A conversation between labor union activist Oleg Zhukov and Vadim Bolshakov, author of the “Istprof” project on the history of the labor movement. “Workers’ History” channel, October 18, 2026.

Video recording of the conversation

Oleg Zhukov: Hello, everyone. This is the “Workers’ History” channel. My name is Oleg Zhukov, and I’m a labor movement activist. And today I’m joined by Vadim Bolshakov, author of the “Istprof” project on the history of the labor movement. Hello, Vadim.

Vadim Bolshakov: Hello, friends. Hello, Oleg.

Sources

Oleg Zhukov: Today we’ve titled our lecture “Trade Unions in the Middle Ages,” but more broadly, our topic is artisan and trade brotherhoods in medieval Rus’. And as is customary on all history channels, I suggest we start with the most boring part—the sources. So, Vadim, please tell us what sources we can use to learn about craft and trade guilds. I suspect there aren’t many sources, but I still hope there are some, and that you’ll tell us about them now.

Vadim Bolshakov: Generally speaking, yes, there are extremely few sources. First and foremost, of course, these are written sources. And their scarcity for a historian’s work is simply glaring. In principle, there are extremely few sources on the history of Ancient Rus’. I didn’t immediately find good examples that would truly show just how bad things were in comparison with the West or the East—the classical East. If we take, for example, the entire book collection of pre-Mongol Rus’, it numbered 130,000 volumes. Some experts even cited higher figures. In other words, by the middle of the 13th century, there were 130,000 different books in Rus’. Of all this wealth, only five or six complete books and 200 or 300 fragments have survived to the present day. That’s all. And here’s an example from China for comparison. A century ago, a cave was discovered near Dunhuang—a city on the outskirts of the medieval Chinese empire during the Song Dynasty. By the 11th century, in anticipation of a nomadic invasion, a library—essentially a regional, outlying library of the empire—had been sealed there. A century ago, they excavated it and discovered 7,000 complete manuscripts and some 50,000 individual documents and fragments there. In other words, we have five or six complete books left, while here, in just one cave, they found 7,000 complete books. Here’s a second example.

Oleg Zhukov: Maybe we just didn’t have a cave like that and didn’t feel the need to seal anything away?

Vadim Bolshakov: There was certainly a desire to do so, and it is no coincidence that there are legends about the books that Sophia Palaiologina brought from Constantinople to Moscow when she married the Grand Prince of Moscow, or Ivan the Terrible’s library, which has still not been found. And perhaps there was some immense treasure there as well, but so far, none of it has been found.

Oleg Zhukov: And how does this compare to the West?

Vadim Bolshakov: Yes, if we compare this to the West, what do we see here? There are two such figures here as well. From Rus’ up until the 15th century—that is, for the entire period of written records, effectively from the 10th century, from the end of the 11th century through the 15th—no more than 4,500 documents have survived. This includes birch-bark letters. Now, in the Holy Roman Empire—which includes Germany and Italy, primarily, as well as some neighboring states—several million documents have survived from roughly the same period, and about half a million of them have been published. That is 100 times more than the total number of documents that have survived in Rus.

And now, birch-bark letters are gradually being found there, and this collection, so to speak, is growing, but these are, of course, completely insignificant numbers compared to what we have in other regions of the world. And here, of course, the first question that comes to mind is: why? It’s just awful. But my answer is this: Rus’, to put it simply, was always built primarily of wood and has burned throughout its history. And, at the same time, stone buildings and stone architecture first emerged exclusively in the construction of churches; only later did various fortifications follow—but in a wooden setting, so to speak, all of this burned to the ground there in the 16th and 17th centuries. And even the large guild archive that Peter I established burned down in Moscow in a fire in the 1740s. So, regarding our specific topic—not only is the entire history of Rus’ very poorly documented, but our narrow focus on trade and craft guilds in the Middle Ages is even less well-documented.

As a result, it turns out that, for example, virtually no written charters of brotherhoods from that era have survived. Yet a charter is considered one of the most important hallmarks of a professional corporation. It is only by chance that the charter of the Ivanovo “sto” has been preserved in two 17th-century collections—that is, in later compilations. A “sto” is a merchants’ guild. In this case, the Ivanovo Sto refers to Novgorod merchants who dealt in wax—and in the Middle Ages, wax was, in general, to Rus’ what oil is to us today. As it turns out, their charter was granted to the guild in the 1130s. The text, however, survived in versions from a century later, the 13th century. And it was preserved solely by chance. It turned out that this charter is the only Old Russian one found to date, and it was the oldest written charter in the Baltic region. And the second charter…

Oleg Zhukov: All right.

Vadim Bolshakov: Hold on, let me finish. Just for comparison, the second charter—the earliest one to have survived from all of Northern Europe’s wealth—is also a guild charter, that of the Merchants of St. Canute in Denmark, but it dates from 40 to 50 years later, sometime around the 1170s–1200s, give or take.

Oleg Zhukov: All right, then what sources can a modern historian use to study the labor movement or various workers’ organizations? Are there any sources—perhaps birch-bark letters or something else—that one can actually see with one’s own eyes and, as they say, touch?

Vadim Bolshakov: Generally speaking, yes. Right now, of course, we’re not yet analyzing the labor movement as such. This is its precursor; we’re examining its origins. And this topic is important to us right now precisely so that we can understand that the labor movement didn’t just spring up out of thin air. Let me return to these brotherhoods. Generally speaking, it’s indeed possible to explore that area and find some sources there, which I, in particular, have used. For example, take the charter of the Ivanovo Brotherhood. It’s, of course, a later copy, but it’s here in our Russian National Library in St. Petersburg. And it’s part of the First Novgorod Chronicle. This is a late copy, I believe, from the 17th century.

