A History of Russian Law

A History of Russian Law
Law in Eastern Europe

A series published in cooperation with Leiden University
and the Universities of Tartu and Graz
General Editor
Joseph Marko
VOLUME 66
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/laee

A History of Russian Law
From Ancient Times to the Council Code
(Ulozhenie) of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich of 1649
By
Ferdinand Feldbrugge
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Feldbrugge, F. J. M. (Ferdinand Joseph Maria), 1933- author.

Title: A history of Russian law : from ancient times to the Council Code
(Ulozhenie) of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich of 1649 / by Ferdinand Feldbrugge.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2017. | Series: Law in Eastern Europe ;
volume 66 | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017033081 (print) | LCCN 2017035424 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004352148 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004346420 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Law--Russia--History. | Russia--History--Aleksei
Mikhailovich, 1645-1676.
Classification: LCC KLA120 (ebook) | LCC KLA120 .F45 2017 (print) | DDC
349.47--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017033081
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Contents
Preface XV
List of Abbreviations XVII
List of Maps XIX
part 1
The Middle Ages (until 1497)
1 General Introduction 3
The Purpose of This Work 3
Periodization 4
The Definition of Law 10
The Organization of This Work 14
General History and History of Law 16
Medieval Law 19
An Outline of the ‘Constitutional’ History of Russia During the
Era of the Independent Principalities 23
State and Law During the Era of the Independent Principalities 38
Section 1
Sources
2 Sources 49
The Concept of Sources 49
Chronicles 52
Kormchie 56
The Merilo Pravednoe 61
The Knigi Zakonnye 63
Archives 64
Foreign Sources for the Prehistory of Russian Law 66
Publication of Texts, Literature, Bibliography 72
3 The Treaties with Byzantium. The Zakon Russkii 85

The Treaties with Byzantium 85
The Treaty of 907 88
vi Contents

The Zakon Russkii 96
4 The Russkaia Pravda or Russian Law 101

History of the Study of the Russkaia Pravda 101
The Different Versions of the Russkaia Pravda 104
The Division of the Russkaia Pravda into Articles 106
The Short Pravda: Introduction 107
The Short Pravda: The Pravda of Iaroslav 108
The Sources of Iaroslav’s Pravda 113
The Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons 118
The Final Compilation of the Short Pravda 122
5 The Russkaia Pravda: The Expanded Pravda 124

The Expanded Pravda: Introduction 124
The Codicology of the Expanded Pravda 126
The Composition of the Expanded Pravda 131
The Relationship Between the Short Pravda and the Expanded
Pravda 133
The Statute of Vladimir Vsevolodovich Monomakh 135
The Final Compilation of the Expanded Pravda 137
Foreign Sources for the Russkaia Pravda? 139
The Abridged Version of the Russkaia Pravda 142
6 Princely Statutes 144
Introduction 144
The Church Statute of St. Vladimir 145
The Church Statute of Iaroslav the Wise 150
The Statute of Vsevolod on Church Courts and People and on
Trade Measures 154
The Testament of Vsevolod Mstislavich (Rukopisanie) 157
The Statute of Sviatoslav Ol’govich of 1137 158
The Smolensk Charters of Rostislav Mstislavich and Bishop
Manuil 160
The Church Statute of Lev Danilovich of Galicia of 1301 161
Church-State Relations in 14th and 15th Centuries Texts 161
Contents vii
7 Treaties 163
General 163
Treaties: Internal Russian Treaties 165
Treaties with Foreign Powers 168
Selected Examples and Special Categories 170
The Treaty of 1229 between Mstislav Davydovich of Smolensk and
Riga and the Gothic Coast 170
The Treaty between the ‘Unknown Prince’ of Smolensk and
Riga and the Gothic Coast 171
The 1269 Treaty between Novgorod and the Hanseatic League 172
The Novgorod-Tver’ Treaties 173
The Peace Treaty of 1318 between Moscow and Novgorod
and Tver’ 175
8 Town and Provincial Charters 177

The Charter of Dvina Land 177
The Court Charter of Pskov 178
The Charter of Novgorod 184
Iaroslav’s Law on Bridges 187
The Charters of Belo Ozero 188
The Metropolitan’s Justice 190
9 The Code (Sudebnik) of Ivan iii of 1497 193

The Homicide Law of Vasilii ii the Blind 193
The Code of Ivan iii: Introduction and Historiography 195
The Numbering of the Articles of the Code 198
The Contents of the Code 199
General Historical Background and Character of the Code 200
The Sources for the Code of 1497 203
Legal Significance of the Code of 1497 205
10 Foreign Laws 209
The Impact of Byzantine Law 209
The Court Law for the People (Zakon Sudnyi liudem) 210
The Skra of Novgorod 217
The Iasa of Chingis-Khan and the Impact of Mongol-Tatar Rule on
Russian Law 219
The Legal Environment of Medieval Russian Law 227
Rurikid Marriages as an Indication of Political and Cultural
Contacts 233
viii Contents
11 Non-Legislative (Non-Normative) Legal Sources: Gramoty 234

Introduction 234
Sources and Historiography before 1917 235
Sources and Historiography after 1917 237
Classification of Documents 240
Alphabetical Dictionary of Gramoty 245
Documents and Collections Other Than Gramoty 285
Pistsóvye and razriadnye knigi 287
Novgorod Birch-Bark Documents 288
The Iarlyki of the Tatar Khans 290
Section 2
The Law
12 Setting the Stage: Territory and Tribes in Early Kievan Russia 299

The Physical Stage of Early Russian History 299
The Eastern Slav Tribes in the 10th Century 299
Russia’s Multi-Ethnic Past in Ancient Times 301
The Emergence and First Expansion of the Early Russian
State 306
The Dynasty of Rurik 308
The Socio-Economic Nature of Kievan Russia: The Feudalism
Debate 311
The Viking Question 317
Tribute and Inter-Tribal Relationships in Early Kievan Russia 323
Territory: A Postscript 327
13 The Prince in Medieval Russia 331

Introduction 331
Relations between Princes: Succession and Treaties – Introductory
Observations 336
The Viking Origins of the House of Rurik 338
The Succession History According to the Primary Chronicle –
A Brief Survey 339
The General Principles of Princely Succession 343
The Grand Princely Dignity 350
Relations between Princes: Wills and Treaties 356
Princely Rule: Succession, Popular Assent, Mongol-Tatar
Validation 363
The Office and Function of the Prince 366
The Prince’s Court and Officials in Kievan Times 367
Contents ix
14 The Prince’s Government 377

The Prince’s Government 377
The Expansion of Princely Administration in Later Centuries 379
General Taxation 390
The Prince as Judge 395
The Prince as Legislator 397
External Relations: Diplomacy and War 402
15 The Towns 408
Introduction 408
The Origin of Russian Towns 409
Town Government and the Veche in Particular 413
External Relations: Treaties with Princes and Foreign
Powers 432
The Urban Population 432
The Legal Framework of the Urban Economy 439
16 Novgorod and Pskov 465

i Velikii Novgorod 465
ii Pskov 521
iii A Note on Viatka-Khlynov 525
17 Western Russia 527
Historical Introduction 527
The Law of the Lithuanian Principality and the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth 531
18 Rural Russia 543
Land Tenure and Land Ownership 544
Large-Scale Land Ownership – Feudalism? 545
Princes as Landowners 547
Boyars and Other Landowners 552
Landowning by the Church and Monasteries 560
Peasants 565
Peasant Landowning 577
The Peasant Population in Later Centuries 578
Transactions Concerning Land 583
Local Government 586
19 The Individual and the Family 589

The Legal Status of the Individual 589
x Contents
Legal Classes 592
The Individual as a Family Member 619
20 The Individual as a Legal Actor 644

Contracts 646
Delicts 648
Ownership 651
21 The Church and Monasteries 654

Church and State 655
The Organization of the Church 659
Church Jurisdiction 663
Other Sources of Church Income 674
Monasteries 676
Landowning by the Church 679
22 Courts and Justice 680

Introduction 680
Secular and Church Courts 684
Procedure in the Russkaia Pravda 687
Procedure in Novgorod and Pskov 689
Evidence 692
Criminal Law 699
Court Fees and Related Payments 710
part 2
Muscovy (until 1649)
23 Introduction 717
The Law of the Principality of Muscovy 718
The Reforms of Ivan iv 723
Section 1
Sources
24 The Code (Sudebnik) of Ivan iv of 1550 729

Introduction and Historiography 729
General Historical Background and Character of the Code 731
The Contents of the Code of 1550 734
In Conclusion 738
Contents xi
25 The Stoglav 740
Legal Relevance of the Stoglav 740
The Enactment of the Stoglav 742
The Contents of the Stoglav 743
26 The Codes of 1589 and 1606–1607 745

The Code of 1589: Introduction 745
The Contents of the Short and the Expanded Redactions 746
The Relationship between the Two Redactions and the Character
and Sources of the Code of 1589 747
The Composite Code of 1606–1607 750
27 The Statute Books of the Prikazy 752

The Statute Books of the Brigandage Department 753
The Statute Book of the Slavery Department 754
The Statute Book of the Department for the City of Moscow 754
The Statute Book of the Department of Roads 755
The Statute Books of the Land Department 755
28 Decisions of the Land Assembly (Zemskii Sobor) 757

The Resolutions of 15 January 1580 and 20 July 1584 758
The Resolution of 9 March 1607 758
The Resolution of 30 June 1611 758
29 The Council Code (Sobornoe Ulozhenie) of Aleksei

Mikhailovich of 1649 760
Historical Background 760
Historiography 762
Preparation and Enactment 763
Overview of the Contents 765
Sources 768
The Follow-up: Novellae or Novoukaznye stat’i 770
section 2
The Law
30 The Tsar 775
The Title of Tsar 776
Autocracy and Public Law 777
Succession 779
The Tsar’s Court 787
xii Contents
31 The Tsar’s Government 789

A Boyar Duma? 789
The Land Assembly (Zemskii Sobor) 797
The Administration 807
Lower Officials 813
Taxation 814
The Army 818
32 Territory and Population 822

The Growth of the Principality of Moscow 822
Muscovy and Western Russia 826
33 Local Government 831
Kormlenie as the Basis of the Traditional System 831
The Reforms of Ivan iv 835
The Abolition of Kormlenie 841
Voevody 842
34 Criminal Law and Procedure 844

Introduction 844
Criminal Law in the Codes of Ivan iii (1497) and Ivan iv
(1550) 846
The Guba and Land Charters 849
Criminal Law in the Council Code (Sobornoe Ulozhenie) of
1649 850
Criminal Law and the Church; Offences against Morals 853
Criminal Procedure 854
35 Civil Law: Persons 860

The Legal Status of the Individual: Men and Women 860
Legal Classes 861
The Sovereign and His Family 862
Princes 863
Boyars and Other High Nobles 866
Lesser Nobles: Boyars’ Sons and Dvoriane 868
Clergy and Church People 871
Townspeople in Moscow and Elsewhere 871
Merchants 875
Peasants 878
Contents xiii
Slavery 887
Foreigners 891
Legal Persons 893
36 Civil Law: Ownership and Obligations 894

Ownership of Land 895
Obligations 916
37 Civil Law: Family Law and Succession 927

Sources 927
The Family 930
Marriage 930
Relations between Spouses 933
Dissolution of Marriage 936
Parents and Children 939
Inheritance and Succession 941
38 Courts and Justice; Civil Procedure 948

Courts in the Period after the Sudebnik of Ivan iii of 1497 948
Courts in the Council Code (Sobornoe Ulozhenie) of Tsar Aleksei
of 1649 950
Court Officials 955
Civil Procedure 956
39 The Church, Monasteries, and Church Law 960

Church-State Relations in Muscovy 960
The Organization of the Church 966
Church Legislation 972
Church Jurisdiction 975
Appendix 1 Money and Measurements 983

The Monetary System of Medieval Russia 983
Measurements 986
Appendix 2 Genealogies 987
Rurikids 987
Gediminids 1010
Glossary of Russian Terms 1014
Index of Personal Names 1072
Subject Index 1083
Preface
The scope of a work like the present involves that many of the subjects to be
discussed are closely connected and turn up at different places in the narra-
tive. The most obvious example is the complex of themes relating to land own-
ership, serfdom, social classes, the law of succession, etc. One could try to deal
with them all together, or examine them all separately by themselves, or find
a solution somewhere in the middle. I have preferred the third option, which
has resulted in a certain amount of duplication, as well as frequent references
to other chapters.
As to my sources, I might repeat what I wrote in the Foreword of my collect-
ed papers on “Law in Medieval Russia”: “A non-Russian scholar who has to rely
mainly on his own library and that of his university, respectable as they may
be, is in an unfavourable position in comparison to a Russian colleague who
has large and ancient collections at his disposal in Moscow or St.Petersburg”.1
Then a few prolegomena (“read this first”), as most of the questions authors
commonly touch upon in prefaces and forewords have been addressed more
extensively in the introductory chapters of the two parts of this work. The divi-
sion itself of the work in two parts is one of these questions. What remains are
mostly practical trivia.
The Russian language is notoriously tricky where word accent is concerned,
in particular in names of persons and places. Such accents have therefore been
indicated where it seemed to be useful, for instance when a name or word ap-
peared for the first time.
I have been sparing with capitals: “state”, “tsar”, “patriarch”, etc., not “State”,
“Tsar”, “Patriarch”. But “church” has been capitalized where the institution it-
self was concerned, usually the Russian Orthodox Church, not when the use
was adjectival (“church property”).
The place of publication in bibliographical references in footnotes has
been given as it appeared in the publication. Therefore “Moskva” and “Sankt-
Peterburg” instead of “Moscow” and “St.Petersburg”; also “Kyiv” for books
published in Ukrainian. Similarly, the names of Russian rulers have not been
anglicized: “Mikhail”, “Aleksei”, etc., instead of “Michael”, “Alexis”, etc.
Work on this book was started more than 40 years ago, but only during the
last ten years have I been able to devote most of my time to it. I cannot thank
all the people who helped me in some way, big or small, by name. I should at
1 F. Feldbrugge, Law in Medieval Russia, Leiden/Boston, 2009, xiv (W.B. Simons, ed., Law in
Eastern Europe, Volume 59).
xvi Preface
least mention, in chronological order, the late Serge Levitsky, Wim Timmer-
mans, Ania van der Meer Krok-Paszkowska, Aiste Myckonyte, Ingeborg van der
Laan, Kate Elliott and Henriette van den Tooren. My wife, Máire Feldbrugge-
Lawlor (†2015), supported and encouraged me all along and was sorry not to be
able to see the book in print.
List of Abbreviations
asei B.D. Grekov (i), L.V. Cherepnin (ii–iii)(eds.), Akty sotsial’no-

ekonomicheskoi istorii Severo-vostochnoi Rusi kontsa xiv –
nachala xvi v., Moskva, 1952 (i), 1958 (ii), 1964 (iii)
Baranowski G. Baranowski, Die Russkaja Pravda – ein mittelalterliches
Rechtsdenkmal, Frankfurt a/M., 2005
Beneshevich V.N. Beneshevich, Sbornik pamiatnikov po istorii tserkovnago
prava, Petrograd, 1915
ddg Dukhovnye i dogovornye gramoty velikikh i udel’nykh kniazei
xiv–xvi vv. (S.V. Bakhrushin, ed., L.V. Cherepnin, man. ed.),
Moskva/Leningrad, 1950
dg sssr Drevneishie gosudarstva na territorii sssr Vols.1978–1983
(V.T. Pashuto, ed.) Vols.1984–1988/1989 (A.V. Novosel’tsev,
ed.)
dgve Drevneishie gosudarstva Vostochnoi Evropy Vols.1991–1994
(A.V. Novosel’tsev, ed.); Vols.1995→(E.A. Mel’nikova, ed.)
Cherepnin, Arkhivy L.V. Cherepnin, Russkie feodal’nye arkhivy xiv–xv vekov, Part
i, Moskva/Leningrad, 1948, Part ii, Moskva, 1951
D’iakonov M. D’iakonov, Ocherki obshchestvennago i gosudarstvennago
stroia Drevnei Rusi, Sankt-Peterburg, 1908 (2nd. ed.)
ep Expanded (Prostrannaia) Russkaia Pravda
Feldbrugge, lmr F. Feldbrugge, Law in Medieval Russia, Leiden/Boston, 2009
Froianov, KRse I.Ia. Froianov, Kievskaia Rus’. Ocherki sotsialno-ekonomiches-
koi istorii, Sankt-Peterburg, 1999 (new ed., orig. Leningrad,
1974)
Froianov, KRsp I.Ia. Froianov, Kievskaia Rus’. Ocherki sotsial’no-politicheskoi
istorii, Leningrad, 1980
Froianov, KRoi I.Ia. Froianov, Kievskaia Rus’. Ocherki otechestvennoi istorio-
grafii, Leningrad, 1990
Froianov, Nachala I.Ia. Froianov, Nachala Russkoi istorii, Moskva 2001
Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’ B.D. Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, Moskva, 1953
gvnp Gramoty Velikogo Novgoroda i Pskova (S.N. Valk, ed.),
Moskva/Leningrad
Iushkov, Istoriia S.V. Iushkov, Istoriia gosudarstva i prava sssr, Part i, Mosk-
va, 1950 (3rd ed.)
Iushkov, Ocherki S.V. Iushkov, Ocherki po istorii feodalizma v Kievskoi Rusi,
Moskva/Leningrad, 1939
Iushkov, Stroi S.V. Iushkov, Obshchestvenno-politicheskii stroi Kievskogo
gosudarstva, Moskva, 1949
xviii List of Abbreviations
Kaiser, Laws D.H. Kaiser (ed. & transl.), The Laws of Rus’ – Tenth to Fif-
teenth Centuries, Salt Lake City, 1992
Karamzin N.M. Karamzin, Istoriia Gosudarstva Rossiiskago, 4 vols.,
Sankt-Peterburg, 1842–1844 (reprint Moscow 5th ed., 1988)
Kliuchevskii, Kurs V.O. Kliuchevskii, Kurs russkoi istorii, Sankt-Peterburg, 1904–
1910; vols. 1–5 of Sochineniia, 8 vols., Moskva, 1956
Novg. Chr. First Novgorod Chronicle
Presniakov, Kn. Pr. A.E. Presniakov, “Kniazhoe pravo v drevnei Rusi. Ocherki
po istorii x–xii stoletii”. Zapiski istoriko-filologicheskogo
fakul’teta imp. S.Peterburgskago universiteta, Part 90, Sankt-
Peterburg, 1909
Presniakov, Lektsii A.E. Presniakov, Lektsii po russkoi istorii, Part i, Moskva, 1938;
Part ii, Moskva, 1939
Prim. Chr./ Chronicle Primary Chronicle (Nachal’naia Letopis’, also “Nestor
Chronicle” or “Tale of Bygone Years”)
PRoP Pamiatniki rossiiskogo prava v 35 tomakh, Moskva, 2013 →
prp Pamiatniki russkogo prava, Vols.1–8, Moskva, 1952–1963
psrl Polnoe Sobranie Russkikh Letopisei
Pushkarev, Dictionary S.G. Pushkarev (comp.), Dictionary of Russian Historical
Terms from the Eleventh Century to 1917, New Haven/London,
1970
rp Russkaia Pravda
rz Rossiiskoe zakonodatel’stvo x–xx vekov, Vols.1–9, Moskva,
1983–1993
Sergeevich, Drevnosti V.I. Sergeevich, Drevnosti russkago prava, i, Sankt-Peterburg,
1909 (3rd ed.); ii, 1908 (3rd ed.); iii 1908
Sergeevich, Lektsii V.I. Sergeevich, Lektsii i izsledovaniia po drevnei istorii russ-
kago prava, Sankt-Peterburg, 1910 (4th ed.)
sggd Sobranie Gosudarstvennykh Gramot i Dogovorov
sp Short (Kratkaia) Russkaia Pravda
Tikhomirov, Issledovanie M.N. Tikhomirov, Issledovanie o Russkoi Pravde, Moskva/
Leningrad, 1941
Tikhomirov, Posobie M.N. Tikhomirov, Posobie dlia izucheniia Russkoi Pravdy,
Moskva, 1953
Vernadsky, Laws G.V. Vernadsky, Medieval Russian Laws, New York, 1947
Vlad.-Bud., Obzor M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov, Obzor istorii russkogo prava,
Rostov- na-Donu, 1995 (republication of 7th ed., Kiev, 1915)
zarg N.E. Nosov (ed.), Zakonodatel’nye akty russkogo gosudarstva
vtoroi poloviny xvi – pervoi poloviny xvii veka. Teksty, Lenin-
grad, 1986; N.E. Nosov, V.M. Paneiakh (eds.), id. Kommenta-
rii, Leningrad, 1987
List of Maps
1 Russia Before the Mongol Conquest (1240) 1012

2 Muscovy and its Neighbours (1497–1649) 1013
part 1
The Middle Ages (until 1497)
∵
chapter 1
General Introduction
The Purpose of This Work
There are no limits to curiosity; the question why anybody would want to know
about Russian legal history is therefore pointless. But it is not hard to think of
more specific reasons, beyond mere inquisitiveness, for embarking on such an
enterprise. These reasons may individually lead to diverging approaches and
different methodologies. The history of Russian law may be studied in order to
contribute to a better understanding of the social, political or economic his-
tory of Russia, or to assist in building a more solid foundation for new Russian
legislation, or to highlight the peculiarities of Russian law through the ages in
contrast with the legal history of other countries, or to see how a particular
branch or particular institutions of Russian law developed over a longer pe-
riod, or to examine the historical relationship between law and other aspects
of Russian culture, or to gain more insight into the phenomenon of law itself,
and so on.
Russia or Rus’?
The Russian language has two names to refer to the country: Rossiia and
Rus’. The first one causes no problem nowadays; it is the official name
of the state, which also bears the name of “Russian Federation”. Art. 1
par. 2 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation declares that the two
names are equivalent. “Russia” is the only possible translation of Rossiia.
The Russian Federation is the legal continuation of the Russian Soviet
Federative Socialist Republic (rsfsr) and, additionally, also the legal
successor in most respects of the ussr. The rsfsr was the legal succes-
sor of the Russian Empire (with the short interval of the Russian Republic
in 1917).
The Russian Empire was the continuation of the Tsardom of Mus-
covy and before that the grand principality of Muscovy. All these states
have at least colloquially been referred to as “Russia”. In earlier times Rus’
was used to refer to the predecessor or collective predecessors of Mus-
covy (“Kievan Rus”), and this implied a territory far larger than that of
Muscovy, comprising also, for instance, the present Ukrainian and Be-
lorussian republics. Both Russian and foreign authors use Rus’ as well as
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352148_002

4 chapter 1
“Russia” when writing about the Russian middle ages. Rus’ was never an
official designation of a state and had a more exalted or even poetic ring
(Sviataia Rus’, “Holy Russia”, while Sviataia Rossiia would sound bizarre).
There is something to be said for using Rus’ in historical writing,
to indicate that other territories, apart from present-day Russia, are also
envisaged. On the other hand, it obliges the author to decide every time
again whether to use Rus’ or “Russia”, because either designation is usu-
ally possible. Also, the adjective of both terms is russkii.
I have opted for “Russia” therefore, avoiding Rus’, except when there
were compelling reasons to do otherwise. I am aware of the political sus-
ceptibilities surrounding the question nowadays.
Each approach implies a different viewpoint and anticipates a specific audi-

ence; a variety of accents will be the result. The historian, the legal practitioner,
the comparative lawyer, the legal theorist, each has his or her own interests
and requirements. How is one to serve them all? The matter is further com-
plicated by the inherent defect of all history writing: the historian attempts to
recreate something that was there once, but is not there anymore; an impos-
sible task, because for complete recreation every feature of the event described
should be revived. Selection then becomes unavoidable and this inevitably en-
tails distortion. Not only has one to serve different audiences, but they all can
only be served inadequately.
In practical terms, there are mitigating factors. The present work is primar-
ily concerned with what could loosely be called medieval law. The distance in
time between it and present-day law weakens the connection between the two.
Medieval law will seldom be of decisive and concrete relevance for present-day
law. More generally, the author believes that he shares most of the significant
different interests that have been indicated above and will at least attempt to
do them justice. Also, what is of particular relevance to one specialist may still
be sufficiently interesting to another.
If I had not found the history of medieval Russian law a fascinating topic, for
a variety of reasons, I would not have studied it.
Periodization
History is concerned with the past, but the past is not here, it is gone. It
has to be recalled, but which past? A century ago, or two centuries, or even
more?
General Introduction 5
It would be possible, provided sufficient sources were available, to describe

the legal system of a country at a particular moment. The advantage of such an
approach is that the relationships between the different components can be
made clear and in that way the fact that the law of a country constitutes a coher-
ent system can be emphasized. The drawback is that the temporal dimension
is lacking; one is left to guess what the situation was previously and afterwards.
This defect can be avoided by concentrating, not on the entire legal system, but
on individual parts of it, on specific legal institutions. Then it is much easier to
present a true narrative. The way Russian law dealt with homicide during its
earliest phases offers a good example. First there was the blood feud, and then
incipient central power attempted to restrict this by introducing various mea-
sures at different times which tended to marginalize the initial form of legal
self-help. Finally, the state assumed exclusive powers in dealing with homicide.
The basic problem of engaging in legal history may therefore be compared to
the problem of describing a three-dimensional object, such as a tree, through
a two-dimensional medium, such as a piece of paper. One can draw a picture
of the roots, the bole, the branches and the leaves, but that does not explain
adequately the way a tree functions. Then one needs at least a cross-section
of the bole. In modern medicine spatial images are achieved by a very large
number of cross-sections.
A more or less comprehensive legal history could be produced, in theory,
by an accumulation of the histories of all major legal institutions, such as con-
tracts, courts, offences against persons, inheritance law, government, taxation,
etc. The obvious defect of such a procedure would be that the systemic aspect
of law, the manifold connections between various legal institutions, would re-
ceive insufficient attention.
The practical solution is usually to cut up the entire time-span to be covered
into manageable slices and treat these as stationary objects, as if little or noth-
ing changed during these shorter periods. In other words, periodization.
All descriptions suffer from the defect that they involve selection: the past
cannot be recalled in toto, so that it would be present again. The narrator has to
select certain elements, considered to be the most relevant. Objectivity cannot
be achieved. The best possible result is when most knowledgeable observers,
over a longer period of time, agree that the narrator has succeeded in present-
ing a fair, balanced and sufficiently detailed picture.
Periodization suffers from the additional defect that it tends to disregard
or at least belittle the changes occurring during the period considered, while
tending to overestimate the differences between subsequent periods. The dan-
ger of falling into this trap may be greater when we are concerned with the
6 chapter 1
more distant past. If we think of Russia in 1975 (the Soviet government is ap-
parently successful in its suppression of dissent), 1985 (Gorbachev embarks on
perestroika), 1995 (the ussr has disintegrated and El’tsin’s Russia is a dynamic
and chaotic country), 2005 (Russia under Putin is back as a stable and powerful
state), the impression received is one of fast and fundamental changes during
a short period. The use of a term like “Kievan Rus” may invoke an image of
a golden age in which a succession of powerful princes ruled the prosperous
and peaceful Russian lands from gold-domed Kiev, until internal discord and
external enemies put an end to this state of primeval harmony. Even a cur-
sory glance at the chronicles covering this period will convince the reader that
11th- and 12th-century Russia was frequently rocked by dramatic upheavals and
subject to a steady process of social, economic and political transformation.
Similar caveats can be made about the other periods in which Russian history
is traditionally divided.
Still, nobody would deny that a discussion of more than thousand years
of Russian history requires the breaking up of a millennium into more man-
ageable sections. The caveat expressed in the foregoing paragraph can be ad-
dressed by an appropriate subdivision of these sections into smaller bits, in
order to avoid the impression that these sections constituted stable blocks,
separated by short periods of rapid change and transition.
To a great extent therefore periodization is a matter of free choice for the
narrator, there are no objective guidelines for dividing up the material into
chronological units, unless of course one is an orthodox Marxist who believes
that Marx discovered objective laws of historic development.
Specific subjects may dictate or at least suggest a certain form of periodiza-
tion. This is quite obvious in legal history, where the introduction of new legis-
lation may occasion a sudden change of the legal landscape. There are several
outstanding examples of this in Russian legal history. For the more recent
past one could mention the three so-called decrees on the courts of the early
Soviet power, by which the entire pre-revolutionary legal system was complete-
ly abolished. Of course, this development coincided with parallel upheavalsin
the political and socio-economic spheres, all of them part of the phenomenon
known as the October Revolution. More intriguing, from the point of view
of periodization, is the enactment of the Code (Sobornoe Ulozhenie) of tsar
Aleksei Mikhailovich in 1649. That year was not of exceptional relevance in
Russianhistory in general and it would not occur to anyone to make it into a
cut-off point for political or socio-economic history. For Russian law, however,
it turned out to be a decisive year, and retrospectively at that, because when
the Russian government embarked on the collection and codification of the
entire mass of Russian law in the middle of the 19th century, the Code of tsar
Aleksei was taken as the starting-point.
All authors who address their efforts to the study of lengthier periods of
Russian legal history use the tool of periodization, but surprisingly few con-
sider the problems involved in periodization itself. Among pre-revolutionary
authors Vladimirskii-Budanov was a notable exception. He regarded the rela-
tionship between public (“state”) and private law as the decisive factor and this
led him to distinguish three major periods: the 9th–13th centuries (the “land”
or “princes’” period), the 14th–16th centuries (the Moscow and Lithuanian pe-
riod), and the 17th–19th centuries (the imperial period).1
For Soviet scholars the problem appeared to have been solved. As the lead-
ing Soviet legal historian S.V. Iushkov wrote in 1950:2
Only on the basis of the teaching by the founders of Marxism-Leninism

concerning the social-economic formations and the economic struc-
tures, and by following the direct instructions of Lenin and Stalin could
the basic moments of the history of the state and law of the ussr be
established.
Russia was supposed to have jumped directly from the stateless communal-
clan phase to feudalism, bypassing the slave-owning state. Only in the course
of the second half of the 19th century was feudalism gradually replaced by ear-
ly forms of capitalism. This necessitated a further subdivision of the more than
eight centuries of ‘feudalism’ into smaller periods. As the founders of Marxism-
Leninism had not clearly expressed themselves on this question, considerable
room for debate became available. The first few centuries were usually charac-
terized as “early feudalism”, which was followed by the period of independent
principalities and then the rise of the centralized state of Muscovy; the lat-
ter was gradually transformed into an absolute monarchy, culminating in the
reign of Peter the Great.3
The real constraints for Soviet legal historians were probably less in the
Marxist-Leninist straightjacket than in the extremely hierarchical academic
climate which made it difficult to defend views which did not agree with those
1 M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov, Obzor istorii russkogo prava, Rostov-na-Donu, 1995, 33. This edi-
tion is a reprint of the 7th and last pre-revolutionary edition of 1915 (Kiev). The first edition
appeared in 1886 in Kiev.
2 S.V. Iushkov, Istoriia gosudarstva i prava sssr, chast’ i, Moskva, 1950 (3rd ed.), 11.
3 Ibidem, 12–17.
8 chapter 1
of the professional leaders, of whom academician B.S. Grekov was the undis-
puted number one. Only during the last years of Soviet power could heterodox
opinions be voiced more freely. This was of particular importance for the early
Kievan period where the feudalism construct was seriously inadequate.
In the post-Soviet era the periodization problem was briefly recognized by
Isaev in his university textbook on legal history. He pointed out that it was to be
determined by several factors, especially the socio-economic structure of soci-
ety and the development of the state. He added that the legal historian would
be interested primarily in politico-legal forms, facts and phenomena. Without
any further argument he then listed five periods, which were more or less the
same as those recognized by Soviet legal historians (Ancient Russia, the period
of the independent feudal states, the Muscovy state, the absolute monarchy
of the Russian empire, the 19th-century transition to a bourgeois monarchy).4
Isaev’s treatment of the matter suggests that the periodization problem,
which appears serious from a theoretical point of view, may actually evaporate
if looked at pragmatically. Most authors arrive at more or less the same result,
regardless of their different points of departure. The main thing to be kept in
mind is that developments were usually gradual, so that the defining charac-
teristics of one era can often already be observed in the immediately preceding
era and sometimes survive into the next era. But there were also events which
represented a serious albeit partial break of legal continuity. One could men-
tion the adoption of Christianity around 988, the sudden Mongol conquest in
1239–1240, or the passing of comprehensive legislation, such as the Code of tsar
Aleksei in 1649 (as mentioned above). In all these cases, however, continuity in
other areas remained intact.
The traditional system is acceptable as a general matrix for chronologically
organizing the material; not because it is widely (and usually without further
consideration) adopted, but because apparently nobody who has given the
matter any thought can come up with something significantly different. The
various schemes proposed differ mainly in their further subdivisions.
At the beginning one can discern the proto-historical phase which is usu-
ally designated as Ancient Russia (Drevniaia Rus’), which was then gradually
transformed into early Kievan Russia. No direct legal sources from this earli-
est period have survived. The reigns of St. Vladimir, when Russia embraced
Christianity, and of his son Iaroslav the Wise are generally regarded as the apex
of Kievan Russia. They were marked by the Russkaia Pravda (“Russian Law”)
and the two church statutes bearing the names of these two princes as the
4 I.A. Isaev, Istoriia gosudarstva i prava Rossii, Moskva, 2006 (3rd ed.), 6–7.
principal legal monuments. Under their successors, the Kievan empire lost its
coherence and was overrun in 1239–1240 by the Mongols. Mongol rule repre-
sented an abrupt break in certain aspects of legal developments, but left other
aspects intact. The post-Kievan period of Russian legal history, both before
and after the arrival of the Mongols, was inevitably characterized by a certain
degree of legislative fragmentation; the prominent position of Novgorod was
of particular importance. Continuity with Kievan Russia remained strong,
however. This so-called period of the independent principalities continued, al-
though under Mongol-Tatar suzerainty, until the princes of Vladimir-Moscow
succeeded in the course of the following centuries to push all other princes
out of the way. The last independent prince (of Riazan’) was removed in 1520.
Long before that time, however, the grand prince of Moscow had become the
effective ruler of the country. The most important legal milestone from this
period was the Code of Ivan iii, the Great, of Moscow, of 1497. This was the
first comprehensive piece of legislation applying to almost the entire territory
of Russia since the times of the Russkaia Pravda. The extinction of the ruling
branch of the house of Rurik (at the death of tsar Fedor, the son of Ivan iv,
the Terrible, in 1596) started the Time of Troubles (Smutnoe Vremia), which
was ended by the election of a new tsar Mikhail Romanov in 1620, the scion of
a leading boyar family. His grandson Peter initiated a period of fundamental
reforms, known ever since as the Petrine era. For almost the entire remainder
of the 18th century Russia was ruled by empresses. In the 19th century develop-
ments in Russia moved the country closer to Europe.
The critical term (which I have tried to avoid) in the preceding paragraph is
“gradual”. There is a rough general consensus about the periods indicated, but
the most important thing to remember is that the transition from one period
into another usually covered several decades or even longer.
Returning to the question of the periodization of legal history, the general
framework sketched above can be used, but with flexibility. Some legal institu-
tions were completely unaffected by the transition to another period. Other
institutions were subject to fundamental transformation, without any obvious
link to what was happening simultaneously in general history.
The Code of Ivan iii of 1497 will be taken as the major milestone divid-
ing the first period (Kievan and Post-Kievan Russia) and the following one
(Muscovy Russia), as it marked very clearly the triumph of the single Russian
state over the co-existence of competing principalities. The period of Muscovy
Russiadid actually continue until the end of the 17th century when Peter the
Great ascended the throne, but, as indicated above, the cut-off point in legal
history may more conveniently be placed somewhat earlier, at the adoption of
the Council Code (Sobornoe Ulozhenie) of tsar Aleksei in 1649.
10 chapter 1
The Definition of Law
Legal history is the history of law and requires therefore a certain understand-
ing of the concept of law. In the past, legal historians would often start from the
law which was around them, the legal system in which they lived and worked.
They would then describe the law of another era and possibly another nation
according to the way their own legal system was organized: private law as op-
posed to public law; private law divided up into the law of persons, property,
obligations, inheritance and succession, and so on, as if such an order pro-
ceeded from a higher authority, or from natural reason, or from some other
external source.5
This approach usually (but not necessarily) starts from an understanding of
law as something that exists objectively, as part of the natural world, and can
therefore be discovered, revealed, by scientific investigation. (Natural world in
this sense would embrace not only the physical world – the object of the natu-
ral sciences, including the medical sciences –, but also a number of aspects of
the human race – anthropology, sociology, linguistics, history, etc.)
Before we consider the question whether law belongs in the latter catego-
ry, we may recognize that the disciplines mentioned all have unclear edges.
Should non-verbal communication be included under linguistics? Sociology
overlaps with anthropology, as well as with history, and so on. The same goes
for law in the generally accepted sense of the term; the legal nature of certain
rules may be debatable. Can unenforceable rules be part of law?
Law (again, in the generally accepted sense) can of course be the object of
scientific analysis, like any other social phenomenon. This is what the legal
historian is involved in, studying the law of the past. Legal sociology would be
another example, the study of the interaction between law and society. But
most lawyers, practitioners as well as academic lawyers, are concerned with
5 This traditional approach is taken by the principal pre-revolutionary Russian textbook au-
thors V.I. Sergeevich and Vladimirskii-Budanov (quoted above), whose works were simply
divided into chapters on the history of state law, criminal law, civil law, and procedure. The
first edition of Sergeevich’s work Lektsii i izsledovannia po drevnei istorii russkogo prava ap-
peared in 1883 in St.Petersburg, so it seems that Vladimirskii-Budanov followed his lead. The
main Soviet textbook on legal history, by Iushkov (quoted above), proceeded along the same
lines. The only major work on medieval Russian legal history in recent times, the first three
volumes of PRoP, stayed close to Iushkov, in the introductions and comments accompany-
ing the legislative texts; most of these are from the hand of the general editor of the series
R.L. Khachaturov.
establishing what the law is in a particular case. Can this be considered as a

scientific investigation, a search for what really is or exists, for the truth?
In the past this question was often answered affirmatively. Even when the
highest court of the land had decided otherwise, scholars would argue that
the judges had misinterpreted the law, that they had not ‘found’ the law, that
the actual, the real law was different.
I suppose that few lawyers subscribe to this view any longer, if only because
it is quite impractical. But because it is often unclear what the highest court
will decide in a particular case in future, lawyers still argue as if the law were
something that existed outside the minds of the judges. This way of arguing
may help in persuading the courts that the solution put forward by the advo-
cate is the correct one, that this is what the law commands, and that deciding
otherwise would be wrong. It is nevertheless based on a metaphor.
Nobody contests that scientific proof is the basis of natural sciences. Disci-
plines such as psychology or linguistics are also involved primarily in proving
the existence or absence of certain things. In law, however, the most central
‘facts’, the existence or absence of a right or a duty cannot be proven, at least
it has never been done; it can only be argued. It is safer therefore to proceed
from the premise that law does not exist objectively, i.e. independently from,
and outside human action.6 Law is constructed, different parts at different
times. In Kievan times there were legal institutions which we could consider
as part of the law of obligations, or of property, or of persons. There certainly
was no law of intellectual property. The public/private dichotomy in law, so
6 A religious person might object that the same argument would lead to the denial of the exis-
tence of God, if one accepts the view that the existence of God cannot be proven scientifical-
ly, i.e. by experiment. The answer to that objection would be, in my view, that the knowledge
of the existence of God may also have other foundations which do not contradict rationality.
A proper scientist, who is also a believer, will be aware of the requirement that scientific
knowledge must be based on scientific evidence.
Can the same reasoning be applied to law? Law operates in the social sphere, it regulates
human relationships. An individual may have non-scientific knowledge of what the law is in
a particular case, but this knowledge is useless, because another person (against whom the
rights or duties produced by this law would be exercized) may have entirely different non-
scientific knowledge. Religion concerns primarily the individual’s relationship with (an exist-
ing or imagined) God and the views which other persons hold on this subject are not directly
relevant. A person may engage in religious worship because he holds the not irrational, but
scientifically unverifiable belief that God exists. A similar belief that the law is in a certain
way, that it grants him a particular right, is an inadequate ground for action; it ultimately has
to be tested in the courts.
12 chapter 1
fundamental nowadays and going back to Roman law, had not yet emerged in
Kievan Russia.
The same argument can be put differently and perhaps more clearly in the
following way. People qualified in certain fields may make statements about
the results of their investigations: “this solution contains cadmium”; “the Mon-
gols took the city of Kiev in 1240”; “the language of the Linear B texts on Crete
is a form of Old Greek”, etc. When other scientists check these results and the
way they were arrived at, or conduct other investigations on their own, and all
of them reach the same conclusion, we can assume that the statements con-
cerned are true, in other words, reflect objectively existing things (including
things that have existed in the past). Until of course somebody comes along
and presents evidence which proves that the earlier conclusions were faulty.
In law matters are different. If a qualified person (a competent lawyer, for
instance) declares: “Mrs. Smith is the owner of this house”, we first want to
know for whom this lawyer is speaking; is he or she Mrs. Smith’s lawyer, or the
lawyer of the party who contests Mrs. Smith’s ownership, or an outside legal
consultant, or is it the court to whom the dispute has been submitted? The au-
thority of the scientist’s statement rests on his arguments, the authority of the
lawyer’s statement on the lawyer’s status. If it is the deciding court speaking,
then the statement is true, in a legal sense, not because it reflects something
that already existed and this existence was revealed by the court, but because
from the moment of the court’s decision a new legal situation arises, a new
reality is created by the court.
In legal terminology one would say that scientific statements are declara-
tory, they express, or conform to, what is there, while legal statements are con-
stitutive (provided they have been made by somebody with the authority to
make them), they themselves create a new (legal) reality.
Law is the product of conscious human creation. This is directly obvious
where law is the product of legislation (in the wide sense of rule creation by
a competent authority) or of judicial decisions which create precedent. But
also in the case of customary law there is a moment when an existing prac-
tice (which may also be a newly emerging practice) is recognized by the com-
munity concerned as legally binding. Precisely because law is the product of
conscious human creation it cannot be found through scientific investigation:
there is nothing there to be found. So-called scientific legal analysis consists in
an imitation of the complex activities of the court in accumulating and weigh-
ing various factual data and considerations, along with interpretations of pos-
sibly applicable legal rules and constructions. The legal scholar may express
his conclusions as a statement: this is the law, but this can only mean: this is
what I think the court should decide.
In other disciplines, such as linguistics, psychology, history, and of course

the natural sciences, there is an underlying reality which the scholar attempts
to discover and reveal.
It is implicit in the view on law as explained above that law is not, like lan-
guage or social relationships, a necessary accompaniment of human society.
At a certain stage of social development it began to be created. This is then also
the point where legal history starts. As I have argued more at length elsewhere,7
one may distinguish three consecutive phases in the emergence of law:
– the emergence of dispute settlement by a third party (which in time will in-
volve fixed procedures for such settlement, its acceptance and enforcement,
and the recognition of the validity of precedents in dispute settlement);
– further elaboration of this complex (specialization and then professional-
ization of dispute settlement: courts, verbal fixation (oral or in writing) of
procedural and substantive rules concerning such settlement, monopoliza-
tion of rule enunciation by specific persons or agencies);
– maturation of a legal system (a central authority for enunciating rules,
which then proceeds to create new rules as well, and monopolizes rule
enforcement).
While law is still in statu nascendi in the first two phases, it is fully present in the
third phase, which almost always coincides with the emergence of the state.
At the beginning of this section the point was made that legal history, the
history of law, requires some understanding of the concept of law itself. We
have taken for granted that there exists indeed a general consensus about the
meaning of “law” when we speak about the function of law in society, the way
lawyers and courts are engaged in determining what the law is, the way law is
different as an object of scholarly interest as compared to history, language,
the psyche, etc. We have established that law in this generally accepted sense
does not exist in the same way as those other objects, that it comes into being
only at a particular moment in human history, as the result of conscious hu-
man creation.
If law does not exist as an objective reality, independent from the human
mind, then the question about reaching an understanding of the concept of
law has in principle been answered by establishing that a general consensus
about the meaning of “law” exists. We can only try to make this consensus as
explicit as possible, by determining its scope.
7 In the chapter on “Law’s Beginnings and Early Law” in Law in Medieval Russia, Leiden/Bos-
ton, 2009, 1–32, at 4 and 27.
14 chapter 1
The Organization of This Work
An exposé of the present-day law of a particular state, of its legal system in

other words, would consist of a discussion of certain general features of such
a system and of the major component elements, the amount of detail being
dependent of the time and space available. The legislation in force would
constitutethe basic source of information, together with, and supplemented
by decisions of courts; legal literature might offer additional information. The
general outline of such a work can be regarded as pre-determined, its execu-
tion would depend on the skills of the author.
The reach or scope of legal regulation in a modern state, what is covered
by the legal system in other words, is therefore reasonably clear. Generally
speaking, modern legal systems tend to expand and to cover areas of human
behaviour that were previously unregulated, or more likely regulated by other
normative systems, such as ethics, local or group custom, good manners, tradi-
tion, religious prescriptions, etc. But modern law can occasionally be seen to
withdraw from certain areas; this may be done explicitly, but the usual pro-
cedure is that a particular legal rule is generally considered unacceptable or
irrelevant and remains unobserved and unenforced. If it is then not replaced
by another legal rule, the area it was supposed to cover is left to be regulated
by non-legal rules.
The progressive expansion of the scope of legal regulation is especially no-
ticeable is one considers longer periods. From the point of view of a modern
lawyer medieval law looks more like a sea of lawlessness with islands of legal
regulation. The much more modest scope of medieval law can be explained in
part by the greater simplicity of medieval society. Even in our own times we
have seen the emergence of branches of law, such as computer law, that were
not even imagined half a century ago. When we go back a thousand years the
gap becomes vast. All sorts of human activities that are part of present-day life
did not exist and were unknown then, and consequently the question of their
regulation through law did not arise.
But that is not the full story. We have argued above that legal regulation is
also a matter of choice; a society, and specifically the powers that shape its law,
may prefer for various reasons to leave certain questions unregulated by law.
One does occasionally notice in medieval society the absence of law in areas
where legislation would have been a realistic option. Family law is an obvious
example. Tradition and custom resisted the intervention of a legislator. Only
after Christianity had taken root, family relations became more juridicized and
then the Church claimed and was assigned a central role in family law. This
occurred in the Eastern church as well as in the Western church and this situa-
tion lasted for many centuries.
Another reason why medieval law can be compared to a collection of is-
lands may simply be the meagre supply of sources. As one goes back in time
they become scarcer. This problem, which does not exist in the study of mod-
ern law, is very prominent in medieval legal history. It will be investigated in
greater detail below, but must already be indicated at this stage, because it is of
decisive importance in the organization of this book. Nothing or at least very
little can be said about a branch of law when we do not have direct contempo-
rary information at our disposal.
To summarize the various considerations which lead to the selection of a
particular approach:
– we regard law as a specific type of regulation of human relations, character-

ized by certain procedures and institutions and the involvement of specific
persons;
– the scope of legal regulation was more limited in the middle ages and
appeared to cover only certain areas of human relations;
– the availability of sources is an independent factor in deciding how to
approach the description of the law of a specific medieval society.
These considerations then lead to the identification of the following areas of

law which lend themselves to a coherent description:
– Early Kievan Russia: tribal territories centred around a town; inter-tribal re-
lations (the payment of tribute);
– the prince as ruler in medieval Russia, including relations between princes;
– the town as a legal locus, especially Novgorod and Pskov;
– rural Russia: the use of land; local government;
– the family: marriage, the status of women and children, inheritance;
– the individual: status and capacity; obligations;
– the Church, including the function of monasteries;
– courts and justice.
The idea behind this selection is that each of the areas mentioned represented
a nucleus around which a set of interdependent legal rules and institutions
coalesced. There are, to be sure, also multiple connections between the dif-
ferent areas. The prince, for instance, generally played a role in the adminis-
tration of justice and in urban government; the Church was deeply involved
16 chapter 1
in family matters; monasteries in time emerged as important users of land,

etc. Although I have been mindful of avoiding excessive repetition, a certain
amount of it was deemed acceptable and useful, because a work such as the
present is more like a course of lectures than like a legislative text (where rep-
etition is undesirable and even dangerous). The reader should preferably not
be sent scurrying around the book to collect bits of information before he can
continue his reading.
The areas identified appear as loci of law – places where we observe the pres-
ence of law, or in practical terms: places illuminated by the available sources.
The law of a society different from our own, in this case of medieval Russia, is
perceived not primarily through the conceptual instruments of our own time,
but, insofar as possible, through the eyes of contemporaries.
The method outlined above is not original or revolutionary; it had been
adopted already by Sergeevich, who not only wrote a Russian legal history
textbook organized along traditional lines (state law, criminal law, civil law,
procedure), but also a three-volume work on the “ancient monuments of
Russian law” (Drevnosti russkago prava, inspired by older German works on
Rechtsaltertümer), which offered sections on territory and population, armed
forces, the popular assembly (veche) and the prince, land use, and taxation.8
General History and History of Law
As noted in the section on “Periodization”, legal history has its own specific
interests and topics, central among which is “the law” at a specific time and
place, and what preceded and followed it. In the section on the “Definition of
Law” we have contemplated the peculiarities of the concept of law, resulting
in the conclusion that the law cannot be said to exist in the same way as the
natural world or immaterial things, such as language. In the last analysis law
comes into being, begins to exist, the moment a certain authority pronounces
it, provided such a pronouncement is accepted by the audience to whom it is
addressed.
This peculiar nature of law lies at the root, in my view, of certain differences
in attitude and approach between general and legal historians. The lawyer, on
the basis of various considerations, decides what the law is or should be. These
considerations may concern facts, but also ethical views and social or political
8 V.I. Sergeevich, Drevnosti russkago prava, Sankt-Peterburg, 1890 (i and ii), 1903 (iii) (first edi-
tion). In his other major work on legal history, the Lektsii i izsledovaniia po drevnei istorii
russkago prava, Sergeevich stuck to the traditional format of state law, criminal law, civil law,
and procedure.
desirabilities, etc. The effect of the lawyer’s decision depends on his/her status:
the legislator decides what the law is going to be, the judge what the law is,
other lawyers what they expect the law to be or what they would like it to be.
The legal historian, who usually has a legal background, is therefore inclined
to establish, to the best of his knowledge, what the law at a certain place in the
past was. If the text of a law is available, this will normally be the prime and
decisive source. But the occasional obscurity of old texts may necessitate the
introduction of other materials. Once the content and meaning of the law (for
a certain time and place) have been established, the investigation stops, until
new materials or insights prompt a revision of the original view.
The general historian will rather be drawn to create a continuous narrative.
As the past is no longer in existence, it has to be reconstructed on the basis of
an often vast reservoir of information, by selecting relevant items. This makes
it usually worthwhile to look at similar attempts by predecessors. Among
Russian historians there is a strong tradition of beginning any reasonably
ambitiousinvestigation with an extensive survey of what previous authors
have written. A legal historian on the other hand would rather argue, I suspect,
in an adversarial manner, as in a law-suit: there are such and such arguments in
favour of this view and such and such against. Then only the relevant authors
and authorities have to be cited.
During the Soviet era, legal history was neglected to the extent that legal
scholars generally paid little attention to it. After the so-called Third Decree
on the Courts of 20 July 1918, pre-revolutionary law had lost almost all legal
relevance and by the same token its place in the legal curriculum.9 A general
course on “History of state and law in the ussr” was all that remained, and
more than half of that was usually devoted to developments after 1917.
The history of Russian law remained a valid research topic for general his-
torians; particularly, the law of the Kievan era and the subsequent period of
the Muscovy tsardom enjoyed the lively interest of Soviet historiography. One
obvious reason was that sufficient legal sources were available. Secondly, and
more hypothetically, one might expect that scholars would often be inclined
to turn their attention to more remote times during periods of political repres-
sion, such as the Stalin era.
9 At least that was the official position. When the new Soviet state felt the need to draft its own
legislation in the principal traditional branches of the law (civil, criminal, procedural law,
etc.), it had to use a generation of lawyers schooled in the old system. In this way consider-
able continuity between the law of Imperial Russia and the new Soviet law was maintained.
In specific instances, direct recourse to the old law could not be avoided, e.g. in determining
whether a person born before the Revolution was a citizen of the ussr.
18 chapter 1
Nobody would deny that Soviet medievalists have produced an enormous

amount of often excellent material. The first generation consisted of historians
who had been trained before the Revolution, people like M.N. Pokrovskii or
A.E. Presniakov. The next generation began to publish before the Second World
War and wrote their major works during the Stalin era. The central figure was
B.D. Grekov, and others of equal stature were S.V. Iushkov, L.V. Cherepnin,
M.N. Tikhomirov, V.V. Mavrodin and others. One might also include A.A. Zimin,
although he was somewhat younger. The latter part of the Soviet era was
dominated by the pupils of this Stalin generation who, with some notable ex-
ceptions, continued to work within the lines staked out by their teachers.
Literature on medieval Russian law consists therefore for a very consid-
erable part of works by Soviet historians. There are certain external charac-
teristics which prevail and may irritate the non-Soviet reader: the obligatory
references to Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin (the latter is no longer mentioned
of course after 1957), a particular Soviet rhetorical style (some authors man-
aged to avoid this), and especially the terminology based on Marxist-Leninist
ideology. Concerning the last item, it is tolerable when it is merely a question
of words. One easily gets used to the term “feudalism” in its very wide Marxist
sense. Even in everyday parlance of Western countries “feudal” often means
merely “very old-fashioned”.
The real difficulty, however, lies in the philosophical basis of Marxist termi-
nology. First of all, Marxist dialectical and historical materialism is regarded
as a scientific doctrine and method, producing scientific truth. The truths so
discovered are then used as the foundation for historical studies. The mind-set
resulting from this procedure has proved to be more durable than actual Marx-
ist ideology. Conceptual realism is still prevalent among Russian historians. By
this I mean a philosophical realism, as opposed to nominalism or, to a lesser
extent, conceptualism. Such realism holds that general ideas or concepts (uni-
versals) exist before, and independently from, their specific manifestations.
This results in endless debates about whether a certain thing is a “state”, a “law”,
a “town”, “feudal”, while the nominalist would only ask: “Shall I call this thing a
state/a law/a town/feudal” and the conceptualist: “Does this thing conform to
the concept I have of a state/a law/a town/feudalism”?
Conceptual realism is almost ineradicable among lawyers, and as most legal
historians started out as lawyers, it is also widespread in legal history. Most
common is the approach where a modern legal concept is tacitly accepted as a
timeless yardstick. The legal historian then may set out to investigate whether
a particular institution (say, mortgage) ‘existed’ in some legal system in the
past (say, Kievan Russia). The only modern major Russian study of medieval
Russian legal history, written by legal historians, offers a perfect example of
the approach criticized above.10 The inherent defects of such an approach are
much aggravated by the pervasive Marxist inspiration of the work. It appears
that the general editor and several of the other contributors assumed uncriti-
cally that the full panoply of Marxist social concepts (“classes”, “class struggle”,
“property relations”, “state”, “feudalism”, etc.) represented an unassailable sci-
entific achievement, supplying the foundation for more detailed academic
exercises.11 This part of the work, reading often as if it had been written half a
century ago, seriously diminishes the overall value of the collection.
Medieval Law
Medieval law has been compared above to a collection of islands, an archipela-

go. Its character as a social phenomenon is sporadic, it occurs here and there. In
certain places the network of social relations thickened and assumed a differ-
ent form which allows us to speak of legal relationships. The evidence from the
earliest law in many cultures suggests that this metamorphosis did not happen
all at once, but at different times depending on the nature of the relationship
involved.12 The first area to become ‘juridicized’ usually concerned injuries in-
flicted on a person belonging to a different social group. Before conflicts aris-
ing from such injuries were submitted to a legal process of resolution, blood
feuds were the most common traditional way of handling them; the costliness
and relative ineffectiveness of this procedure gave rise to the search for a more
adequate way of conflict resolution. Once the instruments for legal solutions
were in place (third party mediation with an appropriate procedure, however
rudimentary, accepted by the conflicting parties), the advantage of submitting
other conflicts soon became obvious (matters concerning property and prop-
erty relationships). Family matters often remained outside the legal sphere for
a longer time, because families usually already had adequate procedures for
dealing with internal difficulties.
This sporadic character of early medieval law creates a peculiar method-
ological problem. When the sources are still scarce, as is usually the case, and
also susceptible to varying interpretations, it stands to reason to elucidate an
obscure term or text by means of introducing external information. Medieval
10 Volumes i–iii of PRoP, with R.L. Khachaturov as general editor.

11 The introductory chapters of Vol.i, for instance, quote abundantly from Soviet works
(without any fundamental criticism) and almost nothing from post-Soviet works (these
texts were written by Khachaturov himself).
12 See also F. Feldbrugge (ed.), The Law’s Beginnings, Leiden, 2003.
20 chapter 1
legal institutions, as argued, grew out of pre-legal arrangements. When we

know more about the latter it is often possible to sketch the socio-economic
and intellectual background of the few isolated bits of legal information and
this may allow us to draw a more complete picture of the legal situation.
I would contend that it is almost impossible to present an adequate general
picture of a medieval legal system without resorting to the use of some kind of
pre-conceived understanding of the society involved. This is the normal way
the acquisition of knowledge and insight is achieved. When we are faced with
an unknown phenomenon we attempt to interpret it within the framework of
the knowledge we already have.
Two dangers are obvious. We may pay insufficient attention to, or even dis-
regard, aspects of the new phenomenon which do not fit our interpretative
framework. The second danger is more insidious. Even where everything fits
the framework, it still remains hypothetical itself. Scholars writing on Kievan
Russia and its law inevitably start from some kind of general image of Kievan
Russia. If the legal data are scarce, as they are for the era concerned, it is tempt-
ing to paint a picture in which too many details are filled in, on the basis of a
general image which is unjustifiably detailed. This is what often happened in
pre-revolutionary studies and, in a different and very specific way, in Soviet
times. For Soviet scholars Marxism-Leninism represented a comprehensive
scientific (and obligatory) view of the world, history and society. The general
image of Kievan Russia was to a considerable extent incontestably fixed by this
ideological approach.
A modern Russian historian, P.V. Lukin, has criticized the prevalent ap-
proach of earlier Russian and Soviet authors for what he termed its aprior-
ism.13 What he had in mind was more or less the same as what we have tried
to indicate above. Lukin then called for a return to the sources. No matter how
much one may agree with Lukin’s concern, it still does not take away the di-
lemma. A certain amount of conjecture is unavoidable if one does not want
to stop at the mere reproduction of the statements made by the sources, but
instead attempt to fit these into a meaningful context.
A peculiar problem of medieval law, and in fact of most non-modern law,
lies in the identification of sources. In almost all contemporary legal systems
it is prima facie clear where the law is to be found: in official publications of
legislative and other normative materials, in publications of court decisions,
etc. The relative strength of these various sources of law, their hierarchy, is,
13 In a study on the Old-Russian popular assembly, the veche; see P.V. Lukin, “Veche:
sotsial’nyi sostav”, A.A. Gorskii, V.A. Kuchkin (eds.), Drevniaia Rus’. Ocherki politicheskogo
i sotsial’nogo stroia, Moskva, 2008, 33–147, at 35–38.
generally, also clear. Moreover, the entire volume of the law operative at a cer-
tain moment is at least theoretically available; a well-equipped lawyer can be
reasonably certain that there are no pertinent legal provisions outside what is
at his disposal.
These conditions do not apply when we study medieval law. This problem
will be discussed more amply in Chapter 2 (on Sources).
Customary Law
Another problem, inherent to medieval and pre-medieval law, is the matter of
custom and customary law. The two constitute a continuum, but large areas of
custom lack direct legal relevance (e.g. the way family members interrelate, or
the way social events, such as funerals, are organized). Custom can become ju-
ridicized and be transformed into customary law when it is solidified into suf-
ficiently clear rules, the enunciation and enforcement of which are entrusted
to an external authority (elders, judges, priests, etc.). Once such customary law
comes into being, it can itself be transformed, because the enunciating author-
ity often acquires the power to create new solutions.14 Such law creation rep-
resents the transition from unwritten customary law to written legislation. The
earliest version of the Russkaia Pravda (discussed in Chapter 4) is an example
in this category.
Our knowledge and understanding of medieval law are based mainly on
written sources (see Chapter 2). As these sources are silent about many legal
aspects of life, such aspects were presumably covered by customary law. What
we know about such law is what can be inferred from the often limited infor-
mation provided by the written sources. The inevitable conclusion is that the
legal aspects of large areas of life in the middle ages remain therefore almost
invisible to the legal historian.
Before 1917, the question of customary law in the Russian middle ages was
treated quite extensively by Sergeevich in his Lektsii.15 After a long theoretical
argument, based mainly on 19th century German authors, he also discussed
the role of customary law in the different periods, up to the Muscovy state.
His observations concerning Russian terminology are still valuable. He pointed
out that zakon (nowadays “statute”) and pokon referred to customary law in the
early sources, such as the 10th-century treaties with the Greeks. Later on, other
terms were used, such as poshlina (e.g. in the Pskov Court Charter) and, less
frequently, starina (“what was common in the past”). Vladimirskii-Budanov is
14 This is one of the main themes in F. Feldbrugge (ed.), The Law’s Beginnings, Leiden/Bos-
ton, 2003; see especially my concluding chapter “Law’s Beginnings” (255–280), at 277–280.
15 Sergeevich, Lektsii, 5–25.
22 chapter 1
more concise, but has an interesting paragraph on Russian legal proverbs, as a

reflection of customary law.16
The attitude of Soviet jurisprudence towards modern customary law was
generally negative, although its existence in medieval law could not be denied.
Most authors just mentioned it cursorily. M.B. Sverdlov devoted an informed
paper to it, in which he attempted to fit customary law in the Kievan era into a
Marxist framework.17 In post-Soviet times a notable contribution was made by
Iu.G. Alekseev in his monograph on the Code of Ivan iii of 1497.18
Numerous examples demonstrating the existence, as well as the poor vis-
ibility of customary law in the middle ages could be given; to present just one:
there was a category of persons called polovniki in Northern Russia in the 14th
and 15th centuries. They are mentioned frequently in various types of char-
ters19 and they obviously represented an established institution. They were not
unlike Western sharecroppers: poor and landless peasants who were provided
with a plot of arable land for which they were obliged to turn over half the har-
vest to the landowner. The only rule about them that could be viewed as regu-
lating their status is a reference in a treaty of 1304–1305 between Novgorod and
the grand prince of Tver’, in which the courts of the grand prince were forbid-
den to judge (Novgorod) slaves and polovniki without the participation of their
masters (owners).20 Beyond this incidental rule, there must have been quite
a body of rules of customary law regulating the status of such an established
category of peasants. A comparable but better-situated category (the izorniki),
which apparently existed only in Pskov, received considerable attention in the
Court Charter of Pskov (see Chapter 8, on Town and Provincial Charters). See
also the sections on dependent peasants in Chapter 18 (on Rural Russia).
Only in more recent times does the greater availability of sources allow a
more detailed description of customary law.21
16 Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 108–111 (in the chapter on sources of law and legislation).
17 M.B. Sverdlov, “Pravovoi obychai i zakon v formirovanii sistemy feodal’nogo prava v Kievs-
koi Rusi”, dg sssr 1987, Moskva, 1989, 19–26. See also K.V. Petrov, “Sootnoshenie obych-
nogo prava i zakona v russkoi sudebnoi praktike xvi–xvii vv.”, Sovetskoe Gosudarstvo i
Pravo, 2007, No.7, 80–83.
18 See especially the chapter “Princely legislation and customary law” in his Sudebnik Ivana
iii. Traditsiia i reforma, Sankt-Peterburg, 2001, 77–101.
19 Many examples in the three volumes of asei.
20 gvnp No.7, 16–18.
21 See e.g. V.A. Aleksandrov, Obychnoe pravo krepostnoi derevni Rossii, xviii – nachalo xix v.,
Moskva, 1984.
An Outline of the ‘Constitutional’ History of Russia During the

Era of the Independent Principalities
While Chapters 2–11 of this work are concerned with the sources of medieval
Russian law, Chapters 12–22 deal with various aspects of the substantive law
of the period concerned. An orderly exposition of the substantive law re-
quires an outline of the general historical background. There are many good
and adequate general histories, in several languages, dealing with the period
of medieval Russia, so we need not engage in unnecessary duplication here.
But there is one topic, close to general historiography, which overhangs many
more specific discussions of medieval Russian law: what in Russian medievis-
tic discourse is referred to as gosudarstvennost’ (“statehood”). The question of
the Russian ‘state’, its origins, its nature, has intrigued generations of Russian
historians. For legal historians the question has an additional interest, because
nobody would deny that state and law are intimately related concepts.
During the Soviet era, the ready answers supplied by Marxism-Leninism
precluded a serious debate, but the question retained its importance and was
accordingly allowed a prominent place in discussions of medieval Russian law.
The Kievan realm which arose in the course of the 9th and 10th centuries un-
der the pagan ancestors of the first Christian ruler, St. Vladimir, was recognized
as a state, although there was no consensus concerning its nature in the sense
of historical materialism. Some accepted the existence of large-scale land-
owning at an early stage, which would allow the identification of the Kievan
state as feudal. Others noted that there was no serious evidence of such socio-
economic developments and this would inevitably lead to a view of the Kievan
realm as a state based primarily on slave-owning (see also Chapter 12, “Setting
the Stage”, the section on the “Feudalism debate”).
Non-Marxist scholars are free to neglect Marxist categories and with most
of them the question of the state in early Russian history is not primarily about
the nature of the Kievan realm but concerns, for instance, the moment one can
begin to speak of the existence of a state in Russia. As has been argued above,
the answer to such a question depends largely on the particular concept of the
state, as subscribed to by an individual scholar.22
22 A wide-ranging modern survey of the question of Old-Russian statehood has been pub-
lished by the Ukrainian historian N.F. Kotliar, Drevnerusskaia gosudarstvennost’. Nauchno-
populiarnoe izdanie, Sankt-Peterburg, 1998. A Ukrainian version of this work appeared a
few years later: M.[!]F. Kotliar, Istoriia davn’orus’koi derzhavnosti. Naukove vydannia, Kyiv,
2002; the differences between the two editions are minuscule, notwithstanding the titles.
24 chapter 1
A more intriguing problem from the point of view of general as well as le-
gal history is probably the question of the Russian state during the so-called
period of the independent and/or apanage principalities. While many related
topics are more conveniently treated in other sections of this work, this ques-
tion is best addressed here.
In Chapter 13 on the Prince, in the sections dealing with princely succes-
sion, the fundamental importance of the ruling house or, in other words, the
descent from a common ancestor, has been underlined. Although the Russian
dynasty derived its name from its oldest known ancestor, Rurik (Riurik, a name
given very occasionally to male descendants), this Viking warlord was eclipsed
completely by his great-grandson Vladimir, the first Christian ruler over all
Eastern Slavs. Descent from the most glorious and prestigious ruler constituted
the essential legitimizing factor for the monopoly to claim a right to rule in
Russia during the following centuries.
St. Vladimir’s Kievan Rus’ possessed all attributes one might require of a me-
dieval state. What was the fate of this state under his successors?
The narrative of the Primary Chronicle, which understandably paid close
attention to succession disputes among princes, allows a more detailed analy-
sis of the consequences of the ruling house or common ancestor concept. It
resulted, at least initially, in the absence of the substitution and primogeniture
principles, which meant that grandsons did not step into the shoes of their
fathers (if the latter had predeceased the grandfather), and that the deceased
father’s estate was not assigned to his eldest son but divided among his surviv-
ing sons. This traditional system of succession was maintained during the first
generations after St. Vladimir. He assigned his sons to rule as his lieutenants in
the principal cities, and this implied an informal hierarchy among these cities
(and the territories belonging to them). The most important places would be
allotted to the more senior sons. After Vladimir’s death this system continued
to be applied and the death of the Kievan grand prince would entail the surviv-
ing princes moving up the ladder one place, the most senior one occupying the
Kievan throne.
Once the number of Rurikid princes grew large, this system became un-
tenable. Vladimir’s son Iaroslav the Wise could assume the sovereignty over
the entire country only in 1035, upon the death of his last surviving brother
Mstislav.23 He assigned seats to his sons in the usual way and appointed his
eldest son Iziaslav as grand prince of Kiev on his deathbed in 1054. His last will
Another modern treatment is by Iu.N. Krivosheev, Russkaia srednevekovaia gosudarstven-

nost’, Sankt-Peterburg, 2008.
23 He became the samovlastets of the entire Russian land, in the words of the Chronicle.
indicatedthat the Kievan grand princely dignity continued to constitute the

position of supreme rank, as well as of supreme power.24 But the increased
powers of other ruling princes found expression in their practice of appointing
their own sons as subordinate princes in various regions of their principalities.
This was a first modification of the original system. One generation later, in
1097, six leading princes (great-grandsons and other descendants of St. Vladi-
mir) met in Liubech and formally agreed that every one of them would retain
his own principality (and leave it to his sons). Sviatopolk Iziaslavich, the grand
prince of Kiev at the time, was one of the princes present, but the Chronicle
does not mention any special position reserved for him. This decision broke
the original unity of the country under the Kievan grand prince and can be
regarded as the beginning of the era of the independent principalities. Within
these principalities, ruled by princes who would recognize the supreme rank,
but not any supreme power of the Kievan grand prince, the old system of ap-
pointing sons (or younger brothers) as apanage princes, to rule over specific
territories, persevered.25 By “independent principalities” we mean those ma-
jor units of the old Kievan realm that considered themselves as more or less
independent states; the rulers of such principalities would then appoint sub-
ordinate princes to rule over what we designate as “apanage principalities”.
Russian sources often use udel’nye kniazhestva to refer to both categories. The
difference is admittedly gradual; independent principalities all started out as
apanage principalities and also an apanage principality could transform itself
into an independent principality, given time, luck, and an adroit ruler.
It should be stressed that this is only a rough sketch. The actual transi-
tion from a more or less unitary state ruled by the grand prince of Kiev to an
amalgam of small and mostly independent principalities was a process which
moved forward in a haphazard fashion. One of the six Liubech princes, the
energetic and competent Vladimir Monomakh, had still observed the old cus-
tom when his father, the Kievan grand prince Vsevolod (last surviving son of
Iaroslav the Wise) died in 1093, by allowing his more senior first cousin Sviato-
slav (the son of Iziaslav) to ascend the Kiev throne. He had to wait until 1113 to
succeed in Kiev upon the death of Sviatoslav. In the following twelve years of
his reign Monomakh succeeded in restoring much of the ancient power and
prestige of the Kievan seat.
24 “The throne of Kiev I bequeath to my eldest son, your brother Iziaslav. Heed him as you
have heeded me, that he may take my place among you”, in the words of the Chronicle.
25 The last person to be granted an apanage principality was Ivan iv Groznyi’s son Dmitrii,
who was granted the principality of Uglich at birth in 1582, see V.V. Boguslavskii, Riurikov-
ichi i Rus’, Moskva, 2009, (s.v. Dmitrii Ivanovich), or in 1584, ibidem, (s.v. Uglich).
26 chapter 1
Nevertheless, the decision of the Liubech assembly was a major step in

replacing the ‘musical chairs’-system of assigning seats to princes, as it had
operated during the reigns of St. Vladimir and Iaroslav the Wise, by the ‘patri-
mony’ (otchina) system, in which the right to rule over a certain territory was
considered the patrimony of a prince, the core of his estate to be inherited by
his sons.
In the course of the 12th and 13th centuries the network of independent
principalities developed further, as some of them tended to fragment even
more. The ultimate consequence of this process would have been the emer-
gence of a vast number of tiny principalities, often not much larger than the es-
tate of the average noble landowner.26 Although this situation did occasionally
arise, it was usually prevented by the introduction of primogeniture – leaving
the entire principality to the eldest son. The increased strengthening of the
position of the eldest son is very much noticeable in the succession of wills of
the grand princes of Moscow (see the section on princely wills in Chapter 13).
Under the old (‘musical chairs’) succession system a prince might be the
ruler of a successive string of principalities, moving gradually closer to the
throne of Kiev. This implied a certain hierarchy among the available princely
seats, the most senior and powerful princes occupying the seats of Chernigov,
Novgorod, Smolensk, Pereiaslavl’, and others, ranking just below Kiev itself. It
was precisely these principalities which then in the following period appeared
as the main components of the political conglomerate into which the Kievan
empire was transformed; in other words, the sum of the territories of this doz-
en of principalities was about equal to the territory of the empire of Iaroslav
the Wise. The territories involved were Kiev, Chernigov, Novgorod, Pereiaslavl’,
Smolensk, Galicia and Volynia, Turov-Pinsk, Riazan’ and Murom, Rostov-Suz-
dal’-Vladimir, and Polotsk.27 Before taking a closer look at the political histories
of these territories, two preliminary remarks must be made.
The first one concerns the sudden break in Russia’s constitutional his-
tory and internal organization caused by the Mongol invasion in the years
1237–1240. We shall return to the effects of Mongol supremacy later on. The
second remark concerns the more gradual developments in the West of Russia,
26 According to Boguslavskii, op.cit., 375 (s.v. Udel’nye kniazhestva), there were about 120 apa-
nage principalities (udel’nye kniazhestva) in Russia.
27 V.A. Kuchkin, in Formirovanie gosudarstvennoi territorii Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi v x–xiv vv.
(Moskva, 1984), discusses the development of the various principalities in North-Eastern
Russia which ultimately were united in the grand principality of Moscow or Muscovy:
Rostov, Suzdal’, Vladimir, Tver’, Nizhnii Novgorod, and the smaller principalities of Iur’ev,
Dmitrov, Galich, Starodub, Uglich, Iaroslavl’, Mologa and Belozero.
where the rise of the power of the Lithuanian grand principality (later on in
personal union with the kingdom of Poland) affected the fate of the western-
most Russian principalities for several centuries.
Pólotsk
Among the principalities mentioned, Pólotsk occupied an exceptional place
(it occupied roughly the territory of the ancient Slav tribe of the Polo-
tians or Polochane28 and of present-day Belarus). It had been conquered by
St. Vladimirin his pagan days, when he killed the local Viking prince Rognvald
and married his daughter Rogneda. Iziaslav, Rogneda’s eldest son by Vladimir,
was given Polotsk as his apanage principality, which indicated the high rank
enjoyed by the place. But Iziaslav died in 1001, long before his father St. Vladi-
mir. At the death of the latter in 1015, Iziaslav’s surviving son Briachislav (and
St. Vladimir’s eldest and most senior grandson), was therefore excluded from
the succession, in accordance with dynastic custom. Briachislav nevertheless
inherited Polotsk and successfully asserted its independence in 1021 in a short
war with his uncle Iaroslav the Wise, the Kievan grand prince. Briachislav’s son
Vseslav even attempted to extend his rule beyond the principality of Polotsk,
but was captured and imprisoned by his uncles and cousins in 1067 in Kiev.
During an uprising of the Kievan town population in 1068 against grand prince
Iziaslav, Vseslav was freed and put on the Kievan throne. It lasted only one year
and he ended his days as prince of Polotsk in 1101. His long reign (1044–1101)
also constituted the apex of Polotsk’s glory as an independent principality. Un-
der Vseslav’s sons and further descendants fragmentation29 set in and by the
middle of the 13th century parts of the principality had been annexed by Smo-
lensk and the Livonian Order, and the rest by Lithuania.
Polotsk generally played a marginal role among the medieval Russian prin-
cipalities, partly because of its relative remoteness, but mostly because its dy-
nasty was not considered fully equal to the other ruling dynasties; the Polotsk
princes were Rurikids, but did not descend, as all the others did, from Iaroslav
the Wise, but from his brother Iziaslav. Also, the Polotsk veche was often of
greater importance than whoever happened to be the prince.30
28 They are also regarded as a division of the much larger tribal complex of the Krivichi.
29 Principalities of Minsk, Vitebsk, Drutsk, Strezhev, Logozhsk, and others.
30 See also A.V. Rukavishnikov, “Nekotorye voprosy istorii polotskoi zemli domongol’skogo
perioda”, D.M. Volodikhin (ed.), Russkoe Srednevekov’e. Istochniki. 2000–2001 gody, Mosk-
va, 2002, 40–69; L.V. Alekseev, “Polotskaia zemlia”, L.G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Drevnerusskie
kniazhestva x–xiii vv., Moskva, 1975, 202–239; M.V. Dovnar-Zapol’skii, Ocherk istorii kriv-
ichskoi i dregovichskoi zemel’ do kontsa xii stoletiia, Kiev, 1891 (1st ed.), repr. 2nd ed.,
28 chapter 1
In 1772 Polotsk was re-incorporated into the Russian Empire. Very few direct
sources for the law of the independent principality of Polotsk have survived.31
For some additional detail, see Chapter 17 on Western Russia.
Smolensk
The principality of Smolensk derived its name from the old tribal centre of
the Krivichi.32 During the first generations after St. Vladimir, Smolensk was
ruled by a succession of younger Rurikid princes. The Smolensk sub-dynasty
was founded by Rostislav (†1168), a younger son of the Kievan grand prince
Mstislav the Great (the successor of Vladimir Monomakh). Rostislav himself
acquired the Kievan throne after the death of his older brother Iziaslav in 1154.
Smolensk remained in the hands of Rostislav’s descendants for the next cen-
tury, its rule being passed on in the usual way according to clan seniority. Dur-
ing this period the Smolensk princes played a prominent role in the Russian
commonwealth, a number of them also served as grand princes of Kiev. This
allowed them to assume the title of grand prince of Smolensk (the first one to
do so was Rostislav’s eldest son Roman, in 1169). Grand prince Fedor Chernyi
(“the Black”) of Smolensk († 1299) also acquired the principality of Iaroslavl’ by
marriage and his descendants constituted a sub-dynasty of the princes of Smo-
lensk until Iaroslavl’ was absorbed by the principality of Moscow during the
second half of the 14th century. Smolensk itself had gradually been drawn into
the sphere of influence of the Lithuanian grand principality during the same
period and was finally incorporated into that state in 1404. Polish-Lithuanian
rule lasted until 1654 when Russian troops took Smolensk and rule over Smo-
lensk was ceded to Russia in the Andrusovo peace treaty of 1667.
The legislative remains of the era of Smolensk independence are not numer-
ous, but they are of great interest and have been discussed in Chapters 4, on
Moskva, 2011, and A.Iu.Dvornichenko, Gorodskaia obshchina Verkhnego Podneprov’ia i

Podvin’ia v xi–xv vv., Moskva, 2013.
31 There are two charters (from 1263 and c.1265) in A.L. Khoroshkevich (ed.), Polotskie
gramoty xiii – nachala xvi vv., Moskva, 1977 (i), 1978 (ii). The following four volumes
of this work have not been avaliable to me. References to older publications of Polotsk
treaties in S.M. Kashtanov, Iz istorii russkogo srednevekovogo istochnika. Akty x–xvi vv.,
Moskva, 1996, 65–66.
32 The present province (oblast’) of Smolensk covers most of the old principality. See V.V.
Sedov, “Smolenskaia zemlia”, L.G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Drevnerusskie kniazhestva x–xiii vv.,
Moskva, 1975, 240–259. See also A.Iu. Dvornichenko, Gorodskaia obshchina Verkhnego
Podneprov’ia i Podvin’ia v xi–xv vv., Moskva, 2013 and M.V. Dovnar-Zapol’skii, Ocherk isto-
rii krivichskoi i dregovichskoi zemel’ do kontsa xii stoletiia, Kiev, 1891 (1st ed.), repr. 2nd ed.,
Moskva, 2011.
Princely Statutes (“The Smolensk Charters of Rostislav Mstislavich and bishop

Manuil”), and 6, on Treaties (“The 1229 Treaty Between Smolensk and Riga and
the Gothic Coast”, also known as the Smolensk Pravda, and “The Treaty Be-
tween the ‘Unknown Prince’ of Smolensk and Riga and the Gothic Coast”).
Galicia, Volynia
See Chapter 17, on Western Russia.
Novgorod
See Chapter 16, on Novgorod and Pskov.
Chernígov
The Chernígov principality bordered in the North on the principality of Smo-
lensk, in the West and South-West on the principality of Kiev, in the South on
the principality of Pereiaslavl’, and in the East on the principality of Riazan’. It
covered the tribal area of the Severiane and the Viatichi, and in the South also
some of the tribal area of the Poliane. Chernigov was one of the oldest towns
of Kievan Russia and the surrounding principality one of the major compo-
nents of the early Kievan empire. In the earliest generations after St. Vladimir
Chernigov was usually assigned to one of the more senior princes, and several
of them, such as Vladimir Monomakh, moved up from Chernigov to Kiev as
grand prince.33
The Chernigov sub-dynasty started with Oleg Sviatoslavich († 1115), the son
of one of the three sons of Iaroslav the Wise who served as grand princes of
Kiev. All through the 12th century the Ol’govichi, as Oleg’s descendants were
commonly referred to, were among the major players in the incessant dy-
nastic squabbles within the Rurikid dynasty, and the Chernigov principality
was the strongest among the Russian principalities. No less than 10 Chernigov
Ol’govichi occupied the Kiev throne during the 12th and 13th centuries. After
the ruling Kiev grand prince had been removed by an alliance of other princes
in 1169, the ruling Chernigov prince assumed the title of grand prince.
The principality of Chernigov, located at the vulnerable south-eastern side
of the Russian land, suffered fatally from the Mongol invasion. The town it-
self was razed by the Mongols in 1239 and prince Mikhail Vsevolodovich was
killed in the Mongol headquarters in 1246. His son Roman moved his capital to
Briansk and for a time the dynasty continued as grand princes of Briansk, but
soon the principality fell apart. The Briansk principality was taken over by the
33 See A.K. Zaitsev, “Chernigovskoe kniazhestvo”, L.G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Drevnerusskie

kniazhestva x–xiii vv., Moskva, 1975, 57–117.
30 chapter 1
Lithuanians in 1356 and only in the beginning of the 16th century most of the
former Chernigov territory was repossessed by Ivan iii of Moscow.
Within the Chernigov principality the principality of Novgorod-Seversk con-
stituted a separate unit, ruled by its own princes from an Ol’govichi sub-dynasty.
No specific monuments of Chernigov law survive.
Turov-Pinsk
The principality of Turov and Pinsk covered most of the tribal area of the
Dregovichi, to the North-West of Kiev, in the southern part of present-day
Belarus.Its princes were descendants of Iziaslav, the eldest surviving son of
Iaroslav the Wise. Iziaslav’s eldest son Iaropolk († 1087) was the first person
recorded as prince of Turov. The principality continued to be ruled by de-
scendants of Iziaslav’s brother Sviatopolk (grand prince of Kiev, † 1113) until
it was split up into separate principalities of Turov and Pinsk (and later on
also others)by the end of the 12th century. In the 13th century it came under
the control of the princes of Galicia (Vladimir-Volynsk) and in the beginning
of the 14th century the grand principality of Lithuania absorbed it. A branch of
the princes of Pinsk survived as Polish-Lithuanian princes.
Pereiaslavl’
The Pereiaslavl’ principality was the eastern neighbour of the Kievan princi-
pality; its capital was Pereiaslavl’ (Pereiaslavl’-Iuzhnyi, not to be confused with
Pereiaslavl’-Zalesskii, founded in 1152 by Iurii Dolgorukii and the capital of an
apanage principality of Suzdal’ from 1175 to 1302, when it was absorbed by the
principality of Moscow).
The old Pereiaslavl’ principality, which constituted the most exposed south-
eastern bulwark of the Kievan empire against the steppe nomads, was ruled
by younger sons of the Kievan grand prince during the first generations after
St. Vladimir.34 The seat was much contested, but in the end it remained with
the descendants of Iurii Dolgorukii until 1239 when the principality was over-
run and destroyed by the Mongols and did not survive.
Murom-Riazan’
The region of Murom derived its name from the local Finnish (Mordvinian)
population. The same holds probably true for the Riazan’ region, to the south
of Murom, where the original dwellers were Mordvinian Erzia and Meshchera
34 See M.P. Kuchera, “Pereiaslavskoe kniazhestvo”, L.G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Drevnerusskie

kniazhestva x–xiii vv., Moskva, 1975, 118–143.
tribes. Slavic elements, mostly Viatichi, began to penetrate in the early Kievan
period.
Murom was already under Russian control by the time of St. Vladimir, be-
cause his son St. Gleb is mentioned as apanage prince of Murom. This is one of
the few instances of Murom being referred to in the Primary Chronicle. Riazan’
is mentioned only twice, in passing. Together the two regions constituted the
easternmost end of the Kievan empire. Originally they seem to have formed
part of the Chernigov principality. The ancestor of the Chernigov sub-dynasty
was Sviatoslav († 1076), one of the three senior sons of Iaroslav the Wise. Apart
from his better-known sons Davyd and Oleg, belonging to the leading caucus
of Rurikid princes at their time, there was also a youngest son Iaroslav († 1129),
who was prince of Murom (then also including Riazan’) and the ancestor of
the princes of Murom and Riazan’. Iaroslav’s sons Sviatoslav and Rostislav be-
came princes or Murom and Riazan’, respectively.
Murom and Riazan’, together with Chernigov, constituted the exposed
south-eastern border of Russia and bore the brunt of the Mongol onslaught in
the middle of the 13th century. Murom did not recover sufficiently and contin-
ued as a principality dependent on its more powerful neighbours until it was
swallowed up by Moscow in 1392.
The principality of Riazan’ fared much better. After a long struggle with
Vsevolod “Big Nest”, grand prince of Vladimir, the princes of Riazan’ succeeded
in asserting their independence upon the death of the latter in 1212 and ad-
opted the title of grand prince.35 Riazan’ was taken and destroyed by the Mon-
gols in 1239 and it took decades to restore the damage done. With the ascent
of the Vladimir-Moscow grand princes, Riazan’ was in a similar situation as
Tver’ and Novgorod in that its independence had to rely on adroit manage-
ment of relations with more powerful neighbours, which for Riazan’ meant
Moscow and the Tatars. The high point was the long reign of Oleg Ivanovich
(1351–1401). With the waning of Tatar power Riazan’ gradually slipped into the
hold of Moscow, although it maintained its formal independence longer than
any other Russian principality. The last grand prince of Riazan’, Ivan Ivanovich,
was deposed in 1520 and Riazan’ was annexed by Moscow the following year.
A number of treaties where Riazan’ was a party is extant, as well as vari-
ous charters, but otherwise no Riazan’ legislation has survived, although there
are indications that such legislation existed. See below, the sub-section on
Riazan’ law.
35 On the history of the Riazan’ grand principality, see A.E. Presniakov, Obrazovanie Ve-
likorusskogo gosudarstva, Moskva, 1998 (orig. Petrograd, 1918), Ch. vi, 157–176 (1988
edition).
32 chapter 1
Kiev
The Kievan principality was the nucleus around which the Kievan empire was
constructed. Its prince was the grand prince par excellence and its territory (the
old tribal territory of the Poliane and Drevliane) constituted the home base of
the grand prince himself. But as the supremacy of Kiev waned, especially after
the princes’ assembly at Liubech in 1097, the Kiev principality slipped into a
place of equality with the other major principalities, be it that the reign of the
Kiev principality, with the grand princely title attached to it, conferred addi-
tional prestige on the incumbent prince.36
The old prominence of Kiev was revived for a while during the reign of
Vladimir Monomakh (1112–1125) and his sons Mstislav the Great (1125–1132)
and Iaropolk (1132–1139) but after the death of the latter the Kievan throne was
occupied in quick succession by competing princes from different branches
of the Rurikid dynasty. Kiev’s decline was demonstrated blatantly when an al-
liance of Russian princes under the leadership of Andrei Bogoliubskii, grand
prince of Vladimir, took and sacked the city in 1169. Andrei Bogoliubskii then
set up his younger brother Gleb as grand prince in Kiev.
In the following decades Kiev recovered to some extent, but after it had
been destroyed by the army of the Mongolian khan Baty in 1240 no more grand
princes presented themselves to claim the throne of Kiev. The Kievan princi-
pality fell apart into smaller principalities and in 1362 it was incorporated into
the Lithuanian empire.
Rostov-Suzdal’-Vladimir
The wedge formed by the rivers Volga and Oka, with Nizhnii Novgorod at the
confluence, and populated by Finnish Meria during the pre-Slavic era, was
penetrated from the West by Slavic (Slovenians) and Slavicized Finnish tribes
in the course of the 9th century. Until the middle of the 12th century the Rostov
region was separated from the major principalities of Kiev and Chernigov by
the land of the Viatichi, a tribe that resisted Christianization for a long time.
In his Testament, Vladimir Monomakh relates how he travelled from Kiev to
Rostov as a young prince through the land of the Viatichi, apparently a heroic
feat (probably in 1074). Rostov (also called Rostov Velikii – the Great), located
north of Moscow in the Upper Volga basin, was one of the oldest Russian cities.
The first Rostov prince mentioned in the Chronicle is St. Boris in 1010, son of
St. Vladimir. During the first generations after St. Vladimir, rule over the Ros-
tov territory (principality) was passed around in the traditional way among
36 See P.P. Tolochko, “Kievskaia zemlia”, L.G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Drevnerusskie kniazhestva
x –xiii vv., Moskva, 1975, 5–56.
the younger sons of the Kievan grand prince. In the hierarchy of principali-
ties, Rostov was somewhere in the middle, not as prestigious as Chernigov
or Novgorod. Through Iaroslav the Wise’s youngest surviving son, Vsevolod
(† 1093), it came to the latter’s son Vladimir Monomakh, and then to one of his
younger sons, Iurii Dolgorukii. All three of these princes made their way up to
the Kievan throne. The Rostov-Suzdal’ area, a backwater in early Kievan times,
assigned to younger members of the dynasty, eventually turned out to be the
nucleus from which the principality of Vladimir, later on the grand principality
of Moscow-Vladimir, grew.37
Iurii Dolgorukii (1091–1157) was a key figure in the history of the principal-
ity. His father assigned Rostov to him at an early age and after the death of his
father in 1125 he moved his capital to Suzdal’ (the Rostov-Suzdal’ principality as
it was called for some time). He actively promoted the building of new towns
(including Moscow, in 1147). He also campaigned for many years to acquire
territories and influence in Southern Russia (hence his nickname “Long Arm”)
and especially the Kievan throne. Twice he was briefly successful in Kiev (in
1149 and 1154), but evicted again. In 1155 he finally took Kiev again to stay there
until his death in 1157 (by poison).
Iurii Dolgorukii was succeeded by his eldest surviving son Andrei (named
Bogoliubskii, after his favourite residence in the village of Bogoliubovo, near
Vladimir). Andrei had originally received Vladimir as an apanage principality
from his father and upon the death of the latter he was invited by the mag-
nates of the Rostov-Suzdal’ principality to take over the reign, bypassing Iurii
Dolgorukii’s direction to leave the principality to his younger sons Mikhail and
Vsevolod (the one who became known as “Big Nest”).
Unlike his father, Andrei Bogoliubskii directed his ambitions primarily to
extending his influence in the northern half of the Kievan realm. He became
the most prominent and powerful prince in that region and headed a coalition
of princes which evicted the resident prince Roman Mstislavich38 in Kiev in
1169 (as related above in the section on Kiev). A campaign in 1170 to subdue
37 Cf. the section on “The Colonization of the Suzdal’ Land” in Iu.V. Got’e, Ocherk istorii zem-
levladeniia v Rossii, Moskva, 2003 (orig. Sergiev Posad, 1915), 41–44. A history of Vladimir-
Suzdal’until the Mongol invasion is Iu.A. Limonov, Vladimiro-Suzdal’skaia Rus’, Leningrad,
1987.
38 He was the son of Mstislav Iziaslavich, at that time the Kievan grand prince. Roman, who
was born after 1160, had apparently been stationed in Kiev as his father’s lieutenant, al-
though still a boy. This was common practice at the time. He went on to become prince of
Galicia and Volynia and the founder of the local sub-dynasty.
34 chapter 1
Novgorod was less successful (see the historical section in Chapter 16, on
Novgorod and Pskov).
During his effective but ruthless reign Andrei Bogoliubskii had alienated
many powerful parties. He was assassinated in 1174 by members of his own
court.
He is generally referred to as grand prince of Vladimir. According to some
sources he adopted this title when he moved his capital to Vladimir in 1157;
another possibility is that the capture of Kiev in 1169, where he had his younger
brother Gleb installed as grand prince, was sufficient reason for Andrei not
to be satisfied with the ordinary princely epithet. According to other sources
only Andrei’s successor and younger brother Vsevolod began to be called grand
prince of Vladimir from around 1180. In any case, the momentous geopolitical
shift from South to North in Russian medieval history, initiated already un-
der his father Iurii Dolgorukii, was carried through decisively during the reign
of Andrei Bogoliubskii in Vladimir. The devastation of the southern plains by
the Mongols and then by other nomads, beginning around 1240 and lasting for
centuries, only strengthened a development which had set in much earlier.
In the struggle between different princely lines for the succession of Andrei
Bogoliubskii, a decisive role was played by the veche of Vladimir, which, al-
though originally subordinate to the more senior towns of Rostov and Suzdal’,
declared its independence in 1176.39
Andrei Bogoliubskii’s successor40 and younger brother, Vsevolod (1154–1212),
was adorned with the nickname “Big Nest” (Bol’shoe Gnezdo) for good reason.
There were six surviving sons when he died in 1212, three of whom became the
founders of the sub-dynasties of the princes of Rostov, of Vladimir-Moscow, of
Suzdal’-Nizhnii Novgorod, of Tver’, and of Starodub.
Vsevolod further strengthened the position of the Vladimir grand prince as
the dominant force in Northern Russia. His sons received the customary apa-
nage principalities, but friction with his eldest son Konstantin resulted in the
latter being assigned the old principality of Rostov (on his father’s death), while
Vladimir (including the title of grand prince) was given to the second son Iurii.
After the death of Vsevolod Big Nest, Konstantin managed to wrest control of
Vladimir from Iurii, but when Konstantin himself died in 1218, Iurii took back
the place his father had left him.
The sons and further descendants of Konstantin remained in Rostov, adopt-
ing for themselves the title of grand prince of Rostov in the beginning of the
39 Cf. Limonov, op.cit., 117 ff.

40 In fact, Andrei’s two surviving brothers, Mikhail and Vsevolod, succeeded, but Mikhail
died in 1176.
14th century. The Rostov princes also followed the custom of making younger
sons apanage princes and this led to the emergence of the principalities of
Belozero (Belo Ozero) and Iaroslavl’. Towards the end of the 14th century the
Rostov princes had to bow to the growing hegemony of the Vladimir-Moscow
grand princes. The fragmentation of the principality made an effective stance
against Moscow impossible and several Rostov princes sold off their parts to
the Moscow grand prince. The last ones to do so were the cousins Vladimir
Andreevich and Ivan Ivanovich in 1474. The principalities of Belozero and Iaro-
slavl’ lost their independence to Moscow and disappeared as such in 1389 and
1463 respectively.
The acquisition of the Rostov, Belozero and Iaroslavl’ principalities were
not the only examples of one of the major methods of the Moscow princes
of enlarging their territory. In many cases such enlargement was effected by
the exercise of military force, conquest in other words, or the imminent threat
of such actions. But often enough weak and impoverished rulers of smaller
territories could be persuaded to sell out to Moscow, usually by being offered
estates. Such estates were normally connected with service duties and for the
princes concerned an existence as a prince in the service of the Moscow grand
prince would often be preferable to hanging on precariously as the ruler of a
small principality.41
The rather insignificant principality of Starodub was the apanage of
Vsevolod Big Nest’s youngest son Ivan. It remained in the hands of his descen-
dants, but by the time it was incorporated in Muscovy at the beginning of the
15th century it had already for a long time lost its independence.
To return to Vsevolod’s other sons: Iurii served as grand prince of Vladimir
for twenty years and fell in the battle of Sit’ against the Mongols in 1238. His
three sons had already perished in the same catastrophic year. Iurii was suc-
ceeded by his brother Iaroslav (1191–1246), from whom the houses of Moscow,
Suzdal’ (Nizhnii Novgorod) and Tver’ descended through his sons Aleksandr
(Moscow), Andrei (Nizhnii Novgorod-Suzdal’), and Iaroslav (Tver’).
Andrei was grand prince of Vladimir from 1249 until 1252 when he had to
yield to his older brother Aleksandr Nevskii.42 He then continued to rule as
prince of Nizhnii Novgorod (as from 1256) and of Suzdal’ (as from 1259), until his
death in 1264. His great-grandson Konstantin transferred his capital from Suz-
dal’ to Nizhnii Novgorod in 1350 and assumed the title of grand prince. Nizhnii
41 See K.A. Aver’ianov, Kupli Ivana Kality, Moskva, 2001.

42 For an account of the complicated fraternal troubles, and that at a time of great crisis,
shortly after the establishment of Mongol suzerainty, see J. Fennell, The Crisis of Medieval
Russia, London/New York, 1983, 105–108.
36 chapter 1
Novgorod had grown into a flourishing commercial centre in the 14th century.
After 1392 it became completely under the control of Moscow, although the
princes of Nizhnii Novgorod continued until the middle of the 15th century.43
After 1238, when the capital of the Vladimir grand principality itself had
been taken by the Mongols, the khan assumed suzerainty over the entire
Russiancommonwealth and succession and appointment of princes were sub-
ject to the khan’s approval, by receiving his iarlyk (see the sections on Mongol-
Tatar iarlyki in Chapter 11, on Gramoty, and on the impact of Mongol-Tatar rule
in Chapter 10, on Foreign Laws). Iaroslav Vsevolodich, who had succeeded his
brother Iurii, fallen in battle against the Mongols in 1238, was the first Vladimir
grand prince who ruled under the khan’s auspices. He was poisoned in the
Mongol headquarters at Karakorum in 1246.
His brother Sviatoslav, prince of Iur’ev, succeeded him according to the tra-
ditional rules of seniority, but he was ousted in 1248 by his nephew Mikhail
Khorobrit (“the Brave”, a younger brother of Aleksandr Nevskii and the above-
mentioned Andrei). Mikhail was killed in battle the same year and his brother
Andrei then obtained the khan’s iarlyk to rule in Vladimir.
Aleksandr Nevskii (1220–1263) owed his soubriquet to his victory over the
Swedes in 1240, when he was serving as prince of Novgorod for his father Iar-
oslav, grand prince of Vladimir. With his brother Andrei he spent two years
at the great khan’s headquarters at Karakorum (1247–1249), where Andrei
received the patent to rule in Vladimir and Aleksandr the same for Kiev. But
when Andrei rose up against the khan in 1252, the Mongols sent an army (prob-
ably with the connivance of Aleksandr Nevskii), beating Andrei and forcing
him to flee to Sweden. Aleksandr could then occupy the grand princely seat
of Vladimir. He died on his return from another visit to the Horde in 1263 and
was succeeded by his younger brother Iaroslav, prince of Tver’ and the founder
of the sub-dynasty of Tver’ (to be discussed below). Iaroslav died in 1272 and
was succeeded by the youngest brother Vasilii (1241–1276), prince of Kostroma.
After Vasilii, who apparently died childless, the throne of Vladimir reverted
to the sons of Aleksandr Nevskii, first to Dmitrii (who occupied the seat from
1276 to 1294) and then Andrei (grand prince of Vladimir from 1294–1304, and
briefly in 1281).
43 On the history of the grand principality of Nizhnii Novgorod, see Presniakov, op.cit. (Ob-
razovanie), Ch. vii, 177–192; also V.P. Makarikhin, “Velikoe kniazhestvo Nizhegorodskoe:
sistema upravleniia”, A.A. Preobrazhenskii (ed.), Feodalizm v Rossii. Iubileinye chteniia,
posviashchennye 80-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia akademika L’va Vladimirovicha Cherepnina,
Tezisy dokladov i soobshchenii, Moskva, 1985, 87–92 and P.V. Chechenkov, Nizhegorodskii
krai v kontse xiv – tretei chetverti xvi v.: Vnutrennee ustroistvo i sistema upravleniia, Nizhnii
Novgorod, 2004.
After the death of this Andrei Aleksandrovich in 1304, the grand princely
dignity was acquired by his cousin Mikhail Iaroslavich, already grand prince
of Tver’.
Moscow
Besides Dmitrii and Andrei, both of them grand princes of Vladimir at some
time, there was also Aleksandr Nevskii’s youngest son Daniil, prince of Mos-
cow. He died already in 1303 and did not get a chance to become grand prince
of Vladimir. But his son Iurii successfully intervened with the khan against
his cousin Mikhail of Tver’ and obtained the patent for Vladimir in 1317, while
Mikhail was killed on the khan’s orders.
Iurii Danilovich met his nemesis in 1322 in the person of Mikhail of Tver’s
son Dmitrii Groznye Ochi (“the Fierce-Looking”), who killed him in the khan’s
court and received the Vladimir patent. Dmitrii then was executed in 1325 by
the Tatars for some other offence. After prolonged intrigues the combined
titles of Vladimir and Moscow were then finally conferred in 1332 on Iurii’s
younger brother Ivan “Moneybag” (Kalita). The latter is usually considered as
the real founder of the line of Muscovy princes. Ivan Kalita is often referred to
as grand prince of Vladimir and Moscow. His eldest son and successor Semën
Gordyi (“the Proud”, 1341–1353) is known to have used the title of “grand prince
of All Russia” on his seal. Ivan Kalita procured the right to collect the annual
tribute for the Tatars for the entire country; another important scheme to bol-
ster his position was his successful intervention with the metropolitan to move
his residence from Vladimir to Moscow.
The Moscow grand princes continued the old practice of conferring apa-
nage principalities on younger sons, but did not allow these to develop into in-
dependent territories, forbidding them in particular to engage independently
in external relations. There still occurred major and violent upheavals during
the 14th and 15th centuries, caused by conflicting ambitions among hostile
clans within the Moscow dynasty, but the period of the independent princi-
palities gradually died off once the hegemony of the Moscow grand princes
had become unassailable. The last apanage principality was Uglich, created by
Ivan iv the Terrible for his youngest son Dmitrii, upon the latter’s birth in 1582.
When Dmitrii died in obscure circumstances in 1591 during the reign of Boris
Godunov, the principality died with him and the unification of the Muscovy
state was also formally completed.
Tver’
As explained above, the Tver’ sub-dynasty commenced with Iaroslav († 1271),
one of the eight sons of Iaroslav Vsevolodich (1191–1246), grand prince of
Vladimir; five of these sons were at one time also grand prince of Vladimir
38 chapter 1
(Aleksandr Nevskii, Andrei, Mikhail the Brave, Iaroslav, and Vasilii). The house
of Tver’ deserves some attention here because its princes were for two centu-
ries the main competitors of the Moscow princes; also, their rule has left some
traces in legal documents.44
Iaroslav’s successor and eldest son Sviatoslav already used the title of grand
prince of Tver’; his brother Mikhail (already mentioned above) followed him as
grand prince of Tver’ in 1285 and also became grand prince of Vladimir in 1304.
Mikhail’s sons Dmitrii Groznye Ochi and Aleksandr both acquired the same
combination of titles, but in the end all three lost their lives at the hands of the
Tatars, thanks in part to the more successful intriguing of their Moscow cous-
ins. In 1327 the first major uprising against Tatar rule started in Tver’, but it was
suppressed by a combined force of Russians under the command of Ivan Kalita
of Moscow and of Tatars. No Tver’ prince ever received the Tatar patent to rule
in Vladimir after this. The revolt had in part been caused by oppressive taxa-
tion and the killing of the Tatar tax-collectors (the baskaki) lighted the flame.
This also resulted in the abandonment of direct taxation by the Tatars and the
transfer of tax collection duties to the grand prince of Moscow and Vladimir.
The fortunes of Tver’ waxed and waned during the following years. When
Tver’ was stable and economically strong, and Moscow simultaneously torn by
internal disorders, Tver’ would temporarily be the dominant power in Russia.
Tver’ also profited from its geographical position, between Novgorod and the
Russian heartland, on the important trade route from the Baltic to the Caspian
Sea. Still, Tver’s own territory and resources could not match those of Moscow
and it had to rely therefore heavily on adroit management of alliances. The
major surrounding powers were the Tatars in the East and Lithuania in the
West. In the end the progress of Muscovy was unstoppable and Tver’ slipped
further behind until its last grand prince Mikhail was deposed in 1486 and Tver’
became part of the Moscow grand principality.
State and Law During the Era of the Independent Principalities
A consideration of the history of law in Kievan Russia and the following pe-
riod of the independent principalities inevitably raises certain questions con-
cerning our understanding of the role of the state in these eras. Our principal
means of getting to know medieval law is through the texts of laws (statutes)
44 On the history of the Tver’ grand principality, see Presniakov, op.cit. (Obrazovanie), Ch. 5,
137–156.
and comparable documents (such as private registrations of law). Written laws

emanate from agencies which represent the state or some aspect of it (in me-
dieval Russia this might include the Church).
During the flowering of Kievan Russia, the period of St. Vladimir, Iaroslav
the Wise and their immediate successors, there cannot be much disagreement
about the state; it was embodied in the grand prince of Kiev and his entire
supporting cast. This state possessed all the attributes one could expect to find
in a medieval setting: a clearly defined territory, populated by an ethnically
coherent population; a recognizable, permanent and effective government,
equipped with adequate military forces; a regular system of foreign relations
and of co-existing with neighbours either peacefully or through open war-
fare; an assemblage of shared concepts on ethics, religion, and social values
(including legal ones) that would justify the assumption of a viable common
culture, etc. The self-awareness of being what we now would call a nation, of
belonging together, of being different from surrounding nations, would be of
particular importance. This self-awareness arose in Russia long before it could
be observed in Western Europe. The evidence from the chronicles on this point
is abundant, eloquent and incontrovertible.
Once Kievan Russia began to break up into bigger and smaller parts, the
question concerning the state becomes more awkward. Surely, the common
concept of the Russian land and the Russian people survived, but where was
the state, where had it gone to? For a while, the Kievan grand prince retained
his prestige, not as a supreme ruler but at least as the acknowledged chief of
the ruling house. The Rurikid house itself, which, as we have argued, was the
genuine and exclusively legitimated depositary of the power to rule, did in fact
continue to rule, not through a system constructed around the Kievan grand
prince as the dynastic leader, but through a multitude of more or less equal
dynastic representatives.
On the other hand, the original territory was broken up; there were many
princes, exercizing governmental functions together with their officials; hos-
tilities between the new territorial units and their princes were the rule rather
than the exception. Employing modern concepts, one could say that during
the later Kievan era the former Kievan state had been decentralized to such
an extent that it almost ceased to exist. But then one would have to ask who
had taken over. Novgorod the Great and some of the more prominent princi-
palities behaved like states in many respects. They had relatively well-ordered
governmental and judicial systems, they conducted their own foreign policies
and concluded treaties with foreign powers. At the other end of the spectrum
there were more or less ephemeral principalities, established by more power-
ful princes for their younger brothers or sons. Often enough such principalities
40 chapter 1
did not last for more than one generation and left few written traces, barring a
short mention in the chronicles. If one would like to regard them as states, then
at least all evidence is lacking.
One may attempt to describe the political conglomerate which existed for
several centuries in Russia by using modern concepts such as “loose confed-
eration (of states)”, “association of states”, “commonwealth of states and other
political entities”, etc., none of them very satisfactory or revealing.
As argued previously, “state”, like most other legal concepts, is a construct
produced by human inventiveness. There was no state before somebody
thought it up. The state can therefore not be studied as components of the
natural world or phenomena such as language can be investigated. The ques-
tion concerning the state during the period of the independent principalities
is therefore futile, because everything depends on the meaning attributed to
“the state”. It is far more productive to look at the information at our disposal
regarding the relationships between and within the principalities, their actual
behaviour, and their relations with the world outside.
Politico-legal conglomerates such as existed for several centuries in medi-
eval Russia have occurred elsewhere, mostly in pre-modern societies.45 What
was most characteristic for Russia, as has been described in the historical sur-
vey above, was the crucial role played by the dynastic element, first of all the
undisputed and exclusive right to rule enjoyed by the house of Rurik, or rather
of his great-grandson St. Vladimir, and then the peculiar system of assigning
the exercise of this right to specific members of the dynasty. This system was
not immutable and underwent several modifications as the number of princes
increased, resulting finally in its complete erosion and its replacement by a
simpler and more stable procedure: rule by a single prince, who appointed his
own successor.
The question of statehood (gosudarstvennost’) which has fascinated Russian
historians for centuries, is in the end a matter of words. For legal history, the
more interesting question is whether the state-like entities of the era of the in-
dependent principalities created their own legal systems. The first part of the
answer should be that custom and customary law were still the rule, and that
written law only provided some additional clarification. This explains for the
greater part the virtual absence of basic written sources for the period follow-
ing the unitary Kievan empire. Another additional explanation is probably that
45 An interesting and little-known parallel is in early Christian Ireland, which offered many
political similarities with medieval Russia, although there was no single dominant dy-
nasty. See D. Edel, “An Emerging Legal System in an Embryonic State. The Case of Early
Medieval Ireland”, F. Feldbrugge (ed.), The Law’s Beginnings, Leiden/Boston, 2003, 59–76.
the few basic enactments from the Kievan era, especially the Russkaia Pravda
and the church statutes, were by and large adequate for satisfying the need for
legislation, whenever it arose. In other words, the numerous ‘states’ required
little written legislation and what they had inherited from Kiev usually satisfied
those needs. Moreover, subsequent developments, viz. the absorption of most
principalities by Muscovy, resulted in the disappearance and perhaps inten-
tional destruction of most governmental archives of these principalities. The
survival of a small number of relevant texts (esp. the Court Charter of Pskov,
the Charter of Novgorod, and a collection of treaties of the grand princes of
Tver’) was secured by the fact that these texts were of importance to the Mos-
cow princes, for various reasons.
Riazan’ Law
If one would start looking for traces of law and legislation of the independent
principalities, the most promising candidate (apart from the special case of
Novgorod and Pskov) would be Riazan’, because its existence as an indepen-
dent principality (about three centuries) lasted longer than that of any of the
others.
The collection of princely treaties in ddg contains nine treaties in which
Riazan’ was a party.46 Five of them were between the grand princes of Mos-
cow and Riazan’. The oldest of them, from 1382, already identified the Riazan’
grand prince as the ‘younger brother’, which primarily entailed the obligation
to follow the line of the Moscow grand prince in war and peace with the Ta-
tars. Otherwise the Riazan’ prince ruled his principality independently. In the
following treaties (of 1402, 1434, 1447 and 1483) there were variations on this
theme. The 1447 treaty more or less forbad the Riazan’ prince to conduct for-
eign relations independently and the 1483 treaty expressed the same instruc-
tions in great detail. The obvious background was formed by the attempts of
the Riazan’ prince to create a counterweight against Moscow’s preponderance
by seeking an alliance with the Lithuanian grand prince and also, to a lesser
extent, with the Tatars.The high point of these attempts were two treaties of
1430 (or somewhat earlier) in which the Riazan’ prince entered the service of
the famous Lithuanian grand prince Vitovt at a time when Muscovy’s grand
prince was the boy Vasilii ii Vasil’evich (later on Vasilii the Blind), who himself
was the grandson of Vitovt, through his mother Sofiia Vitovtovna (1371–1453).47
All these treaties offer glimpses of the domestic law of Riazan’ by referring to
46 ddg, Nos. 10, 19, 25, 26, 33, 47, 76, 84.
47 Treaty ddg No.25 concerned the Riazan’ grand prince Ivan Fedorovich and treaty ddg
No.27 the prince of Pronsk, Ivan Vladimirovich, who had served briefly as grand prince
42 chapter 1
all kinds of matters left to the discretion of the Riazan’ prince (such as taxa-
tion, court procedure, boyars’ estates, etc.)
The most informative treaty is perhaps the last one, of 1496, between grand
prince Ivan Vasil’evich and his brother Fedor. Although Riazan’s independence
had by that time been reduced to almost zero, the princes kept up appear-
ances. The treaty followed exactly the standard format for treaties between the
Moscow grand prince and his brothers or cousins. But along with these public
matters, the bulk of the treaty was devoted to the distribution of estates and
other assets between the brothers.
Apart from these treaties there is a sizeable collection of Riazan’ charters,
covering the 14th and 15th centuries.48 About half of them (most of them gift,
immunity and judgment charters) concern monasteries, the other half is be-
tween lay persons, usually landowners. The variety within this latter category
is considerable. The opposite party in most charters is the grand prince of
Riazan’,occasionally his widow or mother, or the prince of Pronsk. Pronsk was
an apanage principality of Riazan and it repeatedly changed hands among the
different branches of the Riazan’ sub-dynasty. The Riazan’ charter material
looks sufficiently extensive to allow at least a sketch of the specificity of the
law of the principality during the last two centuries of its existence.49
The entire topic has been disregarded by most historians. There is an 1858
monograph on the history of the Riazan’ principality by D.I. Ilovaiskii, which
discussed some of the texts referred to above in some detail.50 His general con-
clusion can be accepted, that the state of the law in Riazan’ and also, presum-
ably, in other independent principalities, was probably hardly different from
that in better known regions, such as Moscow.
of Riazan’ in 1408–1409 and had retained the grand princely title; Pronsk was an apanage
principality of Riazan’.
48 Except one, of 1257, of grand prince Oleg Ingvarevich (Krasnyi, “the Handsome”, † 1257),
the authenticity of which has been rejected by most commentators; see asei iii No.347
and the study of Kashtanov, quoted below. The collection has been published in asei iii,
339–409 (Nos.309–391) as Part vi (Akty Riazanskie).
49 The only (partial) attempt known to me is S.M. Kashtanov, Iz istorii russkogo sredneveko-
vogo istochnika; akty x–xvi vv., Moskva, 1996, Ch. v (“Osobennosti nachal’nogo protokola
i dispozitsii gramot riazanskikh kniazei xiv–xvi vv.”), 96–107.
50 D.I. Ilovaiskii, Istoriia Riazanskogo kniazhestva, Moskva, 1858 (1st ed.), republished in
2008, Moskva; see esp. 137–153.Iu.G. Alekseev devoted the better part of a paper on im-
munity charters (zhalovannye gramoty) to the Riazan’ charters referred to above; cf. Iu.G.
Alekseev, “K voprosu o sudebnom immunitete v kniazheskikh gramotakh xii–xiv vv.”,
S.N. Kisterev (ed.), Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii, vyp.8, Moskva, 2004, 10–28, at 13–21.
Mongol-Tatar Rule
The picture sketched in the foregoing pages changed fundamentally after the
Mongol conquest of Russia in 1237–1241. The impact of Mongol-Tatar rule on
Russian law will be discussed separately in Chapter 10, on Foreign laws. At this
point something should be added to the consideration of the “state” in medi-
eval Russia as explained in the previous section.
For contemporaries, both in Russia and in Western Europe, the Mongol
conquest of Russia appeared as a sudden disaster which imposed a foreign
and very alien regime for several centuries. Such a view also solved, to some
extent, the main problem discussed in the previous section. After the taking
of Kiev, still the nominal capital in 1240, almost the entire traditional Russian
territory had become part of the Mongol empire. The great khan at Karakorum
was the supreme ruler and with the subsequent division of the empire into
several “hordes”, the khan of the Qipchaq empire (better, but not quite cor-
rectly, known as the Golden Horde) became his successor as the immediate
suzerain of Russia. Russian princes ruled their principalities only after having
received the khan’s assent, and only as long as it suited the khan. They were his
servants, rather than his vassals. This is a crucial difference, especially in view
of the Marxist feudalism concept which is still prevalent among many Russian
historians. Classical West-European feudalism was, at least ideally, based on
a contractual relationship, rooted in a certain balance of power. Such a rela-
tionship was at least initially, and in principle, completely absent in Mongol-
dominated Russia.
Mongol-Tatar rule was at its most effective and oppressive during the first
decades. Later on, internal leadership struggles and urgent interventions in
other parts of the huge empire would often create a more relaxed climate for
the Russians. In time the hold of the Tatar khan also weakened, although there
were many revivals of military energy on the Tatar side.51 The Tatars had to
operate increasingly by combining military and diplomatic means, playing the
Russian princes against each other. With the waning of Tatar power and the
strengthening of the hegemony of Muscovy, the model of a Tatar state, ruled by
the Qipchaq khan who would appoint Russian princes as his regional agents,
evaporated and was gradually replaced by the crystallization and consolida-
tion of state power in the hands of the Moscow grand prince.
Looking at the period following the invasion of Russia from a Mongol-
Tatar perspective, a rather different picture emerges. The Mongol empire had
51 After the first major victory of the Russians under the Moscow grand prince Dmitrii
Donskoi against the Tatars on the field of Kulikovo in 1380, the Tatar khan Tokhtamysh
mounted a punitive expedition in which Moscow itself was taken and sacked in 1382.
44 chapter 1
a lready become a multi-ethnic state under the rule of its founder Chingis-
Khan († 1227). The regime established in Russia was not fundamentally differ-
ent from the ones prevailing in other parts of the realm, such as Iran, the Near
East, or China. Local rulers who submitted to the Chingisid overlords could
remain in their seats, provided they carried out the obligations imposed on
them, the collection of taxes and participation in the military expansion of Ch-
ingisid supremacy. From this point of view, Aleksandr Nevskii, and all Russian
princes who followed his example in resigning themselves to the modus vivendi
required by the conqueror, had turned themselves into Mongol-Tatar mag-
nates. Such an understanding of the situation also prevailed de facto among
the Russian princes. In contemporary Russian sources the khan was generally
referred to as the tsar, implying legitimate rule. A clear distinction was made
between the (Chingisid) khans and other supreme rulers of the Golden Horde,
who had obtained their position by usurpation, such as the emirs Mamai
(† 1380) or Edigei (1352–1419).52 Only in later centuries, a more hostile view of
Tatar rule gained the upper hand, especially under the influence of ecclesiasti-
cal chronicle writing, in which infidel domination of Russia was characterized
as punishment for Russian sins, especially the incessant warfare between
Russianprinces before 1240.
Such a conception was in perfect agreement with the legitimation of Mus-
covy hegemony, understood as the restoration of the old order of a unified
state as had existed under the first Kievan rulers.
Among pre-revolutionary authors, no genuine consensus about the under-
standing of Tatar rule and its impact on medieval Russia emerged. Although
the negative appreciation encapsulated by the designation of the “Tatar yoke”
was widely shared, some scholars, like Karamzin, recognized the often decisive
role of Tatar domination in shaping many aspects of social and political life in
Russia after 1240, while others, like Kliuchevskii, were inclined to minimize the
effect of the centuries of foreign suzerainty.
In Soviet times, the official view was formulated by Grekov, in a little book
published in 1937.53 The idea of the Tatar yoke was accepted, as well as its nega-
tive appreciation, but its indirectly positive effect was underlined, in that it
had engendered Russian resistance, which resulted in the emergence of a pow-
erful unitary state which in the end was able to eject and subjugate the Tatars.
52 See on this question, and generally on the relations between the Moscow grand prince
and the Golden Horde, A.A. Gorskii, Moskva i Orda, Moskva, 2001.
53 B.D. Grekov, A. Iakubovskii, Zolotaia Orda, Moskva, 1937.
An extensively researched and much more nuanced, but still orthodox Soviet
study on the topic was published a few years later by A.N. Nasonov.54
New insights were offered by Iu.V. Seleznev in a study of Russian-Tatar
armed conflicts during the 13th–15th centuries.55 Seleznev’s analysis of more
than 150 of such conflicts, as recorded in chronicles and other sources, showed
that Mongol-Tatar attacks and raids always had a specific objective; subjuga-
tion in the first period, and then maintenance and enforcement of the regime
imposed. As long as a Russian prince ‘behaved’, things were quiet. Once Tatar
power became fragmented among competing warlords, violence and unrest
increased. The military relationship between Russians and Tatars became am-
biguous. Russian princes, in the domestic conflicts among themselves, often
made use of Tatar cavalry. Russian princes and boyars would not seldom func-
tion as military commanders over Tatar armies.
Still, the dominant view in Russia after so many centuries continues to be
that the flowering and greatness achieved under the first Christian rulers in
Kiev were lost to a great extent in the following period of the independent
principalities, to be restored and further developed under the grand princes
of Muscovy. The exercise of effective central leadership, expressed in the exis-
tence of a strong unitary state, is implied in this view. Like all conceptualiza-
tions in history, this one should also be open to critical examination.
54 A.N. Nasonov, Mongoly i Rus’. Istoriia tatarskoi politiki na Rusi, Moskva, 1940 (republished
together with Russkaia zemlia, by the same author, in Sankt-Peterburg, 2002).
55 Iu.V. Seleznev, Russko-ordynskie konflikty xiii–xv vekov, Moskva, 2010.
Section 1
Sources
∵
chapter 2
Sources
The Concept of Sources
The historian’s battlecry “Ad fontes !”, “Back to the sources !”, is fully applicable
to legal history, and especially to the history of medieval law. Insistent inquisi-
tiveness will inevitably lead the legal historian to the sources, the best, the orig-
inal, the most reliable sources. Consider one of the most prominent questions
in early medieval Russian law, the payment of wergeld for homicide and other
personal injuries. How do we know about it? Mainly from the provisions of
the Russkaia Pravda. Then the question arises what the rp represents and this
leads us into a vast field of scholarship concerning this particular monument.
But it is also possible to approach the matter in another, more ‘physical’
way. We will have a copy of some edition of the rp in our hands. Where did
the editor of this edition get his text from? Continuing this line of question-
ing will eventually bring us to thick volumes of manuscript collections, writ-
ten down many centuries ago in Russian monasteries.1 The oldest copies of
the Short Pravda are the so-called First Academic and First Archeographical
Copies, both included in 15th-century manuscripts (of the Younger Version
of the First Novgorod Chronicle). The oldest copy of the Expanded Pravda is
from 1280 (or 1282), the Synodal Copy. It is included, as is the majority of the
numerous surviving Expanded Pravda copies, in a collection of texts for the
use of monasteries, a so-called Kormchaia or “Guidebook” (the Greek Nomo-
canon). The oldest texts of the rp at our disposal are therefore copies, and
more commonly copies from copies. The oldest surviving original legal text is
a gift charter of grand prince Mstislav († 1132), the son of Vladimir Monomakh,
jointly with his son Vsevolod, in which they donated the village of Buitsy and
appurtenances to the Iur’ev monastery in Novgorod.2 The probable date of this
charter is 1130. The oldest surviving original private legal text is a deed from
around 1192 through which a certain Varlaam donated land to the monastery
1 In my Law in Medieval Russia (Leiden/Boston, 2009, xv–xvi) I have called such documents
“primary sources”: sources on which our knowledge ultimately rests, in other words, sources
which cannot be traced back to earlier sources.
2 gvnp No.81, 140–141; prp ii, 102, 110–111 (comments by Zimin).

50 chapter 2
of Spaso-Khutinsk.3 The oldest birch-bark texts with legally relevant content

are dated around 1100.4
As suggested in Chapter 1, much of the older writing on the history of law
in medieval Russia is like reconstructed mural paintings from ancient times,
where the modern restorer has filled in the 90% blank space on the basis of the
surviving 10% of the original murals. This process does produce a full picture,
or in history, a better story, but the narrator must incessantly be questioned:
How do you know this?
Nowadays the preferred academic approach is unquestionably to stay close
to the sources and profess ignorance whenever the sources or rather their ab-
sence indicate this as the safest solution.
Philosophically inclined historians have written books about the concept
of sources in history. In a study devoted to a very particular branch of history:
the history of law of a specific country, there does not appear to be a need to
delve deeply into this matter, but it may be enlightening to ponder the ques-
tion briefly by considering the views of two authors who have given the matter
more thought.5
Lowenthal presents a tripartite division of sources for knowing the past:
memory, history, and relics. Pushkarev distinguishes between three levels of
sources: types (tipy), genera (rody), and kinds (vidy). At the level of types he
lists the following: written sources, material sources, oral sources (folklore),
ethnographical sources, linguistic data, film/photo and audio documentation.
Written sources are considered fundamental and the most important by him
and their further subdivision is worked out in detail.
The views of authors such as Lowenthal or Pushkarev may be helpful in ac-
quiring a clearer understanding of the sources for medieval legal history. Mem-
ory will obviously not be relevant, nor will modern forms of documentation
(film/photo/audio). Others cannot be completely excluded, such as linguistic
3 gvnp No.104, 161–162; prp ii, 108, 113 (comments by Zimin, who, following Tikhomirov, sug-
gests a date of 1211).
4 L.V. Cherepnin, Novgorodskie berestianye gramoty kak istoricheskii istochnik, Moskva, 1969, 26.
5 For a detailed and closely argued Leninist view on the problem of historical sources, see
L.N. Pushkarev, Klassifikatsiia russkikh pis’mennykh istochnikov po otechestvennoi istorii,
Moskva, 1975. The first sentence may put modern readers off (“Leninist teaching on cogni-
tion as a reflection of reality in the judgments, concepts and ideas of man is of the most
direct and immediate relevance to the work of the historian and for the formation of history
as a science.”, p.7), but at least Pushkarev offers a very full overview over the different kinds of
historical sources. A completely different work, also concerned with the ways we try to know
the past, is D. Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country, Cambridge, 1985, especially Ch. 5
“How We Know the Past”, 185–262.
Sources 51
data (e.g. the Turkic origin of certain legally relevant terms) or material sources
(relics), such as money from the Kievan era. Still, written sources constitute the
overwhelming majority of what is relevant to the history of law.
In this respect a distinction between direct and indirect sources of law is
appropriate. The most direct source of law is a written statute. Next would be
court judgments, which create law in a particular case. Then there is the indi-
vidual act which creates rights and duties, either unilaterally (a will, a grant,
etc.) or bilaterally (a contract or a treaty). Finally, a description of the law by an
individual may in time acquire a certain status which would allow it also to be
considered as a direct source of law.
The most important statutes from Kievan times are the Russkaia Pravda in
its two main versions (Short and Expanded) and the so-called church statutes
of the princes. Court judgments have undoubtedly played a role in the for-
mation of the law, but documentation lacks almost completely. Art. 23 of the
Short Pravda laid down that the fine for the killing of the prince’s senior stable-
master (koniukh staryi) was 80 grivna, “as Iziaslav established when the people
from Dorogobuzh killed his stablemaster”. This rule returned in the Expanded
Pravda (art. 12), without the reference to Iziaslav’s decision. This demonstrates
clearly that the decisions of judges contributed to the creation of new legal
rules.
The treaties between the (still pagan) Russian princes and the Byzantine
emperors, as communicated by the Primary Chronicle in apparently verbatim
form, contain important information on Russian law at a very early stage.
Individual acts (deeds) from the early Kievan era are not available; as men-
tioned above, the first original text is from around 1192 (or 1211). The oldest
Novgorod birch-bark documents date from about a century earlier.
Anything which cannot be considered as a direct source of law but still of-
fers information on law can be included among the indirect sources. Promi-
nent among such indirect sources are the chronicles, which often touch upon
legal matters in their historical narratives and occasionally contain materials
which could be considered as direct sources of law. At the same time, direct
sources of law for the Kievan era cannot be circumscribed as precisely as could
be done for modern sources. A text found in a collection dating from the 16th
or 17th century may purport to be a law, a statute, from the 12th century, but
other interpretations of its contents are usually not excluded. For all these rea-
sons the distinction between direct and indirect sources of the law of Kievan
Russia cannot be regarded as sharp or absolute.
Apart from the distinction between direct and indirect written sources,
one could also, to return to an idea put forward above, formulate the concept
of a physical (written) source: a document, generally a volume of sheets of
52 chapter 2
archment or paper, containing a direct or indirect source. A physical source

p
may coincide with a direct or indirect source (e.g. the volume consisting of the
text of the First Novgorod Chronicle, or a will on a single sheet of paper), but
more often a direct legal source is included in a volume containing all kinds of
materials, much of it of no legal relevance. This is especially the case with the
kormchie, to be discussed below.
Physical sources owed their existence usually to a practical purpose. Written
texts which had to be consulted from time to time by a wider circle of persons
had to be copied, before the invention of printing. Short documents could be
kept in a box or chest, but longer texts were more conveniently bound together.
Some texts, such as the Bible or a chronicle, would be long enough to take
up an entire bound volume. For a shorter text, separate binding would be im-
practical; such texts were ususally combined with others to make up a usable
collection. Such collections could easily be copied when required, the copier
(or his principal) being free to add new texts or leave out materials considered
irrelevant for the new user.
As a result of this procedure, medieval Russian texts (including laws) have
usually come down to us in a great variety of ‘convoys’ of other texts. These col-
lections have often been assembled many centuries after the estimated date of
origin of an individual text.
The different categories surveyed below can sometimes be classed as indi-
rect sources, sometimes as physical ones (the one not excluding the other).
Chronicles
A considerable number of medieval Russian chronicles have survived; some

of them, such as the Primary Chronicle, offer a chronologically drafted ac-
count (year by year, hence the often used alternative designation of “annals”)
of the history of Russia (which roughly equals today’s European Russia, includ-
ing also Ukraine and Belorussia), while many others focus on the history of a
particular region or principality (e.g. the Novgorod Chronicle). The chronicles
were almost always written in monasteries closely connected with, and located
in or nearby the capital city of the region concerned. In other words, chronicle
writing was usually tied to the ruling local prince and his political interests.
For a general understanding of the political and social parameters of me-
dieval Russian society, the chronicles are the principal informant. They show
us the world in which medieval Russian law functioned. Additionally, as indi-
cated above, they occasionally also contain direct pertinent information about
this law.
Sources 53
Publication of the Russian chronicles has been the responsibility of the

Archeographical Commission, founded in 1834. The first volume of the “Full
Collection of Russian Chronicles” (Polnoe Sobranie Russkikh Letopisei – psrl)
appeared in 1841. The Archeographical Commission and its publications sur-
vive until the present day. For chronicle texts, the psrl is considered the basic
publication.
The literature on Russian chronicles is rich, as most leading Russian medi-
evalists and also philologists and legal historians have concerned themselves
with them. The culmination of all older scholarship and the starting-point for
all modern studies is the work of A.A. Shakhmatov (1865–1920), in particular
his main work “Studies on the Oldest Russian Chronicle Collections” of 1908.6
The Primary Chronicle

The most important of the early Russian chronicles is the so-called Primary
Chronicle (Nachal’naia Letopis’), also known as the “Tale of Bygone Years”
(Povest’ vremennykh let, often just Povest’ in Russian literature) or the Nestor
Chronicle, after the monk Nestor of the Crypt Monastery in Kiev to whom the
text was often ascribed in the 19th century. The designation “Primary Chronicle”
is well-established but not quite correct after Shakhmatov’s detailed investiga-
tions of the origins of the text. His views are perhaps not universally, but still
very widely accepted nowadays.7
According to Shakhmatov, the original Primary Chronicle (now lost) had
been composed in the Crypt Monastery around the year 1095; the narrative
began with Noah and the Flood and ended in the year 1093. It was not even
the first text of its kind in Russia; it was preceded by similar texts of 1039 and
1073 which served as sources for the 1095 text.8 The non-Russian part of the
1095 text rested mostly on the Byzantine chronicle of Georgius Hamartolus
and other Byzantine texts. This first Primary Chronicle was then fused with
other materials in 1111, possibly by the monk Nestor, to make up a new chron-
icle. Political developments in Kiev necessitated editorial reviews in 1113 and
6 A.A. Shakhmatov, Razyskaniia o drevneishikh russkikh letopisnykh svodakh, Sankt-Peterburg,

1908. Of similar importance, posthumously, by the same author: Obozrenie russkikh leto-
pisnykh svodov xiv–xvi vv., Moskva/Leningrad, 1938, of which an improved edition ap-
peared in 2011: Istoriia russkogo letopisaniia, T.ii, Obozrenie letopisnykh svodov xi–xvi vv.
(Sankt-Peterburg).
7 Cf. M.N. Tikhomirov, “Chto novogo vnes A.A. Shakhmatov v izuchenie drevnerusskikh letopi-
sei”, M.N. Tikhomirov, Russkoe letopisanie, Moskva, 1979, 12–22.
8 These texts are respectively called “Oldest Kiev Collection” (Drevneishii kievskii svod) and
“First Collection of the Kievan Crypt Monastery” (Pervyi kievopecherskii svod) by Shakhmatov.
54 chapter 2
1118.9 The 1113 review is connected with the name of the abbot Silvester of the
St. Michael’sMonastery in Vydubichi near Kiev. This name appears at the end
of one of the two main redactions of the Primary Chronicle as we know it,
the Laurentian redaction.10 The more prestigious Crypt Monastery retaliated
in 1118 by producing its own version, which was the origin of the second main
redaction, the Hypatian text.11 The Laurentian and Hypatian redactions were
usually at the basis of later general and regional chronicles, the Laurentian
redaction was of particular importance for the central Russian chronicles, the
Hypatian for those of Western Russia (Galicia-Volynia).12
Until 1116, the narratives of the Laurentian and Hypatian redactions are
closely linked. The Laurentian text stops in 1110 (last entry) or 1116 (colophon)
and is followed immediately by the Suzdal’ Chronicle (1110–1305). The Hypa-
tian narrative continues to 1117 and is then followed by a Kievan chronicle up
9 The 1111 (Nestorian) redaction attempted to throw a more favourable light on the activi-
ties of the then grand prince of Kiev, Sviatopolk Iziaslavich. When he was succeeded after
his death in 1113 by his cousin Vladimir Monomakh, the latter prince took the editing of
the text away from the Crypt Monastery and entrusted it to the abbot of the St. Michael’s
Monastery in Vydubichi. Silvester produced a text more to Vladimir’s liking in 1116 (ac-
cording to the colophon). The important Kievan Crypt Monastery took the side of Vladi-
mir then and produced its own reworked version of the Primary Chronicle in 1118. For a
summary of these developments, see Cross/Sherbowitz-Wetzor, 13–19 (they are among
the few scholars who do not accept Shakhmatov’s views), or N.K. Gudzii, Istoriia drevnei
russkoi literatury, Moskva, 1953 (5th ed.), 46–52.
10 The Laurentian manuscript derives its name from the monk Lavrentii who made a
copy in Suzdal’ in 1377, according to the colophon of the copy. After earlier publications
in the 19th century it was published in psrl as Vol.1 Part 1 in 1846 in Sankt-Peterburg
(Lavrent’evskaia letopis’. Povest’ vremennykh let); republished in 1926 (Leningrad), 1962
(Moskva) and 1997 (Moskva). A modern Russian translation of the Laurentian manuscript
by D.S. Likhachev and O.V. Tvorogov was published in Sankt-Peterburg in 2012: Povest’ vre-
mennykh let. Po Lavrent’evskomu spisku 1377 g. English translation of the Laurentian text
by S.H. Cross and O.P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor, The Russian Primary Chronicle. Laurentian Text,
Cambridge, ma, 1953.
11 Published as Vol.2 of psrl (Ipat’evskaia letopis’), Sankt-Peterburg, 1843 (republished
Sankt-Peterburg, 1908; Leningrad 1923; Moskva, 1962; Moskva, 1998). The Hypatian manu-
script was found in the Hypatian monastery in Kostroma and dates from the middle of
the 15th century.
12 A third redaction, the Trinity (Troitskaia) text, was lost in the fire of Moscow in 1812. It
had been used by early historians such as Karamzin. The text, close to that of the Lauren-
tian copy, has been restored by M.D. Priselkov, Troitskaia letopis’. Rekonstruktsiia teksta,
Moskva/Leningrad, 1950.
Sources 55
to 1199 and a third section devoted especially to events in Galicia-Volynia (up

to 1292).13
One of the most important political messages of the Primary Chronicle,
written by monks who worked in close proximity of the Kievan grand prince,
was the glorification of the resident dynasty; this was expressed by a double
emphasis: on the exclusive role of Rurik and his descendants as the founders
of the Kievan empire, and on the all-overshadowing impact of St. Vladimir as
the prince who introduced Christianity. Non-Rurikid rulers and princes were
pushed to the background and the undeniable evidence for the earlier and
more gradual conversion of Russia was connected with the activities of Vladi-
mir’s grandmother, the princess Olga, who ruled as regent during the minority
of Vladimir’s father Sviatoslav.
The First Novgorod Chronicle

The chronicles of Novgorod are of course of great relevance for the history of
that city and its law, but they also contain unique and important information
on the law of the entire Kievan realm. Their genesis is hardly less complicated
than that of the Primary Chronicle.
Russian scholarship traditionally distinguished between five different
complexes of manuscripts, of which only the first one, the First Novgorod
Chronicle,is of interest for our purposes, the other four being of later date.
Two versions of the First Novgorod Chronicle exist, the Older (Starshii izvod)
and the Younger (Mladshii izvod). The Older Version is available in one (parch-
ment) copy only, the Synodal manuscript, completed around 1333, but writ-
ten by different scribes over a long period (the first part during the second
half of the 13th century). New entries were added later in the Younger Version,
taking the narrative from 1330 up to the year 1446 (with several gaps), when
Novgorod’s independence was crumbling under the growing dominance of the
Muscovy state.14
13 A Ukrainian translation of the Chronicle of Galicia-Volynia was published in L’viv in 2002

(O.S. Kucheruk, ed.), Halyts’ko-Volyns’ka Derzhava xii–xiv st., kn.1.
14 First published in psrl as Vol.3, Sankt-Peterburg, 1841; then Novgorodskaia letopis’ po
Sinodal’nomu Kharateinomu Spisku, Sankt-Peterburg, 2 vols., 1875–1888. The Older and
Younger Versions were published together by A.N. Nasonov (gen. ed.) and M.N. Tik-
homirov (ed.), Novgorodskaia pervaia letopis’ starshego i mladshego izvodov, Moskva/
Leningrad, 1950. New edition of the Synodal Copy by M.N. Tikhomirov (d.), Novgorods-
kaia kharateinaia letopis’, Moskva, 1964. A late and almost forgotten copy of the Younger
Version was recently published in Russia: Novgorodskaia Pervaia letopis’. Berlinskii spisok,
Sankt-Peterburg, 2010.
56 chapter 2
According to Shakhmatov, chronicle writing started very early in Novgorod,

already in the 11th century, predating the appearance of the Primary Chroni-
cle. The Synodal manuscript is based therefore both on local predecessors and
on other Russian sources, such as the third redaction (of 1118) of the Primary
Chronicle. The Synodal manuscript is defective in that it misses the part cover-
ing the years before 1016. The missing part was probably a text close to the third
redaction of the Primary Chronicle (or the Hypatian redaction).
The Younger Version of the First Novgorod Chronicle arose in the middle of
the 15th century and is based mainly on the Synodal manuscript, but covers
the full period up to 1443 (1441 in the Academy Copy, 1444 in the Berlin Copy).
More importantly, several copies, including the two oldest and most authorita-
tive copies (the Academy and the Commission copies), include the text of the
Short Version of the Russkaia Pravda under the year 1016.
The most striking feature of the Novgorod chronicles is their matter-of-fact
style, in contrast to the prominent presence of the narrator in texts such as the
Primary Chronicle.
Kormchie
A kormchaia (a “pilot-book” or “steering-book”, from korma – stern, and

kormchii– helmsman) is a collection of church rules and prescriptions for the
use of bishops, abbots and other persons exercizing authority on behalf of the
Church. In the Christian religion, Holy Scripture (the Bible) is The Book par
excellence, but many other written texts are used besides, such as decisions of
church councils, writings of church fathers, etc. As a highly organized body,
the Church also needed rules. In the Eastern Church, collections of rules had
been put together at a very early date already and in time these collections
had solidified into fixed bodies of documents, bearing such names as Collectio
or Syntagma or Nomocanon. When Russia adopted Christianity, some of these
collections came along. In time, Russian kormchie started to include secular le-
gal texts as well, and for that reason, and also because the canon law contained
English translation of the Synodal text (with additions up to 1446) by R. Mitchell and
N. Forbes, The Chronicle of Novgorod, London, 1914 (reprint 1970); this edition contains
introductory texts by the translators, A.A. Shakhmatov and W. Hanak. Text of the Synodal
Copy, full facsimile reproduction of the manuscript, German translation and introduc-
tion in German and English in J. Dietze, Die Erste Novgoroder Chronik nach ihrer ältesten
Redaktion (Synodalhandschrift) 1016–1333/1352, München, 1971.
Sources 57
in them influenced Russian law, they are of great relevance to Russian legal
history.
Byzantine Canon and Secular Law

As the Russian kormchie have Byzantine roots, a brief survey of the develop-
ment of church (canon) and secular law in Byzantium will be useful.15
The first surviving collection of Byzantine canon law is the Collectio L titu-
lorum of John the Scholastic from around 550. The main body consisted of the
so-called canons of the apostles and church councils (the corpus canonum),
but an appendix (the Collectio Lxxxvii capitolorum) added parts of Justin-
ians Novellae, pertaining to ecclesiastical topics. These materials were then
included in a more systematized form16 in the Syntagma canonum (probable
author: Eutychius) of around 580 with the addition of the Collectio tripartita, a
collection of secular legislation concerning the Church, mostly from the Cor-
pus Iuris, but also embracing later novellae. Several more revisions followed
with the addition of some new materials; the so-called Third Redaction (in the
terminology of Shchapov), from around 806 or shortly afterwards, added the
decisions of the Second Council of Nicea.
In 865 the Bulgarian khan Boris was baptized in Constantinople and the
conversion of the Bulgarians constituted a major event in the penetration of
Christianity in the Slavic world. At that time, the most prominent secular leg-
islative document of the Byzantine empire was the Ecloga, the law code of the
emperors Leo and Constantine, variously dated to 726 or 741. Two centuries
after the Corpus Iuris Civilis, the Byzantine legal system was summarized in this
modestly-sized text of 18 chapters. Most innovations are contained in chapters
2 and 17, devoted respectively to matrimonial and criminal law. These chapters
are also by far the longest of the code.
A more recent Byzantine law code, the Procheiros nomos or Procheiron,
was also of particular relevance for the history of Russian law. It was prob-
ably put together during the reign of Leo vi (the Wise; 886–912) and coincided
roughly with two other major monuments of Byzantine law, the Epanagoge
and the Basilika. The latter two are of minimal importance for Russian law; the
15 This survey is based in part on N. van der Wal, J.H.A. Lokin, Historia iuris graeco-romani
delineatio. Les sources du droit byzantin de 300 à 1453, Groningen, 1985, 51–54, 60–62,
66–70. The basic Russian study is Ia.N. Shchapov, Vizantiiskoe i iuzhnoslavianskoe pravo-
voe nasledie nu Rusi v xi–xiii vv., Moskva, 1978. I have treated the subject of this section
more extensively in my Law in Medieval Russia, Leiden/Boston, 2009, 75–79, 87–92.
16 The Syntagma canonum was split into a systematic survey of 14 titles (the Collectio xiv
titulorum) and a full collection of texts as the second part.
58 chapter 2
E panagoge never had the force of law and was soon replaced by the Procheiron;
and the Basilika, on account of its enormous volume, did not lend itself to
translation, a necessary condition for having any influence in medieval Slavic
cultures. The avowed aim of the Procheiron was to replace the Ecloga and re-
turn to the old law of Justinian; it also did away with the strongly pro-Church
penchant of the Epanagoge in the provisions affecting Church-state relation-
ships. It was more than double the length of the Ecloga.
The Penetration of Byzantine Law into the Slavic World

The Christianization of the Slavic world was accompanied by the translation
of the most relevant texts into Slavonic, first of all the Bible itself but then
also the collections of church rules. These developments have been the subject
of scholarly interest for a long time, resulting in the publication of important
sources and studies.17 In more recent times it has especially been the extensive
work done by Ia.N. Shchapov which has increased our understanding of the
process through which Byzantine law penetrated into the early Slavic world. In
his study on the “Byzantine and Southern Slav heritage in Russia in the 11th–
13th centuries” Shchapov succeeded in drawing a consistent picture of this
process by means of a painstaking analysis of the vast repertoire of kormchie.18
The first Slavonic translation of the Collectio L titulorum of John the Scho-
lastic of 550, was made some time around 862 by Methodius, known together
with his younger brother Cyrillus as the apostles of the Slavs (825–885). Little
is known about the role, if any, of this translation in the development of medi-
eval Russian law.19
The actual penetration of Byzantine law in the Slavic world is divided into
three stages by Shchapov. The first stage revolved around a version of the
Greek Syntagma, connected with the conversion of Bulgaria (862). This ver-
sion was based on the Third Redaction of the Syntagma from around 806. It
was provided with some additions and amendments shortly before 912, prob-
ably in Constantinople itself. This new collection reached Bulgaria where it
was translated.20 Shortly after the conversion of Russia, probably during the
17 Such as V.N. Beneshevich, Drevneslavianskaia kormchaia xiv titulov bez tolkovanii, Sankt-
Peterburg, 1906–1907; A.S. Pavlov, Pervonachal’nyi slaviano-russkii nomokanon, Kazan’,
1869, to mention only two older Russian works. I. Žužek, Kormčaja Kniga. Studies on the
Chief Code of Russian Canon Law. Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 168, Roma, 1964, has not
been available to me.
18 Shchapov refers to the existence of about 180 kormchie, op. cit., 37.
19 Shchapov, Vizantiiskoe, 36.
20 Shchapov, Vizantiiskoe, 88–100, esp. 96–98. The entire story of the different kormchie
reaching Russia is conveniently summarized by Kaiser, The Growth of the Law, 19–23.
Sources 59
reign of Iaroslav the Wise, this Slavonic Kormchaia reached Russia.21 Its oldest
surviving copy is from the 12th century, the Efrem Copy.22 Its contents con-
cerned almost entirely ecclesiastical matters.
The second stage is represented by the emergence of the so-called Serbian
redaction of the Kormchaia, connected with the name of Savva, who became
the first Serbian archbishop in 1219.23 This kormchaia was based on more up-
to-date Byzantine materials, particularly the canon law collections with com-
ments by the great 12th-century canonists Zonaras and Aristenes. The secular
law section contained among other things the Collectio lxxxvii capitolorum,
more recent imperial constitutions and the entire Procheiron text.24 Although
the original Serbian redaction did not include any specifically Slavonic mate-
rials, it did not have a Byzantine example or counterpart and was apparently
assembled in Serbia.
A copy of the Serbian redaction of the Kormchaia was sent to Kiev from
Bulgaria, at the request of Kirill (Cyril) ii, the last Kievan metropolitan, shortly
before 1273.25 A considerable number of copies of the Serbian redaction of this
Kormchaia has survived in Russia; the oldest one, the Riazan’ Copy, is from
1284.
The arrival of the Serbian Kormchaia text in Russia signified at the same
time the beginning of the third stage. At a Russian church council held in
Kiev in 1273, it was decided to create a new Russian kormchaia which would
better satisfy the needs of the Church at that moment.26 While the Serbian
redaction constituted the main source for the new text, the earlier version (the
Efrem Kormchaia) was also utilized and many new materials of Russian origin
were included as well.27 The new product is therefore known as the Russian
redaction.

22 Kaiser, op. cit., 20, suggests that the 11th century is also a possibility.
23 Shchapov, Vizantiiskoe, Ch.iii (117–155).
24 The penetration of the Procheiron was the subject of a special study by Shchapov: “Prokhi-
ron v vostochnoslavianskoi pis’mennosti”, Vizantiiskii vremennik, Vol.39 (1977), 45–58.
25 Cyril’s successor, the Greek Maxim, moved the see to Vladimir on the Kliazma in 1299.
Cyril himself died in 1281, after almost 40 years as metropolitan of the Russian Church.
On Cyril, see Ia.N. Shchapov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov’ Drevnei Rusi x–xiii vv., Moskva, 1989,
204–206.
26 The loss of the rich cathedral library of Kiev, which undoubtedly held several kormchaia
copies, during the Mongol sack of Kiev in 1240, may have been a central consideration in
Cyril’s efforts to bring about a new version of the Russian kormchaia; cf. Shchapov, Vizan-
tiiskoe, 172.
27 A detailed comparison of the contents in Shchapov, Vizantiiskoe, 165–171.
60 chapter 2
The work on this Russian redaction proceeded in two phases. The first phase
(between 1273) is represented by a family of mainly South-West Russian cop-
ies which can be traced to a Volynian protograph of 1284. In the second phase,
following immediately, more Byzantine and non-Byzantine materials were
added,including the Short Redaction of the Court Law for the People (zsl),
as well as other amendments and additions.28 Some of the resulting North-
Russian families of kormchie, at a later stage, also came to include different
versions of the Expanded Pravda. This occurred first in Novgorod, where as
a result of the particular politico-legal situation the bishop’s jurisdiction also
began to extend to certain secular cases. It made sense therefore to include the
rp as a secular law code in the general ‘pilot-book’ (kormchaia) at the disposal
of the bishop. The oldest extant version of the Expanded Pravda is as the last
item in the Novgorod Synod Kormchaia of 1282.
The idea behind the incessant amendments of all these texts was that a no-
mocanon or kormchaia was not itself a sacred text, immune to editorial in-
terference, but an ad hoc collection of texts for the use of church dignitaries.
Conditions among the newly baptized Slavic peoples, still close to their pagan
past and tribal customs, were very different from those prevailing in the Byz-
antine empire.
The main elements of the Syntagma of 806 (the ‘ancestor’ of most Russian
kormchie) were the so-called canons of the apostles, the canons of the general
church councils and of certain regional councils, the collection of 14 titles (Col-
lectio xiv titulorum) from the old Syntagma canonum, and the three collections
of secular law pertaining to church affairs included in the Revised Syntagma of
Enantiophanes (from between 612 and 629) and consisting mostly of novellae.
The edited Slavonic translation of these texts, which did not itself survive
and has been reconstructed on the basis of extant kormchaia copies based on
it, is supposed to have consisted of the following three parts:29
(1) An introductory part: (a) Introduction, (b) the Collectio xiv titulorum
(a systematic survey of canonical texts), (c) a list of council rules, rules of
church fathers, and imperial constitutions.
(2) Main part: (a) the (185) canons of the apostles, (b) the canons of 6 gen-
eral and 7 regional councils, (c) the writings and rules of the church fathers,
(d) a collection of imperial constitutions.
(3) Additional part, consisting of various materials, to be grouped into
four categories: (a) chronological and historical survey of data and lists, (b)
two theological treatises, (c) excerpts from the Procheiron and the Ecloga,
28 Cf. Shchapov, Vizantiiskoe, 163–164.

Sources 61
concerningthe calculation of degrees of consanguinity, (d) rules of various

origin concerning bishops.
Of the most important contemporary Byzantine legislation, the Ecloga and
the Procheiron, the full texts were not to be found in the original Russian Korm-
chaia, only rather insignificant excerpts; these laws were included in the Merilo
Pravednoe (see below). Nonetheless, the presence of the excerpts as well as
the presence of the full texts in the Serbian redaction prove their availability
in Russia in the second half of the 13th century.30 Several authors argue for an
earlier date, in the 12th century.31
The main difference between this Kormchaia and its Byzantine prototype
was in the additional materials, mostly based on other Byzantine texts.
The Merilo Pravednoe
After the numerous kormchie, the collections known as Merilo Pravednoe (“Just
Measure”) must be mentioned. Four almost identical volumes of its first ver-
sion are known, together with a fifth, offering a number of different texts. The
Trinity Copy of the second half of the 14th century is considered the standard
text.32 It consists of two main parts. The first one, 69 sheets, presents 63 short
religious and/or moralistic texts, mostly of Greek origin, but including also a
few texts of Russian origin. The general tenor is to admonish judges how to
judge justly. The second part numbers 275 sheets and represents the explicitly
legal side of the collection. Its 30 texts are numbered separately. Most of them
are of Byzantine origin, such as might be found in the kormchie. Among them
are the Russian translations of the complete texts of the Procheiron and the
Ecloga.33 The Court Law for the People (zsl) is also included and, as text No.28,
30 Cf. Shchapov, Vizantiiskoe, 155.

31 Ia.N. Shchapov, “Rimskoe pravo na Rusi do xvi v.”, V.L. Ianin (ed.), Feodalizm v Ros-
sii. Sbornik statei i vospominanii, posviashchennyi pamiati akademika L.V. Cherepnina,
Moskva, 1989, 211–219, at 215, states that the edited translation of the Ecloga into Russian
took place in the 10th–11th centuries and refers for further arguments to L.V. Milov,
“O drevnerusskom perevode vizantiiskogo kodeksa zakonov viii v. (Eklogi)”, Istoriia sssr,
1976, No.1, 151–153. S.V. Iushkov, “K istorii drevnerusskikh iuridicheskikh istochnikov”,
O.I. Chistiakov (ed.), Serafim Vladimirovich Iushkov. Trudy vydaiushchikhsia iuristov,
Moskva, 1989, 28–70, at 69, opts for the 13th century.
32 Published in facsimile with an introduction by M.N. Tikhomirov, Merilo Pravednoe po ru-
kopisi xiv veka, Moskva, 1961.
33 The most important copies of the Russian translation have been published by Ia.N.
Shchapov, Vizantiiskaia “Ekloga zakonov”, Sankt-Peterburg, 2011. A translation of the Ecloga
62 chapter 2
the Expanded Pravda, followed by the text of the Church Statute of Vladimir
(No.29). The Expanded Pravda is the so-called Trinity or Troitskii i Copy, gen-
erally used in modern collections as being closest to the Expanded Pravda’s
protograph.
Of the leading Soviet medievalists, especially Tikhomirov and Iushkov have
concerned themselves with the Merilo Pravednoe. According to Tikhomirov,
the first nucleus of the collection may have been assembled by the Kievan
metropolitan Nikifor at the beginning of the 12th century for the Kievan grand
prince Vladimir Monomakh.34 Other legal texts, including the Expanded
Pravda, were added later and this resulted in the collection of 30 texts which
constitute the second part of the Merilo Pravednoe.35 Subsequently this col-
lection was expanded by the addition of a much smaller collection of texts
of a religious-educational character, in the manner of an extensive foreword,
extolling the virtues of the ‘just judge’. The Merilo Pravednoe had its origin in
ecclesiastical circles but was probably also used in secular courts.36
Iu.G. Alekseev has drawn attention to a hitherto neglected aspect of the
Merilo Pravednoe and this approach resulted in a significantly different per-
spective. Alekseev pointed out that the exhortations of the first part of the
collection were primarily addressed to the prince as supreme judge and to all
other judges (secular as well as ecclesiastical). The Merilo Pravednoe appears
then as a kind of comprehensive law collection for the use of all judges, and
this of course adds considerably to its importance as a monument of medi-
eval Russian law. Alekseev advanced these views in his study of the Code of
1497, which is regarded by him and many other Russian historians as the first
comprehensive Russian law code after the Russkaia Pravda.37 In a more recent
and detailed review of the literature and sources concerning the Merilo Praved-
noe, K.V. Vershinin tentatively suggested that the metropolitan Kirill himself
into modern Russian was published by E.E. Lipshits, Ekloga. Vizantiiskii zakonodatel’nyi
svod viii veka, Moskva, 1963; this translation was taken over (except Title xviii) in PRoP I,
431–452.
34 Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 88–99, esp. 92–93.
35 Ibid., 91. S.V. Iushkov, Russkaia Pravda. Proiskhozhdenie, istochniki, ee znachenie, Moskva,
1950, 44. Shchapov, Vizantiiskoe, 154–155, added the point that the Serbian redaction of
the Kormchaia, reaching Kiev around 1270, was the source for the Slavic Procheiron and
Ecloga texts in the Merilo Pravednoe.
36 See also D. Kaiser, The Growth of the Law in Medieval Europe, Princeton, 1980, 23–24 and
26–29 where Kaiser discusses Iushkov’s theories concerning the Merilo Pravednoe.
37 Iu.G. Alekseev, Sudebnik Ivana iii. Traditsiia i reforma, Moskva, 2001, 77–79.
Sources 63
was responsible for the final compilation of the collection, which then is to be
dated around the year 1280, a few years before or after.38
A revised version of the Merilo Pravednoe emerged in the 15th century, in-
cluding a number of new texts and omitting certain old ones. This version is
found in kormchie, where it has been included fully in the text of the korm-
chaia. The Rozenkampf (or Chudov) and Ferapontov recensions of the Ex-
panded Pravda are found in such collections.39
The Knigi Zakonnye
A collection known as Knigi Zakonnye (“Law Books”), consisting primarily of

the Byzantine Farmer’s Law (Nomos Georgikos),40 has apparently been avail-
able in Russia at a comparatively early date.41 A small number of manuscripts
is extant, of which the earliest is from the first half of the 15th century.42 The
other components of the collection are the “Law on Penalties” (taken from ti-
tles 39 and 40 of the Procheiron), the “Law on Divorce” (taken from title 11 of the
Procheiron), and the Chapters on Witnesses (from title 27 of the same law with
some additions from title 14 of the Ecloga).43 The entire collection is therefore
38 K.V. Vershinin, “K voprosu o proiskhozhdenii Merila Pravednogo”, A.A. Gorskii (ed.),

Srednevekovaia Rus’ 11, Moskva, 2014, 147–256.
39 Cf. Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 107–127.
40 The Farmer’s Law, dating probably from the first decades of the 8th century, contains
some older Byzantine (late Roman) law, but mostly reflects contemporary (Greek) cus-
tomary law. Whether it was officially promulgated or should rather be regarded as a pri-
vate description is uncertain. Cf. I.P. Medvedev (ed.), Vizantiiskii Zemledel’cheskii Zakon,
Leningrad, 1984, 148–150; also: N. van der Wal, J.H.A. Lokin, Historiae iuris graeco-romani
delineatio. Les sources du droit byzantin de 300 à 1453, Groningen, 1985, 65, 73–75.
41 The first substantial study on the Knigi Zakonnye was A.S. Pavlov, “Knigi Zakonnye”, soder-
zhashchie v sebe v drevnerusskom perevode vizantiiskie zakony zemledel’cheskie, ugolovnye,
brachnye i sudebnye, Sankt-Peterburg, 1885. A.V. Soloviev in “Der Einfluss des Byzan-
tinischen Rechts auf die Völker Osteuropas”, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung, Romanische
Abteilung, Bd. 76 (1959), 432–479, states that the Knigi Zakonnye reached Russia in the 14th
century, without offering any corroboration. Kaiser, Laws, li, believes that the text may
already have been in circulation in Russia in the 13th century.
42 Medvedev, op.cit., 190–191, 199. The comments in this work are by E.E. Lipshits. The com-
plete text of the Knigi Zakonnye is at 233–256.
43 Ibid., 191.
64 chapter 2
in substance Byzantine law, with some Russian editorial reworking. The Chap-
ters on Witnesses appear also in other medieval Russian collections.44
Archives
The physical sources required for the study of medieval legal history have a
long history themselves. Time eventually wipes out everything and the further
back one goes in time the scarcer the surviving sources. Legal sources have a
better chance of survival if their possessors expect them to be of possible use
in the future. Two other general considerations govern the survival of docu-
ments in Russian history: destruction, caused by Mongol-Tatar invasions in the
13th century and subsequent years, affected the North-West (Novgorod and
Pskov) least of all; ecclesiastical depositaries (monasteries and cathedral reg-
istries) were more inclined and better equipped to preserve their documents
than secular keepers. Almost all the direct legal sources mentioned above and
the collections of which they formed part, as well as the various chronicles,
kormchie and other collections, have come down to us, at least initially, through
church archives. Some of them remained there until the October Revolution,
but many others had already ended up in the Russian state archives before
that time.
A parenthetical caveat could be made at this point. Medieval legal history
is one of those topics where study is based on a limited number of surviving
sources. The loss of sources is usually not caused by random factors. The fac-
tors determining such losses (especially geographical location and the status
of the original keeper in the case of the Russian middle ages) should be borne
in mind when general conclusions are based on sources, the survival of which
was conditioned by these factors.
The oldest nucleus of the Russian state archives was the collection of wills
and treaties of the (grand) princes of Muscovy, starting with the will of Ivan
I Kalita (around 1339).45 These archives grew with the expansion of Musco-
vy. When the city of Pskov and the grand principality of Tver’ lost their inde-
pendence at the end of the 15th century, their public archives were at least
partially transferred to Moscow; it is unclear what happened to the archives
of Novgorod. The fate of these collections has been charted in great detail by
44 Cf. Kaiser, Laws, li; and English translation of the Chapters on Witnesses at 116–121. The
different texts of the Chapters on Witnesses show that they go back to different transla-
tions of the original Greek text.
45 ddg No.1, 7–11.
Sources 65
L.V. Cherepnin.46 The matter is of considerable importance for legal history,

because a number of important legal documents (such as the Court Charter of
Pskov) have their origin in these collections.
Among the church archives, those of the Troitse-Sergiev monastery are
the richest. This monastery (the Troitse-Sergieva lavra, about 70 kms north of
Moscow) was founded around 1350 by Sergius of Radonezh, one of the most
eminent personalities in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. In time,
the monastery became the largest landowner in Russia after the ruler himself.
Much of the enormous administration produced in the running of the monaste-
rial estates has been preserved and has now ended up in c entral archives. Some
of it had been published in pre-1917 collections and in 1929 S.B. Veselovskii and
A.I. Iakovlev produced a fuller collection Pamiatniki sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi
istorii Moskovskogo gosudarstva xiv–xvii vv. (Moskva). This collection was
superseded in 1952 by the first volume of Akty sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi isto-
rii Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi kontsa xiv – nachala xvi v. (Moskva), edited by B.D.
Grekov. It contained the texts of a dozen late 14th-century charters, more than
600 15th-century charters, and about 30 from the first few years of the 16th
century.47
The publication of legal documents from monasterial and other archives
has been continued energetically in post-Soviet times. The documents con-
cerned are overwhelmingly of a non-normative nature, in other words, they
do not contain laws and similar regulations, but document various transac-
tions (sales, gifts, appointments, etc.). They will be discussed in greater detail
in Chapter 11, on Charters (gramoty).
After the Revolution, the numerous private archives of landowning families
usually ended up in the State Archives. Important surveys have been published
by A.V. Antonov and others.48
46 L.V. Cherepnin, Russkie feodal’nye arkhivy xiv–xv vekov, T.I, Moskva/Leningrad, 1948,
T.II, Moskva,. 1951. See also S.O. Shmidt, Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo v seredine xvi stoletiia.
Tsarskii arkhiv i litsevye letopisi vremeni Ivana Groznogo, Moskva, 1984, which is devoted
mainly to the formation of the state archives of Muscovy.
47 The cut-off date of 1505/1506 is explained by certain reforms of Vasilii iii. 302 more char-
ters from the same monastery from the following period (1505–1523) were published in
A.A. Novosel’skii, L.V. Cherepnin (eds.), Akty Russkogo gosudarstva 1505–1523, Moskva, 1975
(comp. by S.B. Veselovskii).
48 A.V. Antonov (ed.), Chastnye arkhivy russkikh feodalov xv – nachala xvii veka (Russkii Dip-
lomatarii, vyp.8), Moskva, 2002, with an addendum by the same author in S.N. Kisterev
(ed.), Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii, No.17, Moskva, 2013, 440–489. Antonov also published four
volumes of charters from archives of private landowners (Akty sluzhilykh zemlevladel’tsev
66 chapter 2
One of the major factors affecting the survival of documents in Russia has
been the frequency of fires in Moscow, where buildings of wood were com-
mon well into the 19th century. Among the many great fires, the one in 1626
stands out for its effect on archives, because it destroyed most of the Krem-
lin, including the archives of many departments, such as the Pomestnyi Prikaz
(the Department of Service Estates), which contained many cadastral registers
(pistsovye knigi).49
Foreign Sources for the Prehistory of Russian Law
The period before the appearance of written sources of Russian law may prop-
erly be considered the prehistoric period. The most important of the early
sources, as will be explained in greater detail below, are the Primary Chron-
icle (which contains the texts of the 10th-century treaties with Byzantium),
the Russkaia Pravda (especially its oldest version, the Pravda of Iaroslav), and
the earliest church statutes of the Russian grand princes Vladimir and Iaroslav.
These take us back to the end of the 10th and the first part of the 11th century.
This is also the time when Christianity was being adopted in Russia, and to-
gether with it, writing came to the country.
There are several routes allowing the observer to penetrate into the prehis-
toric period. One is by using external written sources, which in the p
resent con-
text primarily means Byzantine sources, but also sources of Eastern (especially
Arab and Persian) and West-European origin.50 Then a certain amount of
xv – nachala xvii veka), Moskva, 1997 (I, together with K.V. Baranov), 1998 (ii), 2002 (iii),
2008 (iv).
49 Among the great fires which destroyed most of Moscow, the following must be men-
tioned: 1382, by the Tatars under Tokhtamysh; 1571–1572, by the Tatars under Devlet-Girei;
1611, by the Poles; 1812, during the Napoleonic occupation.
50 A detailed overview of foreign sources on early Russian history is provided by E.A.
Mel’nikova (ed.), Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh istochnikov, Moskva, 1999/2000. It
contains chapters on classical (Greek and Latin), Byzantine, oriental (Arab and Persian),
West-European, and Scandinavian sources, including extensive quotations. A second edi-
tion (amended) appeared, under the same tile, in 2013.
Full translations into Russian have been published in the series Drevneishie istoch-
niki po istorii narodov sssr (after 1990: Drevneishie istochniki po istorii narodov Vostoch-
noi Evropy), of which numerous volumes have appeared. Shorter excerpts in English in
G. Vernadsky & R. Fischer (eds.) and S. Pushkarev (comp.), A Sourcebook for Russian His-
tory From Early Times to 1917, Vol.1, New Haven/London, 1972. As it became clear that the
publication of the Drevneishie istochniki series would be a long drawn-out process, a
Sources 67
i nformation can be extracted by a process of retrograde e xtrapolation from the

earliest Russian written sources. Finally, one may resort to the c onsideration of
a variety of unwritten sources (material culture, general concepts supplied by
various academic disciplines, etc.). These different approaches have enabled
scholars to put forward suggestions about what Russian law during the period
preceding the adoption of Christianity might have looked like. In all this,
attention must mainly be directed towards the period immediately p receding
early Christian Kievan Russia, i.e. the 10th century. But in order to draw a
balanced picture of the ethnic, socio-economic and political c ircumstances of
Russia in the 10th century, a brief survey of the foreign sources for the p
receding
centuries will be helpful, as well as an overview of the historic development
of the ethnic situation, especially where it reveals southern Russia as a kind
of marshalling-yard of a host of nomadic peoples of Indo-European and Ural-
Altaic origin.
The earliest foreign sources are Greek. The first Greek colonies on the coast
of the Black Sea were founded around 700 b.c. and two centuries later they
were to be found all along the coasts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Much
of the information in classical Greek sources is based therefore on first-hand
information.51 The presence of mediterranean civilization continued under
the Romans, until it was engulfed in the course of the great migrations of the
fourth century a.d. (Völkerwanderung).52 Along with Herodotus (c.490/480-
c.412 b.c.) and Strabo (68–20 b.c.), the cartographer Ptolemy should be men-
tioned, who worked around the middle of the 2nd century a.d. His works show
practicaland intermediate solution was devised through the publication of a less ambi-
tious series, Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh istochnikov, which aimed at publishing
the most important foreign sources on early Russian history (quoted below as Mel’nikova,
Istochniki). The series was published under the general editorship of T.N. Dzhakson, I.G.
Konovalova & A.V. Podosinov in five volumes in 2009–2010 and consisted of the following:
i. Antichnye istochniki, A.V. Podosinov (comp.), Moskva, 2009.
ii. Vizantiiskie istochniki, M.V. Bibikov (comp.), Moskva, 2010.
iii. Vostochnye istochniki, T.M. Kalinina, I.G. Konovalova & V.Ia. Petrukhin (comps.),
Moskva, 2009.
iv. Zapadnoevropeiskie istochniki, A.V. Nazarenko (comp.), Moskva, 2010.
v. Drevneskandinavskie istochniki, G.V. Glazyrina, T.N. Dzhakson & E.A. Mel’nikova
(comps.), Moskva 2009.
51 After Herodotus’ historical works, Strabo’s Geografika, written around the beginning of
the Christian era, is of prime importance. Strabo himself was born in Amasya (present-
day Turkey), on the Black Sea coast.
52 The Roman poet Ovid († a.d. 17) spent the last nine years of his life in exile in Tomi
(Constanţa) on the Black Sea coast in present-day Romania.
68 chapter 2
that the level of knowledge of the classical authors about the Black Sea coast
and its immediate hinterland was quite high.
After the Roman empire had broken up in 395 a.d. (upon the death of em-
peror Theodosius the Great) into an eastern and a western part, it was espe-
cially the eastern part, surviving for a thousand years as the Byzantine empire,
which was most closely involved in developments in southern Russia.53 The
early Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea (who lived during the first
sixty years of the 6th century) reported in his Histories (also known as Books
About the Wars) the presence in southern Russia of the Sclaveni and Antae
and added a detailed description of their way of life.54 Similar information is
given by the emperor Mauricius (deposed and killed in 602) in his handbook
Strategikon; he added a long discussion on how to wage war with the Slavs and
the Antae.
During the following centuries Byzantine sources concerning the area north
of the Black Sea became more abundant. In the Life of George of Amastris (dat-
ed by some around 840 and by others around 940) a raid of Rós invaders (prob-
ably Vikings) is described, “a nation, as everybody knows, most ferocious and
coarse”.55 The Russian attack on the city of Constantinople in 860 (as reported
in the Primary Chronicle) is mentioned by several Byzantine authors and espe-
cially by Photius, who as patriarch at that time played a major role in repelling
the attack (the emperor being away on an expedition against the Saracens).56
The way long-distance trade by water in Russia was realized is explained in
considerable detail in De administrando imperio, the instruction book written
for his successors by the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus (905–959). The
author distinguished clearly between the Russes (Scandinavians) and the Slavs
and offered many names and terms in both their Scandinavian and Russian
53 Ammianus Marcellinus, who died around 395, was the last of the pagan Roman histori-
ans; he served as a Roman officer in the eastern part of the empire and his information on
places and population is therefore to some extent based on personal observation.
54 Mel’nikova, op.cit., 82, offers a Russian translation; the chapter on Byzantine sources
(69–168) is by M.V. Bibikov. See also on this topic G.V. Vernadskii, Istoriia Rossii, Drevniaia
Rus’, Tver’/Moskva, 1996, 141–142 and 182–183.
55 Greek and Russian texts in V.G. Vasil’evskii, Trudy V.G. Vasil’evskogo, T.3, Petrograd, 1915, at
64. See also Bibikov, op.cit., 90–92.
56 Cf. Bibikov, 93; J.J. Norwich, Byzantium: The Apogee, London, 1991, 66–68. The episode is
not only related by Photios himself, but also more extensively in the “Continuation of
Theophanes the Confessor” (covering the period of 813–961), where a connection with
the baptism of Russia is made, cf. Bibikov, 103–105.
Sources 69
forms.57 He also explained the custom of poliud’e, the winter circuit of the Ki-
evan princes, in order to collect tribute.58
The late Russian prehistory period is also covered by the Byzantine chron-
icles of these centuries. Theophanes the Confessor (c.758–818) continued the
annals of George the Syncellus (Georgios Synkellos) and dealt with the period
of 284–813. A continuation of the work by Theophanes the Confessor by anon-
ymous authors covers the period until 961 (Scriptores post Theophanem). An-
other important source is the chronicle by Georgios Hamartolos (George the
Monk), who lived in the 9th century. His Chronicon Syntomon covers the period
until 842; it is continued by the work of Georgios Continuatus (also known as
George the Logothete), leading up to the year 948. These works served as major
sources for the Russian Primary Chronicle; the introductory part of the latter
contains a long direct quotation from Hamartolos. The last decades of the 10th
century were covered by Leo the Deacon (Leo Diaconus).
In Western Europe the level of civilization during the same period was not
as elevated as in Byzantium; also, relations with Eastern Europe were not as in-
tense on account of the geographical factor. Sources from Western Europe for
the period in question are therefore much scarcer and cover a shorter period.
The first mention of Russia is in the Annales Bertiniani, written by Pruden-
tius, the chaplain of Charlemagne’s son and successor, Louis the Pious (814–
840), and the latter’s son and successor, the West-Frankish king Charles the
Bald (840–877). These annals report the visit of a diplomatic mission from
the Byzantine emperor Theophilus (829–842) to emperor Louis; the mission
also included persons belonging to the Rhos, a nation ruled by a prince called
the chacanus. After further investigation, Louis established that they were
Swedes.59
In 949, Liutprand, a cleric in the service of Berengar, marquess of Ivrea and
ruler of most of Italy, visited the Byzantine court and left behind a detailed
57 See M.Iu. Braichevskii, “«Russkie» nazvaniia porogov u Konstantina Bagrianorodnogo”,

P.P. Tolochko (ed.), Zemli Iuzhnoi Rusi v ix–xiv vv. (Istoriia i arkheologiia), Kiev, 1985,
19–30.
58 The Russian term is used and then translated. In the Primary Chronicle, the first mention
of poliud’e is for the years 946–947, when princess Olga is mentioned collecting tribute in
wintertime.
59 F. Grat, J. Vieillard, P. Clémencet (eds.), Annales Bertiniani: Annales de St.Bertin, Paris, 1964;
English translation: J.L. Nelson, The Annals of St-Bertin, Manchester, 1991. Further discus-
sion in Mel’nikova, op.cit., 288–290 (the chapter on West-European sources, pp. 259–407,
is by A.V. Nazarenko); Cross/Sherbowitz-Wetzor, 41; S. Franklin, J. Shepard, The Emergence
of Rus 750–1200, London/New York, 1996, 29–31.
70 chapter 2
description (Antapodosis), in which he reported extensively about the Russian

(Viking) attack on Constantinople by the Kievan prince Igor in 941.60
Several decades before the conversion of Russia, during the years 960–962,
the German cleric Adalbert was sent to Russia as a missionary bishop by the
German king Otto I61 and the archbishop of Mainz. The mission is mentioned
in several German sources, but although it is of great interest for diplomatic
and ecclesiastical history, the reports contains nothing of importance from the
point of view of Russian legal history.62 The mission was a failure and Adelbert
later on became the first archbishop of Magdeburg.
The Arab-Persian sources are more or less contemporary with the West-
European ones. Under the khalifate of the Abassid dynasty (since 750) Bagdad
had become the capital of the Muslim empire and one of the major commer-
cial centres of the time. The important trading route from Scandinavia to the
Middle East traversed Russia. The first description of this route, or rather the
various routes available, was given by ibn Khurradadhbih (Ibn Khordadbekh
in Russian works), an Iranian geographer (c.820-c.912), born on the coast of
the Caspian Sea in present-day Iran.63 The Russians are referred to as ar-Rus in
Arabic. Another Persian author, ibn Rusta, offered a more detailed description
of the way of life of the ar-Rusii and from this description it is clear that he
had the Scandinavian traders in mind.64 The most valuable Muslim source on
60 “Liudprandi episcopi Cremonensis Antapodosis”, J. Becker (ed.), Die Werke Liudprands

von Cremona, mgh ss rer. Germ. T.41. Liudprand later on became bishop of Cremona
and went to Constantinople again in 968, this time as ambassador of the emperor Otto
i. The record of this second mission “Relatio de legatione Constantinopolitana” appears
in the same volume. Liudprand’s works were published in Russian translation in Liut-
prand Kremonskii, Antapodosis; Kniga ob Ottone; Otchet o posol’stve v Konstantinopol’
(I.V. D’iakonov, ed.), Moskva, 2006
Earlier but more succinct mention of West-European-Russian relations in Descrip-
tio civitatum et regionum ad septentrionalem plagam Danubii sive Geographus Bavarus,
from the second half of the 9th century, and in the Inquisitio de teloneis Raffelstettensis
of 904/906 (mgh leges ii.2, Capitularia regum Francorum). Both texts also in A.V. Naza-
renko (ed.), Nemetskie latinoiazychnye istochniki ix–xi vekov: Teksty, perevod, kommentarii
(Drevneishie istochniki po istorii Vostochnoi Evropy), Moskva, 1993. See also Mel’nikova, Is-
tochniki, 292–297.
61 Otto i the Great (912–973) was crowned Roman emperor in 962.
62 Further details in Mel’nikova, Istochniki, 303–308. See also Franklin and Shepard, op.cit.,
136–137.
63 See Mel’nikova, Istochniki, 204–208; the chapter on Arab-Persian sources (169–258) is by
I.G. Konovalova; Franklin and Shepard, 42–43.
64 Ibn Rusta’ s work was written in the years 903–913. See Mel’nikova, Istochniki, 208–210;
Franklin and Shepard, 45–46.
Sources 71
early Russian history is ibn Fadlan, who himself visited the Middle Volga area
in 921–922 in the capacity of secretary to a diplomatic-missionary delegation,
intended to convert the Volga Bulgars to Islam. Ibn Fadlan’s account relates his
observations concerning the Russian traders and again it is uncontested that
he is referring to Scandinavians.65 Of equal importance are the works of Ma-
sudi (d. 956), an Arab scholar who travelled widely around the entire Muslim
world. On the southern coast of the Caspian Sea he was able to acquire first-
hand information on the activities of Russian merchants.66
Scandinavian sources on early Russian history concern the period after
Russia’sBaptism and are therefore of no direct relevance to the prehistoric era.67
The foreign sources surveyed above produce a general impression of the
state of affairs in Russia, especially its southern regions, in the centuries pre-
ceding the adoption of Christianity. The overall picture agrees with what can be
inferred from the Russian Primary Chronicle where it relates to the more dis-
tant past of Russia. A Slavic population had been present for several centuries;
their social development was still at the level of relatively small tribes, with-
out marked social differentiation or significant inter-tribal organization. They
lived in inaccessible places and were engaged in small-scale agriculture and
cattle breeding (Procopius, Mauricius). The first reports about the appearance
of Varangians (Vikings) are from the middle of the ninth century (Theophilus
Continuatus, Life of George of Amastris, patriarch Photius, the Bertinian An-
nals) and become more numerous in the 10th century. Foreign authors were of
course primarily concerned with the warlike activities of sea-borne Varangian
bands, but their trading activities were also noticed (Constantine Porphyro-
genitus, Theophanus Confessor, Ibn Khurradadhbih, Ibn Rusta, Masudi). The
relationship between the Varangians and the Slavic population is discussed by
several authors; the effective military power and mobility of the Varangians
and their access to wealth through trade gave them a strong position in their
dealings with the sedentary local population, notwithstanding their insignifi-
cant numbers (Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Theophilus Confessor).
Although explicit references fail, one may infer that the 10th century also
saw the merger of the ethnic components (Slavic and Varangian) which would
produce Kievan Russia. Similar processes took place in many European coun-
tries during the early middle ages, and a Viking element was often involved.
65 Mel’nikova, Istochniki, 213–215; Franklin and Shepard, 43–44.

66 Mel’nikova, Istochniki, 220–221.
67 The authors (G.V. Glazyrina, T.N. Dzhakson and E.A. Mel’nikova) of the chapter on Scan-
dinavian sources in Mel’nikova, Istochniki, 408–563, suggest that a painstaking analysis of
the Scandinavian data may yield useful information on the most ancient period.
72 chapter 2
The result in Russia was the complete absorption of the Scandinavian compo-
nent within a few generations, an indication of the small number of persons
involved, although their impact as leaders in the 10th and 11th centuries was
considerable.
Most of the 10th-century reports concern the frequent Russian raids against
prosperous towns along the coast of the Black Sea and especially the attacks
against Constantinople (e.g. Liutprand of Cremona, Masudi, Leo the Deacon).
Some of the reports mention the early Kievan princes (Oleg, Igor, Sviatoslav)
and it is obvious that operations which were considered as vital threats by the
Byzantine empire could not have been carried out by armed bands of Vikings,
but required full-scale armies which the Varangians alone could never muster.
Publication of Texts, Literature, Bibliography
In a physical sense, the numerous and various sources discussed above reach
most of us ultimately in paper form, as books or periodicals (if we can regard
electronic storage of texts as a derivative of texts on paper). Original medieval
sources have nearly always been lost, and the few that are extant can only be
consulted by a small number of experts.
In the discussion of the most important sources of medieval Russian law
in the following chapters the principal publications of the texts concerned,
as well as the main literature about these texts, will be reviewed. This section
attempts to offer an overview of what will be explained in greater detail under
specific topics.
Publication of Texts
Before 1917, the most ambitious publication of Old-Russian laws and legal texts
was achieved by M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov (1838–1916), professor of legal his-
tory, first in Iaroslavl’, then in Kiev.68 The three volumes of his anthology con-
tained all the important legislative and treaty texts, from the beginning up to
the Code of tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich of 1649, as well as a number of the most
significant charter texts. A special feature of this work is that it also included
a number of texts from the part of Russia which was under the control of the
Polish-Lithuanian monarchs (see Chapter 17, on Western Russia). All texts
were accompanied by often lengthy comments by the author.
68 M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov, Khristomatiia po istorii russkago prava, vol.1, Iaroslavl’, 1872,

vol.2, Iaroslavl’, 1873, vol.3, Iaroslavl, 1875; the 5th edition (Kiev, 1899, 1915, 1889) is most
widely used and cited.
Sources 73
In Soviet times, a similar but much wider-ranging project was undertaken,

first under the general editorship of the leading legal historian of the mid-
Soviet era, S.V. Iushkov (1888–1952); volumes 3–5 and 7 appeared under the
general editorship of L.V. Cherepnin (1905–1977), and volumes 6 and 8 under
the general editorship of K.A. Sofronenko. The central figure in the actual or-
ganization and compilation of volumes 1–5 was A.A. Zimin (1920–1980).69 The
first volume started with the 10th-century treaties with Byzantium and includ-
ed the Russkaia Pravda and the Church Statutes of Vladimir and Iaroslav; the
eighth volume contained the most important legislation of Peter the Great, the
last item being a decree of 1724 on the building of fortifications along the Ural
Mountains. The first three volumes covered the period until 1497 (the Code of
Ivan iii).
The Pamiatniki russkogo prava included not only actual legislation but also
numerous other items of interest for legal history, such as the wills of ruling
princes, court judgments and all kinds of other charters, directives of Tatar
khans, etc. All documents were accompanied by comments, written by the
best experts; the publication was indeed itself a monumental achievement
and is still a basic reference tool.
The more recent nine-volume “Russian Legislation from the 10th to the 20th
Centuries” had a somewhat different focus.70 It limited itself to legislation
alone, but extended its reach right up to 1917. The Code of 1497 and some con-
temporary Muscovy legislation is found in the second volume; on the whole,
its coverage of the Russian middle ages was not as wide as that offered by the
Pamiatniki. The practice of accompanying comments by leading authors was
continued and, because of many new insights and achievements, this repre-
sented a genuinely new contribution.
The first volumes of a somewhat comparable series began to appear in
2013. The series was named “Monuments of Russian [Rossiiskogo] law in 35
volumes” and was announced as covering the entire period of Russian legal
history, down to the dissolution of the ussr (1991). R.L. Khachaturov was the
general editor of the series; he was also the author of the main sections on the
rp and the treaties with Byzantium in the first volume. The period up to 1649
(the Council Code of tsar Aleksei) was covered by vols.1, 2, and 3 (Parts 1–3).71
The following remarks concern only these volumes.
69 Pamiatniki russkogo prava, Moskva, 1952 (i), 1953 (ii), 1955 (iii), 1956 (iv), 1959 (v), 1957
(vi), 1963 (vii), 1961 (viii).
70 O.I. Chistiakov (gen. ed.), Rossiiskoe zakonodatel’stvo x–xx vekov, Moskva, 1984 (i), 1985
(ii), 1985 (iii), 1986 (iv), 1987 (v), 1988 (vi), 1989 (vii), 1991 (viii), 1994 (ix).
71 R.A. Khachaturov (general editor), Pamiatniki rossiiskogo prava v tridtsati piati tomakh;
T.I, Pamiatniki prava Drevnei Rusi, Moskva, 2013; T.II, Pamiatniki prava udel’noi Rusi,
74 chapter 2
In the second volume Khachaturov co-authored the sections on the Pskov

and Novgorod court charters, but otherwise he confined himself to contribut-
ing a foreword to the volumes published to date and, presumably, to the overall
co-ordination of the series. The team of authors (exclusively lawyers) assem-
bled by him was recruited mostly from peripheral institutions for legal educa-
tion; contributors from the leading Academy of Sciences institutions and the
old universities of Moscow and St.Petersburg were not involved.
Khachaturov’s own views and the choice of contributors invited by him de-
cisively affected the general format of the series and thereby its strengths and
weaknesses. Although Khachaturov’s footnotes indicated that he was not unfa-
miliar with recent Russian literature on his subject, the numerous new insights
presented by it apparently had little influence on the general concepts which
Khachaturov believed to be basic for a proper understanding of the topic. Kha-
chaturov’s way of thinking remained fully Soviet-Marxist, with all the trappings
of class struggle, feudalism, and so on. Typically, he devoted an entire chapter
to an angry refutation of “Normanism”, which in view of the enormous work
done in connection with this question in recent years by Russianscholars is,
to say the least, astonishing. On the other hand, some of the authors and com-
mentators recruited by Khachaturov have contributed in an innovative way by
drawing attention to forgotten and under-exposed topics.72
In sum, the new series, notwithstanding its impressive size, is academically
inferior to its two predecessors, although it retains considerable practical use-
fulness. (As an example, the text of the two versions of the Russkaia Pravda is
presented only in translation into modern Russian; this is convenient for the
uninformed reader, but frustrates serious inquiry, in view of the presence of
diverging copies and the uncertainty of many translations.)
Of no direct interest for the study of medieval Russian law is the series of
publications in the “Russian Legal Heritage” (Russkoe Iuridicheskoe Nasledie)
collection in which the most important later legislation is included, beginning
with the Code of Aleksei Mikhailovich of 1649; these texts were all taken from
the “Complete Collection of Laws” (Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov).73
Moskva, 2013; T.III, Pamiatniki prava Moskovskogo gosudarstva i, Moskva, 2013; id., ii and
iii, Moskva, 2014.
72 E.g. the chapters on the church statutes and other questions of church law by Iu.V. Ospen-
nikov in PRoP i, 453–507.
73 The volumes are not numbered consecutively, but devoted to the legislation of the reign
of a particular ruler (tsar, then emperor or empress) and cover the reigns of tsar A leksei
Sources 75
An English translation of a few of the most important legislative materials

from medieval Russia was produced by G. Vernadsky (the Short and Expand-
ed Version of the Russkaia Pravda, the Charter of Dvina Land, and the Court
Charters of Pskov and Novgorod).74 A more recent and much fuller collection
is available as the first volume on medieval Russia in the series “The Laws of
Russia”(texts translated and edited by D.H. Kaiser).75 A more modest collec-
tion of French translations, accompanied by comments, was published by M.
Szeftel and A. Eck.76
George vernadsky
George Vernadsky was born in Moscow in 1887, the son of Vladimir Ver-
nadskii, professor of geology at the University of Moscow. He studied his-
tory in Moscow from 1905 to 1910, with a break in the restless year 1906,
when he spent half a year in Germany. In 1911 he accepted a post at the
University of St. Petersburg, as an assistant to the well-known historian
S.F. Platonov. After completing his dissertation in 1917, he received an ap-
pointment at the Omsk Polytechnic, but never reached his destination
on account of the revolutionary unrest in the country. He was stranded
in Perm’, where he remained until the bolsheviks took control in Janu-
ary 1918. He was forced to flee (he had been an active member of the
Cadet Party) and rejoined his parents in Kiev. He engaged in various ac-
tivities in the Ukraine (including some work as press chief for general
Wrangel), until he was forced to emigrate in October 1920. He then spent
several years in Prague as a prominent member of the Russian intellec-
tual community there. In 1927 he emigrated to the United States, where
he started to teach Russian history at Yale. For many years he worked on
a monumental history of Russia, of which the first volume was published
in 1943 and the fifth in 1968. It covered the period up to 1682. Vernadsky
died in New Haven in 1983, one of the intellectual giants of the Russian
emigration.
Mikhailovich up to emperor Aleksandr i (1812–1825). There are no footnotes or com-

ments, but introductory essays by V.A. Tomsinov.
74 G. Vernadsky (transl. & introduction), Medieval Russian Laws, New York, 1947.
75 D.H. Kaiser (ed. and transl.), The Laws of Rus’ – Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries, Vol.1 of Series
i: Medieval Russia, of The Laws of Russia (Ch. Schlacks, gen. ed.), Salt Lake City, 1992.
76 M. Szeftel, A. Eck (eds.), Documents de droit public relatifs à la Russie médiévale, Bruxelles,
1963.
76 chapter 2
General Textbooks
The tradition of producing comprehensive treatments of a large field was at
its strongest in the latter half of the 19th and the first part of the 20th century.
Such works were primarily conceived as university textbooks. In Russia, a few
were specifically devoted to legal history, but the ones devoted to general me-
dieval history are usually still of great interest to the legal historian, because (as
pointed out in the previous chapter) the fields of general medieval history and
of the history of medieval law overlap to a considerable extent.
The principal general works from before 1900 will only be discussed here
briefly, as they are well-known and publicized through modern reference
works.
The “Russian History” of V.N. Tatishchev (1686–1750) embraced the period
from Slavic pre- and proto-history to 1682, the death of tsar Fedor Alekseev-
ich.77 Apart from its other merits, its really unique feature is that the author
made use of chronicles and other documents that were lost in the fire of
Moscowin 1812.
The emperor Aleksandr i commissioned N.M. Karamzin (1766–1826) to
write a comprehensive history of Russia. The result was the “History of the
Russian State”, which appeared in twelve parts in 1816–1829.78 Karamzin, like
Tatishchev before him, took the succession of Russian rulers as the skeleton of
his work. The very valuable footnotes take up almost half the pages of the work
and, additionally, several indices add to the usefulness of the text itself.
While the works of Tatishchev and Karamzin contain much that is of in-
terest to the legal historian, their main theme was the political history of
Russia.The “Course of Russian History” of the Moscow history professor V.O.
Kliuchevskii (1841–1911) adopted a much wider perspective and paid extensive
attention to economic, social, legal and other aspects.79 Many of Kliuchevskii’s
views were already controversial in his own time and are generally rejected
nowadays, but his daring hypotheses and engaging inquisitiveness make the
reading of his history still worthwhile. The five volumes of his Course consist of
86 lectures, reaching up to the reign of emperor Aleksandr ii (†1881), and are
equipped with extensive footnotes.
77 V.N. Tatishchev, Istoriia Rossiiskaia; it was only published posthumously and often, almost
continously, republished afterwards.
78 N.M. Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskago; many editions (I have used the republica-
tion of the 1842–1844 Sankt-Peterburg edition, Moskva, 1988).
79 V.O. Kliuchevski, Kurs russkoi istorii, included in his collected works (Sochineniia), several
editions (I have used the Moscow 1956–1959 edition in eight volumes, where the Course
takes up the first five volumes).
Sources 77
Among the works of legal historians, those of Sergeevich and Vladimir-

skii-Budanov stand out. V.I. Sergeevich (1832–1910), after a short stint at the
universityof Moscow, spent the rest of his life (since 1872) at the university of
Saint-Petersburg, where he wrote two major works on medieval Russian legal
history. The Lektsii i issledovaniia (“ Lectures and Investigations”), first pub-
lished in 1883,80 were structured according to the traditional model: an open-
ing chapter on the sources of law, then four chapters on state law, criminal law,
civil law, and court procedure. Sergeevich was probably aware of the restric-
tions imposed by this approach. It produced a map with many blank spaces:
topics on which medieval law was silent. Also, for people living in the middle
ages, the law was not compartmentalized the way people are accustomed to
during the last few centuries. All through the work, the author allowed himself
considerable freedom in inserting discussions of topics which somehow broke
through the rigid frame he had selected. Most of the chapter on sources was
actually devoted to the Russkaia Pravda. The chapter on state law was mostly
about the organization of the Muscovy government. The chapter on civil law
had nothing on obligations and contracts, but was elaborate on marriage, fam-
ily, and inheritance law. A long Appendix on the 10th-century treaties with Byz-
antium followed the five chapters.
In the Drevnosti russkago prava (“Antiquities of Russian Law”), first pub-
lished in 1890, Sergeevich abandoned the traditional method.81 The first sen-
tence of the introduction to the 1890 publication suggested the path he chose.
“Only the reading of the real sources themselves [chtenie podlinnykh pami-
atnikov] can yield a genuine understanding of the past.” In other words, it is
better to be guided by whatever materials we have at our disposal, than by a
preconceived format. This induced Sergeevich to select certain themes, suit-
able for a coherent examination on the basis of available documents and this
resulted in chapters on “Territory”, “Population”, “Armed Forces”, “Popular As-
sembly [Veche]”, “Prince”, “Use of Land” and “Taxation”. The first three chapters
were combined in a first volume, the chapters on the Veche and the Prince
constituted the second volume, and the last two chapters the third volume.
The chapters on Population and Prince each took up more than half of the
volume in which they were included and comprised a great variety of topics.
The chronological span of the Drevnosti (notwithstanding the name) was
wider than that of the Lektsii; they covered in principle the entire history of
80 V.I. Sergeevich, Lektsii i Izsledovaniia po drevnei istorii russkago prava, Sankt-Peterburg,

1883, 1888 (2nd ed.), 1890 (3rd ed.), 1903 (4th and standard ed.).
81 V.I. Sergeevich, Drevnosti russkago prava, TT.I, II, Sankt-Peterburg, 1890, 1901 (2nd ed.),
1909 (3rd ed.), T.III, Sankt-Peterburg, 1903.
78 chapter 2
Russian law until the end of the 17th century, although the accent remained
very much on earlier periods.
The superior quality of Sergeevich’s works, especially the Drevnosti, stand
out if they are compared with some more or less contemporaneous publica-
tions, such as the textbook written by Sergeevich’s own teacher, the Moscow
professor I.D. Beliaev; this was a straightforward collection of classroom lec-
tures, without much intellectual debate and lacking footnotes or references.82
Vladimirskii-Budanov’s anthology has been mentioned above. He was also
the author of a highly successful textbook on the history of Russian law.83 In
this work, of which the first edition appeared a few years after the first pub-
lication of Sergeevich’s Lektsii, the author adopted the same traditional ap-
proaches, but combined these with a much stricter periodization. This allowed
Vladimirskii-Budanov to be more flexible in the organization of his different
chapters. The work treated the entire period of Russian legal history, from the
beginning to the 19th century. It was divided into two main parts, Russian state
law and other branches of Russian law (criminal, civil and procedural law).
These two parts were each sub-divided into chapters on the consecutive pe-
riods, the early period (called the period of the “lands”, zemskii period), the
period of Muscovy and the imperial period.84 In his introduction Vladimirskii-
Budanov stated that Russian legal history was about the history of the law
applicable to (ethnic) Russians, and did not cover therefore the law of other
nations in the Russian Empire, but did encompass the law of the Polish-Lith-
uanian state, insofar as it applied to Russians. He did not quite live up to this
position and limited himself to brief incidental excursions on this topic.
M.A. D’iakonov (1856–1919) taught Russian legal history in the ancient uni-
versity of Dorpat (Iur’ev, now Tartu), until he was forced to leave his post in
the aftermath of the unrest in Russia after the disastrous war against Japan in
the years 1905–1906. His main work “Essays on the Public and State Structure
of Old Russia” was written for his students and published in a small edition
which was immediately sold out. The second edition of 1908 is therefore the
82 I.D. Beliaev, Lektsii po istorii russkogo zakonodatel’stva, Moskva, 1879, 1888 (2nd ed.), 1888
(3rd ed.), republished in Moscow in 2011.
83 M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov, Obzor istorii russkago prava, Kiev, 1886 (1st ed.), 1915 (7th and
standard ed.).
84 As an example of the author’s flexibility: the chapter on state law in the first period cov-
ered a large number of topics; as to criminal law, the author then used the term “criminal
law in the period of the Russkaia Pravda” and only discussed that theme; the chapter on
civil law has nothing on the first period and is very brief on the third period.
Sources 79
standard text.85 He followed other authors in dividing the material into two
major chronological parts, a first period from the beginning to the establish-
ment of Moscow hegemony, and a second period until the Code of tsar Aleksei
Mikhailovich of 1649. As the title of his work indicates, the accent is very much
on ‘public law’, there is no special treatment of criminal or civil law subjects.
On the other hand, the two periods are sub-divided into only three and two
very large chapters (sources, state structure, and administration for the first
period, and sources and state structure for the second period) and within these
large chapters most of the topics discussed in the works of the author’s prede-
cessors pass the review.
A.E. Presniakóv (1870–1929) was the most important figure in the transi-
tion after the October Revolution. He started lecturing as a privat-dotsent at
the University of Sankt-Peterburg in 1907. In 1909 he published a still relevant
study on the legal status and legal activities of the prince in Kievan Russia.86
After 1917 his views moved closer to the Marxist-dominated historical consen-
sus, without embracing it completely.87 At the time of his death he had made
it to be a corresponding member of the ussr Academy of Sciences. One year
later, many of his colleagues with a similar ‘bourgeois’ background were ar-
rested. Presniakov’s lecture notes, dating from 1907–1916, were published post-
humously in two volumes, one devoted to Kievan Russia, the other to Western
Russia and the Lithuanian-Russian state.88 This second volume made him the
first major author who paid due regard to the fact that the greater part of eth-
nic Russian territory had a history of its own during much of the middle ages.
In other aspects as well, Presniakov’s work was outstanding by its erudition,
originality and openness to comparative analysis. In both volumes, questions
of legal history take up about half the available space (prince, government,
veche, the Russkaia Pravda and other legislation).
A more eccentric legal historian, who also had a role in the transition to
the Soviet period, was N.P. Pavlov-Sil’vanskii (1869–1908). His main work
85 M.A. D’iakonov, Ocherki obshchestvennogo i gosudarstvennogo stroia Drevnei Rusi, Sankt-

Peterburg, 1908 (2nd ed.).
86 A.E. Presniakov, Kniazhoe pravo v drevnei Rusi. Ocherki po istorii x–xii stoletii, published as
Part xc in the Zapiski istoriko-filologicheskago fakul’teta Imperatorskago S.-Peterburgskago
Universiteta, Sankt-Peterburg, 1909.
87 On Presniakov, see A.Iu. Dvornichenko, “A.E. Presniakov–issledovatel’ Kievskoi Rusi”, A.Iu.
Dvornichenko (ed.), Issledovaniia po istorii Srednevekovoi Rusi. K 80-letiiu Iuriia Georgievi-
cha Alekseeva, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 2006, 35–46.
88 A.E. Presniakov, Lektsii po russkoi istorii, T.I: Kievskaia Rus’, Moskva, 1938, T.II: Zapadnaia
Rus’ i litovsko-russkoe gosudarstvo, Moskva, 1939.
80 chapter 2
“ Feudalism in Russia” covered a large number of legal topics for the periods of
Kievan Russia and its aftermath (the independent principalities), roughly up to
the Mongol invasion.89 Everything was directed at proving that developments
in medieval Russia were essentially the same as those in Western Europe and
that Kievan Russia was therefore the period of feudalism in Russia. A consider-
able part of Pavlov-Sil’vanskii’s efforts was spent in refuting his opponents and
in explaining West-European medieval institutions which, in his view, were the
same as their Russian counterparts. As a guide to Russian legal history of the
middle ages, Pavlov-Sil’vanskii is therefore less successful. Although he was a
left-wing liberal and certainly not a full-blown Marxist, his views on feudalism
were welcomed by the classic Soviet school of Grekov.
In the Introductory Chapter it has been pointed out that legal history as an
academic discipline assumed a different role during the Soviet era. At least in
theory all links with the legal past from before 1917 had been cut off and the
history of law appeared therefore more as a branch of general history than as
a supporting discipline for general legal studies. Still, much valuable work on
Russian legal history has been done during the Soviet era, generally by histori-
ans. History of state and law (as was the official designation then) was studied
along with history of agriculture, of political thought, of commerce, of serf-
dom, etc.
Among the leading Soviet medievalists, the only person who had originally
been trained as a lawyer was S.V. Iushkov (1888–1952). After the Revolution,
Iushkov, then a young law professor in Saratov, had wholeheartedly sided with
the new regime. Although he wrote on all periods of Russian legal history, his
main interest was in medieval law. He produced well-researched and innova-
tive studies on the Russkaia Pravda and other monuments of medieval law, but
in this work he had set himself the task of infusing the entire field of legal his-
tory with Marxist-Leninist ideology. The Marxist understanding of feudalism
was the key concept in this respect. He is therefore rightly considered as the
founding father of Soviet legal history.
Among his impressive output is the only comprehensive Soviet textbook on
the history of state and law of the ussr.90 As this work attempts to cover the
legal history, not only of Russia, but of all other Soviet republics as well, it is
inevitably somewhat superficial.
89 N.P. Pavlov-Sil’vanskii, Feodalizm v Rossii (S.O. Shmidt, ed.), Moskva, 1988. This edition
united two original works, Feodalizm v Drevnei Rusi, of 1907, and Feodalizm v udel’noi Rusi,
of 1910.
90 S.V. Iushkov, Istoriia gosudarstva i prava sssr, Part i (which dealt with the entire period up
to 1918), Moskva, 1940 (1st ed.), 1947 (2nd ed.), 1950 (3rd ed.).
Sources 81
More satisfactory is his volume on the socio-political structure and law of

the Kievan state.91 This work dealt with the legal history of Kievan Russia in the
10th-12th centuries and has retained its status as one of the most basic general
studies on the topic.
In the early years of Soviet power, M.N. Pokrovskii (1868–1932) emerged as
the founder of Marxist-Leninist historiography; along with his scholarly activi-
ties, political work took much of his time. He was a close collaborator of Lenin.
In his major work “Russian History from the Earliest Times on”92 he attempted
to present a view of Russia’s history from a principled Marxist point of view;
after the 8th edition of the work in 1934, Pokrovskii posthumously fell foul of
the new Stalinist orthodoxy. For the legal historian there is little of direct inter-
est in Pokrovskii’ works. This need not be said about Pokrovskii’s successor as
the undisputed leader of the Soviet medievalists of the Stalin era, B.D. Grekov
(1882–1953). For many years his views were not only dominant, but also obliga-
tory, or at least practically unassailable for his colleagues. But his position rest-
ed not only on his political prominence, but on academic excellence as well.
Apart from directing huge collaborative projects, such as the three-volume
Academy of Sciences edition of the Russkaia Pravda, Grekov wrote on a bewil-
dering variety of subjects in the field of medieval studies with great expertise
and clarity, if one closes one’s ears to the outbursts of sycophantic admiration
for the genius of Stalin and Lenin. One of his major works, “Kievan Russia”, for
many years an almost canonical text in the ussr, also covered many topics
concerning the law of the Kievan era.93
Another Soviet medievalist whose works were of great relevance to Russian
legal history was L.V. Cherepnin. His two-volume study on the principal medi-
eval archives (especially of the Muscovy grand princes and of the metropolita-
nate) was in fact a voluminous commentary on almost all important legislative
and other legal documents from the Russkaia Pravda to the Code of 1497 of
Ivan iii.94
A.A. Zimin has been mentioned above as the central person in the “Monu-
ments of Russian Law” series. Apart from this, most of his impressive oeuvre
91 S.V. Iushkov, Obshchestvenno-politicheskii stroi i pravo Kievskoi Rusi, Moskva, 1949. The less
ambitious Ocherki po istorii feodalizma v Kievskoi Rusi, Moskva/Leningrad, 1939, can be
regarded as its forerunner.
92 M.N. Pokrovskii, Russkaia istoriia s drevneishikh vremen (in five volumes), Moskva,
1910–1913. Republished as Russkaia istoriia in three parts, Moskva, 2005.
93 B.D. Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, Moskva, 1953. English translation published in the ussr: Kiev
Rus, Moscow, 1959.
94 L.V. Cherepnin, Russkie feodal’nye arkhivy xiv–xv vekov, T.I, Moskva/Leningrad, 1949, T.ii,
Moskva, 1951.
82 chapter 2
is of immediate interest to Russian legal history, such as his monographs on

slavery,95 and on monasterial landowning,96 and his posthumously published
studies on the formation of the boyar class,97 and on the Russkaia Pravda.98
One of the few, and now mostly forgotten, general legal surveys from the So-
viet era was a collective work, edited by V.S. Nersesiants, and dealing with the
development of Russian law from the 15th to the first half of the 17th century.99
Most of the chapters were written by S.I. Shtamm.
The tradition of producing textbooks intended for students was continued
in the post-Soviet era by I.A. Isaev, but such textbooks, purporting to deal with
the history of Russian law from the Kievan era up to the present day in a single
volume without any footnotes or references, are only of interest in a narrow
educational sense.100 Much more valuable from an academic point of view
was a series of works on Kievan Russia by I.Ia. Froianov (1936–2012). The first
one was devoted to socio-economic aspects and was first published in 1974,
as a shortened version of a doctoral thesis.101 It dealt mainly with landowner-
ship and the various categories of dependent peasants. The second volume ap-
peared in 1980; the main topics were the prince, the druzhina, and the veche.102
In the third volume, published in 1990, Froianov’s attention was directed pri-
marily at refuting the dominant views of Soviet historians on dependent peas-
ants.103 These three works were combined in a single volume in 2001 under the
title “The Beginnings of Russian History”.104
95 A.A. Zimin, Kholopy na Rusi (s drevneishikh vremen do kontsa xv v.), Moskva, 1973.
96 A.A. Zimin, Krupnaia feodal’naia votchina i sotsial’no-politicheskaia bor’ba v Rossii (konets
xv–xvi v.), Moskva, 1977, based on materials from the monastery of St. Joseph of Volokol-
amsk, one of the biggest monasterial landowners in the country.
97 A.A. Zimin, Formirovanie boiarskoi aristokratii v Rossii (vo vtoroi polovine xv – pervoi treti
xvi v.), Moskva, 1988.
98 A.A. Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, Moskva, 1999.
99 V.S. Nersesiants, Razvitie russkogo prava v xv – pervoi polovine xvii v., Moskva, 1986.
100 I.A. Isaev, Istoriia gosudarstva i prava Rossii, Moskva, 1998 (3rd ed, Moskva, 2006).
101 I.Ia. Froianov, Kievskaia Rus’. Ocherki sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi istorii, Leningrad, 1974.
A fuller version was published as Kievskaia Rus’. Glavnye cherty sotsial’no-ekonomicheskogo
stroia, Sankt-Peterburg, 1999.
102 I.Ia. Froianov, Kievskaia Rus’. Ocherki sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii, Leningrad, 1980.
103 I.Ia. Froianov, Kievskaia Rus’. Ocherki otechestvennoi istoriografii, Leningrad, 1990.
104 I.Ia. Froianov, Nachala russkoi istorii. Izbrannoe, Moskva, 2001. This collection contains the
1974 version of the part on socio-economic aspects, the 1980 and 1990 parts of Kievskaia
Rus’, and a number of shorter works by Froianov. The magnum opus on Kievan Russia is
complemented by two other works of the same author, Rabstvo i dannichestvo u vostoch-
nykh slavian (vi–x vv.), Sankt-Peterburg, 1996 (on slavery in the pre-Kievan era), and
Sources 83
As a young scholar during the late Soviet period, Froianov was controversial,
on account of his often heterodox views. Although the intellectual climate had
changed considerably since, Froianov succeeded in hanging on to his reputa-
tion. Whatever the ultimate validity of his views, his productive scholarship
and massive erudition are beyond doubt.
More recently V.V. Momotov published an original survey of Russian me-
dieval law, which combined traditional approaches with more modern theo-
retical perspectives.105 Family, property, contract, and procedural law are
discussed in detail, without much regard for diachronical developments, and
many other topics have been left aside, but much place has been reserved for a
general consideration of the basic characteristics of medieval law.
There has been a decent amount of Western scholarship in the field of
Russianlegal history, going back to major works in German from the 19th cen-
tury, but the only recent comprehensive treatment is H. Küpper’s “Introduc-
tion to the Legal History of Eastern Europe”, which devotes some 80 pages to
the middle ages and the Muscovy period.106
Bibliography
As bibliographies are the nightmare of the perfectionist, an attempt is to be
abandoned at the beginning. If any useful suggestions materialize, we are
satisfied.
The Russkaia Pravda is well served, where bibliography is concerned. The
Academy of Sciences edition has some 200 titles, while Baranowski, almost 60
years later, has more than 400.107
Several special studies from the Soviet era discuss the question of the bib-
liography of Kievan Russia and, without presenting lists of titles themselves,
offer helpful indications.108
revniaia Rus’. Opyt issledovaniia istorii sotsial’noi i politicheskoi bor’by, Sankt-Peterburg,

D
1995 (a survey of the political history of Kievan Russia), all three works adorned by the
author’s portrait.
105 V.V. Momotov, Formirovanie russkogo srednevekovogo prava v ix–xiv vv., Moskva, 2015 (an
earlier and similar edition appeared in Moscow in 2008).
106 H. Küpper, Einführung in die Rechtsgeschichte Osteuropas (Studien des Instituts für Os-
trecht München, Bd.54), Frankfurt am Main, 2005
107 B.D. Grekov (ed.), Pravda Russkaia, ii, Moskva/Leningrad, 1947, 747–753; Baranowski,
741–769.
108 E.g. V.V. Mavrodin (ed.), Sovetskaia istoriografiia Kievskoi Rusi, Leningrad, 1978; V.V. Mavro-
din (ed.), Sovetskoe istochnikovedenie Kievskoi Rusi. Istoriograficheskie ocherki, Leningrad,
1979.
84 chapter 2
An excellent source for older materials, covering also non-Russian sources,

is M. Szeftel’s contribution to the Bibliographical Introduction to Legal History
and Ethnology (edited by J. Gilissen).109
Shchapov produced, at the end of his long and brilliant career, a detailed
introduction to the various kinds of reference tools for the history of Russia
(specialized encyclopedias, general and special bibliographies, other reference
works).110
109 M. Szeftel, Bibliographical Introduction to Legal History and Ethnology (J. Gilissen, ed.),
Russia (before 1917), Part D/9, 1966.
110 Ia.N. Shchapov, Spravochnyi instrumentarii istorika Rossii, Moskva, 1907.
chapter 3
The Treaties with Byzantium. The Zakon Russkii
The Treaties with Byzantium
The four treaties between the Kievan grand prince and Byzantium, dating from
907, 911, 944 and 971, are of interest to the legal historian because they offer a
glimpse of Russian law in a pre-literate period. What apparently happened is
that the treaties were written down in Greek, and that Russian translations
were made afterwards.1 These translations, or copies or fragments of them,
were used by the author of the Primary Chronicle.2
1 This was first demonstrated by N. Lavrovskii, O vizantiiskom elemente v iazyke dogovorov

russkikh s grekami, Sankt-Peterburg, 1853, to whom most subsequent discussions refer. See
also Cross/Sherbowitz-Wetzor in the introduction to their translation of the Primary Chron-
icle (Cambridge, Mass., 1953/1973), 26, who pointed out that the textual and archival his-
tory of the four treaties is completely obscure. S.M. Kashtanov, Iz istorii russkogo sredneve-
kovogo istochnika. Akty x–xvi vv., Moskva, 1996, discusses the formal (diplomatic) aspects of
the treaties in his Ch. i (“Russko-vizantiiskie dogovory x v.”), 4–57; also, by the same author,
“O protsedure zakliucheniia dogovorov mezhdu Vizantiei i Rus’iu v X v.”, V.T. Pashuto (ed.),
Feodal’naia Rossiia vo vsemirno-istoricheskom protsesse. Sbornik statei, posviashchennyi L’vu
Vladimirovichu Cherepninu, Moskva, 1972, 209–215. On the historiography of the treaties,
along with the work of Sakharov quoted below, R.L. Khachaturov in PRoP i, 359–379.
2 The principal editions of the Treaties are:
• M. Vladimirskii-Budanov, Khristomatiia po istorii russkago prava, Part 1, Sankt-Peterburg,
1899 (5th ed.), 1–22; this edition contains the treaties of 911, 944, and 971 and a bibliogra-
phy of older literature;
• prp i, 3–72, contains the text of the four treaties, a modern Russian translation, and a
bibliography. PRoP i, 406–421, offers the texts of the four treaties and the translation into
modern Russian of prp.
• Text of the four treaties with English translation in Kaiser, Laws, 2–12.
Of the older literature V.I. Sergeevich, “Grecheskoe i russkoe pravo v dogovorakh s grekami
X v.”, deserves to be mentioned; first published in the Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Pros-
veshcheniia in 1882 and then included as an appendix in Sergeevich, Lektsii, 626–666. Also:
A. Dimitriu, “K voprosu o dogovorakh russkikh s grekami”, Vizantiiskii Vremennik, ii (1895),
vyp.4, which dealt especially with international law aspects. A similar approach was adopted
by M.Iu. Braichevskii in an article in the Soviet Yearbook of International Law 1978, “O pervykh
dogovorakh Rusi s grekami”, Sovetskii Ezhegodnik Mezhdunarodnogo Prava 1978, Moskva,
1978, 264–284.
The most recent comprehensive treatise is A.N. Sakharov, Diplomatiia Drevnei Rusi ix –
pervaia polovina x v., Moskva, 1988, which provides a wealth of information on various

86 chapter 3
As a general historical source the treaties have caused, rather than solved,
problems. In all probability they had been preceded by similar agreements. An
indication in this direction is provided by an incident reported in the Annales
Bertiniani. When the emperor Louis the Pious was visited in 839 by a delega-
tion of envoys from the Byzantine emperor, they were accompanied by a few
persons who called themselves Rhos and claimed to have been sent by their
khakan to the Byzantine emperor in order to promote friendly relations (“qui
se, id est gentem suam, Rhos vocari dicebant, quod rex illorum, chacanus vo-
cabulo, ad se amicitiae, sicut asserebant, causa direxerat”).3
Of far more importance were the hostilities between Byzantium and in-
vaders from Russia in 860. These events are reported in a distorted fashion in
the Chronicle under the year 866, but actually took place in 860. According to
abundant reports from Byzantine and European sources, a large naval force of
‘Rosses’ suddenly appeared before Constantinople on 25 June 860; they laid
waste to the surrounding countryside, but were unable to enter the city. The re-
ports diverge on the outcome: Did they go home more or less victoriously with
rich booty? Were they surprised and driven off by a sudden storm? Or were
they soundly beaten by the Greeks? After some time Russian envoys returned
to Constantinople to negotiate a peace treaty. This was apparently concluded,
but apart from the condition that the Russians would convert to Christianity,
the contents are obscure.4
istorical and diplomatic aspects of the treaties. A detailed Western discussion by I. Sorlin,
h
“Les traités de Byzance avec la Russie au Xe siècle”, Cahiers de monde russe et soviètique, ii
(1961), 313–360, 447–475. Also: J. Malingoudi, “Die russisch-byzantinischen Verträge des 10.
Jhds. aus rechtshistorischer Sicht. Ein erster Deutungsversuch”, Byzantinoslavica 58 (1997),
Part 2, 233–250, and id., “Der rechtshistorische Hintergrund einiger Verordnungen aus den
russisch-byzantinischen Verträgen des 10. Jhds.”, Byzantinoslavica 59 (1998), Part 2, 52–64.
3 Mon. Germ. Hist., Scr. i, 434. On the mission of 839, see A.N. Sakharov, op.cit., 36–47, and by
the same author: “Russkoe posol’stvo v Vizantiiu 838–839 gg.”, V.T. Pashuto (ed.), Obshchestvo
i gosudarstvo feodal’noi Rossii, Moskva, 1975, 247–261.
4 Cf. P.V. Kuzenkov, “Pokhod 860 g. na Konstantinopol’ i pervoe kreshchenie rusi v sredneve-
kovykh pis’mennykh istochnikakh”, dgve 2000, Moskva, 2003, 3–172, who presents most
sources together with a Russian translation. S.V. Tsvetkov, Pokhod rusov na Konstantinopol’
v 860 godu i nachalo Rusi, Sankt-Peterburg, 2010, is based on Kuzenkov’s materials and con-
structs a rather audacious model of early Russian history. See also Sakharov, op.cit., 48–65.
The 860 raid was mentioned in sermons of the contemporary patriarch Photius, by Greek
historians, such as Theophanes Continuatus and others, and also by Liutprand of Cremona,
in his major work Antapodosis (references and Russian translations of the relevant fragments
also in the Byzantine and West-European volumes of Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh
istochnikov: Khrestomatiia, T.N. Dzhakson, I.G. Konovalova, A.V. Podosinov (eds.), Moskva,
T.ii (Vizantiiskie istochniki), 2010, T.iv (Zapadno-Evropeiskie istochniki), 2010). A Russian
The treaty resulting from the well-documented hostilities in 860 was clearly
not the only one or the first of its kind. There are confused reports, especially
in Greek sources, of other Russian attacks and raids, followed by reconciliation
and peace agreements. Several authors have argued that the political bias of
the Russian chroniclers, in particular their purpose to strengthen the claims
of the Rurikid dynasty, has caused serious distortions in the narrative of the
Primary Chronicle covering events in the 9th and 10th centuries. Greek sources
mention Askold as the Russian leader in 860. The Chronicle calls him a boyar
of Rurik, himself not of princely stock, and permitted by Rurik to try his luck
in Kiev after Rurik had assumed the reign in Novgorod in 860. According to
Braichevskii, who was following Rybakov in this respect, Askold was in fact the
ruler of Kiev in his own right and had accepted baptism after his successful
raid in 860; this is more or less confirmed by Greek authors.5 The 860 raid was
followed by other hostilities and, so Braichevskii, there were at least two peace
treaties, probably in 860 and in 874. These treaties were then presented by the
author of the Chronicle as concluded by Oleg and Sviatoslav, and assigned to
907 and 911. Although Braichevskii’s meticulously argued position merits seri-
ous consideration because it provides satisfactory solutions to several anoma-
lies in the accepted view, it does not significantly affect the various points of
relevance from the perspective of legal history. For this reason the accepted
view will generally be followed in the discussion of the four treaties. Whatever
view is closer to reality, the four treaties of the 10th century mentioned in the
Primary Chronicle were all connected with hostilities against Constantinople.
The obscurity surrounding the 10th century Greco-Russian treaties extends
not only to their textual history, but also to the nature of the events which oc-
casioned them, the status of the Russian parties, and the legal nature of the
surviving texts.6 The existence of the 944 and 971 treaties and the surrounding
circumstances are well documented by Byzantine sources; the 944 Treaty also
speaks of “renewing the old peace treaty” (obnoviti vet’khii mir) and this would
probably refer to the Treaty of 911 (or, less likely, to the Treaty of 907). A similar
reference can be found in Byzantine sources. In the run-up to the Treaty of 971
translation of the main works of Liutprand of Cremona appeared under the editorship of
I.V. D’iakonov: Liutprand Kremonskii, Antapodosis. Kniga ob Ottone. Otchet o posol’stve v Kon-
stantinopol’, Moskva, 2006.
5 Braichevskii, op.cit., 265–269; see also B.A. Rybakov, Kievskaia Rus’ i russkie kniazhestva
x ii–xiii vv. Proiskhozhdenie Rusi i stanovlenie ee gosudarstvennosti, Moskva, 2013, 9–10 (and
older works by Rybakov).
6 Cf. for instance Iushkov, Stroi, 84–85; Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 91; D’iakonov, Ocherki, 19–23; Sergee-
vich, Lektsii, 639–666; Sorlin, op.cit., 353–354.
88 chapter 3
the Greek emperor Johannes Tzimisces reminded the Kievan prince Sviatoslav
what happened to the latter’s father Igor, when he, “disrespecting the treaty
confirmed by oath”, attacked Constantinople in 944 (which led to the Treaty
of 944) and was killed afterwards by the Pechenegs. The “treaty confirmed by
oath” is probably the Treaty of 911, or possibly the one from 907, both of which
are described as such in the Chronicle text.7
The treaties of 911, 944 and 971 were preceded by the formula Ravno drugago
sveshchaniia byvshago pri … (“This is the same as [a true copy of] another trea-
ty which was [concluded] at [the time of] … ”), followed by the names of the
Greek emperors involved, or, in the case of the Treaty of 971, the Kievan prince
Sviatoslav. This strengthens their character as formal treaties.8
Within a wider historical framework the four treaties with the Greeks
should be viewed against the background of long-distance North–South trade
along the Russian rivers, the Dnepr in particular. The importance of this trade
in the 10th century is illustrated by the attention which the Byzantine emperor
Constantine vii Porphyrogenitus (913–959) paid to it in his work De Adminis-
trando Imperio, composed around 950. The ninth chapter is devoted to a de-
tailed description of the organization and routes of Russian shipping for their
annual trips to Constantinople.9
The Treaty of 907
Judged by the Chronicle’s narrative, the 907 attack of the Russes on Constan-
tinople had very much the look of a pirates’ raid, albeit a large-scale one. It
was led by Oleg, Rurik’s successor, who had moved his capital to Kiev in 882 by
ejecting and killing the Viking chieftains Askold and Dir who had established
themselves there somewhat earlier.10 Oleg commanded an apparently large
7 The story is told by Leo the Deacon in his History; Russian text in T.N. Dzhakson, I.G.
Konovalova, A.V. Podosinov (eds.), Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh istochnikov:
Khrestomatiia (hereafter: Dzhakson, Drevniaia Rus’), T.ii: Vizantiiskie istochniki, Moskva,
2010, 194.
8 Cf. Sakharov, op.cit., 134–140.
9 Dzhakson, Drevniaia Rus’, 158–168.
10 Whether there ever was a separate person Dir is doubtful. The source is the Primary
Chronicle which twice mentions Askold and Dir, together, and this story has been re-
peated forever in other Russian chronicles. Dir never turns up in other sources, while
Askold is mentioned repeatedly by Greek authors. Tatishchev was the first to doubt the
historicity of Dir (in a footnote to his chapter on Oleg’s reign, in Ch. 2 of Part ii of his
Istoriia Rossiiskaia).
force consisting of Varangians (Norsemen), supplemented by various Slavic

and Finnish troops. The Chronicle, with not unusual exaggeration speaks of
two thousand ships with about forty men on every ship.
There is no doubt that Oleg’s raid was successful and that he was able to
wrench important concessions from the co-emperors Leo and Alexander. The
Greeks agreed to pay a lump sum of tribute (twelve grivny for every Russian
warrior, plus separate amounts for various Russian towns) and granted advan-
tageous terms to Russian merchants visiting Constantinople. The latter condi-
tions are included verbatim in the Chronicle text. The matter of the tribute is
woven into the general narrative and appears in two different versions. The
chronicler, reporting on the 907 Treaty, seems to have attempted, not quite suc-
cessfully, to integrate two or three versions of the event. The Treaty text of the
Chronicle is neither complete nor exact.11
The 907 Treaty contains little or no information on Russian law proper, al-
though it sheds some light on the political organization of Oleg’s realm. Along
with the tribute based on the strength of the Russian army, special payments
for the principal Russian towns were exacted: “first Kiev, then Chernigov, Pere-
iaslavl, Polotsk, Rostov, Liubech, and the other towns. In these towns lived great
princes subject to Oleg.”12 This information agrees with the Chronicle’s earlier
statements concerning the original size and further extension of the territory
controlled by Rurik and his successor Oleg.13 The story of Oleg’s conflict with
Askold and Dir, who are referred to as boyars, indicates that a sharp distinction
was made between princes and other grandees. Most of the princes referred to
in the 907 Treaty belonged therefore probably to Oleg’s kinfolk. More on this
question can be found in Chapter 12, on the Prince. In the narrative of the 907
events five envoys are mentioned by name, who were sent by Oleg to negotiate
the terms of the Treaty; all of them bear Norse names and reappear four years
later as members of a larger group of emissaries.14
The parts of the Treaty which are quoted verbatim concern only the rights
and duties of Russian merchants visiting Constantinople. In the first part the
Russian demands are formulated:
11 Sergeevich, Lektsii, 629; Sorlin, op. cit., 343–350.

12 There is some confusion about Pereiaslavl’; it is mentioned in the 907 and 911 treaties,
while it was founded in 992–993 according to the same Chronicle.
13 Chernigov, Pereiaslavl’ and Liubech are all in the Kiev region. Rostov and Polotsk are men-
tioned under the year 862 as being ruled by princes appointed by Rurik.
14 Cf. Sakharov, op.cit., 160–162; Sorlin, op.cit., 329; Soviet authors occasionally attempted
to belittle or deny the Viking identity of the envoys, e.g. V.V. Mavrodin, Obrazovanie
drevnerusskogo gosudarstva, Leningrad, 1945, 243.
90 chapter 3
When the Rus’ men come, let them take for their provisions as much as
they want, and let those merchants who come take monthly provisions
for up to six months: bread, wine, meat, fish and vegetables. And let them
set up for themselves baths, as many as they wish. When the Rus’ men go
home, let them take from your Emperor for the journey food, anchors,
rigging, and sails, as much as they need.
kaiser’s translation
After stating that the Greeks accepted these conditions, the Chronicle relates
the Greek counterdemands:
If Rus’ men come to us for reasons other than trade [bez kupli], then let
them not take monthly provisions. Let the Rus’ prince prohibit his emis-
saries and those Rus’ men who come here from causing damage in our vil-
lages and our country. Let those Rus’ men who come here dwell near [the
church of] St. Mamas. And when our imperial majesty sends [to them],
let them write down their names, and [only] then take their monthly
provisions, first [those who come] from Kiev, and then [those] from
Chernigov, and Pereiaslavl’. And let them enter the city [only] through
one [certain] gate in the company of the Emperor’s official, unarmed,
fifty men at a time, and let them trade, as much as necessary, without
paying any trade fees on anything at all.
kaiser’s translation
The Treaty of 907 also provides some insight into the diplomatic practices and
the rudimentary international law of the period. The course of the negotia-
tions is not quite clear, due to the confusion on this point in the text, but the
Treaty took shape through different stages and procedural steps. The conclu-
sion of the Treaty was followed by a ratification of sorts: the emperors swore
an oath by kissing the cross and Oleg and his men swore by their weapons and
their gods Perun and Volos, the cattle-god, “according to Russian custom” (po
ruskomu zakonu).
The Treaty of 911
The conclusion of the 907, 944 and 971 treaties is described by the Chronicle as
resulting from hostilities between the Kievan prince and Byzantium. The be-
ginning of the 912 entry in the Chronicle stated laconically: “Oleg despatched
his men to make peace and draw up a treaty between the Greeks and the
Russians.” It is this lack of context, combined with the obviously fragmentary
character of the known portion of the 907 Treaty, that has given rise to the the-
ory that there was actually only one raid against Constantinople during these
years, resulting in a single treaty, fragments of which have been incorpoarted
under different years by the chronicler.15
The Treaty of 911, unlike the one from 907, appears to have been textually
reproduced in the Chronicle. It closes with an ornate formula, setting out the
diplomatic particulars of the Treaty (“vermillion script on parchment in dupli-
cate”), and gives the date: 2 September 6420. This would correspond to 912 a.d.,
but it is generally accepted that the date was actually one year earlier.16 The
emperor Leo, who was the first of the co-emperors concluding the Treaty died
before September 912; also, Oleg himself died in the autumn of 912 and the text
of the Chronicle strongly suggests that the death of Oleg did not occur shortly
after the conclusion of the Treaty.
If there can be little doubt that the Chronicle’s text of the Treaty represented
a more or less exact translation from the Greek original, it is less certain that
it was a complete translation. The text suggests that it was a copy specially
made for the Russian side and in that case certain parts had very possibly been
left out.17
The preamble mentions fifteen envoys, all of them bearing Norse names,
and including the five envoys mentioned in the 907 Treaty. They were sent
by “Oleg, Grand Prince of Russia, and by all the illustrious and great princes
and great boyars under his sway” (the Hypatian Copy has: “Oleg, Grand Prince
of Russia, and all the illustrious boyars under his sway”). The “illustrious and
great princes” return at the end of the preamble and in the first substantive
provision of the text; the Treaty is said to be concluded “in accordance with
the wishes of our great princes and at their command, and on behalf of all
the Russians who are under his [presumably: Oleg’s] hand”. The first provision
mentions “the subjects of our illustrious princes” and enjoins the Greeks to
15 On the relationship between the 907 and 911 treaties, see: Iushkov, Stroi, 80–84; D’iakonov,
Ocherki, 17–19; Sergeevich, Lektsii, 631–632; Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 89–90; Mavrodin, op.cit.,
228; M.D. Priselkov, “Kievskoe gosudarstvo vtoroi poloviny X veka po vizantiiskim istoch-
nikam”, Uchenye Zapiski lgu, otdel istorii, vyp.8, 229–239; Sorlin, op.cit., 336–342; Cross/
Sherbowitz-Wetzor, op.cit., 235 (note 33); a review of the preceding literature on this point
in Sakharov, op.cit., 149–155.
16 E.g. Sergeevich, Lektsii, 627; Presniakov, Lektsii i. 70.
17 Sergeevich, Lektsii, 632–638; Presniakov, Lektsii i, 70.
92 chapter 3
“maintain henceforth and forever the same irrevocable and immutable amity
toward our illustrious Russian princes and all those who are under the hand of
our serene prince”.
The fact that the princes appear separately, along with the Kievan prince,
suggests that the envoys, or at least some of them, represented individual
princes. Reference to princes in the plural could be understood as relating to
Oleg and his successors, or Oleg and his house, but such an interpretation is less
plausible because it cannot be applied to all references to the princes. More-
over, a careful reading of the Chronicle indicates that at least until 978 (the
year in which Vladimir killed Rogvolod, prince of Polotsk) there were Russian
or Varangian princes who did not belong to the house of Rurik, although they
may have been relatives. Finally, independent representation of a number of
princes is made explicit in the preamble of the Treaty of 944. One can accept
therefore that the Treaty of 911 was concluded between the Byzantine emper-
ors on the one side and, on the other side, the Kievan grand prince and a group
of semi-independent princes and other magnates.18
The Treaty of 911 is much richer in legal detail than its predecessor of 907.
It dealt with a number of situations which could arise in Greek-Russian rela-
tions. Most of them are in the sphere of criminal law: homicide, assault, theft,
robbery and violence. Arts. 14–15 are traditionally understood as dealing with
the extradition of fugitive criminals, but the (defective) text probably refers to
private actions of a creditor to capture a fugitive debtor.19 Other subjects cov-
ered were: torts, evidence, shipwrecks,20 recovery of stolen or escaped slaves,
redemption of prisoners and inheritance. In the sphere of strictly public law
the most important rule was the one which allowed Russians (Varangians) to
enter Greek military service. This rule could be viewed as newly created inter-
national law; it was of course quite germane to the Kievan practice of military
employment of foreigners and mercenaries.
18 This is the position taken by most Russian historians, but it is rejected by Sakharov (op.cit.,
162–164) who insists upon the centralized character of the Kievan state under Oleg.
19 Cf. K.S. Rodionov, “Byla li v Dogovore 911 g. Kievskoi Rusi s Vizantiei norma o vydache?”,
Gosudarstvo i Pravo, 2006, No.3, 75–85, and Kaiser’s circumspect translation in Kaiser,
Laws, 7.
20 The Treaty of 911 dealt with various situations arising from Russian ships being wrecked
on Greek or foreign coasts. It directed the Greek side to render aid to the Russian crew and
cargo. The 944 treaty has a similar but shorter provision. The question of the ius naufragii
was also covered in some of the Novgorod treaties with Hanseatic partners (see Chapter
16, on Novgorod). Cf. P.V. Savas’kov, “Normy mezhdunarodnogo morskogo prava v dogovo-
rakh drevnerusskogo gosudarstva zakliuchennykh s Vizantiei v X veke”, Vestnik mgu, se-
riia pravo, 1973, No.4, 77–83; also R.L. Khachaturov in his comments in PRoP i, 388–389.
Some parts of the Treaty reflected Russian law, and are reminiscent of cer-
tain later rules in the oldest parts of the Russkaia Pravda (see the section on the
Zakon russkii at the end of this chapter). This is made explicit in the provision
concerning assault, which reads:
If any man strikes another with a sword or assaults him with any other
sort of weapon, he shall, according to Russian custom [po zakonu rus-
komu], pay five pounds of silver for such a blow or assault.
Most of the provisions, however, appear not to have been taken from either
Byzantine of Russian law, but to have been designed specifically for situations
arising in Russo-Byzantine intercourse. Anyway, the fact that the 10th-century
treaties with the Greeks represent the oldest direct source on Russian law
makes it difficult to discern what is Greek, Russian, or a mixture of both. The
general impression produced by the Treaty of 911 is that it was directed pri-
marily at dealing with the problems arising from Russian merchants operating
on Greek territory.21 There are indeed a few rules concerning the position of
Greeks in Russia, but they are all included as the inverse and second part of
rules dealing with Russians in Constantinople.
Whereas the surviving text of the Treaty of 907 consists of two parts, in
one of which the Russians are expressing their demands and in the other the
Greeks, the format of the 911 Treaty is that of a Russian address to the Greek
emperors.
The Treaty of 944
The Treaty of 944 is included in the Chronicle under the year 945 and it is often
referred to as the Treaty of 945, but most historians agree that it was actually
concluded in 944; subsequent ratification by the Kievan grand prince Igor may
have taken place in 945.22
According to the Chronicle’s narrative, the 944 Treaty was concluded un-
der a threat of a Russian invasion, which followed an earlier and unsuccessful
Russian campaign in 941. The 941 campaign and the Russian defeat are well
documented through Byzantine chronicles and the reports by Liutprand of
21 Sergeevich, Lektsii, 642–643; Sorlin, op.cit., 354.

22 Sorlin, op.cit., 454–455.
94 chapter 3
Cremona who visited Constantinople in 949.23 What followed is less clear. Ac-
cording to the Chronicle, the Kievan grand prince Igor (usually considered the
son of Rurik) collected a new force in 944 in order to attack Constantinople.
When things did not look too auspicious for the Russians, some sort of deal
was struck, formalized in the 944 Treaty. The general tenor of this Treaty is less
advantageous to the Russians that that of the previous pacts. It covered some
of the subjects dealt with in the 911 Treaty, but in general it is more closely
related to the Treaty of 907.24 The latter outlined briefly the status of Russians
who came to Constantinople with or without merchandise. The first provisions
of the 944 Treaty dealt with the same subject, in words which are reminiscent
of the 907 text, but in a less liberal and generous manner. Like the 907 Treaty,
the 944 Treaty consisted of two parts, in one of which the Greeks address the
Russians and in the other vice versa.
Some of the provisions are also close to the 911 Treaty, e.g. the one concern-
ing assault, punished by a fine of five pounds of silver “according to Russian
custom”, irrespective of whether it had been committed by a Russian or a
Greek.
The Treaty of 944 was concluded between the co-emperors Romanus, Con-
stantine and Stephan on the one side and the grand prince Igor and other
princes and boyars on the other. The paramount position of the grand prince
received more emphasis than in the previous treaties. In the introductory para-
graph, which identified the Russian envoys, Igor’s representative is set apart:
We are the envoys and merchants of the Russian nation, Ivar, envoy of
Igor, Grand Prince of Russia, and the other envoys [follows a list of 23
representatives and their principals and one single name: Sverki] … and
the merchants [follows a list of 25 names].
This text demonstrates Igor’s dominant position, as well as the individual rep-
resentation of a number of princes and boyars.25 First mentioned among them
is Igor’s son Sviatoslav, then his wife Olga, then his nephew Igor. Further down
23 Dzhakson, Drevniaia Rus’, T.iv, 38–40. Also in Liutprand Kremonskii, Antapodosis. Kniga
ob Ottone. Otchet o posol’stve v Konstantinopol’, I.V. D’iakonov (ed.), Moskva, 2006, 96–97.
24 Sergeevich, Lektsii, 632–639; Iushkov, Stroi, 83–84.
25 A detailed analysis of the list of envoys and their principals, and the ethnic composition,
in A.S.Korolev, Istoriia mezhdukniazheskikh otnoshenii na Rusi v 40-e–70-e gody X veka,
Moskva, 2000, 30–49.
the list Haakon, another nephew of Igor, is mentioned.26 Among the other
principals only two certain Slavic names appear: Vladislav and Predslava. One
person, Sverki, is mentioned all by himself; he is presumably a prince or boyar
who took part in the mission in person. The 25 merchants all bear Scandina-
vian names. This need not imply that the mission existed exclusively of Varan-
gians; Russians could have had Scandinavian names and vice versa. (Igor’s son
Sviatoslav, was of pure Scandinavian stock.)27
It seems unlikely that it was a coincidence that the number of envoys (plus
Sverki) equaled the number of merchants. Each envoy was possibly accom-
panied by a merchant, acting as a kind of commercial counsellor. This would
agree with the fact that the 944 Treaty clearly bears the character of a com-
mercial agreement.
The Treaty treats the Russian realm as the sum of a number of separate
units. One provision directed that envoys and merchants were to receive their
monthly allowances according to a certain ‘pecking order’: “first Kiev, then
Chernigov, Pereiaslavl’, Polotsk, Rostov, Liubech and the other towns.28 In these
towns lived great princes subject to Oleg.” The Kievan grand prince appeared
as the powerful head of a confederation of semi-dependent principalities. The
944 Treaty strongly emphasized his position, but he was most probably still
unable to conclude the treaty all by himself.29
The legal content of the 944 Treaty is somewhat less rich than that of the 911
Treaty. It dealt with the trade monopoly granted to merchants authorized by
the Kievan prince, the allowances to be paid to Russian envoys and merchants
in Constantinople, trade restrictions imposed on Russian merchants, runaway
slaves, theft, the status of Greek and Russian slaves in the possession of Rus-
sians and Greeks respectively, homicide, assault and Russian military aid to
the Greek emperor; in addition, Russians were forbidden to punish Greek
criminals or harass the inhabitants of Kherson (a Greek settlement on the
Crimea).
26 On the sequence of the names, see Presniakov, Lektsii i, 74.

27 Cf. E.A. Mel’nikova, “The Lists of Old Norse Personal Names in the Russian-Byzantine
Treaties of the Tenth Century”, Studia Anthroponymica Scandinavica. Tidskrift för nordisk
personnamnsforskning, B.22, Uppsala, 2004, 5–27.
28 Cf. J.H. Lind, “The Russo-Byzantine Treaties and the Early Urban Structure of Rus’”, Sla-
vonic and East European Review, 62:3 (1984), 362–370.
29 Cf. Sorlin, op.cit., 457; Cross/Sherbowitz-Wetzor, op.cit., 238; less emphatically, Mavrodin,
op.cit., 243.
96 chapter 3
The Treaty of 971
The Treaty of 971 is of little interest for the history of Russian law. It was con-
cluded after an unsuccessful campaign in the Balkans by Sviatoslav, the son
of Igor and grand prince of Kiev.30 The course of the campaign, resulting in
a peace treaty, is well documented by Byzantine sources.31 The author of the
Chronicle made his usual attempt at aggrandizing the military superiority of
the Kievan prince but did not succeed in concealing the essential failure of
Sviatoslav’s Balkans adventure.
The Treaty is quite short and consists mainly of Sviatoslav’s promise to the
Greek emperors to preserve peace and render aid. It illustrates the growth of
the power of the Kievan prince, who acts for the whole of Russia, “boyars and
others”, with one curious exception: the opening line of the Treaty reads: “This
is a copy of the treaty concluded by Sviatoslav, Grand Prince of Russia, and
Sveinald, with Johannes, surnamed Tzimisces, Greek Emperor …”. Sveinald, as
is known from other entries in the Chronicle (in 945, 946, 974 and 975), was
the most powerful and wealthy magnate in Kievan Russia; he apparently acted
as the Kievan commander-in-chief during Sviatoslav’s youth and even after-
wards. Such an official, resembling the Merovingian major domus, reappeared
several times under later Kievan princes (see the relevant section in Chapter
12, on the Prince).
The Zakon Russkii
The Zakon russkii (Russian law, Russian custom) is a term which appears in the
tenth century treaties between the Russian princes and Byzantium. In the 911
treaty the Zakon russkii is mentioned once (in art. 5) and in the 944 treaty four
times (arts. 3, 6, 9 and 14). Nobody doubts that “Russian law” in this context
30 The negotiations which led to the conclusion of the Treaty of 971 are the subject of a
lengthy study by S.N. Kisterev, “Russko-grecheskie peregovory 971 g.”, S.N. Kisterev (ed.),
Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii, vyp. 13, Moskva, 2009, 3–64.
31 Especially the History of Leo the Deacon, covering the period from the death of emperor
Constantine vii Porphyrogenitus (959) until the end of the reign of Johannes Tzimisces
(976). Events in the Balkans and the wars with Bulgarians and Russians constitute the
main theme. Cf. Dzhakson, Drevniaia Rus’, T.ii, 189–215, esp. 211.
refers to unwritten customary law,32 although one has to bear in mind that
such a concept does not completely exclude the possibility of legislation.33
In his monograph on the rp, A.A. Zimin devoted a special section to the
Zakon russkii and proposed to make an attempt “to reconstruct Russian cus-
tomary law as it existed before the creation of the Old-Russian state”, by using
the texts of the treaties together with that of the Oldest Pravda.34 The results
were not spectacular, to the extent that the range of topics covered by these
texts was limited (homicide and a few other offences against the person, some
offences against property) and that the conclusions drawn were already obvi-
ous for any attentive reader of the texts. Moreover, Zimin failed to refer to the
treaties anymore in his following arguments. Among his principal conclusions
were that in Old-Russian society homicide and other kinds of personal injuries
were governed by the “eye-for-an-eye” principle (where the victim (if surviv-
ing) or his relatives would inflict equal harm on the attacker, or, if the latter
could not be reached, on his relatives, while the actual retributory harm could
in certain cases be replaced by material compensation), and that property
would be inherited in the male line.
Another way to penetrate into the prehistory of Russian law, and par-
ticularly to shed more light on the possible contents of the Zakon russkii, is
(as indicated above) to trace developments back from the earliest available
monuments of Russian law; this means in fact the oldest layer of the rp. V.N.
Tatishchev, the man with whom Russian historiography started, was the first
to rediscover manuscripts of the rp (in 1738).35 The main manuscript formed
part of a copy of the First Novgorod Chronicle, where it was inserted after the
entry for the year 1016, relating how Iaroslav the Wise after a victory over his
32 Several authors have noted that the term zakon had already been taken over by the
Turkic Pechenegs before the middle of the tenth century, as recorded by Constantine
Porphyrogenitusin his De administrando imperio, i.e. well before there was written legis-
lation among the Russians. Cf. A.A. Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, Moskva, 1999, 65; B.D. Grekov,
“Russkaia Pravda i ee slavianskoe okruzhenie”, Izvestiia an sssR, ser. ist. i filos. No.2, t.ix,
1952, also included in Grekov, Izbrannye Trudy, t.ii, Moskva, 1958, 576–585 (at 580), and in
Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, Moskva, 1953, 534–546 (at 540).
33 A possible example of unwritten legislation in early Russian law is mentioned by Zimin,
who suggests that the directives given by the grand princess Olga in 946 for the manage-
ment of her estates could have been a source for the rules of princely estate management
in arts. 19–27 of the Short Pravda. See A.A. Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, Moskva, 1999, 94.
34 Zimin, op.cit., 65–70, at 65.
35 More on this topic in Chapter 4, on the rp.
98 chapter 3
brother Sviatopolk sent his Novgorod troops home and awarded them a law for
adjudicating cases (po chemu im sudit’). According to Tatishchev, the first part

of the rp constituted in fact “a law which had been created several centuries
before Iaroslav”. This view was taken over by many subsequent authors.36
Essentially, this retrospective approach was adopted by Zimin, who, as ex-
plained above, attempted to reconstruct certain elements of the Zakon russkii
by a close investigation of the oldest part of the rp. Parallels between the latter
and certain ‘Russian’ rules enunciated in the 911 and 944 treaties are obvious
and indicate that the oldest part of the rp does indeed reflect to a considerable
extent the state of the law as it was during the foregoing century.
To return to the main topic of the treaties of 911 and 944, the Rusi mentioned
in the texts were, with a few exceptions, Vikings and the Russian custom re-
ferred to in the texts was therefore in all likelihood Scandinavian custom. On
the other hand, the “Russian law” of the treaties shows many parallels with
the earliest written law of Kievan Rus (the rp). Had the early Kievan rulers
and their Viking followers already adopted local custom, or was the oldest core
of the rp in fact Viking custom? A third possibility is that the customary law
systems of the early Slavs and Scandinavians were similar. The latter point had
already been made by 19th century Russian authors, although mostly in con-
nection with the oldest layers of the rp.37 Such similarity can be explained in
two (not mutually exclusive) ways: convergence (parallel development might
be a better term) or genetic connections. If the social substrata in which le-
gal systems are embedded and develop are similar, then their legal systems
may easily display many common characteristics. Genetic connections imply
a common ancestor. If such connections exist (which I think they do) then the
resulting similarity of certain legal institutions can of course be reinforced by
a similarity of circumstances.38 This means in concrete terms that the earliest
36 V.N. Tatishchev, Istoriia Rossiiskaia, T.vii, 277. See also Zimin, op.cit., 11; Ia.N. Shchapov in
rz i, 36; Baranowski, 148.
37 M.B. Sverdlov (in “K istorii teksta Kratkoi redaktsii Russkoi Pravdy”, Vspomogatel’nye
istoricheskie distsipliny X, Leningrad, 1978, 135–159, at 141) mentions S.V. Vedrov,
O denezhnykhpeniakh po Russkoi Pravde sravnitel’no s zakonami salicheskikh frankov,
Moskva, 1877, and A.N. Filippov, “Nachal’nye stadii protsessa vindikatsii dvizhimosti po
leges barbarorum”, in Sbornik statei po istorii prava, posviashchennyi M.F. Vladimirskomu-
Budanovu, Kiev, 1904.
38 I have argued the significance of a common Indo-European background of early European
legal systems in more detail in the chapter on “Law’s Beginnings and Early Law” in Law in
Medieval Russia, 1–32, at 5–17.
known phase of Russian law is most likely not very different from the earliest
law of Germanic, Celtic and other Indo-European peoples.39
The tenth century, as we have seen, marked the high point of Varangian
influence in Russia; the numerical dominance of the Slavs made the absorp-
tion of the Varangians a question of time, notwithstanding the military and
political predominance of the latter. The systems of customary law of the two
ethnic groups, displaying a considerable degree of similarity (as argued above),
were able to merge under such circumstances.40 The first article of the Oldest
Pravda offers an illustration of this process, where it provided that the wergeld
due for homicide was the same, irrespective of the victim being a Russian (a
man from Kiev or Novgorod), a man belonging to the retinue of the prince, or
an outsider.
In this respect the druzhina aspect is of interest. During the most recent
decades several Russian medievalists have drawn attention to the importance
of the druzhina in the political and legal culture of early Kievan Russia.41 In
this view the Rusi of the treaties with the Greeks were the druzhina members
39 This point is also strengthened by the general similarity between Old-Russian law and
the oldest law of other Slavic peoples, such as the Statute of Vinodol of 1288 and the
13th-century Polish law code. See B.D. Grekov, “Pol’skaia Pravda. Opyt izucheniia ob-
shchestvennogo i politicheskogo stroia Pol’shi xiiiv. po Pol’skoi Pravde (‘Kniga Prava’)”,
B.D. Grekov, Izbrannye trudy, I, Moskva, 1957, 267–442 (includes German text and Russian
translation) and B.D. Grekov, “Vinodol’skii Statut ob obshchestvennom i politicheskom
stroie Vinodola”, B.D. Grekov, Izbrannye trudy, I, Moskva, 1957, 33–110. Russian translation
by V.V. Iagich, Zakon Vinodol’skii, Sankt-Peterburg, 1880.
40 Kliuchevskii, i, 219–222, devoted a special section to the Zakon Russkii, acknowledging its
originally Scandinavian character, but concluding that the “Russian Law” which consti-
tuted the main source of the rp was indeed the result of a merger between Scandinavian
and Slavic elements.
41 In particular the group of scholars connected with the yearbook Drevneishie gosudarstva
Vostochnoi Evropy (dgve), the successor publication of Drevneishie gosudarstva na ter-
ritorii sssR, founded in 1978. See especially S.L. Nikol’skii, “O druzhinnom prave v epokhu
stanovleniia gosudarstvennosti na Rusi”, A.A. Gorskii (ed.), Srednevekovaia Rus’, vyp.4,
Moskva, 2004, 5–48, and further E.G. Mel’nikova, “K tipologii predgosudarstvennykh i
rannegosudarstvennykh obrazovanii v Severnoi i Vostochnoi Evrope”, dgve 1992–1993,
Moskva, 1995, 16–32; N.F. Kotliar, Drevnerusskaia gosudarstvennost’, Sankt-Peterburg, 1998,
63–70; A.A. Gorskii, Drevnerusskaia druzhina, Moskva, 1989 (not available to me). See also
the chapter on the rp in my Law in Medieval Russia, quoted above, at 55–56. Zimin refers
in passing (op.cit., 69 n.54) to druzhina law in his discussion of the Zakon russkii. The
most recent overview in P.S. Stefanovich, Boiare, otroki, druzhiny: voenno-politicheskaia
elita Rusi v x–xi vekakh, Moskva, 2012, 45–262.
100 chapter 3
and the “Russian custom” (Zakon russkii) represented the customary law of the
druzhina. There has most likely been mutual influencing of the customary laws
of the Slavs and the Scandinavians during this period of unwritten law. More
extensively on the druzhina, see Chapter 12, on the Prince, (sub-section on dru-
zhina, in section on the prince’s court and officials).
In the Introductory Chapter (in the section on the definition of law) the point
has been made that law is not a necessary concomitant of all human societies,
but that it makes its appearance at a certain stage of societal development, in a
phased process of emergence. The evidence indicated in this chapter suggests
that it was precisely the 10th century when Russia was passing through this
stage. In the 10th century there was already a fixed body of rules concerning
dispute settlement, customary law (the Zakon russkii): the first and, partially,
the second phase as described by us. A central authority enunciating existing
rules and then creating and enforcing new rules (the third phase) was only
beginning to affirm itself (the ‘decrees’, ustavy, of princess Olga in 946; the role
of the princes in the treaties with Byzantium). Princely legislation and the ac-
tivities of regular courts appear in the 11th century. This means that the period
considered in this chapter can be identified as the prehistory of Russian law,
not only because the sources which could inform us adequately about law are
lacking (implying that if we had those sources the borderline between history
and prehistory could be moved), but also because law in the sense adopted in
this study was not fully present yet during this period.
chapter 4
The Russkaia Pravda or Russian Law
By far the most important monument and source of Old-Russian law is the Russ-
kaia Pravda or Pravda Russkaia, the “Russian Law” or Lex Russica. The Russkaia
Pravda (rp) is, on the face of it, a legal document of the type of the leges bar-
barorum which emerged in Western Europe in Merovingian and Carolingian
times. The Statute of Iaroslav Vladimirovich, Iaroslav the Wise (Mudryi), the
son of St. Vladimir, ruling as grand prince of Kiev from 1019 to 1054, is consid-
ered to be the oldest part of the rp.
The rp is the starting-point of Russian legal history and the basis on which
medieval Russian law evolved. An immense structure of scholarship has arisen
around the rp. Not only legal historians, but almost all Russian and Soviet me-
dievalists have participated in this work. After 1917, the scene was dominated
by general historians, seconded by linguistic scholars, on account of the virtual
disappearance of legal history as an independent discipline in Soviet times.
History of the Study of the Russkaia Pravda
Texts of the rp have survived in numerous manuscripts, most of them in eccle-

siastical collections. The rp was frequently included in kormchie (lit. “pilot-
books”), Slavic versions of the Greek Nomokanon, a collection of rules and
laws for the use of church officials. The other principal source of rp texts are
chronicle manuscripts, themselves also almost exclusively of monastic origin.
One should not draw the conclusion that the rp was apparently a canon law
document; manuscripts kept in monasteries simply had a much better chance
of survival.
Modern scholarship of the rp began with its rediscovery in 1738 by the pa-
triarch of Russian historiography, V.N. Tatishchev. Tatishchev found the rp in
a manuscript of the First Novgorod Chronicle where it was included in the
narrative under the year 1016. He offered his annotated text for publication
to the Academy of Sciences, but it was not published until 1786.1 Meanwhile,
1 Tatishchev’s annotated text was published in Prodolzhenie Drevnei Rossiiskoi Vivliofiki, Chast’
I, Sankt-Peterburg, 1786. An extensive account of the historiography of the rp in M.N. Tikho
mirov, Issledovanie o Russkoi Pravde. Proiskhozhdenie tekstov, Moskva/Leningrad, 1941 (Ch. 2).
Also Baranowski, 48–50 (on the 18th century) and 49–157 (on the following period). A brief

102 chapter 4
A.L. Schloezer (Shletser), a German scholar working in Russia, had published

the rp, using a different manuscript.2 Both works were concerned with the
so-called Short Version (Kratkaia Pravda) of the rp. The text of the other main
version (the Expanded Version, Prostrannaia Pravda) was first published by
V. Krestinin in 1788.3
The first study on the rp (apart from Tatishchev’s comments) was an academ-
ic address by F. Strube de Piermont, “Discours sur l’origine et les changements
des loix russiennes”, delivered in St.Petersburg in 1756. This was followed by a
number of studies in the 19th century. The most important among these were
by I.Ph.G Ewers (1826), E. Tobien (1844), N.V. Kalachov (1846) and P. Mrochek-
Drozdovskii (1881–1886).4 The works of Ewers and Tobien, originally written in
German, were accompanied by the first (German) translations of the rp.
The great Russian historians of the 19th century, such as Kliuchevskii and
Solov’ev, also paid considerable attention to the rp.5 Their efforts at evaluat-
ing the place of the rp in early Russian history were preceded by the work of
N.M. Karamzin, one of the founders of Russian historiography.6
rp scholarship was greatly enhanced by the work of the next generation of
pre-revolutionary Russian historians, especially by those who were active as
legal historians. The first work to be mentioned is V.I. Sergeevich’s monograph
on the rp of 1904.7 Most of the other leading medievalists of the end of the 19th
and the beginning of the 20th century made valuable contributions.8
survey in Vernadsky, Laws, 12–14. It was generally taken for granted that Tatishchev had used
the so-called Academic Copy of the First Novgorod Chronicle, but A.V. Maiorov has presented
persuasive evidence for the conclusion that the recently rediscovered Berlin Copy, originally
part of Tatishchev’s own library, was the basis of his work. A.V. Maiorov (ed.), Novgorodskaia
Pervaia letopis’. Berlinskii spisok, Sankt-Peterburg, 2010, 94–97.
2 A.L. Shletser, Pravda Russkaia, Sankt-Peterburg, 1767.
3 Prodolzhenie Drevnei Rossiiskoi Vivliofiki, Chast’ iii, Sankt-Peterburg, 3–47.
4 I.Ph.G. Ewers, Das älteste Recht der Russen in seiner geschichtlichen Entwickelung, Dorpat/
Hamburg, 1826, also in Russian translation: Drevneishee russkoe pravo v istoricheskom ego
raskrytii, Sankt-Peterburg, 1835; E.S. Tobien, Sammlung kritisch bearbeiteten Quellen des rus-
sischen Rechts, Bd.1. Die Prawda Russkaja und die ältesten Tractate Russlands, Dorpat, 1844;
N.V. Kalachov, Predvaritel’nye iuridicheskie svedeniia dlia polnago ob”iasneniia Russkoi Pravdy,
Moskva, 1846; P. Mrochek-Drozdovskii, Issledovaniia o Russkoi Pravde, Moskva, 1881–1886.
5 Kliuchevskii, Kurs, i, Lecture xiv. S.M. Solov’ev, Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen, Part i,
Moskva, 1851 (new edition, Moskva, 2001).
6 N.M. Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskago, 12 Parts in 3 books (Book 4 contains the In-
dex), Sankt-Peterburg, 1842–1844; Chapter 3 of Part 2 is devoted to the rp.
7 V.I. Sergeevich, Russkaia Pravda v chetyrekh redaktsiiakh, Sankt-Peterburg, 1904.
8 Vladimirskii-Budanov, Obzor, 94–96; D’iakonov, Ocherki, 40–52; S.F. Platonov, Lektsii po russ-
koi istorii, Petrograd, 1917 (10th edition, republished, Petrozavodsk, 1995), 111–112; Presniakov,
The Russkaia Pravda or Russian Law 103
An important work, published in Germany, was L.K. Goetz’ four-volume

monograph on the rp.9
During the Soviet era, almost all the great names in the study of the Russian
middle ages have been involved in new publications of the rp.10 The results of
two centuries of scholarship were collected in an imposing three-volume edi-
tion, Pravda Russkaia, published by the ussr Academy of Sciences under the
general editorship of B.D. Grekov and with the cooperation of a large number
of eminent scholars.11 This edition, in the words of the émigré scholar George
Vernadsky, may be regarded as definitive, until important new materials would
be discovered. The first volume of this edition (1940) contained the texts of the
fifteen principal copies, with the variants as offered by the remaining copies.
These texts were preceded by a study by V.P. Liubimov on the classification of
the more than 100 copies of the rp. The second part (1947) contained the best
texts of the Short and the Expanded Versions of the rp, each provision fol-
lowed by several older and more recent translations in Modern Russian, Ger-
man and Polish, and by a systematized collection of quotations from the most
important studies on the respective provisions. The third part (1963) contained
a facsimile edition of the principal copies.
The publication of the texts of the different versions of the rp in the two
major Soviet collections of legal history texts (prp and rz) is based on the
Acedemy of Sciences edition.12
The most important Soviet monographs on the rp are by Karskii, Iushkov,
Tikhomirov, and Zimin.13
Lektsii, 210–227; N.L. Diuvernua [Duvernois], Istochniki prava i sud v Drevnei Rossii. Opyty
po istorii russkogo grazhdanskogo prava, Moskva, 1896 (repr. Sankt-Peterburg, 2001).
9 L.K. Goetz, Das Russische Recht, Stuttgart, 1912–1913.
10 E.g. A.I. Iakovlev and L.V. Cherepnin (eds.), Russkaia Pravda po spiskam Akademiches-
komu, Troitskomu i Karamzinskomu, Moskva, 1928; B.D. Grekov (ed.), Russkaia Pravda
po spiskam Akademicheskomu, Troitskomu i Karamzinskomu, Moskva/Leningrad, 1934;
S.V. Iushkov (ed.), Russkaia Pravda po piati redaktsiiam i semi spiskam, Kiev, 1935.
M.N. Tikhomirov’s edition is in his Posobie.
11 B.D. Grekov (ed.), Pravda Russkaia, Part i: Teksty, Moskva/Leningrad, 1940, 505p.; Part ii:
Kommentarii, Moskva/Leningrad, 1947, 862p.; Part iii: Faksimil’noe vosproizvedenie tek-
stov, Moskva, 1963, 471p.
12 prp i, 77–80 (Short Pravda), rz i, 47–49 (Short Pravda); prp i, 81–85 (translation of Short
Pravda into modern Russian); prp i, 108–120 (Expanded Pravda), rz i, 64–73 (Expanded
Pravda); prp i, 121–137 (translation of Expanded Pravda into modern Russian); prp i,
197–101 (Abridged Pravda). PRoP i only has modern Russian translations, 109–116 (Short
Pravda) and 116–138 (Expanded Pravda). rz and PRoP do not have the Abridged Pravda.
13 E.F. Karskii, Russkaia Pravda po drevneishemu spisku, Leningrad, 1930; Grekov’s major work
Kievskaia Rus’, Moskva, 1944, and S.V. Iushkov’s monograph Obshchestvenno-politicheskii
stroi i pravo kievskogo gosudarstva, Moskva, 1949, are both intimately concerned with the
104 chapter 4
After the 19th-century German translation mentioned above, an English

translation of the Short and Expanded Pravda, accompanied by an introduc-
tory essay, was published by Vernadsky in 1947.14 A French edition of the two
versions, also with an introduction and extensive notes, was published by Szef-
tel and Eck in 1963.15 In 1992, the first volume of the series The Laws of Russia
(general editor Charles Schlacks), offered new English translations of the Short
and Expanded Versions, by D.H. Kaiser.16
A major event in the study of the rp was the publication in 2005 of G. Ba-
ranowski’s monograph (in German), which to a great extent superseded the
second volume of the Academy of Sciences edition of 1947.17 In addition to
the older scholarship, covered by the Russian edition, publications from the
following six decades were summarized by Baranowski.
The literature on the rp is by now very extensive.18 Most works specifically
devoted to the rp contain bibliographies, especially the second volume of the
Academy of Sciences edition and Baranowski’s work. Shorter but still very use-
ful bibliographies may be found in the works of other authors.19
The Different Versions of the Russkaia Pravda
As more and more copies of the rp became avaliable in the course of the 18th
and early 19th century, it became obvious that there were two or three distinct
versions of the document. The shortest of these, generally known nowadays
legal and political structure of Kievan society and can almost be regarded as studies on
the rp. M.N. Tikhomirov’s Issledovanie o Russkoi Pravde, Moskva/Leningrad, 1941, was his
most searching investigation into the origins of the rp; his Posobie dlia izucheniia Russkoi
Pravdy is more in the nature of a university textbook, but very rich in content. A.A. Zimin’s
Pravda Russkaia was published posthumously (Moskva, 1999; Zimin had died in 1980). Its
obvious ‘sovietisms’ are richly compensated by Zimin’s colossal scholarship.
14 In Medieval Russian Laws, New York, 1947.
15 M. Szeftel and A. Eck, Documents de droit public relatifs à la Russie médiévale, Bruxelles,
1963.
16 D.H. Kaiser (ed. and transl.), The Laws of Rus’ – Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries, Salt Lake City,
1992 (Volume 1 of Serie i: Medieval Russia, of The Laws of Russia).
17 G. Baranowski, Die Russkaja Pravda – ein mittelalterliches Rechtsdenkmal, Frankfurt am
Main, 2005 (Rechtshistorische Reihe 321).
18 My own contribution has been the chapter on “The Russkaia Pravda” in Feldbrugge, lmr,
33–58, a reworked version of “The Earliest Law of Russia and Its Sources”, in F. Feldbrugge
(ed.), The Law’s Beginnings, Leiden/Boston, 2003, 93–113.
19 Baranowski, 741–769, and further in Tikhomirov’s Posobie, 30–34; Iushkov, Stroi, 530–531;
Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, 391–409.
as the Short Pravda (Kratkaia Pravda), numbers about 850 words, the longest,
known as the Expanded Pravda (Prostrannaia Pravda), is about four times as
long; the Abridged Pravda (Sokrashchennaia Pravda), known from only two
late (17th-century) copies, is somewhere in the middle and can be left aside for
the time being.
The two main versions, the Short and the Expanded Pravda, are intimately
related. Not only do most copies of both versions designate themselves as Prav-
da Russkaia, but also almost the entire contents of the Short Pravda reappear,
generally in amended form, in the Expanded Pravda. The first part of the first
provision, for instance, is identical in both versions (spelling apart).20
Thirteen copies of the Short Pravda are extant; four more are known to have
existed, but have been lost. Of these thirteen copies, eleven were made in the
18th and 19th century, at the time of incipient historical scholarship. The two
remaining copies are from the middle of the 15th century.21 They are in the
possession of respectively the Academy of Sciences and the Archeographi-
cal Commission and hence referred to as the First Academic and the First
Archeographical Copy. Both texts were included in (different versions of) the
so-called Younger Redaction (Mladshii Izvod) of the First Novgorod Chronicle,
where they were inserted in the narrative of 1016 (further detail below). The
First Academic Copy is considered the better of the two.
The great number of copies of the Expanded Pravda (close to one hun-
dred) has raised considerable classification problems. Many earlier authors
proposed their own solutions, until V.P. Liubimov put forward an extensively
argued classification system in the first volume of the Academy of Sciences
edition of the rp.22 Although some criticism concerning points of detail has
remained, Liubimov’s system has been generally accepted now.23 More on this
in the next chapter.
Even a superficial reading of the two main versions of the rp shows that
each of them does not constitute a single and coherent legislative document,
but consists of the amalgamation of several chronologically different layers.
After about one third of the text of the Short Pravda, a preamble is inserted
proclaiming that the following provisions were agreed upon at a meeting of
20 The famous and much commented upon rule concerning the right to blood vengeance for
the killing of a close relative.
21 The later copies are of negligible importance for the study of the Short Pravda, according
to Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, 32.
22 V.P. Liubimov, “Spiski Pravdy Russkoi”, B.D. Grekov (ed.), Pravda Russkaia i, Moskva/
Leningrad1940, 11–54.
23 Iushkov, Stroi, 152, retained strong objections.
106 chapter 4
Iziaslav, Vsevolod and Sviatoslav (the sons of Iaroslav the Wise). This meeting
is usually considered to have taken place in 1072. At the end of the Short Pravda
(in the rule concerning the payment for the bloodwite collector, the virnik)
there is a reference to Iaroslav himself. The text of the Short Pravda suggests
that the first part is the law of Iaroslav, to which a second part was attached
later on, the law of the sons of Iaroslav. This suggestion is explicitly justified by
the Expanded Pravda which is preceded in most copies by the title: The Law
of Iaroslav, son of Vladimir. In other places the Expanded Pravda also demon-
strates clearly that it embraces components derived from Iaroslav’s legislative
work and from his sons’ contributions. It is safe therefore to assume that the
Short Pravda’s main parts are formed by the Pravda of Iaroslav and the Pravda
of Iaroslav’s Sons.
The chronological structure of the Expanded Pravda is based on that of the
Short Pravda, but is far more complicated. Not only have new elements been
added, in particular the so-called Statute of Vladimir, the son of Vsevolod (Vlad-
imir Monomakh, the grandson of Iaroslav, who ruled in Kiev from 1113–1125),
but the older chronological components have been edited and amended, and
then inserted in a seemingly haphazard fashion. As a result, some provisions
which have their origin in Iaroslav’s legislation turn up at the end of the Ex-
panded Pravda.
The Division of the Russkaia Pravda into Articles
Originally, the rp was not divided into numbered articles. The early writers of
the 18th and 19th century usually proposed their own systems. Tatishchev, in
his first edition of the Short Pravda, had broken up the text into 35 provisions.
The fact that modern editions are agreed on 43 provisions suggests that the
text itself offers certain clues. This is indeed the case. Although in some cop-
ies of the rp the text runs on without a break, other copies use the device of
occasionally starting a new line; even more helpful is the use of red ink for a
first letter or a first word to mark a new beginning. The best indications are the
headings which sometimes precede the actual provisions. Such headings, like
“About theft”, or “And this on inheritance”, are quite common in the Expanded
Pravda; in the Short Pravda they are rare. Also, many provisions start with the
words “And if” in various forms (A, A izhe, Ashche, Ozhe, A ozhe, Ache).
A division of a legislative text into numbered articles is not only convenient
for the user, but also affects the interpretation. The meaning of a rule may be
altered if we do not take it by itself, but consider it to be part of a larger com-
plex regulated by a single provision.
Most scholars nowadays follow the division proposed by the editorial

board of the Academy of Sciences edition of the rp; the same is done in this
work. This division was already used in the first volume of 1940 and it was ex-
plained and defended, where necessary, in the second volume of 1947. It only
concerned the Short Pravda and the Expanded Pravda. For the less important
Abridged Pravda Zimin has proposed a division in his edition in prp i.24 In us-
ing older editions one has to bear in mind that the numbering of rp provisions
is usually at variance with modern usage.
The Short Pravda: Introduction
It would be exaggerated to call the Short Pravda a comprehensive legal code.

Nevertheless, it purports to deal, not with particular legal issues, but with a
wide range of situations which could be subject to legal regulation. As such, the
Short Pravda did not have a predecessor. The 10th-century treaties with Byzan-
tium did also cover a number of eventualities, but all of them were connected
with a specific situation – the temporary presence of visitors from Russia in
the city of Constantinople. The point is therefore that in interpreting the Short
Pravda there is not much to fall back on. For general historical background
there are the Primary Chronicle and especially the First Novgorod Chronicle.
Two closely connected questions are of primary importance in interpreting
the Short Pravda and its individual provisions: those concerning its charac-
ter and its origin. Its character: Where is it located on the line stretching from
formal princely legislation to private registration of legal rules and customs?
And its origin: When and where did the document now available as the Short
Pravda arise?
In the foregoing section we have noted that the Short Pravda clearly consists
of two chronological components, the Pravda of Iaroslav and the Pravda of
Iaroslav’s Sons. The questions concerning character and origin should there-
fore be answered separately and three times: for these two components and for
their final fusion into a single document.
The fact that the Short Pravda is not a homogeneous legal document has
given rise to the theory that it should be regarded as the amalgamation of two
independent versions of the rp, an older one (Iaroslav’s Pravda) and a later ver-
sion (the Pravda of his sons). This was the view, in particular, of S ergeevich, the
leading pre-revolutionary legal historian.25 He believed that the two versions
24 prp i, 76.
108 chapter 4
were joined by a monastic copier in the middle of the 13th century or some-
what later. Modern scholars generally accept D’iakonov’s refutation of the the-
ory of Sergeevich. D’iakonov pointed out that the two main parts of the Short
Pravda did not regulate the same subject matter, as would have followed from
Sergeevich’s argument.26 Rather, the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons appears as an ad-
dition to the Pravda of Iaroslav, regulating questions not covered by the latter.
The last two provisions of the Short Pravda are generally regarded as sepa-
rate minor components;27 they contain the law on the payment for the blood-
wite collector (the pokon virnyi, art. 42) and the bridge builders’ statute (the
urok mostnikov, art. 43).
The Short Pravda: The Pravda of Iaroslav
As mentioned above, the two basic copies of the Short Pravda (the Academic
and the Archeographical copies) have come done to us in the text of the First
Novgorod Chronicle (in the so-called Younger Redaction).28 This text is quite
specific concerning the circumstances surrounding the emergence of the Short
Pravda. Its narrative of the events leading up to the year 1016 closely parallels
that of the Primary Chronicle and of the Older Redaction of the First Novgorod
Chronicle.
Before considering these events in more detail, a more general observation
concerning the 1015–1019 period is worth making. This was the troublesome
and fateful transition period between the the two most celebrated Kievan
grand princes: Vladimir, who brought about the conversion of Russia and es-
tablished himself as the the first undisputed ruler of the Russian nation, and
his son Iaroslav, who successfully consolidated the work begun by his father.29
The succession was by no means a foregone conclusion; Vladimir’s realm could
very well have been divided among his numerous sons, and Iaroslav was not
the most prominent in this fractious band of brothers (see the sections on
princely succession in Chapter 13, on the Prince). His half-brother Sviatopolk,
26 D’iakonov, Ocherki, 43; see also Iushkov, Stroi, 177–178.

27 E.g. by Tikhomirov, Posobie, 45; Iushkov, Stroi, 177; Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, 126–132;
Baranowski, 332.
28 A.N. Nasonov, M.N. Tikhomirov (eds.), Novgorodskaia Pervaia Letopis’ Starshego i Mlad-
shego Izvoda, Moskva/Leningrad, 1950.
29 A modern study, which also considers the extensive Western materials on the 1015–1019
episode, is S.M. Mikheev, «Sviatopolk” siede v Kievie po ottsi». Usobitsa 1015–1019 godov
v drevnerusskikh i skandinavskikh istochnikakh, Moskva, 2009. See also S. Franklin, J.
Shepard, The Emergence of Rus 750–1200, London/New York, 1996, 188–193.
born in the same year, was in Kiev when Vladimir died in 1015 and this enabled
him to claim the throne. He lost it again the next year (to Iaroslav, see below),
but retrieved it in 1018 with the help of his father-in-law, the Polish king Bole-
slaw. In 1019 Iaroslav was finally able to rout the forces of Sviatopolk and drive
the latter into exile. His claim to the Kievan throne was not undisputed and
only in 1026 he agreed with his brother Mstislav to share the realm. Upon the
death of Mstislav in 1036 Iaroslav became sole ruler, until his death in 1054.
To return now to the events of 1016 and their relevance in explaining the
origin of the oldest layer of the Russkaia Pravda: Iaroslav, in accordance with
the prevailing practice among the descendants of Rurik, had been appointed
by his father, St. Vladimir, the grand prince of Kiev, to rule in Novgorod. One
of his duties was the payment of a yearly tribute of 2000 grivny to Kiev (for the
backgroundof this tribute, see Chapter 16, on Novgorod). In 1013 or 1014, Iaro-
slav, with the support of Novgorod, had decided to cease this payment. When
his father began to collect his troops in order to enforce his claim, Iaroslav
strengthened his own army by recruiting fresh Varangian forces in Scandina-
via. These Vikings, faithful to their reputation for violence and unruliness, cre-
ated much unrest among the Novgorod population, culminating in an uprising
in which many Varangians were killed. Iaroslav, in revenge, had a number of
prominent Novgorod citizens treacherously assassinated. The same night he
heard of the death of his father and how his half-brother Sviatopolk had set
himself up as Vladimir’s successor in Kiev.30 Iaroslav was then forced to make
peace with his Novgorod subjects. He collected an army of Novgorodians and
Varangians and marched against Sviatopolk. In a bloody battle on the banks of
the Dnepr, near Liubech, Iaroslav emerged victorious and occupied the throne
in Kiev. At the end of this campaign he dismissed his Novgorod troops and
“gave them a law code (pravda) and wrote down a statute (ustav), saying to
them: «Live according to this charter (gramota), as I have written it for you,
and observe it.»” These words are then followed immediately by the text of the
Short Pravda.
This looks more straightforward than it is. First of all, the story of the
Novgorod Chronicle, referring to events in 1016, can of course apply only to the
first part of the Short Pravda, the Pravda of Iaroslav, and cannot have any bear-
ing on the second part, the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons. As to the actual events
of 1015/1016, the narratives of the Primary Chronicle and the two redactions
of the First Novgorod Chronicle run parallel down to the battle on the Dnepr.
30 Vladimir died on 15 July 1015 and a considerable length of time apparently elapsed before
this news and that of subsequent developments in Kiev reached Iaroslav; the Primary
Chronicle puts the crisis in Novgorod still in the year 1015.
110 chapter 4
The PrimaryChronicle simply relates how Iaroslav vanquished the army of

his brother and occupied the throne of Kiev. The Older Redaction of the First
Novgorod Chronicle adds that Iaroslav rewarded his troops before sending
them home, but is silent about the granting of a law code. This has given rise
to the hypothesis that the quotation given above and the insertion of the text
of the Short Pravda in the Younger Redaction of the First Novgorod Chronicle
were the result of the work of Novgorod scribes at some later moment, possibly
to stress the Novgorodian character and origin of the Short Pravda.31
One can readily agree that the text of the Short Pravda as included in the
Younger Redaction of the First Novgorod Chronicle (under the year 1016) can-
not possibly have been the law code Iaroslav is supposed to have given to
Novgorod (because the chronicle text also included the Pravda of Iaroslav’s
sons).
Almost all Russian medievalists since Tatishchev, as well as many Western
scholars, have voiced opinions on the origins of the Short Pravda. This is not
surprising, in view of the uniqueness of the text as the first and unprecedented
expression of the beginning of Russian law. A more or less adequate survey
of the relevant historiography would require a book-length study. The major
division concerns the question whether the emergence of the first elements
of the Short Pravda were specifically connected with Novgorod or not. During
the Sovietera, S.V. Iushkov was the principal advocate of the latter view; he
regarded the Short Pravda as a code of law emanating from the Kievan grand
prince and applicable to the entire Kievan realm.32 In more recent times I.Ia.
Froianov is one of the leading scholars denying a Novgorod origin.33
The majority opinion has been and still is to give credence to the general
drift of the story told by the Novgorod Chronicle: Iaroslav did write a law in
some way connected with Novgorod’s support in his war against Sviatopolk
and this law is at the root of the first part of the Short Pravda. The most elabo-
rate arguments have been put forward by Cherepnin, Tikhomirov, and Zimin.34
It is generally agreed that this law of course did not include the second half of
31 The most probable scenario has been painstakingly reconstructed by Tikhomirov, Issledo-
vanie, 36–40.
32 Iushkov, Stroi, 152–155, 178–183, and also S.V. Iushkov, Russkaia Pravda, Moskva, 1950,
283–292.
33 I.Ia. Froianov, Drevniaia Rus’, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 1995, 97–112.
34 Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 239–254; Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 35–40; Zimin, Pravda Russ-
kaia, 89–98. Also M.B. Sverdlov, “K istorii teksta Kratkoi redaktsii Russkoi Pravdy”,
Vspomogatel’nye istoricheskie distsipliny x, Leningrad, 1978, 135–158.
the Short Pravda, the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons. Beyond this point opinions are
divided.
The most detailed and in-depth investigation of the entire problem has
been carried out by Tikhomirov; it involved a comparative study of the differ-
ent Novgorod chronicles and their divergent reports concerning developments
in Novgorod and Kiev in the course of the 11th century. To summarize his find-
ings: the first eleven provisions of the Short Pravda may be connected with the
events of 1016 and reflect an attempt to contain and regulate the ethnic ten-
sions in Novgorod at that time. The first ten provisions deal with homicide and
other forms of physical injury, precisely the kind of behaviour which could up-
set relations between Novgorodians and Varangians. Art. 11, devoted to the case
of a runaway slave hiding with a Varangian, fits into this pattern. The following
seven articles (12–18) are concerned with property disputes and the specific
Slav-Viking confrontation is lacking. According to Tikhomirov these rules rep-
resent regular legislation by Iaroslav and they are tentatively dated by him in
1036. Other authors refrain from making this chronological distinction and re-
gard the entire complex of arts. 1–18 of the Short Pravda (i.e. Iaroslav’s Pravda,
also known as the Oldest Pravda – Drevneishaia Pravda) as a single whole.35
The importance of elucidating the circumstances surrounding the origin of
the Oldest Pravda is that the connection with the events of 1016 in Novgorod
bestows a specific character on it, irrespective of the question whether one
regards only the first ten or eleven articles as resulting from these events (as
Tikhomirov), or the entire complex of arts. 1–18. The Oldest Pravda, in this
view, although appearing in the shape of a law issued by a prince, was essen-
tially the registration of a pact, a kind of peace treaty. Cherepnin has pointed
to the general similarity between the Pravda of Iaroslav, the treaties with Byz-
antium from 911 and 944, and the peace treaty of 1191–1192 between Novgorod
and the Hanseatic cities.36 This similarity is easily explained if one bears in
mind that these documents were all concerned with situations in which a for-
eign minority had to live in close and daily contact with an urban community
belonging to a different culture and faith.37
The first eleven articles of the Short Pravda correspond most closely to the
view that the earliest version of the Pravda of Iaroslav was designed to deal
with a specific situation in Novgorod: the necessity to placate the population
35 E.g. Cherepnin and Zimin; D.P. Hammer, “The Character of the Russkaia Pravda”, Slavic
Review, 31 (1972), 291–295, considers Tikhomirov’s argument in favour of two chronologi-
cal layers in Iaroslav’s Pravda convincing, a view the present author shares.
36 gvnp No.28, see also Chapters vii, on treaties, and xvi, on Novgorod.
37 Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 245–246.
112 chapter 4
of Novgorod without losing the support of the Varangians by providing an

adequate framework for settling their mutual feuds and quarrels. The date of
this version may be 1016 (or 1017, as the chronicler used the so-called March
calendar), if one follows the account of the First Novgorod Chronicle, or 1019,
if the Primary Chronicle is followed, where the end of the hostilities and the
dismissal of the troops took place a few years later. This question is more or less
irrelevant for the legal historian.
In the view of Tikhomirov and others who accept the two chronological
layers in the Pravda of Iaroslav, one needs a second date, after 1016, for the
emergence of the second part of Iaroslav’s Pravda. Tikhomirov himself sug-
gested 1036.38 Following an argument previously developed by Stratonov,39
he pointed to an entry in the Primary Chronicle, the only one after 1019 refer-
ring to Iaroslav in connection with Novgorod. It relates how Iaroslav came to
Novgorod to set up his son Vladimir as resident prince and Zhidiata as bishop.
He then received news that the Pechenegs (Turkic nomads) were laying siege
to Kiev. Iaroslav assembled an army of Novgorodians, Varangians and Kievan
Russians and attacked the Pechenegs at Kiev. The arguments in favour of 1036
are not at all conclusive, but there is nothing to suggest another year.40
A special twist to the story of the Novgorod origin of the Pravda of Iaroslav
has been given by the leading Novgorod historian, V.L. Ianin. Referring to the
quotation from the Novgorod Chronicle reproduced above, he asserted that
the pravda (code) given to the Novgorodians in 1016 was the Russkaia Pravda
(supposedly only the Pravda of Iaroslav), while the ustav (statute) accompany-
ing it probably contained, among other things, the confirmation of Novgorod’s
old privileges, conceded already in the ninth century by Rurik when he was
invited by Novgorod. Art. 1 of the rp, allowing blood revenge in certain cases
and thereby exempting the avengers from princely jurisdiction, represented a
special concession to the Novgorod boyars, according to Ianin.41 Apart from
the connection between 1016 and the rp, these ideas are highly hypothetical
and lack reliable foundations.
38 Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 54–61.

39 N.A. Stratonov, “K voprosu o sostave i proiskhozhdenii kratkoi redaktsii Russkoi Pravdy”,
Izvestiia Obshchestva arkheologii, istorii i etnografii pri Kazanskom universitete, Vol. 40,
No. 4, Kazan’, 1920, 385–494, at 387–398.
40 Iushkov, who rejected the entire version of the Novgorodian origin of the Pravda of Iaro-
slav and the crucial year 1016, suggested some time in the 1030–1040 decade as the most
probable date of the Pravda of Iaroslav; Stroi, 183.
41 L.V. Ianin, Ocherki istorii srednevekovogo Novgoroda, Moskva, 2008, 36–37.
The other major question in respect of the rp concerns its legal charac-
ter, more specifically: Was it an explicitly legislative document or something
else? This question does of course affect not only the Short Pravda but also
the ExpandedPravda (and the Abridged Pravda) and, moreover, has to be an-
swered also for the different components of these documents. Where the Short
Pravda is concerned this means: the Oldest Pravda (in the narrow sense of the
first eleven provisions, going back to 1016), the second part of the Pravda of
Iaroslav (arts. 12–18), the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons (arts. 19–41), and the two iso-
lated provisions at the end, the Law on the Bloodwite Collector (pokon virnyi,
art. 42) and the Bridge Builders’ Statute (urok mostnikov, art. 43).
The legislative character of Iaroslav’s Pravda (whether one regards it as a
single document or as a compilation of two complexes) is documented by what
is known about the conditions in which it came into being. It is also confirmed
by other parts of the rp text, notably most copies of the Expanded Pravda.
These are often headed “The Law of Iaroslav Vladimirovich”; furthermore art. 2
of the Expanded Pravda offers an augmented version of the preamble to art. 19
of the Short Pravda, specifically referring to the previous legislation of Iaroslav.
The old preamble (which, incidentally, by itself also confirms the legislative
character of the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons) stated: “The Law established for the
Russian land, when … [the sons of Iaroslav and three officials] came together.”
In art. 2 of the Expanded Pravda the preamble appeared in this form: “After Iar-
oslav his sons Iziaslav, Sviatoslav, Vsevolod, and their men [names] met again
and abolished blood vengeance, [replacing it] by compensation by money; and
everything else as Iaroslav had decided was confirmed by his sons.”
That arts. 42 and 43 represent two separate enactments is obvious and needs
no further explanation.
Finally, if Tikhomirov’s hypothesis of two components of the Pravda of Iaro-
slav is accepted, one going back to 1016 and another one to 1036, the rather
academic question remains whether these two parts were joined together in
1036 (or at some later date) as a consolidated piece of legislation, or whether
they remained separate until they were joined with the Pravda of Iaroslav’s
Sons when the final redaction of the Short Pravda was put together. We shall
return to the question of the character of the Short Pravda as a whole after our
discussion of the separate components of it.
The Sources of Iaroslav’s Pravda
An obvious question to be asked first is whether there was any Russian legis-
lation prior to the 1016 statute. Attention is often drawn in this respect to the
114 chapter 4
treaties with the Greeks of 911 and 944, both of which mention the zakon russkii
several times (see Chapter 3, which includes a section on the Zakon russkii). The
Treaty of 911 relates how the Russians had to confirm the treaty by oath po za-
konu i po pokonu iazyka nashego, which is variously translated as “according to
the law and regulation of our people” (Kaiser), “According to our own faith and
the custom of our nation” (Cross/Sherbowitz-Wetzor). The Treaty of 944 con-
tains several references to zakon, but the most illuminating is the rule concern-
ing theft (art. 8 in Kaiser’s translation), which provided that the penalty was to
be po zakonu Grech’skomu i po ustavu, i po zakonu Ruskomu. As the usual mean-
ing of ustav unquestionably is “enacted legislation” or “statute”, zakon should
most probably be read as “custom” or “customary law”. This meaning of zakon
in Old-Russian is well-known from other sources. The references to the zakon
russkii in the treaties with the Greeks can therefore not be adduced in order to
prove the existence of written laws preceding Iaroslav’s Pravda.42
One possibility remains and is contained in a short communication in the
Chronicle entry for 946. The princess Olga, who ruled as regent for her son
Sviatoslav after the death of her husband Igor in 945 at the hand of the Derev-
lians, subdued the land of Dereva, establishing laws (ustavy) and tribute. The
context suggests that these ustavy served the purpose of fixing the subordinate
position of the Derevlians and would have consisted of a few general rules.
Whether they were put down in writing is quite uncertain and at any rate they
could hardly have played a role as a source for the rp.
The most probable source for Iaroslav’s Pravda would be Russian custom-
ary law; this then would be the zakon russkii to which the Treaties of 911 and
944 refer. There is a general similarity between the most prominent rules of
the oldest layer of Iaroslav’s Pravda (the first eleven articles, tentatively dated
at 1016–1019) and some of the rules of the 911 and 944 treaties. They all con-
tain rules about blood revenge for homicide and monetary compensation for
assault. This may be regarded as a simple codification of Russian customary
law. It has often been noticed that a comparison between the treaties, Iaro-
slav’s Pravda, and more recent layers of the rp demonstrates the gradual disap-
pearance of blood revenge. The Treaty of 944 had granted the right to revenge
to the relatives of the victim, Iaroslav’s Pravda limited it to a narrow circle of
siblings (fathers, sons, brothers, and nephews), while art. 2 of the Expanded
Pravda relates how Iaroslav’s sons forebad blood revenge and replaced it gener-
ally by composition.
42 The above reading is from the Hypatian Copy of the Chronicle; the Laurentian Copy has
versions which would also allow the reading “according to Russian law and custom”.
One may accept, in accordance with the leading opinion of Russian legal
historians, that the customary law rules in Iaroslav’s Pravda would have re-
flected the customary law of Novgorod. But this is hardly a helpful statement,
as next to nothing is known about the customary law of Kiev or Chernigov or
Smolensk and other ancient Russian towns, and their possible differences with
the law of Novgorod. This is rightly pointed out by Iushkov, who, as mentioned
before, rejects the Novgorod origin of Iaroslav’s Pravda and holds that it was
not a charter granted to Novgorod, but a general law for the whole country,
enacted in Kiev at some time during Iaroslav’s reign.43
Several Russian authors44 have pointed to the “Court Law for the People” (Za-
kon Sudnyi liudem, zsl; see the section on this topic in Chapter 10, on Foreign
Laws) as a likely source for at least a few provisions of Iaroslav’s Pravda, nota-
bly art. 12 (riding another person’s horse, without his permission) and art. 18
(damaging another person’s arms or clothing). However, the references made
to specific provisions of the zsl are all to either the Expanded or the Concor-
dance versions, both of which came into being long after the Pravda of Iaroslav
appeared. The Short Version of the zsl, which goes back to the 9th century,
is supposed to have reached Russia before the 13th century, but it does not
contain any provisions paralleling the Pravda of Iaroslav. The Expanded and
Concordance versions of the zsl were most probably compiled in R ussia some
time after 1300 and they borrowed from the rp, not the other way around.45
Along with customary law, Iaroslav’s Pravda undoubtedly also contained
elements of new legislation, amending the traditional system. Certain provi-
sions clearly represent a departure from previous practice. The best example is
art. 14, which in the laconic way typical of the Short Pravda quotes both the old
custom and the new rule superseding it.
If somebody recognizes [his property], he is not to take it back and ought

not to say to him [who possesses his property]: ‘This property is mine’;
instead he ought to say: ‘come to a confrontment [to disclose] where you
43 Iushkov, Stroi, 181.

44 Cf. N.V. Kalachov, Predvaritel’nyia iuridicheskiia svedeniia dlia polnago ob”iasneniia Russ-
koi Pravdy, Sankt-Peterburg, 1880 (first ed. 1846), 166; D’iakonov, Ocherki, 49; Tikhomirov,
Issledovanie, 58–59.
45 For a more detailed argument in this question see my chapter on “Roman Law in Medi-
eval Russia” in Feldbrugge, lmr, 59–128, at 79–80 and 116–118. Tikhomirov reversed his
position twenty years later (i.e. zsl was in fact the borrower, not the lender) in his study
on the zsl; M.N. Tikhomirov, Zakon Sudnyi liudem Prostrannoi i Svodnoi redaktsii, Moskva,
1961, 21.
116 chapter 4
obtained [the property]’; if he [who is asked to appear] does not come,

then [he is to provide] a guarantor within five days.
Leaving aside the substance of the rule for the time being, the point here is
that the old custom of self-help is explicitly forbidden and replaced by a more
legalized procedure. The same principle, less clearly expressed, seems to be at
the basis of the immediately following articles 15 and 16.
The legislative incursion of the prince fits into the view of discerning two
chronological layers in the Pravda of Iaroslav, with the more recent layer reveal-
ing an increasing assertion of central power and interference with the tradi-
tional order. But even in the first and older part of Iaroslav’s Pravda (arts. 1–11)
the hand of the prince is visible. The very fact that customary law is more or less
officially recorded emphasizes the prince’s legislative role. More specifically,
there are good reasons to assume that art. 1, dealing with homicide, was in fact
designed to restrict the right to revenge to a narrower circle than previously.46
Then there is the question of possible Scandinavian influences in the Prav-
da of Iaroslav. The effect of irrational factors in the debate around this theme
through the ages has been discussed in the section on “The Viking Question”
(in Chapter 12, “Setting the Stage: Territory and Tribes in Early Kievan Russia”).
The presence of a significant Scandinavian element among the Russian popu-
lation during the 10th and 11th centuries is undeniable and explicitly recog-
nized in arts. 11 and 12 of the Short Pravda (and the corresponding provisions
of the Expanded Pravda). But did this also result in Scandinavian influences on
early Russian law?
Several pre-revolutionary Russian authors have argued in favour of this
position.47 Karamzin, for instance, simply stated that the early Russians had
received their laws from the Varangians.48 Such a sweeping statement would
not be accepted by anybody nowadays, but the negative attitude prevail-
ing during the Soviet era, which rejected anything that would diminish the
46 See my “Wergeld, Bloodwite, and the Emergence of Criminal Law (Article 1 of the Short
Redaction of the Russkaia Pravda)”, H. Küpper (ed.), Von Kontinuitäten und Brüchen:
Ostrecht im Wandel der Zeiten. Festschrift für Friedrich-Christian Schroeder zum 75. Geburt-
stag, Frankfurt am Main, 2011, 3–21.
47 A critical overview in S.V. Iushkov, Russkaia Pravda, Moskva, 1950, 352–371, who men-
tioned the ‘Normanist’ authors Strube de Piermont (already in 1756), Karamzin, Shchep-
kin, Karskii and Presniakov. The latter author paid special attention to the payment
scale of the Pravda of Iaroslav and very similar scales in Germanic law; A.E. Presniakov,
Kniazhoe pravo. Ocherki po istorii x–xii stoletii (Zapiski istoriko-filologicheskogo fakul’teta
imp. Sankt-Peterburgskogo Universiteta, XC), Sankt-Peterburg, 1909, 255–267.
48 Karamzin, T.II, Ch. iii, col.26.
autochthonouscharacter of Kievan institutions, exaggerated in the opposite

direction. Modern authors have stressed the importance of the druzhina in
the political and legal culture of Kievan Russia.49 In their view, the “Russes” of
the treaties with Byzantium were the druzhina members and the “Russian cus-
tom” (Zakon russkii) was actually the customary law of the druzhina. If these
considerations are combined with the acceptance of the theory of the origin of
the Oldest Pravda in connection with the events in 1016 in Novgorod, then the
conclusion that the Oldest Pravda reflected predominantly Viking customary
law becomes plausible, because the druzhina of the earliest Rurikid princes
consisted mainlyof Scandinavians.50
On the other hand, if Russian customary law preceding the rp would turn
out to be quite similar to Scandinavian (Germanic) law of the same period, it
would be impossble to establish whether the earliest phase of the rp reflect-
ed Germanic or Slavic law. There are indeed reasons to assume that this was
the case and this would make the question of Scandinavian influences on the
Pravdaof Iaroslav moot.51
The presumable similarity with Scandinavian law, and Germanic law gener-
ally, involves a few other specific questions. First, not enough is known about
contemporary Scandinavian law, because the earliest written law books ap-
peared only after the conversion of Scandinavia. Further research in this field,
involving also material from a pre-Christian era, may yield new insights.52
Secondly, the connections with (South-)Germanic law have been the sub-
ject of several studies before 1917, but attention has usually been focused on
the earliest and most important of the so-called leges barbarorum, the Salic
law,53 and on two complexes of rules in particular: arts. 10 (pushing or shoving
somebody) and 14–15 (“confrontment”, svod and izvod) of the Short Pravda and
arts. 33 (De viae lacina) and 39 (De vestigio minando) of the Lex Salica (arts.
31 and 37 of the Pactus Legis Salicae). The similarities, however, are not very
specific and, moreover, there is a gap of five centuries between the two laws.54
49 A.A. Gorskii, Drevnerusskaia druzhina, Moskva, 1989 (not available to me); E.A. Mel’nikov,
“K tipologii predgosudarstvennykh i rannegosudarstvennykh obrazovanii v Severnoi
i Vostochnoi Evrope”, dgve 1992–1993, Moskva, 1995, 16–32; N.F. Kotliar, Drevnerusskaia
gosudarstvennost’, Sankt-Peterburg, 1998, 63–70.
50 Such a view had already been advanced a century ago by E.N. Shchepkin, Variazhskaia
vira, Odessa 1915, 153.
51 See also my “The Russkaia Pravda” in Feldbrugge, lmr, 33–58, at 53–57.
52 Cf. K. von Amira, Grundriss des germanischen Rechts, Strassburg, 1913 (3rd ed), 78–84.
53 E.g. M. Levashov, Ugolovnoe pravo Russkoi Pravdy sravnitel’no s Salicheskoi Pravdoi, Odes-
sa, 1911.
54 Art. 33 (De intertiare) of the Lex Ribuaria is a bit closer to art. 14 of the Short Pravda.
118 chapter 4
The 9th-century Lex Saxonum might be a better candidate for comparison, but
only its first dozen or so provisions, which probably reflect traditional Saxon
law (the remainder consisting of Carolingian innovations and impositions)
and are remarkably close to the first ten articles of the Short Pravda. Their
greater proximity to the oldest parts of the rp in time and substance is also
matched by a possible geographical proximity. According to certain research-
ers, the founder of the dynasty, Rurik, was a native of Jutland, a region con-
tiguous with the territory of the Saxons in Germany (see the section on “The
Dynasty of Rurik” in Chapter 13).55
My own view, expressed more extensively in other publications, is that the
oldest layer of the rp is representative of a cultural and political stage of de-
velopment in which state and law (as we know them) came into being, and,
secondly, that this stage can be observed among many peoples with Indo-
European roots at a point where the common origins of socio-legal institutions
were still noticeable.56
The Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons
The second and largest part of the Short Pravda is known as the Pravda of Iaro-
slav’s Sons (Pravda Iaroslavichei) because it begins (after art. 18) with the words:
“The law established for the Russian land, when Iziaslav, Vsevolod, Sviatoslav,
Kosniachko Pereneg, Mikyfor the Kievan, and Chudin Mikula met together”.57
Iziaslav, Vsevolod and Sviatoslav had succeeded their father Iaroslav in 1054,
55 More detail in my above-mentioned study on the rp in Feldbrugge, lmr, 33–58, at 53–57.

56 In addition to the works quoted in this chapter, see also F. Feldbrugge (ed.), The Law’s
Beginnings, Leiden, 2003, “Law’s Beginnings. Some Concluding Observations”, 255–
280, at 258–268. Reviewing the rp in the context of contemporary Slavic legislations,
Z.M. Chernilovskii explicitly widened the perspective to the Indo-European dimension
in Z.M. Chernilovskii, “Russkaia Pravda v svete drugikh slavianskikh sudebnikov”, G.V. Shvekov
(ed.), Drevniaia Rus’: Problemy prava i pravovoi ideologii, Moskva, 1984, 3–35.
57 I follow the most frequently accepted reading of the enumeration as referring to three of-
ficials accompanying the three princes. The princes are not in order of seniority (Iziaslav,
1025–78; Vsevolod, 1030–93; Sviatoslav, 1027–76); Kosniachko is mentioned in the Chroni-
cle in 1068 as Iziaslav’s general and Chudin Mikula is probably attached to Sviatoslav (his
son Ivanko Chudinovich turns up in art. 53 of the Expanded Pravda as the ‘man’ of Oleg,
the son of Sviatoslav). In this reading each prince is accompanied by his own boyar. Other
readings of the list result in four or five names, by regarding Kosniachko and Pereneg, or
Chudin and Mikula as separate persons. Full references in Baranowski, 248.
together with their brothers Igor and Viacheslav, who died in 1060 and 1056
respectively.
More light on this brief preamble is shed by the Expanded Pravda, in which,
as explained, almost all the material of the Short Pravda has been inserted, but
often in amended form. The preamble encountered in the middle of the Short
Pravda returns in modified version at the beginning of the Expanded Pravda,
as art. 2.
After [the reign/death of] Iaroslav his sons met again: Iziaslav, Vsevolod
and Sviatoslav and their men Kosniachko Pereneg and Nikifor, and abol-
ished revenge killing, but [replaced it] by monetary compensation; and
everything else was established by his sons as Iaroslav had ordered it.
This provision is preceded by art. 1, itself an amended version of art. 1 of the

Short Pravda (allowing certain relatives to kill a murderer in revenge, or accept
a fixed compensation). From the point of view of modern legislation art. 1 of
the Expanded Pravda does not make sense where it allows revenge killing, to
have it abolished in art. 2. But as a kind of historical footnote to art. 2 it does
make sense. We return to it at the end of the discussion of the Pravda of Iaro-
slav’s Sons.
The most important question concerning the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons is
whether all that follows after the heading preceding art. 19 should be regarded
as the law established at the meeting of the princes. As mentioned in the intro-
ductory section to the Short Pravda, at least the last two provisions of the Short
Pravda appear to be separate enactments (art. 42, the law on the payment of
vira, and art. 43, the bridge builders’ statute).
Many commentators are of the opinion that the entire complex of arts.
19–41 cannot be regarded as a single whole. Arts. 19–28 represent a complex
which is homogeneous in substance and format, setting fines for the killing
of the prince’s servants.58 For the killing of the highest officials (the ognish-
chanin, “steward”, and the pod”ezdnoi, the collector of taxes and fines) a fine
of 80 grivna was set, double the amount due for the killing of a freeman. But
while the latter amount was to be paid as compensation to the victim’s next
of kin (wergeld), the sanctions of arts. 19ff. were genuine fines, named vira
(bloodwite) in the text, and payable to the prince.
58 This position had already been taken by several pre-revolutionary authors (e.g. Presn-
iakov, Lektsii, i, 215) and was most extensively defended by Tikhomirov in Soviet times;
Issledovanie, 63ff. Arts. 31–33 might arguably be added to the domanial law complex.
120 chapter 4
Among the otherwise uniformly worded provisions, art. 23 stands out. It

concerns the “senior stable master” (koniukh staryi) and the standard formula
is followed by the words: “as Iziaslav established concerning his stable master,
who was killed by the people of Dorogobuzh”. The fact that the fine in this
case was set at 80 grivna suggests that the official concerned would otherwise
not have been protected by the maximum bloodwite set for the highest of-
ficials. More generally, the addition to the standard formula is noteworthy as
the earliest example of an individual judicial decision being transformed into
a general rule.
The second part of the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons (arts. 29–41) does not pos-
sess the internal unity of the first; this prompts the question whether it was
enacted as a single piece of legislation or consisted of a collection of inciden-
tal laws. The latter position is favoured by several prominent scholars.59 The
second part is no longer, like the first, directed at securing the personnel and
property of the prince, but addresses the entire population (arts. 31–33 might
perhaps be added to the complex of arts. 19–28).
Arts. 42–43, as stated before, stand by themselves. They both enjoy their
own separate headings: “And this is the law on the payment of vira” (A se pokon
virnyi, art. 41) and art. 43 (A se urok mostnikov, “And this is the bridge builders’
statute”).60 In the case of the pokon virnyi, its character as a separate statute is
emphasized by its last sentence: “And this is the law of Iaroslav”, which would
of course mean that it was merely added on by Iaroslav’s sons at a certain mo-
ment.61 Most authors regard the bridge builders’ statute also as originating
during the reign of Iaroslav.62
The question of the character of the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons in its original
form (presumably arts. 19–28) is closely interwoven with the question of the
date and circumstances of its origin. It must have been agreed upon (enacted
may be too explicit a term) at some time within the period the three brothers
59 Such as Iushkov, Stroi, 184; Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 168.

60 “Statute” is the most common meaning of urok in Old-Russian. The basic meaning is
“what has been [authoritatively] expressed”, and on this basis urok mostnikov is also trans-
lated as the bridge builders’ rate, tariff, share, etc.
61 Cf. Sergeevich, Lektsii, 61; Iushkov, Stroi, 85; Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, 132. Tikhomirov re-
jected this idea, with the argument that attribution of statutes to a prince with a leg-
islative reputation was a common practice; according to him, the pokon virnyi was a
Novgorod enactment which was added to the Short Pravda during the last editorial phase
of its compilation, Issledovanie, 70–74. The fact that art. 41 prescribes in detail the rations
to be allotted during Lent speaks for a comparatively late origin, as noted by Tikhomirov,
because the observation of Lent had hardly taken root during the reign of Iaroslav.
62 E.g. Iushkov, Stroi, 185.
were reigning together, i.e. between 1060 (the death of the fourth surviving
son of Iaroslav, Igor) and 1076 (the death of Sviatoslav). It is usually connected
with the meeting of the three brothers in Vyshgorod in 1072, an event reported
at length in the Chronicle.63 The meeting ostensibly took place to celebrate
the solemn interment of the saints Boris and Gleb (killed in 1015), the broth-
ers’ uncles, but “after the liturgy was sung, the brothers dined together, each
with his boyars and with great affection”, and that would have been the time to
transact some business. It remains an open question what the agenda of this
meeting consisted of. Was it the entire Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons (arts. 19–43
of the Short Pravda) that was agreed upon? Or were the last two provisions
(the pokon virnyi and the urok mostnikov) added on at a later date? Or did the
princes’ consensus only involve the rules concerning the protection of princely
officials and property (arts. 19–28 and possibly also 32–33)? And there is also
the question of the abolition of blood feuds, mentioned as the central topic
of the meeting in the Expanded Pravda version (art. 2) of the preamble of the
Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons in the Short Pravda. Art. 2 of the Expanded Pravda
relates how the brothers met “again” (paki), and this has given rise to the as-
sumption that there were actually two different meetings.64
A definitive answer to these questions is difficult to give; many interpreta-
tion have been proposed, usually based on connections with specific episodes
or events related by the chronicles. Tikhomirov’s monograph from 1941 re-
mains an important milestone, followed by Zimin’s posthumously published
study on the rp.65
63 Cf. Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 64–66; Iushkov, Stroi, 184, and Russkaia Pravda, Moskva,
1950, 303. The window is actually smaller than the 1060–72 period; the 1060–65 period was
reasonably quiet (according to the Chronicle), but in 1065 Vseslav started his campaign
against the three brothers, which resulted after various defeats in his victory in 1068 when
the dissatisfied population of Kiev threw out the brothers and installed Vseslav as their
prince. The next year the brothers succeeded in unseating Vseslav, re-instating Iziaslav as
prince of Kiev. If the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons is viewed as a measure to address popular
unrest, 1072 would look like an acceptable date. Shchapov, on the other hand, viewed the
1072 assembly as a predominantly religiously motivated event and opted for a moment
soon after Iaroslav’s death, possibly still in 1054; cf. Ia.N. Shchapov, “K istorii Pravdy Iaro-
slavichei”, A.A. Preobrazhenskii (ed.), Problemy sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi istorii feodal’noi
Rossii, Moskva, 1984, 256–261.
64 E.g. Sergeevich, Lektsii, 62, 93.
65 Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, 122–124, regarded the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons as a surviving
fragment of a more extensive regulation concerning the prince’s domain, put together
during the last years of Iaroslav’s reign (before 1054). Several other viewpoints exist; see
Baranowski, 149–151.
122 chapter 4
The Final Compilation of the Short Pravda
If there is considerable uncertainty about the date of the Pravda of Iaroslav’s

Sons (1072 still remaining the most likely answer), the questions surround-
ing the final compilation of the entire Short Pravda are even more difficult
to answer. When and why have the various components of the Short Pravda,
which as we have seen originated at different times and possibly in different
places, been combined into a single document, and what was the nature of this
document?
The simplest answer was given (in 1949) by Iushkov, who asserted that the
Short Pravda was an officially compiled consolidated code consisting of Iaro-
slav’s Pravda, the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons, and some new legislation issued at
a somewhat later date. It was promulgated, so he held, by the grand prince of
Kiev soon after the enactment of the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons, i.e. in the 1060’s
or 1070’s.66
According to Tikhomirov, the compilation of the Short Pravda was un-
dertaken in a Novgorod monastery, probably during the reign of Vsevolod
Mstislavichas prince of Novgorod (this was a grandson of Vladimir Monomakh
and a great-grandson of Vsevolod Iaroslavich, who was regarded as the Short
Pravda’s legislator by Iushkov). This prince (see Chapter 16, on Novgorod) ruled
in Novgorod from 1117 till 1136 and it was at that time (according to Tikhomirov)
that the pokon virnyi and the urok mostnikov (being essentially local Novgorod
ordinances) were added. The final editor made an attempt to produce a more
or less consistent text and for this purpose amended some of the texts at his
disposal. Still, the Short Pravda as known to us should not be seen as a pure-
ly private compilation but rather as a work done at the instigation of prince
Vsevolod, whose activities as a legislator are well-known.67
Zimin, who, as mentioned above, advocated an early origin of the Pravda
of Iaroslav’s Sons, still during the reign of their father, was inclined to regard
1052 as the year the entire Short Pravda was compiled, although this position
has not attracted any followers.68 Other dates have been suggested by other
scholars, but until a more persuasive argument for a specific year can be made
66 Iushkov, Stroi, 188. During that period one of the three brothers Iziaslav, Sviatoslav or
Vsevolod served as Kievan grand prince, as well as a more distant nephew Vseslav of
Polotsk. In his monograph on the rp (Russkaia Pravda, Moskva, 1950, 312–318) Iushkov
opted for a somewhat later date, the reign of Vsevolod (1078–1093).
68 Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, 148–150.
one has to be satisfied with a tentative date around the end of the 11th century
or within the first decades of the 12th century.69
Opinions are also divided on the character of the Short Pravda. The views of
Iushkov and Tikhomirov have been mentioned.70 Much depends on what po-
sition one takes concerning the date and circumstances of the compilation of
the final text. Another approach would be to forget about such data and con-
sider instead the text of the Short Pravda as an integral document. In that case
it is hard to escape the feeling that the Short Pravda is a fairly heterogeneous
collection of texts of different origin. This would speak more in favour of it be-
ing an unofficial compilation, whether or not instigated or sponsored by some
official authority. Baranowski, after reviewing the various theories, seems to
come to a similar conclusion when he writes: “That is why the Short Pravda is
not a codification, not a code of law, but a legal collection, a law book, a judges’
manual.”71
69 For a survey of various theories, see Baranowski, 150–152.

70 Iushkov’s position rests in part on ideological arguments: the Kievan state was not primi-
tive, therefore it must have had proper legislation.
71 Baranowksi, 152.
chapter 5
The Russkaia Pravda: The Expanded Pravda
The Expanded Pravda: Introduction
The study of the Short Pravda, as we have seen, needed to concern itself with
only two copies (the First Academic Copy and the First Archeographical Copy)
and these copies are very similar. With the Expanded Pravda the situation is
quite different. Close to one hundred copies are known and the differences
between some of them are considerable. This makes it far more difficult to say
about a particular text: “This is the Expanded Version of the Russkaia Pravda.”
There are always a number of credible competitors for such a label.
Ever since the beginning of the study of the Expanded Pravda scholars have
attempted to introduce order into the mass of available copies. The first step is
to put aside more recent copies, identical or very similar to an older copy, and
concentrate work on the latter. Then there are two main approaches to clas-
sification: according to contents, or according to the physical context of the
copy, the ‘convoy’ of documents among which it was discovered. The contents
approach speaks for itself: copies which contain certain rules or expressions,
or a sequence of rules, which set them apart from other copies, may be con-
sidered as forming a family, and such families may further be subdivided into
more specific categories. In the ‘convoy’ approach one does not look primarily
at the copies of the Expanded Pravda themselves, but rather at the texts which
are accompanying them. About three quarters of the Expanded Pravda copies
were found in kormchie, collections of ecclesiastical texts, fashioned after the
Greek Nomocanon, and in use in monasteries. The kormchie followed a gen-
eral pattern, but as they were copied and recopied for centuries, considerable
variations in contents and arrangement arose. The remainder of the Expanded
Pravda copies were found in various other collections, also of monastic origin,
especially in the Merilo Pravednoe (“Just Measure”), the Sofia Chronicle, and a
special Legal Collection.
The two principal authors who have addressed the problem of classifying
the Expanded Pravda copies, Liubimov and Iushkov, notwithstanding their
numerous disagreements on questions of detail, both employed the two
approaches outlined above with remarkably similar results.1 Liubimov’s clas-
sification covered 86 copies of the Expanded Pravda; four other copies were
1 Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 80, explains why he adopted the same approach.

The Russkaia Pravda: The Expanded Pravda 125
available to him but had been left out for various reasons; three more cop-
ies were known to have existed but had been lost. Several new copies of the
ExpandedPravda have turned up after Liubimov drew up his system, but they
can be accommodated in it without serious difficulties.
Liubimov divided his 86 copies into three groups, and these groups into
families. The division was based not only on the similarity of the texts within a
certain group or family, but also on the ‘convoy’
Liubimov’s three groups were designated by him according to the principal
copies within each category: the Synodal-Trinity group (69 copies), the Push-
kin group (6 copies), and the Karamzin group (11 copies). The Synodal-Trinity
group was sub-divided into eight families or types (vidy), the Pushkin group
into two, and the Karamzin group into three.
Iushkov divided all rp copies into six ‘redactions’. His first redaction is
the Short Pravda, while the sixth redaction is the Abridged Pravda. Iushkov’s
second redaction is Liubimov’s Synodal-Trinity group (without the Abridged
Pravda), the third redaction is Liubimov’s Karamzin group (but without the
Fourth Trinity Copy), the Pushkin Copy and the Fourth Trinity Copy constitute
Iushkov’s fourth redaction, and the remaining copies of Liubimov’s Pushkin
group form the fifth redaction.2 Thus, the only substantial difference between
Liubimov and Iushkov was the attribution of the Fourth Trinity Copy. There are
other important differences between the views of the two scholars, but these
do not concern the classification of the Expanded Pravda, but the relation-
ships between the component parts of the Expanded Pravda, as well as the
character of the Abridged Pravda. These matters will be discussed below.
In the perspective of the legal historian an analysis of the numerous cop-
ies of the Expanded Pravda serves primarily the purpose of establishing the
best text, in other words, the texts from which later copies were taken and the
time and circumstances of their origin.3 Iushkov observed in this connection:
2 S.V. Iushkov, Russkaia Pravda, Moskva, 1950, 9–27. The classification terminology used by the
different authors is not uniform. Liubimov distinguished three main “groups” (gruppy), di-
vided into “types” (vidy), each type embracing a number of “copies” (spiski); in a few cases he
inserted a “section” (zveno) between a gruppa and its vidy. Tikhomirov followed Liubimov in
principle, but also has izvod and tip for “type” (vid); Iushkov has “redaction” (redaktsiia) as the
overall category, divided into izvody (subdivided into vidy), or directly into vidy (subdivided
into spiski), or even directly into spiski. Zimin stayed close to Liubimov.
Ia.N. Shchapov (in Kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’ v Drevnei Rusi, Moskva, 1972, 9) has pro-
posed a terminolgy in which the terms redaktsiia, izvod, vid, gruppa, arkhetip and protograf
are exactly defined.
3 For this reason it is unnecessary to discuss the earlier attempts at classification of Expand-
ed Pravda copies by authors such as Kalachov, Tobien or Sergeevich; their views have been
126 chapter 5
“As the differences between the [various] copies had their origin, in principle,
in the mistakes of the copyists or in their efforts to give meaning to an earlier
text, it stands to reason that the study of these types cannot yield any signifi-
cant information on the history of the text of the Russkaia Pravda.”4 Zimin
retorted that “The distinguishing of separate types of the Expanded Pravda
within the Synodal-Trinity group allows [us] to follow the history of the text of
it, the context within which it operated, the changes in the understanding of
legal norms, the time and place of the emergence of its archetype and many
other important questions.”5
With Zimin’s warning in mind, we intend to look first briefly at the three
main groups of Expanded Pravda copies. The following sections will then dis-
cuss the component parts of the Expanded Pravda and the question of the
origin and sources of the final compilation of the Expanded Pravda. A section
on the Abridged Pravda will close this chapter, more or less as an appendix,
because the dominant view is that the Abridged Pravda is a document of later
date, based on certain copies of the Expanded Pravda.
The Codicology of the Expanded Pravda
The background to the impressive scholarship structure erected around the

mass of copies of the Expanded Pravda was the medieval practice of copy-
ing. This resulted inevitably in the introduction of conscious and unconscious
changes in a copied text. Unconscious changes or mistakes (“a slip of the pen”)
can only be expected and conscious changes could be made when the copy-
ist was of the opinion that the text he was writing out was for some reason
to be preferred to the text he was copying (because it was incomprehensible
to him, or because he thought he was correcting an earlier copyist’s mistake,
or because a new text would be more acceptable to the master for whom he
was working, etc.). In this way the copying process, continued over centuries,
would produce entire families and family trees of copies, leaving it to the his-
torian to figure out what the usually long lost original document could have
looked like.
summarized and taken into account by Liubimov and Iushkov, and also by Tikhomirov who
published his study on the rp one year after the Academy of Sciences edition (containing
Liubimov’s study).
4 Iushkov, op.cit., 17–18.
5 Zimin, op.cit. 152–153. The same idea is given great emphasis by D.H. Kaiser, The Growth of the
Law in Medieval Russia, Princeton, 1980, 29–37.
Synodal-Trinity Group
The most important group of Expanded Pravda copies is the Synodal-Trinity
group embracing more than three quarters of all extant Expanded Pravda cop-
ies (75, against 6 copies in the Pushkin group and 13 in the Karamzin group).6
The Synodal Copy (S) is the oldest one available, from a kormchaia dated 1282
by the copyist himself.7 Next in age are the First Trinity (T) and Pushkin (mp)
copies, dating from the middle of the 14th century. The Pushkin Copy (epony-
mous for the Pushkin group) has several additional provisions, as compared
with the Synodal-Trinity group. The First Trinity Copy is generally considered
to be the best of all the Expanded Pravda copies; a number of obvious omis-
sions and copying errors can be corrected by consulting copies from other
groups. It is invariably used in collections as the standard text.8
Within the Synodal-Trinity group, the five copies which form the Trinity
family have been found in manuscripts of the Merilo Pravednoe (“Just Mea-
sure”), one of the major collections of legal texts (see the special section on
the Merilo Pravednoe in Chapter 2, on Sources). The copies of the seven other
families of the Synodal-Trinity group have all been found in kormchaia collec-
tions (see also the section on kormchie in Chapter 2). It is to be noted that the
kormchie in which most copies of the Synodal-Trinity group are found are not
uniform. The Synodal Copy (S) is the last item of the Novgorod Synod Korm-
chaia of 1282 (followed by two short texts added later on). In Liubimov’s clas-
sification it represents a family all by itself. The 19 texts of the Expanded Pravda
of the Novgorod-Sofia family are from a few closely related kormchie. The other
families of the Synodal-Trinity group are also internally connected by being
included in particular families of kormchie. The 19 texts of the Rozenkampf
family are from collections which combine the kormchaia with the Merilo
Pravednoe.
The eighth family within Liubimov’s Synodal-Trinity group is the Tolstoi
family, consisting of only two copies, the so-called Fourth Tolstoi Copy (tbiv)
and the First Obolenskii Copy (ao). These copies contain an abridged form
(about 1100 words) of the Expanded Pravda. This version is known therefore as
the Abridged Pravda (Sokrashchennaia Pravda), sometimes regarded as a third
6 According to Zimin, op.cit., 153, written in 1980.

7 All rp copies (both Short and Expanded Pravda) were assigned a cipher by Liubimov, consist-
ing of one or two letters, indicating the origin or location of the text, and a Roman numeral
(ii, iii, etc.) for other texts with the same letter(s). So, for instance, smv referred to a fifth
copy of the rp from the Solovetskii monastery.
8 For instance by prp, rz and PRoP, and in the translations of Vernadsky, Szeftel/Eck, Kaiser
and Baranowski.
128 chapter 5
and separate version of the rp (we shall return to this question later on). tbiv
and ao also form part of a kormchaia text.
In the search for the protograph9 of the Synodal-Trinity group one only has
to consider the two oldest families within this group, the Synodal (represented
by a single copy, S) and Trinity families, the latter represented by its oldest
copy (First Trinity, T). The Synodal Copy is conveniently dated by its scribe
(1282) and the First Trinity Copy (as well as the other four copies of its family)
appeared in the second part of the Merilo Pravednoe (the so-called Collection
of Thirty Chapters). Tikhomirov put the inclusion of the rp in this Collection
around the end of the 13th century.10 This would make the emergence of the
Trinity family more or less contemporary with the creation of the Synodal
Copy. A common protograph would precede them.
Pushkin Group
The copies of the Pushkin group have all been found in manuscripts of a col-
lection of legal materials which included the Court Law for the People (see
the relevant section in Chapter 10, on Foreign Laws). The Pushkin Copy (mp),
dating from the second half of the 14th century,11 has a convoy which differs
from the other five copies of the Pushkin group, and it is therefore regarded as
a separate family. The convoy consists of the rp (the Expanded Pravda, pro-
vided with an introduction, the “Word of Basil”, an admonition ascribed to
St. Basilius the Great and addressed to judges) and the Court Law for the Peo-
ple, followed by a selection from the laws of Moses, the 1229 Treaty between
Smolensk and Riga, and Iaroslav’s Law on Bridges.12 The other five copies form
the Archeographical family, named after its oldest member, the Second Ar-
cheographical Copy (aii). The convoys differ among the five copies. The main
difference with the Pushkin Copy is that the legal collection of which the cop-
ies of the Archeographical family form part is itself an appendix to various
larger collections, kormchie, or, in the case of the Second Archeographical
Copy (aii), the text of the First Novgorod Chronicle (Younger Version). This
text ends with the text of the Short Pravda (Archeographical Copy, A). At the
end of the rp text of the Archeographical family a few short rules are added,
the “Russian articles from the Court Law for the People” (russkie stat’i).
9 A discussion of this term at the end of this section.

