The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 17

by Unknown

CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE AND EARLY HISTORY

EXTENT, CONFIGURATION, AND CLIMATE

[To 1054 A.D.]

To arrive at a just appreciation of Russia’s genius we must have a knowledge of the soil that nourishes her, the peoples that inhabit her, and the history through which she has passed. Let us begin with nature, soil, and climate.

The first fact that strikes us in regard to the Russian empire is its vastness.[2] Its colossal dimensions are so out of proportion to the smallness of the greatest among European states, that, to bring them within the sphere of human imagination, Alexander von Humboldt, one of the greatest scientists of his century, makes the statement that the portion of the globe under Russia’s dominion is greater than the entire surface of the moon at its full.

The territories of that vast empire acknowledge no limits; its vast plains stretch toward the heart of the old continent, as far as the huge peaks of central Asia; they are stopped between the Black and the Caspian seas by the great wall of the Caucasus, whose foot is planted below the sea-level, and the height of whose summits exceeds by eight hundred feet that of Mont Blanc.

In lakes Ladoga and Onega, in the northwest, Russia possesses the greatest lakes in Europe; in Lake Baikal, in Siberia, the greatest in Asia; in the Caspian and Aral seas, the greatest in the world. Her rivers equal her plains in proportion: the Obi, the Yenisei, the Amur, in Asia; the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, in Europe. The central artery of Russia is the Volga—a river that, in its winding course of nearly twenty-four hundred miles, is not altogether European. Nine tenths of the Russian territory are as yet nearly empty of inhabitants, and nevertheless the population, according to the census of 1897, taken over all the empire except Finland, numbered 129,000,000; and the annual increase is very nearly two million.

Europe is distinguished from other regions of the globe by two characteristics which make her the home of civilisation: her land is cut into by the seas—“cut into bits,” as Montesquieu says; she is, according to Humboldt, “an articulated peninsula”; her other distinctive advantage is a temperate climate which, in great measure the result of her configuration, is duplicated nowhere under the same latitude. Russia alone, adhering solidly to Asia by her longest dimension, bordered on the north and northwest by icy seas which permit to the borders few of the advantages of a littoral, is one of the most compact and eminently continental countries of the globe.

She is deprived of the even, temperate climate due to Europe’s articulated structure, and has a continental climate—nearly equally extreme in the rigour of its winters and the torrid heat of its summers. Hence the mean temperature varies.

The isothermal lines extend in summer toward the pole; in winter they sink southward: so that the greater part of Russia is included in January in the rigid, in July in the torrid zone. Her very vastness condemns her to extremes. The bordering seas are too distant or too small to serve her as reservoirs of warmth or basins of coolness. Nowhere else in the Occident are to be found winters so long and severe, summers so burning. Russia is a stranger to the great influences that moderate the climate of the rest of Europe—the gulf stream and the winds of the Sahara. The long Scandinavian peninsula, stretching between Russia and the Atlantic, deflects from her coasts the great warm current flowing from the New World to the Old. In place of the gulf stream and the African deserts it is the polar snows of Europe, and Siberia, the frozen north of Asia, that hold the predominating influence over Russia. The Ural range, by its insignificant elevation and its perpendicularity to the equator, is but an inconsiderable barrier to these influences. In vain does Russia extend south into the latitude of Pau and Nice; nowhere this side the Caucasus will she find a rampart against the winds of the north. The conformation of the soil, low and flat, leaves her open to all the atmospheric currents—from the parching breath of the central Asian deserts to the winds of the polar region.

This lack of mountains and inland seas deprives Russia of the necessary humidity brought to the rest of Europe by the Atlantic and laid up for it in the storehouses of the Alps. The ocean breezes reach her only when empty of refreshing vapours; those of Asia are wrung dry long before they touch her confines. The further the continent stretches, the greater its poverty of rain. At Kazan the rainfall is but half that of Paris. Hence the lack, over an enormous southern region, of the two principal elements of fertility—warmth and moisture; hence in part those wide, woodless, arid, un-European steppes in the southeast of the empire.

THE SIMILARITY OF EUROPEAN AND ASIATIC RUSSIA

One whole formed of two analogous halves, Russia is in nowise a child of Europe; but that is not to say that she is Asiatic—that we can shelve her among the dormant and stationary peoples of the far East. Far from it: Russia is no more Asiatic than she is European. But in all physical essentials of structure, climate, and moisture, she is opposed to historical, occidental Europe; in all these she is in direct relation with the bordering countries of Asia. Europe proper naturally begins at the narrowing of the continent between the Baltic and the Black seas.

In the southeast there is no natural barrier between Russia and Asia; therefore the geographers have in turn taken the Don, the Volga, the Ural, or again the depression of the Obi, as boundaries. Desert steppes stretch from the centre of the old continent into Russia by the door left open between the Ural chain and the Caspian. From the lower course of the Don to the Aral Sea, all these low steppes on both banks of the Volga and the Ural rivers form the bed of an old, dried-up sea, whose borders we can still trace, and whose remnants constitute the great salt lakes known as the Caspian and the Aral seas. By a hydrographical accident which has had an enormous influence upon the character and destinies of the people, it is into one of these closed Asiatic seas that the Volga, the great artery of Russia, empties, after turning its back upon Europe almost from its very source.

To the north of the Caspian steppes, from latitude 52° to the uninhabitable polar regions, the longest meridional chain of mountains of the old continent forms a wall between Russia and Asia. The Russians in olden days called it the “belt of stone,” or “belt of the world”; but, despite the name, the Ural indicates the end of Asia on the one side, only to mark its recommencement, almost unaltered, on the European slope. Descending gradually by terraces on the European side, the Ural is less a chain than a plateau crowned with a line of slight elevations. It presents principally low ridges covered with forests, like those of the Vosges and the Jura. So greatly depressed is the centre that along the principal passes between Russia and Siberia (from Perm to Iekaterinburg, for example) the eye looks in vain for the summits; in constructing a railroad through the pass the engineers had no long tunnels to build, no great difficulties to surmount. At this high altitude, where the plains are snow-bound during six or seven months, no peak attains the limit of eternal snows, no valley enbosoms a glacier.

In reality the Ural separates neither the climates, nor the fauna and flora. Extending almost perpendicularly from north to south, the polar winds blow almost equally unhindered along both sides; on both, the vegetation is the same. It is not till the heart of Siberia is reached—the upper Yenisei and Lake Baikal—that one finds a different soil, a new flora and fauna. The upheaval of the Ural failed to wipe out the resemblance and the unity of the two regions it divides. Instead of a wall between the Russias, it is merely a storehouse of mineral wealth. In the rocks, of eruptive or metamorphic origin, are veins of metals not found in the regular strata of the great plains. It no more separates one from the other than does the river of the same name; and when one day Siberia shall boast a denser population, the Ural will be regarded as the axis, the backbone of the two great halves of the empire.

THE DUALISM OF NORTH AND SOUTH

Unity in immensity is Russia’s chief characteristic. From the huge wall of the Caucasus to the Baltic this empire, in itself greater than all the rest of Europe, in its numerous provinces presents perhaps less variety of climate than west European countries whose area is ten or twelve times less. This is on account of the flat uniformity. And yet, underlying this homogeneity of climate and configuration, nature has marked with special characteristics and a distinct individuality a number of regions which, divided into two groups, embrace all European Russia. Equally flat, with a climate nearly equally extreme, these two great zones, notwithstanding their similarity, present a remarkable contrast in soil, vegetation, moisture, and most other physical and economic conditions. One is the forest region, the other the woodless zone of the steppes; they divide the empire into almost equal halves.

From the opposition, from the natural dualism of the steppe and the forest, has sprung the historical antagonism and the now-ended strife between the two halves of Russia—the struggle between the sedentary north and the nomad south; between the Russian and the Tatar; between the Muscovite state laid in the forest region, and the free Cossacks, children of the steppes. The forest region, though ceaselessly diminished by cutting, still remains the more extensive. Occupying the entire north and centre, it grows wider from east to west, from Kazan to Kiev.

Beyond the polar circle no tree can withstand the intensity and permanence of the frost. On both sides of the Ural, in the neighbourhood of Siberia, stretch vast boggy plains (toundras), perpetually frost-bound, and clothed with moss. In these latitudes no cultivation is possible, no pasturage but lichens is to be obtained, no animal but the reindeer can exist. Hunting and fishing are the sole occupations of the few inhabitants who make their dwelling in these lands of ice.

The soil of the wooded plains, at least in the northwest, from the White Sea to the Niemen and the Dnieper, is low, swampy, and peaty, intersected by arid sandy hills. The Valdai Hills, the highest plateau, scarcely attain the height of one thousand feet. This region is rich in springs and is the source of all the great rivers. The flatness of the land prevents the rivers from assuming a distinctly marked course, and as no ridge intervenes, their waters at the thaw run together and form enormous swamps; or, travelling slowly down undefined slopes, form at the bottom vast lakes like the Ladoga, a veritable inland sea, or strings of wretched little pools, like the eleven hundred lakes in the government of Archangel.

The population, though scattered over wide expanses and averaging less than fifteen to the square mile, fails to wring from the unfriendly soil a sufficient nourishment. Wheat will not thrive; barley, rye, and flax alone flourish. A multitude of small industries eke out the livelihood for which agriculture is insufficient.

The augmentation of the scattered population is scarcely perceptible having, so to speak, reached the point of saturation. Russia can hope for an increase of wealth and population in this desolate northland only upon the introduction into it of industrial pursuits, as in the case of Moscow and the Ural regions.

Russian civilisation finds a great, though by no means insurmountable obstacle in the extremes of temperature. It must be remembered that Europe enjoys a temperate climate unparalleled in her fairest colonies, while other continents, for analagous reasons, labour under much the same disadvantages as Russia. The climate of the northern portion of the United States greatly resembles that of south Russia, while New York, Pennsylvania, and the New England states pass through the same extremes of temperature as the steppes of the Black Sea.

THE SOIL OF THE BLACK LANDS AND THE STEPPES

The Black Lands, one of the largest and most fertile agricultural tracts in the world, occupy the upper part of the woodless zone at its juncture with the forest and lake district. Obtaining moisture and shelter from the latter, the Black Lands enjoy much more favourable climatic conditions than the steppes of the extreme south. They derive their name (tchernoziom) from a stratum of black humus, of an average depth of from one and a half to five feet, consisting partly of loam, partly of oily clay mixed with organic substances. It dries rapidly and is thereupon reduced to a fine dust; but it absorbs moisture with equal promptitude, and after a rain takes on the appearance of a coal-black paste. The formation of this wonderfully fertile layer is attributed to the slow decomposition of the steppe grasses, accumulated during many centuries.

The tchernoziom circles like a belt across European Russia, from Podolia and Kiev on the southwest beyond Kazan in the northeast; after the interruption of the Ural ridge it reappears in Siberia in the southern part of Tobolsk. The trees disappear altogether as we advance southwards, till not even a bush is to be seen. Nothing is visible to the eye but hundreds of miles of fertile black soil, a limitless field stretching beyond the horizon. As a consequence of its fertility this portion of Russia is most populous; the population increases steadily, as railways are constructed and as agriculture gains upon the surrounding steppes.

Between the Black Lands and the southern seas lie the steppes proper wherein the dead level of the country, the absence of all arboreal vegetation, and the summer droughts attain their maximum. These great plains, covering over half a million miles of Europe, include many different qualities of soil, destined to as many different ends.

The sandy, stony, saline steppes will forever be unfit for cultivation. The fertile steppes which occupy the greater part of the space between the Black Lands and the Black Sea and the sea of Azov consist of a layer of black vegetable mould ready for cultivation and teeming with fertility. The grass, growing five or six feet high, in rainy seasons even higher, accounts in some measure for the absence of woods: its rapid luxuriant growth would smother young trees.

The virgin steppe with its rank vegetation—the steppe of history and poetry—diminishes day by day, and will soon disappear before the agricultural invasion. The legendary Ukraine has almost lost its wild beauty; Gogol’s steppe, like Cooper’s prairie, will soon be but a memory—lost in the black belt. The long delay in opening up these grassy plains is due as well to the lack of water and wood as to the lack of workers. The lack of water is difficult to remedy, hence the plains are bound to experience alternately good and bad years; hence, also, the frequent famines in lands which otherwise might be regarded as the storehouse of the empire.

Perhaps an even greater drawback is the lack of trees; thereby the population is deprived both of fuel and of materials for building. Stalks of the tall steppe-grasses and the dung of the flocks, which otherwise would go to the soil, supply it with a fuel that would not suffice for a dense population. The introduction of railroads and the opening of coal mines will, however, remedy little by little these evils, by supplying fuel and restoring the manure to the soil. The proximity to the estuaries of the great rivers and to the Black Sea renders the position of these steppes especially favourable to trade with Europe.

