It is extremely difficult to draw an approximately correct picture of the life of the Russian Slavs even in its barest outlines. Among the widely scattered tribes there was hardly more than one element tending towards union--that of language. Frequent contact with the populations living on their borders and wedged in between them, must of itself have produced considerable modifications in their mode of life. The entire social organisation of the early Slavs, like that of all other Aryan and non-Aryan peoples, was based upon kinship or descent from a common ancestor.[a] Even in the Varangian period we can discover traces of this primeval organisation in clans among a few tribes. In time of peace these clans were in the habit of meeting together in order to discuss common affairs. The chronicler[h] uses the expression “came together” when he wants to speak of decisions taken in common. This practice seems to have been known to all Slavonic peoples. Among the Russian Slavs these folkmotes were known under the name of _vetché_, and they remained to the end of their existence a necessary part of the political institutions, not only in the northern city republics, Novgorod and Pskov, but also in nearly all the principalities of Russia, with the exception of one of the latest founded, Moscow. Among these tribes we also find native princes or clan chieftains (_kniaz_), and it is also certain that as early as the ninth century there were among the Russian Slavs private owners of tracts of land who occupied an advantageous position as compared with the great bulk of the members of the community, and from whom the latter nobles (_boyars_) were descended. But on the whole the village community formed the nucleus of the entire political and economic organisation of the eastern or Russian Slavs. It was a world complete in itself, self-sufficient and independent both economically and juridically. The community was the possessor of the soil, which was periodically redistributed among its component members; the separate patriarchal families, and the assembly of the heads of the families was the body that judged and decided all things pertaining to the community. It is thus that we are to understand the apparently contradictory reports of the Byzantine writers, who say, on the one hand, that the Slavs know of no government and do not obey any individual, and on the other hand speak of a popular government that has existed from ancient times, that discusses all things in common, and that has many petty princes at its head.