ABSTRACT
The land into which Volodimer the Saint introduced Christianity as an official cult about 988 was stateless. It is true that Volodimir forced most of the few important towns in the vast area between Kiev and Novgorod to accept his brothers and sons as overlords by his death in 1015. Central place theory posits that a single town eventually emerges as the central plaee of a 'mature' society of dense agricultural settlement, local market towns, and often towns of intermediate size. The emergence of a common written culture left much the same pattern on a map of Rus' as the development of manufacturing and commerce. A count of wooden as well as masonry churches would be a better measure of the extent to which the church socialized the people of Rus' towns. Documents, law codes, and related writings were further evidence of the extent of popular literacy.