10 Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 95.
11 See Zimin, op.cit., 173–175.
12 This is not the same as the urok mostnikov, the bridge builders’ statute of art. 43 of the
Short Pravda and art. 97 of the Expanded Pravda; see the section on Iaroslav’s Law on
Bridges in Chapter 8, on Town Charters.
There are several rp provisions in the copies of the Pushkin group which
are missing in the copies of the Synodal-Trinity group. The most important of
these is the last article, “On the spear”, very similar to art. 18 of the Short Pravda.
One of the characteristics of the entire Pushkin group is that the transition
between the rp and the Court Law for the People tends to be blurred. In the
Pushkin Copy itself the text of the Court Law follows the rp on the same line of
the manuscript, without even the red initial frequently used in the same text.
Opinions on the origin of the Pushkin group are divided. Zimin has argued
that the protograph of the Pushkin (and Karamzin) groups originated in the
first half of the 13th century, because the legal collection of which the Pushkin
Copy (mp) forms part arose before 1274.13 This implies, obviously, that a proto-
graph of the Pushkin Copy must have been available at that time. Tikhomirov
favoured a date in the second half of the 13th century.14 What can be said with
reasonable certainty is that the Pushkin group of copies were all part of a col-
lection of legal texts, originating in Novgorod and serving most probably as a
guide for judges, especially in ecclesiastical courts. The rp, unlike the Court
Law for the People, contained few rules which would be of great relevance to
the latter courts and this may explain the amalgamation of the two statutes in
one document. Moreover, the preface to the rp (the admonition of Basil the
Great to judges), a characteristic feature of the Pushkin group, strongly sug-
gests that the collection was primarily destined as a judicial guide.
Karamzin Group
The copies of the Karamzin group are also in a convoy with the Court Law for
the People and Iaroslav’s Law on Bridges; some of the copies are included in
a collection of legal materials, others appear in manuscripts of the so-called
First Sofia Chronicle. Only the oldest copy of the Karamzin group (the Fourth
Trinity Copy (tiv) from the beginning of the 15th century) contains the “Word”
of St. Basil the Great.15 The Karamzin group occupies an intermediate position
between the Synodal-Trinity and Pushkin groups, both of which are older. The
original copy of the Karamzin group is therefore believed by some to be based
13 Zimin, op.cit., 174–175.

14 Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 166.
15 tiv occupies a special place within the Karamzin group. Liubimov regarded it as a
separate family, along with the other two families of the Karamzin group, Obolensko-
Karamzinskii (3 copies) and Muzeiskii (9 copies). Its convoy is distinctly different and
there are also textual differences in comparison with the other two families. Tikhomirov
(Issledovanie, 169) and Iushkov (Russkaia Pravda, 110–120) disagreed with Liubimov’s
assigning tiv to the Karamzin family.
130 chapter 5
on a comparative reading of copies of the other two groups.16 Liubimov’s classi-

fication is followed by almost all later commentators, notably M.N. Tikhomirov
and A.A. Zimin.17
The Karamzin group of copies is generally closer to the Pushkin group than
to the Synodal-Trinity group. Its main substantive differences with the Pushkin
group copies are the incorporation of Iaroslav’s Law on Bridges (see Chapters 8,
on Provincial Charters, and 16, on Novgorod) in the text of the rp18 and the
insertion of a lengthy fragment, the stat’i o rezakh (rules on percentages and
accretions).19
The Karamzin group arose at a comparatively late moment (early 15th cen-
tury, according to Tikhomirov, middle 14th century, according to Iushkov), on
the basis of texts close to the Pushkin group, but corrected with the aid of texts
belonging to the Synodal-Trinity group.20
The Protograph of the Expanded Pravda

A careful analysis of the entire complex of manuscripts of the Expanded Prav-
da, embracing both their individual contents and the convoys in which they are
encountered, will lead to the construction of family trees or stemmata, which
involve the postulation of common ancestors. Russian scholarship generally
uses the term ‘protograph’ (protograf) to refer to such ancestors. Protograf is
normally used to designate the text which has served as the common source
16 More on the relationship of the Karamzin group with the other two groups in Tikhomirov’s
chapter on the Karamzin group, Issledovanie, 166–181.
17 Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 80; A.A. Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, Moskva, 1999, 153–190 (this work
was published 19 years after Zimin’s death).
18 In the Pushkin group, Iaroslav’s Law on Bridges appears together with a number of other
fragments in the convoy of which the Expanded Pravda also forms part, but it is not incor-
porated into the rp text.
19 The stat’i o rezakh offer elaborate and very improbable calculations about the increase of
livestock and crops over a specific number of years, and their relative money values. It is
said, for instance, that three pigs will produce in twelve years 73.728 pigs, to a total value
of 36.864 grivna (i.e. half a grivna a pig). According to Iushkov, the stat’i o rezakh should
be regarded as the result of an accident, a scribe filling an empty sheet with his sums
(Russkaia Pravda, 129–134). Tikhomirov believed that at least some part of it reflected an
account of a specific village (Issledovanie, 178–180). Both authors agree that the fragment
is an insertion of later date, which has no connection with the original text of the rp, and
was retained in the Karamzin group copies only because it followed immediately on the
rp rules on percentages, so that the stat’i o rezakh appeared superficially to be an elabora-
tion of provisions which were unquestionably part of the rp.
20 Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 174; with some reserve, Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, 188; Iushkov,
Russkaia Pravda, 137.
for several other texts, in genealogical terms: the nearest common ancestor.
To take the important Trinity family as an example: Tikhomirov and Zimin
agreed that the oldest of the five copies, the First Trinity Copy (T), stood by
itself and that the four others21 had a common source (or protograph), but they
differed about the exact relationship between T and MA.22 The entire family
was connected by a ‘higher’ protograph, the source of all five copies. Zimin re-
constructed stemmata for all the families and groups of the Expanded Pravda,
leading to a pyramid of protographs culminating eventually in the archetype
of the Expanded Pravda. Adopting somewhat different approaches, other au-
thors reached more or less the same point. The entire exercise is actually sim-
pler than it may seem, because almost everyone agreed that the First Trinity
Copy offered the most reliable starting-point. Corrections may then be made
by introducing better readings from other old and trustworthy copies. In this
way not only Zimin, but also Tikhomirov and Iushkov have presented hypo-
thetical archetypes or protographs of the Expanded Pravda.23 From the point
of view of legal history, the differences are insignificant; all three remain very
close to the First Trinity Copy. Almost all editions and translations use this text,
with a few obvious mistakes corrected.24
The Composition of the Expanded Pravda
Before attempting to identify the component parts/chronological layers of the

Expanded Pravda, the question whether there is adequate reason to speak of
the Expanded Pravda as a single legal document must be addressed. This ques-
tion is prompted by the impression raised by most copies that the Expanded
Pravda consists in fact of two separate parts, the first one bearing the title “The
Law of Iaroslav Vladimirovich” (e.g. in the First Trinity Copy) or “The Law of
Prince Iaroslav” (e.g. in the Pushkin Copy), and the second one “The Statute
21 The Moscow Academy Copy (ma), the Second and Third Synodal Copy (sii and siii), and
the Third Kirillo-Belozersk Copy (biii).
22 Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, 154–156; Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 98–99.
23 Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, 363–380; Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 233–254; Iushkov, Russkaia
Pravda, 205–222.
24 One of the most obvious examples is art. 18 where the rule directing a defendant, accused
of homicide, to bring seven character witnesses is softened for Varangians and other for-
eigners; according to the texts of the Pushkin and Karamzin groups such defendants only
have to bring two witnesses: “if [the accused] is a Varangian or some other [foreigner],
then two [will suffice]” (paky li variag” ili in” kto, to dva, Pushkin Copy); the copies of the
Synodal-Trinity group have paki li variag” ili kto in”, togda, which is meaningless.
132 chapter 5
of Vladimir Vsevolodovich” (e.g. in the First Trinity Copy) or “The Statute of

Prince Vladimir” (e.g. in the Pushkin Copy). The Statute of Vladimir starts at
art. 53.
The identity of the two princes is not in doubt. The first article of the Ex-
panded Pravda is roughly identical to the first article of the Short Pravda; more-
over, the second article of the Expanded Pravda relates how after Iaroslav’s
death his sons Iziaslav, Sviatoslav and Vsevolod came together in a conference.
Iaroslav was the Kievan grand prince Iaroslav the Wise, son of St. Vladimir,
who ruled from 1019 to 1054 and with whom the first part of the Short Pravda is
connected. Vladimir Vsevolodovich was the Kievan grand prince better known
as Vladimir Monomakh, who succeeded his cousin Sviatopolk in 1113. Art. 53
of the Expanded Pravda refers to this succession (“After Sviatopolk, Vladi-
mir Vsevolodovich convened his druzhina in Berestovo …”). In some copies
the name is given as “Grand Prince Vladimir Vsevolodovich Monomakh”. His
mother was a Byzantine princess of the Monomachoi imperial house.
In many of the Expanded Pravda manuscripts the two headings have been
written in large red lettering and in one copy the two parts have changed
places.25 All this has given rise to the view that the Expanded Pravda was a
simple combination of two separate documents. This view was quite current in
the 19th century and was defended later on strongly by Iushkov.26
According to Iushkov, the first part of the Expanded Pravda (“The Law of
Iaroslav”) was enacted around 1100, on the basis of the Short Pravda (which
had become obsolete in several respects) and with the incorporation of vari-
ous enactments from the period following the Short Pravda and possibly also
of rules arising from judicial decisions. The socio-economic background to this
new legislation was the process of increasing feudalization, to which the provi-
sions of the Short Pravda did not sufficiently address themselves. The second
part of the Expanded Pravda, the Statute of Vladimir Monomakh, was prompt-
ed (always according to Iushkov) by the social unrest and the uprisings which
immediately preceded Vladimir’s accession to the throne of Kiev and which
are well documented in the chronicles.
Most authors consider Iushkov’s position on this question untenable.27
There are indeed many arguments against it. Epifanov pointed out that it
would be hard to understand how fundamental socio-economic changes
could occur within a period of twenty years, to warrant comprehensive new
25 The Second Godunov Copy (gii), cf. Grekov, Pravda Russkaia i, 146.
26 Iushkov, Russkaia Pravda, 169–185.
27 Tikhomirov, Posobie, 23–24; P.P. Epifanov, “K voprosu o proiskhozhdenii Russkoi Pravdy”,
Voprosy Istorii, 1953, No.3, 93–104; Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, 222; Ia.N. Shchapov, rz i, 40–41.
legislation (Iushkov accepts 1072 as the date of the original Pravda of Iaroslav’s
Sons). Furthermore, the social awareness which Iushkov discerns in the Stat-
ute of Monomakh is noticeable only in its first 10–12 provisions; the bulk of the
second part of the Expanded Pravda is devoted to a variety of matters. F inally,
the editorial process of the Expanded Pravda proves convincingly that it is
to be regarded as a coherent whole. Notwithstanding the two headings, the
original Short Pravda has been worked into the text of the Expanded Pravda
in a way that is inconsistent with Iushkov’s theory. Almost all provisions of
the Short Pravda (both Iaroslav’s and his sons’ Pravda) reappear in edited form
in the Expanded Pravda, without repetition and scattered over both parts of
the text. This shows that the Expanded Pravda was put together at a particular
time on the basis of several texts of which the Short Pravda was one.
The Relationship Between the Short Pravda and the

Expanded Pravda
The most efficient way to identify the various components of the Expanded
Pravda is to elucidate first its relationship with the Short Pravda. The existence
of a close relationship is immediately evident: the common name, the similar-
ity of the first articles of both texts, the connection with Iaroslav the Wise, and
especially the occurrence of a large number of parallel provisions.
Some 19th-century authors held that the Expanded Pravda antedated the
Short Pravda, but there has been complete agreement for a long time now that
this could not be the case.28 The fact that the Statute of Vladimir Monomakh,
whatever its exact extent may be, is clearly an integral part of the Expanded
Pravda speaks out conclusively against the latter being older than the Short
Pravda. Also, many provisions of the Expanded Pravda reflect a more devel-
oped economic and social climate than the one projected by the Short Pravda.
If there has been any borrowing between the two, it must have been from the
Short Pravda to the Expanded Pravda and not vice versa.
A comparison of the two texts shows that almost the entire Short Pravda
has been incorporated into the Expanded Pravda, although not in a single
block, and always with an amended text. Art. 18 of the Short Pravda (damaging
28 One of the last authors to argue in favour of a greater age of the Expanded Pravda was
A.I. Sobolevskii, “Dve redaktsii Russkoi Pravdy”, Sbornik statei v chest’ grafini P.S. Uvarovoi,
Moskva, 1916, 17–23. E.F. Karskii, Russkaia Pravda po drevneishemu spisku, Leningrad,
1930, 9, still admitted the plausibility of this argument, but none of the later writers have
followed in this respect.
134 chapter 5
somebody’s weaponry or clothes) is absent in the texts of the Synodal-Trinity

group, but has been included at the end of the copies of the Pushkin and
Karamzin groups among the so-called “Russian articles” (russkie stat’i). Art. 29
of the Short Pravda (abduction of a slave or slave woman) is also absent in the
Expanded Pravda, although the case is covered in a different manner by art. 114
of the latter statute (dealing with the procedure to be followed if one discovers
one’s slave in another town). This provision is part of the block of provisions
“On slavery” (arts. 110–121) and inclusion of the isolated provision of art. 29 of
the Short Pravda may have been considered superfluous to the compilers of
the Expanded Pravda.
Although the Expanded Pravda, as noted above, has the appearance of con-
sisting of two parts, the Law of Iaroslav and the Statute of Vladimir Monomakh,
the first part can in no way be regarded as an edited version of the Pravda of
Iaroslav (as the first part of the Short Pravda) or the entire Short Pravda. The
Expanded Pravda is unmistakably the product of an editorial process in which
one has tried to unite several texts, including the Short Pravda, into a coher-
ent whole. The first article of the Short Pravda (the old rule concerning homi-
cide, revenge and composition) has presumably been taken over in the first
article of the Expanded Pravda (with amendments) to emphasize continuity
since Iaroslav. The following article in the Expanded Pravda is based on the
preamble to the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons, and in fact cancels art. 1 (abolition
of vengeance). Then a few new provisions (arts. 3–10) deal with the payment
of bloodwite (fine) and arts. 11–17 parallel arts. 22–27 of the Short Pravda (fines
for killing the prince’s people). More rules on homicide and bloodwite follow
(arts. 18–22) and then there is a series of provisions on various kinds of bodily
harm (23–31); these rules parallel arts. 2–9 of the Short Pravda. Arts. 10–14 of
the Short Pravda reappear (with amendments) in arts. 31–35 of the Expanded
Pravda and a few more (arts. 16, 35, 31, 40, 28 and 15) are connected with arts.
38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45 and 47 of the Expanded Pravda. The second part of the
Expanded Pravda, the Statute of Vladimir Vsevolodovich (Monomakh), begins
at art. 53 and most of the immediately following provisions (arts. 54–64) are
usually interpreted as addressing socio-economic unrest in early 12th-century
Kiev. This part is followed by a considerable number of provisions dealing
mostly with various infractions against property. In this part old Short Pravda
provisions resurface (arts. 17, 8, 34, 37, 33, 35, 36–37 and 39) as arts. 65, 67, 72,
78, 79, 81 and 82. Most curious is art. 67 (“On beards”), reproducing art. 8 of the
Short Pravda, where pulling out somebody’s beard was considered a grievous
offence, deserving a 12 grivna wergeld.
Editorial intervention is also very noticeable in the changing terminology.
The iabetnik and ognishchanin as princely officials have disappeared, but are
probably covered by kniazh’ muzh’ (the prince’s man); the Vikings (Variagi and
Kolbiagi) of the Short Pravda (arts. 1 and 11) have apparently been absorbed in
the Slavic population and are not mentioned anymore in the corresponding
provisions of the Expanded Pravda (arts. 1 and 32). The killing of the prince’s
stable master still entailed an 80 grivna fine in the Expanded Pravda, but the
interesting aside in the Short Pravda was dropped (“as Iziaslav established
when the people of Dorogobuzh killed his stable master”).
The last provision of the Short Pravda, the bridge builders’ statute, is also the
last Short Pravda provision taken over in the Expanded Pravda (art. 97).
The manner in which the Short Pravda has been worked into the Expanded
Pravda does not only illustrate the editorial process, but also helps to identify
other components of the latter text.
The Statute of Vladimir Vsevolodovich Monomakh
The heading “The Statute of Vladimir Vsevolodich” is followed by a preamble

similar to the one preceding the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons in the Short Pravda.
After [the death of] Sviatopolk, Vladimir Vsevolodich, having called

together his druzhina at Berestovo: Ratibor, tysiatskii of Kiev, Prokopii,
tysiatskii of Belgorod, Stanislav, tysiatskii of Pereiaslavl’, Nazhir, Miroslav,
and Ivanko Chudinovich, Oleg’s man, and they established …
As explained above, no one holds any longer that the entire following text of
the Expanded Pravda is the law issued at the conference at Berestovo; the ques-
tion is rather where the actual Statute of Monomakh ends. The answer can be
given by combining the indications provided by the rp text itself with external
information, in particular from the chronicles. The background of the begin-
ning of Vladimir Monomakh’s reign, as related by the chronicles, is as follows.
Vladimir was the son of Vsevolod, the youngest of the three Iaroslavichi
brothers mentioned in the preamble to the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons. Vsevolod
had been grand prince of Kiev after the death of his elder brothers, according
to the succession customs of the Rurikid dynasty. During the last years of his
reign his son Vladimir had taken over much of the power of his ailing father. But
when Vsevolod died in 1093, Vladimir, who was nominally prince of Chernigov,
stepped down in favour of his senior cousin Sviatopolk (son of Iziaslav, elder
brother of Vsevolod), and took up his duties in Chernigov. He actively support-
ed his cousin in the tumultuous years that followed. When Sviatopolk died in
1113, riots broke out in Kiev where the houses of powerful officials and wealthy
136 chapter 5
burghers were sacked. The Hypatian Chronicle also mentions Jews as victims
of the popular fury. Prominent citizens begged Vladimir to come to Kiev and
take the reins. His previous involvement and his successful military and civil
record made him the obvious successor, although two other cousins, Davyd
and Oleg (sons of Sviatoslav, the brother of Iziaslav and Vsevolod), could have
claimed senior status.
According to Tikhomirov, the conference in Berestovo probably took place
in the same year (1113), as Vladimir’s cousin Oleg died in 1115 and Ivanko Chudi-
novich was present in Berestovo as Oleg’s representative. Moreover, the obvi-
ous socio-economic background of the popular uprising in Kiev made it urgent
to introduce reforms right away.29
That widespread indebtedness and the resulting usury were an important
factor is demonstrated in the rules on usury which follow immediately in the
same sentence after the passage on the conference of Berestovo. A maximum
rate of 50% interest was established and this interest could only be collect-
ed twice; if it was collected a third time, the debtor was freed from paying
back the principal. The following two provisions (arts. 54–55) also concerned
indebtedness.
A new block of provisions on the “indentured labourer” (zakup) started with
art. 56. It embraced arts. 56–62 and 64.30 Most authors have regarded the law
on the zakup as part of the original Statute of Monomakh. It is about the only
source on the institution of the zakup (see Chapter 18, on Rural Russia).
The first part of the Expanded Pravda, entitled “The Law of Iaroslav”, was
based mainly on the Short Pravda, in amended form and with a number of ad-
ditions. Together with the original Statute of Monomakh it accounted for less
than half of the entire Expanded Pravda. What then made up the remaining
part of the Expanded Pravda? It contained three recognizable blocks of provi-
sions plus quite a number of isolated rules.
The first of these blocks concerned the legal consequences of various unlaw-
ful actions against persons or property. They included a number of provisions
based in part on older rules in the Short Pravda. The first one is art. 65 (a slave
striking somebody, see art. 17 of the Short Pravda) and then arts. 67–73, and 75–84.
Arts. 85–87 are connected with the foregoing, but deal with procedural mat-
ters, evidence in particular. Arts. 88 and 89 complete the series with two new
general rules: the killing of a woman is treated as the killing of a man, but the
29 Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 208–210. Zimin, in his chapter on the reforms of Monomakh

(Pravda Russkaia, 217–254), generally concurs with Tikhomirov.
30 Art. 66, on evidence of witnesses, also mentions the zakup; in suits over small sums the
evidence of a zakup may be accepted.
fine (bloodwite) is halved (art. 88); the killing of a male or female slave entailed
a fine of 12 grivna (to the prince) and compensation to the owner (art. 89).
A new series of rules devoted to inheritance law begins at art. 90 and ends
at art. 108, but there are several insertions on other subjects (arts. 96–97, wages
for builders; art. 107, court fees). The last block (arts. 110–121) concerns slavery.
These rules also build on the few provisions on slavery in the Short Pravda and
reflect the gradual development of this institution in the 11th century whereby
the status of a slave became more similar to the status of a dependent peasant
and vice versa.31
The Final Compilation of the Expanded Pravda
The various components of the Expanded Pravda must have been collected at
some time into a single document. When was this achieved and what was the
status of this document?
The simplest answer was given by Iushkov. The first part of the Expanded
Pravda, the “Law of Iaroslav”, constituted in his view a heavily updated
and amended version of the Short Pravda, enacted by a Kievan grand prince
around the end of the 11th or the beginning of the 12th century.32 The second
part of the Expanded Pravda, under the heading of “The Statute of Volodi-
mir Vsevolodich”, represented a law code established by Vladimir Monomakh
shortly after the uprising of 1113.33 When these two parts were joined together
appeared to be a matter of little importance and Iushkov did not bother to deal
with it.
For most authors, however, the starting position was that the Short Pravda,
the Statute of Vladimir Monomakh, and several other enactments were col-
lected and subjected to an editorial process resulting in the original text of the
Expanded Pravda. The traces of such editorial activity are indeed undeniable.
The chronological limits of this process are the accession of Vladimir Mono-
makh to the Kievan throne in 1113 and the appearance of the Synodal Copy
of the Expanded Pravda in 1280. There are good reasons to assume that this
copy was already significantly different from the original text and this would
speak for a much earlier date than 1280. This argument is greatly reinforced
by the presence of the so-called Smolensk Pravda, the treaty of 1229 between
31 See Zimin’s chapter on slavery in Pravda Russkaia, 255–275.

32 That would mean Monomakh’s father Vsevolod, or the latter’s successor and nephew,
Sviatopolk. Iushkov, Russkaia Pravda, 326–327.
33 Iushkov, Russkaia Pravda, 335.
138 chapter 5
Smolensk and Riga (see Chapter 7, on Treaties). There are quite a number of
provisions in the Smolensk text which are strongly reminiscent of provisions
in the Short as well as the Expanded Pravda.34 This of course would indicate
an earlier date for the Expanded Pravda. Tikhomirov has proposed the period
immediately following the upheavals in Novgorod in 1209, the beginning of the
reign of prince Mstislav Mstislavich “the Fortunate” (Udatnyi) in Novgorod, in
tune with his (Tikhomirov’s) view that the Expanded Pravda was compiled in
Novgorod.35
The latter view is shared by few others36 as there are much better arguments
to connect the Expanded Pravda with Kiev, then still the undisputed capital,
than with Novgorod. Vernadsky has suggested the period of 1160–1168, during
which Rostislav of Smolensk served as grand prince in Kiev.37
In his survey of the literature on this problem, Baranowski pointed out that
after Vladimir Monomakh and his son Mstislav the Great († 1132) no Kievan
grand prince would probably have had the power and authority to achieve the
legislative consolidation represented by the Expanded Pravda.38 This of course
begs the question concerning the character of the Expanded Pravda; was it
real legislation, or a private recording of relevant legal texts, or something
in-between?
Zimin has defended an early origin of the Expanded Pravda. He regarded
Vladimir Monomakh as the central figure in a complex of legislative mea-
sures to address the socio-economic crisis of 1113. This complex embraced
mainly the actual Statute of Monomakh (the rules on interest payments and
on the zakupy) and the laws on succession and slavery. All this material was
reworked together with the existing law based on the Short Pravda but con-
siderably enlarged and amended and combined with several other legislative
fragments into a more or less coherent whole shortly after the 1113 conference
in Berestovo.39
The matter of the official status of the Expanded Pravda is less relevant than
it might seem. The prince himself and his closest advisors would certainly
have taken all important decisions on substance. The elaboration and actual
34 Cf. Zimin’s comments to the text of the Treaty in prp ii, 75–85.
35 Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 229. This prince was the son of Mstislav Rostislavich “the Brave”,
of the Smolensk sub-dynasty, who also ruled in Novgorod from 1178–1179.
36 Such as L.V. Cherepnin in “Obshchestvenno-politicheskie otnosheniia v Drevnei Rusi i
Russkaia Pravda”, A.P. Novosel’tsev (ed.), Drevnerusskoe gosudarstvo i ego mezhdunarod-
noe znachenie, Moskva, 1963, 128–278 (not available to me).
37 Vernadsky, Laws, 17.
38 Baranowski, 154.
39 Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, 217–254, esp. 253–254.
draftingof the text could only have been done by persons with the required
skills, in those days priests and monks. Once a final text was approved it would
be copied out for use by judges. The continuing copying process, in the condi-
tions of an ever more fragmented realm and changing economic circumstanc-
es, would result in a gradual diversification. The large number of Expanded
Pravda copies demonstrates that there was a lasting demand for it. Public and
private features are inextricably present in the history of the text.
Foreign Sources for the Russkaia Pravda?
The more general problem of the possible impact of foreign legal cultures and
systems on medieval Russian law will be discussed in Chapter 10, on Foreign
Laws. As the rp is undoubtedly the first significant item of Russian legisla-
tion, the question concerning its sources, and in particular foreign sources,
is legitimate and has indeed been raised frequently by its commentators.
(The 10th-century treaties with Byzantium most probably contain Russian as
well as Byzantine elements, but this is not directly a matter of reception of
foreign law.)
The two most obvious candidates are Byzantine (Greek) and Scandinavian
law. The latter could have been an active factor in an early period, when a Scan-
dinavian (Viking) identity was still discernible as a separate element, in other
words, at the time the Oldest Pravda (the Pravda of Iaroslav) emerged. This
topic has been discussed accordingly in Chapter 4, on the Short Pravda.
The Byzantine factor merits a somewhat more extensive discussion, be-
cause it was more permanent, on account of the continued presence and in-
volvement of Greek clergy in the affairs of medieval Russia. As Byzantine law
was based largely on Roman law, the question of the influence of Roman law
looms in the background.40
When examining the issue of the impact of foreign law in a medieval set-
ting, one encounters specific methodological obstacles. There is usually little
or no ‘surrounding’ information, such as travaux préparatoires or contempo-
rary commentaries; this means that a judgment must be based largely on simi-
larity or, more precisely, on a calculation of the probability that the drafter of
a particular rule, which displays a certain similarity with an earlier rule from
another legal system, could have chosen his words without being aware of the
40 This section is based mainly on my paper “Roman Law in Medieval Russia”, in Feldbrugge,
lmr, 59–128. For more extensive references, see this work.
140 chapter 5
other rule. Such a calculation has to take into account any available data affect-
ing the probability.
Direct influence of Roman law in the formative phase of the rp can in no
specific instance be demonstrated or even made probable, although it has
been suggested by a few authors.41 Such influence would also be extremely
unlikely, considering the conditions of early Christian Russia. The vehicle of its
contacts with the world of Christendom was the presence of a small number
of Greek clergy in Kiev, Novgorod and a few other major centres. Some of them
would have had a knowledge of Byzantine canon law, but at that time almost
nobody in Constantinople was able to read Roman law sources in Latin, and,
moreover, the physical availability of such texts in Constantinople was very
restricted. Byzantine secular law, although based mainly on Roman law, was
embodied in various Greek compendia, such as the Ecloga and the Prochei-
ron. So the chances of anybody having access to Roman law texts in 11th- and
12th-century Kiev or Novgorod were actually nil. Also, the areas of secular law
of which a Greek monk in Russia would have had some knowledge would pri-
marily concern topics where traditional Roman attitudes had been replaced by
Christian views and where the Roman law content had accordingly been much
reduced or where it had completely disappeared (matrimonial law and parts
of criminal law).
There is, to my knowledge, only a single instance of possible Roman law in-
fluence in the rp and it illustrates the situation sketched above. Art. 46 of the
Expanded Pravda concerns theft committed by slaves. The provision has no
predecessor in the Short Pravda and has probably been drafted during the last
decades of the 11th century. It provides, among other things, that the master of
the slave must pay the owner the double value of the stolen property. This was
a common sanction in Roman law, taken over in Byzantine law and unknown
in Russian law. After art. 46 it disappeared again in Russian law. My hypothesis
is that a Greek clergyman in the prince’s court, who would have been familiar,
even without much general legal knowledge, with the double-value compensa-
tion in Byzantine law, put forward the idea when art. 46 was drafted.
Whether Byzantine law would have influenced the rp can be examined in
the same way: What are the chances of such influences, on the basis of what
we know about the circumstances surrounding the genesis of the rp; and: Can
41 In particular by N.A. Maksimeiko, Ocherki obshchestvennogo i gosudarstvennogo stroia

Drevnei Rusi, Sankt-Peterburg, 1908 (2nd ed.) and more recently by E.V. Salogubova, “Vli-
ianie rimskogo prava na rossiiskoe grazhdanskoe zakonodatel’stvo”, Vestnik Moskovskogo
Universiteta, seriia ii, Pravo, 1997, No.2, 29–37 and id., “Elementy rimskogo prava v rossiis-
kom proizvodstve x–xvii vv.”, Ius Antiquum-Drevnee Pravo, 1999, No.4, 173–179.
the effect of such influences be demonstrated or at least made probable in any

individual case?
An answer to the first question depends heavily on the time factor, in other
words, what Byzantine legal sources were available in the formative phases of
the different components of the rp? The answer is complicated by the lack of
agreement concerning the time frame of the rp and the uncertainty about the
appearance of various Byzantine texts in Russia.
The earliest text to have reached Russia may have been the Short Version
of the Court Law for the People, usually considered to have arrived before the
13th century. The collection known as Knigi Zakonnye (“Law Books”) is very
tentatively dated in the 12th century and its main component was a Russian
translation of the Nomos Georgikos (“Farmer’s Law”). A Slavonic translation
of the Procheiron was at least available in 1273 (the arrival of the Serbian
kormchaia in Kiev), but one might very tentatively consider the appearance of
translations of the Ecloga and the Procheiron at some time in the 12th century.
Such translations were included in the Merilo Pravednoe and the composition
of its earliest version is sometimes dated as far back as the 12th century.42 All
in all one could contemplate the possibility of some Byzantine legal texts being
available during the later formative phase of the Expanded Pravda, but noth-
ing more than that.
With this in mind one may look at the specific examples given by Russian au-
thors who consider Byzantine law as a source of the rp.43 Without refuting the
various claims one by one, a few general points should be made.44 First, most
claims fail already on the basis of chronology: the alleged Byzantine source
was not available at the time a particular provision of the rp was drafted. Sec-
ond, most parallel provisions are too general to make a genetic link at all prob-
able. Third, the authors concerned all come forward with different proposals,
not shared by other commentators, and this suggests that these proposals are
hazardous. With regard to Kalachov and Sergeevich one might add that the
general state of knowledge about the subject has improved very considerably
since they wrote their treatises. In sum, it is fair to say that at the present state
42 For more detail and references, see my paper on “Roman Law in Medieval Russia”.
43 Notably N. Kalachov, in Predvaritel’nyia iuridicheskiia svedeniia dlia polnago ob”iasneniia
Russkoi Pravdy, Sankt-Peterburg, 1880 (2nd ed.), Sergeevich, in Lektsii, and E.E. Lipshits
in her commentary to the Russian edition of the Nomos Georgikos, I.P. Medvedev (ed.),
Vizantiiskii Zemledel’cheskii Zakon, Leningrad, 1984.
44 The full argument and necessary references in my paper on “Roman Law in Medieval
Russia”.
142 chapter 5
of knowledge the influence of Byzantine law on the rp in its various stages is

completely undocumented and therefore, for the time being, unlikely.
The Abridged Version of the Russkaia Pravda
The more than 100 extant copies of the rp can easily be divided, as we have
seen, into two main versions: the Short Pravda (available in a dozen or so cop-
ies) and the Expanded Pravda (available in a large number of copies), itself
subdivided into many groups, families, etc. Two copies remain however, the
Fourth Tolstoi Copy (tbiv) and the First Obolenskii Copy (ao), which cannot
be assigned to either the Short or the Expanded Pravda; both copies are dated
around the middle or the second half of the 17th century and are to be found
in kormchie. They have been known since the 19th century as the Abridged
Pravda (Sokrashchennaia Pravda).
The Abridged Pravda is somewhat longer than the Short Pravda and about
one third the length of the Expanded Pravda. It numbers fifty articles in the prp
i edition.45 On the whole it remains closer to the text of the Expanded Pravda
than the Short Pravda does. In the latter, almost all provisions have their coun-
terpart in the Expanded Pravda, but the wording has usually been changed
considerably and the original sequence of the provisions of the Short Pravda is
completely lost in the Expanded Pravda. The Abridged Pravda, with the excep-
tion of one provision (art. 2), follows the sequence of the Expanded Pravda.
Some provisions are identical to their counterpart in the Expanded Pravda and
otherwise the changes are usually of secondary importance. Whereas most
Short Pravda provisions find their parallel provisions in the first part of the
Expanded Pravda, about half the parallel provisions of the Abridged Pravda are
found after art. 80 of the Expanded Pravda, i.e. in its last third part. There are
only thirteen provisions in the Expanded Pravda which have parallels in both
the Short and the Abridged Pravda.
Investigating which parts of the Expanded Pravda reappear or disappear in
the Abridged Pravda sheds some light on the character of the latter text. In the
first part of the Expanded Pravda (arts. 1–52, the part preceding the Statute of
Monomakh) there are only 18 parallels with provisions of the Abridged Pravda.
There are only two parallels in the actual Statute of Monomakh (arts. 54–55).
Then arts. 69–73 of the Expanded Pravda (concerning the theft of beavers and
the damaging of various boundary marks) have been summarized in art. 21
of the Abridged Pravda. But after art. 80 of the Expanded Pravda the parallels
45 prp i, 197–205.
with the Abridged Pravda are numerous, with a very obvious gap at arts. 101–
109 of the Expanded Pravda (mostly inheritance law), absent in the Abridged
Pravda.46
The almost unanimous opinion concerning the Abridged Pravda has been,
since the 19th century, that it represents a drastically abridged edition of the
Expanded Pravda, made at a comparatively late date.47 The editor shortened
the by then often obscure text and adapted it according to the understanding
and the terminology of his time. Provisions which seemed irrelevant to him
were omitted and this would explain the small number of parallels between
the more ancient Short Pravda and the Abridged Pravda.
It has been established that the Abridged Pravda was based on the Third
Tsarskii Copy (TsIII) of the first half of the 17th century.
The only significant heterodox view on the Abridged Pravda was expressed
by Tikhomirov, who presented an ingenious but far-fetched hypothesis in his
main work on the rp.48 He believed that there were ancient elements in the
Abridged Pravda, absent in the Expanded Pravda. A text similar to the Short
Pravda existed perhaps as early as the 11th century in Novgorod. This text was
used around 1400, perhaps in the remote new eparchy of Perm’, as the raw ma-
terial for an abbreviated text, which then served as the protograph of the two
17th century copies of the Abridged Pravda. Later on Tikhomirov took back
much of this theory.49
As to the background of the Abridged Pravda, Zimin and other authors have
connected its origin with various codification attempts at the end of the 16th
and the beginning of the 17th century.50 Its importance is therefore mainly in
illustrating the direction of legal thought at that time. It does not throw new
light on the law of the Kievan era.
46 See the Table of parallel provisions of the three versions of the rp in prp i, 22225.
47 See Zimin’s chapter on the Abridged Pravda in his Pravda Russkaia, 335–354.
49 Tikhomirov, Posobie, 24.
50 Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, 353–354.
chapter 6
Princely Statutes
Introduction
Among the legislative sources of medieval Russian law, the Russkaia Pravda,
in its two main versions, undoubtedly dominates the stage as the oldest, most
fundamental and most comprehensive document. Nothing of the same stature
was realized until the Code (Sudebnik) of Ivan iii of 1497. The Court Charter of
Pskov was comparable in scope, but, as its name indicated, its applicability was
limited to the territory of Pskov. There was nevertheless a considerable amount
of other legislation in the intervening period. For the sake of convenience this
material has been divided here into three categories, princely statutes, treaties,
and local or provincial statutes.
The so-called Church Statute of St. Vladimir has been followed by a series
of other statutes, concerned mainly with the relations between the prince and
the Church, but dealing with a variety of other matters as well. They are treated
in this chapter under the heading of “princely statutes”. In the more recent
literature on this topic the works of Ia.N. Shchapov (1928–2011) figure most
prominently.1
Treaties have been included among legislative materials because in the set-
ting of the Russian middle ages the dividing-line between treaties and laws
was by no means as sharp as nowadays. The treaties between ruling Russian
princes dealt primarily with matters which we would designate as public or
constitutional law, or even the internal law of the ruling family. Treaties with
foreign powers often dealt with questions of civil and criminal law in situa-
tions where nationals of both sides lived in close contact.
The third category comprises legislative material of various nature, but of
limited spatial applicability: laws applying only in a specific principality. The
Court Charter of Pskov is the leading example.
1 Especially: Kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’ v Drevnei Rusi xi–xv vv., Moskva, 1972;
Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy xi–xv vv., Moskva, 1976;
Vizantiiskoe i iuzhnoslavianskoe pravovoe nasledie na Rusi v xi–xiii vv., Moskva, 1978;
Gosudarstvo i tserkov’ Drevnei Rusi x–xiii vv., Moskva, 1989;
Vizantiiskaia «Ekloga Zakonov» v russkoi pis’mennoi traditsii, Sankt-Peterburg, 2011.

Princely Statutes 145
The Church Statute of St. Vladimir
The document commonly known as the Statute of the Holy Prince Vladimir is
a short text, drawn up in the name of Vladimir Sviatoslavich, the first Christian
prince of Kiev. It defines certain basic elements of the legal position of the
RussianChurch. It is available in more than two hundred copies, dating from
the 14th to the 19th century.2 Most of them are included in different kormchie,
but also in various other collections of legal and ecclesiastical texts.
Chapter 21, on the Church and Monasteries, analyzes in more detail the fun-
damental importance of the Statute of St. Vladimir in shaping the relationship
between Church and state in Russia, a relationship which to some extent has
survived to the present day. It comprises a relatively prominent position for the
Church in public affairs, balanced by considerable subservience to the state.
The means by which the Statute secured the position of the Church was the
granting of tithes, of jurisdiction in certain cases and the definition of “church
people” as a special legal category.
As the Statute was copied and referred to continuously and remained the
basis for similar legislation in the separate principalities arising in later cen-
turies, it never became completely forgotten like the Russkaia Pravda. A con-
siderable number of copies was already available to legal scholarship in the
19th century. The most frequently debated question at that time was the au-
thenticity of the Statute. Karamzin, pointing to a number of inconsistencies in
the text, had considered it a forgery fabricated in the 13th century.3 This view
remained dominant for a long time, although it was already rejected by met-
ropolitan Evgenii in 1825 in his history of the Kievan Church.4 The question of
the authenticity is inevitably bound up with the other main subject of schol-
arly examination: a correct classification of the enormous number of copies.
As the latter question was gradually being solved, it became clear that there
was indeed a nucleus in the Statute which could be traced to the very early
2 The older publications by Beneshevich and Iushkov are quoted below, as is Shchapov’s com-
prehensive 1976 edition of almost all available copies. Text of some of the most important
copies in prp i, 236–256 (comments by Zimin) and in rz i, 133–162 (comments by Shchapov
and N.A. Semiderkin). The rz text was also taken over in PRoP i, 461–462, with comments
by Iu.V. Ospennikov, 462–468. Text of the Synodal Copy and English translation in Kaiser,
Laws, 42–44. French translation of the Synodal Copy in M. Szeftel and A. Eck, Documents de
droit public relatifs à la Russie médiévale, Bruxelles, 1963, 229–245. The Statute of Vladimir was
already known to Herberstein in the 16th century, who quoted liberally from it. Older transla-
tions (into Latin, German and Italian) are mentioned by Shchapov.
3 Karamzin, T.I, note 506.
4 Evgenii [Bolkhovitinov], Opisanie Kievo-Sofiiskogo sobora i Kievskoi ierarkhii, Kiev, 1825, 7.
146 chapter 6
times of St. Vladimir. Through the ages new elements had been added to this
nucleus and this would explain the apparent inconsistencies in the texts that
had come down to modern times.
Important moments in the study of the Statute were the publication in
1915 of the then available copies by V.N. Beneshevich5 and the appearance of
S.V. Iushkov’s study in 1925 in which a classification of six redactions was pro-
posed.6 Then in 1972 and 1976 Ia.N. Shchapov published his two volumes on the
statutes of the Old-Russian princes.7 Almost half of the first work is devoted to
the Statute of Vladimir and the second volume offers the full text of 18 major
copies plus an additional 203 copies as variants in the footnotes. Shchapov dis-
tinguished between seven different redactions of the Statute, of which the Ole-
ninskaia, dating from the end of the 12th or the beginning of the 13th century,
is considered closest to the original text.8 Shchapov’s works have since been
regarded as the basic publications on the subject. Most of the following, unless
indicated otherwise, is based on Shchapov’s 1972 study.
A major difference between the Statute of Vladimir and the rp is in the dia-
chronic aspect, to put it briefly but cryptically. Although all commentators ac-
cept that there was once upon a time an original text of the Statute, this text
was subjected to drastic editorial intervention through the ages, resulting in a
multitude of quite divergent texts. The position of the Church at a particular
time and in a particular region (principality) was thus reflected in the text of
a particular copy. The rp had a far more stable content; the Short Pravda was
absorbed and replaced by the Expanded Pravda after a century or so and the
Expanded Pravda remained operative all over Russia with only modest diver-
gencies among its many copies, until it was superseded by other legislation
after a considerable period.
Both Shchapov and Iushkov agree that the origin of the Statute is to be
found in the events immediately following the conversion of Russia in 988.
In 989 Vladimir is reported as building a church dedicated to the Bogoroditsa
5 V.N. Beneshevich, Sbornik pamiatnikov po istorii tserkovnago prava i, Petrograd, 1915, 59–77.
In this publication the articles of the text are not numbered. Later publications follow the
numbering given in Pamiatniki drevne-russkogo kanonicheskogo prava, Ch. ii, vyp.1, Russkaia
istoricheskaia biblioteka, xxxvi, Petrograd, 1920.
6 S.V. Iushkov, Issledovaniia po istorii russkogo prava, vyp.1. Ustav kniaz’ia Vladimira, Novouzensk,
1925. Other authors have “Saratov, 1926”, as place and date. The work was included in O.I.
Chistiakov (ed.), Serafim Vladimirovich Iushkov. Trudy vydaiushchikhsia iuristov, Moskva,
1989, 71–335.
7 Ia.N. Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’ v Drevnei Rusi xi–xiv vv., Moskva, 1972; id.,
Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy, xi–xv vv., Moskva, 1976.
8 Shchapov, in rz i, 138. The oldest copy extant is the Synodal Copy of the 14th century.
(the Mother of God, the Russian version of Greek Theotokos). The church was
completed a few years later (994–996). The Chronicle then added that Vladi-
mir, after praying in the church, said: “I bestow upon this church of the Holy
Mother of God a tithe of my estates and my towns”, “and he wrote out and
deposited a solemn vow in the church, saying: If anyone violates this, let him
be accursed.” Some time later, but before 1011 (the death of Vladimir’s wife, the
Byzantine princess Anna), the material provision of the Church was extended
from a single church’s tithe to a generous grant of fee-generating jurisdiction
for the Church.9 Iushkov believed that it was primarily the princess Anna and
the Greek clergy accompanying her who were responsible for this extension.10
The Byzantine Church was a wealthy landowner and did not need the tithe. The
young Russian Church had to be built up from the ground and did not own land
yet. The concept of the payment of one tenth of some or all assets to a religious
institution went back to the Old Testament, had been taken over by the Chris-
tian Church, and taken root in the Western Church before Charlemagne.11 The
tithe as an instrument for generating Church income was therefore undoubt-
edly known to the Greek clergy, even if the Byzantine Church made little use
of it. The jurisdictional grant served a double purpose. It generated income
for the Church and it represented an effective instrument for inculcating the
new Christian value system among a pagan nation. Most of the behaviour re-
ferred to the Church’s jurisdiction was outside the purview of traditional law
and would have been handled in the pagan past through negotiation among
families. As a third purpose one might designate the mutual advantages accru-
ing from this co-operative enterprise between state and Church. The new re-
ligion and the Church embodying it represented a powerful factor of national
integration for a dynasty that was only starting to build up its position. The
advantages for the Church were obvious, at least in the short run, when its
subordination to the state did not seem particularly oppressive.
The combination of the tithe granting and the transfer of jurisdiction formed
the nucleus of the Statute of Vladimir as it took shape in the early part of the
11th century.12 Although the original beneficiary of the tithe was the church of
the Bogoroditsa in Kiev, it was soon extended to the Church in general. This
is obliquely reflected, according to Shchapov, in art. 3, where the reference
to the “miracle-working Mother of God and the miracle-working Saviour” as
9 Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy, 127.

11 Its universal applicability in the Western Church was expressed in canon law in the Decre-
tum Gratiani, Book iii, Title 30.
148 chapter 6
beneficiaries probably referred to the churches of the same name erected in

Vladimir in 1158–1160 and 1164 respectively.13
The listing of church people, who were transferred en bloc to the jurisdiction
of the Church, was probably added somewhat later. The Statutory Charter of
prince Rostislav Mstislavich of Smolensk of 1136 (see the section below) is one
of the earliest and most important statutes drafted along the lines of the Statute
of Vladimir. The Smolensk Charter spelled out the various sources of Church
income in great detail; they comprised both tithes and various court fees; the
list of church people found in all copies of the Statute of Vladimir is absent. It
is therefore assumed that this list represents an addition made after 1136, but
still early enough to be included in the protograph at the basis of all of its ex-
tant copies.14 Shchapov has proposed 1158 as the year in which this protograph
arose, during the reign of Andrei Bogoliubskii as grand prince of Vladimir.15
Both Iushkov and Shchapov have attempted to reconstruct a protograph
of the Statute. One has to bear in mind that, as pointed out above, such a pro-
tograph would have enjoyed only a short period of relevance, after which it
became replaced by an ever-growing number of variant versions. Shchapov’s
text runs as follows:
[1.] In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
[2.] Lo i, prince Vasilii, called Volodimer, son of Sviatoslav, grandson of Igor
[and] of the blessed Olga have received holy baptism from the Greek em-
peror and the patriarch Photius [and] conducted the first metropolitan
to Kiev, who baptized the entire Russian land.
[3.] And in years past I founded the church of the Holy Mother of God and
gave it a tithe from the entire Russian land, from [the revenues of] my
principality [and] from every court [case] the tenth pence, from trade
[fees] the tenth week, from my houses for every year a tenth of all the
herds and of all the grain, to the miracle-working Mother of God and the
miracle-working Saviour.
[4.] And then I looked in the Greek Nomocanon and found in it that it does
not befit the prince, nor his boyars, nor his judges, to judge these disputes
and cases.
[5.] And after consulting with my princess Anna and with my children, I gave
[these cases] to the Holy Mother of God and to the metropolitan and all
the bishops.
13 Id., 130–131.
14 Id., 124.
15 Id., 133.
[6.] And therefore neither my children, nor my grandchildren, nor my lineage

are to interfere with church people and all [their] court cases.
[7.] And in all towns and in villages and in settlements where there
are Christians I have given [to the Church][the following cases]: di-
vorces, fornication, adultery, rape, disputes between husband and wife
over an inheritance, or if they are [too closely] related or in a spiritual
relationship [godparents or – children], divination, contumely, potion-
making, heresy, biting [in a fight between men], if a son or a daughter
beats the father or mother, or if brothers have a dispute over an inher-
itance. The metropolitan’s church people are: the abbot, the priest, the
priest’s wife, the priest’s children, the monk, the nun, the woman who
bakes the Eucharist bread, the slave freed by testament.
The article numbers have been added by Shchapov; the list of church people
(added later on, as explained above) has been left without a number.
Iushkov first reconstructed the hypothetical text of Vladimir’s charter, men-
tioned in the Chronicle in 994–996, which served as the basis for the original
Statute. The text is similar to arts. 5, 4, 6, and the first line of art. 7 (as above)
and also contains a threat against violators. His version of the protograph of
the Statute runs parallel with arts. 3, 5, 4, 6, 7 and the list of church people; the
threat against violators is inserted in art. 7.16
The tithe and the jurisdiction of the Church, as well as the recognition of
a special category of “church people”, remained the basic components of the
Statute in its numerous later versions. The original short version has been best
preserved in the Oleninskaia redaction, while most of the six other redactions
offer longer texts in which especially the topic of Church jurisdiction has been
dealt with more elaborately.
The basic importance of the Statute of Vladimir is in laying the foundation
for the relationship between Church and state in Russia as it was to survive
for many centuries. Additionally, its many versions with regional connec-
tions provide some insight into the differences between the legal systems of
the principalities of medieval Russia, a subject which is otherwise very poorly
documented.17
16 Texts reproduced in prp i, 235–236, taken from Iushkov’s 1925/1926 Issledovaniia, 134–135
and 118.
17 Shchapov, in rz i, 138, notes that the seven redactions identified by him are each con-
nected with a particular region.
150 chapter 6
The Church Statute of Iaroslav the Wise
The text known as the Statute of Iaroslav consists of a catalogue of offences

and misdemeanours to be dealt with by ecclesiastical courts, and of the penal-
ties to be imposed.18 Its introductory provision refers to grand prince Iaroslav,
the son of Vladimir, as its author, together with the metropolitan Ilarion, and
nobody has ever doubted that the Statute is therefore to be ascribed (but not
necessarily attributed) to the second Christian grand prince of Kiev, Iaroslav
the Wise, who ruled from 1019 to 1054. There are two main versions, the Short
and the Expanded Redaction.19 Compared to the Statute of Vladimir, the Stat-
ute of Iaroslav remained somewhat neglected for a long time. The fact that
Karamzin regarded it as a 14th century fabrication may have contributed to
this lack of attention.20 Only Kliuchevskii devoted an entire lecture to it, re-
garding it as a contemporary and pendant of the rp.21
In Soviet times, the principal authors to concern themselves with the Stat-
ute of Iaroslav were Iushkov and Zimin, and then Shchapov. Iushkov believed
that only the introductory provision of art. 1 (more or less repeating the grant
of jurisdiction made in arts. 4–5 of the Statute of Vladimir) could be attrib-
uted to Iaroslav and that the bulk of the Statute was of later date, perhaps the
middle of the 12th century.22 Zimin was more circumspect and regarded the
question of the time of origin of the Statute of Iaroslav as yet unsolved.23
Shchapov’s twin volumes, already mentioned above in connection with
the Statute of Vladimir, have filled this void, at least for some time to come.24
18 Standard edition now is Ia.N. Shchapov, Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy xi–xv vv.,
Moskva, 1976, 85–139. Also: prp i, 257–285 (Short and Expanded Redaction copies); rz i,
163–208 (Short and Expanded Redaction copies); the Expanded Redaction text of rz was
taken over in PRoP i, 468–471, with comments by Iu.V. Ospennikov, 471–480. Kaiser, Laws,
45–50 (Archeographic Copy, which combines the two redactions; with English transla-
tion); V.N. Beneshevich, Sbornik pamiatnikov po istorii tserkovnago prava i, Petrograd, 1915,
78–89 (Short and Expanded Redaction and two abbreviated copies).
19 The other four redactions (according to Shchapov’s classification) are of secondary inter-
est here. The Rumiantsev and Tarnovskii redactions represent a combination of the Short
and Expanded redactions; the Svitka Iaroslavlia and Ustiug redactions are short excerpts;
cf. Ia.N. Shchapov, Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy xi–xv vv., Moskva, 1976, 127–139.
20 Karamzin, ii, 38.
21 Kliuchevskii, Kurs i, 252–265 (Lecture xv).
23 prp i, 257.
24 Ia.N. Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’ v Drevnei Rusi xi–xiv vv., Moskva, 1972; id.,
Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy xi–xv vv., Moskva, 1976.
The 1976 volume offered five full texts of copies of the Expanded Redaction,
and four of the Short Redaction, plus a great many other copies as variants.
In the 1972 study a large chapter was devoted to the Statute of Iaroslav. In his
shorter introduction to the Statute in the rz publication, Shchapov himself
noted that his views on the topic had been widely accepted, in Russia as well
as abroad.25
Most copies of the Statute have been found in different kormchie (more
than half of them) or as part of other collections. The earliest copies date from
the second quarter of the 15th century.26 Shchapov distinguished between six
different redactions, the Expanded and Short Redaction being the first two. As
the other four are derived from the first two, they can be left aside here. A care-
ful analysis of the oldest and most reliable copies of the Expanded and Short
Redaction led Shchapov to the conclusion that there was no direct genetic con-
nection between the two and that both were based on a common older source.
The Short Redaction arose as a result of the redrafting and modernization of
parts of the original text, presumably in Moscow around the middle of the 14th
century. The main tenor of the adaptation of the Short Redaction was an ex-
pansion of princely jurisdiction at the expense of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.27
The Expanded Redaction, on the other hand, was the result of adding new
provisions. Otherwise it remained closer to the original text of the Statute. One
of the most conspicuous additions concerned the regulation of divorce. Most
of the additions and the emergence itself of the Expanded Redaction can be
dated around 1200.28
Shchapov’s analysis of the two main redactions and their relationship al-
lowed him to attempt a reconstruction of the original text. This was arrived at
by retaining the provisions, identical in both redactions, discarding the new
provisions of the Expanded Redaction, and undoing the innovations of the
Short Redaction.29 Of special importance in this respect was the monetary sys-
tem of the Statute, a question on which Kliuchevskii had already made some
observations.30 Changes in the value and denomination of the currency, docu-
mented by other sources, were of much assistance in sorting out the numer-
ous copies of the Statute.31 Shchapov’s reconstruction of the archetype of the
25 rz i, 166.
26 Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy, 200–232 (discussion of the different copies).
27 Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy, 233–235, 243.
28 Id., 234, 243, 257.
29 Id., 279; the reconstruction of the archetype is on 293–296.
30 Kliuchevskii, Kurs i, 257–258.
31 Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy, 257–279 (discussion of the monetary system of the Statute).
152 chapter 6
Statute of Iaroslav produced a text which, notwithstanding its hypothetical

character, is sufficiently convincing on acccount of its internal consistency.
Between the preamble (art. 1) and the stern appeal to all and sundry to ob-
serve the Statute (art. 42) there are forty separate provisions, of which the ma-
jority deals with infractions in the area of marriage, sexual relations, and the
family. All of these apply to the entire population. A second, smaller group is
formed by provisions regarding various other infractions, such as minor insults
and fights. These provisions are equally of universal application. The third
group consists of offences committed by persons specifically subject to the ju-
risdiction of the Church, such as members of the clergy, nuns, church servants.
These provisions presumably have been added at a somewhat later date.32
The Statute of Iaroslav, taken as a whole, and in its original form, elabo-
rates the grant of exclusive jurisdiction to the Church by the Kievan prince,
made already in more general terms by Iaroslav’s father St. Vladimir. From this
perspective, the Statute represented the natural complement to the rp, par-
ticularly the Expanded Pravda. The latter addressed itself to the protection of
the interests of the prince, his servants and his property, and of public order
in general. Where the interests of the prince were not heavily involved and, at
the same time, the Church claimed a strong interest, jurisdiction was ceded to
the latter.33
The Statute of Iaroslav may simultaneously be viewed as a companion or
sequel to the Statute of Vladimir, which was legally incomplete, as it lacked
sanctions. This was corrected by the Statute of Iaroslav. The penalties which it
prescribed had the form of fixed fines, to be paid to the bishop (or the metro-
politan in some of the texts). In a number of more serious cases the formula a
kniaz’ kaznit’ (“and the prince shall punish”) was added. Such cases (e.g. rape
or forcible abduction of a woman) could be regarded as being relevant in both
jurisdictional spheres, secular and ecclesiastical.34 The formula indicates how
the two spheres were closely intertwined. While the Old-Russian Church func-
tioned almost as a department of the state, Church and state were roughly
equal and separate partners in Byzantium. This, in Shchapov’s view, is the key
to a proper understanding of the Statute of Iaroslav.35
The replacement of church penances (epitimia) of Byzantine canon law by
fines and monetary sanctions in Russia should also be seen in this light. It was
32 Id., 288–289. Art. 41 (in Shchapov’s archetype, art. 57 in the Archeographical Copy, in
Kaiser’s translation).
33 Id., 291. A similar point had already been made by Kliuchevskii, Kurs i, 252.
34 Id., 197–198.
35 Id., 301.
not so much sins that were being punished, but violations of public order. Also,
in Russia it was the bishop, closely tied to the prince’s administration, who
imposed and received fines, and not the priest who would normally be the
first-line administrator of church penalties.36
The transfer of jurisdiction to the bishop in the Statute of Vladimir con-
cerned not only what we would regard as criminal cases, but civil matters as
well, particularly divorce and inheritance disputes. The original Statute of Iaro-
slav was basically a specialized criminal code, although divorce was included
in later versions.37 The infractions listed in the Statute of Vladimir were taken
over and much expanded, with the exception of certain pagan practices (divi-
nation, potion-making), although other pagan survivals were included.38
The expansion concerned primarily offences against Christian sexual mo-
res, where the Statute of Iaroslav went to great lengths in penalizing sexual re-
lations of all kinds, not only various types of rape and incest, but also between
godparents, with two sisters, with one woman by two brothers, with a nun, or
by nuns and priests, or with animals, etc. Some of these had also been covered
by provisions of Title 17 of the Ecloga, but the extreme casuistry of the Statute
of Iaroslav is lacking in the Ecloga and has to be ascribed to the ingenuity of the
drafters and, presumably, to surviving pagan habits of the Russian population.
But the major difference with Byzantine law, as already indicated above,
was in the sanctions. The corporal punishments and mutilations of Byzantine
law were without exception replaced by fines, although the formula “and the
prince will punish” in the most serious cases would allow something more
drastic.
The Statute of Iaroslav was an innovative legislative act in two ways. Com-
pared to the rp, which still contained an important element of pre-Christian
Russian law, the Statute of Iaroslav took its inspiration from Byzantine law, and
specifically from its predominantly non-Roman, Christian components. But
the ferocious Byzantine penalties imposed by the state were transformed into
financial sanctions and transferred to Church jurisdiction. This represented a
clear departure from Byzantine practice and in this connection Shchapov has
made the intriguing suggestion that the actual drafting could have coincided
36 Ibidem.
37 Art. 18 of Shchapov’s archetype (art. 19 in the Archeographical Copy) dealt with divorce,
but rather as an offence: the man who divorced (actually repudiated) his wife must pay
a fine to the bishop, the rate depending on whether there had been a church wedding
or not.
38 Art. 32 (Shchapov’s archetype, art. 36 of the Archeographical Copy), cutting the cheese as
a pagan marriage ritual.
154 chapter 6
with the metropolitanate of Ilarion, who is mentioned by name in the Statute

as co-author. Ilarion was the first Russian metropolitan of Kiev and he was ap-
pointed, not by the patriarch in Constantinople, like his three predecessors,
but by Iaroslav in 1051, “after he had assembled the bishops”.39 In a later work
Shchapov withdrew the suggestion on the grounds that the Statute of Iaroslav
was actually of a later date (12th–13th centuries).40
Whereas the Statute of Vladimir established the general pattern of legal
relations between Church and state in Russia, the Statute of Iaroslav was a
much more detailed code of mainly criminal law. This meant that it was more
exposed to obsolescence than its predecessor. In the centuries following its
enactment, some of the most obvious anachronisms were corrected, as the
process of copying and recopying went on, and this explains the significant
variety among the many copies extant. Finally, it suffered the same fate as the
Russkaia Pravda, the companion of which it was in some ways, and fell into
oblivion.41
The Statute of Vsevolod on Church Courts and People

and on Trade Measures
The “Statute of the Grand Prince Vsevolod on church courts and on people and
on trade measures” is known from a small number of copies, the earliest of
which dates from the middle of the 15th century.42 The discrepancies among
the various copies are insignificant, the main feature of the most divergent
Solovetsk Copy being the addition of a provision at the end of the statute.

40 Ia.N. Shchapov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov’ Drevnei Rusi x–xiii vv., Moskva, 1989, 193.
42 A.A. Zimin, prp ii, 160–161. Text of the Statute on 162–165, followed by Zimin’s comments
on 166–172. Older editions: M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov, Khristomatiia po istorii russkogo
prava i, 238–248; V.N. Beneshevich, Sbornik pamiatnikov po istorii tserkovnago prava i,
91–95; S.V. Iushkov, “Ustav kn. Vsevoloda”, Iubileinyi zbirnyk na poshany akad. D.I. Bahaliia,
Kiev, 405–427; republished in Russian in O.I. Chistiakov (ed.), S.V. Iushkov. Trudy vydai-
ushchikhsia iuristov, Moskva, 1989, 345–369, at 352–357. Newer editions: rz i, 249–261,
at 250–253 (comments by Ia.N. Shchapov); the same text taken over by PRoP i, 480–482,
with comments by Iu.V. Ospennikov, 482–488; Ia.N. Shchapov, Drevnerusskie kniazheskie
ustavy xi–xv vv., Moskva, 1976, 153–158; Kaiser, Laws, 59–64 (includes English translation).
French translation with notes and comments in M. Szeftel, M. Eck, Documents de droit
public relatifs à la Russie médiévale, Bruxelles, 1963, 267–280.
The principal substantive provisions of the Statute concern the granting

of certain revenues to the Church, the definition of Church jurisdiction, in
terms of persons as well as subject matter, the granting of the supervision over
weights and measures to the Church and the succession rights of illegitimate
children.
The inconsistencies in the text as it has been transmitted are obvious. There
are a number of repetitions and some of the provisions are contradictory. It is
generally agreed that the Statute as represented by the extant copies has never
been enacted as such and has been assembled from various sources. Beyond
this point opinions diverge.
The first point of controversy is the identity of prince Vsevolod, a decisive el-
ement in dating the Statute. The numerous references in the text to Novgorod,
its bishop, and the organization of urban government indicate that the prince
concerned was not the grand prince of Kiev, but a prince of Novgorod. Ac-
cording to one of the current views it was Vsevolod Mstislavich, eldest son of
Mstislav the Great and a grandson of Vladimir Monomakh, who resided in
Novgorod from 1117–1136 (see Chapter 16 for more details). This identification
can be supported by reference to another statute which can be ascribed with
reasonable certainty to the same prince, the so-called testament (Rukopisan-
ie) of Vsevolod Mstislavich (see below), which offers certain parallels with
the Church Statute of Vsevolod.43 On the basis of this identification Iushkov
has argued that there was an original charter of prince Vsevolod, consisting
mainly of a grant of revenues to the Novgorod Church, to be dated more or
less precisely in 1135/1136. This charter, together with the provision concerning
weights and measures (which may or may not have been part of the original
charter), would subsequently have been fused with the Church Statute of St.
Vladimir. The elaboration of the text of the Church Statute of Vsevolod as we
know it could then have been effected at some time around the end of the 13th
century.44
Iushkov’s views were rejected by Shchapov in his work on the Old-Russian
princely statutes. Shchapov concluded that the so-called Statute of Vsevolod
was concocted in Novgorod around the end of the 13th century on the basis
of the Statute of Vladimir and various local Novgorod ordinances. The assem-
blage served the political aims of Novgorod and was a posteriori connected
with a prominent local prince. The prince the Novgorod authors had in mind,
according to Shchapov, was Vsevolod Iur’evich, installed as prince in Novgorod
in 1222, when he was 10 years old. Then there were other additions made to
43 Iushkov, op.cit.; id., Stroi, 216–221.

44 Ibidem.
156 chapter 6
the Statute in the course of the 14th and 15th centuries.45 In the end, though,
Iushkov and Shchapov concur in regarding the extant text of the Statute as a
text originating around the end of the 13th century. This is now a fairly gener-
ally shared view.46
Zimin, in his introduction to the prp publication of the Statute of Vsevolod,
had also expressed his doubts about the existence of a 12th century charter of a
prince Vsevolod. An analysis of the text did not allow, in his view, a date earlier
than the end of the 14th century for the charter in its entirety.47 Zimin empha-
sized the Novgorod character of the document and regarded it as reflecting the
power struggle between the archbishop and the wealthy urban classes in the
14th century.
Another identification was proposed by Ianin in an ingenious argument
based on the baptismal name of Vsevolod, rendered ИГΘШЬ in most texts.
The deciphering of this cryptogram (not unusual in documents of the peri-
od) yielded “Peter” and it turned out that only one Novgorod prince named
Vsevolod had the baptismal name of Peter, Vsevolod, son of Mstislav Roma-
novich Khrabryi (“the Brave”), prince of Smolensk. This Vsevolod ruled in
Novgorod in 1219–1221.48
B.N. Floria made a connection between prince Vsevolod and the birich (her-
ald, town crier) Miroshka, mentioned in art. 4 of the Statute. Considering that
this person must have belonged to the highest circle of Novgorod officials, it
seems justified to assume that he was the same as Miroshka Nezdinich who
served as posadnik from 1189 until 1203. During the period of 1174–1212 the
princes of Novgorod were appointees of Vsevolod “Big Nest”, grand prince of
Vladimir. Floria pointed out that this prince repeatedly interfered personally
in the affairs of Novgorod. Floria’s interpretation would also justify the refer-
ence to “grand prince Vsevolod” in the preamble. The co-operation between
Vsevolod and Miroshka (and others) resulting in new legislation must have
45 Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy, 165–177. This Vsevolod was a grandson of Vsevolod iii “Big
Nest” (Bol’shoe Gnezdo).
46 See L.A. Bassalygo, “Novgorodskie tysiatskie. Chast’ i”, Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik
No.11 (21), 33–37, at 46–47; V.L. Ianin, Novgorodskie posadniki, Moskva, 2003, 129; B.N.
Floria, “K izucheniiu tserkovnogo ustava Vsevoloda”, V.A. Kuchkin (ed.), Rossiia v sred-
nie veka i novoe vremia. Sbornik statei k 70-letiiu chl.-korr. ran L.V. Milova, Moskva, 1999,
83–96, at 91.
47 prp ii, 161; also in A.A. Zimin, “Ustavnaia gramota kniazia Vsevoloda Mstislavicha”, in Aka-
demiku B.D. Grekovu ko dniu 70-tiletiia, Moskva, 1952, 121–131.
48 V.L. Ianin, Novgorodskie posadniki, Moskva, 2003 (2nd ed.), 129–135. Shchapov, ibidem, 168,
did not completely reject Ianin’s theory, but seemed to question its credibility.
occurred while Miroshka was still the birich, i.e. between 1174 and 1189. Other
details allowed Floria to narrow down the year hypothetically to 1182.49
The first part of the Statute of Vsevolod (arts. 1–13) generally followed the
Statute of Vladimir. Then arts. 14–16 transferred the supervision over weights
and measures to the bishop, referring to a Byzantine charter of patriarch Pho-
tius. Arts. 17–23 returned to the subject of Church jurisdiction over church
people and art. 24 concerned the succession rights of children of a third or
fourth marriage. Art. 25 is a general mandate to the bishop, accompanied by
the instruction to consult the Nomocanon. In the Solovetsk Copy a new art. 25
has been inserted after art. 24, devoted to the succession rights of children.
Until the controversies surrounding the origin of the Statute of Vsevolod
have been dissolved, it is difficult to formulate a final evaluation of the text, al-
though a few points stand out. The major part of the contents are based on the
Statute of Vladimir. Other parts reflect various legal innovations in Novgorod,
such as the supervision over weights and measures.50 Notwithstanding these
uncertainties, the Statute is of considerable relevance because it deals with
several underexposed topics. The list of church people, based on the Statute
of Vladimir, refers to the izgoi, a category of persons already mentioned in the
Short Pravda (see Chapter 19).
The Testament of Vsevolod Mstislavich (Rukopisanie)
The Archeographical Redaction of this text bears the title “And this is the Testa-
ment of Prince Vsevolod”; hence, to distinguish it from the Statute of Vsevolod
(often provided with the patronymic “Mstislavich”), the usual designation is
“The Testament [Rukopisanie: “handwriting”] of Vsevolod Mstislavich”. In the
other (Trinity) redaction this heading is absent. The latter redaction is repre-
sented by a single copy, the Archeographical Redaction by seventeen copies.51
The Testament basically represents a charter for the merchant guild of St. John
49 Floria, op.cit., 83–96.

50 Cf. Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy, 170, who points out that the later princely statutes con-
cerning the relationships between the prince and the bishop were usually based on the
Statute of Vladimir and elaborated and/or amended some of the latter’s provisions, add-
ing occasionally also entirely new items.
51 Shchapov, Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy, 158–165; prp ii, 174–185 (Trinity Copy; other
copies as variants); M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov, Khristomatiia po istorii russkago prava i,
Kiev, 1899 (5th ed.), 249–254; rz i, 262–292 (both redactions); V.N. Beneshevich, Sbornik
pamiatnikov tserkovnago prava i, Petrograd, 1915 (Archeograph. Red.; Trinity Copy as vari-
ants), 95–97.
158 chapter 6
the Baptist, the Ivanskoe kupechestvo, attached to the church of the same name
na Opokakh in Novgorod. This guild of St. John was not only endowed with the
supervision over the important wax trade, but also involved in the general gov-
ernment of Novgorod (see Chapter 16), and in commercial jurisdiction, exempt
from the ordinary town courts.
A superficial inspection would suggest 1135/1136 as the date of the charter;52
the prince is also clearly identified: Vsevolod Mstislavich, with the baptismal
name of Gabriel. This is the same prince (grandson of Vladimir Monomakh)
who is regarded by some as the author of the Statute of Vsevolod (see above).
There are, however, too many anachronisms in the text for this version to be ac-
cepted. Zimin has suggested a date between 1359 and 1410 for the final drafting
of the present text.53 Other authors have stressed that there was a 12th century
nucleus, admitting that amendments and additions were introduced later on.54
It would seem that in the end the chronological structure of the Testament
is not unlike that of the Statute of Vsevolod. The merchant guild of St. John the
Baptist had undoubtedly emerged gradually; the provisions of the Testament
recorded an existing situation. It would also be pointless to ask the question
about the relative age of the two documents. They both developed over time
and in conjunction. The Statute refers several times to the Ivanskoe kupechestvo
(arts. 4–6, 15) but these references are not contemporary with the final text of
the Testament and reflect somewhat different arrangements.
The Statute of Sviatoslav Ol’govich of 1137
This Statute presents fewer problems than other church statutes but also
adds less to our knowledge, all on account of its brevity. Only two older cop-
ies are extant (Synodal Copy of the 14th century and the Egorovskii Copy of
the end of the 15th century).55 It granted a tithe from various sources of the
52 The posadnik Miroslav was elected in 1135 and died the next year; prince Vsevolod Ms-
tislavich was deposed in 1136. Also, the church of St. John the Baptist na Opokakh was built
in 1127–1130 according to the Novgorod Chronicle.
53 prp ii, 178, 180.
54 Cf. M.N. Tikhomirov, Drevnerusskie goroda, Sankt-Peterburg, 2008 (orig. Moskva, 1956),
99–108; Iushkov, Stroi, 221, and more recently B.N. Floria, “O polozhenii «Ivanskogo ku-
pechestva» v Novgorode domongol’skogo vremeni”, Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik
12(22), Sankt-Peterburg, 2011, 34.36.
55 Publication by Shchapov in Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy, 147–148 (Synodal Copy
with Egorovskii variants); prp ii, 116–123; rz i, 224–232; M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov,
Khristomatiia po istorii russkogo prava i, Kiev, 1899 (5th ed.), 255–256; V.N. Beneshevich,
Sbornik pamianikov tserkovnago prava i, Petrograd, 1915, 99–100; Kaiser, Laws, 57–58
prince’s income to the bishop of Novgorod. The revenues subject to this tithe
were summed up in great detail and the Statute accordingly is of consider-
able importance for understanding the territorial extension of the Novgorod
bishopric.
The date of the Statute and the identity of its author have been clearly in-
dicated in the text: 1137 and Sviatoslav Ol’govich, prince of Novgorod. The cir-
cumstances of Sviatoslav’s accession to the principality of Novgorod are set out
in the First Novgorod Chronicle. They were part of a chain of critical events
which determined the constitutional character of Novgorod (see Chapter 16).
The Novgorod citizenry had arrested and deposed their prince Vsevolod Ms-
tislavich in 1136 (the same prince whose name is connected with the statutes
discussed above). They then invited Sviatoslav Ol’govich, prince of Chernigov,
to rule in Novgorod, who arrived on 19 July at three o’clock in the afternoon. His
rule lasted until 17 April 1138, when he himself was deposed.
In this connection the question arose whether the precise listing of the bish-
op’s income in the Statute reflected an increase in the prince’s power and a con-
comitant restriction of the bishop’s position, or rather the opposite. The former
view had been advocated by Grekov,56 while Shchapov tended to see the Stat-
ute as a manifestation of the growing power of the bishop.57 The question ap-
pears in a different light in the perspective outlined by Ianin, who pointed to
the peculiar financial position of Sviatoslav Ol’govich. Some time before (either
in 1112 or 1127) the Kievan grand prince (at that time Vladimir Monomakh or
his son Mstislav the Great) had set aside a part of Smolensk territory for the
upkeep of the Novgorod princes of his house. When Sviatoslav Ol’govich, not
belonging to the Monomakh clan, came to Novgorod, he was denied the enjoy-
ment of this legacy and Novgorod therefore had to provide him with an estate
which would produce sufficient income. The lands concerned were located in
the northern and north-eastern parts of Novgorod’s territory. The Statute of 1137
described these lands and allotted their tithes in the usual way to the bishop.58
(with English translation); French translation in M. Szeftel, A. Eck, Documents de droit

public relatifs à la Russie médiévale, Bruxelles, 1963, 281–284. The most recent longer
study on the Statute of Sviatoslav Ol’govich is Shchapov’s section in Kniazheskie ustavy,
150–165. See also V.L. Ianin, “Gramota kniazia Sviatoslav Ol’govicha 1137 g.”, V.T. Pashuto
(ed.), Feodal’naia Rossiia vo vsemirno-istoricheskom protsesse. Sbornik statei, posviashchen-
nyi L’vu Vladimirovichu Cherepninu, Moskva, 1972, 243–251.
56 Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 244–245.
58 Cf. V.L. Ianin, Novgorod i Litva. Pogranichnye stituatsii xiii–xv vekov, Moskva, 1998, which
is devoted to the entire problem of the border situation in the south-western corner of
the Novgorod territory; also: id., Novgorodskie posadniki, Moskva, 2008 (2nd ed.), 139; id.,
Ocherki srednevekovogo Novgoroda, Moskva, 2008, 57.
160 chapter 6
The Smolensk Charters of Rostislav Mstislavich and Bishop Manuil
In 1837 a Russian scholar, S.V. Solov’ev, bought a small bundle of documents

in Sweden, which later on became known as the Smolensk charters of prince
Rostislav. They were published several times in the course of the 19th and 20th
centuries.59 Shchapov’s study of them and their publication by him have now
produced a clear and detailed picture.60
In early Kievan times, Smolensk had been passed from one prince to an-
other, according to the customs of the Rurikid dynasty. A more or less perma-
nent sub-dynasty was founded by Rostislav Mstislavich († 1168), a grandson of
Vladimir Monomakh, who occupied the grand princely throne (of Kiev) like
his father and grandfather from 1154 until his death in 1168, after he had ruled
in Smolensk from 1127 to 1154. The economic and political power of Smolensk
had increased significantly during Rostislav’s reign and the establishment of a
bishopric in 1136 was one of the prime indicators of this. The Smolensk char-
ters were connected with this development.
The most important of the four documents involved is the charter of
Rostislav in which the new bishop and his bishopric were granted the neces-
sary income, mostly from tithes, but from a few other sources of income as
well. All the districts of the principality are mentioned with the amount of the
tithe to be withheld for the bishop; the tithe is imposed on the tribute to be
levied in the district. This charter was drafted in 1134 and then issued in 1136.61
Following again the pattern of the Statute of Vladimir, the donation of tithe
was supplemented by a grant of jurisdiction. The list of cases is significantly
narrower than the list of the Statute of Vladimir or the catalogue in the Statute
of Iaroslav; in particular, as noted before, the list of church people is lacking.
Rostislav’s charter is accompanied by a much shorter confirmation charter is-
sued by bishop Manuil in the same year. The other texts making up the col-
lection concern the gift of a hill (fortress?)62 by Rostislav to the bishop (dated
59 Vladimirskii-Budanov, op.cit., 257–265; Beneshevich, op.cit., 102–107; prp ii, 37–53; rz i,

212–223.
60 Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy, 136–150; id., Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy, 140–146. prp
ii, 37–53 (comments by A.A. Zimin); rz i, 212–223 (comments by Ia.N. Shchapov); PRoP
ii, 86–91 (comments byA.A. Dorskaia).
61 Cf. Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy, 136–137.
62 Not in PRoP i. The charter mentions the donation of a kholm, which could be just a hill,
but according to Shchapov (Kniazheskie ustavy, 140–143) the gift concerned a hill upon
which Vladimir Monomakh had already built a church, which was subsequently de-
stroyed. See also L.V. Alekseev, Smolenskaia Zemlia v ix–xiii vv., Moskva, 1980, 23–24.
1150) and an anonymous list of taxes to be levied from different provincial

towns (end of 12th–beginning of 13th centuries).
The wealth of detail in the charter of Rostislav is of considerable interest for
understanding the administrative structure, social class system, and judicial
organization of the Smolensk principality.
Both Rostislav’s charter and the bishop’s confirmation charter contain a
warning against the possible reunification of the bishopric with the eparchy of
Pereiaslavl’; these warnings were perhaps inserted at a later date, when there
was an acute threat of a merger of the two eparchies.63
The Church Statute of Lev Danilovich of Galicia of 1301
The Statute of Lev Danilovich, prince of Galicia, demonstrates the lasting

influence of the Statute of Vladimir on the management of Church-state re-
lations during the period of the independent principalities.64 There are two
redactions (Metrika and L’vov) with small differences.65 The Statute follows
the pattern of the Vladimir Statute, granting tithes to the Dormition cathedral
of Krylos, near Galich, defining Church jurisdiction and listing church people.
Lev Danilovich, the son of king Daniil of Galicia, was one of the most impor-
tant and powerful princes in Russia in the first period after the Mongol Con-
quest (see Chapter 17, on Western Russia).
Church-State Relations in 14th and 15th Centuries Texts
The continuing validity in the 14th and 15th centuries of the principles of
Church-state relations, as first laid down in the Statute of St. Vladimir, is docu-
mented by texts from various parts of Russia, including those that had become
part of the Lithuanian-Polish state.
63 Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy, 139–140; Iushkov, Stroi, 223.

64 Publications: Shchapov, Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy, 166–173 (both redactions,
Ukrainian, Polish and Latin versions); M.M. Peshchak, Hramoty xiv st., Kyiv, 1974, 12–14
(L’vov Copy of L’vov Redaction). A charter from 1581 of the Polish king Stephan Batory ad-
dressed to the bishop of Lutsk confirmed the 1301 Statute (the text of the latter is included
in the charter text), cf. Shchapov, op.cit., 193–196.
65 Four of the Metrika copies are in Ukrainian, one in Polish translation; three of the L’vov
copies are in Ukrainian, one in Latin translation.
162 chapter 6
A charter of the Volynian prince Liubart (son of the Lithuanian grand prince
Gedimin) of 1321 granted several villages, described in detail, to the bishop of
Lutsk (a Volynian bishopric established in the 13th century), together with ju-
risdiction, as well as jurisdiction over church people. In the second half of the
charter some of the rules of the Statute of Vladimir were included in rephrased
form.66
A charter of the Moscow grand prince Vasilii Dmitrievich of 1402, issued in
consultation with metropolitan Kiprian, confirmed that the old regulations of
Vladimir and Iaroslav on Church jurisdiction remained in force.67 It was recon-
firmed in 1419.68
The financial and jurisdictional immunities of the Church were spelled out
in considerable detail by the same prince in a model charter, kept in the ar-
chive of the metropolitanate, of 1404.69
In 1499 the Lithuanian grand prince Aleksander confirmed in a charter ad-
dressed to bishop (and elected metropolitan) Joseph of Smolensk that the ju-
risdiction of the Church, as laid down in the Statute of Iaroslav, remained in
force.70 A similar confirmation, in almost identical terms, was issued by the
same prince to the bishop of Lutsk in 1502.71
66 Shchapov, Drevnekniazheskie ustavy, 173–176. A later Lithuanian grand prince, Alexander,

confirmed and repeated the 1321 charter in 1498: Shchapov, ibidem, 185–186.
67 Shchapov, Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy, 182–184; Kaiser, Laws, 64.
68 Shchapov, ibidem, 184–185. Kaiser, Laws, 65.
69 Shchapov, ibidem, 176–179; prp iii, 421–423; asei iii, 18–20.
70 Shchapov, ibidem, 187–191.
71 Shchapov, ibidem, 191–193.
chapter 7
Treaties
General1
Information about the earliest known treaties concluded by the ancestors of

the medieval Russians is understandably vague and obscure, but comparative
studies and circumstantial evidence remove all doubt about the ancient roots
of the institution of treaty-making.
One of the earliest instances has been discussed in Chapter 3 (on the Trea-
ties with Byzantium), the Russian (or rather Viking) raid on Constantinople in
860, dimly reflected in the Primary Chronicle, but well known from Byzantine
and Western sources. It was followed in the 10th century by a series of trea-
ties between Kiev and Byzantium, the texts of which have been included in
the Chronicle. Because of their exceptional importance for the early history of
Russian law, they have been discussed in a special chapter. Although several
centuries separate the treaties with Byzantium and the earliest foreign treaties
of the following period (the treaties with Baltic partners), certain traditional
elements of Russian law, as reflected in the 11th century in the Russkaia Pravda,
can be identified in both groups of treaties.2
The Greeks were not the only foreign parties the early (pagan) Kievan realm
had to deal with. The Slavic tribes were relative newcomers in the territory of
present-day European Russia and they were in permanent contact with other
ethnic entities, Finnish forest-dwellers in the North and North-East and a vari-
ety of mainly Turkic steppe nomads in the South and South-East. To maintain
or restore peaceful relationships with these neighbours, treaties must have
been concluded from time to time, although very little is known about them.
One rare example is provided by Tatishchev’s entry for the year 1006 (6514),
devoted entirely to a commercial treaty between St. Vladimir and the Bulgars.
1 I have discussed the subject matter of this chapter at greater length in “The Treaties of
Medieval Russia – a Survey”, in R. Clark, F. Feldbrugge, S. Pomorski (eds.), International and
National Law in Russia and Eastern Europe; Essays in Honor of George Ginsburgs; Law in East-
ern Europe, No.49, The Hague/London/Boston, 2001, 157–205, republished with some edito-
rial amendments, in Feldbrugge, lmr, 181–232.
2 This aspects was elaborated by M.B. Sverdlov in “Sistema russkogo prava kak osnova mezh-
dunarodnykh dogovorov Rusi x – pervoi treti xiii v.”, A.N. Sakharov (ed.), Ot Drevnei Rusi k
novoi Rossii. Iubileinyi sbornik posviashchennyi chlenu-korrespondentu ran Ia.N. Shchapovu,
Moskva, 2005, 109–122.

164 chapter 7
The Bulgars were allowed to trade in the towns along the Volga and the Oka with
the local merchants; they were not allowed to trade outside the towns and with
other persons. The Bulgars were provided with the appropriate sealed docu-
ments (pechati); Russian merchants received such documents from the local
governors (namestniki), which allowed them to take their wares to the Bulgars.3
As the earliest Russian treaties between various Kievan princes and Byzan-
tium have already been discussed separately, the following sections will offer
an overview of the treaties of the next period.4 The Kievan empire (if it could
ever have been regarded as such) broke up within a few generations after its
apogee under the illuminator of Russia, St. Vladimir, and his son Iaroslav the
Wise and was replaced by an amalgam of principalities ruled by the numerous
descendants of the Rurikid dynasty. This udel’nyi period, the era of the apanage
principalities (udely), gradually dissolved, as the princes of Moscow managed
to impose their supremacy on the other Russian princes. The last nominal-
ly independent Russian state, the principality of Riazan’, was absorbed into
Muscovy in 1521.
The dynastic principles at the basis of the fragmentation of the Kievan em-
pire, in particular the institution of family seniority or starshinstvo, were dis-
cussed in Chapter 13 (on the Prince). Within the context of this section it is
sufficient to point out that the division of lands and the governance thereof
was effected between the adult male members of the Rurikid house, more
precisely the descendants of Iaroslav the Wise († 1054), with the exception
of the relatively unimportant princes of Polotsk, who traced their descent to
Iaroslav’s brother Iziaslav († 1001). The original principle of generational se-
niority (younger brothers succeeding ahead of the sons of the deceased) was
gradually superseded by the principle of a father being succeeded by his sons,
and subsequently the principle of primogeniture also became established (the
eldest son excluding the younger sons).
The operation of these principles caused, first, an increasing fragmenta-
tion of the Kievan heritage, and then the condensation of political power in
a small group of major principalities (grand principalities): Vladimir (later
Moscow), Chernigov,5 Smolensk,6 Tver’, and Riazan’. In Novgorod, the prince
3 V. Tatishchev, Istoriia Rossiiskaia, T.2, Moskva, 2003, 64. The verisimilitude of the treaty is very
much in doubt; cf. S.M. Kashtanov, Iz istorii russkogo srednevekovogo istochnika. Akty x–xvi vv.,
Moskva, 1996, 58.
4 The standard text for the foreign policy of medieval Russia, which provides the political back-
ground for the treaties discussed in this chapter, is V.T. Pashuto, Vneshniaia politika D revnei
Rusi, Moskva, 1986.
5 The (grand) principality of Chernigov gradually broke up after the Mongol invasions.
6 By the end of the 14th century Smolensk had become dependent on the grand duchy of Lith-
uania, into which it was fully absorbed in 1404.
Treaties 165
was marginalized at an early date already, resulting in the development of a

semi-republican form of government. A similar situation arose in Pskov, origi-
nally a dependent city (‘suburb’, prigorod) of Novgorod.
The legal relationships between the Russian principalities were shaped dur-
ing this period by treaties between ruling princes, and, occasionally, city-states
(especially Novgorod and Pskov).
The matter became more complicated after 1240, when the entire complex
of post-Kievan Russian ‘states’ was forced to recognize the suzerainty of the
Mongol (Tatar) khan. From a modern point of view one would have to say that
the sovereignty of the individual principalities was limited, and this would of
course affect their treaty-making powers. The Mongols directly controlled the
lands to the East and South of medieval Russia (present-day Ukraine). In the
West the most powerful direct neighbour was the grand prince of Lithuania
who was also, since 1386, in a personal union, king of Poland.
The situation, moreover, was unstable and subject to change in two re-
spects. One was that the domination of the Tataro-Mongols was not a factor of
constant strength, it varied greatly over time. In the long run the Tatars lost out
and were eventually subdued themselves by Russia. Secondly, relationships be-
tween the Russian ‘states’ of the udel’nyi period were permanently in flux and,
as already indicated several times, the end result was the complete triumph of
Moscow over all the others.
Russian treaties from this period can therefore be divided into two major
groups: internal Russian treaties, i.e. treaties between Russian princes them-
selves (including the city-states of Novgorod and Pskov), and treaties with
genuine foreign powers, which are more like traditional international law trea-
ties. A secondary division can be made on the basis of content. In that respect
the most important categories would be general treaties, which were aimed at
creating a comprehensive framework for the relations between the two treaty
partners, treaties concerning peace or an armistice, treaties regulating com-
mercial relations and treaties concerning taxation, although fiscal questions
turned up in most other treaties as well.
Treaties: Internal Russian Treaties
The surviving corpus of internal Russian treaties from the middle ages consists
overwhelmingly of treaties in which either Moscow or Novgorod was a party;
there is also a small number of treaties between Moscow and Novgorod; the
number of treaties concluded between other Russian princes is even smaller.7
7 For detailed lists, see my article on medieval Russian treaties, cited above.
166 chapter 7
The survival of these treaties has largely been determined by their inclusion in
the archives of the Moscow grand prince, which in turn became the nucleus
of the Russian state archives.8 This explains why non-Moscow treaties appear
to be underrepresented.
The practice of concluding family treaties among the members of the rul-
ing house undoubtedly went very far back in Russia. The Short Version of the
Russkaia Pravda contains a reference (in the preamble to the second part, the
so-called Pravda of Iaroslav’s sons) to an agreement (traditionally dated 1072)
between three sons of Iaroslav the Wise, together with four (or three or six)
magnates.9 The Primary Chronicle and other chronicles offer numerous ex-
amples of princes concluding agreements among themselves.
The internal Russian treaties of the Moscow grand prince generally reflect-
ed Moscow’s long-term strategy of imposing its supremacy on other Russian
principalities. This sub-group may further be divided into treaties between
the Moscow grand prince and his immediate male relatives (brothers, cousins,
nephews), and treaties between the same prince and his more distant Rurikid
relatives.
The dynastic principles governing succession in Kievan Russia and their sub-
sequent development during the udel’nyi period were discussed in Chapter 13.
At this point it will be sufficient to say that the treaties between the Moscow
grand prince and his close relatives served primarily the gradual introduction
of primogeniture in the Moscow principality and, by the same token, the pre-
vention of fragmentation of the state. These treaties were therefore inherently
treaties between unequal parties. The Moscow prince was the ‘elder brother’,
the traditional term in medieval Russian treaty practice to signal a position of
superior status, but in this case the prince was in fact the elder brother (or his
most senior descendant).10
The second group of Moscow treaties concerned relations between the
Moscow prince and the grand princes of Tver’ or Riazan’, who were more
8 The basic source in this respect is Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, quoted above.

9 “The law established for the Russian land, when Iziaslav, Vsevolod, Sviatoslav, Kosniachko,
Pereneg, Mikyfor the Kievan and Chudin Mikula came together”.
10 See my “The Elder Brother in Russia. Seniority in Russian Politico-Legal Discourse”,
G. Brunner [and others] (eds.), Sowjetsystem und Ostrecht; Festschrift für Boris Meissner
zum 70. Geburtstag, Berlin, 1985, 211–226; republished with some editorial amendments in
Feldbrugge, lmr, 167–180. Of the more than 40 published treaties between the Moscow
grand prince and his younger brothers and cousins, more than half was with the princes
of Serpukhov-Borovsk (Dmitrii Donskoi’s first cousin Vladimir the Brave, and his descen-
dants) and the princes of Mozhaisk-Verei-Belozero (descendants of Andrei, younger son
of Dmitrii Donskoi).
Treaties 167
d istantly related and had better grounds for claiming equality, at least in terms
of diplomacy. These treaties tended to cover a wider range of topics and their
wording respected the equality of the parties, at least as long as this would
more or less reflect the political reality. As the strength of the Moscow grand
prince increased, the princes of formerly independent principalities were in
the end all forced to bow to the power of Moscow. This was generally expressed
by recognizing the Moscow prince as the ‘elder brother’, prior to full absorption
of their principalities into the state of Muscovy.
Two general observations made by Sergeevich a century ago are worth re-
peating: there are no treaties between ascendants (fathers, grandfathers) and
descendants (sons, grandsons), because the paramount position of the ascen-
dant was apparently unquestioned. Secondly, some treaty provisions were in-
novative, while others merely confirmed customary arrangements.11 Evidently,
the ascent of the Moscow grand prince was brought about, in legal terms, by a
continuous amendment of the traditional system of princely relationships. See
also the section on relations between princes in Chapter 13.
The peculiarities of the archival history of medieval Russia have, as noted
before, allowed the survival of only a very modest number of treaties between
other princes, apart from the Moscow grand princes. They were typically
concerned with unsuccessful attempts at making common cause against the
Moscow threat.12
The internal Russian treaty record of Novgorod reflected its geopolitical situ-
ation. gvnp offers 15 treaties (or draft treaties) with the grand prince of Tver’, 7
with the Moscow grand prince, and one triangular treaty with the two of them.
The principality of Tver’ was located between the territories of Novgorod and
Moscow and constituted the most serious contender for the hegemonial posi-
tion in Russia, along with Vladimir-Moscow, during the 13th and 14th centuries.
The published treaties between Novgorod and Tver’ start in 1264 while the last
one is from 1446–1447. The Novgorod-Moscow series starts later (in 1318–1319)
and ends in 1471 with the ultimate subjugation of Novgorod. The large body of
treaties between Novgorod and Tver’ covered many aspects of their relation-
ships and is of great importance on account of the wealth of detail it provides
on all kinds of legal subjects.13 (See the special section below.)
11 Sergeevich, Drevnosti russkogo prava ii, 3rd. ed., Sankt-Peterburg, 1908, 150–162.
12 Treaties between princes of Galich and Suzdal’ (ddg, No.40, 119–121, from 1445), between
princes of Mozhaisk and Serpukhov-Borovsk (ddg, No.62, 199–201, from 1461), and be-
tween two princes of Riazan’ (ddg, No.84, 332–341, from 1496).
13 See also the section on Novgorod-Tver’ treaties in my chapter on treaties in Feldbrugge,
lmr, at 202–204.
168 chapter 7
Treaties with Foreign Powers
The majority of Russian treaties with foreign powers from the period of the in-
dependent principalities involved Novgorod (also called Novgorod the Great, to
distinguish it from the then relatively unimportant city of Nizhnii Novgorod).
This was a natural consequence of Novgorod’s location on the western edge of
European Russia. Novgorod’s prominent position among the Russian princi-
palities rested primarily upon its extensive trade with its western neighbours
and Novgorod was the first major Russian power that Westerners were likely to
come into contact with.
Apart from a few treaties with the kings of Poland (and/or grand princes of
Lithuania) and of Norway and Sweden, the bulk of Novgorod’s foreign treaties
was with its immediate neighbours in the Baltic area. Most of these treaties
were with the Hanseatic League, usually represented by its dominant city
Lübeck, but also with the entire League, with smaller groups of towns, or with
the Baltic Hanseatic towns only. Then there was a smaller number of treaties
with the Livonian Order, founded in 1204 by the bishop of Riga, and absorbed
into the German or Teutonic Order in 1237, and in a few cases with Baltic bish-
ops (of Riga, Dorpat, Oesel and Kurland).14
The all-encompassing background of the Hanseatic treaties was commerce.
The League had early on achieved a virtual monopoly in the trade between
Western Europe and Russia and most of the Novgorod treaties were meant to
regulate the relationships between the parties and in particular the Hanseatic
presence in Novgorod in the guise of the Nemetskii dvor, the German Court, the
colony of merchants from numerous towns of the Holy Roman Empire (com-
prising a far greater territory than the present Germany). Relationships would
often break down and hostilities would result, ending invariably in the conclu-
sion of a peace treaty.
The text of the oldest treaty, from the end of the 12th century, shows clearly
that other similar treaties must have preceded it. The general format of the
Hanseatic treaties with Novgorod was as follows. First, a confirmation of the
staryi mir, the previous treaty relations and the traditional pattern of the con-
sensual relationship; then the text usually referred to the ways Novgorod could
be reached by the German merchants (winter and summer approaches, hiring
of pilots, etc.), followed by procedural rules about the solving of disputes, rules
of evidence, etc.; finally, rules about breaches of the peace by the visitors or
Novgorod citizens, affecting each other. The latter rules did in some ways echo
14 As a curiosity one might add the treaty between Novgorod and the German merchant
community in Novgorod (the “German Court”) of 1439 (gvnp, No.68, 113–114).
Treaties 169
the provisions of the Russkaia Pravda concerning compensation for homicide,

injuries, etc. Altogether, the Hanseatic treaties of Novgorod offer a fairly de-
tailed picture of the legal dimensions of the city’s commercial role (see also the
section on foreign trade and foreign merchants in Chapter 16).
Next to the Hanseatic League, the main foreign treaty partner, not only
of Novgorod, but also of other Russian principalities, was the grand duke
of Lithuania (since 1386 the grand duchy of Lithuania and the kingdom of
Poland formed a personal union). Relations with Lithuania were occasionally
hostile on account of Lithuania’s often expansionist foreign policy, but with
the rise of Moscow’s power Lithuania also emerged as the only effective coun-
terweight to Moscow, from the perspective of Novgorod and other Russian
principalities, and this factor became more dominant in the treaties of the
later period.
Along with Novgorod, other West-Russian powers participated in diplomat-
ic traffic with the West: there is a small number of treaties between Smolensk,
Polotsk and Pskov on one side and Poland, Lithuania, Riga and the German
Order on the other. The number of genuine foreign treaties of Central and
Eastern Russian principalities is quite small; all of them are with the grand
prince of Lithuania (king of Poland) and on the Russian side the princes of
Moscow, Tver’, Riazan’, Novosil’ and Odoev, and Pronsk appear. Of course this
did not mean that the Russian princes did not engage in relations with their
eastern and southern neighbours, but simply that no written documents, if
there ever were any, have survived.
The absence of treaties between Russian princes and their eastern neigh-
bours, the Mongol-Tatar rulers, is easily explained. After the utter defeat of the
various Russian principalities in the years 1238–1240, the khan considered him-
self the supreme ruler of Russia and the Russian princes his servants. It would
not make sense to conclude agreements with them. He would communicate
his wishes through unilateral instructions, usually in the form of a iarlyk (dis-
cussed separately in Chapter 11).
Contacts with the South-East, the area of the Caucasus, were more s poradic.
Iurii, a son of Andrei Bogoliubskii, grand prince of Vladimir, married the
famous Georgian queen Tamara around 117715 and this is only one indication
of relations that must have existed between Russian and Caucasian rulers.
The connection was cut off effectively by the Mongol invasion.
15 Cf. N. de Baumgarten, Généalogies et mariages occidentaux des rurikides russes du Xe au

XIIIe siècle; Orientalia Christiana, Vol. ix-1, No.35, Roma, 1927, Table vi, No.22; M. Surgu-
ladze, Bagrationt’a samep’o saxli, Tbilisi, 1995, 48.
170 chapter 7
Selected Examples and Special Categories
The dichotomy dividing normative (legislative) and non-normative (non-

legislative) sources, lying at the basis of the organization of the first part of this
work, is often not fully applicable in medieval legal conditions. Some treaties
represented a public law version of a contract, others were similar to a statutory
document. The latter documents have a much greater value as sources of law.
Several categories of treaties are therefore discussed separately in the most ap-
propriate places in this work. This would apply to the treaties among Russian
princes, a topic intimately connected with the institution of the prince in the
Russian middle ages. In Chapter 16 (on Novgorod) the considerable number
of treaties between Novgorod and the Hanseatic League has been examined
as the principal source for defining the legal status of foreign merchants in
Novgorod.
The treaties between pre-Christian Russian princes and the Byzantine
emperors are of such fundamental importance that a special Chapter (3) is
devoted to them.
In the following part of this chapter a few individual treaties of more than
average significance for the overall picture of Russian law in the middle ages
will be looked at in somewhat more detail; another section will deal with
the remarkable body of treaties between Novgorod and the princes of Tver’,
which is of much greater importance than its narrow geographical focus might
suggest.
The Treaty of 1229 between Mstislav Davydovich of Smolensk and

Riga and the Gothic Coast
The preamble to this treaty relates how prince Mstislav Davydovich of Smo-
lensk sent his envoys to Riga in the year that bishop Albrecht died. This allows
the exact dating of this text between the death of Albrecht (Albert, Adalbert),
the first bishop of Riga, in January 1229 and the appointment of his successor in
April of the same year. The treaty, to be exact, is between the Smolensk prince
and the Hanseatic merchants of Riga and Visby (Gotskii bereg, the Gothic
Coast, as it is commonly called in the Russian documents of the period).16
16 Original publication in K.E. Napierski (ed.), Russko-Livonskie akty, Sankt-Peterburg, 1868,

Appendix i, 420–445; prp ii, 54–71, with comments by A.A. Zimin, 75–87; R.I. Avanesov
(ed.), Smolenskie gramoty xiii–xiv vv., Moskva, 1963, 18–62. See also L.V. Alekseev, Smolen-
skaia zemlia v ix–xiii vv., Moskva, 1980, 27–29.
Treaties 171
There are two groups of extant texts of the treaty, significantly different
from each other because they are based on different Old-Russian translations
of Latin and German texts. The original Russian text of the treaty has been lost,
as well as the German and Latin texts.
The first three provisions of the treaty are devoted to homicide and oth-
er personal injuries and echo in many respects corresponding provisions of
the Expanded Version of the Russkaia Pravda, which should not be surprising
in view of the treaty’s early date. Most of the remaining provisions concern
the relationships between Russian and Hanseatic merchants; the standard for-
mat is a more or less detailed description of the rights and duties of a Smolensk
merchant (or a German merchant) in a particular situation in Riga (or Smo-
lensk) and then a short formula to the effect that the same will apply to a
German merchant (or Smolensk merchant) in Smolensk (or Riga).
The treaty is often referred to as the Smolenskaia Pravda, as the text after
the long preamble starts with the words: “Here starts the Pravda” (A se pochi-
nok Pravde, and in other manuscripts Zde pochinaetsia Pravda). The rp was
undoubtedly still alive in Smolensk during the first half of the 13th century al-
though socio-economic developments had had an effect. The reason for draw-
ing up the treaty was the need to regulate the application of Smolensk law in
situations where non-Russians were involved and this offered an opportunity
to make the law more up-to-date. The Smolensk Pravda therefore also covers
topics on which the rp was silent.
The Treaty between the ‘Unknown Prince’ of Smolensk and

Riga and the Gothic Coast
This treaty is closely related to the one discussed above; it should perhaps be
named a draft treaty, because the Smolensk Pravda of 1229 was the operative
text during the reign of the Smolensk prince Gleb Rostislavich (1270–1277).17
Older authors have advocated a date around 1223–1225, but a later date is fa-
voured by modern scholars; V.A. Kuchkin suggested 1233–1240, A.A. Zimin a
date after 1239 and before 1270.18 If one follows Kuchkin the prince would be
Sviatoslav Mstislavich; if Zimin, then the latter’s brother Vsevolod Mstislavich.19
17 Cf. Zimin, prp ii, 55.

18 V.A. Kuchkin, “O drevneishikh smolenskikh gramotakh”, Istoriia sssr, 1966, No.3, at 104;
A.A. Zimin, prp ii, 55.
19 Kuchkin, 106; Zimin, 87.
172 chapter 7
The original Russian text has been preserved;20 its first words are: “My
agreement with the Germans is as follows” (A riad moi s Nem’tsi takoi). There
is no preamble as in the Smolensk Pravda; the relationship between the two
texts remains unclear. To some extent the texts regulate the same subject
matter; all the ‘commercial law’ provisions of the second treaty can be traced
to the Smolensk Pravda, which is more elaborate. Also, its language is gener-
ally more obscure, which may be caused by the fact that its different versions
are medieval Russian translations from the Latin or the German. Some of the
provisions of the two documents offer close parallels (e.g. the provisions con-
cerning the homicide of a freeman, art. 1 of the Smolensk Pravda and art. 2 of
the other treaty, both of them reminiscent of the corresponding rules of the
rp). Unlike the Smolensk Pravda, which is predominantly a commercial and
procedural law text, the other treaty devotes far more attention to personal
injuries and is in this respect closer to the rp. The legislative technique is
similar to that of the Smolensk Pravda; many provisions end with the words:
“and the same applies to a German in Smolensk” (Takozhe i Nem’chitsiu
Smolen’ske).
One might surmise provisionally that the treaty text was a reformulation of
the legal relations between Smolensk and the Hanseatic towns, in which ear-
lier texts were used. As is often the case with the treaties of medieval Russia,
they were renewed after being interrupted by war, violence or other difficulties,
and the occasional surviving texts do then sometimes refer to the “old treaties”.
L.V. Alekseev, following Kuchkin, mentions the years 1110, 1112 and 1223–1225 as
possible dates of earlier treaties between the same parties.21
The 1269 Treaty between Novgorod and the Hanseatic League
The commonly used text of this treaty is the one published as No.31 in gvnp,
where it is entitled “Draft treaty between Novgorod and Lübeck and the Gothic
Coast on trade and courts”.22 Its main interest for legal history is that is offers the
fullest picture of treaty relations between Novgorod and the Hanseatic League
and, among other things, fills in the background to the Skra of Novgorod (the
internal law of the Hanseatic colony in Novgorod; see the relevant section in
Chapter 10, on Foreign Laws). Some of the treaty provisions were reproduced
20 Original publication in Napierski, op.cit., Appendix ii, 451–453; prp ii, 72–75, comments
by Zimin, 85–87.
21 Alekseev, op.cit., 26.
22 gvnp No.31, 58–61 (modern Russian and Middle Low German text).
Treaties 173
almost without change in several versions of the Skra. Additionally, the treaty
has a complicated diplomatic history.
It was discovered in Lübeck in 1761 in three copies, one in Latin and two
virtually identical ones in Middle Low German. There were considerable dif-
ferences between the Latin and Low German texts. One of the latter was sent
to Russia, where it was translated into Russian already in the 19th century.23
Soviet scholars were inclined to regard the available Low German text as a
draft treaty, which had perhaps been signed, but not officially ratified.24 Recent
studies have demonstrated that the Latin text25 represents a draft which the
Hanseatic envoys had taken to Novgorod; on the basis of this draft a more pre-
cise final treaty text was produced in Russian, which then was translated into
Middle Low German and taken back to Lübeck after ratification.26 The origi-
nal Russian text has not survived; the text included in various modern collec-
tions is (as mentioned above) a modern Russian translation of the Middle Low
German text (itself a translation from 13th century Russian).
The Novgorod-Tver’ Treaties27
The first provision of the first published treaty between Novgorod and Tver’
(grand prince Iaroslav Iaroslavich) of 1264 invited Iaroslav to confirm the treaty
23 The gvnp translation was made in the 1930’s by E.A. Rydzevskaia.

24 The diplomatic aspects of the 1269 treaty have recently been revisited by D.G Khrustalev
and L.D. Bondar’: “Proekt torgovogo soglasheniia Novgoroda s Liubekom i Gotlandom
1268/1269 gg. (Latinskaia gramota)”, Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik 12 (22), Sankt-
Peterburg, 2011, 453–480. This paper bases itself to a considerable extent on E. Skvairs
[Squires], “Neues zur Text-, Handschriften- und Sprachgeschichte der niederdeutschen
Jaroslav-Urkunde von 1269”, «Was liegt dort hinterm Horizont?». Zu Forschungsaspekten
in der (nieder)deutschen Philologie. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Prof. Irmtraud
Rösler (Rostocker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft. Heft 12), Rostock, 2002 (not available
to me).
25 The Latin text is reproduced, with extensive comments, by Khrustalev and Bondar’, op.cit.,
461–480.
26 Khrustalev and Bondar’ follow Skvairs in considering the ratification as having indeed
taken place.
27 Cherepnin’s chapter on the Novgorod documents from the Tver’ archives in his Arkhivy
is still a fundamental source for this subject; Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 254–266 (treaties of
Iaroslav Iaroslavich), 266–299 (treaties of Mikhail Iaroslavich), 299–306 (the 1327 treaty of
Aleksandr Mikhailovich), 306–317 (treaties of Mikhail Aleksandrovich), 317–333 (treaties
of Boris Aleksandrovich).
174 chapter 7
by oath, as his father Iaroslav had done.28 This indicates that the 1264 treaty
had been preceded by similar agreements. The basic provision of the treaty
contained the obligation of the prince “to hold Novgorod according to custom”,
a formula which returned with minor variations in all subsequent similar trea-
ties, both with the princes of Tver’ and those of Moscow.29
The 1264 treaty is the first known example of a treaty providing a general
framework for the functioning of the Novgorod prince (see also the section
on relations with the prince in Chapter 16). It was followed by a long series of
similar treaties, in which the mutual rights and obligations were extended or
curtailed, depending on various factors and especially on the balance of power
between the two sides.30
When peaceful co-existence between Novgorod and its prince broke down,
the ensuing hostilities eventually had to end in peace negotiations and a num-
ber of peace treaties between Novgorod and the prince of Tver’ have been
preserved.31 The peace treaties laid down what specifically was to be done to
28 The father was one of the sons of Vsevolod ‘Big Nest’, and the ancestor of both the Moscow
and the Tver’ princes.
29 The principal publication of these treaties has been in gvnp. This publication (of 1949)
did not offer any substantive commentary to the texts, a defect that was amended by
V.L. Ianin with the publication of his Novgorodskie akty xii–xv vv. Khronologicheskii kom-
mentarii, Moskva, 1990. In many cases Ianin has proposed a new dating for the treaties,
which I have followed here.
30 Treaties of 1264 (gvnp, No.1, 9–10; sggd i, No.2, 2–3; prp ii, 135–136; see also Ianin, Akty,
142–146; Kaiser, Laws, 67–68);
1264 (gvnp, No.2, 10–11; sggd i, No.1, 1; prp ii, 137–138; see also Ianin, Akty, 142–146);
1268 (gvnp, No.3, 11–13; sggd i, No.3, 3–4; prp ii, 138–141; see also Ianin, Akty, 142–146);
1305–1307 (gvnp, No.6, 15–16; sggd i, No 9, 11–12; see also Ianin, Akty, 152–155; Kaiser,
Laws, 69–71);
1305–1307 (gvnp, No.7, 16–18; sggd i, No.10, 13; see also Ianin, Akty, 152–155);
1307 (gvnp, No.9/10, 19–22; sggd i, Nos.6/7, 6–8; see also Ianin, Akty, 152–155);
1327 (gvnp, No.14, 26–28; sggd i, No.15, 19–20; see also Ianin, Akty, 161–163; Kaiser, Laws,
72–74);
1371 (gvnp, No.15, 28–30; sggd i, No.8, 9–10; see also Ianin, Akty, 165–171; Kaiser, Laws,
75–78);
1446 (gvnp, No.20, 36–38; sggd i, No.18, 232–24; see also Ianin, Akty, 1179–1180).
31 1317, peace of Torzhok (gvnp, No.11, 22–24; sggd i, No.12, 15; see also Ianin, Akty, 155–161);
1317 (gvnp, No.12, 24; sggd i, No.16, 21; see also Ianin, Akty, 155–161);
1318 (gvnp, No.13, 25–26; sggd i, No.14, 17–18; V.A. Kuchkin, Dogovornye gramoty mos-
kovskikh kniazei xiv veka; vneshnepoliticheskie dogovory, Moskva, 2003, 336–337; see also
Ianin, Akty, 161);
1376 (gvnp, No.18, 33–34; sggd i, No.17, 21–22; see also Ianin, Akty, 165–171).
Treaties 175
restore peaceful relations, such as the return of seized property, payment of

reparations, etc. Additionally, the peace treaties often contained more general
conditions which figured already in the general treaties; the two types there-
fore overlapped to some extent. Of the peace treaties, the one from 1318 was
the most remarkable.
The Peace Treaty of 1318 between Moscow and Novgorod and Tver’
This treaty was concluded in February 1318 between Iurii Danilovich,32 grand
prince of Moscow, together with Novgorod (represented by its posadnik and
tysiatskii), on one side, and grand prince Mikhail Iaroslavich33 of Tver’ on the
other.34 It is available in its original parchment form, albeit heavily damaged.
There has been much debate about its contents, on account of its numerous
defects, but even more because of a seeming contradiction between the con-
tents and the surrounding circumstances. The main conflict had been between
Novgorod and Tver’. The princes of Tver’, who had on and off been in posses-
sion of the grand princely dignity of Vladimir and as such had been much in-
volved in Novgorod politics (by controlling the appointment of the nominal
prince in Novgorod), had lost favour with khan Uzbek, who had transferred it
to the Moscow princes.
Tver’s dealings with Novgorod had often led to open hostilities, ending with
a new peace treaty, the conditions of which depended mainly on who had
come out the stronger party.35 In a new conflict in 1317, the prince of Moscow
had joined Novgorod, but prince Mikhail of Tver’ had succeeded in beating his
opponents separately. One would expect therefore a treaty which was favour-
able to Tver’. The present text, as reconstructed, seemed to place most of the
burdens on the prince of Tver’.
32 Iurii († 1325) was an older brother of Ivan Kalita, the ancestor of the Moscow dynasty; he
had received the khan’s approbation to occupy the position of grand prince of Vladimir
in 1317.
33 Mikhail Iaroslavich of Tver’ had enjoyed the khan’s patent for the Vladimir grand princely
position from 1304 to 1317.
34 New edition on the basis of reconstructed text in Kuchkin, Dogovornye gramoty, 336–337.
An earlier reconstruction by Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 291–293. Older versions in gvnp, No.13,
25–26, and in sggd i, No.14, 17–18. The first Chapter (10–67) of Kuchkin’s work is devoted
to the 1318 treaty.
35 See gvnp, No.11, 22–24 (sggd i, No.12, 15).
176 chapter 7
A painstaking analysis by V.A. Kuchkin36 has shown that the apparent con-
cessions by Tver’ were actually minimal or even non-existent, and that the ab-
sence of conditions which would have been significantly advantageous to Tver’
is to be explained by the presence of Kavgadii, the personal representative of
the khan, who at that time was ill-disposed towards Mikhail of Tver’.37
The treaty’s interest lies especially in its illumination of the relations be-
tween the princes, with the khan in the background, the beginnings of the
emergence of the Moscow sub-dynasty, and of course its antiquity. From a legal
point of view, its contents are not spectacular. The boundaries between various
disputed territories were spelled out once again; villages and other properties
unlawfully appropriated were to be returned, etc. Three former peace treaties
with Novgorod were renounced, but as Kuchkin has argued, the onerous finan-
cial conditions they had imposed on Novgorod had been satisfied, and their
renunciation did therefore not affect Tver’s interests.
36 Kuchkin, Dogovornye gramoty, 57–67.

37 Such a suggestion had already been made by Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 293–296. Mikhail
was summoned to the court of the khan soon afterwards, where he was executed in
November 1318.
chapter 8
Town and Provincial Charters
The Charter of Dvina Land
The granting of the Charter of Dvina Land by the Moscow grand prince Vasilii
Dmitrievich was connected with specific historical events.1 Dvina Land, cover-
ing vast and sparsely populated forest land in the North of Russia, was ruled
of old by the city of Novgorod. It was rich in resources and as its importance
at the crossroads of several northern trade routes grew, its inhabitants became
more and more dissatisfied with their semi-colonial status. The First Novgorod
Chronicle relates how, with the active encouragement of Vasilii Dmitrievich,
the boyars and people of the Dvina rose up against Novgorod in 1397.2 The up-
rising was crushed in the next year by the army of Novgorod. The Charter must
therefore have been granted in 1397 (or 1398).
The Charter, usually subdivided by editors into 16 articles, is essentially a
short law on local government, criminal justice and taxation. It was granted
unilaterally by the Moscow prince, but an obvious effort was made to create a
benign impression.3 In the preamble, for instance, the prince announced that
he would either send his lieutenant to govern the province, or that he might
appoint a lieutenant from among the Dvina boyars. The Dvina men had sim-
ply changed their allegiance. From having been the subjects of Novgorod, they
became the subjects of the Moscow grand prince. The prince limited his own
powers in the Charter, which implied that he could revoke this self-limitation
later on. The most important exception granted to the population of Dvina
Land was that the ordinary judicial officer of the prince, the pristav, was not al-
lowed to enter the province, and that the provincial lieutenant (the namestnik),
would take care of everything. The concept of a princely lieutenant, on the
other hand, was indicative of the centralizing aspirations of Moscow. Formerly,
1 Text in prp iii, 162–164, with notes and comments by A.A. Zimin and A.G. Poliak, ibidem,
185–197; rz ii, 180–182, with notes and comments by B.V. Vilenskii, ibidem, 183–186; asei iii,
21–22 (No.7); gvnp, 144–146 (No.88). The gvnp text also in PRoP ii, 98–100, with comments
by Iu.V. Ospennikov, 100–107. It was also included in the many editions of M.F. Vladimirskii-
Budanov’s Khristomatiia po istorii russkago prava, i. English translation in Vernadsky, Laws,
57–60; also Kaiser, Laws, 111–113.
2 Novg. Chr., 1397 and 1398.
3 This is pointed out by Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 226.

178 chapter 8
Dvina Land had enjoyed a fair measure of self-government under locally ap-
pointed or elected mayors (posadniki) and other officials. These, presumably,
had a free hand, as long as they carried out the instructions from Novgorod.4
The legal contents of the Charter also illustrate the new tendency towards
centralization. According to Zimin and Poliak, the Charter combined Novgorod
and Moscow elements. Among the latter, traces of the Russkaia Pravda can
be identified, such as the vira in art. 1 and the rules on confrontment (svod) in
art. 5.5
Notwithstanding its ephemeral nature as a legally and politically relevant
document, the Dvina Charter is of great significance as the earliest known ex-
ample of centralizing general legislation of the Moscow grand princes. In this
respect it is of much greater importance than its limited geographical applica-
bility would lead us to expect.
The Court Charter of Pskov6
Introduction
The Court Charter of Pskov (Pskovskaia Sudnaia Gramota) is undoubtedly the
most important piece of legislation in the period between the Russkaia Pravda
and the Code of 1497 of Ivan iii. It is the only surviving comprehensive code
of law from the period of the independent principalities, after the breakup of
Kievan Russia. It also represents a direct and major link between the rp as the
main legal monument from Kievan Russia and the Code of 1497 as the first
milestone in the legal history of a newly unified Russian state.
The Charter of Pskov survived by mere chance. Only one complete copy is
known. A smaller fragment (the Synodal Copy) was found and published by
Karamzin in 1812. The full text of what is known now as the Charter of Pskov
(the Vorontsov Copy) was discovered and published by N.N. Murzakevich
in 1847. It is quite a long document, traditionally divided into 120 articles.7
4 As suggested by Zimin and Poliak, 187.

5 Zimin and Poliak, 185, 187, 191; Vilenskii, 183–184; Vernadsky, Laws, 57.
6 On Pskov generally, see Chapter 16, on Novgorod and Pskov.
7 N.N. Murzakevich, Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota, sostavlennaia na veche v 1467 g. Izdana po
spisku, khraniashchemusia v biblioteke kn. M.S. Vorontsova, Odessa, 1847; 2nd ed. Pskovskaia
Sudnaia gramota, Odessa, 1868. The division of the Charter into 120 articles goes back to
Murzakevich, who also gave the Charter its current Russian name. The Charter refers to itself
as gramota or pravda. Iu.G. Alekseev has proposed a different division, based on paleographic
considerations, in which some articles have been split up and others merged; Iu.G. Alekseev,
Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota i ee vremia, Leningrad, 1980, 6–10. Text and comments
Town and Provincial Charters 179
Soon after its publication the Charter of Pskov was the subject of a number
of studies by Russian legal and general historians, such as Kalachov, Ustrial-
ov, and Engel’man.8 Later on in the 19th century Mrochek-Drozdovskii wrote
about it and Vladimirskii-Budanov included it in the first volume of his well-
known anthology.9
Several authors have suggested that the available texts had themselves been
copied from defective copies and represented in fact extracts from a longer
original text.10
After 1917 the Charter of Pskov retained the interest of Soviet scholars.
M.K. Rozhkova and I.D. Martysevich each devoted a special study to it,11 and
a number of articles appeared before as well as after the Second World War.12
In 1980 Iu.G. Alekseev’s monograph on the Charter summarized the achieve-
ments of many years of scholarship and this work was followed in 1997 (on the
occasion of the assumed sixth centenary of the Charter) by a new study of the
same author.13
The language and terminology of the Charter of Pskov are unusually dif-
ficult and obscure in places and this explains why even Russian scholars occa-
sionally found it necessary to offer a modern Russian translation. Martysevich
(by A.A. Zimin) in prp i, 282–383 and rz i, 321–389 (introduction by Iu.G. Alekseev, com-

ments by T.E. Novitskaia, V.M. Kleandrova and H.A. Semiderkin). Text, translation into
modern Russian, and comments by R.L. Khachaturov and Iu.V. Ospennikov, in PRoP ii,
18–64.
8 N. Kalachov, “Pskovskaia sudnaia gramota”, Moskvitianin, No.2, Moskva, 1848, 165–178; F. Us-
trialov, Issledovanie pskovskoi sudnoi gramoty 1467 g., Sankt-Peterburg, 1855; I. Engel’man,
Sistematicheskoe izlozhenie grazhdanskikh zakonov, soderzhashchikhsia v pskovskoi sudnoi
gramoty, Sankt-Peterburg, 1855.
9 P.M. Mrochek-Drozdovskii, “Glavneishie pamiatniki russkogo prava epokhi mestnykh
zakonov”, Iuridicheskii vestnik, T.16, No.5–6, 1884. M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov, Khristomati-
ia po istorii russkago prava i, Kiev, 1899, 145–199.
10 B.B. Kafengauz, “O proiskhozhdenii i sostave pskovskoi sudnoi gramoty”, Istoricheskie
Zapiski, Vol.18 (1946), 295–326, at 296ff.; L.V. Cherepnin, Russkie feodal’nye arkhivy xiv–
xxv vv., i, Moskva/Leningrad, 1948, 425; A.A. Zimin in prp ii, 285.
11 M.K. Rozhkova, K voprosu o proiskhozhdenii i sostave pskovskoi sudnoi gramoty, Lenin-
grad/Moskva, 1927; I.D. Martysevich, Pskovskaia sudnaia gramota, Moskva, 1951.
12 Especially worth mentioning are B.B. Kafengauz, op. cit, and L.V. Cherepnin, who devoted
Ch. 7 of Russkie feodal’nye arkhivy xiv–xv vekov, Ch. i, Moskva/Leningrad, 1948 (408–447),
to the Charter of Pskov. This chapter is a slightly revised version of his article “K voprosu
o sostave pskovskoi sudnoi gramoty”, Istoricheskie Zapiski, Vol.16 (1945), 203–231.
13 Iu. G. Alekseev, Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota. Tekst. Kommentarii, Issledovanie, Pskov, 1997
(this work has not been available to me). A recent survey of the historiography of the
Charter by R.L. Khachaturov and Iu.V. Ospennikov in PRoP ii, 7–18.
180 chapter 8
republished a translation in his 1948 monograph, made and published earlier

by Cherepnin and Iakovlev, and the annotated edition of the Pskov Charter in
the second volume of the Monuments of Russian Law (prp) was accompanied
by another translation.14 English translations have been produced by Verna-
dsky and Kaiser.15
The Enactment of the Charter of Pskov

The available text (the Synodal Copy) of the Charter of Pskov is provided with
a Preamble which states:
This charter has been copied [vypisana] from the charter of the grand
prince Aleksandr and the charter of prince Konstantin and all the records
of Pskov’s ancient customs, with the blessing of its fathers, the priests
of the five cathedral churches and the priest-monks and the deacons and
the priests and all of God’s clergy by the whole of Pskov at the veche in
the year 6905.
Although this dating appears perfectly clear (6905 = a.d. 1396/1397), it is con-
tradicted by the mention of the five cathedral churches (sobory). In 1397 there
were only two cathedral districts in Pskov; the fifth sobor was founded in 1462
and a sixth in 1471. This would point to an enactment date between 1462 and
1471. Moreover, only one Pskov prince by the name of Constantine is known, a
brother of the Moscow grand prince Vasilii Dmitrievich, who ruled in Pskov in
the beginning of the 15th century.16
The identity of the grand prince Aleksandr, which is of immediate relevance
in dating at least parts of the Charter, is much disputed.17 The main pretend-
ers are Aleksandr Iaroslavich ‘Nevskii’ (1220–1263), who became grand prince
14 L.V. Cherepnin and A.I. Iakovlev, “Pskovskaia sudnaia gramota”, Istoricheskie Zapiski,
Vol. 6 (1940), 235–299; prp ii, 302–324 (by A.A. Zimin). The Cherepnin-Iakovlev transla-
tion was taken over in the PRoP edition, mentioned above, 18–64. Another translation,
by I.I. Polosin, in Uchenye Zapiski Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo
instituta, t. lxv (1952), vyp.3.
15 Vernadsky, Laws, 61–82; Kaiser, Laws, 87–105.
16 The youngest son of Dmitrii Donskoi, he was born in 1389 and is mentioned in the Novg.
Chr. in 1407 (18 years old) as prince of Pskov; the next year his brother grand prince Vasilii
made him prince of Novgorod. The grand prince Aleksandr is identified by Alekseev as
Aleksandr Nevskii, who was grand prince of Vladimir-Suzdal’ from 1252 until his death in
1263; Alekseev (1980), 17.
17 Aleksandr Nevskii is supported by Kalachov, Engel’man, Rozhkova and Kafengauz, Alek-
sandr Tverskoi by Murzakevich, Ustrialov, Nikitskii, D’iakonov, Martysevich, Iakovlev,
of Vladimir-Suzdal’ in 1252, and Aleksandr Mikhailovich (1301–1339), who was

grand prince of Tver’ and of Vladimir (1325–1327) and prince of Pskov from
1327–1330 and from 1332–1337.18 Aleksandr Nevskii never ruled in Pskov, but
was regarded as Pskov’s liberator for having driven out the Germans in 1242.
The main argument against Aleksandr of Tver’ appears to be that he lost
the title of grand prince by accepting the princely dignity in Pskov.19 The ar-
guments against Aleksandr Nevskii are (1) that at his time Pskov was still a
borough (prigorod) of Novgorod, which would make it unlikely that a special
charter would have been granted to Pskov,20 and (2) that the Moscow grand
prince Ivan iii refused in 1474 (according to the Chronicle of Pskov) to confirm
the charters presented to him by the ambassadors of Pskov because they had
not been issued by the grand princes themselves; it would be difficult to ac-
cept, according to modern authors, that Ivan iii would deny the grand princely
title to his direct paternal ancestor (in the 7th generation).21 For these reasons
I am inclined to accept the stronger claim in favour of Aleksandr of Tver’.
The prevailing view among modern commentators is that a first redaction
of the Charter was completed in 1397 and that after several intermediate efforts
at legislation the final redaction arose during the period 1462–1471.22
The wording of the Preamble suggests that the following text was the work
of a private copyist and that the Preamble was originally not part of the Char-
ter itself.23 A puzzling point in the Preamble is the relationship between the
first few words (that the text was copied from various sources) and the final
words (about the solemn acceptance procedure). The final words indicate that
the Charter of Pskov, unlike other important monuments of medieval Russian
law, constituted a single piece of legislation which was officially adopted at a
certain moment. This moment was preceded by other relevant stages, such as
the assumed adoption of earlier versions of the Charter, or parts thereof, the
collection and editorial preparation of particular texts, including the copying
of them, etc. The first words of the Preamble seem to point to some prepara-
tory stage, the final ones to the official adoption of the last version, or at least
the only available version.
Iushkov and Zimin. Iu.G. Alekseev, the most important modern authority on the Charter,
regarded Aleksandr Nevskii as the more likely choice in 1980 (17) and 1984 (rz i, 344).
18 According to A. Nikitskii, Ocherk vnutrennoi istorii Pskova, Sankt-Peterburg, 1873, 108.
19 Alekseev (1980), 17.
20 D’iakonov, 56; Martysevich, 36.
21 Martysevich, 36; Zimin (in prp ii, 328).
22 Alekseev (1980), 11; Alekseev (in rz i, 328–331); Zimin (in prp ii, 283–285).
23 Cf. Kafengauz, 323–326; Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 416–417.
182 chapter 8
In order to shed more light on the question of the final adoption of the
Charter it will be necessary to look more closely at its sources and constituent
components.
The Sources for the Charter of Pskov

The questionable reliability of the Preamble concerns not only the time of
origin of the Charter of Pskov, but also its sources. The Preamble refers to two
charters, of the princes Aleksandr and Konstantin, and to the ancient customs
(poshliny) of Pskov. As nothing definite is known about any of these, the only
way to proceed is by analyzing the text in order to establish its chronological
structure. This procedure may lead to the identification of particular clusters
of provisions which display a certain amount of internal consistency. Addi-
tionally, other provisions may serve as warning signals that there is a break in
the structure of the text; this is for instance the case where the text repeats a
previous provision, as happens occasionally, and particularly at art. 108. The
latter provision has the appearance of a rule which concludes the entire text
(“And if a rule is missing from this charter, the mayors will refer the matter
to the Lord Pskov at the veche, in order that such a rule may be written.”)24
Accordingly, most commentators agree that the following provisions (arts.
109–120) constitute a separate block within the Charter. Some of them added
that this final section is probably the most ancient part of the Charter.25
In many other instances there are considerable discrepancies between the
various commentators in dividing up the Charter in coherent clusters. Some
then go even further and attempt to ascribe a particular cluster to a specific
source, such as the charters of the two princes mentioned in the Preamble.
All that can be said with a reasonable degree of confidence is that the Charter
of Pskov has been compiled on the basis of several earlier and shorter statutes.
The principal subjects of these statutes were the law of procedure, inheritance,
commercial law, criminal law, evidence, debts, the legal position of certain
classes of peasants, and the rights and duties of certain officials. Moreover,
these statutes occasionally overlapped, which explains a certain amount of du-
plication in the Charter. The compilation of the Charter proceeded in various
stages of intermediate legislation; Iu.G. Alekseev believes that the first post was
reached in 1397 with a Collection (Svod) which included the charter of prince
Aleksandr (it is immaterial whether this was Nevskii or the prince of Tver’)
24 Lord Pskov (Gospodin Pskov) was the title used by the independent city-state of Pskov,
following the example of Lord Novgorod.
25 E.g. Kafengauz, 309; Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 440. Zimin regards the question as unsolved,
prp ii, 375–376.
and a record of customary law; a second redaction of the Charter could have
coincided with the rule of prince Konstantin in the beginning of the 15th cen-
tury.26 The final version that has come down to us is unquestionably connected
with the political developments after 1460, the gradual crumbling of Pskov’s
independence vis-à-vis the rise of Moscow, and emerged in a process in which
the various components were combined and edited, but not to such a degree
that they became totally submerged in a uniform and systematized text.27
Fragments of the component parts remained recognizable.
The question concerning sources and components can also be taken a step
further: Where did the various components come from? Alekseev assumes that
the overwhelming majority of the provisions found their origin in customary
law,28 but that the persons who participated in the compilation of the text did
also have some notion of the legal collections which were current at that time
in Russia, such as the Merilo Pravednoe and the kormchie.29 The former con-
tained, among other things, the complete texts of the Procheiron, the Ecloga,
and the Court Law for the People (Zakon Sudnyi liudem). E.K. Piotrovskaia has
argued recently that the Knigi Zakonnye should also be included in this cat-
egory and that there are in particular a number of parallel provisions in the
Byzantine Nomos Georgikos (Farmer’s Law).30
The similarities between the rp and the Pskov Charter have been noted by
several scholars.31 They appear not so much as direct borrowings but rather, in
the words of Cherepnin, in the similarity of terminology and in common le-
gal institutions. Cherepnin advances the hypothesis that the Expanded Pravda
was used as a model and a source in the course of the editorial process which
26 Various authors connect at least art. 107 with this second redaction, where it speaks of
peniazi (penezi, from Middle-German penningen), a coinage introduced in Pskov in 1409
and abolished in 1420; cf. Zimin, prp i, 374; Alekseev, rz i, 331.
27 For various theories about the course of events which led to the final codification of the
Charter of Pskov, see Nikitskii, 250; Cherepnin and Iakovlev, 255; P. Mrochek-Drozdovskii,
“Pamiatniki russkogo prava vremeni mestnykh zakonov”, Uchenye Zapiski Imp. Mosk.
Univ., Iur. Fak., No.20 (1902), 2.
28 A view which had already been expressed by Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 120.
29 Alekseev, rz i, 331.
30 E.K. Piotrovskaia, “Pskovskaia sudnaia gramota i kompiliatsiia «Knigi Zakonnye»”, A.P.
Pavlov (ed.), Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo v xiv–xvii vv. Sbornik statei, posviashchennyi 75-letiiu
so dnia rozhdeniia Iu.G. Alekseeva, Sankt-Peterburg, 2002, 167–172. Piotrovskaia singles
out twelve provisions (42–44, 51, 63, 75–76, 84–87) of the Pskov Charter; the similarities
with the parallel provisions from the Knigi Zakonnye are in my view too general to be
persuasive.
31 Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 430–431; Zimin, prp ii, 283.
184 chapter 8
produced the Pskov Charter. A less ambitious view would be that the Charter
of Pskov was shaped in a legal culture in which the concepts and terminology
of the rp were still of central importance. This would explain the more lim-
ited but still discernible connections noted by Cherepnin between the Charter
and certain treaties of Pskov with neighbouring princes, such as the treaty of
1440 with the Lithuanian grand prince Kazimir.32 Alekseev noted that many
rules contained in the rp (that would be the Expanded Pravda) are absent in
the Pskov Charter and concluded that with regard to such topics (e.g. various
forms of homicide and personal injuries, protection of the prince’s property
and his officials) the rp would have continued to represent the law in force.33
Art. 103 refers explicitly to “Pskov custom” (pskovskaia poshlina).
The customs (poshliny) are mentioned in the Preamble, but again it is dif-
ficult to indicate their precise location in the Charter. Cherepnin lists a number
of provisions in the first half of the Charter, which together constitute about
one quarter of the entire text, and which he regards as a reflection of commer-
cial customs prevailing in Pskov.34
According to Cherepnin, the Charter of Pskov was re-edited in Moscow dur-
ing the years 1484–1486 (when Pskov had already lost its independence), as
part of a larger codification programme which culminated in the enactment
of the Code of 1497 of Ivan iii.35 In his opinion, the presently available single
copy of the Charter was based on this Moscow revision. The Charter of Pskov
is generally regarded as one of the principal sources of the Code of 1497 and
its reworking in a direction desired by the Moscow government would then be
part of the preparation for the latter Code. There are also numerous parallels
between the Pskov Charter and the First Lithuanian Statute of 1529, explained
by S.V. Vasil’ev in a special study as the reflection of a common legal tradition,
going back to the era of the rp.36
The Charter of Novgorod
Although the law of medieval Novgorod is reasonably well documented,

compared to the law of other Russian provinces, its main legislative text, the
Charter of Novgorod, is easily overshadowed by the much longer and wider
32 Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 432. The treaty text in gvnp, No.335, 321–322.

33 Alekseev, rz i, 324.
34 Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 443.
36 S.V. Vasil’ev, Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota i I Litovskii Statut. Opyt sravnitel’nogo issledova-
niia terminologii zakonodatel’nykh pamiatnikov, Moskva, 2011.
ranging Charter of Pskov. The Charter of Novgorod (Novgorodskaia sudnaia

gramota) is less than one third the length of the Pskov text and deals only with
matters of court procedure; questions of substantive civil or criminal law are
touched upon only tangentially. Moreover, the text is incomplete and breaks
off at art. 42 (according to the traditional division into articles, based on Vlad-
imirskii-Budanov’s edition of the text).37
The Charter of Novgorod has come down to us in a single copy only, as part
of the same collection of documents which contains the Charter of Dvina
Land and several of the principal treaties between Novgorod and Moscow.38
The literature on the Charter of Novgorod, in accordance with its more
modest contents, is not as rich as that on the Charter of Pskov. There are a
few 19th century studies,39 which are mostly out of date now, the main pre-
revolutionary textbooks devoted only a few lines to it,40 and the main study
from the Soviet period is by L.V. Cherepnin in his major work on medieval
Russian archives.41
As always, the time and circumstances of the emergence of the Charter
are of crucial importance in determining its general tenor. In this respect the
Charter’s preamble is of particular interest.
After reporting to the lords the grand princes, Grand Prince Ivan
Vasil’evich of All Russia, and his son Grand Prince Ivan Ivanovich of All
Russia, and with the blessing of the archbishop-elect of Novgorod the
Great and of Pskov, the priest-monk Feofil, it has been decided by the
mayors of Novgorod, and the commanders [tysiatskie] of Novgorod, and
the boyars, and the burghers [zhit’i liudi], and the merchants, and the
common people [chernye liudi], all five boroughs, and all Lord Novgorod
the Great at the assembly [veche] in Iaroslav’s Court:
37 M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov, Khristomatiia po istorii russkago prava i, Kiev, 1899, 200–217;

also in prp ii, 210–242 (text, translation into modern Russian, notes and comments by
A.A. Zimin); rz i, 300–320 (text, and comments by V.M. Kleandrova). The rz text, with
comments by R.L. Khachaturov and Iu.V. Ospennikov, in PRoP ii, 75–85. English transla-
tion by Vernadsky, Laws, 83–92, and Kaiser, Laws, 79–85.
38 This collection was put together during the 1470’s in Moscow, during the reign of Ivan iii,
and consisted of copies of originals which have now been lost. Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy i,
224–226.
39 Mentioned by Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 373.
40 Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 97; Sergeevich, Lektsii, 38–39.
41 Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 373–396. An almost identical version of this chapter had appeared
a year earlier in Istoricheskie Zapiski, Vol.21 (1947), 222–253 (“Sostav i proiskhozhdenie
Novgorodskoi Sudnoi Gramoty”).
186 chapter 8
The preamble provides not only a thumb-nail sketch of the governmental and
class structure of Novgorod at the time of its enactment, but also allows its
dating with great precision. The peace treaty of Korostyn’, concluded between
Novgorod and Ivan iii of Moscow on 11 August 1471, marked the final defeat
and subjugation of Novgorod.42 The treaty stipulated that the grand prince
would confirm the charter of Novgorod with his seal. The definitive shaping of
the Charter of Novgorod, as transmitted in its only available copy, will there-
fore have taken place between 11 August and 15 December 1471, the latter being
the ordination of Feofil (Theophilos) as archbishop of Novgorod.43
The 1471 version of the Charter was preceded by earlier ones. Sergeevich
and Vladimirskii-Budanov refer loosely to the middle of the 15th century as the
time of origin of the earlier version, but a more elaborate and closely argued
theory has been developed by Cherepnin. According to him, the first version of
the Charter of Novgorod goes back to as far as 1385 and was connected with an
attempt, documented by the Novgorod Chronicle, to increase the judicial inde-
pendence of Novgorod vis-à-vis the Moscow metropolitan and the prince.44 To
this oldest layer of the Charter belong arts. 1–5, 8, 13–19, 22–24, 30–32, 35, and
39–41. It could be regarded, in Cherepnin’s view, as the judicial constitution of
Novgorod and as such it had, beyond its purely legal effect, a certain symbolic
significance. This would explain the emphasis in these provisions on the oath
through the ritual of kissing the cross, as an act of allegiance to the legal order
established by the city itself.
Cherepnin added that there must have been at least two other occasions
when the Charter of Novgorod was amended, before its final version of 1471.
He suggested 1422 as one likely date. That year was preceded by stormy so-
cial upheavals in Novgorod; the amendments of 1422 would then represent
an attempt to codify the compromises reached between the aristocracy and
the common people. These amendments were reflected in the last sentence of
art. 5 and in arts. 6–7, 10–12, 20–21, and 42. According to Cherepnin, the fol-
lowing occasion of major reforms was connected with certain events in 1446.
These reforms would have affected arts. 9, 26, 28–29, 33–34, and 36–38.
Zimin emphasized the hypothetical character of Cherepnin’s theory. He be-
lieved that for the time being it would be safer to regard the Novgorod Charter
as a document from the middle of the 15th century, revised and put into its final
42 Text of the Korostyn’ treaty in gvnp, 45–51 (Nos.26–27) and in prp ii, 251–259. See also
Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 395.
43 Zimin in prp ii, 228.
form in 1471.45 It is uncontested anyway that the presently available copy of the
Charter represents a version reworked in favour of the Moscow grand prince;
by eliminating the advantageous position of the latter in a number of places
one would receive an impression of what the original would have looked like.
The immediate sources of the Charter of Novgorod were local customary
law, previous decisions of the city assembly (veche), and the treaties conclud-
ed between Novgorod and its neighbours and trading partners.46 Many of the
latterare known; the customary law of Novgorod can only be hypothetically
reconstructed on the basis of the Charter and a few similar sources.
Iaroslav’s Law on Bridges
In the Pushkin group of copies of the Expanded Pravda there is a short text
added as an appendix (after art. 21) with the heading: “And this is Iaroslav’s
law on bridges” (A se ustav Iaroslavl’ o mostekh). The same text appears at the
same place, but without the heading, in the Karamzin group of copies.47 It
is a short ordinance which apportions responsibility for the upkeep of the
streets in Novgorod among the quarters and streets of Novgorod. Most (bridge
in modern Russian) refers to the wooden planking used for paving streets in
Novgorod, located in marshy terrain. The importance of the text is primarily
in providing more detailed information on the urban organization and taxa-
tion of Novgorod. It refers to the church of Boris and Gleb, which was built in
1146, and also to the official known as tysiatskii (‘thousandman’), whose first
appearance in Novgorod is in 1191. This has prompted commentators to look for
a Novgorod prince Iaroslav in the period after 1191. The earliest is Iaroslav Vladi-
mirovich, who ruled as prince of Novgorod from 1182 to 1199. His candidacy is
supported by Iushkov and Tikhomirov.48 Rybakov49 and Cherepnin50 have ar-
gued in favour of Iaroslav Vsevolodovich, which would put the Law on Bridges
45 Zimin in prp ii, 211.

46 Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 98.
47 Texts of the 15 variant copies in B.D. Grekov (ed.), Pravda Russkaia i, Moskva/Leningrad,
1940, 292, 316–317, 340–241, 361–352, 390. One text in prp i, 207, with comments by Zimin,
213–217. Three variant texts in rz i, 233–248, with introduction and commentary by
V.L. Ianin.
48 Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 145–146; S.V. Iushkov, Russkaia Pravda, Moskva, 1950, 102–103.
49 B.A. Rybakov, “Delenie Novgorodskoi zemli na sotni v xiii v.”, Istoricheskie Zapiski ii,
148–149.
188 chapter 8
in the period of 1230–1235, and Zimin advocated an even later date, between
1238 and 1268, the reign of Iaroslav Iaroslavich as prince of Novgorod.51 A simi-
lar position is taken by V.L. Ianin, who narrowed the time the Law on Bridges
was issued down to 1265–1267. If Ianin’s views, which are not only the most
recent but also the most extensively argued, are followed, the original Law on
Bridges constituted a listing of Novgorod districts and other parties, directing
each one of them to look after the paving of certain streets. The other parties
included the prince, the mayor (posadnik), the tysiatskii, and the German and
Scandinavian (‘Gothic’) merchant compounds (see Chapter 16, on Novgorod).
All texts include two insertions which were made soon after the original
text was drafted. The first one lists certain rural districts, located upstream the
Volkhov River. Their inhabitants were obliged, according to Ianin, to supply
the timber required for the great bridge across the Volkhov, connecting the two
sides of Novgorod. The second insertion listed the Novgorod ‘hundreds’ who
were responsible for different sections of the bridge.
Iaroslav’s Law on Bridges is not to be confused with the Urok mostnikov, the
Bridge Builders’ Statute, included as the last article (art. 41) in the Short Pravda.
The Charters of Belo Ozero
Belo Ozero (also Belozero: White Lake) is the name of a principality and also
a lake and a town in the North of Russia, halfway between Moscow and the
White Sea. It was formed as an apanage principality in 1238 for Gleb, son of
Vasil’ko Konstantinovich, prince of Rostov. His descendants ruled until 1386
when the principality was absorbed by the Moscow grand princes.52 Dmit-
rii Donskoi assigned it to his third son Andrei (*1382) in his will of 1389 and
Andrei’sson Mikhail was forced to return it to the Moscow grand prince in his
will of 1486. In March 1488, Ivan iii, Grand Prince of Moscow, issued a char-
ter setting out the main lines for the administration of the newly acquired
51 prp i, 213–214.
52 In the will of Dmitrii Donskoi, the principality was designated as “a purchase of his grand-
father” (kupleiu deda svoego). This would have been Ivan Kalita († 1341). At any rate, there
is no doubt that Belozero, like most other Russian principalities in the 14th century, had
gradually become more and more dependent on the Moscow princes. The wills of 1389
and 1486 in ddg, Nos.12 and 80. In a treaty between the grand prince and Mikhail Andree-
vich of 1482 (ddg, No.75) the latter’s rights to the Belo Ozero principality had already been
limited to his own lifetime. Full story with A.V. Ekzempliarskii, Velikie i udel’nye kniaz’ia
Severnoi Rusi v tatarskii period, Moskva, 1998 (orig. Sankt-Peterburg, 1899), 188–189.
territory(the Belozero Statutory Charter, Belozerskaia ustavnaia gramota). The

charter has been transmitted in a single copy only.53
The majority of the charter’s provisions is devoted to the precise definition
of fees due to the princely officials: periodic subsistence payments (korm), var-
ious court fees, fines, duties on goods, etc. The particular importance of Belo
Ozero for the Moscow rulers was in its location on the crossroads of several
northern trade routes.
The closest parallel to the Belozero Charter is the Dvina Land Charter. There
was greater emphasis on local independence in the latter; the prince’s repre-
sentatives in Dvina Land were to be appointed from the local population. In
Belozero the prince was free to appoint his own people, although their number
was limited to one namestnik (governor, vice-gerent), or possibly two, two dep-
uties (tiuny), and ten court agents (dovodchiki). Moreover, officials apparently
elected or appointed locally (sotskie, hundredmen) were entrusted with the
collection of various taxes. Also, the charter provided that the administration
of justice by the namestniki or their deputies was only to take place with the
participation of hundredmen and prominent citizens (‘good people’, dobrye
liudi).
The sources of the Charter of Belozero encompass the Dvina Land Charter
(of 1398) and, more dimly, the Russkaia Pravda. The Charter itself is one of
the principal sources for the Code (Sudebnik) of 1497. Art. 10 of the Charter
(according to the accepted division into articles, based on Vladimirskii-
Budanov’sedition of the text) offers a striking example of the continuous line
of development from the Russkaia Pravda to the Sudebnik of 1497. The article
deals with the ploughing over or cutting down of boundary marks. Similar pro-
visions appear in the Short Version of the rp (art. 34), the Expanded Version
(art. 72), the Dvina Land Charter (art. 4), and the Sudebnik of 1497 (art. 62).
The Charter of Belozero offers a vivid impression of life in an outlying prov-
ince of the emergent Russian empire, and its relations with the metropolitan
government. Its general tenor was the decrease of local independence vis-à-
vis central government, although there was an obvious attempt to soften the
53 Text with notes and comments by A.A. Zimin & A.G. Poliak in prp iii, 170–174, 208–219
and in rz ii, 191–206 (comments by V.M. Kleandrova); the rz text has been taken over,
together with comments by Iu.V. Ospennikov, in PRoP ii, 107–111. Also in asei iii, 38–41
(No.22) and M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov, Khristomatiia po istorii russkago prava ii, 73–80.
An English translation appeared as an appendix to H.W. Dewey, “The White Lake Charter:
a Mediaeval Russian Administrative Statute”, Speculum xxxii (1957), 74–83. This transla-
tion has also been included in H.W. Dewey, Muscovite Judicial Texts 1488–1556, Michigan
Slavic Materials, No.7, Ann Arbor, 1966, 1–6.
190 chapter 8
impact of centralization by allotting a role to locally elected officials and mak-

ing an effort to limit abuses by the officials of the Moscow prince. Additionally,
there were a few provisions concerning criminal and matrimonial law. In the
Dvina Land Charter there was less scope for interference by Moscow into local
affairs.54
Nine years later, in 1497, the Charter of Belozero (Belozerskaia ustavnaia
gramota) was followed by the Tax Charter of Belozero (Belozerskaia tamozhen-
naia gramota).55 The latter is also an early example of the policy of centraliza-
tion and unification pursued by Moscow. The Tax Charter of Belozero is mainly
concerned with various duties levied on commercial transactions concluded
at the market of Belozero. By fixing rates and appointing officials and agents
entrusted with the collection of fixed sums, the Tax Charter contributed to the
further erosion of discretionary powers of local government.
The Metropolitan’s Justice
Although the Metropolitan’s Justice (Pravosudie Metropolich’e) had been men-

tioned and partially published in a 19th century publication,56 it was Iushkov
who brought it to the attention of Russian historiography and to whom we owe
its first complete publication in 1929.57 Its origins are nebulous, but on account
of its contents and in particular its links with the Statute of Iaroslav it is best
discussed in this chapter.
54 On the Belozero Statutory Charter, see also Iu.G. Alekseev, Sudebnik Ivana iii. Traditsiia
i Reforma, Sankt-Peterburg, 2001, 102–128 (chapter on the Belozero Charter as one of the
sources of the Code of 1497).
55 Text, with comments by A.A. Zimin & A.G. Poliak, in prp iii, 175–178, 220–226; rz ii,
200–206, with comments by V.M. Kleandrova (rz text taken over in PRoP iii(1), 63–65);
also in asei iii, 41–43 (No.23).
56 A.V. Gorskii, K.N. Novostruev, Opisanie slavianskikh rukopisei Sinodal’noi biblioteki, otd.2,
vyp.3, Moskva, 1862, 692–694.
57 S.V. Iushkov, “Pravosudie mitropolich’e”, Letopis’ zaniatii Arkheograficheskoi komissii za
1927–1928 gody, Vol.39, vyp.2, Leningrad, 1929, 115–120; included in O.I. Chistiakov (ed.),
S.V. Iushkov. Trudy vydaiushchikhsia iuristov, Moskva, 1989, 336–344. Later editions: M.N.
Tikhomirov, “Pravosud’e mitropolich’e”, Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik 1963, Moskva, 1964,
32–55 (text, facsimile of the relevant pages of the Tsvetnik manuscript, and translation
into modern Russian); text also included in Tikhomirov’s Posobie, 127–129; prp iii, 426–
432 (text, modern Russian translation and comments by V.N. Avtokratov); asei iii, 22–25
(No.8); Ia.N. Shchapov, Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’, 207–211; Kaiser, Laws,
107–110 (text and English translation).
The Metropolitan’s Justice (pm) is a fairly short legal text, covering five man-
uscript pages in a collection of ecclesiastical texts, the Tsvetnik, dating from
the early part of the 16th century. This is also the only extant copy of the text.
It contains a number of short rules on a variety of legal subjects: criminal law,
ecclesiastical law, procedure, divorce, and others. Its style (brief statements)
and lack of system create an impression of archaism, but other features, es-
pecially its terminology, disprove an early origin.58 Beyond this point opin-
ions of Russian scholars diverge. Grekov favoured a 13th century origin, while
V.N. Avtokratov believed that the pm had been influenced by the Sudebnik of
1497 and thus was preceded by it.59 Neither is there much agreement about
its geographical connections. Novgorod has been suggested, on account of the
Novgorod origin of other Tsvetnik texts.60 Other authors have opted for a more
central location in the Muscovy principality, or for Perm, which became a seat
of a bishop in 1383. The text itself speaks repeatedly of the “bishop” and not of
the “metropolitan” and this has led some commentators to the conclusion that
the title of Metropolitan’s Justice does not belong to it and has been added at
some later date.61
The pm has been influenced most clearly by the Church Statute of Iaroslav.
A number of provisions have been taken over without amendments. There are
also several borrowings from the Expanded Pravda. The few vague parallels
with the Dvina Land Charter are insufficient to allow the conclusion that this
Charter is also one of the sources of the pm. The grounds for regarding the
Court Charter of Pskov in the same light are even weaker. The only thing to be
said with safety is that there is a certain common element in the terminology
of all these texts.62
Avtokratov has defended a very late origin for the pm, on the ground of
a similarity of structure in a section of the Sudebnik of 1497 and a sequence
of provisions in the pm.63 A comparison of the two passages shows that the
similarity is quite vague. Moreover, any concrete connection between the two
texts is improbable, because if one assumes that the pm would have preceded
the Sudebnik, it would be implausible that such an obscure and amateurishly
edited text could have been a significant source for such an important and
fundamental legislative document as the Code of 1497; if on the other hand
58 Tikhomirov, op. cit., 42–44; Shchapov, op. cit., 208; prp iii, 438–440.
59 B.D. Grekov, Krest’iane na Rusi, book 2, Moskva, 1954, 96; Avtokratov, op. cit., 439–440.
60 Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 25–29.
61 Tikhomirov, Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik 1963, 42.
63 Avtokratov, op. cit., 438–440.
192 chapter 8
the Sudebnik would have preceded the pm, then one may wonder why anyone
would have gone to the trouble of compiling a small ‘home-made’ code, if the
Sudebnik was at hand.
Art. 12 of the pm refers directly to the Procheiron (Zakon gradskii), but as the
latter Byzantine law probably had reached Russia at a quite early moment, this
reference is of little help in dating the pm.64
A provisional conclusion concerning the date of the pm, on the basis of its
general terminology, would indicate some time during the 15th or perhaps the
late 14th century. The evidence available fits Tikhomirov’s hypothesis most
conveniently (for the time being): that the text of the pm originated in the
newly established eparchy of Perm, at that time a remote eastern outpost of
the principality of Muscovy. The pm would then be a brief law code for a bor-
der region of Muscovy which was in fact ruled by the bishop of Perm. This
would explain the general tenor of the document, which tends to strengthen
the position of the bishop, but acknowledges the supreme power of the grand
prince; it also explains certain archaisms in the text and other terminological
peculiarities.65
An evaluation of the relevance of the pm within the framework of medieval
Russian law is even more uncertain. If Tikhomirov’s hypothesis is accepted,
the pm can be understood as an example of the haphazard and eclectic way in
which different legal sources were combined into a small code by a provincial
scribe; the pm was most likely the work of a poorly educated monk. In any oth-
er theory concerning the origin of the pm, its general character and its place in
medieval Russian law become more difficult to define.
The many uncertainties surrounding the pm also concern its authorship.
Avtokratov has suggested that the text was compiled by the same person who
was responsible for the compilation of the Tsvetnik collection in which the
pm was included.66 Other possibilities that have been mentioned are circles
close to the metropolitan or to the bishop of Perm. Identification of the author
would also throw more light on the legal status of the text, or in other words,
to what extent can it be regarded as the reflection of actual law and to whom
did it apply.
64 “And punish the murderer according to the Procheiros Nomos …”.

65 Tikhomirov, Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik 1963, 43. Tikhomirov’s position is shared by
Ia.N. Shchapov in Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy xi–xv vv., Moskva, 1976, 208.
66 Avtokratov, op. cit., 439–440.
chapter 9
The Code (Sudebnik) of Ivan iii of 1497
The Homicide Law of Vasilii ii the Blind
The Zapis’, chto tianet dushegub’stvom k Moskve (“Ordinance about the scope of
Moscow jurisdiction in homicide cases”) is a short enactment of the Moscow
grand prince, usually dated somewhere in the period 1456–1462.1 Recently an
earlier date was advocated by Iu.G. Alekseev, who put the origin of the law
at a moment not later than the early ‘40’s of the 15th century.2 The number-
ing of the articles was introduced by Vladimirskii-Budanov, who included the
text in his anthology.3 It is also known by the name of Gubnaia zapis’; the verb
gubit’ (“to ruin”, “to destroy”) is also present in the designation of the subject
matter of the law, dushegubstvo (lit. “destruction of the soul”); this usually
has the meaning of “homicide”, but occasionally also refers to violent death,
suicide, robbery accompanied by violence, etc.4 In fact, the offences covered
by the Zapis’ comprised more than just homicide, but apparently all serious
offences (such as theft by a recidivist) where capital punishment was allowed,
as opposed to offences punishable by a fine.5
Regardless of whether one follows the traditional or the more recent view
concerning the date of the Zapis’, it would belong to the reign of Vasilii ii Temnyi
(“the Blind”), Moscow grand prince from 1425–1462.
The first article of the law summarizes its main features: centralization of
homicide jurisdiction in the hands of the prince’s lieutenant (namestnik) in
Moscow, the prominent position of the Grand Lieutenant (bolshoi namestnik),
and its territorial applicability to the old Moscow principality. Most provisions
reflected traditional arrangements, which could already be found in almost
1 See Cherepnin’s chapter on the Zapis’ and its connection with the Code of 1497 in Arkhivy ii,
348–359, esp. 352–353; Cherepnin’s view on the date is accepted by A.G. Poliak in his com-
mentary to the Zapis’ in prp iii, 199–208, at 200–201 (text of the Zapis’ at 167–169). Text and
comments (by V.M. Kleandrova) also in rz ii, 187–191 (taken over in PRoP iii(1), 62–63). Text
and English translation in Kaiser, Laws, 114–116.
2 Iu.G. Alekseev, “«Zapis’ chto tianet dushegubstvom k Moskve»: Nekotorye voprosy datirovki
i soderzhaniia”, A.A. Preobrazhenskii (ed.), Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie i biurokratiia. Sbornik
statei v chest’ N.F. Demidovoi, Novosibirsk, 2000, 50–63 (not available to me).
3 M.F. Vladimirksii-Budanov, Khristomatiia po istorii russkago prava, ii, Kiev, 1915 (5th ed.), 68–72.
4 Cf. rz ii, 189.
5 This is made clear by the comments in prp iii and rz ii.

194 chapter 9
identical formulas in treaties between the Moscow grand prince and apanage
princes.6
Immunity charters, conferring jurisdiction on monasteries and secular
lords, had already in most cases excepted homicide and other serious offences
from such jurisdiction and reserved it to the prince. The Zapis’ narrowed the
scope of the jurisdiction of others than the grand prince even more, although
some of it remained in the hands of apanage princes.
The last article (art. 10) allowed the homicide trial of a subject of the grand
prince of Tver’ (who at the time was still an independent ruler) if such a per-
son was caught red-handed, but referred all other cases of Tver’ subjects to the
court of Tver’.
The Grand Lieutenant was originally the namestnik of the Moscow grand
prince for his own domain (udel), while his brothers had their own lieutenants
for their domains.7
The precise listing of the districts in art. 1 demonstrates that the Zapis’ only
concerned the old principality of Moscow (originally an apanage of the grand
principality of Vladimir) and not the entire territory ruled in the middle of the
15th century by the Moscow grand prince, of which the Moscow principality
was only a minor part (the principalities of Vladimir and Moscow had already
been united in 1362).
In the scholarly debate concerning the Zapis’ an ingenious hypothesis of
Cherepnin has played a central role.8 Cherepnin noted the parallels between
the Zapis’ and the last article (art. 100) of the Code of Ivan iv of 1550, devoted
to the courts of apanage princes. Cherepnin had plausibly advocated (see the
following sections) that the Code of 1497 should not be divided into 68 articles,
but into 94 (or 95). This led him to the suggestion that the Code of 1497, of
which the Code of 1550 was admittedly the successor and replacement, had
originally consisted also of 100 articles and that the contents of the Zapis’ were
the source of the last few missing provisions.
No definitive answer has as yet been given, but the conclusion that the
Zapis’ was one of the main forerunners of the Code of 1497 is inescapable. One
of the general features they have in common is the prominence of the fiscal
aspect of the administration of justice; the income derived from trials and its
distribution were dominant factors in designing the court system.
6 Cf. A.A. Zimin, “Zapis’ o dushegubstve”, Vspomogatel’nye istoricheskie distsipliny xvii, Lenin-
grad, 1985, 133–141.
7 Cf. ppr iii, 203–204; rz ii, 190.
8 See Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 348–359.
The Code of Ivan iii of 1497 195
The Code of Ivan iii: Introduction and Historiography
The full text of the Code (Sudebnik) of Ivan iii of 1497 was lost for several cen-
turies, although its existence was known (at least theoretically), because Her-
berstein had included a Latin translation of the initial provisions (arts. 3–7,
9–16) of the Code in his famous memoirs. A Russian translation of Herber-
stein’s work appeared in 1866, but by that time the original text of the Sudebnik
had been rediscovered by P. Stroev, who, together with K. Kalaidovich, pub-
lished the text two years later, in 1819.9 The existence of the Code was known in
Russia at least as early as the end of the 18th century, because of the references
to it in chronicle literature.10
Sigismund von Herberstein

Sigismund von Herberstein was the third son of a member of the lower
Austrian nobility in the Karst, in present-day Slovenia. He was born in
1486 and learned Slovenian in his native village. Of delicate health in his
youth, he did not follow the customary military career, but received a
good education in various religious schools and the University of Vienna.
He then entered the service of the emperor Charles v and his brother
Ferdinand, lord of the Austrian Habsburg possessions. After successfully
carrying out several diplomatic missions in Western and Central Europe,
he reached the high point of his career in two missions to the court of the
grand prince of Moscow, Vasilii iii Ivanovich, in 1516–17 and 1526–1527.
After two centuries of Tatar domination, Russia had almost become
a white space on the map for the Western world. Herberstein’s mandate
explicitly included the collection of all sorts of information on Russia,
such as could be useful for the diplomatic and strategic policies of his
masters. He executed his duties brilliantly and to the great satisfaction of
his sovereigns. He was elevated to the dignity of Reichsfreiherr (baron of
the Holy Roman Empire) and later on, in 1556, to the high positions of he-
reditary chamberlin (Erbkämmerer) of Austria and hereditary steward or
seneschal (Erbtruchsess) of Karinthia. His marriage to Helena von Saurau
remained childless. Herberstein died in Vienna in 1566.
Due to his knowledge of Russian, Herberstein was able to acquire first-
hand information on a great variety of subjects, such as the organization
9 K. Kalaidovich, P. Stroev, Zakony velikogo kniaz’ia Ioanna Vasil’evicha i Sudebnik tsaria i

velikogo kniaz’ia Ioanna Vasil’evicha s dopolnitel’nymi ukazami, Moskva, 1819.
10 Cf. Iu.G. Alekseev, Sudebnik Ivana iii. Traditsiia i reforma (hereafter: Alekseev, Sudebnik),
Sankt-Peterburg, 2001, 28–29.
196 chapter 9
of the state of Muscovy, the mores of the Russian court, the relationship
with the Russian Church, religious and moral beliefs, the situation in the
provinces, education, family life, non-Russian ethnic groups, and law and
courts as well. His reports are usually precise and fair, and, considering
his background, not overly judgmental. He may deservedly be considered
the patriarch of Russian studies in the West.
The original reports to his masters have been lost, but he published a
book-length Latin version of them in 1549 in Vienna (Rerum Moscoviti-
carum Commentarii); slightly amended versions were published in Basel
in 1551 and 1556. He translated the work himself into German and this was
published in Vienna in 1557 (Moscovia Hauptstat in Reissen). Numerous
new editions (including one in St.Petersburg in 1795) and translations into
various European languages have appeared over the years (see the exten-
sive bibliography in N. Poe, Foreign Descriptions of Muscovy; An Analytic
Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources, Columbus, Ohio, 1995,
61–65). The original Latin and German editions are available on Internet.
After the Stroev edition, several others followed before 1917, the most influen-
tial among them the one by Vladimirskii-Budanov, who included the text of
the Code in the second volume of his anthology on the history of Russian law.11
A cursory inspection of the text produces the impression that the Code was
predominantly concerned with court procedure, criminal as well as civil, and
that in this procedural aspect the emphasis was on the fees and other payments
due to judges and all kinds of other court officials. In the words of Dewey:
“ … the Sudebnik sounds disappointingly like a simple listing of court fees, or
of payments to be made to victorious litigants.”12 This peculiarity of the Code
would explain that many pre-1917 authors displayed only moderate interest in
it.13 A more thorough investigation shows that underneath and beyond this
financial pettifoggery the Code offered a broad view of the entire structure of
the administration of justice at the time the Muscovy state was consolidating.
After 1917 the first major study of the Code of 1497 was by Iushkov, in
1926.14 In 1951 Cherepnin devoted a long chapter to the same subject in his
11 M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov, Khristomatiia po istorii russkago prava, vyp.2, Kiev, 1915 (5th ed.),
82–108.
12 H. Dewey, “The 1497 Sudebnik – Muscovite Russia’s First National Law Code”, American
Slavic & East European Review, Vol. 15 (1956), 325–338, at 325.
13 Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 227–229; Sergeevich, Drevnosti, dealt extensively with the Russkaia
Pravda, but mentioned the Code of 1497 only in passing.
14 Published in the Uchenye Zapiski (T.V, Part 3, 1–46) of Saratov University and reprinted
in O.I. Chistiakov (ed.), Serafim Vladimirovich Iushkov. Trudy vydaiushchikhsia iuristov,
Moskva, 1989, 370–443.
work on Russian medieval archives, which remained for a long time the most
authoritative investigation of the Code.15 Cherepnin also wrote the comments
to the 1497 Code in the 1952 Academy of Sciences edition of the Sudebniki of 1497,
1550 and 1589.16 Less well known is S.I. Shtamm’s short monograph of 1955.17
The Code of 1497 was also included in the major collections of Russian legis-
lation, the “Monuments of Russian Law” (prp),18 the “Russian Legislation from
the 10th to the 20th Century” (rz),19 and the “Monuments of Russian Law in 35
Volumes” (PRoP).20
Building to a considerable extent on the work of Iushkov and Cherepnin,
Iu.G. Alekseev’s monograph on the Sudebnik of 1497 represents the most im-
portant contribution to Russian scholarship on this document from the post-
Soviet period.21 In his historiographical survey Alekseev attempted to correct
some of the most egregious examples of ideological posturing by his Soviet pre-
decessors. Three years later a collective memorial volume, dedicated to the 5th
centenary of the Code, was produced by a group of St.Petersburg historians.22
Among the works by Western authors, the studies by Szeftel and Dewey deserve
to be mentioned.23 Szeftel also published a French translation of the Code.24 An
English translation was included by Dewey in his Muscovite Judicial Texts.25

16 B.D. Grekov (ed.), Sudebniki xv–xvi vekov, Moskva/Leningrad, 1952.
17 S.I. Shtamm, Sudebnik 1497 g., Moskva, 1955.
18 prp iii, 341–416, including a translation into modern Russian by Cherepnin and com-
ments by A.G. Poliak.
19 rz ii, 54–97, with comments by S.I. Shtamm.
20 PRoP iii(1), 18–25, with historiographical introduction by I.V. Popriadukhina, 6–18.
21 Iu. G. Alekseev, Sudebnik Ivana iii. Traditsiia i reforma, Sankt-Peterburg, 2001 (Alekseev,
Sudebnik). This work also contains a review of the historiography of the Code of 1497, which
updated Cherepnin’s review of half a century earlier. In a lengthy review of Alekseev’s
study, S.N. Kisterev, critical on many points of detail, hailed it as a milestone in the study of
the Code and of Ivan iii’s policies; S.N. Kisterev, “Issledovanie Iu.G. Alekseeva o Sudebnike
1497 g.”, S.N. Kisterev (ed.), Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii, vyp.6, Moskva, 2002, 235–269.
22 I.Ia. Froianov (ed.), Sudebnik Ivana iii. Stanovlenie samoderzhavnogo gosudarstva na Rusi,
Sankt-Peterburg, 2004.
23 M. Szeftel, “The Sudebnik of 1497: Paleographical Analysis, Composition and Sources”,
M. Halle (ed.), For Roman Jakobson, The Hague, 1956, 547–552. H. Dewey, The Sudebnik of
1497, Ann Arbor, 1955 (unpublished doct. diss.); id., “The 1497 Sudebnik – Muscovite Russia’s
First National Law Code”, American Slavic & East European Review, Vol. 15 (1956), 325–338.
24 M. Szeftel, “Le Justicier (Sudebnik) du Tsar Ivan iii”, Revue historique de droit français et
étranger 34 (1956), 530–568. The Introduction reproduced Szeftel’s paper of the same year
in the Jakobson Festschrift.
25 M. Dewey (ed.), Muscovite Judicial Texts 1488–1556. Michigan Slavic Materials, No.7 (Ann
Arbor), 1966, 7–21.
198 chapter 9
The manuscript discovered by Stroev is still the only one extant, but, as
mentioned above, there can be no doubt that the Code of 1497 represented a
major legislative event. Various theories concerning the circumstances of its
origin have been advanced, but no consensus has as yet emerged. For a long
time a prominent official, the d’iak (clerk) Vladimir Gusev was considered the
principal author, but this view has been abandoned now, thanks to Cherepnin’s
persuasive refutation. Cherepnin also advocated an early date for the origin of
the present copy, a few years after 1497, and this was generally accepted until
A.I. Pliguzov more recently made a strong case for a much later origin, around
the middle of the 16th century.26
The Numbering of the Articles of the Code
In the single available manuscript copy of the Code the separate provisions
have not been numbered, neither is their separateness indicated in another
way, except by the use of red ink for the first letter of certain sentences and
also for certain words. The matter of numbering is important, as pointed out in
connection with other ancient legislative sources, because it helps in clarifying
the structure of a legislative text and the relationships between its constituent
parts.
All editions and translations follow the numbering system adopted
by Vladimirskii-Budanov in the first edition (of 1873) of his anthology. In do-
ing so, Vladimirskii-Budanov asserted that he had merely added numbers to
the provisions he found in the Stroev edition. His system was not based on an
inspection of the one and only copy and it is uncontested that it was to some
extent arbitrary and unfortunate, leading to separation of what should have
remained united and the inverse.27
Cherepnin, whose study also involved the perusal of the manuscript
text, had suggested that the use of red ink in the text should be the main
guide for dividing up the Code into articles.28 Many sentences in the Code
start with the red letter A (“And” or “And if”); also certain words have been
written in red ink and these words constitute headings for the following
26 A.I. Pliguzov, “O sud’be spiskov Sudebnika i dukhovnoi gramoty Ivana iii”, Sovetskie arkhivy,
1989, No.6, 44–51. See also Alekseev, Sudebnik, 75.
27 For example, the “Decree concerning bailiffs” occurs in the middle of art. 31, while it actu-
ally is the beginning of a new fragment, running up to art. 37. Art. 30 and the first part of
art. 31 would then constitute the “Decree on riding-distance fees”.
sentences.29 By applying this method Cherepnin arrived at a total number

of 94 provisions.30 In a few instances provisions in the standard edition were
joined into a single provision, but in most of Cherepnin’s proposals they were
split up. Pliguzov’s recent argument in favour of a comparatively late origin
of the extant manuscript text robs the latter of some of its authority and con-
sequently undermines Cherepnin’s approach to some extent. However, as ob-
served by Alekseev, the system of marking initials in red ink proved to be quite
stable over time in the case of the numerous copies of the Expanded Pravda,
and this might also apply to the Code of 1497.31 In any case, the numbering sys-
tem of Vladimirskii-Budanov, with all necessary caveats, remains the one that
is still followed by most authors.
The Contents of the Code
Because of the single copy, there is no codicological history of the Code of

1497 which could help in distinguishing the various components of the Code.
Everything here will have to be based on what this copy yields on the Code’s
contents. This applies first of all to observable coherence of a particular block
of provisions, and then also to the use of red ink for headings, by which obvi-
ously the beginning of a new theme is indicated.
The two principal commentators, Cherepnin and Alekseev, came to more or
less the same conclusion in their investigation of the structure of the Code.32
Two main segments (arts. 1–25 and arts. 37–45) deal respectively with higher
courts (of boyars and okol’nichie33) and with lower courts (of urban and ru-
ral lieutenants, namestniki and volosteli). The two segments are separated by
a relatively coherent set of rules (arts. 30–36), concerning the duties and re-
muneration of different court officials. Art. 30 bears the title “Decree on travel-
ling [expenses]” (Ukaz o ezdu). In the middle of art. 31 there is a new heading
29 Except in one case, in art. 19, where the words Ino ta gramota (“Then such a charter”) are
written in red ink and constitute the beginning of the second sentence of the provision.
30 Cherepnin also advanced the hypothesis that the Code of 1497 originally had 100 articles,
like the Code of 1550, and that the omitted six provisions dealt with the matter previously
regulated in the Homicide Law of Vasilii ii the Blind (see the first section of this chapter).
31 Alekseev, Sudebnik, 158–159; starting from this Chapter (5), Alekseev used the numbering
proposed by Cherepnin, putting the numbers in square brackets.
32 Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 359–376; Alekseev, Sudebnik, 157–179.
33 Okol’nichie (derived from okolo, “around”) were originally officials belonging to the inner
circle of the ruler; at the time of the Code they were part of the serving aristocracy, rank-
ing immediately after the boyars. Cf. Pushkarev, 74.
200 chapter 9
“Decree on bailiffs” (O nedel’shchikakh ukaz).34 Arts. 46–64 treat of a variety of

subjects of a civil law nature. Arts. 65–68 cover miscellaneous additions.
The main segments themselves are interrupted by shorter units, sometimes
single provisions, sometimes small blocks of rules, which seem to have found
their place through a process of association in the minds of the drafters of
the Code. This can be demonstrated by considering the sequence of provi-
sions in the beginning of the Code. First there is a coherent body of provisions
defining the fees to be paid to court officials in a variety of situations. Arts.
7–8 deal with lawsuits concerning theft, homicide, arson, robbery, and other
crimes, and the fees connected with those suits. Then art. 9, almost as an aside,
decrees that such criminals should be put to death. This is followed by a red-
letter heading “On thieves”; arts. 10–14 are then devoted to thefts and the way
the courts should deal with them, as if the drafters, being on the subject of
theft at arts. 7–8, felt this was a convenient place to say a few more words about
it. In art. 15 the main line of the text is then taken up again with more rules
about court fees.
The last part of the Code contains its most famous provision, art. 57, “On the
Peasant Quitting-Time” (O khristianskom [= krest’ianskom] otkaze), which al-
lowed the peasants to move to another village or district only during one week
before and after St. George’s Day (Iur’ev den’, 26 November).
General Historical Background and Character of the Code
Some knowledge of the historical background of the Code of 1497 can obvi-
ously be helpful in understanding obscure aspects of individual provisions.
The grand picture was determined, without question, by the achievement of
complete supremacy in Russia by the Moscow grand princes.35 The two major
contenders, Novgorod and the princes of Tver’, had gradually been reduced to
helpless victims of Moscow’s ambitions and were ultimately incorporated into
the Muscovy state, Novgorod in 1477 and Tver’ in 1485. Only the more mar-
ginal principalities of Pskov and Riazan’ remained nominally independent for
a few more years (Pskov until 1510, Riazan’ until 1521). The territory ruled by
the Moscow grand prince had increased enormously since its modest begin-
nings 150 years ago under Ivan Kalita. As a result, a new political reality had
arisen in Russia, which called also for new legal arrangements. The territorial
34 An eloquent example of the defective numeration of Vladimirskii-Budanov.

35 The decisive years of 1479–1485 are the subject of a special study by Iu.G. Alekseev,
Osvobozhdenie Rusi ot ordynskogo iga, Leningrad, 1989.
a pplicability of the Code is defined in considerable detail in a list of 53 towns

and the corresponding travelling expenses (the ‘riding-fee’, ezd) to which bai-
liffs riding on official business were entitled.
But the conditions under which the Code of 1497 came into being can also
be considered from a lower perspective, focusing on the politico-legal cir-
cumstances of its adoption in 1497. For a long time this question had been
bedevilled by the figure of Vladimir Gusev. He was introduced as the actual
author of the Code by Karamzin on the basis of a mistaken reading from the
so-called Typographical Chronicle.36 The same chronicle reported that Gusev
was executed in the same year the Code was published, in connection with his
involvement in a conspiracy against Ivan iii’s grandson Dmitrii Ivanovich. The
connection between the two events remained in the dark.37
Gusev’s posthumous enjoyment of the authorship of the Code of 1497 only
came to an end after Ia.S. Lur’e and then Cherepnin had demonstrated that
Karamzin had misunderstood the chronicle text.38
As an alternative explanation the prominent involvement of the Patrikeev
princes,39 Ivan Iur’evich and his son Vasilii Ivanovich, was tentatively suggest-
ed by Cherepnin, on account of them having been the chief judicial officers of
Ivan iii in the 1495–1499 period.40 The significance of this connection would
have been that the Patrikeevs, representing the high Moscow nobility which
had thrown in its lot with the grand prince in his struggle for supremacy in
Russia, would have been inclined to support centralizing tendencies through
legislative reforms. Gusev, on the other hand, belonged to the old nobil-
ity of the independent principalities, which would not be in favour of such
centralization.
Alekseev rejected Cherepnin’s hypotheses as lacking any solid foundation.41
The Code of 1497 was seen by Alekseev as the capping-stone of Ivan iii’s
36 Karamzin, T.vi, col.219. The Typographical Chronicle in psrl, Vol. xxiv, Petrograd, 1921,
the relevant sentence on p. 213.
37 A full exposition of the entire story in Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 255–256, 289–303.
38 Ia.S. Lur’e, “Iz istorii politicheskoi bor’by pri Ivane iii”, Uchenye Zapiski lgu, seriia is-
toricheskikh nauk, vyp.10 (1940), 90–91. Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 255–256, 289–303.
39 The Patrikeev princes, descendants of a Lithuanian Gediminid prince who had entered
the service of the Russian grand princes, had for several generations occupied high offices
in Moscow; Ivan Iur’evich was the son of a sister of Vasilii ii the Blind, and thus Ivan iii’s
first cousin.
40 Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 306–320. Other persons closely involved in the drafting of the
Code, according to Cherepnin, were the d’iaki Vasilii Tret’iak Dolmatov and Fedor Kurit-
syn, judicial officers of Ivan iii, belonging to the circle of the Patrikeev princes.
41 Alekseev, Sudebnik, 59–61.
202 chapter 9
legislative reforms, rather than the product of relatively ephemeral political

forces. The Code was an expression, in the view of Alekseev, of a new politi-
cal concept of Russia which had gained the ascendancy through the rule of
Ivan iii. In proclaiming a return to the “old order” (starina) of the founder of
the Kievan realm, St. Vladimir, the ‘aberrations’ of the era of the independent
principalities were to be corrected through the establishment of a unified Rus-
sian state. The Code streamlined the court system of this new creation, but it
did so by retaining much of the law of the previous period.42 The sub-title of
Alekseev’s work is “Tradition and Reform”.
The main foreign commentators, Szeftel and Dewey, were in agreement
about centralization being the dominant characteristic of the Sudebnik. “It is a
tool of centralization”, writes Szeftel, “which was a necessary consequence of
the territorial and political centralization of Great-Russia.”43 Dewey described
the establishment of uniform and orderly procedure as the main task of the
Sudebnik.44
Without denying the essentially centralizing thrust of the Code, Cherepnin
painted a more complex picture of its basic purposes. The Code did undoubt-
edly emphasize the influence and the jurisdiction of Moscow vis-à-vis the
provinces and the subordinate towns. This showed, for instance, in the vari-
ous provisions obliging judges to refer cases to the court of the grand prince
or of a higher boyar (e.g. arts. 20 and 43). But there was another tendency as
well, according to Cherepnin, mitigating the centralization effort: the main-
tenance of a certain equilibrium between the powers of the grand prince and
those of the higher nobility. This tendency was reflected in a number of pro-
visions which recognized the equality between the grand prince’s court and
the courts of high boyars and which distinguished between various levels of
courts.45
In conclusion, Dewey’s down-to-earth evaluation of the Code is worth quot-
ing: “ … the Grand Prince wanted his judicial system set on a sound basis, with
uniform judicial fees and prohibition of judicial corruption as all-important
steps, initial measures without which laws of substantive character could
only fail.”46
42 See esp. Ch.iv (129–156) of Alekseev’s study.

43 Szeftel, “Le Justicier (Sudebnik) du Tsar Ivan iii”, quoted above, 550.
44 Dewey, “The 1497 Sudebnik – Muscovite Russia’s First National Law Code”, quoted
above, 337.
45 This argument is developed in §8 of Cherepnin’s chapter on the Code, Arkhivy ii, 320–348.
It is entitled, in typical Soviet jargon, “The Sudebnik as a monument of class justice”.
46 Dewey, op.cit., 337.
The Sources for the Code of 1497
The most easily identifiable sources of the Code are two decrees devoted to
the courts of boyars and okol’nichie and resp. the lower lieutenants’ courts. The
existence of these decrees can be accepted on the basis of the text of the Code.
The solemn title of the Code is: “In the year 7006 [1497] in the month of Sep-
tember, the Grand Prince Ivan Vasil’evich of All Russia decreed with his chil-
dren and his boyars about courts, how boyars and okol’nichie [were to] judge.”
And art. 37 is preceded by the heading: “Decree to the lieutenants about the
town court”. Most commentators agree that there were therefore originally two
enactments. A.G. Poliak repeats Cherepnin’s apposite observation that the last
words of the Preamble, “how boyars and okol’nichie [are] to judge”, written in
black ink, do not actually belong to the original Preamble, which was written
in red ink, but are in fact the beginning of the first section of the Code.47
A first question concerns the relationship of the two sections. The existence
of a close relationship is obvious, because there is a number of parallel, almost
identical provisions (arts. 8 and 39; 15, 22 and 40; 17, 18 and 42; and others). As
the provisions which can be regarded as belonging to the second part (con-
cerning lower courts) are generally less detailed, Cherepnin has argued that
the decree on lower courts probably preceded its counterpart on boyars’ courts
and that the former was used in drawing up the latter.48 The opposite position
would raise questions which would be difficult to answer.49
It is equally obvious that the original decrees were subject to a thorough ed-
iting process in the drafting of the Sudebnik and that they were not simply in-
corporated without alterations into the Code. The point has been made above
that the editing process in most medieval legislation was often more associa-
tive than rational-logical. Some of the meandering insertions have the look of
having been derived from separate enactments, but others may have been the
product of the drafters’ creative imagination.
Alekseev, on the other hand, stressed the differences between the two seg-
ments dealing with courts in the Sudebnik, and suggested that the two were
drafted simultaneously in the immediate preparation of the Code.50 This agrees
with Alekseev’s general penchant for regarding the Code first and foremost
as a coherent and comprehensive effort to create a uniform legal and judicial
47 A.G. Poliak in prp iii, 374.

49 Such as: Why leave all the detail of the older part, considered unnecessary for including in
the younger part, intact when the final combined text of the two parts was being drawn up?
204 chapter 9
s ystem for the emerging state of Muscovy and for dismissing the importance of
individual enactments as building-blocks for the Code.
Without denying the fundamental significance of the Code and recognizing
the major innovations it introduced, one cannot disregard its often ramshackle
and disorganized structure. Even if one takes on board Alekseev’s injunction
concerning the different approach to drafting of medieval legislators, the over-
whelming impression produced by the Code is that it was cobbled together
by collecting the most important existing laws concerning the administration
of justice and eliminating subsequently the most glaring contradictions and
abolishing rules that did not fit into the overall concept of the desired new
system.
Another, more general observation by Alekseev concerning the drafting
process of the Sudebnik is perhaps more enlightening. In a special chapter on
“The Prince’s Law and Custom” (Kniazhoi ustav i obychnoe pravo),51 Alekseev
argued that the usual juxtaposition of statute and customary law had been
exaggerated, at least in the case of the Code of 1497. He was more inclined to
view medieval law in such a setting as a continuum, from which occasionally,
for whatever reason, bits might be lifted out and put down in writing. The Code
of 1497 was therefore based on and rooted in Russian customary law, the same
law that had been expressed in other legislative acts of the period. Alekseev
did not pay much attention to enactments that others proposed as “sources”
of the Sudebnik; in his view, presumably, they all had their source in contem-
porary custom.
Although this is a useful and productive insight, it still remains obvious that
the two segments discussed above must have had their origin in earlier legisla-
tion. Similarly, the insertions of arts. 30–36, between the two main segments,
are clearly entitled: “Decree on travelling [expenses]” and “Decree on bailiffs”,
suggesting that they were based on specific legislation.
Older authors have looked at the ustavnye gramoty (local government char-
ters) as important sources for the Code of 1497.52 Cherepnin on the other hand
proposed a different approach to the matter of the relationship between the
ustavnye gramoty and the Code. He suggested that his presumed decree on the
lieutenants’ court was not only the source for arts. 37–44 of the Code, but also
for the local government charters.53

52 Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 228, regarded them as the chief source of the Code; similarly, Szeftel,
op.cit., 551.
53 Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 379. The decree on the lieutenants’ courts is dated provisionally in
1483–1484 by him (ibidem and 367) and constituted the main foundation of the reform
A definitive answer is difficult to give, because of the incertitude surround-

ing the chronology of the various enactments concerned. The essential point
remains that many of the Code’s provisions constituted an elaboration of pre-
vious Muscovy law, whether expressed in specific statutes or forming part of
the body of customary law.
Among the other possible sources for the Code of 1497 most authors men-
tion the Russkaia Pravda and the Pskov Court Charter.54 Art. 54 of the Ex-
panded Pravda and art. 55 of the Code both deal with the case of a merchant
who has become indebted by having lost his merchandise through shipwreck,
robbery or a similar disaster; art. 110 of the Expanded Pravda and art. 66 of
the Code both list three similar grounds for becoming a slave. The situations
described in these provisions display great similarity, but the wording of the
two sources is so different that direct borrowing looks very improbable. With
regard to the Pskov Charter the matter is more obvious; several provisions of
both texts are partly identical (i.e. the same, word for word). So while the draft-
ers of the Code of 1497 probably did not have a text of the Russkaia Pravda on
their writing table, the Pskov Court Charter must have been at hand.
Legal Significance of the Code of 1497
Notwithstanding its limited scope and its focus on courts and procedure, the
Sudebnik of 1497 may still be considered the legislative foundation stone of
the Muscovy principality. It stands at the beginning of a continuous line of
development, running through more than four centuries, until the wholesale
abolition of all pre-revolutionary law by the Bolshevik government in 1918.
of land ownership. Entrusting the administration of justice in the regions to appointed

officials and defining their fee income from such activities were initial steps in the grad-
ual elimination of the kormlenie system, completed under Ivan iv Groznyi in 1555–1556.
The Belo Ozero charter (Belozerskaia ustavnaia gramota) of 1488 was probably accom-
panied by similar local government charters for other regions (now lost) and fitted into
the same grand scheme of Ivan iii, as well as the large-scale confiscations of boyar lands
and the forced relocation of their owners in the recently acquired provinces of Tver’ and
Novgorod.
54 E.g. Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 228–229; Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 371–373; Szeftel, op.cit., 551. The
pre-revolutionary literature concerning the sources of the Code of 1497 is discussed in S.I.
Shtamm, “Russkaia istoriografiia xix veka ob istochnikakh Sudebnika 1497 i 1550 godov”,
E.A. Skripilev (ed.), Istochnikovedenie istorii gosudarstva i prava dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii,
Irkutsk, 1983, 102–117.
206 chapter 9
As the Kievan realm started to fragment, its original legal unity, manifested
before all by the Russkaia Pravda and the church statutes of St. Vladimir and
his son Iaroslav the Wise, was weakened by the emergence of law of only re-
gional applicability. Much of the law of this period has been lost, except that
from the westernmost regions of Novgorod, Pskov and Smolensk, and also from
Volynia before the latter province was incorporated into the Polish-Lithuanian
state, together with large swaths of present-day Ukraine and Western Russia.
Concerning the once independent principalities of Tver’ and Riazan’ there
is some diffuse information about them having had statutes of their own.55
On the other hand, regional differences in legal regimes were probably small.
This is suggested by what has been made available by the sources, particularly
by medieval charters from various parts of Russia (even those under Polish-
Lithuaniancontrol), as well as, indirectly, by the smooth transition to a unified
legal system once Moscow had imposed its rule.
There was of course Moscow law before the Code of 1497; the Homicide Law
of Vasilii ii the Blind would be the most obvious example. But also the charters
of Dvina Land, of Belo Ozero, and even the Court Charter of Pskov, were in fact
issued by the Moscow grand prince. But none of these enjoyed the universal
applicability in the entire principality of Muscovy, as it had taken shape by the
end of the 15th century, that could be claimed for the Sudebnik of 1497. The lat-
ter remained in force until it was replaced by Ivan iv’s Code of 1550, which was
then replaced by the Sobornoe Ulozhenie of tsar Aleksei in 1649. The Ulozhe-
nie of 1649 was the starting-point of a new period of legislative development,
reaching its completion in the consolidating codification of Count Speranskii
in the middle of the 19th century.
For these reasons, it is worth considering the relationship of the Code of
1497 and its successors and predecessors. The relationship between the Codes
of 1497 and 1550 is the easiest to define. The Code of Ivan iv was the regular
successor of the Code of his grandfather, Ivan iii. The Code of 1497 was far
and away the most important source for the Code of 1550. The overwhelming
majority of the 1497 Code’s provisions were incorporated into the 1550 Code,
with numerous amendments and additions.56 During the 1497–1550 period the
Code of 1497 was often explicitly referred to in legal documents.57 The Code of
1497 put an end to the legal fragmentation of Russia.
55 Based on a communication by Tatishchev; cf. rz ii, 48.

56 Cf. B.D. Grekov (ed.), Sudebniki xv–xvi vekov, Moskva/Leningrad, 1952, 192 (this part of the
commentary was written by B.A. Romanov).
57 I.I. Smirnov gave a list of 15 instances in I.I. Smirnov, “Sudebnik 1550 g.”, Istoricheskie
Z
apiski, Vol. xxiv (1947), at 273–274.
The relationship between the Code of 1497 and its predecessors, as sources
of law, is more difficult to determine. The Code itself refers twice to local gov-
ernment charters, both times in the segment dealing with lower courts (arts.
38 and 44).58 The implied meaning is that the validity of these charters had not
been affected by the adoption of the Code. The Code was superimposed on the
existing law of Muscovy and superseded only what was contrary to it. The con-
cept of a hierarchy of laws is a modern one and it operates only where there is
a clear understanding of a well-regulated system of adopting legal rules. Where
there is no separation of powers (as in Muscovy Russia or in modern authori-
tarian or totalitarian systems), all legal rules ultimately emanate from the same
authority and remain in force until the ruling powers decide otherwise. In an
individual case one has to look for an applicable rule; if there is more than one,
the most recent rule applies, no matter which public authority enunciated it.
The ruler, or some of his prominent representatives, could also bypass an exist-
ing rule and thereby amend the legal system. This is not the same as arbitrari-
ness, where decisions of empowered agencies are in principle unpredictable.
A somewhat similar view had already been expressed by Sergeevich, when
he wrote: “The Muscovy state was not administered by laws, in the present
meaning of this word, but by discretion [usmotrenie]; ordinances and laws of
the sovereign did not precede practice, but the other way round.”59
Finally, there is the question of the relationship between the legislation of
the Moscow prince, culminating in this era in the Sudebnik of 1497, and the le-
gal sphere dominated by church jurisdiction. This jurisdiction, as explained in
Chapter 21 (on the Church and Monasteries), concerned certain types of cases
and disputes and, additionally, an entire class of persons who were (almost)
completely and exclusively subject to church jurisdiction. The latter category
is explicitly recognized in art. 59 of the Code: members of the clergy and cer-
tain other categories of church dependents were to be judged by the bishop
58 Most authors understand gramoty in these provisions as ustavnye gramoty (local govern-
ment charters); cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 373–374; D’iakonov, Ocherki, 217; Vlad.-Bud.,
Obzor, 228; Szeftel, op.cit., 551.
59 Sergeevich, Lektsii, 27; in similar vein Dewey, “The 1497 Sudebnik – Muscovite Russia’s
First National Law Code”, American Slavic & East European Review, Vol. 15 (1956), 325–338,
at 337. See also a more recent discussion of the relationship between customary and
statute law (in connection with the Code of Ivan iii) in Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii (OfR)
between S.N. Kisterev (“Velikokniazheskii Sudebnik 1497 g. i sudebnaia praktika pervoi
poloviny xvi v.”, OfR 11, Moskva, 2007, 440–461) and K.N. Petrov (“Imel li Sudebnik 1497
g. znachenie zakona v ego sovremennom ponimanii?”, OfR 12, Moskva, 2008, 365–382) and
Kisterev’s reaction (“Zakon i poriadok v srednevekovoi Rusi (otvet K.V. Petrovu)”, OfR 12,
383–406).
208 chapter 9
or his judge. Efforts by the Moscow prince to make inroads on the lucrative
jurisdiction of the Church in the decades preceding the adoption of the Code
remained largely unsuccessful.60 Art. 59 would then be a recognition of the
Church’s traditional powers in this area, and a price paid for its much needed
support of the grand prince. The second part of art. 59 represented a compro-
mise solution for litigation between an ordinary citizen and a person under
church jurisdiction; such disputes were decided, as was done in the past, by a
mixed court. The Code had one short and rather insignificant provision on the
law of succession (art. 60), but otherwise the main branches of law reserved to
the Church, matrimonial and inheritance law, were not mentioned and pre-
sumably remained in the hands of the Church.
60 Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 344–345.

chapter 10
Foreign Laws
This chapter deals with foreign laws which at some time during the Russian
middle ages were applicable at some place in Russia, albeit in an amended
form. The laws concerned are from neighbouring regions, South, West, and
East. Chronologically, Byzantium came first, the country from which Russia
received the Christian religion, and along with it certain laws with religious
connections. To the West there were Poland and Lithuania and, further away,
Germany. The entire subject of Polish-Lithuanian law which was applicable for
a very long period in the western regions of Russia is discussed in Chapter 17
(on Western Russia); this subject also involves the influence of German (main-
ly Magdeburg and Lübeck) law in Central and Eastern Europe. A small pocket
of German law on Russian territory was represented by the Skra of Novgorod,
the law of the Hanseatic merchant community in Novgorod. The massive influ-
ence of European law started much later, with the policies of Peter the Great
in the 18th century.
The question whether Mongol-Tatar law and institutions had an impact on
medieval Russia, and if so, what the results were, is part of the wider problem
of the place and meaning to be given to the period of Mongol-Tatar rule in
Russia.
The Impact of Byzantine Law
In Chapter 2 (on Sources), the section “The Penetration of Byzantine Law Into
the Slavic World” discusses in some detail which Byzantine laws reached me-
dieval Russia and during which period.1 An important moment in this process
was the arrival, shortly before 1273, of the Serbian redaction of the Nomocanon,
which contained among other things the entire text of the Procheiron. This
Serbian redaction was the main source of the so-called Russian redaction (of
the Nomocanon or Kormchaia). The first phase of the latter redaction (roughly
the period from 1273 to 1280) resulted in a family of South-West Russian copies
1 This section, and the present survey, are based mainly on Ia.N. Shchapov’s pioneering studies
in this field, especially his Vizantiiskoe i iuzhnoslavianskoe pravovoe nasledie na Rusi v xi–xiii
vv., Moskva, 1978.

210 chapter 10
of the Kormchaia, while the second phase, following immediately, included

the Short Redaction of the Court Law for the People (to be discussed below),
itself not a Byzantine law, but almost entirely based on it. Inclusion of a text
in a kormchaia obviously implied that the text was available at that moment
to the scribe and had arrived in Russia at some previous moment; at the same
time inclusion ensured much wider dissemination and the greater impact of
the text.
After the kormchie, the collection known as “Just Measure” (Merilo Praved-
noe) was a major conduit for spreading texts of Byzantine origin in Russia.
The Merilo Pravednoe contained Russian translations of the Procheiron and
the Ecloga, as well as the Short Redaction of the Court Law for the People
(implying that it is to be dated after ±1280).
Another Byzantine law which was available in Russian translation was the
Farmer’s Law (Nomos Georgikos), the main component of a collection known
as Knigi Zakonnye (“Law Books”, which also included excerpts from the Pro-
cheiron and the Ecloga).
All these collections were made and copied in ecclesiastical circles, espe-
cially in the chanceries of the metropolitan, the Novgorod archbishop, and also
other bishops, as well as the major monasteries. Their interest in materials of
a legal nature was primarily directed to matters in which church jurisdiction
would be involved (matrimonial law, especially divorce and marital property,
inheritance, and also criminal matters entrusted to church jurisdiction). These
questions are dealt with more extensively in Chapter 21 (on the Church and
Monasteries) and also in the discussion of the so-called church statutes in
Chapter 6 (on Princely Statutes).
Generally speaking, Byzantine law dealing with such matters was a major
source of inspiration for the Russian courts involved, but Byzantine law was
rarely adopted directly; instead it was subjected to a process of reworking to
adapt it to the circumstances of medieval Russia, which differed greatly from
those prevailing in Byzantium.2
The Court Law for the People (Zakon Sudnyi liudem)
The “Court Law for the People” (Zakon Sudnyi liudem, zsl) is known to have
had three redactions, the Short zsl, the Expanded zsl, and the Concordance
zsl (Kratkii, Prostrannyi, and Svodnyi zsl).
2 See also A.A. Dorskaia in PRoP i, 421–430.

Foreign Laws 211
The Short Redaction

The Short zsl has survived only in Russian ecclesiastical collections, although
it is not a Russian law.3 Most copies are part of various kormchie, the oldest
one being the copy included in the Novgorod Kormchaia of 1282. The Short zsl
is also found as part of another important manuscript collection, the Merilo
Pravednoe (see the section on this collection in Chapter 2, on Sources). The
question of the origin of the Short zsl is surrounded by much controversy.
Among the different theories, the so-called Moravian, Bulgarian, and Macedo-
nian theories are the most widely accepted.4
The Moravian theory holds that the zsl was drawn up in Great Moravia
in or shortly after 862, on the basis of the Ecloga, a Byzantine law code, sup-
posedly of 726 (or 741). The main positive evidence for this theory is of a lin-
guistic nature.5 The Bulgarian theory asserts that the zsl had its origin in the
early Bulgarian empire, where it would have been enacted by the first Christian
ruler, khan Boris, in 866–868. This theory is also based on indirect historical
evidence.6
The Macedonian theory, advanced by S.V. Troitskii, regarded the zsl as an
adaptation of the Ecloga, intended for use among irregular Slavic troops in the
service of Byzantium, and drawn up between 830 and 840 in Macedonia.7
3 The principal editions of the Short zsl are:

M.N. Tikhomirov (ed.), Zakon Sudnyi liudem kratkoi redaktsii, Moskva, 1961; this edition
contains facsimile reproductions of the five most important manuscript copies; V. Ganev,
Zakon Soudnyi Liud’m, Sofiia, 1959; this work offers the most elaborate analysis of the text,
although it is defective in some ways. A critical review by I.V. Milov in Slavianskii Arkhiv, 1961,
51–63 (“Novoe issledovanie o Zakone Sudnom liudem”); H. Oroschakoff, “Ein Denkmal des
bulgarischen Rechts”, Zs. f. vergl. Rechtsw. 33(1916), 141–282; English translation with introduc-
tion and commentary by H. Dewey and A. Kleimola in Michigan Slavic Materials No.14, Zakon
Sudnyj Ljudem (Court Law for the People), Ann Arbor, 1977.
4 Cf. Dewey and Kleimola, op.cit., vii–xii.
5 The principal proponent of the Moravian theory is J. Vašica, “Origine cyrillo-méthodienne du
plus ancien code slave dit « Zakon sudnyj ljudem »”, Byzantinoslavica, Vol.12, 1951, 154–174.
6 Cf. Ganev, op.cit., esp. 23–25 and passim. Oroschakoff (op.cit.) also supports this theory, as
does M. Andreev, “Iavliaetsia li ‘Zakon Sudnyi Liudem’ drevnebolgarskim iuridicheskim
pamiatnikom?”, Slavianskii Arkhiv, 1959, 1–22. A central place in the historical argument for
the Bulgarian theory is occupied by the answers of pope Nicholas i to the questions directed
to him by khan Boris, concerning the drafting of a civil law. Cf. J. Harduinus (ed., = Hardouin),
“Responsa Nicolai Papae i ad Consulta Bulgarorum”, Acta Consiliorum et Epistolae Decretales,
T.V, Paris, 1714, 353–386.
7 S.V. Troitskii, “Sv. Mefodii kak slavianskii zakonodatel’”, Bogoslovskie trudy, Vol.2, Moskva,
1961, 83–141, and id., “Sv. Mefodii kak slavianskii zakonodatel’”, Zhurnal moskovskoi patriarkh-
ii, 1961, No.12, 49–59.
212 chapter 10
The oldest and most important copies of the Short zsl, the Novgorod,
Varsonof’ev and Ustiug copies, do not differ greatly and are affiliated to the
same protograph.8
The Short zsl is almost entirely based on the Ecloga; only the introduc-
tory provisions (arts. 1 and 2) and the end of the last provision (art. 33) lack
a close parallel in the Ecloga.9 Moreover, with a few exceptions, the Short zsl
is limited to extensive borrowing from the penultimate seventeenth title of
the Ecloga. This title (= chapter) was devoted to criminal law. Arts. 4–17 of the
zsl rephrased arts. 21–23, 25–26, 29–33, 35, and 40–41 of the seventeenth title
of the Ecloga, and arts. 18–19 and 23–32 of the zsl were related to arts. 1, 5–8,
10, 12–17 of the same Ecloga title. Arts. 3, 21–22 and 33 corresponded to other
Ecloga provisions (title 18, title 14, arts. 4–5, title 8, art. 6, title 14, art. 11, and title
2, arts. 13–15). The textual parallels as well as the sequence of the provisions
demonstrated beyond doubt the close relationship between the Ecloga and
the Short zsl. The latter, however, is not to be regarded as a slavish imitation of
selected Ecloga provisions. The principal innovation of the zsl is in the system
of sanctions.
The seventeenth chapter of the Ecloga (“Punishments for Crimes”) provid-
ed several forms of capital punishment, as well as an array of other corporal
punishments, such as flogging, whipping and the cutting off of various body
parts, and banishment. This system has been much mitigated in the Short zsl.
Capital punishment was retained only for serious cases of arson, and of the
corporal punishments of the Ecloga only cutting off the nose (for serious sex-
ual offences) and flogging were preserved. A greater role is given to financial
sanctions, but the main innovation is the introduction of a two-track penalty
system: along with the penalties to be imposed by secular authorities, eccle-
siastical penalties figure prominently, such as church penance, fasting for a
fixed period, or exclusion from participation in church ceremonies. The Short
zsl may therefore be characterized as an adaptation of selected criminal law
provisions of the Ecloga; apart from the different system of sanctions, there is
also a modest amount of new text.10
8 Tikhomirov, op.cit., 14.

9 Cf. Lipshits, op.cit., 22–23. The numbering of the individual provisions of the Short zsl
goes back to the Novgorod Kormchaia Copy. Dewey and Kleimola designate these provi-
sions as “chapters”, but in accordance with the practice followed in this work I use the
term “articles” (Russian sources similarly speak of stat’i).
10 On the relationship between the Ecloga and the zsl, Ia.N. Shchapov, Vizantiiskaia «Ekloga
Zakonov» v russkoi pis’mennoi traditsii, Sankt-Peterburg, 2011, 6 and 147–186 (Shchapov’s
commentary to Chapter xvii of the Ecloga).
Foreign Laws 213
In the context of the history of Russian law, the question concerning the
relevance of the Short zsl for medieval Russian law is of greater interest than
the points discussed above, concerning its origin and original applicability.
Was the zsl ever directly applied in Russia, and, if not, did it directly influence
Russian law? There is some indirect evidence suggesting that church courts
had recourse to it and may have used it, particularly in conjunction with the
Church Statute of Iaroslav, which dealt mainly with the same sort of situations.
The inclusion of the Short zsl in many versions of the Kormchaia suggests its
usefulness in ecclesiastical jurisdiction.11
The availability of the Short zsl at a comparatively early date in Russian
church circles12 quite naturally leads one to look for an effect on contempo-
rary Russian legislation. The earliest candidate would be the Church Statute
of Vladimir. Shchapov has pointed to the offences of church theft and d igging
up corpses.13 They are to be found in the Short zsl in arts. 30 and 29. In the
list of cases referred to church jurisdiction in the Statute of Vladimir the
terms “church theft” and “digging up corpses” have been inserted consecu-
tively in the later redactions, but are missing in the oldest Oleninskaia redac-
tion. This appears to be a case of inspiration by the zsl, rather than direct
borrowing.
Both the Church Statute of Iaroslav and the Short zsl are in the main spe-
cialized criminal codes. Most of the provisions of the Statute of Iaroslav are
devoted to offences in the sphere of marriage and sexual relations; the remain-
der concern offences in some way connected with the transition from a pagan
to a Christian way of life. In the Short zsl the list of sexual offences is much
less detailed; there are also a few offences connected with the introduction
of Christianity, but as their origin is in the Ecloga and conditions prevailing
in Byzantium, they were probably of little relevance in Kievan Russia. The
clearest parallel is in the combination of secular and church penalties, but, as
Shchapov has repeatedly pointed out, there is a difference in the penalizing
church authority. In Byzantium the church penalty consisted of the imposition
of penance, fasting, etc., and it was imposed by the priest. In Russia, jurisdic-
tion in certain types of cases was transferred to the bishop, more or less as an
agent of the state, and the penalty was a fixed sum of money. Also, the various
11 Cf. Tikhomirov, op.cit., 25–26; Dewey and Kleimola, op.cit., xvi–xvii.

12 Tikhomirov, op.cit., 27, speaks of the first centuries of Christianity in Russia, “perhaps even
the end of the 9th century”. Dewey and Kleimola, op.cit., xv, quote several older authors
who support the idea that the Short zsl reached Russia soon after the latter’s conversion.
13 Ia.N. Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’ v Drevnei Rusi xi–xiv vv., Moskva, 1972, 77–78.
214 chapter 10
mutilating penalties which were still included in the zsl, are not in the Statute
of Iaroslav.
In view of all this, the direct application of the Short zsl in Russia is difficult
to imagine. It would have created impossible dilemmas for the Russian church
court. Fornication with a nun, for instance, would cost 40 grivna (Statute of
Iaroslav, art. 21), or the offender would have his nose cut off and be assigned a
church penance (art. 7 zsl).
If one assumes that the Slavic translation of the zsl was available at the
time the original Statute of Iaroslav was drafted, it could only have served as a
certain source of inspiration, suggesting the regulation of specific situations.
In later times the text of the zsl was obviously part of the repertory available
to church courts, but then again not as a principal source of law, but rather as
an aid in shaping decisions.
The relationship between the zsl and the Russkaia Pravda is a theme which
has given rise to a number of assertions. Certain superficial parallels have
prompted theories about Byzantine and even Roman law influences on the
rp. (See also the discussion of this question in the sections on sources in the
chapters on the rp.)
The most efficient way to tackle this matter is by establishing first of all
the appropriate time frame. This means that only the Short zsl is involved;
the other two redactions were too late to have had an influence on the rp.
In practical terms it boils down then to arts. 12 and 18 of the Short Pravda.14
These provisions deal, respectively, with riding another person’s horse without
permission, and destroying or damaging another person’s weapons or clothes.
Art. 24 of the Short zsl concerned the liability of the person who had bor-
rowed a horse which subsequently died or was injured (text adopted almost
unchanged from Ecloga xvii, 7).
With regard to the ‘joy-riding’ case of art. 12 Short Pravda, a slightly more
attentive consideration of the two provisions involved (of the rp and the zsl)
shows that they concern totally different situations. The Short Pravda provi-
sion is part of a catalogue of ‘offences against the person’, such as is found in
the laws of pre-medieval cultures where the horse was the main means of
transport and the unauthorized taking of a horse, without the intention to ap-
propriate it, was a common occurrence. The rule of art. 12 is almost identical
to art. 40 of the Frankish Lex Ribuaria. The zsl provision, through Ecloga xvii,
14 Art. 12 of the Short Pravda is parallelled by art. 33 of the Expanded Pravda; art. 18 of the
Short Pravda is only to be found as an appendix in certain later copies of the Expanded
Pravda (e.g. last article of the Pushkin Copy).
Foreign Laws 215
7, goes back to Roman law (D.13.6.5.7), where it is part of a complex of rules

concerning the contract of loan-for-use (commodatum).15
There is no parallel provision in the Short zsl for art. 18 of the Short Pravda;
art. 26 of the Short zsl is sometimes mentioned in this respect, but the simi-
larity with art. 18 of the Short Pravda is minimal.16 (See also the section on the
sources of Iaroslav’s Pravda in Chapter 4).17
The Expanded Redaction18

The principal copies of the Expanded Redaction of the zsl are found in the
so-called Pushkin Collection and in the Archeographical Copy of the First
Novgorod Chronicle (Younger Version). The Pushkin Collection consists of
various legal texts (including also the Expanded Pravda) and probably dates
from the second half of the 14th century.19 The Archeographical Copy dates
from the middle of the 15th century.20 In both copies the title Zakon Sudnyi
liudem is missing. Following Tikhomirov’s edition of the various manuscripts
of the Expanded zsl in 1961, accompanied by an introductory essay, it can be
considered proven that the Expanded zsl was compiled on Russian soil and
functioned in fact exclusively as a Russian law.
The first 41 provisions (articles, “chapters” in the terminology of Dewey
and Kleimola) of the Expanded zsl reiterate the entire Short zsl, sometimes
word for word, sometimes with alterations. The other half of the Expanded zsl
(40–45 articles, depending on the numbering system adopted and on the spe-
cific copy) consisted mainly of criminal law provisions, with a smaller number
of rules concerning evidence, inheritance law, and obligations. Some provi-
sions have a mixed character, criminal as well as civil.21
15 In the Expanded zsl, after art. 26 which more or less reiterates art. 24 of the Short zsl,
there is an art. 27 which in its descriptive part is very close to art. 12 of the Short Pravda
(the sanction is quite different). This formula is therefore in all probability borrowed from
the Short Pravda. See also Shchapov, Vizantiiskaia «Ekloga Zakonov», 184–185.
16 The views put forward here were already defended a century ago by E. Chernousov, K
voprosu o vlianii vizantiiskogo prava na drevneishee russkoe, Iur’ev, 1916, 303 ff.
17 More extensively on these questions see F. Feldbrugge, “Roman Law in Medieval Russia”,
in Feldbrugge, lmr, 59–128, at 79–80 and 116–118.
18 Basic edition: M.N. Tikhomirov (ed.), Zakon Sudnyi liudem prostrannoi i svodnoi redaktsii,
Moskva, 1961. English translation and facsimile Russian texts also in Dewey and Kleimola,
op.cit.
19 Tikhomirov, op.cit., 6–9.
20 Ibid., 10–12.
21 Art. 80, for instance, is devoted to the duties of the executor of a will but also provides
for punishment (70 lashes and punitive compensation) for an executor who has failed in
carrying out his duties properly.
216 chapter 10
The tone of the second part of the Expanded zsl is occasionally strongly
moralistic.
In the process of inserting the Short zsl into the new text, the latter’s au-
thors consulted the Byzantine laws on which the Short zsl was based, and as a
result the text of the Expanded zsl is sometimes closer to the Ecloga than that
of the Short zsl.22
The second half of the Expanded zsl is based on Russian (Slavic) trans-
lations of other Byzantine laws, included in Russian ecclesiastical collections
and on Old Testament laws. The main Byzantine source of the Expanded zsl
(apart from the Ecloga) is the Procheiron.23 The many biblical borrowings are
chiefly from a Russian collection entitled “Selection from the Laws of Moses”,
and sometimes directly from the Old Testament (Exodus, Deuteronomium,
Leviticus).24
According to Tikhomirov, the Expanded zsl was probably compiled in the
first half of the 14th century in the North-West of Russia (Novgorod or Pskov).25
This would agree with the situation prevailing in Novgorod, where the scope of
jurisdiction exercized by the (arch)bishop was very extensive. The Expanded
zsl would then have functioned as the basic codification of criminal law, un-
like the Short zsl which had to compete with the indigenous Statute of Iaro-
slav as well as with the criminal law aspects of the rp.
Although the origins of the Expanded zsl were ultimately in Byzantine law,
certain minor influences from the rp can be perceived in matters of termi-
nology and procedural institutions.26 This is again a demonstration that the
Expanded zsl did not arrive in Russian legal practice as an alien text (as the
Short zsl did to a great extent), but was integrated from its inception into the
fabric of Russian medieval law.
The Concordance Redaction

The so-called Concordance Redaction of the zsl is found in a manuscript
of the Sofia Chronicle of 1402. This version of the zsl simply consists of an
amalgamation of the other two redactions. It does not therefore have much
22 Tikhomirov, op.cit., 15.

23 Ibid., 13–15. As the Slavic translation of the Procheiron reached Russia around 1270 as part
of the Serbian kormchaia (see Chapter ii), this provides a clear terminus post quem for the
Expanded zsl; cf. Shchapov, Vizantiiskoe i iuzhnoslavianskoe pravovoe nasledie na Rusi v
xi–xiii vv., Moskva, 155.
24 Ibid., 15–16.
25 Ibid., 17–21. Tikhomirov’s principal conclusions regarding the zsl are accepted by
Shchapov in Vizantiiskoe, 186–187.
26 Tikhomirov, op.cit., 17–19, who offers several examples.
Foreign Laws 217
independentrelevance for legal history. It was apparently compiled in the

chancery of the Moscow metropolitan in or shortly before 1402.27
The Skra of Novgorod
The Skra of Novgorod was the internal law of the Hanseatic merchant commu-
nity in Novgorod. It could be viewed as a curiosity of legal history, but in appre-
ciating its relevance one should take into consideration that for much of the
middle ages Novgorod was the leading city of Russia, that Novgorod’s status
and wealth were determined chiefly by its being the principal centre of foreign
trade in Russia, and that the Hanseatic League occupied an almost monopo-
listic position in Russian-West-European trade. This trade was of great impor-
tance to both sides; Russia exported furs, wax (mainly for making candles),
timber and honey (the principal sweetening agent for food); Western Europe
exported linen and woollen cloth, wine and luxury items.
For several centuries the Hanseatic League maintained a semi-permanent
trading-post in Novgorod: the German Court (nemetskii dvor) or Court of
St. Peter (Hof Synte Peteres te Nogarden).28 The distance between the Novgorod
settlement and its West-European home bases and the difficulty of commu-
nicating with these bases made a certain amount of self-government and
self-regulation inevitable. The internal affairs of the German Court were regu-
lated by a short law code, called the Skra, established by the League.29 Seven
successive versions of the Skra are known, the first one dating from the middle
27 Tikhomirov, op.cit., 22–27.

28 The German Court, together with its own church of St. Peter, was founded in 1192, accord-
ing to E.A.Rybina, “O dvukh drevneishikh torgovykh dogovorakh Novgoroda”, Novgorod-
skii istoricheskii sbornik 3(13), Moskva, 1989, 43–50 (and also Rybina’s monograph, quoted
below, 15–19). Generally on the Court of St. Peter see N.G. Riesenkampf, Der deutsche
Hof zu Nowgorod bis zu seiner Schliessung durch Iwan Wassiljewitsch iii im Jahre 1494,
Dorpat, 1854.
29 The basic publication in which the seven versions of the Skra appear is W. Schlüter, Die
Nowgoroder Schra in sieben Fassungen vom xiii. bis xvii. Jahrhundert, Dorpat, 1911. See
also F. Frensdorff, “Das statutarische Recht der deutschen Kaufleute in Nowgorod”, Ab-
handlungen der kön. Ges. der Wiss. zu Göttingen, Vol.33 (1886), 1–35 and Vol.34 (1887),
1–55; E.A. Rybina, Inozemnye dvory v Novgorode xii–xvii vv., Moskva, 1986 (contains text
of Skra iv and Russian translation); F. Feldbrugge, “The Skra of Novgorod: Legal Con-
tacts B
etween Russia and Western Europe in the Middle Ages”, Feldbrugge, lmr, 261–291
(updated version of paper with identical title in Hommage à-Hulde aan-Tribute to René
Dekkers, Bruxelles, 1982, 519–533).
218 chapter 10
of the 13th century. The sixth Skra was enacted after Novgorod had lost its in-
dependence and trading relations between the German merchant community
and Novgorod, now part of the Muscovy empire, had been re-established in
1514.30 But after Novgorod had been incorporated into the Moscow principal-
ity it never regained its hegemonial position in Russian-Western trade, and
the German Court gradually faded into insignificance in the course of the
16th century, although a seventh version of the Skra was issued by the city of
Lübeck in 1604. The text of the Skra was in Middle Low German, except the last
(High German) version.
The oldest nucleus of the Skra consisted of the confirmation in writing of
various practical arrangements which arose as the German merchant com-
munity gradually took shape in the 13th century. In the more extensive and
detailed later versions most provisions were based on the city law of Lübeck.
Much of the contents of the Skra reflected the policies of the Hanseatic League,
especially the protection of its trading monopoly.
What made the Novgorod settlement different from other Hanseatic trad-
ing-posts in West-European countries was its strictly semi-annual schedule of
activities. During winter Novgorod could only be reached over-land and dur-
ing summer the sea route was obviously preferable. As roads were impassable
in spring, winter visitors would have left before summer visitors arrived. As a
result there was a constantly changing population, without a permanent body
of self-government. A new alderman was elected twice a year by the merchants
who happened to be present.
The Russian component of the Skra was insignificant and consisted mostly
of some terminological borrowings. The Skra had no noticeable impact on
the law of Novgorod. It was not only the relatively modest size of the Ger-
man Court, but also the fact that the Skra was an internal regulation that
made such an effect improbable. Relations between Novgorod and the Ger-
man Court were regulated by a whole series of treaties, of which a number
have been p reserved (see Chapter 7, on Treaties). The Skra, in its different ver-
sions, often took a ccount of the agreements with Novgorod, as embodied in
the treaties.31
30 See N.A. Kazakova, “Eshche o zakrytii ganzeiskogo dvora v Novgorode v 1494 g.”, Novgorod
skii istoricheskii sbornik 2, Leningrad, 1984, 177–188.
31 Art. 97 of Skra iv, regulating the wax trade, explicitly reproduces the entire text of the 1342
treaty between Novgorod and the League; cf. gvnp No.41, 73–74.
Foreign Laws 219
The Iasa of Chingis-Khan and the Impact of Mongol-Tatar Rule on

Russian Law
The Iasa of Chingis-Khan

The imposition of Mongol32 suzerainty in Russia after 1240 implied that the
law of the Mongol empire became a factor in the legal make-up of medieval
Russia. The determination of the impact of Mongol rule on the Russian con-
temporary legal system is complicated by the fact that not very much is known
about the law of Chingis-Khan’s empire.33
There was something in the nature of a code, which is known as the “Great
Iasa” (also Yasa or Yassa) of Chingis-Khan (1162–1227), which nowadays is
regarded by most scholars as a predominantly legal text, rather than as a col-
lection of maxims of various kinds.34 No complete text of the Iasa has been
preserved and the most extensive summary was given by the Egyptian histo-
rian Al Makrizi (1364–1441). Excerpts from the Iasa provided by other authors
confirm the reliability of Makrizi’s communications. The inaccessibility of
the text is explained by some authors as being connected with its sacred and
32 The Mongol empire founded by Chingis-Khan imposed its rule initially on neigbouring
Mongol and Turkic peoples. Within a few generations the rulers were turkicized, although
Mongol was still used into the 14th century as the language of administration. “Tatars” was
the generic name for Turkic nomads in medieval Russia, although it actually designated
only a specific group among them. Many Turkic peoples had converted to Islam and this
also resulted in the ultimate islamization of the Mongol-Tatar rulers. Khan Berke (1257–
1266) was the first Muslim khan of the Golden Horde. The term “Mongols” became less
relevant after the 13th century, but, in accordance with the usage of most authors, “Mon-
gols” and “Tatars” are used here more or less as synonyms. (“Tartars” is a West-European
corruption in an allusion to Greek Tartaros, “underworld”, which the Tatars allegedly
came from.)
33 For a general overview, see R.Iu. Pochekaev, Pravovaia kul’tura Zolotoi Ordy, Moskva, 2015,
122–130.
34 See V.A. Riasanovsky, “Velikaia Iasa Chingiz-Khana”, Izvestiia iuridicheskogo fakul’teta v
Kharbine, Vol.10 (1933), and id., Fundamental Principles of Mongol Law, Tientsin, 1937 (1st
ed.), Bloomington/The Hague, 1965 (2nd ed.), as Vol.43 of Indiana University Publications
– Uralic and Altaic Series. Earlier, Riasanovsky (V.A. Riazanovskii) had published in Har-
bin Customary Law of the Mongol Tribes (Mongols, Buriats, Kalmucks), Vols.i-iii, Harbin,
1929. G. Vernadsky, The Mongols and Russia, Vol.3 of M. Karpovich and G. Vernadsky, A
History of Russia, New Haven, Conn., 1953, 99–110; also in the Russian edition: G.V. Verna-
dskii, Istoriia Rossii. Mongoly i Rus’, Tver’/Moskva, 1997, 106–115; and by the same author,
“The Scope and Content of Chingis-Khan’s Yasa”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol.3,
1938, 348 ff.
220 chapter 10
magical character, which caused it to be kept in secret for the use of only a few
people and in a restricted number of copies.
According to Riasanovsky, the promulgation of the Iasa took place between
the years 1206 and 1218. Much of its contents is based on the customary law
of the Mongols, but there is also an important element of innovation and re-
form in it. Some of the Iasa’s prescriptions merely reflect ancient tribal cus-
toms and taboos and have no legal significance (e.g. the prohibition against
dipping a hand into the water; some kind of vessel should be used); other rules
contain moral exhortations (not to lie, to love one another). Of the remaining
provisions most can be regarded as concerned with criminal law. The penalty
in most cases was death, even for such offences as urinating into water or on
ashes, or not picking up the property of a comrade-in-arms in battle.
The Iasa is mentioned in one of the charters (iarlyks) of the Tatar khans
addressed to the Moscow metropolitan, the iarlyk of Mengu-Timur of 1279.35
It threatens all (presumably: Mongol) officials who would disregard the provi-
sions of the iarlyk with death “in accordance with the Great Iasa”. The Iasa was
also applicable to Russian troops serving in the Mongol army. Otherwise there
is no evidence of the direct application of the Iasa in respect of the Russian
population.
Mongol-Tatar Impact on Russian Law

The question of how the period of Mongol-Tatar domination affected Russian
civilization remains fundamental in Russian historiography and has been de-
bated for almost two centuries.36 Foreign rule, imposed by force, is a traumatic
experience for any nation, and it is also an experience from which few nations
escape. (I am aware of the problems surrounding the concept of a nation; nev-
ertheless, in the case of Russia, her self-awareness as a Russian nation has been
obvious and undeniable since the Kievan era.) Mongol-Tatar rule lasted for
a long time, although its hold gradually weakened, with occasional flare-ups
in asserting its status. Such national experiences are strong emotional factors
and these may cloud an objective investigation of the effects of foreign rule.
35 prp iii, 467–468. However, according to A.P. Grigor’ev, Sbornik khanskikh iarlykov russkim
metropolitam, Sankt-Peterburg, 2004, 43–44, the entire formula is an interpolation of later
date. (On iarlyks generally, see the relevant section in the Chapter xi).
36 Other or more specific aspects of the impact of Tatar suzerainty were discussed in Chapter
1 (sub-section on “Mongol-Tatar Rule” in the section on “State and Law During the Era of
the Independent Principalities”), Chapter 11, on Charters (section on “The Iarlyki of the
Tatar Khans”), Chapter 13, on the Prince (section on “Princely Rule: Succession, Popular
Assent, and Mongol-Tatar Validation”, and the sub-section on “Taxes Imposed by Tatar
Khans” in the section on “The Expansion of Princely Administration in Later Centuries”).
Foreign Laws 221
The traditional designation of the period in Russia – the Tatar Yoke (Tatarskoe
igo) – is itself indicative of the emotional charge involved. Russian and Soviet
historians have occupied various and diverse positions in this debate; histo-
rians from other countries have added valuable external perspectives to it.37
The discussion in this work can be limited to the more manageable problem
of the impact of the Mongol-Tatar era on Russian law. The principal authors
who have pronounced on this topic are Riasanovsky and Vernadsky and, much
later, and in a critique of his predecessors, Ostrowski.38
Riasanovsky’s rather infelicitous starting-point was that Mongol culture and
law, on account of their different level (by which the author obviously meant:
inferior), “could not have exerted, and did not exert, any significant influence on
Russian culture and law”.39 But then he continued to investigate the question.
He pointed out that there was no evidence of any direct effect or application of
Chingis-Khan’s Iasa in respect of the Russian population (apart from Russian
troops in the Mongol army, as also mentioned above). In denying the influence
of Mongol law on Russian civil law, he mentioned the Charter of Pskov as an
example. This is not very convincing, as of all medieval Russian principalities,
Pskov was the place where one would expect the impact of Mongol rule to be
minimal. One could even turn Riasanovsky’s argument upside down by argu-
ing that the only major piece of legislation roughly contemporary to Mongol
rule came from Pskov and that this could be taken as circumstantial evidence
for some Mongol influence in the law of other Russian principalities.
Regarding criminal law, Riasanovsky noted the introduction of capital pun-
ishment, flogging and torture during Tatar rule and ascribed this to the coars-
ening of moral standards resulting from the general cultural deterioration
caused by the Mongol invasions.40 This at least seems to contradict his view
that Mongol culture and law, on account of their inferiority, could not and did
not exert any significant influence on their superior Russian counterparts.
When it came to government and administration, Riasanovsky again started
from the in his eyes inefficient and primitive administrative methods and prac-
tices of the Mongols. The Russians had nothing to learn from them.41 Russian
37 See especially Ch.J. Halperin, The Tatar Yoke, Columbus, Ohio, 1988; D. Ostrowski, Musco-
vy and the Mongols. Cross-cultural influences on the steppe frontier, 1304–1589, Cambridge,
1998, 244–248.
38 Riasanowsky in Fundamental Principles of Mongol Law; G.V. Vernadskii, Mongoly i Rus’,
126–135 (section on Mongol government and administration in Chapter ii, “The Mongol
Empire”); D. Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols, 1–13.
39 Riasanovsky, Fundamental Principles of Mongol Law, 262.
40 Ibidem, 263.
41 Ibidem, 263–273.
222 chapter 10
princes ruled, he admitted, subject to confirmation by the Tatar khan, but this
had no effect, according to him, on the internal administration of the Russian
principalities. The Mongol principle of unconditional subordination of the in-
dividual, of whatever rank, to the ruler was, in his view, unconnected to the
universal service of the population to the autocracy in Muscovite Russia. The
latter phenomenon should rather be viewed as a parallel to the rise of the ab-
solute monarchy in Western Europe. There was some influence of the Tatar
system of taxation – the levying of tribute being one of the most prominent
and essential features of Mongol overlordship – but this point should not be
overrated in Riasanovsky’s opinion.42
The whole idea of the cultural superiority of one system, as compared to
another, whatever value it might have in general, is of little use anyway in in-
vestigating questions of legal cultures and institutions. A legal system may bor-
row institutions and practices from another legal system, not because they are
‘superior’, but because they can be accommodated and put to use domestically.
Very little Byzantine law (with its impressive Roman law pedigree) was taken
over by Kievan Russia, apart from certain parts intimately connected with the
Christian religion (e.g. matrimonial law, sexual offences).
A more sensible way forward would be to look at the actual points of contact
between the Mongol and Russian civilizations. The Russian princes were for a
considerable period in the position of servants of the Tatar khan, who himself
was a vassal of the great khan, residing in the vastness of the Asian steppes
or in China. In order to be able to take up the succession in his principality, a
Russianprince needed the khan’s confirmation. He owed the khan obedience
and could be punished and even killed by the latter. In practice, as long as
a prince behaved as was expected of him, his main duty consisted of paying
various taxes and supplying occasional contingents to the khan’s army. In later
years the princes, and particularly the grand princes of Vladimir-Moscow, ac-
quired a central role in the Tatar system of tax collection. Otherwise they were
generally left to their own devices in the government and administration of
their principalities.
From this perspective it is clear that the prince and his administration were
the main channel through which Mongol-Tatar ideas and institutions could
reach Russian law. Relations between private Russian citizens (anachronis-
tically: “civil law”) would generally not be greatly affected by Mongol-Tatar
interference, although the khan would usually have an interest in disputes be-
tween Russian princes and would then claim jurisdiction. Equally, according
42 Ibidem, 273–276.
Foreign Laws 223
to Vernadskii, disputes between Russians and Mongols were subject to Mongol

courts.43
The Mongol-Tatar involvement in criminal jurisdiction was larger, be-
cause in a number of cases Mongol interests would be at stake. This applied
not only (as mentioned above) to Russians serving in the khan’s armies, but
also to R
ussians who had in some way offended against significant interests
of the khan or his servants (e.g. by killing Tatar tax collectors, a not infrequent
occurrence).
The introduction of capital punishment and other corporal punishments is
often adduced as an indication of Mongol influence on Russian law, while at
the same time this idea is rejected by others who point to parallel contempo-
rary developments in Western Europe. There is probably some truth in both
views. The emergence of a more powerful and more intrusive state may easily
lead to an expansion of the punitive arsenal of public power, as alternative
private systems of settling disputes are being pushed aside. At the same time,
the Tatars were there and they had different (and much more drastic) ways of
coping with deviant behaviour; it stands to reason that this would be an obvi-
ous source of inspiration for the Russian authorities. That Byzantine law of the
era offered a similar catalogue of physical punishments would be an additional
incentive.
Along with jurisdiction, tax collection and the organization of the army
were the main functions of the medieval state. Initially, the khan employed
his own officials to collect the taxes imposed by him. These baskaki, supported
by armed contingents, visited the capital cities of the Russian principalities to
carry out their duties. Their activities often gave rise to local rebellions, usually
resulting in punitive expeditions by larger Tatar forces. In later years, the col-
lection of tribute and other Tatar impositions was handed over to the Moscow
grand prince, who was made responsible for the timely delivery of the correct
amount. The actual work was carried out by special officers, dan’shchiki.44 In
this manner the Tatar fiscal system directly influenced the Russian system of
tax collection. The Tatar system was originally operated mainly for the benefit
of the khan, and its comprehensiveness is well illustrated by hundreds of docu-
ments concerning various fiscal duties and immunities (tarkhannye, obel’nye,
obrochnye, tamozhennye, bezdannye gramoty; see Chapter 11).45
43 Vernadskii, Mongoly i Rus’, 362–363.

44 Cf. Vernadskii, 365 ff.
45 See A.D. Gorksii, “Otrazhenie tataro-mongol’skogo iga v russkikh aktakh xiv–xv vv.”, V.T.
Pashuto (ed.), Feodal’naia Rossiia vo vsemirno-istoricheskom protsesse [Cherepnin Collec-
tion], Moskva, 1972, 48–48.
224 chapter 10
In reviewing these developments, Vernadskii also pointed to the effect of

Tatar domination on the balance of power as it had prevailed during the pe-
riod of Kievan Russia in the relationship between princes, aristocracy, and the
urban populations.46 Tatar domination was exercized mainly, as explained
above, by tight control of the princes. Urban independence did not have a
place in this system. The towns were therefore the chief losers and the princes
the chief winners. Only Novgorod and Pskov were for a long time able to main-
tain their exceptional position, being far away from the centre of Tatar power.
The boyars remained in the middle, but when in the end the grand prince of
Moscow emerged victorious in the struggle with the other princes, partly with
the help of local aristocracies, the balance of power shifted definitively in fa-
vour of the Moscow tsar, all others becoming losers.
A special and unique position was occupied by the Russian Church (see also
the section “The Russian Church Under Mongol-Tatar Rule” in Chapter 21). The
comprehensive tax exemption for the Russian Church and its personnel was
one of the most important politico-legal effects of Tatar rule. It allowed the
accumulation of great wealth and the acquisition of vast estates, resulting in
a much enhanced position of the Church in later centuries. Chingis-Khan and
his immediate successors, before the conversion of the khans to Islam, ruled
a vast amalgam of nations with a multitude of religions, and religious toler-
ance was undoubtedly a factor favourably affecting the coherence of this em-
pire. The first Russian metropolitan after the Mongol invasion, Kirill, occupied
his post until his death in 1281 and an adroit use of the opportunities offered
by Mongol benevolence to the Russian Church produced great yields for the
latter; it particularly strengthened the position of the metropolitan himself,
who was the recipient of the first iarlyk outlining the privileges of the Church
in 1267.47 The metropolitans usually worked closely together with the grand
princes of Vladimir-Moscow in a mutually advantageous arrangement.
D. Ostrowski’s approach to the question of Mongol-Tatar influence deserves
special mention, not only because it also addressed several legal aspects, but
especially because of its apposite methodological observations. Ostrowski
noted that there are a number of basic attitudes to the question which tend
to exclude each other: Muscovite institutions and attitudes were mainly deter-
mined by the Byzantine connection, or on the contrary by the impact of Mon-
gol rule, or by a combination of the two, or by Western European models, or
46 Vernadskii, 352–357.
47 The iarlyk of Mengu-Timur, see Grigor’ev, Sbornik khanskikh iarlykov, 7–44 (text on 44);
also prp iii, 467–468. Mengu-Timur was the grandson of Baty, the conqueror of Russia,
himself a grandson of Chingis-Khan.
Foreign Laws 225
they did not owe anything to outside influences and were the result of internal
dynamics.48 While all five attitudes were represented among pre-revolutionary
Russian historians, the last attitude was dominant in Soviet times. Ostrows-
ki himself pointed out that at least the civil and military institutions of 14th
century Muscovy were overwhelmingly Mongol in origin, while the legal sys-
tem was inherited from Kiev with only a limited number of effects of Mongol
influence.49 The Russian Church at the same time was leaning heavily towards
Byzantium. The attitude of the Church was of exceptional importance, in view
of its uniquely advantageous position during Tatar rule. In the early period,
when Mongol power was still overwhelming, the Church’s attitude was decid-
edly positive in the sense that the khan was regarded as the legitimate ruler, en-
joying the title of “caesar” (tsar), along with the Greek and German emperors.
As the Tatar hold weakened, the Church gradually developed an anti-Tatar po-
sition. But all through the period of Mongol-Tatar dominance there remained
the problem of its conceptualization, a matter which was of special concern to
the Church. How could rule by pagan or Muslim rulers of the Christian Russian
nation, and the subordination of Russia’s Christian princes to these rulers be
explained? How could the adoption of numerous Tatar institutions in the ad-
ministration of Muscovy be justified? For the medieval Russian churchman
there was probably no meaningful solution to this riddle; one therefore passed
it over in silence. The Mongol conquest and the occasional Tatar invasions in
later years appeared as natural disasters in the chronicles; they just happened.
Once the Tatar threat had receded, in the second half of the 16th century, the
myth of the Tatar Yoke emerged, which until the present day has to a consider-
able extent determined the way Russian historiography looked at and inter-
preted the two centuries following the fall of Kiev in 1240, and this, according
to Ostrowski, accounted for the numerous contradictions in the appreciation
of the exact impact of Mongol-Tatar rule.50
A dispassionate evaluation of the evidence, evading juxtapositions like civi-
lized/uncivilized, European/Asiatic, just/unjust, cruel/humane, progressive/
backward, etc., indicates that the legal and administrative make-up of medieval
Russia after the Mongol invasions showed a mixture of autochthonous Russian,
Byzantine and Mongol-Tatar elements. The latter two would occasionally tend
to push Russian institutions in the same direction and then it would become
much more difficult to identify the real spiritus movens. The often quoted ex-
ample is the excessive absolutism of the ruler and the concomitant reduction
48 Ostrowski, 1–15.
49 Ostrowski, 26, 16.
50 Cf. Ostrowski, 244–248.
226 chapter 10
to virtual serfdom of every subject, from the highest to the lowest. Early Kievan
Russia, as reflected by many incidents reported in the chronicles, showed a
comparatively free intercourse between the princes and their subjects, espe-
cially the boyar class, contrasting with the rigid hierarchy of the courts of the
emperor in Constantinople or the khan in his steppe headquarters.
The pre-Mongol Kievan realm has in the past often been compared to the
empire of Charlemagne. Such a comparison has its merits in explaining a num-
ber of parallels, as long as the very significant differences are not lost sight of. A
more adventurous comparison is between the Kievan empire and the “Golden
Horde”.51 This road is taken, although somewhat implicitly, by Iu.V. Seleznev, as
indicated in his work “The Russian Princes as Members of the Ruling Elite of
the Ulus of Juchi during the 13th to the 15th centuries”.52 It involves adopting a
Mongol perspective. Chingis-Khan and his immediate successors had founded
an empire, not merely by conquering and subjugating other peoples, but by
forcing them to become members of a multi-ethnic political conglomerate,
ruled by the Chingisid khans. If the subject nations and their rulers fulfilled
the obligations imposed on them (mainly taxation and military support), they
were allowed their share in the revenues and other advantages generated by
the empire’s expansion. This is of course not unlike the way Charlemagne han-
dled relations with his Germanic (and non-Frankish) neighbours.
From this point of view, the behaviour of most Russian princes can easily
be explained. Once they had become convinced that resisting Mongol rule was
not an option, turning themselves into allies and vassals of the khan offered
many advantages, as indicated above. In the two-and-a-half centuries follow-
ing the invasion of Russia, Russian princes were frequently and deeply involved
in the complex struggles among the various factions within the Mongol-Tatar
empire. Mixed Russian-Tatar forces often faced similar forces in battle.53 There
were also a number of mixed marriages between members of the Chingisid and
Rurikid houses, the most spectacular among them the marriage between Iurii
Danilovich, grand prince of Vladimir and Moscow and Konchaka (Agaf’ia), the
51 The empire ruled by Chingis-Khan’s eldest son Juchi designated itself as the Ulus of Juchi,
while contemporary Russian sources simply called it the Horde (Ordá). “Golden Horde”
came only in use in the 17th century. Cf. Ostrowski, xiii, who himself uses “the Qipchaq
Khanate”.
52 Iu.V. Seleznev, Russkie kniaz’ia v sostave praviashchei elity Dzhuchieva Ulusa v xiii–xv ve-
kakh, Voronezh, 2013 (not available to me).
53 In Russko-ordynskie konflikty xiii–xv vekov. Spravochnik, Moskva, 2010, Iu.G. Seleznev
compiled a detailed catalogue of armed encounters between the Russians and the Horde
during the period 1223–1502.
Foreign Laws 227
sister of khan Uzbek, in 1317.54 Although the khan’s power remained absolute
(not unlike that of the later Moscow tsars), Russian princes certainly could be
considered as members of the ruling elite of the khan’s empire.
The actual impact of Byzantine or Mongol-Tatar law on Russian law may
have been quite modest, but the effect of the underlying attitudes was very
significant.
The Legal Environment of Medieval Russian Law
The foregoing sections of this chapter were concerned with foreign law which
to some extent may have had a direct impact on Russian law or was directly
applied in Russia. This section will briefly survey the legal systems operating
in the regions bordering on medieval Russia. Whether they had any impact on
Russian law is a question which has to answered case by case.
The Finnish Forest Dwellers

The autochthonous population of Northern and North-Eastern Russia before
the gradual northwards penetration of the Eastern Slavs consisted of numer-
ous Finnish55 tribes. (The same is true for Scandinavia before the arrival of
Germanic tribes.) The Primary Chronicle mentions the Chud’, Ves’, Kors’, Iam’,
and the Narva in the Baltic area, and they frequently appear under the collec-
tive name of Chud’ in the First Novgorod Chronicle;56 more to the North-East
and East the presence of the Mer’ia, Mordva, Murom, Meshchera, Mari and
others (the ancestors of the present-day Volga Finnish peoples) is reported. In
the course of the Russian middle ages, most of these populations were forced
to recognize Russian rule, in the person of the Vladimir-Moscow grand prince,
or the Novgorod republic. This process was accompanied by conversion to or-
thodox Christianity and by widespread russification. As a result, the peasant
population in a significant part of the territory of the Muscovy state consisted
of russified Finnish inhabitants.
It is almost inevitable that the customary law of this population survived to
some extent. But as next to nothing is known about this law, and the peasant
54 See N. de Baumgarten, “Généalogies des branches régnantes des Rurikides du XIIIe au

XVIe siècle”, Orientalia Christiana, Vol.xxxv-1, No.94, Roma, 1934, 150.
55 “Finnish” is used in a very broad sense (‘Finnic’) to denote ethnic groups linguistically and
culturally related to the ancestors of modern Finns.
56 Other sources add the Vod’ and the Vepsy (surviving in the Karelian republic and in Len-
ingrad province).
228 chapter 10
customary law of medieval Russia is poorly documented and also largely un-
known, the whole subject remains terra incognita, academically speaking.
The Baltic Coast

In the course of the middle ages, almost the entire Baltic sea coast came under
the control of the German or Teutonic Order.57 Only the northern half of Esto-
nia was colonized by Denmark from 1219 on, and Danish law was applied until
1346, when the Danes ceded power to the Order.58
The German Order

Together with the other two knightly orders (the Templars and the Order
of St. John, later on the Knights of Malta), the Order of the House of
St. Mary of the Germans (Ordo Domus Sanctae Mariae Theutonicorum)
arose during the First Crusade in order to provide medical services to
the crusader troops. It was officially recognized in 1198 by pope Clement
iii and the emperor Henry vi. While the Knights Templar were mostly
a French organization (brutally annihilated by the French king Philippe
le Bel in 1312–1314) and the Knights of Malta counted members of many
nations, the German Order was specifically tied to the Holy Roman Em-
pire (which embraced many other nations apart from ethnic Germans).
When prospects for a successful conclusion of the Crusades began to
fade, the German Order shifted its focus to the conversion of the last re-
maining pagan regions in Europe itself, the Baltic area. In 1228 they ac-
cepted the invitation of the Polish (Piast) duke Konrad of Mazovia to
subdue the latter’s pagan Baltic-Prussian neighbours. This resulted in the
military conquest of the land later known as East Prussia.
A serious attempt to understand the medieval mentality fuelling West-
European expansion in the Baltic region will lead to the conclusion that
the religious sentiment, the desire to spread the Christian faith, played
a significant role. If it is all ascribed to lust for power and wealth or a
sense of adventure, too many aspects remain unexplained. One indica-
tion is that military action was preceded by the arrival of missionaries,
first the German Augustinian friar Meinhard who became the first bishop
57 “Teutonic” and Russian Tevtonskii have acquired an unpleasant ring and for this reason
I have preferred to call the Order “German”, as in German (Deutscher Orden) and other
European languages.
58 Cf. H. Küpper, Einführung in die Rechtsgeschichte Osteuropas. Studien des Instituts für Os-
trecht München, Band 54, Frankfurt am Main, 2005, 183–189. See also F.G. Bunge, Das Her-
zogthum Estland unter den Königen von Dänemark, Gotha, 1877 (not available to me).
Foreign Laws 229
in Livland in 1184. Then in 1200 a Bremen priest Albert (Albrecht) came,

accompanied by a fleet of crusaders. He conquered the land around the
mouth of the Western Dvina and founded Riga in 1201. He became the
first bishop of Riga and received Livland as a fief from the empire. To pro-
tect and expand his possessions he founded a military order (the Order of
the Swordbearers) in 1202. Public power in Livland (roughly modern day
Latvia and the southern part of Estonia) was shared between the bishop
and the Order of the Swordbearers. In 1246 Riga was raised to the rank of
an archdiocese, after three more bishops had been appointed (Dorpat,
Kurland, and Ösel).
In 1237 the Livonian Order (of the Swordbearers) was absorbed by the
much larger German Order. Its chief in Livland was the Livonian Land-
meister, residing in Wenden (now Cēsis, Latvia) or in Riga. The German
Order, which had had its headquarters in Venice after the crusaders had
been driven from the Holy Land, moved the seat of its Hochmeister to
Marienburg in East Prussia (now Malbork, Poland) in 1309.
After almost two centuries the Order was unable to stand up to the
superior power of the combined Polish-Lithuanian state. After being de-
feated at the battle of Tannenberg in 1410, the Order never fully recovered,
although it remained an important power in the region until the Refor-
mation, when it was secularized and its possessions became dispersed
among different secular rulers.
During its heyday the German Order was one of the best organized
and progressive European states; it was the only non-urban member of
the Hanseatic League; its head, the Hochmeister, enjoyed the status of
prince (Reichsfürst) in the Diet (Reichstag) of the Holy Roman Empire.
The legal landscape in the German-controlled Baltic Coast was complicated on

account of the absence of a single state power. The territory directly controlled
by the German Order consisted of two main parts: East Prussia and Livland,
separated by lands subject to Lithuanian control; the Livonian Landmeister
usually operated independently of the Order’s headquarters in East Prussia.
Then there were the lands of the bishops, who, as Western hierarchs, were tem-
poral as well as spiritual lords, and finally, a number of towns, mostly harbour
towns along the coast, enjoyed significant independence.
Within the Order itself and with regard to its knightly members, German
feudal law (such as the Sachsenspiegel) applied. In Livland, the towns had
followed Riga in adopting Lübeck law. This was a natural choice, as most of
them (Riga, Dorpat, Reval, Wenden, Pernau, Windau, Wolmar, Lemsal, Roop,
230 chapter 10
Kokenhusen, Goldingen and Fellin) were members of the Hanseatic League,

headed by Lübeck. In East Prussia, where there were only a few members of
the Hanseatic League, almost all towns had adopted Magdeburg law.
For the almost entirely peasant Baltic population, its old customary law was
largely maintained. The early German bishops of Livland and the German Or-
der endeavoured to have the customary law of various ethnic groups written
down, and this resulted in a collection of law books which were published and
studied in the 19th century, thanks mostly to the efforts of F.G. Bunge. The gen-
eral pattern of these law books is comparable to the early Germanic laws and
to the Russkaia Pravda, but a considerable new layer had been superimposed
on them as the result of the newly established feudal system.59 The oldest parts
went back to the 13th century; new elements were added afterwards. There are
separate codes for Livland, Kurland, the Dorpat (Tartu) diocese and the Ösel
diocese (as published in the Nazarova edition).
Lithuania and Poland

The legal system of Lithuania as a grand principality, and, after 1386, as a state
in a personal union with the Polish kingdom, was discussed at some length
in Chapter 17 (on Western Russia). The law of Lithuania and later of Poland-
Lithuania was applicable for centuries in most of Western and South-Western
Russia.60 Lithuanian law retained its independence until the end (the parti-
tions of Poland) and was generally closer to Russian law; in Polish law, the in-
fluence of Germany (esp. Magdeburg law) and later on also Roman law was
more obvious.
The oldest surviving Polish law book, the Elbinger Rechtsbuch, is of special
interest for Russian legal history because it reflects surviving Slavic customary
law better than later sources. It is similar to the Livland law books referred to
above, in that its reduction to writing was undertaken by the feudal authori-
ties, in this case probably clerics working for the German Order, some time
after 1249.61
59 See E.L. Nazarova, “«Livonskie Pravdy» kak istoricheskii istochnik”, dg sssr 1979, Mosk-
va, 1980, 5–218, which reproduces most of the relevant texts in Middle Low German
with a Russian translation. Nazarova also provides full references to Bunge’s numerous
publications.
60 See also Küpper, op.cit., 197–204 (Lithuania) and 267–275 (Poland).
61 The original Middle German text and Russian translation are in B.D. Grekov, Izbrannye
Trudy, T.I, Moskva, 1957, 265–447 “Pol’skaia Pravda. Opyt izucheniia obshchestvennogo
i politicheskogo stroia Pol’shi xiii v. po Pol’skoi Pravde («Knige Prava»)”. Elbing (Pol.
Elbląg) was a Hanseatic harbour near the mouth of the Vistula, founded in 1237; Elbing
itself had Lübeck law. Excerpts appear also in M.M. Freidenberg (ed.), Khrestomatiia po
Foreign Laws 231
Although Elbing was situated in land ruled by the Order (East Prussia), there
is no doubt whatsoever that it reflected Polish customary law.62
Hungary and the Balkans

Hungary was Russia’s neighbour while Galicia was part of the Kievan realm, i.e.
until the middle of the 14th century. After Galicia’s incorporation in the Polish
kingdom, Hungary and Hungarian law no longer had significant relevance for
developments in Russia and in Russian law.
Initially, there were several parallel factors in the formation of the Hungar-
ian and Kievan state structures. In both cases an effective ruler introduced
Christianity as the official religion, was posthumously elevated to sainthood,
and emerged as a legitimizing symbol for the new state. In Hungary, however,
greater unity was preserved and, more importantly, the kingdom of St. Stephen
operated in a medieval European environment where the presence of the Holy
Roman Empire loomed large. These factors caused Hungarian law to develop
as a system which was especially akin to German law.63
Bulgaria, on the other hand, emerged as a Slavic state which bordered di-
rectly on the Byzantine empire. The “Court Law for the People” (Zakon Sudnyi
liudem, see above for the special section on this subject) in its oldest version
(second half of the 9th century) is connected by some scholars with the reign
of the first Christian ruler of Bulgaria, khan Boris. This law was based on the
Byzantine Ecloga, but very much amended to adapt it to contemporary Slavic
culture. It reached Russia soon after that country’s conversion. By this time the
first Bulgarian state had collapsed (in 1018) and had been incorporated into
the Byzantine empire. The original zsl was subsequently reworked in Russia,
resulting in the first part of the 14th century in the so-called Expanded Re-
daction, which was probably in use as a valid law book, a guide for judges, in
Northern Russia.
Bulgarian independence was restored by the dynasty founded by tsar Asen
(† 1096) and lasted for another three centuries, until it was overrun by the Turks.
Relations with Russia were sporadic and ceased altogether after the Mon-
gol invasion which effectively cut post-Kievan Russia off from the Balkans.
istorii iuzhnykh i zapadnykh slavian, Tom I, Epokha feodalizma, Minsk, 1987, which gives
numerous excerpts from legal history sources of Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Kroatia, Slove-
nia, the Czech lands, Slovakia, and Poland.
62 Its first provision read: “Let it be known to anyone who wants to know Polish law [Polen-
sche recht] that the Poles, after embracing Christianity, have been subject to the Roman
see of the Pope, and not to the emperor.”
63 See further Küpper, op.cit., 290–301.
232 chapter 10
The legal culture of Bulgaria during this period was close to that of Byzantium
and had little similarity with that of Russia.64
The complex medieval history of the numerous entities that made up
20th century Yugoslavia need not be reviewed here, as it is hardly of interest
for Russianlegal history. An exception may be made for the medieval law of
the Dalmatian coastal republics, specifically Poljica (orig. 14th century) and
Vinodol (of 1288), because their legislations retained a number of traditional
features of Old Slavic law and for that reason attracted the interest of Russian
legal historians.65 This would also apply, but to a lesser extent, to the Law Code
of the Serbian king (tsar) Dušan of 1349, the most ambitious legislative project
to emerge from the Balkan peninsula in the middle ages. It represents a mix-
ture of Byzantine and traditional Slavic elements.66
Byzantium
See above, the section on the impact of Byzantine law.
Caucasus
In the Caucasus area, only Georgia and Armenia could boast legal systems
of comparable sophistication during the period of medieval Russian law. Ar-
menia, however, was in fact too far removed and belonged culturally to the
world of the Crusaders and the Near East.67 Its legal system, although retain-
ing many traditional features, was strongly influenced by Byzantium and the
West-European(mostly French) law applied in the Crusader kingdoms and
64 This is clearly demonstrated by the small number of charters and treaties from this period
which have survived, such as the grant charter of tsar Asen ii to the Vatopedi monastery
on Mount Athos, shortly after 1230 (Russian translation in Koretskii, op.cit., 686–688, and
in Freidenberg, op.cit., 48–49), the confirmation charter of tsar Konstantin (1257–1277)
to the St.George’s monastery near Skopje (Koretskii, 688–689; Freidenberg, 49–50), the
confirmation charter of tsar Ioann iii Shishman of 1378 to the Rila monastery (Koretskii,
690–692; Freidenberg, 51–52), and others.
65 The main source is Grekov: B.D. Grekov, Izbrannye Trudy, T.I, “Politsa. Opyt izucheniia
obshchestvennykh otnoshenii v Politse xv–xvii vv., Moskva, 1957, 111–263 (comments);
id., Izbrannye Trudy, T.I, “Vinodol. Vinodol’skii Statut ob obshchestvennom i politiches-
kom stroe Vinodola”, 3–107. Slightly abbreviated Russian translations of the Kroatian
texts of the Statutes of Poljica (originally from the 14th century) and Vinodol (of 1288) in
Koretskii, 927–945 and 917–926.
66 Cf. Küpper, 380; partial Russian translation in Koretskii, 892–915.
67 On early medieval Armeno-Russian contacts: Ia.R. Dashkevich, “Drevnaia Rus’ i Armeniia
v obshchestvenno-politicheskikh sviaziakh xi–xiii vv. (Istochniki, issledovaniia, temy)”,
dg sssr 1982, Moskva, 1984, 177–195.
Foreign Laws 233
principalities.Georgia was nearer to Russia and had held on to a home-grown

and original system of its own. But its contacts with medieval Russia were
sparse.68
Rurikid Marriages as an Indication of Political and Cultural

Contacts
In addition to what was said about Rurikid marriages in Chapter 13 (on the
Prince), this topic is also illuminating for an insight into medieval Russia’s for-
eign contacts.69
After the Mongol invasion, the reservoir of foreign marriage partners dried
up, with the exception of Lithuanian candidates. A much smaller number of
brides (and only a few bridegrooms) of Tatar origin replaced them. Baumgar-
ten also lists six marriages with members of Byzantine imperial families. The
majority of Rurikid marriages took place within the family itself and with
members of boyar families. One should take into account that in these later
centuries the Rurikid stock had increased impressively; there was simply a
much larger supply of marriage candidates within the dynasty itself.
Up to the Mongol invasion the picture is much more varied. Baumgarten
mentions 73 internal dynastic Rurikid marriages, 5 with other Russian partners,
13 with partners from the Holy Roman Empire, 13 with English and Scandina-
vian partners, 6 Bohemian partners, 3 Bulgarian ones, 12 Byzantine partners, 13
Turkic (various ethnic origin) partners, 7 Georgian and Ossetian ones, 15 from
the Hungarian kingdom (not all ethnically Magyar), 5 Lithuanian partners, 2
French, 27 Polish partners, and 7 (Slavic) partners from Pomerania and Silesia.
68 See further my “Medieval Law in Transcaucasia–On the Periphery of European Legal His-
tory”, Feldbrugge, lmr, 293–314.
69 Data from N. de Baumgarten, Généalogies et mariages occidentaux de Rurikides russes
du Xe au XIIIe siècle (Orientalia Christiana, Vol.ix.-1, Num.35), 64–73, Roma, 1927; id.,
Généalogies des branches régnantes des Rurikides du XIIIe au XVIe siècle (Orientalia
Christiana,Vol.xxv.-1, Num.91), 145–150, Roma, 1934. See also P.P. Tolochko, Dinasticheskie
braki na Rusi. xii–xiii vv., Sankt-Peterburg, 2013.
chapter 11
Non-Legislative (Non-Normative) Legal Sources:

Gramoty
Introduction
The previous chapters have dealt with the legislative sources of medieval
Russian law. “Legislation” has been used in a wide sense, embracing not only
laws in the form of statutes (generally binding rules issued by a sovereign au-
thority), but also written materials serving a similar – normative – function:
providing sufficiently general and authoritative regulation of certain aspects
of social life. Additionally, one has to take into consideration the fact that me-
dieval legislation offers a wide variety in the status of texts, from official and
authentic texts of pure legislation (very rare), to copies of copies of private
notes of what purports to be the law.
The present chapter will discuss the non-legislative or non-normative
sources of medieval Russian law. A sharp distinction between normative and
non-normative materials is difficult to make. Some sources contain both (this
is especially the case with treaties and with so-called ustavnye gramoty). In
other cases it may be hard to determine the exact nature of a legal provision.
The body of non-legislative sources consists of a wide variety of documents,
such as contracts, wills, treaties, reports, instructions, depositions, requests,
etc. In accordance with Russian usage, “document” is employed as the most
general term; a gramota is a deed or charter, as against other documents which
may be just a piece of paper or parchment with a few words on it.1
Parenthetically, it is worth remembering that a document which could not
reasonably be considered a legal document (e.g. personal correspondence) may
still be legally relevant and merit the attention of the legal historian. The legal
character of a document depends not only on its contents, but also on its form.
The practice of medieval Russia owed much to its Byzantine ancestor in this
respect. The affixing of seals, the appearance of witnesses as co-signatories, and
the special mention of certain surrounding circumstances (such as time and
place) are among the principal features which mark a document as a legal one.2
1 The Russian term is derived from the Greek grammata (pl.,“script”, “writing”).
2 Cf. N.A. Soboleva, “K voprosu ob udostoverenii russkikh aktov v kontekste vostochno-
rimskogo prava”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Issledovaniia po istorii srednevekovoi Rusi.
K 80-letiiu Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 2006, 47–61.

Non-Legislative Legal Sources 235
After introductory sections covering briefly the historiography and the prin-
cipal publications in this field, the inevitable question of classification of the
great mass of materials must be addressed. Then more than one hundred dif-
ferent types of deeds (gramoty) will be described briefly, in the manner of a
dictionary, to be followed by sections on related and comparable documents.
Two final sections will be devoted to two types of documents which occupy a
particular and separate position among the sources of medieval Russian law:
birch-bark documents discovered in the course of archaeological excavations
in Novgorod and other ancient Russian cities, and the iarlyki issued by the
Tatar khans, mainly to Russian church dignitaries.
Sources and Historiography before 1917
Legal documents usually constitute a significant part of the written heritage of

past cultures. This also applies to the Russian middle ages. With the beginning
of modern historical scholarship at the end of the 18th century and the begin-
ning of the 19th century there was a growing awareness of the desirability of
collecting and publishing these documents. Most of the early Russian publica-
tions are difficult to find in Western libraries and have also been superseded by
qualitatively superior later editions. For this reason only the most important
older publications will be mentioned here. Many of them have been reprinted
or microfiched and will therefore be more accessible. For more complete infor-
mation the various specialized bibliographies must be consulted.3
The earliest publication of medieval Russian charters was in Drevniaia Ros-
siiskaia Vivliofika ili sobranie raznykh drevnikh sochinenii in 1773–1775.4 More
accessible to Western readers will be the official publication of state charters
in five volumes, which began in 1813.5 In 1836–1838 the Imperial Academy of
Sciences published four volumes of records collected by its Archeographi-
cal Expedition in the libraries and archives of the empire (abbreviated: Akty
Arkheograficheskoi Ekspeditsii).6 A prominent role in the publication of
sources (see also Chapter 2, on Sources) was played by the Archeographical
3 J. Gilissen (ed.), Bibliographical Introduction to Legal History and Ethnology, D/9, M. Szeftel,
“Russia (Before 1017)”, 1966, 22–31; A. Eck, “Introduction bibiographique à l’histoire du droit
russe”, Archives d’histoire du droit oriental, Vol. 2, 1938, 403–430.
4 1st edition, Sankt-Peterburg.
5 Sobranie Gosudarstvennykh Gramot i Dogovorov, khraniashchikhsia v Gosudarstvennoi Kollegii
inostrannykh del, Moskva, 1813 (Vol. 1, 1819 (Vol. 2), 1820 (Vol. 3), 1828 Vol. 4), 1894 (Vol. 5).
6 Akty, sobrannye v bibliotekakh i arkhivakh Rossiiskoi imperii Arkheograficheskoiu ekspeditsiiu
Imperatorskoi akademii nauk, Sankt-Peterburg, 1836–1838.
236 chapter 11
Commission, founded in 1834 (and still in existence). It was responsible for the
Akty Iuridicheskie,7 the five volumes and twelve volumes of supplements of
Akty Istoricheskie,8 parallel series of historical sources for Western Russia,9 and
for Southern and Western Russia,10 as well as other publications. The Archeo-
graphical Commission also initiated two serial publications, both of which
were continued after the October Revolution: the Russkaia Istoricheskaia Bib-
lioteka (rib), which was begun in 1872, and the proceedings of the Commis-
sion, Letopis’ zaniatii Arkheograficheskoi Komissii.
Among the privately published collections one of the earliest was a series of
documents from the Riazan’ province gathered together by A.I. Piskarev.11 Other
19th century collections were published by Fedotov-Chekhovskii,12 D’iakonov13
and Likhachev.14 The well-known legal historian N.V. Kalachov published three
volumes of various kinds of charters and documents for the Archeographical
Commission in 1857–1884.15 Documents in private possession and deposited
with the Appointments Department (Razriadnyi prikaz) after the abolition of
the precedence (mestnichestvo) system in 1682 were published by A.I Iushkov.16
Other pre-revolutionary publications worth mentioning are Debol’skii’s collec-
tion of documents from the monastery of Kirill of Belozersk,17 and the publica-
tion of the collection of count Uvarov by I.M. Kataev and A.K. Kabanov.18
7 Akty iuridicheskie, ili sobranie form stariinogo deloproizvodstva, Sankt-Peterburg, 1838.

8 Akty istoricheskie, sobrannye i izdannye Arkheograficheskoiu komissieiu, 5 vols., Sankt-
Peterburg, 1841–1842, and twelve volumes of supplements, Dopolneniia k Aktam istoriches-
kim, sobrannym i izdannym Arkheograficheskoiu komissieiu, Sankt-Peterburg, 1846–1872.
9 Akty, otnosiashchiesia do istorii Zapadnoi Rossii, 5 vols., Sankt-Peterburg, 1846–1853.
10 Akty, otnosiashchiesia do istorii Iuzhnoi i Zapadnoi Rossii, 15 vols., Sankt-Peterburg,
1863–1892.
11 A.I Piskarev, Drevnie gramoty i akty riazan’skogo kraia, Sankt-Peterburg, 1852.
12 A.A. Fedotov-Chekhovskii, Akty, otnosiashchiesia do grazhdanskoi raspravy drevnei Rossii,
2 vols., Kiev, 1860–1863.
13 M.A. D’iakonov, Akty otnosiashchiesia k istorii tiaglogo naseleniia v moskovskom
gosudarstve,2 vols., Iur’ev, 1895–1897.
14 N.P. Likhachev, Sbornik aktov sobrannykh v arkhivakh i bibliotekakh, Sankt-Peterburg, 1895.
15 N.V. Kalachov, Akty otnosiashchiesia do iuridicheskogo byta drevnei Rossii, 3 vols., Sankt-
Peterburg, 1857 (i), 1864 (ii), 1884 (iii); a fourth volume with indices was published sepa-
rately, Sankt-Peterburg, 1901.
16 A.I. Iushkov, Akty xiii–xvii vekov, predstavlennye v Razriadnyi prikaz predstaviteliami slu-
zhilykh familii posle otmeny mestnichestva, Part 1 (all published), Moskva, 1899.
17 N.N. Debol’skii, Iz aktov i gramot Kirillo-Belozerskogo monastyria, Sankt-Peterburg, 1900.
18 I.M. Kataev, A.K. Kabanov, Opisanie aktov Sobraniia grafa A.S. Uvarova, Akty istoricheskie,
opisannye I.M. Kataevym i A.K. Kabanovym, Moskva, 1905.
Sources and Historiography after 1917
After the October Revolution two volumes of charters deposited with the
Department of Economic Affairs (Kollegiia ekonomii) were published in 1922
and 1929.19 The work on these volumes had already been started before 1917 by
A.S. Lappo-Danilevskii, who is regarded as the founder of diplomatic studies in
Russia. After the secularization of church property in the 18th century, many of
the old charters in the possession of monasteries and other church institutions
had been handed over to the Kollegiia Ekonomii. A complete description of the
charters of the Kollegiia was started in 2016.20
In Soviet times, the central role in the publication of old documents was
passed to the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences. During the fol-
lowing decades, the Institute took the lead in publishing the most important
collections of medieval Russian documents; its principal policy in this respect
was to keep archival complexes, as they had emerged over time, intact. The
first publications resulting from this policy were two collections of documents
accumulated by some of the wealthiest ecclesiastical landowners of medieval
Russia, the Troitse-Sergiev monastery, north of Moscow, and the Solovetskii
monastery in the White Sea.21 After the Second World War these volumes were
supplemented by a collection of documents from the monastery of Joseph of
Volokolamsk, west of Moscow.22
A thematic, rather than archival criterion was decisive for the publication
at the same time of two other volumes. S.N. Valk edited a collection of charters
concerning the history of Novgorod and Pskov, covering the period of their
independence from Moscow,23 i.e. until 1478 for Novgorod and until 1510 for
Pskov. In the following year L.V. Cherepnin published a collection of treaties
and testaments (last wills) of grand and provincial princes.24 These are of great
19 Sbornik gramot Kollegii ekonomii, t.1: Gramoty dvinskogo uezda, Petrograd, 1922, t.2: Gramo-
ty dvinskogo, kol’skogo, kevrol’sko-mezenskogo i vazhskogo uezdov, Leningrad, 1929.
20 A.V. Antonov (ed.), Opisanie gramot Kollegii Ekonomii, T.I (A-I), Moskva, 2016.
21 S.B. Veselovskii, A.I. Iakovlev (eds.), Pamiatniki sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi istorii
moskovskogo gosudarstva xiv–xvii vv., Moskva, 1929, and N.S. Chaev (ed.), Severnye
gramoty, Moskva, 1929.
22 A.A. Zimin, M.N. Tikhomirov (eds.), Kniga kliuchei, Moskva,. 1949.
23 S.N. Valk (ed.), Gramoty Velikogo Novgoroda i Pskova [gvnp], Moskva/Leningrad, 1949.
A two-volume commentary to gvnp was published by V.L. Ianin in 1990, Novgorodskie
akty xii–xv vv. Khronologicheskii kommentarii, Moskva, containing numerous corrections
and additions.
24 S.V. Bakhrushin (comp. and ed.), L.V. Cherepnin (final ed.), Dukhovnye i dogovornye gramo-
ty velikikh i udel’nykh kniazei xiv–xvi vv., Moskva/Leningrad, 1950.
238 chapter 11
significance for an understanding of the constitutional law of medieval Russia

and of the relations between the Russian principalities.
Cherepnin was also the chief editor of the three-volume “Acts of Feudal
Landowning and Management”,25 of which the first volume was based on the
archives of the Moscow metropolitanate and the second on those of the mon-
astery of Joseph of Volokolamsk.26 The third volume (covering the 1521–1622
period) contained further documents concerning the Moscow metropolita-
nate (later on patriarchate) and especially concerning the Annunciation (Bla-
goveshchenskii) monastery in Nizhnii-Novgorod.
These ambitious and large-scale publications from the Soviet era endeav-
oured to present entire archival complexes without regard to previous publica-
tion. In this respect they may be considered as having replaced these earlier
publications.
The plan to publish the core fund of medieval Russian documents was com-
pleted by the Institute of History with another three-volume work, specifically
devoted to the Russian North-East.27 The purpose of these three volumes was
to cover the most important medieval archival funds (mainly from the 15th
and early 16th centuries) which had remained outside the scope of the earlier
Institute publications. The first volume contained documents from the ar-
chives of the premier medieval Russian monastery, Troitse-Sergiev, and the
monasteries subordinate to it. The second volume covered the other princi-
pal medieval monasteries, Kirill of Belozersk, Ferapont of Belozersk, the mon-
astery of Simon in Moscow, and the Spaso-Evfimii monastery in Suzdal’.28
25 L.V. Cherepnin (ed.), Akty feodal’nogo zemlevladeniia i khoziaistva, vol. 1 (L.V. Cherepnin,
ed.), Moskva, 1951; vol. 2 (L.V. Cherepnin, ed.; A.A. Zimin, comp.), Moskva, 1956; vol. 3 (L.V.
Cherepnin, ed.), Moskva, 1961. The second volume formed the basis of a monograph by
A.A. Zimin, Krupnaia feodal’naia votchina i sotsial’no-politicheskaia bor’ba v Rossii (konets
xv–xvi vv.), Moskva, 1977.
26 Documents from the same monastery from the 1580–1600 period were published by
A.G. Man’kov, Votchinnye khoziastvennye knigi xvi v. Prikhodnye i raskhodnye knigi Iosifo-
Volokolamskogo monastyria 80–90-kh gg., Moskva/Leningrad, 1987 (two volumes).
27 Akty sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi istorii Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, vol. 1 (B.D. Grekov, ed.),
Moskva, 1952; vol. 2 (L.V. Cherepnin, ed., I.A. Golubtsov, comp.), Moskva, 1953; vol. 3 (L.V.
Cherepnin, ed., I.A. Golubtsov, comp.), Moskva, 1964; abbreviated asei.
28 Later documents from the Spaso-Evfimii monastery were published by S.N. Kisterev and
L.A. Timoshin: Akty Suzdal’skogo Spaso-Evfim’eva Monastyria 1506–1608 gg., Moskva, 1998.
Similarly, later documents from the Moscow Simon monastery were published by L.I. Ivi-
na: Akty feodal’nogo zemlevladeniia i khoziaistva – Akty Moskovskogo Simonova Monastyria
(1505–1613 gg.), Leningrad, 1983. Charters from the Troitse-Sergiev monastery from part of
this later period were published by A.A. Novosel’skii and L.V. Cherepnin (eds.) and S.B.
Veselovskii (comp.): Akty Russkogo gosudarstva 1505–1526 gg., Moskva, 1975.
The Troitse-Sergiev monastery was founded around 1380, and the others re-
spectively in 1397, after 1408, around 1370, and around 1360. The collections
extend to the year 1505 or occasionally a few years later, The third volume
brought together a number of smaller archives, of monasteries as well as of
landowning families; it covered the period from around 1294 until the begin-
ning of the 16th century.
During the post-war period, several collections of charters from specific ar-
eas and towns were published.29 Also, the publication of smaller clusters of
newly-discovered charters was continued.30 During the following post-Soviet
period, these various efforts at making archival materials accessible went on
uninterruptedly and important new initiatives were taken. I.Z. Liberzon col-
lected more than 1300 charters from the Solovetskii monastery, covering the
period from 1479 to 1584.31 Documents from three Moscow monasteries and
from the Uspenskii and Arkhangel’skii cathedrals in Moscow were published
under the editorship of V.D. Nazarov.32
Almost 2000 documents, originating from the private archives of landed
families and covering three centuries (from around 1400 until 1700), were pub-
lished by A.V. Antonov and K.V. Baranov.33 Antonov also acted as the editor-
in-chief of the series Russkii diplomatarii, which started in 1997 and offered
29 R.I. Avanesov (ed.), Smolenskie gramoty, Moskva, 1963; A.L. Khoroshkevich (ed.), Polotskie
gramoty xiii – nachala xvi vv., Moskva, 1977 (i), 1978 (ii); G.N. Anpilogov (ed.), Nizhegoro-
dskie dokumenty xvi veka (1588–1600), Moskva, 1977; V.M. Rusanivs’kyi (ed.), Ukraïns’ki
hramoty xv st., Kyiv, 1965; M.M. Peshchak (ed.), Hramoty xiv st., Kyiv, 1974.
30 A notable series of publications is Russkii feodal’nyi arkhiv xiv – pervoi treti xvi veka,
Moskva, 1986 (i), 1987 (ii, iii), 1988 (iv), 1992 (v), edited by V.I. Buganov and compiled by
A.I. Pliguzov and G.V. Semenchenko. As a one-off continuation of this series A.I. Pliguzov
published a work with the same title in 2008 (Moskva), containing the entire Synodal
collection No. 562 of the State Historical Museum (gim); this collection represents an of-
ficial sbornik (collection) of the metropolitan chancery from the period indicated and is
of great interest for the Church-state relationship of this era.
31 I.Z. Liberzon (comp.), A.I. Kopanev, N.E. Nosov (eds.), Akty sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi isto-
rii Severa Rossii kontsa xv–xvi vv. Akty Solovetskogo monastyria, 1479–1571 gg., Leningrad,
1988 (i), 1572–1584 gg., Leningrad, 1990 (ii).
32 V.D. Nazarov (ed.), Akty Rossiiskogo gosudarstva. Arkhivy moskovskikh monastyrei i soborov
xv – nachalo xvi vv., Moskva, 1998. Another collection of monasterial charters was S.N.
Kisterev, L.A. Timoshina (eds.), Akty Troitskogo Kaliazina monastyria xvi g., Moskva/
Sankt-Peterburg, 2007; the Troitskii Kaliazin monastery, north-west of Moscow, was
founded around 1434. This collection is a continuation of the series of charters from the
same monastery published in asei iii, Nos. 128–174.
33 A.I. Antonov, K.V. Baranov (eds.), Akty sluzhilykh zemlevladel’tsev xv – nachala xvii veka,
Moskva, 1997 (i), 1998 (ii), 2002 (iii), 2008 (iv).
240 chapter 11
the full text of hundreds, and summaries (regesta) of thousands of documents

from the 13th to the 17th century, of various provenance.34
A valuable collection of English translations of eighty medieval Russian
charters was published by Dewey and Kleimola in 1973.35
The document collections known as pistsovye knigi and razriadnye knigi will
be discussed below in the section on documents other than gramoty.
Classification of Documents
Russian and Soviet literature has paid much attention to the question of clas-
sifying large numbers of medieval legal documents. At the beginning of this
chapter we opted for making the normative significance of a document the
basic classificatory criterion, because this is the most practical approach for
the legal historian. The basic characteristic of a normative document is that
it functions beyond the individual case, that it has a wider effect in time and
space, and that it is therefore of special interest in describing the history of the
law. For this reason normative or legislative sources have been taken together
and discussed in chronological order, with a view to illuminating their mutual
relations.
The dichotomy between normative and non-normative is self-evident for
modern lawyers and needs no further explanation. This has not always been
the case, and the dichotomy is therefore not to be taken for granted in legal
history, nor in legal theory for that matter. Legal rules have often arisen from
decisions in individual cases or resolutions of concrete questions; only more
sophisticated legal cultures institute separate procedures for making rules and
for deciding individual disputes. (See also Chapter 2, on Sources, and the sec-
tion on legislation in Chapter 14, on the Prince’s Government.)
Most documents can be classified without serious problems as either nor-
mative or non-normative. The major documents in the former category have
been discussed in the preceding chapters. Hundreds, thousands indeed of doc-
uments of the latter category have been published in the numerous collections
referred to above. There remains a not insignificant number of documents
occupying an intermediate position and displaying a gradual t ransition from
34 A.I. Antonov (ed.), Russkii diplomatarii, Moskva, 1997 (i); T.X appeared in 2004. T.viii
(2002) contained thousands of summaries of charters from private archives of hundreds
of landed families, going back as far as 1390.
35 H.W. Dewey, A.M. Kleimola (eds.), Russian Private Law in the xiv–xvii Centuries. Michigan
Slavic Materials, No. 9, Ann Arbor, 1973.
purely normative to purely non-normative. A prominent example is the

so-called Testament (Rukopisanie) of Vsevolod Mstislavich, which was dis-
cussed in Chapter 6 (on Princely Statutes) because it contains a text which
can be regarded as the charter of the St. John the Baptist’s guild of Novgorod
merchants. The major part of the document is taken up, however, by various
concrete and individual measures of a fiscal nature.
Another distinction, basic to modern lawyers, is the one between public and
private law. But in a medieval setting, where the ‘state’ is often conceived of as
part of the estate of a prince, the distinction is often dysfunctional. The testa-
ments of the Moscow grand princes, particularly the early ones, offer a good
illustration (see the relevant section in Chapter 13, on the Prince). Along with
gold and silver, weaponry and other possessions, and the ownership of tracts
of land, the lordship of Moscow is also bequeathed by the testator to his eldest
son. Similar situations, but on a more modest scale, occur in various types of
charters, where a plot of land is donated, together with certain judicial and/or
fiscal rights.
With these caveats, the main problem of devising a system for classifying
medieval legal documents can be tackled. It has been extensively discussed in
Russian and Soviet literature and various criteria have been put forward.
D.M. Meichik chose the position of the author of the document as the deci-
sive factor in constructing his typology. Was the document issued by somebody
in an official capacity, or was it drawn up by a private citizen?36 This device
re-introduced the public-private quandary and, not surprisingly, Meichik had
to have recourse to a third and intermediate category. A similar, but more
elaborate scheme was proposed by S.A. Shumakov,37 who placed church docu-
ments in a special category, but otherwise adhered to Meichik’s basic division
between officially issued and private documents.
A.S. Lappo-Danilevskii, the author of the first book-length treatise on dip-
lomatic studies in Russia,38 added another distinction to the public-private
dichotomy. He distinguished on the basis of content between declaratory
(osvedomitel’nye) and constitutive (udostoveritel’nye) documents.39 The first
category refers to some legally relevant event having occurred in the past and
36 D.M. Meichik, Gramoty i drugie akty xiv–xv vv. Moskovskogo arkhiva Ministerstva Iustitsii,
1884, 2–3.
37 S.A. Shumakov, Obzor gramot kollegii ekonomii, Part 4, Moskva, 1917, 3–43.
38 A.S. Lappo-Danilevskii, Ocherk russkoi diplomatiki chastnykh gramot, Sankt-Peterburg,
2007 (orig. Petrograd, 1920).
39 The explanation given by the author (op. cit., 40) shows that “declaratory” and “constitu-
tive” are indeed the meanings he had in mind.
242 chapter 11
serves to prove and confirm the legal consequences of this event. The second
category embodies the legally relevant event and is far more common in the
collections. Again, the distinction is not as sharp as one might expect; it is not
always clear whether the effect of the charter is merely declaratory or wheth-
er it actually creates a new legal situation. When a document is drawn up in
order to define the exact boundaries between two pieces of land (mezhevaia
gramota)it can be done for a purely declaratory purpose or in order to em-
body an agreement reached between adjoining landowners about a disputed
boundary.
Soviet authors, in accordance with their penchant for contrasting form and
content, rejected a classification based on the position of the document’s au-
thor as formalistic, and argued that the contents of the document, looked at
from a Marxist-Leninist viewpoint, should supply the decisive criterion. This
resulted in a first distinction between socio-economic and political docu-
ments in a proposal advanced by A.A. Zimin.40 This proposal was amended
and expanded by Cherepnin, enlightened, he claimed, by I.V. Stalin’s teachings
on feudalism and the feudal state.41 Cherepnin defined nine groups of docu-
ments, ranging from “documents which characterize the struggle of the feudal
lords for the means of production and especially for land” to “documents of
ecclesiastical law”.
No matter how different these proposals may appear, if one looks more
closely, beyond the theoretical foundations, at the actual breakdown of the
various categories into smaller groups of documents, it transpires that there
is much similarity in their detailed elaboration. Obviously, charters pertain-
ing to the sale, gift or exchange of land are closely related, irrespective of the
ideologicalposition taken. The same goes for the different types of grant char-
ters, bestowing fiscal or judicial immunities. It would seem therefore that,
phraseology apart, the differences between traditional Russian and Soviet
approaches were not so enormous. One could allow Cherepnin the view that
content should be the decisive factor, recognizing at the same time that the
contents of a medieval Russian document were usually closely connected with
the position of the document’s author. A grant charter, for instance, was usu-
ally issued by a prince.
After the content of a document as the principal distinguishing criterion,
additional aspects present themselves which may have relevance for a par-
ticular purpose. Geographical origin is of interest in comparing local and re-
gional differences between documents, or when one’s attention is directed at
40 In an unpublished course programme, according to Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 62.

a particular locality. In this respect the contrast between Novgorod and other
North-West Russian documents and those of Central Russian provenance is
important.42 Novgorod, an outward and westward-looking republic in a con-
glomerate of inward and eastward looking principalities, occupied a unique
and eccentric place in medieval Russia. This was also reflected in the style of
Novgorod documents, where the author of the text is presented in the third
person (“Ivan Petrovich has bought from Andrei Nikolaevich …”), instead of
the usual Russian formula with the first person (“I, Ivan Petrovich, have bought
from Andrei Nikolaevich …”). There are also terminological differences, as well
as dialectological ones.
The position of the author (the person issuing the document) becomes
a prominent criterion for classification in studies devoted to specific agents
or institutions. The most notable example in this respect are the treaties be-
tween princes and the last wills (testaments) of princes, constituting the chief
source of knowledge concerning the position of the medieval Russian princes,
their mutual relations and the mechanics of the ascent of the grand princes of
Moscow.43
The chronological criterion is seldom decisive, but always relevant, in order
to provide the necessary diachronic perspective. The oldest charters date from
the 12th century; there is only a trickle from the 13th and the earlier part of the
14th centuries; a more plentiful supply starts around the last decades of the
14th century and the vast majority dates from the 15th century. The possibilities
for chronological comparison are restricted by this uneven supply.
Although this work is devoted in principle to the period preceding the en-
actment of the Code of Ivan iii in 1497, this cut-off date cannot be applied too
strictly to the topic of charters. The life of the law in Russia continued after
1497 much as it had done before and the major collections of Russian charters
usually run on into the 16th or even the 17th century. All in all, the emphasis
will be on the mass of 15th and 16th century charters.
Archival origin may also be used as a criterion for classifying charters.44
Charters are rarely discovered as single documents; they usually form part of
larger collections and these collections have their own history. The bulk of Rus-
sian medieval charters has been preserved through the archives of the great
monasteries, first among which was the Troitse-Sergiev monastery, the biggest
42 Cf. N.N. Pokrovskii, Aktovye istochniki po istorii chernososhnogo zemlevladeniia v Rossi xiv
– nachala xvi v., Novosibirsk, 1975, 47–48.
43 Collected and edited by S.V. Bakhrushin, Dukhovnye i dogovornye gramoty velikikh i
udel’nykh kniazei xiv–xvi vv., Moskva/Leningrad, 1950.
44 This question is discussed at length by Cherepnin in his Arkhivy ii, Chapter 1 (10–64).
244 chapter 11
private landowner in Russia. The state archive of the Moscow grand princes
constituted another eminent treasure of medieval documents.
The landholdings of the major monasteries were so vast that the latter were
induced to set up elaborate administrative offices to keep track of their estates.
These offices assembled coherent collections into kopiinye knigi (lit. “copy-
books”); most of the presently available charters have survived in this form.
Those that have come down in originali did so through the Kollegiia Ekonomii,
set up (as noted above) to administer church property after the seculariza-
tion of ecclesiastical land in 1764. Along with kopiinye knigi, the monasteries
maintained pistsovye knigi, land registers containing all kinds of information
concerningmonasterial land (type of land, population, habitation patterns,
etc.). Another type of document from the monasterial administration was the
formuliarnik, a set of sample documents for the use of the land offices, espe-
cially the chancery of the Moscow metropolitanate (patriarchate, after 1589).
Some designations of charters are very general and are usually combined
with another more specific characteristic indicating the actual content of the
charter. A chelobitnaia is a petition, a zhalobnaia a complaint, a dogovornaia or
dokonchal’naia an agreement, a riadnaia an agreement concerning property,
a dertnaia a ‘definitive’ charter, none of them revealing what the charter was
about.
Other designations concern only a particular aspect of the charter, such as
its form: charters confirmed by oath (krestotseloval’naia, prisiazhnaia, shertna-
ia), counterfeit charters (l’zhivaia), circulars (okruzhnaia), confirming charters
(podtverditel’naia), charters in the form of a report (dokladnaia), lists (perech-
nevaia), copies (protivnaia), renunciation charters (otstupnaia, otpisnaia),
charters issued by a prince or his representative (posyl’naia).
When content is considered, there are private law charters, referring to all
kinds of private law transactions: gift charters (dannye), deeds of sale (kupchie),
repurchase charters (vykupnye), deeds of exchange or barter (menovnye), leases
(naemnye), loans (zaemnye, kabal’nye), mortgages or pledges (zakladnye), ami-
cable settlements (mirovye), warranties (ochishchal’nye, poruchnye), charters
concerning boundaries (otvodnye, mezhevye, delovye, razdel’nye, raz”ezdnye),
land purchases by peasants (posil’nye), undertakings to refrain from something
(zariadnye); in the sphere of marriage and family law: last wills (dukhovnye,
izustnye), gifts mortis causae to monasteries (vkladnye), betrothals (sgovornye),
divorces (rospusknye).
Of mixed public-private character are those charters which record the lease
of a public office (otkupnye) or various charters concerning the entering into or
release from an unfree status (serfdom, bondage, slavery): kholop’i, otpustnye,
polnye, poriadnye, sluzhilye, vol’nye gramoty.
Other charters, issued by a prince or another public authority, are in the pub-
lic sphere. The most general term is zhalovannaia (a grant). This category fur-
ther includes various travelling documents (berezhnye, opasnye, podorozhnye,
proezzhie), charters conferring land or an official position (kormlennye, mes-
tnye, nevmestnye, pomestnye, votchinnye), judicial immunities (nesudimye,
srochnye), charters releasing from a public law obligation (oslobozhonye),
charters enjoining peasants to obey a new master (poslushnye, vvoznye), official
orders or instructions (ukaznye, posyl’nye, pogonnye), charters conferring vari-
ous privileges (okhrannye, zapovednye), excerpts from land registers (sotnye).
Other special categories in the public sphere are the various types of legis-
lative charters (gubnye, sudnye, tamozhennye, ustavnye); the most important
of these have already been discussed in Chapter 8, on Local and Provincial
Charters. Of considerable significance are also the fiscal privileges (bezdannye,
l’gotnye, obel’nye, obrochnye, tarkhannye).
Among the charters connected with the courts and their activities are the
judgment charters (pravye) and others (beglye, bessudnye, obysknye, poletnye,
pristavnye, mirovye, zazyvnye).
In the sphere of international relations one finds treaties in general (usually
called dogovornye gramoty, dogovory or dokonchaniia), peace treaties (mirnye
or peremirnye), declarations of war (razmetnye, vzmetnye, skladnye), and let-
ters of credence (veritel’nye).
Finally there are several types of charters concerning ecclesiastical appoint-
ments (blagoslovennye, nastol’nye, povol’nye, stavlennye).
Alphabetical Dictionary of Gramoty
The following abbreviations have been used, along with several others, includ-
ed in the general List of Abbreviations (asei; Cherepnin, Arkhivy; ddg; gvnp;
prp; Pushkarev, Dictionary).
afzkh Akty feodal’nogo zemlevladeniia i khoziaistva, 1951–1956
AIuB N. Kalachov (ed.), Akty, otnosiashchiesia do iuridicheskogo
byta drevnei Rosii, 1857–1884
Akty Ross. Gos. V.D. Nazarov (ed.), Akty rossiiskogo gosudarstva. Arkhivy
moskovskikh monastyrei i soborov xv – nachala xvii vv.,
Moskva, 1998
Akty Russk. Gos. S.B. Veselovskii (comp.), Akty russkogo gosudarstva
1 505–1526, Moskva, 1975
Akty sluzh. A.V. Antonov, K.V. Baranov (eds.), Akty sluzhilykh
zemlevlad. zemlevladel’tsev xv – nachala xvii veka i–iv, 1997–2008
246 chapter 11
Akty Solovetsk. I.Z. Liberzon (comp.), Akty Solovetskogo monastyria

mon. 1 479–1571 gg., Leningrad, 1988
Dewey, Russian H.W. Dewey, A.M. Kleimola, Russian Private Law in the xiv–
Private Law xvii Centuries. Michigan Slavic Materials, No. 9, 1973
Ivina-afzkh L.I. Ivina (ed.), Akty feodal’nogo zemlevladeniia i khoziaistva.
Akty Moskovskogo Simonova Monastyria, Leningrad, 1983
Russkii A.V. Antonov (ed.), Russkii Diplomatarii, 1 (Moskva, 1998)
Diplomatarii →
Beglaia gramota
A court document, ordering the return of a fugitive (beglyi) slave to his master.
This is the usual definition of this term, occurring only in art. 20 of the Code of
1497. According to this provision, urban and rural lieutenants (namestniki and
volosteli) who did not possess full jurisdiction (who enjoyed kormlenie without
the right of a boyar court; see Chapter 22, on Courts) were not allowed to re-
lease slaves without reporting (doklad) to higher authorities, or to issue beglye
gramoty.45
Berezhnaia (Berezhonaia) gramota

Defined by Vernadsky-Pushkarev as a “protective charter, safe conduct”.46
Bessudnaia gramota
A default judgment, a document issued by the court to one of the parties in
a dispute, without a trial, on the mere grounds of the other party’s failure
to appear in court at the appointed time. A modest number of such default
judgments, of fairly similar format, is known from the second half of the 15th
century.47 They usually begin with an identification of the party present and
the prince exercizing jurisdiction; the party briefly relates his case in the first
person, concluding that his opponent has not shown up. Then the document
reports that the judge (the prince), after examining the summons, has issued a
default judgment in favour of the party present.
Art. 27 of the Code of 1495 is devoted to default judgments. The court clerk
(d’iak) was responsible for issuing them, after investigating the terms which
had been set for appearance in court. They were written out by the scribes
45 Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 342; prp iii, 389; Pushkarev, Dictionary, 24.
46 Pushkarev, Dictionary, 24.
47 Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 231, 343. Examples in asei i, 238–239 (No. 329), 362 (No. 479);
asei ii, 102–103 (No. 167); afzkh i, 221 (No. 257). Translations of asei i (No. 479) and
afzkh i (no. 257) in Dewey, Russian Private Law, 38–40.
(pod’iachie) and issued on the eighth day after the trial date, although other
periods also occurred. Default judgments are also mentioned in arts. 25, 32 and
36 of the same Code.
Bezdannaia gramota
A document which freed the recipient from the payment of dan’ (tribute).
Blagoslovennaia gramota
A document containing a blessing from a church hierarch, especially a charter
confirming the appointment by the bishop of a lower church dignitary. The
texts of such documents indicate that the dignity was conferred by the blessing
itself. The bishop’s blessing could concern the appointment of an abbot or a
priest, but also the building of a church.48
Chelobitnaia gramota
A petition; such a document, also known as a chelobit’e, was the normal means
of addressing a petition, request or complaint to the prince or another person
of exalted status in Muscovy. The literal meaning of chelobit’e is “beating of
the forehead” (against the ground), as a sign of submission. The usual open-
ing words of such a document were: “nn. [followed by an indication of social
standing, rank, position, etc.] has beaten his forehead [se bil chelom] before
[name and rank of person addressed], speaking as follows”, and then these
words were followed by a direct account of the case from the petitioner’s point
of view.49
Dannaia gramota
A gift charter, a donation. Hundreds of gift charters are known from the period
preceding the Code of 1497.50 Among the donors mentioned in the gift char-
ters one finds private citizens, persons of princely rank and, rarely, church dig-
nitaries.51 Where princely donors are concerned, a distinction must be made
between gifts of a private nature and gifts with a significant or predominant
48 Pushkarev, Dictionary, 24. Examples in asei ii, 58–59 (No. 97); AIuB i, 63–69 (Nos. 24–27).
49 Cf. Dewey, Russian Private Law, 3–5.
50 One of the oldest known dannye is gvnp, No. 104 (161–162), a gift of around 1200 by Var-
laam Mikhailovich to a Novgorod monastery, the oldest private charter in Russia, avail-
able in the original. See S.M. Kashtanov, Iz istorii russkogo srednevekovogo istochnika. Akty
x–xvi vv., Moskva, 1996, 87–88. A few old (14th century) gift charters from Western Russia
in M.M. Peshchak (ed.), Hramoty xiv st., Kyiv, 1974.
51 A rare example is a gift by the archbishop of Rostov in 1434, asei i, 90–91 (No. 113).
248 chapter 11
public law aspect. In the latter instance the prince acted in his capacity as
territorial ruler. In such cases the verbal form of “to give” is then accompanied
in the formula of the charter by the corresponding form of “to grant”. These
charters are usually called zhalovannye dannye or simply zhalovannye. The gift
of a property may also be accompanied by the granting of fiscal or judicial
privileges (immunities) and such not uncommon charters are then referred to
as zhalovannye dannye, tarkhannye i nesudimye gramoty (gift charters granting
fiscal and judicial immunity).52 The donee was usually a monastery and occa-
sionally a church in Moscow or Novgorod.
Among private persons, donations between ascendants and descendants.
were not common, because the desired effect could normally be achieved in-
formally during the donor’s lifetime. If only a post mortem effect was envisaged,
a testament would be the solution, if the donee was not already the donor’s
heir of intestacy. Donation between private persons inter vivos therefore, as a
rule, occurred only if there was a specific reason for transferring the property
right away, without waiting for the death of the donor.53
The object of the donation, as described in the gift charters, is nearly always
real property. This is not surprising, as the gift of movable property can easily
be effected through the actual transfer of the object donated. The reason for
preferring the written form in the case of real property is in the evidentiary
force of the charter. The same argument applies to the gift of ‘invisible’ rights,
particularly rights concerning real property. Several gift charters embody the
gift of fishing rights in specific bodies of water.54 The few instances where mov-
able property was included in gift charters concerned mixed donations: where
movable property was donated together with real property, for instance the gift
charter of a village, enumerating all the assets of which the village consisted.55
Most of the available gift charters are of a type called vkladnaia, by which
the donee (always a monastery) is favoured so that the monks will remember
the donor and his living and deceased relatives in their prayers (na pominok or
po dushi).56
52 E.g. asei i, 326 (No. 436).

53 Illustrated by asei i, 364–364 (No. 483), the gift of a village to a daughter and her husband, on
the condition that the donor (mother) is kept and cared for for the remainder of her life; also
gvnp, 203 (No. 156), gift of a share in the donor’s property to a daughter and her husband, on
the condition that they assume the care of the donor’s son and two other daughters.
54 Charters granting fishing rights were normally issued by a prince and had a public law
character; they are then designated as zhalovannye dannye; e.g. asei i, 47–48 (No. 41).
55 E.g. asei i, 64 (No. 71), where all property, movable and immovable, was listed; gvnp, 203
(No. 156), where one half of the movable property and one third of the real property were
donated.
Occasionally, other more secular conditions were added in the charter, such
as the right for the donor or his heirs to buy the property back or exchange it
for another.57 Some gift charters contained references to other obligations of
the monastery, such as the payment of a sum of money to the donor or to third
persons; in such cases the transaction’s character as a donation can be much
diluted, even if would still be designated as a dannaia.58
Gift charters sometimes indicate the exact extent of the property by listing
its boundaries; others refer to local knowledge and usage by designating the
property only by name and a general formula, such as “as far as the axe, the
scythe, the sickle and the plough go”.59
It was also not unusual to indicate the title of the property’s donor, by stat-
ing that the property donated was part of his inherited estate (votchina) or by
naming the person from whom he had acquired it.
Delovaia gramota
A charter dividing property, especially real property. The number of extant de-
lovye is small. An essential element of a delovaia is of course an indication of
the shares into which the property was divided. The question of who received
what is not always answered and may be left to the drawing of lots. A delovaia
may be of a purely private character, but it may also concern the dividing of
property between ruling princes, with the accompanying division of judicial
and fiscal powers.60 Another name for this type of charter is razdel’naia.61
Dertnaia gramota
A document repealing an earlier document or confirming ownership of a
landholding. The approximate meaning of dertnaia or dernovataia is “final” or
“definitive”.62
57 E.g. asei ii, 157 (No. 237).

58 Cf. N.N. Pokrovskii, Aktovye istochniki po istorii chernososhnogo zemlevladeniia v Rossii
xiv – nachala xvi v., Novosibirsk, 1973, 48. The relevant section in Pokrovskii’s book on
dannye, kupchie and menovnye (46–62) had been published earlier as “Kupchie, dannye i
menovnye gramoty kak istochnik po istorii chernososhnogo zemlevladeniia Rossii xiv –
pervoi chetverti xvi v.” in Novoe o proshlom nashei strany [Tikhomirov memorial volume],
Moskva, 1967, 79–90.
59 E.g. asei ii, 136 (No. 210).
60 E.g. asei ii, 360–361 (No. 476).
61 E.g. gvnp, 191 (No. 137), 234 (No. 204); asei i, 422 (No. 543).
62 Pushkarev, Dictionary, 24. A grant charter of Ivan iv of 1539 contains the formula: “And
there is not any dertnaia gramota affecting this grant charter of mine” (prp iv, 113). Ref-
erences to dertnye gramoty may be found in other charters, afzkh ii, 62 (No. 62), 63
(No. 63), 129 (No. 133), 133 (No. 135).
250 chapter 11
Dogovornaia gramota
An agreement, especially a treaty. International and internal Russian treaties
(between princes) are discussed in other chapters. Treaties were an important
instrument in spreading Moscow’s hegemony and there are numerous treaties
between the grand princes of Moscow and other princes; they usually go by the
name of dokonchal’nye gramoty.
Dokladnaia gramota
A document by which a contract or a unilateral act of an official is referred to
a higher authority for approval or confirmation. The higher authority is usually
the Moscow grand prince, another grand prince or provincial prince, his agent
(a particular boyar, a steward, a lieutenant, etc.), or occasionally the metropoli-
tan or a bishop.63
The dokladnaia rarely stood by itself; it was normally the form assumed by
another document, such as a court judgment, deed of sale, barter or pledge,
etc. Whenever such documents were transmitted through the process of
doklad (report) to somebody in authority, they were designated as dokladnye.
The purpose of the doklad could be the securing of the approval of a higher
authority, or merely the notification to the latter of the matter contained in the
document reported, thereby increasing the evidentiary force of the original
document.
Among the contracts covered by dokladnye one finds sales,64 barter
(exchange),65 pledges,66 loans,67 enserfments,68 leases,69 and others. In their
simplest form these dokladnye represent a brief record of the transaction,
reported by one of the parties to the prince (or another authority). More in-
tricate forms first describe the original transaction and then record how this
transaction was reported to the prince, who then questioned the other party as
to the truthfulness of the description of the transaction and finally affixed his
63 E.g. afzkh i, 50–51 (No. 33), reporting the grant of a use for life of a plot of land to the
metropolitan, and id., 53 (No. 37), reporting the lease of a plot of land to the same. Both
documents were also published in AIuB i, 493–494 (No. 69-ii) and 491–492 (No. 69-i).
64 E.g. asei ii, 16–23 (Nos. 2–7, 10–13); AIuB i, 494–495 (No. 69-iii); asei iii, 387–388
(Nos. 365, 367).
65 E.g. asei iii, 170–173 (Nos. 150, 153, 155, 156), 175 (No. 160), 178 (No. 166).
66 E.g. asei i, 151 (No. 216), the same document in AIuB ii, 5–6 (No. 126-iii); asei iii, 448
(No. 465).
67 E.g. asei iii, 374–374 (Nos. 348–350), 381 (No. 358).
68 E.g. asei iii, 411–414 (Nos. 392–396), 416–417 (Nos. 400–401), 418–424 (Nos. 404–414).
69 E.g. afzkh i, 53 (No. 37), the same document in AIuB i, 491–492 (No. 69-i).
seal to the document describing the original transaction and the doklad pro-
ceedings.70 In some cases the doklad proceedings were recorded as a separate
entry on the same sheet as the original transaction.71
Court documents could also assume the form of a dokladnaia or a dokladnyi
spisok.72 The document then started with a record of the trial, beginning with
a statement by the plaintiff, usually in direct speech. This was followed by a
statement of the defendant, the evidence of witnesses and interrogation by
the judge, all of which were usually in direct speech. No judgment followed
at the end of the proceedings, but the document recorded that the case was
reported to the prince or a judicial officer representing him. At this higher
forumthe parties were questioned again as to the correctness of the initial
proceedings and then the higher judge decided on the matter and instructed
the lower judge to pronounce judgment accordingly. The lower judge would is-
sue the final judgment and provide the winning side with a copy of it (pravaia
gramota).73 This doklad procedure was typical for medieval Russian law, where
it took the place of ordinary appellate proceedings. The lower judge could re-
fer the case to the higher judge, either because he was not sure how he should
decide, or because he was not competent to decide the case.74 The doklad pro-
cedure is mentioned in the Code of 1497 (arts. 16, 20 and 24) and also in the
Court Charter of Novgorod (arts. 6, 20, 26 and 29). It was still included in the
Ulozhenie of 1649 (Ch. 10, art. 2).
Occasionally, last wills were presented to the bishop (or metropolitan) and
thereby assumed the character of dokladnye. In such cases the bishop would
act as a supervisor of testamentary dispositions.75
Dokonchal’naia gramota
See Dogovornaia gramota.
Dukhovnaia gramota
A last will or testament. In fact any document which contained instructions
about what was to happen after the death of the de cuius could be called a
70 E.g. afzkh i, 50–51 (No. 33), a doklad, not to the prince, but to the metropolitan. In this
case (the grant of the use for life of a plot of land) the transaction appeared to be a gift,
but as both parties entered into mutual obligations, there was undoubtedly a synallag-
matic contract.
71 E.g. asei i, 151 (No. 216), quoted above; asei i, 333–334 (No. 446).
72 E.g. asei iii, 87–88 (No. 56), 181–189 (Nos. 172–173), 217–223 (Nos. 208–209).
73 Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 231.
74 Cf. Dewey, Russian Private Law, 44–45.
75 E.g. asei i, 523–525 (No. 612), translation in Dewey, op. cit., 229–231.
252 chapter 11
dukhovnaia or dushevnaia gramota (lit. “soul charter”). In the last will itself
the term “handwriting” (rukopisanie) is often used. Such rukopisaniia need
not concern the fate of the testator’s estate. The earliest known example is the
so-called Testament of Vladimir Monomakh, inserted in the Chronicle in the
year 1096, which consisted of an account of the author’s life accompanied by
various admonitions to his sons (discussed in several other parts of this work).
Similarly, the oldest known private will, of the abbot Antonii Rimlianin in
Novgorod († 1147), had almost nothing to say about his estate, but was mostly
concerned with the running of the monastery.76 Even among later wills, some
were mainly concerned with spiritual matters, such as the will of the founding
abbot of the Belozersk monastery, Kirill († 1427).77 But one of the oldest surviv-
ing original private charters (1270 or earlier), the testament of Kliment, a rich
and apparently childless Novgorod merchant, listed in detail the destination of
the various parts of his estate.78
Most of the numerous extant texts of wills benefitted monasteries. This is
not necessarily indicative of a tendency to accumulate monasterial wealth
at the expense of secular fortunes.79 In the most common case of an estate
passingto descendants, there was usually no need to make a will. Only when
property was left outside the circle of descendants, was a will called for. Since
monasteries were more careful in keeping records than private citizens, wills
which mentioned monasteries as beneficiaries had a much better chance of
survival.
Wills often did not provide full instructions concerning the entire estate,
but only specific dispositions, such as an instruction to the heirs to respect
the sale of a certain plot of land to a monastery.80 Bequests were sometimes
accompanied by the obligation to pay a fixed sum to the widow.81
76 gvnp, 159–161 (No. 103); prp ii, 106–107. See S.M. Kashtanov, Iz istorii russkogo sredneveko-
vogo istochnika. Akty x–xvi vv., Moskva, 1996, 84–86; see also M.N. Tikhomirov, “O chast-
nykh aktakh v Drevnei Rusi”, id., Drevniaia Rus’, Moskva, 1975, 240–266, at 248–257 (orig.
in Istoricheskie zapiski, t.17 (1945), 225–244).
77 asei ii, 277–279 (No. 314).
78 gvnp, 162–163 (No. 105); prp ii, 108–110. See also Kashtanov, op. cit., 88–89.
79 As seems to be suggested by Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 75, in his discussion of dukhovnye
gramoty.
80 E.g. gvnp, 202 (No. 155); id., 241–242 (No. 217) – a simple bequest. See also the section on
succession law in Chapter 19, on the Individual and the Family, where the point is made
that Russian law did not follow the Roman law rule that one cannot die partly testate,
partly intestate.
81 E.g. asei i, 379–380 (No. 501) and asei i, 46 (No. 38): bequest of a village to a monas-
tery, with the obligation to maintain the widow out of the income from the village. See
Where the last will apparently dealt with the entire estate of the testator,
left to his children, the purpose was usually to make suitable provision for the
widow and to prevent discord among the heirs by assigning specific shares to
the heirs individually. Most of such wills concerned landholdings82 and listed
the villages and possessions allotted to the individual heirs, often containing a
report of the survey (otvod, see Otvodnaia gramota), describing the exact size
and location of the different plots.83
Although most wills were merely concerned with real property, a number
of more elaborate ones also paid attention to the fate of specific categories of
unfree persons, belonging to the testator’s estate.84 Such wills did not relate to
the general (unfree) rural population, considered to be part and parcel of the
villages, but to slaves and other unfree persons in the personal service of the
testator. 15th century wills usually provided for their emancipation.85
Occasionally, cattle and other valuable movable property, such as icons,
jewels and clothes, were also named in wills.86 Many wills contained an ac-
count of the testator’s debts and financial claims, with instructions to the heirs
or executors to pay the debts and collect on the claims.87
Last wills almost invariably began by an invocation of the Trinity (the Sign
of the Cross), followed by such words as: “I, God’s servant nn., write this last
will during my lifetime and being of sound mind, [in order to state] who owes
me something and to whom I give something”. The more elaborate wills then
proceed to list the debts and claims of the testator. Then follow the actual tes-
tamentary dispositions. Even where the bulk of the property was left to de-
scendants or other relatives, some gift was usually made to a monastery or a
church to remember the souls of departed parents or other relatives, or for the
soul of the testator him- or herself. The concluding part of the will consisted
of a record of the witnesses and the person who transcribed the will (usually a
clergyman) and then, at least in Novgorod wills, a warning that anybody con-
testing the will or violating its provisions would have to answer before God.
Wills in Central Russia were often presented to the bishop for his visa. This was
recorded on the will itself, often with a short record of the hearing before the
also Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 75. A similar, but different situation arose in gvnp, 265–266
(No. 256): bequest with obligation to pay a debt of the testator.
82 E.g. gvnp, 329 (No. 344); afzkh ii, 18–20 (No. 15).
83 E.g. asei i, 344–345 (No. 457).
84 E.g. asei i, 86–87 (No. 108); id., 162 (No. 228).
85 Such as the above quoted asei i, 379–380 (No. 501) and 86–87 (No. 108).
86 E.g. asei i, 31–32 (No. 11), 162 (No. 228), 181–183 (No. 253).
87 E.g. asei i, 337–338 (No. 450).
254 chapter 11
bishop or his official, where the various parties were interrogated about the
discharge of the duties imposed on them or the receiving of what was due to
them.88
A very special category is formed by the last wills of ruling princes. A number
of the most important of such wills have been published in a separate collec-
tion.89 As the topic of princely wills is intimately connected with the treaties
between princes and, more generally, with inter-princely relations in medieval
Russia, it is treated in Chapter 23 (on the Prince).
Dushevnaia gramota
See Dukhovnaia gramota.
Dvusrochnaia gramota
See Srochnaia gramota.
Gubnaia gramota
The earliest known gubnaia gramota is from 1539,90 and many more fol-
lowed.91 Several of these charters have been translated by Dewey, who called
them “anti-brigandage” charters. Pushkarev defined them as “a criminal stat-
ute or charter originally issued by the government at the request of local com-
munities; it granted permission for elected officials to investigate and punish
crimes.”92 They are discussed at greater length in Part ii of this work.
Izustnaia gramota
A dying declaration, a written record taken down from a person before dying,
containing either specific instructions about certain actions or goods (a codi-
cil), or covering most of the assets belonging to his estate. In the latter case this
88 E.g. afzkh ii, 18–20 (No. 15); asei i, 523–525 (No. 612): asei ii, 512–513 (No. 474).
89 Dukhovnye i dogovornye gramot velikikh i udel’nykh kniazei, collected and edited by
Bakhrushin and Cherepnin; see the List of Abbreviations. Quoted as ddg.
90 The Gubnaia Charter of Belozersk, prp iv, 176–179; rz ii, 213–218. English translation
in H.W. Dewey, Muscovite Judicial Texts 1488–1556. Michigan Slavic Materials, No. 7, Ann
Arbor, 1966, 31–43. See also H.W. Dewey, “Muscovite Guba Charters and the Concept of
Brigandage (Razboj)”, Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, LI
(1966), 277–288.
91 E.g. the Anti-Brigandage Instruction of Medyn’ (Medynskii gubnoi nakaz) of 1555, prp iv,
179–185 and rz ii, 218–223 (also in PRoP iii(1), 65–68); the same of Sol’ Galitskaia of 1540,
Ivina-afzkh, No. 64 (75–76).
document comes close to a full-blown will. Other names for it are izustnaia
pamiat’ of zaustnaia gramota.93
Kabal’naia gramota
This term, or more commonly: kabala, is used to denote a document which
records a loan. There are different types of kabaly, depending on the accom-
panying conditions of the loan. These conditions may be so preponderant that
the original character of the transaction as a loan is completely overshadowed.
The most frequently encountered kabala is the zakladnaia, where the recipi-
ent of the loan pledged real property.94 Peasants who were unable to provide
such security for a loan could pledge their labour, entering into the service
of the creditor, in a service charter (sluzhilaia kabala). An ordinary loan char-
ter or promissory note, not secured by any kind of pledge, is called zaemnaia
kabala.
Kholop’ia gramota
Literally, a slave’s charter or a charter concerning a slave, but in fact a judgment
concerning a slave (pravaia gramota s kholopa) or a charter of emancipation
(otpusknaia gramota). It is referred to in art. 17 of the Code of 1497 and also,
without the term being mentioned, in art. 20.95
Khrestnaia gramota
See Krestotseloval’naia gramota.
Kormlennaia gramota
A charter granting korm or kormlenie (lit. “food”, “feeding”). The kormlenie prac-
tice involved local government officials, in particular urban and rural lieuten-
ants (namestniki and volosteli), not being paid a salary, but granted an income
in kind, to be produced by the local population. But gradually this korm as-
sumed the form of monetary remuneration; it could also consist of a share in
local court fees. The kormlenie system was officially discontinued in the middle
of the 16th century, but in fact lasted much longer.96
93 A 16th century example in afzkh ii, 349–351 (No. 332). In earlier times the term izustnaia
gramota occurs in other documents, where it is more or less synonymous with “last will”.
94 E.g. Akty Solovetsk. mon., No. 26 (28); No. 37 (33); No. 45 (36–37).
96 Cf. Pushkarev, Dictionary, 44–45. A late kormlenie grant from 1584 in Akty sluzh. zemlevlad.
i, No. 307, (298–299), by Ivan iv’s son tsar Fedor, to Il-Murza Iusupovich, the ancestor of
the Iusupov princes.
256 chapter 11
Most of the extant kormlennye gramoty are from the second half of the 15th
and first half of the 16th centuries, but the practice undoubtedly went back to
the early Kievan princes who appointed trusted boyars as their local represen-
tatives. Kormlenie was granted by the prince; in most cases the Moscow grand
prince, but other ruling princes also appear.97 Most grants concerned the of-
fice of rural lieutenant (volostel’), but other offices also occur, such as urban
lieutenant (namestnik)98 or a judgeship of a certain area,99 or regional agent of
the iam (government communications and transport system).100 In most cases
the general governmental appointments included jurisdiction (sud or pravda),
involving a share of the court fees.
Kormlenie charters customarily contained a reference to traditional prac-
tice; kormlenie was granted “according to ancient usage, as it used to be before”
(po staroi poshline, kak bylo prezh sego),101 or as it used to be under the grant-
ee’s ancestors or predecessors.102 The latter formula, found in one of the old-
est extant kormlenie charters (of the Moscow grand prince Dmitrii, 1363–1389),
corroboratesthe assumption that kormlenie actually started long before the
earliest written evidence appeared.
A smaller number of grants do not use the term kormlenie, but the property
or right indicated is granted v put’, otherwise these grants are identical with
ordinary kormlennye gramoty. There is some disagreement about the meaning
of the term v put’. Zimin and Poliak interpret it as referring to kormlenie within
the personal domain of the prince.103
The usual grant formula is short and general, only occasionally does the
charter list in detail what the grantee was entitled to.104 Most of the kormlennye
97 E.g. princes of Dmitrov, of Uglich, of Staritsa, of Volotsk, grand princes of Riazan’ (asei
iii, No. 112 (pp. 84–85); id., No. 74 (p. 60); id., No. 76 (pp. 61–62), id., No. 69 (p. 104); Akty
sluzh. zemlevlad. i, No. 175 (p. 145)). asei iii, No. 73 (107–108), mentions Mariia Iaroslavna
(the widow of Vasilii ii the Blind) as the grantor.
98 asei iii, No. 108 (145–146); id., No. 385 (398–399), also a charter of a grand prince of
Riazan’.
99 asei iii, No. 351 (375).
100 Akty sluzh. zemlevlad. i, No. 16 (21).
101 E.g. asei iii, No. 73 (107–108); id., No. 102 (140); id., No. 145 (No. 107).
102 E.g. asei iii, No. 4 (16).
103 A.A. Zimin, A.G. Poliak, in their commentary to a kormlenie charter of Ivan iii; prp iii,
156–157 (charter), 178–180 (commentary). The same charter appears also in asei iii,
No. 279 (295–296). Other examples of such grants v put’ are in V.N. Kozliakov, “Dve korm-
lennye gramoty xv veka”, Russkii Diplomatarii vii, 13–19. See also V.O. Kliuchevskii, Boiar-
skaia Duma Drevnei Rusi, Moskva, 1902 (3rd ed., repr. Moskva, 1994), 538–539, where a very
similar view is presented.
104 E.g. asei iii, No. 114 (150); id., No 189 (202–203).
gramoty were sine die, but in some cases the grant was made for one year
only.105
Krepkaia (Krepostnaia) gramota

Also known as krepost’, a charter in which the Moscow (or Lithuanian) grand
prince gave assurances for the safe entry, a benevolent reception and the provi-
sion of the necessary means of subsistence to members of the ruling elite of
the Crimean khanate during the last decades of the 15th century. They were
usually drafted by the potential beneficiaries themselves and represented a
mixture of Tatar and Russian diplomatic customs. Their purpose, from the Rus-
sian perspective, was to exploit the political unrest prevailing in the Crimean
khanate and entice important Crimean princes and noblemen to come over to
the side of the Russians.106
Krestotseloval’naia gramota
A charter confirmed by oath, in the traditional orthodox fashion of kissing the
Cross (krestotselovanie); also termed a krestnaia or khrestnaia gramota.107
Kupchaia gramota
A purchase deed, almost invariably of land.108 Among the medieval Russian
charters that have appeared in print, purchase deeds are the most numerous;
hundreds of kupchie were included in the basic publications mentioned above.
Both pre- and post-revolutionary authors have proposed various schemes for
dividing purchase deeds into different categories, using either legal or socio-
economic (Marxist) criteria.109 Below, only the most important general features
of kupchie will be pointed out and several special categories will be identified.
A kupchaia is usually worded as a deed of purchase, in which the buyer,
speaking in the first person, states that he has bought a certain piece of land.
Novgorod kupchie, in accordance with general Novgorod usage, are written in
105 E.g. asei iii, No. 279 (quoted above).

106 Cf. A.L. Khoroshkevich, “«Krepostnaia» ili «krepkaia» gramota”, dg sssr 1987, Moskva,
1989, 77–84.
107 E.g. asei iii, No. 18 (34–35).
108 I have not come across any others.
109 Cf. K. Kindiakov, “Opyt uchenoi razrabotki kupchikh gramot, pomeshchennykh a Aktakh
iuridicheskikh”, D. Meier (ed.), Iuridicheskii Sbornik, Kazan’, 1855, 409–448; D.M. Meichik,
Gramoty i drugie akty xiv–xv vv. Moskovskogo arkhiva Ministerstva Iustitsii, Moskva, 1884,
71–73; Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 78–79; N.N. Pokrovskii, Aktovye istochniki chernososhnogo
zemlevladeniia v Rossii xiv – nachala xvi v., Novosibirsk, 1973, 46–62.
258 chapter 11
the third person.110 A small number of kupchie are worded as deeds of sale, in
which the seller stated that he has sold a property; these charters are called
zaprodazhnye.111
The essential contents of a purchase deed included: the identity of the
buyer and the seller, a description of the object sold, and the price. While the
numerical predominance of charters in which the Church or a monastery ap-
pears is easily explained by the better conditions for preservation enjoyed by
such charters, this does not explain why the Church appears more often as a
buyer than as a seller. The conclusion probably has to be that there was over-
all a greater accumulation of wealth in the hands of monasteries and other
church bodies. Among other buyers and sellers one finds the grand prince and
his family members, other princes, boyars, officials, other landowners and, oc-
casionally, peasants. Land purchases among peasants were called posil’nye.
Purchase deeds concerning villages often contained formulas which tended
to cover anything and everything in the village, including therefore also mov-
able property.112 Otherwise, the absence of purchase deeds for movable prop-
erty is easily explained by the practical aspect of proof of ownership. Movable
property is normally transferred to the new owner, while the ownership of land
is not immediately obvious in most cases. This argument would be particularly
persuasive in the conditions prevailing in medieval Russia, a sparsely popu-
lated country with much uncultivated land or previously cultivated land which
had been deserted (pustoshi). Especially the monasteries and other great land-
owners, who owned a large number of villages spread out over an immense
area, had a strong interest in being able to proffer documentary proof of their
ownership.
Purchase deeds usually described the land being bought as the village so-
and-so. In later times this description was accompanied by a reference to the
province (uezd) and district (volost’) in which the village was located.113 Many
deeds described the property more precisely by indicating its boundaries: from
the hamlet A to the forest B, and then to the road to C, and from there to the
110 See the more than 100 kupchie in gvnp.

111 E.g. asei iii No. 162 (176), No. 171 (180).
112 E.g. asei i, No. 163 (119): “the village Prisetskoe with all its hamlets and the Zamolzhskie
hamlets and deserted lands, and the village Vorob’evskoe and its hamlets and deserted
lands, and the meadows, rivers, fords, fowling nets, woods, bee-keeping woods, and ap-
purtenances, and with everything belonging to the village Prisetskoe and the village
Vorob’evskoe, as it used to be under Fetinia and her son Dmitrii [the sellers]”.
113 Cf. Pokrovskii, op. cit., 47.
river D, etc.114 Such a description is often in the form of a special survey deed
(otvodnaia gramota), attached to or incorporated in the kupchaia.115 Where
such descriptions are absent, one usually finds the traditional formula: “wher-
ever the axe and the plough and the scythe went”.
Another common addition to the definition of the purchase was the quality
of the seller’s ownership, whether he was selling his inherited ancestral land
(votchina) or whether he had himself bought the land (kuplia). In the latter
case the previous owner is sometimes mentioned as well.116 All such additions
could strengthen the probative value of the purchase deed.
Purchase deeds always mentioned the price paid for the property; this price
was usually accompanied by a popolnok, a supplement consisting of a cow, a
horse, a chicken, a pelt, a bag of flour, etc.117
As with many other deeds, the kupchie always included the names of the
witnesses present and the scribe who wrote down the text.
One of the most common conditions in purchase deeds was bez vykupa,
without the right of redemption. There are indeed a number of examples which
show that sellers or their children (if the condition had not been expressed,
presumably) made use of the right to buy back a property.118 This right was
apparently not exclusively connected with ancestral property (votchina),119
it could also be invoked when the seller himself had bought the property.120
A purchase deed which realized the right of redemption was called a vykup-
naia gramota.121 In some purchase deeds the customary right of redemption
was strengthened by an express prohibition on the buyer to resell the land to
anybody except the original seller.122
114 E.g. afzkh i, No. 59 (68–69); this is the normal format in Novgorod purchase deeds,
where the survey (otvod or zavod) is less often encountered; cf. e.g. gvnp, Nos. 153–154
(201–202).
115 E.g. asei i, No. 10 (30–31).
116 E.g. asei i, No. 426 (315).
117 According to Zimin and Poliak (prp iii, 64), the custom of giving a popolnok, as well as
the use of the formula “where the axe, the plough, and the scythe went”, were of great
antiquity. The latter formula originally referred to a more primitive mode of agriculture,
based on clearing virgin woodland. The formula did not occur in Novgorod deeds.
118 E.g. asei i, No. 487 (367), a vykupnaia gramota which itself contained the bez vykupa
condition (conceivably in order to prevent a legal perpetuum mobile of redemption and
re-redemption).
119 asei i, No. 488 (367–368): renunciation of the right of redemption of a votchina.
120 asei i, No. 484 (365): renunciation of the right of redemption of a kuplia.
121 E.g. asei i, No. 509 (386–387), a vykupnaia of votchina land.
122 E.g. asei i, No. 444 (330–331), which even added the condition that in case of redemption
the price would be the same as in the first sale.
260 chapter 11
Soviet authors have pointed out that the contract embodied in the purchase
deed may reflect a great variety of factual and legal relationships.123 If the
price agreed upon was very low, the contract would approach a gift; if property
passed in both directions, the contract of purchase and sale merged with the
contract of barter. An interesting type of contract in this respect was the pur-
chase of land with the simultaneous retention of a life interest for the seller,
allowed to remain on the property and continue to enjoy its income for the rest
of his (usually her) life.124
A significant aspect of the variety of purchase deeds is in the more ambigu-
ous nature of medieval ownership. The sale of a plot of land might occasionally
include the transfer of certain public law functions, such as administration of
justice or taxation.125 The prince could also be regarded as having a certain
proprietary right in the lands of his principality. This is quite clear in the sale of
land among free peasants, who buy and sell “the prince’s land” and their “pos-
session” (see posil’nye gramoty). In other instances the prince’s involvement is
illustrated by the appearance of the purchase deed in the form of a dokladnaia:
it is reported to the prince that A has bought a piece of land from B.126
Another special form of a purchase deed was the zhalovannaia kupchaia:
the purchase in the form of a grant, in which a prince granted a property which
at the same time was sold to the recipient for the sum mentioned in the text.127
L’gotnaia gramota
A charter granting temporary tax exemptions.128 L’gotnye usually appear in
combination with a grant of other privileges, such as permanent tax exemp-
tions (tarkhannye) or judicial immunities (nesudimye). The most common
combination is with judicial immunity (l’gotnaia i nesudimaia gramota).129
The recipient of the exemption was usually (at least in the available texts)
a monastery, but private landowners also appear,130 as well as peasants.131
123 Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 82; Pokrovskii, op. cit., 48.

