Kievan Rus, the first organized state located on the lands
of modern Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, was ruled by members of the Rurikid
dynasty and centered around the city of Kiev from the mid-ninth century to
1240. Its East Slav, Finn, and Balt population dwelled in territories along the
Dnieper, the Western Dvina, the Lovat-Volkhov, and the upper Volga rivers. Its
component peoples and territories were bound together by common recognition of
the Rurikid dynasty as their rulers and, after 988, by formal affiliation with
the Christian Church, headed by the metropolitan based at Kiev. Kievan Rus was
destroyed by the Mongol invasions of 1237–1240. The Kievan Rus era is
considered a formative stage in the histories of modern Ukraine and Russia.
The process of the formation of the state is the subject of
the Normanist controversy. Normanists stress the role of Scandinavian Vikings as
key agents in the creation of the state. Their view builds upon archeological
evidence of Scandinavian adventurers and travelling merchants in the region of
northwestern Russia and the upper Volga from the eighth century. It also draws
upon an account in the Primary Chronicle, compiled during the eleventh and
early twelfth centuries, which reports that in 862, Slav and Finn tribes in the
vicinity of the Lovat and Volkhov rivers invited Rurik, a Varangian Rus, and
his brothers to bring order to their lands. Rurik and his descendants are
regarded as the founders of the Rurikid dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus.
Anti-Normanists discount the role of Scandinavians as founders of the state.
They argue that the term Rus refers to the Slav tribe of Polyane, which dwelled
in the region of Kiev, and that the Slavs themselves organized their own
political structure.
According to the Primary Chronicle, Rurik’s immediate
successors were Oleg (r. 879 or 882 to 912), identified as a regent for Rurik’s
son Igor (r. 912–945); Igor’s wife Olga (r. 945–c. 964), and their son
Svyatoslav (r. c. 964–972). They established their authority over Kiev and
surrounding tribes, including the Krivichi (in the region of the Valdai Hills),
the Polyane (around Kiev on the Dneper River), the Drevlyane (south of the
Pripyat River, a tributary of the Dneper), and the Vyatichi, who inhabited
lands along the Oka and Volga Rivers.
The tenth-century Rurikids not only forced tribal
populations to transfer their allegiance and their tribute payments from Bulgar
and Khazaria, but also pursued aggressive policies toward those neighboring
states. In 965 Svyatoslav launched a campaign against the Khazaria. His venture
led to the collapse of the Khazar Empire and the destabilization of the lower
Volga and the steppe, a region of grasslands south of the forests inhabited by
the Slavs. His son Vladimir (r. 980–1015), having subjugated the Radimichi
(east of the upper Dnieper River), attacked the Volga Bulgars in 985; the
agreement he subsequently reached with the Bulgars was the basis for peaceful
relations that lasted a century.
The early Rurikids also engaged their neighbors to the south
and west. In 968, Svyatoslav rescued Kiev from the Pechenegs, a nomadic, steppe
Turkic population. He devoted most of his attention, however, to establishing
control over lands on the Danube River. Forced to abandon that project by the
Byzantines, he was returning to Kiev when the Pechenegs killed him in 972.
Frontier forts constructed and military campaigns waged by Vladimir and his
sons reduced the Pecheneg threat to Kievan Rus.
Shortly after Svyatoslav’s death, his son Yaropolk became
prince of Kiev. But conflict erupted between him and his brothers. The crisis
prompted Vladimir to flee from Novgorod, the city he governed, and raise an
army in Scandinavia. Upon his return in 980, he first engaged the prince of
Polotsk, one of last non-Rurikid rulers over East Slavs. Victorious, Vladimir
married the prince’s daughter and added the prince’s military retinue to his
own army, with which he then defeated Yaropolk and seized the throne of Kiev.
Vladimir’s triumphs over his brothers, competing non-Rurikid rulers, and
neighboring powers provided him and his heirs a monopoly over political power
in the region.
Prince Vladimir also adopted Christianity for Kievan Rus.
