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The Rus’ People of the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries: Ethnicity and Social Differentiation
The chapter “The Rus’ people of the IXth–Xth centuries: ethnic identity and social differentiation” reveals the mechanisms of ethno- cultural and ethno-political solidarity of the Rus’ people and economic and social differentiation within the Rus’ communities. Firstly, for almost the first time in historiography, the problem of ethnic identity of Rus’ is considered, primarily the forms of its manifestation and markers of belonging to the macro-community of Rus’ in the IXth–Xth centuries. Secondly, an attempt is made to reconstruct the emergence of social inequality in these societies and their subsequent stratification. In the 10th century Rus’, which professed its own special primordial-pluralistic (heathen) religion, was fully formed as a people with a very clearly expressed ethno-political and ethno-cultural self-identification. The Xth century data at our disposal leaves no doubt that Rus’ at that time was a separate people who lived in a certain territory, had their own identity, demonstrated their unity and superiority over other peoples, and also had a set of distinctive features, i.e. had a special ethno-cultural and ethno- political identity. During the Xth century the polity of the Rurikid princes located in the Middle Dnieper region transformed into a complex chiefdom. This chiefdom quickly expanded its territory and the zone of its political dominance, eventually, from the middle of the Xth century, being perceived by external observers as the only country of the Rus’ people. Rus’ of the Xth century was a ranked society in which a stable set of prestigious social statuses was formed. Quite quickly, the ranked society of Rus’ turns into an early stratified one with the hereditary status of the supreme leader and, from the second half of the Xth century, the special status of his relatives. During this period, among different groups of Rus’, from the bulk of full-fledged men, an elite emerged, which included both the relatives of the paramount chief and people not related to him by real or artificial kinship. However, even in the most developed polities there was not yet a rigid hierarchy with a closed ruling class and a professional administrative apparatus. The vector of evolution of the social hierarchy among the Rus’ people was directed from obvious heterarchy to increasing homoarchy, although the speed of these changes in the IXth– Xth centuries was not too high, so the Rus’ society became more complex and differentiated, remaining predominantly heterarchical. In the Xth century Rus’ consisted of societies, the basis of which were adult men, however, apparently, the women of the Rus’ people, in turn, had a high degree of legal capacity. The subculture of dominant masculinity of the bulk of the male Rus’ people was organically supplemented, apparently, by almost complete equality of men and women in its elite, and, perhaps, in the entire stratum of free and full-fledged Rus’ people.
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