

Hop - the name of the Pecheneg tribe - is well known from the words of Konstantin Porphyrogenitus, since the Russians usually bought horses and cattle from the Pechenegs. When large herds were bought, the Pecheneg shepherds were to be hired or bought by the Russians in order to look after the animals when driving and after arriving at the site. Presumably, most of the shepherds hired in this way belonged to the Hop tribe, hence the term Hop, which first meant "a shepherd of Pecheneg origin" and then a shepherd in general.

As we know, during the eleventh century, the Pechenegs were expelled and replaced by the Polovtsians. Polovtsian shepherds were also hired by Russian princes. In the twelfth century, the term hop was no longer used, and by the time of the final revision of Pravda, at the end of the twelfth century, it was replaced in a certain way by something similar to it - slave("slave"). Coincidentally, the prince's shepherds were usually his slaves; thus between hop and serf there is an internal connection through social implications two terms.

Having studied both the economic foundations and the social organization of Kievan Rus, we can now ask ourselves, to what stage of the social and economic development, or, using the geological term, socio-economic formation, belongs to Kievan Rus.

Chronologically, as we know, the Kiev period included the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries. These three centuries saw the rise and flowering of feudal institutions in Western and Central Europe; they represent what may be called the feudal period par excellence. It is quite natural to strive to place Kievan Rus in the same category and to characterize its socio-political regime as feudal. But still, until recently, Russian historians were in no hurry to do this. They did not raise any serious objections to the study of feudalism in Russia: they simply ignored the problem.

A similar attitude on the part of leading representatives of Russian historical science, such as S.M. Soloviev and V.O. Klyuchevsky, as well as ordinary historians, can be partially explained by the leading idea - consciously or subconsciously hatched - of the basic difference in the development, on the one hand, of Russia and Europe, on the other. Each scientist had his own explanation for the reasons behind this difference. Some noted the important role of the clan in the Russian social structure (Soloviev, Kavelin), others - the world or communities (K. Aksakov), and still others - the excessive growth of centralized power (Milyukov) or the expansion of foreign trade (Klyuchevsky). While Slavophiles extolled Russia's uniqueness as a historical gift, Westerners deplored this inclination and - as we have seen - talked about the "slowness" of the historical process in Russia as the main reason for its "backwardness."

An important reason for the neglect of Russian historians of the nineteenth century to the problem of feudalism was the concentration of their efforts - in relation to the Mongol and post-Mongol periods - on the study of Eastern or Muscovite Russia, where the development of feudal or similar institutions was less pronounced than in Western, or Lithuanian, Russia. From this point of view, the appearance of the work of M.K. Lyubavsky's "Provincial division and local administration in the Lithuanian-Russian state" (1893) constituted an important historiographic milestone that opened new horizons for historical research.

N.P. Pavlov-Silvansky was the first to put the study of the problem of feudalism on the agenda in Russian historiography, but he investigated mainly the feudal institutions of the Mongol period, without trying to assert their development in Kievan Rus. Only in Soviet times was sufficient attention given to the problem of feudalism in Kievan Rus.

Since “feudalism” is a rather vague concept and its Marxist definition differs from more or less generally accepted in Western historiography, we must clarify the meaning of the concept itself before accepting or rejecting the conclusions of Soviet scientists. The term "feudalism" can be used in both a narrow and a broad sense. In a narrow sense, it is used to refer to a social, economic and political system specific to the countries of Western and Central Europe - mainly France and Germany - in the Middle Ages. In a broader sense, it can be applied to certain social, economic and political trends in the development of any country at any time.

In this sense, any definition of a developed feudal regime should include the following three features: 1) "political feudalism" - the scale of mediation of the highest political power, the existence of a ladder of greater and lesser rulers (suzerains, vassals, even lesser vassals) linked by personal contact, reciprocity of such an agreement ; 2) "economic feudalism" - the existence of a manorial regime with the limitation of the legal status of peasants, as well as the distinction between the right of ownership and the right to use in relation to the same land ownership; 3) feudal ties - the inseparable unity of personal and territorial rights, with the conditionality of the vassal's land ownership on the part of the lord's service.

The essence of feudalism in the narrow sense is the complete fusion of political and economic power within the class of nobles - the owners of large land estates. To this must be added the fact that during the period of early feudalism, European society was largely dependent on agriculture for its economy. And, despite the objections of A. Dopsch, it can be said in general that at the initial stages of European feudalism there was a primacy of the so-called "natural" economy in contrast to the "money economy".

