Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  KIEVAN CAVES PATERICON

  under the Stolypin reforms an individual could now own a plot of land on which was also located his house and farm buildings. This totally self-contained farm unit was the khutor.

  Never important as an agricultural institution either under the tsars or during the Soviet period, khutors, along with the closely related otrub (where only the farmland was enclosed), accounted for less than 8 percent of total farm output at its height before the Bolshevik Revolution and for a mere 3.5 percent of all peasant land as of January 1, 1927. Only in the northwest and western parts of the Russian Republic were khutors an important part of peasant agriculture-11 percent and 19 percent of all households, respectively.

  Before collectivization in 1929, there were two forces causing the number of khutors to fluctuate in number. On the one hand, as a result of the revolution and the civil war that followed, many of the khutors once again became part of a communal mir. But, on the other hand, the 1922 Land Code permitted peasants to leave the mir, and in some places peasants were encouraged to create khutors. As a consequence, the number of khutors increased in the western provinces as well as the central industrial region of Russia.

  In spite of its relative numerical unimportance, the khutor remained a thorn in the side of the Soviet leadership, who rightly saw the often prosperous khutor as inconsistent with the larger effort to socialize Soviet agriculture. The khutor, which existed alongside collective farm agriculture in the 1930s, was finally dissolved at the end of the decade. All peasant homes located on the khutors were to be destroyed by September 1, 1940, without compensation to the peasants who lived in them. Nearly 450,000 rural households were transferred to the collective farm villages. The khutor as a form of private agriculture in Russia became extinct. See also: COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE; MIR; PEASANT ECONOMY; STOLYPIN, PETER ARKADIEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Danilov, V. P. (1988). Rural Russia under the New Regime. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. (1994). Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. New York: Oxford University Press.

  WILLIAM MOSKOFF CAROL GAYLE

  KIEVAN CAVES PATERICON

  The Kievan Caves Patericon is a monastic collection of tales about monks of the Caves Monastery of Kiev. It reflects the rich monastic practice and theology of the learned monks of the Kievan Caves Monastery. The core of the patericon is the epistolary works of Bishop Simon of Vladimir-Suzdal, a former Caves monk, and the monk Polikarp, to whom Simon addresses an epistle and accompanying stories, written between 1225 and his death in 1226. Ostensibly, Simon writes to Polikarp because he is appalled at the latter’s ambition for a see and feels he must instruct him to remain in the holy Monastery of the Caves. Attempting to convince Po-likarp to stay at the Caves, Simon attaches nine stories to his letter, which are intended to illustrate the holiness of the monastery and its inhabitants. There is no recorded response to Bishop Simon, but sometime prior to 1240, Polikarp wrote to his superior, the archimandrite Akindin, and attached to his brief missal eleven tales recounting the exploits of thirteen more monks.

  To this core were added in various editions a number of disparate works associated with the Caves Monastery, including the Life of Theodosius. It is not clear when the collection began to be called a patericon (paterik), a word used to designate a number of Byzantine monastic collections translated into Slavic, but this title was not used in the oldest extant manuscript, the Berseniev Witness, which was copied in 1406 at the request of Bishop Arseny of Tver. A printed version appeared in 1661, which, though seriously flawed, was apparently quite popular, as it was reprinted many times up to the nineteenth century. See also: CAVES MONASTERY; KIEVAN RUS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Fedotov, George P. (1965). The Russian Religious Mind. New York: Harper Torchbooks. The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery. (1989). Tr. and intro. Muriel Heppell. Cambridge, MA, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.

  DAVID K. PRESTEL

  KIEVAN RUS

  Kievan Rus, the first organized state located on the lands of modern Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, was

  KIEVAN RUS

  ruled by members of the Rurikid dynasty and centered around the city of Kiev from the mid-ninth century to 1240. Its East Slav, Finn, and Balt population dwelled in territories along the Dnieper, the Western Dvina, the Lovat-Volkhov, and the upper Volga rivers. Its component peoples and territories were bound together by common recognition of the Rurikid dynasty as their rulers and, after 988, by formal affiliation with the Christian Church, headed by the metropolitan based at Kiev. Kievan Rus was destroyed by the Mongol invasions of 1237-1240. The Kievan Rus era is considered a formative stage in the histories of modern Ukraine and Russia.

