As Rambaud has commented, one might speak of two conquests of Russian soil. Of course, such a notion of “conquest” is inappropriate, for, in both examples the great French scholar has mentioned, one cannot speak of a conquest as such. In both the religious and social senses, it is the Russians who conquered, and it is Russia that emerged victorious. Vladimir Solovyev, in one of his more sarcastic comments, attacked Russian nationalism in that the social forms were Norse, and the religious forms were Greek. Of course, this scholar should have known, and no doubt did, that it was Russia that took these formed and created the Russian identity from them, gave to them something they did not have before. Orthodoxy became Russian, and the fierceness of the Viking became the steadfastness of the east Slav.

It is worth considering the most basic aspects of social an political culture at this time in ancient/medieval Russia, beginning with the prince, not so much because the prince, or chieftain, as he should be called, had much power, but rather, first, the chronicles speak of him most prominently, and, as we know, the remainder of Russian history will show him or her to be the true former and “restrainer” in the Russian lands.

The prince, as has already been intimated, is a first among equals. This is a phrase that has been dulled through repetition, and this repetition has eliminated the immediate grasp of its importance. The phrase means that the prince is elected, in a rather rude way, as the man most likely to lead his warrior retainers, the drouina, to power, victory and spoil. The warrior’s income was based on this latter, with “taxes” being really the irregular payment of some sort of “tribute” by the communal structures of the peasant.

Keep in mind that there is no “state” in even a remotely modern sense of the word. It is critical to understand that there is no institutionalization of power in any way, save the Orthodox Church of Christ. And even in this latter, she is a rather sullen former occupant of a Greek see or monastery, and is often chafing at the notion of living among the Russian/Nordic rustics. Its institutional presence, though real, is minimal.

In the absence of institutions, as in nearly all early societies, simple ones, the major notions of communal cohesion are the rudiments of culture and personal loyalty. The warrior companions of the princes (as they as yet cannot be called servitors in the literal sense) are independent entities, with their own retinues. They serve with a prince/chieftain because it is he (or she, in the case of St. Olga) that can lead them to victory. If not, they retire elsewhere and fight with others. In Russia, the political divisions among the princes, to be dealt with in more detail in Lecture III, are prime ground for such movement. One might call such an arrangement Primitive Libertarian Royalism. And regardless of its instability–the chaos will develop in just a bit–it maintained a free peasant and free warrior class. Such freedom does not come without a price, and the refusal to pay this heavy price will create the later Tsardom.

The military companions of the prince would gather periodically in council. The Russians were “Greek” enough to realize that the fullness of one’s manhood derived from his public presence and was manifest by his fighting skill. But the dispensing of advice in the “government” of the realm was of very real importance, and this was as much as part of the warrior elite as fighting itself. The prince, if he is successful in war as Vladimir was, were granted lands to rule independently of the prince, being tied to the latter through oaths on weapons (for the venerators of Perun), or the Cross (for the Orthodox). It is worth telling that if this was the basis for a successful member of the elite, then it is also open for all to prove themselves as useful for the prince and for social stability–thus leading to some sort of rude meritocracy. The aristocrats were as much multi-national as they were multi-religious at the time of St. Vladimir, the Equal to the Apostles. There is no doubt, moreover, that given the free nature of this association, that the prince was bound, not merely in terms of tradition, but of self-interest as well, to take very seriously the advice and weight of his companions, and put their wishes into practice. It is read, however, that deadlocks were decided by fighting, a perfectly civil arrangement in relation to a group of professional warriors.

The peasantry was free in the highest sense of the word. He gathered in his traditional communal council to debate all the fine points of agricultural and livestock management. There were no landlords in the sense of the specific group developing in later centuries, tied to a Grand Prince or Tsar rather than a loose band of military elites. However, with the growth of a state institution, and the acceptance of Russia into the family of Christian nations, living by plunder was not only impossible, but was bad for the relations with one’s neighbors. State growth is expensive and often brought about by sheer ruthlessness, regardless of the theoretical or real benefits brought to the common agriculturalist. Taxes are soon to be introduced and they will steadily rise given the nature of subsequent institutionalization.

St. Vladimir the Great, the patron of Russia and all things Russian, was a wild Viking of the old type. Fierce, bloody and savage in the grand tradition of his Norse forebears. He was an indomitable fighter with insatiable lusts. Vladimir realized, at the pinnacle of his power, the limits and the inbred contradictions of this way of life. Vladimir was one of three sons of Sviatoslav, and found himself in a typical civil war developing with his brothers, Yaropolk of Kiev and Oleg. Within the Russian system of inheritance, land was given more or less equally to all sons, rather than the eldest, as developed later, through necessity. With all sons given a small bit of land, the impulse to collect more becomes irresistible. Only a strong personality, such as an Oleg or Vladimir, has the strength to restore some semblance of order. Bereft of institutions, whose purpose it is to continue the traditions of government precisely without the benefit of strong personalities, only such a personality can provide stability.

