DAVID B.

MILLER (Chicago, IL, USA)

THE MANY FRONTIERS

OF PRE-MONGOL RUS'

The land into which Volodimer the Saint introduced Christianity as an

official cult about 988 was stateless. It is true that Volodimir forced most of
the few important towns in the vast area between Kiev and Novgorod to
accept his brothers and sons as overlords by his death in 1015. But how
different were the realities and conceptions of community and of outsiders in
that period from those of today-and how misleading can be modem
conceptions of sovereignty and,.frontiers when applied to these phenomena.
Volodimer's political achievement, remarkable though it was, amounted to
this: the establishment of a ruling clan and its retinues with tributary rights
over a welter of different peoples at central points in agricultural communities
and along commercial routes. When the Mongols came two hundred fifty
years later, Rus' was -more populous, more urban, more literate, ethnically
more homogeneous, and richer in the extent of land under tillage and in the
vitality of urban manufacturing and commerce. It had a fragmented political
culture centered in a multitude of what I. Ia. Froianov and others have called
city-states. ,
The degree to which towns generated independent political cultures with
institutional coherence and sense of community varied considerably. Nor
were literati consistent when they wrote of a larger entity called Rus' or the
Rus'skaia zemlia. City-state and Rus', both terms were concepts of
community. Whether they ever were defined in territorial terms with frontiers
beyond which Others had a different body politic and a different loyalty is
open to question.
The dynamic by which these communities came into being and the
. forms they ? tc?ok ? werethe result of related but different processes, each of
which might be said to have had its own frontier. Illustrating these processes
is analogous to placing one transparancy atop another on a map of Rus'. A
first set of imaginary transparancies marks areas of agricultural tillage and
towns. A second set illustrates manufactures and commerce; a third shows
the areal of a common written culture as defined by evidence of Christian .
worship and literacy;,?,afourth set marks ethno-linguistic frontiers. My last set
of imaginary transparancies. reflects political units and the frontiers of self- '
identity, that is, how people defined their community and what divided them
232

from Others. For each category of community and its frontier I offer three
transparancies; the first of Rus' about 1000, the second reflecting the
situation around 1100, and the third the state of things from 1200 to the
Mongol invasions of 1238-40.

* * *

My transparancies of agricultural tillage and towns take the form of

points registering fortified places identified by archaeologists. Probably not
all of them were permanent settlements, but then how many micro-
settlements there were, mere hamlets without walls, one can only guess. The
dots are indicative of human effort and to suggest that in the aggregate they
represent densities of settlement should not lead us far astray. In the
transparencies the points come in various sizes according to the size of their
fortified areas. I take them as a rough measure of the size of settlements from
the humblest pogost to the greatest of towns. The pattern of their
development to the Mongol invasion will be of great importance in defining
modifications in the development of all other phenomena under
investigation.
The model owes much to the dynamic statistical profile of settlements
and town formation in Rus' developed by the late A. V. Kuza In the first
transparancy settlements existing about 1000 already show up as a pattern of
clusters. The largest and densest cluster was that on the central Dnepr and its
tributaries; a lesser cluster was evident on the upper part of the southern Bug
and Dnestr Rivers to the west; another shows up on the upper Don.
Elsewhere patterns were thinner, the dots even widely dispersed as in lithe
loose cluster on the Northern Bug River and on the Pripiat' and its southern
tributaries, or that on the upper Neman. Elsewhere individual points existed
'
in empty spaces.
By 1100 the same clusters were larger and denser with the exception of
that on the upper Don which disappeared. There were also new clusters: on
the upper Dnepr around Smolensk, along the Oka and to its north; and a
sparser cluster between the upper Volga and Lake Il'men forming the nucleus
of the Novgorod land. By 1200 there were many more sites, but the tightest
cluster and the most settlements were still in the central Dnepr basin from the
Ros River on the right bank south of Kiev to the Desna to the northeast.
This was the southernmost area of mixed forest and pasture. In the same zone

1. A. V. Kuza,"Sotsial'no istoricheskaiatipologiiadrevnerusskikhgorodakhX-XII vv.,"

Russkiigorod 6 ( 1 983): 4-26; idem.Malyi goroda DrevneiRusi (Moscow:Nauka, 1989);his
chapters in Drevniaia Rus'. Gorod, zamok,selo, cd. B. A. Kolchin (Moscow:Nauka, 1985),
esp. tables 1, 6, 16-19;based on pioneeringfield studiesof P. A. Rappoport,Materialyi issle-
dovaniiapo arkheologiiSSSR[hereafterMIA],nos. 52, 105, 140(1956, 1961,1967).
 233

to the west in the uplands near the Carpathians, the lands of Galich and
Volyn' on the Dnestr and Northern Bug contained almost as many
settlements but scattered over a larger territory. In descending order of density
were clusters on the upper Dnepr and in the Vol'ga-Oka triangle. The number
of sites in the latter cluster had increased significantly since 1100. A new
cluster shows up in 1200 around the ancient city of Polotsk on the Western
Dvina. But neither here, nor around Turov and Pinsk. on the Pripiat', nor on
the upper Neman aro. p d*'bor6den" (Grodno) were densities much greater in
1200 than in 1100. Excepting its southeast portion near the headwaters of the
Volga, the Novgorod land had hardly developed at all. ' ;
Knowing that Slav and Balt farmers, the main ethnic stock, preferred to
live in hamlets, the settlement patterns described above must approximate the
locatioa and extent? of land put to the plow. The denser the pattern, the
greater the completeness of land utilization. If this is granted, then it must
follow from the first transparancy that widespread agriculture first appeared in
the basin of the central Dnepr and that it continued to develop most
intensively'there; tha(šà'uthwest Rus' possessed a solid agricultural base
early on, one which continued to develop; that in the early 1100s the upper
Dnepr an<1 Vntga-0?3 areas, had become important areas of tillage and
continued to develop into the 1200s with the latter having the most
explosive g?oi1th;' and that agriculture developed slowly and steadily in the
relatively swampy lands of western Rus' and also, but even more slowly,
around a few centers in the climatically less hospitable north.
It is thought that in pre-industrial societies towns initially coalesced as
market centers feeding off surrounding agricultural districts.2 In such societies .
levels of productivity per unit of land or per capita changed little over time.
It meant that increases in overall surpluses to feed people who were not
farmers had to come from marginal increments generated by .
primarily
increasing numbers' of farmers tilling additional plots of land. In north
Europe where only about one-third of arable land was planted annually in

2. My discussion of central place theory and agriculture relies on Ester Boserup,

Populationand Technologièàt Change (Chicago:Univ.of ChicagoPress, 1 98 1J.);C. Russell,
MedievalRegionsand Their Cities (Bloomington,IN: Indiana Univ. Press. 1972); Gilbert
Rozman, Urban Networksin Russia, 1750-1800,and Premodern Periodization (Princeton:
PrincetonUniv. Press, 1976), 5-41Norman
; Pounds,An EconomicHistoryof MedievalEurope
(London: Longmans, 1974), esp. 128-39;H. H. Lamb, "Climate and History in Northern
Europe and Elsewhere,"in Climatic Changes on a Yearlyto Millennial Basis, eds. A. A.
Mourner and W. Karl6n(Dordrecht:D. Reidel, 1984),225-40;Hans-WemerGoetz, Leben im
Mittelalter:vom 7. his zum 13. Jahrhundert(Munich:C. H. Beck, 1986),chs. 1-2;Drevniaia
Rus', ed. Kolchin,219-33,tables 83-87; R. A. French,"Russians and the Forest," and "The
Introduction of the Three-field Agricultural System," in Studies in Russian Historical
Geography,2 vols.,eds.James Baterand R. A. French(London:AcademicPress, 1983),1: 22-
44, 65-81.
_ .. : ,: , .. -
 234

cereals, a third of the harvest was needed as seed for the next sowing, and
animals and farmers had to be fed from the remainder. Between 900 and 1250
improvements in farming and a warming cycle resulted in increased average
yields as a ratio of seed sown for principal cereals from 1:2 to 1:3 or 1:4. To
achieve such ratios, of course, rainfall and other factors had to be favorable.
But even at a ratio of 1:4 only about one-twelfth of the crop could be
marketed. Obviously it required a dense network of many farms, and farmers,
to support a town. What then in Rus', where a harsh continental climate
dictated average yields of about 1:3? Transportation was a second variable
affecting town formation in agricultural societies; the more distant the tilled
land from a town, the greater the cost of moving its harvest to market. From
where it became uneconomical to do so, farms became suppliers of new
market centers. The emerging pattern of settlment then was one in which
clusters of farming hamlets surrounded market towns that were equidistant
from one another.
Returning to the transparencies, and taking into consideration that Rus'
was criss-crossed by slow moving, navigable rivers that allowed greater
distances between markets, it does not take much imagination to see that the
emerging pattern of settlement was one of ever denser clusters of small
hamlets surrounding ever more numerous market towns. Of the over fourteen
hundred known fortified sites, or of the eight hundred sixty-two of them that
archaeologists have investigated, or even of the two hundred sixty-two place
names mentioned in chronicles, the number that had an urban character was
relatively small. Kuza calculated that forty-one settlements in 1000 had
fortified areas of 2.5 or more hectares, a size adequate for a town. Of these he
thought thirty to thirty-six possessed enough urban characteristics-a
complex system of walls, the presence of masonry buildings, evidence of
crafts and trade, or that it was a political or cult center--to be called a town.
By 1100 there were seventy-eight towns with 2.5 hectares of walled area; by
the same criteria, Kuza thought fifty-eight to sixty were towns. In 1200 the
totals were one hundred twenty-three and at least seventy-five. The number of
settlements of lesser size increased at a greater pace. Kuza counted fifty-two
settlements with fortified areas of 1-2.5 hectares and 267 of less than 1
hectare in 1100; by 1200 the number of such settlements in each category had
increased significantly, to 111and 600. In size, location, and number, the
pattern of town formation duplicated the pattern by which settlement clusters
formed. These developing urban networks resembled classical descriptions of
central place theory.3
-- .
3. In addition to Kuza see Paul Bairoch,Cities and EconomicDevelopment(Chicago:
Univ. of ChicagoPress, 1988),esp. ] 1-18;Carsten Goehrke,"Bemerkungenzur altrussischen
Stadt der fruhen Teilfurstenzeit(mitte des 1 1.bis des 12. Jahrhunderts),"in Beitrdge zum
 235