124 E.g. gvnp, No. 164 (208); asei i, No. 163 (119).
125 E.g. asei ii, No. 295 (250): Fedor, prince of Kem, sold his share (including jurisdiction and
tribute) in the principality of Kem, to his brother Afanasii for seventy roubles and a horse
as popolnok. The princes of Kem belonged to a cadet branch of the princes of Belozero.
126 Examples of kupnye dokladnye: asei i, No. 83 (70); No. 301 (213).
127 A rare example in asei iii, No. 178b (194).
128 Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 96, 112; Pokrovskii, op. cit., 88–92.
129 Examples of simple l’gotnye: asei i, Nos. 49 (52–53), 225 (160–161), 239 (168–169).
130 E.g. asei ii, No. 265 (177–178).
131 E.g. asei iii, Nos. 163–165 (177–178), 489 (528–529).
Judicial immunity was not granted to peasants, as there would be no depen-

dent population over which a peasant could exercize judicial powers.
L’gota means freedom or lightness (of a charge); the l’gotnaia accordingly
granted freedom from one or more taxes to the recipient. There were numer-
ous taxes and duties in medieval Russia; some charters granted an exemption
from only one or two taxes,132 while others tended to cover all fiscal charges,
either by granting a comprehensive exemption or by listing all the taxes in-
cluded in the privilege.133
L’gotnye could also cover obligatory work (corvées) to which the dependent
population of a territory was subject. In the long run, such works tended to
be replaced by payments in cash or kind; it is not always clear whether the
l’gotnaia would also exempt from such payments.
Other fiscal charters discussed below are the obel’nye, obrochnye and
tarkhannye gramoty.
L’zhivaia gramota
Defined by Pushkarev, Dictionary, 24, as a document which is either counter-
feit or formally wrong. Counterfeit charters, charters written with the inten-
tion to corroborate a legally relevant fact in the knowledge that the statement
was false, are not at all rare. A tax exemption charter, allegedly from Dmitrii
Donskoi (†1389) to the Troitse-Sergiev monastery, written down in a monaste-
rial register dating from 1584–1588, has been known since 1884 to be a fake.134
Such charters are also known as podlozhnye gramoty. “Formally wrong” could
mean that the original text of the charter was written down in good faith, but
that its contents were incorrect from the beginning.
Menovnaia gramota
An exchange deed. Such deeds are closely related to purchase deeds, in a legal
as well as an economic sense, and most of what has been said about kupchie
applies to menovnye.135 A purchase deed may even be considered a special
kind of exchange deed, where the input of one of the parties consists of a sum
of money. Conversely, an exchange deed can be viewed as a double purchase
132 E.g. asei ii, No. 265 (177–178), a land grant to a private owner with exemption from paying
tribute (dan’) for one year.
133 E.g. asei i, No. 49 (52–53), mentioning the following taxes: dan’, myt, tamga, pishchaia
belka, iam, podvoda, and other poshliny (see the section on taxation in Chapter xv, on
Towns).
134 See asei i, No. 1 (25–26).
135 Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 77–89; Pokrovskii, op. cit., 48–62.
262 chapter 11
deed where two properties of equal value are exchanged, and the money pay-
ments cancel each other out. Where the amount of money to be paid for a
purchase is to be accompanied by certain goods, or where one of the parties in
the exchange contract has to pay an additional sum of money, the two kinds of
contract become even more similar. Exchange contracts did indeed not infre-
quently contain a provision that one of the parties was to add a sum of money
to the property which was being exchanged.136
Exchange deeds, like purchase deeds, always concerned real property, for
the reasons indicated before. Sometimes, land exchanges included the ad-
dition of supplementary goods (apart from money, as mentioned above), in
order to make up the balance.137
Exchange deeds often comprised a survey of the plots to be exchanged, in
the form of an otvodnaia.138 Another not uncommon form of an exchange
deed was the dokladnaia, where the exchange transaction was reported to a
prince, a bishop or another person in authority.139
A special category is formed by the zhalovannye menovnye, exchange deeds
in the form of a grant, where the territorial ruler granted property in exchange
for other property.140
Mestnaia gramota
A charter concerning the place (mesto) or status of prominent nobles and
servants of the prince in the official hierarchy. The system of mestnichestvo
involved not only court etiquette, but also appointments to official functions.
The mesto of an individual nobleman was determined by two factors, the sta-
tus of his family among other noble families, and his own status within his
family (determined according to the same principles as were applied in the
Rurikid house). The system was administered (in Muscovy) by a special gov-
ernment department. As the serious disadvantages of this anti-meritocratic
system became more obvious, various exceptions were introduced (e.g. the
non-applicability of mestnichestvo in times of war), until the system was fully
abolished in 1682 and the relevant registers were burned. (See the sections on
mestnichestvo in Chapter 14 and in Chapter 31.)
136 E.g. asei ii, Nos. 233 (154–155), 255 (168).

137 E.g. asei ii, No. 184 (116–117): a horse.
138 E.g. asei ii, Nos. 35 (27–28), 61 (40).
139 E.g. asei ii, Nos. 61 (40), 238 (158).
140 E.g. asei ii, Nos. 147 (86), 486 (526–527).
A few documents survived elsewhere, such as two mestnye gramoty of Dmi-

trii Konstantinovich, grand prince of Nizhnii Novgorod († 1383), in which the
exact order of precedence of a number of boyars was indicated.141
Mezhevaia gramota
A document fixing and describing the boundaries between landholdings. The
terminology for such documents is not quite stable and depends to some ex-
tent on the circumstances under which the description of the boundaries took
place. Other designations, apart from mezhevaia (from mezha, boundary), are
also common.
Where boundaries were unclear, the parties concerned could come to an
agreement and set out the boundaries to which they had agreed in a docu-
ment, sometimes called a razvodnaia (separation charter).142 A more elaborate
procedure would be to send out a party of representatives from both sides to
inspect the boundary in situ. The report of such an expedition (raz”ezd) would
then be included in a document in which the parties concerned laid down
their agreement about the boundaries (raz”ezzhaia).143 Such a party could also
be replaced by an official (raz”ezdshchik), who would report his findings to
the prince. This report would normally be included in an official document in
which the prince questioned the raz”ezdshchik about the results of the latter’s
mission and then fixed the boundaries as they were to be in future (dokladnaia
raz”ezzhaia).144
A closely related type of document is the otvodnaia (q.v.) a document
containing the result of an otvod. This is strictly speaking a unilateral act
concerningan individual property, while various forms of mezhevye express-
ly concerned the delimitation of different properties. In practice, however,
mezhevye, raz”ezzhie, raz”ezdnye, razvodnye, and otvodnye were often used al-
most synonymously.
Mirnaia gramota
Peace treaty; see Peremirnaia gramota.
Mirovaia gramota
A conciliation charter, a document in which the agreement between litigant
parties to resolve their dispute is recorded. In connection with the fact that the
141 asei iii, Nos. 307–308 (335–338). There is a discussion of this subject in Kliuchevskii,
op. cit., 120–121, 539–541.
142 E.g. asei ii, Nos. 152 (88), 181 (144).
143 E.g. asei i, Nos. 284 (203), 413 (303).
144 E.g. asei ii, Nos. 420–422 (309–312); asei i, Nos. 257 (185–187), 378 (275–276).
264 chapter 11
dispute resolved through reconciliation is already at the stage of actual litiga-

tion, the mirovaia gramota is often in the form of a dokladnaia, a formal report
to the judicial official that the dispute has been resolved by conciliation.145
Naemnaia gramota
A document recording a contract of hire or lease, of labour as well as property.146
Nastol’naia gramota
A charter issued by the highest ecclesiastical authorities (metropolitan, patri-
arch, bishops) to bishops and heads of monasteries, confirming their installa-
tion or the conferment of other dignities.147
Nesudimaia gramota
A charter granting judicial immunity. Such immunities were granted by the
prince or, rarely, by a church hierarch (bishop, archbishop, metropolitan).148
Such charters were often combined with other privileges. The most common
combination was with a permanent or temporary tax exemption (tarkhanno-
nesudimaia or l’gotno-nesudimaia).149 Other common and more complex
combinations were with a gift charter (dannaia), permanent and temporary
tax exemptions together, and with obrochnye (see below),150 resulting in dan-
nye tarkhanno-nesudimye,151 dannye l’gotno-nesudimye,152 l’gotno-tarkhannye i
nesudimye.153
Where the judicial immunity was combined with a gift charter,154 the trans-
action could be regarded as an extensive gift; the prince not only donated a
property, but also endowed it with judicial immunity. In most cases, however,
the property was already in the possession of the recipient of the grant; the
145 E.g. gvnp, No. 51 (89–90), which is of special interest, as it concerned a conciliation be-
tween a Novgorod citizen and a German merchant and also contained an account of the
procedure followed; see also asei i Nos. 549 (427–428), 554 (430–432), 574 (454–455);
asei ii, Nos. 189–190 (120–121), 284 (191–192). See also H.W. Dewey, “Immunities in Old
Russia”, Slavic Review, xxiii (1964), No. 4, 643–659.
146 Some 17th century examples in AIuB i, Nos. 161–165 (511–524).
147 E.g. AIuB i, No. 47 (145–151).
148 E.g. asei ii, Nos. 174–176 (110–112), judicial immunity charters granted by the archbishop
of Rostov.
149 Numerous examples of both types in asei i and ii.
150 E.g. asei i, No. 221 (156–157).
151 E.g. asei i, No. 103 (83–84).
152 E.g. asei i, No. 171 (124–125).
153 E.g. asei i, No. 191 (136–137).
154 E.g. asei i, No. 176 (127–128).
charter would then usually refer to the title: judicial immunity was conferred
on a property previously donated by the prince, his ancestors or a third party.155
In the vast majority of immunity charters available, a monastery is men-
tioned as the beneficiary; private landowners occasionally also received this
privilege.156
The substantive contents of the immunity charter would as a rule consist of
four components: an instruction to the officials of the prince not to enter the
territory to which the immunity applied; the right of the recipient of the im-
munity to administer justice to the inhabitants of the territory; the provision
of a mixed court for litigation between inhabitants of the territory and outsid-
ers; and the stipulation that the recipient himself and his subordinate judicial
officials would be subject to the jurisdiction of the prince.157 Homicide, and in
later years also robbery and theft, were usually excluded from the immunity
and reserved for the prince’s jurisdiction.
Judicial immunity charters belong to the oldest types of legal documents;158
this, and their availability in large numbers make them an important source for
the history of land ownership in Russia.159
Nevmestnaia gramota
A charter correcting the ranking of a nobleman in the service hierarchy of the
mestnichestvo system (see above Mestnaia gramota).160
Obel’naia gramota
A type of grant charter (zhalovannaia) by which the inhabitants of a specific
locality were exempted from paying tax to, or doing work for the grantor (usu-
ally a prince).161 The beneficiary of an obel’naia was usually a monastery which
had already been granted the territory (or certain rights in it) in which the
locality where the obel’naia applied was situated.162
Obetnaia gramota
Mentioned only in art. 39 of the Novgorod Court Charter. Obviously, very simi-
lar to the better known default charter (Bessudnaia gramota, q.v.).
155 E.g. asei i, No. 195 (139–140).

156 E.g. asei iii, Nos. 63–66 (95–98).
158 Some of the oldest in gvnp, e.g. No. 86 (143), from 1337/1339.
160 E.g. AIuB i, No. 48 (152–159).
162 Examples in asei i, Nos. 199 (142), 250 (178–179).
266 chapter 11
Obodnaia gramota
A charter in which the contents of other charters were summed up and which
then replaced those charters: a consolidation charter.
Among the few examples of this type of charter are an obodnaia mezhevaia,163
laying down the boundaries between a number of territories, an obodnaia
nesudimaia,164 in which a number of judicial immunity charters concerning a
great many territories were merged into a single document, and an obodnaia
dannaia,165 which confirmed a number of previous land grants.
Obrochnaia gramota
A tax exemption charter by which all taxes to be paid from a certain property
were replaced by a single annual payment (obrok). Such charters normally ap-
peared in combination with other privileges, especially judicial immunity. The
grantor was usually the prince, the recipient almost always a monastery.166
Obysknaia gramota
Defined by Pushkarev as an investigation warrant.167 This document was not
necessarily connected with a criminal investigation, but also embraced any doc-
ument empowering somebody to conduct any kind of official investigation.168
Ochishchal’naia gramota
Or more commonly, ochishchal’naia zapis’: a document in which a previous
owner declared that the property sold, donated, etc., by him was free of mort-
gages, liens or other encumbrances, and that he would compensate the new
owner if any of the latter were to be enforced.169
Okhrannaia, Okhranitel’naia gramota

See Zapovednaia gramota.
163 gvnp, No. 285 (286–288).

164 asei ii, No. 316 (282–298).
165 asei ii, No. 223 (143–146).
166 E.g. asei i, Nos. 221 (156–157), 237 (166–167); asei ii, Nos. 51 (34–35), 185 (115), 202 (131);
asei iii, No. 238 (259–260); AIuB ii, Nos. 173–177 (545–562); S.N. Kisterev (ed.), Akty
Suzdal’skogo Spaso-Efim’eva monastyria 1506–1608, Moskva, 1993, No. 5 (23, an obrochnaia
with private persons as beneficiaries); see also Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 113.
168 Cf. afzkh ii, No. 373 (417). Ivina-afzkh, No. 76 (79–80), concerned a boundary dispute
where the parties each appointed a team of “old-timers” (starozhil’tsy) who combined to
investigate the exact location of the boundaries.
169 E.g. afzkh ii, Nos. 209 (103), 266 (270–271); Akty Russk. Gos., No. 215 (217–218).
Okruzhnaia gramota
A circular letter, i.e. a letter to a number of persons belonging to a particular
category and not identified by name.170
Opasnaia gramota
A safe conduct, a laissez passer, for foreign envoys and merchants.171
Oslobozhonaia, Osvoboditel’naia gramota

A charter by which the recipient is freed from an existing prohibition and re-
ceived the permission he requested. Issued by the prince and regarded as an
unusual type of grant charter.172
Otdel’naia gramota
A document by which something is divided, separated or put aside. It is en-
countered infrequently and covers quite disparate transactions, such as ordi-
nary partitions of property,173 as well as administrative adjustments of a fiscal
nature.174
Otkupnaia gramota
A charter recording an otkup, the granting of a public franchise against pay-
ment, the lease of a public power.175
Otpisnaia gramota
Also called an otpis’; a general term for a document in which one party uni-
laterally stated that he was relinquishing a right or a claim, or undertook to
refrain from doing something. One of the commonest examples is the under-
taking not to appropriate land which had been granted in use.176 Art. 26 of the
Code of 1497 mentions otpisnye srochnye, officially issued documents in which
170 E.g. asei i, No. 359 (263–264), a circular letter of grand prince Ivan iii Vasil’evich of Mos-
cow to his lieutenants and rural stewards (posel’skie) in Suzdal’ and Iur’ev.
171 Several of such documents from the early 16th century are mentioned in a 1626 inventory
of the Moscow ambassadorial archive (the Posol’skii prikaz); ddg, 472, a laissez passer for
envoys from the Hanseatic League.
172 E.g. asei ii, No. 142 (84), 242 (160), 320 (303), 341 (339).
173 E.g. Akty otnosiashchiesia k istorii Iuzhnoi i Zapadnoi Rossii i, Sankt-Peterburg, 1863, No. 3 (2).
174 E.g. AIuB i, No. 49 (159–161).
175 E.g. gvnp, No. 93 (149): the purchase from the grand prince of judicial office in a precisely
defined territory in Northern Russia by two Novgorod citizens.
176 E.g. afzkh i, Nos. 160 (142), 218 and 220 (192–193).
268 chapter 11
the day for appearance in court, as fixed by the srochnaia, is postponed in an

individual case.177
Otpusknaia gramota
A manumission charter, a document releasing a kholop (slave or bondman).178
Art. 18 of the Code of 1497 (repeated in art. 42) restricted the issue of such
documents in several ways. Manumission charters were sometimes mentioned
in wills, where the testator released some of his slaves and ordered his heirs
to issue the appropriate documents.179 Another name for such a charter is a
vol’naia (freedom charter).
The designation otpusknaia can also be used for other documents which
release somebody from an obligation or a position.180
Otstupnaia gramota
A charter in which a right or a claim is renounced. This may be done by giv-
ing an undertaking not to interfere with a certain property to which one has
claimed certain rights in the past.181 A special kind of otstupnaia concerns the
sale of land among peasants, where ownership remained with the prince or
another overlord and only limited user rights were transmitted.182
Otvodnaia gramota
A document recording an otvod or land survey. Such a survey was usually part
of another document concerning land, such as deeds of sale, exchange or
gift.183 Where the survey charter stood by itself, it was drawn up by one party
and addressed to another party, presumably in connection with an existent or
latent dispute.184 The otvodnaia gramota typically defines the boundaries of
the landholding in question (“along such-and-such a stream, and then along
the road to N.”); it always names the witnesses of the otvod.
177 Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 343; B.D. Grekov (ed.), Sudebniki xv–xvi vekov, Moskva/Lenin-
grad, 1952, 69–70; prp iii, 390.
178 Examples, all from the 17th century, in AIuB i, No. 221/i–ix (643–648).
179 E.g. asei i, No. 612 (523–525), the 1497 will of Vasilii Borisovich Tuchko Morozov, a promi-
nent boyar.
180 Several later examples in AIuB i, 219–220 (641–6743), 222 (648–652).
181 E.g. asei i, No. 373 (272); asei iii, No. 91 (123); afzkh i, No. 153 (134).
182 Cf. Pokrovskii, op. cit., 55–61.
183 E.g. asei ii, No. 61 (40), an exchange and survey charter.
184 E.g. asei ii, No. 94 (56–57); asei iii, No. 89 (121).
Perechnevaia gramota, (vypis’, zapis’)

A document containing a list.185
Peremirnaia gramota
An agreement embodying an armistice (peremirie).186 Such treaties are in fact
hard to distinguish from peace treaties, which are usually ranged under the
wider category of dogovornye gramoty (treaties) and are occasionally called
mirnye gramoty.187
Podorozhnaia gramota
A “road document”, issued to a person travelling on the prince’s business or an-
other official errand, and containing instructions to specific third parties, e.g.
not to levy taxes from the traveller,188 or to provide him with certain services.189
Podtverditelnaia gramota
A charter which confirms an earlier charter; usually confirmation of a grant
made by the grantor’s predecessor.190
Pogonnaia gramota
An official instruction to a local official to assist the master of runaway serfs or
slaves in their arrest and return.191
Poletnaia gramota
A document issued under the seal of the prince, allowing a debtor a postpone-
ment of the payment of his debt.192 Art. 55 of the Code of 1497 provided that
the poletnaia was to be issued, after an investigation by a boyar, to a merchant
185 E.g. asei i, Nos. 286 (204), 649 (565–571).

186 E.g. ddg, Nos. 6 (21–22, between the grand princes of Lithuania and Moscow), 46
(140–142, between the princes of Mozhaisk, Verei and Belozersk, and the grand prince of
Moscow); gvnp, No 76 (127–129, between Novgorod and the Hanseatic League).
187 Many examples of peace treaties between Novgorod and various princes, and between
Novgorod and various Western powers appear in gvnp.
188 E.g. afzkh i, Nos. 293 and 296 (249–251).
189 E.g. asei i, Nos. 393 (285), 652 (576–577).
190 E.g. asei i, Nos. 360 (353–354), 375 (367).
191 E.g. AIuB i, No. 51 (162–163).
192 E.g. Akty sluzh. zemlevlad. i, No. 3 (10–11), for the widow of an officer killed by the Tatars;
she was also exempted from paying interest. Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 343.
270 chapter 11
who had lost goods belonging to somebody else, due to circumstances for
which he was not answerable.193
Many loan charters (zaemnye) contained a clause in which the debtor was
forbidden from seeking a poletnaia.194
Polevaia gramota
A “duelling charter”; mentioned only in the Novgorod Court Charter (art. 33).
Apparently a document recording an agreement to settle a dispute by means
of a judicial duel.
Poliubovnaia gramota
A document recording an amicable settlement, usually of a question concern-
ing boundaries between adjoining landowners. Otvodnye gramoty, and other
such documents concerning boundaries (mezhevye, razvodnye), in the form of
a poliubovnaia, differ from the general type in being issued by the parties to-
gether, without the intervention of an official or an intermediary.195
Polnaia gramota
A document by means of which a person becomes a slave (kholop).196 No origi-
nal polnye from the 15th century or earlier have survived, but a large collection
of copies of late 15th century polnye is extant.197 The standard polnaia men-
tions the master, the person who sells himself into slavery, together with his
relatives sharing the same fate, the price paid by the master, the presence of
witnesses, and the tax (tamga) paid to the prince.
Some polnye are in the form of a report (dokladnaia) to the prince.198 The
term polnaia is also used to designate the deed of sale of a slave from one mas-
ter to another.199
The Code of 1497 devotes art. 66 to the polnaia; it laid down certain require-
ments with which the polnaia had to comply, and, in general, restricted the
practice of selling oneself into slavery.200
193 See Grekov, Sudebniki, 89–90 and prp iii, 402–403, both pointing out that the provision
goes back to art. 54 of the Expanded Pravda.
194 E.g. asei iii, Nos. 348–350 (374–375).
195 E.g. asei ii, Nos. 152 (88), 181 (114), 246 (162).
197 Cf. asei iii, Nos. 392–462 (410–446).
198 E.g. asei iii, No. 409 (421),
199 E.g. asei iii, No. 411 (422).
200 See Grekov, Sudebniki, 106–107; prp iii, 411–412.
Pomestnaia gramota
A grant charter (zhalovannaia) concerning the grant of an estate (pomest’e) to
a serviceman. The pomestnaia, issued by a prince, was usually combined with
the granting of fiscal and/or judicial privileges (l’gotnye, nesudimye).201
Poriadnaia gramota
A document in which a peasant undertook to perform certain works or pay
certain dues in return for a plot of land put at his disposal.202
Poruchnaia gramota
A guarantee; a document in which a person (the guarantor) obliged himself
to pay a specific sum to another person if a third person failed to behave in
an agreed manner.203 The guarantee might be for a completely private matter,
such as the payment of a debt,204 or for public behaviour, such as abstaining
from drunkenness. One of the earliest known letters of guarantee is signed by
a large number of Russian princes and nobles; they vouched for the political
loyalty of a certain Gridka Konstantinovich to the Lithuanian grand prince.205
In the 16th century the use of the guarantee or surety bond as a means to en-
force political loyalty became very popular, especially under Ivan iv.206 In the
Ulozhenie of 1649 surety bonds, as a means to enforce the performance of all
kinds of duties, occur frequently.
Posil’naia gramota
A deed concerning the purchase of land among peasants. This type of
transaction (a special kind of kupchaia) was not uncommon in Northern Rus-
sia. Although such transactions did not affect the over-arching ownership rights
of the prince (akin to dominium eminens), free peasants were able to transfer
their semi-proprietary rights in land to each other.207 The form of the posil’naia
was not essentially different from the general kupchaia; it o ften designated itself
as a posil’naia and occasionally contained a referenceto the rights of the prince
201 E.g. asei iii, No. 389 (263–264).

202 E.g. gvnp, No. 260 (267–268); see also Pushkarev, Dictionary, 25.
203 Cf. Dewey, Russian Private Law, 236–254, with many examples, mostly from the 17th
century.
204 E.g. gvnp, No. 304 (299).
205 Akty otnosiashchiesia k istorii Iuzhnoi i Zapadnoi Rossii i, Sankt-Peterburg, 1863 No. 2 (2),
dating from before 1390; translated in Dewey, Russian Private Law, No. 71 (236–237).
206 An early example (from 1474) in asei iii, No. 19 (35–36).
207 Examples in Akty Russk. Gos., No. 115 (116–117) and asei i, No. 634 (546); asei ii, No. 297
(255); asei iii, Nos. 247 (266) and 251 (277); the last two are in fact one and the same pur-
chase deed.
272 chapter 11
in the description of the land sold: “the land of the grand prince and our pos-

session” (zemlia velikogo kniazia, a nashego vladeniia).208
Poslushnaia gramota
A princely charter ordering the peasants of a specific territory to obey their
new master and to carry out the works and pay the dues required of them.209
Such a document was logically preceded by a grant charter in which the terri-
tory concerned was granted to the new master. The poslushnaia repeated the
principal provisions of the grant charter by referring to the grant itself, its ben-
eficiary and its conditions.
Povol’naia gramota
A document registering approbation, especially by an ecclesiastical hierarch,
of a church appointment.210
Posyl’naia gramota
In its literal sense, a document sent (through an intermediary). In a few cases
this is indeed the meaning.211 In most cases the posyl’naia is actually a version
of an ukaznaia.212
Pravaia gramota
A written decision of a court, handed down to the winning side in a lawsuit.
There was, strictly speaking, a distinction between the pravaia, the court deci-
sion, and a sudnyi spisok, the record of a lawsuit, but in practice the distinction
is difficult to maintain. The form of a pravaia is that of a court record with the
decision added, and documents going by the name of sudnyi spisok normally
record only the judgment of the court. Another distinction is between pravye
in a narrow sense, documents which contain the trial court’s decision in the
matter, and pravye dokladnye, in which the trial court examined the matter
and then referred it to a higher court of the prince or of a boyar.213 In the latter
208 Cf. prp iii, 54, comments at 72–73.

209 E.g. afzkh ii, No. 255 (259–260).
210 E.g. AIuB i, No. 50 (161–162).
211 E.g. asei iii, Nos. 9–11 (25–27), letters from the metropolitan to various princes.
212 E.g. asei i, No. 564 (443) an instruction from the grand prince to the peasants of a village,
contained in a judgment record (sudnyi spisok), asei i, No. 571 (449–452).
213 Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 227; Dewey, Russian Private Law, 44–45. The record of the
doklad hearing and the subsequent issue of the pravaia gramota by the lower judge were
normally part of the text of the pravaia. Occasionally, however, the doklad hearing was
recorded on the reverse of the charter; such documents are called podpisnye; e.g. asei ii,
No. 388 (391–393).
case the pravaia usually contained a laconic record of the session of the high-
er court. The judge in that court questioned the parties whether everything
took place as set out in the trial record and then pronounced his judgment.
The lower court was then charged with the issuing of a pravaia gramota. The
doklad hearing would occasionally provide an opportunity for airing com-
plaints about the initial trial or for bringing up new arguments.214 In such cases
it could be regarded as a form of appellate procedure.
Pravye invariably concern civil actions between private parties. Even in cas-
es which have a criminal aspect, such as those arising from assault or robbery,
the litigious point is the damages to be paid, not the punishment to be meted
out to the culprit.215
The number of pravye extant is considerable. They are generally longer
than other types of gramoty. Most of their contents are taken up by the court
record, written down in direct speech. The plaintiff stated his claim and the
defendant was ordered: “Answer!” Then the parties adduced evidence and in
between the judge asked questions. Often, witnesses were heard, especially
starozhil’tsy, people who had lived for a long time in the district where the
contentious property was located.216 Other charters were frequently presented
as evidence and then incorporated into the pravye.217 Needless to say, almost
all pravye concern disputes about land.
The pravye complement the static reflection of the law, produced by the
numerous normative sources, by illuminating the actual operation of the law
in medieval Russia. Their importance for the study of this subject is enhanced
by the fact that members of all social classes appear as parties in lawsuits.218
The Code of 1497 has two provisions (arts. 22 and 40) dealing with pravye
gramoty, both of them concern only the payments due to various court offi-
cials; similar rules appear in the Code of 1550.
Other court decisions, but not on the merits of the case, are bessudnye (de-
fault judgments), mirovye (confirming amicable settlements), srochnye (set-
ting or postponing dates for appearing in court), and others.
Prisiazhnaia gramota
A document confirmed by oath, especially one concerning allegiance.
214 E.g. asei i, No 607 (505–509); the complaint was dropped, however, the next day.
215 Cf. afzkh i, Nos. 1a and 2a (13–22), 222 (194–197).
216 Cf. asei ii, No. 467a (506–507), an unusual kind of pravaia, in fact an intermediate form
between a pravaia and a grant charter (zhalovannaia).
217 E.g. asei i, Nos. 430 (318–320, a kupchaia), 447 (335–336, a dannaia).
218 Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 232–247; Dewey, Russian Private Law, 41–48.
274 chapter 11
Pristavnaia gramota
A bailiff’s warrant, issued by the clerk of the court (d’iak), empowering the
bailiff or another court officer to summon the defendant, to carry out an inves-
tigation, or to execute a judgment.219 Bailiff’s warrants are mentioned in the
Code of 1497 (arts. 28 and 31).
Proezzhaia gramota
A document issued to a traveller and ordering local officials, tax collectors, etc.,
not to interfere with the free passage of the traveller.220
Protivnaia gramota
A document which is the counterpart of another, basically identical document.
In diplomatic practice especially, documents were usually not drawn up in a
bilateral mode, like a contract, but as two unilateral declarations, being each
other’s mirror image. They were then handed over to the opposite party.221 In
other cases protivnaia simply means “copy”.222
Razdel’naia gramota
See Delovaia gramota.
Raz”ezdnaia (Raz”ezzhaia) gramota

See Mezhevaia gramota.
Razvodnaia gramota
See Mezhevaia gramota.
Riadnaia gramota
A document containing an agreement concerning property, especially the set-
tlement of a dispute concerning property.223
Rozpusknaia gramota
A document concerning divorce.
219 Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 344; Dewey, Russian Private Law, 28–29.
220 E.g. afzkh i, No 244 (209–210).
221 Numerous examples exist from the practice of Novgorod and Moscow in gvnp and ddg.
222 E.g. afzkh ii, No. 128 (121); asei ii, No. 316 (283).
223 E.g. gvnp, No. 115 (174).
Ruzhnaia gramota
A charter granting ruga, subsistence payment, usually in kind (grain) or in
money to clerics.224
Sgovornaia gramota
A document concerning a betrothal.
Shertnaia gramota
A document confirmed by Moslem oath (shert’),225 especially as used by the
Tatar khans.226
Skladnaia gramota
A declaration of war, a declaration concerning the cancellation of a peace
treaty. Also called razmetnaia or vzmetnaia gramota.
Sluzhilaia gramota
A document recording the entry into service of a person. The most typical form
is the zaemnaia sluzhilaia: peasants who had received a loan and who did not
own land (the most common object to be pledged as security), pledged their
labour instead. The work done replaced the interest. The term of the loan was
usually short: one, two or three years. Some contracts provided for the option
of terminating the service relationship and paying interest instead.227
Sobornaia gramota
An act emanating from a sobor, a church council.
Sotnaia gramota
An official excerpt from a land register, listing the property of a landowner
within a specific district. Sotnye were issued in the 16th century and later.228
From sotnia, a territorial unit.
224 Akty Russk. Gos., No. 15 (24–25); Akty Ross. Gos., No. 93 (220), an internal note (zapis’) on
annual payments of ruga.
226 Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 62. An example of a shertnaia: D. Iskhakov, I. Izmailov, Vvede-
nie v istoriiu Kazanskogo khanstva, Kazan’, 2005, 110–112; Abdul-Latif, khan of Kazan’ from
1496 to 1502, after having been ousted, sought refuge with the Moscow grand princeVasilii
iii Ivanovich and was granted the town of Iur’ev Pol’skii (near Suzdal’); in a shertnaia of
29 December 1508 he confirmed his rights and obligations towards the grand prince by
oath, in a way similar to a “younger brother” in the usual treaties between Russian princes.
227 E.g. asei iii, Nos. 371 (391), 376, 378, 380–384 (393–398).
228 E.g. afzkh ii, No. 148 (143); Ivina-afzkh, Nos. 69–70 (80–82), 78 (91–92)
276 chapter 11
Srochnaia gramota
A charter which granted the inhabitants of a certain territory the right to be
summoned to appear in court on only one day in the year. The charter was
issued by the prince and in fact ordered the bailiff (pristav) not to summon
persons to whom the charter applied on any other day. It applied to the popu-
lation of a territory which already enjoyed judicial immunity and concerned
litigation between the inhabitants and persons from outside the territory.229
Some charters provided two or three days on which the court appearance
could be ordered (dvukh- and trekhsrochnye). The days mentioned were always
important church holidays. The Code of 1497 mentions srochnye in arts. 26, 27,
32 and 36.
Stavlennaia gramota
An episcopal letter of appointment of a priest or a deacon.230 The difference, if
any, from a blagoslovennaia gramota is that in the latter the emphasis is on the
blessing by which the office is bestowed. From other documents it is known
that stavlennye gramoty had to be carried by priests who wanted to officiate
outside the locality to which they had been appointed; before being allowed to
carry out their duties, they had to present their letter of appointment.231
Sudnaia gramota
A charter, a statute, concerning courts. The best known are the Sudnye
g ramoty of Pskov and Novgorod; these are among the most important legis-
lative documents of medieval Russia and were discussed in Chapters 8 (on
Local and Provincial Charters) and 16 (on Novgorod and Pskov). Similar texts
are reported to have existed in other independent principalities, but they
have been lost. The designation sudnaia gramota is used occasionally in a
more modest and limited sense as a synonym for pravaia gramota, a court
judgment.232
Tamozhennaia gramota
A charter containing tax rates and specific regulations concerning the levying
of taxes. The earliest known fiscal charter is the Belozero (White Lake) Tax
229 Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 112. Examples in asei i Nos. 329 (239), 495 (374); afzkh i, No. 256
(221). Also: asei i Nos. 74 (65–66, a dvukhsrochnaia) and 243 (170–171, a trekhsrochnaia).
230 E.g. afzkh ii, No. 361 (402).
231 Cf. asei ii, Nos. 234 (155), 280 (188).
232 E.g. asei iii, No. 32 (54–56) and also in the Novgorod Court Charter itself (in arts. 33
and 34).
Charter (Belozerskaia tamozhennaia gramota) of 1497, discussed in Chapter 8

(on Provincial and Local Charters).233 This charter, like some of its successors,
was in the form of an otkupnaia, by which the execution of the prince’s fiscal
powers was leased for a fixed sum of money and for a limited period to private
tax collectors. The fiscal charter also served in such cases to protect the popula-
tion against over-taxation by the tax collectors.
Tarkhannaia gramota
A charter granting exemption from paying taxes, duties and other fiscal charges.
The name of the charter is derived from the Tatar tarkhan, meaning a free per-
son, not subject to tribute.234 As explained in connection with the l’gotnaia
gramota, the latter, unlike the tarkhannaia, is valid for a limited period only.
Otherwise the wording of both kinds of charters is similar. The sources are not
always very precise in distinguishing between the two types. Tarkhannye are
also known as obel’nye.235
Like l’gotnye, tarkhannye rarely appear as such,236 but usually in combina-
tion with judicial immunity (tarkhanno-nesudimye), and also with obrochnye,
involving the payment of an annual sum.
A tarkhannaia is granted by a prince and sometimes a bishop.237 It usually
granted freedom from all taxes, with the exception of church taxes. As in the
case of l’gotnye, tarkhannye may also be combined with a gift charter in which
a prince granted property and attached fiscal privileges to it (as well as judicial
immunity in many cases).238
Monasteries are the usual beneficiaries of tarkhannye; private landowners
appear less frequently.239
233 Cf. the commentary to the White Lake (Belozero) Tax Charter in prp iii, 220–221.
235 S.A. Shumakov, Obzor gramot Kollegii Ekonomii, vyp.4, Moskva, 1917, 5–9, reserved the des-
ignation tarkhannye to charters granting full immunity, i.e. fiscal and judicial (these char-
ters are usually called tarkhanno-nesudimye); obel’nye gramoty in his terminology were
those charters which granted fiscal immunity only (tarkhannye in the usual terminology).
236 Some rare examples of mere tarkhannye: asei i, No. 461 (369–370); asei ii, No. 68 (44).
237 afzkh i, Nos. 135–139 (124–126, charters issued by the metropolitan).
238 E.g. asei i, No. 618 (530–531), a dannaia/tarkhanno-nesudimaia of the Tatar khan of
Kazan’ from 1498.
239 Examples of tarkhannye granted to private landowners: asei i, Nos. 236 (166), 325 (234),
336 (243–244), 341 (249–250), 419 (308–309), 527 (405); asei ii, No. 95 (57); afzkh i, Nos.
213–216 (187–190).
278 chapter 11
In most cases tarkhannye concern taxes to be raised from property, but

there are also tarkhannye exempting the beneficiary from taxes on commer-
cial activities.240
Torgovaia gramota
A charter concerning trade, especially trade privileges of monasteries. The
usual form is through the granting of fiscal or judicial privileges.
Trekhsrochnaia gramota
See Srochnaia gramota.
Ukaznaia gramota
A document containing an order or instruction from the prince. Sometimes
the designation posyl’naia is used. Such directives could be of all kinds and
could be addressed to individual officials, to all officials within a certain terri-
tory, or to an even wider category, such as the population of a certain territory.
More often than not, the directive contained a prohibition, an order to abstain
from certain acts, such as interference with the immunities of a monastery
or the levying of taxes from the servants of the monastery, etc. Other ukaznye
contained an appointment of an official by the prince in order to carry out a
specific job, such as the adjudication of a dispute.241
The typical ukaznaia concerned a triangular relationship: the prince, at the
request of one party, ordered another party to behave in a certain way with
regard to the former.
A special type of ukaznaia is the gramota s prochetom; in it, the addressee
is ordered to return the document after having read it. Another gramota s pro-
chetom is the one which is to be handed over to the beneficiary who may retain
it for future reference.
Ustavnaia gramota
A local government charter. The term covers both normative princely charters
and charters containing concrete instructions, dispositions or grants. One and
the same charter may display both aspects. The so-called Testament of prince
Vsevolod Mstislavich was at the same time a fiscal and judicial immunity
240 E.g. afzkh i, No 133 (79–80), which freed a monastery from certain taxes and duties on
trade conducted by the monastery.
241 A whole series of such cases, where usually a local steward or a similar official was ap-
pointed to decide a dispute between monasteries or private parties, is in S.N. Kisterev
(ed.), Akty Suzdal’skogo Spaso-Efim’eva monastyria 1506–1608 gg., Moskva, 1993, Nos. 9–10
(26–27), 13–14 (30–32), 18 (47–48), 22–23 (51–53).
charterand the statute of a major merchant corporation in Novgorod (and has

been explained as such in Chapter 6). The designation ustavnaia gramota is
used generally for local government charters, although the charters themselves
do not normally refer to this designation. As a result, the entire, not very large,
collection of ustavnye gramoty is rather a mixed bag.
The first documents designated as ustavnye gramoty were the Smolensk
charter of 1136 of prince Rostislav (see Chapter 6, on Princely Statutes) and a
charter of around 1289 of prince Mstislav Romanovich of Vladimir-Volynsk.242
Some of the most important ustavnye gramoty were discussed in Chapters
6, on Princely Statutes, and 8, on Local and Provincial Charters (the Charter of
Dvina Land, the Charter of Belozero) and in Chapter 33, on Local Government.
Most of the extant ustavnye gramoty are from the 15th and 16th centuries, and
nearly all of them emanate from the Moscow grand prince.243
One of the most remarkable charters in the category is the “statutory agree-
ment” (ustavnaia dogovornaia) between the grand prince and the metropol-
itan of 1404.244 On the face of it, it regulated Church-state relations, and in
particular church jurisdiction and fiscal powers, in a particular district. But it
was included in a “book of forms” (formuliarnik) of the metropolitanate and
can therefore be regarded as a late successor to the statutes of St. Vladimir and
Iaroslav, discussed in Chapter 6.
16th century charters of this type were usually addressed to the population
of a specific district,245 granting them certain privileges and regulating their
activities.
Veritel’naia gramota
Diplomatic credentials; this term is still used in modern Russian law.
Vkladnaia gramota
A gift charter by which property is donated to a monastery or a church with
the explicit condition that prayers will be said for the soul of the donor and his
relatives. The vkladnaia is a special kind of gift charter (dannaia).246
242 The text of this charter, regulating certain taxes for the town of Berest’e, survived because
it was included in a chronicle text; see prp ii, 29, comments by A.A. Zimin, 32.
243 There is one example of an ustavnaia gramota issued by the metropolitan in 1391, asei iii,
No. 5 (16–18), in a dispute between a monastery and its peasants, the metropolitan clari-
fied the rules regulating their relationship. Also in prp iii, 423–425, comments by A.A.
Zimin, 436–438.
244 asei iii, No. 6 (18–20); prp iii, 421–423, comments by A.A. Zimin, 432–436.
245 E.g. Akty Russk. Gos., No. 18 (26–28); Russkii Diplomatarii, iii, 67–70.
246 E.g. gvnp, No. 255 (264–265).
280 chapter 11
Vol’naia gramota
See Otpusknaia gramota.
Votchinnaia gramota
A charter granting the ownership of an estate (votchina). As a grant charter
the votchinnaia is a sub-species of the zhalovannaia; the estate was usually
granted as a gift (dannaia); the grantor was the prince, occasionally a church
hierarch.247
Vvoznaia gramota
See Poslushnaia gramota.
Vykupnaia gramota
A purchase deed recording the exercise of the right of vykup (redemption):
the right of the seller and his relatives to buy back land which had been sold
or, less commonly, given away.248 As noted above (under kupchaia), the right
of redemption was not limited to ancestral lands (votchina) which had been
sold or donated, but also extended to land which had been acquired by a
kuplia.249
The right of redemption was often expressly excluded through the
formula bez vykupa; this formula also appeared in purchase deeds among
relatives.250
Vzmetnaia gramota
See Skladnaia gramota
Zaemnaia gramota
A document recording a simple loan of money; usually called a zaemnaia
k abala, a promissory note. There is a small number of such documents,
the most common being the zakladnaia kabala, a loan contract reinforced
247 E.g. AIuB i, No. 30-vii (88–90), a grant charter from 1689, from the archbishop of Velikii
Ustiug.
248 E.g. asei i, No. 509 (386–387), also in prp iii, 47 (with comments at 63–64), vykup of
donated villages by the donor’s son; S.N. Kisterev, L.A. Timoshina (eds.), Akty Troitskogo
Kaliazina monastyria xvi v., Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 22007, No. 41 (42–43, vykup of
land from a daughter-in-law, who gave a guaranty that the land had not been mortgaged).
249 E.g. asei i, No. 484 (365).
250 E.g. asei i, No. 488 (367–368).
by a pledge or mortgage of land. The extant zaemnye concern comparatively

modest sums of money lent to peasants for short periods, such as one year.251
Zakladnaia gramota
A pledge or mortgage charter; usually referred to as zakladnaia kabala or zaem-
naia zakladnaia kabala.252 In strict legal terms these charters record loans and
may for this reason be regarded as a type of zaemnaia, with the addition of
certain property being pledged as security (zaklad). But in fact zakladnye al-
most exclusively concerned real property and the transaction concerning this
property completely overshadowed the original loan at the bottom of it. From
the socio-economic point of view, moreover, zakladnye covered a wide variety
of factual relationships between more or less equal to very unequal partners.
Finally, the zakladnaia could be used as the legal form for a transaction which
was actually a sale, a gift or an exchange agreement.253 There were all kinds of
reasons which could make the zakladnaia an attractive form of contract.
The essential components of a zakladnaia were at least the definition of the
property pledged (almost invariably real property), the amount of the loan,
and its duration.
The principal legal division of zakladnye was between contracts that al-
lowed the creditor to use the property and those that did not. The former cat-
egory normally included a clause to the effect that if the debt was not repaid on
time, the zakladnaia would be regarded as a deed of sale.254 A second clause
was added occasionally, providing that in such a contingency the amount of
the loan would have to be supplemented by an additional sum of money in
order to make up a fair sale price. Other zakladnye of the first category did not
include a sale clause but provided instead that failure to pay the debt on time
would result in an extension of the creditor’s possession of the property, until
the debt was repaid. Interest was not charged, as a rule; instead, the creditor,
being in possession of the property, enjoyed the income of it.255
When the mortgaged property remained in the possession of the debtor, the
contract usually provided for the payment of interest; the standard formula
251 E.g. asei iii, No. 358 (381).

252 There are numerous examples in Akty Solovets. mon., see Kabal’naia gramota.
254 E.g. Akty Russk. Gos., No. 3 (10).
255 Very explicitly, e.g. in zakladnye which stipulated that “instead of interest” the creditor
would have the full enjoyment of the property; cf. asei iii, No. 368 (389).
282 chapter 11
was “to five – a sixth”, i.e. 20%.256 This second category of mortgage contract
could also be turned into a contract of sale, when the loan was not repaid on
time. Most zakladnye of this category contained such a clause. In that case the
creditor would take possession only after the contractual period of the loan
had expired, unlike the typical cases from the first category, where the creditor
was in possession from the start.
Repayment of the loan was actually never contemplated in many cases, and
the pledge contract was then in fact a contract of sale in disguise. Where the
zakladnaia was genuinely meant to be repaid, there was often a clause forbid-
ding the debtor to conclude specific other transactions which might injure the
interests of the creditor.257
Zapovednaia gramota
Zapovednaia or okhrannaia (okhranitel’naia) gramota is a collective designa-
tion for charters which granted various protective prohibitions or privileges to
certain territories.258 The grantor was generally the prince and the beneficiary
a monastery.
The most common type of zapovednaia concerned a prohibition addressed
to the prince’s own officials on entering the territory to which the grant applied
or taking part in local assemblies (piry and bratchiny).259 In other zapoved-
nye this prohibition extended to all outsiders,260 and could be accompanied
by the threat of a fine for trespassers. Similar types of charters forbad trav-
elling through the territory concerned,261 or staying for a longer period than
necessary.262
Other instances of zapovednye cover a variety of prohibitions and privileges,
such as the granting of a share in portage fees,263 dispensation from the duty
to pay an investigation fee in a case of accidental death,264 or a prohibition on
all outsiders to cut wood.265
256 Instead of interest, the right to certain proceeds, such as the harvesting of hay, could be
granted the creditor; cf. asei ii No. 367 (361–362). Such zakladnye then constituted an
intermediate form between the two principal categories mentioned above. In rare cases,
no interest was charged at all: asei iii, No. 157 (173–174).
257 E.g. asei iii, No. 368 (389).
259 E.g. asei i, No 264 (192).
260 E.g. asei i, No. 315 (225).
261 E.g. asei ii, No. 69 (44).
262 E.g. asei ii, No. 479 (517).
263 E.g. asei ii, No. 159 (95–96).
264 E.g. asei ii, No. 109 (67).
265 E.g. asei iii, No. 61 (94).
In all cases, the zapovednaia was connected with a certain plot of land; the
monastery which was the beneficiary of the charter was usually already in pos-
session of the territory to which the zapovednaia applied.
Zariadnaia gramota
A document in which a person obliged himself to do or not to do something,
on penalty of forfeiting a fixed sum of money.266 Also a document containing
an agreement to have an issue settled by arbitration.267 The underlying prob-
lem was usually the fixing of boundaries between adjoining landowners.
Zazyvnaia gramota
A summons to appear before a court, issued on behalf of the court. Mentioned
in art. 22 of the Belozero Charter.268
Zhalobnaia gramota
A written complaint to a government official.269
Zhalovannaia gramota
A charter in which a property, certain rights, privileges or immunities were
granted by the prince. The name of the charter is derived from the verb
zhalovat’ (to have mercy and, hence, to grant) and grant charters usually con-
tained a form of this verb in the opening sentence: “I, prince A, have granted
B …”.
There is a great variety of grant charters. They are also very numerous. In a
few cases they were issued, not by a prince, but by a church hierarch (bishop,
archbishop, metropolitan).270
266 An example from 1503/1504 in asei i, No. 647 (564); in this case the element of zariad
(forfeit) was combined with poruka (guarantee): if the debtor, prince Fedor Dolgorukov,
did not fulfil his obligations, the two guarantors put up by him would forfeit the sum of
twenty roubles.
267 E.g. Akty Russk. Gos., No. 278 (280–281) and No. 90 (95–96; no forfeit clause included).
268 Cf. prp iii, 173 and comments at 219. An example in asei iii, No. 22 (38–40). An example
of a zazyvnaia from 1678, to appear before the court of the Moscow patriarch, is in AIuB i,
No. 45 (143–144). See also Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 189.
269 Pushkarev, Dictionary, 26–27.
270 E.g. asei ii, No. 487 (527), issued by the Moscow metropolitan Simon. A rare example of
a grant charter by a Tatar prince: asei i, No. 618 (530–531), Mukhammad-Amin, khan of
Kazan’ from 1487 to 1496 (and again from 1502–1518), having been granted lands in Mus-
covy after having been dethroned in 1496, donated forests near Kashira to a monastery,
with judicial and fiscal immunities, in 1498 (a zhalovannaia dannaia tarkhannaia i nesu-
dimaia gramota).
284 chapter 11
The main types of grant charters have been discussed under their own
names. This lemma will look at what is common to all grant charters and at the
division of the general class of grant charters into separate sub-groups.
Grant charters may easily and anachronistically be defined with the aid of
modern concepts, such as the distinction between public and private law or the
concept of sovereignty. A grant charter would then be a document in which a
public authority conferred, from the fullness of its sovereign power, something
to a private agent. In fact, in a medieval setting, where sovereignty was diffuse
and private and public law inextricably intertwined, such a definition is hardly
helpful. Still, the first characteristic of a grant charter is that it was issued by
somebody possessing public authority, i.e. in the typical case a prince, and a
ruling prince at that. Secondly, the grant charter conferred something specifi-
cally connected with the prince’s official position and public powers.
Grant charters, as public law documents, can be regarded as related to other
public charters, such as ukaznye; the difference is that the specific purpose of a
zhalovannaia was the transfer from somebody in public authority to a private
agent. The difficulty remains that no sharp distinction between public and pri-
vate law can be made in this respect. There was no clear dividing line between
the prince acting as a territorial ruler and the prince in his capacity as private
landowner. At the receiving end of the grant one usually finds a monastery,
the most common intermediate landowner in medieval Russia, between the
prince and the immediate users of the land. To regard the monasteries them-
selves as purely private institutions would be misleading. In brief, and avoiding
the public-private dichotomy, it would be safest to say that the grant charter
was a typical instrument in shaping relations between the prince, intermedi-
ate agencies, and the population at large in medieval Russia.
The classification debate which raged among pre-1917 scholars and with
Soviet scholarship has already been mentioned in the section above on the
classification of gramoty in general. It has also affected the inevitable topic of
classification of the large number of grant charters. Again, in the end, the net
difference between the various views is not disturbing. A pragmatic approach
avoids unnecessary controversy.
One main group of zhalovannye is formed by documents directed at the
transfer of property: gift, sale and exchange charters in the form of a grant
(zhalovannye dannye, kupchie, menovnye). These combine the grant element
with the purely private aspect of gift, sale or barter.
The second main group of grant charters comprises those which conferred
judicial privileges; the most common among them are the nesudimye, through
which the prince waived his jurisdictional rights, or some of them, in respect of
the territory concerned and granted jurisdiction to the grantee. Such privileges
(immunities) were usually granted in combination with fiscal privileges or

immunities, and these form the third main group. The most important fiscal
grants were the tarkhannye, the l’gotnye and the obrochnye.
Zapovednye or okhrannye gramoty was the designation of charters in which
the prince forbad his own servants and outsiders to engage in certain activi-
ties with regard to the territory to which the grant applied (e.g. to enter it).
Such charters cannot always be distinguished from those in which a positive
right is conferred to the possessor of the territory. The prohibition on enter-
ing a territory, for instance, can also be formulated as the right to expel un-
authorized visitors. There is a tendency therefore to place all kinds of grant
charters which do not fit easily into one of the main categories indicated
above into the category of zapovednye gramoty; these would then include,
e.g. a c harter conferring the right to levy a toll on a road or at a ford. See also
srochnye, votchinnye, obodnye, poslushnye, vvoznye, kormlennye, pomestnye and
torgovye.
It goes without saying that zhalovannye represent a historical source of
prime importance, especially on account of the large number available and
the considerable time-span covered.271
Russian as well as Soviet scholars have drawn attention to the fact that the
most ancient charters have not been worded as express exclusions of princely
power within a certain territory, but as a general land grant, implying public
powers within the territory concerned.272 One of the oldest land grant char-
ters dates from 1130, in which the Kievan grand prince Mstislav (the Great)
Vladimirovich and his son Vsevolod donated a village to the monastery of
St. George in Novgorod, together with certain taxes and court fines.273
Documents and Collections Other Than Gramoty
Although the terminology with regard to medieval Russian documents is not

entirely stable or uniform, gramota (charter) is the most common designation.
Other more or less synonymous terms are often encountered, as well as terms
271 In a review of a small number of ancient zhalovannye, Alekseev writes: “Only a very small
number of grant charters has been preserved.” (Iu.G. Alekseev, “K voprosu o sudebnom
immunitete v kniazheskikh gramotakh xii–xiv vv.”, S.N. Kisterev (ed.), Ocherki feodal’noi
Rossii, vyp.8, Moskva, 2004, 10–28, at 10.) His paper, however, is devoted only to charters
granting judicial immunity, usually referred to as nesudimye gramoty.
273 gvnp, No. 81 (140–141).
286 chapter 11
with a more specific meaning. Some of the more frequently used are explained
below.
Doklad
A report. Many gramoty, of various kinds, are in the form of a report to the
prince or some other authority. These are called dokladnye gramoty. Apart
from such charters, there is a small number of documents where the report
is the essence of the message contained, not just the form. These are called
doklady.274
Dokonchanie
An agreement, a treaty, especially between princes.275
Dozor
An inspection report.276
Iarlyk
A document issued by the Tatar khan. These documents are discussed sepa-
rately at the end of this chapter.
Khartiia
Another, less common, name for gramota, a charter.
Nakaz
An instruction, particularly one of a general nature, such as from the metro-
politan concerning certain aspects of church administration.277
Opis’
A description, an inventory.278
Otpis’
See Otpisnaia gramota
274 E.g. AIuB i, Nos. 68–70 (491–497).

275 E.g. ddg, No. 2 (11–13), a treaty of 1351 between the Moscow grand prince Semën and his
brothers Ivan and Andrei.
276 E.g. asei ii, No. 372 (366).
277 E.g. AIuB i, Nos. 166–167 (523–525).
278 E.g. asei iii, No. 48a (72–74); ddg, 445–484 (excerpts from inventories of the Posol’skii
Prikaz, the ambassadorial department, from the early 17th entury).
Pamiat’
A mémoire, a note, a record of some legally significant fact.279
Pis’mo
A letter.
Spisok
A list or, more commonly, a copy. A great many gramoty have not survived in
originali but as copies. Such documents are often preceded by the words Spisok
s gramoty … (“Copy of a charter …”), or a similar designation. Particularly nu-
merous are copies of judgments (pravye gramoty); such documents are called
sudnye spiski.280
Vypis’
An excerpt from another document.281
Zapis’
A note, a record of some legally significant fact.282 Zapis’ as well as pamiat’ may
occur as a synonym for gramota.
Pistsóvye and razriadnye knigi
Pistsovye knigi were records, comparable to West European cadastres, in which

ownership of land, including all kinds of relevant aspects of it (size, quality,
location, yields, population, buildings, etc.), were recorded. Their main use was
for tax purposes, but they were also used for proving ownership or for genea-
logical reference;283 in connection with mestnichestvo claims, see the section
on mestnichestvo in Chapter 14 (on the Prince’s Government) and in Chapter 31
(on the Tsar’s Government). They began to be compiled during the latter part
of the 15th century, until around 1630, when they were gradually replaced by
perepisnye spiski or knigi, which only recorded the local population and their
279 E.g. asei i, No. 596 (494), a pamiat’ from 1495/1499 to a monastery, signed by witnesses,
testifying that Anastasiia Salareva had donated a property to the monastery na pominok
– for the souls of her father-in-law and her husband.
280 E.g. asei i, No. 326 (235–236).
281 E.g. afzkh i, No. 12 (29).
282 E.g. asei i, No. 556 (433).
283 Cf. S.A. Kozlov, Z.V. Dmitrieva, Nalogi v Rossii do xix v., Sankt-Peterburg, 2001 (2nd ed.), 21.
288 chapter 11
ability to pay taxes. The pistsovye knigi of the Moscow principality were first
published by Kalachov in 1872.284 The basic publication of the pistsovye knigi
from Novgorod started earlier (in 1859) and was completed in 1910.285 A rich
additional collection of pistsovye knigi from various parts of Novgorod terri-
tory, covering the period of ca.1490 to 1560, was published in five volumes by
K.V. Baranov.286
Razriadnye knigi or spiski were more or less contemporary with pistsovye
knigi, starting in the reign of Ivan iii (the oldest dates from 1471) and official-
ly destroyed in 1682 in connection with the abolition of mestnichestvo, with
which the razriady were closely connected. They recorded appointments of of-
ficials, in particular of military commanders. With the increasing importance
and institutionalization of these records, a special government department,
the Razriadnyi prikaz, arose in the middle of the 16th century. This department
acquired a central role, not only in the allocation of military commands, but
in a wider sphere of regulating the employment of the nobility and assigning
estates to them in payment for their service to the state.
Noble families often maintained their own razriadnye knigi, in order to be
able to support their claims to certain positions or advantages. A considerable
number of such private registers has survived.287
Novgorod Birch-Bark Documents
The first birch-bark documents (berestianýe grámoty) were found during

excavations in the old Russian city of Novgorod in 1951. The following de-
cades produced many more hundreds, including smaller numbers from
other m
edieval Russian towns (Staraia Russa, Smolensk, Pskov, Moscow and
Vitebsk). The total number of available birch-bark documents is now well over
one thousand.
The preservation of the birch-bark documents is due to the climatic and soil
conditions of North-Western Russia.
284 N.B. Kalachov (ed.), Pistsovye knigi Moskovskogo gosudarstva, Sankt-Peterburg, 1872. See
also V.B. Pavlov-Sil’vanskii, Pistsovye knigi Rossii xvi v., Moskva, 1991.
285 Novgorodskie pistsovye knigi, published in Sankt-Peterburg in six volumes by the Archeo-
graphical Commission, 1859–1910.
286 K.V. Baranov, (ed.), Pistsovye knigi Novgorodskoi zemli, Moskva, 1999 (i, ii), 2001 (iii), 2004
(iv, v).
287 See Iu.V. Ankhimiuk, Chastnye Razriadnye knigi s zapisiami za posledniuiu chetvert’ xv –
nachalo xvii vekov, Moskva, 2005.
The documents were inscribed by means of a pointed implement. This ex-

plains the generally good legibility. Only rarely has ink been used, and then
complicated technical procedures are required to restore the text.
The documents have been numbered consecutively, according to the date
of their discovery. The definitive publication is in the serial work Novgorodskie
gramoty na bereste, but the entire collection can also be accessed electronically
on gramoty.ru; the latter publication includes a modern Russian translation of
the texts.
The size of the piece of bark used posed a natural limit to the length of the
document. In one case (No. 419) a number of sheets was gathered into a little
booklet, containing the text of an evening prayer. It appears that birch-bark
was used more or less in the same way as writing-paper in modern times, in
other words for anything considered worth writing down. Some documents
are no more than labels or name tags, with only a few words written on them.
Then there is a small collection of writing exercises (Nos. 199–210) of a boy
called Onfim. There are all kinds of lists, notes, and some private correspon-
dence, among the last are two letters of Ontsifor Lukinich to his mother (Nos.
354 and 358). Ontsifor Lukinich was a prominent Novgorod boyar, mentioned
in 1342 in the First Novgorod Chronicle. Document No. 377 is regarded as a love
letter by some Russian historians.
The birch-bark texts are not only of necessity short; more than three quar-
ters of them are also defective in the sense that part of the text is missing or
has become illegible. The language is a local Novgorod Russian dialect, with a
few exceptions (No. 292, a pagan invocation in Karelian; No. 488, a psalm text
in Latin, found in the ‘Gothic’, i.e. Visby settlement within Novgorod).
The documents can to some extent be dated paleographically (on the ba-
sis of script and language), as well as on the basis of their contents. Purely
archaeological methods offer more exact dating. Dendrochronology in partic-
ular has been helpful, as the medieval streets of Novgorod were covered with
wooden pavements (mosty). The oldest document has been dated to around
1080 (No. 526). Documents from the 12th–14th centuries are well represented;
the number decreases after that, due no doubt to the wider availability of
paper.
For the legal historian, two types of documents are of particular interest.
There is a modest number of purely legal documents: wills, gift charters, deeds
of sale, etc., and a much larger number of documents which, although not
of a strictly legal nature, illustrate in one way or another some aspect of the
legal system of medieval Novgorod. One of the prominent works on the im-
portance of Novgorod birch-bark documents as a historical source contains a
long chapter entitled “The Russkaia Pravda in Action”, while other chapters on
290 chapter 11
deals concerning land, the position of peasants, court procedure, mortgages

and other subjects with a legal dimension demonstrate how law permeated
many aspects of daily life.288
The formulae used in the birch-bark charters were similar to those already
known from paper and parchment charters. They adhere to the typical Novgorod
usage of the third person (“Hereby Ivan Petrovich buys …”) instead of the first
person, as current in Central Russia (“I, Ivan Petrovich, have bought …”).
The actual number of complete or almost complete birch-bark charters is
quite small, not more than about ten. The longest of them, No. 519–520, is a
will from around 1400. Among the others are two agreements of the riadnaia
type (Nos. 136 and 366) and at least one kupchaia (No. 318). A full understand-
ing of the nature of the charter is often made difficult by the conciseness of
its style and the lack of contextual information. The beginning of No. 138, for
instance, has the appearance of a will: “I, God’s servant Silvester, have written
this rukopisanie”. The term rukopisanie (“handwriting”), as explained above,
usually denotes a last will, but may also refer to other charters. The opening
words are followed by a list of persons who are apparently Silvester’s debtors,
and the amounts of their debts (a frequent component of last wills). Among
the incomplete charters are several wills, recognizable as such by the custom-
ary opening words of the invocation of the Trinity (Nos. 28, 42, 369).
The uniqueness of the birch-bark documents as a source for legal history is
illustrated especially by the large number of documents concerned with daily
life and business. Their interpretation often gives rise to difficulties, but they
nevertheless offer a vivid picture of the “law in action” in a period when the
usual legal sources (laws and ordinary legal charters) are scarce or non-existent.
The Iarlyki of the Tatar Khans289
The iarlyki of the Tatar khan constitute an exotic but unavoidable element
in the reservoir of sources of medieval Russian law.290 The word iarlyk is of
288 L.V. Cherepnin, Novgorodskie berestianye gramoty kak istoricheskii istochnik, Moskva, 1969.
This work also contains the texts of almost all Novgorod birch-bark documents up to No. 424.
289 As already explained elsewhere, the ethnonyms “Mongols” and “Tatars” are used more or
less synonymously in referring to the empire of Chingis-Khan and his successors. The ex-
plosive growth of the originally Mongol realm brought overwhelming numbers of Turkic
peoples in Central Asia and the adjoining steppe world into the confines of the empire.
Within a few generations, the thin layer of Mongol leaders had been thoroughly turkicized.
290 The most extensive collections of iarlyki are to be found in pre-revolutionary p
ublications:
Sobranie gosudarstvennykh gramot i dogovorov [quoted as sggd], Vol. 2, Sankt-Peterburg,
1819, Nos. 2, 7, 9–12, 15;
urkic origin and means “order” or “decree” (in modern Russian its meaning
T
has been reduced to “a label” or “a slip of paper”). The invasions of the armies
of Chingis-Khan’s grandson Baty, which started in 1237, resulted in the rapid
subjugation of most of the Russian principalities. Russia became what can best
be described as a collection of vassal states of one of the successor states of
the empire of Chingis-Khan, the Ulus of Juchi (Dzhuchi, Chingis-Khan’s eldest
surviving son), better known in later centuries as the Golden Horde or the Qip-
chak khanate. Mongol-Tatar domination left the infrastructure of Russian law
by and large intact and limited itself to the imposition of various kinds of trib-
ute and taxes, and to securing recognition by the Russian princes of the khan’s
suzerainty (see also the section on the Mongol-Tatar impact on Russian law in
Chapter 10, on Foreign Laws). For this purpose princes would be summoned to
the khan’s temporary headquarters, at Sarai, on the Lower Volga, or somewhere
else in South-East Russia or in the West-Siberian steppe. Occasionally, they
would even be required to present themselves at the court of the great khan,
in Karakorum, in present-day Mongolia, until khan Mengu-Timur (1266–1282)
made the Golden Horde independent in 1269.291
Among the number of available iarlyki, some have no significant connection
with Russian legal history and they need not be considered here.292 The recent
works of two authors have furthered a fuller understanding of the iarlyki af-
fecting legal history. A.P. Grigor’ev has been able to reconstruct the original Old
Uigur texts by an extensive comparison with available diplomatic texts from the
M.A. Obolenskii, Iarlyk khana Zolotoi Ordy Tokhtamysha k pol’skomu koroliu Iagailu 1392–
1393 g., Kazan’, 1850;
V. Radlov, “Iarlyki Tokhtamysha i Temir-Kutluga”, Zapiski vostochnogo otdela imperatorsk-
ogo russkogo arkheologicheskogo obshchestva, T.3 (1888), Sankt-Peterburg, 1889, 1–40;
I.N. Berezin, Khanskie iarlyki, 3 vols., Kazan’, 1850–1851;
id., “Tarkhannye iarlyki krymskikh khanov”, Zapiski obshchestva istorii i drevnosti, No. 8,
Odessa, 1872;
id., “Iarlyki krymskikh khanov Mengli-Gireia i Mukhamed-Gireia”, ibidem;
Ia. Iartsev (transl)., V. Grigor’ev (comm.), “Iarlyki Tokhtamysha i Seadet-Gireia”, Zapiski
obshchestva istorii i drevnosti, No. 1, Odessa, 1844;
V.V. Grigor’ev, O dostovernosti iarlykov, dannykh khanami Zolotoi Ordy russkomu dukhoven-
stvu, Moskva, 1848; also in Sbornik statei “Rossiia i Aziia”, Sankt-Peterburg, 1876, 170–258.’
More recent and accessible publications are:
M.D. Priselkov, Khanskie iarlyki russkim metropolitam, Petrograd, 1916;
V.N. Beneshevich, Sbornik pamiatnikov po istorii tserkovnogo prava ii, Petrograd, 1914,
9–25; prp iii, 463–491;
A.P. Grigor’ev, Sbornik khanskikh iarlykov russkim metropolitam, Sankt-Peterburg, 2004.
291 R.Iu. Pochekaev, Pravovaia kul’tura Zolotoi Ordy, Moskva, 2015, 187.
292 E.g. the iarlyk of Temir-Kutlug of 1398, discussed by Radlov (see above). This document
concerned the appointment of a certain Mekhmet and his sons as tarkhans in the Crimea.
292 chapter 11
entire Mongol empire.293 These documents were drafted in accordance with

a fixed format. In the first section the person issuing the document (usually
the khan himself) identified himself and addressed himself to the officials
concerned, or sometimes to the entire population. The historical legitimacy
was established by referring to previous and similar charters issued by Chingis-
Khan himself or his successors. The next section contained the legal substance
and provided the actual contents of what was being ordered. In the case of the
iarlyki addressed to the Russian Church this mostly concerned fiscal immunity.
In return, the Russian Church was ordered to pray for the khan and his family.
Then there was a warning paragraph, containing threats against anyone not
obeying the decree. The final section mentioned the place and the date the
iarlyk was passed, and in some cases the witnessing officials.294
R.Iu. Pochekaev has presented an explanatory framework for the six avail-
able iarlyki. They have come down in church collections and in Russian trans-
lation only. In keeping with the Mongol tradition of religious tolerance, the
Russian Church was initially not prevented from continuing to function and
was in fact granted a privileged position in being exempted from taxation.
These privileges were confirmed, according to Mongol custom, every time a
new khan came to power. The metropolitan would be required to travel to the
khan’s encampment, bringing presents, in order to receive the confirmation
iarlyk. Most of these iarlyki conferred fiscal immunity on the Church, who was
instructed in return to pray for the khan and his kin (plemia). The texts of these
iarlyki to the Russian metropolitan, originally written in Old Uigur, were trans-
lated into Russian already in the 14th and 15th centuries. In this form they were
included in the metropolitan archive and acquired a place in the kopiinye knigi
(lit. copy books, see above).295 The collection is not complete and Pochekaev
explained the absence of certain iarlyki by their intentional exclusion. It ap-
pears that political circumstances repeatedly induced the khan to curtail the
privileges which had been extended by his ancestors. When the old privileges
were again restored by a successor, the metropolitan archive would keep only
the more favourable documents. The iarlyki of the khans commanded great
respect and the documents issued by Taidula (the widow of khan Uzbek and
the mother of khan Dzhanibek) and included in the official Russian collection
293 A.P. Grigor’ev, op. cit.

294 Cf. Grigor’ev, 206–207.
295 Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 53–57. Texts in sggd ii, Nos. 2 (5–6), 9–12 (11–4), 15 (17–18); prp
iii, 465–470; Beneshevich, Sbornik pamiatnikov ii, 9–25; revised texts in A.P. Grigor’ev,
Sbornik khanskikh iarlykov russkim metropolitam, Sankt-Peterburg, 2004, 44, 52–53, 65–66,
70–71, 114–115, 201–202.
should be considered as enjoying less prestige.296 According to Pochekaev, the

full list of iarlyki issued by the khans to the Russian metropolitans counted
9 documents, of which only three survived in their Russian version.297
The importance of the iarlyki for the Russian Church was in the privileged
treatment the Church enjoyed at the hands of the infidel rulers; thus the iarlyki
were politically useful documents in the Church’s attempts to secure similar
concessions from the Moscow grand princes. In this respect it is noteworthy
that the texts of some of the copies of surviving iarlyki had been doctored to
produce a more favourable position for the Church298 and that some of the se-
ries of copies contain an entirely counterfeit seventh document, the so-called
iarlyk of khan Uzbeg.299
The three iarlyki addressed to the metropolitan directly concerned fiscal im-
munity for the Church. They differed on additional questions. The oldest of
them, the iarlyk of Mengu Temir of 1267, established general fiscal immunity
for the entire clergy (priests and monks) and imposed on them the obligation
to pray for the khan.300
The iarlyki of khan Berdibek of 1357 and of khan Biulek (also Tiulak or
Tulunbek) of 1379 are very similar. The latter document confirmed earlier
grants and did in fact refer to Berdibek’s previous grant. Both iarlyki originate
from a lost iarlyk of khan Tokhta of 1308.301 They allowed full tax exemption to
the metropolitan, priests and monks (the 1379 charter even specified “ordinary”
and “extraordinary” taxes), but also established territorial immunity for the
churches and dwellings of the clergy, as well as for all church lands and waters
(i.e. Tatar officials were told to keep out).302 A tax exemption iarlyk from
296 Pochekaev, op. cit., 194.

297 Pochekaev, 200, mentions iarlyki of 1283, 1308, 1313, 1333, 1342 and 1363, along with the
iarlyki of 1267, 1357 and 1379, discussed hereafter.
298 The iarlyki of 1357 and 1379, for instance, conferred criminal jurisdiction upon the
metropolitan, according to the texts from the metropolitan’s archives (prp iii, 466
and 470), although such provisions are absent in Grigor’ev’s new reconstruction (see
below).
299 Cf. P.P. Sokolov, “Podlozhnyi iarlyk Uzbeka metropolitu Petru”, Russkii istoricheskii zhur-
nal, No. 5 (1918), 70–85; Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 54; prp iii, 464–465. Text of the counterfeit
iarlyk in sggd ii, 9, and in Beneshevich, Sbornik pamiatnikov ii, 21–24.
300 Grigor’ev, 44. The old text in prp iii, 467–468 and in Beneshevich ii, 14–16, is different and
much longer.
301 prp iii, 471, 478.
302 Grigor’ev, 114–115, 201–202; longer and different texts in prp iii, 465–466 and 469–470, and
in Beneshevich ii, 9–12 and 18–20.
294 chapter 11
Taidula,widow of khan Dzhanibek, issued in 1351, was slightly less generous in

that it did not exempt the Church from market taxes.303
Another iarlyk from Taidula, from 1347, was traditionally regarded as a fiscal
immunity charter, granted to the metropolitan.304 In Grigor’ev’s reconstructed
reading it appeared as a proezzhaia, a travelling document guaranteeing the
bearer free passage, issued to the bishop of Sarai for travelling through Russia
in 1347.305 For a 1354 iarlyk of Taidula both readings agree in understanding it
as a proezzhaia, in this case for metropolitan Aleksei who intended to travel
to Constantinople.306 The iarlyk threatened those who disregarded it with re-
sponsibility under the Great Iasa (see Chapter 10).
These six iarlyki demonstrate the well-developed diplomatic practice of the
Golden Horde. There is, for instance, a clear difference in style between the
three iarlyki issued by Taidula in something like a regent’s capacity and the oth-
er three iarlyki issued by the khan himself. The latter three all commence with
a solemn invocation of divine powers.
Such diplomatic niceties were also reflected in a letter from khan Tokhta-
mysh to the Polish king Jagiello of 1392–1393.307 The original text of this letter
in Old Uigur was accompanied by a contemporary Russian translation, appar-
ently prepared in the khan’s chancery. The letter contained a report on a plot
against Tokhtamysh, hatched by a group of Mongol princes, conspiring with
Timur (Tamerlane). Additionally, the khan requested the payment of tribute
and the resumption of commercial relations. The Russian version of the iarlyk
is less severe and more courteous in tone than the Uigur original. Tokhtamysh
was in serious trouble at the time and was certainly interested in enlisting the
support of the Polish king.308
The subordinate position of the Russian princes is made clear by the very
few iarlyki addressed to them directly.309
303 Grigor’ev, 65–66; different texts in prp iii, 468–469 and Beneshevich ii, 16–18.
304 prp iii, 466–467; Beneshevich, 13–14.
305 Grigor’ev, 52–53. Within the context of Tatar policy with regard to religion, a bishopric had
been established in 1261 in Sarai, the temporary headquarters of the khan at that time. See
R.G. Skrynnikov, Krest i korona. Tserkov’ i gosudarstvo na Rusi ix–xvii vv., Sankt-Peterburg,
2000, 42.
306 Grigor’ev, 70–71; prp iii, 470–471; Beneshevich ii, 24–25.
307 Russian text in M.M. Peshchak (ed.), Hramoty xiv st., Kyiv, 1974, 112–113.
308 See G.V. Vernadskii, Istoriia Rossii; Mongoly i Rus’, Tver’/Moskva, 1997, 277–280 and also
the works by Radlov and Obolenskii, quoted above.
309 Cf. a very brief charter, dated 1266–1272, and consisting of only two sentences, the first
one being: “The word of Mengu-Timur to prince Iaroslav: allow the German merchants to
travel freely through your lands.”, gvnp, No. 30 (61), the prince being Iaroslav Iaroslavich,
grand prince of Vladimir, who served as prince of Novgorod from 1266 on. Even more
explicit is the letter of the Tatar emir (not even the khan himself) Edigei to the Moscow
grand prince Vasilii Dmitrievich in 1409, in which the grand prince was reproached for
lack of respect and failure to pay his dues; sggd, Vol. 2, No. 15 (17–18). The Polish and
Lithuanian rulers, who were never in the position of vassals, were addressed more politely
as “brother” by the khan; see the iarlyk mentioned above of 1393 to the king of Poland and
one addressed by khan Murtazy in 1484 to the Lithuanian grand prince Kazimir (V.M.
Rusanivs’kyi (ed.), Ukrains’ki hramoty xv st., Kyiv, 1965, 1347–138).
Three late Tatar iarlyki have been published by A.A. Gorskii in Moskva i Orda, Moskva,
2001, 196–199, from the usurping Tatar ruler Edigei to the Moscow grand prince Vasilii I
Dmitrievich, of 1408; from khan Akhmet to Ivan iii, some time between 1472 and 1480
(cf. Gorskii, 175–177); and from khan Murtoza to Ivan iii, from 1486.
Section 2
The Law
∵
chapter 12
Setting the Stage: Territory and Tribes in Early

Kievan Russia
The Physical Stage of Early Russian History
Half-way between Moscow and the ancient Russian city of Velikii Novgorod,
the Valdai Heights present the most notable elevation in the vast expanse of
European Russia. If one were to go from there in a south-westerly direction all
the way to Warsaw, the road would be level for the first two hundred kilome-
tres, but then right up to the Polish border it would follow a ridge of gentle hills,
the West-Russian elevation. South of the south-western tip of this elevation the
impenetrable Pripiat’ marshes constitute a formidable natural border. These
geographical features are of fundamental importance for the course of Rus-
sian history, because the main rivers of Medieval Russia find their origin here
in the West-Russian elevation: the Dnepr, the Volga, the Western Dvina1 and
the Volkhov. The flatness of the terrain and the closeness of the heads of the
rivers and their tributaries made portage possible and thereby the emergence
of long-distance river transport.
Along with these hydrographical features, the vegetation zones are among
the basic determinants of Russian history. A broad zone, running in a sw-
ne direction, in which broad-leaved forests gradually thin out into the forest
steppe, separates the southern steppes and the northern forests. The central
axis of this zone is the Ufa- Chişinau (Kishinev) line. Mixed forests dominate in
the Central-Russian territory; further north, roughly above the Riga-Perm’ line,
conifers reign absolute. The tundra in the Far North is of minor importance in
Russian history.
The Eastern Slav Tribes in the 10th Century
When the Eastern Slavs appeared on the stage of history, the territory o ccupied
by them consisted roughly of the basins of the Dnepr, the Western Dvina
and the Volkhov, and their tributaries, and the upper reaches of the Volga.
1 The Western Dvina, which empties into the Baltic Sea at Riga, is not to be confused with the
Northern Dvina, flowing into the White Sea.

300 chapter 12
Novgorod, on the Volkhov, and Kiev, on the Dnepr, were the old economic and
political centres. As most of this area was densely wooded, rivers offered the
only realistic thoroughfares.
The inhospitable North was sparsely inhabited by various Finnish tribes,
mostly known as Chud’ in the Russian annals. To the East, in the direction of
the Urals, other Finnish and Ugrian tribes lived in the forests. Further to the
South, the forest gradually changed into forest-steppe and then full steppe,
part of the immeasurable plains stretching from the Carpathians to the moun-
tains of Central Asia, the Altai and the Tian-Shan. This was and would remain
for most of Russian history the homeland of nomads, mainly of Turkic ori-
gin. In the West, Russian land bordered on the lands of other Slavic and Baltic
peoples.
According to the Primary Chronicle, the main Eastern Slav tribes in the 10th
century were the Poliane (in the area around Kiev), the Severiane (ne of the
Poliane, along the Seim, Sula and Upper Desna rivers), the Radimichi (W of the
Severiane, along the river Sozh), the Dregovichi (W of the Radimichi, between
the Pripiat’ marshes and the Dvina), the Derevlians (S of the Dregovichi and
W of the Poliane), the Polochane (N of the Dregovichi, with Polotsk as their
centre), the Viatichi (in the Oka river basin), the Krivichi (N of the Polochane,
Radimichi and Viatichi, with Smolensk as their centre), and the Slovenes (N of
the Krivichi, with Novgorod Velikii as their centre). Additionally, the Chronicle
mentions the Volynians (or Duleby, along the Western Bug), and a multitude of
Finnish tribes, scattered around the northern half of this territory.
The picture drawn by the Chronicle of the tribal territories of 10th century
Russia has been almost universally accepted in Russian historiography, with-
out much serious questioning. Lately I.N. Danilevskii has pointed out that sup-
porting evidence is almost completely absent.2 With this caveat in mind we
continue our narrative.
These Slavic tribes presumably constituted the main political units during
the 10th century, although there are echoes of larger tribal confederations in
the works of non-Russian authors. Procopius of Caesarea and Jordanes, both
writing in the middle of the sixth century, mention the related nations of the
Sclaveni and the Antes, inhabiting the area of Western Russia.3
2 I.V. Danilevskii, “Vostochnoslavianskie «plemennye soiuzy»: real’nost’ ili letopisnaia legen-

da?”, T.N. Dzhakson, A.V. Podosinov (eds.), Kniga kartiny Zemli. Sbornik stateii v chest’ Iriny
Gennadievny Konovalovoi, Moskva, 2014, 66–75.
3 English texts in G. Vernadsky & R. Fischer (eds.) and S. Pushkarev (comp.), A Sourcebook for
Russian History From Early Times to 1917, Vol.1, New Haven/London, 1972, 7–8. Russian texts in
T.N. Dzhakson, I.G. Konovalova & A.V. Podosinov (eds.), Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh
Territory and Tribes in Early Kievan Russia 301
Russia’s Multi-Ethnic Past in Ancient Times
The most fundamental factor in the geopolitics of European Russia was and is
its division into two main zones: the forested North, difficult to penetrate and
traversable mainly by water, and the steppes in the South, stretching eastwards
for thousands of kilometres to Mongolia and Eastern Siberia. Mounted, mobile
and well-armed tribes had since time immemorial been able to impose their
rule over vast territories.
The earliest detailed information about the territory of Russia stems from
the Greeks, who, as mentioned before, had founded numerous colonies along
the coast of the Black Sea. Herodotus discussed at length the Scythians, the
population of the steppes north of the Black Sea. That they belonged to the
great amalgam of Indo-Iranian peoples is not seriously contested. As can be
expected, his information about the neighbours of the Scythians is sketchier.
The Neuri, living to the north and north-west of the Scythians, are regarded by
some as Slavs, as is another nation mentioned by Herodotus, the Budini.4 The
Sauromatians are placed by Herodotus between the Scythians and the Budini,
i.e. in the south-eastern part of European Russia. In the following centuries
the Sauromatians formed the main segment of the Sarmatians, a league of
predominantly Indo-Iranian nations, who replaced the Scythians as the domi-
nant force in southern Russia until the arrival of the Germanic Goths in the
3rd century a.d.5 The Indo-Iranian element did not completely disappear in
southern Russia; from the 1st century a.d. on, the presence of the Alans has
been recorded in the area around the Sea of Azov and north of the Caucasus.6
The present-day Ossetians are regarded as their descendants.
The rule of the Goths spread over most of Europe. The populations of the
conquered territories did not disappear but became less visible. This might ap-
ply also to the Antae, inhabiting the area between the Dnestr and the Dnepr.
istochnikov, T.I (Antichnye istochniki), A.V. Podosinov (comp.), Moskva, 2009, 269–274 and T.II
(Vizantiiskie istochniki), M.V. Bibikov (comp.), Moskva, 2010, 69–79.
4 Vernadskii, op.cit., 81–83.
5 The principal authority on the history of the Goths (and equally of the Huns) is Jordanes,
a Gothic monk, who wrote in the middle of the 6th century. The Gothic language survived
for a long time in the Crimea, where de Busbecq, an emissary of the German emperor to the
Ottoman sultan, recorded a considerable number of Gothic words in the middle of the 16th
century.
6 The Alans as such are not mentioned in the Primary Chronicle. The Iasy (also known as
Ovsy), the ancestors of the Ossetians, turn up in 965, together with the Kasogi (the ancestors
of the Adyge), inhabiting the steppes to the north of the Caucasus, in the tale of Sviatoslav’s
campaign against the Khazars.
302 chapter 12
The visibility of ethnic units in this period depended very much on their mo-
bility. A mostly sedentary population, as the Slavs seem to have been in this
era, would hardly be noticed by the more advanced powers such as Byzantium,
while the warlike nomadic peoples, be they Huns, Goths or Alans, constituted
a genuine threat to the civilized mediterranean world. The Antae emerged
in the 5th century a.d. and are the first to be reliably identified as Slavs on
Russian territory. The original homeland of the Slavs is generally considered to
have been located more to the north-west in present-day Poland.
The Goths in turn were overrun by the Huns in the second half of the 4th
century. The Huns were probably of Turkic origin, but their armies included
auxiliaries of numerous subject nations. The Hun empire rapidly fell apart af-
ter the death of their most famous king, Attila, in 453.
The appearance of the Huns had caused, or at least considerably contribut-
ed to, the massive ethnic movements in Europe known as the Great Migration
of Peoples (Germ. Grosse Völkerwanderung). It also signaled the emergence
of a new ethnic factor in Russia: peoples speaking languages belonging to the
Ural-Altaic family. In the 6th century the Avars arrived from Central Asia, to
play an active role in Russia, the Balkans, and Central Europe.7 They reached
their apogee under their ruler Baian in the second half of the 6th century. The
Avar empire survived for another two centuries, although gradually weaken-
ing, until it was annihilated by Charlemagne during the last decade of the 8th
century.
Another Turkic people which entered on the Russian and then European
scene was the Bolgars who arrived in southern Russia in the 5th century.8 They
fell under Avar domination around the middle of the 6th century, but were not
fully absorbed. There are reports of Bolgar attacks against Byzantium in the be-
ginning of the 6th century and during the government of Justinian (527–565).
They continued to harass the Byzantines during the following centuries, espe-
cially after they had founded the first Bulgarian state in the Balkans during the
latter half of the 7th century. Another group of Bolgars moved up along the
Volga, where they settled in the Middle Volga area. The Volga Bolgars are men-
tioned in the writings of Ibn Fadlan; they converted to Islam in the 9th century.
7 Whether the original Avars themselves spoke a Turkic language is not entirely clear; the multi-
ethnic armed bands which constituted the Avar host were predominantly Turkic-speaking.
8 I use the term ‘Bolgars’, although ‘Bulgars’ or ‘Bulgarians’ are also encountered in the litera-
ture. The Bolgar elite in the early Bulgarian empire in the Balkans was soon slavicized so that
present-day Bulgarians and their language are considered to be Slavic. Vernadskii regards the
Bolgars as closely connected with the Huns and often speaks of Huns-Bulgars; in contempo-
rary Byzantine sources the Bolgars are commonly called Huns.
They were important trading partners of the Russians on the trade route from
Scandinavia to the Middle East.
Of greater importance in protohistoric Russia were the Khazars, another na-
tion of Turkic origin (as is assumed by most scholars), who are first mentioned
in the 6th century. In the course of the following centuries the Khazar empire,
which had its centre in the vast steppes north of the Caucasus, rose to be the
regional hegemonial power, imposing tribute on most of the surrounding na-
tions: the (equally Turkic) Volga Bolgars, the Alans (north of the Caucasus),
and the early Slavs in the Middle Dnepr area. The Khazars maintained close
relations with the Byzantine empire and were constantly at war with Arab in-
vaders coming across the Caucasus during the explosive expansion of Islam
in the 7th century. Khazar hegemony came to an end when the Kievan grand
prince Sviatoslav (the father of St. Vladimir) defeated the Khazars in 965 (or
966) and took their capital Bela Vezha (on the Lower Don).
Comparative late comers in southern Russia were the Magyars or Hungarians,
who wandered from their homeland somewhere in western S iberia or the Ural
area during the 8th century. In the 9th century they appeared as tributaries
of the Khazars. There are reports of Hungarian forays into the empire of the
Franks in 862 and 881. The Primary Chronicle mentions them for the first time
during the last decade of the 9th century, when they raided Kiev under the reign
of prince Oleg. It was also at the same time (896) that the entire H
ungarian na-
tion moved en masse to Central Europe where it settled. Although the Hungar-
ians belonged linguistically to the Finno-Ugrian language group, their nation
also embraced Turkic elements (mainly Khazars) which had joined them dur-
ing their stay in the lower Don region, migrating with them to their destination
on the Danube.
The exodus of the Hungarian tribes during the last decade of the 9th century
was caused by the pressure of new invaders from the East, the Turkic Pech-
enegs whose incursions had started earlier in the century. All through the 10th
century they constituted a major component of the ethnic scene in south-
ern Russia, occasionally in alliance with the Russians, but usually at war with
them. The final showdown came in 1036 when a large Pecheneg force laid siege
to Kiev and the Kievan grand prince Iaroslav the Wise destroyed them utterly
with a combined force of Varangians (Vikings) and contingents from Kiev and
Novgorod. The remnants of the Pechenegs were gradually absorbed by another
wave of Turkic nomads, the Polovtsians, arriving from Central Asia during the
1030–1060 period.
The Polovtsians are already squarely within the era of early medieval Rus-
sia. They are also known as the Cumans, or by their own ethnic name, the
Kipchaks (Qipchaks). For many years they remained the main enemy of the
304 chapter 12
Kievan Russians, until they finally stood together with an all-Russian force in
1223 against the Mongols in the battle at the Kalka river; this signified the end
of the Polovtsians.9
A crucial role in the beginning of Russian history was played by Scandina-
vians, Vikings, or Varangians (Variagi) as they are called in the Russian chroni-
cles. The first mention is in 859, when “the Varangians from beyond the sea” are
said to have imposed tribute on various nations in the northern part of Russia
(the Finnish Chud’, Ves’ and Meri, and the Slavs – Novgorodians – and Kriv-
ichi), while the Slavic tribes of the Poliane, Severiane and Viatichi were tribu-
taries of the southern Khazars. The following years were apparently marked
by unrest: the Varangians were first driven out, but then some of them (called
‘Russes’) were invited back by the same northern peoples in 862. This is one of
the most famous and disputed episodes in the Primary Chronicle. At this point
it is sufficient to say that the appearance of Vikings in significant numbers at
this time, as recorded by the Primary Chronicle, agrees with the information
produced by external sources. Patriarch Photius and other Byzantine writers
have described the Russian (or rather Varangian) raid against Constantinople
in 860, and a disputed date around 840 is given for the attack by the Rós on the
town of Amastris on the Black Sea. In Western European sources the Russians
turn up in the Bertinian Annals, where (as related before) the emperor Louis
the Pious received a Byzantine delegation in 839, which included a few Rhos
people; Louis did not quite trust them (the Frankish empire was already suffer-
ing from Viking invasions at that time) and established, after further investiga-
tions, that they were Swedes.
The events after 859 should not be viewed as the result of a sudden inva-
sion of Russia by Scandinavians. Archeological evidence indicates that goods
from Scandinavia had been passing through Russia for at least a century by
then. There would certainly have been a presence of Scandinavian traders in
Russia during that period.10 But the intensity and therefore the impact of this
presence increased after the middle of the 9th century.
9 For the sake of completeness the Torks or Oghuz (a Turkic people) should also be men-
tioned in this connection. They occupied the steppes to the west, north and east of the
Aral Sea and played a minor role in the earliest history of Kievan Russia. They are men-
tioned as members of an anti-Khazar alliance in 890 and supported the Kievan prince
Sviatoslav in defeating the Khazars in 965. They seem to have been mostly supportive of
the Russians, first against the Khazars and later against the Polovtsians. Torks were pres-
ent in Kievan Russia and are mentioned occasionally in the Primary Chronicle.
10 See the first chapter “The Silver-Seekers from the North (c.750-c.900)” in Franklin and
Shepard, op.cit., 3–70.
While the southern Russian steppes witnessed a continuous va-et-vient

of various Indo-European and Altaic (Turkic and Mongolian) nomad invad-
ers from the beginning of recorded history until the arrival of the Mongolian
Kalmyks during the 18th century, the forested North of Russia presented a
scene of silent stability. It had been sparsely populated since neolithic times
by Finno-Ugrian tribes. In medieval Russian history they continued to play a
minor but still noticeable role. The Russian chronicles report about occasional
armed collisions with the Chud’, a Finnish people living in the north-western
corner of European Russia. The economic impact of the connections between
the forest-dwellers and the more advanced civilizations of southern Russia was
quite significant. The forests of North Russia produced an inexhaustible supply
of animal skins, one of Russia’s principal exports through the centuries.
The penetration of the North by the Eastern Slavs (Russians) was gradu-
al and by and large peaceful. The autochthonous Finnish populations were
mostly absorbed; in the eastern part of European Russia some of them sur-
vived as compact ethnic blocks (Komi, Mari, Udmurt, Mordva), in other parts
of Russia (especially in north-west Russia) as small scattered communities
(such as the Vepsy in the Onega Lake region).11
The bewildering procession of warlike nomads succeeding each other as
rulers of the plains in southern Russia appears more manageable if attention
is focused on a shorter period, such as the 10th century. The situation sketched
in the Primary Chronicle is confirmed by other sources: Eastern Slav tribes oc-
cupied the western half of European Russia, with the main tribes around the
two main centres in the North (the Slovenes) and the South (the Poliane). In
the eastern part of this territory (the Oka and Upper Don basins) the wild and
coarse Viatichi had settled. To the north and east of the Slavic area various
Finnish tribes had their homes, and further east, the realm of the Volga Bol-
gars was located in the Middle Volga region. The steppe to the south of Kiev
was the stage of permanent conflict between Slavs (mainly the Poliane) and
Pechenegs, who also controlled the vast open territories further east, as far as
the Lower Don and Lower Volga. There the Pechenegs bordered on the Khazar
empire, which had its centre in the steppes to the north of the Caucasus moun-
tains and to the west and north of the Caspian Sea. The Varangians (Vikings),
in accordance with their origin as traders/warriors, did not claim any territory
(apart from their Swedish homeland) as exclusively their own but were promi-
nently present wherever profit or booty was to be had.
11 The majority of river names in the north of European Russia are of Finnish origin, while
in the south Iranian names dominate. This seems to reflect the ethnic make-up of the area
during the first two millennia b.c.
306 chapter 12
The Khazars and Volga Bolgars were eliminated (as mentioned above) as
independent political actors in 965–966 by prince Sviatoslav of Kiev and this
left the Slavs (Russians), Varangians and Pechenegs as the major ethnic groups;
the more primitive and fragmented Finnish populations of the northern for-
ests were of little political importance. The Pechenegs, pagan Turkic nomads,
were the enemy, the Slavs and Varangians lived in a symbiotic relationship. The
Varangians were numerically insignificant. They had been passing through
Russia as traders for centuries (as evidenced, for instance by Byzantine and
Arab sources). Gradually, their presence assumed a more explicitly military
and political character, as suggested by the famous story about Rurik and his
brothers being invited to rule over the local Slavic population. The Primary
Chronicle refers repeatedly (1015, 1018, 1024) to Russian princes sending to Swe-
den for Varangian troops. Iaroslav the Wise, in his struggle for the throne of
Kiev in the decisive year 1015, is said to have collected a force of one thousand
Varangians and forty thousand Russians.
The 10th century undoubtedly represented the apogee of the Varangian im-
pact in Russia. The comparatively small number of them meant that they were
easily absorbed. Already before the adoption of Christianity, under prince
Sviatoslav (the first Rurikid ruler with a Slavic name), russification had set in.
The events around the succession of St. Vladimir in 1015/1016 were the last in
which local Varangians played a significant role. A separate Varangian contin-
gent in the Russian army is mentioned for the last time in 1036. After that they
had apparently become fully integrated into Russian society.
The Emergence and First Expansion of the Early Russian State
In the narrative of the Chronicle, the emergence of the first Russian state in the
course of the 10th and 11th centuries was closely connected with the subjuga-
tion of the main tribes to the authority of a single dynasty. The relevance of a
Viking or Scandinavian element in this process is a central and unavoidable
question, but will be left aside for the time being.
The founder of the dynasty, Rurik, is said to have established his rule in
Novgorod around 860 and extended it to include the Krivichi (directly south
of the Novgorod territory) and some of the neighbouring Finnish peoples,
such as the Ves’ and the Chud’, as well as the Meria and the Murom, who were
also partly or in some respects subject to him. His successor Oleg (879–913)12
12 Oleg’s genealogical connections are uncertain; according to the Chronicle, he belonged

to the gens (rod) of Rurik. Others (such as Tatishchev) indicate that he was Rurik’s shurin
shifted the centre of gravity of his power to the south by taking Kiev and subju-
gating the local Polianians. He also conquered the Severians and, temporarily,
the Derevlians. The Radimichi, tributary to the Turkic Khazars, switched their
allegiance to Oleg. The latter also waged war against his south-western Slavic
neighbours, the Ulichi and Tivertsy, but the outcome of these campaigns is
unclear. Rurik’s son Igor (913–945), who succeeded Oleg, continued to fight
the Derevlians under their prince Mal and fell in a battle against them. His
widow Olga and son Sviatoslav succeeded in finally crushing the Derevlians.
In 966 Sviatoslav defeated the Viatichi, inhabiting the basins of the Oka and
the Upper Don, and made them his tributaries. Later on they rose once more
against Sviatoslav’s son Vladimir, but were beaten by him in 982. The Viatichi
stubbornly resisted the introduction of Christianity, and a century later Vladi-
mir Monomakh recounts in his Testament how he waged a campaign for two
winters against the Viatichi under their prince Khodota in 1079–1080. The
Radimichi, under their ruler Wolf’s Tail (Vol’chii Khvost) unsucessfully rose up
against Vladimir in 984.
The pagan princes of Kiev, Oleg, Igor and Sviatoslav, had directed their am-
bitions mainly to the south, where they had to deal with the Bulgarians and the
Byzantine empire. They established a precarious hold over the territory along
the Black Sea between the Danube and the Dnepr. Sviatoslav even had his capi-
tal for a while in Pereiaslavets (Preslavets) on the Lower Danube.
Under the first Christian princes, Vladimir and Iaroslav, the Kievan realm
was enlarged by the conquest of the south-western corner, of what would later
be known as Galicia-Volynia. Before his conversion Vladimir had also imposed
his rule on the north-western principality of Polotsk, where he killed the prince
Rogvolod and married his daughter Rogneda (978–980).
Accordingly, the territory ruled by the Kievan grand princes at their apo-
gee, the era of Vladimir and Iaroslav and their immediate successors, consisted
of the areas inhabited by the Eastern Slavs, the ancestors of present-day Rus-
sians, Ukrainians and Belorussians. The western borders were more or less
as they still are; in the North and the East the Slavic population slowly pen-
etrated further into the forests of the Finno-Ugrian native peoples, and in the
South the gradual transition from forest-steppe to steppe remained an uneasy
and fluid border between the Russian forest-dwellers and the warlike steppe
nomads.
It was this territory which, broken up by the political fragmentation of K
ievan
Russia, produced the amalgam of old Russian principalities. Traditionally and
(i.e. the brother of Rurik’s wife). The two views of course do not exclude each other. See
also E.V. Pchelov, Genealogiia drevnerusskikh kniazei, Moskva, 2001, 111.
308 chapter 12
conveniently they were numbered a dozen, although their number was always
unstable: Galicia and Volynia in the South-West, Polotsk in the West, Novgorod
the Great in the North, Kiev and Pereiaslavl’ in the South, Murom-Riazan’ and
Vladimir-Suzdal’-Rostov in the East, Turov-Pinsk, Smolensk, Chernigov and
Novgorod-Seversk in the centre.
While the first generations of rulers of the Rurikid dynasty were not lack-
ing in drive and political acumen, their success was certainly not a matter of
personality alone. Occupation of the central economic axis of Novgorod-Kiev
gave them a strategic advantage over the tribal conglomerates inhabiting the
forested basins of the tributaries on either side of this axis.
The Primary Chronicle already reveals a clear concept of the ethnic unity of
the Russian nation. They are set off against non-Slavic peoples by pointing to
the linguistic differences. The Slavic Poles (called Liakhs in the Chronicle) are
sharply distinguished from the Russians. The component parts of the Russian
nation are usually referred to as tribes (rody); these are obviously not tribes in
the accepted sense of modern anthropology, but rather larger units, inhabiting
areas the size of a small European country.13 The term rod is also used indis-
criminately in the Chronicle to refer to other social units, such as the familia
(Rurik and his brothers Sineus and Truvor, each with their own rod, mentioned
in 860–862), larger kinship groups (“The Polianians … lived separately each
with his own rod and at their own places, each ruling his own rod”), the nation
(the Khazar rod), a race (Novgorodians of the Varangian rod), a group of na-
tions (the Slavic rod), etc. The same confusion extends to the term plemia, the
modern Russian word for tribe: the first Viking rulers of Kiev, Askold and Dir,
belonged to the following (the druzhina) of Rurik, but were said to be boyars,
not belonging to Rurik’s plemia (in this case obviously: his family or clan); in
another place the Chronicle relates that the entire Avar plemia (i.e. nation)
perished.
The Dynasty of Rurik
Although the Chronicle’s account of Rurik’s arrival in Russia and his successful
reign is embellished with accretions which can probably be relegated to the
13 Cf. L.V. Cherepnin, “Usloviia formirovaniia russkoi narodnosti do kontsa xv v.”, N.M. Dru-
zhinin & L.V. Cherepnin (eds.), Voprosy formirovaniia russkoi narodnosti i natsii, Moskva/
Leningrad, 1958, 7–104, at 19–22; B.A. Rybakov, “Soiuzy plemen i problema genezisa feo-
dalizma na Rusi”, Z.V. Udal’tsova (ed.), Problemy vozniknoveniia feodalizma u narodov
sssr, Moskva, 1969, 25–28.
province of legend, there is no serious reason to doubt the historicity of the

eponymous founder of the dynasty that ruled Russia for six centuries and that
lives on in a number of Russian princely families.14
Rurik’s successor Oleg had established Kiev as his main seat, and from that
city the entire following period of Russian history derived its name. The name,
however, may suggest more than is warranted by reality. The Kievan era is often
juxtaposed to era of the independent principalities which followed it: unity,
strength, high culture and international prestige, against fragmentation, weak-
ness, cultural and political decay. In actual fact, political unity was by no means
the rule in Kievan Russia, and the other contrasts also deserve much nuancing.
After the conversion of Russia under St. Vladimir (978–1015), only that prince
himself, his son Iaroslav the Wise (1019–1054) and the latter’s grandson Vladi-
mir ii Monomakh (113–1125) could justifiably claim to be the supreme ruler. In
other words, the eras of Kievan greatness and of the independent principali-
ties are inextricably interwoven.
The explanation lies mainly in the character of Kievan dynastic rule.
This was not very different from what was and is customary in many other
traditional patriarchal government systems, where the right to rule was per-
ceived to reside, not in the person of the monarch, but in a particular fam-
ily (for instance the Merovingians and Carolingians in Western Europe, or
the descendants of Chingis-Khan in the Mongol Empire). In pagan times, di-
vine origin and descent would often legitimize such a right; after the adop-
tion of Christianity (or Islam, as in the case of Saudi-Arabia), the will of God
could be seen as the source of the right. But the perception of a family’s right
to rule does not per se require such a clear ideological foundation. In all his-
torical cases the dynasty started with the appearance of an outstanding ruler
whose achievements spoke for themselves and made his rule incontestable
(Clovis, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Rurik, Chingis-Khan, etc.).
Upon the death of the founder of the dynasty, his possessions (which would
14 Rurik’s undeniable Scandinavian background made his personality a tricky subject

d uring the Soviet era. Modern authors have returned to the subject, but have not yet
succeeded in establishing Rurik’s origins beyond doubt. See especially dgve 2005 g.
Riurikovichi i Rossiiskaia gosudarstvenoost’, Moskva, 2008, and further E.V. Pchelov, Ge-
nealogiia drevnerusskikh kniazei. ix-nachala xi v., Moskva, 2001, 43–98; E.V. Pchelov,
“Proiskhozhdenie russkikh kniazei ot Riurika: ustnaia traditsiia ili letopisnaia kon-
struktsiia?”, dgve 2011 g., Moskva, 2013, 418–433; S.N. Azbelev, “O Riurike i Gostomysle”,
Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik, 10(20), S.Peterburg, 2005, 7–31; G.V. Glazyrina, “Praviteli
Rusi. Obzor drevneskandinavskikh istochnikov”, dgve 1999 g., Moskva, 2001, 143–159; V.I.
Merkulov, Otkuda rodom variazhskie gosti? Genealogicheskaia rekonstruktsiia po nemets-
kim istochnikam, Moskva, 2005.
310 chapter 12
include his political function) were taken over by his sons. In accordance with
the patriarchal foundations of the s ystem, the ruling family consisted of the
male descendants in the male line of a common ancestor. Illegitimacy, in pa-
gan as well as C hristian times, constituted a serious but not insurmountable
obstacle.
As long as there was an undisputed patriarch, he would exercize supreme
power from his ‘capital’ or principal seat and other male relatives would rule as
subordinate princes in various other parts of the realm. There was an informal
and natural hierarchy among them, first according to generation, and within
the generation according to age. The informality of the hierarchy could easily
be upset by ability, ambition, opportunity or sheer brutality. If everything pro-
ceeded peacefully, the supreme ruler would be succeeded, first, by his broth-
ers, and then by his sons, according to age.
Once the ruling dynasty expanded, sub-dynasties emerged and the system
gradually collapsed. Sub-dynasties tended to hold on to what their own found-
ers had acquired and to divide up their inheritance according to the old sys-
tem. In the end the subordinate principalities became minute (as happened in
many Russian regions) and then those clans which had made a timely switch
to primogeniture and had managed to keep larger territories united were able
to absorb the spoils (the rise of Muscovy).
This explains how the so-called era of the independent principalities set in
every time the Kievan throne was empty or occupied by an ineffective prince
and the Kievan era surfaced again once a new grand prince was able to impose
his authority on his brothers and cousins.15
15 The views outlined in this section are close to those of A.V. Nazarenko, who devoted
several papers to this theme: “Rodovoi suzerenitet Riurikovichei nad Rus’io (x–xi vv.)”,
dgsssr 1985, Moskva, 1986, 149–157, and “Drevnerusskoe dinasticheskoe stareishinstvo po
«riadu» Iaroslava Mudrogo i ego tipologicheskie paralleli–real’nye i mnimye”, Drevniaia
Rus’ i Slaviane, Moskva, 2009, 7–28, also in id., Iaroslav Mudryi i ego epokha, Moskva, 2008,
30–54. I first expressed my views on this question in “The Elder Brother in Russia: Senior-
ity in Russian Politico-Legal Discourse”, G. Brunner (ed.), Sowjetsystem und Ostrecht. Fest-
schrift für Boris Meissner zum 70. Geburtstag, Berlin, 1985, 211–225 and then in a chapter
“The Elder Brother in Russia”, in Feldbrugge, lmr, 167–180. Nazarenko is more inclined
to stress the legal nature of the various arrangements operating in the succession sys-
tem, while I would rather see these arrangements as informal practices, based on what
would make sense under certain circumstances, or on family custom at most. The same
legalistic approach was adopted more recently by S.A. Mel’nikov in Pravovoi rezhim nasle-
dovaniia prestola v Drevnei Rusi ix–xvi vv., Moskva, 2009, and Istoriko-pravovye faktory
evoliutsii Drevnerusskogo gosudarstva (ix–xv vv.), Moskva, 2010. Among pre-revolutionary
The Socio-Economic Nature of Kievan Russia: The Feudalism

Debate
In the section on “Medieval Law” we pointed to the inherent dilemma

b etween understanding a society by means of what we know about its law,
and interpreting its law on the basis of what we know about the society. This
dilemma is particularly prominent in the study of the law of Kievan Rus-
sia. The main relevant data are to be found in the Russkaia Pravda, which
contains a number of provisions which throw light on the socio-economic
conditions prevailing in Kievan Russia. There is mention of the buying of
slaves, of the boundaries of fields, of the relative value of domestic animals,
etc. But, u
seful as these pointers are, they fail to produce a comprehensive
picture of the type of society which existed in Russia in the 10th to the 12th
centuries. In some ways the Primary Chronicle helps to fill out more details,
although its e mphasis is on political, dynastic and military, rather than social
and economic matters. The inconclusiveness of the sources, combined with
the need to obtain a general picture of Kievan society, has given rise to a de-
bate which has been going on for at least a century and a half and in which
almost all major R ussian and Soviet historians have participated. The format
of the debate has depended very much on the general views, philosophies and
methodologies of the p articipants. For many authors, feudalism was the key
concept. More than a century ago, N.P. Pavlov-Sil’vanskii, in his main work
on feudalism in Russia, stressed the parallels between developments in early
medieval W estern Europe and in Kievan Russia.16 This approach found many
followers in Soviet times and b ecame dominant through the works of B.D.
Grekov.17
Russian authors A. Presniakov is a precursor of this approach, although his attention is

directed mainly at parallels with other Slavic nations, A.E. Presniakov, Kniazhoe pravo v
drevnei Rusi. Ocherki po istorii x–xii stoletii, Zapiski istoriko-filologicheskago fakul’teta imp.
S.-Peterburgskago Universiteta, xc, Sankt-Peterburg, 1909. See also Chapter xiii, on the
Prince.
16 N.P. Pavlov-Sil’vanskii, Feodalizm v Rossii, Sankt-Peterburg, 1907 (1st ed.). I have used the
edition edited by S.O. Shmidt and published in Moscow in 1988, which is based on the
second and slightly amended (Soviet) edition of 1923.
17 Especially Grekov, Kievskaia Rus (quoted from the 1953 Moscow edition, and the 1959
English translation Kievan Rus; page numbers from the latter source in brackets).
312 chapter 12
The Castle as the Feudal Icon

A reasonably educated member of the general public, without any spe-
cial historical knowledge, when talking about “feudal lords”, will see a
picture of a knight in his castle. This image has been inculcated from
the days of childhood and has taken root in West-European languages
in numerous sayings and expressions. If one were to start to explain the
presence of feudalism in Russia during, say, the 12th to the 15th centuries,
and the conversation would get to the abode of the Russian feudal lord,
the conclusion would be that there were actually no feudal lords, because
there were no castles. And what sort of feudalism is it, if there are no
feudal lords?
Such a spontaneous and uneducated judgment is not to be rejected out
of hand. The West-European medieval castle, in the time it was built, rep-
resented and asserted the relative power and independence of its owner.
His feudal status unquestionably implied the relativity of his indepen-
dence and the presence of a higher feudal lord, his sovereign, whether king
or high noble or ecclesiastical dignitary. But the strength of his castle pro-
vided him with some, and often quite effective protection when an armed
conflict between lord and vassal arose. Only at the end of the middle ages,
when modern states ruled by powerful princes emerged, was the provin-
cial nobleman reduced to a servant, albeit often an important and influ-
ential one, of a new type of ruler. Political systems which for some reason
were unable to bring about this transition lost out in the competition with
more effective neighbours. In the new dispensation in Western Europe,
the castle became an anomaly and was replaced by the country house.
Medieval Russia boasted impressive fortifications, but almost all
of them are of an urban nature: the kreml’ of the major towns, and
simultaneously the seat of the local ruler, prince or bishop. Additionally,
there are numerous fortified monasteries. But castle-like residences of
landowning ‘feudal lords’ are very rare.
A somewhat different way of visualizing or conceptualizing18 Kievan Rus-

sia can be summarized as “trade against agriculture”; was trade or rather
18 Russian authors occasionally use the term osmyslenie, the understanding, conceptualiza-
tion, or even visualization, of Kievan Russia. The absence of feudal castles in medieval Rus-
sia is conspicuous in the work of B.A. Rybakov, for many years a leading Soviet medievalist
and archeologist; in his major work on Kievan Russia, in a section on “The feudal castle
in the 11th and 12th centuries”, all he came up with was the castle of Vladimir Monomakh
in Liubech; B.A. Rybakov, Kievskaia Rus’ i russkie kniazhestva xii–xiii vv. Proiskhozhdenie
Rusi i stanovlenie ee gosudarstvennosti, Moskva, 2013 (orig. Moskva, 1982), 312–324.
a griculture the determining factor in shaping the society and civilization of

Kievan Russia? Kliuchevskii, one of the earliest and most articulate protago-
nists of the former view, regarded Kievan Russia, as its contemporary Byzan-
tine counterpart, primarily as a money economy.19 The Viking chieftains and
the Russian princes succeeding them found the main source of their wealth
and power in conducting trade with Byzantium. The imposition of their rule,
in his view, served above all the furthering of their trading interests. This was
the main reason for their campaign to subjugate the Eastern Slav tribes and the
introduction of various kinds of taxes and tributes. Their political and military
power was aimed chiefly at the protection of the trade routes to Byzantium
and their defence against marauding Turkic nomads threatening the empire
from the East. Kliuchevskii’s views were shared, at least in part, by Vernadsky20
and some Western authors, and by several Russian historians.
The dominant view among Soviet historians, predisposed to follow the po-
litically approved position of Grekov, was to stress the importance of agricul-
ture. Kievan society was regarded as early feudal and therefore intrinsically
closer to Europe in the early Middle Ages. Although the existence of a well-
developed trade system was not denied, the utilization of land was seen as
the determining factor for the socio-economic structure of Kievan society. In a
predominantly natural economy, the powers concerning land (its ‘ownership’),
the organization of its utilization, and the distribution of the yields would
present the main issues in shaping the political and legal system. Grekov based
his theory explicitly on Stalin’s definition of the feudal system:
The basis of the relations of production under the feudal system is that
the feudal lord owns the means of production and does not fully own the
worker in production – the serf whom the feudal lord can no longer kill,
but whom he can buy and sell.21
19 Kliuchevskii, Kurs i, 151–168 (Lectures ix and x).

20 G. Vernadsky, “On Feudalism in Kievan Russia”, Am. Slav. & East-Eur. Rev. (aseer) vii,
1948, 3–14. Reprinted in Vernadsky’s Kievan Russia, New Haven, 1948; Russian edition: G.V.
Vernadskii, Kievskaia Rus’, Tver’/Moskva, 2004, 179–189.
21 Grekov, Kievskaia Rus, 115 (149). This section of Grekov’s study also appeared in an even
more Stalinist style in a separate study “Genezis feodalizma v Rossii”, Voprosy Istorii, 1952,
No.9, reprinted in Kievskaia Rus, 517–533. The first major presentation of Grekov’s view
was at a conference at the gaimk (the Institute for the History of Material Culture) in the
spring of 1933 in a report entitled “Slavery in Kievan Russia” and published in the Institute’s
Izvestiia (1934, No.86) as “Slavery and Feudalism in Kievan Russia”. Extensive descriptions
of the discussions in which Grekov’s report was a central issue are in M.B. Sverdlov, Ob-
shchestvennyi stroi Drevnei Rusi v russkoi istoricheskoi nauke xviii–xx vv., Sankt-Peterburg,
1996, 192–212, and Froianov, KRoi, 232–249 (also in Froianov, Nachala, 243–260).
314 chapter 12
In order to justify his characterization of Kievan society as feudal, Grekov had

to show that agriculture based on large-scale landowning was the prevailing
mode of production during the period concerned. This was indeed one of the
main themes in his major work on Kievan Russia, and he even went so far as to
contend that feudal relations and feudal property existed among the Eastern
Slavs as early as between the 6th and the 8th centuries.22
The feudalism issue muddied the waters of the wider-ranging question
of the nature of Kievan Russian society. The Grekov school proceeded on
two assumptions: the Marxist-Leninist concept of feudalism, and the feudal
character (in its specific Marxist sense) of Kievan Russia. For them, the
feudalism concept of course was not an assumption but scientific truth, but a
non-Marxist could still accept such usage as a working definition. However, de-
claring Kievan Russia feudal (if only in the Marxist meaning of the term) was
intellectually questionable. S.V. Iushkov, in his legal history textbook, openly
admitted that the contemporary sources did not contain anything to enable
one to conclude how and when feudal landownership arose in Kievan Russia.23
This problem can only be solved, he continued, by reference to the ‘foundation
layers’ (osnovopolozhniki, i.e. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin). He then p roduced
a quotation which indicated that Lenin was on his side.24
The weakness of the construction was already clear to his contemporaries.
Some of them found ways to circumvent the rigid schematism of the dominant
theory.25 Other historians, while accepting the central positions of Grekov’s
argument, proposed solutions to deal with various inconsistencies.26 These
concerned such topics as the role of slavery, the importance of towns and for-
eign trade, ownership of land by peasants, and others. More significant shifts
occurred during the last decades of the Soviet Union when the intellectual cli-
mate allowed a greater variety of opinions. This trend continued in the post-
Soviet period, to the effect that it is difficult now to point to a clearly dominant
theory.
Is it necessary for the legal historian to occupy a position in this debate? Yes
and no. As the legal sources are often fragmentary and occasionally cryptic, a
general understanding about the society in which these laws operated is very
desirable. In many cases, however, the legal sources are sufficiently clear by
22 Grekov, Kievskaia Rus, 116 (150).

23 Iushkov, Istoriia, 112.
24 Ibid., 114: “… landowners imposed servitude [kabalili] on peasants already in the times of
the Russkaia Pravda”, not even a very persuasive formulation.
25 S.B. Romanov’s highly original Liudi i nravy Drevnei Rusi, Leningrad, 1947, is an example.
Grekov attempted to prevent its publication.
26 I refer to the descriptions by Sverdlov and Froianov, indicated above.
themselves, and then they may in fact help in completing the picture of the
society in which they operated.
Moreover, a certain amount of practical common sense could take some of
the acrimony out of the discussion. Much of it is essentially about concepts
without authoritatively fixed contents. As argued earlier in this book, debates
about when exactly there was a state in Kievan Russia (a most popular top-
ic for many Russian historians, if one looks at the books and articles about
‘statehood’ – gosudarstvennost’, in Kievan Russia) are often meaningless be-
cause everybody is free to use his own definition of a state. More generally, the
juxtapositions which kept the debate going for many decades (trade versus
agriculture, feudal landownership or rather something else, a central state or
a loose confederation, etc.) are perhaps not as stark as their respective propo-
nents pretend. In the end, nobody could deny that there was slavery in Kievan
Russia, that the urban aspect was more preponderant than in early medieval
Western Europe, that princely landowning co-existed with land held by peas-
ants, to mention some of the salient issues.
This said, the parallels with Western Europe (in Merovingian and Caro-
lingian times) remain more meaningful and productive than the ones with
contemporary Byzantium. The basic reason for this is that Kievan Russia and
Merovingian-Carolingian Europe found themselves at similar stages of histori-
cal development: late Iron Age ‘barbarian’ tribal societies recently converted to
Christianity and entering the orbit of the civilization of the extinct Roman Em-
pire. If foreign trade had been the determining factor for the socio-economic
character of Kievan society, its collapse in the wake of the Tatar-Mongol inva-
sions in the 13th century should have resulted in the breakdown of the tradi-
tional socio-economic structures. This was evidently not the case.
The lasting contribution of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in my view,
is the insight that economic factors and considerations are of great impor-
tance in almost all areas of human endeavour. Although they were not the
first to make this point, they reached a wider audience than any predecessor,
for reasons which do not concern us now. The historical theory which they
built on this insight was based on certain 19th century views and suffered
moreover from numerous internal inconsistencies. As a result, the progress
of societal d evelopment in five stages (the piatichlenka)27 as proclaimed by
Marxism, had an inhibiting effect on the progress of historical studies in the
communist world. It made it difficult to approach the sources with an open
mind.
27 Primordial communist, clan-tribal, slave-owning, feudal and capitalist societies, each

with their specific modes of production.
316 chapter 12
In Chapter 1 it was already argued that the intellectual attitudes engendered

by Marxism-Leninism have survived to some extent the collapse of the Soviet
system. This concerns in particular what I have termed conceptual realism,
the conviction that general concepts or ideas existed before, and indepen-
dently of, their specific manifestations. Such a conviction made sense with-
in Marxism itself, because, once one accepts the scientific nature of Marxist
theory, concepts like “class”, “ownership”, “feudalism”, “state”, etc., are consid-
ered to be discoveries revealed by some kind of scientific investigation and
therefore actually existing. Then one can debate the existence of slavery or
feudalism in Kievan Russia; did they occur or not? Once the acceptance of
Marxist theory is recognized as a belief, instead of an inevitable conclusion
based on scientific investigation, such questions become meaningless if there
is no agreement about the precise meaning of such terms. Nonetheless, quite
a few post-Soviet scholars still pay great attention to them in interpreting the
materials available.
Others, however, have left this unproductive path and have started to
look at those materials in new ways, drawing also on the experience of pre-
revolutionary Russian scholarship and the manifold approaches of foreign his-
torians. A lot of creative energy is unleashed by the realization that the variety
of human societies cannot be encapsulated by the Soviet five-stages straight-
jacket and that, anyway, nothing dictates the strict sequence of these succes-
sive stages.
This kind of awareness has, for instance, allowed renewed interest in the
parallels between the early Kievan era and pre-medieval Western Europe. As
indicated above, these parallels are numerous and it would not be excessively
speculative to assume that such similarity is not just a matter of convergence,
but is based rather on common origins in an Iron Age Europe, populated pre-
dominantly by peoples of Indo-European stock still sharing many common
traits. Kievan society arose on the basis of this heritage, in the specific circum-
stances of its geographical location and chronological frame.
Certain facts about the Eastern Slavs in the pre-Kievan era have been es-
tablished beyond doubt. Although they inhabited mainly the river valleys in
a largely unconquered wilderness of forest and forest-steppe and engaged in
hunting and fishing, they were an agricultural people whose livelihood relied
primarily on their crops. The existence of slavery and other indications of
social differentiation, documented by foreign sources, lead to the inevitable
conclusion that agriculture was not confined to small-scale farming, but that
there were also agricultural enterprises of some size, where dependent peas-
ants worked for a master, a ‘landowner’.
The existence of towns is much better documented and a number of towns

were centres of domestic and also international trade (see Chapter 15, on
Towns). The most important towns became in time the centres of government,
where the local rulers or princes would normally reside.
The position of the prince was closely bound up with that of his retinue, the
druzhina. The wealth accumulated through warfare, trade, and various forms
of taxation, was shared by the prince and his followers. The druzhina was re-
cruited from various contingents, such as foreign adventurers or enterprising
locals. It would also therefore include wealthy inhabitants, such as landown-
ers. (More extensively on the druzhina: see Chapter 13, on the Prince, the sub-
section on druzhina, in the section on the prince and his officials).
Compared to Western Europe of the era of the Merovingians and Carolin-
gians, agriculture and landowning appeared to play a less prominent role in
Kievan Russia. The relatively modest number of written sources from the earli-
est period is more concerned with the transfer of wealth through the gift or
sale or bequest of chattels, than with transactions concerning land. This does
not alter the fact that Kievan Russia, like the empire of the Franks, was an
agricultural economy. The visible wealth in gold, jewellery, ornate weapons,
expensive furs and textiles, was only the tip of the iceberg. If it had not been
there, Kievan Russia would have been less spectacular, but not very different;
in other words, it would still be an agricultural country with a distinct class of
agricultural landowners. The emphasis on trade, urban life, the money econ-
omy, in brief, on the Byzantine parallels, may be correct in respect of certain
aspects of Kievan culture, but with some scholars it has led to a denial of the
primary role of agriculture, on the mere ground that the sources are almost
silent about it.
The Viking Question
One of the most famous entries in the Primary Chronicle is for the years 859–
862. It describes how the Slavic and Finnish tribes of North-West Russia were
subject to tribute payable to the Varangians (Scandinavians), while the South-
ern Russian tribes paid tribute to the Khazars. Then the Varangians were driv-
en out, but this resulted in chaotic inter-tribal warfare. To put an end to this,
the Finnish (Chud’ and Ves’) and Slavic tribes (Krivichi and Slovenes) agreed to
invite a prince from abroad, from a particular Varangian tribe called the Russes
(Rusini). They said to the Russes: “Our land is great and rich, but there is no
order in it. Come to rule and reign over us.”
318 chapter 12
If the Chronicler is taken at his word, the quotation could be read as casting
doubt on the political competence of the local population. This consideration
has had a distorting effect on the general debate concerning the nature of early
Kievan Russia. The involvement of a foreign ethnic factor will inevitably com-
plicate the understanding of a particular phase of a country’s history. This dif-
ficulty is aggravated when the evaluation of such a factor becomes a matter of
emotional and political significance. Viking invasions and settlements played
an important role in the history of many European nations, but only in Rus-
sia did they arouse passionate controversies. The meaning attributed to the
Chronicler’s colourful narrative has been emblematic for this development.
Before 1917, the lines of the struggle could be drawn roughly between Slavo-
philes and Westernizers. In the ussr, once Stalinism had been imposed, the
issue became completely politicized, like numerous other academic questions.
The almost grotesque proportions which the debate assumed may be illustrat-
ed by the following quotation from the handbook on the history of the ussr,
published by the Institute of History of the ussr Academy of Sciences, under
the editorship of the leading Soviet medievalist of the time, B.D. Grekov:28
“The Anglo-American falsifiers of history and their cosmopolitan lackeys

from the White emigration are now trying again to use this legend for
their foul purposes, attempting in vain to defame the glorious past of the
great Russian people.”
The position taken by Grekov and his followers, dominant for many years,
wove the rejection of any meaningful Scandinavian influence into its general
perception of Kievan Russia: a well-established feudal Slavic state, which obvi-
ously did not need any outside help in ordering its affairs. Full-scale opposi-
tion to this approach, normanizm, bordering on high treason, was politically
impossible, but scholars often got away with proposing modifications and mi-
nor divergences. In later years a more dispassionate treatment of the question
replaced the former rigidity, and in post-Soviet times the debate was opened
up completely,29 although, as pointed out above, many Soviet concepts and
perceptions continued to be active.
Mel’nikova has adduced much material to place the “invitation of Rurik”
in the general context of Viking relations with rulers of countries attacked
28 B.D. Grekov (ed.), Ocherki istorii sssr; Period feodalizma ix–xv vv., Moskva, 1953, 76.
29 The role of E.A. Mel’nikova, a leading expert in the field of Russo-Scandinavian relations
in the proto-middle ages, was particularly influential in this respect. Her most important
publications in this field were collected in E.A. Mel’nikova, Drevniaia Rus’ i Skandinaviia.
Izbrannye trudy, Moskva, 2012.
by them.30 Frankish and Anglo-Saxon kings, after several fruitless attempts

to repel the invaders permanently by force, hit upon the device of suffering
powerful bands to settle in their kingdoms, which allowed a gradual integra-
tion of the newcomers. Part of the deal was that the new allies would assist in
keeping out competing Viking gangs. This process was clothed in legal form by
the conclusion of pacts. The Rurik episode fits into this pattern. Scandinavian
warrior-traders had been active for a long time in the Russian river network.
The population of Novgorod reached an agreement with a particular group
of Vikings by which the latter would be allowed a permanent presence in ex-
change for effective protection. There has been some debate among Russian
historians about the legal status of such an agreement: was it something in
the nature of a treaty, or rather a unilaterally imposed arrangement. In the
view taken in this study, such a debate is sterile, because it attempts to apply
modern legal concepts to a situation occurring at a time when these concepts
were unknown.
The archeological evidence for the Scandinavian presence in Russia from at
least the middle of the 8th century is indisputable. The rise of Kievan Russia is
closely bound up with the North–South trade between Scandinavia and Byz-
antium and the Near East. The considerable amount of information on Scandi-
navian activity in early Kievan Russia based on material remains is abundantly
complemented by Old-Norwegian (Icelandic) sources. Trade and incidental
warfare (piracy may be a more apt designation) were inextricably connected.
The major eastern cities of the time occur in the sagas and other literary works
with their own Norse names (Miklagard-Constantinople, Holmgard-Novgorod,
Kenugard-Kiev, Palteskia-Polotsk, Aldeigjuborg-Staraia Ladoga; Russia itself is
Gardariki, ‘land of the towns’). The sagas are less reliable as historical sources
than other literary genres, but they do offer far more information.
A major role was played by the numerous descendants of the first king of
all Norway, Harald Haarfagr (‘Fairhair’, ca.850–933). His son and successor Erik
Blodoks (‘Bloody Axe’, † 954) is the first of them to be mentioned as engaging
in raids in Bjarmaland, a region to be located approximately in N orth-Western
Russia.31 Erik’s son Harald Graafell (‘Gray Fur’, king of Norway, ca.960-ca.970)
30 Mel’nikova, op.cit., 249–256 (“Riad v Skazanii o prizvanii variagov i ego evropeiskie i skan-
dinavskie paralleli”); ibidem, 190–200 (Mel’nikova, V.Ia. Petrukhin, “«Riad» legendy o priz-
vanii variagov v kontekste rannesrednevekovoi diplomatii”).
31 In the saga of Harald Fairhair and in Egil Skallagrimsson’s saga; see T.N. Dzhakson, I.G.
Konovalova, A.V. Podosinova (eds.), Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh istochnikov, Tom
V, Drevneskandinavskie istochniki, Moskva, 2009, 90–91, 207–208. The exact location of
Bjarmaland is disputed; although originally identifiable as the Far North of Scandinavia,
it appears later to refer to more eastern regions; ibid.
320 chapter 12
is mentioned as returning to Bjarmaland and winning a great battle (Harald

Graafell’s Saga).32 Other members of the Ynglingar dynasty turn up as visitors
at the court of St.Vladimir and his son Iaroslav the Wise, or as traders in Russia.
Most conspicuous are two Norwegian kings Olav, Olav I Tryggvason (995–1000,
*963) and Olav ii Haraldsson, also known as St. Olav (1015–1028, *995).
There are several versions of the Saga of Olav Tryggvason, but the most
interesting in our context is the fragment which relates how, after being ran-
somed as a boy by Estonian pirates, he ended up at the court of Vladimir in
Novgorod, where he remained for about ten years, to return to Norway to re-
claim the throne.33 Olav was apparently much favoured by Vladimir and his
wife (probably Rogneda of Polotsk) and much wealth and several important
military commands were bestowed on him. The story contains details about
local customs and laws in Novgorod at the time (i.e. before the conversion of
Vladimir in 988). Olav Tryggvason was a Christian and one of the later versions
of the saga improbably ascribes to him an important part in the conversion of
Vladimir.
Of comparable interest is the Saga of Olav Haraldsson, a great-grandson of
Björn Farmand (†927), one of the numerous sons of Harald Fairhair. Olav was
born in 995 and became king of Norway in 1015. He was expelled by the Danish
king Canute (Knut) in 1028 and died in the battle of Stiklestad in 1030 in an at-
tempt to regain his throne. He energetically continued the Christianization of
Norway, begun by Olav Tryggvason, and came to be venerated as St. Olav (dur-
ing his lifetime he was known as Olaf Digre, ‘the Fat’). He spent some time in
the period 1015–1019 at the court of Iaroslav and his wife Ingigerd (herself the
daughter of the king of the Swedes, Olav Skottkonung, and the half-sister of St.
Olav’s wife Astrid, also a daughter of Olav Skottkonung). According to the saga,
Iaroslav attempted to keep him in Novgorod as a military commander, but Olav
did not stay. He was active in trading with Russia, through partnerships with
Norwegian merchants, and returned for some time to Russia after he had been
deposed by the Danish king Knut in 1028; he raised an army with the help of
Iaroslav and after he had been beaten and killed, his son Magnus remained at
Iaroslav’s court for a while, until sufficient support for his return to the Norwe-
gian throne (in 1035) had been raised.
32 Ibid., 93–94.
33 Vladimir was sent to Novgorod by his father, grand prince Sviatoslav of Kiev, in 970. In 980
he himself began to occupy the Kievan throne, so the Novgorod sojourn of Harald Tryg-
gvason must have occurred within this period.
The most informative is the Saga of Eimund; it relates the adventures of

another great-great-grandson34 of Harald Fairhair in Russia at the time of Iaro-
slav the Wise. Eimund came to Russia in 1015 or 1016, right after the death of St.
Vladimir, when Iaroslav was still in Novgorod (Holmgard) and embroiled in the
struggle for the succession. Eimund, in the blunt fashion of the Icelandic sagas,
declared his intention to offer the services of himself and his companions to
the highest bidder. After some haggling they reached a detailed agreement for
one year’s service. The following chapters are devoted to Iaroslav’s ultimately
successful attempt to secure the grand princely dignity and the Kievan throne;
Eimund’s contribution to Iaroslav’s triumph is presented as decisive and much
attention is devoted to the subsequent squabbling between the two princes
over Iaroslav’s unwillingness to recompense Eimund. In all this, Iaroslav’s wife,
the Swedish princess Ingigerd, played a prominent role. As a historical nar-
rative, the latter part of the saga is quite unreliable, but the picture it paints
of the leading actors at that particular time in Kievan Russia is livelier than
the one offered by the Primary Chronicle. The parallels with the account of
the Chronicle are striking and the recruitment of Eimund and his companions
probably coincides with Iaroslav’s request for Viking support in 1015/1016, the
event which started the developments leading to the adoption of the oldest
part of the Russkaia Pravda.35
Although Russian sources on the Viking presence in early Kievan Russia are
by no means as abundant as those from Old-Norse literature, the famous quo-
tation from the Chronicle under the years 859–862 is followed by many others
testifying to the activities of Vikings (Varangians) in that period. The 10th cen-
tury treaties with Byzantium represent a special case. The participating war-
riors and merchants all have Scandinavian names and the forces commanded
by the princes of Kiev consisted apparently almost completely of Varangians.
The last time Varangians are mentioned in the Chronicle is in 1036, when Iaro-
slav ranged the men from Kiev on the right, the Varangians in the centre, and
the men from Novgorod on the left flank in a battle against the Pechenegs. After
the reign of Iaroslav, Varangians are no longer mentioned in Russian chronicles
as separate units of mercenaries or as a separate contingent in the service of a
prince. One can only conclude that the practice of calling on auxiliary forces
from Scandinavia had come to an end and that the Scandinavian element pres-
ent in Russia had been absorbed in the general population.
34 Son of Hring, son of Dag, son of Hring, son of Harald Fairhair. This branch of the Ynglingar
were petty kings of Hedemark.
35 Dzhakson a.o., op cit., 121–138.
322 chapter 12
The general picture which results is that bands of Scandinavian (Viking)

warriors/traders were prominently active in Russia along the main waterways
to Byzantium and further south and east from at least the middle of the 8th
century; that some of them settled in Russia and achieved great political and
economic prominence; that a particular Viking clan, the Rurikids, succeeded
in acquiring monarchical power over the entire country; that they maintained
lively relations with Scandinavia until the first decades of the 11th century,
through dynastic marriages and the practice of calling on military aid from
their former homeland; and that significant Varangian influence is no longer
observable in later years.
For the purposes of legal history, the ‘Varangian question’ may actually be
less weighty. The most obvious traces of a Scandinavian presence are to be
found in the Russkaia Pravda. Art. 10 of the Short Pravda grants a Scandinavian
(Variag and Kolbiag) victim of minor violence the right to prove his case by
taking an oath, instead of producing two eyewitnesses (vidoki), which was the
normal procedure. The reason for this privilege was clearly that it could be dif-
ficult or impossible for a foreigner to produce an eyewitness. The rule returned
in a somewhat different version in art. 31 of the Expanded Pravda.36 Another
kind of evidentiary advantage for foreigners (Variags and others) is granted by
art. 18 of the Expanded Pravda; in the case of an accusation of homicide, the
defendant needs seven ‘character witnesses’ (poslukhi) to prove his innocence,
a Variag or other foreigner only two.37
Art. 11 of the Short Pravda obliged a Variag or Kolbiag who had given shelter
to a fugitive slave to hand him over to the rightful owner within three days.
Various sources indicate that the Scandinavians usually lived separately, which
would make it easier for a fugitive slave to hide with them; this would explain
the separate rule. The rule returned in the Expanded Pravda (art. 32), but then
applied to everybody, not just Scandinavians.
36 In one of the families of Expanded Pravda manuscripts (the Ferapontov version) included
in the Merilo Pravednoe collection, the text of the Expanded Pravda is preceded by a few
provisions which repeat a few Expanded Pravda provisions in slightly different wording.
The origin of this text is disputed. In a fragment entitled “On the bloody man” (O kro-
vavom muzhe) arts.29–31 are rephrased and to the words variag ili kolobiag is added “who
are not baptized” (kreshcheniia ne imeia). As this text probably originated at a time when
both Scandinavia and Russia had adopted Christianity, the author of the addition was
presumably referring to a situation in the past, when most natives had become Christians,
but certain non-Russian residents were still pagans. Cf. Tikhomirov, Posobie, 120; prp i, 211,
218–219; rz i, 73, 128–129.
37 Most authors read the last word of the provision, togda (in the standard, Trinity i, copy),
as to dva. There are convincing reasons for doing so.
Variags or Varangians is the usual term to refer to people from Scandinavia

(Norway, Sweden or Denmark). The precise meaning of Kolbiag is much dis-
puted. In Russian (Kolbiag) and Byzantine (Kulpingi) sources they are almost
always mentioned together with Varangians. They are probably identical with
the Kylfingar of Old-Norse sources (e.g. the Saga of Egil Skallagrimsson). A like-
ly hypothesis is that they were a specific Scandinavian population which had
settled in Russia (Kylfingaland is used in Scandinavian sources as a synonym
for Gardariki – Russia). This would explain why they were mentioned sepa-
rately (as indigenous foreigners) along with Varangians (foreigners who were
only temporary residents).38
A comparison of the relevant texts of the Short and Expanded Pravda sug-
gests that the special legal status of Vikings was already on its way out in the
latter text. Varangians and Kolbiags do no longer appear in later legal sources;
Viking mercenaries and traders had stopped playing a significant role in Russia
and those that had settled in Russia had become Russians. The reference made
below to a rephrased version of art. 31, added to some rp manuscripts, could
indicate that the copyist had felt it necessary to explain the by then historical
terms of Variag and Kolbiag.
Tribute and Inter-Tribal Relationships in Early Kievan Russia
In its numerous references to tribute (dan’, ‘gift’) being paid by one tribe to
another, the Primary Chronicle paints a vivid picture of the formation of the
Kievan empire. Tribute, as it occurs in the Chronicle, can be defined as the
expression of political subordination through gifts or payments. It can be re-
garded as a forerunner of a regular fiscal system, and as such it has been an
important element in the emergence of early states. The Primary Chronicle is
itself the source for almost everything we know about tribute in early Kievan
Russia.39
The earliest mention of tribute in the Chronicle is in the introductory part,
which covers the period before 852, without any indication of the year, where
it is related how after the death of the legendary founders of Kiev, Kii, Shchek
and Khoriv, the Polianians started to pay tribute to the (non-Slavic) Khazars,
38 Cf. Dzhakson, op.cit, 205; Vernadsky, Laws, 27; Grekov, B.D. (ed.), Pravda Russkaia ii, Mosk-
va/Leningrad, 1947, 85–86; Tikhomirov, Posobie, 77; Baranowski, 210–214.
39 The main special study on tribute in early Kievan Russia is S.M. Kashtanov, “Vozniknove-
nie dani v Drevnei Rusi”, V.L. Ianin (ed.), Ot Drevnei Rusi k Rossii novogo vremeni. Sbornik
statei. K 70-letiiu Anny Leonidovny Khoroshkevich, Moskva, 2003, 57–71.
324 chapter 12
at the rate of one sword per hearth. After some time the tariff must have been
changed, because under 859 the chronicler reports that the Polianians, Seve-
rians and Viatichi paid the Khazars a white squirrel skin per fireplace.40 At
the same time, in the North of Russia, the East Slav (Slovenes and Krivichi)
and Finnish (Chud’, Meria and Ves’) tribes paid tribute to the Varangians from
beyond the sea; the complications following their refusal to continue this pay-
ment led to the establishment of the rule of Rurik in the North of Russia, as
related before in this chapter. In 883 a tribute of a black marten skin per head
is mentioned, to be paid by the Derevlians, after they were subjugated by Oleg.
Otherwise, tribute seems to have consisted of money or silver or gold, or goods
of comparable value. The first mention of monetary tribute is under 880–882,
when the people of Novgorod had to pay 300 grivna annually to the Kievan
prince. More than a century later, in 1012–1014, the Novgorod tribute was re-
ported to be 3000 grivna, and the refusal to pay it any longer set in motion
the process which propelled Iaroslav the Wise to the Kievan throne and which
was also responsible for the drafting of the oldest segment of the rp. In the
run-up to the treaty of 911 with Byzantium there is much talk of various kinds
of tribute, but nothing of that returns in the actual text. The amounts men-
tioned were incredibly high and probably had their origin in the chronicler’s
imagination. Another rate which occurs in the Primary Chronicle is a shilling
(shch’liagu41), per head, paid by the Radimichi to the Khazars and then in 885
transferred to Oleg, and per plough, paid by the Viatichi to the Khazars and in
956–964 transferred to the Kievan prince Sviatoslav.
In the narrative of the Chronicle, tribute is imposed upon an entire tribe. As
the tribal territory was usually centred around a principal town, such a town
itself could also appear as the tributary debtor. This was the case in the 945
episode when Igor, after returning from the raid against Byzantium, tried to
increase the tribute paid by the Derevlians. He was killed in the attempt, but
his widow Olga returned in 946 and laid siege to the Derevlian capital Iskoro-
sten’. According to an improbable story containing many traditional motifs,
she subdued them through a ruse, imposing a light tribute on the town, three
40 Pelts of wild animals constituted one of the principal currencies in early Russia. The most
commonly used furs were those of squirrels (veveritsa, veksha) and of martens (kuna).
Along with furs, precious metals (gold and silver) were used either in the form of coins
(mostly Byzantine and Arabic), or in another form, such as ingots. From the text of the
Short Pravda it is clear that even that early the names of various furs referred to monetary
units rather than to actual pelts. See the Appendix on the monetary system of Kievan
Russia.
41 Probably an Arab dirhem; cf. Cross, Sherbowitz-Wetzor, The Russian Primary Chronicle,
234 (note 26).
pigeons and three sparrows per house, which she then used to set the town
alight. When she had taken the town she imposed a heavy tribute, two thirds
of which went to Kiev, and one third to her own town Vyshgorod.
This takes us to the more complicated question of the recipient of tribute.
First and foremost it is the prince himself as the eminent representative of
the victorious tribe who exacts, negotiates for, and receives the tribute from
the submitting population. There are quite a few indications that custom de-
manded the further distribution of the tribute received. The 300 grivna tribute
imposed by the Kievan prince Oleg in 880–882 on Novgorod was to be paid to
“the Varangians”, most likely the Varangian garrison. A century later (978–980)
the newly installed Novgorod prince Vladimir is reported quarrelling with his
Varangian troops, who said to him: “This city belongs to us, and we took it;
hence we desire tribute from it at the rate of 2 grivna per head.” In 1012–1014,
two thirds of the 3000 grivna tribute went to Kiev (the grand prince) and one
third to the Novgorod garrison.
Several other examples could be quoted, and together they suggest that
there existed a system for distributing tribute, an idea which is also suggested
by common sense. There was clearly a territorial element within this system.
In the negotiations leading up to the 907 treaty with Byzantium the Chroni-
cle mentions “the sums required for the various Russian cities: first Kiev, then
Chernigov, Pereiaslavl’, Polotsk, Rostov, Liubech, and the other cities”, adding :
“In these cities lived great princes subject to Oleg.” The 971 treaty with Byzan-
tium indicated that within the army there was a system in operation of distrib-
uting fixed shares among the various ranks. The participation of Scandinavian
chieftains with their warrior bands further complicated the matter. Distribu-
tion patterns among Scandinavian warriors are well documented in Icelandic
sources and the vitality of such patterns among the Russian Varangians is dem-
onstrated by the example offered above.
As to the occasions for paying tribute, two types can be distinguished: the
annual tribute, imposed as an expression of political dependence, and inci-
dental tribute, expressing a temporary inferiority of the tributary party and
variously to be regarded as the price paid for a peace treaty, punishment for
disloyalty or aggressive behaviour, etc. The annual tribute was collected in late
autumn or early winter when the prince and his comrades-in-arms would trav-
el around for precisely that purpose, as well as for hunting and other festivities.
This was called the poliud’e (“visiting the people”), a term which was used more
or less as a synonym of dan’. Originally, however, poliud’e represented gifts by
which the prince was recognized by his own people, while tribute (dan’) was
paid by a people which had been forced or persuaded to subject itself to the
prince. In the course of time such a distinction would fade.
326 chapter 12
The Chronicle’s numerous references to the exaction and payment of

t ribute leave little doubt that at the basis of the practice was the eternal ten-
sion between might and right. Initially a stronger group imposed its will on a
weaker group; then the exercise of naked power was formalized by the imposi-
tion of tribute. This step implicitly restricted the exercise of power, because it
is (fortunately) in human nature that a stronger party attempts to rationalize
the imposition of its will on a weaker party. “You must pay me, because I
protect you, because you have offended me, or done me harm, etc.” From then
on the refusal to pay tribute can be construed as the violation of an agree-
ment. The legalization of the power relationship may be of some advantage
to the t ributary group, because it transforms the latter into an ally and a client
of the more powerful party. Ultimately, however, it is the power relationship
which is decisive; when the tribute cannot be enforced any longer, the connec-
tion falls apart.
The practice of imposing tribute was, in a rudimentary form, the interna-
tional law instrument which welded the Kievan state together. This function is
particularly manifest in the various instances of Russian tribes who were per-
suaded by the Kievan princes to shift their allegiance from the Khazars to Kiev.
The practice of paying tribute may have continued for some time after the
unification of the Eastern Slav tribes under the sceptre of Kiev. In his entry for
984, reporting the renewed imposition of tribute on the Radimichi, the chroni-
cler added that it was paid “until the present day” (i.e. presumably 1116). The
Novgorod tribute, instituted in 880–882, was stopped by Iaroslav in 1015 (the
two thirds due to Kiev, one third went to the Varangians; see above) and prob-
ably not re-imposed by him when he became grand prince of Kiev a few years
later, but the one third due to the Varangian garrison was said to have been
paid until the death of Iaroslav (1054). The latter payment is also illustrative
of the ultimate fate of tribute: it was absorbed into the regular fiscal system.
Once its original function, cementing the unity of the Kievan realm, had been
fulfilled, it became superfluous. In the latter part of the Kievan era tribute ap-
pears only as an imposition on non-Russian nations: in 1066 prince Rostislav
of Tmutorakan’ received tribute from the Kasogians (a North-Caucasian tribe)
and in 1096 the Finnish Pechora tribe paid tribute to Novgorod.
The traditional term for tribute, dan’ (‘gift’), began to be used again at least
as early as around 1130, when it referred to a general imposition, not connected
to specific assets or transactions.42 According to S.M. Kashtanov, who quotes
42 In the famous grant made by Mstislav Vladimirovich, grand prince of Kiev, in 1130 to the
Iur’ev monastery in Novgorod; gvnp No.81, prp ii, 102 (the oldest Russian charter surviv-
ing in the original; also discussed in Chapter xviii, on Rural Russia).
a number of examples from the 14th century, this new form of tribute consti-
tuted a general tax imposed by the prince on his own subjects. Most examples
are from gramoty exempting the beneficiary from the payment of all taxes, ex-
plicity including dan’ in some cases. This type of tribute was closely connected
with the tribute Russian princes had to pay to the Tatar overlords, called vyk-
hod (‘exit’). The vykhod was collected exclusively by the major independent
princes (grand princes), as part of general taxation in the form of dan’. These
were the princes who had reserved the exclusive right of dealing with the Tatar
khan in their treaties with apanage princes. Legally, the relationship could
be described as follows. A small group of grand princes, owing their patents to
the khan, were personally obliged to pay an annual amount (the vykhod) to
the khan. For this reason a certain sum was added to the traditional general
taxation, applicable in the principality concerned (the dan’). But in their testa-
ments and treaties the princes were quite explicit about the permanent char-
acter of the dan’ in its new form; if they would no longer be forced to hand over
the vykhod, they would keep the whole sum themselves (see also the relevant
section in Chapter 13).43
Territory: A Postscript
Traditionally, a state is defined as an entity possessing three attributes: a terri-

tory, a population, and a government. The following chapters will be devoted
to the prince, and his government, and various legal aspects of the population
turn up in different chapters. This leaves something to say about territory, in
addition to what was discussed in the beginning of this chapter.
Among Soviet authors, this topic did not arouse much interest, but pre-
revolutionary textbooks usually paid some attention to it, as part of a system-
atic treatment of the state. The first two chapters (“books”) of the first part of
Sergeevich’s handbook were typically devoted to territory and population.44
Vladimirskii-Budanov followed the same pattern; in his handbook of Russian
legal history, territory and population were the subject of the first two sec-
tions in all three parts devoted to “state law”, dealing with the zemskii period
(the period of the ‘lands’: 9th–13th century), the Muscovy period (14th–17th
century), and the period of the Empire.45 All these fragments show that there
43 S.M. Kashtanov, Finansy srednevekovoi Rusi, Moskva, 1988, 6–21, esp.6–10.

44 Sergeevich, Drevnosti i, 1–100 (“The State Territory”), 101–596 (“The Population”).
45 Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 39–49, 126–135, 239–241 (“Territory”) and 50–62, 135–150, 239–246
(“Population”). Same approach with D’iakonov, 60–67, 235–245 (“Territory”), 68–113,
249–396 (“Population”).
328 chapter 12
was much less to say about “territory” than about “population”, which invited
wide-ranging discussions of the different social classes and their respective le-
gal status. The neglect of territory as a legal category in Soviet literature was
to a great extent compensated for by A.N. Nasonov’s monograph of 1951 “«The
Russian Land» and the Formation of the Territory of the Old-Russian State”.46
Nasonov sketched the territorial formation of medieval Russia, starting from
the nucleus of the original “Russian Land”, the regions of Kiev, Chernigov and
Pereiaslavl’. Further chapters in his study dealt with the formation of the lands
of Novgorod, Pskov, Western Russia (Galicia-Volynia), Polotsk, Smolensk, Ros-
tov-Suzdal’ and Murom-Riazan’. Nasonov continued the tradition of his 19th
century predecessors in adopting the “land” (zemlia) as the central concept in
describing early developments.
“Land” preceded more explicitly legal terms, such as kniazhestvo (“prin-
cipality”) or volost’ (“power”, hence “territory subject to the power of a par-
ticular ruler”), to designate a specific territory. In early Kievan times, “land”
referred usually to the area inhabited by a particular tribe, characterized by
common customs and other factors, but not necessarily by central rule. Such
a land could not yet be regarded as a state, but it did have a roughly defined
territory.
The further articulation of a territory (its more precise geographical defini-
tion) went hand-in-hand with, and was an element of, the coagulation of tribal
lands into state-like entities. The case of the Polotians, as related by the Chron-
icle, may serve as an example of the transition from tribal land, through the es-
tablishment of central rule, to incorporation in a well-defined larger state. This
tribe took its name from the Polota river and the town of Polotsk. They were
related to the larger north-western tribe of the Krivichi (centred around the
later town of Smolensk), of which they formed a sub-division. During the lat-
ter half of the 10th century, a Viking warlord, Rogvolod (Rognvald), established
his rule in Polotsk. The grand prince of Kiev at that time, Sviatoslav, had placed
one of his sons, Vladimir, as his representative in Novgorod. When Rogvolod
refused to give his daughter Rogned in marriage to Vladimir, the latter killed
Rogvolod (in 980) and took his daughter and the whole principality by force.
Later on, when Vladimir had succeeded his father in Kiev in 1019, he placed his
son by Rogned, Iziaslav, as apanage prince in Polotsk.
46 A.N. Nasonov, “Russkaia zemlia” i obrazovanie territorii drevnerusskogo gosudarstva. Istor-

iko-geograficheskoe issledovanie, Moskva, 1951, and republished in 2002 in S ankt-Peterburg,
together with Mongoly i Rus’. Istoriia tatarskoi politiki na Rusi, originally published, Mosk-
va, 1940. References are to the 2002 publication.
The question of territory as a legal category requires answers at two levels,

where medieval Russia is concerned: the all-Russian level, which entails the
establishment of Russia’s borders with adjacent states, and the determination
of borders between the numerous Russian principalities.
As to the all-Russian level, the situation was reasonably clear-cut in respect
of Russia’s borders with its well-established western neighbours, Lithuania
and Poland, Sweden, and various smaller entities, such as Baltic bishoprics,
Hanseatic towns, the German Order, and others. Borders were often changed,
through wars or peaceful cession, but then these changes would be expressed
in treaty texts. In the North and the East and South-East, the situation was fluid
and generally unclear. The dense and inhospitable forests of Northern Russia,
thinly populated by Finnish tribes, were slowly penetrated by traders and set-
tlers from Novgorod, which eventually claimed almost the entire North of Rus-
sia as part of its empire. After Novgorod had lost its independence, its role
was taken over by Muscovy. But control by the ruling power diminished with
distance and this would make it hard to say how far it realistically extended.
Going clockwise from the east of European Russia to the south-east and the
south (the present Ukraine), the forests would gradually make way for open
plains and steppes. This had always been the land of warlike nomads whose
way of life made fixed borders of little interest to them. For centuries, the Rus-
sian principalities at the exposed edge of the realm were involved in a perma-
nent struggle to keep invaders at bay. With the arrival of the Mongols and the
imposition of Tatar suzerainty over the entire Russian land, the question of
external borders in this part of the world lost most of its relevance.
The fragmentation of the Kievan empire after Iaroslav the Wise (†1054)
created the need for the determination of the borders between the emerging
principalities. This was a process which continued over centuries and which
was in principle not affected by Tatar suzerainty; the khan had every interest
in maintaining the existing system, and once a prince had received the khan’s
patent, managing border conflicts between princes was something left to them
(see the relevant sections in Chapter 13, on the Prince).
The preferred procedure for fixing disputed borders appeared to be, judging
from the limited material available, the enumeration of villages belonging to
one of the sides.47
The rise of Muscovy and the gradual elimination of all independent princi-
palities resulted in the end in the emergence of a unified territory, ruled by the
Moscow grand prince (later on the tsar). The formation of the nuclear t erritory
47 See the section on the Novgorod-Tver’ treaties in Chapter vii, on Treaties.

330 chapter 12
of Muscovy has been painstakingly described by V.A. Kuchkin.48 Kuchkin

traced developments from the original apanage principality of Rostov, exist-
ing already during the reign of St. Vladimir. Initially less prestigious than Kiev,
Chernigov, Novgorod and others, it became the root out of which the princi-
pality of Suzdal’ grew, which in turn was the origin of the grand principality of
Vladimir, the leading principality during Tatar suzerainty and the origin of the
power of Moscow. Kuchkin accordingly recorded the territorial transformation
of the old Rostovskaia zemlia.
48 V.A. Kuchkin, Formirovanie gosudarstvennoi territorii Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi v x–xiv vv.,

Moskva, 1984.
chapter 13
The Prince in Medieval Russia
Introduction
Opinions may differ as to the impact of princely power on the law of Kievan
Russia, but there can be no doubt that an understanding of the latter is impos-
sible without a reasonably clear idea of the centralizing and organizing role
of the former. The governance of towns and of the activities of their inhabit-
ants, the use of land and the life of the rural population, the significant pres-
ence of the Church and its servants in legal affairs, all of these are intimately
connected in one way or another with the position and the functions of the
prince. It is therefore convenient to examine first of all the place occupied by
the prince in Kievan society and its law.
The earliest, foreign, written sources on the Eastern Slavs stress the absence
of unified rule. Procopius, writing in the 6th century, states that “these nations,
the Sclaveni and the Antae, are not ruled by one man, but have lived of old un-
der popular power and therefore all affairs, good and ill, are conducted by all of
them together.”1 The Byzantine emperor Mauricius expressed himself in simi-
lar terms around 600: “Finding themselves in a state of anarchy and mutual
hostility, they [the Slavs and the Antae] have no idea of an order of battle, nor
do they attempt to fight an orderly battle …”; “As there are many chiefs among
them and they do not agree among themselves …”.2 The Arab historian Masudi
echoed these statements several centuries later (around 956) when he wrote:
“They form a numerous people, not subject to a ruler or to legislation.”3 Similar
indications of the persistence of a certain democratic tradition in the earliest
historical period can be observed in the Primary Chronicle, for instance in its
reporting on the activities of the veche, the Old-Russian urban assembly (see
Chapter 15, on Towns).
Simultaneously, reports concerning proto-historical tribal leaders or princes
among the Eastern Slavs occur in the works of contemporary authors. Jordanes,
who wrote about the same time as Procopius, mentioned a king of the Antae,
1 Quoted from Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh istochnikov, Tom ii: Vizantiiskie istochniki
(M.V. Bibikov, comp.), Moskva, 2010, 72.
2 Ibidem, 96.
3 Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh istochnikov, Tom iii: Vostochnye istochniki (T.M. Kalinina
& others., comp.), Moskva, 2009, 114.

332 chapter 13
called Bozh.4 Arab authors also refer to various Slavic kings or rulers.5 The early
Russian “Life of Stephen of Surozh” refers to a Novgorod prince Bravlin, active
in the first half of the 9th century.6 The Frankish Annales Bertiniani reported
the presence of messengers from the nation called Rhos in a Byzantine mission
to the court of Louis the Pious; they were said to be ruled by their chacanus
(from the Turkic kagan, the ruler of the Khazars and other Turkic nations).7
The existence of local or tribal rulers or princes is well-documented by
the Primary Chronicle. The evidence is intertwined with the n arrative of the
establishment of the Rurikid dynasty in Russia. The main line of this story is
as follows (see also the section on “The Viking Question” in Chapter 12, Setting
the Stage).
Under the year 859 it is related how the Varangians (Vikings) had im-
posed tribute upon the Finnish (Chud’, Meria, and Ves’) and Slav (Slovene
and K rivichi) populations of Northern Russia, and the Khazars upon the Slav
(Poliane, Severiane, and Viatichi) population of Southern Russia. Then the 860
entry reports that the tributaries of the Varangians drove the latter out and
started to rule themselves (pochasa sami v sobe volodeti). This led to chaos and
they decided to invite a prince from the Varangians to rule over them: “our land
is great and abundant, but there is no order in it; come and reign and rule over
us” (… da poidete kniazhit’ i volodeti nami). A Viking chief, Rurik, came over
with two brothers and many followers. Rurik established himself in Novgorod;
his brothers went to Beloozero and Izborsk, where they died soon afterwards.
Although part of the story may be literary embellishment or mere legendary
tradition, the central core is clear, especially in light of subsequent develop-
ments. Rurik and the dynasty he created did not have their roots in the na-
tive population, as most contemporary West-European dynasties did, but were
invitees, whose rule was based on an agreement with the population inviting
them. As we shall discuss in more detail below, princes continued to be invited
4 Quoted by Froianov, KRsp, 14 and Nachala, 494. Jordanes stressed that the Antae, together
with the Veneti and the Sclaveni, made up a tribal complex known also as Veneti. Cf. D revnaia
Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh istochnikov, Tom i: Antichnye istochniki (A.V. Podosinov, comp.),
Moskva, 2009, 273.
5 E.g. Al-Bakri in “The Book of Roads and Kingdoms”, quoted from Drevnaia Rus’ v svete zaru-
bezhnykh istochnikov, Tom iii: Vostochnye istochniki, 126.
6 Cf. V.G. Vasil’evskii, Trudy, T.iii, Petrograd, 1915, 95. This volume contains the texts of the
Lives of the Saints George of Amastrida and Stephen of Surozh, together with Vasil’evskii’s
introductions.
7 This event took place at some time in the period of 829–840; more detail in the section on for-
eign sources in Chapter 2. On the (pre-Rurikid) Russian kagan, see S.N. Temushev, “Problema
lokalizatsii «Russkogo kaganata» ix veka”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Russkoe Srednevekov’e.
Sbornik statei v chest’ professora Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva, 2012, 213–232.
The Prince in Medieval Russia 333
by the popular assembly (the veche) and, before taking up their responsibili-
ties, a contract (riad) had to be concluded, which both parties could and often
did renounce after some time. There are numerous examples of princes “being
sent on their way”, as was the traditional formula in the chronicles for the evic-
tion of a prince, and princes themselves were always on the lookout for op-
portunities to move their seats to a wealthier and more powerful principality.
This arrangement is of fundamental importance for understanding princely
rule in medieval Russia. After the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, it under-
went crucial changes but did not disappear; the veche was left out of the equa-
tion and lost almost all of its power. Instead, the Mongol (Tatar) khan a ppeared
as the suzerain; Russian princes ruled on the basis of the khan’s charter (the
iarlyk), and as long as the khan did not withdraw his favour. The waning of
Tatar power in the course of the 15th century went pari passu with the rise of
the grand princes of Vladimir-Moscow who could claim with some amount of
credibility to be the successors of the old grand princes of Kiev, and therefore
the restorers of the greatness of the Russian state.8
Rurikid Princes
The singularity of the Rurikid dynasty was reinforced in later centuries
by its own size. There was always a wide choice of marriage candidates
within the dynasty itself and such marriages were employed to further
territorial and seniority ambitions. A marriage to the daughter of one
of the leading princes would generally be more attractive to a prince of
junior status than marrying a foreign princess. Marriages to boyar daugh-
ters were exceptional; occasionally powerful princes who had been wid-
owed or whose wives had been repudiated could afford to follow their
personal preferences. Impoverished and insignificant princes might not
have any choice. Among foreign spouses, Polish and Lithuanian princess-
es were the most numerous, followed by Tatar princesses (who invariably
adopted the orthodox faith). (See also the section on foreign marriages of
Rurikids in the Chapter on Foreign Law.)
The Rurikids were therefore not strongly rooted, in a genetic or genea-
logical sense, in Russia.
The Romanovs (and the derivative dynasty of Holstein-Gottorp) quite
clearly avoided marrying Rurikid princesses. Only the first wife of the first
Romanov tsar, Mikhail Fedorovich, was a Dolgorukov princess.
8 On the legitimation of princely rule in Russia, see K.A. Solov’ev, Vlastiteli i sud’i. Legitimatsiia
gosudarstvennoi vlasti v drevnei i srednevekovoi Rusi. ix- pervaia polovina xv vv., Moskva, 1999.
334 chapter 13
Rurik was succeeded by his kinsman Oleg and then by his son Igor; the lat-
ter was succeeded by his son Iaropolk and then another son, Vladimir, who
accepted baptism in 988 and became the ancestor of a many-branched fam-
ily. The story of the Rurikid house up to Vladimir (known in Russian history
as St. Vladimir) is the story of the subjugation of the entire Eastern Slav or
Russian territory and the elimination of other indigenous rulers. A few of them
are mentioned by name in the Chronicle.
Igor was killed in a bloody struggle with the Derevlians under their prince
Mal, but his widow Olga succeeded in breaking the resistance of this nation
(tribe). One of the last independent principalities conquered by the descen-
dants of Rurik was Polotsk. The Chronicle reports that Vladimir made war on
Rogvolod, prince of Polotsk, killed him and his two sons and took his daughter
Rogned as his wife (978).9
Not all Russian princes may have come to such a violent end in the course of
the emergence of Rurikid rule. Some of the Eastern Slav tribes submitted vol-
untarily and their princes or chieftains presumably survived as highly-placed
‘vassals’ of the Kievan prince. The 907 Treaty between Oleg and Byzantium
mentioned a number of Russian towns and then continued: “in these towns
lived great princes subject to Oleg.” Similarly, the Treaty of 912 referred to Oleg,
grand prince of Russia, and “all the serene and great princes … under his sway.”
Such princes were mentioned again in the 944 Treaty with Byzantium.10 In the
following years such references disappear and this coincided with the growth
of the Rurikid dynasty. At least eleven of St. Vladimir’s sons are known by name
and his son and successor Iaroslav had at least seven sons. In view of the well-
known practice of the Kievan grand princes to send their sons and other male
relatives to rule as subordinate princes in provincial capitals, there was no lon-
ger any need to have recourse to the scions of the older non-Rurikid ruling
families as local administrators.
This development highlights one of the determining factors in the history
of Kievan Russia, and indeed the entire history of Russia: the emergence of a
single powerful ruling family, eventually consisting of numerous branches and
9 Rogvolod, or Rognvald, is generally believed to have been a Viking chieftain himself who
“had come from overseas” (in the words of the Chronicle), like Vladimir’s great-grandfather
Rurik a century earlier.
10 That the princes mentioned in the Treaty of 944 were of non-Rurikid stock is also the
opinion of Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 298. The question has been analyzed in considerable
detail by A.S. Korolev, Istoriia mezhdukniazheskikh otnoshenii na Rusi v 40-e – 70-e gody X
veka, Moskva, 2000, 49–78.
a vast number of princes, excluding thereby the possibility of the rise of other
ruling families with competitive dynastic claims.
The unitary political order resulting from the suppression of all other rulers
was short-lived. In the course of the Kievan Russian period only St. Vladimir,
his son Iaroslav the Wise and the latter’s grandson Vladimir Monomakh could
claim to be the unquestioned supreme princes of Russia. At other times the rul-
ers of the constituent principalities assumed a more decisive role, with the
Kievan grand prince being nothing more, and occasionally even less, than
the primus inter pares.
In the section on the Primary Chronicle (in Chapter 2, on Sources) the po-
litical bias of this document, aggrandizing the Rurikid dynasty and belittling
other rulers, as well as heavily emphasizing the role of St. Vladimir as the first
Christian prince, has been noted.
This chapter will review first of all the question of the identity of the prince:
which individual was eligible to become a prince and how this position was ac-
quired. This question involved several related issues, such as the matter of the
internal relations within the Rurikid house, the succession to princely seats,
the settlement of disputes between princes, and the treaties between princes
of the Rurikid house. The remainder of the chapter will examine the people
around the prince, his retinue or entourage. The next chapter will continue
with a discussion of the prince ‘in action’, the organization of the government,
his military leadership, his role in legislation and adjudication, and also tax-
ation. Closely connected are such questions as the role of the prince in the
administration of land and the princely officials assisting in the execution of
various governmental and administrative duties. In Chapter 15, on Towns, the
prince’s relationship with the population as a more or less independent politi-
cal agent, is one of the central themes. This embraces such topics as the popu-
lar invitation (prizvanie) to a prince to come and rule over a particular territory
and, more generally, the entire problem of the relations between the prince
and the organized people, be it in the shape of the popular assembly (veche) or
in other guises such as the town elders.
In accordance with the mores of the times, women were generally consid-
ered incompetent to act as rulers. The ability to defend his people and lead his
troops into battle was one of the chief qualities required of a prince. Neverthe-
less, a woman could act as regent when no male candidate was available. The
formidable Olga, wife of Igor and mother of Sviatoslav, who reigned during her
son’s minority, is the best-known example. In later years the proliferation of
the house of Rurik made the unavailability of a suitable male candidate almost
impossible. But once the old succession traditions, favouring male relatives of
the same generation, had outlived their usefulness and succession was assured
336 chapter 13
for the ruler’s eldest son, widows again could have the opportunity to rule dur-
ing the minority of their eldest sons. The prime example is the grand princess
Sofia, the widow of the Moscow grand prince Vasilii i († 1425), herself a daugh-
ter of the Lithuanian grand prince Vitovt, who effectively ran the affairs of the
grand principality for many years.11
During the pre-Christian era the sons of concubines were not excluded
from the succession process, but had to settle for a somewhat lower status.
When Christianity became the established religion, legitimate birth gradu-
ally became a requirement for participating in the selection process for a new
prince.12
Relations between Princes: Succession and Treaties – Introductory

Observations
The following sections will examine the question of how an individual be-
came a (ruling) prince. This question immediately raises the question of the
relationships between princes, on account of the great number of princes in
medieval Russia. The importance of the system of relationships as it solidified
during the Kievan era, apart from its intrinsic interest, was in the influence it
exercized in the following centuries, down to 1598, the year of the death of tsar
Fedor, the son of Ivan iv (the Terrible) and the last Russian monarch of the
Rurikid house.13
The different destinies of the founding dynasties in Russia and Western
Europe had a decisive impact on further developments in these regions. Two
centuries after Charlemagne, the Carolingians had died out in Germany and
France.14 Two centuries after the death of St. Vladimir there were close to one
hundred male descendants. The early Rurikids had already eclipsed all other
11 I.G. Ponomareva, “Kto upravlial Moskovskim velikim kniazhestvom v 1425–1432 gg.?”

A.A. Gorskii (ed.), Srednevekovaia Rus’ 9, Moskva, 2011, 167–196.
12 See M. Font, “Nasledovanie kniazheskoi/korolevskoi vlasti v Vostochnoi i Tsentral’no-
Vostochnoi Evrope”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko, A.V. Maiorov (eds.), Rossica Antiqua 2006, Sankt-
Peterburg, 2006, 196–2003, at 196.
13 By a curious twist of history, the Rurikids briefly returned to supreme power, albeit purely
formal, when prince G.E. L’vov became prime minister in 1917 upon the abdication of
Nicholas ii and the end of the Romanov monarchy.
14 With the exception of the counts of Vermandois, descending from Charlemagne’s son
Pepin, who predeceased his father in 811. There is an interesting parallel between this
line and the princes of Polotsk, also descending from an underprivileged sub-dynasty,
founded by Iziaslav of Polotsk († 1001), son of St. Vladimir, grand prince of Kiev († 1015).
indigenous rulers and their offspring and, later, their descent from the glorious
grand prince of Kiev who had brought the Christian faith to Russia provided
them with a unique claim to rule in Russia. For many centuries the title of
prince (kniaz’) was the exclusive right of members of the Rurikid house. Only
in the later middle ages was this rule relaxed, with the russification of many of
the descendants of the Lithuanian grand prince Gedimin and the absorption
of various former ruling families of defeated Turkic (Tatar) nations.15
Princely rule in the Russian middle ages was characterized therefore by
the unique position of the Rurikid dynasty, combined with the weakness of
a central monarchical tradition. In the beginning, the first grand princes of
Kiev ruled as virtually uncontested monarchs over the entire Russian land (the
lands inhabited by Eastern Slav tribes). But the custom of dividing the realm
among the surviving sons made this unity fragile, and the emergence of several
branches of the ruling family inevitably led to fragmentation. Only when the
paramount throne, the grand princely seat of Kiev, was occupied by a prince
with sufficient talent and luck, such as Vladimir Monomakh (1113–1125), was
the former unity of Russia temporarily restored. The central question in the
following sections is therefore how the princes of the Rurikid house divided
power among themselves. This question was much debated in pre-1917 histori-
ography and several modern authors have returned to it, especially A.V. Naza-
renko.16 Otherwise, the question did not arouse much interest during the So-
viet era, although the main authors expressed themselves briefly on it.17
As with all disputed questions concerning Kievan Russia, the Chronicle
is the main source, at least for the first period, up to the reign of Vladimir
At the death of a grandfather, surviving one or more of his sons, the sons of the latter were
in a weak position vis-à-vis their surviving uncles.
15 Cf. Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 350–351.
16 Kliuchevskii, Kurs i (Lecture xi), 169–189; Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 261–334; D’iakonov,
140–148, and in more recent times A.V. Nazarenko, “Rodovoi siuzerenitet Riurikovichei
nad Rus’iu (x–xi vv.)”, dg sssr 1985, Moskva, 1986, 149–157 and id., “Drevnerusskoe dinas-
ticheskoe stareishinstvo po «riadu» Iaroslava Mudrogo i ego tipologicheskie paralleli –
real’nye i mnimye”, A.V. Nazarenko, Drevniaia Rus’ i Slaviane, Moskva, 2009, 7–28,
and id., in the same volume (47–87), “Dinasticheskii stroi Riurikovichei x–xii vekov v
sravnitel’no-istoricheskom osveshchenii”; S.A. Mel’nikov, Pravovoi rezhim nasledovaniia
prestola v Drevnei Rusi ix- nachala xvi vv., Moskva, 2009 and id., Istoriko-pravovye faktory
evoliutsii Drevnerusskogo gosudarstva ix–xv vv., Moskva, 2010 (the second work is a some-
what expanded edition of the first one).
17 Iushkov, Stroi, 329–333; L.V. Cherepnin, “K voprosu o kharaktere i forme Drevnerusskogo
gosudarstva x – nachala xiii v.”, Istoricheskie Zapiski No.89 (1972), 353–409, esp. 358–365.
Grekov disregarded the matter.
338 chapter 13
onomakh. The various theories concerning princely succession in Kievan

M
Russia are therefore all based in principle on the same source and differ in the
way additional information from other sources is digested.
Before surveying this material in more detail, it will be useful to consider a
preliminary problem: the much-disputed Viking origins of the Rurikid dynasty.
The Viking Origins of the House of Rurik
The Viking origins of the Rurikid dynasty is of course part of the wider ques-
tion of the role of the Vikings in the history of Kievan Russia, which was dis-
cussed briefly in the previous chapter. Like this wider question, it constituted a
touchy subject in Soviet times.18 Nowadays, however, no serious scholar seems
to deny that Vikings (Varangians) played a significant role in 9th and 10th cen-
turies Russia and that the stories of Viking chiefs setting themselves up as local
rulers in Russia, as recounted in the Chronicle, do in fact refer to historical
events.19 It would then not be too far-fetched to consider the possibility that
princely succession in Kievan Russia could have its roots in earlier Scandi-
navian (Germanic) traditions.20 There are indeed several points of similarity
between the succession practices in Kievan Russia and the well-documented
18 The leading Soviet medievalist from the times of Stalin, B.D. Grekov, wrote: “There are no
reasons whatsoever to deny the appearance and activity of Norman bands, not only in
the North of our territory. They appeared in various parts of Europe. But this has nothing
to do with the question of the formation of the Russian state.” (B.D. Grekov, ed., Ocherki
istorii sssr. Period feodalizma ix–xv vv. v dvukh chast’iakh, I, Moskva, 1953, 77; this part
of the work is by Grekov himself). A more extreme point of view, explicitly critical of
Grekov, was expressed by the leading legal historian of the time, S.V. Iushkov: “In one
word, the view that the state of Rurik arose as the result of the conquest of Novgorod by
the Normans is based on nothing. We are convinced that ultimately serious evidence will
be produced that the story of the invitation of the Viking princes is a legend from begin-
ning to end, introduced by the initial chronicler with the purpose of aggrandizing the
importance of the Kievan princely dynasty … Then we will consider the princes Rurik,
Oleg, and Igor as princes of the Novgorod Russians and, as all Russians, as Slavs.” (Iushkov,
Stroi, 67).
19 See for instance E.A. Mel’nikova, “Skandinavy v protsessakh obrazovaniia Drevnerussk-
ogo gosudarstva”, E.A. Mel’nikova (ed.), Drevniaia Rus’ i Skandinaviia. Izbrannye trudy,
Moskva, 2011, 49–72. Extensive dna research has also indicated that the Rurikids came
from the Stockholm area and belonged to a Finno-Ugric genetic type.
20 A suggestion already made by E. Shchepkin in “Poriadok prestolonaslediia u drevnenor-
vezhskikh konungov”, in Sbornik statei, posviashchennykh V.O. Kliuchevskomu, Moskva,
1909, 164–216.
royal succession among the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties. Most no-
ticeable are the tendency to divide the realm among the ruler’s surviving sons,
the appointment of sons as provincial rulers during the father’s lifetime, and a
certain privileged position accorded to the eldest son. It is, on the other hand,
entirely plausible that such similarity is to be explained, not by the Kievan
system being based on Scandinavian traditions, but by the original affinity of
underlying Germanic and Slavic succession systems. An apparent difference is
the generational hierarchy within the Kievan system, which gives precedence
to surviving brothers of a deceased ruler over the latter’s sons (more in the fol-
lowing sections).
That the house of Rurik was originally of princely stock (or at least claimed
to be so) is made clear by the Chronicle. Under the year 859 it is reported:
“With Rurik there were two men who did not belong to his kin [plemeni], but
who were boyars.” These men, Askold and Dir, set themselves up as rulers in
Kiev, but were attacked and killed in 882 by Oleg, Rurik’s successor and kins-
man. The Chronicle quotes Oleg’s words when he reproached them for usurp-
ing the principality of Kiev: “You are not princes nor even of princely stock, but
I am of princely birth.”
The Succession History According to the Primary Chronicle –

A Brief Survey
As already related above, Rurik and his two younger brothers came to Russia
and settled, respectively, in Novgorod, Beloozero and Izborsk. After two years
the younger brothers died and Rurik assumed sole authority. “He assigned cit-
ies to his followers,21 Polotsk to one, Rostov22 to another, and to another Beloo-
zero,” and then, on his deathbed (before 879), “Rurik bequeathed his realm to
Oleg, who belonged to his kin,23 and entrusted to Oleg’s hand his son Igor.” Igor
was brought up by Oleg and married a woman from Pskov, Olga. After Oleg’s
death in 912, Igor succeeded him and ruled until 945, when he was killed by
the Derevlians on whom he had imposed tribute. The reign was then assumed
by his widow Olga, their son Sviatoslav still being young. His own rule started
21 “Men” (muzhi), prominent persons from his entourage, ‘vassals’.

22 The Old-Russian town of Rostov-Iaroslavskii, in Northern Russia.
23 Probably a cousin, because if he had been Rurik’s brother the Chronicle would have re-
ferred to him as such. According to Tatishchev (V.N. Tatishchev, Istoriia Rossiiskaia, T.I.
Moskva, 2003, orig. Sankt-Peterburg, 1768, 503) he was the brother of Rurik’s wife (Rurik’s
shurin). He could have been both of course.
340 chapter 13
probably in 956 or soon afterwards. He had two sons by a wife whose name is
not recorded in the Chronicle; these he installed as subordinate princes, Iar-
opolk in Kiev (which had already been added to the Rurikid lands by Oleg),
and Oleg in Dereva (970). A half-brother of these, Vladimir, the son of Sviato-
slav and his concubine Maliusha (stewardess, kliuchnitsa, of his mother Olga)
and therefore of lower rank, was appointed to be prince in Novgorod, as the
Novgorodians had asked for a resident prince. They would have preferred Svia-
toslav or otherwise one of his legitimate sons but, on the advice of Dobrynia,
Maliusha’s brother and Sviatoslav’s favourite general, Vladimir was sent and
Dobrynia accompanied him.
On his return from a successful expedition against the Byzantines in 971 (the
last Russo-Byzantine treaty was the result), Sviatoslav was killed the next year
in an ambush by the Turkic Pechenegs. His sons succeeded and remained in
their assigned seats, the eldest son Iaropolk becoming the grand prince of Kiev.
In 976–977 Iaropolk made war on his brother Oleg of Dereva, killed him and
took over his principality. Upon hearing of these developments Vladimir fled
to Scandinavia and Iaropolk took control of Novgorod. But Vladimir returned
the next year with a force of Varangians and marched on Kiev. After having his
brother Iaropolk killed, he became the sole ruler of Russia. His uncle Dobrynia
was appointed as his lieutenant in Novgorod. Vladimir was baptized (in 988),
introduced Christianity as the official religion in Russia, and became known as
St. Vladimir.
Vladimir’s chief wife was Rogned, the daughter of Rognvald, prince of Po-
lotsk, deposed and killed by Vladimir. By Rogned he had four sons, Iziaslav,
Mstislav, Iaroslav and Vsevolod. From other wives he had more sons: Vysheslav,
Sviatoslav, Mstislav, Boris and Gleb, Stanislav, Pozvizd, and Sudislav. Then there
was a son, Sviatopolk, of a union with the widow of his brother Iaropolk, her-
self a former Greek nun, a relationship regarded as illicit and immoral by the
Chronicle.
In 988 Vladimir set up his eldest son Vysheslav in Novgorod, Iziaslav in Po-
lotsk, Sviatopolk in Turov, and Iaroslav in Rostov. After the death of Vysheslav,
Iaroslav moved to Novgorod, and Rostov was assigned to Boris. Of the younger
sons, Gleb received Murom, Sviatoslav Dereva, Vsevolod Vladimir,24 and Ms-
tislav Tmutorakan (this is obviously the younger Mstislav, the elder Mstislav,
son of Rogned, had apparently died earlier).
24 This is the principality of Vladimir, also known as Volynia, in present-day Ukraine, not the
principality known later on as Vladimir-Suzdal’, of which a fortress Vladimir, founded in
1108, was the capital.
Not surprisingly, in view of the profusion of contenders, the succession

upon the death of Vladimir in 1015 led to major conflicts among the brothers.
The two most senior ones, Vysheslav and Iziaslav, had already died before 1015.
Next in line was Iaroslav, followed probably by Sviatopolk, prince of Turov. The
latter, the only prince present in Kiev when Vladimir died in nearby Berestovo,
grasped the opportunity and set himself up as prince in Kiev. The only other
prince in the neighbourhood, Boris, was urged by his followers to resist Svi-
atopolk’s usurpation, but replied: “It is not for me to raise my hand against my
elder brother.” As a reward, Sviatopolk had his brother treacherously killed.
The same fate befell Gleb, Boris’ full brother. They are the princes now revered
as the saints Boris and Gleb in the Russian church. A third brother, Sviato-
slav, was also killed by Sviatopolk. The only surviving senior brother, Iaroslav
of Novgorod, had been warned in time about Sviatopolk’s machinations; he
collected an army of Novgorodians and Varangians and marched on Kiev. Af-
ter several campaigns and battles Sviatopolk “the Accursed” (Okaiannyi) was
beaten and fled to Poland, where he died (1019).
For a while Iaroslav’s supremacy as grand prince of Kiev was not unchal-
lenged. His nephew Briachislav, son of Iziaslav, who had succeeded his father
as prince of Polotsk, captured Novgorod, but Iaroslav was able to repulse him
and Briachislav retreated to Polotsk (1021). A much more serious challenge was
presented by Iaroslav’s younger brother Mstislav, prince of Tmutorakan, who
seized the principality of Chernigov and attempted to wrest control of Kiev
from Iaroslav. In the end they reached a compromise, with Iaroslav retaining
the western bank of the Dniepr (with Kiev) and Mstislav the eastern bank (with
Chernigov). It was only after the death of Mstislav (1034/1036) that Iaroslav was
able to assume sovereignty over the entire Kievan realm. He then installed his
eldest son Vladimir as prince of Novgorod. Polotsk remained in the hands of
Briachislav, who died in 1044 and was succeeded by his son Vseslav.
Together with his father St. Vladimir, Iaroslav is considered the iconic ruler,
symbolizing the glory of Kievan Russia. He is adorned with the epithet “the
Wise” (Mudryi) and died in 1054; his eldest son Vladimir had preceded him
to the grave two years before. The Chronicle contains the ostensible text of
Iaroslav’s will, in which he arranged his succession in these words: “The throne
of Kiev I bequeath to my eldest son, your brother Iziaslav. Heed him as you
have heeded me, that he may take my place among you. To Sviatoslav I give
Chernigov, to Vsevolod Pereiaslavl’, to Igor Vladimir, and to Viacheslav Smo-
lensk.” Then he ordered his sons not to violate each other’s boundaries and
not to despoil one another. Iziaslav was enjoined to aid the party wronged,
should one brother attack another. Viacheslav, prince of Smolensk, died three
years later, and Igor, the youngest son, moved over to Smolensk; he died shortly
342 chapter 13
afterwards, in 1060. This left the Kievan realm in the hands of the three surviv-
ing brothers, Iziaslav, Sviatoslav, and Vsevolod. Together they conducted sev-
eral campaigns. Other members of the family occupied princely seats of lower
rank and occasionally caused dynastic conflicts.
Sviatoslav’s eldest son Gleb resided in Tmutorakan, until he was expelled by
his first cousin Rostislav, son of Vladimir (the eldest son of Iaroslav, who had
died before his father). A more serious upheaval was caused by Vseslav, son
of Briachislav, both of them princes of Polotsk. First he occupied Novgorod.
The three brothers Iziaslav, Sviatoslav and Vsevolod marched against him and
were victorious; Vseslav was taken captive and imprisoned in Kiev (1067). But
in the next year the Russian army under the three princes was beaten by the
Polovtsian nomads. In the ensuing confusion, the population of Kiev rose up,
expelled Iziaslav, and installed Vseslav as grand prince. In 1069 Iziaslav re-
turned and was accepted again by the people of Kiev; Vseslav fled to his pa-
ternal Polotsk, but was pursued by Iziaslav, who drove him out and installed
his own son Mstislav. The latter died the same year and was succeeded by his
brother Sviatopolk. In 1071 Vseslav returned to Polotsk and expelled Sviatopolk.
In 1073 the pact between the three brothers broke down. Sviatoslav and
Vsevolod forced Iziaslav to leave Kiev, and Sviatoslav took the latter’s place. He
died in 1076 and was succeeded by his brother Vsevolod. In the following year
(1077) Vsevolod and Iziaslav patched up their differences and Iziaslav returned
to rule in Kiev. Serious trouble arose again the next year. Vsevolod was attacked
by two nephews, Oleg, prince of Chernigov and son of Sviatoslav, and Boris, son
of Viacheslav (prince of Smolensk, who had died in 1057). These two cousins
had collected an army of Polovtsians and forced Vsevolod to seek refuge with
his brother Iziaslav in Kiev. With the help of the latter the insurrection was
overcome, but Iziaslav and Boris fell in the battle of Nezhata (1078). Vsevolod
assumed sovereignty over the whole of Russia. His eldest son Vladimir, son of
a Greek princess and therefore known as Vladimir Monomakh, was installed
as prince of Chernigov (the more prestigious seat of Novgorod was occupied
at that time by Sviatopolk, son of Iziaslav).25 Minor dynastic wars among the
Rurikid princes continued during the following years, but Vsevolod remained
on the throne until his death in 1093.
His son Vladimir “Now reflected that if he succeeded immediately to the
throne of his father, he would become involved in hostilities with Sviato-
polk, because the throne had belonged to that prince’s father.” He accordingly
25 Vladimir Monomakh had left Chernigov in 1094 to take up residence in Pereiaslavl’, where
his father Vsevolod had also been prince. Chernigov fell to Oleg, the son of Sviatoslav to
whom Chernigov had been assigned in 1054 by his father Iaroslav the Wise.
a llowed Sviatopolk (the son of Iziaslav) to become grand prince of Kiev, where
he reigned until his death in 1113, to be succeeded by his cousin Vladimir Mono-
makh. Sviatopolk’s reign was by no means peaceful. Especially his cousins, the
brothers Davyd and Oleg, princes of Chernigov and sons of Sviatoslav, were
a constant source of trouble. There were also conflicts with other princes of
the Rurikid house, descendants from less illustrious lines. The year 1097 was of
particular interest, because most of the leading princes came together at the
beginning of the year at Liubech, where they agreed that each of them should
retain what had originally belonged to his father.26 The rest of the year was
then spent in fighting each other.
For developments during the next 120 years other chronicles must be con-
sulted. Because of the fragmentation of the ruling house, the story gets even
more confused but continued along the lines which were already discernible in
the previous period. The growing number of principalities was ruled by princes
of the Rurikid dynasty, but at the same time sub-dynasties began to take root.
Once almost the entire Russian territory had been overrun by the Mongol in-
vaders in 1237–1240, the succession system remained in place but was strongly
affected by the supremacy of the khan. A Russian prince would only be admit-
ted to rule his principality after having received the khan’s approval.
The General Principles of Princely Succession
The main dynastic developments up to Vladimir Monomakh’s occupation of

the Kievan throne have been related here, because (as mentioned before) the
narrative of the Chronicle which covers this period constitutes the principal
source concerning the system of succession in Kievan Russia.
The first author to propose a theory to explain this system was S.M. Solov’ev
(1820–1877), who already in his doctoral thesis in 1847 pointed to the all-im-
portant aspect of the rod, the family, kin or clan (Germ. Geschlecht is more
precise).27 His views are therefore summarized as the “family theory” (rodovaia
teoriia). His student V.O. Kliuchevskii devoted an entire lecture (xi) to prince-
ly succession in his famous Kurs (Vol.i). He elaborated on several prominent
26 On the Liubech assembly, see D.M. Kotyshev, “Liubechskii s”ezd v istorii Iuzhnoi Rusi
kontsa xi – nachala xii veka”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Russkoe Srednevekov’e. Sbornik
statei v chest’ professora Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva, 2012, 260–269.
27 S.M. Solov’ev, Istoriia otnoshenii mezhdu russkimi kniaz’iami Riurikova doma, Moskva,
1847, republished in S.M. Solov’ev, Drevnerusskie kniaz’ia, Sankt-Peterburg, 2010, 109–404.
Also in the first Book of his 18 volume Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen.
344 chapter 13
e lements of the succession system as it arose after Iaroslav the Wise: the role of
family seniority, the mobility of princes, and the origin of the Kievan order of
succession. He saw this origin in the customary family law of the Viking lead-
ers, but also pointed out that similar practices prevailed among other nations,
such as the Franks.
Another of the giants of pre-revolutionary Russian history, V.I. Sergeevich,
politely but firmly rejected the “family theories”. Sergeevich’s general view was
that popular assemblies (the veche) were the original form of government and
that they used to invite or elect a prince whenever they needed one, particu-
larly in time of war. The position of a ruling prince rested therefore, at least
initially, on a contract or rather on a network of contracts, because internally
the prince had an agreement with the people, and externally he had to co-exist
with other princes, to whom he was tied through peace or friendship treaties.28
Sergeevich’s views were shared to a considerable extent by M.A. D’iakonov,29
while Presniakov occupied an intermediate position, summarized by him in
stating that the status of an individual prince was based on the possession, by
the family as a collective entity, not of sovereignty over the entire territory but
of the individual principalities (volosti).30 He recognized the operation of a
seniority principle, which he regarded as a compromise solution between the
tendency to divide up patrimonies (otchiny) and the tendency to keep them
intact.
The major Soviet authors either disregarded the question altogether (Grekov)
or discussed it without any reference to the voluminous pre-revolutionary
debate (Cherepnin),31 or briefly subscribed to the approach of Sergeevich
(Iushkov).32 In later years I.Ia. Froianov returned to the question, but his ap-
proach remained within the confines of traditional Soviet conceptions. Kievan
Russia was a feudal state, and the relations between the princes were to be
explained as manifestations of vassalage.33
A.V. Nazarenko offered a more innovative treatment of the topic in a short
essay, published in 1986.34 He examined the developments of princely suc-
cession in Kievan Russia within a comparative framework, pointing to the
28 See especially Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 31ff., 150ff., 181ff.

29 D’iakonov, 136–154.
30 Presniakov, Kn. Pr., 153–157.
31 L.V. Cherepnin, “K voprosu o kharaktere i forme drevnerusskogo gosudarstva x- nachala
xiii v.”, Istoricheskie Zapiski No.89 (1972), 353–409, esp. 358–365.
33 Froianov, KRsp, 45–48; Froianov, Nachala, 524–527.
34 A.V. Nazarenko, “Rodovoi siuzerenitet Riurikovichei nad Rus’iu (x–xi vv.)”, dg sssr 1985,
Moskva, 1986, 149–157.
numerous parallels with Western and Central Europe. He noted how early sys-
tems, based on the equal and joint entitlement of a corpus fratrum (a body of
brothers), through the emergence of seniority (of the eldest brother), gradu-
ally metamorphosed into feudal monarchies where junior siblings were turned
into vassals. In post-Soviet times Nazarenko returned to the subject in length-
ier studies.35
More recently S.A. Mel’nikov devoted several special studies to the ques-
tion of succession to the throne in Russia.36 As the titles of his works suggest,
he viewed the actual events of succession as manifestations of a legal regime.
I would consider this questionable from a philosophical or theoretical point of
view. Law, in any meaningful sense of the term, was still in an early stage of de-
velopment in a society like Kievan Russia; customary practices would gradually
solidify into more explicit legal arrangements. The various successional events
could, under certain circumstances, create law, but were not the outcome of
existing law. With this correction, Mel’nikov’s observations retain their value.
When one attempts to draw a few conclusions on the basis of the preceding
survey and the brief narrative of the Chronicle, the first one would be that, al-
though the system may appear chaotic at a first glance, it was in fact governed
by several interlocking principles. First and most obvious among these was
that only male members of the house of Rurik were eligible as rulers. The prin-
cess Olga was the notable exception, but the Chronicle makes clear that she
was ruling as the guardian of her young son Sviatoslav; no other male members
of the then still very small dynasty are mentioned. Non-Rurikid princes turn
up for the last time (as pointed out above) in the treaty of 945 with Byzantium,
where the formula “the grand prince Igor and his princes and boyars” occurs
several times, along with the formula “the grand prince Igor and his boyars”.
In the treaty of 971 only the latter formula is encountered, which could indi-
cate that other princes had disappeared in the intervening years. For many
35 Several of these were collected in A.V. Nazarenko, Drevniaia Rus’ i Slaviane (= dgve 2007),
Moskva, 2009: “Bratskoe sovpadenie, otchina, sen’orat (dinasticheskii stroi Riurikovichei
x–xii vv. v sravnitel’no-istoricheskom aspekte)”, dgve 2005, Moskva, 2008, 132–179 (also
as dgve 2007, 47–87); “Drevnerusskoe dinasticheskoe stareishinstvo po «Riadu» Iaroslava
Mudrogo i ego tipologicheskie paralleli–real’nye i mnimye”, in A.V. Nazarenko, Iaroslav
Mudryi i ego epokha, Moskva, 2007, 30–54 (also as dgve 2007, 7–28); “Vladimir Mono-
makh i kievskoe prestolonasledie: Traditsiia i popytki reformy”, dgve 2004, Moskva, 2006,
279–290 (also as “Dinasticheskii proekt Vladimira Monomakha: popytka reformy kievsk-
ogo prestolonaslediia v 30-e gody xii veka”, dgve 2007, 88–102).
36 S.A. Mel’nikov, Pravovoi rezhim nasledovaniia prestola v Drevnei Rusi ix – nachala xvi vv.,
Moskva, 2009; id., Istoriko-pravovye faktory evoliutsii Drevnerusskogo gosudarstva (ix–xv
vv.), Moskva, 2010.
346 chapter 13
centuries afterwards only the descendants of Rurik were considered to be en-

titled to rule in Russia.
The second principle operating during the first two centuries of the Rurikid
dynasty is the predominance of the house, the dynasty itself, over its individ-
ual members. The grand prince of Kiev and the ruling princes of principalities
of lower rank were to be regarded as representatives of the sovereign house,
not so much as sovereigns themselves. While the first principle, the exclusive
eligibility of (male) Rurikids as ruling princes, could be seen as providing the
general framework for the system of identifying rulers (what are the qualifica-
tions for being eligible?), the second principle constituted its foundation. It
implied that an individual prince as such did not have a personal claim to a
particular throne.
The actual identification of a particular prince as the ruler of a particular
principality was governed by a complex and often confused concept of senior-
ity or family rank. The principle operated through a number of ‘sub-rules’ (not
really rules, but rather practices, customs, traditions). One of these, discussed
in previous chapters, was the existence of a certain hierarchy of principalities,
or their capitals in fact. First among these was Kiev.37 Several of the earliest
grand princes of Kiev were the undisputed rulers of the entire Russian realm.
With the expansion of the Rurikid house and the emergence of subordinate
principalities ruled by other members of the dynasty, the grand prince of Kiev
acquired the character of the head of the house, the leader of the country.
When his co-princes were strong and he himself weak, the grand prince of Kiev
would merely be the first in honour among the Russian princes, the primus
inter pares. The second place after Kiev was occupied by Novgorod, the first
centre of Rurikid power in Russia and the principality regularly ruled by the
most senior member of the family after the grand prince of Kiev or assigned to
the eldest son of the grand prince of Kiev. Another and obvious aspect of the
seniority principle was that among brothers precedence would be given to the
eldest. There are many examples of this. Where there were many brothers, they
were ranked according to age. In several cases this led to the emergence of one
37 The Chronicle provides two early lists of towns in connection with the appointment of
his sons as provincial rulers by St. Vladimir in 988 and with the testament of Iaroslav
the Wise in 1054. The lists appear to be quite different, but when certain special circum-
stances are taken into regard this difference becomes much smaller. A combination of
the two lists would produce the following conditional hierarchy of towns: Kiev, Novgorod,
(Polotsk,) Chernigov, Vladimir-Volynsk, Pereiaslavl’, Rostov, Smolensk, Murom. Over the
years the ranking of a town could change considerably and lower down the list the hierar-
chical element was weak.
group of senior and leading brothers, and another of less influential younger
brothers.38 A third and quite peculiar elaboration of the seniority principle
was the importance attached to the generational layering within the family.
This meant that among male relatives more distant than brothers, rank within
the family was primarily determined by generation, uncles being more senior
than nephews. In other words, the substitution principle, common in more
modern systems and allowing the son (and nowadays also the daughter) to
take the place of the deceased father, did not apply or at least applied only
after the entire generation of the father had been depleted. The operation of
this principle was especially striking in the succession to the Kievan throne,
where the prince was normally succeeded, not by his sons, but by his brothers
and cousins first. The best way to put it may be that the substitution principle
in its pure form (upon the death of the father the son steps into his place)
was absent in Rurikid dynastic arrangements, but that an element of filial suc-
cession was nonetheless relevant. This is borne out by several episodes in the
Chronicle where a prince based his claim to a particular principality on the fact
that his father had ruled the principality in the past. Also, it had already been
noted by Shchepkin that, with very few exceptions, only princes whose fathers
had been grand princes of Kiev could successfully claim the dignity of grand
prince themselves.39 One could also observe a tendency for filial succession
to be stronger where the princely seat in question was of lesser importance.
When the ruler of a principality of little importance died, his more powerful
relatives would already be residing in more prestigious places and they would
therefore, as a rule, be more inclined to let the son of the deceased succeed.
In later centuries, with the wide expansion of the various branches of the
Rurikid house, the political fragmentation of the country, and the concomitant
weakening of the sense of unity within the ruling house, the principle of sub-
stitution (filial succession) asserted itself more strongly: virtually independent
principalities arose, ruled by their own dynasties, where son succeeded father.
An important milestone in this development was the princes’ meeting at Liu-
bech, where the principle of filial succession was agreed upon, although the
pact collapsed the same year.40
38 The principle continued to operate in later centuries and then often in the form of the
fourth brother being considered equal in rights with the eldest son of the eldest brother.
They were then considered sverstniki (co-evals), which of course they in fact often were.
39 E. Shchepkin, “Poriadok prestolonaslediia u drevnenorvezhskikh konungov”, in Sbornik
statei posviashchennykh V.O. Kliuchevskomu, Moskva, 1909, 164–216, at 213.
40 Cf. L.V. Cherepnin, “K voprosu o kharaktere i forme drevnerusskogo gosudarstva x –
nachala xiii v.”, Istoricheskie Zapiski, No.89 (1972), 353–408, at 361.
348 chapter 13
The absence of substitution, coupled with the idea of precedence given to

the older generation, worked out most unfavourably for sons whose fathers
had predeceased their own fathers. At best they might be allowed to succeed
in their fathers’ principalities, if these were of modest importance. They were
precluded from rising further in the family. Their surviving uncles might as-
pire to the Kievan throne if the grandfather was the grand prince of Kiev, and
would in any case divide the more important principalities among themselves.
They in turn would eventually be succeeded by the generation of their sons,
but the orphan-prince, the kniaz’-izgoi as he is sometimes termed, would not
be counted in these calculations.41 The earliest and most notable example of
this procedure concerned the principality of Polotsk. This had been assigned
to Iziaslav, the second son of St. Vladimir. Iziaslav died in 1001, many years be-
fore his father. Polotsk remained in the hands of his descendants for more than
two hundred years, until it was absorbed by the Lithuanian rulers. One prince
of Polotsk, Vseslav, as mentioned above, usurped the Kievan throne for a few
months in 1068, but otherwise Polotsk remained a backwater of Kievan Russia.
Because it was ruled by its own sub-dynasty, it was less concerned with, and
affected by the great dynastic upheavals of the 11th and 12th centuries42
The various arrangements for dynastic succession were of decisive im-
portance for the fate of early medieval polities. The different courses taken
by Russia and various Central and Western European countries are not to be
explained by fundamental differences in their political and dynastic organiza-
tion, but by a different emphasis on certain elements within a basically similar
setting. In Russia, the concept of a ruling house or clan was more pronounced
than in the West, where the accent was more on the “patrimony” left by a fa-
ther to his son. The concept of patrimony (otchina) ultimately also prevailed
in Russia. In Muscovy the grand prince would, as a rule, bequeath his throne,
dignity and lands to his eldest son, apportioning more modest shares to his
other sons. In Kievan Russia, however, the idea that the right to rule belonged
to the ruling dynasty, rather than to the prince who happened to occupy the
throne in Kiev, was still strong. The natural consequence of this was that the
strongest claimant for this throne, once it fell empty, would be the person who
enjoyed the highest seniority (stareishinstvo) in the clan. Within a small family,
such seniority is relatively easily determined by age: a (brotherless) father is to
41 Shchepkin, 213–214.
42 On Polotsk, see L.V. Alekseev, Polotskaia zemlia, Moskva, 1966, and the chapter on Polotsk
by the same author in L.G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Drevnerusskie kniazhestva x–xiii vv., Moskva,
1975.
be succeeded by his eldest son, and when a third generation appears, uncles
will come before their nephews. When the family became more extended, it
was still possible to devise rules, but factors other than age, such as prestige,
power, etc., would also tend to be considered in establishing a prince’s place
within the family pecking order. One factor which acquired increasing weight
was the position occupied by the claimant’s father in the past. At this point
the seniority and partimonial principles became entangled; if a prince’s posi-
tion in the dynasty was co-determined by his father’s prominent position, then
there would be a tendency to allow him to succeed in this position. This situa-
tion was clearly observable in the much-discussed assembly of the princes in
Liubech in 1097, when the leading princes agreed that each should retain his
paternal seat.
The Chronicle’s narrative of the period, particularly of the events within
the ruling dynasty, prompted several Russian authors of the pre-revolutionary
era, as pointed out above, to formulate specific theories concerning the law
of princely succession in Kievan Russia. Such theories can be used to explain
why prince A was succeeded by prince B. No theory can explain all instances
of princely succession, which means that it is difficult to evaluate the merits
of the various theories. The matter of princely succession within the Rurikid
house was unquestionably governed by customary arrangements, but wheth-
er these were sufficiently compelling to speak of customary law is uncertain.
Early empires were all created by a talented, powerful and charismatic individ-
ual, who lived on in his gens, his rod, his male progeny. First, and most potently,
in his sons, particularly the first-born. The closer a family member was to the
ancestor, the higher his standing. This may explain the precedence of brothers
of a deceased prince over the latter’s sons. But a family member intended to
perpetuate not only the line of the ancestor, but also his own. This resulted
in the emergence of sub-dynasties which tended to hold on to the patrimony
of their own founders. In this way the Monomakhovichi could claim over-all
precedence, the Ol’govichi the principality of Chernigov, the Rostislavichi the
principality of Smolensk, etc. This development eventually destroyed the old
system in which there was a fairly clear order of precedence among the princes
and where the death of the grand prince of Kiev or another prominent rul-
ing prince would cause a musical chairs’ situation; most ruling princes would
move up to a better, wealthier, more important seat.
The original idea of the right to rule belonging to the ruling house (the
community of descendants of the founder) would almost inevitably become
impractical once the number of descendants got too large. Then it would
gradually be superseded by the patrimonial idea (the father’s ‘patrimony’ is
350 chapter 13
inherited by his sons). But if the patrimony was not to be fragmented again,
it eventually needed the correction of primogeniture. All these developments
are clearly observable in the course of the Russian middle ages. Initially the
ruling princes would apportion parts of their principalities to individual sons,
but in the end this practice was abandoned and everything was left to the el-
dest son. From another perspective, this development can also be viewed as
the emergence of a much more explicit concept of statehood. As the position
of the ruling prince waxed, the original apanage principalities of younger sons
lost their status and approximated to ordinary noble estates.
An understanding of the succession system does not require the postulation
of an underlying legal system; the conduct of the princes of the ruling house
can be explained completely satisfactorily as the outcome of rational consid-
erations within the context of the times.
The Grand Princely Dignity
The governmental system of medieval Russia was based historically on the

Kievan empire founded by the early Rurikid princes and culminating in the rule
of St. Vladimir and his son Iaroslav the Wise. The annalists adorned the Kievan
rulers with the title of grand prince and sometimes “grand prince of Russia”.
As mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, the 912 Treaty with the Greeks
referred to Oleg, grand prince of Kiev, “and all the serene and grand princes
[svetlye i velikie] under his sway”, but this formula did not appear in subsequent
treaties. During the following period the grand princely title was reserved by
the annalists for the most senior prince who had his seat in Kiev.43 When the
dynasty grew in size – both Vladimir and Iaroslav had many sons – young-
er sons were assigned principalities, but the supreme position of the Kievan
prince was expressly recognized by Iaroslav in his last will, as transmitted in
the Chronicle: “The throne of Kiev I bequeath to my eldest son, your brother
Iziaslav. Heed him as you have heeded me.” This position represented the sum-
mit of the career of a ruling prince and this also implied that the Kievan dig-
nity differed in some respects from other rulerships. The Kievan prince would
normally remain in his seat until his death, unless forcibly removed by one
of his relatives. His actual powers, as observed before, depended on various
circumstances and tended to diminish in the course of 12th and 13th centuries.
What remained was the prestige, which enhanced the standing of his immedi-
ate family. Most Kievan grand princes were themselves sons of grand princes
43 E.g. in reporting the death of Vsevolod in 1093, the last surviving son of Iaroslav the Wise.
of Kiev.44 The dynastic unity of the house of Rurik and, by the same token, the
ideal unity of Russia were held together by the concept of the common origin
of the rulers as descendants of St. Vladimir and Iaroslav the Wise.
As a result of the Kievan grand princely dignity wandering around differ-
ent branches of the Rurikid house, some of the leading princely lines which
had already produced grand princes of Kiev began to adopt the title of grand
prince for themselves. The first to do so were members of the branch of the
Rostislavichi, princes of Smolensk, in the second half of the 12th century.45
They retained the title until 1404, when Smolensk was incorporated into the
Lithuanian-Polish state upon the death of the last grand prince of Smolensk,
Iurii Sviatoslavich.
The appropriation of the grand princely title by the princes of Riazan’ is less
obvious. They were the descendants of Sviatoslav, son of Iaroslav the Wise, and
himself grand prince of Kiev from 1073–1076. But Riazan’ was something of a
south-eastern backwater, which therefore was the first victim of the Mongol
invasion, when it was completely destroyed in 1237. In the aftermath it slowly
recuperated and its somewhat marginal location may explain how Riazan’ was
able to maintain its position as an independent principality for a long time.
Its history is not very well documented and the precise moment (probably in
the latter half of the 13th century) its princes adopted the title of grand prince
is therefore uncertain.46 At that time, presumably, the grand princely title
indicated that the prince concerned did not owe allegiance of any kind to an-
other Russian prince. All princes were subject to the Tatar khan anyway. The
grand princes of Riazan’ were the last to be unseated by the Moscow grand
princes. The last grand prince of Riazan’ was Ivan Ivanovich, who fled to Lithu-
ania in 1520.
The princes of Chernigov, also known as Ol’govichi (descendants of Oleg
Sviatoslavich, himself a son of Sviatoslav Iaroslavich, grand prince of Kiev
from 1073–1076), who supplied a number of Kievan grand princes, also styled
themselves occasionally grand princes of Chernigov.47 The main line became
44 The first exception was Vseslav of Polotsk (1068–1069), generally considered a usurper;
the sons of grand prince Sviatoslav Iaroslavich († 1076), Davyd and Oleg, never made it to
Kiev, but their sons and further offspring did, right down to Oleg’s great-great-grandson
Mikhail († 1246).
45 Descendants of Rostislav Mstislavich (†1168), grandson of Vladimir Monomakh.
46 See A.A. Zimin, Formirovanie boiarskoi aristokratii v Rossii, Moskva, 1988, 113–121 (“Ri-
azanskie kniaz’ia”); D.I. Ilovaiskii, Istoriia Riazanskogo kniazhestva, Moskva, 2008 (orig.,
Moskva, 1858).
47 On the princes of Chernigov, see S.A. Mel’nikov, Pravovoi rezhim nasledovaniia prestola
v Drevnei Rusi ix – nachala xvi vv., Moskva, 2009, 55–63; the same text in S.A. Mel’nikov,
352 chapter 13
e xtinct with Mikhail Vsevolodovich who was executed by the Tatar khan in
1246. After his death the Chernigov principality fell apart and most of it came
under Lithuanian control until it was won back by Ivan iii in 1503.
Apart from the Chernigov sub-dynasty, all other lines which assumed the
grand princely title at some time were descendants of Vladimir Monomakh.
The most senior line of the Monomakhovichi were the princes of Galicia. They
were the descendants of Vladimir Monomakh’s eldest son Mstislav the Great.
His great-grandson Roman became prince of Galicia-Volynia; Roman’s father
Mstislav, as well as his grandfather Iziaslav, had occupied the Kievan throne.
His four-year old son Daniil succeeded him in 1205, but it took him 34 years
to achieve effective control of the principality and thereby become the most
powerful of the Russian princes. He did not take the title of grand prince, but
instead accepted the offer of a crown from pope Innocent iv (part of the latter’s
struggle with the Holy Roman emperor). Daniil was crowned king of Galicia in
1253 and no longer needed the title of grand prince. His son Lev styled himself
“prince Lev, son of the king”, but Lev’s son Iurii again was called king of Galicia.
After Iurii the kingdom of Galicia fell apart and was ultimately absorbed by
Poland-Lithuania (see Chapter 17, on Western Russia).48
The other grand princely lines all belonged to the sub-dynasty descending
from Vsevolod “Big Nest” (Bol’shoe Gnezdo, † 1212), son of Iurii Dolgorukii and
grandson of Vladimir Monomakh. The least significant49 of them was the line
which produced a small number of grand princes of Nizhnii Novgorod; the
first one was Konstantin Vasil’evich, prince of Suzdal’, who transferred his seat
to Nizhnii Novgorod and assumed the title of grand prince in 1350. The grand
princely line died out in 1418 with Aleksandr Ivanovich, great-great-grandson
of Konstantin.50
Iaroslav, one of the sons of Vsevolod “Big Nest”, was the ancestor of the grand
princes of Tver’, as well as of the main grand princely line of Vladimir-Moscow.
Istoriko-pravovye faktory evoliutsii Drevnerusskogo gosudarstva (ix–xv vv.), Moskva, 2010,

43–49. The latter work is a slightly expanded edition of the former.
48 The rivalry for all-Russian hegemony between the princes of Galicia-Volynia and of Vladi-
mir is the main subject of D.V. Kozlov, Zakonomernosti gosudarstvenno-pravovoi integrat-
sii doordynskoi Rusi, Moskva, 2014.
49 If one omits the even less significant line of the princes of Rostov, who are reported as
having assumed the title of grand prince in the beginning of the 14th century. As fas
as I could ascertain, only the founder of the line of the princes of Rostov, Konstantin
Vsevolodovich (†1218), could claim this title (as grand prince of Vladimir); he was the
eldest son of Vsevolod Bol’shoe Gnezdo; Iaroslav, the ancestor of the Moscow, Nizhniii
Novgorod and Tver’ grand princes was one of his younger brothers.
50 Several junior branches, such as the Shuiskii princes, survived.
His son Iaroslav († 1271), like his father, first served as prince of Tver’ and then
as grand prince of Vladimir, after the death of his elder brother Aleksandr
Nevskii († 1263). Vladimir ultimately ended up in the hands of Aleksandr
Nevskii’s descendants. Iaroslav’s son Mikhail became the ancestor of the Tver’
dynasty and adopted the title of grand prince in 1282. The grand princes of
Tver’ were the principal rivals of the descendants of Aleksandr Nevskii in the
struggle for the hegemony in Russia during the following two centuries and
several Tver’ grand princes occupied the throne in Vladimir. The Tatar khan
usually played the two houses against each other, until the waning of Tatar
power and the s uperior force of the Moscow rulers brought victory to the de-
scendants of Aleksandr Nevskii. In 1485 the principality of Tver’ was united
with Moscow.
The grand princes of Vladimir emerged at an early stage in the struggle for
the Kievan throne. Iurii Dolgorukii, the seventh of the eight sons of Vladimir
Monomakh and prince of Rostov-Suzdal’, made several attempts to acquire the
Kievan grand princely dignity and finally achieved his goal in 1154 after the
death of his older brothers Mstislav, Iaropolk and Viacheslav, and Mstislav’s
son, Iziaslav, all of them serving at one time as grand princes of Kiev. Upon
the death of Iurii Dolgorukii in 1157, his eldest surviving son Andrei, surnamed
Bogoliubskii, ruled in Rostov-Suzdal’ and transferred his capital to Vladimir,
styling himself grand prince of Vladimir.
In 1169 Andrei Bogoliubskii took Kiev by force from a distant cousin
(Iziaslav Davydovich, who had ruled there after Iurii Dolgorukii), but installed
his younger brother Gleb there as grand prince. From this time on, the grand
princes of Vladimir were generally considered the most important and pres-
tigious among the Russian princes; the status of the grand prince of Kiev ac-
cordingly diminished and became insignificant and then meaningless after the
Mongol invasion.
When Andrei Bogoliubskii was assassinated in 1174, most of his sons had
predeceased him and he was eventually succeeded as grand prince of Vladimir
by his brother Vsevolod “Big Nest”. The principality of Vladimir subsequently
remained in the hands of the descendants of Vsevolod’s son Iaroslav (as men-
tioned above), and the latter’s sons Aleksandr Nevskii and Iaroslav Iaroslavich
(ancestor of the princes of Tver’).
The princes and later grand princes of Moscow descended from Daniil,
youngest son of Aleksandr Nevskii. His son Ivan I Kalita (“Money Bag”) also
served as grand prince of Vladimir, as well as Ivan Kalita’s sons Semën Gordyi
(“the Proud”) and Ivan ii Krasnyi or Krotkii (“the Meek”). At the end of the
reign of the son of Ivan ii, Dmitrii Donskoi, the principalities of Vladimir and
Moscow were united.
354 chapter 13
Under the grand princes of Moscow (at least since Ivan ii), the old Rurikid
succession system, already defunct, was explicitly discarded by the testamen-
tary appointment of the eldest son as the heir to the father’s “patrimony” or
“heritage” (otchina).
The title of grand prince, originally little more than a literary embellishment
applied by the annalists to indicate the exalted status of the incumbent, gradu-
ally solidified into a qualification with clear legal overtones, suggesting ruler-
ship deriving directly from the old Kievan source and excluding subordination
to another Rurikid prince.
The title continued to play a role in the process of Moscow’s emergence as
the hegemonial power, and the subtle changes in the way princes and rulers ad-
dressed each other in the treaties of the era reflected the continuous shifting
of the relationships among them. The Moscow grand princes recognized the
grand princely titles of their cousins in Tver’ or Riazan’; as long as they remained
“brothers” they considered themselves as equals. Once the Moscow grand prince
was identified as the “elder brother”, he was obviously the more powerful one.
Further steps were the insertion of the term “Lord” (gospodin) in addition to “el-
der brother”, and then also the appearance of the grand prince’s eldest son, with
or without the title of grand prince, as elder brother of the opposite treaty party.
Grand Prince of All Russia

A special twist was added to the evolution of the grand princely title by the
emergence of the addition “of all Russia” (vseia Rusi). Epithets of this kind had
already been used in early times, e.g. in referring to the death of Iaroslav the
Wise in 1054 (“the Russian grand prince”) and in 1212, in reporting the death of
Vsevolod “Big Nest”, “son of the pious grand prince of all Russia Iurii” (=Iurii
Dolgorukii, syn Georgiev blagochestivago kniazia vseia Rusi). These references
had a literary character, while the persons thus honoured did not themselves
use the title of grand prince of all Russia.51
In the oldest surviving original Russian charter, an immunity charter of
the Kievan grand prince Mstislav “the Great” Vladimirovich, of 1132, the do-
nor identified himself, not as grand prince, but as “Mstislav, son of Vladimir,
holding [ruling] the Russian land”.52 One could regard this formula as the
51 Kisterev has argued in favour of a more direct link between the title carried by Vsevolod
Big Nest and the subsequent use of the title by Moscow princes; S.N. Kisterev, “«Velikii
kniaz’ vseia Rusi» v xi–xv vekakh”, S.N. Kisterev (ed.), Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii, vyp.6,
Moskva, 2002, 47–85.
52 gvnp No.81, 140; also prp ii, 102 (comments at 110–111); see also the short discussion of this
charter in Chapter 18, on Rural Russia, in the section on landowning by the church and
monasteries.
f orerunner of the “grand prince of All Russia”. The first documented use of the
latter title by the incumbent himself is during the reign of Ivan Danilovich
Kalita (1328–1341), in a fiscal immunity charter issued to his falconers in Pech-
era.53 Somewhat earlier, the metropolitan had assumed the title “of all Russia”
and obviously the two innovations were connected.54 In the latter half of the
14th century the title grand prince of all Russia was also used in external rela-
tions by the princes of Moscow.55
In proto-historic times, the title of grand prince of all Russia had a forerun-
ner in the title of kagan, of Khazar origin. It reflected a memory of Khazar he-
gemony in Southern Russia, which came to an end in the 10th century. The first
recorded application of the title to the ruler of Russia was in the episode at the
Carolingian court of Louis the Pious, mentioned at the beginning of this chap-
ter.56 It turned up in Russian as well as foreign sources from the 10th and 11th
centuries. Its last occurrence is in the Lay of the Warfare Waged by Igor (Slovo o
polku Igoreve), where it is used once (kogan), in reference to Oleg Sviatoslavich
(†1115), prince of Chernigov and grandson of Iaroslav the Wise. The meaning
of the term and its equivalence with kniaz’ were obviously still remembered
at that time. Otherwise, kagan had completely been replaced by kniaz’ at that
moment. Older references to the kagan of the Russians are believed to pertain
to pre-Rurikid Russian rulers.57
53 Text in gvnp, No.84, 142; similar use in gvnp, No.86, 143, a land grant by Ivan Kalita to
the Novgorod Iur’ev monastery. See also Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 186; Kh. Lovmian’skii [H.
Łowmianśki], “Russko-Litovskie otnosheniia v xiv–xv vv.”, V.T. Pashuto (ed.), Feodal’naia
Rossiia vo vsemirno-istoricheskom protsesse. Sbornik statei, posviashchennyi L’vu Vladi-
mirovichu Cherepninu, Moskva, 1972, 269–275, at 270–271.
54 A.E. Presniakov, Obrazovanie Velikorusskogo gosudarstva, Moskva, 1998 (orig., Petrograd,
1918), 90, indicates Maksim, who served as metropolitan from 1283–1305, as the first met-
ropolitan “of all Russia” (referring to Russkaia Istoricheskaia Biblioteka, vi, No.13). It was
also Maksim who transferred the seat of the metropolitan from Kiev to Vladimir after the
death of the famous metropolitan Kirill in 1281. See also Chapter 21, on the Church.
55 E.g. in a mutual aid treaty between the Moscow grand prince Dmitrii Ivanovich Donskoi
and Novgorod, gvnp, No.16, 31.
56 The episode is widely commented upon in Russian historiography. See A.V. Nazarenko
(ed.), Zapadnoevropeiskie istochniki, T.iv of Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh istoch-
nikov (T.N. Dzhakson, I.G. Konovalova, A.V. Podosinov, eds.), Moskva, 2010, 19–20; E.A.
Mel’nikova (ed.), Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh istochnikov, Moskva, 2000, 288–290
(a shorter version of the same in E.A. Mel’nikova (ed.), Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh
istochnikov, Moskva, 2013, 277–278).
57 See E.A. Mel’nikova, “«Kniaz’» i «kagan» v rannei titulature Drevnei Rusi”, E.A. Mel’nikova,
Drevniaia Rus’ i Skandinaviia. Izbrannye trudy, Moskva, 2011, 114–122; S.N. Temushev,
“Problema lokalizatsii «Russkogo kaganata» ix veka”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Russkoe
356 chapter 13
Relations between Princes: Wills and Treaties
In pagan times, succession disputes between brothers and other relatives were
often resolved by the sword. Of the sons of Sviatoslav, Iaropolk first killed his
brother Oleg and was in turn killed by his brother Vladimir. This scenario re-
peated itself after the death of the same Vladimir, the first Christian prince of
Kiev. His son Sviatopolk murdered three of his half-brothers, before being de-
feated by their brother Iaroslav (the Wise). The ensuing conflict between Iaro-
slav and the most senior of his surviving brothers, Mstislav, reached a peaceful
solution after initial warfare between the two, when they divided the realm in
1026. This is the first reported pact between princes of the same house. Many
more are referred to in the Chronicle and the practice lasted until the end of
the Russian middle ages, when the absolute supremacy of the Moscow grand
prince had reduced all other princes to ordinary subjects.58
Along with treaties between princes of more or less equal rank, paternal
disposition was the other main instrument for resolving succession disputes
before they could arise. This was sometimes done by a unilateral disposition
inter vivos, such as the appointment of sons as rulers in various provinces (as
discussed above), but more commonly and certainly more effectively by testa-
mentary disposition (Iaroslav’s will of 1054 being the first example). A will was
more effective because it would also deal with the main question: who was
to succeed in the father’s main seat? In a paternal disposition inter vivos the
father would of course reserve the main seat for himself during his lifetime.
Treaties
The treaties between Rurikid princes should not be viewed in isolation from
other types of treaties, such as true international treaties and domestic Rus-
sian treaties concluded between princes and towns. The prevailing customs
regarding treaties, especially the well-developed practice of the Byzantine em-
pire, were also observed in the treaties which the Russian princes concluded
amongst themselves.59 Sergeevich has demonstrated that the roots of the
Srednevekov’e. Sbornik statei v chest’ professora Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva,

2012, 213–232.
58 See A. Poppe, “Words that serve the authority. On the title of ‘Grand Prince’ in Kievan Rus”,
Acta Poloniae Historica, 60 (1989), 159–184.
59 Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 157–159.
ractice of Russian princely treaties went back to Kievan times.60 The treaties
p
were drawn up in two different authentic texts, one each in the name of each
of the parties, in which the author requested the other party to kiss the Cross
(swear) to confirm the obligations undertaken by him. Each party would also
retain a true copy of the authentic text which he had handed to his opposite
number.
Most of the surviving texts concern treaties between the Moscow grand-
prince and close or distant relatives. This is to be explained by the archival
continuity between the Moscow principality and the following emanations
of a central Russian state, and also, probably, by the deliberate d estruction of
other princely archives. The general picture provided by the e xisting corpus of
Moscow texts is, however, representative of a more general practice.61
The most common conditions contained in the treaties and traceable to the
Kievan era concerned respect for each other’s territory and a pledge of unity
and brotherhood. The elaboration of the latter concept allowed a more explicit
expression of the relationship between the treaty partners. Formal equality was
recognized when the partners referred to each other as brothers. D esignation
as an elder or younger brother implied a relatively superior or inferior status,
which had to be elaborated in more precise terms. Among the more impor-
tant conditions encountered in the treaties were the duty to support the elder
brother in times of war (“to mount the horse” or “to ride alongside”, vsesti na
kon’, podle ezdit’); not to conclude treaties with outside parties (ne kanchivati);
to revoke certain existing treaties (tselovanie slozhiti); not to maintain direct
contacts with the Tatar (Golden) Horde (Ordy ne znati); to inform the senior
party about anything of importance to the latter. Complete subordination was
expressed by accepting the other party “in the place of a father” (v ottsa mesto)
or by “being in his will” (byt’ v ego voli).
After the Mongol invasion, the relationship of a ruling prince with the
Tatar khan was crucial, because the prince depended on receiving the khan’s
60 Ibidem, 150–154; see also L.V. Cherepnin, “K voprosu o kharaktere i forme drevnerussk-
ogo gosudarstva”, Istoricheskie Zapiski, No.89, 1972, 353–409, at 369–378, and Iushkov,
Stroi, 530.
61 The standard work on the history of the archives of the Moscow grand princes and of con-
nected archives is L.V. Cherepnin, Russkie feodal’nye arkhivy xiv–xv vekov, Part i, Moskva/
Leningrad, 1948, Part ii, Moskva, 1951 (quoted as Cherepnin, Arkhivy). The standard text
edition is L.V. Cherepnin (text ed.), S.V. Bakhrushin (gen’l ed.), Dukhovnye i dogovornye
gramoty velikikh i udel’nykh kniazei xiv–xvi vv., Moskva/Leningrad, 1950 (quoted as ddg).
358 chapter 13
authorization, by means of a iarlyk, before he could occupy his seat. And when
Tatar control was relaxed and the collection of tribute to the Tatars was en-
trusted to the prince, the relationship remained of overwhelming interest, be-
cause it determined the strength of the prince’s financial position. The treaties
among the princes illustrate the continuous shifting of power balances in the
variety of arrangements for dealing with the Tatar overlord.62
Where the relationship was formulated as one of equality, the princes ad-
dressed each other as brothers and recognized the other party’s freedom in
dealing with the khan: “And to the Horde and to the tsar [khan], the road is
clear for you, brother, and for your children, and for your grandchildren, and
for your people.”63 In an earlier treaty between the Moscow and Tver’ princes,
the latter recognized the Moscow prince as elder brother; the delicate matter
of dealing with the Tatars was not mentioned explicitly, but the two princes
agreed to maintain solidarity in their contacts with the Tatars, there was to be
consultation in all matters and, if it came to hostilities, one would come to the
aid of the other.64 In a treaty from the same period between the Moscow and
Riazan’ princes, the latter was required to bring his external policy in line with
that of Moscow by following Moscow’s course in dealings with the Lithuanians
and the Tatars. Otherwise, the independence of the Riazan’ prince remained
unaffected.65
After Dmitrii Donskoi’s (short-lived) victory over the Tatars in 1380 (the bat-
tle of Kulikovo Pole), the treaties often already envisaged an eventual collapse
62 On this question, see A.D. Gorskii, “Otrazhenie russko-ordynskikh otnoshenii v duk-

hovnykh i dogovornykh gramotakh velikikh i udel’nykh kniazei xiv – nachala xvi veka”,
Appendix i (190–195) in A.D. Gorskii, Moskva i Orda, Moskva, 2001.
63 ddg, No.15, 40–43 (treaty between the grand prince Vasilii Dmitrievich of Moscow and
Mikhail Aleksandrovich of Tver’, around 1396); cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 84–86, and also
V.A. Kuchkin, Dogovornye gramoty moskovskikh kniazei xiv veka, Moskva, 2003, 271–325;
text of the treaty at 345–348. ddg, No.37, 105–107 (treaty between grand prince Vasilii
Vasil’evich of Moscow and grand prince Boris Aleksandrovich of Tver’); cf. Cherepnin,
Arkhivy i, 124–125; the date of this treaty was 1437 according to G.V. Semenchenko,
“Moskovsko-tverskoi dogovor vtoroi poloviny 30-kh godov xv veka”, V.A. Kuchkin (ed.),
Issledovaniia po istochnikovedeniiu istorii Rossii (do 1917 g.). Sbornik statei, Moskva, 1997,
4–15.
64 ddg, No.9, 25–28 (treaty between the grand princes Dmitrii Ivanovich of Moscow and
Mikhail Aleksandrovich of Tver’ of 1375). Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 51–55, and also Kuch-
kin, Dogovornye gramoty, 169–222; text of the treaty at 339–343.
65 ddg, No.10, 29–30 (treaty between the grand princes Dmitrii Ivanovich of Moscow and
Oleg Ivanovich of Riazan’ of 1382). Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 55–58, and also Kuchkin, Do-
govornye gramoty, 223–270; text of the treaty at 343–345.
of Tatar suzerainty by providing new conditions to deal with such changed

circumstances.
As several authors have noted, there are no treaties between fathers (or
grandfathers) and sons (or grandsons),66 although there are many examples of
princes rebelling, often successfully, against their fathers. In principle, the son
owed his father complete obedience. The same logic explains the absence of
treaties with the Tatar khan, who demanded the same obedience.
Although the ancient principle of family seniority (stareishinstvo or starshin-
stvo) remained terminologically the instrument to shape relationships within
the ruling dynasty, its negotiability in fact abolished it. Once seniority was no
longer determined by birth and descent, but became negotiable between fam-
ily members, its original meaning was lost. The most powerful one would in
the end be recognized as the senior one. Tatar supremacy unquestionably fa-
voured this metamorphosis; the khan had reserved for himself the power to
sanction princely succession in Russia and could not be bound by the tradi-
tional seniority system of the Rurikids. But even without this factor the original
seniority system would have been unworkable once the family had spread out
in numerous branches and sub-branches.
In an early period, when the ruling family had not yet branched out exces-
sively, princes occasionally assembled to work out their differences. These as-
semblies could also result in the conclusion of a pact which settled outstanding
territorial disputes. The best-known example is the meeting of six princes at
Liubech in 1097, where Sviatopolk, grand prince of Kiev, Vladimir Monomakh,
then prince of Pereiaslavl’, Davyd and Oleg Sviatoslavichi, Davyd Igor’evich (all
of them first cousins), and Vasil’ko Rostislavich (son of a first cousin) divided
up most of the principalities, assigning, as a general rule, principalities to the
sons of fathers who had ruled there before.67
These assemblies, especially when most of the leading princes took part,
had the potential to develop into a more permanent institution, embodying
the concept of the dynasty as the supreme ruler of the country.68 But although
the princely assemblies in some cases made explicit decisions on national mat-
ters, such as war or the distribution of principalities, the institution never ac-
quired sufficient strength and vitality to achieve a permanent status. N ational
66 E.g. Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 152,

67 Cf. Presniakov, Lektsii i, 159–161; D.M. Kotyshev, “Liubechskii s”ezd v istorii Iuzhnoi Rusi
kontsa xi – nachala xii veka”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Russkoe srednevekov’e. Sbornik
68 Cf. D’iakonov, Ocherki, 152–154.
360 chapter 13
unity was in the end imposed unilaterally by the Moscow grand prince, after
manoeuvering himself into a position of supremacy.
When conflicts between princes could not be settled through negotiations,
war remained the standard manner of settling disputes. The sources show
clearly that such wars differed from those against foreign invaders or from
the raids against pagan tribes in which the Kievan princes often engaged.
There was a sliding scale between wars which resembled duels, as an ultimate
procedural instrument to arrange relationships, and wars waged without the
pretence of a legitimate claim where a stronger prince would attempt to evict
another prince by sheer military force. In the case of the duel, the outcome
was regarded as ordained by heaven and the loser would usually accept his
fate. Although princes often fell in such wars, this was considered a not un-
usual professional risk. If they lost and survived, they would normally not be
punished, except by the loss of territory or assignment to a smaller principality.
Outside regular warfare, violence and killing among the members of the house
of Rurik was strongly condemned in the chronicles, reporting several i nstances
of the princes themselves reflecting on the impermissibility of bloodshed
among relatives.
Wills
The will or testament is only a specific type of unilateral disposition, made
when the testator wants to achieve a definitive settlement of his affairs before
his death. Similar dispositions could be made at various times during his life
and they could of course be amended or revoked later on. The earliest example
mentioned in the Chronicle is the assignment by Sviatoslav of principalities to
his three most senior sons in 970. Such dispositions had by their very nature
a temporary character; wills, on the other hand, were normally definitive. The
oral will of Iaroslav the Wise in 1054, as transmitted in the Chronicle, has been
mentioned several times before. He appointed his eldest son Iziaslav as his
successor on the throne of Kiev and assigned principalities to his other four
(surviving) sons, enjoining them to respect the position of Iziaslav, “that he
may take my place among you.”
There are several indications that princes continued to make such disposi-
tions, but the first actually available text is the will of Ivan I Kalita, from about
1339.69 It was followed by a complete series of wills of Moscow grand princes,
down to Ivan iv (the Terrible).
The private law aspect was still dominant in the will of Ivan I Kalita; in other
words, it dealt mostly with the distribution of the prince’s property among
69 ddg, No.1, 7–11. Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 12–20.

his children and his future widow. At that moment, it was not in the gift of
the Moscow prince to decide who was going to rule in Moscow and in other
parts of his principality. Numerous villages, gold and silver implements and
expensive garments were assigned to his four eldest sons, with another share
going to their mother and the younger children. The eldest son Semën received
a larger share and was enjoined to act as protector (pechal’nik) for his mother
and his siblings.
When Semën himself died without issue in 1353, he left his worldly goods
to his widow.70 His brother and successor as grand prince, Ivan ii (†1359),
made the usual dispositions in his will in favour of his two sons and his widow,
preceding those with the formula: “I assign my patrimony of Moscow to my
sons Dmitrii and Ivan.”71 He also made bequests to his nephew Vladimir An-
dreevich.72 Ivan ii’s son Dmitrii Donskoi employed the same formula in his will
of 1389, but added later on in the will the formula “And I bequeath the grand
princely dignity, my paternal heritage, to my son prince Vasilii (i).”73 This was
nine years after the first major defeat inflicted on the Tatars, when Dmitrii an-
nihilated the army of Mamai on the Sandpiper Field (Kulikovo Pole). He then
felt able to assign the grand princely dignity without having received Tatar
assent. The will of 1389 was also remarkable in granting a significant role to
his widow; his five sons (the eldest, Vasilii, being 17 years old) were instructed
to heed their mother’s will and the grand princess was provided with an estate
securing her independence.
Vasilii i Dmitrievich himself followed his father’s independent course in
his second will (of around 1417), by leaving “my paternal heritage, the grand
princely dignity” to his son Vasilii. But the vicissitudes of his relations with the
70 ddg, No.3, 13–14. His brothers Ivan (the future grand prince) and Dmitrii witnessed the
will. Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 20–27.
71 ddg, No.4, 15–19 (around 1358). Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 27–31.
72 This Vladimir, the son of grand prince Ivan’s brother Andrei, prince of Serpukhov (†1353),
was a five-year old orphan; as the grand prince Ivan’s sons were also young children, the
testator may have felt the need to provide as best as possible for the few male heirs of his
branch. Vladimir Khrabryi (“the Brave”) turned out a steadfast supporter of his cousin,
grand prince Dmitrii Donskoi, and played a decisive role in the battle of Kulikovo Pole
against the Tatars.
73 ddg, No.12, 33–37 (1389). Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 58–62. An earlier will of Dmitrii Dons-
koi of around 1375 has survived only in part (ddg, No.8, 24–25). The 1389 will is the subject
of a long study by V.A. Kuchkin, “Poslednee zaveshchanie Dmitriia Donskogo”, A.A. Gor-
skii (ed.), Srednevekovaia Rus’, 3, Moskva, 2001, 106–183.
362 chapter 13
Tatars led him to adopt a more cautious approach in his wills of 1406–1407 and
1423 (“and in case God will grant my son the grand princely dignity”).74
In the will of Vasilii ii Vasil’evich, eldest son and successor of Vasilii i
Dmitrievich, the decisive bequest of the grand principality was moved to the
beginning of the will and his son and successor Ivan iii was explicitly indi-
cated as the eldest son.75 Ivan iii Vasil’evich in his turn appointed his eldest
son Vasilii iii as his successor and instructed the other sons simultaneously to
regard him as their father or, in other words, to obey him.76
This series of wills of the grand princes of Moscow, covering a period of
almost two centuries, was conservative in its private law aspect, the regulation
of what was to happen with the private property of the prince, his personal
villages and other real estate, his gold and silver. The public law aspect, almost
absent in the will of Ivan I Kalita, gradually asserted itself until the final stage
was reached: the appointment of the eldest son as comprehensive successor in
the grand princely dignity.
While the wills of Moscow grand princes, starting with Ivan I Kalita, were all
in the Muscovy state archives, the wills of other princes are poorly represented.
In fact, the 13 wills included in the ddg volume, all concerned close relatives of
the grand prince.77 Few other princely wills are extant.78
74 ddg, No.20, 55–57 (1406); No.21, 57–60 (1417); No.22, 60–62 (1423). Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy i,
86–92. See also I.G. Ponomareva, “K khronologii zaveshchanii moskovskogo velikogo
kniazia Vasiliia Dmitrievicha”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Russkoe srednevekov’e. Sbornik
75 ddg, No.61, 193–199 (1461). Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 158–161.
76 ddg, No.89, 353–364 (1504). Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 220–223.
77 Six of them (Nos.17, 29, 68, 71, 74, 99) concerned younger sons of the grand prince; three
of them (Nos.80, 88, 98) sons of younger sons; three others the widows of some of the
foregoing (Nos.28, 57, 87); and one (No.86) is the last will of prince Ivan Iur’evich Patri-
keev, son of Mariia, daughter of grand prince Vasilii i. Ivan Patrikeev was the grandson of
prince Patrikii Narimontovich (of the Lithuanian royal house of the Gediminids), who
had come to Russia in 1408 and entered the service of the Moscow grand prince, the first
non-Rurikid prince in Russia. Cf. A.A. Zimin, Formirovanie boiarskoi aristokratii v Rossii vo
vtoroi polovine xv – pervoi treti xvi v., Moskva, 1988, 29–35.
78 asei i, 86–87 (No.108) contains the will (1473) of a grandson of prince Dmitrii Ivanovich
of Galich (an obscure line, descendants of Konstantin, a brother of Aleksandr Nevskii); cf.
Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 72. asei ii, 146–147 (No.224) contains a gift charter (1473–1485) by
the widow of Fedor Ivanovich, the last prince of Kargolom, in execution of his last wishes.
The princes of Kargolom were a cadet branch of the princes of Belozero, themselves the
descendants of Konstantin, one of the sons of Vsevolod Big Nest. A gift charter of princess
Elena, widow of prince Dmitrii Ivanovich Riapolovskii, of 1463–1470, was also made out
in order to execute the prince’s last will, asei ii, 499 (No.462). The Riapolovskii princes
The surviving wills of princes (and princesses) did not differ essentially
from the wills of other wealthy landowners from the period; in other words,
their contents did not concern the public law aspects of the princely office.
A possible exception was the will of Mikhail, prince of Verei, a son of Andrei,
prince of Mozhaisk, the latter a younger son of Dmitrii Donskoi. His only sur-
viving son Vasilii had fled Muscovy and gone over to the Lithuanian grand
prince in 1484. The Moscow grand prince Ivan iii Vasil’evich had therefore al-
lowed Mikhail Andreevich to continue to enjoy the principality of Verei (and
other possessions) during his lifetime, with the obligation to turn it over to the
grand prince in his will. This was done in a will, drafted by the grand prince
himself, in 1486.79
What is missing in the reservoir of available princely wills is the wills of rul-
ing princes of other leading principalities (Smolensk, Tver’, Riazan’, etc.). Ac-
cording to Cherepnin, such documents were probably intentionally destroyed
by the Moscow rulers.80 One can only presume that the format of such docu-
ments must have been similar to that of the Moscow ones; in other words, that
there would have been a transition from wills with a purely private character,
in which the prince transferred his personal possessions to his heirs, to a later
form, reflecting the relaxation of Tatar control, in which the transfer of sov-
ereign power was the main element, along with the distribution of personal
possessions.
Princely Rule: Succession, Popular Assent, Mongol-Tatar Validation
The family-based organization of the Kievan realm gave rise to a peculiar po-
litical structure. There has been endless discussion about its nature; was it a
unitary state, a conglomerate of semi-states, or something else again?81
were a cadet branch of the princes of Starodub, the descendants of Ivan, one of the sons
of Vsevolod Big Nest. A will of prince Dmitrii Ivanovich Sheleshpanskii, from around
1470, in A.V. Antonov, K.V. Baranov (eds.), Akty sluzhilykh zemlevladel’tsev xv – nachala
xvii veka i, Moskva, 1997, No.301, 293–294. The Sheleshpanskii princes were also a cadet
branch of the princes of Belozero.
79 ddg, No.80, 301–315 (1486); for the complicated story behind these documents, see
Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 175–179.
81 See for instance, Kliuchevskii, Kurs i, 144; Sergeevich, Lektsii, 141, 147; Presniakov, Lektsii i,
154–156; D’iakonov, Ocherki, 140–144; Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 45–47; Iushkov, Stroi, 322–329;
A.A. Zimin, “Feodal’naia gosudarstvennost’ i Russkaia Pravda”, Istoricheskie Zapiski,
No.76, 1965, 230–275; L.V. Cherepnin, “K voprosu o kharaktere i forme Drevnerusskogo
364 chapter 13
The main thing to be kept in mind is that the character of the Kievan pol-
ity was constantly in flux; the interplay of centrifugal and centripetal forces
produced an ever-changing picture. The most potent centrifugal force was un-
doubtedly the dynastic custom of dividing up the estate of a deceased ruler
among his heirs. Then there were the ambitions and capabilities of regional
rulers and also the still lively tradition of provincial independence. It was
only the Rurikid dynasty which had put an end to the independence of tribal
principalities, such as Dereva, Polotsk, Smolensk, and others. The strongest
centripetal forces were the general awareness of the underlying unity of the
Russian land, the dignity of the Kievan grand prince, and the unity of the rul-
ing house.
The question of succession or, more precisely, of identifying the prince who
would be the ruler of a particular principality, has been investigated hitherto
as a matter of relationships between princes. One crucial aspect is still missing
in drawing a complete picture of princely succession in Kievan Russia: popular
involvement. This aspect will be discussed from a different perspective in the
section on the relationship between the veche and the prince in C hapter 15,
on Towns, but something must be said about it here. The background of
this involvement was, as was pointed out in the introductory section of this
chapter, the basically contractual character of the relations between prince
and people.
The chronicles offer many examples of the importance and often decisive-
ness of popular involvement in the selection of a prince in the Kievan era. The
events in Kiev in 1068–1069 were a prominent example of this (related above
in the section containing a historical survey of princely succession). When the
ruling Kievan prince, Iziaslav, had lost the support of the people of Kiev after
a lost battle against the Polovtsians, the Kievans expelled him and installed in
his place Vseslav, prince of Polotsk, who had been incarcerated in Kiev after an
unsuccessful uprising againts Iziaslav and his brothers Sviatoslav and Vsevolod
(sons of Iaroslav the Wise).82 When Iziaslav approached with an army, Vseslav
fled and the inhabitants of Kiev offered their allegiance to Iziaslav again.
gosudarstva”, Istoricheskie Zapiski, No.89, 1972, 353–408; I.A. Isaev, “Drevnerusskaia gosu-
darstvennost’ v istoricheskoi perspektive: kritika evraziiskoi kontseptsii”, G.V. Shvekov
(ed.), Problemy prava i pravovoi ideologii, Moskva, 1985, 94–115; M.B. Sverdlov, “Obra-
zovanie Drevnerusskogo gosudarstva (Istoriograficheskie zametki)”, dgve 1992–1993,
6–16; N.F. Kotliar, Drevnerusskaia gosudarstvennost’, Sankt-Peterburg, 1998.
82 Vseslav was the grandson and successor (after his father Briacheslav) of Iziaslav, prince of
Polotsk and elder brother of Iaroslav the Wise. This Iziaslav had died before their father
St. Vladimir and his descendants were therefore out of the loop for the succession of the
In Novgorod and Pskov (see Chapter 16 on those two cities) the election
and rejection of the local prince was a common occurrence for several centu-
ries and although the prince remained very much an element of their govern-
mental organization, the republican component was very significant. In other
principalities the prince was generally the central political institution, but his
appointment was not always merely the result of the complex dynastic ar-
rangements of the Rurikid house; in many cases the population (of the capital,
as a rule) had a significant input in the process of selecting a new prince; they
would occasionally object strenuously to a particular candidate. It was impor-
tant for a prince to have popular support. Just belonging to the right branch of
the Rurikid house was often not enough.
Popular involvement decreased after the Mongol invasions. The khan had
appropriated the authority to confirm princely succession and this had given
him an effective political instrument to maintain control from a distance. He
was obviously not going to allow the citizens of a particular town to interfere
with his policies.
Mongol-Tatar validation of princely succession was introduced immediate-
ly after 1240. A short item in the Suzdal’ Chronicle under the year 1243 r eports
that grand prince Iaroslav (of Vladimir, son of Vsevolod Big Nest) made the
journey to the Tatar headquarters to khan Baty, who released him with the
words: “Iaroslav, thou shalt be the senior of all the princes of the Russian na-
tion”, and “Iaroslav returned to his lands with great honour”. The next year,
three other princes83 made the same journey “for their patrimony (pro svoiu
otchinu)”, were received by Baty and dismissed, each having been assigned his
patrimony.84 Occasionally, princes were required to travel all the way to Kara-
korum to the great khan himself. The diplomatic phraseology of the chronicles
should not disguise the risk of these endeavours. Not only was the journey it-
self long and arduous, but also a sojourn at the Mongol court often ended in
murder or summary execution of the prince and even wholesale slaughter of
the Russian delegation.85
latter. Still, Vseslav could claim that he represented the most senior branch of the Rurikid
dynasty.
83 Vladimir Konstantinovich of Uglich, Boris Vasil’kovich of Rostov, and Vasilii Vsevolodich
of Iaroslavl’.
84 psrl i, 470.
85 In fairness to the Mongols one should add that a stay at the court of the Moscow grand
prince in the 15th and 16th century was an equally risky experience for subordinate
Russian princes.
366 chapter 13
The Office and Function of the Prince
In the foregoing sections the identification of the prince has been examined,
in other words: who would be eligible; the concept of the ruling house; the
manner of selection, and similar questions. The next chapter will deal with
the way a prince, once having occupied his throne, would function, what kinds
of activities he would engage in, seen, of course, from the point of view of
legal history. It goes almost without saying that we are only concerned with rul-
ing princes, not with anyone rightfully bearing the title of prince (such as the
sons of a ruling prince). Members of the latter category, once they had reached
adulthood, would normally be entrusted with positions of responsibility, espe-
cially military commands, but they could not be considered ruling princes un-
less they had been assigned principalities of their own by their fathers or other
genealogically superior relatives (uncles, elder brothers, etc.), themselves rul-
ing princes. In later years junior princes would occasionally also be appointed
as representatives of a ruling prince, as his regional or local lieutenants (as
posadnik or namestnik), but such positions were quite different from that of
being a ‘suffragan’ or apanage prince. The Moscow grand princes in particular
made frequent use of such ‘service princes’ (sluzhilye kniaz’ia, see the following
chapter).
But at the end of this chapter we want to take a closer look at the court
of the prince, the people around him, his entourage, the court officials. The
public activities of a ruling prince required the involvement of such persons;
without them a prince could not function.
While modern constitutions define the rights and duties of the head and the
chief officials of a state, other legal cultures regard such matters generally as
subjects of customary law or mere custom. An indication of the way of think-
ing about such topics in Kievan times is provided by a few literary sources, such
as the so-called “Testament of Monomakh”, or, more generally, the text known
as the “Word of Daniil the Exile” (Slovo Daniila Zatochnika)86 and also the fa-
mous “Lay of Igor’s Campaign” (Slovo o Polku Igoreve). In the “Testament of
Monomakh”, a text incorporated in the Primary Chronicle after the year 1096,87
Vladimir Monomakh is introduced as speaking in the first person, advising his
sons on how a prince ought to conduct himself.
The narrowest circle around the prince was formed by his family and close
relatives. The principal aspects of the prince’s relations with this category have
already been mentioned above.
86 On the legal and political aspects of this text, see B.A. Romanov, Liudi i nravy Drevnei Rusi,
Leningrad, 1947, 17–46.
87 psrl i, col.240–252.
The visible role of wives was small, apart in exceptional situations. Adult
males (younger brothers and sons) would either be entrusted either with sub-
ordinate principalities of their own or with military commands.
The Prince’s Court and Officials in Kievan Times
The Druzhina
Ouside his own family, closest to the prince were the members of his druzhina,
his personal retinue or Gefolgschaft.
The general historical literature on the druzhina is very extensive and goes
back to the 19th century.88 There has been increased interest in the importance
of the druzhina in the political and legal culture of early Kievan Russia among
modern Russian historians.89
Social groupings similar to the Old-Russian druzhina can be observed among
other Indo-European peoples in comparable stages of social development. The
Russian druzhina unquestionably had its roots in prehistoric times, and is al-
ready present in the earliest written sources. It is mentioned frequently in the
Primary Chronicle, for the first time in 945, in a very significant passage.90
In this year, Igor’s druzhina said to him: “Sveinald’s young men [otrotsi]
are well equipped with weapons and clothing, while we are naked; go
forth with us, Prince, in search of tribute, in order that you and we may
profit from this.”
The main points to be noted here are that the druzhina at that time was obvi-
ously an armed band of comparatively small size, attached to the prince, but
not fully subordinate to him; other magnates, besides the prince, had their
88 The most recent comprehensive treatment is P.S. Stefanovich, Boiare, otroki, druzhiny:
voenno-politicheskaia elita Rusi v x–xi vekakh, Moskva, 2012. See also Froianov, KRse,
64–96, and id., Nachala, 542–575.
89 In particular the group of scholars connected with the yearbook Drevnie gosudarstva
Vostochnoi Evropy (dgve), the continuation of Drevnie gosudarstva na territorii sssr
(dg sssr), founded in 1978. See especially S.I. Nikol’skii, “O druzhinnom prave v epokhu
stanovleniia gosudarstvennosti na Rusi”, A.A. Gorskii (ed.), Srednevekovaia Rus’, vyp.4,
Moskva, 2004, 5–48; E.G. Mel’nikov, “K tipologii predgosudarstvennykh i rannegosudarst-
vennykh obrazovanii v Severnoi i Vostochnoi Evrope”, dgve 1992–1993, Moskva, 1995, 16–
32; N.F. Kotliar, Drevnerusskaia gosudarstvennost’, Sankt-Peterburg, 1998, 63–70 (there is
also a Ukrainian edition from 2002); A.A. Gorskii, Drevnerusskaia druzhina, Moskva, 1989
(not available to me).
90 psrl i, col.54.
368 chapter 13
own druzhiny. This agrees with a more general pre-medieval phenomenon in

which a king or chief functioned as the central figure of a group of warriors,
comrades-in-arms and drinking companions, who engaged in various warlike
activities, ostensibly to acquire booty or exact tribute, while the enhancement
of status was the actual driving force. Such a leader is a recurrent element in
the earliest history of most European peoples. The Homeric ‘kings’ offer one of
the oldest examples, but similar set-ups appeared in Old-Irish society and they
were very common among Germanic peoples.91
S.L. Nikol’skii emphasized the point that Kievan druzhina membership
crossed tribal and even ethnic lines; it was not limited to persons who were
genetically close to the chief. This pluralist character of druzhina membership
provided an additional incentive for the fixation of existing or new legal ar-
rangements, hitherto fixed mnemonically in tribal custom.92
These archaic features of the original druzhina were already fading in the
early Kievan period, when it mutated into a group of armed men, attached and
subordinate to the prince. This would be a generalized description and not a
definition. In later centuries druzhina sometimes referred to an armed force
of considerable size; at other times to a small group of high nobles, close to
the prince, and to various in-between groupings. This terminology was and is
often conceptualized by regarding the druzhina as consisting of two distinct
layers: senior members (boiare or boliare, also designated as kniazhi muzhi,
“the prince’s men”) and junior members, otroki (lit. “youths”), but this view
implies a degree of institutionalization of the druzhina which is perhaps not
quite realistic.93
Although the druzhina occurs in the chronicles at an early stage, it is absent
in the Short Pravda and mentioned three times in the Expanded Pravda. In
art. 53, the preamble to the Statute of Monomakh, its meaning is completely
obvious: a small group of the prince’s closest councillors. Art. 2 of the E
xpanded
Pravda (which rephrases the preamble to the Statute of Iaroslav’s Sons in the
Short Pravda) is very similar, but refers to the councillors as the prince’s “men”
(muzhi).
91 I have discussed this aspect at greater length in Feldbrugge, lmr, 140–145; more recently,
P.S. Stefanovich published an important study on precisely this topic, “Germanskaia dru-
zhina i popytki sravneniia ego s slavianskoi druzhinoi. Istoriograficheskii obzor”, A.Iu.
Dvornichenko, A.V. Maiorov (eds.), Rossica Antiqua 2006. Issledovaniia i materialy, Sankt-
Peterburg, 2006, 204–228.
92 Nikol’skii, op. cit. (“O druzhinnom prave”), 24–25.
93 Cf. Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 344; Presniakov, Kniazhoe pravo, 241–249; Froianov, KRsp, 76ff.
and id., Nachala, 554ff. The indeterminateness of the druzhina concept is a major element
in the approach of Stefanovich, op. cit. (Boiare …), 259–262.
Art. 91 of the Expanded Pravda dealt with the inheritance of boyars and
druzhina members in contrast to art. 90, covering the inheritance of the peas-
ant (smerd). The peasant’s estate escheats to the prince. The estates of boyars
and druzhina members do not escheat to the prince; if there are no sons, the
daughters inherit. It is implied that in the normal case the sons inherit. The
formula “boyars and druzhinniki” raises the question about their relationship.
Are the two categories more or less identical? Do they partly overlap (there
are some boyars who are also druzhinniki, and vice versa)? Are they separate
categories? My tentative view is that the two groups were originally separate,
but already partly fused at the time of the Expanded Pravda (see the section
on boyars and other nobles in Chapter 19, on the Individual and the Family).
In art. 5 of the Expanded Pravda druzhina is used apparently as a synonym
for verv’. The meaning of the latter term itself is not entirely clear, “community
of local residents, not necessarily related by blood” is probably a suitable ap-
proximation. I have not found any comments in the literature on the curious
and unique use of druzhina in this provision. All commentators simply treat it
as a synonym for “community”.94 One can only regard the druzhina of art. 5 of
the Expanded Pravda as a one-off case.
The prince’s men (kniazhi muzhi), as has been pointed out above, appear in
the Expanded Pravda as a synonym for druzhina; both terms are absent in the
Short Pravda, but the parallel formulations of art. 20 Short Pravda and art. 3
Expanded Pravda indicate that the ognishchanin, repeatedly mentioned in the
Short Pravda, is a kniazh muzh.95
The druzhina turns up only rarely in sources of the 13th century, where it re-
fers rather loosely to a group of people, as, for instance, in art. 37/35 of the 1229
Treaty between Smolensk and Riga.96 The last mention in the First Novgorod
Chronicle is in 1266, when the Lithuanian prince Gerden’ escaped after a lost
battle “with his small druzhina” (apparently his bodyguard). There is also a
very late example from the Suzdal’ Chronicle, concerning a similar situation,
when the grand princes Dmitrii Donskoi and Oleg of Riazan’ managed their
escape v maloi druzhine (with or in a small druzhina) in 1371.97
The druzhina being an important element in the political and legal make-up
of early Kievan society, specific aspects of it have also been discussed elsewhere
94 Cf. Baranowski, 363–368.

95 On the ognishchanin: Sergeevich, Drevnosti i, 363; Presniakov, Kniazhoe pravo, 231; Grekov,
Pravda Russkaia ii, 138–146; M. Szeftel, A. Eck, Documents de droit public relatifs à la Russie
médiévale, Bruxelles, 1963, 48; Baranowski, 251–255.
96 In the text of Copy A, prp ii, 69.
97 psrl i, col.534.
370 chapter 13
in this work: the question of the Zakon Russkii as ‘druzhina law’ (in the section
on the Zakon Russkii, in Chapter 3, on the Treaties with Byzantium and the
Zakon Russkii), druzhina membership and the emergence of noble landown-
ership (in the section on boyar landowning, in Chapter 18, on Rural Russia),
and the origin of noble status (in the section on boyars and other nobles, in
Chapter 19, on the Individual and the Family).
The Maior Domus

Returning to the quotation set out above, about the druzhiny of Igor and Svein-
ald, something more must be said about the identity of the latter. Igor gave in
to the request of his druzhina and started a campaign against the Derevlians,
in which he was killed (945). He was succeeded by his young son Sviatoslav,
with his widow Olga acting as regent. At the same time Sveinald is mentioned
as the military commander (voevoda) and Asmud as Sviatoslav’s tutor (kormi-
lets). The latter quickly disappeared from the stage,98 but Sveinald continued
his career as general and chief advisor of Sviatoslav until the latter’s death in
972 and is last mentioned in 977. The high point of his career seems to have
been in 971, when the treaty with the Byzantine emperor Johannes Tzimisces
named Sviatoslav, prince of Russia, and Sveinald side by side as the Russian
parties. After Sviatoslav’s death, Sveinald was closely associated with the most
senior of Sviatoslav’s sons, Iaropolk, but when finally Vladimir (who was ini-
tially outranked by other brothers) emerged victorious in 980 nothing more is
heard of Sveinald.99
His place as military commander and chief councillor to the ruling prince
was taken by Dobrynia, who was Vladimir’s maternal uncle. About Dobrynia’s
prominent position there is no doubt – he ruled in Novgorod for some time and
campaigned together with his nephew – but there are no indications that he
ever appeared as the prince’s equal, as Sveinald did. His position was possibly
inherited by his son Konstantin, who is mentioned as posadnik (lieutenant) of
Vladimir’s son Iaroslav the Wise in Novgorod in 1018. Later on during the reign
of Iaroslav, in 1043, he sent one of his sons on a military campaign against the
Greeks and gave the command to Vyshata, the son of Ostromir (also posadnik
in Novgorod). After Vyshata, his son Ian served several Kievan grand princes as
councillor, general and tysiatskii of Kiev (mentioned in 1089), until his death
98 He is mentioned in 946, together with Sveinald, as the young prince Sviatoslav’s chief
companions.
99 Iaropolk and another brother, Oleg, were legitimate, while Vladimir was the son of a con-
cubine, Maliusha. Also, Iaropolk had already been assigned the Kievan throne by his fa-
ther, when the latter set up his headquarters in Pereiaslavets on the Danube in 967.
90 years old in 1106. Ian’s brother, Putiata, served Sviatopolk (grand prince of
Kiev from 1093–1113 and son of Iziaslav) in a similar capacity (mentioned from
1097–1106).
More examples could begiven, but those given above are sufficient to assert
that during the earlier Kievan period, at the side of the ruling prince, an offi-
cial, not unlike the Merovingian maior domus, was usually present, exercizing
the functions of commander of the army, governor of Kiev or Novgorod and,
if need be, keeper of the realm.100 The connection between Vladimir and his
maternal uncle Dobrynia allows the hypothesis that the position of premier
magnate would naturally fall to a prominent and capable relative of the prince,
who was himself not a member of the Rurikid house, and thereby not a con-
tender for the princely dignity.
In later years the powers attached to the position gradually diminished;
Presniakov observed that developments in Russia were different from those in
the Frankish kingdom. The Rurikids retained a firm grip on the affairs of state,
following Vladimir Monomakh’s advice in his Testament: “without relying on
lieutenants [posadniki] or messengers [birichi], I did whatever was necessary”
and “attend to all matters yourself. Do not rely on your sheriff [tivun] or your
servant [otrok]”.
A similar and almost identical function is that of princely tutor or kormilets,
the first one mentioned being Asmud, tutor of Sviatoslav in 945, and equal in
rank with Sveinald, the general. In 1018 one encounters Budy, tutor and general
of Iaroslav. Some authors hold that this Budy is none other than Blud or Bludy,
the ruthless and treacherous general of Iaroslav’s uncle Iaropolk, who went
over to the side of Iaroslav’s father Vladimir in 980.
The princely tutor (kormilets), who obviously belonged to the highest ech-
elon of Kievan society, is not to be confused with the official of the same name
mentioned in the rp (art. 27 of the Short Pravda and art. 17 of the Expanded
Pravda). The latter person was a low-ranking member of the princely house-
hold, entrusted with looking after young members of the princely family; it
could even be a slave.
In later times in the Moscow principality, the commander of the Moscow
militia, the tysiatskii, occupied a position of exceptional power and trust with-
in the administration of the prince, until the position of tysiatskii was abol-
ished in 1374 by Dmitrii Donskoi.101
100 Among the few authors who paid special attention to this official is A.E. Presniakov,
Kniazhoe pravo v drevnei Rusi, Sankt-Peterburg, 1909, 233–238.
101 Cf. Iu.G. Alekseev, U kormila rossiiskogo gosudarstva, Moskva, 1998, 19. Alekseev points to
asei iii, 259–260 (No.238), a fiscal grant charter in which Dmitrii Donskoi refers to his last
tysiatskii, Vasilii Vasil’evich Vel’iaminov, as “his uncle”.
372 chapter 13
The Officials of the Kievan Prince

The druzhina was at the root of both the court and the service of the Kiev-
an princes. While the core of the druzhina was made up of boyars or kniazhi
m
uzhi, junior members were present at an early stage. The usual term for the
latter was otroki, but gridin or grid’ (a term of Scandinavian origin) is also used
(e.g. in art. 1 of the Short Pravda).102 Like boyars, junior druzhina members
could serve as members of the prince’s retinue or in specific offices. The mech-
nik (“sword man”) appears in the Short as well as the Expanded Pravda. From
the context one can conclude that the mechnik was a personal bodyguard of
the prince, but that he was also involved in court duties (Vernadsky translates
mechnik as “sheriff”).103
Of somewhat lower status was the metel’nik, an assistant of the bloodwite
collector (virnik) mentioned in arts.9 and 107 of the Expanded Pravda (Verna-
dsky translates metel’nik as “constable”).104 Tikhomirov regarded the metel’nik
as a junior druzhina member.
Another court official who is regarded by several authors as a junior mem-
ber of the druzhina is the detskii (arts.86 and 108 of the Expanded Pravda). His
involvement concerned primarily, as it seems, executive duties.105
Along with druzhina members, whether they belonged to the prince’s im-
mediate household or exercized their duties elsewhere, various other catego-
ries of persons employed at the prince’s court are mentioned in the rp. First
among these is the stable master (koniukh), responsible for the prince’s horses.
Art. 23 of the Short Pravda referred to the koniukh staryi, the senior stable mas-
ter, who enjoyed the same status as senior druzhina members, the fine for his
killing being set at 80 grivna, the same as for other high dignitaries such as the
ognishchanin and the prince’s tiun (steward).
Other (junior) stable masters are ranged with junior members of the dru-
zhina, the otroki, and with the prince’s cook, their bloodwite being 40 grivna
(art. 11 Expanded Pravda).106 The senior stable master (koniukh staryi) of the
Short Pravda (art. 23) is probably the same as the stable tiun or steward (tivun
koniushii) of art. 12 of the Expanded Pravda, where he is paired with the pal-
102 On the gridin, see Grekov, Pravda Russkaia ii, 42–44; Tikhomirov, Posobie, 144; Szeftel/Eck,
42; Baranowski, 181–182.
103 On the mechnik, see Grekov, Pravda Russkaia ii, 47–48, 232–233; Tikhomirov, Posobie, 154;
Szeftel/Eck, 42; Baranowski, 184–185.
104 On the metel’nik, see Grekov, Pravda Russkaia ii, 305; Tikhomirov, Posobie, 154; Szeftel/
Eck, 42; Baranowski, 380–381.
106 On the koniushii, see Sergeevich, Drevnosti i, 279; Grekov, Pravda Russkaia ii, 161–163;
Baranowski, 385–386.
ace steward (tiun ognishchii), each meriting a bloodwite of 80 grivna. The se-
nior stable master is therefore to be regarded as one of the principal officers of
the prince’s court, comparable to the marshal in the courts of West-European
princes, unquestionably one of the chief nobles and a member of the boyar
class.107
Although the prince’s court was undoubtedly the main place where govern-
mental functions were exercized in Kievan Russia, not all princely officials car-
ried out their tasks there. The highest agents of the prince in regional centres
were the prince’s lieutenants or posadniki. They were known already in the
time of St. Vladimir.108
While the posadnik was a general agent of the prince in civil matters, military
responsibilities were entrusted to the thousandmen or tysiatskie (chiliarchs).109
The preamble to the second part of the Expanded Pravda, the Statute of Mono-
makh, referred to the tysiatskie of Kiev, Belgorod and Pereiaslavl’ by name as
the most intimate councillors of the prince, and by the same token the most
prominent members of his druzhina. In later chronicles tysiatskie regularly
turn up as military commanders.110 According to older authors, the office of
tysiatskii, as well as that of the less visible sotskii (centurion) and desiatskii
(decurion), was a relic of the prehistoric tribal-military organization of Russia
into decimal units: thousands, hundreds, tens (of armed men, or of the places
where they lived, or of the households providing them).111 There are obvious
parallels with patterns of social organization among early Germanic and other
Indo-European peoples; even the Mongols were organized along similar lines.
Other authors deny such origins and connections, pointing to the very defec-
tive evidence for such a state of affairs in early Kievan Russia.112 The tysiatskii
and the sotskii remained prominent in the governmental systems of Novgorod
and Pskov in subsequent centuries, albeit with significantly altered functions.
As mentioned above, the office of tysiatskii existed in Moscow, until it was
abolished in 1374.
107 Cf. Sergeevich, Drevnosti i, 279; Grekov, Pravda Russkaia ii, 161–163.
108 First mention in the Chronicle in 977 and then in 994–996 when Vladimir summoned “his
boyars, his posadniki, his town elders …”, psrl i, cols.75 and 125.
109 Only mention in the Chronicle in 1098, “Ian, commanding the Kiev thousand”, psrl i,
col.208.
110 On the military character of the tysiatskii’s office, Sergeevich, Drevnosti i, 605.
111 A review of this question in Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 313–317.
112 Particularly Presniakov, Kniazhoe pravo, 165–190 and V.A. Kuchkin, “Desiatskie i sotskie
Drevnei Rusi”, A.A. Gorskii, V.A. Kuchkin (eds.), Drevniaia Rus’. Ocherki politicheskogo i
sotsial’nogo stroia, Moskva, 2008, 270–425.
374 chapter 13
Another general agent of the prince, of lower rank than the tysiatskii, was
the tiun or tivun, a steward or overseer. The older meaning of the term is “ser-
vant” and this agrees with its Germanic origin (cf. Germ. Diener).113 The servile
origin of the tiun is confirmed by art. 110 of the Expanded Pravda which in-
cludes entering into stewardship (tivunstvo) among the three sources of slav-
ery, unless there has been an agreement to the contrary. Similarly, art. 66 of the
Expanded Pravda provided that slaves could not serve as witnesses, but that
in case of necessity a boyar’s steward could. It follows, considering the laconic
style of the rp, that a boyar’s steward was a slave (as a rule). Nevertheless, one
has to distinguish between social and public status. Other provisions of the rp
demonstrate that the tiun occupied a comparatively high position among the
prince’s servants. The bloodwite of the prince’s steward (kniazhii tiun) placed
him in the highest bracket, on a par with the prince’s man (kniazh muzh).114
The same high bloodwite of 80 grivna was due for the killing of the household
steward and the stable steward (tiun ognishchii and tiun koniushii, see art. 12
Expanded Pravda).
Other lower-ranking stewards (tiuny), along with the three high-ranking
ones mentioned above, were the village, rural, and boyar’s stewards (tiuny
sel’skie, ratainye, boiarskie, arts.13 and 1 Expanded Pravda) and the assistant
steward (tivunets, arts.21 and 33 Short Pravda). Their less elevated position
is indicated by the lower fines set for killing them (40 grivna for the boyar’s
steward and 12 for the other two stewards). The modest position of the lat-
ter two s tewards is confirmed by the parallel provision of the Short Pravda
(art. 24), where they are designated not as tiun, but as elders (starosta).
The numerous references to tiuny in the laws and other sources suggest that
the term represented a rather undifferentiated designation of a public official
or agent, and that the actual position of a tiun in the Kievan hierarchy depend-
ed on the function entrusted to him. This function seems normally to have
been of a general administrative nature, but it could also have a judicial char-
acter, as indicated by two provisions (arts.13 and 19) of the longer version of the
Church Statute of Vladimir.115 In these provisions Vladimir ordered his tiuny
not to interfere in what was assigned to the jurisdiction of the Church and not
to judge cases without the participation of the bishop’s law officer, wherever
such a mixed court was required.
113 Presniakov, Kniazhoe pravo, 273; Vernadsky, Laws, 31.

114 Cf. art. 22 Short Pravda, art. 1 Expanded Pravda.
115 It is found in the majority of the copies of the Statute, viz. in the more than hundred cop-
ies of the Synodal and Trinity Redactions (see Chapter 6, on Princely Statutes).
Several authors regarded the riadovnik or riadovich (art. 25 Short Pravda,

art. 14 Expanded Pravda) as the lowest representative of princely or boyar pow-
er in the village.116 The name is derived from riad, the Old-Russian word for
contract. Other authors pointed out that, according to the monetary scales of
the rp, the status of a riadovnik was no higher than that of an ordinary peas-
ant or slave; this would make it unlikely that he would occupy a place of any
importance in the prince’s administration.117
In a legal code like the rp, officials connected with the administration of
justice are the best documented. The tiun, the mechnik, the metel’nik and the
detskii have already been mentioned in this respect. The iabetnik, figuring in
the first article of the Short Pravda, has an interesting pedigree (the term is
connected with “ambassador” and “ombudsman”, going back to Celtic ambac-
tus), but the exact nature of his office is subject to debate.118 In the parallel
provision of the Expanded Pravda (art. 1) he is replaced by the boyar’s steward.
There is no doubt that his duties concerned judicial business, but in the ab-
sence of more precise indications it would be safest to define him as a court
agent. The function of the virnik (art. 42 Short Pravda, arts. 9–10 Expanded
Pravda) is less uncertain. These provisions, containing the pokon virnyi (the
law on the collection of fines), demonstrate that the virnik was the principal of-
ficer responsible for the collection of the vira, the bloodwite or fine to be paid
to the prince by the killer.119 The emets (art. 41 Short Pravda) was obviously an
assistant official, involved in the execution of judgments.120
The virnik may also be included among the tax-collecting officers of the
prince. The latter category further embraced the mytnik (mentioned in arts. 37
and 39 of the Expanded Pravda), an official also known in later times as the
116 Iushkov, Ocherki, 130–131; Presniakov, Kniazhoe pravo, 293; Vladimirskii-Budanov, Khristo-
matiia i, 40.
117 Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 191–195; Grekov, Pravda Russkaia ii, 166–170, 311–314; Zimin, in prp
i, 98. See also Baranowksi, 276–279.
118 On the iabetnik, see S.V. Vasil’ev, “O funktsiiakh «sokov» v sviazi s problemoi drevnerusskikh
«iabetnikov» i «iabednichestvom» Sudebnika 1497 g.”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Issle-
dovaniia po srednevekovoi istorii Rusi. K 80-letiiu Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva/
Sankt-Peterburg, 2006, 100–112; also: Grekov, Pravda Russkaia ii, 44–47; Tikhomirov,
P osobie, 174; Vernadsky, Laws, 26; Szeftel/Eck, 42; Baranowski, 182–184. In the Code of 1497
iabednichestvo had an entirely different meaning (see Chapter 9).
119 On the virnik, see Grekov, Pravda Russkaia ii, 233–234; Zimin, in prp i, 105; Szeftel/Eck, 56;
Baranowski, 325–327. Zimin regarded the virnik as a member of the druzhina.
120 On the emets, see Grekov, Pravda Russkaia ii, 232–233; Zimin, in prp i, 104; A.A. Zimin,
“Feodal’naia gosudarstvennost’ i Russkaia Pravda”, Istoricheskie Zapiski, No.76, 1965, 230–
275, at 252; Baranowski, 318–320.
376 chapter 13
collector of the myt, a market or trading tax (Germ. Maut). It would seem that
his duties in Kievan Russia were not essentially different.121 There is less cer-
tainty about the pod”ezdnoi kniazhii, mentioned in art. 19 of the Short Pravda,
as somebody of rank, approximately equal to the ognishchanin. The term itself
is derived from “to ride”, and has accordingly been translated as the prince’s
messenger, emissary or adjutant.122 Several Soviet scholars follow Grekov, who
regarded the pod”ezdnoi as the chief collector of revenues within the prince’s
domain, and as the right hand of the boyar representative of the prince (the
ognishchanin) entrusted with the management of the prince’s estate.123
121 On the mytnik, see Tikhomirov, Posobie, 155; Baranowski, 439.

122 Cf. Grekov, Pravda Russkaia ii, 132, 146–147; Baranowski, 255.
123 Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 145; Zimin, in prp i, 95.
chapter 14
The Prince’s Government
The Prince’s Government
As mentioned before, a longish text with the title of “Testament [Pouchenie] of

Monomakh” is inserted in the Laurentian Redaction of the Primary Chronicle
between the entries for the years 1096 and 1097. Part of the Testament consists
of excerpts from the Psalms and ecclesiastical writings and is obviously the
product of the pen of a cleric, but the middle section contains a down-to-earth
admonition from Vladimir Monomakh to his sons about the desirable conduct
of a prince. The third and last part presents an autobiographical sketch. In this
way the Testament offers a lively picture of the way a Kievan prince spent the
day. Most of the time he was away on the warpath. When at home, he would
(allegedly) start the day by going to church and then sit and deliberate matters
with his retinue (druzhina), adjudicate cases submitted to him, or go hunt-
ing. The last activity, as with medieval princes in general, claimed much of the
prince’s time, being the peacetime equivalent of warfare.
Hunting
An early indication of the importance of hunting as a princely pastime is
the report in the Chronicle from 946–947 about the princess-regent Olga
establishing hunting preserves in the land of Dereva (Western Ukraine)
and in the Novgorod region. The Short Pravda (art. 37) set a comparative-
ly high fine (3 grivna) for the theft of a (hunting) dog, hawk or falcon; it
probably referred exclusively or especially to hunting animals b elonging
to the prince.1 The parallel provision of the Expanded Pravda (art. 81) only
covered theft by cutting a bird from a snare; then 3 grivna for a falcon or
a hawk and much smaller fines for the taking of other birds (doves, chick-
ens, geese, swans, cranes); additionally the owner of the damaged snare
received one grivna. Art. 73 of the Expanded Pravda, covering the cut-
ting down of an oak which was serving as a boundary marker, probably
referred to forest land, because the destruction of boundary marks on
agricultural land was covered by art. 72. The only provision concerning
poaching is art. 69, stealing a beaver.
1
1 Baranowski, 311–312, summarizes the various viewpoints.

378 chapter 14
The actual business of government appears to have been a relatively simple

and straightforward affair. The Testament stressed repeatedly that the prince
should do as much as possible himself and not rely too much on stewards
(tiuny), servants (otroki), lieutenants (posadniki) or messengers (birichi).
The governmental workload could be divided into domestic and foreign
affairs. The latter duties could be discharged through warfare or by peaceful
means, mainly through negotiation and the conclusion of treaties. Domestic
administration embraced specific tasks, such as adjudication and incipient
legislation, along with general government business. Judging by the not very
abundant sources, the latter would consist mainly of running the prince’s do-
main. The matter of princely landowning is discussed in the relevant section
in Chapter 18.
The domain was the prince’s regular and principal source of income. If
domanial revenues were inadequate, additional income could initially be ob-
tained only externally, by imposing tribute on populations not directly subject
to the prince or by waging war and taking booty. This point is graphically illus-
trated by the Chronicle’s entry for 945, quoted at the beginning of the previous
chapter, when Igor’s druzhina urged him to go after tribute with them. The
sources are almost silent on other domestic concerns of the prince, apart from
adjudication and occasional legislation. One activity that does get some atten-
tion is the building of towns and fortified places, although some of this could
also be connected with the expansion of the prince’s own domain. The Testa-
ment of Monomakh enjoined the prince to pay close attention to the affairs of
his domain; the second half of the Short Pravda is also devoted mainly to the
protection of the prince’s domain and his servants. All indications therefore
suggest that his domain and its welfare were the paramount domestic con-
cerns of the prince. There are no indications that the druzhina as such was in
any way involved in the running of the prince’s domain, but the prince could
entrust the responsibility for looking after his own affairs to a trusted druzhina
member; the ognishchanin is generally considered to have been employed in
this capacity.
Although in later centuries the grand princes of Muscovy treated their own
estates as purely personal and private property, distributing it freely during
their lifetime or in their wills among their children and wives, Kievan princes
would often involve their closest relatives in important transactions concern-
ing their estates, and even affairs of state. The Church Statute of Vladimir stat-
ed that the prince acted in consultation with his wife the princess Anna, and
their children in making an endowment to the Church.2 The 944 Treaty with
2
2 These lines are part of the oldest nucleus of the Statute; cf. Ia.N. Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy
i tserkov’ v Drevnei Rusi xi–xiv vv., Moskva, 1972, 120.
the Greeks included princess Olga and her son Sviatoslav as treaty partners,
along with prince Igor himself, and a long list of prominent persons.
The participation of the druzhina in running the affairs of the state, together
with the prince, is well documented. The Chronicle entry for 996 relates that
St. Vladimir regularly consulted his druzhina in matters of administration, war
and government. There are similar statements about other Kievan princes, and
in his Testament Vladimir Monomakh advised his sons to sit and deliberate
with the druzhina in the morning, after having been to church.3 (See also the
discussion concerning the Boyar Duma in the following pages.)
The Expansion of Princely Administration in Later Centuries
The comparative simplicity of central administration in the Kievan era did

not change radically in the immediately following period (of the independent
principalities), because the more modest size of the political units did not
require more complicated governmental machineries. This situation began
to change with the rise of the principality of Moscow. Originally an apanage
principality of the grand princes of Vladimir-Suzdal’, assigned to Aleksandr
Nevskii’s youngest son Daniil († 1303), it had doubled in size by the time of
the death of Daniil’s son, Ivan Kalita, in 1341. In the following fifty years, up
to the death of Kalita’s grandson Dmitrii Donskoi in 1389, the principality of
Moscow at least tripled in size.4 Also, the princes of Moscow usually (but not
always) served as grand princes of Vladimir. This spectacular accretion of ter-
ritory inevitably engendered a transformation of the traditional system of
administration.5
For the early period, the rule of Ivan Kalita and his sons Semën the Proud
and Ivan ii the Handsome, information is scarce, limited mostly to the wills
of these princes.6 In the first version of Ivan Kalita’s will the d’iak (secretary,
clerk) who wrote out the document is mentioned at the end; this is one of the
3
4
5
6
3 This is followed by the sensible advice to have a nap: “Sleep is ordained by God for noontide,
then animals and birds and men rest.”
4 The territorial history of North-Eastern Russia (the area of the future grand principality of
Moscow) is documented in detail by V.A. Kuchkin, Formirovanie gosudarstvennoi territorii
Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi v x–xiv vv., Moskva, 1984. An earlier fundamental work on this topic
is M.K. Liubavskii, Obrazovanie osnovnoi gosudarstvennoi territorii velikorusskoi narodnosti.
Zaselenie i ob”edinenie tsentra, Leningrad, 1929 (not available to me).
5 See especially Iu.G. Alekseev, U kormila rossiiskogo gosudarstva, Moskva, 1998, on which
much of this section is based.
6 ddg, Nos.1, 3, 4.
380 chapter 14
earliest appearances of an official who became a central figure in the prince’s

government in later years.
Ivan ii was succeeded by his son Dmitrii (*1350) in 1359, the metropolitan
Aleksii acting as regent. During his comparatively short actual reign (he died in
1389), Dmitrii proved himself to be an energetic and effective ruler. He scored
the first major victory over the Tatars on the Sandpiper Field (Kulikovo Pole)
near the Don (in 1380), earning him the soubriquet Donskoi and allowing him
to bequeath the grand princely dignity to his son Vasilii without the khan’s con-
sent.7 The rapid territorial expansion of the principality of Vladimir-Moscow
(united since 1362) was accompanied as well as made possible by the rise of a
boyar elite. The wealthy and powerful magnates served the prince as military
commanders and regional governors in a mutually advantageous alliance. The
abolition of the office of tysiatskii, referred to before, is probably to be seen in
this light.8
Donskoi’s successor Vasilii i, who ruled from 1389 to 1425, continued his fa-
ther’s policies and his rule constituted the apogee of the “boyar government”
(Alekseev’s expression).9 Under his son and successor Vasilii ii the Blind
(*1415, 1425–1462), the Moscow territory grew again impressively and the tra-
ditional system of administration, based mainly on oral instructions to a small
number of great boyars serving in responsible positions, became increasingly
inadequate. Greater reliance on written records implied a regular central chan-
cery, which was run by the personal clerk (d’iak) of the grand prince. From an
originally modest scribe, usually of unfree birth, this official developed into the
leading civil servant of the state.
Ivan iii, also called “the Great” (*1440, 1462–1506), more or less completed
the “collection of the Russian lands”, in particular by adding the huge territo-
ries of Novgorod to the already vast Muscovy empire. The further construction
of a condign governmental apparatus proceeded in parallel with the expan-
sion of the territory. The backbone of this apparatus was a new class of of-
ficials, the d’iaki, to whom the task of running the state machinery on a daily
basis was entrusted. The social origins of this class were not uniform; there
were persons from boyar clans who had become impoverished or otherwise
lost status, persons with a clerical background, and persons from middle-level
service families. Although the administration of the grand prince was the prin-
cipal employment of the d’iaki, prominent boyars maintained their own clerks.
7
8
9
7 ddg, No.12, 34 “And I bequeath the grand princely dignity [velikoe kniazhenie], my heritage
[svoeiu otchinuiu], to my son prince Vasilii” (1389).
8 Alekseev, U kormila, 19–20.
The relationship between prince and boyars on the one hand and their d’iaki
on the other was one of mutual dependence. The mighty needed their pro-
fessional staff to exercize their powers, the d’iaki needed the protection of a
powerful lord.
Along with the secretarial duties of the d’iaki in the central administration
of the prince, the registration of landholdings and the compilation of various
registers for fiscal purposes were entrusted to special officers (pistsy, revenue
clerks) who carried out their work all over the country. These activities, result-
ing in the emergence of pistsovye knigi, constituted an important component
of the administrative innovations engendered by the territorial growth during
the reign of Ivan iii.10
The main aspects of governmental administration in Novgorod are dis-
cussed in Chapter 16. Sources on the administrative systems of other princi-
palities are scarce.11
Apanage Princes and Service Princes

As explained in several sections of the previous chapter, the early Kievan princ-
es would usually appoint their adult sons as subordinate princes in the major
centres after Kiev. When an important seat fell vacant, the princes would move
up the ladder. Once the dynasty grew in size and complexity, this system gave
way to another in which sons would hold on to the principalities which had
been ruled by their fathers. The custom of assigning principalities to junior
members of such sub-dynasties remained in force. This resulted in the emer-
gence of the apanage principalities (udel’nye kniazhestva). The principality of
Moscow, for instance, arose as an apanage principality for the youngest son
Daniil, born in 1261, two years before the death of his father Aleksandr Nevskii,
grand prince of Suzdal’-Vladimir. Depending on various circumstances, an
apanage principality would occasionally succeed in loosening its ties with the
principality which had generated it, and become a more or less independent
principality. In other conditions it might disappear in one or two generations
and be reabsorbed.
Under the Muscovy grand princes the practice of the apanage principalities
became more institutionalized. The grand prince would often during his life-
time, or otherwise in his will, assign apanage principalities to his younger sons.
Also, the Moscow grand prince could lay down the details of the relationship
10
11
10 Cf. Alekseev, U kormila, 126–149.

11 See e.g. N.V. Shtykov, “K istorii skladyvaniia apparata upravleniia tverskikh kniazei v
xiii – nachale xiv vv.”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Issledovaniia po istorii srednevekovoi
Rusi. K 80-letiiu Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 2006, 70–75.
382 chapter 14
between himself and his brothers or cousins as rulers of apanage principalities

in official treaties. As mentioned elsewhere, the traditional view of father-son
relationships precluded the conclusion of contracts between relatives in the
direct line.
An apanage prince would rule his principality independently, apart from
the matters which had been reserved for the grand prince in the assignment of
the principality. He was not in the service of the grand prince, although he had
important duties towards the latter. These could best be summarized by saying
that he was to support the latter and not in any way hinder him. The apanage
relationship implied first of all a military alliance; also, the apanage prince was
not to conduct his own foreign policy.
The apanage system undoubtedly had archaic traits, going back to an era
when the right to rule was perceived as a family heritage. Under the Moscow
grand princes it repeatedly led to fierce infighting among different family
groups, resulting occasionally in civil war.
One of the best-known and most serious of these episodes occurred after
the death of Dmitrii Donskoi’s son Vasilii i in 1425. He was survived only by his
youngest son Vasilii, who was nine years old at the time. Several sons of Dmi-
trii Donskoi were alive in 1425, the most senior of them being Iurii, prince of
Galich and Zvenigorod, and Andrei, prince of Mozhaisk and Vereia. Iurii, who
had been a successful commander of his brother Vasilii’s forces in wars with
Novgorod and the Tatars, was little inclined to leave the rule of Muscovy to his
young nephew and was supported in this by his brother Andrei. His claim was
based on certain unclear provisions in the will of Dmitrii Donskoi of 1389. After
a long struggle, he succeeded in unseating his nephew, occupied the Moscow
throne in 1433, and appointed the deposed grand prince Vasilii (then 18 years
old) as apanage prince of Kolomna. Iurii, however, died the next year (1434).
His eldest son Vasilii Kosoi (“the Squint”) took over his father’s place, but could
not maintain himself in Moscow, not being supported by his brother Dmitrii
Shemiaka,12 who went over to the side of his cousin Vasilii. During the follow-
ing two years the cousins repeatedly reconciled and broke up again, and in the
process Vasilii ii had his cousin Vasilii Kosoi blinded. Dmitrii Shemiaka con-
tinued to serve his cousin as a military commander, but in 1445, when Vasilii
ii had been taken captive and then released by the Tatars, Dmitrii Shemiaka
avenged his brother and had Vasilii ii also blinded (hence Temnyi, “the Blind”).
12
12 The soubriquet Shemiaka has not been satisfactorily explained; it survives in the expres-
sion shemiakin sud, an “unfair trial”.
Dmitrii Shemiaka then occupied the grand princely throne, but was thrown
out the next year by the Moscow population.
In later centuries, with the growth of the overwhelming power of the grand
prince and tsar, the assignment of apanages became mostly a formality; the
last apanage prince was Dmitrii, prince of Uglich († 1591), the last son of Ivan
iv the Terrible, born in 1582 of his father’s seventh marriage to Mariia Nagaia.
In the course of time, the apanage system proved to be unable to accommo-
date the steady growth of the Rurikid stock. Younger sons of the ruling princes
of insignificant apanage principalities had no option but to find employment
in the service of more powerful relatives.13 Political developments could also
cause a prince to lose his principality. In this way a new category of service
princes (sluzhilye kniaz’ia, also sluzhebnye kniaz’ia) arose.14
The notional equality which existed in the relationship between a grand
prince (“elder brother”) and an apanage prince (“younger brother”) was lack-
ing with the position of the service prince. There were, however, distinctions
within the class of the service princes. Their highest level consisted of princ-
es whose families had surrendered their principalities to the Moscow grand
prince and entered the latter’s service, while at the same time receiving back
their lands as freely inheritable estates (otchina, “patrimony”) or service es-
tates (pomest’e). In such cases many of the old ‘sovereign’ rights concerning ju-
risdiction and taxation would sometimes be retained by the prince concerned.
At the lower end there were the landless sons of impoverished princely fami-
lies, whose service was normally rewarded in the usual way by the granting of
estates.15
13
14
15
13 Kliuchevskii, Kurs i, 354–355 (Lecture xx), gives the example of Dmitrii Vasil’evich, of
the line of the princes of Iaroslavl, apanage prince of Zaozer’e (a region north-east of the
Kubena Lake) in the early 15th century; his ‘realm’ consisted of a princely residence close
to the place where the Kubena River flowed into the lake, a church, and the village of
Chirkovo close by.
14 A review of the literature on service princes in M.E. Bychkova, Sostav klassa feodalov Ros-
sii v xvi v. Istoriko-genealogicheskoe issledovanie, Moskva, 1986, 29–73 (chapter on sluzhi-
lye kniaz’ia).
15 Extensively on service princes: A.A. Zimin, Formirovanie boiarskoi aristokratii v Rossii vo
vtoroi polovine xv – pervoi treti xvi v., Moskva, 1988, of which the entire first part is devoted
to the “princelings” (kniazhata, service princes) from the various regions of the country
in the consolidation period of the Muscovy state; V.D. Nazarov, “Sluzhilye kniaz’ia Severo-
Vostochnoi Rusi v xv veke”, Russkii Diplomatarii v (1999), 175–195; id., “O titulovannoi zna-
ti Rossii v kontse xv v. (Riurikovichi i Gediminovichi po spisku dvora 1495 g.)”, dgve 1998,
M., 2000, 189–206. The latter study is complemented by V.D. Nazarov, “Netitulovannaia
384 chapter 14
The service princes themselves constituted the highest level of the boyar
class. The reservoir of service princes was considerably enlarged in the 15th
century with the arrival and acceptance of non-Rurikid princes. The first of
them was Patrikii Narimontovich, a member of the Lithuanian dynasty of the
Gediminovichi, who entered the service of the Moscow grand prince Vasilii i
in 1408; his son Iurii married Vasilii’s daughter. Somewhat later, in the reign of
Ivan iii, princes of Tatar and Mongol stock started to join the ranks of the ser-
vice princes. Although the service princes are overwhelmingly encountered in
the service of the Moscow grand prince, they also served other grand princes,
such as those of Tver’.
Mestnichestvo
Service princes were closely connected with the institution of mestnichestvo,
although mestnichestvo also affected other members of the boyar class. Mes-
tnichestvo, as a peculiar form of seniority system, arose in Moscow, at least
under the rule of Ivan iii; its roots probably went back much further. It con-
cerned the assignment of offices in accordance with the rank held by the ap-
pointee’s family, and with the position of the appointee within his own family.
“Precedence” would be the closest English equivalent,16 but this term does not
quite do justice to the peculiarities of the mestnichestvo system.17
16
17
znat’ po podokhodnomu spisku dvora Ivana iii v 1495 g.”, A.P. Pavlov a.o. (eds.), Rossiis-
koe gosudarstvo v xiv–xvii vv. Sbornik statei, posviashchennykh 75-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia
Iu.G. Alekseeva, Sankt-Peterburg, 2002, 567–583. The subject of these last two studies by
Nazarov was an official list of persons belonging to the court of Ivan iii, providing an
important insight in the composition and internal relationships within the highest level
of the Muscovy elite.
16 The peculiarity of the mestnichestvo system was known to the great medievalist Johan
Huizinga, who wrote: “In the old Russian Empire before the Romanovs, the struggle for
precedence before the throne had assumed the form of a permanent department of state.
The Western medieval states did not know this form, but jealousy about precedence was
also prominently present there.” (my translation, ff); in Ch. 2 of Huizinga’s best-known
work Hersttij der Middeleeuwen (“The Waning of the Middle Ages”, many editions and
translations).
17 The principal pre-revolutionary study on mestnichestvo is A.I. Markevich, Istoriia mes-
tnichestva v moskovskom gosudarstve v xv–xvii vv., Odessa, 1888. See also N.P. Pavlov-
Sil’vanskii, Gosudarevy sluzhilye liudi, Sankt-Peterburg, 1898, newly published together
with another work (Liudi kabal’nye) by the same author, Moskva, 2001 (references below
are to the 2001 edition), Ch. ii, 35–51; Sergeevich, Lektsii, 120–140; D’iakonov, 284–294;
Kliuchevskii discussed mestnichestvo in Lecture xxvii, Kurs, ii, 145–156;
In Soviet and post-Soviet times: Iu.M. Eskin, Mestnichestvo v Rossii xvi–xvii vv. Khro-
nologicheskii reestr, Moskva, 1994, containing a register of mestnichestvo cases from 1332 to
The system owed its name to mesto (place), which referred to the place or
rank of a person within his own family and the rank occupied by the family in
relation to other boyar families. The ranking of persons within the family went
back to Kievan traditions, and perhaps even further, and was based on the idea
of the unity of the family. It was the same principle which was at the basis of
the Rurikid system of succession, discussed before. It was elaborated in nu-
merous more detailed rules, or at least usages. The main principles within the
family were that older generations preceded younger ones and that within one
generation age was the decisive criterion. But these principles were refined in
several ways. The fourth son, for instance, was considered of equal rank to the
eldest son of the eldest son; they were sverstniki (coevals), which in fact they
often were. The proliferation of princes of Rurikid stock and perhaps also the
influx of Gediminid and other princes can be identified as major factors which
created the need for some sort of hierarchical arrangement.
The ranking of princely and other boyar families was obviously more dif-
ficult to establish than the ranking within a single family. The main guideline
would be the historical record: the importance and status of the family in
the past, the service positions occupied by their individual members, and of
course also the favour they found with the ruler.
In theory, every nobleman belonging to a princely or boyar family would
have a fixed place in the government hierarchy. In fact, the system was any-
thing but stable or static, as every new appointment could change the balance.
This explains to a great extent why such importance was attached to holding
on to and improving one’s position and that of one’s family on the ladder. Any
appointment which involved a deterioration of this position in the eyes of the
appointee would affect not only his own prospects, but also those of his family
members. The claimant in a typical mestnichestvo dispute would, for instance,
submit that the post which had been proposed to him (such as deputy gover-
nor of a particular town) would involve him in serving under a governor whose
uncle had served as deputy governor of another town under the claimant’s
father as governor.
As the mestnichestvo system became embedded, such disputes would be
dealt with by a panel of boyars, and sometimes by the grand prince (later, the
tsar) himself. It has been noted in the literature that everybody, including the
1717; Iu.N. Mel’nikov, “Mestnicheskie dela v razriadnom proizvodstve 80-kh godov xvi v.”,
Vspomogatel’nye istoricheskie distsipliny, Tom ix, Leningrad, 1978, 222–235; K.V. Baranov,
“Akty xvi – nachala x vii veka iz mestnicheskikh del”, A.V. Antonov (ed.), Russkii diplo-
matarii vii, Moskva, 2001, 35–51; Iu.M. Eskin, “Mestnichestvo, rodoslovtsy i rodoslovnye
«paskvili»”, V.I. Ianin (ed.), Ot Drevnei Rusi k Rossii novogo vremeni. Sbornik statei: K
386 chapter 14
grand prince himself, took such disputes very seriously. Even Ivan iv (the Ter-
rible), not averse to dealing ruthlessly with troublesome nobles, always dis-
played great patience and tolerance in mestnichestvo cases.18 A nobleman was
expected and actually obliged to observe the system and to refuse an appoint-
ment which he considered to be beneath the dignity of his family and himself.
In exceptional cases, he could be imprisoned for his refusal to accept a position
proposed to him, or he could be appointed, without his agreement and as a
punishment, to another post.
When an appointment had to be made, the ranking of the different prince-
ly and boyar families had to be combined with the first ranking system (the
internal family hierarchy). Precedents were of decisive importance in such
situations, and the more recent the precedent, the more powerful. A special
government department, the Razriadnyi prikaz, kept records of military and
civil appointments (razriadnye knigi), which helped to solve the frequent dis-
putes about precedence. The first of such registers appeared already during
the government of Dmitrii Donskoi (1362–1389).19 Additionally, many families
maintained their own registers, in order to have the necessary information at
their disposal should the need arise.20
The system was in its heyday during the 16th century, but the strains i mposed
on the state’s administration were then already beginning to show. Legislation
by Ivan iv in 1550 allowed certain military appointments to be made “without
places” (bez mest); the law stipulated that such appointments would not affect
the status of the appointees.21
In the end, the mestnichestvo system, constricting the influx of new talent
into the administration of the state, became too much of a burden. It had led to
endless strife between the leading families22 and had seriously hampered the
tsar in selecting suitable servants. In 1682, tsar Fedor Alekseevich abolished it
and the registers were burned “to the joy of contemporaries and to the sorrow
of future historians”, in the words of S.G. Pushkarev.23
18
19
20
21
22
23
70-letiiu Anny Leonidovny Khoroshkevich, Moskva, 2003, 165–172; Iu.V. Ankhimiuk, Chast-
nye Razriadnye knigi s zapisiami za posledniuiu chetvert’ x v – nachalo x vii vekov, Moskva,
2005.
18 Cf. Pavlov-Sil’vanskii, op. cit., 74.
19 Ankhimiuk, op. cit., 29.
20 This is the main subject of Ankhimiuk’s work.
21 Texts in prp iv, 582–586.
22 Cf. Iu.M. Eskin, “Mestnichestvo, rodoslovtsy i «rodoslovnye paskvili»”, V.L. Ianin (ed.), Ot
Drevnei Rusi k Rossii novogo vremeni. Sbornik statei. K 70-letiiu Anny Leonidovny Khorosh-
kevich, Moskva, 2003, 165–178.
The functionality of mestnichestvo is quite clear when looked at from the

perspective of the individual nobleman, for whom it was a vehicle to secure
and improve his position in the government hierarchy. For the grand prince,
mestnichestvo was first of all a much-needed instrument to maintain a balance
between the competing ambitions of aristocratic groups, particularly the old
nobility of the Moscow principality and the influx of service princes. Then it
also served to weaken the tendency towards forming alliances among the aris-
tocracy; it favoured an attitude of looking primarily after the interests of one’s
own family or clan. It also helped to integrate the prince’s former contend-
ers, ruling families of principalities absorbed by Muscovy, into the Moscow
aristocracy. Once these factors lost their potency, the meritocratic drawbacks
of the system became more manifest, and after several attempts to alleviate
them proved to be inadequate full abolition was inevitable. Nevertheless, dis-
putes based on the mestnichestvo concept continued sporadically into the 18th
century.24
Non-princely Servants
Chapter 19 discusses princes, boyars and other members of the elite (‘nobility’)
of medieval Russia (along with other social classes), from the point of view
of the rights and duties of the individual. In medieval Russia, elite status was
overwhelmingly dependent on a person’s service to the prince, much more so
than in medieval Europe. The present section looks at the various components
of the elite from the point of view of the services they provided within the
court and the administration of the prince, particularly in Muscovite Russia.
After the princes (ruling princes, their close relatives ruling apanage princi-
palities, and service princes) came the boyars, a category not sharply defined at
the bottom end. At the top there were the “introduced boyars” (boiare vvedën-
nye), constituting the circle of intimate advisors and courtiers of the prince,
and the boiare putnye, who were in charge of a put’, a department entrusted
with the running of a part of the prince’s estate. The put’ system probably
developed from the simpler arrangements of Kievan times, where we know
about the prince’s stable master (arts. 23 Short Pravda, 12 Expanded Pravda).
The growth of the prince’s estates engendered the setting-up of a more elabo-
rate management structure, and in later centuries one encounters special of-
fices concerned with falconry, horses, sheep farming, bee-keeping, hunting,
and the provision of food and drink. The boyars in charge of such departments
enjoyed such titles as sokol’nichii, koniushii, lovchii, chashnik, stol’nik. According
to Kliuchevskii, who is the main authority on this subject, the puti represented
an administrative system which paralleled and ran across the regular system
24
24 Cf. Ankhimiuk, op. cit., 209–210.

388 chapter 14
of local administration, because particular princely estates, and even other

estates, were exempted from the regular system and subordinate in almost all
matters to the put’ to which they belonged.25
As mentioned above and discussed at greater length in the section on
boyars in Chapter 19, boyar status, in Muscovite times, depended primarily on
the office occupied by the incumbent. Boyars would of course strive towards
securing similar positions for their sons, and in such a way boyar families arose
and the status became semi-inheritable. Nevertheless, boyar offspring might
not always be socially successful and then would descend to the official status
of “boyar children” (deti boiarskie).
Boyar status, in sum, had a dual character; it could be granted to a high of-
ficial by the prince, while also all (male) members of a family, of whom a num-
ber served in high state offices, could be regarded as boyars.
Immediately below the boyars in the court hierarchy came the okol’nichie,
originally persons serving “around” (okolo) the prince himself. The office is
first mentioned in 1284. Unlike the boyar, the okol’nichii was a functionary, an
official, who could be assigned a more specific duty (such as military com-
mander, or urban governor); there were usually some okol’nichie among the
intimate advisors of the grand prince. A prince or boyar could be appointed as
an okol’nichii.
The Boyar Duma

The question of the councillors of the Moscow grand prince is connected with a
major controversy among pre-revolutionary Russian historians.26 Kliuchevskii
had advanced the thesis that there was a permanent governmental agency,
which he called the Boyar Duma and which he regarded more or less as the
co-owner of governmental power.27 This thesis was strongly supported by
Vladimirskii-Budanov,28 but rejected by Sergeevich.29 Among Soviet historians
25
26
27
28
29
25 V.O. Kliuchevskii, Boiarskaia Duma Drevnei Rusi, Moskva, 1902 (3rd ed., repr. 1994), 100–
110. See also G.V. Vernadskii, Istoriia Rossii. Mongoly i Rus’, Tver’/Moskva, 1994, 368–370.
The parallels with the traditional court offices of marshal, chamberlin, butler and numer-
ous other minor ones in medieval Western Europe are obvious.
26 A survey in P.P. Tolochko, Vlast’ v Drevnei Rusi x–xiii vv., Sankt-Peterburg, 2011, 32–50.
27 B.O. Kliuchevskii, Boiarskaia Duma Drevnei Rusi, Moskva, 1882 (1st ed., last and 5th ed. in
1919); it was first published in instalments in Russkaia Mysl’, 1880. The 3rd edition (1902)
was reprinted in Moscow in 1994, together with Dobrye liudi Drevnei Rusi (orig. 1892).
28 Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 70–74. There were some differences between Kliuchevskii and Vladi-
mirskii-Budanov, concerning the origin and composition of the Boyar Duma.
29 Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 371–384; 454–517.
there was little interest in the question. Iushkov agreed in principle with
Sergeevich that there was no evidence for the existence of a clearly defined
governmental agency, such as Kliuchevskii’s Boyar Duma.30 In Zimin’s posthu-
mously published work on the rise of the boyar aristocracy, the Boyar Duma
appeared as a basic concept, because Zimin looked in particular at the higher
court and government positions occupied by service princes and boyars, tak-
ing for granted that such positions entailed the incumbent being a member of
the Boyar Duma. The principal evidence adduced by Zimin for the existence of
such a body was a statement by Lenin about its role during the 17th century.31
We shall return to this question in Chapter 31, on the Tsar’s Government.
The Code of 1497 of Ivan iii had a preamble stating that “In September of
the year 7006 [1497] the grand prince Ivan Vasil’evich of All Russia, together
with his children and his boyars, decreed [as follows] on courts”. This was by
no means the only indication of the practice of the Moscow prince (and some
of the remaining contemporary princes) in conducting government business,
legislation in particular, in council with his advisors, and to that extent it is
justified to speak of the existence of a Boyar Council or Boyar Duma in Mus-
covite times. The institution lacked a formal structure and its ad hoc member-
ship depended obviously largely on the grand prince’s discretion. The limited
evidence suggests that there would always be several boyars and okol’nichie, as
well as selected members of the lower nobility (dumnye dvoriane) and high-
ranking secretaries (dumnye d’iaki). Such lower noblemen and secretaries,
selected to serve as councillors to the prince, constituted the next two ranks
of court functionaries. Like boyars and okol’nichie, they were also employed
in other responsible positions by the prince, as military commanders, envoys,
and heads of regional or local government. These four ranks of officials, partic-
ipating in the prince’s government at the highest level (the ‘Boyar Duma’), were
followed by four other categories of court officials, equally employable for duty
elsewhere in the principality of Muscovy. They were the stol’niki, the striapchie,
the dvoriane moskovskie, and the zhil’tsy. The stol’niki (from stol, “table”) origi-
nally served at the prince’s table during banquets and are mentioned as early
as in the 13th century. The next three categories arose later on.32 The “Moscow
30
31
32
30 Iushkov, Stroi, 340–345.

31 Lenin, Collected Works (Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii), T.1, 153–154. Quoted by Zimin,
Formirovanie, 13.
32 G. Kotoshikhin, a secretary (pod’iachii) at the Posol’skii prikaz (the foreign department),
fled to Western Europe in 1664 and settled in Sweden, where he wrote a description of
the Russian state during the rule of tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich. It was first published in
Russia in 1840 under the title O Rossii v tsarstvovanie Alekseia Mikhailovicha. The numbers
390 chapter 14
noblemen” (dvoriane moskovskie) were selected noblemen who had received

estates near Moscow in order to provide an immediately available corps of
armed servants.
The various classes of servants of the grand prince must be distinguished
from the specific court and government functionaries, although the two cat-
egories are connected. Mentioned above were some of the highest offices such
as the falconer (sokol’nichii), the master of the prince’s hunt (lovchii), the mas-
ter of the stable (koniushii), the cup-bearer (chashnik), who were in charge of
important departments and were selected from the boyar class. Other offices
of high rank were those of pechatnik (keeper of the seal), postel’nichii (cham-
berlin), and kaznachei (treasurer).
General Taxation
After the income from his own domains, taxation was the second major source
for the prince’s treasury. If taxation is understood in a broad sense as all finan-
cial burdens imposed on individuals or groups by a public authority, then the
oldest form is tribute, exacted, not from one’s own population, but from outsid-
ers. Such tribute is frequently encountered in the chronicles in very early times
and remained in existence all through the period of Kievan Russia, down to the
tribute imposed by the Mongols. It is discussed in a previous chapter in the sec-
tion on tribute and inter-tribal relationships in early Kievan Russia. From the
14th century on, tribute (dan’) appeared as a general tax imposed by the prince
on his own subjects. This would not affect individuals, but rather corporate or
individual entities representing specific communities, such as owners of large
estates, towns, or monasteries. It was intimately connected with the system of
fiscal immunities. Beneficiaries of fiscal immunities were often exempted from
all impositions, except dan’.33
Taxation in the Russian middle ages is treated extensively by Sergeevich,
and more briefly by later authors.34
33
34
of the four lower categories of court officials, as given by Kotoshikhin, give an indication
of their relative importance: about 500 stol’niki, 800 striapchie, 1200 dvoriane moskovskie,
and 2000 zhil’tsy.
33 Cf. S.M. Kashtanov, Finansy srednevekovoi Rusi, Moskva, 1988, 6–10.
34 Sergeevich, Drevnosti iii, 164–384; S.A. Kozlov, Z.V. Dmitrieva, Nalogi v Rossii do xix v.,
Sankt-Peterburg, 2001 (2nd ed.), first and second lecture (4–28); S.M. Kashtanov, Finansy
srednevekovoi Rusi, Moskva, 1988.
For a more orderly discussion of the subject it may be useful to point out
several distinctions, using such criteria as: “To whom (person or entity) does
the tax apply?” and “What is being taxed?”. One distinction, then, is between
general and special taxation.35 Special taxation is imposed on specific activi-
ties (such as trading or transport) and therefore directly affects only persons
or entities engaged in such activities. It can often be justified, not as taxation
proper, but as a fee for services rendered. The most obvious examples are the
numerous kinds of payment connected with the administration of justice.
(They will be discussed in a special section in Chapter 22, on Courts.) For many
forms of special taxation, however, it would be difficult to point to a specific
service provided by the authority imposing the tax.
General taxation affects in principle the entire population and aims at the
accumulation of means for the use of the government (the prince); such taxes
are also often designated as direct taxes (taxes on income and property). Some
general taxation, however, may be earmarked for specific purposes (such as
road maintenance or military equipment). A second distinction looks at the
tax debtor, who may be an individual person or a collective or corporate entity
(a town or village, a monastery, landed property, a merchant guild, a home-
stead, etc.).
The two distinctions are not unrelated, because taxation of specific activi-
ties will more commonly affect individuals, while corporate entities will prob-
ably pay most of their taxes in some form of general taxation. In this respect
one should bear in mind that today’s unspecified citizen as a taxpayer was
unknown in a medieval setting; every individual belonged to a specific social
group and such groups were subject to different systems of taxation.
A third distinction could be made by looking at the authority imposing
taxation. This would usually be the prince (or central government), but also
other powers, such as municipal government or church authorities. The typi-
cally medieval absence of a strict distinction between public and private law
is relevant in this respect. The obrok paid by the numerous peasants living on
lands of the prince could be regarded as a tax, while obrok was also paid by de-
pendent peasants of private landowners (to those owners). Obrok, as a rather
general term for a permanent material obligation imposed on the peasantry,
could be payable as a certain part of the harvest (izdol’e); the usual amount was
one fifth (piatina). The obrok could also be fixed beforehand; this was called
35
35 The distinction general/special taxation is not quite the same as the distinction direct/
indirect taxation. A sales or value-added tax is usually considered an indirect tax, while it
is also a general tax, levied, not on property or income, nor on specific activities, but on
the (almost) entire expenditure of the population.
392 chapter 14
posp, occasionally replaceable by monetary payment.36 In other words, and

more generally, the interwovenness of public and private elements affected
also the definition of taxation, which was inevitably less clear than it would
be nowadays.
The difficulties in applying modern fiscal categorizations to medieval Rus-
sian tax law probably led Sergeevich to abandon all efforts to systematize his
treatment of the various taxes applicable in medieval Russia. The general term
tiaglo (“burden”) was used by him as a collective designation for all kinds of
taxes, from the very general to the very specific, and understood in an even
wider sense than the one indicated above (“all financial burdens imposed on
individuals or groups, imposed by a public authority”), because under tiaglo
Sergeevich also gathered non-financial impositions (such as payments in kind,
or obligatory works).
Sergeevich also discussed dan’ (“gift”, “tribute”) among the different forms
of tiaglo, and the various meanings of the term through the ages. As pointed
out above, its earliest meaning referred to the payment of tribute (in money
or in kind) by a subject population, something that could be regarded as an
embryonic form of general taxation. Later, dan’ came to include all kinds of
payments to be made to officials of the prince, and after the Mongol invasions
dan’ usually referred to the fixed annual money payments to the foreign rulers.
When in the end the Moscow grand prince succeeded in becoming the exclu-
sive collector of the Tatar dan’ (then also known as vykhod), and subsequently
was able to discontinue the payment, he had acquired an effective system for
imposing and collecting general taxation.
Along with dan’, korm is one of the oldest forms of taxation, appearing al-
ready in the Short Pravda in art. 42, the pokon virnyi (law on the collection
of bloodwite, the payment to be made to the prince in a case of homicide).
This provision (which probably dates from long after the time of the sons of
Iaroslav the Wise, the assumed authors of the second part of the Short Pravda,
because it refers to fasting during Lent, which was not yet widely observed in
11th century Russia) fixed the daily rations to which the collector of bloodwite
(virnik) and his assistants were entitled. Most rations were accompanied by a
monetary equivalent. Korm means “forage”, “fodder”, and kormlenie “feeding”. It
was the basic form of paying princely officials who were exercizing their func-
tions within the principality and it appears in numerous legal documents, laws
as well as charters. It could easily be replaced by cash payments and eventually
36
36 Kozlov, Dmitrieva, op. cit., 24.

