Eastern Slavs

In the first millennium B.C. Slavs played a leading role in the development of civilization of ethno–Ukrainian society. The Slavs evolved from the autochthonous Indo–European population of Eastern Europe. Most modern scholars adhere to the view that the original homeland of the Slavs encompassed the northern slopes of the Carpathians, the Vistula valley, and the Prypiat marshlands. From there, the Slavs spread out in all directions, particularly in the early 7th century. In the northeast, they reached deep into Finno–Ugric lands around the Oka and upper Volga rivers; in the West, their settlements extended to the Elbe River in northern Germany. But the greatest flow of the Slavic colonization was to the south into the Balkans where fertile land, warmer climate, and wealthy cities exerted a powerful attraction. Compared with the nomadic invasions, Slavic expansion was a slow movement that radiated out from the core Slavic lands without ever losing touch with them. As a result, it covered a large, contiguous area. A striking feature of this expansion was its relative peacefulness. The Slavs generally moved into the new lands as colonists, not as invaders. But as the Slavs spread out, they also became more fragmented.

Over time, the Slavs divided into an eastern and a western group, which continued to disperse over the area of Central, South-eastern and Eastern Europe. Slavic settlers in these different areas gradually developed distinct languages, ways of life, forms of economic, activity and cultural traditions. In written sources, they are known as Antes and Sclavs.

The Eastern Slavs or their immediate predecessors, Antes, were native, autochthonous population, occupied an area stretching from Lake Ilmen to the Northern Black Sea shore and from the Carpathians to the Volga. After some time, although the Antes disappeared from the European map in 602, their traditions have not. The descendants of Antes began populating in the vast areas.

The Slavs settled in the forests and steppes, along the banks of the Dnieper and other rivers. They were divided into tribes. Each tribe lived by itself, according to its own ways and rules, and was headed by a leader who was called the prince.

The settlements of the Eastern Slavs were numerous but small. Villages, con­sisting of as few as four and as many as seventy log dwellings, were built one or two miles apart. Thirty or forty miles away, another cluster of villages would be established. At the centre of these inhabited areas were fortified strong points or grady that provided defense and served as tribal meeting places and sites of cult worship. Hundreds of these stockades dotted the East Slavic lands.

Agriculture was the main occupation of the ancient Slavs. The land was tilled by the ralo, other plough-like implements and iron hoes also came into use. There was fallow (with double- or triple-course rotation) and felling-site farming in some areas along with the common practice of alternative cultivation. The Slavs were growing wheat, rye, barley, oats, millet, peas, hemp, and flax.

At that time the tiller's lot was very hard. In many areas the woods began where the houses ended. The ancient trees rose as a solid wall. The people had to clear the land of trees. One man could not cope with such a job, and people, joined forces and worked together as a community. They chopped down trees and burned them and uprooted the tree-stumps. The ashes from the burned trees fertilized the earth. However, the crops were very small. After a few years a field would stop producing and then a new area would have to be cleared. The tillers broke the soil with wooden hoes and in time began using wooden ploughs. They used sickles to reap their harvest and threshed their grain by hand.

The Slavs were also cattle breeders. They were great hunters and skilled fishermen. They hunted with bows and arrows and spears. They set traps for wild animals. In those days hunting was difficult and dangerous, and men often died fighting off wild beasts. Many were the times when the hunters returned home empty-handed.

At first, the land surrounding a settlement belonged to all the people in the settlement. But in time the land ceased being common property, for the more powerful members of the tribe took over much of the land for their own personal use. These wealthy landowners were called boyars. The princes owned still more land than boyars.

The achievements the Slavs had to their credit in handicraft industry, above all, in metal production, blacksmithing and goldsmithery were appreciable by the standards of the day. One fact to show that handicrafts were developing as an industry in its own right separate from husbandry and stock-breeding was the existence of a wide range of unrelated handicrafts, the high quality of the articles made and tools used. Success in the field of material production created the necessary conditions for the development of commercial relations. The ancient Dnieper waterway was one of great importance for trade. The Slavs were more and more often getting articles from Byzantium – gold and silver plates and dishes, ear-rings, bracelets, gold coins, and silk fabrics. Trade was becoming more brisk with Arab countries, which the Slavs supplied with their furs, hides, wax, honey, grain and fish.

It was at that time that the first few Eastern Slavonic cities appeared – as centers of tribal federations, which combined handicraft industry and trade.

Economic progress became fundamental to all essential change in social relations in the Slavonic world. The patriarchal clan commune was fast breaking up into individual households in the seventh and eighth centuries. Some families gradually amassed a considerable amount of wealth in their hands which made for growing inequality of property relations. A hierarchical structure of feudal society, complete with its class contradictions, began to emerge.

The ruling top crust gradually secured the right to take some of the products and handicraft articles away from other members of the communes and dispose of them as they saw fit. As time went on, collecting tributes became a standing practice of the feudal exploitation of labour.

The Slavs jumped a slave-holding social and economic struc­ture of society because bond peasants made more profit for the rich than the slaves who had no stake at all in the product of their work.

Little is known about the political organization of the Eastern Slavs. Apparently, they had no supreme rulers or centralized authority. Tribes and clans, linked by their worship of common gods and led by patriarchs, most probably reached important decisions by means of communal consensus. Although eventually a class of tribal leaders called kniazi did emerge, socioeconomic differentiation did not appear to be great among the tribesmen, who considered land and livestock to be the commu­nal property of extended families. In warfare, the Eastern Slavs were known to be tough, stubborn fighters who could endure extremes of cold and heat and survive with a minimum of provisions.

One particular feature to distinguish the political organization of Slavonic societies during the period of disintegration of the primitive communal system was the creation of tribal federations, which, as they consolidated themselves, developed into State-organizations.

In the sixth to the ninth century, the Eastern Slavs who lived between the Carpathian Mountains and the Volga and between the Black and Baltic Seas had at least 14 federations of this kind: Polyans (the middle course of the Dnieper), Slovens (Lake Ilmen and the Volkhov River basin), Severyans (the basin of the Desna, Sula and Vorskla Rivers), Drevlians (the basin of Pripyat and Dnieper Polessie), Dulibs (Western Bug basin), Uliches (the region between the Southern Bug and the Dniester), Tivertsians (area between the Dniester and the Prut down to the Danube estuary and the Black Sea coast), Volynians (upper reaches of the Western Bug and the right tributaries of the Pripyat), White Croats (the Carpathians), Radimiches (the Sozh and Berezina River basin), Dregoviches (the Pripyat River basin), Polochans (area between the Western Dvina and the Pripyat), Kriviches (the upper reaches of the Volga and the Dnieper), and Vyatiches (the basin of the Oka and its tributary, Moskva-River).

The development of tribal federations into feudal principalities (the seventh to the ninth centuries) was the important step towards the creation of Kyivan Rus.

Projects

1. Anty state formation.

2. Socioeconomic and political factors of Slavs unification.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 1588