The Origins of Rus', Kievan Rus' and Rus' principalities from Cambridge history of Russia, volume 1

The origins of Rus' (c. 900-1015)

JONATHAN SHEPARD

The Rus' Primary Chronicle's quest for the origins of Rus'

The question of the origins of Rus', how a 'land' of that name came into being and from what, has been asked almost since record-keeping began in the middle Dnieper region. The problem is formulated in virtually these terms at the beginning of the Rus' Primary Chronicle. The chronicle supposes a political hierarchy to have formed at a stroke, through a covenant between locals and outsiders. The Slavs, Finns and other natives of a land mass criss-crossed by great rivers agreed jointly to call in a ruler from overseas. Turning to 'the Varangians, to the Rus'' they said 'our land is vast and abundant, but there is no order in it. Come and reign as princes and have authority over us!'[1] The response, in the form of the arrival of three princely brothers with 'their kin' and 'all the Rus", is dated to around 862. The younger brothers soon died and the survivor, Riurik, joined their possessions to his own and assigned his men to the various 'towns' (grady). There were already 'aboriginal inhabitants' in them, 'in Novgorod, the Slovenes; in Polotsk, the Krivichi; in Beloozero, the Ves . . . And Riurik ruled over them all.' Before long a move was made southwards to the middle Dnieper by non-princely 'Varangians', Askold and Dir. They are said to have come upon a small town called Kiev and took charge, having learnt that the inhabitants paid tribute to the Khazars. Later a certain Oleg arrived, not, apparently, a prince himself, but acting on behalf of Riurik's infant son, Igor'. Denouncing Askold and Dir as 'neither princes, nor of princely stock', Oleg brought forth the child with the words 'Behold the son of Riurik!' and the two unlicensed venturers were put to death. The installation of princely rule in Kiev is dated around 882, with Oleg acting as Igor''s military commander.²

This sequence of tableaux was still being incorporated in works such as the chronicle of Nikon in the sixteenth century. They form the framework to any 'political' survey of the areas that would come to form part of Muscovy and, eventually, Russia. The Primary Chronicle's focus on princes can readily be dismissed as an oversimplification, a variant of European foundation myths involving two or three brothers. And the chronology sets developments both too early and too late. In reality, some sort of hegemonial structure already existed in the second quarter of the ninth century, perhaps earlier still, whereas the middle Dnieper only became a significant princely centre a generation or more after 882. Other qualifications could be made to the chronicle's picture, which is very much a product of the time when it neared completion, the opening years of the twelfth century, and also of the place - the Kievan Caves monastery. By then, the routes leading southwards along such rivers as the Volkhov and the Western Dvina to converge at the Dnieper and run down to the sea - 'the way from the Varangians to the Greeks' - formed an axis of obvious (though not unassailable) primacy The chroniclers' wishful assump­tion that power was from the first vested at points such as Novgorod and Kiev is understandable. They had little time for alternatives, such as routes from northerly regions to the Khazars based on the lower Volga and to the Islamic world. They note that people's rituals and customs across this 'vast' land had been variegated,³ but there are only occasional hints that princely authority itself might have been strung across several political centres through the ninth and most of the tenth centuries.

The vicissitudes of one leading family are treated as virtually synonymous with the emergence and extent of the land of Rus'. And yet in addressing the questions posed at the beginning of the chronicle - 'Whence came the land of Rus', who first began to rule as prince in Kiev . . .?'⁴ - the chroniclers did not play fast and loose with facts. Some places mentioned as centres of the 'Varangian' newcomers have been shown by excavations to have had Scandina­vian occupants and visitors from the outset, for example Staraia Ladoga, while archaeology is uncovering important settlements started by 'aboriginal inhab­itants' before the arrival of Scandinavians, for example, at Murom, Sarskoe and Pskov and a fortified settlement on the site of Izborsk. Other aspects of the chronicle's tableaux likewise gain corroboration from independent

2 PVL, p. 14.

3 The whereabouts and languages of different tribal groupings are described: PVL, pp. 10-11.

4 PVL, p. 7.

evidence. The princely line traced back in the chronicle was the most resilient and effective of whichever other ruling kin groups may have existed among the early Rus' (for the known descendants of Riurik, see Table 3.1). The name of the leading brother points clearly to an Old Norse original, *Hr0rikR, a form philologically plausible for the ninth century, when Riurik is supposed to have lived.[2] His son Igor' - the Slavic form of whose name harks back to Old Norse *Inghari - is an unquestionably historical figure. And for the final decade or so of the ninth century there is archaeological evidence of the establishment at Kiev of persons from much further north. Thus the Primary Chronicle reg­isters actual political change and population movement under way in the late ninth century. But its composers drew from an exiguous database, spreading it thinly across gaps in their knowledge. Riurik is depicted as a commanding figure in the mid-ninth century, yet his son was active in the mid-tenth.[3] To gain an inkling of antecedents, one has to glance back to sources written far away and without first-hand knowledge, and to the oft equivocal findings of archaeology.

The beginnings of political formations

First signs of an organised power in the forest zone and of long-distance trading between the Muslim and Baltic worlds There had been a political hierarchy somewhere north of the middle Dnieper long before the turn of the ninth century, but it is hard to reconstruct the barest outlines. One firm fact is that by 838 there existed the ruler of a 'people' known to the Byzantines as Rhos and answering to that, or a very similar, name. Some Rhos accompanied a Byzantine embassy to the court of Louis the Pious, who was requested to assist them back to their 'homeland'.[4] The contemporary Frankish court annal relating this is carefully worded. It shows that the Rhos were well enough organised under a 'king' to send a mission to the Byzantine emperor, with sufficient resources for long-range embassies. The annal provides further clues about the strangers, clues at once suggestive and confusing. They described their own ruler as a chaganus, and when Louis investigated 'more diligently' he discovered that they 'belonged to the people

Table 3.1. Prince Riurik's known descendants

of the Swedes'. Fearing they might be spies, he detained them for further questioning. Thus their ruler bore a title akin to that of the ruler of the Khazars, the khagan, while their characteristics suggested those of 'Swedes'.

Countless historical interpretations revolve around this annalistic entry. There is no matrix against which to judge the inherent plausibility of one reconstruction against another. Much depends on assumptions about overall conditions between the Gulf of Finland and the Khazar-dominated Don and Volga steppes. But coexistence of a Scandinavian-led polity to the north with a Khazar power collecting tribute as far west as the Dnieper is the scenario implied in the Primary Chronicle. Objections can, of course, be raised: for example, to the discrepancy between the annal's intimation of a polity in 838 and the Primary Chronicle's chronology, and the sheer unlikelihood of a supposedly Swedish potentate assuming a Khazar title. There is, however, suggestive evidence of other Khazar and Turkic nomad traits in some of the Rus' elite's status symbols - for example the sporting of belts studded with metal mounts and ofbridles with elaborate sets ofornaments (see also below). Moreover, ambitious Scandinavian warlords in the British Isles were apt to take on local customs and Christian kingly attributes to bolster their regimes.

There are several reasons why Khazar styles of rulership and titles would have resonated among the inhabitants of major river basins north of the Black Sea steppes. This semi-nomadic people showed formidable organisa­tional powers, regularly extracting resources from its neighbours, while the pax khazarica in the steppes between the Crimea and north-east of the Caspian Sea beckoned to traffickers along the 'Silk Roads' from the Far East, Caucasian markets and the core lands of the Abbasid caliphate. The abatement of Arab attempts to submit the Khazars and other steppe-dwellers to Islam, followed by the Abbasids' issue of huge quantities of silver dirhams from the mid-eighth century onwards, gave a fillip to trade nexuses of long standing. The dynamics of these exchanges are unknown to us and they fluctuated according to circum­stances. But the predisposition of populations to cluster around lakes and along riverways provided staging posts and potential emporia for longer-distance traders. Great lakes such as Il'men' and Ladoga performed a dual function. Their resources and the fertile lakeside soils sustained sizeable concentrations of persons engaged in hunting, fishing and agriculture with iron ploughs. But they also acted as communications hubs, drawing in miscellaneous groups and individuals and enabling them to practise craftsmanship and trade. The nexuses between fur-yielding northern regions, the peoples of the steppes and Sasanian Persian and Byzantine markets attested in the sixth and earlier seventh centuries were probably not obliterated by the first century of Arab conquests. Their persistence would account for the speed with which silver coins from Abbasid mints reached the Gulf of Finland. At the small trading-post of Staraia Ladoga, Abbasid coins occur in almost the earliest 'micro-horizon'; so does a set of smith's tools analogous to kits found in Scandinavia. Work­shops welded knives by an apparently Scandinavian technique, produced nails and boat rivets and by the beginning of the ninth century, if not earlier, glass beads were being worked up. One of the earliest hoards of dirhams uncovered in Russia was deposited early in the ninth century beside the Gulf of Finland, just west of modern St Petersburg. On some, Scandinavian-type runes and Arabic characters are scratched while the name of 'Zacharias' is scratched in Greek on one dirham and others have Turkic runes, such as might have been acquired en route through the Khazar dominions.[5] These markings serve as a paradigm of the types of outsider then active in the fur trade. And it can hardly be coincidental that dirhams feature among grave goods in central Sweden from the end of the eighth century. The region of Sweden facing the Aland islands was known in medieval Swedish law codes as 'Rodhen' or 'Rodhs'. The Baltic Finns' designation for persons hailing from there, Rotsi, probably became attached to all Scandinavians whom they encountered. So did the ver­sion subsequently borrowed by the Slavs, Rus'. These Rotsi probably traded in smallish groups on their own account, but emporia east of the Baltic facil­itated travel and exchange, while an overarching symbol of authority would have encouraged order. An overlord sporting the same title as the Khazar ruler's - through whose dominions the dirhams, mentioned above, passed - fitted the bill. There is thus some congruence between the Frankish annals' indication of a Scandinavian 'people' headed by a khagan and the chronicle's tale of the native peoples' covenant with 'Varangians'.

Signs of turbulence c.86o-c.8yi

The location of the principal base of the 'khagan of the Northmen' (as a Byzantine imperial letter of 871 termed him)[6] is controversial, but may well have looked onto Lake Il'men', just south of the later Novgorod. Fortified from the start and with outlying settlements dating from the beginning of the ninth century or earlier, this large settlement-cum-emporium dominated communications northwards to Ladoga, eastwards towards the Volga's head­waters, and south towards the Western Dvina. The island-like site of what is now called Riurikovo Gorodishche could well be the inspiration for Arabic descriptions of a huge boggy 'island', three days' journey wide, where 'the khaqan of the Rus' resided.[7] This is presumably where a Byzantine religious mission headed for in the earlier 860s. The mission was requested by the Rus' soon after a great fleet had sailed to Constantinople, looting the suburbs but apparently coming to grief in a storm on the way back. This Viking-style raid had at least the co-operation of the Rus' leadership and our main Byzantine source for the subsequent mission intimates that its purpose was to convert the ruler and notables responsible.[8] Many participants in the 860 expedition are likely to have been newcomers to the lands east of the Baltic and a fresh influx of fortune-seeking war-bands could well account for the disorder and political discontinuity evident for the final third of the century. Staraia Ladoga seems to have been razed to the ground between c.863 and c.871; around the same time there was a conflagration at Gorodishche and other settlements in the Volkhov basin suffered devastating fires in the second half of the ninth century.

One cannot be sure whether the archaeological evidence registers one wave of turbulence or recurrent bouts. But the damage done to two outstanding emporia cannot have been without political implications, and there was prob­ably at least one change of princely regime. The Byzantine mission could well have been dislodged by such upheavals: there is no further trace of a prelate among the Rus' for a hundred years. The violence did not put paid to commer­cial vitality and may actually have been prompted by it, in that accumulation of silver and other treasure could be used to win followers and spectacularly raise one's status, while one of the main 'products' exchanged for dirhams was slaves, a trade involving at least the threat of duress. But incessant free-for-all violence was deleterious to so intricate a network, consisting of clusters of set­tlements around major emporia, towards which countless outlying 'feeders' contributed the most important product of all, furs. So it would not be surpris­ing if a rather tighter political order emerged after a period of instability. One hint is the construction at Staraia Ladoga of what was apparently a citadel, sur­rounded by limestone slabs. Across the river from the expanding settlement, at Plakun, warriors armed in Scandinavian mode began to fill a separate burial ground. In the mid-890s a 'great hall' was built, partly from dismantled ship's timbers, and this could well have been where a prince or governor lived. The ensemble may register an attempt to guard the western approaches of Rus' against further marauders or conquerors from the Scandinavian world.

At the other end of the Volkhov, Gorodishche likewise recovered from physical destruction. By the end of the ninth century structures were being raised on boggier ground below the original hill-fortress. Workshops turned out Scandinavian-style brooches for women, weaponry and other metalwork for men. Silver, glass beads and other semi- de luxe items from eastern markets were dealt in, hoarded or worn as ornaments and, as at other centres of the trading nexus, pottery was beginning to be turned on the wheel rather than moulded by hand. Grandees, full-time warriors and wealthy wives were probably of Scandinavian stock, like the princely family presumed to have presided over them. But the majority of those choosing to work bone, wood and clay at Gorodishche were Slavs and Finns, some having travelled great distances to do so. Finds of their products attest this. The composition of the populations of other centres such as Pskov varied according to circumstances, but a constant is the presence of wealthy, armed, Scandinavians.

In the later ninth century a number of settlements, some quite sizeable and accommodating new arrivals from the Aland isles, appeared near the largely Finnish settlements flanking major lakes and rivers connected with the upper Volga. Their inhabitants, like many of the locals, engaged in the fur trade and it was probably prospects of self-enrichment as well as the fertile soils around Lake Nero and Lake Pleshcheevo that attracted them. The area offered good hunting and trapping, and connections between centres such as Sarskoe and fur-yielding regions much further north were long established. The newcomers' boatmanship provided means of reaching lucrative markets by water. Towards the end of the ninth century a new political structure formed on the middle Volga, under the auspices of the khagan of the Bulgars; the Bulgars themselves amassed huge quantities of furs from the north through barter and tribute collection. Two or three weeks' river journey to the Volga mouth brought one to the Khazar capital, Itil, while caravan routes led overland to the Samanid realm in Transoxiana. From the end of the ninth century the Samanids issued immense quantities ofdirhams to stimulate trade. The Bulgar khagan took from them his first silver coins' designs, and soon the Bulgar elite was Muslim, with mosques and schools. The Rus' newcomers to the upper Volga fully exploited their relative proximity to ample supplies of silver. Tenth- century Samanid dirhams form easily the largest group of Islamic coins found in what is now Russia and a high proportion of those found in the Baltic world. These exchanges did not, however, require a particularly high level of regular co-ordination or armed protection. So although the Volga Rus' and their collaborators made up a kind of polity, perhaps for a while distinct from that in the north-west, they did not create a tight politico-military structure. Silver in the north-east was too easily obtainable and shared out too widely; the routes to northernmost furs were too multifarious. In so far as order needed to be maintained along the middle and lower reaches of the Volga, the Bulgars and Khazars were already there in force.

