Neighborhood community among the Eastern Slavs: education and historical significance. Neighborhood community: one of the original forms of social organization of mankind

The neighborhood community was a more complex formation than tribal community in primitive social organization.

We can say that the neighborhood community is a transitional stage between a tribal society and a class society. How did the neighborhood community come about?

Reasons for the formation

There were several prerequisites for the emergence of a new social formation:

Primitive tribes grew over time, and the blood connection between their constituent clans and individual members ceased to be realized;
The transition from hunting and gathering to pastoralism and agriculture accelerated the division of land between parts of large tribes;
The improvement of labor tools, in particular, the appearance of metal means of cultivating the land, made it possible for individual cultivation of a plot, as opposed to group cultivation.

Thus, the transition from the tribal system to the neighboring one was an objective consequence of human development.

Was it possible to "keep" the disintegrating community?

In many philosophical systems, the separation of mankind is called one of the main social vices. In different eras, "world religions" and cultural trends tried to find a means of uniting large masses of people separated by national, religious, property and other differences. But was it possible to preserve the primitive community?

The tribal community turned into a neighboring one slowly and gradually. Even with the advent of cattle breeding and primitive agriculture, the tribes continued to live and work together: arable land and pastures were considered common property, which was processed jointly, the harvest was distributed equally among the members of the community.

Inequality between people manifested biological. For example, when migrating to other places, the weakest members of the tribe remained in the old territory or did not survive at all, and when they moved, newcomers who were not relatives to the rest of the tribe joined him. Someone died on a hunt or in a war; someone could work more than the average member of the community.

Owners of increased physical and mental strength, as well as more "tricked out" tools, were not required to share the harvest and booty obtained with the help of these advantages. In a later era, living space was distributed as follows: hunting grounds remained public property, but each clan or family owned the cultivated plots separately.

In the first half of the X century. a social trend made itself felt, which, steadily gaining strength over the next century, eventually led to a complete degeneration of the social organization of the Eastern Slavs: a transition was laid from tribal to zemstvo (territorial-administrative) and political unions. In various regions of the Russian land (and beyond) this process occurred unevenly and with varying degrees of intensity. We will describe only its general scheme.

In the initial period of settlement by the Slavs of the East European Plain (VI-VII centuries), the patriarchal tribal community was the basis of social organization. Each such large group of relatives owned about 70-100 km2 of surrounding lands, since the slash-and-shift farming system required the development of a territory that was 10-15 times the area of annual sowing.

The tribal community and the land it occupied were called horses. The conceptual facets of the Old Slavonic word kon (from the Ind.-Heb. kon / ken - "to arise", "to begin") are extremely diverse: it is generally a frontier, a limit, a boundary, a limited place; and the beginning lost in time (hence the words "from time immemorial", "quietly" and expressions like "this is where the horse of our land came from"); and the completion of something ("the end", "finish", "his end has come", that is, turn, death, death); and sustainable order in nature and society ("law", "pokon"). The community was for the ancient man the beginning and the end, the owner of the land, the source of legal norms.

The military organization of the horse was called "hundred" and united ends or dozens - large patriarchal (three-generation) families that made up the tribal community. One of the ends was revered as the oldest, descending directly from the patron ancestor (usually legendary), who once gave life to the whole family. An elder of such an end, "owning his clans", led the con community by the right of seniority and was called "horse", "prince", that is, "the oldest in the family", "the ancestor of the horse." Ten kindred horses made up a "small tribe" that put up a "thousand" in the field. One of these horses, again, claimed to be of great antiquity of origin compared to others and was considered the first, "princely". All small tribes related to each other in their totality were covered by a common tribal name ("Radimichi", "Krivichi", etc.). The territory belonging to the union of small tribes was called the land, and the general tribal militia was called the regiment or darkness 1 . The tribal hierarchy of seniority was preserved at this level as well. In the union of small tribes, one "oldest" small tribe stood out with the oldest "princely" horse, in which the head of the oldest "princely" end reigned. It was he who was recognized by the rest of the small tribes as the prince of the earth.

1 In practice, the decimal principle of military organization among the ancient Slavs was very arbitrary and only approximately corresponded to the exact numerical concept of ten, hundreds, thousands, ten thousand ("darkness"). A thousand originally meant something like "big hundred". Other-glory, pulk ("multitude, people") are related to other Greek. polls ("a lot"), etc. German. Volk, folk ("crowd, army"). Darkness had the same meaning - "an innumerable (dark) multitude". Rapprochement of other Russian. darkness with a Turk, tu men, fog (10,000, 100,000) happened later.

