Social Organization
Inhabited by a numerous population – estimates vary greatly and range from 3 to 12 million – and encompassing a vast territory of about 800,000 sq. km (about half of which fell within the boundaries of modern Ukraine), Kievan Rus’ was the largest political entity in medieval Europe.1 It was also a rapidly changing one.
Although experiencing a gradual growth of distinctions between commoners and the emerging tribal elite, East Slavic agrarian society in the 9th century was still ethnically and socially relatively homogeneous. But Kiev’s rapid expansion brought Varangian trader-warriors, Finnic hunters, Turkic mercenaries, Greek artisans, and Armenian and Jewish merchants into the Slavic midst. Moreover, with the rise of cities, merchants and craftsmen proliferated. Finally, a completely new class – the clergy – appeared with the introduction of Christianity. In short, the inhabitants of Kievan Rus’ became culturally more cosmopolitan, ethnically more diverse, and socially more differentiated and stratified.In the social hierarchy that evolved, the highest place was held by the growing number of members of the various branches of the Riurikid dynasty. The retainers of the princes, senior and junior members of the druzhyna, and the local elites formed the boyar, or noble class, also referred to as the muzhi. In time, the mostly Scandinavian elite was Slavicized, a process reflected in the transformation of such originally Scandinavian names as Helgi, Helga, Ingvarr, and Valdemar into their respective Slavic equivalents – Oleh, Olha, Ihor, and Volodymyr. As a result of the diminishing opportunities in trade caused by repeated nomadic attacks on the trade routes and by Constantinople’s commercial decline, by the 12th century, the early trader-warriors gradually changed into large landowners. Land was not difficult to come by because princes had a surfeit of open, uncultivated territory to give away to their retainers.
Unlike in Western Europe where noble landholding was conditional upon service to an overlord, in Rus’ the boyars had a hereditary right to their estates (votchyny) and retained them even if they left the prince they served for another. Many boyars lived in the cities, renting their lands to peasants in return for a portion of their produce, which they sold on the open market. It was their city orientation, commercial interests, and mobility that differentiated the boyars of Kievan Rus’ from the nobility of Western Europe.Below the boyars were the urban patricians, or liudy as they were called, often described as the Kievan middle class. Its foremost members were the great merchants who engaged in foreign trade, intermarried with the boyars, and dominated city politics. Compared with the burghers of Western Europe at the time, the urban elite of Kievan Rus’ was much more powerful and numerous, even after the slackening trade brought about a relative decline in its position during the 12th century. Included among the less influential and wealthy urban inhabitants – the molodshi liudy or younger men – were the petty merchants, shopkeepers, and skilled craftsmen, such as armorers, masons, glaziers, and goldsmiths, who were organized into trade associations. Lowest on the urban social scale was the chern or proletariat, people who owned no property and who hired themselves out as manual laborers.
The vast majority of the population consisted of peasants, or smerdy. Because the historical sources focused their attention on the upper classes, little is known about the peasantry. It is generally accepted that throughout the Kievan period, most of the peasants were relatively free. However, as times became more difficult in the 12th–13th centuries, there are indications that peasants became increasingly subject to various forms of bondage. A free peasant had access to a court of law, could move about at will, and his sons could inherit his land (if he had only female heirs, however, the prince had the right to claim his land).
The major obligations of the smerdy were the payment of taxes (dan’) and the performance of military duties in wartime, usually of a supportive nature. An indication of the peasant’s low status in society was the penalty imposed by the formulators of the Ruska pravda on those responsible for the death of a smerd: the blood money was in such cases set at 5 hryvnia. By way of comparison, the blood money for killing a merchant or a member of the junior druzhyna was 40 hryvnia, while that for killing a senior member of the prince’s retinue was 80.If a peasant or member of another social group fell into debt (a frequent occurrence because interest rates ranged from 25 to 50%), or if he simply wanted a cash advance, he could enter into an agreement with his creditor whereby he obligated himself to perform labor for a specified period of time in lieu of monetary payments. These indentured, or half-free, laborers were called zakupy. At the very bottom of the social pyramid were the slaves, or kholopy. Because slaves were a major commodity of trade between Kiev and Constantinople, it is safe to assume that slavery was commonplace in Rus’, especially before the acceptance of Christianity. The ranks of the slaves, many of whom worked on princely estates, were enlarged by prisoners of war, children of slaves, zakupy who attempted to flee from their obligations, and other unfortunates. It was possible, however, for slaves to buy their own freedom or to receive it in reward for faithful service to their masters.
The many people who were associated with the church also constituted a separate social group. Parish priests, deacons and their families, monks, and nuns were under the exclusive jurisdiction of the church. In addition, the izhoi, a term originally used to designate princes who had lost their patrimony (sometimes referred to as izhoi-princes), but later extended to include all individuals who did not fit into a specific social category, were also under the protection of the church.
Counted among these were recently freed slaves (the church encouraged the freeing of slaves as a good deed), bankrupt merchants, and priests’ sons who were illiterate and therefore excluded from the priesthood.Historians have long struggled with the question of similarities between the society of Kievan Rus’ and that of the medieval West. Specifically, they have been engrossed by the question of whether European feudalism existed everywhere before the age of industrialization. Soviet historians accept it as a matter of fact that Kievan Rus’ was a feudal society. This was also the view of such respected non-Marxist scholars as Nikolai Pavlov-Sylvansky, who was impressed by the disintegration of Kievan Rus’ in the 12th century into small principalities with an increasingly agrarian-based economy. However, most modern non-Marxist historians disagree with this analysis. They point out that because of the minimal control exercised by princes over their boyars, the institution of vassalage, which was central to feudalism, did not exist in the Riurikid realm. Moreover, the important role played by commerce and the cities in Kievan Rus’ and the existence of a largely free peasantry are factors indicating that the situation in the East was quite different from that in the West. Therefore, rather than subsuming Kievan Rus’ under the general category of feudal societies, Western historians prefer to consider it a unique and independent social system.