The installation of northerners on the middle Dnieper towards the end of the ninth century may be viewed against this background. Their cultural characteristics - including language - were still preponderantly Scandinavian and they will have been deemed Rhos, much as the envoys to Byzantium in 838/9 had been. But in so far as status in the burgeoning 'urban' networks was attainable by wealth, advance was open to a wider range of individuals and outriders willing to adopt the elite's working practices. Besides, a likely by-product of the trade in nubile slave girls was children of mixed origins. The newcomers from the north used building techniques characteristic of settlements such as Staraia Ladoga rather than the middle Dnieper region. Log cabins were built on the damp soil beside the river at Kiev in the 890s, judging by dendrochronological analysis, and many structures served as workshops or warehouses. The riverside took on a new importance in the economy of what was still a small town. Kiev had been of significance as an emporium in antiquity, a convenient point for bartering forest produce for products of the steppes and southern civilisations. And it may well have been a staging post for Radhanite Jewish traders shuttling between Western Europe, Itil and China. But only around the end of the ninth century did the Dnieper gain primary importance as a waterway. Kiev became the trading base of navigators capable of negotiating the fearsome Rapids downstream and then, from the Dnieper's mouth, raising masts and setting sail for markets across the sea. It was essentially for this purpose that northerners installed themselves in force at Kiev, Chernigov and nearby Shestovitsa.

Within a few years emissaries were negotiating with the Byzantine emperor and gaining the right for Rus' to trade toll-free in Constantinople itself, entering the city in groups of fifty 'through [only] one gate, without their weapons'. Provided that they brought merchandise, free board and lodgings were theirs for six months as well as 'food, anchors, ropes and sails and whatever is needed' for the return journey.¹² An initial charter of privileges was soon followed by a bilateral treaty laying down procedures to settle likely disputes between individual Rus' and Byzantines, and also regulations for shipwrecks and due restitution of cargo. The emissaries' provenance is uncertain, but all five of those named as responsible for the first agreement recur among the fourteen listed for the September 911 treaty. Such continuity and regard for law and order implies a political structure, while the emissaries' names have a Nordic ring: Karl, Rulav, Stemid.

The northerners' move to Kiev might initially have been an attempt at secession from the other Rus' strongpoints, reminiscent of the tale of Askold and Dir. But these traders could scarcely have stood alone for very long, seeing that the finest furs originated far to the north. The 911 treaty, if not its precursor, most probably involved northern-based princes, as well as magnates newly installed on the middle Dnieper. By contrast with Kiev a centre such as Gorodishche was huge and populous, and the military potential of its ruling elite correspondingly formidable. In the early tenth century as earlier, this elite had a paramount leader. An Arab envoy to the Bulgars, who observed Rus' traders on the middle Volga in 922, evoked the court of the Rus' ruler. Residing on a huge throne together with forty slave girls, he mounts his horse without ever touching the ground; 400 'bravest companions' live in his 'palace', 'men who die with him and kill themselves for him'. A lieutenant commands troops and fights his battles.[9] The Rus' debt to Khazar political culture is clear from this and other evidence, including the style of dual rulership, the title ofkhagan and use of variants of his trident-like authority symbol. It may well be that their sacral ruler was ensconced in the north, at Gorodishche, as late as the 920s. The Rus' on the middle Dnieper, while affiliated to this polity, may also have paid tribute to the Khazars. In the mid-tenth century a Khazar ruler still regarded the Severians, Slavs near the middle Dnieper, as owing him tribute, while Kiev had an alternative, apparently Khazar, name, Sambatas.[10]

Princes of Kiev and the 'Byzantine connection': challenge and response

The earliest firm evidence of Rus' paramount rulership based in the region of Kievisforthe son ofRiurik, Igor', andheis only clearly attested there c.940.Itis

significant that the politico-military locus of Rus' shifted south little more than a generation after northerners first arrived in force on the middle Dnieper. This registers the rapid development and allure of the 'Byzantine connection', in terms oftrading and the wealth it could yield. But it also reflects a unique state of affairs. Demand in Byzantium was particularly strong for slaves and this was of practical convenience to the Rus' because, unlike inanimate goods, slaves could disembark and walk their way round the most hazardous of the Rapids. Other perils, including steppe nomads and shipwreck, tipped the Rus' self- interest in favour of an agreed command structure for voyages in convoy and regular dealings with the Byzantine authorities. So did the need to ensure a steady influx of slaves and confront the relatively well-organised and well- armed Slav groupings in the region of the middle Dnieper. Possessing towns and led by 'princes', they could resist tribute demands deemed excessive. Per­haps most important of all, the Rus' leadership needed to deal diplomatically or otherwise with the Khazar realm, whose resilience is easily overlooked. Events from c.940, the first in Rus' relatable with any degree of confidence, tend to bear this out.

Around that time a Rus' leader was impelled by the Byzantine govern­ment 'with great presents' to seize the Khazar fortress guarding the Straits of Kerch. Subsequently the Rus' were dislodged and their leader, named by our Khazar source as 'H-l-g-w', was overpowered and obliged to attack Byzan­tium. Reluctantly he complied and the Rus' expedition lasted four months, but the Byzantines were 'victorious by virtue of Fire'.[11] The latter details concur with our data for the well-attested Rus' attack on Constantinople of 941, the one serious mismatch being that its leader was Igor'. But the name H-l-g-w could well register the Nordic 'Helgi', and the earliest extant precursor of the Primary Chronicle actually names Igor' and Oleg (the Slavic form of Helgi) as jointly organising a raid against Byzantium.[12] The slight discrepancies in our sources could well reflect a joint arrangement, reminiscent of the dual ruler- ship mooted by Ibn Fadlan and the chronicle itself. The debacle recounted by our Khazar source also implies the precariousness of the Rus' hold on the middle Dnieper, while the importance of privileged access to Byzantine markets would be demonstrated a few years later. Igor' apparently lacked the wherewithal to satisfy his retainers and was put to death while trying to raise additional tribute from the Derevlians. Their prince sought the hand of Igor' 's widow, Ol'ga, albeit unsuccessfully. By this time, however, a new treaty had been negotiated with the Byzantines and commerce resumed. Princess Ol'ga, acting as regent, took measures to regularise the payment of tribute and set up hunting lodges where birds - probably of prey - could be caught for shipping to Byzantium together with furs, wax, honey and slaves. Ol'ga herself sailed to Constantinople, partly to confirm or improve the terms of the foresaid treaty. She was received at court 'with princesses who were her own relatives and her ladies-in-waiting' as well as 'emissaries of the princes of Rhosia and traders'.[13] During her stay Ol'ga was baptised and took the Christian name of the emperor's wife, Helena. However, no bishop accompanied Ol'ga-Helena back to Rus', and by autumn 959 she was asking Otto of Saxony for a full reli­gious mission. Eventually a bishop, Adalbert, was sent but he soon returned together with his followers, describing the venture as futile.[14]

Evaluation of these events is difficult. Even the date of Ol'ga's visit to the emperor is controversial. The year 946 is one possibility but the main alter­native, 957, has its merits, not least in more or less reconciling chronological pointers in the Rus' and Byzantine sources. What is certain is that Ol'ga made her journey against a background of economic boom and competent organ­isation. Constantine VII himself describes the marshalling of convoys at Kiev every spring. Slaves, together with the tribute collected over the winter by 'their princes (archontes) with all the Rhos', were loaded aboard for a voyage tailed by opportunistic nomads: if a boat was wrecked in the Black Sea, 'they all put in to land, in order to present a united front against the Pechenegs'.[15]The underlying stability of the princely regime is suggested by its survival through major setbacks and challenges in the 940s, although this owed some­thing to Ol'ga's personality. A concentration of wealth and weaponry in the middle Dnieper region is also suggested by the finds of chamber graves at Kiev and Shestovitsa. Their occupants were equipped for the next world with arms and riding gear - sometimes horses or slave girls, too - while their dealings in trade are signalled by the weights and balances accompanying them (see Plate 1). Most were probably the retainers of the princes and other leading notables. The number of chamber graves on the middle Dnieper is not vast, but this tallies with Constantine VII's indication that Rus' military manpower was finite, further grounds for self-discipline.

The risks did not throttle trading along the waterway to Byzantium, and its range and vigour are registered at the site of modern Smolensk's pre­cursor. Now called Gnezdovo, this was located near the outflow into the Dnieper of a river accessible via portages from many northern waterways, including the Western Dvina and Lovat. Its raison d'etre was as emporium and service station for boats hauled over lengthy portages and in need of repair or replacement. From the mid-tenth century the settled area expanded drastically to cover approximately 15 hectares by the century's end and it is from this period that the largest, most lavishly furnished, barrows date. Ten or so contain traces of boat-burnings and while finds of a few iron rivets need not denote the burning of entire boats, their symbolic value is none the less eloquent - of Scandinavian-style funerary rites and the status attach­ing to trade and boats. Pairs of tortoiseshell brooches attest the burial of well-to-do Scandinavian women and some chamber graves contain Byzantine silks, the single most valuable luxury obtained from 'the Greeks'. Many per­sons were drawn to Gnezdovo, whether to drag boats or make a living in smithies and other workshops. A pot with a Slavic graffito from the first half of the tenth century denotes, probably, a literate Slav resident. Comparable expansion was under way at Gorodishche, whose overspill began to take up the nearby site of Novgorod. The influx of Muslim dirhams, which had so long driven its economic growth, continued but Western markets were also involved in the networks of exchange. Silks of probable Byzantine manufacture played some part, as witness finds in the burial ground at Birka and, occasion­ally, still further west, in Scandinavian-dominated parts of the British Isles where dirhams of the later ninth and earlier tenth centuries have also come to light.

The pattern of finds of luxury goods is loosely congruent with that of chamber graves. Chamber graves have been excavated at Birka, Hedeby and elsewhere in Denmark, a kind of 'social register' of the well-to-do. Their occupants had not necessarily belonged to ruling elites, and war-bands could cause serious disorder, especially when legitimate authority was in dispute. However, the direct involvement of many retainers in trading gave them an underlying interest in stability. The distribution pattern of the chamber graves in Rus' charts princely strongpoints and the most regulated trading nodes from the end of the ninth century onwards: from Staraia Ladoga, Gorodishche and Pskov down to Gnezdovo and the middle Dnieper, with a cluster at Timerevo on the upper Volga. Membership of war-bands and trading companies was not closed to talent, and costumes, riding gear and ornament designs were adopted from both host populations and more exotic cultures. But their breeding- and, frequently, homing-ground was the Scandinavian world, long-range travel being a mark of membership.

Christianising impulses reached the Rus' in several ways - from individ­ual warriors and traders frequenting Swedish and Danish kingly courts and emporia; from those who journeyed to Byzantium and back; and through missionary efforts by Byzantine emperors and churchmen. These impulses can hardly have failed to affect the sacral aspects of rulership, whatever its precise complexion at that time, and by 946 baptised Rus' were being paraded at receptions in the Great Palace. Whether to impress her Christian notables or out of personal belief, Ol'ga proceeded to associate herself sacramentally with the ruling family in Byzantium. The Byzantines' apparent reluctance to send a mission is understandable in light of Bishop Adalbert's experiences. After his mission was abandoned, several members were killed and Adalbert claimed that he had only narrowly escaped himself. Ol'ga maintained a priest in her entourage until she died in 969 and the presence of other priests and a church in Kiev would not be surprising, given that a number of leading Rus' were Christian. Yet powerful Rus' were opposed to Christianisation. Their stance is epitomised by the Primary Chronicle's tale of Ol'ga's attempts to con­vert her son, Sviatoslav. He responded: 'My retainers will laugh at this.'²⁰ This image of Sviatoslav as swashbuckler, consciously reacting against his mother's new-found eirenic disposition, accords with an eyewitness descrip­tion. Sviatoslav's head was shorn save for one long strand of hair, a mark of nobility among Turkic peoples. Members of the Rus' elite were no strangers to artefacts evoking myths and customs of steppe dwellers. The mounting on a drinking-horn depicts a scene of men and predators in combat which may evoke Khazar concepts of sacral kingship. The horn, one of a pair, was buried in the barrow of a Chernigov magnate in the 960s, as was a statuette of Thor.

Sviatoslav: the last migration

Sometime in the mid-960s Sviatoslav forged an alliance with a group of nomads, the Oghuz, and launched a joint attack on the Khazars. Sviatoslav's aggression was reportedly triggered by his discovery that the Viatichi were pay­ing tribute in 'shillings' to the Khazars.²¹ This vignette illustrates the lucrative involvement of the Slavs with the trading nexus; the long reach of the Khazars;

and, more generally, the many compass-bearings of the Rus'. In laying waste to the Khazar capital of Itil, Sviatoslav destroyed a rival power intruding into his own sphere, and in attacking the Volga Bulgars and the Burtas he was perhaps seeking unhindered access to the Samanid realm, the main source of Rus' silver. Sviatoslav did not, however, try and base himself on the lower Volga or at the Straits of Kerch, where his forces sacked the Khazar fortress of S-m-k-r-ts. In fact the influx of silver from Samanid mints began to falter from around this time. Instead he opted for Pereiaslavets on the lower Danube. This, he determined, would be 'the centre of my land, for there all good things flow: gold from the Greeks, precious cloths, wines and fruit of many kinds; silver and horses from the Czechs and Hungarians; and from the Rus' furs, wax, honey and slaves'.[16] The immediate reason for Sviatoslav's intervention in the Balkans in 968 was fortuitous. The Byzantine emperor, Nicephorus II, incited him to raid Bulgaria, offering gold as an inducement. Byzantine sources portray the Rus' as marvelling at the fertility of the region, and the emissary delivering the gold is said to have urged Sviatoslav to stay there, furthering his own ambitions for the imperial throne. But Sviatoslav probably needed little prompting to stay on in the south. He had already shown impatience with the status quo in shattering the Khazar hegemony and, as stressed above, the Rus' on the middle Dnieper were hemmed in by many constraints. The Pechenegs were incited by the emperor to attack Kiev, once Sviatoslav showed signs of overstepping his brief, and the town came close to surrendering. But Sviatoslav proved able to come to terms with the nomads and many Pech- enegs accompanied him back to the Balkans in, probably, the autumn of 969. Hungarians, too, joined in and with their help Sviatoslav ranged as far south as Arcadiopolis, impaling prisoners en masse. The atrocities were not entirely random. Sviatoslav seems to have envisaged a commonwealth spanning sev­eral cultures and climate zones: his young sons Iaropolk, Oleg and Vladimir were respectively assigned to Kiev, the Derevlian land and Novgorod, while Sviatoslav ensconced himself near the Danube's mouth. The Bulgarian Tsar Boris was left in his capital, Preslav. Rus' garrisons were installed there and in Danubian towns. Sviatoslav's underlying aim was probably to foster trade along and between major riverways, employing nomads to police the steppes and keep the peace. His base had the advantage of proximity to the markets of both 'the Greeks' and Central Europe, where Saxon silver was beginning to be mined. Sviatoslav was not the first Rus' leader to have a keen eye for commercial openings.

