The Calling-In of the Varangians: Tribal Conflict, Treaty and the Beginning of Urban Law

A conflict situation is characteristic of the era of urbanization. Urban communities (communes of West European towns) were not united by blood (tribal) kinship: overcoming these conflicts required treaty (pact) relations sealed by an oath (conjuratio); in the Old Russian tradition, such an oath corresponded to a ryad. In the typological aspect, when studying the urbanization processes, “special importance ... have those groups that arise not on the basis of kinship, but on the basis of consent and agreement”, archaic oral law (O.G. Oexle). In Old Rus’, this also applies to relations between the multi-ethnic population of the most ancient towns and the power of the Old Russian princes, based on the retinue, the Rus’.