Berladnici

The Berladnici^[a] were a supposed medieval people living along the northeastern Black Sea coast. While their ethnicity is unclear, it included runaways from Rus' who left those lands due to feudal oppression. Peasants as well as boyars dissatisfied with the rulers purportedly settled in the vicinity of the city of Bârlad as well as the river of the same name in eastern Romania, as well as on the lower Don River.

History

The Berladnici are first mentioned in the Kievan Chronicle (part of the Hypatian Codex). The text recounts the 1159 war between Prince Yaroslav of Galicia and his cousin Ivan Berladnic, during which the latter fled "to the steppe to the Polovtsi" (Cumans):

...in the cities around the area of the Dunaj [Danube] River. He captured two ships and took many goods in them, and did harm to the Galician fishermen. And many Polovtsi came to him, and six thousand people of the area of Berlad [Берладника Berladnika] joined them.^[1]

In 1161, the Berladnici captured the port of Oleshia at the mouth of the Dnieper river, which caused severe damage to Rus' merchants. They were occupied mainly with fishing, hunting, and crafting. They practiced robbery, often working alongside Cumans in raids against the cities of Rus'. Berladnici nobility consisted of landowners and knyazes refugees who tried to create a state along the lower Danube.^[2]

According to Romanian history professor Victor Spinei (1982), written sources exclude the existence in the 12th-century of a Romanian territory subordinate to the Principality of Galicia.^[3] On the other hand Spinei contends that the archaeological evidence from that era does not reveal any typological or quantitative differences between the Bârlad area and the lands in the center and south of Moldova.

There is no mention of the Berladnici after the 13th century. The Galician–Volhynian Chronicle mentions a group of "Galician exiles" led by voivode Yuri Domazhyrych and boyar Volodymyr Derzhykray who come as allies of Kievan Rus' during the Battle of the Kalka River which some interpret to mean the Berladnici.^{[citation needed]}

A small number of historians see in the Berladnici's libertine lifestyle a prototype of the Ukrainian Cossacks who developed in the 15th - 18th centuries.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Ivan Berladnic
• Blakumen
• Bolokhoveni
• Brodnici
• Foundation of Moldavia
• Romania in the Early Middle Ages

Notes

1. Polish: Berładnicy; Romanian: Berladnici; Russian: Берладники, romanized: Berladniki; Ukrainian: Берладники, romanized: Berladnyky.