The general speculation which had drawn Sviatopolk into debt had continued and grown worse. It was led by the Prince of Kiev himself who, with increasing age, had grown not wiser, but lazier and more rapacious.
There was corruption everywhere. Debt, often at crippling interest rates, was positively encouraged. Small artisans and smerdy, in considerable numbers, had been thus forced into becoming zakupy. It was, after all, a very cheap form of labour for the creditor. And if, on distant estates, the friends of the prince ignored the laws concerning the zakup and actually sold him as a slave, the prince turned a blind eye. Because of these widespread abuses, the people were furious.
But worst of all were the cartels. They were organized by the great merchants. Their object was simple – to obtain monopolies on basic commodities and raise their prices. And the greatest of all was the salt cartel.
The Prince of Kiev had been successful. His plan for controlling the Polish supply had been effective and prices had soared.
‘Are we to welcome visitors with bread alone?’ his people demanded ironically. For every Slav, since time began, welcomed a stranger at his door with bread and salt.
But the Prince of Kiev was corrupt and cynical. The abuses continued.
And then, on April 16 1113, he died.
The next day, an almost unheard of event occurred.
Years before, after the troubles of 1068, the Prince of Kiev had moved the meeting place of the veche from the podol to the square by the palace, where he could keep an eye on it. Nor did the veche meet unless summoned by the Metropolitan of the Church, or the boyars. But these safeguards did nothing for the ruling powers now. Without consulting anyone, the veche of the people met of its own accord. And their meeting was both stormy and determined.
‘They make slaves of free men!’ they rightly protested. ‘They conspire to ruin the people,’ they said of the cartels.
‘Let us return,’ many demanded, ‘to the laws of Yaroslav.’ Although in fact the Russkaya Pravda – the Russian Law – which had been collated by Yaroslav the Wise and his sons was chiefly concerned with the payments due for harming the prince’s servants and boyars, it did contain a provision protecting the zakup from being made into a slave.
‘Let us return,’ they cried, ‘to another just prince who will maintain the law.’
There was only one such man in the land of Rus; and so it was that the veche of Kiev, in the year 1113, offered the throne of Kiev to Vladimir Monomakh.
‘Praise the Lord!’
It seemed to Ivanushka that at last there would be order in the land of Rus. He had been in Pereiaslav when the news of the Prince of Kiev’s death had come, and without even waiting to summon his sons from the estates, had ridden hard to the capital.
He had long been disgusted by the old prince’s rule. At Russka, and on his estates in the north-east, things were well run and the laws were obeyed. But he knew this was an exception. For the reigning prince’s brothers he had no great regard, and it was good judgement as well as personal loyalty, he believed, that made him declare: ‘Only Monomakh can put things right.’
With admirable good sense, he discovered on his arrival in Kiev, the people’s veche had decided the same thing.
Before even going to his brother’s house, he sent one of his grooms with all speed to Monomakh with the message: ‘Ivan Igorevich awaits you in Kiev. Come, take what the veche rightly offers you.’
So he was saddened, as he strode into their childhood home, to find his older brother in a gloomy mood, shaking his head.
‘It can’t work,’ Sviatopolk told him.
Since the campaign against the Cumans they had developed a quiet relationship that suited them both. They were not friends, but Sviatopolk’s hatred, having smouldered all his life, had burned itself out. He felt old and tired. Thanks to Ivanushka, he was well provided for. He lived entirely alone. His sons were serving in other cities, but he preferred to remain in Kiev, enjoying the respect due to him as a boyar and a reputation – alas undeserved – as a successful man of affairs. In general, on most subjects, he was pessimistic. ‘And I tell you,’ he reiterated, ‘Monomakh cannot become Grand Prince.’
Two days later, it appeared he was right. For word arrived in Kiev that Monomakh had refused.
In a way, he had no option. By the rules of succession he was not the next in line – there were senior branches of the family who should precede him. And had he not, all his life, striven to preserve an orderly succession and keep the peace? Why should he throw away his principles now, especially at the bidding of the lower classes whom, as a prince, he knew must be kept in their place? He did not come.
And then the revolution started.
Ivanushka had gone riding in the woods, that fateful morning, across to the Monastery of the Caves and back. He had no idea that anything was amiss until, coming in sight of the podol, he suddenly saw a dozen columns of smoke starting to rise over the city. He spurred forward. A few moments later he met a merchant in a cart. The fellow was sweating profusely and whipping his horses along for all he was worth.
‘What are they doing?’ he cried.
‘Killing us, lord,’ the man shouted. ‘Merchants and nobles alike. Turn back, sir,’ he added, ‘only a fool would go in there.’
Ivanushka smiled grimly to himself, and rode forward. He passed into the podol. The streets were full of people, running to and fro. The uprising looked spontaneous, and seemed to be universal. Some of the small traders were boarding up their houses, but at the same time others were forming into armed groups in the street. Several times he had difficulty getting through.
In one small street, he came face to face with a group of twenty or so.
‘Look,’ one of them shouted, ‘a muzh – a nobleman.’ And they rushed at him with such fury that he only just managed to get away.
The crowds were surging towards the centre. Already he could see flames coming from the citadel of Yaroslav. And a single thought formed in his mind: I must go and save Sviatopolk.
It was as he came towards the Khazar Gate that he saw something that made him go cold, and for a moment drove even thoughts of his brother from his mind.
The crowd numbered at least two hundred. They had entirely surrounded the house. And whereas the people he had seen so far looked either angry or excited, the faces of these rioters had taken on a cruel aspect. A number of them were grinning with obvious pleasure at the punishment they were about to inflict.
The house belonged to old Zhydovyn the Khazar.
An expectant murmur rose from the crowd.
‘Roast them a little,’ he heard a voice cry.
There was a chorus of approval.
‘Roast pig belongs on a spit,’ a large man shouted jovially.
Some of them, Ivanushka noticed, carried flaming torches. They were already preparing to set light to one side of the house; but it was obvious from their faces that their desire was not so much to burn it down as to smoke the inmates out.
‘Villains,’ a man cried.
‘Jews!’ shouted an old woman.
And at once several more in the crowd took up the cry: ‘Come out, Jews, and be killed.’
Ivanushka understood very well. The fact that many of the Jewish Khazar merchants were poor; the more significant fact still that nearly all the leaders of the exploiting cartels had been Slavic or Scandinavian Christians – both these truths had been temporarily forgotten. In the heat of the moment, the angry crowd, looking for scapegoats to attack, had remembered that some of the capitalists were foreign. They were Jewish. There was now a grand excuse for acts of cruelty.