Although Christianity, Judaism, and Islam had long been known in these lands
and Olga had personally converted to Christianity, the populace of Kievan Rus
remained pagan. When Vladimir assumed the throne, he attempted to create a
single pantheon of gods for his people, but soon abandoned that effort in favor
of Christianity. Renouncing his numerous wives and consorts, he married Anna,
the sister of the Byzantine Emperor Basil. The Patriarch of Constantinople
appointed a metropolitan to organize the see of Kiev and all Rus, and in 988,
Byzantine clergy baptized the population of Kiev in the Dnieper River.
After adopting Christianity, Vladimir apportioned his realm
among his principal sons, sending each of them to his own princely seat. A
bishop accompanied each prince. The lands ruled by Rurikid princes and subject
to the Kievan Church constituted Kievan Rus.
During the eleventh and twelfth centuries Vladimir’s
descendants developed a dynastic political structure to administer their
increasingly large and complex realm. There are, however, divergent
characterizations of the state’s political development during this period. One
view contends that Kievan Rus reached its peak during the eleventh century. The
next century witnessed a decline, marked by the emergence of powerful
autonomous principalities and warfare among their princes. Kiev lost its
central role, and Kievan Rus was disintegrating by the time of the Mongol
invasion. An alternate view emphasizes the continued vitality of the city of
Kiev and argues that Kievan Rus retained its integrity throughout the period.
Although it became an increasingly complex state containing numerous
principalities that engaged in political and economic competition, dynastic and
ecclesiastic bonds provided cohesion among them. The city of Kiev remained its
acknowledged and coveted political, economic, and ecclesiastic center.
The creation of an effective political structure proved to
be an ongoing challenge for the Rurikids. During the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, princely administration gradually replaced tribal allegiance and
authority. As early as the reign of Olga, her officials began to replace tribal
leaders. Vladimir assigned a particular region to each of his sons, to whom he
also delegated responsibility for tax collection, protection of communication
and trade routes, and for local defense and territorial expansion. Each prince
maintained and commanded his own military force, which was supported by tax
revenues, commercial fees, and booty seized in battle. He also had the
authority and the means to hire supplementary forces.
When Vladimir died in
1015, however, his sons engaged in a power struggle that ended only after four
of them had died and two others, Yaroslav and Mstislav, divided the realm
between them. When Mstislav died (1036), Yaroslav assumed full control over
Kievan Rus. Yaroslav adopted a law code known as the Russkaya Pravda, which
with amendments remained in force throughout the Kievan Rus era.
He also attempted to bring order to dynastic relations.
Before his death he issued a “Testament” in which he left Kiev to his eldest
son Izyaslav. He assigned Chernigov to his son Svyatoslav, Pereyaslavl to
Vsevolod, and lesser seats to his younger sons. He advised them all to heed
their eldest brother as they had their father. The Testament is understood by
scholars to have established a basis for the rota system of succession, which
incorporated the principles of seniority among the princes, lateral succession
through a generation, and dynastic possession of the realm of Kievan Rus. By
assigning Kiev to the senior prince, it elevated that city to a position of
centrality within the realm.
This dynastic system, by which each prince conducted
relations with his immediate neighbors, provided an effective means of
defending and expanding Kievan Rus. It also encouraged cooperation among the
princes when they faced crises. Incursions by the Polovtsy (Kipchaks, Cumans),
Turkic nomads who moved into the steppe and displaced the Pechenegs in the
second half of the eleventh century, prompted concerted action among Princes
Izyaslav, Svyatoslav, and Vsevolod in 1068. Although the Polovtsy were
victorious, they retreated after another encounter with Svyatoslav’s forces.
With the exception of one frontier skirmish in 1071, they then refrained from
attacking Rus for the next twenty years.
When the Polovtsy did renew hostilities in the 1090s, the
Rurikids were engaged in intradynastic conflicts. Their ineffective defense
allowed the Polovtsy to reach the environs of Kiev and burn the Monastery of
the Caves, founded in the mideleventh century. But after the princes resolved
their differences at a conference in 1097, their coalitions drove the Polovtsy
back into the steppe and broke up the federation of Polovtsy tribes responsible
for the aggression. These campaigns yielded comparatively peaceful relations
for the next fifty years.
