Russia under the Old regime

27

part of the endless forest. This method of cultivation demanded constant movement and undoubtedly helps explain the remarkable rapidity with which the Slavs spread throughout Russia. 'Slash-burn' remained the prevalent technique of farming in Russia until the sixteenth century, when under the combined pressure of the state and its landed servitors the peasants had to settle down and go over to the three-field system. It continued, however, to be practised in the remoter areas of the north well into the present century.

A characteristic feature of early Slav settlements was the construction of stockades. In the steppe, these were built of earth, in the forest of wood alone or in combination with earth. Such primitively fortified places served the members of the communities scattered in near-by clearings as common defensive centres. There were hundreds of such tribal stockades all over early Russia. The tribal communities combined to form larger social units, known by a variety of names, such as mir, whose connecting link was the worship of common gods.* An agglomeration of miry formed the largest socio-territorial entity known to early Eastern Slavs, plemia, of which the chronicles identify by name a dozen or so. As in tribal groupings elsewhere, authority rested in the patriarch, who enjoyed virtually unlimited power over the other members of the tribe and their belongings. At this stage in their history, the Eastern Slavs had neither institutions nor officials charged with the performance of judiciary or military functions, and therefore nothing approximating statehood even in its most rudimentary form.

In the ninth century, the Volga trade plied by the Khazars attracted the attention of the Normans. The ninth century was for the Normans a period of extraordinary expansion. Scattering far and wide from Scandinavia, they roamed with impunity in central and western Europe, conquering in the process, Ireland (820), Iceland (874), and Normandy (911). During this initial phase of their expansion, some of the Normans turned east and founded settlements on territory of what later became Russia. The first Norse colony on Russian soil was Aldeigjuborg, a fortress on the shores of lake Ladoga. This was an excellent base from which to launch exploration of the water routes leading south, towards the great centres of Levantine wealth and civilization. Routes connecting northern Europe with the Near East by way of Russia acquired special value at this particular time, because Muslim conquests of the eighth century had closed the Mediterranean to Christian trade. From Aldeigjuborg and other fortresses built near by and to the south, the Normans explored in their flat, capacious boats the rivers leading to the Near East.

* This early mir must not be confused with the repartitional commune, known by the same name, but created much later, (see above, p. 17).