(in the 16th century) it was abandoned in favour of direct payments to the
prince’s coffers (obrok).
The basic unit of taxation was the sokha (lit. plough). The size of the sokha
differed from one part of the country to another, depending on the quality of
the land and its status (state, private, church land, etc.). In the northern re-
gions, esp. the old Novgorod lands, a so-called small sokha was in force which
comprised only a few farm households; in other Muscovy regions the sokha
was much larger.37 In towns, the urban sokha would comprise a number of
households, in the range of 40–160, depending on the wealth of the individual
households and allowing also for local differences.
From the 15th century on, a parallel system of general taxation was in
existence, based on the vyt’ (“share”), applicable mostly in the countryside, and
taking into account (as in the sokha system) the quality of the land. The size
of the vyt’ was also variable, but much smaller than the sokha. Its exact nature
is much disputed.38 Originally, at least in Novgorod, vyt’ may have been an an-
nual payment to the lord or master of the peasant; unlike the sokha, it was
imposed on the individual peasant household.39
In addition to general taxation in the form of dan’, there were a few other
general forms of taxation in Muscovy, primarily the iam, intended to cover
the upkeep of roads and related expenses, and an urban tax (gorodovoe delo)
for building and maintaining fortifications, as well as an imposition called
posokha, requiring the supply of a workforce and financial means for military
needs.40 In the same category was the duty to put up bridges (mostovshchina).
General taxation, by its nature, targeted a settled population, which meant
mostly the great mass of rural inhabitants and then also town populations.
Special taxation consisted primarily of a great variety of commercial taxes
(discussed in Chapter 15 in the section on trade regulation and taxation) and
further of all kinds of court fees and payments connected with court proceed-
ings (see Chapter 22). For the sake of completeness, taxation as a source of
income for the Church (mainly in the form of tithes and court fees) should be
mentioned (see Chapter 21).
37
38
39
40
37 Cf. Pushkarev, Dictionary, s.v. sokha, 136–137; Kozlov, Dmitrieva, op. cit., 22–23; Sergeevich,
Drevnosti iii, 318–341.
38 See A.L. Shapiro, Z.V. Dmitrieva, “Vyt’ – edinitsa oblozheniia v Russkom gosudarstve xv–
xvii vv.”, S.B. Lobachev, A.S. Lavrov (eds.), Srednevekovaia Rus’. Sbornik nauchnykh statei k
65-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia professora R.G. Skrynnikova, Sankt-Peterburg, 1995, 94–135.
39 Cf. Sergeevich, Drevnosti iii, 352–359.
40 Kozlov, Dmitrieva, op. cit., 22–23.
394 chapter 14
Taxes Imposed by the Tatar Khan

During the first few years after the Mongol conquest of Russia, the khans ap-
parently followed the taxation system preferred at that time within the empire,
of selling taxation rights to private tax collectors (otkupshchiki).41 In Russia (in
the ‘Golden Horde’), this task was soon taken over by special officials, baskaki,
but tax collectors from the great khan in Karakorum were still active in the
1260s. Then a general census was organized in Russia in 1257, emulating similar
measures taken earlier in other parts of the Mongol empire. Its initial unit of
calculation was the individual household.42 A “great baskak”, in charge of tax
collection in the grand principality of Vladimir, was the head of the revenue
service for the whole of Russia. The baskaki toured the country, accompanied
by armed detachments, enabling them to enforce payment. They also headed
a multitude of subordinate Mongol/Tatar officials which constituted the main-
stay of Tatar rule in Russia.
After an uprising in Tver’ in 1327, the system of tribute collection through
the baskaki administration was discontinued by transferring the obligation to
the grand prince of Vladimir; the grand princes of Tver’, Riazan’ and Nizhnii
Novgorod were responsible for tribute collection in their own principalities.43
Other princes (apanage princes) were usually prevented from having direct
contact with the Horde (Ordu ne znati) in their treaties with the grand prince.
Novgorod enjoyed a somewhat special fiscal regime with regard to Tatar trib-
ute; it paid a tax called chernyi bor (“black collection”) to the grand prince of
Vladimir.44
As mentioned above, the annual tribute paid by the grand princes to the
khan was known as vykhod (lit. “way out” or “exit”).45 Its effect was u
ndoubtedly
41
42
43
44
45
41 Most of this survey is based on A.N. Nasonov, Mongoly i Rus’, Istoriia tatarskoi politiki na
Rusi, Sankt-Peterburg, 2002 (orig., Moskva, 1940), 220–231; the 2002 edition is published
together with “Russkaia Zemlia” i obrazovanie territorii drevnerusskogo gosudarstva, by
the same author (another edition of Mongoly i Rus’ was published in Sankt-Peterburg in
2006).
42 In later times, other units were applied: villages, ploughs, working men, etc.
43 Cf. S.A. Fetishchev, “«Dan’ velikaia tiazhkaia …»”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Russkoe
Srednevekov’e. Sbornik statei v chest’ professora Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva,
2012, 270–279, at 274–275.
44 The subject of a special study by V.L. Ianin, “«Cherny bor» v Novgorode xiv–xv vv.”, in a
book Kulikovskaia bitva v istorii i kul’ture nashei Rodiny, Moskva, 1983, 98–107 (not avail-
able to me).
45 First mentioned in the 1375 treaty between the Moscow and Tver’ grand princes, ddg
No.9, 25–28. See also S.M. Kashtanov, Finansy srednevekovoi Rusi, Moskva, 1988, 7.
to strengthen the position of the grand prince (esp. the grand prince of Vladi-
mir/Moscow), who was able to combine the collection of the vykhod with that
of other taxes due to him. And once Tatar power waned and the grand prince
could get away with withholding the vykhod, it was not abolished but flowed
into the prince’s own coffers. This was explicitly provided by several wills of
Moscow grand princes.46
A special category of serviceman, called the deliui, was involved in the de-
livery of the moneys collected for the benefit of the khan. Most of the informa-
tion on the deliui derives from wills and treaties of the Moscow grand princes,
where they are first mentioned in a treaty between grand prince Dmitrii Don-
skoi and his cousin Vladimir Andreevich Khrabryi (“the Brave”) of Serpukhov
of 1364–1365.47 The deliui were rewarded for their services by being allotted
the use of parcels of land, which were taken back when they left the prince’s
service. The position and status of the deliui remained obscure for a long time,
but it is clear at least that they constituted an elite corps of soldiers, closely
tied to the prince himself. With the evaporation of Tatar power, the deliui also
faded away.48
The Prince as Judge
Although the separation of powers is a comparatively modern concept, adju-

dication as a specific function of government is clearly observable in Kievan
Russia. The Testament of Vladimir Monomakh, as related above, listed “ren-
dering justice to the people” between “deliberating with the druzhina” and
“hunting” as one of the daily activities of the Prince. The Chronicle entry for
996 reports the much commented-on altercation between St. Vladimir and the
bishops, who reproached the prince for not punishing robbers and advised
him that he had been appointed by God in order to chastise the wicked and
reward the good, adding: “It is proper to punish the robber, but only after a
trial”.49 (The prince took their advice.)
46
47
48
49
46 E.g. in the second will of Dmitrii Donskoi of 1389, ddg No.12, 33–37: “And if God changes
the Horde and my children will not have to pay vykhod to the Horde, each son will take
the tribute [payable] for his own udel [apanage]”.
47 ddg No.5, 19–21, at 20; ddg gave the date as “around 1367”.
48 I.G. Dobrodomov, V.A. Kuchkin, “Deliui srednevekovoi Rusi”, dgve 1998, Moskva, 2000,
88–98.
49 No so ispytom; psrl i, 127.
396 chapter 14
The different layers of the rp do actually show the gradual emergence of

the prince as a judge. In the oldest layer, the Pravda of Iaroslav, evidence for
the activity of the prince as a judge is weak and, at the same time, there are still
obvious traces of self-help. The latter are to be seen not only in the well-known
references to blood feuds and vengeance (arts. 1 and 2), but also in several
other provisions. Art. 14, for instance, expressly enjoined the owner who had
found his property in somebody else’s possession not to take it back outright,
but to observe a specific procedure. The rule implied that simple self-help had
been the practice previously. Some indication of the existence of courts is giv-
en in the provisions of Iaroslav’s Pravda which refer to eyewitnesses (vidoki,
arts. 2 and 10), and the reference to the oath in art. 10. In this provision the
oath (rota) appears as an alternative for producing eyewitnesses; foreigners
(Vikings: Variagi and Kolbiagi), who presumably could have difficulty in pro-
ducing the required two eyewitnesses, were allowed to swear an oath. It is en-
tirely possible, on the other hand, that the witness testimony or oath, referred
to in these provisions, was not connected with court proceedings, or at least
not with the court of the prince. In sum, therefore, the evidence for the exis-
tence of a prince’s court in the Pravda of Iaroslav is at best ambiguous.
In the next chronological layer of the Short Pravda, the Pravda of Iaroslav’s
Sons, there is more positive evidence for the existence of the prince’s court
in art. 38, which provided inter alia that the thief apprehended during the
night on the prince’s estate, if he had not been killed in the process, had to
be brought to the prince’s court the next day. This provision suggests that the
function of the prince as judge grew, at least in part, out of his position as lord
of his domain. The other main root of princely jurisdiction was in his position
of ruler over a territory much larger than his own domain, viz. his principal-
ity. In the latter capacity, as “head of state” instead of “lord of the manor”, the
prince would act, at least in the earlier period, in concert with his druzhina, in
particular the most senior boyars.
In the Expanded Pravda the above-mentioned provisions of the Short
Pravda return (in amended form), but additionally, in the second part of the
Expanded Pravda, starting with the Statute of Monomakh, references to the
court of the prince are numerous and explicit. One of the most informative
examples in this respect is art. 56, providing that a zakup will not be reduced
to slavery when he has left his lord openly, in order to go to the prince to sue
for the money owed to him, or when he has gone to the judges to complain of
an injustice inflicted by his lord. The rule makes clear that the prince could
either involve himself personally in settling such master-servant disputes or
leave matters to his judges. The same point is made by the rule in the Church
Statute of Vladimir, forbidding the prince or his judges from interfering in
c ases assigned to church courts. This rule belongs to the oldest part of the
Statute.
The explicit reference to the prince and his court in this Statute, along with
the Chronicle reference from 996, is clear evidence of the early appearance of
princely jurisdiction, exercized both by himself and by his appointed judges.
This jurisdiction continued all through the Kievan era, in tandem with
church jurisdiction in a great number of cases. In Novgorod and Pskov (see
Chapter 16), the prince’s court functioned alongside the courts established by
the city authorities.
The Prince as Legislator
On Legislation in General
Before moving on to the more specific subject of the prince as legislator in
medieval Russia, some general considerations concerning legislation may be
appropriate, elaborating on what was put forward in the section on the defini-
tion of law in Chapter 1.50
The emergence of legislation in the sense of authoritative and generalized
statements about law, fixed in writing, can be viewed as taking place in two
distinct but interrelated processes. Legislation can be seen as the outgrowth
of custom and customary law. Potential conflicts in early societies were often
avoided through informal procedures or, if the latter were unsuccessful, by
reference to customary law. Once a central authority had arisen and acquired
sufficient power, it could attempt to introduce alterations in the existing body
of customary rules. Much early legislation reflected therefore the active inter-
ference of a central authority in societal affairs and was then in opposition to
pre-existing customary law, although it was rooted in it.
But legislation can also be seen as an outgrowth of adjudication, the set-
tlement of disputes by specific dispute-solving agencies, such as judges and
courts. While customary law can operate perfectly well in the absence of leg-
islation, the emergence of adjudication (in the sense of dispute settlement by
courts and similar agencies) will inevitably entail the birth of the legislative
process. Every case decided acquires to some extent a power of precedent, and
constitutes the embryo of a legal rule. Generally, repetition is the most im-
portant factor, because the more a certain practice establishes itself, the more
difficult and undesirable it will be to deviate from it. Nonetheless, a single
50
50 For the general conceptual framework of this section, see my “Law’s Beginnings”, F. Feld-
brugge (ed.), The Law’s Beginnings, Leiden/Boston, 2003, 255–280.
398 chapter 14
d ecision in a momentous case may all by itself acquire a strong effect for the
future. As the precedent is followed in similar cases, the rule solidifies and it
will become increasingly unlikely that the deciding agency will depart from
established practice; at the same time, members of society, anticipating the
position to be taken by the court, will adjust their conduct accordingly. Then
the rule created by the original decision (or by a whole series of decisions)
changes its character: it is no longer primarily a guideline for the court itself
in deciding future cases, but first and foremost a generalized norm regulating
citizens’ behaviour.
The two processes described are related, because one of the first areas in
which an emerging central authority will express its ambitions will be in the
solution of certain social controversies. In other words, one of the first func-
tions to be assumed by an arising new power will be that of judge.
Legislation in the full sense is present when the function of establishing
general rules is detached from adjudication. This takes place when the central
authority is able to bypass the judicial process and achieve the desired regula-
tory effect more efficiently by enunciating and publishing its new rules directly
to the public.
A final corrective remark is to be added. Modern legal anthropology has
demonstrated that customs and customary law are not to be regarded as rigid
and immutable entities to which the societies in which they operated were
helplessly subordinated. Such societies were usually in possession of proce-
dures capable of adapting the body of custom to changed circumstances and
of handling disputes which occurred outside the normal ambit of customary
law. The transition from a traditional society living by custom and customary
law to a society possessing central agencies adjudicating disputes and issuing
general norms was therefore gradual.51
Legislation in Kievan Russia

The transition indicated above is easily observable in Kievan Russia.52 The 912
and 944 treaties with Byzantium contained several references to the Zakon
51
52
51 See also the discussion concerning the relationship between customary and statute law
(in connection with the Code of 1497) in Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii (OfR) between S.N.
Kisterev (“Velikokniazheskii Sudebnik 1497 g. i sudebnaia praktika pervoi poloviny xvi
v.”, OfR 11, Moskva, 2007, 404–461) and K.N. Petrov (“Imel li Sudebnik 1497 g. znachenie
zakona v ego sovremennom ponimanii?”, OfR 12, Moskva, 2008, 365–382) and Kisterev’s
prompt reaction (ibidem, 383–406).
52 This transition is the central theme in D. Kaiser, The Growth of the Law in Medieval Rus-
sia, Princeton, 1980. The topic is somewhat underexposed in the otherwise vast Russian
russkii; the meaning of this is quite clear: Zakon russkii was not Russian law,
but Russian custom (see the section on the Zakon Russkii in Chapter 3). The
944 Treaty opposed the Zakon russkii to the Greek ustav and zakon, i.e. Greek
law and custom.
A possible reference to legislation is the 947 entry in the Chronicle about
Olga’s campaigns in that year. She is reported as having passed through the
land of Dereva, establishing ustavy and uroki. The latter term is translated by
Sherbowitz-Wetzor as tribute. If ustavy means laws in this text, one can only
guess about their contents.
An early and unambiguous example of legislation is the famous story about
Vladimir’s abolition of the vira in 996 (mentioned several times above). Vladi-
mir’s legislative activity is expressed most clearly in his Church Statute.
The most comprehensive illustration of the general views on the origin of
legislation, outlined in the previous section, is in the various stages of the Russ-
kaia Pravda. This subject was discussed at greater length in Chapter 4; it will be
enough to recapitulate the main conclusions here.
The oldest part of the rp, the Oldest Pravda or Pravda of Iaroslav, was
still close to customary law and was predominantly a written record of
customary rules. The unusual circumstances surrounding its origin made it
desirable to fix in writing what was already observed in practice. The amount
of innovation was modest and, as pointed out in the previous section, it of-
fered practically no evidence of the prince’s activity in a judicial or executive
capacity.
In the next phase, the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons, the picture was significantly
changed. The preamble already heralded the legislative self-confidence of its
authors: “The law established for the Russian Land”, at the assembly of the
three princes and their councillors. The main thrust of the Pravda of Iaroslav’s
Sons was towards increased protection of the prince’s interests. Where homi-
cide or physical attacks threatened the prince’s servants or his property, the
customary rules were amended. The prince himself, and not the direct victims,
would then claim compensation.
The genesis of at least some of the rules of the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons will
have been in ad hoc decisions. The best example is art. 23 of the Short Pravda.
and Soviet literature on the rp and other major monuments of early medieval Russian
law. The principal authors usually contented themselves with a few pages. Cf. Sergeevich,
Lektsii, 25–27; Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 93–94; Presniakov, Lektsii i, 208–209; D’iakonov, Ocherki,
33–37; A.A. Zimin, “Feodal’naia gosudarstvennost’ i Russkaia Pravda”, Istoricheskie Zapiski,
No.76, 1965, 230–275, esp. 234–240 (“Skladyvanie rannefeodal’nogo prava v kontse ix –
nachale x v.”).
400 chapter 14
It follows arts. 19–22 which set a double fine (bloodwite) of 80 grivna for kill-
ing the highest princely officials (the ognishchanin/steward, the pod”ezdnoi/
adjutant, the tiun). Art. 23 then set the same amount for the killing of the se-
nior stable master (koniukh staryi), adding: “as Iziaslav established when the
men from Dorogobuzh had killed his stable master”. In the parallel provision in
the Expanded Pravda (art. 12) these words were edited out. Art. 27 of the Short
Pravda (the killing of a slave nurse or a slave tutor) probably had a similar ori-
gin. As a general rule, the killing of a slave of the prince would entail a 5 grivna
fine, but where trusted personal servants, albeit slaves, were concerned, the
fine was increased to 12 grivna.
The final parts of the Short Pravda were derived from special legislation.
Art. 42 states: “This is the law on vira”, and art. 43 begins: “This is the bridge-
builders’ statute”.
The close connection between judicial decisions and legislation is well il-
lustrated in the amended version of the preamble to the Pravda of Iaroslav’s
Sons, as incorporated in the Expanded Pravda (art. 2). This provision not only
explicitly outlawed blood feuds and revenge, but also added the following
words to the version of the Short Pravda: “and so was everything else, as it had
been adjudicated by Iaroslav, confirmed by his sons”. The incipient legislative
effect of Iaroslav’s judgments, inasmuch as they constituted important prec-
edents, was thus fully expressed and confirmed by his sons.
The separation of legislation from adjudication and, consequently, the
emergence of legislation as a distinct function of the prince, took place dur-
ing the early part of the Kievan era and was more or less completed during the
reign of Iaroslav’s sons.
Legislative Procedure
It has been noted above that the prince in Kievan Russia did not rule as a pure
autocrat, but in consultation with his family, members of his druzhina, and
other influential persons. This would certainly also apply to legislation as one
of the main governmental activities. The most common situation was that the
prince would deliberate with his retinue, or at least with its higher echelon, his
boyars. Numerous instances of this practice are reported in the Chronicle. In
the two most prominent legislative landmarks, the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons
and the Statute of Monomakh, only a small number of leading officials were
mentioned as participating in the drafting of the law, not the boyars as a group.
The Church Statute of Vladimir referred to consultations between the prince,
his wife and children, presumably because the donations made to the Church
in the Statute would affect the financial position of the entire family. The back-
ground of Vladimir’s donations to the Church is extensively reported in the
Chronicle under the years 994–996 and this entry names several other groups
of persons who took part in the consultations with the prince.
Important governmental decisions were often taken on occasions when a
large number of prominent persons had gathered for great religious events,
followed by more worldly feasting. The 994–996 entries mentioned that Vladi-
mir had summoned his boyars, lieutenants (posadniki) and town elders, and
on another occasion, also his junior druzhina members (the grid’), military
commanders (tysiatskie and sotniki), and ‘important men’ (narochity muzhi).53
Next, the Chronicle reported that Vladimir would consult his druzhina in mat-
ters of administration, war and government, and then, still within the 994–996
entry, followed the story about the consultations with the bishops concerning
the abolition of the vira and the punishment of robbers.
The obvious conclusion from all this must be that it was the prince who
promulgated laws and ruled the country, but that he would normally submit
his intentions to an appropriate sounding-board, his boyars and other leading
officials as a rule, in order to strengthen the effect of his measures.
Legislation after the Breakdown of Kievan Unity

The Expanded Pravda is the last major achievement of central Kievan legisla-
tion and there is no serious doubt about its validity in medieval Russian prin-
cipalities, apart of course from those that fell under Lithuanian-Polish rule.
There is no consensus about the time of its final compilation, but a reasonably
safe guess would be to locate it chronologically at some time between the be-
ginning of the reign of Vladimir Monomakh (1113) and some time not too long
after his death (1125) or that of his son, Mstislav the Great (1132). After these
two princes, no Kievan grand prince would probably have had the prestige and
power to legislate for the whole country.
Although one has to reckon with the probability that most legislative mate-
rials from these times have been lost, it is hardly a co-incidence that it is exact-
ly in this period that the first legislation from separate principalities begins to
appear: the Church Statute of the Novgorod prince Sviatoslav Ol’govich (1137),
the Smolensk Church Charters of prince Rostislav Mstislavich (1134–1136), the
nucleus of the ‘Testament’ (Rukopisanie) of the Novgorod prince Vsevolod
Mstislavich (tentatively 1135–1136), and others. On the whole, the legislative
production from the principalities in the following two or three centuries is
extremely modest; most of it is, understandably, from Novgorod and the only
major monument is the relatively late Court Charter of Pskov. In view of the
more favourable storage conditions in churches and monasteries, most of the
53
53 On the celebrations of 994–996, see Froianov, KRsp, 140–143; id., Nachala, 615–617.
402 chapter 14
available texts are also connected with the Church. The first significant text
from the principality of Moscow is the Dvina Land Charter (1397–1398).
The legislative procedures outlined above continued to be adhered to in
most of the texts from the later era. Prince Rostislav of Smolensk stated that
he had involved the (new) bishop of Smolensk in producing his statute, sdu-
mav s liudmi svoimi (after consulting his people, or perhaps his ‘men’). Prince
Vsevolod Mstislavich of Novgorod, quite elaborately, consulted his wife, the
Novgorod archbishop, his boyars, the ten sotniki and the city elders.
The relationship between the prince and various sections of the popula-
tion of his principality changed fundamentally after the Mongol invasion. The
prince owed allegiance to the khan and the admission of a ‘democratic’ com-
ponent in governmental procedures was not in the interests of the khan or the
prince. There is no reference to consultation by the prince in the Dvina Land
Charter. Consultation of a select groups of leading noblemen continued how-
ever (see the section above on the Boyar Duma).
External Relations: Diplomacy and War
Treaties and Diplomacy

The conduct of foreign affairs was one of the prince’s main duties. This is com-
pletely obvious from the attention paid to this matter in the chronicles and
from the account given by Vladimir Monomakh in his Testament (“I concluded
nineteen peace treaties with the Polovtsians”). Warfare and diplomacy formed
a continuum, although their legal ramifications were very different. Diplomacy
would ideally result in an agreement in which the parties pledged “peace and
amity” or “peace and love”. The origins of Russian diplomacy go back far into
prehistory; faint echoes can still be heard in the Chronicle in the oldest entries
concerning events in the 9th century. 10th century treaties are well represented
in the Chronicle through the four treaties with Byzantium. These treaties are of
fundamental importance for the history of Russian law and have accordingly
been discussed separately (Chapter 3). No treaty texts from the following two
centuries have survived; the first one available is the 1191–1192 treaty between
Novgorod and the Hanseatic League.54 This treaty explicitly confirmed an ear-
lier treaty (staryi mir) between the parties.
The Kievan princes had to deal with a great variety of neighbours, and this
would of course be reflected in diplomatic practice. The formal treaties with
54
54 gvnp, No.28, 55–56; on the dating, see E.A. Rybina, “O dvukh drevneishikh torgovykh
dogovorakh Novgoroda”, Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik, No.3 (1989), 43–51.
the Byzantine empire, which had very long and extensive diplomatic experi-
ence, were very different from the oral agreements which must occasionally
have been reached with Finnish tribes inhabiting the forests of Northern Rus-
sia. In the West, Russia’s neighbours (Poles, Czechs, Germans, Scandinavians)
represented established medieval states, while in the East and South-East the
Russian princes were faced with a multitude of nomadic tribes, occasionally
coagulating into a state-like entity; Khazars first, then Pechenegs, Polovtsians
and other Turkic ethnic groups. Moreover, once the Kievan empire started to
break up into semi-independent principalities, relations between their ruling
princes became a major area of interest (this subject was treated in a separate
section in the previous chapter).
The liveliness of diplomatic intercourse with the steppe nomads is illustrat-
ed not only by the above quotation from Vladimir Monomakh’s Testament, but
also by the numerous marriages of Kievan princes with Polovtsian and other
Turkic princesses.55
On the basis of his examination of the 10th century Russian-Greek treaties
Sakharov has argued that the practice of treaty-making, the form of treaties,
the manner of their conclusion, and their basic clauses, were regulated by well-
established usage, some of it going back to the time of oral diplomacy.56 A cen-
tral element in the treaty-making process was the ambassadorial speech, an
institution which survived into the 11th century.57 The prince would give oral
instructions to his envoys, ordering them to address the foreign ruler in cer-
tain words. The latter would then, depending on the status of the contracting
partners, either reply in person to the envoys, thereby actually concluding the
treaty (the envoys would return and report accordingly to their own principal),
or the envoys would return together with a mission sent by the foreign prince,
and the latter’s ambassadors would pronounce the words conveyed to them by
their own ruler.
Written treaties began with an identification of the ambassadors, then the
substantive clauses would follow, and the treaty would be closed by provi-
sions spelling out the confirmation procedure to be observed (the exchange
55
56
57
55 The third wife of Vladimir Monomakh was a daughter of the Polovtsian prince Aepa
(1107); his cousin Sviatopolk, who preceded him on the throne of Kiev, had married a
daughter of the Polovtsian khan Tugorkan as his second wife in 1094. At least a dozen
other Russian-Polovtsian dynastic marriages are mentioned by de Baumgarten, op. cit.,
69–70; in all cases except one, a Russian prince married a Polovtsian princess.
56 Sakharov, op. cit., 48–82.
57 Cf. D.S. Likhachev, “Russkii posol’skii obychai xi–xiii vv.”, Istoricheskie Zapiski, No.18
(1946), 42–55.
404 chapter 14
of oaths). After the conclusion of the treaty, gifts would usually be exchanged.
The substantive part of the treaty would of course depend on the circumstanc-
es of the previous dispute, but the central clause, as noted above, was generally
a mutual pledge of “peace and amity” or “peace and love”.
The Prince at War

Being involved in warfare of some kind was the rule rather than the exception
for the medieval Russian prince. This is again shown abundantly by the chron-
icles and also by the descriptions in the Testament of Monomakh. If the prince
was not at war, he was probably preparing for one or trying to undo the damage
caused by the last war.
The warlike actions displayed a great variety. During the early phase of
Kievan Russia the most common type of hostilities were the raids against other
tribes or foreign powers, undertaken for the sake of booty and glory, and usu-
ally of comparatively small scale. In later years the campaigns waged against
pagan peoples, such as Turkic steppe nomads or Finnish forest dwellers, often
lacking an obvious defensive or strategic purpose, seem to have been viewed as
an outlet comparable to a hunting expedition. Then there were the more major
armed conflicts with European nations, such as the Poles or Greeks. Of particu-
lar frequency were the mostly defensive wars with the steppe nomads, whose
incessant incursions would ultimately culminate in the Mongol invasions in
the first half of the 13th century and the end of Kievan Russia.
If no external enemy threatened the peace, there were still numerous do-
mestic upheavals. A town might rise up against its prince. Novgorod in par-
ticular had a long and often successful history of asserting its independence
against its nominal prince. Dynastic conflicts between members of the Rurikid
house also often escalated into open warfare (these have already been men-
tioned above).
The variegated pattern of warfare in Kievan Russia resulted in greatly differ-
ing systems of military organization, command structure, the conduct of hos-
tilities, treatment of the enemy, and the supply and rewarding of the troops,
all these aspects being determined by the kind of armed conflict engaged in.
Most writers distinguish between three kinds of armies.58 There was the
small standing army represented by the prince’s retinue, the druzhina; then
the large popular army, constituted by the male population in arms, gathered
58
58 Sergeevich, Drevnosti i, 595–600; Sergeevich’s chapter on the army in Kievan times

(Drevnosti i, 595–618) is one of the most comprehensive treatises on the subject in the
works of leading legal historians. See also Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 310–353; Iushkov, Stroi,
110–113 and 381–384; Froianov, KRsp, 185–215 and id., Nachala, 658–686. Shorter paragraphs
at moments of national emergency;59 and finally the foreign forces, usually

recruited for a specific campaign. As circumstances dictated, a combination
of these three might present the most apposite answer to a particular military
challenge.
The druzhina and the different meanings of the term have been discussed
above. What is envisaged here is what is referred to as the junior druzhina,
consisting of professional warriors, living permanently at the prince’s court,
supported and rewarded by him, and sharing his table at court and in the field.
Great magnates maintained their own druzhiny (see the episode related be-
fore, concerning Sveinald’s druzhina).
There has been much debate concerning the question whether the Kievan
period was preceded by an era of “military democracy”, a time in which every
able-bodied man would become a soldier at a moment of need.60 The question
is obviously connected with the more general question concerning the nature
of pre-Kievan society. It suffices to say that at least during the Kievan era the
idea was very much alive. The main difference from the druzhina, apart from
the aspect of size, was in the temporary character of such a popular army. It
would be called up by the prince through a popular assembly (veche); for the
purpose of a specific campaign or to face a specific emergency; when hostili-
ties were over, or even earlier, everybody would go home to look after his own
affairs (examples may especially be found in the Novgorod Chronicle).
The Kievan princes also made extensive use of foreign auxiliaries, mainly
Vikings (Varangians) and Turkic horsemen, especially Pechenegs and later
Polovtsians.61 Vikings were especially active in the northern regions around
Novgorod, and the Turkic cavalry in the South, in the Kiev area. Many of these
soldiers were gradually assimilated and absorbed by the Slavic population.
The supreme command of the army rested with the prince, but early on
one already encounters generals or military commanders (voevody) in actual
command of the troops.62 Where the druzhina, the members of which had a
59
60
61
62
on military organization in Kievan times in Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 107–108; D’iakonov, Ocherki,

80–84.
59 The reality of the concept of such a large force, consisting of the armed male population,
assumed by most authors, is questioned by P.V. Lukin, “Sushchestvovalo li v drevnei Rusi
narodnoe opolchenie?” A.A. Gorskii (ed.), Srednevekovaia Rus’, 9, Moskva, 2011, 47–98.
60 This thesis was strongly advocated by Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 310–320.
61 In the first major encounter with the Mongols-Tatars, on the Kalka River in 1223, a mixed
Russian-Polovtsian force was defeated.
62 According to Tolochko, voevody were professional military commanders, recruited from
the higher echelon of the boyars, and appointed by the prince to head the druzhina, or
406 chapter 14
personal connection with the prince, was concerned the latter was their lead-
er. In such a comparatively small unit, no more elaborate command structure
would be required, while a larger force would also need intermediate levels of
command. The tysiatskii (discussed above, and in Chapter 16) was an officer of
high rank in Kievan times, usually the commander of the detachment of the
major city of the principality.63 His status as a local leader, although appointed
by the prince, granted him a certain degree of independence. This explains,
according to Sergeevich, why in later years the princes tended to replace the
tysiatskie as permanent commanders of provincial detachments by voevody,
generals, appointed for a specific campaign.64
As pointed out by several authors, supported by the sources, the command
structure was in fact lax and fluid.65 A prince or commanding general often
had little control over his army. Especially when a large army consisted of con-
tingents from several principalities, there was little co-ordination between the
commanders of the different units. Provincial detachments or auxiliaries from
other nationalities might follow their own battle plans. Much would depend
on the personality of the supreme commander.
The treatment of prisoners and of the population of a foreign region showed
a varied, although not quite unregulated, pattern. Pagans, such as the Pech-
enegs or Polovtsians, were treated more harshly than Christians. The pious
clerk who recorded the Testament of Monomakh has the great prince listing,
among his many glorious exploits, how he had four Polovtsian princes, fifteen
chieftains, and two hundred other important prisoners killed and thrown into
the river. Christian prisoners of war could be sold into slavery or ransomed, but
were often returned at the conclusion of a peace treaty. Russian prisoners in
domestic wars might fare better.
While the druzhina was kept and rewarded by the prince himself, his means
would usually not permit him to finance a large popular army. For this reason,
the main source of payment was the taking of booty. The prince would in fact
often need such proceeds from foreign campaigns also for keeping his druzhi-
na satisfied, as is amply illustrated by several entries in the Chronicle. The op-
portunities for plundering were therefore an important factor in deciding on
the course of a campaign and the direction of the strategy. This holds true not
only for the early period, as shown by the reports concerning the campaigns
63
64
65
to command a specific army for a campaign; P.P. Tolochko, Vlast’ v Drevnei Rusi x–xiii vv.,
63 See also Tolochko, op. cit., 107–130.
64 Sergeevich, Drevnosti i, 606–608.
65 Cf. Sergeevich, ibidem, 608–612.
against Byzantium, but also in respect of later times. In a passage from the
Hypatian Redaction of the Chronicle, the princes are heard rejecting the pos-
sibility of waging war on Novgorod territory; for the explicit reason that the
Mongols had been there before them and that consequently there was nothing
to be taken from the local population.66
While the prince was leading his army through his own territory or the lands
of his allies, the property of the inhabitants would have to be respected; the
army then would only be entitled to korm, to be fed and maintained.
66
66 Entry for 1277; quoted by Sergeevich, Drevnosti i, 615.

chapter 15
The Towns
Introduction
The town was one of the principal localities in the middle ages where people
lived in close proximity; relations between them therefore tended to be more
intense and complex. In this way the medieval town was an important locus
of law and comparable, in this respect, to the court of a prince or a landown-
ing monastery. During the early Kievan period monasteries were in fact inside,
or in the immediate vicinity of, towns and so were the normal places of resi-
dence of the ruling princes. The major towns of the Kievan realm constituted
therefore legal communities which embraced the smaller legal communities
of princely courts and monasteries.
This chapter will briefly investigate, first, the origin of Russian towns,
different on several counts from the origin of towns in Western Europe. The
following section will deal with the internal organization of the town, with
the c haracter and function of the popular assembly, the veche, as the central
topic. Then the town will be considered within its wider setting: its relations,
especially treaty relations, with Russian princes and foreign powers. The next
topic will be the urban population, its different strata and their respective
rights and duties. The final general topic concerns the legal aspects of the
urban e conomy; what in modern terminology would be called commercial law
represents the principal subject.
The city republic of Novgorod, which ruled over the enormous territory
of almost the entire northern half of European Russia, was a dominant fac-
tor in medieval Russia and itself the subject of an extensive literature. The
smaller city of Pskov gained its independence from Novgorod; its importance
for legal history is that the Court Charter of Pskov constituted the most com-
prehensive piece of legislation between the Russkaia Pravda and the Law
Codes of the unified Muscovy state (of which the 1497 Law Code, Sudebnik,
of Ivan iii was the first). Novgorod and Pskov will be dealt with in a spe-
cial Chapter (16). The towns of Western Russia developed in ways different
from those in Central Russia and will be discussed in Chapter 17 (on Western
Russia).

The Towns 409
The Origin of Russian Towns
Notwithstanding the many general parallels between Kievan Russia and

the early middle ages in Western Europe, the importance of towns in early
Christian Russia presents a conspicuous difference with an overwhelmingly
rural Western Europe. Towns occur frequently in the narrative of the Primary
Chronicle, even where it discussed events from the pagan past. Several 19th
century authors had already noted this point and the prominence of the topic
only grew when archaeological discoveries during the last half century pro-
duced a mass of new material.
During the more dogmatic periods of Soviet historiography scholars
struggled with the problem of fitting the existence of towns into the Marxist
framework for early medieval history. B.D. Grekov, the leading medievalist of
the Stalin era, had offered a definition of the town which was for a long time
regarded as authoritative and which was directly derived from the writings of
Marx and Engels:
… the gorod is a settlement with an industrial and trading population

to some extent detached from agriculture. Such a gorod is the result of
the divorcement of «industrial and trade labour from the agricultural»,
a result of the social division of labour.1
The definition did not allow the many towns referred to in the Primary Chron-
icle as existing in pagan times to be regarded as such (because a population as
specified by Grekov’s definition was absent); all the same, occupation in agri-
culture and the raising of cattle remained a major element in the life of Rus-
sian towns, sometimes up to the 19th century.2 Grekov’s authoritative views did
not prevent the further advance of Soviet historical scholarship on this topic,
but they still presented a serious obstacle to an unbiased development of new
insights.
1 B.D. Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, Moskva, 1953, 98; the translation has been taken from the English
edition of the same work, Kiev Rus, Moscow, 1959, 127. The section in French quotation marks
is a direct quotation from Marx-Engels (4th Russ. ed., iv, 40–41). A more precise translation
of Grekov’s words would be: “… the town was an inhabited place in which a population,
engaged in crafts and trade and in one way or another detached from agriculture, was con-
centrated. Such a town was the result of the separation of «crafts and trade from agricultural
labour», the result of a social division of labour.”
2 This point had already been made by M.G. Rabinovich, “O zemledelii v russkom feodal’nom
gorode”, T.V. Nikolaeva (ed.), Drevniaia Rus’ i Slav’iane, Moskva, 1978, 129–133.
410 chapter 15
Archaeological and historical research has allowed us to date the emer-

gence of towns in Russia to at least as early as the second half of the 8th cen-
tury. This development was connected with the victory of the Abbasid over
the Ommayad dynasty in the Middle East in 749 and the transference of the
Arab capital from Damascus to Baghdad. This gave a strong boost to interna-
tional trade because Baghdad had become the greatest centre for issuing silver
coins (dirhams). Furs from the North European forests were much sought
after and transit trade along the Volga and other Russian rivers was the result.
Transit trade needed points where traders could restock and goods could be
unloaded.3
In all this one has to bear in mind that the northern part of Russia (and
most of Northern and Western Europe as well) was almost completely covered
by dense and impenetrable forests and that the slow-flowing rivers in the flat
Russian country offered the only realistic means of long-distance travel.
The earliest known Russian town is Staraia Ladoga (on the southern shore
of Lake Ladoga, about 100 kms from St. Petersburg), the existence of which is
documented in the second half of the 8th century. It was situated close to the
point where the Volkhov river flowed into Lake Ladoga, which by means of
the river Neva gave access to the Baltic Sea. Staraia Ladoga was surrounded
by dense forest and marshes, sparsely inhabited at that time by Finnish tribes
of hunters and fishermen. The population of Staraia Ladoga, judging from the
material remains, would probably have been predominantly Scandinavian, but
other ethnic elements (Slavs, Finno-Ugrians) were also present.4 The reason
for its existence was to serve the transit trade between Scandinavia and the
Middle East. Staraia Ladoga fitted Grekov’s definition in that transit and inter-
nal trade, together with local industry (pottery, metal-working, etc.), consti-
tuted the economic foundation of the settlement; the forbidding environment
made agriculture almost impossible. Hunters from the surrounding forests
might bring furs, but otherwise there was little contact between Staraia Ladoga
and the region around it.
3 Cf. E.N. Nosov, “Rechnaia set’ Vostochnoi Evropy i ee rol’ v obrazovanii gorodskikh tsen-
trov Severnoi Rusi”, A.A. Gippius, E.N. Nosov, A.S. Khoroshev (eds.), Velikii Novgorod v istorii
srednevekovoi Evropy. K 70-letiiu Valentina Lavrent’evicha Ianina, Moskva, 1999, 157–170.
4 Extensively on Staraia Ladoga, S. Franklin & J. Shepard, The Emergence of Rus 750–1200,
London/New York, 1996, 12–21. Grekov, op. cit., 107, insists on the Slav character of Staraia
Ladoga’s population and was followed for a while by Soviet authors. This point of view seems
to be deserted now; see e.g. E.N. Nosov, “Proiskhozhdenie pervykh gorodov Severnoi Rusi”,
M.B. Sverdlov (ed.), Feodal’naia Rossiia. Novye issledovaniia, Sankt-Peterburg, 1993, 5–10. Sta-
raia Ladoga was known to the Scandinavians as Aldeigjuborg; see G.V. Glazyrina, T.N. Dzhak-
son, “Iz istorii Staroi Ladogi (na materialakh skandinavskikh sag)”, A.V. Novosel’tsev (ed.), dg
sssr 1985, Moskva, 1986, 108–115.
The Towns 411
Similar urban-type settlements emerged, or at least are documented at a

slightly later stage: Gnëzdovo (very close to Smolensk), Gorodishche (Riuriko-
vo Gorodishche, Rurik’s Fort, outside Novgorod), Sarskoe Gorodishche (Sarskii
Fort, near Rostov, south of Iaroslavl’) and others. These pre-Christian towns
were invariably connected with long-distance North-South trade and located
at confluences of rivers or other advantageous points on the shores of rivers.
Apart from supporting trade directly by providing various services, they could
also have administrative and military functions in controlling and protecting
trade routes.
Most scholars recognize that in the course of the following centuries other
types of towns began to emerge, which were not initially and primarily based
on trade. Some of the types mentioned are fortified villages, forts (built as a
refuge and not necessarily connected with a village), domanial centres (con-
trolled by a prince or lord), regional tribal centres (which might coincide with
any of the foregoing), etc. Occasionally, as documented by several chronicle
reports, towns did not come into being gradually, but were founded specifically
by a prince, usually for military purposes.
Of the older Soviet authors, Grekov dealt with towns briefly in his major
work on Kievan Russia. Iushkov restricted himself to some tentative conclu-
sions about the emergence of the earliest towns on the basis of fortified tribal
settlements during the last pre-Christian centuries.5 The principal specific
study was by M.N. Tikhomirov, who generally agreed with Grekov’s definition
of a town.6 In later years other authors generally kept to Grekov’s outlines but
added their own accents. Another prominent scholar who wrote extensively
on Old Russian towns, P.P. Tolochko, regarded fortified centres of Slav tribes as
their main origin. In this connection he gave more prominence to the military,
administrative and religious functions of these early towns than to their role as
centres of trade and crafts.7
I.Ia. Froianov, notable during the last decades of Soviet power for his non-
conformist views on medieval Russian history, emerged as one of the leading
historians in the post-Soviet era. Already in 1980, in his study of the socio-
political history of Kievan Russia, he revived the idea launched before the
Revolution by Presniakov, that before a unified Kievan state arose, there were a
number of tribal states consisting of towns/tribal centres and the surrounding
5 S.V. Iushkov, Ocherki po istorii feodalizma v Kievskoi Rusi, Moskva/Leningrad, 1939, 20–24.
6 M.N. Tikhomirov, Drevnerusskie goroda, Moskva, 1956; republished with an introduction by
S.V. Alekseeva, Sankt-Peterburg, 2008 (references below are to the 2008 edition). An earlier
version appeared in Uchenye Zapiski mgu, vyp.99, Moskva, 1946.
7 P.P. Tolochko, Drevnerusskii feodal’nyi gorod, Kiev, 1989, esp. 34–48.
412 chapter 15
territory.8 The St. Petersburg school of medieval historians, of which Froianov

was a central proponent, produced a number of valuable studies based on
this idea, but, although the ‘tribal’ theory still has many adherents,9 it is by no
means generally accepted.10
To an outsider the debate appears to be mostly about terminology. When
does a tribal centre (which presumably will usually be fortified) become a town
and when is such a town (with the surrounding area) to be considered a state?11
One point that stands out from the entire discussion of the problem is
that a certain hierarchy among towns was a definite characteristic of Kievan
Russia. A particular town, usually an old tribal centre, would emerge as the
regional capital, the eponymous locality of the future principality. In later cen-
turies the hierarchy was occasionally formalized in subordinate towns (such
as Pskov) having the status of a suburb (prigorod) of the principal town (such
as Novgorod). E.N. Nosov observed that in Northern Russia the ancient trad-
ing centres appeared more often as the nucleus around which the later towns
8 I.Ia. Froianov, Kievskaia Rus’. Ocherki sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii, Leningrad, 1980, Ch. vii,
216–243. This work has been reprinted together with other major works by Froianov on
Kievan Russia in Nachala russkoi istorii, Moskva, 2001, where the same chapter is to be
found at 687–712. See also A.E. Presniakov, Lektsii po russkoi istorii, Tom i, Kievskaia Rus’,
Moskva, 1938, Ch. xi (163–173). Presniakov’s lecture notes from the period 1908–1916 were
not published at the time.
9 For instance, S.N. Malovichko, “«Plemennaia» teoriia vozniknoveniia drevnerusskikh
gorodov v trudakh otechestvennykh istorikov xviii–xx vv.”, V.M. Vorob’ev, A.Iu. Dvor-
nichenko (eds.), Srednevekovaia i novaia Rossiia. Sbornik nauchnykh statei. K 60-letiiu
professora Igoria Iakovlevicha Froianova, Sankt-Peterburg, 1996, 118–129. Also various
publications by Dvornichenko, such as Gorodskaia obshchina Verkhnego Podneprov’ia i
Podvin’ia v xi–xv vv., Moskva, 2013.
10 Malovichko’s views were criticized by S.N. Kisterev, who concluded: “…this theory is a
theory about nothing, and the discussions about it are meaningless.” S.N. Kisterev, “Za-
mechaniia k otsenke «plemennoi» teorii vozniknoveniia drevnerusskikh gorodov”, S.N.
Kisterev (ed.), Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii, vyp.3, Moskva, 2001, 247–256. The tribal theory can
to some extent be traced to a local academic tradition. S.F. Platonov, who perished in the
purges of 1933, was the teacher of A.E. Presniakov, the Leningrad medievalist who per-
sonified the transition from ‘bourgeois’ to Soviet historiography (he escaped the purges
by his timely death in 1929). Presniakov was the teacher of V.V. Mavrodin (1908–1987), who
was the teacher of Froianov and many of his colleagues, such as Iu. G. Alekseev.
11 Another author, N.F. Kotliar, introduced the term “proto-town” (protogorod), to refer
to a transitory phase between a fortified settlement and a town, but this does not re-
ally help. See N.F. Kotliar, “Rol’ gorodov v protsesse gosudarstvennogo osvoeniia territorii
Galitsko-Volynskoi Rusy (do nachala xiii v.)”, A.A. Preobrazhenskii (ed.), Feodalizm v Ros-
sii. Iubileinye chteniia, posviashchennye 80-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia akademika L’va Vladi-
mirovicha Cherepnina, Moskva, 1985, 117–122.
The Towns 413
developed, while in the South tribal centres with mainly administrative and
military functions predominated.12
The narrative of the Primary Chronicle, which begins in earnest with the
year 852, mentioned the existence of some 15–20 towns before the adoption
of Christianity in 987; they were fairly evenly distributed across the territory of
Kievan Russia.13 The larger ones developed into capitals of principalities once
the unity of the Kievan state was dissolved. Soon after the conversion of Russia
a church hierarchy was instituted, Kiev and Novgorod being the first episcopal
sees (already in 988–989). With the emergence of semi-independent princi-
palities, every regional capital tended to acquire its own bishop.14
Town Government and the Veche in Particular
As noted above, the greater population density in a medieval town also re-
sulted in a greater density of law. A central element in the urban legal network
was the town itself as a legal construct. Outwardly, the town appeared as a
legal entity in its dealings with whatever authority to which it was subordinate
(usually a prince), and with other external powers. Internally, the town was a
major legal actor in relation to the urban community which it embodied, and
to individual citizens and various groups or organizations of citizens.
A general description of medieval urban government in Russia is made diffi-
cult by the differences between the numerous towns and by the developments
taking place over time; and also of course by the scarcity of materials. Novgorod
and Pskov are the best documented and will be treated in a separate Chapter
(16). What is known about urban government in other places is almost entirely
based on chronicle reports. It was only when the grand princes of Muscovy had
emerged as the supreme rulers that a more uniform system came into being.
Still, the basic axis of urban government was identical everywhere: prince
and town population. In some cases, such as Novgorod and Pskov, the prince
12 E.N. Nosov, “Proiskhozhdenie pervykh gorodov Severnoi Rusi”, M.B. Sverdlov (ed.),
Feodal’naia Rossiia. Novye issledovaniia, Sankt-Peterburg, 1993, 5–11.
13 In more or less chronological order: Kiev, Novgorod, Polotsk, Belozersk, Izborsk, Rostov,
Murom, Smolensk, Liubech, Chernigov, Pereiaslavl’, Iskorosten’, Vyshgorod, Pereiaslavets,
Vruchii, Turov, Rodnia, and perhaps also Dereva.
14 Ia.N. Shchapov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov’ Drevnei Rusi x–xiii vv., Moskva, 1989, 33–56, 107–114,
presents the following list of pre-Mongol eparchies (with probable dates of origin): Kiev
(988), Novgorod (989), Belgorod (991), Turov (996), Polotsk (±1000), Chernigov (±1030),
Iur’ev/Kanev (after 1032), Pereiaslavl’ (before 1054), Rostov (before 1072), Vladimir-Volynsk
(±1080), Peremyshl’ (±1120), Smolensk (1136), Galich (1136–1150), Riazan’ (±1200), Vladimir/
Suzdal’ (1214), Ugrovsk (after 1219)/Kholm (±1240), Lutsk (1220–1230).
414 chapter 15
was often marginalized, while other towns were in fact ruled by their prince or
his agent. All kinds of intermediate arrangements occurred.
In the earliest period, the Kievan prince ruled in Kiev and his sons and other
relatives were appointed as his lieutenants (posadniki) in the other major cen-
tres. This pattern remained the same when semi-independent principalities
arose; the princes of the major principalities normally resided in their capitals,
although some princes did occasionally prefer other seats. Where there was no
prince or when the prince was away from his normal residence for a long time,
he would be represented by his lieutenant; the designation namestnik gradu-
ally replaced that of posadnik and remained for centuries the title of the urban
governor. In rural parts the prince was represented by the volostel’, the head of
a volost’, a region.15
The remuneration of the namestniki and similar regional princely agents
was effected through the kormlenie system, payment generated by the region
itself (shares in court fees and various taxes, deliveries in kind, etc.). There is
more on the kormlenie system in Chapter 11 (Kormlennaia gramota).
As to the urban population, the evidence available indicates that for several
centuries some kind of general gathering of the town’s inhabitants regularly
played a major role in the socio-political life of Russian towns. Such gather-
ings were often referred to as a veche. There has been much debate about the
exact meaning of the term and about the question whether urban gather-
ings which were not specifically referred to as veche should still be regarded
as veche meetings. The answer to such a question requires a criterion which
allows us to determine whether a meeting was a veche or not, or, to put it dif-
ferently, what the author of the chronicle had in mind when he used the term:
just a meeting of a large crowd, or something more specific, and if so, what
exactly.
The terminology of the chronicles at least, where they mentioned veche
meetings, gave rise to the conception that the veche was a more or less cir-
cumscribed institution, fulfilling certain functions, endowed by tradition with
customary rights and duties. This resulted in a further step – the view, domi-
nant before 1917 as well as in Soviet times, that the veche was a central part
of the politico-legal structure of local and regional government during the
Kievan era. Historians, and legal historians especially, then discussed various
legal questions, such as the specific competence of the veche, its place in the
15 I.E. Andreevskii, O namestnikakh, voevodakh i gubernatorakh. Istoriia gosudarstvennogo

upravleniia v Rossii (ix–xix vv.), Moskva, 2014 (orig., Sankt-Peterburg, 1864), is still a con-
venient survey of the local government system of medieval Russia.
The Towns 415
relationships between capital and subordinate towns, the procedures followed

by veche meetings, the question of “unlawful” veches, etc.16
Modern authors, such as Lukin or Granberg, tend to stress the need to re-
turn to the sources.17 In this respect it is worth reminding oneself that almost
everything we know about the veche is communicated by the chronicles. They
inform us about meetings which were termed “veche”, and about apparently
similar meetings which were not so identified.
The legal nature of many Old-Russian institutions is beyond doubt because
specifically legal sources, such as the Russkaia Pravda, tell us about their exis-
tence. The veche as such rarely turns up in legal documents and the question
concerning its legal nature (if any) is therefore more difficult to answer.
Moreover, the possibility or rather probability of “veche” not having the
same meaning in the different sources must be kept in mind. It is therefore
more convenient to start from a fairly loose and vague concept (“some kind of
general gathering of the town’s inhabitants”) and elucidate this as we go along.
The Veche: Sources and Literature

The term veche is usually derived from the Old-Russian verb veshchati/vetiti,
to speak, and more specifically: to discuss together in council.18 It occurs for
the first time in the Primary Chronicle in a reference to a town meeting in Bel-
gorod in 997, when the inhabitants were hard-pressed by a prolonged siege by
the Pechenegs and came together to consider the surrender of the town. There
are numerous explicit references in the chronicles to the veche in later years
and, additionally, mention is often made of urban assemblies without using
the term veche.19 For the 11th century, references are not very numerous, but
16 The chapter on the veche in my own Law in Medieval Russia (Leiden, 2009), relying per-
haps too strongly on Sergeevich, is not entirely free from this defect.
17 P.V. Lukin, “O tak nazyvaemoi mnogoznachnosti poniatiia «veche» v russkikh letopisiakh:
Domongol’skoe vremia”, Neischerpaemost’ istochnika: K 70-letiiu V.A. Kuchkina, Moskva,
2005, [not available to me]; J. Granberg, Veche in the Chronicles of Medieval Rus: A Study of
Functions and Terminology, Göteborg, 2004. An abbreviated translation of the latter work
appeared in dgve 2004, Moskva, 2006, 3–163 (“Veche v drevnerusskikh pis’mennostnykh
istochnikakh: Funktsii i terminologiia”). Quotations below are from the Russian transla-
tion of Granberg’s study.
18 Cf. Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 75; Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 359. A discussion of the etymology of
veche in Granberg, op. cit., 162–163.
19 A few authors, Granberg (op. cit., 7) being the most recent one among them, have argued
that only veche meetings explicitly mentioned as such in the chronicles should be accept-
ed as the foundation for studies on the veche. The juxtaposition of chronicle statements
explicitly referring to veche meetings to statements referring to other urban assemblies
416 chapter 15
they get more plentiful in the twelfth century. After 1240 (the Mongol invasion)
reports about town assemblies mostly concern Novgorod and Pskov.
For earlier periods certain indications may be found in the works of foreign
authors, such as the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea, who wrote in
the middle of the 6th century:
For these nations, the Sclaveni and the Antae, are not ruled by one man,
but they have lived from of old under a democracy, and consequently
everything which involved their welfare, whether for good or for ill, is
referred to the people.20
Echoing this arrangement is an event described in the Primary Chronicle

which appears to have taken place sometime during the first half of the ninth
century or earlier. The Khazars were exacting tribute from the inhabitants
of Kiev (or the region of Kiev), the Poliane, who were said to have consulted
among themselves (s”dumavshe poliane) before giving in to the request. In later
instances the words duma and dumati (“counsel”, as noun and verb) are often
used in referring to the activities of the veche.21 Similar indications of the rec-
ognition of the people as a separate political agent can be perceived in the
treaties between Kiev and Byzantium, most clearly in the treaty of 944, where
the Russian envoys declared: “And our grand prince Igor and his boyars, and
the whole people of Rus have sent us…”. This entry is followed in 997, as men-
tioned above, by the express reference to the town veche of Belgorod. One of
the most crucial veche meetings in Russian history occurred in Novgorod in
1016 (or 1015), when Iaroslav the Wise called a meeting of the townspeople after
engaging in similar activities is artificial, as was pointed out, e.g. by T.L. Vilkul in a pa-
per appearing in the same volume as the Russian translation of Granberg’s study, “Kon-
struirovanie narrativa v parallel’nykh letopisnykh soobshcheniiakh o veche”, dgve 2004,
Moskva, 2006, 210–243, at 212. Occasionally the chronicle text will speak first about a town
assembly and then later on refer to it as a veche meeting; e.g. the 1217 entry in the First
Novgorod Chronicle which relates that the men of Novgorod were deliberating with the
men of Pskov, when their camp was being attacked by the Chud’; “the men of Novgorod
ran from their veche to their baggage”.
20 Translation of Vernadsky-Pushkarev, 7. Russian translation and detailed discussion (by
M.V. Bibikov) in E.A. Mel’nikova (ed.), Drevnaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh istochnikov,
Moskva, 2000, 80–84. Also in Dzhakson, T.N., Konovalova, I.G., Podosinov, A.V. (eds.),
Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh istochnikov: Khrestomatiia T.ii (Vizantiiskie istochni-
ki), Moskva, 2010, 72. See also I.Ia. Froianov, Kievskaia Rus’. Ocherki sotsial’no-politicheskoi
istorii, Moskva, 1980, 160.
21 Froianov, id., 159–160.
The Towns 417
his father Vladimir had died in Kiev and the Kievan throne had been seized by
Iaroslav’s half-brother Sviatoslav. Other important veche meetings took place
in Kiev in 1068–1069, at another moment of dynastic strife, when the people of
Kiev had put Vseslav of Polotsk on the throne, bypassing the sons of Iaroslav
the Wise. Other entries appear during the 11th and 12th centuries, referring to
veche meetings in Kiev, Novgorod and other Russian towns.22
The chronicles are therefore the basic source concerning the veche, and
in particular the Primary Chronicle and (for Novgorod especially) the First
Novgorod Chronicle; as the narrative of the Primary Chronicle stops at 1116, the
next generation of Russian medieval chronicles, such as the Suzdal’ Chronicle,
also have to be included.23 A central role in the veche debate is played by an
entry in the Suzdal’ Chronicle for the year 1176 which says: “From of old the
people of Novgorod, of Smolensk, of Kiev, of Polotsk, and of all the lands have
assembled for counsel in veches.” This quotation is one of the main arguments
of those scholars who advocate the universal occurrence and immemorial ori-
gins of the veche in medieval Russia.24
The veche was and still is one of the most ardently discussed topics in the his-
tory of early medieval Russia and the domestic literature is therefore extensive;
foreign authors, in particular from Western Europe, have added to this already
large volume. The obviously emotive power of the subject is itself an interest-
ing phenomenon. It could perhaps be explained by reference to the different
paths taken in this respect in Western Europe and Russia. Certain forms of
representative government and an ensuing balance of power between rulers
and representative institutions remained a more permanent fixture in Western
Europe than in Russia, where the overwhelmingly paramount position of the
ruler was virtually uncontested from the time the Moscow princes achieved
dominance until the end of the twentieth century. In this p erspective the ques-
tion whether and in what form and to what extent an element of representation
was present during the earliest period of the country’s existence assumes a cer-
tain symbolic importance. The veche question, in this light, is a special aspect
and one of the chief components of the wider problem of the overall concep-
tualization of Kievan Russia.
22 A survey of such entries in Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 1–50. More recently P.V. Lukin has of-
fered an extensive discussion of a great number of veche reports from various chronicles
in “Veche: sotsial’nyi sostav”, A.A. Gorskii, V.A. Kuchkin (eds.), Drevniaia Rus’: Ocherki
politicheskogo i sotsial’nogo stroia, Moskva, 2008, 33–147. Granberg’s works contain
detailed enumerations of such chronicle reports.
23 The Laurentian text of the Suzdal’ Chronicle in psrl, Vol.1 Part 2, Leningrad, 1927.
24 See e.g. Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 1; Granberg, op. cit., 47–49; Lukin, op. cit., 92–97.
418 chapter 15
Of the pre-revolutionary authors who concerned themselves with the

history of the veche, Sergeevich is undoubtedly the most important. Book 4
of his “Antiquities of Russian Law” was entirely devoted to it.25 Although
the views of Sergeevich were not accepted uncritically by all his contempo-
raries, his studies on the topic remained the starting-point for most writers
who came after him, even up to the present day.26 During the Soviet era, the
most detailed study was by Iushkov who wrote an elaborate refutation of the
theories of Sergeevich.27 Other Soviet historians of the period occupied more
middle-of-the-road positions.28
Of the historians of the later Soviet period, I.Ia. Froianov, devoted a chapter
to the veche in his work on the socio-political history of Kievan Russia, first
published in 1980.29 Froianov’s views continued to be prominent, as well as
controversial, in the post-Soviet period. His perspective on the veche was deter-
mined by his overall conception of Kievan Russia as a pre-feudal, clan-based
(obshchinnyi) system which replaced the older extended-family (rodovoi) sys-
tem. The veche of the Kievan era, according to Froianov, constituted a transfor-
mation of the veche from an earlier era.30
A central position in the recent literature is occupied by P.V. Lukin, who
has written extensively on the veche, taking account also of studies pub-
lished outside Russia.31 Among the latter, the older works by Marc Szeftel and
25 Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 1–149. This work was to a considerable extent based on an earlier
publication Veche i kniaz’, Sankt-Peterburg, 1867.
26 The main dissenter in pre-revolutionary times was Kliuchevskii (Kurs, Vol.1, Lecture xii,
190–205) who argued that the veche emerged only after princely power had became weak
and fragmented in the course of the 11th century.
27 Iushkov, Ocherki, 193–216, and Stroi, 345–360 (the two fragments are virtually identical).
28 Such as Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 353–370, and M.M. Tikhomirov, Drevnerusskie goroda,
Moskva, 1946, 213–222.
29 I.Ia. Froianov, Kievskaia Rus’. Ocherki sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii, Leningrad, 1980,
150–184. This work was included in Nachala russkoi istorii (Moskva, 2001), in which
Froianov’s three books on Kievan Russia were republished, together with other writings
by the same author (the chapter on the veche at pp. 624–657).
30 This view was more recently elaborated by him in I.Ia. Froianov, “Ob evoliutsii veche-
voi i kniazheskoi vlasti v Kieve (konets x – seredina xii v.)”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.),
Srednevekovaia Rus’. Sbornik statei v chest’ professora Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Mosk-
va, 2012, 233–259.
31 P.V. Lukin, “Veche, «plemennye» sobraniia i «liudi gradskie» v nachal’nom russkom leto-
pisanii”, A.A. Gorskii (ed.), Srednevekovaia Rus’, vyp.4, Moskva, 2004, 70–130; id., “K voprosu
o tak nazyvaemym sovete v domongol’skoi Rusi”, dgve 2003, Moskva, 2005, 132–142; id.,
“O tak nazyvaemoi mnogoznachnosti poniatiia «veche» v russkikh letopisiakh”, Neisch-
erpaemost’ istochnika: K 70-letiiu V.A. Kuchkina, Moskva, 2005, 36–83; id., “O sotsial’nom
sostave novgorodskogo vecha xii–xiii vv., po letopisnym dannym”, dgve 2004, Moskva,
The Towns 419
K. Zernack should be mentioned, as well as the more recent monograph by

J. Granberg.32
The chronicles are not only the main source concerning the veche, they are
virtually the only source, if one disregards foreign reports and sporadic ref-
erences or implications in other contemporary Russian documents. Why is it
then that the veche has continued to be such a controversial subject for over
a century? Most of the major studies on the subject start with a review of the
foregoing literature, arguing that its authors were all wrong in one or more
ways. P.V. Lukin’s most recent study is no exception in this respect, but the
problem is noted by him. He points to the “apriorism” that dominates the de-
bate: the tendency to make the sources illustrate preconceived ideas.33 One
can certainly agree with Lukin’s criticism; it would apply not only to the veche
debate, but also to many other topics in the study of the Russian middle ages.
On the basis of my more general views on jurisprudence (as explained in
Chapter 1) I would add another related but different aspect. The veche de-
bate seems to be particularly susceptible to an approach in which conceptual
constructs are treated as pre-existing realities. Participation in the veche is
considered as an original right of (free) townspeople (Sergeevich); the veche,
alongside the prince, was an organ of the feudal Kievan state (most Soviet
authors); the veche was not a political institution (Granberg). This approach
inevitably begs the questions: What is meant by “the right of free townspeople”,
“an organ of a feudal state”, “a political institution”? Such concepts have been
constructed by writers and any statement claiming the presence or absence
of an entity corresponding to such a concept requires a definition of the lat-
ter. The often intense discussions about such issues are therefore semantic
shadow-boxing. Almost all authors base their views on the same collection
of chronicle entries and obviously these entries often require interpretation
and that is precisely the point at which a false conceptualism (more precisely:
philosophical realism) may slip in.
This danger is especially real in questions which we would consider as be-
longing to “public law”, such as those concerning the veche. Kievan Russia and
2006, 164–209; id., “Veche: sotsial’nyi sostav”, A.A. Gorskii, V.A. Kuchkin (eds.), Drevniaia
Rus’, Moskva, 2008, 33–147. His views were rejected by P.P. Tolochko in a more recent
work: Vlast’ v Drevnei Rusi x–xiii vv., Sankt-Peterburg, 2011, 155–156.
32 M. Szeftel, “La participation des assemblées populaires dans le gouvernement central de
la Russie depuis l’époque kiévienne jusqu’à la fin du xviii siècle”, Receuils de la Société
Jean Bodin, Vol.25, 1965, 339–365; K. Zernack, Die burgstädtischen Volksversammlungen bei
den Ost- und Westslaven. Studien zur verfassungsgeschichtlichen Bedeutung des Veče. Gies-
sener Abhandlungen zur Agrar- und Wirtschasftsforschung des Europäischen Ostens, Bd.33,
Wiesbaden, 1967.
33 P.V. Lukin, “Veche: sotsial’nyi sostav” (2008), 38 ff.
420 chapter 15
even pre-Kievan Russia had an awareness of the rights of an individual person

(at least a freeman) against his fellow man in matters of contract, personal
injuries, etc. Such matters formed the substance of the oldest laws and of the
earlier body of customary law. But constitutional or state law in the modern
sense was completely absent. There were customary arrangements about the
division of authority, power and property within the family, and such arrange-
ments also embraced ruling families. But it would be unrealistic to consider
the activities of the veche in the light of the “rights” of the populace against
the rulers. No constitution or charter had endowed them with such rights. The
townspeople would congregate naturally and more or less spontaneously at
stressful moments; they would not if they were prevented by circumstances,
such as the presence of another power who did not want them to meet (usually
an armed force under the command of a prince or other dignitaries).
If one avoids this realist trap, the area of controversy around the veche grows
much smaller. This should not surprise anybody because the considerable but
still finite treasure of chronicle entries concerning the veche constitutes the
same source for every commentator.
This body of evidence indicates that the veche was a not unusual occur-
rence over a long period and in many towns of Kievan Russia. Moreover, the
chronicles make clear that its contemporaries regarded it as a normally proper
and, as a rule, legitimate event (I recall the famous 1176 entry, quoted above).
For these reasons the veche may in our modern view be seen as a component
of the customary law of Kievan Russia. If it were a mere political phenom-
enon there would be no reason to examine it here. Still, its recognition as a
customary institution does not involve much more than the admission that its
activities were embedded in the general value judgments of the time. It would,
for instance, be unthinkable, once the ruling house of Rurik had been firmly
established, that the veche would elect a prince from outside this house.
On the other hand, the fairly abundant evidence from the Novgorod veche
demonstrates that even major riots and mass disorders were occasionally
designated as veche meetings. This means that if one were to insist on a com-
prehensive definition of the veche, a vague and very general formula would
emerge, such as Granberg’s “a gathering or mobilization of the entire commu-
nity or of at least a large number of people”.34 Within such a wide concept
one may then differentiate and describe narrower categories, such as “mass
disorders” or, at the other side of the spectrum, regularly convoked citizens’ as-
semblies. All such events were at times referred to as veches and, to make mat-
ters more complicated, they were related at other times without being called
a veche.
34 Granberg, op. cit., 50.

The Towns 421
Origin and Development of the Veche

Most authors assume that the veche of the Kievan era grew out of the tribal or
popular assemblies of the Eastern Slavs of the preceding centuries. This was
the view of Sergeevich, the most important author on the veche from the pre-
revolutionary era, and also of prominent Soviet scholars such as Grekov and
Iushkov.35 Kliuchevskii did not express himself on this point and merely noted
that the veche became more prominent, from the 11th century onwards.36 More
recent authors, such as Froianov, occupy the same general position.
Common sense seems to support this position, but at the same time one
has to admit that the evidence is not abundant. It boils down mainly to the
statement of Procopius of Caesarea (mentioned above) and a few other less
clear communications from foreign authors (such as the Byzantine emperor
Mauricius in his Strategikon), the single but explicit statement in the Suzdal’
Chronicle under the year 1176, and the reference to the town veche of Belgorod
in 997 (both of them mentioned above).
The question of the origin of the veche, an urban assembly in historical
times, is obviously connected with the question of the origin of the Russian
town. Where the town had come into being as a tribal or regional centre,
the gradual transformation of a traditional tribal assembly into a town veche
stands to reason. This would not apply to those towns which had emerged or
which had specifically been founded for other reasons and which therefore did
not necessarily have their roots in the surrounding countryside. On the other
hand it is to be expected that such towns also knew the institution of a general
town assembly.
In the course of the early Kievan era the different origins of town assemblies
had apparently faded and had merged into the general presence of the veche.
There is ample evidence that veche meetings took place in Kiev, Novgorod
and most of the other principal cities during the 11th and 12th centuries.37 The
situation is much less clear in respect of the 10th and the first half of the 11th
centuries. Grekov, although he subscribed to the theory that the veche was
an institution with ancient roots, interpreted this as a decline in the political
function of the veche, caused by the newly dominant position of the Kievan
35 Cf. Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 1–2; Vlad.Bud., Obzor, 75; Presniakov, Lektsii i, 168; Grekov,
Kievskaia Rus’, 353–370, esp. 369; Iushkov, Ocherki, 35–36 and 193–215.
36 Several authors (Grekov, Iushkov, Froianov, Granberg) stress Kliuchevskii’s dissident po-
sition in this matter, but careful reading of the first few pages of Lecture xii (as quoted
above) does not bear out this view.
37 See, for instance, Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 1–50. Iu.A. Limonov, Vladimiro-Suzdal’skaia
Rus’, Leningrad, 1987, has a long chapter (117–149) on the role and activities of the veche in
the principal towns (Rostov, Suzdal’ and Vladimir) of the Suzdal’-Vladimir principality in
the 12th and 13th century.
422 chapter 15
grand prince, who ruled in concert with his druzhina.38 The scarce references
to popular assemblies during this period were explained by Grekov either as
exceptional events, occasioned by the temporary absence of the prince, or as
assemblies that did not deserve the name of veche. Grekov then observed a
rebirth of the institution during the latter half of the 11th century, a develop-
ment he connected with the onset of the fragmentation of the Kievan empire.
Grekov’s views were already rejected by his contemporary Epifanov and later
on by Froianov.39
The modest amount of evidence from the earliest period offered by the
chronicles and other sources, suggests the following. Town veches may have
had different origins, depending on the origin of the town itself. The town as
a gradually urbanized tribal centre may have been the dominant type, but in
Kievan times this type was merging or had already merged with other types
of towns (such as those which were specifically founded as military or admin-
istrative centres, or which originated as multi-ethnic trading centres). The
subsequent fate of the veche, the urban assembly, depended on a variety of
factors, such as the power of the local prince, the town’s standing in the region
(regional capital or not), the socio-economic conditions prevailing in the area,
the general cultural level, etc. Accordingly, the veche could atrophy, or it could
become the dominant political agent; it could be an infrequent occurrence, or
a regular event.
In the end the veche did not survive the Mongol invasion and domination
of Russia, except in the North-West, where the effects of Mongol rule were
less stringent. But whatever the local differences, there can be no doubt that
in Kievan Russia the veche constituted a significant part of the politico-legal
structure.
The Composition of the Veche

In the entire complex of questions around the Old-Russian veche, the problem
of its composition is the central issue. Once a clear picture can be formed of
the different persons or groups who took part in it, all other issues can be re-
solved more easily. The question is usually considered primarily from the social
aspect, the participation of different social groups among the urban popula-
tion. It does however also have a secondary, territorial aspect. Most chron-
icle items about veche meetings concern the main towns of p rincipalities
38 Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 353–370.

39 P.P. Epifanov, “O drevnerusskom veche”, Vestnik Mosk. Univ. seriia istoricheskaia, No. 3,
1963, 112–117; Froianov, Kievskaia Rus’. Ocherki sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii, Moskva, 1980,
Ch. 5, 150–184 (also in Nachala russkoi istorii, Moskva, 2001, 624–657).
The Towns 423
(Kiev, Novgorod, Chernigov, Smolensk, etc.), and then the question arises of

the participation of citizens or representatives of subordinate towns.
Some of the problems concerning the composition of the veche are already
suggested by the earliest references in the Primary Chronicle. At the Belgorod
veche of 997, which was briefly mentioned above, an old man who had not
been present at the meeting “sent for the town-elders” (posla po stareishiny
gradskyia) the next day and persuaded them to overturn the veche decision
and accept his own solution instead. Belgorod was at that time under siege
by the Pechenegs (Turkic nomads) and the citizens intended to surrender the
town.
The sparse narrative leaves several questions unanswered, such as: Did the
veche embrace more than the town-elders, and if so, how could the latter go
against the decision of the former? Who was the old man (starets), that he
was able to prevail over the veche itself? The events in Belgorod in 997 neatly
encapsulate one of the main problems connected with the composition of the
veche in Kievan times: should it be thought of as a general popular assembly, or
was it rather a comparatively small body, consisting of a number of prominent
citizens?
Pre-revolutionary Russian historians, whatever their other differences con-
cerning the Kievan veche, usually agreed about its broadly popular charac-
ter.40 But it was especially the Soviet historians who paid much attention to
the question of the social make-up of the veche, as could be expected. Iushkov
insisted that the veche was essentially an aristocratic parliament, consisting of
the narochity muzhi, the prominent citizens, the urban feudal lords in Iush-
kov’s terminology.41 Even where the popular masses were physically present,
they were, in his view, the mute and passive tools of the local elites. Most other
leading Soviet historians rejected this view and argued that it could not be
reconciled with the evidence from the chronicles.42
Without reviewing the development of the various theories concerning the
social composition of the veche in detail (a work that has already been car-
ried out recently by P.V. Lukin), it will be sufficient to refer to the conclusions
reached by the latter on the basis of an extensive re-examination of the materi-
als from the chronicles.43
40 Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 52; D’iakonov, Ocherki, 118; Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 53.
41 Iushkov, Stroi, 350; Ocherki, 196. Ianin, the leading expert on Novgorod history, occupied a
similar position with regard to the composition of the Novgorod veche (see Chapter 16).
42 Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 369; Froianov, Kievskaia Rus’. Ocherki sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii,
Moskva, 1980, 153 (also in Nachala russkoi istorii, 626–627).
43 Cf. Lukin, op. cit. (Veche: sotsial’nyi sostav).
424 chapter 15
During the early Kievan period the prince and his entourage (druzhina) con-
stituted a separate element in the political make-up of the principality, against
which the general assembly of the people formed the main c ounterweight. In
Lukin’s words: “… sections of the population, not belonging to the princely/
boyar/druzhina elite, unquestionably took part in the socio-political life of
Old Russia”.44 This conclusion is based on chronicle reports concerning veche
meetings in several major towns.
There is no evidence, according to Lukin, for the thesis that the rural pop-
ulation of the region surrounding the town would regularly take part in the
political life of the town. The opposite view had been espoused by most ear-
lier authors, mainly on the basis of the above-quoted line from the Suzdal’
Chronicle (1176) that the people from all the different Russian lands would
assemble in veches. This led to the conception of the veche as some kind of
parliament of the land (the region of which the town in question was the capi-
tal), with all free inhabitants enjoying the right to take part in a general as-
sembly. Several authors admitted the improbability of such participation in
practice, on account of the size of the region concerned, but maintained that
other persons outside the town population were still entitled to take part in
the veche.
Lukin’s final conclusion concerning the social composition of the veche is
in general agreement with the majority view, in that the veche was not the ex-
clusive domain of the urban elite, but that the ordinary people from the town
were also involved.
As noted above, the social composition of Kievan towns did not constitute
a fixed constellation, but was constantly evolving. The original entourage of
the prince, the druzhina (partly of non-Russian ethnic origin), melted away
in the surrounding Slavic population, providing one of the components of the
new elite, the boyar landowners and the “best people” (luchshie or narochity
liudi) in the towns. The veche as the general assembly of the town people is
consequently to be regarded, not as a mass of individuals, deciding matters on
the basis of one-man-one-vote, but as a living, organic community, including
its formal and informal relationship patterns. This may explain the variability
of the veche’s composition. Where a bishop was present, for instance, one finds
him taking part, but not as an ordinary citizen. His undisputed spiritual au-
thority made him the obvious president of the assembly. In such a capacity the
Kievan metropolitan is mentioned in 1147.45
44 Op. cit., 64.

45 This, at least, is the impression created by the entry in the Suzdal’ Chronicle; cf. psrl I/2,
316–317. It is also the opinion of Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 78.
The Towns 425
Lukin’s recent study also agreed with the general assumption that only free
persons could take an active part in the veche.46 What is known about the
position of unfree persons in Kievan society would certainly support this as-
sumption. More speculative is the opinion of 19th century authors that fathers
would speak for their sons, except when the latter for some reason could be
regarded as independent free citizens.47 Lukin noted that there were no indica-
tions of women taking part in veche meetings; although their position in Kievan
Russia was less restricted than in the Muscovy era, he regarded it as unlikely that
they had sufficient independence to participate in political decision-making.48
The local prince himself is often reported as a participant, although he could
hardly be regarded as an ordinary citizen. The relationship between prince and
veche is discussed in a following section.
Finally, there is the still unanswered question of the participation of other
persons outside the actual inhabitants of the town. Lukin admitted the partici-
pation of persons immediately outside the fortified town,49 but seemed to deny
the participation of persons from other towns which had the status of a suburb
(prigorod) of the main town. Older authors, especially those who regarded the
veche of the principal town as the assembly of the entire region (principal-
ity), affirmed the right of the population of subordinate towns to take part in
such veches, but added that in practice it would be limited to p ersons who hap-
pened to be present at the time the veche in the principal town took place.50
As argued above, the question is more effectively approached as one of fact,
instead of one of right. The first point to be established then is that there are
a few rare examples of subordinate towns involved in veche meetings in the
chief town, as when in 1136 “the men of Novgorod summoned the men of Pskov
and of Ladoga and took counsel how to expel their prince Vsevolod”. Secondly,
subordinate towns (prigoroda) are mentioned a few times as conducting their
own assemblies.51
The Scope of Veche Activity

In the older view, where the veche was considered as a legal institution en-
dowed with certain rights, the scope of its activities was perceived as a ques-
46 Lukin, op. cit., 146–147. See also Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 53; D’iakonov, Ocherki, 119; Vlad.-
Bud., Obzor, 78.
47 Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 52; D’iakonov and Vlad.-Bud. as in preceding footnote.
48 Lukin, op. cit. 146.
49 Op. cit., 107.
50 Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 54–55; D’iakonov, Ocherki, 119–120; Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 77.
51 See for instance the list in Granberg, op. cit., 150–161.
426 chapter 15
tion of its competence or jurisdiction. This approach is not to be rejected

outright, because (as argued above) it can indeed be seen as an institution sup-
ported by customary law. But then its legal contents can only be determined
by the occurrence of concrete events, and not, as was often done in the past,
by reference to the trias politica doctrine (legislation, administration, and jus-
tice). The following quotation indicates that as eminent a legal historian as
Sergeevich was well aware of the anachronism of the latter approach.
It is understandable that the people may take any question of public

life into consideration, as they meet in the veche by virtue of their right
to decide on public affairs, which were not yet separate from their pri-
vate affairs and which were regarded as being of direct concern to them.
Speaking in the language of our times, the veche had the power to legis-
late, to administer, and to judge. But the mutual relationship of these var-
ious concerns of the veche was then quite different from what it is in our
time. Legislation was certainly not of primary importance. Our ancestors
did not live under law, but under custom, which was equally binding for
the people as well as for the princes.52
The emphasis which Sergeevich placed on custom, in a paragraph specifically

purporting to discuss the competence of the veche, might suggest that Sergee-
vich considered this competence primarily determined by custom. It is how-
ever more likely that the veche, in drawing up its agenda, would be guided not
so much by what was proper (i.e. in accordance with custom) but by expedi-
ency (i.e. what could be achieved under the circumstances). Custom would
primarily play a role in circumscribing the work of the veche; the veche (esp.
in Novgorod) would often dismiss its ruling prince and invite another prince,
but it would not invite one (as mentioned before) from outside the Rurikid
dynasty.
Beyond the veche’s relationship with the prince, which will be discussed
separately below, custom does not seem to have delegated specific issues to the
veche. Once the assembly took place, it would deal with anything that took its
fancy (unless prevented by custom). Naturally, these would normally be mat-
ters of considerable general interest; participants would not like to waste their
time on trivia. This is the general picture suggested by the chronicles.
The Veche and the Prince

Underlying the relationship between the town and its veche on the one side and
the prince on the other is the idea that a town without a prince is orphaned.
52 Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 72.

The Towns 427
This idea is occasionally expressed in the chronicles. In more pragmatic terms

one could point to the military aspect. Kievan towns were continually being ha-
rassed by invading nomads; in later years, when the unity of the Kievan e mpire
had been lost, there were incessant wars between the princes. Originally, the
prince was a military leader with his own band of warriors, his druzhina. Later
on, towns usually needed a prince to lead their armed forces. Another basic
function of the prince was the provision of judicial services through his offi-
cials; the Russkaia Pravda indicates that this function arose already at an early
stage, i.e. under the first Kievan grand princes.
Although the evidence is not completely conclusive and incontrovertible,
there are strong indications that the contractual relationship between prince
and people went back to the earliest times, when a Viking chief was invited to
come and rule in Northern Russia and he settled in Novgorod. Rurik’s succes-
sors moved their capital to Kiev, but at least in Novgorod the essential equality
between the contractual partners remained a prominent feature all through
the history of Novgorod’s independence.53
What has been said above about the relationship between law, custom and
expediency in the matter of the scope of veche activities applies equally to the
question of the relationship between the veche and the local prince. The evi-
dence from the chronicles indicates clearly that a contractual bond between
the veche and a particular prince was a normal phenomenon. Frequently, the
population of a town would invite a member of the Rurikid dynasty to become
“their prince”; they would then mutually swear oaths (“kiss the cross”) and he
would be the local prince until he died, was expelled by the townspeople, or
dislodged by another prince.
The relationship can be regarded as legal because of its formal contractual
nature. Although no pacts (riady) between towns and princes from the ear-
lier Kievan era have survived, there are indications that they were not a 13th
century innovation (when they were standard practice in Novgorod). The first
surviving Novgorod pact with a prince, of 1264, contained the formula: “Kiss
the cross, prince, on this [charter] on which your father Iaroslav kissed the
cross”. And two years later a new pact with Iaroslav contained the more exten-
sive formula: “Kiss the cross, prince on this [charter] on which your ancestors
[dedi] and fathers [ottsi] and your father Iaroslav kissed the cross.”54 An older
53 This is a leading idea in Ianin’s presentation of Novgorod history, V.L. Ianin, Ocherki istorii
srednevekovogo Novgoroda, Moskva, 2008. See also K.A. Solov’ev, Vlastiteli i sud’i. Legitimi-
zatsiia gosudarstvennoi vlasti v drevnei i srednevekovoi Rusi. ix – pervaia polovina xv vv.,
Moskva, 1999, 82–87.
54 gvnp, Nos. 1 and 2 (pp. 9–11). The prince in question was the grand prince of Tver’ Iaroslav
Iaroslavich, a brother of Aleksandr Nevskii, who was invited to come to Novgorod in 1264
428 chapter 15
but less unequivocal indication is a communication in the Novgorod Chronicle

under the year 1209 when the Novgorod prince Konstantin wanted to reward
his Novgorod army after a successful campaign against Pronsk and “he gave
them all their will and the decrees [ustavy] of the old princes, all the men of
Novgorod had wished for”.55
As to the exact contents of the older pacts, one can only speculate, but they
were probably not very different from those of the later Novgorod pacts, as the
latter have every appearance of being firmly rooted in tradition.
Nevertheless, factual circumstances were the dominant factor. A strong and
united urban population would be much freer in its choice of prince and its
readiness to expel him if he did not prove to be satisfactory. A powerful prince
with good connections and a significant armed force of his own would be able
to be more influential in the town he ruled.
As explained before, the rotation of princes from smaller towns-principalities
to more important ones was less restricted in the early period of the Kievan
empire, when the Rurikid house was still comparatively small. As different
branches and sub-dynasties arose, these tended to hold on to their principali-
ties by having close relatives succeed and eventually adopting the system of
sons stepping into the shoes of their fathers. Still, there are many examples of
towns changing their allegiance from one Rurikid branch to another.
Once the prince had been installed, his relationship with the veche is again
best described along factual lines and not as a matter of law, as earlier authors
were inclined to do. If the prince’s position was tenuous, his influence in the
veche would be reduced, while a powerful prince could afford to be dominant.
The evidence from the chronicles suggests that there was no clear awareness
of the prince and the veche being two separate institutions that were to act in
concert. If the prince was present at the veche, he was part of it.
During the prince’s absence his responsibilities could be entrusted by him
to a lieutenant, the posadnik. This official is mentioned once in the Expanded
Pravda (art. 114): “If somebody finds his kholop in another town, and the posad-
nik did not know about him [the latter], …”.
In Novgorod and Pskov the relationship with the ruling prince developed
over time in such a way that the prince became more and more marginalized
until in the end these two towns were in fact republics. The relationship be-
tween town and prince in Novgorod and Pskov will be reviewed separately in
Chapter 16 (on Novgorod and Pskov).
after the townspeople had expelled Aleksandr Nevskii’s son Dmitrii because they consid-
ered him too young.
55 This was Konstantin Vsevolodovich, the eldest brother of Iaroslav (father of Aleksandr
Nevskii and Iaroslav who became prince of Novgorod in 1264).
The Towns 429
Veche Proceedings
The numerous references to veches in Russian chronicles, especially for the
period of the 13th–15th centuries, allow the reconstruction of typical veche
proceedings. This does not mean that there were any precise written rules con-
cerning such proceedings, only that veches were customarily conducted along
certain lines.
First, a veche had to be convoked.56 The most obvious person to do this
would be the prince. Often, however, the main topic of the veche meeting
would be a conflict between the prince and the population, and in such cases
the citizens themselves would take the initiative. In Novgorod, and probably in
other towns as well, regular veche meetings were convoked by ringing the veche
bell. When Novgorod lost its independence and the grand prince had forbid-
den further meetings of the veche, the veche bell was removed to Moscow.
Whether sufficient people would turn up is another matter. There was ap-
parently no strict duty to attend and if the number of participants was insig-
nificant their decisions would lack legitimacy and enforceability. There are
even instances of unsuccessful convocations by the prince himself. The gen-
eral haziness of the procedure also did not preclude the convocation of two
simultaneous veches of competing sections of the population. In some cases
the veche met as a result of a spontaneous assembly of the population, usually
in moments of acute emergency.
The normal meeting-place would be a central square in the middle of the
town: in front of the Sophia cathedral, or in the Court of Iaroslav, or the Mar-
ket Place in Kiev, and the Sophia Cathedral Square or the Court of Iaroslav in
Novgorod.57 During a campaign, a veche could be held in the open field, even
on horseback.
Little is known about the actual proceedings, except that, as mentioned
above, the bishop could act as chairman. In other instances this function
could be assumed by the prince, although his position in the veche debate was
different. The position of the bishop tended to place him in the role of a me-
diator between the factions, while the prince, if relations with the populace
were good, would be the natural leader of the assembly. In any case the prince
represented a faction all by himself.
The ideal form of a veche decision was the acclamation: the unanimous
and almost spontaneous resolution of all present.58 If no consensus could be
reached, the veche was a failure and no decision was taken. The c hronicles show
that an escalating series of measures was employed to bring about unanimity,
56 Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 55–58; D’iakonov, Ocherki, 120–122; Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 56.
57 Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 58–59; D’iakonov, Ocherki, 122; Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 57–58.
58 Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 62; D’iakonov, Ocherki, 124; Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 58.
430 chapter 15
from persuasion to intimidation, right down to physical violence against the

minority faction. There are no reports of a veche adopting a decision by a ma-
jority vote.
Town Officials
If the prince was absent, his appointed representative (the posadnik, and
later on the namestnik) would be the head of the local government. Posad-
niki (lieutenants) are mentioned as early as in 977 and return frequently in
the chronicles. Obviously, however, neither the posadnik nor the veche could
run the town by themselves on a day-to-day basis. Nevertheless, other institu-
tions and persons involved in managing urban affairs have received far less
attention than the veche. The matter is usually dealt with in connection with
Novgorod, where of course the subject of town government is much better
documented. Those authors who do touch upon the topic of town government
in Kievan times usually take the ‘decimal’ system, the occurrence of desiatskie,
sotskie and tysiatskie (Latin: decanus, centenarius, millenarius) as their start-
ing point.59 The most detailed argument was offered by Pavlov-Sil’vanskii, who
regarded the decimal system of the organization of Kievan society as an an-
cient remnant of a system common to several other Aryan (Indo-European)
peoples.60
The evidence for the involvement of the ‘thousandmen’ (tysiatskie) in town
government is undeniable; this might suggest that the ‘hundredmen’ (sotskie)
and the ‘tenmen’ (desiatskie) were similarly involved within a hierarchical
structure.
The first question to be answered therefore is whether this relationship be-
tween the three groups of officials actually existed, in other words, whether
there was a decimal system of urban government. The investigation can best
be started with the most visible group, the tysiatskie.
The first appearance of the tysiatskii is in 1089, when Ian the son of Vyshata
is mentioned in the Laurentian Chronicle as commanding the Kiev “thousand”.
He died, 90 years old, in 1106. His brother Putiata is mentioned in the Hypatian
Chronicle as the tysiatskii of Kiev in 1097; while he is mentioned several more
times as such in the Hypatian Chronicle, the Laurentian Chronicle referred to
59 Cf. Iushkov, Istoriia, 109–110; Iushkov, Stroi, 104–108; Tikhomirov, Drevnerusskie goroda,
173–177; N.P. Pavlov-Sil’vanskii, Feodalizm v Drevnei Rusi, Moskva, 1988 (1st ed., Sankt-
Peterburg, 1910), 47, 55, 227–228. Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 98–100.
60 An early author to reject the then dominant view that there was a decimal system of ter-
ritorial government (1000-100-10) in Kievan Russia was Presniakov, Kn. Pr., 165–190.
The Towns 431
him as the military commander of Sviatopolk Iziaslavich, grand prince of Kiev

(1093–1113).61
Sviatopolk was succeeded as grand prince of Kiev by his cousin Vladimir
Monomakh (Vladimir Vsevolodovich, 1112–1125). He was one of the last effec-
tive grand princes of Kiev who exercized control over the entire Kievan realm.
One of his important achievements was the legislation known as the Statute of
Monomakh (Ustav Monomakha), incorporated as one of the main later com-
ponents in the Expanded Pravda. It is usually dated 1116 and its preamble (art.
53) related that Vladimir called together his druzhina in Berestov (near Kiev):
Ratibor the tysiatskii of Kiev, Prokopii the tysiatskii of Belgorod, Stanislav the
tysiatskii of Pereiaslavl’ and further Nazhir, Miroslav and Ivanko Chudinovich.
Two points standing out from this brief survey are that the tysiatskii was
originally a military commander under the prince and that his office in Ki-
evan times was connected with a major town, a town which was the capital
of a dependent principality. This explains how in later times, and especially in
Novgorod, the tysiatskii became one of the highest urban officials.
Originally, the tysiatskie were appointed by the prince and were primar-
ily the commanders of the urban militia.62 In Novgorod and Pskov the office
(which also included judicial responsibilities) had become elective at an early
stage, while in other places it only tended to be elective.63 In any case, it often
ran (as mentioned above) in particular families (from which either the prince
or the veche had to select their candidate). In the principality of Moscow the
office disappeared after the death of the last tysiatskii, Vasilii Protas’ev in 1374.64
The sotskie and desiatskie (from sto, hundred, and desiat’, ten) have more
recently been the subject of a detailed study by V.A. Kuchkin.65 On the basis
61 Putiata was still alive and active in 1106 and during riots in Kiev in 1113 the court (dvor)
of the tysiatskii Putiata was sacked according to the Hypatian Chronicle. In 1116 a new
Kiev tysiatskii (Ratibor) is mentioned; Putiata was then not alive anymore, or too old,
or removed by the new prince Vladimir Monomakh. See also Tikhomirov, Drevnerusskie
goroda, 173–177, who limited his discussion of urban government to the role of the tys-
iatskie. He pointed out that the office of military commander of the town apparently ran
in specific families. Putiata was the son of Vyshata, the general who was put in charge of
the expeditionary force by Iaroslav the Wise in 1043 to attack Constantinople. Vyshata
himself was the son of Ostromir, the general of Novgorod (Primary Chronicle, 1064). He
had two sons Ian and Putiata, of whom Ian was obviously the elder.
62 Sergeevich, Lektsii, 324.
63 Tikhomirov, Drevnerusskie goroda, 176.
64 Sergeevich, Lektsii, 325, based on an item in the Voskresenskii Chronicle.
65 V.A. Kuchkin, “Desiatskie i sotskie Drevnei Rusi”, A.A. Gorskii, V.A. Kuchkin [a.o.] (eds.),
Drevnaia Rus’. Ocherki politicheskogo i sotsial’nogo stroia, Moskva, 2008, 270–428.
432 chapter 15
of an analysis of a large number of documents, Kuchkin reached conclusions

which seem to refute the view which was traditionally dominant in the 19th
century. Kuchkin demonstrated that the emergence of desiatskie and sotskie
was connected with fundamental reforms in the princely economy. In the ear-
liest, ‘heroic’ period the prince’s wealth depended on his relationship with his
druzhina. He was its leader in carrying out armed raids abroad; the booty ac-
quired would be distributed among his comrades-in-arms. This system could
be highly profitable and therefore effective, but it also carried great risks. Sev-
eral early Kievan princes perished in skirmishes with hostile tribes. With the
consolidation of the Kievan empire under St. Vladimir and his son Iaroslav the
Wise a more peaceful and reliable method of securing the prince’s income was
developed. Land and/or money would be made available to peasants-colonists
who then could pay back their debts in money or in kind. The system was ad-
ministered in loco by low-ranking princely servitors (the desiatskie) who would
each supervise and organize about ten peasant households. In time they as-
sumed other related functions, such as fiscal and executive duties. The hun-
dredmen were, as the name suggests, of higher rank. Their basic and original
task was the supervision and organization of the work of the desiatskie; other
related tasks were gradually added to this, in the sphere of dispute settlement,
taxation, etc. In all this one has to keep in mind that the prince’s court and
government were normally located in or close to the capital of the principal-
ity. The sotskie would therefore spend much of their time in town. As princely
appointees they were often entrusted with ad hoc tasks, and these might in-
clude responsibilities in urban government. In Novgorod the sotnik was a local
official of considerable importance.
External Relations: Treaties with Princes and Foreign Powers
Almost everything known about the treaty-making activities of towns concerns

Novgorod and to a lesser extent Pskov. It is therefore more convenient to dis-
cuss this topic within the context of Novgorod and Pskov as semi-independent
states.
The Urban Population
A consideration of the origins of Russian towns already suggested the presence

of different urban social groups, such as merchants and craftsmen, in Kievan
The Towns 433
times. This picture can be augmented by what we know about the veche. For
a more comprehensive view additional information from the chronicles and
the few available legal sources is required. Many of the events narrated by the
chronicles took place inside towns and the urban population often played a
prominent role. The legal sources are primarily the two main versions of the
rp. As explained before, the final versions of the rp constitute an amalgama-
tion of different sets of rules, some of which explicitly or implicitly refer to an
urban environment.
The first part of the Expanded Pravda mainly represented an edited version
of related provisions from the Short Pravda. Then another block of provisions
still followed certain themes from the Short Pravda, but in a much more elabo-
rate way. In this block (roughly starting from art. 32), there were various refer-
ences to the town itself (gorod), to the market place (torg), and to merchants
(kuptsy). Similar references occurred in the beginning (arts. 54 and 55) of the
second main part of the Expanded Pravda, the Statute of Monomakh (starting
at art. 53).
In line with what has been said above about the divergent origins of Old-
Russian towns, the composition of their populations was probably not al-
ways identical; a preponderance of manufacturing, trading, or military activi-
ties would lead to a greater number of respectively craftsmen, merchants, or
soldiers.
Free Craftsmen
M.N. Tikhomirov, the author of the fundamental monograph on Old-Russian
towns, regarded craftsmen as the principal component of the urban popula-
tion.66 This would probably be correct as a general rule for the average major
town of the Kievan era. The basic distinction within the category of craftsmen
would be between free and dependent persons. Tikhomirov adduced quite
a few examples from the chronicles which presented (obviously free) crafts-
men as prominent political actors within the local community. The chronicles
refer to various manufacturing professions, especially to persons engaged in
the production of durable goods: metalworkers, such as jewellers or makers of
weapons and armour, carpenters and other woodworkers, masons and other
builders, potters, etc. The evidence indicates that, while some craftsmen ac-
quired considerable wealth and social status, others might descend into abject
poverty.67
66 Tikhomirov, Drevnerusskie goroda, 118.

67 Cf. Tikhomirov, 118–122.
434 chapter 15
There are indications that urban craftsmen were organized in guild-like

corporations, although no direct documentary traces are available. The matter
was obviously left to customary law.68
Unfree Craftsmen and Other Unfree Persons

The unfree craftsman makes an appearance in the Expanded Pravda in the list
of princely dependents, whose killing must be compensated for by the pay-
ment of bloodwite to the prince. According to art. 15 the payment for the kill-
ing of a craftsman or -woman was 12 pounds (grivna). This was the same as the
payment for the killing of the prince’s middle-rank officials (the village and
farm overseers of art. 13 and the tutor of art. 17) and indicated that the prince
put far greater value on his craftsmen than on ordinary unfree servants. As the
princes’ residences were generally within the capital towns of their principali-
ties, their craftsmen would have had their dwellings and workshops close by.69
Along with princes, great nobles (boyars) and the Church (esp. monaster-
ies) would also have their own dependent craftsmen. These would usually
come under the general description of “serfs” or “slaves” (kholopy). Art. 46 of
the Expanded Pravda mentioned slaves of princes, boyars and monks. Crafts-
men dependent on boyars or monasteries would exercize their crafts in close
proximity to their masters’ residences. This would usually be a town in the case
of boyars, while all Old-Russian monasteries were originally situated inside or
adjacent to a town.70
Another category of dependent persons, apart from serfs/slaves, discussed
by Tikhomirov, are the milostniki, ‘beneficiaries’, persons enjoying the milost’
(grace, benevolence) of the prince or of a boyar. They seem to have served nor-
mally in the personal service of their lord, especially as armed personnel.71 See
further the section on boyars and other nobles in Chapter 19.
According to art. 117 of the Expanded Pravda “If someone permits his slave
[to engage in trade] in the market square, and he [the slave] becomes indebted,
then the slave-owner is to redeem him, and not to be deprived of him [because
of his debt].” This indicates that dependent persons (of a prince or a boyar, or
perhaps a monastery) could also appear in the capacity of traders.
68 Cf. P.S. Peniak, “K voprosu o remeslennykh ob”edineniiakh v Drevnei Rusi xi–xiii vv.”, P.P.
Tolochko (ed.), Zemli Iuzhnoi Rusi v ix–xivvv., Kiev, 1985, 126–130.
69 Cf. Tikhomirov, 122–125.
70 Ibidem.
71 Cf. Tikhomirov, 124–125, and more extensively: M.N. Tikhomirov, “Uslovnoe feodal’noe
derzhanie na Rusi v xii v.”, id., Drevniaia Rus’, Moskva, 1975, 233–239, where Tikhomirov
presented a more developed conception.
The Towns 435
Finally, the list of dependent inhabitants of the town would also include
various other groups, such as izgoi (generally: persons who had lost their social
status), proshchenniki (persons dependent on the church), beggars, etc.72
Merchants
The importance of trade, especially long-distance trade, in the emergence of
towns in pre-medieval Russia is beyond doubt. Already in the earliest written
sources merchants appear as a distinct and prominent social group. The 944
treaty with Byzantium was concluded on the Russian side by the representa-
tives of, first of all, the grand prince Igor, then of a group of his relatives and
close supporters (his druzhina supposedly), and thirdly of a group of mer-
chants. In the treaties with Byzantium, trade between the Russians and the
Greeks was also one of the main themes. The first article of the Short Pravda
mentioned the merchant (kupchina) in the same breath as the man from Kiev
(rusin), the junior member of the druzhina (gridin), the bailiff (iabetnik), the
bodyguard (mechnik), the izgoi and the man from Novgorod (slovenin), as en-
titled to the standard wergeld of 40 grivna.
The Expanded Pravda (art. 48) mentioned the merchant (kupets) and dis-
tinguished between local and long-distance trade (kuplia and gost’ba); while
kupets remained the general designation for a merchant, gost’ referred exclu-
sively to a long-distance trader. Both the Short and the Expanded Pravda paid
considerable attention to merchants and their activities. This also demon-
strates that the latter constituted a separate segment of the urban population.
It stands to reason that merchants would be domiciled in towns.
The merchants should on the other hand not be r egarded as a closed group, es-
pecially in early Kievan times. In the 10th century, the era of the Russian-Byzantine
treaties, there was not always a sharp distinction between foreign trade (by
sea) and warlike raids; the trader was a warrior at the same time and vice versa.
The line between being a successful merchant and a boyar was therefore fluid.
Impoverishment of a merchant could lead to a diminution in his social status.
The Urban Aristocracy

The general designation of the urban elite in the chronicles is the collective
boiare.73 Most authors agree that, at least originally, the boyars did not form
72 Cf. Tikhomirov, 125.

73 The singular boiarin occurs rarely in the texts. The origin of the word is not clear. Some
consider it a loan-word from a Turkic language, others regard it as Slavic, connected with
bit’ (to beat) and boi (fight); a boyar would then originally mean a fighter or a warrior. If, as
appears to be the case, boliare is the older form, then it could be connected with bol’shoi
436 chapter 15
a homogeneous component of the population. Four strands can be distin-

guished. There were first of all the people referred to in the oldest sources as
“town elders”, the leading citizens, already mentioned under the year 997 in
the story about the Belgorod veche. If these could be regarded as the autoch-
thonous part of the local elite, the druzhinniki, who had their origin in the
prince’s druzhina, had originally come from elsewhere and were often not even
of Slavic origin. Wealthy merchants, as indicated above, unquestionably had
the chance of finding a place within the town’s elite. Finally, anyone, whether
belonging to the original local aristocracy, being of druzhina ancestry, being
a successful merchant, or for any other reason having acquired considerable
wealth, particularly in the form of rural land holdings, could claim member-
ship of the leading class as a landowner.
Where the authors differ is in the accents they place and in the description
of the processes that led to the emergence of these various groups.74 During
the Kievan period they gradually merged into a single class of local boyars. It
has been pointed out that the organization of the boyars, particularly as an im-
portant element of the military power of individual principalities, was based
on their urban provenance: the boyars of Vladimir, of Kostroma, etc.75
Although boyar status could be acquired and lost through social success or
failure, it was in principle an inherited quality. Tikhomirov discussed the role
of several boyar families, not only in Novgorod where their activities were well-
documented, but also in Kiev, and concluded that such a role would have been
similar in other towns of the same era.76
Conclusions about the legal status of boyars can only be very general. They
did form a more or less separate class with specific rights and duties. They had
a strong and often decisive voice in the running of the affairs of the town and
could usually claim the important urban offices. According to the older layers
of the rp, the wergeld of persons who later on emerged as members of the
local aristocracy was usually twice the wergeld of the ordinary freeman.
See also the special section on boyars in Chapter 19.
(great). Cf. S.V. Zavadskaia, “«Boliarin»–«boiarin» v drevnerusskikh pis’mennykh istoch-

nikakh”, dgsssr 1985, Moskva, 1986, 89–94, who opts for a Turkic origin.
74 The most important representative of the mainstream of Soviet scholars is Iushkov,
Stroi, 89–93, 138–139, 257–267, who generally elaborated on Grekov’s conception of the
(Marxist) feudal character of Kievan Russia. A more balanced view is offered by M.N.
Tikhomirov in his basic monograph on Old-Russian towns, op. cit., 129–135.
75 Cf. A.N. Kotliarov, “Boiarskii «gorod» v xiv veke”, A.A. Preobrazhenskii (ed.), Feodalizm v
Rossii. Iubileinye chteniia, posviashchennye 80-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia L’va Vladimirovicha
Cherepnina, Moskva, 1985, 84–87.
76 Tikhomirov, 131–135.
The Towns 437
Clergy
Members of the clergy and lay persons connected with the Church constitut-
ed a significant section of the urban population of Kievan Russia. Among the
clergy, the basic distinction was between the so-called black and white clergy,
monks and secular clergy. The conversion of Russia advanced from the towns
into the still pagan countryside; clerical personnel were therefore initially con-
centrated in the towns. The foundation of monasteries in remote places was a
development that only took off by the end of the 14th century.77
Along with monks, the nuns in a women’s convent also belonged to the
black clergy. The monasteries and convents were the organizational units of
the black clergy, each one under the direction of an abbot (igumen) or abbess
(igumen’ia). The monastic community could also embrace other persons who
contributed particular services. The Church Statute of Vladimir (art. 16) men-
tions proshchenniki and zadushniki, persons in some way dependent on a mon-
astery.78 Art. 46 of the Expanded Pravda illustrated that, apart from dependent
persons attached to a monastery, there were also persons who were the depen-
dents of individual monks.79
Although some monks would be engaged in specific crafts and trades, they
were on the whole more connected with the higher strata of society, both in
their social origin and in their way of life.80 The black clergy were celibate.
The white clergy consisted primarily of the ordinary priests and deacons
of the town, entrusted with the spiritual care of the urban population. In the
capital town of the principality there would be a bishop, with his entourage.
The office of bishop was open only to monks. The local priesthood, in its way
of life and social origin, was generally close to the middle and lower strata of
the urban population.81 The contemporary literature frequently refers to the
participation of priests in rowdy festivities and the Church Statute of Iaroslav
had a special rule (art. 48) about the drunkenness of priests, monks and nuns
bez vremeni (i.e. at an inappropriate time, such as during Lent).
77 Tikhomirov, 140.
78 Kaiser, Laws, 44, translated these terms as free debt slaves and manumitted slaves. Tik-
homirov (146) refrained from an exact translation and added that there were also other
types of dependent persons attached to monasteries.
79 The kholopi … chernech’ are occasionally translated as serfs (or slaves) of the monastery,
but several authors have pointed out that such a translation is unwarranted and that the
direct translation as serf (or slave) of a monk is correct. See Baranowski, 459–461, for fur-
ther references.
438 chapter 15
The upper segment of the urban priesthood was formed by the kliros (from
Greek klèros, share→heritage→clergy), the priests attached to a sobor. This term
is usually translated as “cathedral”, but refers instead to the wider category of
“church in which daily services are held”.82 The kliros is separately mentioned
in art. 16 of the Church Statute of Vladimir as belonging to the class of ecclesi-
astical persons.83 There are indications that certain rights and duties, such as
membership of church courts, were exclusively reserved to the kliros.84
The special legal status of church people goes back to the very beginnings
of Christianity in Russia. Art. 16, which belongs to the oldest nucleus of the
Church Statute of Vladimir, lists the “church people” (tserkovnye liudi) as “the
abbot, the priest, the deacon, their children, the priest’s wife, anyone in the
kliros, the abbess, the monk, the nun, the woman who prepares the Eucha-
rist bread, the pilgrim, the healer, the manumitted slave [zadushnik], the freed
debt slave [proshchennik], the wanderer, the blind, the lame, the monasterial
people, and those in hospitals, hostels and refuges for wayfarers.” This group of
people was subject to the jurisdiction of the bishop (art. 17 of the Church Stat-
ute of Vladimir). In a dispute between a church person and somebody under
ordinary jurisdiction, a joint secular/church court was to be set up (art. 18 of
the same).
The role of the Church and its institutions and personnel is a factor of pri-
mordial importance in the law of medieval Russia, in respect of land owner-
ship, status of persons, administration of justice, family and inheritance law,
taxation, and other matters. It will therefore be dealt with in a separate Chap-
ter (21).
Foreigners
The foreigner as an urban resident in early Kievan Russia is a questionable
topic. In those days, Russian nationhood was gradually taking shape out of the
amalgam of Eastern Slav tribes. At the same time Kievan society was in many
ways multi-ethnic as in the preceding pre- and proto-historic centuries. Scan-
dinavian traders and warriors had been around for ages and the chronicles of-
fer ample evidence of the frequent and close contacts with other non-Slavic
elements, particularly persons of various Turkic and Ugrian origin. Smaller
82 On the kliros, see Ia.N. Shchapov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov’ Drevnei Rusi x–xiii vv., Moskva,
1989, 124–131.
83 In modern Russian kliros means “church choir”, and most translations of the Church Stat-
ute of Vladimir follow this meaning. Shchapov, who follows older Russian authors such as
Tikhomirov (op. cit., 137), demonstrates convincingly that such a reading is anachronistic.
84 Cf. Shchapov, loc. cit.
The Towns 439
numbers of Greeks, Arabs, Jews, Caucasians and Persians can be added. One
might reasonably assume that some of these ‘foreigners’ would become set-
tled, especially in the major towns, such as the capitals of principalities.
As could be expected, the few indications available suggest that the general
tendency was to equate the status of foreigners permanently or temporarily
present among the native population with the status of the latter.
In later centuries, when Kievan Russia had broken up into a loose collection
of Russian principalities, and especially after the Mongol invasions, trade rela-
tions between European and Western Russian towns, such as Novgorod, Pskov
and Smolensk, developed, resulting in the frequent residence of foreign mer-
chants in these places. Their status was often the subject of legal regulation
through treaties or through internal rules. See the section below on foreign
merchants and the section on the Skra of Novgorod.
The Legal Framework of the Urban Economy
Towns were intimately connected, as discussed above, with the beginnings of

Russian history. The oldest towns emerged in the 9th century as multi-ethnic
way-stations for long-distance trade along the rivers. They might well have
been set up in the localities of older tribal centres, but, especially in Northern
Russia, towns could also arise in uninhabited areas. Where the town was locat-
ed in a populated region, it would naturally also assume the role of a regional
(short-distance) trading centre. The clear distinction between long-distance
(foreign) and local trade is very characteristic of medieval Russia and (as men-
tioned above) is expressed through different terms for the persons engaging in
such activities (gost’ for foreign trade merchant and kupets for a local trader),
and the corresponding difference in social status: higher for the gost’.85
Beyond this external distinction, long-distance and local (regional) trade
also differed in respect of the merchandise involved, a difference determined
by the market. Archeological finds show the importance of oriental goods
(especially silver and valuable cloth) as imports. Other sources (Arab and
Icelandic) indicate that the principal exports consisted of furs and skins, and
also slaves. Certain metal goods (especially Frankish swords) were a signifi-
cant item of transit trade. Beeswax can probably be added to the list; it was
an important export product in later times and the Russkaia Pravda mentions
85 From Indo-European ghosti (a stranger to whom one owes hospitality), as in Germanic

languages (German Gaste, English “guest” ), but in Latin: hostis (“enemy”) and hospes
(“host”, from *hosti-potes).
440 chapter 15
beehives repeatedly (arts. 32 Short Pravda, 71–72, 75–76, 107 and 109 Expanded
Pravda).86 Domestic trade could be divided into strictly local trade, where ru-
ral producers and urban craftsmen offered their produce on the local market,
and inter-regional trade, where goods were carried from one region of Kievan
Russia to another. The latter activity was of special importance in respect of
grain, which could not be grown in sufficient quantity in the Novgorod area
and other parts of Northern Russia.
Trade was not the only economic activity in the Russian medieval town, but
it was central to all the others. Certain types of production would not reach
the market because they were destined for use or consumption within the
community where they were produced: the peasant household, the estate of
a wealthy person, the monasterial economy. But any excess production would
normally reach the market, be it the wares of an individual craftsman or of a
group of artisans, or the agricultural or other production of secular or ecclesi-
astical estates, or the surplus of the peasant’s harvest.
From the legal point of view, trade was regulated everywhere by trade prac-
tices, commercial custom, long before there was any question of identifiable
commercial law. The latter emerged visibly when commercial custom was writ-
ten down. This is why a systematic discussion of the commercial law of Kievan
Russia is difficult. Certain trade practices were registered in documents which
could be regarded as legal texts; as the incidence of such registrations grew,
one might perhaps discern general lines, the beginning of a system. As ever in
early medieval law, the question of the sources overshadows everything. For
this reason attention has to focus mainly on the Expanded Version of the rp
and the Court Charter of Pskov, by far the two most important sources of me-
dieval commercial law in Russia.
The range of commercial activities finds its legal expression primarily in
contractual relationships. Such relationships are usually synallagmatic, which
means that there is a potential material benefit to both sides. (Non-syllagmatic
contracts, such as gift, where the donor’s obligation is not matched by an ob-
ligation of the donee, normally have no place in commerce.) In any system
which accepts the freedom of contract, the range of contracts is in principle
infinite, but most legal systems identify certain types of contracts. The old Ro-
man scheme of do/facio ut des/facias provides a traditional guide (“I give/do
(something) in order that you may give/do (something)”). It is of course based
on distinguishing between transferring material goods (money and other
things) and rendering services.
86 There is one reference in the Court Charter of Pskov, in art. 106.

The Towns 441
Do ut des: barter, purchase/sale, money loan, etc.

Do ut facias or facio ut des: labour contract, works contract, hire, carriage,
storage, etc.
Facio ut facias: various association contracts.
In a medieval setting many modern types of contracts are of course unknown,

but on the other hand certain contracts between masters and various catego-
ries of persons with limited freedom have disappeared in modern times.
Apart from the aspect of commercial law proper, two other aspects are of
importance in elucidating the legal framework of the urban economy of Ki-
evan Russia. One is the legal status of merchants, a subject discussed briefly
above. The other one concerns the organization of the merchants as a distinct
social group and their relations with the authorities, what one would designate
in modern terms as the public law aspect of trade, a question we shall return
to below.
Commercial Law in the Expanded Pravda

Commercial law proper made its first appearance in the Expanded Pravda, al-
though commerce is mentioned, referred to, and implied in earlier legal docu-
ments, such as the treaties with Byzantium and the Short Pravda. This suggests
that certain socio-economic shifts in the course of the 11th and 12th centuries
favoured the legislative expression of particular aspects of commercial law,
aspects which had largely been left unregulated in the Short Pravda. The con-
siderable number of provisions concerning commercial law in the Expanded
Pravda does indeed evoke a lively picture of trade in Russian towns during the
Kievan era.
Originally, the central legal vehicle for trade has always been the contract
of barter where reciprocally desired goods are exchanged between the parties.
At an early stage the contract of sale arose, where one side, instead of goods,
offered money or something that could take the place of money. Although bar-
ter has remained very much alive until the present day, the contract of sale
replaced it long ago as the main institution of commercial law. In Russia, this
transformation had already taken place in the pre-Kievan era, with the emi-
nent role of the silver trade. Still, the monetary nomenclature of Kievan Russia
(kuny, veveritsa) reflected the use in times past of animal skins.
The circumstances of trade in Kievan Russia would favour a situation where
agreement about the sale, payment of the agreed price, and handing over of the
goods would coincide in time. In such a situation legal problems would rarely
arise. Various provisions of the Expanded Pravda dealt with certain complica-
tions that might occur, the most common of which would be the acquisition
442 chapter 15
of property from somebody who was not the owner. The Short Pravda already
had a few provisions on this subject; arts. 32–39 of the Expanded Pravda con-
structed a more consistent and systematized complex of rules on the basis of
the older rules from the Short Pravda. It will be more convenient therefore to
examine the Expanded Pravda complex first.
Art. 37 covered the purchase of stolen property (a horse, clothes, or live-
stock) at market. The buyer was to produce two free men or the market over-
seer, the mytnik, as eyewitnesses to testify (that the goods were indeed bought
at market). If the buyer did not know whom he bought from, the eyewitnesses
had to take an oath (to confirm the buyer’s statement); the original owner
would then take his property back, without refunding the buyer. If the buyer
subsequently recognized the person who sold him the goods, he could reclaim
the money paid; the seller had to pay the original owner for any additional
losses and a fine to the prince.87
The obvious question which art. 37 did not answer was: how to proceed
when the buyer identified the seller? This question was actually answered by
the surrounding provisions dealing with the ‘confrontment’ (svod) procedure
in a broader context (not referring specifically to market sales). Art. 35 is the
main rule: if one recognized lost or stolen property (horse, clothes, livestock)
in another person’s hands, that person had to produce the person from whom
he acquired it, and so on, until one reached the person who had acquired the
property unlawfully from the original owner. If the confrontment procedure
led out of town, the original owner would only have to go as far as the third
confrontment; the third person in the chain would then have to pay the owner
the price and could continue the procedure himself (art. 36). The term “out of
town” (po zemliam) must be understood as referring to the surrounding region
(under the authority of the local government). Art. 39 provided that there was
no confrontment “in a different land” (v chiuzhiu zemliu); in such a case the
possessor had to produce testimony by witnesses or a statement from the myt-
nik that he had bought the property (in good faith presumably), the original
owner got his property back, and the possessor “mourned the loss”.
The complex of rules concerning the involuntary loss of property was
rounded off by art. 34, which concerned not theft, but the loss of property (in
this cases the list embraced “a horse, weapons or clothing”). The loss must be
announced publicly (na torgu – at the market);88 if the owner then recognized
87 This is the usual reading of the somewhat obscure text. See Pravda Russkaia, ii, 378–380;
Rossiiskoe Zakonodatel’stvo, i, 97; Baranowski, 438–441.
88 The public announcement at the market is also known to the Charter of Pskov, in arts.
39 and 44 (vzaklich’), and represents an archaic institution with parallels in Germanic
The Towns 443
his property in his own town, he could take it back and the person who held it
was also to pay him 3 pounds za obidu (for the insult).
These provisions make no mention of one of the most important objects
of trade in Kievan Russia – slaves. This aspect is covered by arts. 32 and 38.
Although slavery is traditionally defined as the state wherein human beings
are considered as ‘things’, objects of ownership, without rights of their own,
this view cannot be applied in its full rigour, because a slave remains a human
being, able to think and act on its own and thereby radically different from all
other objects of ownership. This consideration forms the background of the
special legal treatment of slaves and was explicitly recognized in art. 38, the
continuation of the preceding provision, where it said: “and this property is not
cattle, so it is not possible to say «[I do not know] from whom I purchased [the
slave]»; but [pursue the confrontment] on the [slave’s] word until the end”;89
unlike a horse or cattle, the slave can speak up and identify the seller.
According to art. 38, the original owner who recognized a slave stolen from
him had to start the confrontment procedure, i.e. he demanded that the new
owner reveal how he had acquired the slave; this was continued until the third
confrontment. Then the person named as owner in the third confrontment
had to supply the original owner with a new slave instead of the stolen one and
he himself continued the confrontment procedure; if this continuation led to
discovery of the thief, the slaves were exchanged between their owners (i.e.
the original owner got his slave back) and the thief paid them the losses and a
heavy fine (12 pounds) to the prince.90 The explanation for the first exchange
of slaves at the third confrontment is that the original owner is not to be bur-
dened excessively by having to follow the confrontment procedure to the very
end; the person identified at the third confrontment, however, needed the sto-
len slave to continue the confrontment procedure; he therefore supplied the
original owner with another slave for the time being.91
A slave can obviously not be lost like the horse, weapons or clothing men-
tioned in art. 34. But a slave can run away and hide somewhere. This is what art.
32 deals with. The procedure parallels that of art. 34. The loss must again be an-
nounced at the market; the person who is hiding the slave then has three days
to produce him. After the third day the owner (if he finds out the whereabouts
of the slave) may take his slave back and also receives 3 pounds (grivna).
legal history; cf. Iu.G. Alekseev, Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota i ee vremia, Moskva, 1980,
176–179.
89 Kaiser’s translation, Laws, 24.
90 Cf. A.A. Zimin, prp i, 155; Ia.N. Shchapov, rz i, 97–98; Baranowski, 441–444.
91 Cf. Tikhomirov, Posobie, 94.
444 chapter 15
A short provision on the unauthorized use of another person’s horse is in-

serted as art. 33. The insertion is understandable, if one considers the working
method of the compilers of such documents as the Russkaia Pravda; they did
not proceed systematically like pandectists, but re-arranged and edited a set of
pre-existing rules primarily by association. The general theme of arts. 32–39 of
the Expanded Pravda is what the owner has to do when he has involuntarily
lost his property, either by theft or simple loss, and he comes across it again. It
then made sense to warn right at the beginning that the case of riding some-
one’s horse without permission was separate. It was implied of course, and
this is additionally made clear in several following rules which cover theft and
mention horses specifically, that in the case of art. 33 there was no intention
to steal and that the horse would be returned after the unauthorized use. As in
other societies which depended on the horse as the principal means of trans-
portation, the theft of horses was regarded as a very serious crime in Kievan
Russia.92
As noted above, the complex of arts. 32–39 in the Expanded Pravda belongs
to the oldest layers of this text and is based on an older complex of rules in the
Short Pravda, arts. 11–14 and 16.
Art. 11 sp corresponds with art. 32 ep, but the provision refers only to a slave
hiding specifically with a Viking or Kolbiag (a stranger, in any case), which is a
much narrower formula than in art. 32 ep. Art. 12 sp, as mentioned above, is al-
most identical with art. 33 ep. Art. 34 ep refers to the discovery (by the owner)
of a horse, weapons or clothes which were lost; art. 13 sp simply refers to the
owner coming across his horse, weapons or clothes which had been ‘taken’ by
someone; this would seem to cover not only lost goods, but also stolen ones;
the owner can take back his property and receives 3 pounds za obidu (for the
insult). Art. 14 sp represents a shorter version of the first part of art. 35 ep, the
introduction of the confrontment procedure (the svod) being the central idea.
Art. 14 sp provides that the owner who comes across the property he lost can-
not just take it back but has to summon the possessor to come to a confront-
ment. This seems to contradict art. 13 sp, which appears to say that the owner
can simply take his property back. Several explanations have been proposed,
the simplest one being the one proposed by Shchapov: art. 13 sp represents
the substantive side and defines the owner’s right, art. 14 sp adds the proce-
dure: he has to go through the confrontment procedure.93 Art. 16 sp is a shorter
92 I have discussed the pedigree of art. 33 of the Expanded Pravda (which is itself taken over
from art. 12 of the Short Pravda) in my Law in Medieval Russia. Law in Eastern Europe, No.
59, Leiden/Boston, 2009, 98–100.
93 Shchapov in rz i, 56; see also Baranowski, 225–230.
The Towns 445
version of art. 38 ep, with less sophisticated wording. Altogether, the casuistic
complex of arts. 11–14 and 16 sp has been transformed in arts. 32–39 ep into a
more consistent and comprehensive set of rules covering a particular theme:
involuntary loss of property.
The complex of rules about retrieving slaves in the Expanded Pravda is
completed by art. 114, which offers a procedure for reclaiming one’s slave when
found in another town (the owner must invoke the help of the town’s mayor,
the posadnik, in apprehending the slave). This rule forms part of one of the
later components of the Expanded Pravda, the so-called Statute on Slavery
(Ustav o kholopstve).
The topics of sale and slavery turn up twice in this part of the Expanded
Pravda. Art. 117 provides that the owner of a slave who allows the latter to trade
in the market square becomes liable for the debts incurred by the slave; it adds
“and he shall not be deprived of him”. This is interpreted by most commenta-
tors as meaning: “he is not entitled to give up the slave in lieu of the debt”. This
would agree with the practice in most slave-owning societies where owners
conduct commercial operations through slaves.94
Art. 118 covers the same subject as art. 38 (the original owner reclaiming the
slave), but seen from the side of the last possessor. If the latter is confronted
by the owner, he must swear that he did not know (that his seller was not the
owner) and then his buying-price is paid back. If he was not in good faith, he
loses his money.
The Expanded Pravda also pays attention to other legal disputes that could
arise in commercial transactions.
The largest complex is formed by arts. 47–55, devoted mainly to debts and
interest. This complex (at least as far as art. 52) is connected by several authors
with the legislative activity of the Kievan grand prince Sviatopolk Iziaslavich
(1093–1113).95 Art. 49, “on storage” (o poklazhai), could be regarded as a special
kind of debt: if someone places goods for storage with somebody else, with-
out witnesses, and later on claims that he stored more than he actually did,
then the person who stored the goods may take the oath to determine the
amount actually stored.96 The same applies to art. 54: if a merchant loses cargo

95 Especially M.N. Tikhomirov, “Obshchestvenno-politicheskie otnosheniia v Drevnei Rusi i
Russkaia Pravda”, A.P. Novosel’tsev (ed.), Drevnerusskoe gosudarstvo i ego mezhdunarod-
noe znachenie, Moskva, 1965, 128–278, at 229 (not available to me); also Shchapov, rz i, 101
and Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, 223.
96 In the storage contract of the Expanded Pravda, the commercial aspect is secondary; it
is regarded primarily as a friendly gesture, a voluntary service (bologodel), and for that
reason the evidentiary requirements for the depositee are lenient.
446 chapter 15
belonging to others in a shipwreck, he is allowed to pay off the debt in an-

nual instalments, except when he is himself to blame for the loss of the goods
(“if he drinks to excess or gambles, and in his foolishness ruins someone else’s
good, then [depending on what] suits them whose property [he lost], either to
wait for him [to repay the loss] or sell [him into slavery] – the choice is theirs
[whose property was lost].”).97
The main provision concerning debts is art. 47 which provides that the cred-
itor must produce witnesses against an unwilling money debtor; the witnesses
then must confirm the correctness of the creditor’s claim on oath (rota). If the
debt has been left unpaid for many years, the debtor must additionally pay 3
pounds za obidu (for the insult). Whether this money is to be paid to the credi-
tor or to the prince is unclear.98 The underlying rule implied by art. 47 is that
loan contracts are to be concluded before witnesses.
Art. 47 is the only provision in the complex which has its roots in the Short
Pravda, in its art. 15. In art. 15 sp the procedure is different: the dispute is to be
submitted to the izvod, a group of 12 persons, who apparently decide the mat-
ter. If the judgment is for the creditor, he receives back what the debtor owed
him and there is an additional fine of 3 pounds.
The location of art. 15 sp in a complex of rules concerning the involuntary
loss of property has prompted many authors to explain it as a continuation
of art. 14 sp (the confrontment procedure in case of a dispute about owner-
ship). In the words of Shchapov: “One could agree with the old point of view of
N.M. Karamzin, developed in our time by A.A. Zimin. The provision concerns
the case where the thief has been exposed as a result of the confrontment,
but where along with the goods recovered other unfound goods were identi-
fied, the return of which is demanded by the plaintiff.”99 Whatever the cogency
of this argument, nobody has suggested that the scope of art. 47 ep (disputes
about money debts in general) would be as limited as that of art. 15 sp, as inter-
preted by Shchapov and his predecessors (a dispute about additional debts of
somebody exposed as a thief).
The following art. 48 of the Expanded Pravda is devoted to the narrower
subject of commercial credit, loans between merchants. When one merchant
gives money to another merchant to engage in local or foreign trade (the text
explicitly mentions the two forms of kuplia and gost’ba), there is no need for
witnesses; the loan debtor may rely on his own oath. Several authors define the

99 In rz i, 56.
The Towns 447
relationship as a limited partnership, very much like the present tovarishchest-

vo na vere (the German Kommanditgesellschaft).100
A creditor who lends money against interest needs witnesses; the same rule
applies when honey or grain is given out and increased repayment is agreed
upon (art. 50). No witnesses are required when the sum loaned is 3 pounds or
less; instead the creditor is allowed to confirm the correctness of his claim by
oath (art. 52).
The interest rate is regulated in arts. 51 and 53. The heading of art. 53 is “Stat-
ute of Volodimer Vsevolodich”; there is no doubt that this was the Kievan grand
prince known as Vladimir Monomakh (his mother being a Byzantine princess
of that dynasty). Art. 51 appears to have been inserted between arts. 50 and 52,
belonging to the legislation of Monomakh’s predecessor, Sviatopolk Iziaslav-
ich.101 Annual interest was 50%; shorter term interest was 20% per month. If
the debt remained outstanding for 12 months or more, the monthly payments
were to be returned and the annual rate would apply. The annual rate of 50%
could be charged twice and then the creditor could demand the return of the
principal. If the annual rate was charged for a third time, the creditor lost his
right to the principal. The practical implication of this would seem to be that
loans would not run beyond two years; the creditor would then have realized
a 200% return (the principal and twice the annual interest). If he demanded
interest for the third year, he would lose the principal and his return would be
only 150% (three times the annual interest); if he did not ask for the interest,
the loan would presumably continue to run, but it would in fact be interest-free.
Commentators generally agree that the later commercial law complexes
of the Expanded Pravda (the Statute of Monomakh in particular) are to be
considered against the background of an economic crisis and were meant
to alleviate to some extent its effects on the merchant class in an attempt to
restore economic balance.102 This is demonstrated not only by the rules on
limiting interest, but also by various rules granting merchants a more favour-
able status than ordinary citizens. The easing of the evidentiary burden for
loans in art. 48 has been mentioned above; another example is art. 55 which
spells out a kind of bankruptcy procedure for merchants. A foreign merchant
(or merchant from another town) who has deposited goods with a merchant
who is in debt is considered the most privileged creditor when the bankrupt
merchant is to be sold into slavery (provided the creditor did not know about
100 Tikhomirov, Posobie, 96; Shchapov, rz i, 100.

101 Cf. Shchapov, rz i, 100.
102 E.g. Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, 223 ff.
448 chapter 15
the indebtedness).103 The balance is divided, first to satisfy the claims of the
prince, and then equally between other creditors. A creditor who had charged
too much interest is excluded from the division. It is to be noted that the me-
dieval prohibition against charging interest,104 which so deeply affected the
economy and the law of Western Europe, did not reach Russia. Priests and dea-
cons, however, were subject to a universal canon law prohibition on accepting
interest.105
Another commercial transaction, along with sales and loans, which is men-
tioned in the Expanded Pravda is the contract for supplying work: in arts. 96
and 97. The first one laid down the monetary value of the sustenance the build-
er of the town’s fortifications (the gorodnik) was entitled to; the second one did
the same for the bridge-builder (the mostnik). The latter rule was based on an
earlier one in the Short Pravda (art. 43). It is entirely clear from the wording of
the provisions that the officials mentioned were specialists in charge of direct-
ing the work (which was done by the townspeople, according to Shchapov).106
Their fee would obviously depend on the size and duration of the work; arts.
96–97 merely spelled out what they were entitled to while the work was going
on. The two articles have apparently been inserted arbitrarily in a long series of
provisions concerning inheritance law.
Commercial Law in the Charter of Pskov

The next major document concerning commercial law, after the Expanded
Pravda, is the Court Charter of Pskov, dated by almost all authors at some time
in the period between 1462 and 1475. Information from the preceding period
of about two-and-a-half centuries (according to the most reliable dating of the
Expanded Pravda) is not altogether lacking, but is very fragmentary. At least
two dozens of birch-bark texts give a surprisingly many-sided picture of com-
mercial life in Novgorod in the fourteenth century (a few documents are from
the 12th or 13th century). But their contents are usually of a starkly practical
nature: brief instructions or requests, lists of goods or outstanding debts, and
103 Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 185–186, argues that the verb prodati (to sell) refers not to the debt-
or himself in this provision, but to his property.
104 Based, in my view, on a mistaken reading of Luke 6, 35. This passus (mutuum date, nihil
inde sperantes, Russ. vzaimy davaite, ne ozhidaia nichego) is part of a long adhortation to
be genuinely unselfish: if you loan money, you should not do so in the hope of deriving
advantage or profit. It took the Western Church a long time to reach this view.
105 This was explicitly spelled out in the authoritative Questionary of Kirik (question 4); see
the section on church legislation in Chapter 21.
106 rz i, 118.
The Towns 449
such things, so that they cannot really add much to our knowledge of the com-
mercial law of the era.107
As has been explained in the section on the Pskov Charter, the presumed
enactment date (sometime between 1462 and 1475) relates to only the final
stage of the text. Most of its contents were probably already included in an ear-
lier version which, according to the leading modern commentator Iu.G. Alek-
seev, can be dated to the year 1397, mentioned in the text itself.108 Whatever
information about medieval commercial law in Russia can be gleaned from
the Pskov Charter therefore concerns not only the 15th but also the 14th and
possibly the 13th centuries. The gap between the Expanded Pravda and the
Pskov Charter is therefore not as wide as it might seem at first sight. Moreover,
it is generally accepted that the commercial law of Pskov was not very different
from that of other medieval Russian towns. The Charter of Pskov can thus be
regarded as representative of the commercial law of Russia in the period fol-
lowing the era of the rp.
A peculiarity of the Pskov Charter is that it is very much a practical guide
to the Pskov judges; almost every provision wraps the substantive rule in a
procedural rule: “if such and such is the case, then decide as follows”.109 Not
for nothing did N.N. Murzakevich who was the first to publish the full text in
1847 give it the name of Pskov Court Charter.110 Its main commercial law top-
ics had already been mentioned in the Expanded Pravda and return in more
developed and elaborate form in the Pskov Charter: storage, loans of various
kinds, acquisition from somebody who is not the owner, pledges, interest, etc.
The procedural focus determined to a great extent the scope of topics covered.
Only those relationships which would most frequently give rise to disputes be-
tween parties and which would then be submitted to the court have been con-
sidered. The absence of rules on sale or barter is striking. Under such contracts
the performances of the parties would normally be simultaneous. Problems
would arise more easily when one side had performed its obligations fully or in
part and the other side still had to perform its part of the bargain. This explains
107 See in particular L.V. Cherepnin, Novgorodskie berestianye gramoty kak istoricheskii istoch-
nik, Moskva, 1969, 267–298.
108 rz i, 330–331.
109 The general similarity with classical Roman law is obvious, although the influence of Ro-
man law on medieval Russian law is arguably non-existent or at least negligible. See the
chapter on “Roman Law in Medieval Russia” in my Law in Medieval Russia, Leiden/Boston,
2009, 59–128. A legal text drafted as a guideline to judges will inevitably tend to formulate
substantive claims as procedural options.
110 N.N. Murzakevich, Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota, sostavlennaia v 1467 g. Izdana po spisku,
khraniashchemusia v biblioteke kn. M.S. Vorontsova, Odessa, 1847.
450 chapter 15
why a considerable number of provisions are devoted to all kinds of relation-

ships connected with loans.
In such cases everything depended on evidence: How could the creditor
prove that he had lent a certain amount of money? How could the debtor
prove that he had already paid back the loan, or that he had never received any
money? And so on. The Pskov Charter contains detailed rules about admissible
evidence and the relative weight of various kinds of evidence. The substantive
rule is then to be derived from the way the burden of proof has been divided
among the parties. The most powerful evidentiary weapon was a document
of which a copy had been deposited at the lar’, the official archives of Pskov,
maintained at the Holy Trinity Cathedral.111 The zapis’ (note, esp. loan note)
is the usual term for the formal document testifying to the existence of a con-
tractual relationship. Of almost equal force is a zaklad, collateral on the basis
of a pledge as a means to secure performance. A much less reliable instrument
is the informal note or doska (pl. doski). The doska (the original meaning is
‘board’) had apparently been in general use in the past, but the Pskov Charter
clearly attempts to relegate it to minor transactions only.112
Whenever the Charter intends to bolster the procedural position of one of
the parties to the dispute (because it is in possession of a zapis’ or zaklad, or
both, or for some other reason), it usually offers the privileged party a choice
between ‘kissing’, ‘placing at the cross’, or the ‘field’. This shorthand refers to, re-
spectively, swearing an oath (‘kissing the Cross’, which could effectively decide
the case), delivering the disputed money or property into court (which would
normally imply giving in to the demands of the other party), or accepting a
judicial duel (where heavenly powers were believed to secure victory for the
party who had right on its side).
The first commercial contract encountered in the Charter is storage. In the
Expanded Pravda this was still a more or less informal arrangement among
persons who knew each other, but in the Pskov Charter it is fully commercial-
ized.113 This finds expression in the strict formal requirements. Arts. 14–19 are
111 Cf. Zimin, prp ii, 340. Such documents are mentioned in arts. 14 (a will), 32 and 38 (a
riadnitsa or poriadnia, a document embodying a contract), and 50 and 82 (various court
documents to be sealed and verified by the Pskov cathedral archives).
112 Doska is frequently encountered in the Pskov Charter and rarely elsewhere, e.g. in the
First Novg. Chr. under the year 1209. There are several explanations of the term; it could
be connected with the birch-bark documents which were in current use in Novgorod and
Pskov, or it could refer to boards between which the documents were kept in the form of
a book. Cf. Zimin, prp ii, 339.
113 Zimin, prp ii, 339, makes the intriguing observation that the evolution of storage, as
reflected in arts. 14–19 of the Pskov Charter, indicates the emergence of commercial
The Towns 451
devoted to various specific cases, but they allow us to reconstruct the general
system of the law on storage (the Pskov Charter does not use the term pokla-
zha, as in the Expanded Pravda, but zbliudenie or sbliudenie instead). The most
general rule is art. 19, according to which claims for the return of stored goods
based (only) on a doska and not accompanied by a list of the goods are not
allowed. Art. 14 specifies this rule for three special cases. If the depositee has
died and left a properly registered will (i.e. deposited in the Pskov cathedral
archives), then whatever the will says about the stored goods will prevail over
a doska. But if the storage is confirmed by a formal note (zapis’) or by pledged
property (zaklad, collateral), then the depositor may file his claim against the
heirs. Heirs who do not have a zapis’ or a zaklad, do not have a claim against
persons enjoying such security (this rule concerns not only storage, but also
loans and trading debts).
In the manner typical of medieval legislation, the following article (15) con-
tinues the last thought of the preceding provision by stating that within the
family the strict evidentiary rules do not apply.
Arts. 16 and 17 are devoted to stored property destroyed by fire or lost on
account of theft or an uprising. The texts are defective and this has given rise
to different interpretations.114 What is clear is that in such cases the strict evi-
dentiary rules are relaxed. Art. 17 allows the defendant a choice between a de-
cisive oath or a judicial duel, or the return of the (value of the) property lost.
Alekseev has suggested that arts. 16–17 may have been inspired by the Ecloga,
which devoted a short Title xi to the question of stored property lost through
theft or fire.115 The Ecloga provision had its roots in older Roman law, where
along with fire and theft other accidental causes of loss of property (such as
uprisings, natural disasters, etc.) were mentioned.116 However, a similar list ap-
pears in art. 54 of the Expanded Pravda (loss of property caused by shipwreck,
military expropriation or fire), where Byzantine, let alone Roman influence is
unlikely and this weakens Alekseev’s hypothesis.
Art. 18 concerns the special case of agricultural storage in the countryside
(po volosti) by certain dependent peasants having deposited property or grain,
presumably with the person on whom they were dependent. In such cases the
c orporations among the merchants of Pskov, but does not corroborate this statement. See
the discussion of art. 92 below, concerning the question of siabrenichestvo.
114 Cf. Alekseev, Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota, 73–77; Zimin, prp ii, 341–342; T.E. Novitskaia,
rz i, 354–355.
115 Alekseev, Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota, 75–76.
116 Most enumerations appear to be derived from Ulpian who mentioned uprisings, fire, de-
struction and shipwreck; cf. D. 16, 3, 1, 1.
452 chapter 15
depositee has the same options as the defendant in art. 17: take an oath, accept
a judicial duel, or return the (value of the) property. The dependent peasants
mentioned are the zakupen and the skotnik. The former is probably not much
different from the zakup in the Expanded Pravda, an agricultural labourer,
while the skotnik is obviously somebody employed in looking after cattle. Alek-
seev regards them as persons without a fixed residence; this fact, together with
the modest amounts involved, would explain the more informal character of
this particular kind of storage.117
The most important commercial subject regulated by the Pskov Charter is
loans (the usual term in the Charter is ssuda). The main block of rules is arts.
28–38 (arts. 34–35 are about theft) and further down the text a number of more
or less isolated provisions can be found. The accent, similar to the rules on stor-
age, is on the ways the existence of a loan can be proved.
Art. 28 defines the case when a loan has been documented by doski and se-
cured by a pledge. The creditor then has the choice (when the debtor defaults)
of confirming the existence of the loan by oath or of offering to return the
pledged property in court (against repayment of the loan, obviously). A duel is
not allowed in such a case and the validity of the doski is recognized.
When the existence of a loan is indicated only by the presence of collateral
(pledged property) and there is no doska, it is the loan debtor who has the
choice of confirming the existence or non-existence of the loan by oath or of
offering to repay the loan in court against the return of the collateral (art. 29).
Loans in excess of one ruble and confirmed only by a doska, but not by col-
lateral, cannot be reclaimed in court; for small loans (less than one ruble) a
mere doska is acceptable, although not conclusive, evidence (art. 30). The lat-
ter point is not made explicitly in art. 30, but it follows from art. 36 (see below)
which describes a specific instance of a claim concerning a small loan and
which grants certain categories of persons the option of hiring somebody to
fight the judicial duel for them. The Pskov ruble from the times of the Charter
was the equivalent of the 3 pounds (grivna) of art. 52 of the Expanded Pravda
(see above); according to Alekseev, this sum was the price of a herd of 20–30
sheep.118
Art. 31 goes back to the case of art. 28 (loan with doska and collateral) and
concerns the complication when the collateral appears to be insufficient to
repay the loan. If, in such a case, the alleged loan debtor denies the existence
of the loan and of any confirming pledge, then the creditor keeps the collat-
eral and the case is over. (There is some contradiction here with art. 28 which
117 Cf. Alekseev, Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota, 76–77; Novitskaia, rz i, 355; Zimin, prp ii, 342.
118 Alekseev, Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota, 78; Novitskaia, rz i, 359.
The Towns 453
grants the creditor two options; the creditor would appear to be better off rely-
ing on art. 28, while the debtor is offered an easy way out by art. 31, provided the
value of the debt exceeds the value of the collateral. Zimin is one of the few au-
thors who has spotted this problem and he proposed to solve it by distinguish-
ing between the two cases: art. 28 was meant to deal with loans secured by a
pledge recognized by the debtor, while art. 31 envisaged the situation where the
loan debtor denied the existence of a pledge.119 I do not find this convincing,
but the obscurity of the text makes it difficult to find a satisfactory solution.)
The next provision (art. 32) describes a specific situation, but the main rule
to be derived from it is that the deposition of a document establishing the re-
payment of a loan in the cathedral archives produced incontrovertible proof
of such repayment. Otherwise the creditor may proceed to seek repayment
from the debtor or from the person who guaranteed the loan (the poruchnik).
Art. 33 adds that only loans of up to one ruble may be secured by a guarantee
(poruka).
In actions based on a doska (according to art. 30 these would be actions
about loans of less than one ruble), persons who are unable or unqualified to
fight a duel (women, children, old people, invalids, monks, nuns) may hire a
replacement, but should take the oath themselves; if a replacement is hired,
the opponent is also free to hire a replacement (art. 36)
Art. 38 repeats the principle expressed in art. 32 (which concerned a loan
backed by guaranty) by stipulating that a document establishing the repayment
of a trade loan (torgovye den’gi), but not registered (deposited as a copy) in the
cathedral archives, has no evidentiary force.120 The trade loan (torgovlia)121 is
mentioned along with the ordinary loan in art. 45, without receiving special
treatment. But in art. 101 the trade loan, along with guaranty and certain other
special items, is treated differently from the ordinary loan; in disputes about
such items the defendant may choose to engage in a judicial duel or take an
oath.122
119 Zimin, prp ii, 346, 348.

120 A more detailed analysis of arts. 32 and 38 and the meaning of the term riadnitsa (trans-
lated as “document” by Kaiser, “receipt” by Vernadsky, and “arrangement” by Szeftel/Eck)
in S.N. Kisterev, “«Riadnitsa» v stat’iakh 32 i 38 Pskovskoi sudnoi gramoty”, S.N. Kisterev
(ed.), Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii, vyp.4, Moskva, 2000, 71–84.
121 Both Zimin (prp ii, 311) and Kaiser, Laws, 95, translate torgovlia as trade loan (torgovaia
ssuda).
122 The main commentaries diverge in the interpretation of this rule. Zimin, prp ii, 372, re-
gards art. 101 as envisaging all kinds of suits concerning trade loans and sees a contradic-
tion with art. 45, which disallows among other things all loan suits which do not contain
an enumeration of the money or property concerned. N.A. Semiderkin, rz i, 380, argues
454 chapter 15
Another special type of loan (called pokruta) is envisaged in arts. 44 and 51:
where a landowner had lent money or grain to his izornik (and other depen-
dent persons) and the izornik denied having received a loan from his master.
It need not be discussed here, because it is part of a rural setting and has no
direct connections with urban commercial life.123
The question of interest connected with a loan is dealt with in arts. 73–74.
The Pskov Charter does not limit interest, as the Expanded Pravda does, but
instead allows interest only if there is an official loan note (a zapis’) which
specifies the interest due and if the interest due is announced to the Pskov
authorities (gospode) at the proper time. If the creditor fails to do so, he loses
his right to interest. He also loses his right to interest if he claims repayment of
the loan before the time agreed in the contract. If the debtor repays the loan
before the agreed time, the interest is reduced accordingly.
The final provision concerning loans is art. 93, which provides that a loan
debtor who has absconded by the time repayment is due also has to pay the
costs connected with the enforcement of the creditor’s claim.
Pledge (zaklad)124 is usually mentioned in the same breath as a zapis’ (loan
note) in provisions which concern loans. There are also a few other provisions
devoted to pledge (or mortgage). Although the property pledged would nor-
mally be placed in the possession of the creditor, this is not possible in the case
of future property (the future harvest or next spring’s catch of a fisherman, art.
43) or of land, bodies of water or houses (art. 104). In the latter case special
documents (gramoty) are required; the provision also regulates the situation
when several mortgage creditors of the deceased turn up and the heirs want to
pay off the debts. In such a case creditors who possess a mortgage document
as well as a loan note are privileged; creditors who only have a mortgage docu-
ment have to confirm the existence of a loan debt by oath.125
Art. 107 deals with the dispute which arises when the alleged creditor denies
having lent any money and received any collateral. He is given the usual choice
between swearing (that everything was as he said it was), depositing the col-
that art. 101 only concerns suits containing such an enumeration and therefore does not
come into conflict with art. 45.
123 On the thorny problem of the izornik, see the special chapter in Alekseev, Psovskaia Sud-
naia gramota, 145–203 and also K.V. Petrov, “Dogovor «izornika s gosudarem» Pskovs-
koi Sudnoi gramoty (rekonstruktsiia)”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Issledovaniia po istorii
srednevekovoi Rusi. K 80-letiiu Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg,
2006, 113–126.
124 It is the same as the modern Russian term zalog; the verb used in the Pskov Charter is
zalozhit’, see art. 43.
125 Cf. Zimin, prp ii, 321 (translation) and 373 (comments).
The Towns 455
lateral at the Cross (he returns the collateral and receives his loan back), or
fighting a duel.
Another topic which is usually related to loans is guarantee (poruka), where
a third person guarantees the debtor’s performance. Art. 33 has been referred
to above; it allows only small loans (up to one ruble) to be guaranteed. This
restriction need not apply to other contracts where the performance is guar-
anteed. The main point of art. 45 is that a detailed list of property is required
in a number of disputes: about trade loans, ordinary loans, storage, guaranty,
and escheated property. Art. 54 describes the procedure to be followed by a
person accused of theft: if he indicates the person from whom he acquired cer-
tain goods, the prosecution will be aimed at that person and the first accused
becomes the latter’s guarantor; obviously, the value would then not be limited
to one ruble.
This provision (art. 54) also leads us to the subject of the acquisition of
property from somebody who is not the owner. Two provisions (arts. 46 and
56) deal with it, each looking at it from a different angle. Art. 46 describes the
position of the original owner. If he finds some property which he lost in the
possession of another and that person declares that he bought it on the market
from an unknown seller, the new owner is allowed to swear an oath that he ac-
quired the property in good faith and then the original owner’s claim fails. The
term “good faith” is not used, but instead the new owner declares that he did
not steal the property but bought it on the market, that he did not know the
seller, and that he had not entered into a deal with the actual thief.
Art. 56 allows the buyer on the market who did not know the seller to pro-
duce four or five reliable witnesses to declare that they witnessed the sale; this
will defeat the claim of somebody who claims to be the owner. If the witnesses
cannot be found, the market buyer is allowed to swear an oath and this will
also exonerate him. The second part of art. 56 does not add anything to what
had already been laid down in art. 46. The system of the Pskov Charter obvi-
ously echoes art. 37 of the Expanded Pravda but is clearly more favourable to
the buyer.126
Art. 47 extends the protection which art. 46 accords the bona fide market
buyer to anybody who had bought something abroad or in the town, or found
it somewhere, by prescribing the same procedure. Kaiser translates na chiuzhei
zemli ili na gorode as “in another land or city [but not at the market]”; this does
indeed make sense because the scope of arts. 46 and 56 is limited to market
transactions and art. 47 would then exceptionally apply the beneficial regime
of these provisions to transactions which had been effected abroad, in order to
126 Cf. Zimin, prp ii, 356, 360.

456 chapter 15
avoid the difficulty of proving the circumstances of these transactions. Zimin

and Kleandrova, however, in their respective comments on art. 47 understand
na gorode not as a foreign (or at last another) town, but as opposed to na torgu
(at the market).127 This seems to be more plausible linguistically, but it raises
the question concerning the sense of including arts. 46 and 56: the lex generalis
of art. 47 does not require the repetition of the more specialized rules of arts.
46 and 56.
The Pskov Charter refers in quite clear terms to some form of commercial
partnership, but the texts give only a general outline. Art. 92 concerns disputes
about siabrenago serebra, the money of siabry. This is usually considered as
money contributed to some common enterprise and also property held jointly
by several owners (land or beehives, in art. 106). In both cases the exact nature
of the partnership remains obscure. Art. 92 speaks about “money invested in a
joint enterprise”128 or “money [advanced] for a mutual endeavor”129 and then
continues “or any other, except a local or long-distance trading [endeavor]”
(oproch’ kupetskago dela i gostebnago); this obviously raises the question of
what sort of partnership the provision has in mind. In art. 106 there is talk of
a multitude of siabry who are jointly entitled to a certain stretch of land in
which each of them is entitled to a specific parcel. The individual siabr thus
enjoys two rights: to his own piece, and jointly with the other siabry to the
entire plot. As the relationship between these two rights remains unclear, the
entire institution of siabrenichestvo is also obscure. Alekseev regards it as an
archaic leftover from the times of the rp, where it was not regulated because it
was part of customary law.130
In the Expanded Pravda the contract for supplying work was regulated only
with regard to the question of the amount of sustenance certain persons (the
gorodniki and the mostniki) were entitled to. The Pskov Charter deals with
this contract in a more substantive manner in arts. 39–41. In these provisions
the hired craftsman (naimit) is the central person. Art. 39 mentions “a mas-
ter” (master), “a carpenter” (plotnik) and a “hired [craftsman]” (naimit);131 art.
40 is devoted to the house craftsman (naimit dvornoi); and art. 41 to the hired
carpenter (naimit plotnik). What the provisions make clear is that the hired
craftsman (embracing all these categories) is a legally independent person who
either contracted to do a particular job (as in arts. 39 and 41) or agreed to work
127 Zimin, prp ii, 311 (translation) and 356 (comments); V.M. Kleandrova, rz i, 366–367.
128 Zimin’s translation of siabrenoe serebro, prp ii, 319.
130 Alekseev, Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota, 84–85; in the same vein Semiderkin, rz i, 377.
131 Zimin (prp ii, 351) regards the master carpenter as one person.
The Towns 457
a certain length of time for his gosudar’ (employer; as in arts. 39 and 40).132
The naimit is allowed to sue for his wages; the procedures prescribed by the
three provisions are not identical. The house craftsman of art. 40 is apparently
the one who is economically most dependent; art. 40 allows him to sue for his
wages within one year after leaving his work, even if he has worked without
wages for five or even ten years. In arts. 39–40 it is implied that the contract is
normally not written down (although there might be an informal note in the
form of a doska) and the procedures are tailored to deal with that aspect. Only
in the case of the hired carpenter of art. 41 is the procedure supplied said to be
applicable to the case where there is no written contract (zapis’), which sug-
gests that the contract was normally or at last frequently written down in the
special form of a zapis’.
The independent position of the master is illustrated additionally by art. 102
which deals with legal actions concerning the costs of apprenticeship between
a master and his apprentice.
The degree of socio-economic dependence of the craftsmen covered by
arts. 39–41 must be distinguished from their legal position. As indicated above,
there were probably significant differences between the various categories
and, moreover, these differences probably developed in the course of the cen-
turies concerned. The chapter on the naimit in Alekseev’s 1981 monograph on
the Pskov Charter is devoted mainly to these developments.
If the commercial law embodied in the Court Charter of Pskov is com-
pared to the same subject as reflected in the Expanded Pravda, the following
points spring to mind. The Pskov Charter undoubtedly continued to build in
a number of cases on the groundwork of the Expanded Pravda, although un-
der changed economic circumstances. Slavery apparently had disappeared.
Commercial relations have become more sophisticated, and this is demon-
strated by the amount of detail in the regulation of certain topics. The role of
credit has increased, which explains the large number of provisions dedicated
to loans, because an unpaid commercial debt can be regarded as a loan. The
practical problem with loans and many other commercial obligations is how
to prove them. The Pskov Charter, which, as indicated, is primarily a guidebook
for courts, seems to be mostly about evidence. The document in writing was
clearly the preferred form, but had not yet ousted older forms of evidence. The
Charter gives prominence to the oath, next to the informal note (the doska).
132 Cf. Alekseev, Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota, 135–144 (the chapter on Naimit i ego gosudar’);
Zimin, prp ii, 351–352; Kleandrova, rz i, 363–364.
458 chapter 15
Other Sources of Commercial Law

The Smolensk Pravda of 1229 was in fact a treaty between the prince of Smo-
lensk and the Hanseatic merchants of Riga and Visby (the ‘Gothic Coast’) and
will be discussed below in the section concerning foreign merchants. Its con-
tents mainly concern commercial relationships and are based primarily on the
Expanded Version of the rp.
Trade Regulation and Taxation

The public law aspect of trade, i.e. the relations between trade and mer-
chants and, on the other side, public authority, cropped up as early as in the
treaties with Byzantium. Art. 8 of the 911 treaty provided that ships stranded
on the coast of the other treaty partner were to be assisted and their cargoes
to remain unharmed.133 The usefulness of such an arrangement was obvious,
considering that navigation close to the coast of the Black Sea was the rule at
that time.
Almost everything else about the regulation of trade and the position of
merchants appears in sources concerning Novgorod and will therefore be dis-
cussed in the following chapter.
Taxation was obviously a major aspect of the interface between trade and
public authority. Almost all information concerning commercial taxation
dates from the period after the Mongol invasion and the Tataro-Mongol impact
on fiscal matters had demonstrably been fundamental.134 The earlier situation
remains therefore largely a blank space, with the exception of the brief men-
tion of princely income from trade in the Church Statute of Vladimir, of which
the tenth week was assigned to the Church.135 These words referred, albeit im-
plicitly, to income from taxation on trade, and not to income from trade in gen-
eral (in the earliest times one could expect the survival of the Viking tradition
of the ruler’s participation in foreign trade). This is confirmed by later sources
which addressed the question of the actual extent of the princely income from
which the church tithes were withheld.136 All we know then is that even in the
earliest Kievan times there existed some kind of market tax.
133 Cf. P.V. Savas’kov, “Normy mezhdunarodnogo morskogo prava v dogovorakh drevnerussk-
ogo gosudarstva, zakliuchennykh s Vizantiei”, Vestnik mgu, seriia pravo, 1973, No. 4, 77–83.
134 A brief discussion of Mongol taxation in D. Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols, Cam-
bridge, 1998, 118–125.
135 “ … iz torgu desiatuiu nedeliu”, in several of the oldest redactions; cf. prp i, 237, 244; rz i,
140, 148.
136 See V.B. Perkhavko, Torgovyi mir srednevekovoi Rusi, Moskva, 2006, 287–292, based on Ia.N.
Shchapov’s extensive work on this subject, e.g. Kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’ v Drevnei Rusi.
xi–xiv vv., Moskva, 1972 and Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy. xi–xv vv., Moskva, 1976.
The Towns 459
The following list of names of taxes, duties and similar impositions appli-
cable to trade indicates that fiscal authorities in medieval Russia were as inven-
tive as their present-day colleagues.137
Ambarshchina – a tax levied from foreign merchants for their stay in the
‘merchants’ court’ (gostinnyi dvor) and for storing their goods (ambar,
warehouse).
Delarnoe, deliarnoe – a tax on river vessels.
Desiatinnaia – a 10% tax on furs.
Driagil’noe – a stamp duty for packaging and sealing goods.
Golovshchina – a tax imposed at some transit point on the number of
persons (golova, head) accompanying the goods.
Gostinniki – a tax imposed on foreign merchants.
Gostin(n)oe – a tax on commercial goods, esp. in connection with staying
in the gostinnyi dvor.
Iavlennoe, iavnoe – a tax on goods presented at a customs office.
Kostki – a transit tax on merchants, often for the benefit of the Church.
Kuna, kunitsa – originally ‘marten skin’, then monetary unit, also a tax in
kind on skins.
Mostovoe – a fee for passing a bridge (most).
Myt – transit tax on goods; toll.
Mytovoe – transit tax on goods.
Naklo – id.
Otvoz – a tax on goods destined for other Russian towns.
Piatno – a tax on the sale of cattle (piatno, spot, stain, mark).
Pomernoe – a fee for weighing bulk goods such as grain or salt; also:
podymnoe, pudovshchina, veschee.
Posazhennoe – a tax based on the length of a river vessel (sazhen’,
c. 2.13 m).
Poshlina – tax in general
Povorotnoe – a fee for taking goods in and out of the gostinnyi dvor.
Proezd – a tax on transit goods.
Promyt – a punitive tax for avoiding myt by taking another road.
Propiaten’e – a punitive tax for non-payment of piatno for the buying
of a horse.
Protamozh’e – a punitive tax for avoiding customs duty (also protamga).
Provodnoe – the fee for accompanying a caravan.
137 Based mainly on V.B. Perkhavko, op. cit., 557–594 and also on S.A. Kozlov, Z.V. Dmitrieva,
Nalogi v Rossii do xix v., Sankt-Peterburg, 2001, 22–24.
460 chapter 15
Provoz – a tax on transit travellers.

Skupnoe – a sales tax on goods bought wholesale at a reduced rate.
Tamga – a tax on trade introduced by the Mongols.
Uturnoe – a tax on ships.
Uzol’tsovaia poshlina – a tax on sacks (uzel, knot) in carts.
Voznichee, vosmnichee, osmichnoe – a tax based on the price of the
goods sold.
Zapoved’ – a punitive tax for avoiding kostki
This list does not reflect a coherent fiscal system, applicable at a certain time;
some of the impositions may have been applied only locally or during a certain
period, and may have been of little significance. Among the major commer-
cial taxes the myt is to be mentioned first, as it appears in numerous treaties
between princes (incl. the Novgorod republic). Often the treaties provide that
myt will be levied as of old and that no new myty will be introduced.138 In
other cases the treaty forbad one side to impose myt.139 It is clear that the myt
was a transit tax or toll, imposed on commercial goods at certain points of
transit, which were also called myt. The usual place for collecting it was the
point of entrance of a road into a market town. It was normally accompanied
by kostki, a personal tax on the trading persons themselves. The considerable
body of treaties in which these taxes are mentioned suggests that the practice
of imposing myt and kostki was traditional, wide-spread and stable and that
the amounts involved were relatively modest.140 The penalties for evasion, on
the other hand, were relatively high.141 The official responsible for collecting
myt was the mytnik. He is already mentioned in arts. 37 and 39 of the Expanded
Pravda (discussed above in the section on commercial law) as a market su-
pervisor who is in a position to testify concerning specific transactions. This
suggests that the myt constituted a very old tax and that it was collected at or
near the market.
138 E.g. a 1402 treaty between the grand princes of Moscow and Riazan’, ddg No. 19, 52–55.
139 E.g. the third treaty between Novgorod and Iaroslav Iaroslavich, its titular prince, of 1270,
gvnp No. 3, 11–13; prp ii, 138–141; commentary, prp ii, 153–157.
140 The treaties between Moscow and Tver’ mention one den’ga for a cart and two altyns
(=12 den’gi) for every section (doska) of a ship. Cf. esp. E.N. Lan’ko, “K voprosu o torgovle i
sbore poshlin v Tverskoi zemle xiv–xv vv.”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Issledovaniia po is-
torii srednevekovoi Rusi. K 80-letiiu Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg,
2004, 254–261. The principality of Tver’, straddling the major roads between Novgorod and
Moscow, was of particular importance for transit trade.
141 Ibidem.
The Towns 461
If myt and kostki, as transit taxes or customs duties, applied to inter-regional

and long-distance trade, sales were subject to sales taxes. The practical prob-
lem of levying a sales tax limited its applicability to transactions that could
be controlled by the fiscal powers, such as market sales or the turnover of a
merchant. The sources regularly mention the tamgá and the osmnichee (spell-
ing varies). Most authors appear to regard these as two separate taxes, but Ia.N.
Shchapov has put forward a plausible argument in favour of the view that the
osmnichee applied specifically to the sale of grain, which was measured in os-
miny.142 A number of treaties between Moscow and Tver’ and Riazan’143 indi-
cate that the rate remained steady over a long period: one altyn to the ruble.144
From the fact that myt, tamga and osmnichee appear in the testaments of
the Moscow grand princes among the most important assets, along with land,
one can conclude that these taxes constituted a major source of income. The
proceeds from the osmnichee were usually assigned to the dowager grand prin-
cess (the testator’s mother) if she was still alive and otherwise to the testator’s
spouse.
A related topic of market regulation was the matter of weights and mea-
sures. A late addition to the Church Statute of Vladimir145 assigned the super-
vision of weights and measures, as a divinely ordained power, to the Church,
referring to the Old Testament and other religious authorities.146 The first
reliably dated mention was in the 1229 treaty (the Smolensk Pravda) between
Smolensk and Riga and the Gothic Coast (in fact the Hanseatic League). Sev-
eral of its remaining versions contained a provision which referred to a stan-
dard measure for weights which was being kept in Smolensk in two copies,
in the Russian and the Latin churches.147 An earlier Smolensk document, the
Charter of Rostislav Mstislavich of 1136 which regulated the bishop’s income
in great detail, did not mention any ecclesiastical involvement in weights and
measures (and the income derived from it) and this gives reason to assume
that the Church managed to acquire control over this matter in the following
142 Cf. his commentaries to the Church Statute of Iaroslav in prp i, 280, and to the so-called
Iaroslav’s Law on Bridges, in rz i, 240.
143 Between Moscow and Tver’ of 1396: ddg No. 15, 42; of ±1456: ddg No. 59, 188; of 1462/64:
ddg No. 63, 203; of 1484: ddg No. 79, 298; between Moscow and Riazan’ of 1434: ddg No.
33, 86; of 1447: ddg No. 47, 145.
144 One altyn equaled 6 den’gi, and 200 (or 220) den’gi were equal to one ruble. This would
result in a 3% sales tax. Other sources mention a slightly different equation (100 altyn = 3
rubles), resulting in a 3.33% rate.
145 prp i, 242, 245–246; rz i, 149; Beneshevich i, 71–72; Kaiser, 43–44.
146 See Leviticus 19, 35–36; Deuteronomy 25, 13–15, and Ezechiel 45, 10.
147 prp ii, 67.
462 chapter 15
period, roughly around the end of the 12th century.148 Shchapov observed that
this development paralleled the course of events in Western and Central Eu-
rope. Previously, supervision of weights and measures (and the income from
it) was presumably a responsibility of the secular powers. The sporadic evi-
dence suggests that there were considerable local differences and that it was a
matter which mainly concerned the local bishop and not the Russian Church
as a whole. In later centuries the state gradually succeeded in reclaiming this
power and the revenues produced by it.149
The adjudication of commercial disputes and the income generated by it
will be discussed in Chapter 22, on Courts and Justice.
Foreign Merchants
The position and treatment of foreign merchants already appeared as promi-
nent topics in the 10th century treaties between Kievan Russia and Byzantium,
particularly in the 907 and 944 treaties (see the special Chapter 3 dealing with
this subject). The focus was very much on the position of Russian merchants in
Constantinople and the treaties therefore offer little information on the status
of foreign merchants in Russia under Russian law.
The text of the 907 treaty as communicated by the Primary Chronicle
appears to present merely fragmentary summaries of what had been agreed
as the result of a successful raid by the Kievan grand prince Oleg. Along with
tribute to be paid to Kiev and other Russian cities, Russian merchants were to
receive provisions for a period of six months and the necessary equipment for
the return journey. They were freed from paying commercial taxes. They could
only enter the city of Constantinople in groups of fifty, unarmed and accompa-
nied by a Byzantine official. Then they were housed in the St. Mamas’ quarter
where their names would be recorded and they would receive their monthly
allowance. They were to refrain from engaging in violence on Byzantine terri-
tory. No allowances were granted to Russians who came without merchandise.
The 911 treaty was silent on the matter of tribute and was concerned
primarily with regulating various questions connected with the presence of
148 See Ia.N. Shchapov, “Iz istorii gorodskogo upravleniia v Drevnei Rusi. Sluzhba mer i vesov”,
Ia.N. Shchapov, Ocherki russkoi istorii, istochnikovedeniia, arkheografii, Moskva, 2004,
34–39 (first published in Goroda v feodal’noi Rossii. Sbornik statei pamiati N.V. Ustiugova,
Moskva, 1966, 99–104). A different version of this paper was also included in Shchapov’s
Gosudarstvo i tserkov’ Drevnei Rusi x–xiii vv., Moskva, 1989, 90–94. My survey is based
mainly on Shchapov’s writings.
149 See also Ia.N. Shchapov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov’ Drevnei Rusi x–xiii vv., Moskva, 1989,
90–94.
The Towns 463
Russian merchants in Constantinople: disputes and fights between Russians

and Greeks, the estate of a Russian merchant dying abroad, disputes concern-
ing slaves, etc. The main provisions which applied especially in Russia were
the rules about shipwreck and related disasters; they were designed to protect
those who had been affected against the prevailing ancient principle of declar-
ing all shipwrecked goods forfeit and robbing the shipwrecked of almost all
rights (the ius naufragii).150
The 944 treaty took up the thread of the 907 treaty; it was again silent (like
the 911 treaty) on the question of tribute – which may have been a tempo-
rary and one-off imposition – but the monthly allowance to Russian visitors,
whether government agents or merchants, was retained, as well as the proce-
dure for recognizing their status and their housing in the St. Mamas’ quarter.
In general, all the provisions of the 907 treaty were repeated and much more
detail concerning the Russians’ rights to trade was added. They were, for in-
stance, not allowed to buy silk above the value of 50 bezants. The rules to pro-
tect Greek ships and sailors who had suffered shipwreck on shores controlled
by the Russians were taken over from the 911 treaty.
Legal texts from later years and concerning foreign trade relationships and
foreign merchants have survived only in North-Western Russia, especially in
the laws of cities such as Novgorod, Pskov and Smolensk. As Novgorod and
Pskov will be treated separately as more or less independent legal microcosms,
the discussion can be limited here to Smolensk.
As indicated before, the Smolensk Pravda is the principal source. The treaty
of the ‘unknown prince’ with the Hanseatic merchants of Riga and Visby ap-
pears to be based on the Smolensk Pravda and does not offer much additional
information.
The general tenor of the Smolensk Pravda is the creation of favourable
conditions for foreign trade. This is achieved especially by making the foreign
merchant, whether German or Russian, the privileged creditor on foreign ter-
ritory: in contracts of sale (art. 5); when the Hanseatic creditor and the Smo-
lensk authorities (the prince) had competing claims (art. 6); in a claim against
a deceased slave’s estate (art. 7). Other provisions which favoured the foreign
merchant are arts. 9–10 (foreign merchants were not obliged to submit to or-
deals or duels as evidentiary instruments), arts. 19 and 30 (the foreign mer-
chant was completely free in buying and selling goods), art. 31 (freedom from
paying myt, toll fees), art. 20 (freedom to trade in other parts of each other’s
150 Cf. P.V. Savas’kov, “Normy mezhdunarodnogo morskogo prava v dogovorakh drevnerussk-
ogo gosudarstva, zakliuchennykh s Vizantiei v X veke”, Vestnik mgu, ser. ist., No. 4, 1973,
77–83.
464 chapter 15
territories; this even included the city of Lübeck for the Russians), and others.
Many of these provisions represent amended versions of rules from the rp.151
Some of the other provisions seem to aim especially at streamlining pro-
cedure and simplification: art. 34 provided that disputes were to be settled in
a single procedure without the possibility of appeal; a contract of sale could
not be rescinded once the goods had been delivered (art. 21); before sending a
bailiff to a foreign merchant the claimant must submit the case to the alder-
man of the foreign merchants’ guild (art. 22); a foreign merchant with a claim
against a local resident must seek the aid of a local official (the bailiff, detskii,
or the tiun; art. 14); in cases between a foreign and a local merchant, the court
will apply the lex loci (art. 23).
Practical aspects of long-distance trade are illustrated by a number of rules
concerning portage (arts. 15–18, 35); Smolensk itself is situated on the Dnepr
and some of the tributaries of the Dnepr (flowing to the Black Sea) and the
Western Dvina (entering the Baltic Sea at Riga) come very close together. Art.
36 granted both Smolensk and Hanseatic ships free passage along the whole
length of the Western Dvina. During the trip, merchants were free to deal with
thieves as they saw fit (art. 33). Art. 37, echoing art. 8 of the 911 treaty between
the Russians and the Greeks, protected foreign merchants who had suffered
shipwreck.
An interesting footnote to the subject of the legal position of foreign mer-
chants is provided by a collection of foreign trade agreements concluded by
or on behalf of the city and principality of Polotsk. As explained elsewhere,
Polotsk, although one of the oldest Russian principalities, hardly participated
in the ups and downs of medieval Russia because it was absorbed at an early
stage by the emerging Lithuanian state, without, however, losing its identity.
A number of commercial treaties between Polotsk and Baltic partners (the
bishop of Riga, the master of the German Order, among others) are available,
covering the period from 1263 (when Polotsk was still an independent Russian
principality) to 1447 (the last treaty concluded by Kazimir, king of Poland and
grand prince of Lithuania). The continuity of the contents is one of the strik-
ing features of these treaties. They generally stipulate the freedom to trade, on
a mutual basis (i.e. Polotsk merchants in Riga, Riga merchants in Polotsk), the
jurisdiction of local courts in all commercial disputes, and they pay much at-
tention to the question of weighing merchandise.152
151 See especially Zimin, prp ii, 78–82.

152 Cf. A.L. Khoroshkevich (comp.), Polotskie gramoty xiii – nachala xvi vv., Moskva, 1977.
chapter 16
Novgorod and Pskov
I Velikii Novgorod1
Among the medieval Russian principalities, Novgorod merits special treat-

ment on account of a number of unique features, also reflected in its legal
system. Although there was never any doubt that it, like for instance the prin-
cipalities of Vladimir and Rostov, belonged to Russia, and usually, like them,
had a prince from one of the Rurikid sub-dynasties, the latter was normally the
ruler in name only. Novgorod was governed, until it lost its independence in
1471, by its own citizenship. Moreover, its geographical position and its history
had made it into the pre-eminent contact zone between Russia and Western
Europe; its foreign trade made it the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan of all
medieval Russian polities. Finally, Novgorod, unlike the other principalities,
constituted a semi-colonial empire consisting of a vast territory populated by
non-Russian peoples, controlled by and economically subordinated to a met-
ropolitan centre.
Slavic tribes had begun to penetrate into the heavily forested regions of
North-West Russia in the course of the 8th or perhaps already the end of the
7th century. Their primitive agricultural economy could co-exist relatively
peacefully with the sparse Finnish population of hunters and gatherers. In
the following century the dense network of waterways of the area became the
scene of increased commercial traffic between Scandinavia and Byzantium
(along the Dnepr), and Scandinavia and the Near East (along the Volga). The
first permanently inhabited trading-posts emerged along the inter-connected
waterways of the Ladoga and Il’men’ lakes and the Volkhov and Lovat’ rivers,
north-west of the watershed between the three major river basins, of the Bal-
tic, the Black, and the Caspian Seas. One of these was the settlement which
later on received the name of Riurikovo Gorodishche (Rurik’s Settlement), on
the northern tip of Lake Il’men’, where the river Volkhov flows north into Lake
Ladoga.2
1 “Novgorod the Great” was the official designation, used in treaties and other official docu-
ments, in order to set Novgorod apart from other similarly named towns, such as Nizhnii
Novgorod or Novgorod Severskii; comp. similar toponymics in other languages, such as New-
ton, Neuville, Neustadt, etc.
2 V.L. Ianin, Ocherki istorii srednevekovogo Novgoroda (hereafter: Ianin, Ocherki), Moskva, 2008,
24, quotes E.N. Nosov, Novgorodskoe (Riurikovo) gorodishche, Leningrad, 1990, although this

466 chapter 16
The population of Gorodishche and similar settlements in the same area

(Staraia Ladoga, Staraia Russa, Gnezdovo) appeared to have been ethnically
mixed, with a predominance of Scandinavians. Novgorod itself was founded,
or rather grew out of a cluster of small settlements, around the middle of the
10th century, just a few kilometres north of Riurikovo Gorodishche.3
The medieval city of Novgorod straddled the Volkhov River, its left bank
was called the Sophia Side, the right (eastern) bank the Trade (or Commer-
cial) Side. At the centre of the Sophia Side on the river bank stood the for-
tress (Kreml’ or detinets), surrounded by three quarters, the Liudin konets
(the People’s or Potters’ quarter, in the south), the Zagorodskii konets (in the
middle), and the Nerevskii konets (in the north). On the other side of the river,
opposite the Kreml’, were the Market Square and the Court of Iaroslav (where
veche meetings were held) and around it was the Slavno quarter (or Slaven-
skii konets). There was a bridge from the Kreml’ to the Market Square and the
Court of Iaroslav. North of the Slavno quarter and separated by a small stream
was the Plotnitskii konets (Carpenters’ quarter). Of the five principal churches,
the sobory (see Chapter 21, on the Church), the Sophia cathedral sobor stood
within the walls of the fortress, the Nikolo-Dvorishchenskii sobor in the Court
of Iaroslav, the Znamenskii sobor in the Slavno quarter, while the sobory of the
two oldest Novgorod monasteries, the Iur’ev and Antoniev monasteries, stood
outside the city walls. The two guild churches of the Russian foreign and do-
mestic merchants (the churches of St. Paraskeve-Piatnitsa and of St. John na
Okopakh) and the two most important compounds of foreign merchants (the
Gothic Court and the German Court) were all in the central area on or around
the Market Square and the Court of Iaroslav.
According to Ianin, the Slavno, Liudin and Nerevskii quarters arose on the
sites of the originally ethnic settlements of, respectively, Slovenes, Krivichi and
Finns.4
The historical province (principality) of Novgorod consisted of an area with
a radius of roughly 200–250 km, with Novgorod at the centre and surround-
ed by the five ‘fifths’ (piatiny), the Vodskaia in the north, the Obonezh’e (area
around Lake Onega) in the north-east, the Bezhitskaia in the south-east, the
work is missing from Nosov’s bibliography in the memorial publication Gosudarstvo i ob-
shchestvo v Rossii xv – nachala xx veka (A.P. Pavlov, ed.), Sankt-Peterburg, 2007, 598.
3 Cf. Ianin, Ocherki, 27–30; I.Ia. Froianov, Miatezhnyi Novgorod, Sankt-Peterburg, 1992, 41–45;
V.A. Bulkin, I.V. Dubov, G.S. Lebedev, Arkheologicheskie pamiatniki Drevnei Rusi ix–xi vekov,
Leningrad, 1978, 90–94.
4 Ianin, Ocherki, 27, who points out that the names of the three quarters suggest their original
ethnic nature.
Novgorod and Pskov 467
Derevskaia in the south, and the Shelonskaia in the west.5 Whether the piatiny
division goes back to the times of the Novgorod republic is a much debated
question; the majority of scholars accept a relatively early origin. The ques-
tion is closely related to another issue – the putative connection between the
division of Novgorod itself into five quarters and the five surrounding regions.
V.F. Andreev traced the locations of the main landholdings of the principal
Novgorod monasteries and reached the conclusion that there was indeed such
a connection.6 This hypothesis gains credibility by the fact that the four oldest
quarters (kontsy) were each contiguous with their adjacent piatina.7 The piat-
iny then were, at least hypothetically, the extensions of the individual quarters
into the open countryside, and were controlled by them.8
The expansion of Novgorod power affected first the region to the north of
Lake Onega (the Zaonezh’e), and then the huge area to the east of this, the
basin of the Northern Dvina (also known as the Zavoloch’e),9 where Novgorod
penetrated in the course of the 12th century, and finally the distant regions
further east and south-east of Dvina Land, such as the Viatka region (see below
5 South-east of the Bezhitskaia fifth was the Novgorod exclave of Volok-Lamsk, on the border
of the Smolensk and Suzdal’ principalities, a source of frequent disputes with Novgorod’s
neighbours.
6 V.F. Andreev, “O proiskhozhdenii novgorodskikh piatin”, A.V. Pavlov (ed.), Rossiiskoe gosu-
darstvo v iv–xvii vv. Sbornik statei, posviashchennyi 75-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia Iu.G. Alekse-
eva, Sankt-Peterburg, 2002, 180–185.
7 The connection is as follows: Nerevskii quarter – Vodskaia piatina, Liudin quarter –
Shelonskaia piatina, Slavno quarter – Derevskaia piatina, Plotnitskii quarter – Obonezhskaia
piatina; the less ancient Zagorodskii quarter was connected with the more distant Bezhits-
kaia piatina, according to Andreev. The main boundaries between the four adjacent (to
Novgorod) piatiny were formed by major rivers, as follows: Vodskaia/Volkhov River/Obone-
zhskaia/Msta River/Derevskaia/Lovat’ River/Shelonskaia/Luga River/Vodskaia. The Upper
Msta River separated the Derevskaia and Bezhetskaia piatiny. Cf. A.N. Nasonov, “Russkaia
Zemlia” i obrazovanie territorii Drevnerusskogo Gosudarstva, Sankt-Peterburg, 2002 (orig. Len-
ingrad, 1951), map opposite 113.
8 According to Frolov, the piatiny were an adminstrative innovation introduced by M oscow
after the absorption of Novgorod. A.A. Frolov, “«Geograficheskii faktor» v organizatsii
gosudarstvennykh pozemel’nykh opisanii kontsa xv – serediny xvi v.”, T.N. Dzhakson,
A.V. Podosinov (eds.), Kniga kartiny Zemli. Sbornik statei v chest’ Iriny Gennadievny Konovalo-
voi, Moskva, 2014, 257–284.
9 Zavoloch’e referred originally to the basin of the Vaga River, but then became more or less syn-
onymous with Dvina Land; from the 16th century onwards it referred to an even larger territo-
ry, stretching further east to the Pechora River; cf. Iu.S. Vasil’ev, “Ob istoriko-geograficheskom
poniatii «Zavoloch’e»”, A.L. Shapiro (ed.), Problemy istorii feodal’noi Rossii. Sbornik statei k
60-letiiu prof. V.V. Mavrodina, Leningrad, 1971, 103–109.
468 chapter 16
the Note on Khlynov), Pechora and Perm’, where Novgorod’s control was epi-
sodic and weak. All these regions in the Russian North were densely forested
(merging into the tundra in the north) and very sparsely populated, serving
primarily as a source for the trade in pelts and wax. There were practically no
towns of any importance; Novgorod colonists lived mostly in small trading-
posts (pogosty).
The principality of Pskov was not formally part of Novgorod territory. Sud-
islav, a younger son of St. Vladimir, is mentioned as prince of Pskov. His brother
Iaroslav the Wise and then the latter’s sons did away with the independence
of Pskov and Sudislav was forced to take the habit of a monk and died in 1063.
Pskov was controlled directly by the princes in Kiev, but as they also still con-
trolled Novgorod at that time, the prince of Novgorod was the actual ruler.
When Novgorod successfully claimed independence from Kiev during the
crisis of 1136–1137 (see below), Pskov grasped the opportunity to make itself
independent again.10
Sources
For a general framework for the history of Novgorod as an independent state
(i.e. until 1471), the First Novgorod Chronicle is the basic source (see the rel-
evant section in Chapter 2). The state archives of Novgorod have been lost, un-
like those of Moscow and Tver’ (Moscow’s principal rival during the 14th and
15th century).11 After Novgorod’s incorporation into the grand principality of
Moscow by the end of the 15th century, relatively abundant Novgorod archival
materials from the later period are available,12 but they reflect aspects of pro-
vincial administration of the Muscovy state.
The most important publication of legal documents (treaties and various
charters) of Novgorod (and Pskov) origin is still the 1949 volume, edited by S.N.
Valk, “Charters of Novgorod the Great and of Pskov”.13 This work was comple-
mented in 1991 by a chronological commentary from the hand of V.L. Ianin.14
10 Cf. A.V. Valerov, Novgorod i Pskov. Ocherki politicheskoi istorii Severo-Zapadnoi Rusi xi–xiv
vekov, Sankt-Peterburg, 2004, 92–117.
11 The grand principality of Tver’, situated between the territories of Moscow and Novgorod,
existed from 1247 to 1485, when it was incorporated into the Muscovy state. The Tver’
archives were transferred to Moscow. Cf. Cherepnin, Arkhivy I, 224–226.
12 Such as the collections of land descriptions (pistsovye knigi), made for administrative and
fiscal purposes; see K.V. Baranov (ed.), Pistsovye knigi Novgorodskoi zemli, Moskva, 1999
(1), 1999 (2), 2001 (3), 2004 (4), 2004 (5).
13 S.N. Valk (ed.), Gramoty Velikogo Novgoroda i Pskova, Moskva/Leningrad, 1949 (cited as
gvnp in this work).
14 V.L. Ianin, Novgorodskie akty xii–xv vv., Moskva/Leningrad, 1991 (hereafter: Ianin, Akty).
Legislation
The volume of specifically legislative sources is comparatively modest. The
Russkaia Pravda, at least its oldest layer, the Pravda of Iaroslav, can of course
be regarded as the oldest Novgorod law known to us. However, this takes us
back to a time when there was as yet no question of Novgorod as an indepen-
dent political entity. The first known enactments of Novgorod proper are the
church statutes of Novgorod princes, of Vsevolod Mstislavich and of Sviatoslav
Ol’govich, together with the so-called Testament of Vsevolod Mstislavich (see
Chapter 6). Only the statute of Sviatoslav Ol’govich can be dated confidently at
1137; the dates of the other two are much disputed.
The major specifically Novgorod law is the Court Charter of Novgorod. Al-
though its final version, the only one known at present, was probably com-
piled around 1471 when Novgorod had already lost its independence, most of
its contents can tentatively be traced back to an earlier period, perhaps as far
back as 1385 (see the section on the Novgorod Court Charter in Chapter 8). The
Novgorod Court Charter dealt with the comparatively narrow subject of pro-
cedure before the Novgorod courts, and this raises the question about the sub-
stantive law, criminal as well as civil, in force during the period of Novgorod’s
independence.
The emergence of Novgorod as an independent state coincided more or less
with the final compilation of the Expanded Pravda. The vitality and effective-
ness of the rp can be observed in the close parallels to it offered by early le-
gal texts from Novgorod, in particular the 1190–1191 treaty with the Hanseatic
League (see below). It is safe to assume therefore that Novgorod’s domestic
legal system was based primarily on the Expanded Pravda, supplemented by
customary law and incidental enactments (of which almost nothing survived).
It was undoubtedly also affected by the numerous treaties concluded with
foreign powers.15 Novgorod’s legal system is abundantly illustrated by a large
number of private charters (gramoty), containing various legal dispositions,
such as gifts, sales, testaments, etc. (see below). This traditional source of infor-
mation is nowadays supplemented by numerous birch-bark documents (see
below), many of which contain information of a legal nature.16
15 A.A. Zimin, in his comments to the Novgorod Court Charter (prp ii, 210), is of the same
view; a similar position had been taken already by B.D. Grekov, Krest’iane na Rusi s drev-
neishikh vremen do xvii veka, Moskva/Leningrad, 1946, 406.
16 L.V. Cherepnin devoted an entire chapter to legal documents in his monograph on
Novgorod birch-bark documents, with the title “The Russkaia Pravda in Action” (Russkaia
Pravda v deistvii), Novgorodskie berestianye gramoty kak istoricheskii istochnik, Moskva,
1969, 36–112.
470 chapter 16
Treaties
The forerunner of Novgorod’s rich treasury of treaties was the pact concluded
between the Novgorodians and the Viking leader Rurik, at least if one reads
the 860–862 entry in the various chronicles17 with a certain amount of benevo-
lence.18 Once the more mythical or just legendary aspects of the story have
been peeled off, there remains an account of a negotiated settlement between
a predominantly commercial community and the chief of a band of merce-
naries, not unlike the deals Novgorod concluded in later times with different
Rurikid princes.
The treaties of Novgorod can conveniently be divided into treaties with for-
eign powers and internal Russian treaties, i.e. treaties with Russian princes.19
Most of the foreign treaties were with the Hanseatic League or its leading cit-
ies; other parties include various Baltic cities (most of them equally Hanseatic
members), the German Order, Sweden and Norway, Lithuania, Poland; and,
as a curiosity, the German colony in Novgorod.20 The Russian treaty partners
were the princes of Moscow and Tver’, Novgorod’s Russian neighbours. Most of
the treaties with Tver’ are very similar in content.21
The oldest surviving treaty text is of 1190–1191, between Novgorod and the
Hanseatic League, and provides a good example of the kind of legal infor-
mation such documents may yield. It was concluded on the Novgorod side
by prince Iaroslav Vladimirovich, after conferring with the mayor (posadnik)
Miroshka and the city commander (tysiatskii) Iakov, and with all the citizenry.
Later Novgorod treaties usually omit reference to a prince. The 1190–1191 treaty
explicitly confirmed a previous treaty (staryi mir). Its contents echo strongly
the oldest part of the rp, the Pravda of Iaroslav.22
17 The Younger Version (Mladshii Izvod) of the First Novgorod Chronicle has a more elabo-
rate story than the Primary Chronicle.
18 This is also the approach adopted by the most prominent modern historian of Novgorod,
V.L. Ianin, in Ocherki, 22–26.
19 Following the example of gvnp, which devoted its first two sections to these two catego-
ries. An (incomplete) list of Novgorod treaties in Feldbrugge, “The Treaties of Medieval
Russia”, lmr, 181–231, at 220–224.
20 See also S.M. Kashtanov, Iz istorii russkogo srednevekovogo istochnika. Akty x–xvi vv.,
Moskva, 1996, 58–65.
21 The treaties with Tver’ cover the Nos.1–10, 12, 14–15, 17–18 and 20 of gvnp. Of these the
Nos.1–3, 6–7, 9–10, 14–15, 18 and 20 represent a comprehensive package of treaty relations
between the two states. In a comparable treaty with the Moscow grand prince of 1435
(gvnp No.19) the same formulas were used. English translations of Nos.1, 6, 14 and 15 in
Kaiser, Laws.
22 Text in gvnp No.28, 55–56; prp ii, 125–126; see also E.A. Rybina, “O dvukh drevneishikh
torgovykh dogovorakh Novgoroda”, V.L. Ianin (ed.), Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik,
Charters and Other Documents

Novgorod charters (i.e. non-legislative documents) can be divided (again fol-
lowing the example of gvnp) into public and private charters. Public charters
(“internal administration charters” as gvnp calls them) are to be understood
as charters issued by a public authority (prince, bishop, posadnik, veche) or
bilateral acts where one of the parties is a public authority. They usually grant
a certain right or privilege or assign some material advantage and often take
the shape of a zhalovannaia (grant charter). The oldest are several charters
from prince Vsevolod Mstislavich, among them a grant charter of 1130 (prob-
able date) of Vsevolod and his father, grand prince Mstislav Vladimirovich of
Kiev, the oldest Russian charter surviving in the original.23
The collection of private charters24 from Novgorod proper in gvnp starts
with the oldest available private texts in Russian legal history (in 16th century
copies), a gift charter and the testament of the monk Antonii the “Roman”
(Rimlianin), and numbers 21 items, gift, sale, barter, and other charters, and
testaments.25 There is a much larger number (more than 150) from Dvina Land,
a few from the end of the 14th century and the rest from the 15th century. A
smaller but still considerable number (more than 40) is from the area around
Lake Onega (the Obonezh’e), located between Dvina Land and the metropolitan
area of Novgorod. The oldest charter in the latter collection is from 1181–1182,
but otherwise the overwhelming majority are again from the 15th century.
Birch-Bark Documents
Of the more than 1100 Russian birch-bark documents now available, more than
1000 have been found in Novgorod. Birch-bark documents therefore are pri-
marily of interest for Novgorod history. A certain number of them also have
legal relevance. There are several testaments and many short documents
concerned with various legal-economic matters: instructions to agents and
servants, disputes over debts or damages, etc. Their value is not so much in re-
vealing unknown aspects of the legal system of medieval Russia as in offering
a vivid illustration of the known law-in-action.
3(13), Leningrad, 1989, 43–50. In gvnp the treaty is dated 1189–1199, but Rybina has argued
convincingly that the date of the treaty can be narrowed down to 1190–1191, as had already
been suggested by Zimin in his comments in prp ii, 126–127.
23 gvnp No.81, 140–141; prp ii, 102 and 110–111 (Comments by A.A. Zimin).
24 See generally, V.F. Andreev, Novgorodskii chastnyi akt xii–xv vv., Leningrad, 1986.
25 Novgorod testaments, of which the majority was from Dvina Land, were the subject of
a special study by V.F. Andreev, “Novgorodskie dukhovnye xii–xv vv.”, Vspomogatel’nye
istoricheskie distsipliny, xiii (1982), 131–148.
472 chapter 16
A general discussion of birch-bark documents as a legal source is to be

found in Chapter 11.
General Historical Overview

If we follow the Primary Chronicle, Novgorod’s history started in 862 when the
Slavic (Slovenes and Krivichi) and Finnish tribes (Chud’ and Ves’) of North-
West Russia invited Varangians or “Russes” to “rule and reign over them”. The
Varangian chief Rurik then installed himself in Novgorod (which at that time
was nothing more than a collection of dispersed settlements). This episode,
one of the most controversial in Russian historiography, is interpreted by Ianin
in the following way.26
Slavic agriculturalists (as already mentioned above) had penetrated into the
area, sparsely populated by Finnish hunters and fishers, in the course of the 8th
and 9th centuries. The different economic activities of these two ethnic groups
allowed relatively peaceful co-existence. The Varangians or Vikings had been
a presence in this part of Russia for some time, as raiders and traders. They
had imposed (as reported by the Chronicle) tribute on the local p opulation,
but had been driven out (in 860). In the ensuing chaos, the need for military
protection against external threats and for the imposition of internal order
was felt. The result was a compact between a foreign chieftain (Rurik) with
his warrior band and the local inhabitants who would accept a ruler selected
and paid by themselves. Rurik’s successor Oleg, apparently unhappy with the
arrangement, abandoned Novgorod and went south, subjugating several Slavic
tribal confederacies, and finally conquered Kiev where he remained. He then
imposed an annual tribute of 300 grivna on Novgorod, “for the preservation of
peace” (882).
Ianin views this episode as the mould which determined many of the later
characteristic features of Novgorod’s subsequent role in medieval Russia: its
contractual relationship with its prince and its relative independence from the
ruling dynasty, its uncomfortable relationship with Kiev, the dominance of the
financial aspect in its relationship with its nominal ruler, and even the strong
internal divisions within the city itself, which went back to its original multi-
ethnic character (Slovenians, Krivichi, and various Finnish elements).
Many older authors, especially during the Soviet era, were inclined to
relegate the entire Rurik story to the realm of legend,27 but nowadays most
26 Ianin, Ocherki, 22–26, 376–377.

27 Such as D.I. Ilovaiskii, Stanovlenie Rusi, Moskva, 2003 (orig. Moskva, 1906), 15; Grekov, Ki-
evskaia Rus’, 452; Iushkov, Stroi, 66. Kliuchevskii (Kurs I, Lecture ix) calls the Rurik story,
not a reflection of popular tradition, but “a schematic parable concerning the origin of
scholars accept the historicity of a Viking leader, named Rurik, coming to Rus-
sia around the time indicated by the Chronicle. Whether the circumstances of
Rurik’s arrival, as related by the Chronicle, justify the conclusion that a com-
pact as sketched by Ianin was actually achieved and that such a compact pro-
vided the basis and model for Novgorod’s relations with the house of Rurik in
the following centuries can be doubted. Chronicle writing in the Russian mid-
dle ages was often a matter of shaping and bending dimly remembered events
from a distant past in a form which suited the ruler for whom one was writing.
By the middle of the 10th century, as observed above, Novgorod consisted
of three small settlements, possibly connected with three different ethnic en-
tities. Its relative unimportance is illustrated by its absence from the lists of
Russian towns included in the Russo-Byzantine treaties of the 10th century.
It is first mentioned again in the Chronicle in 947 when the widowed prin-
cess Olga organized an expansionary expedition to North-West Russia. When
her son, Sviatoslav, had appointed his sons Iaropolk and Oleg as subordinate
princes in Kiev28 and Dereva in 970, the people of Novgorod requested Sviato-
slav also to appoint a prince for them, or otherwise “we will choose a prince of
our own”. Sviatoslav then appointed Vladimir, his son by Maliusha, one of his
concubines.
The story illustrates the lower status of Novgorod during this early period,
as compared to the main cities of Southern Russia, as well as the Novgorodian
tradition of being assertive where the selection of its prince was concerned.
With Vladimir, Novgorod gradually returned to the mainstream of events.
After Sviatoslav had been killed by the Pechenegs in 972, his son Iaropolk suc-
ceeded him; after a few years he fell out with his brother Oleg in Dereva and in
the ensuing hostilities Oleg was assassinated in 977. Vladimir, afraid that the
same fate was awaiting him, fled to Scandinavia and Iaropolk sent his lieuten-
ants (posadniki) to rule in Novgorod. Soon, however, Vladimir returned with a
force of Varangians, recaptured Novgorod and marched on Kiev. Iaropolk was
murdered as the result of a palace plot and Vladimir became the sole ruler
of the Kievan realm. His maternal uncle Dobrynia was appointed to govern
the [Russian] state”, created at some later moment. A.V. Kuza occupied a transitional posi-
tion in a learned study on the formation of the Novgorod territory; although he referred
to the “legendary” Rurik, he treated the Chronicle narrative of the 860 events as basi-
cally historical; A.V. Kuza, “Novgorodskaia zemlia”, L.G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Drevnerusskie
kniazhestva x–xiii vv., Moskva, 1975, 144–201, at 146ff.
28 Although Kiev was undoubtedly the capital city of Russia at that time, Sviatoslav’s atten-
tion was directed mainly towards the south and he had established his headquarters in
Pereiaslavets in present-day Roumania in 969.
474 chapter 16
Novgorod; Dobrynia also served as Vladimir’s chief military advisor. He was

succeeded as prince of Novgorod by Vladimir’s eldest son, Vysheslav. The con-
version of Novgorod took place around this time and followed immediately
upon that of Kiev. The first bishop of Novgorod, Ioakim of Korsun, arrived in
989. Vysheslav died in 1010 and was succeeded by another son of Vladimir, Iaro-
slav (later on known as Iaroslav Mudryi, the ‘Wise’).29 The following years, par-
ticularly 1014–1016, placed Novgorod in the centre of developments and were
of decisive importance for its history.
In 1014, Iaroslav ceased the payment of the annual tribute to Kiev (which
had risen to 2000 grivna at that time), no doubt supported in this by the people
of Novgorod. His father Vladimir started to prepare a campaign to subdue his
rebellious son, but died in July 1015. Initially, among Vladimir’s numerous sons,
Sviatopolk emerged as the successor, after murdering his half-brothers Boris
and Gleb (Russia’s first saints) and then Sviatoslav. Iaroslav in the meantime
was facing internal troubles in Novgorod, where hostilities between the people
of Novgorod and Iaroslav’s Varangian troops had flared up. Eventually Iaroslav
obtained the support of the Novgorodians and in a complicated campaign
with many ups and downs took possession of the throne of Kiev. Most authors
nowadays agree that the issuing of the oldest version of the rp, the Pravda of
Iaroslav, was connected with these events and reflected certain concessions
made to the people of Novgorod (see Chapter 4)
Some of the copies of the First Novgorod Chronicle, in the last entry for the
year 1016, after the words “Iaroslav went to Kiev and established himself on the
throne of his father” (also found in the Primary Chronicle), added a sentence
about the generous payments Iaroslav made to his soldiers from Novgorod,
and then continued: “and he gave them a code of law [pravda] and wrote a law
[ustav], saying «live according to this charter, and observe it, as I have written
it»”. After these words then follows the text of the rp.
Most commentators agree that the rp text was inserted into the First
Novgorod Chronicle text at a later date (it is absent in the Primary Chronicle
and in several old versions of the First Novgorod Chronicle). Ianin still held
that by the pravda mentioned in the First Novgorod Chronicle the rp was in-
deed meant, or at least its first part, the Pravda of Iaroslav. These two views of
course do not exclude each other. Ianin then extended his argument by stating
29 Dobrynia is still mentioned in 985 and the appointment of Vysheslav appears under the
year 988, but need not have been in that year. Later on (1016) the Chronicle states that
Iaroslav had been in Novgorod for 28 years, but not necessarily as his father’s representa-
tive; he was probably born in 978 (he died in 1054, 76 years old), so he would have been
only ten years old in 988.
that while the rp was actually a law for the whole of Russia, it contained a
special concession to the Novgorod elite in the form of the retention of the
right to revenge and blood feuds (as contained in art. 1) and of the immunity
from princely jurisdiction granted by the same token. About the ustav, Ianin
wrote that the text did not survive, but that it contained at least a restatement
of the original limitations of princely power as expressed in the compact con-
cluded with Rurik in 862.30 Views similar to those of Ianin had already been
put forward by Cherepnin, except for Ianin’s extension concerning the special
concession to Novgorod.31
Although Ianin’s views produced a coherent picture, not contradicted by
known facts, some of them (especially his suggestions concerning art. 1 of the
Short Pravda and the mysterious ustav) are a concatenation of conjectures.
What can be considered as established is that the involvement of the men of
Novgorod in the events of 1014–1016 was of decisive importance for Iaroslav’s
success, that there must have been some kind of reward for this effort, and that
the origin of the first part of the rp (the Pravda of Iaroslav) must be viewed
against this background.32
In the following years, Iaroslav often stayed in Novgorod and Novgorod sup-
port remained an important factor in his difficult relations with one of his
surviving brothers, Mstislav. The two brothers finally agreed in 1026 to share
power, and this arrangement lasted until Mstislav’s death in 1034/1036, leav-
ing Iaroslav in complete and uncontested control of the Kievan realm. Iaroslav
then set up his eldest son Vladimir as subordinate prince in Novgorod. This
Vladimir died two years before his father (1052 and 1054). Whether a prince
was appointed for Novgorod in 1052 is unclear. Iziaslav, the surviving eldest son
of Iaroslav, may have acted as de facto ruler.33 According to one of the versions
of the First Novgorod Chronicle, Iziaslav sent his son Mstislav to Novgorod as
prince upon the death of Vladimir in 1052.34 Novgorod is curiously absent in
the testamentary dispositions of Iaroslav the Wise in 1054, when he distributed
the most important principalities among his sons, Iziaslav, as the eldest, re-
ceiving Kiev. The explanation is probably that the obviously important seat of
Novgorod had already been reserved for Iziaslav’s son.
30 Ianin, Ocherki, 36–37.

31 Cherepnin, Arkhivy I, 239–249.
32 See in particular A.A. Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, Moskva, 1999, 35–40.
33 Gleb, a son of Sviatoslav, the latter a brother of Iziaslav and prince of Chernigov (and later
on grand prince of Kiev), was given the Novgorod seat in 1068/1069, which he occupied
until his death in battle in 1078.
34 Ianin, Ocherki, 39–40, makes the valid point that Iziaslav could not at that time bypass his
father Iaroslav, still alive in 1052.
476 chapter 16
For several decades, the succession of Novgorod princes, appointees of the

grand prince of Kiev, proceeded relatively smoothly, at least the chroniclers
have little to report on this matter.35 But in 1095 the people of Novgorod told
prince Davyd Sviatoslavich, who had just left Novgorod for Smolensk, never to
come back, and they invited Mstislav, the son of Vladimir Monomakh (then
prince of Pereiaslavl’), to come to Novgorod. Mstislav had already been in-
stalled earlier in Novgorod in 1088 as a 12-year-old boy. This is one of the earli-
est instances (if not the earliest) of what was to become the practice in later
years: Novgorod princes being invited and dismissed.
This practice was reinforced by the sequel to this story in 1102. Sviatopolk
Iziaslavich (who had himself served as prince of Novgorod from 1078 to 1088),
at that time grand prince of Kiev, had agreed with Vladimir Monomakh (Ms-
tislav’s father and at that time prince of Smolensk) that Mstislav would be
moved from Novgorod to Vladimir-Volynsk, while Sviatopolk’s son (probably
a younger son, Iziaslav) would receive Novgorod. While all the princes were
together in Kiev, among them also young Mstislav with a delegation from
Novgorod, the men of Novgorod went separately to see the grand prince and
addressed him as follows:
We were sent to you, oh Prince, with positive instructions that our city
does not want either you or your son. If your son had two heads, you
might send him. But the fact is that Vsevolod assigned us Mstislav as our
prince. We brought him up as one of us while you left us in the lurch.
The chronicler was obviously so struck by the brazen and self-confident lan-
guage of this remonstration that he thought it worthwhile to quote it verbatim.
What is more is that the Novgorod people had it their way, a most eloquent
demonstration of the uniquely powerful position they had been able to secure
for themselves.
Another significant step in Novgorod’s progress towards full independence
had been the appointment of a governor or mayor (posadnik) by the boyar
leadership, without consulting the prince, at that time (1088–1094) Mstislav
Vladimirovich, a boy still in his teens.36 Previous posadniki had been appointed
35 Gleb Sviatoslavich was succeeded upon his death in 1078 by his cousin Sviatopolk Iz-
iaslavich, who again left Novgorod in 1088 to reign in Turov. Novgorod then went to Gleb’s
brother David (although young Mstislav Vladimirovich is also mentioned as prince of
Novgorod during the same period).
36 Ianin, Ocherki, 41; V.L. Ianin, Novgorodskie posadniki, Moskva, 2003 (2nd ed.), 87. The first
elected posadnik, according to Ianin, was Zavid, whose son Dimitrii served as posadnik for
seven months, until his death in 1118.
by the prince as his representatives during his absence. Such appointments

continued in later years, but then these officials were called namestniki (lieu-
tenants). When Mstislav had become a widower in 1122 at the age of 46, he
remarried the daughter of Dmitrii Zavidich, who had been the posadnik in 1118.
As Rurikid princes of this period almost invariably married Russian or foreign
princesses, this marriage demonstrated the prestige attached to the position of
Novgorod posadnik.
The princes did not abandon their grip on Novgorod without a fight. The
Novgorod Chronicle reports (1118) that Vladimir Monomakh and his son Ms-
tislav summoned the Novgorod boyars to Kiev and had them swear an oath of
allegiance, after which some of them were retained and executed37 on account
of certain wrongdoings. Mstislav, who could expect to succeed his father as
grand prince of Kiev, moved to Kiev in 1117, presumably to be closer to events
in the capital, and left his eldest son Vsevolod behind in Novgorod as his rep-
resentative (Vsevolod was probably around 20 years old then). When Vladimir
Monomakh died in 1125, Mstislav did succeed as grand prince. The people of
Novgorod then accepted Vsevolod as their new prince, but made him swear to
remain in Novgorod for the rest of his life.
When Mstislav himself died in 1132, his childless brother Iaropolk suc-
ceeded him. Iaropolk called Vsevolod to Kiev, offered him the principality of
Pereiaslavl’ and the prospect of succession. The plan failed because the people
of Pereiaslavl’ refused to go along with it and the Novgorodians felt betrayed.
They dismissed Vsevolod, but after a while allowed him to return. The recon-
ciliation did not last long. The years 1133–1136 were turbulent and Novgorod
was involved in military confrontations on all sides. In 1136 the matter came
to a head. Vsevolod was arrested by his own people and confined under guard
with his own family in the bishop’s residence. Three formal charges were
laid against him: his Pereiaslavl’ escapade, his poor leadership as a military
commander, and his disregard for the serf (smerd) population. Only after a
new prince, Sviatoslav Ol’govich from Chernigov, had been installed did the
Novgorodians release Vsevolod. He then went to Pskov (which was still part
of Novgorod territory then) and attempted to regain control of Novgorod with
the help of the Pskovians and his remaining Novgorod supporters, but he died
soon in Pskov in February 1138.
Sviatoslav Ol’govich, whose position was weak from the beginning as he did
not have his own domains on Novgorod territory to support him financially,
did not last long and was dismissed by the Novgorodians in April 1138.
37 Or “banished” in other translations; zatochi.

478 chapter 16
The events of 1136 constituted a major milestone in the history of Novgorod,

marking the reduction of the position of the prince as the supreme ruler to
that of the chief official in the service of a republic which was in effect run by
its upper class of boyars. It also marked the beginning of the independence of
Pskov, hitherto a ‘suburb’ (prigorod) of Novgorod, as the people of Pskov had
taken the side of Vsevolod and invited his brother Sviatopolk to be their own
prince.
The 12th century was also the time when Novgorod’s trading relations with
Western Europe began to assume significant proportions. Novgorod had been
an important point of transit in prehistoric times for the trade between North-
ern Europe and Byzantium and the Near East. When trade patterns changed
due to political developments in these areas, the North-West of Europe be-
came the chief trading partner for Russia and Novgorod was the hub of this
relationship. Scandinavian merchants from Gotland were the first to acquire
their own permanent compound within the walls of Novgorod, the Gothic
Court (Gotskii dvor) with the church of St. Olav, at the beginning of the 12th
century. The Hanseatic merchants followed later on, around the end of the
12th century, with the German Court and its church of St. Peter. The treaty
between Novgorod and the Hanseatic towns of 1190–1191 has been mentioned
above already; the reference in the treaty to the staryi mir (the old treaty) indi-
cates that relations with the Hanseatic League had already been in existence
for quite a while then.
While historians generally agree that the struggle for independence, ulti-
mately successful, was the central theme of Novgorod history for the period
up to 1136, it is far more difficult to find a suitable vantage point for looking at
the following period. Ianin has stressed the importance of the Novgorod elite,
the boyars, as the dominant force in the city’s policies, promoting their inter-
ests in their struggles with the princes, the ecclesiastical powers, and the ordi-
nary people, and striving to turn the governmental and legal machinery of the
city into an instrument in their own hands.38 Their narrow-minded obsession
with their own interests, leading to the estrangement of the ordinary people,
eventually caused not only their own downfall, but the loss of independence
of Novgorod itself, because, when the pressure from Muscovy increased, the
general populace greeted the grand prince as a liberator, according to Ianin.
Froianov, on the other hand, in line with the approach adopted by him in
his major works on Kievan Russia, made the general population the basic force
determining developments in Novgorod. His monograph on Novgorod history
38 One only has to look at the titles of the chapters in Ianin’s Ocherki, which make very clear
that the boyar class is the lead actor in the author’s view.
described a series of momentous events in Novgorod’s history as illustrative

of his thesis. Froianov pointed out, correctly, that the boyars were almost al-
ways bitterly divided and that any particular boyar faction could succeed only
if it managed to obtain the support of the mass of the population. The gen-
eral background of his approach is his criticism of the old standard theories
of Soviet historians such as Grekov, who postulated a very early beginning of
‘feudalism’ (in the Marxist sense) in Russia, which allowed them to explain al-
most any kind of social upheaval as “exacerbation of the class struggle”. Ianin’s
views still reflected this traditional approach, albeit in a more sophisticated
way. Froianov, notwithstanding his critical attitude, also shows many traces of
his Soviet upbringing in his dogmatic treatment of concepts like ‘feudalism’ or
the ‘state’.39
A new perspective was recently proposed by O.V. Sevast’ianova.40 She at-
tributed a more decisive role in determining developments in Novgorod to
the princes and their incessant dynastic struggles. Novgorod, she argued, re-
mained essentially a subordinate principality of the grand princes of Kiev (and
later on Vladimir) and was used as a pawn in the princes’ conflicts. In this pro-
cess princes were often inclined to grant favours and privileges to Novgorod,
in order to enlist its support. Novgorod would also regularly serve as a prince’s
stepping-stone to the throne of Kiev.
Sevast’ianova’s views, which can in most cases be reconciled with those
of Ianin, have the advantage of accentuating the general Russian context of
Novgorod’s history, rather than looking at it as something determined by its
internal dynamic.
As the purpose of this section is only to offer a sketch of the history of
Novgorod as an independent entity, insofar as it might help to understand the
peculiarities of its legal system, we shall limit ourselves to pointing out certain
prominent themes, without attempting to impose an explanatory framework
on them. Most of the more spectacular developments and events in Novgorod
history display the interaction of such themes.
A factor of long-lasting influence was the emergence of a powerful neighbour
in the East, appearing variously as the prince of Vladimir (on the Kliazma),
39 See also A.V. Petrov, who defended an intermediate view, according to which the exis-
tence of small urban communities, headed by boyar families, was a decisive element in
the socio-political make-up of Novgorod; A.V. Petrov, “K obsuzhdeniiu problem istorii
vechevogo Novgoroda”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko, A.V. Maiorov (eds.), Rossica Antiqua 2006.
Issledovaniia i materialy, Sankt-Peterburg, 2006, 260–269.
40 O.V. Sevast’ianova, Drevnii Novgorod: novgorodsko-kniazheskie otnosheniia v xi – pervoi
polovine xv v., Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 2011 (originally defended as a thesis at the Uni-
versity of Zürich in 2008).
480 chapter 16
Rostov Velikiii, or Suzdal’. One of the younger sons of Vladimir Monomakh was
Iurii Dolgorukii (†1157), prince of Rostov and Suzdal’ and later on also grand
prince of Kiev. Of his 11 sons, two were of particular significance in connection
with Novgorod.
The oldest son alive in 1157 was Andrei Bogoliubskii, who had become
prince of Vladimir (on the Kliazma) in 1155. With him the centre of gravity of
Kievan Russia moved from Kiev to Vladimir, a fact also expressed in the grand
princely title adopted by Andrei and by the latter’s permission to his younger
brother Gleb to ascend the throne in Kiev.41 In the same year (1157) Andrei also
assumed the princely seat of Suzdal’. His ambitions brought him into conflict
with Novgorod. In 1167 the Novgorodians had ‘shown the road’ to their prince
Sviatoslav Rostislavich, an appointee of Andrei Bogoliubskii,42 and invited Ro-
man, the son of the then grand prince of Kiev, Mstislav Iziaslavich. Two years
later the matter came to a head. The point at issue was the tribute from the
Zavoloch’e region. A 7000-strong army sent over by Andrei was decisively beat-
en by a small Novgorod force of 400 men (if we can believe the Chronicle).
Later in the same year (1169) a large Suzdalian army with its allies beleaguered
Novgorod and was again beaten by the Novgorodians under prince Roman.
The victories were short-lived, as a famine soon broke out and Novgorod was
forced to restore good relations with Suzdal’. Prince Roman was dismissed in
1170 and a new prince, allied to Andrei Bogoliubskii, was brought in.43 Andrei
Bogoliubskii’s ambition and efforts had made him many enemies; he was as-
sassinated in 1174.
His policies were continued by his successor and youngest brother,
Vsevolod iii “the Big Nest” (Bol’shoe Gnezdo, 1154–1212), grand prince of
Vladimir. His son Iaroslav ii (1191–1246) was also grand prince of Vladimir, and
of the many sons of the latter sprang the grand princely dynasties of Moscow
(Aleksandr Nevskii), Suzdal’ (Andrei), and Tver’ (Iaroslav). Like his brother
Andrei, Vsevolod iii (who was the most powerful Russian prince of his time)
and successive princes of Vladimir and Rostov-Suzdal’ actively interfered in
the internal affairs of Novgorod. This was done mostly by supporting one of the
boyar factions and by manipulation of the selection of a posadnik. This office
had been occupied from 1189 until his death in 1203 by Miroshka N ezdinich.
41 This happened only in 1169, when Kiev was taken by an alliance of Russian princes.
42 Of the sub-dynasty of the princes of Smolensk, as indicated by the name Rostislav.
43 Riurik Rostislavich of the Smolensk house; he was dismissed again in 1171 and then An-
drei sent his own son Iurii, who was dismissed in his turn in 1175 (this Iurii became the
first husband of the famous queen Tamar the Great of Georgia, who repudiated him after
some time).
During his term of office Novgorod had supported Vsevolod in various con-
flicts with other Russian princes, although not without a certain amount of
tension. Posadnik Miroshka and other prominent citizens were kept for two
years at Vsevolod’s court in Vladimir and prevented from returning home.
The Novgorod prince for most of this time (1187–1199) was an appointee of
Vsevolod, Iaroslav Vladimirovich.44 In 1199 Vsevolod replaced him by one of
his younger sons, Sviatoslav. After Miroshka’s death in 1203 the posadnik-office
was given to a member of a competing boyar clan, Mikhalko Stepanich. Two
years later Vsevolod suggested to the Novgorodians that they would be better
off with a more experienced prince, like his eldest son Konstantin. They ac-
cepted Konstantin and at the same time divested Mikhalko Stepanich of his
office and gave it to Miroshka’s son Dmitrii. The convoluted story, told with ex-
treme matter-of-factness by the First Novgorod Chronicle, culminated in 1209,
when the Novgorodians under their prince Konstantin and posadnik Dmitrii
had joined Vsevolod in a campaign against the prince of Rostov.45 After the vic-
torious Vsevolod had praised and handsomely rewarded the men of Novgorod
for their support, he kept Dmitrii, who had been wounded, at his court and
dismissed the Novgorod troops. When they came home, a veche meeting was
held in which Dmitrii was robbed of his dignity. He and the whole clan of the
Miroshkinichi were accused of all kinds of wrongdoings and the veche meeting
was followed by general mayhem in which the houses and estates of the Miro-
shkinichi were plundered.
Different interpretations of this series of events have been proposed;46 the
points to be made here are that it demonstrated the involvedness of outside
Russian princes in the domestic affairs of Novgorod, the importance of the
rivalry between various Novgorod elite clans, and also the intensity of socio-
economic tensions among the population.
The First Novgorod Chronicle reports extensively (under 1224) about the
first Mongol invasion of Russia in 1223, which resulted in the Russian defeat
on the Kalka River. But the enemy returned to the depths of Asia, “we know
not whence they came, nor where they hid themselves again”. It had only been
a warning, for in 1237 the great invasion of the Mongol armies engulfed most
44 He was a grandson of the Kievan grand prince Mstislav Vladimirovich, an elder b rother
of Iurii Dolgorukii. Vsevolod recalled him in 1199 to replace him by one of own sons,
Sviatoslav.
45 Ianin and a number of other authors hold that 1207 is the correct date.
46 See for instance, Ianin, Ocherki, 93–99, who held that Vsevolod’s intrigues were aimed at
getting rid of the hostile Miroshkinichi, and Froianov, Miatezhnyi Novgorod, 235–262, who
argued that Vsevolod and the Miroshkinichi were actually allies, opposed by the general
population of Novgorod.
482 chapter 16
of Russia and parts of Europe. The Mongol hosts reached Novgorod territo-
ry in 1238 and besieged the important Novgorod town of Torzhok, the main
Novgorod transit post for the domestic Russian trade (also known as Novyi
Torg). After a siege of two weeks Torzhok fell and was annihilated. It may have
saved Novgorod, because the threat of running out of forage for their horses,
the change of seasons, and, possibly, developments faraway in the East induced
the Mongol generals to turn around and go back to the steppes.47
Being the only major Russian town (together with Pskov) not to have been
taken by the Mongols had obvious advantages for Novgorod, although the
general consequences of the Mongol-Tatar domination, lasting for almost two
centuries, affected Novgorod as well. The breakdown of domestic trade was
especially disadvantageous for Novgorod, and the city also did not escape the
effects of the fiscal demands made by the Tatar rulers.
The enforcement of the latter impositions was only a small aspect of a much
wider shift in Russian history, intimately connected with the person of prince
Aleksandr Iaroslavich, better known as Aleksandr Nevskii.48 He was the eldest
surviving son of Iaroslav ii, one of the many sons of Vsevolod iii. Iaroslav ii
had become grand prince of Vladimir in 1238, after his elder brothers Konstan-
tin and Iurii had died (in 1218 and 1238); Iaroslav ii therefore became one of
the most prominent among the Russian princes at the beginning of Mongol
domination in Russia. His son Aleksandr (born 1220/1221) had been appointed
as prince of Novgorod in 1236, where he was effective, once he grew up, in his
main task, the defence of the territory. Novgorod was almost permanently ha-
rassed by its western neighbours, Finnish (Estonian) tribal entities, colonizing
German knights,49 the Swedes, and especially the Lithuanians.
The beginning of Aleksandr Nevskii’s reign in Novgorod coincided with the
great turmoil of the Mongol (Tatar) invasions. They appeared in the south-east
by the end of 1237, where they attacked and took Riazan’. They then moved
on to the important capital of Vladimir, which they took early in 1238. Shortly
47 Ianin, Ocherki, 116–130, reviews the much-debated causes of the Mongols’ desisting from
attacking Novgorod and comes to the conclusion that foraging difficulties were the deci-
sive factor.
48 Cf. J. Fennell, The Crisis of Medieval Russia, 1200–1304, London/New York, 1983, Chapters 4
and 5.
49 The Order of Our Lady of the Germans (Ordo S. Mariae Theutonicorum) was founded in
1190/1191 during the Third Crusade; in 1237 it absorbed the Livonian Order of the Sword-
bearers. The fact that in Russian (and in English) it is not called the “German Order” (as in
German “Deutscher Orden”), but the “Teutonic Order” has contributed to its bad reputa-
tion in Russian historiography, where it is consistently depicted as evil and bloodthirsty.
See further the section on the German Order in Chapter 10.
afterwards they crushed the army of Vladimir-Suzdal’ in a battle by the riv-

er Sit’, where the grand prince of Vladimir, Iurii, elder brother of Iaroslav ii,
was killed. As mentioned above, the Mongol armies then pushed on towards
Novgorod, but turned back before they had reached it. The next two years they
spent in subjugating the southern part of Kievan Russia; Kiev itself fell in 1240.
The Russian princes who submitted to Mongol suzerainty were allowed to
keep their seats, but the accession of a new prince required the khan’s prior
assent. The princes were made responsible for the collection of the various
taxes imposed and for recruiting military forces for the army of the khan. The
Russian Church and all its ‘church people’ were granted a general tax exemp-
tion, in accordance with traditional Mongol tolerance in the matter of religion.
The Mongol imperial system was therefore based not only on naked military
superiority but also on a shrewd mix of other measures.
During the first years of the Mongol campaign Aleksandr Nevskii was in-
volved in the protection of Novgorod interests. Best known are his victories
over a Swedish invading force on the Neva River in 1240 and over a mixed
force of Chud’ (Estonians) and knights of the German Order on the ice of Lake
Peipus (Chudskoe ozero) in 1242. In 1246 his father Iaroslav ii died on a journey
to Karakorum where he had been summoned by the great khan. He was suc-
ceeded first by his brother Sviatoslav and then in 1249 by his son Andrei; as An-
drei was younger than Aleksandr Nevskii, this succession must be regarded as a
usurpation, although it had the approval of the khan. In 1252 Aleksandr visited
the Horde, possibly to complain about his brother Andrei, who apparently was
unwilling to give in to all the demands of the Mongols. The khan despatched
an army and Andrei was forced to flee to Sweden. Aleksandr finally received
the throne of his father at Vladimir.
During the remaining eleven years of his life his policy of accommodation
of, and in effect submission to, the wishes of the khan secured him the undis-
puted supreme position among the Russian princes. The attempts of his broth-
ers Andrei and Iaroslav (prince of Tver’) in 1252 to put up some resistance to
Mongol domination were effectively thwarted and Aleksandr steadfastly con-
tinued this policy in the following years. When the Novgorodians refused to
allow the tax collectors of the khan entry, Aleksandr brought in his army and
threatened to take the city by force (in 1259). And this was not the first time
Novgorod had shown its unwillingness to do his bidding.
The fate of Novgorod in this case was emblematic of the fate of Russia under
Aleksandr Nevskii. The establishment of Mongol-Tatar suzerainty had changed
the rules of the game. The old rules governing the relationships between
princes (and entities like Novgorod) had not lost their validity, but they oper-
ated henceforth within the wider framework of a dominant external force.
484 chapter 16
Aleksandr Nevskii had obviously reached the conclusion that resistance

would be pointless and that only the course charted by him would offer a real-
istic way forward. Others clearly thought differently. In any case it was a pain-
ful decision to make and, as history is written by the victors, Aleksandr came
out well, thanks especially to his staunchest supporter, the formidable metro-
politan Kirill, who laid the foundation for the subsequent glorification (and
canonization) of Aleksandr Nevskii. The latter’s victories for Novgorod over
western enemies in relatively minor skirmishes in 1240 and 1242 were achieved
while the rest of the country was in mortal combat with the Tatars, a struggle
in which he took hardly any part. They were then blown up out of propor-
tion by generations of Russian political actors for their own purposes and with
the support of most Russian historians. Thus Aleksandr the saviour of Russia
dwarfed Aleksandr the collaborator.
When Aleksandr Nevskii died in 1263, the people of Novgorod dismissed
Aleksandr’s son Dimitrii, whom they considered too young, and invited Alek-
sandr’s brother Iaroslav iii, prince of Tver’, who took the throne in 1265. His
relations with the fractious city were by no means smooth. In the end, in 1270,
he was forced to give in to all the demands of Novgorod and all the terrain
won by Aleksandr Nevskii in the tug-of-war between prince and city was lost
again. Iaroslav died in 1272 on a visit to the khan, a not uncommon fate for
Russian princes, whether caused by the natural hardships of a long journey
into Asia or by foul play. This time Dimitrii Aleksandrovich was considered ac-
ceptable as the new prince by Novgorod. Although the Novgorodians stuck to
their old privileges in inviting and dismissing princes, the sub-dynasty of the
grand princes of Vladimir (and later on Moscow) was regarded as the only res-
ervoir to take a prince from. This sub-dynasty consisted of the descendants of
Iaroslav ii Vsevolodovich († 1246) through his sons Aleksandr Nevskii († 1263)
and Iaroslav iii († 1271), the founders of the houses of Vladimir-Moscow and
Tver’, respectively. The Novgorodians continually played off these two houses
against each other. As a result, Novgorod itself was often in conflict with its
titular prince. The balancing act generally worked, especially since the Tatar
khan also remained involved. With the waning of Tatar power and the inexo-
rable ascent of Muscovy the arrangement gradually collapsed in the course of
the 15th century.
Aleksandr’s Nevskii’s younger brother and successor Iaroslav (iii as grand
prince of Vladimir) was the first prince of Tver’, appointed in 1247 (by his uncle
Sviatoslav ii, then grand prince of Vladimir). The principality remained in the
hands of Iaroslav’s descendents, who also competed with their cousins, the de-
scendents of Aleksandr Nevskii, for the seat of Vladimir. The Tatar khan would
grant his favour in turn to one or the other of the two lines, in a long series of
intrigues, according to his own political calculations (see the story behind the
treaty of 1318 between the prince of Tver’ and the prince of M oscow, together
with Novgorod, in Chapter 7). The line of Aleksandr Nevskii, the princes of
Moscow,50 ultimately came out victorious, and in 1485 Tver’ was incorporat-
ed into the principality of Muscovy. Several Tver’ princes served as princes of
Novgorod. After 1485 the Tver’ archive was transferred to Moscow and this ar-
chive contained a number of treaties between Novgorod and the prince of Tver’.
The last decades of the 13th century also produced important modifications
of Novgorod’s internal system of government. In the past, powerful boyar clans
had competed for the leading position and this often resulted in the posadnik-
office being occupied by a single person for a long time, until he appeared too
strong, or too rich, or too unsuccessful and was overthrown by popular and
often violent discontent. In the new dispensation a council of leading citizens
moved to the centre of the stage and the posadnik was elected for one year.
The same system applied to the election of the tysiatskii, the second most im-
portant official and the representative of the merchants and craftsmen, and
the archimandrite. The latter, the head of the entire monastic community,
was in charge of supervising the very significant landowning wealth of the
monasteries. According to Ianin, the background of this institution was the
unwillingness of the boyar class, which had great direct and indirect interests
in the lands owned by the monasteries, to leave these assets in the control of
the archbishop, who could otherwise easily develop into a head of state. Al-
though the archbishop was also elected by Novgorod,51 his official installation
required the metropolitan’s consent and was therefore not fully in the hands
of the Novgorod elite.52
In the 14th century Russia slowly recovered from the tumultuous 13th cen-
tury. Novgorod’s position as the main point of transit for foreign trade further
expanded. Along with the traditional goods for import and export, silver from
Western Europe became a significant item, because tribute to the Tatars was
partly paid in silver.
Novgorod consolidated its foreign relations, particularly with its western
neighbours, through a network of treaties. Lithuania was gradually emerging
50 Under Aleksandr Nevskii’s great-great-grandson Dmitrii Donskoi (†1389), grand prince

of Vladimir and prince of Moscow, the principalities of Vladimir and Moscow, which had
been held by the same princes for a long time already, were united.
51 The first recorded event is in 1156, the election of Arkadii, the successor of Nifont, the
first bishop of Novgorod to use the archiepiscopal title. Cf. Ia.N. Shchapov, Gosudarstvo i
tserkov’ Drevnei Rusi x–xiii vv., Moskva, 1989, 65–69.
52 Ianin, Ocherki, 384–385.
486 chapter 16
as the dominant regional power in the course of the 14th century and contin-
ued to play a strong role in the relationship with Novgorod and Muscovy in the
15th century.
Novgorod could maintain its independence while the balance of powers
between its neighbours lasted. The internal system of government was occa-
sionally adapted to new circumstances. In 1354 the representatives of the five
quarters all received the title of posadnik, while the actual mayor (stepennyi
posadnik) was elected by the veche. Later on, the number of posadniki was fur-
ther enlarged.
As the grand princes of Vladimir-Moscow, who also served intermittently
as princes of Novgorod, were gradually able to establish their hegemony, the
old balance which had favoured Novgorod for so long began to crumble.
The celebrated victory of Dmitrii Donskoi over the Tatar army under Mamai
on the Sandpiper Field (Kulikovo Pole) in 1380 was of great symbolic impor-
tance, even if khan Tokhtamysh burned Moscow in revenge two years later.
The Horde was not invincible and when Dmitrii died in 1389 he left the throne
to his eldest son without asking for the khan’s approval.
In the course of the 15th century the grand prince of Muscovy mopped up
nearly all of the remaining independent principalities. There was no escape for
Novgorod either. When it supported Dmitrii Shemiaka in his attempt to wres-
tle the throne of Moscow from his cousin, the grand prince Vasilii ii “the Blind”
(Temnyi) in 1456, the latter brought Novgorod to heel and forced it to submit
through the Iazhelbitsy treaty. Novgorod then sought a way out by turning to
Lithuania for help. This gave Vasilii ii’s son and successor, Ivan iii, a pretext to
attack the city in order to protect the orthodox faith, although this argument
was fabricated largely for soliciting support among his own population.53 The
Novgorod forces were decisively beaten in the battle at the Shelon’ River in 1471
and the peace treaty of Korostyn’ ended Novgorod independence de facto. In
1478 Novgorod was formally integrated into the Muscovy state.
Government and Administration

The Composition of the Novgorod Population
When we consider the social composition of a particular group of persons in
a modern (Western) setting, we take the equality of citizens before the law
as granted; social differences present a mere sociological feature. In medieval
Novgorod, as in most medieval settings, social differences had a clear legal
content; belonging to a specific social group involved legal consequences and
53 As suggested by A.E. Tarasov in “Tserkov’ i podchinenie Velikogo Novgoroda”, Novgorodskii

istoricheskii sbornik 12 (22), Sankt-Peterburg, 2011, 71–109.
affected in particular an individual’s right to participate in public affairs. The

(free) population of Novgorod consisted of boyars (nobles), zhit’i liudi (‘well-
to-do people’) and chernye liudi or chern’ (‘black people’, or common people).
In official documents, such as Novgorod treaties, these groups were often men-
tioned separately, with their representatives. The clergy, priests, monks and
nuns constituted a special category.
Older treaties usually referred simply to “all the greater and the lesser peo-
ple” (stareishie and men’shie),54 while the formula referring to well-to-do vs.
common people was of a later date.55 In the 15th century the formula “boyars,
well-to-do people, merchants, and common people” is also encountered.56 To
determine exactly how these different formulas relate to each other is difficult.
The enigmatic document known as the Testament of Vsevolod Mstislavich
(see Chapter 6) throws some light on this problem. The main theme of this
charter was the merchants’ guild of St. John the Baptist na Opokakh, uniting the
Novgorod merchants engaged in domestic Russian trade.57 Its board consisted
of three elders, the tysiatskii on behalf of the well-to-do and common people,
and two merchants. In the past, many authors read the text differently; the
formula “three elders from the well-to-do people and from the common people
the tysiatskii, and from the merchants two elders” (tri starosty ot zhit’ikh” liudei
i ot chernykh” tysiatskogo, a ot kouptsev” dva starosty) could also be read as if
there was a comma after “well-to-do people”; this would result in a total of six
elders.58 Whichever reading is preferred, the fact remains that the provision
(art. 5 of the ‘Testament’) made a clear distinction between merchants on the
one side and the well-to-do and common people on the other.
The distinction can also be observed in the treaty preambles, mentioning
the representatives of Novgorod. The archbishop usually (but not always)
headed the list, the posadnik and the tysiatskii almost always followed after
54 Such as the treaties with Tver’, mentioned above.

55 E.g. gvnp No.17, 32–33, a mandate for Novgorod’s envoys to the prince of Tver’ in 1372.
56 E.g. gvnp No.21, 38–39, a concessionary grant to the Moscow grand prince Vasilii ii
(1448–1461).
57 The overseas (zamorskie) merchants had their own church of St. Paraskeve, mentioned in
1156 and 1207 in the Chronicle.
58 E.g. Zimin in prp ii, 179. Both Ianin and Bassalygo seem to follow M.N. Tikhomirov
on this point, who had advocated the three elders’ theory in Drevnerusskie goroda,
Sankt-Peterburg, 2008 (originally published, Moskva, 1946), 102. Tikhomirov was actu-
ally following in the footsteps of V.O. Kliuchevskii, Boiarskaia Duma, Moskva, 1902 (3rd
ed.), 544–545. See also V.L. Ianin, Novgorodskie posadniki, Moskva, 2003 (2nd ed.), 128;
L.A. Bassalygo, “Novgorodskie tysiatskie. Chast’ i”, Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik, vyp.
11(21), Sankt-Peterburg, 2008, 45.
488 chapter 16
the archbishop, but after that there is much variety. Often the tysiatskii is fol-
lowed simply by “all Novgorod”, but (as mentioned above) older treaties (the
last one in 1371, gvnp No.15) sometimes inserted the “greater and lesser people”,
replaced in later times occasionally by “well-to-do and common people”. A 1372
document (gvnp No.17, mentioned above) inserted “boyars” between the
tysiatskii and the well-to-do and common people, demonstrating that boyars
were not included among the well-to-do people.
The merchants of the St. John’s guild themselves knew a division between
ordinary and privileged members. The latter (poshlye kuptsy) paid a very high
entrance fee (fifty grivna silver), but this granted them and their successors he-
reditary membership. The two elders who headed the guild were to be chosen
from the privileged members (art. 7 of the Testament). In some of the com-
mercial treaties with Western partners the elders are mentioned (after the tys-
iatskii) as co-signatories.59
To summarize the picture of Novgorod’s social composition: at the top of the
pyramid were the boyars (more about them in the special section on boyars be-
low); the rest of the population was divided, first in “greater and lesser people”,
and later on in “well-to-do and common people”. The “greater” and later on the
“well-to-do” people also embraced an elite occasionally referred to as “elders”.
Merchants could be found in different social groups, but constituted a special
category, a comparatively closed group with its own social hierarchy. Persons
belonging to the clergy represented a parallel pyramid, with the archbishop
at the top, followed by the archimandrite (the abbot of the Iur’ev monastery)
and the abbot of the Antoniev monastery, other abbots and then lower clergy.
Although, as said in the beginning of this section, these social distinctions
were legally relevant, they were not defined by law (with the exception of the
‘great merchants’). As a result, their borders were porous; an individual could,
exceptionally, move in his lifetime from one category to another, the boyar
class remaining strictly hereditary in the meantime.
The Rural Population

Apart from the city population, as discussed in the preceding section, there
was the population of the rest of the territory controlled by Novgorod. The
territory occupied by Novgorod’s five piatiny (including the huge Ladoga and
Onega Lakes) measured roughly 322 thousand square kilometres by the end
59 gvnp No.41, a treaty on the wax trade with the Hanseatic League of 1342, mentions the
“elder of the merchants Sidor and all the Novgorod merchants”; the unnamed starosty
mentioned in a treaty of 1269 (gvnp No.31) and in a diplomatic note of 1301 (gvnp No.33)
are presumably also elders of the St. John’s guild.
of Novgorod’s independence. Its population varied greatly in the course of the

16th and 17th century, due to epidemics, famine, war and domestic upheaval,
but it remained typically at a level of ten times the population of Novgorod
itself. The vast majority (in the order of 90%) of it consisted of free peasants
who worked the fields of landowners on a contractual basis. Another 5% was
made up of peasants with a different status (slaves, bobyli); persons with a
clerical status (less than 4%) and various others (merchants, craftsmen, land-
owners, soldiers, etc.) accounted for the remainder.60 Legislative sources on
this very large section of the Novgorod population is almost non-existent, but
a considerable number of charters and also birch-bark documents fills the gap.
Novgorod peasants enjoyed and actually used the right to leave their landlords
around St. George’s Day (Iur’ev den’), after giving notice (otkaz) and paying
their debts.61
After the loss of Novgorod’s independence, the expulsion of Novgorod boyar
and ecclesiastical landowners and their replacement by Moscow pomeshchiki
(owners of service estates) implied various changes in the peasants’ position
(they now had to pay obrok instead of performing contractual duties towards
the landlords they worked for in the past); of much greater effect was the grad-
ual abolition of the peasants’ right to leave their landlords, as this was imple-
mented during the second half of the 16th century. In the end the enserfment
of Novgorod peasants was no different from that of other Russian peasants.
Apart from the already huge territory of the Novgorod republic (the city
and its immediate surroundings and then the five piatiny) there was the even
larger territory to the east of the Obonezhskaia piatina (the northernmost
of the five), Dvina Land (Dvinskaia zemlia) and the borderless area beyond,
extending as far as the Ob River in Western Siberia. Most of this terrain was
extremely sparsely populated, due to the harsh climatic conditions, but Dvina
Land proper occupied a special place in the history of Novgorod’s territorial ex-
pansion. It was administered by a namestnik appointed by Novgorod, who was
by necessity left mostly to his own devices because of the difficulty of commu-
nicating with the Novgorod government. Moreover, on account of its l ocation,
bordering on the Vologda region which had been acquired by M uscovy during
the reign of Vasilii i (1389–1425), it had attracted the attention of the latter, who
had even attempted to add it to his lands in 1397 when an uprising of Dvina no-
blemen had tried to sever their ties with Novgorod. (This resulted in the Dvina
Land Charter of 1397, see Chapter 8). In the course of the 15th century, the
60 V.M. Vorob’ev, “Novgorodskie krest’iane”, in A.I. Kopanev, M.B. Sverdlov (eds.), Istoriia
krest’ianstva Severo-Zapada Rossii. Period feodalizma, Sankt-Peterburg, 1994, 86–103.
61 V.F. Andreev, in Kopanev, Sverdlov, op. cit., 75–76.
490 chapter 16
oscow grand prince succeeded in acquiring most of Dvina Land before the
M
actual dissolution of the Novgorod republic. The possessions of the Novgorod
boyars who owned much of the land in the region were not, as often happened,
distributed among the petty nobility of Muscovy, but they remained in the
hands of the state. This then turned most Dvina Land peasants into chernye
liudi, ‘black people’, a position which was generally more advantageous than
being the dependent peasant of an individual landowner.62
The surviving collection of documents concerning Dvina Land is surpris-
ingly rich, which has allowed more detailed descriptions of the legal aspects
of local conditions.
The Veche
What was said about the Old-Russian veche in general in Chapter 15 applied to
the Novgorod veche as well; the Novgorod chronicles are after all an important
source for the study of the veche in general. Their relative wealth of informa-
tion on veche activity in Novgorod and the length of the period covered allow
for the placing of a few extra accents.63
First of all, the veche concept of the Novgorod chronicles is very wide. It
embraced not only formal assemblies, properly convoked by some person of
authority such as the prince (1016, 1215, 1228) or the posadnik (1299), but also
spontaneous, even riotous gatherings, often leading to mob violence (1209,
1270, 1290, 1342, 1418).64 Along the same lines, a veche could not always be con-
sidered to express the position of Novgorod, because it could also represent a
rebellious current opposing the official position. There are also examples of
disagreeing quarters conducting their own veches (1384).
The Novgorod records prove beyond doubt that the veche label cannot be
considered a requirement to identify an assembly as a veche. Numerous meet-
ings are mentioned explicitly, or their occurrence is inevitably implied, with-
out using the veche designation. The election of the archbishop by the veche,
for instance, is described several times, usually when there were complications
(1228 – dismissal of archbishop, 1299, 1375, 1388, 1415, 1421). Where the election
went smoothly, the Chronicle might just refer to it without giving any details.
The same goes for the election of the posadnik; this was obviously something
effected at a veche meeting, but occasionally the Chronicle informs the reader
62 See A.I. Kopanev, Krest’ianstvo Russkogo Severa v xvi v., Leningrad, 1978, 30–63. This work
is specifically devoted to the peasantry of Dvina Land in the 16th century.
63 See also P.V. Lukin, Novgorodskoe veche, Moskva, 2014 (not avaliable to me).
64 Under 1337 the Chronicle relates how the common people (prostaia chad’), “at the instiga-
tion of the devil”, held a veche in order to dismiss the archimandrite Esif.
in passing that there was a new posadnik, without bothering to tell about his
election. This means that beyond the more than 40 veche meetings explic-
itly reported by the Novgorod Chronicle there were numerous other similar
meetings. An entry under the year 1160 in the Hypatian version of the Primary
Chronicle states that the people of Novgorod often assembled in a veche.65
Veche meetings in Novgorod were therefore a common event, even on con-
secutive days or two on the same day (1214, 1218, 1342). Then there could also be
longer periods without such meetings.
The above observations are relevant for evaluating the legal significance of
veche activity in Novgorod. Novgorod veches, as pointed out, ranged from of-
ficial, orderly procedures to downright riots. Decisions reached at the former
(e.g. the peaceful and unanimous election of a new archbishop upon the death
of the last one, 1388) may without doubt be regarded as legally valid. But how,
for instance, can one force the consecutive events of the restless year 1230 into
a consistent legal framework? In 1229 the posadnik office had been entrusted
to Vnezd Vodovik, after Ivanko Dmitrovich had been dismissed. The next year
an opponent of Vodovik, Stepan Tverdislavich, together with his ally Ivanko Ti-
moshkinich, attempted to remove Vodovik at a veche convoked by Ivanko. The
attempt was unsuccessful, and in the ensuing hostilities Vodovik had Ivanko
killed. But a few months later, while Vodovik was out of town with the young
prince Rostislav, there was an uprising and the houses of Vodovik and his as-
sociates were plundered and Stepan Tverdislavich was made posadnik.66
The inevitable conclusion is that even veche meetings that might appear
to have been unlawful and irregular could take decisions entailing valid legal
consequences.
If we accept that the veche concept, especially with regard to Novgorod, was
amorphous or fluid, the question concerning the competence or jurisdiction
of the veche becomes meaningless. Popular gatherings in Novgorod, whether
expressly designated as veches or operating in a similar manner, would lead
to all kinds of decisions and results, many of them legally relevant. What is
possible is highlighting certain categories of decisions that the veche would
regularly take.
65 psrl ii, col.510. Cf. P.V. Lukin, “K voprosu o tak nazyvaemym sovete v domongol’skoi Rusi”,
dgve 2003, 131–142, at 141.
66 The Novgorod Chronicle reported the death of Vodovik Vnezd, posadnik of Novgorod, in
Chernigov in 1231, apparently in exile. The death of Stepan Tverdislavich is reported under
the year 1243, with the observation that he had been posadnik for almost 13 years. It would
seem that the chronicler wanted to abstain from passing judgment on the legal status of
the two officials.
492 chapter 16
The most important among these was the selection, and dismissal, of the
prince. The gradual emancipation of Novgorod from princely supervision has
been described above. The dismissal of David Sviatoslavich in 1095 was the first
recorded instance of Novgorod’s independence in this sphere, but it was fol-
lowed by a long series of similar steps. The reason given was often that the
prince had failed to honour the contract made with the city upon his accep-
tance of the throne. (There is more on this topic below).
The election of the archbishop has been mentioned above. Most Chronicle
entries reporting on such events added a reference to the required blessing of
the metropolitan. This also meant that dismissal of an archbishop, although
attempted a few times, needed the metropolitan’s agreement to be effec-
tive. Such a condition did not apply to the appointment of an archimandrite,
although the archbishop obviously had a say in this matter.
The veche’s turnover of posadniki was sometimes very rapid. Some failing
posadniki were even sentenced to death and executed or just killed by an angry
mob. The veche also acted as a court in other serious cases, ordering the execu-
tion of rebels or traitors (e.g. 1291, 1316). Being thrown off the bridge into the
Volkhov River was a common manner of execution.
The legal force of a veche decision was most obvious in the comparatively
rare cases of a properly convoked veche meeting taking a formal decision upon
a request. In 1411 the Novgorod veche established, at the request of the peasants
of the village of Terpilov, the amount of taxes to be paid by the latter.67
Veche meetings of the disorderly type, such as popular riots, would obvi-
ously involve crowds of considerable size. But if the discussion is limited to
the more institutionalized type of veche, the argument has been made that
such veches were actually meetings of members of the elite, boyars, great mer-
chants, church dignitaries and the like. Ianin in particular took this position,
in line with his overall view of Novgorod as an oligarchic republic. P.V. Lukin,
the author of several detailed studies on the social composition of the Russian
veche, rejected Ianin’s views and presented elaborate grounds for accepting
that the Novgorod veche would normally involve the participation of the en-
tire free (male) population of the city.68 The turnout would of course depend
on various circumstances. If the population of early 13th century Novgorod
67 gvnp No.89, 146.

68 P.V. Lukin, “O sotsial’nom sostave Novgorodskogo vecha xii–xiii vv. po letopisnym
dannym”, dgvo 2004, Moskva, 2006, 164–211; P.V. Lukin, “Veche: sotsial’nyi sostav”,
A.A. Gorskii, V.A. Kuchkin (eds.), Drevniaia Rus’: Ocherki politicheskogo i sotsial’nogo
stroia, Moskva, 2008, 33–147.
is considered to be in the region of 20.000 to 30.000,69 one could expect the

free male population to consist of something like 3.000 to 4.000 persons.70 The
usual meeting places of the Novgorod veche, the Court of Iaroslav or the Arch-
bishop’s Court, could accommodate such numbers.
The Archbishop
Novgorod was the second Russian town to receive a bishop, immediately after
Kiev, in 989 (as mentioned above). In later times the bishop of Novgorod dif-
fered on two points from the other Russian bishops; he was popularly elected
instead of appointed by the Kievan metropolitan, and he enjoyed the title of
archbishop. The first reported election was in 1156 when “all the people of the
town came together and decided to elect as bishop, Arkadii, a man chosen by
God”. This event took place at a time when Novgorod’s ascent to independence
was in full swing, and the fact that the see of the Kievan metropolitan was
vacant presented an excellent opportunity to circumnavigate the normal pro-
cedure (appointment by the metropolitan). The precedent was followed un-
failingly until the end of Novgorod independence, the election always being
confirmed by consecration (khirotoniia, from Greek χειροτονία, “imposition of
hands”) in Kiev by the metropolitan. This required the newly elected bishop to
travel to Kiev and often took place with much delay.71
The various reports of the Novgorod Chronicle do not produce a completely
uniform picture of the procedure followed. The veche was normally involved,
but occasionally a further meeting in the Sophia Cathedral is mentioned.
Sometimes (e.g. at the 1421 election) lots were drawn between three candidates
(a procedure also sometimes used in other situations).72 The crucial factor re-
mained that the bishop of Novgorod was not imposed from outside.
69 See for instance, M.N. Tikhomirov, Drevnerusskie goroda, Moskva, 2008 (orig. published as
Uchenye Zapiski mgu, vyp.99, Moskva, 1946), 116–117.
70 Cf. V.F. Andreev, “O sotsial’nom sostave Novgorodskogo vecha”, I.Ia. Froianov (ed.), Genezis
i razvitie feodalizma v Rossii, Leningrad, 1988, 70–80, at 78.
71 Cf. Ia.N. Shchapov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov’ Drevnei Rusi x–xiii vv., Moskva, 1988, 62–69;
Ianin, Ocherki, 63. The consecration was anything but an empty formality. The doctrine
of apostolic succession, embraced by the Christian Church (both Orthodox and Roman-
Catholic), rested on the idea of co-optation into the original collegium of apostles.
Breaking the chain of apostolic succession would result in the absolute invalidity of the
episcopal dignity. Elected but unconsecrated bishops of Novgorod were always careful to
present themselves not as bishops, but as bishops-elect.
72 More on this: M.V. Pechnikov, who held that the lottery was a permanent feature of the
Novgorod episcopal election: M.V. Pechnikov, “Novgorodtsy i kafedra Sv. Sofii v seredine
xii–xiii v.”, A.A. Gorskii (ed.), Srednevekovaia Rus’, 9, Moskva, 2011, 7–46; and further:
494 chapter 16
As to the archiepiscopal title, this was honorific only and devoid of the
customary privilege in the Byzantine church, i.e. the direct subordination to
the patriarch in Constantinople, bypassing the territorial metropolitan. The
bishop of Novgorod, like all other Russian bishops, was subject to a certain
amount of supervision and control by the Kievan metropolitan.73 When the
title was actually conferred is unclear. The year 1165 is often mentioned, be-
cause the Chronicle reports that the metropolitan ordered Ilia (the successor
to the above mentioned Arkadii) to accept the archiepiscopal title in that year.
Novgorod’s archbishop exercized the same judicial duties as other Russian
bishops (see Chapters 19, on Family Law, and 21, on the Church). The point is
made explicitly in the first article of the Novgorod Court Charter, which provid-
ed that the archbishop was to conduct his own court. His judicial duties were
in fact carried out by a special official, the archbishop’s namestnik, assisted by
a tiun (steward, sheriff). The Novgorod Court Charter refers repeatedly to the
procedure in the archbishop’s court, and it appears that the provisions of the
Charter applied to it, although art. 1 also directed that the archbishop’s court
followed the rules of the church fathers and of the Nomocanon.
In two other respects the legal activities of the archbishop went beyond the
normal episcopal pattern. He was at least in some ways comparable to a cer-
emonial head of state (as in many present-day republics and monarchies), and
he was the supreme ruler of an economic empire, the House of St. Sophia.
During the first period, at least until 1136 (the dismissal of prince Vsevolod
Mstislavich), the prince functioned as head of state. As Novgorod appropri-
ated more and more elements of politico-legal independence, the posadnik
acquired many of the tasks previously entrusted to the prince, although the
latter never disappeared entirely from the stage and eventually re-emerged
with a vengeance when the grand prince of Muscovy gradually achieved the
complete submission of Novgorod. In the meantime the archbishop enjoyed
the status of the highest dignitary of the republic. This found expression, for
instance, in the texts of numerous treaties where he was mentioned first, be-
fore the posadnik and other persons and parties representing Novgorod.
In the often tumultuous political life of Novgorod, where the posadnik
was normally the highest representative of the dominant section of the elite,
the archbishop was about the only person with sufficient authority to act as
Matsuki Eiko, “Izbranie i postavlenie Vasiliia Kaliki na novgorodskoe vladychestvo v 1330–

1331 gg.”, A.A. Gippius, E.N. Nosov, A.S. Khoroshev (eds.), Velikii Novgorod v istorii sredneve-
kovoi Evropy. K 70-letiiuValentina Lavrent’evicha Ianina, Moskva, 1999, 207–217. The lottery
procedure in the election of bishops is probably of biblical origin: Acts, 1, 26.
73 Shchapov, op. cit., 62.
moderator and mediator. Many excesses and atrocities were averted by the ac-
tive intervention of the archbishop.
A good illustration of the role of the archbishop in secular matters was a
letter dispatched in 1417 to the three major Baltic towns (Riga, Iur’ev, and Koly-
van’) in which the archbishop invited the town authorities to send envoys to
Novgorod to work out a peace treaty. He pointed out that he had carried out
their request to discuss the matter of such a treaty with the Novgorod authori-
ties and that the latter had expressed the wish to return to the status quo ante
by resurrecting the old treaty.74
The enormous wealth of the archiepiscopal see was not lost after Novgorod
lost its independence and is well-documented for this period, the 16th and 17th
centuries. It was the subject of one of the earlier works of B.D. Grekov, the
“Novgorod House of St. Sophia”.75 The House of St. Sophia constituted almost a
state within the state. It was based on the extensive landholdings of the arch-
diocese, providing the raw materials for all kinds of crafts and industries. Its
produce not only served the domestic consumption of the archbishop’s house-
hold and its large and varied workforce, but was also used commercially for
local and foreign trade. It had its own ‘civil service’ of clerks and managers,
headed by the Clerk (d’iak) of St. Sophia.
The Posadniki
The title of posadnik referred originally to an official appointed to represent
a ruling prince in a specific town and the region belonging to it. As such the
posadnik is mentioned in various chronicles and legal sources.76 It is usually
translated as “mayor”, but “lieutenant” and “governor” also occur.77 The ‘eman-
cipation’ of the Novgorod posadnik by the end of the 11th century, by remov-
ing his appointment from the prince’s jurisdiction to that of Novgorod itself,
has been mentioned already. This turned the posadnik into the actual ruler
of Novgorod, although this was a far from stable arrangement. The strength
74 gvnp No.54, 92. The archbishop’s words were that he had blessed his children at the re-
quest of the Baltic towns and that his children, the posadnik, the tysiatskii, the merchants,
and all Novgorod, had accepted his blessing.
75 It was first published in 1914, but an up-to-date version was included as vol.4 in the post-
humously published “Selected Works”: B.D. Grekov, Izbrannye Trudy, t.iv: Novgorodskii
Dom Sviatoi Sofii, Moskva, 1960.
76 In art. 114 of the Expanded Pravda, arts. 11 and 13 of the Church Statute of prince Rostislav
Mstislavich of Smolensk, a.o. In the Primary Chronicle (1012–1014) Iaroslav the Wise, rul-
ing in Novgorod for his father St. Vladimir, is himself called the posadnik of Novgorod.
77 The Low German in the various treaties with Hanseatic partners has borchgrave, borch-
greve (modern High German Burggraf) and Latin borgravio, and also borgermeister.
496 chapter 16
and effectiveness of the posadnik’s government would depend on several fac-

tors: the support of powerful political actors both inside and outside Novgorod,
other political and economic circumstances, and of course his own capability.
The Novgorod Chronicle shows that the posadnik was easily dismissed, like
the Novgorod prince, but, unlike the prince who was just “shown the road”, the
posadnik often paid with his life for political failure.
The office of Novgorod posadnik was, moreover, not a stable institution
which remained unaltered for centuries. Initially, the posadnik was appointed
(by the prince, and then by Novgorod itself) for an unspecified period; then,
by the end of the 13th century, the appointment was limited to one year; as
from 1354, the five quarters of Novgorod each had their own posadnik, along
with the acting city (stepennyi) posadnik. In the 15th century the number was
further increased.
Novgorod’s modern historian, V.L. Ianin, published a major monograph
on the Novgorod posadniki in 1962, and a much amended edition appeared
in 2003.78 Notwithstanding the wealth of information offered by this new vol-
ume, the sources for describing the legal aspects of the posadnik office were
roughly the same as in 1962, that is to say, modest.
The narrative of the Novgorod Chronicle suggests, as a general principle,
that the Novgorod posadnik functioned as a replacement for the prince, that he
took over the prince’s duties. This is confirmed by the evidence from the trea-
ties between Novgorod and the princes of Tver’ and Moscow.79
The oldest surviving Novgorod-Tver’ treaty of 1264 (with grand prince Iaro-
slav iii Iaroslavich) contained the formula: “And without the posadnik, prince,
you are not to grant lands nor issue charters [gramoty]”. In a treaty between the
same parties of 1270 the formula was extended to: “And without the posadnik,
prince, you are not to judge court cases, nor grant lands, nor issue charters”.
This formula is retained in all similar following treaties with the princes of
Tver’ and is also found in the 1435 and 1456 treaties with Moscow and even in
the final 1471 treaty of Korostyn’. Its most problematic element is the issuing of
charters. Kaiser interpreted it as “documents concerning land transactions”,80
while Zimin proposed a more comprehensive understanding: “legislative acts,
court decisions”.81 As the general tenor of the treaties was to hem in the prince
78 V.L. Ianin, Novgorodskie posadniki, Moskva, 1962; second edition, Moskva. 2003. All refer-
ences are to the second edition.
79 For details, see Chapter 7.
80 Kaiser, Laws, 67.
81 In prp ii, 144.
as much as possible, the latter reading is to be preferred. It then comprised al-

most the entire package of princely duties, minus his military leadership role.
The titular prince of Novgorod was usually engaged somewhere else in Rus-
sia during the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, which meant that his responsi-
bilities in Novgorod had to be shouldered by his namestnik. If the namestnik
would then be in charge, in tandem with the posadnik, of executing the most
important powers in Novgorod, it is obvious that the posadnik, whose position
rested on the support of the population, would be the overwhelmingly domi-
nant partner. Numerous events narrated in the Novgorod Chronicle confirm
the view that the posadnik was in effect the ruler, at least most of the time,
and always depending on his being able to muster sufficient popular backing.
Novgorod did not have a constitution (in the sense of a legislative document
setting out the legal organization of the state), so one has to look for direct
legal confirmation of the posadnik’s paramount position elsewhere.
The large number of Novgorod treaties with Russian princes, as well as
those with Western parties, provide one indication. Although the archbishop
was in many cases the first Novgorod representative mentioned in the opening
sentences, immediately followed by the posadnik, there is a somewhat smaller
number (about 20) of treaties concluded without the archbishop, where the
posadnik heads the list of Novgorod representatives. In a few rare cases the
prince’s lieutenant (namestnik) is also included and then he is mentioned be-
fore the posadnik.82
The oldest treaties with foreign parties were still concluded by the prince,
“after consulting with the posadnik, the tysiatskii, and all Novgorod”, but soon
the prince, if mentioned at all, just headed the usual list of Novgorod rep-
resentatives.83 In other types of documents issued on behalf of Novgorod a
similar practice was followed, Novgorod was represented by the posadnik, the
tysiatskii, and others.84 It appears that the posadnik would never act alone in
a legislative or executive capacity, but always as the chief agent of a collective
acting on behalf of Novgorod.
But as a judicial officer, the posadnik did act alone, as is well documented
by the Novgorod Court Charter. The Charter mentions the posadnik several
times (arts. 2, 5a, 8, 24, 27 and 28) and these provisions show that along with
82 E.g. gvnp Nos.41, 42, 44 (treaties with Hanseatic partners). In many treaties with foreign
parties the Novgorod prince heads the list of Novgorod representatives, followed first by
the posadnik.
83 The old formula in the 1189 (gvnp No.28) and 1269 (gvnp No.31) treaties with the Hanse-
atic League.
84 E.g. gvnp No.89, a grant charter of around 1411, issued by the veche.
498 chapter 16
the posadnik and the archbishop’s namestnik, judicial functions were also in-
cumbent on the tysiatskii, although the posadnik appeared to be in charge of
the general jurisdiction.
The posadnik was closely connected to the boyar class and, in a way, defined
the latter. The posadnik was always chosen from the boyar class, and boyar
families were those families that could provide a posadnik. The posadnik was
first and foremost the spokesman and representative of the Novgorod elite.85
Many Russian and Western historians have developed theories about a
“Council of Lords” (Sovet Gospod), which was supposed to have come into being
around the end of the 13th century and consisted allegedly of a small number
of leading citizens, particularly the acting (stepennyi) posadnik, his predeces-
sors, the prince’s namestnik (if available), the tysiatskii, with the archbishop
acting as chairman. This Council was seen as the real executive of Novgorod
during the 14th and 15th centuries, determining the agenda of the veche. The
existence of such a body is nowhere mentioned in contemporary Russian
sources and can be based only on one or perhaps two communications from
Western visitors. Of course, small caucuses of powerful officials would consult
each other and work closely together in many cases, and this may have given
rise to the idea, or rather mystification, that they constituted an official body
with determinate powers.86
The Tysiatskie
After the posadnik, the most important official in Novgorod was the tysiatskii.
The literal translation of this term is ‘thousandman’, millenarius, or chiliarch.
While the presence of a posadnik is documented in Novgorod from very early
times, a tysiatskii (by the name of Miloneg) appeared first (in the Novgorod
Chronicle) in 1191. This does not mean that the office itself did not exist. In
fact, thousandmen were known at an early stage in Kievan Russia. The pre-
amble (art. 53) to the second main part of the Expanded Pravda, the Statute
of Vladimir Monomakh (1112–1125), relates how Vladimir called together his
druzhina in Berestovo: Ratibor, the tysiatskii of Kiev, Prokopii, the tysiatskii of
85 Ianin’s works, particularly his monograph on the Novgorod posadniki, offer abundant evi-
dence for all this.
86 In my study on the Skra of Novgorod (Feldbrugge, lmr, 265) I followed the view on the
Council of Lords, as expounded by many authors. Failure to find any reference to it in
the Russian sources, consulted in writing this chapter, made me doubt the existence of
such a body. J. Granberg’s special study of the subject convinced me that my doubts were
justified (Iu. Granberg, “Sovet Gospod Novgoroda v nemetskikh istochnikakh”, dgve 1998,
Moskva, 2000, 78–87. See also V.L. Ianin’s sparse comment in Novgorodskie posadniki,
Moskva, 2003 (2nd ed.), 243.
Belgorod, Stanislav, the tysiatskii of Pereiaslavl’, and two others. The thousand-
men belonged obviously to the highest level of officialdom. If the posadnik or
the namestnik was originally the general permanent representative or lieuten-
ant of the prince in a particular town or region, the thousandman was primar-
ily concerned with the military leadership in a particular place.87
It is not entirely clear when the Novgorod tysiatskii emerged in his typical
Novgorod role, that of a military commander and commercial judge. As a mili-
tary official he may have been present during the 11th and 12th centuries and
he may gradually have assumed certain functions in the supervision of trade.
The first unambiguous indication is in the so-called Testament (Rukopisanie)
of Vsevolod Mstislavich (mentioned above in the section on the composition
of the Novgorod population). This prince of Novgorod died in Pskov in 1138,
after having been arrested and expelled by the people of Novgorod. Nobody
however doubts that most of the contents of the Testament are of a later date
and that the Testament’s references to the prince and to the posadnik Miroslav
(who died in 1136) represent anachronistic additions. More recent scholarship
assigns the nucleus of the Testament to the last few decades of the 12th century,
a period of growth in Novgorod’s long-distance commercial relations.88 These
authors have argued that at some moment during the last two decades of the
12th century, the appointment of the tysiatskii, who had officially been an ap-
pointee of the prince’s administration until then, was taken over by Novgorod,
like the appointment of the posadnik a century earlier.
The most consistent scenario is outlined by Floria. According to him,
the tysiatskii was originally a princely appointee, as everywhere else in Rus-
sia. The sotskie (hundredmen), of which there were apparently ten (see the
Church Statute of Vsevolod), were important urban officials.89 The Church
Statute of Vsevolod, tentatively dated 1182 by Floria, marked the point where
the sotskie acquired control of commercial jurisdiction and (together with the
87 In the various treaties with Hanseatic partners, tysiatskii is translated into Low German as
hertoge, which indicates that the translator was aware of the military aspect of the office.
88 Cf. L.A. Bassalygo, “Novgorodskie tysiatskie, Ch.I”, Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik, 11(21),
Sankt-Peterburg, 2008, 33–67, at 42–44; B.N. Floria, “O polozhenii «Ivanskogo kupechest-
va» v Novgorode domongol’skogo vremeni”, Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik, 12(22),
Sankt-Peterburg, 2011, 34–36 ; V.N. Floria, “K izucheniiu tserkovnogo ustava Vsevoloda”,
V.A. Kuchkin (ed.), Rossiia v srednie veka i novoe vremia. Sbornik statei k 70-letiiu chl.-korr.
ran L.V. Milova, Moskva, 1999, 83–96; V.L. Ianin, Novgorodskie posadniki, Moskva, 2003
(2nd ed.), 155–162.
89 The sotskie also appear in rural areas, see the section on “Local Government” in Chapter
18. In Novgorod the sotskie were involved in particular in the supervision of trade (see
below).
500 chapter 16
a rchbishop) supervision over weights and measures, previously in the power of

the prince and his tysiatskii, who used to serve as the head of the sotskie. Soon
afterwards, the office of the tysiatskii himself also passed into the hands of the
Novgorod veche. Miloneg is mentioned in 1185 as a wealthy Novgorod burgher
(the builder of the church of the Ascension) and in 1191 as the tysiatskii. He is
considered the first elected tysiatskii (an appointed one would probably be an
outsider and would not invest in building a local church). The Testament is
therefore of a later date than the Church Statute, because the former reflects a
situation in which the tysiatskii and not the sotskie ran the commercial court.
In the section on the composition of the Novgorod population we referred
to art. 2 of the Testament in connection with its mention of ‘well-to-do’ vs.
‘common’ people. Another aspect of this provision is its description of the
tasks of the three elders, who are said to have been appointed to “manage all
affairs of the St. John’s guild, domestic and foreign trade, and commercial ju-
risdiction”. The three elders consisted of the tysiatskii and two other persons,
to be appointed from amongst the wealthy (poshlye) merchants (art. 4). Art.
2 also added that the posadnik and the Novgorod boyars were not to interfere
with the affairs of the guild.
The judicial aspect of the tysiatskii’s office is indirectly confirmed by the
Church Statute of Vsevolod (see Chapter 6) which in this and other ways is in-
timately connected with the Testament of Vsevolod, in agreement with Floria’s
theory outlined above. The central topic of the Statute is the granting of tithes
and of jurisdiction in a large number of cases to the church, more or less along
the lines of the Church Statute of St. Vladimir. The Statute of Vsevolod, as said,
does not mention the tysiatskii; instead, the prince states that it was issued af-
ter calling together the ten hundredmen (sotskie), the elder Boleslav, the town
herald (birich) Miroshka, the elder Vasiata of the merchants’ guild of St. John,
and that it was then established in consultation with all those persons, the
archbishop of Novgorod, the prince’s wife and the boyars. But along with the
church as the principal beneficiary, the guild of St. John turns up as the super-
visor of trade measures in Novgorod (wax scales, honey weights, silver weights
and cloth measures). This responsibility was specifically entrusted to the elder
(singular) of the guild.
The guild of St. John co-existed with the church of the same name, the en-
dowment of which was the main concern of the Testament. The income from
the various grants made by the Testament was spent partly for the upkeep of
the church, its clergy and other personnel, and for liturgical services, while
another part of it was added to the treasury of the guild. The general drift of
the document is to confer the general management of trade in Novgorod to
the complex of St. John, the merchants’ guild and its church. As the tysiatskii,
himself a Novgorod official, not being a member of the guild, was already con-
cerned with the administration of Novgorod trade, his appointment, to what
amounted to being the head of the St. John’s guild, was a logical step to take
once the guild acquired its public role in the administration of Novgorod’s
trade.
The tysiatskii and the sotniki, as the principal commercial officers of
Novgorod, also had important responsibilities with regard to the upkeep of
Novgorod’s streets and the great bridge across the Volkhov (see below, the sec-
tion on central and regional government).
The Novgorod Court Charter (reflecting mostly a situation prevailing at a
somewhat later date) is very clear about the role of the tysiatskii as a separate
court, side by side with the courts of the archbishop and of the secular powers,
the latter being run jointly by the posadnik and the lieutenant (namestnik) of
the prince (see arts. 1–4).
The 1269 (draft) treaty between Novgorod and Lübeck together with the
‘Gothic’ Coast, which regulated the relationships between Novgorod and its
Western trading partners in considerable detail, directed Western merchants
to take their legal disputes (with Novgorod partners) to the court of “the tys-
iatskii, the elders, and the Novgorodians”.90
The election of the tysiatskii, after the office had been removed from the
control of the prince at the end of the 12th century, was effected by the veche.
As the second most important city official, the tysiatskii was recruited from the
boyar class; this is confirmed by several Chronicle entries.
The posadnik was often away from Novgorod, on diplomatic or military mis-
sions; in such a situation the tysiatskii, if he happened to be in town himself,
would act as the posadnik’s deputy, but presumably only with regard to general
executive duties, and not in a judicial capacity. The Novgorod Court Charter is
quite precise about keeping the judicial duties of these offices separate.
It has already been mentioned in passing that the tysiatskii, like the posad-
nik, was very much involved in Novgorod’s foreign relations. In treaty pream-
bles he is almost invariably mentioned immediately after the posadnik.
Boyars
The Novgorod Chronicle, as well as legal sources such as treaties, demonstrates
that boyars and merchants were perceived as distinct categories of persons,
playing specific roles in the political and economic life of medieval Novgorod.
In the works of V.L Ianin the boyar class even assumed the role of the actu-
al carrier of Novgorod’s statehood and sovereignty. But while a manageable
90 gvnp No.31, 58–61, at 60.

502 chapter 16
c oncept of merchants as a social class is at least within reach (for instance:

“persons who made their living primarily by buying and selling goods, together
with their families”), boyars constituted a much more elusive collective entity.
They are first mentioned in the First Novgorod Chronicle in 1118, when Vladi-
mir Monomakh summoned “all Novgorod boyars” to Kiev.
This would agree with the theory put forward by S.V. Zavadskaia that before
the beginning of the 12th century the term “boyar” did not refer to a distinct
social group.91 It is probably more than a coincidence that the term is first used
in Novgorod to refer to such a distinct group at a time when Novgorod was able
to assert the right to elect its own posadnik (first documented case in 1161). On
the other hand (as argued in the section on boyars in Chapter 19), Zavadskaia’s
date probably ought to be moved back at least to the middle of the 11th century
(when “great boyars” and “lesser boyars” appeared a number of times in the
Church Statute of Iaroslav).
Two treaties (of 1372 and 1448–1461) in which boyars are mentioned specifi-
cally, between the chief officials (posadnik and tysiatskii) and the well-to-do
people (zhit’i liudi), have been referred to in the section on the constitution of
the Novgorod population.
What exactly defined a person’s status as a boyar (apart from the fact that
his father had been a boyar) remains unclear. One feature pointed out above is
that the Novgorod boyars constituted the class from which the leading officials,
the posadniki and the tysiatskie, were chosen. In most cases the appointment
appears to have been effected by the veche, in which all free citizens could
participate. The fact that such procedures would always lead to the appoint-
ment of a member of the boyar class demonstrates that either the choice was
limited, by custom, to that class only, or that the boyar class wielded sufficient
influence in veche meetings to ensure the election of one of their own.
In the traditional Soviet view, the Novgorod boyars were identified as the
ruling class in a feudal society.92 This meant that boyar land ownership had
to constitute the foundation of their socio-economic and legal position.
(Monasteries and other ecclesiastical entities owning land were considered as
associated with this ruling class.) This approach led to a simple answer to the
question concerning the characteristics of the Novgorod boyars: an individual
who owned (a sufficient quantity of) land was ipso facto a boyar. Even if one
were to disregard certain general objections to this approach (the validity of
91 S.V. Zavadskaia, “«Boliarin»-«Boiarin» v drevnerusskikh pis’mennykh istochnikakh”, dg

sssr 1985, 89–94. See the section on boyars and other nobles in Chapter 19.
92 Cf. B.D. Grekov (ed.), Ocherki istorii sssr. Period feodalizma ix–xv vv., i, Moskva, 1953,
334–357 (“Novgorodskaia feodal’naia respublika”, by A.L. Mongait), at 335.
Marxist theory on this matter, the dubious usefulness of the feudalism con-
cept, etc.), this position is by no means unassailable. Novgorod ‘well-to-do’
people and merchants were also known to own land; a Novgorod boyar who
lost his land did not lose his membership of the boyar class.
In accordance with the pivotal role assigned by V.L. Ianin to the Novgorod
boyar class, a more precise definition of it was attempted by him. In a special
study devoted to the “feudal votchina” (roughly: allodium) he reached the con-
clusion that the Novgorod boyar class constituted a closed body of families de-
scending from a small number of ancestors.93 His study is therefore subtitled
“An historical-genealogical investigation”. This concept is close to the German
Uradel, persons descending (in the legitimate and male line) from persons pos-
sessing noble status at some given moment in the past. The Novgorod Uradel,
in Ianin’s view, was based on the local tribal aristocracy of the pre-Christian
era.
Most authors agree that landed property was the mainstay of the wealth
of a Novgorod boyar. The dependent peasants living on the estates generally
paid obrok (roughly: quitrent), the preferred system of exploitation where
land was less productive.94 The non-Slavic (mostly Finnish of some descrip-
tion) population of more distant northern and eastern regions, controlled by
Novgorod boyar families and engaged primarily in non-agricultural activities,
such as hunting and fishing, paid tribute (dan’). There are several reports in the
Novgorod chronicles about hostilities and punitive expeditions in connection
with the payment of tribute.95
What can be said therefore, without providing a definition of the Novgorod
boyars, is that they constituted the urban elite, that they controlled appoint-
ment to the most important offices, that their wealth and position were based
to a considerable extent on landowning, and that the quality of being a boyar
was inherited, in other words it was membership of a boyar family or clan that
was the decisive factor.
As with Russian boyars in general, the origin of Novgorod boyars is probably
twofold, they descended in part from local families prominent in prehistoric
times and in part from foreign elements, in particular members of princely
druzhiny (esp. of Scandinavian origin) who had merged with local elites. The
93 V.L. Ianin, Novgorodskaia feodal’naia votchina. Istoriko-genealogicheskoe issledovanie,

Moskva, 1981, 213–229.
94 The alternative was especially barshchina, where a dependent peasant tilled a plot of land
assigned to him for his personal use, after he had worked for a fixed number of days on the
land of his master.
95 See generally Mongait’s chapter on Novgorod, quoted above.
504 chapter 16
well-known Chronicle narrative of the sequence of events in 1015 leading ulti-

mately to the succession of St. Vladimir by his son Iaroslav might echo this de-
velopment. First, the chronicler related how the Novgorodians killed members
of Iaroslav’s Varangian druzhina, and then continued with the story of Iaro-
slav’s revenge, when he had leading Novgorod burghers put to death. When
Iaroslav needed the support of the Novgorod people the next day, he expressed
his regrets by mourning “my beloved druzhina, whom I killed yesterday”. The
leading citizens (narochity muzhi) as opponents of the (Varangian) druzhina
apparently became members of the same druzhina in one day. The explana-
tion, I suggest, is that the two categories, although still sufficiently separate to
indulge in violent altercations between each other, were already in a process
of being fused into a single Novgorod elite, and that is why Iaroslav could refer
to both groups as his druzhina.
In an urban setting such as Novgorod, the quantitative aspect of the class re-
lationships is obviously relevant; in other words, what sort of numbers should
come to mind when one considers the Novgorod boyar class. Somewhere be-
tween 100 and 250 adult men (who would take part in veche meetings) would
be my guess, based on calculations of Russian scholars.96
The question of boyar landowning is closely connected with princely land-
owning and will be discussed below.
Merchants
Merchants have already appeared above in the section on the composition
of the Novgorod population. Those remarks were based mostly on the so-
called Testament (Rukopisanie) of prince Vsevolod Mstislavich, representing
a kind of foundation charter of the guild of St. John the Baptist, a corporation
of Novgorod merchants engaged in domestic (i.e. Russian) trade.97 The main
points emerging from it (in the context of the present section) were:
– merchants constituted a well-defined group, organized into several guilds or

corporations;
– they were not a socio-economically homogeneous category; there was a
more or less separate group of important (poshlye) merchants;
– a prospective merchant had to be admitted and had to pay an entrance fee;
– the quality of “important” (poshlye) merchants could be inherited;
96 Esp. V.F. Andreev, “O sotsial’nom sostave Novgorodskogo vecha”, I.Ia. Froianov (ed.), Gene-
zis i razvitie feodalizma v Rossii, Leningrad, 1988, 70–79.
97 The guild was not set up by the Testament; the latter merely recorded an existing
arrangement.
– the merchant guild had its own board, which also served as a commer-
cial court; it consisted of two ‘important’ merchants and the tysiatskii as
president;
– the guild’s income was derived from entrance fees and from trade tax.
Additionally, the guild of St. John shared the revenue from the supervision of
weights and measures with the church.98
Although little is known about other merchants’ guilds, their organization
was probably similar to that of the guild of St. John. In this respect an inter-
esting hypothesis has been advanced by B.N. Floria, who suggested that the
merchants’ guild of St. John actually arose as the result of a merger of several,
or at least two previous corporations. This would explain the presence of two
aldermen and the absence of charters similar to the Rukopisanie, regulating
the operation of other merchants’ corporations.99
Merchants are mentioned several times separately, along with other catego-
ries (such as boyars or ‘common people’) and Novgorod’s principal officials, in
the preambles to treaties.100 Some of these treaties mention the elders of the
merchants by name, as representatives of all the merchants.101
The economic vulnerability of merchants is illustrated by a clause on zak-
ladniki (indentured servants), included in most of the considerable number
of treaties with Tver’ (and a few with Moscow), providing the general frame-
work for relationships between Novgorod and its prince (on zakladniki, see
the section on “Other categories among the rural population”, in Chapter 18,
on Rural Russia). It appeared for the first time in the 1266 treaty102 with prince
Iaroslav Iaroslavich of Tver’ and forbad the prince and all his people to re-
ceive Novgorod persons into dependent (indentured) service, whether smerdy
(dependent peasants) or merchants (kuptsiny); they were to be returned
to respectively their villages (pogosty) or their ‘hundreds’ (soty). It is quite
understandable that a dependent person such as a smerd would like to leave
98 This is not in the Testament, but in the Church Statute of Vsevolod (art. 15).
99 B.N. Floria, “O kupecheskikh organizatsiiakh v Novgorode xii–xv vekov”, V.L. Ianin (ed.),
Ot Drevnei Rusi k Rossii novogo vremeni. Sbornik statei: K 70-letiiu Anny Leonidovny Khoro-
shkevich, Moskva, 2003, 272–275.
100 gvnp No.41 (treaty with Hanseatic League on wax trade of 1342), No.42 (treaty with Han-
seatic League of 1371), No.43 (treaty with Hanseatic League of 1372), No.48 (peace treaty
with Dorpat/Iur’ev of 1405), No.21 (treaty of 1448–1461 with grand prince Vasilii ii “the
Blind”).
101 The treaties of 1371 and 1372; the treaty of 1342 mentions only “Sidor, olderman der
koplude”.
102 gvnp Nos.2–3; also in prp ii, 137–141.
506 chapter 16
his Novgorod master and enter into a more promising relation of dependence
elsewhere, but of course only a merchant in serious difficulties would contem-
plate a similar course. The clause allows the reading that Tver’ masters were
forbidden to accept Novgorod subjects (particularly smerdy or merchants)
into the zakladnichestvo relationship, as well as the reading that it concerned
in particular Novgorod persons (whether smerdy of merchants) who were al-
ready z akladniki of a Novgorod master.
The merchant (kupets) turns up a number of times in the Novgorod Court
Charter in procedural provisions; in these provisions he is treated in the same
way as a boyar or a well-to-do (zhit’ii) person.
The merchants discussed hitherto were the kuptsy, engaged in domestic
trade; they are to be distinguished from the merchants engaged in foreign
trade, the gosti, who enjoyed a more exalted status. The treaties with the princ-
es usually contained the formula that the gosti were to be granted free passage
within the territory of the treaty partner, as ordered by the charter of the tsar
(gosti nashemu gostiti … bez rubezha, po tsesareve gramote). The “tsar” in ques-
tion was the Tatar khan (the Moscow grand prince at that time had not yet
assumed this title). It indicates the importance attached by the Tatars to the
unhindered exercise of long-distance trade in Russia. Otherwise the sources
are almost silent about the status of Novgorod (and other Russian) merchants
engaged in foreign and long-distance trade. The position of foreign merchants
in Novgorod will be discussed below.
The merchants, as already mentioned above, constituted a relatively closed
group, but not a social class. A person belonging to the ‘common people’, or to
the well-to-do people, or even to the boyar class, could engage professionally
in trade and then the rules concerning merchants would apply. By the same
reasoning, the gosti and the kuptsy were not necessarily separate social groups;
the quality would depend on the activity engaged in. This is of particular rele-
vance to boyars. A wealthy boyar could be viewed as the owner and manager of
an enterprise, based on agricultural production but often embracing also the
production of other goods by craftsmen. Part of the output of the enterprise
would be used or consumed by the owner, his family and his workforce, but
the surplus would be available for sale. Its export to faraway places could be
undertaken by the enterprise itself or by other merchants. In the former case
the boyar himself would assume the quality of a gost’.
Central and Regional Administration

In addition to what has been said above about the central authorities of
Novgorod and their mutual relationships, one more curious source should be
mentioned which throws unexpected light on the way Novgorod managed its
affairs. What we have in mind is the text known as Iaroslav’s Law on Bridges.103
This short text, appearing as an appendix to certain groups of copies of the
Expanded Pravda, dealt in practical terms with the matter of the maintenance
of urban roads and bridges in Novgorod. During wet seasons the marshy soil on
which Novgorod was built would make urban traffic almost impossible, if noth-
ing was done about it. For that reason roads were paved with wooden beams,
called mosty (bridges). Iaroslav’s Law on Bridges listed the different neighbour-
hoods and the specific stretches of road they had to maintain. Along with the
neighbourhoods, the prince, the posadnik, the tysiatskii, and the German and
Gothic Courts were also assigned their own stretches. The list covered mainly
those streets which were essential for Novgorod’s trade, those leading from the
river front to the market. The taxes required for the upkeep were collected by
the osmeniki, officials normally responsible for the collection of customs duty
at the market.
The Law also contained two insertions which were probably included im-
mediately or soon after the main list was compiled. The first insertion offered
a list of the ten urban ‘hundreds’, or rather their chiefs, the sotniki, and of
nine provincial ‘hundreds’. They were collectively responsible for the mainte-
nance of the great bridge across the Volkhov River, connecting the two halves
of Novgorod. Each ‘hundred’ was assigned one section of the bridge (a few of
them two or three sections, as there were 23–25 sections). The tysiatskii, as the
head of the sotniki, was in charge of the entire operation.
The second insertion listed several rural regions located upstream along the
Volkhov River, the inhabitants of which were obliged to supply the timber re-
quired for Novgorod’s bridge-building. In his exposition of the meaning of Iar-
oslav’s Law on Bridges, Ianin points out that Novgorod could afford to be more
relaxed about the timber of the forests downstream, which would be difficult
to bring back to Novgorod.104 In a treaty of 1269 with the Hanseatic League,
almost exactly contemporary with Iaroslav’s Law on Bridges, the German mer-
chants were allowed to cut down trees on both sides of the river, to repair their
masts or for other purposes.105
By collecting scraps of information from different sources it is possible, not
to reconstruct the entire system of regional administration of the Novgorod re-
public, but at least to acquire some of idea of how the vast territory controlled
103 The following account is based entirely on V.L. Ianin’s interpretation of Iaroslav’s Law on
Bridges, as explained in rz i, 233–248. For other views on this Law see the relevant section
in Chapter 8.
104 Ibid., 245.
105 gvnp No.31.
508 chapter 16
by Novgorod was administered. The picture may be one-sided because less is

known about the nuclear regions (the piatiny) around Novgorod than about
the more distant, albeit vast, Dvina province.
The five piatiny consisted basically of the estates of ecclesiastical (the arch-
bishop and the Novgorod monasteries) and secular landowners (Novgorod
boyars). Lands owned by, or granted to, princes constituted a special category
(see below).
Most disputes of a legal nature would arise and be solved within the small
world of the estate. What remained as functions to be exercized by higher au-
thorities were taxation and jurisdiction. For the purposes of taxation the ter-
ritory was divided into districts (okruga-pogosty) which generally coincided
with parishes (prikhody). The jurisdiction of the court of the urban quarter
(konets) with which the piatina was connected extended to the latter.106
In the more distant regions to the north and the east, tax collection was
the primary governmental business. The non-Slavic tribal communities were
expected to pay tribute (dan’), which was whenever necessary enforced manu
militari by armed officials (danniki). Government servants, bearing titles such
as posadnik or namestnik, were often stationed at population centres. Their
duties seem to have been mostly involved with tax collecting and possibly with
other general administrative matters. Numerous (metal) seals of deeds certi-
fied by them have been preserved and suggest that they were in fact appointees
of the archbishop. The sources testify to the presence of boyars of local origin
and appointments of officials may have been made from this reservoir of local
candidates.107
The most important towns on Novgorod territory enjoyed the status of prig-
orod (borough). The exact legal ramifications of this status are difficult to es-
tablish. Some of them can be pieced together on the basis of dispersed entries
in chronicles.108 They obviously implied a certain amount of autonomy. The
best-documented case is Pskov, which eventually was able to shake off the sta-
tus of prigorod (see the section on Pskov below). Other prigorody were (among
106 In this respect I follow A.A. Frolov, “Novyi vzgliad na territorial’no-administrativnuiu

sistemu zemel’ Gospodina Velikogo Novgoroda”, Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik, 11(21),
107 Cf. V.A. Ianin, “K istorii administrativnoi sistemy Novgorodskoi zemli”, V.L. Ianin (ed.), Ot
Drevnei Rusi k Rossii novogo vremeni. Sbornik statei: K 70-letiiu Anny Leonidovny Khoro-
shkevich, Moskva, 2003, 77–84; P.D. Malygin, “O regional’nykh (oblastnykh) vladychnykh
namestnikakh Novgorodskoi zemli”, A.A. Gippius, E.N. Nosov, A.S. Khoroshev (eds.), Ve-
likii Novgorod v istorii srednevekovoi Evropy. K 70-letiiu Valentina Lavrent’evicha Ianina,
Moskva, 1999, 218–224.
108 See Kliuchevskii, Kurs ii, 74–75.
others) Torzhok (also known as Novyi Torg), Velikie Luki, Ladoga and Rzhev. It
seems that at least some of the prigorody had their own courts, with the cor-
responding courts in Novgorod serving as the appellate instance.
Relations with the Prince

Novgorod the Great, before its incorporation in the grand principality of Mus-
covy, is commonly designated as a republic or even a boyar republic, at least
after the events of 1136–1137 when it succeeded in wrenching control of its own
affairs from the Kievan princes. But during the entire following period, with a
few short intermissions, there always was a prince, who was subject however to
being “shown the road” when he had incurred the displeasure of the people of
Novgorod. In the selection of a new prince Novgorod usually had a preponder-
ant, if not decisive, say. It would be pointless for the Kievan grand prince (later
on the grand prince of Vladimir) to appoint an unwanted candidate, unless
very particular circumstances would prevent the Novgorodians rejecting such
a prince. As everywhere in Russia, the new prince would belong to the house
of Rurik; the field was in fact much narrower, because after 1137 the Novgorod
princes would always be somebody close to (i.e. a younger brother or son) the
line of the grand princes of Vladimir-Suzdal’ which would ultimately produce
the princes of Moscow: Vladimir Monomakh (†1125), Iurii Dolgorukii (†1157),
Vsevolod ‘Big Nest’ (†1212), Iaroslav ii (†1246), Aleksandr Nevskii (†1263) and
the further father-son line (there were a few Novgorod princes from the Smo-
lensk branch, who were politically subservient to the Vladimir-Suzdal’ princ-
es). For some time the principality of Novgorod was in the hands of the princes
of Tver’, themselves a junior branch of the princes of Vladimir (descendants of
Iaroslav ii).
The legal ramifications of the relationship between Novgorod and its prince
are well-documented, thanks to the survival of a considerable number of con-
tracts concluded between the two. The tradition which legitimated these riady
went back to an alleged compact between Iaroslav the Wise and the Novgorod
people in 1016, when Iaroslav was in great difficulties and needed Novgorod
support. Possibly, as suggested by Ianin, the memory of the legendary deal be-
tween the Viking Rurik and Novgorod may have served the same purpose. Most
of the presently surviving texts concern treaties with the prince of Tver’.109 The
texts closely parallel each other and also one of a similar treaty with the prince
109 The most extensive work on the Novgorod-Tver’ treaties has been done by L.V. Cherepnin
in his work on medieval Russian archives, Cherepnin, Arkhivy, I, Moskva/Leningrad,
1948, 224–333. A brief outline in my “The Treaties of Medieval Russia”, Feldbrugge, lmr,
181–232, at 202–204. Important new insights were offered by V.A. Kuchkin, Dogovornye
510 chapter 16
of Moscow; they span the period of 1264–1471.110 This suggests that there was
indeed a standard formula listing the duties and rights of the prince.
The first and most comprehensive obligation of the prince was “to hold
Novgorod according to custom [po poshline]”; several texts add “as of old” and/
or “as your father held it”. Such a formula was already included in the first avail-
able text (of 1264) and it survived until 1471. It demonstrates, incidentally, that
the 1264 text was by no means the first of its kind.
Among the specific obligations, the division of jurisdiction constituted one
of the most important clusters. The basic rule, already referred to above, was
that the prince (or rather his lieutenant/namestnik) was not to judge cases
without the participation of the Novgorod posadnik. Another rule forbad the
Novgorod prince to try cases outside Novgorod territory (which would allow
him to avoid the shared jurisdiction). Several treaties warned the prince not to
contemplate self-administered justice (A samosuda ne zamyshliati).
An entire package of rules set out territories and periods for the prince’s
hunt.
The most detailed and extensive regulation was devoted to the question of
princely landowning (to be discussed immediately hereafter).
Closely connected with landowning were the rules aimed at preventing per-
sons fleeing Novgorod jurisdiction from settling on land controlled or owned
by the prince. The prince was not allowed to remove people from Novgorod
territory to his own lands, nor to offer shelter to indentured persons (zaklad-
niki, see the section on unfree persons in Chapter 18). This prohibition also
extended to the prince’s wife and family and his boyars.
In conclusion, some of the considerations discussed at greater length in
Chapter 13 (on the role of the Prince in Kievan Russia) could be repeated here.
For the inhabitants of the principality concerned, an indispensable and much-
needed aspect of the prince’s office was his military leadership. The chronicles
show very clearly that princes would generally serve as commanders of the
army, and that their reputation would depend to a large extent on their per-
formance as such. The core of the armed forces consisted, at least during the
earlier period, of the prince’s personal guard, his druzhina. Of even greater im-
portance, although less tangible, was what one author has called “the magic
of power”,111 the awe inspired by the princely dignity, the conviction that a
gramoty moskovskikh velikikh kniazei xiv veka, Moskva, 2003, in the chapters on the trea-
ties with Tver’.
110 gvnp Nos.1–3, 6, 7–10, 14–15, 19–20, 22–23, 26–27; some of these are also to be found in prp
ii, 133–158; English translations of Nos.1, 6, 14–15 in Kaiser, Laws, 67–78.
111 V.A. Arakcheev, Srednevekovyi Pskov, Pskov, 2004, 39 ff.
princeless polity was like an abandoned orphan.112 This idea was fully appli-
cable to medieval Novgorod and Pskov.
Princely and Boyar Landowning

As we have argued elsewhere, a modern concept of ownership is not quite suit-
able for analyzing relationships concerning land in the middle ages. This ap-
plied fully to the lands of Novgorod, which ranged from urban plots within the
walls of the city to vast tracts of almost inhabitable and unusable land in the
North. A single ownership concept cannot very well deal with such a variety
of objects.
A prince of Novgorod could be the ‘owner’ of land situated on Novgorod ter-
ritory and belonging to his family of old. Then he could ‘own’ land allotted to
him by Novgorod for his upkeep. Otherwise, the treaties forbad him, his family
or his boyars, from acquiring land (or rather: villages) belonging to Novgorod.
As quasi-sovereign he could claim certain rights with respect to the land be-
longing to Novgorod, in particular the payment of a ‘gift’ (dar), as set out in
the treaties. It is best to look at the relevant and available legal rules and ask
the standard question: Who could do what with a piece of land? The trouble is
that documentation begins to become available at a moment when the entire
picture is already fairly complex. Several authors have therefore attempted to
devise a more comprehensive scenario to fit the individual bits of information
provided by the various sources (chronicles, legal texts, birch-bark documents
and the post-1478 tax registers – pistsovye knigi). The most comprehensive and
elaborate, although not entirely undisputed, argument is by V.L. Ianin in his
monograph on the Novgorod ‘feudal votchina’,113 supplemented by later publi-
cations.114 Briefly, it runs as follows.
Under the first Kievan princes, land grants were made by the prince. (As
pointed out in Chapter 18, first to druzhina members, to support their activities
on behalf of the prince; and later also to monasteries.)
According to Ianin, Mstislav Vladimirovich, after he had moved from
Novgorod to Kiev in 1117, set aside the border region between the Novgorod
and Smolensk principalities (the Toropets-Rzhev area) with the purpose of
creating a family domain for his descendants (first of all his son Vsevolod, then
prince of Novgorod) who would be princes of Novgorod. Such a private source
112 It may seem strange now, but most new states in 19th century Europe still found it neces-
sary to look for a monarch in some small German principality.
113 V.L. Ianin, Novgorodskaia feodal’naia votchina. Istoriko-genealogicheskoe issledovanie,
Moskva, 1981.
114 Esp. V.L. Ianin, Novgorod i Litva, Moskva, 1997.
512 chapter 16
of income would enable them to operate more effectively in Novgorod. In the

course of the 13th century this area fell under the control of Lithuania, but
after protracted hostilities Novgorod succeeded in regaining control through
a peace treaty in 1326 (mentioned in the Novgorod Chronicle) in exchange
for an annual payment. This arrangement lasted until the end of Novgorod’s
independence.115
The first known land grants of Novgorod territory concerned monaster-
ies, from 1130 by the Kievan grand prince Mstislav Vladimirovich and his son
Vsevolod (the acting prince in Novgorod) of the Buitse region to the Iur’ev mon-
astery, and from 1134 by Iziaslav Mstislavich of the village of Vitoslavichi to the
Panteleimon monastery.116 While the grant of Buitse was simple and straight-
forward, the grant of Vitoslavichi was made “with the blessing of bishop Nifont
and after I had asked [permission from] Novgorod”. This is explained by the
fact that Buitse, situated on the border with Smolensk territory, was part of the
extensive private domains of Mstislav’s family, while Vitoslavichi, being part
of common Novgorod territory, could only be granted after securing the agree-
ment of the Novgorod veche. After the events of 1136, the rule that the prince
could not grant Novgorod land without the co-operation of the Novgorod au-
thorities (the posadnik) became a standard clause in the treaties concluded be-
tween the Novgorod prince and the city. It was even included in the 1471 treaty
with the grand prince of Moscow, and it was almost always combined with the
basic rule discussed above, concerning the duty to share jurisdiction with the
posadnik.117 In the end most of the agricultural land ended up in the hands
of the boyar class or the Church, the latter in the person of the archbishop
himself (St. Sophia), other Novgorod churches, or monasteries, among which
the Iur’ev monastery was the most prominent. As mentioned above, the archi-
mandrite, appointed by the Novgorod veche, was entrusted with the general
supervision of church property and served simultaneously as the abbot of the
Iur’ev monastery. ‘Well-to-do people’ and merchants constituted a secondary
category of landowners.
115 It was still referred to in the 1470–1471 treaty with Kazimir iv, king of Poland and grand
prince of Lithuania (gvnp No.77).
116 gvnp Nos.81–82, 140–141. The corrected date of 1134 instead of 1146–1155 (as indicated by
gvnp) is based on newly discovered copies of Iziaslav’s grant; cf. V.L. Ianin, “Kniazheskii
domen v Novgorodskoi zemle”, V.L. Ianin (ed.), Feodalizm v Rossii. Sbornik statei i issle-
dovanii, posviashchenny pamiati akademika L.V. Cherepnina, Moskva, 1987, 119–134, at
119–120. Ianin, Akty, 135, notes that the village Buitse (mentioned in 1232 in the Novgorod
Chronicle) was actually the centre of the Buets region and that the grant concerned the
entire region.
117 Typically: A bez posadnika ti, kniazhe, suda ne suditi, ni volosti rozdavati, ni gramot daiati.
In the long-drawn-out struggle between the prince and the Novgorod

boyars, control over land as the principal source of wealth and power re-
mained the main object. Preventing the prince from using the reservoir of
public land as an instrument for exercizing influence was supplemented by a
number of o ther conditions aimed at curbing his powers. The prohibition on
granting land independently (i.e. without the co-operation of the posadnik)
was usually accompanied in the treaty texts by the addition of a prohibition
on issuing other documents concerning land (independently). Almost all trea-
ties contained the rule that the prince, his family, his boyars and servitors were
forbidden to hold, purchase or receive as a gift villages in the land of Novgorod.
This rule did not apply to the domains the prince already held privately, nor to
land temporarily granted to him for the maintenance of his office
In 1480, after Novgorod’s incorporation in the Muscovy state, the entire
Novgorod boyar class was resettled elsewhere in the country and its estates
were given as service grants (pomest’ia) to servants of the Moscow prince.
Finally, as may be clear from the foregoing, it should be stressed that the
prince, although hemmed in considerably on different sides, still remained
an essential component of the Novgorod polity, as a military commander, a
member of the executive and the judiciary, and a participant in treaty-making.
Novgorod, until 1471, was simultaneously a republic, run mostly by an aristo-
cratic elite, and a principality.
Relations with Foreign Powers118

Novgorod’s eastern and southern neighbours were Russian principalities. The
relations, as reflected by a number of treaties between Novgorod and the prin-
cipality of Rostov-Suzdal’-Vladimir and the principalities which sprouted from
the latter (Moscow and Tver’), have been dealt with above. They ultimately
resulted in the absorption of Novgorod by Moscow. In the south, Novgorod
bordered on Smolensk and Polotsk. Polotsk was already very much in decline
by the middle of the 12th century and had become increasingly under the in-
fluence of Lithuania, to be fully absorbed by it a century later. Polotsk therefore
did not play a significant role as an independent Novgorod neighbour.
The princes of Smolensk held out much longer against their powerful Lithu-
anian neighbours and were forced to submit only by 1386. The relations be-
tween Smolensk and Novgorod seem to have been relatively free from strain.
Occasionally, the Smolensk princes were able to exploit the opportunity offered
by internal discord within the Kiev and Vladimir sub-dynasties to interfere
118 More detail on this topic in my “The Treaties of Medieval Russia”, Feldbrugge, lmr, 181–
231, esp. 200–210.
514 chapter 16
more actively in the affairs of Novgorod. This happened especially during the
turbulent second half of the 12th century.119 Several Smolensk princes (or rath-
er their sons) managed to be invited to become princes of Novgorod. It never
lasted very long and left no important traces of legal relevance.
Of far greater significance were the relations with western powers,
Novgorod’s immediate western neighbours and more distant western powers
(Sweden, Norway, Poland). During the centuries of Novgorod’s independence
the situation on its western borders was fluid, with the late arrival of Chris-
tianity in the area as the general backdrop. The main permanent power was
Lithuania, the last European country to be baptized.120 The area which would
later form Latvia and Estonia was populated by Baltic and Finnish tribes; its
conversion was undertaken by German missionaries, Riga became the seat of
a bishop in 1201 (archbishop in 1246). Other bishoprics in this area were Dor-
pat, the island of Oesel, and Kurland. The German-dominated towns of Riga,
Reval (Russian name: Kolyvan’, Estonian name: Tallin) and Dorpat (Russian
name: Iur’ev, Estonian name: Tartu) were members of the Hanseatic League
and therefore enjoyed a special status.121
A factor of special importance was the presence of the German or Teutonic
Order (see the section on the Baltic Coast in Chapter 10). Co-operation be-
tween the Order and the German towns of Riga, Reval and Dorpat was gener-
ally close. These towns and other smaller German towns in the area followed
the law of Lübeck.
Novgorod of course owed its existence to its favourable location for transit
trade and its contacts with western traders went back into the prehistoric era.
The first available text of a commercial treaty is of 1190–1191, between Novgorod
and “all the German sons, the Goths and the entire Latin tongue”.122 It was ob-
viously not the first of its kind as it confirmed “the old agreement” (staryi mir).
The western partners, as is clear from the further text and from subsequent
similar treaties, were Germans from North German Hanseatic towns, first of
all Lübeck, and inhabitants of the ‘Gothic Coast’ (the town of Visby on the
Swedish island of Gotland). The treaty covered the most essential privileges
119 Cf. L.V. Alekseev, Smolenskaia zemlia v ix–xiii vv., Moskva, 1980, 205–207.
120 Its ruling prince Mindaugas was baptized in 1251, but Lithania remained basically pagan
until 1386 when grand prince Jagaila married the heiress of the Polish crown, princess
Jadwiga.
121 Nine other smaller towns in the area were also associated with the Hanseatic League:
Fellin, Wolmar, Pernau, Lemdal, Kokenhusen, Wenden, Goldingen, Windau and Roop.
122 gvnp No.28 (55–56). The 1190–1191 date is based on E.A. Rybina, “O dvukh drevneishikh
torgovykh dogovorakh Novgoroda”, Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik, 3(13), Leningrad,
1989, 43–50.
for merchants of both sides (free passage, freedom to trade, guarantees against
arbitrary arrest, etc.) but dealt in more detail with various difficulties and fights
that could arise between local people and Germans or Scandinavians. This part
of the treaty is still strongly reminiscent of the oldest part of the rp, itself origi-
nally an attempt to cope with inter-ethnic violence.
After the treaty of 1190–1191, a considerable number of treaties and com-
munications with Hanseatic partners followed, right up to Novgorod’s loss of
independence. A few are explicitly with the entire Hanseatic League, designat-
ed as the “73 cities”.123 More often a less precise formula is employed; Lübeck
and a few other prominent towns are mentioned by name, and then the words
“and all the German merchants” or a similar term are added.124 The promi-
nence of Lübeck is also demonstrated by the fact that several treaties or other
communications concern Lübeck alone. A regional sub-category is formed by
the treaties and communications with the Baltic cities: Riga, Iur’ev (Dorpat) or
Kolyvan’ (Reval), either individually or collectively.125
The nature of the treaties is varied. Among the more general are treaties
providing a framework for trade between Novgorod and its partners,126 and
also peace treaties or treaties establishing a truce.127 Other treaties are devoted
to settling more specific questions. Even more varied is the nature of the com-
munications (one-sided contacts between Novgorod and a foreign partner):
requests, complaints, proposals about different matters.
Along with the central issue of the freedom to trade and the accompanying
freedom of passage, the question of dealing with disputes between merchants
from different places was an ever urgent matter. The general principle was mu-
tual recognition of the competent foreign court. This principle did not always
lend itself to smooth application. One of the obstacles was the bewildering
diversity of legal systems, notwithstanding the overall dominance of Lübeck
law among the Hanseatic towns. gvnp offers quite a number of official com-
munications between Novgorod and foreign urban powers in which the other
side is urged to take appropriate measures to do justice to the cause of the
complaining citizens.128 If all failed, individual merchants would occasionally
123 E.g. gvnp No.62 (1423), No.64 (1434), No.67 (1436), No.74 (1450), No.76 (1466: 72 cities).
124 E.g. gvnp No.41 (1342): the ‘Gothic Coast’, Lübeck, Riga, Dortmund, Münster, Dülmen,
Minden, “and all the German merchants”. gvnp No.43 (1372) only mentions “Johannes
Prutze from the Gothic Coast as envoy of the entire German merchant community”.
125 E.g. gvnp No.36 (Riga, 1303/1307), No.47 (Kolyvan’, 1396), No.48 (Iur’ev, 1405), No.49 (all
three, 1409).
126 E.g. gvnp No.67 (1436).
127 E.g. gvnp No.46 (1392, peace treaty), No.64 (1434, two-years’ truce).
128 E.g. gvnp Nos.36, 44, 45, 53, 56, 57, 58, 66, 68, 69, 71, 75.
516 chapter 16
start their own private wars, a course considered justified under certain
circumstances.129
While treaties were generally concluded on behalf of Novgorod by the
posadnik, together with other officials (as explained earlier on in this chap-
ter), the opposite side was usually represented by envoys. In a few cases the
Hanseatic treaties only concerned a specific group of merchants, either from
abroad or from the German community in Novgorod (see below).130 Offers to
send envoys or conclude treaties were occasionally made by the archbishop.131
Most of the treaties or communications with Hanseatic or other German
parties are accompanied by a translation into Middle Low German, the medi-
um of communication within the Hanseatic League. This also applies to most
of the smaller number of treaties and agreements with the German Order,
starting with the military alliance treaty of 1323, directed against the Lithu-
anians.132 The usual partner was the Livonian Landmeister in Riga.133 Relations
between Novgorod and the Order did not seem to depart from the general pat-
tern of relationships entertained between Novgorod and its immediate neigh-
bours: a cyclical process of commerce, disputes, hostilities, and peace again.
They do not bear out the traditional image (an anti-western and anti-Catholic
stereotype) of the Order in Russian historiography as a permanently aggressive
and malicious threat.
In one case the bishop of Iur’ev (as opposed to the city authorities of Iur’ev)
appeared as the treaty partner.134
129 Cf. I.E. Kleinenberg, “«Chastnye voiny» otdel’nykh novgorodskikh kuptsov s Ganzoi i Li-
voniei v xv v.”, Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik 3(13), 68–74.
130 gvnp No.68 (1439, an agreement between Novgorod and the German merchant commu-
nity in Novgorod).
131 E.g. gvnp No.54 (1417, treaty proposal by the Novgorod archbishop to the three Baltic cit-
ies, Riga, Iur’ev and Kolyvan’).
132 gvnp No.37. N.A. Kazakova has argued that this text (as well as gvnp No.40) is not actu-
ally a treaty, but a unilateral statement; “Novgorodsko-nemetskie dogovory ili livonskie
akty?”, Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik 3(13), 63–67 (see also Ianin, Akty, 87–88). This
can be conceded, but the statement relates exactly what was in the treaty (the same goes
for No.40, see Ianin, Akty, 90–91). See also N.A. Kazakova, “Nachal’nyi tekst novgorodsko-
nemetskikh dogovorov xii–xv vv.”, Vspomogatel’nye istoricheskie distsipliny vi, 161–175,
Leningrad, 1974 (not available to me).
133 gvnp No.53 (1417), No.59 (1420, with the Landmeister and the bishop of Iur’ev), No.60
(1421), No.72 (1448, with the Landmeister and the bishop of Iur’ev), No.73 (1448, between
Novgorod and Pskov on one side and the Landmeister on the other, also on behalf of the
archbishop of Riga, the bishops of Iur’ev, Oesel, and Kurland, and the city of Iur’ev).
134 gvnp No.78 (1474).
A far more realistic threat was posed by the young and vigorous Lithuanian
state which, in the course of the 14th century succeeded in extending its power
over most of the Russian principalities which had made up Kievan Russia (see
Chapter 17, on Western Russia). In the end the very real possibility of Novgorod
becoming part of the western-oriented, Roman-Catholic empire of the Polish-
Lithuanian rulers tilted the balance in favour of orthodox Moscow. Apart from
a few incidental documents, a full peace treaty of 1440/1447 with Kazimir,
prince of Lithuania, and a treaty of 1470–1471 with the same prince (by that
time also king of Poland) are offered by gvnp.135
The frequent prehistoric visitors, not always peaceful, from S candinavia,
were followed in medieval times by repeated incursions from Sweden, r eported
by the Novgorod Chronicles. According to the latter, an “everlasting peace”
was concluded with the Swedish king Magnus v Eriksson in 1323, “on the old
terms”. The latter formula indicates that there were earlier similar treaties. The
Russian text of the treaty is available, but does not contain a reference to previ-
ous agreements.136 Three years later a similar and more extensive treaty was
concluded with the same ruler, who by then also served as king of Norway.
The text of the treaty referred to Norway only and its application was appar-
ently limited to that country.137 There was an earlier treaty with Norway in 1251,
of which a fragment has survived, which defined the borders of a region of
common tribute collection in the land of the Saami.138 The circumstances sur-
rounding the conclusion of this treaty have been described in the saga of king
Hakon the son of Hakon.139
After Pskov had gained its independence from Novgorod in 1348, the two
cities occasionally appeared as allies in their foreign relations documents.140
135 gvnp Nos.70 and 77. The last treaty was apparently never signed and represented a last
desperate attempt to ward off annexation by Moscow. It fell into the hands of Ivan iii who
then used it to accuse Novgorod of plotting against him.
136 gvnp No.38. Ianin, Akty, 118 and 120, discusses two other treaties between Novgorod and
Sweden (1468 and 1473, not included in gvnp; published in O.S. Rydberg (ed.), Sveriges
traktater med främmande magtér jemte andra dit hörande handlingar, Volume iii, Stock-
holm, 1895, 292–293 (N 512/1) and N 517.
137 gvnp No.39, accompanied by a Latin translation. See also I.P. Shaskol’skii, “Dogovory
Novgoroda s Norvegiei”, Istoricheskie Zapiski, 1945, Vol.14, 45–61, and id., “Russko-Nor-
vezhskii dogovor”, Skandinavskii Sbornik, Vol.15, Tallinn, 1976, 63–72.
138 Ianin, Akty, 82.
139 Cf. T.N. Dzhakson, I.G. Konovalova, A.V. Podosin (eds.), Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezh-
nykh istochnikov, Tom V: Drevneskandinavskie istochniki, Moskva, 2009, 168–170.
140 gvnp No.73 (1448), a comprehensive treaty between Novgorod and Pskov and an alli-
ance of Baltic parties, headed by the Livonian Landmeister (also mentioned above); gvnp
518 chapter 16
Foreign Trade and Foreign Merchants

As pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, Novgorod’s position as the for-
eign trade centre of medieval Russia was one of the main factors determining
its uniqueness. From the legal perspective, two aspects are to be noted in this
respect: the legal regime of Novgorod’s foreign trade, reflected especially in the
commercial treaties with western powers, and the special status granted to for-
eign merchants residing in Novgorod.
Already in 1190–1191, in the earliest known text of a treaty with the Hanseatic
League, free passage of merchants was put forward emphatically as the first
and obviously most important point of agreement.141 In the following similar
treaty, of 1262–1263, the verb “to go” was replaced by “to trade”.142 In later trea-
ties the standard formula became that the foreign merchant and the merchant
from Novgorod were granted “free passage to come and to go back, by sea or by
land, according to the old oath and this oath, according to the old charters and
this charter, without chicanery.”143
The co-operativeness of authorities in respect of foreign trade, expressed
in the free passage/free trade principle, can be traced back to the 10th century
treaties with Byzantium.144 Long-distance trade had of course represented a
significant contribution to wealth in Russia from prehistoric times. No special
No.78 (1474, truce with the bishop of Iur’ev, concluded when Novgorod had already effec-
tively lost its independence).
141 gvnp No.28: “First: Novgorod’s envoy and every Novgorodian will be allowed to go in
peace to the German land and to the Gothic Coast; equally the Germans and the Goths
will go to Novgorod without any trouble, not hindered by anyone.”
142 gvnp No.29 allowed the Novgorodians to trade without hindrance on the Gothic Coast;
they apparently did not venture as far as the North German cities; the Germans, Goths
and “the entire Latin tongue” were allowed to trade in Novgorod. Ianin, Akty, 82–84, dates
this treaty in 1259–1263.
143 … chistyi put’ emy priezzhat’ i ot”ezzhat’ vodoi i goroi po staromu krestotselovaniiu i po semu
krestotselovaniiu, po starym gramotam i po sei gramote, bez khitrosti, e.g. gvnp Nos.62
(1423), 67 (1436), 70 (1440–1447).
144 This point has been noted by several authors, in particular with regard to the duties of
local authorities and the populace to be co-operative in respect of foreign merchants,
especially in case of shipwreck (and the absence of the customary medieval ius naufra-
gii, Germ. Strandrecht). See V.S. Pokrovskii, “Dogovor Velikogo Novgoroda s Gotlandom
i nemetskimi gorodami 1189–1195 gg. kak pamiatnik mezhdunarodnogo prava”, Pravove-
denie, 1959, No.1, 97–105; I.E. Kleinenberg, “K voprosu o sushchestvovanii v Novgorode
Velikom x–xii vv. beregovogo prava”, Pravovedenie, 1960, No.2, 158–161; P.V. Savas’kov,
“Normy mezhdunarodnogo prava v dogovorakh drevnerusskogo gosudarstva, zakliuchen-
nykh s Vizantiei”, Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta, seriia pravo, No.4, 77–83; R.L. Khacha-
turov in his comments in PRoP I, 388–389.
provisions were needed during the apogee of the Kievan empire when there
was a central government in Kiev. With the rise of independent principalities
it became an issue, because the imposition of various taxes became a useful
source of revenue for regional rulers. The Novgorod-Tver’ treaties addressed
this issue by limiting the amounts the prince was allowed to charge Novgorod
merchants who traded outside Novgorod in the lands of the prince.
After the establishment of the Mongol-Tatar overlordship, the khans im-
posed free passage for merchants on the territory controlled by them. This was
done by khan Mengu-Timur in 1270; the words have been preserved in a charter
issued by the Novgorod prince Iaroslav Iaroslavich to the city of Riga.145 The
Novgorod-Tver’ treaties, beginning with the one from 1270, retained the limited
tax the prince could impose within his own principality (outside Novgorod),
but allowed Novgorod merchants to trade throughout the principality of Su-
zdal’-Rostov-Vladimir, “without limit, according to the tsar’s charter” (bez ru-
bezha, po tsesareve gramote; at this time only the supreme rulers of Byzantium,
the Holy Roman Empire, and Mongolia enjoyed the title of Caesar, tsar).
Later treaties elaborated the free trade/free passage principle by adding
complementary clauses. Both sides were usually guaranteed access to the local
courts. Extra-judicial reprisals, such as preventing merchants from returning to
their own towns, were forbidden.
Although the last treaty with the Hanseatic League dates from 1450, the in-
terest of the North German towns in the Novgorod trade had waned consider-
ably at that time. Most of the later Hanseatic treaties are with the (German)
towns of Riga, Iur’ev and Kolyvan’, collectively or individually.
A quite remarkable feature of Novgorod as a centre of international trade
was the presence within the city itself of semi-permanent colonies of foreign
merchants, enjoying to a considerable extent an extraterritorial status. The
oldest of these colonies was the Gothic Court for the merchants from Visby,
centred around its own church of St. Olav and going back to the beginning
of the 12th century.146 It was overshadowed during the following centuries by
the German Court of St. Peter, founded around the end of the 12th century.
145 gvnp No.30, “The word of Mengu Timur to prince Iaroslav: «Give [free] passage to the
German merchant in your land». From prince Iaroslav to the people of Riga, the great and
the small, the merchants, and everybody: your road in my land is clear; whoever comes to
me as a warrior, I shall deal with him myself; but for the merchant the road is clear in my
land.” Cf. A.P. Grigor’ev, Sbornik khanskikh iarlykov russkim mitropolitam, Sankt-Peterburg,
2004, 19–21.
146 Cf. E.A. Mel’nikova, K predystorii Gotskogo dvora v Novgorode”, E.A. Mel’nikova, Drevniaia
Rus’ i Skandinaviia. Izbrannye trudy, Moskva, 2011, 371–384 and ibidem, “O iuridicheskom
statuse Gotskogo dvora v Novgorode v seredine xiii v.”, 385–395.
520 chapter 16
In the 15th century the Gothic Court had been taken over by the German
merchants.147
The position of and the goings-on at the German Court were a prominent
topic in the various Hanseatic treaties. The (draft) treaty of 1269 and the treaty
of 1371 contained detailed rules about the rights of the German merchants in
Novgorod and of the two foreign courts.148 But internal Russian treaties also
recognized the importance of the German Court.149
The internal order of the Court of St. Peter was determined by a special law,
called the Skra, originally established by the mother city of Lübeck and re-
issued six times in often much amended form (see the section on the Skra of
Novgorod in Chapter 10). The later versions of the Skra were largely a prod-
uct of the locally present merchant community and represented increasingly
a codification of customs which had arisen locally.150 Some sections also had
their origin in the treaties concluded between Novgorod and the Hanseatic
League.151
The need to have such a law and its basic features were determined by the
unusual circumstances in which the foreign merchants found themselves.
Novgorod could be reached over land (carts or sleighs) or by ship. For a part of
the year ice would prevent the water route from being used; for another part of
the year the roads would be impassable. The result was that all voyages to and
from Novgorod occurred in semi-annual waves and that for certain periods the
German compound was intermittently uninhabited.
The annexation of Novgorod by Moscow spelled the end of the Court of St.
Peter. It was closed by Ivan iii in 1494.152 Later on, other foreign settlements
147 The treaty of 1392 with the Hanseatic League (gvnp No.46) still mentioned the separate
participation of the Gothic Coast. The treaty of 1439 with the German merchant commu-
nity in Novgorod (gvnp No.68) spoke of “both German courts”.
148 gvnp Nos.31 and 42.
149 The Novgorod-Tver’ treaties allowed the prince’s people to trade in the German Court, but
forbad him to interfere with its operation.
150 The basic edition is W. Schlüter, Die Nowgoroder Schra in sieben Fassungen vom xiii bis
xvii Jahrhundert, Dorpat, 1911. See also my “The Skra of Novgorod”, Feldbrugge, lmr, 261–
291. E.A. Rybina’s monograph on the foreign settlements in medieval Novgorod is devoted
mainly to the history of the German and Gothic courts and contains a Russian translation
of the 4th version of the Skra: Inozemnye dvory v Novgorode xii–xvii vv., Moskva, 1986.
Further: M. Szeftel. “La condition légale des étrangers dans la Russie novgorodo-kiévi-
enne”, Receuil Jean Bodin 10, 375–430, esp. 387–412 (also included in M. Szeftel, Russian
Institutions and Culture up to Peter the Great, London, 1975).
151 In particular art. 97 of Skra iv which was a verbatim inclusion of the 1342 treaty (gvnp
No.41).
152 Cf. N.A. Kazakova, “Eshche raz o zakrytii ganzeiskogo dvora v Novgorode v 1494 g.”,
Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik 2 (12), Leningrad, 1984, 177–187.
were in operation in Novgorod, but not much is known about them and
their importance was in no way comparable to that of the German Court in
Novgorod’s heyday.153
ii Pskov
Pskov is one of the oldest Russian towns, located near the border with the pres-
ent republic of Lithuania. The Primary Chronicle relates (under the year 903)
that the Kievan prince Igor brought his wife Olga from Pskov. This already sug-
gests that Pskov enjoyed a sufficiently independent position at this early mo-
ment. The suggestion is confirmed by the appointment of one of St. Vladimir’s
numerous younger sons, Sudislav, as prince of Pskov around 1010–1015, while
the more senior sons had been settled in more prominent principalities, first of
all Novgorod. After St. Vladimir had been succeeded as grand prince of Kiev by
his son Iaroslav the Wise, Sudislav fell out with his older brother and the latter
imprisoned him in Pskov in 1036. Only after Iaroslav’s death (1054) was Sudislav
set free by Iaroslav’s sons in 1059 and forced to become a monk. No successor to
Sudislav was appointed, as the grand princes obviously intended to maintain
full control of the North-West. Novgorod itself was usually assigned to the grand
prince’s eldest son and successor. In this way Pskov became part of the territory
of Novgorod, at that time still very much in the hands of the Kievan prince.154
Within the Novgorod republic it enjoyed the status of a borough (prigorod), al-
beit one with an exceptional position; alone among Novgorod boroughs, Pskov
was entitled to have boroughs of its own.155 As Valerov pointed out, the term
prigorod is actually inappropriate, because this term refers to a town founded
by the mother-city and, moreover, the chronicles do not use it with regard to
Pskov.156 According to Valerov, Pskov should rather be viewed as a member
of an alliance of towns which also included Ladoga and which was headed
by Novgorod. The common interest of the alliance was primarily to keep at
153 See Rybina’s work on foreign settlements in Novgorod, quoted above, 124–140.
154 Cf. A.V. Valerov, Novgorod i Pskov. Ocherki politicheskoi istorii Severo-Zapadnoi Rusi xi–xiv
vekov, Sankt-Peterburg, 2004, 90–95. Most of the narrative concerning Sudislav is based
on the Fourth Novgorod Chronicle.
155 On Pskov generally: A. Nikitskii, Ocherk vnutrennoi istorii Pskova, Sankt-Peterburg, 1873,
and V.A. Arakcheev, Srednevekovyi Pskov: Vlast’, obshchestvo, povsednevnyi zhizn’ v xv–xvii
vekakh, Pskov, 2004. A convenient summary of Pskov history in ch. 3 of I.D. Martysev-
ich, Pskovskaia sudnaia gramota, Moskva, 1951, 37–48. See also Iu.G. Alekseev, Pskovskaia
Sudnaia gramota i ee vremia, Leningrad, 1980, and id., Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota. Tekst,
kommentarii, issledovanie, Pskov, 1997 (not available to me).
156 Valerov, op. cit., 99.
522 chapter 16
bay the restless pagan neighbours, Finnish and Baltic tribes whose frequent in-
roads into Russian-held territory are reported in the Novgorod Chronicle (1042,
1069, 1113, 1116, 1123, 1130, 1131, 1133).
In the constitutional revolution of 1136 Novgorod successfully enforced its
claim to be entitled to invite and dismiss its own prince and, as related above
(in the survey of Novgorod’s history), the Pskovians grasped the opportunity by
receiving Vsevolod Mstislavich, the prince who had been rejected and arrested
by the Novgorodians. When Novgorod, supported by several allies, attempted
in the following year to force Pskov to submit, the people of Pskov stood firm
and repelled the attack. Novgorod resigned itself to the new situation, Vsevolod
Mstislavich died, and his brother Sviatopolk was accepted as prince of Pskov.
The importance of Pskov as a trading centre grew as the commercial posi-
tion of the entire North-West of Russia rose at the expense of the South. Be-
coming gradually more independent from Novgorod, Pskov finally reached full
statehood through the treaty of Bolotov in 1348, in which Novgorod recognized
Pskov as a “younger brother”.157
The sources for the history of Pskov are not as abundant as those for
Novgorod. The various versions of the Novgorod Chronicle offer a reasonable
amount of information, mostly on the external relations of Pskov. Chronicle
writing did also take place in Pskov itself, the Novgorod Chronicle constituting
one of the sources for the Pskov Chronicles.158 gvnp has 18 Pskov documents,
15 of which are from the 15th century (against more than 300 from Novgorod,
from the 12th to the 15th centuries). For the legal historian the relative paucity
of Pskov documents is compensated for by the availability of the Pskov Court
Charter, the only comprehensive piece of legislation between the rp and the
1497 Code of Ivan iii. The Court Charter of Pskov as a legal source is discussed
in Chapter 8; substantive provisions of the Pskov Charter are treated in the
relevant chapters and sections.
The government of Pskov was in the hands of three powers, the assembly or
veche, the Gospóda (a council of leading citizens and boyars), and the prince.
The archbishop of Novgorod was represented by his own lieutenant, who kept
a number of judicial functions. The Gospoda of Pskov was an actually existing
body, mentioned several times in the Pskov Charter (arts. 10, 18, 24–26, 29, 73,
106, 108 and 111), unlike the ‘Council of Lords’ of Novgorod, which existed only
in the imagination of scholars.
The mayor or posadnik of Pskov is well documented and in later years, as in
Novgorod, former posadniki retained the title, while the incumbent mayor was
157 Nikitskii, op. cit., 105.

158 Cf. Valerov, op. cit., ch. 1 (13–88).
known as the stepennyi posadnik. The tysiatskii appears to have been unknown
in Pskov; some of his duties were apparently carried out by the sotskie (see
arts. 12, 20 and 78 of the Pskov Court Charter). There are some indications that
the Pskov boyars did not constitute a closed social class, as in Novgorod, but
consisted of leading citizens of different social origin.159
As to the prince, what has been noted about the Novgorod prince also ap-
plied to Pskov. Although these cities can in some way be regarded as republics,
their head of state was a prince. In other medieval Russian principalities state
power or ‘sovereignty’ belonged to the prince, who was invariably a member
of one of the Rurikid sub-dynasties. In Novgorod and Pskov this power was
shared by the prince and the local authorities – veche, posadnik and other
prominent citizens. A particular prince could be dismissed, but a prince could
not be dispensed with in the view of the contemporaries.
The best documented duties of the Pskov prince were his commanding of
the armed forces and his judicial office. The former is illustrated mainly by the
accounts of chronicles about princes leading the Pskov troops into battle; the
prince as judge is one of the major themes of the Pskov Court Charter. Accord-
ing to this text, the Pskov judiciary consisted of three distinct branches: the
prince’s court, the court of the posadnik, and the court of the (Novgorod) arch-
bishop. While general jurisdiction in Novgorod belonged to the prince and the
posadnik together, in Pskov the court of the prince had been given jurisdiction
in the more serious civil and criminal cases.160 The court of the archbishop (in
fact his namestnik) dealt with ‘church people’ (art. 100) and with certain other
matters as well, while the general court of the posadnik possessed jurisdiction
in the remainder of cases. The prince was entitled to receive fixed fees from
most court cases.
While retaining for a long time the right to dismiss its prince, Pskov’s in-
dependence with regard to the appointing authority (in principle the grand
prince of Vladimir-Suzdal’) was not as great as that of Novgorod. The Pskov
prince himself was generally more dependent on the grand prince and served
as his lieutenant (namestnik), while in Novgorod the prince was normally
a prominent member of the Rurikid house, often represented by his own
159 Arakcheev, op. cit., 53–58.

160 Cf. Iu.G. Alekseev, Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota i ee vremia, Leningrad, 1980, 12–13. A very
early example of a judgment charter by the prince and the posadnik jointly is gvnp
No.348, concerning a border dispute between two monks and a group of peasants. The
prince involved has been identified by Ianin as Aleksandr Nevskii and this fixes the date
at 1240–1242; cf. A.D. Gorskii, Bor’ba krest’ian za zemliu na Rusi v xv – nachale xvi veka,
Moskva, 1974, 36.
524 chapter 16
n amestnik. Pskov princes, especially after 1399 (see below), were mostly of low-
er rank and often recruited from the ranks of the non-ruling (service) princes,
either from the Rurikid or from the Gediminid house, who had been accepted
into the service of the grand prince of Vladimir.
Although officially a city-state, Pskov, like Novgorod itself, extended over a
vast territory. It covered the area between the lands of Novgorod and the lands
inhabited by various Baltic peoples, all the way up to the Gulf of Finland. By
virtue of its geographical position, Pskov was also in close and frequent con-
tact with its western neighbours, Lithuania and the knights of the German Or-
der. Additionally, there were intensive commercial contacts with more distant
western and northern lands. The Hanseatic League for many years maintained
an office in Pskov (German: Pleskau). The absence of a relatively empty hinter-
land prevented Pskov from indulging in expansionist policies, unlike Novgorod
which was able to establish a vast semi-colonial empire in the Russian North.
Notwithstanding the similarity in the legal and economic make-up of
Novgorod and Pskov, the latter did not know large-scale landowning to the ex-
tent current in Novgorod. This lent a specific colouring to socio-economic and
legal relations in medieval Pskov, as is evidenced by many provisions of the
Court Charter of Pskov.161
For a long time Pskov had guarded its independence by playing its most
powerful neighbours, the rulers of Moscow and Lithuania, against each other.
When this policy finally became unworkable, it accepted the protection of the
prince of Moscow in 1399. In a protracted rearguard action against the inter-
ference of the latter, Pskov struggled to hold on to as much as it could of its
position and rights during the 15th century. The year 1462 was critical in this re-
spect. Grand prince Vasilii ii had appointed prince Vladimir Andreevich162 as
his lieutenant that year, without asking for the agreement of Pskov. When the
grand prince died the same year, the citizens of Pskov acted quickly and dis-
missed the lieutenant. The new grand prince, Ivan iii, reached a compromise
with Pskov: he promised not to appoint a lieutenant without the agreement of
Pskov and Pskov promised not to dismiss a lieutenant without the permission
of the grand prince.163
The next crisis arose in 1467, when a new lieutenant, prince Fedor Iur’evich
Shuiskii, took up his office in Pskov. Until then, the local prince (at that time
161 Cf. Kliuchevskii, Kurs ii, 94–95.

162 This Vladimir Andreevich was the last grand prince of Rostov Velikii; his principality was
formally absorbed in the Moscow state in 1474, but his appointment to Pskov shows that
Rostov independence had already been lost in 1462.
163 Cf. Nikitskii, 240, 246–250; Martysevich, op. cit., 42–44; Cherepnin, Arkhivy I, 412–414.
the grand prince’s lieutenant) had enjoyed the right to appoint his own repre-
sentatives in only seven of the twelve Pskov boroughs (the boroughs were the
principal towns in the Pskov territory). Now Ivan demanded for his lieutenant
the right to appoint representatives in all twelve boroughs. Pskov was forced
to give in. Several scholars believe that the enactment of the Court Charter
of Pskov should be regarded as an attempt on the part of Pskov to define at
that moment, as precisely as possible, the distribution of judicial authority be-
tween Pskov and the grand prince.164 See also the section on the Court Charter
of Pskov in Chapter 8.
iii A Note on Viatka-Khlynov
The present city of Kirov, the capital of the Kirov oblast’, was known as Viatka
before the Soviet era, a name derived from the neighbouring Viatka River and
conferred upon the town in 1780. Before that it was called Khlynov. Karamzin
mentions its founding in 1174 by colonists from Novgorod territory; the Viatka
region, in the north-east of European Russia, was sparsely populated in me-
dieval times (and still is), mostly by Finnish tribes. The settlers founded an
independent republic and Novgorod, despite several attempts, was never able
to establish its authority in this faraway corner of the Russian North. Khlynov
remained independent until 1452.165 In 1469 it unsuccessfully tried to stay neu-
tral in Ivan iii’s war with the khan of the Tatars in Kazan.166 The only other
author (apart from Karamzin) who paid more than passing attention to Khly-
nov was Kostomarov, who observed: “There is nothing in Russian history more
obscure than the fortunes of Viatka and its region.”167
According to another version, a fortified town called Viatsk was founded
by a military expeditionary force from Novgorod in 1374. The settlers from
Novgorod mixed with the not very numerous local population, Slavs from
the Viatichi tribe and various Finnish elements. Viatsk constituted a de facto
164 M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov, Khrestomatiia po istorii russkago prava I, 48; Nikitskii, 150; L.V.
Cherepnin, A.I. Iakovlev, “Pskovskaia sudnaia gramota”, Istoricheskie Zapiski, Vol.6 (1940),
235–299. Later on, Cherepnin opted for the 1492 date, see Arkhivy i, 411–416.
165 Karamzin, Book i, Part 3, col.22–24.
166 Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 39–40, who refers to the involvement of the Viatka veche; his
communications are based on the Voskresenskaia Letopis’ (psrl vii and viii).
167 N.I. Kostomarov, Severno-russkie narodopravstva, Sankt-Peterburg, 1862 (2 vols.), I, 241–251,
I have used the third edition (Sankt-Peterburg, 1860), where the chapter on Viatka is to be
found at 233–243. There is also a modern reprint, Moskva, 2008. Kostomarov’s sources are
a number of entries in several medieval chronicles.
526 chapter 16
independent republic, governed by a veche and elected elders, following the

model of Novgorod.168 Several other small towns in the region were subor-
dinate to Viatsk along the lines of a Novgorod prigorod. Princely power was
weak and the princes were elected from Rurikid stock or from local Finnish
tribal chieftains. The town remained independent until 1391, when it was de-
stroyed by the Tatars. At that time the town was controlled by the princes of
Suzdal’-Nizhegorodsk. In 1401 it came under the rule of the princes of Galich.
The building of a citadel (kreml’) in 1457 occasioned the renaming of the town
as Khlynov. In 1489 it was absorbed into the Muscovy state.169
What is undisputed is that Viatka-Khlynov was for centuries an indepen-
dent entity inside the medieval Russian conglomerate. As such it is mentioned
occasionally in the same breath as Novgorod and Pskov.170
168 Kostomarov, 237.

169 Cf. Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 49. See also A.P. Gorkin (chief ed.), Rossiiskaia istoriia, Mosk-
va, 2006, s.v. “Viatskaia Zemlia”, and Bol’shaia Entsiklopediia Rossii, Moskva, 2008, 297
(article on Kirov oblast’).
170 E.g. Kliuchevskii, Kurs ii, Lecture 23 (pp. 54–55); G. Vernadskii, Istoriia Rossii. Kievskaia
Rus’, Tver’/Moskva, 2004, 220–221.
chapter 17
Western Russia
Historical Introduction
The ancient territory of the Eastern Slavs, essentially the river basins (Western
Dvina, Lovat’, Volkhov, and the Dnepr system) which connected, through por-
tages, the Baltic and the Black Seas, had been enlarged by the early Kievan
grand princes in several directions and had come to encompass the regions of
Galicia and Volynia in the West and the tribal land of the Viatichi in the East.
Additionally, the Kievan rulers were intermittently in control of the plains be-
tween the Prut and the Dnepr. Subsequently, the Kievan practice of assigning
apanage principalities to leading male members of the Rurikid family resulted
in considerable fragmentation of the Kievan realm. A strong Kievan grand
prince, such as Vladimir Monomakh, would still manage to maintain a signifi-
cant measure of control, but after the complete victory of the Mongol invad-
ers in the period 1237–1242, it had become “every man for himself” among the
Rurikid princes and it would be a century before the princes of Moscow would
start their long campaign of eliminating their rivals.
The greatest political-territorial transformations occurred in the West and
were connected with the rise of Lithuania. The original tribal territory of the
Lithuanians, roughly coinciding with present-day Lithuania, had begun to be
enlarged under their prince Mindaugas († 1263)1 by the conquest of a few small
Russian principalities, known as Black Russia (Chernaia Rus’), and bordering
Lithuania in the south. In the same period the important old Russian prin-
cipality of Polotsk, on the eastern border of Lithuania, had become increas-
ingly dependent on Lithuania until it was fully incorporated in 1307 (it was
briefly recaptured by Russia from 1563–1579, but re-incorporated only in 1772 at
the first partition of Poland). The next step was the acquisition of the Russian
principalities of Turov and Pinsk (south of Black Russia) during the reign of
Gediminas (Russ. Gedimin), the founder of the Lithuanian dynasty (1316–1341).
At that time the southern neighbour of Lithuania was the kingdom of
Galicia-Volynia. The old Russian principalities of Galicia and Volynia had
1 Mindaugas was baptized in 1251 and crowned king of Lithuania in 1253, but Lithuania and its
rulers remained pagan for more than century until the conversion of grand prince Jagaila in
1386. Starting with the latter, the grand princes of Lithuania were usually kings of Poland too
(this became a strict rule in 1501 only) and did not claim a separate royal title for Lithuania.