As the dynasty grew larger, however, its system of
succession required revision. Confusion and recurrent controversies arose over
the definition of seniority, the standards for eligibility, and the lands subject
to lateral succession. In 1097, when the intradynastic wars became so severe
that they interfered with the defense against the Polovtsy, a princely
conference at Lyubech resolved that each principality in Kievan Rus would
become the hereditary domain of a specific branch of the dynasty. The only
exceptions were Kiev itself, which in 1113 reverted to the status of a dynastic
possession, and Novgorod, which by 1136 asserted the right to select its own
prince.
The settlement at Lyubech provided a basis for orderly
succession to the Kievan throne for the next forty years. When Svyatopolk
Izyaslavich died, his cousin Vladimir Vsevolodich Monomakh became prince of
Kiev (r. 1113–1125). He was succeeded by his sons Mstislav (r. 1125–1132) and
Yaropolk (r. 1132–1139). But the Lyubech agreement also acknowledged division
of the dynasty into distinct branches and Kievan Rus into distinct
principalities. The descendants of Svyatoslav ruled Chernigov. Galicia and
Volynia, located southwest of Kiev, acquired the status of separate
principalities in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, respectively. During
the twelfth century, Smolensk, located north of Kiev on the upper Dnieper
river, and Rostov- Suzdal, northeast of Kiev, similarly emerged as powerful
principalities. The northwestern portion of the realm was dominated by
Novgorod, whose strength rested on its lucrative commercial relations with
Scandinavian and German merchants of the Baltic as well as on its own extensive
empire that stretched to the Ural mountains by the end of the eleventh century.
The changing political structure contributed to repeated
dynastic conflicts over succession to the Kievan throne. Some princes became
ineligible for the succession to Kiev and concentrated on developing their
increasingly autonomous realms. But the heirs of Vladimir Monomakh, who became
the princes of Volynia, Smolensk, and Rostov-Suzdal, as well as the princes of
Chernigov, became embroiled in succession disputes, often triggered by attempts
of younger members to bypass the elder generation and to reduce the number of
princes eligible for the succession.
The greatest confrontations occurred after the death of
Yaropolk Vladimirovich, who had attempted to arrange for his nephew to be his
successor and had thereby aroused objections from his own younger brother Yuri
Dolgoruky, the prince of Rostov-Suzdal. As a result of the discord among
Monomakh’s heirs, Vsevolod Olgovich of Chernigov was able to take the Kievan
throne (r. 1139–1146) and regain a place in the Kievan succession cycle for his
dynastic branch. After his death, the contest between Yuri Dolgoruky and his
nephews resumed; it persisted until 1154, when Yuri finally ascended to the
Kievan throne and restored the traditional order of succession.
An even more destructive conflict broke out after the death
in 1167 of Rostislav Mstislavich, successor to his uncle Yuri. When Mstislav
Izyaslavich, the prince of Volynia and a member of the next generation,
attempted to seize the Kievan throne, a coalition of princes opposed him. Led
by Yuri’s son Andrei Bogolyubsky, it represented the senior generation of
eligible princes, but also included the sons of the late Rostislav and the
princes of Chernigov. The conflict culminated in 1169, when Andrei’s forces
evicted Mstislav Izyaslavich from Kiev and sacked the city. Andrei’s brother
Gleb became prince of Kiev.
Prince Andrei personified the growing tensions between the
increasingly powerful principalities of Kievan Rus and the state’s center,
Kiev. As prince of Vladimir-Suzdal (Rostov-Suzdal), he concentrated on the
development of Vladimir and challenged the primacy of Kiev. Nerl Andrei used
his power and resources, however, to defend the principle of generational
seniority in the succession to Kiev. Nevertheless, after Gleb died in 1171,
Andrei’s coalition failed to secure the throne for another of his brothers. A
prince of the Chernigov line, Svyatoslav Vsevolodich (r. 1173–1194), occupied
the Kievan throne and brought dynastic peace.