Scheme of the location of archeological monuments of the IX-XV centuries. Zharovsky end of the Zhabensky volost:
a - settlement; b - settlements; c - barrow groups; settlements of the XIV-XVI centuries; e - toponyms;
e - accumulations of monuments; g - approximate boundaries of the Zharovsky end

Subsequently, natural population growth, accompanied by technological progress in the field of agriculture, led to the growth of the tribal community and, ultimately, to its transformation into a rural community. The ubiquitous distribution of the ral with a snake and the final transition during the 10th century. to steam farming system 2 eliminated the need for joint labor of the entire community for clearing and cultivating arable land and made possible the existence of individual farms. Large patriarchal families (“ends”) emerged from the kona community, which then themselves broke up into so-called undivided families consisting of a father and adult (married) sons. As a result, the number of settlements in some areas increased by five times (with m.: Timoshchuk B.A. East Slavic community VI-X centuries. n. e. M., 1990. S. 86 ) . Studies of monuments of material culture of the first half of the 10th century. revealed approximately the same picture of the structure of the rural community in different East Slavic lands.
The vast majority of rural settlements of that time, concentrated in the Dnieper and Carpathian regions, are small clusters of dwellings (from two to six in a group) on the banks of large and small rivers; each dwelling (semi-dugout with a stove-heater) is designed to accommodate four to six people who are able to jointly conduct independent economic activities. Nearby are burial mounds with single burials, which replaced the collective burial tombs. About a dozen of these group settlements and individual estates usually make up, as it were, a "bunch" or "nest" of settlements, located on a plot of land ranging from 70 to 100 km2. Each "nest" is surrounded by a strip of uninhabited lands 20-30 km wide - a kind of border territory separating it from another "nest". A similar structure of Slavic settlements is usually considered as archaeological evidence of the growth of large patriarchal families and the separation of undivided families from them, in which for some time the tradition was preserved not to separate married sons, because "only this can explain the existence of an undivided, two-generation family consisting of a father and his adult sons "( There. S. 27). In the northern lands, large patriarchal families continued to exist in many places, the disintegration of which was delayed adverse conditions management.

2 The fallow system (two-field and three-field) "could get complete and final completion only in the presence of winter rye" ( Kiryanov A.V. The history of agriculture in the Novgorod land X-XV centuries. (According to archaeological data) // Materials and research on archeology of the USSR. 1959. No. 65. P. 333). The earliest finds of winter rye in the East Slavic lands date back to the 9th century. Steam farming developed mainly on old arable lands. When expanding arable fields, undercut and fallow were still used.

Having developed from a tribal community with its customs of hostel, mutual assistance and joint housekeeping, the rural community has retained many of its inherent features. The land remained in collective ownership, the use of reservoirs, forests, hayfields, and pastures was still carried out jointly. Community cohesion was manifested in the joint administration of religious rituals, household and calendar holidays, as well as in the collective financial responsibility of the community to the supreme authority for the fulfillment of duties and taxes, and before the law for the offenses of individual members of the community. Peasant family nests, which jointly owned land and jointly corrected duties, were preserved in separate Russian lands until the very end of the 18th century. Their existence is indicated, in particular, by the presence in Russia of many villages with endings in -ichi, -ovichi, -vtsy (after the name of the ancestor): Miryatichi, Dedich, Dedogostich, etc. It is no coincidence that Russian people are used to even addressing a stranger with words taken from the circle of family relations: uncle, mother, father, son, granddaughter, grandfather, grandmother, etc. Thus, the tribal consciousness reproduced tribal relations even in those tribal unions that were no longer properly tribal.