  The process of the formation of the state is the subject of the Normanist controversy. Normanists stress the role of Scandinavian Vikings as key agents in the creation of the state. Their view builds upon archeological evidence of Scandinavian adventurers and travelling merchants in the region of northwestern Russia and the upper Volga from the eighth century. It also draws upon an account in the Primary Chronicle, compiled during the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, which reports that in 862, Slav and Finn tribes in the vicinity of the Lo-vat and Volkhov rivers invited Rurik, a Varangian Rus, and his brothers to bring order to their lands. Rurik and his descendants are regarded as the founders of the Rurikid dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus. Anti-Normanists discount the role of Scandinavians as founders of the state. They argue that the term Rus refers to the Slav tribe of Polyane, which dwelled in the region of Kiev, and that the Slavs themselves organized their own political structure.

  According to the Primary Chronicle, Rurik’s immediate successors were Oleg (r. 879 or 882 to 912), identified as a regent for Rurik’s son Igor (r. 912-945); Igor’s wife Olga (r. 945-c. 964), and their son Svyatoslav (r. c. 964-972). They established their authority over Kiev and surrounding tribes, including the Krivichi (in the region of the Valdai Hills), the Polyane (around Kiev on the Dneper River), the Drevlyane (south of the Pripyat River, a tributary of the Dneper), and the Vyatichi, who inhabited lands along the Oka and Volga Rivers.

  The tenth-century Rurikids not only forced tribal populations to transfer their allegiance and their tribute payments from Bulgar and Khazaria, but also pursued aggressive policies toward those neighboring states. In 965 Svyatoslav launched a campaign against the Khazaria. His venture led to the collapse of the Khazar Empire and the destabi-lization of the lower Volga and the steppe, a region of grasslands south of the forests inhabited by the Slavs. His son Vladimir (r. 980-1015), having subjugated the Radimichi (east of the upper Dnieper River), attacked the Volga Bulgars in 985; the agreement he subsequently reached with the Bul-gars was the basis for peaceful relations that lasted a century.

  The early Rurikids also engaged their neighbors to the south and west. In 968, Svyatoslav rescued Kiev from the Pechenegs, a nomadic, steppe Turkic population. He devoted most of his attention, however, to establishing control over lands on the Danube River. Forced to abandon that project by the Byzantines, he was returning to Kiev when the Pechenegs killed him in 972. Frontier forts constructed and military campaigns waged by Vladimir and his sons reduced the Pecheneg threat to Kievan Rus.

  Shortly after Svyatoslav’s death, his son Yaropolk became prince of Kiev. But conflict erupted between him and his brothers. The crisis prompted Vladimir to flee from Novgorod, the city he governed, and raise an army in Scandinavia. Upon his return in 980, he first engaged the prince of Polotsk, one of last non-Rurikid rulers over East Slavs. Victorious, Vladimir married the prince’s daughter and added the prince’s military retinue to his own army, with which he then defeated Yaropolk and seized the throne of Kiev. Vladimir’s triumphs over his brothers, competing non-Rurikid rulers, and neighboring powers provided him and his heirs a monopoly over political power in the region.

  Prince Vladimir also adopted Christianity for Kievan Rus. Al
though Christianity, Judaism, and Islam had long been known in these lands and Olga had personally converted to Christianity, the populace of Kievan Rus remained pagan. When Vladimir assumed the throne, he attempted to create a single pantheon of gods for his people, but soon abandoned that effort in favor of Christianity. Renouncing his numerous wives and consorts, he married Anna, the sister of the Byzantine Emperor Basil. The Patriarch of Constantinople appointed a metropolitan to organize the see of Kiev and all Rus, and in 988, Byzantine clergy baptized the population of Kiev in the Dnieper River.

  After adopting Christianity, Vladimir apportioned his realm among his principal sons, sending

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  KIEVAN RUS

  each of them to his own princely seat. A bishop accompanied each prince. The lands ruled by Rurikid princes and subject to the Kievan Church constituted Kievan Rus.