The church of this Ivanovo Sto itself—St. John the Baptist on the Opoki, though in its 15th-century version built on the ancient foundation of that very 12th-century church—yes, it still stands in Novgorod to this day. It is, however, no longer active. But there is an active church today; it is the Church of St. Panteleimon, located near Galich. This is in Ukraine, in the village of Shevchenkove. It was built at the end of the 12th century, and despite a series of fires and partial destruction, part of it has survived. Today it is an active church of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. There, on one of the walls, there is a legal record concerning 13th-century carpenters. We’ll talk more about that later. What else is there to see? For example, take Pskov—it’s simpler, yes, for a Russian today. You go to Pskov, visit Dovmont’s City, and there you’ll see about a dozen foundations, neat and tidy, clearly marked on a flat, grass-covered area; these are the foundations of various churches and public buildings in Pskov.

And there it is clearly stated—as architectural historians have determined—that there are the churches of St. Cyril, their foundations, and St. Sophia. So, the Church of St. Cyril belonged to the construction guild of church masons, while the Church of St. Sophia belonged to the merchants of Pskov. There are other sources as well—for example, the charters of Kalita, specifically those of Ivan Kalita, dating from the first half of the 14th century, which pertain to groups of maritime workers and hunters. These are kept at the RGADA, the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts. In short, all of this comes from the Pskov chronicles, which contain numerous references to merchants, bridge builders, construction workers, and various other craft guilds. These records are also preserved in Moscow and St. Petersburg. There are various versions of these chronicles. So, of course, it’s possible to find and verify all of this, but the vast majority of these documents and other records—for example, epigraphy, that is, inscriptions on objects or on church walls—have now been almost entirely published, and new discoveries are published every year as well, with reports based on them.

In other words, we are not in a vacuum after all; we do have something to rely on.

Oleg Zhukov: Listen, I’m curious—why did they write in the church and on the wall? Why didn’t they just write it on paper and put it somewhere? Why specifically on the wall of a church?

Vadim Bolshakov: Generally speaking, the church was a central institution in medieval Rus’, and churches housed books and served as places where all sorts of chronicles and annals were written. Primarily at monasteries, of course, but relevant records were also made in churches—for example, in liturgical books. In addition to this, inscriptions and drawings were made on the walls—on fresh plaster—for everyone to see. First and foremost, these were official records of some sort. We’ll talk about this record concerning carpenters later, okay? But even parishioners did this there. And, by the way, there’s this Orthodox tradition: when—I don’t know—someone important to the community or the parish passed away, a record would be made. This tradition persisted until the 20th century. I’ve actually seen this even in my own hometown. That’s how it was.

History of Research on the Topic

Oleg Zhukov: Shall we return to the state of the sources for just a moment?

Vadim Bolshakov: Sure, go ahead. I’ll continue here. This isn’t so much about the state of the sources as it is, generally speaking, about historiography—that is, the history of research on the topic. And this field, too, has certainly suffered, let’s say, for ideological reasons. First, as far as I know, the study of the history of brotherhoods in Russia began in 1852. That article was written by the legal historian Vasily Nikolaevich Leshkov. Gradually, by the time of the revolution, there were about a dozen authors working in this field. There were some very interesting studies, and certain documents were discovered and published. During the early Soviet period, early historians of the Marxist school took up the baton, developing this topic in line with the concept of Kievan Rus’ as a developed feudal state. It was very important for them to show that Rus’ developed on par with Europe. And, accordingly, our historians sought traces of a developed feudal city and craft guilds as advanced as those in Europe.

And here we have these two luminaries—Academicians Rybakov and Tikhomirov. We’ll have a few words to say about them later as well—let’s just say, some good things. In short, by and large, no traces of developed cities or guilds in Rus’ were found. And the concept itself began, from the 1960s onward, to face growing criticism. Competing concepts even emerged, such as Aron Yakovlevich Gurevich’s theory of a pre-feudal state. As a result, interest in the topic of brotherhoods—as a secondary topic—has largely waned. Although experts have introduced a vast amount of archaeological material and new documents into scholarly discourse. Here I’d like to cite two examples that are particularly significant to me. Two publications by Pavel Alexandrovich Rappoport have been released. He is a Soviet architectural historian specializing in church construction during the pre-Mongol period.

And there, through painstaking, astonishingly subtle observations and analysis of archaeological remains, various inscriptions, and the study of schools of church architecture, he uncovered a whole series of brotherhoods and determined their migration patterns across Rus’ as well as each one’s portfolio of construction projects—based on the commissions they completed. This is astonishing, of course. I’ll demonstrate this now, and then, of course, I’ll post all the links. This is his second work, where he describes it in great detail. And not long ago, a collection of documents titled *The Russian Hanse* by Marina Borisovna Bessudnova was published. She worked with German Hanseatic documents. And everything is described very clearly there—it’s absolutely unique. There are no such documents in Russian. It contains references to the guilds of laborers there—for example, boatmen—to how merchants operated, and to the relationships between German merchant guilds, specifically between the German trading compound and Veliky Novgorod. And so on, and so on.

And there is some truly unique evidence there. There are still few examples like these, but overall, attitudes toward the topic of brotherhoods today are lukewarm.

It’s more like ethnography, I’d say, or an isolated historical phenomenon, unfortunately. That’s why we know very little about the history of these brotherhoods.

When did the brotherhoods appear?

Oleg Zhukov: Then our listeners are lucky to have you here. And I suggest we wrap up the boring part and move on to something more interesting. Tell us, which century are we going to explore today—when did artisan and trade brotherhoods begin to emerge in Ancient Rus’?

Vadim Bolshakov: The first reliably documented evidence dates back to the 11th century. It concerns the Kiev “drevodel” (woodworkers). They were, so to speak, a distant counterpart to carpenters. Only they did not “chop” buildings; rather, they “built” them. The difference lies in the construction technique. “Chopping” means laying logs one on top of another, and, accordingly, a church or a log cabin is erected in this way.