Central place theory posits that a single town eventually emerges as the
central place of a "mature" society of dense agricultural settlement, local
market towns, and often towns of intermediate size. Central places almost
always are cult and political centers served by concentrations of artisans and
merchants engaged in long distance as well as local trade. "Portal" cities of
unusually large size exist where a central place enjoys an exceptional
geographical location controlling the exchange of goods at a strategic point
on narrow seas, at a river mouth, or at a junction between river systems or
geographical zones.
In Rus' only the central Dnepr basin could be described as having an
emerging hierarchy of towns in 1000. Kiev was its central place and already
large and populous. Its religious and political prominance and position as a
point of departure of goods from Rus' across the steppe to the Black Sea
made it a portal city of unusual importance. That settlement formation in its
environs was greater than elsewhere speaks of relatively intense agricultural .
development. Chemigov and Pereiaslavl'-Russkii, potential central places,
were still within Kiev's orbit. Elsewhere, excepting the nest of small towns
in the Dnestr-Northem Bug region, only isolated commercial towns existed:
Polotsk, a cogeedon pointier commerce on- the-wokm Dvhwz first Ladoga,
then Novgorod as ports of call in the trade from the Baltic to the Volga and
points east and south; and'Smolensk at the junction of east-west and north- .
south routes.
By the early 1100s Kiev had become a giant city with an interior area of
300-350 hectares and thirty to fifty thousand inhabitants. Its land was still
more densely settled-and farmed---than any in Rus', but neither this nor its
vitality as a commercial and manufacturing center can account for its great
size. Kiev's elite must have taken tribute from other lands for some time after
1100. In these lands from about the 1080s on there seems to have been an
explosion of town formation and growth. Chernigov and PereiasIavl'-Russkii
became central places. Both had become cult and political centers; Chernigov
had several important satellite towns. In southwest Rus' there were perhaps
ten towns by the 1130s. One, Galich, had become a major urban center with

HochmittelalterlichenStddtewesen; ,ed.B. Diestelkamp(Köln: BöhlauVerlag, 1962),208-27;

idem, "Die Anfdngedes mittelalterlichenStadtwesensin eurasischerPerspektive,"Saeculum
31 (1980): 194-239;V. V. Karlov,"Ofaktor3kh ekonomicheskogoi politicheskogorazvitiia
russkogogorodav epokhu srednevekov'iia,"Russkiigorod 1 (1978):32-69;David B. Miller,
"MonumentalBuildingand Its Patronsas Indicatorsof Economicand PoliticalTrendsin Rus'.
900-1262,"JahrbacherfLfrGeschichteOsteuropas38 (1990):321-55;WitoldHensel,Anfarrge
der Stddte be den Dst- und West-slawen(Bautzen:Domowina,1967);V. I. Meuntsev, "The
Territorialand DemographicDevelopmentof MedievalKiev and Other MajorCities of Rus," .
Russian Review48 ( 1 989):145-70;EduardMühle,Die stddtischenHandelszentrender nord-
westlichenRus'.(Stuttgart:FranzSteiner,-1 99vi .
 236

a walled area of eighteen hectares. In western Rus' Turov was administrative

and economic center of a sparsely populated swampy domain in which Pinsk
was the only other identifable town; Polotsk was center of a land in which
Vitebsk was probably a town by 1100 and in which there may have been two
others by 1150. Perhaps also Goroden' and Dorogobuzh on the upper Neman
were towns by 1130. On the upper Dnepr in 1130 Smolensk was still the
only town. In Suzdalia Rostov and Suzdal' were administrative centers (as
was Beloozero north of the Volga), but whether any of them possessed more
than rudimentary urban characteristics before 1130 is doubtful. On the lower
Oka there were Riazan' and Murom. In the north Novgorod was the fastest
growing city, its prominance the result of an alliance of princes and its
citizenry to. make it the portal city through which the riches of the northern
forests were funnelled into international trade routes. Given its limited
agricultural potential, the sparseness of its cluster is not surprising, although
Pskov and Ladoga were important towns, the latter by virtue of its
''
commercial importance.
By 1200 the process of urbanization around central places was more
pronounced. A necklace of market-administrative centers surrounded Kiev;
Chernigov was a large central city with a mature urban network of secondary
towns and villages. In southwest Rus' from 1150 Volodimer was the central
place of Volyn'. But neither it nor Galich, now very large, retained.
hegemony, which went with their senior princes to new towns in their
regions. Smolensk suddenly had become the center of a hierarchy of towns;
Novgorod was larger and its per capita wealth enviable, but it had only four
intermediate towns. The sudden emergence of Suzdalia in the Volga-Oka
triangle as a mature society was truly surprising. The new town of
Volodimer, its central place, had at least six satellite towns in addition to
ancient Rostov and Suzdal'.
The pattern of tillage, settlement, and population growth illustrated in
this succession of transparencies had both "inner" and "outer" frontiers. The
proliferation of settlements, seen in the increasing number of dots as one
transparancy is superimposed on another, filled in the empty spaces on the
map as clusters which thickened and grew in area. They created inner frontiers
pushing into the shrinking "wilderness" of empty spaces within and between
the clusters. These were the "building blocks" of a progressively integrated
civilization. The outer frontiers of these clusters also expanded, if unevenly,
in successive transparencies. The living organisms represented so abstractly
on the map were pushing their frontiers into neighboring areas.
I have noted the emergence a hierarchy of central towns and their
satellites within each cluster. Central places were "receivers" of economic,
cultural, and political currents in large networks extending to other central
places and beyond. Internalizing and transforming what they received, central
 237

places forged unique economic, cultural, and political institutions and self-
identities. Central places also acted like dynamos that generated economic,
cultural, and political power. Their reach depended on the density of the
networks. Secondary towns acted like boosters, radiating these currents to the
smallest hamlets. In the following pages I will examine the frontiers of these
processes of integration and expansion.

Drawing on the rich data provided by archaeological investigations since

B. A. Rybakov's magisterial study of the crafts, it is now possible to draw
general conclusions about the sophistication and magnitude of manufacturing
and commerce in pre-Mongol Rus'. We have fascinating accounts of the
development of glass making and other crafts and Thomas Noonan has
sketched a comprehensive hypothesis about processes of technological
transfer and the rising volume of commerce that was one of the dynamics
4
structuring the expansion of the clusters of urban life I have described.4
Ancient sources testify to the co-existence of long distance trade in 1000
across a Rus' in which local market relationships and urbanization are hardly
attested. Scandinavian, Finnic, Balt, Arab, Slavic, and Turkic merchants
plied routes between the Baltic and the central Volga--the Bulg_ar land-and
beyond. They also tapped the forest wealth of Rus', its honey, wax, and furs..
Similar groups organized the movement of such goods, as well as amber and
slaves, along north-south river routes to Kiev, and ultimately to the Crimea
and Constantinople. The enterprise was partly tribute-taking and coercive,
partly commercial. The permanence and high value of the commodities made
it profitable even under the primitive circumstances prevailing in Rus'; in no
small degree it underwrote the political power of Volodimer the Saint's
family. The enterprise had no ethnic or political frontier.
4. B. A. Rybakov;Remeslodrevnei Rusi (Moscow:IzdaLAN SSSR, 1948);Kolchinon
crafts and Darkevichon archaeologicalevidenceof commercein Drevniaia Rus', ed. B. A.
Kolchin, 243-65, 387-400; Kolchin and V. I. lanin, "ArkheologiiaNovgoroda 50 let," in
Novgorodskiisbornik.50 let raskopokNovgoroda,eds. B. A. Koichinand V. I. lanin (Moscow:
Nauka, 1982), 71-91;P. P. Tolochko,Kiev i kievskaiazemliav epokhu feodal'noirazdrob-
lennosti XII-Xill vekov(Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1980), 21-66; idem et al., eds., Novoe v
arkheologiiKieva(Kiev:Naukovadumka, 1 98 1 ), 265-378; L. V. Alekseev,Polotskaia zemlia
(Moscow:Nauka,1966),66-11 l;E. A. Rybina,Arkheologicheskie ocherkiistorii novgorodskoi
torgovliX-XIXvv. (Moscow:Izdat. Moskovskogoun-ta, 1978);P. A. Rappoport."Stroitel'nye
arteli Drevnei Rusi i ikh zakazchiki," Sovetskaia arkheologiia 4 (1985): 80-89; Miller,
"MonumentalBuilding,"I 1-16;Muhle,Die siddtischenHandelszentren;V. M. Petegirich,"Iz
istoriiekonomicheskikh Rusi v X-XIIIvv. (po arkheo-
i kul'tumykhsviazeiGalitsko-Volynskoi
logicheskimdannym)," in Slavianskie drevnosti i etnogenez.ed. V. D. Koroliuk (Kiev:
Naukovadumka, 1980),151-62;Thomas S. Noonan,"The Flourishingof Kiev's International
and DomesticTrade,ca. I 100-ca.1240,"in UkrainianEconomicHistory,ed. I. S. Koropeckyj
(Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniv.Press, 1991), 102-45;idem.,"The MonetaryHistoryof Kiev
in the Pre-MongolPeriod."Harvard UkrainianStudies111 ( 1 987):
384-443.
238

An imaginary transparancy showing manufactures and commerce in 1100

would also register an embryonic pattern of local technological and
commercial development. Noonan's work and case studies of glass making,
masonry construction and other crafts make clear it that Kiev was the great
receiving point for technologies introduced into Rus'. Conversion to
Orthodox Christianity was the catalyst, foreign artisans, especially Greeks,
were the carners, and Kiev's princes the transfer agents. The same sources
supplied rival princes in Chernigov with skilled artisans, and an independent
center of masonry construction perhaps emerged in Galich. The process of
diffusion began immediately. Local apprentices learned from foreign masters.
By 1050 apprentice masons and church decorators had become masters of
local collectives of artisans. Usually relying on princely patronage, they
practiced their skills in the central Dnepr basin and extended them to
Novgorod and probably to Polotsk. The employment of new technologies
was uiban-based as were their patrons. Kiev, a frontier town of the Orthodox
commonwealth, had become the nerve center of a sub-system of technological
transfer.
By 1100 and certainly before 1150 Kiev was a major manufacturing
center. In construction, probably because it was so costly, princely patronage
remained the principal transfer agent that introduced skills of stone cutting,
brick making, and building, and also esthetic norms to Volyn', Smolensk,
Goroden', Suzdalia, and Riazan'. By 1160 local construction teams were
working independently in these lands. The pattern of technological transfer in
thi. industry resembled that of the formation of urban networks: building
skills spread to new central places and secondary towns, while in vital central
places like Chernigov, Kiev, Novgorod, and Polotsk, they continued to be
practiced intensively. The lands of Riazan' and Pereiaslavl'-Russkii, where
urbanization was stunted, were exceptions.
Rich urban communities like Kiev and Novgorod over time multiplied
the number and variety of workshops producing objects for their elites.
Between 1100 and 1200 there is also evidence of specialization and
commercialization of those crafts that did not require the large intitial
investments needed for masonry construction. The most important of these
were glass making, pottery turning, the production of glazed tiles, and the
working of ferrous and non-ferrous metals. While production for commission
of luxury items spawned new technologies and innovations in existing skills,
shops produced growing quantities of crockery, amphorae, glass beads and.
bracelets, and the ubiquitous slate whorls for looms for mass markets.
Commercialization was accompanied by simplification and cheapening of
ceramic products. Something analogous took place in construction: in
Novgorod, but also in other towns, by 1200 builders built simpler, more
uniform, and smaller churches for a wider pool of less affluent clients-urban
 239

parishes, merchant groups, small monasteries, secondary towns, and boiar

families. The evidence Noonan has organized and interpreted also shows that
market expansion produced technological transfer that shows up in the
appearance of shops in other towns by 1200 producing for the market goods
once fabricated in one place.
The most obvious pattern exhibited in these imaginary transparencies
was of an expanding frontier of technical knowledge, output, and trade
spreading outward from Kiev and the central Dnepr basin, its lines
superimposed on the ancient and, from the 1140s, diminishing flow lines of
tributary commerce toward Kiev. Given the sparsity of reciprocal urban
centers initially, lines of the new commerce had. to "leap" great distances
before showing up in Novgorod where the pattern intersected with the old
Baltic-Volga trade route. Kiev's trading partners over time grew in number
and proximity. By 1200 they traded with one another and their products .
turned up outside Rus' in northern and eastern Europe. This phenomenon
resembled that in successive transparencies of settlement development, and
for good reason. Technological transfer and manufacturing, in all but
construction, followed commercial expansion, expanding the areal of
economic community. The transparencies also reveal another sort of frontier,
an inward-moving frontier based on town formation, one that integrated
small settlements with larger ones in commercial networks and brought new ..
technologies from an increasing number of big towns to a growing number of
smaller ones .