  During the eleventh and twelfth centuries Vladimir’s descendants developed a dynastic political structure to administer their increasingly large and complex realm. There are, however, divergent characterizations of the state’s political development during this period. One view contends that Kievan Rus reached its peak during the eleventh century. The next century witnessed a decline, marked by the emergence of powerful autonomous principalities and warfare among their princes. Kiev lost its central role, and Kievan Rus was disintegrating by the time of the Mongol invasion. An alternate view emphasizes the continued vitality of the city of Kiev and argues that Kievan Rus retained its integrity throughout the period. Although it became an increasingly complex state containing numerous principalities that engaged in political and economic competition, dynastic and ecclesiastic bonds provided cohesion among them. The city of Kiev remained its acknowledged and coveted political, economic, and ecclesiastic center.

  The creation of an effective political structure proved to be an ongoing challenge for the Rurikids. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, princely administration gradually replaced tribal allegiance and authority. As early as the reign of Olga, her officials began to replace tribal leaders. Vladimir assigned a particular region to each of his sons, to whom he also delegated responsibility for tax collection, protection of communication and trade routes, and for local defense and territorial expansion. Each prince maintained and commanded his own military force, which was supported by tax revenues, commercial fees, and booty seized in battle. He also had the authority and the means to hire supplementary forces.

  When Vladimir died in 1015, however, his sons engaged in a power struggle that ended only after four of them had died and two others, Yaroslav and Mstislav, divided the realm between them. When Mstislav died (1036), Yaroslav assumed full control over Kievan Rus. Yaroslav adopted a law code known as the Russkaya Pravda, which with amendments remained in force throughout the Kievan Rus era.

  He also attempted to bring order to dynastic relations. Before his death he issued a “Testament” in which he left Kiev to his eldest son Izyaslav. He assigned Chernigov to his son Svyatoslav, Pereyaslavl to Vsevolod, and lesser seats to his younger sons. He advised them all to heed their eldest brother as they had their father. The Testament is understood by scholars to have established a basis for the rota system of succession, which incorporated the principles of seniority among the princes, lateral succession through a generation, and dynastic possession of the realm of Kievan Rus. By assigning Kiev to the senior prince, it elevated that city to a position of centrality within the realm.

  This dynastic system, by which each prince conducted relations with his immediate neighbors, provided an effective means of defending and expanding Kievan Rus. It also encouraged cooperation among the princes when they faced crises. Incursions by the Polovtsy (Kipchaks, Cumans), Turkic nomads who moved into the steppe and displaced the Pechenegs in the second half of the eleventh century, prompted concerted action among Princes Izyaslav, Svyatoslav, and Vsevolod in 1068. Although the Polovtsy were victorious, they retreated after another encounter with Svyatoslav’s forces. With the exception of one frontier skirmish in 1071, they then refrained from attacking Rus for the next twenty years.

  When the Polovtsy did renew hostilities in the 1090s, the Rurikids were engaged in intradynastic conflicts. Their ineffective defense allowed the Polovtsy to reach the environs of Kiev and burn the Monastery of the Caves, founded in the mid-eleventh century. But after the princes resolved their differences at a conference in 1097, their coalitions drove the Polovtsy back into the steppe and broke up the federation of Polovtsy tribes responsible for the aggression. These campaigns yielded comparatively peaceful relations for the next fifty years.

  As the dynasty grew larger, however, its system of succession required revision. Confusion and recurrent controversies arose over the definition of seniority, the standards for eligibility, and the lands subject to lateral succession. In 1097, when the in-tradynastic wars became so severe that they interfered with the defense against the Polovtsy, a princely conference at Lyubech resolved that each principality in Kievan Rus would become the hereditary domain of a specific branch of the dynasty. The only exceptions were Kiev itself, which in 1113 reverted to the status of a dynastic possession, and Novgorod, which by 1136 asserted the right to select its own prince.