And “gradit” means to erect supporting posts, which are then sheathed with either planks or thinner logs; alternatively, such structures may be circular or oval in plan, for example, and this could be a fortress. Accordingly, the guild of Kyiv carpenters, dated 1072, is the first clear and sufficiently detailed documentary reference to a guild of Russian craftsmen. The document in which this passage appears is a reading about the holy martyrs Boris and Gleb. “Reading” here refers to a moralizing document—a work—excerpts of which are read during church services. Accordingly, this reading describes the construction by this very guild of the Church of Saints Boris and Gleb in Vyshgorod near Kyiv. At that time, Vyshgorod was a small town belonging to the domain of the Grand Princes of Kyiv—to their personal estates, so to speak, or ancestral estates.

And Grand Prince Izyaslav Yaroslavich, son of Yaroslav the Wise—I will now quote this document, or rather a part of it—summoned the elder of the carpenters and commanded him to build a church. The foreman did so immediately; having gathered the carpenters under his command, he carried out the order given to him by the pious prince and, in a few days, built the church at the designated site. Here is the key phrase—this is what is very important. The Grand Prince summons the foreman and personally conveys the order to him, commanding him to “rebuild the church”—that is, he placed the order in Old Russian. And so the foreman immediately gathers all the carpenters under his command, and further on, the phrase “having fulfilled the command given to him by the pious one”—that is, by the prince—is used, right? So, “skonchav”—“skonchavat” is the verb—its primary meaning is “to carry out” or “to resolve.” But here, given the context, that doesn’t fit, and there’s a rarer meaning of this word: “to agree upon” or “to discuss.” It is precisely these terms that are appropriate here. In other words, the elder actually discussed with the carpenters—his fellow craftsmen—what had been ordered of him by the prince.

And then, he quickly built a church at the designated site. Then the elder, after construction was completed—I don’t know, it probably took a few weeks, because the church was small, as can be seen even from the miniatures included in the Silvestrovsky Collection. Both the church and its construction are depicted there. So the elder returns to Kyiv from Vyshhorod and reports to the prince—he personally reports to the prince on the progress of the construction. Then Izyaslav sent a message to the governor of Vyshhorod, saying, and I quote: “I am giving them from the princely tribute.” That is, he was giving the carpenters a portion of the princely tribute that came to Vyshhorod for the decoration of the church. The elder soon carried out what he had been ordered to do—that is, he fulfilled Izyaslav’s commission. And so, this entire story concludes with Metropolitan George of Kyiv, who solemnly transfers the relics of the saints to the new church. Meanwhile, the prince organizes a grand celebration with a feast for the entire region.

This excerpt is not here by chance, because these readings were specifically devoted to how unjustly these righteous princes—brothers—were treated, how they were allegedly killed by Svyatopolk the Accursed, and how, afterward, various miracles took place at their burial site. People discovered them in a miraculous way, and built one church, then a second, then a third, and various miracles continue to occur around these churches as well. That’s the entire document. Accordingly, this story is simply dedicated to how important it was for the next prince—yes, Izyaslav Yaroslavich—to build a new church dedicated to these important saints in place of the dilapidated one. So, here in this episode, what do we have? The funds to decorate the church are provided by the prince, not the elder. This is what’s needed—again, “I give them.” That is, I give money from the prince’s tribute to the brotherhood as a single entity. This is no coincidence, because similar phrases—such as “I give them from the prince’s tribute”—are also found in other ancient Russian texts.

Accordingly, the elder—despite all his importance—communicates with the prince, receives money from him, and is, in fact, accountable to the prince for the outcome of the construction, right? Legally, then, the elder has the status of merely a representative of the hired retinue, which acts as an independent legal entity. Now that’s what you call hitting the nail on the head. It may seem like a small fragment, but it already reveals very important characteristics of the guild. The elder is not an absolute leader, but, generally speaking, first among equals. Yes, he represents his guild before clients and the authorities, but in important matters, he consults with the guild. He oversees construction, but while the money is paid to him, it’s actually for the guild. These are very important details. Here are some parallels in Europe; the most interesting one also dates back to the 11th century: the Maestri Comacini.

This is in the north of modern-day Italy, around Lake Como; there was the small town of Como, and, accordingly, these lands were barren and uncultivated, and as early as the 11th century, itinerant stonemasons’ artels appeared there. “Arta,” “arteli,” “arta” in Italian. There was little arable land there, so they supplemented their income with construction work—in fact, exactly the same way as the Kiev woodworkers did. And these Comacine masters traveled throughout Northern and Central Italy in the 11th century, building the first Romanesque cathedrals. And again, far more documents from them have survived. Far more churches have been preserved, along with their foundations; consequently, we know an order of magnitude more about them than we do about the Kyiv woodworkers. The guild of Komachin masters included not only stonemasons, but also engineers, sculptors, plasterers, and artists. This was exactly the same as with the Kyiv woodworkers, because they first built the church and then decorated it themselves. Just like these Komachin masters. They had their own contractors.

Oleg Zhukov: They did it on a turnkey basis.

Vadim Bolshakov: Exactly.

Oleg Zhukov: Did they lay the foundation themselves, too?

Vadim Bolshakov: I can’t tell you that particular detail. Even if they didn’t do it themselves, they hired people—perhaps the brotherhood itself, or simply local residents—to perform less skilled work. At least, that’s how it was done in Rus’. There are repeated mentions that the brotherhood either hired workers or, in rare cases, might even have purchased some personally unfree builders. That used to happen. I think this was, in general, a common practice in Europe as well. They, too, had leaders—they had masters. And here, we had elders. And, accordingly, these masters directed the work of hundreds of journeymen and ordinary laborers. In what other trades did we have guilds? I won’t list these guilds right now, because there’s very little data on them, but there were still about a dozen by the 14th century. I’ll now name a dozen trades and crafts in which guilds began to emerge. In the 11th century, there were the “gradniki-ogorodniki”.