The Ural-Caspian depression is as truly a desert as the Sahara. It contains but few oases. These saline steppes sink in part below the sea level, like the Caspian itself, whose ancient basin they formed, and which now, narrowed and sunk, lies about eighty-five feet below the Black Sea’s surface. This region is of all European Russia the barest, the driest, and the most exposed to extreme seasons. It is decidedly Asiatic in soil, climate, flora, fauna, and inhabitants. This barren steppeland, covering three hundred thousand square miles, has less than a million and a half inhabitants. It is good for nothing but pasturage; and is therefore overrun with nomad Asiatic tribes.

We cannot consider as Russian in character the Caucasus and the southern coast of the Crimea; these present an entirely different aspect, and are as varied as the real Russia is monotonous. In the valleys of the Caucasus appear again forests—absent from the centre of the empire southwards—dense and vigorous, not thin and scattered and monotonous as in the north. Here fruit-trees thrive, and all varieties of plant life for which Russia seeks in vain over her wide plains, from the shores of the ice-bound north to the Black Sea—the vine, which on the banks of the Don finds but a precarious existence; the mulberry-tree; the olive. Few are the fruits that cannot prosper in the hanging gardens of the Crimea suspended above the sea, or in Transcaucasia where, not content with having introduced successfully the cultivation of cotton and the sugar cane, the Russian merchants are anxious to establish tea plantations.

DIVERSITY OF RACES

The number of diverse races is accounted for by the configuration of Russia. Lacking defined boundaries to east and west, Russia has been open always to invasion—she has been the great highway of emigration from Asia into Europe. The strata of human alluvions have nowhere been more numerous, more mingled, more broken or inharmonious than on this flat bed, where each wave, pushed by the one behind it, encountered no obstacle other than the wave which had preceded. Even since historical times it is difficult to enumerate the peoples who have followed one another upon Russian soil—who have there formed empires more or less durable: Scythian, Sarmatian, Goth, Avar, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Chazar, Petcheneg, Lithuanian, Mongol, Tatar; without counting the previous migrations of the Celts and Teutones, or of peoples whose very names have perished, but among whom even the most obscure have left upon the population some impression whose origin to-day it is impossible to trace.

Costume worn by Cossack of the Ukraine

While the configuration of Russia has left her open to every invader, the structure of her soil forbade the development of the invaders into organised nations independent of one another. Instead of being the consequence of slow development by physical causes, this multiplicity of races and tribes is an historical heritage. Without considering the glacial regions of the north, uninhabitable save for hunters and fishers, or the sandy and saline steppes of the southeast, where wander only pastoral nomads, this complexity of races and tribes, far from being a result of adaptation to the soil—far from being in harmony with physical conditions, is directly opposed to them. Far from having a tendency to race diversion, the natural conditions made for unity and harmony. The absence of boundaries made it impossible for the different tribes to isolate themselves.

In the immense quadrilateral comprised between the glacial ocean and the Black Sea, between the Baltic and the Ural, there is not a single mountain—not a single dividing line. Over this even surface the different tribes have been obliged to scatter at random—just as the waters have flowed together, having no ridge to separate them, no banks to contain them. Thus, while custom, religion, and language prevented their mingling, they were yet obliged to live side by side: to invade one another, to mingle one with another without loss of individuality, as the rivers which flow together without confounding their waters. Exhausted in the effort to spread over too large expanses, or broken up into fragments, all these races have the more easily submitted to the domination of one rule; and under this domination they have been the more rapidly unified and mingled. From this fusion, begun centuries ago under the Christian empire and the Muscovite sovereignty, have sprung the Russian people—that mass of about 129,000,000 souls, which, compared with other peoples, resembles the sea devouring its own shores, a sea dotted with islands which it swallows one by one.

Out of the seeming chaos of Russian ethnology emerge definitely three principal elements—Finn, Tatar, and Slav, which last has to-day to a great extent absorbed the other two. Not counting the three millions of Jews in the west, the seven or eight hundred thousand Rumanians in Bessarabia, the eight or nine hundred thousand Germans of the Baltic provinces and the southern colonies; without counting the Kalmucks of the steppe of the lower Volga, the Circassians, the Armenians, the Georgians, and the whole babel of the Caucasus—all the races and tribes which have invaded Russia in the past and all which inhabit her to-day can be traced to one of these three races. As far back as history goes, are to be found upon Russian soil, under one name or another, representatives of all these three groups; and their fusion is not yet so complete that we cannot trace their origin, their distinctive characteristics, or their respective original dominions.

The Finnish tribe seems in olden times to have occupied the most extensive territory in what is to-day called Russia. It is manifestly foreign to Aryan or European stock, whence, with the Celts and Latins, Germans and Slavs, most of the European peoples have sprung. Ethnological classifications usually place the Finns in a more or less comprehensive group known variously as Turanian, Mongolian, and Mongoloid.

The Mongols, properly so called, with the Tatars are usually arranged beside the Finns in the Ural-Altaic group; which, on the other hand, rejects the Chinese and other great nations of oriental Asia. This classification appears to be the most reasonable; but it must be noticed that this Ural-Altaic group is far from presenting the same homogeneousness as the Aryan or Semitic group. The relationship between the numerous branches is far less fundamental than between Latin and German; it is probably far more remote than that between the Brahman or Gheber of India and the Celt of Scotland or Brittany; at bottom it is perhaps less close than between the Indo-European and the Semite.

The Finns

The Finnish race, which outside of Hungary is almost entirely comprised within European Russia, numbers five or six millions, divided into a dozen different tribes. To the Hungarian family in the north belongs the only Finnish people which ever played an important rôle in Europe, or arrived at a high state of civilisation—the Magyars of Hungary. In the northwest we find the Finns properly so called; they are subdivided into two or three tribes, the Suomi, as they designate themselves, constituting the only tribe in the whole empire that possesses a national spirit, a love of country, a history, and a literature; also the only one that has escaped the slow absorption by which their kindred have been swallowed up. They form five-sixths of the population of the grand duchy of Finland—a population almost wholly rural. A Swedish element mingled with German and Russian is predominant in the cities.

A Tatar

(Russian)

St. Petersburg is, truth to tell, built in the midst of Finnish territory; the immediate surroundings are russified, and that quite recently: even half a century ago Russian was not understood in the hamlets lying at the very gates of the capital. To this Finnish branch belong the Livs, a tribe nearly extinct, which has given its name at Livonia; also the Lapps—the last, physically the ugliest, morally the least developed, of all the branches of this tribe.

The race is almost infinitely subdivided; its members profess all the religions from Shamanism to Mohammedanism, from Greek orthodoxy to Lutheranism. They are nomadic, like the Lapp; pastoral, like the Bashkir; sedentary and agricultural like the Esth and the Finn. They have adopted the customs and spoken the language of each and all, have been ruled by peoples of different origins, have been russified after having been partially tatarised—all these influences contributing to break up the race into insignificant fragments. As numerous as their Hungarian kindred, the Finns of the Russian Empire are far from being able to claim an equal political significance.

Is it true that the alliance with the Finns is for Russia an irremediable cause of inferiority? It is doubtful. In their isolation and disruption, hampered by the thankless soil upon which they dwell, the Finns have been unable to achieve an original development; as compensation, they have everywhere manifested a singular facility of assimilation with more developed races with which they have come in contact; they allowed themselves easily to be overwhelmed by a civilisation which they themselves were unable to originate: if they possessed no blood-ties with Europe, they placed no obstacles in the way of annexation by her. Their religion is the best proof. The majority have long been Christians; and it is principally Christianity which has led the way to their fusion with the Slavs and their assimilation into civilised Europe. From Hungary to the Baltic and the Volga, they have accepted with docility the three principal historical forms of Christianity; the most modern, Protestantism, has thriven better among the Finnish and Esthonic tribes than among the Celtic, Iberian, and Latin peoples.

If we seek in language an unmistakable sign of race and intelligence, it must be admitted that certain Finns—the Suomi of Finland like the Magyars of Hungary—have brought their agglutinated languages to a perfection which for power, harmony, and wealth of expression well bears comparison with our most complex flexional languages. If it is true that the Finns are related to the Mongols, they have certainly the virtues of that race, which holds its own so well in its struggle with Europe: they possess the same stability, patience, and perseverance; hence perhaps the fact that to every country and every state which has felt their influence the Finns have communicated a singular power of resistance, a remarkable vitality.

ETHNOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION OF RELIGIONS

The Finn has become Christian; the Turk or Tatar, Moslem; the Mongol, Buddhist: to this ethnological distribution of religion there are few exceptions. Hereto are attributable the causes of the widely different destinies of these three groups—particularly the neighbouring Finns and Tatars. It is religion which has prepared the one for its European existence; it is religion which has made that existence impossible for the other. Islam has given the Tatar a higher and more precocious civilisation; it has inspired him to build flourishing cities like the ancient Sarai and Kazan, and to found powerful states in Europe and Asia; it has achieved for him a brilliant past, while exposing him to a future full of difficulties: while saving him from absorption into Europe, it has left him completely outside the gate of modern civilisation.

It is the Tatars who have given to the Russians the name of Mongols, to which the Tatars themselves have but a questionable right. In any case the title is not applicable to the true Russians, who have at most but a drop or two of Mongol blood in their veins, and less of Tatar than the Spaniards have of Moorish or Arab.

At the same time with the process of absorption and assimilation of the Finnish element, another process has for centuries been going on—an inverse process of secretion and elimination of the Tatar and Moslem elements which Russia found herself unable to assimilate. After their submission a great number of Tatars left Russia, being unwilling to become the subjects of the infidels whose masters they had been. Before the progress of Christianity they spontaneously retreated to the lands still dominated by the law of the prophet. After the destruction of the Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, they tended to concentrate in the Crimea and the neighbouring straits—in what up to the eighteenth century was known as Little Tartary; after the conquest of the Crimea by Catherine II they took their way still farther toward the empire of their Turkish brethren. Even in our own time, after the war of Sebastopol and after the conquest of the Caucasus, the emigration of the Tatars and the Nogaians began again on an enormous scale, together with that of the Circassians. In the Crimea the Tatar population, already diminished by one-half in the time of Catherine II, is to-day scarcely one-fifth of what it was at the time of the annexation to Russia. The introduction of obligatory military service in the year 1874 drove them out in large numbers. By defeat and voluntary exile have the Tatars been reduced to insignificant groups in a country where, formerly, they reigned for centuries—in some parts of which even they were the sole inhabitants.[b]

THE SLAVS

As to the Slavs, who form the nucleus of the Russian population, it is now generally recognised that they migrated to Russia from the neighbourhood of the Carpathian Mountains. The Byzantine annalists of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh centuries, speaking of the Slavs, whom they called Sklaboi, a name appearing as early as the end of the fifth century, distinguish two branches of them: the Ants, living from the Danube to the mouth of the Dnieper; and the Slavs, properly so named, living northeast of the Danube and as far to the east as the source of the Vistula, and on the right bank of the Dniester. In this, their statement agrees with that of Jornandes,

l the historian of the Goths. Some Russian scholars suppose that before coming to the Danube the Slavs lived near the Carpathians, whence they invaded the Byzantine empire. These encroachments, beginning as far back as the third century, resulted in the penetration of the Slavs into southern Austria and the Balkan peninsula. Byzantine annalists of the sixth and seventh centuries, Procopius and the emperor Maurice, who had to fight the Slavs in person, speak of them as being ever on the move: “They live in woods and on the banks of rivers, in small hamlets, and are always ready to change their abode.” At the same time these Byzantine annalists describe this people as exceedingly fond of liberty. “From the remotest period,” says Procopius,[d] “the Slavs were known to live as democracies; they discussed their wants in popular assemblies or folkmotes.” “The Slavs are fond of liberty,” writes the emperor Maurice[e]; “they cannot bear unlimited rulers, and are not easily brought to submission.” The same language is used also by the emperor Leo.[f] “The Slavs,” says he, “are a free people, strongly opposed to any subjection.” If the Byzantine historians do not speak of the invasion of the Slavs into the limits of the empire during the second part of the seventh century, it is because their migration took at this time another direction: from the Carpathians they moved toward the Vistula and the Dnieper.

