Russia under the Old regime

THE GENESIS OF THE PATRIMONIAL STATE IN RUSSIA

They soon discovered what medieval Russian sources call 'the Saracen route', the network of rivers and portages connecting the Baltic Sea with the Caspian by way of the Volga, and entered into commercial relations with the Khazars. Hoards of Arabic coins dating from the ninth and tenth centuries discovered throughout Russia and Sweden attest to the wide reach and intensity of these commercial activities of the Normans. The Arab traveller Ibn Fadlan left a vivid description of a ship burial of a Norman ('Russian') chieftain which he had witnessed on the Volga early in the tenth century.

In the long run, however, the 'Saracen route' proved to the Normans of lesser importance than the 'Greek route' leading down the Dnieper to the Black Sea and Constantinople. Utilizing this road, they carried out several raids against the capital of the Byzantine Empire, compelling the Byzantines to grant them commercial privileges. The texts of the treaties in which these privileges are enumerated, recorded complete in the Primary Chronicle, are the oldest documents bearing on Norman rule in Russia. In the ninth and tenth centuries, regular commercial relations developed between the Russian forest and Byzantium, the management of which was in the hands of Norman merchant-soldiers.

In most of Europe under their control, the Normans settled down and assumed the role of territorial sovereigns. In Russia they behaved differently. For reasons enumerated before, they had little inducement to bother with agriculture and territorial claims, preferring to concentrate on foreign trade. They gradually gained control of all the principal riverways leading to the Black Sea, along which they built fortresses. From these bases they extracted as tribute from the Slavs, Finns and Lithuanians commodities most in demand in Byzantium and the Arab world: slaves, furs and wax. It is precisely in the ninth century that tliere began to appear in Russia populated centres of a new type; no longer the tiny earthern or wooden stockades of the Slavic settlers, but regular fortress-cities. These served as habitations for the Norman chieftains, their families and retainers. Around them there often grew up suburbs populated by native artisans and shopkeepers. Each of these fortress-cities had near by its burial grounds. Normans and Slavs were often buried in the same mounds, but the tombs of the two were quite different, the Norman ones containing weapons, jewels and home implements of a distinctly Scandinavian type, and on occasion entire boats. Judging by archaeological evidence, the Normans maintained in Russia four major settlement areas: one along the Gulf of Riga; a second around lake Ladoga and the Volkhov river; a third to the east of Smolensk; and a fourth in the mesopotamia between the upper Volga and the Oka. In addition, they had isolated settlements, of which Konugard (Kiev) was by far the largest. All four of the major Norman settlement areas lay