Sviatoslav overestimated the Byzantines' willingness to accept him as a new neighbour. In April 971 Nicephorus' successor, John I Tzimisces, led a surprise offensive through the Haemus mountain passes and soon Sviatoslav was holed up at Dorostolon. Retreat down the Danube was barred by the imperial fleet, while most of the nomads were won over by imperial bribery. In late July, after ferocious fighting, a deal was struck. The Rus' received grain, safe-conduct and confirmation of the right to trade at Constantinople in return for Sviatoslav's written oath never again to attack imperial territory or Bulgaria. His ambitions had canniness. While reputedly adopting the nomads' lifestyle, with a saddle for pillow,[17] Sviatoslav seems to have determined that the best prospects for commercial growth lay with Byzantine and Western European markets rather than - as traditionally - the East. Had Byzantine forces not then been in peak condition, a Danubian Rus' might have formed. As it was, the outcome of the campaigning was uncertain only days before Sviatoslav proposed terms: he did not actually surrender nor does he seem to have given up his captives or his loot. These spoils and putative slaves were his undoing. Concern for shipping them back to Rus' slowed down withdrawal, and Sviatoslav and his men were ambushed by Pechenegs at the Dnieper Rapids early in 972. Few escaped and Sviatoslav's own skull became a plated drinking cup, a use to which steppe peoples put the heads of enemies.

972-C.978 Fragmentation

Sviatoslav's demise brought instability to the princely dynasty and allowed out­siders to set themselves up near the 'way from the Varangians to the Greeks'. His two eldest sons, Iaropolk and Oleg, fell out after a clash between hunt­ing parties which cost Liut, the son of Iaropolk's military commander, his life. Iaropolkthen attacked and defeated his brother, and Oleg perished in the crush of fugitives. Vladimir fled 'beyond the sea'. The Primary Chronicle's account is laconic, a tale of the commander's vengeance for Liut. Nonetheless its intima­tions of quarrels over resources involving princely retainers may not be sheer fiction. There had been problems with satisfying retainers after Igor' 's disas­trous expedition to Byzantium; on that occasion the Derevlians themselves had been involved. Both episodes imply reduced princely circumstances after defeat by the Byzantines and probable dislocation of trade. There are hints that Iaropolk attempted a rapprochement with Emperor Otto I, in that Rus' envoys were among those at Otto's court in March 973. An attempt to step up exports of furs and slaves to silver-rich Central European markets through amity with their chief protector would be quite understandable, a substitute for Byzantine and oriental outlets. Taking advantage of the political disarray, figures with Scandinavian names such as Rogvolod (*Ragnvaldr in Old Norse) and Tury reportedly set themselves up at, respectively, Polotsk and Turov. These strongholds could give access to the West but lay near 'the way from the Varangians to the Greeks'. This route had not lost its magnetism and drew Vladimir Sviatoslavich back. Having lodged at some Scandinavian court or courts, he mustered a company of retainers and led them to Rus'. He enjoyed advantages over other power holders or seekers, being a son of Sviatoslav and acquainted with leading figures of Gorodishche-Novgorod. Dobrynia, his mother's brother, had in effect been his guardian there and was probably still with him. Vladimir was thus better able to enlist many citizens, Finns as well as 'Slovenes', and although they may have been inexpert fighters, their num­bers together with the 'Varangians' proved more than a match for Rogvolod. Vladimir's personal qualities also gave him a head start. Ruthless and shrewd, he put to death Rogvolod, reportedly a 'prince',²⁴ and also Rogvolod's sons. But he took Rogvolod's daughter to wife and led his Novgorodians and retain­ers to Kiev. There he suborned the commander of Iaropolk's defence force and invited his half-brother to parley in their father's old stone hall. As Iaropolk entered, 'two Varangians stabbed him in the chest with their swords'.²⁵ Thus Vladimir gained the throne city of Kiev around 978.

Vladimir's force, his legitimacy deficit and turning to the gods

Vladimir suffered the handicap of lacking reputable ties with local elites or populations on the middle Dnieper. He was of princely stock, but his mother had been Sviatoslav's key-holder and of unfree status. Vladimir had spent his youth far away and lacked a longstanding retinue, once he had dispatched his 'Varangian' retainers to Byzantium. He sent them off after declining to pay them in precious metal and then reneging on a promised payment in marten- skins. This episode demonstrates the high running costs of war-bands and also Vladimir's political nous. He was anxious not to antagonise the better-off inhabitants of Kiev through over-taxation. As at Novgorod, the active co­operation of the citizenry was needed to underpin his regime: at least one prominent supporter of his murdered half-brother had fled to the Pechenegs and 'often' took part in their raids.²⁶

Lack of material resources partly explains the tempo of Vladimir's early years in power. He needed to reimpose and extend tribute collection so as to feed the markets of Kiev and secure means for rewarding his followers. He led campaigns to the west and campaigned repeatedly against the redoubtable Viatichi, so as to reimpose tribute on them. Besides restoring the exchange nexuses, war-leadership could bond Vladimir with contingents of warriors of his choosing and strengthen his power base. This, however, presupposed victories and the public cult he instituted was designed to induce them, besides appealing to the heterogeneous population of the middle Dnieper region. The 'pantheon' of wooden idols set up outside his hall in Kiev was headed by Perun, the Slavic god of lightning and power. This is our first evidence of a prince's attempt to organise public worship and to associate his rule with a medley of gods, some quite local, others (like Perun) with a widespread following. Vladimir presumably hoped to bolster his legitimacy through such measures, and to win further victories. After subjugating the Iatviagians in the west, he ordered sacrifices in thanksgiving to the idols outside his hall. We know of this only because the father of a boy chosen by lot for sacrifice happened to be Christian, a Varangian who had come from 'the Greeks' to reside in Kiev and who refused to give up his son, at the cost of his own life. Vladimir's command- cult thus gave rise to 'martyrs'. But judging by the coffins and contents of several graves in Kiev's main burial ground, Christians and part-Christians lived peaceably with pagans, and were buried near them. The incessant circulation of travellers between the Baltic and Byzantium prompted individual Rus' to be baptised and Christianity was quite well known to inhabitants of the urban network, but this did not oblige their prince to follow suit.

Vladimir's campaigns brought mastery of the towns between the San and the Western Bug. Among these were Cherven and Peremyshl' (modern Przemysl in Poland), population centres astride routes to Western markets. The run of victories abated when Vladimir suffered a setback at the hands of the most sophisticated power adjoining Rus', the Volga Bulgars. He had presumably hoped to subjugate their markets, too, but on his uncle's advice came to terms. Dobrynia is supposed to have pointed out that these enemies wore boots: 'Let us go and look for wearers of bast-shoes!'²⁷ His implication that Vladimir should seek tribute from simpler folk was demeaning, setting limits to the resources he could bring under his sway. To that extent, Perun and his fellow gods had failed to 'deliver', and a quest for a better guarantor of victory would be understandable. It may be no accident that the Primary Chronicle's next entry after Vladimir's reverse on the Volga is the arrival of a Bulgar mission to convert him to Islam, in the mid-980s. This serves as the preliminary to a lengthy account sometimes termed Vladimir's 'Investigation of the Faiths'. Most - though not all - of the material in the 'Investigation' is stylised doctrinal exegesis. But its image of Vladimir investigating four brands of monotheism - Eastern and Western Christianity besides Islam and Judaism - encapsulates what the immediately preceding chronicle entries and the gen­eral historical context lead one to expect. Rus' rulers since Ol'ga had been considering alternative sacral sources of authority. The cult of an all-powerful God had its attractions for a prince pre-eminent, yet light on legitimatisation, as Vladimir was. One might consider Vladimir's eventual choice of Byzan­tine Christianity inevitable, given the exposure of so many of his notables to its wealth and majesty. But Vladimir could have obtained a mission from the Germans, following his grandmother's precedent, had the government during Otto III's minority been better placed to further mission work. And there is evidence that Vladimir sent emissaries to Khorezm and obtained an instructor to teach 'the religious laws of Islam'. This demarche by a Rus' 'king' is recounted by a late eleventh-century Persian writer and it is com­patible with the Primary Chronicle's tale of the dispatch of enquirers to the Muslims, Germans and Byzantines.[18] Seeking a mission from the Orient was nothing untoward, even if commercial ties with Central Asia were set to slacken.

An unusual conjuncture of events caused Vladimir to settle for a religious mission, marriage alliance and treaty with the senior Byzantine emperor, Basil II. The outlines are clear: by early 988 Basil was beleaguered in his capital by rebel armies encamped across the Bosporus, while a Bulgarian uprising against Byzantine rule in the Balkans was in full flame. Basil came to terms with Vladimir, sending his sister as bride in exchange for military aid; Vladimir's baptism was the inevitable corollary of this. Vladimir sent an army - 6,000- strong by one account - and they caught the rebels off-guard at Chrysopolis in the opening months of 989, at latest. This turned the tide. Within a couple of years the military rebellion ended and Anna Porphyrogenita settled in Kiev with her spouse, who took the Christian name 'Basil', in honour of his brother-in-law. These outlines convey the essence, that Basil II's domestic interests momentarily converged with those ofVladimir. The Rus' ruler could supply desperately needed troops and in return received generous concessions, such as had not been vouchsafed to Ol'ga.

The exact course and significance of events is harder to reconstruct, espe­cially the expedition of Vladimir to Cherson. The Primary Chronicle's account draws on disparate sources, and our near-contemporaneous foreign sources are sketchy. Various explanations for Vladimir's expedition are feasible. This could have been a 'first strike', akin to his seizure of Cherven and other towns to the west. Cherson had prospered greatly in the tenth century and the town's built-up area expanded. Vladimir may have exploited Basil II's preoccupation with rebellions to grab the Crimea's richest town, reckoning that he could either mulct its revenues or use it as a bargaining counter. As part of an ensu­ing treaty, he may have sent Basil military aid. Alternatively, Vladimir may have seized Cherson in retaliation for Basil's slowness to honour an initial agree­ment on similar lines, forcing him to abide by it. Or the capture of Cherson could even have been carried out as a form of assistance to Basil if, as has been suggested, the townsfolk had sided with the rebellious generals.[19] What is not in doubt is that Vladimir exploited Byzantine disarray in order to secure his own authority, underwritten by Almighty God.

Vladimir-Basil, 'new Constantine' and patriarch

Vladimir was acclaimed by later churchmen as an 'apostle among rulers' who had saved them from the devil's wiles.[20] The devil bemoaned expulsion from where he had thought to make his home. Such imagery was fostered by the spectaculars staged in the wake of Vladimir's own baptism, and in the second half of the eleventh century a Kievan monk could still recall 'the baptism of the land of Rus".[21] Kiev's citizens were ordered into the Dnieper for mass baptism. The idol of Perun was dragged by a horse's tail and thrashed with rods, then tossed in the river and kept moving as far as the Rapids, clear of Rus'. Vladimir ordered 'wood to be cut and churches put up on the sites where idols had stood'; 'the idols were smashed and icons of saints were installed.'[22]

This scenario of purification and transformation must be qualified. A fair proportion of the Rus' elite were probably more or less Christian just before the conversion: there had been baptised Rus' in the 940s. Conversely, the extent and nature of the 'Christianisation' of ordinary folk, especially those living outside towns and the immediate sway of princely agents, is very uncertain. Even the chronicle merely has Vladimir getting people baptised 'in all the towns and villages'. Priests were assigned to towns, rather than villages. It was pagan idols, sanctuaries and communal rituals - alternative focuses of loyalties and expectation - that were swept away.

The churchmen's portrayal of Vladimir's achievement is not, however, sheer make-believe. The initiatives taken by Vladimir were intended to associate his regime indissolubly with the Christian God and His saints, making promotion of the Church a function of princely rule. And he succeeded in embedding a version of Christianity in the political culture of Rus'. No aspiring prince in Rus' mounted a pagan revival, unlike some usurpers in Scandinavia. Vladimir's Christian leadership predicated victories and the vein of triumphalism in the Primary Chronicle's depiction of Vladimir's activities at Cherson probably relays his own propaganda. But he also exploited his new-found ties with a court renowned among the Rus' for God-given wealth. Anna Porphyrogenita would eventually be laid to rest in a marble sarcophagus beside Vladimir's own, a symbol of parity of status as well as conjugal bonds. Anna probably lived in the halls built on the Starokievskaia Hill and graced the feasts held there every Sunday, presumably after religious services in the church of the Mother of God which the halls flanked. These stone and brick buildings were the work of 'masters' from Byzantium and were embellished with wall-paintings and marble furnishings. The church's design seems to have followed that of the main church in the emperor's palace complex, the church of the Pharos, and they shared a dedicatee, the Mother of God. Vladimir was inviting comparisons between his own residence and that of the emperor. The message that he could match the Greeks was underlined when he placed a certain Anastasius in charge of his palace church. Reputedly, Anastasius had betrayed Cherson to Vladimir by revealing where the pipes supplying its water ran; once these were cut, the thirst-stricken Chersonites surrendered.[23] A number of other priests from Cherson were assigned to the church, which became known as the 'Tithe church' (Desiotinnoio) because of the tenth of revenues allocated to it. The relics of St Clement brought back from Cherson had a prominent position, while looted antique statuary was displayed outside. Thus the show church served as a kind of victory monument to Vladimir's role in the conversion of his people.