528 chapter 17
been united by prince Roman, a son of the Kievan grand prince Mstislav ii,
in 1199. He was killed in battle in 1205 and after many years and much turmoil
ultimately succeeded by his son Daniil in 1239. The latter emerged as one
of the most powerful and successful Russian princes during the troublesome
years of the Mongol invasions; he was also intermittently in control of the
Kiev region. His international ambitions were highlighted when he accepted
kingship from pope Innocent iv; he was crowned king of Galicia-Volynia in
1253. His son Lev and then his grandson Iurii succeeded him,2 but the lat-
ter’s sons Andrei and Lev fell in battle in 1324, and with them the only royal
branch of the Rurikids became extinct. Neighbouring rulers fought long over
the spoils, and in the end one of the sons of Gediminas, Liubart, acquired
Volynia and the Kiev region for Lithuania, while the Polish king Kazimir iii
annexed Galicia (1349).
After the death of Gediminas of Lithuania in 1341 he was succeeded as grand
prince, following the usual violent upheavals in the ruling family, by his son
Algirdas (Olgerd, 1345–1377) who continued with even more fervour3 the ex-
pansionist policies of his ancestors. During his reign the principalities of Kiev,
Chernigov, Pereiaslavl’, Novgorod-Seversk and part of Smolensk were added to
the Lithuanian lands.
In 1386 the son of Algirdas, grand prince Jagaila (Polish: Jagiełło), married
the heiress of the Polish Piast dynasty, Queen Jadwiga, and was baptized. From
then on Poland and Lithuania formed a personal union, two separate states
with separate legal systems under a single ruler (also known as the Union
of Kreva). In 1569 (the Union of Lublin), three years before the Jagiellonian
dynasty died out with the death of Zygmunt ii August, the personal union
was converted into a full union, where the two countries constituted a single
state. This did not mean a merger of the legal systems; they stayed separate to a
great extent. Foreign policy and the monetary system were the main common
subjects.4
Part of the background of Jagaila’s Polish marriage was the feud with his
cousin Vytautas (Russ. Vitovt), son of Algirdas’ brother Kestutis, who in fact
held the position of ruler of Lithuania. Under Vytautas († 1430) the further
2 I am not sure whether Lev ever used the royal title. In the few charters cited below he pre-
sented himself as “prince Lev, son of king Daniel”. His son Iurii did use the title; cf. N. de
Baumgarten, Généalogies et mariages occidentaux des Rurikides russes. Orientalia Christiana,
Vol. ix.1, Roma, 1927, 50.
3 Karamzin, grudgingly admiring Olgerd and comparing him favourably with weak Russian
contemporaries, often calls him khitryi (cunning), but also khishchnyi (rapacious) Olgerd,
and iazychnik Olgerd (Olgerd the pagan).
4 Cf. I.N. Kuznetsov, V.A. Shelkoplias, Istoriia gosudarstva i prava Belarusi, Minsk, 2004, 27.
Western Russia 529
expansion of Lithuania was energetically pursued. By the end of the 14th cen-
tury the area between the mouths of the Dnepr and the Dnestr was controlled
by Lithuania. A few years later (1404) the entire principality of Smolensk also
ended up in Lithuanian hands.
Of the twelve old principalities which traditionally (and not quite correctly)
are considered to have made up the Kievan realm at its apogee (the times of
St. Vladimir and his son Iaroslav the Wise) only Novgorod the Great, Murom-
Riazan’, and Vladimir-Suzdal’-Rostov remained with Russian (Rurikid) princes,
ruling under Tatar-Mongol suzerainty. The Moscow princes were the descen-
dants of a younger branch of the grand princes of Vladimir-Suzdal’.
The town of Smolensk changed hands several times, it was taken by Vasilii
iii of Moscow in 1514, recaptured by the Poles in 1618, and then by the Russians
in 1654. With the growth of Muscovy’s power bits of the old Kievan territory
(such as the Chernigov region, which was taken by Ivan iii in 1503) were repos-
sessed by the Russian rulers; but it was only at the first Polish partition of 1772
that Polotsk and part of Galicia became part of the Russian empire.
At the conclusion of the Polish-Lithuanian Union of 1569, the provinces of
Kiev, Chernigov and Bratslav (Podolia) were assigned to Poland as Crown lands.
Developments in this area in the following period were very much determined
by the emergence of a new population, the Cossacks. Runaway serfs from Rus-
sian and Polish lands and other itinerants had started to move to the southern
steppes (the “wild lands”, dikoe pole) in the 15th century where they founded
semi-military agricultural settlements. The major communities in South Rus-
sia and Ukraine were the Cossacks of the Don and of Zaporozh’e (“beyond the
rapids” downstream the Dnepr). The Zaporozh’e Cossacks were nominally un-
der the Polish Crown, but had a great deal of practical autonomy under their
own hetmans. In 1648 they rose up under their hetman Bohdan Khmel’nitskii
against the Polish king. The next twenty years offered a complicated theatre
of wars, peace treaties, shifting allegiances and new rebellions, in which not
only Poland but also Muscovy was heavily involved. In the end, by the treaty
of Andrusovo in 1667 the Dnepr was recognized as the border between Poland
and Muscovy; Kiev itself was also ceded to Russia.
The second partition of Poland in 1793 brought the entire Ukrainian terri-
tory of Poland-Lithuania under Russian control, while most of Galicia-Volynia
was allotted to Austria.
...
These developments have been sketched in some detail because they give rise
to several considerations affecting the way one may look at the law of medieval
Russia.
530 chapter 17
The greater part of the territory of Kievan Russia, as has been pointed out
above, became part of a state ruled by Lithuanian-Polish princes through an
increasingly polonized aristocracy, a state where the majority of the popula-
tion was ethnically East-Slavic and where the linguistic distinctions between
Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians were beginning to emerge. One could
therefore argue that the study of medieval Russian law should primarily ad-
dress itself to the law of this state, and not to an initially less important area
located at the fringes of the then civilized world, the handful of principalities
from which the Muscovy tsardom emerged.
After the break-up of the ussr in 1991 Ukraine and Belarus came into be-
ing as independent and sovereign states. (This was in fact not the result of
democratic decision-making by which lost independence was recovered,
but of a coup-d’état, intended, among other things, precisely to prevent such
decision-making. The coup leaders based the legitimacy of their acts on the
totally spurious and hypocritical pronouncement of the Soviet Constitution
that the ethnic Soviet republics constituted sovereign states.) But whatever
the background, the outcome was that, after having been part of Russia (or
a Russo-centric state like the ussr) for many centuries, Ukraine and Belarus
were something they had never been before: states of their own, not under the
control of an outsider government.5 It was only to be expected that in a hasty
5 Some modern Ukrainian historians are inclined to treat Cossack rule in the 17th and 18th
century as a form of statehood; e.g. O. Hurzhii, Ukrains’ka kozats’ka derzhava v druhii polovyni
xvii-xviii st.: kordoni, naseleniia, pravo, Kyiv, 1996. This is a matter of definition. Powerful
hetmans such as Khmel’nitskii or Mazepa did indeed negotiate independently with foreign
powers; from the point of view of legal history, however, Cossack rule cannot be considered
as constituting a regular state. It lacked permanence and consistency, and did not offer a
separate legal regime. Polish-Lithuanian law, and in other territories Russian law, continued
to be in force.
The Belorussian search for historical roots of political identity has led some historians
to the view that modern Belarus can be considered the successor of the Lithuanian grand
principality. One could point in this respect to the fact that modern Belarus covers about the
same territory as the geographical centre of the grand principality and that a Slavic language
which can be regarded as Belorussian or its forerunner was for centuries the state language
of the Lithuanian realm. There are weighty politico-historical objections to be made against
this view, but this is not the place for such discussions. As to the linguistic aspect, which also
plays a role nowadays in the perception of some historians, it should be left to the linguists
to decide whether certain medieval documents were written in Old-Russian, Old-Ukrainian
or Old-Belorussian or even Old-Polish. For reasons of convenience I shall use the term “Old-
Russian”, without claiming any authority as a philologist. (The same point is made by M.E.
Bychkova, Russkoe gosudarstvo i velikoe kniazhestvo litovskoe s kontsa xv v. do 1569 g., Moskva,
1996, 27 and 51.)
Western Russia 531
search for a national identity the past was appropriated and many dreamed
of their own country as the true heir to the glory of Kievan Russia. In Ukraine,
this position had already been developed before 1917 by the historian M.N.
Hrushevs’kyi (Grushevskii in Russian), whose thesis was that Galicia-Volynia
was the principal successor state of Kievan Russia.6 Hrushevs’kyi (1866–1934)
then played a central role in the Ukrainian Rada after the October Revolution
and in the transition to the sovietization of Ukraine. His historical views were
totally unpalatable to the Soviets, but after the break-up of the ussr in 1991
the new Ukrainian regime raised Hrushevs’kyi to the status of a national hero.
Without entering into this debate, one should first of all recognize the fact
that a large part of what would later be regarded as Russian territory, together
with the predominantly East-Slavic population of that territory, found itself for
many centuries outside the entity which then and now was considered to be
Russia. And then one may also recognize that this Russia represented and still
represents an unbroken political and juridical continuity over a period of more
than thousand years, something that cannot be said about the other territories.
This is an important consideration in the study of the legal history of Russia.
The Law of the Lithuanian Principality and the Polish-Lithuanian

Commonwealth
On the question of applicable law, two points emerge from the foregoing sur-
vey of the historical developments: there was a multitude of territories popu-
lated by Eastern Slavs and included in the territory of the Lithuanian state,
and this inclusion did not happen at a single moment. We must (1) distinguish
therefore between the individual territories and (2) look at the time of their
inclusion. All of them had been part of the Kievan realm and had shared the
same legal system, although some differentiation had already taken place as
this realm was slowly dissolving. At the earliest stage, when the pagan and still
mainly tribal Lithuanians had acquired control over the area of Black Russia in
the 13th century, Russian customary law and the few elements of written Rus-
sian law existing at that time would obviously continue to be in force among
the local population. As the Lithuanian state took shape and equipped itself
with the necessary attributes of statehood, a process which was of course ac-
celerated once the union with the more advanced kingdom of Poland had been
6 M.N. Hrushevs’kyi (Grushevskii), Istoriia Ukrainy-Rusi, 10 vols., published over a long period
(1898–1937), covering the history of Ukraine (as the continuation of Kievan Rus’) until the
year 1658.
532 chapter 17
concluded, the law created by the legislator and applied by the courts would
become the dominant factor, although Russian law remained significant.
The relative weight of Lithuanian and Polish law in the formerly Russian
principalities was not the same everywhere and was subject to change dur-
ing the centuries of Polish-Lithuanian domination. As indicated above, Galicia
had been part of Poland since its incorporation in 1349, while most of the other
principalities had been acquired by Lithuania before the union of 1386. Only
Smolensk was added to the Polish-Lithuanian territory in 1404.
Polish law was therefore hardly involved initially, but in the course of time
its impact on the territories of the old Russian principalities increased through
the inevitable influence Polish law had on Lithuanian law and on account of
Polish preponderance in the administration of these territories.
Pre-Lithuanian Russian Law in Western Russia

A small number of legal documents from Western Russia in the pre-Lithuanian
period survive. They fit the general pattern of Russian legal documents from
this era. One of the earliest (1134) is a short charter from a subordinate prince
in Galicia, Ivan Berladnik, granting certain fiscal privileges to Bulgarian mer-
chants in his main market town, Malyi Galich.7
From the same province, but of a much later date, are the testament of
prince Vladimir Vasil’kovich of Volynia († 1288) and a short charter from his
cousin and successor as prince of Volynia, Mstislav Danilovich, whose elder
brother Lev was the prince of Galicia. In his will the childless prince Vladimir
left most of his possessions to his wife. The charter of Mstislav defined certain
local taxes for the region of Brest.8
Lev of Galicia is represented by four short charters in which different prop-
erties, most or all of them in Central Ukraine, are donated to various religious
7 prp ii, 26 and 30–31. Ivan Rostislavich’s father (Rostislav Vasil’kovich) was a cousin of the
ruling prince of Galicia at that time, VladimirkoVolodarich (according to V.V. Boguslavskii,
Riurikovichi i Rus’. Ot Riurika do Smutnogo vremeni, Moskva, 2009, 165–166). De Baumgarten
regards Ivan Berladnik as the son of Vladimirko’s brother Rostislav (N. de Baumgarten, Géné-
alogies et mariages occidentaux des rurikides russes, Roma, 1927, 15). Berlad’ is in present-day
Romanian Moldavia and Malyi Galich is close to the Romanian city of Galaţi. The date is not
certain, it could very well be 1144.
8 prp ii, 27–29, 31–33; the charter of Mstislav also in rz i, 209–211. These texts have survived be-
cause they were included in the last (third) part of the Hypatian Chronicle, which is devoted
mainly to events in Galicia-Volynia from 1199–1292. Their location in the Chronicle is also the
ground for dating them around 1287 and 1289 respectively. Modern Ukrainian version of the
1205–1290 Chronicle text in O.S. Kucheruk (ed.), Halyts’ko-Volyns’ka derzhava xii-xiv st., L’viv,
2002.
Western Russia 533
entities.9 The virtual absence of 13th century documents from the Ukraine can
be explained by the chaotic state of affairs which prevailed in the South Rus-
sian steppes for many years after the Mongol invasions of 1239–1240.
There is more material available from the principality of Smolensk, also of
course because it stayed independent much longer than Galicia-Volynia. The
Church Statute of Rostislav Mstislavich of Smolensk of 1136 and a few related
charters have been discussed elsewhere in this work in conjunction with the
leading church statutes of Vladimir and Iaroslav. They are all fully in the main-
stream of Russian law of the Kievan era. The so-called Pravda of Smolensk, in
fact a treaty of 1229 between Smolensk and the Hanseatic towns on the Baltic
Coast, together with the treaty between the same parties which is dated in the
era 1230–1270, have been dealt with in Chapter 7.
Polotsk occupied a special place among the Russian principalities. It had
been conquered by St. Vladimir in 976, who killed the Viking prince Rogvolod
(Rognvald) and married his daughter Rogneda. Polotsk was then given as an
apanage principality to the eldest son from this union, Iziaslav. The latter pre-
deceased his father in 1001 and, as was the custom, this resulted in a serious loss
of status of his descendants in the Rurikid dynasty. They were excluded from
succession to the Kievan grand princely throne10 and continued as a provincial
dynasty in the North-West of Russia. Polotsk went more and more its own way,
directing its attention mainly to its western and northern neighbours, Lithu-
ania, the German Order and the Hanseatic ports on the Baltic Coast, and Po-
land. It was in the end, as noted above, absorbed by the expansion of Lithuania
in 1307.
A number of treaties concerning free trade with Riga and concluded
on behalf of Polotsk are available for the period when Polotsk was part of
Lithuania.11 They illustrate what has been observed by many authors: that the
Lithuanian state knew a considerable degree of decentralization. The princi-
pality of Polotsk continued to function as a semi-independent state, ruled at
first by an apanage prince from the Lithuanian (Gediminid) dynasty and later
on by a governor appointed by the Polish-Lithuanian king/grand prince. From
9 Cf. M.M. Peshchak, Hramoty xiv st., Kyiv, 1974, 9–20. They all date from 1301–1302 or slight-
ly earlier.
10 Only Iziaslav’s grandson Vseslav ii usurped the grand princely dignity in 1068–1069. See
also A.V. Rukavishnikov, “Nekotorye voprosy istorii polotskoi zemli domongol’skogo peri-
oda”, D.M. Volodikhin (ed.), Russkoe Srednevekov’e. Istochniki. 2000–2001 gody, Moskva,
2002, 40–69.
11 A.L. Khoroshkevich (comp.), Polotskie gramoty xiii – nachala xvi vv., I, Moskva, 1977, Nos.
4, 34–35, 37–38, 52a, 78, pp. 39–41, 94–97, 100–114, 134–139, 164–168.
534 chapter 17
the pre-Lithuanian period at least one of such treaties is known, concluded in

1265 by prince Iziaslav, the last Russian prince of Polotsk.12 Its conditions were
generally like those from later periods and moreover the text itself referred to
previous practice (“how it used to be in the time of the old princes”), so it is safe
to assume that trade relations between Polotsk and the Baltic had been rea-
sonably stable over quite a long period, notwithstanding the political changes.
The 1265 treaty also showed that the principality of Vitebsk was subordinate
to Polotsk.
This brief survey of legal documents from Russian principalities before their
incorporation into the Lithuanian state shows that these regions were squarely
within the sphere of the law of Kievan Russia.
The Law of the Grand Principality of Lithuania

After the partitions of Poland, the vast archives of the Lithuanian grand princi-
pality ended up in Moscow. These collections, known as the Lithuanian Metri-
ka (Litovskaia Metrika), are the main source of documents for the history of
Lithuanian law, or rather the law of the Lithuanian state, because it included
not only certain original Lithuanian elements but also a mass of Polish, Rus-
sian and German elements.
One of the earliest surviving documents is a peace treaty concluded be-
tween five Lithuanian princes, sons and grandsons of Gediminas, acting ap-
parently on behalf of their brother and uncle Algirdas (the grand prince), and
Kazimir iii of Poland and duke Kazimir of Mazovia; its most reliable dating
is 1352.13 The charter explicitly recognized that Galicia was Polish and Volynia
Lithuanian. Lithuanian rule in Volynia was also confirmed by a treaty of 1366
between the king of Poland and a Volynian prince Dimitrii, in which the com-
mon borders were defined.14 A few years later, in 1371, there was an armistice
between Lithuania and Muscovy, concluded on behalf of the Lithuanian grand
prince Algirdas together with his brother Kestutis and prince Sviatoslav Iva-
novich of Smolensk on one side and the Moscow grand prince Dmitrii Ivanov-
ich and a string of subordinate princes on the other.15
Along with the treaties there is a considerable number of charters of the
usual type, mostly concerning land grants, but also including deeds of sale and
12 Ibid., No. 2, 36–37.

13 Ibid., 29–32.
14 Ibid., 38–39.
15 Ibid., 46–49; also ddg No. 6, 21–22 and sggd i No. 31, 52–53.
Western Russia 535
fiscal immunities.16 At least the earlier charters, dating from the period before
1386 (the conversion of Lithuania), must have been written by local East Slavic
clerks. Their style and format are not very different from what was practiced in
other Russian principalities.
It is probably safe to conclude that Russian law continued to be alive in the
Russian territories which had come under the control of Lithuania, until the
Polish-Lithuanian union of 1386. Galicia, as mentioned before, had already
been Polish since 1349. Polish law was quite developed at that time, although
fragmented, as most of the component duchies clung to their own customary
law; in 1347 the Statutes of Wiślica had been promulgated as a record of the
customary law of Little and Great Poland.17
The best documented part of the development of Lithuanian law concerned
the position of the landowning class, defined through a long series of general
privilege charters. General land privileges were issued in 1387, 1413, 1432, 1434,
1447 (1457),18 1492, 1506, 1529.19 The contrasts with the roughly contemporary
period of Muscovy Russia are striking. First of all, there was the matter of re-
ligious pluralism. Although the rulers were Roman-Catholic and Catholicism,
with the polonization of the Lithuanian nobility, also obtained a foothold
among the landowning class, the Russian-speaking population generally held
on to Orthodoxy. Accordingly, the privilege charters addressed the respective
rights of the two religious sections of the nobility. While the charters of 1387
and 1413 favoured the Roman-Catholic nobility, those of 1432 and 1434 raised
16 All to be found in the Peshchak volume, devoted to 14th century charters from the terri-
tory of modern Ukraine.
17 Cf. H. Küpper, Einführung in die Rechtsgeschichte Osteuropas, Frankfurt a/Main, 2004,
272–273. Partial Russian translation of the “Complete Collection of Statutes of Kazimierz
the Great”, of which the Statute of Wiślica constituted the major part, in V.M. Koretskii
(ed.), Khrestomatiia pamiatnikov feodal’nogo gosudarstva i prava stran Evropy, Moskva,
1961, 751–765. A recent survey of the law and government of Galicia as part of the Polish
kingdom is to be found in I.I. Boiko, Orhany vlady i pravo v Halychyni u skladi Pol’s’koho
Korolivstva (1349–1569 rr.), L’viv, 2009. See also B.D. Grekov, “Obshchestvennyi stroi Galits-
koi Rusi v xiv–xv vv.” and “Sud’ba naseleniia galitskikh kniazheskikh votchin pod vlast’iu
Pol’shi”, both in B.D. Grekov, Izbrannye trudy iii, Moskva, 1960, 13–28 and 29–39 (also pub-
lished in Izvestiia an sssr, ser. ist. i fil., 1944, t.I, No. 5, 195–210 and in Istoricheskii zhurnal,
1944, No. 12, 37–43).
18 Russian text of the 1447 (1457) privilege in M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov (comp.), Khristo-
matiia po istorii russkago prava, ii, Kiev, 1915 (5th ed.), 20–31. The 1447 charter was the
most important of them all in completing the enumeration of the privileges of the
nobility.
19 Cf. V.I. Picheta, Vvedenie v russkuiu istoriiu, Moskva, 1922, 78; K. Von Loewe, The Lithuanian
Statute of 1529, Leiden, 1976, 1–2.
536 chapter 17
the status of the Orthodox nobility to the same level. Secondly, Russian-style
autocracy never took root. The grand prince (and the Polish king later on), in
his election as well as in governing the country always depended on the co-
operation of the great magnates. In time, the lower nobility (the shliakhta, Pol.
szlachta) managed greatly to increase its status and influence and became the
dominant political force, although the dichotomy between high and low no-
bility remained one of the characteristics of the Lithuanian state. The charter
of 1387 granted the landowning class the right of free disposal of their landed
estates, the charter of 1413 added the right to elect the grand prince, and the
charter of 1447 the right for the landowner to judge his own subjects, as well
as the right to emigrate.20 Thirdly, a much greater degree of regional particu-
larism than in Muscovy was practiced. This was closely connected of course
with the limited power at the disposal of the sovereign. Many provinces had
been granted their individual charters in which the rights and privileges of the
whole population of the province were spelled out. Such charters are known
for Kiev (1507),21 Vitebsk (1503),22 Polotsk (1511), Smolensk (1505), Zhemaitia
(North-West Lithuania, 1492) and Volynia (1501).23 The texts of several char-
ters make clear that they represented in fact the confirmation of older charters
now lost.
The existence of separate legal regimes for different classes of persons also
extended to the Jews, who constituted a significant part of the population of
Lithuania since Jewish refugees from the pogroms in Western Europe had set-
tled here during the reign of Kazimir iii the Great (1333–1370). Special privilege
charters for the Jews were issued in 1385/1388, 1503, 1507 (for the Jews of Brest),
1514 (for all the Jews of Lithunania) and 1541.24 Even the Tatars were honoured
with a special privilege charter in 1568.25
20 Cf. Kuznetsov, op. cit., 26.

21 Text in Vladimirskii-Budanov, op. cit., 53–61. Unlike some other provincial charters (such
as the one for Vitebsk) from the Polish-Lithuanian state, granted to the entire population,
the Kiev charter was granted at the request of the “entire Kiev shliakhta”. Vladimirskii-
Budanov notes (p. 53) that its contents however conform to the general type of provincial
charter, rather than to the typical privilege charter. The same goes for several other pro-
vincial charters.
22 Text in Vladimirskii-Budanov, op. cit., 44–49.
23 Text in Akty otnosiashchiesia k istorii Iuzhnoi i Zapadnoi Rossii I, Sankt-Peterburg, 1863,
No. 36, 27–28. References to the texts of the Polotsk, Smolensk and Zhemaitia charters in
Vladimirskii-Budanov, 50–52. Vladimirskii-Budanov (62–67) offers the text of a charter
for Volynia from 1509, which is almost identical to the one from 1501.
24 Cf. V.I. Picheta, Vvedenie v russkuiu istoriiu, Moskva, 1922, 79; Küpper, op. cit., 201.
25 Picheta, op. cit., 79.
Western Russia 537
Magdeburg Law and the Urban Population in Poland-Lithuania

Many medieval German towns were granted a certain amount of legal auton-
omy by the emperor or an intermediate ruler (prince, duke, bishop or count);
this would normally involve both a measure of legislative as well as judicial
freedom. Some towns adopted more or less comprehensive codes, ‘law-books’,
while in other places the local law was to be found in a variety of public and
private sources. The law of such a privileged town might then serve as a model
for other towns. In such cases the ‘daughter’ would often accept the authority
of the law of the ‘mother’ and in difficult decisions the authorities (judges, al-
dermen, etc.) of the mother town could be consulted. Entire families of urban
legal systems emerged in this way. This expansion of the law of a particular
town was not limited to the Holy Roman Empire but spread also beyond its
borders. In Central and Eastern Europe the local laws of Lübeck and Magde-
burg acquired great influence. Lübeck law was of particular importance in
the area of the Baltic Sea, where it came as far as Novgorod, where the colony
of German merchants had its own law based on that of Lübeck (the Skra of
Novgorod). The granting of German urban law was generally advantageous to
the inhabitants because of the freedom it involved for managing their own
affairs. In Central and Eastern Europe the adoption of German (and in some
cases Flemish) law was much promoted by the resettlement of German émi-
grés in these areas.
In the Polish-Lithuanian realm the law of Magdeburg occupied the leading
position. Magdeburg law did not consist of a single code or text, but of several
official and private texts.26 During the second half of the 12th century Magde-
burg law was received in a number of not too distant German towns (Stendal,
1160; Leipzig, 1156–1170; Jüterbog, 1174). The major expansion took place in the
13th century, when numerous towns in Brandenburg, Silezia and the adjacent
Polish regions (Cracow in 1257, Gniezno in 1251) were granted Magdeburg
law. Of particular importance were the grants to Kulm (Pol. Chełmno, 1231)
and Neumarkt (Pol. Środa, 1235), because the laws of these towns themselves
served as models for a great number of town laws in the Polish-Lithuanian
26 On Magdeburg law, see H. Conrad, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, I, Karlsruhe, 1962 (2nd ed.),
356ff.; R. Schroeder, Lehrbuch der Deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, Leipzig, 1898 (3rd ed.), 668–
670. M.M. Kobylets’kyi, Magdeburz’ke pravo v Ukraini, L’viv, 2008, offers a very full account
of the penetration of Magdeburg law into the territory of present-day Ukraine, but also
deals extensively with the origins and early expansion of Magdeburg law. A more succinct
account has been given by T. Hoshko, Narysy z istorii magdeburz’koho prava v Ukraini xiv-
pochatok xvii st., L’viv, 2002.
538 chapter 17
state, especially in Galicia.27 Neumarkt had itself received Magdeburg law

through the intermediary of the law of Halle. The expansion continued fur-
ther eastwards in Poland proper, Galicia, Lithuania and Belorussia during the
14th century (Warsaw in 1334, Lemberg/L’viv in 1356, Vilnius in 1387, Brest in
1390). In this phase Magdeburg law came to be adopted in regions where Ger-
man settlers no longer constituted an important section of the urban popula-
tion. The furthest extension was reached in the 15th and 16th centuries, when
Magdeburg law penetrated further into purely Baltic and East Slavic territories
(Kaunas in 1408, Slutsk in 1441, Polotsk in 1498/1499, Minsk in 1499, Kiev in
1506/1516, Vitebsk in 1597).
The granting or adoption of Magdeburg law appears to have been not much
more than a simple statement. The grant to Kiev was made in 1506 by the Polish
king Alexander and confirmed by his nephew king Sigismund in 1516. It stated
that the king “had conferred the German law known as Magdeburg law to the
city itself and the citizens of Kiev, whether they were adherents of the Latin
or the Greek or Armenian faith, in order that the citizens themselves and [the
other] inhabitants of Kiev and their successors would in everything govern and
defend themselves in such a way as [prescribed by] the law and customs of the
aforesaid law of Magdeburg.”28 In a much older grant, by a Galician prince Iurii
Troidenovich in 1339, to a local lord who held the office of advocatus (Germ.
Vogt) of the town of Sanok in Galicia, similar expressions were used (“with full
powers and jurisdiction according to German law, id est Magdeburg law”).29
The entire process of the penetration of Magdeburg law lasted for a very
long time and was itself quite complex.30 As towns took over, or rather were al-
lowed to take over, the law of another town, they adapted it according to their
special circumstances. The whole system was held together by the legally fixed
practice of appeal to the judicial bodies of the ‘mother’-town and ultimately to
the courts of Magdeburg. Not only did the Magdeburg system lack uniformity,
it was also far from comprehensive. It touched upon many subjects, without
quite covering them: local government, contracts, torts, criminal law, proce-
dure (criminal as well as civil), family law, inheritance law. Still, it clearly of-
fered a workable set of legal tools, witness its survival over many centuries,
27 Cf. Kobylets’kyi, 279–310.

28 Latin text and Ukrainian translation in Kobylets’kyi, 394–404.
29 Id., 391–393.
30 A special study of the penetration of Magdeburg law in the principalities of Polotsk and
Vitebsk is M. Makarau, Ad pasada da Magdeburgii: pravavoe stanovishcha nasel’nitstva
mestau Belaruskaga Padzvinnia u xiv – pershai palove xvii st., Minsk, 2008. This work also
contains the texts of 16 Polish-Lithuanian charters granted to various Belorussian towns
during the 1509–1648 period.
Western Russia 539
well into the period of the Russian empire when most of the territories of
the Polish-Lithuanian state had been absorbed by the former. The last place
where Magdeburg law survived on Russian soil was the city of Kiev, where it
was abolished in 1835, three years after its application had been forbidden in
the Ukraine.31
The Code of Kazimir of 1468

The so-called Code of Kazimir iv of 1468 is a short statute of which most of
the 25 articles were devoted to various kinds of theft; additionally there are
a few provisions concerning procedure, disputes concerning land, lost and
found property, and a final rule concerning bridge building. In the past, Rus-
sian authors were inclined to characterize this Code as an offshoot of the rp,
especially the Expanded Pravda, which also dealt with different types of theft
and contained an isolated rule on bridge building. Several Lithuanian and Pol-
ish authors disputed this view and after the thorough study by I.P. Starostina
the rp connection indeed looks weak.32
The Code may have been preceded by earlier comprehensive legislation, but
nothing definite is known about such activities. According to Starostina, it is
likely that the Code, ostensibly adopted in consultation with the leading noble
officials of the Lithuanian grand principality, was originally meant specifically
for the Lithuanian heartland, the provinces of Vilnius and Troki, but that its ap-
plicability extended later on also to the Russian provinces of the principality.
This would fit the view of some Lithuanian historians, to which Starostina also
subscribes tentatively, that the Code was based primarily on earlier Lithuanian
customary law.
The law was written in the official language of the principality, Old-Russian
(Old-Belorussian), and used the accepted Russian legal terminology which
went back to the rp. This, suggested Starostina, could explain why many au-
thors in the past assumed the Code’s genetic link with the rp, without any
serious comparison of the significantly different contents.
The Lithuanian Statute of 1529

If “Code” is rather too grand a designation for the 1468 statute, the Statute of
1529 would be deserving of such a name. It is also known as the First L ithuanian
31 Kobylets’kyi, 378ff.
32 I.P. Starostina, “Sudebnik Kazimira 1468 g.”, dg sssr 1988–1989, Moskva, 1991, 170–344. This
almost book-length study also contained a new scholarly edition of the text. The main
publication in the past was in Vladimirskii-Budanov, op. cit., 32–43, still most useful for its
comments to the individual provisions.
540 chapter 17
Statute, because there are two subsequent versions, the Second Statute of 1566
and the Third of 1588 (i.e. after the Union of Lublin with Poland in 1569). It was
issued by Sigismund (Zhigimont, Zygmunt) i the Old who reigned as grand
prince of Lithuania from 1505–1548 (king of Poland, 1506–1548).
Like all previous Lithuanian legislation the three Lithuanian Statutes were
written in Old-Russian (or Old-Belorussian, as some prefer).33 The 1529 Statute
was translated into Latin the next year. In the course of the last two centuries it
has been published several times, also in Russian, Polish, Lithuanian and Eng-
lish translations.34 The most complete and modern edition is the Lithuanian
one edited by S. Lazutka and E. Gudavičius.35 A shorter version of this edition,
but provided with a Russian translation and a commentary, was published for
a wider scholarly audience in 2004.36
Although an in-depth discussion of the 1529 Statute would be outside the
scope of this work, a few observations are appropriate because of the relevance
of the Statute and its two successors for the legal history of Russia. They were
applicable for centuries on territories which later became part of the Russian
state and they directly influenced Russian law.
The first thing that strikes the reader of the 1529 Statute is its relative moder-
nity. Art. 9 of its first chapter laid down that it applied equally to all subjects of
the Lithuanian state, “whether poor or rich, and of whatever position or class”.
Art. 7 of the same chapter stipulated that a person could be punished only
for a crime committed by himself. The Preamble (Introduction) stressed that
the granting of the rights and privileges defined in the Statute was in fact the
confirmation of the rights and privileges granted by previous rulers, and that
no distinctions between adherents to the Latin and the Greek faiths were to
be made.
The scope of the Statute, unlike the 1468 Code which mainly covered some
criminal law matters, was very broad. There are thirteen chapters of which the
first, entitled “Concerning the Person of the Sovereign” in the Table of C ontents,
33 Von Loewe (op. cit., 13) in his introduction to his translation of the 1529 Statute wrote: “It
was issued in a language peculiar to the Lithuanian chancery of that time. Nearly every
East European nationality whose language uses the Cyrillic alphabet has at one time or
another claimed this chancery language as the forerunner of its own.”
34 The English translation by von Loewe has been referred to above (K. von Loewe, The Lith-
uanian Statute of 1529, Leiden, 1976).
35 S. Lazutka, E. Gudavichius (eds.), Pervyi Litovskii Statut t.i Ch. 1 (Paleograficheskii i tek-
stologicheskii analiz spiskov), Vilnius, 1983; Ch. 2 (Faksimile Dzialyn’skogo, Lavrent’evskogo
i Ol’shevskogo spiskov), Vilnius, 1985; T.ii, Ch. 1 (Teksty na starobelorusskom, latinskom i
staropol’skom iazykakh), Vilnius, 1991.
36 S. Lazutka, I. Valikonite, E. Gudavichius, Pervyi Litovskii Statut (1529 g.), Vilnius, 2004.
Western Russia 541
contained provisions which we would classify as constitutional law. The same

could be said about the second and third chapters (defence of the realm and
the rights and freedoms of the nobility). Chapters 4, 5, 8 and 10 (on the status of
women and marriage, guardianship, ownership disputes concerning land, and
encumbered estates) covered various civil law subjects. Chapter 6 dealt with
judges and courts, and the remaining Chapters 7, 9, 11–13 with various criminal
offences. Many subjects are evidently missing (e.g. contracts or torts) and the
attempt at systematization looks very poor to a modern lawyer. Criminal law
provisions not only appear in the chapters mentioned, but are strewn around
all the others chapters. This is most easily explained by assuming that the Stat-
ute is to a great extent an accumulation of earlier and more narrowly focused
statutes. For the 1468 Code this is obvious; several of its provisions return in
the 1529 Statute.
Since the 19th century most Russian authors have until recently stated ca-
sually that the rp was the principal source of the 1529 Statute.37 Modern au-
thors reject this view.38 The parallels with the rp are superficial and concern
mainly terminology (both texts, for instance, have the term golovnichestvo,
“head money, wergeld”, as the composition payable to the close relatives of
the person killed).39 Indeed anything more than a cursory inspection of the
text of the 1529 Statute transports the reader into a very different legal world.
The roots, the foundation, of the Statute are probably in Lithuanian custom-
ary law (and this may explain a certain typological similarity with the rp), but
on this foundation an elaborate structure had been built by the legislation of
the Lithuanian grand principality, mainly in the shape of privilege charters,
and also by a large volume of court decisions, many of which can be found
in the Lithuanian Metrika. The close relations with Poland and the existence
37 The leading Soviet legal historian, S.V. Iushkov, in his Istoriia (189): “The basic source of
the [Lithuanian] statutes, drafted in the Russian language, was Russian feudal law, es-
pecially the Russkaia Pravda.” Von Loewe (op. cit., 6–12) identifies a number of parallels
between the two texts, but notes that there is no obvious influence from other Russian
legislation.
38 See e.g. I.P. Starostina, op. cit., and by the same author “K voprosu o skhodstve i razlichii
zakonodatel’nykh pamiatnikov Velikogo kniazhestva Litovskogo i Russkogo gosudarstva v
xv v.”, dg sssr 1987, Moskva, 1989, 92–99; Bychkova, op. cit., 76; Kuznetsov, op. cit., 48–49.
This point of view has also been argued forcefully and extensively by Lithuanian scholars
as Lazutka, Valikonite and Gudavichius (supra).
39 A recent study by S.V. Vasil’ev stressed that the terminological parallels are significant and
go back to the era of the Russkaia Pravda, and reflect a common background in the law
of the Eastern Slavs. Cf. S.V. Vasil’ev, Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota i i Litovskii Statut. Opyt
sravnitel’nogo issledovaniia terminologii zakonodatel’nykh pamiatnikov, Moskva, 2011.
542 chapter 17
of a princely chancery in Lithuania, staffed in part by officials and clerks who

might have studied in Cracow (its university was founded in 1364), would un-
doubtedly have resulted in the penetration of Polish and West-European con-
cepts and institutions. As stated above, the Statute looks surprisingly modern.
The 1529 Statute was superseded in 1566 by a new Statute, based on its pre-
decessor but offering a considerably revised, augmented and systematized
text.40 The 1566 Statute was in its turn replaced in 1588 by the Third Lithuanian
Statute. These two Statutes were prepared by special commissions (as was the
one from 1529), established to produce texts which were more in harmony with
socio-economic and political changes in the grand principality. The Third Stat-
ute remained in force in many territories after they had been incorporated into
the Russian empire, in some instances well into the 19th century.
40 New edition by T.I. Dounar (a.o.), Statut Vialikaga kniastva Litauskaga 1566 goda, Minsk,
2003, with comments in Belorussian.
chapter 18
Rural Russia
The presence of law in rural surroundings in medieval Russia is the theme of

this chapter. The sources, as is to be expected, tell us more about what hap-
pened in towns or in the courts of princes. As long as life in the country went
on as it had always done, it remained almost invisible. Looking at it from a
legal perspective, one presumes that it was governed by custom, which in some
cases might have solidified into customary law; in other words, certain customs
would be expressed in explicit rules, generally recognized within the com-
munity. Only when such customary arrangements become juridified can one
speak meaningfully about law. What is understood by “juridified” is that cus-
tom or customary law acquired sufficient legal relevance for it to be the subject
matter of a legal dispute or legal regulation: it might be submitted to the judg-
ment of a public authority (the prince, his officials, a town or village authority,
a church official), or it might be expressed in a legal document (legislation or
other public regulation, a contract, a will).
Adopting such a concept of law, one can safely say that in the setting of
early medieval rural Russia, law was not only, like other aspects of life at that
time, almost invisible – it was hardly there. The sparse evidence, to which
we shall return below, suggests that law emerged, like little islands of dry land
in an area previously under water, at certain points where the usefulness of
legal regulation had arisen. In an urban setting, the moment when it becomes
too difficult to do without law occurs much earlier. A town cannot function
without some forms of institutionalized public power; as a natural centre for
crafts and trade, the density of commercial relationships also calls for formal
rules.
It is generally known in legal history that the emergence of law itself and
its subsequent metamorphoses in the shape of major law reforms are almost
always connected with important socio-economic changes. For the earliest pe-
riod of Russian legal history one can at least identify one complex of factors
that was of great relevance for the Russian countryside. The area populated
by the Eastern Slavs had become politically unified under the princes of the
Rurikid dynasty and this process was accompanied and supported by the for-
mation of a new social elite. The adoption of Christianity, during the same
period, introduced the Church, and somewhat later, the rise of monasticism,
as separate factors within this complex.

544 chapter 18
Land Tenure and Land Ownership
The Primary Chronicle offers a rough picture of rural conditions in pre-Christian

Russia: a tribal society, where tribal land co-existed with individual plots of
families. This at least would apply to the more advanced Southern tribes, es-
pecially the Polianians. In the North, life in the dense forests would appear to
have been more primitive. For a proper understanding of rural conditions the
peculiar role of the early Russian town has to be kept in mind. As explained
in Chapter 8, towns of various kinds had existed in Russia since prehistoric
times. These towns presupposed the existence of a wider urban environment,
economically connected with them, supplying at least food and then also trad-
ing goods (pelts, timber, wax, etc.). Beyond this environment there was, in the
North, endless and mostly impenetrable forest, in the South, the steppe, and
pustynia in the transition zone, as the Chronicle refers to it: a wild and empty
place, ownerless, from the legal point of view, or at least from a modern le-
gal point of view, which employs the concept of a person’s relationship with
a particular piece of land. It is of course more realistic to talk about a per-
son’s attitude towards a piece of land. The early Finnish and Slavic hunters
in the forests of Northern Russia would probably regard the forest as an alien
and awe-inspiring place where they would go to find prey; only when their
hunting-grounds began to overlap with those of others, might some sense of
‘ownership’ emerge. For the nomadic herdsmen of the Southern steppe, the
endless plains were the place where they lived and grazed their cattle; the ap-
pearance of strange herds would be felt as a threat to their livelihood. Only
among sedentary agriculturalists could a more distinct sense of land owner-
ship arise, because there would be specific fields worked by specific peasants
and producing a specific crop. The basic feature concerning land in this era
would still be that most of it was ownerless, in whatever sense, legal or psycho-
logical, one might assign to the term.
Early Russian law still shows clear traces of the gradual emergence of own-
ership in a more modern sense, in particular in connection with hunting and
bee-keeping, when some kind of exclusive claim on a specific part of the
primeval forest first arose. One indication is the entry in the Primary Chron-
icle for 946/947 about Olga establishing hunting preserves in the newly con-
quered land of the Derevlians (see below), others are encountered in the rp
in various rules against damaging or removing oak trees or other signs mark-
ing bee-keeping, hunting or ploughing rights (art. 34, Short Pravda; arts. 70–73,
Expanded Pravda). This, in very broad outline, would have been the situation
preceding the formation of proto-historical Rus’.
It began to change in the earliest historical times with the arrival of new
players. The princes of the Kievan era differed in many ways from the old Slavic
Rural Russia 545
chieftains. Their following, the druzhina, was of mixed origin; along with Slavic
members, there were certainly Varangians, and also persons with other eth-
nic backgrounds, such as various Turkic and Finnish elements, and possibly
others. Such princes, as well as members of new elites including also clergy
members, constituted a new presence in the Russian countryside in this era,
although they would normally be found more often in and around the towns.
An explanation of this new phenomenon would raise the question of his-
torical causality, which is not the subject of this study. A certain awareness of
it may contribute however to a better understanding of the topic of this chap-
ter and in particular of the emergence of ‘large-scale landownership’ (krupnoe
zemlevladenie), the not altogether felicitous term used especially by Soviet his-
torians to denote the rural transformations of this period.
All that can be done here is to point out how a number of important new
factors were closely connected. All through the several centuries of its exis-
tence, Kievan Rus was plagued by incursions of Turkic steppe nomads; first the
Pechenegs, until they were almost annihilated by Iaroslav the Wise in 1036, and
then the Polovtsians. This was at least one of the main reasons towns needed
a prince and his military power for their protection. The nucleus of this power
was the druzhina, and its members had to be rewarded. The prince would de-
rive income from his personal domain (as attested to by the rp); gradually, dru-
zhina members also appeared as lords of estates, rather than as companions
of the prince. The Church and its doctrine supported and legitimized princely
power and received material support in exchange. The growth of larger estates
required an increased work force; slavery continued to play a role, but eco-
nomic hardship would also drive poorer elements of the rural population into
positions of dependence. Large estates were, as a rule, better able to defend
themselves and to weather difficult times.
It is probably pointless to look for a single ‘efficient cause’ in this process.
Once it got under way, the various factors indicated above (and others as well)
reinforced each other.
Large-Scale Land Ownership – Feudalism?
In Russian historiography the process is usually referred to as the rise of

large-scale landownership, which directs attention to the legal question of
ownership of the land. This approach became completely dominant in Sovi-
et times because of the importance of the question of the ownership of the
means of production in Marxist ideology. Ownership of land by a small num-
ber of wealthy landowners, used to exploit the peasants who actually worked
the land, was the central feature of feudalism as one of the major phases of
546 chapter 18
istorical development in the Marxist view. It was formulated by B.D. Grekov

h
in his work on Kievan Russia as follows.
A classical definition of the feudal system was given by Stalin. The basis
of the relations of production under the feudal system is that the feudal
lord owns the means of production and does not fully own the worker in
production – the serf whom the feudal lord can no longer kill, but whom
he can buy and sell. Alongside feudal ownership there exists the individ-
ual ownership by the peasant and the handicraftsman of his implements
of production and his private enterprise based on his personal labour.1
The Marxist concept is obviously much wider than the classical ones, based
on the combination of fief-holding and vassalage, as it emerged in post-
Carolingian Europe through the ritual of homage and fealty.2 In its application
in the history of the Russian middle ages, the general Marxist concept, more-
over, had to be augmented, in order to come to a satisfactory elucidation of
Russian ‘feudalism’. This was done by the introduction of the concept of state
feudalism, in which the state (in fact the prince) was the dominant owner of
land and the source of the ownership of other ‘feudal’ landowners. State feu-
dalism, accordingly, acquired great popularity as a theoretical theme for Soviet
historians, without adding much (in my view) to a genuine understanding of
what had actually happened.3
As has been said above, the application of the modern, absolute ownership
concept is anachronistic, at least with regard to the rights concerning land in
a medieval setting. Medieval landownership, to put it briefly, was not so much
a question of the identity of the owner, but rather of identifying different
layers of ‘ownership’, in other words, of the identities of the various catego-
ries of persons who enjoyed certain rights concerning the land in question.
Marxist-Leninist views on the feudal system, as proclaimed by Soviet ideol-
ogy, recognized the stratified character of ownership in the middle ages, as
well as the restricted character of the ownership rights of an individual owner,
1 B.D. Grekov, Kiev Rus, Moscow, 1959, 149. Original in Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 115.
2 Cf. M. Bloch, La société féodale, Paris, 1939; C. Stephenson, Mediaeval Feudalism, Ithaca
n.y., 1942; F.L. Ganshof, Qu’est-ce que la féodalité?, Bruxelles, 1944; many later editions and
translations.
3 The literature on this subject is vast, but probably of little interest now. When the transi-
tion to a market economy was in full swing in 1993, the Institute of Russian History of the
Academy of Sciences published a collection of articles (only 300 copies, poor paper and type-
writer print), which looked like a last attempt to keep the discussion alive; L.V. Danilova (ed.),
Sistema gosudarstvennogo feodalizma v Rossii. Sbornik statei, 2 vols., Moskva, 1993.
Rural Russia 547
implied in this stratification.4 Instead of “ownership” (sobstvennost’) of land,

zemlevladenie, is often used, a term which in its traditional legal meaning
would refer to “possession of land” or “land tenure”, but in its more general
meaning refers to “control over land”. The latter term often occurs together
with the term “the use of land” (zemlepol’zovanie), which, from the legal point
of view, is an even vaguer concept than zemlevladenie. In medieval sources,
princes and noble landowners would commonly refer to votchina or otchina
(“paternal heritage”) with regard to their own lands.5 Nowadays votchina is in
general use in Russian historical terminology to refer to the main form of me-
dieval (‘feudal’) landownership.
The real question is to find out what legal roles various actors played in con-
nection with land.
Princes as Landowners
The central role unquestionably fell to the prince, the Kievan grand prince at
first and the multitude of princes in later years. The rights of others concerning
land depended on or were connected with the rights of the prince; this applied
to secular members of the elite (druzhina members, boyars), as well as to the
Church (bishops and monasteries). Apart from being a source of landowning
rights of others, the prince was usually also an important landowner himself.
The first mention of the prince as landowner is found in the Primary Chron-
icle in the celebrated passage for the years 946–947, which relates the activities
of Olga, the widow of grand prince Igor, after she had inflicted a crushing de-
feat on the Derevlians, who had killed Igor in 945. The story contains a wealth
of information on the prince’s powers concerning land and therefore deserves
to be quoted in full.
She imposed on them a heavy tribute [dan’], two parts of which went to
Kiev, and the third to Olga in Vyshgorod; for Vyshgorod was Olga’s city.
She then passed through the land of Dereva, accompanied by her son
and her retinue [druzhina], establishing laws [oustavy] and tribute [ou-
roki]. Her trading-posts [stanovishcha] and hunting-preserves [lovishcha]
4 Cf. Iushkov, Stroi, 116–117 and especially A.L. Shapiro, Russkoe krest’ianstvo pered zakreposh-
cheniem (xiv–xvi vv.), Leningrad, 1987, Ch. 3, 31–46.
5 Cf. L.V. Danilova, “Poniatie zemel’noi votchiny v srednevekovoi Rusi”, V.M. Vorob’ev, A.Iu.
Dvornichenko (eds.), Srednevekovaia i novaia Rossiia. Sbornik nauchnykh statei. K 60-letiiu
professora Igoria Iakovlevicha Froianova, Sankt-Peterburg, 1996, 254–278.
548 chapter 18
are still there. Then she returned with her son to Kiev, her city, where
she remained one year. [947] Olga went to Novgorod, and along the Msta
she established trading-posts [povosty=pogosty] and tribute [dani] and
along the Luga imposts [obroki] and tribute [dani] and her hunting-
preserves [lovishcha], boundary posts [znamiania] and trading-posts
[povosty=pogosty] still exist throughout the whole region, while her
sleighs stand in Pskov to this day. Her fowling preserves [perevesishcha]
still remain on the Dniepr and the Desna, while her village of Olzhichi is
in existence even now.6
Without getting into a full discussion of the passage, the following salient
points may be noted.7 Olga was the only ruling grand princess of the Rurikid
dynasty, acting as regent for her young son Sviatoslav. Shortly after her resolute
and cruel treatment of the Derevlians she herself became a Christian, although
the Kievan empire only accepted Christianity during the rule of her grandson
Vladimir in 988. Whether the “laws” (ustavy) she established can be regarded
as the first reported Kievan legislation is much debated. The importance of
tribute (dan’) in the formation of the Kievan state was discussed in the section
on “Tribute and inter-tribal relations” in Chapter 7. What concerns us here are
the various forms of power exercized by the prince in respect of land. First of
all, the land of the Derevlians had obviously been annexed and incorporated
into the Kievan state, to apply modern terminology; Olga imposed an annual
tribute (dan’) and other taxes (uroki) and established “laws”. She also reserved
certain areas in Dereva as her own hunting-preserves. Although the capital
Kiev (grad svoi) and Vyshgorod (grad Vol’zin) are both called ‘her’ cities, the
context suggests that Vyshgorod was more of a personal apanage. The same
applies to the village of Olzhichi, which bears her name and would not have
been mentioned if she did not have special rights to it. The Chronicle makes
an effort to point out that Olga’s real property activities in establishing fowl-
ing and hunting-preserves, boundary posts (of these preserves, presumably)
and trading-posts were effective until the Chronicle itself was written down,
more than a century and a half later. The reference to the village of Olzhichi
in particular indicates that the Kievan prince and members of his family ap-
peared as landowners at this early moment. It also implies that there were
other landowners as well. It appears that the accent in respect of Olga’s rights
concerning land was still more on hunting and gathering (bee-keeping) than
on agriculture.
6 Translation (with minor alterations) of Cross/Sherbowitz-Wetzor, 81–82.

7 A fuller treatment in Froianov, KRse, 138–144; also in Froianov, Nachala, 374–378.
Rural Russia 549
During the following century, the sparse legal sources do not contain clear
references to princely landowning, with one exception. The first part of the
Short Version of the rp (the Oldest Pravda, or Pravda of Iaroslav, tentatively
dated 1016) is almost exclusively concerned with relationships among Russians
and Varangians in an urban environment; the Church Statute of Iaroslav (ten-
tatively dated 1054) focuses primarily on sexual behaviour which was particu-
larly objectionable to the Church and which had been assigned to ecclesiastical
jurisdiction. Iaroslav’s father, St. Vladimir, had already conferred jurisdiction
and tithes onto the Church through his Church Statute (some time between
980 and 1015, possibly 996) and the section conferring tithes mentioned the
prince’s herds and harvest among the assets from which tithes would be paid
and this of course implied that Vladimir owned land.
Then, with the second part of the Short Version, the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons
(1073, most likely), the prince as landowner appeared at the centre of the stage.
The complex structure of the second part of the Short Version was discussed
at greater length in Chapter 4 on the rp; in fact, only the first half is to be
regarded as the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons, the second half consists of provi-
sions of a later date, combined with the first half when the final compilation
of the Short Pravda was accomplished. This first half (arts. 19–29) constituted
a catalogue of fines (bloodwite), payable for the homicide of various officials
and servants of the prince, plus a few related offences. This catalogue offered
a fairly detailed picture of the organization of the prince’s domain and the
persons employed by it.
At the top of the list (art. 19) were the steward (ognishchanin) and the collec-
tor of fines (pod”ezdnoi).8 Although the exact meaning of these terms has been
much debated, the dominant view is that the ognishchanin was the person
who ran the estate as the prince’s representative and that the pod”ezdnoi was
in particular concerned with receiving money on behalf of the prince.9 The
importance of these officials is borne out by the fact that their killing entailed
a doubling of the normal sanction of 40 grivna.
A bloodwite of 80 grivna was also due (arts. 22–23) for the killing of the
prince’s tiun or the senior stable master (koniukh staryi); the tiun was an of-
ficial who could be entrusted with various responsibilities by the prince.10
8 “Steward” and “collector of fines” in Kaiser’s translation; Vernadsky has “bailiff” and
“prince’s adjutant”.
9 For a survey of the various views, see Baranowski, 251–255.
10 Vernadsky translates tiun as “steward”; Kaiser, who uses “steward” for ognishchanin, ren-
ders tiun as “overseer”. While the ognishchanin appears only in the rp, tiun remained a
frequently used title well into the 17th century.
550 chapter 18
Of the prince’s lower officials, the Short Pravda mentioned (art. 24) the village
elder (sel’skii starosta) and the plough land supervisor; their bloodwite was 12
grivna.
A bloodwite of 5 grivna was set for rank-and-file farm labourers, whatever
their legal status: contract labourers (riadovichi, art. 25), ordinary (dependent)
peasants (smerdy, art. 26), and slaves (kholopy, art. 26); however, the killing of
slaves enjoying a position of confidence in the prince’s household (the wet-
nurse and the male tutor, the kormilitsa and the kormilichits) entailed the high-
er bloodwite of 12 grivna (art. 27).
The list was completed by setting fixed fines for the killing of a horse be-
longing to the prince (3 grivna) or belonging to a peasant (2 grivna) and for
the killing of various other animals (art. 28); art. 29 dealt with the abduction
of a male or female slave (kholop or roba) and ordered the offender to pay the
owner 12 grivna “for the offence” (za obidu, obviously on top of making good
the loss caused).
The entire complex of arts. 19–29 of the Short Pravda offers the outline of an
extensive domain of which the prince was the lord and which was managed on
his behalf by a hierarchy of officials and employees. This picture is made more
detailed by the following part of the Short Pravda which is predominantly con-
cerned with offences against the functioning of the agricultural enterprise of
the prince.
As mentioned earlier, almost all provisions of the Short Pravda reappear in
the Expanded Pravda, in a different but still very recognizable form, and this
applies also to the provisions referred to above.11 As a result of the editorial
work during the final compilation of the Expanded Pravda, the logical con-
nection between the blocks of provisions of the Short Pravda devoted to the
management of the princely domain has to a considerable extent been lost in
the Expanded Pravda. In addition to the members of the domanial personnel
mentioned in the Short Pravda, the Expanded Pravda referred to the kniazh’
muzh (arts. 1 and 3), the prince’s man or agent (quite possibly the same person
as the ognishchanin), the rural tiun (art. 13), and the zakup (art. 56ff.). The rural
tiun (sel’skii tiun kniazh’) was of the same rank as the plough land overseer
(ratainyi), with a bloodwite of 12 grivna, while the prince’s tiun (art. 1) retained
the 80 grivna bloodwite. The zakup or indentured labourer is thought to have
been the subject of a special enactment, subsequently included in the final
redaction of the Expanded Pravda (arts. 56–62, to be discussed in more detail
in the following section).
11 With the exception of art. 19 of the Short Pravda, devoted to the bloodwite for the og-
nishchanin, an official who virtually disappeared in the Expanded Pravda, save a passing
mention in arts. 12 and 78.
Rural Russia 551
The general picture of princely landowning, produced by these provisions

of the rp, is further concretized by a chronicle passage under the year 1146,
referring to an armed conflict between two groups of Chernigov and Volyn-
ian princes, a common event at that time (the brothers Sviatoslav and Igor
Ol’govich on one side, and the brothers Iziaslav and Vladimir Davydovich and
the Volynian prince Iziaslav Mstislavich on the other).12
… they came and halted in the village of Mel’teko, from where they sent
[a force] to seize the herds of Igor and Sviatoslav in the forest along the
river Rakhna – some 3000 mares and 1000 horses; spreading out among
the villages, they burned the courts and the grain stores. But this was not
enough for them, inspired as they were by the devil; they went to Igor’s
village where he had built himself a palace; there was a wealth of good
things there in the storerooms, wine and honey in the cellars, and there
was also such a great quantity of heavy goods, such as iron and brass, that
they could not take it away with them. The order was given to place it all
on carts and then they ordered to set fire to Igor’s palace, the church, and
the wheat field on which there were 900 stacks … [in Putivl’, the other
brother’s main village] they divided the [contents of the] palace of Svia-
toslav Ol’govich into four parts, the cattle sheds and the storerooms, and
all the stocks; there were 5000 pounds [500 berkovtsy] of honey and 50
large jars of wine in the cellars; they divided up the entire princely estate,
including 700 slaves.
Another concrete example of princely landowning from the same period is the
1150 Charter of prince Rostislav Mstislavich of Smolensk, endowing the newly
established bishopric of Smolensk with a few villages, including the depen-
dent local peasants, and parcels of land, specifically designated as “land of the
prince” (kniazh uezd).13
12 Quoted from Iu.B. Got’e, Ocherk istorii zemlevladeniia v Rossii, Moskva, 2003, 13–14. (This
work was published posthumously; Got’e was a Russian émigré scholar, who died in
1943). Got’e did not indicate which chronicle his quotation was taken from, apparently
the Hypatian text of the Prim. Chr. (psrl ii, 331–332), see also Froianov, Nachala, 385,
or Froianov, KRse, 156. Karamzin (Part ii, Ch. 12) has the same story in more or less the
same words under the year 1146; in his footnote 296 (col.123 in the Primechaniia to Part ii)
Karamzin quotes verbatim from the “Kievan Chronicle”. Tatishchev, in his Istoriia Rossiis-
kaia, Part ii, Ch. 18, under the year 1146, recounts the same story in similar words (I have
used the 2003 Moscow edition, where the text is found in vol.2, 201).
13 Art. 4 of the Charter (Ustavnaia gramota) of Rostislav of Smolensk, prp ii, 41. On the
Charter, see the relevant section in Chapter 8).
552 chapter 18
The sources show without any doubt that the Rurikid princes in the Kievan
era ‘owned’ land in the sense that specific tracts of land were at their disposal
for exploitation in their personal interest and that they could donate or sell
such lands. This is to be distinguished from other, vaster, territories which were
also designated as belonging to them, but where they were only recognized as
the rulers. Their rights as rulers would involve certain revenues (such as court
fees), but other persons or entities (such as monasteries) would appear as the
‘owners’. Not all Rurikid princes were in fact ruling princes. Such non-ruling
princes were little different from other landowners, if at least they had been
granted lands of their own.
This raises the question of the origin of princely landowning and of land-
owning in general, a subject that can only be dealt with in connection with
non-princely landowning.
Boyars and Other Landowners
The legal framework of agriculture in Russia in pre-Kievan times is a matter of

conjecture (and of customary law of course). Subsistence farming by peasant
households can be assumed, but external sources testify to the existence of
slavery, and a certain degree of social stratification (see the section on slav-
ery in Chapter 19).14 That slaves were an object of trade and that the Russians
were very active in the slave trade is made abundantly clear by the sources.
Whether they also used slaves as an agricultural workforce at this time remains
obscure. The Primary Chronicle (for 946) reports that the princess Olga, af-
ter defeating the Derevlians, slaughtered some of them and gave others to her
druzhinniki. This passage demonstrates that Russians themselves could also be
slaves to other Russians, but does not indicate whether they were employed to
work for their masters or destined only to be sold on. Taking everything into ac-
count (the inescapable importance of agriculture, the existence of slavery, and
the existence of a political and economic elite), the assumption that estates
larger than a single family household existed, where a relatively wealthy mas-
ter would control an agricultural economy of a certain size, employing slave
labour, is reasonable. In modern terminology such a person would be consid-
ered a landowner.
14 Of the many testimonies, one of the most extensive is by Procopius of Caesarea, who lived
during the first half of the 6th century, in his description of the wars with the Goths; see
Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh istochnikov, t.ii, Vizantiiskie istochniki (M.V. Bibikov,
comp.), Moskva, 2010, 69–79. Slavery in Russia in pre-Kievan times is discussed in more
detail by A.A. Zimin, Kholopy na Rusi, Moskva, 1973, 9–21.
Rural Russia 553
For Kievan times there is sufficient evidence to indicate that the prince
was the basic source of the landowning of others. Among the various ways
the prince would reward his followers, his druzhina, the granting of land was
initially not the first option, but in time became more important. (For the main
treatment of the druzhina, see Chapter 13 (on the Prince), section on the prince
and his officials, sub-section on the druzhina.)
The relationship between (the assumed) landowning by a pre-Kievan ‘no-
ble’ and the landowning by the Kievan elite, derived from grants by the prince,
has been and still is a much contested question in Russian historiography. Did
the pre-Kievan elite disappear by being dissolved into the general population,
did it survive as an independent landowning class along with the ‘new’ land-
owners from the druzhina, or was the druzhina perhaps recruited in part from
the old Russian landowning class? And the answers to these questions may all
be in the affirmative to some extent; in other words, the three options are not
mutually exclusive.15
To be quite precise, there are two closely connected complexes of questions.
The first one concerns the existence and subsequent fate of a pre-Kievan elite,
the ‘landed boyars’ (zemskie boiary, lit. “land boyars”, or indigenous boyars),
in the pre-1917 terminology. Did such a class indeed exist and, if so, what hap-
pened to it in the era of the first Rurikid rulers. Secondly, if it existed, did it own
land? If it did, how did this group of landowners fare in the era of the first Ru-
rikids? A variety of answers has been offered to these questions by successive
generations of Russian historians. A survey recently presented by A.A. Gorskii
offers a convenient summary.16 The following paragraph is based on Gorskii’s
argument.
Following the conceptualization of feudalism in West-European historiogra-
phy of the 19th century, N.P. Pavlov-Sil’vanskii was the first major proponent of
the theory of the emergence of a similar type of feudalism in Russia, based on
the combination of noble landowning and vassalage.17 The first generation of
Soviet medievalists, with B.D. Grekov as the undisputed leader, followed in this
track, but used a Marxist concept of feudalism, in which the economic domi-
nance of large-scale landownership was the decisive factor. Grekov put the
beginning of Russian feudalism as early as the 9th century, while others (espe-
cially S.V. Iushkov) advocated a later date, in the 11th century. Grekov’s position
15 More on this problem: Froianov, Nachala, 392–399 (KRse, 166–177); M.B. Sverdlov, Genezis
i struktura feodal’nogo obshchestva v Drevnei Rusi, Leningrad, 1983, 18–27.
16 A.A. Gorskii, Russkoe Srednevekov’e, Moskva, 2009, 57–81 (Chapter 4: “«Feudalism»: the
«Classical» Model and Reality”).
17 N.P. Pavlov-Sil’vanskii, Feodalizm v Rossii, Moskva, 1988 (orig. Sankt-Peterburg, 1910).
554 chapter 18
was difficult to justify on the basis of the available evidence, but the other view
ran into ideological difficulties. Soviet historians agreed on the existence of a
Russian state already in the 10th century, but that would require the existence
of a ruling class of landowners. One way out was suggested by L.V. Cherepnin,
who formulated the theory of “supreme state ownership of land” as a special
Russian variety of early feudalism.18 Most leading Soviet historians of the time
followed Cherepnin. A more drastic solution was offered by I.Ia. Froianov who
advocated the view that feudalism only became the basis of Russia’s socio-eco-
nomic system after the invasions of the Mongols in the 13th century.
Gorskii, who was well aware of modern Western criticism of the feudalism
construct, continued his argument by proposing to abandon feudalism as a
conceptual instrument for analyzing early medieval Russian society and to
turn instead to realia, to the actual information provided by the contemporary
sources. In this respect he pointed to the abundant references to the role of the
druzhina, the retinue or Gefolgschaft of the Kievan prince in the chronicles;
also, the numerous princely officials appearing in the rp were to be regarded as
members of the druzhina. The early Kievan state system was based on and run
by a corporation, the druzhina with the prince as its head. Druzhina members
constituted the administrative machinery and served as officials at the court,
managers of the prince’s estate, military commanders, envoys, judicial person-
nel, and lieutenants of the princes in peripheral towns and districts. They were
rewarded principally by being allotted a share of the revenues they collected.
When they were serving as the prince’s representative in a particular district,
they would be entitled to a part of the material yields of local agriculture, hunt-
ing, etc. Once such positions became permanent and then also inheritable,
large-scale noble landowning came into being.
The unpopularity of this approach in the past was explained by Gorskii by
reference to the old view, propagated by the Primary Chronicle, of the Scan-
dinavian origin of the druzhina. In order to belittle the importance of such a
druzhina, pre-revolutionary Russian historians invented the category of indig-
enous boyars as the main source of the Kievan landowning class. Soviet histo-
rians perpetuated this myth with certain modifications.
There are a number of refreshing aspects in Gorskii’s approach (which is
shared by other modern Russian historians), such as the rejection of the sterile
feudalism discussion and the emphasis on the importance of the druzhina.
In his denial of the existence of a pre-Kievan landowning boyar class Gorskii
appeared to follow the view which was most explicitly put forward by Froianov,
18 In “K voprosu o kharaktere i forme drevnerusskogo gosudarstva”, Istoricheskie Zapiski,

No.89 (1972), 353–408.
Rural Russia 555
who stressed the absence of any evidence for such existence.19 The opposite
opinion was represented most clearly by Iushkov: “But all this cannot overturn
the completely correct view expressed with such force by M.N. Pokrovskii, that
the origin of the boyars is mainly the large landowners, outside the druzhina
organization.”20 Froianov argued that there could be no doubt that the boyars
belonged to the druzhina, and he referred to three authorities, Presniakov,
Grekov and his teacher Mavrodin.21 As the druzhina members owed their al-
lowances, including the lands granted them, to the prince, it would follow that
this would also apply to boyars as druzhina members; there is no evidence of
boyar landowning before the second half of the 11th century. Kievan boyars,
like other druzhina members, were first and foremost princely servants and
officials. It is possible, Froianov allowed, that they were the successors in this
respect of the old tribal elites, which left the stage of history as a result of the
breakdown of the tribal system and the emergence of a new social organization.
There are several weak spots in Froianov’s argument. Presniakov agreed that
there was no evidence of boyar landowning for the early period, but added
that it was apparently very common in the 12th century and would probably
have been in existence for quite a while then;22 Grekov merely noted that the
most prominent members of the druzhina were recruited from the ranks of
the boyars;23 and Mavrodin actually held that boyar landowning was based
in part on the old tribal elites and in part on druzhina members becoming
boyar landowners.24 All that remains of Froianov’s argument therefore is the
absence of direct evidence for boyar landowning in the early Kievan period,
a distinctly weak position in view of the general scarcity of sources for the
period concerned.25
19 “Boyar landowning did not arise before the second half of the 11th century.”, Froianov,
Nachala, 557 (KRsp, 79); less outspoken A.Iu. Dvornichenko, Rossiiskaia istoriia s drevnei-
shikh vremen do padeniia samoderzhaviia, Moskva, 2010, 153 (“Boyar landowning was also
modest.”).
20 Iushkov, Ocherki, 143; Iushkov does not offer a reference, but a relevant passage may be
found in M.N. Pokrovskii, Russkaia istoriia v 3 tomakh, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 2005
(orig. 1905–1914), i, 29.
21 Froianov, Nachala, 558 (KRsp, 81).
22 Presniakov, Kn. Pr., 246.
23 Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 344. Grekov anyway accepted the thesis of the indigenous boyars,
and explained his views in Kievskaia Rus’, 126–129.
24 V.V. Mavrodin, Obrazovanie drevnerusskogo gosudarstva, Sankt-Peterburg, 2008 (2nd ed.,
orig. 1945), 220.
25 A fundamental and critical review of Froianov’s theories in M.B. Sverdlov, Obshchestven-
nyi stroi Drevnei Rusi v russkoi istoricheskoi nauke xviii–xx vv., Sankt-Peterburg, 1996,
287–301.
556 chapter 18
Boyars are indeed absent in the Short Pravda, but they are mentioned in the
treaties of 911, 944 and 971 with Byzantium. Their absence in the Short Pravda
is easily explained by the character of this document. Its first part (the Pravda
of Iaroslav) dealt primarily with the particular problems which had arisen in
Novgorod between Iaroslav’s druzhina and the urban population; its second
part (the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons) with the management and protection of
the prince’s domain. Neither of these had any connection with boyar landown-
ing, if it had existed at that time.
Boyar landowning is evidenced by the Expanded Pravda, but, as authors
such as Presniakov had already pointed out, more or less in passing, as a com-
mon phenomenon. In art. 1 (which parallels arts. 1 of the Short Pravda) the
tivun boiaresk (the overseer or steward of a boyar) was inserted in a list of per-
sons entitled to increased compensation. The Short Pravda only knew the tiun
of the prince, one of the higher princely officials. The tivun boiaresk returned
in art. 66 of the Expanded Pravda, which demonstrates that this official did not
belong to the class of freemen: testimony of a slave was not to be accepted, but
if no free person was available to testify, a boyar’s tivun could be referred to.
Arts. 90–95 of the Expanded Pravda dealt with inheritance law. The estates
of boyars and druzhina members did not revert to the prince, as did the estates
of peasants, but were inherited by the sons and, in the absence of sons, by the
daughters. Nobody has doubted that “estate” (zadnitsa: “what is left behind”)
referred first of all to land.26 The fact that boyars and druzhinniki are men-
tioned separately supports the view that these categories were not identical.27
The block of provisions in the Expanded Pravda dealing with zakupy
(“indentured labourers” in Kaiser’s translation, arts. 56–62, 64) does not explic-
itly mention large estates, but the relationships between a lord and his z akupy
as outlined by these rules suggest that the lord (gospodin) in question was
more than just a well-to-do peasant. The rules on zakupy belong most likely
to the original content of the legislation of Vladimir Monomakh and are usu-
ally dated at 1116; the institution of zakupy must have been well established by
that time.
In view of the general scarcity of sources concerning pre-Kievan and early
Kievan Russia, the absence of direct evidence of boyar landowning is quite
insufficient to assert its non-existence in that period. Although hunting and
fishing were important activities, domestic grains constituted the basic food

27 The distinction, admittedly, could also be explained by regarding the boyars as senior,
and the druzhinniki as junior members of the druzhina. Curiously, none of the numerous
commentators of the rp have paid any attention to the matter.
Rural Russia 557
source. The presence of agriculture combined with extensive social stratifica-

tion makes the absence of boyar landowning very unlikely.
The material (archaeological) evidence, especially from an early East Slavic
settlement area such as the Smolensk region, supports this view. Here a consid-
erable number of remains of fortress-like character were found, together with
comparatively rich grave contents, indicating significant social stratification.28
The presence of local boyars in the 12th century in the Russian North, both
in Novgorod and in the Rostov-Suzdal’ principality, is confirmed by the chroni-
cles. The position of these ‘urban’ boyars was based on their landed wealth, and
not on any close connection with the prince, as members of his druzhina.29
The most acceptable construction, based on the material available, is that
boyar landowning existed on a considerable scale among the East Slavic popu-
lation at least as early as the 10th century. With the ascent of the Rurikid rul-
ers, the indigenous elite was partly absorbed by the new elite consisting of
the prince’s druzhina. The prince rewarded his followers in various ways, and
the assignment of estates was one of them. Ultimately, the two groups of aris-
tocratic landowners merged, although the distinction was apparently still re-
membered when art. 91 of the Expanded Pravda was drafted.
Intense debates about the nature of early Kievan society have been going
on for a very long time (see the relevant section in Chapter 12) and the issue
of boyar or large-scale landowning is a prominent element of it. Once the dust
has settled, one may conclude that differences of opinion have often been ex-
aggerated and that there is also consensus on many points. The real problem
is perhaps to establish when large-scale landowning arose and how important
it was at a certain moment, instead of arguing whether it was there or not. For
legal history these questions are in any case less urgent than for general history.
It is also most likely, as several authors have argued, that large-scale landown-
ing had come into being long before it was evidenced by written sources and
that its operation was based on custom and customary law.30
The existence of private landowning on a considerable scale, after the rules
concerning zakupy in the Statute of Monomakh (beginning of the 12th cen-
tury), is documented by private charters dealing with land transactions, at first
28 L.V. Alekseev, Smolenskaia zemlia v ix–xiii vv., Moskva, 1980, 124, 132–134.
29 Cf. Iu.V. Krivosheev, “Kniaz’, boiare i gorodskaia obshchina Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi v xii –
nachale xiii v.”, I.Ia. Froianov (ed.), Genezis i razvitie feodalizma v Rossii, Leningrad, 1988,
111–123.
30 E.g. N.F. Kotliar, “K istorii vozniknoveniia normy chastnogo zemlevladeniia v obychnom
prave Rusi”, P.P. Tolochko (ed.), Drevnie slaviane i Kievskaia Rus’, Kiev, 1989, 147–154.
558 chapter 18
a trickle in the 12th and 13th centuries, a sufficient number for the 14th century,
and abundant quantities for the following era.
The oldest items are not surprisingly from the Novgorod area and are con-
nected with monasteries. Two of them concern Antonii Rimlianin (“Anthony
the Roman”), the abbot (since 1131) of the monastery of the Mother of God,
who is mentioned several times in the First Novgorod Chronicle (from 1117 to
his death in 1147).31 In one of them he donated some land and a village which
he had purchased from other owners to the monastery; in his last will he be-
queathed some land to the monastery, together with the dependent peasants.32
These two documents are known from 16th century copies, prepared for the
monastery in an ownership dispute. Several authors have therefore regarded
them (especially the sale charter) as fakes, but nowadays their authenticity is
more generally accepted.33 The probable date of the testament is before 1131
and of the sale charter between 1135 and 1147.34 In a similar document from
1181–1182, a prominent Novgorod official, Ivan Fomin, donated extensive lands
around Lake Onega to the Murom monastery, on the condition that prayers for
himself and his parents were to be said.35
From the beginning of the 13th century there is the gift charter of Varlaam,
by which he donated various plots of land and the dependent peasants to the
Khutinsk monastery.36 Later in the same century there is the testament of Kli-
ment, a wealthy Novgorod burgher, who died childless and donated most of his
estate (including several villages) to the Iur’ev monastery, making provisions
for his wife.37
Later on in the 13th century (1257), from the other end of Russia and from a
different source, a charter of Oleg Ingvar’evich, grand prince of Riazan’, granted
31 On Antonii Rimlianin, see N.A. Makarov, “Kamen’ Antoniia Rimlianina”, Novgorodskii is-
toricheskii sbornik, 2(12), Leningrad, 1984, 203–211.
32 Texts in gvnp Nos.102 (gift) and 103 (testament), 159–161; also in prp ii, 106–107.
33 Especially after V.L. Ianin, “Novgorodskie gramoty Antoniia Rimlianina i ikh data”, Vestnik
Moskovskogo universiteta, Seriia istoriia, 1966, No.3 and V.F. Andreev, Novgorodskii chastnyi
akt xii–xv vv., Leningrad, 1986, 93–96.
34 Andreev, loc.cit.
35 gvnp No.283 (284); such a gift charter (dannaia) is called a vkladnaia. Ivan Fomin was the
‘mayor’ (posadnik) of Slavno, one of the quarters of the Eastern (‘Commercial’) half of
Novgorod, on the right bank of the Volkhov river.
36 gvnp No.104, 161–162, and prp ii, 108 (comments by Zimin, 113). Zimin, following Tik-
homirov, prefers the date of 1211 (death of Varlaam), instead of around 1192, as proposed
by Valk in gvnp. The charter is original, the oldest extant private document in Russia.
37 gvnp No.105, 162–162, and prp ii, 108–110 (comments by Zimin, 114). The charter has the
form of a gift, made in compensation of certain debts to the monastery, but from the
contents it is clear that it was in fact a last will.
Rural Russia 559
Ivan Shain (of Tatar origin) a piece of land.38 The Hypatian version of the Pri-
mary Chronicle includes under the year 1287 what purports to be the text of
the last will of prince Vladimir Vasil’kovich of Galicia, who died without issue
and left his property to his wife and to the monastery of the Apostles.39 In
his last will he stated that one of the villages was bought by him from Fedor
Davydovich for 50 grivna. In another charter from Galicia, from around the end
of the century, Lev Danilovich, prince of Galicia, granted two brothers from
Lithuania the village of Dobanovich with appurtenances.40
Such charters, in which a prince granted villages and lands to individuals,
remain comparatively rare in the 14th century,41 while other documents con-
cerning land deals are more numerous: sale charters, gift charters, testaments,
etc.42 The great mass of such charters is from the 15th and 16th centuries. The
compound result of this long sequence of documents is that a strong case is
created for assuming that private landowning on a significant scale (boiarskoe
zemlevladenie, ‘boyar landowning’) existed in Russia from the 10th century, i.e.
from the beginning of the historical period of Kievan Russia.
For the 14th century, boyar landowning in Novgorod (i.e. the enormous ter-
ritory of Northern Russia, controlled by Novgorod) was discussed in Chapter
16. The remaining territory, mostly Eastern and North-Eastern Russia, ‘Suzda-
lia’, the grand principality of Suzdal’-Rostov-Vladimir, the nucleus of the Mus-
covy state of the following centuries, is best documented through Moscow
sources (Western and South-Western Russia having become more and more
under the control of the Lithuanian-Polish rulers).
Under the Vladimir-Moscow grand princes, the landowning balance be-
tween the prince and the boyars shifted in favour of the former. One of the
38 asei iii No.347, 373. This is a very early example of a grant charter (zhalovannaia gramo-
ta), included in a grant charter from 1556 and known from an 18th century copy. Several
authors have regarded it as fake, but the author of the comments in asei (I.A. Golubtsov),
following Iushkov, accepted its authenticity.
39 prp ii, 27–28.
40 My source is M.M. Peshchak, Hramoty xiv st., Kyiv, 1974, No.2, 11–12, who refers to Akty ot-
nosiashchie k istorii Iuzhnoi i Zapadnoi Rossii, t.ii, Sankt-Peterburg, 1965, No.60, 101. Pesh-
chak indicates a date “before 1301”; as Lev, who did not style himself king of Galicia, but
“son of king Daniil”, ruled Galicia from the death of his father in 1264, some date in the last
third part of the century is most likely.
41 Peshchak has several examples from Western Russia (present-day Ukraine), such as No.12
(27–28), issued by king Casimir of Poland (some time after 1349) as the local ruler, in Rus-
sian and in the Russian style.
42 For instance, asei i No.2 (26–27, a sale charter from 1380–1417), No.3 (27, a gift charter
from 1392); asei iii No.292 (316–319, a testament from 1393). Numerous summaries of
such charters in Russkii Diplomatarii, Nos.1, 2, 7 and 9.
560 chapter 18
factors in this development was the circumstances of exploitation of the land,

which were different from those in the old Kievan territories. The introduc-
tion of agriculture in formerly forested areas required the recruitment of im-
migrant peasants (more on this in the section below on the status of peasants
in later centuries). The Moscow princes were dominant players in this process,
which also allowed them to accumulate very considerable holdings them-
selves. These lands were tilled in part by the prince’s own dependent peasants,
partly were they granted to landowners as a reward for service as military or
civil officials.
A detailed analysis of princely and boyar landowning in the principality of
Moscow at the time of Ivan i Kalita (†1340) by A.A. Iushko showed that while
the villages (and the surrounding land) owned by Kalita and his relatives were
spread out across the principality, the principal boyar families possessed large
estates along the periphery of the principality and smaller holdings in the vi-
cinity of Moscow.43 This is explained by Iushko by the requirements of the
boyar households in the city of Moscow itself; the villages nearby would pro-
vide food, while the faraway estates constituted the basic source of the boyar’s
wealth.
Landowning by the Church and Monasteries
Ecclesiastical landowning mainly concerned two groups of owners: monaster-

ies and cathedral churches (in other words, bishops, or bishoprics or eparchies,
as they are usually called in the Orthodox Church). Its beginnings are more
easily dated than those of secular owners, because the Church would of course
only appear as a landowner after the baptism of Russia. At first, the Russian
Church received its income from the prince, by being assigned tithes from all
princely income. This constituted the core provision (art. 2) of the earliest Rus-
sian law on the Church, the Church Statute of St. Vladimir; its second main
element was the granting of general jurisdiction (and the income generated by
it) to the Church over ‘church people’ (not only the clergy, but all kinds of per-
sons in some specific way connected with the Church) and special jurisdiction
(in various kinds of cases specified in the Statute) over the general population.
At a somewhat later stage, the princes began to assign villages and land to the
Church, initially in a moderate way and in addition to what was apparently
the main source of income (the various tithes). The earliest examples are from
43 A.A. Iushko, Feodal’noe zemlevladenie Moskovskoi zemli xiv veka, Moskva, 2003, 176–177.
Rural Russia 561
Novgorod. Vladimir Monomakh, grand prince of Kiev, died in 1125 and was
succeeded by his eldest son Mstislav. The latter had (as was usual for the eldest
son of the prince of Kiev) served as prince of Novgorod, but had already placed
his own eldest son Vsevolod on the throne of Novgorod in 1117. With the death
of Vladimir Monomakh, Vsevolod became the regular prince of Novgorod, un-
til he was expelled by the population of Novgorod in 1137.
The oldest Russian charter which has survived in the original is the gift of
the village of Buitse to the Iur’ev monastery in Novgorod. The gift is in the
form of an order of grand prince Mstislav of Kiev to his son Vsevolod to ef-
fect this transaction. The most probable date is 1130.44 From about the same
time are two charters by which the same Vsevolod Mstislavich donated some
rural property to the Iur’ev monastery.45 Somewhat later, Vsevolod’s brother
Iziaslav Mstislavich, then grand prince of Kiev, possibly in 1148 during a visit to
Novgorod which was without a prince at that time, granted the Panteleimon
monastery the village of Vitoslavichi and other lands.46 (See also the section on
princely and boyar landowning in Chapter 16.)
That such grants were not a local Novgorod phenomenon is proved by a
Smolensk charter from about the same period. In connection with the es-
tablishment of a new bishopric for Smolensk, the Smolensk prince, Rostislav
Mstislavich (brother of the above-mentioned Vsevolod of Novgorod), issued
a charter analogous to the first Church Statute of St. Vladimir, in which the
income of the Smolensk church was precisely listed (see the section on the
Smolensk charters of prince Rostislav and bishop Manuil in Chapter 6).47
Along with tithes from a large number of districts, several villages with their
dependent population, together with other pieces of land, were donated to the
cathedral church.48
44 gvnp No.81, 140–141; prp ii, 102 (comments by Zimin, 110–111). The chronological window
is between 1125 (death of Vladimir Monomakh) and 1132 (death of Mstislav); the probable
dating of 1130 rests on the Novg. Chr. which reports that Vsevolod visited his father in Kiev
that year.
45 gvnp Nos.79 and 80, 139–140; prp ii, 103–104 (comments by Zimin, 111–112).
46 gvnp No.82, 141; prp ii, 104–105 (comments by Zimin, 111–112).
47 There are various views on the exact date of the charter of prince Rostislav of Smo-
lensk, but the year 1136 seems to be the most probable, as argued by Ia.N. Shchapov in
Kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’ v Drevnei Rusi xi–xiv vv., Moskva, 1972, 140–150.
48 prp ii, 39–43 (comments by Zimin, 45–52); also in Ia.N. Shchapov, Drevnerusskie
kniazheskie ustavy xi–xv vv., Moskva, 1976, 140–146. English translation in Kaiser, Laws,
52–55. French translation in M. Szeftel, A. Eck, Documents de droit public relatifs à la
Russie médiévale, Bruxelles, 1963, 287–299.
562 chapter 18
The 13th century offers a modest number of charters, documenting the own-
ership of land by monasteries and bishops;49 for the 14th and 15th centuries
such documents constitute a massive body. Church property was obviously not
subject to inheritance and often remained with its owner for centuries.50 Ad-
ditionally, literacy was concentrated in monasteries and cathedral chanceries
and promoted respect for written texts. These two factors adequately explain
the numerical preponderance of documents with ecclesiastical connections.
Wills, deeds of sale, and other documents concerning the landowning of no-
blemen would most often fall into disregard, be forgotten, abandoned or de-
stroyed once they were no longer considered potentially relevant. Those that
survived are usually the ones that ended up in monastic and cathedral archives.
The complex of early grants of villages to monasteries has been the subject
of heated debates with Froianov and Shchapov as the protagonists. Froianov, in
line with his general inclination to move the inception of what he termed ‘feu-
dal land ownership’ to a comparatively late date, argued (against Shchapov)
that the early grants, such as those mentioned above, did in fact not transfer
the ownership of villages and agricultural land to specific monasteries, but
merely provided them with income from such villages and lands.51 Moreover,
Froianov rejected Shchapov’s views on the assignment of tithes from tribute
(dan’) to the church; such assignments, he stated, did not take place, and, any-
way, tribute should not be considered as a feudal institution, but as a much
more primitive one.
Shchapov replied in a measured way in his 1989 study of Church-state rela-
tions in Kievan Russia.52 The debate, as so often during the Soviet era, seems
to have been mostly about terminology (which was of course a matter of great
weight in Marxism-Leninism). Our understanding of developments is not re-
ally advanced by disagreements about whether the assignment of the village
of Buitse in the early 12th century constituted a transfer of ownership from the
prince to the monastery or rather something else. Contemporaries would not
have understood such a dilemma. There was a village over which the prince
exercized a certain measure of control which yielded certain revenues to him.
This control was passed to the monastery, the revenues included.
Shchapov drew attention to the considerable differences between landown-
ing by bishops and other secular church institutions (e.g. local churches) on
49 Such as the ones referred to above from gvnp Nos.104 (the gift of Varlaam) and 105 (the
testament of Kliment) or from prp ii, 27–28 (the testament of Vladimir Vasil’kovich of
Galicia).
50 Cf. Ia.N. Shchapov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov’ Drevnei Rusi x–xiii vv., Moskva, 1989, 87–90.
51 Froianov, Nachala, 399–412, at 405–407; Froianov, KRse, 178–197, at 185–188.
52 Shchapov, Gosudarstvo, 151–157.
Rural Russia 563
the one hand and landowning by monasteries on the other.53 For monaster-
ies, ownership and utilization of agricultural land was the major source of in-
come, while bishops had important other sources of income (tithes, court fees,
market fees; see Chapter 21). While a monastery was subordinate to the local
bishop in general, it was fully independent as a landowner. This also applied
to individual churches in towns or villages, in respect of their holdings, which
would usually be much more modest than those of monasteries.
Land ownership by the church and especially by monasteries (by far the
largest contingent of ecclesiastical landowners) also differed significantly from
land ownership by boyars and other private individuals. The ownership of the
latter was normally connected with service to the prince; also, private land
ownership was subject to the vagaries of genealogy. Estates would be split up
among heirs, other families would take over. With regard to monasterial land,
ownership was in principle immutable. As long as the monastery existed and
held on to its estates, no change in ownership would occur.
Although landowning by monasteries is documented, as pointed out above,
from the first half of the 12th century, and grew gradually in the course of the
13th and 14th centuries, its development increased spectacularly in the 15th
century as part of the spread of monasticism prompted by the foundation of
the Trinity monastery by Sergii of Radonezh in the latter half of the 14th cen-
tury (see Chapter 21). Several mutually reinforcing factors contributed to this
development. The achievement of all-Russian hegemony by the grand princes
of Moscow together with the eastward expansion of Muscovy opened up vast
tracts of land suitable for exploitation, either for agriculture or for forestry. The
stability of monasterial land ownership and its management by the monks had
also proved to be more economically effective than other forms of landowning.
The comparative wealth of monasteries had given them the means for the in-
vestments required by the exploitation of new territories. In the vast expanses
of the Russian North and East the monasteries functioned not only as the ma-
jor agents of agricultural development, but also as the de facto representatives
of the state. For the Moscow grand prince, this set-up was preferable to the
‘feudalization’ of the new lands, assigning them to boyars and other landown-
ers who might not have the means and the inclination to engage in the most
productive use of the land.
The legal framework of this development had its own peculiarities.54 The
initial way of acquiring landed property, in the case of monasteries, was by

54 The most extensive treatment of the legal aspects of the acquisition of land by the monas-
teries in A.A. Zimin, Krupnaia feodal’naia votchina i sotsial’no-politcheskaia bor’ba v Rossii
(konets xv–xvi v.), Moskva, 1977, 189–207.
564 chapter 18
means of grants (zhalovanie). Such grants, made by the prince, were usually
accompanied by additional privileges in the sphere of jurisdiction and taxa-
tion. The lands granted, together with the population settled on it, would often
be excluded from the jurisdiction of the general courts in a number of specific
instances (nesudimye gramoty); they could also be granted immunity from par-
ticular taxes (tarkhannye gramoty); see also Chapter 11. The monasteries in this
way acquired the character of miniature states, ruled by the abbot. The Troitse-
Sergiev monastery at one time was the biggest landowner in Russia, after the
grand prince (the state) himself.
Princely grants of land often accompanied the foundation of a monastery.
In time, however, lands acquired from other landowners became the chief
source of the monasteries’ landed wealth. Acquisition was mostly on the basis
of a gift or grant (vklad), with purchase and barter as additional means of en-
larging the monasteries’ holdings. The large number of documents embodying
such contracts offers a detailed picture of the various backgrounds of these
contracts. The first thing to be kept in mind is that medieval man was con-
cerned with looking after his interests not only in this life, but also, and even
more, in the life hereafter. This could be done effectively by making sure that
prayers would be said for the repose of his soul and a monastery was a good
place to turn to; it would probably continue to function for a long time and
praying for others was one of the basic duties of the inhabitants of the monas-
tery, monks or nuns. Most landowners with sufficient wealth would therefore
in their lifetime or upon death make some sort of gift to a monastery. This
could be, for instance, a plot which for some reason was less valuable to the
owner, barren or remote lands, isolated plots acquired by inheritance, etc. The
monasteries accumulated in this manner a mass of disconnected bits of land,
and that was where purchase and barter could come in as a means for rear-
ranging and streamlining the ownership pattern.
Of far greater economic importance to the monastery was another type of
grant, the one made by a person who left his or her entire estate to the monas-
tery. The most typical situation was where there were no sons or other obvious
heirs, but other circumstances could also prompt a person to opt for this pro-
cedure. The disposition could be made when a person was reaching the end of
his or her life, or when a person for other reasons did not want to continue to
manage his/her estates; a childless widow might enter a convent and simulta-
neously grant her worldly goods to the convent. There could also be prepon-
derant economic considerations for making over one’s goods to a monastery,
for example when the gift was part of a more comprehensive package by which
the donor would also enter the service of the monastery and continue to man-
age the estates he had made over. During the 15th and 16th centuries a new
Rural Russia 565
ractice arose by which the use of monasterial or church land was granted to
p
small landowners for a specific time or for lifelong use.55
The multitude of motives for making over land to a monastery, apart from
the desire to create a spiritual ‘insurance’ for the life hereafter, offers a remark-
able insight into the socio-economic dynamics of the times and has spawned
numerous academic publications.56
The practice of transferring landed property to a monastery by means of a
grant (vklad) was finally forbidden in 1580 by a decision of the Holy Council,
dictated by Ivan iv the Terrible.57
Peasants
Not surprisingly, the mass of the rural population was also the least visible. Such
gaps in our knowledge are often filled by a priori constructs. The most common
one is that before ‘feudalization’ set in, simpler societal forms, c haracterized
55 See M.S. Cherkasova, “Formy raschlenennoi sobstvennosti v votchine Troitse-Sergieva

monastyria xv–xvi vv.”, A.A. Preobrazhenskii (ed.), Feodalizm v Rossii. Iubileinye chteniia,
posviashchennye 80-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia akademika L’va Vladimirovicha Cherepnina,
Tezisy dokladov i soobshchenii, Moskva, 1985, 41–44.
56 The basic collection of charters (1382–1505/6) concerning the land holdings and man-
agement of the Troitse-Sergiev monastery is in Vol.1 of asei and for the years 1505–1526
in S.B. Veselovskii (comp.), Akty Russkogo gosudarstva 1505–1526 gg., Moskva, 1975. Addi-
tional studies and materials: M.S. Cherkasova, Zemlevladenie Troitse-Sergieva monastyria
v xvi–xvii vv., Moskva, 1995, also of L.A. Kirichenko, Aktovyi material Troitse-Sergieva
monastyria 1584–1641 gg. kak istochnik po istorii zemlevladeniia i khoziaistva, Moskva, 2006.
The same topic concerning the Simonov monastery in Moscow is dealt with by L.I. Ivina,
Krupnaia votchina Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi kontsa xiv – pervoi poloviny xvi v., Leningrad,
1979. A.A. Zimin, Krupnaia feodal’naia votchina i sotsial’no-politicheskaia bor’ba v Rossii
(konets xv–xvi v.), Moskva, 1977, is devoted to the Iosifo-Volokolamskii monastery. Other
studies: N.A. Gorskaia, Monastyrskie krest’iane Tsentral’noi Rossii v xvii v. O sushchnosti i
formakh feodal’no-krepostnicheskikh otnoshenii, Moskva, 1977; L.I. Ivina, Vnutrennee osvoe-
nie zemel’ Rossii v xvi v., Leningrad, 1985 (monasteries in the Uglich, Galich and Vologda
regions); G.N. Aiplatov, A.G. Ivanov, Monastyrskaia kolonizatsiia Mariiskogo Povolzh’ia. Po
materialam Spaso-Iunginskogo monastyria Kosmodem’ianskgo uezda 1625–1764 gg., Iosh-
kar-Ola, 2000 (monastery in Mari republic); V.I. Ivanov, Monastyri i monastyrskie krest’iane
Pomor’ia v xvi–xvii vekakh: mekhanizm stanovleniia krepostnogo prava, Sankt-Peterburg,
2007 (monasteries in North-Western Russia); M.M. Dadykina, Kabaly Spaso-Prilutskogo
monastyria vtoroi poloviny xvi–xvii v. Issledovanie. Teksty, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 2011
(Spaso-Prilutskii monastery near Vologda).
57 prp iv, 527 (Ch. 13, art. 164 of the Svodnyi Sudebnik).
566 chapter 18
as familial-tribal (rodoplemennyi) or clan-familial (obshchinno-rodovoi), were

dominant. The conclusion drawn from this is that in pre- and protohistorical
times the Eastern Slavs lived in a society constituted by groups based on family
ties and consisting of free men, tilling the communal land and tending their
cattle. The available circumstantial evidence may then allow us to make cor-
rections to this general picture.
Foreign sources indicate that in the centuries preceding the baptism of Rus-
sia, the degree of societal organization was actually more complex. At that
time the Eastern Slavs were seen to foot entire armies, commanded by dukes
or princes (kniaz’ia) and able to take on the might of the Byzantine empire.
Moreover, there were, along with free citizens, slaves, although their economic
roles (as discussed above) are difficult to establish with certainty. In particu-
lar, the available sources are not very helpful is acquiring a clear picture of
the situation in rural areas. Did the majority of the rural population consist of
free peasants, were slaves attached to small peasant households, or were they
mostly found on the domains of wealthy landowners? The information offered
by chronicles and the sparse legal sources have been used by the proponents
of various theories to produce divergent answers to these questions. The pur-
pose of this section is to have a closer look at the rural population of medieval
Russia and its composition. A more detailed discussion of the various aspects
of the legal status of the common people, irrespective of their place of habita-
tion, is to be found in Chapter 19.
Slaves: Cheliad’, Kholopy

The general question of slavery is discussed in Chapter 19. In the earliest
(pagan) era slavery existed in its ‘classic’ form: the slave as a thing, a commer-
cial item, when the slave trade and enslavement for commercial purposes con-
stituted a major economic activity. The presence of slaves in the countryside,
as part of the agricultural workforce, was a secondary phenomenon. The 10th
century treaties with Byzantium are representative of this phase; in the rp a
transition becomes noticeable when the importance of slaves as part of the
workforce was increasing. This is probably reflected by the co-existence, in the
oldest Pravda (Iaroslav’s Pravda), of the terms cheliad’ (arts. 11 and 16) and kho-
lop (art. 17), the former suggesting primarily the slave as a commercial item,
the latter, as a worker.58 The second part of the Short Pravda, the Pravda of
58 Baranowski, 240, notes the unique appearance of kholop in Iaroslav’s Pravda, without
explaining it or referring to explanations by other authors. The only attempt at an ex-
planation I found was in Zimin’s comments in prp i, 93, who suggested that cheliad’ had
come to mean the entire mass of the ‘feudally-dependent’ population and that therefore
Rural Russia 567
Iaroslav’s Sons, only mentioned the kholop (arts. 26 and 29). As that text was
directed mainly towards the protection of the prince’s domain and its manage-
ment, it is obvious that the kholopy mentioned there were members of the
rural population.
Art. 46 of the Expanded Pravda referred to kholopy belonging to the prince
and in addition also to kholopy belonging to boyars and monasteries. One may
conclude therefore that in view of the presence of private landowning in the
course of the Kievan era, slaves constituted a significant element of the rural
population.
Smerdy in the Short Pravda

But what about other peasants, not being slaves? Their presence and even their
numerical dominance in the countryside are often assumed on the basis of a
general conception of Kievan Russian society, although the evidence is unim-
pressive. The smerd, mentioned three times in the Short Pravda (arts. 26, 28
and 33) and four times in the Expanded Pravda (arts. 16, 45, 78 and 90), is often
regarded as the ordinary peasant of Kievan times. Art. 28 of the Short Pravda is
of less importance in the present context (it deals with fixed compensation for
damage to or loss of animals and mentions, among others, a horse belonging
to the prince and a horse belonging to a smerd, valued at three and two grivna
respectively). Art. 33 penalizes serious mistreatment (‘torture’) of a smerd or
of higher princely servants without the permission of the prince; this suggests
that the smerd mentioned in this provision was a peasant who belonged to the
prince’s domain, not just any peasant, but this view is not uncontested.59
That the kholop of the rp was a slave is beyond doubt and that the smerd was
not a kholop is made clear by art. 26 of the Short Pravda, one of its shortest pro-
visions (“And for the smerd and for the kholop, 5 grivna.”), but also the object of
much scholarly comment.60 It would be tempting to read the provision as cov-
ering the entire common population of the countryside, slaves and others, free
another term was required; this is all by itself unsatisfactory, but if one adds an obser-
vation made by Shchapov in his comments in rz i, 57, a solution compatible with my
views emerges. Shchapov noted that the kholop of art. 17 of the Short Pravda had devel-
oped from a plain asset into somebody who was on the way to being a legal subject. This
agrees with my suggestion that kholop referred in particular to a member of the (usually
agricultural) workforce, who still possessed the status of a slave, but whose value as a
worker overshadowed his value as a commercial item. See also A.A. Zimin, Kholopy na
Rusi, Moskva, 1973,368–369.
60 Cf. Baranowski, 279–289. Like Baranowski, I concur with the majority view of modern
scholarship, as outlined below.
568 chapter 18
or partially free peasants, but most modern commentators (since Presniakov

and Iushkov61) reject this reading, for various reasons. Art. 26 is part of a long
list of officials and persons connected with the prince’s domain, whose killing
entailed the payment of fines of different amounts (bloodwite). The highest
sums related to the killing of the prince’s highest officials (80 grivna), twice
the amount of wergeld to be paid for the killing of an ordinary freeman (as
set down by art. 1 of the Short Pravda). The killing of lower officials entailed a
bloodwite of 12 grivna, and the lowest rate was 5 grivna. This list is followed,
quite logically, by various fixed amounts for damaging the property (animals)
of the prince. The entire context suggests strongly that the smerd of art. 26 was
not just any ordinary peasant, but somebody of low status (same bloodwite as
a slave), who was not a slave, and who was part of the system of the princely
domain. This suggestion is reinforced by art. 33 of the Short Pravda, which di-
rects that torturing a smerd (evidently in connection with the acquisition of
evidence) without the prince’s permission entailed a fine of 3 grivna, while the
same offence committed in respect of higher princely officials (ognishchanin,
tivunits and mechnik) merited a fine of 12 grivna.
Another reason advanced by several authors for not identifying the general
peasant population of the era of the Short Pravda as smerdy is the relatively
early disappearance of the term. Unlike kholop and kholopstvo, which still fig-
ure in the Code of 1649 of tsar Aleksei, smerdy had already become a rare oc-
currence in the 14th century.62 This may lead to the conclusion that the smerd
of the rp was not an ordinary peasant, but referred to a specific legal institu-
tion which became obsolete in the following centuries.
These arguments raise two new questions: What characterized the legal sta-
tus of the smerd of the Short Pravda, apart from his not being a slave? And:
What about the rest of the peasant population, those who were not slaves or
smerdy on the prince’s lands? For the first question, the theories developed
by Froianov are of particular interest. According to him, a careful reading of
the chronicles shows that in the earliest historical period the prince made his
round during the winter to collect a head-tax (poliud’e) among his own free
subjects. The poliud’e must be distinguished from tribute (dan’, lit. ‘gift’), pay-
able by subjugated foreign peoples (danniki). The original smerdy were mem-
bers of non-Slavic (mostly Finnish) peoples, inhabiting the forested regions
61 Presniakov, Lektsii i, 190;Iushkov, Stroi, 287–305. Baranowski follows Iushkov’s argument

on this point, 285.
62 They still appear in treaties between Novgorod and princes in the 15th century, but in for-
mulas which have been taken over from old treaties; the term smerd was probably already
obsolete at that time.
Rural Russia 569
into which the Eastern Slavs were gradually penetrating; they were also sub-
ject to tribute. At a later stage, prisoners-of-war were also settled as dependent
peasants on the land of the prince, constituting a second source of the smerdy
population.63
Although Froianov’s theories may satisfactorily explain certain obscure as-
pects of the sources, they also leave other matters in the dark. As we have seen
(in the section on tribute and inter-tribal relationships), almost all Eastern Slav
tribal complexes ended up as tributaries to the Kievan rulers in the period be-
fore Iaroslav the Wise. They had the status of danniki, but nobody would hold
that the entire population of the Kievan realm, with the exception of the Poli-
anians, consisted of smerdy. So, who then were the smerdy of the Short Pravda?
The various Finnish ethnic components, mentioned in the Chronicle in this
period (Chud’, Mer’, etc.)? Such a hypothesis is unsubstantiated. There were
slaves (cheliad’) in those days, and they normally had their origin in the tak-
ing of prisoners, but the Short Pravda clearly distinguished them from smerdy.
And when did slaves (former prisoners or their descendants) acquire the status
of smerdy, which involved their recognition as persons with limited rights?
A partial and tentative answer to some of these questions may be pro-
duced by combining the two views sketched above. The smerdy of the rp were
primarily dependent peasants employed in the agricultural economy of the
prince; later on they also appeared as a workforce on boyar domains. The ex-
tension of the territory controlled by the Kievan princes resulted in the rapid
increase of princely domains, their potential for agricultural exploitation, and
the concomitant need for an adequate workforce. Such a force could be re-
cruited from the more defenceless sections of the population of the annexed
territories. The Chronicle’s story of the treatment Olga meted out in 946 to the
defeated Derevlian townspeople of Iskorosten’ offers a clue; some were killed,
others taken prisoner, given away as slaves to her retainers, or left free and sub-
jected to tribute. While in the past prisoners-of-war would be killed or sold as
slaves and perhaps a few retained as household staff, the emerging new condi-
tions made it more expedient to leave most of the rural population of newly
acquired territories on their lands and expropriate part of the proceeds from
their normal activities through the payment of dan’ (tribute). Some sections
of this population, instead of being subjected to the more general regime of
tribute payment, would have the harsher regime of becoming smerdy imposed
63 Froianov, Nachala, 437–450, and KRse, 233–250. In the main question (that smerdy repre-
sented a special category of the peasant population) Froianov followed Iushkov, but the
two differ on what to them was an important point of Marxist scholasticism, the question
whether smerdy were paying tribute or feudal rent.
570 chapter 18
on them. They would lose much of their freedom and most of them would pre-
sumably be employed on the land they used to till in the past. Once this system
was in operation and had proved to be effective it could have been extended to
former slaves and to members of non-Russian populations.
Verv’, Liudi
The two versions of the rp offer several pointers for answering the second
question formulated above, concerning the status of ordinary peasants, not
being slaves or smerdy. They both refer to communities of ordinary people as
legally relevant actors. The Expanded Pravda is the more specific, especially
where it deals with the verv’ (arts. 3–6, 19 and 70).64 Arts. 3–6 concern the li-
ability of the verv’ for the payment of bloodwite for a homicide committed on
its territory and/or by a member of the verv’. Without getting into a discussion
of the substance of these provisions, one may conclude from these provisions
that the verv’ represented a circumscribed local community consisting of the
resident freemen.65 The term is found only in the Expanded Pravda, not in the
Short Pravda,66 but arts. 7 and 8 of the Expanded Pravda use liudi (“the people”)
where clearly the verv’ is meant, and arts. 19 and 20 of the Short Pravda use liudi
in provisions which to some extent parallel art. 3 of the Expanded Pravda (in
art. 20 only implicitly). This justifies the conclusion that liudi in the rp (at least
in most provisions) is synonymous with verv’.67 The singular of liudi (liudin)
appears only once, in art. 3 of the Expanded Pravda, where every commenta-
tor accepts the meaning of “ordinary freeman”. This confirms the idea that the
normal position of a freeman is not that of an isolated individual, a citizen, but
of the member of a local community.
64 The term also appears in legal sources of other Slavic peoples, e.g. the Statute of Polica
in Dalmatia; see B.D. Grekov, “Politsa. Opyt izucheniia obshchestvennykh otnoshenii v
Politse xv–xvii vv.”, Izbrannye Trudy, T.I, Moskva, 1957, 111–266. Verv’ also appears with
the meaning of “rope” in the Primary Chronicle, and is the origin of the Modern Russian
word for rope, verëvka.
65 Kaiser translates it as “community”, Szeftel as “commune”, Baranowski as “Gemeinde”. See
also Froianov, Nachala, 349–355 and Froianov, KRse, 22–32.
66 Art. 20 of the Short Pravda directed that the bloodwite was to be paid by those “in whose
«community» the head lies”. For «community», the Academic Copy has vi*r**i (the aster-
isks referring to erased letters), and the Archeographic Copy vernei. Most commentators
and translators have regarded this term as equivalent or even identical to the verv’ of the
Expanded Pravda. Instead of vernei or virnei (the most likely readings), one should then
read vervi, and the rule would then closely parallel art. 3 of the Expanded Pravda.
67 In the 944 treaty with Byzantium, liudi is used in the sense of “the whole population [of
freemen]” (“prince Igor, his boyars, and the liudi of the whole Russian land”).
Rural Russia 571
The various rules about the liability of the verv’ for its individual members
and for crimes committed on its lands allow us to achieve a more concrete vi-
sualization of it. It cannot have been very large, because this would have made
it impossible to establish the individual contributions of its members; an up-
per limit somewhere around 100 individuals seems to be reasonable. The status
of these ‘members’ would probably have been more or less equal, considering
that they apparently contributed equally to the payments to be made by the
verv’. The territory of the verv’ must have been circumscribed in some way, be-
cause of its liability for things happening on its territory. Art. 8 of the Expanded
Pravda provided that if somebody did not contribute to the bloodwite system
of the verv’, the latter would not assist him, apparently in a situation where
the unwilling verv’ member had to pay bloodwite himself. This implies that
there was an optional element in verv’ membership, although how exactly it
operated is not clear from the text of the provision. This would agree with the
assumption of many authors that the verv’ had developed as a continuation of
older communities, based on close family ties (semeinaia obshchina) or wider
connections of consanguinity (rodstvennaia obshchina), by including also un-
related neighbours, maintaining all the time its territorially defined aspect.68
The almost inescapable conclusion from all this is that the verv’ constituted
the basic organizational form in which ordinary (free) peasants appeared in
Kievan Russia.69
Smerdy in the Expanded Pravda

Of the four provisions of the Expanded Pravda which mention smerdy, art. 16
closely parallels art. 26 of the Short Pravda70 and arts. 45 and 78 are related to
68 Cf. Froianov, loc. cit.

69 Art. 13 of the Short Pravda dealt with the situation where a person recognized his own
property (which he had in some way lost) in his own mir; this obviously meant: his own
surroundings, his village, the place where he lived. It is the only time mir is mentioned in
the rp, and its meaning is probably synonymous with verv’ in a territorial sense.
70 Art. 16 of the Expanded Pravda added the female slave (roba) to the smerd and the kholop
of art. 26 of the Short Pravda; the bloodwite for a female slave was six grivna, one more
than for a male slave. A more serious potential divergence between the two provisions is
in a reading which merges the smerd and the kholop as smerdii kholop, where instead of
the noun smerd the adjective smerdii is accepted. The absence of spaces between words
in most copies of the rp produces the following variants: Av”smerdeiv”kho[lo]pe (Short
Pravda, Acad. Copy), Av”smerd’ivkholope (id., Archeogr. Copy), Azasmerdiikholop” (Ex-
panded Pravda, Troitsa i Copy and most others), Azasmerd”ikholop (id., Obol. Copy of
the 2nd half of the 15th century). A few authors read (and translate) smerdii kholop in the
Short Pravda, but this is rejected by most authors. There is a much greater following for
572 chapter 18
but quite different from arts. 28 and 33 (resp.) of the Short Pravda. Art. 90 starts
the long section on inheritance law, which is missing in the Short Pravda.
Art. 45 of the Expanded Pravda, like art. 28 of the Short Pravda, set fixed
amounts for theft or loss of various domestic animals; however, it did not men-
tion the horse of the smerd, but stated at the end of the list: “these then are the
fees the peasants [smerdom] are to pay [as compensation to the animals’ own-
ers] when they pay a fine to the prince” (Kaiser’s translation). Much is unclear
in this provision, but at least it distinguished clearly between the legal status
of smerdy and of slaves, who were specifically exempted from paying such fines
(prodazhi) to the prince by the following art. 46.
Art. 78 of the Expanded Pravda dealt with the torture of a smerd (as men-
tioned above, this was probably torture for the purpose of acquiring evidence),
as in art. 33 of the Short Pravda, but was specifically aimed at smerdy who com-
mitted such offences; it entailed a fine to the prince (3 grivna) and compen-
sation (to the victim obviously); if the victim was an ognishchanin (princely
official), the amounts were increased.
Art. 90 provided that upon the death of a smerd, his estate escheated to the
prince, but if daughters were still at home, they should be given a part of the
property.
All four provisions comfortably fit the view that smerdy were peasants who
were dependent of the prince, who were part of the prince’s economy. Regard-
ing smerdy as a general designation of peasants unnecessarily complicates the
understanding of these rules. This does not mean that the socio-economic
situation of smerdy remained unchanged during the period between the Short
and the Expanded Pravda, but the exact consequences of certain trends are
hard to identify and the main elements of the arrangement stayed in place.71
Smerdy in the Chronicles

Smerdy appear occasionally in the chronicles and it is worthwhile comparing
this information with the understanding of the term based on the rp. The first
this reading where the Expanded Pravda is concerned. The reading of smerdii kholop cre-
ates itself new problems; is he a slave who belongs to a smerd or is he a slave of a special
category, similar in some way to a smerd? Without delving deeper into this matter, I as-
sociate myself with the more straightforward position of those who reject the reading of
smerdii kholop (including the translations of Kaiser and Baranowski).
71 I.I. Smirnov in particular has proposed detailed hypotheses about certain shifts in the
position of smerdy in the course of the 12th and 13th century; “Problema «smerdov» v
Prostrannoi Pravde”, Istoricheskie Zapiski, T.64 (1959), 255–302, and “K probleme «kholop-
stva» v Prostrannoi Pravde. Kholop i feodal’naia votchina”, Istoricheskie Zapiski, T.68 (1961,
238–270.
Rural Russia 573
time smerdy are mentioned in the Primary Chronicle is under the year 1071.
Sviatoslav, one of the sons of Iaroslav the Wise, and at that moment prince of
Chernigov, had sent his general Ian Vyshatich to the Beloozero region to collect
tribute. The local people complained to the latter about two wandering sorcer-
ers who had killed many women as a cure against a famine. Ian inquired whose
smerdy the sorcerers were and when he learned that they were the smerdy of
his own prince, he had them killed, even though they protested that he had no
right to condemn them, insisting that they ought to be tried by Sviatoslav him-
self. Iushkov read this passage as an indication of the narrow interpretation
of the term: the sorcerers were peasants who were attached to the domains of
Sviatoslav.72 A less narrow reading (that they were just peasants) seems equally
acceptable, although this does not quite answer the question of jurisdiction,
which obviously was an issue. Sviatoslav clearly claimed certain rights in Be-
loozero, having sent his general to collect tribute, but the text suggests that this
would not be enough for his general to exercize jurisdiction locally. Perhaps
it was established that the sorcerers had come from lands fully controlled by
Sviatoslav; the Chronicle text is silent on this point.73
In 1101, in one of the frequent episodes of war and reconciliation among the
princes, one of the sides is instructed to return the slaves (kholopy) and peas-
ants (smerdy) of the other side. This would rather speak in favour of the nar-
row interpretation. But an entry in the Primary Chronicle for the year 1103 goes
in the opposite direction. The story relates how the princes Sviatopolk (then
grand prince of Kiev) and his cousin Vladimir Monomakh met to discuss a
campaign against the Polovtsians. Sviatopolk’s druzhinniki objected to a spring
campaign, pointing to the damage it would do to the smerdy and their fields.
Vladimir retorted that precisely in spring when the smerd would start plough-
ing, the Polovtsians would come, kill him, seize his horse, and carry off his wife,
children and all his property.
In the First Novgorod Chronicle smerdy are mentioned occasionally (e.g.
1169, 1193 and 1229) and a general reading as “peasants” or even “subjects” ap-
pears to be the most satisfactory.
Zakupy and Other Dependent Peasants

Along with the presumably numerous persons falling within the broad catego-
ries of smerdy, kholopy, cheliad’ and roby, the rp also mentions several other,
more specific categories of rural dwellers.

73 Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor simply translate smerdy as “subjects”. See also A.A. Zimin,
Kholopy na Rusi, Moskva, 1973, 111–112.
574 chapter 18
Among the persons connected with the prince’s domanial household, listed
in the first half of the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons, we find the contract labourer
(riadovich, a person with whom a riad, a contract, has been concluded), in art.
25 of the Short Pravda and art. 14 of the Expanded Pravda. The Short Pravda
specifically designated him as “the prince’s contract labourer”, which agrees
with the original purpose of the list: the protection of the princely economy.
The Expanded Pravda simply called him “the contract labourer”, and then
added: “The same also applies to the contract labourer of a boyar”. These two
short provisions show that along with ordinary slaves and smerdy (dependent
peasants), the prince was already supplementing his labour force at an early
stage with free peasants who were working for him on a contractual basis. At
the time of the Expanded Pravda, boyars had also started to make use of this
opportunity. The low status of the contract labourer was reflected in the same
bloodwite assigned to his killing as for smerdy and slaves (5 grivna).
Of much greater prominence were the zakupy (“indentured laborer” in Kai-
ser’s and Vernadsky’s translations), to whom a whole block of provisions in the
Expanded Pravda is devoted (arts. 56–64). Most authors agree that this coher-
ent complex is in fact a “law on the zakupy”, introduced by Vladimir Mono-
makh in 1113, the year he succeeded as grand prince of Kiev after the usual
dynastic troubles and in a climate of great social unrest. Kiev had been the
theatre of a popular uprising and the law on the zakupy was intended to ad-
dress the most urgent grievances of the common people.74 A full explanation
of the zakupy question is complicated by the fact that the Expanded Pravda is
virtually the only source;75 the zakupy disappear as suddenly as they entered
the stage, although similar arrangements are encountered in later centuries,
but under a different name. The available material on zakupy is still substan-
tial and allows a few conclusions which command general approval, although
many aspects remain disputed.
While the zakup could also be found in towns, he was typically a dependent
peasant, and for that reason he is discussed here.76 The rules of the Expanded
Pravda show that the zakup was in a relationship of great dependence on his
master, while he was not a slave. He would become a slave when he stole from
74 Cf. Tikhomirov, Issledovanie, 204–211; A.A. Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, Moskva, 1999, 254;
Froianov, Nachala, 450–460 (KRse, 251–266).
75 The zakup is mentioned in passing in art. 18 of the Court Charter of Pskov and in art. 30
of the Metropolitan’s Justice, which suggests that the institution survived for quite a long
time, without leaving many traces.
76 Art. 57 mentions the roleynyi zakup, the “field zakup”; there are various interpretations (a
peasant zakup vs. a domestic zakup, a zakup working his own field vs. a zakup working
his master’s field, etc.). It still does not alter the fact that the zakup was basically a rural
phenomenon. Cf. Baranowski, 515–517.
Rural Russia 575
others (art. 64) or when he ran away from his master, but if he left openly for a
valid reason (e.g. to find money [secure a loan?], or to complain to the prince
or to the court about his master) this result did not arise (art. 56). Several other
provisions attempt to define to what extent the zakup was answerable for dam-
aging his master’s property. He was obviously someone who entered the state
of zakup as an indigent and who was provided with working animals and tools
by his master (art. 57). The essential component of the relationship, however,
was the kupa given by the master to the person entering his service as a zakup.
This term is mentioned in arts. 57 and 59, but neither provision allows an im-
mediate understanding of it. Most modern commentators regard the kupa as
a loan to the zakup, consisting of money, land, animals, or other assets.77 The
typical situation appears to have been a completely impoverished peasant,
who had no other choice in order to survive than to accept whatever was of-
fered to him. His term of service would last until the loan had been paid back.
Art. 61 obliquely refers to this by freeing the zakup of all money debts (svoboda
vo vsekh kunakh) if the master sold him as a slave; additionally, the master paid
a fine of 12 grivna (to the prince).
This understanding of the relationship based on the allowance of a kupa to
a needy person permits a satisfactory and coherent explanation of the “law on
zakupy” in the Expanded Pravda. The person entering zakupnichestvo was free,
but gave up most of his freedom by becoming a zakup. The law protected him
against serious maltreatment and abuse by his master. Art. 66 of the Expanded
Pravda neatly demonstrates the intermediate status of the zakup; the provision
dealt with the capacity to testify. Slaves were in principle excluded, but if no
free man was available, a boyar’s steward (tivun boiaresk, obviously an unfree
person) could serve. Zakupy could give evidence in cases of small value.
The main question remaining unanswered is the nature of the pool from
which zakupy were recruited. If smerdy is taken as a designation of the general
peasant population (free and unfree), then the zakupy would be impoverished
free smerdy. If smerdy is understood in a narrower sense of semi-dependent
peasants connected with princes’ (and later on also boyar and monastery)
households, then this category would probably not have been the source of
new zakupy, inasmuch as they lacked sufficient freedom to enter into such a re-
lationship. In either view, the prospective zakup would be a member of the free
peasant population who would normally be included in a local community (ob-
shchina, verv’). The emergence of the zakupnichestvo arrangement (obviously
in the course of the 11th century) would then indicate that such traditional
communities had weakened to the extent that they did not offer their indigent
members the most elementary protection. Another possible r ecruitment pool

576 chapter 18
for new zakupy would be the category of persons who had lost their social an-
chor, either as members of a community or as protégées of powerful masters,
the izgoi, once they were economically unable to carry on (on izgoi, see the
relevant section in Chapter 19).
Art. 61 uses the terms zakup and naimit as synonyms. Naimit means “hired
person, hireling”; it returns only in arts. 39–41 of the Court Charter of Pskov.
There is much similarity between the zakupy of the Expanded Pravda and
the zakladniki, encountered in a range of treaties between Novgorod and the
neighbouring princes of Tver’ in the period between 1264 and 1371.78 The basic
rule on zakladniki in these treaties was that the prince of Tver’ undertook, on
behalf of himself, his family and his boyars, not to accept indentured servants
(Kaiser’s translation of zakladniki). What is implied is that Novgorod boyars
employed persons who had temporarily abandoned most of their freedom in
exchange for a loan. They were keen therefore to stem the flight of such per-
sons to the adjacent territory of Tver’. Some of the treaties mention specifi-
cally the regions of Torzhok and Bezhitsy, bordering on the Tver’ principality.
Several treaties provide more detail by directing that zakladniki from the ranks
of (Novgorod) merchants should be returned to their ‘hundreds’, the organiza-
tional unit of Novgorod merchants, while the smerd should be returned to his
pogost (rural settlement).79
In his comments Zimin80 refers to a (draft) treaty between Novgorod and
the Polish king Kazimir iv of 1470–1471, in which the king undertook not to
allow (certain dependent persons, as implied) to leave Novgorod territory, nor
slaves (from Novgorod territory) to be handed over as a pledge or gift (a cheladi
ne zakupati, ni darom ne primati).81 The words confirm the similarity of zakupy
and zakladniki.
The stipulations concerning zakladniki even survived the downfall of the
Tver’ principality and were included in Novgorod’s treaties with Moscow, right
down to the final one, the Korostyn treaty of August 1471.82
78 Treaties of 1264 (gvnp No.1, 9–10; prp ii, 134–135; English translation, Kaiser, Laws, 67–
68); 1266–1267 (gvnp No.2, 10–11; prp ii, 137–138); 1270 (gvnp No.3, 11–13; prp ii, 138–141);
1296–1301 (gvnp Nos.4–5, 13–15); 1304–1305 (gvnp No.6, 15–16; English translation, Kaiser,
Laws, 69–71); 1304–1305 (gvnp No.7, 16–18); 1307–1308 (gvnp Nos.9–10, 19–22); 1326–1327
(gvnp No.14, 26–28; English translation, Kaiser, Laws, 72–74); 1371 (gvnp No.15, 28–30;
English translation, Kaiser, Laws, 75–78).
79 See Zimin’s comments in prp ii, 146–147, 152, 157.
80 Loc. cit., 147.
81 Text in prp ii, 247–251. Also gvnp No.77, 129–132. See also Cherepnin, Arkhivy i, 363–369.
82 Zakladniki were included in the Novgorod-Moscow treaties of 1435 (gvnp No.19, 34–36);
1446–1447 (gvnp No.20, 36–38); 1456 (gvnp No.22, 39–41); 1471 (gvnp No.26, 45–48; prp ii,
251–255).
Rural Russia 577
A similar, but weaker category, in a socio-economical and legal sense,

was the polovnik, mentioned in one of the Novgorod treaties with the grand
prince of Tver’.83 Polovniki were poor smerdy who worked somebody else’s
land in exchange for half (polovina) the harvest (comparable to Western
sharecroppers).84
Izorniki, who appear in the Charter of Pskov, belonged to the same category
as zakupy and zakladniki; they are discussed below.
Peasant Landowning
Above we looked at the various categories of peasants to be found in Kievan

Russia. Such an overview was needed, in order to examine the question of
peasant landowning (with all the reservations explained above, about using
a modern ownership concept in dealing with the use of land in other histori-
cal settings). It needs no further argument to establish that slaves (kholopy,
cheliad’), employed on the land of their masters/owners, would not appear as
landowners in any reasonable sense of the word. For the smerdy, the situation
is not as clear-cut. If one follows the more modern view that they were depen-
dent peasants, working for the prince (and later on also for boyars and monas-
teries), one could imagine that they would still be in control of small parcels
of land, granted to them to engage in small-scale agriculture for subsistence
purposes.85 The fact that they could own horses (art. 28 of the Short Pravda)
and that their estate escheated to the prince (art. 90, Expanded Pravda) indi-
cates that they did run some kind of private farming enterprise, and that would
be almost unthinkable without a piece of land which they were entitled to use.
D’iakonov has drawn attention to the episode related under the year 1103 in the
Primary Chronicle (and mentioned above).86 Whether smerdy is understood
here as a general designation of peasants, or more specifically as dependent
peasants on princely estates, the quotation confirms the view that smerdy ran
their own farms.
83 The treaty of 1304–1305, gvnp No.7–8, 16–18.

84 Cf. one of the sections written by V.F. Andreev (“Natisk feodal’nogo zemlevladeniia i
krest’ianstvo v xiii v.”, 49–54) in Istoriia krest’ianstva Severo-Zapada Rossii. Period feodal-
izma, edited by A.I. Kopanev, Sankt-Peterburg, 1994, at 53. Polovniki appear in all three
volumes of asei: i (Nos.237, 239, 420, 502, 585, 587, 591, 594), ii (Nos.29, 138, 290, 326); iii
(Nos.28, 117, 190, 390).
85 The parallel with the private plots of sovkhoz and kolkhoz farmers in Soviet times is
inescapable.
86 D’iakonov, 94.
578 chapter 18
In the view on zakupy outlined above, they were typically impoverished

peasants who were forced by circumstances to give up most of their indepen-
dence by entering the service of a master in exchange for a loan in kind or
money. It is implied in this view that the community (obshchina) of which they
were members was either unwilling or unable to alleviate their plight. If that
was the situation, it would have been improbable that the typical zakup would
have a piece of land he could call his own.
This leaves the ordinary peasants, freemen who were neither slaves nor
smerdy or zakupy. The few authors who consider their position agree that al-
most nothing is known about it. Abstract models then, as indicated above, are
resorted to to fill in the blank spaces. Froianov invoked Marx, Engels, Morgan,
and Scandinavian parallels.87 He offered one concrete pointer: the Chronicle’s
statement, repeated twice, that “the Polianians lived by themselves”; one of the
statements is augmented by the words “and ruled their rody, because before
these brothers [the legendary founder of Kiev, Kii, and his brothers] there were
Polianians and each lived with his rod at his own place, each governing his rod
at his own place.”88 What can be read into these words with a certain amount
of probability is that the Polianians were organized in rody, that these rody
had their own territories, and that they were ruled by their own chieftains. It
is unclear whether these rody were identical with the communities (obshchiny
and later on the verv’), or whether the latter units were subdivisions of the rod.
From the rp we know that the verv’ had its own territory. Freemen would then
have been shareholders in the common land of whatever community could
claim this land as its own; in addition they would most likely have been as-
signed plots of land for their own use. Although there is hardly any direct evi-
dence for this, the elaborate rules on inheritance law in the Expanded Pravda
put the emphasis on the small family (parents and children) and these rules
were in no way restricted to members of the boyar class.
The Peasant Population in Later Centuries
There is a curious parallel between the history of medieval Russia and that of
the North American continent in the era of the first European settlers. The sim-
ple explanation is that both evolved in similar physical conditions: a climate
with harsh winters and hot summers, dense coniferous and mixed forests,
the presence of a sparse indigenous population with a less advanced level of
87 Froianov, Nachala, 343–349; KRse, 12–21.

88 psrl i, cols.7, 9 and 12.
Rural Russia 579
c ivilization. The Eastern Slavs slowly penetrated the forests of European Russia,
inhabited by dispersed groups of Finnish hunters and fishers; at first the trade
in furs, honey and other forest products was the object, then farmers began to
clear the forest and raise crops. The vast spaces of the northern half of Euro-
pean Russia began to be colonized, once the first towns had arisen. Novgorod’s
semi-colonial empire encompassed the entire western part of this area, and
the enormous but partly uninhabitable North as well, while the colonization
of the eastern part was undertaken from the old towns in the Upper Volga and
Oka region, such as Rostov and Suzdal’. One of the effects of colonization was
that the bonds of blood relationship, which had been a prominent factor in
the past in cementing rural communities, ceased to be so in the new peasant
communities of the Russian North-East. This may have been reflected in the
emergence of a new general designation for the peasant population, krest’iane
(khristiane, as opposed to the autochthonous pagan hunters and fishers), to
replace the former liudi (as well as smerdy). It is first encountered in a charter
of 1391 in which the metropolitan Kiprian decided a dispute between Efrem,
abbot of the Constantine monastery (near Moscow), and his peasants.89
Russian authors have paid considerable attention to the question of the
peasant’s relationship to land (zemlevladenie) in post-Kievan times. Once gen-
eral developments and tendencies can be recognized (such as those indicated
in the previous paragraph), a more detailed description of the life of the peas-
ant in the different regions (the Novgorod lands, the Suzdal’-Vladimir-Rostov
region, the western regions, the area around Kiev, Tver’, etc.) can be attempted.
During the dominance of Marxist-oriented historiography this approach
was embedded in the framework of historical materialism. Ownership of
(agricultural) land was considered the basic determinant of the feudal era,
fuelling the antagonisms between the exploiting class of feudal landowners
and exploited peasant masses. It would then be the task of the historian to
map the course of the class struggle and to describe and analyze the inter-
action between the opposing classes. Espousal of historical materialism en-
tailed acceptance of Marx’s ownership concept, which was essentially the
classical 19th century ownership concept, applied to a comprehensive view
of societal development. It induced many Soviet medievalists to agonize end-
lessly about whether peasants who were in some way dependent on somebody
else were in fact owners. Such dependence could appear in many forms. They
89 prp iii, 423–425; asei iii, No.5, 17. The charter refers several times to the peasants as liudi
or as siroty (“orphans”, a term typical of Eastern Russia), and only once, almost casually,
as khristiane. This could suggest that krest’iane was a more colloquial designation, which
only acquired official status later on.
580 chapter 18
may most conveniently be categorized along the way the dependence relation
was expressed: through work done for a master, through payment in kind, or
in money. Within these three main categories sub-categories arose, and also
mixed forms. The principal form of the first category was barshchina (which
survived into the 19th century): a peasant would be granted a plot of land for
his own use, while he was obliged to work a certain number of days on another
plot of the landowner. The second category is exemplified by the polovniki, a
type of share-croppers, who had to hand over a particular part of the harvest
to the owner of the land. The third category is usually referred to as obrok, a
fixed annual sum to be paid to the landowner. Designating the opposite num-
ber of the peasant as the landowner is of course questionable. If the peasant
were able to sell whatever right he was supposed to have in respect of his own
plot – and this was normally the case at least with ‘black peasants’ (peasants
on the prince’s land) paying obrok – he could be regarded as the owner of a plot
encumbered with a particular obligation.90
Many Soviet authors who had concerned themselves with the subject, espe-
cially the more recent ones, noted in some way that the traditional ownership
views were inadequate to deal with the question of peasant landownership in
medieval Russia. One of the more perspicacious among them, A.L. Shapiro,
additionally drew attention to the importance of customary law, which recog-
nized the peasants’ rights in the lands they tilled.91
Whatever the shortcomings of the Soviet approach, it has undoubtedly
yielded a wealth of useful material, but it has been of limited use from the
point of view of legal history because of the paucity of more precise sources.
Most of the latter have been mentioned above: the Court Charter of Pskov first
of all, then the Novgorod-Tver’ treaties; for the important Suzdal’-Vladimir-
Rostov area (Suzdalia), the cradle of the future Muscovy state, there is a wealth
of charter material (especially in the three asei volumes), but where legisla-
tion is concerned a few isolated provisions have to suffice, such as the much-
discussed art. 57 of the Code of 1497 (the peasant’s quitting-time).
The most elaborate and informative legislative source about the status of
peasants is the Court Charter of Pskov, in its provisions on the izornik (arts. 42,
42a, 44, 51, 63, 74–76, 84–87, 93). One of the basic considerations to be kept in
mind, with regard to the Pskov Charter as well as other contemporary sources,
90 Cf. A.D. Gorskii, “K voprosu o sushchnosti chernogo zemlevladeniia na Rusi v xiv–xv vv.”,
A.M. Sakharov (ed.), Problemy razvitiia feodal’noi sobstvennosti na zemliu, Moskva, 1979,
25–54.
91 A.L. Shapiro, Russkoe krest’ianstvo pered zakreposhcheniem (xiv–xvi vv.), Leningrad, 1987,
31–47, esp. 32.
Rural Russia 581
is that systematic legislation was not the object; most matters were covered
by custom and customary law, legislation made up for what was considered
lacking, because a particular question was not foreseen in customary law, or
because the customary arrangement was considered inadequate. The exten-
sive rules on izorniki in the Pskov Charter referred to an existing institution,
familiar to the Pskovians, and only clarified a number of points which could
give rise to disputes.92
From this body of rules one can deduce that the izornik was a peasant who
had concluded a contract with a landowner (the master) which put him in a
position not unlike that of a tenant. The izornik received the use of a plot of
land, normally for an indeterminate period (cf. arts. 75a, 84–86), as well as pok-
ruta (cf. arts. 51, 76). This is usually translated as a loan, but, although it could
also comprise money, it referred primarily to whatever was essential to engage
in agriculture: structures, implements, farm animals, seed corn, etc. (cf. art. 44).
The rules imply, but do not express outright, that the izornik had to work for
the benefit of his master (cf. arts. 63, 75a). The contract could be terminated
by the master as well as the tenant, but only at the beginning of the Advent
Fast (St. Philip’s Fast) on 15 November (art. 42); in such a case each party was
entitled to one half of the harvest (art. 63). A money loan often accompanied
or was included in the tenancy contract (cf. arts. 44, 85). When the izornik died,
his wife and children were liable for his obligations to the master, provided
there was a formal loan note (zapis’); otherwise the matter was to be decided
according to Pskov custom (po pskovskoi poshline), cf. art. 85.
The master of the izornik was a private landowner, so much is clear from
the Pskov Charter. The same goes for the zakladnik, mentioned in the treaties
between Novgorod and Tver’; his master was typically a Novgorod boyar.
In the East, in Suzdalia and other regions, the situation was different. Large-
scale landownership by boyars and other wealthy persons certainly occurred,
but the colonization process had been directed mostly by the princes and this
92 Iu.G. Alekseev devoted a long chapter to the izorniki in his Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota
i ee vremia, Moskva, 1980, 145–203; also: A.L. Shapiro, Russkoe krest’ianstvo pered zakre-
poshcheniem (xiv–xvi vv.), Leningrad, 1987, 146–157 (Ch. 11); a modern discussion, critical
of Soviet approaches, is K.V. Petrov, “Dogovor «Izornika s gosudarem» Pskovskoi Sudnoi
gramoty (rekonstruktsiia)”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Issledovaniia po istorii sredneveko-
voi Rusi. K 80-letiiu Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 2006, 113–126.
Floria regarded the izornik as a temporary phenomenon of the transition period between
early and developed feudalism and noted the appearance of similar figures in other Eu-
ropean countries, B.N. Floria, “Pskovskii «izornik» i mazovetskii «kmet»”, V.L. Ianin (ed.),
Feodalizm v Rossii. Sbornik statei i vospominanii, posviashchennyi pamiati akademika L.V.
Cherepnina, Moskva, 1987, 134–141.
582 chapter 18
had allowed them (according to Iu.V. Got’e) to assume the position of supreme
owner of much of the land available for agriculture.93
According to Veselovskii, such lands were mostly forested or uncultivated
(‘wild’ or ‘black’), and their cultivation required considerable resources and for
this reason the monasteries were prominent grantees.94 The land grants made
by the Moscow princes were often not gratuitous and were then in fact sales of
land. The princes also attempted to replenish their stock of usable agricultural
land by themselves buying from private owners, or by confiscations.95
The prince’s lands (chernososhnye zemli) were tilled by ‘black’ peasants
(chernye krest’iane) who paid dues to the prince’s agents and/or had to carry
out a certain amount of work, but otherwise enjoyed a considerable measure
of freedom. They had their own organizational structures, headed by villages
elders (starosty and dobrye liudi – ‘good men’), who were involved in certain lo-
cal government and tax collection tasks.96 The Code of 1497 mentioned ‘black’
peasants along with peasants subject to a private landlord (sel’skie krest’iane)
in art. 63, concerning participation in litigation about land. Prominent ‘black’
peasants (belonging to ‘good people’ and having taken an oath, dobrye chernye
krest’iane tseloval’niki) are also mentioned in art. 12 of the Code, as being on the
same level as “boyars’ sons of good repute” (deti boiarskye dobrye) as character
witnesses.
The principal reference to peasants in the Code, as mentioned above, is in
art. 57, “About the peasant’s quitting-time” (O khristianskom otkaze, lit. “refus-
al”). It provided that peasants could only quit, i.e. leave their village or region
(volost’), once a year, in the week before and the week after the autumnal feast
of St. George (Iur’ev den’ osennii), 26 November. They were obliged to pay for
the use of the peasant’s household (the dvor, dwelling and appurtenances) the
full sum of one ruble, if they had lived there for four years or more, and a re-
duced rate for shorter stays. As the peasant would normally leave in order to
work for another landowner, a poor peasant could only leave if his new land-
lord were willing to pay this indemnification (pozhiloe).97
93 This theme is prominent in the views of Iu.V. Got’e, Ocherki istorii zemlevladeniia v Rossii,
Moskva, 2003 (orig. Sergiev Posad, 1915) 41–45.
94 S.B. Veselovskii, Feodal’noe zemlevladenie v Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, Tom i, Leningrad, 1947,
74–80.
95 Veselovskii, ibidem.
96 Cf. L.V. Danilova, “O vnutrennei strukture sel’skoi obshchiny Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi”, V.T.
Pashuto (ed.), Rossiia na putiakh tsentralizatsii. Sbornik statei, Moskva, 1982, 6–17.
97 On pozhiloe, S.B. Veselovskii, “Iz istorii zakreposhcheniia krest’ian”, Trudy po istochnikove-
deniiu i istorii Rossii perioda feodalizma, Moskva, 34–119, at 114–118; also in S.B. Veselovskii,
Moskovskoe gosudarstvo xv–xvii vv. Iz nauchnogo naslediiia, Moskva, 2008, 217–302, at
Rural Russia 583
Combining art. 57 of the Code of 1497 with the information about izorniki
from the Pskov Court Charter allows us a few tentative conclusions. The ter-
mination of a contract between a peasant and a landlord who provided the
necessary plot of land (plus various other assets) would normally take effect at
the end of the agricultural cycle, in late autumn. The position of the peasant
weakened over time. The situation described in the Pskov Charter, however
uncertain its precise date, reflected a relationship of greater equality; art. 57 of
the Code of 1497 addressed a situation where the landowner needed a work-
force and the legislator came to his aid by making it more difficult for a peasant
to leave.
The institution of Iur’ev den’, allowing peasants to leave their masters once
a year, was abolished a hundred years later by Boris Godunov, who actually
ruled Russia during the reign of tsar Fëdor Ivanovich, the son of Ivan iv the
Terrible.98
More detailed studies of the status of Russian peasants during the 13th–15th
centuries show that there were significant differences between the various re-
gions. The general background was the expansion of cultivation, caused by im-
proved agricultural methods as well as by the expansion of the land available
for agriculture; this expansion entailed an increased need for a workforce and
various solutions to cope with this need were put into practice. These solutions
shaped the relationships between peasants and landowners and resulted in a
great variety of contractual forms.99
Transactions Concerning Land
The gradually increasing flow of documents embodying transactions con-

cerning land, starting with the 12th century charters of Antony the Roman,
has been referred to above. If one looks at these documents with the eye of a
297–301. See also V.A. Arakcheev, “Krest’ianskii otkaz i poriad: issledovanie sotsial’nykh ot-
noshenii v russkoi derevne xv–xvi vv.”, S.N. Kisterev (ed.), Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii, vyp.8,
Moskva, 2004, 75–106.
98 The peasants’ right to leave was abolished gradually; Ivan iv the Terrible had already for-
bidden it temporarily around 1580; then such “forbidden years” (zapovednye gody) be-
came more frequent, until at last 1606 was the last “exit year” (vykhodnyi god), cf. S.B.
Veselovskii, “Otmena Iur’eva dnia”, in S.B. Veselovskii, (Trudy), 34–119, at 51–53, and id.
(Moskovskoe gosudarstvo), 217–302, at 234–235.
99 This matter is discussed in considerable detail by A.L. Shapiro in the second part of the
work quoted above (Russkoe krest’ianstvo …), entitled “Categories of the Peasant Popula-
tion. The Right to Change [Place of Employment]”.
584 chapter 18
modern lawyer, one can distinguish between public and private law transac-
tions, public law ones being those by which the ruler (the prince) bestowed
certain rights or imposed certain duties. Their general name is zhalovannye
gramoty (“grant charters”). The private law ones can be divided according to
tradition into unilateral and multilateral (esp. bilateral) transactions. Gifts and
wills would form the first category, while the main types of bilateral transac-
tions are sales and exchanges. The gift charter of Antonii Rimlianin described
the outline of the donated land in considerable detail (“from the Volkhov River
upstream along the Vitka brook to Liushchik, and from there to the cross, from
the cross to the cattle pass, from the cattle pass to the alder tree, from the
alder tree to the spruce wood, from the spruce wood to the Donets heights,
and down along the Donets, which flows into the Derevianitsa, and the Dere-
vianitsa flows into the Volkhov”). This example is often followed in later char-
ters concerning rural land. Less common, but still occurring frequently, is an
indication of the origin of the donor’s ownership, by referring to the way the
property was acquired from a previous owner and, where applicable, the price
paid.100
It is worth repeating that the picture produced by the available mass of doc-
uments is inevitably one-sided, because most surviving documents have their
origin in monasterial collections. Medieval deeds concerning land and involv-
ing only secular parties have almost all been lost.
It would not be too far-fetched to regard the 10th century Church Statute of
St. Vladimir as the first example of a zhalovannaia gramota, because its central
content was the granting of tithes and of jurisdiction over church personnel
(and various categories of other cases) to the Church. The first surviving char-
ter in which land is granted is from 1130, in which the grand prince Mstislav
(son of Vladimir Monomakh) and his son Vsevolod donated the village of Bui-
tse to the Iur’ev monastery in Novgorod (referred to above). In this charter, as
in almost all subsequent ones of its kind, the land grant is accompanied by
connected grants, in this case the collection of tribute (dan’), bloodwite (viry)
and fines (prodazhi).101 Later, the right to collect certain fiscal duties was usu-
ally replaced by outright exemption from certain taxes; such grant charters
came to be called tarkhannye (from Turkish tarkhan, a free person, not subject
to tribute). The tax exemption was often accompanied by an exemption from
100 Such a reference is included in the gift charter of Antonii Rimlianin.

101 The same formula appears in the Church Statute of prince Rostislav of Smolensk of 1150
(recte 1136, see above) (prp ii, 39–42), an offshoot of the Church Statute of St. Vladi-
mir and, like the latter, a mixture of pure statutory elements and a number of concrete
dispositions.
Rural Russia 585
general jurisdiction (as in the original church statutes), nesudimye gramoty.

(See also Chapter 11.)
The 1130 charter of prince Mstislav also included the obligation imposed on
the monastery to pray for the prince and his family, also after their death. This
illustrates the difficulty in classifying Russian medieval charters by strict mod-
ern standards. Public and private arrangements are combined, the gift also in-
volved fiscal benefits and contained elements of a last will.
Along with gifts of land made by princes, which often contained ‘public law’
elements such as judicial and fiscal immunities, there were numerous gifts of
land made by private landowners. The recipient was almost always a monas-
tery or church. The oldest surviving private charter was mentioned above, the
gift of land and the persons (slaves) attached to it by Varlaam to the Spaso-
Khutinsk monastery (around 1211). The various collections of charters from dif-
ferent Russian regions contain many such dannye from the 14th century and
later periods. In most cases the donors stated that the gift had been made for
the repose of the souls (v pominok dushi) of relatives and prospectively of the
donor himself. In such a case the gift charter comes close to a true last will
(dukhovnaia gramota, or rukopisanie, “handwritten document”).
The destination of landholdings was usually the main topic of wills (duk-
hovnye). Normally, there would be no need to make dispositions about the fate
of real property after the owner’s death because his children would inherit by
virtue of intestate succession, whether on the basis of customary or statutory
law. A will would be called for in special cases, to make provision for certain
dependents (esp. wives, mothers, daughters) and/or where the testator had re-
mained childless. The traditional rule from Roman law that intestate and tes-
tamentary succession could not be combined102 did not apply in Russia. The
last will could therefore regulate certain specific matters, while for the rest the
rules of intestate succession operated. Many of the available dukhovnye are
of this type. The testator, leaving children, left for instance some property to
his widow and instructed the children to honour this bequest. Most surviv-
ing wills (found in monasterial collections) contain bequests to monasteries
or churches, usually with the instruction to say prayers for the soul of the de-
ceased testator. When the testator died without issue, he or she often left the
entire estate to a monastery, with some provision for a surviving widow (where
she had not predeceased him).
Wills are among the oldest available documents concerning land. The testa-
ments of Antony the Roman (from before 1131) and of Kliment (13th c entury)
102 Nemo pro parte testatus, pro parte intestatus, moritur.

586 chapter 18
have been discussed above. See also the section on dukhovnye gramoty in
Chapter 11, where various examples are cited.
Wills of princes, especially of the grand princes of Moscow, constitute a spe-
cial category because they combined elements of ordinary private wills with
public law dispositions (see the section devoted to this topic in Chapter 13).
Deeds of sale (kupchie) almost exclusively concerned land and are relatively
numerous, although mostly from the 15th century and later periods. That land
was bought and sold between private persons long before this time is testi-
fied to by the references in the charters of Antonii Rimlianin (12th century)
to the origin of his ownership. There are several private deeds of sale from the
14th century in the land of Novgorod.103 See further the section on kupchie in
Chapter 11.
Exchange deeds (menovnye gramoty) were very close to deeds of sale and,
like the latter, nearly always concerned real property. (Where movable good
were exchanged or bought there was usually no need for written documenta-
tion.) See the section on menovnye in Chapter 11.
Pledges were generally connected with money loans; where the property
pledged was handed over into the possession of the creditor (movable prop-
erty), there would not be a paper trail. The surviving pledge charters (zaklad-
nye gramoty) therefore almost exclusively concern the pledging of real estate
(mortgage). The subject is discussed at greater length in Chapter 11.
Local Government
The original sources offer almost nothing on the question of local government
for the early Kievan period.104 Some of the leading authors have attempted
reconstructions on the basis of parallels with urban government, or by deduc-
ing the existence of certain institutions from a general concept of early Kievan
Russia, or by extrapolating backwards from what is known about later periods.
Of these three approaches, the last is the least unreliable. It would indicate,
among other things, that there were significant differences between urban and
103 gvnp No.106, 163 (after 1359); No.108, 164 (between 1389–1415).
104 Andreevskii, one of the leading 19th century authors on the theme of the history of local
government in Russia, starts his study with a chapter on the lieutenant (namestnik), rely-
ing on kormlenie; although this was undoubtedly an ancient institution, information on
it does not really become available before the 14th century. Cf. I.E. Andreevskii, O namest-
nikakh, voevodakh i gubernatorakh. Istoriia gosudarstvennogo upravleniia v Rossii (ix–xix
vv.), Sankt-Peterburg, 1864 (1st ed.), reprint Moskva, 2014.
Rural Russia 587
rural administration. Starting from parallels with urban government is there-

fore the least promising approach.
The different versions of the rp mention various princely officials in charge
of different duties, but these provisions primarily concerned the management
of the prince’s own domains. Of the judicial functionaries only a few can be
considered to have exercized their offices throughout the territory ruled by the
prince; the bloodwite-collector (virnik) and his assistants are a clear example
(arts. 42 of the Short Pravda and 9 and 10 of the Expanded Pravda).
The usual designation of a rural administrative unit is pogost, already men-
tioned in the Chronicle’s story of Olga’s campaigns against the Derevlians.
There is some controversy about whether the pogost was first of all a financial-
administrative unit or rather a rural trading-post.105 As the running of local
affairs took place primarily at some local settlement, this would obviously also
be the commercial centre. The 1136 Charter of prince Rostislav of Smolensk (re-
ferred to above) mentions 43 pogosti with the taxes payable by them, covering
the entire territory of the principality.
A much larger unit was the volost’, governed by a volostel’. In Kievan times a
volost’ was usually equivalent to a dependent principality and its ruler would
be appointed by the Kievan prince, generally from the circle of his close rela-
tives: brothers, sons, cousins. The title of namestnik, lieutenant, is often used.
“Land” (zemlia) has about the same meaning as volost’.106
A vivid picture of the organization of regional government is offered by the
Statute of Dvina Land of 1397–1398.107 The peculiar circumstances of its enact-
ment have been discussed in Chapter 8, but as it is one of the few early sources
for our knowledge of regional government it cannot be neglected in the con-
text of this section.108 The Statute does show that the prince would normally
appoint a namestnik, from the ranks of his own (Moscow) boyars, or from
local Dvina Land boyars The namestnik would receive his income primarily
from court fees and fines; the administration of justice (both prosecution and
105 Cf. Iushkov, Stroi, 108–110.

106 Cf. V.M. Rychka,”Poniatie «volost’» i ego evoliutsiia v drevnerusskikh letopisiakh (na
materialakh kievskoi zemli xi–xii vv.)”, A.A. Preobrazhenskii (ed.), Feodalizm v Rossii.
Iubileinye chteniia, posviashchennye 80-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia akademika L’va Vladi-
mirovicha Cherepnina. Tezisy dokladov i soobshchenii, Moskva, 1985, 82–83.
107 Text with comments by A.A. Zimin and A.G. Poliak in prp iii, 162–164 and 185–197; also
gvnp No.88 (144–146); text and English translation in Kaiser, Laws, 111–113.
108 To repeat: the Dvina Land boyars were shifting their allegiance from Novgorod to the Mos-
cow grand prince. The latter granted them a local government charter which was unusu-
ally accommodating to their interests. The next year however, Novgorod r e-established its
control over Dvina Land and the charter never became operative.
588 chapter 18
adjudication) was mostly in his hands.109 He was also entitled to receive cer-
tain commercial taxes and travelling allowances. All amounts were p recisely
determined. There was a possibility of appealing to the grand prince against
excessive impositions, all of this being part of the kormlenie remuneration sys-
tem (see the heading kormlennaia gramota in Chapter 11). He was assisted by
various lower officials (dvoriane, podvoiskie, d’iaki, sotskie). Dvorianin, later the
general designation for nobleman, still had the old meaning of “prince’s servi-
tor”, a lower civil servant with general duties; podvoiskie were court officers,
bailiffs; a d’iak (from Greek diakonos) was a clerk, a secretary.
Although, in the case of the Dvina Land charter, these titles may represent
more typically Novgorodian offices, they also appear outside the north-western
part of Russia with perhaps a somewhat different content. The occasionally in-
determinate nature of the office hiding under a certain title is most outspoken
in the case of the sotskii. In the Dvina Land charter the sotskii is mentioned
only in the singular; there seemed to have been a single sotskii for the whole
of Dvina Land, a local official, not appointed by the Moscow grand prince and
sufficiently important to be mentioned in the preamble. The sotskie are well-
known in Novgorod and Pskov sources; they were the heads of the ‘hundreds’,
the sotni, middle-ranking urban officials; as such they also appear later on in
Muscovy. They seem to have general administrative, as well as specifically ju-
dicial, duties. The sotskie, hundred-men, centurions, fit into the numerical hi-
erarchy of tysiatskie (thousand-men, chiliarchs), hundred-men, and decurions
(desiatskie). Older historians110 often regarded this system as ancient and tradi-
tional, going back to an era of military democracy, contrasting it with a newer
system, introduced by the princes and consisting of appointed governors
(posadniki) and lieutenants (namestniki) and their subordinate staff. Presnia-
kov contested these views and argued that the numerical system was also de-
pendent on appointment and approval by the prince, although he recognized
its military origin.111 More recently V.A. Kuchkin enlarged on Presniakov’s view
by showing that sotskie and desiatskie were actually an invention of the Kievan
princes to address the problem of managing newly available arable land.112
109 Cf. V.D. Nazarov, “O proezdnom sude namestnikov v srednevekovoi Rusi”, dg sssr 1987,
Moskva, 1989, 84–92.
110 Such as Vladimirskii-Budanov, Obzor, 98–99.
111 Presniakov, Kn. Pr., 165–190.
112 V.A. Kuchkin, “Desiatskie i sotskie Drevnei Rusi”, A.A. Gorskii & V.A. Kuchkin (eds.), Drev-
niaia Rus’. Ocherki politicheskogo i sotsial’nogo stroia, Moskva, 2008, 270–427. Desiatskie
and sotskie are first mentioned in the Primary Chronicle (Laurentian text) under the year
996 (St.Vladimir carousing with his followers, including desiatskie and sotskie); Ian, son of
Vyshata, is mentioned in 1089 as the commander of the Kiev ‘thousand’.
chapter 19
The Individual and the Family
In medieval law the problem of sources is more pronounced than in the law
of later periods. For that reason the first part of this work has been devoted to
an examination of the sources of medieval Russian law. The law itself is the
subject proper of the second part and in most instances we have looked for
the presence of law in particular physical places: around the prince, in towns,
in the countryside, around the Church and its monasteries, etc. In this chapter
a different perspective is chosen: When and where did the individual person
encounter law in his own life in medieval Russia? This question can be broken
down into three separate ones: Concerning the legal status of the individual
and in particular his or her being a member of a legally defined class of per-
sons; What legal consequences were attached to being, not merely an individ-
ual, but the member of a family; How would law affect the individual once he
became active outside the circle of his family? This chapter is devoted to the
first two questions; the third question merits a separate chapter (the next).
The Legal Status of the Individual
Men and Women

As the undifferentiated human being does not exist as such and can appear
only as either a man or a woman, this most basic distinction underlies all other
distinctions and invariably affects the legal status of the individual. Whenever
legal history addresses itself to some aspect of the status of the individual, at-
tention is almost automatically and unconsciously directed at the position of
the male individual. Eventual differences in the position of women are then
treated separately, almost as exceptions to the general rule.1 Such differences
may be determined by all kinds of factors, but generally the dominant concep-
tions concerning relationships between the sexes in a given society will be the
most significant determinant.
1 Art. 88 of the Expanded Pravda is exemplary in this respect. Somewhere in the middle of this
legislative text, almost as an afterthought, the law directs that the killing of a woman will be
judged in the same way as the killing of a man, but the bloodwite in this case is 20 grivna, half
the bloodwite of a man.

590 chapter 19
In this respect the adoption of Christianity was the all-important water-

shed in Russian history. Russian sources, especially the Primary Chronicle,
and foreign sources to a lesser extent, offer information on male–female
relationships in pre-Christian Russia. The picture is many-faceted. Polygamy
and the forceful capture of brides occurred, but respectful treatment of female
relatives is also mentioned. Exceptionally, women could reach positions of
great power. Widows of important men in particular not only enjoyed great
prestige, but could also act as their husband’s successors. This tradition sur-
vived the adoption of Christianity and remained in force in Kievan Russia. The
most prominent example is the transitional figure of the famous princess Olga,
who ruled for a decade after the death of her husband Sviatoslav in 945.
That which can be reconstructed concerning the position of women in
blood feuds also suggests that they were not without rights. Art. 88 of the Ex-
panded Pravda has been mentioned. In a well-known episode recounted in the
Chronicle (1071), Ian Vyshatich, the famous general of Sviatoslav Iaroslavich,
ordered the boatmen from Belozero to avenge the killing of their mothers and
sisters by magicians.2
The fundamental equality of all human beings before God belongs to the
core message of the four Gospels. It is hard to deny that secondary teachings
of individual early Christian authors also injected certain misogynist views,
detracting from the original equality. At the same time, the traditional patriar-
chal order of pre-Christian Russia continued in many respects. At least three
different strands can therefore be discerned in the male–female relationships
of Kievan Russia. Part of the pagan heritage, irreconcilable with Christian
doctrine, disappeared, and (a) the surviving elements were often adapted and
transformed in accordance with (b) the new faith; the original simplicity and
radicalism of the latter became overgrown in places by (c) the divergent views
of churchmen. In the following sections, dealing with legal relationships with-
in the family, the legal consequences of these various factors will be considered
in more detail. They are of course most prominent in the legal regulation of
marriage.3
2 Cf. S.L. Nikol’skii, “O kharaktere uchastii zhenshchin v krovnoi mesti (Skandinaviia i Drevniaia
Rus’)”, dgve 1999, Moskva, 2001, 160–168.
3 The position of women in medieval Russia is dealt with most extensively in the works of
L.N. Pushkareva:
“Zhenshchina v srednevekovom Novgorode x–xv vv.”, Vestnik Mosk. Univ., seriia istoricheskaia,
1983 No.3, 78–89; “Pravovoe polozhenie zhenshchiny v Drevnei Rusi x–xv vv.: Voprosy prestu-
pleniia i nakazaniia”, Sov. Gos. i Pravo, 1983 No.4, 121–126; “Imushchestvennye prava zhensh-
chin v russkom gosudarstve x–xv vv.”, Istoricheskie Zapiski, No.114 (1986), 180–224; “Women
in the Medieval Russian Family of the Tenth Through the Fifteenth Centuries”, Clements, B.E.
The Individual and the Family 591
Literary works from the Russian middle ages, particularly those of a

d idactic nature, provide a detailed picture of the prevailing attitudes concern-
ing relationships within the family and between men and women. Prominent
among these are the 12th century Questionary of Kirik (Voproshanie Kirika),
a collection of 152 questions addressed by Kirik, a monk from the Novgorod
monastery of St. Antony, to Nifont, the bishop of Novgorod,4 the 14th century
Izmaragd (“Emerald”), consisting mainly of translations from Greek moralis-
tic writings, and the 16th century Domostroi, a hugely popular work, offering
practical directives with a strong moral content on many aspects of daily life.5
It may perhaps be superfluous to point out that from a modern point of
view Russian society, before as well as after the adoption of Christianity, was
strongly patriarchal; this found legal expression in a generally weaker position
of women. Another, related, aspect of the relations between the sexes in Russia
in these times was the virtual inevitability of marriage. The general assump-
tion was that adult men and women would be married. The accepted excep-
tion during the Christian era was celibacy as an element of monastic life, for
both monks and nuns. The selection of a spouse was primarily a family mat-
ter, especially for the parents (both of them). The wishes of the prospective
spouses had to be considered and forced marriages not only were defective
from the point of view of canon law, but could also entail sanctions against
the parents (see below). But while an unmarried young man would generally
be free, except in the choice of a bride, young women were much more depen-
dent on their parents or their brothers (once the parents were deceased), and
on their husbands after marriage. Once a widow, however, a woman’s indepen-
dence was quite substantial, as numerous records of transactions by widows
show. Also, a woman retained a separate property status, apart from that of
her husband (this will be examined in more detail in the following section on
marriage property).
(a.o., eds.), Russia’s Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation, Berkeley, ca, 1991,
29–43, also, under the title “The Woman in the Ancient Russian Family (Tenth to Fifteenth
Century)”, in Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia, Vol. 29, No.3 (1990–1991), 57–73.
4 On the Questionary of Kirik, see Ia.N. Shchapov, Vizantiiskoe i iuzhnoslavianskoe pravovoe
nasledie na Rusi v xi–xiii vv., Moskva, 1978, 179–180; text of the Questionary in Russkaia Is-
toricheskaia Biblioteka, t.vi,, Sankt-Peterburg, 1880, cols.21–62, and also in PRoP i, 504–524,
text and comments by Iu.V. Ospennikov. In his famous description of Muscovy, first pub-
lished in Vienna in 1549, Sigmund von Herberstein offered a long excerpt from the Ques-
tionary of Kirik. Cf. S. v. Herberstein, Das alte Russland (transl. from the Latin by W. von den
Steinen), Zürich, 1982, 97–103.
5 Many editions; I have used the 1994 edition of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Domostroi,
V.V. Kolesov, V.V. Rozhdestvenskaia (eds.), Moskva, 1994.
592 chapter 19
A curious consequence of the obligatory character of marriage was the

practice of forcibly removing women, and occasionally men too, from pub-
lic life by putting them into a monastery or convent. In the Church Statute of
Iaroslav, this was the standard punishment for a girl or woman who had seri-
ously misbehaved (unmarried girl or widow who became pregnant, infanticide
by a mother, entering a bigamous marriage, marrying outside the Orthodox
Church, etc.). Compulsory consignment to a monastery was used occasionally
to punish political opponents and get rid of them; it was a not uncommon fate
for princes who could present a threat to a ruling prince, or for princes and
princesses who belonged to a branch which had fallen into disgrace.
Legal Classes
The division of the population into legally defined classes, with specific rights
and obligations, arose gradually in Russia and lasted until 1917. Class in this sense
is to be distinguished from the much vaguer class in a sociological sense. Legally
defined classes existed in many European countries and were denoted by spe-
cial terms in most languages (German Stand, French état, Russian soslovie).
Belonging to the highest class (princes) and the lowest (slaves) was circum-
scribed already at an early age; the arrival of Christianity introduced the e asily
recognizable class of the clergy. The borders between intermediate groups, from
aristocracy to the half-free were porous for a long time. The consolidation of a
unitary Russian state under the grand prince of Moscow created the conditions
for a more exact determination of the legal status of the different classes. This
process was directed by the ruler, rather than produced as the result of a balance
of power achieved through contestation and negotiation, as in Western Europe.
Iu.G. Alekseev has demonstrated that it was especially Ivan iii whose domestic
policies were directed at the creation of a state-centred social system in which
the different classes all had their specific duties towards the sovereign.6
Princes
Princes constituted a class of their own from the pre-Christian era and all
through the Russian middle ages. The Chronicle reports how prince Oleg had
6 Cf. Iu.G. Alekseev, “K voprosu o sosloviiakh v Rossii XVXVIi vv. Nekotorye cherty soslovnoi
politiki Ivana iii”, A.P. Pavlov (ed.), Gosudarstvo i obshchestvo v Rossii xv – nachala xx veka.
Sbornik statei pamiati Nikolaia Evgen’evicha Nosova, Sankt-Peterburg, 2007, 65–81. See also
Iu.G. Alekseev, Sudebnik Ivana iii. Traditsiia i reforma, Sankt-Peterburg, 2001, 431–436.
Askold and Dir killed in Kiev (880–882), because they had arrogated p rincely
power while not even being of princely stock (kniazh rod). The narrative
preceding the 907 Treaty with Byzantium mentioned “great princes” ruling dif-
ferent territories in Russia and being subject to the Kievan prince Oleg. Such
princes were mentioned again in the 911 and 944 treaties. Under St. Vladimir
all other princes were eliminated, but the apanage principalities he set up for
his sons were the origin of the numerous principalities into which the Kievan
empire fragmented in the subsequent period. They were invariably ruled by his
descendants. With the proliferation of the Rurikid house many princes were
left without a territory of their own, although they retained their title. The first
non-Rurikid prince appeared only in 1408, when the Lithuanian prince Patrikii
(a grandson of the founder of the Lithuanian dynasty, Gedimin) entered the
service of grand prince Vasilii i of Moscow.
The oldest legal sources paid a great deal of attention to the legal status of
the prince. They often had a particular prince in mind, such as Iaroslav the
Wise in the case of the oldest section of the rp, but the general intention was
always to lay down a regime which would also apply to successors. The Church
Statutes of St. Vladimir and his son Iaroslav the Wise are explicit on this point
(arts. 19 and 58 resp.: “my sons, grandsons and great-grandsons”).
The legal status of the prince is the subject of a special Chapter (13), to
which we refer here.
Boyars and Other Nobles

In later times, especially during the more recent centuries, nobility was a le-
gally defined status in Russia, involving specific rights and duties. As one goes
back in time, the definition becomes less clear. In the earliest, Kievan period,
the existence of a social elite can be observed, but there is no way to define it
in a legally meaningful way.
Nobility
The presence of a social elite is a universal phenomenon in almost all
forms of societies, except very small-scale ones (to avoid the possibly
pejorative term of ‘primitive’). Additionally, many societies recognize the
existence of a narrower category, called nobility, which as a rule is de-
fined in legal terms. The backbone of such a definition is inheritability,
or more precisely: a person belongs to the noble class if his/her parents
were noble. National systems have offered all kinds of variations on this
general principle. If inheritability would be the only criterion, nobility
would attach only to families who could claim this status “from times
immemorial”. This would cause the slow but inevitable dying out of a
594 chapter 19
nobility. Admittance of new members into an otherwise closed class is

therefore usually allowed. This is invariably a sovereign prerogative, used
ostensibly to reward the most meritorious, but, viewed dispassionately,
often employed as a political tool.
Under the influence of egalitarian views, promoted by the Enlighten-
ment, inheritability of a status endowed with specific rights is now gen-
erally considered to be unfair, inasmuch as it would provide some with a
more advantageous start in life than others. But until recently, n
obility was
an accepted phenomenon in most European (and some Asian) states. In
some of them it still exists, although governments have taken steps to do
away with any but the most trivial legal differences with other classes.
In Russia, nobility thrived until 1917, both the usual (inherited) kind and
personal nobility (attached to specific civil or military ranks).
The reason for examining the question of nobility in the Kievan era is not
that it existed as such (it did not), but that the foundations for what later be-
came the Russian noble class were laid in those times.
In the discussion of landowning in Kievan times by boyars and other land-
owners, as well as in the section on the prince and his court and officials, the
functions of the elite have been looked at from various points of view. Some of
this discussion may be summarized here.
A ruler (prince) was normally surrounded and accompanied by a group of
followers, the druzhina. They were originally, i.e. in the pre-Christian era, his
comrades-in-arms, with whom he undertook expeditions and raids to fight his
enemies, collect booty, and capture slaves to be sold. They formed, as it has of-
ten been called, a corporation of which the prince was the central figure, if not
the outright leader. It was held together by bonds of friendship and solidarity,
rather than by one-sided personal loyalty to the prince. Personal ambition
and qualities might move a person to seek membership. In a society which
was still largely dominated by kinship ties and clan and family loyalty, the
druzhina introduced new patterns of social adhesion. The presence of vari-
ous non-Slavic elements in pre-Christian Russia, combined with the druzhina
recruitment system, meant that the druzhina’s composition could easily be
multi-ethnic.
Under the first Christian Rurikid rulers (St. Vladimir and Iaroslav the Wise)
something resembling an integrated polity, covering a huge territory, arose.
The grand prince needed trusted and able men to carry out his wishes in dis-
tant parts. This caused the dissolution of the druzhina as the company in close
physical proximity to the prince. At least to some extent, because some se-
nior members would remain at the prince’s court and junior members would
serve as the prince’s bodyguard. At that time, the growing number of druzhina
members had resulted in the emergence of two distinct layers, the senior mem-
bers, often referred to as boyars in the sources, and junior members, consisting
of various kinds of servitors of the prince.
Although the importance of the druzhina in the politico-legal structure of
Kievan Russia was recognized by most pre-revolutionary and Soviet histori-
ans, various factors contributed to it being played down. More recently, several
Russian historians have characterized Kievan Russia explicitly as a “druzhina
state” (druzhinnoe gosudarstvo).7 (See also the treatment of the druzhina in
Chapter 13, section on the prince and his officials, sub-section on the druzhina.)
The posting of senior druzhina members to distant places followed a pat-
tern which already prevailed within the princely family itself. The ruling prince
would assign his sons or younger brothers to rule as his representatives in the
various provincial centres. Such a local ruler would rely for his upkeep, his in-
come and the expense of maintaining a military force on various revenues to
be collected locally. In time, the temporary office tended to become inherit-
able and the income of the ruler would depend increasingly on local estates
assigned to him or acquired in other ways.
The occurrence of the term “boyars” in the 10th century treaties with Byz-
antium is not to be taken as an indication of the existence of a special class
at such an early date. Semantically, the 10th century “boyar” is identical to a
magnate, or a grande – merely a person of great social importance.8 Accord-
ing to Zavadskaia, “boyar” was a literary loanword, used to refer to the “prince’s
men” (kniazhi muzhi) as they were known in arts. 1, 2, 3 and 11 of the Expanded
Pravda. In the older Short Pravda the ognishchanin is more or less equivalent
to the kniazh muzh of the Expanded Pravda. The boyar turned up in later layers
of the E
xpanded Pravda, arts. 46 (the boyar’s slave) and 91 (inheritance of a
boyar), and also in arts. 1 (“or a boyar’s steward”) and 14 (“the same applies to a
boyar’s contract labourer”), but these last two fragments have the appearance
of being more recent insertions. In any case, all this would agree with the con-
clusion of Zavadskaia that before the beginning of the 12th century the term
“boyar” did not yet refer to a distinct social group. Obviously, the inclusion of
boyars in the final text of the Expanded Pravda implied that the term had ac-
quired sufficiently concrete legal content.
Zavadskaia’s theory is somewhat at variance with several provisions
of the Church Statute of Iaroslav. If one accepts the elaborate argument of
7 E.g. N.F. Kotliar, Drevnerusskaia gosudarstvennost’, Sankt-Peterburg, 1998, 63–69. See also
Feldbrugge, lmr, 140–145 (“Land Tenure, the Druzhina and the Nature of Kievan Rus”).
8 Cf. P.S. Stefanovich, Boiare, otroki, druzhiny: voenno-politicheskaia elita Rusi v x–xi vekakh,
Moskva, 2012, 367–376; S.V. Zavadskaia, “«Boliarin»–«Boiarin» v drevnerusskikh pis’mennykh
istochnikakh”, dg sssr 1985, 89–94.
596 chapter 19
Ia.N. Shchapov (the most prominent modern expert on this topic), the original
core of this text is to be dated around the end of Iaroslav’s reign (between 1051
and 1054). A series of provisions belonging to this category, contains references
to boyars, and even distinguishes between “great boyars” and “lesser boyars”
(arts. 1–4, 7, 27, 42).9 This of course suggests that boyars already existed as a
distinct category by the middle of the 11th century.
Another lead is provided by the Chronicle entry for 1018, referring to the
power struggle between Iaroslav Mudryi (the Wise) and his half-brother
Sviatopolk, in the wake of the death of their father St. Vladimir in 1015. The
people of Novgorod, in order to allow Iaroslav (who was their prince at that
time) to collect a force of Varangians in Scandinavia, collected funds at the
rate of 4 kuna from each freeman, 10 grivna from each elder, and 18 grivna from
each boyar.10 This implies that boyars constituted a well-defined element of
the urban population at this comparatively early date.
Along with events in Novgorod in 1018, there are quite a few other occur-
rences from the same era (the reigns of St. Vladimir and of his son Iaroslav
the Wise) indicating the presence of boyars as a distinct group. Usually, the
relevant Chronicle entries mention boyars at the top of the list of elite catego-
ries: boyars, town elders, and others. Of particular interest is the entry for 996,
which relates that Vladimir was wont to invite the boyars, the grid’, the sotskie
and desiatskie and the important men (narochitye muzhi) every Sunday for a
feast. The boyars and grid’ (see below) were part of the prince’s retinue (dru-
zhina) and did not necessarily have a connection with the urban population
of Kiev; the sotskie and desiatskie (see the section the officials of the Kievan
prince in Chapter 13) and the “important men” (possibly the same as the town
elders) represented the local citizenry.11
Stefanovich, in his monograph on the Kievan elite in the 10th and 11th cen-
turies, described the boyars as constituting the highest social layer after the
princes, characterized primarily by their closeness to the prince and their par-
ticipation in government; boyar status soon tended to become inheritable and
was connected with wealth, but these two features were derivative of their re-
lationship with the prince and his government.12
9 Ia.N. Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’ v Drevnei Rusi xi–xiv vv., Moskva, 1972,
293–295; this is the so-called protograph of the Statute, reconstructed by Shchapov.
10 If the older rate of 25 kuna = 1 grivna is applied, this would result in a relationship of
4:250:450, suggesting a wide disparity in wealth in Novgorod.
11 See for all this, M.N. Tikhomirov, Drevnerusskie goroda, Sankt-Peterburg, 2008 (orig.,
Moskva, 1956), 129–135.
12 Stefanovich, Boiare, 553–556.
One point that arises from the discussions concerning boyars in medieval
Russia is that the meaning of the term developed and changed considerably
over the centuries. From a rather general concept indicating high status, just
below the prince himself (Greek άρχοντες), it became a more specific one
which indicated the highest rank of service, enjoyed by a small number of per-
sons around the prince.
In our discussion of the emergence of boyar landowning we have looked at
the question of the relationship between the Kievan druzhina and the “landed
boyars” (zemskie boiare), assumed by several pre-revolutionary and Soviet his-
torians to be rooted in the indigenous Slavic tribal elite. Although unambigu-
ous direct evidence for the existence of private landowning by members of the
early Kievan elite is lacking, the presence of such an elite is on balance more
likely than its absence. In the course of the Kievan period this elite presumably
merged with the new elite represented by the druzhina. Art. 91 of the Expand-
ed Pravda which speaks twice and explicitly about “boyars and druzhinniki”
possibly reflected a still living memory of these two different components of
the Kievan upper class.13
The articulation of the nobility as a separate class was the result of a lengthy
process, covering many centuries. Social differentiation within the circle of the
prince’s companions and servitors was the first phase. This is already notice-
able in the Short Pravda, at first dimly in its oldest part, the Pravda of Iaroslav,
and then more explicitly in the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons. Art. 1 of the Short
Pravda mentioned different princely officials, the gridin, the iabetnik and the
mechnik.14 The Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons offered a whole range of princely ser-
vants, from high-ranking ones, such as the ognishchanin, to ordinary slaves.
The Preamble to this part of the Short Pravda mentioned Iaroslav’s three sons,
as well as three other persons. They return in art. 1 of the Expanded Pravda
where the three others are identified as the princes’ ‘men’ (muzhi). Their direct
13 Baranowski’s extensive survey of the literature on this provision offers no indication that
anyone has paid attention to the curious formula of “boyars and druzhinniki” (Baranowski,
616–620); only Stefanovich, in his recent monograph on the early Kievan elite, reviews the
question at some length: Stefanovich, Boiare, 523–525.
14 Several translations have been proposed for gridin, but most of them are covered by the
safe formula employed by Kaiser, “junior member of the prince’s retinue” (see Baranows-
ki, 181–182). If the gridin is usually supposed to have had primarily military duties, the
iabetnik is considered to be mostly a civilian officer with general administrative duties
(see Baranowski, 182–184). Most authors regard the term to be of Scandinavian origin;
its actual origin would then be in Gallic ambactus. Less problematic is the mechnik, the
‘swordman’, an armed follower, a bodyguard, also often involved in duties connected with
the prince’s court (see Baranowski, 184–185).
598 chapter 19
involvement in legislation is indicative of their high rank. The second part of

the Expanded Pravda, the so-called Statute of Monomakh, has a comparable
formula where it declares in the preamble (art. 53) that prince Vladimir called
together his druzhina, naming the chiliarchs (tysiatskie, thousandmen, ‘mayors’)
of the three main cities, as well as three others.
This small group of persons, closely associated with the ruling prince, con-
stituted the nucleus from which in subsequent centuries the highest class of
boyars arose. The Church Statute of Iaroslav already knew the distinction of
great (velikie) and minor boyars (men’shie boiare, in arts. 2, 4 and 7). Many leg-
islative documents from the Kievan era were preceded by a preamble in which
the legislator (the prince) announced that he had consulted with (his wife and
relatives and) his boyars. In some cases they were even mentioned by name.15
The gridin (in art. 1 of the Short Pravda) or grid’ (in art. 1 of the Expanded
Pravda) is the subject of one of the three parts of Stefanovich’s study of the
Kievan elite. Among the junior members of the prince’s retinue, the otroki (lit.
“youths” or “young men”), the gridi are regarded by the author as a private army
in the pay of the prince. Their numbers were much greater than those of the
boyars or the druzhinniki. According to Stefanovich, who pointed to several
parallel developments in proto-medieval Western and Central Europe, they
were employed especially during the reign of the first Rurikid princes, up to
Iaroslav Mudryi, in the campaigns for the collection of tribute. With the estab-
lishment of the Kievan empire their role lost much of its importance and they
gradually merged with the lower layers of the elite.16
With the proliferation of the Rurikid house, a growing number of princes
without principalities of their own emerged. They would normally enter the
service of a more powerful relative and then constitute a separate section of
the class of great boyars (see the section on “service princes” in Chapter 14).
The original equality of druzhina members initially found expression in
their freedom to join and to leave. This right continued to be enjoyed by the
Kievan boyars, who were entitled to leave their prince and enter the service
of another prince. Once boyars came to be rewarded for their service with
land grants and these grants tended to be inherited within the boyar’s fam-
ily, the old system became untenable.17 The rise of Muscovy hegemony was
15 E.g. an immunity charter from Oleg Ivanovich, grand prince of Riazan’, from around 1371,
mentions nine persons, one of them with a Tatar name, and two with their office (an
okol’nichii and a chashnik); prp iii, 96–97.
16 Stefanovich, Boiare, 304–358.
17 Cf. P.S. Stefanovich, “Kniaz’ i boiare: kliatva vernosti i pravo ot”ezda”, A.A. Gorskii (a.o.,
eds.), Drevniaia Rus’. Ocherki politicheskogo i sotsial’nogo stroia, Moskva, 2008, 148–269;
a ccompanied by increasing curtailment of boyar mobility, as documented by

the numerous treaties concluded between the grand princes of Moscow and
the princes of adjacent territories.
While the quality of prince was unconditionally inheritable,18 the same did
not apply to boyars. Sons of boyars would usually try to attain high offices,
like their fathers and ancestors, and this resulted in the establishment of regu-
lar boyar families. Membership of such a family did not automatically involve
boyar status; socially less successful members would still be known as “boyars’
children” (deti boiarskie); in the 15th century the deti boiarskie had come to
constitute a genuine social class and were mentioned as such in legislation.19
The lower end of the boyar class was therefore not clearly defined and merged
with the lower nobility.
In the Muscovy state, the highest echelon of the boyar class was formed
by the boiare vvedennye (the ‘introduced’ boyars) and the boiare putnye (the
boyars who headed a put’, a department), both offices depending on appoint-
ment by the grand prince.
In his discussion of the development of the Kievan upper class, D’iakonov
has stressed the importance of the relative wealth of an individual. Junior dru-
zhina members, he argued, contributed their personal loyalty and commit-
ment to the prince, while boyars or the ‘prince’s men’ also brought their private
armed supporters.20 The prince could elevate an individual to boyar status,21
and would presumably endow the new boyar adequately. When prince Vladi-
mir Mstislavich proposed in 1169 to elevate his junior druzhina (the detskie) to
boyar status in order to bypass his recalcitrant boyars, the plan failed because
his means were inadequate.22
The milostniki, encountered in 12th century sources, possibly represented
a special category of persons in the lower ranges of the elite. Tikhomirov has
been the only author who has paid serious attention to them.23 The term m ilost’
S.B. Veselovskii, “Ocherki obrazovaniia Moskovskogo boiarstva”, Moskovskoe gosudarstvo:

xv–xvii vv. Iz nauchnogo naslediia, Moskva, 2008, 74–140 (at 80–92); Veselovskii’s paper
on the boyars of Moscow was first published in S.B. Veselovskii, Issledovaniia po istorii
klassa sluzhilykh zemlevladel’tsev, Moskva, 1969, 465–519.
18 There are very few examples of Rurikid families losing or abandoning princely status,
Tatishchev and Musorgskii being among them.
19 E.g. in art. 21 of the Charter of Belo Ozero of 1488, prp iii, 173; rz ii, 195; Kaiser, Laws, 125.
20 D’iakonov, 81–86.
21 Vladimir did so in 992, see Prim. Chron.
22 D’iakonov, 85.
23 Mostly in M.N. Tikhomirov, “Uslovnoe feodal’noe derzhanie na Rusi v xii v.”, id., Drevna-
ia Rus’, Moskva, 1975, 233–239 (orig. in Akademiku Borisu Dmitrievichu Grekovu ko dniu
600 chapter 19
(“grace”, “favour”, “free gift”), from which milostnik has obviously been derived,
is mentioned in art. 111 of the Expanded Pravda, which elaborates on the basic
provision on slavery in art. 110. Art. 110 described the basic three forms of slav-
ery and art. 111 added a few similar situations which did not lead to slavery: any-
one who worked v dache (“for a gift”, i.e. for money), or po khlebe (“for bread”,
i.e. for wages in kind), or po pridat”tse (“for an additional allowance”, the exact
meaning is unclear) did not become a slave. The provision then continued by
laying down that “the favour” (milost’) was to be returned when the full period
agreed had not been served (ozhe ne dokhodiat’ goda, to vorochati emu milost’).
There is no agreed reading of art. 111, neither of its general sense, nor of
several of its crucial terms.24 Tikhomirov regarded the recipients of the milost’
(milostniki) as junior members of the retinue of a prince or a wealthy boyar,
generally of unfree origin, who were employed primarily as armed followers.
They were rewarded with money, arms and other valuables, and then also with
land. In this way they became one of the precursors of the later dvoriane.
Although in later years and up to the present day dvoriane has been the gen-
eral term for nobles, its original meaning was ‘courtiers’, referring to princely
servants below the rank of boyars, and appearing first in the Russian North.25
The 1264–1265 treaty between Novgorod and the grand prince of Tver’ makes
this very clear by forbidding the prince, and “your princess, your boyars and
your dvoriane”, to hold villages on Novgorod territory (art. 12). Dvoriane make an
appearance in all the Novgorod-Tver’ treaties, in the Novgorod and Pskov Char-
ters, and in the Charter of Dvinaland. In all these cases the dvorianin appears
as a servant, an official, of the prince. They were recruited mostly from the pool
of free persons under the prince’s control, but also from the lower stratum of
the druzhina, such as the otroki (lit. “youths”) and detskie (id.), m entioned in
s emidesiateletiiu, Moskva, 1952, 100–104); also id., Drevnerusskie goroda, Moskva, 2008,
124–125 (orig., Moskva, 1946), and id., Posobie, 110.
25 Cf. M.B. Sverdlov, “Dvoriane v Drevnei Rusi”, Ezhov, V.A. (ed.), Iz istorii feodal’noi Rossii.
Stat’i i ocherki k 70-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia prof. V.V. Mavrodina, Leningrad, 1978, 54–59.
The earliest literary mention is in the Laurentian Copy of the Suzdal’ Chronicle in the de-
scription of the assassination of prince Andrei Bogoliubskii in 1175 (psrl I vyp.2, 369–370).
An early example from a legal text is the 13th century treaty between Novgorod and prince
Iaroslav Iaroslavich of Tver’ (usually dated 1264–1265), art. 20; see gvnp No.1, 10; prp ii,
136; Kaiser, Laws, 68. Even earlier is the term bozhie dvoriane (“God’s noblemen”), which
obviously referred to the knights of the German Order, in art. 36 of the 1229 treaty be-
tween Smolensk and Riga (prp ii, 67). On dvoriane in the Vladimir-Suzdal’ grand princi-
pality, Iu. A. Limonov, Vladimiro-Suzdal’skaia Rus’, Leningrad, 1987, 150–173.
the Expanded Pravda.26 Froianov observed that, although the use of dvorianin
was originally restricted to the North of Russia, the collective dvor was used in
Southern Russia to refer to all the court servants of a prince.27
In most of the other Novgorod-Tver’ treaties, dvorianin is interchangeable
with slug (“servant”, cf. art. 7 of the 1264–1265 treaty with parallel formulas in a
1270 treaty, a 1304–1305 treaty, a 1307–1308 treaty, a 1326–1327 treaty, and a 1371
treaty).28 The ‘noble’ status of dvoriane (slugi) is confirmed by the fact that
they, along with princes and boyars, were capable of holding ‘indentured ser-
vants’ (zakladniki), see e.g. art. 18 of the 1326–1327 Novgorod-Tver’ treaty, which
expressly forbad them all to recruit zakladniki on Novgorod territory.
In the majority of the sources the dvorianin appears only sporadically. The
Code of Ivan iii of 1497 mentioned boyars and numerous government offi-
cials, but was completely silent about dvoriane. Instead, a profusion of offi-
cials is indicated by the name of their office. While the highest positions were
reserved to the boyar class, officials of medium rank constituted the corps of
dvoriane. They occupied posts in the general service of the prince (a dvorskii
or steward, a volostel’ or rural agent, a lovchii or forest and hunting agent), in
military service, and in the justice system (a tiun or sheriff, a pristav or bai-
liff, also nedel’shchik).29 Being a dvorianin depended primarily on the position
occupied, not on birth. Nobility (dvorianstvo) in the sense of a closed class,
defined by birth, therefore did not yet exist, and would appear in Russia only
by the end of the 17th century. This is also illustrated by the fact that boyars
could have dvoriane of their own. In fact, anybody who had a “court” (dvor),
such as a monastery or an important local official, might employ servitors (not
being rank-and-file peasants or workers) who would be called dvoriane.30
Freemen
It would be unrealistic to view a medieval society, such as that of Kievan
Russia, as consisting of a general population of ordinary citizens with a few ad-
ditional special categories of persons, such as princes and nobles, clergy, and
26 In the view of Sergeevich, Drevnosti i, 497. D’iakonov (81) believed that unfree persons
and even slaves (kholopy) could be elevated to the status of dvoriane.
27 Froianov, KRsp, 95–98 ; Nachala, 572–575.
28 The treaty of 1264–1265 (see previous footnote) was followed by similar treaties of 1266–
1267 (gvnp No.2, 10–11 ; prp ii, 137–138), 1270 (gvnp No.3, 11–13; prp ii, 138–141), 1304–1305
(gvnp No.6, 15–16 ; Kaiser, Laws, 69–71), 1307–1308 (gvnp Nos.9–10, 19–22), 1326–1327
(gvnp No.14, 26–28; Kaiser, Laws, 72–74), and 1371 (gvnp No.15, 28–30; Kaiser, Laws, 75–78).
29 Cf. I. Porai-Koshits, Istoriia russkogo dvorianstva ot ix do kontsa xviii veka, Moskva, 2003
(orig. Sankt-Peterburg, 1900), 48–52, 62–69.
30 Sergeevich, Drevnosti i, 499–500, offers many examples.
602 chapter 19
unfree persons. To be sure, it was preceded by a considerably more egalitarian

type of society. This is reflected by the earliest phase of the rp, particularly by
the first article of Iaroslav’s Pravda, defining the sanction for killing an ‘ordi-
nary person’, the muzh. In the next phase, the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons, social
differentiation was already more pronounced, and this tendency continued in
the Expanded Pravda. Anyway, it has to be kept in mind that even in pre-Kie-
van (pagan) times the existence of slavery is well-documented, which implies
that at that stage the mass of the population did not constitute a single block
of persons endowed with more or less equal rights.
The few authors who express the intention to describe the legal position of
‘ordinary people’, the middle class between princes and nobles on one side and
the unfree on the other, abandon their effort almost immediately by starting to
discuss the position of two specific groups, the merchants and the craftsmen.31
The closest one gets to a designation of the common people is the term chernye
liudi, ‘black people’, or collectively the chern’. An early occurrence of the term
is in the so-called Testament (Rukopisanie) of the Novgorod prince Vsevolod
Mstislavich, which effectively constituted the guild charter of the merchants
of the church of St. John the Baptist. It is dated around 1137.32 It provided for
the representation of the well-to-do (zhit’i) and the common people (chernye)
among the aldermen of the guild. The common people were represented by
the Novgorod tysiatskii (the highest-ranking city official after the posadnik).33
In the Charter of Dvina Land (1397), the chernye liudi are mentioned in the pre-
amble, in opposition not to the well-to-do, but to the boyars. This text indicates
that ‘black people’ were not an exclusively urban phenomenon; moreover, they
were free persons.34 They are mentioned occasionally in the 15th century, but
after that the term becomes obsolete.35
One of the few clear pictures of social stratification is in art. 7 of the Church
Statute of Iaroslav which set fines for parents who failed in their duty to find
a husband for their daughters; great boyars paid 5 gold grivna, lesser boyars
one gold grivna, well-to-do persons (narochity liudi) 12 (ordinary) grivna or
2 rubles, and ordinary people (prostaia chad’) one silver grivna of one ruble.
31 E.g. D’iakonov, 86–87; Iushkov, Stroi, 264–265.

32 The church of St. John the Baptist in the court of Petriata, also called na Opokakh, was
founded in 1127 (Novg. Chron.) and Vsevolod, son of Mstislav, grandson of Vladimir Mono-
makh, died in 1138.
33 Text and comments in prp ii, 174–185. See also Iushkov, Stroi, 264–265.
34 Kaiser translates chernye liudi as “taxpaying people”.
35 E.g. in art. 7 of the Code of 1497; in the treaty of 1496 between the Riazan’ princes Ivan
Vasil’evich and Fedor Vasil’evich (prp iii, at 281; ddg, No.84, at 335).
The well-to-do people mentioned above (narochity liudi, and zhit’i liudi in
Novgorod) are encountered in legal and general sources under various guises
and it is difficult to determine the exact content of the various terms. “Good
people” (dobrye liudi) are mentioned several times in connection with proce-
dure, where they may be called upon as assessors or witnesses.36 But the Met-
ropolitan’s Justice (art. 7) mentions the “good people” as a social class between
the lesser boyars and the well-to-do (narochity) people.37 So possibly the “good
people” represented the upper layer of the well-to-do people, not only at least
reasonably well-off, but also enjoying sufficient social prestige, solid citizens,
“good men and true”. This view is further corroborated by other sources con-
firming that reliability, based not only on wealth but also on respectability, was
the decisive criterion for including somebody among the “good people”.38
The sources allow us therefore to distinguish between various categories of
persons of different legal status and they may give some indication of what
these differences consisted of. What they do not offer is a definition of these
categories; what would make a person a boyar, or a member of the well-to-do
citizenry. Perhaps no clear-cut definition existed and the borderlines between
the adjoining categories were fluid, a situation not unknown in medieval West-
ern Europe where well-to-do burghers could gradually attain noble status by
adopting a ‘noble’ lifestyle.
In the discussion on legal conceptualization in Chapter 1 we developed the
view that legal concepts do not ‘pre-exist’, but are created, invented, in order to
construct an appropriate legal framework to deal with particular issues. Mod-
ern views on the rule of law, civil rights, etc., require concepts such as “the
citizen” or “society as the organic whole of all human persons within a certain
territory”. Other legal cultures may get their business done without recourse
to such ideas and the anachronistic application of our views to such cultures
might not produce important new insights.
We intend therefore to look in somewhat more detail at divisions which
were en vogue in early medieval Russia. Most of them were connected with
the different relationships within urban and rural situations; the legal status of
specific groups or classes in either towns or the countryside has already been
treated in the relevant chapters on towns (15) and rural Russia (18). What re-
mains are those groups which straddle the urban–rural divide. They include
36 Pskov Court Charter, arts. 56–57; Novgorod Court Charter, art. 25; Beloozero Charter, art. 19.
37 This provision is obviously based on art. 2 of the Church Statute of Iaroslav. In other
provisions of this text narochity liudi appears, apparently as a synonym of dobrye liudi (e.g.
art. 3).
38 Cf. art. 4 of the ‘Testament’ (Rukopisanie) of Vsevolod Mstislavich (prp ii, 176), or the
repeated references to dobrye liudi in the Smolensk Pravda (prp ii, 57, 58, 68, 70).
604 chapter 19
princes and nobles (discussed above in this chapter) and the various categories
which could be regarded as the middle and lower (unfree) classes.
The urban middle class would embrace at least merchants and free crafts-
men (see also Chapter 15). From the earliest times on, the sources distinguish
between merchants engaged in long-distance trade (called gosti), and local
merchants (kuptsy). A merchant was generally a freeman, but the master of
a serf or slave could of course instruct the latter to act for him in a commer-
cial capacity. That this was a normal phenomenon is reflected in art. 117 of the
Expanded Pravda, which deals with the situation of the slave trading in the
market on his master’s orders and then becoming indebted. Unfree craftsmen,
i.e. in the service of a master, were quite common.
In Chapter 16 (on Novgorod) we saw that the boyars constituted a relatively
closed group, as opposed to the merchants, who were defined by their activity
and not so much by their descent. In Muscovy the boyar class was open to new
members, elevated to that status by the grand prince (tsar). Rich merchants in
particular, who were able to render material support to the prince’s projects,
were obvious candidates and there are several examples of gosti (merchants
engaged in foreign trade) being made boyars.39
In the countryside it would be more difficult to speak of a middle class. Its
backbone would be formed by free peasants, united in the village community,
but disposing also of individual plots of land. With the passing of time, how-
ever, peasant independence became more and more eroded until the typical
peasant was attached to the land owned by a master (prince, lord, or church).
This process evolved through the emergence of various categories of semi-free
(or semi-dependent) peasants, such as the riadovichi (appearing already in the
Short Pravda), the zakupy (in the Expanded Pravda and later), the zakladniki in
the Novgorod region, the izorniki in Pskov, etc.
Craftsmen, free and unfree, might also be found in the larger villages (e.g. a
blacksmith).
Izgoi or déclassés
The izgoi is generally defined as a person who has been rejected by his own
world (family, village, town, clan, etc.) and the term has survived to this day
39 Several members of the Golovín family, descended from Greek merchants on the Crimea
who had migrated to Moscow in the 14th century, served as treasurers (kaznachei) to the
Moscow princes, an office which implied boyar rank. Cf. V.B. Perkhavko, “Gost’ i boiarin
velikogo kniazia”, A.N. Sakharov (ed.), Ot Drevnei Rusi do novoi Rossii. Iubileinyi sbornik,
posviashchennyi chlenu-korrespondentu ran Ia.N. Shchapovu, Moskva, 2005, 191–203.
with the meaning of “social outcast”.40 The izgoi appears only rarely in the
sources, the main places being art. 1 of the rp (both versions) and the Church
Statute of prince Vsevolod of Novgorod. This has not prevented the emergence
of a very substantive body of literature.41 As almost all the leading historians
of Kievan Russia formulated their own more or less comprehensive theories
about this period, the modest data on the izgoi presented an opportunity for
amplification on the basis of theoretical constructs.
In art. 1 of the Short Pravda the izgoi is included in the list of persons for
whose killing a 40 grivna wergeld is due, where he is placed between the first
set of persons (ending with the prince’s bodyguard, the mechnik) and the man
from Novgorod (slovenin). In art. 1 of the Expanded Pravda this part of the for-
mula is almost identical.
More information is provided by the so-called Church Statute of prince
Vsevolod of Novgorod.42 This document is itself rife with obscurity, starting
with its date and the identity of its ostensible author. One of its provisions
defined “church people” (art. 6 in the prp, art. 17 in Shchapov’s edition). The
definition indicated three categories of izgoi: an illiterate son of a priest, a slave
(kholop) who had paid his way to freedom, and a merchant in debt (bankrupt).
The definition then continued: “and we add a fourth form of being an izgoi
ourselves: a prince who has become orphaned, and persons in monasteries,
sick-wards, inns and pilgrim hostels.” The definition is part of a complex of
rules about the legal status of the Church and “church people”; it dealt there-
fore with izgoi who had come under church jurisdiction and did not exclude
the existence of other izgoi.
Leaving aside the various theoretical frameworks which have been pro-
posed for explaining the status of the izgoi, as well as the more fanciful solu-
tions suggested,43 the general opinion remains that an izgoi was a person who
for one reason or another had left or lost his normal social setting with the
traditional rights and duties attached to it. A prince as well as a slave could be-
come an izgoi. The phenomenon would occur especially in times of increased
social friction and then the law would have to deal with individuals who no
40 Cf. Tikhomirov, Posobie, 149; Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 247–255; Iushkov, Ocherki, 119–124;
Froianov, Nachala, 460–469. This interpretation is fully supported by etymological argu-
ments, as pointed out by many authors.
41 Discussed and summarized by Baranowski, 175–181.
42 prp ii, 160–173; Ia.N. Shchapov (ed.), Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy xi–xv vv., Moskva,
1976, 153–156. Also in Kaiser, Laws, 59–63 (who follows Shchapov’s numeration).
43 As Vernadsky, in Vernadsky, Laws, 27, who suggests that the izgoi of art. 1 was a member of
the princely retinue of Ossetian or Circassian origin.
606 chapter 19
longer fitted the traditional patterns. An izgoi who did not succeed in finding
his footing would eventually join the growing reservoir of dependent persons,
although originally the status of izgoi did not entail loss of freedom, as indi-
cated by the wergeld allotted for his killing in the rp.
Baranowski’s conclusion, at the end of his exhaustive review of the various
viewpoints is worth quoting:
From all these opinions concerning the izgoi one might conclude that
the term does not denote a territorially or ethnically, but socially deter-
mined category. The izgoi are people who have been excluded from, or
who have left their social community (village or town, family, social class)
and who are initially without social, economic or legal roots, but then
end up under the protection of the prince or of the Church, although not
of boyars.44
The limited evidence from times after the rp suggests that the izgoi in fact
merged with the mass of the dependent population. The charter of the Smo-
lensk prince Rostislav Mstislavich (reliably dated 1137), in which the relations
between the prince and the newly established bishopric of Smolensk were reg-
ulated, mentions the village of Drosenskoe with its land and its izgoi, donated
to the bishop.45
Church People
A formal characteristic of “church people” was that this distinction, unlike all
others, cut across all other distinctions. In principle, one was born within a
certain class and stayed in it until death. But members of all classes could be-
come church people at some time in their lives. Even princes and princesses,
when they felt the end of life approaching, would often become monks or
nuns.
Church people embraced not only the actual clergy (priests, deacons, monks,
nuns), but also a host of other persons. The Church Statute of St. Vladimir,
the earliest statute dealing with matters of Church and state, already offered a
list of church people (tserkovnye liudi). Belonging to this category entailed all
kinds of legal consequences and it will be more convenient to deal with this
subject in more depth in Chapter 21.
44 Baranowksi, 181 (my translation, ff). Szeftel-Eck translate izgoi as déclassés, M. Szeftel.
A. Eck, Documents de droit public relatifs à la Russie médiévale, Bruxelles, 1963, 31, 68.
45 prp ii, 37–42, at 41. Kaiser, Laws, 51–55, at 54.
Unfree Persons: Serfs and Slaves

People traditionally regarded as free, such as nobles or merchants, may also
be restricted in their freedom in a number of ways. Our modern concept of
unfree people is probably based on the equally modern concept of the citi-
zen as a person enjoying the full panoply of traditional personal rights. Unfree
persons would then be those who lacked at least some of the most significant
of these rights, such as the right to move around freely or to own and inherit
property (especially land). At the lowest level are those who lack the capacity
to enjoy any rights at all, in other words, who do not participate in legal traf-
fic as persons – slaves in the strict sense, non-persons who are objects and
not subjects of rights. Such a definition of slavery has the advantage of com-
plete legal clarity. It is also not unrealistic, because slavery in this strict sense
has occurred in various cultures, including an early phase in Russian history.
Such slavery itself, however, has certain unrealistic features (quite apart from
ethical considerations), because a slave, as a human being, inevitably relates
to its surroundings in a way different from the closest comparable ‘object’, an
animal. Even ‘classic’ slave-owning societies therefore had to address legal situ-
ations which could not arise with animals but only with slaves: liability for
legal transactions concluded by a slave on the orders of his master; the use of
slaves as witnesses; criminal offences committed by slaves, to mention only a
few obvious examples. Strict slavery was therefore inherently unstable and li-
able to be eroded by the demands of daily life. As a result, it turns out that the
borderlines between free and unfree, and between unfree persons and slaves,
are rarely as clear as stipulated from the start. This certainly applies to medi-
eval Russia where the measure of freedom enjoyed by all classes was probably
more modest than in medieval Western Europe. There were various catego-
ries of dependent persons who found themselves somewhere between the
fully-fledged slave and the freeman; most of these formed part of the peasant
population and have accordingly been discussed in Chapter 18. Several of them
occur already in the rp (e.g. smerdy, zakupy). In the countryside, the smerdy
would probably make up the majority of the unfree population and they could
be regarded as serfs. The Expanded Pravda contained a general recognition of
the existence of non-slaves who were still in a position of dependence (art. 111)
and this provision was included in the concluding part of the law, entitled
“On Slavery” (see below).
Slaves in Kievan Russia

A precise legal definition of a slave in Kievan Russia is hard to give, as certain
aspects of his legal status changed over time. By way of a general understand-
ing we could start from the position that a slave was a person who depended
608 chapter 19
in most of these aspects on the will of a master, capable of buying and selling
a slave.46
The existence of slavery among the Eastern Slavs in pre-Kievan times is
well-documented by the works of oriental geographers. The earliest of these is
a Persian, Ibn Rustah, the author of the “Book of Precious Records” (903–925),
who supposedly visited Kiev and Novgorod himself. Like most oriental au-
thors, he distinguished between Russes and Slavs. The Russes, he relates, would
attack the Slavs and sell them as prisoners into slavery in southern lands. They
themselves were used to treating slaves well. He is less clear about the Slavs,
but the communication that their ruler would hand thieves over into the su-
pervision of local rulers of remote areas suggests that they also knew slavery.47
A raiding campaign by Russes along the Caspian coast of present-day Azer-
baidzhan, occurring around 912 and involving the capture of prisoners for the
slave trade, is described by Al-Masudi, an Arab author who died in 956. This
campaign had all the characteristics of a Viking raid and supports the view that
the Russes of the Arab geographers were of Scandinavian origin.48 Al-Garnati,
an Andalusian Arab author who visited Russia and Eastern Europe during the
years 1050–1053, designated the population of Southern Russia as Slavs, with-
out mentioning any Russes. These Slavs, according to Garnati, kept slaves and
engaged in the slave trade.49 This information agrees with the knowledge we
have from other sources that the Scandinavian element had by that time been
absorbed into the general Slav population.50
46 R. Hellie, Slavery in Russia 1450–1725, Chicago 1982, although dealing with another period,
discusses definitions of slavery at 18–21, 33–64, and 77–80, and these observations are
of great relevance to the present topic, although he fails to come up with an unambigu-
ous answer himself; in Russian pre-revolutionary literature slavery is discussed at length
by Sergeevich, Drevnosti, 102–159; P.I. Beliaev, “Kholopstvo i dolgovyia otnosheniia v
drevnem russkom prave”, Iuridicheskii Vestnik, 1915, kn. ix (i), 115–152; Vlad.-Bud., Obzor,
386–401; among Soviet authors A.A. Zimin, Kholopy na Rusi (s drevneishikh vremen do
kontsa xv v.), Moskva, 1973, is the principal work. Generally, Soviet scholars appeared to
have been more interested in the ‘loan slavery’ (kabal’noe kholopstvo) of the 16th century
and later times.
47 T.N. Dzhakson, I.G. Konovalova, A.V. Podosinov (eds.), Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh
istochnikov: Khrestomatiia, t.iii: Vostochnye istochniki, Moskva, 2009, 47–49.
48 Idem, 115–116.
49 Idem, 143–144.
50 The question of slavery among the Eastern Slavs is discussed in detail by I.Ia. Froianov
in Rabstvo i dannichestvo u vostochnykh slavian, Sankt-Peterburg, 1996, 74–103. Froianov
cavalierly assigns the Russes to the Slavic ethnic group, disregarding the clear distinction
often made by oriental authors. Where the latter do not distinguish, they presumably
refer to the entire population of the region in question, whether designated as Russes or
The main information on slavery provided by the Primary Chronicle is that

its existence was a common phenomenon during the 10th and 11th centuries
and that the slave trade was an important economic activity. The Chronicle
refers to slaves generally as cheliad’, a collective noun, and cheliadin, an indi-
vidual slave.51 These terms were also used in the texts of the treaties with Byz-
antium, included in the Chronicle. The 911 and 944 treaties paid considerable
attention to slavery, particularly of course to slavery issues arising in Russo-
Byzantine relations. Art. 9 of the 911 treaty directed Russians resp. Greeks who
came across Greek resp. Russian slaves in foreign lands to redeem them with
subsequent reimbursement of the price paid, or of the going market price for
a slave. Russian resp. Greek prisoners sold among the Greeks resp. Russians
were to be ransomed for twenty gold pieces (bezants) – art. 11. A Russian slave
who had run away or had been stolen or forcibly abducted could be redeemed
by the Russians and the Greek authorities were obliged to co-operate in this
procedure (art. 12). The slave’s testimony could be accepted in confirming the
course of events.52 This is of interest, because in later sources the testimony of
slaves was normally not taken into consideration.
In the 944 treaty the question of runaway slaves was split. Art. 3 dealt with
Russian slaves and art. 4 with Greek slaves, sheltering with Greeks or resp. Rus-
sians. If the slave of visiting Russians had fled and was discovered, he could be
taken back; if he could not be found, the Russian (owner) had to confirm by
oath (that his slave had run away), and then he would receive two silk cloths
(pavoloki) per slave (from the Greek authorities presumably). It would be dif-
ficult for visiting Russians to hide a fugitive Greek slave; it is implied in art. 4
that such a slave was returned and the provision only looked at the special case
when the slave had taken something with him (when he fled). If the property
was undamaged, the owner was to pay the Russian two gold pieces.53
as Slavs. Where they do distinguish, Russes refer to the Scandinavian element, and Slavs
to the Slavic element. This construction agrees with information from other sources and
provides the most satisfactory explanation of the inconsistent nomenclature of the orien-
tal texts.
51 The term is etymologically cognate to chelovek (“man”, “human being”), chado (“child”,
“offspring”), with many connections to the vocabulary of other Indo-European languages.
See A.A. Zimin, Kholopy na Rusi, Moskva, 1973, 15–17.
52 At least this is the reading put forward by Zimin in his modern Russian translation, prp i,
13. Kaiser’s translation (Kaiser, Laws, 6) is different.
53 This is the reading of Kisterev, who disagreed with Zimin’s explanation in prp i. It raises
more problems than it solves. See S.N. Kisterev, “Cheliadin v russko-grecheskikh dogovo-
rakh x v.”, dgve 2002, Moskva, 2004, 200–213.
610 chapter 19
Cheliadin occurs in the rp, in both versions, where it co-exists with kho-
lop (male slave) and roba (female slave).54 Art. 16 of the Short Pravda (and its
much amended version in the Expanded Pravda, art. 38) removes any doubt
about the cheliadin being a genuine slave, treated as a commercial item and
not endowed with personal rights. These provisions were concerned with the
involuntary loss of a slave by its owner and displayed some similarity with the
procedure regulated in the treaties of 911 and 944. They involved a procedure
called confrontment (svod), consisting in the reconstruction of the chain of
possession between the original owner and the person in whose possession
the slave was encountered. It would normally require the slave’s co-operation,
and this is made explicit by art. 38 of the Expanded Pravda.55 Art. 11 of the Short
Pravda is also reminiscent of the arrangements of the 911 and 944 treaties and
dealt with the situation where a runaway slave was hiding with a Viking or Kol-
biag. The terse formulation seems cryptic, but can easily be explained in the
light of the origin of this part of the Short Pravda (discussed in the section on
the Pravda of Iaroslav) and the more extensive formula of the corresponding
provision of the Expanded Pravda (art. 32). The latter rule omitted the specific
reference to a foreign possessor, prescribed a public announcement of the loss
of the slave at the market place, granted the possessor a three-day period in
which to hand over the slave to his owner, and allowed the owner to take back
his slave together with a three grivna fine after three days. This procedure is
presumably implied in the brief formula of art. 11 of the Short Pravda. The che-
liadin is mentioned once more in passing in the Expanded Pravda (art. 99), in
wording which again emphasizes the slave’s character as a commercial item
(“the offspring of a slave or of cattle”, ot cheliadi plod ili ot skota).
In the Short Pravda, the kholop makes his first appearance in art. 17 in a situ-
ation which mirrors the one described in art. 11 (the slave hiding with a Viking).
A slave (kholop) who has struck a freeman and who then hides with his own
master should be handed over for punishment, otherwise the master is to pay
12 grivna (to the injured person); if the injured person comes across the slave
later on, he is allowed to beat (kill?56) him. Art. 26 set the wergeld for a kholop
54 On the legal aspects of slavery in medieval Russia generally, see E.I. Kolycheva, Kholopstvo
i krepostnichestvo (konets xv–xvi vv.), Moskva, 1971, 202–240.
55 In Kaiser’s translation: “… and this property is not cattle, so it is not possible to say «[I do
not know] from whom I purchased [the slave]»; but [pursue the confrontment] on the
[slave’s] word until the end …”.
56 According to Zimin in his modern Russian translation, prp i, 82. This reading is con-
firmed by the parallel text of art. 65 of the Expanded Pravda which explicitly mentioned
that Iaroslav had allowed the killing of a slave who had struck a freeman, but added
at 5 grivna; this provisions is part of the long list of officials and servants of the
prince; the wergeld was obviously to be paid to the prince. As has been dis-
cussed in the section on smerdy, this provision mentions smerdy and kholopy
together, the wergeld for each of them being set at 5 grivna. The abduction of
a male (kholop) or female slave (roba) entailed a payment of 12 grivna to the
master, za obidu (“for the injury”, art. 29 of the Short Pravda). This payment
came on top of the return of the slave or the payment of the slave’s value.57
Art. 16 of the Expanded Pravda corresponds to art. 26 of the Short Pravda
(the 5 grivna wergeld for a smerd or a kholop), but added the female slave
(roba), who merited a 6 grivna wergeld. The following provision (art. 17) set
the wergeld for a tutor or a wet-nurse (of the prince’s household) at 12 grivna,
adding “even if they be a kholop or a roba”.
Art. 46 of the Expanded Pravda is the last article in a block of provisions de-
voted to theft and deals with theft committed by slaves (kholopy). Unlike other
thieves, they were not fined by the prince, “because they are not free”, but their
master paid twice the amount stolen to the complainant.58 The text referred to
“slaves of princes, boyars, or monks”.
In the later layers of the Expanded Pravda, following the Statute of Mono-
makh, which begins at art. 53, there are two main blocks of provisions, along
with a few isolated provisions between them, which prominently concern the
legal status of slaves. The first one starts at art. 56 and deals first with the in-
dentured peasant, the zakup. It introduces a new concept in art. 61, the full
slave (obel’nyi kholop), indicating a further differentiation within the class of
unfree persons. The full slave is mentioned again in art. 63 (the master of a
full slave who had abducted a horse was to pay 2 grivna to the injured party).
Art. 65 has been mentioned above and offered a more detailed parallel to art.
17 of the Short Pravda (slave striking freeman). Art. 66 prohibited slaves from
testifying, but allowed the testimony of a boyar’s overseer (tivun, obviously an
unfree person) if no free person was available to give evidence; in minor cases
the partially free zakup was allowed to testify. Art. 85 addressed this question
somewhat differently. Such inconsistencies are caused by the character of the
two versions of the rp: various more or less consistent legislative texts having
that Iaroslav’s sons had replaced this sanction by financial compensation. See also
B.A. Romanov, Liudi i nravy Drevnei Rusi, Leningrad, 1947, 52.
57 Zimin, op. cit., 100. According to Baranowski, 297, the 12 grivna fine was to be paid to the
prince, but this reading is flatly contradicted by the text of art. 29 (platiti emu za obidu,
“pay him for the injury”).
58 I have discussed the double-value fine of art. 46, a curious and unusual parallel with
Roman law, in my “Roman Law in Medieval Russia”, in Feldbrugge, lmr, 59–128, at 113.
612 chapter 19
been amalgamated into a single longer text. Art. 85 concludes a block of regu-
lations concerning different, mostly rural, disputes. It states that such cases
are to be resolved through the testimony of witnesses. Although a slave cannot
testify, a free person may rely on the word of a slave (kholop) and demand reso-
lution of the dispute through trial by hot iron. If he lost the case, he had to pay
the other party one grivna, for having relied on the word of a slave.
In a similar manner, art. 89 contradicted art. 16 of the Expanded Pravda
(which more or less repeated the much older art. 26 of the Short Pravda), pre-
scribing a 5 grivna bloodwite (fine) for the killing of a male slave (of the prince)
and 6 grivna for killing a female slave. Art. 89, the operation of which was not
limited to slaves belonging to the prince, directed that the killing of a male or
female slave did not entail bloodwite, but if it was done without cause, the of-
fender was to pay compensation to the master of the slave and additionally a
12 grivna fine (prodazha) to the prince.
Art. 98, part of a block of provisions concerning inheritance law, provided
that if a freeman had children with a slave woman, the children (rob’i deti) did
not inherit, but received their freedom, together with the mother, upon the
death of the father.
The second main block starts at art. 110 and is headed “On slavery”. This is
the concluding part of the Expanded Pravda and it is generally regarded as a
coherent regulatory complex for slavery at the time of its enactment. There is
less agreement about the time of its enactment. Several authors have ascribed
it to the legislative activity of Vladimir Monomakh (1113–1125), but other (later)
12th century princes have also been considered.59 In his posthumously pub-
lished monograph on the rp, A.A. Zimin argued that its provisions go back to
the 10th century, with certain modifications from the 11th century.60
The “Slavery Statute” (Ustav o kholopstve) of the rp opens with two provi-
sions which contribute to the definition of what constitutes slavery; most of
the remaining provisions deal with fugitive slaves. Art. 110 defined “full slavery”
(obel’noe kholopstvo) by listing three origins of this status: a contract of sale,
marrying a female slave, accepting employment as someone’s overseer (tivun)
or steward. All commentators agree that there were several other origins of full
slavery, such as being born into slavery or having been made a prisoner of war.61
The point of art. 110 is apparently to define the ways in which a person might
enter slavery of his own will. For a completely destitute individual, accepting
59 A review of the literature is given by A.A. Zimin, Pravda Russkaia, Moskva, 1999, 255–276.
60 Ibidem, 275.
the status of somebody else’s kholop could have been the only option to escape
starvation. By regulating this process, art. 110 attempted to curb excesses.
It appears that “full slavery” as regulated by art. 110 and mentioned in other
provisions of the Expanded Pravda was actually slavery in the strict sense.
There are no rules on ‘not-full slavery’ in the rp; one should think of various
other categories of persons who were unfree or partially free, without being
slaves, such as the zakupy, who were just a step above ordinary (full) slaves.
The following rules of the Statute on Slavery (except art. 111) all concern full
slavery.62
Most authors regarded sale, the first, most general and probably most wide-
spread origin of full slavery, as covering self-sale into slavery.63 Among the con-
ditions were the presence of witnesses and of the slave himself. A person who
married a female slave was entitled to preserve his freedom by stipulating this
in the contract (riad). The same possibility was available to the person who
entered the service of a master as his steward or overseer.
Art. 111 enlarged on the restrictions implied in art. 110 by listing various con-
tracts which did not lead to slavery: working for money (a loan or a combina-
tion of a loan and wages), or for “bread” (upkeep), or something else put at his
disposal (such as tools). If the worker does not work off his debt within the
term agreed, he must return the loan.64 The status of such a person differed
little from that of the zakup, and therefore, if he ran away before his debt had
been paid, he would probably be covered by art. 56 of the Expanded Pravda,
which provided that a zakup who ran away and was captured became a full
slave.65
What these various arrangements illustrate is that the 12th century kholop
was no longer a ‘classic’ slave, a commercial item which happens to be alive and
able to speak, but a person with severely restricted rights, but a person never-
theless. The following rules of the Slavery Statute confirm this impression.
Arts. 112–116 and 118–120 all concern the fugitive kholop and ‘supersede’ (so
to speak) the older and much simpler rule of art. 32 of the Expanded Pravda,
concerning the fugitive cheliadin, itself a modernized version of the even older
rule of art. 11 of the Short Pravda. They suggest that runaway slaves were a com-
mon phenomenon and address various situations that could arise: penalizing
assistance to a runaway slave (art. 112), rewarding somebody who captures
62 Cf. Baranowski, ibidem; Zimin, Kholopy na Rusi, 181–197.

63 Baranowski, ibidem.
64 On this topic, see Iu.G. Alekseev, “Stat’i o «vdachestve»”, Vspomogatel’nye istoricheskie
distsipliny ix, Leningrad, 1978, 148–173.
65 Cf. Zimin in prp i, 186.
614 chapter 19
a runaway slave and penalizing him at the same time if he does not guard the
slave properly (art. 113), the procedure for repossessing a slave who has fled to
another town (art. 114), unwittingly aiding a runaway slave (arts. 115 and 116),
unwittingly buying a runaway slave (art. 118), and liability of the master for
actions of a runaway slave (arts. 119–120).
The final provision of the Statute on Slavery (and of the Expanded Pravda),
art. 121, dealt with the master’s liability for theft committed by his slave. The
master had the choice between handing over the slave (together with his
accomplices), or redeeming him. If the slave’s wife and children were not
involved in the theft, they need not be handed over. Zimin had pointed to
the incongruence of art. 121 and art. 46 of the Expanded Pravda. According
to the latter rule, thieving slaves were judged by the prince’s court, while art.
121 allowed the victim of the theft and the slave’s master to settle the matter
among themselves. This supports Zimin’s argument for an early origin of the
Statute on Slavery.66
If one considers the provisions on the cheliad’ and kholopy (roby) in the rp,
it is unmistakable that with regard to kholopy the accent appeared to be not so
much on their value as commercial items as on their value as members of their
master’s workforce. Combining this observation with the consideration
that cheliadin was almost completely replaced by kholop as the designation of
the slave in later documents, one could hypothesize that cheliad’ and cheliadin
were used initially to refer to human beings as objects of the slave trade and
kholop/roba as slave members of the work force.67
The two provisions on the cheliadin are included in the second part of the
oldest layer of the Short Pravda (arts. 11 and 16), the Pravda of Iaroslav, from
where they found their way into the Expanded Pravda (arts. 32 and 38). The
kholop appears in the same part of the Short Pravda (art. 17), but also in its
more recent layer, the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons (arts. 26 and 29).
In any modern appreciation of slavery as a legal institution it is hard to
distance oneself from ethical considerations based on Christian or humanist
views on the value of the human person. Putting aside these considerations
and looking at slavery from the point of view of legal ‘technology’, develop-
ments in early medieval Russia confirm our earlier conclusion that slavery as
a legal institution is inherently unstable. The ultimate economic purpose of
66 Ibidem, 188.
67 The semantic transformations of cheliad’ from early times to the 15th century are dis-
cussed by M.B. Sverdlov, “Ob obshchestvennoi kategorii «cheliad’» v Drevnei Rusi”, A.L.
Shapiro (ed.), Problemy istorii feodal’noi Rossii. Sbornik statei k 60-letiiu prof. V.V. Mavro-
dina, Leningrad, 1971, 53–58.
slavery is to put the slave to some economic use, either in domestic service or
as a member of the labour force. Only in the intermediate stage, when the slave
is being captured, transported and sold on the market, does he come close to
being a purely commercial object, without any rights, a non-person. Once he
has reached his destination this status cannot be maintained indefinitely and
is gradually eroded by the dictates of daily life. The strict borders between
slavery (being a non-person, without rights) and other states of dependency
become blurred. It becomes possible to enter and exit slavery as part of a deal
with a master. Slaves are no longer voiceless in law, they may under certain
conditions appear as witnesses, etc. Once slave-trading has come to an end, for
whatever reason, slavery is on the way out and is replaced by less extreme situ-
ations of dependency. The role of the Church is undeniable in this respect, at
least in Russia, as demonstrated by art. 30 of the Metropolitan’s Justice, which
condemned the killing of one’s own slave as an offence before God, admitting
simultaneously that it was not homicide in the eyes of the secular law.68
Later Developments: From Slave to Serf

The gradual dissolution of slavery in its strict original sense, evident already in
the more recent layers of the rp, continued during the following centuries.69
This phenomenon had been noticed in pre-revolutionary literature,70 but be-
came a prominent topic among Soviet medievalists, obviously because of its
strong ideological associations. In the Marxist view, slave-owning societies
were necessarily followed by feudal societies, with different sets of exploiters
(slave-owners vs. feudal lords) and exploited (slaves vs. feudal serfs). For B.D.
Grekov, the undisputed leader of this category of scholars in the Stalin era, the
slavery/enserfment sequence constituted the central theme in his treatment
of the later middle ages in his voluminous study on the history of the Russian
peasantry.71 In later years, the monographs of Kolycheva and Zimin (already
mentioned) were of considerable interest.
68 On the benign role of the Church in respect of slavery, see Zimin, Kholopy na Rusi, 239–
243; in standard Marxist fashion he explained this role by the Church’s interest in promot-
ing feudalism, where there is no place for slavery.
69 The transition from slavery to serfdom is the subject of a monograph by E.I. Kolycheva,
Kholopstvo i krepostnichestvo (konets xv–xvi v.), Moskva, 1971.
70 E.g. by Kliuchevskii, in a paper “Proiskhozhdenie krepostnogo prava v Rossii”, first pub-
lished in Russkaia Mysl’, 1885, Nos.8 and 10, also in V.O. Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia, t.vii,
Moskva, 1959, 238–317.
71 B.D. Grekov, Krest’iane na Rusi s drevneishikh vremen do xvii veka, Moskva/Leningrad,
1946, Part 4 (549–943).
616 chapter 19
In the Donation of Varlaam from around 1211, the oldest private char-
ter in Russia available in the original, a well-defined territory is donated to
the Novgorod monastery of Spaso-Khutynsk, “with its slaves [cheliad’] and
cattle”.72 But the 1229 treaty between Smolensk and Riga already went a step
beyond the equation of slaves and cattle by recognizing the existence of the
slave’s own property (in regulating unpaid debts between Russian and German
merchants, in art. 7).73
The Church Statute of prince Vsevolod (discussed above in the section on
the izgoi), tentatively dated to around the end of the 13th century,74 referred
to the slave (kholop) who had bought himself free as one of the three sources
of the izgoi status.75 This would represent another big step in the erosion of
original slavery; not only might a slave have his own money, he could also, in
principle, leave his status as a slave.
The limited number of sources from the 14th century confirms this trend.
Most of the treaties between Novgorod and the prince of Tver’, for example,
stipulated that the Tver’ prince was not to hear complaints by Novgorod slaves
against their masters, implying that slaves generally had a right to complain to
the authorities about their masters.76
At the end of the 14th century the killing of a full slave by his master was still
not a punishable offence, but it was condemned as being morally wrong (sin-
ful) by the Church; art. 30 of the Metropolitan’s Justice has been mentioned
above. Art. 11 of the Dvina Land Charter (1397) is quite similar: “If a master sins
and strikes his own male or female slave and death results, the lieutenants are
not to judge him and do not take any fees.” It is to be noted that art. 30 of the
Metropolitan’s Justice strictly limited impunity to the killing of a full slave (pol-
nyi cheliadin); the same provision added that the killing of a zakup (indentured
labourer) or a hired labourer (naimit) constituted homicide. The latter at least
is probably to be regarded as a slave, because art. 29 speaks of the cheliadin-
naimit, the slave/hired labourer.77
The most powerful factor in the ‘humanization’ of the slave, his transfor-
mation from a commercial asset into a person possessing certain rights, was
72 prp ii, 108; gvnp (No.104), 161–162.

73 prp ii, 54–71, at 60–61.
74 Cf. Ia.N. Shchapov (ed.), Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy xi–xiv vv., Moskva, 1976, 153.
75 Art. 12 in the prp ii edition (164), art. 17 in Shchapov’s edition (157).
76 Treaty of 1304–1305, art. 21, gvnp (No.6), 15–16 ; treaty of 1326–1327, art. 29, gvnp (No.14),
26–28 ; treaty of 1371, art. 27, gvnp (No.15), 28–30 ; also in Kaiser, Laws, 69–78.
77 Iu.G. Alekseev discussed the exact meaning of cheliadin-naimit in the Metropolitan’s
Justice in “Cheliadin-naimit Pravosudiia mitropolich’ego”, V.T. Pashuto (ed.), Rossiia na
putiakh tsentralizatsii, Moskva, 1982, 41–48.
the allotment of agricultural land to slaves. Again, as argued before, a modern

ownership concept cannot be applied; the question to be asked in a medieval
setting is not: Who owns this land?, but: Who can do what with this land?
The transformation of the slave, looked at from a different angle, was also the
localization of the slave; was he to be found somewhere around his master, as
a servant of the house or living communally on the estate as a member of the
work force (in other words, as a cheliadin, in the terminology of the rp), or did
he live in his own dwelling with his family, working a plot assigned to him by
his master?
According to Iushkov, referring to the Testament of Antony the Roman and
the Donation of Varlaam (mentioned above), the transition was already under
way in the 12th century.78 Other authors are more cautious, but the settlement
of slaves on land assigned to them individually in the 14th and 15th centuries
is beyond doubt.79
The shift from the slave as an object of trade to the slave as an indispensable
part of the agricultural labour force had a decisive impact on the legal aspects
of slavery, although the origins of slavery remained the same as they had been
in the era of the rp. Slaves were still bought and sold, but then together with
the land they were attached to, by the person who was the owner of the land
and at the same time the master of the slaves. For the vast majority of slaves
the origin of their status was being born into a family of slaves; additional to
this category were the persons who became slaves by marriage, under certain
conditions (as explained above). Foreign prisoners of war could also become
slaves (called polonianiki), and this applied in particular to non-Christians,
such as Tatars and members of pagan Finnish tribes. Wars with Western pow-
ers and especially wars among Russian principalities would normally be ended
by a peace treaty which would usually allow for an exchange of prisoners.80
There are examples however of persons from one principality being enslaved
in another principality. Another source of slavery was conviction of a serious
crime (e.g. repeated theft).
Self-sale into slavery, as it had been known for centuries in Russia, continued
well into the 16th century, but in changed circumstances. The typical situation
in the past had been the indigent peasant who was forced to sell himself (with
his family) to a master in order to avoid starvation. This situation also occurred
regularly in later centuries, but, along with it, quite different c onsiderations
78 Iushkov, Ocherki, 61.

79 Cf. Kolycheva, op. cit., 97–99.
80 Examples of the situations referred to in this paragraph in Zimin, Kholopy na Rusi,
277–281.
618 chapter 19
might induce a person to change his status into that of a slave. This was con-
nected with the increased variegation within the slave population. Talented
and energetic slaves, serving in the household of a prince or boyar, were often
able to rise socially by being entrusted with responsible positions in the admin-
istration of their masters’ estates.81 Eventually this category, or at least some of
its members, approximated to the status of other less elevated members of the
administration of the prince. They normally lacked the freedom to leave the
service of their master. Such ‘court servants’ (dvorskie slugi or dvorskie liudi)
were a far cry from the rank-and-file stradniki, slaves who had been supplied
with a piece of land, agricultural implements and a dwelling by their masters
in order to work for him.82
One of the merits of Kolycheva’s study (mentioned above) is that her
detailed analysis of the extensive documentary material on slavery in the
15th–16th centuries produced a vivid picture of the variegated composition
of the slave population. One aspect was the difference in the development of
the various categories of slaves; they grew and declined in different ways. For
instance, a slave elite first emerged gradually; then, as it became more numer-
ous and distinct, it was also depleted by the practice of princes and boyars
to emancipate their servants (having the status of slaves) in their wills. Koly-
cheva characterized this category as slugi-ministerialy (servants-ministeriales),
entrusted with civil or military offices by the prince. Among the civil offices
one finds tiuny (stewards), dovodchiki (constables, bailiffs), pravedchiki (bai-
liffs, sheriff’s assistants), posel’skie (estate manager), kliuchniki (steward, estate
manager, esp. of monastery), and especially d’iaki (clerks).83 The records show
that it was not actually the office which bestowed elite status on a slave, but
that a master would temporarily appoint one of his trusted slaves to a particu-
lar office. The same persons, in times of war, could serve in lower command
functions (such as trubniki, trumpeters, sergeants). Between these various
groups of ‘elite’ slaves and the ordinary slaves working the land there were in-
termediate groups, such as huntsmen, fowlers, cooks, bakers, etc.84
In the 15th century the authorities, in effect the Moscow government,
assumed full control over the practice of selling oneself into slavery, known
already in the Expanded Pravda. The standard form was a document called pol-
naia gramota (full charter), which mentioned the master, the person s elling
81 Cf. Zimin, op. cit., 283–290.

82 Zimin, ibidem. They were also known as slugi pod dvorskim, “servants subordinated to the
court steward” (dvorskii), as opposed to slugi vol’nye (“free servants”).
83 Kolycheva, op. cit., 57–61.
84 Kolycheva, op. cit., 62–63.
himself and his family members, the price paid, the witnesses present, and
usually also the tax paid to the prince. A short excerpt (zapis’) of the polnaia
was often drawn up for the authorities and large numbers of these from the end
of the 15th century and later are available.85 Art. 66 of the Code of 1497 listed
the legal origins of slavery: voluntary entry into slavery through the drawing
up of a corresponding charter (polnaia); acceptance of the position of a village
steward (tiun) or kliuchnik (no polnaia was required in such a case); or marriage
to a slave. The family living with a person entering into slavery shared his fate.
In a similar procedure, release from slavery had to be reported in a special
document (dokladnaia gramota, a report) destined for the authorities. The
practice was legislatively sanctioned by arts. 16–18, 42–43 and 66 of the Code
of 1497, with a decisive role being assigned to the prince’s officials. The require-
ment of presentation of the manumission charter (otpustnaia gramota) to the
boyar court could be avoided by the slave’s master writing out the charter him-
self (art. 42). Otherwise, manumission could only be effected by a boyar with
full jurisdictional rights (art. 43).
By that time, however, genuine slavery in its original sense had outlived its
economic usefulness and the kholop had in fact become a serf rather than a
slave: a person with undeniable legal status, but with restricted rights. It would
generally be more attractive to a landowner to settle dependent peasants on
his land and exact part of the proceeds from their labour, than having his
fields tilled by slaves without any interest in their work apart from avoiding
punishment.
The Individual as a Family Member
The Old-Russian Family

In almost all societies that people nowadays would regard as ‘traditional’, family
relationships are of the most fundamental importance to the individual. Me-
dieval Russia was no exception in this respect. Some clarification of the family
concept is however required. English, like most other languages, uses “family”
in a narrow sense as “group of relatives who form a common household”86 and
in a multitude of wider senses where blood relationship remains the binding
element (the blood relationship traditionally also covers individual spouses,
85 See, for instance, asei iii, Nos.392–462, 410–446.

86 This is the standard meaning of sem’ia in Russian, according to the dictionaries of Dal’
and Ozhegov-Shvedova, other relatives being covered by rod, itself a term with various
connotations. Dutch has a similar pair of terms, gezin and familie.
620 chapter 19
but not their blood relatives). The family in a wider sense would embrace, for
instance, the group constituted by grandparents, their children and spouses,
and the grandchildren, but also a similar but larger group descending from
great-grandparents. The small family consists typically of the parents and their
minor children, all living together under the same roof, but it may include
grandparents or other relatives. In some cultures grandparents live together
with their married children and grandchildren in a large house; this would be
a large family in the accepted sense, but it also satisfies the definition of the
Russian sem’ia. The important point is that contrasting the small family with
the large one, as is often done in Russian literature, is imprecise, because there
are various transitional forms.
This is a necessary introductory caveat to the most convenient survey con-
cerning the Old-Russian family by Ia.N. Shchapov, entitled “The Large and
Small Family in Russia from the 8th to the 13th century”.87 The topic was gener-
ally neglected by the leading Soviet authors; before 1917, Sergeevich devoted
considerable attention to it in one of his major works, but this text, obviously
a university lecture, represented for the greater part an erudite comparison
between marriage systems in all kinds of ‘primitive’ cultures.88
Shchapov’s survey is based on opposing the small family (sem’ia), living
together in a single dwelling, to the larger family (rod) consisting of a wider
group of relatives. He demonstrated convincingly that the small family was
the dominant form of social organization at the lowest level. The arguments
for this view can be found in the Chronicle, and also in archeological data.
With regard to the rod, he pointed to the gradual narrowing of the concept; at
first it was similar to a clan or Roman gens, but later it referred primarily to the
circle of persons who could claim particular rights on the basis of being blood
relatives, in such cases as compensation for homicide or inheritance mat-
ters.89 The treaties with Byzantium of 911 (arts. 4 and 13) and 944 (art. 13) used
the term blizhii or blizhiki for near relatives who might lay claim to the prop-
erty of a deceased kinsman or the person responsible for the latter’s death.90
87 Ia.N. Shchapov, “Bol’shaia i malaia sem’ia na Rusi v viii–xiii vv.”, in Ia.N. Shchapov, Ocher-
ki russkoi istorii, istochnikovedeniia, arkheografii, Moskva, 2004, 5–15.
88 Sergeevich, Lektsii, 456–468. The same goes for Vladimirskii-Budanov, Obzor, 402–409.
89 Shchapov (op. cit., 6) quotes the passage from the Chronicle (discussed in the section on
“The Eastern Slav Tribes in the 10th Century” in Chapter xii) about the Poliane, where rod
appears with obviously different meanings: “The Poliane lived separately and ruled their
rody, because already before these brothers Kii, Shchek and Khoriv there were Poliane
and they lived each with their own rod and in their own places, each ruling his own rod.”
90 Art. 13 (911) speaks of malye blizhiki; this is usually translated as closest or nearest rela-
tives; it is unclear who belonged to this inner circle. Art. 99 of the Expanded Pravda does
The term returned in art. 99 of the Expanded Pravda where the nearest relative
is directed to take small children under his guardianship when the widowed
mother remarries. An echo of the obsolete rod can be perceived in the first
article of the Pravda of Iaroslav which limits the right to revenge a homicide to
a precisely circumscribed group of close male relatives, by the same token ex-
cluding other members of the rod who presumably were entitled to participate
in blood feuds in the past.91
By the end of the 12th century, according to Shchapov, the rod had ceased
to be a factor of importance in legal relationships, with the exception of the
ruling family of the Rurikids, where membership of the house remained an
absolute requirement for occupying a princely seat.
The advent of Christianity, as indicated above, entailed the abolition of
some aspects of family life of pagan Russia (e.g. polygamy), acceptance and
even reinforcement of other aspects (such as exogamy), and the transforma-
tion of yet other aspects (such as male–female relationships).
The basic form of the small family in Old-Russian society, before and after
the conversion of Russia, consisted of husband and wife and their children. It
originated in marriage and on this point the differences between the two peri-
ods were very substantial. The pre-Christian marriage was a matter of custom-
ary law, but after the conversion this traditional set-up underwent a complete
metamorphosis on account of the involvement of the Church.
The rp has almost nothing on family law (with the exception of the long
section on the law of inheritance at the end of the Expanded Pravda). This
is fully understandable if one considers that it was largely a codification and
amendment of customary law and that its character was purely secular. Art.
110 of the Expanded Pravda mentioned marriage of a freeman to a slave girl,
without a special reservation of freedom, as one of the causes of full slavery
(obel’noe kholopstvo).
Marriage in Pre-Christian Russia

Most of what is known about marriage law in pre-Christian Russia has to be
derived from indirect sources, such as narratives in chronicles or inferences
which can be made on the basis of legal sources from later periods.
not help, because it refers to a single person who is the closest relative, even if he would
not belong to the inner circle of the malye blizhiki.
91 Art. 1 mentions brothers, fathers, sons, and sons of brothers and sisters of the person slain.
Commentators do not agree on whether uncles and first cousins, and perhaps grandfa-
thers, should also be included. See Baranovski, 162–165.
622 chapter 19
The conclusion of marriage was surrounded by customs and usages which

differed from tribe to tribe. The Poliane, relates the Chronicle, “observed a fixed
custom, under which the groom’s brother did not fetch the bride, but she was
brought to the bridegroom in the evening, and on the next morning her dowry
was turned over.” The chronicler, who always exalts the Poliane and despises
most other Russian tribes, then observes that the latter (the Drevliane, Rad-
imichi, Viatichi and Severiane) had no marriages but abducted their wives and
even practised polygamy. According to the few authors who have gone into
the matter the actual truth is that symbolic abduction was an accepted mar-
riage ritual which survived for centuries in parts of Russia.92 Zagorovskii, in his
monograph on the history of divorce in Russian law, distinguished between
three forms of marriage in pre-Christian Russia, genuine abduction, symbolic
abduction, and contractual marriage, but added that the borderlines between
these forms were fluid in the course of time.93
The contractual character of marriage was obvious. Even the chronicler, de-
scribing the lascivious customs of other Russian tribes, noted that “each took
any woman with whom he had reached an understanding”. This is of course
not enough to argue that the pagan Russians already observed art. 16(2) of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.94 The contractual partners were the
respective families, not the future spouses, but later sources demonstrate that
some attention was to be paid to the wishes of the bridal couple.95 The dowry
(pridanoe), as mentioned above, could also be accompanied by a gift from the
other side, the bride-price. Both Zagorovskii and Sergeevich observe that direct
evidence for such payment is thin, but still, they believe, such a custom was fol-
lowed. The payment had a special name (veno) and is mentioned twice in the
Chronicle in connection with royal weddings.96 In these cases payment of the
bride-price was predominantly a diplomatic gesture, while normally it would
constitute compensation for the economic loss of the bride’s family. As such,
92 A.I. Zagorovskii, O razvode po russkomu pravu. Issledovanie brakorazvodnogo prava v

R
ossii, Khar’kov, 1884 (2nd ed., reprint. Moskva, 2011), 4–12; Sergeevich, Lektsii, 487–488.
93 Zagorovskii, op. cit., 21–22.
94 “Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending
spouses.”
95 Art. 30 of the Church Statute of Iaroslav punished the parents of a bride or groom who
had been forced into marriage, in case the latter caused harm to themselves as a result.
See also art. 47 of the Statute, which dealt with the opposite situation (parents preventing
their children’s marriage).
96 In 988, when Vladimir after his baptism married the Greek princess Anna and returned
the town of Kherson to the Greeks, and in 1043 when the Polish king Kazimir returned 800
prisoners to Iaroslav the Wise at his wedding with Iaroslav’s sister.
the custom was very wide-spread both in the Slavic world and outside, and this
would be another argument for accepting its existence in medieval Russia.97
The function of the dowry was to guarantee the wife a certain amount of finan-
cial independence, especially in the event of the husband’s death or other mat-
rimonial difficulties (see further below in the section on marriage property).
Polygamy in pre-Christian Russia is well-documented. The Chronicle entry
about St. Vladimir before his conversion spoke of Rogned as his lawful wife,98
but also mentioned four other wives with their sons, who were undoubtedly
considered legitimate; additionally he was supposed to have had 800 concu-
bines. Women who had gone through the ritual of formal induction into the
husband’s household were “inducted women” (vodimye zheny) and this grant-
ed them superior status over women with whom a less formal liaison had been
established. Art. 10 of the Church Statute of Iaroslav the Wise implicitly forbad
bigamy, by making a husband who remarried while still being married to an-
other woman answerable in the court of the metropolitan, ordering him to go
back to his first wife, and sending the second wife off to a convent.
Marriage after the Conversion of Russia

The law concerning marriage and everything connected with it, such as the
family, the position of children, inheritance law, was more affected than any
other branch of law by the adoption of Christianity. The fundamental differ-
ence between pre-Christian and Christian concepts of marriage, from the legal
point of view, is that the former can be regarded as a contract, albeit one of a
special nature, while in the case of the Christian marriage (as understood at
least during the first centuries of Christianity) the contractual nature of mar-
riage is heavily overshadowed by its religious aspect. The reason for this is that
marriage, unlike numerous other questions on which the Christian religion
holds an opinion, is described by Jesus Christ himself (Matt. xix, 5–9) in a
direct response to a question of the Pharisees concerning the admissibility of
divorce, or more precisely, of “putting away a wife”, unilateral dismissal.99 Mar-
riage is described as a union between man and wife and the decisive words
then are: “What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”
On the basis of these words the Church has not only held that divorce was not
97 Zagorovskii, op. cit., 15–21; Sergeevich, Lektsii, 489.

98 The Chronicle uses the term of “an inducted wife” (vodimaia zhena), although Rogned
had in fact been taken by force after Vladimir had killed her father and brothers.
99 More or less the same statement is made in the sequel to the Sermon on the Mount,
Matt. V, 32; see also Mark x, 7–12 and Luke xvi, 18, where the crucial words “except it be
for fornication” are lacking.
624 chapter 19
allowed, but that it was actually beyond human power (including that of the
Church) to bring it about (more on divorce below). The existence of a con-
tract rests on a social convention, which to some extent is also a fiction (we
pretend that something exists, knowing it does not): if certain matters have
been agreed between parties and under certain conditions, then society itself,
including the parties concerned, will act as if there was a contract. The Chris-
tian marriage, in its original sense, does not rest on such a convention, but
on the conviction shared by members of the faith that something really exists
(a lifelong bond, created by divine intervention and sanctioning the agreement
between the spouses and raising it to another level).
In the East as well as in the West, the adoption of Christianity has therefore
been followed by the Church’s insistence on its right to be the judge of matri-
monial affairs. In Russia, this claim was honoured by the secular power in the
first and most basic piece of legislation on relations between the Church and
the state, the Church Statute of Vladimir, who is also known as St. Vladimir,
who introduced Christianity as the state religion in Kievan Russian. The nucle-
us of the original text of this statute is art. 9 which lists the subjects assigned
to the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts.100 The first item is rospust,
which is usually translated as “divorce”, but which actually means “dismissal”
or “repudiation” (of a wife), the standard manner of terminating a marriage in
pre-Christian Russia. The following items also concern marriage and offences
against it, and then more generally offences within the family, against sexual
morality, and sorcery and related practices.101
100 According to Shchapov’s reconstruction of the archetype of the Statute of St. Vladimir,
Ia.N. Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’ v Drevnei Rusi xi–xiv vv., Moskva, 1972, 120–121.
101 “And these are [the cases subject to the jurisdiction of] church courts: divorce; fornica-
tion; adultery; rape; abduction [of women]; [disputes] between a husband and wife over
an inheritance; [cases which arise] if [a man and woman] marry within the prohibited
degrees of consanguinity or spiritual relationship [which stem from acting as godparents
for someone]; witchcraft; [making of] potions; [making of] charms; sorcery; magic; these
three dishonors: [accusations of] fornication and [making of] poisons; heresy; fighting
[in which a man bites another]; or [cases in which] a son beats his father or [if] a daugh-
ter [beats] her mother, or a daughter-in-law [beats her] mother-in-law; if brothers or chil-
dren bring a suit over an inheritance; church theft; [cases in which] people uncover a
[buried] corpse; [if some people] cut down a cross or carve [mutilate?] a cross on the
walls; if [someone] leads cattle, or dogs, or fowl [into church] without good reason, or
does anything else not fitting for church; or [if] two friends fight and the wife of one
grabs the other by the genitals and crushes [them]; or [if] they catch someone with a
four-legged animal [about to sacrifice it? committing bestiality?] or [if] someone prays
[to a pagan god] beneath a grain-drying bin, or in a copse of trees, or by the water; or if an
[unmarried] girl aborts a fetus.” Kaiser’s translation, Laws, 42–43.
The list of art. 9 is innovative in the sense that it covers all kinds of behaviour
which were probably current practice in pagan times and which the secular
authorities were rather indifferent to. Assigning these offences to the church
courts therefore did not constitute a great sacrifice in money or power for the
prince. Art. 10 underlined that the jurisdiction of the church in these cases was
exclusive; the prince, his boyars and the judges were explicitly forbidden to
interfere. For additional authority art. 11 referred to the legislation of the Byz-
antine emperors and the canons of the seven ecumenical councils.
The Church Statute of Vladimir’s son Iaroslav the Wise complemented the
jurisdictional package covered by art. 9 of the Statute of Vladimir by providing
penalties for most of the offences named in the latter and for quite a number
of others as well. The great majority of the offences covered by the Statute
of Iaroslav concern sexual misbehaviour or offences against the family; the
amount of detail, or rather casuistry, is remarkable. Art. 14, for instance, deals
with intercourse between a godfather and a godmother; other bizarre situa-
tions are arts. 24 (fornication with two sisters) and 28 (two brothers engaging
in intercourse with one woman). Most offences are punishable by fines, to be
paid to the metropolitan (of Kiev), but in a few more serious cases, such as rape
or abduction, the fine to the metropolitan is combined with more serious pun-
ishment (kaznit’, which probably did not encompass execution) by the prince.
The two statutes together present a clear picture of the kind of conduct
within the family which the Church meant to combat and which was presum-
ably to some extent prevalent in pre-Christian Russia.
Art. 19 of the Statute of Iaroslav set a 12 grivna fine for the man who dis-
missed his wife, if they had been married through venchanie (i.e. a church wed-
ding), and 6 grivna if they had not gone through this procedure. This shows
that other marriage rituals were still being practised but that the church wed-
ding was considered more worthy of respect. Art. 36 referred to such ancient
practices by making it a punishable offence to go through the ritual of cutting
the cheese for a maiden. According to Shchapov, the church-sanctioned cer-
emony penetrated only very slowly and by the end of the 11th century only
boyars got married in church.102
Although exogamous marriage had already been the rule in pre-Christian
Russia, the prohibited degrees were widened by the two statutes. They now also
covered marriages between godparents and godchildren; the prohibited de-
grees of consanguinity went as far as descent from a common great-grandparent
102 Ia.N. Shchapov, “Brak i sem’ia v Drevnei Rusi”, Ia.N. Shchapov, Ocherki russkoi istorii, is-
tochnikovedeniia, arkheografii, Moskva, 2004, 16–22 (originally published in Voprosy istorii,
1970, No.10, 216–219).
626 chapter 19
(six degrees). Art. 20 of the Statute of Iaroslav forbad sexual relations between
a Russian woman (and implicitly also marriage) and Jews, Muslims and per-
sons of another faith (presumably Latin Catholics); the offender was liable to a
50 grivna fine to the metropolitan and the Russian woman involved was sent to
a convent. According to Shchapov, the provision did not belong to the original
text of the Statute of Iaroslav; in any case, its applicability to Latin Catholics
can only have arisen after the Great Schism of 1054. Moreover, it has been noted
that until the end of the 12th century marriages between Rurikid princes and
princesses and West-European spouses were quite common.103 Presumably,
their example was followed occasionally by persons of less elevated status.
As mentioned above, marriage was traditionally an agreement between
families, in which the parents’ role was decisive, although attention was paid
to the views of the intended spouses (see arts. 30 and 47 of the Statute of Iaro-
slav). The parents were obliged to find a husband for their daughter, otherwise
they had to pay a fine to the metropolitan, the amount depending on their
social status (art. 7 of the Statute of Iaroslav).
Marriages would normally be concluded between persons belonging to the
same social class. Art. 110 of the Expanded Pravda has been mentioned above,
providing that marriage to a slave girl without an explicit reservation of the
groom’s freedom would lead to the latter’s full slavery. The opposite (a free
woman marrying a slave) would probably happen only very rarely; it would
also lead to the slavery of both spouses.104 Concubines of princes and boyars
are mentioned in literary sources such as chronicles; marriages in such cases
would usually be politically disadvantageous to the men.
A duty to mutually support each other was implied in arts. 12–13, which for-
bad the abandonment of a spouse who became seriously ill, blind or suffered
from a prolonged illness. Generally, however, the position of a married woman
was subordinate. The Statute of Iaroslav contained provisions about a wife
beating her husband (art. 42), a man beating another man’s wife (art. 44), or a
son beating one of his parents (art. 45), but the husband and father was enti-
tled to beat his wife or children with impunity. Several provisions (arts. 37–40)
explicitly recognized the husband’s right to punish the members of his family.
103 A.V. Nazarenko, “«Zelo nepodobno pravovernym»; mezhkonfessional’nye braki na Rusi

v xi–xii vekakh”, A.V. Nazarenko, Drevniaia Rus’ i Slaviane (=dgve 2007), Moskva, 2009,
269–283. A list of more than 80 Rurikid-Western alliances in N. de Baumgarten, Généalo-
gies et mariages occidentaux des Rurikides russes du xe au xiiie siècle (Orientalia Chris-
tiana, Vol. ix-1, Num.35), Roma, 1927, 67–73.
104 Shchapov, Brak i sem’ia, 18.
The church statutes which came after those of St. Vladimir and of Iaroslav
the Wise offered their own peculiarities but followed the list of marital and
sexual transgressions contained in art. 9 of the Statute of Vladimir, albeit in
often abbreviated form.105
Dissolution of Marriage
Nobody would dispute that marriage is dissolved by the death of one of the
spouses. It is the dissolution of a marriage between living spouses that con-
trasts the situation in pre-Christian Russia with that after the conversion, but
there are also considerable differences between the Eastern and Western ap-
proaches in this question.
In pre-Christian Russia repudiation of the wife by the husband is well-
documented in the chronicles. Whether other forms of divorce were p ractised
is a matter of speculation. The adoption of Christianity entailed major changes,
on account of the Christian marriage doctrine.
As explained above, the authority of the principal source of this doctrine
is the direct and unambiguous statement of Christ himself, answering the
Pharisees’ question concerning the permissibility of a man dismissing his wife
(Matthew, xix, 3–6): “Therefore, let no man separate what God has joined.”
But then, replying to further questions of the Pharisees, Christ continued:
“I now say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except it be for fornication, and
marries another commits adultery” (italics added, ff).106 Although the words
were originally spoken in Aramaic, they have come down to us in Greek (μή
έπί πορνείαι). Both elements of the formula raise questions. Is it a clear excep-
tion, implying that the indissolubility principle does not apply in the case of
adultery, or is it more vague, implying perhaps that the principle itself could be
relaxed under certain conditions? Πορνεία could also be read strictly, meaning
adultery, or in a more general sense of lewd behaviour. Although translations
use various terms such as “divorcing”, “putting away”, “dismissing”, “repudiat-
ing”, etc., the Greek verb is the same in all cases (άπολΰω) and this creates fewer
interpretation problems.
In the most liberal interpretation of the formula concerned, divorce could
in principle be allowed where the exception of inappropriate behaviour
105 Art. 11 of the Smolensk Charter of prince Rostislav; art. 9 of the Church Statute of the
Novgorod prince Vsevolod; art. 4 of the Church Statute of prince Lev Danilovich of Galicia.
106 The translations of Matthew are from the American Bible, except for the words “except
it be for fornication”, where the American Bible has “(lewd conduct is a separate case)”,
which in my opinion is too imprecise as a translation from the Latin (nisi ob fornicatio-
nem) or the Greek.
628 chapter 19
o perated. The Western Church has held (and the Roman-Catholic Church still
holds) that the indissolubility principle is absolute and that adultery may only
entitle the innocent party to seek a separation, but does not open up the pos-
sibility of remarrying. A biblical argument for this position is that the impossi-
bility of divorce is confirmed by similar but much shorter reports of the words
of Jesus Christ in the gospels of Mark (x, 11) and Luke (xvi, 18). The Eastern
Church in principle agreed with this view,107 but reached different practical
solutions, rooted in the practice of the slow implementation of the principle
of indissolubility.
During the first centuries after the emancipation of the Christian faith un-
der Constantine the Great, the old Roman law concerning divorce remained
in operation, with occasional amendments. In Western Europe, during the
so-called Dark Ages, Germanic marriage law was followed, including its vari-
ous arrangements regarding divorce. Only gradually did the Western Church
in the course of the early middle ages succeed in establishing its dominance
in this field and in eliminating divorce as a recognized legal institution. The
main pragmatic approach in overcoming the human difficulties resulting from
this situation was the use of the annulment procedure. If, after a marriage had
been concluded, it could be proved that some condition considered as vital by
canon law had not been met, the marriage could be declared void, meaning
that it had never existed.
In the world of the Eastern Church another method for dealing with these
difficulties emerged. Byzantine law had never proceeded to a complete abo-
lition of the traditional system of divorce, based on Roman law, but had in-
troduced some amendments to bring about a certain rapprochement with
Christian ideals. This approach could be justified in various ways. One obvious
route was to appeal to the exception contained in Matthew’s version of Christ’s
teaching: adultery and similar behaviour would then offer an adequate ground
for divorce. Another way out would be to argue that the divinely established
lifelong union could also be dissolved by God himself and that certain types of
behaviour of the spouses might indicate that in fact the marriage had ceased to
exist.108 A more sophisticated answer could be that Christ’s teaching presented
a moral ideal and not a legal maxim. Some kind of legal procedure would con-
ceivably be needed to deal with marriages which could no longer reasonably
be sustained. There are many ethical demands in the Christian faith which are
107 Cf. Zagorovskii, 34–59.

108 Although this argument is in principle respectable, in practice it would lead to the total
collapse of the prohibition of divorce: if you want a divorce, just behave badly and your
marriage is over.
not met by the faithful. Legal rules which cannot be observed should be abol-
ished; to do the same with moral rules would be the end of civilization.
The Eastern Church, as a result, adopted a more flexible and, one might say,
pragmatic approach to divorce than the Western Church. The Russian Church
added a twist of its own.109
The Statute of St. Vladimir (art. 9, quoted above) mentioned divorce as the
first item assigned to the church courts; the Statute of Iaroslav the Wise went
into greater detail. Wherever the list of art. 9 was taken over in later statutes
(in amended form), divorce always took the first place, from which one might
conclude that it was considered one of the most important, if not the most
important, of the affairs assigned to the jurisdiction of the Church. Although
“divorce” is the usual translation, the actual term was not razvod, but rospust:
dismissal, rejection or repudiation. This illustrates the basic inequality be-
tween men and women which is encountered in the traditional legal systems
of all Indo-European and Semitic peoples. Wives may leave their husbands,
but husbands dismiss their wives. The Old-Russian divorce law was mainly di-
rected towards the question of men repudiating their wives; the question of
women leaving their husbands received less attention.
If the Statute of St. Vladimir only mentioned divorce, albeit prominently,
the Statute of Iaroslav the Wise dealt with it quite extensively.
Its oldest and most basic rule is art. 4; it was discussed briefly above, in
connection with the social stratification of Kievan society (it distinguishes
between great boyars, boyars, prominent people, and ordinary people). It
sets double penalties, fines, one to be paid to the metropolitan and an equal
amount to the divorced wife, the rate depending on the rank of the man who
dismissed his wife. The various manuscripts of the Statute offer different texts,
but the reconstructed original text (according to Shchapov)110 has the formula
bez viny attached to the repudiation, in other words the provision applied only
when the husband did not have a just cause for dismissing his wife. This of
course raises the question of what would constitute just cause; we shall return
to this question below in the discussion of art. 53 of the Statute of Iaroslav. The
penalty due to the wife (in the case of art. 4) is za sorom, for the insult. The
total picture of art. 4 in its original version agrees with the one suggested by
the oldest layer of the rp: personal injuries still had the character of an insult
to the honour of the family. Art. 4 reflected the pre-Christian order where re-
pudiation (by the husband) and departure (by the wife) as unilateral actions
which terminate the marriage contract took the place subsequently occupied
109 A full treatment of this entire subject with Zagorovskii, 59–87.

110 In Kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’, 293–296.
630 chapter 19
by divorce as a bilateral contract. This is an anachronistic approach of course;

for contemporaries the old order was gradually replaced under the influence
of the Church by new procedures.
The following provision of the Statute of Iaroslav, belonging likewise to its
original nucleus, is art. 10, which makes a husband who married a new wife
without having been divorced from his first wife answerable to the metropoli-
tan. The second wife is to be sent to a convent and the husband is to go back
to his first wife. It demonstrates clearly that the new Russian church accepted
divorce, but at the same time strove to outlaw bigamy.
Later versions of the Statute included a provision (art. 11) dealing with the
situation of a wife leaving her husband and marrying or living with another
man; here the solution was different: the wife was not sent back to her hus-
band, but instead was put into a convent, and her male partner paid a fine to
the metropolitan.
Arts. 12 and 13 are still part of the original nucleus of the Statute. They for-
bad divorce in the case of the blindness or a serious or prolonged illness of the
other spouse.
Art. 18 dealt with bigamy more directly. If in the case of art. 10 the hus-
band had in fact separated from his first wife without a formal divorce and
started to live with a second wife, art. 18 envisaged actual bigamy: living with
two wives simultaneously. The verb used for marrying (vodit’) usually refers to
pre-Christian marriage rituals; in any case, a priest would be forbidden to offi-
ciate at a bigamous marriage. The solution is roughly identical to that of art. 10:
the man is directed to live with the first wife and the second wife is sent to a
convent. But unlike art. 10, art. 18 specified the fine to be paid to the metropoli-
tan (20 grivna), ordered the husband to marry the first wife “according to the
law” (po zakonu), which probably meant that they had to conclude a church
marriage, and threatened punishment if he treated his wife badly.111
Art. 19 looked at divorce (or rather “dismissal”) po svoei voli, which could
mean “by his own wish” or “by their own wish”. The latter reading is to be pre-
ferred, as otherwise the rules of arts. 4 and 19 would clash; art. 4 set a mini-
mum penalty of twice 12 grivna (for ordinary people) for the husband who
repudiated his wife without just cause, and higher penalties for men of higher
rank. Art. 19 set a fixed penalty of 12 grivna to the metropolitan for persons
who were married in church (6 grivna if they were not married in church).
The Church would surely not regard arbitrary divorce as being for just cause.112
111 This is the satisfactory interpretation given by Shchapov in his comments to the text of
the Statute in rz i, 178 and 181.
112 So also Shchapov, op. cit., 176.
Art. 19 therefore concerned a situation where the husband did not unilater-
ally repudiate his wife (without just cause), but where the spouses agreed to
divorce. This would in principle be unacceptable to the Church, but, in accor-
dance with the tolerant attitude of the early Russian church, the spouses could
get away with it by paying a fine. The provision also documents the widespread
survival of traditional (i.e. non-church) forms of marriage.
Marriage within the forbidden degrees of kinship entailed a fine to the met-
ropolitan and separation (razluchiti) of the partners (art. 17); in a modern view
this would be an annulment, rather than a divorce.
Arts. 37–40 concerned various offences by wives, which explicitly did not
provide sufficient grounds for divorce (such as stealing from husband or fa-
ther-in-law); they are part of later additions to the Statute.
Art. 53 is the longest in the entire Statute and the only one with its own title:
“And for these causes divorce a man from his wife”. It obviously constitutes a
later addition and has clear Byzantine origins, although it is difficult to identify
the immediate source. It lists six grounds for a husband to divorce his wife:
1) when the wife knew about plots against the ruler and did not inform her
husband, 2) adultery, 3) when the wife was involved in plots against the life
of her husband, 4) when the wife adopted a permissive life style, 5) when the
wife went to pagan festivals, 6) when the wife was involved in the theft of her
husband’s property (this is a summary; for details, see text of art. 53). The sixth
point of art. 53 contradicts art. 37 of the Statute, which expressly dismissed a
wife’s theft of her husband’s property as a ground for divorce.
Of these grounds, the first is found in the section “On the dissolution of a
marriage” in the Knigi Zakonnye (art. 4); the second one in the Ecloga (ii,14)
and the Knigi Zakonnye (art. 5); the third one in the Ecloga (ii, 14), the Knigi
Zakonnye (art. 6), and the Court Law for the People (s.33); the fourth one in the
Knigi Zakonnye (arts. 7–8) ; the fifth one in the Knigi Zakonnye (art. 9). Addi-
tionally, the Ecloga (ii, 14) and the Court Law for the People (s.33) mention the
case when the wife has become a leper. The Knigi Zakonnye are derived mainly
from the Procheiron, the Court Law for the People is based on the Ecloga. The
Ecloga and the Procheiron go back to new legislation of Justinian. Altogether,
the Byzantine roots of art. 53 are obvious. The original source is Novellae 22
(Chapter 22) and especially 117 (Chapters 8 and 9), on which the divorce rules
of the Procheiron (title 11) are based. The Procheiron reached Russia at least
during the second half of the 13th century and perhaps earlier.113
113 The penetration of the Procheiron in Russia is the subject of a special study by Shchapov,
“Prokhiron v vostochnoslavianskoi pis’mennosti”, Vizantiiskii vremennik, Vol.38 (1977),
48–58. See also my “Roman Law in Medieval Russia”, Feldbrugge, lmr, 59–128, at 91–93.
632 chapter 19
Later church statutes confine themselves to the mere mention of adultery as

one of the cases subject to church jurisdiction. The Metropolitan’s Justice is the
exception. It repeated the grounds of art. 53 in somewhat different words and
added a seventh ground: if someone plots against the husband, and the wife,
knowing about it, fails to inform him.
The six grounds for divorcing a wife as found in art. 53 reappear in a rather
obscure 15th century legal text entitled “On divorce”, known only from two
publications by Shchapov.114 These texts (a short and a long version) repro-
duce in slightly different wording the 6-point list of art. 53, but the long version
has an additional list of grounds for divorcing a husband. It includes serious
mistreatment or plotting against the wife’s life, but also concealing the unfree
status of the husband, or selling oneself into slavery. These grounds also have
clear Byzantine origins.
Shchapov is probably right in proposing that the list of grounds for d ivorce in
medieval Russia was not standardized and that regional differences emerged.115
The various legislative sources are silent on the practical consequences of
divorce, apart from the punitive payments mentioned in the Statute of Iaroslav.
The dowry would most likely have to be returned; remarriage by ex-husbands
is abundantly documented, but whether divorced wives actually concluded
second marriages is not well known. In general, the permissibility of second
and subsequent marriages depended on the guilt or innocence of the party
involved; it was apparently more difficult for divorced women to remarry. Most
authors agree that a canonically valid marriage could no longer be concluded
after a fourth marriage.116
The Questionary of Kirik (see above) made clear (in art. 93) that a wife had
the right to divorce her husband, at least when the husband did not carry out
his marital duties. Although the Questionary was ostensibly nothing but a se-
ries of replies by the Novgorod bishop to questions posed by one of his priests,
114 Ia.N. Shchapov, “Novyi pamiatnik russkogo prava xv v.: Zapis’ «O razluchenii», Slaviane i
Rus’”. Sbornik statei k 60-letiiu akademika B.A. Rybakova, Moskva, 1968, 375–382. The texts
(a short and a long version) have also been published in Ia.N. Shchapov, Drevnerusskie
kniazheskie ustavy xi–xv vv., Moskva, 1976, 204–207. These quite short texts, of Russian
origin, are not to be confused with the much longer and older section on divorce in the
Knigi Zakonnye, a Slavic translation of Byzantine texts.
115 Shchapov in his comments to art. 53 in rz i, 207. More extensively on the entire sub-
ject, Ia. N. Shchapov, Vizantiiskaia “Ekloga Zakonov” v russkoi pis’mennoi traditsii, Sankt-
Peterburg, 2011, 78–83. See also Ia.N. Shchapov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov’ Drevnei Rusi x–xiii
vv., Moskva, 1989, 112–113.
116 Extensively on the consequences of divorce, Zagorovskii, 201–239.
it enjoyed considerable authority as a valid restatement of church law and con-

tinued to be included in collections of church law for centuries.117
Marriage Property
The question of marriage property becomes relevant in the case of divorce and
always in matters of inheritance. But while the advent of Christianity com-
pletely changed the institution of divorce, it had little effect on the property
relations between spouses. The new faith placed hardly any obstacles in the
way of the survival of traditional arrangements.
Perhaps more than anything else, marriage property was a matter of cus-
tomary law. This also makes it almost invisible to the legal historian. It can be
reconstructed to some extent through incidental references in written laws,
but there are very few coherent legislative fragments available. The earliest ref-
erence is in the 911 Treaty with the Greeks, where art. 4 (dealing with homicide)
provided that the kinsmen (blizhnii) of the murdered man could appropriate
part of the property of the murderer, as determined by law (po zakonu), but
that the widow should take what was due to her po zakonu. “Law” in this case
obviously meant “customary law” and all persons involved were clearly aware
of what in such a case the widow was entitled to claim as hers. The interesting
addition of the widow in the Treaty of 911 is absent in the parallel provision of
the Treaty of 944 (art. 13).
More clarity is offered by the Church Statutes of St. Vladimir and of his son
Iaroslav the Wise. Art. 9 of the former lists the cases subject to church jurisdic-
tion (the full list has been quoted above); these cases concern behaviour which
may have been acceptable or legally irrelevant in pagan times, but which the
Church was determined to combat. The one exception is the point translated
by Kaiser as “[disputes] between a husband and wife over an inheritance”;
as Shchapov has observed, such affairs should not be of interest to a church
court. The preferred translation should be “property disputes between living
spouses”.118 The point here is that the wife enjoyed a separate property status,
which could clash with that of her husband. Similar provisions are found in
other church statutes.119
A similar message is conveyed by art. 4 of the Statute of Iaroslav; it lists
the compensation a husband is to pay his wife in the event of repudiation
117 Cf. Iu.V. Ospennikov in PRoP i, 504–524 (text and commentary).

118 Shchapov in his commentary to the Church Statute of St. Vladimir, rz i, 157; he refers to
A.S. Pavlov, Kurs tserkovnogo prava, Troitse-Sergieva Lavra, 1902, 139.
119 Such as art. 9 of the Church Statute on Church Courts, Church People, and Trade M
easures
of the Novgorod prince Vsevolod.
634 chapter 19
(depending on the status of her father; if he was a great boyar – 300 grivna, a
lesser boyar – one gold grivna, and so on); also, art. 31, fixes fines (to be paid
to the bishop) and compensation, to be paid to the married woman herself
by somebody who has called her a whore (the amount also depends on the
status of her father). Arts. 12 and 13 stipulate that spouses are bound to support
each other, especially in the event of serious illness.120 The maintenance duty
returns in art. 18: a bigamist is to send his second wife to a nunnery, pay a fine
to the bishop, and keep and maintain his first wife.
The separate property status of spouses is also borne out by arts. 37–38,
devoted to theft of her husband’s property by a wife; this is not a ground for
divorce, but a fine has to be paid to the bishop. However, aggravated forms of
theft by a wife are mentioned in art. 56 as the sixth cause for divorce (such as
by acting in complicity with other thieves).
The Pskov Court Charter (arts. 85–91) is the most explicit about the position
of wives with regard to marriage property, but these provisions concern inheri-
tance, testate as well as intestate, and will be discussed below. They confirm
the relatively strong and independent financial status of married women, but
also that of unmarried sisters remaining in the household.
The Code of Ivan iii of 1497 did not deal with marriage property, but 15th
century documents illustrate the general framework outlined above. Married
women are mentioned occasionally as acting together with their husbands in
acts of gift or sale. It is unclear whether the (real) property involved in such
cases should be considered as being held jointly by the spouses, or whether
it concerned the wife’s own estate (but see the following paragraph). Widows
and nuns are regularly seen as donors or sellers of land and related rights.121
Women made their own wills, and the right do so was apparently not limited
to widows. Not surprisingly, princesses are often actively involved personally in
transactions concerning real property. The collection of princely treaties and
wills in the archives of the Moscow grand princes (ddg) offers the wills of
three princesses (one of grand princess Sofiia Vitovtovna, the wife of Vasilii i
and the mother of Vasilii ii).122
120 The Metropolitan’s Justice (art. 8) allowed repudiation, by husbands as well as wives, of a
spouse who had become blind or seriously ill.
121 E.g. asei i, Nos.64 (gift by a nun, 1428–1432), 119 (sale by mother and son, 1433–1447), 161
(sale by wife (widow?) and children, 1430–1450) and many others, all from the archives of
the Troitse-Sergiev monastery; gvnp, Nos.119 (gift by wife, 1466–1467), 129 (gift by widow,
beginning 15th century), from Novgorod.
122 ddg, Nos.28 (Elena Ol’gerdovna, widow of prince Vladimir Andreevich of Serpukhov,
1433) 57 (Sofiia Vitovtovna, 1451), 87 (Iulianiia, widow of prince Boris Vasil’evich of Volotsk,
1503).
In conclusion and to return to what was observed at the beginning of this

section, the dominant role of customary law in property arrangements be-
tween spouses must be kept in mind. The roles of husbands and wives, and of
brothers and sisters, were defined not by any written law but by custom. When
the legislator, dealing with other subjects, had occasion to pronounce himself
also on some point of marriage property law, he would merely express what
the normal routine was and what everybody already knew. The uncertainty
concerning the status of marriage property, referred to in the previous para-
graph, may therefore be caused by our own fixed ideas on such matters. Brides
brought a dowry (pridanoe, but also called veno) into the marriage; clothes,
jewelry, etc. would clearly remain the bride’s own; realty could probably not be
disposed of by the husband without the wife’s cooperation. As to real property
belonging to the husband, wives are often mentioned as co-donors, together
with their husbands, in donation charters (dannye) concerning real property.
If the husband had not made a will, the widow apparently had large powers
over the entire estate. It would, however, be unrealistic to define the various
practices in strict terms of ownership.
The payment of a dowry (pridanoe) by the bride’s parents or other close
relatives was clearly a normal phenomenon. Its primary purpose was not to
strengthen the husband’s or the couple’s financial position, but to provide
the wife with a measure of financial independence. The term veno is used oc-
casionally to refer to some material input from the wife’s side, but the more
common meaning is that of a bride-price, paid by the husband to the bride’s
parents. Another meaning of veno is the payment of a sort of marriage tax by
the bride’s family to their master or lord.123
Rights and Duties Within the Family

Even in modern systems, the relationships between members of the nuclear
family remain largely outside the sphere of law, and this was no different in
medieval Russia. To get an idea of such relationships, didactic texts such as
the Izmaragd or the Domostroi (mentioned in the beginning of this chapter)
are more enlightening than legal texts. The law would step in only in extreme
cases where all other means of dispute solving had failed. And then the church
courts would represent the first port of call. The Church Statute of Vladimir
referred disputes between husband and wife or between siblings or parents
and children over inheritance matters, as well as violence within the family
123 This meaning seems to be present in the famous gift charter of the village of Buitse of
prince Mstislav Vladimirovich from the 12th century; gvnp, No.81 (see the section on
princely and boyar landowning in Chapter xvi).
636 chapter 19
to the church courts (art. 9). According to the Statute of Iaroslav, the same ap-
plied in a few extreme situations which have already been mentioned above
(art. 30: parents who forced a child into a marriage, leading to (attempted) sui-
cide; art. 47: parents preventing a marriage, with the same consequence; art.
45: a son beating his parents). Barring such exceptional circumstances, the law
would leave the family alone. The few authors who have tried to construct a
legal framework for intra-family relationships in medieval Russia do not get
beyond generalities and speculative conclusions on the basis of ethnographic
comparisons.124
Inheritance
The Roman law adage Nemo pro parte testatus, pro parte intestatus moritur,125
or at least the idea behind it, has conditioned lawyers, ever since Romanist
legal thought became dominant, to believe firmly that the law of inheritance
consists naturally of two blocks, intestate and testate succession. The principle
contained in the adage is, however, nothing more than an arrangement, and,
generally speaking, a practical one; still, it would be perfectly feasible to have a
functioning system of legal succession upon death where testate and intestate
succession happily co-existed in a single concrete case. This preliminary ob-
servation is useful when discussing the various views on the law of succession
in Kievan Russia.
Nothing is known about the law of succession in pre-Christian Russia.
Vladimirskii-Budanov pointed to the system of succession in the Rurikid dy-
nasty (see Chapter 13) as a remnant of a previously universal system: property
belonged to a community of relatives, so there was no genuine succession to
specific heirs, there was in fact no inheritance law. In the earliest historical
times, represented by the rp, a transitional system was in operation, where
property could not be willed to somebody who was not already an heir, but
the ‘testator’ could effect a certain division of his goods among his heirs
(sons).126
The first reliable information comes from the 911 and 944 treaties with Byz-
antium. This information concerned primarily the Viking followers of the Rus-
sian princes, but it appeared to be applicable to the Slavic population as well,
124 See for instance Sergeevich, Lektsii, 500–511 or V.V. Momotov, Formirovanie russkogo
srednevekovogo prava v ix–xiv vv., Moskva, 2003, 179–199.
125 “Nobody dies partly testate, partly intestate”, in other words: either there is a last will
which covers the entire estate, or there is not and the law of intestate succession covers
the entire estate.
126 Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 460–461.
as suggested by later sources. Either Slavic and Germanic law were similar on
this point, or the Viking element had by that time already been sufficiently
slavicized. Art. 4 of the 911 Treaty granted the (closest?) kinsman (blizhnii)
of a murder victim a part of the property which the murderer would owe (as
wergeld), “as defined by law” (po zakonu), which in this case referred to cus-
tomary law. This rule expressed the same principle as embodied in the first
article of the Short Pravda: that composition owed to the victim would be pay-
able (as wergeld) to his closest relatives in the case of murder. Art. 13 of the 944
Treaty repeated this in different words.
The law of succession was more squarely involved in art. 13 of the 911 Treaty,
which dealt with the death of Russians (or rather Varangians) in the service of
the Byzantine emperor. If such a person had not made a will, his property was
to be turned over to his kinsmen in Greece, and if there were none of those, it
was to be sent to Russia to his close relatives (malye blizhiki). If he had made
a disposition, then the person to whom some property was willed was to take
it.127 If this means (but an unprejudiced reading suggests it does not) that such
a person would thereby become the universal heir of the de cuius, then one
could assume that the Roman law principle of intestate and testate succes-
sion being mutually exclusive would apply. Several authors have speculated or
theorized about the impact of Byzantine law on the inheritance provisions of
the 911 and 944 treaties.
Only after the conversion of Russia in 988 did one begin to be on firmer
ground. The Church Statute of St. Vladimir, in its oldest part (i.e. from the de-
cades immediately following the conversion), indicated the matters referred
to the jurisdiction of church courts, and among them were disputes between
husband and wife, and between brothers or children, over an inheritance (art.
9). In the same body of rules was art. 4 which informed us that “having opened
the Greek nomocanon, we [i.e. prince Vladimir] found in it that it is not fitting
for the prince, and neither for his boyars or his judges to judge [the following]
cases and disputes”. Unfortunately, the prince did not tell his audience where
he found this directive in the nomocanon.128 Since there were obviously no
ecclesiastical courts in pagan Russia, we can only presume that the idea was of
Byzantine origin. In any case, inheritance matters had undoubtedly become a
subject for church jurisdiction.
127 The verbal form pisal (“wrote”) proves that such testamentary dispositions were in
writing.
128 I have not found a single Russian author who has attempted to answer this intriguing
question.
638 chapter 19
The rule of art. 4 of the Statute of Vladimir was taken over in somewhat al-
tered form in the Church Statute of the Novgorod prince Vsevolod of 1135–1137:
inheritance disputes between brothers or sons.129
The Short Pravda was completely silent on the question of inheritances. It
is safe to assume that succession upon death was adequately regulated by cus-
tomary law at that time, and, moreover, the focus of the Short Pravda was not
on such questions. The important socio-economic shifts in the composition of
the population in the following century, as well as the expansion of princely
legislation, created a new situation.
The Expanded Pravda has a body of provisions on succession, starting with
art. 90 which, like some other provisions of the Expanded Pravda has its own
heading (“When a smerd dies”), and ending with art. 106, dealing with vari-
ous situations affecting estates of deceased persons. This complex belongs to
one of the more recent layers of the Expanded Pravda. It shows that, although
jurisdiction might belong (at least initially) to the church, legislative pow-
ers were retained by the state. Various authors, Sergeevich in particular, have
claimed that Byzantine law had been an influential factor in the drafting of the
inheritance provisions of the Expanded Pravda, but the evidence is extremely
meagre.130 All that one might expect is that certain general ideas espoused by
Byzantine law had some effect in Kievan Russia.
The basic provisions are arts. 90–92. Art. 91, in contrast to art. 90 (death of
a smerd), dealt with the death of boyars or druzhina members. The smerd of
art. 90 had the original and most common meaning of a servile peasant on the
prince’s land. Upon his death his estate reverted to the prince, but if he left
unmarried daughters (“daughters in his house”), they received a portion of the
estate. The estate of a boyar or druzhina member did not escheat to the prince,
but his sons inherited; if there were no sons the daughters inherited. Together,
the two provisions offer a general framework, albeit an incomplete one. It must
be assumed that unfree people in general received the same treatment as the
prince’s smerd, and that the rules covering boyars and druzhinniki were equally
applicable to other free persons. Another unanswered question concerns the
situation when the de cuius did not have any children, but brothers instead,
or other close male relatives. The more ancient arrangements found in the 911
and 944 treaties, involving succession by “close relatives”, suggest that such
129 I am not sure whether the formula promezhi muzhem i zhenoiu o zhivote i o bezdetnom zhi-
vote includes disputes about inheritances. See prp ii, 162–165 (art. 6) and Ia.N. Shchapov,
Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy xi–xv vv., M., 1976, 154–158 (art. 9); also in Kaiser, Laws,
59–63.
130 I have discussed Sergeevich’s allegations in Feldbrugge, lmr, 114–116.
relatives could inherit in the absence of children. This is confirmed by the old-
est surviving wills from the Kievan era. Kliment, a wealthy Novgorod merchant
and landowner, left most of his estate to the Iur’ev monastery in Novgorod
(represented by its abbot Varlaam), making provision for his wife, and adding
“as I do not have a brother or a son”.131
Art. 92 has often been regarded as covering testamentary succession, as op-
posed to intestate succession as regulated by the two preceding provisions.
This opposition, as argued above, may be anachronistic when applied to
Kievan Russia. Art. 92 can also be viewed as complementing arts. 90–91 in an-
other way: by going into greater detail, where arts. 90–91 only refer to children
generally. Art. 92 then added that a person (the father, as a rule) could make a
division of his property among his children; if no division was made, the chil-
dren would receive equal shares. Following the system of arts. 90–91, “children”
should most likely be read as “sons”.132
An unprejudiced reading of these opening provisions of the section on the
law of succession in the Expanded Pravda leads to an overall view which is
quite close to what had already been proposed by Vladimirskii-Budanov.133
The dominant idea was family property, managed, but not actually owned, by
the pater familias. He could effect a division of the property, but not will it
outside the family. He would normally be succeeded by his sons, but daugh-
ters were entitled to maintenance as long as they remained within the family.
There was a duty (as we have seen above) to arrange a marriage for them and
then they were entitled to a dowry. In the absence of sons, daughters could
take their place. Other close male relatives (brothers, cousins, uncles) consti-
tuted the next echelon of heirs. This entire system applied only to free people.
The series of provisions following arts. 90–92 offered further confirmation and
illustration of this overall view.
The disposition of art. 92 by which the division among the sons was effect-
ed is called a riad, a term which always refers to a bilateral act, a contract or
agreement.134 This again strengthens the view that art. 92 does not deal per se
131 Dated before 1270, when Varlaam died. See gvnp No.105 (162–163), also prp ii, 108–110, 114
(comments by Zimin).
132 prp i, 180 (Zimin). For an extensive discussion of the whole matter, see Baranowski,
604–626.
133 Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 460–472, esp. 460–461. A large number of scholars has contributed
comments to art. 92. The main point of consensus is that it is the key provision of the sec-
tion on the law of succession. As the whole debate has been ably and extensively related
by Baranowski, there is no point in summarizing his survey here.
134 The 911 Treaty with Byzantium refers to itself as a riad; art. 14 of the Expanded Pravda
deals with the riadovich, the contract labourer, and art. 110 mentions several riady in
640 chapter 19
with testamentary succession, as opposed to intestate succession, covered by

arts. 90–91. It is of course quite possible that by the time the rule was included
in the Expanded Pravda the disposition had in fact become unilateral and no
longer required the approval of the heirs. The disposition can therefore be re-
garded as an embryonic testamentary disposition, although there was as yet
no freedom to select heirs at will. And the mutual exclusion of intestate and
testamentary succession of Roman law was still beyond the horizon.
As a kind of afterthought, art. 92 also mentioned that some part of the es-
tate should be left to the “soul” (dushi), which in fact meant to be given to the
Church to pray for the soul. This appendix was undoubtedly included at the
suggestion of church officials involved in the drafting and confirms the con-
nections between the Church and inheritance law. Sergeevich (a proponent
of the strict differentiation between intestate and testamentary succession)
placed the riad in the context of the deathbed: the last wishes of the father,
uttered in the presence of a priest, were sacred. This would support the pos-
sibility, accepted by most authors, of the riad being in oral form, and it would
also explain the curious addition to art. 92 about the portion for the Church.135
The following provisions of the Expanded Pravda dealt with several special
situations. The widow was to be given a portion of the estate; a husband could
also assign such a portion to her beforehand (art. 93). When a widower remar-
ried, the children of the first marriage would receive their mother’s property
(art. 94). An unmarried daughter received nothing from the estate, but “her
brothers give her in marriage as best they can” (art. 95). This would include the
provision of a suitable dowry. The children of a concubine (of a slave-woman,
rob’i deti), receive nothing from the father’s estate, but are freed by the father’s
death, together with the mother (art. 98). Art. 99, the longest of the Expand-
ed Pravda, offered a detailed set of rules to protect young children after the
death of the father, in the event the mother remarried. The main element is
the appointment of the closest kinsman as guardian; his duties and rights are
defined. Art. 100 is very short and directs that the father’s house is inherited
by the youngest son; similar provisions occur in many legal systems and have
at least two advantages: a lower frequency of ownership changes and a lon-
ger expectation of care provision for the widow and other dependent family
members.136 A widow who had undertaken to remain unmarried and then
c onnection with slavery (see the section on slavery). Only art. 99 of the Expanded Pravda
uses riad in the sense of regulation or arrangement.
136 Zimin points out that the inheritance provisions of the Expanded Pravda distinguish be-
tween dom and dvor; both can be translated as house, but dom may also refer to the entire
estate, while dvor is the actual house with the farmyard; prp i, 180.
r emarried and squandered her late husband’s property was to compensate the
children for all losses (art. 101). The widow was allowed to stay on her late hus-
band’s property, sustaining herself on what she had received from her husband
(art. 102, see also art. 93). Art. 103 stressed that the widowed mother was en-
tirely free in the disposition of the portion assigned to her; she could also give
it or leave it to whomever she wished; if she had not made any disposition, the
property would be inherited by the person with whom she had lived and who
had looked after her. If the mother was married twice, the two sets of children
would inherit the estates of their respective fathers (art. 104). If a widowed
woman remarried and the second husband had squandered the property of
his stepchildren (what they inherited from their father), his son(s), upon his
death, had to indemnify their half-brothers (art. 105). Art. 106 does not really
add anything by repeating that a mother may give her property, to “a good son”,
whether of a first or a second husband, or to a daughter who has looked after
her, if “all the sons are bad”.137 Arts. 103 and 106 also make clear that widows can
independently make testamentary dispositions. More generally, the authors of
this part of the Expanded Pravda seem to have taken the trouble to strengthen
the position of women, particularly married women and mothers.
Art. 108 is part of a set of three provisions dealing with court fees, but is
relevant for inheritance law. It set a fee of one grivna kun for the detskii (a
court official of the prince) who settled an inheritance dispute which brothers
had brought before the prince. This shows that church jurisdiction in inheri-
tance matters, as stipulated by the Church Statute of Vladimir and subsequent
legislation, was apparently not strictly observed. The contradiction between
art. 108 and the Church Statute of Vladimir has been noted by several authors
and various explanations have been given.
The Statute of Vsevolod on Church Courts, Church People and Trade Mea-
sures (see the section on this Statute in Chapter 6) has a few additional pro-
visions (considered to be of much later date) in some copies, devoted to the
questions of the division of the estate where there were daughters along with
sons, or third and fourth wives.138
Like the Expanded Pravda, the next major comprehensive legislative act,
the Court Charter of Pskov, also contained a block of provisions devoted to
inheritance law (arts. 84–91).139 In earlier parts of the Charter succession upon
death is mentioned in passing, for instance in art. 14, which speaks about a
137 Detailed comments on arts. 93–106 and 108 as usual in Baranowski, 626–663, 666–669.
138 Text in Ia.N. Shchapov, Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy xi–xv vv., Moskva, 1976, 154 and
158; see also Iu.N. Ospennikov, PRoP i, 482 and 486–488.
139 Art. 87 does not directly concern inheritance law.
642 chapter 19
“will [rukopisanie], properly written and deposited in the [Pskov] archive”. This
formula implies that a last will could also be expressed orally. The inheritance
provisions of the Pskov Charter are of a casuistic nature and more general rules
have to be derived from them through extrapolation or in another way.
Arts. 84–86 dealt with various consequences of the death of an izornik, a
uniquely Pskov figure, a dependent peasant (on the izornik, see Chapter 18).140
The izornik had a contract with a landowner, who put a plot of land at his dis-
posal for a certain length of time, usually accompanied by a loan of money and/
or farm animals or implements. The izornik was obliged to transfer a certain
amount of the proceeds to the landowner and to pay back the loan. Arts. 84–86
indicate that the wife and children of the izornik would normally be his heirs,
but that they were responsible for paying back the advance. Brothers and then
kinsmen in general (plemia) are mentioned as subsequent heirs.
The other provisions (arts. 88–91) apparently concerned the general popula-
tion. Art. 88 showed that a married woman retained property of her own and
that she could make a will. If she had not made a will, the husband had the use
of her estate until he remarried. Presumably the estate would be handed over
to the children in that case. The same apparently goes for a wife who survived a
husband who had not left a will, according to the somewhat differently worded
art. 89. Arts. 90 and 91 dealt with family quarrels over clothing and valuables
left by the deceased and the way to prove a claim in such a case (this is in line
with the general character of the Pskov Charter, which pays great attention to
questions of proof and evidence).
Art. 100 fits the same mould; it directed that a gift of movable or landed
property to a kinsman, made in writing (through a gramota) before qualified
witnesses (a priest or disinterested outsiders), was valid after the death of the
donor, even if he had not made a proper will (rukopisanie).
The wills of ruling princes constituted a special category. From a modern
point of view one would say that in those deeds the public law aspect out-
weighed the private law one, although the testators were apparently not
aware of such a distinction. In those wills princes would not only give instruc-
tions about their property (divide it among their sons, make provisions for
their widows and daughters), but also designate a successor and make other
140 “Dependent agriculturist” (in Kaiser’s translation), “laboureur” (translation of Szeftel-

Eck); on the izornik generally, see Iu.G. Alekseev, Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota i ee vremia,
Leningrad, 1980, Ch. viii (145–203) and K.V. Petrov, “Dogovor «izornika s gosudarem»
Pskovskoi Sudnoi gramoty (rekonstruktsiia)”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Issledovaniia po is-
torii srednevekovoi Rusi. K 80-letiiu Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg,
2006, 113–126.
arrangements concerning their governmental duties. One of the earliest sur-

viving princely wills is that of Vladimir Vasil’kovich of Volynia, around 1287,
who appointed his brother Mstislav as his heir, while providing his wife with
certain estates for the duration of her life.141
The series of wills of grand princes of Moscow were discussed separately
(see Chapter 13).
141 The text of the prince’s will has survived in the Hypatian Chronicle (psrl ii, col.902–904);
also in prp ii, 27–28.
chapter 20
The Individual as a Legal Actor
In the previous chapter on the individual and the family we looked first at the
legal relevance of an individual’s existence per se, in particular his membership
of a certain class and the legal status connected with such membership, and
then at the legal relevance of being a member of a family, including such top-
ics as marriage and divorce, children, and inheritance and succession. These
questions affect, in a legal sense, all persons automatically, they do not have to
do anything for it. The exigencies of human life also require almost all persons
to become socially and economically active, to earn a livelihood. This normally
involves entering into legal relationships with others, i.e., relationships liable
to become the object of legal processes in cases where disputes concerning
such relationships have not been solved in another way. As explained in the
introductory chapter, legal relationships are not to be regarded as some sort of
natural phenomena, arising all by themselves. They have been created, initially
in an often amorphous process such as customary law, and then by a legislator
or public official. This means that before there was actual law, somebody had
to have a conception of what it ought to be.
Numerous modern, technical legal concepts have been invented in recent
times by legal professionals in order to cope with new types of conflicts. The
most basic legal concepts have their roots in pre-legal times, and perhaps the
most basic one is the contract. Any kind of social life requires a minimum of
trust between participants, trust in particular that the other person will actu-
ally behave in the way he/she has indicated he/she will. As soon as the devel-
opment of legal procedures has reached the stage that such procedures begin
to be concerned with understandings, agreements, deals between people, the
contract is born. When the deal is violated in some way, the law may provide
remedies.
Social life has always known ways to deal with individual behaviour that it
considered unacceptable (for some, most, or all members of the social group).
When such remedies are drawn into a legal system, an undifferentiated con-
cept of a delict emerges. It is as yet undifferentiated, because no distinction is
made between torts and criminal offences.1 The earliest version of the rp, as
1 One of the introductory chapters in PRoP i, by A.N. Fedorova, is entitled “The Character and
Content of the Violation of Law in the Russkaia Pravda” (pp. 211–277). It is based on the con-
sideration that the application of a modern distinction between public and private law to a

The Individual as a Legal Actor 645
well as numerous comparable legal systems of other civilizations, represents

this phase; even homicide was treated as an insult to the family of the victim,
to be wiped out; first by revenge, then by the payment of wergeld. As argued
elsewhere, it is narrow-minded to regard simple, but in their time adequate,
arrangements as ‘primitive’; such an approach becomes positively mislead-
ing if one views such ‘primitivism’ as ignorance of the ‘true nature’ of cer-
tain elements of the legal system, such as the distinction between public and
private law, or between a crime and a tort (because such a ‘nature’ is itself a
misconception).
The third fundamental legal concept is ownership. It differs in several ways
from the other two concepts, in that it does not seem to concern a relationship
between persons. This difficulty is traditionally resolved in legal education by
defining ownership as the relationship between a person and a thing, which is
to be respected by all other persons. If one fitted this view into the personal re-
lationship paradigm, governing contracts and delicts, then everything owned
would be the object of a personal relationship between the ‘owner’ and every
other person on the planet. Even if we were to limit the social universe to a
small village of 101 persons, then, if we assume that everybody in the village
owned 101 things, one million relationships would result. The matter can be
reduced to more realistic proportions once we recognize that almost all such
relationships are dormant and will always remain dormant. Legal ownership
only ‘wakes up’ when it is contested in some way, and then we are not dealing
with an owner and myriads of other persons, but with an owner and a specific
person who in some way does not recognize the owner’s status. This is a rela-
tionship which is comparable to the one between contractual partners and the
one between the person committing a delict and the victim.
Another specific problem concerning ownership is that it is a concept which
admits gradualism. One may argue about the content or even the existence of
a contract or a delict, but for both concepts gradualism is irrelevant: a weak
contract is still a contract and an insignificant delict remains a delict. The le-
gally recognized powers of a person over a thing may however range from com-
plete control to enjoyment so limited that it amounts to almost nothing. Also,
legally recognized powers over a thing can be broken up into smaller parts
and dispersed among any number of persons. In the classic, Roman law in-
spired view of most Western lawyers such situations are still handled through
legal system such as reflected in the rp is inappropriate. The author spoils the statement a
bit (in my view) by adding that “in the early feudal conditions of Ancient Russia the different
branches of law were insufficiently [my italics, ff] delimited” (211).
646 chapter 20
an ownership concept, which is then regarded as the mother rock from which
other more limited rights have been split off. This may offer a practical method
for handling the problem of multiple stakeholders in the property; it is still
unrealistic, especially in the not uncommon case where the official owner is
divested of almost all powers and rights regarding the thing. In a medieval
setting, where different persons were often granted various rights regarding
immovable property, the question concerning ownership can occasionally be
unanswerable on the basis of contemporary views; in other words, the owner-
ship concept itself may become fluid.
Contracts
Contracts in the legal sense, i.e., agreements between private parties which, if
leading to disputes, could be settled through legal procedures, occur mostly in
the commercial sphere, where at least one of the parties is engaged more or
less professionally in commerce. For this reason most types of contracts to be
encountered in Kievan Russia have already been discussed in the section on
commercial law in Chapter 15: sales, barter, gifts, loans, hire, labour contracts,
storage, carriage, and others. Some of these already made an appearance in
the Expanded Pravda (art. 43 of the Short Pravda, the “bridge builders’ law”,
urok mostnikov, implies a contract by which such craftsmen were engaged).
It remains therefore to consider the topic of general principles of contract law;
is anything to be found in early Russian law?
The answer is mostly negative. The few authors who have paid attention
to this question do not come up with much, and treat the matter in the tradi-
tional ‘pandectist’ way, i.e., they view contracts, along with delicts or torts, as
the sources of obligations and consider therefore first the more general topic
of obligations. One of the advantages of this approach is that it presents the
information a modern lawyer might be looking for in a familiar format.2 But
by imposing a modern conceptual frame on a legal system alien to these con-
cepts, a serious anachronism is introduced and a better understanding of such
a system may be thwarted.
Of the pre-revolutionary authors Vladimirskii-Budanov has offered the most
thorough treatment of the question, and his approach was eminently typical
of the pandectists. He started with some thoughts on the general d octrine
2 The pandectist approach, regulating every topic at the highest possible level, also has the
advantage of being logical and systematic; at the same time it can be very impractical.
concerning obligations,3 followed by sections on persons involved in obliga-

tions, the origin of obligations (contracts and delicts), the performance of
contracts, the object of an obligation, and the various ways an obligation is
terminated. As is inevitable in the pandectist approach, most of the chapter
is actually about contracts (in general). Vladimirskii-Budanov observed, like
most authors after him, that early Russian law did not clearly distinguish be-
tween delicts and criminal offences, and that delicts would therefore be dis-
cussed in Chapter 22. The observation, basically correct, is usually couched in
somewhat condescending words: the simple people in the past were not yet
aware of the fundamental distinction between civil and criminal law.4
Vladimirskii-Budanov’s treatment of the topic is however much less com-
prehensive than would seem from this brief survey. In essence, he related the
main points of his contemporary views on obligations and contracts and then
looked for examples from Russian legal history that could be fitted into his
system. These examples were taken from sources from almost eight centuries
and then presented as the law of obligations of old Russia.
Although the overall picture resulting from this procedure was completely
unrealistic, occasional points made by Vladimirskii-Budanov have retained
their relevance. One is the tendency he described as obligations (or rather
claims) to perform (do ut facias) being turned into rights in rem, the res in such
a case being the person of the debtor. Examples are labour contracts leading
to dependence of the worker (the zakup of the Expanded Pravda), or loan con-
tracts leading to slavery (kholopstvo).5 Another valid observation concerns the
tendency of the family to appear as co-debtor in various contracts.6
Iushkov, in his section on the general features of the law of obligations in the
Kievan era, repeated most of the points made by Vladimirskii-Budanov, with-
out the latter’s artificially imposed system (and also without quoting him).7
Sergeevich, in his long chapter on “Civil Law”, offered lengthy sections on
marriage, the family, inheritance law, and ownership and related topics, but
was completely silent on obligations.8
3 The first sentence is characteristic of his way of thinking: “A true understanding of the obliga-
tion as a right to [demand] an action of another person did not arise right away in history.”
(italics in original, Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 561). As there cannot be a “true understanding of the
obligation”, it cannot arise either.
4 See for instance I.V. Petrov, Gosudarstvo i pravo drevnei Rusi 750–980 gg., Sankt-Peterburg,
2003, 256–257.
5 Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 561.
6 Ibidem, 562–563.
8 Sergeevich, Lektsii, Chapter 4.
648 chapter 20
The most recent and ostensibly quite comprehensive treatment of the mat-
ter in various chapters of PRoP i remains very much within the traditional con-
fines adopted by 19th century scholarship.
Delicts
Above, the most basic legal concepts of contracts and delicts (also embracing
crimes) were distinguished by the presence or absence of trust: a legal relation-
ship can arise because parties trust each other sufficiently to reach an under-
standing concerning mutual behaviour (this may be an action or, conversely,
abstaining from an action), or a legal relationship arises because one party acts
(or fails to act) in a way which affects the interests of another party and which
is contrary to what is expected from members of a particular society. The cru-
cial concept in this distinction is the legal relationship, itself an abstract cre-
ation of the human mind.
The topic can also be approached from a procedural angle. For the general
public, law is the business of lawyers, and first of all courts. The appearance of
an independent and (hopefully) impartial arbiter is one of the decisive mo-
ments in the emergence of law. In the absence of a judicial input, law becomes
a mirage. The judge, in the view of the lay person, is the official who tells the
person in his court that he has acted wrongly; the judge imposes a sanction, a
penalty. Three situations can be distinguished, with correspondingly increas-
ing ‘penalties’. If two parties appear before the judge with a disagreement about
a contract, about property, the judge will say: A is right and B is wrong and I or-
der B to pay A so much or do such and such a thing (B’s ‘penalty’). The second
situation concerns the appearance of A stating that B has wronged him; if the
judge agrees, he will ‘punish’ B by issuing a similar order. In the third situation
the person of A (the victim) is pushed into the background by a public author-
ity (the state), which considers the wrong done by B so serious that it will take
over from A; if the judge agrees he will impose a genuine criminal penalty.
The dividing lines between the three categories are more blurred in this
approach and the use of an abstract concept such as a legal relationship is
avoided. In this historically realistic approach the middle category is represent-
ed by delicts or torts. They overlap on one side with contracts, because non-
performance of a contract can also be treated as a delict, and on the other side
with criminal offences, because a criminal offence almost always constitutes a
delict at the same time. They differ from contracts and offences in their lack of
concreteness; barter or sale is the basic contract and most other contracts can
be viewed as modifications; homicide, personal injury and theft are the basic
offences. There is on the other hand no basic concrete form of tort, any anti-
social behaviour can be juridified as a tort.
Most authors who have expressed themselves on the subject agree that the
earliest layer of the rp represented an era when torts and crimes still consti-
tuted a single complex. In the virtual absence of a public power intervening in
situations where it would consider its own interests affected, the victim and his
kin were the only available actors to counteract wrongdoing. In the subsequent
phases of the rp the prince and his court asserted themselves in many of such
cases, where by the same token the victim himself had to be content with a
more modest position or no role at all in the legal procedure aimed at redress-
ing any wrongdoing.
The first part of the Pravda of Iaroslav dealt almost exclusively with such
situations. (As explained in Chapter 4, the Short Pravda consists of two main
parts of which the Pravda of Iaroslav (arts. 1–18) is the elder; within this com-
plex, arts. 1–10 constitute the oldest nucleus.) The first and most basic provi-
sion of this complex is art. 1, regulating the consequences of homicide. For a
proper understanding of the importance of this provision, the background of
this oldest layer of Iaroslav’s Pravda must be recalled once more.
According to the nowadays most widely accepted view, this oldest registra-
tion of Russian law conformed to a pattern which is also encountered in the
oldest legislation of other Slavonic and Germanic peoples: a moment of par-
ticular political tension led to the writing down of traditional customary law;
the event would often be used to introduce certain modifications of the old
order. In Russia, this event was the turmoil in Novgorod in 1015–1016, following
the succession struggle among the sons of St. Vladimir, in particular Sviatopolk
in Kiev and Iaroslav in Novgorod.9 Violent clashes between Iaroslav’s Viking
druzhina and the Slavic population of Novgorod had forced Iaroslav to spell
out the rights of both groups in a manner satisfactory to all. Art. 1 does so in
considerable detail for homicide, while the following and much shorter provi-
sions concern lesser offences against the person. The stylistic brevity of the
rp has caused numerous problems in interpretation, particularly in art. 1 of
the Short Pravda. My own translation of art. 1, which already implies a certain
amount of interpretation, is as follows:
If a man kills a[nother] man, [the following relatives of the murdered man
avenge him:] the brother avenges the brother, or the son the father, or the
father the son, or the son of the brother or the son of the sister [avenge
their respective uncles]; if there is no one to avenge [the murdered man],
9 Related in detail in the Prim. Chr.

650 chapter 20
then 40 grivna wergeld; be [the murdered man] a Rusin: a bodyguard, a

merchant, a steward, or a sheriff, or rather an izgoi or a [Novgorodian]
Slav, his wergeld is 40 grivna.
Among the many questions raised by this text, by far the most relevant in the
context of this chapter concerns the payment of wergeld.10 The Russian text
has 40 griven za golovu, 40 grivna “for the head”. Who is the recipient of this
amount? If it is the prince, then it is a fine (usually called “bloodwite” in Eng-
lish translations); if it is the victim’s kin, it is genuine wergeld (Lat. compositio).
Scholarly opinion is still divided about this question. As my translation indi-
cates, I believe the wergeld theory has the better arguments. The first one is
that the general course of development is the replacement of blood vengeance
by wergeld, and then the conversion of wergeld into bloodwite, when public
power takes over the handling of offences against the person. If Iaroslav wanted
to discourage violence and revenge among the heterogeneous Novgorod popu-
lation, the promotion of the acceptance of wergeld would be a more effective
measure that taking the matter entirely into his own hands by imposing fines
(bloodwite). A second argument is that in some of the following provisions of
the Short Pravda (esp. art. 2) and other later Russian sources the victim of an
injury is explicitly mentioned as the recipient of the amount indicated. This
point is reinforced by the fact that a comparison with similar legislation from
other Slavic and Germanic peoples yields the same conclusion. A famous entry
in the Primary Chronicle under the year 996 (see below) proves that the pay-
ment of wergeld was an accepted practice at that time. If this line of reasoning
is accepted, the earliest phase of the rp represents an era when homicide and
other personal injuries constituted torts entailing, in a modern legal view, fixed
damages. The following provisions of the Short Pravda defined fixed damages
for lesser personal injuries. A comparison of the relative sanctions reveals that
the seriousness of the injury was not measured in physical or economic terms,
but in considerations of honour and status. Cutting off a moustache or a beard
entailed a composition of 12 grivna, while the loss of a finger only merited
3 grivna.
Whichever interpretation is given to art. 1 of the Short Pravda, it should be
borne in mind that it constitutes only a particular point in a long development.
If we confine our attention to homicide, revenge (blood feud) was the oldest
10 For an extensive survey of the literature on this question, see my “Wergeld, Bloodwite,
and the Emergence of Criminal Law”, H. Küpper, Von Kontinuitäten und Brüchen: Ostrecht
in Wandel der Zeiten. Festschrift für Friedrich-Christian Schroeder zum 75. Geburtstag,
Frankfurt am Main, 2011, 3–21.
way of dealing with it, accompanied at an early stage already by the alterna-
tive of accepting compensation. As such, they (revenge and compensation)
are mentioned in the 911 and 944 treaties with Byzantium (arts. 4 and 13 resp.).
When public power (a prince) began to assert itself, it attempted to intervene
in the process of dealing with the consequences of homicide; this could be
done by discouraging revenge and promoting the alternative of accepting
compensation, and subsequently also by diverting the compensation to be
paid from the victim’s family to the state itself. Such an attempt is described in
the Chronicle for the year 996.11 An intermediate point in this course of events
is the appropriation of the usual compensation by the prince in the case mem-
bers of his own personnel had been killed. This is the main topic of the Pravda
of Iaroslav’s Sons. In the end, homicide is removed entirely from the private
sphere, revenge is forbidden and the punishment of the offender becomes the
monopoly of the state, although there still may be some provision for compen-
sating the victim’s family.12
When this final stage is reached, the various torts described in the Pravda
of Iaroslav are converted into criminal offences. Needless to say, medieval Rus-
sian law did not have and did not need an abstract concept of delicts. With
the growth of central power, more and more conflicts would be drawn into
the sphere of law. The various injurious actions defined in the Pravda of Iaro-
slav may be regarded as torts, by applying (anachronistically) our modern con-
cepts. After they had been converted into crimes, torts seemingly disappeared
from medieval Russian law; in fact, they existed only in the minds of lawyers
of other times.
The question of crimes and criminal law will be discussed in Chapter 22
Ownership
Only a few of the Russian legal historians have paid attention to the gener-
al question of ownership in Kievan Russia,13 while the narrower question of
11 Vladimir’s plan to abolish vira (wergeld) and execute robbers, withdrawn on the advice
of the bishops, who suggested that Vladimir could use the vira to buy horses and arms for
his troops.
12 This is a summary of the detailed argument in my paper mentioned in a footnote above.
13 In particular Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 492–501; Sergeevich, Lektsii, 518–529; Iushkov, Stroi, fairly
comprehensive in other matters, completely disregarded the question. See also E.I. Koly-
cheva, “Traditsiia i zakonotvorchestvo v russkom srednevekovom gosudarstve xv–xvi
vv. (Pravovye aspekty otchuzhdeniia sobstvennosti)”, N.A. Gorskaia, E.N. Shveikovskaia
652 chapter 20
ownership of land has been and continues to be a topic commanding the inter-
ests of other historians as well. This of course makes good sense in view of the
central importance of land ownership for the understanding of Kievan Rus-
sia. It has accordingly been treated extensively in Chapter 18. But within the
framework of the present chapter the general question of ownership merits
some consideration.
A lawyer reared in the modern, Romanist tradition is inclined, mostly un-
consciously, to look at ownership as an almost physical quality adhering to
a material object. Looking at a bar of precious metal, he will ask: “Who is the
owner?”, in the same way a physicist might ask: “Is this bar radioactive?”, and he
might believe that some kind of (quasi-)scientific examination could answer
his question, in the same way as the physicist would establish radioactivity.
Ownership, however, does not reside in the physical world, but is an invented
concept, which is then applied to the physical world. For what it is worth, the
dominant concept of ownership, found in slightly different shapes in most
modern legislations, embraces the full and exclusive power of the owner over
a particular physical object (leaving aside the further complication of the met-
aphorical application of ownership to non-material things).14 Ownership in
this sense is at the basis of most of private law. All other rights with respect
to things have been construed as derivative of ownership and in the law of
obligations ownership also occupies a central place; the transfer of ownership,
for instance, is the basic purpose of the most important contract: barter/sale.
It is not easy for a lawyer who operates in such an ownership-based legal
universe to genuinely understand, to get inside, a world in which this frame-
work did not function. In Chapter 18 we have attempted to sketch the slow
emergence of graduated concepts of land tenure and land ownership. It took
several centuries before the idea was accepted that a piece of land could be
‘owned’ in the modern sense: that a particular person would be exclusively
entitled to use and exploit it, to sell, donate or bequeath it.
This approach cannot be applied similarly to other objects of ownership:
chattels, movable property. The dichotomy of movable and immovable things,
a conscious human invention in its legal form, is itself grounded in physical
reality. The allegedly unlimited powers of an owner to do what he likes with
his property (barring specific legal prohibitions) are in fact severely limited in
(eds.), Predstavleniia o sobstvennosti v russkom obshchestve xv–xviii vv., Moskva, 1998,

6–38, at 6–7.
14 See art. 544 Code Civil, art. 903 bgb, art. 209 Civil Code of the Russian Federation.
respect of land, because it lies where it lies and there is not that much you can
do with it, at least compared to things like clothing or furniture.15
In law, the borderline between movable and immovable property has of ne-
cessity been drawn sharply, but there is implicit recognition of the fact that
in reality there is no clear borderline. For most categories of things located in
the border area between the two kinds of property, the law (the legislator or
otherwise the court) decides where something should go. Seagoing ships and
aeroplanes, for instance, although eminently movable, are considered to be
immovable in most legislations.
If it took a long time before a clear concept of ownership of immovable
property came about, the awareness of ownership of movable property has a
much longer pedigree, not surprisingly. The 911 and 944 treaties with Byzan-
tium discuss theft and this necessarily implied such ownership. Art. 13 of the
Short Pravda is even more explicit in referring to the unlawful taking of the
principal objects of such ownership: a horse, weaponry, clothes. Art. 18 men-
tions the destruction of weaponry or clothes by someone who is not the owner.
The Pravda does not use such terms as ‘owner’ or ‘ownership’, but simply refers
to somebody’s property as ‘his’ (svoe).
The few authors who deal with ownership in general terms do so in the tra-
ditional way, i.e., they impose their conceptual framework on the rather dispa-
rate bits of information offered by early Russian legislation. Then they reach
conclusions that the law of the Kievan era did not distinguish between owner-
ship and possession, or about the various ways ownership could arise, etc.16
Vladimirskii-Budanov notes the valid point that the family (itself a not very
precise concept) often appeared as the owner, rather than the person who was
actually using the property. This can easily be accommodated in the view ad-
opted in this work that ownership was a fluid and often unarticulated concept
in early law.
15 In the post-Soviet debates about the privatization of land, a politician exclaimed that he
would be horrified to see an American being allowed to buy the Ural mountains, where-
upon an opponent retorted: “Are you afraid he would be carrying them home?”
16 Sergeevich. Lektsii, 518–529, offers a general essay on ownership in early legal systems,
with little reference to Russian law. Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 493–501, is more to the point and
stresses the importance of the movable-immovable property dichotomy.
chapter 21
The Church and Monasteries
The conversion of Russia, traditionally dated 988, the year of the baptism of
the Kievan prince Vladimir Sviatoslavich in Kherson, one of the most funda-
mental turning-points in Russian history, also affected the legal system of the
Kievan realm to its very foundations.1 Christianity was not an entirely new
phenomenon in Russia at that time. The Primary Chronicle contains many
references to earlier manifestations. The 911 Treaty between Byzantium and
Kiev explicitly juxtaposed Christians (i.e. Greeks) and Russians (pagans), but
the 944 Treaty already has several references to Russian adhering to the Chris-
tian faith. Somewhat later, probably in 948, the ruling Kievan princess Olga
(Vladimir’s grandmother) visited Constantinople where she was baptized by
the patriarch, a story told with great gusto in the Chronicle. But it was only
the baptism of Vladimir which propelled the Christian Church to a central po-
sition in the politico-legal structure of the Kievan state.2 The acceptance of
baptism from Byzantium and the subordination of the Russian Church to the
see of Constantinople for many centuries were of decisive importance for the
fate of Russia, up to the present day. On the other hand, it should be kept in
mind that the conversion of Russia took place before the Great Schism of 1054
and that the Russian Church started life in union with the Church of Rome.3
In this chapter we intend to look first at the legal identity of the Church, in
other words, what sort of subject the Church represented in the legal system,
1 Post-Soviet authors occasionally recognize this point; e.g. T. Fedorenko, “Vplyv khrystyians’
koho svitohliadu na pravosvidomist’ ta pravovu kul’turu Kyivs’koi Rusi (kinets’ x – persha
tretyna xiii st.)”, Pravo Ukrainy, 2001, No.8, 114–116.
2 The story of Vladimir’s conversion and baptism is one of the major themes in the Primary
Chronicle, told with much detail, most of it quite improbable. See the relevant chapter in
J. Fennell, A History of the Russian Church to 1449, London/New York, 1995 (hereafter: Fennell),
35–44. Also R.G. Skrynnikov, Krest i Korona. Tserkov’ i gosudarstvo na Rusi ix–xvii vv., Sankt-
Peterburg, 2000, 20–30. The general literature on the spiritual, political, international and
socio-economic factors affecting the Christianization of Russia is voluminous, and a refer-
ence to the usual handbooks and works of reference must suffice here. Among modern au-
thors, the figure of Ia.N. Shchapov towers above all others; church and state relations, and
Byzantine-Russian connections are among the main themes of his numerous books and
articles.
3 Fennell, 97–104, gives many examples of the absence of wide-spread anti-Latin feelings in
Russia until the stage had changed completely after the Mongol invasion.

The Church and Monasteries 655
how it related to the state and what its organizational structure was. The next
topic is the Church as a legal actor and concerns the jurisdiction of the Church:
the particular class of persons (church people) subject to church jurisdiction,
particular categories of cases and disputes assigned to church jurisdiction, and
the role of ecclesiastical courts. Thirdly, there is the role of monasteries as sep-
arate legal entities; ecclesiastical and particularly monastic landowning was
discussed separately in Chapter 18.
Church and State
In the modern secularized world, the on-going implementation of the prin-

ciple of separation of Church and state has led to increasing ‘privatization’ of
churches, and their being relegated to the sphere of private life and private law.
Churches then become private legal persons, comparable to associations or co-
operatives. But cultural and demographic realities are hard to deny and many
European countries recognize in some way the special position of a particular
religious denomination. This perpetuates to some extent the situation which
prevailed well into the 19th century, when most countries recognized a state or
at least an official religion (Roman-Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox).
In a more distant past, after Christianity had ousted paganism in Europe,
its exclusive position (either Western/Roman, or Eastern/Orthodox) remained
uncontested for centuries, until the Reformation necessitated new arrange-
ments for the co-existence of different faiths in one country.4 For the young
Christian churches, the eradication of paganism remained an urgent task for a
long time. Russia was no exception in this respect. Pagan practices survived for
many centuries in the Russian countryside.5
The earliest legislation concerning the Russian Church, the Church Statute
of Vladimir, in its list of cases subject to church jurisdiction (art. 9) mentioned
the following: witchcraft (ved’stvo), the making of potions (zeliinich’stvo) or
charms (potvori), sorcery (charodeianiia), magic (volkhovaniia), cutting down
a cross, praying under a grain-drying roof (ovin) or in a copse or by the water.
The Church Statute of Iaroslav, a kind of penal code for offences in which the
Church had a greater interest than the state, referred to many practices which
were probably commonplace in pagan Russia, but some of them concerned
particularly pagan practices, such as “cutting the cheese for a girl” (a wedding
4 Leaving aside the special question of the Jewish religion, which was tolerated in some coun-
tries and not at all times.
5 See the chapter on “Pagan Survivals” in Fennell, 73–90.
656 chapter 21
ritual, art. 36), or women engaged in making charms, witchcraft, sorcery or

potions (art. 40), eating pagan (poganoe) food such as bear’s or mare’s meat
(art. 50) or women going to pagan dances (igrishchi, art. 56, the fifth ground for
divorcing a wife).
The exclusive position of the medieval Church in Europe (whether Western
or Eastern), the fact that Christianity was the religion of the state, the ruler
and the population, meant that the relationship between Church and state
became a matter of supreme socio-political importance. Such a relationship
usually allowed or tolerated the presence of persons professing another faith;
much would depend on local conditions. In Russia, the conversion of forest-
dwelling Finno-Ugrian peoples was never completed, but they did not consti-
tute an important factor in the make-up of the political system. Foreign trade
often implied the more or less permanent presence of foreign merchants, Latin
Catholics from Western Europe, Muslims from the East and South. With the
waning of the Mongol-Tatar overlordship in the 14th and 15th centuries, the
Russians co-existed with Muslim Tatars in many parts of the country. The pres-
ence of Jewish communities has already been mentioned above.6 All this did
not alter the position of Orthodoxy as the national religion of the country.
Through the centuries, the Western and Eastern churches had developed
different modes of co-existence with the state. Initially, the Roman emperors
after Constantine the Great legislated without hesitation about matters con-
cerning the internal organization of the church. Charlemagne and his succes-
sors followed this example in respect of the Church of the Frankish empire. In
the process of European feudalization, bishops and abbots were preferable as
feudal lords for emperors and kings, as they were prevented from setting up
their own dynasties. This bound church dignitaries, who simultaneously acted
as temporal rulers, more closely to the ruling monarch. The tension between
Church and state, implied in this relationship, came to a head at the end of
the 11th century in the Investiture Struggle between the pope and the emperor.
The Concordat of Worms of 1122 reflected a compromise perpetuating the feu-
dal subordination of church dignitaries in temporal matters, but excluding (at
least in principle) the intervention of secular rulers in the election of the pope
and confirming the latter’s exclusive right to appoint bishops, introducing
6 The state of the Khazars (a probably Turkic people which had adopted Judaism as its state
religion) was overpowered by Sviatoslav, the father of Vladimir, in 965. There were Jewish
Khazar communities in Kievan Russia. In the 12th and 13th century numerous West-European
Jews settled in the Polish-Lithuanian state; after the partition of Poland in the 18th cen-
tury they became Russian citizens and constituted the main component of Russia’s Jewish
population.
thereby some of the elements which later contributed to the doctrine of the
separation of Church and state.
In the Byzantine empire, Church and state continued to work together in
close harmony, the Symphonia of Church and state. One of the curious legal
consequences of this arrangement was that church and state each acted as leg-
islator, without a very strict demarcation between the respective jurisdictions.7
The Byzantine collections of canon law, usually going under such names as
Nomocanon or Syntagma, also contained secular law which often had been
taken from the Corpus Iuris and subsequent imperial legislation.8 Different
versions of the Nomocanon eventually reached Russia, where they constituted
the main vehicle for the reception of Byzantine law. A detailed examination of
the process by which Byzantine law came to Russia was carried out in recent
times by Ia.N. Shchapov in several pioneering works, especially “The Byzantine
and South-Slavic Legal Heritage in Russia in the 11th-13th Centuries”.9
After the conversion of Russia, the hierarchy of the Russian Church consist-
ed initially of Greek clergymen, but the Byzantine model of Church-state rela-
tions underwent significant alterations and adaptations to specifically Russian
circumstances. The fundamental enactment in this respect was the Church
Statute of Vladimir, of which the oldest part was issued shortly after Vladimir’s
baptism.10 The three main points of this Statute were the conferring of tithes
on the Church, of jurisdiction in certain categories of cases, and the definition
of ‘church people’ (tserkovnye liudi). These three points together created a prac-
tical structure, providing the Church with the necessary material resources to
enable it to operate in what was essentially a missionary context. This struc-
ture differed from its Byzantine counterpart, which did not know tithes, and
from the systems in operation in Western Europe, in which the incorporation
of bishops and abbots in the emerging feudal system was a central element.
In terms of power relationships, a conspicuous feature of the Russian set-up
7 This tendency was most clearly present in the Epanagoge, a summary of the law, which
appeared in 885/886 during the reign of emperor Basil i (867–886) and was strongly in-
spired by the famous and energetic patriarch Photius. The Epanagoge, with the most bla-
tantly pro-church chapters removed, was the main source of the Procheiron (907/908), a
text of considerable influence in Russia later on. The foundation on which the Epanagoge
built was in the Corpus Iuris, where the respective domains of Church and state were
briefly designated in the preface of Nov.6.
8 I have discussed this matter in more detail in “Roman Law in Medieval Russia”, F eldbrugge,
lmr, 59–128, at 70–79.
9 Vizantiiskoe i iuzhnoslavianskoe pravovoe nasledie na Rusi v xi–xiii vv., Moskva, 1978.
10 Art. 5 of the Statute mentions that Vladimir had consulted with his wife Anna, the sister
of the Byzantine emperor; she died in 1011 according to the Chronicle.
658 chapter 21
was that the Church-state relationship appeared as a creation of the prince.