Since the undivided families that emerged from the extended family communities did not lose their sense of “original” (tribal, social, and territorial) unity, the ancient tribal terminology also remained in use, but its content was radically updated. The tribal principle of division (and association) of society was replaced by the territorial (zemstvo) principle. The East Slavic rural community of the 10th century, the heir to the ancestral horse, turned into a territorial association of undivided families, for the most part still connected by ties of kinship 3 , but already economically independent. The end has now become the main communal unit, but already as a territorial-administrative unit, a union of rural communities that arose on the site of a fragmented large family community. In ancient Russian sources, the Slavic rural community is often also referred to as a vervy. The meanings of both words - "end" and "rope" - almost completely coincide. "Rope" is a thread, a cord, a rope, usually used for measuring land, as well as the land measure itself 4 . The same is the "end": thread, yarn, measure of length (2 m 13 cm). Consequently, in both cases, the transformation into a social term took place on a similar semantic basis and according to the same scheme. "Rope", "end", taken in the social sense, meant the same thing - a rural community, consisting of relatives 5, and at the same time the land belonging to this community. Apparently, these were equivalent concepts in different Slavic dialects. The territorial-administrative term "end" was used mainly by the Slavs living in the upper reaches of the Dnieper and to the north, while the term "verv" was used in the southern Russian lands. "Kon" also did not disappear from the language. Article 38 of Russian Pravda contains the expression "to drive by horses", which certainly means a detour or a detour by the participants in the trial of neighboring communities. Thus, "con" here is equal to "end", "vervi".

3 In particular, this is evidenced by the fact that in the IX-XI centuries. families living in neighboring settlements continued to bury the dead in the common family cemetery (see: Sedov V.V. Rural settlements in the central regions of the Smolensk land (VIII-XV centuries) // Materials and research on archeology of the USSR. 1960. No. 92. P. 17).

4 "They took away, sir, a village from us ... and arable land, sir, there are five ropes in it."

5 Among the Serbs, a relative is called a vervnik. A similar East Slavic term uzik, "relative", comes from the word uz', which also means rope, among other things.

Corresponding changes have also been made to the military registration terms, which now began to be applied not to the military units of the tribal militia, but to the territories. The concept of "hundred" was transferred to the "end", which adopted the conditional decimal principle of the territorial-administrative structure. For example, the Livnsky end in Smolensk land (the basin of the Volost River, a tributary of the Dnieper) in the 10th century. consisted of eleven settlements (ten Krivichi and one belonging to the Vyatichi); there were nine settlements in the neighboring Moshninsky end (see: Sedov V.V. Rural settlements of the central regions of the Smolensk land (VIII-XV centuries). pp. 144-147, 151-153). According to the sources of the XII century. "Snovskaya Thousand" is known - a territorial-administrative formation on the river. Snovi, with a length of about 100 km, where two centuries earlier a dozen or hundreds of ends could well have been accommodated. "Darkness" began to mean "land" (principality) - "Kyiv darkness", "Chernigov darkness", etc.

The formation of the zemstvo principle of community organization introduced important innovations in the beginning of self-government of rural communities. Many tribal orders have sunk into the past. This primarily concerned the composition of the popular assemblies, which were previously attended by all the adult men of the Kona community. Now tribal democracy has given way to zemstvo democracy. There was, so to speak, a representative veche. The right to participate in meetings was delegated to the heads of undivided families. The removal (or rather self-elimination) of the majority of community members from participation in the political life of not only the “land” as a whole, but even their “hundreds” was due to the natural course of things, since with a significant territorial spread of community settlements within the end / vervi, regularly collect all the male population was not easy, and not always possible - say, in the midst of field work or in the event of a sudden external threat.

The chronicle mentions elders ( "foremen of hundreds 6) or sotsky, who led the detachments of the zemstvo militia - ends / hundreds. It must be that the elders belonged to the tribal aristocracy and during the war they performed the functions of communal governors, possibly on an elective basis. It is possible that the leaders of the oldest tribal nest-horses, who once let out their ends / ropes, were now called this way. Having ceased to be absolute masters over the life and death of the faithful, they, probably, for some time in the old manner were called "princes", that is, gentlemen, nobles, noble people. But the term "prince" in this sense was gradually replaced by the term "boyar". Gradually, under the "prince" in Russia began to understand mainly the political sovereign - "Russian prince" 7, a representative of the grand ducal dynasty of Kyiv. This, apparently, explains the fact that, while mentioning in passing the East Slavic "principalities" - the remnants of tribal administrations - the chronicle is silent about the East Slavic "princes" - elders who headed these archaic institutions.

6 The word "headman" is not directly related to age. The original meaning of the word "old" - "strongly standing, solid, durable" - reflected the social dignity of a person. In many Slavic languages (Czech, Slovak, Upper Lusatian, etc.), the word "headman" has precisely the social meaning: "steward", "overseer", "head", "leader", "chief", "community elder" (cm.: Fasmer M. Etymological Dictionary. T. III. S. 747). The presence among the Slavs of the decimal principle of military, and later zemstvo organization and the leadership of the elders over the detachments of the zemstvo militia, testified by the annals, make the etymology of the word "starosta" as "senior hundred", "leader over a hundred" - first as a military unit, and then territorial-administrative districts.