  KIEVAN RUS

  The settlement at Lyubech provided a basis for orderly succession to the Kievan throne for the next forty years. When Svyatopolk Izyaslavich died, his cousin Vladimir Vsevolodich Monomakh became prince of Kiev (r. 1113-1125). He was succeeded by his sons Mstislav (r. 1125-1132) and Yaropolk (r. 1132-1139). But the Lyubech agreement also acknowledged division of the dynasty into distinct branches and Kievan Rus into distinct principalities. The descendants of Svyatoslav ruled Chernigov. Galicia and Volynia, located southwest of Kiev, acquired the status of separate principalities in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, respectively. During the twelfth century, Smolensk, located north of Kiev on the upper Dnieper river, and Rostov-Suzdal, northeast of Kiev, similarly emerged as powerful principalities. The northwestern portion of the realm was dominated by Novgorod, whose strength rested on its lucrative commercial relations with Scandinavian and German merchants of the Baltic as well as on its own extensive empire that stretched to the Ural mountains by the end of the eleventh century.

  The changing political structure contributed to repeated dynastic conflicts over succession to the Kievan throne. Some princes became ineligible for the succession to Kiev and concentrated on developing their increasingly autonomous realms. But the heirs of Vladimir Monomakh, who became the princes of Volynia, Smolensk, and Rostov-Suzdal, as well as the princes of Chernigov, became embroiled in succession disputes, often triggered by attempts of younger members to bypass the elder generation and to reduce the number of princes eligible for the succession.

  The greatest confrontations occurred after the death of Yaropolk Vladimirovich, who had attempted to arrange for his nephew to be his successor and had thereby aroused objections from his own younger brother Yuri Dolgoruky, the prince of Rostov-Suzdal. As a result of the discord among Monomakh’s heirs, Vsevolod Olgovich of Chernigov was able to take the Kievan throne (r. 1139-1146) and regain a place in the Kievan succession cycle for his dynastic branch. After his death, the contest between Yuri Dolgoruky and his nephews resumed; it persisted until 1154, when Yuri finally ascended to the Kievan throne and restored the traditional order of succession.

  An even more destructive conflict broke out after the death in 1167 of Rostislav Mstislavich, successor to his uncle Yuri. When Mstislav Izyaslavich, the prince of Volynia and a member of the next generation, attempted to seize the Kievan throne, a coalition of princes opposed him. Led by Yuri’s son Andrei Bogolyubsky, it represented the senior generation of eligible princes, but also included the sons of the late Rostislav and the princes of Chernigov. The conflict culminated in 1169, when Andrei’s forces evicted Mstislav Izyaslavich from Kiev and sacked the city. Andrei’s brother Gleb became prince of Kiev.

  Prince Andrei personified the growing tensions betw
een the increasingly powerful principalities of Kievan Rus and the state’s center, Kiev. As prince of Vladimir-Suzdal (Rostov-Suzdal), he concentrated on the development of Vladimir and challenged the primacy of Kiev. Nerl Andrei used his power and resources, however, to defend the principle of generational seniority in the succession to Kiev. Nevertheless, after Gleb died in 1171, Andrei’s coalition failed to secure the throne for another of his brothers. A prince of the Chernigov line, Svy-atoslav Vsevolodich (r. 1173-1194), occupied the Kievan throne and brought dynastic peace.

  By the turn of the century, eligibility for the Kievan throne was confined to three dynastic lines: the princes of Volynia, Smolensk, and Chernigov. Because the opponents were frequently of the same generation as well as sons of former grand princes, dynastic traditions of succession offered little guidance for determining which prince had seniority. By the mid-1230s, princes of Chernigov and Smolensk were locked in a prolonged conflict that had serious consequences. During the hostilities Kiev was sacked two more times, in 1203 and 1235. The strife revealed the divergence between the southern and western principalities, which were deeply enmeshed in the conflicts over Kiev, and those of the northeast, which were relatively indifferent to them. Intradynastic conflict, compounded by the lack of cohesion among the components of Kievan Rus, undermined the integrity of the realm. Kievan Rus was left without effective defenses before the Mongol invasion.

  When the state of Kievan Rus was forming, its populace consisted primarily of rural agriculturalists who cultivated cereal grains as well as peas, lentils, flax, and hemp in natural forest clearings or in those they created by the slash-and-burn method. They supplemented these products by fishing, hunting, and gathering fruits, berries, nuts, mushrooms, honey, and other natural products in the forests around their villages.

  KIEVAN RUS