By the turn of the century, eligibility for the Kievan
throne was confined to three dynastic lines: the princes of Volynia, Smolensk,
and Chernigov. Because the opponents were frequently of the same generation as
well as sons of former grand princes, dynastic traditions of succession offered
little guidance for determining which prince had seniority. By the mid-1230s,
princes of Chernigov and Smolensk were locked in a prolonged conflict that had
serious consequences. During the hostilities Kiev was sacked two more times, in
1203 and 1235. The strife revealed the divergence between the southern and
western principalities, which were deeply enmeshed in the conflicts over Kiev,
and those of the northeast, which were relatively indifferent to them.
Intradynastic conflict, compounded by the lack of cohesion among the components
of Kievan Rus, undermined the integrity of the realm. Kievan Rus was left
without effective defenses before the Mongol invasion.
When the state of Kievan Rus was forming, its populace
consisted primarily of rural agriculturalists who cultivated cereal grains as
well as peas, lentils, flax, and hemp in natural forest clearings or in those
they created by the slash-and-burn method. They supplemented these products by
fishing, hunting, and gathering fruits, berries, nuts, mushrooms, honey, and
other natural products in the forests around their villages.
Commerce, however, provided the economic foundation for
Kievan Rus. The tenth-century Rurikid princes, accompanied by their military
retinues, made annual rounds among their subjects and collected tribute. Igor
met his death in 945 during such an excursion, when he and his men attempted to
take more than the standard payment from the Drevlyane. After collecting the
tribute of fur pelts, honey, and wax, the Kievan princes loaded their goods and
captives in boats, also supplied by the local population, and made their way
down the Dnieper River to the Byzantine market of Cherson. Oleg in 907 and
Igor, less successfully, in 944 conducted military campaigns against
Constantinople. The resulting treaties allowed the Rus to trade not only at
Cherson, but also at Constantinople, where they had access to goods from
virtually every corner of the known world. From their vantage point at Kiev the
Rurikid princes controlled all traffic moving from towns to their north toward
the Black Sea and its adjacent markets.
The Dnieper River route “from the Varangians to the Greeks”
led back northward to Novgorod, which controlled commercial traffic with
traders from the Baltic Sea. From Novgorod commercial goods also were carried
eastward along the upper Volga River through the region of Rostov-Suzdal to
Bulgar. At this market center on the mid-Volga River, which formed a nexus
between the Rus and the markets of Central Asia and the Caspian Sea, the Rus
exchanged their goods for oriental silver coins or dirhams (until the early
eleventh century) and luxury goods including silks, glassware, and fine
pottery.
The establishment of Rurikid political dominance contributed
to changes in the social composition of the region. To the agricultural peasant
population were added the princes themselves, their military retainers,
servants, and slaves. The introduction of Christianity by Prince Vladimir
brought a layer of clergy to the social mix. It also transformed the cultural
face of Kievan Rus, especially in its urban centers. In Kiev Vladimir
constructed the Church of the Holy Virgin (also known as the Church of the
Tithe), built of stone and flanked by two other palatial structures. The
ensemble formed the centerpiece of “Vladimir’s city,” which was surrounded by
new fortifications. Yaroslav expanded “Vladimir’s city” by building new
fortifications that encompassed the battlefield on which he defeated the
Pechenegs in 1036. Set in the southern wall was the Golden Gate of Kiev. Within
the protected area Vladimir constructed a new complex of churches and palaces,
the most imposing of which was the masonry Cathedral of St. Sophia, which was
the church of the metropolitan and became the symbolic center of Christianity
in Kievan.
The introduction of Christianity met resistance in some
parts of Kievan Rus. In Novgorod a popular uprising took place when
representatives of the new church threw the idol of the god Perun into the
Volkhov River. But Novgorod’s landscape was also quickly altered by the
construction of wooden churches and, in the middle of the eleventh century, by
its own stone Cathedral of St. Sophia. In Chernigov Prince Mstislav constructed
the Church of the Transfiguration of Our Savior in 1035.