The middle Dnieper is the region where Rus' churchmen's rhetoric con­cerning 'new Christian people, the elect of God' rings most true. In order to protect his cult centre, Vladimir established new settlements far into the steppe, taking advantage of the black earth's fertility. Kiev itself was enlarged to enclose some 10 hectares within a formidable earthen rampart and ramparts of similar technique were raised to the south of the town. The construction of barriers and strongholds along the main tributaries of the Dnieper brought a new edge to Rus' relations with the nomads. Although never unproblematic, these had hitherto involved constant trading and had more often than not been peaceable. There was now, according to the Primary Chronicle, 'great and unremitting strife'³⁴ and although Kiev was secure, even the largest of the for­tified towns shielding it came under pressure from the Pechenegs. Belgorod, south-west of Kiev, underwent a prolonged siege. It did not, however, fall and this owed something to the layers of unfired bricks forming the core of the ramparts, which still stand between five and six metres high. They enclosed some 105 hectares, and a very high level of organisation was needed to supply the inhabitants. The princely authorities adapted techniques from the Byzan­tine world, not only brick- and glass-making but also plans for large cisterns and a beacon system perhaps fuelled by naphtha. Few new towns matched Belgorod or Pereiaslavl' in size and many settlements lacked ramparts, the nearby forts serving as places of refuge. But the grain and other produce grown by the farmers fed the cavalrymen and horses stationed in the forts, sickles and ploughshares were manufactured in the smithies, and nexuses of trade burgeoned. Finds of glazed tableware and, in substantial quantities, amphorae and glass bracelets attest the prosperity of the settlements' defenders. The risks of voyages to Byzantium were mitigated - though never dispelled - by ramparts beside the Dnieper and a large fortified harbour near the River Sula's confluence with the Dnieper, at Voin. Cavalry could escort boats to the Rapids, and from the late tenth century the Byzantine government let the Rus' establish a trading settlement in the Dnieper estuary.

The middle Dnieper region had not been densely populated before Vladimir's reign. He is represented by the Primary Chronicle as rounding up 'the best men' from among the Slav and Finnish inhabitants of the forest zone and installing them in his settlements.³⁵ The newcomers to the hundred or more forts and settlements in the great arc protecting Kiev were prime targets for evangelisers, as well as raiders. Divine intervention supporting princely leadership was in constant demand, and one of the few bishoprics quite firmly attributable to Vladimir's reign is that of Belgorod. At Vasil'ev Vladimir founded a church and held a great feast in thanksgiving, after hiding under its bridge from pursuing Pechenegs. The apparent intensity of pastoral care and the deracination of most of the population from northern habitats made inculcation of Christian observances the more effective. Judging by the funerary rituals in the burial grounds of these settlements, few flagrantly pagan practices persisted. Barrows were not heaped over graves in cemeter­ies within a 250-kilometre radius of Kiev, or in regions such as the Cherven towns where Christianity was already well established. Elsewhere barrows were much more common, although heaped over plain Christian burials. The small circular barrows often contained pottery, ashes and food symbol­ising - if not left over from - funeral feasts, occasions of which the Church disapproved.

The regions and key points where Vladimir's conversion transformed the landscape, physically as well as figuratively, were finite but the number of per­sons affected was considerable. New Christian communities were instituted in the middle Dnieper region and existing ones in the trading network mas­sively reinforced, especially in the northern towns frequented by Christians from the Scandinavian world. Novgorod was made an episcopal see. Churches were most probably built and priests appointed in Smolensk and Polotsk, albeit without resident bishops. Even in north-eastern outposts, Christianity became the cult of retainers and other princely agents, and it appealed to locals traf­ficking with them and aspiring to raise their own status. At Uglich on the upper Volga (as at Smolensk, Pskov and Kiev itself) the pagan burial grounds were destroyed in the wake of Vladimir's conversion and in the first quarter of the eleventh century a church dedicated to Christ the Saviour was built. Soon members of the elite began to fill St Saviour's graveyard in strict accordance with Church canons. Vladimir's tribute collectors and other itinerant agents did not just owe allegiance in return for treasure such as his new-fangled sil­ver coins, share-outs of tribute and sumptuous feasts featuring silver spoons, important as these were (for examples of Vladimir's silver coins, see Plate 2). They had religious affiliations with him: greed, ambition and concern for indi­vidual survival in life and after death fused with loyalty to the prince. Vladimir probably saw the advantages of instilling the faith into the next generation. There is no particular reason to doubt that the children of 'notable families' were taken off to be instructed in 'book learning' while their mothers, 'still not strong in the faith . . . wept for them as if they were dead'.[24]

The wording of the Primary Chronicle seems to treat book learning as more or less synonymous with studying the Scriptures and the new religion, and Vladimir stood to gain moral stature from enlightening his notables' children. One should not, however, suppose that the literacy which boys - maybe also girls - of his elite obtained was of much application to everyday governance. The administrative and ideological underpinnings of princely rule were still quite rudimentary, even if Vladimir loved his 'retainers and consulted them about the ordering of the land, about wars and about the law of the land'.[25]The 'land of Rus" was an archipelago of largely self-regulating communities. Extensive groupings in the north were still considered tribes, most notoriously the Viatichi. It was mainly in Vladimir's new fortresses and settlements in the middle Dnieper region that princely commanders, town governors and agents were numerous enough to intervene in the affairs of ordinary people; the standing alert against the nomads required as much. But even there the officials seem to have had little occasion to issue deeds or written judgements. Nor do they seem to have played a commanding role in adjudicating disputes or enforcing laws. There had longbeen some sense of due legal process among the Rus'. Procedures for making amends for insults, injuries, thefts and killings inform the tenth-century treaties with the Byzantines. However, practical measures for conflict resolution of mutually inimical parties fell far short of upholding an inherently ethical code, of punishing upon Christian principle actions deemed sinful. A hint of attitudes towards justice as a non-negotiable quality is offered by a passage in the Primary Chronicle, perhaps first set down before Vladimir's reign passed from living memory. Vladimir's bishops urged punitive action against robbers, for 'you have been appointedby God to punish evil-doers'. Vladimir gave up exacting fines in compensation for offences (viry) but later he reverted to 'the ways of his father and grandfather'.[26] The story shows awareness in Church circles that Rus"s 'new Constantine'[27] had only limited conceptions concerning his authority.

Vladimir's regime rested less on elaborate institutional frameworks or jus­tifications in law than on well-oiled patronage mechanisms and the aura with which his paternal ancestry invested him. The blood of a murdered half-brother on one's hands could be offset by imposing a well-ordered public cult. In every other way, family blood and concomitant bonds were assets that Vladimir exploited to the full. His maternal uncle, Dobrynia, seems to have been a mainstay and there is no sign of the multiplicity of 'princes' or magnates attested for the middle Dnieper in the mid-tenth century. The losses incurred during Sviatoslav's campaigns and his sons' internecine strife may have cleared what was always a hazardous deck. In any case, Vladimir quite soon came to rely on his own sons in what was probably a new variant of collective, fam­ily, leadership. He was not the first Rus' prince to assign sons to distant seats of authority, but he seems to have carried this out on a wider scale than his predecessors. Twelve sons are named and associated with seats by the Primary Chronicle, a likely evocation of the twelve Apostles. The actual number of sons assigned to towns may well have been greater, since the distinction between those born in wedlock rather than to a concubine was not sharply drawn. That Vladimir was the father was what mattered: they could deputise for him in a variety of places. If it is unsurprising that a son was installed in Novgorod, the failure to grace Pskov - the town of Vladimir's grandmother and proba­bly a longstanding seat of authority - with a prince of its own is noteworthy. So is the assignment of sons to towns which, though of fairly recent origin, had proved to be potential power bases, Polotsk and Turov. When Iziaslav, Vladimir's first assignee to Polotsk, died in 1001, his son was permitted to take his place and, in effect, put down the roots of a hereditary branch of princes there; Iziaslav's mother hadbeen Rogneda, daughter of Rogvolod. Presumably Vladimir calculated that so strongly rooted a regime would block any future bids for Polotsk by outsiders. Princes were also sent to locales whose ties with the urban network had not been specifically 'political'. For example, Rostov was only developed into a large town in the 980sor 990s, when the local inhabi­tants were mainly the Finnic Mer. The newly fortified town was dignified with a resident prince, Iaroslav, and an oaken church was subsequently built. Some places of strategic importance but lacking recent princely associations were not assigned a prince. It was a governor who had to cope with Viking-type raids on Staraia Ladoga and the town suffered conflagrations, at the hands of Erik Haakonson in 997 and of Sveinn Haakonson early in 1015.

Sveinn raided down 'the East Way' at a time when the shortcomings of Vladimir's regime were becoming plain. Ties between father and sons could hold together for a generation of peace, but they were not immune from jock­eying for prominence and ultimate succession. By around 1013 Vladimir's rela­tions with one leading son, Sviatopolk, were so fraught that he was removed from his seat in Turov and imprisoned. And, ominously, Vladimir's relations with the occupant of the most important seat after Kiev itself deteriorated drastically. In 1014 Iaroslav, now prince of Novgorod, held back the annual payment due from that city to Kiev and Vladimir began detailed preparations for the march north. The fact that Vladimir was on such bad terms with two of his foremost sons suggests that thoughts about the succession were in the air. Iaroslav 'sent overseas and brought over Varangians' for what promised to be outright war.[28] However, Vladimir fell ill, putting off the expedition, and on 15 July 1015 he died.

Essentially, the vast 'land of Rus" was a family unit, with all the affinities and tensions germane to that term, and there were no effective ritual or legal mechanisms making for a generally accepted succession. Once the family 'patriarch' died, these uncertainties could only be resolved by a virtual free- for-all between the more or less eligible sons of Vladimir. The coming of Christianity fostered economic well-being, fuller settlement of the Black Earth region and cultural advance, while a kind of 'cult of personality' now invested Vladimir, accentuating the aura of princely blood. Over the centuries there would scarcely ever be a question of persons who were not his descendants seizing thrones for themselves in Rus'. This was partly due to force of custom and princely retinues' force majeure. But there was also symbiosis amounting to consensus across diverse populations and urban centres with a positive interest in the status quo - and in the profits to be had from long-distance trading. For these members of Rus', the tale of the summoning of Riurik from overseas had resonance. The regime fashioned by Vladimir could maintain order of a sort. There was no other overriding authority, no well-connected senior churchmen to knock princely heads together. But given the remarkable make-up of Christian Rus', how could it have been otherwise?

Kievan Rus' (1015-1125)

SIMON FRANKLIN

The period from 1015 to 1125, from the death of Vladimir Sviatoslavich to the death of his great-grandson Vladimir Vsevolodovich (known as Vladimir Monomakh), has long been regarded as the Golden Age of early Rus': as an age of relatively coherent political authority exercised by the prince of Kiev over a relatively coherent and unified land enjoying relatively unbroken economic prosperity and military security along with the first and best flowerings of a new native Christian culture.[29]

One reason for the power of the impression lies in the nature of the native sources. This is the age in which early Rus', so to speak, comes out from under ground, when archaeological sources are supplemented by native writings and buildings and pictures which survive to the present. From the mid-eleventh cen­tury onwards, in particular, the droplets of sources begin to turn into a steady trickle and then into a flow. Before c.1045 we possess no clearly native narrative, exegetic or administrative documents. By 1125 we have the first sermons, saints' lives, law codes, epistles and pilgrim accounts, as well as a rapidly increasing quantity of brief letters on birch bark and of scratched graffiti on church walls and miscellaneous objects.[30] Before the death of Vladimir Sviatoslavich no component of our main narrative source, the Primary Chronicle (Povest' vre- mennykh let) is clearly derived from contemporary Rus' witness; by the early twelfth century, when the chronicle was compiled, its authors could incorpo­rate several decades of contemporary native narratives and interpretations. No building from the age of Vladimir Sviatoslavich or earlier survived above ground into the modern age. Monumental buildings from the mid-eleventh to early twelfth centuries can still be seen today - in varying states of complete­ness - the length of Rus', from Novgorod in the north to Kiev and Chernigov in the south. Still more survived until the mid-twentieth century, when they were destroyed either by German invaders or by Stalinist zealots.[31] These early writ­ings and buildings came to acquire - and in some cases were clearly intended to convey - an aura of authority, a kind of definitive status as cultural and political and ideological models, as the foundations of a tradition.

Between 1015 and 1125, then, for subsequent observers Rus' emerged into the light, and immediately contemplated and celebrated its own enlightenment. Such perceptions are real and significant facts of cultural history. However, their documentary accuracy is debatable and our own retelling of the period is necessarily somewhat grubbier than the image.

Dynastic politics

Political legitimacy in Rus' resided in the dynasty. The ruling family managed to create an ideological framework for its own pre-eminence which was main­tained without serious challenge for over half a millennium. To this extent the political structure was simple: the lands of the Rus' were, more or less by definition, the lands claimed or controlled by the descendants of Vladimir Sviatoslavich (or, in more distant genealogical legend, by the descendants of the ninth-century Varangian Riurik). But the simplicity of such a formulation hides its potential complexity in practice. It is one thing to say that legiti­macy resided in the dynasty, quite another to determine how power should be defined and allocated within it. Legitimacy was vested in the family as a whole, not in any individual member of it. Power was distributed and redistributed, claimed and counter-claimed, among members of a continually expanding kinship group, not passed intact and by automatic right from father to son. The political history of the period thus reflects, above all, the interplay of two factors, the dynastic and the regional: on the one hand the issue ofprecedence or seniority within the ruling family; on the other hand - as a consequence of the distribution of power - the increasingly entrenched and often conflicting regional interests of its local branches.

