own inconspicuous doings. To the tiller of the soil, the prince, the boyar, and the monastery were an example and an ideal. In Kievic Russia, therefore, as in the west, the palace of the prince (above all, of the grand prince) and the city were of preponderant importance, strategically and politically, administratively and economically, in respect alike of craftsmanship, industry, and commerce. It is therefore erroneous to ascribe to agrarian communism, and to ancient social institutions in general, a notable moral significance, as if family ties and other bonds of kinship had predominantly, or even exclusively, determined the organisation of society.
The development of Russian law, of civil law above all, affords unambiguous proof of what has just been said. During the Kievic epoch, commercial interests became so outstanding as to secure legal formulation to a far greater extent than did agricultural interests. It was not until towards the close of the Kievic regime, and subsequently in Moscow, that legal specifications in the interests of agriculture came to occupy the premier place.[1]
iii. Economic relationships are, of course, largely dependent upon the qualities of the soil and upon climatic conditions. Primitive agriculture and primitive forestry seem prescribed by nature upon the boundless, thinly inhabited, beforested plains, whilst fishery is similarly prescribed by the existence of numerous large rivers and lakes. Trustworthy descriptions of Old Russian agriculture and stock-farming are, however, not forthcoming.
The direct and indirect influence, the economic and strategic
- ↑ The latest researches into primitive times have shown that the mir and the zadruga existed and still exist in the most varied forms and among the most divers people—among the Germans, the English, and the French, but also in India and Africa. There is nothing specifically Slavic about the mir. The only points remaining for enquiry in this connection are wherein the Russian mir and the zadruga may have differed from similar institutions elsewhere. Moreover if our ideas concerning the origin of the state and other institutions were to become more precise, we should less readily content ourselves with such schematic and unduly generalised concepts as "patriarchalism" etc. and we should undertake a more accurate analysis of the individual social and historical forces that were operative. The inaccuracy of the Slavic theory is further shown by a closer analysis ot the mir. We cannot point out too often that the mir is not identical throughout Russia. It exhibits manifold modifications, which present its economic, administrative, and legal functions in a light very diflerent from that favoured by the slavophils and by Haxthausen. In North Russia, for example, and in Siberia we see the mir in its older and more primitive form.