* **

The emergence of a common written culture left much the same pattern
on a map of Rus' as the development of manufacturing and commerce. It
came to Kiev with Orthodox Christianity; it had expanding frontiers that
spread from Kiev thoughout the central Dnepr basin to other towns in Rus'
arid with town formation to new areas. The Orthodox faith and writing also
possessed internal frontiers. Like the church, they were initially and foremost
urban phenomena that were diffused downward through the social order from
a small clerical and an even smaller lay elite to touch ordinary folk. The
development of urban networks facilitated their diffusion into the
countryside. From central places, then secondary towns and major villages,
this culture extended tentacles along traditional paths traced by family, .
commercial, and cult ties that connected them with the surrounding
countryside. In addition to zealous clerics, the agents that defined the process .
are familiar: ambitious princes, their retinues, and their urban allies; boiar
entrepreneurs; craftsman seeking markets, and merchants who sought
'
integrated markets.
 240

After his baptism Prince Vo!odimer Sviatoslavich established Orthodoxy

in Kiev in 988 or 989 by having its people baptized, an event extolled by
Metropolitan Ilarion. in his "Sermon on Law and Grace," and by establishing
a Greek metropolitan there.5 ,In 995-96 he built the Church of the Tithe, the
first masonry church in Kiev. Probably in his lifetime a Greek bishop was
seated in Novgorod. Volodimer's son laroslav the Wise (d. 1054) with the
guidance of Greek monks organized the first monasteries, a male monastery
of St. George and a female monastery dedicated to St. Irene. It was laroslav
who employed Greek builders to built the Cathedral of St. Sophia for the
metropolitanate. In name, form, and dignity it too had Greek antecedents.
Thus Kiev became a jewel on the frontier of the greater community of
Orthodox Christendom; thus it entered Christian history. The subsequent
proliferation of religious institutions in Rus' provides a good indication on
my transparencies also of the spread of Orthodox written culture.
A few more bishoprics appeared in the eleventh century. Polotsk had one
by about 1050, while the Kievan land had two: one at Belgorod in a highly
settled area, the other on the southern frontier in Iur'ev for missionary work
among Turkic steppe peoples. Iur'ev was overrun by Polovetsian raiders
around 1100. The appearance of bishops in Chernigov and Pereiaslavl'-
Russkii was coincident with their political autonomy after 1054. From the
vita of St. Feodosii of the Caves Monastery we learn that Kievan Prince
Iziaslav appointed one of its monks bishop of Rostov in Suzdalia (1070s?).
Then or soon after Volodimer-Volynskii and Turov became bishoprics.
Princes were prime movers in founding bishoprics outside the Kievan land.
The sources, when they mentioned princely motives, did so in formulas of
Christian piety. We can infer a kindred motive: that princes founded sees to
promote settlements into ruling centers either to establish their legitimacy or
to extend their political sway.
The next wave of episcopal foundation placed a bishop in Smolensk in
the 1130s, another in Galich, and re-established the Suzdalian see, the earlier
effort evidently having not taken root on that wild frontier. In the first two
local princes were promoters and Iurii Dolgorukii was behind the third. A
final transparancy indicates that diocesian development continued to the
Mongol invasion with autonomous local authorities as sponsors. By 1174

5. I rely esp. on AndrzejPoppe,'The OriginalStatus of the Old Russian Church,"and

"L'organizationdioc6sainede la Russieaux XIe-XIIesi6clcs,"in idem.,TheRise of Cliristian .
Russia (London: Variorum Reprints, 1982); idem, Pafstwo i Kósciól na Rusi w XI wieku
(Warsaw:Pafstwowewydawnistwonaukowe,1968);E. Golubinskii,Istoriia russkoitserkvi,2.
vols. (Moscow:Universitetskaiatip., 1901-I 1),1, pt. 1; A. I. Komech,Drevnerusskoezodch-
estvo kontsaX-nachalaXII v. (Moscow:Nauka, 1977);Miller,"MonumentalBuilding,"339-
55 ;VladimirVodoff,Naissancede la chrétientérusse: La conversiondu Prince Vladimirde
Kiev(988) et ses consequences(Xle-Xlllesiecles)(Paris: Fayard, 1988).
 241

Andrei Bogoliuskii transferred the Suzdalian see to Volodimer-Suzdal'skii.

Rostov was made a second bishopric in Suzdalia in 1214. About 1190
Riazan' became a bishopric. Kiev re-established its missionary see to the
steppe in Kanev, then returned it to Iur'ev. In the southwest Peremyshl' split
from Galich and Lutsk and Ougrovsk from Volodimer-Volynskii to become
eparchies. Later Prince Daniilo Romanovich transferred that of Lutsk to his
new residence of Kholm.
In Rus' monasteries arguably were more important than episcopal sees in
training local aspirants in the written culture of Orthodox Christianity. The
Monastery of.the, Caves near Kiev was the nerve center of this culture. By
Iaroslavs death it was self-governing, its charter modeled on that of the
Studion Monastery in Constantinople. Its monks excelled in copying,
translating, and educating. They wrote many of the finest works produced in
Rus'. Its pool of educated monks furnished abbots and bishops for
monasteries and sees everywhere. However, laroslav's example of lay
patronage was the model for most monastic foundations. These were
"domainal",(ktitorskie, votchinnye) monasteries.
In the 1000s monasteries existed only in the central Dnepr basin.
Novgorod's first monastaries, those of St. George and St. Antonii, were
founded soon after 1 I00 and sources begin to mention the foundation or
existence. of monasteries in other towns. Church historian Evgenii
Golubinskii estimated that there were seventy monasteries in Rus' by the
Mongol invasion-seventeen in Kiev and Novgorod, .six in Volodimer-
Suzdal'skii; five in Smolensk and Galich, three in Chemigov, three in
Polotsk, : two in Pereiaslavl'-Russkii, one each in Volodimer-Volynskii,
Suzdal',. ,. Muron1;;Pskov, Staraia Russa, Nizhnii Novgorod, and laroslavl'.
All were situated within or near town walls.
Building records confirm the connection between town formation and the
extention:of Christian culture. Thus prince Iurii Vsevolodovich built a major
church in Nizhnii Novgorod with. the founding of the town in 1221 on the
eastern frontier :of Suzdalia. Its missionary objectives in the Mordvinian land
were political .as .well . as religious. Data about the building of masonry
churches also help in estimating the extention of the inner frontier of written
culture down the social order in Rus' towns. If princes and high churchmen
were the only patrons in the first transparancy, at least in Kiev and Novgorod
after 1100 ,.people other than princes displayed their wealth and piety as
patrons of this culture. In Novgorod patrons of thirty-eight of fifty-four
masonry buildings can be identified. Here princely patronage virtually ceased
after the 1130s; thencefbfth boiar families and other commoners built at least
two-thirds of the churches that went up. Elsewhere princes and clerics (a
distant second) were still the patrons of record, evidence perhaps that as late
 242

as 1200 in most places an appreciation of high Christian culture, and the

wealth to display it, was still a combination enjoyed by only a few.
A count of wooden as well as masonry churches would be a better
measure of the extent to which the church socialized the people of Rus'
towns. However, fires and decay have obliterated them, chroniclers ordinarily
were uninterested in celebrating them or their builders, and contemporary
reports, such as those for Kiev by Thietmar of Merseberg around 1000 of four
hundred churches and in Laurentian Chronicle of six hundred churches
destroyed in the great fire of 1124, exaggerate. But other fire narratives, such
as those for Volodimer-Suzdal'skii under 1185 and for Novgorod under
1227, contained knowledgeable, even meticulous, counts.6 They indicate that
by 1200 Rus' towns contained many wooden churches. Such counts do not
tell us the sophistication with which townspeople integrated Christianity and
its written culture into their lives, but they are proof that no one living .
within town walls could escape the influence of that culture.
Records of masonry construction suggest also that the expansion of
urban networks into rural areas was the vehicle that advanced a second inner
frontier of Christian culture, its penetration of rural areas. Around Kiev,
excepting Belgorod and, temporarily, Iur'ev, the only secondary town with.a
masonry church in 1100 was Vyshgorod, site of the pilgrimage Church of
Sts. Boris and Gleb. My final transparency would show that before 1240
there were new masonry churches in Kanev (1144), Ovruch ( 1190s), Belgorod
(ca. 1200), and near present-day Bila Tserkva. Masonry monuments mark the
penetration of Christian culture into secondary centers in my final
transparency for parts of the Novgorod land, for the lands of Suzdalia,
Smolensk, and Chernigov, and in a more weakly developed pattern in
Galich, Volodimer-Volynskii, Goroden', and Polotsk. By analogy, one must
assume that many more wooden churches existed as outposts of Christian
'
culture everywhere in intermediate and small towns.
Greek prelates, bookmen, and artisans were the first, importers of
Christian high culture, but the written language they introduced was a variant
of Common Slavic used in translations in the first Bulgarian state I refer to
as Old Slavic. By the time Iaroslav the Wise summoned bookmen, it was
written in Cyrillic. Our interest is in the subsequent growth of literacy in
Rus' in Old Slavic, the study of which presents many vexing questions. To
what degree, for example, did locals master Orthodox high culture? Was Old
Slavic similar enough to Slavic dialects of Rus' to be comprehensible to

6. Die Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg, ed. Robert Holzmann =
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, n.s., 9 (Berlin: WeidmannscheVerlag, 1955), 530;
Novgorodskaiapervaia letopis' [hereafterNPLj, ed. A. N. Nasonov (Moscow-Leningrad:
Izdat. AN SSSR, 1950),57, 257. Polnoe sobranie russkikhletopisei[hereafterPSRLI,2d ed
Akad.nauk, 1908-),l: 293,392.
(St. Petersburg : Imp.
 243

broad elements of the population so that people might easily master and use
it? Recently scholars have advanced new and interesting arguments about
these matters and it is important to examine them, preliminary though they
are. In estimating the extent to which a culture of the written word had come
into being and the degree to which a common culture had integrated the
peoples of Rus', one should anticipate answers phrased according to levels of
literacy and degrees of familiarity, and according to the impact of written
culture on traditional oral cultures in Rus'.' 7
The roughly one hundred seventy-five manuscripts that survive from this
period and the collections dating from later centuries that included items
thought to have originated in the pre-Mongol period constitute the source
base for understanding the sway of Orthodox high written culture. These and
collections of writing on birchbark, graffiti, seals, and markings on artifacts
constitute the inventory on which generalizations can be made about the
popular culture of writing and counting. The rest is inference informed by
analogies with other cultures.8
Virtually all surviving manuscript evidence reflects a culture of elite
churchmen and, where it can be inferred, of their patrons. Virtually all such
texts may be subsumed under categories of scripture, canonical works,
.
hagiography, and collections of fathers of the church. Virtually all were
translated into Old Slavic elsewhere. Most were prepared for liturgical
purposes, although several Byzantine chronographs and a chronicle or two