Moreover, it is unclear here whether this refers to vegetable gardeners—that is, say, a neighborhood of residents who engage in vegetable gardening, for example, and are united in a brotherhood—or whether it refers to builders of city fortifications. It is unclear. Next, church masons—referred to as “builders”—have been known since the 12th century specifically as a guild. Next, the wax merchants; we were just talking about the Ivanovsky Ste, which also dates to the 12th century. Novgorod shield makers, 12th century. 13th century: the carpenters of Galich—they were also mentioned in connection with the Church of St. Panteleimon; we’ll talk more about that later. 13th century: the merchant’s ship crew—these were essentially sailors and fighters in the merchant’s service. And, incidentally, they were specifically referred to as a “druzhina.” Early 14th century: seabird hunters. 14th century: itinerant Kaliki—these were pilgrims, or, let’s put it this way, a brotherhood of beggars who could travel not only throughout all of Rus’ but also abroad; they were organized, and—though this is mainly attested in later documents—they also had their own brotherhoods and maintained strict discipline. Perhaps in foreign lands, this helped them survive better as a group.

And finally, here are the 14th-century icon painters and blacksmiths of Novgorod. There are 10 such examples; including the first example, this makes 11 trades and crafts, of which 10 are classified as trades and only one is classified as a craft—and even that one is not very… [inaudible]—it belongs to the craft category. What’s important here is…

How does a craft differ from a “promyslo”?

Oleg Zhukov: All right. Then I’d like to ask you to explain to our listeners the difference between a craft and a “promyslo.”

Vadim Bolshakov: Yes, this is indeed an important point, because those unfamiliar with the subject might get confused. What’s the difference, anyway? Today, the distinction is barely noticeable; many people perceive these two words as synonyms. But in ancient times—and even in the 19th century, and even in Dal’s dictionary—a fairly clear distinction was still made. So, a “craft” refers to the main occupation of a townsman or peasant—working in one place, either alone or with an assistant, an apprentice, or a student. It involves living together, selling goods, and working for the market. And here are some examples I’ll just list to illustrate what a “craft” is, okay?

Moreover, these were most often urban crafts. Blacksmiths, potters, leatherworkers, shoemakers, bakers, and butchers—from whom, by the way, the authorities recruited executioners—this, too, is a sort of special detail of the interaction between the brotherhood and the authorities. And so on. Now, let’s talk about trades. These are seasonal occupations, and precisely because they are seasonal—for example, if it involves church construction, then it takes place only during the dry season, specifically in the summer. First and foremost, of course, it’s summer. Take, for example, the carters: they can travel either in winter, across frozen rivers, or in summer, along the roads. There are also certain seasons when the roads are simply washed out completely, and so on. In short, this is a supplementary occupation for both townspeople and peasants. Now, what exactly is this trade? It’s traveling in search of earnings. That is, if there’s a blacksmith or a potter there—he has his own workshop, he made something there, and took it to the market, to the bazaar, let’s say, or to the fair, as they used to say back then.

But here it’s different; here you can move from district to district, from city to city, from one large, wealthy client to another in the hope that they’ll give you work. This is the second difference: seasonality, movement in search of work, and collective labor. These are most often jobs that are very difficult to do alone or even with just one other person. And finally—wage labor. That is, while in our context a craft is primarily work for the market, here it is wage labor. And, by the way, it is precisely in these trades that the ancient guilds—these brotherhoods—are closer to the later forms of the labor movement, from which modern professional workers’ organizations have since emerged. And, in principle, they’re of greater interest to us now, and there are far more documents about them. Why are there more documents? Because, for example, take crafts, right? Judging by the first few centuries, of course, all these crafts existed—blacksmiths, potters, and so on.

But for wealthy clients—and these were, first and foremost, our princes; secondly, the princes of the church, that is, the monasteries; then the bishops; and finally, the wealthy merchants—of course, they were more than happy to purchase imported goods. These were of higher quality, even if they were more expensive. In other words, they were not particularly interested in the work of local artisans, and perhaps that is why there are fewer documents and fewer references to artisans specifically in the records from the early centuries.

Oleg Zhukov: There were some things, for example, that we didn’t produce—for instance, we didn’t manufacture bladed weapons for a very long time because there was no ore; we had nothing to forge steel from, and that’s why all our swords were imported. I think anyone familiar with military history knows this. So maybe they wanted to buy something locally, but there simply wasn’t any available.

Vadim Bolshakov: Yes, I was also referring to weaponsmiths, by the way. To be honest, this is still just my theory as to why there are so many fewer sources and references regarding the trades.

Because, in principle, I don’t know—should pottery be brought in from abroad? On the other hand, if a large order is placed with the potters by a prince or a monastery, then where might this be mentioned? Only in some business records, and those that have survived date only to the 16th, or even the 17th century—and there aren’t many from the 16th century either. Consequently, what about, for example, certain types of trades? First and foremost, merchants—that was also a trade. Or builders. Merchants, wealthy clients, wealthy suppliers of goods for the domestic market. Merchants, at the same time, were also scouts who traveled abroad. Consequently, merchants are generally mentioned more frequently in both documents and chronicles—including city chronicles. Take the Pskov and Novgorod chronicles, for example—these are classic documents that focus not so much on the history of the princes, as in other regions, but rather on the history of the urban community. Merchants appear more frequently there, yes. As for builders—again, these were churches, commissioned by the princes; there were monasteries, and so on.