A Finnish Costume

During the ninth century, the time of the founding of the first principalities, the Dnieper, with its numerous affluents on both sides, formed the limit of the Slavonic settlements to the east. This barrier was broken only by the Viatitchi, stretching as far to the northeast as the source of the Oka. On the north the Slavs reached the great Valdai plateau from which Russia’s largest rivers descend, and the southern part of the great lake region, that of Ilmen.[c]

There is no indication that the race is deficient in genius. It was the Slavs who opened the way to the west by two great movements which inaugurated the modern era—the Renaissance and the Reformation; by the discovery of the laws that govern the universe, and the plea for liberty of thought. The Pole Copernicus was the herald of Galileo; the Czech, John Huss, the precursor of Luther. Poland and Bohemia, the two Slav peoples most nearly connected with the west by neighbourhood and religion, can cite a long list of men distinguished in letters, science, politics, and war. Ragusa alone could furnish an entire gallery of men talented along all lines. There where remoteness from the west and foreign oppression have made study impossible and prevented single names from becoming widely known, the people have manifested their genius in songs which lack none of the qualities inherent in the most splendid poetry of the west. In that popular impersonal literature which we admire so frankly in the romanceros of Spain, the ballads of Scotland and Germany, the Slav, far from yielding the palm to the Latin or the Teuton, perhaps excels both. Nothing more truly poetical exists than the pesmes of Servia or the doumas of Little Russia; for, by a sort of natural compensation, it is among the Slavs least initiated into western culture that popular poetry has flowered most freely.

A Woman of Yakutsk

In temperament and character the Slavs present an ensemble of defects and qualities which unite them more nearly with the Latins and Celts than with their neighbours the Germans. They are characterised by a vivacity, a warmth, a mobility, a petulance, an exuberance not always found to the same degree among even the peoples of the south. Among the Slavs of purer blood these characteristics have marked their political life with a mobile, inconstant, and anarchical spirit which has rendered extremely difficult their national existence and which, taken with their geographical position, has been the great obstacle in the way of their civilisation. The distinguishing faculty of the race is a certain flexibility and elasticity of temperament and character which render it adaptable to the reception and the reproduction of all sorts of diverse ideas; the imitative faculty of the Slavs is well known. This gift is everywhere distributed among them; this Slav malleability, peculiar alike to Pole and Russian, is perhaps fundamentally but a result of their historical progress and of their geographical position. But lately entered in at the gate of civilisation, and during long years inferior to the neighbouring races, they have always gone to school to the others; instead of living by their own invention, they have lived by borrowing, and the imitative spirit has become their ruling faculty, having been for them the most useful as well as the most widely exercised.

In the west the Slavs fell under the influence of Rome; in the east, under that of Byzantium: hence the antagonism which during long centuries has set strife in the midst of the two chief Slavonic nations. United by their common origin and the affinity of their languages, they are, however, separated by the very elements of civilisation—religion, writing, and calendar; therein lies the secret of the moral and material strife between Russia and Poland—a strife which, after having nearly annihilated the one, actually cost the other its life; as though from the Carpathian to the Ural, on those vast even plains, there was not room at one time for two separate states.

In the northwest, on the banks of the Niemen and Dvina, appears a strange group, incontestably of Indo-European origin yet isolated amidst the peoples of Europe; harking back to the Slavs, yet forming a parallel branch rather than offshoot—the Letto-Lithuanian group. Shut away in the north by marshy forests, restricted by powerful neighbours, the Lithuanian group long remained closed to all outer influences, whether of East or West. Last of all the peoples of Europe to accept Christianity, its language even to-day is the nearest of European tongues to the Sanskrit. The bone of contention among the Germans, the Poles, and the Russians, who each in turn obtained a footing among them and left an influence on their religion, they found themselves divided into Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox.

Mixed with Poles and Russians, menaced on both sides with complete absorption, the Lithuanians and the Samogitians, their brothers by race and language, still number in ancient Lithuania nearly two million souls, Catholics for the most part; they formed the majority of the population of Vilna and Kovno. In Prussia some two hundred thousand Lithuanians constitute the representatives of the ancient population of oriental Prussia, whose name is derived from a people of that race which kept its language intact up to the seventeenth century.

The second existing group of this family, the Letts, crossed probably with Finns, number more than a million souls; they inhabit chiefly Courland, Vitetesk and Livonia; but, converted, subjected, and made slaves of by the Teutonic knights, they still live under the dominion of the German barons of the Baltic provinces, with whom they have nothing in common but their religion—Lutheranism. Like the Finnish tribes outside of Finland, the Letts and Lithuanians, scanty in number and widely scattered, are incapable of forming by themselves a nation or a state. Out of this intermixture of races by the assimilation of the ruder by the more civilised, was formed a new people—a homogeneous nation. In fact, contrary to popular prejudice there is in Russia something more than an intermixture of diverse races—there is what we to-day call a “nationality”—as united, as compact, and as self-conscious as any nation in the world. Russia, notwithstanding all her various races, is yet no incoherent mass, no political conglomeration or mosaic of peoples. She resembles France in her national unity rather than Turkey or Austria.

If Russia must be compared to a mosaic, let it be to one of those ancient pavements whose scheme is a single substance of solid color edged with a border of diverse forms and shades—most of Russia’s original alien populations being relegated to her borders and forming around her a sort of belt of uneven width.

It is in the centre of Russia that is found that uniformity of much more marked among the Russians than among all other peoples of Europe; from one end of the empire to the other the language presents fewer dialects and less localisms than most of our western languages. The cities all look alike; the peasants have the same customs, the same manner of life. The nation resembles the country, having the same unity, almost the same monotony as the plains which it peoples.

The Great Russians and the Little Russians

There are, however, two principal types, almost two peoples, speaking two dialects and wholly separated from each other: the Great Russians and the Little Russians. In their qualities and in their defects they represent in Russia the eternal contrast of north and south. Their history is no less diversified than their nature; the first have their centre at Moscow, the second at Kiev. Stretching, the one to the northeast, the other to the southwest, these two unequal halves of the nation do not precisely correspond to the two great physical zones of Russia. This is due partly to nature, partly to history, which has hindered the development of the one and fostered that of the other. The southern steppes, open to every invasion, long arrested the expansion of the Little Russians, who for centuries were shut up in the basins of the Dnieper, the Bug, and the Dniester; while the Great Russians spread freely in the north and east and established themselves in the enormous basin of the Volga; masters of nearly all the forest regions and of the great Ural Lake, they took possession of the Black Belt and the steppes along the Volga and the Don.

The White Russian inhabits Mohilev, Vitebsk, Grodno, Minsk—a region possessing some of the finest forests in Russia, but whose soil is marshy and unwholesome. United politically with the Little Russian, the two have been classed under the name Western Russians. Subjected at an early date by Lithuania, whose dialect became its official language, White Russia was with the greater part of Little Russia united to Poland, and was for centuries the object of strife between that nation and the Muscovite czars, from the effects of which strife she still bleeds. Of the three Russian tribes this is perhaps the purest in blood; but thanks to the sterility of the soil and the remoteness of the sea, she has remained the poorest and least advanced in civilisation.

The Great Russians are the most vigorous and expansive element of the Russian nation, albeit the most mixed. Finnish blood has left its traces in their physique; Tatar dominion in their character. Before the advent of the Romanovs they formed alone the Muscovite Empire, and their czars took the title “Sovereign of all the Russias” long before Alexis, father of Peter the Great, justified this title by the annexation of the Ukraine. Hence Great Russia, under the name Muscovite, has been considered by certain foreigners the true, the only Russia. This is an error; since the Great Russian, the product of the colonisation of central Russia by the western Russians before the invasion of the Tatars antidates the state and even the village of Moscow. If, therefrom has emerged the Muscovite autocracy, it is impossible to cut the ties that bind it to the great Slav republic of the world whose name is still the active symbol of liberty—Novgorod.

Least Slav of all the peoples that pretend to the name, the Great Russian has been the coloniser of the race. His whole history has been one long struggle against Asia; his conquests have contributed to the aggrandisement of Europe. Long the vassal of the Tatar khans, he never forgot under Asiatic domination his European origin; and in the farthest limits of Muscovy the very name Asiatic is an insult to the peasant.

Conqueror over Asia, influenced morally and physically by all the populations assimilated or subjugated by him in his march from the Dnieper to the Ural, the Great Russian lost something of his independence, his pride, his individuality; but he gained in stability and solidity.

In spite of the obvious evidences of his mixed blood, the Great Russian is in perfect harmony with the Caucasian race by the exterior characteristics which distinguish it—his stature, his complexion, the colour of his hair and eyes. He is apt to be tall, his skin is white, his eyes are very often blue; his hair is usually blond, light chestnut, or red. The long heavy beard so dear to the heart of the moujik and which all the persecutions of Peter the Great failed to induce him to dispense with, is in itself a mark of race, as nothing could be smoother than the chin of the Mongol, the Chinese, or the Japanese.

The Little Russians dwelling in the south have brown or dark chestnut hair, and are of purer race, dwelling nearer to the Occident; they pride themselves upon their comparatively unmixed blood, their more temperate climate, their less dreary land; they are a more imaginative, more dreamy, more poetic people than their neighbours of the north. It is in Little Russia that the Zaparogians belong, the most celebrated of those Cossack tribes which in the Ukraine or the southern steppes played so important a rôle between the Poles, the Tatars, and the Turks, and whose name will ever remain in Russia the synonym of freedom and independence. Even to-day the Zaparogian, with his liberal or democratic tradition, remains the more or less conscious and avowed ideal of the majority of the Little Russians. Another reason, in the history of the Ukraine, which makes for democratic instincts in the Little Russians is the foreign origin and denaturalisation of a great part of the higher classes among the Poles and Great Russians. From this double motive the Little Russian is perhaps more susceptible to political aspirations, more accessible to revolutionary seduction than his brother of Great Russia.

Of the Cossacks of to-day only those of the Black Sea transplanted to the Kuban between the sea of Azov and the Caucasus are Little Russians; the Cossacks of the Don and the Ural are Great Russians.[b]

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ORGANISATION

It is extremely difficult to draw an approximately correct picture of the life of the Russian Slavs even in its barest outlines. Among the widely scattered tribes there was hardly more than one element tending towards union—that of language. Frequent contact with the populations living on their borders and wedged in between them, must of itself have produced considerable modifications in their mode of life.

The entire social organisation of the early Slavs, like that of all other Aryan and non-Aryan peoples, was based upon kinship or descent from a common ancestor.[a] Even in the Varangian period we can discover traces of this primeval organisation in clans among a few tribes. In time of peace these clans were in the habit of meeting together in order to discuss common affairs. The chronicler[h] uses the expression “came together” when he wants to speak of decisions taken in common. This practice seems to have been known to all Slavonic peoples. Among the Russian Slavs these folkmotes were known under the name of vetché, and they remained to the end of their existence a necessary part of the political institutions, not only in the northern city republics, Novgorod and Pskov, but also in nearly all the principalities of Russia, with the exception of one of the latest founded, Moscow.

Among these tribes we also find native princes or clan chieftains (kniaz), and it is also certain that as early as the ninth century there were among the Russian Slavs private owners of tracts of land who occupied an advantageous position as compared with the great bulk of the members of the community, and from whom the latter nobles (boyars) were descended. But on the whole the village community formed the nucleus of the entire political and economic organisation of the eastern or Russian Slavs. It was a world complete in itself, self-sufficient and independent both economically and juridically. The community was the possessor of the soil, which was periodically redistributed among its component members; the separate patriarchal families, and the assembly of the heads of the families was the body that judged and decided all things pertaining to the community. It is thus that we are to understand the apparently contradictory reports of the Byzantine writers, who say, on the one hand, that the Slavs know of no government and do not obey any individual, and on the other hand speak of a popular government that has existed from ancient times, that discusses all things in common, and that has many petty princes at its head.

It is self-evident that a government adapted to the requirements of a village community must assume a different character as soon as the settlement gains in extent and assumes the character of a city. And cities grew up quite early in northern and southwestern Russia. Toward the end of the ninth century Kiev had a wide fame as a large and populous city. Constantine Porphyrogenitus also knows of Novgorod, Smolensk, Linbetch, Tchernigov, Vishgorod, and Vititchev; in the time of Igor more than twenty cities can be named. The question as to the origin of Russian cities has called forth much debate and an extensive literature.

The chief difficulty lies in a proper understanding of the so-called Bavarian geographer, a writer of the ninth or tenth century, who counts, in his description of the northern Slavs, some twenty peoples with more than 3,760 cities. These latter he calls now civitates, now urbes, without indicating that there is any distinction of meaning to be attached to these terms, so that we are left to conclude that both names denote settlements. The present consensus of opinion as to those old Russian cities is as follows:

The old word grad, (now gorod, city) denoted any space surrounded by a palisade or earthworks. Thus there were wooden and earthen cities built for protection in time of war, and every community had its city. But in the regions that offered a natural protection by their inaccessible and swampy character the need for these cities was not so urgent, so that the wooded and marshy north had fewer cities than the open south. Numerous remains of these ancient earth piles enable us to recognise the position and wide extension of these old Slavonic settlements. Sometimes they are circular in form, others consist of a double angular trench with outlying earthworks. These are to be distinguished from the wooden cities, which were originally built for trading purposes, and only later were fenced in and enclosed, so that they could also serve for protective purposes. They were built in favourable situations, adjacent to some trade route. The more complex social relations that grew up in them demanded a more thorough organisation of social and political life, for which the village community did indeed furnish the basis, but which, in the long run, was found to be inadequate. The questions of general interest to the city were settled in the first place by the vetché, which greatly resembled the village gathering of the family elders.