What we know for sure is that Vladimir won–he killed and dispossessed Yaropolk who had already eliminated Oleg. As a token of his victory, he took their wives and concubines, leading to Vladimir’s legendary harem of 300, or 500, by some estimates.

Vladimir seemed an unlikely candidate to baptize Russia. After his victory over Yaropolk and the Kievans, Vladimir increased the veneration of Perun and the traditional gods of Rus’. However, it seems somewhat clear that something moved Vladimir other then mere political expediency to seek out some form of faith that dispensed with the, shall we say, morally libertarian views of ancient paganism. Vladimir was a man of substance underneath the outer coating of Viking hostility, he sought out answers to his budding problems with polygamy and the mere satisfying of his never-ending desires.

The Chronicles tell of St. Vladimir interviewing members of all major faiths that were convenient given Russian geography. Jews from Khazaria, Muslims from the southeast, Orthodox from the Greek lands and Roman Catholics from Germany and/or Poland. The reality is that Vladimir was truly searching, and, over the course of time, he was able to acquaint himself with the ways other men worshiped something called god. Rejecting Islam for its rejection of alcohol, and Judaism for its previous defeats at the hands of the Romans, he also rejected the Roman Catholics for th aridity of their services. He accepted the Orthodox faith given the aesthetic beauty of the liturgy, an aesthetic farthest removed from the Viking spartanism of his youth. The Chronicle, given Vladimir’s temperament, as well as his inner substance, seems reasonable. Any choice would have attached Rus’ to an empire of significance, and therefore, we might dispense with the typical, cynical arguments of unbelievers. Vladimir chose Orthodoxy for its aesthetics, one that contrasted with his personal surroundings. Now–we enter into the realm of Medieval Russia, of the Orthodox Imperium, one only destroyed at the beginning of the 20th century, and is now in a tremendous project of rebuilding.

St. Vladimir took to Orthodoxy as a Viking might. The Orthodox faith is a warrior creed, and is not inimical to the Viking way of life in that respect. But it is also worth mentioning that the pagans, which included some of his drouina, were not forcibly baptized, and those who were went to the riven rather willingly, as following the directives of a manifestly successful warrior prince. He invaded the Greek lands, and took as his booty not gold and silver, unless such were attached to the chalices and service books he took. He could not view the world except as a Viking, and the same was applied to the sublimity of the True Faith. Priests were his “captives,” and the only female “booty” he received was the hand of the princess Anne of Byzantium, a marriage that sealed the connection between Byzantium and Rus, a connection that will last to this day, and forever, and a marriage to which, shockingly, Vladimir stayed faithful. Vladimir was a true Christian, having repented of the more disagreeable lifestyle of the Vikings. He set free his hundreds of “wives” and apologized to them. He banned all forms of capital punishment, though it should be said that such punishment was rather rare except in princely feuds. He imported Greek architects and scholars, and with the True Faith, literacy was brought to Rus’.

In true Russian fashion at this time, all of St. Vladimir’s sons were given lands. The great Yaroslav of Kiev, known to posterity as “The Wise,” received the wealthy city of Novgorod. Yaroslav did not ingratiate himself with the haughty and westernized Novgorodians, but, after his brother Sviatoslav began to war against his brothers, including the saintly martyrs Boris and Gleb, Yaroslav the Wise stayed true to his later title, and begged the merchants of the New City for forgiveness, as he needed their support, their fighting men, and their money, for again, the appanage system of inheritance proved a disaster for Russia, and another civil war was waiting to emerge.

Prior to the defeat of Sviatoslav, still a pagan, the latter had defeated the mighty and wealthy Khazar empire to the south, which freed up the Black Sea trade for the Russians without having to pay high tolls to the Jews. However, the defeat of this curious empire also let out a wave of Turkic tribes to the south, who were now roaming freely, taking their slaves that kept them in business to the Greeks and Arabs. It was up to Yaroslav, now having defeated his brothers, to pacify the southern border, one of the major tasks of any Russian ruler of the day, and a sign of his true greatness in the military sphere.

But what Yaroslav is known for his is Russkia Pravda, or the first coherent law code for the Russian nation. Now, this has been dealt with many times in the literature, and the full code is available online. But its coherence and laconic nature make it a major landmark in legal practice. Its laws are simple, as is common for the era, only a few sentences per section make it easy reading, but will likely be considered “primitive” by those who believe that highly complex and impenetrable legalese that only empower wealthy lawyers is synonymous with an “advanced” res publica. Its major provisions, speaking very generally, do sanction revenge killings. Where members of one commune may attack members of another who are harboring a murderer. This is similar to the provisions of the urban communes of the later middle ages, where commune members are permitted revenge killings against non-urban murderers. This, however, is considered an “advancement” in legal practice in its relation to agrarian medieval law.