Builders are mentioned very often, bridge builders are mentioned very often, as are carters and boatmen, because they are connected to trade. True, again, these are mainly German documents, of course. Icon painters, of course, also received commissions from princes, bishops, and so on. Therefore, they are better documented. Slightly better—let’s say, about ten times as well. Just a little bit. And the last thing I want to mention here is that the craftsmen’s records include references to the churches of their patron saints. There aren’t that many mentions either, but there are some; we’ll talk about that a little later as well. But as for the trade guilds—excluding the merchant guilds, since merchants had all sorts of churches—almost nothing is known about the churches of the other trade guilds. Consequently, while the life of a craft revolved around a church—its own church, with its own patron saint (more on that later)—the life of a trade and its guild likely revolved around its community or a communal gathering place. In other words, it was not a church.

Most likely, they simply commissioned certain services in the name of their patron saints at neighboring churches, for example, or they had their own side chapels in churches dedicated to their saints. But this has not yet been confirmed by any documents. But this is just a hypothesis. So, once again, for those who aren’t familiar with these trades—and crafts, for that matter—I’ll offer a hint. When we’re talking about Europe, the most common term for a craft organization is “cech.” There, it might be “gilde,” “amt,” or “innung,” but the main term is “cech,” of course. As for trade brotherhoods, they’re called “company,” “artel,” or “arta.” There’s sort of a distinction here. A “guild” is an association of these workshops and trade brotherhoods combined—that’s a whole other story, which we’ll discuss elsewhere. That’s the gist of it. It’s not all that simple; the lines are pretty blurred, and there are no clear boundaries, but we can roughly delineate these two categories.

Why did these brotherhoods emerge?

Oleg Zhukov: So, is everything clear on that? Then tell us when and why these brotherhoods began to emerge in Rus’.

Vadim Bolshakov: If we take, for example, a “promyslovy” brotherhood—yes, they could have arisen from pooled funds among merchants to purchase goods when traveling to a distant region, for instance. They could have emerged from a large patriarchal family—precisely from these uncultivated areas—whose inhabitants were forced, as entire families, to seek side jobs or alternative sources of income. And, for example, the early druzhinas—which were not yet trade guilds—were associations of members of these patriarchal extended families formed to pay certain fines or taxes to the authorities. This is known from the Russkaya Pravda, in particular. Now, if we return to these families from uncultivated areas—they had to make a living somehow, since there was no harvest. The simplest solution here was for them to form a brotherhood of beggars or robbers. This, too, was essentially a trade guild. And they engaged in their trade.

Oleg Zhukov: Illegal, as I understand it.

Vadim Bolshakov: Beggars are perfectly legal, but bandits—these very bandits—could, after all, be hired as a retinue by some merchant, for example.

And, accordingly, when they needed to protect something—and when they didn’t—they could also rob. Actually. They could rob their competitors. That is, here…

Oleg Zhukov: In short, it depends on who pays. If you pay, they’ll protect you; if you don’t, they’ll rob you.

Vadim Bolshakov: Absolutely right. They could have simply gone off on their own, in which case they would have been nothing but bandits. But again, this material is from a later period—all the way up to the 18th–19th centuries. Other such brotherhoods engaged in collective labor. There were porters, carters, builders, boat builders, hunters, and so on. And in fact, yes, their services often proved useful to the authorities, and accordingly, there are references to this. Here, among the examples, there’s one that’s particularly interesting—I’d like to say a few words about it: the “khodebshchiki-ofeni.” These peddlers—and peasants did this too—would carry small goods from village to village: spoons, thread, needles, cheap jewelry, icons—things like that.

And so this Ofen peddling trade was passed down through inheritance along with the capital earned, the connections, the geography of the trading journeys, and various trade secrets. These brotherhoods of the Ofen people are, of course, known from later times. We’re talking about an earlier period now, while the Ofens and their brotherhood date back to the 17th century. But they existed even earlier; this is evident from a number of characteristics. And aside from a communal fund or pooled resources, let’s say, yes, their main function was protective—against those very same bandits or the arbitrariness of local authorities. And by the 18th century, these peddlers had developed a special secret language. In Catherine II’s Russian dictionary, this language is referred to as the Suzdal dialect. That was around the end of the 18th century, right? It was first documented then through a whole series of words. And the main purpose of this secret language was to ensure that buyers—primarily peasants, whom the “ofeni” called “lohas”—wouldn’t understand what the “ofeni” were saying among themselves.

Oleg Zhukov: So, you’re not joking—they really did call them “suckers”?

Vadim Bolshakov: Exactly.

Oleg Zhukov: Is that exactly what this ancient word means? Is it a peasant-buyer?

Vadim Bolshakov: Exactly.

The Ofen language became one of the foundations of modern prison slang—in fact, its main foundation. This can be traced; in fact, there are several excellent dictionaries of the Ofen language. As far as I recall, they contain between two and three thousand words documented in various examples, including documentary sources. And there are hundreds of overlaps with this prison slang. I was interested in this topic for a while, and yes, indeed, this connection is clearly evident. And here’s another interesting parallel: church stonemasons in Europe—we know what they were called. We’re all familiar with them: Freemasons. A brotherhood dedicated to working with soft stone—marble, for example, or limestone. Now here’s what’s interesting: the symbolic language used by modern Freemasons, who have little in common with the original stonemasons, right?