7, M. T. Clanchy,From Memoryto WrittenRecord: England, 1066-1307(Cambridge,

MA: HarvardUniv.Press, 1979);Brian Stock,The Implicationsof Literacy.Writtenlanguage
and Modesof Interpretationin the Eleventhand TwelfthCenturies(Princeton:PrincetonUniv.
Press, 1983); Simon Franklin, "Literacy and Documentationin Early Medieval Russia,"
Speculum60 ( J 985):1-38.
8. GerhardPodskalsky,Christentumund theologischeLiteraturin der KiewerRus' (988-
1237)(Munich:C. H. Beck, 1982);Franklin,"Literacy;"idem,"Bookleamingand Bookmenin
KievanRus': A Surveyof an Idea,"Harvard UkrainianStudies 12-13( J 988):830-48; idem.,
"The Writingin the Ground;RecentSoviet Publicationsin Early RussianLiteracy,"Slavonic
and East EuropeanReview65 (1987):41 l-21;V. I. lanin and A. A. Zalizniak,Novgorodskie
gramoty na bereste (i raskopok 1977-1983gg.) (Moscow:Nauka, 1986); S. A. Vysotskii,
KievskiegraffitiXI-XVIIvv.(Kiev:Naukovadumka,1985);SvodnyiKatalog slaviano-russkikh
rukopisnykhknig, khi-aniashchikhsiav SSSR.XI-XIIIvv., S. O. Shmidt et al., eds., Moscow:
Nauka, 1984);Henrik Birbaum,"The BalkanComponentof MedievalRussian Culture," and
DeanWorth,"Tawarda SocialHistoryof Russian,"CaliforniaSlavicStudies 12 ( 1 984): 3-30,
227-46;J. Thomson,"The Natureof the Receptionof MedievalByzantineCulturein Russiain
the Tenthto ThirteenthCenturiesand its Implicationsfor RussianCulture,"SlavicaGandensis5
(1978): 107-39;Ihor Sevcenko,"Remarkson the Diffusionof ByzantineScientificand Pseudo-
ScientificLiteratureAmongOrthodoxSlavs,"Slavonicand East EuropeanReview59 ( 1 98 J ):
321-45; A. A. Medyntseva,"Gramotnost' zhenshchinna Rusi X-XIII vv. po dannym epi-
grafiki,"in-Slovoo polku Igoreve' i ego vremia,ed. B. A. Rybakov(Moscow:Nauka, 1985),
218-40.
 244

were known in Rus'. Excepting the extraordinary "Tale of the Host of Igor'"
and several other isolated writings, the small, by comparison, inventory of
surviving works written by local people fall within these genres. Some local
creations were not without distinction compared to Byzantine models:
Metropolitan Ilarion's sermon (before 1050) for its elegance of style,
erudition, and multiple levels of meaning; Metropolitan Klim Smoliatich's
epistle to Presbyter Foma (soon after 1146), a unique example of a local .
engaging in biblical exegesis and revealing a subversive acquaintance with
classical writers. These qualities earned Klim the odd (for Rus') title "the
philosopher." Then there were Prince Volodimer Monomakh's (d. 1125)
literate but literal minded ("I often fell from my horse, fractured my skull
twice...") testament; and the learned-in a monkish sense-allegories,
homilies, exhortations, and sermons ascribed to Kirill of Turov (mid-late
1100s); the newsy paterik of the Caves Monastery written almost entirely
from earlier texts by its one-time monks Simon and Policarp (early 1200s);
and the plaintive "Supplication" of Daniil the Exile (ca. 1200).'
A survey of the frontiers of this culture would not be complete without
discussing its patrons, the sophistication of audiences, and matters of
chronology and geographical distribution of sources. Simon Franklin's
investigations and R. R. Rozov's study of the book in pre-Mongol Rus'
agree that its language was not so distant from the spoken tongue to make it
inaccessable to princes and their retinues. They also agree that, beginning
with Prince Iaroslav's invitation to bookmen, this milieu acquired a lively if
largely passive literacy in the culture. Rozov lists twenty-two identifiable
patrons of books, ten being laymen. Posadnik Ostromir of Novgorod was
one of the first, donating a Bible to Novgorod's bishop dated 1056.' The
inscription also mentioned his wife Feofana, his lord Prince Iziaslav
laroslavich of Kiev and his brother Volodimer, indicating that they too
shared in the Christian culture of the written word. Iziaslav's wife Gertrude, a

9. See esp. Simon Franklin's remarks in idem, tr. and intro., Sermonsand Rhetoric of
Kievan Rus' (Cambridge,MA: Harvard Univ. Press, (991), xcv-cix, and in his "Echoes of
Byzantine Elite Culture in Twelfth Century Russia?" in Byzantium and Europe, ed. A.
Markopoilos(Athens:EuropeanCulturalCenter of Delphi, 1987), 177-83,where he argues
that Daniil's "Petition" and Klim's letter echoed stylistic techniques of contemporary
Constantinopolitanseculardiscourse.Texts with Russiantranslationsof the Igor' tale and other
works specificallycited, exceptingKirill's sermons and Monomakh,are in Pamiatniki liter-
atury Drevnei Rusi [hereafterPLDR]XII veka, eds. L. A. Dmitrievaand D. S. Likhachev.
(Moscow:Khudozhestvennaia literatura,1980);Englishtranslationsof Ilarion,Klim,and Kirill
by Franklin,Sermons,and of the paterik by Muria]Heppell,The Paterik of the KievanCaves
Monastery(Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniv. Press, 1989);for Kirill:1.P. Eremin,"Literatumoe
nasledie Kirilla Turovskogo,"Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoiliteratury 11 (1955): 342-67; 12
( J956):340-60; t3 ( J 957):409-26;15(1958):331-48;for Monomakh's"Testament":PSRL,2d
ed., 1: 240-52,esp. 251.
 245

daughter of Mieszko II of Poland, was also literate. Franklin has

demonstrated that Iaroslav's son Vsevolod and some of his descendents over
several generations were literate, that they married foreign wives who were
literate, and that they were connected with virually every surviving document
of twelfth-century origin. Rozov's list of copyists is larger and the proportion
of churchmen greater. Much of their output was intended for daily readings or
were rhetorical works, reflecting an oral tradition and meant to be read
publicly. Such texts obviously had an audience that extended from the clergy
to communities of laity.
The foregoing description of the high written culture of Rus', superficial
though it may be, suggests that in some superanuated form it was to extend
well beyond a small elite of literate clerics and bookmen. Anecdotal evidence
supports this interpretation. Initially only a few noteworthy ecclesiastical
centers generated' high literacy and most of the texts; in Kiev the chancellory
of the metropolitan, many of the administrators of which were probably
Greek, and the Caves Monastery founded on Greek lines. By the mid-twelfth
century the bishopric of Novgorod, especially under its Byzantinophile
prelate Nifont (1130-56), who was an initiate of the Caves Monastery, and
Smolensk ?undec its first bishop Manuel who was Greek, were
centers of high written culture. The tradition of writing continued in church
circles of Smolensk. The vita of St. Avraamii ( 1200s) says he loved books
and founded a scriptorium in his monastery. A chronicler associated Bishop
Kirill of Rostov with the possession of a library; another said Prince
Volodimer Vasil'kovich of Volyn' (d. 1289) was a devotee of the book.'°
One should not overstate the sophistication of this achievement. In
major centers bookmen often failed to grasp what they copied and Franklin's
search for locals sufficiently "at ease" in this culture to converse with it
turned up three names. Also, the few texts that contained information about
the natural world had been available for a long time in Old Slavic and
aroused no unusual curiosity in Rus'. But cannot one conclude that by 1200
central places and nearby monasteries throughout Rus' were populated by
resident admirers, not always dextrous imitators, and a few creative
manipulators of this high culture? ,
.1 It is now fairly certain that princely courts and a considerably larger
element of the laity generated a more common sort of written culture.
Chronicles, written in a simplified version of Old Slavic, was an
intermediate genre between high and popular culture that was very popular. In
the early 1100s monks of the Caves Monastery wrote chronicles and their
product shows signs of an earlier tradition. Before 1200 annals were produced
in Kiev, Novgorod and probably Pskov, Suzdalia, Riazan', Smolensk, and

10.Rozov,Kniga,77; PSRL,2d ed., 1:457, and 2: 921,925-27.

 246

Polotsk. The Galich chronicle began with the year 1201. It was continued in
Volyn' at the court of Daniil Romanovich and his descendents and possessed
an ornamental style and celebration of warrior virtues that set it off from
other annals which generically were quite similar. But these in time also
diverged somewhat from one another as they assimilated elements of local
East Slavic folk culture, and some of that of their neighbors, and by their
I
development of distinctive local visions of events."
Documents, law codes, and related writings were further evidence of the
extent of popular literacy. Although the inventory of texts is slight-ten
princely and church charters (from the early 1100s), collections of legal
precedents (from the mid- and late-1200s), and sources indicating that Rus'
knew one or more South Slav translations of canon law and the Byzantine
code known as the Ecloga-it reveals several things. Law codes, written in a
simplified Old Slavic contain the archaic syntax of an older East Slavic oral
tradition; they are evidence of an interest in setting down ancient precedents
and procedure. Remaining texts may be taken as attempts of a few to refine
legal practices in the light of Byzantine codes. These things and some
archaeological evidence persuade me that a written legal tradition gradually
' .
took hold widely from 1100 on.
The earliest archaeological materials surviving from Kievan Rus" were
wooden tally sticks and officially marked cylinder bindings used to seal
inventories or documents (late 900s, early 1100s). At least twenty-three,
mostly lead, pendant seals that were attached to documents also have been
catalogued. And, from the discovery of the first fragment in 1951 until 1983,
archaeologists have catalogued one hundred ninty-four birchbark writings for
the pre-Mongol period. More than a few of them indicate that urban citizens
were familiar with precedents and procedures set down in the codes and shed
light on passages in the few extant charters. V. L. lanin thought tally sticks
were official records, possibly those called doski (literally tablets) in later
Pskov codes, of private transactions. He also argued that the finds were proof
of the existence of private documentary archives and an official written legal
culture. Franklin is skeptical of this but, even if he is correct, it would seem

