In both justice and administration the prince occupied the key position. Yet he had to work with elected as well as his own appointed officials and in general co-ordinate his efforts with the local elements. To repeat a point made earlier, princely government came relatively late and had to be superimposed on rather well-developed local institutions, notably so in towns. The customary law of the Kievan Russians, known to us best through the Russian Justice, a code associated with Iaroslav the Wise, indicates a relatively high development of Kievan society, especially in the fields of trade and finance. It has also attracted attention for the remarkable mildness of its punishments, including a reliance on fines in preference to the death penalty. Canon law came with Christianity from Byzantium. In addition to the direct taxes on the "smoke" and the "plough," state revenue accumulated from judicial fees and fines, as well as from tariffs and other imposts on commerce.
The boyar duma developed, it would seem, from consultations and joint work of the prince and his immediate retinue, the senior druzhina. It expanded with the evolution of Kievan Russia, reflecting the rise of the boyar class and also such developments as the conversion of Russia to Christianity, for the higher clergy found a place in the duma. While it would be quite incorrect to consider the boyar duma as analogous to a parliament - although it might be compared to its immediate predecessor, the curia regis - or even to claim for it a definite legal limitation of princely power, it remained an extremely important institution in its customary capacity as the constant adviser and collaborator of the prince. We know of a few occasions when the senior druzhina refused to follow the prince because he had failed to consult it.
Finally, the democratic element in the Kievan state found a certain ex-
pression in the veche or town meeting similar to the assemblies of freemen in the barbarian kingdoms of the West. All heads of households could participate in these gatherings, held usually in the market place and called to decide such basic issues as war and peace, emergency legislation, and conflicts with the prince or between princes. The frequently unruly veche practice of decision by unanimity, can be described as an application of direct democracy, ignoring such principles as representation and majority rule. The veche derived from prehistoric times and thus preceded princely authority with which it never became fully co-ordinated. In the Kievan period, the veche in Kiev itself played an especially significant role, but there were other vecha in action all over Russia. In fact, the most far-reaching development of this institution was to occur a little later in Novgorod.
The economic and social development of Kievan Russia, and in particular its institutions, deserve study not only in themselves but also as the heritage of the subsequent periods of Russian history. For example, we shall time and again be concerned with the prince, the duma, and the veche as they evolved differently under changing circumstances in various parts of what used to be the Kievan state.
VI
Old customs and beliefs have left but the slightest trace in the documents of the earlier period, and no systematic attempt to record the national epic was made until the middle of the nineteenth century. Moreover, it is generally admitted that the survival of folklore has suffered important modifications in the course of time. Under these conditions any attempt to present a comprehensive survey of Russian cultural developments previous to the seventeenth century meets with insurmountable obstacles and is necessarily incomplete and one-sided. The sources have preserved merely the Christian literature, while the bulk of the national epic has been irretrievably lost… The early literary efforts of native origin were hardly more than slavish imitations of the Byzantine patterns.
Yet, Kievan Russia, like the golden days of childhood, was never dimmed in the memory of the Russian nation. In the pure fountain of her literary works anyone who wills can quench his religious thirst; in her venerable authors he can find his guide through the complexities of the modern world. Kievan Christianity has the same value for the Russian religious mind as Pushkin for the artistic sense: that of a standard, a golden measure, a royal way.
THE Kievan Russians, as we have seen, had two religions in succession: paganism and Christianity. The heathen faith of the East Slavs included a deification of the forces of nature, animism in general, and a worship of ancestral spirits. Of the many gods, Perun, the deity of thunder and lightning, claimed special respect. East Slavic paganism lacked elaborate organization or institutional development. Vladimir's efforts to strengthen it proved to be short-lived, and the conversion to Christianity came quickly and relatively painlessly, although we know of some instances of the use of force by the government, and of certain rebellions. But the effectiveness of the baptism of Russia represents a more controversial matter. Some historians, including Golubinsky and other Church historians, have declared that the new religion for centuries retained only a superficial hold on the masses, which remained stubbornly heathen in their true convictions and daily practices, incorporating many of their old superstitions into Christianity. Some scholars speak of dvoeverie, meaning a double faith, a term used originally by such religious leaders of the time as St. Theodosius to designate this troublesome phenomenon.
Kievan Christianity presents its own problems to the historian. Rich in content and relatively well known, it revealed the tremendous impact of its Byzantine origin and model as well as changes to fit Russian circumstances. The resulting product has been both unduly praised as an organically Russian and generally superior type of Christianity and excessively blamed for its superficiality and derivative nature. In drawing a balance it should be made clear that in certain important respects Kievan Christianity could not even copy that of Byzantium, let alone surpass it. Thus theology and philosophy found little ground on which to grow in Kievan Russia and produced no major fruits. In fact, Kievan religious writings in general closely followed their Byzantine originals and made a minimal independent contribution to the Christian heritage. Mysticism too remained alien to Kievan soil. Yet in another sense Kievan Christianity did grow and develop on its own. It represented, after all, the religion of an entire, newly baptized people with its special attitudes, demands, and ethical and esthetic traditions. This Russification, so to speak, of Byzantine Christianity became gradually apparent in the emergence of Kievan saints, in the creative growth of church architecture and art, in the daily life of the Kievan Orthodox Church, and in its total influence on Russian society and culture.
Kievan saints, who, it might be added, were sometimes canonized with considerable delay and over pronounced opposition from Byzantium, which was apparently unwilling to accord too much luster to the young Russian Church, included, of course, Vladimir the baptizer of Russia, Olga the first Christian ruler of Kiev, and certain princes and religious leaders. Of these princes, Boris and Gleb deserve special notice as reflecting both Kievan politics and in a sense - in their lives and canonization - Kievan mentality. As mentioned before, the brothers, sons of St. Vladimir and his Bulgarian wife, were murdered, allegedly, by their half-brother Sviatopolk, in the fratricidal struggles preceding Iaroslav the Wise's accession to power. They were elevated to sainthood as innocent victims of civil war, but also, at least in the case of Boris, because they preferred death to active participation in the deplorable conflict. St. Anthony, who lived approximately from 982 to 1073, and St. Theodosius, who died in 1074, stand out among the canonized churchmen. Both were monks and both are associated with the establishment of monasticism in Russia and with the creation and organization of the Monastery of the Caves near Kiev. Yet they possessed unlike personalities, represented dissimilar religious types, and left different impacts on Russian Christianity. Anthony, who took his monastic vows on Mount Athos, and whose very name recalled that of the founder of all monasticism, St. Anthony the Great, followed the classic path of asceticism and struggle for the salvation of one's soul. His disciple, Theodosius, while extremely ascetic in his own life, made his major contribution in developing the monastic community and in stressing the social ideal of service to