But the need of a power which should decide all questions that might arise while the vetché was in abeyance, was more pressing in the cities, and favoured the development of the power—originally very limited,—of the kniazes or princes, who were elective and whose dignity was neither hereditary nor lifelong. The prince did not even have a permanent military following: his dignity was of a purely personal nature. It is certain that not he but the vetché had the power to make laws. Our information concerning the political organisation of the earliest period of Russian history is very scanty, and we know more of what it lacked than of what it possessed. What strikes us most is the absence of a military organisation. In times of danger, those who could defend themselves took up arms, the remainder fled to places of safety.

Nor can we discern with certainty any social differentiation into classes. On the other hand we know that a thriving trade was being carried on in the ninth century along the route which led from the gulf of Finland through Lake Ilmen to the Dvina and down the Dnieper to the Black Sea and thence to Greece. The oldest wooden cities lay along the famous route of the Varangians to the Greek Empire, along which amidst many dangers, the raw products of the north were exchanged for the finished commodities of the south. It is owing to these dangers that the trader had also to be a warrior, and it is into those ancient trade relations—peaceful intercourse enforced by warlike means—that we are to look for the most important arms of the old Russian state. Who discovered this trade route? We see no compelling reason to deny the honour to the Slavs, although it is established beyond doubt that even before the middle of the ninth century the Northmen reached Byzantium along this route. On the other hand, the marauding and trading expeditions which were carried on by Russians in the tenth century and earlier to the sea of Azov, the Caspian, and further still to the Caucasus and the shores of Persia, emanated from Scandinavians, and not from Slavs.

RELIGION

Native of Yakutsk

The religious conceptions of the Russian Slavs were but little developed. All other Aryan peoples, including the western Slavs, excel them in this respect. There was neither a distinct priestly class, nor were there images of the gods, nor were there distinct types of gods. The Arabian travellers almost unanimously ascribe sun worship to the eastern Slavs, and Byzantine writers before the ninth century tell of a belief in a supreme being who rules the universe. It is now generally accepted that this supreme god was called Svarog and was a personification of heaven and light, while sun and fire were regarded as his children. Perun, the thunder god, and Veles, god of herds, both mentioned by the oldest chronicler, must be brought in relation to the sun. But it is highly probable that these two gods were taken over by the Slavs from their Varangian rulers. Water also was regarded as sacred, and, like the forest, it was filled with animate beings which must be propitiated with sacrifices, since they had relations to human beings. Water, fire, and earth were related to death. The russalki, shades of the dead, swam about in the water, and the bodies of the dead were given up to the flames in order to make easier their passage to the realm of the dead (rai). The slaves, as well as the wife and the domestic animals were burned on the funeral pyre, and cremation was preceded by a feast and games in honour of the dead. But burial also was common.[g]

[862 A.D.]

We find the Russian Slavs about the middle of the ninth century split up into numerous tribes, settled on the soil and engaged chiefly in hunting and agriculture. A continental people, everywhere confining itself to the inland country, leaving the sea-borders to non-Slavonic tribes. Politically they were in the midst of the transition from the clan organisation to the village community, without any central authority, without any military organisation, and but little able to resist the inroads from north, south, and east, of populations who lived by plunder.[a] The primitive condition of their political organisation, their extreme subdivision into tribes and cantons, the endless warfare of canton with canton, delivered them up defenceless to every invader. While the Slavs of the south paid tribute to the Chazars, the Slavs of Ilmen, exhausted by internecine conflicts, decided to call in the Varangians. “Let us seek,” they said, “a prince who will govern us and reason with us justly. Then,” continues Nestor,[h] “the Tchud, the Slavs (of Novgorod), the Krivitchi, and other confederate tribes said to the Varangian princes: ‘Our land is great and has everything in abundance, but it lacks order and justice; come and take possession and rule over us.’”

THE VARANGIAN PERIOD (862-1054 A.D.)

To the elements that have obtained a permanent foothold on the soil of modern Russia and affected the Slavs in a greater or less degree, a new one must now be added in the Varango-Russians. The brave inhabitants of Sweden and Norway, who were known in western Europe under the name if Northman or Normans, directed their first warlike expeditions against their Slavonian and Finnish neighbours. The flotillas of the vikings were directed to the shores of the Baltic, and austrvegr—the eastern route—was the name they gave to the journey into the country of the Finns and Slavs on the gulf of Finland and further inland. Gardar was the name they gave to the Slavo-Finnish settlements, Holmgardar was their name for Novgorod, Kaenungardar for Kiev. Mikligardar, for Constantinople, shows that the Normans first learned to know that city through the eastern Slavs. The Slavs, on the other hand, called those Scandinavians by a name given to them by the Finns—Rus. The Scandinavians who sent their surplus of fighting men to Russia and were destined to found the Russian state, lived—as we learn from the form of the names that have come down to us—in Upland, Södermanland, and Östergötland, that is, on the east coast of Sweden north of Lake Mälar. In these lands and throughout the Scandinavian north, men who were bound to military chiefs by a vow of fidelity were called vaeringr (pl. vaeringjar, O. Sw. Warung), a name changed by the eastern Slavs into variag. It was these Russo-Varangians who founded the state of Old Russia.[g]

At the call of the Slavs of Novgorod and their allies, three Varangian brothers, Rurik, Sineus, and Truvor (Scand. Hrurekr, Sikniutr, Thorwardr), gathered together their kindred and armed followers, or drujina, and established themselves on the northern frontiers of the Slavs: Sineus to the northeast, on the White Lake; Rurik, the eldest, in the centre, on Lake Ladoga near the Volkhov River, where he founded the city of Ladoga; and Truvor to the northwest, at Izborsk, near Lake Pskov. The year 862 is usually assigned as the date in which the Varangians settled in Russia, and it is the official year for the founding of the Russian empire; but it is more probable that they had come before that date.

[865-907 A.D.]

Shortly after their settlement the two younger brothers died and Rurik became sole chief of all the Varangian bands in northern Russia and assumed the title of grand-prince. He now became so powerful that he was able to subject Novgorod, which he made the capital of an empire stretching from the lakes in the north to the sources of the Dnieper in the south.[a] The country drained by that river was also occupied by Varangians, but independently of Rurik. Two chiefs by the name of Askold and Dir (Scand. Höskaldr and Dyri) wrested Kiev from the Chazars and ruled over the Polians, the most civilized tribe of the eastern Slavs. In 865 they led against Byzantium an expedition which consisted of at least two hundred ships, and according to Venetian accounts of three hundred and sixty ships, to which would correspond an army of about fourteen thousand warriors. A tempest arose and destroyed the fleet in the sea of Marmora. The barbarians attributed their disaster to the wonder-working virgin, and it is reported that Askold embraced Christianity. This expedition has a two-fold importance: (1) it gives us the first certain date in Russian history; and (2) it introduced the seeds of Christianity into Russia. In the following year, 866, the patriarch Photius established a bishopric at Kiev.

After the death of his brothers Rurik reigned till his death in 879, when he was succeeded, not by his son Igor (Scand. Ingvarr), but by the eldest member of his family Oleg (Scand. Helge). In 882 he set out from Novgorod with an army composed of Varangians and the subject Slavo-Finnish tribes—Tchuds, Merians, Vesians, Ilmen Slavs, and Krivitchi—sailed down the upper Dnieper, took Smolensk, freed the Radimichi and the Severians from the yoke of the Chazars and incorporated them in his empire, and finally reached Kiev. Askold and Dir were then got rid of by an act of treachery, and Kiev was made the capital of an empire embracing nearly all the eastern Slavs.

The Treaty with Constantinople

But Kiev was only one of the stages in the southward progress of the Varangians. The great city of the east, Constantinople, was the glittering prize that dazzled their eyes and was ever regarded as the goal of their ambition. Accordingly, in 907, Oleg sailed with a fleet of two thousand boats and eighty thousand men, and reached the gates of Constantinople. The frightened emperor was obliged to pay a large ransom for the city and to agree to a treaty of free commercial intercourse between the Russians and the Greeks. A particular district in the suburbs of the city was assigned as the place of residence for Russian traders, but the city itself could be visited by no more than fifty Russians simultaneously, who were to be unarmed and accompanied by an imperial officer.[g][a]

Oleg’s Varangian guard, who seem to have been also his council, were parties with him to this treaty, for their assent appears to have been requisite to give validity to an agreement affecting the amount of their gains as conquerors. These warriors swore to the treaty by their gods Perun and Volos, and by their arms, placed before them on the ground: their shields, their rings, their naked swords, the things they loved and honoured most. The gorged barbarian then departed with his rich booty to Kiev, to enjoy there an uncontested authority, and the title of Wise Man or Magician, unanimously conferred upon him by the admiration of his Slavonic subjects.

The First Written Document of Russian History (911 A.D.)

[911-913 A.D.]

Three years after this event, in 911, Oleg sent ambassadors to Constantinople to renew the treaty of alliance and commerce between the two empires. This treaty, preserved in the old chronicle of Nestor, is the first written monument of Russian history, for all previous treaties were verbal. It is of value, as presenting to us some customs of the times in which it was negotiated.

Here follow some of the articles that were signed by the sovereigns of Constantinople and of Kiev respectively:

II. “If a Greek commit any outrage on a Russian, or a Russian on a Greek, and it be not sufficiently proved, the oath of the accuser shall be taken, and justice be done.

III. “If a Russian kill a Christian, or a Christian kill a Russian, the assassin shall be put to death on the very spot where the crime was committed. If the murderer take to flight and be domiciliated, the portion of his fortune, which belongs to him according to law, shall be adjudged to the next of kin to the deceased; and the wife of the murderer shall obtain the other portion of the estate which, by law, should belong to him.

IV. “He who strikes another with a sword, or with any other weapon, shall pay three litres of gold, according to the Russian law. If he have not that sum, and he affirms it upon oath, he shall give the party injured all he has, to the garment he has on.

V. “If a Russian commit a theft on a Greek, or a Greek on a Russian, and he be taken in the act and killed by the proprietor, no pursuit shall be had for avenging his death. But if the proprietor can seize him, bind him, and bring him to the judge, he shall take back the things stolen, and the thief shall pay him the triple of their value.

X. “If a Russian in the service of the emperor, or travelling in the dominions of that prince, shall happen to die without having disposed of his goods, and has none of his near relations about him, his property shall be sent to Russia to his heirs; and, if he have bequeathed them by testament, they shall be in like manner remitted to the legatee.”

The names of Oleg’s ambassadors who negotiated this treaty of peace, show that all of them were Northmen. From this we may conclude that the government of the country was as yet wholly in the hands of the conquerors.

THE REIGN OF IGOR

Igor, the son of Rurik, who was married to a Scandinavian princess named Olga (Helga), was nearly forty years of age when he succeeded Oleg in 913. He ascended the throne under trying circumstance, for the death of the victor revived the courage of the vanquished and the Drevlians raised the standard of revolt against Kiev; but Igor soon quelled them, and punished them by augmenting their tribute. The Uglitches, who dwelt on the southern side of the Dnieper, contended longer for their liberty against the voyevod Sveneld, whom Igor had despatched against them. One of their principal towns held out a siege of three years. At last they too were subdued and made tributary.

Meanwhile new enemies, formidable from their numbers and their thirst for pillage, showed themselves on the frontiers of Russia: these were the Petchenegs, famous in the Russian, Byzantine, and Hungarian annals, from the tenth to the twelfth century. They were a nomad people, of the Turcoman stock, whose only wealth consisted in their lances, bows and arrows, their flocks and herds, and their swift horses, which they managed with astonishing address. The only objects of their desires were fat pastures for their cattle, and rich neighbours to plunder. Having come from the east they established themselves along the northern shores of the Black Sea. Thenceforth occupying the ground between the Greek and the Russian empires, subsidised by the one for its defence, and courted by the other from commercial motives—for the cataracts of the Dnieper and the mouths of the Danube were in the hands of those marauders—the Petchenegs were enabled for more than two hundred years to indulge their ruling propensity at the expense of their neighbours. Having concluded a treaty with Igor, they remained for five years without molesting Russia; at least Nestor does not speak of any war with them until 920, nor had tradition afforded him any clue to the result of that campaign.

[920-944 A.D.]

