What this song renders
The pre-Olga Kievan tribute system — the polyudye — required the prince to circulate annually through subject territories collecting in person. It was the system that had killed Igor when he overstayed and overdemanded. Olga’s solution was structural: she fixed permanent collection points (pogosty), set tribute amounts in advance, and built a network of dependent administrative centres rather than relying on the prince’s itinerant authority.
This is the kind of reform medieval chronicles tend to underreport. The Primary Chronicle notes the work briefly — in entry 947, with Olga travelling to the lands and setting up collection points — but treats the bloody folktales of the previous two years at much greater length. Modern historians (Franklin and Shepard, Martin) treat Olga’s administrative work as a more important political act than the revenge campaign.
By the time Sviatoslav came of age in the late 950s, the kingdom he inherited was structurally different from the one his father had ruled. The administrative chassis Olga built outlasted her by centuries.
The administrative reforms are documented in the Primary Chronicle and corroborated by archaeological evidence of pogost sites and the gradual urbanisation of Rus’ territories in this period. Less dramatic than the revenge tracks but historically more consequential.