If only some of the above tendencies are present, while others are absent, and if there is no harmonious connection between them, then we do not have “feudalism” in the narrow sense, and in this case we should only talk about the process of feudalization, and not about feudalism.

Let us now turn to the Marxist approach to the problem. According to the "Small Soviet Encyclopedia" (1930), feudalism is "a socio-economic formation through which many countries of the new and ancient world passed." The essence of feudalism is the exploitation of the peasant masses by the owner of the manor. It is characterized by the "noneconomic pressure" of the master in relation to his serf in order to obtain "rent", which has a "pre-capitalist nature."

The feudal state of secular and ecclesiastical lords is nothing more than a political superstructure over the economic foundation of feudal society and, thus, does not belong to the essence of feudalism. In other words, what is called “feudalism” in the Marxist interpretation rather corresponds to “economic feudalism” in everyday usage.

For the special conditions of scientific activity in the Soviet Union, where the party dictates the rules of historical terminology, it is characteristic that the publication of critical notes by Stalin, Zhdanov and Kirov on the draft historical science. "In these 'notes' the historians of the Soviet Union received the most important principled advice on the fact that it is precisely the affirmation of serfdom that should be considered as the boundary line separating the feudal period from the pre-feudal period." .

In numerous "discussions" of Soviet historians, a series of which was started by the report of B.D. Grekov's "Slavery and Feudalism in Kievan Rus", presented in 1932 at the Academy of the History of Material Culture, it was concluded that Kievan society was not "slave-owning", but "feudal". The emergence of the Kiev state is now viewed by Soviet historians as an expression of the common European historical process - the transition from the slavery of classical antiquity to medieval feudalism.

As a result, two leading contemporary researchers of the history of Kievan Rus B.D. Grekov and C.B. Yushkov view the Kiev regime as feudal, albeit with some reservations.

Terminology is ultimately not a matter of central importance. It is only necessary to properly understand what is meant by such and such a term. We call a tiger a big cat or a cat a small tiger; it does not matter as long as the person to whom we are addressing knows what we mean by "cat" or "tiger." But if we see a cat crossing the street and start screaming "tiger", we can easily create panic.

In fact, my own objection to the position of the newest Soviet school in the discussion of the problem of feudalism in Kievan Rus is not only terminological in nature. In a sense, the growth of the manor can be called evidence of the growth of feudalism. And one can agree with Soviet historians that the manorial power of princes and boyars was constantly increasing in Kievan Rus. I am even, moreover, ready to admit completely the novelty of the approach of Soviet historians to the study of the economic and social development of Kievan Rus, as well as the important achievements in their research.

However, the question remains whether they did not exaggerate too much the sociological consequences of the growth of the manorial system and minimized the role of slavery in the Kiev period. It can be admitted that the manor was an important institution in Kievan Rus and that some tenants were at the semi-serf level, but still doubt that the manor and serfdom were the leading socio-political institutions and the foundation of the Russian national economy of this period. In order to determine the special significance of the manor in the Russian social and economic life of this time, we must consider or revise the following provisions: 1) the degree of distribution of large land holdings in Kievan Rus; 2) their types; 3) the status of the land from a legal point of view; 4) the degree of manorial power over the rural tenant; 5) the social status of the landowner; 6) general type national economy in the Kiev period.

1. There is no doubt that large land holdings existed in Russia in the Kiev time. However, next to them there were also estates of a different type, such as, for example, the households of people organized in the guild. It is characteristic that the extended version of Pravda deals with such guilds in more detail than the short version. This is an important testament to the fact that humans still owned land in the twelfth century. We are also aware of the existence of a large class of smallholders ( native people) in the Novgorod region.

2. With regard to large land holdings, the question may be asked whether they were all of the manorial type (using this term in the special sense of fiefdoms). The existence of large landed estates does not in itself imply the inevitable predominance of the feudal regime. Large landed estates existed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in England, France and Germany under democracy or in any other case under capitalism.

Large holdings existed in the Roman Empire and, although they are sometimes regarded as one of the reasons for its final fall (latifundia perdidere Italiam), their growth did not immediately change the "capitalist" economy of the Romans into a feudal one. In the medieval continuation of the Roman Empire known as Byzantium, also, despite the gradual growth of "economic feudalism," the land regime based on Roman law did not stifle the functioning of the "money economy." In Kievan Rus, the situation was similar.

3. From a legal point of view, land in Kievan Rus was the only type of private property. Land transactions did not meet with any feudal interference. It could be inherited, gifted, bought, sold and otherwise used without hindrance.

