Russia

The fatal flaw was the ‘apanage’ system, the practice by which an estate was divided between one’s offspring. The eldest might get more than his brothers, but the others also inherited portions. This was the custom of the Slavs as it was of the Irish - princes and peasants alike. It seemed to carry some advantages in Russia, where both commercial and political success depended on unitary control of the immense river system from Novgorod in the north to Kiev in the south and from Polotsk in the west to Tmutorakhan (present-day Taman) in the east. Family interdependence implied trust, while also providing sufficient devolution of authority to facilitate effective regional control. Even the practice laroslav initiated of lateral succession, from brother to brother, rather than vertical succession, from father to son, had the advantage of entrusting the most important cities with their hinterlands to the most senior, and therefore most experienced, members of the ruler’s immediate family. However, as time passed and the family tree ramified, it became increasing difficult to determine the right pecking order, and the succession eventually became the object of almost perpetual dispute and feuding. ³⁰ Common blood does not necessarily imply harmony. Family members can fall out, especially when power is at stake.

Belatedly, laroslav himself recognized the danger and tried to avert it. According to a chronicler, before he died in 1054 he summoned his sons and begged them, much as Shakespeare has the dying Edward IV beg his courtiers, to love each other and his heir. If they did so, said laroslav, God would vanquish their enemies and peace would prevail. But, he warned, ‘If you live in hatred and dissention, quarrelling with one another, then you will ruin the country your ancestors won with so much effort, and you yourselves will perish.’

Though laroslav had had the authority to create a more centralized administration, he had failed to challenge the apanage principle. Perhaps he was too much of a traditionalist; perhaps it was politically impossible for him to do so. At any rate, his will was set in the traditional mould. He bequeathed the throne of Kiev to Iziaslav, his first-born, and four other cities to his other sons, Sviatoslav, Vsevolod, Igor and Viacheslav. If any of them violated the boundaries of another’s territory or tried to oust him, the others were to join together to help the brother who had been wronged. ³¹ Beyond that, Iaroslav had only exhortations for them. It was not enough. The falling-out was not long delayed.

The masters of the steppe, which ran eastward of the Kievan frontier, were now the Polovtsians, otherwise known as Cumans or the Kipchak horde. Anxious to break into the profitable slave trade and to filch such plunder as they could from Russian territory, their raiding parties were becoming a nuisance, and to the more exposed cities even a danger. In 1068 these Polovtsians succeeded in routing a Russian army trying to keep them out, and this precipitated a revolt against Grand Prince Iziaslav of Kiev. The rebels evidently thought Iziaslav was failing them over the issue of defence. The invaders were turned back by Sviatoslav’s forces and order was restored to Kiev. However, the divisive issue of the succession remained. Iziaslav’s three brothers joined forces to remove him, and Sviatoslav gained control of Kiev. But he died in 1077, at which Iziaslav returned from refuge in Poland and took over again.

When he was killed in the following year, a chaotic period of family infighting followed — only briefly interrupted by war against the Polovtsians. The premier city passed into the hands of Iaroslav’s last surviving son, Vsevolod, but he died in 1094, and from then on the crisis deepened. Attempts were made to find an accommodation between rival members of the family, and it was agreed to abide by Iaroslav’s will by giving Kiev to Iziaslav’s son Sviatopolk as a patrimony, Chernigov to the sons of Sviatoslav, and so on. But, as generation succeeded generation and the lines of precedence among Iaroslav’s numerous descendants became more and more blurred, the spirit of family solidarity withered, and the tendency to civil strife grew.

Apanages became patrimonies, and the Rus state came to resemble a ramshackle collection of little independent duchies. Pressure from the Polovtsians increased, and some of them joined in the Russians’ family fights. Fear of the steppe people and a sense of the common interest sometimes made for co-operation, but family conflict always flared up again and the fear of civil war was pervasive even in quiet times. ‘Why’, wailed a chronicler, ‘do we ruin the land of Russia by continual strife against each other?’ ³²