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The Smerd in Kievan Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Jerome Blum
Jerome Blum*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

Many of the names that were used for the peasant during the centuries of Russian history tell much about the people to whom they were applied. To give just a few examples, three of the terms that were employed during the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, starožilcy, “old dwellers,” novoporjadčiki, “new renters,” and polovniki, “sharers,” were descriptive of tenurial status. Earlier, during the Kievan era (ninth to thirteenth centuries), the mass of the free rural population was known as smerdy (the singular is smerd). This name, though less obvious, is actually more revealing of social position than the examples just given. Philologists have pointed out that in all probability it was derived from an ancient root meaning “man.” Once, they suggest, it may have been used to describe everyone. By the Kievan period, however, the word was used only for the lowest class of free men and had become associated with the verb smerdeti, “to stink.”

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , February 1953 , pp. 122 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1953

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References

1 Grekov, B. D., Kresfjane na Rusi s drevnejšikh vremen do XVII veka (Moscow and Leningrad, 1946), pp. 15–17.Google Scholar

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3 Short Version, Article 1. Citations of the Pravda are from Institut Istorii, Akademii Nauk Sojuza SSR, Pravda Russkaja, ed. B. D. Grekov (2 vols., Moscow and Leningrad, 1940-1947), I, pp. 397-457, Academy and Trinity copies. English translation by Vernadsky, G., Medieval Russian Laws (New York, 1947), pp. 26–56.Google Scholar

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6 Expanded Version, Article 1.

7 Ibid., Article 3.

8 Cf. M. F. Vladimirskij-Budanov, Obzor istorii russkago prava (3rd ed., Kiev, 1000), pp. 35-37; Goetz, Russische Recht, II, 32.

Professor Vernadsky excludes the smerdy from the ranks of the ljudi. He writes that the ljudi were those men who held enough land to guarantee them both a comfortable living and a social position superior to that of the mass of the rural population (i.e., the smerdy). He calls the ljudi the middle class of Kievan free society, the upper class being the prince's men, and the lower class the smerdy. Vernadsky, G., Kievan Russia (New Haven, 1948), pp. 136, 141.Google Scholar

9 Short Version, Article 19; Expanded Version, Article 7.

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18 In an article in a forthcoming issue of Speculum, I discuss the problem of the origins of large-scale estate ownership in Russia.

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20 Not all the students of this era are agreed that there was this division in the smerdy. Many, especially among the older authorities, maintained that the status of all smerdy was the same. For representative views see Institut Istorii Ak. Nauk SSSR, Pravda Russkaja, II, 171–76. Others, notably S. V. Juskov and G. Vernadsky among modern writers, insist that the term smerdy was not a nomen generale for all the peasantry but referred only to the “dependent” peasants, i.e. those who had come under the control of a private landlord (Juskov) or whose legal status was limited by the prince's authority (Vernadsky). S. V. Juskov, Ocerki po istorii feodalizma v Kievskoj Rusi (Moscow, Leningrad, 1939), pp. 89 ff; Vernadsky, Kievan Russia, pp. 143-46. The interpretation presented here is that suggested by a number of historians, among them M. Vladimirskij-Budanov, N. P. Pavlov-Silvanskij, and, especially, B. D. Grekov.

21 Expanded Version, Article 45.

22 Ibid., Article 46.

23 Grekov, Krest'jane …, p. 200.

24 Short Version, Articles 19–28, 32–33.

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26 Short Version, Article 26.

27 Ibid., Articles 19–24.

28 Ibid., Article 33.

29 Expanded Version, Article 90.

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36 Cf. Grekov, Krest'jane …, p. 207.

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42 E.g., S. V. Juskov, Russkaja Pravda (Moscow, 1950), p. 268; Akademija Nauk SSSR, Institut Istorii, Istorija SSSR (2nd ed., 2 vols., Moscow, 1948), I, 100 Google Scholar; Grekov, , Krest'jane …, pp. 233–44.Google Scholar

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