Byzantine legislation - that is, in fact, Roman law - served as an example for Russian practice in all matters relating to the land. Two Byzantine textbooks of legislation - Ecloga (eighth century) and Procheiron (ninth) were available in Slavic translation. In addition, legislative codes in the original Greek version could be used.

In Russian practice, certain modifications of Byzantine legislation were introduced, similar to the right of the seller or his relatives to redeem the sold land, at least within the boundaries of a certain time. But such restrictions did not come from feudal law, but from the remnants of generic psychology, as well as from the general concepts of law and justice inherent in the Russian mind.

4. Although it is true that the owner of the manor in Kievan Rus, as in feudal Europe, had a certain power over his tenants, this power was less defined in the former case than in the latter. And no matter what legal power the owner had, it was delegated to him by the prince. We know that the peasants (smerds) originally lived on the land of the princely possession; some of them could later find themselves under the rule of the boyar through the transfer of the estate to this boyar by the prince, but there is no positive evidence regarding this. Outcasts, or freedmen, settled mainly in church estates. Contract workers (purchases), as well as the recipients of the "donation" (delivery), were largely dependent on the owner of the manor, but the source of their subordination was more financial, that is, "capitalist" than feudal. Their adversity was not the result of "extra-economic pressures."

And another important circumstance was that even if we call the outcast a semi-serf (this cannot be done without appropriate reservations), they represented only part of the necessary agricultural labor. In addition, hired free workers were used ( hirelings, ryadovichi And whatever the objections of Grekov and the historians of his school against the concept of Kiev society as a "slave-owning" society, slaves were an indispensable factor in the Kiev economy. Contract workers (purchases) and recipients of donations (delivery) were actually half-slaves, and their role should be related to the slave economy rather than serfdom.

As a result, there was no universal serfdom in Kievan Rus, and the sociological significance of this fact cannot be overestimated, since it is serfdom, not slavery, that is specific to feudalism, according to the testimony of Soviet historians themselves.

5. From a social point of view, the owners of large land holdings in Kievan Rus cannot be identified without reservations with the feudal barons. As a social group, they did not represent an exclusive link in the Kiev period, similar to the feudal rulers of Western Europe. The owner of the manor, a Russian boyar of the Kiev period, was an ordinary citizen outside his land. He obeyed the same laws as other free ones, and in city-states like Novgorod, at least officially, he had no more voice in the city assembly than any other burgher. It can be agreed that the life of some boyars was protected by a double wergeld, but they were only a group of people in the prince's service, and not all the owners of large land holdings were servants of the prince during this period.

Moreover, in his income the Russian boyar of the Kiev period depended not only on agriculture, but also on trade - (mainly foreign trade) as well. Not only the ancestors of such a boyar could receive their wealth as members of the squad of an ancient prince - an adventurer, but he himself, probably, could own a significant share of Kiev trade even in the twelfth century. In this respect, the Kiev boyars did not differ from the Kiev prince. Both groups collaborated — or even at times competed — with the regular merchant class and had the same share in river caravans as the merchants themselves.

6. In Western Europe, feudalism appeared in the conditions of the so-called "natural economy", the opposite of the "money economy". In a sense and with appropriate reservations, one can characterize the economic regime of the feudal countries of Western and Central Europe, at least in the tenth and eleventh centuries, as "closed economies" with the economic self-sufficiency of each manor. Agriculture was the main source of national income, and trade, as a source of livelihood and supply of necessary goods, played only a minor role for the majority of the population. We know that in Kievan Rus agriculture was also an important branch of economic life and that agricultural production was partly organized at the manorial level. However, we also know that there have been other trends in agricultural management. There were smaller, non-feudal farms; and, I repeat, on large farms, labor was carried out mainly by hired workers and slaves, and not exclusively by semi-serfs. So, large-scale farming in Kievan Rus had, perhaps, a greater resemblance to Roman latifundia, rather than feudal senoria. It is important that the grain was grown on large land holdings of the Kiev period, not only for the consumption of the inhabitants of the estate, but also for the market. Summarizing these remarks, we can say that while the agriculture of Kievan Rus was highly developed, this does not necessarily mean the primacy of the "natural" or "closed" economy in the national life.