It was the prince who granted the Church the revenues from his own estate
and part of the jurisdiction which, without the grant, would have remained
in his hands. The entire first part (arts. 1–8) of the Statute reads almost like a
preamble, in which Vladimir explains how he came to his ostensibly generous
grants to the Church. “Having opened the Greek nomocanon we discovered in
it that the prince ought not to hold jurisdiction over these cases …” (art. 4, Kai-
ser’s translation); “And I, having consulted with my Princess Anna and with my
children, have given these cases to the churches, to the Metropolitan, and to all
the bishoprics throughout the Rus’ land.” (art. 5, Kaiser’s translation). Although
these lines were undoubtedly conceived and written down by church repre-
sentatives, perhaps by the metropolitan himself, the decision behind them was
the prince’s. This decision deviated from previous practice, as it had to deal
with the presence of a new actor, the Church, and the innovation may have
required some explaining to circles around the prince. Once the step across the
threshold into the Christian Church had been taken, the new institution had
to be given the materials with which to function; Vladimir’s grant satisfied this
demand and simultaneously bound the Church to its benefactor. The Church
Statute of Vladimir was followed by the Church Statute of his son Iaroslav; the
latter statute represented a natural elaboration and complement to the former.
Together these statutes provided the foundation of the legal position of the
Russian church. This was repeatedly and explicitly confirmed by several later
rulers.11
The history of Christianity knows numerous instances of church leaders
who, clearly motivated by a sense of spiritual and moral duty, did not shirk
their responsibilities and spoke out and acted against secular powers; Russia
has been no exception in this respect. But that does not alter the fact that the
Russian Church has generally been less independent with respect to the power
of the state. To put it in a perhaps oversimplified form, if the Western Church
ultimately developed as an independent power, but within its own limited
sphere, and the Byzantine Church as a close and more or less equal partner of
11 Some of the later church statutes refer to the early ones of Vladimir and Iaroslav; e.g.
the Novgorod Statute of prince Vsevolod on Church Courts, Church People, and Trade
Measures (in art. 14), prp ii, 160–161; also Ia.N. Shchapov, Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy
xi–xv vv., Moskva, 1976, 153–158; English translation, Kaiser, Laws, 59–63. Apart from that,
there are also several “confirmation charters”, which confirm the continued validity of the
statutes of Vladimir and Iaroslav; e.g. by the Moscow grand prince Vasilii i Dmitrievich
of 1402 (Shchapov, Drevnerusskie, 182–184); by the Lithuanian grand prince (and king of
Poland) Aleksander Kazimirovich of 1499 and 1502 (Shchapov, Drevnerusskie, 187–193).
the state, the Russian Church often appeared to be mostly the state’s depart-
ment for religious affairs. Peter the Great formalized this status by replacing
the patriarch by the Holy Synod, which was in fact controlled by the Ober-
Prokuror of the Holy Synod, the entire system fixed legally in 1721 by the Duk-
hovnyi Reglament (Spiritual Regulations).12
To correct this admittedly cavalier characterization one should add that
major variations occurred in the course of the long history of the Russian Or-
thodox Church. The Church of the Kievan era was primarily concerned with
the promotion of the new faith across the vast territory of the Eastern Slavs.
As the Kievan state was gradually transformed into a loose amalgam of often
independent and competing principalities, the Church attempted as a rule to
maintain and balance its position. The rise of the grand principality of Moscow
again changed the playing field. Although the general tendency of the policies
of the metropolitans was undoubtedly supportive of the grand prince’s ambi-
tions, the Church had its own separate interests, spiritual as well as material,
to be looked after, and this would occasionally lead to tense relations with the
grand prince. Moreover, the Church was not a monolithic body; there were
at least three major categories of interested parties: the metropolitan (often a
Greek appointee of the patriarch of Constantinople), the individual bishops,
and the monasteries, some of which were among the wealthiest and most pow-
erful landowners of the country.13
The Organization of the Church14
The Chronicle reports that the Greek princess Anna (the emperor’s sister)
came to Russia in the company of priests to marry Vladimir, but is otherwise
curiously silent about the initial organization of the Russian Church. This has
12 Text of the Dukhovnyi Reglament in V.N. Beneshevich, Sbornik pamiatnikov tserkovnago

prava, Petrograd, 1915, Part ii (Petrograd, 1914), 94–155; also in V.A. Tomsinov (comp.),
Zakonodatel’stvo Petra i, 1696–1725 gody, Moskva, 2014, 313–355.
13 While Fennell generally attached less weight to ecclesiastical opposition to the policies
of the grand prince, Borisov is more inclined to stress the independent course taken by
several metropolitans during the formative period of Muscovy; cf. N.S. Borisov, Russkaia
tserkov’ v politicheskoi bor’be xi–xv vekov, Moskva, 1986. For the history of Church-state
relations in Russia, see also V. Val’denberg, Drevnerusskiia ucheniia o predelakh tsarskoi
vlasti. Ocherki russkoi politicheskoi literatury ot Vladimir Sviatogo do kontsa xvii veka,
Petrograd, 1916.
14 This section is based mainly on Ia.N. Shchapov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov Drevnei Rusi x–
xiii vv., Moskva, 1989, Chapter 1: “The Formation and Development of the Structure and
660 chapter 21
given rise to much controversy. Who was the first leader of the Russian Church?
Was he a metropolitan or an ordinary bishop, or archbishop? Who had ap-
pointed him? Did he answer to the patriarch in Constantinople, or, as some
have argued, to the Bulgarian patriarch in Ohrid?
The most likely answer is that a Byzantine bishop, Feofilakt (Theophylactes),
who had been involved in diplomatic contacts with Vladimir, was the first met-
ropolitan, appointed by the patriarch of Constantinople.15 He was succeeded
before 1018 by Ioann, who was followed in 1039 by Feopempt (Theopemptes),
who is the first metropolitan named in the Chronicle. The next metropolitan
Ilarion, unlike his three predecessors (Greek bishops appointed by the patri-
arch of Constantinople), was a Russian monk, appointed in 1051 by Iaroslav the
Wise, “after assembling the bishops”, in the words of the Chronicle. This was not
a revolutionary move, but rather a return to traditional Byzantine procedure,
according to which the selection of the metropolitan was the responsibility of
the bishops of the province, a procedure which had gradually been replaced
by the patriarch assuming this responsibility.16 Anyway, after Ilarion, appoint-
ment by the patriarch of Constantinople remained the normal procedure and
all metropolitans until the Mongol invasion were of Greek origin, except Klim
(Kliment), elected by a majority at a council of bishops and appointed by the
Kievan prince Iziaslav Mstislavich in 1147, when the patriarchal see in Con-
stantinople happened to be in disarray. Klim’s appointment was followed by
serious discord within the church hierarchy, which was finally resolved when a
new Greek metropolitan, Konstantin, was appointed in 1155.
In the Eastern Church a metropolitan was the head of a national church,
enjoying a certain amount of power over the bishops of his territory. Very oc-
casionally a bishop was honoured with the mere title of metropolitan. This
was the case for a short period with the bishops of Chernigov and Pereiaslavl’.17
dministration of the Church”, 23–75. Appendices i and ii (191–214) offer lists of the
A
Russian metropolitans and bishops for the 10th-13th century.
15 So Ia.N. Shchapov, Gosudarstvo, 192; also Fennell, 40.
16 Fennell, 45.
17 The three surviving sons of Iaroslav Mudryi (†1054), Iziaslav, Sviatoslav and Vsevolod, who
succeeded him, had their capitals in Kiev, Chernigov and Pereiaslavl (respectively). This
would explain the temporary metropolitanates in Chernigov and Pereiaslavl’; see A.V.
Nazarenko, “Territorial’no-politicheskaia organizatsiia i eparkhial’naia struktura tserkvi v
Drevnei Rusi (konets x–xi vek)”, A.V. Nazarenko, Drevniaia Rus’ i Slaviane (=dgve 2007),
Moskva, 2009, 172–206, and also id., “Pereiaslavskaia mitropoliia na Rusi na rubezhe xi–
xii vv. (dinasticheskaia i vneshnepoliticheskaia podopleka tserkovnoi geografii)”, T.N.
Dzhakson, A.V. Podosinov (eds.), Kniga kartiny Zemli. Sbornik statei v chest’ Iriny Genna-
dievny Konovalovoi, Moskva, 2014, 192–211.
The first Russian city to receive a bishop after Kiev was Novgorod, possibly as
early as 989. Within a few decades Belgorod and Chernigov followed; later in the
course of the 11th century Pereiaslavl’, Polotsk and Vladimir-Volynsk received
their own bishops. Peremyshl’, Turov, Galich, Smolensk, Ugrovsk, Kholm, Iur’ev,
Kanev, Rostov, Vladimir (on the Kliazma), Riazan’ and Lutsk complete the list
of pre-Mongol eparchies18 in Russia. Most episcopal sees coincided with the
regional administrative centres, seats of ruling princes, which had often arisen
in older tribal capitals.19
Until the Mongol invasions the metropolitans resided in Kiev and were
known as the metropolitans of Kiev or as the metropolitans of Russia or the
Russian metropolitans.20 Shortly after the fall of Kiev in 1240, a Russian monk,
Kirill, was appointed to the Kiev see, but it was several years before he was
officially installed. He led a rather ambulant existence, due to the turmoil of
the times and often resided in Vladimir, the seat of the grand princes of Vladi-
mir. He enjoyed a particularly close relationship with Aleksandr Nevskii (grand
prince of Vladimir, 1052–1063). After the death of Kirill in 1281, his successor
Maksim moved the metropolitan see from Kiev to Vladimir and adopted the
title of metropolitan of all Russia.21 In 1325 metropolitan Petr moved the see
again, this time from Vladimir to Moscow.
Bishops were appointed by the Kievan metropolitan, as a rule, and not by
the patriarch in Constantinople. The wishes of the local prince were an impor-
tant factor, as the income of the Church depended on the revenues assigned
to it by the ruler. The best documented is the appointment of the first bishop
18 “Eparchy” is the normal designation for a bishopric or diocese in the Eastern church.
19 The small eparchies of Belgorod and Iur’ev in the vicinity of Kiev were part of the territory
of the Kievan grand prince; their bishops served as administrators of the Kievan eparchy
and as deputies for the metropolitan. In Western Russia (the principality of Vladimir-
Volynsk), there were several eparchies (Vladimir-Volynsk, Lutsk, Ugrovsk and Kholm).
Nazarenko, op. cit., 172, regards this as a consequence of the principle that the diocesan
structure should follow the political organization of the state, as enunciated in Canon 17
of the Council of Chalcedon (451). However, the last sentence of this Canon merely states
“If any city has been, or shall hereafter be erected by imperial authority, then let the order
of the church parishes follow the political and municipal example.”
20 The varying titles adorning the Russian metropolitan have a complicated background,
connected not only with his relationship with the grand prince (of Kiev and then
Vladimir), but also with a wider network of relationships involving the Byzantine patri-
arch and emperor, as well as developments in Western Russia, where various metropoli-
tanates were set up and dissolved (esp. in Galicia). See Fennell, Chapters 12 and 13, and
also A.I. Pliguzov, “O titule «mitropolit kievskii i vseia Rusi»”, A.I. Pliguzov (ed.), Russkii
feodal’nyi arkhiv xiv – pervoi treti xvi veka, v, Moskva, 1992, 1034–1042.
21 Shchapov, Gosudarstvo, 205.
662 chapter 21
of Smolensk, Manuil, in the first half of the 12th century.22 Art. 2 of the charter
of prince Rostislav Mstislavich of Smolensk stated that the prince brought a
bishop to Smolensk “[after] having consulted with my people, by the order of
my holy father [Mstislav], who wished to create [a bishopric] in his lifetime
here where previously there was no bishopric; so that I, [although] unworthy
[and] sinful, [do hereby] establish the bishopric”.23 The confirmation charter
by bishop Manuil referred to the establishment of the bishopric by prince
Rostislav and the latter’s charter, but also to the Kievan (“Russian”) metro-
politan Mikhail, who had “appointed” him (postavlenikom moim Russkim kir
Mikhailom).24 The main topic of prince Rostislav’s charter is the detailed list-
ing of the various sources of income assigned to the bishop. It illustrated the
usual practice in which the local prince and also the local population played
an often decisive role, while the official appointment, lending legitimacy to the
new bishop, rested with the Russian metropolitan.
This applied in particular to Novgorod, where the selection of the bishop
depended very much on local preferences. Of all the medieval Russian bishops,
the Novgorod bishop was the only one to enjoy the title of archbishop. This
was, according to Shchapov, a mere question of titular eminence, without the
normal immediate subordination of a Byzantine archbishop to the patriarch
and corresponding exemption from the powers of the metropolitan.25
The administration of a medieval Russian eparchy embraced a wide vari-
ety of activities, requiring a more or less extensive bureaucracy. Much would
depend on local circumstances. The eparchy of Rostov in the East of Russia
covered an enormous territory, much of it sparsely populated by pagan Finn-
ish tribes; the bishop of Rostov, initially at least, was the main representative
of the Kievan prince, and missionary duties would have been prominent, along
with general administrative responsibilities. In most eparchies, the bishop re-
sided in a town which was at the same time the capital of the regional prince
(e.g. Smolensk, or Polotsk); the Novgorod archbishop gradually assumed the
function of ceremonial head of state of the Novgorod republic.
The information on the episcopal bureaucracy is incidental and scattered
and allows only a somewhat sketchy reconstruction. It seems that the general
22 For the complications surrounding the exact dating of the actual founding of the epar-
chy and the appointment of the first bishop, see the section on the Smolensk charters of
prince Rostislav and bishop Manuil in Chapter 6.
23 Kaiser’s translation; in prp ii, 39, this is art. 1; Kaiser follows Shchapov’s later edition in
Ia.N. Shchapov, Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy xi–xv vv., Moskva, 1976, 141.
24 The title kir, from Greek kurios, “lord”, is unusual. prp ii, 43; Shchapov, op. cit., 145.
administrative representative of the bishop was the bishop’s lieutenant (vlady-

chnyi namestnik); clerical as well as lay persons are mentioned as the occupants
of this office. Such lieutenants could serve as administrators in the diocesan
capital, and also as episcopal representatives in other towns of the eparchy.
Their duties also involved participation in criminal trials. Art. 8 of the Church
Statute of Vladimir forbad the prince’s judges to adjudicate without the par-
ticipation of the bishop’s lieutenant, where this was required.26 The Statute of
Iaroslav mentioned the metropolitan’s lieutenant (volostel’ mitropolichii) as the
regular judge of his court (art. 57). The tiun or steward, mentioned repeatedly
in the rp as an official of a prince or a boyar (e.g. art. 1 of the Expanded Pravda),
also appears in other sources as an estate agent, overseer, or business manager
of a bishop. Other more specialized episcopal officials were the mytnik, the
market overseer, and the desiatinnik, whose duties, as the name suggests, were
in some way connected with tithes.27
The priesthood of the eparchy consisted of ordinary (secular) priests and
deacons and the members of the kliros, comparable to the canons in the West-
ern church. The kliros is often mentioned separately; their principal religious
duty consisted in taking care of daily services in the local sobor, the church
specifically designated for this purpose. In major towns, where the bishop had
his residence, the local cathedral would be the sobor. In the largest towns, like
Kiev or Novgorod, there would be several sobory. It seems that the appoint-
ment and material provision of the kliros were often made by the prince.28
Church Jurisdiction
The Church Statute of Vladimir (in its original shape) produced an outline of
Church-state relations which remained a fundamental aspect of the legal sys-
tem of Russia for many centuries. Its main points, as indicated above, were the
establishment of tithes, the introduction of the Church (or rather the bishop)
as a judicial actor, and the definition of “church people”. The last point may ac-
tually be considered as an elaboration of the second, because it provided a part
of the definition of the jurisdiction of the Church. The practical background of
26 This particular rule represents a later addition to the Statute, because there were obvi-
ously no lieutenants, nor even bishops, at the time of the first enactment of it. Art. 109 of
the Court Charter of Pskov mentions a case of mixed jurisdiction of the prince’s and the
bishop’s lieutenants.
27 See Shchapov, Gosudarstvo, 69–73.
664 chapter 21
it all was the need to equip the Church with sufficient material means to func-
tion. In his work on Church and state in medieval Russia, Shchapov therefore
unites all such means in a single chapter: tithes, landowning by the Church,
weights and measures, and church jurisdiction. If one adopts a legal, instead
of an economic perspective, these different sources of income are of a widely
divergent legal nature and are therefore better treated separately.
Matters Assigned to the Church

The alleged ground for conferring jurisdiction on the Church (as indicated
above) was the Greek practice, which Vladimir had discovered when he ac-
quainted himself with the Nomocanon (see art. 4 of the Statute). A similar ref-
erence is to be found in the Church Statute of Iaroslav, which in its first article
relates that the Greek Nomocanon was consulted in the matter of conferring
jurisdiction on the metropolitan and the bishops. This is a pia fraus, for several
reasons. Vladimir surely did not consult the Nomocanon himself. The Slavonic
Efrem version of the Nomocanon probably reached Kiev only during the reign
of Vladimir’s son Iaroslav.29 Also, the cases referred to church courts in the
Statute of Vladimir were normally dealt with by secular courts in Byzantium,
and it is unlikely if not impossible that the practice referred to in art. 4 could be
found anywhere in contemporary Byzantine legislation.30 The real reason for
invoking the Byzantine roots of the innovation was most probably the wish to
strengthen its legitimacy, hence also the express mention of the consultation
of Vladimir’s wife, the princess Anna, sister of the Byzantine emperor Basil ii.
What the newly converted Russian rulers actually did was to deviate from,
rather than to follow the Byzantine model. This can be explained, as Shchapov
has done convincingly,31 by considering the conditions prevailing in Russia at
the time, a completely uneducated pagan population in the countryside and a
legal system which was only taking the first steps in the direction of central leg-
islation and written law, conditions which required an entirely different gov-
ernmental approach from what would be appropriate in the Byzantine empire.

30 This question is overlooked by most Russian authors, except Shchapov who refers to it
laterally when he points out, in his discussion of the Statute of Iaroslav, that the Rus-
sian division of jurisdiction differed from the Byzantine system by taking away an entire
complex of cases from the secular courts and transferring them to the bishop’s court,
while in Byzantium the secular court would deal with them and the Church would only
get involved in a complementary fashion by adding church penalties to what the secular
court had already imposed; Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’, 302–306.
31 Ibidem.
The initial list of cases handed over to the jurisdiction of the church, accord-
ing to the reconstructed archetype of the Statute of Vladimir, was:32
And in all towns, and in villages and in settlements where there are
Christians, I have given [to the Church]: divorces, fornication [smil’noe],
adultery, abduction, rape, disputes between husband and wife over an
inheritance, or if they are within a forbidden degree of consanguin-
ity or spiritual relationship [godparent and godchild], witchcraft,
dishonour[33], potion-making, heresy, biting [in a fight between men], if
a son or daughter beats the father or mother, or if brothers have a dispute
over an inheritance.
In later versions of the Statute other wrongdoings were added (see the list in
the section on “Marriage After the Conversion of Russia” in Chapter 19). The
Church Statute of Vladimir’s son Iaroslav rounded off what Vladimir had
started, by directing what was to happen when the cases referred to church
jurisdiction occurred. It therefore has the appearance of a small criminal code.
The various forms of misconduct identified in the Statute of Vladimir (also
in the longer lists of more recent versions) resurfaced, together with a good
many new forms, and the Statute indicated what kind of measure or penalty
the metropolitan (or the bishop) was to impose.34 In accordance with the ex-
press purpose of providing the Church with income, the penalties generally
consisted of fines.
In a few cases an additional penalty could be imposed by the prince. These
comprised abduction and rape (arts. 2 and 3), dishonouring a wife by repudiat-
ing her (without a valid reason, art. 4), seduction leading to a group rape (art.
8), adultery by the husband (art. 9), arson (arts. 15 and 49), shaving off some-
body’s beard or hair (art. 32), participating in a pagan marriage ritual (“cutting
32 As suggested by Shchapov in Kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’, 120–121.

33 Urekanie: this is the term Shchapov uses in his reconstruction of the original text. In the
church statutes of Vladimir and Vsevolod it appears in the formula “these three dishon-
ours [urekaniia]: fornication [bliadnia], making poisons, heresy”. If urekanie in Shchapov’s
reconstruction is read as bliadnia and taken to mean “visiting prostitutes” of “engaging in
prostitution”, as specific forms of fornication, everything falls into place.
34 In most copies of the so-called Expanded Version (to which the frequently used Archeo-
graphic Copy belongs) the metropolitan is mentioned as the judge; in the more numerous
copies of the Short Version, the bishop. Nobody contests that ordinary bishops, along
with the metropolitan, were the judges in the cases referred to church courts in Kievan
times. In his reconstruction of the archetype of the Statute, Shchapov deliberately opted
for the term “bishop”; Kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’, 293.
666 chapter 21
the cheese”, art. 36). The reasons for the prince’s intervention in these cases
were apparently diverse. The offences in arts. 2, 3, 4, 8 and 32 affected primar-
ily the honour of the family or individual concerned and paralleled various
provisions of the rp. Arson as defined in art. 15 (art. 49 was a mere repetition
of art. 15), burning “a threshing floor or a house or anything else”, was also cov-
ered by the rp (burning a threshing floor, art. 83 of the Expanded Pravda) and
probably did not envisage the acts of an individual arsonist, but rather an act
of collective violence against the property of another family. Then it would
also belong to the type of behaviour which could upset the peace and public
order, like the other offences mentioned, and unlike the various forms of pri-
vate sexual misconduct which made up the bulk of the Statute of Iaroslav. Why
the prince should get involved in a husband’s adultery (art. 9) is difficult to
explain, in light of the mores of the times. Perhaps this additional sanction was
included at the insistence of the Church. The struggle against pagan rituals, in
particular pagan weddings, would be a case in which the interests of prince
and Church coincided. The Church wanted people to be Christians and behave
accordingly; for the prince, paganism would be a factor resisting the territorial
penetration and implementation of his power.
If one views the behavioural complex, briefly indicated in art. 9 of the Stat-
ute of Vladimir and expanded and elaborated in the Statute of Iaroslav, as a
coherent whole, its meaning is clear. The new rules were directed against cer-
tain excesses of a pagan life-style which were most objectionable to the Chris-
tian religion. The ideas behind it came therefore from Byzantium; much of the
behaviour involved would not have upset the pagan Russians overmuch, or
it would have been dealt with according to customary law. The new remedy,
however, was very much a Russian innovation. This can be clearly illustrated by
a comparison with the Ecloga, in particular its 17th Title, devoted to criminal
law. The Greek clergy which had come to Kiev was of course familiar with the
legal world reflected by the Ecloga and comparable Byzantine legislation; this
was where they got their ideas from. Most of the wrongdoings described in
Iaroslav’s Statute were found in some form in the Ecloga. But on two decisive
points the Byzantine and Russian solutions diverged. In the Ecloga the penalty
was imposed by the secular court, and not by the bishop; and the penalties in
the Statute of Iaroslav consisted, as has been said, of fines, while the Ecloga’s
penalties, and Byzantine criminal law in general, were more brutal (crucifix-
ion, decapitation, cutting off the nose, the hand or the genitals, etc.).
The strengthening of the power of the prince, especially after the establish-
ment of the hegemony of Muscovy, together with the more thorough Christian-
ization of Russia, rendered the original co-operation model between Church
and state outdated. The usefulness of assigning a number of offences to the
jurisdiction to the Church dwindled as the Church acquired important other

sources of income, and more and more jurisdiction was reclaimed by the state.
The Smolensk Church Statute of prince Rostislav still contained a list of “bish-
op’s cases”, expanded in some ways and reduced in others (art. 11). The Church
Statute of the Novgorod prince Vsevolod, in accordance with its general char-
acter, copied the list of art. 9 of the Statute of Vladimir (also in its art. 9). The
Church Statute of the Galician prince Lev Danilovich (of 1301), which also rep-
resented a rephrasing of the Statute of Vladimir, reduced the cases reserved for
the bishop to matrimonial matters (divorce, separation, annulment). The Code
of 1497 still acknowledged “church people” as a separate jurisdictional category
(art. 59), but was silent on the matter of exclusive jurisdiction of the Church in
certain types of cases. See also the section below on “Church Courts”.
Church People
The jurisdiction of the Church was not exhausted by the generous package
of cases referred to it by art. 9 of the Statute of Vladimir and its elaboration
in the Statute of Iaroslav. In the later versions of the Statute of Vladimir, art.
16 listed the “church people” (tserkovnye liudi) and art. 17 then added: “They
are the church people, those who do God’s work, the Metropolitan or bishop
holds jurisdiction [in disputes] between them, whether [it be a case of] in-
sult, or quarrel, or physical harm or inheritance.” (Kaiser’s translation). Art. 57
of the Statute of Iaroslav transmitted the same principle in a quite different
wording.35 The Statute of Vladimir already envisaged the case when somebody,
belonging to the “church people”, had a dispute with an outsider; in that case
there was to be a common court (obchii sud, art. 18), obviously consisting of a
secular and an ecclesiastical judge.
So, not only had a certain category of cases been removed from the juris-
diction of the ordinary court, but also an entire category of persons had been
made subject to a special church court. This category was defined in the Church
Statute of Vladimir as “the abbot, the priest, the priest’s wife, their children, the
monk, the nun, the deacon, the proskurnitsa [a woman who baked the bread
for the divine liturgy], the slave freed by testament [zadushnyi chelovek].” This
at least is the enumeration of Shchapov’s reconstruction of the original text. In
the numerous later versions of the Statute the list was brought up to date by
inserting additional categories: the abbess, the deacon’s wife, the sacristan, the
35 “And whatever goes on among monastery people and among church people, and in the
monasteries themselves, neither the prince nor his rural judge [is to] interfere in that, and
the Metropolitan’s lieutenants have jurisdiction over these [matters], and their escheated
estates go to the Metropolitan’s lieutenant.” (Kaiser’s translation).
668 chapter 21
members of the kliros, the widow, the lame, the wanderer, the blind, the clerk,
the prikladnik (church protégé), the proshchenik, the physician, the pilgrim,
persons being cared for in monasteries, hospitals and refuges, persons who sew
monks’ habits.
While the meaning of most of these categories is sufficiently plain, the
prikladniki and proshcheniki deserve some further comment. The prikladniki
make an appearance in the list of church people in only some of the versions of
the Statute of Vladimir. Iushkov is the only modern author who has paid seri-
ous attention to them. He came to the conclusion that they were to be regarded
as persons who had voluntarily put themselves under the protection of the
Church.36 Other authors who mention them do so usually in one breath with
the izgoi, a category which also turns up among the church people, but was by
no means confined to that (see the discussion of izgoi in Chapter 19).
The term proshchenik suggests a person for whom something had been
forgiven. According to one theory, this would be a person who had been
healed miraculously and whose sins would have been forgiven simultane-
ously (an idea prominently present in the New Testament, whenever Jesus
Christ heals somebody and adds: “Your sins are forgiven”). A strong argument
in favour of this interpretation is that it was still current in the times of Her-
berstein at the beginning of the 16th century.37 Against it, Iushkov has argued
that even princes, boyars and other important people could have been healed
miraculously and that it would be implausible to assume that this would
make them wards of the Church.38 He therefore preferred a more pedestrian
interpretation; a proshchenik in his view was a person who had become a
debt slave, but who was then absolved from the obligation to pay back the
debt.39 In the Church Statute of Vsevolod the term proshchenik is replaced
by pushchenik: somebody “who has been released”.40 The Church Statute of
the Smolensk prince Rostislav explicitly referred (in art. 2) to pushcheniki
36 Iushkov, Ocherki, 116–118. See also Shchapov, Gosudarstvo, 103.

37 In his section devoted to “Who is subject to church jurisdiction”, Herberstein mentions
“those for whom a saint worked a miracle”, S. von Herberstein, Das alte Russland, Zürich,
1984 (orig. Vienna, 1549) 126. Szeftel/Eck follow this interpretation with their translation
of miraculé, M. Szeftel, A. Eck, Documents de droit public relatifs á la Russie médiévale,
Bruxelles, 1954, 244.
38 Iushkov, Ocherki, 119; id., Stroi, 307.
39 Kaiser, Laws, translates “freed [debt] slaves”, leaving the question unresolved, following in
the tracks of Grekov, Kievskaia Rus’, 255–257. Shchapov, Gosudarstvo, 102–103, is close to
Iushkov in his views.
40 Szeftel/Eck, op. cit., 273, translate pushchenik here as libertin; Grekov, op. cit., 255, regards
him as somebody released from slavery and having become a serf.
belonging to the prince himself, who were transferred by him to the newly
established eparchy.41 This of course would be hard to reconcile with the
miraculous healing theory.
The general idea is clear: church people were not only the clergy and those
who directly served the Church, but also persons who were under the care
and protection of the Church. The Church functioned as the basic welfare
agency; once you were being looked after by the Church, you were also sub-
ject to church jurisdiction. It is worth stressing that the medieval Church, in
the East as well as the West, took on this responsibility because it considered
it part of its vocation on the grounds of biblical injunctions. Simultaneously
and additionally, this relieved the prince’s secular government of the need to
direct extensive means towards the provision of welfare in situations (such as
famines and droughts) where such provision would be politically desirable. It
is undeniable that this division of labour between state and Church also had
an additional advantage for the latter; it provided a legitimate reason for the
Church to insist on being supplied with the means to carry out its tasks. This
became an important issue in the internal church struggle during the reign of
Ivan iii between the abbot Iosif Volotskii (see below in the section on monas-
teries) and the party of the nestiazhateli (from stiazhatel’stvo, “acquisitiveness,
money-grubbing”), followers of Nil Sorskii, who deplored the accumulation of
landed wealth by the Russian monasteries.42
Another attractive aspect of a broad definition of “church people” from the
point of view of the prince could have been that, given his interest in the prop-
agation of the Christian faith by a loyal Church, such a definition would allow
a more effective penetration of the Church in different strata of society.
Later secular legislation, as could be expected, tended to increase the re-
striction of the category of “church people”. They are not encountered in the
Church Statute of the Smolensk prince Rostislav, while the Church Statute of
the Novgorod prince Vsevolod took over the list from the Statute of Vladimir,
with a few interesting amendments (art. 17). One of them concerned the izgoi
and offered the most explicit pronouncement on this elusive category in medi-
eval Russian legal sources (see the discussion in Chapter 19). Another charter
containing a more restricted definition of “church people” is the Church Stat-
ute of the Galician prince Lev Danilovich (of 1301). The Code of 1497 reduced
the “church people” to priests, deacons, monks, nuns, church guards, and wid-
ows dependent on the Church for their livelihood (art. 59).
41 prp ii, 39.

42 See also R.O. Crummey, The Formation of Muscovy 1304–1613, London, 1985, 121–125.
670 chapter 21
Church Courts
Church jurisdiction was the exclusive privilege of the metropolitan and other
bishops. The oldest lists of “church people” always included the abbot and the
abbess, along with all monks and nuns; there was no separate monastic juris-
diction. Art. 57 of the Statute of Iaroslav is quite unambiguous: “And whatever
goes on among monastery people and among church people, and in the mon-
asteries themselves, neither the prince nor his rural judge [is to] interfere in
that, and the Metropolitan’s lieutenants have jurisdiction over these [matters],
…” (Kaiser’s translation). A similar rule was included in the Metropolitan’s Jus-
tice (art. 38).
In view of the large packages of jurisdiction entrusted to the Church, the
bishop would normally not be able to act personally as a judge in routine cases,
but little can be found in the sources about the composition and operation of
church courts.43 The church statutes of Vladimir (art. 8) and Iaroslav (art. 57), as
mentioned above, refer to the bishop’s lieutenant (namestnik or volostel’) as his
judicial representative. The duties of the bishop’s tiun or steward also involved
work in the bishop’s court. One can only assume that there must also have been
lower officials such as clerks (d’iaki), bailiffs (pristavy) and other servants.
The Court Charter of Pskov (art. 109) shows that the bishop’s court was fully
alive at that time. It dealt with the bishop’s (in this case the archbishop of
Novgorod’s) namestnik as judge in cases concerning priests, deacons, monks,
nuns and proskurnitsy (see above), and in cases of litigation among such per-
sons. In litigation between church people and outsiders, a mixed court was to
be instituted (a rule already found in art. 18 of the Statute of Vladimir).
If one accepts the theory that the Metropolitan’s Justice represented a small
law code for the court of the bishop of Perm (see the section on the Metropoli-
tan’s Justice), then it provides the most detailed view of the operation of the
court of a bishop.
It seems that in later years some of the most influential monasteries had
acquired jurisdiction over their dependent people in certain cases. In a char-
ter from 1337/1339 the Moscow grand prince Ivan Kalita granted the Novgorod
Iur’ev (George) monastery limited immunity from the prince’s jurisdiction for
certain lands held by the monastery in the region of Volokolamsk (a disputed
area between Novgorod and Moscow), “and let the man from St. George judge
the disputes between them”.44
43 Shchapov, who has a section on “Church Jurisdiction” (in Gosudarstvo, 97–107), does not
mention the question and only remarks elsewhere (130) that there is no evidence of the
clergy assuming judicial duties, except in the 15th and 16th century in South-West Russia.
44 gvnp No.86, 143. See also Cherepnin, Arkhivy ii, 116 and Shchapov, Gosudarstvo, 121.
The existence of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and courts inevitably raises the

problem of their relationship with ordinary jurisdiction and courts. This prob-
lem can be split into several more specific questions. Where is the borderline
between the two jurisdictions? What happens when a case is subject to both
jurisdictions? What about mixed courts? Shchapov is the only modern author
who deals with these questions in some detail.45
One question has already been considered above; in a dispute between
church people (subject to church jurisdiction) and other persons, the Statute
of Vladimir (art. 18) ordered the setting-up of a joint court.
But where church jurisdiction was established ratione materiae (according
to subject matter) and not ratione personae (according to the status of the per-
sons involved) the situation was more complicated. Shchapov identified two
major points of overlap of the two jurisdictions, in inheritance questions and
in criminal law.
The various church statutes assigned inheritance questions to church
courts, but the formulas are not identical. The Expanded Pravda contained a
fairly detailed set of rules concerning succession (arts. 98–106). Shchapov sug-
gested that in the event of overlapping jurisdiction parties had the option of
choosing. I would be more inclined to believe that the solution would depend
on practical conditions, such as the relative power of the two courts in a given
situation, the availability of a court, etc.
The most serious instances of overlapping jurisdictions had been taken care
of by the Church Statute of Iaroslav through the insertion of the formula: “and
the prince punishes”. These cases have already been mentioned above in our
review of matters assigned to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. With regard to the ab-
duction/rape complex (arts. 2, 3 and 8 of Iaroslav’s Statute), the overlap with
secular legislation was small; the Short Pravda (art. 29) dealt only with the ab-
duction of a slave woman, and this was seen as a property crime and not as an
offence against morals. In two other cases the overlap was almost complete,
the burning down of a threshing floor (art. 83 of the Expanded Pravda and arts.
15 and 49 of Iaroslav’s Statute), and cutting off a man’s beard (art. 8 of the Short
Pravda, art. 67 of the Expanded Pravda, and art. 19 of the Statute of Iaroslav). In
all these cases the prince’s penalty came on top of the bishop’s penalty.
Other church statutes occasionally assigned additional cases to the bishop’s
court. The Smolensk charter, for instance, granted the bishop jurisdiction in
cases of murder through poisoning (art. 11, point 6). The same provision start-
ed with the statement: “And no one is to judge the bishop’s cases; the bishop
45 Shchapov, Gosudarstvo, 113–123. Of the older authors, Presniakov (Lektsii i, 117–118) can be
mentioned.
672 chapter 21
imself judges them.”, and this is then followed by a list of cases, based on, but
h
differing from art. 8 of the Statute of Vladimir. However, point 6 of this list,
devoted to abduction, provided that the prince (of Smolensk) or his mayor
(posadnik) were to turn over half the money received by them (obviously in
the form of a fine paid by the offender) to the bishop. Obviously, the list of
cases reserved for the bishop was not to be taken too literally.
The Eastern as well as the Western church has always maintained specific
ecclesiastical jurisdiction in punishing violations of church law, along with and
apart from criminal jurisdiction assigned to the Church by secular legislation.
In present-day secular society (but not in Islamic societies) this is a matter of
little concern to lawyers, as such church law is viewed as a species of private
internal regulation of a private law corporate entity. It is up to the individual to
subject himself to such jurisdiction; the state will not interfere, except where
the exercise of such jurisdiction would be contrary to public order or other
major public interests. This was different in the past, when the interpenetra-
tion of Church and state was much more pervasive, especially in Russia. For a
treatment of this topic I refer to specialized literature.46
Church Legislation
In Byzantium, as explained above, the Church operated in tandem with the
state and accordingly displayed much activity in the field of legislation. In Rus-
sia, the situation was different and there was a more modest volume of church
legislation. The Metropolitan’s Justice, however obscure its exact legal char-
acter, would be one of the obvious examples, if the above-mentioned theory
concerning its origin were accepted. The first volume of the old collection of
Beneshevich, containing the main historical documents concerning ecclesias-
tical law,47 consisted mainly of secular legislation affecting the church (such as
the various princely church statutes) and writings of old church fathers, of no
specific interest to the history of Russian law. Its last item was the “Answers of
Metropolitan Ioann ii”, representing replies to questions of church law asked
by the monk Iakov.48 Most of these concerned questions of a strictly religious
nature, but some also touched upon topics of matrimonial law.49 The second
46 A recently republished textbook is N.S. Suvorov, O tserkovnykh nakazaniiakh. Opyt izsledo-

vaniia po tserkovnomu pravu, Sankt-Peterburg, 1876 (reprint, Moskva, 2011).
47 V.N. Beneshevich, Sbornik pamiatnikov po istorii tserkovnago prava, Petrograd, 1915 (Part i,
Petrograd, 1914; Part ii, Petrograd, 1914).
48 Also included, together with comments by Iu.V. Ospennikov, in PRoP i, 489–503. This was
the Kievan metropolitan Ioann (1080–1089).
49 Comparable in many ways to the Questionary of Kirik from the 12th century; see the
section on “Men and Women” in Chapter 19.
volume contained among other things the iarlyki (charters) of the Mongol
khans to the Russian metropolitans (see below) and 15th century regulations
on the election and installation of bishops and other church personnel; most
of the volume was taken up by the Spiritual Regulations (Dukhovnyi Regla-
ment) of Peter the Great of 1721, which fixed the legal status and internal orga-
nization of the Russian Orthodox Church until the October Revolution.
As pointed out above, the organizational forms of religious denominations
are treated by most modern secular states as purely voluntary associations of
citizens, governed by private law. Such organizations are free, within certain
legal limits, to make their own rules and have their own ‘laws’. Individual mem-
bers of such organizations are free to follow the organizational rules or leave
the organization if they find such rules unacceptable. This arrangement was
obviously inappropriate in the setting of medieval Russia, where the powers
of the state and the Church were strongly intertwined. Legislation emanating
from church authorities had to be regarded, in principle, as part of the national
legal system in such a situation. However, much of it concerned matters of reli-
gious observance which nowadays would be regarded as lacking legal relevance
and which even in a medieval setting had little legal content. The “Answers of
Metropolitan Ioann ii”, mentioned above, offer one example, the “Questionary
of Kirik” another (first half of the 12th century).50 Among the 101 questions
asked by the priest Kirik and addressed to the Novgorod bishop Nifont, only
a very few could be considered as having concrete legal consequences. In the
answer to question 4 the bishop made clear that members of the clergy were
prohibited from charging interest (on the basis of rules established by the 6th
Ecumenical Council of 680). The answer to question 94 confirmed that women
also had the right, under certain conditions to divorce their husbands.
The Russian Church under Mongol-Tatar Rule

The metropolitan Iosif is usually considered to have died when the Mongols
took Kiev in 1240, although there are also reports that he had left the city be-
forehand.51 After a period of sede vacante for a few years, Kirill, a learned cleric
at the court of Daniil Romanovich of Galicia (at that moment also holding the
title of grand prince of Kiev), was elevated to the metropolitan see of Kiev (as
already mentioned above). He held this position until his death in 1281 and
emerged as one of the most influential figures in the turbulent times following
the Mongol conquest. This was also due to the good relations he had been able
to establish with the khan of the Golden Horde. The Mongols, who had not
50 Text and commentary by Iu.V. Ospennikov in PRoP i, 504–524.

51 Shchapov, Gosudarstvo, 204.
674 chapter 21
yet embraced Islam at the time of Chingis Khan and his immediate successors
and who ruled an empire with a multitude of faiths, displayed considerable
tolerance in the field of religion, provided their supremacy was recognized by
the religious leaders. This would be expressed in prayers for the rulers and his
family. In his iarlyk granted to Kirill in 1267 khan Mengu-Timur wrote:
Chingis-Khan and the following khans, our elder brothers, spoke: «Let
priests and monks, not seeing any kind of taxes whatsoever, pray to God
for us and send up their good wishes for us» and gave them iarlyks. And
now we, in accordance with the previous iarlyks, say: «Not seeing any
kind of taxes whatsoever, pray to God for us and send up good wishes for
us» and we gave this metropolitan the iarlyk.52
The general tax exemption for the church was confirmed by several successive
khans (see the section on “Iarlyks of the Tatar Khans”).
Another manifestation of the Mongol attitude towards the Russian Church
was the establishment of a bishopric right in the heart of the Golden Horde,
in its temporary capital of Sarai, in 1261, during the reign of khan Berke (1256–
1266), which also saw the introduction of Islam as the official religion of the
Golden Horde. It was unquestionably advantageous for the leading Russian
princes at that time to have a Russian or Greek cleric of considerable status
present at the court of the khan.53
Other Sources of Church Income
For many centuries, the importance of the Church and its manifold agencies
and representatives in the sphere of law stemmed largely from its landown-
ing. Initially, however, church income was based not on land, but on other
sources. The church’s prominent presence in the administration of justice has
been discussed above in greater detail because of its special relevance from a
legal point of view. But income from the activities of courts was not the only
source of income during the early period of the Russian Church. This was al-
ready demonstrated by the Church Statute of Vladimir. Before it got into the
52 A.P. Grigor’ev, Khanskie iarlyki russkim mitropolitam, Sankt-Peterburg, 2004, 44. A different
and much longer text, extensively doctored apparently by the metropolitan chancery in
later years, in prp iii, 467–468. See the section on “Iarlyks of the Tatar Khans” in Chapter 11.
53 Cf. R.G. Skrynnikov, Krest i Korona. Tserkov’ i gosudarstvo na Rusi ix–xvii vv., Sankt-Peter-
burg, 2000, 42.
specifics of the church’s jurisdiction, it granted the Church a tithe “from all the
Russian land”, from the trade fees (market fees), and from the prince’s houses,
herds, and grain (harvest); also 10 veksha from each case which came before
the prince’s court.
The grant was made specifically to the church of the Mother of God, found-
ed by Vladimir himself in Kiev. Other church statutes and chronicles confirm
that the grant of tithes was made, as a rule, to the local cathedral church (so-
bor), so in effect to the local bishop.54
Tithes were paid, first of all, from the prince’s income (from the prince’s
house, his herds and harvest). They probably also extended to the annual tax
paid by the general population in the form of the poliud’e.55 The market tax
(myt), of which a tenth was assigned to the bishop, usually took the shape of
the myt going to the church every tenth week (so, for instance, in the Charter
of Vladimir and the Charter of prince Vsevolod).
The tithe was not always 10%, but sometimes considerably more, 20 or even
50%.56 In the course of time, as other sources of church income grew in impor-
tance, several forms of tithes diminished or disappeared altogether. Although
the Old Testament origins of church tithes are obvious, Shchapov considered it
not unlikely that there were comparable impositions in pagan Russia.57
In a later addition to the Charter of Vladimir (art. 15), the supervision of
weights and measures was entrusted to the bishops. The Church Statute of the
Novgorod prince Vsevolod was specifically entitled “On Church Courts, Church
People, and Trade Measures”. This matter is dealt with in the section on “Trade
Regulation and Taxation” in Chapter 15.
There are a few instances of entire towns having been assigned to a bishop.
They were sometimes termed “tithe towns” (desiatinnye goroda). The meaning
of the institution was probably not to make the town in question part of the
bishop’s worldly territory (as would occasionally happen in medieval Western
Europe), but rather to assign to the bishop the income which the prince would
normally have derived from the town (such as fines, fees, etc.).58
A few sources of church income of secondary importance are discussed
by Shchapov.59 Landowning by the Church was discussed separately in
Chapter 18.

56 See Shchapov, Gosudarstvo, 82–83.
676 chapter 21
Monasteries
The origins of monasticism go back to the early ages of Christianity; monas-

teries were a prominent component of the Byzantine Church. They appeared
in Russia after some delay. The Chronicle entry for 1037 mentioned that Iaro-
slav founded the monastery of St. George and the convent of St. Irene, but this
should probably be read within the context of the narrative which extolled
Iaroslav’s merits in promoting the work of the Church and which was inserted
in the 1037 report. It also said that during his reign the number of monks in-
creased and new monasteries came into being. Under the year 1051 the chroni-
cler, himself a monk of the Crypt monastery, described the foundation of the
Crypt monastery in much detail. From the story it is clear however that the
actual foundation took place during the reign of Iziaslav, Iaroslav’s son and
immediate successor upon the Iaroslav’s death in 1054. But the spiritual father
of the Crypt community was the holy monk Antonii, whose religious activities
apparently started in 1051, when he took over a crypt dug by another monk,
Hilarion, who had been appointed metropolitan in that year. Antonii had de-
clined to become the first abbot of the Crypt monastery and had appointed
the monk Varlaam instead. After a few years Varlaam accepted an appoint-
ment as abbot in the monastery of St. Dimitrii, newly founded by Iziaslav. His
successor Feodosii introduced the Byzantine rules of the Stoudion monks (on
Mount Athos), and these rules were taken over by all Russian monasteries ac-
cording to the Chronicle, which continues: “Therefore the Crypt Monastery is
honoured as the oldest of all.”
Whichever monastery should be considered the oldest,60 three relevant
points emerge from this narrative with regard to the legal status of medieval
Russian monasteries. One is that monasteries began to be founded during the
reign of Iaroslav. The second one is that the Crypt monastery, whether or not
it was in fact the oldest, enjoyed the highest status. And finally, although most
early monasteries were princely foundations, this was not always the case.61
Most of the oldest Russian monasteries were located in the centre of the
60 More recently, A.Iu. Karpov, reviewing the literature on the foundation of the Crypt mon-
astery, concluded tentatively that some time in the 1040–1050 period would be the most
likely date. A.Iu. Karpov, “Kogda voznik Kievskii Pecherskii monastyr’?”, S.N. Kisterev
(ed.), Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii, vyp.1, Moskva, 1997, 5–23.
61 The Iur’ev monastery, perhaps the oldest monastery in Novgorod, was possibly founded
by Iaroslav the Wise (i.e. before 1054), although it is first mentioned in 1119; whether it ac-
tually was a princely foundation is uncertain. Cf. Shchapov, Gosudarstvo, 147–148, Fennell,
69. In his more recent survey of Novgorod history, Ianin opted for the traditional date of
1119; cf. V.L. Ianin, Ocherki istorii srednevekovogo Novgoroda, Moskva, 2008, 54.
Kievan empire, not too far from the capital itself. A Russian study offers the fol-
lowing number of monasteries, founded during the first three centuries: 10th
century: 7; 11th century: 18, 12th century (up to 1240): 16.62 The oldest Novgorod
monasteries were founded at the beginning of the 12th century; Antonii “the
Roman” (Rimlianin), a Novgorod boyar, founded the monastery which came
to be called after him (Antoniev) in 1106. The George (Iur’ev) monastery was
probably founded a few years later, but before 1119, by the Novgorod prince
Vsevolod and the abbot Kir’iak (Cyriacus). The Iur’ev monastery soon became
the premier monastery of Novgorod; its abbot (igumen) was the archimandrite
of Novgorod from about 1200 and was deeply involved in the internal politics
of Novgorod. Its relations with the prince became less strong over the years.
The Iur’ev monastery was also one of the richest landowners; by being able to
loan money to Novgorod citizens it was even able to increase its influence.63
The third oldest Novgorod monastery was that of St. Panteleimon, founded in
1134. Many more followed.
In the following centuries, monasteries were mostly founded by energet-
ic and charismatic churchmen, such as Sergii of Radonezh, the founder of
the Trinity (Troitsa) monastery, which now bears his name (Troitse-Sergieva
Lavra) in Sergiev Posad, in the middle of the 14th century;64 this monastery
in time became one of the biggest landowners in Russia. Other monasteries
were founded in subsequent years by monks from the Trinity monastery: the
Simonov monastery in Moscow in 1370; then in Belozersk, by the abbot of the
Simonov monastery, Kirill, in 1397, which became known as the Kirillo-Beloz-
erskii. Kirill’s companion Ferapont then founded the Ferapontov monastery
nearby (after 1408). The wealth of preserved charters from these monasteries is
of great importance as a source for the legal history of the following centuries.
Other 14th and 15th century monasteries which have left similar materials are
the Spaso-Evfimiev monastery in Suzdal’ (founded around 1360), the Soltich-
inskii monastery near Riazan’ (founded around the end of the 14th century),
the Solovetskii monastery in the Far North (founded in 1430), and the Troitskii
Makar’ev monastery in Kaliazin (on the Upper Volga, 160 km north of Moscow,
founded around 1434). Of singular importance was the monastery in Volokol-
amsk, founded in 1479 by Iosif Volotskii (1439–1515), not only because of the
large number of surviving charters, but also because of the prominent role
62 B.V. Sapunov, “Nekotorye soobrazheniia o drevnerusskoi knizhnosti xi–xiii vekov”, Trudy

otdela drevnerusskoi literatury, vol.11, Moskva/Leningrad, 1955, 314–332, at 320 (quoted
from Fennell, 63).
63 Ianin, loc. cit.
64 Around 1380, according to some sources.
678 chapter 21
played by its founding abbot in shaping the relationship between the Church
and the state in Russia.65
The main legal aspects of medieval Russian monasticism concerned the
following matters: the place of the monastery within the organization of the
Church and its relationship with the state (the prince); the internal organiza-
tion of the monastery; the monastery as a legal actor. The last topic is of course
intimately connected with the question of landowning by monasteries.
As has been pointed out above, almost all early monasteries were founded
by princes and princesses. Such monasteries were usually named after the
baptismal saints of the princes concerned.66 Soviet medievalists occasionally
felt obliged to explain to their readership that the practice was not primarily
prompted by political calculations, but sprang from the conviction that earthly
goods could be employed for securing salvation in the hereafter.67 The prince
supplied the monastery with the material means to exist and the monks (or
nuns) would pray for him and his family, especially after his death; he would
often also be buried in his monastery. Several instances in the Chronicle dem-
onstrate that the founding prince, and his successors after his death, would
often take an active interest in the affairs of the monastery, particularly by ap-
pointing the abbot or abbess. It was not uncommon for princes to accept the
skhima (strict monastic vows) on their deathbed and die as monks (a famous
scene in the opera Boris Godunov).
Monasteries, no matter how well connected, remained under the ecclesi-
astical authority of the bishop, although their material wealth might outstrip
that of the local eparchy.68 The monastery itself was governed by the abbot (in
a convent for nuns, the abbess) or igumen. When there were several monas-
teries in a town, the abbot of the most important monastery would normally
be given the title of archimandrite and would be considered the head of the
65 The monastery of Iosif Volotskii is the subject of A.A. Zimin’s monograph, Krupnaia
feodal’naia votchina i sotsial’no-politicheskaia bor’ba v Rossii (konets xv–xvi v.), Moskva,
1977.
66 The famous Olga received the baptismal name of Elena, Vladimir took the name of the
Byzantine emperor as his baptismal name in 988. Later on, princely charters often gave
both the baptismal and the effective (vernacular) name of the prince.
67 A conviction based, among other things, on Christ’s direct instruction, as expressed in
Luke 16, 9.
68 In later times, a few of the most important and venerated monasteries enjoyed the rank of
a Lavra, which made them directly subordinate to the patriarch and later on the Holy Syn-
od: the Kiev Crypt monastery (1599), the Trinity monastery of Sergii Radonezhskii (1744),
the Aleksandr Nevskii monastery in St. Petersburg (1797), and the Uspenskii monastery in
Pochaev in Ukraine (upon its forcible re-incorporation into the Orthodox Church in 1833).
monastic clergy of the town. The archimandrite would be one of the most in-
fluential persons in the town, even in places where a bishop was resident (such
as Novgorod).69
As pointed out by Shchapov, the absence of specific monastic orders or con-
gregations (such as Benedictines, Franciscans, etc.) is one of the distinguishing
features of the Eastern Church, along with the absence of bishops and abbots
serving simultaneously as secular rulers.70
Landowning by the Church
This topic was discussed in a special section of Chapter 18.
69 D.G. Davidenko, “Monastyri-arkhimandritii v gorodakh Severo-Vostochnoi i Severo-

Zapadnoi Rusi v xiv–xv vv.”, A.A. Gorskii (ed.), Srednevekovaia Rus’, 10, Moskva, 2012,
248–331.
70 Ia.N. Shchapov, “Sobornye tserkvi i monastyrskie organizatsii v russkom gorode do xv v.
Nekotorye osobennosti vostochnokhristianskikh tserkovnykh organizatsii”, Ocherki russ-
koi istorii, istochnikovedeniia, arkheografii, Moskva, 2004, 59–71, at 59.
chapter 22
Courts and Justice
Introduction
At the start of this chapter it is useful to recall what was said in the sections
on “The Definition of Law” and “The Organization of this Work” (in Chapter 1).
Law, in this work, is viewed as something that has not been around forever
in human society. It emerged at certain times and in specific situations. As
to time, we have looked at the Russian middle ages; the specific situations or
locations that have been examined in some detail were the prince and his
court, the towns, certain aspects of the family, the management of rural land,
the Church and its monasteries, and a few others. At these locations, in our
view, law, as a regulatory force, first manifested itself. Courts, or more gener-
ally the administration of justice, is the theme that ties everything together.
The regulated settlement of legal disputes by an independent authority, rec-
ognized by society at large and operating permanently, is the most eloquent
manifestation of the presence of law.
In many cultures, the phase that may loosely be designated as early me-
dieval is characterized by (among other things) the emergence of law in the
usual sense of the term.1 This would at least apply to the vast complexes of
Slavic and Germanic peoples in Europe (although not to the Ancient Near East
and Greece and Rome).
The earliest information on Russian law in its formative, embryonic phase
is to be found in the 10th century treaties with Byzantium. These treaties at-
tempted to offer solutions for disputes that could arise when the still predomi-
nantly pagan Russian (or mostly Viking) traders/marauders came into contact
with sophisticated Byzantine society. Many of these solutions had their origin
in the well-developed Byzantine law, but occasionally, especially in the more
elaborate 911 and 944 treaties, reference was made to the “Russian law” (zakon
russkii) or “Rus law”. A closer examination reveals that this Russian law did not
refer to some written body of rules, but simply to what was customary among
the Russian visitors (see the section on the Zakon Russkii in Chapter 3). The
911 treaty in particular shows that self-help was the normal manner of r ighting
1 I have explained my views in these matters more extensively in “Law’s Beginnings. Some
Concluding Observations”, the closing chapter of F. Feldbrugge (ed.), The Law’s Beginnings,
Leiden/Boston, 2003, 255–280.

Courts and Justice 681
wrongs among the Russians; there are no indications that they were in the
habit of referring disputes to a court-like authority.
A century later, in the oldest layer of the rp, the Pravda of Iaroslav, this prac-
tice was still prevalent. The murdered man’s relatives were entitled to seek re-
venge or demand fixed compensation. For less serious injuries and insults the
perpetrator had to pay fixed compensation to the victim. This first part of the
Pravda of Iaroslav (arts. 1–10) presented a coherent and consistent catalogue
for dealing with the most common disputes that could arise among a rough
and warlike population; no role for any external authority is mentioned. Only
art. 10 added a procedural element: a man who complained of having been
pulled or shoved by another was to present two eyewitnesses, but a foreigner
could take an oath instead.
The second part of the Pravda of Iaroslav (arts. 11–18), which was generally
more directed towards property disputes, was also silent about the existence
and involvement of courts, but had a few provisions referring to procedures
which could be viewed as rudimentarily judicial. Art. 14 forbad a person who
recognized his lost property from just taking it back and instead ordered the
persons involved to come to a svod (confrontment) where the possessor was
to explain how he obtained the property. Obviously, such a svod would involve
the presence of others who would have some role in determining who was
the rightful owner. The next provision, art. 15, was even more explicit. A dis-
pute about money owed was to be taken before an assembly of twelve men (an
izvod), who apparently decided the matter. Art. 16 (retrieval of a stolen slave)
also displayed procedural traits. (There is more on these matters in the section
on commercial law in Chapter 15.)
The central theme of the second main part of the Short Pravda, the Pravda
of Iaroslav’s Sons (starting at art. 19), was the protection of the prince’s own
personnel and property. The prince’s personnel ranged from the highest of-
ficials (the ognishchanin and the pod”ezdnoi) to slaves. The fine for killing a
high-ranking official was twice that imposed for a freeman (80 instead of 40
grivna). There is general agreement that this fine (vira, translated as blood-
wite) was to be paid to the prince.2 Damage to the prince’s property (livestock,
2 The principal argument for this view is that the catalogue of the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons
runs smoothly from the killing of an ognishchanin (art. 19) to the killing of a slave (art. 26).
As the prince was obviously the one who received the bloodwite of 5 grivna for the killing of
his slave and there is no break in the list which would suggest that the arrangement changed
its character, the bloodwite for the highest princely officials must also have been due to the
prince. It is entirely possible that the relatives of the killed official could additionally claim
wergeld (see below).
682 chapter 22
boats, beehives, border markers, etc.) was also punished by a fine, usually
called prodazha (arts. 35, 36, 40). A special official, the virnik or bloodwite col-
lector, was in charge of collecting the fines imposed. Although the Pravda of
Iaroslav’s Sons did not explicitly mention the prince’s court, it stands to reason
that there must have been some sort of judicial procedure for imposing fines.
Art. 38 of the Short Pravda directed that a nocturnal thief could be killed with
impunity, but if he was apprehended he had to be held in order to be taken
the next morning to the kniazh’ dvor. This could be translated as “the prince’s
court” (Vernadsky), but Kaiser’s “the prince’s residence” is to be preferred. The
prince, if present at his residence, would exercize his judicial function there;
if he was away, as would often be the case, some official of the prince might
serve as judge.3
If the existence of the prince’s court is implied in various provisions of the
Short Pravda, other contemporary sources are explicit. The Church Statute of
St. Vladimir (Iaroslav’s father), in apportioning certain types of cases to the ju-
risdiction of church courts, spoke of the prince’s court as a common phenom-
enon. A famous locus in the Primary Chronicle (under the year 996) described
how the bishops of the newly converted country exhorted Vladimir to abolish
wergeld and instead to punish criminals “after an investigation” (no so ispytom)
and use the fines collected for the upkeep of his army.
In the Expanded Pravda the prince’s court is mentioned explicitly only once
(art. 46) with the clear meaning of “the prince’s jurisdiction” (to which stealing
slaves were subject), but quite a number of provisions referred to the prince’s
judicial role: art. 35 ordered the horse thief to be handed over to the prince for
punishment, arts. 37, 38, 45, 89 and 108 dealt with fines to be paid to the prince,
art. 56 allowed a dependent peasant (zakup) who had been ill-treated by his
master to appeal to the prince or to judges.
Humour in Legislation
Art. 37 of the Expanded Pravda, dealing with purchasing stolen property,
provided for one particular case where “one party may mourn the loss of
his property, and the other party the loss of his money”. A similar formula
turns up in art. 39. Art. 74, listing fees for judicial officers, allowed some of
them “either a sheep or a half-carcass of meat, whatever fills their stom-
achs”. Art. 29 dealt with the man bloodied and bruised in a fight and suing
his opponent. If eyewitnesses confirmed that he himself had started the
fight, then his bruises served as payment (to to emu za platezh’). This is in
the same class as the Spottbusse in the Sachsenspiegel, such as “his shadow
on the wall”, for the travelling musician (Sachsenspiegel, Landrecht, 45 §9).
3 This point is made by Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 582.

To sum up these various indications, there may be much uncertainty and

disagreement4 about details, but the general picture is clear. The prince in-
tervened in the traditional dispute-settling process, first by putting himself
forward as the injured party in offences regarding his personnel and property
and demanding payment of the fixed indemnities to himself; this put in place
a system of princely courts for the orderly despatch of cases where the prince
was the claimant. Once the prince’s court was functioning, one of the parties
in a dispute would usually have an interest in submitting his claim, or his rejec-
tion of a claim, to a body which had the power to enforce its decision. In other
cases, where a dispute between private parties did not occur, but where the
authorities (primarily the prince as the embodiment of the emerging state)
were of the opinion that some act would be injurious to the public interest, the
public powers could start court proceedings themselves.
In the Expanded Pravda the two aspects which in a modern view would be
characterized as “criminal” and “civil” were still mostly interwoven. A number
of provisions offered material compensation for the victim and contained a
fine for the prince at the same time. (e.g. arts. 36, 37 and 38: involuntary loss,
esp. by theft, of property or a slave; art. 45: theft of livestock; art. 78: compensa-
tion for the victim of torture, and a fine; art. 89: killing a slave without cause;
the owner received compensation, the prince a fine of 12 grivna).
The Short Pravda did not know these double sanctions, which meant that
uncertainty arises (for the modern reader) about the identity of the person to
whom the financial sanction for a violation was due: the victim or the prince
(unless of course the text itself provided a clear answer). Still, even where one
assumes that the amount mentioned was to be paid to the prince, one would
often expect that some kind of compensation would also be due to the victim
or his heirs. The most compelling case is art. 19 of the Short Pravda, the killing
of a high princely official (an ognishchanin or a pod”ezdnoi). It is generally ac-
cepted that the heavy 80 grivna amount is to be paid to the prince, but most au-
thors hold that the usual compensation is also to be paid to the victim’s family.
Art. 5 of the Expanded Pravda offers strong support for this view, as it dealt with
a similar situation and then added that the killer, in addition to his contribu-
tion to the bloodwite, was to pay the golovnichestvo (“head money”) himself.5
4 I have discussed this question in some detail in my chapter on the rp in Feldbrugge, lmr,
32–58, esp. in the section on “Wergeld and Composition” (41–46) and more extensively in
“Wergeld, Bloodwite and the Emergence of Criminal Law”, H. Küpper (ed.), Von Kontinuitäten
und Brüchen: Ostrecht im Wandel der Zeiten. Festschrift für Friedrich-Christian Schroeder zum
75. Geburtstag, Frankfurt am Main, 2011, 23–44. See also G. Baranowski’s review of the first
work in Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte. Germanische Abteilung, 127 (2010).
5 An extensive discussion of the literature in Baranowski, 255–261.
684 chapter 22
The emergence of a regular court system, in the person of the prince and the
officials appointed by him, can therefore be observed during the reign of the
first two Christian princes of Kiev, St. Vladimir and his son Iaroslav the Wise, at
the end of the 10th and the beginning of the 11th centuries. It is no coincidence
that this development was accompanied by the emergence of the distinction
between private and public law, the latter in the shape of criminal law, where
public authority assumed the role of the injured party. Traditional and custom-
ary arrangements for settling disputes were still dominant in the oldest layer
of the rp. Violence and physical injuries, along with the wilful damaging of
property, were perceived mainly as offensive to the honour and status of a per-
son and the family he belonged to. Reparation could be achieved by revenge
or, generally, inflicting equal harm. In a later phase payment of compensation
provided an economically more satisfactory substitute. Both revenge and com-
pensation were still recognized in art. 1 of the Short Pravda.
The establishment of the prince’s court led to the phased takeover of the
traditional system of dispute settlement by the prince. The financial transfers
from perpetrator to victim were redirected as payments of fines to the prince.
This can be regarded as incipient criminal law; the victim had now disap-
peared from the equation. If there was genuine material damage, the victim
could seek reparation through the court, provided he could substantiate his
claim. Such cases were not essentially different from general disputes over
what would be right between individual persons, where no significant public
interest was involved; together, these constituted the subject matter of private
(civil) law.
Secular and Church Courts
The parallel existence of two jurisdictions, secular and ecclesiastical, has been
discussed at greater length in Chapter 21. This phenomenon, which appeared
with the establishment of Christianity as the official religion in the Ancient
World and in the newly baptized countries of Europe, remained dominant
for centuries and still survives to some extent in several European countries.
In medieval Russia, the form adopted was expressed mainly by the so-called
Church Statute of St. Vladimir: the Church was granted comprehensive juris-
diction over “church people” and, additionally, general jurisdiction over cer-
tain types of cases (esp. marriage and family law, and criminal cases involving
sexual mores). This jurisdiction was granted to the bishops, who exercized it
through their own courts. The Russian system also allowed mixed jurisdiction
(by secular and ecclesiastical judges jointly), where this was appropriate.
Apart from what had been granted to church courts, the prince’s court was
the court of general jurisdiction. Routine jurisdiction would be handled by
appointed officials. Such judges were already known in the Expanded P ravda
(art. 56, mentioned above, spoke of appealing to the prince or to judges). Al-
though both versions of the rp name various officials connected with the
administration of justice, they all appear to have special duties and none
of them can be identified as a judge. The virnik was the collector of vira or
bloodwite; the tiun an overseer or bailiff, the metel’nik and the mechnik were
other court officers. Most probably the prince would entrust judicial office to
ah igh-ranking member of his inner circle, such as an ognishchanin or gener-
ally a “prince’s man” (kniazh muzh). One category of persons who undoubtedly
served as judges was the posadniki, the highest-ranking officials. The posadniki
were appointed as the prince’s lieutenants to major urban centres.
Art. 20 of the Belozero Charter provided that the prince’s namestniki (lieu-
tenants or agents) or their stewards (tiuny) were not to conduct court cases
without the participation of (local) sotniki (hundred-men) and ‘good people’
(dobrye liudi). Whether this element of popular involvement in the adminis-
tration of justice at a lower level was a special favour granted to Belozero is un-
clear; at least some authors regard it as a reflection of a more general custom.6
In Novgorod (and Pskov) the general system of courts was transformed on
account of the great measure of independence these cities acquired in respect
of the prince (see the section on posadniki in Chapter 16). Novgorod also had
a special commercial court, of which the tysiatskii was the presiding judge.
A laconic and brief provision in the Pskov Charter (art. 113) states that “A fra-
ternity judges like a judge.” Such fraternities (brat’shchina, bratchina), consti-
tuting a survival of pre-Christian male societies, were mostly concerned with
the organization of feasts for their members. The rule probably meant that the
fraternity itself, esp. its ‘master of ceremonies’ (pirovoi starosta, art. 34) would
deal with relatively minor infractions occurring during the feast.7 The institu-
tionalized character of such feasts (piry) and fraternity meetings (bratchiny) is
illustrated by the inclusion of a protective clause in numerous statutory and
6 L.V. Danilova, “O vnutrennei strukture sel’skoi obshchiny Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi”, V.T.

Pashuto (ed.), Rossiia na putiakh tsentralizatsii, Moskva, 1982, 6–17, at 7–8.
7 Cf. Iu.G. Alekseev, Pskovskaia Sudnaia gramota i ee vremia, Leningrad, 1980, 60–62. See also
S.V. Vasil’ev, “K voprosu o proiskhozhdenii i znachenii «bratchiny»”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko
(ed.), Russkoe Srednevekov’e. Sbornik statei v chest’ professora Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva,
Moskva, 2012, 295–306, and M.S. Cherkasova, “Kommentarii k 20-i stat’e Belozerskoi ustavnoi
gramoty 1488 goda (o pirakh i bratchinakh v srednevekovoi Rusi)”, in the same work, 3 07–327;
also V.V. Bovykin, Ocherki po istorii mestnogo samoupravleniia epokhi Ivana Groznogo,
Sankt-Peterburg, 2015, 76–83 (“Pir na ves’ mir”).
686 chapter 22
grant charters with the standard formula: “and that whoever will come to these
feasts and fraternity meetings without being invited and will cause any up-
heaval, he shall pay [a fine] without going to court”.8
The vastness of the country and the fact that the court of the prince (or
in Novgorod the posadnik) had its seat in the capital town meant that some
kind of assizes or travelling courts were inevitable.9 Several provisions of the
Novgorod Court Charter dealt with the costs of travelling and sojourn of judges
and judicial personnel. This subject retained its prominence in later legislation
(the Codes of 1497 and 1550).
Immunities
A further differentiation in the court system arose in the course of the 14th
century with the increase in land grants to ecclesiastical and secular landown-
ers. In the grant charters (zhalovannye) of the late 14th and the 15th centuries,
one encounters formulas in which the grantor (nearly always a prince) prom-
ised the grantee that the prince’s administrative and judicial officers would
abstain from exercizing their office in the territory granted; the grantee was
simultaneously given jurisdiction, sometimes without limitation, but usually
with the reservation that the handling of serious cases (esp. homicide and rob-
bery) would remain with the prince.
The ancient church statutes may be regarded as the ancestors of such grant
charters. The church statutes, such as those of St. Vladimir or the Novgorod
prince Vsevolod Mstislavich (see Chapter 6), contained provisions in which
the prince’s officials were forbidden from interfering in matters delegated to
the church and, in particular, from entering church territory for the execution
of their judicial duties. The income generated by jurisdiction (fines, fees, etc.)
was explicitly included in such immunities. The connection of the immunity
with a land grant implied that the immunity affected a particular territory, gen-
erally a village or several villages, even an entire region, but also uninhabited
territories, such as forests, lakes, etc. Obviously, the broader the content of the
immunity, the more the territory covered by it became an enclave where the
authority of the prince was more restricted. The most important elements in-
cluded in the immunities were jurisdiction and taxation. The grant charters
8 For a full enumeration of references, see Danilova, op. cit., 8. As an example, asei i, No.356,
262. On the figure of the ‘uninvited guest’, see A.L. Khoroshkevich, “«Nezvanyi gost’» na praz-
dnikakh srednevekovoi Rusi”, V.L. Ianin (ed.), Feodalizm v Rossii. Sbornik statei i vospominanii,
posviashchennyi pamiati akademika L.V. Cherepnina, Moskva, 1987, 184–192.
9 Cf. V.D Nazarov, “O proezdnom sude namestnikov v srednevekovoi Rusi”, dg sssr 1987, Mosk-
va, 1989, 84–92.
(zhalovannye) involved were known accordingly as nesudimye or tarkhannye

(or l’gotnye, if a fiscal immunity was granted for a limited time only).
Judicial immunity charters (nesudimye zhalovannye) were occasionally
granted to secular landowners in later years, but not many of such charters
have survived. Most of the surviving charters are from monasteries.10 The en-
joyment of (limited) immunity of general jurisdiction meant of course that
the landowner, monastic or secular, had to set up his own court. A.D. Gorskii,
who wrote a special study on these private courts, pointed out correctly that
the jurisdiction of church bodies (monasteries or eparchies) based on land
grants, made by secular authorities, should not be regarded as church jurisdic-
tion properly speaking.11 In other words, a bishop could have jurisdiction as a
bishop but also as a landowner.
Procedure in the Russkaia Pravda
In the first section of this chapter we argued that the rp in its various versions
showed an incipient distinction between criminal and civil law in providing
both ‘private’ and ‘public’ remedies (compensation and fines) for violations of
law. Such a distinction cannot be made with regard to procedure, as already
noted by Sergeevich.12 The rp limits itself to the description of a few special
procedures which display both public and private law features
The most important of these is the svod or confrontment, known to both
versions of the rp. Svod is mentioned explicitly in art. 14 of the Short Pravda
and the corresponding art. 35 of the Expanded Pravda which is followed by
more detailed regulation in arts. 36, 38 and 39 of the Expanded Pravda. It is
also implied in arts. 11, 13 and 16 of the Short Pravda, which correspond with
arts. 32, 34, and 38 of the Expanded Pravda. The essence of the confrontment
procedure, which is obviously germane to a simple face-to-face society, is the
appeal to the community to become involved in the settlement of a dispute,
especially about ownership. The procedure is initiated by loudly announcing
one’s claim (the zaklich) in the market, at least that is the description of art. 32
of the Expanded Pravda. Such a claim is of course preceded by the acquisition
10 Iu.G. Alekseev, “K voprosu o sudebnom immunitete v kniazheskikh gramotakh xii–xiv

vv.”, Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii 8, Moskva, 2004, 10–28, mentions many examples, mostly
from the collection of Riazan’ charters in asei iii, Nos. 309–391.
11 A.D. Gorskii, “O votchinnom sude na Rusi v xiv–xv vv.”, V.T. Pashuto (ed.), Rossiia na pu-
tiakh tsentralizatsii. Sbornik statei, Moskva, 1982, 25–35.
12 Sergeevich, Lektsii, 583.
688 chapter 22
of the necessary information, more commonly, recognition of one’s involun-

tarily lost property in the possession of another person. The cases covered in
the rp concern involuntary loss of property, i.e. by loss or theft, and are limited
to property that is recognizable by the owner: slaves (art. 11 Short Pravda, art. 32
Expanded Pravda), horses, livestock, weapons or clothes (arts. 13 and 14 Short
Pravda, 35 and 36 of the Expanded Pravda).
The owner who has lost such property and announced his loss in the mar-
ket, and then recognized his lost property in his own community (mir), was
allowed to take his property back and the temporary possessor must pay him
3 grivna for the offence (za obidu; arts. 13 sp and 34 ep combined). In this case
no confrontment is required. A slightly different but similar procedure applied
to the fugitive or stolen (abducted) slave (art. 11 sp and art. 32 ep).
The provisions of art. 14 sp (and art. 35 ep) and art. 16 sp (and art. 38 ep) deal
again with the loss of resp. property and of slaves and the resolution of the re-
sulting dispute by the confrontment procedure. The original owner is directed
not to take back his property or the slave, but to demand the new owner to come
to the confrontment, where the latter will be asked to disclose the seller from
whom he bought the slave; then the same procedure will be gone through with
the earlier owner, until the third confrontment. If the question has not been
resolved by then, the person appearing at the third confrontment will have to
provide the old owner with a new slave and take over the slave the dispute is
about. This slave presumably may assist him in identifying the first unlawful
possessor of the slave. If the thief is found he has to pay all the losses, a 12 grivna
fine to the prince, and the slave goes back to his original owner (see art. 38 ep).
The relationship between the two complexes of rules (11 and 13 sp together
with 32 and 34 ep, against 14 and 16 sp together with 35 and 38 ep) is somewhat
confusing, considering that the confrontment procedure appears only in the
second complex. It is explained more or less satisfactorily by Iushkov13 in the
following way: the first complex concerns cases where the loss has been an-
nounced at the market (the zaklich) and the lost slave is not produced within
three days or the owner only learns about his whereabouts after three days, as
well as cases where the owner has announced his loss at the market and then
finds his lost or stolen property within his own community. In all such cases the
owner takes his property (or slave) back and receives a three grivna fine. In all
other cases the confrontment procedure has to be gone through. It is generally
limited to three successive confrontments; if this does not produce a thief or
another person who had unlawfully acquired the property, the procedure ends.
13 Iushkov, Stroi, 515–517, following on the whole the short explanation by Vlad.-Bud., Obzor,
588–589. Also Sergeevich, Lektsii, 597–598.
The Expanded Pravda offers further detailed rules about confrontment

within one’s own town and outside it (ep 36 and 39).
The svod is also known in the Dvina Land Charter (art. 5) and the Belozero
Charter (art. 12), where even ten successive confrontments are prescribed.
While the svod displays aspects of both civil and criminal law, the other
special procedure, mentioned only in the Expanded Pravda (art. 77), “follow-
ing the trail” (gonenie sleda), is purely a matter of criminal procedure. The
co-residents of a fugitive thief are obliged to follow his trail until the thief is
caught or the trail is lost on a major road or in a deserted place. Otherwise they
must pay compensation for the theft and a fine.14
Procedure in Novgorod and Pskov
The relatively brief legislative materials which follow the rp offer only a few
glimpses of the court procedures involved15 and one has to wait for the later
sources from Novgorod and Pskov for more details. The Court Charters from
these two cities are basically from the 14th century, although some parts may
have an earlier origin (see the relevant sections in Chapter 8) and are, as indi-
cated by their common denomination, primarily concerned with judicial mat-
ters. The Novgorod charter may originally have been of about the same length
as the Pskov charter, but only the first part, which breaks off in the middle of
a word in art. 43, has survived. In view of the fact that Pskov was closely con-
nected to Novgorod for a considerable period there is reason to assume that
their judicial procedures were quite similar. In view of the greater length of the
Pskov charter it is convenient to discuss it first.
Modern law is used to a systematic structure of a legal text: defining the
terminology and the scope of the text, the emergence or establishment of the
legal institutions and relationships covered, their mode of operation, the dif-
ferent ways they come to an end, etc. Older texts, especially medieval ones,
usually adopt an associative approach: the most urgent question is treated
first and this leads to other related questions; when the first subject is more or
less exhausted, another prominent question is tackled, and so on. Matters of
14 Iushkov, Stroi, 517–518; Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 590; V.F. Inkin, “«Gonenie sleda» v galitskoi
obshchinnoi praktike xv–xviii vv. (Material dlia ob”iasneniia 77-i stat’i Prostrannoi
Pravdy)”, dg sssr 1985, Moskva, 1986, 131–140.
15 The 1229 treaty between Smolensk and Riga, also known as the Smolenskaia Pravda (see
the relevant section in Chapter 7), would be an example. It is generally close to the rp.
Another example is the Dvina Land Charter of 1397–1398.
690 chapter 22
g eneral knowledge or not needing regulation are often passed over, even when
they would have been mentioned in a more systematic approach.
The two approaches are not exclusive; even in modern systematic treat-
ment the associative approach can sometimes not be avoided. At any rate
the Novgorod and Pskov Court Charters do not stand out by their systematic
coherence.
The Pskov Court Charter has the character of a manual for judges, at least
the judges of the prince’s court and the judges of the posadnik; the archbishop’s
lieutenant (namestnik) judged ‘church people’ (art. 109)16 and he is also men-
tioned in art. 2 where, along with the prince and the posadnik he is forbidden
to retry cases tried by a (Pskov) court. Arts. 3–5 exhort the judges to judge fairly.
Many provisions of the Pskov charter instruct the court to proceed in a
certain way (reject a claim, impose a penalty, etc.) in certain cases. In such
instances the provisions of what we would regard as substantive civil or crimi-
nal law have been disguised as procedural rules (see the section on the com-
mercial law of Pskov in Chapter 15). Still, a considerable part of the charter is
devoted to actual procedure.
It is implicit in many provisions that a case could be started by two opposing
parties presenting themselves at the court. A party unwilling to appear might
be summoned by a bailiff (pristav); if he failed to appear the Pskov Council
(the Gospoda) would issue a formal order (art. 25). The prince and Pskov each
had their own bailiffs (art. 81). The bailiffs played a central role in the proce-
dure preceding the trial, they presented summonses, examined certain mat-
ters, etc. (cf. arts. 37, 49–50, 57, 64–67, 76, 80, 84, 93, 98). The actual writing out
of summonses, judgments, etc. was the work of the court clerk (pisets).
Litigants were not allowed to bring other persons to the trial; an exception
was made for people who were supposed to need help (women and children,
monks and nuns, old or deaf people; see art. 58). There is a similar rule in the
Novgorod Court Charter (arts. 5 and 42).
Art. 54 deals with a procedure called izvod, reminiscent of the svod in the
rp. Somebody suspected of theft was allowed to request the appearance of the
person he claimed to have bought the disputed property from. The latter then
became the new defendant. The original defendant became a guarantor for the
new defendant.
16 This is the lieutenant of the Novgorod archbishop. His jurisdiction was limited to church
people and did not extend (as in the older church statutes of St. Vladimir and Iaroslav
the Wise) to certain matters (mainly marriage and inheritance questions) regarding the
general population. A number of provisions of the Pskov charter cover inheritance law
(arts. 85–86, 88–91, 94, 100).
Written documents played an important role in the law of Pskov and the
Charter distinguished between several types, possessing varying evidentiary
strength (see below under “evidence”). Of special value were documents de-
posited in the lar’, the Pskov archive kept in the Holy Trinity cathedral (arts.
14, 32 and 38).
The Pskov Court Charter paid a great deal of attention to the various kinds
of evidence; this will be discussed below.
Although the Novgorod Court Charter is obviously destined for judicial
usage, it does not have the clear appearance of a manual. Along with many
similarities, several features distinguishing it from its Pskov counterpart stand
out. The much greater size of the Novgorod territory is reflected not only in
the greater attention devoted to court actions concerning land (arts. 12, 23, 24,
28, 29), but also by the grading of time-limits and fees according to distance
(arts. 23ff., 36, 41).
Possibly, the enormous size of the Novgorod territory also affected the speed
of trials and the occasional need for postponements. Arts. 28ff. attempt to en-
sure the timely resolution of actions about land and these are followed by a
series of provisions about postponements (arts. 30–32, and also 24 and 41).
A procedure initially unique to Novgorod was the doklad, lit. the report. The
main provisions are arts. 20–21 and 26 of the Novgorod Court Charter. They
speak of the referral by the court of a decision to “reporters” (dokladchiki), who
were to take a final decision. They met three times weekly in the archbishop’s
palace in Novgorod. For a long time this was perceived as a form of appeal,17
but a recent study by Petrov argued that the Novgorod doklad (and its further
development in the law of the Muscovy principality) should rather be viewed
as the splitting up of a single trial into a first phase, where a report (doklad) was
prepared on the basis of the court’s investigations, and a second phase where
the case was decided by other judges on the basis of the report. This procedure
was developed to deal with the practical difficulties of investigating and try-
ing cases arising over a vast territory.18 The underlying idea was the overarch-
ing and exclusive judicial competence of the grand prince, which required the
maintenance of effective central control over the administration of justice.
During the second half of the 15th century, the reign of Ivan iii, the doklad
procedure became a common feature.
17 By the commentators in prp ii, 235 and rz i, 314.

18 K.V. Petrov, “Protsedura sudebnogo «doklada» v russkom prave xv-pervoi poloviny xvi
v.: K istorii formirovaniia sudebnykh organov v Rossii”, A.P. Pavlov (ed.), Gosudarstvo i
obshchestvo v Rossii xv – nachala xx veka. Sbornik statei pamiati Nikolaia Evgen’evicha
Nosova, Sankt-Peterburg, 2007, 106–115.
692 chapter 22
Evidence19
While general procedure is dealt with somewhat haphazardly in the sources

discussed above, evidence is a topic which appeared already in the earliest
laws. The treaty of 911 with Byzantium showed the sensibility of the parties
to the matter of evidence in one of its first provisions (art. 3), which provided
(among other things) that a claim, in order to be recognized, should be sup-
ported by evidence. In such a case the defendant was to be allowed to rebut
the claim by taking an oath.20 Art. 3 avoids using a specific term for “evidence”,
although all translations suggest it does.21 The oath (rotá) is also mentioned in
the treaties of 944 and 971.
The Short Pravda introduced the eyewitness as a source of evidence in art. 2.
If someone complained about having been beaten and he could show his inju-
ries, he did not need an eyewitness to corroborate his complaint; if he did not
bear any signs of the fight, he must produce an eyewitness (vidok). In the case
of pulling and shoving, two eyewitnesses must be produced, but a Viking or
Kolbiag could instead take the oath (art. 10).22 The eyewitness appeared again
in art. 16, discussed already above in connection with the svod. In the third and
final phase of this procedure (about the recovery of a stolen slave), the original
owner could claim a new slave as a replacement for the one he lost from the
third possessor of the stolen slave and the latter was then to attempt to inves-
tigate the case further “with an eyewitness” (pri vidotse). Although the stolen
slave could of course assist in identifying the person responsible for the own-
er’s original loss, most commentators agree that the eyewitness in this case did
not refer to the slave, who was generally unable to appear as a witness.23
Art. 30 of the Short Pravda repeats art. 2 in more or less the same words,
but only the first sentence (about the appearance of a man who is bloody and
beaten) and then uses a different term for “witness” (poslukh). Etymological-
ly the difference between the two terms is clear: a poslukh is somebody who
has heard something, a vidok somebody who has seen something. While the
19 Generally on this topic: G.M. Barats, “O sudebnykh dokazatel’stvakh po Russkoi Pravde”,

Vestnik prava, xxxvi (1906), kn.2, 294–372; F. Gorlé, “La preuve judiciaire dans l’ancien
droit russe”, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis/Revue d’histoire du droit, xlv (1977), 67–94.
20 This at least is clear. The translation of the entire provision is quite uncertain. Divergent
interpretations are given by prp i, 10 (Zimin), Kaiser (Laws, 5), and Cross/Sherbowitz-
Wetzor, Prim. Chron., 66.
21 Cross/Sherbowitz-Wetzor, Prim. Chron., 66 (“proofs”); Kaiser, Laws, 5 (“evidence”); Zimin,
prp i, 11 (dokazatel’stva); Baranowski, 736 (Beweise). The original text is: da eliko iave bu-
det’ pokazanii iavlenymi, da imeiut’ vernoe o tatsekh iavlenii.
22 A Kolbiag is unquestionably a foreigner, but his exact origins are much debated.
23 Cf. art. 85 Expanded Pravda and also Baranowski, 238–239.
p oslukh appears only in art. 30 of the Short Pravda, he appears more frequently
in the Expanded Pravda, where the vidok turns up only three times. In one
provision of the ep (art. 29) both kinds of witnesses occur. Many explana-
tions for this terminological duplication have been proposed, none of them
fully convincing in my view. One term could reflect a more ancient usage; or a
difference between Kiev and Novgorod terminology. While the vidok is gener-
ally considered to have been an eyewitness who was able to testify about what
he had seen himself, poslukh can also be translated as “character witness” or
understood as somebody who has full knowledge of the case. Unfortunately,
art. 29 ep (which is an elaboration of art. 2 sp, about the bloody and bruised
man) does not offer a solution, because the two terms seem to have about the
same meaning in this provision. The man who has been beaten but bears no
outward signs must produce a witness (vidok, obviously to confirm that he saw
that the attacker had beaten the complainant); but, as added by the second
part of the provision (the innovation in respect of the corresponding provi-
sion in the sp), if the victim had started the fight “his bruises will serve as pay-
ment”, provided this course of events was confirmed by witnesses (poslusi, who
could – as eyewitnesses – testify that they saw that the victim started the fight,
or perhaps – as character witnesses – confirm that the victim was a notorious
troublemaker).24
In the ep, where, as said, the poslukh is frequently introduced as a source of
evidence, it is often unclear whether he is to be understood as an eyewitness
or as somebody who on account of his status deserves credibility. The latter ex-
planation seems to be preferable in the case of art. 18, where a person accused
of homicide may free himself by bringing in seven poslukhi, or two if he is a
foreigner. In art. 39, one of the provisions about the svod in the ep, the accused
is to present poslukhi or the customs officer (mytnik) in order to confirm that
he bought the disputed property; here the meaning of “eyewitness” would be
more likely. In later sources (after the rp) the vidok disappears completely, and
poslukh remains the only term for witness.
In addition to witnesses (vidoki, arts. 29, 31 and 37, and poslukhi, arts. 18,
21,29, 39, 47–50, 52, 77, 85 and 110) and the oath (arts. 22, 31, 37, 47–49, 52, 109,
115 and 118), the ep also introduced the ordeal as a source of evidence (arts. 21,
22, 85–87). Arts. 21–22 represented an elaboration of the charge of homicide of
art. 18. If the accused could not produce the required number of seven (char-
acter) witnesses, he was subjected to the ordeal by hot iron (art. 21).25 Art. 22
24 A more detailed review of the debate in Baranowski, 295–299.

25 This is the usual reading of art. 21; according to Kaiser, Laws, 22, the ordeal is imposed on
both the accused and the accuser and only in case the accused has in turn accused the
accuser of the homicide.
694 chapter 22
extended the procedure to charges of theft; for less serious cases the ordeal by
water was prescribed and for insignificant cases the accused would be allowed
to affirm his innocence by oath.
The Church Statute of Iaroslav, which is very detailed on all kinds of offenc-
es assigned to the jurisdiction of the bishop, is silent on the matter of evidence.
Presumably the rules applicable in the secular court applied.
The Novgorod and Pskov Court Charters developed the evidentiary system
of the older laws. The former oath (rota), going back to pagan times, now ap-
peared in the shape of the “kissing of the cross” (tselovanie kresta). It is men-
tioned frequently in the Novgorod Charter, where it represented the basic
source of evidence.26 The Christian form of the oath was used not only as con-
firmation of a statement made during a trial, but also in swearing loyalty to
one’s duty, such as in judicial office (arts. 4a and 13 of the Novgorod Charter),
or to observe the Novgorod Court Charter (arts. 14–15).27
Where, as is usually the case, a trial is not merely about a point of law, two
or more parties oppose each other with different accounts of what happened.
This goes for both civil and criminal trials. As argued before, the differentiation
between the two developed gradually in the past; a differentiation between
the law and the facts is probably of even later date. All this implies that the
statements of the parties about what happened were the basic source of infor-
mation for the court. The statements can be confirmed by witnesses (directly
by eyewitnesses, indirectly by character witnesses affirming the credibility of
the statement made by a party), by oath (pagan or Christian), and of course
by material evidence (hence the importance of the wounds and bruises in the
case of the “bloody man”, krovav muzh).
A next step during the early period when relationships were not yet ex-
pressed in written form, was the introduction of the ordeal. It appeared in the
Expanded Pravda (as mentioned above). Although it is absent in the Short
Pravda, its origins undoubtedly went back to pagan times, as a means to invoke
divine help to discover the truth. At a somewhat later moment the judicial duel
came to replace the ordeal as an evidentiary instrument.28 In the Novgorod
and Pskov court charters the ordeal is absent. The Novgorod Charter does not
directly deal with the duel, but mentions it twice in passing; art. 6, devoted
to slander, which includes slandering somebody at the duelling field (pole),
26 The rota is still mentioned in art. 24 and also in arts. 34, 35, 99 and 116 of the Pskov Court
Charter.
27 Generally on tselovanie kresta, H.W. Dewey and A.M. Kleimola, “Promise and Perfidy in
Old Russian Cross-Kissing”, Canadian Slavic Studies, iii (1969), No.2, 327–341.
28 Cf. H.W. Dewey, “Trial by Combat in Muscovite Russia”, Oxford Slavonic Papers, ix (1959),
21–31 (mainly on later period).
and art. 33, mentioning a ‘duelling charter’ (polevaia gramota, perhaps a writ-
ten document containing an agreement to settle the dispute through a judi-
cial duel).29 In the Pskov Charter the duel, generally abbreviated as ‘the field’
(pole), is almost as important as the oath as a source of evidence. The Charter
does therefore not only order the litigants to engage in a duel in a considerable
number of cases, but also offers some general regulation in the matter of du-
els. Personae miserabiles (elderly, youthful, invalids, priests and monks) are al-
lowed to hire a champion, while their opponents are not (art. 21). The failure to
mention women in art. 21 is probably an omission. Art. 36, devoted to disputes
about undocumented loans, directs a solution of the dispute through a duel
and allows women, children, elderly persons, invalids, sick persons, monks and
nuns to hire a champion. In this case the opponent is also allowed to hire a
substitute to fight for him. Art. 37 adds more detail about the outcome of the
duel: the winner received the sum at issue from the losing party. If the oppo-
nent was killed, the winner only received the dead person’s armour and other
property he had on him. The losing party also had to pay a fine to the prince
and a fee to the bailiff (pristav).
Both Charters recognized the witness (poslukh) as a source of evidence, of-
ten in connection with the oath (Novgorod Charter arts. 22, 23, 35; Pskov Char-
ter arts. 20–24, 27, 117). The higher level of sophistication of the Pskov Charter
is also noticeable in the presence of a few general rules about the testimony
of witnesses. A claim will fail if the witness upon whom the claimant relied
did not appear in court or if the witness contradicted the claimant (art. 22).
A witness for the defendant in a case of assault who is accused by the victim of
having participated in the assault is unacceptable as a witness (art. 23).
An unusual form of evidence, akin to the testimony of witnesses is men-
tioned in art. 9 of the Pskov Charter. In litigation about rights concerning
land, a litigant may invoke the testimony of four or five neighbours to confirm
the fact that the litigant has ploughed and possessed the land (or a stretch of
water) for four or five years.
The Pskov Charter’s character as a handbook for courts is most obvious in
arts. 29–32, all of them describing various situations concerning money loans
and instructing the judge about the procedure to follow and the decision to take.
The growing importance of written documents begins to be observable in
the Novgorod Charter and is fully visible in the Pskov Charter. The Novgorod
Charter did not yet explicitly recognize written evidence, but referred a
number of times to judicial decisions taking the shape of a written judgment
(sudnaia gramota, arts. 7, 8, 11, 12, 33 and 34). Another judicial decision put
down in writing is the postponement charter (srochnaia gramota, arts. 24, 30
29 The commentaries fail to enlighten the reader about the meaning of this term.
696 chapter 22
and 31), granted at the request of one of the parties to an action. Other official
documents named in the Novgorod Charter are the somewhat puzzling duel-
ling charter (mentioned above) and the obetnaia gramota of art. 39, which ap-
pears to be a default judgment issued against a party who failed to respond to
a summons to appear in court.30
The doklad procedure was discussed above. It inevitably included a written
report (doklad, mentioned in art. 21) which was sent up to the reviewing court.
In the Pskov Court Charter written evidence has come to full maturity. Most
attention is directed at doski, ‘uncertified notes’ (in Kaiser’s translation) and
literally “boards” (in arts. 14, 19, 28–31, 36, 38, 61–61, 75, 92 and 103). Most of the
provisions concerning doski deal with notes recording loans or, more gener-
ally, money debts. Such notes are obviously one-sided records of debts. If they
are contested by the debtor their value as proof of the existence of the debt is
limited, but not non-existent. Their value increases once they are supported by
collateral in the possession of the creditor.
In the text of the Charter the doski are occasionally opposed to the more sig-
nificant zapisi (notes) or gramoty (charters). The value of the latter documents
is even increased if a copy has been deposited in the official archives of Pskov,
maintained at the cathedral of the Holy Trinity (mentioned in arts. 14, 32, 38,
50 and 82).31 A will could also be deposited there (art. 14).
The growing importance of written documents, replacing the testimony
of witnesses, inevitably raised the question of their authentication, in other
words: how was one to know that the document really represented what it pur-
ported to be? The question is as old as written documents themselves. It came
up already in the 971 Treaty between Byzantium and the Russians. In art. 4
of the Treaty prince Sviatoslav stated solemnly: “Take as truth that which we
have here agreed with you, and which we have written on this parchment and
sealed with our seals.” (Dewey’s translation). It is a matter of speculation what
is meant here by “seals”, and this point is passed over by all c ommentators. After
971, the seal (pechat’) remained out of view for centuries, to reappear by the
end of the 14th century and more widely in the 15th century.32 The Novgorod
and Pskov Charters referred to seals as a means for authenticating a document
(in arts. 8, 21, 24 and 30 of the former and art. 82 of the latter). The seal was to
30 A.A. Zimin, in his comments in prp ii, 242, regarded it as a special kind of bessudnaia
gramota, a default judgment.
31 See also S.N. Kisterev, “«Riadnitsa» v stat’iakh 32 i 38 Pskovskoi sudnoi gramoty”, Ocherki
feodal’noi Rossii 4, Moskva, 2000, 71–84.
32 Pechat’, the seal that is pressed down in hot wax, is derived etymologically from a root
designating “heating”. It has been taken over in medieval German, where Petschaft has a
similar meaning.
be affixed by an independent authority (judges, court clerks, public officials);

the Dvina Land Charter of 1397–1398 mentioned the lieutenant (namestnik) as
charged with sealing documents (art. 10).
At the level of private charters (most of the extant ones from monasterial ar-
chives), abbots and monks in management positions were usually called in to
supply the seal, but occasionally one encounters individuals who sealed docu-
ments in which they declared themselves as debtors or potential debtors.33
The Code of 1497 has been described, with some exaggeration, as an elabo-
rate catalogue of court fees (and seal fees) concealing a fairly comprehensive
code of law and this aspect is less prominent but still very visible in the Code of
1550. The importance of the fiscal aspect, i.e. the obvious purpose of court and
seal fees to strenghten the state’s financial position, completely overshadowed
the legal aspect of requiring an official seal for bestowing evidentiary value on
a multitude of documents.
In the Ulozhenie of 1649 Ch. 18 (On seal fees) the system of seal fees for al-
most all documents emanating from state agencies appeared in full maturity.
The validity of such documents depended on their being sealed properly. The
decisive role of seals lasted for a long time, until in the end the signature slowly
began to complement the seal as an equally essential signal for indicating the
authenticity of the document. But the signature never replaced the seal, which
has survived in Russia until the present day.
The question of seals has received almost no attention in Russian legal his-
tory, although it has been mentioned as a possible example of Byzantine influ-
ence on medieval Russian law.34
In the Code of 1497 the testimony of witnesses was still an important source
of evidence, but most attention was directed towards various types of docu-
ments. The ordeal has disappeared, but the judicial duel is mentioned in a
number of provisions (4–7, 38, 48, 49, 52, 68), presenting an elaboration of cor-
responding provisions in the Pskov Charter. The same goes for the oath in the
form of kissing the Cross (arts. 12, 13, 46, 47, 48, 58).
A particular example of the weight attributed to the oath can be found
in art. 13 of the Code. If a certain number of credible witnesses35 assert that
somebody is a thief, then, if there is no further evidence of a crime having been
33 E.g. prp iii, 52–53, in which Foma Danilov acknowledged the temporary possession of
land, granted to him by the metropolitan (1461–1465).
34 N.A. Soboleva, “K voprosu ob udostoverenii russkikh aktov v kontekste vostochno-rimskogo
prava”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Issledovaniia po istorii srednevekovoi Rusi. K 80-letiiu Iuri-
ia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 2006, 47–71.
35 Five or six reputable petty nobles (deti boiarskie dobrye), who have sworn to the grand
prince, or five or six good peasant tseloval’niki (cross-kissers).
698 chapter 22
committed, there will not be a trial, but the alleged thief must compensate the
plaintiff (who started proceedings) for what he claimed to have lost.
Evidence, in particular a confession, could be obtained through torture. It
is already mentioned in art. 33 of the Short Pravda, which refers to the tortur-
ing of a peasant (smerd) without the prince’s permission (somewhat different
wording in art. 78 of the Expanded Pravda). Reference to torture is made now
and again, most explicitly in art. 14 of the Code of 1497, where torture to obtain
evidence during a criminal investigation is prescribed in certain cases.
The Code of 1497 shows increased sophistication in distinguishing with re-
gard to the evidentiary force of various documents. As explained above, court
judgments needed to be confirmed by a boyar judge and the court clerk’s sig-
nature in the course of a doklad procedure. Such a doklad was also required
in the case of manumission of a slave by an otpusknaia gramota (cf. art. 17).
Art. 18 added that a manumission charter without the boyar’s doklad or with-
out the signature of the d’iak was invalid, except when it was fully written out
by the slave’s master.36 The relative importance of various documents can be
estimated by looking at the different fees due to the issuing authorities.
Excursion: Witnesses in Church Courts

In Chapter 2 the “Law Books” (Knigi zakonnye) were briefly discussed. Their
main component is an Old-Russian translation of the Byzantine Farmer’s Law
(Nomos Georgikos), supplemented by a translation of several chapters of the
Procheiron. One of these is the Chapter on Witnesses (Glava o poslusekh),
drawn from title 27 of the Procheiron, with some additions from title 14 of the
Ecloga.37 The fact that this chapter survived not only in the Knigi zakonnye,
but also in other collections indicates, as Kaiser has observed, that the chapter
was used in ecclesiastical circles.38 A discussion of the law on the evidence of
witnesses in medieval Russian should therefore not completely neglect this
document.
The Chapter on Witnesses, apart from more or less pious exhortations,
contains a number of explicit rules about the evidence of witnesses. Hearsay
evidence is not admitted (art. 6). Written depositions are allowed, but not in
36 The rule of art. 18 is repeated in slightly different words in art. 42, having regard to the
courts of the lieutenants (namestniki).
37 The entire Old-Russian text of the Knigi zakonnye, together with a translation into mod-
ern Russian has been included in the edition of the Nomos Georgikos prepared by E.E. Lip-
shits, I.P. Medvedev and E.I. Piotrovskaia, Vizantiiskii Zemledel’cheskii zakon, Leningrad,
1984, 233–256; the Chapter on Witnesses at 254–256. English translation of the Chapter
on Witnesses (from a different ms., with four additional articles) in Kaiser, Laws, 118–121.
38 Kaiser, Laws, li.
serious cases (arts. 8–9). Members of the same family may testify in one and
the same case (art. 13), but a father may not testify for or against his son, and
vice versa (art. 21). Many categories are generally excluded as witnesses: the
poor, minors (under 20), prisoners (convicted and under investigation), con-
victed adulterers, slaves, the deaf and dumb, etc. (arts. 15–25).
Some of these prohibited categories of witnesses reappear in the Metropoli-
tan’s Justice, itself a short guidebook, primarily for use by a church court (see
Chapter 8).
Criminal Law
Criminal Law in the Expanded Pravda

In the first section of this chapter we pointed out that the emergence of some-
thing we would now regard as criminal law could be observed in the later phase
of the rp, the Expanded Pravda. Punishment of misdeeds by public authority
was not unknown in an earlier period, because the 944 treaty with the Greeks
referred to punishment of offenders according to Greek law.39 The 911 treaty is
less explicit, but its art. 3, an introductory provision to the following provisions
on various crimes, presents a rough outline of a criminal trial (charge, presen-
tation of evidence, examination of evidence, verdict) and this presupposes the
existence of some sort of tribunal.
The criminal law provisions are all contained in the 911 and 944 treaties and
are devoted to homicide (art. 4/911 and art. 13/944), inflicting injuries (art. 5/911
and art. 14/944), and theft (arts. 6 and 7/911 and arts. 5 and 6/944).40 All of them
made clear that the same rules would apply to Greeks and Russians. The homi-
cide provisions appeared to represent the ancient Russian custom of revenge
by family members, with monetary compensation of the family as a substitute;
the killer could apparently be killed by the kinsmen of the victim, without in-
terference by a court.
The 911 treaty distinguished clearly between ordinary theft (art. 6) and
robbery (art. 7, open theft with violence), although the punishment was the
same: threefold restitution of the stolen value. This type of penalty (twofold or
39 Cf. R.L. Khachaturov, “Ugolovno-pravovoe soderzhanie dogovorov Kievskoi Rusi s Vizan-

tiei”, Sovetskoe Gosudarstvo i Pravo, 1987, No.8, 125–128 and, by the same author, PRoP i,
393–405.
40 Sergeevich devoted a special appendix in his Lektsii to the treaties with Byzantium; he
regarded the regime as imposed by the treaties as heavily weighted in favour of Greek law,
a point of view shared by very few other authors. See Sergeevich, Lektsii, 645–659, on the
criminal law provisions.
700 chapter 22
t hreefold restitution) was well-known in Greek (and Roman) law; in Russian

law, it occurred only once later on, in the Expanded Pravda (art. 46). In the 944
treaty the distinction between arts. 5 and 6 is unclear; it would seem that art. 5
also covered attempted theft. The penalty was reduced to twofold restitution.
Art. 6 of the 911 treaty allowed the killing of a thief during the commission of
his crime, but not if he did not resist arrest or afterwards (a similar, but not
identical, provision in the rp, art. 38 Short Pravda, art. 40 Expanded Pravda).
Striking a person with a weapon entailed a fixed penalty of 5 litra41 of silver
(arts. 5/911 and 14/944).
The oldest layer of the Short Pravda, the Pravda of Iaroslav, cannot very well
be regarded as criminal law, because its main theme was the fixation of the
customary manner in which parties would resolve their disagreements – by
paying fixed compensations. Moreover, the compensation was obviously not
meant to make up for economic losses, or inflict unpleasantness or pain upon
one of the parties, but to restore the honour and reputation of the party who
had suffered.
The second part of the Short Pravda, the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons, can be
viewed as the transition to the system of the Expanded Pravda: the compensa-
tion due for offences against the prince’s personnel was claimed by the prince
himself and acquired the character of a fine (as mentioned above, the payment
of bloodwite did not necessarily absolve the killer from the duty to pay com-
pensation to the victim or his kin according to the traditional system). In the
Expanded Pravda the prince’s right to impose a fine (or another penalty) was
no longer limited to offences against his own personnel. This may rightly be
regarded as the emergence of criminal law.
The famous and much-disputed episode of 996, as related by the Primary
Chronicle, is also to be brought to mind here insofar as it concerns the ap-
pearance of new concepts concerning crime and punishment. The bishops42
encouraged St. Vladimir to punish robbers, if only after a proper investigation
(no so ispytom); they pointed out to him that he had been divinely appointed
to reward the just and to punish the wrongdoers. The passage suggests that the
interposition of the prince in dealing with socially disruptive acts took place
with the full support of the young Russian church.43
41 One litra equaled about 327 gram of silver.

42 At that time only the bishops of Kiev and Novgorod, and perhaps other Greek bishops
present at the court of Vladimir.
43 I have discussed the events of 996 in more detail in my chapter “Wergeld, Bloodwite,
and the Emergence of Criminal Law”, in H. Küpper (ed.), Von Kontinuitäten und Brüchen:
The Short Pravda (with the exception of a few provisions) was inserted in
the Expanded Pravda, but often in considerably amended form, and, which
complicates understanding even more, it was broken up in the course of the
editorial process of the Expanded Pravda into six-seven fragments which were
inserted in the ep text without regard to the original chronological structure of
the sp; art. 8 sp (pulling out somebody’s beard, from the oldest part, Iaroslav’s
Pravda) returned for instance as art. 67 ep, well after the 11th century Statute of
Vladimir Monomakh.
Any provision which unambiguously refers to the prince as the institution
imposing a sanction on a wrongdoer may justifiably be regarded as criminal
law. This is precisely where the main difficulty lies in the interpretation of the
often terse and abbreviated pronouncements of the ep, because in quite a few
cases the terminology of the ep does not allow the unambiguous identifica-
tion of the receiver of the amount mentioned. Where the text uses the term
prodazha (“sale” in modern Russian), it almost always means “fine”. Where the
payment order is accompanied by the words za obidu (“for the offence”, “for
the injury”), payment to the victim or his kin is usually involved. In some of
the early provisions of the sp (e.g. art. 2) the victim is clearly indicated as the
receiver of the payment za obidu. In the second part of the sp, the Pravda of
Iaroslav’s Sons, devoted mainly to offences against the prince’s officials and
servants, the za obidu formula is often encountered, but as the payment is then
to be made to the prince as the master of his own personnel, the za obidu pay-
ment here coincides with a fine. A few provisions (arts. 35, 36 and 40) do in fact
omit za obidu and instead simply call the fine prodazha.
These provisions then became dispersed, reappearing with numerous
amendments in the Expanded Pravda, accompanied by new provisions which
used a similar terminology. In some cases (arts. 23, 60 and 61) the two forms
merged, for instance art. 23: “If somebody strikes [another person] with a sword,
without unsheathing it, or with the hilt, then 12 grivna [as a] fine [prodazhi] for
the offence [za obidu].” In this case the context indicates that the 12 grivna is
paid to the prince, although the corresponding and almost identical provision
of the Short Pravda (art. 4), which does not use the prodazha term, has the za
obidu formula and it is generally accepted that this payment would go to the
person struck. But art. 23 ep is in the company of similar provisions, all of them
going back to similar provisions in the Short Pravda, and one of them (art. 28)
is absolutely clear: a three grivna fine (prodazha), and one grivna kun44 to the
Ostrecht im Wandel der Zeiten. Festschrift für Friedrich-Christian Schroeder zum 75. Geburt-
stag, Frankfurt am Main, 2011, 3–21, esp. 10–12.
44 The grivna kun (grivna of fur) or ordinary grivna was one quarter of the silver grivna.
702 chapter 22
victim himself. The payment of art. 23 ep is therefore to be regarded as a real

fine (prodazha).
The matter is further complicated by the traditional use of the dative in Old-
Russian to indicate the person who is obliged or ordered or in need of acting
out the infinitive form of the verb. In the provisions of the rp one often finds
such formulae as emu platiti (“[it is up] to him to pay”), although it could also
be read as “to him [i.e. the injured party] [is] to be paid”. The context is usu-
ally sufficient to resolve the dilemma, but not always. Art. 34 ep, for instance,
concerning the case where somebody has lost some property and then finds it
again with somebody else, allowed the finder to take it back and then ordered
a payment of 3 grivna (za obidu platiti emu 3 grivny). Zimin regarded the pay-
ment as a fine (to the prince), while Kaiser’s translation handed the payment
to the original owner.45
All these caveats, however, do not undermine the basic fact that the Ex-
panded Pravda contains a considerable number of provisions describing acts
subject to punitive sanctions to be imposed by the prince and his appointed
officials. Their ancestry – many of them go back to similar provisions in the
Short Pravda, where the injured person or victim, instead of the prince, was the
opposite party – explains the casuistic and unsystematic character of this cata-
logue of criminal offences. Homicide is often mentioned, but most provisions
concern all kinds of special cases. There are occasional attempts at systemati-
zation. Somewhere at the tail end of the ep a rule concerning the killing of
women is inserted (art. 88); such homicides are to be judged in the same way as
the killing of a man, but the bloodwite (vira) is halved to 20 grivna. Along with
this general rule there are several others regarding special cases of the killing
of women (art. 16, killing a female slave – 6 grivna, against 5 grivna for a male
slave; art. 15, killing a craftswoman – 12 grivna; art. 17, killing a wet nurse – 12
grivna). These rules concerned women in the prince’s service; in general, the
killing of a slave did not entail the paying of bloodwite, but only of compensa-
tion (if the slave was owned by somebody else) and a fine of 12 grivna to the
prince (art. 89).
After homicide there is a group of less serious offences against the person,
ranging from serious bodily harm (half the bloodwite of homicide – 20 grivna)
to the relatively innocuous unsheathing of a sword without actually strik-
ing the opponent (one grivna). Most of these provisions go back to the Short
Pravda.
The next main complex of offences concerned different forms of theft
and offences against property: slaves, weapons, livestock, clothes, provisions.
45 prp i, 124 and 153.

Among the other offences against property one finds the destruction of owner-
ship signs and marks, illegal fishing and hunting, arson, among others.
The fine was practically the only penalty available and this agrees with the
circumstances surrounding the appearance of the prince as a substitute for
the revenge- and rehabilitation-seeking victim. This substitution allowed the
prince to strengthen the material foundation of his rule and it simultaneously
confirmed his authority and suppressed social unrest. Physical punishment of
offenders would have been less advantageous in the conditions prevailing in
Kievan Russia.
The one exception to this rule was the rare occurrence of potok and con-
fiscation of all property (razgrablenie or razboi). This penalty, apparently of
ancient origin and comparable to the Germanic Friedlosigkeit, threatened the
robber who had killed somebody without cause during a robbery (art. 7),46
and the arsonist who set fire to the grain store (gumno, art. 83). Potok by itself
is also mentioned in art. 35, the theft of horses. It is not entirely clear what is
meant by it. The offender was robbed of everything he possessed, except his
life. Perhaps he was sold as a slave or ejected forever from his community. His
wife and children shared his fate.47
Art. 7 of the Expanded Pravda is part of a group of provisions beginning
with art. 3, entitled “On homicide”, and ending with art. 8. The central theme of
these provisions is the collective responsibility of the verv’ for the homicide of
an important princely official (kniazh muzh) committed within their commu-
nity. The verv’ in the ep is a relatively small and territorially defined communi-
ty, having its origin in family relationships (see for a more extensive treatment
the relevant section in Chapter 18). The basic provision is art. 3 which makes
the members of a community in which the corpse of a victim of an unjusti-
fied attack (razboi) was found liable to pay the bloodwite, if they failed to find
(and deliver) the killer. For the killing of an important princely official (kniazh
46 In view of the position of art. 7 within a block of rules concerning the killing of important
princely officials, its applicability would most likely be limited to such an offence. “Rob-
bery” (razboi) refers to an unjustified attack, a violation of the customary rules concern-
ing the use of violence. A more extensive discussion in Baranowski, 345–347.
47 Cf. prp i, 141–142, 175; rz i, 112. Zimin (in prp) regarded potok as an innovation introduced
by the grand prince as a sign of “increasing class struggle”, in view of the fact that potok
was absent in the Short Pravda. But these words were written in or before 1952 and re-
flect the Stalinist stereotypes of Soviet historiography of that period. Shchapov (in rz)
returned to the view of potok as an archaic institution. See also Iushkov, Stroi, 490–491.
Among the older authors Sergeevich alone defends the view (utterly unsubstantiated)
that potok was of Byzantine origin, Lektsii, 405–407.
704 chapter 22
muzh) the bloodwite was 80 grivna (as in the Short Pravda), for an ordinary
freeman (liudin) 40 grivna.
Art. 3 ep reproduced art. 20 of the Short Pravda, with a few amendments.
The following provisions (arts. 4–8) are missing in the Short Pravda and elabo-
rated art. 3. Arts. 4 and 5 make very clear that collective liability for payment
of the bloodwite was the leading concept. Art. 8 added a new factor to this
by directing that somebody who did not contribute his share in the payment
of bloodwite could not claim community support either in case of need. The
underlying idea of collective liability for the payment of bloodwite may have
been the pragmatic desire to ensure that the bloodwite was paid, either by the
community itself, or by the killer, if his own people managed to locate him.
Collective responsibility of the family or a larger local community, such as
the verv’, for acts of one of their own by which some extraneous person was
harmed, is a not uncommon phenomenon in early legal systems. It is called
krugovaia poruka in Russian (circular or mutual responsibility) and it occurs
in the medieval legislation of most Slavic peoples.48 It is reflected in several
Russian proverbs, such as Vor voruet, mir goriuet (“The thief thieves, the mir
mourns”).49
The two versions of the Russkaia Pravda, understandably for such an ear-
ly piece of legislation, have next to nothing to say about general concepts of
criminal law, such as different forms of guilt, criminal responsibility of minors
or mentally handicapped persons, preparation and attempt, various forms of
complicity, etc. One curious instance is the treatment of theft committed by
several persons together. Arts. 31 and 40 sp and arts. 41–43 ep provided a fixed
fine to pay for the theft of livestock or from a barn, whether there was a single
thief or several. In the latter case each thief had to pay the amount set.
Criminal Law in the Statutes of St. Vladimir and Iaroslav the Wise
Offences against the person and against property were more or less a dequately
covered by the Russkaia Pravda. Traditional institutions and procedures
derived from pre-Christian customary law were taken over, amended and
transformed in a newly emerging legal order in which judicial and then also
legislative powers were gradually gathered in the hands of the prince. Of-
fences against sexual mores represented a separate element in this process.
The adoption of Christianity implied the acceptance of very different views on
sexual mores. This was recognized at an early stage, when the Church Statute
48 Cf. I.M. Sobestianskii, Krugovaia poruka u slavian po drevnim pamiatnikam ikh

zakonodatel’stva, Moskva, 2011 (3rd ed., orig., Khar’kov, 1888).
49 Cf. Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 110.
of St. Vladimir (in its art. 9) conferred jurisdiction in what could be termed

sexual offences on the bishop. The plan of action of this provision was fully
implemented by the Church Statute of Iaroslav, which was basically a criminal
code for sexual offences.
The Statute of Iaroslav, as the name indicates, is a secular statute defining
offences (and civil disputes as well) to be tried by the metropolitan (at that
time the only bishop in Russia, together with the bishop of Novgorod). There
was no punitive discretion; the penalties were all fixed, at levels ranging from
240 grivna (=5 gold grivna) to 60 nogata (little more than 1 grivna).50 A closer
inspection of the catalogue of offences reveals that one of the guiding ideas of
the older layers of the rp also governed the scaling of offences in the Statute
of Iaroslav. Assuming that society expresses its opinion of the relative social
disruptiveness of human actions through criminal law, it is obvious that sta-
tus and honour were the dominant considerations.51 The most serious offence
(art. 4) was dismissal, by a great boyar, of his wife (a daughter of a great boyar);
in this case the 5 gold grivna fine to the metropolitan was accompanied by even
greater compensation to the wife (300 grivna) “for her dishonour” (za sorom
ei). Rape and abduction of the daughter of a great boyar merited the same fine,
and an equal sum (5 gold grivna = 240 grivna) as compensation (arts. 2–3). For
the same offences regarding daughters of lesser boyars the metropolitan’s fine
was 1 gold grivna (48 grivna), and for daughters of common people 12 g rivna.52
Calling a married woman a whore entailed penalties and compensation of the
same levels, depending on her social status (art. 31).
The catalogue of sexual offences in the Statute of Iaroslav is detailed and of-
ten casuistic. It includes not only ordinary adultery, but also sexual intercourse
between a godfather and a godmother, between brother and sister, with Jews
or Muslims, with a nun, with one’s daughter-in-law, with an animal, with two
sisters, with a stepdaughter, with a stepmother, with one’s sister-in-law, by two
brothers with one woman, with one’s daughter, bigamy, and a few others (but
not homosexuality).
The designation “sexual offences” has been used for the sake of conve-
nience. The Statute did not target expressions of sexuality disapproved of by
50 See Appendix, “The Monetary System of Medieval Russia”.

51 Many interesting observations concerning this theme were made by S.L. Levitsky in “Pro-
tection of Honour and Dignity in Pre-Petrine Russian Law”, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschie-
denis/Revue d’histoire du droit, xl (1972), 341–436, esp. 342–351.
52 Between the lesser boyars and the common people, the “good” (dobrye) or “important”
(narochitye) people are mentioned with a 2 rouble fine. It is agreed that the rouble is a
later insertion; one would expect that originally a 24 grivna fine was set.
706 chapter 22
the legislator, but conduct permissible in a pagan society and condemned by

Christian morality. The catalogue therefore included various other activities,
unconnected with sexuality, such as different kinds of sorcery, pagan wedding
rituals, fighting among women, men “fighting like women” (biting and scratch-
ing), among other things.
Occasionally, in less serious cases, no fixed penalty is set and the punish-
ment is left to the metropolitan. In a few serious cases, on top of the set fine to
the metropolitan, the prince will punish additionally. Among such cases were
the ones of arts. 2–4 (mentioned above), group rape (art. 8), adultery (art. 9),
arson (arts. 15 and 49), shaving somebody’s beard of hair (against his will,
art. 32), and pagan wedding rituals (art. 36). The punishment imposed by the
prince would presumably exist of an additional fine.
Two of the cases which involved the prince also figured in the rp: arson
and ‘beard’ offences. The two provisions on arson in the Statute are differently
worded, but basically identical and very close to art. 83 of the Expanded Pravda
(burning a gumno, “threshing floor”, grain storage). Arts. 15 and 49 of the Stat-
ute of Iaroslav also mentioned the gumno, but additionally the house or “some-
thing else” (ili ino chto).53 In the Russian medieval economy, the destruction
of the grain stores of an entire community represented an existential threat
to a large number of people and this may explain why the legislator wanted
to make sure that it was well covered by criminal law. The heavy penalty (40
grivna) was the same in all cases.
Pulling out or shaving off somebody’s beard is regarded by most commenta-
tors routinely as an insult to the victim’s virility and as violence against the per-
son.54 It is curious, however, that the offence has a long pedigree and that the
sanctions imposed are unusually high. It occurs in the Short Pravda (art. 8), the
Expanded Pravda (art. 67), the Church Statute of Iaroslav (art. 32), the Court
Charter of Pskov (art. 117), and several other sources. In the first three the pen-
alty is set at 12 grivna. Shchapov alone points to possible religious connections,
such as the Semitic attitude expressed in Levit. 19, 27 (still alive in Islam).55 This
of course could not explain the rule in the Short Pravda, which undoubtedly
goes back to pagan times. But a traditional Russian attitude may have been
embedded in the new Christian approach. Jesus Christ is almost without ex-
ception portrayed as bearded, and in Christian iconography, Eastern as well
as Western, God invariably has a beard. Shchapov suggests, although not in so
53 They belong according to the most authoritative commentator, Ia.N. Shchapov, to later
additions to the Statute.
54 References with Baranowski, 207–208.
55 In rz i, 184–185; “Nor shall you cut your hair roundwise; nor shave your beard.”
many words, that in the view of the Russian middle ages, as man is made unto
God’s likeness, a man should have a beard. As the West had abandoned this
strict approach, the Russian beard served as a confession of faith, and by the
same token as an easy and practical way of telling Russian men from strangers.
Byzantine inspiration for the Statute of Iaroslav is most likely, because the
Greek clergy present in early Christian Russian must have been closely in-
volved in its drafting. There are many similarities in the catalogues of punish-
able offences, as well as important differences. Byzantine influence seems to
have been a matter of general orientation, rather than of taking over specific
texts. The penalty system is fundamentally different. In Russia the penalties
consisted generally of monetary sanctions, while Byzantine law (e.g. Title 17
of the Ecloga) excelled in physical punishment, from various forms of capital
punishment to the cutting off of assorted body parts.
Criminal Law in Later Centuries

The Novgorod and Pskov Court Charters dealt with criminal law only tangen-
tially. Art. 10 of the Novgorod Charter set a fine to be imposed on persons con-
victed of assault or robbery in connection with land deals; the fine depended
on the status of the person convicted: 50 roubles for a boyar, 20 roubles for a
well-to-do (zhitii) person, and 10 roubles for a poor man. The Pskov Charter
ordered capital punishment for theft from the town fortress, theft of horses, ar-
son and treason (art. 7), and also for theft committed for the third time (art. 8).
A few other provisions refer to theft in connection with property disputes,
without indicating what kind of penalty was to be imposed.
Other legislative sources confirm the impression that the combined set
of criminal law provisions of the Expanded Pravda and the Church Statute
of Iaroslav offered an adequate toolbox to deal with the criminal law needs of
medieval Russian society. In Chapter 21 we have already observed that part
of the jurisdiction originally assigned to the bishop tended to be switched back
to the prince.
The 1229 treaty between Smolensk and the Baltic towns of the Hanseatic
League (the Smolensk Pravda) contained a small number of criminal law pro-
visions which were still very close to the rp, except that the amounts were
expressed in silver grivnas (four times the value of the ordinary grivna). A few
scattered criminal law provisions may also be found in the Dvina Land Charter
(arts. 1, 2, 4, 6) and the Belozero Charter (arts. 10, 13, 14, 18). They were still well
within the rp tradition, with the exception of a new offence, encountered in
both sources (art. 6 of the Dvina Charter and art. 13 of the Belozero Charter):
taking justice into one’s own hands (samosud). This is not what we would un-
derstand by it, but concerned the case where a thief was caught by the owner
708 chapter 22
of the stolen object and the latter allowed the thief to go, after paying a bribe,
thereby robbing the prince’s treasury of the fine set by law.
The only legislative text which stands out in respect of its criminal law con-
tent is the Metropolitan’s Justice (see the relevant section in Chapter 6). Most
of its provisions are reminiscent of rules already encountered in the Statute of
Iaroslav, which makes sense if one considers that it was apparently meant as a
guide for a church court in a remote area of Russia. A few other rules can more
easily be connected with the rp. The comparatively late date of origin of the
Metropolitan’s Justice is reflected by several features: its explicit reference to
the ‘City Law’ of Byzantium (the Procheiron) as the law regulating the penalty
for murder, and the repeated occurrence of capital punishment and mutila-
tion. Capital punishment was included for offending the grand prince (of Mos-
cow; this in itself also proves a late date) and for (repeated) theft.
The late appearance of capital punishment and mutilating penalties, both
well known and frequently applied in Byzantine law, should not create the im-
pression that the culture of medieval Russia was gentle in comparison with the
rough mores of Western Europe. It would already be sufficient to point to the
rules of the rp about vengeance or about the permissibility of killing the night-
time burglar “like a dog” (art. 40 ep, v psa mesto). The Statute of the Novgorod
prince Vsevolod (on Church Courts, Church People, and Measures) ordered
the person who had tampered with weights and measures to be punished
“close to death” (blizko smerti, art. 15) and to beat brothers who had falsely ac-
cused a sister of fornication (to cheat her out of her parents’ inheritance) with
stones (art. 25).56 The chronicles offer many examples of violent treatment of
opponents and Russian legal historians, such as Sergeevich or Iushkov, have
qualified this as proof of the existence of capital punishment.57 All that can be
said against these views is that the taking of life as described in such episodes
lacked the characteristics of a penalty imposed in the course of a formal trial.
Sometimes it was plain assassination, in other cases violent reprisal against
opponents. Mutilation as a penalty began to be applied first in ecclesiastical
56 The latter provision appears only in the Solovetsk copy of the end of the 15th century and
is based on borrowing from the Kormchaia; cf. Ia.I. Shchapov, Drevnerusskie kniazheskie
ustavy xi–xv vv., Moskva, 1976, 153–158; also Kaiser, Laws, 63.
57 Cf. Sergeevich, Lektsii, 394 and 404; Iushkov, Stroi, 491–492. Both authors refer to the fa-
mous Chronicle episode of 996, where St. Vladimir is exhorted by the bishops to punish
robbers. I side with those authors who translate the verb kazniti here not as “execute”,
but as “punish”, which agrees with the rest of the text. See also on capital punishment in
Russian legal history: S.V. Zhil’tsov, “Smertnaia kazn’ v prave Drevnei Rusi i iurisdiktsiia
Velikogo kniazia v ego primenenii”, Pravovedenie, 1997, No.4, 47–52.
jurisdiction, although it was also used occasionally as a political tool, in par-

ticular to render competitors harmless.58
Criminal Law in the Code of Ivan iii of 1497

Under Ivan iii the expansion of the Moscow principality was reaching its fi-
nal stage, in the sense that almost all Russian principalities which at one time
had been part of the Kievan empire had been brought under the rule of the
Moscow grand prince, with the exception of western and southern territo-
ries, which remained under Polish-Lithuanian control. The obvious need to
introduce a measure of uniformity in the legal system of the new politico-legal
entity was the main motive behind the enactment of the Sudebnik (Code) of
1497. It addressed itself mainly to the organization of the courts, the procedure
to be followed, and the various payments to judges and other court officials.
Substantive criminal law is often mentioned in the Code, but then mostly in
passing, in connection with other topics.
As pointed out in Chapter 9 (the Code of 1497), one of its main features was
that it represented a combination of two closely related texts: a statute on the
court of boyars and okol’nichie, and a statute on the urban court of the namest-
nik (lieutenant). The most important criminal law provision of the Code illus-
trated this duplication: art. 8 dealt with the boyar court, art. 39 with the court
of the town namestnik; the contents are almost identical. These provisions or-
dered capital punishment for several serious crimes, which, as noted above,
was an innovation in Russian law, but in other aspects they reflected ancient
traditions.
One of these was the survival of the civil law element, by allotting an impor-
tant role to the victim of the crime. The penalty to be imposed consisted of two
parts: capital punishment and compensation for the losses of the victim. If the
culprit’s estate was insufficient to compensate the victim, arts. 8 and 39 stated
explicitly that the culprit was then not to be handed over to the victim (as a
slave, or for private revenge), but to be executed. If there was anything left over
from the culprit’s estate, this would be divided between the boyar (judge) and
his clerk (d’iak), in the ratio of 3:2 (two altyn against 8 den’gi).
Secondly, the provisions showed that criminal law was also largely governed
by customary law, in that there was no exhaustive list of crimes. The wording
of arts. 8 and 39 made this abundantly clear. The crimes covered were “theft
[tat’ba], or robbery [razboi], or homicide [dushegubstvo] or false accusation
58 Blinding in particular was supposed to render a person incapable of occupying a position

of importance, such as that of a prince or a bishop. This custom was not limited to Russia
alone, but occurred widely among Indo-European and Semitic peoples.
710 chapter 22
[iabednichestvo], or any other evil deed [ili inoe kakoe likhoe delo]”. The vague
scope of these two provisions was further extended by making them appli-
cable only to a “notorious criminal” (vedomyi likhii).
The next provision (art. 9) further extended the applicability of capital
punishment to persons (obviously slaves or serfs) who had murdered their
masters, conspirators (zagovorshchiki), church thieves (sviatotattsy), arsonists,
notorious criminals, and others (such as podymshchiki and golovnye).59
Theft without qualifying circumstances (being a notorious criminal, a re-
peated offender, church theft, etc.) was punished by public flogging with the
knout, payment of compensation, and a fine. If the thief’s means were insuf-
ficient, he could be handed over in slavery to the plaintiff (art. 10). For a re-
peated offender capital punishment was mandatory, and the same regime as
described in art. 8 applied (art. 11).
Art. 12 (accusation of theft, without other evidence) was discussed above
in the section on evidence. Art. 13 is a continuation of art. 12: if the charge of
being a thief not only rests on the sworn statement of five or six good men, but
is corroborated by the thief’s possession of the stolen goods, the death penalty
applies.
Apart from the widely available capital punishment, the Code (as noted
above in passing) also knew the ancient penalty of a fine, of commitment to
slavery, and of flogging.
Court Fees and Related Payments
Court fees are of course necessarily connected with the emergence of courts,
of the adjudication of disputes by an independent and authoritative agency,
equipped with the means to have its decision enforced. In our discussion
of the different phases of the rp, in particular art. 1 of the Short and of the
Expanded Pravda (dealing with homicide), the transition from compensation
of the victim’s family by the offender (and his family) to payment of the same
amount to the prince was explained; this transition took place through the
intermediate stage of payment to the prince of compensation for the killing
of his servants.
In these and similar cases (infliction of all kinds of injuries and other of-
fences against the person) the appropriation of the claim for compensation by
59 I refrain from translating podymshchiki and golovnye, as there is too much disagreement
about these two categories.
the prince could be explained as a payment for the judicial services provided
by the prince’s court. But very soon the compensation assumed the character
of a fine, a punishment for a crime. Payment for the actual costs of the admin-
istration of justice occurred already in the rp, but in a less prominent way, for
the first time in the second phase of the Short Pravda, the Pravda of Iaroslav’s
Sons, in arts. 41–42.
As a result of unfortunate editorial intervention at some stage, the extant
version of art. 41 is difficult to understand at first glance. After much debate
through the years, the established opinion now is that the provision concerned
the distribution of the fines specified in the foregoing provisions and based
on the rate of 1 grivna equals 25 kuna. The bulk of the fine went to the prince,
but smaller amounts were set aside for the tithe (a later addition to the ar-
rangement), for the mechnik (an official, sheriff, prince’s guard), and for the
emets (another, or the same official, or perhaps the person or official agent who
caught the culprit).60
Art. 42 contained the pokon virnyi (the law on the [payment of the] col-
lector of the bloodwite), a separate part of the Short Pravda (see Chapter 4).
As pointed out in Chapter 14, in this provision the kormlenie system appeared
for the first time. Kormlenie (“feeding”) meant that an official of the prince
was provided with food and lodging for the duration of his stay in a particular
locality. Later, kormlenie could also be paid in money or equivalent services or
goods. Kormlenie in art. 42 of the Short Pravda was of the original type (“the
bloodwite collector gets seven buckets of malt each week, and also a ram or
half a carcass of meat, [etc.]”), but it already allowed alternative payment (“or 2
nogatas”). On top of the detailed food rations (such as special fare on Wednes-
days and Fridays, fast days), there was also a fixed money payment and provi-
sion was also made for horses. The entire package was not only elaborate but
also calculated to cover the living expenses of an entire party for one week.
The virnik (bloodwite collector) and his team were sent out when the killer (in
a homicide case) or another culprit (in other cases where bloodwite was owed
to the prince) had not been apprehended and the community where the homi-
cide took place was liable for the bloodwite payment (see art. 20 of the Short
Pravda). In such cases an official party (most probably armed), headed by the
60 See comments in prp i, 104; rz i, 63; full survey of different viewpoints with Baranowski,
318–324. The basic provision concerning the assignment of the tithe (10%) from all court
fees received by the prince is in the Church Statute of Vladimir (arts. 3 and 13) and in all
church statutes derived from it.
712 chapter 22
virnik, had one week to collect the bloodwite from among the community of
the offender.
Art. 9 of the Expanded Pravda reiterates the pokon virnyi of the Short Pravda
in somewhat amended form; the money payments are different and along with
the virnik and his deputy (otrok) the metel’nik is mentioned.61 Art. 10 of the
Expanded Pravda represents a much amended version of art. 41 of the Short
Pravda (distribution of the bloodwite). Art. 20 of the Expanded Pravda rounds
off the regulation of the payment of bloodwite (vira) for homicide, by ordering
both sides (the victim’s relatives and the killer) to pay a fee of one grivna in
case the homicide charge failed; the accused had to pay an additional smaller
sum (9 kuna).
The foregoing paragraphs concerned payments to the prince (bloodwite,
vira) due in cases of homicide (of the prince’s servants) or closely related of-
fences. Where an ordinary fine was paid for a certain offence, the Expanded
Pravda also prescribed additional payments to the court officers, both in the
form of fixed money payments and in kind (art. 74).
The further elaboration of the system of court fees is reflected in arts. 86 and
107–109 of the Expanded Pravda (representing later layers of the rp), which
set out schedules of fees for administering the iron ordeal (art. 86), general
court fees (art. 107), fees for partitioning estates (art. 108), and for administer-
ing oaths (art. 109). In some cases the fees for particular court officers are taken
out of the sum total of the payment (fine, bloodwite) imposed, in other cases
they are added on to it.
The same system is found in the Court Charter of Novgorod. General court
fees at 10% are taken out of the fine imposed (art. 8), while special payments
are due to court officials who have to travel a long distance to discharge their
duties (arts. 23 and 24). A special payment is also due for a judgment after liti-
gation or a simple decision without litigation (art. 33).
In the Court Charter of Pskov there are numerous provisions on court fees
and fees for court officials, but, in accordance with the general character of
the Charter (based on, and additional to customary law, which is assumed to
be known), the regulatory system is haphazard. Art. 12 sets a general court
fee (podsudnich’e) of 10 den’gi.62 Several provisions mention a special fee for
the bailiff (pristav): art. 37 for his work in connection with judicial duels, arts.
64–67 for various activities in criminal investigation, art. 93 for his involve-
ment in the execution of the judgment. As in Novgorod, these fees are often
61 There is no agreement about the nature of the metel’nik’s responsibility, except that he is
subordinate to the virnik; see Baranowski, 380–381.
62 In Pskov 220 den’gi were equal to 30 grivna and to one ruble.
c onnected with the distance bailiffs have to travel to discharge their duties.
Other provisions concern special fees for the court clerk (pisets), arts. 50 and
82–83, or for the guards (podverniki, art. 59; dverskie = dvorskie, art. 65).
In the Dvina Land Charter court fees and related payments was regulated in
arts. 8 and 10. Art. 8 is devoted mainly to the riding fee (khozhenoe) and other
emoluments due to the lieutenant’s assistants for travelling to various points
in the large territory. Art. 10 fixes the fees for all officials involved in issuing
judgments. Art. 3 envisages a special situation: when a fight occurs during a
(village) feast and the parties make up before the party is over, there are no
legal costs; but when they make up afterwards, the lieutenants may claim their
usual fee.
The riding fee is also mentioned in the Belozero Charter (the Belozero prin-
cipality was much smaller than Dvina Land), art. 16. Two provisions of the
Belozero Charter (arts. 9 and 13) aim to protect the income from court fees
against evasive action by the parties involved; art. 9 deals with situations where
parties reach an out-of-court settlement; a court fee of one thirtieth of the sum
in litigation is then due (one grivna for one ruble). Art. 13 is directed against
samosud (taking justice in one’s own hands, i.e. capturing a thief with his loot
and making a deal with him); there is a fixed fine of one ruble (art. 6 of the
Dvina Charter is also directed against samosud).
In Chapter 9 (on the Code of 1497, the Sudebnik of Ivan iii), Dewey’s words
were quoted concerning the character of this text.63 Most provisions of this
Code are structured as indications of court fees (“If such and such a case oc-
curs and is tried, then the court receives so much, the bailiff so much, etc.”).
As explained elsewhere, the Code consists of two more or less parallel parts,
concerning the boyar court and the lieutenant’s court. Also, the main purpose
of the Code seems to have been to introduce more uniformity into the judicial
system of the newly emerged grand principality of Muscovy. The unification
of the fee structure for the courts was an important aspect of this policy, if not
the most important.
The general court fee was set at two altyn per ruble for the judge and eight
den’gi for the clerk (arts. 3 – for the boyar court, 38 – for the lieutenant’s court),
to be paid by the losing party.64 There were all kinds of special fees for spe-
cial activities, such as the issuing of documents (judgments, court records,
63 “The Sudebnik sounds disappointingly like a simple listing of court fees, or of payments
to be made to victorious litigants”; H. Dewey, “The 1497 Sudebnik – Muscovite Russia’s
First National Law Code”, American Slavic & East European Review, Vol.15 (1956), 325–338,
at 325.
64 In 15th century Moscow 200 den’gi were equal to 33.3 altyn and to one ruble.
714 chapter 22
e mancipation papers, etc.), riding fees for court officials, etc. The tendency to
protect income from court fees against avoidance, observable in the Beloze-
ro Charter and earlier laws, was strengthened. A considerable variety of of-
ficials was on the receiving side of these various fees, not only judges (boyar
and okol’nichii judges, lieutenants, and judges of the court of a prince), but
also scribes (diaki, pod’iachie, and pechatniki), bailiffs (nedel’shchiki, pristavy),
among other things.
part 2
Muscovy (until 1649)
∵
chapter 23
Introduction
(Grand) Princes (and Tsars) of Muscovy (All-Russia) since Ivan i
Ivan i Kalita (“Moneybag”; *?) 1327–1341, “Ivan Danilovich”, son of Ivan i

Semën Gordyi (“the Proud”; *1316) 1341–1354, “Semen Ivanovich”, son of Ivan i
Ivan ii Krasnyi (“the Handsome”; *1326) 1354–1359, “Ivan Ivanovich”, son of
Ivan i
Dmitrii Donskoi (*1350) 1359–1389, “Dmitrii Ivanovich”, son of Ivan ii
Vasilii i (*1371) 1389–1425, “Vasilii Dmitrievich”, son of Dmitrii Donskoi
Vasilii ii Temnyi (“the Blind”; *1415) 1425–1462, “Vasilii Vasil’evich”, son of Vasilii
i
Ivan iii (*1440) 1462–1506, “Ivan Vasil’evich”, son of Vasilii ii
Vasilii iii (*1479) 1506–1534, “Vasilii Ivanovich”, son of Ivan iii
Ivan iv Groznyi (“the Terrible”; *1530) (1534) 1547–1584, “Ivan Vasil’evich”, son of
Vasilii iii, first tsar
(Simeon Bekbulatovich, 1575–76, “grand prince of All-Russia”, appointed and
dismissed by Ivan iv)
Fëdor (*1557) 1584–1598, “Fedor Ivanovich”, son of Ivan iv
Boris Godunov (* ± 1552) 1598–1605, brother-in-law of Fedor, elected
Fëdor Godunov (*1589), 1605, son of Boris
Pseudo-Dimitrii i (Iurii Otrep’ev, *?), 1605–1606, self-proclaimed
Vasilii iv Shuiskii (*1552), 1606–1610 († 1612), elected
“Seven Boyars” (Semiboiarshchina), 1610–1612
Mikhail Romanov (*1596), 1613–1645, elected, “Mikhail Fedorovich”
Aleksei (*1629), 1645–1676, son of Mikhail, “Aleksei Mikhailovich”
With the death of tsar Fedor in 1598 the Moscow dynasty descending from
Ivan Kalita died out. During most of Fedor’s reign, the government had actu-
ally been in the hands of his wife’s brother, Boris Godunov, who then also suc-
ceeded Fedor in 1598. When Boris died suddenly in 1605, his son Fedor, aged
16, succeeded him, but he was overthrown and killed after six weeks by a pre-
tender (reputed to be Iurii Otrep’ev) who claimed to be Dmitrii, son of Ivan iv
and allegedly assassinated in 1591 with the connivance of Boris Godunov. This
(first) Pseudo-Dimitrii was crowned tsar and ruled for one year, until he was
overthrown in a plot organized by prince Shuiskii, who then ascended the
throne as tsar Vasilii iv (1606). During his reign the second Pseudo-Dimitrii

718 chapter 23
(known as the “Thief of Tushino”) appeared; he operated in an alliance with

the Polish king and controlled large parts of the Russian territory. Vasilii iv
was forced to abdicate as the result of a palace coup in 1610. A few months
later, the second Pseudo-Dimitrii, abandoned by the Poles, was killed. In the
years 1610–1611 the Time of Troubles reached its lowest point and the country
descended into chaos. Moscow was occupied by the Poles and there was seri-
ous talk of making the Polish crown prince tsar of Russia. In October 1611 the
general awareness of the need for concerted action produced a groundswell of
patriotic enthusiasm which spread from Nizhnii-Novgorod across the country,
until Moscow was taken (where the Polish garrison surrendered in October
1612). In February 1613 the Land Assembly elected the young Mikhail Romanov
as the new tsar. (For more details, see Chapter 30).
The Law of the Principality of Muscovy
In Chapter 1, certain general ideas on law, medieval law, and legal history, de-
termining the approaches adopted in the following chapters, were outlined.
A few additional remarks, specifically concerning the law of the Muscovy era,
are made here.
In the 19th century and until the present day, the dominant approach
among legal historians, the Russians being no exception, has been to apply the
dominant modern views on law and legislation, and on the organization of
the legal system, to the description and analysis of legal systems of the past. In
this work, instead, a pragmatic rather than dogmatic concept of law has been
adopted and on this basis the sources and materials offered by the historical
period itself have been examined.
Russian law from the prehistoric period largely escapes investigation by rea-
son of the absence of information. Materials from the earliest historical period
merely allow us to sketch a few lines concerning the Zakon Russkii (the cus-
tomary law of the Russians) preceding the Russkaia Pravda, Russia’s earliest
written law. The 11th and the 12th centuries, the actual Kievan period, were for
all practical purposes the formative era of medieval Russian law when law (as
viewed in this work) began to appear here and there in Kievan society. The
political and legal unity of the Kievan realm was already falling apart in the
course of the 12th century, when at the same time the legal system which had
begun to take shape in the 11th century was reaching greater maturity. The lat-
ter process continued in the following centuries, accompanied by a certain
amount of diversification in the virtually independent principalities.
Introduction 719
With the ascent of Moscow, a new situation arose, characterized by four

factors distinguishing Muscovy law from the law of the preceding period (the
independent principalities). First, the imposition of the rule of the Moscow
grand prince represented to some extent a return to the political unity of the
Kievan realm (a consideration of which the rulers of Muscovy were keenly
aware). Secondly, unification of the legal system was an almost inevitable con-
comitant of the new political unity. Thirdly, this legal system needed far great-
er sophistication than the relatively simple arrangements suitable for Kievan
Russia and the numerous principalities which had succeeded it. And, fourthly,
political developments in Muscovy had favoured the emergence of the pre-
dominant position of the monarch, in relation to the other principal political
actors. These factors have to be kept in mind when one attempts to identify the
sources of law in the Muscovy era.
In line with the approach adopted in the first part of this work, we shall first
engage in a survey of the sources of the law, and then enter into a discussion of
the substance of the law. The concept of “sources of law”, especially in a medi-
eval context, and the effect of such an understanding on the method of ana-
lyzing and describing medieval and more generally pre-modern law, has been
elucidated at length in Chapter 2 and it will be sufficient to refer to these texts.
Perhaps the most basic and down-to-earth observation is that in dealing with
pre-modern law our sources are not only more limited than those concerning
modern law, but that these sources are usually also defective. While a modern
legal system is, at least in theory perfectly knowable (we have complete col-
lections of the full statutory material, of the practice of the courts, and of le-
gal literature at our disposal), pre-modern legal sources are always incomplete
and often we do not know what we do not know. Two of the most important
sources of medieval Russian law, for instance, the Court Charter of Pskov and
the Code of Ivan iii of 1497, have come down to us in a single copy, more or less
by chance.
The period reviewed in the present part of this work covers the era between
the Law Code (Sudebnik) of Ivan iii of 1497 and the Council Code (Sobornoe
Ulozhenie) of 1649 of tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, which marked an entirely new
stage in the history of Russian legislation.
The Sudebnik of 1497 of Ivan iii can be seen as a legal gateway: the road
of earlier legal developments leads up to it, and it is the beginning of a new
road. During the reign of Ivan’s son Vasilii iii the rounding off of the Muscovy
territory was completed, and then under Ivan iv Groznyi, whose actual reign
started in 1547, the work of bringing the legal system to a level required by the
new circumstances was begun in earnest.
720 chapter 23
The surfeit of drama and horror surrounding the almost 37 years of the reign
of Ivan iv and the sorry state of Muscovy which he left to his insignificant son
Fedor in 1584 obscured the achievements of the first dozen years of this first
tsar of Muscovy, achievements which especially affected the law. The impact
of the numerous reforms introduced in this period far exceeded the changes
brought about during the long reign of the tsar’s grandfather, Ivan iii; only the
great wave of legislation under Peter the Great during the first 25 years of the
18th century had an even greater effect.
The manner of conducting government business in Muscovy had grown out
of the simpler arrangements of the past, when the prince would sit in his hall
in the morning and, surrounded by his retainers, would deal with matters as
they presented themselves: requests for favours and grants, disputes between
important people, military affairs, dealing with wrongdoers, etc.
There were still many traces of these arrangements in the practice of the
Muscovy government. The tsar, in the fullness of his power, could decide mat-
ters on his own, and grants and favours to monasteries or individuals were
normally made in the form of a zhalovannaia (grant charter) by the tsar (or
before him, the grand prince) himself. In matters of importance it would often
be opportune to act in concert with an inner circle of counsellors. In Chapter
31 the Boyar Duma was described as an informal group of prominent mem-
bers of the court, without a fixed composition or a clear mandate. In Muscovy,
the tsar’s council would usually, apart from a few trusted boyars, also include
okol’nichie (the next rank after boyars), so-called Duma nobles (dumnye dvori-
ane, from the lower nobility), and Duma clerks (dumnye d’iaki). This council
would sometimes act on its own, presumably in cases where the monarch for
some reason did not want to be directly involved (routine matters, less impor-
tant issues, civil and criminal cases, the elaboration of questions which had
already been agreed in principle, etc.).
When government business became increasingly complex, a further di-
vision of labour took place, in which certain topics were assigned to special
departments (prikazy), each usually headed by a prominent boyar. These
departments would in time also act on behalf of the government, in other
words, issue general regulations concerning their area of competence (legisla-
tion), act as a judicial body for disputes arising within this area or for punishing
offenders, and engage in various executive activities. The legislative activities
of the prikazy were cloaked in the form of ukazy or prigovory of the tsar alone,
the tsar and his boyars (the Boyar Duma) together, or the boyars (the Boyar
Duma) alone.
Very occasionally, when decisions of the highest importance were to be
taken, a way to involve the most politically significant sectors of the p
opulation
Introduction 721
was devised.1 This would include the Church (represented by the metropolitan/
patriarch, the bishops and abbots: the Holy Council), the great nobles (boyars),
middle-rank court officials and the secular landowners (the lower nobility or
gentry), representatives from the urban merchants, etc. As this assembly be-
came more institutionalized, it came to be known as the “Land A ssembly”
(Zemskii Sobor). An ad hoc joint meeting of the Church’s Holy Council and the
boyars (the Boyar Duma) in 1549, in which the drafting of a new and compre-
hensive law code (the future Code of 1550) was approved, is generally regarded
as the first manifestation of the emergence of the Zemskii Sobor. During the
Time of Troubles (1598–1613), when there was often no effective government
by a tsar, the Zemskii Sobor acted as the default ruler of the country. The acts of
the Land Assembly, acting in concert with the tsar, were normally designated
as ulozhenie, from the verb ulozhit’ (to lay down, to establish), for which no
single translation is appropriate. The Ulozhenie of 1649 was a genuine code,
but, for instance, the decree (ulozhenie) of 1607 of tsar Vasilii Shuiskii on peas-
ants and slaves was a short enactment, prompted by persistent unrest among
the dependent rural population.2 Most Land Assembly decisions were known
as prigovory (decrees).
A number of decisions affecting the legal position of the Church and espe-
cially the estates of monasteries was issued in the shape of council decrees
(sobornyi prigovor), involving the tsar himself and the Holy Council, and,
occasionally, the boyars as well.3
Decisions of the tsar alone were designated as ukazy (“decrees”, but more
precisely “directives”), because the standard formula, at least in later years, was
Velikii gosudar’ ukazal (“the Great Lord directed”). Joint decrees (prigovory)
of the tsar and his boyars (the Boyar Duma), generally concerning more im-
portant matters, were preceded by the words Velikii gosudar’ ukazal i boiare
prigovorili (“The Great Lord directed and the boyars decided”). Decisions of
the boyars (the Boyar Duma) were also known as prigovory, which in modern
Russian would mean “judgments”, but in Muscovy practice embraced all kinds
of decisions, even the adoption of legislation.
Beyond the various and numerous legislative texts mentioned above there
were thousands of other documents relevant to an understanding of the law of
the Muscovy era. First of all, there is quite a number of judgment charters (pra-
vaia gramota or pravyi spisok) illustrating the practice of the courts, almost all
of them in cases which we would designate as civil cases. Then there is a mass
1 A typical example would be the election of tsar Boris Godunov in 1598, PRoP III/2, 225–228.
2 prp iv, 586–589; zarg No.57, 75–76.
3 Several examples in the section on land ownership by the Church in Chapter xxxvi.
722 chapter 23
of legal documents (gramoty, charters) of all kinds, which have been described
extensively in Chapter 11. In that description we disregarded the chronologi-
cal boundary of Part 1, the Code of Ivan iii of 1497.4 While all other sources
discussed in the first sections of both Part 1 and Part 2 can be connected with
certain dates, the great mass of individual charters presents a continuum, run-
ning across the year 1497. Dealing separately with charters from before and
after that year would lead to unnecessary duplication.
In all of this it has to be kept in mind that the modern, strict distinction
between legislative acts, executive or administrative decisions, and judicial de-
cisions cannot be applied to the governmental practice of Muscovy. A decision
of the tsar was to be regarded as an expression of the law; its format was of
secondary importance.
The Published Sources

With regard to the written sources of the law of the Muscovy era, the situation
is much more straightforward than in the foregoing era of Kievan and Medieval
Russia. The grand prince of Muscovy and subsequently the tsar constituted the
supreme source of law. As the administration of the state became more com-
plicated, a more complex system of agencies with legislative and legal func-
tions arose, but all of them operated in the name of the tsar and on the basis
of his directives. Decisions and decrees of more than trivial importance would
have been in writing and copies were kept in the various government depart-
ments, housed in the vicinity of the tsar’s residence in the Moscow Kremlin.
Much has been lost, especially in the great fires of 1611, 1626 and 1812, but the
surviving body of documents offers a consistent and fairly comprehensive nar-
rative of the legislative history of the period.
The main components of this body of documents will be discussed in sepa-
rate Chapters (24–29), devoted to the law codes of 1550, 1551, 1589, 1606–1607
and 1649, to the various so-called statute books of the departments (prikazy),
and to the decisions of the Land Assembly. Beyond these major landmarks
there is a considerable treasure of shorter enactments, almost all of them dat-
ing from the beginning of the reign of Ivan iv to the enactment of the Code of
Aleksei in 1649.
4 “Although the first part of this work is devoted in principle to the period preceding the enact-
ment of the Code of Ivan iii in 1497, this cut-off date cannot be applied too strictly to the
topic of charters. The life of the law in Russia continued after 1497 much as it had done before
and the major collections of Russian charters usually run on into the 16th century or even the
17th century. All in all, the emphasis will be on the mass of 15th and 16th century charters.”
Introduction 723
Of the basic academic publications of historic Russian legislation (prp, rz

and PRoP), the Pamiatniki Russkogo Prava offer a good and annotated edition
of a considerable number of the more important enactments. The best collec-
tion is undoubtedly the volume on “Legislative Acts of the Russian State of the
Second Half of the 16th and the First Half of the 17th Century”, published in
Leningrad in 1988 under the general editorship of N.E. Nosov. It contains 345
items, from 1550 to 1649, including almost everything to be found in prp and
other collections.5
The Reforms of Ivan iv
We explained earlier why the Sudebnik of Ivan iii of 1497 has been taken as the
border post between the early period of the history of Russian law, what might
loosely be identified as the “Middle Ages”, and the period of Muscovite Russian
law, which culminated in the Ulozhenie of tsar Aleksei of 1649. The Muscovite
era ended with the ascent to the throne of Peter the Great in 1689, but where
legal history is concerned the Ulozhenie is a better cut-off point, because the
entire volume of Russian law from 1649 on was collected, digested and consoli-
dated in the 19th century in the Complete Collection of Laws (Polnoe Sobranie
Zakonov) and the shorter Collection of Laws (Svod Zakonov), based on it.
As related above, the first half-century after the adoption of the Code of 1497
was a relatively quiet period in the development of Russian law; the attention
of the grand princes (Ivan iii died in 1506 and his son Vasilii iii ruled from
1506 until his death in 1534) was directed mostly towards safeguarding external
security and dealing with the most urgent problems of the vastly expanded
Russian territory. Large-scale legal reforms were undertaken during the first
10–15 years of the reign of Ivan iv, who was only four years old when his father
died, and who was crowned tsar in 1547, at the age of 16. Within a remarkably
short period a general law code was drafted and enacted (the Sudebnik of 1550);
a similar code of church law (the Stoglav) followed the next year; local gov-
ernment was radically restructured (the zemstvo reforms); central government
was greatly expanded (the organization of the prikazy); the Land Assembly
(Zemskii Sobor) came into being as a body representing the most influential
estates (Church, boyars, gentry, merchants, etc.); local communities and their
5 N.E. Nosov (ed.), Zakonodatel’nye akty Russkogo gosudarstva vtoroi poloviny xvi – pervoi
p oloviny xvii veka. Teksty, Leningrad, 1988 (abbreviated zarg). There is a companion vol-
ume with comments (same title, but Kommentarii instead of Teksty), edited by Nosov and
V.M. Paneiakh, Leningrad, 1987.
724 chapter 23
elected officers were entrusted with first-line responsibility for certain law
enforcement functions (the guba reforms). There were also major reforms
in the fiscal regime, including attempts to reduce the impact of immunities
(tarkhany).
It is not primarily the task of the legal historian to sketch the political and
socio-economic background of legal reforms, the more so since in the case of
the reforms of Ivan iv this topic has been treated in much detail by several
general historians. But an awareness of the main features of such a background
will unquestionably be helpful for a better understanding of the intentions of
the legislators.
A preliminary issue that arises in this respect is the relevance of the person-
ality of Ivan iv himself. Two points are worth making. One is that the attempt
to write him out of the story altogether is bound to fail. In the famous debate
about the correspondence between Ivan iv and prince Kurbskii the argument
has been put forward that Ivan iv was in fact a dim-witted, weak and ineffec-
tive ruler, to whom the authorship of the two letters to Kurbskii cannot be
ascribed, letters which moreover must be regarded as forgeries. Whatever view
one takes about the authenticity of the correspondence, the evidence of for-
eign visitors to the court of Ivan iv is unanimous in describing the first tsar as
a forceful and intelligent monarch; and then there is also abundant domestic
material to shore up this view.
The second point, going in the opposite direction, is that there is also suf-
ficient evidence to show that “the reforms of Ivan iv” started to some extent
before he was born, were energetically pursued by the people who ran the gov-
ernment when he was a child, and, for the first decade of his actual rule, were
to be credited primarily to the highly competent circle of advisors surrounding
him, the so-called Chosen Council (Izbrannaia Rada), led by Aleksei Adashev.
The son of Fedor, a wealthy member of the lower nobility who rose to the
high rank of okol’nichii in the court of Ivan iv, Aleksei was recruited in 1547 by
Sil’vestr,6 the spiritual advisor and confessor of the young tsar, to become part
of the small team of intimate councillors at the court. Adashev is believed to
have played a central and decisive role in the drafting of the Sudebnik of 1550.
Of the leading pre-1917 historians, Kliuchevskii treated the different compo-
nents of the early reforms of Ivan iv quite extensively in separate chapters, but
failed to offer a comprehensive view. The Soviet era produced serious works,
but these were to some extent hampered by an ideologically imposed frame-
work: the era of Ivan iv and the successive regimes had been authoritatively
(by Lenin) characterized as the period of the “monarchy with representation
6 At least according to Karamzin, viii, 63.

Introduction 725
of the estates” (soslovno-predstavitel’naia monarkhiia), an intermediate period

between the ‘feudal’ period of the independent principalities and the period of
the absolute monarchy (under Peter the Great and his immediate successors).
This created an irresistible temptation for authors to look for what they were
supposed to find and to disregard or misrepresent what could not be fitted into
the framework. Nevertheless, the works on this period by outstanding schol-
ars such as Nosov, Smirnov, Zimin and Skrynnikov overcame this handicap in
most respects and retain their value.7
Two prominent ideas emerging from these and other works deserve to be
highlighted. One is that it is probably futile to search for some over-arching
policy which could explain the broad reach of the reforms of the period end-
ing in 1560. There were numerous protagonists, all with their own interests and
plans: the tsar, his entourage, the leading boyar families, the metropolitan and
other bishops, the monasteries, the lower service nobility, the merchant class,
and, with the exception of the tsar himself, all these parties were not homoge-
neous themselves and often consisted of rival factions. The policies that arose
and were implemented were thus the result of ad hoc compromises between
permanently shifting alliances, instead of the expression of a coherent and
comprehensive view of the political and socio-economic situation of Musco-
vite Russia.8
A second factor to be considered is that the external policies of Russia were
inextricably bound up with the internal reforms. Throughout these years Mus-
covite Russia was fully engaged in a struggle for its existence, surrounded by
neighbours no less ambitious at the international level than Muscovy itself. If
Muscovy could with some exaggeration be described as a war machine under
the guise of a state, then this was not the result of an entirely free decision of
its rulers.
7 What I have in mind especially are I.I. Smirnov, Ocherki politicheskoi istorii Russkogo gosu-
darstva 30-50-kh godov xvi veka, Moskva/Leningrad, 1958; A.A. Zimin, Reformy Ivana Gro-
znogo, Moskva, 1960; N.E. Nosov, Stanovlenie soslovno-predstavitel’nykh uchrezhdenii v Rossii.
Izyskaniia o zemskoi reforme Ivana Groznogo, Leningrad, 1969; R.G. Skrynnikov, Ivan Grozny,
Moskva, Moskva, 1975.
8 Nosov, in the Preface to his study (p. 4), noted that he had called it Stanovlenie … and not
Ustanovlenie …, what could perhaps have been expected, implying a diffuseness and incom-
pleteness of the process. The translated title at the back of the title page said correctly “The
Rise of the Elective Estate Institutions in Russia”, and not “The Establishment of …”.
Section 1
Sources
∵
chapter 24
The Code (Sudebnik) of Ivan iv1 of 15502
Introduction and Historiography
The Sudebnik of Ivan iv of 1550, also known as the Tsarskii Sudebnik (“the Tsar’s
Code”), was the centrepiece of a wave of legal and political reforms which
marked the early years of the reign of this prince. The church code known as
the Stoglav and the numerous local government charters were other major
components of these reforms and will be discussed in the following chapters.3
Modern scholarship about the Code (Sudebnik) of 1550 started with its re-
discovery by Tatishchev in 1734.4 Several (manuscript) copies of the Code came
to light during the remainder of the 18th century.5 At present, more than 40
copies are extant, most of them from the period between 1550 and 1649 (the
Ulozhenie of tsar Aleksei).
1 Ivan iv is usually referred to as Ivan the Terrible. I shall avoid the epithet, for several reasons.
Although Ivan’s conduct during the later part of his reign would justify it in the opinion of
most people, it seems sensible to refrain from using a term which implies condemnation.
Secondly, the Russian term of which “Terrible” is just one possible translation, is rendered
more appropriately as “Awe-Inspiring” or “Stern” (compare the name of the capital of Chech-
nia, Groznyi, founded as the Russian fortress Groznaia in 1818 during the Russian campaigns
in the North Caucasus).
2 The principal modern text editions of the Sudebnik of Ivan iv are:
• B.D. Grekov (gen’l. ed.), Sudebniki xv–xvi vekov, Moskva/Leningrad, 1952, 141–177 (com-
ments by B.A. Romanov, 181–340; text editor: S.N. Valk);
• prp iv, 233–261 (comments by A.G. Poliak, 261–350);
• rz ii, 97–128 (comments by S.I. Shtamm, 128–177);
• PRoP III/1, 45–61 (introduction by N.G. Anan’eva, 26–44)
English translation in H.M. Dewey, Muscovite Judicial Texts 1488–1556, Michigan Slavic Materi-
als No.7, Ann Arbor, 1966, 47–74.
3 The standard work on Ivan’s reforms is A.A. Zimin, Reformy Ivana Groznogo, Moskva, 1960
(not available to me).
4 This text was published by G.F. Miller (Sudebnik Gosudaria Tsaria i Velikogo Kniazia Ioanna
Vasil’evicha i nekotorye sego gosudaria i blizhnikh ego preemnikov ukazy, sobrannye i primecha-
niiami iz”iasnennye pokoinym tainym sovetnikom i astrakhanskim gubernatorom Vasil’em Ni-
kitichem Tatishchevym, Moskva, 1786). It was also used by M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov in his
Khrestomatiia po istorii russkago prava, ii, Kiev, 1915 (5th ed.), 117–180.
5 The first printed book in Russia appeared in Moscow in 1563 (Ivan Fedorov, printer).

730 chapter 24
With the oldest legislative sources of Russia, the Russkaia Pravda and the
Church Statutes of Vladimir and Iaroslav, the large number of copies and the
very considerable differences between individual copies and groups of copies
made the search for the most correct text, the one that is presumably closest
to the original protograph, one of the major scholarly challenges. This problem
hardly arises in the case of the Code of 1550, because it can easily be established
which copies are the most reliable, and the differences between them are in-
significant. Most publications use one of two copies, both made very soon after
the promulgation of the Code in 1550, and these two copies are very similar.6
As early as 1819, P.M. Stroev and K.F. Kalaidovich published a very satisfac-
tory text of the 1550 Code on the basis of a comparative study of the then avail-
able copies; this text was published together with the only available text of
the Code of Ivan iii of 1497, which had been discovered by Stroev two years
earlier.7
During the pre-1917 era, there were several studies devoted to the 1550 Code,8
but the leading authors paid little attention to it. Kliuchevskii mentioned it
more or less in passing in the context of his discussion of the first years of gov-
ernment of Ivan iv.9 Most authors dealt with it briefly, regarding it mainly as
an updated version of the Code of 1497.10
During the Soviet era, several important publications contributed to a bet-
ter understanding of the Code of 1550, although often distorted by the obliga-
tory and inevitable Marxist-Leninist perspective.11 For many years the debate
6 The question of selecting the best copy is discussed extensively in the Introduction to the
Code of 1550 in the Academy of Sciences edition, 112–131 (B.N. Grekov, gen’l. ed., Sudeb-
niki xv–xvi vekov, Moskva/Leningrad, 1952). This edition used the copy (No.228) from the
Likhachev Collection in the Leningrad section of the Institute of History of the Academy
of Sciences. This text was then taken over in rz ii (97–120) and in PRoP III/1 (45–61). prp iv
(233–261) used the copy (No.823) of the Undol’skii Collection in the State Lenin Library,
considered to be less defective by A.G. Poliak, responsible for the introduction and com-
mentary to the Code of 1550 in this volume.
7 K.F. Kalaidovich, P.M. Stroev, Zakony velikogo kniazia Ivana Vasil’evicha i Sudebnik tsaria
Ioanna Vasil’evicha s dopolnitel’nymi ukazami, Moskva, 1819.
8 See the extensive and most recent historiographical survey by N.G. Anan’eva in PRoP III/1,
26–38, and an older survey by S.I. Shtamm in rz ii, 34–54.
9 Kliuchevskii, Kurs, Lecture xl.
10 E.g. S.F. Platonov in his chapter on the reign of Ivan iv, in the section on the years 1550–1554
(Lektsii po russkoi istorii, many editions and reprints); D’iakonov, 217–220; Vlad.-Bud.,
Obzor, 229–231.
11 See esp. Anan’eva’s apposite comment (op. cit. supra, 30): “After the revolution of 1917,
new methodological foundations for legal history were adopted in the country, which
were aimed at revealing that law and its evolution were conditioned by class. As a
The Code of Ivan iv of 1550 731
was dominated by two major figures, I.I. Smirnov and B.A. Romanov. Smirnov’s
long paper in 194712 prompted a reaction by Romanov,13 and a few years later
Romanov further elaborated his views in his commentary to the Code in the
Academy of Sciences edition of the Codes of the 15th and 16th centuries.14
In the post-Soviet period, Anan’eva’s comments and introduction to the
Code of 1550 have been mentioned above. These were followed by a discussion
of the sources of the Code and its general character.15
General Historical Background and Character of the Code
The Code of 1550, like its predecessor of 1497, started with a long heading,
almost a short preamble: “In the year 7058 [1550] the tsar and grand prince
Ivan Vasil’evich of All Russia, together with his brothers and boyars, laid down
this Code: How boyars and okol’nichie and dvoretskie and treasurers and clerks
and all prikaz officials, and urban and rural lieutenants and stewards and all
[other] judges are to administer justice”.16
The drafting process and the adoption of the Code of 1550 have been much
debated among Russian historians, because even if one accepts the old and
rather minimalist view that the 1550 Code was just an updated version of the
1497 Code, it is obvious that the latter text had been subjected to very signifi-
cant editorial review. The preamble expressed this in its last sentence, where
it made clear that the Code envisaged administration of justice in all its forms.
The Code of 1497 had combined two more limited pieces of court legislation,
that of boyars and okol’nichie, and that of urban and rural lieutenants, but was
silent on other officials with judicial responsibilities.17
r esult, [a number of] studies appeared in Soviet times which artificially exaggerated the
development level of class consciousness of the contemporaries of the Code of 1550 and
attempted to establish manifestations of class struggle even in relationships which objec-
tively had nothing to do with the relations between classes.”
12 I.I. Smirnov, “Sudebnik 1550 goda”, Istoricheskie Zapiski, No.24 (1947), 267–370.
13 B.A. Romanov, “Sudebnik Ivana Groznogo (po povodu issledovaniia I.I. Smirnova)”,
Istoricheskie Zapiski, No.29 (1949), 200–235.
14 B.D. Grekov (gen’l. ed.), Sudebniki xv–xvi vekov, Moskva, 1952, 181–340.
15 Anan’eva, op. cit., 38–44. A short textbook on the Code of 1550 appeared in 2015: M.V. F edorov,
Sudebnik 1550 g.: uchebnoe posobie, Moskva, 2015.
16 For a discussion of the duties of the various officials named in the preamble, see rz ii,
130–131.
17 If one accepts the dominant view that the last words of the 1497 preamble (“how boyars
and okol’nichie are to administer justice”) did not actually belong to the preamble, but
732 chapter 24
The other differences between the 1497 and 1550 preamble formulas flowed
from the different dynastic conditions. Ivan iii was said to have conferred with
his children and boyars; he had five sons in 1497. Ivan iv was 20 years old in
1550, married but still childless, had been crowned tsar in 1547, and had one
brother (Iurii, prince of Uglich, *1533) and several uncles and cousins. A signifi-
cant parallel between the two formulas was the absence of the metropolitan
and other church dignitaries.
The adoption of the 1550 Code was only one of the major politico-legal
events of the early years of the reign of Ivan iv.18 He had succeeded his father
Vasilii iii at the age of four, upon the latter’s death in 1534. For the first few
years the regency had been assumed with considerable success by his mother,
Elena Glinskaia. After her death in 1538 prominent boyar clans, such as the
Glinskii, Bel’skii, and Shuiskii princes and the Vorontsovs, competed with each
other for government power, until Ivan officially took over at the age of 16
when he was crowned tsar on 16 January 1547 (he was born on 25 August 1530).
One month later he married Anastasiia Iur’eva-Zakhar’ina, daughter of Roman
and half-sister of Nikita, the ancestor of the Romanov dynasty.
One of the young tsar’s first important actions reported in the chronicles
was an address to a joint meeting of the Church council (the Holy Council)
and a council of leading boyars on 27 January 1549, in which the boyars were
reproached for having oppressed the lesser nobles (the deti boiarskie) and the
peasants. Two days later the tsar and the councils decided that henceforth the
deti boiarskie would be exempt from the jurisdiction of the provincial lieuten-
ants, except in the most serious criminal cases.19 (This event is often regarded
as the first appearance of the Zemskii Sobor, the Land Assembly.)
The credit for the innovative policies of the first years of the reign of Ivan iv
is to be attributed chiefly to the Izbrannaia Rada (“Chosen Council”), an infor-
mal inner circle of advisors, which emerged after the riots in Moscow which
followed a devastating fire in 1547. The central figure of this circle was A.F. Ada-
shev, a highly capable scion of the minor nobility, who was the virtual ruler of
constituted the heading of art. 1, the first provision of the first part of the Code, which
dealt with the courts of boyars and okol’nichie.
18 For a long time it was assumed (e.g. by Vladimirskii-Budanov in his Obzor, 229) that some
time between the Codes of Ivan iii and Ivan iv a third sudebnik had existed (of Vasilii
iii, son of Ivan iii and father of Ivan iv). The assumption was ultimately refuted by I.I.
Smirnov in his 1947 study (op. cit. supra), although A.G. Poliak still regarded the question
as unsolved in 1956 in his comments in prp iv, 231. The existence of a code of Vasilii iii
does not seem to have any supporters anymore; cf. Anan’eva, op. cit., 31.
19 See prp iv, 575–576 (text), 590–592 (comments), cited from S.O. Shmidt, “Prodolzhenie
khronografa redaktsii 1512 goda”, Istoricheskii Arkhiv, T.VII, 295–296.
Russia until he fell into disgrace in 1560. The plans for reform were outlined
by Adashev in a list of questions addressed by the tsar to the metropolitan in
January 1550.20
The adoption of the Code in June 1550 was the next major step; but, as not-
ed above, this was not effected by a resolution of the Land Assembly (which
included at least the leadership of the Russian Church), but by the tsar, to-
gether with his “brothers” and boyars. Although the details of the Church-
state relationship in Russia during these years are not entirely clear, there
were obvious tensions. These were also connected with internal problems in
the Russian Church concerning monastic and ecclesiastical landowning be-
tween the followers of Iosif Volotskii and Nil Sorskii. Adashev did not succeed
in drastically curtailing such landowning, but in a resolution of 15 September
1550, drafted as a statement by the metropolitan to the tsar, further extension
of church jurisdiction and landowning was prohibited (see further the section
on church ownership of land in Chapter 39).21
The Church’s approbation of the 1550 Code was secured the next year, in
connection with the adoption of the Stoglav (see Chapter 25). In his address
to the assembly deliberating the Stoglav, Ivan stated that he had laid down a
Code (Sudebnik) the year before and that he was now submitting this Code for
the assembly’s inspection, approval and signature.22
This brief summary of several politico-legal events of the first few years of
the reign of Ivan iv points to a few general features which may help in elucidat-
ing the character of the Code of 1550. They suggest, first of all, that there were
different interest groups whose support or at least acquiescence was relevant:
the Church, boyars, and small landowners (lesser nobility). Secondly, a certain
degree of tension between the tsar and his close collaborators on the one hand
and the leading boyars on the other was undeniable. This was understandable,
in view of the dominant role of boyar clans during Ivan’s minority. But be-
yond this factor rooted in the tsar’s personal experiences was the more general
tendency towards centralization, observable in other late medieval European
states, where the ruler had to search for a counterweight against the power
of great magnates. In Russia, the lesser nobility, the small landowners, would
be an obvious ally. The Russian Church, as a separate section of the political
spectrum, did not represent a monolithic body at the time, when there were
fundamental disagreements between theological currents, as well as practical
20 See prp iv, 576–580 (text), 592–595 (comments).

21 See prp iv, 580–581 (text), 595–596 (comments); zarg No.3, 30.
22 Text of the relevant part of Ivan’s address in Romanov’s commentary to the Code of 1550,
B.D. Grekov (gen’l. ed.), Sudebniki xv–xvi vekov, 181.
734 chapter 24
divergences between the interests of the Church leadership and the powerful
monasteries. In some ways the Church would be an ally of the tsar, in other
ways a competitor, as the policies of the state began to demonstrate secular-
izing tendencies. The final outcome was that the initiatives towards centraliza-
tion and legal unification as embodied in the Code of 1497 were taken up and
reinforced, as expressed in no uncertain terms by the tsar in his allocution to
the Stoglav assembly.
The question of the personal input of the tsar himself in these developments
is part of the wider problem concerning the personality of Ivan iv. This is of no
direct relevance to legal history, but it does not do any harm to keep it in mind.
Against the dominant judgment of contemporaries and historians, viewing
Ivan as a forceful and talented (albeit increasingly unbalanced and ultimately
insane) ruler, who exercized a decisive influence on the course of Russian histo-
ry, there is the seriously argued minority opinion that he was in fact a weak and
incompetent prince whose policies were determined by the able, ambitious,
and usually unscrupulous people constituting his ever-changing inner circle.23
But beyond this problem one may readily concede that there is also some
justification for the traditional Marxist view that it is not personalities who
determine the course of history, but deeper and more comprehensive fac-
tors. The political re-unification of the Russian lands had been more or less
rounded off under Ivan iii and the Code of 1497 was one of the expressions of
this accomplishment. This then prompted new political and socio-economic
developments which half a century later necessitated further adaptations of
the legal system.
The Contents of the Code of 1550
The Code of 1550 is the first major piece of legislation where the numbering of
the provisions is contained in the text itself. The number is 100, although it is of-
ten assumed that art. 100 was added soon after the adoption of the Code itself.24
This provision, further curtailing the jurisdictional rights of apanage princes,
was obviously based on the Zapis’ o dushegubstve (usually referred to as the Ho-
micide Law of Vasilii iii), a law immediately preceding the Code of 1497.25
23 See for a longer discussion of this issue: R.O Crummey, The Formation of Muscovy 1304–1613
(Longman History of Russia), London/New York, 1987, 143–147.
24 Cf. Romanov, op. cit., 338–340; prp iv, 340–341; rz ii, 172–173. The same position had been
taken already by Tatishchev.
25 See the section on the Zapis’ o dushegubstve in Chapter 9.
The importance of numbering is first of all in separating and identifying the

individual legislative items. The absence of numbering in earlier legislation
gave rise to endless discussions about which pieces of text formed a logical
entity and where a new topic started. Secondly, numbering, and especially the
round number of one hundred, demonstrated that the numbered text con-
stituted an entity conceived as a more or less consistent whole, rather than
an accumulation of diverse texts (as in several legislative texts from the past).
Finally, numbering protected the integrity of the original text, because insert-
ing new text or removing old text (as often happened, for instance with rp
texts and the old church statutes) was made more difficult. The last problem
was addressed by one of the last provisions of the Code, art. 98, to be discussed
below.
Our analysis of the Code of 1497 indicated that it consisted of an amalga-
mation of several series of provisions, each probably derived from earlier leg-
islation, with the addition of a number of smaller groups of provisions and
of more or less isolated individual provisions. The main elements were the
decree on the courts of boyars and okol’nichie, the decree on the courts of ur-
ban and rural lieutenants (namestniki and volosteli), and the decree on bailiffs
(nedel’shchiki). A prominent characteristic of the drafting technique was the
associative approach: what a modern legislator would consider a logical and
proper sequence of provisions was often interrupted by the 15th century drafts-
man going off on a tangent. Criminal law, for instance, was treated in several
places in the 1497 Code.
Very little is known about the actual drafting of the 1550 Code, but an ex-
amination of the text reveals an approach significantly different from the one
taken in 1497. The Code of Ivan iv was drawn up as an integral text. At the
same time it was viewed by the drafters themselves as an updated version of
the Code of Ivan iii, as was expressed in the tsar’s allocution to the Stoglav as-
sembly in 1551 where he described his new Code as a corrected version of the
Code of his grandfather.26 The combination of these two factors (i.e. the 1497
Code as the starting-point, and the creation of a comprehensive and integrated
regulation of the administration of justice) resulted in the breaking up and
recombination of the constituent parts of the Code of 1497. Still, almost the
entire Code of 1497 returned in the new Code, although little of the original
sequence remained (the only missing provisions are arts. 44 and 47).27
26 Text in Romanov, op. cit., 181.

27 Grekov (gen’l. ed.), Sudebniki xv–xvi vekov, 610–615 provides full comparative tables of
corresponding provisions of the Codes of 1497, 1550 and 1589. A shorter table in prp iv,
345–347.
736 chapter 24
The remaining provisions from the 1497 Sudebnik were not only extensively
reshuffled but often also heavily amended and expanded. Then there were 39
completely new provisions.28 One of the results of these operations was that
the 1550 Code looked much less like a list of fees than its 1497 predecessor.
The dominant drafting technique, still far from modern usage, was sliding
from one subject into another. The Code started with a series of general provi-
sions. Art. 1 demanded fairness from judges: bribes, personal favours or dis-
favours (personal vendettas) were strictly forbidden. Arts. 2 and 3 belonged
together: a judge who intentionally (having been bribed) delivered a wrong
decision was to pay a threefold (as against the sum at issue) fine and could
be subject to further punishment (art. 3); a judge who delivered a wrong deci-
sion in error (good faith) was not fined, but the decision was to be overturned
(art. 2). Arts. 4 and 5 then dealt with clerks taking bribes and art. 6 protected
all judicial personnel against false allegations by ordering lying parties to be
flogged. Art. 7 regulated in considerable detail the prevention of judges refus-
ing to deal with cases put before them. Art. 8 contained the basic regulation of
fees for judges and all other judicial personnel.
As the judicial duel was one of the main procedures for producing evidence
(along with the oath, the “kissing of the Cross”, krestnoe tselovanie), opting for
a duel and then becoming reconciled was a major way of avoiding court fees.
This explained the location of art. 9, devoted to this subject. But while the cor-
responding art. 4 (1497) was followed by three more elaborating provisions
(arts. 5–7) and then continued with a series of provisions on serious criminal
offences, the authors of the Code of 1550 ostensibly decided to have all rules on
duels together here (arts. 9–17 and 19).
Having dealt with duels, the legislator then resumed his treatment of gen-
eral questions of procedure: refusal to testify as a witness (art. 18), how to deal
with cases against several defendants together (arts. 20–21), and, as a special
form of the latter situation: actions against urban or rural lieutenants, together
with their agents (arts. 22–24). Other general topics (such as legal actions by
foreigners, unfinished cases, etc.) were covered by arts. 25–31.
In arts. 30 and 31 the bailiff (pristav) played a prominent role, and this prob-
ably induced the drafters to insert a new version of art. 33 of the Code of 1497
into the Code of 1550 as art. 32. This provision specifically forbad bailiffs to
solicit bribes for themselves or on behalf of judges and other court personnel.
The simple prohibition from 1497 was much strengthened by the threat of the
public flogging (torgovaia kazn’) of the bailiff. Art. 32 (1550) used the same term
28 The calculations add up, because several provisions from the 1497 Code were merged in
the 1550 Code.
as art. 33 (1497), nedel’shchik, for bailiff. Scholars had usually assumed that the
terms pristav and nedel’shchik were more or less synonymous.29 Pristav may
have had a slightly more general meaning: bailiff, constable, court officer in
charge of various executive duties, while nedel’shchiki were at least originally
court officers who worked in teams and in weekly shifts (nedelia, “week”).
From art. 34 on, up to art. 54, the Code of 1550 followed the sequence of its pre-
decessor (arts. 15–36), with a few exceptions. These provisions dealt with vari-
ous activities of the court of the grand prince (tsar) and other higher courts (of
boyars, okol’nichie and others), as well as with the duties of the nedel’shchiki (the
original decree on nedel’shchiki was in arts. 30–36 of the Code of 1497). Art. 46,
on the riding-fees (ezd) to which bailiffs were entitled when travelling to sixty
different towns, offers a clear picture of the territorial applicability of the Code;
this provision represented an updated version of art. 30 of the Code of 1497.
Art.54 corresponded with art. 35 of the Code of 1497, instructing the bai-
liff about what to do with thieves in his custody. The following provisions
(arts. 56-61) then took up the topic of theft and other serious crimes (regulated
mostly in the beginning of the Code of 1497). This again illustrates the practice
of the 1550 drafters to slide from one topic to another.
The small number of provisions of the Code of 1497 on the courts of urban
and rural lieutenants reappeared scattered through the latter part of the Code
of 1550 (arts. 48, 60, 62, 64, 67, 71, 75 and 77), together with a range of new provi-
sions dealing with such courts (arts. 63, 66, 68–72, 74–75).
Of special interest are arts. 68, 69 and 72, mentioning the obligatory par-
ticipation of elders (starosty) and ‘trusted persons’ (tseloval’niki, lit. “persons
who had kissed the Cross”) in the courts of lieutenants. Such people had al-
ready made an appearance in art. 12 of the Code of 1497 as character witnesses
against a person suspected of being a thief (a much expanded version of this
provision returned as art. 58 in the Code of 1550). This form of popular partici-
pation in the administration of justice was part of a wider government policy
to engage especially the rural population in the task of fighting robbery and
theft in thinly populated regions. The main expression of this policy was the
numerous gubnye gramoty which, beginning in 1539, granted the people of
29 Cf. for instance Cherepnin’s translation of the Code of 1497 into modern Russian in prp iii,
357–374. According to S.N. Kisterev, the terms nedel’shchik and pristav were more or less
interchangeable, but nedel’shchik had a more recent origin; S.N. Kisterev “Nedel’shchik
xv–xvi vv.: proiskhozhdenie termina”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Issledovaniia po istorii
srednevekovoi Rusi. K 80-letiiu Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg,
2006, 127–139.
738 chapter 24
specific districts and regions the right to elect their own elders and trusted
people to try brigands. This topic will be dealt with in Chapter 33.
Art. 76 is one of the few provisions of the Code with its own heading: “On
justice in cases of slavery” (A o kholopstve sud). This topic occupies the follow-
ing provisions (arts. 77–83), the last one (art. 83) devoted to the hired labourer
(naimit), whose position was only just above that of a kholop.
Arts. 84 and 85 were also provided with headings (“On justice concerning
land” and “On justice concerning ancestral estates”). This theme was contin-
ued by arts. 86 and 87 (about fences and boundary marks).
The famous provision about the peasant’s quitting time, St. George’s Day
(Iur’ev den’), art. 57 of the Code of 1497, appeared in much expanded form in
art. 88 of the 1550 Code (see also Chapter 18, section on “The peasant popula-
tion in later centuries”, and Chapter 35, section on “Peasants”).
Arts. 90–96 were devoted to sundry questions of civil law (especially the sale
of horses).
The higher level of sophistication of the Code of 1550 was apparent in
arts. 97 and 98, on questions of transition law. Art. 97 stipulated that the Code
had no retroactive force and did not affect cases pending, but only new cases.
Art. 98 directed that the decisions taken by the tsar and the boyars in cases not
covered by the Sudebnik were to be appended to the Sudebnik.
Art. 99 again stressed the prohibition of bribery, ordering that this prohibi-
tion be read out in public in Moscow, all towns of the Moscow principality, as
well as those of Novgorod and Tver’, and in rural areas.
Art. 100 has been mentioned above; it represented special legislation ad-
dressing the question of jurisdiction by apanage princes, included in the Zapis’
o dushegubstve (discussed in the Chapter 9). This legislation had already lost
most of its relevance in 1550, because there were only two apanage princes left
at that time, a younger brother of Ivan iv, Iurii, prince of Uglich († 1563), and
a first cousin, Vladimir Andreevich, prince of Staritsa († 1569, poisoned on the
tsar’s orders).
In Conclusion
A more detailed comparison of the two Codes reveals first of all that the Code
of Ivan iv was based in principle on the Code of Ivan iii. As mentioned above,
the entire Code of 1497 (with the exception of two provisions) was paralleled
by corresponding provisions of the 1550 Code, constituting two thirds of the
latter. A few provisions were taken over in almost identical form (e.g. art. 60 of
the 1497 Code and art. 92 of the 1550 Code, heirs on intestacy: first sons, then
daughters, then other relatives), but most corresponding provisions were con-
siderably expanded in 1550, rather than amended. Most additions involved
sanctions. While the old Code would be more inclined to restrict itself to regu-
lating the conduct of officials and the fees to be paid for their various activities,
the new Code added numerous rules about the consequences of the improper
execution of or failure to carry out official duties. Lower officials, such as bai-
liffs, were, as a rule, to be flogged for all kinds of transgressions. Other addi-
tions to the old rules just added more detail and were presumably based on the
practice of applying the 1497 Code.
Another prominent aspect of the relationship between the two Codes was
the obvious attempt by the 1550 draftsmen to bring more order into the rather
haphazard accumulation of texts of different origins in the Code of 1497. This
aspect, together with the changes indicated in the foregoing paragraph, made
the Sudebnik of Ivan iv look more like a real code of law which, like so much
medieval legislation, was conceived primarily as a guide for courts. Centraliza-
tion, and more specifically the increase in the power of the tsar and his central
bureaucracy, can be noted in numerous provisions of the Code. Nevertheless, it
was not a one-way street because, as pointed out above, it was accompanied by
a generous delegation of criminal jurisdiction (in cases of robbery and theft)
to locally elected judges. The express purpose of this policy was to weaken the
dominant power of rural lieutenants, an office usually in the hands of high
nobles.
Russian and Soviet legal historians have also stressed two related features
of the 1550 Code which in their views were important for understanding its
origin and operation. These were the advance of the lesser nobility (small
landowners) as against the former dominance of the great nobles, holders of
vast estates, and the crucial position of the Church, especially with regard to
ecclesiastical landowning, in the triangular relationship with tsar and secular
landowners. These points are valid, but the traces left by these developments
in the 1550 Code were not particularly prominent. Ivan iv caused great devas-
tation in the ranks of his boyars, but other classes suffered heavily too and the
great nobles recaptured the commanding heights after Ivan’s death in 1584. As
regards the relationship with the Church, the Code of 1550 had very little to say.
This was in no way surprising as these questions were going to be dealt with in
the following year in the Stoglav (see Chapter 25).
chapter 25
The Stoglav
Legal Relevance of the Stoglav
The Stoglav (“hundred chapters”) is, on the face of it, a very long and e laborate
reply given by the Council (Sobor) of the Russian Church to a large number of
questions posed by the tsar, drafted during an assembly which began in Febru-
ary 1551.1 It concerned a great many aspects of the Church’s activities and orga-
nization, many of them of little direct interest to the legal historian, a lthough
often providing specific information on the religious convictions, political
views, social relationships and mores, practicalities of daily life, etc. of the
Muscovy state and society.
When it comes to determining to what extent the Stoglav was relevant for
the legal history of the Muscovy era, at least two introductory observations are
appropriate.
In Chapter 21 attention has been drawn to the peculiarities of the Church
and state relationship in the Byzantine world, where the two had always lived
closely together, almost intertwined. In the West, in many different modes,
Church and state achieved a generally stable condition of relative separation,
respecting each other’s autonomous spheres of authority. In Russia, the Byzan-
tine concept of “symphony” of Church and state, where emperor and patriarch
would either act together or each would freely concern himself with matters
of Church and state, assumed a form in which the state handed over some of
its powers to the Church, to be exercized independently, although it was im-
plied that the Church would do so in harmony with the general policies of the
state. The Church Statutes of St. Vladimir and of his son Iaroslav the Wise gave
legislative expression to this peculiarly Russian solution for dealing with the
Church-state relationship.
The Stoglav conformed to this pattern, because it was the Church that was
ostensibly acting as the legislator, but the guiding and supervising role of the
tsar could be seen in many of its provisions.
1 Text in rz ii, 253–378; Introduction by N.S. Semiderkin and T.E. Novitskaia, rz ii, 242–252;
Commentary by T.E Novitskaia, S.I. Shtamm and N.S. Semiderkin, rz ii, 403–498. Text also
in PRoP III/2, 25–119; Introduction by T.Iu. Ampleeva, PRoP III/2, 6–25. An academic text
edition, edited by G. Maniscalco Basile and A.V. Iurasov, was published in 2015 (Moskva/
Sankt-Peterburg), with a short commentary by E.B. Emchenko.

The Stoglav 741
Secondly, the Stoglav prompts an observation of a more philosophical na-

ture, or at least one that concerns the definition of law (see also the relevant
section in Chapter 1). A modern Western lawyer will automatically start from
the secular point of view that law is something emanating from the authority
of the state, either its legislative or its judicial agencies. Church law (canon
law) in this view is no different from rules established internally by all kinds of
private entities (societies, corporations, etc.). They are binding only on people
who have joined such an entity and voluntarily submitted to its rules. Only to
that extent can such rules be enforced through state mechanisms and become
part of the legal system.
In a setting of Byzantine inspiration, such a view would be untenable.
Church law constituted a separate legal system, but it was integrated into and
part of the general law of the state. As explained at greater length in Chapters
21 and 39, church law was connected with state law through two major chan-
nels. A very considerable part of the population (“church people”) was subject
to church jurisdiction in all but the most serious criminal matters, and the en-
tire population was subject to church jurisdiction in certain specific matters,
mainly matrimonial and inheritance law. (Until the Napoleonic era, a similar
order survived in most West-European states, where matters like civil status
registration and most matrimonial law were the responsibility of the Church.)
The Stoglav, however, brings to light another aspect which has not been dis-
cussed before. From the point of view of the Church, church law would prob-
ably be perceived as a coherent whole, bound together by a common purpose
(the well-being of the Church for the salvation of the souls of the faithful, or
something similar). For anybody concerned with the secular law of medieval
Russia, however, some parts of church law (such as those mentioned above)
would be of obvious practical importance, while other parts would be utterly
irrelevant. This is something to be kept in mind when investigating the Stoglav,
because much of it concerns matters of no interest whatsoever in the context
of legal history. The problem is further aggravated by the curious literary style
of the work, where often the little bits of meat of mundane regulations dis-
appear in a thick sauce of religious exhortations, pious excursions and some-
times even complete sermons.
The regulation of church jurisdiction and church courts as laid down by the
Stoglav undoubtedly constituted an integral part of the legal system of Russia
until it was superseded by the fundamental reforms of Peter the Great, in par-
ticular through the enactment of the Spiritual Regulations (Dukhovnyi Regla-
ment) in 1720.2 By that time, the Stoglav had already long ago lost its status
2 Cf. the comments in rz ii, 248–249. The historiography of the Stoglav is treated extensively
in the introductions of Semiderkin and Novitskaia in rz ii, 242–252, and Ampleeva, PRoP
742 chapter 25
as the most authoritative expression of the identity, role and powers of the
Russian Orthodox Church. The Moscow Church Council of 1666–1667 had con-
demned many of the positions taken by the Stoglav.3
There are two principal versions of the Stoglav, a full and a short redaction.
The commonly used edition is the so-called Kazan edition, based on several
copies of both versions.4
The Enactment of the Stoglav
It was of course no coincidence that the Stoglav was passed by the Russian
Church Council eight months after the enactment of the Code of Ivan iv.5 The
Stoglav refers several times to the Sudebnik, most notably in Chapter 3, which
contains the tsar’s address at the opening of the council. In the second part of
this short speech the Sudebnik was the main theme; the tsar related how he
had had it drafted the year before, with the blessing of the Church; now he was
putting it before them for their inspection, blessing and signature. The Stoglav
would appear to be the complement of the Code to regulate the affairs of the
Church.
That the actual agenda was set by the tsar and not by the Church was further
made clear by the document’s structure: predominantly a series of authorita-
tive answers by the Church to questions posed by the tsar.6 Where the draft-
ing of the Code of 1550 was guided primarily by the young tsar’s chief advisor
Adashev, a similar role in respect of the Stoglav, particularly in formulating the
questions to the council, was played by the priest Sil’vestr Medvedev, in whom
the tsar had boundless confidence at the time.
In Chapter 24 reference was made to the tensions between the different
interest groups: the tsar himself and the close circle around him, the great
III/2, 6–21. The basic monograph on the Stoglav is still D. Stefanovich, O Stoglave. Ego proisk-
hozhdenie, redaktsii i sostav. K istorii pamiatnikov drevnerusskogo tserkovnogo prava, Sankt-
Peterburg, 1909.
3 This was the council which robbed the former patriarch Nikon of his church dignities, con-
firming at the same time Nikon’s reforms, which had sparked the revolt of the Old Believers.
Excerpts from the resolution of the council in Beneshevich ii, 77–88.
4 Cf. E.B. Emchenko, “Stoglav i perspektivy issledovaniia drevnerusskoi leksiki”, in the academ-
ic edition cited above, 9–28, at 15–17.
5 Most authors are of the opinion that, along with the tsar himself, members of the Boyar
Council and other intimate advisors of Ivan iv also took part in the work of the council,
without being explicitly mentioned in the document itself.
6 Chapters 5 and 41 contained the tsar’s questions; 37 in Chs. 5, 32 in Ch. 41.
The Stoglav 743
boyars, the petty landowning nobility, and the bishops and monasteries,
to mention only the most influential actors. The Stoglav is one of the main
sources to throw light on the complex relationships. In different places (such
as in another speech in Ch. 4) the tsar expressed his annoyance with the con-
duct of the boyars; at the same time he was critical of the behaviour of church
personnel in several instances. He was concerned in particular with the growth
of ecclesiastical and monastic landowning.
The church council dealt with the tsar’s questions in a way that showed
that the tsar might have set the agenda but did not completely control the
outcome. The church fathers insisted in particular on holding on to their real
property and on retaining the church’s numerous financial privileges, although
concessions were made. The final product of their deliberations was decisions
(called prigovory) which were quite obviously accepted as such by the tsar and,
by implication, by the legal system of Muscovy.
The Contents of the Stoglav
As the name indicated, the Stoglav consisted of one hundred “chapters”,

to which at the council meeting itself Chapter 101 was added.7 The parallel
with the Code of 1550 was evident. A few other chapters were added after-
wards.8 The main reason for the round number was probably, as with the Code
of 1550, the protection of the text’s integrity.9
As mentioned above, the majority of the chapters was of little or no rel-
evance to secular law, such as directives concerning bell-ringing and church
chant (Ch. 7), icon-painting (Chs. 27 and 74), or how to make the sign of the
cross (Ch. 31), etc. A few council decisions were inserted by the church fathers
without any clear connection with the tsar’s questions (e.g. Ch. 42, on whether
the Alliluia should be sung twice or thrice).
Of greater interest to the legal historian were the themes of land ownership,
church jurisdiction and courts, matrimonial law, and fiscal privileges.
7 Almost all copies are preceded by a kind of table of contents, entitled The Tsar’s Questions
and the Council’s Replies Concerning Many and Diverse Church Matters. In rz ii, 253–258; not
in PRoP.
8 Text in rz ii, 378–379.
9 The original Stoglav document with the signatures of the church hierarchs has not survived,
or at least has not been found, but the existence of contemporary and practically identical
copies leaves no doubt about the text. Cf. the comments in rz ii, 242–244 and Ampleeva,
op. cit., 7 and 14.
744 chapter 25
Only two Chapters (75 and 101) dealt explicitly with land ownership by mon-
asteries and other church bodies, but they are among the most important of
the Stoglav and they show that the Church was to a large extent successful
in defending its position. Ch. 76 contained the prohibition of charging inter-
est, well-known in medieval Europe. In Russia, however, it applied only to all
church institutions and ‘church people’, and not to ordinary lay people.
Church courts, church jurisdiction, and the procedure to be followed
were the subject of a series of Chapters (53–67) and a few isolated provisions
(Chs. 94 and 98). Much of the text of the chapters consisted of a wordy defence
of the church’s position, invoking also the authority of Byzantine law. Art. 63 is
a long paraphrase of the Church Statute of Vladimir.
Chapters 18–24 were devoted to matrimonial law, most of them to the
approach to be taken in respect of second, third and fourth marriages. Taxes to
be levied on weddings were also a topic of considerable importance (Chs. 46,
48 and 69). The question of married priests who became widowers also mer-
ited a whole string of Chapters (77–81).
One of the most curious themes in the Stoglav was the struggle against pa-
gan survivals. This had been an important subject in the earliest ecclesiastical
legislation in Russia, the Church Statutes of St. Vladimir and Iaroslav the Wise,
in the 11th century. The tsar devoted no fewer than four questions to it (ques-
tions 24–27 in Ch. 41), and the council reacted in Chs. 92 and 93. The continu-
ing vitality of all kinds of pre-Christian practices and rituals and the activities
of various sorcerers, witches and magicians obviously represented a serious
source of concern to both tsar and Church.10
As for the sources of the Stoglav, numerous texts included in kormchie
represented the principal materials to which the tsar’s advisors as well as the
council fathers had recourse. These texts themselves offered a great variety of
sources: the Bible, writings of church fathers, resolutions of ecumenical coun-
cils, Russian texts, such as the Church Statutes of Vladimir and Iaroslav or the
so-called Questionary of Kirik, etc. The recently enacted Sudebnik of 1550 was
also used. Many questions were rooted in contemporary life in Russia, and the
answers given by the council in the Church’s practice in dealing with the situ-
ations concerned.11
10 The point was mentioned already by Vladimirskii-Budanov (Vlad.-Bur., Obzor, 232); see
also the comments to Chs. 92 and 93 in rz ii, 491–494.
11 Cf. Ampleeva, op. cit., 20–21; Semiderkin and Novitskaia, op. cit., 248.
chapter 26
The Codes of 1589 and 1606–1607
The Code of 1589: Introduction
“The Code of tsar Fedor Ivanovich of 1589 is a legal monument regulating

questions of procedural organization among the free peasant population of
the North.” This is the opening sentence of the introduction to the chapter on
this Code in the edition of the “Monuments of Russian Law” (prp).1 Its author,
A.F. Kopanëv, had also written the much longer comments in the Academy of
Sciences’ 1952 edition of the Codes of the 15th and 16th centuries.2 In the rz
series, the Code of 1589 was not included. The author of the short introduction
to the Code of 1589 in its most recent publication (PRoP), A.S. Smykalin, merely
summarized Kopanev’s more substantive treatment of the Code.3
Before 1917, Vladimirskii-Budanov was the principal scholar who paid seri-
ous attention to the Sudebnik of 1589.4 Altogether therefore, Kopanev’s com-
ments and the text of the Code itself are the main sources of information.
The relative obscurity of the 1589 Code was also the result of its late discov-
ery. It had been hidden for centuries in private collections, and only in 1899
did it end up in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was then pub-
lished the next year.5 During the next few years several more copies came to
light and then it became obvious that there were two quite different versions of
the same text, one called the Short Redaction, the other the Expanded Redac-
tion. The Short Redaction is available in two copies, the Expanded Redaction
in three. The principal questions surrounding the 1589 Code concern the
1 prp iv, 409. The chapter on the Code of 1589 consists of Kopanev’s Introduction (409–412),
the text of the so-called Expanded Redaction (413–443), and Kopanev’s comments (444–483).
2 B.D. Grekov (gen’l. ed.), Sudebniki xv–xvi vekov, Moskva/Leningrad, 1952, 343–346 (Intro-
duction), 417–562 (Commentary). Text of the Short Redaction on 349–365, of the Expanded
Redaction on 366–414.
3 PRoP III/2, 120–126. Text of the Expanded Redaction on 126–144.
4 M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov, “Sudebnik 1589 g. Ego znachenie i istochniki”, Izvestiia Kievsk-
ogo universiteta, 1902 (not available to me); a summary by the author in Vlad.-Bud., Obzor,
301–302. In 1922 A.I. Andreev published O proiskhozhdenii i znachenii Sudebnika 1589 g., Petro-
grad, 1922 (not available to me).
5 By S.K. Bogoiavlenskii, Sudebnik tsaria Fedora Ioannovicha 1589 g., Moskva, 1900.

746 chapter 26
relationship between these two versions and the character of the Code; in oth-
er words: what did it actually represent? The sparse literature concerning the
Code often referred to its znachenie (meaning, significance, sense), suggesting
that this was perceived as being in some way problematic. But before examin-
ing these questions it may be useful first to consider the contents of the Code
in its two versions.
The Contents of the Short and the Expanded Redactions
The preamble to the Short Redaction is preceded, as were most copies of

the Code of 1550, by a Table of Contents, consisting usually of the first words
of the provision concerned, enough to indicate what the provision was about.
The preamble itself relates how tsar Fedor Ivanovich, together with his advi-
sors, established “this Code” (sei Sudebnik) on 14 June 1589. Art. 1, like its pre-
decessors in the Codes of 1497 and 1550, enjoined judges to judge honestly and
not to take bribes. Art. 2 followed the example of art. 4 in the same codes in
warning court clerks to do their work honestly and without stealing or bribe-
taking. Arts. 3–6 had no parallel in the 1497 and 1550 Codes. Arts. 7–11 were
based on different provisions of the Code of 1550, arts. 8–10 as well on provi-
sions of the Code of 1497. From art. 14 on, up to art. 38, slightly more than half
of the provisions (14) go back to provisions in the 1550 Code (8 of these also
to the Code of 1497). The remaining provisions of the Short Redaction (arts.
39–56) showed no direct connection with either of the previous Codes. Art.
39 is preceded by the words “Judgment of the tsar and grand prince”; the fol-
lowing arts. 39–48 had been taken over with significant amendments from a
Decree (“Judgment”) on Guba Affairs (Prigovor o gubnykh delakh) of 22 August
1556 by Ivan iv, devoted to procedure in the then new guba courts.6
The Expanded Redaction started with a preamble, which was then followed
by a Table of Contents. There are significant differences between the pream-
bles to the two redactions. Arts. 1–204 follow arts. 1–100 of the Code of 1550,
retaining the sequence of the latter. Many of the 1550 Code provisions were
split up and the Code of 1589 also contained a number of provisions absent
in the Code of 1550. Most of these new provisions could also be found in the
Short Redaction of the Code of 1589. Arts. 205–231 of the Expanded Redaction
corresponded to the series of provisions in the Short Redaction (arts. 39–56),
borrowed from the 1556 Decree on Guba Affairs.
6 prp iv, 363–370; PRoP III/2, 267–271.

The Codes of 1589 and 1606–1607 747
The Relationship between the Two Redactions and the Character

and Sources of the Code of 1589
The question concerning the relationship between the two versions of the
Code is obviously of decisive importance for a proper understanding of what
the Code represented within the framework of Russia’s legal system in 1589. The
first major contribution in answering this question was made by A.I. Andreev
in his work mentioned above. Andreev defended the view that the Short Re-
daction was in fact an excerpt of the Expanded Redaction. Andreev’s views
were rejected by Kopanev, who included a lengthy refutation of them in his
comments on the preamble to the Code.7 A.A. Zimin, in his review of the pub-
lication in which Kopanev’s study was included, concluded that on balance
the arguments in favour of an earlier origin of the Expanded Redaction were
stronger.8 In his comments on the Code in prp iv, a few years later, Kopanev
declared: “The final solution of the question concerning the relationship be-
tween the two redactions of the Code of 1589 will only be possible with the aid
of new materials.”9
Be this as it may, a comparative examination of the two redactions would
lead almost every knowledgeable but uninitiated reader to a conclusion
close to that of Kopanev. Without a thorough evaluation of the arguments of
Andreev and Kopanev, one has to reserve judgment. But the accumulation
of arguments adduced by Kopanev is impressive and well-nigh persuasive. In
the most recent study on this subject, Smykalin did not even bother to men-
tion the point of view of Andreev and Zimin and took the earlier origin of the
Short Redaction for granted.10
The scholars who expressed themselves on the Code of 1589, beginning with
its first publisher Bogoiavlenskii, put forward various ideas with regard to its
origin and character, derived from a careful reading of the text. According to
Bogoiavlenskii, the Code represented a draft prepared in government circles
and submitted to the tsar, but not officially enacted and put into operation.
Kliuchevskii, who devoted a special study to the Code of 1589 immedi-
ately after it became accessible,11 held that the tsar’s decision of 14 June 1589,
7 In his study on the Code in Grekov, Sudebniki, esp. 234–242.

8 A.A. Zimin, review of Grekov (gen’l. ed.), Sudebniki xv–xvi vekov, in Voprosy istorii, 1953,
No.5, 113 (not available to me).
9 prp iv, 412.
10 PRoP III/2, 120–126.
11 V.O. Kliuchevskii, Sudebnik tsaria Fedora Ioannovicha 1589 g. Po spisku sobraniia F.F. Mazu-
rina, Moskva, 1900 (not available to me).
748 chapter 26
entioned in the preamble to the Code, was only an instruction to start work
m
on revising the 1550 Code. The text inspected by him, of what ostensibly was
the new Code of 1589, was actually an unfinished draft which was still far from
official approbation and enactment.
Kliuchevskii’s view on the draft status of the Code was shared by
Vladimirskii-Budanov, but he also came to the conclusion that the available
text lacked any official character. It was, according to him, the work of a pri-
vate person who wrote the draft on his own initiative.12 He also concluded
that the author had some practical experience with legal matters and that the
draft must have originated in Northern Russia. These points were adopted a
few years later by M.M. Bogoslovskii, who, however, added a new twist. He as-
sumed that the author had actually undertaken the work on instructions from
above and that his draft had been approved, but that it did not achieve the
official status of its 1550 predecessor, a comprehensive code of law, established
by the tsar upon the advice of his council and approved by the Church.13
In his textbook on Russian legal history, the leading Soviet legal historian,
S.V. Iushkov, mentioned the 1589 Code briefly, roughly following the path laid
down by his predecessors. He was of the opinion that the Code had been com-
piled in the Russian North by a private author, on the basis of the 1550 Code,
subsequent decrees, and the practice of the courts in Northern Russia.14
As matters stand, by far the most detailed and most extensively argued ac-
count of the origin of the Code of 1589, tying together many strands identi-
fied by his predecessors, is still Kopanev’s commentary to the preamble in the
Academy of Sciences’ edition of the 15th and 16th century codes.15 Kopanev
first of all agreed with earlier authors who had pointed to the region of the
Upper Ust’ia River (a tributary of the Northern Dvina) as the place of ori-
gin of the Code. This was a thinly settled rural area and this would not agree
with the presence of many urban elements in the text of the Code. Kopanev
therefore argued that the Code was meant to apply to the entire Dvina area,
where there were several significant urban centres (Arkhangel’sk, Kholmogo-
ry). Shortly before 1589 (probably within the 1584–1589 period) a statutory
charter (ustavnaia gramota) had been issued for the Dvina region; its text is
not known, but its existence is reliably documented. Other known statutory
12 Vladimirskii-Budanov, op. cit. supra.

13 M.M. Bogoslovskii, “Eshche k voprosu o Sudebnike 1589 goda”, Zhurnal Ministerstva
narodnogo prosveshcheniia, December, 1905 (not available to me).
14 Iushkov, Istoriia, 254–255.
15 Grekov, Sudebniki, 417–442.
The Codes of 1589 and 1606–1607 749
c harters from this era granted the populations of specific areas a considerable
measure of s elf-government, including wide-ranging judicial powers. Most of
such charters concerned territories where noble landowning was less promi-
nent and peasant communities as the basic form of socio-economic organiza-
tion were the rule.
This Dvina charter, according to Kopanev, would have amended some of
the general arrangements of the Code of 1550 and this would have prompted the
drafting of the Short Redaction of the Code of 1589 as a kind of appendix to the
Code of 1550.16 The general idea would be that the Code of 1550 continued to be
in force, except where it had been amended or superseded by subsequent leg-
islation, in particular the (unknown) Dvina charter and the above-mentioned
Decree on Guba Affairs of 1556. The Short Redaction contained therefore only
amended provisions of the Code of 1550 and new provisions, especially arts.
39–56, based mostly on the Decree on Guba Affairs.
Among the arguments put forward by Kopanev were the text of the pream-
ble which clearly alluded to its character as an addition to the 1550 Code, and
the fact that the sequence of the provisions of the Short Redaction followed
the sequence of the 1550 Code.
From all this one may safely conclude that the Short Redaction was meant
as a practical and provisional guide to courts in Northern Russia. The Expand-
ed Redaction, emerging soon afterwards, attempted to offer a more consistent
solution for the requirements of these courts. It reworked the entire Short
Redaction and the entire Code of 1550 into a comprehensive draft code. The
preamble to the Expanded Redaction followed the format of the preamble to
the Code of 1550 and claimed general applicability for the whole of Russia, but
added that this would start on a day to be determined by the tsar.
The Expanded Redaction was apparently never submitted to the tsar’s gov-
ernment, let alone formally approved. Nonetheless, it was used by the courts in
the Russian North, even as late as 1640.17 It was part of the government’s policy
to leave local administration and justice, especially in the North, to locally ap-
pointed and elected officials, and a home-grown code of law, based entirely on
official legislation, would be acceptable within this framework. Although tsar
Fedor Ivanovich made a solemn appearance in the preambles to both redac-
tions, it is well-known that he was completely ineffective as a ruler. The actual
government of Russia at that time was in the hands of Boris Godunov, the tsar’s
brother-in-law and successor.
16 Ibidem, at 421.
17 Ibidem, at 423.
750 chapter 26
The Composite Code of 1606–1607
The text of the Composite Code (Svodnyi Sudebnik) is known from a few
copies dating from the first decades of the 17th century. It was in two ways
the opposite of the Code of 1589: it originated within the government admin-
istration, and it was never actually applied. What the Codes had in common
was that neither of them was ever officially enacted, as the Code of Ivan iv of
1550 was.18
In its origin, the Composite Code differed from its two predecessors in
that it arose at a moment of great instability during the height of the Time of
Troubles. Tsar Vasilii iv Shuiskii had been in power since the death of the First
Pseudo-Dmitrii in May 1606. A year later his position had again become very
precarious as a result of the rise of the Second Pseudo-Dmitrii. The completion
of the draft of the Composite Code by the officials of the Moscow administra-
tion is usually considered to have occurred at some time during the second
half of 1606 or the first three months of 1607.19
The literature on the Composite Code is very scarce, due no doubt to its
character – it was essentially a complete reorganization and systematization
of existing legislation and offered almost no new law. Its great innovation was
that the most important legislation, beginning with the Code of 1550, had been
brought together and reshuffled to produce something that was beginning to
look more like a modern code of law. This innovation was expressed primarily
in the orderly sequence of 25 thematic chapters, called grani, and provided
with titles indicating the subject covered (except in the first two chapters,
where the chapter headings are missing). Headings had appeared occasion-
ally in a haphazard manner in earlier legislation, usually as an indication that
the following provisions had originally constituted a separate enactment, be-
fore being included in a more comprehensive code-like text, but they did not
reflect an attempt at systematization.20 Arranging a code of law according
to a sequence of chapters was an approach which had been used in the First
Lithuanian Statute of 1529 and in its subsequent versions (the Second Statute
of 1566 and the Third Statute of 1588). The Lithuanian Statute was written in
Russian and applied in large parts of ethnic Russian territory (see Chapter 17,
on Western Russia). The drafters of the Composite Code would certainly have
18 Text in prp iv, 481–542; Introduction(479–481) and Comments (542–570) by A.A. Zimin;
PRoP III/2, 177–220; Introduction (176–177) and Commentary (213–220) by A.S. Smykalin.
19 Zimin, op. cit., 480–481; Smykalin, op. cit., 176–177.
20 Such as the law on slavery, arts. 110–121 of the Expanded Russkaia Pravda; the Code of 1497
made frequent use of headings.
The Codes of 1589 and 1606–1607 751
been familiar with it and the idea of drafting a code of law along such lines may
have been inspired by the Lithuanian example.
The main problem encountered in the Composite Code is the identification
of its various components, and this problem is quite manageable.
The numbering of its 168 articles is initially confusing. It is not numbered
through consecutively from 1 to 168. Chapter 1, for example has arts. 1–7, 28–29,
32, 61–64, 96–97, 128–138 and 161. Arts. 1–100 can easily be identified as arts.
1–100 of the Code of 1550, but generally in a slightly amended version.21 Arts.
101–168 are based on other earlier legislation. The sequence of the 1550 Code
has roughly been followed; Chapter 2 has arts. 8–14, 30–44, 65 and 74 of the
1550 Code. From Chapter 3 on, the Composite Code follows the Code of 1550
more closely, although quite a few individual provisions of the latter have been
lifted from their original context. The underlying concept was quite clear; pro-
visions were grouped thematically. Chapter 3 could serve as an illustration of
the editorial policies of the drafters. The chapter was entitled “On witnesses
and on [duel] fighters and on false searches”. In a more modern approach one
might say “On evidence”. It starts with arts. 15–19 of the Code of 1550, devoted
to witnesses (art. 19 to participants in a judicial duel). This is followed by art.
98 (99 in the Code of 1550), because Ch. 3 deals with witnesses and art. 99 is
at least in part about witnesses The remaining and much longer part of the
chapter is taken up by arts. 101–115; these provisions constitute an incomplete
copy of the Decree on Guba Affairs of 22 August 1556 (see the discussion of this
Decree in Chapter 33) and deal with wrongful searches.22
About twenty-five similar insertions based on incidental legislation can be
identified easily, because they are preceded by the words “On such-and-such
a date the tsar and grand prince Ivan Vasil’evich decreed …”, or a comparable
formula. The earliest decree is from 1552, the last one from 1 February 1606, and
most of them are from the early part of the reign of Ivan iv, the 1550’s. Most
of the decrees are known from other sources, and in such cases (as the Decree
on Guba Affairs) one can establish whether the original decree has been taken
over in toto or incompletely.23
Whether the Composite Code was used in the drafting of the Council Code
of 1649 (the Sobornoe Ulozhenie) is a question which has not been thoroughly
investigated. Most commentators restrict themselves to the observation that
the drafters of the Ulozhenie had also consulted previous sudebniki, a fact
which had been noted already in the preamble to the Code of 1649.
21 The numbers do not always correspond exactly; this is caused by the use of different
c opies of the 1550 Code.
22 prp iv, 363–370; PRoP III/2, 276–271.
23 E.g. Decree of 5 (or 15) May 1555 on the Collection of Debts, prp iv, 36.
chapter 27
The Statute Books of the Prikazy
The emergence and duties of the central government departments of M uscovy,

the prikazy, will be discussed in Chapter 31. This chapter will look only at the
statute books of the departments as a source of the law, along with the law
codes covered in the preceding chapters.
The origin of the statute books is connected by most authors with one of the
last provisions (art. 98) of the Code of Ivan iv of 1550: “And whatever new cases
shall be [of a type which are] not provided for in this Sudebnik, when those cas-
es are decided with reference up to the Sovereign, and upon sentence by all the
boyars, such cases shall be appended to this Sudebnik.” (Dewey’s translation).1
The departments, which were just starting to assume a more definitive form
in those years, would refer matters within their jurisdiction, if they were un-
able to decide them themselves, to the tsar and his council, and collect the
decisions handed down for future reference. It is these collections which bear
the name of ukaznye knigi (books of directives).
This peculiar legislative practice affected mostly the work of a few of the
numerous departments, and then also only a small number of these uka-
znye knigi have survived. The oldest one is the ukaznaia kniga of the Treasury
Department (vedomstvo kaznacheev, the central state chancery), covering the
period from 1555 to 1560.2 Of greater importance are similar collections from
the Brigandage Department, the Slavery Department, the Department for the
City of Moscow, the Department of Roads, and the Land Department.
One has to bear in mind that the emergence of the prikazy evolved gradually
and was not the result of a conscious and comprehensive reform of the system
of public administration. Consequently, the duties of the prikazy often over-
lapped. Moreover, new legislation was not published uniformly, but merely
communicated to those governmental departments which were in need of the
information concerned. These departments would then include such items in
their ukaznye knigi. Other prikazy would, in principle, be ignorant of the con-
tents of such collections.
An event of great impact on the survival of the ukaznye knigi was the great
Moscow fire of 3 May 1626, in which most of the prikaz archives, including
their ukaznye knigi, were burnt.
1 H. Dewey, Muscovite Judicial Texts 1488–1556, Michigan Slavic Materials No.7, Ann Arbor, 1966,
at 73.
2 Cf. prp iv, 353, 544; Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 233; D’iakonov, Ocherki, 222–223.

The Statute Books of the Prikazy 753
The Statute Books of the Brigandage Department
The Robbery or Brigandage Department (Razboinyi prikaz, Razboinaia izba)

emerged during the early years of the reign of Ivan iv as the central agency
for combating the widespread lawlessness in the countryside caused by ma-
rauding bands. Its activities were preceded by the guba reforms, by which the
responsibility for dealing with this problem had to a large extent been del-
egated to local agencies (see Chapter 33, on Guba Charters). Once the Robbery
Department became active, it served as a co-ordinating and supervisory body.
Its first known Statute Book covered the years 1555–1556 and contained five en-
actments concerning the substantive and procedural law for dealing with rob-
bery and theft.3 The next available Statute Book covered the years 1616–1636,
and a third one the years 1635–1648.
The first item of the 1555–1556 Statute Book was a Decree (prigovor) on Mat-
ters of Robbery of 18 January 1555, constituting a brief general enactment on
the investigation, prosecution and punishment of robbers.
The 1616–1636 Statute Book contained 13 enactments, of which the first
one, the Statute Book of the Robbery Department of 1616–1617, was the most
important.4 It was clearly based on its predecessor from 1555 and r epresented
a more or less comprehensive miniature code on the entire procedure for
dealing with robbery, from investigation and prosecution to trial, sentence
and execution. Its preamble referred to the preceding Statute Book of the
Robbery Department, compiled under tsar Ivan Vasil’evich. This is unques-
tionably the Statute Book of 1555–1556 mentioned above, which apparently
remained in force for sixty years.
The third Statute Book contained 19 items, from the years 1635 to 1648, lead-
ing right up to the Code of tsar Aleksei of 1649. These 19 comparatively short
enactments concerned all kinds of questions of detail in the prosecution and
trial of persons suspected of robbery.5
The statute books of the Robbery Department are known as Ustavnye knigi
(Statute Books), rather than ukaznye knigi (books of directives), as those of
other departments which were merely chronologically arranged collections
of directives, while those of the Robbery Department had undergone some
3 Four of them in prp iv, 353–370, the fifth (the Medyn’ Guba Directive), ibidem, 179–185 (see
also Chapter 33, on Guba Charters); PRoP III/2, 263–271 (three items only). The 1555–1556
Statute Book had been discovered by A.A. Zimin, not long before its publication in prp in
1956; older authors such as Vladimirskii-Budanov and D’iakonov only speculated about its
contents.
4 prp v, 188–220. PRoP III/2, 277–290 (five items only).
5 prp v, 221–239; PRoP III/2, 290–293 (four items only).
754 chapter 27
editorial processing, resulting, as noted above, in the creation of systematized

legislation. These texts were an immediate source in the drafting of the Code
of 1649.
The Statute Book of the Slavery Department
The Slavery (or Serfdom) Department had been in existence at least since 1571
but its only known Statute Book started in 1597 and ran on until 1608.6 This
period coincided with the most chaotic part of the Time of Troubles. The full
name of the department was Department of the Slavery Court (Prikaz Kholop’ia
suda). The Statute Book contained five items of which the first one (of 1597)
was by far the most important, as it outlined the scope of the Department’s
powers. They covered all people who served, not only on state lands, but also
with princes, boyars, other nobles, merchants, etc. “in slavery” (v kholopstve).
Most attention was directed towards the kabal’nye liudi, people who served
temporarily in serfdom, in exchange for a loan. The decree (prigovor) of 1597
and the following four enactments of the Statute Book illustrated vividly that
the term slavery had actually become inappropriate, as the legal relationship
between master and dependent peasant had evolved into something quite dif-
ferent from the classic slavery relationship.
The Statute Book of the Department for the City of Moscow
The literal translation of Zemskii prikaz would be “Land Department”, but in

fact it was in charge of the taxation of the urban tax-paying (tiaglyi) popula-
tion, other matters of urban government, as well as the handling of court cases
concerning the urban population of Moscow, including cases of robbery and
theft occurring in Moscow.
The Statute Book covered the 1622–1648 period and consisted of 52 items.
Many of these concerned day-to-day matters of city government, such as the
building of a bridge, the prohibition of public fist-fights, etc. The competence
of the Moscow City Department was in fact superimposed on the powers of
other prikazy, and this resulted in the need for those prikazy to inform the
Moscow City Department of various developments (new legislation, deci-
sions, etc.) within those prikazy which required the attention of the Moscow
6 prp iv, 370–381; PRoP III/2, 271–277 (four items only).

The Statute Books of the Prikazy 755
Department. Many of the items in the Moscow Statute Book reflected this pe-
culiar relationship.7 Of the relatively few items of a general legislative nature,
one of the most important was a decree of 1641 concerning peasants who had
fled from their masters (dvoriane and deti boiarskie, i.e., small landowners) to
lands owned by the state, boyars or the Church.8
The Statute Book of the Department of Roads
The only known Statute Book of the Department of Roads contained eight
items, seven decrees (ukazy) and one report (doklad), all from the years 1627–
1628.9 Its legal relevance is modest, although the responsibilities of the Iams-
koi prikaz were essential to the functioning of government in medieval Russia.
It was in charge of the organization and management of the iamskaia gon’ba,
the provision of transport for government officials, which included both
means of transport (horses, carts, sleighs, boats) as well as personnel (coach-
men, boatmen, etc.). It rested on the general duty of the local population to
provide podvody (esp. horses and carts), a duty which was already known in
Kievan times.
The name iam (staging-post, and also the duty to maintain the iam system)
was of Tatar origin (dziam, road) and the Iamskoi prikaz was split off in the
middle of the 16th century from the central state chancery, the State Treasury.10
The Statute Books of the Land Department
The Land Department (Pomestnyi prikaz) was in charge of the supervision

and state management of both hereditary (votchiny) and service (pomest’ia)
estates. Like other prikazy, it also handled the litigation of cases arising within
its area of competence. The origin of its Statute Book (1626–1648) was directly
connected with the Moscow fire of 3 May 1626. Its first item was a report of
7 An important example is the 1628 Decree on Court Matters, included in the 1616–1636
Statute Book of the Robbery Department, which was transmitted to the Moscow City De-
partment and included in the latter’s Statute Book a few weeks later. Cf. prp v, 208–211
and 342.
8 prp v, 362–371; PRoP III/2, 299–304.
9 prp v, 539–547.
10 Cf. prp v, 535–538.
756 chapter 27
26 May 1626 in which the damage was described and an indication was given
of what might be restored. Several items from the old statute books were still
available in other places or had survived the fire. These categories were first in-
cluded in the new Statute Book. They went back as far as 1587. The other main
part of the Statute Book consisted of items from the period after 3 May 1626.11
One of the most significant and curious pieces of legislation was the Decree on
Hereditary and Service Estates of 1636.12 The 14 articles of the D
ecree described
particular legal questions arising in connection with estates; these questions
were then answered in an advisory opinion of the Boyar Council, which was
submitted to the tsar. In 13 cases the tsar decided as suggested by the boyars, ex-
cept in respect of art. 2, where the boyars had abstained from advising because
of self-interest. The tsar then decided in a manner favourable to the boyars.
11 prp v, 431–483; only the most relevant decisions have been included here (19 items). A list
of the full contents of the Statute Book (112 items) in prp v, 526–531. PRoP III/2, 304–314
(8 items only).
12 prp v, 470–477; PRoP III/2, 310–314; zarg No.134, 171–174.
chapter 28
Decisions of the Land Assembly (Zemskii Sobor)
The joint meeting of the Holy Council and the Boyar Duma in 1549, where the
desirability of a new and comprehensive law code was agreed upon, is usually
regarded as the first manifestation of the supreme state agency which came
to be known as the Zemskii Sobor, the Land Assembly or Land Council.1 Its
composition varied over time, depending on the wishes of the tsar, and po-
litical and practical circumstances. Once the new Romanov dynasty became
more firmly established after its foundation in 1613, the relevance of the Land
Assembly gradually diminished until the need to convoke it had disappeared
by the end of the 17th century.
The legal status of the Land Assembly will be discussed later on in the ap-
propriate place (in Chapter 31); what interests us here is whether the decisions
of the Land Assembly are to be regarded as sources of the law of Muscovy.
The answer must obviously be in the affirmative in the case of some of the
most important legislative acts of the era, emanating from the Land Assembly;
the Stoglav, approved by the Land Assembly of 1551, and the Code of 1649, the
Sobornoe Ulozhenie (the “Council Code”). In most other cases2 the r esolutions
were primarily of a political nature but did simultaneously have far-reaching
legal consequences, such as the decision of 1 October 1653 to receive the
Ukraine into the Russian tsardom.3
At the practical level, the significance of Land Assembly resolutions as
sources of law is diminished by the modest number of usable texts. Many of the
57 Land Assembly meetings identified by Cherepnin are documented only by
references in chronicles and other sources. The editors of the prp series judged
only five texts worthy to be included and none of them consisted of an actual
Land Assembly decision; they were only connected with such decisions and
referred to the latter.4 Seven other texts were included in the rz series, of which
1 See N.E. Nosov, Stanovlenie soslovno-predstavitel’nykh uchrezhdenii v Rossii. Izyskaniia o zem-

skoi reforme Ivana Groznogo, Leningrad, 1969, 14–53.
2 The standard work on the Land Assembly is still L.V. Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory russkogo
gosudarstva v xvi–xvii vv., Moskva, 1978. Cherepnin compiled a list of 57 meetings of the
Land Assembly, from 1549 to 1683 (op. cit., 382–384).
3 rz iii, 450–458; PRoP III/2, 255–262. See also Chapter xxxii.
4 prp iv, 575–589.

758 chapter 28
five contained the actual Land Assembly resolutions.5 To these five one can add
the sobornoe ulozhenie (Council Decree) of 9 March 1607 of tsar Vasilii Shuiskii,
concerning peasants and slaves.6 Four of these six are described briefly below.
The other two concern the Council decree by which Boris Godunov was elect-
ed tsar in 15987 and the union with the Ukraine in 1653, mentioned above.
The Resolutions of 15 January 1580 and 20 July 1584
The issue of restricting the expansion of landowning by the Church and the
monasteries had been prominent all through the reign of Ivan iv and contin-
ued to be so after his death in March 1584. The Land Council meetings of 1580
and 1584 were devoted to this problem and the government was to a large extent
successful in its endeavours to raise legal barriers against further expansion.8
The Resolution of 9 March 1607
Prince Vasilii Shuiskii had come to the throne in 1606 in the turmoil of the
Time of Troubles. In order to hold on to power he urgently needed the sup-
port of the large class of small landowners/noblemen. The purpose of the Land
Assembly of March 1607 was primarily to undo some of the reforms of tsar
Boris Godunov of 1601–1602, which had lightened some of the burdens of the
peasant population. The 1607 Assembly made it more difficult for peasants to
leave their masters and continued the trend towards complete enserfment of
the dependent rural population.
The Resolution of 30 June 1611
The Zemskii Sobor of June 1611 took place at a time of the greatest confusion;
tsar Vasilii Shuiskii had been forced to take monastic vows, the Poles were still
5 rz iii, 17–74 and 448–463. PRoP III/2, 221–262, republished the 5 + 7 texts from prp and rz,
but without the valuable commentaries.
6 prp iv, 586–589; this meeting of the Zemskii Sobor was for some reason overlooked by
Cherepnin who did discuss a February meeting of the Council, devoted to another topic
(Cherepnin, op. cit., 156–157). The March meeting is well-documented, see prp iv, 601–602.
7 rz iii, 36–39 (text), 40–43 (comments); PRoP III/2, 225–228 (text only).
8 rz iii, 26–28 (text of 1580), 31–35 (text of 1584; also in PRoP III/2, 221–223. Comments: rz iii,
23, 28–31, 35–36. See also Cherepnin, op. cit., 120–125, 130–131.
Decisions of the Land Assembly 759
in Moscow, the Second Pseudo-Dmitrii had been assassinated, and the popu-
lar uprising under a Riazan’ nobleman, Prokopii Liapunov, was crumbling. The
resolution of 30 June was a final attempt by Liapunov and his supporters to re-
store order.9 Although Liapunov was murdered by Cossacks three weeks later
and the resolution achieved nothing, it represented, from the point of view of
legal history, an ambitious initiative towards broad constitutional reform. The
constitution of the assembly was also unusual as it did not have representa-
tives from the Church and the Moscow citizenry (the merchants and crafts-
men), but it did include various non-Russian elements, such as Tatar princes
and nobles, as well as Cossack leaders.
9 rz iii, 43–49 (text), 51–62 (comments). Also PRoP III/2, 228–233 (text only). See also
Cherepnin, op. cit., 172–179.
chapter 29
The Council Code (Sobornoe Ulozhenie) of Aleksei

Mikhailovich of 1649
The Ulozhenie, the comprehensive legal statute enacted in the fourth year of
the reign of the second Romanov tsar, Aleksei Mikhailovich, is rightly regarded
as one of the most pivotal texts in Russian legal history. It reflects the entire
previous legislative mass and its roots can ultimately be traced back as far as
the Russkaia Pravda. By being the first Russian legislative act that was printed
and then disseminated officially, it also inaugurated a new era in which the
identification and legitimation of a document as valid legislation no longer
presented the sort of problems which had characterized the previous era.
When a governmental working group headed by Mikhail Speranskii proceed-
ed to collect the entire body of valid and operational Russian law in 1830, the
Polnoe Sobranie Otechestvennykh Zakonov (“Complete Collection of the Laws
of the Country”), it took the Code1 of 1649 as the starting-point.
Historical Background
Time and again one may notice that major legal reforms are often triggered by
events which suddenly induce governments to take action. Such events, bring-
ing deep-seated tensions or basic problems to the surface, may then appear as
the actual rationale of the reforms, although they in fact only accelerated their
achievement. In the case of the Code of 1649, the Salt Riots of 1648 set in mo-
tion a development which culminated in the convocation of a Land Council
or Assembly (Zemskii Sobor) in September of the same year. The adoption of
the Council Code (Sobornoe Ulozhenie) in January 1649 was the major achieve-
ment of that Assembly.
Tsar Aleksei had succeeded his father Mikhail in 1645 at the age of 16. The
government was in the hands of a small coterie of boyars, of whom Boris
Morozovwas the leader. In 1648, he married Anna Miloslavskaia the sister
of the tsar’s wife, thereby becoming the tsar’s svoiak (wife’s brother-in-law).
1 There is an almost interminable debate among some Russian historians whether or not the
Ulozhenie can be called a code or a codification. Almost all translations in other languages
use the term “Code”.

The Council Code of Aleksei Mikhailovich of 1649 761
Morozovhad increased the tax on salt in 1646, and when this had caused great
unrest, the measure was withdrawn and replaced by other tax increases. These
affected a variety of categories of the population and dissatisfaction became
more widespread. Riots occurred in many towns and there were mutinies
among military units. In Moscow itself, the matter got out of hand on the first
of June 1648 when the houses of leading boyars were plundered and some of
them were lynched by angry mobs. The young tsar himself had to plead with
the rioters who finally calmed down after Morozov had been exiled and the
convocation of a Land Council had been promised. Meetings of the Zemskii
Sobor had often taken place during the previous decades and on 10 June the
merchants and service people (sluzhilye liudi) from Moscow had presented a
petition to the tsar to put an end to the corruption of the bureaucracy, call a
meeting of the Land Assembly and proceed to the preparation of a new law
code. The government lost no time and a zemskii sobor met soon afterwards.2 It
resulted in a decree in which a meeting of the assembly in a new composition
was convoked for 1 September. At the same time the tsar appointed a commis-
sion to prepare a collection and revision of the old sudebniki (law books) and
other laws, in order that in future “law and justice would in all cases be equal to
all” (sud i rasprava byla vo vsiakikh delakh vsem rovna).
The underlying causes of the reforms were much more complex and the de-
bate about them is by no means finished. As in the case of the Code of 1550 of
Ivan iv, there were several interest groups, each having its own agenda. Russian
society had become more complex in the century separating the two codes
and especially the middle class, to use an anachronistic term for indicating the
layer between the boyars and the dependent urban and rural population, itself
consisted of a variety of categories with often conflicting aspirations: towns-
people (big and small merchants, craftsmen, various kinds of civil and military
officials), petty landowners, all kinds of military service personnel, etc. This
factor was taken into account to some extent in the appointment of the mem-
bers of the preparatory working group (see below).3
2 There is some confusion about the date; Cherepnin (L.V. Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory russkogo
gosudarstva xvi–xvii vv., Moskva, 1978, 284–285) believed the meeting ended on or before
16 July, while other sources (e.g. zarg No.334) held that it started on 16 July (and was possibly
finished the same day).
3 Several authors have dealt in depth with the events of June 1648 and the following months,
as the prelude to the creation of the Ulozhenie. See especially M.N. Tikhomirov, “Sobornoe
Ulozhenie i gorodskie vosstaniia serediny xvii veka”, M.N. Tikhomirov, P.P. Epifanov, Sobor-
noe Ulozhenie 1649 g. Uchebnoe posobie dlia vysshei shkoly, Moskva, 1961, 1–26; A.G. Man’kov,
Ulozhenie 1649 goda. Kodeks feodal’nogo prava Rossii, Moskva, 1980, 39–52.
762 chapter 29
Historiography
Historiography is like an endless stocking; every scholar adds his bit, which
then becomes part of the permanent work-in-progress. Still, it may be helpful
to say a few words about it.
As explained above, the Ulozhenie was the centrepiece of Russian legisla-
tion and, as such, the foundation on which subsequent legislation rested. It
was only after work on the Complete Collection of Laws had started in 1830
that incipient legal scholarship in Russia began to show a specific interest in
the Ulozhenie itself.4 A considerable volume of literature on the Ulozhenie saw
the light during the 19th century, every generation adding new perspectives,
such as the political context of the Code, the question of its sources, the search
for the most correct text, etc. The Ulozhenie, after its original and official publi-
cation in print in 1649, was republished a number of times; the last publication
before the October Revolution was by M.K. Liubavskii.5
Soviet scholars continued to build on the extensive work of the pre-1917 gen-
erations, paying much attention of course to the “class” character of various
factors, especially those connected with agriculture, landownership and the
increasing enserfment of the peasant population. In the prp series, the whole
of volume vi (1957) was devoted to the Ulozhenie; it had been prepared by a
team from the Moscow State University, headed by K.A. Sofronenko. The texts
of the 25 chapters of the Code were accompanied by comments on every indi-
vidual provision. A few years later, Tikhomirov and Epifanov published a text
edition of the Ulozhenie, provided with introductory studies on the 1648 riots
(by Tikhomirov) and on the historiography of the Code (by Epifanov), as well
as with several useful annexes (especially a detailed dictionary of the Code’s
terminology).6
The Ulozhenie took up most of volume iii (1985) of the rz series (Akty
Zemskikh soborov); the text of the Code was accompanied again by detailed
comments;the editorial team was headed by A.G. Man’kov; some of the team
members had already taken part in the prp edition 18 years earlier.
The ussr Academy of Sciences’ Institute of History oversaw the publica-
tion of the Ulozhenie in a new edition in 1987 (A.G. Man’kov, general editor).7
The Introduction characterized the work as “the first critical scholarly edition
4 The first monograph on the Ulozhenie was by V. Stroev, Istoriko-iuridicheskoe issledovanie

Ulozheniia, izdannogo tsarem Alekseem Mikhailovichem v 1649 g., Sankt-Peterburg, 1833.
5 M.K. Liubavskii (ed.), Sobornoe ulozhenie tsaria Alekseia Mikhailovicha 1649 g., Moskva, 1907.
6 M.N. Tikhomirov, P.P. Epifanov, Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 g. Uchebnoe posobie dlia vysshei shko-
ly, Moskva, 1961.
7 A.G. Man’kov (general editor), Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 goda. Tekst. Kommentarii, Leningrad, 1987.
of this major code of feudal law with extensive article-by-article commentar-

ies”. This was not quite fair to the authors of the publications in prp and rz,
but the 260 pages of the commentary in the Academy’s edition undoubtedly
constituted a major contribution to scholarship on the 1649 Code.
A.G. Man’kov, who had been intimately involved in several of the publica-
tions referred to above, was also the author of the most important monograph
on the Ulozhenie to appear during the Soviet era.8
In more recent times (2014) volume III/3 of PRoP was devoted to the Ulozhe-
nie. Two general introductory essays (by T.Iu. Ampleeva and Iu.N. Anuchina)
were followed by the text of the Code and then by individual chapters on civil
law, inheritance law, serfdom, criminal law, procedural law, and on execution
of judgments. A comparable publication was by V.A. Tomsinov, in the series
“Russian Legal Heritage” (Russkoe iuridicheskoe nasledie), who offered a long
study of the 1649 Code, together with the text of the Ulozhenie.9
Most of the general studies mentioned above contain shorter or longer sec-
tions on the historiography of the Code of 1649.10
An English translation, together with the Russian text, is available as vol.3
in the Series i: Medieval Russia of The Laws of Russia.11 Less accessible are the
German translation and introduction by C. Meiske. Like many of his colleagues
from the German Democratic Republic, the author made a serious attempt to
outdo his Soviet colleagues in ideological correctness, but once the narrative
is stripped of its Marxist-Leninist shell, an informed and intelligent analysis of
the Ulozhenie remains.12
Preparation and Enactment
The preamble to the Ulozhenie relates how the tsar, on the very first day the
Land Council met (16 July 1648), had appointed a working group to collect
8 A.G. Man’kov, Ulozhenie 1649 goda. Kodeks feodal’nogo prava Rossii, Moskva, 1980 (2nd rev.
edition, Moskva, 2003).
9 V.A. Tomsinov, “Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 goda kak pamiatnik russkoi iurisprudent-
sii”, V.A. Tomsinov (ed.), Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 goda. Zakonodatel’stvo tsaria Alekseia
Mikhailovicha, Moskva, 2011, 1–51.
10 Esp. P.P. Epifanov, “Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 g. v istoricheskoi literature”,Tikhomirov &
Epifanov, op. cit., 27–64; Man’kov, Ulozhenie 1649 g., 1980, 5–38; T.Iu. Ampleeva, “Diskus-
sionnye problemy otechestvennoi istoriografii Sobornogo Ulozheniia”, PRoP III/3, 6–27.
11 R. Hellie (transl. & ed.), The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649, Part 1: Text and Trans-
lation, Irvine, ca, 1988.
12 C. Meiske, Das Sobornoe Uloženie von 1649. Beiträge zur Geschichte der UdSSR, No.9, Halle
(Saale), 1985.
764 chapter 29
and re-arrange all the legislative material from the past, in order to prepare
the drafting of a new code of law. The commission consisted of two boyars, the
princes N.I. Odoevskii (chairman) and S.V. Prozorovskii, the okol’nichii prince
F.F. Volkonskii, and the d’iaki (secretaries) G. Levont’ev and F. Griboedov. The
July meeting of the Zemskii Sobor was apparently in the nature of a prepara-
tory session. Its composition was restricted to the tsar, the members of the
Holy Council (Osviashchennyi Sobor, the assembly of bishops of the Orthodox
Church), and the tsar’s own council (Duma) of selected boyars, okol’nichie, and
a few other councillors (Dumnye liudi). Its main business was the appointment
of the drafting commission and the decision concerning the composition of
the following meeting of the Land Council for the discussion of the new Code.
For this occasion the Zemskii Sobor was to meet in enlarged form. In addition
to the members of the Holy Council and the tsar’s Duma, the lower ranks of
the Moscow nobility (stol’niki, striapchie, zhil’tsy, and Moscow dvoriane) were
to be represented by two persons each; other major towns were each allowed
two representatives of the lower nobility (dvoriane and deti boiarskie), except
Novgorod (five representatives); lesser towns were given one representative
(of the lower nobility) each; three representatives were to come from the great
merchants (the gosti), and two each from the other two major merchant cor-
porations (the gostinnaia and the sukonnaia sotnia), all of them from Moscow;
one representative from the lower (free and taxpaying) urban population of
each town.
The enlarged Land Assembly met on 1 September 1648 in two divisions, the
small Assembly (Holy Council and the tsar’s Duma) and a chamber consist-
ing of the delegates of the lesser nobility and the urban population (called
the “Answering Chamber”, Otvetnaia Palata). According to the preamble to the
Code, a completed draft was submitted to the Council on 3 September 1648,
testimony to the commitment and efficiency of prince Odoevskii and his col-
leagues.13 As no direct reports of the transactions in the two chambers of the
Assembly have survived, there is still disagreement about the relative weight of
each chamber’s input. The end result suggested that the interests of the lower
nobility (the petty landowners) in particular had received much attention;
some concessions were made to the urban participants, but in general they
were less successful.
The main work on the Ulozhenie was completed and confirmed by the tsar on
25 November 1648, but discussions on a few controversial points went on until
13 There are reports of veritable armies of clerks in the government departments (prikazy),
employed in copying the decrees of their departments for the commission.
the middle of January 1649.14 Then, on 29 January 1649, the entire Ulozhenie
was read out in the two chambers and the delegates, as had been prescribed
beforehand, placed their signatures on the scroll (svitok) containing the text.
Most authors tacitly regard this procedure as the official confirmation and en-
actment of the Code, but Tomsinov has pointed out that a confirmation pro-
cedure had nowhere been provided; the Code was established by the tsar; the
members of the Assembly had taken part as his councillors in the preparation
of the text.15
According to the preamble, this scroll with the authentic text of the Ulozhe-
nie was to be copied and then this manuscript was to be printed. This was
effected in the course of April and May 1649, when a printed edition of the
Ulozhenie was produced in 1200 copies. A second edition of 1200 copies, in
which some real or perceived errors of the first edition were corrected, fol-
lowed a few months later.16 The handwritten scroll with the signatures sur-
vived, its manuscript copy did not.17
In the preparation of the inclusion of the Ulozhenie as the first item in the
Complete Collection of Laws (Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov, psz) in 1830, a new
version was produced, based on a critical comparison of the texts of the scroll
and the two 1649 editions. The psz edition was used in most of the later edi-
tions, but in 1961 Tikhomirov and Epifanov, in their university textbook on the
Ulozhenie, presented the text of the second 1649 edition which for good rea-
sons can be regarded as the most authentic one. Later scholarly editions have
used either the psz text or the one proposed by Tikhomirov and Epifanov; the
differences are not very significant.18
Overview of the Contents
The Ulozhenie differed from its predecessors, especially the Code of 1550, not
only in its more modern and sophisticated process of preparation, enactment
14 See Man’kov, Ulozhenie 1649 goda, 1980, 49–50. N.B.: the September calendar still being in
use in Russia at that time, the dates of 1648 and 1649 are often mixed up in Russian literature.
15 Tomsinov, op. cit., 8.
16 Cf. Man’kov, op. cit., 1980, 54; Tomsinov, op. cit., 9.
17 Hellie, op. cit., 235–352, published plates of the Preamble and the first two chapters, and
of the reverse side of the scroll with all the signatures of the delegates.
18 For more detail, see the Archeographical Introduction by L.I. Ivina in the Academy edi-
tion, Man’kov (general editor), Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 goda, 1987, 10–14. ppr v and Hellie
have the psz text, but the main other publications followed Tikhomirov and Epifanov
(rz iii, the Academy edition of 1987, Tomsinov, and PRoP III/3).
766 chapter 29
and publication, but also in its internal organization. It consisted of a long

preamble, setting out the drafting and publication procedure, and 25 chapters
devoted to specific topics.19 The chapters contained articles, numbered con-
secutively in each chapter. The chapters differed sharply in length; the three
longest Chapters (10: on the judicial process, 20: on the judicial process con-
cerning slavery, 21: on robbery and theft) contained 510 of the total of 968 (or
967) articles. Chapter 2 (on counterfeiting) has only two articles, Chapters 12
(procedure in the courts of the patriarch), 23 (on musketeers, strel’tsy) and 24
(on atamans and Cossacks) only three.
Although the organization of the material in thematic chapters was a great
step forward (from the point of view of a modern lawyer), this did not mean
that a more or less systematic coverage of the material was achieved or even
envisaged. Russian authors of treatises on the Code of 1649 often present
chapters on public, criminal and civil law, but such a framework is anachro-
nistic, helpful as it may be to today’s reader. The sequence of the chapters of
the Ulozhenie is associative, rather than systematic.20 After a first chapter on
insults to God (blasphemy and disruption of the liturgy), the Code has two
chapters on the honour and the personal well-being of the sovereign (Ch. 2)
and on the maintenance of order at the court of the tsar (Ch. 3). The next two
and very brief Chapters (4 and 5) concerned forgery of the tsar’s documents,
counterfeiting his seals, and making counterfeit coins. Chapter 6 then went
on with the regulation of foreign travel documents issued by the tsar or his
provincial governors (voevody), and continued with a few more detailed rules
about people living in disputed border areas around the Lithuanian and Swed-
ish borders. Chapter 7 took up this theme in its preamble, which proclaimed
solemnly (but not quite truthfully) that eternal peace existed between the tsar
and his Polish, Lithuanian and Swedish neighbours.21 But then its first article
contemplated what should happen if war broke out. The rest of the longish
chapter (32 articles) is devoted to various aspects of military service. Chapter 8
(on the redemption military prisoners) is a natural extension.
19 The Composite Code (Svodnyi Sudebnik) of 1606–1607, which was in fact only a depart-
mental draft, also had 25 chapters, but many chapters contained a single article only. Its
scope was much more limited than that of the Ulozhenie and it can only have served as a
source of inspiration for the latter Code in respect of the use of the chapter-article format.
20 On this question, Meiske, op. cit., 22. A more positive evaluation in E.A. Zhelonkina, Zako-
notvorcheskaia tekhnika v Rossii xvii–xix vekov, Moskva, 2015, who devoted a long section
to the legislative technique of the Ulozhenie, 78–96.
21 Chapter 7 is the only one with its own preamble, a leftover from its earlier life as a sepa-
rate enactment.
Chapter 9 (on tolls, ferry and bridge fees) stands more or less by itself. It
concerned not only fees due to the tsar’s treasury, but all other similar fees to
be paid to persons or institutions entitled to collect such fees. The main thrust
of the chapter was in the identification of the person or institution responsible
for the upkeep of a certain road or bridge, generally speaking the same as the
one entitled to collect the fee for using the road or bridge. The state’s interest in
maintaining a serviceable network of roads in a vast and increasingly central-
ized country with difficult climatic conditions needs no explanation.
Chapter 10, the longest of the Code, has 287 articles and takes up about
one third of the entire Ulozhenie. It is entitled simply O sude (on justice) and
can be regarded as replacing the bulk of the Code of 1550 (which was very
much centred on the activities of the courts). It constituted therefore almost
a law code by itself, covering a great variety of topics, criminal as well as civil
law. The following Chapters 11–15 are devoted to related and more specific
aspects of the administration of justice; Chapter 11 to court cases involving
peasants, Chapters 12 and 13 to courts of the patriarch and monasteries, Chap-
ter 14 to the oath (as a means of producing decisive evidence), and Chapter 15
to the effect of cases that have been decided by judgments, settlements or
arbitration.
Chapter 20, on court cases concerning slavery, belongs to the same block
of chapters but is separated from it by four quite different and long chapters.
Chapters 16 and 17 deal, respectively, with service lands (pomestnye zemli) and
with hereditary lands (votchiny), the two main categories of private landown-
ing. Chapter 18, on fees for sealing documents, is connected with the two fore-
going chapters as almost all documents referred to concern transactions about
land. Chapter 19 is entitled “On townsmen”, but deals mostly with the owner-
ship and taxation of urban holdings.
The slavery Chapter (20) not only covered court cases concerning slavery,
but was in fact a comprehensive law on many aspects of slavery (119 articles).
Criminal law is the subject of Chapters 21 (on robbery and theft) and 22 (of-
fences entailing capital punishment).
The very brief Chapters 23 (on strel’tsy, musketeers) and 14 (on atamans and
Cossacks) have already been mentioned above. The last chapter, 25, the Decree
on (illicit) taverns (Ukaz o korchmakh), dealt not only with the unlawful selling
of liquor, causing loss of revenue to the state, but also with the sale or use of
tobacco, forbidden outright on pain of death by a decree of 1634.
To return to a point made above, one has to keep in mind that the organizing
principle governing the organization of the Ulozhenie resulted in the distribu-
tion of subject matter in a way that is often baffling to a modern lawyer. Crimi-
nal law, for instance, is the central topic of Chapters 21 and 22, but it appears
768 chapter 29
prominently in Chapters 1–5 (“offences against the state and public order”)
and is present in almost all other chapters. The chapters on court procedure
(especially Chapters 10–15 and 20), in line with previous legislative practice,
contain much substantive law, both criminal and civil, clothed in procedural
rules.
Sources
Excursion: The Impact of Foreign Sources

In Chapter 2 (on Sources) we considered the question of what could be consid-
ered a source of law in a medieval setting. This question loses its importance
once the law-making process becomes sufficiently sophisticated to produce
rules with an unambiguous legal character. The Ulozhenie unquestionably sat-
isfies this criterion.
But “source” in legal history may also be given the meaning of legal materi-
als which inspired, or contributed to, a particular law-making process. Sourc-
es in this sense were considered in Chapter 10 (on Foreign Laws), where the
question of the impact of Byzantine or Mongol law was investigated briefly.
Far more important, however, than foreign sources (in this particular sense)
are domestic sources. The history of medieval law in Russia abounds with ex-
amples. The Short Version of the Russkaia Pravda was the principal source
of the Expanded Version; the Russkaia Pravda continued to influence many
later manifestations of legislative initiative. The Church Statutes of Vladimir
and Iaroslav were the principal source for all subsequent church statutes. The
Code of Ivan iv of 1550 was based mainly on the Code of Ivan iii of 1497, and
so on.
What happened in such cases was that the drafter of the new law had access
to the text of an old law and consulted it; he could then decide to take over the
old rule, amend it, or make an altogether new rule. The impact of the old rule
is often discernible in the formulation of the new rule, most patently of course
when the old text has been taken over verbatim.
The relevance of domestic or foreign sources can also be much less visible
and more uncertain when the similarity between the rules to be compared
is less obvious. The fact that several laws deal with a similar situation need
not imply a connection between them if the situation is relatively unspecific.
For instance, almost all legal systems which concern themselves with market
transactions address the question of the acquisition of movable property from
somebody who is not the owner. It is only when the similarity between legal
rules in different texts becomes very specific that probability calculus suggests
that the texts must be connected, that they have a common origin or that one
text has been the source of the other.22
Sources, as Indicated in the Ulozhenie Itself

The question of the sources has been foremost in many studies of the Ulozhe-
nie, both in the 19th century and in more recent times. The question cannot be
considered resolved, although the main outlines are visible. The preamble to
the Code relates how the tsar had ordered the drafting commission to extract
relevant legal rules from canon law (“the rules of the Holy Apostles and the
Holy [Council] fathers”), from the laws of Byzantine emperors, from the codes
(sudebniki) of former (Russian) sovereigns, from the decrees of the tsar’s fa-
ther (tsar Mikhail), from boyar decisions (boiarskie prigovory), and from rules
which had not been included in the old law codes, sovereign decrees, or boyar
decisions. This at least gives an impression of the kind of sources utilized by
the commission. This impression is given more detail by 168 short handwritten
notes (in very small script) in the margin of the scroll text, indicating the origin
of the provision in two or three words.23
A closer examination however of these marginal pointers does not yield
much. The frequent references to the Lithuanian Statute as the source of
certain provisions are the least helpful. Because they do not cite chapter and
verse, one has to scour the Lithuanian Statute for provisions which are more or
less similar to the Ulozhenie provision to which the marginal note is attached.
This search is usually in vain; one may find roughly parallel provisions, but
without any close similarity. The closest parallels are to be found in part of
Chapter 10 (arts.100–123) and Chapter 6 of the Lithuanian Statute, both of
them dealing with the early stages of the proceedings before a court.24 An-
other possible connection, not mentioned in the marginal references, is the or-
ganization of the Ulozhenie in chapters and numbered articles, which is unlike
anything in earlier Russian legislation and which could very well have been
inspired by the similar organization of the Lithuanian Statute.
There are a few marginal references to the Stoglav and they are also not
very productive. Art. 1 of Chapter 22 of the Ulozhenie (homicide of a parent by
22 I have dealt with the topic of this Excursion in more detail in connection with the ques-
tion of the influence of Roman law on medieval Russian law in “Roman Law in Medieval
Russia”, Feldbrugge, lmr, 59–128, esp. 85–87.
23 The text of these marginalia in Tikhomirov & Epifanov, op. cit., 421–423, and in Man’kov,
Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 goda, 1987, 445–446.
24 For instance, art. 105 of the Ulozhenie and arts.17–18 of the Statute, each dealing with
misconduct in court, or art. 109 and art. 12 (failure of the plaintiff to appear in court).
770 chapter 29
a child, entailing capital punishment) and the following provisions (several

other offences by children against their parents, usually punishable by beat-
ing with the knout), are accompanied by a reference to the Stoglav. This then
must be Chapter 36 (On the punishment of one’s children); it provides, among
other things, that beating one’s father or mother entails excommunication and
death.
Russian scholars, especially in more recent times, have been inclined to look
for the immediate sources of Ulozhenie provisions in the legislation of Mus-
covy for the period preceding the Code’s enactment. This means in particular
the Code of Ivan iv of 1550 and the legislation of the intermediate period, to
be found mostly in the decree collections of the departments (the ustavnye
and ukaznye knigi of the prikazy), and possibly also in the Composite Code
of 1606–1607. This approach has been fruitful and has yielded the insight that
indeed most of the Code of 1649 was derived from the large volume of leg-
islation contained in the ustavnye and ukaznye knigi. The Code of 1550, very
much oriented towards the administration of justice, was the starting-point for
Chapter 10 (On courts) of the Ulozhenie, but not much more than that, because
Chapter 10 alone was more than twice the size of the entire Code of Ivan iv.
The connection is obvious nevertheless if one compares, for instance, the first
articles of the 1550 Code and Chapter 10, or art. 2 of the 1550 Code and art. 10
of Chapter 10.
A separate source revealed by modern studies is the chelobitnie or formal
petitions addressed to the tsar by various interest groups during the restless
period preceding the adoption of the Code. The exact wording of these peti-
tions has usually been lost, but enough is known about their contents and pur-
pose and it is generally accepted that the Ulozhenie was meant to meet at least
some of the demands of certain sections of the population.
The Follow-up: Novellae or Novoukaznye stat’i
The text of the Ulozhenie itself, especially the preamble, other contemporary
sources, as well as the significance of the Code as the starting-point for the
Complete Collection of Laws in 1830 provide abundant proof of the Code’s
pretention to reflect in an official and authentic manner the entire law of
the Muscovy state. But this claim became untenable after a lapse of time
and this caused the emergence of the Novoukaznye stat’i, comparable to the
novellae of the Corpus Iuris. They were viewed explicitly as additions and
complements to the Ulozhenie; legislation which introduced new institutions
or inaugurated new trends would normally be in the form of a zakon or ustav

(“statute”).25
In a wide sense, Novoukaznye stat’i refer to all subsequent legislation,26 but
in practice a small number of decrees issued during the second half of the 17th
century is envisaged.27 Also, the absence of a clear awareness of the separation
of powers as we know it has to be kept in mind. The ‘government’, whether the
tsar by himself, the tsar together with his council, or officials and institutions
entrusted with governmental functions, would govern the country without
making much distinction between issuing general rules, taking administrative
(executive) decisions, deciding disputes submitted by parties, or trying crimi-
nal cases.
25 Literature on the Novoukaznye stat’i is not abundant; see, for instance, Vlad.-Bud., Obzor,
237–238; D’iakonov, Ocherki, 234–235; I.A. Isaev, Istoriia gosudarstva i prava Rossii, Mosk-
va, 2006 (3rd ed.), 174.
26 According to Isaev, op. cit., 178, more than 1500 items, qualifying as novoukaznye stat’i in
the wide sense, were adopted during the second half of the 17th century. E.A. Skripilev
(ed.), Razvitie russkogo prava vtoroi poloviny xvii–xviii vv., Moskva, 1992, provides a
detailed overview of the development of the various branches of Russian law during the
one-and-a-half century after the adoption of the Ulozhenie.
27 The novoukaznye stat’i can of course be found in the Complete Collection of Laws (psz).
The most frequently mentioned decrees are:
1667 (psz No.408), Novotorgovyi ustav (“New Decree on Trade”); also prp vii, 303–328;
1669 (psz No.441), “On Matters of Theft, Robbery and Homicide” (superseding most of
Chapters xxi and xxii of the Ulozhenie); also prp vii, 396–434;
1676 (psz No.633), “On Service Estates” (amending Chapter xvi of the Ulozhenie); also prp
vii, 57–71;
1676 (psz No.634), “On Hereditary Estates” (amending Chapter xvii of the Ulozhenie);
also prp vii, 72–79;
1676 (psz No.644), “On Service and Hereditary Estates” (replacing in part Chapters xvi
and xvii of the Ulozhenie and psz No.633 of the previous year); also prp vii, 79–85;
1676 (psz No.702), “On Hereditary Estates”; also prp vii, 86–88;
1680 (psz No.814), “On Hereditary Estates”; also prp vii, 94–97
1681 (psz No.860), “On Service and Hereditary Estates”; also prp vii, 97–100;
1684 (psz No.1074), Nakaz (Instruction) on the determination of estate boundaries;
1686 (psz No.1157), “On [certain urban] Households”.
section 2
The Law
∵
chapter 30
The Tsar
During the first era of Russian legal history – what we have loosely designated
as the middle ages – the prince was the central figure, although his role was
subject to very considerable transformation. After several generations of pa-
gan princes of Kiev, descendants of the alleged founder of the dynasty, Riurik,
the first Christian rulers, St. Vladimir and his son Iaroslav the Wise, set the tone
for their descendants. Ideally, the grand prince of Kiev would be regarded as
the supreme ruler, with his younger brothers (and later on cousins) serving as
subordinate rulers in the principalities assigned to them. This set-up, as could
be expected, proved to be untenable as the dynasty grew in size, and, as a re-
sult, a loose conglomerate of principalities emerged in which the Kievan grand
prince was at best a primus inter pares. Then the Mongol invasion and fall of
Kiev in 1240 radically amended the system, without destroying it completely.
The Mongol (Tatar) khan assumed the role of absolute ruler, however allowing
Russian princes to hold on to their seats, provided they professed allegiance
and observed the often heavy duties imposed on them (especially as regards
taxation and military service). But as the hold of the Tatars gradually weak-
ened and Russian princes were able to assert themselves more forcefully, the
most powerful among them started to compete again for supremacy. The grand
prince of Vladimir (later on of Moscow) came out as the winner in the end.
During the long reign of Ivan iii of Moscow (1462–1506) all major rivals were
eliminated, in particular Novgorod and Tver’. Throughout these developments,
two factors remained constant: the political and legal system revolved around
the figure of the ruling prince, and that prince would invariably belong to the
house of Riurik.
The victory of Muscovy and the concentration of supreme political power
in the hands of the Moscow grand prince created a new situation which even-
tually was also reflected in the title of the ruler. In the Chapter on the Prince
in Kievan Russia (xiii) the differentiation between various kinds of princes
was examined. The most prominent ruling princes gradually became known as
grand princes, and while some of the other princes were independent rulers,
others ruled as apanage princes under a higher prince (usually a grand prince),
and the least prominent princes, those without their own principalities, would
generally have no other option but to enter the service of a more powerful
cousin. In the course of the 14th century the grand princes of Moscow began

776 chapter 30
to style themselves “grand prince of all Russia”, and under Ivan iii this title was
converted into “sovereign lord [gosudar’] of all Russia”.1
The Title of Tsar
In 1547, the young Ivan iv (Groznyi) was crowned tsar in an elaborate ceremo-
ny designed by the metropolitan Makarii and obviously inspired by the Byzan-
tine coronation ritual. This official and formal adoption of a new title was the
culmination of a long development.2 The term itself, derived from the Latin
“Caesar”, had been used in previous centuries to denote the fullness of sover-
eign power, not in any way dependent on or subject to other powers. Only the
emperors of Byzantium and of the Holy Roman Empire and the khan of the
Mongols were regarded as rightful bearers of the title of tsar. A less restrictive
usage of the term occurred in literary texts, where “tsar” and derivative forms
(especially the verb tsarit’ and the adjective tsarskii) indicated an illustrious
ruler.3 The grand princes of Moscow had for many years been edging closer to
the title, for instance by presenting themselves as “tsar” in communications
with foreign powers.
The new title encapsulated several fundamental changes in the politico-
legal structure of Russia. While there had in the past simultaneously been nu-
merous princes and grand princes, there could only be one tsar, the supreme
ruler. Also, the title implied that Mongol-Tatar suzerainty had become a thing
of the past. The Russian Church consistently presented the tsar as the succes-
sor to the Byzantine emperor and Russia as the bulwark and refuge of Chris-
tian orthodoxy. The additional legitimacy the Rurikid dynasty had acquired
through its being descended from St. Vladimir, who brought Christianity to
Russia, was raised to a higher level by embracing the Byzantine “symphony”
of emperor and Church acting in unison, which bestowed a sacramental qual-
ity on the dignity of the monarch. The uniqueness and exclusiveness of this
position rendered obsolete the old concept of the ruling house as the ultimate
repository of sovereign power. This, incidentally, facilitated the transition to a
new dynasty at the end of the Time of Troubles.
1 E.g. in a treaty of 1494 with the Lithuanian grand duke Aleksandr (his son-in-law in 1495);
ddg No.83, 329–332.
2 See also Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 168–169.
3 Cf. Ia.N. Shchapov, “Dostoinstvo i titul tsaria na Rusi do xvi v.”, Ia.N. Shchapov, Ocherki russkoi
istorii, istochnikovedeniia, arkheografii, Moskva, 2004, 138–144 (originally published in 1999).
Shchapov also refers to W. Vodoff, “Remarques sur le valeur du terme «tsar» appliqué aux
princes russes avant le milieu du XVe siècle”, Oxford Slavonic papers, Vol. xi, 1978, 1–42.
The Tsar 777
The wife of the tsar was the tsaritsa.4 Whether this title was retained when
the tsar had died is not quite clear. Ivan iv left several wives who had been re-
pudiated and sent to convents; his last (seventh and uncanonical) wife (Maria
Nagaia) also became a nun. The widow of Boris Godunov was assassinated to-
gether with her son, tsar Fedor, a few months after the death of Boris Godunov.
The second wife (Evdoksiia Streshneva) of Mikhail, the first Romanov tsar,
survived her husband by only a few weeks. The only widow who enjoyed the
dowager-tsaritsa title for a considerable length of time was Nataliia Naryshkina
who survived her husband tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich by 18 years. She was the
mother of Peter the Great and died in 1694. After Peter the Great had taken the
title of emperor in 1721, the title of tsar (and tsaritsa) of Russia lost its o fficial
status.
There was a symbiotic relationship between “tsar” and samoderzhets (“au-
tocrat”, from Greek αύτοκρατωρ), both derived from the titles of the Byzantine
emperor. While tsar was the official title of the Russian monarch, samoderzhets
started its life in Russia in learned discourse and then penetrated gradually
into the language of the state. After Ivan iv, official texts referred to the mon-
arch as “the sovereign lord [gosudar’] tsar and grand prince of all Russia”. The
resolution of the Land Assembly in which Mikhail Romanov was proclaimed
tsar in 1613 had already added the samoderzhets title. In the following years it
was frequently used in addresses and requests to the tsar and in the preamble
to the Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649 tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich used it himself. It
continued to be used in official documents and was retained by Peter the Great
when he exchanged the title of tsar for that of emperor. The three empresses
who ruled Russia during most of the 18th century (Catherine i, Elizabeth, and
Catherine ii) styled themselves Imperatritsa i Samoderzhitsa Vserossiiskaia.
Autocracy and Public Law
If we take “public law” in its original sense (“the law that concerns the affairs of
the Roman state”5) but in a more generalized form (i.e. referring to all states),
it would be the law that regulates the state itself and its principal activities. In
present conditions, a constitution is the normal instrument for laying down the
most central and fundamental elements of public law. The constitution itself is
4 The term “tsarina” (or even “czarina”), current in ordinary English and in other European
languages, is a perversion of the German Zarin (wife of the Zar), more or less like calling a
female German prime minister the Bundeskanzlerina.
5 Publicum ius est quod ad statum rei Romanae spectat (Inst. Just. I.1.4 and Digest 1.1.1.2, both
going back to Ulpian).
778 chapter 30
a fairly recent phenomenon on the legal scene. Its roots can be traced back to
medieval times when circumstances induced competing political actors, such
as monarchs, nobles, and towns, to conclude formal pacts expressinga certain
division of political power in legal terms. During the Age of Enlightenment the
understanding that human beings were endowed with certain fundamental
and inalienable rights, to be respected and protected by the state, and the mar-
riage of the list of such rights with the statute that laid down the organization
of the state itself then produced the modern constitution.
This does not mean that public law in the above mentioned sense was fully
absent during earlier periods. The organization and the running of the state in
Kievan Russia was not a matter of despotic whim; much of it was embedded in
tradition, custom and customary law. In the Chapter on the Prince in Kievan
Russia (13) we examined the elaborate structure of customary rules and con-
tractual relationships within the Rurikid dynasty, determining who would be
eligible to rule, how succession among princes would take place, how princes
were to behave among themselves, etc.
The rise of the Muscovy tsardom and in particular the prominence of the
Russian concept of autocracy (samoderzhavie) create serious difficulties in this
perspective in dealing with the topic of public law during this era. Certainly,
one could point to various branches of public law which undoubtedly func-
tioned normally in those years. There was, for instance, a whole range of laws
regulating local government or taxation. The law on the organization of courts
and the administration of justice, a major subject within the field of public
law, continued to receive special legislative attention during the 16th and 17th
centuries. But at the core of public law, the regulation of the highest state agen-
cies, a strange void opened up as the autocratic character of the government
was more and more explicitly emphasized.6
One of the central problems of genuine autocratic rule, determination of
the person or persons to be invested with autocratic power, is probably the
most instructive in this respect. In legal terms this would come down to the law
of succession to the throne. Vladimirskii-Budanov’s treatment of this question
is illustrative of the approach adopted by the comparatively few authors who
have paid attention to this matter.7 The two main ways of acquiring the throne
of Muscovy, according to Vladimirskii-Budanov, were inheritance and appro-
priation (usvoenie). Both ways occurred in a variety of forms. He referred in
6 As expressed in art. 20 of the military code of law (Artikul Voinskii) of 1715: “His Majesty is
an autocratic [samovlastnyi] Monarch who does not have to answer to anyone in the world
about his actions”; prp viii, 325; rz iv, 331. PRoP iv, 372.
7 Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 168–177.
The Tsar 779
particular to Ivan iv Groznyi, who displayed great imagination in abandoning

and then repossessing his dignity. Of old, in the Rurikid dynasty, the elements
of automatic intestate succession of sons and appointment by the father had
always been combined. Under the immediate predecessors of Ivan iv the
practice had been established that the eldest son was appointed successor to
the throne and various arrangements were made for the other sons. Ivan iv
not only appointed sons as successors, but also withdrew appointments; he
abdicated once, and appointed an outsider (Simeon Bekbulatovich) as grand
prince of Russia, retaining a smaller principality for himself, and then dis-
missed Bekbulatovich again. It is of course possible to fit all such actions into
a legal framework, devised ex post facto, and then argue that such and such
varieties of succession to the throne were provided by the law of succession
of Muscovy.
Perhaps things look neater in such an approach, but the simple fact remains
that Ivan iv, in following his erratic course, was not in any way guided by rules
of succession which were only invented afterwards by scholars.
In Chapter 1 the position was taken that law can be defined in various ways
and that these definitions are equally valid, because law, unlike the material
world or phenomena such as language or the human psyche, is itself the prod-
uct of human invention. If Vladimirskii-Budanov and other legal historians
adopting the same approach wanted retrospectively to construct a law of suc-
cession to the throne in Muscovy, one cannot object that they were wrong, but
only that the exercise is pointless, because such a law did not exist for contem-
poraries. It is more practical to limit ourselves to those rules which actually
guided conduct in those days and then the conclusion has to be that at the
heart of the public law of Muscovy was a black hole, filled conceptually by
the idea of samoderzhavie: the will of the ruler, however unpredictable, was
the basic determinant. This left in principle little or no room for law and the
work of lawyers. But a large, late medieval state like Muscovy could not func-
tion without the administrative technicalities of local government, taxation,
etc., and this allowed the retention or penetration of legal institutions into the
field of public law.
Succession
In Kievan Russia, succession among ruling princes was governed by custom,

based on several interconnecting ideas. The most basic one was that of the
Rurikid house (or rather the descendants of St. Vladimir) as possessing the
exclusive right to rule. The next one was the priority of age. This worked at
780 chapter 30
two levels: older generations enjoyed precedence, and within one generation
precedence was given to the eldest brother. As the dynasty grew in size, the
generational aspect lost its importance and sub-dynasties ruling their own
principalities emerged. With the gradual elimination of rival principalities by
the grand princes of Vladimir-Moscow, the position of the eldest brother ev-
erywhere gained strength. The adoption of the principle of primogeniture in
inheriting the throne prevented the weakening of principalities by being divid-
ed among brothers. This adaptation of the traditional system of succession was
achieved mainly through wills of ruling princes (see the survey in Chapter 13).
As long as Tatar suzerainty remained an effective institution, the need to
secure confirmation through the khan’s iarlyk constituted an intrusive fac-
tor in the Russian succession process. Although the waning of Tatar power is
traditionally connected with the victory of Dmitrii Donskoi at the Sandpiper
Field (Kulikovo Pole) in 1380, the three consecutive wills of his son and succes-
sor Vasilii i reflected the precariousness of the position of the Moscow grand
princes.8 The first and third wills (of 1406/1407 and 1423) used the formula
“if God gives my son the grand princely dignity”, while the second will of 1417
employed the more audacious words “and I bless my son Vasilii [ii] with my
paternal heritage, the grand princely dignity”. One might speculate whether
the long practice of Tatar confirmation would not have helped to promote the
view, prevalent in later centuries, that the occupation of the throne was some-
thing that was not subject to higher rules, but to the will of the sovereign.
In this respect, the practice of later Moscow grand princes of appointing
prospective successors as co-rulers is to be noted. Vasilii ii appointed his eldest
son Ivan [iii], then 8 years old, as co-ruler in 1448. Ivan iii did the same in 1500
with his son Vasilii [iii].
When Vasilii ii the Blind died in 1462, he had his succession arranged in his
will of 1461.9 The grand princely dignity and a considerable part of his property
were bequeathed to his eldest son Ivan, while four other sons each received an
apanage (udel’noe) principality. Ivan iii survived his four brothers, of whom
two died without issue. Ivan iii and the grand princes succeeding him saw to
it that the apanage principalities assigned to the other two brothers (Andrei of
Uglich and Boris of Volok) did not survive very long.
The political and often also physical elimination of junior brothers, uncles,
cousins and nephews by Ivan iii, his son Vasilii iii, and his grandson Ivan
iv Groznyi was such a frequent phenomenon that one wonders whether the
old idea of all male members of the dynasty having an at least moral claim to
8 Cf. ddg Nos.220–22, 55–62.

9 ddg No.61, 193–199.
The Tsar 781
articipate in the exercise of the princely dignity was still very much alive and
p
presented a threat to the exclusive rule of the eldest son.
Ivan iii (*1440) died in 1506, and in his will of 1504 he had made the usual
dispositions in favour of his eldest (surviving) son Vasilii, the new grand prince,
assigning minor shares to his other four sons. But during his reign the normal
course of events was interrupted by one curious initiative of Ivan iii. His el-
dest son Ivan (*1456) had predeceased his father in 1490, leaving a son Dmitrii
(*1485). In 1497 there were rumours of a plot to kill the boy Dmitrii. The grand
prince, believing that his eldest surviving son Vasilii (*1479) and his mother
Sophia Palaeologa were involved, appointed his grandson as his heir and had
him crowned in a ceremony inspired by the ritual of the Byzantine emperors.
After a few years however Vasilii succeeded in being accepted again by his fa-
ther and Dmitrii and his mother fell into disgrace. Both of them died in prison.
One of the strange aspects of the incident from the point of view of the suc-
cession practice, was that the initiative of Ivan iii ran counter to the ancient
custom of rejecting substitution in succession. The rights, or rather expecta-
tions, of a son who died before his father were not passed on to his own son. If
your father happened to die before your grandfather you were just out of luck.
Ivan iii overruled this principle, but then retracted his innovation. Still, it was
a sign of things to come, because later on grand princes and tsars would ap-
point successors at will and then change their minds again, another indication
of how the principle of autocracy would affect traditional arrangements.
When Vasilii iii died in 1533, he left two sons, the elder, Ivan, four years old
and the other a baby. The succession was arranged in the traditional way, Ivan
was assigned the grand princely dignity and provision was made for Vasilii’s
widow Elena Glinskaia, and the younger son Iurii.10 The government was left
in the hands of his wife’s uncle, Mikhail Glinskii, and the Bel’skii princes.11
Soon after the death of the grand prince, his surviving brothers, Iurii (prince of
Dmitrov) and Andrei (prince of Staritsa), were put in prison, where they died
in 1536. The grand princess Elena, appointed as her son’s guardian by Vasilii
10 The testament of Vasilii iii is the only one missing from the collection of testaments
of the grand princes of Moscow up till Ivan iv. According to Karamzin (t.vii, 100–103),
Vasilii had his old will destroyed and a new one written, during his final illness. See also
A.E. Presniakov, “Zaveshchanie Vasiliia iii”, Sbornik statei po russkoi istorii, posviashchen-
nykh S.F. Platonovu, Petrograd, 1922, 71–80 (not available to me) and Cherepnin, Arkhivy i,
217–220.
11 Vasilii called them his plemianniki (nephews); how exactly they were related is unclear
to me. The Glinskii family were descendants of the Tatar emir Mamai (beaten by Dmitrii
Donskoi at Kulikovo Pole in 1380) who had moved to Lithuania where they had received
their title.
782 chapter 30
until Ivan would reach the age of fifteen, dismissed and imprisoned her uncle
Mikhail and so took over the reins of government. After Elena’s death in 1538,
in a foretaste of the Time of Troubles, the government was in the hands of
competing boyar clans until Ivan iv was crowned tsar in 1547 upon reaching
the age of seventeen.12
Under Ivan iv, as indicated earlier in this chapter, the regularity and pre-
dictability of the succession process suffered further inroads through the in-
creasing dominance of samoderzhavie; while his father and grandfather had
allowed themselves occasional breaches of the ancient succession customs,
Ivan iv himself treated succession like he did anybody and anything else, as
subject to every whim.
The most auspicious part of the reign of Ivan iv was the beginning, coin-
ciding with the years of his first marriage to Anastasiia, the daughter of the
boyar Roman Iur’evich Zakharin, the ancestor of the Romanov dynasty; she
died in 1560. Many important reforms were put in place and Ivan’s foreign and
domestic policies were often successful. After 1560 Ivan’s reign was a succes-
sion of weird adventures, generally carried out with shocking cruelty. There
are several theories attempting to reveal the motives behind Ivan’s behaviour.
It would seem that at least the memory of his youth could explain the anxiety
and insecurity underlying his deep suspiciousness. The first major manifesta-
tions appeared in the first four to five years after 1560; the trusted and compe-
tent advisors of the early years of his reign, Adashev and the priest Sil’vestr,
were dismissed and then there were several purges in which prominent noble-
men were exiled or executed.
Late in 1564 Ivan iv announced that he would abdicate, being disillusioned
by his advisors, his officials, the boyars, the leaders of the Church, and so on.
He set up a kind of state within the state, the oprichnina (from oprich, apart,
separate), with its own territory, lands, administration and army, to be ruled by
himself. The remainder of the country, the zemshchina, was to be run by the
Boyar Duma.13 The oprichnina then began a regime of terror which swept over
the entire country in intermittent waves, until it was officially dissolved in 1572.
From a legal point of view, the oprichnina represented a contradiction.
It appeared as a form of autocracy, reduced ad absurdum, a state of utter
12 On this period, see M.N. Tikhomirov, “Zapiski o regentsve Eleny Glinskoi i boiarskom
pravlenii 1533–1547 gg.”, Istoricheskie Zapiski, t.46 (1951), 278–288; also in M.N. Tikhomirov,
Russkoe letopisanie, Moskva, 1979, 167–183.
13 Karamzin, ix, footnote 137, offers a long quotation from the Aleksandro-Nevskaia Letopis’
(Aleksandr Nevskii Chronicle, see psrl 29, Moskva, 2009) which is probably very close to
the actual text of the decree.
The Tsar 783
lawlessness. On the other hand, it was embedded in the legal system of 16th
century Russia. It was officially enacted by decree, which had beforehand been
the subject of negotiations between the tsar and the representatives of the ma-
jor political groups, perhaps in the form of a land assembly (zemskii sobor).14
Ivan had threatened to abdicate and that made his subjects agree with the in-
troduction of the oprichnina.
Eleven years later, in the autumn of 1575, the tsar formally abdicated and
handed the title of grand prince of all Russia to Simeon Bekbulatovich, a Tatar
prince and descendant of Chingis-Khan who had joined the service of the Rus-
sian ruler and accepted baptism. He had been given the khanate of Kasimov as
his own principality.15 Ivan’s reasons were not completely clear; fear of a plot
in Moscow apparently had something to do with the bizarre decision. The new
grand prince was even less than a figurehead; Ivan iv acted openly as before as
the ruler of the country. After eleven months the charade was over.16
The last will of Ivan iv of 1574 followed the format of the wills of his prede-
cessors in naming his eldest son as his successor and making provisions for his
wife and relatives.17 The succession was made even simpler by the death of the
eldest (surviving) son Ivan in 1581, killed by his father in a rage. This left only
Fedor (*1557), who became the last Rurikid tsar at the death of Ivan iv in 1584.
(There was another son Dmitrii, one year old (born in 1583), of Ivan’s fifth mar-
riage to Maria Nagaia, of doubtful legitimacy on account of the rules of canon
law.18)
14 Cf. L.V. Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory russkogo gosudarstva xvi–xvii vv., Moskva, 1978,
100–105.
15 The khanate of Kasimov (along the Middle Oka River) had been set in 1445 by Vasilii ii as a
Tatar vassal state; it was used as an instrument in Russian-Tatar political relations and sur-
vived into the 17th century. See B.R. Rakhimzianov, Kasimovskoe khanstvo (1445–1552 gg.).
Ocherki istorii, Kazan’, 2009 also, by the same author, “Russkie kniazhestva i nasledniki
Zolotoi Ordy v xv v.: Nachal’naia istoriia Kasimovskogo khanstva”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko,
A.V. Maiorov (eds.), Rossica Antiqua 2006. Issledovaniia i materialy, Sankt-Peterburg, 2006,
360–386; and V.V. Chernovskaia, Ot Romanova do Kasimova (iz istorii sluzhiloi tatarskoi
znati), Moskva, 2014.
16 Cf. K.V. Baranov, “Kogda zakonchilos’ pravlenie Simeona Bekbulatovicha”, Russkii diplo-
matarii iii, Moskva, 1998, 156–159.
17 ddg No.104, 126–144 (elaborate pious excursions are largely to blame for the great length
of the will).
18 This Dmitrii, who had received the apanage principality of Uglich shortly after he was
born, died in 1591, apparently as the result of a stab wound suffered during an epileptic
fit. Godunov, however, was widely blamed and those rumours favoured the claims of the
so-called First Pseudo-Dmitrii after the death of Boris Godunov.
784 chapter 30
There were serious doubts about Fedor’s ability to rule and Ivan iv had ap-
pointed a small group of nobles in his latest will as executors. The most promi-
nent among them was the brother of Fedor’s wife, Boris Godunov. The latter
acted as the actual ruler of Russia, until he also secured the succession after
Fedor’s death in 1598. Although the evidence is not conclusive, there are sev-
eral indications that the enthronement of Fedor was preceded and confirmed
by a meeting of a land assembly.19
The succession of Boris Godunov was, in legal terms, the result of a deci-
sion of the Zemskii sobor, convened for the purpose of electing a new tsar.20
The resolution of the sobor pointed first to the will of Ivan iv, who allegedly
had appointed Godunov not only as the protector of Ivan’s son Fedor, but also
as the latter’s successor; then the resolution mentioned that tsar Fedor had
also appointed Godunov as his successor; finally, it referred to the unanimous
support from the clergy, the boyars, and all other sections of the population
for Godunov as the only acceptable candidate. The veracity of these various
statements may be less than complete, but they suggest that the legitimacy of
Godunov was a highly sensitive question. For many centuries all ruling princes
had been Rurikids (Mongol suzerainty apart) and this election concerned not
just any principality, but the tsardom of Muscovy, which had absorbed all for-
mer principalities.21
The precedent set by Godunov’s election confirmed the de facto status of
the Zemskii sobor as a kind of default ruler of Russia in the absence of a tsar.
This status was of decisive importance during the following years of the Time
of Troubles, until the ascent of the Romanov dynasty.
The beginning of the 17th century was marked for Russia by a series of
natural disasters, causing famines and civil unrest. Anti-government feelings
coalesced around the figure of the (First) Pseudo-Dmitrii, a pretender who
claimed to be the youngest son of Ivan iv (Dmitrii of Uglich, born in 1583
and supposedly killed in an accident, or murdered on the orders of G odunov,
in 1591). The Pseudo-Dmitrii enjoyed the support of Poland and of various
19 Cf. Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory, 126–128. This sobor took place shortly after the death of
Ivan iv on 18 March 1584 and is not to be confused with the well-documented sobor of July
1584 (rz iii, 31–35; PRoP iii/2, 223–225).
20 rz iii, 36–39; PRoP iii/2, 225–228.
21 For a brief review of the most important aspects of the election of Godunov, see Ia.G.
Solodkin, “Boris Godunov kak naslednik prezhnei dinastii (ob odnom aspekte obosnova-
niia prav novogo gosudaria na tsarstvo v publitsistike rubezha xvi–xvii vv.)”, S.N. Kis-
terev (ed.), Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii, vyp.15, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 2012, 228–237. Also:
Ia.G. Solodkin, “Priznavalsia li Boris Godunov sovremennikami zakonnym gosudarem?”,
Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii, vyp.7, Moskva, 2003, 112–128.
The Tsar 785
d isaffected elements in Russia when he appeared on the scene in the summer

of 1604. Boris Godunov died suddenly in April 1605, and in the ensuing confu-
sion support for his son and successor Fedor (only 16 years old at the time)
collapsed and little more than a month later the forces of the Pseudo-Dmitrii
entered Moscow and the young tsar was murdered. The Pseudo-Dmitrii ruled
as tsar for less than a year, when he was killed in his turn as the result of a plot
by leading boyar families. His ascent to the throne had not been based on a
decision of a land assembly but on military conquest. He was crowned tsar,
however, in the official fashion.
Prince Vasilii Shuiskii, one of the leaders of the boyar plot, was elected
tsar then in May 1606 by a council of boyars, although most authors doubt
that such an informal cabal could qualify as a land assembly.22 In any case,
Vasilii’s four-year rule remained restless and insecure and his actual control
over the Russian territory was limited. Within a year after the First Pseudo-
Dmitrii had been killed a new pretender appeared, claiming that Dmitrii of
Uglich was still alive. This pretender, known as the Second Pseudo-Dmitrii,
set himself up in the village of Tushino, near Moscow (hence his nickname
“the Thief of Tushino”), where he established himself as tsar in the summer
of 1608 and laid siege to Moscow. At that moment there were two parallel
governments in Russia, each with its own tsar, court, boyar council, etc. The
‘tsar’ in Tushino even appointed his own patriarch.23 In July 1610 Vasilii Shuis-
kii was forced to abdicate and to accept being tonsured a monk.24 A group of
seven boyars, headed by prince F.I. Mstislavskii, installed itself as a temporary
22 Cf. Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory, 153–154. The Shuiskii princes were descendants of Andrei
Iaroslavich, a younger brother of Aleksandr Nevskii, and the founder of the line of grand
princes of Suzdal’ and Nizhnii Novgorod.
23 This was Fedor Nikitich Romanov, whose father Nikita was a brother of the first wife of
Ivan iv Groznyi. Under tsar Boris Godunov the Romanovs, who had reached great promi-
nence under Ivan iv and his son tsar Fedor, fell into disgrace and Fedor Romanov was
forced to become a monk. He returned from exile in a remote monastery under the
First Pseudo-Dmitrii, who made him metropolitan of Rostov. He left the camp of the Sec-
ond Pseudo-Dmitrii in time and then headed the delegation which was sent to Warsaw in
August 1610 for the negotiations with king Sigismund about the Russian succession. When
these talks collapsed, he was taken prisoner by the Poles and spent the next nine years in
Polish captivity, to return to Moscow in 1619, where his son Mikhail had in the meantime
become the first Romanov tsar.
24 Whether the deposition of Vasilii was formalized as a decision of the Zemskii sobor or
whether it was the outcome of a conspiracy of boyars, successfully invoking the dissat-
isfaction affecting the common people, is a matter of dispute; cf. Cherepnin, Zemskie
s obory, 160–167.
786 chapter 30
government.25 It declared tsar Vasilii Shuiskii as deposed and indicated that

its main concern would be the election of a new tsar. In the same month the
Thief of Tushino was defeated and killed.
A land assembly, meeting in August 1610, decided to invite the Polish crown
prince Władysław (*1595) to accept the Russian throne.26 This decision, how-
ever, was never implemented because of disagreements with Władysław’s fa-
ther, the Polish king Sigismund iii Wasa. At that point the Time of Troubles
had reached its nadir. Moscow was occupied by Polish troops and the govern-
ment of the seven boyars had lost its grip of the situation. Various armed bands
roamed the country. The year 1611 passed in a long sequence of private wars,
shifting alliances and invasions by foreign armies. Novgorod was taken by the
Swedes, Smolensk by the Poles. Russia seemed to be disintegrating completely.
Recovery started in the provincial towns where the urban population took
the initiative into its own hands. Foremost was Nizhnii Novgorod, where a
charismatic merchant and local notable, Kuz’ma Minin, began organizing the
citizenry in the autumn of 1611. He allied himself with prince Dmitrii Pozhar-
skii, an experienced military commander and local landowner. The forces put
in motion by these two leaders swept over the country and found ready sup-
port in many other regions. In October 1612 Moscow finally fell to the new na-
tional army of Pozharskii and Trubetskoi (the commander of a Cossack army
which had joined Pozharskii’s forces).
A new land assembly was convoked and began its deliberations in January
1613 in order to elect a new tsar. On 7 February 1613 Mikhail Romanov (*1596)
25 Fedor Mstislavskii’s father was Ivan Fedorovich Mstislavskii, one of the leaders of the gov-
ernment of the zemshchina, appointed by Ivan iv in 1564 at the beginning of the oprich-
nina. He was also appointed as one of the guardians of tsar Fedor by Ivan iv in his will
in 1584. Fedor Ivanovich Mstislavskii was the head of the semiboiarshchina (the seven
boyar’s rule) from 1610–1612. He reputedly turned down the offer to be elected tsar, al-
though the Mstislavskii’s were closely related to the tsars. The mother of Ivan Fedorovich
was a first cousin of tsar Ivan iv, she was the daughter of the grand princess Evdokiia,
daughter of Ivan iii. But the Mstislavskii’s were Gediminids instead of Rurikids.
26 This initiative was not as strange as it may look at first glance. The options were limited at
that time and the Polish prince would have been required to embrace Russian orthodoxy
and marry a Russian woman. The text of the treaty concluded with Poland has not been
included in the major collections of Russian documents of legal history (prp, rz and
PRoP). It was published in several 19th century collections; for more detail see Sergeevich,
Drevnosti ii, 408–409, and Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory, 163–164, who both offer excerpts
and further bibliographical references. See also R. Crummey, The Formation of Muscovy
1304–1613, London/New York, 1987, 226. Russian authors often describe the policies of the
semiboiarshchina (the seven boyars’ rule) as treacherous.
The Tsar 787
was elected, the son of Fedor Nikitich Romanov, then in Polish captivity. The
grounds cited for choosing Mikhail Romanov in the resolution of the Zemskii
sobor were his family connections with the old dynasty.27 In settling on a poor-
ly gifted boy as a compromise candidate, the various factions determining the
outcome of the election avoided making a choice which would seem unfairly
advantageous to one of them. The situation was fundamentally changed when
Mikhail’s father, Fedor Nikitich (then patriarch Filaret), was released by his
Polish jailers in 1619. The energetic and forceful Filaret ruled Russia officially
together with his son, the tsar, but was in fact the decisive force, until his death
in 1633. When tsar Mikhail died in 1645, he was succeeded without difficulty by
his only son Aleksei, who, like his father, was 16 years old when assuming the
dignity of tsar.
The Tsar’s Court
The court of a truly medieval or pre-medieval ruler was a significant locus of

law, in that it was a place where law originated and was administered. This as-
pect of the princely court diminished with the growing complexity of govern-
ment. The creation of law and the administration of justice were then located
elsewhere. The court of the monarch continued and even grew as an organized
entity, but its institutional relevance in legal history diminished, although it did
not disappear, as demonstrated by the third chapter of the Ulozhenie of 1649:
“About the Court of the Sovereign, that there will not be any misbehaviour or
fighting by anyone in the Sovereign’s court”. The nine provisions of this chapter
lay down heavy penalties for all kinds of fights, brawls, etc., in the tsar’s palace.
The chronicles contain many stories about such happenings in the court of
the Moscow grand prince. Most provisions distinguish between misbehaviour
in the presence of the tsar, which attracted more severe punishment, or in his
absence. Most of them also envisage situations arising in the tsar’s (Moscow)
palace, but several provisions extend the protective regime of this chapter also
to the surroundings of the tsar on his travels.
27 prp iv, 563–565; PRoP iii/2, 233–234. As mentioned above, his father was a first cousin of
the last fully legitimate tsar, Fedor Ivanovich. It seems that in the view of the contempo-
raries the close genealogical links with the last Rurikid rulers were more important than
the legitimacy provided by the resolution of the Zemskii Sobor; see M. Perrie, “Izbran-
nyi tsar’ i prirozhdennye gosudari: Mikhail Romanov i ego soperniki”, A.P. Pavlov (ed.),
Gosudarstvo i obshchestvo v Rossii xv – nachala xx veka. Sbornik statei pamiati Nikolaia
Evgen’evicha Nosova, Sankt-Peterburg, 2007, 233–246.
788 chapter 30
The old court ranks of boyars, okol’nichie, etc., as they existed under the
Moscow grand princes, survived until the era of Peter the Great, who replaced
them with an entirely new system in 1722, the Table of Ranks, which listed
court ranks as a third category along with military and civil ranks.
Still, the strict separation known in modern times between the royal court
as a symbolic forum for state ceremonial and international representation of
the state, and, on the other hand, the actual government of the state as real-
ized in offices and courthouses, was unknown during the regime of the tsars.
Emerging government departments, the prikazy, were initially located in the
sprawling ensemble of the Moscow Kreml. The machinery of government as it
started to blossom into an independent institution was run by courtiers, whose
chanceries were in the immediate vicinity of the tsar’s residence. Their rise,
organization and operation will be discussed in the next chapter.
chapter 31
The Tsar’s Government
A Boyar Duma?
In the earliest times, the prince would conduct his business (in which no
clear distinction between government and the prince’s private affairs could be
made) in the company of his druzhina, his comrades-in-arms, and out of this
informal consultation grew the later practice of the prince deciding important
matters after receiving the advice of his boyars. This was discussed in the first
part of this work in Chapter 14, in the section on the Boyar Duma, and the
controversies concerning the character of this body in Kievan and post-Kievan
times continue when one investigates the role of the Boyar Duma in Muscovy.
It is undeniable that in the course of the 16th century the participation of
boyars in government became a regular feature, to the extent that it could
be designated as an institution of the central government. What remains
questionable is whether a “Boyar Duma” could be regarded as a comparatively
independent body, functioning alongside the monarch himself. The view that
this was indeed the case is widespread and goes back to Kliuchevskii who de-
voted one of his major works to the Boyar Duma, its history, its powers, its
organization, etc.1
The controversy concerning the Boyar Duma provides an apposite illustra-
tion of the dilemma indicated in the section on Medieval History in Chapter 1.
In order to understand more detailed topics, one requires some general under-
standing of the historical context. But such a general understanding has to be
based primarily on knowledge of detailed topics. Kliuchevskii’s conceptualiza-
tion of the Boyar Duma has imposed itself on the views of many historians,
because it is neat, attractive, and generally consistent with the available facts.
But the alternative view, put forward by Sergeevich, is also consistent with the
facts, and it is simpler.2 Sergeevich argued that the autocratic power of the tsar,
the samoderzhavie, constituted the ground rule. The tsar was free to delegate or
1 V.O. Kliuchevskii, Boiarskaia Duma Drevnei Rusi, Moskva, 1902 (3rd ed.), repr. Moskva, 1994.
2 Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 384–430; in this part of a longer chapter on the prince’s council
(371–453) Sergeevich explained his own view on the Boyar Duma; in the following chapter
(454–517) he argued against the views of Zagoskin, Kliuchevskii, Vladimirskii-Budanov and
several other authors. The question has also been discussed by him more briefly in Lektsii,
269–279.

790 chapter 31
to invite advisors, but this in no way restricted his freedom of action. It would
therefore be misleading, from a legal point of view, to speak of the competence
or (legal) powers of other public agencies. Sergeevich did not deny the almost
permanent presence of advisors around the tsar, but rejected the existence of
a clearly defined body in possession of circumscribed powers.
The Chosen Council

An independent action of a council of boyars could only occur under excep-
tional circumstances. Such circumstances arose several times during the Time
of Troubles, when there was temporarily no functioning monarch. Another
example would be the first years of the reign of Ivan iv, when on account of
his youth actual political power and initiative were in the hands of a “Chosen
Council” (Izbrannaia Rada), which was similar in its composition to a boyar
council as it occasionally operated later on. The Council came into being in
1547 after the great fire of Moscow; this event provoked serious riots in Moscow,
which deeply shook the young tsar. For many years after that he put his trust
in a small group of advisors, headed by A.F. Adashev, one of the most talented
‘prime ministers’ Russia ever had. Among the other members of the Council
were Sil’vestr, a well-educated and charismatic priest who also served as the
tsar’s spiritual advisor, the princes A.M. Kurbskii and D.I. Kurliatov, and the
d’iak (secretary) I.M. Viskovatyi who, together with Adashev, handled Musco-
vy’s foreign policy. After the death of his first wife Anastasia in 1560, Ivan iv lost
faith in his council and all its members fell into disgrace.3 Although Russian
historians have disagreed and continue to disagree about the institution of a
Boyar Duma, it seems that everyone is willing to admit that Adashev’s council
constituted the actual government of Muscovy, together with tsar Ivan iv, dur-
ing the years following the events of 1547.4 There are also clear indications that
this government, inspired most likely by the example of Poland-Lithuania, at-
tempted to balance the powers of the tsar with those of the higher aristocracy.
3 Adashev died in prison, Kurbskii fled to Lithuania (from where he started his famous cor-
respondence with Ivan iv), Kurliatov and Viskovatyi were executed, and Sil’vestr was sent to
a monastery.
4 Zimin has published a list enumerating appointments of boyars during the 1550–1560 period,
taking for granted that the persons mentioned on the list constituted the Boyar Duma. How-
ever, there was no mention of a boyar duma on the list, which merely gave the names of per-
sons appointed during the active period of Adashev’s Chosen Council. The same source (the
“Court Notebook”, Dvorovaia Tetrad’) also gave a list of okol’nichie appointed during the same
period and nobody would suggest that there ever was a council of okol’nichie. Cf. A.A. Zimin,
“Dvorovaia tetrad’ 50-kh godov xvi v. i formirovanie sostava Boiarskoi dumy i dvortsovykh
uchrezhdenii”, Arkheograficheskii Ezhegodnik xii, Moskva, 1981, 28–47.
The Tsar’s Government 791
The unofficial designation Izbrannaia Rada goes back to the famous cor-
respondence between prince Kurbskii and Ivan iv, where it was used by the
former.
Boyars, “All Boyars”, the Boyar Duma

Turning to the documentary record now, the first observation should be that
the Boyar Duma made its first appearance in the 19th century as a construct of
historians. There are all kinds of indications from earlier sources of groups of
prominent people serving as advisors to the ruler, but the closest one gets to
something like a boyar council is the references to “the tsar’s council” ( tsarskii
sigklit) in chronicles and similar sources and occasionally in official documents,
such as the preamble to the Council Resolution (Sobornoe ulozhenie) of tsar
Vasilii Shuiskii of 1607, which mentioned that the resolution had been reached
after consultation with the patriarch, the Holy Council, and the tsarskii sigklit.5
(The joint participation of the Holy Council and a council of dignitaries actu-
ally made the assembly qualify as a land assembly (Zemskii sobor), which is
also suggested by its title of Sobornoe ulozhenie; see the following section.)
The designation sigklit (sigklet, sinklet),6 unlike “boyar duma”, is regularly
encountered in contemporary sources from the 16th and 17th century, where it
referred generally to an advisory collective, serving the tsar, without any con-
notation of it being a body with specific powers or a fixed composition.
The activities of a circle of advisors serving the prince are well-known from
earlier periods. Such people already appeared in the preambles to the Pravda
of Iaroslav’s Sons and of the Statute of Monomakh. The Testament of Mono-
makh, included in the Primary Chronicle, enjoined the prince as part of his
daily routine “to sit and deliberate with your retinue”. For the following centu-
ries evidence is scarce, but from the middle of the 16th century (the beginning
of the reign of Ivan iv) the participation of boyars is well-documented.
An interesting example from earlier times is a charter from the Riazan’
grand prince Oleg Ivanovich from around 1371, in which a village was granted
to the Mother of God monastery in Ol’gova Sloboda. The prince mentioned
that he acted with the blessing of the bishop of Riazan’ and Murom and after
consultation with his boyars, and then added: “and the boyars who were with
me were [nine names follow]”.7
5 prp iv, 586.

6 From Greek σύγκλητος, “something that has been called together, senate”. The term is used,
for instance, in the correspondence between Ivan iv and Kurbskii, in reference to the Chosen
Council.
7 The charter is mentioned by Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 379–380; full text in asei iii, No.322,
350–352.
792 chapter 31
The Code (Sudebnik) of 1550 is often mentioned as an indication of the exis-

tence of a boyar council, because its preamble related that the Code had been
established by the tsar, “together with his brothers and boyars”. This formula
was clearly inspired by the Code of Ivan iii of 1497, established by the grand
prince, “together with his children and boyars”.8 At that time there was no sign
of any boyar council, so the formula has little evidentiary value.
There is a large number of decisions in which the participation of boyars
is mentioned, dating from the century between the two Codes (of 1550 and
1649). Reference is made to “boyars” or “all boyars”, but not to a more specific
“boyar council”. The distinction between decisions concerning specific dis-
putes or requests (adjudication) and resolutions establishing general rules to
be applied in future (legislation) is not made, as a modern lawyer would do.
And even a modern observer cannot help noticing that the two categories of-
ten overlapped, when an individual case had been submitted, resulting in a
decision expressed as a general regulation. The decisions of government de-
partments (prikazy) were often taken in order to resolve a particular case or
dispute and then at the end of the decision its effect was extended to all future
similar cases.
In Sergeevich’s view, the participation of boyars in decision-making was to
be set against the background of the absolute supremacy of the power of the
tsar. In principle, the tsar decided everything, and often enough he did not
bother to consult any advisors. There are numerous decisions, of a regulatory
nature as well as in individual cases, where the tsar is mentioned without any
reference to boyar participation. The usual expression was tsar’ ukazal (“the
tsar directed”).
In most cases, the matter was presented to the tsar by a reporter, often a
boyar or somebody of slightly lower rank (such as an okol’nichii).
In more complicated cases, the tsar would surround himself with some
trusted advisors, selected by himself. They usually included a few boyars and
okol’nichie, d’iaki (secretaries, clerks, who wrote down everything and who
were in fact often the real experts), and perhaps a few experienced and compe-
tent officials from the lower nobility (dumnye dvoriane). They were collectively
referred to as “the boyars” and they could be asked to give an opinion about the
report (doklad) that had been presented and/or to formulate the tsar’s brief
decision in a more extensive manner. This decision then used such terms as
tsar’ ukazal i boiare prigovorili (“the tsar directed and the boyars spoke/judged/
expressed themselves”).9
8 Ivan iv was still childless in 1550.

9 E.g. prp v, 237, a decision of 1647, taken on the doklad (report) of the okol’nichii B.I. Pushkin
and two clerks.
As indicated above, among the questions decided by the tsar after hearing
the opinion of (a few) boyars, review of decisions of various courts constituted
a major proportion. In the course of time the practice emerged of a small num-
ber of boyars and d’iaki preparing cases to be reported to the tsar. As such com-
mittees acquired more experience, the tsar was increasingly inclined to leave
the handling of routine matters entirely to them. In the second half of the 17th
century this practice was consolidated in the appearance of the Raspravnaia
Palata (Justice Chamber), also known as the Zolotaia Palata (Golden Chamber,
from the place where it convened), as a more or less regular supreme court.10
The Code of 1649 already referred to the emerging practice in art. 2 of Ch. 10.11
This body, of course, is not to be confused with a Boyar Duma. (See further
Chapter 38, on Courts and Justice.)
A small number of decisions is reported as taken by the tsar “with all the
boyars”. Several are from the first few years of the reign of Ivan iv, and Ser-
geevich observed that during these years Ivan’s principal advisors, Adashev
and the priest Sil’vestr, attempted to bring about a system in which a boyar
council would constitute a counterweight to the power of the tsar.12 An im-
portant decree on slavery/serfdom was issued in 1597 by tsar Fedor Ivanov-
ich “with all boyars”.13 Tsar Fedor was the ineffective son of Ivan iv who ruled
only in name, while in fact his brother-in-law Boris Godunov controlled the
government. The decree formed part of Godunov’s policies towards the trans-
formation of slavery into serfdom. These various circumstances may explain
the format of the decree. Another special case is offered by a decree of 1603
of tsar Boris Godunovand the tsarevich Fedor, “with all the boyars”, on manu-
mitted slaves.14 Godunov’s parlous political position at that time, his patent
eagerness to boost the status of his 16-year-old son Fedor, and the subject it-
self (the boyars were among the principal owners of slaves) may again explain
the involvement of “all boyars”. What makes the formula of “all boyars” more
puzzling is that its content is uncertain. It would of course include persons
who had individually been elevated to boyar status, as often happened under
10 Cf. Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 439–450. Also Kliuchevskii, Boiarskaia Duma, 430–433.
11 “Disputed cases which for some reason cannot be resolved in the prikazy [departments],
are to be referred from the prikazy to […] the tsar […] and his […] boyars and okol’nichie
and duma servitors. And the boyars and okol’nichie and duma servitors shall sit in the
chamber and handle all the sovereign’s cases all together, in accordance with the sover-
eign’s decree.”
12 prp iv, 363–370, a lengthy general regulation of 1556 on guba matters, including an in-
struction to append it to the Code of 1550; prp iv, 583–586, of 1555–1556, partial abolition
of mestnichestvo system.
13 prp iv, 370–374.
14 prp iv, 375.
794 chapter 31
Ivan iv and his successors. But prominent members of leading princely fami-
lies would probably also have been regarded as boyars. The boyars envisaged
by the standard formula i boiare prigovorili (“and the boyars gave their judg-
ment”) obviously included the few non-boyars (okol’nichie, Duma nobles and
Duma clerks) who had taken part in the deliberations. In the conception of a
Boyar Duma as a well-defined body this problem is easier to solve (“all boyars”
would then be all members of the Boyar Duma). (See also the section on boyars
in Chapter 19, and Chapter 32, on Territory and Population).
In exceptionally weighty decisions, such as the adoption of the Codes of
1550 and 1649, the involvement of boyars would probably refer to anybody who
could reasonably be considered to enjoy boyar status and who was present at
the grand session concerned.
The years of the oprichnina of Ivan iv, starting in 1564, added a special twist
to the story of boyar involvement at the highest level of government. In the de-
cree introducing the partition of the entire state (territory, government, admin-
istration) into two parts,15 Ivan regulated the affairs of his “special share” (the
meaning of oprichnina) in considerable detail and assigned “the state of Mus-
covy, the army, justice, government, and all other national [zemskie] matters”
cavalierly to his boyars, specified as “prince Ivan Dmitrievich Bel’skii, prince
Ivan Fedorovich Mstislavskii and all boyars”. A number of boyars, however, had
been selected by Ivan to be included in his oprichnina administration. Depart-
mental officials (in the prikazy) were ordered to continue working as before
and to report to “the boyars” instead of to the tsar, as had happened before.
The boyars of the non-oprichnina part of the country (the zemshchina) were
left free to decide the matters left to them, except in military and “important
national [zemskie]” affairs, where they had to report to the tsar as before. Ser-
geevich did not use the term “boyar duma”, but accepted that there was a board
of boyars which carried out the extensive duties entrusted to “the boyars”.16 On
the other hand, regular government soon became impossible when a veritable
regime of terror was unleashed in which most of the prominent members of
the zemshchina administration were swept away.
The short intervals during the Time of Troubles when there was no func-
tioning tsar constituted an exception. Then of course only boyar judgments
could be expected, especially during the short period of the semiboiarshchina
(the seven boyars’ rule) from 1610 to 1612.
15 The actual text of the decree has been lost, but Karamzin (ix, footnote 137) has a very
long quotation, taken from the Aleksandr Nevskii Chronicle (Aleksandro-Nevskaia Leto-
pis’, psrl xxix), which has the appearance of being very close to the authentic text. See
also Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 432.
16 Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii, 432–438.
On 17 August 1610 the boyar government concluded a treaty with the Polish
commander-in-chief, hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski, concerning the succes-
sion of the Polish crown prince Władysław to the Muscovy throne. This treaty
considerably restricted the rights of the monarch, who required the assent of
boyars and duma members (dumnye liudi) in numerous instances. Again, there
was no mention of a boyar duma, and the ruling band of boyars was obviously
thinking of itself.17
To complete the picture the aspect of the prikazy (departments) has to be
added. These departments, taking shape during the early years of the reign
of Ivan iv, were headed by appointed boyars and were assigned specific gov-
ernment concerns. Occasionally, the tsar would delegate a complicated matter
entirely to a group of boyars, with or without specific instruction on how to
decide. These are the cases where one can speak of a boyar judgment (boiarskii
prigovor).18
For legal history, the Robbery (or Brigandage) Department was of particu-
lar importance because it played a central role in the administration of crim-
inal justice. It formulated new criminal law and also served as an appellate
court.19 The tsar himself would occasionally be present and decide questions
personally.20
Art. 98 of the Code of 1550

The last four articles of the Code of 1550 could be regarded as concluding pro-
visions (art. 97 deals with retroactivity, art. 99 with the promulgation of the
Code, and art. 100 is an appendix concerning jurisdiction of apanage princes),
of which art. 98 is the most fundamental and also the one that has been the
subject of endless disputes.21 It reads: “And whatever new cases will come up
17 The treaty was based on, but different from, an earlier draft treaty of 14 February 1610,
between a group of leading boyars, who had taken the side of the Second Pseudo-Dmitrii
against tsar Vasilii Shuiskii, and the Polish king Sigismund. Cf. Sergeevich, Drevnosti ii,
408, and L.V. Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory russkogo gosudarstva xvi–xvii vv., Moskva, 1978,
163–164.
18 E.g. prp iv, 376, a decision of 1606, taken by the boyars of the Serfdom Department,
with an instruction to add the decision to the (copy of the) Code (of 1550), as kept in the
Department.
19 A number of boyar judgments from the Razboinyi Prikaz in prp v, 201–202 (1619), 202–203
(1620), 203 (1624), 204–205 (1625), 205–206 (1628), 206–207 (1628), 217–220 (1636).
20 E.g. prp v, 224–225 (1637). Apart from tsar Mikhail and the reporter okol’nichii M.M.
Saltykov, the boyars prince I.B Cherkaskoi, F.I. Sheremetev, and prince Iu.Ia. Suleshev, as
well as the Duma clerks I. Gavrenev and M. Danilov were reported to be present.
21 This discussion is the topic of a special paper by I.Ia. Froianov, which summarizes the
various viewpoints presented since Kliuchevskii; I.Ia. Froianov, “Kommentarii k stat’e 98
796 chapter 31
that have not been described in this Code, such cases shall be appended to this
Code as they have been decided by the sovereign’s report and in accordance
with the judgment of all boyars.” It is the last two terms in particular that have
caused most problems.
The words are z gosudareva dokladu i so vsekh boiar prigovoru. The adjectival
form of gosudarev doklad allows the reading that the tsar was the one to whom
the doklad was made or that he was the author of the doklad. Many authors
have concluded that this provision implied joint decision-making (concern-
ing additions to the Sudebnik) by the tsar and a council of (all) boyars, and
that it therefore offered additional evidence for the existence of a Boyar Duma.
Sergeevich accepted the conclusion that art. 98 restricted the tsar’s freedom
to legislate by requiring the agreement of another power.22 He viewed the in-
clusion of art. 98 in the Code of 1550 as an attempt by Adashev and Silvester
to bring about a constitutional reform which would introduce some kind of
balance of powers, such as existed in other contemporary states, into the body
politic of Muscovy. In practical terms, he felt, the position created for “all the
boyars” by art. 98 would in fact be appropriated by the Chosen Council; in the
end, however, the provision remained a dead letter, because it was rejected, as
was the entire Chosen Council, by Ivan iv.
In Conclusion
The still dominant view is that there was an official body, the Boyar Duma,
its members appointed by the tsar (presumably), which functioned concur-
rently with the tsar as co-legislator and as supreme court. This view goes back
to Kliuchevskii and Vladimirskii-Budanov. All instances of boyar ‘judgments’
(decisions) referred to above are then regarded as manifestations of the ac-
tivities of this boyar council, even though a boyar duma is never mentioned
as such. Samoderzhavie, as a specific form of Russian autocracy, is however an
undeniable fact and was explicitly recognized as such by contemporaries. The
Boyar Duma is not only an invention of 19th-century historians, its supposed
role in the government of Muscovy is also difficult to reconcile with Muscovy
autocracy. And, moreover, how could a body whose composition was appar-
ently completely dependent on the wishes of the tsar act as a more or less
Sudebnika 1550 g.”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Issledovaniia po istorii srednevekovoi Rusi. K
80-letiiu Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 2006, 145–155.
22 Drevnosti ii, 404–408.
independent co-ruler? Application of Occam’s razor would clearly favour the

approach taken by Sergeevich.23
Autocracies are affected by an inherent instability, because it is difficult to
solve the inevitable succession problem in a satisfactory way. Unstable and
even chaotic intervals are therefore a common phenomenon, and in such situ-
ations small cliques of prominent politicians will take control. But these in-
tervals themselves are unstable and temporary because they are in fact power
struggles in the process of selecting a new autocrat.
In sum:
1. A Boyar Council as such is nowhere mentioned in the sources.

2. In certain cases a person’s status as boyar is clear (when he has been ap-
pointed as such, when he is a boyar vvedennyi or boyar putnyi); in other
cases boyar rank may be assumed (e.g. members of the most prominent
Rurikid families); other prominent noblemen (vel’mozhi) may customar-
ily be regarded as boyars. All in all, the boyar class cannot be precisely
defined.
3. There is ample evidence that the formula boiare prigovorili (“the boyars
advised/judged/decided”) usually referred to matters in which also other
persons, not enjoying boyar rank, participated (okol’nichie, dumnye dvori-
ane, dumnye d’iaki).
4. The tsar could decide matters alone, or he could do so in the company of
advisors invited by him – an ad hoc Boyar Duma.
5. When for whatever reason the autocratic decision-making process was
stalled (absence of tsar, inability of tsar, etc.), a group of magnates would
usually take control and constitute a temporary government, which could
also be designated as a Boyar Duma.
The Land Assembly (Zemskii Sobor)
The Land Assembly (Zemskii sobor) emerged in the middle of the 16th cen-
tury, when the Old-Russian popular assembly, the veche, had disappeared
everywhere. As explained in Chapter 15, the veche only survived the Mongol
conquest in the Russian North-West, in particular in Novgorod and Pskov. But
23 Froianov, op. cit., 151, after a critical discussion of the principal viewpoints, concluded that
the view of Sergeevich was to be preferred. Alekseev, U kormila, 276, also seems to belong
to the agnostics, where the Boyar Duma is concerned.
798 chapter 31
after the subjugation of these territories under Ivan iii, veche meetings were
thenceforth forbidden.
Comparisons between the veche and the Zemskii sobor are a recurrent theme
in Russian historiography and, of course, similarity cannot be completely re-
jected. Both bodies represented popular assemblies, but did they not have
much more in common. It would be misleading to regard the Land Assembly
as a kind of successor to the veche.24 The latter was intrinsically connected
with a considerable amount of urban autonomy, especially in Novgorod and
Pskov, and veches could generally be convoked by the population itself. The
presence of the local prince was not required, although it was by no means
uncommon. In Novgorod and Pskov the veche regularly dismissed the ruling
prince. The Land Assembly, as it arose under Ivan iv, was a body which only
functioned within a relationship of complete dependence of the prince (the
tsar). Only in later years, especially during the Time of Troubles, might a situ-
ation occur when there was no tsar available, and then, depending on various
factors, the Land Assembly would sometimes act on its own.
Historiography
The Land Assembly of Muscovy is a subject that has evoked much more reso-
nance in the national history debate than the Boyar Duma. Whatever concep-
tion one embraces about the latter affects one’s view of the nature of autocracy
in Muscovy, whether the monarch did in fact share power to some extent with
the higher echelon of the aristocracy. The way one understands the Land As-
sembly has much wider ramifications, not only for the appreciation of samo-
derzhavie, but also for the idea of popular representation, the legitimation of
political power, the impact of Orthodoxy (as opposed to the political culture
of Western Europe), etc. The 19th-century slavophiles regarded the Zemskii
Soboras an authentic Russian creation, radically different from the ‘estates’ of
medieval Europe.25 Others then felt that it was in many ways comparable to
West-European institutions.26
24 The slavophiles in particular were fond of this idea.

25 The term Zemskii Sobor itself was coined by K.S. Aksakov (1817–1860) one of the founders
of the slavophile movement. It was taken up by the legal historian I.D. Beliaev in his work
Zemskie sobory na Rusi. Ot Ivana Groznogo do Ekateriny Velikoi, Moskva, 1867 (reprint of
3rd ed., Moskva, 2011).
26 Pavlov-Sil’vanskii (1869–1908), in line with his general inclination to play down differ-
ences between medieval Russia and medieval Western Europe, was a strong supporter
of this approach; cf. N.P. Pavlov-Sil’vanskii, Feodalizm v Rossii, Moskva, 1988, 133–138 (this
publication combined Feodalizm v Drevnei Rusi, Sankt-Peterburg, 1907, and Feodalizm v
udel’noi Rusi, Sankt-Peterburg, 1910).
In his posthumously published “Land Assemblies of the Russian State in

the 16th and 17th century” L.V. Cherepnin provided an extensive overview of
pre-revolutionary, Soviet and foreign writings on the subject.27 For the time be-
ing, Cherepnin’s study remains the most recent comprehensive monograph on
the land assemblies,28 a successor to the major studies on this topic from the
pre-revolutionary past by Latkin and Sergeevich.29 Among the works of Soviet
authors, M.N. Tikhomirov’s lengthy study of the Land Assemblies of the 16th
century (up to 1598) deserves to be mentioned.30
Among the most important studies by Western authors Torke’s work has
been the most comprehensive.31 Other significant contributions were made by
Szeftel, Stökl and Keep.32
The Definition and the Legal Nature of the Land Assembly

In matters concerning the central institutions of Muscovite Russia certain
questions of legal philosophy cannot be avoided in a determined interrogation
of the information available.
27 L.V. Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory russkogo gosudarstva v xvi–xvii vv., Moskva, 1978, 5–47
(hereafter quoted as Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory). Cherepnin was brief in referring to
Western scholarship, arguing “Certain observations of the authors mentioned deserve at-
tention, but they mostly proceed from the results of the pre-revolutionary Russian bour-
geois historiography”. Only H. Torke, Die Staatsbedingte Gesellschaft. Zar und Zemlja in
der altrussischen Herrschaftsverfassung 1613–1683 (Leiden, 1974) was considered “a serious
study”.
28 A modest number of more narrowly focused studies have appeared afterwards, nota-
bly Ia.G. Solodkin, “K istorii zemskikh soborov kontsa xvi v.”, S.N. Kisterev (ed.), Ocherki
feodal’noi Rossii, 11, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 2007, 363–385.
29 V.I. Sergeevich, “Zemskie sobory v moskovskom gosudarstve”, V.D. Bezobrazov (ed.),
Sbornik gosudarstvennykh znanii, ii, Sankt-Peterburg, 1875, 1–60, also in Sergeevich, Lektsii,
172–245; V.N. Latkin, Zemskie sobory v drevnei Rusi, ikh istoriia i organizatsiia sravnitel’no
s zapadno-evropeiskimi predstavitel’nymi uchrezhdeniiami. Istoriko-iuridicheskoe izsledo-
vanie, Sankt-Peterburg, 1885.
30 M.N. Tikhomirov, “Soslovno-predstavitel’nye uchrezhdeniia (zemskie sobory) v Rossii xvi
veka”, M.N. Tikhomirov, Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo xv–xvii vekov, Moskva, 1973, 42–70 (here-
after quoted as Tikhomirov, Zemskie sobory).
31 Torke, op. cit. supra, who devoted a long chapter (Chapter 4: 119–215) to “Die moskauer
Versammlungen”.
32 M. Szeftel, “La participation des assemblées populaires dans le gouvernement central de
la Russie depuis l’époque kiévienne jusqu’à la fin du xviiie siècle”, Receuils de la Société
Jean Bodin, t.25, Bruxelles, 1965, 339–365 (Ch. 2 on the zemskie sobory, 346–361). G. Stökl,
“Der Moskauer Zemskij Sobor. (Forschungsproblem und politisches Leitbild)”, Jahrbücher
für Geschichte Osteuropas, Neue Folge 8, 1960, 149–170. J. Keep, “The Decline of the Zemsky
Sobor”, The Slavonic and East European Review, xxxvi, London, 1957, 100–122.
800 chapter 31
What has been noticed with regard to the Boyar Duma – that an institution
comes into being by being given a name – equally applies to the Zemskii Sobor.
The institution then exists in the world of ideas. Whether there is anything in
the real world which relates to this idea is another question. In the case of the
Boyar Duma the answer, in the view of some (including the present author),
is cautiously negative. The tsar was usually surrounded by a group of coun-
sellors, but the composition of this group was subject to the tsar’s whim and
constantly changing; only in exceptional circumstances, when the figure of the
tsar as the pivot of the political system was absent, might a temporarily stable
team of boyars wield decisive influence on government.
Although the Zemskii Sobor, like the Boyar Duma, received its name only
in the 19th century, its existence in the real world is well-documented. The
joint meeting of the Holy Council and an assembly of boyars, convoked by
Ivan iv (or rather by the Chosen Council which guided the tsar during these
early years of his reign) in January 1549, was followed by numerous similar
meetings in the course of the 16th and 17th centuries. The composition of the
meeting was usually enlarged later on, to include the lower service nobility,
urban representation, and even peasants, but the presence of the highest
dignitaries of the Church and the state remained a permanent and decisive
feature.33
Inevitably, the question of the definition of the Land Assembly has at-
tracted the attention of many scholars. This has resulted in serious disputes
about whether a certain meeting of church and state dignitaries and repre-
sentatives of various social groups was to be considered a zemskii sobor or not.
“The question of the definition has therefore not been solved after 1917 in the
Soviet Union.”, as Torke observed in 1974.34 This remark summarizes the mis-
understanding at the bottom of the disputes. No authority exists which can
impose a binding definition of something like the Russian Land Assembly. The
question of the definition can therefore not be resolved, because there is no
single correct solution. It all depends on the individual scholar’s preference.
It is, however, possible to describe the Land Assembly in very general terms,
in a way that is not quite adequate, but still acceptable to most scholars as a
starting-point. Within this wide category one may then introduce finer distinc-
tions narrowing down the subject. This will allow the selection of a number
of meetings that satisfy the criteria and the rejection of others that do not.
33 A few Land Assembly meetings that took place under wartime conditions or in the field
were conducted without participation of the clergy, the meeting outside Moscow in June
1611 during the siege of Moscow being the most conspicuous example.
34 Torke, op. cit., 127.
Individual preferences will then produce different lists, all of them “correct”,
provided the criteria chosen have been applied consistently.
One could suggest, by way of a general description, that the Russian Land
Assembly of the 16th and 17th centuries would at least have been considered
at the time as the representation of the country, by counting among its mem-
bers the most prominent representatives of the Church and of secular society.
Bodies satisfying these conditions appeared frequently during the period in-
dicated, although the composition of the individual assemblies varied greatly.
In the most recent Russian monograph on the Land Assembly, Cherepnin
approached the definition question from a terminological angle. He pointed
out that zemskii referred to matters of importance to the state or the whole
country, and sometimes also to “civil” as opposed to “military” questions.
A sobor, he continued, referred most often to an assembly of church dignitar-
ies, in which also the prince or other secular personalities might participate.
On the basis of these considerations he proposed that zemskie sobory in the
fullest sense of the term would be assemblies (of church and secular dignitar-
ies) dealing with matters of “grand policy”, of general interest to the state. Then
there would be other assemblies, frequently also designated as zemskie sobory,
which did not quite satisfy his description as they dealt only with military is-
sues, or judicial questions, or where the assembly served to allow the tsar to
address a wider public.35
Although terminology which only arose centuries afterwards may not be
the most fortunate starting-point, Cherepnin’s approach is entirely workable.
At the end of his study he presented a list of 57 assemblies of which some re-
cord has survived, adding several caveats. One concerned the uncertainty of
the number, because several assemblies met repeatedly over a period of time.
Some known assemblies were not included, because their only business was
to act as a (political) court in a particular case, or they were called during a
military campaign as a war council.36
The undeniable existence of the Land Assembly as a political institution
with certain lasting characteristics still leaves the question of its legal nature,
and the answer to this question depends to a great extent on one’s concept
of law. The more pragmatic approach adopted in this work concurred with
the view of Sergeevich on the Boyar Duma (that this body did not have a cir-
cumscribed composition and did not enjoy a clearly defined competence) and
35 Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory, 63–66.

36 Such as the trials of Adashev and Silvester in 1560 and of metropolitan Filipp in 1568, or
an assembly in Vladimir in 1550 in connection with the war with Kazan’; cf. Cherepnin,
Zemskie sobory, 89–91.
802 chapter 31
r esulted in the conclusion that the Boyar Duma could scarcely be regarded as
a legal institution, although the activities of the officials surrounding the tsar
would often have legal consequences.
In the case of the Land Assembly this aspect is less troublesome, because its
activities, rights and duties were in many respects outlined in advance by the
tsar or by whoever was convoking an assembly.
The Composition and Development of the Zemskii Sobor

In his attempt to reach a definition of the Zemskii sobor, Cherepnin distin-
guished between various types, the distinction being based on the subject mat-
ter of the assembly concerned. Elsewhere in his work, he proposed another
categorization, this time based on the manner of convocation: by the tsar; by
the tsar at the request of the ‘estates’; by the ‘estates’ themselves during the
absence of a tsar; for the purpose of electing a tsar.37 A third approach, also
mentioned by Cherepnin, is by considering the composition of the assembly.38
From a politico-legal point of view, the composition aspect is indeed of at least
equal weight as the subject matter of an assembly, and more important than
the question of the manner of convocation.
Almost all authors regard a meeting that took place on 27–28 February 1549
as the first Zemskii sobor.39 The main source for this assembly is a chronicle
which related that the tsar received the metropolitan and the entire Holy
Council, and a company of boyars, okol’nichie, and other high-ranking court
officials (dvoretskie and kaznachei) in his palace.40 A brief summary of the
transactions followed. The report then continued that the tsar, apparently on
the same day, addressed the (representatives of the) lower nobility (voevody,
deti boiarskie and dvoriane bol’shie).
The second Zemskii sobor on Cherepnin’s list was the assembly where the
Stoglav (see Chapter 25, on the Stoglav) was adopted. All information concern-
ing the composition of this assembly has to be derived from the text of the
Stoglav itself. The presence of the members of the Holy Council (metropoli-
tan, bishops, abbots and a few others) and the tsar himself is mentioned of
course, but the evidence for the presence of others is meagre and consists only
of some passing utterances about the tsar’s relatives and his boyars.
37 Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory, 385.