7 Konstantin Porphyrogenitus ("On the management of the empire") contrasts the "autocratic archons" (princes) of the Slavs with their "elders-zhupans" (ancestral elders).

Eastern Slavs - a cultural and linguistic community of Slavs who speak East Slavic languages.

The language of the Eastern Slavs - the ancestors of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians - long time(until the 13th century) was one. But over time, he changed. Already in the Old Russian language there were tens of thousands of words, but no more than two thousand go back to the ancient, common Slavic language. New words were either formed from common Slavic ones, or were a rethinking of the old ones, or were borrowed.

As for the external appearance of the Eastern Slavs, according to the descriptions of ancient historians, they were vigorous, strong, tireless. Despising the bad weather characteristic of the northern climate, they endured hunger and every need. The Slavs surprised the Greeks with their tirelessness and speed. They cared little about their appearance, believing that the main beauty of men is the strength of the body, strength in the hands and ease of movement. The Greeks praised the Slavs for their slenderness, tall stature and courageous pleasant face. This description of the Slavs and Antes was left by the Byzantine historians Procopius of Caesarea and Mauritius, who knew them as early as the 6th century.

By the 17th century, on the basis of the East Slavic community, the following were formed (in descending order of numbers): Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian peoples.

In the VIII-IX centuries. several associations of Eastern Slavs formed on the territory of Belarus. The Krivichi-Polochans settled along the course of the Western Dvina. There is a literary hypothesis that their name could be formed from the word "blood", which means "close by blood". Krivichi arose as a result of the Slavicization of the Balts - a mixture of alien Slavic with local Baltic tribes. The southern neighbors of the Polotsk Krivichi were the Dregovichi, who lived between the Pripyat and the Dvina. It is widely believed that their name comes from the word "drygva" - a swamp, since in ancient times the territory of Pripyat Polissya was swampy. The neighbors of the Dregovichi were the Radimichi, who settled on the Sozh River. The Eastern Slavs gradually mastered the territory of Belarus and until the 10th century. became its main population. To denote the commonality of all the Eastern Slavs, historians use the name "Old Russian nationality."

The main occupations of the population of Belarus in the IX-XII centuries. were agriculture and animal husbandry. In the slash-and-burn type of agriculture, forests were cut down, stumps were burned, and land freed from forests was sown. Ashes were used as fertilizer, which remained after the burning of stumps. They cultivated the land with a knotty harrow made from a tree trunk with chopped branches. During the transition to arable farming, they began to use a wooden plow with iron coulters and a wooden ralo with iron tips. Common agricultural crops were rye, millet, and wheat. A secondary role was played by hunting, fishing, beekeeping - collecting honey from forest bees.

The transition from a tribal to a neighboring (rural) community was associated with the transition from slash-and-burn to plow farming. Now it was possible to cultivate the land with the help of a plow and a ral, and it was possible to harvest the crops with the help of one small family. People got the opportunity to separate families. In search of convenient and fertile land for agriculture, relatives from the same family began to leave fortified settlements and build unfortified settlements on new lands. The population in the settlements was part of the neighboring (rural) communities. Independent peasant families constituted a neighboring community, called by the Slavs "Verv". This name comes from the word "rope", which was used to measure a piece of land that belonged to each member of the community.

In the IX-XII centuries. among the Eastern Slavs, a feudal economic structure was born - a way of doing business. It was associated with the emergence of property inequality among the communal peasants and their stratification into the poor and the rich. The land, previously owned by the rural community, gradually passed into the private ownership of the community members. There was a forcible seizure of land by the tribal nobility and the transformation of free community members into dependent peasants. Large landowners seized communal lands and turned them into their own property - a feud, which could be given to the use of warriors (warriors) of the feudal lord for the duration of his service.

The feudal lord (prince) - the owner of a certain amount of local lands - together with his retinue (army) collected tribute from the subject population - a natural tax in products, which was called polyud. This usually happened in the autumn when the crop was harvested. The prince's combatants (they were also called boyars) could receive from him accept for feeding - the right to collect income from a certain territory.