The changing patterns of internal politics are most graphically shown at moments of strain resulting from disputes over succession. Succession took place both 'vertically' from an older generation to a younger, and 'laterally' between members ofthe same generation, from brother to brother or cousin to cousin. Three times between 1015 and 1125 the dynasty had to adjust to 'vertical' succession: in 1015 on the death of Vladimir himself; in 1054 on the death of his son Iaroslav, and in 1093 on the death of his grandson Vsevolod (see Table 4.1). On each occasion the adjustment to 'vertical' succession introduced a fresh set of 'lateral' problems among potential successors in the next generation, and on each occasion the solutions were slightly different. Through looking at the sequence of adjustments to changes ofpower we can followthe development of a set of conventions and principles which, though never neat or fully consistent in their application, are the closest we get to a political 'system'.[32]

In 1015 Vladimir's sons were scattered around the extremities ofthe lands, for it had been his policy to consolidate family control over the tribute-gathering areas by allocating each of his sons to a regional base. One was given Turov, to the west, on the route to Poland; another had the land of the Derevlians, the immediate north-western neighbours of the Kievan Polianians; one was installed at Novgorod in the north, another at the remote southern outpost of Tmutorokan', beyond the steppes, overlooking the Straits of Kerch between the Black Sea and the Azov Sea. There were a couple of postings in the north­east, at Rostov and Murom, and one in Polotsk in the north-west. This was Vladimir's framework for ensuring that each of his sons had autonomous means of support and that the family as a whole could establish and maintain the territorial extent of its dominance.

On Vladimir's death this structure collapsed. Despite their remoteness from each other, the regional allocations were clearly not regarded as substitutes for central power (if we regard the middle Dnieper region as the 'centre'). The only exception was Polotsk, where Vladimir's son Iziaslav had already died and had been succeeded by his own son Briacheslav: there is no indication that Briacheslav competed with his uncles, and this is the first recorded example of a regional allocation coming to be treated as the distinct patrimony of a particu­lar branch of the family. Relations between Vladimir's surviving sons, however, were more turbulent. Three were murdered (two of them, Boris and Gleb, went on to become venerated as saints),[33] and three more - Sviatopolk of Turov,

Table 4.1. From Vladimir Sviatoslavich to Vladimir Monomakh (princes of Kiev underlined)

Iaroslav of Novgorod, and Mstislav of Tmutorokan' - emerged as the princi­pal combatants. From their widely dispersed power bases each used his own regional resources and contacts to reinforce the campaign for a secure place at the centre. Sviatopolk formed an alliance with the king of Poland, whose multi­national force occupied Kiev for a while; Iaroslav augmented his local Nov- gorodian forces with Scandinavian mercenaries who helped him eventually to defeat and expel Sviatopolk; Mstislav gathered conscripts from his tributaries in the northern Caucasus, with whose aid he was able (in 1024) to negotiate an agreement with Iaroslav: he (Mstislav) would occupy Chernigov and would control the 'left-bank' lands (east of the Dnieper), while Iaroslav would control the 'right bank' lands including Kiev and Novgorod. Only on Mstislav's death (in 1034 or 1036) did Iaroslav revert to his father's status as sole ruler.⁶

Thus the death of Vladimir was followed by multiple fratricide, three years of dynastic war, a further seven years of periodic armed conflict, then a decade of coexistence before the final resolution when just one ofVladimir's numerous sons - Iaroslav - was left alive and at liberty. We can (and scholars do) speculate as to how the succession in 1015 'should have' worked. For such speculations to have any value, we need to be reasonably confident of three things: (i) that we know the seniority of his sons; (ii) that we know Vladimir's own wishes; and (iii) that we know what in principle constituted dynastic propriety at the time. But we know none of these things. Even if we did, and even if we could thereby in theory extrapolate a system to which his sons were meant to adhere, their actions demonstrate that any notional system failed to function. For practical purposes no such system existed.

The next change of generations, on Iaroslav's death in 1054, was more orderly. Like Vladimir, Iaroslav allocated regional possessions to his sons. Unlike Vladimir - according to the Primary Chronicle - he specified a hierarchy of seniority both within the dynasty and between the regional allocations, and he laid down some principles of inter-princely relations. The chronicle presents Iaroslav's arrangements in the form of what purports to be his deathbed 'Testament' to his sons, though it is possible that the document itself was composed retrospectively.⁷

6 Franklin and Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, pp. 183-207. The precise course of events is contentious: see e.g. I. N. Danilevskii, Drevniaia Rus' glazami sovremennikov i potomkov (IX-XIIvv.) (Moscow: Aspekt Press, 1998), pp. 336-54; A. V Nazarenko, Drevniaia Rus' na mezhdunarodnykhputiakh. Mezhdistsiplinarnye ocherki kul'turnykh, torgovykh, politicheskikh sviazei IX-XIIvekov (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul'tury, 2001), pp. 451-503.

7 Povest' vremennykh let (hereafter PVL), ed. D. S. Likhachev and V P. Adrianova-Peretts, 2 vols. (Moscow and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1950), vol. I, p. 108. See Martin Dimnik, 'The "Testament" of Iaroslav "the Wise": A Re-Examination', Canadian Slavonic Papers 29 (1987): 369-86.

As at the death of Vladimir, the offspring of older sons who had pre-deceased their father were not part of the general share-out. Seniority was lateral before it was vertical: that is, it passed down the line of sons before it passed to grandsons. However, whereas in 1015 Polotsk had remained with the family of Vladimir's deceased son, in 1054 Novgorod - the seat of Iaroslav's first son, who had died in 1052 - was not alienated as patrimony but reverted to being in the gift of the prince of Kiev. The oldest of Iaroslav's surviving sons in 1054 were given towns in the middle Dnieper region. Iziaslav and Sviatoslav were to have Kiev and Chernigov (still the two most desirable cities, as in the arrangement between Iaroslav and Mstislav thirty years before), while the third son, Vsevolod, was given the more precarious prize of Pereiaslavl', further south and more exposed to the steppes. As for the conduct of family business, the 'Testament' made two stipulations: first, the eldest son (Iziaslav) was to take the place of the father, was owed the same respect and had similar responsibility for resolving disputes; and second, the territorial allocations were to be inviolate, with no brother entitled to transgress the boundaries of another.

Iaroslav's 'Testament' dealt with an immediate problem of succession, but in the larger dynastic context over time it had to be more aspirational than operational. It only dealt explicitly with a small number of regions. It said nothing about subsequent succession. It was vague about the potential con­tradiction between its two principal instructions: that the oldest brother had a father's authority, yet that all the brothers' allocated possessions were invi­olate (were Chernigov and Pereiaslavl' now the patrimonial possessions of Sviatoslav and Vsevolod respectively, or did Iziaslav have the right to reallo­cate as a father might?). And of course the 'Testament', like any document, could only be as effective as it was allowed to be by interested parties. Iaroslav's sons do seem to have operated as a reasonably harmonious triumvirate for nearly twenty years (briefly disrupted in 1067-8 when a kinsman from the Polotsk branch of the dynasty, Vseslav Briacheslavich, was installed as prince of Kiev by a faction of the townspeople). Yet in 1073 the two younger brothers, Sviatoslav and Vsevolod, blatantly contravened the provisions of their father's 'Testament' by ousting Iziaslav themselves. Iziaslav returned to Kiev after Svi- atoslav's death in 1076, only to be killed in 1078 in battle against a nephew, one of Sviatoslav's sons. Despite the dynastic messiness of Iziaslav's last few years, the result was neat. Kiev passed laterally down the line of brothers and Vsevolod at last found himself in a position similar to that of his father Iaroslav in the mid-i030s: with all his male siblings dead, he was left as 'sole ruler'. The 'Testament' of Iaroslav, blueprint for collective governance, was seemingly dis­solved into monarchy. As we shall see, however, in the intervening period the dynasty had developed, and its complexities cannot be reduced to the struggle for Kiev alone.

The next change of generation, on Vsevolod's death in 1093, illustrated and affirmed an important feature of dynastic convention. Vsevolod was succeeded as prince of Kiev by Sviatopolk Iziaslavich. Seniority did not, therefore, pass directly from Vsevolod to his offspring, but reverted to the offspring of his older brother. Or rather, it reverted to the offspring of the oldest of his brothers who had been prince of Kiev (the general practice was that one could only succeed to a throne where one's father had already been prince - so those whose fathers died young were at risk of falling off the ladder of succession). Three principles thus emerge: (i) legitimacy in general resides with the dynasty as a whole; (ii) seniority passes laterally down the line of brothers, and then back up to the offspring of the senior brother, except that (iii) a prince of Kiev should be the son of a prince of Kiev (according to the chronicles' formula a prince 'sits on the throne of his father and grandfather').

Although this nuance might be seen as a useful device to limit the number of claimants, the excluded members of the dynasty did not disappear, nor did they cease to be princes, nor did they lose the broader claim to some legitimate share of the family inheritance. Squabbles over Kiev itself are only a small part of the larger pattern of dynastic rule: a pattern which became ever more complex as the family expanded. Regional allocations came to be regarded as patrimonial possessions, within which the senior regional princes could then allocate possessions to their own offspring, approximately repro­ducing at local level the conventions which emerged in the Kievan succession. Indeed, Kiev and Novgorod remained exceptional in that they always retained, in different ways, a pan-dynastic dimension, never quite being converted into patrimonial principalities. With the dynasty continually expanding, and with every son of a prince remaining a prince, and with no mechanism for limiting the overall numbers, so the regional controversies over succession multiplied. For over forty years from Vsevolod's accession in 1078 there were no serious disputes over the Kievan inheritance, but instead the prince of Kiev and his senior associates on the middle Dnieper had to devote more and more of their time to dealing with conflicts among their junior or dispossessed kinsmen. Regional rivalries among land-hungry princelings were a powerful stimulus for settlement and colonisation and hence gave rise to fresh problems of prece­dence and demarcation. If in 1015 the princes posted around the periphery had looked inwards to Kiev, by the 1090s there was fierce competition for rights of tribute-gathering or settlement in previously remote areas in the north-east (Rostov, Suzdal') and south-west (Vladimir-in-Volynia, Peremyshl', Terebovl'), which thereby became ever more closely drawn into the political, economic and cultural nexus. The dynastic conventions, messy as they can appear to be (a particularly grisly series of conflicts in the mid-i090s led to an attempt at regulation through an accord at Liubech in 1097),[34] nevertheless helped to drive the process by which the lands of the Rus' gradually expanded outwards from the original north-south axis between the Baltic and the steppes and were consolidated into an increasingly coherent politico-cultural zone.

Returning, however, to Kiev to complete the outline narrative of dynastic politics: Sviatopolk's death in 1113 did not precipitate another change of gen­erations, but it did bring into focus, with respect to Kiev itself, a potential ambiguity in the conventions which had emerged over the second half of the eleventh century Who was the legitimate successor: Oleg, son of Sviatoslav of Chernigov? or Vladimir Monomakh, son of Vsevolod of Pereiaslavl'? On the one hand: Oleg was a son of the older brother, Vladimir was a son of the younger brother, Oleg's father Sviatoslav had been prince of Kiev before Vladimir's father Vsevolod (1073-6 and 1078-93 respectively), therefore obvi­ously Oleg was senior and had the legitimate claim. On the other hand, Oleg's father Sviatoslav had not become prince of Kiev legitimately according to seniority, nor had he outlasted his older brother as seniority passed down the line of siblings: he had ousted his older brother Iziaslav, whom he had then predeceased, and on both these counts the claims of his offspring were dubious. In 1113 the issue was resolved in favour of Vladimir Vsevolodovich, who (in the chronicle account) recognised the problem but allowed himself to be persuaded by the townspeople of Kiev However, this ambiguity between the claims of Vladimir and the claims of his cousin Oleg Sviatoslavich was to resurface periodically in disputes over the Kievan succession for at least the next hundred years.

Such, in brief but already sufficiently confusing outline, was the process of improvisation and adaptation through which the dynasty's political culture emerged. Yet whatever the dynasty's own preferences, family agreements in themselves were not enough to ensure their own implementation nor was dynastic seniority in itself a mechanism for the exercise of power. The political culture of a few brothers or cousins or uncles or nephews would have been irrelevant if it were not held in place by structures of coercion and legitimacy involving broader social groups.

Power and governance

The princes of Rus' were warlords, heading a military elite. While prince of Kiev, Vladimir Vsevolodovich Monomakh wrote an 'Instruction' for his sons, a kind of brief curriculum vitae presenting as exemplary his own credentials and achievements. What, in Vladimir's presentation, does an exemplary prince do? The answer is simple: he engages in military campaigns, and in their recreational equivalent, the hunt. Vladimir introduces the narrative of his life thus: 'Here I relate to you, my children, the tale of the labours that I have laboured: of my campaigns and of my hunts since I was thirteen years old.' And he concludes the narrative with a summary boast: 'In all [I completed] 83 major campaigns, besides minor campaigns too numerous to recall.'[35] Besides his kin, then, the social group closest to and most vital for the prince was his druzhina: his retinue, the protective and coercive basis for his power.

