PRINCIPALITIES--EXPANSION NORTHWARD
When Vladimir died, in 1015, the partition of his dominions among
numerous heirs inaugurated the destructive system of _Appanages_. The
country was converted into a group of principalities ruled by Princes
of the same blood, of which the Principality of Kief was chief, and its
ruler _Grand Prince_. Kief, the "Mother of Cities," was the heart of
Russia, and its Prince, the oldest of the descendants of Rurik, had a
recognized supremacy over the others; who must, however, also belong to
this royal line. No prince could rule anywhere who was not a
descendant of Rurik; Kief, the greatest prize of all, going to the
oldest; and when a Grand Prince died, his son was not his rightful
heir, but his uncle, or brother, or cousin, or whoever among the
Princes had the right by seniority. This was a survival of the
patriarchal system of the Slavs, showing how the Norse rulers had
adapted themselves to the native customs as before stated.
So while in thus breaking up the land into small jealous and rival
states independent of each other--with only a nominal headship at
Kief--while in this there was a movement toward chaos, there were after
all some bonds of unity which could not be severed: A unity of race and
language; a unity of historical development; a unity in religion; and
the political unity created by the fact that all the thrones were
filled by members of the same family, any one of whom might become
Grand Prince if enough of the intervening members could--by natural or
other means--be disposed of. This was a standing invitation for
assassination and anarchy, and one which was not neglected.
Immediately upon the death of Vladimir there commenced a carnival of
fraternal murders, which ended by leaving Yaroslaf to whom had been
assigned the Principality of Novgorod, upon the throne at Kief.
The "Mother of Russian Cities" began to show the effect of Greek
influences. The Greek clergy had brought something besides Oriental
Christianity into the land of barbarians. They brought a desire for
better living. Learning began to be prized; schools were created.
Music and architecture, hitherto absolutely unknown, were introduced.
Kief grew splendid, and with its four hundred churches and its gilded
cupolas lighted by the sun, was striving to be like Constantinople.
Not alone the Sacred Books of Byzantine literature, but works upon
philosophy and science, and even romance, were translated into the
Slavonic language. Russia was no longer the simple, untutored
barbarian, guided by unbridled impulses. She was taking her first
lesson in civilization. She was beginning to be wise; learning new
accomplishments, and, alas!--to be systematically and judicially cruel!
Nothing could have been more repugnant or foreign to the free Slav
barbarian than the penal code which was modeled by Yaroslaf upon the
one at Byzantium. Corporal punishment was unknown to the Slav, and was
abhorrent to his instincts. This seems a strange statement to make
regarding the land of the _knout_! But it is true. And imprisonment,
convict labor, flogging, torture, mutilation, and even the death
penalty, came into this land by the way of Constantinople.
At the same time there mingled with this another stream from
Scandinavia, another judicial code which sanctioned private revenge,
the pursuit of an assassin by all the relatives of the dead; also the
ordeal by red-hot iron and boiling water. But to the native Slav race,
corporal punishment, with its humiliations and its refinements of
cruelty, was unknown until brought to it by stronger and wiser people
from afar.
When we say that Russia was putting on a garment of civilization, let
no one suppose we mean the _people_ of Russia. It was the Princes, and
their military and civil households; it was official Russia that was
doing this. The _people_ were still sowing and reaping, and sharing
the fruit of their toil in common, unconscious as the cattle in their
fields that a revolution was taking place, ready to be driven hither
and thither, coerced by a power which they did not comprehend, their
horizon bounded by the needs of the day and hour.
The elements constituting Russian society were the same in all the
principalities. There was first the Prince. Then his official family,
a band of warriors called the _Drujina_. This Drujina was the germ of
the future state. Its members were the faithful servants of the
Prince, his guard and his counselors. He could constitute them a court
of justice, or could make them governors of fortresses (_posadniki_) or
lieutenants in the larger towns. The Prince and his Drujina were like
a family of soldiers, bound together by a close tie. The body was
divided into three orders of rank: first, the simple guards; second,
those corresponding to the French barons; and, third, the _Boyars_, the
most illustrious of all, second only to the Prince. The Drujina was
therefore the germ of aristocratic Russia, next below it coming the
great body of the people, the citizens and traders, then the peasant,
and last of all the slave.
Yaroslaf, the "legislator," known as the Charlemagne of Russia, died in
the year 1054. The Eastern and Western Empires, long divided in
sentiment, were that same year separated in fact, when Pope Leo VI.
excommunicated the whole body of the Church in the East.
With the death of Yaroslaf the first and heroic period in Russia
closes. Sagas and legendary poems have preserved for us its grim
outlines and its heroes, of whom Vladimir, the "Beautiful Sun of Kief,"
is chief. Thus far there has been a unity in the thread of Russian
history--but now came chaos. Who can relate the story of two centuries
in which there have been 83 civil wars--18 foreign campaigns against
one country alone, not to speak of the others--46 barbaric invasions,
and in which 293 Princes are said to have disputed the throne of Kief
and other domains! We repeat: Who could tell this story of chaos; and
who, after it is told, would read it?
It was a vast upheaval, a process in which the eternal purposes were
"writ large"--too large to be read at the time. It was not intended
that only the fertile Black Lands along the Dnieper, near to the
civilizing center at Constantinople, should absorb the life currents.
All of Russia was to be vitalized; the bleak North as well as the
South; the zone of the forests as well as the fertile steppes. The
instruments appointed to accomplish this great work were--the disorder
consequent upon the reapportionment of the territory at the death of
each sovereign--the fierce rivalries of ambitious Princes--and the
barbaric encroachments to which the prevailing anarchy made the South
the prey.
By the twelfth century the civil war had become distinctly a war
between a new Russia of the forests and the old Russia of the fertile
steppes. The cause of the North had a powerful leader in Andrew
Bogoliubski. Andrew was the grandson of Monomakh and the son of Yuri
(or George) Dolgoruki--both of whom were Grand Princes of extraordinary
abilities and commanding qualities. In 1169 Andrew, who was then
Prince of Suzdal, came with an immense army of followers; he marched
against Kief. The "Mother of Russian Cities" was taken by assault,
sacked and pillaged, and the Grand Principality ceased to exist.
Russia was preparing to revolve around a new center in the Northeast;
and with the new Grand Principality of Suzdal, far removed from
Byzantine and Western civilizations, it looked like a return toward
barbarism, but was in fact the circuitous road to progress. The life
of the nation needed to be drawn to its extremities, and the ambitious
Andrew, who assumed the title and authority of Grand Prince, had
established a line which was destined to lead to the Czars of future
Russia.