Economic Activity

It is as adventurous, freebooting merchants that the Varangians first appear in the primary sources for the history of Kievan Rus’. From their bases near the Baltic shores, they pushed eastward along the Volga route in the 8th–9th centuries until they reached the Caspian Sea, where they established contacts with the merchants of the Muslim world.

It was no accident that the first formal treaty concluded by a Kievan ruler was Oleh’s commercial pact with Byzantium (911) that secured exceedingly favorable terms in Constantinople for the merchants of Rus’. When Byzantine trade faltered in the 12th–13th centuries as a result of the Crusaders’ attack on Constantinople and the frequent disruptions of the Dnieper trade by the nomads, commercial contacts with the West, extending primarily over the Cracow-Prague-Regensburg route, assumed greater importance for Kiev.

In contrast to the medieval West where the landowning aristocracy eschewed commercial activity, in Kievan Rus’ not only was the boyar nobility deeply involved in trade, but so too was the prince. Most of the early Kievan ruler’s time was spent in gathering tribute from his scattered subjects, in bringing it down to Kiev, and then in organizing a large flotilla every year for shipment of the slaves, furs, flax, honey, wax, and other raw products down the Dnieper to Constantinople where they were exchanged for luxury goods. Even when the princes and boyars became more settled and acquired large tracts of land, much of the produce from their estates was intended for foreign markets. Opportunities for commerce must have been numerous, for the cities of Rus’ supported a substantial merchant class whose most powerful and wealthy members were also active in foreign trade and enjoyed the same legal and political rights as the boyars.

Modern scholars estimate that 13–15% of the population of Rus’ lived in urban centers. The chronicles indicate that there were about 240 towns and cities in the land. However, it is probable that as many as 150 of these were nothing more than fortified settlements inhabited by a semiagrarian population. Of the approximately ninety large towns and cities, Kiev was by far the largest. Before the Mongol invasion, it had a population of approximately 35,000–40,000 (London was only to reach this size a century later). By comparison, such important centers as Chernihiv and Pereiaslav near the Dnieper, Volodymyr-in-Volhynia, and Halych and Lviv in Galicia probably had no more than 4000–5000 inhabitants. Petty merchants and artisans made up most of the population of these towns because handicrafts were highly developed. In Kiev, for example, between forty and sixty different handicrafts were represented, the most important practitioners of which were carpenters, smiths, potters, and leather workers.

Countering those historians who stress the commercial character of the Kievan economy are those who contend that agriculture constituted its basis. Noted Ukrainian scholars such as Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Dmytro Bahalii, and Iaroslav Pasternak, as well as the leading Soviet specialists in the field, are adherents of the latter view. They argue that because the Slavs had traditionally been an agrarian people, it is unlikely that they would have suddenly changed their way of living during the Kievan period. Additional support for this view comes from the frequent references in the chronicles to agricultural activity in Kievan Rus’, the agrarian orientation of the ancient Slavic calendar and mythology, and (most convincingly) archaeological evidence.

Recent archaeological excavations have demonstrated that iron plowshares were in use in Ukraine by the 10th century and that the relatively advanced two- or three-field crop rotation system (leaving one-half to one-third of the land fallow) was also used, as it was in western Europe.

If the economy of Rus’ was primarily agricultural, how do proponents of this position explain the rise of large urban and commercial centers? The noted Soviet scholar Mikhail Tikhomirov, whose views are shared by many of his Soviet colleagues, has argued that the development and growing sophistication of agriculture encouraged the appearance of numerous handicrafts and where these became concentrated, towns arose.² He acknowledges that once towns appeared, commerce played an important role in their expansion, but this trade was primarily between the towns and their agrarian hinterlands rather than large-scale foreign-transit trade.

Confronted by compelling argument on the part of supporters of both the “commercial” and “agricultural” interpretations of the economic history of Kievan Rus’, modern historians are inclined to compromise on this question as well. While agreeing that the prince, his retinue, and the richest merchants were primarily interested and involved in a lively and lucrative foreign trade, especially up to the 12th century, they also accept the argument that the overwhelming majority of the people of Kievan Rus’ made its living from agriculture.