I 1.Cf. Henrik Birnbaum,"The Subculturesof MedievalRussia: Chronology,Regional

Distribution, InternalLinks,and ExternalInfluences,"Viator 15 (1984): 181-235,with Carsten
Goehrke,"Zum Problemdes Regionalizmusin der nissischenGeschichte:Vorubereine kun-
ftige Untersuchung,"Forschungunzur osteuropdischenGeschichte25 ( 1 978): 75-107;also M.
D. Priselkov,Istoriia russkogoletopisaniia(Leningrad:Izdat.Leningradskgoun-ta, 1940),16-
96 ;Rybakov, Russkie letopisi i avtor'Slova o polku Igoreve' (Moscow: Nauka, 1972); A.
Hens'ors'kyi, Nalyts'ko-Volyns'kyilitopys(Prorses skladannia; redaktsii i redaktory)(Kiev:
Vyd-voAN URSR, 1958);Iu. A.Limonov,LetopisanieVladimiro-Suzdal'skoi Rusi(Leningrad:
Nauka, 1967); A. G. Kuz'min, Riazanskoe letopisanie (Moscow: Nauka, 1965); idem.,
Nacha/' nyeetapy drevnerusskogoletopisaniia(Moscow:Izdat.Moskovskaiaun-ta, 1977).
 247

that prominant people were becoming accustomed to preserving written

records in their homes alongside or in place of memory. Novgorod was
atypical in the degree commerce dominated its culture. But, knowing what
we do of Kiev's industrial and commercial vitality and that business cultures
existed elsewhere, one may be reasonably certain, even in the absence of
written materials, that some townspeople everywhere by 1200 were
accustomed to proceedings in which legal documentation, if only
infrequently or in certain types of litigation, was used.
Birchbark writings, graffiti on walls of Kievan churches and St. Sophia
in Novgorod, and marks, phrases, and initials inscribed on artifacts that were
part of everyday life, were further proof that some townspeople commanded a
common sort of literacy. Franklin says an index of people involved in
literacy--owners, writers, senders, recipients, and so on-in the eleventh-
twelfth centuries would yield about one hundred names, not to mention
about a thousand more who were anonymous. People wrote in many different
genres on birchbark. In addition to petitions, wills, and other legal materials,
there were private correspondence, school exercises, religious material (lists,
orders for icons, fragments of prayers, admonitions), and jottings. It would
seem that the written word was common enough in the households of the
rich to involve their officials and retainers, and also among ordinary clergy
and simple monks in Novgorod. Some writings, but even more marks and
inscriptions on bricks, tools, and other artifacts suggest that artisans and
workers were part of this culture. There is evidence female literacy went
beyond the few famous princesses I referred to: graffiti, marks and
inscriptions on slate whorls, and other epigraphical evidence shows that other
well-born women and their courts could write, and that some of their
domestics were literate to some degree. It may be that I have understated the
degree to which the written word had become part of pre-Mongol culture. The
digs in Novgorod which have furnished so much of our evidence have opened
up no more than one-fortieth of the total area of the ancient town.
Obviously popular literacy was an urban phenomenon. Hard evidence, as
well as the arguments by analogy regarding documentation, however, shows
that the culture was not confined to Novgorod, let alone a few major cities,
but spread throughout Rus'. Birchbark documents have been found in Staraia
Russa (9 from the eleventh-thirteenth centuries), Smolensk (10), Pskov (4),
Vitebsk and Mstislavl' ( each). The geographical incidence of epigraphical
evidence is wider yet, coming from Kiev, Vyshgorod, Liubech, Terebovl',
Volkavysk, Dmtsk, Goroden', Pinsk, Smolensk, Riazan', Novgorod, and
Beloozero. In pre-Mongol Rus' Slavic vernaculars were not so different from
Old Slavic. Ordinary people seem to have taken to the written word rapidly.
While archaeological evidence cannot substantiate unequivocally that the
frontiers of everyday literacy spread from Kiev to Novgorod and then to the
 248

chief towns of Rus' in the same manner as material culture and the high
written culture of Orthodoxy did, that was probably the case. Thus far the
evidence does confirm that town formation and the emergence of urban
networks were processes by which the frontiers of literacy penetrated the
countryside.
My final premise is that literacy grew steadily over time and that the use
of writing and the number of people involved in written culture quickened
noticably in the period around 1200. Very few writings dated from the 1000s
and only a restricted circle of princes and clerics were associated with those
that did. Arranging the manuscript inheritance and lists of those connected
with writing in time, the second and third transparancies would show that
literacy, defined in this manner, progressively extended from the older towns
throughout Rus' and had progressively wider circles of admirers. The
incidence of surviving documents begins with the early 1100s, but the
majority of them and of ancillary materials date from the last half century
before the Mongol invasion or the period immediately after. Only then were
documents becoming more than symbol, a habitual way of doing business.
The dating of Novgorod birchbark writings reported through 1983 tells the
same story regarding general literacy: the earliest dated to 1025 and nineteen .
were written in the eleventh century. One hundred forty-one date from the
twelfth century and thirty-four from the early thirteenth century.

* * *

Another set of imaginary transparancies defines changes in frontiers of

ethno-linguistic groups. Viewing these transparancies, we must anticipate
three problems. The first has to do with evidence. It many instances one
cannot authoritatively distinguish between closely related groups, for
instance, between Baits and Slavs, from the layout and artifacts of
settlements and burial mounds; nor can one date closely a culture identified
from toponymic evidence. The others are problems of interpretation. "Real"
frontiers separating ethno-linguistic communities could not have had the
sharp definition of lines on a transparency. Also, more than one ethno-
linguistic community often inhabited a region and many communities were
themselves multi-ethnic. Frontiers then must be understood to divide a
region in which one ethnos enjoyed a preponderance from one dominated
by another. '2 .

12.RomanSerbyn,"The Characterof the Rus Commonwealth,1140-1200"(unpublished

Ph.D. Dissertation,McGillUniv., 1975),27-44, 71-161;1.1. Liapushkin,Slaviane vostochnoi
Evropy nakanune obrazovaniia drevnerusskogo gosudarstva = MIA, no. 152 (Leningrad:
Nauka, 1968);idem.,Dneprovskoelesostepnoelevoberezh'ev epokhuzheleza= MIA,no. 104
(Moscow-Leningrad: Izdat.ANSSSR, 1961);A. N. Nasonov,"Russkaiazemlia" i obrazovanie
 249

In this context it is safe to say that by 1000 Slavic settlement had

overwhelmed and largely assimilated former inhabitants of the mixed forest-
steppe of south Rus'. We know these peoples from a legacy of Iranian and
Turkic xoponyms and hydronyms, and from archaeological evidence of
settlement, the ethnos of which remains controversial. Some probably were
Balts, and unassimilated Turkic peoples continued to live on the edge of the
steppe. Elsewhere Slav migrants lived among Balts and Finns. Slavs, called
the Slovene, penetrated the Novgorod land from the mid-800s. In southern
regions they lived among a Balto-Finnic population; to the north and east
they lived.among Finns. Except at points of concentrated settlement, Slavs
then were a minority. On the Pripiat', the Western Dvina, the upper Dnepr,
and the upper Desna, Slav settlement was well established by 1000 and Slav
migrations into these areas continued in historical time. From the late 900s
into the 1100s from the south the Slavic Viatichi tribe (or confederation)
settled along the Oka as far east as Riazan' and Krivichi Slavs in great
numbers followed the upper Volga into Suzdalia. In these areas from the
Baltic to the Moscow River in 1000 Balts were a numerous and distinctive
ethnos. On the upper Volga and Kliazma Slovene from the Novgorod area
also settled among the Finnic Meria.
Scandinavians-Variagi to Rus' chroniclers-in 1000 were a small but
important ethnos in Rus'. They were a prominent component of the urban
population in the Novgorod land and present in other towns as merchants.
The princely line of Volodimer the Saint descended from Norse raiders, long
maintained ties to Scandinavia, and recruited Variagi warriors for its retinues.

territorii drevnerusskogogosudarstva(Moscow:IzdaLAN SSSR, 195 J ); I. P. Rusanova,B. A.

Timoshchuk, Drevnerusskoe Podnestrov'e (Uzhgorod: Karpati, 1981); L. V. Alekseev,
Polotskaiazemlia(Moscow:Nauka, 1966), 28-65;Ia. G. Zverugo,VerkhneePoneman'e v IX-
XIII vv. (Minsk: Nauka i tekhnika, 1989);V. V. Sedov, Slaviane verkhnegoPodneprov'ia i
Podvin'ia .= MIA,no. 163(Moscow:Nauka, 1970);idem, Proiskhozhdeniei rannaia istoriia
Slavian (Moscow:.Nauka, 1979); idem., "Etnicheskii sostav naseleniia severo-zapadnykh
zemel' Velikogo.Novgoroda(IX-XIV vv.)," Sovetskaia arkheologiia 18 (1953): 190-232;
MarijaGimbutas,The.Balts(New York: Praeger, 1963);Finno-Ugryi Balty v epokhusredn-
evekoi'ia, ed. V. V, Sedov (Moscow:Nauka. 1987); V. N. Toporov,"Etimologicheskieza-
metki po gidronimii srednego Dnepra."in Studia Lingvistica Slavica Baltica, ed. Astrid
Baecklund·Ehler(Lund:Slaviskainstitutionenvid Lunds universitet,1966),299-308;idem.,
"DrevniaiaMoskvav baltiiskoiperspektive,"Balto-slavianskieissledovaniia1981g. (Moscow:
Nauka,1982),3-61; idem.and O. N. Trubachev,Lingvisticheskiianaliz gidronimovverkhnego
Podneprov'ia (Moscow:Izdat.AN SSSR, 1962);1. 1. Goriunova,Einicheskaiaistoriia Vol'go-
Okskogomezhdure;h' ia = MIA, no. 94 (Moscow:Izdat. AN SSSR, 1861);Max Vasmer,Die
Iranier in Südrussland (Leipzig:Markertand Peters, 1923);Stepi Evrazii v epokhusredn-
evekav' ia,ed. S. A. Pletndva(Moscow:Nauka, 198 J );John Lind, "The Martyriaof Odense
and a TwelfthCenturyRussianPrayer,"Slavonicand East EuropeanReview68 (1990): J -2 J ;
Robert Cook, "RussianHistory,IcelandicStory, and ByzantineStrategy in Eymunderpattr
Hringssonar,"Viator 17( J986):65-89.
250