38 Ibidem, 386.
39 Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory, 68–78; Tikhomirov, Zemskie sobory, 43–52.
40 The chronicle in question is the Prodolzhenie (Continuation) Khronografa, psrl xxii,
Sankt-Peterburg, 1911, 528–529. Text also in prp iv, 575–576 and in B.D. Grekov (ed.),
Sudebniki xv–xvi vekov, Moskva/Leningrad, 1952, 183. See also Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory,
68–78.
The assembly of January 1565 took place under the most dramatic circum-
stances.41 On 3 December 1564 Ivan iv had suddenly left Moscow, proclaim-
ing that he had had enough of the traitorous behaviour of almost everybody
and that he was carving out a principality for himself (the oprichnina). Ac-
cording to the chronicles, the church hierarchs, the secular notables (boyars,
okol’nichie, lesser nobility, departmental officials, etc.) and the merchants and
(other) Moscow burghers met in the metropolitan’s court, to consider the situ-
ation. This was one of the first manifestations of the emergence of something
like the West-European estates in Muscovy. They each contributed their own
deputations to a delegation to the tsar in Aleksandrova Sloboda. The trend
continued in the following years, although there were still many zemskie sobo-
ry where only the church hierarchy and the high aristocracy were represented.
Another significant aspect of the assembly of 1565 was that the Zemskii
sobor appeared here for the first time as an actor all by itself, apart from the
tsar. Although subsequent developments demonstrated convincingly that
the Zemskii sobor was almost negligible as a potential opponent of the tsar, the
precedent had nevertheless been set.
Ivan iv died in 1584, after having reigned as tsar for 37 years, and was suc-
ceeded by his son Fedor. There are several communications, mostly from for-
eigners, about the succession procedure, but the picture remains confused.42
There was apparently a meeting of the Zemskii sobor in which Fedor was urged
to accept the throne, but what was actually decided and how the assembly was
constituted remains obscure.43
The succession of Fedor in 1598 by his brother-in-law Boris Godunov, on the
other hand, is well-documented, not only by the extensive reports in chroni-
cles and communications from foreigners, but especially by the texts of two
official acts, the “Assembly Resolution on the Election of Boris Fedorovich Go-
dunov as [the new] Tsar”, adopted by the Land Assembly some time between
17 February and 9 March 1598,44 and a “Confirmation Charter”, based on the
Assembly Resolution and issued at a somewhat later date (July or August).45
41 Cf. Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory, 100–105.

42 Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory, 125–129; Tikhomirov, Zemskie sobory, 62–64.
43 The different theories and the sources they were based on are reviewed by Ia.G. Solod-
kin, who concluded that it is indeed more likely than not that the accession of Fedor
was preceded by a meeting of the Land Assembly; Ia.G. Solodkin, “K istorii zemskikh so-
borov kontsa xvi v.”, Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii 11, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 2007, 363–385,
at 363–372.
44 Text of this Sobornoe opredelenie in rz iii, 36–39 and in PRoP iii/2, 225–228.
45 The Confirmation Charter is discussed by Cherepnin (Zemskie sobory, 137–143) and
Tikhomirov (Zemskie sobory, 64–68), both referring to its publication in the 19th c entury
series Akty sobrannye […] Arkheograficheskoiu Ekspeditsieiu (aae), t.ii, No.7, 23–24.
804 chapter 31
Although the political and legal aspects are both present in the Resolution,
the former outweigh the latter. The situation the Resolution attempted to deal
with was without precedent in Russian history. Tsar Fedor had died child-
less and without brothers or male cousins; he probably left the throne on his
deathbed to his wife Irina Godunova, whose brother Boris had been the actual
ruler of Russia for many years already. Boris was therefore in an advantageous
starting-position from a political point of view; his legal claims, however, were
weak. He did have the support of the patriarch (the Moscow metropolitanate
had been elevated to a patriarchate in 1589). The solution adopted was to use
the existing institution of the Zemskii sobor to bring about Godunov’s succes-
sion. A meeting, which normally would have been convoked by the tsar, was
this time called by the patriarch. It embraced all the usual parties46 and was
presided over by the patriarch. The Resolution listed several reasons why Boris
Godunov would be the only acceptable candidate to be the new tsar. It pointed
to his merits as leading counsellor of the late tsar, the fact (actually fiction)
that he had already been preselected by Ivan iv and more or less appointed by
Fedor, that he was the universal choice of all the delegates, that it was therefore
his divine duty to accept the throne offered to him, etc.
From the legal point of view, the main achievement was that the Resolution
established a sort of customary right of the Zemskii sobor to elect a new tsar
under certain conditions: when there was no legitimate heir and successor,
and with the implied proviso that the tsar did not owe his position to the be-
nevolence of the assembly, but to divine intervention, of which the assembly
was only an instrument.
The Charter (text not available to me) was apparently a more elaborate version of the
Assembly Resolution.
46 The full listing of the officials requesting the succession by Godunov was as follows:
“[with the blessing and prayers] of Iov, the most holy patriarch of Moscow and All Russia,
of Varlaam, metropolitan of Great Novgorod and Velikie Luki, of Germogen, metropolitan
of Kazan’ and Astrakhan, of Varlaam, metropolitan of Rostov and Iaroslavl’, of Gelasii,
metropolitan of Sarai and the Don Region, and of all archbishops and bishops, archi-
mandrites and abbots, and of all the monks, of the hermits and the desert hermits, the
archpriests and the priests and the entire clergy, and of the full Holy Council; and at the
request of the sovereign’s boyars, of prince Fedor Ivanovich Mstislavskii and all the sover-
eign’s boyars and okol’nichie, of the entire sinklit of the tsar, and all the sovereign’s gener-
als, of the gentlemen [dvoriane], stol’niki, striapchie, zhiltsy, clerks [d’iaki], deti boiarskie,
and the commanders and captains of the strel’tsy, and all service persons [sluzhilye liudi],
of the great merchants [gosti] and the trading people, of the state peasants [chernye liu-
di], and of all the countless peasant people [narodnoe khristianstvo], from one end of the
entire Russian state to the other”.
The Godunov precedent played a role in 1606 when, after the First Pseudo-
Dmitrii had been killed as a result of a boyar conspiracy, the victorious party
was looking around for a new tsar. Prince Vasilii Shuiskii, who had been one
of the principal opponents of Boris Godunov and had subsequently been
one of the leaders in the overthrow of the Pseudo-Dmitrii, was accepted as the
new tsar by the dominant boyar faction and other sections of the population
supporting its side. The procedure leading to his election hardly deserved to
be considered a Land Assembly, but an effort was made to make it look like a
proper nationwide consultation. A semblance of legitimacy was conferred on
his elevation by the fact that Shuiskii, unlike Godunov, was a genuine Rurikid.47
Four years later, Shuiskii’s reign ended in the same irregular and chaotic way
it had started. Uncontainable riots in Moscow forced him to abdicate and ac-
cording to some reports a meeting, at least resembling a Zemskii sobor, was
organized which declared Shuiskii as having lost the dignity of tsar. The gov-
ernment of the country was entrusted temporarily to a council of seven boyars
(semiboiarshchina) under the direction of prince F.I. Mstislavskii.48 One has to
keep in mind that a large part of the Muscovy territory was at the time under
the control of the Second Pseudo-Dmitrii, or rather of the Polish army sup-
porting the latter. The semiboiarshchina soon entered into negotiations with
the Poles, ultimately resulting in the invitation for the Polish crown prince to
become the new tsar and the entry of Polish troops into Moscow.
By the end of 1610 unrest in several parts of Russia increased, eventually
leading to a nationwide movement known as the First National Levy (Per-
voe zemskoe opolchenie). In the spring of 1611 a motley force, headed by a Ri-
azan’ nobleman, P.P. Liapunov, the Cossack hetman I.M. Zarutskii and prince
D.T. Trubetskoi, laid siege to Moscow. A Zemskii sobor was organized, which
met in June. Its composition was unusual, because there was no participation
from the clergy or from the urban citizenry, while on the other hand various
new categories took part: “princes and mirzas” (i.e. princes from non-Russian
Muscovy subjects), hetmans and Cossacks. This is to be explained by the cir-
cumstances: the meeting took place under wartime conditions.
47 Cf. Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory, 151–155. The text of the confirmation charter, if it ever
existed, did not survive. The Shuiskii princes were descendants of Andrei Iaroslavich,
a brother of Aleksandr Nevskii and the founder of the house of the princes of Suzdal’-
Nizhnii Novgorod.
48 Cf. Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory, 160–167. This Mstislavskii prince was the son of Ivan
Fedorovich, one of the appointed heads of the zemshchina in 1564, when Ivan iv set up
the oprichnina.
806 chapter 31
The First National Levy soon fell apart after its leader Liapunov was assas-
sinated by Cossacks (on 2 July 1611), but the Resolution of the Zemskii sobor of
30 June 1611 is one of the most interesting constitutional documents in Russian
history.49 It entrusted the government to the three leaders mentioned above,
making clear at the same time that supreme power rested with the Assembly.
The government needed the consent of the Assembly for certain major deci-
sions. Most of the Resolution was concerned with the question of recognition
and attribution of landownership, either as inherited estates (votchiny) or as
service estates (pomest’ia). The backbone of the forces consisted of dvoriane
(lower nobility) and the many years of war and civil unrest had often ruined
their estates or caused loss of ownership.
The failure of the First National Levy soon led to the much more famous
Second National Levy, launched by K.M. Ankundinov, better known as Kuz’ma
Minin, a merchant from Nizhnii Novgorod. He enlisted the support of prince
D.M. Pozharskii, an experienced military commander, and the movement
spread over most of Russia, until Moscow fell into its hands in October 1612.
The new regime set out to organize a Zemskii sobor for the election of a new
tsar and this body met in Moscow in February 1613.
The text of the ‘judgment’ (prigovor) of the Zemskii sobor of 1613, which reg-
istered the election of Mikhail Romanov as the new tsar, has been preserved.50
It was similar in many respects to the Resolution accompanying the election of
Boris Godunov in 1598. Again, the unanimity of the choice of all sections of so-
ciety received great emphasis.51 But also the family ties with the old and extinct
dynasty were pointed out.52 According to some reports, there was an expecta-
tion among leading boyars that the new tsar, who was a pious and somewhat
dim-witted young man of 17, could easily be manipulated, a factor which then
worked in his favour in getting elected. The Zemskii sobor played a prominent
role during the first six years of Mikhail’s reign, meeting at least once a year. Af-
ter the release of patriarch Filaret by his Polish captors, the latter actually took
over the reins of government from his son. Decisions were henceforth taken by
49 rz iii, 43–51 (text), 51–62 (comments). Text also in PRoP iii/2, 228–233. See also
Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory, 168–179.
50 prp v, 563–565; PRoP iii/2, 233–234.
51 There was no mention of the patriarch in the resolution of the Zemskii sobor, but that is
to be explained by the curious circumstance that the patriarch, first of all, was Mikhail’s
father Fedor, who as patriarch Filaret was at that time a prisoner of the Poles, to return to
Moscow only in 1619.
52 While Boris Godunov was the shurin (brother of the wife) of tsar Fedor, Mikhail Ro-
manov’s grandfather Nikita Romanovich was the shurin of tsar Ivan iv (brother of the
latter’s first spouse, Anastasiia Romanovna Iur’eva).
“the sovereign tsar and grand prince Mikhail Fedorovich of All Russia and the
sovereign’s father, the great sovereign Filaret Nikitich, most holy patriarch of
Moscow and All Russia” and the Zemskii sobor retreated into the background,
only to be called back when it was politically expedient. Filaret died in 1633.
In the official acceptance judgment of the Zemskii sobor in 1613, the full title
of Mikhail also included samoderzhets (autocrat) and once the dynasty became
more established and more forceful monarchs appeared on the stage, the au-
tocratic element increasingly came to the fore. This inevitably resulted in the
erosion of the influence of the Zemskii sobor and its gradual obsolescence.53
The Administration
The Expansion of the Administration under Ivan iii and Vasilii iii
In Chapter 14, on the Prince’s Government, the development of the govern-
ment’s apparatus from Kievan times up to Ivan iii was outlined in its general
aspects. The originally simple arrangement of a prince governing on a personal
basis, with the aid of a few trusted men at his court and working through a
small group of regional agents, on the basis of oral instructions, was gradually
replaced by the emergence of a central administration, staffed by a consid-
erable number of secretaries or clerks (d’iaki), and operating mainly through
procedures in writing.
The foundation for the increasing sophistication of the grand prince of
Muscovy’s central administration was provided by two court departments in
particular: the Treasury and the palace management, headed by the kaznachei
(treasurer) and the dvoretskii (major-domo, butler) respectively. The separate
activities of these officials and their staffs can already be observed during the
reign of Vasilii ii the Blind († 1462) as the rudiments of the prikaz system of
the following centuries. Other court officers with specific responsibilities also
began to acquire their own staffs, reflecting the differentiation and increased
sophistication of the governmental interests.
The Departments (Prikazy) Under Ivan iv and His Successors54

Originally, the kaznachei (treasurer) was a court official in charge of the prince’s
valuables, regalia, jewels, gold and silver, and money. Later on, important
53 See especially J. Keep, “The Decline of the Zemsky Sobor”, The Slavonic and East European
Review, xxxv, No. 86, London, 1957, 100–122.
54 Most of this section is based on D.V. Liseitsev, N.M. Rogozhin, Iu.M. Eskin, Prikazy Mos-
kovskogo gosudarstva xvi–xvii vv. Slovar’-spravochnik, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 2015.
808 chapter 31
d ocuments, such as treaties and the wills of princes, were also entrusted to the
Treasury. This allowed the Treasury to develop as the prince’s chancery, with its
own personnel, housed in the Kazennaia palata. The entire complex was first
known as the Kazennyi dvor, but with the establishment of the prikaz (depart-
ment) system the designation Kazennyi prikaz (Treasury Department) came
in use. Later on, various specialized departments were split off, each headed
by its own chief. The Treasury Department survived until 1700, when it was
absorbed as a section in the Great Palace Department. It was headed by the
kaznachei (Treasurer), an official of high rank, often a boyar or okol’nichii.
The Treasury Department is not to be confused with the Revenue Depart-
ment (Prikaz Bol’shogo prikhoda, also known as Bol’shoi prikhod), founded
around 1555 and charged with the collection of several of the most important
taxes (especially the iam). In the 17th century (at least as early as 1622) another
department was founded, known as the Great Treasury (Bol’shaia kazna, or
Prikaz Bol’shoi kazny), the main business of which was to serve as the central
mint. It was merged in 1686 with the Revenue Department.
The dvoretskii was the head of the prince’s household, responsible for the
supply of food and for buildings. This then also involved supervision over the
prince’s domains where the food and building materials came from. In the end
the dvoretskii became the manager of the prince’s own estates in the name
of the latter. This also included jurisdiction over the people working on the
prince’s lands. The prince’s estates consisted not only of agricultural land and
forests, but also of urban land and in fact a number of entire towns and several
quarters of the city of Moscow itself. The dvoretskii, like the kaznachei, was a
high official, usually of boyar or okol’nichii rank.
The department headed by the dvoretskii was known first as the Palace
Office (Dvortsovaia izba), but later on as the Great Palace Department (Pri-
kaz Bol’shogo Dvortsa). It was itself the mother department for a whole range
of specialized prikazy. It was transformed in 1724 into the Palace Chancery
(Dvortsovaia kantseliariia).
The development of the prikaz system was not the product of a purpose-
ful government policy, but occurred more or less spontaneously. From the
middle of the 15th century, the Moscow grand princes appointed trusted of-
ficials to take charge of specific problems and tasks as they arose. The gradual
disappearance of independent principalities occasioned the establishment of
special departments to deal with specific difficulties connected with the inte-
gration of these territories into the Muscovy state. Examples of such territo-
rial departments (oblastnye prikazy) were the departments dealing with the
affairs of Dmitrov, Nizhnii Novgorod, Novgorod, Riazan’, Staritsa and Kaluga,
Tver’, and Uglich, all of them active during the first half of the 16th century
and abolished in 1566 (or earlier). With the further expansion of Muscovy and
the acquisition of new territories, special prikazy were set up for Kazan’, the
Kalmyks, the Ukraine (Little Russia), Smolensk, Riazan’, Siberia, and others.
While these departments had a more or less permanent character, other pri-
kazy were more in the nature of a commission, established to deal with a single
issue. There was a whole series of prikazy entrusted with the collection of taxes
or materials in kind for a specific short-term purpose. When the tasks of these
prikazy had been fulfilled, they were discontinued.55
Some of the oldest prikazy, like the Treasury and the Great Palace Depart-
ment, had their roots in the duties of ancient court officials. The prince’s stable
master (koniukh staryi) was already mentioned in the Russkaia Pravda. In Mus-
covy this position was known as that of the koniushii, where it became the
most prestigious court office (Boris Godunov occupied the post from 1584 until
1598 when he was elected tsar). The Stable Master’s Department (Koniushennyi
prikaz), of which the koniushii was the head, was in charge of everything that
had to do with horses: the tsar’s stables and horses; the stud farms, villages and
fields where the tsar’s horses were raised, and the people who worked there;
the provision of horses for the cavalry; the taxation of the horse trade. A spe-
cial responsibility was the horse trade with the Turkic Nogai horse breeders,
entrusted to the iasel’nichii (from iasli, crib, manger), who also acted as the
koniushii’s deputy. After 1613, when the court office of koniushii was abolished
(for political reasons), the iasel’nichii became the head of the Stable Master’s
Department.
Other departments in this category of the administration were the Armoury
(Oruzheinaia palata, also know as Bronnyi prikaz), the Chamberlain’s Depart-
ment (Postel’nii prikaz), and the Department of the Seal-Keeper (Pechatnyi
Prikaz). The prince’s armourer (oruzhnichii) was originally the courtier who
looked after the prince’s armoury, but as the head of the Armoury he was also
responsible for the production and repair of the weaponry for the tsar’s guard
troops and the Moscow garrison. This then came to include the craftsmen em-
ployed by the Armoury and the villages (slobody) where they lived, as well as
manufacture related to the production of weapons (jewelry, tableware. etc.).
The duties of the Chamberlain’s Department embraced the provision of and
care for the apparel of the tsar and his family; it was headed by the chamber-
lain (postel’nichii).
55 E.g. the Prikaz for the Collection of Provisions for the Cossacks, active in 1613–1614; similar
Prikazy for the Collection of Provisions for Foreign Soldiers (1632–1638) or for the Strel’tsy
(1668–1679).
810 chapter 31
The seal-keeper, as the name indicates, affixed the prince’s (tsar’s) seal to
official documents and in this way came to assume responsibility for a number
of related activities. As Alekseev has pointed out, the official seal replaced to a
certain extent the signatures of parties and witnesses as a means of authenti-
cation of a document.56 The increased importance of the seal is demonstrated
by the attention paid to it in the Code of 1497 (arts. 1, 15–17, 22–25 40, 55) and
the Ulozhenie of 1649, where the whole of Chapter 18 (71 articles) is devoted
to it. The Pechatnyi prikaz (Seal-Keeper’s Department) came into being as an
independent division of the Treasury. It acted as the depository for important
state documents confirmed by the state’s seal. As these also included foreign
treaties, the seal-keeper (pechatnik) was often the same person as the head of
the Ambassadorial Department (the Posol’skii prikaz, the ministry of foreign
affairs). A very significant aspect of the affixing of the seal was the payment of
the prescribed fee, the stamp duty (the main point of interest in the two codes
mentioned). The Pechatnyi prikaz controlled a network of regional offices for
the collection of stamp duty, especially on deeds concerning real property.
The prikazy mentioned above, which go back to ancient court offices (the
Treasury, the Great Palace Department, the departments of the Stable Mas-
ter, the Armoury, the Chamberlain and the Seal-Keeper), emerged gradually
and can be traced back at least to the 15th century. Three other departments,
although less ancient, appeared at least before the reign of Ivan iv. They are
the Department of Estates (Pomestnyi prikaz), the Appointments Department
(Razriadnyi prikaz), and the Robbery (or Brigandage) Department (Razboinyi
prikaz).
The Pomestnyi prikaz had its roots in both the Treasury and the Great Pal-
ace Department. It served as the administrative centre for the service estates
(pomest’ia) put at the disposal of minor nobles in exchange for military service;
it also kept track of their ancestral estates (votchiny), if they owned any. Its
tasks included the registration of the dependent population on these estates,
and, later on, the registration of transactions concerning the estates and their
population and any litigation arising in this connection.
The Appointments Department kept track of the entire service popula-
tion and in particular of military appointments. The books it kept (razriadnye
knigi) were of decisive importance in disputes concerning precedence and
seniority between serving families (see mestnichestvo). The Razriadnyi prikaz
was involved not only in military appointments, but also in many related mat-
ters, such as military training and logistics, the provision of equipment, etc.

Although it was also concerned with civil service appointments, matters con-
cerning military personnel were its prime occupation.
The Robbery Department could be described as a ministry of criminal justice.
Its emergence was closely connected with the guba reforms (see Chapter 33).
In an embryonic state it was a commission of boyars overseeing the administra-
tion of justice, which had been transferred to local authorities during the first
half of the 16th century. The prikaz itself was probably set up officially around
the middle of the 16th century. Its first Statute Book was compiled in 1555 (see
the relevant section in Chapter 27). Its competence extended, as indicated by its
name, over robbery and related serious crimes, their investigation, trial and the
execution of judgments.
During the long reign of Ivan iv a considerable number of new departments
arose, reflecting the administrative activism of his rule. Among the more im-
portant of these, the following should be mentioned.
The Department for the City of Moscow (Zemskii prikaz) was probably con-
nected with the emergence of the Robbery Department (Razboinyi prikaz).
The activities of the latter were primarily concerned with the problem of ban-
ditry in rural areas. The Zemskii prikaz dealt with all law enforcement in the
city of Moscow, but beyond that with most other questions of city government,
including taxation of the ordinary (tax-paying) citizens (the tiagloe naselenie).
The Posol’skii prikaz (Ambassadorial Department) was the equivalent of a
ministry of foreign affairs. Its was based on personal and material contribu-
tions from the Treasury, the Great Palace Department, and the Seal-Keeper’s
Department; its first known chief in 1549 was the d’iak I.M. Viskovatyi, one of
the members of the Chosen Council and the virtual foreign minister of Ivan
iv at the time. The head of the Posol’skii prikaz later also served as the head of
a number of smaller separate departments. Initially, the Posol’skii prikaz was
also in charge of the southern border regions, which included Cossack affairs.
The Department was well-staffed with competent personnel, d’iaki, interpret-
ers, cartographers, etc. Its archives and library were outstanding for the time.57
The Posol’skii prikaz is not to be confused with the Inozemskii prikaz (Foreign-
ers’ Department), a specialized department responsible for the employmentof
foreign troops (initially mainly Polish soldiers, hence its early designation as
Panskii prikaz). It was in existence in 1588–1589, when Giles Fletcher visited
Russia.58
57 The activities of the Posol’lskii prikaz during the Time of Troubles is the subject of a two-
volume study by D.V. Liseitsev, Posol’skii prikaz v epokhu Smuty, Moskva, 2003.
58 Giles Fletcher, Of the Russe Commonwealth, London, 1591; many later editions.
812 chapter 31
The Tatar khanate of Kazan’ was finally annihilated by Ivan iv when Kazan’
was taken in 1552. The entire government of Kazan’ was put in the hands of a
special department, the Kazanskii dvorets (Kazan’ Palace); it was responsible
for all matters, military, civil, fiscal, etc., and exempt from the jurisdiction of
other prikazy. The territory entrusted to the Kazan’ Palace was large and in-
cluded most of present-day Eastern (European) Russia, including the former
khanate of Astrakhan’.
Iamskoi prikaz could tentatively be translated as the Department of Roads
(from Tatar dziam, “road”), although Department of Communications would
be more to the point. Communications constituted an essential element in the
effective management of the enormous territory of the Muscovy state. They
were entrusted to a special service of messengers (the iamskaia gon’ba), sup-
ported by a network of staging-posts (iamy) all over the country. The service
was originally attached to the Revenue Department, but from the middle of
the 16th century a separate office (Iamskaia izba) is mentioned. The collec-
tion of the iam tax, originally the responsibility of the Revenue Department
(Bol’shoi prikhod), was entrusted later in the 17th century to the Iamskoi prikaz.
The Petitions Department (Chelobitnyi prikaz) arose around the middle of
the 16th century, or somewhat later, and handled petitions to the tsar. This
made it into something like the tsar’s personal chancery. In 1685 it was ab-
sorbed by the Vladimir Court Department.
The Slavery Department (Kholopii prikaz) has been mentioned since 1571.
It was in charge of the registration of persons entering slavery, sales of slaves,
and manumission (freeing) of slaves, and also of prisoners-of-war serving as
slaves. Litigation concerning slavery also belonged to the jurisdiction of the
Kholopii prikaz.
The Strel’tsy Department (Streletskii prikaz) has also been mentioned since
1571. The strel’tsy were the regular infantry of the Muscovy army. They lived
in separate settlements (slobody) and their organization, equipment, and
maintenance, as well as jurisdiction in most cases, were the main duty of the
Strel’tsy Department.
The Artillery Department (Pushkarskii prikaz) was probably founded in or
around 1577; as suggested by its name, it was charged with all matters concerning
the artillery: production of guns and equipment, fortifications, personnel, etc.
A special type of department was the sudnyi prikaz, of which there were
four. It represented the regular system of courts of Muscovy, although one has
to keep in mind that many other prikazy enjoyed jurisdiction within their spe-
cific competences. The highest of the court departments was the Sudnyi Vladi-
mirskii prikaz (Vladimir Court Department), which served as the a ppellate
court for the other three court departments and as a court of first instance
(forum privilegiatum) for high officials. The second court department was the
Sudnyi Moskovskii prikaz, and then the Sudnyi Riazanskii prikaz and the Sudnyi
Dmitrovskii prikaz; the latter two were short-lived and absorbed by the other
two court departments. In later times (after about 1664) there was also a sepa-
rate court department attached to the Great Palace Department, which served
as a supreme court for cases within the latter’s jurisdiction. The two main court
departments went back to the end of the reign of Ivan iv († 1584); the Riazan’
and Dmitrov court departments were established about ten years later.
Another type of specialized department was known as chetvert’ or chet’.
Chetvertnye d’iaki (chetvert’ secretaries) were officials responsible for the col-
lection of taxes in different parts of the country for the upkeep of the army.
They were attached to various prikazy. During the reign of Boris Godunov sev-
eral independent chetverti were set up, first the New and the Siberian chet-
verti (soon disbanded), and then the Novgorod, Vladimir, Galich and Nizhnii
Novgorod, Kostroma, and Ustiug chetverti.
Many more prikazy were established during the 17th century and many were
also discontinued, either completely or by being merged with other depart-
ments. The prikaz system operated for a century and a half, from the middle
of the 16th to the end of the 17th century. The names of about one hundred
prikazy are known (many prikazy bore different names through the years). At
any given moment, the average number of independent operational prikazy
varied between 20 and 30.
A prikaz system, similar but much more modest than that of the state, had
been established by the Church. It consisted of a palace department, a trea-
sury, and an appointments department.
Lower Officials
The higher levels of officialdom in the Muscovy state have been reviewed in
the foregoing sections. At a lower level there existed an extensive body of of-
ficials, most of whom were residing in Moscow but available to be sent to the
provinces on government business. In the Ulozhenie of 1649 four categories
are mentioned frequently in the same breath, the stol’niki, striapchie, dvoriane
moskovskie, and zhil’tsy.
The stol’nik was originally somebody who served the palace table. They de-
veloped into a corps of officials to support high functionaries and ranked im-
mediately under the officials with Duma rank.59
59 For an example, see prp iii, 98, a grant charter of grand prince Vasilii i of 1423.
814 chapter 31
Originally, striapchie were persons assisting or supporting parties in court

proceedings.60 In the hierarchy of Muscovy officialdom they followed imme-
diately after the stol’niki and were entrusted with various supportive duties,
especially in connection with law enforcement.
The next level was constituted by the gorodovye dvoriane, the lower gentry
residing in or around Moscow, to provide a readily available military and civil
support force.
The zhil’tsy (lit. ‘inhabitants’) represented the lowest level of the Moscow
gentry. They served as a pool from which the ranks of the city gentry (gorodovye
dvoriane) could be augmented.61 Zhil’tsy is also used in another and more gen-
eral sense of inhabitants of a particular locality and in that case membership
of the lower Muscovy gentry is not implied of course.
The Ulozhenie of 1649 has numerous provisions where the four categories
of lower officials are mentioned together and where they have identical rights
and duties.
Mestnichestvo
The specifically Russian system of service seniority, known as mestnichestvo,
was explained in Chapter 14. It continued to be an important factor in the ad-
ministration of Muscovy and was abolished only as late as 1682 during the reign
of tsar Fedor, the son of tsar Aleksei and the elder brother of Peter the Great.
Taxation
War and Taxation

The foregoing sections have dealt with the personal aspect of government,
the persons and institutions who collectively constituted the government of
Muscovy. Now it is time to look at the activities of the government, apart from
administration of justice, which merits separate treatment within the frame-
work of legal history. The most prominent concern of the ruler and his govern-
ment was unquestionably warfare and this observation is valid for the strictly
medieval as well as for the Muscovy period. The earlier Kievan princes were
incessantly engaged in fighting off the incursions of various warlike steppe no-
mads, such as Pechenegs and Polovtsians. Then, the numerous principalities
60 As such they appeared in previous legislation, such as the Code of 1497 (art. 68), the Code
of 1550 (art. 13), the Code of 1589 (art. 18).
61 Cf. E.N. Gorbatov, “Materialy k istorii zhiletskogo razbora 1643 goda”, S.N. Kisterev (ed.),
Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii, 18, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 2015, 224–358.
resulting from the fragmentation of the Kievan realm had to compete with
each other for survival until the superior force of the Mongol empire made
them all subjects of the khan. This did not end the rivalry between Russian
princes, but only made it more complex. Once Tatar power had sufficiently
weakened, the Moscow grand prince was able to subdue all other Russian prin-
cipalities. This did not signal the arrival of peace, as Muscovy was surround-
ed by restless neighbours. The capital itself was repeatedly taken by foreign
armies (Tatars, Poles) and, along with the Kazan’ Tatars and the Poles, Swedes,
Crimean Tatars, Lithuanians, Hungarians, and others appeared from time to
time on the Russian borders. The rulers of Muscovy were themselves also not
devoid of expansionist aspirations.
The effect of all this was that the entire governing process of Muscovy could
be viewed as serving to facilitate the war machine. The basic orientation of this
process also had a profound influence on the legal system; a major example
would be the organization of landownership, designed to support a reliable
supply of manpower to the armed forces.
The most important condition for the upkeep of adequate military pow-
er, however, was a well-filled treasury, and taxation was the principal source.
Much of the legislative efforts of the Muscovy period were directed at improv-
ing the internal revenue system. As noted, for instance, in the discussion of the
Sudebnik of Ivan iii of 1497, this Code superficially looked like an elaborate
catalogue of fees to be paid for using the court system.
The Development of the Fiscal System

This section will not attempt to draw a balanced picture of the fiscal policies of
the Muscovy government during the 16th and 17th centuries.62 For one thing,
this is not required in a general overview of legal history and, for another, the
period concerned, which included the Smuta, the Time of Troubles, was for
much of the time so chaotic that a balanced picture would be difficult to draw.
Instead, it may be enlightening to point out several more or less permanent
considerations, features and aspirations, producing a background for a sur-
vey of the most important developments of Russian tax law during the period
concerned.
One important new factor in the fiscal regime of Muscovy was the perceived
need for the unification of tax law. Closely connected with this consideration
was, secondly, the wish of the government to simplify, and where possible to
62 The reader is referred to general works on the history of Russian taxation, such as
S.M. Kashtanov, Finansy srednevekovoi Rusi, Moskva, 1988, and S.A. Kozlov, Z.V. Dmitrieva,
Nalogi v Rossii do xix v., Sankt-Peterburg, 2001 (2nd ed.), on which this section is based.
816 chapter 31
abolish, the complicated patchwork of fiscal immunities of which especially

the Church and the monasteries were the beneficiaries. Thirdly, there were
numerous attempts to expand the reach of taxation to include more sectors
of the population. Fourthly, there was a noticeable drift away from direct and
towards indirect taxation. The fifth and most general factor was the gradual
transition to greater reliance on regular and irregular professional soldieries,
who had to be paid for their services. Examples, mentioned above, were the
strel’tsy and the Cossacks.
The incorporation of the enormous territory of Novgorod could be seen as
a qualitative, instead of a quantitative change in the enlargement of Muscovy.
The need for new governmental approaches then became inescapable. One
of the new measures was the introduction of the pistsovye knigi, official de-
scriptions of landholdings, listing size, population, buildings, soil quality, etc.
The first of such registers were compiled in the Novgorod region around the
end of the 15th century.63 (They may have existed already during Novgorod’s
independence, although there is no unassailable evidence.64) During the first
half of the 16th century the practice was extended over most of the territory of
Muscovy. The pistsovye knigi were compiled primarily for fiscal purposes, but
constitute of course an important source for all kinds of other aspects.
The size of plots was expressed in sokhi, which then became the unit for
taxation. The sokha65 itself was variable, as it depended on the quality of the
land to be ploughed. In the middle of the 16th century, the government of Ivan
iv introduced the “great sokha” (bol’shaia sokha). The size of the great sokha
depended on two factors: the quality of the land (good, moderate, or bad) and
the quality of the user. Secular landowners (noblemen) were most favoured,
church-owned land was in the middle, and ‘black’ lands (i.e. land owned by
free peasants, peasant communities, or others) were most heavily taxed.
Greater uniformity was also brought about by the widespread conversion
of various duties and deliveries in kind into financial obligations. At the same
time, this reform resulted in greatly increased fiscal income. The example of
this innovation had been the transformation of kormlenie, the duty of the
63 The oldest pistsovye knigi of Novgorod, going back to 1495, have been published by
K.B. Baranov in the first volume (Novgorodskie pistsovye knigi 1490-kh gg. i otpisnye i ob-
rochnye knigi prigorodnykh pozhen Novgorodskogo dvortsa 1530-kh gg.), Moskva, 1999, of
the series Pistsovye knigi Novgorodskoi zemli, edited by the same author.
64 See K.V. Baranov, “Novye svedeniia o pervykh pistsovykh opisaniiakh Novgorodskoi zem-
li”, S.N. Kisterev (ed.), Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii, vol.4, Moskva, 2000, 85–97, mentions 1482
as the first documented date for such registers.
65 Sokha, the Central Russian plough, between the more primitive ralo and the more sophis-
ticated plug, used in southern areas.
local population to provide various officials with all the necessities to carry
out their functions. Kormlenie had gradually been converted into fixed money
payments, until it was ultimately abolished altogether in the guba reforms of
the first half of the 16th century (see Chapter 33).
The government was less successful in its attempt to abolish the numer-
ous and varied fiscal privileges. These had been granted in the past to land-
owners, usually in connection with the land grant itself. The beneficiaries
were mostly monasteries, but also included other church entities as well as
secular landowners. Some of the grants were of a temporary nature (so-called
l’gotnye gramoty), but the permanent grant (tarkhannaia gramota) was more
common and, of course, more of a disadvantage to the state treasury. Tarkhan-
nye gramoty could concern immunity from all or most taxes, or from specific
taxes. Fiscal immunity was often combined with judicial immunity, i.e. im-
munity from the state’s courts, except for the most serious crimes (so-called
nesudimye gramoty). There had been several attempts to curb the practice of
issuing tarkhannye gramoty, until in the end such immunities were forbidden
altogether by art. 43 of the Code of 1550. This firm position, however, remained
a dead letter, as Ivan iv continued to issue such gramoty when it appeared po-
litically opportune. Only after his death in 1584, at a church council in the same
year, did the Church concede to have the tarkhany temporarily discontinued.
A few were still issued during the following years, but ultimately the practice
which had favoured ecclesiastical landowners above secular ones became a
thing of the past.
The economic crisis which followed the long reign of Ivan iv and accompa-
nied the Time of Troubles had a strong impact on fiscal developments. Rural
poverty induced peasants to look for better opportunities elsewhere and land-
owners became impoverished by the shortage of their workforce. The Codes of
1497 and 1550 had allowed peasants to move from one landowner to another
during two weeks in later autumn (around St. George’s Day, Iur’ev den’). This
right had been restricted already by Ivan iv in 1581 by the introduction of “for-
bidden years” (zapovednye gody); under tsar Fedor (Ivan’s son and successor)
the right was completely abolished and measures were taken to return fugitive
peasants forcibly to their masters. (It was briefly reintroduced in 1601 by Boris
Godunov.)
In general, the succession of short-term rulers and governments during the
Time of Troubles resulted, among other things, in often contradictory fiscal ini-
tiatives. After Mikhail Romanov’s accession to the throne in 1613 the situation
became more stable; the economy of the country, however, was in a deplorable
state and the government resorted to drastic measures. In 1614 the first imposi-
tion of “fifths” (piatiny or piatinnye den’gi) was introduced, a direct tax of 20%
818 chapter 31
on annual income (or on movable property; there is no agreement among au-

thors). This type of taxation was applied many times in the course of the 17th
century, but usually at a lower percentage.
Regular tax for the maintenance of the army (streletskii khleb) was to be
paid in kind, in fact rye, oats and other grain, and only in special cases was a
monetary equivalent allowed. Among the other direct taxes, the ancient iam
continued to be imposed for the maintenance of roads and the government’s
communications network. A special tax introduced in the 16th century in or-
der to redeem Russian prisoners-of-war who had ended up as slaves in the
Tatar slave trade also remained in force. Together with these three main types
of regular direct taxes, a whole range of obligatory burdens continued to apply:
work on roads, fortifications, official buildings, fences, hunting preserves, etc.
In many cases the duty to work could be paid off.
In 1646 the government decided to replace the streletskii khleb and the pay-
ment of iam by indirect taxation through the introduction of a high tax on salt.
This caused great unrest among the population, culminating in the “salt riots”
(solianye bunty) of 1648–1650, which were an important factor in the process
leading to the adoption of the Ulozhenie of 1649. The old taxes were restored.
The Army
Warfare, armed forces, and the preparation and financing of military activities
constituted perhaps the most prominent concern of the Muscovy government,
but there is not much direct legislative regulation of it.
The basis of Moscow’s military might was in the class of sluzhilye liudi, “ser-
vice people”. The bulk of it consisted of the lower nobility, the deti boiarskie
(“boyars’ sons”) and other dvoriane, who had been granted land (pomest’ia),
primarily in exchange for military service. The duty to serve in the army ex-
tended also to the higher nobility, in possession of inherited land (otchiny),
such as boyars and okol’nichie, and even its highest echelon, the service princ-
es (sluzhebnye kniaz’ia), descendants of formerly ruling princes, all of whom
would strictly speaking also count as “service people”.
While apanage princes were still around, their relationship with the ruling
prince was determined by the elder-younger brother pattern; the usual con-
tracts between such parties provided that the ‘younger brother’ had to par-
ticipate in the wars of the ‘elder brother’, “– when I mount my horse, you will
mount your horse with me”.66
66 E.g. ddg No.13, 37–39, treaty of 1390 between the Moscow grand prince Vasilii i Dmitriev-
ich and Vladimir Khrabryi Andreevich, prince of Serpukhov and Borovsk. Vasilii i was a
The duty of service people implied not only personal service, but also
the provision of a certain number of armed men from their own dependent
servants.
The main division of the service people was between those resident in or
around Moscow (sluzhilye liudi moskovskie) and the others from the provinces
(sluzhilye liudi gorodovye). Regional detachments from the latter would nor-
mally be on active service for a certain length of time on a rotation basis. When
there was a major war afoot, more troops would of course be needed.67
Gradually, the need for a more regular standing army made itself felt. The
appearance of firearms by the end of the 15th century probably influenced this
development. Herberstein (who visited Muscovy in 1516–1517 and 1526–1527)
reported to the emperor Ferdinand about the rare occurrence of such weap-
ons among the Russians.68 They were apparently of the type called pishchal’,
hence the designation pishchal’niki (arquebusiers), the known predecessors of
the similarly armed strel’tsy (sing. strelets).69 In the middle of the 16th century
the strel’tsy, organized in regiments, formed the core of the army. They were
professional soldiers, recruited from the ranks of the free population and serv-
ing on the basis of contracts. Soon, however, the service became permanent
and the status inheritable. Thus they joined the general category of sluzhilye
liudi. They lived in separate suburban settlements, slobody. During the reign of
Ivan iv their number grew to approximately 12.000, of whom about 2.000 were
cavalrymen. Like the dvoriane, they were divided into Moscow strel’tsy (also
known as vybornye strel’tsy) and provincial (gorodovye) strel’tsy. The Ulozhenie
of 1649 devoted a short chapter to the strel’tsy (Ch. 23, 3 articles), the most
important provision of which was that trials of strel’tsy (except in the most
serious cases) and legal actions between strel’tsy were to be handled by the
Streletskii prikaz. This department was also entrusted with the recruitment,
equipment and management of the strel’tsy.
grandson of Ivan ii (the Handsome), the older brother of Andrei, the father of Vladimir
Khrabryi; the latter still counted as the younger brother of Vasilii i.
67 An indication of the full effective size of the Muscovite army (8–9.000 horsemen) is given
by N.V. Smirnov in a study of the strengths of the Muscovite and Lithuanian forces in the
battle at the Vedrosh River near Gomel’ in 1500 (in which infantry played a modest role);
N.V. Smirnov, “Rekonstruktsiia sostava i chislennosti russkikh i litovskikh voisk v bitve na
Vedroshe”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Russkoe Srednevekov’e. Sbornik statei v chest’ profes-
sora Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva, 2012, 598–624.
68 See also A.L. Khoroshkevich, “Russkoe voisko pervoi chetverti xvi v. po soobshcheniiu
S. Gerbershteina”, A.A. Preobrazhenskii (ed.), Feodalizm v Rossii. Iubileinye chteniia, posvi-
ashchennye 80-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia akademika L’va Vladimirovicha Cherepnina, Mosk-
va, 1985, 93–96.
69 After some time, the arquebuses were replaced by muskets.
820 chapter 31
The Streletskii prikaz, and several others, were mentioned above in the sec-
tion on prikazy, and collectively they give an impression of the organization of
the armed forces of Muscovy during and after the reign of Ivan iv. The oldest of
them all was the Cavalry Department (Koniushennyi prikaz) which went back
to the ancient court office of the prince’s stable master. The Armoury (Oru-
zheinaia palata), in charge (among other things) of weaponry, equipment,
ammunition, etc., also went back to previous centuries. The Razriadnyi prikaz
occupied a central position among the military departments, as it was the or-
ganizational centre of the mestnichestvo system, by keeping accounts of ap-
pointments of military commanders (voevody and others), in order to respect
seniority claims (see the section on mestnichestvo in Chapter 14). The Artillery
Department (Pushkarskii prikaz), like the Streletskii prikaz, has been known
since 1571. This also agrees with Herberstein’s observation (half a century ear-
lier) about the rudimentary stage of Muscovy’s artillery in his time. With the
increasing importance of artillery, the artillery soldiery (pushkari) formed a
special class of servicemen, comparable to the strel’tsy, living together in their
own villages (slobody), and enjoying certain privileges.
Apart from the regular army of Muscovy, auxiliaries from other nations also
served in the tsar’s forces. The Inozemskii or Panskii prikaz, caring for the sol-
diery from various European countries, has been mentioned above. Its duties
were many-sided; not only the obvious questions of recruitment and payment,
but also the management of land set aside for the upkeep of foreign troops,
questions connected with the religious affiliation of foreign soldiers (many of
whom from protestant countries) and their personal status, etc.
Auxiliaries from indigenous nations, such as Tatars and other Turkic (e.g.
Bashkirs) or Finnish (e.g. Mari or Cheremisy) nations, were widely employed.
This in fact was a continuation of older practices; Kievan and medieval princes
were often reported commanding mixed forces of Russians and Turkic cavalry.
The most important of all the auxiliaries were the Cossacks. Their early
history is still a controversial topic, but at least since the 15th century they
had been prominently present in Southern Russia (and much of present-day
Ukraine), where they formed two large coalitions in the following century,
the Don and the Zaporozh’e Cossacks. Ethnically, they were predominantly
Russian, although there were undoubtedly significant Tatar elements among
them. They generally acted as allies of the Moscow rulers, but insisted on their
independence. They received payment and also land grants for their service.
As they gradually got drawn into the organization of the Muscovy state, their
status began to approximate that of other ‘service people’. During the Time of
Troubles they often were a factor of decisive influence, especially during the
chaotic years after tsar Vasilii Shuiskii. At that time the Don Cossacks were the
concern of the Ambassadorial department (Posol’skii prikaz). Later on there
was a specialCossack Department (Kazachii prikaz) from 1613 to 1643, until the
Cossacks were sufficiently integrated to be subordinated to the Appointments
Department. Ch. 24 of the Ulozhenie of 1649 is entitled “On Hetmans and Cos-
sacks” and offers three articles, mainly on small suits.
The higher command positions in the army, voevody, were initially reserved
to the higher nobility (boyars and okol’nichie), in accordance with the mest-
nichestvo practice, but as the disadvantages of this approach became increas-
ingly obvious, exceptions were made where this was considered desirable, at
first with the proviso bez mest, i.e. that an appointment disregarding mestnich-
estvo rules would not upset the existing mestnichestvo hierarchy.70 Mestnich-
estvo was altogether abolished in 1680.
The armies commanded by voevody (generals) consisted of regiments
(polki)under the command of a polkovnik (colonel). The regiment was divided
into units of roughly one hundred men, and these into platoons of about ten
men, commanded respectively by sotniki (from sot, 100) and desiatniki. There
was also an in-between subaltern officer, the piatidesiatnik. The higher officers
(polkovniki and sotniki) were invariably from the lesser nobility (dvoriane and
deti boiarskie).
The effective strength of the armed forces of Muscovy during the first half of
the 16th century was between 40.000 and 100.000 men, according to the calcula-
tions of M.M. Krom, based on a broad comparative review of all available data.
The number of voevody, commanding the forces, varied between 20 and 40.71
Russian soldiers who had become prisoners-of-war of a foreign power would
either be exchanged at the end of hostilities or redeemed, provided the ransom
could be agreed. The first approach was common between Christian powers,
the second one applied in particular to Russian prisoners of Tatar rulers.
A special tax, polonianichnye den’gi, was introduced in the first half of the 16th
century to cover expenditure on ransoms. Ivan iv attempted to pass the bill on
to the Church, but failed in this. In 1551, art. 72 of the Stoglav (“On the Redemp-
tion of Prisoners”) stated clearly that the tsar’s treasury was responsible.
In the 17th century there was a special prikaz entrusted with the redemption
of Russian prisoners-of-war, the Polonianichnyi prikaz, which itself was identical
with the curiously named Department of Prikaz Matters (Prikaz prikaznykh del)
Foreign prisoners-of-war in Russia were the responsibility of the Inozemskii
prikaz (the Foreigners’ Department).
70 This was done by Ivan iv in 1550, see prp iv, 582–586. This decree also contained instruc-
tions about the command structure of an army in the field.
71 M.M. Krom, “O chislennosti russkogo voiska v pervoi polovine xvi veka”, A.P. Pavlov (ed.),
Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo v xiv–xvii vv. Sbornik statei, posviashchennyi 75-letiiu so dnia rozh-
deniia Iu.G. Alekseeva, Sankt-Peterburg, 2002, 67–82.
chapter 32
Territory and Population
In Chapter 17 on Western Russia we noted that only three of the old princi-
palities which made up the Kievan realm remained in the hands of Rurikid
princes after the invasion of the Mongols in the 13th century and the growth
and expansion of the Lithuanian grand principality in the following centuries.
All the western principalities became part of Lithuania, later on united with
Poland, and only the principalities of Novgorod Velikii (the Great), Vladimir-
Suzdal’-Rostov and Murom-Riazan’ were still ruled by the descendants of the
Kievan grand princes, albeit under Tatar suzerainty. Still, from these modest
beginnings a united Russian state eventually arose.
The Growth of the Principality of Moscow
In 1263 Moscow first appeared as a separate (apanage) principality within

the grand principality of Vladimir. In 1276 it was granted by the Vladimir
grand prince Dmitrii to his youngest brother Daniil (both sons of Aleksandr
Nevskii). By the time of his death in 1303, Daniil had acquired the contigu-
ous territories of Kolomna and Pereiaslavl’-Zalesskii. His eldest son Iurii
succeeded him as prince of Moscow. He added the territory of Mozhaisk to
Moscow in 1304 and attempted for many years to wrest the grand principal-
ity of Vladimir from Mikhail, prince of Tver’ (a distant cousin). After gaining
favour with the Tatar khan, he finally achieved his goal in 1319, when Mikhail
had been killed at the khan’s court in 1318 by Iurii’s servants. Iurii then was
himself killed by Mikhail’s son Dmitrii Groznye Ochi (“the Fierce-Looking”)
in 1325.
The scale of Moscow’s expansion increased considerably under Iurii’s suc-
cessor, his brother Ivan i Kalita (prince of Moscow since 1325, and grand prince
of Vladimir since 1328). Ivan Kalita acquired control over large territories to
the North of his Moscow base, the principalities of Kostroma, Uglich, Galich
and Beloozero, although it is not entirely clear how these acquisitions were
made. The principalities of Uglich, Galich and Beloozero were mentioned in
Dmitrii Donskoi’s will of 1389 as the “purchases” (kupli) of his grandfather,
and for this reason it was usually assumed that Ivan Kalita (Dmitrii Donskoi’s
paternal grandfather) had bought them by paying the khan for the necessary

Territory and Population 823
patent (iarlyk).1 But K.A. Aver’ianov has argued persuasively that the territories
of Uglich, Galich and Beloozero had in fact come to Ivan Kalita through the
dowries of spouses of his brother Iurii, himself and his brother Afanasii (both
brothers died without leaving sons).2 At that time (the first quarter of the 14th
century) a Russian prince unquestionably needed the approval of the khan
before being able to rule a principality, so Aver’ianov’s version complements,
rather than contradicts, the traditional view. It seems, moreover, that the local
princes of Uglich, Galich and Beloozero retained their positions for a while,
until they died out or were expelled by their Moscow cousins later on during
the 14th century.3
The reigns of Ivan Kalita’s sons, Semën the Proud (1341–1353) and Ivan ii
the Handsome (1354–1359), saw some minor acquisitions, but were character-
ized by quiet consolidation rather than expansion. Then, under Ivan ii’s son
Dmitrii Donskoi (*1350, † 1389), the formal incorporation of the large territo-
ries of Kostroma, Uglich, Galich and Beloozero was realized and other terri-
tories (such as the principalities of Starodub and Dmitrov) were added to the
Moscow principality as well. At the end of his reign, Dmitrii Donskoi united
the grand principalities of Vladimir and Moscow, which had been in the hands
of his father, uncle, and grandfather.
Dmitrii Donskoi had established unequivocal primogeniture for the succes-
sion and Moscow was ruled by a succession of six generations of fathers and
sons after him (if one disregards the dynastic upheavals following the death of
Vasilii i in 1425). Dmitrii Donskoi’s eldest son, Vasilii i, was granted the grand
princely dignity of Moscow by his father (the first time this happened with-
out seeking the approval of the Tatar khan), together with more land than had
been allotted to his four brothers together.
Both Dmitrii Donskoi and Vasilii i had been involved for many years in a
feud with the grand princes of Suzdal’ and Nizhnii Novgorod (Dmitrii Kon-
stantinovich and his kin). The third party in this feud were the Tatar rulers.
The Golden Horde was experiencing major political convulsions at this time,
when, along with the regular rulers, – the khans (especially Tokhtamysh), pow-
erful warlords, such as Timur, Mamai and Edigei pursued their own interests.
Russian princes, as well as their Tatar counterparts, all attempted to exploit
1 ddg No.12, at 36.

2 K.A. Aver’ianov, Kupli Ivana Kality, Moskva, 2001. As Aver’ianov pointed out, great-uncles
were commonly called dedy, along with grandfathers.
3 The princes of Uglich were apanage princes of the princes of Rostov, and the princes of
Galich and Beloozero were minor independent princes.
824 chapter 32
these permanently shifting relationships to their advantage. The princes of

Nizhnii Novgorod were occasionally successful in laying hands on the grand
princely seat of Vladimir, but in the end their Moscow cousins came out vic-
torious. In 1392 Vasilii i received the khan’s iarlyk for Nizhnii Novgorod and
several adjoining territories to the south-east of his domains. Other territories
were acquired as well by the same prince, the largest of them Vologda, in the
Russian North, so that by the time of his death in 1425 his principality had
about doubled in size during his reign.4
The reign of Vasilii ii, the Blind (1425–1462), the son and successor of Vasilii i,
was marked by vehement dynastic strife within the small circle of Dmitrii
Donskoi’s grandsons and the territorial expansion of the Moscow principality
remained modest. Vasilii ii’s son and successor, Ivan iii emerged as the lon-
gest reigning and probably the most successful of the Moscow grand princes
(1462–1506). The grand princes of Tver’, also descendants of Aleksandr Nevskii,
who for a long time had been serious contenders for the leading position
among the Russian princes, had gradually been reduced to ‘younger brothers’
of the Moscow grand prince, and in the end the last Tver’ grand prince, Mikhail
Borisovich, was deposed in 1486 and Tver’ became part of Muscovy. An even
bigger prize was Novgorod, whose rule extended over the huge and largely un-
inhabited territories of Russia’s North, as far east as the Ural Mountains. The
grand princes of Vladimir had for centuries exercized the right to appoint the
nominal prince of Novgorod, but while Novgorod was strong and the powers of
the Vladimir grand prince limited, this right was of little importance. Under
Ivan iii this situation had changed and Moscow’s dominant position was used
to push Novgorod more and more into a corner. The struggle had begun already
under Vasilii the Blind who had imposed the unfavourable Iazhelbitsy treaty
on Novgorod in 1456.5 A last desperate attempt to resist failed when Novgorod
was beaten in the battle at the Shelon’ river in 1471. In 1478 it was formally in-
corporated into the Muscovy empire.
The unification of the territory of Central, East and Northern Russia was
then completed, the main exception being the grand principality of Riazan’
in the South-East. Its princes, however, had already lost all genuine indepen-
dence by that time, having formally recognized the Moscow prince as their
‘elder brother’. Its last prince was deposed in 1520.
4 See also S.A. Fetishchev, “K voprosu o prisoedinenii Muromy, Meshchery, Tarusy i Kozel’ska
k Moskovskomu kniazhestvu v 90-e gg. xiv v.”, A.P. Pavlov (ed.), Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo v
xiv–xvii vv. Sbornik statei, posviashchennyi 75-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia Iu.G. Alekseeva, Sankt-
Peterburg, 2002, 31–39.
5 gvnp Nos. 22–23, 39–43.
Initially, the Moscow princes, adhering to the traditional arrangement of

assigning apanage principalities to their sons and younger brothers, had al-
lowed such apanage princes a considerable amount of autonomy in the inter-
nal government of their principalities. But eventually the further expansion
of the territory controlled by the Moscow grand prince reduced the efficacy
of this arrangement. In particular, the integration of the republic of Novgorod
with its huge territory and its own legal culture and customs demanded the
replacement of the simple procedures for running a small principality6 by a
much more sophisticated and elaborate governmental apparatus. Many of the
reforms required were introduced during the reign of Ivan iii, with the Sudeb-
nik of 1497 as the crowning achievement. Art. 30 of the Code of 1497 listed the
riding-fees (ezd) to which bailiffs riding from Moscow to provincial towns were
entitled. The 53 towns mentioned offer a detailed description of the territory of
Muscovy in 1497.
Under Vasilii iii, the son and successor of Ivan iii, the last nominally indepen-
dent Russian principalities were absorbed by Muscovy (Pskov in 1510 and Riazan’
in 1521). Vasilii iii continued the westward expansion which had already started
under his predecessors, in particular in attempting to recuperate territories with
a predominantly Eastern Slavic (Russian) population that had originally been
part of the Kievan empire. In several wars with Lithuania the old principalities
of Chernigov and Novgorod-Severskii returned to Russia (still during the reign
of Ivan iii in 1503); of special importance was the acquisition of Smolensk in
1514. Some of the gains were only temporary and were lost to Poland-Lithuania
in later campaigns (Poland and Lithuania formed a union after 1569).
The reign of Vasilii iii (1505/6–1534) was followed by the long reign of his
son Ivan iv Groznyi (“the Terrible”, born in 1530, died in 1584). Until Ivan iv
actually ascended the throne in 1547, the government was in the hands of com-
peting boyar clans. The Code (Sudebnik) of Ivan iv of 1550 also contained a list
of riding-fees for bailiffs, as did its predecessor of 1497. The main territories
acquired since 1497 were added: the vast and remote territory of Viatka in the
North-East, while the other six (Torzhok, Pskov, Smolensk, Ivangorod, Velikie
Luki and Toropets) were in the North-West.
After khan Tokhtamysh (†1406), the unity of the Golden Horde was defini-
tively lost. Its principal successors were the khanates of Kazan’, of Astrakhan’,
and of the Crimea. Under Ivan iv, Russia’s expansionary energy was primarily
directed eastwards, while the western frontiers remained relatively stable.
6 The territory of the original principality of Daniil Aleksandrovich in 1276 was in the order of
18.000 sq km, somewhat smaller than Israel or the state of New Jersey and less than half of
the present Moscow oblast’ (province).
826 chapter 32
fter almost a century of hostilities between Russia and Kazan’, Ivan iv took
A
Kazan’ after a long siege in 1552 and incorporated the khanate into the R
ussian
tsardom. The same fate befell the khanate of Astrakhan’ four years later (1556).7
The khanate of the Crimea, which at that time had become a vassal of Turkey,
survived until 1783.
During the last years of the reign of Ivan iv Cossack detachments started
the penetration and conquest of Siberia.
Under Ivan’s successor and only surviving son Fëdor and the subsequent
Time of Troubles (1598–1613), the western borders of Russia became unstable,
and this situation continued during the reign of the first Romanov tsar Mikhail.
The territories of Smolensk and Chernigov were ceded to Poland again in 1618.
The Swedes also occupied large swathes of the Russian North-West (Novgorod
and the surrounding area).
Territorial acquisitions and losses were a constant phenomenon in fol-
lowing centuries as well, but, in respect of the history of Russian law, the
establishment (or re-establishment) of a centralized state on a large and
contiguous territory, as it was achieved under Ivan iii, was a fundamental
determinant.
The “Territorial Growth of the Russian Empire, 16th–20th Centuries” was
the theme of a collective study which appeared in 2015. Individual chap-
ters were devoted to the formation of the borders with the various contigu-
ous states over a period of four centuries, up to the beginning of the 20th
century.8
Muscovy and Western Russia
This chapter began with the observation that the Muscovy state was con-
structed on the modest base of a few Eastern Russian principalities, which
the rulers of Lithuania-Poland had been unable to include in the enormous
territory acquired by them by the middle of the 15th century. The grand
principality of Lithuania was actually in several ways a Russian state; the
7 Ivan iv added “tsar of Kazan’” and “tsar of Astrakhan’” to his list of major titles: “tsar and
grand prince of All Russia, Vladimir, Moscow and Novgorod, tsar of Kazan’, tsar of Astra-
khan’, lord of Pskov, grand prince of Smolensk, Tver’, Iugria [Western Siberia], Perm’, Viatka
and Bolgaria[Middle Volga region], lord and grand prince of Nizhnii Novgorod, Chernigov,
Riazan’,Polotsk, Rostov, Iaroslavl’ and Belo Ozero”.
8 E.P. Kudriavtseva (ed.), Formirovanie territorii Rossiiskogo gosudarstva xvi – nachalo xx v.
(granitsy i geopolitika), Moskva, 2015.
official language was Russian and the vast majority of the population was
Russian-speaking.9
This situation began to change when Muscovy slowly emerged as a major
player in Eastern Europe, while the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (the
Rzeczpospolita) started its downward course until its final dissolution at the
end of the 18th century. The entire process lasted for more than two centuries
and knew many reverses. One aspect of it merits some consideration on ac-
count of its potential relevance for legal history.
In Chapter 17 (on Western Russia), the history of the law of Lithuania and
then Poland-Lithuania was summarized. Although initially some remnants of
Old-Russian law survived, the introduction of the law of the Lithuanian grand
principality as embodied in the subsequent versions of the Lithuanian Statute
represented a significant break with the past. Later, Polish law and indirect-
ly also medieval German (especially Magdeburg) law applied in many parts
of the Commonwealth. Once territories changed hands and became part of
Muscovy, Russian law applied again.
Recently, the view has been advanced by Ukrainian historians that for some
time a third player was also involved, the law of the Ukrainian hetmanate. This
would have been the law of the Cossack state of the second half of the 17th
century.10
The fertile plains of Southern Russia,11 which had been the heartland of
Kievan Rus, became a no man’s land after the incursions of the Mongols in
the middle of the 13th century, a place abandoned to nomadic invaders, ma-
rauding horsemen, bands of robbers and various fortune-seekers. It was
surrounded by established states or at least coherent state-like entities such
as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Muscovy grand principality and
several Tatar successor states of the Golden Horde. As the occasion arose, they
all attempted to turn the existence of the “Wild Place” or Dikoe Pole, as it was
known, and its inhabitants to their advantage.
9 As noted in Chapter 17, I am not taking a position in the linguistic debate concerning the
correct nomenclature of the language of the Lithuanian principality, whether it should be
called Old-Belorussian, Old-Russian or anything else.
10 See for instance O.A. Hurzhii, Ukrains’ka kozats’ka derzhava v druhii polovyni xvii–xviii
st.: Kordony, naselennyia, pravo, Kyiv, 1996; S.O. Huseva, Istoriia derzhavy i prava Ukrainy,
Odesa, 2000; O.O. Rafal’s’kyi, Pereiaslavs’kyi dohovir Ukrainy z Rosieiu 1654 roku, Kyiv, 2004.
11 I use Russia here as a geographical and not as a political or legal designation: the area
known in atlases as European Russia, the territory between the White Sea in the North
and the Black Sea in the South. To speak of Ukraine in the present context would be
anachronistic.
828 chapter 32
At least as early as the 15th century and perhaps earlier, the presence of
communities of militarized settlers could be observed in this region, later to
be known as Cossacks. The ethnogenesis of the Cossacks cannot yet be consid-
ered as completely resolved and this problem is made more complicated by its
political connotation. Undoubtedly, the influx of runaway slaves and serfs from
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and from Muscovy constituted a major
factor. Other elements comprised Tatar and other Turkic horsemen and, more
speculatively, remnants of the original inhabitants of the area. At any rate, the
Cossacks of the 17th century identified themselves in the various documents
as Russians and spoke an East-Slavic language akin to present-day Ukrainian.
Of the several Cossack communities which arose in Southern Russia, from
the Balkans to the steppes of Asia, the most important ones were the Zaporo-
zhian host, which had its headquarters in a fortified camp at Sich, below the
Dnepr Rapids (dneprovskie porogi), and the Don Cossacks. Although the ter-
ritory controlled by the Zaporozhian Cossacks, the only relevant group in the
context of this section, was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,
the Zaporozh’e Cossacks enjoyed a large measure of autonomy on account
of the geopolitical conditions of the area. Their military presence in a per-
manently exposed flank of the Commonwealth made them an irreplaceable
ally. At the same time, the political dynamics of most European states in the
17th century favoured the strengthening of central royal power; accordingly,
the Polish-Lithuanian rulers incessantly attempted to reduce the Cossacks to
the status of loyal subjects. But the Cossacks, whose existence was based on
personal freedom and ownership of land, could only accept integration into
the social network of the Commonwealth, if they were granted a status compa-
rable to that of the lower Polish nobility, the szlachta. This was something the
Polish government was unable to offer, because Poland, unlike Russia, was not
run by an autocratic ruler, but by a delicate balance between king, magnates
and lower nobility.
In the end, the Zaporozhian Cossacks rebelled under their hetman Bogdan
Khmel’nitskii (Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi) and, ultimately,12 transferred their alle-
giance to the Muscovy tsar. The basic document in which the new relationship
was expressed was the so-called treaty of Pereiáslav which was worked out
during the 1648–1654 period, due to the ever changing political constellation
in which not only the Cossacks and the tsar, but also the Polish king and the
khan of the Crimean Tatars were involved. Judged by its form, the Pereiaslav
treaty was not a genuine agreement between equal parties, but a request by
the Zaporozhian Cossacks to be accepted by the tsar as his subjects with the
12 The road towards the agreement was by no means straight and took several years.
simultaneous recognition of their existing autonomous self-government, fol-

lowed by the tsar’s unilateral grant of most of the Cossacks’ requests.13 The
Pereiaslav treaty led to a long-drawn-out war with Poland and only the peace
of Andrusovo (1667) created a more or less stable situation, in which the land
on the left bank of the Dnepr and the city of Kiev permanently became part
of Russia.
Although the union with, or rather incorporation of, the territory controlled
by the Zaporozhian Host was attractive to Moscow, the great drawback was
that it made war with Poland inevitable, as it would be in violation of the ex-
isting peace treaty with that country. This was why the Russian government
had recourse to the most elaborate procedure at its disposal. The proposals
of Khmel’nitskii were first submitted to a meeting of the Land Assembly in
1651. That body agreed on condition that first all possible diplomatic solutions
would be investigated. When this did not produce a satisfactory result, a sec-
ond meeting of the Land Assembly was convened, and on 1 October 1653 it
solemnly aligned itself with the tsar’s decision to accept Khmel’nitskii and his
host “under his high hand”.14 This was also the swan song of the Land Assembly
(see Chapters 28, on the Land Assembly, and xxxi, on the Tsar’s Government).
The autonomous status of the Zaporozhian Host came to an end in 1775 by
a decree of empress Catherine ii.15
The period between 1648 and 1775 is of particular interest for Ukrainian his-
toriography, because the Zaporozhian Host under its hetman, and therefore
also known as the Hetmanate, is regarded by some as a state and by the same
token as the forerunner of the Ukrainian Republic which emerged as a fully
independent state after the break-up of the ussr. The acceptance of such a
view would involve the existence of the usual paraphernalia of a state, includ-
ing some kind of legal system.16 The discussion of this subject is burdened by
strong emotions and great political interests, and if one tries to limit it to the
question of the creation of Ukrainian law during the period concerned, several
marginal observations may elucidate the problem.
13 Texts in Ukrainian in Rafal’s’kyi, op. cit., 210–216. Since there never was a genuine t reaty,
there was also no authentic treaty text; the status of the various texts which, taken
together, would embody the agreements reached between the Zaporozhian Cossacks and
the tsar, is also disputed.
14 Text of the 1653 resolution of the Land Assembly in rz iii, 450–458; PRoP iii/2, 255–262.
15 Text in Rafal’s’kyi, op. cit., 246–251.
16 This, for instance, is the position of Huseva, who presented an entire chapter entitled
“The system of the organs of government and administration, and of justice, in the Cos-
sack-hetman state (1648 to the end of the 18th century)”, op. cit., 80–117.
830 chapter 32
A first and preliminary one should be that the situation created by the
1648–1654 negotiations with Muscovy was anything but stable and permanent.
Khmel’nitskii went back to the Polish side a few years later and subsequent
hetmans transferred their allegiance successively to Moscow, the Crimean
khan, the Polish king, the sultan of Turkey, and even to the king of Sweden
in the 18th century. Also, the Cossacks never stayed united for long. For a long
time the Zaporozhian Host had its headquarters at Sich, while the Hetmanate
(Getmanshchina) covered the area to the north of it on the right bank of the
Dnepr.
Most of the Cossack hosts which had emerged in Southern Russia had been
at least nominal subjects of Poland-Lithuania until 1648 and their status did
not change much afterwards, except as regards the identity of their suzerain.
Only during the short tenure of hetman Pylyp Orlyk (1710–1712) was complete
independence proclaimed, but this proclamation was never realized; it did
acknowledge the king of Sweden as the protector of the Zaporozhian Host.17
Other hetmans always asserted their status as loyal subjects of the tsar in their
official statements. This goes in particular for their “universals” (universaly),
administrative decisions concerning a wide variety of topics, taken by the het-
man in his capacity as governor of the territory.18 As explained in Chapter 17,
on Western Russia, Polish-Lithuanian law, and especially Magdeburg law, sur-
vived for a long time in the former Polish-Lithuanian territories incorporated
into Russia, and the last remnants of this arrangements were abolished only in
the middle of the 19th century.
Initially, the Zaporozhian Host had retained limited rights to conduct foreign
policy; in the course of the 18th century these rights were gradually withdrawn.
Supervision of the Hetmanate’s foreign and domestic policies was entrusted to
the Department of Little Russia (Malorossiiskii prikaz), established in 1662 and
absorbed by the Department of Foreign Affairs (Posol’skii prikaz) in 1667. These
departments were represented by Russian officials (voevody) at the headquar-
ters of the hetman and of regional Cossack hosts (polki).
17 Text in Rafal’s’kyi, op. cit., 228–245.

18 Cf. I. Butych (comp.), Universaly Ivana Mazepy 1687–1709, Ch. i, Kyiv/L’viv, 2002; I. Butych,
V. Rynsevych (comp.), Universaly Ivana Mazepy (1687–1709), Ch. ii, Kyiv/L’viv, 2006;
V. Rynsevych (comp.), Universaly Pavla Polubotka (1722–1723), Kyiv, 2008.
chapter 33
Local Government
In a country the size of Russia, local government may refer to the management
of public affairs at various levels below that of the central government. This
chapter will look at the intermediate level, the regional or provincial, in other
words. As the territorial subdivisions of Muscovy were inherently connected
with the regional urban centres, provincial government was inseparable from
the government of those towns. At the lowest, rural level, local government
was closely connected with the aspect of land ownership and will be discussed
accordingly in Chapter 36 (on Ownership).
Kormlenie as the Basis of the Traditional System
With the expansion of the Muscovy principality, the question of local (regional)
government became a matter of increasing importance. During the foregoing
era of the independent principalities, the modest size of most of them allowed
the ruling prince to run the affairs of his principality with a few councillors
from his residence. The principal exception was Novgorod, which controlled
the huge territory of most of the Russian North. Novgorod did have a system
for exercizing control in faraway places and it was discussed in the relevant
section of Chapter 16 (on Novgorod).
During the reign of Ivan iii (1462–1506) and that of his son Vasilii iii (1506–
1534), local government in the by then greatly expanded territory of the grand
principality of Moscow continued to be exercized as of old; in regional cen-
tres far away from Moscow the grand prince was represented by his lieuten-
ants, called namestniki in urban and volosteli in rural areas.1 Their position and
1 The namestniki were in charge of uezdy, districts with a prominent urban centre; in the 16th
and 17th century there were from 60–100 of such districts. The district entrusted to the vo-
lostel’, a volost’, would be predominantly rural, but could contain small towns; there were
several hundreds of such volosti. “Lieutenant” is a fairly precise equivalent of namestnik
(“somebody who acts in the place of another person”); I have preferred it to the more unusual
“vicegerent” as used by Dewey in his translations. A pre-1917 text, recently reprinted, still
provides a convenient overview of the organization of local government in Russia through
the ages: I.E. Andreevskii, O namestnikakh, voevodakh i gubernatorakh. Istoriia gosudarstven-
nogo upravleniia v Rossii (ix–xix vv.), Sankt-Peterburg, 1864 (1st ed.), reprint Moskva, 2014.
See also T.V. Chernikova, Istoriia gosudarstvennogo upravleniia Rossii ix–xviii vekov (Part i of

832 chapter 33
activities were financed by the resident population itself, on the basis of korm-
lenie, the ancient system by virtue of which officials were provided locally with
everything they needed, food, housing, means of transportation, etc., most of
which was replaced in later years by a monetary equivalent.
The administration of a particular region, entrusted to namestniki (volosteli),
was occasionally specified in a grant charter (zhalovannaia gramota) of a spe-
cial type, called a “statutory charter on lieutenancy” (ustavnaia namestnich’a
gramota). The Dvina Land Charter of 1397–1398 and the Belozero Charter of
1488 belonged to this category. The main component of the lieutenancy char-
ters was the listing, often in great detail, of the korm to which the lieutenant
and the different officials in his staff were entitled.2 The number of known
lieutenancy charters is modest.3 With a few exceptions they are from the 1506–
1556 period. It has been suggested that the issuing of lieutenancy charters, me-
ticulously defining what the lieutenants and their staffs were entitled to, was
prompted by the rising abuse of kormlenie by the latter.
The very short-lived Dvina Land Charter of grand prince Vasilii I Dmitriev-
ich of 1397–1398 had its origin in the long-drawn-out struggle for supremacy
between Moscow and Novgorod.4 The leading nobles of the vast Dvina region
had changed their allegiance from Novgorod to Moscow and this prompted
the Moscow grand prince to regulate the region’s government anew. The tra-
ditional arrangement of appointing a representative of the prince (lieutenant,
namestnik or volostel’)5 to rule in the latter’s name was maintained; the remu-
neration of the namestnik and his staff was effected through the usual kormle-
nie system. But the Dvina Land Charter made various concessions to the Dvina
nobles, as compared with the generally practised system of namestniki with
kormlenie. Novgorod put an end to the Dvina rebellion in 1398.
Ninety years later, in 1488, the government of Belo Ozero (or Belozero: White
Lake) was organized along similar lines, although less generously in respect of
E.V. Okhotskii, V.I. Ukolova (eds.), Istoriia gosudarstvennogo upravleniia Rossii), Moskva, 2016,
174–176.
2 For an early 16th century example, see S.B. Veselovskii (comp.), Akty russkogo gosudarstva
1505–1526 gg., Moskva, 1975, No.18, 26–27 (grant by Vasilii iii to a district in the Pereiaslavl’
uezd).
3 prp iv, 222–223, lists 16 of such charters, including the 1397–1398 Dvina Charter and the
1488 Belo Ozero Charter; a new one was published by A.V. Antonov (“Ryl’skaia ustavnaia
namestnich’ia gramota 1549 goda”, in A.V. Antonov (ed.), Russkii Diplomatarii, vyp.3, Moskva,
1998, 65–70).
4 Ustavnaia gramota Dvinskoi zemle; see the section in Chapter 8.
5 Namestniki were appointed as princely representatives in towns, volosteli in rural areas.
In the Codes of 1497 and 1550 they are often mentioned in the same breath.
local interests. Belo Ozero had been acquired by the Moscow grand prince in
1386 and was then granted as an apanage principality to a cadet branch of his
family. In 1486 Ivan iii brought it back under direct Moscow rule. The Belozero
Statutory Charter adopted the system of rule through a namestnik; it regulated
kormlenie in much detail.6
As long as the lieutenant (urban or rural) did not give the grand prince
any cause for concern and did what was expected of him, he enjoyed great
independence in governing the territory assigned to him.7 His power was not
monopolistic, there would be several princely officials, not reporting to him,
active within the same territory, but their tasks would be more specific, such
as the collection of a variety of taxes, specific military duties or police work,
etc. The power of the namestnik or volostel’ was more or less universal, or at
least relatively indeterminate. It would embrace general and especially eco-
nomic administration (such as land management), public order, and general
jurisdiction, except in a few of the most serious cases. The Code of 1497 of
Ivan iii devoted a number of provisions to the judicial and law enforcement
activities of the lieutenants and their specialized staff (sheriffs, constables,
bailiffs, etc.). Kormlenie was meant to provide not only for the lieutenant
personally, but also for the entire government apparatus of which he was the
head.
The differences between the namestniki and volosteli were mostly of a socio-
logical nature. Pashkova’s detailed analysis has shown that the office of namest-
nik would usually confer greater prestige on the incumbent than that of the
volostel’.8 Accordingly, a much greater number of service princes, boyars and
other high-ranking officials was found among the namestniki than among the
volosteli. The fact that the territory over which the namestnik was appointed,
the uezd, was generally much larger than the volost’ run by the volostel’ was of
course a major factor in the difference in status. It should be added that, while
volost’ was a fairly distinct territorial unit, a district consisting of a number of
villages, uezd had a less well-defined character. It usually referred to a territory
which had enjoyed a degree of independence in the past as an apanage or an
independent principality or in another way. This resulted in a total number
of from 60 to 100 uezdy. This number included uezdy as sub-divisions of large
6 Belozerskaia ustavnaia gramota, see Chapter 8.

7 Cf. T.I. Pashkova, Mestnoe upravlenie v russkom gosudarstve pervoi poloviny xvi veka.
Namestniki i volosteli, Moskva, 2000, 125. This section is based mainly on Pashkova’s work.
8 See the lists of namestniki and volosteli of the Moscow grand princes and other princes
(Appendices 1 and 2) from the second half of the 15th century and the first half of the 16th
century in Pashkova, 131–185.
834 chapter 33
former principalities. These principalities were themselves occasionally also

designated as uezdy.9 Another name for such territories was zemlia (“land”)
and they resurfaced in the times of Peter the Great as “provinces” or “govern-
ments” (gubernii).
The evidence from Riazan’, which survived as a nominally independent
grand principality until 1521, suggests that the administrative system of namest-
niki and volosteli, maintained through kormlenie, operated, with minor differ-
ences, in all other Russian principalities which were successively absorbed by
Moscow.10
The curious combination of relatively independent local government by
lieutenants and its financing by means of the kormlenie system suffered from
inherent defects which made it untenable in the end. Lax supervision by the
central authorities made the temptation to exploit kormlenie and related im-
positions on the population as an instrument to accumulate private wealth
almost irresistible.
The Codes of 1497 and 1550, as well as other contemporary sources, offer
some information on the staff assisting the lieutenant in the execution of his
duties. Most officials mentioned are connected with the administration of jus-
tice, which is not surprising as this was the central topic of the Codes. The tiun,
an officer already known in Kievan times, appeared as the ordinary deputy of
the lieutenant. Dovodchiki and pravedchiki are usually mentioned together and
are translated variously as bailiffs, constables, etc., belonging to the staff of a
lieutenant.11 The dovodchik was probably the official who delivered the sum-
mons (dovod). Dovodchiki and pravedchiki did not receive korm, but a reward
called pobory. They disappeared in the 17th century. Other officials served as
members of the lieutenant’s staff, such as poshlinniki (tax collectors), obysh-
chiki (investigators), pristavy (bailiffs) and of course tiuny, but they are also
encountered in other branches of the administration.
9 Art. 46 of Ch. xvii of the Ulozhenie directed that a particular rule for assigning land
in the uezdy of Moscow, Dmitrov, Zvenigorod and Ruza was to be applied similarly in
the uezd of Novgorod. The meaning was obviously that the law of the Muscovy heartland
(the uezd of Moscow and the adjacent uezdy) was also applicable in the former territory
of the Novgorod republic, of which the actual uezd of Novgorod was only a small part and
which encompassed a number of uezdy.
10 Pashkova’s lists contain many names of namestniki and volosteli from Riazan’ and other
principalities.
11 See also S.V. Strel’nikov, “K izucheniiu iuridicheskoi terminologii v srednevekovoi Rusi
x–xvii vv. («pravda», «pravednik» i «nedel’shchik»)”, Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii 8, Moskva,
2004, 58–74.
The Reforms of Ivan iv
The general significance and background of the reform policies of the first ten
years of the reign of Ivan iv were discussed earlier (in Chapter 23). Accordingly,
the inadequacy of the kormlenie system as the financial backbone of local gov-
ernment is not to be seen as the single factor that drove the reforms introduced
during the reign of Ivan iv. The need to have a more efficient system of local
government was connected with several other factors, such as the wish of cen-
tral government to acquire more control over what went on in the periphery,
the shifting balances between sections of the landowning classes (boyars, gen-
try, monasteries), serious social unrest in various parts of the country, military
requirements, and of course fiscal considerations. The overall perspective re-
mained the metamorphosis of Moscow from a small principality into a major
European state. The Muscovy government had to deal with all these factors
and the new political reality implied that its policies would be cloaked, at least
in part, in legal enactments. This has to be kept in mind in examining the re-
forms of local government in the era of Ivan iv, because most of the measures
taken concerned not only, and often not primarily, local government.
One of the earliest manifestations of the new trends was the passing of
the Belo Ozero Guba Charter of 1539 (not to be confused with the Belo Ozero
Statutory Charter of 1488, discussed above). It took place under rather chaotic
political conditions, shortly after the death in 1538 of the grand princess-regent
Elena Glinskaia, the mother of Ivan iv (born in 1530), when the government
was in the hands of quarrelling boyar clans and Muscovy was involved in sev-
eral wars on its borders. Lawlessness was rife, especially in the North, sparsely
inhabited by ‘black’ peasants, who worked on government lands without being
subject to feudal masters. The Belo Ozero Guba Charter, looking outwardly like
a grant charter, recognized the ineffectiveness of the prince’s agents in fighting
robber bands controlling much of the countryside, and outlined a new sys-
tem for dealing with the problem. It was issued in the name of tsar Ivan. The
policy embodied in the reform was mentioned in an entry in the First Pskov
Chronicle under the years 1540–1541, which stated explicitly that it represented
a new departure.12
Guba Charters
In the Muscovy era, the gubá was an administrative district, more or less syn-
onymous with an uezd. In the guba charters the term uezd is frequently used,
12 Cf. prp iv, 174 and rz ii, 208. On the guba reforms, see also V.V. Bovykin, Ocherki po istorii
mestnogo samoupravleniia epokhi Ivana Groznogo, Sankt-Peterburg, 2015, 156–186.
836 chapter 33
but the (elected) district officials were commonly referred to as guba elders
(gubnye starosty). The legal relevance of the guba charters is especially in the
light they shed on the emergence of a governmental apparatus, as well as in
their impact on the development of the criminal law of Muscovy.13
The 1539 Belo Ozero Guba Charter was addressed to the population of the
Belozero district (as mentioned above, originally an independent principality,
but absorbed by Moscow in 1386), ostensibly as a reaction to its request to be
allowed to deal with robbers and brigands itself. The main thrust of the charter
was in granting the population its request and in regulating the main features
of this innovation.14 Art. 1 contained the address, art. 2 had the character of a
preamble. The latter provision related that the Belozero population had com-
plained bitterly about the deprivations suffered at the hands of bandits and the
ineffectiveness and even harmfulness of the activities of the officials sent by
Moscow. The same rhetoric was later used by Ivan iv in introducing his Code
of 1550.
The reform initiated by the Belo Ozero Guba Charter changed the procedure
in force until then, which was based on art. 39 of the Code of Ivan iii of 1497.
This provision already contained elements which returned in the guba reform,
in particular the central concept of the “known criminal” (vedomyi likhii).
Art. 39 (1497) covered not only banditry, but also homicide, theft and “other
evil deeds”; it seems that along with the defendant’s bad reputation some sort
of other evidence was required. Such cases were tried by the namestnik (or, in
rural areas, the volostel’). Art. 3 of the Belo Ozero Charter took jurisdiction in
cases of banditry away from the lieutenants and transferred it to locally con-
stituted courts.
Although the charter was of regional applicability, other provisions (esp.
arts. 4 and 5) indicated that the guba reform concerned the entire country.
The judicial handling of bandits operating in organized gangs was taken away
from the regular courts of the namestniki and volosteli, the tsar’s regional
agents, and given to councils consisting of three or four literate and suitable
minor noblemen (deti boiarskie, in fact: landowners) and five or six elders and
13 The major editions of selected guba charters in prp, rz and PRoP are accompanied
by comments by A.G. Poliak (prp iv, 173–175, 198–226), V.M. Kleandrova (rz ii, 207–213),
and Iu.V. Ospennikov (PRoP iii/1, 74–83). See also H.W. Dewey, “Muscovite Guba Char-
ters and the Concept of Brigandage (Razboj)”, Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science,
Arts, and Letters, Vol. li (1966), 277–288.
14 Text in prp iv, 176–179; rz ii, 213–215; PRoP iii/1, 74–75; English translation in H.W. Dewey,
Muscovite Judicial Texts, 33–34.
prominent peasants (lutchikh liudei krestian, probably: well-to-do farmers).

The councils were elected by a general assembly (art. 3) in which everybody
from local princes to dependent peasants and craftsmen (excluding slaves)
participated (a list in art. 1).The result of the election had to be reported to
Moscow (art. 10).
Art. 3 also stipulated that not only the bandits themselves, but also their
accomplices (who sheltered bandits or hid stolen goods) were covered by the
charter.
Most of the remaining provisions of the charter were devoted to the pro-
cedures to be followed. In the conditions of 16th century Russia one should
of course not expect the fair trial guarantees of the 21st century. The central
concept remained the vedomyi likhii chelovek (notorious criminal); if the lo-
cal people who constituted the court were convinced that they were dealing
with a real bandit, he would have little chance of escaping the gallows. Torture
was an almost obligatory part of the procedure, but only persistent denial of
guilt by the defendant coupled with the lack of any other evidence and the
existence of some real doubt about the charge might save his life; he would be
put in jail then, to see whether new evidence would perhaps turn up. In most
instances the procedure would end in capital punishment, accompanied by
confiscation of property. This was to be used first for compensating victims,
and then the balance was to be sent to Moscow.
Everything had to be written up; the appearance of court documents was
a significant element of the new legislation, explaining the requirement of
literacy.
Later on in the same year, a very similar charter was issued to the town and
district of Kargopol’.15 In the following year, the town and district of Ustiug was
the recipient of a charter in many ways identical to its predecessors,16 but the
gubnaia gramota of the same year and addressed to the town and district of
Sol’ Galitskaia, although similar in its content, was drafted differently.17 The
key role in handling people suspected of being bandits was given here to the
town commissioner (prikazchik gorodovoi), an elected official.
15 The most comprehensive collections of guba charters are to be found in 19th century pub-
lications, such as the Akty, sobrannye v bibliotekakh i arkhivakh Rossiiskoi imperii Arkheo-
graficheskoi ekspeditsii Imperatorskoi akademii nauk (aae), the Russkaia Istoricheskaia
Biblioteka (rib), or S. Shumakov, Gubnye i zemskie gramoty Moskovskogo gosudarstva,
Moskva, 1895.
16 Text in PRoP iii/1, 75–76.
17 Text in L.I. Ivina (comp.), Akty feodal’nogo zemlevladeniia i khoziaistva. Akty Moskovskogo
Simonova monastyria (1506–1613 gg.), Leningrad, 1983, No.64, 75–76.
838 chapter 33
There were altogether eight gubnye gramoty issued during the first few years
(1539–1542), all drafted along the lines of the Belozero example.18
After a single guba charter from 1549, six new charters appeared in the fol-
lowing decade.19 These charters were designated as nakazy, reflecting their
character as detailed instructions coming from above. The best known is the
Medynskii gubnoi nakaz of 1555.20 The general set-up of the guba jurisdiction
remained unchanged, but procedures were described more elaborately and
less was left to the discretion or imagination of the local guba officials. The
highest guba elders were not elected but appointed by name in the nakaz.
Guba elders had to swear an oath in Moscow, the text of which listed their
most important duties.21
The nakazy of the 1550’s concerned regions all over Russia. By that time the
1550 Sudebnik was in force; art. 60 referred explicitly to the exclusive compe-
tence of guba courts in cases of banditry. This provision was based on art. 39 of
the Sudebnik of 1497, mentioned above.
The increasing involvement of the tsar’s central government in the work
of guba institutions required a more elaborate administrative structure in
Moscow. Most authors are of the opinion that the start of the guba reforms
was accompanied by the emergence of a special department. The 1539 charter
of the Belozero guba mentioned prince Ivan Danilovich Penkov and his asso-
ciates, to whom reports were to be addressed. The next year, the Ustiug guba
charter said: “our boyars in Moscow to whom banditry cases have been as-
signed”. In the 1550’s the existence of a Brigandage (or Robbery) Department
(Razboinyi prikaz) is well-documented. This Department was operationalat
least as early as 1555. Its decisions were collected in a “Book of Directives”
(Ustavnaia kniga); the first one known is from 18 January 1555, in fact a short
general regulation on procedure in cases of banditry.22 On 26 November 1555
a similar regulation on procedure in cases of theft followed,23 and the next
year (on 22 August 1556) a general regulation on procedure in matters subject
18 Two gubnye gramoty of 1541 to the Troitse-Sergiev monastery (itself not too far from Mos-
cow) concerned some of the monastery’s extensive landholdings, mostly in the former
principality of Tver’.
19 A list of guba charters, known at the time (1956), in prp iv, 223–224.
20 Text in prp iv, 179–185; rz ii, 218–223; PRoP iii/1, 65–68.
21 See prp iv, 186–188. On this second phase of the guba reforms, see V.V. Bovykin, Ocherki
po istorii mestnogo samoupravleniia epokhi Ivana Groznogo, SPb., 2015, 279–312.
22 Prigovor o razboinykh delakh (“Judgment in matters of banditry”), prp iv, 356–360; PRoP
iii/2, 263–265.
23 Ukaz o tatebnykh delakh (“Decree on matters of theft”), prp iv, 360–363; PRoP iii/2,
265–267.
to guba jurisdiction was established.24 The activities of the Razboinyi prikaz

made the granting of guba charters to specific regions superfluous, although a
small number of them were issued during the remainder of the 16th century.
Statutory Land Charters

Lieutenancy charters, as the basic statutory regulation of the lieutenancy (in-
cluding kormlenie) system, continued to be granted into the middle of the 16th
century, when they were gradually replaced by another type, the “statutory
land charter” (ustavnaia zemskaia gramota).25 The latter charter paralleled
the guba charter in several ways, but its scope was wider. The similarity was
most obvious in the first paragraphs of the two types of charters, referring usu-
ally to the initiative of the rural population in addressing the tsar to complain
about the problems in their villages, the devastation caused by robbers, war,
exploitation by the tsar’s officials, and the ensuing flight of a substantial part
of the population; this narrative was then usually followed by the tsar’s reply in
the form of an ukaz in which he prescribed a new approach. Where the guba
charters usually contented themselves with just taking away certain sources
of income from the lieutenants, the land charters summarily dismissed the
namestniki and volosteli in most cases.
The guba charter had transferred criminal jurisdiction in cases connected
with banditry from the lieutenant to the elected guba elders, the land char-
ter extended the involvement of the local elite to other matters as well. This
elite was designated in the charters as “beloved leaders” (izliublennye golovy),
to be selected from the “best people” (lutchie liudi). Village elders would con-
stitute the core, but well-to-do merchants and, where available, landowning
gentry, would also be eligible. Such persons, like guba elders, also had to swear
a solemn oath (krestnoe tselovanie, hence their designation as tseloval’niki) in
Moscow, that they would carry out their judicial functions without favours or
bribery, and also that they would collect and deliver the annual tax (obrok)
faithfully and on time.26
One of the earliest examples of a statutory land charter was the charter
granted on 25 February 1552 by Ivan iv to the population of three districts
24 Prigovor o gubnykh delakh (“Judgment on guba affairs”), prp iv, 363–370; PRoP iii/2,
267–271.
25 Lists of lieutenancy and land charters in prp iv, 222–225. Very occasionally (in 1584 and
1614), lieutenancy charters were granted after the middle of the 16th century.
26 Oath formula in prp iv, 197–198.
840 chapter 33
(volosti) in the very vast North Russian Dvina province (uezd).27 Art. 1 of the
charter contained the tsar’s address to the population, represented by three
peasants mentioned by name, and art. 2 served as a preamble; the tsar took
into consideration that the local population had suffered much from the lieu-
tenants (volosteli) and their various agents, as well as from brigands, that many
villages were deserted and that peasants had sought refuge by joining the work-
force of monasteries, but that the officials continued to impose korm and other
taxes on the remaining peasants. The main body of the charter then replaced
the administration of volosteli and their agents with that of “best people”, ten
“beloved leaders”. Although the charter repeatedly spoke of “elected best peo-
ple”, the ten elders were in fact appointed by name in the charter. At the same
time, korm and other taxes imposed by the volosteli were abolished. Their place
was taken by an annual tax of one hundred rubles, the obrok, to be collected
by the administration of the elders and paid directly to the tsar’s treasury. The
replacement of lieutenants’ kormlenie by an annual tax can be conceived as a
kind of buying off and it is therefore often referred to in the literature as otkup;
the term is rarely encountered in contemporary sources. Other taxes in favour
of the treasury and formerly collected by the volosteli were maintained, but
their collection also became the duty of the ten elders.
The other duties of the new administrators were defined quite generously:
criminal jurisdiction, including investigation, prosecution, trial and the exe-
cution of judgments in cases of homicide, other serious crimes “or other evil
deeds” (arts. 19–20), as well as the general administration of the district, which
also included jurisdiction in most civil cases. The assignment of jurisdiction
was repeatedly (arts. 4, 10, 17, 20, 21, 22) accompanied by the words “according
to our Code” (po nashemy Sudebniku). This connects the charter and the re-
forms of which it was an early manifestation very clearly with the more general
legislative campaign of the first years of the reign of Ivan iv and the Code of
1550.
A very similar charter was granted one month later (21 March 1552) to
the peasants of the entire district (uezd) of Vaga (in the present province of
Vologda).28
Most of the surviving land charters are from the 1551–1561 period and most
of them concern regions in Northern Russia where landowning by boyars and
27 Ustavnaia zemskaia gramota volostei Maloi Penezhki, Vyiskoi i Sury Dvinskogo uezda, prp
iv, 188–197; rz ii, 227–234; PRoP iii/1, 68–74; English translation in H.W. Dewey, Muscovite
Judicial Texts 1488–1556. Michigan Slavic Materials, No.7, Ann Arbor, 1966, 77–82.
28 M.F. Vladimirskii-Budanov (comp.), Khrestomatiia po istorii russkago prava, ii, Kiev, 1915
(5th ed.), 269–292.
other noblemen was less prominent. This explains at least in part why the need
to replace the outdated administration by princely lieutenants, financially sup-
ported by the kormlenie system, was more urgent there than in other parts of
Muscovy, where many administrative functions would informally be in the
hands of the local elite.29 In financial terms, the reform granted a greater mea-
sure of self-government to the local population (or at least its upper echelons),
but this was balanced by greater direct involvement of the central government
(as indicated by several new procedures outlined in the individual charters),
while the fiscal impact of obrok and other impositions to be paid to the trea-
sury was considerable, but more or less fixed, as against the less calculable risks
involved in being subject to the regime of the lieutenants.
In all this it should be remembered that everything was certainly not as neat
as one might make it look on paper. It has been noted above that kormlenie and
the appointment of namestniki occurred not infrequently during the latter half
of the 16th century.
The Abolition of Kormlenie
For a long time it has been generally accepted by Russian historians that
kormlenie was abolished by a decree of Ivan iv, issued in 1555 or 1556.30 An of-
ficial record of the enactment has not been preserved, but the Nikonovskaia
Chronicle relates that tsar Ivan Vasil’evich (Ivan iv) issued a decree (prigovor)
on kormlenie and service in the year 7064 (= 1556).31 The text communicated
by the Chronicle is obviously not the genuine text of the decree. It consisted of
the following six parts: an introduction describing how kormlenie functioned
in the past; a record of the abuses that had arisen; a long digression on how a
God-fearing tsar treats his people; a central part containing the tsar’s decision,
consisting of a. the transfer of jurisdiction to local officials, b. the imposition
of a tax (obrok) on towns and rural districts, and c. the making of alternative
29 V.N. Glaz’ev, Vlast’ i obshchestvo na iuge Rossii v xvii veke: protivodeistvie ugolovnoi
prestupnosti, Voronezh, 2001, discusses the situation in the southern parts of Muscovy,
where specific circumstances (constant threats of Tatar incursions, a different social com-
position of the population, etc.) had slowed down and amended the guba reform mea-
sures already implemented in other provinces.
30 E.g. Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 209; S.V. Iushkov, Istoriia gosudarstva i prava sssr i, Moskva, 1950,
663; I.A. Isaev, Istoriia gosudarstva i prava Rossii, Moskva, 2006, 127.
31 The Nikonovskaia letopis’ takes up many volumes of the psrl; the text concerned is in
Vol.13, Sankt-Peterburg, 1904, 267–269. Tatishchev reproduced this text with minor varia-
tions, V.N. Tatishchev, Istoriia Rossiiskaia, Part 4, 253–255 (1996 reprint of 1964 edition).
842 chapter 33
provision (also called kormlenie) for boyars and other servicemen, in accor-
dance with rank and status; a final part was devoted to (military) service and
its reward in the form of land grants to (noble) servicemen.
Most commentators agree that the text incorporated in the Chronicle was
inserted afterwards in the narrative because the reforms introduced by the
government of Adashev were considered so important that they deserved to be
mentioned.32 Some authors go a step further and argue that there was in fact
never a decree in 1556 abolishing kormlenie, but that the Chronicle text merely
summarized the most important reforms of the previous years.33
Voevody
A new twist was added more recently by a study on the voevody in the 17th
century, the provincial governors who were to a great extent the functional
successors of the namestniki.34 The central point of Enin’s study is summarized
in the title of the book Voevodskoe kormlenie v Rossii v xvii veke (“Kormlenie of
voevody in Russia in the 17th century”). Enin pointed out that the Nikonovs-
kaia Chronicle (the only source) did not say that kormlenie was abolished, but
merely that the namestniki and volosteli, the main beneficiaries of kormlenie,
were replaced by a new type of official, who did not receive kormlenie. How-
ever, the simple fact that the assignment of kormlenie to voevody continued
during the 17th century speaks eloquently in favour of Enin’s view that korm-
lenie was not abolished and that it constituted the principal source of income
for the voevody.
The voevoda was known as early as in the Primary Chronicle.35 As the
word indicates (“one who leads the army”, comp. Germanic hartoghe, hertog,
herzog), the voevoda was originally the military commander, the general, un-
der the prince.
32 See the incisive discussion of the debate in N.E. Nosov, Stanovlenie soslovno-
predstavitel’nykh uchrezhdenii v Rossi. Izyskaniia o zemskoi reformy Ivana Groznogo,
Leningrad, 1969, 367–385.
33 This, in particular, was the view of Zimin, who returned repeatedly to the question; cf.
A.A. Zimin, “«Prigovor» 1555–56 gg. i likvidatsiia sistemy kormlenii v Russkom gosudarstve”,
Istoriia sssr, 1958, No.1, 178–182; id., Reformy Ivana Groznogo, Moskva, 1960, 422–437;
prp iv, 599–601 (Zimin’s comments to the text from the Nikonovskaia Chronicle).
34 G.P. Enin, Voevodskoe kormlenie v Rossii v xvii veke (soderzhanie naseleniem uezda gosu-
darstvennogo organa vlasti), Sankt-Peterburg, 2000.
35 Such as Sveinald, the general of Ol’ga in 945, or Vyshata and his son Ian who were generals
of Iaroslav the Wise.
In the 16th century sources voevoda still had this meaning. In the 17th centu-
ry the voevoda also appeared as a high-ranking civil official.36 In the Ulozhenie
of 1649 the namestniki and volosteli have disappeared and the voevody, who are
absent in the Sudebnik of 1550, are mentioned frequently.
In a few cases (e.g. arts. 20(ii) and 21(ii), and 9(vii) and 26(vii)) the Ulozhe-
nie explicitly indicated that military commanders were meant. They were also
referred to as voevody v polku or voevody polkovye (regimental voevody, e.g. art.
149(x)). In most cases another kind of official is envisaged, and from the nu-
merous details provided concerning his various duties it is obvious that the
latter voevoda was actually the successor of the namestnik of the past. These
voevody were known as voevody gorodovye. They were the general representa-
tives of the tsar in the province (uezd) and, as such, they carried out manifold
governmental duties, including judicial ones. Jurisdiction in serious criminal
cases (homicide, theft, brigandage), assigned to guba elders, was excluded, ex-
cept in provinces where no guba courts had been set up(art. 3(xxi)).37 “Gov-
ernor” would be the most appropriate translation for voevoda gorodovoi. In
the Ulozhenie such governors are usually mentioned together with their close
assistants, their prikaznye liudi (chancery officers).
The emergence of the civil governors could tentatively be explained as fol-
lows. In the main towns of the provinces (uezdy) and especially in the former
capitals of principalities, there would usually have been a military presence of
considerable strength. When the namestnik disappeared, the local commander
was the natural successor as the agent of the prince. There are also indications
that voevody would appear earlier or more frequently in regions subject to in-
ternal or external threats.38 Several provisions of the Ulozhenie demonstrate
that payments for various administrative actions (sealing documents, granting
permissions, etc.), which in the past had been assigned to the namestnik, were
henceforth payable to the voevoda. This may have facilitated the continuation
of kormlenie in favour of the governor and his staff.
It goes without saying that voevody were appointed by the tsar.
36 E.g. prp v, 58–59, a sluzhilaia kabala (by which a loan debtor became the creditor’s serf),
confirmed and sealed by the two voevody of Iaroslavl’.
37 This was certainly not the only exception to the general jurisdiction of the provincial
governors. Art. 9 of the Decree on the Search and Handing Over of [Fugitive] Peasants
of 1641 provided that for a wide variety of offences committed by zakladchiki (dependent
persons belonging to monasteries) jurisdiction belonged to the government department
(prikaz) concerned, because governors apparently had claimed not to be competent in
such cases; cf. prp v, 368.
38 Cf. V.N. Glaz’ev, “Gorodovoe voevodstvo vtoroi poloviny xvii v.”, Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii 8,
Moskva, 2004, 165–174.
chapter 34
Criminal Law and Procedure
Introduction
One of the results of the emergence of a unitary Russian state by the end of
the 15th century was a great increase in the complexity, sophistication and
professionalism of the legal system. The Code (Sudebnik) of Ivan iii of 1497
was in most ways a continuation of legal traditions going back to the Russkaia
Pravda. The Council Code (Sobornoe Ulozhenie) of tsar Aleksei of 1649 was
sufficiently advanced to serve as the starting-point for the wholesale modern
codification of the 19th century. One of the indicators of this change was that
in handling an individual’s responsibility for his own acts the law began to dif-
ferentiate more clearly between criminal and civil responsibility. Still, to speak
blithely of the criminal law of Muscovy, as many authors have done follow-
ing Vladimirskii-Budanov,1 seems to be preposterous. Sergeevich, as always,
was more keenly aware of the problems involved; he did include a chapter
on criminal law in his Lektsii, but warned immediately that criminal law in
medieval Russia meant something quite different from how it was understood
in his time.2
The basic foundation of modern criminal law is the legality principle: only
acts which have been defined as criminal by the law can subsequently be re-
garded as crimes. This means first of all that a legal definition is required and
secondly that acts cannot retroactively be defined as crimes. A further conse-
quence is that a criminal penalty may only be imposed after the commission
of a crime has been established by a proper court. (This does not automatically
preclude the imposition of administrative penalties.) These ideas, summa-
rized in the Latin adage Nullum crimen, nulla poena, sine praevia lege poenali
1 Cf. Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 333–335. The PRoP series has not only included the texts of the most
important legal sources from Russia’s past (as did its predecessors, the prp and the rz),
but occasionally added chapters on certain legal topics. There are chapters on the crimi-
nal law of the Code of 1497 by I.V. Popriadukhina, PRoP iii/1, 99–165, and by A.A. Rozhnov,
PRoP iii/1, 227–260; on the Code of 1550 by I.G. Anan’eva, PRoP iii/1, 166–226, and by
A.A. Rozhnov, PRoP iii/1, 261–280. The criminal law in the Ulozhenie of 1649 is treated by A.A.
Rozhnov, PRoP iii/2, 304–354.

Criminal Law and Procedure 845
(“No crime obtains, no penalty can be imposed, without a previous criminal

law”), only became widely accepted in the course of the 18th century.
If we want to distinguish the criminal law of an earlier period as something
separate from other branches of law, we need another criterion. The most ob-
vious one is the role of public authority. In modern criminal law this role is
completely dominant; state prosecution usually appears there as the opponent
party to the party charged with a crime. The role of the victim of the crime
is very much secondary in criminal procedure (in a limited number of cases
prosecution requires the prior approval of the victim). In early times, such as
the era of the Russkaia Pravda, the role of public prosecution was absent or
insignificant; trials were basically between a plaintiff and a defendant, and
civil and criminal law were hardly distinguishable. In later times, such as in the
Muscovy tsardom, the state was already heavily involved in the prosecution of
certain acts, considered highly reprehensible, and this allows us to speak of the
criminal law of Muscovy, although this law was not as precisely circumscribed
as modern criminal law.
Compared to civil law, where a multitude and great variety of topics cre-
ate a complicated playing field, the basic conceptual structure of criminal law
is straightforward. Certain considerations are relevant to all criminal acts in
general. They include: the applicability of the criminal law in time and space
(such as the statute of limitation, territorial applicability), the act itself (time
of commission, acting by omission, attempt and preparation, plurality of ac-
tors, etc.), the actor (age, questions of mens rea, accountability and insanity,
error and mistake, etc.). All such questions are regarded as constituting the
general part of criminal law. The special part then consists, in modern times,
of the catalogue of criminal offences; such a catalogue was not absent dur-
ing earlier times, but it was open-ended. The law would describe and indicate
offences as the legislator saw fit, but this would not prevent the court from
punishing acts considered as deserving criminal punishment. A third part of
the criminal law would regulate penalties; this part is nowadays usually re-
garded as a division of the general part. The structure of the law of criminal
procedure, regulating the application of the criminal law in individual cases,
is even more transparent as it takes one in chronological order through the ap-
plication process, from the moment the proper authorities have taken note of
the fact that a crime may have been committed, through the identification of
a suspect, the formulation of a charge and the institution of prosecution, the
collection of evidence, conducting a trial and examination of the evidence,
drafting and announcing the decision of the court, and the execution of the
penalty imposed.
846 chapter 34
Criminal Law in the Codes of Ivan iii (1497) and Ivan iv (1550)
In Chapter 22, a short section was already devoted to the treatment of criminal
law in the Code of 1497. Its discussion here may conveniently be combined
with an overview of what the Code of 1550 had to say concerning criminal law,
as all relevant provisions of the Code of 1497 reappeared in the Code of 1550,
usually in amended and expanded form.
Before looking in more detail at the content of both codes, a few general ob-
servations are pertinent. The first point to be stressed again is that the border-
lines between civil and criminal law still remained quite hazy. This is especially
noticeable in the Code of 1497. As mentioned earlier, this Code was structured
primarily as a guide to higher and lower courts (the boyar courts and the courts
of the local lieutenants) about the various fees to be exacted. Its arts. 4–7 dealt
with the fees due in cases involving judicial duels. Arts. 6 and 7 referred to
duels concerning loans (zaimy), assault, arson, murder, theft and brigandage.
This casual combination of what we would regard as civil and criminal matters
was retained by the Code of 1550, which otherwise made an attempt at a more
systematized description of trials.
Secondly, as already suggested by the first point, the editorial policy of the
drafters of the two codes could be described as associative. In regulating judi-
cial duels, the Code of 1497 happened to refer to theft and then began a series
of provisions on how to deal with thieves and robbers. In its final provision
(art. 68), as an afterthought, it then returned to duels. Any kind of systematic
treatment of criminal law was therefore not to be expected in this approach.
A third aspect of this approach was that criminal law subjects were, as a
rule, treated in passing, not as the main topic. The principal thrust of the Code
of 1550 was to impose clear operating directives on the courts and all judicial
personnel. Serious violations of such rules were then often explicitly defined,
with the penalties to be imposed in such cases.
Finally, the range of offences covered by criminal law was indeterminate,
as illustrated most clearly by art. 8 of the Code of 1497 and the corresponding
art. 59 of the Code of 1550, which referred to several serious offences by name
and then added “or any other such evil deed” (ili inoe kakoe likhoe delo). In
the same vein, the codes mentioned several kinds of penalties, but the record
showed that different penalties were also applied and, in any case, the text of
the codes repeatedly referred to the grand prince (tsar) as the one who was to
determine what the penalty was going to be. The concept of the “notorious
criminal” (vedomyi likhoi chelovek), encountered in the provisions concern-
ing theft and similar offences and also prominent in the guba charters (see
Chapter 33), fitted effortlessly into this approach.
Russian authors often discussed the criminal law of the two codes through
an anachronistic imposition of modern systematization: crimes committed by
officials, crimes against property, economic crimes, crimes against the state,
etc. Similarly, the traditional Russian method of systematization of the topics
of the general part was usually followed: the subject of the offence (age, sex, so-
cial position, etc.), the subjective aspect (intent and negligence, insanity, etc.),
the object of the offence (the protected interest, as the organizational criterion
for the special part of the criminal law), and the objective side (the criminal act
or omission, attempt and preparation, perpetrators and accomplices, plurality
of perpetrators, recidivism, etc.).
If we start from the available texts, a less orderly picture emerges. As a result
of the drafting characteristics described above, it was unnecessary to regulate
most of the topics of the general part. Because criminal liability did not rely on
the presence of a precise definition of the offence, no special mention of, for
instance, attempt or complicity was required. Certain topics would turn up,
but it would be unrealistic to recognize a more comprehensive understanding
in such instances. The “notorious criminal” was nowhere defined and has given
rise to much debate; he could doubtlessly be regarded as a recidivist.
The drafters of the codes obviously never intended to regulate topics such
as homicide, offences against the person or against property, which just turned
up in the text in a casual fashion.
Only two categories of offences attracted the special attention of the draft-
ers and were treated more or less elaborately: theft and related offences (rob-
bery, etc.), and offences committed by judges and law enforcement personnel
in the course of conducting trials.
As regards theft (including also robbery or brigandage), both codes distin-
guished between first and repeated offenders. The Code of 1497 ordered the
execution of a person caught stealing a second time (art. 11). This also applied
to a person caught with stolen goods for the first time, but reliably identified
as a notorious criminal (art. 13). These rules were taken over into the Code of
1550 (arts. 56 and 52), but in a much more elaborate form, describing the proce-
dures to be followed in much detail. The prominence of theft and brigandage
can be explained by the prevailing lawlessness in many remote parts of the
vast country.
If the various fees to be paid in the course of the judicial process were the
central theme of the Code of 1497, the Code of 1550 was above all concerned
with the regulation of trials and everything connected with it. This shift was
most clearly demonstrated by a series of provisions right at the beginning
(arts. 3–11). These provisions generally followed the opening provisions of the
Code of 1497, but added sanctions: a judge or a member of the law e nforcement
848 chapter 34
personnel who violated the prescribed procedures made himself subject to

punishment. Not surprisingly, bribery figured prominently among the offenc-
es for which judicial personnel could be held liable (arts. 3–5, 8–11, 32–34, 42,
53–54).
Offences against the person received little attention. Art. 25 (1550) included
assault among other serious offences. Insults and other actions inflicting dis-
honour were discussed in Chapter 36 (on Civil Law) as a form of delict, be-
cause the penalty in such cases was private, financial compensation. Homicide
was mentioned occasionally in the same breath as theft and robbery, as one of
the most serious crimes, but was not dealt with separately.
A few odd offences, some of them with a long pedigree, turned up in both
codes, e.g. the ploughing up of boundaries (art. 62, Code of 1497; art. 87, Code
of 1550), encountered already in similar words in the Short Pravda (art. 34) and
the Expanded Pravda (art. 72).
While capital punishment and various forms of corporal punishment were
rare in earlier periods, the 16th and 17th centuries saw a big rise in their appli-
cation. The Code of 1497 ordered capital punishment in cases of theft, robbery
(brigandage, razboi), homicide (dushegubstvo), false accusations (iabednich-
estvo) and “other evil deeds” in art. 8, adding then in art. 9 the murder of one’s
master, conspiracy (kramola), theft from a church, kidnapping slaves (golovna-
ia tat’ba),3 and arson; art. 9 also mentioned the podymshchik as somebody
deserving the death penalty, but the meaning of this term remains obscure.4
Capital punishment was also included in arts. 11, 13 and 39, but these provisions
did not further widen its reach. The list remained essentially unchanged in the
Code of 1550 (arts. 52, 56, 57, 59–61).5 The standard mode of execution was by
hanging; important people were usually beheaded, but other, often more grue-
some methods were also used.
The principal form of corporal punishment was flogging. The Code of 1497
prescribed it twice, in art. 10 for a thief as first offender; this was called torgo-
vaia kazn’ (punishment on the market place) and was to be carried out with the
knout; and in art. 62, ploughing up boundaries, which was also to be punished
by flogging with the knout. In the Code of 1550 flogging with the knout was also
ordered for court clerks (pod”iachie) who had been bribed to falsify j udgments
3 This interpretation is disputed; cf. prp iii, 381–383.

4 See the review of the various interpretations in rz ii, 70–71 and also Dewey’s footnote 2 in
H.M. Dewey, Muscovite Judicial Texts 1488–1556, Michigan Slavic Materials No. 7, Ann Arbor,
1966, 10. Most likely, the podymshchik was somebody who was attempting to raise trouble,
initiate an uprising, etc.
5 Art. 58 added that the swindler (moshennik) was to be punished as a thief.
or who had committed other irregularities (arts. 5 and 28) and persons who
had falsely accused judges and judicial personnel of perverting justice (art. 6).
In a great many other cases public flogging was ordered, without mentioning
the knout. The Ulozhenie of 1649 distinguished explicitly between flogging
with the knout (leather thongs attached to a handle) and with batogi (a bun-
dle of sticks). The former procedure was reserved for more serious cases and
regularly resulted in the death of the culprit. The mentioning of flogging in the
Code of 1550 without the addition of “with the knout” may therefore refer to
the lighter form of flogging.
Other penalties included incarceration, often for an indefinite period,
branding (for thieves and arsonists), chopping off a hand (for thieves), and
fines. The Code of 1550 was the first legislation which made mention of prison
as a form of punishment; it could be imposed in many cases which were still
not considered sufficiently serious to have the culprit executed. The Ulozhenie
extended the use of prison to an even larger number of crimes.6
The Guba and Land Charters
Guba charters were discussed in the relevant section in Chapter 33 (on Lo-
cal Government). The guba reform was inaugurated during the childhood of
Ivan iv when the government issued the Belo Ozero Guba Charter in 1539. A
whole series of similar decrees appeared during the following decades. The
main purpose of the guba reform was to deal more effectively with bands of
robbers, active in many rural areas. Justice in such cases was taken out of the
hands of the local lieutenants and given to elected, and later appointed, local
elders. Art. 60 of the Code of 1550 took account of this procedure in its list of
capital offences to be tried by the urban or rural lieutenant (theft, homicide, or
other evil deeds), by adding “excepting brigandage”. The latter offences were to
be tried by the guba elders who were to judge robbers “according to the guba
charters of the tsar and grand prince, as it is written in them”. In other words,
brigandage continued to be tried in the established way, even after the Code
of 1550 had been adopted. For further details, see the section referred to above.
The statutory land charters (ustavnye zemskie gramoty) were similar to
the guba charters, but more comprehensive in their scope. They appeared
6 See T.I. Pashkova, “Tiuremnoe zakliuchenie v zakonodatel’stve Moskovskoi Rusi”, A.P. Pavlov
(ed.), Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo v xiv–xvii vv. Sbornik statei, posviashchennyi 75-letiiu so dnia ro-
zhdeniia Iu.G. Alekseeva, Sankt-Peterburg, 2002, 82–98.
850 chapter 34
somewhat later and continued to be issued for a longer period.7 Like guba
charters, they were applicable in specific regions, most of them in the Russian
North.
Criminal Law in the Council Code (Sobornoe Ulozhenie) of 1649
Most of the 25 chapters of the Ulozhenie contained criminal law provisions,

viz. provisions which defined specific acts as entailing criminal penalties. The
death penalty was in fact to be found in 11 chapters. One should not pretend
therefore that criminal law was treated in a systematic and coherent way.8 On
the other hand, if one were to compare the treatment of criminal law in the
Ulozhenie with the way it had been covered by the Codes of 1497 and 1550,
certain steps in the direction of more coherence could certainly be observed.
Several (relatively short) chapters of the Ulozhenie were devoted to specific
criminal law topics. Chapter 1 dealt with blasphemy and related offences af-
fecting the Church; Chapter 2 with offences against the person of the monarch
(major offences against the state, in a modern perspective);9 Chapter 3 with of-
fences against the order of the tsar’s palace; Chapter 4 with forgery and coun-
terfeiting of official documents; Chapter 5 with counterfeiting by mintmasters;
Chapter 25 with the illegal sale of liquor and tobacco.
The most important innovation, where criminal legislation was concerned,
was the inclusion of two long Chapters (10, “On the Judicial Process”, and 21,
“On Matters of Robbery and Theft”), together making up 40% of the content
of the Ulozhenie.
The Chapter on the Judicial Process

As with most parts of the Ulozhenie, this chapter bore the traces of a com-
pilation of heterogeneous components. It started with a series of provisions
(arts. 1–26) concerning the general duties of judges and court personnel; much
attention was paid to bribery in various forms. This part was an elaboration
of similar but much shorter sections in the Codes of 1550 and 1497. After a
7 The oldest known is the statutory charter granted to the peasantry of Plës, in 1551; the last one
known is the tsar’s charter granted to the region of Ust’iany (in the Novgorod province), in
1622.
8 As in the chapter on criminal law according to the Council Code of 1649 in PRoP iii/3, 304–
355 (sections by A.A. Rozhnov).
9 Cf. D.A. Savchenko, “Otvetstvennost’ za gosudarstvennye prestupleniia po Sobornomu
Ulozheniiu”, in PRoP iii/3, 355–383.
while it entered into a description of the proper conduct of a trial and of the
people taking part in it. Then followed the lengthy treatment of dishonour and
the fines set for it (arts. 27–99). As these fines were in fact compensation for
the person who had been offended and not criminal penalties, this part of the
chapter was discussed in the section on injuries in Chapter 36 (on Civil Law:
Ownership).
After a long series of rules regulating primarily the payment of various judi-
cial fees, arts. 133–135 concerned situations where the threat to kill somebody
had been carried out; this would lead to the imposition of capital punishment,
the standard penalty for homicide, if no extenuating circumstances obtained.
In a number of cases compensation and damages to the injured person (as a
civil remedy) were accompanied by a fine or other penalty to be determined
by the tsar; art. 136 offered an example: the victim of assault or robbery could
sue the offender and, if the latter was found guilty, the tsar would also impose
a penalty.
In arts. 137–143 and 145 the activities of the bailiff (pristav), the central figure
in pre-trial procedures, were the main topic. These provisions were followed
by arts. 144 and 146–148 dealing with nedel’shchiki (commonly also translated
as bailiffs).10 Corrupt behaviour by a nedel’shchik was punished by flogging
with batogi, and, in the event of recidivism, by flogging with the knout and
dismissal (art. 146). Wrongful acts (obidnye dela) committed by higher officials
(boyars, okol’nichie, stol’niki and Moscow dvoriane) would entail at least finan-
cial consequences for them, and additionally any penalty to be determined by
the tsar (arts. 149–151).
In the following parts of this chapter specific criminal offences turned up
incidentally, such as those referred to in arts. 182 and 186–188, bringing legal
actions in bad faith, with the intention to inflict harm on other people, and in
arts. 198–202, various acts of violence against other people. From art. 203 on
the list continued, but then acts causing harm to other people were consid-
ered in what we would understand as a civil law perspective, in other words,
they did not entail criminal punishment, but some kind of compensation for
the damage inflicted. Art. 216 was devoted to unlawful interference with a de-
vice for trapping birds (ptich’ia privada). Art. 217 then went on by defining
more serious and malicious interference with such devices, and this turned
10 Several commentators have pointed out that the duties of the pristavy and nedel’shchiki
were similar, but not quite identical. Arts. 144–145 create the impression that the
nedel’shchik received a higher “walking fee” (khozhenoe) in some cases than the pristav.
See prp vi, 152, and A.G. Man’kov (ed.), Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 goda. Tekst, Kommentarii,
Leningrad, 1987, 201–202.
852 chapter 34
the act into a criminal offence, entailing flogging with batogi. This provision
was the first of a great variety of acts, most of them defined as criminal of-
fences, to be punished by penalties ranging from fines to capital punishment
(in the case of arson, art. 223). Although this list was interrupted several times
by procedural and civil matters, it continued until the final part of the chapter
(until art. 287), where most of the provisions addressed all kinds of rural mis-
conduct. The following Chapter 11 dealt with court cases concerning peasants,
but most of it was devoted to the enforcement of serfdom and the problem of
fugitive serfs.
The Chapter on Robbery and Theft

The inclusion of this chapter was in part to be explained by the separate treat-
ment of robbery in the past, when, in the course of the guba reforms, it was
taken out of the hands of the urban and rural lieutenants and made the re-
sponsibility of special courts, elected and subsequently also appointed from
among prominent local people. As robbery was usually accompanied by homi-
cide and other violence against the victims, such offences were added to the
robbery package in the Ulozhenie, and another factor which strongly affected
the regulatory system of Chapter 21 was the central role assumed by then in
the administration of justice by the Robbery Department (Razboinyi prikaz)
and the Land Court (Zemskii prikaz).
These elements were reflected in the opening provisions of Chapter 21.
Arts. 1–2 laid down that robbery, theft and homicide in the city of Moscow
were to be handled by the Land Court (the principal municipal authority in
the city, entrusted with police, judicial and fiscal responsibilities), while the
Robbery Department would be the competent authority for all other places
(the Moscow uezd and the provinces). The old guba jurisdiction survived in the
provincial towns, where elected guba elders and tseloval’niki (prominent citi-
zens), acting under instructions from the Robbery Department, would exercize
judicial duties in the cases assigned to the latter (art. 3).
Robbery, theft and homicide were to be understood as a general indication,
not a precise definition of the matter regulated in Chapter 21. Many of its pro-
visions widened its reach, to the extent that Chapter 21 could almost be un-
derstood as an embryonic criminal code covering the more serious offences
against property and against the person. Swindlers (moshenniki) were equated
to thieves (art. 11). Various forms of complicity were described in arts. 59–65
and elsewhere.
The chapter also dealt with related, less serious offences, such as providing
shelter to felons (art. 20), failure to apprehend felons and deliver them to the
Robbery Department, where this would have been possible (art. 15), private
settlements between thieves and people who had been robbed (art. 31), and
others. Such offences were usually punished with a fine.
Unintentional killing, during a fight or while drunk, entailed lighter punish-
ment (arts. 69–71).
Death was the standard penalty for repeated robbery, homicide and for re-
peated theft. The manner of execution was left to the court; hanging was the
usual method, but more painful methods were also employed.11 Then came
flogging with the knout; in more serious cases it could be qualified as “merci-
less” (bez poshchady), and also “on the rack” (na kozle) or “around the market
place” (po torgom). Next there was flogging with sticks or thin rods (batogi).
Prison would sometimes be imposed for a fixed period (three years for a first
conviction of robbery, after having been beaten with the knout), and at other
times would be left to the discretion of the tsar. An ear or a hand could be cut
off as additional punishment. Fines constituted the lightest form of punish-
ment; where the case remained unresolved, the suspect was often required to
post a bond.
Criminal Law and the Church; Offences against Morals
In the first part of this work, in Chapter 21 (on the Church and Monasteries),
we have noted that after the introduction of Christianity in Russia the Church
assumed primary responsibility in combating behaviour, not considered
particularly reprehensible in pagan times, but condemned decisively by the
Church. The basic sanction was the imposition of church penalties, although
the church statutes of the princes provided additional punishment by the state
in a few more serious cases. This approach, which was based on Byzantine
practice but had assumed a very different form in Russia, continued in later
centuries. (In Byzantium, Christian sexual mores were enforced by the state;
penalties were ferocious, compared with the relatively light ones imposed by
the Russian Church; see Chapter 17 of the Ecloga.)
What are known nowadays as offences against morals or sexual offences
were almost absent in the law of Muscovy. Obviously, the prevailing attitude
of the legislator was still that sexual behaviour per se was not a matter of great
interest to the state, unless it also affected other interests. Only two special
types of rape were covered by the Ulozhenie. Art. 30 of Chapter 7 (On Military
Personnel) dealt with homicide, plunder, rape and other serious misconduct
11 Cf. S.V. Zhil’tsov, “Ocherki smertnoi kazni v tsarstvovanie Alekseia Mikhailovicha”, PRoP
iii/3, 400–414.
854 chapter 34
by military personnel during a campaign; homicide and rape were then pun-
ished by death. If somebody entered a house by stealth with the intention of
doing something shameful to the mistress of the house (nad gospozheiu kakoe
durno uchiniti) and her servants or slaves did not defend her or even assisted
the intruder, then all of them (the intruder and the guilty servants) were to
be punished by death (art. 16 Chapter 22). In a similar manner, prostitution
itself did not constitute an offence, but a prostitute who was guilty of killing
her child or of having it killed was to be executed (art. 26 Chapter 22). The
foregoing provision (art. 25) made it an offence punishable with flogging with
the knout to procure women for prostitution; this provision could be seen as
the first sign of a more active involvement of the state in the sphere of sexual
offences.
The general principle remained that sexual offences were a matter for the
Church. Art. 80 of Chapter 20 (Justice Concerning Slaves) directed that an
unlawful act (bezzakonie) with one’s slave girl, resulting in a pregnancy and
then leading to an official complaint by the girl to the tsar, was to be dealt
with by the officials of the Church. Sodomy was only mentioned in the Stoglav
(Chapter 33) and incurred church penalties.
Criminal Procedure
Criminal procedure can be regarded as an offshoot of civil procedure. The

emergence of courts, as independent agencies for solving conflicts between
parties, was a decisive step in the genesis of law (see Chapter 1 where these
questions were developed at greater length). Initially, courts were set up by
the ruler (public authority, the prince, the ‘state’) as an instrument to curb the
disorder caused by private parties attempting to settle their disputes in any
way they saw fit. It was also obvious that courts could be used additionally for
other interests of the rulers: to extend their own influence or to derive financial
profit (by charging court fees, etc.). Eventually, the ruler not only provided ju-
dicial services, but also began to join disputes as a party in his own right, when
he felt ‘public’ interests were also involved. This can be viewed as the moment
when criminal procedure arose, together with criminal law itself. Of course,
this moment did not occur at a specific time in history, it happened with in-
creasing frequency, until the combination of civil and criminal elements with-
in a single procedure became a common phenomenon. This was the situation
in the setting created by the Codes of 1497 and 1550. In the Ulozhenie of 1649
there were still a number of provisions (especially in Chapter 10, on courts
and justice) which dealt with unlawful behaviour by ordering damages to the
plaintiff/victim and, simultaneously, by imposing a criminal penalty (usually
a fine, or flogging).12 The long block of provisions of arts. 100–123 of Chapter

10 regulated in considerable detail how a civil action should be started, and in
the course of considering the numerous eventualities that could arise, it also
dealt with misbehaviour by one of the parties, including insulting, injuring or
even killing the judge; there were no references, however, to any special proce-
dures to be followed in such cases. Apparently, the court handling the principal
action – the civil case – would also take care of the criminal aspects.
Judicial organization gradually became more complex in the century and a
half after the Sudebnik of 1497. That Code was still based on a simple two-level
procedure: lower courts in provincial centres and the boyar court in Moscow.
Bypassing the general jurisdiction of the boyar court, the grand prince or one
of his children could reserve the right to judge particular cases (art. 21). With
the emergence of the departmental system, two government departments,
headed by boyars, came into being as specialized criminal courts. At the same
time, the old practice of granting (judicial) immunity charters did not lose its
validity and many monasteries, but also hereditary landowners (votchinniki),
continued to enjoy the right to criminal jurisdiction, except in the most serious
matters.
The picture became further complicated by the local government reforms
shortly before and during the early years of the reign of Ivan iv. The guba
reforms transferred jurisdiction in cases of robbery and related crimes from
provincial lieutenants (namestniki) to locally elected or appointed guba el-
ders, and further reforms, embodied in the so-called statutory land charters,
entrusted the judicial handling of almost all crimes to local officials. Where
these special jurisdictions had not been instituted, jurisdiction remained with
the regional government’s representative, the governor (voevoda). See also on
judicial organization: Chapter 38 (on Courts and Civil Procedure).
Criminal procedure emerged in its own right in Chapter 21 (robbery, theft
and related serious crimes) of the Ulozhenie of 1649. One would look in vain
in this chapter for an orderly description of the procedures to be followed,
but certain elements were mentioned in passing. As stated above, two gov-
ernment departments were designated as the central agencies in handling
the offences covered by the chapter, the Robbery Department (Razboinyi pri-
kaz) and the Land Court (Zemskii dvor or Zemskii prikaz). The former depart-
ment was in charge of robbery and connected offences and theft, outside the
city of Moscow, the latter with theft and homicide in Moscow city. Outside
Moscow, jurisdiction was exercized by guba courts (guba elders together with
tseloval’niki), acting under instructions from the Razboinyi prikaz. Where no
12 The example of art. 136 of Chapter 10 had been mentioned above.

856 chapter 34
guba courts were active, provincial governors (voevody) or officials of the Raz-
boinyi prikaz were competent (arts. 1–3).
The actual scope of Chapter 21 was in fact wider than suggested by these
provisions. Art. 1 spoke about “robbers who rob and kill people, and thieves who
steal” outside the city of Moscow, and art. 2 about “thieves who steal and engage
in all kinds of homicidal matters” in Moscow. Subsequently, the chapter also in-
cluded a great variety of offences connected with homicide, robbery and theft,
such as aiding and abetting robbers and thieves (e.g. arts. 20, 40, 57), buying an
unmarked horse (art. 52), and others. Then art. 72 covered intentional homi-
cide in a general formula, without limiting it to homicide committed by robbers
or thieves. In practical terms therefore Chapter 21 covered the bulk of all seri-
ous crime, with the exception of what one could describe as crimes against the
state, which were already covered in large part by Chapter 2 of the Ulozhenie.
Procedures, in fact criminal investigations, could be initiated by petitions
from interested parties or by government officials themselves. In accordance
with the general concept of guba jurisdiction, particular emphasis was given
to the active role of the population; several provisions expressed the general
duty of members of the public who were in a position to apprehend offenders
or at least to inform the authorities to act accordingly. The basic responsibility
for starting a criminal investigation was given to guba elders, wherever guba
courts were in operation (art. 5); otherwise the provincial governors would be
in charge while in Moscow itself the Robbery Department (headed by a boyar
assisted by an okol’nichii) would also handle investigations.
The activities required during the pre-trial phase were conducted by b ailiffs
and their helpers. As mentioned above, Chapter 21 referred to pristavy and
nedel’shchiki, without any clear distinction, although the historical origins of
the two offices were different. Their activities included the gathering of all po-
tentially useful information and this is usually referred to as sysk (search) or
obysk. It embraced, among other things, the hearing of victims and potential
suspects; the apprehension and arrest of the latter; the questioning of suspects;
the ordering of torture where this was prescribed by the law; the imposition of
a bond on suspects or other people involved in the case; impounding stolen
property.
Art. 161 (one of the longest in the Ulozhenie) and the following provisions
were devoted to a special type of investigation called poval’nyi obysk (approxi-
mating a general investigation or general inquiry), where an indeterminate
and possibly large number of people was to be questioned in the context of an
action, most often a criminal case.13
13 Cf. Man’kov, Kommentarii, 205–206; T.Iu. Ampleeva, “Ugolovnoe sudoproizvodstvo v Mos-

kovskom gosudarstve”, PRoP iii/1, 321–340, at 332.
Quite a few provisions of Chapter 21 were directed at preventing bailiffs

from abusing their position, by accepting bribes or other unwarranted pay-
ments, granting favours to suspects, exercizing insufficient supervision, etc.
Serious infractions could result in heavy punishment and dismissal (as men-
tioned above).
The chapter had next to nothing to say about the trial itself. Presumably,
the investigative phase would go on until there was adequate evidence, but
the Ulozhenie also continued the practice which had already existed under the
earlier guba reform, where there was insufficient evidence to convict, while at
the same time serious suspicions remained. The suspect could then end up in
prison, awaiting the appearance of fresh evidence. Another option would be to
release him on his bond.
Convictions under Chapter 21 would often entail capital punishment.
The Ulozhenie established a waiting period of six weeks dlia pokaianiia (for
remorse) after the judgment of the court (art. 34). Later on this period was
shortened.
Robbers and thieves would have an ear cut off (left ear for the first offence,
right ear for the second offence, arts. 9–10), after having been flogged with the
knout. They were then handed a document about their status by the court
clerk and banished to a remote place.
In modern times, criminal proceedings consist of a legal dispute before a
court between one party, representing public authority and charged with the
prosecution of crimes, and a defending party, charged with the commission of
a crime. In earlier times, including the era of the Muscovy tsardom, a clear di-
vision of labour between the court and public prosecution had not yet arisen.
The office of state prosecutor (prokurator) was created in Russia only in 1722
by Peter the Great. Various parties could therefore appear in a prosecutorial
role in Muscovy: the person who had suffered personal or material damage
from the crime could still, as in earlier times, act as a plaintiff; officials could
speak up about matters within their powers; the court itself, in the course of
its investigation of the case, could actively interfere. In the case of guba elders
and leading members of the Razboinyi prikaz the combination of judicial and
prosecutorial responsibilities is obvious.
Evidence
The modern distinction between accusatorial (adversarial) and inquisitorial
proceedings is sometimes applied in analyzing the historical development of
procedure, especially criminal procedure, in Russia. In accusatorial proceed-
ings the main role belongs to the parties, the activity of public power (whether
the court or a public prosecutor) is more restricted. Such proceedings were and
still are, as adversarial proceedings, the prevailing model for civil law disputes.
858 chapter 34
In Muscovy, the gradually increasing ambitions of public power were manifest-

ed in its ever more prominent role in criminal procedure, with a correspond-
ingly reduced role of the victim and his private interests.14
In the matter of evidence in criminal procedure, this inquisitorial tendency
had considerable impact in that some forms of evidence disappeared or lost
significance, while other forms became more important.15 The most obvious
example was the judicial duel, a common device for producing evidence in the
Code of 1497 and still available in the Code of 1550, but absent in the Ulozhenie.
A more inquisitorial form of proceeding in criminal cases received a power-
ful boost from the institution of a special procedure for dealing with “notori-
ously evil persons” (zavedomo likhie liudi). Of course, this development was
inherently connected with the gradual growing apart of civil and criminal pro-
ceedings. The major political and socio-economic dangers of wide-spread ban-
ditry could obviously not be combated by the private activities of individual
victims, but required concerted action by the state itself. The concept of the
notoriously evil person was the central element in this campaign.
The legislative history of this term can be traced back to the Code of 1497
where art. 13 allowed the execution of a person characterized as a “known
thief” (tat’ zavedomoi) by five or six persons who had sworn an oath to that
effect. In the corresponding provision of the Code of 1550 (art. 52) the identi-
fication of the suspect as an evil person (likhii chelovek) was to be established
during the investigation (obysk), no specific procedure was prescribed. The
most common method was the “general inquiry” (poval’nyi obysk), where a
large number of members of the neighbourhood concerned were questioned,
but other methods were also possible, such as the suspect’s confession that he
had robbed people before. In Chapter 21 (robbery and theft) of the Ulozhenie
the “evil person” was a common feature, but had become almost a synonym for
recidivist in the crime of robbery or theft. Whichever way it was established,
the suspect’s subsequent confession, usually under torture, would normally
provide complete proof of the fact. If the suspect did not confess, he could
escape a capital sentence provided the evidence against him was considered
insufficient; he would then be imprisoned until he was released on a bond (see
e.g. art. 38 of Chapter 21).
The inquisitorial inclination of the Ulozhenie was especially noticeable in
the prominence of torture as a means of producing evidence, viz. a confession.
14 On this topic, see N.G. Anan’eva, “Pravonarusheniia i iuridicheskaia otvetstvennost’ po

Sudebniku 1550 g.”, PRoP iii/1, 166–226, at 207–215 (“The peculiarities of the process ac-
cording to the Sudebnik of 1550”).
15 Cf. Anan’eva, op. cit., 21–226 (“Evidence according to the Sudebnik of 1550”).
Even where thieves or robbers were caught in the act or still in possession of
the stolen goods (polichnoe) and had confessed, they had to be tortured.
Traditional ways of producing evidence, such as the evidence of witnesses
or written documents, retained their importance throughout the period re-
viewed. The main witness in criminal cases was often the victim, who then ap-
peared in the law or in legal documents as the “plaintiff” (istests). The general
term for a witness who could produce evidence by testifying to what he had
observed himself was called a poslukh; another kind of witness was a ponia-
toi, somebody who was required to be present at some official act (such as a
search).
The most important written documents to be used as evidence were the
reports which had to be written down by court clerks at various stages of the
preliminary proceedings, such as the first interrogation of a suspect, the inter-
rogation under torture, the execution of a search, the seizing of property, etc.
chapter 35
Civil Law: Persons
This chapter builds on Chapter 19 (the Individual and the Family, sections on
the Legal Status of the Individual and on Legal Classes); certain general consid-
erations expounded in those sections will not be repeated here. This applies in
particular to the most general one, the absence of the abstract idea of the hu-
man person, endowed with inalienable rights, as it was expressed most clearly
during the Age of Enlightenment in its major legal monuments, connected
with the American and French Revolutions.
The absence of this idea manifests itself in the legal treatment of women
and men as basically different categories and also in the prominence of the
idea of legal classes of persons, where the accent is almost exclusively on the
differences in their respective status instead of on the features common to all
persons. There are many varieties of the modern concept of equality, but at
least the idea of all people being born equal, as expressed in many major pro-
nouncements concerning human rights, was not germane to the understand-
ing of medieval and Muscovite Russia, where one was born a peasant, a boyar,
a prince, etc. To some extent, this understanding survived until 1917, because
official documents (such as passports) continued to indicate to what class a
person belonged.
There was nevertheless an element, not of the equality of all human beings,
but of a basic commonality, and this was derived from Christian values and
particularly from the writings of St. Paul. The Apostle was not a M arxist and
did not advocate or reject any particular type of society, but insisted that cer-
tain basic rights and duties were attached to all persons. He did not condemn
slavery, but admonished masters to treat their slaves humanely, and slaves
to serve their masters honestly. These ideas undoubtedly had an impact on
Russian society after the adoption of Christianity.
The Legal Status of the Individual: Men and Women
The impact of the dominant view on the relationships between the sexes on
law in Russian history was discussed in the opening section of Chapter 19. This
impact continued unabated during the era of Muscovy Russia. Before dividing
up society into different classes of persons, the most basic division between
women and men was made, entailing numerous legal consequences. Such

Civil Law: Persons 861
consequences were of course immediately and prominently visible in matri-

monial and inheritance law, but they also affected property law and then pub-
lic law as well, for instance in answering the question which members of a
dynasty would have the right to rule.
Certain traditional features of the Russian approach to women’s rights are
more clearly visible in the Ulozhenie, because of the degree of detail in its more
extensive regulation. The lesser legal powers of women were balanced to some
extent by the more generous protection afforded them by the law. Ch. 10 art. 99,
for example, perpetuated the old tradition of double compensation for insults
against honour where women were concerned. Art. 185 of the same chapter
granted procedural privileges to widows and unmarried young women (and
boys under 15) who were summoned as defendants in court proceedings.
Widows constituted a separate category. Once the husband, whether a land-
owner or the head of a family of serfs or slaves, had died, the family lost its
legal representative and the widow stepped into his place, insofar as the cir-
cumstances and views of Muscovy society allowed this. This is especially no-
ticeable in Chs. 16 and 17 of the Ulozhenie, dealing with service and hereditary
estates respectively. Two considerations shaped the fairly detailed regulation
of these topics, the government policy directed towards maintaining service
and hereditary estates as a steady source of military manpower, and the de-
rivative policy of assuring especially the petty landowner a measure of social
welfare and security for his widow and family. Ch. 16 art. 58 is revealing in this
respect. It dealt specifically with the situation in which the widow of a service-
man had been granted his service landholdings jointly with his children and
the children failed to look after her (not feeding her, not paying her respect,
or even expelling her from the house). In such a case, upon the widow’s re-
quest, the tsar would grant her service landholdings for maintenance out of
the husband’s estate.
Generally speaking, the Ulozhenie appeared to have special regard for the
protection of the regular family and its members. Fourth wives (considered
uncanonical) and concubines enjoyed little or no protection. Also, peasant
wives and children would usually share the fate of the husband as head of the
family (many examples in Ch. 11 are on court cases concerning peasants).
Legal Classes
Belonging to a legal class was in principle a question of birth. By being born in

a family of princes, boyars, merchants, serfs, slaves, one would automatically
become a member of that particular class. The major exception was that part
862 chapter 35
of the clergy which embraced monks and nuns (bishops and high church dig-
nitaries were recruited exclusively from monastic ranks). By becoming a monk
(or nun) one would ‘leave the world’, including the class into which one was
born, and assume a new name. Forced entry into a monastery was often used
to dispose of a political opponent in a non-violent way (although such “monks”
were sometimes later quietly assassinated). Widows of princes would often be-
come nuns, especially if it appeared desirable to get them out of the way (such
as the repudiated wives of Ivan iv).
The Sovereign and His Family
The legal status of the tsar as sovereign belonged overwhelmingly to public law
and was discussed in Chapter 30. But in a survey of the legal characteristics of
the civil status of various classes of persons in Muscovite Russia, the tsar must
be mentioned, because he was outside all other categories. His position in civil
law was very much determined by its autocratic aspects, in particular by the
principle that the tsar was answerable to nobody for his acts. This allowed Ivan
iv to be married six times after the death of his first wife, in blatant violation of
the Church Code (Stoglav, Chapters 23–24), solemnly adopted under his own
supervision in 1551.1
In older Russian legislation, such as the Russkaia Pravda, much attention
was paid to protecting the prince’s property, especially his own estates. In the
Ulozhenie of 1647, the emphasis was on the person and the dignity of the tsar,
allotted a prominent place in Chapters 2 and 3.2 The dominance of the auto-
cratic principle implied that the concept of the state (as owner of state proper-
ty) was completely overshadowed by the idea of the sovereign and all-powerful
ruler.
There is little to be found on the status of the tsaritsa, but her closeness to
the tsar would probably assimilate her status to that of her husband.
1 Chapter 23 described re-marriage after divorce as an offence that was to be forgiven, a third
marriage as a crime, and a fourth marriage as a disgrace: “living like a pig”. The first three
wives of Ivan iv died, the following three were repudiated and sent to a nunnery, therefore
Ivan’s last marriage to Mariia Nagaia was uncanonical. She was the mother of Dmitrii, prince
of Uglich, born in 1583 and assassinated in 1591, but re-appearing at least three times (as
Pseudo-Dmitrii i, ii and iii) in 1605–1606.
2 Chapter 2, “Concerning the Sovereign’s Honour, and How to Safeguard the Sovereign’s Well-
Being”; Chapter 3, “Concerning the Sovereign’s Court, in Order That There Will not be Any
Disorder and Misconduct by Anyone in the Sovereign’s Court”.
The widow of the tsar (or of a ruling grand prince in the previous era) was
a case apart. The Moscow grand princes usually made generous provision
for their widows by assigning very considerable landholdings to them. In the
sphere of public law, everything depended on the political and especially dy-
nastic circumstances prevailing at the death of the monarch. If for some rea-
son an obvious, undisputed and competent successor was not available at the
time, the widow could step in as regent. Sofiia Vitovtovna (1371–1453) was an
outstanding example. The daughter of the Lithuanian grand prince Vitovt, she
married Vasilii i in 1391 and assumed the regency upon his death in 1425 in fa-
vour of their only surviving son Vasilii ii (*1415).3 Left in Moscow in 1451 during
a siege by a Tatar army, she successfully co-ordinated the defence of the capital
at the age of 80. Elena Glinskaia (†1538) was another effective regent for her
son Ivan iv, who was only four years old when his father Vasilii iii died in 1534.
The regency of mothers, however, was factual rather than official; so much is at
least clear from the regency of Elena Glinskaia (1534–1538), when public docu-
ments emanated from the child-grand prince Ivan, instead of the regent.4
As from the reign of Ivan iii, the eldest son of the grand prince, and later
on the tsar, began to appear in official documents (treaties and grand princely
charters) as co-signatory, along with the main signatory (the grand prince or
tsar) himself, on whom all the rights included in the document concerned
were conferred.5
Princes
As discussed in several chapters of the first part of this work, the abundant pro-
liferation of the Rurikid dynasty in medieval Russia developed into a decisive
factor in shaping Russian history. It was uncontested that the right to rule be-
longed to the house of Rurik, or rather the descendants of St. Vladimir. Collec-
tively they constituted the princely class in Russia. In time, a threefold division
arose. There were princes who ruled their own more or less independent ter-
ritories, together with their immediate families, wives, children, grandchildren
and, if no direct heirs were available, their brothers. The second category was
formed by the apanage princes, younger sons or brothers of the ruling princes
3 Cf. I.G. Ponomareva, “Kto upravlial Moskovskim velikim kniazhestvom v 1425–1432 gg.?”
A.A. Gorskii (ed.), Srednevekovaia Rus’ 9, Moskva, 2011, 167–196.
4 See for instance Nos. 41, 44–45, 50–51, 53–55, L.I. Ivina (comp.), Akty feodal’nogo zemlevlad-
eniia i khoziaistva. Akty Moskovskogo Simonova monastyria (1506–1613 gg.), Leningrad, 1983.
5 Numerous examples in ddg.
864 chapter 35
who had been assigned apanage principalities, where they enjoyed consider-
able independence in domestic affairs. The least prominent were the service
princes, who did not have their own principalities, but had entered the ser-
vice of one of the grand princes, generally the grand prince of Vladimir and
Moscow.
During the long reign of Ivan iii (1462–1505) this system was gradually
transformed through the operation of three factors. The grand principality
of Moscow had absorbed almost all the other independent principalities and
the grand prince (later on tsar) of Muscovy emerged as sovereign of the en-
tire country, “grand prince of All Russia”, as his major title proclaimed. Sec-
ondly, the grand princes of Moscow, who had had many bad experiences in the
past with ambitious brothers and cousins, operating from their own apanage
principalities, successfully reduced the status of apanage principalities and
ultimately did away with them altogether. Thirdly, the admission of foreign
princes into Muscovy service put an end to the Rurikid monopoly of the title.
Most of these princes were descendants of the royal house of Lithuania (Gedi-
minids) and were easily integrated into the fabric of the high bureaucracy of
Moscow;6 among the others, the descendants of Chingis-Khan and other Tatar
princes were the most numerous. Conversion to the Christian faith was an ob-
vious precondition.
The result of this process was that the apanage princes virtually disappeared.
The above mentioned Dmitrii of Uglich, youngest son of Ivan iv, was granted
the apanage principality of Uglich upon his birth in 1583 and the practice was
discontinued afterwards. Outside the family of the grand prince (tsar), there
was no longer place for the numerous princely families, except in the service
of the ruler. The princes, all of them service princes now, merged with leading
boyars and other high officials to form the new military and bureaucratic elite
of the state. This of course explains much of the prominence of the special
system of mestnichestvo at the time.
This merger, however, did not mean that the status of prince was lost. Of all
the social classes in Muscovy, the princely class was the most clearly defined:
the great number of Rurikid families, whose ancestors had ruled part of the
country in the past, and a much smaller number of expressly recognized and
admitted foreign princely families.
6 The reverse movement also occurred: Russian princes who entered the service of the Lithu-
anian grand prince; prince Andrei Kurbskii who fled Ivan iv in 1564 being a notable example.
The last remaining notionally independent grand prince of Riazan’, Ivan vi, also found refuge
in Lithuania in 1520; see S.I. Smetanina, “Novyi dokument o prebyvanii riazanskogo kniazia
Ivana Ivanovicha v Litve”, Russkii Diplomatarii vi, 14–16.
Although the new arrangement meant a certain diminution in status for

most princely families, the material advantages were often considerable. For
many of them a precarious existence as ‘sovereign’ of a minute territory, which
was perennially at risk of being swallowed up by a more powerful neighbour,
was abandoned in favour of becoming a well-endowed magnate, close to an
illustrious monarch.
The lists of high offices from Muscovy show that for most of the time about
half of the most influential and lucrative positions (as military command-
ers and provincial administrators) were in the hands of members of princely
families.7
The formative process of the new elite of Muscovy, through the absorption
of princely families of various origin and their partial merger with the different
strands of the boyar class, has been documented meticulously by A.A. Zimin in
his posthumously published work on “The Formation of the Boyar Aristocracy
in Russia in the Second Half of the 15th and the First Third of the 16th Century”.8
Zimin, who subscribed to the dominant theory on the Boyar Duma, defined
the entry of new princely families into the upper level of the Muscovy aris-
tocracy by their offspring becoming members of the Boyar Duma. For those
(like the present author) who are inclined to side with Sergeevich on this is-
sue, Zimin’s investigations retain their full value, as long as “Boyar Duma” is
not considered as a formal institution with a fixed membership, but as a label
which generally refers to the highest level of the Muscovite aristocracy, from
which the tsar drew most of his intimate collaborators and councillors. As has
repeatedly been observed, a Boyar Duma as such is nowhere mentioned in
contemporary documents; a fortiori, there has never been any mention of the
tsar appointing somebody at a certain date to become a member of the Boyar
Duma, persons already holding high rank, such as okol’nichii, were merely
raised occasionally to boyar status. All we have is reports of the tsar deciding
something in his council chamber, with a few high-ranking noblemen (boyars)
being present. The composition of this group changed over time and this then
was taken by Zimin and scholars on his side as an indication of appointments
to and dismissals from the Boyar Duma. On this basis, Zimin, at the end of his
study, offered a table of the numerical strength of the Boyar Duma during the
1501–1538 period.9
7 See, for instance, the lists of namestniki in T.I. Pashkova, Mestnoe upravlenie v Russkom gosu-
darstve pervoi poloviny xvi veka, Moskva, 2000.
8 A.A. Zimin, Formirovanie boiarskoi aristokratii v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine xv – pervoi treti xvi v.,
Moskva, 1988.
9 Ibidem, 290–291.
866 chapter 35
Boyars and Other High Nobles
The figure of the boyar in earlier times was discussed in Chapter 14 and in
Chapter 19. The lines drawn in those sections can be continued when we come
to the Muscovite era. The boyar class remained unclearly circumscribed, as be-
fore. When a person was defined as a boyar in a contemporary text, we may as-
sume the correctness of the statement. Under Ivan iv, appointment as a boyar
occurred regularly, but this did not mean that there were no boyars outside the
category of appointed ones. Some of the more extensive princely families, such
as the Shuiskiis or the Obolenskiis,10 produced considerable numbers of high-
ranking military and civil officials, generally regarded as boyars, and this, unof-
ficially, conferred boyar status on the entire family. Zimin himself designated
many non-princely families as boyar families; foremost among them were the
old Moscow boyar families of Protas’evich, Ratshich, Kobylin, Saburov and
Pleshcheev.11
The boyar class of the 16th and 15th century grew out of the boyar class of
the past, but certain characteristics were transformed. The main cause of this
change was the introduction of the appointment of boyars, itself one of the
many manifestations of the increasingly autocratic nature of the regime. The
tsar surrounded himself with trusted advisors and helpers, the category con-
ceptualized by Kliuchevskii and his followers as the Boyar Duma, although it
was actually a company of undefined composition, consisting of persons who
happened to be available and whom the tsar felt like consulting. There was
unquestionably a nucleus of courtiers who were regularly present and formed
a sort of cabinet. Most of them enjoyed boyar rank, others had been grant-
ed the next lower rank of okol’nichii, and there were also some lower nobles
(dumnye dvoriane) and secretaries (dumnye d’iaki). The boyars among them
were designated as boiare vvedennye (introduced boyars, i.e. into the inner
circle around the tsar). This title, obviously, depended on appointment. Most
of the introduced boyars were recruited from the service princes, others from
families traditionally regarded as boyars. Occasionally, noblemen of lower
rank would be elevated personally to boyar rank. Persons of non-princely rank
10 The Shuiskii princes descended from the grand princes of Nizhnii Novgorod, the Obolen-
skii princes from the princes of Chernigov.
11 The entire second part of Formirovanie is devoted to what Zimin called “untitled aris-
tocracy in the Duma” (netitulovannaia znat’ v Dume), with chapters on the oldest boyar
families, boyar families of the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century, and
the entry of other boyar families into the Duma in the course of the 15th and the begin-
ning of the 16th century.
were a ppointed only as boyars after they had first served as okol’nichie. Princes,
however, considered such a career move as below their dignity (they were all
descendants of ruling princes). As a result a new hierarchy arose among the
princely families: those that served regularly as (appointed) boyars, and those
that were less successful (but served for instance as okol’nichie).12
The dichotomy between the select group of appointed boyars and boyars
in general is abundantly clear in the legal texts, especially in the Ulozhenie of
1649. Where boyars are mentioned in the Ulozhenie, it is mostly in the context
of the jurisdiction of boyars’ courts; such boyars belonged to the narrow cat-
egory of the tsar’s more intimate councillors. But in a considerable number of
provisions, especially in the long Chapter 20 (Sud o kholopakh, Jurisdiction in
cases of slaves), the boyar is just the landowner who is the master of a slave.13
The boyar in the narrow sense (the councillor of the tsar) was closely con-
nected to another high official, the okol’nichii.14 The okol’nichie represented
the next rank after the boyars. Originally, there may even have been only one
okol’nichii at the court, in charge of the day-to-day management of the grand
prince’s court.15 Later on, there were several, but the number of okol’nichie re-
mained relatively small and the rank could only be attained through appoint-
ment. There were always several okol’nichie among the intimate councillors of
the grand prince (tsar), members therefore of the Boyar Duma in the view of
the majority of scholars. Princely families contributed a significant proportion
of the total of okol’nichii appointments.
One of the principal responsibilities of boyars (in the narrow sense) and
okol’nichie was judicial service in the capacity of superior court justices. This is
the central idea of the codes of 1497 and 1550.
In the composition of the upper class (what could be called the high no-
bility) genealogical and appointment factors were combined. The dignity of
prince was determined exclusively by descent.16 Boyars, as explained above,
were originally a vaguely defined hereditary class of magnates below princes,
but under Ivan iv and his successors, the boyar rank was granted by the tsar.
12 The view on the development of the boyar class explained here is close to that of Ser-
geevich who put forward his ideas in a much more detailed and documented form in his
chapter on the “Introduced boyars” (boiare vvedennye) in Drevnosti i, 432–457.
13 In the Index of Hellie’s edition and translation of the Ulozhenie, the distinction is made
explicitly between boyar as an indication of rank and boyar as the master or lord of serfs
or slaves.
14 See generally, Sergeevich, Drevnosti i, 459–466.
15 Cf. Zimin, Formirovanie, 19–20.
16 The first person to become a prince, not by birth, but by sovereign elevation, was
Men’shikov in 1707.
868 chapter 35
Once princes also became the beneficiaries of such appointments, the so-
cial gap between princes and the old boyar class became less pronounced.
Okol’nichie ranked immediately below boyars and their rank was based exclu-
sively on appointment. The high nobility consisted therefore of five distinct
groups: princes who had also been appointed as boyars, other princes (many
of them serving as okol’nichie), appointed boyars, other members of families
traditionally regarded as boyars, and appointed okol’nichie (most of them re-
cruited from princely or boyar families).17
The title of dvoretskii, originally also a courtier with specific responsibili-
ties (the general management of the princely court), developed similarly to
that of okol’nichii, in that it became a designation of high rank.18 The dvoretskie
belonged to the restricted pool from which the most important appointments
were made, together with boyars, princes, okol’nichie, Duma nobles, and Duma
secretaries.
Lesser Nobles: Boyars’ Sons and Dvoriane
The Church Statute of Iaroslav the Wise had already distinguished (in arts. 4,
5 and 7) between great and lesser boyars. Art. 4 of this Statute was the obvious
source of art. 7 of the Metropolitan’s Justice’s. The latter provision confirmed
what was known from other sources: that at the socially lower end of the boyar
class there was no clear boundary to separate boyars from non-boyars. In the
course of the 15th century the deti boiarskie appeared as a separate category of
free persons. The term means “boyar’s children”, but as the references in legal
texts are generally to a class of persons employed as military servants, “boyar’s
sons” is more appropriate.19
Sergeevich connected the emergence of the deti boiarskie with the loss of
the boyars’ original freedom of choice to change their allegiance from one
17 A numerical analysis of the known heads of departments (prikazy) for the entire period
of the 16th and 17th century yields 262 boyar princes, 251 other princes (about half of
them simultaneously serving as okol’nichie), 176 (appointed) non-princely boyars, 251
okol’nichie (about half of them princes), 94 dvoretskie, 112 Duma nobles (dumnye dvoriane),
and 214 Duma secretaries (dumnye d’iaki). The numbers are indicative only (overlaps, dou-
ble appointments, etc.) and based on D.V. Liseitsev, N.M. Rogozhin and Iu.M. Eskin, Pri-
kazy Moskovskogo gosudarstva xvi–xvii vv. Slovar’-spravochnik, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg,
2015.
18 See Sergeevich, Drevnosti i, 466–477.
19 Syn boiarskii is found occasionally, e.g. in art. 40 of the 1497 Sudebnik, and also several
times in the Ulozhenie.
prince to another.20 In any case, it was obvious that the offspring of a boyar who
enjoyed little status and wealth could not all hope to retain boyar status, be-
cause the estate of a father would generally have to be divided among his sons.21
The deti boiarskie were mentioned in legal documents in at least as early
as 1433, in a treaty between the Moscow grand prince Vasilii Vasil’evich and
his distant cousin Vasilii Iaroslavich, prince of Serpukhov.22 They appeared fre-
quently in a similar context, i.e. in treaties regulating the relations between the
grand prince of Moscow and his apanage princes, where the parties defined
the rights and duties of their “boyars and deti boiarskie”, especially those who
had their estates in the land of the other prince.
The Sudebnik of 1497 mentioned them several times, but more or less in
passing. In art. 12 they appeared as character witnesses in cases of theft, where
their status was roughly equal to that of wealthy and prominent peasants (do-
brye chernye krest’iane tseloval’niki). Arts. 38 and 40 offered a more favourable
impression of their status, where they appeared, along with boyars, as judges.
These provisions returned in amended form in the Code of 1550 (arts. 58,
62 and 65). Additionally, arts. 26 and 81 of the Code of 1550 also referred to
deti boiarskie; art. 26 set fixed fines for offences against honour (bezchestie),
the amount depending on the status or class of the injured person; the deti
boiarskie were at the top of the list and were followed by great merchants (gosti
bol’shie), ordinary merchants, (free) town dwellers, etc. The list illustrated the
comparatively high status of the deti boiarskie.23 Art. 81 was part of the block of
provisions on slavery and forbad the enslavement of deti boiarskie.
In the Ulozhenie of 1649 deti boiarskie occurred frequently; of particular
importance is Chapter 16 (on service lands, o pomestnykh zemliakh), and also
Chapters 10 (judicial process) and 17 (on hereditary estates, o votchinakh).
The chapter on service lands made it abundantly clear that deti boiarskie
formed a class which was granted landed estates in exchange for service, mili-
tary service first of all. Its first article was devoted to service land grants in the
Moscow province (uezd).24 A boyar (vvedennye boiare only, presumably) was
20 In 15th century treaties between the grand prince of Moscow and apanage princes the deti
boiarskie, along with full boyars, often still enjoyed the right of shifting their allegiance
from one prince to another.
21 Cf. Sergeevich, Drevnosti i, 393–397.
22 ddg No. 27, 70. The apanage princes of Serpukhov were the descendants of a younger son
Andrei of Ivan i Kalita; the two Vasilii’s of the treaty were third cousins.
23 The provision did not mention the higher classes of princes, boyars, etc.
24 The Moscow uezd was defined by an ukaz of 3 October 1550 as an area around Moscow
with a radius of 60–70 km; this would result in a territory in excess of 10.000 km3 (1 mill.
ha). Cf. prp v, 485.
870 chapter 35
entitled to 109 ha (200 chetverti); for others the allotments were smaller in ac-
cordance with rank. The lowest category was the Moscow service men called
zhil’tsy, mounted grooms (stremiannye koniukhi), and the hundredmen (sot-
niki) of the musketeers (strel’tsy), who would receive 27 ha each. Other lower
officials, including deti boiarskie, who had their estates elsewhere, were men-
tioned last; they were entitled to an allotment in Moscow province equal to
10% of their provincial estates.
Military service of boyars’ sons was implemented through verstan’e, the an-
nual registration of them for service. If they did not go through this procedure,
they were neverstany (see e.g. Chapter 16, art. 33, and Chapter 18, art. 69).
In most provisions of the Ulozhenie the deti boiarskie are mentioned in
the same breath as provincial gentry (gorodovye dvoriane). Many provisions
of Chapter 16 either implied or made it explicit that deti boiarskie were pri-
marily active or retired servicemen, while dvoriane embraced more widely
non-military officials as well. Another factual distinction was that most deti
boiarskie resided outside Moscow province, as provincial landowners, while
dvoriane were explicitly divided into provincial gentry (gorodovye dvoriane)
and Moscow dvoriane (resident in Moscow province); the latter were of higher
status and more generously endowed.25 Otherwise, dvoriane and deti boiarskie
were in most cases subject to the same rules.
The first four provisions of Chapter 20 (on slavery) threw an unexpected
light on a seemingly paradoxical phenomenon: deti boiarskie who volun-
tarily entered slavery. At the basis of such behaviour could be both economic
calculations (impoverished servicemen without, or with insufficient, landed
property) and the wish to avoid arduous and lengthy military service. The
legislator’s attitude to this phenomenon was on the whole negative, allowing it
only in exceptional cases.
At the lower end of the spectrum of the deti boiarskie were those who were
too poor to afford the proper equipment for military field service. They were
called to arms only when the towns where they lived were under siege (osada),
hence their designation as osadnye deti boiarskie. They received a small plot of
20 chetverti (about 10 ha) for their services.26
The Ulozhenie also distinguished between deti boiarskie of old ancestry (izs-
tari prirodnye) and other deti boiarskie, but only in Ch. xvii art. 37, in connec-
tion with buying land and turning it into ancestral land (votchina).
25 Special provisions concerning provincial dvoriane, e.g. Ch. xvi, arts. 1, 3, 13, 16, 45; idem on
Moscow dvoriane, Ch. xvi 1, 39, 43, 45–46.
26 A.V. Antonov, “Ukaz o pomest’iakh osadnykh detei boiarskikh”, A.V. Antonov (ed.), Russkii
diplomatarii, vyp.7, Moskva, 2001, 381–383, according to whom the relevant decree was
issued between 1591 and 1594.
As the deti boiarskie and to a somewhat lesser extent, the dvoriane in general
provided the backbone of the armed forces, the government had an interest in
preventing the depletion of the warrior class. The Ulozhenie demonstrated this
not only in its unwillingness to allow an individual nobleman to adopt servile
status, but also in a more positive way by promoting the assignment of estates
to all servicemen (including even boyars) who had (too) small estates or none at
all (malopomestnye and bezpomestnye, see arts. 13, 18, 20 and 39 of Chapter 16).
Most of the various ranks of service personnel (princes, boyars and lesser
nobles) were also present, although obviously in much smaller numbers, with-
in the organization of the Church. The Ulozhenie has a number of provisions
devoted to this particular aspect. In the short Chapters 12 and 13 one repeat-
edly comes across deti boiarskie subject to the patriarch or other high dignitar-
ies and to monasteries; Chapter 10 (on the judicial process), arts. 95 ff., dealt
with penalties for dishonouring deti boiarskie and other servitors in the service
of church hierarchs or monasteries. See also Chapter 39, on the Church.
Deti boiarskie appeared frequently in the last chapter of the Ulozhenie, Ch.
xxv (Statute on korchmy).27 This statute stood in a long line of measures to
combat illicit distilling and imbibing. The main consideration of the govern-
ment was probably financial, in order to protect the state monopoly on spirits,
but it has been demonstrated that public health and morality considerations
also played a role.28 The involvement of deti boiarskie was twofold: as officials
within the law enforcement agencies; and, curiously, as masters who were al-
lowed to distribute certain quantities of spirits among their personnel. See also
Chapter 34 (on Criminal Law).
Clergy and Church People
It will be more convenient to discuss this category in Chapter 39 (on the

Church).
Townspeople in Moscow and Elsewhere
While the Codes of 1497 and 1550 contained hardly any specific provisions
concerning townspeople, the Ulozhenie had a long chapter on the subject
(Chapter 19, 40 articles). Its immediate background was the urban riots in
previous years, particularly the Moscow uprising in the summer of 1648, which
27 A korchma is a disreputable tavern, a pothouse, speak-easy, shebeen, etc.

28 See especially the comments in rz iii, 438–439.
872 chapter 35
deeply upset the young tsar Aleksei himself (see Chapter 29). Although the
composition of the urban population during the 16th and 17th centuries is well
known from other sources, the Ulozhenie is the principal source for determin-
ing the legal status of the various components of the population of Moscow
and the provincial towns.
Moscow itself was of course exceptional from this point of view because,
being the capital and the normal place of residence of the tsar, it was also
the abode of most of the country’s elite, princes and boyars connected with the
court, other courtiers and public officials, military officers, etc. Parallel to the
governmental elite, there was the leadership of the Russian Church, patriarch,
other church dignitaries, together with a considerable number of people be-
longing in one way or another to the church organization.
Most of the other components of the urban population would be found, al-
beit in smaller numbers, in other towns as well. Merchants were an important
segment, followed by all kinds of craftsmen. Wealthy people often maintained
large households, including private agricultural estates, and this implied the
presence of dependent personnel employed in working these plots. Profes-
sional soldiers, especially the musketeers or strel’tsy, lived in their own subur-
ban settlements. Slaves were encountered at all levels. In some towns foreign-
ers constituted a significant part of the population.
Herberstein, who visited Muscovy during the reign of Vasilii iii in 1517 and
1526, reported on the city of Moscow in the chorography (“description of a re-
gion”) section of his famous work.29 He noted that Moscow looked even bigger
than it really was, “because every large house has gardens and farms”; black-
smiths and other craftsmen who used fire lived in long stretches of houses, sep-
arated from the main part of the city by fields and meadows; foreign soldiery
was housed in separate settlements on account of the more liberal liquor laws
applicable to them. Apart from the Kremlin, which constituted a small town by
itself, the city was not walled and did not have a clear boundary.
Posadskie liudi
The term posadskie liudi referred to taxpaying townspeople who, together with
‘service people’ (sluzhilye liudi, military and civilian servants of the govern-
ment), made up the bulk of the urban population.30 The entire Chapter 19 of
29 On Herberstein, see the box in Chapter 9.

30 Cf. A.G. Man’kov (ed.), Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 goda. Tekst. Kommentarii, Leningrad,
1987, 293. Most authors discussing the relative numbers of the posadskie and sluzhilye
liudi refer to Ia.E. Vodarskii, “Chislennost’ i razmeshcheniie posadskogo naseleniia v
Rossii vo vtoroi polovine xvii v.”, in Goroda feodal’noi Rossii, Moskva, 1966, 279, which
the Ulozhenie is devoted to them.31 According to the definition offered by P.P.

Smirnov, posadskie liudi, as they appeared in the Ulozhenie, were part of the ur-
ban population, primarily engaged in trade and crafts and living on state lands;
they were subject to state taxes and duties, carried out certain fiscal services,32
and were not free to leave their place of residence (posad) and the commu-
nity (obshchina) connected with it.33 The emergence and identification of
posadskie liudi as a distinct component of the urban population are supposed
to have taken place during the second half of the 15th century,34 in a process
that could be considered as completed by the middle of the 16th century.35
The posad, as the place where the posadskie liudi lived, was generally located
around the walled city itself.
The Ulozhenie itself only contained an implicit definition of posadskie liudi.
Its main concern was clearly to establish and maintain a reliable source of
fiscal income from a sufficiently numerous and financially resilient section
of the urban population. As indicated above, the immediate background to
the legislative implementation of this policy was the outrage of the taxpaying
townspeople, expressed in violent riots in 1648 and evoked by the existence of
numerous tax-exempt ‘freedoms’ (slobody) within the urban area, granted to a
multitude of clerical and secular landowners. The merchants and artisans of
these slobody were not affected by most forms of taxation applicable to similar
inhabitants of other parts of towns. The population of the tax-exempt urban
districts was known as the belomesttsy, the inhabitants of belye mesta (“white
put the first category at about one third and the second one at well over a half of the ur-
ban population. See also M.G. Bulgakov, “Gosudarstvo i posad po Sobornomu Ulozheniiu
1649 g.”, D.V. Danilova (ed.), Sistema gosudarstvennogo feodalizma v Rossii. Sbornik statei,
Moskva, 1993, 165–179.
31 The most important comments to this chapter are by Man’kov, op. cit., 293–309; by
E.G. Baskakova, prp vi, 315–326; and by V.M. Kleandrova, rz iii, 375–384.
32 Esp. through the franchise (otkup) system, by virtue of which the collection of certain cus-
toms duties and the sale of liquor could be assigned to a private person against payment
of a fee.
33 P.P. Smirnov, Posadskie liudi Moskovskogo gosudarstva, Kiev, 1912, and P.P. Smirnov, Posad-
skie liudi i ikh klassovaia bor’ba do serediny xvii veka, tt.1–2, Moskva/Leningrad, 1947.
As quoted from Man’kov, supra, apparently from the first part of the Soviet edition of
Smirnov, 182–183.
34 Man’kov, op. cit., 293.
35 Cf. V.A. Arakcheev, “K voprosu o stanovlenii sosloviia posadskikh liudei v pervoi polovine
xvi veka”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Russkoe srednevekov’e. Sbornik statei v chest’ profes-
sora Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva, 2012, 445–452.
874 chapter 35
places”).36 It constituted a heterogeneous group, and this perhaps explains

why legal sources refer to them only in connection with posadskie liudi.37
The main reform introduced by the Ulozhenie was the abolition of the tax-
exempt status of the slobody and thereby of the slobody themselves. Art. 1 of
Chapter 19 contained a sweeping prohibition of urban slobody, except those
established for the benefit of the tsar himself. The following provisions further
elaborated on the transfer of various categories of merchants and craftsmen to
the general pool of posadskie liudi.
Art. 11 and several following provisions dealt with the question of different
categories of sluzhilye liudi who, apart from their basic military duties, were
allowed to engage in commercial operations, people like musketeers (strel’tsy),
Cossacks, etc. They were not included among the posadskie liudi, but were li-
able to pay a special tax on their enterprises and shops.
Another set of provisions was aimed specifically at preventing the draining
of the pool of posadskie liudi. The basic provision was art. 19 which tied posad-
skie liudi, both in Moscow and in the provincial towns, to their place of resi-
dence at the time of the adoption of the Ulozhenie.38 Within this series of rules
one special sub-group was devoted to the problems raised by marriage be-
tween members of the taxpaying townspeople and outsiders (e.g. arts. 21–23).
Other rules concerned the position of (temporarily) unfree people (such as
zakladchiki), or townspeople who joined military units.
The burdens (tiaglo) imposed on posadskie liudi consisted primarily of fis-
cal duties, but also included the duty to provide labour in specific cases. In
exchange for these burdens, the Ulozhenie granted them a virtual monopoly
as shopkeepers, small traders, franchise holders (otkupshchiki), and craftsmen;
their main competitors were certain lower level groups of the service people
(see below), who then were subject to similar fiscal duties.
There are occasional references to three levels of posadskie liudi, high (luch-
shie), middle (srednie), and junior (molodchie), but these groups were appar-
ently not strictly defined.
Strel’tsy, Cossacks and Comparable Categories

Strel’tsy (musketeers, the core infantry force of the Muscovy army), and Cos-
sacks, the most important and numerous auxiliary forces, were discussed
in more detail in the section on the Army in Chapter 31 (on Government).
36 In Moscow, the area around the Kremlin and the adjacent Kitai-gorod, and within the
present Sadovaia circular road, was known as the White City.
37 In the Ulozhenie only in Ch. x, art. 269 and Ch., art. 39.
38 Cf. Man’kov, op. cit., 304.
The short Chapters 23 and 24 (three articles each) of the Ulozhenie, devot-
ed respectively to strel’tsy and Cossacks, concerned only certain legal actions
involving them.
Strel’tsy and Cossacks served on the basis of a contract and constituted
the main segment of the wider category of persons serving the state on the
basis of a contract, the sluzhilye liudi po priboru or pribornye sluzhilye liudi.
In the Ulozhenie they were often mentioned together with similar groups of
service people, such as the pushkari (gunners), zatinshchiki (fortification gun-
ners), draguny (dragoons, mounted infantrymen), etc. As a socially intermedi-
ate group between the higher levels of the service people (deti boiarskie and
higher) and the mass of posadskie liudi, the pribornye sluzhilye liudi were al-
lowed to engage in artisan and commercial activities, provided they paid the
established taxes. Unlike the posadskie liudi, they could avoid taxation by ab-
staining from such activities.39
The musketeers occupied a special and more privileged position among the
contractual service people. This found expression in a number of provisions of
the Ulozhenie (e.g. art. 124 of Ch. 10).
Merchants
The clear distinction between gosti (merchants engaged in foreign or long-

distance trade) and kuptsy (other merchants) which had existed since Kievan
times, continued through the ages and also found expression in the Ulozhenie
of 1649. Both terms turned up in legislation from the intermediate period, such
as the Dvina Land Charter of 1397–1398 (art. 14, gost’) and the Statutory Charter
of Belozero of 1488 (art. 7, gost’, art. 8, kupets), in statutory land charters40 and
in numerous other legal documents. One has to bear in mind that kupets had
the meaning not only of “merchant”, but also of buyer in general (pokupatel’ in
modern Russian).
In the Ulozhenie, however, the distinction was amended and refined in sev-
eral ways. First of all, while Kievan gosti were both foreign merchants and Rus-
sian merchants engaged in long-distance trade (i.e. not only foreign trade, but
also trade with distant Russian regions), in later years, gosti referred to Russian
merchants engaged in foreign trade, unless foreign merchants were explicitly
39 Cf. A.G. Man’kov, Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 goda. Kodeks feodal’nogo prava Rossii, Lenin-
grad, 1980, 146.
40 Such as the statutory land charter of several districts of the Dvina province of 1552, prp iv,
190 (art. 6).
876 chapter 35
envisaged, as for instance in art. 55 of Ch. 18 of the Ulozhenie which dealt spe-
cifically with gosti from foreign lands (among whom English and Dutch mer-
chants occupied a privileged position). Secondly, further distinctions arose
within the category of kuptsy. Prominent, wealthy merchants could be ap-
pointed by the tsar as members of the Gostinaia sotnia (“Merchants’ Guild”),
a commercial corporation, which arose during the latter part of the 16th
century.41 Slightly less prestigious was the Sukonnaia sotnia (“Clothiers’ Guild”),
of about the same period. Thirdly, while in the past the qualification of mer-
chants as gosti or kuptsy was a statement of fact, it acquired a more s pecific
legal character in the time of the Ulozhenie, because gosti and members of
the other two categories of prominent merchants were appointed as such by
the tsar.42 The number of gosti was usually quite small (in the order of 20); the
number of members of the other two groups varied, but was generally some-
where between 100 and 200.43 The legally relevant nature of the d istinctions
between the three categories of prominent merchants was recognized in the
very adoption procedure of the Ulozhenie, where the Preamble indicated that
the gosti were to appoint three deputies, and the other two groups two depu-
ties each, to the assembly adopting the Ulozhenie. Although originally the two
privileged merchant guilds, as well as most of the gosti, were to be found in
Moscow itself, members of these groups also settled in many other towns.44
The Ulozhenie did not have a special chapter to deal with merchants, but the
numerous dispersed provisions offer a more detailed picture of the peculiari-
ties of the legal status of the various categories. Art. 94 of Ch. 10, specifying the
fines to be paid to a member of a particular category for dishonouring such a
person, is of particular interest because it offers the most elaborate survey of
the different groups and their place on the social ladder. This rule is part of a
very extensive series of provisions covering dishonour fines for almost all kinds
41 More on the Gostinaia sotnia in N.B. Golikova, Privilegirovannye kupecheskie korporatsii

Rossii. xvi – pervoi chetverti xviii v., T.1, Moskva, 1998. See also S.N. Kisterev, “Struktura
Gostinoi sotni vo vtoroi polovine xvi – pervoi polovine xvii veka”, Ocherki feodal’noi
R
ossii 16, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 2013, 231–272, and V.B. Perkhavko, Srednevekovoe russ-
koe kupechestvo, Moskva, 2012, 184–199.
42 On the middle category, the “Moscow trading people” (torgovye liudi moskvichi), see I.P.
Kulakova, “«Moskvichi torgovye liudi» kontsa xvi – nachala xvii v.”, L.A. Timoshina (ed.),
Torgovlia i predprinimatel’stvo v feodal’noi Rossii. K iubileiu professora russkoi istorii Niny
Borisovny Golokovoi, Moskva, 1994, 85–92.
43 Cf. Man’kov, Sobornoe Ulozhenie. Kodeks feodal’nogo prava Rossii, 209–210.
44 L.A. Timoshina, “Rasselenie gostei, chlenov gostinoi i sukonnoi soten v russkikh gorodakh
xvii v.”, paid particular attention to the expansion of these categories in the towns of
Velikii Ustiug, Vologda, Nizhnii Novgorod and Murom; Timoshina, op. cit., 117–151.
of people. Art. 94 covered the merchant class first of all, followed by other
members of the urban population and various categories of dependent peas-
ants. The list was headed by members of “the distinguished Stroganov family”,
followed by the gosti, the senior, middle and junior members of the Gostina-
ia sotnia, and then the senior, middle and junior members of the Sukonnaia
s otnia; after them a multitude of various urban residents were mentioned.
A transitional category between merchants and peasants was that of the
“trading peasants” (torgovye krest’iane); they will be discussed below.
The Stroganov Family

The Stroganovs, who had been granted the rare title of “distinguished family”
by the tsar in 1610, occupied a unique place in the social hierarchy of Muscovy,
a place that was also recognized in law.45 In Ch. 10 of the Ulozhenie, arts. 27–99,
an elaborate tariff of dishonour compensation is spelled out, from 400 roubles
for a boyar insulting a metropolitan, to one rouble at the lowest level (insult-
ing ordinary peasants and slaves). A member of the Stroganov family was con-
sidered worth 100 roubles in this scheme, equal to the archimandrite of the
Troitse-Sergiev monastery or the tsar’s confessor.
The Stroganov family belonged originally to the merchant class (they were
raised to barons and counts in the 18th century), and their prestige rested on
their enormous fortune, acquired mostly by the exploitation of salt mines
and employed by them to finance projects of great interest to the government
(such as the exploration of Siberia). In exchange they were the recipients of
extensive favours and immunities, which resulted in their almost vassal status
as the semi-independent rulers of vast estates.46
45 The concept of a “distinguished citizen” (imenityi grazhdanin) resurfaced in 1785 in the

decree “On the rights and privileges of the Russian Empire”, where art. 132 gave a defini-
tion of the distinguished citizen; it embraced citizens with a background in urban govern-
ment, persons with academic degrees, artists, wealthy merchants, and bankers. Cf. V.A.
Tomsinov (ed.), Zakonodatel’stvo imperatritsy Ekateriny ii. 1783–1796 gody, Moskva, 2011,
52–89.
46 See, for instance, a grant charter of Ivan iv of 1564 to Grigorii Stroganov, in which vast
tracts of land along the Kama River were assigned, both for the manufacturing of guns
and for the mining of salt; V.I. Lebedev a.o. (eds.), Khrestomatiia po istorii sssr, T. I,
Moskva, 1951, No. 116, 355–356., or a very generous immunity charter of tsar Fedor in 1591
for territories in the Perm region to Maksim Stroganov and two of his uncles; cf. Russkii
Diplomatarii vi, 190–195. See also N.I. Nikitin, “Formirovanie vostochnykh granits Rossii
(konets xvi – nachalo xx v.)”, E.P. Kudriavtseva (ed.), Formirovanie territorii Rossiiskogo
gosudarstva xvi – nachalo xx v. (granitsy i geopolitika), Moskva, 2015, 201–241, at 204; and
A.V. Zhukova, Dvorianskie i kupecheskie rody Rossii, Rostov-na-Donu, 2008, 308–317.
878 chapter 35
Peasants
In Chapter 18 (on Rural Russia in Kievan times), the comparatively late ap-
pearance of the term krest’ianin (also khristianin, orig. “Christian”) at the end
of the 14th century was noted, as the most general designation of “peasant”. Its
currency increased in the course of the 15th century and the Code of Ivan iii of
1497 used it in one of its most crucial provisions, art. 55, the peasants’ quitting-
time around the autumnal feast of St. George (26 November, Iur’ev den’). The
essence of this provision was taken over by art. 88 of the 1550 Code of Ivan iv,
and by art. 178 of the 1589 Code.47 In the Ulozhenie of 1649, the krest’ianin ap-
peared in most chapters and was mentioned in 111 provisions.48
It is implied in all these provisions that the peasant, as a general rule, was
dependent on somebody else, who put land and other assets at the peasant’s
disposal to engage in agricultural production. The free farmer, working his own
land and operating as an agricultural entrepreneur, was an exception (see be-
low: svoezemtsy). The original legal basis of the activity of the krest’ianin was a
contract with the landowner, called a poriadnaia, itself a version of a naemnaia
(a contract of hire). Such contracts were usually concluded orally; few written
poriadnye have survived.49 In the conclusion of the poriadnaia the peasant was
invariably the weaker party, subject to more onerous conditions. This would
then allow further restrictions of his freedom in future, especially by forbidding
him to terminate the contract before he had paid off his debts to the landown-
er. In the course of time, when the indebted peasant died and was succeeded
by his children, the attachment of the peasant family to the land allotted to it
would become permanent. This was the origin of the division of dependent
peasants into newly arrived ones, novoporiadchiki (who had concluded a po-
riad with the landowner), and long-term residents, starozhil’tsy (see below).50
Restricting the peasant’s freedom to move from one master to another, to
a short period in late autumn (when agricultural work had come to a stand-
still) had gradually been introduced during the 15th century, and the Code of
1497 confirmed and consolidated an existing practice.51 The restriction was
47 The so-called (draft) Composite Code of 1606–1607 repeated art. 88 of the 1550 Code.
48 According to A.G. Man’kov, “Pravovoe polozhenie krest’ian po Ulozheniiu 1649 g.”, V.A.
Ezhov, I.Ia. Froianov (eds.), Iz istorii feodal’noi Rossii. Stat’i i ocherki k 70-letiiu so dnia rozh-
deniia prof. V.V. Mavrodina, Leningrad, 1978, 141–148, at 141.
49 Sergeevich, Drevnosti iii, 327–329. An example of a poriadnaia from 1599 in prp iv, 71–72.
50 See M.A. D’iakonov, Ocherki iz istorii sel’skogo naseleniia v Moskovskom gosudarstve
xvi–xvii vv., Moskva 1898 (2nd ed., reprint Moskva, 2011); Grekov, Krest’iane, 711–734.
51 See for instance a grant charter of prince Mikhail Andreevich of Verei and Belozersk to the
Ferapont monastery, in which the Iur’ev den’ rule was included; asei ii No. 326, 307–3089
(which gives the date as 1455–1467) and prp iii, 93 (1454–1455).
known to the Court Charter of Pskov, the latest drafting phase of which is
dated to 1462–1471, in a slightly different form (art. 42, St. Philip’s Fast Day,
14 November).
The, ultimately successful, attempt to tie the peasant to the land worked
by him was fuelled by the urgent need for an adequate agricultural workforce,
without which landowners would not be able to fulfil their military duties to-
wards the state. This applied in particular to the owners of pomest’ia, service
estates, who had been endowed with them for the specific purpose of supply-
ing military service. The abolition of the Iur’ev den’ was effected through a long-
drawn-out process of alternating “exit years” and “forbidden years” (vykhodnye
and zapovednye gody), the first time probably when peasants were forbidden
to leave their masters in 1581, at the end of the reign of Ivan iv.52
An inevitable consequence of this prohibition was the flight of peas-
ants to find employment under more favourable conditions elsewhere. This
could also include joining Cossack units somewhere in the vast steppe area
to the south of Muscovy. The next step taken by the government, prodded
especiallyby small landowners, was the decree of 24 November 159753 on fugi-
tive peasants.54This decree, adopted shortly before the death of tsar Aleksei
when actual power had passed to his brother-in-law Boris Godunov, was am-
bivalent in a political and socio-economic sense. It again allowed the vykhod,
the legitimate exit of the peasant on the basis of the St. George’s Day rule, but
also introduced the concept of the fugitive peasant (beglyi krest’ianin) who
had deserted his master in another way. Landowners whose peasants had run
away could have them returned, but this right was limited to peasants who
had run away during the five years before 1597 and the demand for whose
return (sysk) had been made during that period. This period, called uroch-
nye gody, was shortened or extended several times in the following years. It
constituted a sort of statute of limitations, because a demand to return the
peasant would be fruitless if the peasant had absconded outside the urochnye
gody.55 In that case he would remain with the landowner whose peasant he
had become in the meantime. But in the opposite case (demand for return
covered by the rule on urochnye gody) the new master would not receive any
52 The text of the decree on zapovednye gody has not been preserved, but Grekov has pre-
sented a detailed argument for accepting that the decree was issued in 1580 and that 1581
was the first ‘forbidden year’; Grekov, Krest’iane, 849–861.
53 The exact date is given, to avoid confusion with the decree of 1 February 1597 on service
slaves (o sluzhilykh kholopakh), about which more in the following section on slavery.
54 zarg No. 48, 66–67; prp iv, 539–540 (a somewhat different text, as art. 166 of Ch. 24 of the
Composite Code).
55 Cf. D’iakonov, Ocherki, 347–356.
880 chapter 35
reimbursement.56 The urochnye gody were abolished by Ch. 11 (arts. 1–2) of

the Ulozhenie.
In 1607 the entire institution of Iur’ev den’ was definitively abolished by tsar
Vasilii Shuiskii.57 This so-called Council decree (Sobornoe ulozhenie) also con-
tained instructions on how to deal with peasants and slaves who had deserted
their masters and homesteads during the previous years. It completed the pro-
cess of enserfment (zakreposhchenie) of the Russian peasant, summarized in
the sarcastic saying: “There, granny, is a St. George’s Day for you!” (Vot tebe,
babushka, i Iur’ev den’!).58 It is to be noted that, although the Iur’ev den’ prac-
tice did not affect slaves (who had no right anyway to leave their masters), the
provisions of the 1607 decree concerning fugitive peasants explicitly covered
slaves as well.
In the Ulozhenie of 1649, the peasant was tied to the land and had become
a serf, in the same way as the posadskie liudi in towns were not allowed to
leave. Ch. 11 of the Ulozhenie (Sud o krest’ianekh, “The judicial process con-
cerning peasants”, 34 articles) was therefore mainly concerned with measures
to keep the peasant at his homestead or to bring him back when he had run
away. The lengthy first article was devoted to fugitive peasants of the tsar’s own
villages (“palace villages”, dvortsovye sela) or of state lands (“black districts”,
chernye volosti). Their status was to be established on the basis of the cadas-
tral registers (pistsovye knigi), drawn up in 1626 and later records, and then
they were to be transported back to the villages they came from and to their
old allotments, together with their families and property, from wherever they
had settled. The following article regulated in similar but not identical fashion
the fate of peasants who had fled from hereditary or service estates (votchiny
and pomest’ia). No statute of limitations applied to the right forcibly to re-
turn fugitive peasants. One of the foremost commentators of the Ulozhenie,
56 Cf. Grekov, Krest’iane, 866–875; D’iakonov, Ocherki, 344–345.

57 prp iv, 586–589; zarg No. 57, 75–76. On the complicated history of the presently avail-
able text, see V.A. Arakcheev, “Sobornoe ulozhenie 9 marta 1607 g.”, A.P. Pavlov (ed.), Rossi-
iskoe gosudarstvo v xiv–xvii v v. Sbornik statei, posviashchennyi 75-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia
Iu.G. Alekseeva, Sankt-Peterburg, 2002, 98–115.
58 See on all this especially S.B. Veselovskii († 1952), “Otmena Iur’eva dnia”, Trudy po istoch-
nikovedeniiu i istorii Rossii perioda feodalizma, Moskva, 1978, 34–53; also in S.B. Veselovskii,
Moskovskoe gosudarstvo: xv–xvii vv. Iz nauchnogo naslediia, Moskva, 2008, 217–236. For
a more recent review of the continuing debate on enserfment: V.A. Arakcheev, “Iz istorii
zakreposhcheniia v Rossii: prikreplenie k tiaglu v kontse xvi – nachale xvii b.”, Ocherki
feodal’noi Rossii 5, Moskva, 2001, 39–69.
A.G. Man’kov, called art. 1 of Ch. 11 “the major and most radical norm of
the Code”.59
Most of the following provisions elaborated on the principles contained in
the first two provisions. Man’kov has pointed out that the leading concern was
to tie the peasant to the land, not to his master. The master was not allowed,
for instance, to move his serfs from one plot to another (arts. 30–31). A similar
concern, at the basis of several provisions of this chapter, was the maintenance
of a sufficiently numerous workforce. This concern was served first of all by
maintaining the integrity of the peasant family; wife and children would fol-
low the peasant wherever he went, along with the family’s movable property.
Many provisions attempted to solve the various problems caused by peasant
daughters marrying outsiders.
It goes without saying that serf status was inherited by the serf’s children.
Peasant children who denied their parents were subject to torture to establish
their status (art. 22).
The permanent threat of the depletion of the peasant workforce on the es-
tates of the tsar and the government and the private landowners is of course
to be explained by the political and socio-economic circumstances as they de-
veloped following the reign of Ivan iv. Even before the oprichnina (1564–1572)
the guba charters and statutory land charters reported about the departure
of peasants from the lands to turn to the safety of monastery estates (see the
relevant sections in Chapter 33, on Local Government). The oprichnina caused
great devastation all over the country and during the Smuta, the Time of Trou-
bles (1598–1613), chaos often became complete. Destitute and desperate peas-
ants would seek refuge by attaching themselves to a monasterial workforce, or
would join one of the numerous bands of brigands roaming the countryside. In
this perspective it is fully understandable that the Ulozhenie did not pay atten-
tion to the probably academic question of peasants fleeing their monasterial
masters.
The peasants attached to monasteries and other ecclesiastical landowners
constituted a very considerable section of the total dependent peasant popula-
tion. The legal framework of their relations with their landowners was an un-
derexposed subject in historiography, until the publication of N.A. Gorskaia’s
study in 1977.60
59 Man’kov, op. cit. (in the Mavrodin Collection), 142. See also Man’kov’s monograph on
enserfment, one of the most detailed and thorough studies on the subject: Razvitie
krepostnogo prava v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine xvii veka, Moskva/Leningrad, 1962.
60 N.A. Gorskaia, Monastyrskie krest’iane Tsentral’noi Rossii v xvii v. O sushchnosti i formakh
feodal’no-krepostnicheskikh otnoshenii, Moskva, 1977. More work on this topic was done
882 chapter 35
Bobyli
The Ulozhenie and contemporary charters contain frequent references to a
class of people called bobyli; they are almost always mentioned along with or-
dinary dependent peasants (krest’iane). They appear for instance in the above-
mentioned provisions concerning fugitive peasants.
Russian historians have not yet reached complete agreement about the sta-
tus and social position of the bobyli. “Persons who, usually on account of the
absence of means of production, lived with a feudal master. They were not
subject to general taxation [tiaglo] and worked only for their master.”61 Grekov
defined the bobyl’ as a person dependent on his master, with whom he had
concluded a contract which obliged him to pay an annual rent (obrok) and
to perform specific tasks in exchange for being given a living, consisting pos-
sibly of a place to live or a plot of land.62 D’iakonov was inclined to regard
bobyli primarily as landless peasants.63 Sergeevich pointed to the differences
between Novgorod and Moscow bobyli.64 The latter were much worse off than
the former, but their dependent relationship with their master was personal
and ended with the death of the master. In the end, in the Ulozhenie, the posi-
tion of bobyli became identical to that of dependent peasants.
Svoezemtsy
Svoezemtsy is the term used to denote persons having their own land. Sergeev-
ich paid a lot of attention to the svoezemets,65 but in Soviet times such a person
constituted an unpopular subject, as he did not fit into the Marxist order of
things.66 Grekov mentioned him in passing in his massive work on the peasant
in Russian history and tended to view him as the lowest category of the exploit-
ing class of landowners.67
afterwards, such as V.I. Ivanov, Monastyri i monastyrskie krest’iane Pomor’ia v xvi–xvii vv.:
mekhanizm stanovleniia krepostnogo prava, Sankt-Peterburg, 2007.
61 prp vi, 175, commentary by O.I. Chistiakov.
62 B.D. Grekov, Krest’iane na Rusi s drevneishikh vremen do xvii veka, Moskva/Leningrad,
1946, 734–759, at 755. See also the critical discussion of Grekov’s views in A.L. Shapiro,
Problemy sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi istorii Rusi xiv–xvi vv., Leningrad, 1977, 1819–208.
63 M.A. D’iakonov, Ocherki iz istorii sel’skogo naseleniia v Moskovskom gosudarstve xvi–xvii
vv., Moskva, 1898 (2nd ed., repr. Moskva, 2010), 206–240.
64 Sergeevich, Drevnosti iii, 132–142.
65 Sergeevich, Drevnosti iii, 7–14.
66 An interesting parallel exists, the Soviet counterpart, the edinolichnik, the peasant work-
ing individually, without being a member of a collective; he was recognized in Soviet law,
but ideologically he was considered a leftover from a less advanced era.
67 Grekov, Krest’iane, 484–486, 503–504.
Sergeevich first of all made clear that the svoezemets was primarily a
Novgorod phenomenon. During Novgorod’s independence any free person
could engage in agriculture, and Sergeevich noted that the svoezemtsy includ-
ed merchants, craftsmen, other urban inhabitants, and peasants as well. The
svoezemets could work his land himself, with his family, but could also have
people working for him. If he was a successful entrepreneur, hired a larger
workforce and bought more land, his status would of course approximate that
of the hereditary landowner (votchinnik), and in that respect Grekov had a
point.68 After Novgorod had lost its independence, the land of svoezemtsy was
sometimes taken away and granted to Moscow landowners. It would appear
that the layer of svoezemtsy was gradually becoming thinner, its most success-
ful members merging into the class of small, noble landowners, its lower levels
being absorbed in the mass of dependent peasants.69
Zakhrebetniki were free peasants without land of their own, who worked
as hired hands for other peasants; a similar category was the podvorniki,
free peasants who worked for others (peasants or landowners) on the basis of
a contract, either on the land or in the household (dvor, hence the name) of a
master.70
Even if, as in Soviet times, the political and socio-economic conditions were
not beneficial to the survival of a significant contingent of independent farm-
ers, practical considerations usually prevented the complete disappearance of
individual agricultural entrepreneurs, small independent farmers. There will
always be remote and isolated patches of agricultural land, able to support just
one peasant family.
Other Categories of Peasants

The principal contingents of Russian peasants in the 16th and 17th centuries
were those working for the state, for the Church or for private landowners.
State peasants were first of all those working the tsar’s personal estates, the
palace lands (dvortsovye zemli), hence their designation as palace people,
peasants or servants (dvortsovye liudi, krest’iane or slugi). Some of the palace
lands were in the hands of the tsar’s wife, the tsaritsa, his mother and other
close relatives. An even more important and numerous group was the ‘black’
68 Sergeevich has an example of a Novgorod svoezemets with possessions of a number of

villages in several Novgorod provinces, Drevnosti iii, 91–92.
69 Cf. A.A. Selin, “Genealogicheskaia i istoriko-geograficheskaia zametka o svoezemtsakh”,
A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Issledovaniia po istorii srednevekovoi Rusi. K 80-letiiu Iuriia Geor-
gievicha Alekseeva, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg. 2006, 338–346.
70 Cf. Sergeevich, Drevnosti, iii, 145–147.
884 chapter 35
peasants (chernye krest’iane or chernye liudi), attached to ‘black’ lands (chernye

zemli). Such lands were originally wild and uncultivated (dikie zemli) and were
then taken into cultivation by the state, which populated them with peasants
recruited from elsewhere.
Among the peasants working on land belonging to churches and monas-
teries monasterial peasants were the most numerous, but along with the big
monasteries the Moscow metropolitanate (later on patriarchate) and the arch-
bishopric of Novgorod were among the biggest landowners in Muscovy times.
The main division among private landowners was between owners of he-
reditary estates (votchiny, hence votchinniki) and of service estates (pomest’ia,
pomeshchiki). Some hereditary estates belonging to leading princely families
were very large, resulting in great numbers of dependent peasants.
Dependent peasants may also be categorized, not according to the type of
estate they were attached to, but by looking at the origin of their dependence
and the resulting nature of the relationship with their masters.
Various peasant categories occurring in Kievan Russia have already been
reviewed in Chapter 18: smerdy, zakupy, zakladniki, izorniki (in Pskov), and
others. The term smerdy, as noted in that chapter, was gradually replaced by
other general terms referring to dependent peasants, such as krest’iane or liudi.
The zakladniki (or zakladchiki) probably represented a newer version of the
zakupy from the Russkaia Pravda, impoverished people who had accepted a
position of dependence in exchange for a sum of money or equivalent assets.
The izorniki were known to the Court Charter of Pskov and were a local mani-
festation of similar dependence.
The zakladchik continued to be mentioned occasionally in the following
centuries and made a brief reappearance in the Ulozhenie (Ch. xix, arts. 13
and 18), where he was a taxpaying urban resident who had left his place of
residence to work for a landowner to repay a loan. In accordance with what has
been said above about the government’s interest in preserving the urban tax
base, the Ulozhenie ordered the forced return of such “pawn-slaves” (in Hellie’s
translation) to their home towns without compensation for their masters.
To move the topic to a more general level, the institution of the zaklad-
nik can be viewed as one more illustration of the general background of the
gradual enserfment of large sections of the population – widespread impov-
erishment forcing people to enter a state of dependence in exchange for some
measureof safeguarding of their livelihood. Initially, such a move would often
have been temporary, until debts were paid off. In time, when it turned out to
be impossible to pay, the status could become permanent. In this sense they
are encountered in the Ulozhenie (Ch. 10, arts. 234, 235, 237; Ch. 17, arts. 50–51).
At a time when peasants generally still enjoyed a certain measure of mobility,
starozhil’tsy were already considered as being attached to the land worked by

them. They were on the other hand regarded as a reliable source of informa-
tion on matters concerning boundaries and similar questions. Often they also
constituted the trusted core of the landowner’s workforce.71
The dependence of the peasant could be expressed in various ways, but
there would obviously have to be some kind of transfer of value from the peas-
ant to his master: money, work, services, produce, etc. On this basis various
categories of dependents arose. The most common form was the payment
of an annual sum, the obrok, which offered the landowner a steady source of
income. Originally, obrok was defined as a fixed quantity of produce. Where
yields varied, a system which gave the landowner a fixed share could be prefer-
able to him; this was often set at half the crop, a polovina, and such peasants
were called polovniki.72
Peasants who had accepted dependent status on the basis of money loaned
to them were sometimes referred to as serebreniki (from serebro, silver). The
exact nature of their relationship with the landowner remains a matter of de-
bate.73 Serebreniki were probably most often beholden to monasterial land-
owners, because monasteries generally had more money at their disposal than
secular landowners.74
According to Grekov, serebreniki either paid interest on the loan or worked
for the creditor; the latter was the more common case. Unlike the ordinary
dependent peasant, the serebrenik was not subject to state taxes (tiaglo).75
Barshchina usually represented a more onerous form of dependence for
the peasant. It consisted basically of the duty to work for the landowner, but
could assume different forms. Most commonly the peasant had a certain
plot allotted to him for the needs of his family, while he had to work a fixed
number of days on the landowner’s land. The actual work was occasionally
replaced by a money payment (usually called obrok), but this arrangement
71 Cf. Grekov, Krest’iane, 622–644; D’iakonov, Ocherki, 339–341.

72 A.L. Shapiro, Russkoe krest’ianstvo pered zakreposhcheniem (xiv–xvi vv.), Leningrad, 1987,
108–126.
73 See Grekov, Krest’iane, 644–659; Sergeevich, Drevnosti i, 243–244.
74 An even more specific category of monasterial peasants is discussed at length by
D’iakonov, the monastyrskie detenyshi (monasterial wards), originally probably orphans
whose parents were monasterial peasants or servants, and who were initially employed
exclusively in farm work. Adult and impoverished peasants would occasionally adopt
the same status. Cf. M.A. D’iakonov, Ocherki po istorii sel’skogo naseleniia v Moskovskom
gosudarstve xvi–xvii vv., Moskva, 1898 (2nd ed., repr. Moskva, 2011), 295–321; Grekov,
Krest’iane, 695–711.
75 Grekov, Krest’iane, 660–678.
886 chapter 35
was often u nfavourable for the landowner, who would therefore be inclined
to steer clear off it.
Apart from the payments and services the peasant owed the landowner,
there were various duties to the state, consisting again of financial impositions
and obligations to contribute in kind or by participating in work. (See also the
section on taxation in the Chapter 31, on Government.) For the ‘black’ peas-
ants, employed on state lands, this meant that they paid the state in its position
of landowner, as well as of sovereign.
The entire fiscal burden imposed on the peasant by public authorities was
often referred to as tiaglo (burden); its main components were the old general
tax (dan’) and an additional tax introduced later (primet), the iam (a tax origi-
nally exacted by the Tatars), and various duties to participate in public works
(sometimes replaced by money payments).76
The peasant (krest’ianin), as discussed above, was understood as a person
directly employed in farming, i.e. raising crops and cattle. Along with genu-
ine farmers and farm workers there could also be other persons, especially in
larger villages, engaged in crafts and trades supporting the work on the farm:
carpenters, blacksmiths, potters, etc. Such people were called nepashennye liu-
di (“non-agricultural persons”) as opposed to the actual agriculturalists (pash-
ennye liudi). They were mentioned separately in the cadastral books (pistsovye
knigi);77 their legal status was, generally speaking, the same as that of pashen-
nye liudi.78
Trading Peasants
Peasants who did not work the land but derived their income from commercial
activities were known as trading peasants (torgovye krest’iane). They were the
subject of specific legislation in the 18th century, but their emergence could be
observed in the Ulozhenie, especially in Ch. 19, devoted to townspeople. The
main concern of this chapter was to ensure as far as possible the maintenance
and increase of the tax-paying urban population (the tiaglye liudi). For that
reason there was a number of rules concerning peasants who had settled in
Moscow and other towns either temporarily or permanently. The general ten-
dency was either to send them back to where they came from, or include them
in the tax-paying urban population. Such peasants would mostly be e mployed
76 Cf. Shapiro, op. cit., 96–107.

77 See for instance S.B. Veselovskii (comp.), Akty pistsovogo dela 60–80-kh godov xvii veka,
Moskva, 1990, No. 40, 183–184.
78 Few authors pay attention to the distinction; one of them was Sergeevich, Drevnosti iii,
129–130.
as craftsmen or merchants, unless they worked as servants to regular city-

dwellers. Art. 17 of the chapter was the most explicit; it directed that peasants
who had come to town to sell their wares were free to do so, but only at the
market and from their carts or boats; they were not allowed to have shops or
stalls.
Other contemporary sources and 18th-century legislation made it clear that
there were in fact peasants who did not own land and whose main occupation
was commerce. As such (nepashennye krest’iane) they were similar to bobyli
and not subject to the impositions in kind and money exacted from ordinary
peasants; they paid only the lighter tax called vyt’. They often lived together in
“trading villages” (torgovye sela).79
Slavery
Slavery, as explained in the relevant sections in the Chapters on Rural Russia

(18) and on the Individual and the Family (19), had been a feature of Russian
society from the beginning of history. The last part of the Expanded Pravda
(arts. 110–121) was entitled “On Slavery” and its provisions were the basis of all
subsequent regulation, up to Ch. 20 (119 articles) of the Ulozhenie of Aleksei of
1649.80 A fundamental transformation of the institution of slavery remained
hidden underneath this remarkable legislative continuity. The long process of
enserfment of the peasant population in combination with the increasing var-
iegation of the slave population resulted in the end in the dissolution of the
latter and the absorption of most of it in the dependent class of serfs.81
The year 1718 is conveniently regarded as marking the abolition of slavery,
following Kliuchevskii.82 In that year Peter the Great announced a poll-tax (po-
dushnaia podat’) on all male subjects, removing the major distinction between
79 A special study of such trading peasants is V.R. Tarlovskaia, Torgovlia Rossii perioda poz-
dnego feodalizma (Torgovye krest’iane vo vtoroi polovine xvii – nachale xviii v.), Moskva,
1988, who refers to the not very rich literature on the subject.
80 This was a central consideration in the chapter on the legal status of slaves in the work
on slavery and serfdom by E.I. Kolycheva, Kholopstvo i krepostnichestvo (konets xv–xvi v.),
Moskva, 1971, 202–240, esp. 202–206.
81 See generally, V.M. Paneiakh, Kholopstvo v xvi – nachale xvii veka, Leningrad, 1975, and by
the same author: Kabal’noe kholopstvo na Rusi v xvi veke, Leningrad, 1967, and Kholopstvo
v pervoi polovine xvii v., Leningrad, 1984.
82 In a long study “Podushnaia podat’ i otmena kholopstva v Rossii”, V.O. Kliuchevskii, So-
chineniia, vii, Moskva, 1959, 318–402, first published in Russkaia Mysl’, 1885. The actual
implementation of the reform took several years.
888 chapter 35
slaves and all other persons, the fact that slaves were not subject to general
taxation (tiaglo).
The legal structure of slavery remained, as noted, quite stable over the cen-
turies. One became a slave by being born to slave parents or by marrying a
slave, or by voluntarily entering slavery. The two main ways of effecting the
latter were by selling oneself into slavery or by accepting appointment to cer-
tain low offices which entailed slavery status (especially tiunstvo, being a vil-
lage steward). Foreign prisoners-of-war constituted a special category. Slavery
could be ended by the slave’s master (through manumission, by will, etc.);
or, if slavery was conditioned by a loan from the master, by the slave himself
paying off all debts. Through the ages, the general tendency was to introduce
ever more formalities into these processes and increase the government’s grip
on the acquisition and loss of slavery status. This was the position in 1497,
when the Code of Ivan iii set out several detailed instructions on how to pro-
ceed on this point.
The following century and a half of legislation reflected the important
socio-economic shifts occurring during that period. This is a question of gen-
eral history, and here one can point only to the development of state-managed
agriculture on ‘black’ lands (chernye zemli), the gradual enserfment of the
peasant population, violent political upheavals and natural disasters (famine,
plague, etc.), resulting in widespread impoverishment and demographic im-
balance, etc. Most of the incidental decrees affecting the status of slaves even-
tually found their way into the long chapter on slavery in the 1649 Ulozhenie.
Among the most significant legislative acts of the period the following could
be mentioned.
A decree of 30 November 1558 provided more detailed rules about the
procedure for returning fugitive slaves to their masters (a major topic in
the Ulozhenie).83
A decree of 15 October 1560 directed that debtors who had accepted slavery
status on the basis of an unpaid money loan (kabala) were to be released from
slavery after the debt had been paid and should not be turned into full (polnye)
or reported (dokladnye) slaves.84
The important decree of 1 February 1597, adopted during the reign of Boris
Godunov, amended the rule of the 1560 decree in the sense that slave status
ended with the death of the creditor, and not with the paying of the debt,
83 Text to be found in the Composite Code, Ch. 12, arts. 149–150; prp iv, 515.
84 Text in Composite Code, Ch. 12, art. 162; prp iv, 517. Reported slaves were persons who had
entered slavery on the basis of a report in which their wish to become a slave had been
expressed. For an example, see prp iv, 67–68, a dokladnaia gramota from 1588.
as in the past. The creditor’s heirs did not even have a claim concerning the
unpaid debt.85
The decree of 16 August 1603 was adopted during difficult circumstances
when famine was raging. It allowed slaves who had been turned out by their
masters to apply for manumission papers with the Slavery Department (Prikaz
Kholop’ego Suda).86
Further decrees were directed at fine-tuning the status of slaves. The overall
strategy was to prevent major upheavals in the legal status of slaves; they were
not to be allowed to leave their masters in droves, but it was also considered
undesirable that large contingents of newcomers should reinforce the ranks of
the slaves.
In the Ulozhenie of 1649, as mentioned, an entire long chapter was devoted
to slavery. The most noticeable aspect of this long chapter was the govern-
ment’s keen interest in maintaining control of entry into and exit from the
status of slavery. This implied that becoming a slave was in some situations
attractive to free persons. Increased government control over slavery was also
expressed in the central role allotted to the government body entrusted with
slavery affairs, the Slavery Department (Kholopii Prikaz). Voluntary slavery on
the basis of a loan contract (kabala, kabal’noe kholopstvo, limited service slav-
ery in the terminology of Hellie) claimed most of the legislator’s attention. The
question of fugitive slaves also remained an important topic.
The first three articles of Ch. 20 were indicative of the main trend, in
that it was henceforth expressly forbidden to receive boyars’ sons (deti boiar-
skie) into slavery and transitory measures for those already in slavery were
announced.
Fugitive slaves, their forced return, and various related topics were covered
by arts. 4–16.
The normal way to enter limited service slavery was by concluding a con-
tract, which had to be registered at the Slavery Department. If a person had
entered slavery without a contract and had served for more than three months,
his status became permanent and the Slavery Department would issue the
contract (art. 16). The following provisions dealt with all kinds of special situa-
tions which could arise in this context. The prospective slave had to be at least
15 years old (art. 20). A slave who had been taken abroad as a prisoner and
was subsequently released (or had fled) and returned, became free (art. 34).
85 Text in the Statute Book of the Slavery Department, prp iv, 370–374; also in the Com-
posite Code, Ch. 12, art. 165, prp iv, 517–521; and in zarg No. 47, 64–66. See also V.M.
Paneiakh, Kholopstvo v xvi – nachale xvii veka, Leningrad, 1975, Ch. 2 (72–145).
86 Text in prp iv, 375; zarg No. 52, 71–72.
890 chapter 35
S imilarly, slaves who had been expelled by their masters (as would happen in
times of famine) regained their freedom (art. 41 and following).
Arts. 61ff. looked at the ways slaves could be handed over to new masters
through wills, dowries and gifts.
Arts. 69ff. regulated the different legal positions of Russian, Western (i.e.
baptized, Roman-Catholic), and unbaptized (mainly Muslim) slaves. Tatar
slaves were apparently a common phenomenon, because they were the sub-
ject of a number of separate provisions (arts. 97–100 and 117–118).
Arts. 80ff. were devoted to the various family law aspects of slavery.
Authors generally agree that the increased predominance of limited ser-
vice slavery, in combination with the gradual enserfment of the originally free
population (especially the peasants) in the end resulted in the fading of the
borders between the two classes. When the (male) slave population was also
subjected to the poll-tax under Peter the Great, the last significant distinction
between slaves and serfs disappeared. The Ulozhenie of 1649 was in many ways
a prelude, for instance in establishing practically the same regime for fugitive
serfs and slaves.
The gradual dissolution of slavery was also facilitated by the variegation oc-
curring within the slave class, where a kind of slave elite arose, entrusted with
positions of responsibility (see also the relevant section in Chapter 19).87 The
tiun and the kliuchnik were mentioned as early as the Russkaia Pravda, where
acceptance of appointment as a tiun or kliuchnik entailed slavery status unless
this had been specifically excluded in a contract (riad, see art. 110 Expanded
Pravda). Although both terms are usually translated as “steward”, the kliuchnik
was the ordinary steward (“the man with the keys”), the general estate man-
ager. The functions of the tiun (“sheriff”) were often more varied and included
in particular various administrative and judicial duties, up to those of a lower
level judge.88
Anybody who was not a slave himself could be the master of a slave; there
are a few examples, mostly from the Novgorod region, of (dependent) peasants
having a slave.89
Zadvornye liudi
A decree (boyar judgment) of 14 October 1624 mentioned zadvornye liudi, per-
sons, obviously slaves, who did not live in the master’s dvor.90 Although the
87 This is one of the main topics in the work by Kolycheva, quoted above.
88 Cf. Sergeevich, Drevnosti iii, 144–145.
89 Ibidem, 143; Sergeevich’s examples are from the Novgorod cadastral books (pistsovyie knigi).
90 prp v, 203; zarg No. 138. 121–122.
master of a slave was normally liable for damage caused by his people, the
decree directed that slaves living outside the master’s household were to be
personally responsible. They were able to assume this responsibility because
they enjoyed the use of their own plots and a private income.
Kliuchevskii was the first to draw attention to this category of slaves in his
paper on the poll-tax.91 Later, D’iakonov analyzed the position of the zadvornye
liudi in more detail.92 In time the zadvornye liudi became a transitory category
between slaves and serfs.
The essence of the decree of 1624 was taken over in the Ulozhenie (Ch. 21
art. 68).
Foreigners
If one compares the conditions determining the status of foreigners in

Russia, as they were during the period of Kievan Russia and the following
era of the independent principalities, and as they prevailed in Muscovy,
certain basic differences are obvious. Muscovy had replaced a multitude of
semi-states; at the same time its foreign contacts had changed character. In
the West there were the late medieval European states, while in the East
and South Muscovy had an uneasy and mostly warlike relationship with the
successor states of the fragmented empire of Chingis-Khan, most of them
Turkic (Tatar) and at least superficially islamized. Wars with Lithuania and
Poland were also frequent, but in the meantime relations were often close,
although not exactly cordial. In the 17th century Sweden had emerged as the
hegemonial power in Northern Europe, resulting in regular collisions with
Russia. West European powers figured mainly as trading partners: the Han-
seatic League, England, the N etherlands (both Flanders and later especially
the Dutch Republic).
The Codes of 1497, 1550, 1589 and the Composite Code contained only spo-
radic references to foreigners.93 Only the Ulozhenie of 1649 reflected many of
the features indicated above.
91 Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia vii, 379–402.

92 D’iakonov, Ocherki iz istorii sel’skogo naseleniia, 241–294; also briefly in D’iakonov, Ocherki,
394–397. See also V.A. Arakcheev, “Dvorovye i zadvornye liudi: k issledovaniiu terminolo-
gii perepisnykh knig 1640–1670-kh gg.”, A.P. Pavlov (ed.), Gosudarstvo i obshchestvo v Rossii
xv-nachala xx veka. Sbornik statei pamiati Nikolaia Evgen’evicha Nosova, Sankt-Peterburg,
2007, 316–323.
93 E.g. art. 58 of the Code of 1497, arts. 36–37 of the Code of 1589.
892 chapter 35
Foreigners in Muscovy were mostly either merchants (visiting or resident)

or employed in the service of the state, especially as mercenaries. The two cat-
egories were mentioned separately in, for instance, Ch. 18 art. 63, concerning
service estates assigned to foreigners. Arts. 13–14 of Ch. 16 made clear that the
government had set aside special service estates for foreigners.
Merchants, in accordance with a tradition that went back to the treaties
with Byzantium and later the Smolensk Pravda, enjoyed to some extent a more
benign treatment. Their claims against Russian counterparts were privileged
(Ch. 10 art. 260) and they ranked in many respects with higher level officials.
As such, for instance, they were not subject to paying state tolls and ferry fees
(Ch. 9 arts. 1–2). Deserting foreign mercenaries were subject to the same severe
punishments as Russian deserters (Ch. 7 art. 9).
The most important provision concerning foreigners was, in principle,
Ch. 10 art. 1, which provided among other things that the judicial process was
the same for foreigners as for Russians.
In the section on slavery we have already referred to the distinctions made
in respect of slave-owning between Russians, baptized foreigners, and unbap-
tized ones (Ch. 20 arts. 70–71).
Among the Western nations, Poles, Lithuanians, English and Dutch are oc-
casionally mentioned specifically in the Ulozhenie as subject to certain special
rules.
Tatars and several other indigenous non-Russians appear frequently in the
Ulozhenie and then also a distinction is made between baptized and unbap-
tized persons. Two aspects are important for understanding their position.
Firstly, they could not be considered as foreigners, people who had come from
another country and who were staying in Russia for a limited period (foreign-
ers who stayed permanently would in time be assimilated to native Russians).
Secondly, it would be an anachronism to ask at which moment Tatars (or com-
parable categories of persons) had become Russian citizens, as the latter con-
cept was not available at the time. They constituted a section of the population
of Muscovy, subject to the tsar, which had its own characteristics, just like
Cossacks, ‘black’ peasants, strel’tsy, etc.
Undeniably, the basic direction of government policy towards the Tatars
was assimilation and ultimately absorption into the mass of the Russian popu-
lation. But the actual political course varied strongly, depending on the govern-
mental requirements of the moment. Certain strands became prominent, and
then faded into insignificance. Land ownership was always an important factor
and was used by Moscow to draw the Tatar elite into the network of the state.
Consequently, Tatar troops were frequently employed in Muscovy’s wars with
foreign powers. Baptism and then marriages with Russians represented a fast
and effective means of assimilation. Russian absolutism, with its pronounced

theocratic aspects, was in principle not well disposed towards Islam, but re-
pressive treatment alternated with considerable tolerance and even indiffer-
ence, as would be suggested by enlightened opportunism.94
Legal Persons
The concept of the legal person is a product of more recent legal thought. Col-
lectivities, such as the Dutch and English East India Companies began to act as
if they were real physical persons, and the law gradually started to adapt itself
to this new phenomenon. Nonetheless, collectivities as entities having rights
and duties, such as the verv’ (the village community) in the Russkaia Pravda
(art. 20 Short Pravda, art. 3 Expanded Pravda) appeared very early on. Later,
one finds the merchant guild of St. John (Ivanskoe kupechestvo) in Novgorod,
the main subject of the so-called Testament (Rukopisanie) of prince Vsevolod
Mstislavich (see Chapter 6). The commercial law of Pskov (see the relevant
section in Chapter 15) knew the institution of siabrenichestvo, a form of com-
mercial partnership, although too little is known about its exact nature to con-
sider this association of siabry as a separate legal entity.
For modern lawyers, the distinction between legal persons in public and in
private law is essential, but in a setting such as medieval Russia this distinc-
tion loses its sharpness, as has been pointed out repeatedly in this work. Com-
mercial corporations, not unlike the guilds in Western Europe, often enjoyed
regulatory and public executive powers and could operate simultaneously as
commercial actors. The Ulozhenie recognized the existence and legal relevance
of the two highest merchant corporations in Moscow, the Merchants’ Guild
(Gostinaia sotnia) and the Clothiers’ Guild (Sukonnaia sotnia).
94 A.I. Nogmanov, Samoderzhavie i Tatary. Ocherki istorii zakonodatel’noi politiki vtoroi po-
loviny xvi–xviii vekov, Kazan’, 2005, describes and evaluates the legislative treatment of
the Tatars from a modern Tatar point of view.
chapter 36
Civil Law: Ownership and Obligations
It would perhaps have been odd to give this chapter the title “Things and
Obligations”, although it would have been more appropriate. Things, parts of
the material world, have been there long before human feet trod the earth.
Ownership is something that human beings invented afterwards, although
Roman law thinking appeared to regard it as part of the material world, of na-
ture, so that ownership became a quality inherent to a thing, like its chemical
properties. Since the reception of Roman law in most of the Western world,
ownership, and the concepts derived from it (possession, usufruct, etc.), have
always leant heavily on Roman law thinking. Russian legal thought in the 19th
century and well beyond that era adopted this approach wholeheartedly. For
Marx and his followers, this ownership concept, in its full 19th-century Roman-
ist splendour, was fundamental in constructing their understanding of human
history and society.
What this chapter is about is the way a legal system, in casu the legal system
of Muscovy, expressed and regulated in legal terms how human beings were
expected and required to handle things. Modern lawyers and legal historians
are accustomed to describing this matter in the terminology they are used to,
employing concepts such as ownership, possession, etc., as if they were preor-
dained, instead of themselves the product of historical development. We shall
follow this traditional method, hence the title of this chapter.
Within this framework, for instance, 19th-century authors have pondered
the question when Russian law became aware of the ownership-possession di-
chotomy.1 Sergeevich pointed to the occurrence of naezd (noun) and naezdit’
(verb) in art. 10 of the Novgorod Court Charter, where is had the meaning of
“inroad”, “raid”, and the resultant taking of land. The judge was instructed in
such cases to decide first the question of the naezd, and then the question of to
whom the land belonged.2 More to the point would be another example, quot-
ed by Sergeevich, from the Pskov Court Charter, where kormlia (lit. “feeding”)
1 As if the dichotomy was there already, waiting to be discovered. In my approach, the question
ought to be: When did it become relevant, useful, to start distinguishing between owners and
possessors?.
2 Sergeevich, Lektsii, 524; naezd also appears in the Metropolitan’s Justice (art. 15) and in other
contemporary sources. Kaiser translated it as “assault”, which is debatable because this term
already implies unlawfulness.

Civil Law: Ownership and Obligations 895
appears twice (in arts. 72 and 88) with the meaning of lifelong possession and
use by a beneficiary, of property inherited by somebody else.3
Another fundamental aspect of the law of things is the distinction between
movable and immovable things. This distinction, however, can be regarded as
pre-existing and not as something invented by man. Of course, the terminology
referring to it went back at least as far as the Romans, but it can easily be under-
stood that, quite apart from what we call it, there is an essential difference be-
tween individual things and the earth itself. Individual plots can be marked off
and assigned in some way to specific users, but they remain attached to the rest
of the globe and are in principle indestructible. In a society of nomadic hunter-
gatherers ownership of land is meaningless, but individual members would
carry around their personal belongings in some kind of satchel. In early legal
systems, such as the Russkaia Pravda, ownership of land is, as we have seen, a
very hazy subject at best, while the rp has many specific provisions concerning
personal property, i.e. movable things. In the Ulozhenie of 1649, various forms
of land ownership are treated in detail and at length; almost no attention is
paid to movable property as such, but the concept is very well known and turns
up in most chapters. It is termed zhivoty4 and occurs usually in a criminal law
setting, for instance where an offender’s belongings are confiscated, or where
a reward or compensation is to be paid from the guilty person’s belongings.5
The distinction also affected other branches of law, such as taxation (where
special taxes on land co-existed with taxes on all kinds of movable assets, and
particularly on transactions concerning the latter) or criminal law (theft and
other offences against property almost always concern movable assets).
In the setting of the Muscovy state, questions of ownership of land and re-
lated issues were of the utmost socio-economic and political importance, and
therefore they should be discussed first.
Ownership of Land
The ideas about the character of the ownership concept, developed above, are
of immediate relevance when we consider the question of the ownership of
3 Sergeevich, ibidem. Art. 72 concerned establishment of such a relationship by will, art. 88 the
more specific case of a wife, dying intestate, who left an estate. In the latter case the husband
enjoyed the lifelong possession and use of the estate. Sergeevich suggested the provision had
been taken over from Ecloga ii art. 7.
4 As the plural of zhivot, “life”, with the meaning of “belongings”.
5 E.g. Ch. 2, art. 15: the person who brings in or kills a traitor is to receive a reward from the lat-
ter’s belongings; Ch. 21, arts. 9, 12, 14 and others: a thief’s belongings are to be divided among
his victims.
896 chapter 36
land in the Muscovy era. As will be demonstrated, different categories of per-

sons regarded as landowners existed, each of them characterized by specific
sets of rights and duties concerning “their” lands, while none of them would
satisfy the Romanist definition of the full owner.
Land belonging to the state, in fact the grand prince or the tsar, enjoyed a
somewhat separate status. For other ownership of land the principal division
was between service and hereditary or ancestral estates (pomest’ia and
votchiny or otchiny). Within this division it would still be necessary to dis-
tinguish between categories of owners, mainly boyars (including princes and
high nobility), lower nobility (dvoriane) and assimilated categories of serving
officials, merchants6 and other urban landowners, various categories of land-
owning peasants, and ecclesiastical landowners (secular, such as bishops and
other clergy members, and monastic owners – the most important category).
The objections to using ownership of land in a broad, non-Romanist sense
may to some extent be avoided by introducing “land tenure” (more or less
equivalent to Russ. zemlepol’zovanie, “land use”), but that of course entails new
definitional problems.
Legislation
The Code of 1497 mentioned ownership of land mainly in passing; the rather
traditional arts. 61 and 62 were devoted, respectively, to fences and boundary
marks. Art. 63, entitled “Justice Concerning Land” (A o zemliakh sud), was of
more importance, as it introduced a fixed period for the limitation of litigation
about land (three years).7 The provision returned in expanded form in art. 84
of the Code of 1550, where it was followed by the principal land law innovation
of that Code, art. 85, “Justice Concerning Ancestral Estates” (A v votchinakh
sud), the text of which probably derived from a special enactment adopted
during the 1497–1550 period.
The second half of the 16th century yielded a number of decrees dealing
with various aspects of land law; especially the early years, coinciding with the
6 Although ownership of land by merchants and other non-noble urban categories was in prin-
ciple not excluded, various legal and practical obstacles made it generally unattractive. For
a detailed discussion of this topic, see L.A. Timoshina (ed.), Torgovlia i predprinimatel’stvo v
feodal’noi Rossii. K iubileiu professora russkoi istorii Niny Borisovny Golikovoi, Moskva, 1994,
and esp. Golikova’s own contribution “Formy zemlevladeniia i zemlepol’zovaniia gostei i gos-
tinoi sotni v kontse xvi–xviii v.”, 23–56.
7 Previously, various periods of limitation were encountered in different statutes, e.g. three
years in the Metropolitan’s Justice (art. 22), four of five years in the Court Charter of Pskov
(art. 9), and other periods. The heading of art. 63 suggests that its origin was a previous sepa-
rate enactment.
first part of the reign of Ivan iv and the activities of the Adashev government,
were productive in this respect (relevant individual enactments will be dis-
cussed below). Although it is possible to identify several consistent legislative
trends in the era preceding the Ulozhenie of 1649, their effects were often con-
tradictory, due to the chaotic circumstances of the Time of Troubles.
The Ulozhenie incorporated what was lasting and made a qualitative jump
ahead by offering two long chapters, on service lands (Ch. 16, O pomestnykh
zemliakh, 69 articles) and on hereditary estates (Ch. 17, O votchinakh, 55 ar-
ticles). These chapters did not contain a systematic treatment of the subject
concerned, as modern legislation would, but constituted a collection and elab-
oration of past decrees on various relevant topics supplemented by a few new
rules. The underlying structure of the regulatory complex is not made explicit,
but can be derived from the more detailed rules.
Lands Owned by the State

In a state like Muscovy, the person of the monarch and the state as a legal enti-
ty cannot be viewed as wholly separate institutions. Still, in the matter of land
ownership, a clear distinction existed between the tsar’s private estates and the
general pool of state land. The peasants living and working on the tsar’s private
estates were known as “palace peasants” (dvortsovye krest’iane) and they lived
in dvortsovye sela (palace villages). Palace peasants and villages are mentioned
frequently in the Ulozhenie; the status of palace peasants was in some ways
more privileged than that of ordinary dependent peasants.
The origin of palace lands was generally within the sphere of private law,
to use an anachronistic term. Such lands had originally been acquired by
the monarch’s ancestors as a share in an inheritance, or as the result of barter
or sale.
The private estates were used by the Moscow grand princes after Ivan
Kalita to endow younger brothers with apanage principalities; also the tsaritsa
and the dowager tsaritsa owned very considerable estates. At the time of the
Ulozhenie, the palace estates were also employed as a source from which ser-
vice estates could be distributed (e.g. Ch. 16, arts. 46–47).8
The acquisition of genuine state lands would normally be a matter of public
law; they encompassed new territories acquired by conquest or cession, unde-
veloped or ‘wild’ lands, of which there was no shortage in medieval Russia, etc.
Once these lands had been populated by peasants who then cultivated them,
the lands became known as ‘black lands’ (chernye or chernososhnye zemli) and
8 On this subject generally, see E.I. Indova, Dvortsovoe khoziaistvo v Rossii. Pervaia polovina
xviii veka, Moskva, 1964.
898 chapter 36
the peasants as ‘black peasants’ (chernye liudi, chernye krest’iane). Such lands
were especially widespread in the North, while they had almost disappeared
and turned into service and hereditary estates in Central Russia by the end of
the 16th century.9
Service Estates
The terms pomest’e and pomeshchik occurred as early as in the 15th century,
with the meaning of “service estate” and, respectively, the person endowed
with such an estate, as opposed to the hereditary estate (votchina) and its
owner (votchinnik).10 The pomeshchik appeared in art. 63 of the Code of 1497
(mentioned above) and in its successor, art. 84 of the Code of 1550. Granting
land in exchange for service had been practiced regularly in Russia’s past, but
was apparently governed by custom (see Chapter 18). The origin of service es-
tates was most probably in the conditional land grants made to medium and
lower level servants, free as well as unfree, of princes. The basic condition of
the grant was the service to be performed by the grantee, as an estate man-
ager, an administrative or judicial official, in a military capacity, etc., and the
grant would consequently be withdrawn when the service was no longer per-
formed, for whatever reason (death, incapacity, old age, dismissal, malperfor-
mance, etc.). In time, the grant would become inheritable, provided a suitable
successor was available, because such an arrangement was advantageous to
both sides.11
The practice received a major boost when Ivan iii relocated a large num-
ber of Novgorod boyars to other parts of Russia, after Novgorod lost its inde-
pendence in 1478, and distributed their lands to Muscovite servicemen. U nder
Ivan iv, the expansion of the pomest’e system became one of the principal
policy instruments. The duties towards the state, imposed on landowners (po-
meshchiki as well as votchinniki), were laid down in a decree of 1555–1556, the
text of which has been lost (see further below).
9 A.I. Kopanev, “Zakonodatel’stvo o chernom krest’ianskom zemlevladenii xvi–xvii vv.”,

V.A. Ezhov (ed.), Iz istorii feodal’noi Rossii. Stat’i i ocherki k 70-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia prof.
V.V. Mavrodina, Leningrad, 1978, 125–132, at 131. Also: A.D. Gorskii, “K voprosu o sushchnos-
ti chernogo zemlevladeniia na Rusi v xiv–xv vv.”, A.M. Sakharov (ed.), Problemy razvitiia
feodal’noi sobstvennosti na zemliu, Moskva, 1979, 25–54.
10 In modern and 19th century Russian, pomest’e and pomeshchik simply mean “country es-
tate” and its owner.
11 See S.V. Rozhdestvenskii, Sluzhiloe zemlevladenie v moskovskom gosudarstve xvi veka,
Sankt-Peterburg, 1897, 2–44. This is one of the most important pre-1917 studies of land
ownership in Russia.
At the end of the Time of Troubles, the Land Assembly on 30 June 1611
a dopted a decree, which, after appointing a temporary government,12 dealt
extensively with the numerous difficulties which had arisen in the matter of
service estates. Many of the innovations introduced in this decree found their
way into the legislation of the first Romanov tsars and so into the Ulozhenie.13
Like other important departments, the Department of Service Estates
(Pomestnyi Prikaz) maintained its own statute book (see the relevant section
in Chapter 27). The principal item concerning service estates was the Decree
on Hereditary and Service Estates of 17 December 1636; most of its 24 articles
were devoted to service estates.14
The contents of the long Chapter 16 of the Ulozhenie were derived from the
mass of legislation adopted since the reign of Ivan iv. The central idea, perme-
ating the entire chapter, was that military service, essential for the survival of
the Muscovy state, was to be secured by granting land to servicemen, so that
they would have the means to carry out their duties. The first article is elo-
quent in this respect, because it laid down the size of land grants to be made to
all levels of service officials.15 The largest allotments were assigned to boyars,
okol’nichie and other high officials, many of whom would already be owners
of ancestral estates. For lower ranks, such as dvoriane and deti boiarskie, the
service estate, the pomest’e, would usually be the main source of income. The
interests of the latter two categories of service people were clearly foremost in
the minds of the drafters of the chapter on service estates; they are mentioned
in almost every article.
The effect of Ch. 16 art. 1 was limited to the Moscow district (uezd), a com-
paratively small area.16 The reasons for this limitation were to be found in
the provision’s history. Ivan iv had already found it desirable to have a suf-
ficient number of resident servicemen in the Moscow district, who could be
12 Text in rz iii, 43–49; PRoP iii/2, 228–233; the government was entrusted to the three
most important military leaders, D.T. Trubetskoi, I.M. Zarutskii and P.P. Liapunov; see the
section on this decree in Chapter 28.
13 Cf. A.G. Man’kov (ed.), Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 goda. Tekst. Kommentarii, Leningrad,
1987, 282.
14 Text in prp v, 470–477; PRoP iii/2, 310–314; zarg, No. 234, 171–174.
15 The grants were expressed in chetverti (slightly more than 0.5 ha, or 2.7 acres), from 200
chetverti for boyars to 50 chetverti to zhil’tsy and comparable ranks.
16 The surface of the Moscow district (uezd) was roughly in the order of 6.000/7.000 km2,
with Moscow at the centre; it consisted of about 30 volosti, later on also known as stany.
See K.A. Aver’ianov, “Moskovskie stany i volosti xiv–xvi vv.”, dg sssr 1987, 114–122 (map
at 116).
900 chapter 36
obilized at short notice.17 This objective was achieved by granting them

m
pomest’ia around Moscow. The relative scarcity of land required more detailed
regulation of this matter.18 More elaborate arrangements were made under
Ivan’s son Fedor.19 Outside the Moscow uezd, land grants for pomest’ia would
as a rule be much larger than those around Moscow.20
One of the prime concerns of the government was obviously to prevent
‘leakage’ from the national reservoir of service land, the sum total of land avail-
able for assignment as service land and land already assigned as such. Arts. 2–7,
which dealt with the exchange of service lands, must be seen in this light. It
would often be mutually advantageous for landowners to exchange land. This
was allowed, but arts. 2–7 envisaged various situations which could arise and
made sure that no service land would be lost in such deals or that its qual-
ity would deteriorate. Another general feature observable in these provisions,
and many other provisions of this chapter as well, was the obligatory involve-
ment of the Service Land Department (Pomestnyi Prikaz) which processed the
exchange requests and registered the permissions granted.
Many provisions testified to the government’s concern to engage the pomest’e
as the main instrument to ensure genuine commitment from the lower service
classes. The effectiveness of this policy would depend not only on enabling the
serviceman to carry out his military duties, but also on various accompanying
measures, calculated to safeguard his interests in old age or infirmity, and the
interests of his family members (cf. arts. 8–11, 13, 16–24, 30–34, and others).
In line with the haphazard regulatory approach of the Ulozhenie (an edited
accumulation of previous enactments, interspersed with a few afterthoughts),
the essential connection between service and the granting of a pomest’e, a sim-
ple fact of life for contemporaries, was only expressed in passing in a number
of provisions,21 demonstrating that service land could be taken away when the
holder of the land for some specific reason was unable or unwilling to render
the service required. Only a few provisions came closer to something like a
general rule. Art. 33 made it clear that when sons of the holder of a service
17 A decree of October 1550 provided for the relocation of one thousand deti boiarskie to the
Moscow uezd and adjacent districts; prp iv, 581–582; zarg, No. 4, 30–31.
18 Man’kov (ed.), Sobornoe Ulozhenie, 253.
19 Only fragments have survived; the decree was issued in 1586/1587; prp v, 434–435; zarg,
No. 44, 63.
20 Cf. the commentary (by A.P. Kopanev) in N.E. Nosov, V.M. Paneiakh (eds.), Zakonodatel’nye
Akty Russkogo Gosudarstva vtoroi poloviny xvi – pervoi poloviny xvii veka. Kommentarii,
Leningrad, 1987, 14–16.
21 E.g. in arts. 9–10, 12, 22, 25, 28, 33, 37–38, 42–44, 47–48, 68–69.
estate died before they had received a service rank, their wives and daughters
received only a small maintenance allotment.
The original basis of the service estate was a grant by the grand prince
(tsar).22 In the normal course of events, a son would succeed his father as
holder of the estate. When there were several sons, they were customarily en-
titled to roughly equal shares (cf. art. 34). Art. 34 also implied that the division
could be made by the father, provided the division was fair. Otherwise the mat-
ter would be corrected by the authorities upon the request of the disadvan-
taged party. Many other provisions imply or state outright that service estates
were included in the estate upon the death of the owner. Inherited service es-
tates (the most common form) must be distinguished from hereditary estates
(votchiny), to be discussed below.
The succession system applicable to service estates is better understood if
it is not viewed as something static. Originally, the grant was personal; succes-
sion by a son would therefore need a renewal of the grant. The government
had of course a strong interest in perpetuating the service relationship, and
this interest coincided with the family interests. This made succession by a son
almost inevitable, and so it came to be regarded as a question of customary
law. This was the situation at the time of the Ulozhenie. When a son who was
suitable as a successor was absent, his place could be taken by a male relative
without service land or with insufficient service land. This required a petition
and a grant (see art. 13). If no such relatives were available, the land was to be
granted to local dvoriane or deti boiarskie without land.
While the land (and connected rights and assets) were of course defined in
the grant charter (zhalovannaia gramota), the service which the grantee had
to provide was left to the discretion of the tsar. It would, as a rule, be mili-
tary service. The exact nature of the appointment would to a large extent de-
pend on the outcome of the mestnichestvo system (see the relevant section in
Chapter 31). Along with personal service, any landowner, whether pomeshchik
or votchinnik, was obliged to contribute men from his own lands to serve in the
army. This had been regulated in more detail by the Decree on Service (Ulozhe-
nie or Ukaz o Sluzhbe) of 1556 (or 1555).23 According to this decree, a landowner
had to supply a fully armed and equipped horseman for every 100 chetverti
22 Examples explicitly mentioning that the grant was made for past and future service: prp
iv, 106 (1523), 110–111 (1551).
23 The full text is not available, but the main contents of the decree have been transmitted
together with other important acts of legislation from 1555–1556 in chronicle texts. See
prp iv, 586, and especially zarg, No. 11, 36, and the commentary volume of the latter
publication (N.E. Nosov, V.M. Paneiakh, eds.), 32–34.
902 chapter 36
(about 54 ha) of good land in his possession; for longer campaigns two extra
horses had to be provided.
Whether the holder of a service estate was to be regarded as its owner is
a matter of definition. He certainly did not enjoy the full panoply of rights
associated with the classical concept of ownership. Although he could leave
the service estate to his sons, this was a duty, rather than a right. The imper-
missibility of selling or mortgaging the pomest’e is implicit and occasionally
explicit in the Ulozhenie; exchanging it was allowed, as mentioned above, but
only against a similar service or hereditary estate and after receiving permis-
sion following a request to the Service Land Department. Through the ages,
however, the position of the pomeshchik was strengthened. While originally
the temporary possessor of a certain parcel of land of which he enjoyed the
proceeds as long as he did actually deliver the service required, the pomeshchik
gradually came closer to being the owner of an ancestral estate; during the last
decades of the 17th century, the sale or mortgaging of a pomest’e was allowed
or tacitly tolerated in more and more situations, until finally the difference
between ancestral and service estates was abolished in 1714.24
During the period of Muscovy Russia and after the subjugation and aboli-
tion of the Kazan khanate, the integration of a considerable non-Slavic popula-
tion, with its own social hierarchy, became an urgent concern for the Moscow
government. The chapter on service estates devoted a number of provisions to
the matter of lands owned by Tatar princes and nobles and the interplay with
Russian service estates (arts. 41–45). Also, the increasing permanent presence
of foreign (Western) servitors of the tsar required special regulation (see esp.
art. 14).
Hereditary or Ancestral Estates25

In Chapter 18, on Rural Russia in the Kievan era, the existence or at least emer-
gence of boyar landowning in that period was discussed. This, unquestionably,
24 Decree (imennoi ukaz) of 23 March 1714, “On the manner of inheriting movable and im-
movable property”, V.A. Tomsinov (ed.), Zakonodatel’stvo Petra i. 1696–1725 gody, Moskva,
2014, 117–121. See also N.P. Pavlov-Sil’vanskii, Gosudarevy sluzhilye liudi, Moskva, 2001 (orig.
Sankt-Peterburg, 1898), 182–186.
25 Generally, on this topic, see S.B. Veselovskii, Feodal’noe zemlevladenie v Severo-Vostochnoi
Rusi, Moskva/Leningrad, 1947, 74–110. Veselovskii also presented a detailed picture of
the life of a typical landowner as the manager of a complex economy, at a time when
the differences between pomeshchiki and votchinniki were already fading, in Votchinnik i
ego khoziaistvo v xvii veke, Moskva/Leningrad, 1929 (based on the personal papers of the
stol’nik A.I. Bezobrazov, executed in 1690 for his involvement in a plot against tsar Peter).
A comparable study of a large estate is D.I. Petrikeev, Krupnoe krepostnoe khoziaistvo
was the origin of the core of the hereditary or ancestral estates (votchiny or
otchiny) in Muscovy: land that had been owned by certain families “from time
immemorial”. The qualities and peculiarities of this type of ownership were
generally known and could be regarded as part of customary law. H istorically,
such votchiny preceded pomest’ia, but for an understanding of the role of
votchiny in Muscovy the institution of service estates had to be explained first.
In time, the grand prince assumed the right to grant land to his servitors, not
as service land with all the restrictions attached to it, but as an ancestral estate,
which made the grant more valuable. Moreover, in certain situations it would
also become possible to sell an ancestral estate, for instance when the entire
clan (rod) of the last owner had died out. As a result, ancestral or hereditary
estates appeared in three different forms in the Ulozhenie: the old ancestral es-
tates which had been in family ownership “forever” (rodovye votchiny), heredi-
tary estates granted for service (vysluzhennye votchiny, or votchiny za sluzhby
dannye), and bought estates (kuplennye votchiny).26 This threefold distinction
permeated the entire Chapter 17 of the Ulozhenie, devoted to ancestral estates
(55 articles).
As a special legislative subject, votchiny appeared first in the Code of 1550,
where art. 85 was entitled A v votchinakh sud (Justice Concerning Ancestral
Estates). The origin of this long provision was most likely a previous special en-
actment.27 The cardinal concept of this provision was vykup (redemption), the
right of family members to redeem or buy back family land which had been
donated, sold, left or mortgaged to an outsider. One may assume that initially
the retention of the land belonging to the extended family or clan was felt as
an urgent moral duty, expressed in the recognition of a wide-ranging right of
clan members to buy back land which had left the family pool. Art. 85 of the
Code of 1550 then attempted to regulate this right in a more precise manner,
restricting it to some extent by the same token. The descendants of the person
xvii v. Po materialam votchiny boiarina B.I. Morozova, Leningrad, 1967. O.A. Shvatchenko,
Svetskie feodal’nye votchiny Rossii v pervoi treti xvii veka, Moskva, 1990, contains extensive
numerical data on votchiny, their size, location, owners, etc.
26 In this chapter, as well as in Chapter 37 (on Family Law and Inheritance), an attempt
has been made to translate the general category of votchina as hereditary estate and its
three subdivisions as “ancestral estate” (rodovaia votchina), “(hereditary) estate granted
for service” (vysluzhennaia votchina), and “bought estate” (kuplennaia votchina), but this
approach cannot always be followed because the ancestral estate was the basic form of
the hereditary estate and, both in English and in Russian, the two are often confused.
27 This is not only suggested by its heading, but also by its insertion in a block of provisions
going back to the Code of 1497. Cf. the comments by A.G. Poliak in prp iv, 328–332 and
also by B.A. Romanov in B.D. Grekov (ed.), Sudebniki xv–xvi vekov, Moskva, 1952, 297–319.
904 chapter 36
who had sold or otherwise disposed of family property were denied the right of
redemption, as well as those family members who had acted as co-signatories
or witnesses to the relevant documents. An estate that had been bought could
be converted into an old ancestral estate by the owner leaving it to his children.
As long as ancestral ownership remained limited to lands which had been
held in such ownership by a particular family (clan), ancestral and service
estates constituted two strictly separate categories. This started to change
under the reign of Ivan iv when the practice of granting new hereditary (an-
cestral) estates began to take hold. A decree of 1573 allowed the sale of va-
cant pomest’ia, withdrawn by the state, as ancestral properties to boyars, lower
nobility (sluzhilye liudi), prominent merchants and other persons, but not to
monasteries.28 It also happened frequently that the tsar granted land in the
usual way to military and civilian servitors, as a reward for service, but with the
specific proviso that the land was granted as ancestral land. Such grants were
much sought after, because they not only enhanced the status of the grantee,
but also implied more extensive rights concerning the land than those granted
to ordinary pomeshchiki.
This new policy significantly enlarged the pool of votchina land. It enabled
the tsar to reward meritorious servitors and simultaneously fill his coffers. The
rights of the owners of such vysluzhennye votchiny (hereditary estates acquired
through service) were usually more restricted than those of owners of genuine
ancestral estates, but still far wider than those of owners of service estates. In
some cases, however, the tsar would grant the new owner of such an estate
more extensive rights than those enjoyed by the owner of an ordinary ances-
tral estate.
The legislation concerning these vysluzhennye votchiny was collected in a
single enactment in 1627, known as the Stateinyi spisok (a list consisting of
articles),29 which constituted a major source for Ch. 17 of the Ulozhenie (espe-
cially in the first part, up to art. 16).
The third category of hereditary estates, bought estates (kuplennye votchiny),
had a double origin. Previously, as indicated above, owners of ancestral estates
had the right to sell their estates, although this right was restricted by the rules
concerning redemption (vykup). As the right of redemption tended to become
more restricted, the owner’s freedom to sell increased. Along with this, the
state made more land available for sale as hereditary land by appropriating
land in various ways (derelict land, new land, expropriated land).
28 zarg, No. 38, 56–57; also in prp v, 461–463, where it appears as an insertion in a decree of
1628, amending the 1573 decree.
29 zarg, No. 161, 133–136 (and also No. 86, ibid., 93–93); prp v, 453–460.
The Decree on Hereditary and Service Estates of 1636 was mentioned in the
previous section; this decree also had a few provisions on hereditary estates
(arts. 1, 2, 13).
In the section on service estates it has been noted that the Ulozhenie of
1649 was an important milestone in the development of this institution, but
by no means the finishing line. The same could be said about hereditary es-
tates. Rather than looking at Ch. 17 as a set of rules for regulating the subject,
attempting to identify lines of development underlying the chapter may be a
more productive approach.
A first observation, suggested by the first block of provisions (up to art. 16), is
the growing approximation between old ancestral (rodovye) and granted (vys-
luzhennye) hereditary estates, which generally received the same treatment.
In fact, granted estates seemed to assume the status of old ancestral estates
and share in the careful protection which the Ulozhenie still afforded the lat-
ter. The legislator made an effort to keep estates within the family, even in the
female line. Bought hereditary estates, on the other hand, offered the owners
certain advantages, because of the greater freedom allowed in handling them.
This gave rise to the curious practice, referred to in art. 8, of people buying old
(rodovye) or granted (vysluzhennye) ancestral estates from members of their
own family or clan, converting these estates by the same token into bought
estates. The opposite, converting bought estates into old ancestral estates, had
been allowed by art. 85 of the Code of 1550 (mentioned above).
Another theme which manifested itself in several provisions was the interac-
tion between hereditary and service estates, almost watertight compartments in
the past. The granting of service land as hereditary land under Ivan iv had made
the first breach, but the Ulozhenie added several new openings between the two.
Art. 9 provided that the government could sell service lands as hereditary lands by
a decree signed by the tsar30 and the same article added that service lands could
be sold as hereditary lands by their holders, but only after they had obtained
a signed decree from the tsar. Art. 47 ordered the sale of vacant and derelict ser-
vice lands to lower nobility (dvoriane and deti boiarskie) as hereditary lands.
A result of the breaking down of the barriers between hereditary and ser-
vice lands was that a person could simultaneously be entitled to hereditary
and service lands. In later years this became a common phenomenon, espe-
cially in the case of members of the higher nobility (boyars, okol’nichie, etc.).31
30 The terminology of the imennoi ukaz (a decree with the tsar’s signature, lit. “a named
decree”) is frequently used in the Ulozhenie.
31 Owners of hereditary land who did not simultaneously have service land constitut-
ed a very small minority within the entire group of owners of hereditary land; cf. G.V.
Abramovich in Man’kov (ed.), Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 goda, 270.
906 chapter 36
As in the previous chapter on service lands, state registration was given an

important and often decisive role; it was carried out by the Service Land De-
partment (Pomestnyi Prikaz); see for instance arts. 34–36.
The policy directed at reducing the volume of landowning by monasteries,
prominent since Ivan iv, was noticeable in many provisions of Ch. 17. Although
the general tendency of the chapter was to increase the scope for transactions
affecting hereditary property, monasteries were often expressly excluded as
beneficiaries of the sale, gift, mortgaging or exchange of ancestral property.
The great factual improvement in the position of at least some unfree per-
sons is evidenced by art. 41 in which the drafters of the Ulozhenie found it nec-
essary to state explicitly that slaves of boyars or monasteries could not buy
ancestral estates or possess them on the basis of mortgage.32
These various points have been indicated because they also represented the
starting points for continued developments during the second half of the 17th
century and in the reign of Peter the Great.
If one may question the ownership character of the right of a pomeshchik,
the holder of a service estate, there is less reason to do so in the case of the
owner of a hereditary estate. From a legal point of view, however, hereditary
ownership had its own peculiarities. Along with the right of the actual owner
of the property, there was a much more diffuse right, enjoyed by other family
and/or clan members, a kind of ownership by default; this right itself was grad-
ed; closer relatives had a stronger position. The family members of the “owner”
of a service estate did not have such a right. Furthermore, the right of common
ownership of the heirs was explicitly recognized by art. 13.
The concept of hereditary ownership of land illustrates the approach ad-
opted in this chapter, that the absolute Romanist concept of ownership is un-
suitable for explaining ownership relations in a medieval setting. The owner of
a hereditary estate was, at least ideally, the manager of property belonging to
a family; when his management impinged on the residual rights of the family,
for instance if he were to sell or bequeath family land in a way unacceptable to
the family, the transaction could be invalidated.
Princes as Landowners
After the principality of Riazan’ had been absorbed into the Muscovy state in
1521, all remaining princes were in some way subject to the grand prince of
Moscow. Many of them continued to be owners of vast tracts of land, their
votchiny, although the latter tended to be broken up into ever smaller estates.
32 “Slaves” is the reading given by some, such as G.V. Abramovich in Man’kov (ed.), Sobornoe
Ulozhenie 1649 goda, 280, to boiarskie liudi and monastyrskie slugi.
The Code of 1550, as related above, had a single provision on votchiny, of

which the regulation of the right of redemption (vykup) was the main com-
ponent. A year later, in 1551, a so-called council decree (sobornyi prigovor) was
issued, of which the restriction of real estate ownership by church bodies (es-
pecially monasteries) was the main subject (we shall return to this topic in the
next section), but it also affected the ownership of votchiny by lay persons, and
especially by princes.33 It referred specifically to the princes of the houses of
Suzdal’, Iaroslavl’ and Starodub, who apparently had already been forbidden by
a decree of Ivan iii to sell votchiny or donate them to monasteries.
In 1562 the prohibition was extended to all service princes and their free-
dom in disposing of their ancestral estates was further restricted.34 Violation
of the tsar’s instruction would in most cases lead to the expropriation of the
estate concerned. The legislation fitted into Ivan’s general policy of reducing
the political power of the service princes, who constituted the wealthiest and
most powerful section of the boyar class.
This legislation, specifically concerned with votchiny belonging to princely
families, showed that service princes were legally in a less favourable position
than other votchinniki.
Church Lands
The question of land ownership by boyars and princes has to be viewed in
connection with the government’s approach regarding land ownership by
monasteries and other church agencies (mainly the patriarchate and the bish-
ops). The new policies adopted by the Adashev government during the first
years of the reign of Ivan iv were of decisive importance in this respect. The
government’s first priority was to ensure its military capabilities, in view of
the permanent external threats to national security. In furthering its aims, the
government had to deal with three major interested parties: the Church, the
higher nobility (princes and boyars), and the lower nobility (dvoriane and deti
boiarskie). The last category, the mainstay of the country’s military power, was
the government’s natural ally; the interests of the higher nobility were mixed,
and the Church, as, collectively, the wealthiest landowner (after the tsar/state),
33 zarg, No. 5, 31–33; see also the comments in the commentary volume of zarg, 17–19.
The text is also included, with minor variations, in the Composite Code, Chapter 13, arts.
119–125, prp iv, 523–524.
34 zarg, No. 36, 55–56; commentary volume, 56–58; text also included with minor varia-
tions, in the Composite Code, Chapter 14, art. 163, prp iv, 529–531. See also zarg, No. 37,
56, a council decree from 1572, which dealt with similar subjects; commentary volume,
58–59; Chapter xiv, art. 163, prp iv, 531.
908 chapter 36
was the most obvious target of the government’s acquisitive inclinations. On

the other hand, it was not an easy prey, on account of its socio-political posi-
tion in the setting of those days, coupled with its enormous wealth. Adashev
and Ivan iv were able to reduce the economic power of monasteries and other
church agencies to a considerable extent, but when the first Romanov tsar
ruled a hundred years later, together with his father who happened to be the
patriarch, the Church continued to be a formidable political agent.
The main routes available to monasteries to accumulate landed property
were discussed in the section on church landowning in the Chapter 18, on Ru-
ral Russia. The first steps taken by the Adashev government during the early
years of the reign of Ivan iv were the attempt to stop the further extension
of monasterial landowning. (The so-called secular church agencies (patriarch/
metropolitan, bishops, local churches) also appeared as landowners, but apart
from the patriarchate itself, they were very much of secondary importance in
this respect, compared to the monasteries.)35 Shortly after the adoption of the
Code of 1550, the freedom of secular landowners to donate (bequeath, mort-
gage, etc.) ancestral land to monasteries was limited to one half of the estates,
although they remained free in respect of bought hereditary estates.36 Then,
in a decision of 15 December 1550 in the form of a council decree (sobornyi
prigovor), ostensibly taken by the tsar in concert with all leading church dig-
nitaries, an attempt was made to deal with the vexing problem of the numer-
ous monasterial “freedoms” (slobody) in towns, enjoying extensive judicial and
fiscal immunity.37
Of far greater importance was the council decree of 1 May 1551 which seri-
ously curtailed the power of the higher clergy and the monasteries to acquire
landed property.38 Its main point was that the sale of ancestral land to church
entities without the permission of the tsar was forbidden. The traditional tes-
tamentary bequest of ancestral land to a monastery retained its validity, but
the right of family members to redeem such land was also maintained, unless
it was excluded. Service and ‘black’ lands which had ended up in the hands
of monasteries on account of unpaid debts of deti boiarskie or peasants were
35 The land registers for 1678 gave the following numbers: 97.934 homesteads (dvory) owned
by 395 monasteries and churches (sobory), 7.128 owned by the patriarch, 11.595 owned by
eight bishops. Quoted from S.B. Veselovskii, Feodal’noe zemlevladenie v Severo-Vostochnoi
Rusi, Moskva/Leningrad, 1947, 330.
36 zarg, No. 1, 29.
37 zarg, No. 3, 30; prp iv, 580–581. Also included in somewhat different words, in the Stoglav,
Ch. 98.
38 zarg, No. 5, 31–33; included in the Composite Code in Ch. 13 as arts. 119–122, 125.
to be returned. There are, however, indications that the decree was enforced
during the first few years, but that its effectiveness was much reduced in later
years.39
In the course of the following years there were several amendments and
additions to the main lines as set out by the decree of 1 May 1551, such as the
decree of 15 August 1557, which spelled out in more detail how and when an-
cestral estates which had been sold or bequeathed to monasteries could be
redeemed by the relatives of the former owner.40
The decisive turnaround was the council decree (sobornyi prigovor) of 15
January 1580.41 The importance of the decree was reflected by its solemn form
as a council decree, taken by the tsar and his boyars together with the church
leadership. It was confirmed by another council decree in 1584, which addi-
tionally put an end to the fiscal privileges of the clergy.42
The political background to these decrees was that a significant part of the
ancestral lands belonging to boyar families had been ceded to monasteries
during the years of the oprichnina of Ivan iv which had hit the boyar class
particularly hard. At the same time, the government was eager to get its hands
on landed property to satisfy the needs of its servitors, especially the lower
noble class. The decree categorically prohibited the acquisition of land by the
monasteries in the future, but on the other hand, as a concession to the mon-
asteries, guaranteed the status quo regarding property relations; the monaster-
ies were allowed to keep what they had acquired in the past.43 If the owner of
ancestral land sold his estate to a monastery, his family was entitled to buy it
back. If there were no family members entitled to redeem the property or if
they were unable to put up the money, the tsar was supposed to buy the es-
tate. This procedure invalidated the intended effect of the decree in practice,
because during the following decades of the Time of Troubles, neither boyars
nor the tsar himself were usually in a position to find the necessary funds. The
ensuing situation was legalized by a decree of 27 August 1622 which ruled that
votchiny acquired by monasteries after the decree of 1580 would remain forever
with the monasteries if no request for redemption had been filed in the mean-
time.44 This favourable treatment of monasteries lasted while the father of tsar
39 zarg, Kommentarii, 19.

40 zarg, No. 22, 444–45; prp iv, 524.
41 zarg, No. 40, 57–59; comments by A.I. Kopanev in the accompanying volume, N.E. Nosov,
A.I. Kopanev (eds.), zarg, Kommentarii, Leningrad, 1987, 60–62. The decree was also in-
cluded in the Composite Code in Ch. 13 as art. 164.
42 zarg, No. 43, 61–63.
43 zarg, Kommentarii, 60–62.
44 zarg, No. 122, 114–115; prp v, 439–441.
910 chapter 36
Mikhail Fedorovich, the domineering patriarch Filaret (†1633), was alive. After
his demise it was abolished and Ch. 17 (on votchiny) art. 42 of the Ulozhenie re-
lated at length its own legislative history, concluding with a repeated prohibi-
tion on the acquisition of votchiny by monasteries and avoiding the loopholes
left by the decree of 1580. The sale, mortgaging, gift or bequest of a votchina,
whether truly ancestral, granted for service, or bought, to a monastery would
result in the confiscation of the estate without compensation; the tsar would
then grant it to somebody else. This provision is also the most important one
on monastic landowning in the Ulozhenie, which otherwise had little to say on
this subject.
The patriarch, as a landowner, had occupied a special position since tsar
Mikhail had granted his father, the patriarch Filaret, a separate eparchy as a
patriarchal province by a decree of 20 May 1625. The grant encompassed full ju-
dicial immunity; in other words, the lands involved and the clergy and depen-
dent population living on it were in all things (barring homicide and robbery)
subject to the patriarch’s own jurisdiction. The patriarchal province constitut-
ed a state within the state and had its own government departments (prikazy)
and administration. Many of its privileges were withdrawn by the Ulozhenie of
1649 after Filaret’s death.45
The sources indicate that land acquired by monasteries retained its original
character of votchina or pomest’e. Monasteries themselves would occasionally
grant land belonging to them as pomest’ia or votchiny to private individuals,
although church rules forbad the change of ownership of real property owned
by the Church.
Peasant Landowning
The step-by-step abolition of the right of the dependent peasant to leave his
master’s service (the abolition of the autumnal Iur’ev den’, St. George’s Day),
as explained in the section on “The peasant population in later centuries” in
Chapter 18, tied the bulk of the peasant population to the place where they
lived and worked for a landowner. To that extent, there could be no talk of
peasant landowning in Muscovy.
45 The special patriarchal province is mentioned by G.V. Vernadskii, Istoriia Rossii; Mos-
kovskoe gosudarstvo, Ch. 1, Tver’/Moskva, 1997, 283–284, and by the same author in P.A.
Sorokin, N.P. Poltoratskii (eds.), Na temy russkie i obshchie. Sbornik statei i materialov v
chest’ Prof. N.S. Timasheva, New York, 1965, 79–94, at 84. A.G. Man’kov mentioned the mat-
ter in passing in A.G. Man’kov (ed.), Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 goda. Tekst. Kommentarii,
Leningrad, 1987, 241. The province comprised numerous monasteries (such as the Troitse-
Sergiev and the Novodevichii) and more than 40 towns and districts (uezdy).
The dependent peasant, on the other hand, had usually been assigned an
allotment which he worked with his family; from the proceeds he had to pay
an annual rent (obrok) to his master, or he had to work for a certain amount
of time for him (barshchina), but otherwise his position was not very different
from that of the svoezemets, the peasant who worked his own land indepen-
dently. As a numerically insignificant section of the peasant population, the
svoezemtsy have left hardly a trace in the legislation.46 The main features of
the position of the dependent peasant, as expressed in the Ulozhenie, were (a)
the fact that he was tied to his allotment; he could not leave it or exchange it
for another of his own free will; (b) the unity of the peasant family, of which
the pater familias was merely the representative; and (c) the exclusivity of
the peasant’s enjoyment of his allotment; it was to some extent his own. The
Ulozhenie referred to the allotment as the peasant’s zherebei (his lot, his share;
e.g. Ch. 11 art. 1).
In the central area of Muscovy, most of the peasant population found it-
self in a state of dependence on a master, the feudal landowner, as he used to
be called by Soviet historians. That is to say, they worked on the votchiny of
boyars and other landowners, on the service estates of those who had been
granted such lands, on monastery and other church lands, or on the tsar’s pri-
vate estates, the palace lands (dvortsovye zemli). A smaller number lived and
worked on so-called ‘black lands’ (chernye zemli; see above, and more exten-
sively on this topic: the section on “The peasant population in later centuries”
in Chapter 18, on Rural Russia).
In the northern half of Muscovy ‘black peasants’ constituted a far more sig-
nificant part of the population. The tsar would unquestionably be recognized
as the supreme owner of such lands, but the ownership relationships concern-
ing black lands were considerably more favourable to the resident peasants.
The written law is almost silent on this subject, but there is a wealth of other
documentary evidence in the form of various kinds of charters, indicating the
fairly extensive rights enjoyed by black peasants in respect of land. A great
deal of work was done during the Soviet era in elucidating the status of black
peasants.47 In line with the Marxist approach, which subscribed to a particular
46 S.B. Veselovskii is one of the few authors who examined the question of landowning by
svoezemtsy, in Feodal’noe zemlevladenie v Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, Moskva/Leningrad, 1947,
203–216.
47 See in particular: N.N. Pokrovskii, Aktovye istochniki po istorii chernososhnogo zem-
levladeniia v Rossii xiv – nachala xvi v., Novosibirsk, 1973; and also, A.I. Kopanev,
“Zakonodatel’stvo o chernom krest’ianskom zemlevladenii xvi–xvii vv.”, V.A. Ezhov (ed.),
Iz istorii feodal’noi Rossii. Stat’i i ocherki k 70-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia prof. V.V. Mavrodina,
912 chapter 36
version of a rigidly Romanist ownership concept, the work of Soviet historians

appeared to be centred on the question whether or not the Muscovy peasant,
and especially the peasant living on black lands, was the owner of the land
worked by him.
Three main positions can be distinguished. One was that land could only be
owned by the state or by feudal lords, which could be accompanied by collec-
tive peasant possession of the same land. Another group of scholars held that
a form of free peasant ownership existed on black lands. According to a third
and intermediate view, the situation of black lands should be conceived as a
form of two-level ownership, by the tsar and by the peasant community.48
In his review of the legislative position of black peasants A.I. Kopanev
pointed to art. 63 of the 1497 Code of Ivan iii, which regulated the statute of
limitations in litigation about land. The provision mentioned actions between
various kinds of landowners, such as boyars, monasteries, pomeshchiki, etc. It
also mentioned black peasants and sel’skie krest’iane (apparently independent
peasants who owned their land). This indicated, in Kopanev’s view, that black
peasants were regarded as the owners of their land.49 The provision returned
in amplified form in the Code of 1550 (art. 84). In the Code of 1589, which was
probably drafted with a particular view towards the situation in Northern Rus-
sia (where black lands were still common at the time), the ideas underlying
the 1550 Code were worked out in greater detail in arts. 163–167; the following
provisions of the 1589 Code made clear that ownership itself of black lands
occurred in two forms: common ownership of the village community and
personal ownership of the black peasant.50 Other publications by Kopanev
produced data on a huge number (more than 1.800) of charters documenting
transactions concerning land conducted by black peasants in the course of the
16th century.51 Most of these transactions involved the sale of land.
Leningrad, 1978, 125–132; A.D. Gorskii, “K voprosu o sushchnosti chernogo zemlevladeniia

na Rusi v xiv–xv vv.”, A.M. Sakharov (ed.), Problemy razvitiia feodal’noi sobstvennosti na
zemliu, Moskva, 1979, 25–54.
48 See, for instance, N.A. Gorskaia, “Obshchinnyi sobstvennik v russkoi derevne xvi–xvii
vv.”, N.A. Gorskaia, E.N. Shveikovskaia (eds.), Predstavleniia o sobstvennosti v rossiiskom ob-
shchestve xv–xviii vv. Problemy sobstvennosti v obshchestvennom soznanii i pravovoi mysli
feodal’noi epokhi, Moskva, 1998, 39–50.
49 Kopanev, op. cit., 127–128. This aspect has been neglected by almost all commentators
of the Code, who directed all their attention to the procedural aspect of the statute of
limitation.
50 Ibidem, 130.
51 A.I. Kopanev, Krest’ianstvo Russkogo Severa xvi v., Leningrad, 1978, 12–18. Hundreds
of such documents are to be found in the published archival funds of the Solovetskii
Kopanev’s views on ownership of land by black peasants were sharply

criticized by some of his Moscow colleagues, in particular by A.D Gorskii
who devoted a long paper to the refutation of Kopanev’s ownership thesis.52
According to Gorskii, Kopanev had neglected the ownership definition of
Venediktov (the leading civil law scholar of the Stalin era), as well as Lenin’s
pontifications in this field.
A more realistic approach started to prevail in later years. In a collective
study on ownership perceptions in Russian society from the 15th to the 18th
centuries, E.N. Shveikovskaia drew attention to the debate preceding the adop-
tion of the Code of 1550, in particular to the questions addressed by Ivan iv to
the Church Council preparing the Stoglav (see Chapter 25).53 In the twelfth
question the tsar announced his plan to have all land described and measured,
summing it up: “the land of myself, the tsar and grand prince, of the metropoli-
tan, the bishops, the monasteries, and the church [lands], [the land] of princes
and boyars, ancestral and service lands, land of black peasants and of obrok
[paying peasants], new clearings and wild lands, empty villages, and all kinds
of zemetskie [privately owned] lands, no matter whose they are”.54 The list sug-
gested but did not prove that black peasants were considered the owners of
their land. The same idea is also encountered in several earlier guba charters,
such as those of Belozersk (1539), Kargopol’ (1539), and Medyn’ (1555) (see
Chapter 33), where the opening provision related the entire social hierarchy of
persons to whom the charter was directed, and where the black peasants were
named last in the line of landowners, to be followed by all kinds of professional
specialists (dog-keepers, huntsmen, fowlers, bee-keepers, fishermen, etc.).
The clearest official recognition of the right of black peasants (and also
posadskie liudi) to buy and sell and mortgage their land was a decree of 12 May
1624 which allowed such transactions, with the reservation that land could
onastery, the largest landowner in Northern Russia: A.I. Kopanev, N.E. Nosov (eds.),
m
Akty Solovetskogo monastyria 1479–1571 gg., Leningrad, 1988, and A.I. Kopanev, N.E. Nosov
(eds.), Akty Solovetskogo monastyria 1572–1584 gg., Leningrad, 1990.
52 The 1979 paper quoted above.
53 E.N. Shveikovskaia, “Krest’ianskoe zemel’noe vladenie kak ob’ekt pravosoznaniia v sered-
ine xvi–xvii vv. (zakonodatel’stvo i real’nost’)”, N.A. Gorskaia, E.N. Shveikovskaia (eds.),
Predstavleniia o sobstvennosti v rossiiskom obshchestve xv–xviii vv. Problemy sobstvennosti
v obshchestvennom soznanii i pravovoi mysli feodal’noi epokhi, Moskva, 1998, 51–86.
54 Text in prp iv, 576–580. The relationship between these questions to the Church Council,
transmitted through a ms. from the Volokolamsk monastery, and other pronouncements
made by Ivan iv at the same session in February 1549 and transmitted by other sources is
not quite clear.
914 chapter 36
only be sold to tax-paying (tiaglye) buyers and not to monasteries.55 The decree
was addressed to the entire population of the North-Russian district (uezd) of
Ustiug and invalidated a decree of a few years before which had forbidden all
transactions concerning land by black peasants.56
If one disregards the conceptual battles and inspects the evidence, the rich
archival materials, especially from the cadastral registers (pistsovye knigi),
yield a detailed picture of the way black peasants were involved in determining
the legal fate of their lands. They unquestionably did regularly sell, mortgage,
exchange, donate or bequeath their lands, like other landowners. There were,
no doubt, various restrictions on these transactions, but the same could be
said about the owners of votchiny or pomest’ia. Whether black peasants were
to be regarded as landowners is therefore merely a question of definition. They
certainly behaved like owners in many ways.
Slaves as landowners seems to be a far-fetched idea, but Veselovskii devot-
ed an entire chapter to this topic. He pointed out that from the 15th century
onwards, emancipation of slaves by last will was a very common occurrence,
a fact that contributed to the gradual merging of the classes of slaves and
serfs. And also, before slaves were actually emancipated, whether during their
master’s lifetime or by will, they often were already in charge of plots of land
assigned to them, where they behaved as de facto owners, more or less like
ordinary peasants.57
The ultimately futile debate about peasant ownership or possession of
land in Muscovy has overshadowed a related and more significant question,
already referred to in passing above: the relationship between individual (or
rather family) peasant landownership and the corporate rights of the peas-
ant community. A more recent study by N.A. Gorskaia has shed more light on
this question.58 In Gorskaia’s perception, the rights of the individual peasant
(family), whether conceived as ownership or mere possession, were embedded
in the rights of his rural community (obshchina, and also volost’). In Central
Muscovy, where black peasants had almost disappeared and peasants were at-
tached to the (palace) estates of the grand prince, or to ancestral or service
55 zarg, No. 134, 119–120.

56 Cf. zarg, Kommentarii to No. 134, 151.
57 S.B. Veselovskii, Feodal’noe zemlevladenie v Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, Moskva/Leningrad,
1947, 217–230.
58 N.A. Gorskaia, “Obshchinnyi sobstvennik v russkoi derevne xvi–xviii vv.”, N.A. Gorskaia,
E.N. Shveikovskaia (eds.), Predstavleniia o sobstvennosti v rossiiskom obshchestve xv–xviii
vv. Problemy sobstvennosti v obshchestvennom soznanii i pravovoi mysli feodal’noi epokhi,
Moskva, 1998, 39–50.
estates of secular or ecclesiastical landowners, the vitality of the obshchina was

boosted by its indispensable role in the management of agricultural produc-
tion, and particularly in the distribution of land among the peasant families.
Additionally, in Northern Russia, many of the powers exercized by landowners
in Central Russia, black peasants exercized themselves through their elected
elders. But in both cases the practical possession of the land was first of all the
responsibility of the obshchina, which would assign plots to peasant families,
depending on the number of working members, the availability and quality of
the land, and other factors. Within this system, the individual peasant families
enjoyed considerable freedom in engaging in transactions concerning the land
allotted to them, provided the overall economic and fiscal interests of the ob-
shchina were guaranteed. In this way, the obshchina also served as a protective
umbrella for its members, while its managerial function was required to main-
tain the economic and fiscal vitality of the landowner’s estate.
Gorskaia emphasized that this peculiarly Russian system was dictated
mainly by natural conditions, viz. the often poor quality of the soil and the
short growing season. The result of this was an almost permanent shortage of
labour during the productive season and the need for an efficient and flexible
assignment of land and labour. This then was the background for an unstable
and permanently developing concept of land ownership.59
The Peasant Community as a Legal Actor

What has been said above indicates that the peasant community possessed
certain characteristics usually ascribed to a corporate legal entity, a legal per-
son. One could describe it in modern terms as a co-operative. There were no
explicit legal rules regulating its operation and the applicable customary law
can only be reconstructed by a detailed analysis of documentary material.
The fluidity of the borders between private and public law, which has been
pointed out repeatedly before, also demonstrates itself in this case, because
the village community represented not only a non-voluntary co-operative of
its members, but also the lowest chain in the system of local government. This
was quite obvious in the “black lands”, where local government at the lowest
level was in the hands of the local community; but also in regions where the
peasants were dependent on a private landowner (monasterial or secular), the
59 Gorskaia quotes from a study by L.V. Danilova (not available to me): “… not only the ac-
tual ownership relationships, but also the concept of private ownership of land itself did
not suddenly appear, but went through a process of establishment and development in
accordance with the formation of estates [sosloviia], classes and the state.” L.V. Danilova,
Sel’skaia obshchina v srednevekovoi Rusi, Moskva, 1994, 103.
916 chapter 36
local peasant community usually had a share in local government, depending

on local conditions. The community expressed itself through its general as-
sembly (mirskoi skhod); it was involved in the distribution of the tax burden
among its members; it bore collective liability (krugovaia poruka) in certain
cases (see Chapter 22, on Courts); and it exercized simple judicial duties in
respect of its members.60
Obligations
While, as we have seen above, property law constituted a prominent topic in

the law of Muscovy, at least as far as land ownership was concerned, it had
little to say about other aspects of ownership. A similar situation existed in
the law of obligations, the law regulating general principles of obligations, and
obligations based on contract or on a non-contractual cause, such as delict.61
The various codes were obviously aware of the existence of the concepts of
different basic contracts, such as purchase and sale, loan, pledge, etc., but one
would look in vain for coherent treatment of the subject of obligations, or even
only some of its major aspects, the way land ownership was discussed in great
detail in the Ulozhenie of 1649.
Most commentators on the law of Muscovy have dealt with this problem by
just disregarding it. Sergeevich is a good example. In his chapter on civil law
he offered long sections on family law, the law of things (veshchnoe pravo), and
the law of succession, but not a word on what modern lawyers would regard
as the heart of civil law: obligations.62 The main exception in this respect is
Vladimirskii-Budanov, who devoted twenty pages to the law of obligations in
his textbook.63 This was an extraordinary feat, considering there was almost
nothing to go on, and it is worth having a brief look at his modus operandi,
because it was typical of a particular way of looking at legal history, a way that
is still very much alive at present.
Vladimirskii-Budanov’s approach was based on a set of ideas, some of them
outspoken, while others were implied only. The idea of linear progress pervaded
60 See esp. L.S. Prokof’eva, Krest’ianskaia obshchina v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine xviii – pervoi
polovine xix v. (na materialakh votchin Sheremet’evykh), Leningrad, 1981, 127–163.
61 Obligations ex lege, such as fiscal obligations, are sometimes included as well by Russian
authors; obligations based on torts (delicts), however, are also based on the law, so there
is no need for a three-partite division. Cf. Iu.N. Anuchina, in PRoP iii/3, 238.
62 Sergeevich, Lektsii, 454–579 (civil law).
63 Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 561–580.
his thinking about law; law got better and more sophisticated as time went on.
In his introductory observations he remarked: “The Muscovy era made a step
forward in getting closer to a true understanding of obligations.” This quota-
tion also pointed to another basic idea: that there existed “true” (istinnye) legal
concepts; legal history then was the story of the quest for these true concepts.
Once they had been discovered (and the Romans had already discovered most
of them) and revealed, legal history entered a new phase; when lawyers had a
correct understanding of the law, they could develop it further on the basis of
such an understanding.
Vladimirskii-Budanov did not describe and analyze the law of obligations
of Muscovy as he found it – there was not much to find – but superimposed
his conceptual framework concerning the structure of the law of obligations
on the law of Muscovy and particularly on what could be found in the Code
of 1550, the Ulozhenie of 1649, and also the Pskov Court Charter. This frame-
work actually represented the dominant view of academic lawyers in late
19th-century Russia, but in the eyes of Vladimirskii-Budanov and many of his
colleagues it was also “true” and, in a sense, eternal.
He started his exposition by considering general principles, in line with the
pandectist tradition of Russian civil lawyers. Who were the persons involved
in obligations? What about the status of third parties? How did obligations
arise? What did the law have to say about the performance of contracts (the
most important source of obligations)? How did obligations end? In scattered
provisions of the legislation examined by him, he would find that the Russian
legislator was aware of certain aspects of the ‘true’ nature of the law of obliga-
tions, but still ignorant of other aspects.
The second part of his chapter was devoted to the contract system of Mus-
covy and the preceding era, as far back as the Russkaia Pravda. The texts of
the laws, as well as an abundance of other documents, such as charters, dem-
onstrated without a shadow of doubt that contracts resembling barter (ex-
change), sale, gift, loan, deposit, bail, employment, and hire were known. The
implicit presumption of Vladimirskii-Budanov was that the casual mention of
such contracts having been concluded was a manifestation of the existence of
an underlying legal system regulating contracts. As such a regulatory system
could not be found in the available written legislation, it was supposed to con-
sist of customary law.
There certainly are numerous instances of customary law co-existing with
or preceding statute law emanating from an authoritative legislator. And un-
doubtedly customary law accompanied frequently occurring transactions,
such as the sale of land or of merchandise, during the Muscovy era. But sev-
eral caveats should be expressed. First of all, there is little point in introducing
918 chapter 36
c ustomary law into the debate when we have no way of knowing what it looked
like or whether it even existed. Reference to customary law in such cases is a
testimonium paupertatis. Secondly, custom becomes customary law when it is
generally accepted that it ought to be followed and when courts are then ready
to enforce it. Some of such customary law, particularly concerning the contract
of sale, found its way into statute law, where the Ulozhenie laid down certain
requirements for the validity of specific contracts.
Another point of criticism of the perspective adopted by Vladimirskii-
Budanov is that a modern, Roman law-based categorization of different con-
tracts is less relevant in the setting of late medieval Russia, as will be shown in
more detail below.
Vladimirskii-Budanov’s approach was recently revived in the chapter on the
law of obligations in the PRoP volume dealing with the Ulozhenie of 1649.64
The undeniable merit of this chapter was that it brought together the most
important Ulozhenie provisions referring to various contracts.
As already pointed out in Chapter 9 (on the Ulozhenie), much of its content
was based on the very considerable volume of legislation of the preceding cen-
tury, the long reign of Ivan iv, the subsequent Time of Troubles, and the reign
of the first two Romanov tsars, Mikhail and Aleksei. There is no need therefore
to deal separately with the more important statutes of this period, because the
most relevant of them found their way into the Ulozhenie.
Contracts
As may be clear from the text above, the discussion of the law of obligations
is inclined to be concerned mostly with contracts. 19th-century and also mod-
ern jurisprudence tends to start the treatment of contract law with a review
of certain general considerations, such as conclusion, form, performance and
termination of contracts, the effect of mistake and error, or of compulsion or
fraud, etc. In her section on public law regulation of transactions and con-
tracts, Anuchina pointed to a number of provisions in the Ulozhenie which
suggested that the drafters were aware of such considerations.65 This was a
far more cautious approach than Vladimirskii-Budanov’s construction of a
coherent “general part” of Muscovy’s law of contract, on the basis of occa-
sional and disparate provisions, with the gaps filled in by some hypothetical
customary law.
64 PRoP iii/3, 238–261, by Iu.N. Anuchina; although the chapter was entitled “The law of
obligations and contracts in the Council Code”, it consisted of a long section on types of
obligations and a shorter one on public law regulation of transactions and contracts.
65 Anuchina, op. cit., 258–261.
The only question to which the Ulozhenie proposed a more or less compre-
hensive solution concerned the form of contracts. Art. 245 of Ch. 10 and the
following provisions, taken together, prescribe the written form for almost all
contracts of considerable value (v bol’shikh delekh, art. 250). This comprehen-
sive solution was arrived at more or less by chance; the drafting method of the
Ulozhenie was predominantly associative. The provisions preceding art. 245
were about legal actions concerning ancestral estates. Art. 245 also mentioned
such estates, as well as loans, and the documents required in such cases. The
following provisions (arts. 246–261) were all about loans and the way the nec-
essary documents were to be prepared, until the focus of the drafter shifted
away from loans to debts. Sometimes the requirement was merely that the
contract had to be in writing, but often witnesses were necessary and the in-
volvement of officials, especially the ploshchadnye pod’iachie, the town square
scribes. The predilection for written contracts, particularly those concerning
real property, reflected primarily the state’s interest in maintaining control of
economic operations and had been expressed in previous legislation. A decree
of 7 June 1635 (or earlier) already contained an instruction to the courts not to
allow legal actions, unsupported by documents, concerning all kinds of loan
debts.66
Among contracts, the ones directed towards the transfer of ownership
were the most prominent: gift (gratuitous transfer), sale (transfer for money),
barter (transfer in exchange for ownership of something else). Under the socio-
economic conditions prevailing in Muscovy, the legislator’s attention was di-
rected primarily towards the regulation of contracts concerning real property.
The transfer of ownership of chattels (movable property) would in almost all
cases be effected by the actual transfer of the property concerned, which did
not require detailed regulation.
In the case of real property, the law of Muscovy reflected its paramount im-
portance for the government. As explained above, the position of the lower
nobility, the mainstay of the regime, was defined by its dependence on service
estates granted by the tsar. The position of the higher nobility, princes, boyars
and other high-ranking aristocrats, depended primarily on their ancestral (in-
herited) estates, but in most cases they had also been endowed with service es-
tates. The Ulozhenie therefore paid a lot of attention to service and hereditary
estates, especially in its Chapters 16 and 17. Most provisions in these chapters
were actually concerned with transactions concerning estates. Although the
Ulozhenie did not offer specific regulations on contracts of sale, gift or exchange
of real property, numerous relevant rules were included in these two chapters.
66 zarg, No. 226, 166–168; also in prp v, 221–223.

920 chapter 36
The dominant feature in most of these rules was what one would nowadays
view as their public law aspect. The different contracts concerning the own-
ership status of service and ancestral estates were made subject to all kinds
of conditions and reservations, most of which were intended to implement
and protect the government’s policies. Foremost among these was the main-
tenance and expansion of a reservoir of service estates, adequate to support a
vigorous class of landowners (pomeshchiki), constituting the backbone of the
country’s military might. Other policies would flow from this general one, such
as the concern for the well-being of the landowner’s family or the persistent
but not always successful policy of restricting monasterial landowning. Many
of such questions have already been reviewed in the sub-sections on service
and hereditary estates (in the section on ownership in this chapter).
In modern Western legal systems the idea (or fiction) of freedom of contract
is dominant and this freedom is usually restricted only by serious consider-
ations of public order and welfare and by urgent concerns for protecting the
weakest. In Muscovy, freedom of contract, at least with regard to most types
of real property, was severely limited, to the extent that at least initially only
certain transactions concerning certain types of land were allowed. The em-
phasis was therefore on the law of property, not on the law of obligations. The
system could be enforced by a rigorous registration procedure, entrusted to the
Service Estates Department (Pomestnyi prikaz).
During the latter half of the 17th century, the strictness of Muscovy’s real
property law was relaxed; owners of service estates acquired a legal status
which did not differ much from that of the owners of ancestral estates, the
limited contractual freedom with regard to landed property was gradually
expanded.
Along with the basic contracts affecting transfer of ownership (exchange,
gift, sale), the Ulozhenie mentioned many others, again without providing
definitions or detailed regulation. Mortgaging real property (zaklad) was often
mentioned in the same breath as sale, with similar prohibitions applying. Zak-
lad could also be used with regard to movable property, in the sense of pledge.
It would then usually, but not necessarily, accompany a loan (zaem).
The loan contract happened to be extensively regulated in Ch. 10 of the
Ulozhenie (devoted to court procedure). In a long and rather rambling sequence
of descriptions of all kinds of legal actions, art. 245 (already mentioned above)
dealt with the case of a loan debtor dying while an action about his debt was
going on. This prompted the drafters to review various situations occurring
in cases of loans. The list continued in a haphazard fashion until art. 259. In
accordance with the strong preference of the Ulozhenie for the written form,
loans of money or other things had to be expressed in writing, a zaemnaia
kabala (art. 246). The following provisions (arts. 247–250) gave more details
on the procedure to be followed. Art. 255 contained a sweeping prohibition on
charging interest on money loans. In Kievan Russia, such a prohibition had ap-
plied only to clergymen (see the section on Commercial law in the Expanded
Pravda, in Chapter 15, on Towns).
The loan kabala is to be distinguished from the service (sluzhilaia) kabala, a
loan contract by which the debtor became the slave of the creditor until he had
paid back the principal and the interest. This contract (termed “limited service
slavery contract” in Hellie’s translation) was also regulated in fairly detailed
fashion in the Ulozhenie in its Ch. 20. Such contracts were registered in the
Slavery Department (Kholop’ii prikaz).
The contract of hire was mentioned sporadically in the Ulozhenie, with re-
gard to the hire of movable property (such as a horse; see Ch. 10, art. 274), or of
labour (such as that of a guard; see Ch. 10, art. 275), or of land (tenancy, in other
words; e.g. Ch. 16, arts. 43 and 45, concerning service lands granted to Tatar and
other baptized Turkic landowners). The most significant provision was Ch. 11,
art. 32 (in the Chapter on Peasants) which laid down that peasants and bobyli
(landless peasants) could hire themselves out as labourers, with or without a
written contract. Their employers were directed not to issue documents (such
as sluzhilye kabaly) which would impinge on the free status of such labourers;
when the agreed upon labour had been completed the workers were to be re-
leased without any restraint.
The contract of poklazha (storage, safekeeping, deposit), known already in
the Russkaia Pravda (Expanded Pravda, art. 49), was mentioned in passing in
various places in the Ulozhenie (e.g. Ch. 18, arts. 39 and 47), without any fur-
ther details. Ch. 10, arts. 189–192 are an exception. They were devoted to the
special situation of military personnel (sluzhilye liudi), stationed in provincial
towns, who had left their equipment and other property with local inhabitants
while away on duty. The obligatory written form of the contract did not apply
to them.
The following provisions also dealt with relationships concerning property
temporarily and voluntarily in the possession of somebody who was not the
owner. Art. 193 simply mentioned the possibility of suing artisans for the prop-
erty handed over to them to work on. Arts. 194–197 were mainly devoted to
pledge (zaklad). Art. 194 directed that if property handed over as a pledge or
left in storage was stolen or perished in a fire, while other property (of the per-
son who was in possession) remained intact, the owner was granted a trial. If
other property had also perished or had been stolen, the person who had been
in possession of the goods had to declare the matter to his neighbours and
report it to the authorities. Art. 195 concerned only safekeeping; if the goods
922 chapter 36
left in safekeeping had been sealed and locked and the keeper subsequently
opened and inspected the goods, the owner was entitled to restitution of the
value of the goods that were missing.
Arts. 196–197 provided more detailed regulation on the contract of pledge.
The pawn note (zakladnaia kabala) could contain a stipulation that failure
to redeem the pawned item on the agreed date would transform the pawn note
into a deed of sale (kupchaia). Art. 196 was silent on the question of what hap-
pened to the original debt. It stands to reason that it would be extinguished,
once the pawn had become the property of the creditor. If a horse or another
animal, given as a pawn, perished, the creditor received half the debt due to
him, provided he could not be blamed for the animal’s death (art. 197).
One of the most frequently mentioned institutions in the Ulozhenie is
poruka, where money or other valuables were put up to guarantee that a per-
son would honour an obligation (to appear in court, to perform a contract,
to refrain from some action, etc.). It embraced the contract of bail, where a
third person guaranteed the creditor that the latter’s debtor would fulfil his
obligation (this is called poruchitel’stvo in modern Russian law, see art. 361 of
the Civil Code of the Russian Federation).67 In the Ulozhenie the identity of the
poruchitel’ (the person putting up the bond) is not defined, and in most cases
it appeared to be the debtor himself. In the few cases where the poruchitel’ was
obviously a third person, poruka appeared as a separate contract, comparable
to modern poruchitel’stvo (e.g. Ch. 21, art. 92). The written form was explicitly
required in most cases of poruka (poruka s zapis’mi).
Another contract which, like bailment, accompanied a primary contract or
at least obligation, was the settlement (mirovaia), a transaction by which la-
tent or existing disputes about obligations were dissolved and replaced by a
new agreement. Muscovy law always had reservations about such settlements
because they tended to deny court fees to the state.68 One particular type of
settlement with an interesting legislative history received considerable atten-
tion in the law of Muscovy: the settlement between a thief and the person
from whom he had stolen. Such a settlement had already been forbidden by
art. 6 of the Dvina Land Charter (1397–1398). This prohibition was taken over
in the Belozero Statutory Charter of 1488 (art. 13). In the voluminous legislation
on robbery during the first decade of the reign of Ivan iv, the emphasis was
rather on the compulsory character of the procedures for dealing with thieves
67 In the English translation of the Russian Civil Code by P.B. Maggs poruchitel’stvo is called
“suretyship”. Other current translations are “guaranty” and “bail”.
68 See e.g. art. 9 of the Belozero Statutory Charter, arts. 4 and 5 of the Code of 1497, and arts.
9 and 10 of the Code of 1550.
and robbers; this would generally imply the impossibility of making private
deal with them. But a decree of 1646 still explicitly prohibited settlements with
robbers without the involvement of the court.69 Art. 31 of Ch. 21 of the Ulozhe-
nie declared private settlements with robbers null and void and ordered those
engaging in such transactions to be fined.
The above survey of the principal contracts treated in the Ulozhenie and
other major legislative sources corroborates the criticism made before of the
approach of Vladimirskii-Budanov and other authors. It is unrealistic to im-
pose one’s own system of categorizing contracts in a significantly different
historical setting. Contracts of the Muscovy era are to an outside observer of-
ten like the aurora borealis, changing shape while we look on. The sluzhilaia
k abala, ponderously, but not without reason, translated by Hellie as “limited
service slavery contract”, is a good example. It can be perceived as a sale (sell-
ing oneself into slavery), as a contract of employment, as a pledge accompany-
ing a loan, etc. Pledge itself, as we have seen above, could be transformed into
a sale. The absence of an absolute and unequivocal ownership concept also
made it more difficult in many cases to construct sharp distinctions between
contracts.
Non-contractual Obligations
Modern civil law systems having their roots in Roman law know a variety of
obligations where the cause is not a contract. Delicts (unlawful acts causing
damage) constitute the most significant category by far. The most frequently
encountered other non-contractual obligations are unjustified enrichment
and the related condictio indebiti (payment of a non-existent debt, or to some-
body who is not the creditor), unauthorized actions in the interest of a third
person (negotiorum gestio), and the public announcement of a reward or of a
competition. Quite apart from the obligations that could arise on the basis of
one of these events are the multifarious obligations imposed on private per-
sons directly by public law, such as fiscal obligations.
It is entirely possible to search for similar obligations (both private and pub-
lic law obligations) in the law of Muscovy and even to find a few. But, as already
argued in the beginning of this section, the exercise would be largely irrelevant
because the conceptual and doctrinal structure which supports modern cat-
egorization did not exist in Muscovy. Public and private law were inextricably
intertwined; the borderlines between criminal and civil law were fluid. These
conditions were perfectly illustrated by the contents of the major codes of 1497
69 Decree of 9 June 1646, zarg, No. 312, 215.

924 chapter 36
and 1550 and especially by the most elaborate and comprehensive one of 1649
(the Ulozhenie). The organization of the last into 25 chapters was undoubtedly
a great improvement, but its main chapters were not individually devoted
to certain branches of law, as would be done in a modern law code, but to
themes: service and ancestral estates, the urban population, court cases in gen-
eral, court cases concerning peasants, court cases concerning slaves. All sorts
of questions, concerning criminal, civil, procedural, administrative, etc., law,
could then come up in the individual chapters.
Delicts (Torts)
Unlawful acts causing damage (delicts or torts) constitute one of the core top-
ics of modern civil law. Although criminal offences are by definition unlawful
and often cause harm or damage to private parties, they differ from delicts by
being explicitly designated as criminal acts by the law. This characteristic is
often summarized by the so-called nulla poena principle: “No crime obtains,
no [criminal] penalty can be imposed, without a previous criminal statute”
(Nullum crimen, nulla poena, sine praevia lege poenali); see also Chapter 34, on
Criminal Law. The present form of this principle emerged only gradually and,
at any rate, was unknown in Russia during the Muscovy era. Then, inevitably,
the borderline between criminal acts and torts was blurred. If we neverthe-
less want to make the distinction, we could reasonably regard an act which
was prosecuted and punished by public authority as a criminal offence. Acts
which did not elicit a punitive reaction by a public authority, but which caused
harm to private parties, could be assigned to the category of delicts, assuming
of course that the injured party could claim some sort of unlawful or improper
behaviour by the party which had caused harm.
One of the key concepts in the border area between delicts and criminal of-
fences was bezchestie (dishonour). One of its earliest appearances was in art. 2
of the Dvina Land Charter, where it referred to insulting a boyar or causing
him bodily harm. It returned in more elaborate form in art. 26 of the Code of
1550, where it again referred to insults and the infliction of bodily harm, but the
scope of the provision was widened; it covered middle ranking officials (deti
boiarskie) and a variety of persons of lower rank, down to peasants. In all cases
bezchestie implied not only the dishonour itself but also the fixed compensa-
tion to which the dishonoured person was entitled.
In the Ulozhenie, bezchestie appeared in many chapters, but most abun-
dantly in Ch. 10 (the judicial process). Arts. 27–99 of that chapter constituted
a vast expansion of art. 26 of the 1550 Code. The last sentence of art. 26 was
in fact the beginning of this entire section of the chapter; it stated (in Hellie’s
translation): “If someone injures the honor of someone in some way, compile
a decree for the dishonor [as follows]:”.70 It is worth noting that these intro-
ductory words implied a wide concept of dishonour, not just verbal insults. In
the following provisions, however, dishonour, with only a few exceptions, was
regarded as a verbal attack on somebody’s honour or status (many provisions
contained the word slovom – “by word”).
The length of the section was due mostly to the extreme detail provided in
dealing with church dignitaries whose honour had been affected. After the pa-
triarch, the metropolitans, archbishops and bishops, who were mentioned col-
lectively, the abbots (archimandrites and hegumens) of 49 monasteries were
listed one by one, and then all sorts of lower ecclesiastical functionaries fol-
lowed, ending with provincial priests and priests without posts (art. 89). Most
of the remaining provisions dealt with dishonouring lay persons, starting with
boyars and okol’nichie, down to peasants and slaves.
The provisions of this section set fixed amounts to be paid as dishonour
compensation, ranging from 400 rubles for insulting a metropolitan, to one
ruble for the lowest ranks. The compensation went to the person affected by
the insult and was not a fine to be paid to the state.
The monetary compensation for offending church dignitaries and other
monks was to be paid only by the highest level of officials, those of Duma rank
(boyars, okol’nichie, and other Duma members); lower officials, from striapchie
down, were imprisoned after having been whipped. The compensation system
for insulting secular priests (down from archpriests – protopopy) apparently
applied to all offenders, irrespective of their social status. The compensation
system for insulting lay persons was similar, but much simpler (arts. 90–99).
A notable aspect of it was that dishonouring somebody’s wife or unmarried
daughter entailed much higher compensation (art. 99).
With regard to peasants, slaves, and persons of low status generally, the text
of art. 94 suggests that verbal insults were irrelevant; bezchestie of such persons
consisted in assaulting, maiming and injuring them physically in any way.
In many other chapters of the Ulozhenie, bezchestie in the sense of dishon-
our compensation was mentioned, referring to all kinds of improper behaviour
where apparently a criminal penalty was not required and compensation to the
person dishonoured was considered adequate. Some of the cases covered were
disturbance of the peace at the court of the tsar (Ch. 3, arts. 2 and 5), the same,
committed by a service man in a military camp (Ch. 7, art. 32), non-observance
of an arbitration decision in a civil case (Ch. 15, art. 5), and others. In other
cases the dishonour compensation to the victim was added to the criminal
penalty imposed (e.g. Ch. 21, arts. 55–56, falsely accusing a person of theft).
70 A budet kto kogo chem obezchestit, i za bezchestie chiniti ukaz.

926 chapter 36
Apart from dishonour, a great variety of unlawful acts causing damage to

private parties were referred to in Ch. 10 of the Ulozhenie, all of them expressed
in a procedural perspective. “When somebody enters a petition about …”, fol-
lowed by a description of some kind of injury or unlawful action from which
the petitioner had suffered. The last part of Ch. 10 in particular (starting from
about art. 203) described a great variety of acts causing damage and estab-
lished guidelines for dealing with them.71 Occasionally, when the behaviour of
the person committing such an act was especially outrageous, criminal sanc-
tions were brought into play, but the standard approach of the law was to set
out the damages or compensation to be paid to the injured part.
In the perspective adopted in this section (delicts are acts, not punished by
a public authority, but causing harm to private persons), the various rules of
Ch. 10 concerning bezchestie and other unlawful acts affecting other persons
came closest to legislation concerning delicts.
71 For instance, art. 206 (loan debtor who has wasted what had been entrusted to him); art.
207 (unlawful violence or infliction of wounds, etc.); art. 208 (causing a neighbour’s field
to be trampled); art. 209 (keeping one’s neighbour’s cattle and starving them to death);
art. 210 (driving another person’s animals into one’s own yard), and many more similar
actions.
chapter 37
Civil Law: Family Law and Succession
This chapter builds on Chapter 19, on the Individual and the Family (sections
on the legal status of the individual and on legal classes) of the first part of
this work; certain general considerations proposed in those sections will not
be repeated here. This applies in particular to the most general one, the ab-
sence of the abstract idea of the human person, endowed with inalienable
rights, as it was expressed most clearly during the Age of Enlightenment in
its major legal monuments, connected with the American and French Revo-
lutions. The absence of this idea can be observed in the legal treatment of
women and men as basically different categories and also in the prominence
of the idea of legal classes of persons, where the accent is rather on the differ-
ences in their respective status than on the features common to all persons.
These topics, as they manifested themselves during the Muscovy era, were
also discussed in C hapter 35, on Civil Law: Persons, and the present chapter
will therefore limit itself to family law and the related subject of inheritance
and succession.
Sources
During the Muscovy era, the arrangement based on the Church Statutes of
St. Vladimir and his son Iaroslav the Wise continued to be the foundation of
Russian family law. The essence of this arrangement was that the state had
transferred the main responsibility for the regulation of family (and inheri-
tance) law to the Russian Church. The implications were that church law was
called upon, in principle, to provide the necessary regulation, but that at the
same time such law was indirectly also the law of the state. Russian rulers al-
ways felt free to intervene in this area, whenever they perceived the need to
do so. The Church might resist when it deemed such intervention detrimental
to its rights and interests, and a compromise solution was often the result, but
on the whole the balance of power would be in favour of the prince. If one
approached the question of legislative competence in Muscovite family and
inheritance law from a modern constitutionalist’s point of view, one could es-
tablish that it was based on state law (the old Church Statutes), which had pro-
claimed the general applicability of church law but retained the state’s right

928 chapter 37
to intervene legislatively; it did so frequently in Muscovite times, although the

Church itself could also act independently in a legislative manner.1
A further complicating factor was that relationships between spouses and
family members constituted an area where custom and customary law played
a greater role than in other fields of law.2 This had been the case in the pre-
Christian era and the Church Statutes were therefore innovative and almost
revolutionary, because they represented the penetration of an external agent
(the Church) into a field that had been left to more or less spontaneous social
organization. In its efforts to inculcate Christian values and morals, the Church
had to reckon with the existence of a body of rules enjoying the support of the
population. The Church’s policy was therefore not to put in place an entirely
new system of norms, but to embrace what was acceptable, forbid what was
unacceptable (such as bigamy), and amend what could be maintained in a
different form.
As a result, one looks in vain for anything like a coherent regulation of
family law in medieval Russia. The major written sources are to be found in
ordinances and instructions emanating from the Church, with occasional
superimposed state legislation. Underneath it all was a large body of tradi-
tional arrangements, generally known to the population, but only subject to
reconstruction through an assiduous investigation of all kinds of narrative and
moralistic sources (such as the Domostroi).3 The entire complex could be com-
pared to the geological structure of a mountain range, where old formations
are covered in most parts by newer strata which in turn are overlain by volca-
nic deposits. An important consequence of this is that the legislative sources
provide a partial and probably one-sided picture of the reality of the actual
legal relationships within the family.4
The peculiarities of the Russian Church-state relationship implied that
church legislation was also in many cases to be regarded as secular law. This
1 E.g. a decree of the metropolitan of March, 1561 (or earlier), in which unsigned and unsealed
last wills were declared valid, under certain conditions; zarg, No. 35, 53–54.
2 Cf. N.S. Nizhnik, “Brachno-semeinye otnosheniia v Moskovskom gosudarstve (xv – pervaia
polovina xvii vv.)”, PRoP iii/2, 315–393, at 342.
3 A popular guide on many aspects of married and family life, with a strong religious-moralistic
orientation. It is often ascribed to the priest Sil’vestr, the spiritual father of Ivan iv and a
prominent member of the young Ivan’s ‘cabinet’, the Chosen Council (Izbrannaia Rada).
It continued to be a source of great authority until the reforms of Peter the Great. There
are many editions, I have used the edition of the Russian Academy of Sciences, edited by
V.V. Kolesov and V.V. Rozhdestvenskaia, Domostroi, Sankt-Peterburg, 1994.
4 This aspect is a prominent motive in Nizhnik’s treatment of the subject; see esp. Nizhnik,
op. cit., 350–370 (sections on personal and property relations between spouses).
Civil Law: Family Law and Succession 929
applied in particular to the Stoglav (see Chapter 25), the principal source for
family law from the era of Ivan iv. It was enacted in 1551 by a Church Council,
but under the guidance and with the active participation of the tsar. Many of
its one hundred chapters were based on previous church regulations.
The remaining sources of church law on marriage and family matters of-
fer a rich variety, as regards their origin and authority. The different kormchie5
themselves consisted of widely heterogeneous documents and then there were
the letters and sermons of prominent churchmen, incidental resolutions of
church councils, etc.
In view of the relationship, explained above, between the Church and the
state in Muscovy, it stands to reason that the state did not enact a coherent set
of rules on marriage and family law. In the Code of Ivan iii of 1497 the subject
was mentioned only in passing in the provision on full slavery (art. 66), listing
the causes of full slavery. These causes included marriage (of a free person) to a
slave. This provision reappeared in much expanded form in art. 76 of the Code
of Ivan iv of 1550. Inheritance law turned up in art. 60 of the Code of 1497,
where in the absence of sons, a daughter was allowed to inherit her father’s
personal and landed property. The corresponding provision in the Code of 1550
(art. 92) was almost identical. There is also a long provision (art. 85) in the lat-
ter Code, the “law on hereditary estates” (v votchinakh sud), and questions of
marriage, family and inheritance were obviously intimately involved in such a
subject.
Of greater interest is the Code of 1589. As explained in more detail in Chap-
ter 26, it was actually applied in large parts of Northern Russia, although it was
probably never officially enacted. It elaborated on the summary provisions of
its predecessors on the marriages and families of slaves (arts. 137–138), on fam-
ily law aspects of the law on hereditary estates (arts. 163–167),6 and on intestate
succession (arts. 190–193).
Incidental state legislation from the century between the Code of 1550
(and the Stoglav) and the Ulozhenie of 1649 made no significant contribu-
tion to matrimonial law, but there was a mass of decrees concerning the
transfer of real property and succession to such property, and very often
these decrees inevitably concerned relationships within the family. Many of
these decrees were absorbed later on in the Ulozhenie of 1649.
The Ulozhenie adhered to the traditional pattern of secular legislation in
that it did not contain specific regulation of marriage, family and inheritance
5 On kormchie, see the relevant section in Chapter 2.

6 These provisions were an adaptation of the (long) art. 85 of the Code of 1550; cf. B.D. Grekov
(ed.), Sudebniki xv–xvi vekov, Moskva-Leningrad, 1952, 524–527 and prp iv, 465.
930 chapter 37
law, but it did offer specific rules in a number of chapters, such as those on
courts and on hereditary and service estates.
The Family
Family relations in Muscovy encompassed a panoply of interpersonal situa-

tions, based either on common ancestry or on marriage. The basic distinction
was between the sem’ia and the rod. These terms are frequently used in legal
texts. The sem’ia itself appeared in two main forms: the small and the large
family. Ideally, the small family would be a husband and wife and their chil-
dren living at home. The standard type of the large family would be grandpar-
ents, their children and their spouses, together with the grandchildren. Various
transitional forms could occur. A family, for instance, could comprise unre-
lated persons, such as domestic personnel.
The rod (clan, Lat. gens) were the legitimate descendants (male and female)
in the male line of a common patriarch, simply, but not quite correctly, the per-
sons identified by a common family name, provided the name was sufficiently
unique. During the Muscovy era such names gradually came into use for boyar
families.7 The main legal relevance of the rod was that its members had certain
claims on ancestral lands (see Chapter 36).
Marriage
For both the sem’ia and the rod marriage constituted the legal origin. For the
small family (the sem’ia) this is obvious, but the coherence of the rod was also
7 The Románovs were an example. They were the descendants of the fifth and youngest son of
Andrei Kobyla, a Moscow nobleman in the middle of the 14th century. The descendants of
this son (Fedor Andreevich), in order to distinguish them from the numerous other Kobylin
descendants, were known as Koshkiny, from their father’s nickname Koshka. They gradu-
ally moved up in the Muscovite hierarchy and a grandson of Fedor Koshka reached boyar
rank: Zakharii Ivanovich Koshkin. Some of his descendants did equally well, others became
okol’nichie, the next lower rank. One of the latter was Roman Iur’evich-Zakhar’in, a grandson
of Zakharii Koshkin. Two of his brothers became boyars; Roman’s son Nikita Romanovich
Iur’ev occupied the less prestigious position of dvoretskii, but Roman’s daughter Anastasiia
was the first wife of Ivan iv. This propelled Roman’s descendants, henceforth known as
Romanovs, to the highest level of the Moscow aristocracy. Nikita’s daughter Irina married
tsar Boris Godunov and Nikita’s eldest son Fedor was one of the most prominent boyars dur-
ing the Time of Troubles, the father of the future tsar Mikhail Romanov, serving for many
years as patriarch of the Russian church. Cf. A.A. Zimin, Formirovanie boiarskoi aristokratii v
Rossii vo vtoroi polovine xv – pervoi treti xvi v., Moskva, 1988, 175–190 (Kobyliny).
based on the marriage of the first ancestors and the marriages of their descen-
dants. The pre-Christian marriage of the Slavs was discussed in Chapter 19.
In Muscovy times the Christian transformation of marriage had become
dominant, although many pagan survivals could be observed. The most effec-
tive instrument for the assimilation and integration of the Christian marriage
into Russian culture was the Church’s appropriation of the conclusion of the
marriage. This found expression in the enforcement of a number of condi-
tions.8 In Kievan times church weddings were limited mainly to members
of the aristocracy, but in Muscovy the Church required everybody, down to
slaves, to adhere to church rules in this respect. Nevertheless, other, custom-
ary forms of getting married survived well into the 17th century in peripheral
regions.9
According to the Stoglav (Ch. 18) the minimum age for marriage was 15 for
boys and 12 for girls. Earlier age limits were sometimes mentioned in kormchie,
based on Byzantine law. An upper age limit for getting married, although oc-
curring in Byzantine sources, did not achieve wide acceptance in Russia.
Both prospective spouses had to be unmarried; the Church obviously did
not countenance bigamy. This rule, on the basis of its Byzantine origin, as-
sumed a more elaborate form in Russia. The Eastern Church, unlike its Western
sister, had not fully excluded divorce and allowed remarriage after divorce, and
of course also after the death of one of the spouses. In both instances, however,
a person could get married only three times. Fourth and further m arriages did
occur, but they were considered invalid and the offspring would be illegitimate.
The prohibition could not always be enforced against powerful men; Ivan iv is
the best known example.
A third condition was that the future husband and wife were not related.
Three kinds of relationships were relevant in this respect. First of all blood
relationships, secondly so-called spiritual relationships, and thirdly relation-
ships through marriage. Of these the first category was the most important.
Forbidden degrees concerning marriages are encountered in most cultures,
but the Russian Church adopted the strict rules applicable in Byzantium. This
meant that marriages between relatives up to the sixth degree were forbidden
(e.g. marriages between second cousins). Within comparatively closed social
groups, peasant communities as well as high aristocracy, this prohibition could
easily be perceived as onerous and its strictness seems to have been alleviated
occasionally by ecclesiastical indifference. The rules also applied to children
born out of wedlock.
8 Cf. Nizhnik, op. cit., 320–341; M.K. Tsaturova, Russkoe semeinoe pravo xvi–xviii vv., Moskva,
1991, 6–20.
9 Cf. Nizhnik, op. cit., 320–322.
932 chapter 37
Spiritual relationships were mainly based on the ties between godparents

and godchildren.10 These ties were considered to prevail over relationship by
blood. The godparent was the spiritual father or mother of the godchild and
ranked as a brother or sister of the godchild’s parents. The system of degrees,
as applied to blood relationships, was then applied correspondingly, but with
certain limitations.
Marriage created svoistvó between the two families: relationship through
marriage. The prohibition up to the sixth degree applied in principle to per-
sons connected by svoistvo, but in practice it was sometimes difficult to estab-
lish and enforce (e.g. my nephew wants to marry the niece of my spouse).
Russian canon law did not allow marriages between (orthodox) Russians
and members of other Christian denominations (at first only Latin Catholics,
after the Reformation also protestants); a fortiori, marriages with Muslims
were outlawed although they were known in regions with a significant Muslim
(Tatar) population.
The bridal couple needed the blessing (i.e. approval) of their respective par-
ents. At the same time, the officiating priest had to make sure that the future
spouses were acting of their own free will and without constraint. The two re-
quirements were often difficult to reconcile. Marriages were generally arranged
by the parents of the couple, and the young people were, as a rule, socially,
economically and mentally ill-equipped to resist. As pointed out in Chapter 19,
marriage was considered the sacred duty of every grown-up person, unless one
opted specifically for life as a monk or a nun.11 Persons dependent on a master,
such as slaves and serfs, needed his permission to get married. This rule also
applied to military personnel in certain cases (permission of the military su-
perior was required).
The solemn performance of the wedding ceremony according to the rules of
the Church, venchanie, included the presence of witnesses (precluding secret
marriages) and was preceded by the betrothal, obruchenie, more commonly
known as sgovor (deal, understanding). This institution was rooted in Russian
custom, but was also known in Byzantine law. Ch. 1 of the Ecloga was devoted
to the betrothal, Ch. 2 to marriage. Obruchenie was effected through a religious
ceremony and was regarded as a sacrament by the Church; sgovor was con-
cluded by the parents of the couple at a meal which included certain formali-
ties.12 The betrothal, which could take place before the prospective spouses
10 Some other situations also could give rise to similar obstacles, such as the relationship
between godparents themselves.
11 It also happened that people were forced to enter a monastery or convent.
12 Nizhnik, op. cit., 345–347.
had reached the required age for marriage, fixed the agreement between the
two families involved concerning the future wedding and usually also about
the wedding date; it regularly included an agreement about the dowry (pri-
danoe). A betrothal could be broken off by one of the parties, but this would
involve the payment of compensation.
Relations between Spouses
Relations between spouses concern a multitude of questions and property re-

lations are only part of them. Personal (non-property) relations are of no great
interest to secular law, except in the case where they have become so bad that
the question of divorce arises.13 Property relations, on the other hand, affect
the interests of third parties as well, and will more readily require legislative or
judicial intervention.
The situation was completely different from the ecclesiastical point of view.
The Church used its authority to induce the faithful to live in a way becom-
ing to Christians. Two points stand out in the marriage policies of the Russian
Church during the Muscovy era. The first one was the strong emphasis on the
dominant position of the husband and father. The implementation of these
views depended very much on the actual circumstances. Peasant women, for
instance, were in charge of a considerable share of the agricultural workload,
and this could yield them a position of near equality. The situation of the wives
of merchants or craftsmen could be relatively favourable for similar reasons.14
The worst off were the wives of aristocratic husbands. In the course of the 16th
century they were increasingly consigned to the terem, separate women’s quar-
ters, which they would leave only rarely.15
The second point concerned the Church’s negative attitude towards any
sexual activity. In this respect the Russian Church was more extreme than her
sister in the West. This attitude also affected marital cohabitation, the one ac-
tivity that was not forbidden and was in fact one of the basic duties of the
married couple.16
13 For further discussions concerning personal relations between spouses, see Sergeevich,
Lektsii, 469–471; Nizhnik, op. cit., 350–365; Tsaturova, op. cit., 36–45; Vlad.-Bud., Obzor,
436–438.
14 See V.B. Perkhavko, Srednevekovoe russkoe kupechestvo, Moskva, 2012, 331–338.
15 This aspect is treated by Nizhnik, supra; also Tsaturova, supra.
16 Nizhnik (363–364) gives numerous examples. For instance, a curtain had to be drawn be-
fore the icons in the couple’s bedroom when intercourse took place, marital cohabitation
934 chapter 37
Moving now to the main topic of this section, we refer to what was stated
in Chapter 36, on Ownership: that our modern concepts, derived from Roman
law, are not always the most suitable for achieving a good understanding of
the legal reality of Russia in times past.17 In the eyes of contemporaries, what
husbands and wives did with the goods they possessed was not perceived in
terms of property: “who owned what”. Such relations within the family were
governed by custom, itself subject to gradual transformation by all kinds of
societal factors. One of these was the increasing interest of the state for which
the upkeep and strengthening of the country’s military potential was the over-
whelming priority. This had fuelled a prominent concern for the welfare of the
owners of service estates (pomest’ia). If one looks at the considerable body of
known legislation from the century between the Code of 1550 and the Ulozhe-
nie of 1649, more than half of it was directed at the maintenance and long-term
vigour of the entire complex of service estates. Hence the great attention given
to the problems of runaway serfs and slaves and of transactions endangering
the overall volume of service estates and their size.
Within the basic distinction between real and movable assets considered
to belong to a couple (or one of them), one could discern at least the follow-
ing sets: goods belonging to either the husband or the wife and brought into
the marriage; the bride’s dowry (pridanoe); the assets assigned by the husband
at the conclusion of the marriage as veno (a guarantee for the repayment of
the dowry, should this be required); assets acquired during marriage. Overly-
ing it all was the idea of clan property, especially relevant for real property.
This meant that both husband and wife could be the effective owner of assets
which under specific circumstances could be claimed by a family member (see
the section on ancestral estates in Chapter 36).
Most authors agree that the major part, or at least a large part, of the couple’s
assets were held by them in common. This concerned in particular the goods
acquired during marriage, the pridanoe and the veno, and other goods the
spouses had contributed at marriage for the common good of the household.18
was allowed only on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays; the couple had to go to church
the next day and confess their sins; etc.
17 This is aptly demonstrated by the difficulties experienced by older Russian legal histori-
ans, struggling to describe the matrimonial property regime in Muscovy; see for instance
Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 439–449 (section on “Property relations of spouses” in the chapter on
the history of Russian family law), and also Sergeevich, Lektsii, 478–481.
18 See Vlad.-Bud. and Sergeevich, supra, as well as Nizhnik, op. cit., 365–370; I.A. Isaev,
“Grazhdanskoe i semeinoe pravo”, in V.S. Nersesiants (ed.), Razvitie russkogo prava v xv –
pervoi polovine xvii v., Moskva, 1986, 151–156; Tsaturova, op. cit., 20–26; D.P. Naidenova,
“Imushchestvennye otnosheniia v sem’e xvi v.”, in A.N. Sakharov (ed.), Ot Drevnei Rusi k
Personal assets, such as clothes, jewelry or weapons, constituted a special cat-

egory. The dowry or pridanoe has attracted most attention, both because of its
intrinsic legal particulars, as well as because of its personal and socio-economic
importance within the framework of matrimonial property relations.
The contents of the pridanoe were agreed upon before marriage, as one of
the main points of the sgovor, the secular aspect of the betrothal. They were
defined precisely, as a rule, in a written document, the riadnaia zapis’ (“note
of agreement”). The pridanoe would generally consist of movable assets; only
exceptionally, among the wealthy, real property could be included, and then
usually in the form of a village with its lands and its dependent population.
Some parts of the dowry would be destined for the personal use of the wife
(clothes, etc.), but transactions concerning parts of the pridanoe were con-
cluded by husband and wife together, sometimes through a formula such as
“with the consent of my wife nn.”, or otherwise by the two spouses together.
Altogether, as also noted by Sergeevich,19 practices concerning the pridanoe
were not uniform and varied locally and also over time. Return of the dowry
where the betrothal did not lead to a marriage was a firm rule of customary
law.20 As to the fate of the dowry after the dissolution of the marriage by the
death of one of the spouses, the most direct and relevant legislative statement
is art. 1 of Ch. 17 of the Ulozhenie (on hereditary estates). It directed, among
other things, that a childless widow would receive one quarter of the movable
property, as well as her dowry. The last few words should not be taken to imply
that widows with children had no right to their dowries.21 According to Isaev,
a widow was entitled to hold on to a third part (the veno) of the entire mass
of the couple’s assets until the heirs of the husband had restored the dowry to
her.22 The widow’s claim for return of the dowry was regarded as privileged
above all other claims.23 Divorce would also entail return of the dowry.24
Where the written law was concerned, the husband’s position in managing
the common household was undoubtedly stronger, although most important
transactions were customarily concluded by the couple jointly. Moreover, the
husband could not unilaterally dispose of goods specifically assigned to his
novoi Rossii. Iubileinyi sbornik posviashchennyi chlenu-korrespondentu ran Ia.N. Shchapovu,

Moskva, 2005, 238–245.
19 Op. cit., 478–479.
20 Nizhnik, 366–367.
21 This also appears to be the view of Nizhnik, 367.
22 Isaev, op. cit., 153, who refers to Sergeevich, Lektsii (without page).
23 Nizhnik, 367.
24 Ibidem.
936 chapter 37
wife. As indicated above, the actual relationship between the spouses in this
area varied among the social classes, between different regions of the country,
over time, and, ultimately, depended also on the personalities of the individu-
als involved. Several authors have noted that in the course of the two centuries
of the Muscovy period (1500–1700) the emphasis shifted from the dominance
of common control (ownership, if you like) of the bulk of the marital property
to the preponderance of a regime of separate estates. In the latter situation
the bulk of the property belonged to, and was managed by, the husband alone,
while the wife was allowed a smaller estate reserved for herself.25
Dissolution of Marriage
The main cause of the marriage being dissolved is always the death of one of
the spouses. The other cause in Muscovy was divorce. In Chapter 19, on the
Individual and the Family, the position of the Eastern Church with regard to
divorce was explained. One also has to keep in mind that the entire matter was
covered by Church jurisdiction, exercized in some respects by the local priest
but mostly by the bishop.26
Annulment
Divorce (razvod) is to be distinguished from annulment (priznanie brak
nedeistvitel’nym). If it came to light that a marriage which ostensibly had been
concluded suffered from essential defects, the marriage was to be annulled.
As a result the marriage was considered never to have existed and its legal
consequences disappeared. This would affect in particular the children born
from such a union, who would be regarded as illegitimate. According to Tsat-
urova, a marriage was to be annulled for one of the following reasons: if at least
one of the prospective spouses had not reached the required age; if at least one
of them was already married at the time; if at least one of them had already
been married three times; if they were blood relatives or related by marriage
(svoistvo) in one of the forbidden degrees.27 Tsaturova added that in real life it
was often impossible or highly undesirable to annul all marriages which were
defective for one of the reasons indicated. For instance, as has been referred to
25 Cf. Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 442–449; Nizhnik, 366.