The druzhina owed its loyalty to the prince personally. Thus to some extent the druzhina could choose whom to support. In 1015 Vladimir Sviatoslavich's son Boris was reputedly on a campaign in the steppes with the druzhina of his father. When Vladimir died 'they said to him: "You have your father's druzhina and his troops; go to Kiev and sit on your father's throne."' But Boris declined, so the troops dispersed, leaving him with no protection except the singing of psalms, which on this occasion proved ineffectual against the agents of his murderous brother Sviatopolk.[36] Boris was a saint, hence virtuous; but a saint's virtue can be foolhardiness in ordinary men: a wise prince nurtured his druzhina, kept it close to him, feasted with it, consulted it and heeded its counsel, rewarded it for its labours on his behalf.[37]

Druzhina was a flexible term and flexible institution.[38] At its core was the 'small' (malaia) druzhina, the prince's permanent personal bodyguards, but beyond that the druzhina merges with the prince's extended household, his dvor (the word for a 'court' in all senses) and it formed the nucleus of his administration. Perhaps at one stage the druzhina had truly corresponded to some egalitarian ideal of military fellowship, with the prince as patron and first among equals, but as the business ofbeing a prince and running a principality in Rus' - especially for one of the senior princes - grew more complex, so the druzhina developed its internal hierarchies, its divisions of functions, its struc­ture of offices and responsibilities. It had its own senior members - the boyars - along with the rank-and-file 'youths' (otroki) in the junior (mladshaia) druzhina. Boyar offices spanned military, domestic and urban administration, from gen­eral (voevoda) to head of household (kormilets) to steward or estate manager (tiun) to military governor of a city (tysiatskii, 'thousander', 'chiliarch'; sup­ported by sotskie, 'hundreders', 'centurions'). Lesser functionaries included the domestic manager (kliuchnik, literally 'key-man'), enforcement officers such as the birich, and - eventually - more specialised servitors such as the 'seal-man' (pechatnik) or scribe (pisets). In a warrior elite, however, the distinction between military and administrative office is not always clear: thus, for example, the mechnik ('swordman') is well attested in Novgorodian inscriptions as having a role in fiscal administration or tribute-gathering.[39]

The political order was not, therefore, just a matter of agreement or dis­pute within the princely family, the inner circle of his kin. A prince needed his druzhina, his inner circle of servitors. And he also needed wider struc­tures of support at least in the towns, an outer circle linked to him more loosely. The pre-Mongol period in general was a time of notable urban eco­nomic and demographic growth, and throughout the period the rulers not merely exploited that growth but played a part in stimulating and developing it, whether through early ventures into long-distance trade and diplomacy, or through the cultural initiatives which helped develop local skills and create markets for local craft and manufacture. Around some of the regions, through the establishment and proliferation of patrimonial possessions, princes could often come to be identified intimately with their urban bases, but in Kiev and Novgorod (and perhaps elsewhere) the prince was not integrated into the urban social structure unconditionally. Not that princely rule itself was in question: a city needed a prince as much a prince needed a city; a prince; but not necessarily the particular prince. There were significant variations both in the degree of the prince's support from the city, and in the nature and extent of his authority over it.[40]

Urban support was embedded in formulae and rituals of political legitimacy. In 1015 Sviatopolk (according to the chronicler antipathetic to him) bribed the Kievans so that they 'received' him, but 'their hearts were not with him', and he asked the men of Vyshgorod whether they would 'receive [him] with [their] heart'.[41] In 1024 Mstislav of Chernigov and Tmutorokan' advanced on Kiev, but the townspeople 'did not receive him'.[42] On 15 September 1068 a faction of the Kievans held a veche, a town meeting, on the market square, and the upshot was that a group of them expelled their prince Iziaslav, freed Vseslav Briacheslavich of Polotsk from incarceration, took him to the princely court and 'acclaimed' him there - though a few months later they 'received' Iziaslav again when he returned with an army from Poland.[43] In 1102 Sviatopolk Iziaslavich had an agreement with his cousin Vladimir Vsevolodovich (Mono- makh) that his (Sviatopolk's) son should replace Vladimir's son Mstislav as prince in Novgorod. But the Novgorodians would have none of it: 'we do not want either Sviatopolk or his son. Send us [Mstislav] even if he has two heads,' they are reported to have said. And Sviatopolk argued and cajoled but could not persuade them, so the Novgorodians kept Mstislav.[44] In 1113 (according to a chronicler favourable to him) Vladimir Monomakh accepted the Kievan throne not by dynastic necessity but only because the Kievans threatened to riot if he refused; and 'all the Kievans' greeted his entrance into the city.[45]This is all still some way away from the written, contractual form in which Novgorod was to set the terms and conditions for its prince from the latter part of the pre-Mongol period,[46] but to be 'received' or 'acclaimed' by the townspeople, to have the commitment of their 'hearts' (later formalised with an oath on the cross) was important for practical legitimacy.

A prince had a price. In return for protection and prestige, the townspeople surrendered a certain authority. No detailed records of governance survive (most likely none were produced), but we can trace aspects of princely rule through, for example, codes of law. Before the reign of Vladimir Sviatoslavich it is unlikely that any type of written law was formally operational in Rus'. This does not, of course, mean that the country was lawless, merely that dispute resolution and social discipline functioned according to custom. As the chronicle (quoting from a Byzantine source) succinctly puts it: 'ances­tral custom is regarded as law for those who have no [written] law'.[47] By the death of Vladimir Monomakh, however, three types of law code had become established, albeit initially on a modest scale: codes issued with the authority of the Church ('canon law'), codes issued under the authority of a prince or princes (Russkaia pravda), and joint codes issued by princes with and for the Church. For princely governance the most important of these is Russkaia pravda.

Russkaia pravda is the generic name for a series of codes - or one could view it as a cumulative code - whose first version was issued by Iaroslav and which was subsequently adapted and expanded by his successors. Russkaia pravda begins with an article prescribing the degrees of kinship within which blood vengeance is permissible ('a brother may avenge [the murder of] his brother, or a son his father, or a father his son, or a brother's son or a sister's son [their uncle]').[48] Subsequently it consists mainly of a list of offences together with the penalty for each, plus a few articles dealing with procedure. The growth of the text of Russkaia pravda over this period is evidence for (though not necessarily proof of) the expanding expectations and claims of princely intervention in dispute resolution. Iaroslav's code is very brief, filling barely a page of a modern printed edition. It was chiefly concerned with discipline and disputes within the druzhina itself and the urban elite. It includes, for example, penalties for striking someone with a sword or sword-hilt, for cutting off an arm or a finger, for hiding a fugitive slave, for manhandling a Scandinavian, for damaging someone's beard or moustache, for stealing a horse, as well as procedures for recovering a stolen slave who has been sold on several times. The most notable additions to the code under Iaroslav's sons consist of penalties for damage inflicted on the prince's own servitors and property, while articles associated with Vladimir Monomakh are more detailed and also extend the overall scope of the code to deal with, in particular, the regulation of financial dealings including interest rates on loans.[49]

The provisions of Russkaia pravda are a mixture of custom and innovation. Equivalent types of code can be found in other early medieval north European legal compilations, but the details are specific to Rus'. The introduction and growth of the code seem to reflect princely attempts to advance two processes: the standardisation of practice, and the social extension of princely authority. The very first written code may have been issued for Novgorod while Iaroslav was prince in Kiev, so that the decision to use a written document was a device to promote standard administrative practices in the prince's absence. More revealingly, an article agreed by Iaroslav's sons states that the penalty for killing the prince's stablemaster was to be 80 grivnas 'as Iziaslav established when the people of Dorogobuzh killed his stablemaster'.[50] Here the written code is used to standardise dynastic practice across local jurisdictions. At the same time the nature and number of articles shows changes in the princes' presumptions about their power to intervene. The earliest provisions deal with regulating direct retribution (blood feuds, vendettas) and with specifying sums to be paid in compensation to the victims or their families. The princes never managed fully to prohibit blood-vengeance (although they apparently tried to do so), but gradually compensation was supplemented or replaced by fines: that is to say, the idea that an offender was primarily responsible to the victim made way for the notion that an offender was responsible to the ruler. 'Horizontal', or 'dyadic' judicial practices began to make way for vertical, or 'triadic', relations.[51] Moreover, this was occurring as the princes were broadening the scope oftheir assumed judicial authority, expandingboth the range of people directly affected and the range of behaviours covered by their written rules. Even in its early stages, therefore, the text of Russkaia pravda reflects the growing incursion of formal mechanisms of princely authority into the mutual relations and activities of the urban population.

The expansion and harmonisation of rules through written codes was linked to a larger process of political and social integration. The ruling dynasty was only one of the institutions promoting this process through written codes of law. The other relevant institution was the Church. 'We Christians', wrote the chronicler, 'have one law.'[52] Here, however, he is not referring to princely secular law but to the laws of Christianity, the authority of the Church and its teachings: the authority of the Bible in general, and more specifically the authority of the practical codes produced over the centuries under the general heading of canon law. Canon law, combined with Byzantine imperial legis­lation relating to the Church, was conveyed in reference books known as nomocanons (Kormchie knigi in the Russian tradition). Much of a nomocanon is concerned with the Church's own internal dogmas and disciplines, but sub­stantial sections are also relevant to the wider community, and one of the prime responsibilities of churchmen in Rus' was to promote behaviour com­patible with canon law, to interpret and apply the rules and guidelines in local circumstances. In promoting social and cultural integration, the Church was thus potentially a very significant partner for the princes, for the Church had pretensions to affect areas of behaviour far beyond the reach of the princes' writ. The Church took regulation beyond the public sphere and into the home, into daily life. It prescribed what food could or could not be eaten on which days through the year, whom and how one could or could not marry, what to wear or not wear, when to have or not to have sexual intercourse and in what manner. Clearly these are areas where custom was likely to be power­ful and - across the lands of the Rus' - diverse. Some of our most eloquent sources record the responses of senior churchmen to practical pastoral ques­tions. Thus, for example, Metropolitan Ioann II (c.1077-89) is asked to advise on a miscellany of issues: whether in the cold northern winters it was permissible to wear leather undergarments made from the hides of animals which were considered unclean for eating (answer - yes); or how to deal with those who married according to local pagan rituals (answer - impose the same penance that one would impose on fornicators); or whether a ritually unclean mother should be allowed to breastfeed her sick baby (answer - yes, if the child's life is otherwise in danger).[53]

The third type of law code brings the secular and the religious institutions together. Advice, admonition and penances could be meted out by the Church on its own authority, but the power to impose material sanctions could only be granted by the prince. A series of 'princely statutes' (ustavy) therefore specified the categories of person and behaviour that came under the Church's jurisdiction. The two most important statutes are attributed to Vladimir and Iaroslav respectively, although, like Russkaia pravda, these are cumulative documents preserved in later versions. In principle, however, the basic nature of each is clear. 'Vladimir's statute' serves as a kind of constitutional statement, allocating to the Church judicial power over specified categories of people (monks and nuns, the clergy and their families; but also 'displaced' persons such as widows, the lame and the blind) and over specified actions (such as divorce, domestic violence, abduction and rape, sorcery - which may include the use of herbal medicine - and heresy).[54] 'Iaroslav's statute' more closely resembles Russkaia pravda in its form: a list of offences and the penalties for each. It is notable for its social differentiation. There was no question of all being equal under the law: the rape or abduction of the daughter of a boyar merited compensation of 5 grivnas in gold and the same sum as a fine to the bishop; but only one grivna of gold was demanded for the rape or abduction of a daughter of 'lesser boyars', and smaller sums further down the social scale. There were fines of 40 grivnas of silver for bigamy, 100 for incest. Sometimes the offender incurred several types of penalty: a man who beat another man's wife had to pay 6 grivnas to the bishop, plus whatever may be due in [secular] law.[55]

Princely power and ecclesiastical authority complemented each other. Moreover, in some ways the Church was better equipped to disseminate and oversee the norms of written law than were the princes, for this was part of its prime mission and in the bishops and the clergy it had a network of trained personnel. Princely administration at this stage was still comparatively rudi­mentary. The introduction of written law did not, for example, imply the imposition of standard written bureaucratic procedures or the immediate cre­ation of a class of civil administrators.[56] Differentiation of service functions was developing, but eleventh-century Rus' had nothing comparable to the administrative bureaucratic institutions either of contemporary Byzantium or indeed of sixteenth-century Muscovy. Over the period covered by the present chapter, the direction and momentum of change became well established, though the process still had a very long way to go.

Beyond the prince, his retinue and parts of the city, evidence for social or administrative structures becomes very sparse indeed. In other words, we know very little about the vast majority of the population. Lack of knowledge is, of course, no bar to historiographical speculation: just how many of the rural population were or were not 'dependent' or 'free', in which senses? At what stage is it or is it not legitimate to speak of 'feudal' structures and relations? Visions of early Rus' range from a cluster of 'city states' sustained partly by slave labour and partly by the surplus produce of a free peasantry, to a 'feudal' economy based on the growth of aristocratic manorial estates and a largely dependent peasantry.[57] In addition, the overall picture may have to accommodate wide regional differences. These are, of course, major issues, but the visible pieces of the jigsaw allow too many plausible but conflicting reconstructions to justify full confidence in any of them.

External relations

For most of the history of Rus' there was no such thing as a Rus' foreign policy. In those periods when political power in Rus' was relatively unitary, one can construe the actions of the prince of Kiev, or the agreed joint actions of senior princes, as the policy of Rus'. 'Sole rule' and joint action were more common during the eleventh and early twelfth centuries than at any subsequent period, but still the norm was for the regional princes to pursue their own interests in dealing with their neighbours. Collective diplomacy such as that which had led to the tenth-century trade agreements with Constantinople was increasingly implausible, if not yet wholly impossible.

Our tour of the regions begins in the north. Iaroslav's ties with Scandinavia were established during the decades he spent in Novgorod. He was married to Ingigerd, daughter of the king of Sweden, and in the battles of 1015-19 he may also have formed an alliance with the king of Denmark.[58] Scandinavian sagas speak warmly ofthe hospitality ofPrince Iarisleif of Holmgarthr (= Novgorod) and ofthe aid he provided to distinguished Vikings on their journeys along the East Way.[59] However, Iaroslav was the last significant Rus' prince to maintain such close traditional ties with Scandinavia. In part the abrupt decline from the mid-eleventh century was due to the strains of the relationship itself. The chronicle hints at antagonism between the mercenaries and the settled Nov- gorodian population, just as it hints that Vladimir himself had been pleased to offload Scandinavian warriors to Constantinople.[60] In part, however, the reduced intensity of direct political links with Scandinavia reflects the down­grading, in the second half of the eleventh century, of the autonomy of the Novgorod prince.

For much of the eleventh century the north-eastern settlements such as Rostov and Suzdal' were still remote outposts in the midst of often hostile peoples. A bishop sent in the 1070s was reportedly murdered, the Primary Chronicle tells of pagan-led uprisings, and Vladimir Monomakh in his autobi­ography indicates that a march 'through the Viatichi' (the tribe separating the middle Dnieper region from the north-eastern settlements) was particularly hazardous.[61] However, the region had obvious economic potential, with its vast reserves of valuable furs and its strategic position on the trade route between the Baltic and the middle Volga. Towards the end of the century there was already fierce competition among the southern princes of Kiev, Chernigov and Pereiaslavl' for tribute-collecting rights in the north-east. The Liubech agree­ment of 1097 was prompted in part by just such a conflict between Vladimir Monomakh and his cousin Oleg Sviatoslavich of Chernigov. Nevertheless, the relatively low status of Suzdal' is reflected in the fact that Monomakh allocated it to Iurii, the youngest of his many sons. The story of its transformation into a powerful principality under Iurii, later known as Dolgorukii ('Long Arm'), belongs to another chapter.

In the south were the nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples of the steppes, dominated until the 1030s by the Pechenegs, and from the 1060s by the Polovtsy (also known as Cumans, also known as Qipchaks).[62] Many of the chronicle narratives, and a fair proportion of subsequent historical writings, imply a state of permanent irreconcilable opposition between the Rus' and the steppe nomads. This is too crude. Certainly there were major clashes, raids and skirmishes in both directions. Yet relations could also be amicable, and on the whole the frontier zones were quite stable. Very rarely did either side have serious territorial designs on the other. There was a limited amount of colonisation by proxy, such as the recruitment and settlement of 'Torks' (Oghuz) in the specially created town of Torchesk as a kind of buffer. Overall, however, it would be hard to show that any Rus' prince spent much more time campaigning against the Pechenegs or the Polovtsy than against his own kin within the dynastic lands.

