Political Structure of Kievan Rus
During the American civil war, President Abraham Lincoln famously quoted a line of Scripture saying, “A house divided cannot stand.” As it was true during the American Civil War, it has been true of any nation at any time in history, that disunion and dissonance weaken the state. Few examples more clearly demonstrate the debilitating nature of civil discord and war than medieval Kievan Rus. Rising from scattered settlements to become a fairly well established “state” by the time of Vladimr I, Kievan Rus was poised to enjoy a period of territorial expansion and increased prosperity. However, as time went on internal division clearly impeded Rus’ ascension to increased prosperity. In several important aspects of the Rus political structure, fragmentation and division among the princes weakened the nation and led to its downfall.
The political status quo of late medieval Europe was a system of government based upon traditional feudal systems, in which commoners owed allegiance to nobility, which would, in turn, owe allegiance to a monarch. An effect of this three-layered system is that each level knew its place in regard to the other two. That is, members of both the peasantry and the nobility recognized their sub ordinance to the King, establishing a source of central authority. However, Kievan Rus had no such supreme echelon of authority with which to unite and direct the nation. Rus consisted of a collection of townships and territories owing allegiance to the local prince. As close as Rus came to having a true national leader was the Grand prince of Kiev, who was considered to have the most power and influence. As a result, there was no true uniting office by which the Russian state could be considered “one.” As stated by E. C. Barksdale, “the harmony of the state in this system was maintained, in theory at least, by the office and the person of the prince. For civilization to exist, the prince must be on his throne” (Barksdale, 23).
Further contributing to the nation’s fragmentation were princes’ efforts to strengthen their own personal holdings. Following the death of Vladimir I, a series of fratricides and battles among the princes continued to weaken the state, hardly apt preparation for the state considering its impending warfare against invading barbarians. Indeed, “writers in the pre-Mongol period persistently urged that princes should join forces to combat outsiders; in 1015-24, the brothers did just the opposite, joining forces with outsiders to combat each other” (Emergence, 199). It was not until only one of Vladimir’s sons, Iaroslav, remained alive (with another resting safely in jail) that Rus was again united, after a span of more than twenty years.
By this time the effects of invasion had begun to take a toll on the Rus nation, boding ill of the years to come. Princely ambition and independence from a singular national order played prominent roles in diminishing the extent of the Russian state. As the state grew weaker and suffered continued invasion, it soon ceased to viably exist independent of its Mongol conquerors, ending a period Russian self rule which would not begin anew for two hundred years. In the interval between, it is possible that survivors of the Mongol conquests observed more starkly the necessity of unity in preserving not only the nation’s prosperity, but also its very existence. Once divided, the nation could no longer stand.
Works Cited
Barksdale, E. C. The Fragile Cathedral: Harmony and Chaos in the Igor Tale. Hieronymus, Neuried, 1983.
Franklin, Simon and Jonathon Shepard. The Emergence of Rus. Harlow, England: Longman, 1996.