26 The most important text on divorce in Russian legal history is still A.I. Zagorovskii, O raz-
vode po russkomu pravu. Issledovanie brakorazvodnogo prava v Rossii. Ot epokhy drevnikh
slavian do vtoroi poloviny xix veka, Khar’kov, 1884 (2nd ed.), Moskva, 2012 (reprint).
27 Tsaturova, 90.
above, the catalogue of forbidden degrees was unrealistically extensive; also,

it would be unreasonable to annul a marriage arranged by the parents, conse-
crated by a priest, and resulting in offspring, when the bride was a few months
short of the required age.28 Failure to observe other basic requirements for get-
ting married, such as receiving the blessing (approval) of the couple’s parents,
would not lead to annulment.29
Divorce
The principal ground on which the Church would allow divorce was adultery.
Various additional conditions had to be satisfied. A precise list of other grounds
for divorce cannot be given, because the ecclesiastical sources diverged on
many points. Also, the lists of grounds applicable to men and women were
not identical. This was based, in the case of adultery, on the idea that the wife’s
adultery was an insult to her husband, while the husband’s adultery was an
insult to the husband of his lover.30 Consequently, consorting with a prostitute
did not constitute adultery, although it was an offence which was punishable by
the Church (usually with a fine). Strict proof of adultery was required; the
statement of one of the spouses was insufficient. Adultery also required the
offender to be of sound mind; and sober. Divorce would not be granted when
the adulterer had been forgiven, either explicitly, by a written document, or by
the continuation of marital cohabitation.
Initially, the priest who had celebrated the marriage was considered compe-
tent to pronounce a divorce, but this procedure was outlawed later and priests
who contravened this prohibition were penalized. The local bishop was the
only proper authority.
Among the most frequently encountered grounds for divorce, apart from
adultery, are the following:
Plotting an attempt on the life of the other spouse;

The disappearance and permanent absence of one of the spouses;
Conversion of one of the spouses to another religion;
An incurable disease of one of the spouses;31
Systematic abuse of one of the spouses by the other;
28 Nizhnik, 374–375, provides many other examples.

29 Cf. Nizhnik, 375.
30 Nizhnik, 377.
31 See D. Kaiser (Kaizer), “Ravod, ser’eznaia bolezn’ i supruzheskaia liubov’ v Rossii v xvii
v.”, A.N. Sakharov (ed.), Ot Drevnei Rusi k novoi Rossii. Iubileinyi sbornik, posviashchennyi
chlenu-korrespondentu ran Ia.N. Shchapovu, Moskva, 2005, 260–267.
938 chapter 37
Extreme neglect or mismanagement of the common household;

High treason by one of the spouses;
Entry into a monastery or nunnery;
Insanity;
Congenital physical inability of the husband.32
The list was not exhaustive; new grounds emerged through interpretation or
by invoking other ecclesiastical texts, other grounds would fall into disuse.
The husband’s protracted absence as a prisoner-of-war could justify a
divorce, but a wife would be expected to follow a husband who had been
sentenced to prison or exile.
Divorce by mutual consent was not allowed, although there are examples
of successful attempts to overcome this obstacle.33 The main avenue for by-
passing the Church’s prohibition of divorce by mutual consent was the con-
tinuing vitality of the traditional institution of rospust, evolving from unilat-
eral repudiation to the joint decision to terminate the marriage.34 This was
done by drawing up a divorce letter (razvodnoe pis’mo), at first by a priest, and,
when this practice was forbidden, the secular authorities would certify such
documents. The legal consequences of divorce35 depended on the innocence
or guilt of the divorced person. An innocent party would, in principle, be al-
lowed to enter a second or third marriage. In practice, marriage after divorce
was common, regardless of the question of guilt. A guilty husband would be
obliged to return the dowry and to turn over to the wife the pre-marital gift
(the veno) he had assigned to her. Additionally the wife would receive a part
of the husband’s estate equal to one third of the veno. A guilty wife lost the
right to her dowry and her claim on the veno; additionally she had to pay the
husband an amount equal to one third of the dowry.
It cannot be denied that the entire field of divorce in Muscovy presented
a scene of confusion, if not chaos. This was caused by the multiplicity and
changing nature of the grounds for official divorce by the Church, in combina-
tion with the continued practice of informal divorce, by the simple means of
a divorce letter.
Children would be assigned, as a rule, to the innocent party, but the (ecclesi-
astical) judge could decide otherwise. The father remained responsible for the
maintenance of his children.
32 For abundant detail see Zagorovskii, op. cit., 88–201.

33 See Nizhnik, 388–389; Zagorovskii, 188–190.
34 Cf. Nizhnik, 391–392.
35 Zagorovskii, 201–239 (Chapter 4 on legal consequences of divorce).
Parents and Children
The principle of absolute autocracy at the basis of the organization of the

state in the era of Muscovy – the tsar being responsible to God alone – was
reflected in the legal structure of the Russian family; or was it the other way
round? Complete parental power and authority determined the legal position
of family members. As the husband also enjoyed a position of strong domi-
nance over his wife, the family was ruled by the father as the tsar ruled Russia.
Consequently, children had hardly any defensible legal position as long as their
father was alive. They could be sent to a monastery or a nunnery and even be
sold as slaves. In the section on slavery in the Code of 1550, art. 76 defined the
exceptions to the rule that parents could sell their children into slavery, without
making the rule itself explicit, but there is no doubt that the rule existed and
was frequently applied in practice. In the course of the 17th century, accord-
ing to Isaev, the practice was gradually replaced by parents placing children in
service for a limited period; children could also be given as pawns for the debts
of their parents.36 Their choice of a marriage partner was determined by their
parents, in fact by their fathers. The right to inflict physical punishment was
almost unlimited; even when this would result in the death of the child; the
penalty was one year in prison (Ulozhenie, Ch. 22, art. 3).
The disciplinary powers of the parents were backed up by the state, as de-
scribed in art. 5 of the same chapter of the Ulozhenie. If parents complained
about almost any misbehaviour of their children (not honouring them, slan-
dering them, not feeding them, etc.) to the tsar, the children were to be pun-
ished severely: “beating mercilessly with the knout”. An official complaint to a
court by a child against a parent was to be turned down and was also punished
by the knout (art. 6).
The few authors who discussed the topic of the legal relations between par-
ents and children pointed to the lack of interest of the state and to the permis-
siveness of the Church in leaving matter to customary arrangements. These
can be found in sources such as the Domostroi, which strongly encouraged
fathers to discipline their children, especially their sons, in the harshest man-
ner possible.37
The few provisions in the Ulozhenie which touched upon matters concern-
ing legal relations within the family fit this pattern. The fate of the peasant
family was inextricably bound up with that of the father (Ch. 11, arts. 1, 3, 9–10).
After the father’s death, the wife and children were liable, as a rule, for his
36 Isaev, op. cit., 155.

37 Cf. Nizhnik, 370–372; Tsaturova, 46–53.
940 chapter 37
debts (Ch. 10, arts. 132, 203, 207, 245). If the father had been found guilty of trea-
son and his family members had been aware of this, they were equally subject
to the death penalty (Ch. 2, art. 5).
While the husband was allowed to inflict on his wife physical punishment,
which occasionally might cause her death, the Ulozhenie reserved one of its
harshest penalties for wives who had killed their husbands: they were to be
buried alive and denied all food and drink until death resulted (Ch. 22, arts.
14–15).
Guardianship and Curatorship

There is almost nothing in the written law of the era to enlighten us about
guardianship (opeka) and curatorship (popechitel’stvo). It is generally accept-
ed that guardianship over minor orphans existed. A close (male) relative ap-
peared to have been the usual choice. In the scholarly literature there is no
consensus about the supervising authority; according to the Ecloga (Title vii)
it was the Church, according to the Procheiron the state.38 Guardianship ended
when the young person came of age (15 years).
Curatorship could be established over adults needing assistance in manag-
ing their affairs (especially widows and unmarried women). It is mentioned
(not in so many words) in art. 10, Ch. 16 of the Ulozhenie, which dealt with
widows and unmarried (young) women (devki) who had surrendered the ser-
vice lands assigned to them temporarily for their maintenance to persons who
in exchange had to feed them and find husbands for them. If such curators
were negligent in their duties, the estates were to be returned to the women
concerned. The provision was based on a decree of 1620–1622 which identified
the curators as rodimtsy, indicating that relatives were appointed as curators.39
Illegitimate Children
The contents of the few rules concerning illegitimate children were deter-
mined by the fundamental factor of the family law of Muscovy – that marital
status was the standard for all adult men and women, unless they had accepted
celibacy as part of monastic life. This meant that along with married women
there were women who had been married (widows or divorced women) and
young women who would get married, and for all these women the families
concerned would be looking for husbands, unless they were too old (and
would enter, or be despatched to, a nunnery). Theoretically, there was no room
for prostitutes or concubines (who would most likely be married anyway).
38 Cf. Tsaturova, 53–56.

39 zarg, No. 110, 155.
The problem could have been left to custom and social control, were it not
that relations with concubines and prostitutes would often produce offspring.
The principal provision dealing with this question was art. 280 of Ch. 10 of the
Ulozhenie. It is part of a long set of rules dealing with all kinds of torts; art. 280
was devoted to insults and specifically to calling somebody a whore’s son (vy-
bliadok). This merited two-fold compensation (bezchestie). But if it was shown
that the person insulted was in fact a vybliadok, no compensation was due. The
same paragraph defined who was a “whore’s son”: somebody born of a concu-
bine, irrespective of whether the father was not (yet) married, married or a
widower. Such a person could not be considered legitimate and was excluded
from inheriting his father’s service or ancestral estates. Legitimation by subse-
quens matrimonium (subsequent marriage of the father and the concubine)
was explicitly excluded.
As already noted above, children from fourth and further marriages were
considered illegitimate (Ch. 16 art. 15).
Infanticide by a prostitute, or by an accomplice, entailed a capital sentence
for both (art. 26, Ch. 22).
Inheritance and Succession
In the first part of this work, the law of succession upon death was discussed in
the relevant section in Chapter 19. The Expanded Pravda contained a more or
less coherent set of provisions (arts. 90–95 and 98–106), and this was followed
by the Court Charter of Pskov, which dealt especially with the estate of the
izornik (dependent peasant, known only in Pskov; arts. 84–87) but also with
inheritance law in general (arts. 72 and 88–91). The Codes of 1497 and 1550 were
silent on this matter, except for a single short provision (art. 60 and art. 92, vir-
tually identical) stating that a daughter, or otherwise the next of kin (blizhnii ot
ego roda) could inherit her father’s estate in the absence of sons.
That the traditional arrangements had gradually become in need of reform
was suggested by the Composite Code of 1589, which repeated art. 92 of the
1550 Code in more elaborate form and then added several new provisions
(art. 190 and the following arts. 191–193). During the intermediate period be-
tween the Code of 1550 and the Ulozhenie of 1649, a considerable number of
decrees, affecting the law of inheritance was issued.
The modest number of authors who discussed the inheritance law of the
Muscovy era proceeded from the traditional Romanist division of intestate
and testate succession. Little attention was paid to the fact that from times
immemorial inheritance law had been a matter of customary law and that the
942 chapter 37
legislator intervened only occasionally where a correction of the existing ar-

rangements was considered necessary. Although authors did sometimes rec-
ognize that the simultaneous application of intestate and testate succession in
a single case was a common occurrence, inheritance law was described as con-
sisting of two separate blocks of rules.40 This often created a picture of great
confusion.
Transparency is much improved by observing what happened in reality. The
first thing then is to establish that the Muscovy law of inheritance addressed
itself almost exclusively to the politically and economically pre-eminent sub-
ject of the estates of the serving class, the minor nobility. When the landowner
died, he would be succeeded by his son(s), who would be able to continue to
run the estate and carry out the service duties (mostly military service). That
was the basic principle and everything else was directed towards achieving the
same goal in case this principle could not operate directly.
The estates of the service class consisted of the two main categories of
land: estates granted as pomest’ia (conferring inheritable possession, con-
ditional upon serving in a military or civil capacity) and votchiny (ancestral
or hereditary estates). The latter estates were subdivided into genuinely an-
cestral estates (rodovye votchiny), estates that had been granted as votchiny
(vysluzhennye votchiny), and estates enjoying votchina status when they were
bought (kuplennye votchiny). These distinctions were of decisive importance
in shaping the inheritance law of Muscovy, because the government’s policies
towards these types of estates were not the same in all cases. The purpose of
the pomest’e system was to maintain a strong and reliable source of military
power, and this purpose required that the volume of pomest’e land was kept
at a healthy level and that it remained in the hands of landowners capable of
providing military service. The pressure to attain this was eased only when, in
the course of the 17th century, the use of hired foreign troops began to assume
greater prominence.
The official attitude towards hereditary land was generally favourable, as long
as it promoted stability of tenure. Fragmentation into too many small plots was
discouraged. The status of bought votchiny was similar to that of genuine ances-
tral estates (rodovye votchiny), but the landowner who had bought a votchina
usually enjoyed greater freedom in disposing of it than he would enjoy with
regard to genuine ancestral land. Vysluzhennye votchiny (granted for service)
occupied an intermediate position between pomest’ia and ancestral estates.
As noted in Chapter 36, the overall tendency of the law concerning land-
ed property during the Muscovy era was gradually to approximate service
40 E.g. Iu.N. Anuchina, “Nasledstvennoe pravo po Sobornomu Ulozheniiu 1649 goda”, PRoP
iii/3, 262–291, at 262.
e states to hereditary estates, until they were merged into a single category in
1714. This tendency was also reflected in the rules concerning the inheritance
of land.
Secondary considerations affecting the development of the law of suc-
cession were the changing attitudes with regard to the treatment of women
(wives, widows and daughters) in a variety of situations (the presence or ab-
sence of sons and other potential male heirs, the marital status of daughters,
etc.), and also the increasing tendency to exclude monasteries as recipients of
estates belonging to secular landowners.
The mostly unwritten inheritance law of the past was gradually expressed
legislatively, amended and made more detailed during the century leading up
to the Ulozhenie of 1649, where it was covered mainly in Chapters 16–17, deal-
ing with service and hereditary estates. The principal source for Ch. 16 was the
decree of 17 December 1636, commonly known as the Decree on Hereditary
and Service Lands, issued in the form of a list of articles (Stateinyi spisok), in
fact 14 separate short decrees.41 The principal source for Ch. 17 was the Stateinyi
spisok of 3 December 1627, also known as the Decree on Ancestral and Granted
(vysluzhennye) Lands, consisting of 9 separate points.42
Succession of Service Estates

As a consequence of the ambiguous ownership status of a service estate, its
inheritability was restricted. As noted in Chapter 36, the normal state of affairs
was that the son would succeed as pomeshchik on the death of his father. If
there were several sons, the father could make a division among the sons, even
excluding some of them and directing them to petition the tsar for another
pomest’e. If such sons were dissatisfied with the estates received, they could
ask the tsar to bring about a new and more equal division by redistributing
the entire fund of service land assigned to the individual sons (Ch. 16, art. 34).
The tsar, or in later years the Service Estate Department (Pomestnyi prikaz),
was closely and decisively involved in the fate of the service estate, because all
important changes had to be reported. In any case, it was out of the question
that a pomest’e could be freely disposed of by will.
The normal way of succession to a pomest’e illustrates once again that mod-
ern or even old Roman concepts are inadequate for a correct description.
The son succeeded the father, but not as owner, because the father himself
was not the owner. The rights and duties connected with the pomest’e were
inseparable, the son was simultaneously entitled and obliged to succeed the
father, barring exceptional circumstances. Art. 69 of Ch. 16 (its last provision)
41 zarg, No. 234, 171–174; prp v, 470–477; PRoP iii/2, 310–315.

42 zarg, No. 161, 133–136; prp v, 453–460.
944 chapter 37
is revealing in this respect. It dealt with a son who had feloniously (vorovski)
mortgaged his pomest’e or sold his ancestral estate in order to avoid the mili-
tary service connected with his estates. In such a case both the son and his
contractual partner were punished. The son was to be beaten “without mercy”
(bez poshchady) and sent back to the army, but his estates were returned to
him; the contractual partner lost his money.43
Widows were generally provided with an income from part of the pomest’e.
Initially, these maintenance allowances were granted by the tsar as he saw fit,
but in the Ulozhenie they were finally fixed in accordance with the service re-
cord of the deceased husband (Ch. 16, arts. 30–32). This lifetime allowance was
called prozhitok.44 The allowance was stopped at the widow’s death, remar-
riage, or entering a convent (art. 16). If there were no service estates nor bought
estates available, a widow would be granted an allowance from the ancestral
estates or the estates granted for service (vysluzhennye otchiny), in order to pro-
vide a prozhitok (Ch. 16, art. 16).
Unmarried daughters are mentioned along with their mothers as recipients
of a prozhitok after the father’s death in arts. 10, 11, 17, 20, and 30–33. Arts. 30–33
indicate that a daughter’s prozhitok was normally one half of the mother’s
allowance. It ended when the girl reached the age of 15 years (art. 11).
When the father’s estate was unable to provide a maintenance allowance,
escheated (vymorochnye) pomest’ia were a preferred source from which main-
tenance service landholdings could be assigned (art. 13). The rationale for the
system of maintenance allowances for wives and daughters was that they were
unable to provide the service for which the service estate had been granted.
If sons and other male relatives could qualify as ‘heirs’ to the estate, women
could not.
Succession of Hereditary (Ancestral) Estates45

In the matter of succession in hereditary estates (votchiny),46 the written law
was much more elaborate and explicit than the sparse provisions on succession
43 Cf. A.G. Man’kov (ed.), Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 g. Tekst. Kommentarii, Leningrad, 1987,
268–269.
44 For a detailed study of the prozhitok, see K.V. Petrov, “Nekotorye vidy zemel’noi sobstven-
nosti v sisteme russkogo prava do nachala xviii v. Prozhitok”, A.P. Pavlov (ed.), Rossiiskoe
gosudarstvo v xiv–xvii vv. Sbornik statei, posviashchennyi 75-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia Iu.G.
Alekseeva, Sankt-Peterburg, 2002, 115–154; Petrov regarded prozhitok as a form of service
ownership (sluzhilaia sobstvennost’).
45 One of the few authors who discussed this question was S.V. Veselovskii in his Feodal’noe
zemlevladenie v Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi, Moskva/Leningrad, 1947, 46–55.
46 In this section, votchiny is translated as hereditary or ancestral estates; such estates were
subdivided into rodovye votchiny (also translated as ancestral estates, or as old or genuine
in service estates. It was the subject of Ch. 17 of the Ulozhenie, and this chapter
itself was based on extensive previous legislation. The most important item in
this respect was a decree of 3 December 1627, itself consisting of a collection
of nine decrees devoted mainly to a detailed regulation of various questions
concerning ancestral estates and estates granted for service (rodovye and vys-
luzhennye votchiny).47
The basic rule of succession to ancestral estates was of course that the
son(s) would inherit, but this rule was not prominently expressed anywhere,
in accordance with the legislative practice of the time. Ch. 17 dealt mostly with
situations arising when no sons or daughters were present. Then (old) ances-
tral estates and estates granted for service would be passed to brothers, cousins
and further (male) members of the family, according to who was closest to the
deceased owner; the surviving wife would receive one quarter of the movable
property and her dowry, and retain her rights to the bought ancestral estates
(art. 1).
If there were daughters, but no sons, the daughters inherited ancestral es-
tates and estates granted for service (arts. 2 and 4).48 These lands would then
pass into another family, if the daughter married and had children. If the
daughter died childless the estates would return to the original family, although
more distant relatives were excluded.49 Additionally, owners of ancestral es-
tates could donate or will such estates to unmarried female family members
(last paragraph of art. 1). The general principle that daughters could inherit in
the absence of sons had already been laid down in the Codes of 1497 (art. 60)
and 1550 (art. 92). When sons had inherited the father’s ancestral and other es-
tates, unmarried daughters were entitled to a maintenance allowance from the
service estates; if the sons then died without issue, the daughters would inherit
the ancestral estates. The same applied to married daughters and sisters, but
then a special decree of the tsar was required.50
ancestral estates), vysluzhennye votchiny (estates granted as ancestral estates, or granted

for service), and kuplennye votchiny (bought ancestral estates).
47 zarg, No. 161, 133–136; prp v, 470–477.
48 Based on a decree of 1628, zarg, No. 180, 145 (decision only); prp iv, 464–465 (full text).
49 Details in a decree of 9 October 1572, zarg, No. 37, 56; prp iv, 531–532. It concerned intes-
tate succession. Succession based on a will in collateral lines of the same family was the
subject of a decree of 15 January 1562 (zarg, No. 36, 55–56; prp iv, 529–531). These two
decrees formed the text of Ch. 14 of the Composite Code (art. 163), entitled “On ancestral
estates of princes”. The decrees dealt only with the succession among service princes,
but its rules could possibly also be applicable to succession among other sections of the
landowning classes.
50 Almost all text of the lengthy arts. 1 and 2 was derived, with minor alterations, from the
decree of 3 December 1627, zarg, No. 161.
946 chapter 37
With regard to ancestral estates that had been bought, the owner was quite
free in disposing of them. If he had not made any disposition, a surviving and
childless wife would inherit a bought estate (arts. 1–2). She could freely dispose
of it, also in the case there were children and it had been left to her in her hus-
band’s will (art. 6).
After these more or less basic provisions, the chapter continued in a ca-
suistic manner with the treatment of all kinds of special situations affecting
succession, such as the consequences of widows remarrying, special grants of
ancestral land for specific occasions, disagreements between joint heirs, the
sale or mortgaging of ancestral land, the possibility of redemption (vykup)
by family members in various situations where the owner had sold or other-
wise disposed of ancestral land,51 the acquisition of deserted lands (porozhnye
z emli), etc.
The increased involvement of the authorities, represented by the Service
Lands Department (Pomestnyi prikaz), is a conspicuous feature in the chapter
on hereditary estates. The standard formula did not say that a certain person
inherited or was the heir, but that the property was granted to him. It stands to
reason that the Service Lands Department was in charge of assigning service
lands, but its intervention was also required in the succession of ancestral es-
tates. This would be a mere formality in the case of sons inheriting from their
fathers. But in other cases provisions in this chapter appointed certain rela-
tives as heirs by granting them the right to petition the Department to assign
them the estate.
Art. 41 of Ch. 17 provided that dependent persons, serving boyars or monas-
teries (boiarskie liudi and monastyrskie slugi), were not to buy ancestral estates
or possess them on the basis of mortgage. Anyone reporting a violation of this
rule would be rewarded by being assigned the property. In Soviet times this
provision was usually interpreted as an expression of the class character of
landownership as something reserved for the ruling class.52 Reading the provi-
sion more carefully already suggests something else. The prohibition extends
only to the persons serving boyars and monasteries and not to the much larg-
er contingent of dependent persons who were servants of the state in some
capacity. The exact meaning of the provision remains unclear.53
Although Ch. 17 is very elaborate on many aspects of inheriting ancestral
estates, it is silent on a great many other aspects of the law of succession, such
51 On vykup, see also Veselovskii, op. cit., 24–35.

52 Cf. for example prp vi, 274.
53 See also Man’kov (ed.), Sobornoe Ulozhenie, 280, where it is suggested that in some cases
the operation of the provision could be avoided by entering the service of the tsar.
as inheritance law among other classes of the population or the succession of

movable property. The latter topic is mentioned a few times in passing. In such
cases the material value involved was usually modest and the matter could be
left to customary law. Russian authors generally limit their attention also to the
questions covered by Chapters 16 and 17 of the Ulozhenie.54
Monasteries and the Law of Succession

Art. 43 of Ch. 17 contained a comprehensive prohibition on acquisition of ser-
vice or hereditary estates by the Church, which also covered the possibility of
monasteries, churches, and church functionaries inheriting such estates. The
background to this rule was extremely complex and can be understood only
in the much wider framework of the development of Church-state relations
in Muscovy. The question will therefore be discussed in Chapter 39, on the
Church.
54 E.g. Vlad.-Bud., Obzor, 479–488 (“The law of inheritance in the Moscow state”); Sergeev-
ich, Lektsii, 572–579.
chapter 38
Courts and Justice; Civil Procedure
Courts in the Period after the Sudebnik of Ivan iii of 1497
The starting-point for a discussion of the court system of Muscovy should be

the situation created by the Code (Sudebnik) of Ivan iii of 1497, as explained
in Chapter 9. This Code consisted basically of an amalgamation of two paral-
lel enactments on the administration of justice, one concerning the (higher)
courts of boyars and okol’nichie, the other devoted to the (lower) courts of re-
gional officials, the urban and rural lieutenants (namestniki and volosteli). At
the same time the Code made clear in several provisions that the jurisdiction
of boyars, okol’nichie and regional lieutenants was not comprehensive. Art. 21
spoke directly of the courts of the grand prince himself and of his children
(adult sons and possibly also brothers who had been assigned their own apa-
nage principalities) and other provisions referred more obliquely to the grand
prince’s own jurisdiction. The autocratic character of ruling made it unneces-
sary or even undesirable to regulate this jurisdiction by law.
The picture is made even more complex by the existence of other secular
courts. One significant category, not mentioned in the Code of 1497 but still
making an appearance in the Code of 1550 (art. 100), was the court of a depen-
dent (udel’nyi) prince, ruling a formerly independent principality, subsequent-
ly incorporated into the Muscovy realm. Also, the Code of 1497 did not refer to
the phenomenon, diminishing but still existing, of landowners who had been
granted lands with the addition of full or partial judicial immunity (through
a zhalovannaia nesudimaia gramota). This implied that the landowner (who
could also be, and often was, a monastery) could set up his own court.
The half century between the Codes of 1497 and 1550 saw the emergence of
a new system of local government, and the reform of the court system was one
of its central elements. This matter was treated extensively in Chapter 33, on
Local Government, and it will be sufficient here to summarize those elements
of the reform which concerned the court system.
One of the principal objectives of the reform was to counteract more ef-
fectively the lawlessness and brigandage afflicting many rural areas, especial-
ly in the North of the country. The existing regional administration, headed
by lieutenants (namestniki and volosteli) deriving their income mainly from
kormlenie, had proved incapable and often unwilling to take adequate mea-
sures. The answer of the government of the infant Ivan iv was to transfer

Courts and Justice; Civil Procedure 949
important powers, including jurisdiction, to locally elected (and later ap-

pointed) officials. This was effected through the issuing of special charters to
individual regions (guby) in which the duties of the guba administrators, who
also acted as the guba courts, were described. These duties would henceforth
also include jurisdiction in cases of banditry (rozboi) and related offences. The
guba court consisted of three or four minor noblemen/landowners (deti boiar-
skie) and five or six prominent peasants. They had to be literate, as everything
was to be written up by a court clerk (d’iak). The first guba charter was issued
to the region of Belozero in 15391 and a modest number of others from the fol-
lowing few years is known, all to more remote regions.
After a few years a somewhat different approach was taken. The regula-
tions concerning the organization of regional courts became more detailed;
these charters were therefore known as gubnye nakazy (guba instructions);
they were addressed to individual regions in various parts of the country. At
the same time a new type of charter appeared, known as a statutory land
charter (ustavnye zemskie gramoty), embodying a more comprehensive regu-
lation of regional government. Most of these are from the 1551–1556 period. In
the statutory land charters the lieutenants were usually dismissed completely
and the jurisdiction of the court of the guba elders was defined more loose-
ly; after mentioning brigandage and homicide, the charters often included a
blanket formula such as “other evil deeds”. At the same time they often also
contained the reservation that guba justice should be administered “accord-
ing to our Sudebnik”, which undoubtedly was the Code of 1550. This Code,
in art. 60, maintained the jurisdiction of the lieutenants’ courts, but added:
“If someone is brought in for robbery or if evidence is offered in court that
he is known as an evil bandit, then the lieutenants are to hand him over to
the guba elders. And the guba elders are not to interfere in any way in the
jurisdiction of the lieutenants, except in cases of robbers. And they are to
judge thieves in accordance with the guba charters of the tsar and grand
prince, as it has been written in them.” In any case, although the jurisdiction
of the guba courts was not defined with great precision, its existence was
beyond doubt.
The Belozero guba charter of 1539 indicated “our boyar prince Ivan Danilov-
ich Penkov and his assistants” as the person to whom the guba elders had to re-
port, and this is taken as the first indication of an embryonic form of what was
to become the Brigandage (or Robbery) Department (Razboinyi prikaz). This
department served not only as the central regulatory agency for criminal law
1 prp iv, 176–179; rz ii, 213–215; PRoP iii/1, 74–75. For a list of other guba charters, see
Chapter 33.
950 chapter 38
in general, but also as a court of appeal in criminal cases. It was itself of course
subordinate to the tsar himself who could always act as a supreme court.
In the century between the Code of Ivan iv and the Ulozhenie of Aleksei
(1550–1649) the courts of the regional and local administration continued to
co-exist with the courts of the guba elders, although, as explained in the Chap-
ter on Local Government, the urban and rural lieutenants (namestniki and
volosteli) were gradually replaced by military governors (voevody).
Courts in the Council Code (Sobornoe Ulozhenie) of Tsar Aleksei

of 1649
More than half of the Ulozhenie of 1649 was devoted to courts and the pro-
cedures to be followed by them: Chapters 10 (On the Judicial Process, 287 ar-
ticles), 11 (On the Judicial Process for Peasants, 34 articles), 12 (On the Judicial
Process for the Patriarch’s Officials and Peasants, 3 articles), 14 (On the Oath,
10 articles), 15 (On Cases That Have Been Decided, 5 articles), 20 (On the J udicial
Process for Slaves, 119 articles), 21 (On Cases Concerning Robbery and Theft,
104 articles), 23 (On Musketeers, 3 articles), 24 (On Atamans and Cossacks,
3 articles), 25 (On Illicit Taverns, 21 articles).
Where courts were concerned, the Ulozhenie maintained (as on other
topics) the court structure developed in the past, incorporated more recent
amendments, and introduced a number of innovations. Chapter 10 constituted
the centrepiece of the amalgam of chapters which dealt with the administra-
tion of justice in its various shapes. This was not spelled out explicitly, but it is
to be inferred from numerous provisions, especially those which formed the
first part of the chapter. The general principles of the administration of justice,
as explained in the first part of Chapter 10, were obviously applicable to the
special courts mentioned in other chapters. By the same token, the Ulozhe-
nie undoubtedly, but without stating so explicitly, perpetuated the system
outlined by its predecessors (the Codes of 1497 and 1550), according to which
the provincial governors (namestniki and later on voevody) and their assistants
acted as the general courts in the provinces, while the boyars, okol’nichie and
a few other high officials charged with judicial duties constituted the general
courts in Moscow itself.
The entire first part of Ch. 10, up to art. 27 (the beginning of the extremely
detailed regulation of penalties for dishonouring church dignitaries and lay
persons), dealt with general questions concerning the functioning of courts.
Art. 1 defined the principles of the administration of justice and as such was
the much expanded successor to art. 1 of the Code of 1550, which in its turn
rephrased art. 1 of the Code of 1497. A description of the manner in which

a judge was to exercise his office had already been expressed in art. 3 of the
Court Charter of Pskov and an echo of that provision was still audible in art. 1
Ch. 10 of the Ulozhenie.2 Together with the principle of the impartiality of
courts, art. 1 set out the principles of equality before the law and of the equal
rights of foreigners in the courts of Muscovy. The proclamation of these prin-
ciples was followed by the more general exhortations that the powerful should
not enjoy special regard and that it was the duty of the court to deliver the
person wronged from the hands of the unjust.
Art. 2 (Ch. 10) acknowledged the judicial supremacy of the tsar, in the same
breath as that of his council (boyars, okol’nichie, and other members of his
Duma), charged with dealing with cases that could not be resolved by the prikazy.
The following provisions were directed at safeguarding and fostering the
principles of art. 1. Art. 3 allowed the parties to challenge a judge for partiality,
but only before or during the trial, not afterwards (art. 4). Previous legislation
(the Codes of 1497 and 1550) had restricted itself to the mere declaration of
judicial impartiality, without providing for any sanctions. Art. 5 (Ch. 10) of the
Ulozhenie corrected this omission. Judges found guilty of favouritism were
to pay three-fold compensation to the person wronged and a fine to the tsar.
Additionally, all such judges were deprived of their rank and lower judges were
also to be punished with the knout. Arts. 7–22 elaborated on art. 5 by regulat-
ing all kinds of special situations, such as judges committing errors without
evil intent (bez khitrosti), bribery and related offences committed by court
clerks and their assistants (d’iaki and pod”iachie), false accusations of bribery
against judicial personnel, tampering with court records, filing patently slan-
derous actions, etc.
Chapter 10 of the Ulozhenie, unlike its predecessors, did not deal specifi-
cally with the traditional division between the central Moscow courts and the
provincial courts. It mentioned the latter in passing, as in art. 6 which simply
stated that the rule of art. 5 also applied to provincial judges. It has to be kept
in mind that the jurisdiction of the provincial courts was severely restricted by
2 The Pskov Charter warned the court not to abuse its position to exact revenge or show favou-
ritism (sudom ne mstitsia ni na kogo, a sudom ne obchitis’), the Code of 1497 used a similar
formula (A sudom ne mstiti, ne druzhiti nikomu), as did the Code of 1550 (A sudom ne druzhiti
i ne mstiti nikomu). The Ulozhenie offered a much longer formula: “[the court] shall not of its
own accord add or remove anything from the records of the case out of friendship or out of
enmity, nor favour a friend or harm an enemy, nor favour anybody in any matter for whatever
reason” (a svoim vymyslom v sudnykh delakh po druzhbe i po nedruzhbe nichego ne pribavliati,
ni ubavliati, i ni v chem drugu ne druzhiti, a nedrugu ne mstiti, i nikomu ni v chem ni dlia chego
ne noroviti).
952 chapter 38
the existence of several separate jurisdictions. Criminal cases were mostly the
responsibility of the Brigandage Department and, in the provinces, of the guba
courts. Other prikazy, such as the Slavery Department (in most matters con-
cerning slaves), and the Department for Service Estates (the Pomestnyi prikaz,
for disputes concerning land) handled cases within their jurisdiction.
While the provisions surveyed hitherto had the upholding of judicial impar-
tiality and in particular the combating of bribery as their central theme, arts.
23–26 envisaged another perennial and seemingly ineradicable defect of the
administration of justice in Muscovy: bureaucratic inertia, volokita (procrasti-
nation, red tape). Judges were required to turn up for work, even on Sundays
and holy days in exceptional cases.
Art. 20 appeared to be designed to protect the tsar and his personal staff
from excessive involvement in the work of the judiciary. While the supreme
judicial powers of the tsar were an essential element of autocracy and the tsar
consequently had the power to overturn any judicial decision, it was not al-
lowed to petition the tsar directly about court cases; such petitions were to
be directed to the competent departments (prikazy). Only if the department
decided negatively was the petitioner allowed to approach the tsar himself.
Violations of this procedure were punished by flogging with sticks (batogi), or,
for high-ranking persons, by imprisonment for one week.
Below the tsar and the Boyar Council serving as a supreme court, the judi-
cial departments acted as the central Moscow courts. These departments were
mentioned only a few times in passing in the Ulozhenie.3 The principal one
was the Vladimir Judicial Department (Vladimirskii Sudnyi prikaz), emerging
around the end of the rule of Ivan iv. It served as the ordinary court for the
higher echelons of the Muscovy aristocracy and for the population of a great
number of subordinate towns and of the vast territory of the former Novgorod
republic. Additionally it served as the appellate court for the other judicial de-
partments. The most important of these was the Moscow Judicial Department
(Moskovskii Sudnyi prikaz), which arose at about the same time as the Vladi-
mir Department. The Moscow Judicial Department handled cases of the lower
Moscow nobles and of their dependent peasants and slaves. Third in rank was
the Riazan’ Judicial Department (Riazan’ was the last independent Russian
principality incorporated into Muscovy) and fourth in rank the Dmitrov Judi-
cial Department (Dmitrov was an apanage principality ruled by a cadet branch
of the Moscow grand princes).4
3 Ch. xvii, art. 33; Ch. xviii, art. 31; Ch. xx, art. 4; Ch. xxi, art. 49.
4 Cf. D.V. Liseitsev, N.M. Rogozhin, Iu.M. Eskin, Prikazy Moskovskogo gosudarstva xvi–xvii vv.
Slovar’-spravochnik, Moskva, 2015, 181–199.
Special (Secular) Courts

Several chapters devoted to special themes referred in passing to judicial func-
tions of specific departments (prikazy). Other chapters contained clear provi-
sions assigning judicial duties to such prikazy. An example of the first category
in Ch. 10 is the Service Land Department (Pomestnyi prikaz), which was not
only the central agency for the registration of service lands and the peasants
attached to such lands, but was also entrusted with the decision of various
disputes which had arisen in connection with service lands and dependent
peasants; similarly, the jurisdiction of this department was mentioned repeat-
edly in the chapters on service estates and on hereditary estates (Chs. 16-17).
Another example is the casual mention of the Lower Volga towns in art. 20 of
Ch. 13. Territories which had formerly belonged to the khanates of Kazan’ and
Astrakhan’ had been placed for all administrative, military, financial and also
judicial matters under a special department, the Prikaz of the Kazan’ Palace
(Prikaz Kazanskogo dvortsa). This situation lasted from the middle of the 16th
century until 1709, when a regular Kazan’ province (guberniia) was set up.5
A similar special jurisdiction created for a specific category could be found
in Ch. 23 of the Ulozhenie, providing that criminal and civil cases involving
musketeers (strel’tsy) were to be handled by the Musketeer Department (Stre-
letskii prikaz). Chapter 25 of the Ulozhenie (the Statute on Illicit Taverns) grant-
ed comparable jurisdictional powers to the Taverns Department (Kabatskii
prikaz, or “New Quarter”, Novaia Chetvert’ in the terminology of the Ulozhenie),
which however did not function as such for very long.6
By far the most important prikaz with judicial functions was the Brigandage
Department (Razboinyi prikaz, after 1683 Sysknoi prikaz, “Investigation Depart-
ment”), initially the central agency for supervising and regulating the struggle
against robbery and related types of professional crime and having its origin
in the guba reforms discussed in the Chapter 33, on Local Government. In the
end the Brigandage Department evolved into the central department for deal-
ing with serious crime. It was abolished in 1701 in the course of the Petrine
reforms.
Other prikazy were also charged occasionally with judicial powers within
the sphere of their jurisdiction.
Arbitration Courts
Art. 5 of Ch. 15 had a separate heading: “On the Arbitration Process” (O treteiskom
sude). The long provision constituted a brief but comprehensive treatment of
5 Ibidem, 74–79.
6 Ibidem, 71–73.
954 chapter 38
the subject. According to Man’kov, it was based not on past legislation but on
customary law and represented new legislation.7 The most significant feature
of the arbitration procedure as regulated in this provision was that it was fully
integrated into the official court system. The procedure was initiated by a mem-
orandum, signed by the parties, binding them to abide by the decision of the
arbiters. If a party did not live up to its promise, the arbiters would receive the
dishonour compensation to which they were entitled and a fine was to be paid
to the tsar. The parties would, as a rule, each appoint one arbiter. If the two arbi-
ters failed to agree, the case was referred to the competent department (prikaz).
Guba Courts
The establishment of guba courts was one of the principal innovations of the
reforms during the early period of the reign of Ivan iv. They were discussed in
the section on these reforms in Chapter 33, on Local Government.
Dealing with robbery and theft, the subject of Ch. 21 of the Ulozhenie, was
the main responsibility of the guba courts. In the city of Moscow itself, where
no guba court was active, those cases were handled by the Moscow Depart-
ment (Zemskoi dvor). Most of the 104 articles of Ch. 21 were devoted to the
regulation of the procedural aspects of prosecuting and trying cases of robbery
and theft. Only a few provisions at the beginning of the chapter mentioned the
constitution and jurisdiction of the guba courts (arts. 1–6). The judges, called
guba elders (gubnye starosty), were to be elected from the ranks of those mi-
nor noblemen (dvoriane) who were for some reason excused from serving in
the army; they had to be literate. In towns where no such dvoriane were avail-
able, the next lowest category of servicemen, deti boiarskie, was eligible. All
free taxpaying residents of the town and surrounding region were entitled to
participate in the election. The guba elders were assisted in their judicial tasks
by sworn assistants (tseloval’niki – persons who had kissed the Cross, i.e. taken
an oath) and clerks.
In regions where no guba courts had been set up, jurisdiction in cases of
robbery and theft reverted to the general court, i.e. governors (voevody) and
prikaz officials. The guba courts were abolished in 1702 in the course of the
Petrine reforms.
Private Courts
The existence of private jurisdictions based on grants of full or partial judicial
immunity had gradually become an anachronism in Muscovy. Art. 153 of Ch. 10
7 In A.G. Man’kov (ed.), Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 goda. Tekst. Kommentarii, Moskva, 1987,
250–251.
of the Ulozhenie was clearly intended to put an end to the practice. It forbad
the granting of immunity charters to landowners and ordered the confiscation
of such charters found in private possession. The wording of the provision sug-
gested that it was directed especially against individual landowners and not
so much against monasteries or bishops. Immunity charters continued to be
issued to the latter after 1649.8
Church Courts
See Chapter 39, on the Church and Monasteries.
Court Officials
Muscovy courts generally consisted of several judges. This would apply of

course to the Boyar Duma when it functioned as a supreme court, but also
to many other courts. The prikaz was headed by a boyar or other person with
Duma rank (okol’nichii, Duma dvorianin, or Duma d’iak), who decided cases
together with three or four appointed associate judges (Ulozhenie, Ch. 10, art.
23). The guba courts were formed by the guba elders (starosty, usually three)
and their associates, the tseloval’niki, three or four but sometimes more. With
the much less prominent provincial courts of the voevody, the situation is
less clear. The voevody were the functional successors of the namestniki and
volosteli and the Code of 1550, without being very specific, seemed in many
provisions to allow the latter officials to act as single judges. Ampleeva, how-
ever, states as a fact that the voevody, at the time of the Ulozhenie, acted as
judges in consort with several associate judges, who would be one rank low-
er than the v oevoda himself.9 The exact relationship between the voevoda as
presiding judge and his associates remains a matter of debate. Lower-ranking
local judges, such as tiuny, probably followed the pattern set by the court of
the voevoda.
In the Code of 1497 of Ivan iii the court clerk or secretary (d’iak) had already
emerged as a prominent procedural actor, especially on account of the im-
portance attached in this Code to written court records. The increased weight
8 Ibidem, 203.
9 T.Iu. Ampleeva, “Izmeneniia v organizatsii suda i pravosudiia po Sobornomu Ulozheniiu
1649 g.”, PRoP iii/3, 400–414, at 404–405; according to Ampleeva, the sons of the voevoda were
frequently appointed as associate judges with their father. Much of this paper is based on
F. Dmitriev, Istoriia sudebnykh instantsii i grazhdanskogo sudoproizvodstva ot Sudebnikov do
Uchrezhdenii o guberniiakh, Moskva, 1859.
956 chapter 38
given to written documents was also one of the notable characteristics of the
Court Charter of Pskov, the principal predecessor to the Sudebnik of Ivan iii.
In the Code of 1550 of Ivan iv the d’iak was mentioned along with the boyars
and other high-ranking officials as one of the judges (arts. 1ff.). This line was
continued in the Ulozhenie. At the same time the court secretary was men-
tioned frequently as the person responsible for court records. Much of the
actual record-keeping was in the hands of the assistants of the d’iaki, the
pod’iachie. In lower courts the court clerk was often referred to as d’iachek.
Scribes in prikazy and administrative departments were designated as pistsy.
The actual execution of judicial business was carried out by a staff of of-
ficials. At the head of this staff was the pristav or bailiff, an official with con-
siderable authority. In the Ulozhenie, the duties of bailiffs were regulated in
particular in arts. 137–148 of Ch. 10. The Ulozhenie used the terms pristav and
nedel’shchik seemingly indiscriminately when referring to bailiffs in these pro-
visions. As pointed out in Chapter 34, on Criminal Law, the functions of these
officials were historically different but had become almost identical at the time
of the Ulozhenie.
The Codes of 1497 and 1550 also mentioned, along with the nedel’shchik,
officials designated as pravetchiki and dovotchiki. The pravetchiki were appar-
ently bailiffs attached to the court of the namestnik in the provinces, while
the nedel’shchiki, who worked in teams, were primarily attached to Moscow
courts.10 The dovotchik was charged in particular with serving summonses.
The bailiff had various judicial servants and police officers under his com-
mand, to assist him in his duties, such as investigating crimes, arresting sus-
pects, serving summonses, conducting searches, escorting prisoners, carrying
out capital sentences and inflicting corporal punishment, etc.
Civil Procedure
The primary focus of the Sudebnik of 1497 of Ivan iii was on the unification of
court fees and related expenses. The text dealt with all kinds of situations in
which courts, court clerks and scribes, bailiffs and other supporting staff were
entitled to certain payments. The structure of the Code was determined to a
considerable extent by a chronological perspective. In his mind, the drafter
went through the consecutive phases of a trial, from the first steps taken by
a plaintiff to the execution of the court’s judgment. In the course of this pro-
cess, all kinds of side issues could come up and be dealt with. As a result, the
10 Cf. prp iv, 273.

modern lawyer may be baffled by a seemingly chaotic hotchpotch of civil and

criminal elements. It would be pointless therefore to look for some description
of the law of civil procedure, although a careful collection of individual items
would allow one to put together a general outline of a civil action under the
Code of 1497.
A more detailed picture emerged in the Code of 1550, thanks also to its
greater length and less emphasis on court fees. But only the Council Code of
1649, the Ulozhenie, reached a degree of systematization in which some of the
main aspects of civil procedure could be treated coherently.11
Arts. 100–123 of Ch. 10 (on Courts) covered many aspects of the early phase
of a civil action, while other questions of civil procedure, evidence in particu-
lar, were treated in arts. 154–178. Additionally, there were several other, shorter
sequences of provisions concerning procedures in civil actions.
Civil proceedings were initiated by a document, called pristavnaia pamiat’,
in which the plaintiff was to state his claim, including its precise amount (art.
100). This document was to be signed by the court clerk (d’iak), who was for-
bidden to sign if the amount claimed was not stated clearly. It was then deliv-
ered by the bailiff (pristav) to the defendant.12 The defendant would then post
a bond on himself (that he would appear for trial). At the trial the plaintiff
would present a request of claims (iskovaia chelobitnaia); failure to specify the
amount claimed would lead not to rejection of his claim, but to an order by the
court to correct the request (arts. 101–102). Arts. 103–104 gave further directions
about corrections and amendments in the pristavnaia pamiat’ or the iskovaia
chelobitnaia.
The long text of art. 105 was concerned with improper behaviour by the par-
ties during trial, ranging from impolite words to killing people present at the
trial. This provision was one of the numerous examples of criminal law rules
being inserted in complexes dealing with other matters. Art. 105 has often been
considered as one of the clearest examples of the influence of the Lithuanian
Statute, where similar subjects were regulated in its chapter on courts. Indeed,
if one compares this section of Ch. 10 of the Ulozhenie (arts. 100–123) with Ch. 6
11 K.D. Kavelin, at the time attached to the law faculty of the university of Moscow, pub-
lished a remarkably astute survey of the Russian law of civil procedure as it operated
between 1649 and the 1775 legislation on provinces (gubernii): Osnovnye nachala russkogo
sudoustroistva ot Ulozheniia 1649 g. do Uchrezhdeniia o guberniiakh 1775 g. (Moskva, 1844,
repr. Moskva, 2010); most of it concerned the pre-Petrine period (1649–1696), 1–75.
12 Pristavnaia pamiat’ may be read as “memorandum to be delivered by a pristav”, or as
“memorandum in which a claim is presented”, because the verb pristaviti is also used in
the provisions of Ch. x in the sense of “to present a claim”. See Man’kov, op. cit., 193.
958 chapter 38
of the First Lithuanian Statute of 1529 (or the Statute of 1566), one is struck
by the numerous and often close parallels, although the similarity never sug-
gests direct borrowing. It is well-known that the Moscow drafter had access to
the Lithuanian text (written in Old-Russian/Old-Belorussian) and used it as a
source of inspiration.
The following provisions (arts. 107–123) considered all kinds of situations
that could arise during the trial (absence of one of the parties, postponements
and continuances, surety bonds, etc.). When the trial was over, the parties had
to post surety bonds (stavochnye poruchnye) that they would not leave Moscow
before judgment was announced (art. 123). Surety bonds generally played a
major role in enforcing the parties’ observance of procedural requirements.
When the surety bond had been posted by a guarantor and the debtor, after
losing his case, failed to pay back the bond, he had to pay a fixed fine of three
roubles per month to the guarantor, on top of the principal (art. 155). This pro-
vision is part of a second batch of civil procedure rules (arts. 154–178), starting
with the rule that a plaintiff who had lost his case or who had settled with the
defendant, and who then brought an identical action against the defendant,
would be punished by being flogged with sticks (batogi); additionally he had
to pay indemnities to the defendant (art. 154).
The next series of articles (156–160) was devoted to various procedural in-
cidents requiring specific steps and investigations. Arts. 161–162, both of them
extremely long, dealt with the procedure known as “general investigation”
(poval’nyi obysk), in which a great number of people were to be interrogated
on certain questions in dispute (see the section on “evidence” in Chapter 34,
on Criminal Law and Procedure). The much shorter arts. 163–164 and 167 con-
cerned the same subject. The ‘narrative’ of the Ulozhenie then moved to the
treatment of all sorts of questions concerning the evidence of various kinds
of witnesses, where it is not always clear whether reference is then to the evi-
dence provided by the general investigation, or to witnesses’ evidence in gen-
eral. Other points of the law of civil procedure turn up incidentally in other
parts of Ch. 10.
The question of appellate procedure assumes a different character in a sys-
tem in which modern principles concerning the stability of judgments prevail.
The point indicated above (about punishing a person who brings an identical
action after having lost his case) illustrates this. Modern legal systems impose
strict rules about the permissibility of appeals; the Ulozhenie was much more
tolerant in allowing parties to pursue their aim in acquiring a decision in an-
other court. Bypassing intermediate judicial instances was forbidden only in
respect of directly approaching the tsar (discussed above). Art. 2 of Ch. 10 rec-
ognized the tsar as supreme judge, insofar as prikazy could send cases up to
him by means of a report (doklad) about their inability to solve a particular

dispute.
The Oath
The whole of Chapter 14 of the Ulozhenie was devoted to the oath as a de-
cisive procedural event in both civil and criminal law.13 Anybody, including
slaves, over 20 years of age, could take the oath (“kiss the Cross”); foreigners
were to swear according to their own religion (arts. 1 and 3). The kissing of the
Cross was surrounded with solemnity and the Ulozhenie laid great stress on its
sanctity (“Violating the oath by kissing the Cross is the most evil thing of all”,
art. 10). Curiously, the penalties for false oaths described in this chapter were
ecclesiastical, but there was a reference to Byzantine law, which ordered the
tongue of the person swearing falsely to be cut out, and also to the penalties in-
dicated in Ch. 11 of the Ulozhenie. Art. 27 of the latter chapter (swearing a false
oath in a matter of a stolen slave) imposed a most severe penalty: being flogged
with the knout in the market place for three days, imprisonment for one year,
and a version of mort civile: being deprived of all credibility in all matters and
of the capacity to sue anybody in court.
The Church’s attitude towards the traditional oath (kissing the Cross) was
increasingly negative, mainly because of the fear that such oaths would often
be sworn lightly. When secular powers eventually reached the same conclu-
sion, implying that the oath represented an unsatisfactory means of producing
evidence, the oath disappeared as a procedural tool.14
13 The origin of some of this chapter was in a decree of 17 November 1628 in which twelve
separate decisions concerning procedural questions were combined. See N.E. Nosov (ed.),
Zakonodatel’nye akty Russkogo gosudarstva vtoroi poloviny xvi – pervoi poloviny xvii veka
[zarg]. Teksty, Leningrad, 1986, No. 188, 148–151.
14 Cf. M.V. Korogodina, “Pravila o krestnom tselovanii”, A.Iu. Dvornichenko (ed.), Issledova-
niia po istorii srednevekovoi Rusi. K 80-letiiu Iuriia Georgievicha Alekseeva, Moskva/Sankt-
Peterburg, 2006, 171–179.
chapter 39
The Church, Monasteries, and Church Law
Church-State Relations in Muscovy1
As explained in Chapter 21, the Russian Church was not affected as badly by
the Mongol invasion of the 13th century as the secular political institutions.
It enjoyed a privileged position, compared to that of the principalities, and
was even allowed to establish the new eparchy of Sarai in the vicinity of the
headquarters of the khan of the Golden Horde. A decisive role in these de-
velopments was played by Kirill, who started his career as the keeper of the
seal of the prince of Galicia, Daniil Romanovich. The princes of Galicia, along
with the princes of Vladimir, were among the most powerful of the Russian
princes during the chaotic period of the Mongol invasion. Just before khan
Batyi mustered his forces to attack Kiev, Daniil had been accepted by Kiev as
its prince, thus becoming nominally the first among the Russian princes. The
Mongols attacked Kiev in 1240. Daniil had left the defence of the city to his gen-
eral Dmitrii, being involved himself in domestic troubles in Galicia. The Greek
metropolitan of Kiev, Iosif, was killed during the destruction of Kiev in 1240.
A Galician bishop, Iosafaf of Ugrovsk, an ally of prince Daniil, assumed the
metropolitanate, but was not accepted by the Kievan clergy. Daniil, in Hungary
at the time, deposed Iosafaf upon his return and appointed his close collabora-
tor Kirill, who then travelled to Byzantium to receive the formal recognition
and confirmation of the patriarch of Constantinople.
Daniil of Galicia’s attention was increasingly absorbed by his efforts to con-
solidate his position in his own principality, where he was facing opposition
from family members and boyars, and endless hostilities with his Hungarian,
Polish and Lithuanian neighbours. In this connection the idea of overcoming
the Great Schism of 1054 and bringing about a union between the Eastern and
the Western churches was revived. Daniil’s acceptance of the crown of Galicia,
offered by the pope, is to be seen in this light; he was crowned king in 1254.
Kirill in the meantime had been active as metropolitan in Russia where he
developed close relations with grand prince Aleksandr who, unlike Daniil, was
secure in his dignity as grand prince of Vladimir, buttressed by the protection
1 The narrative of this section is based mainly on the works of R.G. Skrynnikov, Krest i korona.
Tserkov’ i gosudarstvo na Rusi ix–xvii vv., Sankt-Peterburg, 2000, and its predecessor Gosu-
darstvo i tserkov’ na Rusi xi–xvi vv. Podvizhniki russkoi tserkvi, Novosibirsk, 1991.

The Church, Monasteries, and Church Law 961
of the khan. In these circumstances it made good sense for the metropolitan to
join forces with Aleksandr Nevskii, the more so when it seemed that his former
protector Daniil was making overtures to the detested Latins.
Under Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Church allied itself closely with the rul-
ers of Vladimir and this alliance was to last for many centuries, in which these
rulers became the grand princes and then tsars of Moscow.
While the Kievan Church was predominantly an urban force in a coun-
try where paganism was still very much alive in rural areas, the 14th and 15th
centuries saw the expansion of monasticism in the countryside. Monasteries
represented a powerful factor in the policies of rulers to enlarge the reservoir
of agricultural land. They were to be preferred in some ways to secular land-
owners. Additionally, in the medieval perception, endowing monasteries in
exchange for their prayers for the souls of the donors constituted a solid mo-
tive for being generous. As a result, the monasteries collectively emerged as
the most important landowners from the end of the 15th century onwards,
after the grand prince (and then the tsar) himself. This caused tensions not
only in the relationship with the government, but also within the monastic
world itself. In Chapter 21 the struggle between two monastic factions was
mentioned, the nestiazhateli, opposed to monasterial wealth, with the char-
ismatic Nil Sorskii (1433–1508) as their leader, and the party of Iosef Volotskii,
abbot of Volokolamsk (1439–1515), who held that monasteries would be able to
fulfil their role in the world only if they had sufficient material goods at their
disposal.
Iosef Volotskii successfully resisted the attempts of Ivan iii to secularize
land belonging to monasteries, but then acted as a strong advocate of the su-
preme power of the grand prince under Ivan’s son Vasilii iii. His justification
of the divine origin of the power of the ruler was in perfect harmony with the
theory of the Third Rome, expounded during the reign of Vasilii iii and his son
Ivan iv by the monk Filofei. According to this theory, Russia and its divinely
appointed ruler had been entrusted by God with the mission to lead and de-
fend Christendom, after the First Rome had fallen into heresy and the Second
Rome (Constantinople) had been overrun by the infidels.2
In the relationship between the Russian state and the Orthodox Church
the question of landowning by the Church remained an unsolved problem.
Most of the church-owned land was in the hands of the monasteries, although
2 A recent review of the extensive Russian and foreign literature on the Third Rome theory in
V.I. Alekseev, Rol’ tserkvi v sozdanii Russkogo gosudarstva. Period tsentralizatsii: Ivan iii,
1462–1505 gg., Sankt-Peterburg, 2003, 251–270, and also A.N. Sakharov, Drevniaia Rus’ na
putiakh k «Tret’emu Rimu», Moskva, 2006.
962 chapter 39
e piscopal sees, the cathedral churches of Moscow and Novgorod in particular,

also owned extensive estates in various parts of the country. The partly success-
ful attempts to curb the expansion of monasterial wealth have been discussed
in the section on the reforms of Ivan iv in Chapter 23. In Ivan’s allocution to
the church council preceding the adoption of the Stoglav in 1551 the evils of
this development were not only stressed, but they were explicitly connected
with the poverty of many members of the lower nobility, the dvoriane and deti
boiarskie. The ascent of this class, encouraged by the tsar for political purposes,
created a new perspective for the Church-state relationship.
After its first decade, the rule of Ivan iv became increasingly irrational, to
descend into the bloody chaos of the oprichnina, as a forerunner of Stalin’s
Great Terror. The metropolitan Filipp, who had publicly opposed Ivan’s poli-
cies of violence and arbitrariness, was arrested after he had refused to bless the
tsar during a solemn service, as was the custom. He was then strangled by the
infamous Maliuta Skuratov, Ivan’s chief hatchet man, in the cell where he was
imprisoned in 1569.
Ivan iv was succeeded in 1584 by his son Fedor, but government was actu-
ally in the hands of Boris Godunov, a brother of the tsaritsa Irina. It was Boris
Godunov who, after troublesome negotiations, managed to secure the promo-
tion of the Moscow metropolitan to patriarchal rank in 1589 (see below). After
Fedor’s death in 1598 Boris succeeded him as tsar, until his death in 1605.
The patriarch Iov, who owed his elevation to tsar Boris refused to bless the
First Pseudo-Dimitrii who had overthrown Boris’ son Feodor, and was robbed
of his dignity and exiled (1605). A Greek clergyman, Ignatii, was elected patri-
arch. But the next year the First Pseudo-Dimitrii was killed in a plot organized
by a boyar faction which then put one of its own, prince Vasilii Shuiskii, on the
throne. Then it was the turn of patriarch Ignatii to be deprived of his rank. This
was also the moment when Fedor Nikitich Romanov appeared at the centre of
the stage where Church and state interests met.
The Romanovs were a leading boyar clan under Ivan iv, whose first wife
was Anastasiia, a sister of Nikita, Fedor’s father. They were opposed to the
Godunovs and after an unsuccessful plot against tsar Boris Godunov in 1600
they fell into disgrace. Fedor Nikitich was forced to become a monk, receiving
the name of Filaret, and was exiled to a remote monastery. When the First
Pseudo-Dimitrii became tsar in 1605, Filaret’s prospects brightened and he
was made archbishop of Rostov. After the death of the First Pseudo-Dimitrii
in 1606 the church leaders had to replace patriarch Ignatii and their choice fell
on Filaret. The new tsar Vasilii Shuiskii and Filaret belonged to different boyar
factions and Filaret was therefore sent on a mission, in order to get him out of
Moscow. In the turbulent conditions of the day, it was considered inevitable
to have a patriarch in Moscow, and the archbishop of Kazan’, Germogen

(Hermogen), who had been a strong opponent of the First Pseudo-Dimitrii,
was elected.
In 1607 a new pretender appeared in Western Russia, known as the Second
Pseudo-Dimitrii or as the “Thief of Tushino”, a village near Moscow where he
had his headquarters for most of the time. Russia was suffering from economic
disasters, famine and civil war, and the position of tsar Vasilii Shuiskii in Mos-
cow was becoming more and more precarious. The Second Pseudo-Dimitrii
was widely recognized as the rightful tsar, allegedly the last surviving son of
Ivan iv, who had supposedly not died as a boy, returned as the First Pseudo-
Dimitrii and miraculously survived in 1606.
The unsinkable Filaret had been taken prisoner by the new pretender’s
forces in 1608 and the two men recognized their common interests. Filaret
who had known the original grand prince Dimitrii of Uglich as well as the
First Pseudo-Dimitrii, vouched for the authenticity of the claims of the Second
Pseudo-Dimitrii, who then had Filaret accepted as patriarch. In this situation
when, in the words of Skrynnikov, Russia had two capitals, two tsars and two
patriarchs, the Time of Troubles was approaching its nadir.
It is undeniable that religious aspects constituted an important factor in
the tumultuous developments of the Time of Troubles, and this made the po-
sitions taken by the Russian Church and its leadership of great significance.
The king of Poland and Polish magnates were much involved in the affairs of
Russia during the last few years of the Time of Troubles, and both Pseudo-
Dimitriis were considered as having strong Roman-Catholic connections.3
Polish involvement became a dominant factor in 1609, when a Polish army
laid siege to Smolensk. When the Poles then stopped supporting the Second
Pseudo-Dimitrii, the latter left his ‘capital’ in Tushino by the end of 1609.4
Filaret and other supporters of the Second Pseudo-Dimitrii started to negoti-
ate with king Sigismund iii of Poland about accepting the Polish crown prince
Władysław as tsar of Russia. But Filaret was taken prisoner again, this time
by the army of tsar Vasilii. He was taken to Moscow in 1610 where he was par-
doned by the tsar and patriarch Germogen and restored to his former dignity
as metropolitan of Rostov. Later in the same year the forces of tsar Vasilii were
3 The First Pseudo-Dimitrii was married to Marina Mnishek (Mniszech), the daughter of a
Polish magnate, who then became the Russian tsaritsa in 1605. As the widowed tsaritsa she
regained her former position when she recognized her previously deceased spouse in the
Second Pseudo-Dimitrii in 1607. After his downfall she was imprisoned in Kolomna, where
she died in 1614.
4 His political and military position quickly eroded and he was killed in the autumn of 1610.
964 chapter 39
beaten by the Poles at Klushino and this brought about the downfall of Vasilii,
who was extradited to the Poles by his opponents and ended his life as a pris-
oner in Warsaw in 1612.
In Moscow in the meantime the government, or what was left of it, was in
the hands of a group of leading boyars (the Seven Boyars or Semiboiarshchina).
The Polish army was at the gates of Moscow. The boyar government again
took up negotiations with the Poles, who were allowed to install a garrison in
Moscow in September 1610. Filaret headed a mission to the Polish king, who
was with his army at the siege of Smolensk, to hammer out the details of the
succession of the Polish crown prince to the throne of Moscow. But when no
agreement was reached, Filaret, who secretly had been promoting his own son
Mikhail as the new tsar, was arrested by the Poles and sent to Poland, where he
remained until 1619.
In the following two years the confusion grew to such an extent that an
adequate description would exceed the bounds of what is essential for out-
lining the relations between Church and state. It must suffice to admit that
the uncompromising conduct of patriarch Germogen propelled him to the
position of being the only credible stronghold for the self-identification of
Muscovy as the home of Russian orthodoxy. Power in Moscow had remained
in the hands of the boyar government and the Polish commanders, who con-
tinued their efforts to get the Polish prince installed as Russian tsar. Germo-
gen’s opposition cost him dear, as he was incarcerated in the Kremlin, where
he died in February 1612 of old age and exposure. Seven months later Moscow
was recaptured by a mixed Russian force consisting of the armies of different
military and political leaders. (See also Chapter 30.) A national council was
convened, and after a long struggle between the various interested parties,
Mikhail Romanov was elected as the new tsar in February 1613.
After Germogen’s death the see of Moscow remained vacant until Filaret
was released by his Polish captors in 1619. He was then installed as patriarch of
Moscow and All Russia, which resulted in the unique constellation of Church
and state in Russia being headed by father and son, a situation which lasted
until Filaret’s death in 1633. Laws in this period were promulgated by tsar and
patriarch together, both being designated as “sovereign lord” (velikii gosudar’).
There is general agreement that from 1619 to 1633 Filaret was the actual ruler
of Russia. If he was a consummate and unprincipled opportunist, he was also
a perspicacious and adroit politician, forceful when necessary. As patriarch,
he organized the management of the vast patriarchal estates according to the
model of a small state, with its own civil servants, departments (prikazy), etc.
He was succeeded by Ioasaf, archbishop of Pskov (1634–1640), who was de-
void of political ambitions but highly regarded by the tsar, who was a deeply
religious person himself.
Mikhail Romanov was succeeded in 1645 by his son Aleksei, who was 16 years
old. By that time the Romanov dynasty could not yet be regarded as safely in
the saddle; the dominant position the great boyar clans had enjoyed during the
Time of Troubles had not suddenly disappeared. At the same time the much
larger contingent of minor nobles, the backbone of the Muscovy state, contin-
ued to be a major force, and the common people of Moscow, the chern’ (the
‘black’ people), had shown itself to be a highly volatile but at times decisive fac-
tor in the country’s politics. Under those circumstances a young and inexperi-
enced tsar had to depend on solid and influential advisors. Initially, these came
from the higher aristocracy; patriarch Iosif, Ioasaf’s successor since 1640, oc-
cupied himself mainly with the preparation of comprehensive church reforms.
Tsar Aleksei already in 1646 had made the acquaintance of a charismat-
ic and energetic monk, Nikon, the abbot of a minor monastery. The young
tsar was deeply impressed by Nikon and had him appointed as abbot of the
Novospasskii monastery in the capital, and then, in 1648, as metropolitan of
Novgorod. Upon the death of patriarch Iosif in 1652 Nikon became patriarch
and simultaneously the most influential councillor of the tsar. Shortly before
his elevation, Nikon had insisted on having the remains of metropolitan Filipp,
murdered on the orders of Ivan iv, transferred from the remote Solovetskii
monastery to the Uspenskii cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin as a sign of tsar-
ist repentance before the Church. In 1653 Nikon received the title of “sovereign
lord” (velikii gosudar’), as it had been enjoyed by his predecessor F ilaret until
1633. For several years Nikon exercized great influence over the tsar and was
virtually co-ruler of the country, acting as de facto regent when the tsar was en-
gaged in military campaigns. During these years Nikon introduced important
reforms in the liturgy of the Russian Church, as well as a modernization of
church texts. These reforms evoked strong opposition from more conservative
clergy members and were then the cause of the Great Schism in the R ussian
Church (the Raskol), and the emergence of the Old Believers (1653–1656).
Nikon’s reforms were supported by tsar Aleksei, and the schism of the Old Be-
lievers therefore assumed the character of sedition, leading to violent reprisals.
In the long run, however, Nikon’s imperious behaviour and arrogance antago-
nized not only the nobles and many church dignitaries, but ultimately the tsar
himself too. A church court was convened which deprived Nikon of the patri-
archate in 1660. Nikon continued his protests and then in 1666–1667 a church
council presided over by the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch demoted
Nikon to the rank of a simple monk, while at the same time approving the
reforms he had introduced. Also at this council, most of the decisions taken a
century ago at the Stoglav council (1551) were declared to be erroneous.5
5 Some of the decisions of the 1666–1667 council can be found in Beneshevich ii, 78–88.
966 chapter 39
The general pattern of the relations between the Russian Church and the
state was that wherever the viewpoints of the two diverged the secular ruler
would have his way, although the Church was not a helpless victim of the
whims of the tsar; a spirited defence, usually on theological grounds, could be
successful in swaying the secular power. The ruler, on the other hand, felt free
to engage church leaders in discussions about religion and impose his views.
In the above survey, attention was directed primarily at the way relations
between the Church and the Russian state took shape. Another perspective
would be to look at developments from the point of view of the history of
ideas.6 The old Byzantine idea of the “symphony” between the two (itself sub-
ject of course to historical permutations) assumed a peculiar form in Russia
(as discussed in Chapter 21), and in later years theories such as the “Third
Rome”, the ascetic views of the nestiazhateli, the ideas of Nikon concerning
the superior nature of the Church as compared to the state, all played a role
in the tensions between the two parties. However, a realistic appraisal of what
actually happened would lead to the conclusion that, no matter what church
leaderswould put forward, the state’s attitude would be determined by a prag-
matic estimate of the usefulness of the Church and its institutions to the inter-
ests of the state. A thousand years of Russian history suggest the validity of this
appraisal, without exception.
The Organization of the Church
The main changes in the organization of the Church during the reign of
Ivan iii and Vasilii iii were the expansion of the number of eparchies, as new
territories were added to the traditional Russian lands.7 At the same time one
has to keep in mind that a large slice of what had constituted Kievan Russia
had become part of the Polish-Lithuanian state. Orthodoxy continued to be
the dominant religion of the ethnic Russian populations in these Western ter-
ritories, but for much of the time a separate church organization, directly sub-
ordinate to the Constantinople patriarch, was in operation. The history of the
relationships between the Russian Church under the Moscow metropolitan
and the Russian Church in the Polish-Lithuanian territories is very complicated
6 An extensive and erudite overview, from the perspective of inherent limits to the power of
the tsar, by V. Val’denberg, Drevnerusskie ucheniia o predelakh tsarskoi vlasti, Petrograd, 1916.
7 Also, the vast eparchy of Rostov, which covered most of the Eastern part of Muscovy and
which counted a considerable non-Russian and pagan population, was raised to the rank of
an archdiocese.
and of little or no relevance to our present topic. The most important organi-
zational change was the establishment of the Moscow patriarchate during the
reign of Boris Godunov (see below).
Many matters concerning the internal organization of the Church were
regulated, at least partly, by the Stoglav.8 There were chapters on archpriests
(protopopy, Ch. 29), ordinary priests (ruzhnye popy, from ruga, “stipend”) and
deacons (Ch. 30), internal supervision of the clergy by archpriests and priestly
elders (starosty popovskie, Chs. 34–35), monasteries (Ch. 49), archimandrites
and abbots (Ch. 50), church courts and their activities (Chs. 53–69), various
charitable activities of the Church (Chs. 70–73),9 the position of widowed
priests (Chs. 77–81), the building of new, and the fate of derelict churches
(Chs. 84–85), the election of archimandrites and abbots (Ch. 86). The last
Chapter 101 of the Stoglav was explicitly in the form of a joint decree by the
tsar and the Holy Council and concerned the question of ecclesiastical lands.
The Patriarchate
Since its founding at the end of the 10th century, the Russian Church had func-
tioned as a metropolitanate under the patriarch of Constantinople, who ap-
pointed the metropolitan of Kiev. With a few exceptions, the appointees were
Greek bishops. The patriarch of Constantinople was the highest in rank and
honour among the patriarchs of the Oriental Church. The Western Church
had occasionally applied the title of patriarch of the West to the pope him-
self, although the latter’s supreme position, at least in honour, in the universal
Church had never been contested.10 It had even been confirmed in the law of
the Roman and Byzantine Empire, where the Corpus Iuris stated that the pope
of Rome was the first among all priests, followed by the archbishop of Constan-
tinople.11 The other patriarchs of the Oriental Church were those of Alexandria,
Antioch and Jerusalem.12 Patriarchs possessed important powers of canon law
8 See also I.D. Beliaev, Lektsii po istorii russkogo zakonodatel’stva, Moskva, 2011 (3rd ed.,
Moskva, 1888), 668–676.
9 In Chapter 21 we have pointed out that the welfare duties which in modern states are usu-
ally discharged by the state, such as looking after the poor and disabled, beggars, orphans,
etc., had, as in the West, traditionally been left to the Church.
10 The Church of Rome has nowadays officially abandoned the use of the title of patriarch
of the West. The Latin Church still bestows the title of patriarch on particular bishops, but
purely as a matter of honour.
11 Novellae 131, Ch. 2.
12 The four patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem are regarded
as the older or senior ones, to distinguish them from more recent patriarchates which
emerged in later centuries. In the view of the Eastern Church, these four p atriarchates,
968 chapter 39
in their own jurisdictions. As explained in Chapter 21, the respective spheres

of secular and canon (church) law overlapped to a considerable extent in the
Eastern Church, on account of the theory of Symphonia of Church and state.
When the regions covered by the patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and
Jerusalem were overrun by Islam, Constantinople remained as the only East-
ern patriarchate with significant powers extending into the secular sphere.
As the Muscovy state grew in power and self-assurance while the Byzantine
empire gradually and fatally declined, relations between the churches of Con-
stantinople and Moscow shifted accordingly. In its death throes, Byzantium
turned to the Church of Rome for support, but this simultaneously caused un-
rest among Russian churchmen. In 1448, just a few years before Constantinople
was overrun by the Turks, the Russian bishops elected one of their own, Iona,
bishop of Riazan’, as the new metropolitan. This election had been necessitated
by the deposition and arrest of his predecessor, Isidor, who had accepted the
Florentine Union of 1439, re-establishing the unity of the Eastern and Western
churches.13 The election of Iona as “metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia”
has been regarded as the birth of the autocephalous Russian Church. How-
ever, the price paid for independence from Constantinople was a schism in the
Russian Orthodox Church, because the patriarch in Constantinople appointed
his own metropolitan, with the title of “metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia”,
for the orthodox population of the territory controlled by the Lithuanian grand
princes, i.e. most of Western and Southern Russia.14
Autocephaly did not mean that the Russian Church had broken away com-
pletely from the patriarch in Constantinople; its main consequence was that
it could appoint its metropolitan independently. The inevitable corollary was
the increased influence of the occupant of the Moscow throne on the affairs
of the Church.15 Later on, the election of the patriarch became in fact his
appointment by the tsar.
together with Rome as the patriarchate of the West, constituted the Pentarchy. Their
eminent position was based on the fact that all of them had been founded by one of the
apostles (and the position of St. Peter by Christ himself) and that they had been the major
centres of the Christian Church in the first centuries of its existence.
13 For a full account, see E.V. Beliakova, “Ob uchrezhdenii avtokefalii russkoi tserkvi”,
V.T. Pashuto (ed.), Rossiia na putiakh tsentralizatsii. Sbornik statei, Moskva, 1982, 152–156.
14 Cf. R.G. Skrynnikov, Krest i korona. Tserkov’ i gosudarstvo na Rusi ix–xvii vv., Sankt-Peterburg,
2000, 114–116. More on the complicated question of the metropolitans’ titles: A.I. Pliguzov,
“O titule «mitropolit kievskii i vseia Rusi», V.I. Buganov (ed.), Russkii feodal’nyi arkhiv V,
Moskva, 1992, 1034–1042.
15 This is also pointed out by G.V. Vernadskii in “Tserkov’ i gosudarstvo v sisteme Sobornogo
Ulozheniia 1649 goda”, in P.A. Sorokin, N.P. Poltoratskii (eds.), Na temy russkie i obshchie.
Sbornik statei i materialov v chest’ Prof. N.F. Timasheva, New York, 1965, 79–94, at 82.
The situation following the establishment of autocephaly of the Moscow

Church remained extremely confused for a long time, but ultimately a much
weakened Constantinople patriarchate remained, together with a Moscow
metropolitanate as the main church agency in a vigorous and dynamic state,
where it also served as the theological articulator of the state’s basic political
aspirations.
During the long and often erratic reign of Ivan iv, Church-state relations
in Muscovy were often disturbed. Under his son and successor, the pious and
ineffectual Fedor, the time was ripe for a new move in the relationship with
Constantinople. For Boris Godunov, Fedor’s brother-in-law (shurin, brother of
Fedor’s wife Irina) and the actual ruler of Russia at the time, elevation of the
Moscow metropolitanate to a patriarchate was an important move to enhance
the international prestige of Muscovy, as well as to bolster Boris’ precarious
domestic position. (Godunov had succeeded in having his protégé Iov (Job) in-
stalled as metropolitan of Moscow.) He achieved his goal by having the impov-
erished patriarch of Constantinople travel to Moscow, where he was kept for
many months as a prisoner, albeit in luxurious circumstances, offered money
and then threatened, until he finally gave in. After several years, in 1589, hav-
ing secured the approval of the other Eastern patriarchs, the patriarch of Con-
stantinople returned to Moscow for the solemn installation of Iov as the first
patriarch of Moscow, and the fifth in rank after the other four patriarchs. Iov’s
patriarchal dignity was confirmed by the tsar’s charter, in which the theory of
Moscow as the Third Rome was officially expressed for the first time. (It had
been current already during the reign of Ivan iv.)16
Together with the establishment of the Moscow patriarchate, the entire
organization of the Russian Church was upgraded. The archbishops of

Novgorod and Rostov were promoted to the rank of metropolitan, as were
the bishops of Kazan’ and Krutitsy.17 Six other bishops became archbishops,
among them the bishop of Pskov and Velikie Luki, and six new eparchies were
founded.
In the course of time the patriarchate had acquired enormous holdings of
land, including a number of towns as well as monasteries. Under patriarch
16 See Skrynnikov, op. cit., 316–326 and also R.G. Skrynnikov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov’ na Rusi
xiv–xvi vv. Podvizhniki russkoi tserkvi, Novosibirsk, 1991, 345–363.
17 The eparchy of Sarai, founded in the middle of the 13th century in the heart of the Golden
Horde, had been moved to Moscow when Mongol-Tatar dominance had come to an end;
in the Stoglav its bishop appeared as vladyka sarskii i podonskii. Later on he is usually
referred to as the bishop (and then metropolitan) krutitskii i podonskii and, as the senior
churchman in Moscow after the patriarch, he served as the latter’s deputy; cf. I.S. Shtamm,
rz ii, 472.
970 chapter 39
F ilaret (1619–1633) the patriarchal land and its dependent population were
granted a special status by tsar Michael in 1625, converting it into an autono-
mous entity within the state of Muscovy.
The politico-legal status of Filaret, approaching that of the tsar himself,
was not attained by his successors, although Nikon, who served as patriarch
from 1652 to 1667, came close to it. In the Ulozhenie, the patriarch was still
granted an exceptional position in respect of that of other members of the
clergy.
The Ulozhenie provided a precise tool for determining the relative posi-
tion of all members of society by its detailed rules on dishonour payments.18
The entire Ch. 2 was devoted to the protection of the tsar’s honour; his fam-
ily members were not mentioned, but were presumably covered by the same
rules. Dishonouring other persons was punished by fines and was the subject
of arts. 27–100 of Ch. 10; further rules dealt specifically with various ways in
which a judge or judicial officer could suffer dishonour. The patriarch was the
first and most important person in the catalogue of Ch. 10. Dishonouring the
patriarch entailed the most serious sanctions, including corporal punishment
or being reduced to the status of a slave. All other church dignitaries were
protected against dishonour by private fines, i.e. fines payable not to the state
but to the person insulted. At the top of the list were the metropolitans (400
rubles), archbishops (300 rubles) and bishops (200 rubles); they were followed
by the archimandrites of the Troitse-Sergiev monastery (100 rubles), the Nativ-
ity monastery in Vladimir (90 rubles) and the Chudov monastery in Moscow
(80 rubles). Then came a list of 46 archimandrites and abbots, their dishonour
fees descending from 70 to 10 rubles. The sequence of the monasteries was not
based on chronological seniority; although the oldest Novgorod monastery
(the Iur’ev or George’s monastery) was in fifth place, the Antoniev monastery
in Novgorod, almost equally old, occupied only the 24th place (they were both
from the beginning of the 12th century). Man’kov made the interesting sug-
gestion that the sequence actually reflected the monastery’s services to the
state; wealthy monasteries that had supplied ‘loans’ to the state in the past and
might possibly be in a position to do so again in the future received some kind
of compensation through the higher dishonour fees assigned to their abbots
and other main clergymen.19
18 In Chapter 36, on Civil Law: Ownership, the section on delicts (torts), it has been pointed
out that the vaguely defined and therefore very broad concept of dishonour sat astride
civil and criminal law.
19 Man’kov in A.G. Man’kov (ed.), Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 goda. Tekst. Kommentarii, Lenin-
grad, 1987, 192.
Church Officials
From its inception, the Russian Church had been entrusted with general judi-
cial tasks, and this implied that, along with judges, there had to be support-
ing staff: court clerks, other administrative officers, bailiffs, constables, and
so on. They have been mentioned already in the section on church courts in
Chapter 21.
In later years, with the growth of ecclesiastical landowning, an entire corps
of church officials employed in the management of church or monasterial es-
tates arose. As mentioned elsewhere, the volume of monasterial and church
estates embraced something like a third of the entire surface of the Muscovy
state. The owners of these estates acted as their economic managers, while the
local bishop was to a considerable extent in charge of their government. This
required the setting-up of a parallel local government organization. Recent
studies, mostly of unpublished archival materials, have thrown more light on
this topic.20
Church lands within an eparchy could be divided into regions with their
own lieutenants (namestniki), assisted by stewards (tiuny) recruited from the
minor nobility (deti boiarskie). Their main responsibility was the collection of
various church taxes and general local government duties. The system was old-
fashioned and conservative, as compared with secular government. For their
remuneration these officials continued to rely on kormlenie (local contribu-
tions), even after kormlenie had become obsolete in general local government
(see Chapter 33).
The complicated and equally old-fashioned system of church taxes was
administered by different kinds of officials such as popovskie starosty (elected
priestly elders) and tithe officers (desiatinniki), reporting to higher church rev-
enue officials (desiatil’niki). Zakazchiki were priests in charge of supervising
marriage law and collecting taxes on marriage licenses (venechnye poshliny).
Lay persons could be elected as church elders (tserkovnye starosty) and would
supervise the building of churches, charitable activities, etc.
Monasteries
After the abbot (archimandrite), the most important persons in the monas-
tery were, in this order, the cellarer (kelar’, the manager of the monasterial
estates), the treasurer (kaznachei), and the elders (sobornye startsy). They were
20 My principal source is M.S. Cherkasova, “K izucheniiu tserkovno-administrativnykh i

territorial’nykh struktur na Russkom Severe v xvi – nachale xviii v.”, A.P. Pavlov (ed.),
Gosudarstvo i obshchestvo v Rossii xv – nachala xx veka. Sbornik statei pamiati Nikolaia
Evgen’evicha Nosova, Sankt-Peterburg, 2007, 206–223.
972 chapter 39
all included in the catalogue of dishonour payments of arts. 32–80 of Ch. 10 of

the Ulozhenie.
Initially, archimandrite was the honorific title conceded to the abbot (igu-
men) of the most important or most prestigious monastery of the town; in
Novgorod, the archimandrite of the Iur’ev monastery was in charge of manag-
ing the extensive monasterial estates and his appointment was in the hands
of the urban elite. Later on, in some of the major towns (Moscow, Novgorod,
Riazan’) other abbots might also receive the title of archimandrite. In the long
list of 49 important abbots in arts. 32–80 of Ch. 10 of the Ulozhenie, 25 were
ranked as archimandrites.
The abbots of the Troitse-Sergiev monastery and a few other leading mon-
asteries, constituting the pool from which the patriarch (metropolitan) and
other important (arch)bishops were selected, occupied positions of national
significance and the grand prince (tsar) was undoubtedly involved in their
appointment. The election of other abbots was in principle a matter for the
fraternity of the monastery concerned, but the local bishop and a secular per-
sonality, such as an apanage prince, would certainly be influential.
Church Legislation
What has been said above about Church-state relations in Muscovy is illus-
trated and concretized by its expression in church legislation. Such legislation
could refer to legislation emanating, wholly or in part, from church authorities,
or to legislation regulating matters concerning the Church.
Within the first category, three sub-groups can be distinguished accord-
ing to the legislative agency involved: legislation by the church council, leg-
islation by the metropolitan (patriarch) or an individual (arch)bishop, and
legislationby Church and state together. The second category (legislation re-
garding church matters) partly overlaps the first one, because a major part of
such legislation is also church legislation in the first sense (i.e. it emanated, at
least in part, from church authorities). The remainder would consist of state
legislation affecting the Church. The interwovenness of Church and state was
demonstrated effectively by one of the most important legislative acts of the
period, the Code (Sudebnik) of Ivan iv of 1550, which was enacted by the tsar,
together with his brothers and boyars, but submitted for confirmation to the
Church Council the next year (see also Chapter 24).21
21 The Code of Ivan iii of 1497 contained a similar pronouncement at its beginning, that
it had been compiled by the grand prince together with his children and his boyars, but
The church council (“Holy Council”, osviashchennyi sobor) consisted of the

metropolitan (later: the patriarch), the archbishop(s) and bishops, and could
also include other church leaders, such as abbots of monasteries (“the entire
Holy Council”, ves’ osviashchennyi sobor). Much of its regulatory activity would
concern internal church questions, such as doctrine, liturgy, etc., and as such
is of little relevance to general legal history. But certain decisions of the church
council directly affected the law of secular society. Such council decisions (so-
bornye prigovory) were especially frequent during the reign of Ivan iv and in
the following Time of Troubles.
An early and important example was the council decision of 15 Septem-
ber 1550 which prohibited the establishment of new monastic immunities
(slobody).22 Such slobody eroded the urban tax base and the new restrictive
policy in this respect was an ecclesiastical concession to the government of
Adashev, which was contemplating much more drastic measures to counter-
act the accumulation of wealth by the Church and the monasteries. The de-
cision was incorporated the following year in the Stoglav (art. 98). The same
government policies were reflected in a council decision of 1 May 1551 which
contained various measures to curb the acquisition of real property by bish-
ops and monasteries.23 The Stoglav itself, the most important monument of
church law of the era, was also in the form of a decision of the Holy Council, in
which the tsar was very much involved (see Chapter 25).
Secular legislation by the metropolitan on matters covered by ecclesi-
astical jurisdiction is encountered occasionally in questions of secondary
importance.24
Of much greater prominence was joint legislation by Church and state to-
gether. The most weighty and solemn decisions were clothed in the form of
decrees of the Land Assembly (Zemskii Sobor), in which the Church Coun-
cil participated along with the tsar, boyars and representatives of the lower
nobility and the leading sections of the urban population (see Chapters 28,
on the Land Assembly, and 31, on the Tsar’s Government). Apart from these
there were numerous decrees adopted by the tsar, along with his boyars and
no church approval had apparently been sought. The Ulozhenie of 1649 offered a lengthy
introduction outlining the drafting procedure, in which church dignitaries were involved
at most stages, but omitted an unambiguous mention that the draft had been accepted
and enacted.
22 zarg, No. 3, 30; also prp iv, 580–581.
23 zarg, No. 5, 31–32; also prp iv, 523–524, 537. These decisions were included in the Com-
posite Code of 1589 (Ch. 13, art. 125, and Ch. 21, arts. 123–124).
24 Such as a decree of the metropolitan on the form of last wills, of 14 March 1561, zarg,
No. 35, 53–54.
974 chapter 39
the Church Council;25 occasionally, the Church Council would legislate in con-
junction with the boyars.26
From 1609 to 1633 most decrees of tsar Mikhail Romanov were issued to-
gether with patriarch Filaret (his father).27
Church law proper, i.e. law which regulated the organization and activities
of the Church, can be found (as indicated above) in sources emanating from
the Church alone, but also in state legislation and in joint Church-state leg-
islation. Many aspects of church law would be of little interest to the state,
which therefore would not involve itself in questions of theological doctrine,
liturgy, etc. The canon law of the Russian Church of the Muscovy era consisted
of a mass of documents of the most diverse provenance (such as biblical texts,
writings of church fathers, decisions of ecumenical church councils), most of
them included at one time or another in various kormchie (see the section on
this topic in Chapter 2, on Sources) or in the Merilo Pravednoe (“Just Measure”,
see the section in the same Chapter).28
The Stoglav itself belongs in this category, a ramshackle accumulation of
rules and regulations, taken from all kinds of sources, and promulgated by
the Holy Council, closely monitored by the tsar, as a single code of law for the
Church.
The secular legislation affecting the Russian Church was overwhelmingly
concerned with the question of landowning. The monasteries, as mentioned
before, were collectively the largest landowners after the tsar himself;29 more-
over, the metropolitanate, the archbishop of Novgorod and other bishops also
25 E.g. zarg, No. 40, 57–59, of 15 January 1580 (discussed in Chapter 36, on Ownership, sec-
tion on Church Lands); zarg, No. 53, 72–73, of 12 June 1604, on recruiting troops from all
estates, including those owned by the Church, to fight (the First) Pseudo-Dimitrii; zarg,
No. 57, 75–76, of 9 March 1607, forbidding peasants to leave their masters (on St. George’s
Day, see Chapter 35).
26 See for instance zarg, No. 37, 56, of 9 October 1572, restricting transactions concerning
ancestral estates (incorporated in the Composite Code of 1589, Ch. 14, art. 163).
27 Among these joint decrees there were also several which were issued together with the
Church Council, boyars, and other officials, see zarg, Nos. 87, 89 and 93, pp. 94–96, 98–100,
from the years 1619–1620, concerning various subjects.
28 Beneshevich ii, has a few examples, such as decrees on the election of bishops, on the
appointment of priests and deacons, and on the issuing of letters of election and appoint-
ment (blagoslovennye and stavlennye gramoty), 26–52.
29 A third of the Russian territory was owned by monasteries by the end of the 15th century,
according to V.A. Bochkarev, Stoglav i istoriia Sobora 1551 g.: istoriko-kanonisticheskii ocherk,
Iukhnev, 1906, 7 (quoted from T. Iu. Ampleeva, “Stoglav: istoriia sozdaniia i znachenie dlia
razvitiia russkogo prava”, PRoP iii/2, 6–25, at 22).
owned vast tracts of land. The controversial character, in the eyes of the state,
of this distribution of wealth continued to be a major factor in the domestic
policies of Muscovy, from the times of Ivan iii up to the reign of Peter the
Great. It is discussed in several foregoing chapters (“The Reforms of Ivan iv” in
the Chapter 23; Chapter 24, on the Code of 1550; the section on “Church Lands”
in Chapter 36, on Ownership).
Church Jurisdiction
The Codes of 1497 and 1550 had briefly recognized the validity of the ancient
system of attribution of jurisdiction by providing that ‘church people’ (see
Chapter 21 for an explanation) were subject to church jurisdiction (arts. 59
and 91 resp.). The Ulozhenie then regulated this question in greater detail. But
before going into this, a special issue complicating the matter had better be
examined first.
The Abolition of Immunities in 1550

In the past, when princes granted land to monasteries (and sometimes to other
landowners) the grants were often accompanied by immunities. Such privileg-
es freed the owner of certain fiscal burdens, of ordinary jurisdiction, or of both.
Charters granting permanent immunity from certain taxes30 were known as
tarkhannye (gramoty), immunity charters concerning jurisdiction as nesudimye
(gramoty). Charters granting both kinds of immunity (tarkhanno-nesudimye
gramoty) were quite common. Such charters would spell out the scope of the
immunity: the types of taxation and the types of civil actions and criminal
cases covered by the immunity. Serious criminal cases always remained within
the prince’s jurisdiction. Civil cases between persons covered by the immu-
nity (such as ‘church people’) and outsiders were submitted to a mixed court.
Jurisdiction, such as delegated by the immunity, was to be organized by the
beneficiary of the immunity.31
Inevitably, the custom of granting judicial immunities to numerous monas-
teries and other church institutions took a large bite out of the main two-track
judicial system of secular and church courts. Once Russia had been united
under a single ruler, the entire immunity structure (affecting both taxation
30 Charters granting fiscal immunity for a limited period were known as l’gotnye gramoty;
see also Chapter 11.
31 A convenient overview of the subject in S.B. Veselovskii, Feodal’noe zemlevladenie v Severo-
Vostochnoi Rusi, Moskva/Leningrad, 1947, 110–145.
976 chapter 39
and jurisdiction) was increasingly considered by the grand prince (the tsar) to
be onerous and obsolete. A major step to correct a system regarded as unbal-
anced, was taken in 1550 when the last sentence of art. 43 of the Code stated:
“Immunity charters [tarkhannye] will not be issued to anybody in the future,
and old immunity charters will be taken away from everybody.” The question
of how this laconic legislative statement affected immunities granted to eccle-
siastical entities obviously depended on the meaning attributed in this case to
the term tarkhannye. If it had also included judicial immunity charters (nesudi-
mye or tarkhanno-nesudimye), it would have brought about a major reduction
of church jurisdiction. The absence of this result can then be explained by the
prompt and effective opposition by the Church, embodied in the Stoglav, pro-
mulgated a year later. This, for instance, seems to be the view of S.I. Shtamm,
who remarked that art. 43 of the Code of 1550 had been declared unlawful by
Chapters 60–65 of the Stoglav (devoted to church courts).32
A more nuanced version of this view was advocated by B.A. Romanov, who
pointed in particular to Ch. 67 of the Stoglav, entitled “On nesudimye gramoty”,
which provided that the granting of immunity charters to monasteries, in
which they were given immunity from the jurisdiction of the (local) bishop,
“had been given contrary to holy regulations” and that such charters were not
to be issued in future.33 The meaning of art. 43 of the Code of 1550 was there-
fore, according to Romanov, to restore the original jurisdiction of the bishop
over the monasteries and their personnel and that tarkhannye gramoty in
art. 43 referred only to those charters which had taken away this jurisdiction
and given it to the archimandrites and abbots of the monasteries concerned.
A third interpretation of the last sentence of art. 43 was suggested by A.G.
Poliak, who pointed out that tarkhannye in this provision referred only to fis-
cal immunity, not to judicial immunity (nesudimye gramoty), in other words,
art. 43 abolished only the former and not the latter.34 This explanation, how-
ever, ignores the unmistakable parallels between the two provisions (art. 43
of the 1550 Code and Ch. 67 of the Stoglav of 1551) and the reference which
Ch. 67 made to art. 43 (as had been pointed out by Romanov). The Romanov
view therefore appears to be the most acceptable.
Church Courts in the Ulozhenie of 1649

Church jurisdiction was an important source of income to the Church and,
together with the permanently contentious question of ecclesiastical land
32 rz ii, 458.
33 In Grekov (ed.), Sudebniki xxvi vekov, Moskva/Leningrad, 1952, 222.
34 prp iv, 287–289.
ownership, it continued to be a major government concern in the century fol-

lowing the Code of 1550 and the Stoglav. But while there was a considerable
volume of legislation concerning ecclesiastical land ownership during the cen-
tury preceding the Ulozhenie of 1649, the system of court jurisdiction received
less attention. Then the Ulozhenie itself introduced several significant amend-
ments, most of them resulting in curtailing the scope of activity of church
courts. Two chapters were specifically dedicated to these reforms, Ch. 12 on the
Court for the Officials and Peasants of the Patriarch, and Ch. 13 on the Monas-
tery Department. Before 1649, civil as well as criminal cases (barring homicide
and robbery) involving church people were handled, in principle, by the bish-
op’s court, while archimandrites and abbots retained jurisdiction over monks
and monasterial personnel (servitors and peasants). Certain supervisory pow-
ers were exercized by the court of the patriarch. The Great Palace Department
(Prikaz bol’shogo dvortsa) handled claims against monasteries which enjoyed
judicial immunity from episcopal jurisdiction and also major cases against
church and monasterial dignitaries and officials. There was a special section
in the Great Palace Department, entrusted with all such cases, known as the
Monastery Department (Monastyrskii prikaz).35
Chapter 13 of the Ulozhenie elevated the Monastery Department to an inde-
pendent prikaz which became the general court in secular cases concerning all
church personnel (except the patriarch himself); it put an end therefore to al-
most all judicial immunities enjoyed by monasteries and other church entities.
Metropolitans, bishops and abbots who had previously enjoyed personal
immunity and could only be tried by the tsar himself, were treated henceforth
like any other person belonging to the category of “church people”.36 Only
“spriritual matters” (dukhovnye dela) remained within the exclusive jurisdic-
tion of church officials. The Monastery Department was also the court for
caseswhere only one of the parties was subject to church jurisdiction.
But as could be expected in an autocratic regime, consistency was lack-
ing. Two years later, on 6 February 1651, tsar Aleksei granted full jurisdiction
to the Novgorod metropolitan Nikon, the future patriarch, who at that time
was very influential with the young tsar; the jurisdiction concerned all cases
(apart from the most serious crimes) involving Nikon’s dependent servitors
and peasants.
35 On the Great Palace Department, see D.V. Liseitsev, N.M. Rogozhin, Iu.M. Eskin, Prikazy
Moskovskogo gosudarstva xvi–xvii vv., Slovar’-spravochnik, Moskva/Sankt-Peterburg, 37–
38. On the Monastery Department, id., 97.
36 Man’kov in Man’kov (ed.), Sobornoe Ulozhenie, 244.
978 chapter 39
The short Chapter 12 on the judicial process involving patriarchal person-

nel had its origin in the special status granted to the patriarchal estates and
their dependent populations, together with the numerous officials serving the
patriarch. A decree of 20 May 1625 of tsar Mikhail, issued at the request of his
father, the patriarch Filaret, had expanded the rights of the patriarch in the gov-
ernment and court system of the patriarchal lands and its inhabitants. Art. 1 of
Ch. 12 of the Ulozhenie specifically referred to this development and stated that
things would be different in future. The patriarchal jurisdiction remained as it
was, but further appeals could be taken to the tsar and “all the boyars”.37
The general tenor of the reforms of the Ulozhenie of 1649 with respect to
the Church was a reduction of its privileged position on several fronts: land
ownership and fiscal and judicial immunities. Many of the reforms, however,
were short-lived. Judicial immunities continued to be granted by the tsar, as
mentioned above.38 The great Moscow Church Council of 1667, presided over
by the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, categorically exempted all church
people from being judged by laymen, and the tsar confirmed this decree on 17
July 1667.39 The Monastery Department, having lost most of its powers, was
dissolved in 1677.
The most successful part, from the government point of view, of the reforms
of the Ulozhenie with regard to the position of the Church was the abolition
of the urban immunities, the slobody (see art. 1 of Ch. 19 and the section on
posadskie liudi in Chapter 35). This reform, strongly advocated by the taxpay-
ing urban population, was not specifically directed against the Church, but as
most slobody were attached to churches or monasteries, the Church was the
main victim.
The relative success of the Church’s resistance to the reforms can be ex-
plained, according to Man’kov, by the wealth of patriarchal, monasterial and
other ecclesiastical landholdings, which put the Church in a strong position as
the preferred provider of credit to a state permanently short of money.40
Church Courts in the Stoglav

The format of the Stoglav, as explained in Chapter 25, was a series of authorita-
tive replies by the Church Council to 37 questions posed by Ivan iv in 1551 (the
questions appeared in Ch. 5 of the Stoglav). From the point of view of general
37 As noted by Man’kov, op. cit., 241, art. 1 repeated almost verbatim an earlier decree of
23 July 1641, zarg, No. 287/3, at 197–198.
38 More examples in Man’kov, op. cit., 244.
39 Ibid.; text of the relevant passage in the Council decree in Beneshevich ii, 84.
40 Man’kov, op. cit., 244.
legal history, the answers to questions 7 (“concerning church courts”) and 14

(“concerning judicial immunities”), contained in Chapters 53–69, were the
most important. They represented a major step in the long struggle between
Church and state regarding the Church’s material and financial position and,
by the same token, its independence vis-à-vis the state. They were not meant,
at least primarily, to codify church law on these points, although they inevita-
bly assumed such a role in the following century. The position of the Church
was defended in a forceful and assertive manner. The Council members used
their superior learning to bombard the tsar with references to, and quotations
from Scripture, decrees of universal (ecumenical) church councils and of Byz-
antine emperors, writings of Byzantine and Russian church fathers, etc., most
of them taken from the Kormchaia. Most chapters are long-winded, Ch. 53,
the first one of the series, being one of the shortest. It set out the two general
principles underlying the following provisions, that secular judges should not
try clergy and persons belonging to the Church, and that appropriating church
property was a heinous crime.
On church courts, Ch. 67 (“Concerning judicial immunity charters”) is the
most informative. The bishop was recognized and to some extent restored as
the basic judicial authority. He was competent in all cases concerning “church
people”, including archimandrites and abbots (abbesses), who used to be ex-
empt from episcopal jurisdiction, as mentioned in the foregoing section. The
bishop was to conduct cases soborne, i.e. with the participation of archiman-
drites and abbots.41 His jurisdiction included ecclesiastical (dukhovnye, “spiri-
tual”, or grekhovye, “concerning sin”),42 as well as secular (svetskie or mirskie)
cases.43 In secular cases the bishop could and often would delegate his judi-
cial powers to appointed officials, such as church boyars, and in less impor-
tant cases to his tithe collectors (desiatinniki). Archimandrites and abbots
retained jurisdiction over monks and other persons attached to monasteries,
but only in secular cases, criminal as well as civil. They tried cases together
with elected church elders (sobornye startsy). The most serious criminal cases
(homicide and robbery) remained completely outside church jurisdiction and
41 I.S. Shtamm, in V.S. Nersesiants (ed.), Razvitie russkogo prava v xv – pervoi polovine xvii v.,
Moskva, 1986, 216; id., rz ii, 471.
42 “Spiritual matters” appears to refer to questions regulated only by canon law, in particular
to violations of rules, irrelevant to secular authority, such as those concerning fasting or
religious rites.
43 One of the few authors discussing the activities of church courts, as regulated by the
Stoglav, is I.D. Beliaev, Lektsii po istorii russkogo zakonodatel’stva, Moskva, 2011 (3rd ed.,
Moskva, 1888), 666–668.
980 chapter 39
were h andled by the secular authorities (see also the section on guba courts in
Chapter 38).
An list of “church people” was included in Ch. 63, but as this was explicitly
a reiteration of the Church Statute of St. Vladimir (with considerable amend-
ments and linguistic adjustments), it did not offer significant new information.
Procedure in church courts generally followed the practice of secular courts;
see Chapters 68 and 69 of the Stoglav.
Where ecclesiastical and secular jurisdiction overlapped, especially in cases
where church people and lay people were involved, the traditional facility of
mixed courts was retained, but church people were discouraged from being in-
volved in actions before secular judges (see Chapters 55, 56 and 58). The lead-
ing principle behind this aversion was the view that laymen should not sit in
judgment over members of the clergy.
Appendices
∵
Appendix 1
Money and Measurements
The Monetary System of Medieval Russia
The basic monetary unit of Kievan Russia was the grivna.1 It is mentioned a lready
in 907 in the Primary Chronicle when Oleg demanded a tribute from the Greeks of
960.000 grivna (12 grivna for every man on his ships, counting 40 men per ship in a fleet
of 2.000 ships).2 The sum was then reduced to 12 grivna per bench, but this would still
seem to be an improbably exorbitant amount. In any case, the grivna is not mentioned
in the treaties with Byzantium of 912 and 944; amounts were expressed in zolotnik
(a gold piece, the Byzantine nomisma or bezant of about 4.3 gram of gold) and litra
(about 327 gram of silver), both terms obviously referring to Byzantine coinage.
In the rp the grivna is mentioned frequently. In the first part of the Short Pravda
(the Pravda of Iaroslav) the wergeld for killing a freeman was 40 grivna, and lower
amounts were set for all kinds of other infractions. In the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons the
fine for killing a high-ranking official of the prince was 80 grivna. The Short Pravda
mentions, along with the grivna, the nogata, the kuna and the rezana. All commenta-
tors agree that the relationship is: 1 grivna = 20 nogata = 25 kuna = 50 rezana.3 Addition-
ally, art. 42 mentions the veveritsa. This provision is the pokon virnyi, a kind of appendix
to the Short Pravda containing a schedule of fees to be paid to the virnik, the collector
of bloodwite. In the parallel provision in the Expanded Pravda (art. 9) the veveritsa is
replaced by the veksha. Commentators agree that the veveritsa/veksha was the smallest
monetary unit, but there is no agreement about its value. Nazarenko equates 60 veksha
1 Etymological dictionaries refer to Slavic and also Sanskrit griva (neck); the original meaning
of grivna would then be a gold or silver necklace.
2 The numbers themselves are not unrealistic; in the rp a 12 grivna compensation or fine oc-
curs frequently in cases of more serious violations. In his main work Antapodosis (Book 5, xv),
Liutprand of Cremona, whose stepfather had witnessed the raid himself, speaks of a fleet
in excess of one thousand ships. Cf. T.N. Dzhakson, I.G. Konovalova, A.V. Podosinov (eds.),
Drevniaia Rus’ v svete zarubezhnykh istochnikov: Khrestomatiia, T. iv, Zapadnoevropeiskie is-
tochniki, Moskva, 2010, 38; also Liutprand Kremonskii, Antapodosis. Kniga ob Ottone. Otchet o
posol’stve v Konstantinopol’ (I.V. D’iakonov, ed.), Moskva, 2006, 96–97.
3 Cf. A.V. Nazarenko, “Proiskhozhdenie drevnerusskogo denezhno-vesovogo scheta”, dgve 1994,
Moskva, 1996, 5–79, at 6; V.L. Ianin, Denezhno-vesovye sistemy domongol’skoi Rusi i ocherki
istorii denezhnoi sistemy srednevekovogo Novgoroda, Moskva, 2009, 230 (the first part of this
book is a republication of Ianin’s thesis Denezhno-vesovye sistemy domongol’skoi Rusi, Moskva,
1956, and does not take account of literature published after 1956).

984 Appendix 1
with one kuna; Z imin puts the kuna at three veveritsa.4 In the Expanded Pravda the
rezana has disappeared and is replaced by the kuna. The equation for the Expanded
Pravda is: 1 grivna = 20 nogata = 50 kuna.
Along with the ordinary grivna (also called grivna kun) there were the silver grivna
and the golden grivna. They are not mentioned in the rp, but turn up in roughly con-
temporary sources, such as the Church Statute of Iaroslav the Wise. The silver grivna
is reliably considered to equal four ordinary grivna;5 as gold was generally valued at a
12:1 rate in relation to silver, the gold grivna (apparently rarely used) should be worth
48 ordinary grivna.6
The relative values indicated above concern only the rp. Not only did relative
values of medieval Russian coinage differ between parts of the country, in particular
between the north-west and the south-east, but also over time in a single province.
According to Ianin, the Novgorod grivna was equal to about 11 grams of silver and at
the same time (1410–1420) the Novgorod ruble was used as an accounting unit, worth
about 170 grams of silver (about 15½ grivna to the ruble).7 In Pskov one ruble equalled
30 grivna and 220 den’gi.
The coinage system of medieval Russia was intimately connected with the system
of weights. For a long time the standard work on this subject was V.L. Ianin’s 1956 the-
sis on the “Monetary and weight systems of pre-Mongol Russia”, until A.V. Nazarenko
presented a comprehensive new theory in 1996. According to Nazarenko, the original
Russian grivna represented the silver equivalent in value of the basic Byzantine and
Arab gold coins of the era, the nomisma or bezant and the dinar (ca. 4,3 grams); this
resulted in a silver weight of about 51 grams for the grivna (on the basis of the 12:1 ratio
for gold to silver). Along with the Byzantine gold/silver ratio there existed a different
Arab rate of 14:1. The gold dinar being divided into 20 dirhems, a single dirhem would
then be the equivalent of 3 grams of silver; in the course of the 10th century the dirhem
as a unit of silver weight was replaced in Russia by the nogata. In this ‘Arab’ system the
grivna would be the equivalent of 60 grams of silver. The grivna currency, rooted in
international trade, also absorbed a different monetary system based on the trade in
furs, Russia’s most important export. This resulted in the strange co-existence of the
nogata and the kuna (4 nogata = 5 kuna).8
4 Nazarenko, 78; Zimin, prp I, 105, followed by T.E. Novitskaia in rz I, 428. See also Baranowski,
330–331.
5 The equation is made explicitly in the First Redaction of the 1229 treaty between Smolensk
and Riga and the Hanseatic towns, see prp ii, 58.
6 Cf. Nazarenko, 77.
7 Ianin, op.cit., 304.
8 The ratio corresponds to that between the West-European pound (408 gram) and the
Byzantine liter (327 gram), but otherwise the reader must be referred to Nazarenko for the
complicated equations.
Money and Measurements 985
Nazarenko’s complicated but comprehensive theory is not uncontested, but for the
time being it represents the best explanation of Kievan Russia’s monetary system.9
If one follows Nazarenko and proceeds from the silver equation of 1 grivna (kun) =
± 50 grams of silver, then the silver grivna (grivna serebra) would be about equal to 200
grams of silver, and the golden grivna to 2.400 grams of silver.
In the course of the 14th and 15th centuries the grivna was replaced by the ruble as
the main accounting unit. The Novgorod ruble has been mentioned above. In Moscow
1 ruble equalled 200 den’gi, while 6 den’gi made up one altyn (33,33 altyn in a ruble).
This was the system of the Code of 1497. In the Ulozhenie of 1649 one also encounters
the half-ruble (poltina) and the copeck (kopeika); there were (and still are) 100 copecks
in the ruble.
A wide-ranging survey of prices is provided by N.Ia. Aristov in his history of eco-
nomic activities in Old Russia.10 It covers wages, grain, salt, livestock, foodstuffs, fowl
and game, vegetables, hay, timber, imported wares, and metal.
Further Reading
S.N. Kisterev, “Den’gi v Novgorode na rubezhe xiv–xv vv.”, L.A. Timoshina (ed.), Tor-
govlia i predprinimatel’stvo v feodal’noi Rossii. K iubileiu professora russkoi istorii Niny
Borisovny Goliakovoi, Moskva, 1994, 59–84.
S.N. Kisterev, “Spornye voprosy nachal’noi istorii russkogo denezhnogo obrashcheniia”,
S.N. Kisterev (ed.), Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii, vyp.1, Moskva, 1997, 197–220.
Ia.N. Shchapov, Kniazheskie ustavy i tserkov’, Moskva, 1972, the section “Denezhnyi
schet ustava Iaroslav i ego svidetel’stva o vremeni vozniknoveniia i bytovaniia
ustava”, 257–278.
D.I. Prozorovskii, Moneta i ves v Rossii do kontsa xviii stoletiia, SPb., 1865; repr. 2nd ed.,
Moskva, 2012.
I.V. Shiriakov a.o. (eds.), Istoriia denezhnogo obrashcheniia v Rossii, TT.1–2, M., 2012; T.1:
Iu.P. Bokarev (ed.), Den’gi s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei.
A.V. Fomin, “Drevnerusskie denezhno-monetnye rynki v 70–80-kh godakh X v.”, dgve
1992–1993, Moskva, 1995, 63–73
9 Nazarenko’s theory was critically reviewed by S.N. Kisterev in “Spornye voprosy russkogo
denezhnogo obrashcheniia”, S.N. Kisterev (ed.), Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii, 1, Moskva, 1997,
197–220. Kisterev points to a number of weak parts of Nazarenko’s argument, but does
not really refute it and suggests that in certain aspects it would be safer to stick to Ianin’s
points of view.
10 N.Ia. Aristov, Promyshlennost’ Drevnei Rusi, Sankt-Peterburg, 1866 (reprint of 2nd ed.,
Moskva, 2011).
986 Appendix 1
Measurements
Obzha = 1.635 ha (15 desiatiny)

Desiatina = 1,09254 ha
= 2.400 sq. sazheni
= 2,7 acres
or: desiatina = 3.200 sq. sazheni
= 3,6 acres
or: desiatina = 3.600 sq. sazheni
appr. 4 acres
Half of the ‘official’ (kazennaia) desiatina was called a chetvert’ or chet’ (0.504627 ha).
Sazhen = 3 arshiny
= 2,133 m
= 7 feet
Arshin = 71,1 cm
= 4 chetverti or 16 vershki
= 28 inches
See also: Ia.N. Shchapov, “Iz istorii gorodskogo upravleniia v Drevnei Rusi. Sluzhba mer
i vesov”, Ocherki russkoi istorii, istochnikovedeniia, arkheografii, Moskva, 2004, 34–39.
APPENDIX 2
Genealogies
Rurikids
The dynasty that ruled Russia from protohistoric times until 1598, the death of tsar
Fedor, the son of Ivan iv the Terrible, is known by the name of its ancestor as the
Rurikids (Riurikovichi). The dynastic element was a factor of prime importance dur-
ing this entire period, affecting also the development of the legal system in many
ways. A brief genealogical survey is therefore relevant as an appendix to the present
study.
The pre-revolutionary literature on the Rurikids is very extensive and this survey
will be limited to aspects which have a more than minimal connection with legal de-
velopments. More extensive information can be found in numerous Russian works,
both from before and after 1917. Among the older studies, Ekzempliarskii’s work is still
of great value, based as it was on a broad study of the chronicle literature.1 It covered
the period of 1238 (the beginning of the Mongol invasions) to 1505 (the end of Pskov
independence), during which the dynastic picture was extremely complicated and
confused.
The most comprehensive treatment of the subject is by N. de Baumgarten, in two
volumes published in Rome in 1927 and 1934 by the Pontifical Institute of Oriental
Studies.2 The first volume was devoted to the early period, not covered by Ekzempliar-
skii, and the second volume to the ruling branches of the dynasty, up to the end of the
16th century. De Baumgarten supplied full references, not only to the Russian chronicle
literature, but also to non-Russian historical and genealogical sources.
A useful addition to the work of de Baumgarten was Zimin’s posthumously pub-
lished study on the formation of the Russian boyar aristocracy, offering genealogies
of non-ruling branches of Rurikid families which merged with other elements of the
higher Muscovy aristocracy.3
1 A.V. Ekzempliarskii, Velikie i udel’nye kniaz’ia Severnoi Rusi v tatarskii period c 1238 g. po 1505 g.,
Sankt-Peterburg, 1889 (I have used the Moscow 1998 edition).
2 N. de Baumgarten, Généalogies et mariages occidentaux des Rurikides russes du Xe au XIIIe siècle.
Orientalia Christiana, Vol.ix-1., Num.35, Roma, 1927; id., Généalogies des branches régnantes
des Rurikides du XIIIe au XVIe siècle. Orientalia Christiana, Vol.xxxv.-1., Num. 94, Roma, 1934.
3 A.A. Zimin, Formirovanie boiarskoi aristokratii v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine xv – pervoi treti xvi
v., Moskva, 1988.

988 APPENDIX 2
Many general works contain genealogical tables, often based on the work of de
Baumgarten.4 Older works especially have often reproduced traditional genealogies of
princely families without any serious investigation. Such family trees had often been
compiled in order to further the interests of a particular family. The scarce information
from the darkest period, the first century of Mongol-Tatar supremacy, was then not
infrequently complemented by fanciful claims. Being the descendant of a very promi-
nent prince, such as Vladimir Monomakh or, even better, of a prince canonized by the
Church, conferred additional prestige.5
The story of the first four generations is based entirely on the Primary Chronicle and
can be told in a few words. The eponymous founder of the dynasty, Rurik, entrusted
the realm to his kinsman (cousin, brother-in-law?) Oleg, to rule while Rurik’s son Igor
was young. Oleg died in 913 and was duly succeeded by Igor. Igor was killed by his en-
emies in 945 and his wife, Olga, ruled until 964, until their son Sviatoslav had reached
adulthood. Sviatoslav also met a violent death, in 972, and was succeeded first by his
son Iaropolk and after the latter had been assassinated in 978, by his son Vladimir. This
Vladimir became the ancestor of the entire Rurikid house; he accepted Christianity in
988 and was subsequently venerated as St. Vladimir in Russia. Before his conversion he
had several legitimate wives and at least eleven legitimate sons are known.
4 E.g. S. Franklin, J. Shepard, The Emergence of Rus 750–1200, London/New York, 1996, and J. Fen-
nell, The Crisis of Medieval Russia, London/New York, 1983 (both volumes of Longman History of
Russia); S.H. Cross, O.P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (eds.), The Russian Primary Chronicle, Cambridge,
Mass., 1973 (up to Iurii Dolgorukii); the new 1998 Moscow edition of A.E. Presniakov,
Obrazovanie Velikorusskogo gosudarstva, has genealogies of the medieval Russian grand
princely houses. See also V.V. Boguslavskii, Riurikovichi i Rus’. Ot Riurika do Smutnogo vremeni,
Moskva, 2009, an alphabetical biographical dictionary of hundreds of Rurikids and related
persons and officials.
5 P.N. Petrov, Istoriia rodov russkago dvorianstva, Sankt-Peterburg, 1886 (2 vols.; reprint, Moskva,
1991), is an example of a work offering detailed information on almost all extinct and existing
Rurikid families, but these data are often completely unsubstantiated. While de Baumgarten
only mentioned two sons of Mikhail Vsevolodich of Chernigov, Petrov has several others,
including a fourth son Mstislav and a fifth and youngest son Iurii, prince of Torus. These sons
figure as the ancestors of a range of princely familes, among which the Obolenskii princes,
the most numerous of all Rurikids. Mikhail Vsevolodich was not only the ruling prince of
Chernigov, but he also occupied the grand princely seat of Kiev; he was killed in 1246 at the
headquarters of the Mongol khan and was subsequently canonized by the Russian church.
The connection with the Chernigov branch, as indicated by Petrov, is most likely correct,
although the evidence is defective.
Genealogies 989
In the following tables the main sub-dynasties descending from St. Vladimir have been
presented. The dynasty was commonly referred to as the Rurikids (Riurikovichi), es-
pecially in later centuries, which implied an awareness of the significance of being a
descendant in the male line of the founder of the house. However, descent from the
first Christian ruler of the undivided empire of Kievan Russia was a far more important
legitimizing factor for the exclusive claim to rule in Russia. This claim was abandoned
only in the beginning of the 17th century once the line of the Rurikid rulers of Muscovy
had become extinct and the chaos created by the Time of Troubles had made the elec-
tion of an effective ruler imperative.
An attempt has been made to include all princes who at one time served as rulers
of a principality. When in later centuries the fragmentation of the dynasty led to the
emergence of very small principalities (which usually disappeared quickly), the rulers
have often not been included. Also, princes who died without issue and were politi-
cally unimportant have been left out. For reasons of space, wives of princes have also
not been mentioned, although they occasionally played prominent roles. The numer-
ous branches of the house in later years allowed Rurikid princes to marry, as a rule, a
Rurikid princess.
Synopsis of Tables 1–17
St. Vladimir, † 1015
gr. pr. of Kiev
Iziaslav, † 1001 Iaroslav Mudryi, † 1054

pr. of Polotsk gr. pr. of Kiev
Briacheslav, † 1044 Vladimir, † 1052 Iziaslav, † 1078 Sviatoslav, † 1076 Vsevolod, † 1093
pr. of Polotsk pr. of Novgorod gr. pr. of Kiev gr. pr. of Kiev gr. pr. of Kiev
Table 2: Polotsk Table 3: Galicia I Table 4: Turov-Pinsk

Oleg, † 1115 Iaroslav, † 1129
pr. of Chernigov pr. of Murom Vladimir, † 1125
gr. pr. Kiev
Table 5: Table 6(1–2):
Chernigov Murom, Riazan’
Mstislav, † 1132
gr. pr. of Kiev
Table 7: Mstislav the Great Iurii Dolgorukii, † 1157
gr. pr. of Kiev
Iziaslav, † 1154 Rostislav, † 1168 Tables 11–17

gr. pr. of Kiev gr. pr. of Kiev
Table 8: Galicia II Tables 9–10: Smolensk
Genealogies 991
table 1 St. Vladimir and the Next Four/Five Generations
Vladimir Sviatoslavich, † 1015, gr. pr. Kiev 978–1015, “St. Vladimir”

Iziaslav, † 1001, pr. Polotsk
Vseslav, † 1003
Briacheslav, † 1044, pr. Polotsk
Vseslav, † 1101, pr. Polotsk, gr. pr. Kiev 1068–69
David, † after 1129, pr. Polotsk 1127–29
Roman, † 1116
Gleb, † 1118, pr. Minsk
Boris, † 1128, pr. Polotsk
Sviatoslav
Rostislav, *1070, † after 1129
→ princes of Polotsk, Table 2
Vysheslav, † 1010, pr. Novgorod
Sviatopolk Okaiannyi (“the Accursed”), * 997, † 1019, gr. pr. Kiev 1015–19
Vsevolod, pr. Vladimir-Volynsk
Iaroslav Mudryi (“the Wise”), † 1054, pr. Novgorod 1010–19, gr. pr. Kiev 1019–54
Il’ia, † 1020, pr. Novgorod
Vladimir, *1020, † 1052, pr. Novgorod
Rostislav, *c.1045, † 1067, pr. Tmutorakan
→ princes of Galicia i, Table 3
Riurik, † 1092, pr. Peremyshl’
Volodar, † 1124, pr. Peremyshl’
Vasil’ko, *c.1067, † 1125, pr. Terebovl’
Iziaslav, * 1025, † 1078, gr. pr. Kiev
Sviatopolk, *1050, † 1113, gr. pr. Kiev
Iaroslav, † 1123, pr. Vladimir-Volynsk
→ princes of Turov and Pinsk, Table 4
Sviatoslav, * 1027, † 1076, pr. Chernigov, gr. pr. Kiev
Gleb, † 1078, pr. Tmutorakan
Roman, † 1079, pr. Tmutorakan
David, † 1123, pr. Smolensk 1095–96, pr. Chernigov
Sviatoslav, † 1143, pr. Lutsk
Vsevolod, † after 1124, pr. Murom
Vladimir, † 1151, pr. Chernigov
Sviatoslav, † 1166, pr. Vchyzh
Iziaslav, † 1161, gr.pr. Kiev
992 APPENDIX 2
Oleg, † 1115, pr. Chernigov, 1095–96, pr. Kursk & Novgorod-Seversk

Vsevolod, † 1146, gr. pr. Kiev 1139
→ princes of Chernigov, Table 5
Igor, † 1147, gr. pr. Kiev 1146
Gleb, † 1138, pr. Kursk
Sviatoslav, † 1164, pr. Chernigov 1154–55, 1159
Oleg, † 1180, pr. Seversk
Igor, *1151, † 1202, pr. Novgorod-Seversk
Vsevolod, † 1196, pr. Trubchevsk
Iaroslav, † 1129, pr. Murom, pr. Chernigov 1123–26
→ princes of Murom & Riazan’, Tables 6(1), 6(2)
Vsevolod, * 1030, † 1093, gr. pr. Kiev
Vladimir Monomakh, *1053, † 1125, gr. pr. Kiev
Mstislav Velikii (“the Great”), *1076, † 1132, gr. pr. Kiev
→ princes of Galicia ii, Drutsk, Smolensk, Tables 7–9
Iurii Dolgorukii (“Long-Arm”), † 1157, pr. Rostov, Suzdal’, gr. pr. Kiev
→ princes of Rostov, Belo Ozero, Moscow, Suzdal’, Tver’, Nizhnii Novgorod,
Starodub, Table 11
Viacheslav, *1036, † pr. Smolensk
Boris, † 1078
Igor, † 1060, pr. Vladimir-Volynsk
David, † 1112, pr. Vladimir-Volynsk, pr. Dorogobuzh
Vsevolodko, † 1141, pr. Gorodno
Boris, pr. Gorodno 1146–72
Gleb, † after 1169, pr. Gorodno
Boris, † 1015, pr. Rostov, “St. Boris”
Gleb, † 1015, pr. Murom, “St. Gleb”
Mstislav, † 1034, pr. Tmutorakan
Genealogies 993
table 2 Princes of Polotsk
Vseslav Briacheslavich, † 1101, pr. Polotsk, gr. pr. Kiev 1068–69

David, † after 1129, pr. Polotsk 1127–29
Briacheslav, † after 1129, pr. Iziaslavl’
Gleb, † 1118, pr. Minsk
Rostislav, † after 1160, pr. Polotsk 1151–58
Gleb, pr. Drutsk 1158
Volodar, † after 1166, pr. Minsk
Vasil’ko, pr. Logoshk 1186
Vladimir, † 1216, pr. Polotsk, pr. Minsk
Vsevolod, pr. Strezhev
Boris, † 1128, pr. Polotsk
Rogvolod, † after 1161, pr. Polotsk
Gleb, † bef. 1186, pr. Drutsk
Vseslav, pr. Drutsk 1186
Boris, pr. Drutsk 1195, pr. Polotsk 1221
Sviatoslav
Vasil’ko, † c.1143, pr. Polotsk 1132
Briacheslav, pr. Iziaslavl’ 1158–59
Rostislav-Iurii, *1070, † after 1129
David
Gleb, pr. Polotsk 1221
table 3 Princes of Galicia i
Rostislav Vladimirovich, *c.1045, † 1067, pr. Tmutarakan 1064

Riurik, † 1092, pr. Peremyshl’
Volodar, † 1124, pr. Peremyshl’
Rostislav, † 1128, pr. Peremyshl’
Vladimirko, † 1153, pr. Zvenigorod, pr. Galicia 1141
Iaroslav Osmomysl (“Thinking for Eight”), † 1187, pr. Galicia
Vladimir, † 1199, pr. Galicia
Oleg, † 1189, pr. Galicia 1187, 1188
Vasil’ko, *c.1067, †1125, pr. Terebovl’
Igor-Ivan, † 1141, pr. Galich
Rostislav-Grigorii, † 1127/40, pr. Terebovl’
Ivan Berladnik, † 1161, pr. Zvenigorod until 1144
Rostislav Berladnik, † 1189
994 APPENDIX 2
table 4 Princes of Turov and Pinsk
Iaroslav Sviatoslavich, † 1123, pr. Vladimir-Volynsk

Iurii, * bef. 1112, † after 1166, pr. Turov after 1154
Sviatopolk, † 1190, pr. Turov
Vladimir, pr. Pinsk 1206
Rostislav, pr. Pinsk, 1228–32
Vladimir
Fedor, pr. Pinsk
Iurii, † 1292
→ Sviatopolk-Chetvertinskii princes
Diomid, pr. Pinsk
Mikhail, pr. Pinsk
Ivan, pr. Turov
→ Sviatopolk-Mirskii princes?
Iaroslav, † 1202, pr. Dubrovitsa c.1186
Aleksandr, † 1223, pr. Dubrovitsa
Iaropolk, pr. Pinsk
Viacheslav, *after 1112, † after 1128, pr. Kletsk
table 5 Princes of Chernigov
Vsevolod Ol’govich, † 1146, gr. pr. Kiev 1139

Sviatoslav, † 1194, gr. pr. Kiev 1180
Vladimir, † 1201, pr. Chernigov
Oleg, † 1204, pr. Chernigov
David, † 1196, pr. Chernigov
Vsevolod, † 1215, gr. pr. Kiev 1210–14
Mikhail, † 1246, pr. Chernigov, gr. pr. Kiev
→ Bariatinskii, Kol’tsov-Mosal’skii, Obolenskii, Repnin, Dolgorukov, Shcherbatov,
Volkonskii (?) princes
Gleb, † after 1209, pr. Belgorod, gr. pr. Kiev
Mstislav, gr. pr. Chernigov 1235–39
Andrei, † 1245, pr. Chernigov
Mstislav, † 1223, pr. Chernigov
Vasilko, † 1223
Sviatoslav Ol’govich, † 1164, pr. Chernigov 1154–55, 1159
Igor, *1151, † 1202, pr. Novgorod-Seversk
Genealogies 995
table 6(1) Princes of Murom, Riazan’ and Pronsk
Iaroslav Sviatoslavich, † 1129, pr. Murom 1097, pr. Chernigov 1123–26

Sviatoslav, † 1145, pr. Murom
Davyd, † 1147, pr. Riazan’
Igor, pr. Riazan’ 1149–49
Vladimir, † 1161, pr. Murom
Iurii, † 1175, pr. Murom
Davyd, † 1228, pr. Murom, pr. Pronsk 1208–09
Iurii, † 1237, pr. Murom
Iaroslav, pr. Murom
Vladimir, † 1204, pr. Murom
Iurii, pr. Murom
Rostislav, † after 1152, pr. Murom
Andrei, pr. Elets
Gleb, † 1178, pr. Riazan’
Roman, † 1215, pr. Riazan’ 1178
Igor, † 1194, pr. Riazan’
Ingvar, † 1235, pr. Riazan’
Ingvar, † c.1237, gr. pr. Riazan’
Oleg Krasnyi (“Handsome”), † 1258, gr. pr Riazan’ 1251
→ princes of Riazan’, Table 6(2)
Iurii, † 1237, pr. Pskov 1232, pr. Riazan’
Fedor, † 1237
Sviatoslav, † c.1213, pr. Riazan’, pr. Pronsk
Sviatoslav, † 1217
Rostislav, † 1217
Vsevolod, † 1207, pr. Pronsk
Mikhail, † 1217, pr. Pronsk
Vsevolod, † 1237, pr. Pronsk
Vladimir, pr. Riazan’
Gleb, † 1219, pr. Riazan’
Oleg, † 1207, pr. Pronsk
Iurii, † 1174, pr. Riazan’, pr. Murom
996 APPENDIX 2
table 6(2) Princes of Riazan’ and Pronsk (cont.)
Oleg Ingvarovich Krasnyi, † 1258, gr. pr, Riazan’ 1251

Roman, † 1270, gr. pr. Riazan’
Fedor, † 1294, gr. pr. Riazan’
Iaroslav, † 1299, pr. Pronsk, gr. pr. Riazan’ 1294
Ivan, † 1327, gr. pr. Riazan’
Ivan Korotopol, † 1343, gr. pr. Riazan’
Mikhail, pr. Pronsk
Aleksandr, † 1340, pr. Pronsk
Oleg, *c.1336, † 1402, gr. pr. Riazan’
Fedor, † c.1427, gr. pr. Riazan’
Vasilii, *c.1448, † 1483, gr. pr. Riazan’
Ivan, *1467, † 1500, gr. prince Riazan’
Fedor, † 1503
Ivan, *1496, † 1533, gr. pr. Riazan’
Iaroslav-Dmitrii, † 1344, pr. Pronsk, gr. pr. Riazan’
Vladimir, † 1373, pr.Pronsk
Ivan, † after 1430, pr. Pronsk, pr. Riazan’ 1408–09
Fedor, † bef. 1479, pr. Pronsk
Ivan, pr. Pronsk
Andrei, pr. Pronsk
Daniil, pr. Pronsk
Konstantin, † 1306, gr. pr Riazan’
Vasilii, † 1308, gr. pr. Riazan’
Genealogies 997
table 7 Mstislav Vladimirovich and the Next Four Generations
Mstislav Vladimirovich “the Great”, *1076, † 1132, gr. pr. Kiev

Vsevolod, † 1136, pr. Novgorod
Iziaslav, † 1154, gr. pr. Kiev
Mstislav, † 1172, gr. pr. Kiev
Roman, † 1205, pr. Galicia-Volynia
Daniil, *1201, † 1264 king Galicia,
→ princes of Galicia ii, Table 8
Vasil’ko, *1203, † 1269, pr. Volynia
Vsevolod, † 1195, pr. Vladimir-Volynsk, pr. Belts
Aleksandr, † after 1234, pr. Belts
→ Drutskii princes
Iaroslav, † 1174/80, pr. Lutsk
Ingvar, † after 1212, pr. Lutsk, Dorogobuzh, gr. pr. Kiev 1202, 1212
Iaroslav, pr. Lutsk, pr. Medżiboż
Boris, pr. Medżiboż, pr. Bolokhov
Iziaslav, † 1223
Mstislav Nemyi (“the Mute”), † 1227, pr. Peresopnitsa, Galich, Lutsk
Vsevolod, † after 1209, pr. Lutsk
Ivan, † 1228, pr. Lutsk, pr. Chartoriisk
Iaropolk, † 1170, pr. Buzhsk
Vasil’ko, *c.1151, † 1178/82, pr. Drohiczyn
Sviatopolk, † 1154, pr. Novgorod, pr. Volynia
Rostislav, † 1168, pr. Smolensk, gr. pr. Kiev 1154, 1159–60
→ princes of Smolensk, Table 9
Vladimir, † 1170, pr. Dorogobuzh
Mstislav, † after 1202, pr. Dorogobuzh
Iaroslav, pr. Novgorod after 1207
Iziaslav, *1190, † 1198, pr. Velikie Luki
998 APPENDIX 2
table 8 Princes of Galicia ii (Galicia-Volynia)
Daniil Romanovich, *1201, † 1264, king of Galicia

Lev, *c.1228, † c.1301, pr. Galicia
Iurii, *1252/57, † 1308, king of Galicia
Andrei, *after 1288, † 1324, pr. Volynia
Lev, † 1324, pr. Galicia
Roman, *c.1230, † after 1260, pr. Slonim, pr. Novogrudek
Vasil’ko, *c.1256, † after 1282, pr. Slonim
Daniil, pr. Ostrog 1343
Mstislav, † after 1292, pr. Volynia
Vladimir, † 1315, pr. Volynia
Shwarn, † 1269, pr. Kholm
Vasil’ko Romanovich, *1203, † 1269, pr. Volynia
Vladimir, *after 1248, † 1288, pr. Volynia
Genealogies 999
table 9 Princes of Smolensk
Rostislav Mstislavich, † 1168, pr. Smolensk, gr. pr. Kiev, 1154, 1159–60
Roman, † 1180, (s. 1169 gr.) pr. Smolensk, gr.pr. Kiev 1171–77
Iaropolk, † after 1276, gr. pr. Smolensk, 1171–75
Mstislav-Boris, † 1223, pr. Smolensk 1197, gr. pr. Kiev
Sviatoslav, pr. Novgorod 1218–19
Iziaslav, gr. pr. Kiev 1235, pr. Smolensk 1239
Vsevolod, pr. Pskov, 1214, Novgorod 1219–21, Smolensk 1239
Rostislav, gr. pr. Kiev 1239
→ Kropotkin princes
David, *1140, † 1197, pr. Vyshgorod 1168, pr. Smolensk 1180
Mstislav, † 1187, pr. Novgorod 1184–87
Mstislav-Fedor, *1193, † 1230, gr. pr. Smolensk
Rostislav, † bef. 1270
Gleb, † 1277, gr. pr. Smolensk
Aleksandr, † 1313, gr. pr. Smolensk
Ivan, † 1358, gr. pr. Smolensk
Roman, † after 1300, pr. Briansk
Vasilii, †1314, pr. Briansk
Ivan, pr. Briansk
Vasilii, † 1356, pr. Briansk
Dmitrii, pr. Briansk
Sviatoslav, † 1310, pr. Briansk 1309
Gleb, † 1340, pr. Briansk
Mikhail, † 1279, gr. pr. Smolensk 1277
Sviatoslav, † pr. Mozhaisk
Fedor, pr. Dorogobuzh, pr. Viaz’ma
Vladimir, † 1380, pr. Dorogobuzh
Andrei, pr. Viaz’ma
Ivan, pr. Viaz’ma
Mikhail, pr. Viaz’ma
Aleksandr, pr. Viaz’ma
Dmitrii
→ Tatishchev family
Fedor, † 1299, pr. Mozhaisk, pr. Iaroslavl’ c.1260, gr. pr. Smolensk
→ princes of Iaroslavl’, Table 10
1000 APPENDIX 2
Riurik, † 1215, pr. Ovruch, Torchesk, 1157–69, pr. Novgorod 1170–72, gr. pr. Kiev
Rostislav, *1172, † 1218, pr. Vyshgorod
Vladimir, *1187, † 1239, gr. pr. Kiev 1223
Andrei Dolgaia Ruka (“Long Hand”), † 1223, pr. Viaz’ma
→ Viazemskii princes
Mstislav Khrabryi (“the Brave”), † 1180, pr. Belgorod, pr. Novgorod
Mstislav Udatnyia (“the Fortunate”), *bef. 1176, † 1228, pr. Novgorod, pr. Galicia
Vladimir, † 1226/33, pr. Pskov
1
Iaroslav, † after 1245, pr. Pskov
a Another translation would be “daring” or “intrepid” (in Russian also udaloi). De Baumgarten
called him Mstislav le Hardi.
Genealogies 1001
table 10 Princes of Iaroslavl’
Fedor Rostislavich Chernyi (“the Black”), † 1299, pr. Mozhaisk, pr. Iaroslavl’, gr. pr. Smolensk
Mikhail, † c.1287, pr. Iaroslavl’
Davyd, † 1322, pr. Iaroslavl’ 1299
Vasilii Groznye Ochi (“the Stern-Looking”), † 1345, pr. Iaroslavl’
Vasilii, pr. Iaroslavl’
Ivan, † 1426, pr. Iaroslavl’
Iakov, 1455, pr. Kurba
Semën, pr. Kurba
Fedor, pr. Iaroslavl’
Aleksandr Briukhatyi (the “Big-Bellied”), † 1471, (last) pr. Iaroslavl’ until 1463
Semën, pr. Novlia
Daniil, pr. Novlia
Dmitrii, pr. Zaozer’e
Andrei, † 1457, pr. Zaozer’e
Semën, pr. Kurbena
Gleb, pr. Iaroslavl’
→ Solntsev-Zasekin, Zasekin, Shchetinin and Shakhovskoi princes
Roman, pr. Iaroslavl’
→ L’vov, Shekhonskii, Gorchakov princes
Mikhail, pr. Mologa
Fedor, † 1408, pr. Mologa
Dmitrii, pr. Mologa
Petr, pr. Mologa
Vasilii, pr. Mologa
Semën, pr. Siti
Petr, pr. Siti
Ivan, pr. Prozorov
Andrei, pr. Prozorov
Ivan, † 1380, pr. Mologa
Gleb, pr. Shumurov
Lev, pr. Mologa
1002 APPENDIX 2
table 11 The Descendants of Iurii Dolgorukii
Iurii Dolgorukii, † 1157, pr. Rostov, Suzdal’, gr. pr. Kiev

Rostislav, † 1151, pr. Pereiaslavl’
Mstislav, † 1178, pr. Novgorod
Sviatoslav, pr. Novgorod 1175
Iaropolk, † after 1175, pr. Torzhok, gr. pr. Vladimir 1175
Ivan, † 1147, pr. Kursk 1146
Andrei Bogoliubskii, † 1174, gr. pr. Vladimir
Iurii, † after 1180 (x Tamar, queen of Georgia)
Gleb, † 1172, pr. Pereiaslavl’, gr. pr. Kiev
Vladimir, *1157, † 1187, pr. Pereiaslavl’
Boris, † 1159, pr. Belgorod
Mstislav, pr. Novgorod
Iaroslav, pr. Volokolamsk 1199
Vasil’ko, pr. Suzdal’
Mikhail, *after 1151, † 1176, gr. pr. Vladimir
Vsevolod Bol’shoe Gnezdo (“Big Nest”), *1154, † 1212, gr. pr. Vladimir
Konstantin, *1185, † 1218, pr. Rostov, gr. pr. Vladimir
Vasil’ko, *1208, † 1238, pr. Rostov
→ princes of Rostov, Table 12
Vsevolod, *1210, † 1238, pr. Iaroslavl’
Vasilii, *c.1229, † 1249, pr. Iaroslavl’
Konstantin, † 1255(57), pr. Iaroslavl’
Vladimir, *1214, † 1249, pr. Uglich
Andrei, † 1278, pr. Uglich
Roman, † 1285, pr. Uglich
Iurii, *1189, † 1238, gr. pr. Vladimir
Vsevolod, *1212, † 1238, pr. Novgorod
Iaroslav, *1191, † 1246, pr. Iaroslavl’, gr. pr. Vladimir 1238
Aleksandr Nevskii, *1220, † 1263, gr. pr. Vladimir 1252
Dmitrii, *1250, † 1294, pr. Pereiaslavl’, gr. pr. Vladimir
Ivan, *c.1280, † 1302, pr. Pereiaslavl’
Andrei, *1255, † 1304, pr. Gorodets, gr. pr. Vladimir 1281, 1294
Daniil, *1261, † 1303, pr. Moskva
→ (grand) princes of Moskva, Table 14
Andrei, † 1264, pr. Tver’, gr. pr. Vladimir 1249–52, pr. N. Novgorod 1256
→ (grand) princes of Suzdal’ and Nizhnii Novgorod, Table 15
Genealogies 1003
Mikhail Khorobrit (“the Brave”), † 1248, gr. pr. Vladimir

Iaroslav, † 1271, pr. Tver’ 1247, gr. pr. Vladimir 1263
Sviatoslav, †1282/85, pr. Pskov 1266, gr. pr. Tver’ 1271
Mikhail, *c.1271, † 1319, gr. pr. Tver’ 1285, gr. pr. Vladimir 1304
→ grand princes of Tver’, Table 16
Konstantin, *bef. 1238, † 1255, pr. Galich
Davyd, † 1280, pr. Galich, pr. Dmitrov
Fedor, † 1335, pr. Galich
Ivan, pr. Galich
Dmitrii, † after 1362 (last) pr. Galich
Boris, † 1334, pr. Dmitrov
Vasilii, *1241, † 1276, pr. Kostroma 1247, gr. pr. Vladimir 1272
Vladimir, *1194, † 1229, pr. Pereiaslavl’
Sviatoslav-Gavriil, *1196, † 1252, pr. Iur’ev, gr. pr. Vladimir
Dmitrii, † 1269, pr. Iur’ev
Ivan, *1198, † after 1246, pr. Starodub
→ princes of Starodub, Table 17
1004 APPENDIX 2
table 12 Princes of Rostov
Vasil’ko Konstantinovich, *1208, † 1238, pr. Rostov

Boris, *1231, † 1277, pr. Rostov
Dmitrii, *1253, † 1294, pr. Rostov
Konstantin, *1255–1307, pr. Rostov, pr. Uglich
Aleksandr, *1286, † bef. 1307, pr. Uglich
Iurii, *c.1303, † 1320, pr. Rostov
Vasilii, *1291, † bef. 1320
Fedor, † 1331, pr. ½Rostov
Andrei, *c.1330, † 1409, pr. Rostov
Fedor, pr. Rostov
Iurii, † 1413, pr. Rostov
Konstantin, † 1407, pr. Rostov
Konstantin, † 1365, pr. ½Rostov
Vasilii, pr. Rostov
Aleksandr, † 1404, pr. Rostov
Andrei, † after 1417, pr. Rostov, pr. Pskov
Ivan, † bef. 1474, pr. Rostov
Vladimir, pr. Rostov until 1474
Fedor, † 1420, pr. Rostov, pr. Pskov
Aleksandr, † after 1438, pr. Pskov
Ivan, pr. Rostov
Aleksandr, † bef. 1474, pr. Rostov
Ivan, pr. Rostov until 1474
Vladimir, pr. Rostov
Konstantin, † 1414, pr. Rostov
Ivan, pr. Rostov
→ Kasatkin-Rostovskii, Lobanov-Rostovskii princes
Gleb, *1237, † 1278, pr. Belozero
→ princes of Belozero, Table 13
Genealogies 1005
table 13 Princes of Belozero
Gleb Vasil’kovich, *1237, † 1278, pr. Belozero

Mikhail, *1263, † 1293, pr. Belozero
Fedor, † after 1314, pr. Belozero
Roman, pr. Belozero
Fedor, † 1380, pr. Belozero
Ivan, † 1380, pr. Belozero
Konstantin, pr. Novgorod, pr. Pskov
Vasilii, † after 1380, pr. Sugor’e
Iurii, (last) pr. Belozero
→ Belosel’skii-Belozerskii, Vadbol’skii princes
Afanasii, pr. Sheleshpan
Semën, pr. Sugor’e & Kem
Ivan, pr. Kargolom & Ukhtom
→ Ukhtomskii princes
1006 APPENDIX 2
table 14-1 (Grand) Princes of Moskva and Vladimir
Daniil Aleksandrovich, *1261, † 1303, pr. Moskva

Iurii, *c.1281, † 1325, pr. Pereiaslavl’, pr. Moskva, gr. pr. Vladimir
Afanasii, † 1322, pr. Novgorod
Ivan i Kalita (“Moneybag”), † 1341, pr. Moskva, gr. pr. Vladimir 1327
Semën Gordyi (“the Proud”), *1316, † 1353, gr. pr. Moskva & Vladimir 1341
Ivan ii Krasnyi (“the Handsome”) or Krotkii (“the Meek”), *1326, † 1359, gr. pr. Moskva
& Vladimir 1354
Dmitrii Donskoi, *1350, † 1389, gr. pr. Moskva & Vladimir 1362
Vasilii i, *1371, † 1425, gr. pr. Moskva & Vladimir
→ grand princes and tsars of Moskva, Table 14–2
Iurii, *1374, † 1434, pr. Galich & Zvenigorod, gr. pr. Moskva 1433
Vasilii Kosoi (“the Squint”), † 1448, pr. Zvenigorod
Dmitrii Shemiaka, *1420, † 1453, pr. Galich, gr. pr. Moskva 1446/47
Ivan, † 1471/85, pr. Ryl’sk
Vasilii, † 1529, pr. Ryl’sk
Dmitrii Krasnyi (“the Handsome”), † 1441, pr. Galich
Andrei, *1382, † 1432, pr. Mozhaisk & Vereia
Ivan, † 1471/83, pr. Mozhaisk
Andrei, † 1481, pr. Briansk
Semën, † c.1505, pr. Starodub
Vasilii, † 1517/19, pr. Starodub
Mikhail, † 1486, pr. Vereia
Vasilii, † c.1501
Petr, *1385, † 1428, pr. Dmitrov
Konstantin, *1389, † 1433, pr. Uglich
Ivan, *1350/56, pr. Zvenigorod
Andrei, *1327, † 1353, pr. Serpukhov
Ivan, *c.1350, † 1358, pr. Serpukhov
Vladimir Khrabryi (“the Brave”), *1353, † 1410, pr. Serpukhov-Borovsk
Ivan, *1381, † 1422, pr. Serpukhov
Semën, † 1426, pr. Borovsk
Iaroslav, *1388, † 1426, pr. Iaroslavets
Vasilii, † 1483, pr. Serpukhov-Borovsk
Ivan, pr. Iaroslavets
Fedor, † 1521, pr. Iaroslavets & Pinsk
Andrei, *c.1392, † 1426, pr. Radonezh
Vasilii, *1394, † 1427, pr. Peremyshl’
Genealogies 1007
table 14-2 Grand Princes and Tsars of Moskva and Russia
Vasilii i Dmitrievich, *1371, † 1425, gr. pr. Moskva & Vladimir

Vasilii ii Temnyi (“the Blind”), *1415, † 1462, gr. pr. Moskva
Ivan iii, *1440, † 1506, gr. pr. Moskva & Russia
Ivan, *1456, † 1490
Dmitrii, *1485, † 1509
Vasilii iii, *1479, † 1534, gr. pr. Moskva & Russia
Ivan iv Groznyi (“the Terrible”), *1530, † 1584, tsar
Ivan, *1554, † 1581
Fedor, *1557, † 1598, tsar
Iurii, *1533, † 1564, pr. Uglich
Iurii, *1480, † 1536, pr. Dmitrov
Dmitrii, *1481, † 1521, pr. Uglich
Semën, *1487, †1518, pr. Kaluga
Andrei, *1490, † 1536, pr. Staritsa
Vladimir, *1533, † 1569, pr. Staritsa
Andrei, pr. Ruza
Iurii, *1441, † 1473, pr. Dmitrov
Andrei, *1446, † 1491, pr. Uglich
Boris, *1449, † 1494, pr. Volok
Fedor, *c.1476, † 1513, pr. Volok
Ivan, *c.1480, † 1504, pr. Ruza
Andrei, *1452, † 1481, pr. Vologda
1008 APPENDIX 2
table 15 (Grand) Princes of Suzdal’ and Nizhnii Novgorod
Andrei Iaroslavich, † 1264, gr. pr. Vladimir 1249–52, pr. Nizhni Novgorod 1256
Iurii, † 1279, pr. Suzdal’
Mikhail, † bef. 1305, pr. Suzdal’
Vasilii, † 1309, pr. Suzdal’
Aleksandr, † 1332, pr. Suzdal’
Konstantin, † 1355, pr. Suzdal’, s. 1350 gr. pr. Nizhnii Novgorod
Andrei, *c.1320, † 1365, gr. pr. N. Novgorod
Dmitrii, *1322, † 1383, pr. Suzdal’, gr. pr.Vladimir 1359–61, gr. pr. N. Novgorod
Vasilii Kirdiapa, † 1403, pr. Suzdal’, pr. Gorodets
Ivan, † 1417
Aleksandr Briukhatyi (“the Big-Bellied”), † 1418, gr. pr. N. Novgorod
Semën, † 1423/24
Iurii, pr. Shuia
Vasilii, † 1450, pr. Shuia
Fedor, pr. Shuia
Ivan, pr. Shuia
Semën, *c.1357, † 1402, pr. Suzdal’
Vasilii, pr. Shuia
Boris, pr. Pskov
Ivan, renounces N. Novgorod and Suzdal’ 1451
Boris, † 1394, pr. Gorodets, gr. pr. N. Novgorod 1365, 1383–92
Daniil, † after 1425, gr. pr. N. Novgorod 1414
Aleksandr, pr. Suzdal’, gr. pr. N. Novgorod
Vasilii Grebenka, † after 1477, pr. Pskov & Novgorod
Genealogies 1009
table 16 Grand Princes of Tver’
Mikhail Iaroslavich, *1272, † 1318, gr. pr. Tver’ 1285, gr. pr. Vladimir 1304
Dmitrii Groznye Ochi (“the Fierce-Looking”), *1298, † 1325, gr. pr. Tver’ 1319, gr. pr.
Vladimir 1322
Aleksandr, *1301, † 1339, gr. pr. Tver’ 1325–27, 1338–39 gr. pr. Vladimir 1325–27
Vsevolod, *after 1327, † 1364, gr. pr. Tver’ 1345, pr. Kholm 1348
Iurii, † after 1408, pr. Kholm
Dmitrii, pr. Kholm
Daniil, pr. Kholm
Mikhail, (last) pr. Kholm
Ivan, † 1402, pr, Kholm
Mikhail, *1333, † 1399, pr. Mikulin, gr. pr. Tver’ 1364
Aleksandr, † 1369, pr. Kashin
Ivan, *1358, † 1425, gr. pr. Tver’
Aleksandr, † 1425, gr. pr. Tver’
Iurii, *c.1398, † 1426, gr. pr. Tver’
Ivan, † after 1453, pr. Zubtsev
Boris, † 1461, gr. pr. Tver’
Mikhail, *1451, † bef. 1505, (last) gr. pr. Tver’
Iaroslav, † 1435, pr. Gorodno
Boris, *c.1362, pr. Kashin
Ivan, pr. Kashin
Vasilii, † after 1426, pr. Kashin
Fedor, † after 1406, pr. Mikulin
Aleksandr, *c.1392, † 1412/53, pr. Mikulin
Boris, † bef. 1477, pr. Mikulin
Andrei, (last) pr. Mikulin
Fedor, p. Teliatev
Andrei, pr. Teliatev
Fedor, (last) pr. Teliatev
Fedor, pr. Mikulin
Konstantin, *1306, † 1346, gr. pr. Tver’ 1327–38, 1339
Eremei, † 1372, pr. Dorogobuzh
Dmitrii, † 1414, pr. Dorogobuzh
Andrei, pr. Dorogobuzh
Iurii, pr. Dorogobuzh
Osip, (last) pr. Dorogobuzh
Ivan, pr. Cherniatyn
Semën, pr. Cherniatyn
1010 APPENDIX 2
Ivan, pr. Dorogobuzh

Semën, † 1364, pr. Dorogobuzh
Vasilii, pr. Kashin, † 1368, gr. pr. Tver’ 1348–68
Vasilii, pr. Kashin, † 1362
Mikhail, *1331, † 1373, pr. Kashin
Vasilii, † 1382, pr. Kashin
table 17 Princes of Starodub
Ivan Vsevolodovich, *1198, † after 1246, pr. Starodub

Mikhail, pr. Starodub
Ivan Kalistrat, † 1315, pr. Starodub
Feodor, † 1330, pr. Starodub
Dmitrii, † 1354, pr. Starodub
Ivan, pr. Starodub
Andrei, pr. Starodub
→ Gagarin, Khil’kov princes
Gediminids
In the 14th century the Lithuanians were the last pagan nation in Europe. They were
ruled by princes of whom Gedimin († 1341) is the first reliably documented represen-
tative. He was succeeded as grand prince by his son Olgierd (Algirdas, † 1381); after
Olgierd, the rulership was disputed by his brother Kestutis and Olgierd’s son Jagiello.
Kestutis was killed in 1381, but his son Vytautas (Vitovt, Vitold, † 1430) maintained his
father’s claim and ruled more or less in tandem with his cousin Jagiello.
Jagiello married the last representative of the Polish royal dynasty of the Piasts, Jad-
wiga, in 1386, became a Christian; Poland and Lithuania were henceforth in a personal
union until 1569 when, close to the extinction of the Jagiellonian dynasty (at the death
of Zygmunt ii August in 1572), the union was transformed into a political one.
Apart from a few interruptions caused by dynastic squabbles, the Polish and Lithu-
anian crowns remained in the hands of Jagiello’s descendants: after Jagiello’s death in
1434 his son Casimir iv (1427–1492, grand prince of Lithuania in 1440, king of Poland
in 1447), then his sons Johan Albrecht (1460–1501, king of Poland in 1492), Alexander
(1461–1506, grand prince of Lithuania in 1492, king of Poland in 1501), and Zygmunt i
Genealogies 1011
(1467–1548, king of Poland and grand prince of Lithuania in 1506). Zygmunt ii August
(1520–1572) was the son of the latter.
Olgierd Gediminovich had been married several times and left at least eleven le-
gitimate sons, apart from Jagiello. His brother Narimont Gediminovich († 1348) left
at least six legitimate sons of whom one, Patrikii, came to Moscow in 1408 in the suite
of his cousin Svidrigailo (Jagiello’s brother). He entered the service of the Moscow
grand prince Vasilii i and his son married Vasilii’s daughter in 1418. Their descendants,
the Patrikeev princes, retained their title and were the first non-Rurikid princes in
Muscovy. The Patrikeev branch became extinct, but other branches of descendants of
Narimont continued to play a role in the history of Muscovy and Russia, such as the
Golitsyn, Kurakin and Khovanskii princes. The descendants of Olgierd included the
Trubetskoi and Mstislavskii princes, prominent actors in the history of Muscovy and
Russia.6
6 Extensive genealogies in N. Iakovenko, Ukrains’ka shliakhta z kintsia xiv do seredyny xvii
stolittia, Kyiv, 2008, 301–370. See also A.A. Zimin, Formirovanie boiarskoi aristokratii v Rossii
vo vtoroi polovine xv – pervoi treti xvi v., Moskva, 1988, 28–35; and P.N. Petrov, Istoriia rodov
russkago dvorianstva i, Sankt-Peterburg, 1886 (reprint, Moskva, 1991), 320–321, 368–370 (less
reliable).
1012 MAPS
WHITE SEA
RUSSIA BEFORE THE
MONGOL CONQUEST
(1240)
Ob
N.
D vin
a
BALTIC a Kam
a
FINNISH on
kh
SEA Ladoga Su
FINNISH
hov
Novgorod Belozero
S
k
NE TRIBES
Vol
E
Pskov OV TRIBES
BALTIC SL Iaroslavl Vi
W.
at
t
ka
D
va
PO Rostov Velikii
vin
Lo
L Volga Be
a
TRIBES OCH
Polotsk Suzdal lai
Kliazma a
AN KRIVICHI
Vitebsk Vladimir
E Smolensk Moskva Moskva
Minsk Murom
Pr pr
ipi Dne Briansk Oka
I
at Riazan
DREGOVICHI HI
CH
Pinsk Turov C
MI
Vladimir DRE TI
SE
sna
IA
DI
VO VolynskVLIA
VE
Ural
De
V
RA
NE
RI
LY
N
AN
IA Chernigov
NE Do
E
Kiev
PO
Galich n
LI
Pereiaslavl
AN
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ep Don
E
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g I ts
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IC
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Dn
0
t
PO(after 1
HItr
Sarai
es
Man
ych
Danube Kuban
Tmutarakan
BLACK SEA Terek
Constantinople GEO
RGIA
N Tbilisi
Ku
KIN ra
GDO
appr. terr. of Kievan Russia
MS
terr. controlled by Novgorod
Kiev: principal territorial centres
CASPIAN SEA
map 1 Russia before the Mongol Conquest (1240)

MAPS 1013
WHITE SEA
Ob
Solovetskii
mon.
Kholmogory
FINNISH
FINNISH
N.
Dv
in
a
TRIBES
BALTIC Tallinn na Kam
a
TRIBES kh
o
Velikii Ustiug
SEA Su
v
Belozero
kho
Tartu
GERMAN
Vol
Viatka
ORDER Novgorod
Riga Pskov Kostroma
Vi
W.
Iaroslavl at
t
ka
D
va
Tver
vin
Lo
Rostov Velikii Volg KAZAN Be

a
a lai
Polotsk Kliazma Kazan a
Moskva Vladimir Nizhnii
Vilnius Vitebsk Smolensk Moskva Novgorod
pr Murom KHANATE
GRAND Minsk Dne Oka
Pinsk Riazan
Turov
a
Vladimir
sn
Ural
De
Volynsk NOGAI
Lvov
PRINCIPALITY Chernigov
Do
Kiev (between 1514–1618)

HORDE
n
Galich OF LITHUANIA
Don
Dn
ets Volga
ep
E
Bu
POL
r
g
Pru
E
DIKO
Dn
t
est
CRIMEA ASTRAKHAN
Man
r
ych Astrakhan
Danube Kuban KHANATE
KHANATE
Terek
BLACK SEA
Constantinople
GEORGIAN
KINGDOM
Tbilisi Ku
ra
MUSCOVY AND ITS NEIGHBOURS (1497–1649)
CASPIAN SEA
map 2 Muscovy and its Neighbours (1497–1649)

Glossary of Russian Terms
The Language of Russian Medieval Law
Legal terminology in Russia has been subject to change, as time went on, and it would
of course be strange if it had not. But the historical transformation of the language of
law in Russia is characterized by a few unusual features.
The conversion of Russia around the year 1000 was accompanied by the arrival of
the written word, especially the Bible and religious texts connected with it. Most of
these texts did not come directly from Byzantium, but from Bulgaria, which had ad-
opted Christianity somewhat earlier than Russia. They had been written in a Mace-
donian dialect, a language that became known as Church-Slavonic and was close to
the contemporary language of Kievan Russia. For that reason there was no need for
a re-translation of these texts from Church-Slavonic into Russian. Also, the earliest
written works of Kievan R ussia, mostly connected with religious themes, used Church-
Slavonic, which possessed the vocabulary required.
When the traditional and customary law of Kievan Russia began to be recorded in
writing, particularly in the Russkaia Pravda, there was no need to resort to Church-
Slavonic, because the legal terminology was already available in the vernacular.
Church-Slavonic is therefore absent in the Russkaia Pravda. It gradually penetrated
in Russia in the course of the following centuries and was absorbed into Russian, but
this development affected the law much less than other linguistic sectors. There are
no traces of Church-Slavonic in the Codes of 1497 and 1550, although they did appear
in the Ulozhenie of 1649.
The co-existence of two separate, admittedly very similar, literary languages, one for
general use (literature, academic discourse, etc.), and the other for law and administra-
tion, remained a special characteristic for Russia, up to the 18th century, when Russian
and a russified Church-Slavonic finally merged completely.
(Based on B. Unbegaun, “Iazyk russkogo prava”, P.A. Sorokin, N.P. Poltoratskii (eds.),
Na temy russkie i obshchie. Sbornik statei i materialov v chest’ prof. N.S. Timasheva,
New-York, 1965, 178–184.)
Akty Sotsial’no-Ekonomícheskoi Istorii Sévero-Vostóchnoi Rusi (asei)

“Acts of [concerning] the Socio-Economic History of North-East Russia”; 3-volume
publication of charters, mainly from the 15th century, and mostly from monasteries in
the Vladimir-Moscow grand principality.

altýn
Monetary unit, in use since the 14th century; in the Code of 1497, the altyn was worth 6
den’gi, while 200 den’gi were equal to one ruble.
ambárshchina
Tax levied on foreign merchants for staying in the gostinnyi dvor (“merchants’ court”)
and for storing their goods (ambar, “warehouse”).
bárshchina
One of the main forms of rent payment by dependent peasants, besides obrok (annual
payment, q.v.). Barshchina consisted of a fixed number of days a peasant had to work
on the land of his master, in exchange for which he was allotted a plot of land to culti-
vate for himself during the remaining days.
baskáki
Mongol-Tatar officials, serving as the khan’s lieutenants in Russian principalities. Their
main task was the collection of the taxes imposed by the Tatar rulers. They were under
the supervision of the great baskak of the grand principality of Vladimir. After 1327
their tasks were taken over by the grand princes of Vladimir, with a more modest role
for the grand princes of Tver’, Nizhnii Novgorod, and Riazan’.
batógi
Sticks, used for the lighter form of flogging; see also knut.
belomésttsy
Inhabitants and also owners of belye mesta (“white places”), parts of town not subject
to tiaglo, certain tax burdens and work duties, imposed on ordinary urban inhabitants,
posadskie liudi (q.v.).
Belozérskaia Tamózhennaia Grámota

Belozero (White Lake) Tax Charter.
Belozérskaia Ustavnáia Grámota

Belozero (White Lake) Statutory Charter of 1488.
bezchéstie
dishonour, and also the compensation to be paid to the person dishonoured.
bezzakónie
Unlawful act.
1016 Glossary of Russian Terms
birích
Herald, town crier.
bliádnia
Prostitution, fornication.
blízhii, blízhiki
Blood relatives, kin. The closest circle is formed by the malye blizhiki (“small” kin).
bobýl’ (bobylí)
Impoverished and often landless peasants, who did not pay the usual peasant taxes,
but only obrok (q.v.). They were mentioned frequently, along with ordinary peasants,
in the Ulozhenie of 1649.
Bogoróditsa
Translation of Greek Theotokos: the Mother of God.
boiárin (−iare)
Important noblemen, boyars. The meaning of “boyars” developed through the ages. In
the Kievan era, boyars were the most prominent noblemen around the prince, while
the wealthy and leading inhabitants of the major cities (such as Novgorod) were also
called boyars. In Muscovy the boyars as a class were more precisely circumscribed; a
boyar was a nobleman of the highest rank, conferred by the grand prince. But as boyar
appointments ran in certain prominent families, the entire family came to be consid-
ered as a boyar family.
boiarin mén’shii
A lesser boyar (Church Statute of Iaroslav).
boiarin pútnyi
A boyar directing a government department called a put’ (q.v.).
boiarin velíkii
A great boyar (as opposed to a lesser boyar, boiarin men’shii; mentioned in the Church
Statute of Iaroslav).
boiarin vvedénnyi
n “introduced boyar”, the highest level among the boyars, consisting of a small group
A
of persons close to the Moscow grand prince.
boiarin zémskii
A “land boyar”, a term invented later on, to refer to those boyars during the Kievan
era who did not derive their status from their closeness to the prince, but from their
local importance as landowners and prominent citizens. The entire concept remains
controversial.
bologodél
A favour, a free and gratuitous service (art. 49 Expanded Pravda)
bol’shói naméstnik
see namestnik
bort’
Hollow treestump in forest, used as beehive. Hence bortnoe derevo (tree used for keep-
ing wild bees), bortnik (bee-keeper).
brátchina
Brotherhood, fraternity; such bodies sometimes had the right to settle disputes among
their members (e.g. in Pskov and Belozero).
chad’
Persons belonging to household, esp. children and personnel.
chaganus, chacanus
see kagan
cháshnik
“Cup-bearer”, princely court official responsible for part of the management of the
prince’s court.
charodeiiániia
Sorcery (Church Statute of Vladimir).
cheliadín (chéliad’)
Early term, referring to persons belonging to the household, hence also “slaves”. Che-
liadin with the meaning of “slave” co-exists with kholop in the rp and then gradually
disappears.
cheliadin naimít
A slave hired out as a labourer.
chelobít’e
Request, petition. Usually in the form of a chelobítnaia gramota.
chelovék (plural: liudi, q.v.)

Man, human person.
chern’
See liudi.
Chërnaia Rus’
Region in present-day Belarus, around the upper reaches of the Neman River, origi-
nally part of Kievan Russia, then under Lithuanian control.
chernosóshnye zémli
“Black” lands, newly cultivated lands in Eastern Russia, belonging to the state.
chërnye krest’iáne
“Black” peasants, i.e. peasants working lands (mostly in Eastern Russia) belonging to
the state.
chërnye liudi, chern’

See liudi.
chétvert’ (also chet’)

From the original meaning (a quarter), several special meanings arose.
1. A department, similar to the prikazy of Muscovy, and in charge of f iscal and ad-
ministrative duties, usually with regard to certain parts of the country.
2. A surface area of ca. 2733 sq.meters (one fourth of a desiatina).
3. A liquid measure of 3.07 l (one fourth of a vedro).
chétvertnye d’iáki
Secretaries or clerks of a chetvert’.
dácha
Gift, grant. V dache: as a gift, for free.
dan’
The original meaning of dan’ is “gift”, a euphemism for tribute, either annual or in-
cidental, exacted from a subjugated or otherwise dependent tribe (people, nation).
The prince’s own subjects would pay poliud’e, which took its name from the annual
circuit of the prince and his retinue, in late autumn or winter, when he would visit the
various parts of his principality to participate in hunting and celebrations, administer

justice, and collect the customary contributions in money and kind. As the distinction
between dan’ and poliud’e faded, dan’ became the designation for the general fiscal
imposition on the population.
dánniki
Foreign tribes, paying dan’.
dán’shchik (−i)
Tax collectors of the Moscow grand prince, charged in particular with the collection of
the tribute (dan’) to be paid to the Tatar khan.
dar
Formalized gift, which could develop into an annual tax.
ded
Grandfather, also great uncle.
délo (−á)
Thing, business, cause, case, incl. legal case.
delá dukhóvnye (or grekhovýe)

cases, specifically reserved for church courts (‘cases concerning the soul’, or ‘concern-
ing sin’).
delá mírskie (or svétskie)

secular (worldly) cases.
delárnoe, deliárnoe
Tax on river vessels.
deliúi
Members of a special detachment responsible for transporting tax revenues to the
Mongol-Tatar headquarters. They were granted special service estates near Moscow
and later on merged with other groups of armed servants of the Moscow grand prince.
desiatína
1. One tenth, tithe (tax in favour of church).
2. Surface measure: 1.09 hectare, 2.7 acres, 2.400 sq. sazheni (in some cases 3.200 or
3.600)
desiatínnaia
A 10% tax on furs.
desiatínnik, desiatíl’nik
Tithe collector.
desiatínnye gorodá
Tithe towns, the income of which (from taxes etc.) was assigned to the Church.
desiátskii
“Decurion”, constable overseeing 10 households, commanding 10 men?
déti boiárskie
Descendants of boyar families who had lost boyar status. Those were izstari prirodnye,
persons who had an old noble lineage. In a wider sense the deti boiarskie constituted
the bulk of the lower nobility (dvoriane), the mainstay of the army of Muscovy.
osádnye deti boiarskie

Impoverished members of the class of deti boiarskie, who only had to serve during a
siege (osada) of a town.
detínets
Fortress within town, same as kreml’.
détskii
“Youth”; regarded as junior member of druzhina, entrusted with various official (execu-
tive) duties.
dévka
Unmarried woman or girl.
d’iak (−i)
Clerk, secretary, scribe; originally a relatively humble servant, but in Muscovy d’iaki
formed the backbone of the grand prince’s administration and some d’iaki belonged
to the intimate councillors of the grand prince.
díkie zémli
Uncultivated, ‘wild’ lands.
Díkoe póle
see pole
dnéprovskie porógi
Dnepr Rapids.
dóbrye liúdi
see liudi
doklád
A report, esp. to the prince, about some matter of public importance. In judicial pro-
cedure a judgment often had to be reported to a higher authority (the dokladchiki) for
approval. This so-called doklad procedure functioned as a kind of appellate procedure.
dokládnye kholópy
see kholopy
dokonchánie
An agreement, a contract, esp. between princes.
Domostrói
Appr. “House management”; 16th century didactic collection of short texts on all as-
pects of daily, esp. family life and on the practice of religion.
doská (−i)
Lit. “board”; informal note, as opposed to a zapis’ (Pskov).
dovódchik (−i)
Constables, bailiffs and other agents under the lieutenant (namestnik) of the Moscow
grand prince, esp. in charge of serving dovody (dovód, summons, indictment, etc.).
dozór
An inspection report or inventory.
dragún
dragoon; mounted infantryman. Like strel’tsy and Cossacks, dragoons were part of the
professional army of Muscovy.
Drévniaia Rus’
The proto-historic period preceding Kievan Russia, roughly the period before the con-
version of Russia in 988.
driagíl’noe
Stamp duty for packaging and sealing goods.
druzhína
Originally, in pre-medieval times, a band of companions and comrades-in-arms of a
chief or ruler. It gradually developed into a larger body, splitting into a smaller group
of senior members, serving as close advisors and high representatives of the prince,
and a larger group of junior members, constituting the prince’s bodyguard and private
army.
druzhínniki
Members of the druzhina.
druzhínnoe gosudárstvo
Modern term (“druzhina state”), referring to a political structure characterized by the
(presumed) central role of the druzhina, as in Kievan Russia.
Dukhóvnyi Regláment
“Spiritual Regulations”, Peter the Great’s edict of 1721, containing his new organization-
al structure of the Russian Orthodox Church.
dúma
Council, esp. the tsar’s personal council, consisting of boyars, okol’nichie, duma nobles
and duma clerks, and usually referred to as the Boyar Duma.
dúmnye d’iáki
The highest ranking clerks (d’iaki), who served on the prince’s council (Duma), together
with dumnye boiare and dumnye dvoriane.
dúmnye dvoriáne
Members of the lower nobility, serving as princely councillors, along with dumnye
b oiare and dumnye d’iaki.
dushá
Soul, person.
dushegúbstvo
Homicide, murder; occasionally also other very serious crimes.
dvérskii, dvórskii, dvorétskii

Official heading the prince’s household.
dvor
1. Peasant household.
2. Household of prince, monastery, nobleman or other landowner.
3. Court of prince.
dvoriáne moskóvskie
Members of lower nobility, provided with service estates in the immediate vicinity of
Moscow, forming a readily available military force for the prince. Members of the lower
nobility in peripheral towns were known as gorodovye dvoriane.
dvorianín (dvoriáne)
Lower nobleman.
dvoriánstvo
Lower nobility.
dvórskie liúdi, slúgi

see liudi, slugi
dvortsóvyi
Adjective to dvorets (palace), the entire complex of personnel, lands, and organiza-
tion serving the needs of the tsar himself. Hence dvortsovye zemli, sela, liudi, krest’iane
(palace lands, villages, people, peasants), etc.
émets
Constable, lower court official charged with executive duties.
gétman (also atamán)

Hetman, supreme commander of Cossack host.
golová (gólovy)
Head, also person; chief.
izliublénnye gólovy
“beloved heads”, prominent village elders.
golovníchestvo
“Head money”, to be paid by the killer to the victim’s family.
golovshchína
Tax imposed at transit points on the number of persons (golova, “head”) accompanying
goods.
golovnýe
There is no agreement about the meaning of this term (in the Code of 1497). It refers at
any rate to persons guilty of the most serious crimes.
gonénie sléda
Following the trail of a fugitive thief, an obligation of the local community concerned.
gorodník
Builder of town fortifications (art. 96 of the Expanded Pravda).
gorodovóe délo
An urban tax to cover the costs of building and maintaining fortifications.
Gospóda
The government of Pskov, the Council of Lords.
gospodín (gospodá)
Lord, master.
gost’ (gósti)
Merchant engaged in long-distance trade. Highest and most privileged layer of the
merchant class. The most important gosti were sometimes known as gosti bol’shie
(great merchants).
gost’bá
Long-distance trade, as opposed to kuplia, local or regional trade.
gostínniki
Tax imposed on foreign merchants.
gostínnoe
Tax on commercial goods.
gosudár’
Lord, sovereign; master, employer (in Pskov Charter).
gosudárstvennost’
Statehood, the quality of being a state.
Gótskii béreg
The island of Visby (the “Gothic Coast”), one of the principal foreign trading partners
of North-West Russia.
Gótskii dvor
The “Gothic Court”, the commercial compound of Visby merchants in Novgorod.
grámota (−y)
Charter, deed, written document. The numerous types of gramoty have been described
in alphabetical order in the Chapter on Charters (Gramoty).
Grámoty Velíkogo Nóvgoroda i Pskóva (gvnp)

“Charters of Novgorod the Great and Pskov”, the basic publication (1949) of medieval
charters and other documents from Novgorod the Great and Pskov, until their absorp-
tion in the grand principality of Moscow.
gráni
Chapters (in the Composite Code of 1605–1606).
grídin, grid’
Junior member of druzhina, bodyguard, about synonymous with otrok.
grívna (−y)
The principal monetary unit of Kievan Russia and the following centuries. The ordi-
nary grivna was also called grivna kun (from kuna, marten skin); four grivna kun made
up one grivna serebra (silver grivna). For more detail, see the Appendix on the mon-
etary system of medieval Russia.
gubá (gúby)
Administrative region, mostly in northern Russia, and more or less the same as an
uezd. The Guba Reforms of the 15th and 16th century introduced a considerable mea-
sure of self-government in the guba.
Gubnáia zápis’
Appr. “criminal ordinance”, common designation of the so-called Homicide Law of
Vasilii ii (1456/1462).
gumnó
Threshing floor, grain storage
iábetnik, iábednik
In the Short Pravda the iabetnik appears to be a middle-level princely servant, en-
trusted perhaps with managerial duties in the prince’s household, like a tiun. He only
returns much later, in the Code of 1497, where iabednichestvo is of one of the most
serious offences, consisting of making false denunciations. The term is probably of
Germanic (and further back of Celtic) origin.
iam (iámy)
Mail staging-post. Iamy were located on major roads at regular intervals. The local
population was obliged to build and equip iamy, to allow an effective system of com-
munication, called iamskaia gon’ba, manned by iamshchiki (in modern Russian a iam-
shchik is a coachman).
iarlýk
Charter issued by Tatar khan, containing a grant, permission, prohibition, etc. In
Modern Russian: tag, label, chit.
Iasá
Refers to the Great Iasa (Yasa) of Chingis-Khan, the Mongol Code of Law.
iávlennoe, iávnoe
Tax on goods presented at customs office.
igríshchi
Pagan dances (Church Statute of Vladimir)
igúmen, igúmen’ia
Abbot, abbess; head of a monastery.
imenítyi
Distinguished. In the Ulozhenie of 1649, the Stroganov family was designated excep-
tionally as a distinguished family. A decree of 1785 conferred the epithet on individuals
and families, belonging to the highest layers of the urban citizenry. The status involved
a number of privileges which narrowed the gap between the lower nobility and the
upper level of the bourgeoisie.
iskováia chelobítnaia
Claimant’s petition, to start a civil procedure.
istéts
Plaintiff, claimant.
Iúr’ev den’
Iur’ev den’ osennyi, the autumn feast of St. George (26 November), when peasants were
allowed to leave their masters (according to art. 57 of the Code of 1497).
Ivánskoe kupéchestvo
The merchant guild of St. John in Novgorod, which apart from its involvement in trade
(esp. foreign trade), also played an important role in public affairs and commercial
jurisdiction.
Ízbrannaia Ráda
“Chosen Council”, a small group of advisors, headed by A.F.Adashev, governing
Muscovy during the early youth of Ivan iv.
izdól’e
Obrok (annual payment by tenant etc.) in the form of a certain share of the harvest.
izgói
A person who for some reason had ended up outside the social framework where he
once belonged; an izgoi would often be compelled to enter into a dependent relation-
ship with some kind of lord or master.
Ízmaragd
Collection of admonitions on religious life, emerging in the 14th century, and a major
source for the Domostroi (q.v.).
izórnik (−i)
Dependent peasant in Pskov, tenant farmer, who usually received a loan of some kind
(money, seed grain, implements, etc.) along with the plot put at his disposal.
izvód
1. Assembly of twelve men with judicial function, in art. 15 of the Short Pravda.
2. Version or redaction of a chronicle, esp. the Old (Starshii) and the Younger
(Mladshii) versions of the First Novgorod Chronicle.
kabalá (−lý)
A written contract, the document as well as the relationship, by which the creditor
loaned a sum of money (from Turkic).
sluzhílaia kabala
“Limited service slavery contract” (Hillie’s translation) by virtue of which the debtor
obliged himself to enter the service of the creditor in lieu of paying interest.
zaëmnaia kabala
Document recording a loan contract.
zakládnaia kabala
Document recording a contract of pledge.
kagán
Title of supreme ruler (Turkic).
kaznachéi
Treasurer, of monastery, of grand prince, etc.
kaznít’
To punish (in general), esp. to inflict capital punishment.
kelár’
Cellarer, monastic officer in charge of monasterial estate management.
khirotóniia
Imposition of hands, as essential element of bishop’s consecration (from Greek).
kholóp
Slave, bondman. The character of slavery changed greatly, from classic slavery (the
slave as a “thing”, a commercial item, without any rights) in the early Kievan era to a
dependent peasant whose status approached that of a serf (somebody whose personal
rights were severely restricted, but who enjoyed certain rights nevertheless).
dokládnyi kholop
Person who has become a slave on the basis of a report (doklad) expressing his
intentions.
kabál’nyi kholop
Person who has become a slave on the basis of a kabala (q.v.).
obél’nyi kholop
A full slave.
khózhenoe
Walking fee for messengers etc.
klíros
“Clergy”, but with the special meaning of clergy belonging to a church which was a
sobor (q.v.), canons.
kliúchnik, kliúchnitsa (female)

Lit. “holder of key”; steward, head of household staff, esp. in monasteries. The func-
tions of kliuchniki and tiuny (q.v.) were often occupied by slaves, who then constituted
the highest level of the slave population.
kniaz’
Prince.
kniaz’ izgoi
A person of princely stock who had lost most of his status by being excluded (for
various reasons) from the pool of candidates for princely seats.
sluzhílyi (sluzhébnyi) kniaz’

Service prince; esp. persons of princely stock whose families had lost their own princi-
palities and who had entered the service of the Moscow grand prince.
velíkii kniaz’
Grand prince, title claimed by the most important ruling princes, esp. the princes of
Kiev and later on of Vladimir-Moscow.
kniazh dvor
The prince’s court. The actual residence, the estates belonging to it, the personnel
attached to it.
kniazh muzh
See muzh
kniazh rod
The princely race or blood; usually referring to the Rurikid dynasty.
kniázhestvo (−a)
Principality, the territory ruled by a prince, the dignity of prince.
kniázhii tiún
see tiun
Knígi Zakónnye
“Law Books”; collection of Byzantine legal texts, translated into Russian, with some
editorial reworking. It included the Greek Farmer’s Law (Nomos Georgikos) and parts
of the Procheiron and the Ecloga.
knut
Knout, instrument for inflicting corporal punishment (flogging), consisting of leather
thongs attached to handle. Punishment with the knout in its more severe form could
be fatal. Flogging with sticks (batogi) was a lighter form of punishment. The more se-
vere forms were flogging “around the market place” (po torgom, also called torgovaia
kazn’), “on the rack” (na kozle), and “without mercy” (bez poshchady).
Kolbiági
An ethnic entity, always mentioned together with the Varangians (Variagi), and pos-
sibly referring to Scandinavians who had already settled in Russia before the arrival of
the Varangians.
Kollégiia Ekonómiki
A government department, first established in 1726, and entrusted in 1762 with the
administration of secularized church property.
konéts (kontsý)
Urban quarter, esp. the five kontsy of Novgorod the Great.
kóniukh
Stable master.
kóniukh stáryi
Senior stable master, one of the highest servants of the prince in the rp.
koniúshii
Master of the prince’s stable. The koniushii was usually one of the putnye boiare (q.v.),
in charge of managing everything connected with the prince’s stables.
kopíinye knígi
Copies of documents concerning monasterial landholdings were collected in sys-
tematized “copy-books”, which were transferred to the Kollegiia Ekonomiki after 1764
(when ecclesiastical land had been secularized).
korchmá
Disreputable tavern, where illegally distilled liquor was sold.
korm
“Feed”, “fodder”, see further kormlenie.
kórmchaia (kniga) (−chie knigi)

Lit. “steering-book”, “pilot-book”, from kormá (“stern”) and kormílo (“helm”) and Greek
prumnè (“stern”); collection of guiding texts for monasterial life; Russian equivalent of
Greek Nomocanon. A kormchaia would contain relevant canon law texts, as well as some
materials on secular law. As kormchie kept b eing copied, new materials were added and
obsolete ones omitted. Most of the actual texts concerning medieval Russian law have
been preserved as parts of kormchie.
kormílets (kormílichits), kormílitsa

Lit. “somebody who feeds” (male/female); in some cases of high rank: the prince’s tutor,
in other cases even slaves: the wet-nurse of art. 17 of the Expanded Pravda.
kormlénie
“Feeding”, as a system for paying officials. For centuries, officials of the prince who car-
ried out their duties away from the court were provided for through the kormlenie sys-
tem. The local population was to supply them, as an elementary form of taxation, with
food and drink, housing, fodder for horses, and anything else necessary for the officials
to discharge their duties. In time, these payments were gradually replaced entirely or in
part by monetary transfers.
kórmlia
Lifelong possession and use, usufruct (in arts. 72 and 88 of the Pskov Court Charter).
kóstki
Transit tax on merchants, often for the benefit of the Church.
kramóla
Acts directed at the overthrow of the ruler and/or the government; sedition, high trea-
son, etc. Mentioned in the Codes of 1497 and 1550, but not in the Ulozhenie of 1649,
although almost its entire second chapter is devoted to it.
kreml’
Fortress within town. Also detinets.
krest’ianín (−iáne)
Peasant; the term acquired currency in the course of the 14th century with the penetra-
tion of Slavic agriculturalists in regions (sparsely) inhabited by pagan forest dwellers.
The Russian peasants were Christians, as opposed to Finnish and Turkic elements.
beglye krest’iane
Fugitive peasants, escaping from enserfment.
kréstnoe tselovánie
The kissing of the Cross, as the Russian and Christian form of the oath (formerly rota).
krováv muzh
The “bloodied man”, subject of special rules of evidence in the rp.
krugováia porúka
Collective responsibility of local community for financial consequences of serious
offences of one of their members.
kúna
Marten skin; monetary unit in rp. In the Short Pravda 25 kuny were equal to one grivna
kun (the ordinary grivna). In the Expanded Pravda the equation was 50 kuny to one
grivna kun. Also tax in kind on skins.
kúpa
Loan of money, implements, etc. to a zakup (q.v.), to allow him to work the plot put at
his disposal.
kupchína
A merchant.
kupéts (kuptsý)
Merchant in general; gosti are merchants engaged in long-distance trade.
póshlye kuptsy
Wealthy, important and prominent merchants, special category in Novgorod.
kúplia
The contract of purchase (and sale) itself and also the property bought, esp. landed prop-
erty. When opposed to gost’ba (long-distance trade): local or regional trade.
lar’
1. Coffer, chest.
2. The archives of Pskov, kept in the Holy Trinity sobor, the most important of the
five sobor (cathedral) churches of Pskov. (Pskov did not have its own bishop
during the middle ages and remained, in ecclesiastical matters, under the arch-
bishop of Novgorod.)
Litóvskaia Métrika
The state archives of the grand principality of Lithuania; now in the central state
archives of the Russian Federation.
liúdi
People, persons; in Kievan Russia: free people.
chérnye liudi, also chern’

Common people (in towns), as opposed to well-to-do burghers (zhit’i liudi).
dóbrye liudi
Prominent citizens, “good people”. Also village elders (see also tseloval’niki).
dvórskie liudi
Originally unfree princely servants who had risen to positions of some importance in
the prince’s household.
likhíe liudi
Criminals, ‘evil people’; usually in combinations, such as zavedomo likhie liudi (known
criminals), vedomye likhie liudi (id.).
lúchshie liudi, narochíty liudi

“The best people”; prominent, well-to-do citizens, the class below urban boyars.
páshennye liudi
Rural inhabitants engaged in agriculture, as opposed to nepashennye liudi, rural inhab-
itants engaged in non-agricultural work, such trades and crafts.
posádskie liudi
axpaying residents of posad. There was a distinction between residents of Moscow
T
and those of other towns: moskovskie and gorodovye posadskie liudi.
sluzhílye liudi
Persons serving the state for a reward in the form of a grant of land or of money,
embracing broad sections of the population, from noble landowners to professional
soldiers and craftsmen. Sluzhilye liudi po priboru were persons who had freely entered
a service relationship with the state, such as persons doing voluntary military service.
tserkóvnye liudi
“Church people”, not only priests, monks and nuns, but a whole range of people who
were connected with the church or who were dependent on the church (e.g. beggars).
zadvórnye liudi
Dependent persons, living by themselves, and not within the master’s household
(dvor).
zhít’i liudi
Burghers, well-to-do citizens.
lóvchii
Master of the prince’s hunt; the lovchii headed a special department (put’, q.v.) for
managing the prince’s hunting estates. Also lower ranking men employed in hunting.
lóvishche
Hunting preserves.
méchnik
“Sword man”, junior druzhina member, officer of the prince, bodyguard, sheriff.
Merílo Pravédnoe
“Just Measure”, a collection of medieval texts, apparently meant as a guide for courts.
It consisted of two parts, one of religious and moralistic texts, mostly of Greek origin,
and the other of legal texts, both Byzantine and Russian, including a.o. a text of the
Expanded Pravda.
méstnichestvo
The appointments system of the Muscovy state, according to which the grand prince
(tsar), in making military and important civil appointments, had to take into account
the rank and status of the appointee’s family and of the appointee himself. The
necessary registers were kept in the Appointments Department (Razriadnyi prikaz).
The mestnichestvo system was abolished in 1682.
metél’nik
Assistant of bloodwite collector (virnik), constable; junior druzhina member?
mílostniki
A person enjoying the benevolence (milost’) of a lord or master (prince or boyar);
personal servants, possibly armed personnel.
mir
Peasant community, lowest link in local government.
mirskói skhod
Assembly of village community (mir).
mirzá
Tatar prince.
monastýr’
Monastery or convent.
monastýrskie detënyshi
“Monastery children”, orphans or other indigents who served as dependent workers in
the monasterial economy.
móstnik
Builder of bridges and wooden pavements (cf. art. 97 of the Expanded Pravda).
mostovóe
Fee for using a bridge.
mostovshchína
Urban tax to cover the costs of bridges and pavements.
mósty
Nowadays “bridges”, but in the middle ages often denoting also pavements consisting
of wooden beams.
muzh (múzhi)
Man.
kniazh muzh
The “prince’s man”, somebody belonging to a small group of high-ranking officers of
the prince, a member of the senior section of the prince’s druzhina.
narochíty múzhi
Important, leading citizens (in towns).
myt, mytovóe
Market tax on transit goods; toll.
mýtnik
Collector of market tax.
Nachál’naia Létopis’
The Primary Chronicle, also known as Tale of Bygone Years (Póvest’ Vrémennykh Let) or
Nestor Chronicle, relating the history of Russia from the Flood of Noah until 1116 (the
Laurentian redaction) or until 1292 (the Hypatian redaction). It provided the basis for
most other medieval Russian chronicles.
naimít
Hired craftsman.
naimit dvornói
Hired craftsman, employed in the master’s house.
naimit plótnik
Hired carpenter.
nakáz
Official instruction, directive.
náklo
Market tax, same as myt.
naméstnik (−i)
Lieutenants of a prince or bishop, serving especially as his general representative in
cities and towns.
bol’shói namestnik
The Grand Lieutenant of the Moscow grand prince, for the city of Moscow.
vladýchnyi namestnik
The lieutenant of the bishop (vladyka).
narochíty muzhi, narochity liudi

Prominent men, leading citizens, about synonymous with luchshie liudi.
nedél’shchik
Bailiff (Code of 1497).
Nemétskii dvor
The German Court, or Court of St. Peter, the semi-extraterritorial compound of the
Hanseatic merchants in Novgorod, which had its own law, the Skra of Novgorod.
nestiazháteli
Oppositional section among monks, objecting to the accumulation of wealth by
monasteries.
neverstany
see verstan’e
nogáta
Small monetary unit in Expanded Pravda; there were 20 nogaty in the ordinary grivna.
normanízm
Normanism, pejorative term in Russian historiography to indicate (and condemn) a
perceived tendency to exaggerate the impact of Scandinavian influences in medieval
Russia.
Novgoródskaia Súdnaia Grámota

Novgorod Court Charter.
novoporiádchik
Newly arrived dependent peasant, who had concluded a contract (poriad) with the
landowner, as opposed to a starozhilets, whose family had lived on the land and worked
for the landowner for a long time.
novoukáznye stat’í
New legislation, in the form of decrees (ukazy), appearing after the enactment of the
Sobornoe Ulozhenie of 1649.
Ober-Prokurór
Function established by Peter the Great in 1721 (Ober-Prokuror Sviateishego Sinoda,
Ober-Prokuror of the Most Holy Synod); supreme government supervisor of the Rus-
sian Orthodox Church.
óbchii (obshchii) sud

Court of joint ecclesiastical and secular jurisdiction.
obída
Offence; in the expression za obidu (“for the offence”), about a compensation for the
victim, additional to the penalty to be imposed.
obídnye delá
wrongful acts.
óblast’
Province.
obrók
Annual payment, esp. as paid by dependent peasants for the use of land, quit-rent.
obruchénie
Betrothal by means of a religious ceremony.
óbshchina
Community, esp. village community, peasant commune.
óbysk
(Criminal) investigation, search.
povál’nyi obysk
Comprehensive questioning of entire village or neighbourhood.
obýshchik
Officer conducting criminal investigation.
ognishchánin
A person belonging to a small circle of high-ranking officials or servants around the
prince, a “man of the prince” (kniazh muzh). There is no agreement about the precise
meaning of the term (which disappears soon after the rp): steward, estate manager,
bailiff?
okól’nichii (−ie)
High officials of the Moscow grand prince, ranking immediately below the boyars.
opríchnina
Political regime instituted by Ivan iv, on account of which part of the country was set
aside and ruled by the tsar personally (the oprichnina, from oprich, “except”), while the
rest of the country formed the zemshchina. The regime soon took on aspects of mania-
cal cruelty and terrorism and left the country in chaos. It lasted from 1665 to 1672.
osménik
Collector of local taxes (osmnichnoe and mostovshchina).
osnovopolózhniki
“Founders”, “foundation layers”; modern term used in Soviet Marxism in connection
with Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.
ótchina
See vótchina
ótkup
In Ch.18 of the Ulozhenie of 1649, a franchise system for different kinds of taxes, by vir-
tue of which taxes were farmed out to private persons for a fixed fee and for a certain
length of time.
otkúpshchiki
For a short period, the Mongol khans sold the right to collect the taxes demanded
by them to private agents – otkupshchiki. In the Ulozhenie, otkupshchiki were franchise
holders for various taxes (see above).
otrók
Young man, esp. junior member of druzhina, servant, bodygard.
otvóz
Tax on goods destined for other Russian towns.
paláta
Palace, then also government department (housed in palace).
Pamiatniki Rússkogo Práva (prp)

“Monuments of Russian Law”, 8-volume authoritative publication of major sources of
Russian law through the ages (Moskva, 1952–1963).
pávoloki
Silk cloths.
pechál’nik
Protector.
pecháti
Sealed documents.
pechátnik
Keeper of the seal; court officer in charge of the prince’s chancery.
peniázi
A coinage in Pskov (from Middle Germ. penningen).
piatichlénka
Development of society in five stages, according to Marx and Engels: primitive com-
munism, slave-owning society, feudalism, capitalism, socialism.
piatidesiátnik
Officer in command of 50 men.
piátina
1. One of five Novgorod’s ‘metropolitan’ provinces.
2. Obrok (annual payment by tenant etc.) in the form of one fifth of the harvest.
piatnó
Lit. stain, mark, spot. Tax on sale of horses and cattle.
pir (−y)
Banquet of fraternity (bratchina).
pirovói stárosta
Fraternity elder, presiding over banquet (pir), with some judicial powers.
pishchál’niki
Arquebusiers, professional soldiers armed with (h)arquebus (pishchal’), a forerunner
of the musket.
piséts (pistsý)
Secretary, scribe, clerk, esp. the court clerk, and also the secretary responsible for the
compilation of pistsovye knigi.
pistsóvye knígi
Land registers, cadastres, in which lands were described, including information con-
cerning ownership, population, soil, etc.
plémia
The basic meaning is “tribe”, but it can also refer to other collectivities, such as clan,
race, family, class, etc.
plemiánnik
Member of the same family, esp. nephew.
pobóry
Fee for certain court officers, esp. dovodchiki and pravedchiki.
pod”ezdnói
One of the highest princely officials (in the Short Pravda), serving as the prince’s emis-
sary, in particular in collecting taxes and fines.
pod’iáchii
Assitant clerk.
plóshchadnye pod’iáchie
Official clerks whose services were publicly available on town squares.
podsúdnich’e
General court fee.
podúshnaia podát’
Poll tax, introduced in 1718, applying to all male persons, including slaves, but exclud-
ing nobles, public servants, and clergy.
podvérniki
Guards (at a court).
podvóiskie
Country bailiffs or court officers.
podvórniki
Landless, free peasants who worked in the household (dvor) of a master.
podýmnoe
See pomernoe.
podýmshchiki
Arsonists.
pogánoe
Pagan food (Church Statute of Vladimir).
pogóst
Originally, trading post; then village as regional centre and trading post in Northern
Russia.
poklázha
Storage, safe keeping.
pokón
Archaic term for “law”, referring probably to rules fixed in writing or in another way, as
opposed to mere customary law, for which the contemporary term was zakon. Occurs
in the 10th century treaties with Byzantium and in both versions of the rp.
pokón vírnyi
see Russkaia Pravda
pokrúta
Agricultural loan to izornik or other dependent person (in Pskov).
póle
1. Field, as in Díkoe pole, “the wild field”, or “the wild land”, the vast and ungoverned
spaces in the south-east, where warlike nomads roamed during most of the Russian
middle ages.
2. The duelling field, or the judicial duel itself as a means to prove or disprove some-
thing in the course of a trial (see Novgorod and Pskov Court Charters, Code of 1497).
políchnoe
Stolen property, serving as material evidence of crime.
poliúd’e
See dan’
polk
Regiment or military unit in general.
polkóvnik
Commander of polk, colonel.
pólnaia zápis’
Excerpt from polnaia gramota, by which somebody sells himself into slavery.
Pólnoe Sobránie Rússkikh Létopisei (psrl)

“Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles”, the basic (multi-volume) publication of
Russian chronicles or annals, started by the Archeographical Commission in 1841.
Pólnoe Sobránie Zakónov

“Complete Collection of Laws”, publication (under the direction of M.M. Speranskii)
of the legislation of the Russian tsardom and empire, from 1649 (the Code of Aleksei
Mikhailovich, the Sobornoe Ulozhenie) to the end of 1913, in 133 volumes, itself the basis
of the Svod Zakonov. Also known as “Complete Collection of National [Otechestven-
nykh] Laws”.
poloniánik (−i)
Prisoner of war, sold in slavery.
poloniánichnye dén’gi
Special tax destined for the ransoming of Russian sodiers in foreign captiviy.
polóvniki
Landless and indigent peasants, supplied with a plot of land by a landowner, as
well as with a loan (in money, seed, tools, etc.), for which they worked an agreed
number of years, paying half (polovina) the harvest to the landowner.
pomérnoe
Fee for weighing bulk goods, such as grain, salt, etc. Also podýmnoe, pudóvshchina,
véshchee.
pomést’e (−‘ia)
A landed estate granted as a reward for service, as opposed to an inherited estate
(otchina).
poméshchik
The person to whom a pomest’e had been granted. Pomeshchiki with small e states
were malopomestnye; those without a pomest’e, but entitled to one, bezpomestnye
(in Ulozhenie).
poniatói
Person appointed to act as witness of certain official acts.
popechítel’
Curator, representing the interests of adult persons considered unable to manage their
own affairs (widows, single women); usually a male relative.
poriád, poriádnaia (grámota)

Contract, agreement, esp. between peasant and master.
porúchnik
Guarantor, person who guaranteed a loan.
porúka
(Contract of) guaranty, where a third person (and sometimes the debtor h
imself) guar-
anteed the debtor’s performance.
krugováia porúka
“Circular guaranty”, joint responsibility, esp. of peasant community (mir).
porúchnye
ritten assurances, bonds. Statnye or stavochnye poruchnye: surety bonds to assure
W
that a person would appear in court.
posád
Part of town, suburb, place of residence of craftsmen, shopkeepers, etc., the posadskie
liudi, who were subject to tiaglo, certain taxes and occasional participation in public
works.
posádnik (−i)
Originally, somebody (usually a son or a brother) appointed by the prince to rep-
resent him in some part of the principality as governor and mayor of the regional
capital. In time, posadniki were recruited outside the ruling dynasty. In Novgorod
(and Pskov) the right to appoint posadniki was claimed successfully by the veche
(assembly) and the nominal prince was represented by a namestnik (lieutenant).
The Novgorod posadniki (there were two for a long time and then more) were
recruited from the Novgorod boyars and headed the Novgorod government. They
also exercized judicial functions, together with judges appointed by the prince.
Novgorod posadniki were often dismissed by the popular assembly or through a
popular uprising.
stepénnyi posadnik
The incumbent posadnik of Novgorod.
posázhennoe
Tax based on length of river vessel (see sázhen’)
posél’skie
Estate manager in the country.
póshlina
1. Ancient customs.
2. Tax, official fees.
póshlinnik
Tax collector.
póslukh (−i)
A character witness, a person who testifies about what he has heard, as opposed to an
eyewitness (vidok).
posókha
Local population could be liable to posokha: the duty to supply the workforce required
for the upkeep of roads and similar public works.
Posól’skii prikáz
The Ambassadorial Department of the Muscovy government.
posp
Obrok (annual payment by tenant etc.) in the form of a fixed amount of money.
postél’nichii
“Gentleman of the bedchamber”, a court officer in charge of the prince’s clothes, etc.,
chamberlin.
potók
Banishment, with loss of all rights (akin to Germ. Friedlosigkeit).
potvóri
Making charms (Church Statute of Vladimir).
Pouchénie Monomákha
The Teaching or Testament of Monomakh. A text ostensibly written by Monomakh
and addressed to his sons, but obviously of clerical authorship, in which Monomakh
not only related his political and military achievements, but also described the proper
way for a prince to rule his principality.
povál’nyi óbysk
see obysk
Póvest’ Vrémennykh Let

See Nachál’naia Létopis’.
pozhilóe
Compensation to be paid by peasant, leaving around the feast of St. George (Iur’ev den’,
q.v.), to his master for the use of living quarters.
pravédchiki
Bailiffs’ assistants.
Pravosúdie Metropolích’e
Short legislative text of uncertain origin and date. According to the most widely
held theory, it was assembled some time around 1400 for the newly established epar-
chy of Perm’.
pridánoe
Dowry (see also véno).
prígorod
Lit. suburb, but actually a town having the status of a suburb of the capital city of a
principality, which involved a greater (but varying) degree of independence than that
enjoyed by an ordinary town. The best know example is Pskov, which, as a prigorod of
Novgorod, had its own assembly (veche), made its own laws (esp. the Court Charter of
Pskov), and had its own ‘suburbs’.
prígovor, prigovór
Official decision (in modern Russian: court sentence).
sobórnyi prigovor
Decree of sobor, esp. Church Council.
boiárskii prigovor
Decision, decree, or judgment of boyar council.
prikáz
Department of Muscovy government. The number varied over time. In connection
with legal history, the following prikazy were the most relevant.
p. Bol’shogo dvortsa (Great Palace): tsar’s estate management
p. Bol’shogo prikhoda (Great Revenue): central financial department
p. Bol’shoi kazni (Great Treasury): mint, treasury, various taxes
Bronnyi p., also Oruzheinyi p. (Armory): palace affairs
Chelobitnyi p. (Requests)
Iamskoi p.: management of communications system (iamskaia gon’ba)
Inozemskii p. (Foreign Countries): foreign troops and residents
Kazach’ii p.: Cossack affairs
Kazennyi p.: state chancery
Kholopii p.: slavery affairs
Koniushennyi p. (Horses): breeding, marking, provision of horses
Malorossiiskii p.: Ukrainian affairs
Monastyrskii p. (Monastery)
Pechatnyi p. (Seal): official documents, stamp duty, notarial affairs
Polonianichnyi p. (prisoners-of-war): redemption of Russian p.o.w.’s
Pomestnyi p.: management and registration of pomest’ia and votchiny
Posol’skii p. (Ambassadorial): foreign affairs
Pushkarskii p. (Artillery)
Razboinyi p. (Robbery): brigandage and theft, prosecution and court
Razriadnyi p.: military and civilian service registration, mestnichestvo
Streletskii p. (Musketeer)
Sudnyi Vladimirskii p. (highest court)
Moskovskii p. (high court)
Riazanskii p. (appellate court)
Dmitrovskii p. (appellate court)
Zemskii p.: Moscow City affairs
prikázchik gorodovói
Elected town commissioner.
prikhód (−y)
Parish, territory belonging to a parish church (village).
prikládniki
Persons under the protection of the Church.
priméta (−y)
Identifying mark (of serfs, slaves, horses, etc.).
prístav
Judicial officer, bailiff.
pristávnaia pámiat’
Summons by pristav, for starting a court case.
prizvánie
Invitation (by the veche) of a new prince.
prodázha
Fine paid to prince (in rp).
próezd
Tax on transit goods.
prokurátor
State prosecutor (since 1722).
promýt
Punitive tax for avoiding myt by taking alternative road.
propiatén’e
Punitive tax for not paying piatno for the buying of a horse.
próshchennik (−i)
Persons dependent on the church, lacking other support by family or a master, such as
freed debt slaves; included among “church people”.
proskúrnitsa
The woman who baked the Eucharist bread; included among “church people”.
prostáia chad’
The ordinary people, as opposed to boyars and well-to-do burghers (narochity liudi).
protográf
“Protograph”, text (usually unknown or lost) which is presumed to be the common
ancestor of several closely related texts.
protopóp
Archpriest.
provódnoe
Fee for accompanying caravan.
provóz
Tax on transit travellers.
prozhítok
Lifetime allowance from pomest’e for widows and unmarried daughters.
Pskóvskaia Súdnaia Grámota

Court Charter of Pskov.
ptích’ia priváda
Contraption for catching birds, bird blind.
pudóvshchina
See pomérnoe
púshchenik
Possibly the same as a proshchenik (q.v.).
pushkár’
Gunner; professional soldier in artillery.
pustýnia
“Empty land”. Wild, uncultivated regions, esp. in southern steppe zone. Nowadays:
desert.
put’ (putí)
Special government departments in Muscovy, administering specific parts of the
prince’s own estate. They were headed by a boyar (putnyi boiarin).
Raskól
Schism; esp. the Great Schism of the middle of the 17th century which led to the emer-
gence of the Old Believers.
ratáinyi
Plowland supervisor.
razbói
Robbery, also confiscation of all property.
razgrablénie
Same as razboi.
razriádnye knígi
See Razriadnyi prikaz
Razriádnyi prikáz
The Appointments Department of the Muscovy government. One of its principal
duties was the maintenance of the razriadnye knigi, registers of military and civil
appointments, which were an essential element of the system of mestnichestvo.
razvód
Divorce, also demarcation of landholdings.
razvódnoe pis’mó
Divorce letter.
rézana
Small monetary unit, 50 rezana were equal to one ordinary grivna.
riad
Contract, agreement, treaty, settlement, etc.
riádnaia zápis’
Note of agreement, esp. concerning betrothal.
riádnitsa
Written agreement; promissory note (Pskov).
riadóvich (−i)
Somebody who is bound by a contract (riad). Some regard him as a contract labourer
on a farm, others as the lowest representative of a prince or a lord in a village.
riadóvnik
See riadovich.
robá
Slave woman.
rób’i déti
Children of slave woman.
rod
Family, in the sense of collectivity of persons connected by the same patrilinear de-
scendence (Germ. Geschlecht). A member of the rod is a rodimets, in modern Russian
rodstvennik.
róspust
Dismissal or repudiation of wife.
rotá
Oath, esp. in pre-Christian times.
rúga
Stipend of priest.
rúzhnye popý
Priests enjoying a stipend.
rukopisánie
Lit. handwriting or manuscript; usually a last will or testament.
rusín
In early texts, a person from the southern part of Russia (the Kiev region), as opposed
to a slovenin, a person from the Novgorod region. A rusin is not necessarily a Slav; in
the 10th century treaties with Byzantium rusini are more likely Scandinavians.
Rússkaia Istorícheskaia Bibliotéka (rib)

“Russian Historical Library”, a 39-volume collection of historical documents, mainly
from before the 17th century, published by the Archeographical Commission over the
period of 1872–1927.
Rússkaia Právda (rp)

The “Russian Law”, the earliest Russian law code. There is an older version, the Short
Pravda (Kratkaia Pravda), while the other main version is known as the Expanded Prav-
da (Prostrannaia Pravda). The main parts of the Short Pravda are the Pravda of Iaroslav,
the Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons, the Bridgebuilders’ Statute (Urok mostnikov), and the Law
on Bloodwite (Pokon virnyi). The structure of the Expanded Pravda is more compli-
cated; it contains almost all of the Short Pravda in a usually amended form, as well as
a string of later enactments, of which the Statute of Monomakh (Ustav Monomakha)
and sections on slavery and dependent peasants (zakupy) are the most important.
A third version of the rp, the Abridged Version (Sokrashchennaia Pravda) is of little
interest here, as it arose in the 17th century.
rússkie stat’í
“Russian articles”, a few short provisions of uncertain provenance, attached at the end
of the text of the Expanded Pravda in copies of the Pushkin and Karamzin groups.
Rzeczpospolíta
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (in Russian Rech’ Pospolita).
samoderzhávie
Autocracy.
samodérzhets
Autocrat, completely independent ruler. Also samovlástets (rarely used).
samosúd
Taking the law into one’s own hands, esp. making a deal with a thief in order to avoid
court fees. Nowadays: mob justice.
sázhen’
Measure of length (2.133 m). 2400 square sazheni made up one desiatina (1.09 hectare).
Local differences.
seló (sëla)
Substantial village, usually with its own parish church. A smaller village is a derevn’ia.
dvortsóvye sëla
Villages belonging to the tsar’s own (palace) estate.
sél’skie krest’iáne
Peasants of a private landowners (“village peasants”), as opposed to chernososhnye
krest’iane, peasants of the prince.
sem’iá
The small family, living together and forming a household (typically, parents and
children).
semiboiárshchina
The Seven Boyars’ Rule, from 1610–1612, when the Polish occupation force left Moscow.
The semiboiarshchina was headed by prince F.I. Mstislavskii.
serébreniki
Peasant who worked for a landlord in exchange for a money loan (serebro, silver); he
was not subject to tiaglo.
sgovór
Secular betrothal, as opposed to obruchenie, betrothal through a religious ceremony.
shemiákin sud
Unjust court, referring to the court of Dmitrii Shemiaka, who served as grand prince
of Moscow, 1446–1447.
shúrin
The brother of somebody’s wife (the brother of somebody’s husband is her dever’, the
husband of a sister, whether the wife’s or the husband’s, is a ziat’).
siabreníchestvo
A form commercial partnership in Pskov, the exact nature of which is not clear.
siábry
Partners in a peculiar form of commercial cooperation in Pskov.
sinklít, sigklít
Council, esp. tsarskii sigklit, the Tsar’s Council, sometimes referred to as the Boyar
Duma.
síroty
Orphans; also synonym of krest’iane (peasants) in Eastern Russia.
skótnik
A dependent herdsman in Pskov.
Skra
The internal law of the German Court (the compound of the Hanseatic merchants in
Novgorod), based mostly on the law of Lübeck.
skúpnoe
Sales tax on goods bought wholesale at reduced price.
slobodá (slóbody)
Part of a town where the resident population was exempted from the usual obligations
of ordinary taxpaying residents (posadskie liudi). Sloboda residents consisted mainly
of persons in voluntary state service (sluzhilye liudi po pribory).
Some slobody belonged to monasteries or private landowners. The population might
also comprise craftsmen, traders, and other professional people. See also belomesttsy.
The Ulozhenie attempted to get rid of slobody, because their tax exempt status had led
to serious unrest among the Moscow population.
Slobody also existed in rural areas, where the peasant population then enjoyed a privi-
leged position.
Sloboda, from svoboda (freedom).
slovénin
A Slavic inhabitant of Northern Russia, esp. Novgorod, as opposed to a rusin (Slav from
Kiev).
Slóvo Daníila Zatóchnika

Early 14th century address of Daniil the Exile to his prince, in which he complained
about his situation and the treatment he was receiving from boyars and monasteries.
Slóvo o Polkú Igoréve

“The Lay of the Warfare Waged by Igor”, the eminent epic poem about the campaign
of Igor (*1149, † 1202), prince of Novgorod-Seversk, against the Polovtsians in 1185;
the poem offers an insight into the spiritual world of, and the relationships between,
Russian princes in the era preceding the Mongol invasion.
slugá (slúgi)
Servant, servitor. In the plural usually a synonym of dvoriane, minor noblemen (slugi
vol’nye, free servitors). A lower category of slugi were the dvorskie slugi, servants in the
princely household.
sluzhílye kniaz’iá
See kniaz’
sluzhílye liúdi
see liudi
smerd
Peasants, esp. those belonging to the prince’s estate. Also, persons of lower class, not
being slaves, serfs.
Smolénskaia Právda
Unofficial name of the 1229 Treaty between Smolensk on one side and Riga and Visby
on the other.
Smútnoe vrémia (Smúta)

The “Time of Troubles”, the period of dynastic confusion and social and political unrest
which followed upon the death of tsar Fedor in 1598 and ended with the election of the
Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov in 1613 as the first tsar of the Romanov dynasty.
sobór
Usually, but not quite correctly, translated as “cathedral”. The sobor is not per se the
church of a bishop, but a church in which daily services are conducted. Major towns,
even if there was no resident bishop, would normally have several sobory.
Sobor also refers to a church council, esp. the general council of the Russian Church,
the Osviashchennyi Sobor (the Holy Council).
Sobórnoe Ulozhénie
“Synod Code” or “Council Code”, Code of tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich of 1649, a pproved
by the Zemskii Sobor (National Assembly).
sokhá
“Plow”; plot of land as unit of taxation. The size of the sokha varied greatly by region
and over time.
sokól’nichii
Muscovy court officer, in charge of the prince’s falconry. The sokol’nichii headed
one of the special put’ (q.v.) departments.
Sokrashchënnaia Právda
Abridged Pravda, third version of the rp, along with the Short and the E
xpanded Prav-
da. Of 17th century origin.
solianýe búnty
The Salt Riots of 1648–1650, caused by an increase in the price of salt.
sórom
Same as sram, insult, offence, indignity.
soslóvie
Status or class to which a person belonged. In the course of the middle ages, soslovie
acquired an increasingly legal character, to the extent that in the end there did not
exist an undifferentiated concept of a citizen, but everybody belonged to a specific
social class (princes, boyars, lower nobility, well-to-do burghers, craftsmen, all kinds
of peasant categories, and slaves).
soslóvno-predstavítel’naia monárkhia
Monarchy with representation of the estates (social classes); traditional designation in
Russian and esp. Soviet historiography of the political system of Muscovy.
sot (−y), also sótnia

One hundred, esp. number of urban households electing a sotskii (see below) or as a
military unit.
Gostínaia sotnia
The highest stratum of Moscow merchants, enjoying many privileges.
Sukónnaia sotnia
“Clothiers’ Guild”. Second level of Moscow merchants, after the Gostinaia sotnia.
sótnik
Military commander (of hundred men).
sótskii (−ie)
Elected middle-level officials, in towns as well as in rural areas; ‘hundredmen’. Entrust-
ed with general governmental, judicial, and police duties.
spísok (−ski)
A list, or more often, a copy. Many charters have survived only as copies, judgments in
particular; such documents are called sudnye spiski.
stariná
Old customs.
stárosta
Elder, usually elected.
gubnói starosta
Guba elder, elected guba official.
pirovói starosta
See pirovoi starosta
popóvskii starosta
Senior priest with supervisory duties.
sél’skii starosta
Village elder.
tserkóvnyi starosta
Lay person entrusted with financial and management duties for parish church.
starozhíltsy
“Old-timers”, peasants who had lived for a long time in a place. They were recruited
occasionally to testify about events or situations long ago. Indebtedness would often
be the reason for their immobility and would be accompanied then by other elements
of a lack of freedom.
starshinstvó, staréishinstvo
Seniority, esp. in the relationships between Russian princes, where seniority within the
Rurikid dynasty was one of the major organizational factors of the medieval political
system.
stáryi mir
“The old peace [treaty]”, a formula frequently employed in treaties between Russian
princes or between Russian and foreign parties, in order to refer explicitly to a willing-
ness to return to the status quo ante, the relationship as it existed before hostilities
broke out.
statéinyi spísok
“List of articles”; collection of decrees on closely related subjects, published together
under a single date.
stat’í o rézakh
“Articles on interest”, a long insertion of later date in the Expanded Pravda copies of the
Karamzin group, containing improbable calculations about the increase of livestock
and crops over a number of years, and their relative money values.
stepénnyi posádnik
see posadnik
stól’nik
Originally, a court official connected with the service at the prince’s table. In Muscovy
the stol’niki constituted a class of officials ranking immediately below the boyars.
strádniki
Slaves who had been supplied with a plot of land, to work for a master.
strél’tsy
Musketeers, professional core of Muscovy infantry, armed with muskets; since the
middle of the 16th century. The strel’tsy moskovskie, in Moscow City, enjoyed a privi-
leged status. In time, the strel’tsy formed a distinct social class, living in special quar-
ters, and membership of the class was inherited.
striápchii
One of the categories of the service nobility (together with the stol’niki, dvoriane mos-
kovskie, and zhil’tsy) from which medium level military and civil a ppointments were
made.
Sudébnik
Law book, code. The most important sudebniki are those of Ivan iii, of 1497, and of Ivan
iv, of 1550, also known as the Tsarskii Sudebnik. There is also a Sudebnik of 1589 (avail-
able in two redactions), which was never officially promulgated, but used in the practice
of lower courts. The Composite Code (Svodnyi Sudebnik) of 1605–1606, was also not en-
acted, but served as a source for the Ulozhenie of 1649
svérstniki
Co-evals, persons (or other entities) of the same age.
sviatotáttsy
Church thieves.
svod
Confrontment procedure for seeking out thief (esp. in rp).
Svod Zakónov (Rossiískoi Impérii)

“Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire”, collection and systematization of materials
from the Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov in 15 volumes, compiled under the direction of M.M.
Speranskii, and constituting the official body of legislation of the Russian empire as
from 1 January, 1835.
svoezémets (−tsy)
A peasant owning his own land
svoistvó
Relationship through marriage.
sysk
Investigation, esp. search for fugitive serf or slave.
szláchta
Lower nobility in the lands of Poland-Lithuania (Russ. shlakhta).
tamgá
Tax on trade introduced by the Mongols.
tarkhán
Free person, not subject to tribute (Turk.), hence tarkhannaia gramota, tax exemption
charter.
Tatárskoe ígo
“Tatar yoke”, designation of the period of Mongol-Tatar supremacy in Russia, which
started with the invasion of the armies of Baty in 1237–1241 and is usually considered to
have ended when the forces of Ivan iii succeeded in preventing khan Akhmat to cross
the Ugra river with his army in 1480. The designation arose only later on.
tát’ba
Theft or robbery.
tat’ba golovnáia
“theft of a head”, kidnapping, esp. of serf or slave.
térem
Women’s quarters in well-to-do and esp. noble households.
tiagló
A burden; general term to refer to taxation, tribute, obligatory works, and similar
impositions.
tiún, tivún
General designation from the times of the rp to the Code of 1497 of lower and middle
level agents of all kinds of authorities (princes, boyars, church dignitaries, urban gov-
ernment, etc.). Initially, tiuny were taken from the unfree population, but their status
gradually improved; in Muscovy they also served as judges and estate managers.
tiun boiáresk
A tiun in the service of a boyar (in the rp).
kniázhii tiun
A tiun in the service of the prince.
tiun ogníshchii
Tiun overseeing prince’s household.
tiun ratáinyi
Agricultural tiun, farm overseer.
tiun sél’skii
Village tiun, overseer of a village of a prince or other landowner.
tiúnets, tivúnets
Tiun’s deputy or assistant.
tivúnstvo
The office of tivun or tiun.
torgováia kazn’
see knut
torgováia ssúda
Trade loan.
torgóvlia
Trade, commerce; in Pskov: trade loan.
torgovýe dén’gi
Commercial loan (Pskov).
torgovýe krest’iáne
(Mostly landless) peasants who derived their income from trade. They often lived in:
torgovýe sëla
Villages of trading peasants.
tovaríshchestvo na vére
Limited partnership (as defined in art. 82 of the Russian Civil Code), similar to the Ger-
man Kommanditgesellschaft. Art. 48 of the Expanded Pravda deals with a commercial
partnership of the same nature.
tretéiskii sud
arbitration court.
Troitse-Sergíeva Lávra
Monastery north of Moscow, founded around 1350 by Sergius of Radonezh. In time it
became the richest landowner in Russia after the grand prince himself.
trúbniki
Trumpeter, military rank of non-commissioned officer.
tsar’
Supreme ruler, emperor (from “Caesar”). Initially, only the Byzantine and Holy Roman
emperors were referred to as tsars; subsequently, also the Mongol-Tatar rulers. With
the waning of Tatar power the Moscow grand princes began to use the title of tsar for
themselves, and this practice was made official under Ivan iv the Terrible. The tsar’s
spouse is the tsaritsa (not tsarina, a non-existing word in Russian).
tselovál’niki
Persons who had taken an oath (krestnoe tselovanie), esp. sworn village elders.
tserkóvnye liúdi
see liudi tserkovnye
Tsvétnik
Collection of ecclesiastical texts from the early part of the 16th century.
tysiátskii (−ie)
Initially, the commander of a large force (thousand men), appointed by the prince as
the military commander of a major town. The office developed into one of the major
urban positions, after the posadnik (q.v.), and often became elective (appointment by
the veche). In Novgorod the tysiatskie occupied the most powerful positions after the
posadniki and were especially entrusted with the supervision of trade and with judicial
responsibility in commercial cases.
udél
A part of a property, usually landed property, set aside for a son or brother. This applied
in particular to sons and brothers of a ruling prince. Such properties were then called
udel’nye kniazhestva, apanage principalities. They were often absorbed again by the
principality from which they were split off, but occasionally developed into indepen-
dent principalities.
udél’nye kniázhestva
See udel.
udél’nye kniaz’iá
Princes ruling an apanage principality (udel’noe kniazhestvo). Relations with the senior
prince ranged from complete subordination to complete independence.
Udél’nyi períod
The period between the bloom of the Kievan realm under St. Vladimir and up to Vladi-
mir Monomakh (†1125), and the political unification of Russia under the grand princes
of Vladimir-Moscow. As both the decline of Kievan Russia and the ascent of Moscow
were processes which unfolded gradually, the udel’nyi period (the period of the inde-
pendent principalities) emerged and disappeared gradually. The Mongol invasion of
1238–1240 took place in the middle of it.
Authors (e.g. Vladimirskii-Budanov) occasionally use the term Zemskii period (the Pe-
riod of the Lands), which refers to the Kievan era and the period of the independent
principalities together, in other words, the entire period preceding the unification of
Russia under the Moscow grand princes.
uézd
District.
ukáz
Decree, esp. of the tsar. Imennoi ukaz is a decree signed by the tsar himself.
ukáz o ézdu
Decree on travelling expenses, part of the Code of 1497.
ukáz o nedél’shchikakh
Decree on bailiffs, part of the Code of 1497.
ukáznye knígi
Collections of decrees of certain prikazy; esp. those from the Robbery department
served almost as a small criminal code.
Ulozhénie
Something that has been laid down, a law or decree. See also Sobornoe Ulozhenie.
universály
Decisions and decrees of Cossack hetmans.
urekániia
Contumely, dishonour, offence (Church Statute of Vladimir).
uróchnye gódy
Limited number of years to effect the forcible return of fugitive slaves and serfs.
urók (−i)
Nowadays “lesson”, but in medieval Russia more commonly “regulations”, “decree”,
“what has been fixed”, etc., and then also fixed amounts, for payments, taxes, rents,
fines, wages, etc.
Urók Móstnikov
See Russkaia Pravda
usmotrénie
Discretion.
ustáv (−y)
Statute, regulations, decree, etc. The oldest references are from the 10th century (the
Treaty of 941 and a Chronicle item from 946), where obviously no written law is
meant, but something that had been specifically ordered or d ecided, as opposed to
zakon (with the ancient meaning of custom, see below). Later on, ustav refers to
a statute concerning a specific subject, as opposed to a more general law or code
(sudebnik).
Ustáv Monomákha
The Statute of Monomakh (Vladimir Monomakh, † 1125); see Russkaia Pravda.
Ustáv o kholópstve
The Statute on Slavery; see Russkaia Pravda.
ustávnye grámoty
See gramoty
usvoénie
Appropriation, as a means of acquiring ownership.
utúrnoe
Tax on ships.
uzól’tsovaia póshlina
Tax on sacks in carts (uzel, “knot”).
Variági
“Varangians”; originally, Scandinavian bodyguards of the Byzantine emperor; then also
members of the retinue (druzhina, see above) of Russian princes (in rp). In the end
almost synonymous with Vikings.
véche
The popular assembly of a town during the Kievan era and the following p
eriod, sur-
viving into the 15th century in Novgorod and Pskov.
védomyie likhíe
Person generally known to be a criminal. See liudi.
véd’stvo
Witchcraft (Church Statute of Vladimir).
véksha
See veveritsa.
vel’mózh
Magnate, great lord.
venchánie
Church wedding.
vénechnye póshliny
Tax on getting married.
véno
Payment at the occasion of a wedding. Either a bride-price, paid by the husband’s fam-
ily, to compensate the bride’s family for the loss of a member of their workforce, or a
payment by the bride’s family to contribute to the new common household. The latter
payment was originally not identical with the dowry (pridanoe, q.v.), meant to allow
the bride a certain amount of financial independence, esp. in widowhood.
verstán’e, verstánie
Registration of young men, mainly from the deti boiarskie or dvoriane classes, for mili-
tary service, together with the determination of the land grants (pomest’ia) or financial
remuneration (oklad) to which they would be entitled. Young men who had not been
registered were neverstanyi.
verv’
A local community (of modest size) of free peasants.
véshchee
See pomernoe
véshchnoe právo
Law of things (Germ. Sachenrecht).
véveritsa, véksha
A squirrel (skin); lowest monetary unit in rp, of uncertain value, perhaps one third or
one fourth of a kuna.
vidók (−i)
An eyewitness.
víra
Wergeld or bloodwite, the compensation paid by the murderer or his kin to the family
of the person killed. It was already abolished during the early part of the Kievan era,
shortly after the conversion of Russia.
vírnik
Official, charged with the collection of bloodwite (vira) and other executive court
duties.
vklad
Gift made to monastery, in order that the monks or nuns would pray for the souls of
the donor and his relatives, or upon entering a monastery, either as a monk or nun, or
in order to stay under the protection of the monastery.
vladýchnyi naméstnik
see namestnik
vodímye zhëny
“Introduced wives”, official spouses of pagan Slavic rulers.
vótchina (also otchina)

Originally, paternal heritage (rodovaia votchina), inherited estate, esp. land, as op-
posed to pomest’e, landed property acquired by grant of a ruler, usually as a reward
for present or future military service. As such inherited property implied full owner-
ship, votchina then also came to be used to refer to ownership in general. Votchina
estates acquired through sale, barter, etc., retained their original status (kuplennaia
votchina). The ruler could also, as a favour, grant a service estate and confer votchina
status on it (vysluzhennaia votchina, or za sluzhbu dannaia). In relations between
princes, votchina usually refers primarily to a principality and the right to rule.
voevóda
Military commander, general. After the official abolition of kormlenie, the lieutenants
(namestniki) were gradually replaced as provincial governors by voevody. The latter
were also known as gorodovye voevody (town commanders), to distinguish them from
genuine military commanders (voevody polkovye).
volkhovániia
Practicing magic (Church Statute of Vladimir).
volokíta
Red tape, procrastination.
vólost’
Power, authority, and then also the territory subject to such authority, a (usually rural)
region.
volostél’ (−i)
General representative of a prince or bishop in a rural area (volost’), lieutenant,
governor.
volostel’ mitropolíchii
Lieutenant of the metropolitan in a rural area.
Voproshánie Kiríka
12th Century text in which the bishop of Novgorod answers a number of questions from
a priest, Kirik, touching also on matters of marriage and family law (the Questionary
of Kirik).
vorovskí (adv.)
In a thievish manner, with evil intent.
vozníchee, vosmníchee, osmníchnoe

Tax based on price of goods sold.
výbliadok
“Whore’s son”, illegitimate child. Calling somebody a vybliadok constituted a dishon-
our (see bezchestie), unless the charge was true.
výkhod
1. Annual tax to be paid to the Tatar khan and collected by the Moscow grand
prince.
2. Peasant’s departure from his master in the period around St. George’s Day (Iur’ev
den’).
vykhodnýe gódy
See zápovednye gódy.
výkup
Redemption of ancestral land by a relative, when the land had been sold or otherwise
disposed of by the immediate owner.
výmorochnyi
Escheated; esp. vymorochnye pomest’ia, service estates left without heirs after the
death of the last pomeshchik.
vyt’
Unit of taxation in Muscovy, which (unlike the sokha) also took into account the
quality of the land being taxed.
zadnítsa
Inherited estate (“what has been left behind”).
zadúshnyi chelovék, zadúshnik

Person released from slavery through his master’s last will; such persons, lacking the
usual social support context, were counted among the “church people”.
zaëm (zaimý)
Money loan.
zagovórshchiki
Conspirators.
zakázchiki
Priests who supervised the observance of marriage laws.
zakhrebétniki
Indigent but free persons who lived in somebody else’s household. They were not
subject to tiaglo.
zaklád
Pledge, both the contract and the collateral itself.
zakládniki, zakladchiki
Indentured servants, persons who had pledged themselves to work for somebody, esp.
a monastery, on account of a debt. There is no complete agreement about the precise
nature of this institution.
záklich
Official announcement made in the marketplace.
zakreposhchénie
Enserfment.
zakón
Law or statute, surviving with the same meaning in modern Russian. In the oldest
sources however, the treaties with Byzantium and the rp, zakon referred to custom or
customary law, and implicitly also occasionally to religion or faith.
Zakón grádskii
Medieval Russian designation of the Byzantine law known as Procheiron.
Zakón Rússkii
Term occurring in the 10th century treaties with Byzantium, where it referred to Rus-
sian customary law. On this basis Zakon Russkii also acquired the meaning of “the body
of unwritten Russian law preceding the first legislation”.
Zakón Súdnyi liúdem (zsl)

“Court Law for the People”, the oldest item of Slavic legislation, originating outside
Russia (in either Bulgaria, Bohemia, or Macedonia), but having survived only in Rus-
sian medieval sources. It was based almost entirely on the Greek Ecloga, but contained
very significant editorial amendments.
zákup, zákupen
Impoverished peasant, who was provided with a loan (kupa), consisting of the use of
a plot of land and other assets to allow him to work the land (tools, grain, structures,
etc.) for a master. He was not a slave, but if he would steal or run away from his master,
he could be sold as a slave. He would regain his independence after paying back his
loan. The Expanded Pravda contains a whole set of rules on the zakup, but otherwise
he is hardly ever mentioned. The zakupen of the Pskov Charter is probably not much
different from the zakup.
zápis’
A document in writing, a note (esp. a loan note, in Pskov), also an ordinance, a list.
Zapis’ o dushegúbstve
Homicide Law of Vasilii ii the Blind; also known as the Gubnaia zapis’.
zápoved’
Punitive tax for avoiding kostki (see above).
zapovédnye gódy
Specific years during the 1580–1606 period when peasants were forbidden to leave
their masters at St. George’s Day (Iur’ev den’), “forbidden years”. The remaining years
were vykhodnye gody, when vykhod (exit) was allowed.
zatínshchiki
Professional soldiers serving in fortifications and fortified towns.
zbliudénie, sbliudénie
Safekeeping, storage (Pskov Court Charter).
zelíinich’stvo
Concocting poisonous drinks (church Statute of Vladimir).
zemlepól’zovanie
Use of land.
zemlevladénie
Possession of, or control over land. The preferred term in Russian historiography, in-
stead of land ownership. Without any precise legal contours, zemlevladenie refers to
who actually decides about what is going to be done with a piece of land. It can mean
therefore ownership, as well as possession or just use and exploitation of land.
krúpnoe zemlevladenie
Usually translated as large-scale land ownership.
zemliá (zémli)
Land. Zemlia is also used to denote a territory constituting a political unit, such as
novgorodskaia zemlia, the territory subject to the political authority of Novgorod.
zémli porózhnye
Deserted lands.
zémshchina
The remaining territory, after Ivan iv had instituted the oprichnina (q.v.) as a territory
to be ruled by himself in 1665.
Zémskii períod
See Udel’nyi period.
Zémskii sobór
The Land Assembly, which functioned intermittently from the reign of Ivan iv until
the reign of Aleksei.
zhálovanie
Favour, grant; anything granted by the prince, ostensibly for free.
zhérebei
“Lot”, piece of land assigned to individual peasant.
zhíl’tsy
One of the categories of the lower nobility from which appointees for medium level
military and civil positions were recruited (along with stol’niki, dvoriane moskovskie,
and striapchie).
zhivóty
Movable property; chattels.
zolotník
“Gold piece”, originally a Byzantine gold coin (nomisma), weighing 4.3 gram.
Index of Personal Names
(Personal names of authors and editors, occurring in bibliographical references only, are
included selectively)
Abdul-Latif, khan of Kazan’ 275n Andrei Iur’evich, prince of Volynia 528

Adalbert (Adelbert, Albert, Albrecht), (arch) Andrei Ivanovich, prince of Staritsa 781
bishop of Riga 70 Andrei Vasil’evich, prince of Uglich 780
Adashev, Aleksei Fedorovich 724, 732, 782, Andrei Vsevolodovich, prince of Suzdal’ 480
790, 793, 801n Ankhimiuk, Iu.V. 288n
Aepa, Polovtsian prince 403n Anna, Byzantine princess, wife of St. Vladimir
Afanasii Danilovich 823 147, 658–659, 664
Afanasii Davydovich, prince of Kem 260n Anpilogov, G.N. 239n
Aksakov, K.S. 798n Antonii, Kievan monk 676
Akhmet, Tatar khan 294n Antonii Rimlianin (the Roman), Novgorod
Aleksandr i, emperor of Russia 76 abbot 252, 471, 558
Aleksandr Iaroslavich (Nevskii), grand prince Antonov, A.V. 65, 239
of Vladimir 35–36, 44, 353, 482, 661, 960 Anuchina, Iu.N. 763, 918n
Aleksandr Ivanovich, grand prince of Nizhnii Arakcheev, V.A. 880n
Novgorod 352 Aristenes 59
Aleksandr Mikhailovich, grand prince of Arkadii, archbishop of Novgorod 486n, 493
Tver’ 38 Asen ii, tsar of Bulgaria 231n
Alekseev, Iu.G. 62, 182, 184, 193, 197, 285, 451, Askold 87–89, 308
592, 797 Asmud 371
Alekseev, L.V. 160n, 170n Avanesov, R.I. 170n
Aleksei, Moscow metropolitan 294, 379 Aver’ianov, K.A. 82, 822–823
Aleksei Mikhailovich, tsar 6, 760, 763–765, Avtokratov, V.N. 191–192
777, 965, 977
Alexander, Byzantine emperor 89 Bakhrushin, S.V. 237n
Alexander, king of Poland 162, 538 Baranov, K.V. 239
Algirdas (Olgerd), grand prince of Lithuania Baranowski, G. 102, 123, 606, 683n, 711n
528, 534 Barats, G.M. 697n
Amira, K. von 117n Bassalygo, L.A. 156n
Ammianus Marcellinus 68n Basil i, Byzantine emperor 658
Ampleeva, A.I. 763, 955n Baty, Mongol khan 32
Anan’eva, N.G. 731 Baumgarten, N. de 532n
Anastasiia Romanovna Iur’eva-Zakhar’ina, Becker, J. 70n
tsaritsa 732, 790 Beliaev, I.D. 78
Andreev, A.I. 747 Beliaev, P.I. 607n
Andreev, M. 211n Bel’skii, I.D., prince 794
Andrei Dmitrievich, prince of Mozhaisk and Beneshevich, V.N. 146, 672
Vereia 382 Berdibek, Tatar khan 293
Andrei Iaroslavich, grand prince of Vladimir Berengar, marquess of Ivrea 69
35–36, 483 Berezin, I.N. 290n
Andrei Iur’evich (Bogoliubskii), grand prince Berke, Tatar khan 674
of Vladimir 32–33, 353, 478, 480, 601 Beskrovnyi, L.G. 348n, 472n
Bibikov, M.V. 66n Clémencet, P. 69n

Biulek, Tatar khan 293 Clement iii, pope 228
Bloch, M. 546n Clements, B. 590n
Bogoiavlenskii, S.K. 747 Clovis 309
Bogoslovskii, M.M. 748 Conrad, H. 537n
Boguslavskii, V.V. 25n Constantine the Great, emperor 656
Boiko, I.I. 535n Constantine vi, emperor 57
Boleslav, Novgorod elder 500 Constantine vii Porphyrogenitus, emperor
Boleslaw, Polish king 109 68, 88, 94, 98
Bolkhovitinov, E. 145n Cross, S. 54n
Bondar’, L.D. 173n Crummey, R.O. 20
Boris, Bulgarian khan 57, 211 Cyrillus and Methodius 58
Boris Fedorovich Godunov, tsar 583, 717,
758, 777, 784, 793, 803, 962, 969 Dal’, V.L. 619n
Boris Vasil’evich, prince of Volok 780 Daniil Aleksandrovich, prince of Moscow
Boris Vasil’kovich, prince of Rostov 365n 37, 381, 822, 825n
Boris Vladimirovich (St. Boris), prince of Daniil Romanovich, king of Galicia 352,
Rostov 32, 474 528, 673, 960
Borisov, N.S. 659n Daniil Zatochnik (the Exile) 366
Bozh, king of the Antae 331 Danilova, L.V. 915n
Braichevskii, M.Iu. 87 Dashkevich, Ia.P. 232n
Briachislav Iziaslavich, prince of Polotsk 27 Davidenko, D.G. 679n
Brunner, G. 166n Davyd Igor’evich, prince of
Budy (Bludy, Blud) 371 Vladimir-Volynsk 359
Buganov, V.I. 239n Davyd Sviatoslavich, prince of
Bulkin, V.A. 466n Chernigov 136, 476, 491–492
Bunge, F.G. 228n, 230 Debol’skii, N.N. 236
Busbecq, O.G. de 301 Dewey, H. 196, 197, 202, 211n, 212n, 240, 713
Bychkova, M.E. 530n D’iakonov, I.V. 78, 108, 344, 599, 601, 882, 891
Dietze, J. 56n
Canute (Knut), king of Denmark 320 Dir 87–89, 308
Catherina i (Ekaterina; Marta Skavronskaia), Dmitrieva, Z.V. 287n
empress 777 Dmitrii Aleksandrovich, grand prince of
Catharina ii (Ekaterina; Sophia von Vladimir 428, 484
Anhalt-Zerbst), empress 777, 829 Dmitrii Iur’evich Shemiaka, prince of Galich
Charlemagne 309, 656 382–383, 486
Charles the Bald 69 Dmitrii Ivanovich Donskoi, grand prince of
Charles v, Holy Roman emperor 195 Moscow 44, 188n, 261, 379, 395, 534, 780,
Chechenkov, P.V. 36n 822–823
Cherepnin, L.V. 18, 81, 110, 184–186, 194, 198, Dmitrii Ivanovich, prince of Uglich 26, 383,
203, 237, 242, 357, 363, 470n, 509n, 554, 717, 783–784, 861, 864, 963
757–758, 799, 801–802 Dmitrii Ivanovich, prince of Galich 362n
Cherkasova, M.S. 971n Dmitrii Ivanovich, grandson of Ivan iii 201,
Chernilovskii, Z.M. 118n 781
Chernousov, E. 215n Dmitrii Konstantinovich, grand prince of
Chingis-Khan 218–219, 309, 864 Nizhnii-Novgorod 823
Chistiakov, O.I. 73n, 146n Dmitrii Mikhailovich (Groznye Ochi,
Chudin Mikula 118 the Fierce-Looking), grand prince of
Clark, R. 163n Tver’ 37–38, 822
1074 Index of Personal Names
Dmitrii Miroshkinich, posadnik of Fennell, J. 659n

Novgorod 481 Feodotov-Chekhovskii, A.A. 236n
Dmitrii Vasil’evich, prince of Uglich 37 Feofil, archbishop of Novgorod 185
Dimitriu, A. 85n Feofilakt (Theophylactes), metropolitan
Dobrynia 340, 371, 473 of Kiev 660
Dolmatov, V.T. 201n Feopempt (Theopemptes), metropolitan of
Dorskaia, A.A. 210n Kiev 660
Dounar, T.I. 542 Ferdinand i, Holy Roman emperor 195
Dubov, I.V. 466n Fetishchev, S.A. 394n
Dvornichenko, A.Iu. 79n Filaret, see Romanov, Fedor Nikitich
Dušan, king of Serbia 232 Filipp, metropolitan of Moscow 801n, 962,
Dzhakson, T.N. 66n 965
Dzhanibek, Tatar khan 294 Filippov, A.N. 98n
Filofei, monk 961
Eck, A. 75, 103 Fischer, R. 66n
Edel, D. 40 Fletcher, G. 812
Edigei, Tatar emir 44, 294n Floria, B.N. 155, 499, 505n, 581
Egil Skallagrimsson 323 Fomin, Ivan, Novgorod official 558
Eimund 321 Forbes, N. 56n
Ekzempliarskii, A.V. 188n Franklin, S. 69n
Elena Ol’gerdovna, princess of Freidenberg, M.M. 230n
Serpukhov 634n Frensdorff, F. 217n
Elizabeth (Elizaveta Petrovna), empress 777 Froianov, I.Ia. 82, 110, 344, 411, 418, 421,
El’tsin, B.N. 6 478, 481, 554–555, 562, 569, 578, 601,
Enantiophanes 60 608n, 795n
Engel’man, I. 179 Frolov, A.A. 468
Engels, F. 314–315
Enin, G.P. 842 Ganev, V. 211n
Epifanov, P.P. 132, 421, 762, 765 Ganshof, F. 546n
Erik Blodoks, king of Norway 319 Garnati, Al 608
Eskin, Iu.M. 386n, 807n Gedimin(as), grand prince of Lithuania 527
Eutychius 57 Gelasii, metropolitan of Sarai 800n
Ewers, I. 102 Georgius of Amastris 68
Ezhov, V.A. 878n Georgius Continuatus, the Logothete 69
Georgius Hamartolus 53, 69
Fadlan, Ibn, 71 Georgius Syncellus 69
Fedor Borisovich Godunov, tsar 717, 777, 793 Germogen (Hermogen), patriarch 963
Fedor Davydovich, prince of Kem 260n Gilissen, J. 84, 235n
Fedor Iur’evich Shuiskii 524 Gippius, A.A. 410n
Fedor Ivanovich, tsar 9, 583, 717, 720, 783, Glazyrina, G.V. 71n
793, 803, 962, 969 Gleb Iur’evich, grand prince of Kiev 34, 480
Fedor Ivanovich, prince of Kargolom 362n Gleb Rostislavich, prince of Smolensk 171
Fedor Mikhailovich (Cherny, the Black), Gleb Sviatoslavich, prince of Novgorod
grand prince of Smolensk 28 475–476
Fedor Vasil’evich, prince of Riazan’ Gleb Vasil’kovich, prince of Belozero 188
Fedorova, A.N. 644n Gleb Vladimirovich (St. Gleb), prince of
Feldbrugge, F. 13n, 19n, 21n, 98n, 115n, 116n, Murom 31, 474
118n, 139n, 166n, 449n, 498n, 650n, Glinskaia, Elena Vasil’evna, grand princess
680n, 683n, 700n, 769n 732, 781–782, 835, 863
Glinskii, Mikhail L’vovich, prince 781 Iaropolk Iziaslavich, prince of Turov 30

Godunov, Boris Fedorovich, tsar, see Iaropolk Vladimirovich, grand prince of
Boris F. Godunov Kiev 353, 473, 477
Godunov, Fedor Borisovich, tsar, see Fedor B. Iaroslav Iaroslavich, grand prince of
Godunov Tver’ 35, 173–174, 428, 483–484, 496, 519
Godunova, Irina Fedorovna, tsaritsa 803 Iaroslav Sviatoslavich, prince of Murom 31
Goetz, L. 102 Iaroslav Vladimirovich (Mudryi, the Wise),
Golubtsov, I.A. 238n grand prince 8, 24, 109, 303, 309, 341–342,
Gorbachev, M.S. 6 360, 474
Gorlé, F. 692n Iaroslav Vladimirovich, prince of
Gorskaia, N.A. 881, 914–915 Novgorod 470, 481
Gorskii, A.A. 553 Iaroslav Vsevolodovich, grand prince of
Gorskii, A.D. 687, 913 Vladimir 36, 480, 482
Gorskii, A.V. 190n Ignatii, patriarch-elect 962
Got’e, Iu.V. 551n Igor Iaroslavich 119
Granberg, J. 415, 419–421 Igor Ol’govich 551
Grat, F. 69n Igor Riurikovich, grand prince 70, 93, 307
Grekov, B.D. 8, 18, 44, 65, 81, 102, 311, 313–314, Ilarion, metropolitan 153, 660
317–318, 409–411, 495, 546, 553–554, Ilovaiskii, D.I. 42
879, 882, 885 Ingigerd, wife of Iaroslav Mudryi 321
Gridka Konstantinovich 271 Innocent iv, pope 352, 528
Griboedov, F. 764 Ioakim of Korsun, bishop of Novgorod 474
Grigor’ev, A.P. 294 Ioann, metropolitan 659
Gudavičius (Gudavichius), E. 540 Ioann ii, metropolitan 660, 672n
Gudzii, N.K. 54n Ioasaf i, patriarch 964
Gusev, V. 198, 201 Iona, metropolitan of Moscow 968
Iosafaf, bishop of Ugrovsk 960
Halperin, Ch. 220n Iosif, metropolitan 673, 960
Hammer, D. 111n Iosif, bishop of Smolensk 162
Hanak, W. 56n Iosif Volotskii, abbot 733, 961
Harald Graefell, king of Norway 319 Iosif Vysotskii, abbot 669
Harald Haarfagr, king of Norway 319, 321 Iov, patriarch 962
Harduinus (Hardouin), J. 212n Isaev, I.A. 82, 935
Hellie, R. 763, 867, 923 Iulianiia, princess of Volotsk 634n
Henry vi, Holy Roman emperor 228 Iurii Andreevich, husband of Tamara, queen
Herberstein, S. von 195–196, 591n, 668, 819, of Georgia 480n
872 Iurii Danilovich, grand prince of Moscow
Herodotus 67, 301 175, 822
Hoshko, T. 537n Iurii Dmitrievich, prince of Galich and
Hrushevs’kyi (Grushevskii), M.N. 531 Zvenigorod 382
Huizinga, J. 383n Iurii Ivanovich, prince of Dmitrov 781
Hurzhii, O. 530n Iurii L’vovich, king of Galicia 352, 528
Huseva, S.O. 827n Iurii Troidenovich, a prince in Galicia 538
Iurii Vasil’evich, prince of Uglich 732
Iagich, V.V. 99n Iurii Vladimirovich (Dolgorukii, Long Arm),
Iakovlev, A.I. 65 grand prince 30, 33, 478
Ian, son of Vyshata 368, 430, 573, 590 Iurii Vsevolodich, grand prince of
Ianin, L.V. 112, 155, 468, 472, 474–478, Vladimir 36
480–483, 501–503, 507, 511 Iushko, A.A. 560
Iushkov, A.I. 236 Kabanov, A.K. 236

Iushkov, S.V. 7, 11, 18, 62, 73, 103, 110, 117n, 122, Kafengauz, B.B. 179n
124, 132, 137, 146, 148, 155, 190, 197, 314, Kaiser, D. 62n, 75, 104, 114, 180, 398, 576,
411, 418–419, 423, 541, 617, 668, 708, 748 597n, 624n
Iusupovich, Il-Murza 255n Kalachov, N.V. 141, 236
Ivan Danilovich (Kalita, Moneybag), grand Kalaidovich, K. 195, 730
prince of Vladimir 37, 188n, 379, 560, 822 Karamzin, N.M. 44, 76, 102, 116, 145, 201, 446,
Ivan Fedorovich, grand prince of 525, 551n, 783, 794n
Riazan’ 41n Karpov, A.Iu. 676
Ivan ii Ivanovich Krasnyi (the Handsome), Karpovich, M. 219n
grand prince of Vladimir 379, 823 Karskii, E. 103, 134
Ivan Ivanovich, grand prince of Riazan’ 31 Kashtanov, S.M. 326–327
Ivan Ivanovich, prince of Rostov 35 Kataev, I.M. 236
Ivan Ivanovich, son of Ivan iv 783 Kavgadii 176
Ivan Rostislavich Berladnik, prince of Kazakova, N.A. 218n
Zvenigorod 532 Kazimir i, king of Poland 622n
Ivan Shain, landowner in Riazan’ 559 Kazimir iii, king of Poland 528, 534, 536
Ivan Vasil’evich, grand prince of Riazan’ 41 Kazimir iv, king of Poland, grand prince of
Ivan Vladimirovich, prince of Pronsk 41n Lithuania 517, 576
Ivan iv Vasil’evich (Groznyi, the Terrible), tsar Kazimir, duke of Mazovia 534
333n, 383, 385–386, 719, 722–724, 783, Keep, J. 800n
790, 793–794, 798, 825–826, 835, 839, Kestutis, prince of Lithuania 534
863, 866, 961 Khachaturov, R.L. 11, 19n, 73–74
Ivan iii Vasil’evich, grand prince 9, 294n, Khmel’nitskii, B.M., Ukrainian hetman 529,
380, 486, 520, 592, 720, 775, 780, 824, 530n, 828, 830
864, 961 Khodota, Viatichi prince 307
Ivan Vsevolodovich, prince of Starodub 35 Khoroshev, A.S. 494n
Ivanko Chudinovich 118n Khoroshkevich, A.L. 686n
Ivanko Dmitrovich, posadnik of Khrustalev, D.G. 173n
Novgorod 491 Khurradadhbih (Khordadbekh), Ibn 70
Ivanko Timoshkinich 591 Kindiakov, K. 257n
Ivina, L.I. 246 Kiprian, metropolitan 162, 579
Iziaslav Briachislavich (?), a prince of Kir’iak, abbot in Novgorod 677
Polotsk 534 Kirill, metropolitan 59–60, 62–63, 484, 661,
Iziaslav Iaroslavich, grand prince 22–23, 30, 673–674, 960
51, 106, 118, 121n, 475 Kirill, abbot in Belozero 252
Iziaslav Mstislavich, grand prince of Kisterev, S.N. 198, 354n
Kiev 353, 512, 660 Kleandrova, V.M. 456
Iziaslav Vladimirovich, prince of Polotsk 27, Kleimola, A. 211n, 212n, 240
328, 336, 533 Kliment, metropolitan 661
Kliment, Novgorod merchant 252, 558
Jadwiga, queen of Poland 514n, 528 Kliuchevskii, V.O. 44, 76, 99n, 102, 151, 312,
Jagiello (Jagaila), king of Poland and grand 343–344, 387–388, 421, 472n, 724, 730,
prince of Lithuania 294, 514n, 528 747–748, 789, 796, 866, 888, 891
Jesus Christ 623, 627, 668 Kobylets’kyi, M.M. 537n
Johannes Scholasticus 57–58 Kolesov, V.V. 928n
Johannes Tzimisces, Byzantine emperor 88 Kolycheva, E.I. 618
Jordanes 300, 331 Konchaka, Tatar princess 226
Juchi (Dzhuchi), Mongol khan 291 Konovalova, I.G. 66n
Konrad, duke of Mazovia 228 Levont’ev, G. 764

Konstantin, metropolitan 660 Liapunov, P.P. 758, 805
Konstantin Dmitrievich, prince of Pskov 180 Liberzon, I.Z. 239n
Konstantin Vasil’evich, grand prince of Likhachev, D.S. 54n
Nizhnii Novgorod 352 Limonov, Iu.A. 600n
Konstantin Vsevolodich, grand prince of Lind, J. 95n
Vladimir 34, 353, 428, 481 Lipshits, E.E. 61n, 141n
Kopanev, A.I. 745, 747–749, 912 Liubart Gediminovich, prince of Volynia
Koretskii, V.M. 232n, 535n 162, 528
Kosniachko (Pereneg) 118 Liubavskii, M.K. 762
Kostomarov, N.I. 525 Liubimov, V.P. 102, 105, 124, 130
Kotliar, N.F. 412 Liutprand, bishop of Cremona 69–70, 87n,
Kotliarov, A.N. 436n 93–94
Kotoshikhin, G. 389 Lobachev, S.B. 393n
Kotyshev, D.M. 343n Loewe, K. von 540n
Kozliakov, V.N. 256n Lokin, J. 57n, 63n
Kozlov, D.V. 252n Louis the Pious, Frankish emperor 69, 86,
Kozlov, S.A. 287n 304, 331
Krestinin, V. 102 Lowenthal, D. 50
Krivosheev, Iu.N. 557n Lukin, P.V. 20, 415, 417–419, 423–425, 492
Krom, M.M. 821n Lur’e, Ia.S. 201
Kucheruk, O.S. 55n
Kuchkin, V.A. 27, 171, 329, 379 Magnus v Eriksson, king of Sweden 517
Küpper, H. 83 Magnus Knutson, king of Norway 320
Kurbskii, Andrei Mikhailovich, prince 724, Maiorov, A.V. 101n
790 Makarii, metropolitan 776
Kuritsyn, F. 201n Makarikhin, V.P. 36n
Kurliatov, D.I., prince 790 Makarou, M. 538n
Kuza, A.V. 472n Makarov, N.A. 558n
Kuzenkov, P.V. 87 Makrizi, Al 219
Kuznetsov, I.N. 528n Maksimeiko, N.A. 140n
Malingoudi, J. 85n
Lan’ko, E.N. 460n Maliusha, mother of St. Vladimir 340
Lappo-Danilevskii, A.S. 237, 241 Malovichko, S.N. 412n
Latkin, V.N. 798 Mamai, Tatar emir 44, 783, 823
Lavrov, A.S. 393n Man’kov, A.G. 762–763, 880, 970, 978
Lavrovskii, N. 85n Manuil, bishop of Smolensk 662
Lazutka, S. 540 Mariia Nagaia, tsaritsa 383, 777, 783, 862
Lebedev, G.S. 466n Martysevich, I.D. 179
Lenin, V.I. 314, 913 Marx, K. 6, 314–315
Leo iii, Byzantine emperor 57 Masudi 71, 331, 608
Leo vi (the Wise), Byzantine emperor 57, Mauricius, Byzantine emperor 68, 331, 421
89 Mavrodin, V.V. 18, 555
Leo Diaconus 69, 96n Maxim (Maksim), metropolitan 60n, 355n,
Lev Danilovich, prince of Galicia 352, 528, 661
532, 559 Mazepa, I.S., Ukrainian hetman 530n
Lev Iur’evich, prince of Galicia 528 Medvedev, I.P. 63n
Levashov, M. 117n Meichik, D.M. 241
Levitsky, S.L. 705n Meier, D. 257n
Meinhard, Augustinian friar 228 Mstislav Mstislavich Udatnyi (the Fortunate),

Meiske, C. 763 prince of Novgorod 138
Mel’nikov, Iu.N. 311n Mstislav Romanovich, prince of
Mel’nikov, S.A. 345 Vladimir-Volynsk 279
Mel’nikova, E.A. 65n, 318–319 Mstislav Vasil’kovich, prince of Volynia 643
Mengu-Timur, Tatar khan 293, 294n, 519, Mstislav Vladimirovich, grand prince of
674 Kiev 109, 475
Men’shikov, A.D. 867n Mstislav Vladimirovich the Great, grand
Mikhail, metropolitan 662 prince of Kiev 32, 49, 471, 476–477,
Mikhail Aleksandrovich, grand prince of 512, 561
Tver’ 38 Mstislavskii, F.I., prince 785
Mikhail Andreevich, prince of Mstislavskii, I.F., prince 794, 805
Belozero 878n Mukhammad-Amin, khan of Kazan’ 283n
Mikhail Andreevich, prince of Vereia 878n Murtazy (Murtoza), Tatar khan 294n
Mikhail Borisovich, grand prince of Murzakevich, N.N. 178, 449
Tver’ 824
Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov, tsar 718, 777, Napierski, K.E. 170n
786–787, 806, 965, 978 Naryshkina, Natal’ia Kirillovna, tsaritsa 777
Mikhail Iaroslavich (Khorobrit, the Brave), Nasonov, A.N. 45, 328, 393
grand prince of Vladimir 36 Nazarenko, A.V. 310n, 344–345
Mikhail Iaroslavich, grand prince of Vladimir Nazarov, V.D. 245
and Tver’ 175, 822 Nazarova, E.L. 230n
Mikhail Vsevolodovich, prince of Nazhir 431
Chernigov 29, 352 Nelson, J. 69n
Mikhalko Stepanich, posadnik of Nersesiants, V.S. 82
Novgorod 481 Nestor 53
Mikheev, S.M. 108n Nicholas i, pope 211n
Mikyfor the Kievan 118 Nifont, bishop of Novgorod 512, 591
Miloneg, Novgorod tysiatskii 498, 500 Nikifor, metropolitan 62
Miloslavskaia, Anna, princess 760 Nikita Iur’evich Zakharin (Romanov) 732
Milov, I.V. 210n Nikitskii, A. 181n
Milov, L.V. 61n Nikol’skii, S.L. 368
Mindaugas, prince of Lithuania 514n, 527 Nikon, patriarch 965, 970, 977
Minin (Ankudinov), Kuz’ma 786, 806 Nil Sorskii 733, 961
Miroshka (Miroslav) Nezdinich, posadnik of Nizhnik, N.S. 928
Novgorod 155, 470, 480, 500 Norwich, J. 68n
Miroslav, posadnik of Novgorod 499 Nosov, E.N. 412–413, 722, 725n
Mitchell, R. 56n Novitskaia, T.E. 451n
Mnishek (Mniszech), Marina 963 Novosel’skii, A.A. 65n
Momotov, V.V. 83 Novostruev, K.N. 190n
Morozov, B. 760–761
Morozov, V.B. 268n Obolenskii, M.A. 290n
Mrochek-Drozdovskii, P.M. 102 Odoevskii N.P., prince 764
Mstislav Danilovich, prince of Volynia 532 Olav ii Haraldsson (St. Olav), king of Norway,
Mstislav Davydovich, prince of 320
Smolensk 170 Olav i Tryggvason, king of Norway, 320
Mstislav Iziaslavich, grand prince of Oleg Ingvarevich, grand prince of Riazan’
Kiev 475 558–559
Oleg Ivanovich, grand prince of Riazan’ 31, Pliguzov, A.I. 198, 239

791 Podosinov, A.V. 66n
Oleg, grand prince 88–91, 306–307, 309, Poe, N. 196
339, 472 Pokrovskii, M.N. 18, 81, 555
Oleg Sviatoslavich, prince of Dereva 340 Poliak, A.G. 178, 203, 976
Oleg Sviatoslavich, prince of Chernigov 29, Pomorski, S. 163n
136 Poppe, A. 356n
Olga, grand princess 55, 94, 98n, 100, 114, Popriadukhina, I.V. 197n
309, 339, 473, 544, 547–548, 590, 654 Porai-Koshits, I. 601n
Ontsifor Lukinich, Novgorod boyar 289 Pozharskii, Dmitrii Mikhailovich, prince
Orlyk, Pylyp, hetman 830 786, 806
Oroschakoff, H. 211n Predslava 95
Ospennikov, Iu.V. 74n, 145n Preobrazhenskii, A.A. 121n, 193n
Ostromir, Novgorod posadnik 370 Presniakov, A.E. 18, 79, 311n, 344, 411,
Ostrowski, D. 221 555–556
Otto, Western emperor 70n Priselkov, M.D. 54n
Ovid 67n Procopius of Caesarea 68, 300, 331, 416, 421,
Ozhegov, S.I. 619n 552n
Prokopii, tysiatskii of Belgorod 135, 431, 498
Paleologa, Sophia, princess 781 Protas’ev, V., last tysiatskii of Moscow 431
Pashkova, T.I. 833, 849 Prozorovskii, S.V., prince 764
Pashuto, V.T. 85n Prudentius 69
Patrikeev, I.Iu. 201n Pseudo-Dmitrii i (Iurii Otrep’ev) 717,
Patrikeev, V.I. 784–785, 805, 861, 962
Patrikii Narimontovich, Lithuanian prince Pseudo-Dmitrii ii, “Thief of Tushino” 717,
383, 593 785–786, 805, 861, 963
St. Paul 860 Pseudo-Dmitrii iii, 861
Pavlov, A.P. 465n Ptolemy 67
Pavlov, A.S. 55n Pushkarev, L.N. 50
Pavlov, A.V. 467n Pushkarev, S.G. 386
Pavlov-Sil’vanskii, N.P. 79–80, 311, 798n Putiata, son of Vyshata 368, 430
Pechnikov, M.V. 494 Putin, V.V. 6
Peniak, P.S. 434n
Pen’kov, I.D., prince 949 Radlov, V. 290n
Pereneg 118n Ratibor, tysiatskii of Kiev 135, 431, 498
Perkhavko, V.B. 458n Riapolovskaia, Elena, princess 362n
Perun, Slavic deity 90 Riapolovskii, Dmitrii Ivanovich, prince
Peshchak, M.M. 559 362n
Peter the Great (Petr Alekseevich), tsar and Riazanovskii (Riasanovsky), V.A. 219n,
emperor 7, 659, 720, 777 220–221
Petr, metropolitan 661 Riesenkampf, N.G. 217n
Petrov, I.V. 647n Riurik Rostislavich, prince of Novgorod 481
Petrov, K.V. 207n Rogneda 27, 307, 328
Philippe le Bel, king of France 228 Rognvald (Rogvolod), prince of Polotsk 27,
Photius, patriarch 68, 157, 304, 658 92, 307, 328
Piotrovskaia, E.K. 183 Roman Iur’evich Zakhar’in 732
Piskarev, A.I. 236n Roman Mikhailovich, prince of
Platonov, S.F. 730n Chernigov 29
Roman Mstislavich, grand prince of Sergeevich, V.I. 11, 16, 21, 77, 102, 107–108, 141,
Smolensk 480 167, 327, 344, 356–357, 388–392, 404,
Roman Mstislavich, prince of Galicia 33, 418–421, 426, 620, 638, 640, 708, 789,
528 792–794, 796, 798, 801, 844, 865, 883,
Roman Rostislavich, grand prince of 916, 935
Kiev 28 Sergius of Radonezh 65, 563, 677
Romanov, B.A. 731, 976 Sevast’ianova, O.V. 478
Romanov, Fedor Nikitich, patriarch Filaret Shakhmatov, A.A. 53
786–787, 806, 909, 962, 964, 970, 978 Shapiro, A.L. 580
Romanov, Mikhail Fedorovich, tsar 760 Shchapov, Ia.N. 58, 121, 126n, 146–162,
Romanova, Anastasiia, tsaritsa, see Anastasiia 209, 461, 562, 596, 620, 625, 632, 657,
Romanus, Byzantine emperor 94 659–664, 667, 675, 706, 777n
Rostislav Iaroslavich, prince of Riazan’ 31 Shchepkin, E.N. 117n
Rostislav Mstislavich, grand prince 28, 138, Shelkoplias, V.A. 528n
148, 561, 662 Shepard, J. 69n
Rostislav Vasil’kovich, prince of Terebovl’ Sherbowitz-Wetzor, O. 54n
532 Shmidt, S.O. 64n
Rostislav Vladimirovich, prince of Shtamm, S.I. 197
Tmutorakan’ 327 Shtykov, N.V. 381n
Rostislav Volodarich, prince of Shumakov, S.A. 241, 277
Peremysl’ 532 Shveikovskaia, E.N. 912n
Rozhdestvenskaia, V.V. 928n Shvekov, G.V. 118n
Rozhdestvenskii, S.V. 898n Sigismund i, king of Poland 538, 540
Rozhkova, M.K. 179 Sigismund iii Wasa, king of Poland 786,
Rukavishnikov, A.V. 533n 795, 963
Rurik (Riurik) 118, 306, 308–310, 317–319, 339 Simeon Bekbulatovich, grand prince of
Rusanivs’kyi, V.M. 294n Moscow 779, 783
Rusta(h), Ibn 70, 608 Silvester, abbot 54
Rybakov, B.A. 87 Silvester (Medvedev), priest 724, 742, 782,
Rybina, E.A. 217n 793, 796, 801n, 928
Rychka, V.M. 587n Skripilev, E.A. 205n
Rydberg, O.S. 517n Skrynnikov, R.G. 65, 725n, 960n,
963
Sakharov, A.N. 403 Skuratov, Maliuta 962
Salogubova, E.V. 140n Smirnov, I.I. 572n, 725n, 731
Sapunov, B.V. 677n Smirnov, N.V. 819n
Saurau, Helena von 195 Smirnov, P.P. 873
Savas’kov, P.V. 92n Smykalin, A.S. 745
Savva, Serbian archbishop 59 Sobestianskii, I.M. 704n
Schlacks, Ch. 75, 104 Soboleva, N.A. 234n
Schloezer (Shletser), A.L. 101 Sobolevskii, A.I. 134
Schlüter, W. 217n Sofiia Vitovtovna, grand princess of Moscow
Schroeder, R. 537n 41, 336, 863
Seleznev, Iu.V. 45 Sofronenko, K.A. 73, 762
Semen, Moscow metropolitan 283n Solov’ev, K.A. 333n
Semen Ivanovich (Gordyi, the Proud), grand Solov’ev, S.M. 102, 343
prince of Vladimir 37, 379, 823 Solov’ev, S.V. 160
Semenchenko, G.V. 239n Soloviev, A.V. 63n
Semiderkin, N.A. 145n Sorlin, I. 85n
Speranskii, M.M. 760 Taidula, Tatar khansha 294

Squires (Skvairs), E. 173n Tamar(a) the Great, queen of Georgia
Stalin, I.V. 18, 313–314 169
Stanislav, tysiatskii of Pereiaslavl’ 135, Temir-Kutlug, Tatar khan 291n
431, 499 Tatishchev, V.N. 76, 97, 101, 106, 110, 163, 551n,
Starostina, I.P. 539 599n, 729
Stefan Batory, king of Poland 161 Theodosius the Great, Byzantine emperor
Stefanovich, P.S. 368n 68
Steinen, W. von den 590n Theophanes the Confessor 69
Stepan Tverdislavich, posadnik of Novgorod Theophanes Continuatus 87
491 Theophilus, Byzantine emperor 69
Stephan, Byzantine emperor 94 Tikhomirov, M.N. 18, 62, 103, 110, 113, 120n,
Stephenson, C. 546n 122, 130, 143, 193, 433, 436, 487, 599, 762,
Stökl, G. 800n 765, 799
Strabo 67 Timoshina, L.A. 896n
Stratonov, N.A. 112 Timur (Tamerlane) 294, 823
Streshneva, Evdoksiia, tsaritsa 777 Tiulak (Tulunbek), Tatar khan
Stroev, P. 195, 198, 730 Tobien, E. 102
Strube de Piermont, F. 102 Tokhta, Tatar khan 294
Sudislav Vladimirovich, prince of Pskov Tokhtamysh, Tatar khan 44, 294, 486, 823,
521 825
Suvorov, N.S. 672n Tolochko, P.P. 411
Sveinald 96 Tomsinov, V.A. 763
Sverdlov, M.B. 22 Torke, H. 799n
Sverki 94–95 Troitskii, S.V. 212n
Sviatopolk Iziaslavich, grand prince 54, 135, Trubetskoi, D.T., prince 786, 805
431, 476, 573 Tsaturova, M.K. 931n, 934n
Sviatopolk Mstislavich, prince of Novgorod Tsvetkov, S.V. 87
522 Tugorkan, khan of the Polovtsians 403n
Sviatopolk Vladimirovich, grand prince Tvorogov, O.V. 54n
108–109
Sviatoslav Iaroslavich, grand prince of Kiev Ustrialov, F. 179
106, 118, 351 Uzbek, Tatar khan 175
Sviatoslav Iaroslavich, prince of Murom 31
Sviatoslav Iaroslavich, grand prince of Val’denberg, V. 659n
Tver’ 38 Valerov, A.V. 521
Sviatoslav Igor’evich, grand prince 88, 96, Valikonite, I. 540n
306, 324, 339–340, 473 Valk, S.N. 237, 468
Sviatoslav Ivanovich, prince of Varlaam, Novgorod landowner 49, 558
Smolensk 534 Varlaam, metropolitan of Rostov 804n
Sviatoslav Iziaslavich, grand prince 25 Vasiata, Novgorod elder 500
Sviatoslav Mstislavich, prince of Smolensk Vašica, J. 211n
Sviatoslav Ol’govich, prince of Vasil’ev, S.V. 375n
Novgorod 477, 551 Vasil’evskii, V.G. 68n
Sviatoslav Rostislavich, prince of Vasilii I Dmitrievich, grand prince of Moscow
Novgorod 480 and Vladimir 177, 294n, 380, 382, 593,
Sviatoslav Vsevolodich, grand prince of 780, 818n, 824, 833, 863
Vladimir 480, 484 Vasilii Iaroslavich, grand prince of
Szeftel, M. 75, 84, 104, 202 Vladimir 36
Vasilii Iaroslavich, prince of Serpukhov 869 Vladimirskii-Budanov, M.F. 7, 11, 22, 72, 78,
Vasilii Iur’evich Kosoi (the Squint), prince of 193, 196, 327, 388–389, 502, 636, 639,
Galich 382 646–647, 653, 745, 748, 778–779, 796,
Vasilii Ivanovich iv Shuiskii, tsar 717, 721, 844, 916–917, 934n
750, 758, 791, 805, 820, 964–965 Vodarskii, Ia.E. 872
Vasilii iii Ivanovich, grand prince of Moscow Vnezd Vodovik, posadnik of Novgorod 491
529, 719, 732, 780, 783, 825, 863, 872, 961 Volkonskii, F.F., prince 764
Vasilii ii Vasil’evich (Temnyi, the Blind), grand Volodikhin, D.M. 533n
prince of Moscow 41, 380, 382, 486, 524, Volos, Slavic cattle-god 90
780, 807, 824, 863, 869 Vrangel’ (Wrangel), P.N. 75
Vasilii Vasil’evich, prince of Galich 362 Vseslav Briachislavich, prince of Polotsk 27,
Vasilii Vsevolodich, prince of Iaroslavl’ 365n 121n
Vasil’ko Konstantinovich, prince of Vsevolod Iaroslavich, grand prince 25, 106,
Rostov 188 118
Vasil’ko Rostislavich, prince of Terebovl’ 359 Vsevolod Iur’evich (Bol’shoe Gnezdo, Big
Vedrov, S.V. 98n Nest), grand prince of Vladimir 31, 34,
Venediktov, A.V. 913 352–353, 480
Vernadskii (Vernadsky), G.V. 75, 138, 180, Vsevolod Iur’evich, prince of Novgorod 155
302n, 313, 605n, 910n Vsevolod Mstislavich, prince of
Vernadskii, V. 75 Novgorod 122, 471, 477, 522, 561
Vershinin, K.V. 62 Vsevolod Mstislavich, prince of Smolensk
Veselovskii, S.B. 65, 582, 880n, 903, 911n, 914 156, 171
Viacheslav Iaroslavich 119 Vyshata 368
Viacheslav Vladimirovich, grand prince of Vysheslav Vladimirovich, prince of
Kiev 353 Novgorod 474
Vieillard, J. 69n Vytautas, see Vitovt
Vilenskii, B.V. 177n, 178n
Vilkul, T.L. 415n Wal, van der, N. 57n, 63n
Viskovatyi, I.M. 790, 811 William the Conqueror 309
Vitovt, grand prince of Lithuania 41, 528 Władysław, Polish crown prince 786, 795,
Vladimir Andreevich, prince of Rostov 524 963
Vladimir Andreevich Khrabryi (the Brave),
prince of Serpukhov 395, 818n Zagorovksii, A.I. 622, 937n
Vladimir Andreevich, prince of Staritsa 738 Zarutskii, I.M., hetman 805
Vladimir Iaroslavich, prince of Zavadskaia, S.V. 502, 595–596
Novgorod 112, 475 Zavidich, Dmitrii, Novgorod posadnik 477
Vladimir Konstatinovich, prince of Zernack, K. 419n
Uglich 365n Zhidiata, bishop 112
Vladimir Sviatoslavich (St. Vladimir), grand Zhil’tsov, S.V. 853
prince 31, 92, 108, 306, 309, 395, 473 Zimin, A.A. 73, 81–82, 97, 103, 106, 110, 122,
Vladimir Vasil’kovich, prince of Volynia 532, 126, 130, 138, 155, 171, 178, 186, 389, 446,
559, 643 453, 455–456, 576, 614, 640n, 725n, 791,
Vladimir Vsevolodovich (Monomakh), grand 865
prince 25, 32, 54, 106, 309, 377–378, 401, Żołkiewski, S. 795
431, 476–477, 573–574 Zonaras 59
Vladimirko Volodarich, prince of Žužek, I. 55n
Galicia 532 Zygmunt (Sigismund) king of Poland 528
Subject Index
Not included: names of various kinds of charters (gramoty), see the Alphabetical Dictionary of
Gramoty in Chapter 11
names of persons, see the Index of Personal Names
Abbasid dynasty 410 autocracy 777, 779–782, 789–790, 796, 798,

abbot, see igumen 806, 862
abduction 625, 665–666 auxiliaries 820
Abridged Pravda 105–107, 128, 142–143 Avars 302, 308
Adashev government 842, 897, 907
administration of justice 767 bailiff (pristav) 177, 204, 274, 276, 601, 690,
adultery 627, 631, 665–666 695, 712–714, 736–737, 834, 851, 856, 956
Alans 301–303 Baltic bishoprics 168, 514
Akty istoricheskie 236 Baltic population 300
Akty Iuridicheskie 236 Baltic towns 168
Akty Sotsial’no-Ekonomicheskoi Istorii Severo- banditry, see robbery
Vostochnoi Rossii (asei) 65, 580 bankruptcy 205, 447–448, 605
Aleksandrova Sloboda 803 barshchina 504, 580, 885, 911
Ambassadorial Department, see Posol’skii barter contract 441
prikaz Basilika 58
ancestral property 259, 738, 869, 896–897, baskaki 38, 223, 394
903–906 beards 134, 706–707
Andrusovo treaty of 1667 529, 829 bee-keeping 548
Annales Bertiniani 86, 332 Belarus 530
annulment 936 Belgorod veche of 997 423, 436
Answering Chamber 764 beloved leaders (izliublennye golovy) 839
Answers of Metropolitan Ioann ii 672 Belozero Guba Charter of 1539 835
Antes (Antae) 68, 300–302, 331–332 Belozero Statutory Charter 188–190, 685,
Antoniev monastery (Novg.) 676 689, 707, 713, 832–833
apanage princes 25, 37, 164–165, 366, 381, Belozero Tax Charter 190
738, 775, 780, 818, 863–864, 869 Belozero principality 362n
appellate procedure 958 Bel’skii family 781
Appointments Department, see Razriadnyi belye mesta 873
prikaz Berestovo assembly of 1113 135–136, 138, 498
arbitration, see courts betrothal 932
Archeographical Commission 53, 235–236 bezchestie, see insults
archimandrite 676, 678, 967, 971 bibliography 83–84
archives 64–66, 468, 811 bigamy 623, 631, 634, 928, 931
archpriests 967 birch-bark documents 288–290, 471–472
Arkhangel’skii sobor (Mosk.) 239 bishops 659–663, 967, 971
Armoury, see Oruzheinaia Palata Bjarmaland 319
army 818–820 black clergy, see monks
arson 665–666, 703, 706–707, 710 black lands (chernye zemli) 582, 816, 880,
Artillery Department, see Pushkarskii prikaz 888, 897, 911
Astrakhan’ khanate 825–826 black peasants (chernye krest’iane) 580–582,
autocephaly 968 835, 869, 883–884, 886, 898, 912–913
1084 Subject Index
Black Russia 527, 532 Byzantine treaty of 944 87, 93–95, 345, 378,

Blagoveshchenskii monastery (Novg.) 238 398–399, 416, 462, 593, 609, 620, 636,
blinding 709 680–681, 699
blizhiki 620 Byzantine treaty of 971 87, 96, 345
blood feuds, see also revenge 114, 396, 400,
590 cadastre, see pistsovye knigi
bloodwite, see also vira 119, 137, 399–400, canon law 672–673, 741, 972–975
567, 570, 584, 590n, 612, 650, 681, 699, capital punishment 221–222, 707–709, 767,
711–712 837, 847–848, 851, 853, 940
bobyli 489, 882 cargo, loss of 445–446
boiare bozhie 600n Carolingian Europe 546
boiare putnye 387, 598, 797 Carolingians 309
boiare vvedennye 387, 598, 797, 866, 869 cavalry 819
Bolgars (Bulgars) 163–164, 302–303, 305–306 centralization 739
Bolotov treaty of 1348 522 centurion, see hundredman
Bol’shaia kazna, see Prikaz Bol’shoi Kazni Chamberlin’s Department, see Postel’nii prikaz
Bol’shoi Prikhod, see Prikaz Bol’shogo Dvortsa chashnik 387, 390
boundaries 263 chattels, see movable/immovable property
boundary marks 738 cheliad’, cheliadin, see slaves
boyar courts 735, 737 chelobitnye 770
Boyar Duma 388–390, 720–721, 757, Chelobitnyi prikaz 812
789–796, 801, 865 chern’, chernye liudi 965, see also black
boyars, see also boiare 199, 368, 380, peasants
387–390, 400, 402, 435–436, 547, 593, Chernigov principality 29–30
595, 720, 732, 792, 851, 865–868, 909 chernye liudi, Novgorod 487, 490, 602
boyars, great (velikie boiare) 599 chernyi bor 394
boyars, petty (men’shie boiare) 599 chetverti 813
bratchina 685–686 Chosen Council, see Izbrannaia Rada
Briansk principality 29–30 Christianity 548, 590, 623, 654
bribery, see corruption chronicles 52–56
bride price, see veno Chud’ 304–306, 317, 324, 472, 483
Bridge Builders’ Law 108, 113, 119–120, 646 Church Council of 1666/67 742, 978
bridge fees, see ferry and bridge fees church courts 147, 152, 207–208, 210,
Bridges, Iaroslav’s Law on 128–129, 187–188, 374, 396–397, 624, 637, 663–667,
507–508 670–672, 684–687, 698, 741–744, 927,
brigandage, see robbery 975–980
Brigandage Department, see Razboinyi prikaz church income 674
Budini 301 church jurisdiction, see church courts
Byzantine Church 147, 493 church landowning, see landowning, church
Byzantine diplomacy 90–91 church officials 971
Byzantine emperors 91 church people 148–149, 437–438, 483,
Byzantine law 57–61, 139–141, 152–153, 605–606, 657, 667–669, 684, 741, 975
209–210, 216, 223–224, 451, 625, 657, Church-state relations 145, 161–162,
666, 697, 699, 707, 958 655–659, 733–734, 744, 776, 907,
Byzantine treaties 85–96, 321, 334, 555 928–929, 960–966
Byzantine treaty of 907 87–90, 462, 593 Church Statute of Iaroslav the Wise 8, 73,
Byzantine treaty of 911 87, 90–93, 398, 150–154, 191, 213, 437–438, 502, 533, 549,
458, 593, 609, 620, 636, 654, 592, 594–595, 598, 602, 625, 656, 658,
680–681, 699 704–705, 744, 927
Subject Index 1085
Church Statute of Lev Danilovich 161, 667, convoys 52, 125, 128–129

669 corporal punishment 153, 848, 853
Church Statute of St. Vladimir 8, 62, 73, corpus canonum 57
145–149, 213, 378, 396, 400, 437–438, corpus fratrum 345
461, 533, 549, 560, 584, 594, 606, 624, Corpus Iuris 57
655, 675, 682, 704, 740, 744, 927 corruption 202, 736, 738, 848, 951
Church Statute of Sviatoslav Ol’govich Cossacks 529, 530n, 758, 767, 805, 811, 816,
158–159, 401, 469 820–821, 826, 874, 879
Church Statute of Vsevolod Mstislavich Cossacks, Don 820–821, 828
154–157, 469, 499–500, 605, 667, 669 Cossacks, Zaporozhian 529, 820–821, 828,
church theft 710, 848 830
cities, see towns Council Code of Aleksei of 1649 see
civil procedure 956–959 Ulozhenie of 1649
classes 592 (2nd) Council of Nicea of 787 57
clergy 276, 437–438, 667, 966–972 counterfeiting 850
Code of tsar Fedor of 1589 745–749 Court Charter of Novgorod 184–186, 469,
Code of Ivan iii of 1497 9, 195–208, 389, 497–498, 501, 686, 689–691, 712
601, 634, 669, 709, 713, 719, 730–732, Court Charter of Pskov 178–184, 205, 221,
734, 738, 791, 825, 844, 846–848, 858 401, 440, 448–457, 522–524, 581–582,
Code of Ivan iv of 1550 206, 721, 723, 634, 689–691, 713, 719, 951
729–730, 739, 742, 765, 770, 791, 795, 825, Court Law for the People, see Zakon Sudnyi
838, 846–848, 908 liudem (zsl)
Code of Kazimir iv of 1468 539 courts 680–714, 812–813, 855, 948–956
Collectio L titulorum 57–58 courts of apanage princes 948
Collectio lxxxvii capitulorum 57, 59 courts of namestniki 735, 737
Collectio tripartita 57 courts, arbitration 953–954
Collectio xiv titulorum 60 courts, private 948, 954–955
collective liability or responsibility 703–704 craftsmen 433–434, 604, 872
commerce, see trade Crimean khanate 257, 825–826, 830
commercial credit 446, 454 criminal law 699, 844–859
commercial custom 440 criminal offences 648–649
commercial law 440–458 criminal procedure 854–859
compensation 709–710, 924–925, 970 Crypt monastery (Kiev) 53–54, 676
common village ownership 912, 914–915 Cumans, see Polovtsians
Composite Code of 1606/07 750–751 curators 940
concubines 623, 626, 640 custom 184, 345, 348–349, 426, 940
confession 858 customary law 21–22, 99, 114, 182, 204, 345,
confrontment procedure 115–116, 442–443, 348–349, 541, 543, 581, 633, 635, 704,
446, 611, 681, 687–688, 690 709, 917, 928
consanguinity 625, 931
conspiracy 710, 848 dan’ 325, 327, 390–391, 503, 508, 547–548,
Constantinople patriarchate 659–660 568, 886
contract for supplying work 448, 456–457 danniki 509, 569
contract, freedom of 920 deacons, see clergy
contracts 440–441, 644–648, 918–923 delicts 644–651, 923–926
contracts, form 919 deliui 395
convents, see monasteries Derevlians 114, 300, 307, 334, 339, 544,
Conversion of Russia, see also 547–548, 552, 622
Christianity 226 deserted lands 840, 946
1086 Subject Index
desiatil’nik 971 dvoriane bozhie 600n

desiatinnik 663, 971 dvoriane gorodovye 814, 869, 870
desiatnik 821 dvoriane moskovskie 389–390, 764, 813, 851,
desiatskii 373, 430–432, 596 870
deti boiarskie 388, 599, 732, 764, 802, 818, dvorskie liudi, see liudi, dvorskie
821, 836, 868–870, 889, 901, 908, 942, dvorskii 601, 713
949 dvortsovye sela 880, 896, 911
detskii 372, 374–375, 463, 599–600, 641
d’iaki 380, 588, 618, 714, 792, 807, 951, 955 Ecloga 57, 60–63, 140, 153, 210–211, 214, 216,
dikie zemli 884 231, 451, 631, 666, 698, 707, 853, 940
Dikoe Pole 529, 827 edinolichnik 884
Dimitriev monastery (Kiev) 676 Elbinger Rechtsbuch 230–231
diplomacy, see treaty procedure elder brother 166, 357, 382, 818
dishonour, see insults elders in courts 737
dismissal (of wife) 624–625 emets 711
dissolution of marriage 627, 936–938 Enlightenment 594, 860, 927
divorce 151, 622, 931, 937–938 Epanagoge 58, 658
Dnepr Rapids 828 eparchy, see bishops
dobrye liudi, see liudi, dobrye equality before the law 951
doklad 250–251, 691, 698, 792 equality of citizens 860
dokladchik 691 escheat 944
Domostroi 591, 635, 928, 939 evidence 450–451, 690–699, 857–858, 958
Donation of Varlaam (ca.1211) 558, 585, 616 exchange 261, 586
doski 450, 452, 696 exit years (vykhodnye gody) 584, 879
dovodchiki 618, 956 Expanded Pravda 49, 51, 62, 191, 682
dowager princess 361 Expanded Pravda, Synodal Copy 49, 127
dowry 622, 635, 933 Expanded Pravda, 1st Trinity Copy 127
dragoons 875 ezd (riding-fee) 737, 825
Dregovichi 300
Drevliane, see Derevlians family law 619–621, 635–636, 927–941
Drevniaia Rossiiskaia Vivliofika 235 family names 930n
druzhina 99, 117, 366–370, 377–378, 396, family ownership 904–905
400, 404–406, 427, 431, 435, 498, Farmer’s Law, see Nomos Georgikos
503–504, 510, 544, 547, 553, 556, 594, fees 196, 202, 709, 712–713, 847, 851
597–598, 791 fences 738
druzhina state 595 Ferapontov monastery (Belozersk) 238
druzhinniki 552, 597, 638 ferry and bridge fees 766
duels 270, 360, 450–451, 694–695, 736, 846, feudalism 7, 18, 311–317, 545, 553–554
858 feudalization 658
dumnye d’iaki 389, 720, 794, 797, 866 fines 152–153, 584, 625, 701–703, 710, 712,
dumnye dvoriane 389, 720, 792, 794, 797, 848, 853
866 Finnish population 226, 230, 300, 304–306,
dumnye liudi, see liudi, dumnye 465–466, 503, 568–569, 578–579, 617,
Duleby 300 656
Dvina Land 471, 489–490 Finnish tribes 163, 403, 472, 482, 522,
Dvina Land Charter 177–178, 189, 402, 587, 525–526, 544–545
602, 689, 707, 713, 832 fiscal system 815
dvoretskii 802, 807, 868 flogging 710, 736, 848, 851, 853, 952
dvoriane, see nobility Florentine Union 968
Subject Index 1087
forbidden years (zapovednye gody) 584, grant charters 283–285, 563–565, 583–586,

817, 879 686, 720, 901
foreign auxiliaries 92, 95, 404–406 Great Schism of 1054 654, 960
foreign merchants 92, 462–464, 518–521 Great Treasury (Mint), see Prikaz Bol’shoi
foreign relations 402, 657 Kazni
foreign sources 66–72, 139–142, 768 gridin, grid’ 372, 400, 435, 596–597
foreign travel 765 griven 89, 390
foreigners 438–439, 890–893 guarantee, see poruka
Foreigners Department, see Inozemskii prikaz guardians 940
forgery 765 guba charters 737, 835–839, 846, 849, 881,
formuliarnik 244, 279 913, 949
fornication 623, 625 guba courts 746, 836–839, 849, 855, 948, 954
franchise 267, 873 guba elders 835–839, 852, 856
Frankish kingdom 371 guba reforms 753, 811, 817
Franks 302, 304 guberniia 833
fraternities, see bratchina Guild of St. John the Baptist
fraud 848–849 (Novgorod) 157–158, 241, 487, 500, 504,
free peasants, see svoezemtsy 893
freemen 601 gunners, see pushkari
Friedlosigkeit 703
Hanseatic League 168–169, 216–217, 228,
Galician kingdom 527–528 402, 469–470, 478, 514, 516, 519, 524
Gardariki 323 hereditary estates, see ancestral estates
Gediminids 524, 864, 1010 Hetmanate, Ukranian 827–830
St. George’s Day, see Iur’ev den’ hierarchy of laws 207
German Court (of St. Peter, Novgorod) 168, hire 921
478, 507, 519–520 Holy Council 565, 720–721, 732, 757, 764, 791,
German law 230–231 800, 802, 973–974
German Order 168–169, 228–230, 482–483, Holy Synod 659
514, 516, 524, 601 homicide 93, 95, 97, 119, 193, 322, 612,
gift charters 585 649–651, 702–703, 709, 712, 848
gifts 247–249 Homicide Law of Vasilii iii 193–194, 734, 738
gifts to monasteries (vklady) 564 humour in legislation 682
Golden Chamber, see Raspravnaia Palata hundredman, see sotskii
Golden Horde 225, 291, 357, 823, 827, 960 Hungarians 302
Golovin family 604 Huns 302
golovnichestvo 541, 683 hunting 377, 544, 547–548, 703
gonenie sleda 689 Hypatian Chronicle 54, 430, 533
gorodnik 448
Gospoda (Pskov) 522, 690 iabednichestvo 709–710
gosti 435, 439, 506, 604, 764, 875–876 iabetnik 375, 435, 597
gosti bol’shie 869 iam 393, 818, 886
Gostinaia sotnia 764, 876, 893 iamskaia gon’ba 755, 812
gosudarstvennost’ 23, 40 Iamskoi prikaz 812
Gothic Coast (Visby) 170–171, 478, 514, 519 iarlyk 36, 220, 224, 290–294, 357, 674, 780
Gothic Court (Novgorod) 507 Iasa of Chingis-Khan 219–227
Goths 301–302 Iazhelbitsy Treaty of 1456 824
gramoty 234–285 Icelandic sagas 321
grand prince 345, 350, 354–355 igumen 437, 678, 967, 971
1088 Subject Index
igumen’ia 437 kelar’ 971
illegitimacy 155, 595, 931, 940–941 khan (great khan) 365
imennoi ukaz 905 Khazars 301–303, 308, 317, 323–324, 326, 355,
immunities 223, 390, 686–687, 724, 817, 910, 403, 416, 659n
975–980 khirotoniia 493
immunity charters 264–265, 564–565, 584, Kholop’ii prikaz 812, 888–889, 921
975–980 kholopy, see slaves
inheritance 92, 137, 369, 636–643, 941–946 khozhenoe (walking-fee) 713, 852
Inozemskii prikaz 811, 820–821 Kiev grand principality 32
insults 705, 848, 851, 869, 924–926, 970 Kipchaks (Qipchaks), see Polovtsians
interest 130n, 136, 138, 447, 454, 673, 920 Kirillo-Belozerskii monastery 238
international trade, see trade, foreign kissing the Cross, see oath
Investiture Struggle 658 kliros 438, 663
iskovaia chelobitnaia 957 kliuchnik 618, 890
Islam 224, 674 kniazh muzh 135, 368–372, 374, 550, 595,
Iur’ev den’ 200, 582–583, 738, 817, 877, 685, 703
879–880, 910 Knigi Zakonnye 63–64, 141, 183, 698
Iur’ev monastery (Novg.) 49, 561, 676, 972 Kobylin family 866
ius naufragii 92, 463, 519n Kolbiagi 322–323, 396, 444, 610, 692
Ivan iv, personality of 724 Kollegiia Ekonomii 237, 244
Izbrannaia Rada 724, 732, 790–791, 796, 800, Komi 305
811, 929n Kommanditgesellschaft 447
izdol’e 391–392 koniukh 372, 869
izgoi 434–435, 604–606, 668 koniukh staryi 51, 120, 135, 372, 400, 549
Izmaragd 591, 635 Koniushennyi prikaz 809
izornik 22, 454, 577, 580, 604, 642, 941 koniushii 387, 390, 809
izvod 446, 681, 690 kopiinye knigi 244
korchmy, see taverns, illicit
Jews 136, 626, 658 korm 189, 392, 406–407, 832
judges 396–397, 867, 869, 955 kormchaia, Efrem Copy 59
judgments 272–273 kormchaia, Serbian redaction 59, 141
judicial abuses 736, 847 kormchie 56–61, 101, 124, 127, 151, 183, 210, 213,
judicial personnel, criminal 744, 974, 979
responsibility 847 kormilets, kormilitsa 371, 550
Justice Chamber, see Raspravnaia Palata kormlenie 255–257, 392, 413, 711, 816,
831–834, 841–842, 971
kabala, see loans Korostyn’ treaty of 1471 186, 486, 496
kabal’nye liudi, see liudi, kabal’nye kostki 460
Kalka River battle of 1223 481 krest’iane, see peasants
Kalmyks 305 Kreva Union of 1386 528
Kargolom principality 362n Krivichi 28, 300, 304, 306, 317, 324, 328, 472
Kasimov khanate 783 krom 821, 840
Kasogians 326 krugovaia poruka 703, 916
Kazan’ khanate 812, 825–826 Kulikovo Pole (Sandpiper Field) battle of
Kazan’ Palace prikaz 812, 953 1380 43n, 361, 380, 486, 780
Kazennyi prikaz (dvor, -aia palata) 807–808, kuptsy, kupchiny 433, 435, 439, 506, 875–876
820 kuptsy, poshlye (Novgorod) 488, 504–505,
kaznachei 604, 802, 971 604
Subject Index 1089
land 767 liudi, nepashennye 886–887

Land Assembly, see Zemskii Sobor liudi, pashennye 886–887
Land Department, see Pomestnyi prikaz liudi, posadskie, see townspeople
land ownership (landowning) 652, 805, 862, liudi, prikaznye 843
870 896–915 liudi, sluzhilye 761, 818, 872, 875, 904
land registers, see pistsovye knigi liudi, zadvornye 890
landless peasants 883 liudi, zhit’i 487, 502–503, 506, 602
landowning, boyars 552–560 Livonian Order 168, 228
landowning, church 560–565, 743, 758, loans (contract) 255, 280–281, 446–447, 920
907–910, 973 local government 586–588, 831–843
landowning, monasteries 560–565, 743, lost property 442–443, 688, 702, 921
908–910, 971, 973–975 lovchie 387, 390
landowning, peasants 565–566, 577–578, Lübeck law 514–515, 537
910–915 Lublin Union of 1569 528
landowning, princes 552, 905–906 luchshie liudi – muzhi, see liudi, luchshie
lar’ 450, 691
Laurentian Chronicle 54n, 430 Magdeburg law 230, 537–539, 827, 830
legality principle in criminal law 844–845 magic 655
leges barbarorum 101, 117 Magyars, see Hungarians
legislation 120, 122, 182, 203, 397–402 maintenance 634
legislative procedure 400–402 maior domus 96, 370–371
Lex Ribuaria 214 Malorossiiskii prikaz 830
Lex Salica 117 manumission 268, 619, 698, 889
Lex Saxonum 118 Mari 305
liability, master/slave 614 marriage 591, 621–633, 930–938
Liakhi, see Poles marriage property 633–635
lifetime allowance, see prozhitok marriageable age 931
liquor 850 Marxism-Leninism 6–7, 18, 23, 314–316,
Lithuania, grand principality of 169, 517, 545–546, 562, 579
527–542, 826–828 matrimonial law 743–744
Lithuanian law 78–79, 230, 230n, 534–536, mechnik 372, 375, 435, 568, 598, 685, 711
827 medieval law 19–21
Lithuanian-Polish rule 401, 512–513 mercenaries 892
Lithunian Statute of 1529 184, 539–542, 750, merchants 89–90, 94, 435, 488, 502,
769, 957–958 504–506, 604, 761, 869, 875, 892
Lithuanian Statutes of 1566 and 1588 542, Meri(a) 32, 304–306
750 Merilo Pravednoe 61–64, 124, 127, 141, 183,
Litovskaia Metrika 534, 541 210, 974
Little Russia Department, see Malorossiiskii Merovingians 309
prikaz mestnichestvo 262–263, 265, 384–387, 810,
Liubech pact of 1097 25, 343, 347–348, 359 820–821, 864, 901
liudi 569–570 metel’nik 372, 375, 685, 711
liudi, dobrye 582, 602–604, 685 metropolitan 224, 291, 424, 492, 659–663,
liudi, dumnye 764, 795 802, 969
liudi, dvorskie 618 Metropolitan’s Justice 190–192, 615, 632, 634,
liudi, kabal’nye 754 672, 699, 708
liudi, luchshie 836, 839 Mikhailovskii monastery (Vydubichi) 54n
liudi, narochity 401, 423–424, 596, 602–603 military personnel 921
1090 Subject Index
military service 766, 870, 901 muzh 602

milostniki 434, 599–600 myt 376, 460, 675
Miroshkinichi family 481 mytnik 375, 442, 663, 693
mirovaia 922–923
mixed church-state courts 208, 438, naimit 575, 616, 738
684–685 naimit dvornoi 456
monasterial jurisdiction 670, 977 named decree, see imennoi ukaz
monasterial peasants 884 namestnik 177, 193, 199, 366, 413, 430, 493,
monasterial serfs 881 497, 501, 508–510, 523, 587–588, 685,
monasterial wards 886 690, 735–737, 831–833, 836, 950
monasteries 437, 592, 676–679, 744, 924, namestnik vladychnyi 662–663, 670
970–972 narochity muzhi – liudi, see liudi, narochity
monastic life 862 (1st) National Levy of 1611 805
money debts 446 (2nd) National Levy of 1612 806
money loans 695 nedel’shchik 601, 714, 735–737, 851, 956
Mongol invasion 343 nepashennye liudi, see liudi, nepashennye
Mongols 291 nestiazhateli 669, 961, 965
Mongol-Tatar rule 9, 38–39, 43–45, 165, nobility 387–388, 588, 593, 600–601, 739,
218–227, 333, 358–359, 361–365, 484, 802, 868, 901
519, 529, 673, 775 Nomocanon 56, 157, 210, 494, 637,
monks 437, 591, 667 657, 664
mort civile 959 Nomos Georgikos 63, 141, 183, 210, 698
mortgage, see zaklad normanism 74, 338
Moscow (grand) principality 717–718, 775, notorious criminal 710, 836–837, 846, 858
see also Muscovy Novellae 57, 770–771
Moscow City Department, see Zemskii prikaz Novgorod the Great 168, 216–218, 325, 816
Moscow fires 66n, 722, 732, 752, 755–756 Novgorod archbishop 485, 487, 492,
Moscow Judicial Department (Moskovskii 494–495, 516, 662
Sudnyi prikaz) 952 Novgorod boyars 486–487, 498, 501, 512–513
Moscow population 872 Novgorod charters 471
Moscow riots of 1648 872 (1st) Novgorod Chronicle 52, 55–56, 107,
Moscow uezd 194, 869 369, 468, 474, 481, 494, 498, 502
mostnik 448 Novgorod, domestic trade
mostovshchina 393 Novgorod, foreign relations 513–517
mounted grooms (stremiannye koniukhi) Novgorod, foreign trade 485
870 Novgorod, landowning 511
movable/immovable property 895, 919–920 Novgorod piatina 467, 488–489, 508
Mstislavskii family 785–786 Novgorod population 486–490
Murom (tribe) 306 Novgorod posadniki 476–477, 480–481, 485,
Murom principality 30–31 487, 490, 495–498, 501–502, 508–510,
Muscovy 864 516, 690
Muscovy government 835 Novgorod province 466–468
Muscovy law, sources 722–723 Novgorod quarters (kontsy) 467
Muscovy, territory 822–830 Novgorod treaties 470, 513–520
musketeers, see strel’tsy Novgorod tysiatskie 470, 485, 487–488,
Musketeers Department, see Streletskii prikaz 498–501, 507
Muslims 626, 656, 890 Novgorod veche 187, 498, 501, 504, 5122
Musorgskii family 599n Novgorod-Hanseatic treaty of 1190/91
mutilation 708 514–515, 518
Subject Index 1091
Novgorod-Hanseatic treaty of 1269 172–173, parents and children 939–940

501, 507 partnership 456, 893
novoporiadchiki 878 partnership, limited 447
novoukaznye stat’i 770–771 patriarchal lands 910
nuns 437, 591, 634, 667 patriarchal jurisdiction 967–968, 978
patriarchate 804, 966
oath 257, 275, 357, 396, 446, 449–451, 455, Patrikeev princes 201, 362n
518, 692, 694–695, 712, 736, 839, 959 pashennye liudi, see liudi, pashennye
obel’nyi kholop, see slavery pavoloki 609
obligations 646–648, 916–918 peasant family 911
Obolenskii family 866 peasants 565–577, 852, 878–886, 908–916
obrok 266, 392–393, 580, 839, 885, 911 peasants, palace (dvortsovye krest’iane) 898
obshchina 914–915 peasants, runaway 755, 879
obyshchiki 834 pechal’nik 361
obysk 266, 856 pechat 697
Oghuz 304n Pechatnyi prikaz 810–811
ognishchanin 400, 549–550, 568, 572, 595, pechatnik 390, 714, 810
597, 681, 683, 685 Pechenegs 112, 303, 306, 403–405, 545
okol’nichie 199, 388, 714, 720, 731, 735, 737, Pechora tribe 326
764, 787, 792–794, 797, 802, 818, 821, 851, Peipus Lake battle of 1242 483
866, 950 penalties 152–153
Old Believers 965 Pereiaslav Treaty of 1654 828–829
Ol’govichi 351 Pereiaslavl’ principality 30
Ommayad dynasty 410 periodization 4–9
oprichnina 782–783, 794, 803, 881, 909, 962 Perm eparchy 192
ordeal 694, 712 personae miserabiles 695
Orthodox Church 293, 615, 628, 654, 740, 776 persons 589–643, 860–893
orphans 940 persons, legal 893
Oruzheinaia Palata 809, 820 Petitions Department, see Chelobitnyi prikaz
osmeniki 507 St. Philip’s Fast Day 879
osmnichee 461 piatidesiatnik 821
Ossetians 301 piatiny, see Novgorod
otchina, see votchina piatiny (taxation) 817–818
otkup, see redemption, franchise piry 685–686
otkupshchiki 394, 874 pishchal’niki 819
otroki 368, 372, 598, 600, 711 pisets 713
Otvetnaia Palata, see Answering Chamber pistsovye knigi 66, 244, 287–288, 381, 511, 816,
ownership 544, 644–645, 652–653, 894–916 880, 886, 908, 914
pledges 449, 454, 586
pacts (riady) between princes and people Pleshcheev family 866
427, 509–510 plotnik 456–457
paganism 147, 153, 573, 590, 655–656, pod”ezdnoi 400, 549, 681, 683
664–665–666, 706, 744, 853 pod”ezdnoi kniazhii 376
palace peasants, see peasants, palace pod’iachie 714, 951, 956
palace villages, see dvortsovye sela ploshchadnye pod’iachie 919
Pamiatniki rossiiskogo prava 73–74 podverniki 713
Pamiatniki russkogo prava 73 podvoiskie 588
pandectism 646–647, 917 podvorniki 883
Panteleimon monastery (Novg.) 561, 676 pogosty 468, 505, 508, 548, 587
1092 Subject Index
poklazha 445, 449–450, 921 poval’nyi obysk 856, 958

pokon virnyi 108, 113, 119–120, 375, 392, 711 Pravda of Iaroslav 107–118, 475, 549, 556
pokruta 453, 581 Pravda of Iaroslav’s Sons 107, 118–121,
Polianians 300, 304–305, 307–308, 323–324 399–400, 549, 681
416, 544, 578, 622 pravedchik 834, 956
Poles 814 pridanoe, see dowry
Polish law 78–79, 530n, 535, 827, 830 priestly elders, see popovskie starosty
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 827–830 prigorod 425, 478, 508–509, 521
(1st) Polish Partition of 1772 529 Prikaz Bol’shoi Kazni 808, 811
(2nd) Polish Partition of 1793 529 Prikaz Bol’shogo Dvora 808, 811, 813, 977
poliud’e 69, 325, 568, 675 Prikaz Bol’shogo Prikhoda 808, 812
polkovnik 821 prikaz system 808
poll-tax 887–888 prikazchik gorodovoi 837
polnaia (gramota) 618–619 prikaznye liudi, see liudi, prikaznye
Polnoe Sobranie Russkikh Letopisei (psrl) 53 prikazy 720, 722–723, 752, 788, 792, 795
Polnoe Sobranie (Otechestvennykh) Zakonov prikhody 508
74, 760, 765 prikladniki 667
Polochanians 300, 328 Primary Chronicle 24, 52–55, 107, 303,
Polonianichnyi prikaz 821 305–307, 317, 321, 323, 331–336
polonianichnye den’gi 821 primet 886
polonianiki 617 primogeniture 26, 164, 348–349, 354, 781,
Polotsk principality 27–28, 464, 527 823
polovniki 22, 576, 580, 885 prince, see also apanage princes, service
Polovtsians 303–304, 403–405, 545 princes 92, 331–376, 592–593, 863
polygamy 590, 621, 623 prince (title) 336–337
Pomestnyi prikaz (Land Department) 66, prince’s court 372, 388, 681, 683
755–756, 810, 899–900, 902, 905, 920, prince’s domain 545, 547
943, 946, 952 prince’s income 378
pomest’e 271, 383, 810, 818, 868–871, 879–880, princes, marriages with foreigners 226, 233,
884, 898–904, 942–943 403
popovskie starosty 967, 971 princes, treaties, see treaties between princes
poriadnaia 878, 921 princes, wills, see wills of princes
portage 464 prison 848–849
poruka 271, 453, 455, 922 prisoners-of-war, see also polonianiki 92,
posadnik 178, 366, 370, 373, 401, 413, 428, 430, 406, 569, 617, 766, 818, 821
445, 470, 522–523, 588, 685, 690 pristav, see bailiff
posadnik, stepennyi 496, 498, 523 pristavnaia pamiat’ 957
posadskie liudi, see liudi, posadskie Procheiron 57–63, 140, 192, 210, 216, 631, 658,
posel’skii 618 698, 708
poshlina prodazha, see fines
poshlinniki 834 prokurator 856
poslukh, see witness property, acquisition of, from non-owner
posokha 393 455–456
Posol’skii prikaz 810–811, 830 proshcheniki 434, 437, 667
posp 392 prostitution 854, 940–941
postel’nichii 390 Protas’evich family 866
Postel’nii prikaz 809 prozhitok 944–945
postponement 695–696 Pskov 521–525
potok 703 public law 778
Subject Index 1093
punishment 212–213, 221–222 Rossiiskoe zakonodatel’stvo 73

pushcheniki 669 Rostov eparchy 662
pushkari 875 Rostov principality 32–37
Pushkarskii prikaz 812, 820 rota, see oath
put’ 387–388, 599 Rurikid dynasty 55, 233, 334–347, 363–365,
776, 778
Questionary of Kirik 591, 632, 673, 744 Rurikids 24, 164, 322, 332–352, 359, 371, 509,
592–593, 784, 863
Radimichi 300, 307, 622 Russian Church, see Orthodox Church
rape 625, 665, 705, 854 Russkaia Istoricheskaia Biblioteka 236
Raskol 965 Russkaia Pravda 49–50, 73, 101–143, 178, 183,
Raspravnaia Palata (Justice Chamber) 792 205, 213–214, 230, 322, 396, 399–400,
ratainyi 550 469, 474, 539, 541, 687, 718
Ratshich family 866 russkie stat’i (Russian articles) 128, 134
Razboinyi prikaz 795, 810, 838–839, 852, Rzeczpospolita, see Polish-Lithuanian
855–856, 949, 952 Commonwealth
razriadnye knigi 287–288, 386, 810
Razriadnyi prikaz 236, 386, 810, 820 Saburov family 866
real property, see movable/immovable Sachsenspiegel 229
property sales 257–260, 441
recidivism 858 Salic Law, see Lex Salica
redemption, see also vykup 92, 259, 840 Salt Riots of 1648 760, 818
reforms of Ivan iv Sarai eparchy 294n, 674, 960, 970
registration for military service, see verstan’e Sauromatians 301
remarriage 640–641 Sclaveni 68, 300, 331
renunciation 268 Scythians 301
repudiation (of wife) 624, 633, 705, 938 Seal-Keeper’s Department, see Pechatnyi
request of claims, see iskovaia chelobitnaia prikaz
retroactivity of laws 738, 844–845 seals, see pechat’
revenge 97, 119, 651 self-help (samosud) 680–681, 707–708, 713
Revenue Department, see Prikaz Bol’shogo sel’skie krest’iane 912
Dvora sem’ia 930
riad 375, 613, 639 semiboiarshchina 785–786, 794, 805, 964
riadovich (riadovnik) 375, 550, 573 serebreniki 885
riady, see pacts serfdom 567, 613, 754, 758, 793, 879–881, 887
Riapolovskii princes 362n serfs 434, 607, 615–619
Riazan’ law 41–42, 206 Service Land Department, see Pomestnyi
Riazan’ principality 30–31, 824 prikaz
riding fee, see ezd service lands, see pomest’ia
roads 755–756, 766 service loan, see loans
Roads Department, see Iamskoi prikaz service princes 366, 381, 775, 818, 863, 907
roba, see slaves settlement, see mirovaia
robbery 699, 709, 738, 752–754, 767, Severianians 300, 304, 324, 622
836–837, 848, 852, 881 sexual offences 153, 592, 625, 704–706, 854
Robbery Department, see Razboinyi prikaz sexual relations 213
rod 930 Sheleshpanskii princes 362n
Roman Catholics 626, 658, 890 Shelon’ River battle of 1471 486, 824
Roman law 140, 451, 645–646, 652 shipwreck 92, 205, 445–446, 463–464, 519n
Romanov family 333, 785, 930n Short Pravda 49, 51, 101–123, 133–135, 649
1094 Subject Index
Shuiskii family 785, 805, 866 Soltichinskii monastery (Riazan’) 677

siabrenichestvo, see partnership St. Sophia, House of (Novg.) 494–495
siabry, see partnership sorcery 655
sigklit, tsarskii 791 sotniki 401–402, 507, 685, 821, 870
Simonov monastery (Mosk.) 239, 677 sotskii 373, 430–432, 499–500, 523, 588, 596
siroty 580 soty 505
Sit’ River battle of 1238 483 Sovet Gospod 498
skhima 678 Spaso-Evfim’ev monastery (Suzdal’) 239,
skhod 916 676
skotnik 452 Spaso-Khutinsk monastery (near Novg.)
Skra of Novgorod 173–174, 217–218, 520, 537 585, 616
slave trade 615 Spiritual Regulations of 1721 658, 673, 741
slavery 137, 406, 443, 457, 566–567, 573, 600, Stable Master’s Department, see Koniushennyi
607–619, 738, 754, 767, 793, 887–891, prikaz
929 stareishinstvo (starshinstvo) 164, 348–349,
slavery, voluntary 869, 889 359–365
Slavery Department, see Kholopii prikaz Starodub principality 35
slaves 434, 437, 550, 552, 566–567, 569, 605, starosta 374
626, 872, 880, 914 starosta pirovoi 685
slaves, debt 888 starosta sel’skii 550
slaves, fugitive 92, 95, 322, 609, 613, 888 starozhil’tsy 878, 885
slaves, full (obel’nye kholopy) 612, 621, 888 starshii brat, see elder brother
slaves, reported 888 state, see gosudarstvennost’
Slavic tribes 300, 323–324 state feudalism 554
Slavophiles 798 state peasants 883
Slavs 302 statement of claims, see pristavnaia pamiat’
slobody 819, 873, 908, 973, 978 statute books 752–756, 770, 811, 838–839
Slovenes 300, 305, 317, 324, 435, 472 Statute of Monomakh 106, 131–132, 135–137,
Slovo Daniila Zatochnika 366 431, 447, 597
Slovo o polku Igoreve 355, 366 Statute of Poljica 231
slugi 601 Statute of Vinodol 231
slugi-ministerialy 618 Statutes of Wiślica 535
sluzhilye liudi, see liudi, sluzhilye Statute on Slavery (Russkaia Pravda) 445,
smerdy 369, 550, 567–573, 607, 698 612
Smolensk Charter of 1136 148, 160–161, 279, stipend priests (ruzhnye popy) 967
401–402, 461, 533, 553n, 561, 586–587, Stoglav 723, 733, 740–744, 757, 770, 802, 821,
606, 667, 669 854, 913, 929, 967, 973–974, 976–980
Smolensk principality 28–29 Stoglav Assembly of 1551 735, 965
Smolensk-Riga treaty of 1229 (Smolensk stolen goods, sale of 441–442
Pravda) 128, 137–138, 170–172, 369, 458, stol’nik 387, 389, 764, 813, 851
461, 604, 616, 689, 707 storage contract, see poklazha
Smuta, see Time of Troubles stradniki 618
sobor 180, 466, 663 streletskii khleb (tax) 818
sobornye prigovory 721 Streletskii prikaz 812, 819, 953
sobornye startsy 971 strel’tsy 767, 812, 816, 819, 869–870, 872–874
sodomy 854 striapchie 389, 764, 813
sokha 393, 816 Stroganov family 877
sokol’nichii 387, 390 substitution principle 347
Solovetskii monastery 237, 239, 677, 965 succession by daughters 638, 641
Subject Index 1095
succession of pomest’e 901 Testament of Vsevolod Mstislavich 157–158,

succession, among izorniki 642, 941 241, 278–279, 401, 469, 499–500, 504,
succession, princely 335–339, 343–350, 779 602
Sudebnik of Ivan iii, see Code of Ivan iii testaments, see wills
Sudnyi Vladimirskii prikaz, see Vladimir Court Teutonic Order, see German Order
Department theft 92, 95, 444, 682, 699, 702–704, 707,
Sukonnaia sotnia 764, 876, 893 709–710, 767, 836, 847
support of dependents 626, 641 Third Rome 961, 965, 969
surety bonds 958 thousandman, see tysiatskii
surveys 268 tiaglo 874, 882
Suzdal’ Chronicle 365, 369, 417, 424–425 tiagloe naselenie 754–755, 811
Suzdal’ principality 32–37 Time of Troubles 9, 717, 721, 784, 794, 798,
sverstniki 385 805, 815, 817, 820, 826, 881, 899, 909, 963
svod, see confrontment tithe towns 675
Svod Zakonov 723 tithes 147, 549, 657, 675, 711
svoezemtsy 878, 882, 911 tiun 374–375, 464, 549, 568, 601, 611, 619, 670,
svoistvo 932 685, 834, 890, 955
Sweden, king of 830 tiun boiaresk 556, 575
swindlers 852 tiun kniazhii 374
Symphonia between Church and state 659, tiun koniushii 372, 374
740, 776, 965, 967 tiun ognishchii 373–374
Syntagma 56, 58, 60, 657 Tivertsy 307
Syntagma canonum 57, 60 tivunets 374
sysk 856, 879 tobacco 850
szlachta 535–536, 828 tolls 766
torg 433
Table of Ranks 788 Torks 304n
tamga 461 torts, see delicts
Tatar princes 864, 902 torture 698, 858
Tatar rule, see Mongol-Tatar rule town commissioner, see prikazchik gorodovoi
Tatar taxes 394–395 town government 413
Tatar Yoke 44, 220–222, 225 town square scribes, see ploshchadnye
Tatars 291, 358–359, 617, 658, 814, 889, 892 pod’iachie
Tatishchev family 599n towns 408–464
taverns 767, 871 townspeople 872–875, 913
taverns, illicit (korchmy) 871 see also urban population
tax collection 221–222, 224 trade, domestic 506
tax exemptions 260–261, 277–278 trade, foreign 168–169, 439–440, 504,
taxation 390–395, 458–462, 548, 814–818 518–521
tenants, new, see novoporiadchiki trade loan, see commercial credit
tenancy contract, see poriadnaia trade, long-distance 88, 518, 875
terem 933 trade, with Byzantium 88, 518
territorial departments (prikazy) 808 trade, with Near East 410
territory 327–330, 822–830 trade, with Western Europe 217, 478
Testament of Antonii Rimlianin 558, 583, trading peasants 876, 886
617 trading posts (pogosti) 548
Testament of Kliment 558, 639 trading villages (torgovye sela) 887
Testament of Monomakh 252, 366, 371, 377, transit trade (Novg.) 514
396 transition law 738
1096 Subject Index
treason 707 Varangians, see Vikings

Treasury Department, see Kazennyi prikaz veche 333, 404–405, 522–523, 797–798
treaties 163–176, 402–404 veche bell 429
treaties between princes 356–360 vedomo likhii, see notorious criminal
treaty procedure 402–404 Velikii Novgorod, see Novgorod the Great
tribal centres 411 vengeance, see revenge
tribute 89, 109, 324–326, 548, 568–569, 584 veno 622
Troitse-Sergiev monastery 65, 237–239, Vepsy 305
243–244, 563–564, 676, 972 verstan’e 869–870
trubniki 618 verv’ 369, 569–571, 575, 703, 893
tsar 720, 722, 764–765, 775–788, 862 Ves’ 304–306, 317, 324, 472
tsar, administration 807 Viatichi 32, 300, 304, 307, 324, 622
tsar, court 765, 787, 866 Viatka region 467–468, 525–526
tsar, offences against 850 victims 845
tsar, title 224, 776 vidok, see witness
tsar’s widow 863 Vikings 68, 91, 95, 98, 109, 112, 116–117, 135,
tsaritsa 777, 862 305–306, 313, 317–323, 396, 405, 444,
tseloval’niki 839, 869 472, 596, 608, 610, 636, 692
tserkovnye liudi, see church people village assembly, see skhod
Tsvetnik 191 vira , see also bloodwite 119, 375, 681
Turkic tribes 545 virnik 108, 372, 375, 587, 682, 685
Turov-Pinsk principality 30 Visby, see Gothic Coast
Tver’ principality 37–38, 64, 167, 173–176, Vladimir Court Department 812, 952
353, 824 Vladimir grand principality 32–37
tysiatskii 371, 380, 401, 430–431, 598, voevody 405, 802, 820, 842–843, 855, 950
602, 685 voevody gorodovye 843
voevody polkovye 843
udel, see apanage Volga trade route 410, 465–466
Udmurts 305 volokita 952
uezd 832–833, 835, 869 Volokolamsk (Iosif) monastery 237–238,
ukaznye knigi, see statute books 676
ukazy 721 volost’ 587, 833,
Ukraine 530, 757, 827–830 volostel’ 199, 601, 670, 735–737, 831–833, 836,
Ulichi 307 950
Ulozhenie of 1649 6, 9, 72, 719, 721–722, 757, volostel’ mitropolichii 663
760–771, 787, 791, 793, 813–814, 818, 821, Vorontsov family 732
850–853, 855, 861, 869 votchina 383, 503, 511, 547, 810, 818, 870, 880,
universaly 830 884, 903–906, 942, 944–947
Uradel 503, 595 votchina, kuplennaia 903–906, 942
urban government, see town government votchina, rodovaia 903–906, 942
urban population 432–433, 872 votchina, vysluzhennaia 906, 9423
urban taxation 458–462 vykhod 327, 392, 394–395, 879
urok mostnikov, see Bridge Builders’ Law vykup 280, 903–904, 908–909, 946
Uspenskii sobor (Mosk.) 239 Vyshgorod assembly of 1072 120–121
ustavnaia namestnich’a gramota 832 vyt 393
ustavnye gramoty 204, 839
ustavnye zemskie gramoty 839–841, 949 walking fee, see khozhenoe
ustavnye knigi, see statute books war 360, 404–406, 814
Subject Index 1097
wedding 625, 932 zakazchiki 971

weights and measures 155–157, 461, 675, 708 zakhrebetniki 883
welfare, provision of 900, 944 zaklad 281–282, 450, 454, 687–688, 920–922
wergeld 119, 435–436, 541, 605, 637, 650, zakladchiki 874, 884
682, 700 zakladniki 505, 576, 581, 601, 604, 884
white clergy, see clergy zaklich 687
white place, see belye mesta Zakon Russkii 96–100, 114, 370, 398–399,
whore 705 680, 718
widows, see also dowager princess 591, 634, Zakon Sudnyi liudem 60–61, 115, 128, 210–217,
640–641, 667, 861, 940, 944 231, 631
wild lands, see dikie zemli zakupy, zakupen 136, 138, 452, 550, 556–557,
wills 251–254, 584–586, 636–643 573, 575, 578, 604, 607, 610, 613, 682
wills of princes 64, 356, 360–363, 395, 586, zapis’ 450, 696
642 Zapis’ o Dushegubstve, see Homicide Law of
wills of princesses 634 Vasilii iii
wills of tsars 780 zatinshchiki 875
witchcraft 655 zbliudenie (sbliudenie) 451
witnesses 396, 692–695, 698–699, 736, 859 zemlevladenie, see landowning
Word of Basil 128–129 zemshchina 782, 794
Worms Concordat of 1122 658 zemskie boiare 553, 597
women 335, 589–592, 702, 860, 943 Zemskii prikaz 811, 852, 855
Zemskii Sobor 720–723, 732–733, 757–760,
Ynglingar dynasty 321 764, 777, 783–784, 786, 791, 797–800,
802, 806
zadushniki 437 zemstvo reforms 723–725
zadvornye liudi, see liudi, zadvornye zhil’tsy 389, 764, 813–814, 870
zaem, see loans zhit’i liudi, see liudi, zhit’i
zaemnaia kabala, see loans Zolotaia Palata 793

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Law in Eastern Europe

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/laee

Names: Feldbrugge, F. J. M. (Ferdinand Joseph Maria), 1933- author.

Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

3 The Treaties with Byzantium. The Zakon Russkii 85

The Treaty of 911 90

4 The Russkaia Pravda or Russian Law 101

5 The Russkaia Pravda: The Expanded Pravda 124

8 Town and Provincial Charters 177

9 The Code (Sudebnik) of Ivan iii of 1497 193

11 Non-Legislative (Non-Normative) Legal Sources: Gramoty 234

12 Setting the Stage: Territory and Tribes in Early Kievan Russia 299

13 The Prince in Medieval Russia 331

14 The Prince’s Government 377

16 Novgorod and Pskov 465

19 The Individual and the Family 589

20 The Individual as a Legal Actor 644

21 The Church and Monasteries 654

22 Courts and Justice 680

24 The Code (Sudebnik) of Ivan iv of 1550 729

26 The Codes of 1589 and 1606–1607 745

27 The Statute Books of the Prikazy 752

28 Decisions of the Land Assembly (Zemskii Sobor) 757

29 The Council Code (Sobornoe Ulozhenie) of Aleksei

31 The Tsar’s Government 789

32 Territory and Population 822

34 Criminal Law and Procedure 844

35 Civil Law: Persons 860

36 Civil Law: Ownership and Obligations 894

37 Civil Law: Family Law and Succession 927

38 Courts and Justice; Civil Procedure 948

39 The Church, Monasteries, and Church Law 960

Appendix 1 Money and Measurements 983

asei B.D. Grekov (i), L.V. Cherepnin (ii–iii)(eds.), Akty sotsial’no-

1 Russia Before the Mongol Conquest (1240) 1012

The Purpose of This Work

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352148_002

Each approach implies a different viewpoint and anticipates a specific audi-

It would be possible, provided sufficient sources were available, to describe

Only on the basis of the teaching by the founders of Marxism-Leninism

The Definition of Law

establishing what the law is in a particular case. Can this be considered as a

In other disciplines, such as linguistics, psychology, history, and of course

The Organization of This Work

An exposé of the present-day law of a particular state, of its legal system in

– we regard law as a specific type of regulation of human relations, character-

These considerations then lead to the identification of the following areas of

in family matters; monasteries in time emerged as important users of land,

General History and History of Law

Nobody would deny that Soviet medievalists have produced an enormous

Medieval law has been compared above to a collection of islands, an archipela-

10 Volumes i–iii of PRoP, with R.L. Khachaturov as general editor.

legal institutions, as argued, grew out of pre-legal arrangements. When we

more concise, but has an interesting paragraph on Russian legal proverbs, as a

An Outline of the ‘Constitutional’ History of Russia During the

Another modern treatment is by Iu.N. Krivosheev, Russkaia srednevekovaia gosudarstven-

indicated­that the Kievan grand princely dignity continued to constitute the

Nevertheless, the decision of the Liubech assembly was a major step in

Moskva, 2011, and A.Iu.Dvornichenko, Gorodskaia obshchina Verkhnego Podneprov’ia i

Princely Statutes (“The Smolensk Charters of Rostislav Mstislavich and bishop

33 See A.K. Zaitsev, “Chernigovskoe kniazhestvo”, L.G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Drevnerusskie

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352148_002

indicatedthat the Kievan grand princely dignity continued to constitute the

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352148_003

archment or paper, containing a direct or indirect source. A physical source

6 A.A. Shakhmatov, Razyskaniia o drevneishikh russkikh letopisnykh svodakh, Sankt-Peterburg,

concerningthe calculation of degrees of consanguinity, (d) rules of various

i nformation can be extracted by a process of retrograde e xtrapolation from the

revniaia Rus’. Opyt issledovaniia istorii sotsial’noi i politicheskoi bor’by, Sankt-Peterburg,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352148_004

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352148_005