The reign of Igor was hardly distinguished by any important event until the year 941, when, in imitation of his guardian, he engaged in an expedition against Constantinople. If the chroniclers do not exaggerate, Igor entered the Black Sea with ten thousand barks, each carrying forty men. The imperial troops being at a distance, he had time to overrun and ravage Paphlagonia, Pontus, and Bithynia. Nestor speaks with deep abhorrence of the ferocity displayed by the Russians on this occasion; nothing to which they could apply fire or sword escaped their wanton lust of destruction, and their prisoners were invariably massacred in the most atrocious manner—crucified, impaled, cut to pieces, buried alive, or tied to stakes to serve as butts for the archers. At last the Greek fleet encountered the Russian as it rode at anchor near Pharos, prepared for battle and confident of victory. But the terrible Greek fire launched against the invaders struck them with such dismay that they fled in disorder to the coasts of Asia Minor. Descending there to pillage, they were again routed by the land forces, and escaped by night in their barks, to lose many of them in another severe naval defeat. By the confession of the Russian chronicles, Igor scarcely took back with him a third part of his army.

Instead of being discouraged by these disasters, Igor prepared to revenge them. In 944 he collected new forces [which included a large number of Scandinavians collected for this special purpose by Igor’s recruiting agents], took the Petchenegs into his pay, exacting hostages for their fidelity, and again set out for Greece. But scarcely had he reached the mouths of the Danube when he was met by ambassadors from the emperor Romanus, with an offer to pay him the same tribute as had been exacted by Oleg. Igor halted and communicated this offer to his chief men, whose opinions on the matter are thus reported by Nestor: “If Cæsar makes such proposals,” said they, “is it not better to get gold, silver, and precious stuffs, without fighting? Can we tell who will be the victor, and who the vanquished? And can we guess what may befall us at sea? It is not solid ground that is under our feet, but the depths of the waters, where all men run the same risks.”

In accordance with these views Igor granted peace to the empire on the proposed conditions, and the following year he concluded with the emperor a treaty, which was in part a renewal of that made by Oleg.[3] Of the fifty names attached on the part of Russia to this second treaty, three are Slavonic, the rest Norman.

[948 A.D.]

Igor, being now advanced in years, was naturally desirous of repose, but the insatiable cupidity of his comrades in arms forced him to go to war. From the complaints of his warriors it appears that the Russian, like the German princes, furnished their faithful band with clothing, arms, horses, and provisions. “We are naked,” Igor’s companions and guards said to him, “while the companions of Sveneld have beautiful arms and fine clothing. Come with us and levy contributions, that we may be in plenty with thee.” It was customary with the grand prince to leave Kiev every year, in November, with an army, and not to return until April, after having visited his cities and received their tributes. When the prince’s magazine was empty, and the annual contributions were not sufficient, it became necessary to find new enemies to subject to exactions, or to treat as enemies the tribes that had submitted. To the latter expedient Igor now resorted against the Drevlians. Marching into their country he surcharged them with onerous tributes, besides suffering his guards to plunder them with impunity. His easy success in this rapacious foray tempted him to his destruction. After quitting the country of his oppressed tributaries, the thought struck him that more might yet be squeezed out of them. With this view he sent on his army to Kiev, probably because he did not wish to let his voyevods or lieutenants share the fruit of his contemplated extortions, and went back with a small force among the Drevlians, who, driven to extremity, massacred him and the whole of his guard near their town of Iskorost.[i]

THE REGENCY OF OLGA

Olga, Igor’s widow, assumed the regency in the name of her son Sviatoslav, then of tender age. Her first care was to revenge herself upon the Drevlians. In Nestor’s narrative it is impossible to separate the historical part from the epic. The Russian chronicler recounts in detail how the Drevlians sent two deputations to Olga to appease her and to offer her the hand of their prince; how she caused their death by treachery, some being buried alive, while others were stifled in a bath-house; how she besieged their city of Iskorost and offered to grant them peace on payment of a tribute of three pigeons and three sparrows for each house; how she attached lighted tow to the birds and then sent them off to the wooden city, where the barns and the thatched roofs were immediately set on fire; how, finally, she massacred part of the inhabitants of Iskorost and reduced the rest to slavery.

But it was this vindictive barbarian woman that was the first of the ruling house of Rurik to adopt Christianity.[d] We have seen before how Christianity was planted in Kiev under the protection of Askold and Dir, and how the converts to the new religion were specially referred to in the commercial treaty between Oleg and the Byzantine emperor. There existed a Christian community at Kiev but it was to Constantinople that Olga went to be baptised in the presence of the patriarch and the emperor. She assumed the Christian name of Helena, and after her death she was canonised in the Russian church. On her return she tried also to convert her son Sviatoslav, who had by this time become the reigning prince, but all her efforts were unavailing. He dreaded the ridicule of the fierce warriors whom he had gathered about himself. And no doubt the religion of Christ was little in consonance with the martial character of this true son of the vikings. The chronicle of Nestor gives the following embellished account of Olga’s conversion:[a]

Nestor Tells of the Baptism of Olga

In the year 948 Olga went to the Greeks and came to Tsargorod (Constantinople). At that time the emperor was Zimischius,[4] and Olga came to him, and seeing that she was of beautiful visage and prudent mind, the emperor admired her intelligence as he conversed with her and said to her: “Thou art worthy to reign with us in this city.” When she heard these words she said to the emperor: “I am a heathen, if you wish me to be baptised, baptise me yourself; otherwise I will not be baptised.” So the emperor and patriarch baptised her. When she was enlightened she rejoiced in body and soul, and the patriarch instructed her in the faith and said to her: “Blessed art thou among Russian women, for thou hast loved light and cast away darkness; the sons of Russia shall bless thee unto the last generation of thy descendants.” And at her baptism she was given the name of Helena, who was in ancient times empress and mother of Constantine the Great. And the patriarch blessed Olga and let her go.

After the baptism the emperor sent for her and said to her: “I will take thee for my wife.”

She answered: “How canst thou wish to take me for thy wife when thou thyself hast baptised me and called me daughter? for with the Christians this is unlawful and thou thyself knowest it.”

And the emperor said: “Thou hast deceived me, Olga,” and he gave her many presents of gold and silver, and silk and vases and let her depart, calling her daughter.

Olga

She returned to her home, going first to the patriarch to ask his blessing on her house and saying unto him: “My people are heathen and my son, too; may God preserve me from harm!”

And the patriarch said: “My faithful daughter, thou hast been baptised in Christ, thou hast put on Christ, Christ shall preserve thee as he preserved Enoch in the first ages, and Noah in the Ark, as he preserved Abraham from Abimelech, Lot from the Sodomites, Moses from Pharaoh, David from Saul, the three young men from the fiery furnace, and Daniel from the lions; thus shall he preserve thee from the enemy and his snares!” Thus the patriarch blessed her and she returned in peace to her own land and came to Kiev.

Olga lived with her son Sviatoslav and she repeatedly tried to induce him to be baptised, but he would not listen to her, for if any one then wished to be baptised it was not forbidden, but people mocked at him. And Olga often said, “My son, I have learned wisdom and rejoice; if thou knewest it, thou too wouldst rejoice.” But he paid no heed to her, saying: “How should I alone adopt a strange faith, my droujina (followers, men-at-arms) would mock at me.” She said: “If thou art baptised, all will do likewise,” but he would not listen to his mother and persisted in the heathen customs, not knowing that who does not hearken to his mother shall fall into misfortune, for it is written, he that does not hearken to his father or mother, let him die the death.[5] And he was angered against his mother. However, Olga loved her son Sviatoslav, and said: “God’s will be done! If God wills to have mercy on my race and on the Russian land, he will put into their hearts to turn to God, even as He did unto me.” And having thus said, she prayed for her son and for the people night and day, and she brought up her son until he was grown to be a man.

SVIATOSLAV; THE VICTORY OF NORTH OVER SOUTH

[964-971 A.D.]

Sviatoslav assumed the reins of government in 964, and he ruled only till 972, but this short period was filled with warlike expeditions. He crushed the power of the Volga Bulgarians and of the Chazars, and he incorporated the Viatitchi in the empire—thus destroying the danger ever menacing from the east, and uniting all the Slavs under one dominion. In 968 he marched—at the instigation of the Greek emperor, who furnished him the means—with an army of sixty thousand men against the Bulgarians of the Danube, conquered Pereiaslavl (the location of which is unknown) and Durostorus (the modern Silistria), and began to form the project of erecting for himself a new empire on the ruins of the Bulgarian power, when tidings reached him of a raid of the Petchenegs against Kiev and of the imminent danger to his mother and children who were beleaguered in that town. Leaving garrisons in the conquered towns he hurried back by forced marches and drove the Petchenegs back into the steppe. He divided his Russian dominions among his three young sons, giving Kiev to Iaropolk, the land of the Drevlians to Oleg, and Novgorod to Vladimir; while he himself went back to Bulgaria, for “Pereiaslavl is dear to him, where all good things meet, fine stuffs, wine, fruits, and gold from Greece, silver and horses from Bohemia and Hungary, furs, wax, honey, and slaves from Russia.”

In 970 he conquered Bulgaria and crossed the Balkans with an army of thirty thousand men. Defeated before Arcadipole (the present Lüle Burpas), his barbarian followers gave way to their plundering instincts, ravaged Macedonia, and scattered in all directions, while the emperor John Tzimiskes was making extensive preparations for their annihilation. Thus the year 971 was spent. In March of the next year the Russian garrison was almost annihilated at Pereiaslavl, which the Greeks took by storm, and only a small remnant reached Sviatoslav. In this hour of need Sviatoslav exhibited a tremendous energy. By recalling his roving bands he soon found himself at the head of sixty thousand men, and a pitched battle was fought. Twelve times the victory wavered from one side to the other, but finally their lack of cavalry and their inferior armament decided the day against the Russians, and they were forced back upon Drster. For three months they held the town against a regular siege, until, reduced in numbers by hunger and numerous sorties, Sviatoslav decided on a last desperate effort to break through the Greek lines. The battle is described in great detail by the Byzantine historians, in whom Sviatoslav’s bravery excited admiration. Fifteen thousand Russians were left on the field, the survivors were forced back into Durostorus. Surrounded on all sides, Sviatoslav sued for peace, and Tzimiskes granted an honourable retreat to a foe so gallant and withal dangerous. He renewed with him the old treaties, undertook to supply his army with provisions on its retreat, and also to induce the Petchenegs to grant a free passage into Russia. But at the rapids of the Dnieper these sons of the steppe surprised Sviatoslav and killed him, and only a small remnant of his force, led by the voyevod Svenedl, reached Kiev.[g][a]

Vladimir I

(Died 1015)

Sviatoslav’s overthrow was, after all, a fortunate event for the Russian empire. Kiev was already a sufficiently eccentric capital; had Sviatoslav established the seat of government on the Danube, his successor would have gone still further; and Rurik, instead of being the founder of a mighty empire, would have been nothing more than the principal leader of one of those vast but transient irruptions of the northern barbarians, which often ravaged the world without leaving behind any permanent trace of their passage. But in the Greek emperor Tzimiskes, Sviatoslav met with a hero as pertinacious as himself, and with far more talent, and the Russians, driven back within the limits of Russia, were compelled to establish themselves there.[i]

[977 A.D.]

Sviatoslav’s death seems to have left no perceptible influence on the destinies of Russia, for his three young sons were in the undisputed possession of authority while he and his warriors were fighting for a new empire in the Balkan peninsula. But his division of Russia among his sons, as if it were his private estate, soon showed its mischievous effects. In 977 civil war broke out between Iaropolk, who was at Kiev, and Oleg, who was in the Drevlian country. The latter was defeated in battle, and in his flight met death by the breaking down of a bridge thronged with fugitives. His territory was thereupon annexed by Iaropolk to his own dominions.

Vladimir, prince of Novgorod, the youngest of the three brothers, now became alarmed for his own safety and fled across the sea to seek refuge among the Scandinavian Varangians. After two years he returned with a numerous force of Norse adventurers, expelled from Novgorod the voyevods whom Iaropolk had installed there during his absence, and led his army against Kiev. On his march he conquered Polotsk on the Dvina, an independent Varangian principality, killing its prince by the name of Rogvolod (Scand. Rangvaldr) and forcing his daughter Rogneda to marry him. Iaropolk, betrayed by his chief men, surrendered Kiev without offering any resistance and finally delivered his own person into the hands of Vladimir, by whose order he was put to death. Vladimir now became sole ruler of Russia.