So this symbolic language—it began to emerge around the same time, in the Middle Ages—and it not only had its own specific terms that carried a special, hidden meaning from outsiders, right? But it also had its own rituals; incidentally, I wouldn’t be surprised if builders in ancient Rus’ also had such rituals. There are simply no documents on this subject. But the Europeans, of course, had their own traditions; it was extremely important to preserve the secrets of their craft. Very few documents remain from the Masonic builders—one of the reasons being precisely to leave as few traces as possible. I’d also like to say a few words here about the stone construction of churches. For the most part, they used plinfa—essentially ancient bricks. Rus’ knew almost nothing about stone or brick before its baptism, but I’ve already mentioned that, haven’t I? According to the historian Rappoport, the first brotherhood of church builders arrived after the Christianization of Rus’ as part of the entourage of the first Archbishop of Kyiv from Byzantium. This was at the very end of the 10th century. The Greeks took on Russian apprentices and journeymen and trained them.

And they had already established their own brotherhoods of builders, which had split off from the Kyiv brotherhood. Builders—that is, ecclesiastical stonemasons. The Chernihiv brotherhood, the Pereyaslav brotherhood, the Novgorod brotherhood, the Galich brotherhood, the Polotsk brotherhood, the Smolensk brotherhood, and so on. And each of them gradually developed into its own school of architectural design. And so, by meticulously examining the ruins of churches—and there were a great many of them built across Rus’, just as in Europe—one of the medieval European monks even coined a phrase to describe this enormous number of churches being built simultaneously: “a white veil of churches.” This was particularly relevant to Rus’ as well. So Rappoport compiled an entire table detailing the emergence of these builder brotherhoods—I’ll show this table here in the video sequence; let’s play it. It also traces the movement of these brotherhoods across the various lands of pre-Mongol Rus’. By the middle of the thirteenth century, there were more than ten of them—perhaps as many as 12 or 13 such brotherhoods.

By the way, after the Mongol invasion, most builders either perished or fled from the Horde, and stone and brick architecture in Rus’ came to a halt for a full 40 years. There is literally not a single mention of it. Not a single one…

Oleg Zhukov: Or they were taken captive by the Mongols.

Vadim Bolshakov: So they either fled or were taken into slavery—of course, yes, that’s true. Thank you for clarifying that; I hadn’t really explained that crucial detail. Of course, they built sheds on the Volga and all sorts of palaces for the local Mongol nobility, yes. In fact, stone architecture in Rus’—the trade of stonemasons—wasn’t revived until the end of the 13th century. Otherwise, there are no ruins, no documentary references. That’s a very important point. Now, regarding the trades. In large settlements, practitioners of a single craft lived together. This is, generally speaking, understandable, because it was more convenient both for them and for the entire urban community. For example, the blacksmiths’ quarter. It was always a fire hazard.

This is also obvious, and, by the way, cities often burned down precisely because fires started in blacksmiths’ workshops. That is why blacksmiths had to settle closer to the water. In fact, there is even a document stating that in 1500, the bakers, blacksmiths, and kalach makers of Veliky Novgorod were relocated outside the city walls to live in the countryside precisely for fire safety reasons. Further out were the neighborhoods of butchers and tanners. They, too, were sources of foul odors, sewage, and all sorts of disease there, so they also had to settle separately—and downstream along the river. This was extremely important, because otherwise they would have contaminated the water supply for the rest of the city. And so on. And in the cities, these quarters were, in fact, named accordingly—there were the blacksmiths, carpenters, bast workers, belt makers, and so on. Artisans also tried to trade together. That is, they lived together, worked together, and traded together. Because at the market, it’s safer, there are more buyers, and it’s better for the buyers—they have more choice. And while they could compete there, they more often agreed on prices and the products in general.

Oleg Zhukov: Regarding the volume.

Vadim Bolshakov: Yes, of course. It’s easier to understand both the total number of buyers and the volume of demand this way. And a whole range of other circumstances as well. And so, at the city market, the stalls were arranged in rows. And they were called by those names there too—the kalach bread sellers’ row, the blacksmiths’ row, the clothing row, and so on. And each of these rows could be a guild known as a “row.” That is, “row” was one of the names—I’ll talk more about this later—for craft guilds. And so, organizing around joint sales allowed artisans to become less tied to their place of residence. That is, they could be more widely dispersed—and there, say, in the 16th–17th centuries, if we look at city censuses and census records, yes—representatives of these various crafts often lived scattered throughout the city. Precisely because their main center of attraction was the marketplace, where they had their own row and their own organization. Moreover, in their own neighborhood or at the marketplace—and later this increasingly took place at the marketplace, yes, near their own row—they built a chapel or church dedicated to their heavenly patron.

In particular, those who worked with metal had such heavenly patrons. These were Saints Cosmas and Damian. For leatherworkers, it was Saints Boris and Gleb, by the way. Butchers had Saint Vlasiy. Merchants had Paraskeva Pyatnitsa, and so on and so forth. Back then, the entire life of a guild revolved around its church. Later on, we’ll be able to discuss exactly which aspects of the guild’s life were connected to that particular church. That’s actually very interesting as well. So, generally speaking…

Oleg Zhukov: Can we compare an Old Russian artisan brotherhood to a European guild?

Vadim Bolshakov: Yes. Yes, there are very clear parallels, especially in documents from the 16th and 17th centuries, when European guilds united various artisan workshops and various trade brotherhoods. In other words, they could even combine crafts and trades within the same organization. In Rus’, there were also similar types of associations that were formed, for example, at the initiative of the authorities, but they took the form of druzhinas.

Later on, we can also talk about this in more detail—about such groups as the European guilds.

Names, Structure, and Self-Governance

Oleg Zhukov: That seems clear enough as well. Let’s move on to the next question. What were the brotherhoods called, how were they organized, and how did they govern themselves?

Vadim Bolshakov: Well, here, generally speaking, of course, it’s a real jumble—an incredible wealth and diversity. There was no single name for them. There weren’t any clear distinctions. So I can simply list some of them here—for example, I’ll list a few names now—to help you understand just how diverse these brotherhoods were. Then I’ll try to paint a general picture, although it will be perfectly clear that none of the actual brotherhoods fully fits this picture. That is, you see, I’m kind of gathering these scraps to sew together a general patchwork quilt, but at the same time, this will be something approximate, because after all, we have too little data. So, first, the names. In the merchants’ guilds, there were first “sty,” then “rows,” and then “hundreds.”