Although Volodimer, his father, and his grandfather had Slavic names in
Rus' chronicles, Scandinavian sources knew the line by Norse names.
laroslav the Wise married a Swedish princess; his daughter married Harald
Hardradi of Norway. Thrice laroslav used Variagi to fight his brothers.
My second imaginary transparancy in this series shows new Turkic
settlement on the southern fringe of the central Dnepr basin which otherwise
was densely populated by Slavs. By 1100 the assimilating power of numbers
and the power of a Slavic written culture in urban centers also made Slavs the
predominant and fastest growing part of the population across central Rus'.
Viatichi colonists continued to settle the Oka valley and spread along the
Moscow River meeting the eastward flow of Krivichi. Slavs from Novgorod
continued their easterly expansion to settle both north and south of the upper
Volga. The Slavic areal also stretched north and west on the Northern Bug
and lower Neman, and west on the Western Dvina. In the Novgorod land
Slavs predominated in towns and west and north-west of Novgorod Slavs
lived alongside Balts and Finns in their settlements and surrounded these
older settlements with new ones; and in the Finnic north Slavs increased
their outposts of settlement. Finally, the Scandinavian presence in Rus'
continued but on a much diminished basis. Norse merchants lived in
Novgorod and in towns on the Western Dvina and Rus' princes maintained
Scandinavian marriage alliances into the 1140s, but there is no longer
evidence of important Scandinavian communities in Rus' towns or the
presence of Norse warriors in princely retinues.
The final transparency delineating ethnic borders around 1200 would
look much the same. Perhaps Slav westward settlement on the Western
Dvina ended. On the Neman Slavs may have been crowded out or assimilated
by Liths. But Slavs expanded areas of preponderance in more westerly parts
of Galich and Volyn' and in the northeast where Suzdalian princes
established Nizhnii Novgorod as a frontier colonizing outpost in Mordvinian
lands. This transparency would also show that Balt speakers such as the
Iatviagi maintained distinctive communities or strengthened them with
increasing numbers in western reaches of Rus'. Within the areal of Slav
dominance stretching eastward in regions south of where once Balts had a
common linguistic border with Finnic speakers and as far south as the Desna
Balts were not entirely assimilated. As late as 1147 the Goliadi (Galindian
Balts) were a functioning community on the upper Protva and north of the
Oka. Moscow probably originated as a Galindian fort, the name itself a Balt
toponym. South of the Gulf of Finland and the Neva River Finnic-speaking
Vod' and Izhory maintained autonomous communities after 1200. Thus,
although the Slavs outnumbered others in most places by 1200 and their
culture was an assimilating force, Rus' remained a patchwork of ethno-
linguistic groups. Linguistic analysis of writing on birch bark indicate that
 251

Balt and Finnic speakers lived on in Novgorod and that Novgorod's oral
culture to some degree was multilingual.
Imaginary transparancies of ethno-linguistic frontiers would be
incomplete if they ignored the dialectical differences that existed among
Slavs in Rus'. The qualities that defined these dialects are in general well
known. But how to interpret them? Horace Lunt pointed out that about 1000
they were dialects of Late Common Slavic, as yet so undifferentiated that the
dialects of Bulgaria and south Rus' were "very close." By about 1150 the "jer
shift" in all Late Common Slavic dialects affected those in Rus' in ways that
set them apart as a separate group known as East Slavic. Lunt argued that one
can therefore speak of a single written "Rus'ian" language as a variant of Late
Common Slavic. Yet each East Slavic dialect also underwent unique
changes; . by 1200 they were moving in direction of greater regional
differentiation. From this George Shevelev concluded that it is best not to
assume the existence of a common language but of a configuration of
dialectical groups. Linguists also differ about the number of distinct dialects
and, therefore, about the frontiers dividing them: A. A. Shakhmatov posited
the existence of three dialects, a northern, an eastern, and a southern; T. Lehr-
Splawinski, N. S. Trubetzskoy and recently A. A. Zalizniak argued for two,
a northern (for Zalizniak divided into sub-dialects) and a southern. Shevelev
has proposed four dialects: one composed of Novgorod and Suzdal' sub-
groups ; a second having Polotsk and Riazan' sub-groups, a Kiev-Podlessa
dialect, and a Galician-Podolian dialect. By 1240 neither in their
characteristics nor the areal of their sway were any of the dialects forerunners
of modem Belorussian, Russian, or Ukrainian. 13
Imaginary transparancies created by historical geographers to illustrate
political frontiers run to extremes: V. T. Pashuto and others portrayed pre-
Mongol Rus' as a great state, albeit with local divisions. I. Ia. Froianov and

13. Cf. HoraceG. Lunt, "The Language of Rus' in the EleventhCentury," Harvard
Ukrainian Studies 12-13 (1988/99):276-313; idem, "History, Nationalism,and The Written
Languageof EarlyRus'," Slavicand East EuropeanJournal 34 (1990):1-29,with Y. Sherekh
(GeorgeShevelov),Problems in the Formation of Belorussian= Supplementto Word 9 (Dec.
1953), esp. v, 52-64; idem., "Mezhdu praslavianskimi russkim," Russian Linguistics 6
353-76.Also: A. A. Shakhmatov,Ocherk drevneishegoperioda istorii russkogo
( 1 98 1/82):
iazyka(Petrograd:Tip. Imp. AN, 1915);T. Lehr-Splawjrski, Stosunkipodkrewierstwaj&yk6w
ruskich= RocznikSlawistyczny9 (Krak6w:,1 92 123-71;
), N. S. Trubetzkoy,"Einigesilberdie
russischeLautenwicklungund die Autltisungder gemeinrussischenSpracheinheit,"Zeitschrift
fair Philologie1 ( 1925):287-319;A. A. Zalizniak,"K istoricheskoifonetikedrevnenovgorod-
skogodialekta,"Balto-slavianskieissledovaniia.1981 (Moscow:Nauka, 1982),61-80; idem,
"Nabtiudeniianad berestiannymigramotami."Istoriia russkogoiazyka v drevneishiiperiod
(Moscow:Nauka, 1984), 36-153; idem. "Berestiannyegramoty peredlitsomtraditsionnykh
postulatovslavistikii vice versa," and Henrik Bimbaum,"Reflectionson the Language of
MedievalNovgorod,"in RussianLinguistics1 (199I): 217-45,195-216.
 252

A. Iu. Dvomichenko are the most recent to envision pre-Mongol Rus' as in

transition from tribal domains into territorial principalities of varying degrees
of independence.'4 Whatever the model, in the earliest sources East Slavic
tribal loyalties were still alive, if losing meaning; the land was criss-crossed
by trade routes in which many peoples participated; and for chiefs and their
retinues loyalty to clan and client, and attention to one's place in clan
hierarchies, mattered more than territorial loyalty. As far as one can tell, they
did not hold estates and worried not at all about boundaries. The term Rus'
referred to Variagi (Viking) princes, possibly some or all of their retinues
and, in the treaties with the Greeks recorded in 907 and 944 in the Primary
Chronicle, also designated towns they ruled ("Kiev, Chernigov, Perc?iaslavl',
Polotsk, Rostov, Liubech, and the other towns"). It is impossible to
ascertain how ordinary people identified themselves, so a transparancy for
1000 would reflect an elite consciousness such as that expressed in
Metropolitan Ilarion's sermon (late 1040s) celebrating Volodimer's bringing
of Christianity to the "Rus' nation," or that refracted through the lens of the
early twelfth-century compiler of the Primary Chronicle.15 Ilarion said
nothing of the outer reaches of Rus'. Perhaps he thought Christianity was
everywhere except where it faded into the "pagan" wilderness. When he

14.V. T. Pashuto,Vneshniaiapolitika DrevneiRusi (Moscow,Nauka, 1968);restatedin

"Osobennostistruktury drevnerusskogogosudarstva," in Drevnerusskoegosudarstvo i ego
mezhdunarodnoeznachenie,eds. V. T. Pashutoand L. V. Cherepnin.(Moscow:Nauka, 1965),
77-t27; andOmel'janPritsak'scritique,Kritika5, no. 2 (Winter1969):1':11,of Pashuto'sview
that Rus' at its originwas a unitarystate and by 1200a confederationwith a "stateterritory"of
princes who were "great diplomats" with a "foreign policy."These fictions only overstated
conceptionsimplicitin worksof B. D. Grekov,KievskaiaRus', 3rd ed. (Moscow-Leningrad:
Izdat. AN SSSR. 1939);B. A. Rybakov, KievskaiaRus' i russkie kniazhestvaXII-XIIIvv.
(Moscow:Nauka, 1982);P. P. Tolochko,Drevniaia Rus' (Kiev:Naukovadumka, 1987),and
others. Cf. I. Ia. Froianov.and A. lu. Dvomichenko,Goroda-Gosudarstva Drevnei Rusi
(Leningrad:Leningradskogoun-ta, 1988); MikhailoHrushevs'kyi,Ocherki istorii Kievskoi
zemliot smertilaroslava do kontsaXIVstoleriia(Kiev, 1891),esp. 296-344;A. E. Presniakov,
Kniazheskoepravo v drevnei Rusi (St. Petersburg:Tip. M. A. Aleksandrova,1909),34-157;
idem.,Lektsiipo russkoiistorii,2 vols. (Moscow:Sotsekiz,1938-39).
15.That Rus' were Scandinavians,PSRL,I, 2d ed.: 1?, 21,19,28, 32-34,36-38;the Rus'
land originallyas Novgorod,20; as meaning the central Dnepr basin and its inhabitants,c.
1000, t7, 28; in the treaties, 31, 46-53. For Ilarion,Franklin,Sermons, 14, 18, 23; also E. A.
Melnikovaand V. Ia. Petrukhin,"The Originand Evolutionof the NameRus'," Tor 23 ( 199 1 );
203-27; WladimirVodoff,"0 nekotorykhosobennostiakhdrevnerusskogoetnopoliticheskogo
samosoznaniia"; Petrukhin, "Normanny i Khazary na iuge Rusi", and V. A. Kuchkin,
"Russkaia zemlia' po letopisnym dannym XI-pervoi treti XII vv.," in Obrazovanie
drevnerusskogogosudarstva.Spornyeproblemy,eds. A. P Novosel'tsevet al. (Moscow:In-t
russkoiistoriiRossiiskoiAN, 1992),11-13,60-62,79-82;but cf. with argumentthat Rus' were
Eastern Slavs in chapter by A. I. Rogov and B. N. Floria in Razvitieernicheskogosamosoz-
naniia slavianskikhnarodov v epokhurannego srednevekov'ia,ed. V. D. Koroliuk(Moscow:
Nauka, 1982),96- I 20.
 253

composed the sermon, except for a few points, this wilderness began when
one left the central Dnepr basin.
The council at Liubech in 1097, at which Chemigov, Pereiaslavl'-
Russkii, and Turov went to laroslav's eldest surviving sons and their clans as
permanent, inheritances, is often seen as the defining event leading to the
proliferation of territorial principalities. In these towns, and probably most
others, princely clans held sovereignty, and the council probably intended
that the senior of Iaroslav's sons would rule in Kiev. If one relied only on the
views of high churchmen, a transparency interpreting the political realities of
this time would reflect a sharper and occasionally a broader self-identity than
a century earlier. For the metropolitans and their entourages Rus' consisted of
the eparchies owing allegiance to the Kievan metropolia and their documents
expressed this understanding of Rus' as lists of eparchies named by their see.
The definition came from Constantinople and all but two of the
in
metropolitans who expressed it Rus' were Greek. In other words, Rus' was
defined by its major towns, those that gave meaning to other trends in my
sets of transparancies. Ecclesiastical jurisdictions stretched to the-
undefined-borders of each eparchy. In this context, Rus' was not an ethnic
designation.. Greater Rus' thus, defined was in fact a multi-ethnic
configuration. High clerical circles in Kiev c. 1100 also supplied another
formulation of self-identity, one common in the medieval world. It was
expressed by juxtaposing their self-image against that of neighboring Others
who were characterized perjoratively. I found five such sources, all written by
Greek metropolitans of Rus', and all reflecting Byzantine preoccupations
with Latin errors after the schism of 1054 rather than a Rus' self-
consciousness. They were Leontios's sermon (c. 1060), Georgios's "Debate
with a Latin Georgios" (ca. 1070), loannos Podromos's (d. 1089) letter to
Pope Clement, and letters of Nicephorus (1 104-21) to Princes Volodimer
Monomakh and laroslav Sviatopolkovich of Volyn' about the Latins.'6