The victory of Vladimir over Iaropolk was achieved with the aid of Northmen and Novgorodians. It was, therefore, a victory of the Russian north over the Russian south, of Novgorod, where paganism was still unshaken, over Kiev, which was permeated with Christian elements. Vladimir was brought up in Novgorod, and during his two years’ stay in Sweden he must have become still more strongly impregnated with heathen ideas. Accordingly we find that no sooner was he firmly seated on his throne at Kiev than he tried to restore the heathen worship to more than its pristine strength among the Russian Slavs. Statues of the gods were erected: Perun, Dashbog, Stribog, Simargla, Mokosh—all of them, with the exception of Perun, known to us hardly more than by name. Human sacrifices were introduced, and two Christians, a father and his son, who resisted this blood-tax, were killed by a fanatical mob—the first and only Christian martyrs on Russian soil. One is tempted to assume that the Russian Slavs had originally no representations of the gods, and that it was their Norse princes who introduced them—at any rate there is no mention of images before the arrival of the latter; while the mode of worship introduced by Vladimir bears a bloody character, quite alien to the eastern Slavs. It is evident that he is making a last effort to impart to the colourless paganism of his subjects a systematic character which would enable it to resist the growing new religion.

But the circumstances of this prince soon underwent a change. His Norse auxiliaries, whose rapacity he could not satisfy, he was soon obliged to dismiss. According to northern sagas he was even involved in a war with Sweden, the stronghold of heathenism. His new capital was in constant commercial intercourse with Byzantium, and the reports that reached him of its gorgeous worship made a deep impression on the imagination of the barbarian. But if he was to accept the religion of the Cæsars, he was determined to do it not as a suppliant, but as a conqueror.[g][a] In what follows we give in full the circumstantial account of Nestor.

NESTOR’S ACCOUNT OF VLADIMIR’S CONVERSION

[987 A.D.]

In the year 987, Vladimir called together his boyars and the elders of the town, and said to them: “Behold, the Bulgarians have come to me saying: Receive our law; then came Germans and they praised their laws; after them came the Jews, and finally came the Greeks, blaming all other laws, but praising their own, and they spoke at great length, from the creation of the world, of the history of the whole world; they speak cunningly, and it is wonderful and pleasing to hear them; they say that there is another world, and that whosoever receives their faith, even though he die shall live to all eternity; but if he receive another law he shall burn in another world amidst flames. What think ye of it, and what will you answer?”

And the boyars and elders answered, “Thou knowest, prince, that nobody finds fault with his own, but on the contrary praises it; if thou desirest to test this matter deeply, send some of thy men to study their various faiths and see how each one serves God.” And the speech pleased the prince and all the people; ten wise and good men were chosen and were told to go first to the Bulgarians and study their faith. So they went, and coming saw infamous doings, and how the people worshipped in their mosques, and they returned to their own country. And Vladimir said to them: “Go now to the Germans, and observe in the same manner, and afterwards go to the Greeks.” They came to the Germans, and after having watched their church services, they went on to Tsargorad (Constantinople) and came to the emperor; the emperor asked them what brought them there, and they told him all that had happened. When he had heard it, he was glad and did them great honour from that day. The next day he sent to the patriarch saying: “There have come certain Russians to study our faith, prepare the church and thy clergy, and array thyself in thy episcopal robes that they may see the glory of our God.” When the patriarch heard this, he called together his clergy and they celebrated the service as for a great festival, and they burned incense and the choirs sang. And the emperor went with the Russians into the church and they were placed in a spacious part so that they might see the beauty of the church and hear the singing; then they explained to them the archiepiscopal service, the ministry of the deacons and the divine office. They were filled with wonderment and greatly admired and praised the service. And the emperors Basil and Constantine called them and said, “Return now to your country.” And they bade them farewell, giving them great gifts and showing them honour.

When they returned to their own country, the prince assembled the boyars and elders and said to them: “These are the men whom we have sent; they have returned, let us listen to what they have seen.” And he said: “Speak before the droujina.” And they said: “First we went to the Bulgarians and we observed how they worship in their temples, they stand without girdles, they sit down and look about them as though they were possessed by the demon, and there is no gladness amongst them, but only sorrow and a great stench; their religion is not a good one. We then went to the Germans, and we saw many services celebrated in their temples, but we saw no beauty there. Then we came to the Greeks, and they took us where they worship their God, and we no longer knew whether we were in heaven or on earth, for there is nothing like it on earth, nor such beauty, and we know not how to tell of it; we only know that it is there, that God dwells among men, and their service surpasses that of any other land. We can never forget its beauty, for as every man when he has tasted sweetness cannot afterwards endure bitterness, so can we no longer dwell here.” The boyars answered: “If the Greek religion were evil, then thy grandmother Olga, who was wiser than all men, would not have adopted it.” And Vladimir replied: “Where then shall we be baptised?” They answered: “Where thou wilt.” And the year passed by.

[988 A.D.]

In the year 988 Vladimir marched with his troops against Kherson, a Greek town, and the inhabitants shut themselves up in the town. So Vladimir established himself on the other side of the town, in the bay, at an arrow’s throw from the town. And the people of Kherson fought hard against him, but he blockaded the town and they were exhausted, and Vladimir said to them: “If you do not surrender I will stay three years if necessary.” But they would not listen to him.

Then Vladimir ranged his men in battle array and commanded them to build a trench towards the town. And a man of Kherson, by name Anastasius, threw out an arrow, on which he had inscribed: “To the east of thee lie springs, the waters of which come into the town through pipes; dig there and thou shalt intercept the water.” When Vladimir heard this he looked up to heaven and said: “If this comes to pass I will be baptised.” He commanded his soldiers to dig above the pipes, and he cut off the water, and the people, exhausted by thirst, surrendered.

So Vladimir with his droujina entered into the town. And he sent messengers to Basil and Constantine, saying: “Behold I have conquered your famous town. I have heard that you have a maiden sister; if you will not give her to me, I will do with your capital even as I have done with this town.” The emperors were grieved when this message was brought to them and sent back the following answer: “It is not meet to give a Christian maiden in marriage to a heathen. If thou art baptised thou shalt receive what thou askest, and the kingdom of heaven besides, and thou shalt be of the same faith as we, but if thou wilt not be baptised we cannot give thee our sister.”

When he heard this, Vladimir said to the emperor’s messengers, “Tell your emperor thus: I will be baptised, for I have already inquired into your religion, and your faith and rites please me well as they have been described to me by the men whom we have sent.” And when the emperors heard these words they rejoiced and persuaded their sister, who was named Anna, and sent to Vladimir saying: “Be baptised and we will send thee our sister.” Vladimir answered: “Let them come with your sister to baptise me.” When the emperors heard this they sent their sister with some dignitaries and priests; and she did not want to go and said: “I am going like a slave to the heathen, it would be better for me to die.” But her brothers persuaded her saying: “It is through thee that God shall turn the hearts of the Russian people to repentance, and thou shalt save the land of Greece from a cruel war; seest thou not how much harm the Russians have already done to the Greeks? And now if thou goest not they will do more harm.” And they persuaded her with difficulty. So she took ship, kissed her parents, and weeping went across the sea to Kherson.

When she arrived, the people of Kherson came out to greet her, led her into the town, and took her to the palace. By the will of God Vladimir’s eyes were then sore and he could not see anything, he was greatly troubled. And the czarina[6] went unto him saying: “If thou desirest to be delivered from this malady, be baptised as quickly as possible, or otherwise thou wilt not be cured.” When Vladimir heard this he said: “If this is accomplished, truly the God of the Christians is great:” and he was baptised. The bishop of Kherson after having announced it to the people, baptised Vladimir together with the czarina’s priests, and as soon as he laid his hands on him, he saw. When Vladimir perceived how quickly he was healed, he glorified God, saying: “Now only do I know the true God.” And when his droujina saw it, many were also baptised. Vladimir was baptised in the church of St. Basil, which is in Kherson in the midst of the town, where the people hold their market.

After the baptism Vladimir was wedded to the czarina. And when he had been baptised the priests expounded to him the Christian faith. After this Vladimir with the czarina and Anastasius and the priests of Kherson took the relics of St. Clement and St. Theba, his disciple, as well as the sacred vessels and relics, and he built a church on an eminence in the middle of the town, which had been raised with the earth taken from the trench, and this church still exists. As a wedding present to the czarina he gave back Kherson to the Greeks, and himself returned to Kiev. When he came there he commanded all the idols to be overthrown, some to be chopped in pieces, others cast into the flames. Then Vladimir had the following proclamation made throughout the town. “Whosoever to-morrow, rich or poor, mendicant or artisan, does not come to the river to be baptised, will be as an alien to me.” When the people heard these words, they came joyfully saying: “If this faith were not good, the prince and the boyars would not have adopted it.” The next day Vladimir came with the czarina’s priests and those of Kherson to the banks of the Dnieper, and an innumerable multitude of people were assembled and they went into the water, some up to their necks, others to their breasts; the younger ones stood on the banks, men held their children in their arms, the adults were quite in the water, and the priests stood repeating the prayers. And there was joy in heaven and on earth to see so many souls saved. When they were baptised the people returned to their homes and Vladimir rejoiced that he and his people knew God. He ordered that churches and priests should be established in all the towns, and that the people should be baptised throughout all the towns and villages; then he sent for the children of the chief families and had them instructed in book learning. Thus was Vladimir enlightened with his sons and his people, for he had twelve sons. And he henceforth lived in the Christian faith.[h]

The Death of Vladimir the Christian

The chronicler then goes on to describe the changes wrought in Vladimir’s character by his conversion: how this prince, who had hitherto been an oriental voluptuary and maintained in several places numerous harems with hundreds of wives, suddenly changed into the faithful husband of his Christian wife; and how he who had murdered his brother (whose wife he appropriated) and the father and brother of another of his wives, now became fearful of punishing offenders and criminals lest he commit a sin, so that it became the duty of his priests to admonish him to enforce justice and punish the guilty. All this, whether true or false, shows in what deep veneration the founder of Russian Christianity was held by subsequent generations.

On the other hand, his acceptance of Christianity does not seem to have diminished his love of war, which in those days, surrounded as the agricultural Russians were by semi-nomadic and marauding tribes, was indeed a social necessity. Throughout his reign he was engaged in suppressing revolts, reconquering territory lost during the reign of the weak Iaropolk—Galicia or Red Russia had then been lost to Poland—and punishing Lithuanians, Volga Bulgarians, and Petchenegs. To secure the southern frontier against these last, he erected a line of fortifications at strategical points and transplanted a large number of colonists from the north to the borders of the steppe.[a]

[1015 A.D.]

Vladimir died in 1015, leaving a large number of heirs by his numerous wives. From the division that he made among them of his states we learn what was the extent of Russia at that epoch. To Iaroslav he gave Novgorod; to Iziaslav, Polotsk; to Boris, Rostov; to Gleb, Murom—these last two principalities being in the Finn country; to Sviatoslav, the country of the Drevlians; to Vsevolod, Vladimir in Volhynia; to Mstislav, Tmoutarakan[7]; to his nephew Sviatopolk, the son of his brother and victim Iaropolk, the principality of Tourov, in the country of Minsk, founded by a Varangian named Tour, who, like Askold and Rogvolod, was not of the blood of princes.[j]

This division of the territories of the state among the heirs of the prince was in entire accord with the ideas of the Norse conquerors, who regarded their conquests as their private property. It was, moreover, dictated by the economic conditions of the time. Money being but rarely employed and all payments being made in service and in kind, it was indispensable, in making provision for the members of the ruling house, to supply them with territories and subjects. The immense extent of Russia, the lack of adequate means of communication, and its subdivision among a large number of tribes without any national cohesion, were further reasons for the introduction of this system of government.[a]

SVIATOPOLK IS SUCCEEDED BY IAROSLAV (1019 A.D.)

[1019 A.D.]

Sviatopolk, who claimed a divided parentage between Vladimir and Iaropolk—being the son of the widow of the latter, who on the murder of her husband was forced to live with the former, she being already pregnant—was at Kiev when the news of Vladimir’s death arrived. He had long indulged in a project for seizing the throne, which was favoured in its formation by the increasing imbecility of his father, whose death now ripened it into action. His ambitious schemes embraced a plan for securing the sole monarchy, by obtaining the grand princedom first, and then by artifice or treachery to put his brothers out of the way, so that he might thus reorganise under the one head the divided and independent governments. The moment had now arrived when this violent scheme was to be put into execution. His brother Boris, who was employed with the army against the Petchenegs, was the first object of his hate and fear, because his good qualities had so strongly recommended him, that he was the most popular of the brothers, and the most likely to gain the ascendency through the will of the people. There was but one sure method to get rid of this formidable rival, and Sviatopolk did not hesitate to adopt it. When the intelligence of his father’s decease reached Boris, he declared that the throne devolved properly upon the elder brother, and rejected the unanimous offer of the soldiery to assist in placing him upon it. This noble insensibility to the general wish alienated his troops, and exposed him to the designs of his treacherous rival. The assassins who were commissioned to despatch him found easy access to his tent, and having first slain a faithful Russian who threw himself before the person of his master, they soon effected their horrible purpose.

