The wording of the Primary Chronicle seems to treat book learning as more or less synonymous with studying the Scriptures and the new religion, and Vladimir stood to gain moral stature from enlightening his notables' children. One should not, however, suppose that the literacy which boys - maybe also girls - of his elite obtained was of much application to everyday governance. The administrative and ideological underpinnings of princely rule were still quite rudimentary, even if Vladimir loved his 'retainers and consulted them about the ordering of the land, about wars and about the law of the land'.[25]The 'land of Rus" was an archipelago of largely self-regulating communities. Extensive groupings in the north were still considered tribes, most notoriously the Viatichi. It was mainly in Vladimir's new fortresses and settlements in the middle Dnieper region that princely commanders, town governors and agents were numerous enough to intervene in the affairs of ordinary people; the standing alert against the nomads required as much. But even there the officials seem to have had little occasion to issue deeds or written judgements. Nor do they seem to have played a commanding role in adjudicating disputes or enforcing laws. There had longbeen some sense of due legal process among the Rus'. Procedures for making amends for insults, injuries, thefts and killings inform the tenth-century treaties with the Byzantines. However, practical measures for conflict resolution of mutually inimical parties fell far short of upholding an inherently ethical code, of punishing upon Christian principle actions deemed sinful. A hint of attitudes towards justice as a non-negotiable quality is offered by a passage in the Primary Chronicle, perhaps first set down before Vladimir's reign passed from living memory. Vladimir's bishops urged punitive action against robbers, for 'you have been appointedby God to punish evil-doers'. Vladimir gave up exacting fines in compensation for offences (viry) but later he reverted to 'the ways of his father and grandfather'.[26] The story shows awareness in Church circles that Rus"s 'new Constantine'[27] had only limited conceptions concerning his authority.
Vladimir's regime rested less on elaborate institutional frameworks or justifications in law than on well-oiled patronage mechanisms and the aura with which his paternal ancestry invested him. The blood of a murdered half-brother on one's hands could be offset by imposing a well-ordered public cult. In every other way, family blood and concomitant bonds were assets that Vladimir exploited to the full. His maternal uncle, Dobrynia, seems to have been a mainstay and there is no sign of the multiplicity of 'princes' or magnates attested for the middle Dnieper in the mid-tenth century. The losses incurred during Sviatoslav's campaigns and his sons' internecine strife may have cleared what was always a hazardous deck. In any case, Vladimir quite soon came to rely on his own sons in what was probably a new variant of collective, family, leadership. He was not the first Rus' prince to assign sons to distant seats of authority, but he seems to have carried this out on a wider scale than his predecessors. Twelve sons are named and associated with seats by the Primary Chronicle, a likely evocation of the twelve Apostles. The actual number of sons assigned to towns may well have been greater, since the distinction between those born in wedlock rather than to a concubine was not sharply drawn. That Vladimir was the father was what mattered: they could deputise for him in a variety of places. If it is unsurprising that a son was installed in Novgorod, the failure to grace Pskov - the town of Vladimir's grandmother and probably a longstanding seat of authority - with a prince of its own is noteworthy. So is the assignment of sons to towns which, though of fairly recent origin, had proved to be potential power bases, Polotsk and Turov. When Iziaslav, Vladimir's first assignee to Polotsk, died in 1001, his son was permitted to take his place and, in effect, put down the roots of a hereditary branch of princes there; Iziaslav's mother hadbeen Rogneda, daughter of Rogvolod. Presumably Vladimir calculated that so strongly rooted a regime would block any future bids for Polotsk by outsiders. Princes were also sent to locales whose ties with the urban network had not been specifically 'political'. For example, Rostov was only developed into a large town in the 980sor 990s, when the local inhabitants were mainly the Finnic Mer. The newly fortified town was dignified with a resident prince, Iaroslav, and an oaken church was subsequently built. Some places of strategic importance but lacking recent princely associations were not assigned a prince. It was a governor who had to cope with Viking-type raids on Staraia Ladoga and the town suffered conflagrations, at the hands of Erik Haakonson in 997 and of Sveinn Haakonson early in 1015.
Sveinn raided down 'the East Way' at a time when the shortcomings of Vladimir's regime were becoming plain. Ties between father and sons could hold together for a generation of peace, but they were not immune from jockeying for prominence and ultimate succession. By around 1013 Vladimir's relations with one leading son, Sviatopolk, were so fraught that he was removed from his seat in Turov and imprisoned. And, ominously, Vladimir's relations with the occupant of the most important seat after Kiev itself deteriorated drastically. In 1014 Iaroslav, now prince of Novgorod, held back the annual payment due from that city to Kiev and Vladimir began detailed preparations for the march north. The fact that Vladimir was on such bad terms with two of his foremost sons suggests that thoughts about the succession were in the air. Iaroslav 'sent overseas and brought over Varangians' for what promised to be outright war.[28] However, Vladimir fell ill, putting off the expedition, and on 15 July 1015 he died.
Essentially, the vast 'land of Rus" was a family unit, with all the affinities and tensions germane to that term, and there were no effective ritual or legal mechanisms making for a generally accepted succession. Once the family 'patriarch' died, these uncertainties could only be resolved by a virtual free- for-all between the more or less eligible sons of Vladimir. The coming of Christianity fostered economic well-being, fuller settlement of the Black Earth region and cultural advance, while a kind of 'cult of personality' now invested Vladimir, accentuating the aura of princely blood. Over the centuries there would scarcely ever be a question of persons who were not his descendants seizing thrones for themselves in Rus'. This was partly due to force of custom and princely retinues' force majeure. But there was also symbiosis amounting to consensus across diverse populations and urban centres with a positive interest in the status quo - and in the profits to be had from long-distance trading. For these members of Rus', the tale of the summoning of Riurik from overseas had resonance. The regime fashioned by Vladimir could maintain order of a sort. There was no other overriding authority, no well-connected senior churchmen to knock princely heads together. But given the remarkable make-up of Christian Rus', how could it have been otherwise?