16. Martin Dimnik, "The 'Testament' of Iaroslav'lle Wise': A Re-examination,"

CanadianSlavonicPapers 29 ( 1987):369-86,and citations,n. 13;Poppe,"L'Princeet I'tglise
en Russiede Kievdepuisla fin du Xe si?clejusqu'au debut de XIIe siicle," in idem.,The Rise,
95-119. On medieval ethnic designations,see Andreas Kappeler, "Ethnische Abgrenzung:
Bermerkungenzur ostslavischenTerminologiedes Mittelakers,"in GeschichreAltrusslandsin
der Begriffsweltihrer Quellen.Festschriftzum 70. Geburistag von Ganther St6kl,eds. Uwe '
Halbachet al. (Stuttgart:FranzSteiner,1986),124-25:idem,RusslandsErsteNatinalitaten.Das
Zarenreich und die Vdlkerdes Mittleren Wolga vom 16. vom 19. lahrhundert (Köln-Wien:
B6hlau, 1982),2-12.The texts:L. E. Makhnovets,Ukrains'kipys'mennyky.Bio-bibliografich-
nyi slovnik, I (Kiev: Derzh. vyd. khudozhn'oi literatury, 1960), 36-37, 70-72; Golubinskii,
Istoriia, 2, no. 2: 799-807,820-28; A. N. Popov, Istoriko-literaturnyi obzor drevnerusskih
polemi;heskikhsochineniiprotiv latinianXI-XVvv. (Moscow:T. Ris, 1875),14-69, 8 1 - 1 A. 1 8;
G. Kuzmin and A. lu. Karpov, eds. Zlastostrui. Drevniaia Rus', X-XIII vekov (Moscow:
 254

Because these formulations, and the princely clan's conviction that it

was Rus', inspired a similar self-identification by its polyethnic retinues, it
is not so surprising that such conceptions filtered into the works of local
writers who wrote for them. Here one finds the earliest popular notions of a
greater Rus'. Several examples: in a narrative of his pilgrimage to the Holy
Land (early 1 1 00s)the Rus' monk Daniil recorded a prayer for the princes of
Rus', one which lanin has decoded for us, that defined Rust in terms of
princely patrimonies. Daniil identified each prince according to his Christian
name and his rank in the ruling clan. The formulation in the prayer was not
unlike the list of eparchies in documents of the metropolia. In this case,
however, it was the aggregate of patrimonies of the_ruling clan that defined a
greater Rus'. The multi-ethnic description of the "land of Rus"' that began
the Primary Chronicle, was another, more complex, way of defining Rus'.
Otherwise chroniclers referred to themselves in traditional and, usually,
religious contradistinctions to Others. The author of the well-known legend
of the baptism of Rus' denigrated Moslems, Jews, and Catholics in
substantiating that Rus' was a proper Christian land. In the Primary and
Novgorod First Chronicles Catholics were nemtsy, dumb, .for i-efusing to say
the liturgy in the vernacular. Such formulations led to an important reversal
of self-identity found in the earlier period where Rus' was equated with
Scandinavians. For the compiler of the Primary Chronicle his newly baptized
land was the Rus' land and Scandinavians were now an Other-Variagi. In
recording the first Polovetsy attack in 1068 he also said Rus' was a Christian
land and the invaders "pagans," whom God called on Rus' for its sins. Not
surprisingly, the monk of the Caves Monastery who survived to provide the
tale of its sack in 1096 in the Primary Chronicle had the learning to give the
contradistinction between local Christians and Others a more literary
rendering, calling the marauding Polovetsy "godless sons of Ishmael," and to
provide an unfavorable origin for them in contrast to the favorable origin for
the Slavs elaborated in the same work and based on the same Byzantine
chronograph. 17

Molodaiagvardiia, 1990),141-4.5.loannos's letter was in Greek;a Slavic translationappeared

in the fourteenthcentury. ,
17 Daniil's prayer,PLDR.XII vek, 14;Ianin. "Mezhdukniazheskie otnosheniia vepokhu
MonomakhaiKhozhdenieIgumenaDanila',"TrudyOrdeladrevnerusskoiliteratury 16 (1960):
112-31;and PSRL, 2d ed., 1: 1-6, for "aggregative"descriptionsof greater Rus'; self-identity
expressedas a distinctionfromothers:NPL, 132,and PSRL, 1, 2d ed.: 45, 85, 167-68, 231-36;
also Kappeler, "Ethnische Abgrenzung," 124-27; Melnikovaand Petrukhin, "The Origin,"
227-29; Kuchkin, "Russkaia zemlia'," 80-82; Thomas S. Noonan, "Rus', Pechenegs, and
Polovtsians:Economic InteractionAlong the Steppe Frontier in the Pre-MongolEra," and
LeonidS. Chekin, "The GodlessIshmaelitesImage of the Steppein Pre-MoscoviteRus'," pa-
pers presented at the Conference"The Frontier in the History of Rus'/Russia," 29-31 May
 255

In non-literary sources c. 1100 the term Rus' hardly appeared at all. It is

not in S. A. Vysotskii's dictionary of Kievan graffiti. It appears but once in
the word-index to birch bark documents and writing on talley sticks
compiled by A. A. Zalizniak. In this instance, a text (#105) of about 1134-611
found in Novgorod, Rus' meant the central Dnepr basin around Kiev.
Moreover, examples of self-identity that I cited from literary sources in the
preceding paragraph are overwhelmed by volumes of evidence suggesting
popular indifference to such distinctions. It is well known that the princes of
Rus' and nomadic Polovetsian chiefs arranged marriages and alliances with
one another, and against rivals of their own ethnos in much the same way
that they allied with princes of their own ethnos. Noteworthy in this respect
is the fact that the entry for 1096, the same year it reported the barbarian sack
of the Caves Monastery, mentioned that the Polovetsy chief Tugorkan was
the father-in-law of his opponent in battle, Grand Prince Sviatopolk
Iziaslavich of Kiev; further it reported that after Tugorkan died in battle,
Sviatopolk transported his body to Kiev for burial as if he were a member of
the ruling clan of Rus'. Rus' marriages with Catholic rulers were also a
matter of record and treated neutrally.'8
From the 1130s princes became entangled in local politics and developed
personal ties and common interests with local boiars and citizens in the
central places of every principality of greater Rus'. Personal, clan, and
territorial loyalties were often confused, so much so that it is as difficult to
distinguish between them as it is between elements of public and private
authority. Novgorod and Kiev, the greatest towns, were exceptional in that
the power of local elites and the rivalry of outside princes to control them
made it impossible for one clan to dominate permanently. In Novgorod rival
boiar factions had their outside favorites, but solidarity enough to assure the
integrity of the principality. In Kiev exterior forces were overwhelming,
taking turns-sometimes by agreement, more often by war-in ruling the
city and dividing up Kiev's secondary towns. By 1200 elites of secondary
towns seeking independence from their central places combined with junior

1992at the 'Universityof Chicago,Chicago,IL., and publishedin revisedform in this collec-

tion.
18. Serbyn, "The Character," 71-161; Vysotskii, Kievskie graffiti, 205-6; lanin and
Zalizniak, Novgorodskie gramoty, 296, 308; PSRL, 2d ed., 1: 231-32, on Tugorkan and
Sviatopolk;the list of "foreign"marriagesin Pashuto,"Vneshniaiapolitika,419-29,and Lind
"The Martyria."See also Kappeler, "EthnischeAbgrenzung,"128; and particularlyon the
Rus'-nomad dichotomy, see Anatoly M. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World
(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1984),esp. 198-227;S. A. Pletnava,"Polovetskaiazem-
lia," in DrevnerusskiekniazhestvaX-XIIIvv., eds. L. G. Beskrovnyiet al. (Moscow:Nauka,
1975),260-300;Noonan,"Rus', Pechenegs,and Polovtsians,"and Peter B. Golden,"Aspects
of the NomadicFactorin the EconomicDevelopmentof KievanRus'," in UkrainianEconomic
History,ed. Koropeckyj,58-62,87-101.
 256

princes who wanted patrimonies of their own to create small principalities in

the major ones. These developments make my third transparency most
complex. The struggle of secondary towns to be independent ruling center
and then competitors for hegemony in combination with a princely ethic
defined by insatiable ambition for power and glory, obligations of clan and
marriage, and love of fighting, guaranteed political instability, particularly in ,
south Rus'.
The career of Prince Roman Mstislavich was not unusual. Sent to rule
Novgorod in the 1160s, Roman then ruled Volyn' more or less permanently.
From there he temporarily ruled Galich and Kiev, and fought and intrigued in
Chemigov, Poland, Hungary, and the German Empire.'9 In Galich and
Volyn' after his death (1205) secondary towns surplanted older central places
as "capitals." The clan that ruled Suzdalia was more sedentary and.successful
. in
maintaining its territorial integrity. But my third transparancy. shows that
Suzdalia also had subdivided into. a hierarchy of semi-independent .
principalities. Novgorod, with Pskov as the only significant secondary town
and rival, maintained its grip on an otherwise vast and sparsely populated
land. The configuration of power elsewhere fell somewhere within these
parameters.
What of loyalties and frontiers? By 1200 local chronicles and patronage
records of masonry construction spoke to the formation of local political
cultures throughout Rus'. Chroniclers frequently described larger entities as
the "Novgorod land," the "Riazan' land," the "Galich land," the "Suzdal.'.
land," etc. In most cases they still meant the central Dnepr basin by "Rus"'
or "Rus' land." These local patriotisms, if that is the correct word, were
focused inward on the central place. In the political culture of Novgorod the
town itself-"Lord Novgorod the Great"-was syrribol of its independence;
the detinets housing its autonomous archbishop was the town castle; the
veche the seat of sovereignty. This body politic undoubtedly had some idea
of its tribute-taking reach, but documentary and narrative sources rarely
mentioned frontiers. Pskov, while subordinate to Novgorod, had its own
body politic by the 1130s and by 1211 a prince. There must have been
borders where the writ of the mother city ended and that of its dependent
began, but they were not mentioned, either. In Volodimer-Suzdal'skii Iurii
Dolgorukii's sons were central figures of the body politic and Andrei's
suburban citadel at Bogoliubovo rivaled the town as "capital" of Suzdal'.
. After 1200
virtually independent rival towns ruled by junior princes of the
19. Citationsin n. 14;Hrushevs'kyi,Istoryia Ukrainy-Rusy,8 vols.(reprintof Lviv-Kiev
ed. of 1904-19;New York: Knyhospilka,1954-56),I: 181-86;2: 359-68,445-54; 3: 1-17;
Pashuto,Ocherkipo istorii Galitsko-VolynskoiRusi (Moscow:lzdal AN SSSR,1950), 200-65;
John Fennell,The Crisis of MedievalRussia(London-NewYork: Longman,1983),12-15, 23-
36.
 257