Two other brothers met a similar fate. Gleb was informed by letter that his father was ill, and desired his return. On his way he was so injured by a fall from his horse as to be forced to continue his journey in a litter. In this state he learned that Sviatopolk had issued orders for his murder, which, tempted probably by the reward, were carried into effect by his own cook, who stabbed him with a knife in the breast. Both Gleb and Boris were afterwards sainted, which appears to have been the last compliment paid by the Russians to their ill-used princes. These villainies alarmed a third brother, who fled to Hungary; but the emissaries of the triumphant assassin seized him in his flight, brought him back to the capital, and put him to death.

The way to the throne was now tolerably well cleared. Sviatopolk I found no further difficulty in assuming the government of Kiev, and calling in such of the tributary provinces as his recent excesses either terrified into submission or reduced within his control. But the most powerful opponent yet remained to be subjugated.

Iaroslav, prince of Novgorod, alarmed and outraged by the cruelties of his brother, and apprehending that, unless they were speedily arrested, they would spread into his own principality, determined to advance upon Kiev and make war on the usurping fratricide. The Novgorodians, to whom he was greatly endeared by the wisdom and mildness of his sway, entered so warmly into the expedition, that the tyrant was driven out of Kiev without much cost of blood, and obliged to flee for refuge to his father-in-law, the duke of Poland. At that period Poland was resting from the ruinous effects of a disastrous and straggling campaign in Germany which had considerably reduced her power, and curtailed her means of satisfying the ambition of her restless ruler. The representations of Sviatopolk rekindled the ardour of the Poles, who, animated as much by the desire of recovering those provinces which Vladimir had formerly wrested from Miecelsas, as by the prospect of ulterior aggrandisement, readily fell into the proposals of the exiled prince to make an attempt for his restoration to the throne. Boleslav at the head of a powerful force, advanced into Russia. Iaroslav, however, apprised of the movements of the enemy, met them on the banks of the Bug, prepared for battle. The army of Boleslav lay at the opposite side. For some time the invader hesitated to ford the river under the fire of the Russian soldiers; and might, probably, have returned as he came, had not a petty occurrence excited his impetuosity, and urged him forward. A Russian soldier one day, while both armies lay inactive within sight of each other, stood upon the bank of the river, and with gesticulations and bold language mimicked the corpulent size and gait of the Polish duke. This insult roused the spirit of Boleslav, who, plunging into the water, and calling on his men to follow, landed in the face of the Russians at the head of his intrepid troops. A long and well-contested action took place, and tardily closed in favour of the Poles, who, flushed with victory, pursued the fugitives to the walls of the capital. Sviatopolk was now reinstated in his throne, and Iaroslav, disheartened by defeat, made his way to Novgorod, where, doubtful even of the fidelity of his own people, he prepared to cross the Baltic in order to get beyond the reach of his brother. The Novgorodians, however, were faithful, and proved their attachment to his person by taking down the rigging of the vessels which had been got in readiness for his departure, and by levying contributions amongst themselves for the purpose of enabling him to procure auxiliary troops to assist in the recovery of the grand principality.

Iaroslav I

(Died 1054)

In the meantime, Sviatopolk was unconsciously facilitating his own downfall. After the Poles had helped him to re-establish himself, he began to feel the oppressive superiority of their presence, and plotted a base design to remove them. He instigated the inhabitants and the soldiery to conspire against the strangers, and massacre them in the midst of their security. Boleslav discovered the plot before it had time to be carried into execution; and, disgusted at a design so cruel and treacherous, he resolved to take ample revenge. The capital was plundered of its accumulated wealth by the incensed Poles, who, but for the moderation of their leader, would have burned it to ashes; and, loaded with treasures, they returned towards the Russian frontiers. Sviatopolk was artful enough to turn the whole transaction to the discredit of his ally, and thus to rouse the courage of his followers, who were easily persuaded to take the field against Boleslav. The belligerents met on the banks of the Bug before the Poles had passed the boundaries. The battle that ensued terminated in the discomfiture of Sviatopolk, who now returned with broken fortunes to the capital which he had so lately entered with acclamations of triumph. This was the opportunity for Iaroslav to appear with his followers. The usurper’s troops were so reduced by his late disasters, that he was forced to seek assistance from the Petchenegs, the hereditary enemies of the country; and they, tempted by hopes of booty, flocked to his standard to resist the approach of Iaroslav. The armies met on a plain near the place where Boris had been assassinated by the command of the fratricide. The coincidence was fortunate, for Iaroslav, taking a prudent advantage of the circumstance, employed all his eloquence in describing to his soldiers the righteousness of the cause in which they were engaged against a second Cain, the shedder of a brother’s blood. His oration, concluding with a fervent prayer to the Almighty to nerve his arm, and direct his sword, so that he might be made the instrument of reparation in so just a fight, wrought powerfully upon the assembled army, and excited them to an unexampled display of bravery. The advantage of numbers was on the opposite side; but such was the courage exhibited by the Novgorodians, that after a desperate battle, which lasted throughout the whole day, they succeeded in putting the enemy completely to flight. Sviatopolk took to horse and fled, but died in a wretched condition on the road.

The zeal and bravery of the Novgorodians were not forgotten by Iaroslav when he ascended the throne and concentrated the sole dominion in himself. His first attention was directed to the revision of the ill-constructed laws of their city, and to the grant of certain franchises, which had the effect of procuring unanimity amongst the inhabitants, and of establishing the peaceful arts and commercial interests of the place upon a sure and solid foundation. He at once evinced a capacity for legislation beyond the abilities of his most distinguished predecessors, and set about the labours of improvement in so vigorous a temper, and with so much aptitude for his objects, that the happiest results sprang up under his administration in all parts of the empire.

But it was not in the destiny of the age in which he lived to permit such extensive benefits to progress without interruption. His brother Mstislav, the seventh son of Vladimir, a warrior distinguished in his wars against the Kossoges, discontented with the enlarged authority that the grand princedom vested in the hands of Iaroslav, transmitted to him a petition praying of him to cede to him a part of the fraternal appanage which he governed. Iaroslav partially assented to the request, by granting to his brother the small territory of Murom. This grant was insufficient to satisfy Mstislav, who immediately equipped an army and proceeded to wage an offensive war against the monarch. In this war the invader was successful, but he was not ungenerous in his triumph; for when he had vanquished the grand prince, he restored to him so large a portion of his possessions that the empire became equally divided between them. In this league of amity the brothers continued to govern for seven years, during the remainder of the life of Mstislav; and at his death the colossal empire, with all its appanages, reverted to the hands of Iaroslav.

It is in this part of his reign, and in this memorable period in the annals of the nation, that we find the first development of justice in Russian legislation, and the first application of philosophy to the management of public affairs. Although Iaroslav’s career commenced with war, and although he extended his arms into Finland, Livonia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria, and even penetrated into Byzantium, yet it was not by war that the glory of his name or the ability of his rule was to be accomplished. His wars could hardly claim the merits of conquests; and in some instances they terminated in such vague conclusions, that they resembled drawn battles on which much treasure had been lavished in vain. In Greece he was routed. He was driven before the soldiers of Sviatopolk, and forced to surrender at his own gates to the victorious Mstislav. His utmost successes amounted to preservation against aggression; and so indifferent was he to the barbarian mode of elevating the empire by wanton and hazardous expeditions into the neighbouring countries, that on most of those occasions he entrusted the command of his army to his lieutenants. It is necessary to explain that part of his character, in order that the loftiness of his nature may be the more clearly understood.

At this period the Russian Empire comprehended those enormous tracts that lie between the Volga and the lower Danube, and stretch from the Black Sea to the Baltic. This accumulation of territory was not the work of a progressive political system; it was not accomplished by the growth of a powerful government or by the persevering pursuit of co-operating interests, and the increasing circles of acquisition were in a constant state of dismemberment, separation, and recall. The surface of the land from the days of Rurik was overrun by revolutions. The marauder, legalised by his tribe, haunted the forest and devastated the populous places, carrying away with him plunder, or usurping authority wherever he remained. The feudal system, introduced by the Scandinavians as a provision for troublesome leaders, was carried to excess. The nominal head was disavowed and resisted at will; and the subordinate governments made war upon each other, or joined in schemes of rapine, with impunity. The maintenance of each fief seemed to depend upon civil war; and the office of the grand prince was not so much to govern the dominions he possessed, as to keep, if he could, the dominion he was called upon to govern.

Russia, combining these gigantic outlines of territory, was now, for the second time, united under one head; but, for the first time, under a head that could discern her necessities, and provide for them. Her civilisation was in progress, but it wanted the impetus of knowledge, and the control of law. The reign of the sword had done its work: what was required was the reign of justice and wisdom to improve and consolidate the triumphs and acquisitions of the barbarian era. In Iaroslav, Russia found a prince whose genius was adapted to her critical circumstances. He effectually raised her from obscurity, and placed her for a time amongst the family of European states. He made her church independent, increased the privileges of the people, facilitated the means of instruction, and elevated her national dignity by contracting domestic alliances with the most powerful countries. His sister was queen of Poland; his three daughters-in-law were Greek, German, and English princesses; and the queens of Norway, Hungary, and France were his daughters. But these were the least memorable evidences of his greatness. He gave Russia a code of laws, which was more valuable to her than the highest connections, or the most ambitious accessions of dominion.

IAROSLAV’S CODE OF LAWS

This code must be judged in reference to the times in which it was enacted and in comparison with the formless mass of confused precedents it superseded. The existence of commercial cities in Russia so far back as the invasion of Rurik, may be accepted as presumptive proof that there were not wanting some regulations to render individuals amenable to the common good. But these were merely the rude precepts of the hunting and agricultural nations matured into a stronger form, and adapted to the wants of the commercial community. When the Scandinavians subjugated the aborigines, the languages, customs, and laws of both fell into still greater confusion by admixture. When each was imperfect, it was unlikely that a forcible intermixture would have improved either, or led to the harmonious union of both. It is to be observed, too, that none of the nations that made up the population possessed written laws; so that whatever notions of legislation they entertained, were constantly liable to the fluctuations of capricious opinion, and were always subject to the interpretation of the strong over the weak. Where there were no records there was but little responsibility, and even that little was diminished by the character of the rulers and the lawlessness of the ruled. The exclusive attention of the princes being of necessity confined to the most effectual methods of preserving their sovereignties, of enlarging their domains, and of exacting tributes, it was natural that the unsystematic and crude usages that prevailed should fall into further contempt, and, instead of acquiring shape and consistency from experience, become still more oppressive, dark, and indecisive.

It was this matter of incongruities that Iaroslav cast out; supplying its place with a series of written laws, in which some sacrifices were made to popular customs, but which, on the whole, was an extraordinary boon to a people that, like mariners at sea without a compass, were tossed about in a tumult of uncertainty and perplexity. Had Iaroslav been a mere soldier, like the majority of his predecessors, he would have employed his talents in the field, and directed the enormous physical means at his command to the purposes of a wild and desolating ambition. But his policy was in advance of the heathen age: it restrained boundless licentiousness, created immunities, protected life and property, bestowed rewards, enacted punishments, established safeguards and facilities for trade, and expounded and confirmed those distinctions of ranks in which a community on a large scale recognises the elements of its permanency. He had the magnanimity to forego vulgar conquests for the higher conquest of prejudices and ancient habits. The people, probably fatigued with the restlessness of their mode of life, and yearning after repose and settlement, rendered now more necessary by the rapid increase of their numbers, received his laws with gratitude.

A short outline of the leading provisions of these laws will form a curious and valuable commentary upon the character of the grand prince, and the actual state of the people at this period (1018). The first article of the code empowers the friends of a murdered man to take satisfaction upon the murderer; constituting the law as the public avenger only in cases where there are no friends to take their vengeance in kind. In the event of there being no relatives to take the revenge into their own hands, the law goes on to enact that the assassin shall pay into the public treasury a certain fine, according to the rank of his victim. Thus, for the murder of a boyar, or thane of the prince, the mulct was fixed at the highest penalty of eighty grivnas;[8] for a page of the prince, his cook, or other domestics, for a merchant, for the sword-bearer of a boyar, and for every free Russian, without distinction of origin, forty grivnas; for a woman, half the usual fine: no fine for killing a slave; but if killed without sufficient cause, the value to be paid to the master: for a serf belonging to a boyar or free Russian, five grivnas to the owner; for the superintendent of a village, an artisan, schoolmaster, or nurse, twelve grivnas; for a female servant, six grivnas to the master, and twelve to the state.

From these penalties a correct estimate may be formed of the principles upon which the social fabric was erected. In all these provisions the rich were favoured above the poor, the strong above the weak. The life of a woman, because her utility in a barbarous community was rated according to its menial value, was fixed at half the worth of a man’s, to be proportioned according to her station. The murder of a slave was not visited with any penalty whatever; the exception constituting, in fact, the privilege to kill a slave at pleasure. Slavery was carried to extremity in Russia. Prisoners of war and their posterity were condemned to perpetual slavery; the poverty of the soil, and the oppression of its lords, forced many to sell their freedom for limited periods; insolvent debtors became slaves by law; and all freemen who married slaves unconditionally, participated in their servitude.