Moreover, agriculture was, as we have seen in a large number of cases, only one important source of Russia's national income during this period. Trade, and especially foreign trade, was no less significant factor in Russian economic life. In this respect, many of Klyuchevsky's brilliant generalizations still stand firm against recent criticism. The commercial expansion of the nation itself is an important indication of the spread of the "money economy" (as opposed to the "natural economy") in the life of the nation. With regard to Kievan Rus, we know that money and trade played a very important role. Foreign trade was the original source of wealth for the upper classes, even if they subsequently settled on the land. Money was available for trade and other transactions at a relatively low interest rate.

Credit, trade, storage of goods, bankruptcy - all this the Kiev legislation of this period paid considerable attention to. And in the field of trade and credit, as well as in the turnover of land, the Kiev legislation was nourished by Byzantine (that is, essentially Roman) sources.

What should be the answer to the question posed at the beginning of this section? To what socio-political formation should we include Kievan Rus? Obviously, it was not a feudal state, at least a typically feudal state. But if she was not, then what was she?

We saw that the first Kiev rulers dreamed of creating a wide commercial empire that would take up the tradition of the Huns and Khazars and at the same time seize the wealth accumulated by Byzantium. In a sense, the Kiev principality grew on the same soil as all nomadic and semi-nomadic empires, which in turn controlled the territory of the Black Sea steppes, starting from the Scythian period. Each of them tried to create a link between northern and eastern trade, on the one hand, and Mediterranean trade, on the other. Chronologically, the Khazar was the last among these Western Eurasian commercial empires before the formation of the Russian state. It was in the bosom of the Khazar Kaganate that the first Russian Kaganate, Tmutarakan, was born. The Kiev principality was created by Oleg and his successors with the intention to continue and expand the trade and political tradition of the first kaganate.

It is against this historical background that one can best understand the origins of Kiev's "commercial capitalism". But there was also a significant difference between the early nomadic and semi-nomadic states and the Kiev principality, since the majority of the population of the latter had a certain place of settlement, regardless of whether its main occupation was agriculture or forestry.

It should also be noted that Kievan Rus, even before the conversion of its population to Christianity, was under significant Byzantine influence, and it increased significantly after the baptism of Rus.

In a number of cases, we have already noted the dependence of the Kiev regime on Roman legislation. The national economy of the Roman Empire can be called capitalist in a certain sense; feature of Roman capitalism was that it was based, at least in part, on slave labor. The Roman economic system, as well as Roman law, continued to exist under various historical circumstances and with significant modifications in Byzantine Empire... Over time, the tendencies of feudalization became more and more pronounced in the Byzantine imperial regime. But until its first fall during the Fourth Crusade (1204), the Byzantine economy was essentially a "money economy."

Culturally under significant Byzantine influence, Kievan Rus economically also had much in common with Byzantium. Of course, we cannot equate the Kiev economy with the economy of the Roman Empire, or even the Byzantine one, without reservations. Kiev "capitalism" was not as well-formed as Roman, and the Kiev civilization, although brilliant in many respects, did not match the Roman one. First of all, she was much younger, if we can use that expression in this connection. As a result, much more primitive elements remained in the Kiev civilization than in the Roman one. Leaving aside the fact that during the Kiev period Russian rural life was at a much lower cultural level than life in cities, many remote areas of Kievan Rus were not affected by the new civilization at all. In general, elements of the ancient cultural land, including ancestral and foreign psychology and habits, were still easily and quickly discerned under the outer layer of the new commercial civilization.

Industrially as well as technologically, Kievan Rus was, of course, on a lower level than the Roman Empire. Kiev capitalism can be primarily characterized as commercial capitalism.

Russia has always been and remains a country of contrasts, and the Kiev civilization with its combination of refinement and primitiveness is an interesting case. And yet, after all that has been said, we are obliged to link Kievan Rus sociologically not only with the type of the nomadic trading empire, but in a certain sense also with the type, the highest expression of which in classical antiquity was the Roman Empire - with the "capitalist" formation based on slavery.

Of course, elements of feudalism were present and gradually increased from the beginning of the twelfth century. But despite a certain limitation of the legal status of some peasants, no general serfdom existed in the Kiev period. This process of "lagging" serfdom was, of course, one of the characteristic facets of the social and economic regime prevailing in Kievan Rus.

We thus come to the conclusion that in the tenth and eleventh centuries there was a significant difference in relation to social and economic foundations between Kievan Rus, on the one hand, and Western and Central Europe, on the other. This difference was partly the result of a different historical background, partly a consequence of the dissimilarity of social and economic factors of development in the Kiev period, as well as the Byzantine influence in the formation of Kiev institutions.