By agreement with the Rurikids the church became legally
responsible for a range of social practices and family affairs, including
birth, marriage, and death. Ecclesiastical courts had jurisdiction over church
personnel and were charged with enforcing Christian norms and rituals in the
larger community. Although the church received revenue from its courts, the
clergy were only partially successful in their efforts to convince the populace
to abandon pagan customs. But to the degree that they were accepted, Christian
social and cultural standards provided a common identity for the diverse tribes
comprising Kievan Rus society.
The spread of Christianity and the associated construction
projects intensified and broadened commercial relations between Kiev and
Byzantium. Kiev also attracted Byzantine artists and artisans, who designed and
decorated the early Rus churches and taught their techniques and skills to
local apprentices. Kiev correspondingly became the center of craft production
in Kievan Rus during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
While architectural design and the decorative arts of
mosaics, frescoes, and icon painting were the most visible aspects of the
Christian cultural transformation, Kievan Rus also received chronicles, saints’
lives, sermons, and other literature from the Greeks. The outstanding literary
works from this era were the Primary Chronicle or Tale of Bygone Years,
compiled by monks of the Monastery of the Caves, and the “Sermon on Law and
Grace,” composed (c. 1050) by Metropolitan Hilarion, the first native of Kievan
Rus to head the church.
During the twelfth century, despite the emergence of
competing political centers within Kievan Rus and repeated sacks of it (1169,
1203, 1235), the city of Kiev continued to thrive economically. Its diverse
population, which is estimated to have reached between 36,000 and 50,000
persons by the end of the twelfth century, included princes, soldiers, clergy,
merchants, artisans, unskilled workers, and slaves. Its expanding handicraft
sector produced glassware, glazed pottery, jewelry, religious items, and other
goods that were exported throughout the lands of Rus. Kiev also remained a
center of foreign commerce, and increasingly reexported imported goods,
exemplified by Byzantine amphorae used as containers for oil and wine, to other
Rus towns as well.
The proliferation of political centers within Kievan Rus was
accompanied by a diffusion of the economic dynamism and increasing social complexity
that characterized Kiev. Novgorod’s economy also continued to be centered on
its trade with the Baltic region and with Bulgar. By the twelfth century
artisans in Novgorod were also engaging in new crafts, such as enameling and
fresco painting. Novgorod’s flourishing economy supported a population of
twenty to thirty thousand by the early thirteenth century. Volynia and Galicia,
Rostov- Suzdal, and Smolensk, whose princes vied politically and military for
Kiev, gained their economic vitality from their locations on trade routes. The
construction of the masonry Church of the Mother of God in Smolensk (1136–1137)
and of the Cathedral of the Dormition (1158) and the Golden Gate in Vladimir
reflected the wealth concentrated in these centers. Andrei Bogolyubsky also
constructed his own palace complex of Bogolyubovo outside Vladimir and
celebrated a victory over the Volga Bulgars in 1165 by building the Church of
the Intercession nearby on the Nerl River. In each of these principalities the
princes’ boyars, officials, and retainers were forming local, landowning
aristocracies and were also becoming consumers of luxury items produced abroad,
in Kiev, and in their own towns.
In 1223 the armies of Chingis Khan, founder of the Mongol
Empire, first reached the steppe south of Kievan Rus. At the Battle of Kalka
they defeated a combined force of Polovtsy and Rus drawn from Kiev, Chernigov,
and Volynia. The Mongols returned in 1236, when they attacked Bulgar. In
1237–1238 they mounted an offensive against Ryazan and then Vladimir-Suzdal. In
1239 they devastated the southern towns of Pereyaslavl and Chernigov, and in
1240 conquered Kiev.
The state of Kievan Rus is considered to have collapsed with
the fall of Kiev. But the Mongols went on to subordinate Galicia and Volynia
before invading both Hungary and Poland. In the aftermath of their conquest,
the invaders settled in the vicinity of the lower Volga River, forming the
portion of the Mongol Empire commonly known as the Golden Horde. Surviving
Rurikid princes made their way to the horde to pay homage to the Mongol khan.
With the exception of Prince Michael of Chernigov, who was executed, the khan
confirmed each of the princes as the ruler in his respective principality. He
thus confirmed the disintegration of Kievan Rus.
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