From Blood Feud to Fines: Kyivan Rus’s Law Code, the Ruska Pravda

“If a man kills a man, then a brother avenges his brother, a son his father, or a father his son. If there is no one to avenge him, then 40 hryvnias for the head.” The Ruska Pravda (Руська правда), which set down the law of Kyivan Rus, opens with an article like this. It permits blood feud while also fixing a payment for when there is no one to carry it out — and this single line captures well the character of this law code.

This article looks, based on encyclopedias and critical editions, at when and under whom the code is said to have been compiled, what manuscripts it survives in, and what it set out. The historical course of Kyivan Rus is covered in our article on Kyivan Rus through the 16th century.

The Name, and How This Article Renders It

“Pravda” means “truth” in modern Ukrainian. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU), published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta, translates the name of this law code into English as “Rus’ Truth [Law].” Here, “pravda” is used in the sense of correct judgment, or law.

There is no single fixed way of rendering the name in English either. English-language scholarship most often uses a Russian-based transliteration, “Russkaya Pravda,” or renders it descriptively as “Rus’ Law” or similar. A Japanese-language study exists — Morikazu Kawamura’s Ruska-Pravda (Reigensha, 1953) — which uses a transliteration based on Russian pronunciation. In this article, the name is written using Ukrainian pronunciation, as “Ruska Pravda,” and explained by its sense as “the law code of Rus.”

No Original Survives; It Is Known Through More Than 100 Manuscripts

According to the IEU, the Ruska Pravda is a compilation of law, based on customary law, assembled between the 11th and 12th centuries. No original has been found; more than 100 manuscripts survive, copied between the 13th and 18th centuries. The manuscripts are divided into three redactions based on how their content is organized.

The oldest surviving manuscript dates to 1282. The critical edition published in 1935 by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kyiv (edited by Serafim Yushkov, Ruska Pravda: Text Based on Seven Manuscripts and Five Redactions) records this Synodal manuscript as “Historical Museum, Synodal Collection No. 132, a collection of church canon law, 1282, folios 615v–627v.” The Academy manuscript used as the base text for the Short Redaction is identified, in the same critical edition, as a manuscript of the First Novgorod Chronicle from the second half of the 15th century. Both descriptions reflect where the manuscripts were held as of 1935.

The Short Redaction: The Law of Yaroslav the Wise and His Sons

The 43 articles of the Short Redaction are read as falling into four parts. According to the IEU and the Ukrainian-language Entsyklopediia ukrainoznavstva (Part 2), they are as follows.

• Articles 1–18, the “Pravda of Yaroslav.” The oldest part
• Articles 19–41, the “Pravda of Yaroslav’s Sons”
• Article 42, the “Arrangement for Vira.” Payment to the official who collects the fine
• Article 43, the “Provision for the Bridge Builder”

The first part has traditionally been attributed to Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Kyiv (r. 1019–1054). The IEU’s entry on “Yaroslav the Wise” states that, to establish social and legal order, Yaroslav had a book of laws compiled that came to be called the “Pravda of Yaroslav.” Researchers differ on the date of its composition, some putting it around 1016 and others in the 1030s. Some researchers also disagree that Yaroslav himself established it, and simply call this part “the oldest part.”

The opening article, in the critical edition of the First Novgorod Chronicle published in 1950, is placed within the entry for the year 6524 (1016 CE).

А се есть правда рускаа. Убиеть мужь мужа, то мьстѣть брату брата, любо сынови отца, а любо отцю сына, любо братучада, любо сестриню сынови; аще не будет кто мьстя, то 40 гривенъ за голову

Novgorodskaia pervaia letopis’ starshego i mladshego izvodov (1950), p. 176. Spelling has been partly simplified.

Translated into English, this reads: “This is the Pravda of Rus. If a man kills a man, then a brother avenges his brother, or a son his father, or a father his son, or a brother’s son, or a sister’s son. If there is no one to avenge him, then 40 hryvnias for the head” (translation by this article). The article continues by stating that whether the person killed was a man of Rus, a prince’s retainer or merchant, a prince’s official, an outcast (izgoi), or a Slovene, the fine is likewise 40 hryvnias.

Regarding the second part, the “Pravda of Yaroslav’s Sons,” the IEU explains that it was compiled at a council held by Yaroslav’s sons — Iziaslav, Sviatoslav, and Vsevolod — at Vyshhorod, near Kyiv. Researchers differ on the year: some (Tikhomirov, Yushkov, Cherepnin) put it at 1072, others (Grekov, Zimin) at 1032–1054. This part contains many articles minutely protecting the interests of princes, officials, and property, and because the fine varies by the rank of the person killed, the IEU sees in it evidence of social differentiation.

The Long Redaction: Blood Feud Replaced by Fines

When the 121-article Long Redaction was created is likewise disputed among researchers. According to the IEU, there are theories dating it to the reign of Volodymyr Monomakh (after 1113), to the reign of his son Mstyslav, and to before 1209.

In the criminal law of the Long Redaction, blood feud disappears, replaced by fines and state punishment. The fine for homicide was called vira (вира). According to the IEU’s entry on “Vyra,” the amount was 40 hryvnias for killing a free person, and 80 hryvnias for a prince’s official. Killing a slave carried no fine, and was compensated only as a loss of the owner’s property. When the killer was unknown, the community where the crime occurred bore the payment.

For grave crimes such as murder combined with robbery, arson, or horse theft, there was a punishment called “banishment and seizure” (поток і розграблення). According to the IEU, the offender lost his rights, was expelled from the community, had his property confiscated, and his family also bore the punishment.

It was not only criminal law. The Long Redaction also includes articles on loans and interest, land disputes, and inheritance, as well as articles on judicial procedure such as witnesses, oaths, and ordeal (judgment by heated iron or by water). The IEU holds that the main purpose of the Ruska Pravda was to give people the power to protect their life, health, and property, and to give courts a basis for fair judgment, and assesses the code’s defining feature as a trend toward more humane law. This is the encyclopedia author’s own assessment.

It Remained in Use After Kyivan Rus

The Ruska Pravda remained in use even after Kyivan Rus fragmented. According to the IEU’s entry on “Lithuanian-Ruthenian law,” the law of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was initially based on the Ruska Pravda and the customary law of Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus, with the 16th-century Lithuanian Statutes added later. The IEU’s entry on “Criminal law” states that, in the parts of Ukraine under Russian imperial rule, the criminal-law provisions of the Ruska Pravda and the Lithuanian Statutes remained in effect until they were replaced by the Russian Empire’s law code in 1840.

The code has been translated into many languages. According to the IEU, translations exist in German, Polish, and French, and the English translation is by George Vernadsky (1947).

The Description “the Oldest Written Law”

The Ruska Pravda is sometimes introduced, in explanatory articles and elsewhere, as “the first written law” or “the oldest law code.” However, the IEU and the Ukrainian-language Entsyklopediia ukrainoznavstva describe this code as “the most important collection of old Ukrainian-Rus law,” not as “the oldest.” No primary source has been found for this article specifying in what scope it would be “oldest.” What can be said with certainty is that the oldest surviving manuscript dates to 1282.

Whose legal history this code belongs to has also been treated differently by different writers. The IEU’s entry on “Lithuanian-Ruthenian law” states that Russian historians called the law of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania “West Russian law” and treated it as part of Russian legal history, while Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian researchers received it as part of the legal history of their own countries. The same encyclopedia also presents the view of the historian Fedir Leontovych, who doubted that the Ruska Pravda influenced medieval Muscovite law. The code was born in the land of Rus centered on Kyiv.