A society composed only of family communities can be thought of as essentially homogeneous. All members of the family have an equal share both in the total work and in the production product. This is a miniature "classless" society.

With the breakdown of the back and the emancipation of the family from the clan, with a similar isolation of the individual from society and the formation of territorial communities of a new type, the entire social structure of the nation becomes more complex. Various social classes are gradually taking shape.

The process of social stratification began among the Eastern Slavs long before the formation of the Kiev state. We know that the Sklavens and Antes in the sixth century converted prisoners of war - even of the same race - into slaves. We also know that there was an aristocratic group among the Antes and that some of the military leaders held great wealth. So, we have, among the Eastern Slavs, elements of at least three existing social groups already in the sixth century: aristocracy, common people and slaves. The subordination of some of the East Slavic tribes to foreign conquerors could also be realized in the political and social differentiation of various tribes. We know that the Eastern Slavs paid tribute in grain and other agricultural products to the Alans, Goths and Magyars, as each of these peoples took turns establishing control over part of the East Slavic tribes. While some of the Slavic groups eventually asserted their independence or autonomy, others remained under foreign control for a longer period. Peasant communities, initially dependent on foreign masters, later recognized the power of the local Slavic princes, but their status did not change, and they continued to pay the old duties. So, a difference was established in the position of different Slavic groups. Some of them were self-governing, others were dependent on the princes.

Given this extraordinary social and historical background, we must approach the study of Russian society in the Kiev period. It can be assumed that the society was quite complex, although in Kievan Rus there were no such high barriers between individual social groups and classes that existed in feudal Europe of the same period. In general, it should be said that the Russian society of the Kiev period consisted of two large groups: free and slaves. Such a judgment, however, although correct, is too broad to adequately characterize the organization of Kiev society.

It should be noted that among the free themselves there were various groups: while some were full citizens, the legal status of others was limited. In fact, the position of some of the free classes was so precarious, due to legal or economic constraints, that some of them voluntarily preferred to go into slavery. So, you can find an intermediate group between free and slaves, which can be called semi-free. Moreover, some groups of the free people were in a better economic position and better protected by the law than others. Accordingly, we can talk about the existence of a high-ranking class and a free middle class in Kiev society.

Our main legal source for this period is Russkaya Pravda, and we must refer to this code to obtain legal terminology that characterizes social classes. In the eleventh century version of Pravda - the so-called Short Variant - we find the following fundamental concepts: husbands- for the upper layer of free, people- for the middle class, smerds - for those with limited availability, servants - for slaves.

In the eyes of the legislator, a person possessed different values, depending on his class affiliation. Old Russian criminal law did not know the death penalty. Instead, there was a cash payment system imposed on the murderer. The latter had to pay compensation to the victim's relatives (known as bot in the Anglo-Saxon version) and a fine to the prince (“bloodwite”). This system was common among the Slavs, Germans, and Anglo-Saxons in the early Middle Ages.

In the earliest version of Pravda, the wergeld, or payment for the life of a free person, reached 40 hryvnias. In "Pravda" of the sons of Yaroslav, the princely people ( husbands) were protected by a double fine of 80 hryvnia, while the fine for lyudin(plural - people) remained at the initial level of 40 hryvnia. The penalty to be paid to the prince for the murder smerda set at 5 hryvnia - one eighth of the normal wergeld. Slaves who were not free did not have a wergeld.

From a philological point of view, it is interesting that all of the above terms belong to the ancient Indo-European basis. Slavic husband (can) associated with Sanskrit manuh, manusah; gothic manna; German mann and mench. In Old Russian "husband" means "a man of noble birth", "knight" and also means "husband" in the family plan. People means a community of human beings, which can be compared to the German leute. It turns out that the root of the word is the same as in the Greek adjective eleutheros ("free"). Smerd can be seen in relation to the Persian mard, "man"; mard also sounds in Armenian. The disappearance of the original "s" in the combination "sm" is not uncommon in Indo-European languages. According to Meillet, mard emphasizes the mortality of man (in contrast to the "immortals", that is, the gods). From this point of view, it is interesting to compare the Persian mard and the Slavic death(both words mean "demise").

In the social development of Russia, each of the above terms has its own history. The term "stink" has acquired a derogatory meaning in connection with the verb "stink", "stink." The term "husband" in the sense of a specific social category gradually disappeared, and the boyar class eventually developed from husbands. In its diminutive form, the term man("Little man") was applied to peasants subordinate to the boyar regime. Hence - man,"peasant". Term lyudin(singular) also disappeared, except for the combination commoner.

