The paper provides an interpretation and meaningful parallels to the sanction-damnation, which was to overtake the violators of the treaty of Prince (archon of Russia) Igor Rurikovich with the Byzantine emperors. According to it, the oath-breaker as punishment was bound to become a slave in the «future age», i.e. in the afterlife. Although the concept of the «future age» is strictly Christian, the idea that a murdered person may end up in the afterlife as a slave of his murderer is independently recorded to Rus’ in the “History” of Leo Deacon. This notion was so strong that it formed the Russian warriors’ practice of suicide in hopeless situations, which was vividly described by Roman Leo Deacon and Persian ibn Miskawayh from the words of eyewitnesses. A similar notion that the murdered or executed man would be a slave of his murderer, according to the Hungarian chronicles of the 13th-14th centuries, reflecting the epic-historical memory of the past, was common among the Magyar people in the 10thcentury. Thus, the sanction of Prince Igor’s treaty reflected a quite authentic element of the Rus’ people’s perceptions of the other world and a significant determinant of their ethics.
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