Regardless, all forms of juridical torture are proscribed, and, deriving from Norse and Irish codes, the notion of the wergeld, or honor price attached to an individual contingent on his standing in society. Hence enshrining something that exist in modern societies only in effect. The only real drawback to this rather astonishing code is its enshrining of trial by ordeal. However, in defense of the code, it should be made clear that the ordeal was not entered into until there was a deadlock in the trial system. When all other forms of evidence gathering were exhausted and no conclusion was obvious, the ordeal was sanctioned. It reflects the extreme heights of the Christian faith that already existed in Russia, in that the ordeal was a rather primitive understanding of Orthodoxy, but one that was taken very seriously. In modern systems, a hung jury means that the suspect, whether guilty or no, walks free, arguably no better than the trial by ordeal. It should also be noted that the ordeal was soon to die out in Russia, as well as western Europe. It has no life whatsoever after 1200 anywhere. I refuse to believe that the ordeal is in any essential way inferior to modern western systems, where lawyers often refer to trial by jury as a “crap-shoot” regardless. Evidence is manipulated; rhetoric takes the place of real evidence; laws are used rather than obeyed; jury tampering is rife; judges have agendas, all of these are real problems in modern legal systems, and render modernity, legally speaking, a far more painful ordeal than anything St. Yaroslav had to offer. Although in modernity’s case, this specific form of ordeal is not going away.

Yaroslav wanted Kiev to become another Byzantium. He realized the social implications of Orthodoxy, that he was now tied with the Greeks and others, expressing the same faith. The importation of Greek intellectuals proceeded apace, with nearly 400 parishes functioning at the time of Yaroslav’s death in 1054, expressing a strong vitality to the Christian faith, something much of the literature refuses to concede. Under Yaroslav, the Dnieper trade flourished, as well as northerly trade with the Germans, something necessary for Yaroslav to continue to build and educate. Literacy in Russia increased tremendously, and this increased in proportion as the monastic life developed. Kiev and Novgorod boasted of major schools, immediately attached to the church, and were endowed as Russian became wealthier under Yaroslav’s gentle rule. Russia now had it own church in all but name. It had its saints in Boris, Gleb and Vladimir, and the Kiev Caves was to take its place as the Russian Athos. Contrary to the literature, Russia was already Christian.

How believable is the story about St. Vladimir’s conversion?

As believable as anything else in ancient history. As always, academic historians are extremely biased, and anything that smacks of anything other than crass self-interest is rejected. Of course, they never apply this principle to themselves. No matter what religion St. Vladimir chose, he would have been allied to a powerful empire. The fact that he rejected his former lifestyle proves he was sincere, and truly a model of repentance and the Christian life.

What was “law” in medieval Russia?

Law had two components: first, the canon law of Orthodoxy, which, in later years, would be the primary organizing principle of monarchy. The second is tradition, or the simple principle of “what has worked” for us in the past. This is a greatly representative principle, for this was known to all, illiterate or literate. Basically, modern ideas of law are a mystery to modern Americans, and they have a tendency to treat it either with mystical reverence or contempt.

How Orthodox was Russia after St. Vladimir?

That is really impossible to answer. It was a new religion and way of life, and therefore, would take time to penetrate. Orthodoxy has always taken ancient forms very seriously, and, as a general rule, has preserved the traditions of a people prior to conversion so long as they did not blatantly contradict the Orthodox way. Therefore, the academic nonsense of the “double faith” is missing the point. Many aspects of Russian paganism were the mere reverence for nature and the harvest, and were thus only to be elevated rather than eliminated.

Was there violence in the imposition of Christianity?

The question is anachronistic. It presumes a modern bias. Normally, people followed the religion of their rulers. Ancient paganism believed that military might was based on the favor of the gods of war. Therefore, defeat in war meant that something was wrong with the gods, or at least, with the people. The fact that Vladimir had converted and had led a prosperous life satisfied the pagan imagination. It proved itself strong and able to provide for the nation. There is no pagan “theology,” or “way of life” to “confront” Orthodoxy. Primitive paganism is merely the fetishization or poetization of natural and social forces. It is harmless in itself. If you believe that Orthodoxy is merely an otherworldly “monkish” life of quietism, then you have completely misunderstood Christianity. Orthodoxy is as much the religion of the Maccabees and of Joshua as it is of the hermit. Both are warriors: one wars with the enemies of God in the flesh, the other, in the spirit.