Plural form people still in use; it corresponds in modern Russian to the word Human, used only in the singular. The first part of this word (chel-) represents the same root that is present in the Old Russian word servants("House slaves"). The original meaning of the root is "genus": compare the Gali clann and the Lithuanian keltis

Russkaya Pravda speaks of various social classes of that time. The majority of the population was made up of free community members - people, or just people. They united into a rural community - rope... Verv possessed a certain territory, separate economically independent families were distinguished in it.

The second large group of the population is smerds; it was the unfree or semi-free population of the princely domain.

The third group of the population - slaves... They are known under different names: servants, servants. Servants - early name, slaves - later. Russian Truth shows slaves completely powerless. The slave had no right to be a witness at the trial; the owner was not responsible for his murder. Not only the slave was punished for running away, but also everyone who helped him.

A fairly large group of the population of Russia was artisans and merchants... The growing cities became centers for the development of handicrafts and trade. By the 12th century, there were over 60 craft specialties; Russian artisans produced more than 150 types of iron products.

There were also such groups of the population as men (vigilantes) and outcasts (people who had lost their social status).

The most important condition for the functioning of the state is taxes. In Kievan Rus, they acted in the form of collecting tribute (with agricultural products, trades and money). Tribute was laid out in the graveyards and collected from the smoke - the yard, the ral - the plow, that is, from individual peasant farms.

The annexed territories began to be considered by the supreme rulers as state property. The right to collect tribute from certain territories was received by the prince's warriors.

3. Organization of state power in Kievan Rus.

At the head of the Kiev state was a prince who was called the Grand Duke; local princes governed by him. The Grand Duke was not an autocrat; most likely, he was the first among equals. The Grand Duke ruled on behalf of his closest relatives and closest entourage - the large boyars, formed from the top of the princely squad and the nobility of Kiev. The title of the Grand Duke was inherited in the Rurik family. Traditionally, power was transferred not only to direct heirs, but also to members of the clan. So, Prince Oleg, according to legend, was not a son, but a nephew of Rurik. However, the primary heirs and applicants for the role of princes in the local principalities were the sons of the Grand Duke of Kiev. After the death of the Grand Duke, the Kievan throne was occupied by the eldest son, and after his death, the rest of the sons took turns. This is the horizontal principle of the inheritance of power. When, after the death of Prince Vladimir, the squad advised his son Boris to take the Kiev throne in addition to his elder brother Svyatopolk, Boris replied: “I will not raise my hand against my elder brother; my father is dead, and my brother will be my father's. "

However, out of the brothers, only three elders could take the Kiev throne in turn. Younger brothers were equated in rights with older children. Inheritance was not family inheritance, but generic. The number of reigns corresponded to the number of members of the clan. With an increase in their number, new principalities were allocated due to the fragmentation of the old ones.

In the state structure of Kievan Rus, along with the monarchical branch of power, there was also a democratic, parliamentary branch - veche. The entire population took part in the veche, except for the slaves; there were cases when the veche entered into an agreement with the prince - a number. Sometimes the princes were forced to swear allegiance to the veche, especially in Novgorod. The main force on which the power relied was the army (voi). It consisted of two parts: the prince's squad and the people's militia.

The squad formed the basis of the army. According to the Varangian custom, the warriors fought on foot and were armed with swords and axes. Since the 10th century, the squad mounts on horses, and the axes are replaced with sabers borrowed from the nomads.

The people's militia was convened in the event of large military campaigns or to repel an enemy attack. Part of the militia was on foot, part was mounted on horses. The people's militia was commanded by a thousand-man appointed by the prince.

In addition to the squads and the people's militia, the troops of nomadic neighbors ("black hoods") were sometimes involved in the conduct of hostilities.

From the moment of the emergence of Kievan Rus, a system of customary law also appeared. The essence of customary law provisions are: blood for blood, or payment for murder; payment in case of beatings; the right of inheritance and disposal of property; theft and search laws, etc.

Princess Olga and Prince Vladimir issued their laws. Under Olga, the collection of tribute was streamlined, laws were adopted to guide administrative activities; Prince Vladimir, apparently with the aim of replenishing the state treasury, tried to impose fines for murder. However, the custom of blood feud was an ancient tradition, and Vladimir's attempt ended in failure. The first written code of laws, Russkaya Pravda, was created by Yaroslav the Wise. "The norms of Russian Truth had a great influence on the subsequent development of legislation, although during the period of feudal fragmentation there did not exist and could not exist a single legal code."