Relations between the steppe and Chernigov were generally more cordial than those between the steppe and Kiev or Pereiaslavl'. Chernigov had tradi­tional links with the lower Don and the Azov region. When Mstislav of Tmu- torokan' and Iaroslav of Novgorod agreed to their division of the lands in 1024, Mstislav settled in Chernigov, and there is no suggestion that he had the worst of the deal. In the decade between 1024 and Mstislav's death, Chernigov looks to have been the dominant power in the middle Dnieper region, and it may be no coincidence that one of Iaroslav's first actions on assuming 'sole rule' was to reassert the pre-eminence of Kiev by undermining Chernigov's relations with the steppe, through mounting what turned out to be the decisive cam­paign against the Pechenegs. Similarly in 1094 Oleg Sviatoslavich of Chernigov marched from Tmutorokan' with Polovtsian allies to recapture his patrimo­nial city from his cousin Vladimir Monomakh.[63] In 1096 Oleg refused, under intense pressure from Monomakh and his (Monomakh's) father Vsevolod of Kiev, to join them on a campaign against the Polovtsy, and he even sheltered the son of a Polovtsian leader who had been killed on Monomakh's orders.[64]Monomakh did organise a series of highly successful expeditions against the Polovtsy in the 1100s and 1110s,[65] yet even he mixed military victory with political alliance, marrying two of his sons (including Iurii Dolgorukii) to Polovtsian

brides.[66]

Further south, beyond the steppes, beyond the Black Sea, lay Constantino­ple. Here we come up against a paradox. In a sense, relations between Kiev and Constantinople ought to have been close and constant. Constantinople was the traditional lure for the Rus' merchants and there is strong documen­tary evidence of intense (if not always friendly) military, economic, diplomatic and cultural dealings with Constantinople in the tenth century, culminating in the conversion to Christianity which - inter alia - should have smoothed the way for ever closer links on all levels. Yet over the course of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, while ecclesiastical and cultural contacts were of course important, political and diplomatic relations seem to have become more sporadic, and even trade apparently declined after the middle of the cen­tury, particularly in manufactured goods, as the Rus' began to acquire some of the skills to switch from import to local production. Finds of Byzantine coins in Rus' become notably rare after c. 1050.[67] In 1043 Iaroslav sent his eldest son Vladimir on a military campaign against Constantinople, the last of its kind in the sequence that had started nearly 150 years previously. The cause is not entirely clear (the conflict is supposed to have escalated from the death of a Rus' merchant in an altercation in a Constantinopolitan market). The result was total defeat for the Rus', but the consequences do not seem to have been severe: in the late 1040s Byzantine artists and craftsmen were putting the finishing touches to Iaroslav's main prestige public project, the cathedral of St Sophia, and by the early 1050s Iaroslav's son Vsevolod was married into the family ofthe reigning Byzantine emperor, Constantine IX Monomachos. The offspring of this union, Vladimir Monomakh, himself impinged on Byzantine authority in 1116-18 by aiding an opponent of Alexios I Komnenos, but this was a minor episode. In 1122 Monomakh's granddaughter married into the ruling Komnenos family.[68]

Perhaps surprisingly, given their Byzantine religious and cultural orienta­tion, political relations between Rus' princes and various parts of Western Europe were more persistent and diverse than political relations with Byzan­tium. As a crude index one might note the substantially longer list of dynastic marriages, ranging from the elite union of Iaroslav's daughter Anna with Henry I of France, to lower-level unions such as Monomakh's marriage, in the early 1070s, to Gytha, daughter of Harald of England (he who was killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066). Perhaps, however, the imbalance is not so surprising. In the first place, the comparison is uneven. 'Western Europe' is not a single or homogeneous place, despite its habitual labelling as such. One cannot properly compare the plurality of polities in 'Western Europe' with the unitary polity of Byzantium. Secondly, Byzantium was geographically remote, very rarely did any Rus' prince come face to face with Byzantium by neces­sity, and no Byzantine military force ever entered or contested Rus' lands. In contrast, more trade routes linked the lands of the Rus' with different parts of Western Europe than with Byzantium, and several Western European peoples and polities shared substantial and periodically contested border zones with the Rus' dynasty. For many of the dynasty political dealings with Byzantium were an option, political dealings with one or more lands of Western Europe were a necessity. Nor did the 1054 schism between Constantinople and Rome (unresolved to the present day) appear to have had much effect on diplomatic and even personal dealings with 'Latin' countries and peoples. Senior churchmen - notably some of those who came to Rus' from Constantinople - might write stern tracts warning about the errors of the 'Latins' and of the dangers of contact with them,[69] but dynastic marriages continued, and a Rus' monk visiting the Holy Land around 1106-8 could be on perfectly amicable terms with its 'Latin' crusader rulers.[70]

Those princes whose own interests were most directly dependent on rela­tions with one or other of their Western neighbours tended - not surprisingly - to pay the most attention to those neighbours, whether the interest was expressed through friendship or through hostility. Among princes or would- be princes of Kiev this applies particularly to those who were also princes of Turov, on one of the main routes westwards. The first of these was Sviatopolk Vladimirovich, who, as we saw, persuaded Boleslaw I of Poland (who hap­pened to be his father-in-law) to put together a force to help him take Kiev in 1018. The second was Iziaslav Iaroslavich, who also persuaded a Polish force, under Boleslaw II (who happened to be his wife's nephew) to help him retake Kiev in 1069. After he was ousted again by his younger brother Sviatoslav in 1073, Iziaslav fled westwards again and spent three years trying (unsuc­cessfully) to solicit material support from Boleslaw, the German Emperor Henry IV and the Pope. By the end of the century, however, Turov had been, so to speak, outflanked, as rival clusters of the proliferating and land-hungry junior princes squabbled for the right to install themselves in the territories still closer to the western border zones, such as Vladimir-in-Volynia, Peremyshl' and Terebovl'. In a particularly vicious and convoluted phase of the conflicts in the late 1090s both Wladyslaw of Poland and Kalman of Hungary were sucked into the dynastic in-fighting which revolved round three descendants of Iaroslav whose fathers had not succeeded to Kiev: Vasilko and Volodar Ros- tislavichi (grandsons of Iaroslav's eldest son Vladimir, who had died before his father) and David Igorevich (whose father Igor' Iaroslavich had died before his older brothers).[71] This was a prelude to the close involvement of Hungary in the political life of Galich which grew over the first half of the twelfth century.

Rus' external political relations were thus as unitary or as diffuse as were Rus' domestic politics. During the rare periods of comparatively unitary domestic authority - under Vladimir Sviatoslavich, for example, or under Iaroslav once he became 'sole ruler' after 1036 - it may be possible to identify a comparatively coherent foreign policy. Otherwise the separate princes' dealings with their non-Rus' neighbours were largely - and increasingly - autonomous.

4. Religion, culture, ideology

In the three generations after Vladimir the main implications of the official conversion to Christianity were made manifest. The official baptism was a single, datable event. Christianisation was a long process with profound con­sequences for social institutions, economic life, structures of authority and power, the urban environment, patterns ofemployment, manufacturing tech­nology and production, public and private behaviours, diet, visual and written culture, aesthetic and intellectual standards and concepts, ideas and ideology, the understanding of the world.

The Church, including monasteries, provided Christianity's institutional foundations. In the larger administrative structure of Christianity, Rus' was a province of the patriarchate of Constantinople. The Church in Rus' was headed by a metropolitan - properly 'of Rhosia', or 'of Rus'', but in modern historiography usually labelled 'of Kiev' since that was his residence. Only one metropolitan during this period - Ilarion (c. 1051-4) - is known to have been a native of Rus'. The rest were appointees from Byzantium whose first language of religion was Greek.[72] Immediately below the metropolitan were the bishops, in charge of Church organisation in the sub-districts. The spread of bishoprics can serve as one rough indicator of the spread of organised Christianity itself. By the time of Vladimir Monomakh bishoprics were well established in the middle Dnieper region: at Chernigov and Pereiaslavl'; at Belgorod and Iur'ev close to Kiev (possibly to help look after Kiev itself). Moving northwards, there were bishoprics at Turov, Polotsk and Novgorod. Estimates vary as to the date of the foundation ofthe bishopric of Rostov, in the north-east, but no continuous episcopal presence can be traced there until well into the twelfth century.[73] Over a hundred years after the official conversion, therefore, organised Christianity was still quite compact: solidly embedded along the north-south, Novgorod-Kiev axis and in a cluster of bishoprics on the middle Dnieper, but not yet institutionally prominent further to the east or west.⁴⁸ In other words, organised Christianity followed - with a certain time-lag - the political fortunes of the dynasty.

The first bishops must have come from Byzantium, or from Bulgaria (whence they could bring their experience of Christianity in Slavonic), but by the second half of the eleventh century we know of several who were trained locally, via Rus' monasteries.⁴⁹ Monks and bishops had to be celibate, while the parish clergy had to be married, hence bishops were recruited from among monks, not from among the parish clergy (who were also likely to have been educated to a much lower level). The early history of Rus' monasti- cism is predictably obscure, but again by the late eleventh century some quite substantial foundations were well established in Kiev and the other principal towns.

The Church's most public act was not prayer but building, and the insti­tutions of Christianity transformed the urban landscape. Most churches were small and made of wood. Vladimir's 'Tithe church' of the Mother of God, in his palace compound in Kiev, was the first of the monumental masonry churches,⁵⁰ and a more or less continuous tradition of such buildings began from the second quarter of the eleventh century. Mstislav Vladimirovich ini­tiated a building programme in Chernigov but he died when its centrepiece, the church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour, was still only 'as high as a man standing on horseback could stretch with his hands'.⁵¹ From the moment he assumed 'sole rule', Iaroslav Vladimirovich set about turning Kiev into a focus of visible splendour such as no other Rus' city could hope to rival. Taking Constantinople as the model, and importing Byzantine specialists to oversee the job, he commissioned the huge (by the standards of normal East Christian churches) cathedral of St Sophia, as well as churches of St George and St Irene

des dioceses russes au milieu du XII siecle', in Mille ans de christianisme russe, 988-1988. Actes du colloque international de l'Universite Paris-Nanterre 20-23 janvier 1988 (Paris: YMCA,

1989), pp. 27-49.

48 See also the archaeological evidence: A. P. Motsia, 'Nekotorye svedeniiao rasprostranenii khristianstva na Rusi po dannym pogrebal'nogo obriada', in Obriady i verovaniia drevnego naseleniia Ukrainy. Sbornik nauchnykh trudov (Kiev: Naukova Dumka, 1990), pp. 114-32; V V Sedov, 'Rasprostranenie khristianstva vDrevnei Rusi', Kratkiesoobshcheniialnstituta arkheologii, 208 (1993): 3-11.

49 See Franklin and Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, pp. 311-12.

50 See F. Kampfer, 'Eine Residenz fur AnnaPorphyrogenneta',JGO 41 (1993): 101-10; Tserkva Bohoroytsi desiatynnavKyevi (Kiev: ArtEk, 1996).

51 PVL, vol. I, p. 101.

(patron saints of himself and his wife, but also echoing distinguished imperial foundations in Constantinople). Lesser cathedrals of St Sophia were also built in mid-century in Novgorod and Polotsk. The list of the most prestigious church buildings of the later eleventh century and early twelfth century would include: the church of the Dormition of the Mother of God at the Caves monastery and the church of St Michael at the Vydubichi monastery (both 1070s, both just outside the city), the 'golden-domed' church of St Michael (c.1108) and the church of the Saviour at the princely residence at Berestovo (1115-19). There was a flurry of building at Pereiaslavl' in the 1090s and 1100s, and the main churches of the Novgorodian monasteries of St George and St Anthony date from the 1110s, while the first two decades of the twelfth century also see the start of work on the earliest masonry churches in Suzdal', Smolensk and Peremyshl'.[74] The pattern of church-building, too, mirrors the fortunes of the dynasty.

Churches and large monasteries cost money to build and run. Donations could of course come from all kinds of people, but the main support for the cen­tral institutions of the Church was by means of a tithe from specified princely income. Several narrative and documentary sources confirm that payment of a tithe was established practice, though the details vary.[75] By contrast, major donations to monasteries were more likely to be directly in the form of land, including dues from those who lived on the land. Monks could also engage in productive labour, whether on the land or through small-scale crafts and trading. Thus while the metropolitans and bishops were to an appreciable extent dependent on continuing allocations from the surplus wealth of others, a successful monastery enjoyed the benefits of its own endowment and also the opportunity to generate income from its own activities. Nothing substan­tial is known about support for the lower clergy. One may speculate that they lived mainly off local donations.

Inside the churches and the monasteries were the objects and pictures and sounds and words and smells that created the distinctive atmosphere of East Christian ritual and worship and contemplation. The continuous his­tory of East Slav high culture, of art and literature (terms which are not, however, entirely appropriate to the devotional context), begins in the mid- eleventh century. It would be hard to overemphasise the ambitions of the mid-eleventh-century patrons and practitioners, who set standards of sophisti­cated opulence that few could rival for half a millennium: the dazzling mosaics covering huge surfaces of the upper walls in St Sophia in Kiev (see Plates 3 and 5);[76] the elegant argument and harmonious rhetoric of the Sermon on Law and Grace by Ilarion;[77] the luxurious Ostromir Gospel (1056-7), the first surviving dated Slavonic book, in format the grandest book of the entire pre-Muscovite age (see Plate 4).[78] These three monuments also happen to exemplify three distinct types of cultural transmission. The St Sophia mosaics are, in effect, Byzantine works which happen to have been commissioned in Kiev. Even their inscriptions are in Greek (see Plate 5). The Ostromir Gospel is a copy of a traditional Greek text in Slavonic translation. Ilarion's sermon uses traditional Byzantine theological argument to construct a framework of interpretation for native Rus' history. These are the three principal modes of the Rus' reception of Byzantine culture: the direct import of objects or personnel; local copying in Slavonic; and adaptation for local purposes. Throughout the Middle Ages the specific texture of Rus' Christian culture can be perceived in the nuances and the interplay of these three modes.