Yet, degrading as these institutions must be considered, it appears that the rights of the person were scrupulously maintained. Thus this code enumerates penalties for striking a blow, describes the different degrees of the offence, and regulates the responsibility accordingly. The distinctions drawn between the different modes of striking are singular, and help to show that, ill as the Russians could appreciate public liberty, they had a jealous sense of that individual respect which, in modern Europe, is called the point of honour. The penalty for striking a blow with the scabbard or handle of a sword, with the fist, a stick, cup, or goblet, was twelve grivnas—equal to the fine for murdering an artisan or a schoolmaster. If the blow was struck with a club, which, we presume, was considered a plebeian weapon, the penalty was only three grivnas. But the most characteristic penalty was that of twelve grivnas for pulling a man by the beard, or knocking out a tooth. The origin of this law may be easily traced to the Goths and Germans, who were rigid in the preservation of their hair, to which they attached extraordinary importance. In the same spirit was the enactment that prohibited the making use of a horse without the permission of the owner, and that visited with imprisonment for life the crime of horse-stealing. This legal protection of the horse is still preserved in the Saxon laws.

The prevailing tendency of the code was to secure to each man his lawful property, and to arm him with the means of protection. Yet it must be remarked as a strange inconsistency, in the midst of this anxiety to erect safeguards around property, that fraudulent debtors were granted a direct escape from liability to consequences. It was enacted, that if one man lent money to another, and the latter denied the loan, the ordeal should not apply; the oath of the defendant being deemed a sufficient release from the debt. This law was the more unaccountable in a country where the legal interest of money was forty per cent.,—a circumstance calculated to increase the motives to dishonesty.

Another enactment makes a distinction between the Varangians and Slavs, which illustrates the fact that the latter had always been more advanced in civilisation than the former. By this enactment, a Koblegian or a Varangian was compelled to take an oath where such a test was required, but a Slavonian was exempted. It would therefore appear, if the conclusion may be safely ventured upon, that judicial combats, which formed the final appeal when a defendant in a cause acquitted himself in the first instance by a solemn oath, were not adopted amongst the Slavs, who were satisfied with a public examination of facts, and an adjudication, without the sacred or the physical test. It is sufficient, however, for the great uses of historical inquiry, to know that a difference so remarkable between two branches of the people was recognised and confirmed by law.

One of the most important declarations of the code was that which divided the population into three classes—the nobles, the freemen, and the slaves. Of these three, the slaves alone were left unprotected. The freemen, who were fenced in from the encroachments of the nobles, were composed of the citizens, the farmers, the landholders, and hired servants. They were sub-classified into centuries, each of which elected a head, who filled an office equivalent to that of a tribune. The civil magistracy, thus created, had a separate guard of their own, and were placed, in virtue of their office, on an equality with the boyars. The city of Novgorod, which maintained, under a nominal princedom, the spirit of a republic, exhibited these municipal franchises in a more complete form than any of the Russian cities; all of which, however, possessed similar privileges, more or less modified according to their relative importance, or the circumstances under which their charters were granted. The chief of the Novgorodian republic was a prince of the blood; the title of his office was that of Namestnick. He took no share in the deliberations of the people, nor does it appear that he even possessed a veto upon their decisions. His oath of instalment bound him as the slave rather than the governor of the city; for it pledged him to govern agreeably to the constitution as he found it; to appoint none but Novgorodian magistrates in the provinces, and even these to be previously approved of by the Posadnick or mayor; to respect strictly the exclusive rights possessed by the citizens sitting in judgment on their own order, of imposing their own taxes, and of carrying on commerce at their own discretion; to interdict his boyars from acquiring landed property within the villages dependent on Novgorod, and to oblige them to travel at their private cost; to discourage immigration; and never to cause a Novgorodian to be arrested for debt. A princedom, accepted on such restrictive conditions, was but the shadow of a sceptre, as the municipal union of the legislative and judicial abundantly proved. The first officer was the Posadnick, or mayor, chosen by election for a limited time; the next was the Tisiatski, or tribune, who was a popular check upon the prince and mayor; and the rest of the functionaries consisted of the senate, the city assembly, and the boyars, all of whom were elective. By the electoral system, the people preserved a constant guard over the fidelity of their representatives in the senate, and their officers of justice; so that, while the three grades propounded by law were kept widely apart, and socially distinguished, the prerogatives of each were rigidly protected against innovation from the other two. All that this little republic required to render its security perfect, was liberty. It was based upon a system of slavery, and sustained its dominion more by fear than righteousness. Nor was it independent of control, although all its domestic concerns were uninterruptedly transacted within its own confines. It was an appanage of the grand princedom; but on account of its fortunate geographical position on the northern and northwestern frontiers, which were distant from the capital—a circumstance that delegated to Novgorod the defence of those remote boundaries—it acquired a degree of political importance that preserved it for four centuries against the cupidity of the succession of despots that occupied the throne. The removal of the seat of empire from Kiev to Vladimir, and finally to Moscow, by drawing the centre nearer to Novgorod, diminished its power by degrees, and finally absorbed it altogether.

One of the enactments of the code of Iaroslav will show what advances had been made towards the segregation of the people into different orders, and how much the government partook, or was likely to partake, of a mixed form, in which a monarchical, an hereditary, and a representative estate were combined. It made the prince the heir-at-law of every freeman who died without male issue, with the exception of the boyars and officers of the royal guard. By this regulation the prerogative of the crown was rendered paramount, while the hereditary rights of property were preserved unconditionally to the families of the nobles alone. A class of rich patricians was thus formed and protected, to represent, by virtue of birth, the interests of property; while commerce and popular privileges were fully represented in the assembly of the elected senators. The checks and balances of this system were pretty equal; so that, if the constitution of which these outlines were the elements, had been allowed to accumulate strength and to become consolidated by time, it would at last have resolved itself into a liberal and powerful form; the semi-savage usages with which it was encrusted would have dropped away, and wiser institutions have grown up in their stead.

So clearly were the popular benefits of the laws defined, that the code regulated the maximum demand which the proprietor of the soil might exact from his tenant; and it neither enforced taxation, nor recognised corporal punishment, nor in the composition of a pecuniary mulct admitted any distinction between the Varangians and the Slavs, who formed the aristocracy and the democracy. The prince neither possessed revenue nor levied taxes. He subsisted on the fines he imposed for infractions of law, on the tributes he received from his estates, on the voluntary offerings of the people, and the produce of such property as had fallen to the private title of the sovereignty. Even the tribute was not compulsory; it was rather a right derived from prescription. The only dependence of the lords of fiefs was in that they were compelled to render military service when required to the grand prince; and it was expected that they should come numerously attended, well armed, and provisioned. The tribute was the mark of conquest, and was not considered to imply taxation.

But while the monarchical principle was thus kept within proscribed limits, the power of the democracy was not sufficiently curbed: over both there was a check, but the hands of the prince were bound too tightly. His dominion was despotic, because he was surrounded by men devoted to his will; but the dominion of the people was boundless, because opinion was only in its rickety infancy, and the resistance to the offending prince lay in the demonstration of physical superiority instead of moral combination. They never hesitated to avail themselves of their numerical advantage. They even carried it to extravagance and licentiousness; and so much did they exult in their strength, that they regulated the hours at which the sovereign was permitted to enjoy relaxation, punished the obnoxious heads of the church by summary ejectment, and in several instances, taking the charter of law into their own keeping, deposed their princes. The checks, therefore, established in Iaroslav’s wise convention between the government and the constituency were overborne by the rudeness of the times.

That the period had arrived when laws were necessary to the settlement of the empire, was sufficiently testified by the circumstances, external and domestic, in which the people were placed. The adoption of Christianity had partially appeased the old passion for aggression against Constantinople, which, having now become the metropolis of their religion, was regarded with some degree of veneration by the Russians. A war of plundering Byzantium, therefore, could not be entertained with any prospect of success. The extension of the empire under Vladimir left little to be coveted beyond the frontiers, which spread to the east, north and south as far as even the wild grasp of the lawless tribes of the forests could embrace. To the west, the Russians had ceased to look for prey, since Boleslav, by his easy conquest of Kiev, had demonstrated the strength of Poland. Having acquired as much as they could, and having next, in the absence of warlike expeditions abroad, occupied themselves with ruthless feuds at home, they came at length to consider the necessity of consulting the security of possessions acquired at so much cost, and so often risked by civil broils. This was the time for a code of laws. But unfortunately there still existed too many remains of the barbarian era, to render the introduction of legal restraints a matter easy of accomplishment. The jealousy of Greek superiority survived the admission of the Greek religion. The longing after power still inspired the petty chiefs; and hopeless dreams of larger dominion wherewith to bribe the discontented, and provide for the hirelings of the state, still troubled the repose of the sovereign. The throne stood in a plain surrounded by forests, from whence issued, as the rage propelled them, hordes of newly reclaimed savages, pressing extraordinary demands, or threatening with ferocious violence the dawning institutions of civilisation. In such a position, it was not only impossible to advance steadily, but to maintain the ground already gained.

Iaroslav Dies (1054 A.D.)

[1054 A.D.]

Could the character of Iaroslav, the legislator, have been transmitted through his successors, the good of which he laid the seeds, might have been finally cultivated to maturity. But his wisdom and his virtues died with him. Nor, elevated as he was in moral dignity above the spirit of his countrymen, can it be said that he was free from weaknesses that marred much of the utility of his best measures. One of his earliest errors was the resignation of Novgorod to his son Vladimir, who had no sooner ascended the throne of the republican city, than, under the pretext of seeking satisfaction for the death of a Russian who had been killed in Greece, he carried arms into the Byzantine empire. The folly of this wild attempt was abundantly punished in the sequel; fifteen thousand men were sacrificed on the Grecian plains, and their chief hunted back disgracefully to his own territories. Yet this issue of one family grant did not awaken Iaroslav to the danger of partitioning the empire. Before his death he divided the whole of Russia amongst his sons, making, however, the younger sons subordinate to the eldest, as grand prince of Kiev, and empowering the latter to reduce the others to obedience by force of arms whenever they exhibited a disposition to dispute his authority.

This settlement, enforced with parting admonitions on his death-bed, was considered by Iaroslav to present a sufficient security against civil commotion and disputes about the succession. But he did not calculate upon the ungovernable lust for power, the jealousy of younger brothers, and the passion for aggrandisement. His injunctions were uttered in the amiable confidence of Christianity; they were violated with the indecent impetuosity of the barbarian nature.

With the death of Iaroslav, and the division of the empire, a new period of darkness and misrule began. The character of the legislator, which influenced his own time, was speedily absorbed in the general confusion. Iaroslav’s name was held in reverence, but the memory of his excellence did not awe the multitudes that, upon his decease, sprang from their retirement to revive the disastrous glories of domestic warfare. Much as he had done for the extension of Christianity, he had failed in establishing it in the hearts of the people. He was an able theologian, and well acquainted with the church ordinances, agenda, and other books of the Greek religion, many of which he caused to be translated into the Russian language, and distributed in copies over the country. So strong an interest did he take in the cultivation of the doctrines of the church, that he established a metropolitan at Kiev, in order to relieve the Russian people and their priests from the inconveniences of attending the residence of the ecclesiastical head at Constantinople, and also with a desire to provide for the more prompt and certain dissemination of the principles of faith. But the value of all these exertions expired with their author. He did much to raise the fame and consolidate the resources of the empire; but the last act of his political career, by which he cut away the cord that bound the rods, had the effect of neutralising all the benefits he meditated to accomplish, as well as those that he actually effected, for his country. His reign was followed by a period of savage anarchy that might be said to have resolved the half-civilised world into its original elements.[k]

FOOTNOTES

[2] According to recent computations the Russian Empire covers an area of 8,660,000 square miles—about one sixth of the land surface of the globe.

[3] [This treaty was not so favourable to the Russians as the one concluded with Oleg—a result, evidently, of the former defeat. Another point of importance is that it makes mention of Russian Christians, to whom there is no allusion in the treaty of 911. From this we may conclude that Christianity had spread largely during this interval.[g]]

[4] [According to another Ms., Constantine, son of Lev.]

[5] Ex. XXI, 17.

[6] [In the original Nestor always calls thus the sister of the emperors.]

[7] [An antiquarian inquiry instituted by Catherine in 1794 resulted in proving that Tmoutarakan was situated on the isle of Taman, forming a key to the confluence of the sea of Azov with the Black Sea.[k]]

[8] A copper coin, of the value, as near as we can ascertain, of about 4½d. of English money.