Dolgorukii clan surrounded Volodimer. The historian of Suzdalian politics

Iu. A. Limonov described the pattern as polycencentric.2° But no one thought
it important to define borders between central place and secondary towns that
had become princely centers, or between the towns of Suzdal' and those of
other lands. The irrelevance of frontiers to expressions of identity also held
true elsewhere in a Rus' where secondary towns had become independent and
sometimes overshadowed central places.
Nevertheless, around 1200 references to borders began to appear.
Novgorod and Suzdal' chronicles, even the Kiev Chronicle, mentioned Novyi
Torg (Torzhok) as Novgorod's "gateway" to Suzdal' or Smolensk, although
never explicitly calling it a border town. But under 1189 the word oukrain'
in the Kiev Chronicle designated a frontier area of Galich from which an
invading army from Smolensk seized two villages, and the Galich chronicler
under 1213 applied the same word to the frontier of Volyn' with Little
Poland. 21
What of visions of a greater Rus' c. 1200? Writers everywhere generally
continued to use Rus' or the Rus' land to mean the central Dnepr basin; but
they used it in other ways and especially to mean greater Rus'. Also, as once
for the monk Daniil, so for the, probably, lay author of the "Tale of the Host
of Igor'" writing no earlier than 1186, Rus' was the sum of lands presided
over by a large, if unruly, family of princes.22 Another well-known text
should interest us as a harbinger of a new consciousness. It is the "Lament on
the Destruction of the Land of Rus"' by the Mongols, and it closes my
analysis chronologically. The author, this time probably a churchman,
envisaged a greater Rus' that was clearly a whole entity, not the sum of
urban-centered sub-units, with borders defined in part by names of
neighboring peoples, in part by geographical frontiers:

20. Iu. A. Limonov,Vladimiro-suzdal'skaia Rus' (Leningrad:Nauka,1987),107ff,and on

the centralquestionof local and"national"loyalties,Goehrke,"Zum Problem,"82-84.
21. Torzhok mentionedin NPL (from 1 l67),32, 37, 42, 43, 51, 54, 55, 60, 64, 68; in
Suzdal' and Kiev chronicles,PSRL 1, 2d ed.: 285 (11?8),288, 435, and PSRL,2, 2d ed: 510;
for oukrain': ibid.,663, 732.
22. Cf. Serbyn, "The Character," 71-161, with B. A. Rybakov, "Drevnie Rusy,"
Sovetskoearkheologiia 17 (1953):29-104;and the sources:NovgorodChronicle:NPL, 52, 53,
60, 62, 71;Suzdal' Chronicle:PSRL,1, 2d ed.: 345, 347, 357, 394, 399, 4 1 1 , 4 1 4, 4 1 6- 1 8, 419,
420, 422, 429-30,445, 446-47,449, 450, 457; Kiev Chronicle:PSRL,2, 2d ed.; 478, 538, 541,
554, 555, 568, 575, 591, 605, 683-84,686; Galich Chronicle:PSRL,2, 2d ed.: 715, 717, 725,
730, 738, 743, 759, 766, 772-73,781, 784, 787; Igor' Tale, PLDR. XII vek, 372-87, and cf.
Norman W. Ingham, "Zemlia Russkaia and Zemlia Polovetskaiaiu the Poetic Structure of
Slovo o Polku Igoreve," paper presentedat the Conference"The Frontier in the History of
Rus'/ Russia,29-31 May 1992at the Universityof Chicago,Chicago,IL (and publishedin re-
visedform in this collection)withmy readingof it.
 258

from the Hungarians to the Poles and the Czechs, from the Czechs to
the Iatviagi and from the Iatviagi to the Liths and the Germans, from
the Germans, to the Korely, from the Korely to Ust'iug where the pagan
Toimitsi live as far as the Breathing Sea [Artic Ocean], and from the
sea to the Bulgars, from the Bulgars to the Butras, from the Butrasy to
the Cheremiss, from the Cheremis to the Mordvinians.?

By 1200 broad elements of the population of Rus' also exhibited a

stronger, if not more precisely defined self-identity. Usually they expressed it
in juxtaposition. to others. No doubt the anti-Catholic diatribes that flowed
through the Byzantine-Orthodox world after the Latin sack of Constantinople
in 1204 or, closer to home, the Catholic crusading in the Baltic area that
began about the same time enhanced anti-Latin sensitivities. They in turn
began to shape expressions of ethnicity. Thus, in the anonymous Discourse
12 of the paterik of the Kiev Caves Monastery the elder Matfei discerned a
demon as the cause of his brethren's distraction during prayer. The demon
was dressed as a Pole. The paterik also contained a discourse (37) about
Latin errors attributed to St. Feodosii (d- 1074) that could not have appeared
before. 1150.24 The Kiev chronicler shifted gears about the same time in
describing struggles witfi the Polovtsy in 1183-85. Unlike the author of the
Igor' tale, he saw them as Christian conflicts with pagans. Such value-laden
annalistic descriptions were more common in the 1200s than in the early
. 1100s. But not by much. Nor were they consistent in defining Otherness. In
. the battle on the Kalka in 1223, for instance, the Tatars, not the Polovtsy,
were the "Godless." The Novgorod First Chronicle mentioned Liths regularly
from 1183, but only three times (from 1213) as pagan or godless Others. One
also finds such inconsistencies in references to Poles-allies one time,
"godless" Others (e.g., under 1143 bezbozhni Liakhove) the next-,
Hungarians, Bulgars, or Mordvinians in the chronicles. A final example: in
the Novgorod First Chronicle for the 1000s and 1100s Swedes and Germans
along with Finnic and Balt peoples were mentioned by name as inhabitants
of the same undifferentiated cultural sphere in which Novgorod's citizenry
lived. But in 1188, as John Lind pointed out, it referred perjoratively to
Germans as nemtsy. After 1200 this became a commonplace, one applied
indiscriminately to Catholic Swedes. 25 ... .

23. PLDR: XIII vek (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1981), 130-31, and
Kappeler,"EthnischeAbgrenzung,"126.
24. PSRL, 2: 311, and Kappeler,"EthnischeAbgrenzung," 127-ff; cf. The Paterik, tr.
Heppell, 109, 211-14, with Eremin, "Literatumoe nasledie Feodosiia Pecherskogo,"Trudy
Otdeleniiadrevnerusskoiliteratury5 (1957):159-84;Popov,Istoriko-literatitrnyi
obzor,69-8 1 .
25. NPL, 37, 39, 52, 61-62,71-74, ;PSRL,2d ed., 1: 345, 435, 440, 444, 460,
and 2: 630-
51, esp. 632, 648, and cf. PLDR:XII vek,380, 382. Also: Lind, "Varaeger,nemcer,op nov-
 259

In other words, a consciousness of "we-they" relationships with

neighbors in Rus', long largely a mindset of clerics, became more prevalent
and widespread, if not always consistently applied, shortly before 1200. Just
how ambiguous these distinctions were may be seen by the fact that annalists
frequently used the same "we-they" rhetoric to distinguish between local
p?triotisms within Rus'. The pro-Daniil Romanovich chronicler of Galich in
1238 placed reigning Prince Rostislav Mikhailovich (son of Prince Mikhail
of Chernigov and Kiev) in the category of "foreign princes" (inoplemen' nykh
kniazii). Was he no different than the "foreigners, called Tatars"
(inoplemen'nitsi, glagolemu Tatarove) who in the same year the Novgorod
annalist said invaded Riazan''?26 That Rus' princes and princesses intermarried
with Polovtsy, Poles, Hungarians, and other "Others" for their own ends as
much in not more than a century earlier tends to support this line of
argument.

* * *

These imaginary transparencies of the development of political culture in

Rus' call up the same images of frontiers that informed transparancies of
economic and cultural development. In pre-Mongol Rus' a self-identity
appeared first in terms of a united clan, then became a matter of religion or
morality that set off elites from others. Such notions were most lively in
Kiev but involved very few people. Duplicating the process of urban creation,
on one hand they reveal an integrated network of political organisms that
over the centuries pushed out frontiers from the central Dnepr basin and
several other isolated points to become greater Rus'. As independent and
secondary political units multiplied around 1100 or soon thereafter, the
political map became denser and more complex as independent and secondary
political units multiplied. The population of these towns also grew and civic
consciousness grew apace. Urban elites naturally forged local patriotisms,
vital sub-cultures that competed for some with greater loyalties of religious
belief, commercial connections, and princely clan. By 1200 the nodes of
civic culture were more numerous, their civil loyalties greater, and their
political sway extended over neighboring rural areas leaving little or no space
free of the authority of urban-princely elites. Political power and
consciousness were strongest at the core of each land, at the central place; on
the periphery they were weak, with a corresponding diminished sense of self,

gorodar ar 1188," Historisk tidskrift (for Finland, 1981), 145-65;idem, `"ThcMartyria,"211

n.54.
26. PSRL,2, 2d ed.: 777;NPL, 74; DmitriObolensky,"Nationalismin EasternEuropein
the Middle Ages," in his The ByzantineInheritance of Eastern Europe (London: Variorum,
1982), 1-16.
 260

unless they collided with some threatening Other. The vitality of core towns
and the absence of well-defined frontiers characterized pre-industrial societies
in many places. As elsewhere, so in Rus', given the lack of defined frontiers,
it was inevitable that proliferating and aggressive, although often small,
political cultures would regularly "collide." This, of course, is an abstract
description of the warfare endemic to Rus' c. 1200. It was to be expected that
the conflicts would be for hegemony over towns and, rarely, over frontier
zones.
Yet, as technologies, commerce, and political power radiated from Kiev
to new centers, so too did the ideal of a greater Rus'. It found more forceful
expression than ever before when juxtaposed to Others and it created a
creative tension with "local patriotisms" that was never resolved. Even c.
1200 few defined such notions of community territorially. In many respects
the term "segmentary state," used by some social scientists to describe
descentralized societies worldwide that were less than empires but more than
tribal confederations, best comprehends the seeming contradictions that
characterized the dynamic political, economic, and cultural life of pre-Mongol
Rus'; the qualities that gave it a self-identity, however, were not those we
employ to describe some sort of pre-modern national consciousness; and
certainly not those associated with the origins of modern national states.?'

Roosevelt University

27. My thinking here was inspired by John LeDonne's paper, "The Frontier in Russian
History,"presentedat the Conferenceon The Frontierin Rus'/Russia,28-30 May 1992,Univ.
of Chicago,Chicago,IL; EdwardA. Shils, Center and Periphery. Essays in Macrosociology
(Chicago Univ.
: of ChicagoPress, 1975),esp. 39-48;and articleson characteristicsof political
life in pre-industrialsocieties worldwide by John Gedhill, John W. Fox, Matthew Spriggs,
MogenTrolle Larsen, and others, in State and Society:The Emergenceand Developmentof
Social Hierarchy and Political Centralization,eds. J. Gledhillet al. (London:UnwinHyman,
1988).