Once Again about Sepulchral Elite Rite of Pagan Rus

Abstract

The first state formation of the Eastern Slavs, known to contemporaries under the name of “Rus land” or “Rus”, and designated by the desk researchers of subsequent generations as “Kyivan Rus” or “Old Rus state”, entered European history as the time when the new and young feudal society went the way from paganism to Orthodoxy, from primitive communal structures to civilization. At the initial stage of its existence, it was referred to as the “armed force” state. At that time, it was representatives of the military contingents of the Grand Prince of Kyiv who implemented the main control over the collection of taxes and the fulfillment of judicial functions in the world of the Eastern Slavs, who gradually came under the control of the grand princes family of Rurikovich. With regard to the actual implementation of the new government by the young rulers of the new European state at this stage of studying all the details of the functioning of this social organism, due to the lack of a sufficient number of written sources, there is a shortage of objective information. Therefore, archaeological realities significantly complement this gap. And first of all it concerns the burial monuments of the pagan period, when, ideologically, the burial rite displayed a specific place in the “earthly” life of members of society who left the “other world,” primarily representatives of its social elite. Details of the burial in the so-called log-like or chamber tombs, as well as burial with weapons, in particular, in the territory of the southern Rus region, in many ways actually reflect such processes in the evolution of the development of early-state structures.