The Lawgiver Of Russia
The Russia of the year 1000 lay deep in the age of barbarism. Vladimir
had made it Christian in name, but it was far from Christian in thought
or deed. It was a land without fixed laws, without settled government,
without schools, without civilized customs, but with abundance of
ignorance, cruelty, and superstition.
It was strangely made up. In the north lay the great commercial city of
Novgorod, which, t
ough governed by princes of the house of Rurik, was a
republic in form and in fact. It possessed its popular assembly, of
which every citizen was a member with full right to vote, and at whose
meetings the prince was not permitted to appear. The sound of a famous
bell, the Vetchevoy, called the people together, to decide on questions
of peace and war, or to elect magistrates, and sometimes the bishop, or
even the prince. The prince had to swear to carry out the ancient laws
of the republic and not attempt to lay taxes on the citizens or to
interfere with their trade. They made him gifts, but paid him no taxes.
They decided how many hours he should give to pleasure and how many to
business; and they expelled some of their princes who thought themselves
beyond the power of the laws.
It seems strange that the absolute Russia of to-day should then have
possessed one of the freest of the cities of Europe. Novgorod was not
only a city, it was a state. The provinces far and wide around were
subject to it, and governed by its prince, who had in them an authority
much greater than he possessed over the proud civic merchants and money
lords.
In the south, on the contrary, lay the great imperial city of Kief, the
capital of the realm, and the seat of a government as arbitrary as that
of Novgorod was free. Here dwelt the grand prince as an irresponsible
autocrat, making his will the law, and forcing all the provinces, even
haughty Novgorod, to pay a tax which bore the slavish title of tribute.
Here none could vote, no assembly of citizens ever met, and the only
restraint on the prince was that of his warlike and turbulent nobles,
who often forced him to yield to their wishes. The government was a
drifting rather than a settled one. It had no anchors out, but was moved
about at the whim of the prince and his unruly lords.
Under these two forms of government lay still a third. Rural Russia was
organized on a democratic principle which still prevails throughout that
broad land. This is the principle of the Mir, or village community,
which most of the people of the earth once possessed, but which has
everywhere passed away except in Russia and India. It is the principle
of the commune, of public instead of private property. The land of a
Russian village belongs to the people as a whole, not to individuals. It
is divided up among them for tillage, but no man can claim the fields
he tills as his own, and for thousands of years what is known as
communism has prevailed on Russian soil.
The government of the village is purely democratic. All the people meet
and vote for their village magistrate, who decides, with the aid of a
council of the elders, all the questions which arise within its
confines, one of them being the division of the land. Thus at bottom
Russia is a field sown thick with little communistic republics, though
at top it is a despotism. The government of Novgorod doubtless grew out
of that of the village. The republican city has long since passed away,
but the seed of democracy remains planted deeply in the village
community.
All this is preliminary to the story of the Russian lawgiver and his
laws, which we have set out to tell. This famous person was no other
than that Yaroslaf, prince of Novgorod, and son of Vladimir the Great,
whose refusal to pay tribute had caused his father to die of grief.
Yaroslaf was the fifth able ruler of the dynasty of Rurik. The story of
his young life resembles that of his father. He found his brother strong
and threatening, and designed to fly from Novgorod and join the
Varangians as a viking lord, as his father had done before him. But the
Novgorodians proved his friends, destroyed the ships that were to carry
him away, and provided him with money to raise a new army. With this he
defeated his base brother, who had already killed or driven into exile
all their other brothers. The result was that Yaroslof, like his father,
became sovereign of all Russia.
But though this new grand prince extended his dominions by the sword,
it was not as a soldier, but as a legislator, that he won fame. His
genius was not shown on the field of battle, but in the legislative
council, and Russia reveres Yaroslaf the Wise as its first maker of
laws.
The free institutions of Novgorod, of which we have spoken, were by him
sustained and strengthened. Many new cities were founded under his
beneficent rule. Schools were widely established, in one of which three
hundred of the youth of Novgorod were educated. A throng of Greek
priests were invited into the land, since there were none of Russian
birth to whom he could confide the duty of teaching the young. He gave
toleration to the idolaters who still existed, and when the people of
Suzdal were about to massacre some hapless women whom they accused of
having brought on a famine by sorcery, he stayed their hands and saved
the poor victims from death. The Russian Church owed its first national
foundation to him, for he declared that the bishops of the land should
no longer depend for appointment on the Patriarch of Constantinople.
There are no startling or dramatic stories to be told about Yaroslaf.
The heroes of peace are not the men who make the world's dramas. But it
is pleasant, after a season spent with princes who lived for war and
revenge, and who even made war to obtain baptism, to rest awhile under
the green boughs and beside the pleasant waters of a reign that became
famous for the triumphs of peace.