Falconers were hunters of—again—birds used for hunting; they had “vatagi.” Sailors had “arteli,” and icon painters had “bratia.” Moreover, these were different eras and different regions, and the names could have shifted or extended to various trades and crafts. The most widespread was the “druzhina.” It has been known since around the beginning of the 12th century, as evidenced by a letter from Zhiznomiir to Mikula of Novgorod—specifically, a birch-bark letter, which we’ll discuss later—and a significant portion of it has survived. Thus, the “druzhina” as a form of brotherhood survived almost to the present day; even in the early 20th century, there were fishermen’s brotherhoods in the Novgorod Governorate that were called “druzhinas.” And in the 17th century, the Croatian scholar and traveler Yuri Krizhanich arrived in Muscovy, and in his notes he referred to all Russian brotherhoods of that time—whether trade- or craft-based—as “druzhinas.” In other words, this was the most common name used.

In the crafts, too, there was diversity: in Northeastern Rus’, there were the “bratchina” for blacksmiths, the “stanitsa” for coin makers, and the “ryad” and “slobodka” for silversmiths and musket makers. So, as you can see, there are a lot of such differences, whereas in Southwestern Rus’, guilds began to appear as early as the 14th century. These were genuine, classical European-style guilds based on Magdeburg Law. Simply put, Magdeburg Law is a code of rules governing the self-governance of an urban community, its internal organization, and its interactions with the authorities—as well as with various internal communities within the city, for example. There were other forms of law there as well, but here we’re focusing specifically on Magdeburg Law. And so, the first shoemakers’ guild—the very first guild known to us in the Russian lands—was the shoemakers of Peremyshl. The year was 1386. This was also in the land of Galicia. And then, 80 years later—and this is also a very important detail—just 80 years later, there was a “gospoda” of journeyman weavers in Lviv. “Gospoda” here refers to governing bodies; for example, the “gospoda” was the governing body of Great Pskov.

Here, it may be the governing body of the journeymen’s brotherhood. Or perhaps the brotherhood itself was called that. Parallels to this kind of transition and these kinds of names also exist in Europe and in other lands of Rus’. So, in 1469, in Lviv, the journeymen—that is, wage laborers, who were already as close as possible to the wage laborers of the 18th–19th centuries—already had their own association. Moreover, it emerged very quickly after the adoption of the weavers’ guild’s charter. Less than 10 years had passed when the “gospoda” of these journeymen had already emerged. Again, the document is brief, and very little can be gleaned from it. But for some people, this was enough to claim that this is the oldest labor union in the world. Of course, one can only smile at this, but the fact itself is extraordinarily interesting. Now, regarding its structure and self-governance. And here we have this patchwork quilt—the big picture. First, the structure, right? At its peak—that is, in its developed state during the late period, the 16th–17th centuries—the brotherhood was built, or could be built, on three stories.

And in some ways, it resembled a prince’s retinue. So I hope this will also help those of our viewers and listeners who are interested, yes, but who aren’t really familiar with the subject, right? The prince’s retinue. The prince, followed by the senior retinue and the junior retinue. The occupational brotherhood. And part of the craft guilds. The elder, followed by the master craftsmen, and finally the young men, children, and so on. In other words, this is the junior retinue among workers in these trades and craftsmen. Now, in more detail. At the top is the leader, right? The foreman, the elder, the old man, the captain, the steersman, the overseer, the architect—there are a hell of a lot of titles for him—but it’s clear that his sole function was almost always to represent the group in dealings with clients, the authorities, the church, and the city community.

Oleg Zhukov: And was he elected?

Vadim Bolshakov: Not always—far from always. Most often, we cannot tell from these fragmentary documentary records, but quite often, judging by how he behaves and how the members of the brotherhood treat him, yes, he is, of course, an elected official.

Let’s talk some more about the elder now. There’s the Illustrated Chronicle Compilation. It’s a chronicle compiled specifically for the young Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. And there are a huge number of beautifully colored miniatures in it; they relate directly to the text and explain it, and there are certain details there that aren’t in the text but are in the miniatures, so you can see how all of this actually worked. And again, there’s an episode—which I’ll just touch on briefly now, though I’ll discuss it in more detail later—where, in one of the miniatures in the Illustrated Chronicle Compilation, the elder is depicted with a beard, unlike the other members of the brotherhood. This is also important because it emphasized his experience and authority. And for the medieval artist who created the miniature, it was important to highlight his significance and role. There was usually only one elder in a brotherhood. Sometimes there were two, three, or even six. Six is an exceptional example known to us, but there were surely many others like it. This is the Ivanskoye Hundred, again, a merchant brotherhood. Why?

Because it played a huge role in the economic life of Veliky Novgorod, and it was precisely for the purpose of oversight by the city or the church that several elders were sent to the council—let’s put it that way; this is, of course, a modern term. The city sent several elders so that the activities of the brotherhood could be monitored. More on this in a moment. Furthermore, the elder could be elected by the brotherhood. In this case, he was accountable to the brotherhood and could be removed from office or even executed. There are actually such passages in the bylinas, but nevertheless, the elder wielded very great authority over ordinary members, extending even to sole jurisdiction—so to speak—during the pre-election period. But most likely, he was elected until complaints arose against him or, in fact, for life. Regarding sole jurisdiction: this is very important in the fishing industry. We know how the lives of medieval guilds were regulated by the Ustyan Code—these are written documents—and the Mezen Maritime Charter. They were recorded in the first half of the 18th century but are based on a very ancient tradition, and this is generally evident in them.

