How Rus lived — towns, peasants, merchants, the druzhina, everyday life

When we speak about Rus’, it is easy to imagine princes, warriors and great cities. The chronicles usually tell us about these people because they were the ones who made decisions that seemed important to the writers of the time. But most people in Rus’ were not princes or warriors. They were farmers, craftsmen, fishermen, traders and servants. They lived in small villages and towns, worked with their hands, raised children, paid tribute and tried to get through the winter.

For them, life was shaped less by the names of rulers than by the seasons. Spring was the time for preparing the fields. In summer there was work to do from morning until evening. In autumn people gathered what they could and prepared food and fuel for the cold months. Winter made travel harder, but it also gave people time for some kinds of craft and trade. A bad harvest could make an entire year difficult, while a good one could mean that a family had enough food to survive until the next summer.

Most people lived from the land. The fields around a settlement were usually small, and farming was hard work. People grew crops such as rye, wheat, barley and oats, depending on the region. They also kept animals and collected what the forests and rivers could provide. Fish was an important part of the diet, and the forests offered berries, mushrooms, honey and nuts. Hunting could provide meat and valuable furs.

The forest was not simply a wild place outside the village. It was part of the economy of Rus’. A person could enter the woods and come back with something that could be eaten, used or sold. Furs were especially valuable because they could be traded over long distances. This was one of the reasons why the northern lands were connected to the great trade routes. A small settlement deep in the forest could therefore have a connection, however distant, with a city on the Dnieper or even with Constantinople.

The rivers were just as important. A river was a road, a source of fish and a way to carry heavy goods. In summer, boats moved along the water. In winter, when the rivers froze, travel could sometimes continue across the ice. Towns grew in places where these routes came together, and some became much more important than the villages around them.

Novgorod was one of these cities. Kyiv was another. They were very different from the villages that surrounded them. In a large town there were craftsmen working with metal, wood, leather and pottery. There were people who built houses and boats, made weapons and tools, prepared food and sold goods. Traders arrived from other lands, and with them came objects that could not be produced locally.

A person walking through a large city of Rus’ would therefore have seen a world that was much more varied than a modern picture of a medieval village suggests. There were wooden houses, workshops, markets and churches. Horses and carts moved through the streets. Boats arrived at the riverbank. Foreign merchants could be seen among local people. Languages and customs mixed together.

Yet cities were still small by modern standards. Kyiv became a large and wealthy city, but it was nothing like a modern capital with hundreds of thousands or millions of inhabitants. Most people lived outside the cities, and the countryside remained the foundation of the whole society.

At the top of this society stood the prince.

The prince needed people because he could not rule alone. Around him was his druzhina, a group of warriors and companions who served him. They fought in his wars, travelled with him and helped him collect tribute. In return, they expected a share of the wealth brought by war and trade.

Tribute was one of the most important parts of this system. A prince and his men travelled through the lands under their control and collected payments from the local population. These payments could take different forms: furs, food, money or other goods. The prince could then use this wealth to support his warriors, reward his followers and take part in long-distance trade.

This system could be harsh. The people who paid tribute did not necessarily feel that they were part of one great state in the modern sense. Their loyalty was often local, and the authority of a prince depended greatly on his ability to protect his position and make his power felt.

The story of Prince Igor shows how dangerous this could become. According to the chronicle, Igor returned to the Drevlyans to collect tribute after they had already paid. His warriors wanted more, and Igor went back with them. The Drevlyans decided that they would not accept this. They killed Igor and later faced the revenge of his widow, Olga.

The story is famous because of what Olga did afterwards, but it also tells us something about how early Rus’ worked. The prince did not simply receive a regular tax from a modern government system. He had to maintain relationships with local communities, and if those relationships broke down, violence could follow.

People also had to live with the dangers of the wider world. War was a part of life, especially for those who lived near important routes. Princes led raids against neighbouring peoples, and they also fought among themselves. Slaves were taken in war and became part of the economy. At the same time, Rus’ was not only a land of violence. Trade could be just as important as raiding, and merchants needed periods of peace in which they could travel safely.

Religion was present everywhere. Before the Christianisation of Rus’, people worshipped a number of gods connected with different parts of the natural and human world. The forests, rivers and fields were not empty spaces without meaning. The world was full of forces that people believed could help them or harm them. Rituals, sacrifices and customs were part of ordinary life.

Later, Christianity would change the religious world of Rus’ profoundly. Churches would appear in the cities, Christian burials would replace older traditions, and books would begin to play a much greater role in public life. But the older world did not disappear overnight. For generations, old customs and the new Christian faith existed side by side.

For most people, however, the greatest struggle remained much simpler: food, work and survival.

A wooden house had to be repaired. Firewood had to be gathered before winter. Animals had to be fed. Children had to be raised. Clothes had to be made and tools repaired. If a harvest failed or an epidemic came, there was little protection against it. Life could be hard, but it was not empty or without pleasure. People celebrated weddings and festivals, told stories, traded jokes, drank together, listened to songs and visited their neighbours.

This is perhaps the most important thing to remember when looking at Rus’. It was not only a country of princes and battles. Behind every army was a population that grew food, made tools, built boats and paid tribute. Behind every rich city stood thousands of people whose names were never written in a chronicle.

The princes created the political history of Rus’. But ordinary people were the ones who made it possible for that history to exist at all.