Under Yaroslaf Russia united itself by ties of blood to Western Europe.
His sons married Greek, German, and English princesses; his sister
became queen of Poland; his three daughters were queens of Norway,
Hungary, and France. Scandinavian in origin, the dynasty of Rurik was
reaching out hands of brotherhood towards its kinsmen in the West.
But it is as a law-maker that Yaroslaf is chiefly known. Before his time
the empire had no fixed code of laws. To say that it was without law
would not be correct. Every people, however ignorant, has its laws of
custom, unwritten edicts, the birth of the ages, which have grown up
stage by stage, and which are only slowly outgrown as the tribe develops
into the nation.
Russia had, besides Novgorod, other commercial cities, with republican
institutions. Kief was certainly not without law. And the many tribes of
hunters, shepherds, and farmers must have had their legal customs. But
with all this there was no code for the empire, no body of written laws.
The first of these was prepared about 1018 by Yaroslaf, for Novgorod
alone, but in time became the law of all the land. This early code of
Russian law is a remarkable one, and goes farther than history at large
in teaching us the degree of civilization of Russia at that date.
In connection with it the chronicles tell a curious story. In 1018, we
are told, Novgorod, having grown weary of the insults and oppression of
its Varangian lords and warriors, killed them all. Angry at this,
Yaroslaf enticed the leading Novgorodians into his palace and
slaughtered them in reprisal. But at this critical interval, when his
guards were slain and his subjects in rebellion, he found himself
threatened by his ambitious brother. In despair he turned to the
Novgorodians and begged with tears for pardon and assistance. They
forgave and aided him, and by their help made him sovereign of the
empire.
How far this is true it is impossible to say, but the code of Yaroslaf
was promulgated at that date, and the rights given to Novgorod showed
that its people held the reins of power. It confirmed the city in the
ancient liberties of which we have already spoken, giving it a freedom
which no other city of its time surpassed. And it laid down a series of
laws for the people at large which seem very curious in this enlightened
age. It must suffice to give the leading features of this ancient code.
It began by sustaining the right of private vengeance. The law was for
the weak alone, the strong being left to avenge their own wrongs. The
punishment of crime was provided for by judicial combats, which the law
did not even regulate. Every strong man was a law unto himself.
Where no avengers of crime appeared, murder was to be settled by fines.
For the murder of a boyar eighty grivnas were to be paid, and forty for
the murder of a free Russian, but only half as much if the victim was a
woman. Here we have a standard of value for the women of that age.
Nothing was paid into the treasury for the murder of a slave, but his
master had to be paid his value, unless he had been slain for insulting
a freeman. His value was reckoned according to his occupation, and
ranged from twelve to five grivnas.
If it be asked what was the value of a grivna, it may be said that at
that time there was little coined money, perhaps none at all, in Russia.
Gold and silver were circulated by weight, and the common currency was
composed of pieces of skin, called kuni. A grivna was a certain number
of kunis equal in value to half a pound of silver, but the kuni often
varied in value.
All prisoners of war and all persons bought from foreigners were
condemned to perpetual slavery. Others became slaves for limited
periods,--freemen who married slaves, insolvent debtors, servants out of
employment, and various other classes. As the legal interest of money
was forty per cent., the enslavement of debtors must have been very
common, and Russia was even then largely a land of slaves.
The loss of a limb was fined almost as severely as that of a life. To
pluck out part of the beard cost four times as much as to cut off a
finger, and insults in general were fined four times as heavily as
wounds. Horse-stealing was punished by slavery. In discovering the
guilty the ordeals of red-hot iron and boiling water were in use, as in
the countries of the West.
There were three classes in the nation,--slaves, freemen, and boyars, or
nobles, the last being probably the descendants of Rurik's warriors. The
prince was the heir of all citizens who died without male children,
except of boyars and the officers of his guard.
These laws, which were little more primitive than those of Western
Europe at the same period, seem never to have imposed corporal
punishment for crime. Injury was made good by cash, except in the case
of the combat. The fines went to the lord or prince, and were one of his
means of support, the other being tribute from his estates. No provision
for taxation was made. The mark of dependence on the prince was military
service, the lord, as in the feudal West, being obliged to provide his
own arms, provisions, and mounted followers.
Judges there were, who travelled on circuits, and who impanelled twelve
respectable jurors, sworn to give just verdicts. There are several laws
extending protection to property, fixed and movable, which seem
specially framed for the merchants of Novgorod.
Such are the leading features of the code of Yaroslaf. The franchises
granted the Novgorodians, which for four centuries gave them the right
to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," form part of it. Crude
as are many of its provisions, it forms a vital starting-point, that in
which Russia first came under definite in place of indefinite law. And
the bringing about of this important change is the glory of Yaroslaf the
Wise.