This is evident in the text itself. For example, in the fishing industry, if the elders were disobeyed—he was most often called the helmsman—he could even appeal to the authorities. And if he, for instance, sentenced someone to punishment, including even death, the authorities could carry out that punishment, no more and no less. By the way, there is a saying from long ago: “A cooperative is strong because of its ataman.” Indeed, this is a very important characteristic, because they would choose a person whom the cooperative would unquestionably obey—even in extreme or exceptional situations—and a person who represented something important to the authorities or clients.

Oleg Zhukov: Can we compare him in any way to a pirate captain?

Vadim Bolshakov: Definitely. Moreover, this is also preserved in modern maritime law. In fact, the captain generally performs a whole range of functions during long-distance voyages, including—as far as I know—police functions and, it seems, even judicial functions. Here’s something I haven’t specifically analyzed—I know these are the kinds of scenes depicted in movies—but I found it very interesting to read about this in these two 18th-century charters; it’s actually very reminiscent of that. Take the “ofeni,” specifically among the “khodebshchiki”—among them, the position of elder could be inherited. That’s something we know quite well, right? And this is what’s important, because let’s now compare the prince here with the elder, shall we? The prince is originally considered… First, the meaning: a prince is the elder of the clan. It’s an Old Germanic word, borrowed into Slavic from Old Germanic. First, he’s the elder of the clan, right? Second, he could be elected. He wasn’t always elected, but he could be. Third, if, for example, the principality was passed down by inheritance, this could only happen with the approval of the druzhina. We know this even from chronicles dating back to the 10th century and the early 11th century in Rus’.

Furthermore, the prince, naturally, represented the druzhina and led it, representing it before the realm, before the foreign authorities there, and before the city community. And he wielded very significant authority over the rank-and-file druzhina members. But at the same time, the druzhina could, in fact, leave. That is, they could leave him, abandon him, and then, essentially, he was doomed. And again, the chronicles provide a couple of such examples. Now, moving on to the middle tier. These are our master craftsmen. They are the boyars, the senior druzhina members—the prince’s senior druzhina, right? And here, in trades and crafts—more often in trades—the master craftsmen, also called “drugi” or “muzhi,” report directly to the elder. There are actually more titles there as well. And these are professionals in their field; they are personally free. Of course, these are usually mature people, and perhaps even elderly ones. Documents sometimes refer to them by name—not as “Demesha the Soapmaker,” as it were, but rather as “Ivan Ivanovich,” plain and simple, right? And that signifies their high status. So this isn’t just meant to be ironic, as I just said, right?

Here is a charter from Ivan Kalita to the Pechersk falconers, who were led by Ataman Zhila. This dates to the 1330s. And this charter lists by name the entire permanent membership of the “vataga.” A “vataga” is also a type of brotherhood. Nineteen names. Alyusha, Vasilko, Stepan, Karp, Fedets, Ostroga, and so on. And they are all listed by name—not by chance. Because this princely letter of protection not only safeguards the brotherhood itself and grants a whole range of privileges, but also personally protects every permanent member of this brotherhood. A guild often brought together representatives of related trades. We’ve already discussed this in relation to builders, right? And a guild could number in the tens, sometimes even hundreds of members. These were, of course, rare cases, but nonetheless, there were even guilds with hundreds of members. There, in particular, in the mid-16th century, for example, right? That’s about one and a half hundred, two hundred people. Of course, this wasn’t the norm, but it did happen. And it stands to reason that in production, the senior members of these guilds served as foremen or crew leaders.

And, by the way, in Europe, too, early and related trades were grouped into brotherhoods—all of them, and even dozens of such trades. And here again, we can compare this to the senior or foremost retinue, which consisted of boyars or the prince’s men. It’s the same. If here, apparently, each of the senior master craftsmen in a trade guild had his own teams—so to speak—or units, then in fact the prince’s men had their own retinues. Sometimes they were called regiments there, although a regiment is, generally speaking, a city militia. That’s beside the point. Each of these boyars had cohesive, armed detachments under their command. And finally, the lower tier. At the very bottom were, naturally, young apprentices, masters with little experience, and all sorts of temporary workers—that is, those hired on a temporary basis by the guild. In various documents, they were referred to as “children” or “boys”—as I’ve already mentioned—and there were quite a few different names for them as well. And apparently—though there’s no documentary evidence to confirm this—they were organized into brigades or teams for all the work carried out by the guild.

And here again we recall the prince’s junior druzhina. And there, serving in it—or rather, residing there—are the kmeti and the gridi. We know, for example, the word griddnitsa, right? This is, in general, the communal quarters where the gridi—that is, the junior druzhina members—live or stay. Furthermore, the younger retinue also includes young men and children, as indicated by their titles. So, in general, the parallels here are quite consistent. It’s possible that some of this may not be confirmed by the discovery of new documents or new research, but, in my opinion, the parallels are significant.

Oleg Zhukov: I think we’ll wrap things up for today. What do you think?

Vadim Bolshakov: I think so.

Oleg Zhukov: For a first try, I think it turned out great. I found it very interesting. I hope our viewers and listeners found it just as interesting.

We hope you’ll continue watching our episodes, subscribe to our channel, give us a like, and be sure to write whatever you feel is necessary in the comments. Be sure to ask Vadim any questions you may have.

At the end of this extensive segment on artisan and industrial brotherhoods, we’ll definitely do an episode answering your questions—no matter how many there are, we’ll answer them all, so don’t hesitate to ask. I personally have already accumulated a lot of questions for Vadim. I’ll ask them to him, and we’ll answer them in the next episodes. That’s all for today. This has been the “Workers’ History” channel, with Oleg Zhukov and Vadim Bolshakov. Bye for now, Vadim.

Vadim Bolshakov: Bye, friends. Bye, Oleg.