VIKTOR PETROV ON THE PROBLEM OF FEUDALISM IN KYIVAN RUS’

Box 258 from the personal collection of Viktor Petrov (No. 16) in the Research Archives of the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine contains an unpublished typewriting with no title that deals with the problem of feudalism in Kyivan Rus’. According to the dates of publication of the studies cited there, Petrov completed this text no earlier than 1956, when he moved from Moscow to Kyiv for permanent residence and began working at the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. It consists of two chapters and five subchapters:

Chapter I. “Development of production in the second half of the first millennium AD”:

– “Agriculture and wildcrafting”;
– “Crafts and trade”;

Chapter II. “Development of social relations in the second half of the first millennium AD”:

– “Decay of the primal society”;
– “Formation of the feudal society”;
– “Establishment of the Kyivan Rus’”.

The text presents the Marxist view of historical development, which is based on the mandatory transition of all societies through five successive economic stages called formations. Despite the ideological framework, what is valuable in this study is the systematization of the most recent results of archaeological excavations of settlements and burial grounds from the period that preceded or coincided with the beginnings of Kyivan Rus’. Petrov emphasized in the text the importance of archaeological sources, given the lack of written information from this period. In the text, the researcher mainly focused on the analysis of the artefacts of the Chernyakhiv and Zarubynets cultures, which Petrov personally studied in the 1950s as a member of a number of expeditions to the Ukrainian and Moldovan SSR. According to researcher Vitalii Andrieiev:

“At this time, the problem of the origin of the Slavs came to the forefront of Soviet archaeology and history studies. A special place in the ethnogenesis of the Slavs was given to the Zarubynets and Chernyakhiv cultures. In this situation, the ideas expressed by Vikentii Khvojka in the early twentieth century about the autochthonous and Slavic affiliation of these cultures were reborn and gained great favour among Soviet researchers.”

Despite this tendency, Petrov was careful in his text writing about the ethnic origins of the representatives of both cultures, which he thought were linked. According to Petrov, the Slavic substrate can only partially explain their origins.

At that time, Petrov was about 60 years old, so given his age and health condition, he could have avoided going to the field. However, in a letter to Sofia Zerova, he wrote with the energy and zeal known only to true researchers:

“Of course, excavations are far from easy, and I understand this perfectly well. (…) But what is archaeology without them?”

References:

Viktoriia Serhiienko