In the IX-XII centuries. cities are in the making. The reasons for this were: the separation of craft from agriculture; the concentration of artisans in places close to the sources of the raw materials necessary for their occupation; the development of the exchange of agricultural products for things made by artisans.

Cities arose as centers of crafts and trade in those places where it was convenient to engage in them - at the intersections of rivers and roads. Some cities got their names from the rivers on which they were founded, for example, Polotsk - from the Polota River, Vitebsk - from the Vitba River. An important role in the emergence of cities was played by the need for defense from the enemy. Therefore, cities were built on natural fortifications - hills and hills.

In total, more than 30 cities on the territory of Belarus are named in medieval written sources. The city consisted of several parts. The city center, fortified with ramparts, ditches, steppes, was called a citadel. The settlement of artisans and merchants, which was formed near the fortified center, was called a settlement. Usually, a market, or bargaining, was located near the citadel on the river bank.

The most common crafts in the cities were Kuznetsk - the manufacture of metal tools, weapons; pottery - making pottery; leatherworking - leather processing; cooperage - the manufacture of barrels; spinning and weaving - making clothes.

Trade played an important role in the cities. A medieval trade waterway “from the Varangians to the Greeks” passed through the territory of Belarus, which connected the Baltic (Varangian) and Black (Russian) seas through the rivers Western Dvina and Dnieper. Between these rivers in the area of modern Orsha and Vitebsk, overland communication routes were established - portages along which ships were dragged along the ground, placing logs under them.

The most ancient Belarusian city is Polotsk. It is first mentioned in chronicles under 862.

The era of the primitive system is characterized by several forms of social organization. The period began with a tribal community, in which blood relatives united, leading a common household in the future.

The tribal community not only rallied people close to each other, but also helped them survive through joint activities.

In contact with

Since the processes of production began to be divided among themselves, the community began to be divided into families, among which communal obligations were distributed. This led to the emergence of private property, which accelerated the decomposition of the tribal community, which was losing distant family ties. With the end of this form of social order, a neighborhood community appeared, the definition of which was based on other principles.

The concept of a neighborhood form of population organization

The meaning of the word "neighborhood community" implies a group of separate families living in a certain area and leading a common household on it. This form is called peasant, rural or territorial.

Among the main features of the neighboring community should be highlighted:

common area;
general use of land;
separate families;
subordination to the communal governing bodies of the social group.

The territory of the rural community was strictly limited, but the territory with forests, pastures, lakes and rivers was quite enough for individual cattle breeding and farming. Each family of this form social system, she owned her own plot of land, arable land, tools and livestock, and also had the right to a certain share of communal property.

The organization, included in society as a subordinate element, performed only partially public functions:

accumulated production experience;
organized self-government;
regulated land ownership;
preserved traditions and cults.

Man has ceased to be a generic being, for whom connection with the community was of great importance. People are now free.

Comparison of tribal and neighboring communities

Neighborhood and tribal communities are two successive stages in the formation of society. The transformation of a form from a generic to a neighboring one is an inevitable and natural stage in the existence of ancient peoples.

One of the main reasons for the transition from one type of social organization to another was the change from a nomadic lifestyle to a settled one. Slash-and-burn agriculture became plowed. The tools needed for cultivating the land were improved, and this led to an increase in labor productivity. There was social stratification and inequality among people.

Gradually disintegrated tribal relations, which were replaced by family ones. Public property was in the background, and private property took the first place in importance. Tools, livestock, housing and a separate plot belonged to a particular family. Rivers, lakes and forests remained owned by the entire community . But each family could run its own business with which she earned her livelihood. Therefore, for the development of the peasant community, the maximum unification of people was required, since with the acquired freedom, a person lost the great support that was provided in the tribal organization of society.

From the comparison table of the tribal community with the rural one, one can single out their main differences from each other:

The neighboring form of society had more advantages than the generic form, since it served as a powerful impetus for the development of private property and the formation of economic relations.

East Slavic neighborhood community

Neighborly relations among the Eastern Slavs were formed in the 7th century. This form of organization was called "vervy". The name of the East Slavic rural neighboring community is mentioned in the collection of laws "Russian Truth", which was created by Yaroslav the Wise.

Verv was an ancient community organization that existed in Kievan Rus and on the territory of modern Croatia.

The neighboring organization was characterized by mutual responsibility, i.e., the entire rope had to be responsible for the misconduct committed by its participant. When a murder was committed by someone from a community organization, the viru (fine) had to be paid to the prince by the entire community group.

The convenience of such a social order was that there was no social inequality in it, since the rich had to help the poor if they had a lack of food. But, as the future shows, social stratification was inevitable.

In the period of their development, vervi were no longer rural organizations. Each of them was a union of several settlements, which included several villages. The early stage of the development of the community organization was still characterized by consanguinity, but over time this ceased to play a major role in the life of society.

The rope was subject to general military service. Each family had a household land with all household buildings, tools, various implements, livestock, and plots for farming. Like any neighboring organization, the vervi had forest areas, lands, lakes, rivers and fishing grounds in the public domain.

Features of the Old Russian neighborhood community

From the annals it is known that the ancient Russian community was called "mir". It was the lowest link in the social organization of Ancient Russia. Sometimes there was an unification of the worlds into tribes, which, during periods of military threat, gathered in alliances. Tribes often fought among themselves. The wars led to the emergence of a squad - professional equestrian warriors. The squads were led by princes, each of which owned a separate world. Each squad was a personal guard of its leader.

The lands have turned into estates. Peasants or community members who used such land were obliged to pay tribute to their princes. The patrimonial lands were inherited through the male line. Peasants living in rural neighborhood organizations were called "black peasants", and their territories were called "black". The people's assembly, in which only adult men participated, resolved all issues in peasant settlements. In such a social organization, the form of government was a military democracy.

In Russia, neighborly relations existed until the 20th century, in which they were eliminated. With the increase in the importance of private property and the appearance of surplus production, society was divided into classes, and communal lands were transferred to private ownership. The same changes were taking place in Europe.. But neighboring forms of population organization exist today, for example, in the tribes of Oceania.

neighborhood community- these are several tribal communities (families) living in the same area. Each of these families has its own head. And each family manages its own economy, uses the produced product at its own discretion. Sometimes the neighboring community is also called rural, territorial. The fact is that its members usually lived in the same village.

The tribal community and the neighboring community are two successive stages in the development of society. The transition from a tribal community to a neighboring one became an inevitable and natural stage in the ancient peoples. And there were reasons for this:

The nomadic way of life began to change to a sedentary one. Agriculture became not slash-and-burn, but arable. The tools for cultivating the land became more advanced, and this, in turn, dramatically increased labor productivity. The emergence of social stratification and inequality among the population.

Thus, there was a gradual disintegration of tribal relations, which was replaced by family ones. Common property began to fade into the background, and private property came to the fore. However, for a long time they continued to exist in parallel: forests and reservoirs were common, and cattle, dwellings, tools, plots of land were individual goods. Now every person began to strive to do his own thing, earning them a living. This, of course, required the maximum unification of people so that the neighboring community continued to exist.

Differences between the neighboring community and the tribal

What is the difference between a tribal community and a neighboring one?

Firstly, the fact that in the first a prerequisite was the existence of family (blood) ties between people. This was not the case in the neighboring community. Secondly, the neighboring community consisted of several families. Moreover, each of the families owned their own property. Thirdly, the joint work that existed in the tribal community was forgotten. Now each family took care of its own plot. Fourthly, the so-called social stratification appeared in the neighboring community. More influential people stood out, classes were formed.

The person in the neighboring community became freer and more independent. But, on the other hand, he lost the powerful support that was in the tribal community.

When we talk about how the neighboring community differs from the tribal one, one very important fact should be noted. The neighboring community had a great advantage over the tribal community: it became not just a social, but
socio-economic organization. It gave a powerful impetus to the development of private property and economic relations.

Neighborhood community among the Eastern Slavs

Among the Eastern Slavs, the final transition to the neighboring community occurred in the seventh century (in some sources it is called "verv"). Moreover, this type of social organization has existed for a long time. The neighboring community did not allow the peasants to go bankrupt, mutual responsibility reigned in it: the richer rescued the poor. Also in such a community, the wealthy peasants always had to be guided by their neighbors. That is, social inequality was still somehow restrained, although it naturally progressed. A characteristic feature for the neighboring community of the Slavs was the circular responsibility for committed offenses and crimes. This also applied to military service.

Finally

The neighboring community and the tribal community are varieties of the social structure that existed at one time in every nation. Over time, there was a gradual transition to a class system, to private property, to social stratification. These events were inevitable. Therefore, communities have gone down in history and today are found only in some remote regions.