In the mid-eleventh to early twelfth centuries we see the beginnings of such processes, the establishment of models and precedents which were to become the foundations of a Rus' tradition. For example, although the mid-eleventh- century churches of St Sophia were not imitated, the church of the Dormition at the Caves monastery became the model for many of the most prestigious churches around the lands of the Rus'.[79] In the eleventh century the Church formally recognised the first Rus' saints: two of them, - the princes Boris and Gleb, murdered in 1015 - were, conveniently, members of the ruling dynasty, which was thereby proved to be especially favoured (see Plate 6); and one of them - Abbot Feodosii (d. 1074) - was the man who set the communal rules for the Caves monastery, and his Life (as well as one of the accounts of Boris and Gleb) was written by Nestor, a monk of the Caves.[80] Monks of the Caves, and possibly Nestor again, were likewise responsible for the main job of devising and shaping and compiling the Primary Chronicle, which served as the first section of successive East Slav chronicles for centuries, its narrative thereby becoming accepted as the standard 'foundation myth' of the Rus', the tale of their origins and formation.⁵⁹ Indeed, if we take into account also a somewhat later Caves compilation known as its Paterik, or Paterikon, with stories of notable deeds of its monks,⁶⁰ then Caves writings constitute a very substantial proportion of all native narrative materials for the period. As a collection of physical and verbal images, therefore, the Kiev- based 'Golden Age' of early Rus' ('Kievan Rus'', as it came to be known in post-medieval writings) was the creation first of the builders and artists and bookmen of Iaroslav Vladimirovich, and then of the monks of the monastery of the Caves. How widely their image of Rus' would have been recognised or accepted as accurate by contemporaries is, ofcourse, open to question, but in retrospect they were extraordinarily successful in shaping the perceptions of their successors.

59 See D. S. Likhachev, Russkie letopisi i ikh kul'turno-istoricheskoe znachenie (Moscow and Leningrad: Nauka, 1947).

60 In L. A. Ol'shevskaia and S. N. Travnikov (eds.), Drevnerusskiepateriki (Moscow: Nauka, 1999), pp. 7-80; translation (of a slightly different version) in Muriel Heppell, The 'Paterik' of the Kievan Caves Monastery (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989).

The Rus' principalities (1125-1246)

MARTIN DIMNIK

Introduction

The years 1125 to 1246 witnessed the creation of new principalities and eparchies, the flourishing of some and the demise of others. During this period the system of lateral succession governed the political hierarchy of princes within individual dynasties in their promotions to the office of senior prince, and the political hierarchy of senior princes between different dynasties in their rivalries for Kiev, the capital of Rus'.[81]

From the earliest times, it appears, the princes of Rus' followed a system of succession governed by genealogical seniority. It dictated that, after the senior prince of the dynasty died, his eldest surviving brother replaced him. After all the brothers had ruled in rotation, succession went to the eldest surviving nephew. Vladimir Sviatoslavich (d. 1015) had no surviving broth­ers. Before his death, therefore, he designated his eldest son, Sviatopolk, to rule Kiev. The latter, fearing that his brothers would usurp power from him, waged war against them. In the end, Iaroslav 'the Wise' (Mudryi) was the victor.[82]

Iaroslav, evidently following the example of his father Vladimir, gave hered­itary domains to his sons and observed the principle of lateral succession (for a fuller discussion of dynastic politics 1015-1125, see Chapter 4). Hop­ing to obviate future fratricidal wars, however, he changed the nature of succession to Kiev. He granted his three eldest surviving sons and their descendants, the inner circle so to speak, the right to rule Kiev. Accordingly, his two youngest sons, Igor' and Viacheslav, became debarred or izgoi. He designated the eldest son, Iziaslav, to replace him in Kiev. After Iziaslav died, Sviatoslav, the next in precedence, would occupy the town. After Sviatoslav, Vsevolod would rule the capital, and after his death succession would pass to the next generation of the inner circle, and so on. Iaroslav also gave the three sons patrimonies adjacent to the Kievan domain: Iziaslav got Turov, Svi­atoslav got Chernigov and Vsevolod got Pereiaslavl'.[83] When each occupied Kiev, he would also retain control of his patrimony. This arrangement, Iaroslav believed, would give the prince of Kiev military superiority over the other princes. [84]

Except for one deviation, Iaroslav's revised system worked smoothly during the first generation. Iziaslav succeeded his father but Sviatoslav deposed his brother thus securing for his sons the right to sit on the throne of their father. After Sviatoslav predeceased Iziaslav, the latter returned to Kiev. Following his death, Vsevolod occupied the throne. He was succeeded by his nephew, Iziaslav's eldest son Sviatopolk of Turov. He and Vsevolod's son Vladimir Monomakh of Pereiaslavl', however, violated Iaroslav's design. (See Table 5.1: The House of Iaroslav the Wise.)

After Sviatoslav died in 1076, his eldest surviving son Oleg replaced him as senior prince of the Sviatoslavichi and prince of Chernigov.[85] By 1096, however, Sviatopolk and Monomakh had deprived him of the Chernigov lands. At a congress held at Liubech in 1097, the princes of Rus' penalised the dynasty of Chernigov because Oleg refused to campaign with them against the Polovtsy. They apparently demoted him from being sole prince of Chernigov to ruling it jointly with his brother David, and appointed the latter his political superior. The princes evidently also placed David's family ahead of Oleg's in political seniority so that David's sons would rule Chernigov ahead of Oleg's. Even more importantly, Sviatopolk and Monomakh demoted the entire dynasty of Chernigov by placing Monomakh ahead of the Sviatoslavichi on the ladder of succession. Accordingly, after Sviatopolk died, Monomakh and not Oleg would occupy Kiev. In promoting himself, Monomakh violated Iaroslav's so- called 'Testament'. Moreover, by changing the order of political seniority in the inner circle, Monomakh, as it turned out, debarred the Sviatoslavichi.

Table 5.1. The House of Iaroslav the Wise

Iaroslav the Wise d. 1054

David Iaroslav Vladimir

d. 1123 d. 1129 Monomakh

The House of ^{d 1125} Murom andRiazan'

Mstislav d. 1132 Mstislavichi

~l I

Iurii Andrei

d. 1157 d. 1142 The House of Suzdalia

Oleg and David would predecease him and their sons would become izgoi.

Monomakh's scheme did not stop at demoting the Sviatoslavichi. After Sviatopolk died he formed a pact with Oleg and David to debar Svi- atopolk's heirs from ruling Kiev. Thus, two families of the inner circle, the Sviatoslavichi of Chernigov and the Iziaslavichi of Turov, became izgoi. Consequently, the three-family system of succession to Kiev created by Iaroslav the Wise failed. Monomakh's descendants remained the only rightful claimants. But he had still other designs for his dynasty. He made a deal with the Kievans to accept the family of his eldest son, Mstislav, as their resident princes.[86] He set the scheme in motion by summoning Mstislav

from Novgorod, giving him Belgorod south-west of Kiev, and naming him co-ruler.[87]

Vladimir Monomakh's successors

Although Mstislav pre-empted the rights of the Iziaslavichi and the Svi- atoslavichi by replacing his father in Kiev on 19 May 1125, no prince disputed his action. The Iziaslavichi presented no challenger because they had become politically impotent. The Sviatoslavichi, however, had an eligible candidate in Iaroslav who had succeeded his brothers Oleg and David to Chernigov. According to the Liubech agreement, it seems, he was the rightful claimant. But Iaroslav lacked the leadership qualities for confronting Mstislav. Conse­quently, he and his sons also became izgoi.

Oleg's eldest son, Vsevolod, frustrated with Iaroslav's ineptitude, evicted his uncle from Chernigov in II27 and declared himself the political head of the dynasty. Mstislav of Kiev, his father-in-law, confirmed his seizure of power. Mstislav and Vsevolod compensated Iaroslav for his loss of Chernigov by giving him Murom and Riazan' as his patrimony. Significantly, in confirming Vsevolod's usurpation, Mstislav violated the lateral order of succession once again.[88] But in doing so, he helped Vsevolod to reclaim for the Ol'govichi their rightful seniority ahead of the Davidovichi. He abrogated the change in political seniority that the princes had dictated at Liubech.

In 1130, in keeping with Monomakh's policy of asserting his family's supremacy, Mstislav subjugated Polotsk by exiling its princes to Byzantium.[89]He was the last ruler ofKiev to impose his control over that dynasty. After his death, the princes of Polotsk would engage in internecine rivalries for some forty years. The chronicles give little information for the Polotsk land for the turn of the thirteenth century, but archaeological evidence suggests that it was a period of intense activity. The princes fought off the encroaching Knights of the Sword (Livonian Order) and the Lithuanians. It was also a period of prosperity. In 1229 the prince of Smolensk negotiated a trade agreement with Riga which also benefited Polotsk. Soon after, however, the town came under the sway of the Lithuanians.[90]

Mstislav's reign was extremely successful and none of his descendants would wield as much power. Indeed, some historians call him Mstislav 'the Great'.[91]Before his death he controlled Kiev, Pereiaslavl', Smolensk, Rostov, Suzdal', Novgorod, Polotsk, Turov and Vladimir-in-Volynia. Whereas his father had driven the troublesome Polovtsy to the River Don, in 1129 Mstislav drove them beyond the Volga.[92] He died on 15 April 1132.[93]

In keeping with the wishes of his father Monomakh and with the agree­ment that he and his brother Mstislav had made, Iaropolk, the next in senior­ity, succeeded Mstislav. But conflicts arose immediately between his brothers, Monomakh's sons (the Monomashichi) and his nephews, Mstislav's sons (the Mstislavichi). Monomakh had intended the Mstislavichi to occupy the patri­monial town of Pereiaslavl' which they could use as a stepping-stone to Kiev after Iaropolk, who had no sons, died. Accordingly, Monomakh had debarred his younger sons: Viacheslav, Iurii, and Andrei. They, however, argued that they had a prior claim to their nephews according to the system of genealog­ical seniority advocated by Iaroslav the Wise. They won Iaropolk's support and forced the Mstislavichi to seek help from their brother-in-law Vsevolod in Chernigov. The two sides waged war for the remainder of the decade. At the time of Iaropolk's death on 18 February 1139, it appeared that the Mono­mashichi had won the day. Viacheslav of Turov succeeded him.[94]

Monomakh's younger sons therewith upset his plan to make Kiev the pat­rimony of the Mstislavichi. Even more importantly, Vsevolod Ol'govich put paid to Monomakh's plan to make his descendants the sole rulers of Kiev. In 1139 he deposed Viacheslav.[95] He refused to submit to Monomakh's injustice in pre-empting the claim of his father Oleg at Liubech. Vsevolod, it is true, could not profess to have the right to sit on the throne of his father because Oleg had never ruled Kiev. Nevertheless, he was the genealogical and political senior prince of his dynasty and usurpation was an acknowledged form of seizing power. With force, therefore, he secured the right for his heirs to rule Kiev.

The Rus' principalities (1125-1246) Table 5.2. The House of Galicia

Volodar d. 1124

Volodimerko d. 1153

Iaroslav Osmomysl d. 1187

He designated his brother Igor' his successor. Igor', however, failed to assert his rule. The Kievans' preferred candidate, in keeping with their promise to Monomakh, was Mstislav's eldest son Iziaslav of Pereiaslavl'. In supporting the latter, however, the citizens threw the House of Monomakh into turmoil. Iziaslav and his brothers were once again pitted against their uncles.

Iurii Dolgorukii

Iurii their leader was ambitious. To obtain greater independence from the boyars of Rostov, he moved his capital to the smaller Suzdal' after which the region was called Suzdalia. To consolidate his rule he began an ener­getic town-building programme. There is uncertainty, however, over which towns he founded (e.g. Pereiaslavl'-Zalesskii, Dmitrov and Iur'ev Pol'skii) and over which ones he merely fortified (e.g. Moscow, Galich, Zvenigorod and Kostroma). He initiated the tradition of constructing churches from white Kama limestone and reputedly founded five, includingthe church ofthe Trans­figuration in Pereiaslavl'-Zalesskii, which he 'filled with books'.[96] In addition to expanding the boundaries of Suzdalia he began asserting his overlordship over the princes of Murom and Riazan'. He campaigned against the Volga- Kama Bulgars to gain control over the trade passing through their lands to the Caspian Sea. To promote his interests in Baltic trade he intervened in Novgorod. In short, Iurii initiated Suzdalia's political ascendancy. He probably received the sobriquet 'Long Arm' (Dolgorukii) after he began laying claim to distant Kiev.[97]

Meanwhile, following the death of one senior prince (Vsevolod) and the evic­tion of another (Igor') from Kiev, the fortunes of the Ol'govichi plummeted. Their brother, Sviatoslav of Novgorod Severskii, demanded that Iziaslav Mstislavich release Igor', whom he was holding captive. The Davidovichi, who ruled Chernigov, took advantage of their cousins' plight by promising Iziaslav to back his rule in Kiev if, in turn, he helped them to expel Sviatoslav from his domain. In retaliation Sviatoslav, unlike his brother Vsevolod who had supported the Mstislavichi, promised to help Iurii win Kiev if the latter helped him to reclaim the lost Ol'govichi lands. Consequently, the two camps went to war.

Iurii challenged his nephew Iziaslav in keeping with the principle of genealogical seniority that governed the practice of succession to Kiev designed by Iaroslav the Wise. He demanded that Monomakh's surviving sons Viach- eslav and Iurii occupy Kiev in rotation and that Iziaslav vacate the town. The latter, however, claimed Kiev on the grounds that Monomakh had designated the Mstislavichi his successors. Iziaslav won the day once again, in the main, because he had the support of the Kievans whose backing was vital to any would-be ruler of their town.

In 1147 Iziaslav antagonised many, including his brother Rostislav, by order­ing a synod of bishops to install a native of Rus', Klim (Kliment) Smoliatich, metropolitan of Kiev. Some believe that he made the controversial appointment because he was attempting to liberate the Church in Rus' from the domination of the patriarch in Constantinople. Others, however, suggest that he adopted this course of action because there was no patriarch in Constantinople to make the appointment.[98] Meanwhile, the Davidovichi joined their cousin Sviatoslav in a plot to kill Iziaslav and to free the captive Igor'. The Kievans retaliated by murdering Igor'.[99]

Iziaslav struggled to retain control of Kiev by repelling attacks from Iurii and his allies, who included the Ol'govichi, Iurii's son-in-law Iaroslav Volodimerovich 'Eight Wits' (Osmomysl) of Galich, and the ever obliging Polovtsy. Iurii's coalition expelled Iziaslav on two occasions. Finally, in II5I he adopted an unprecedented expedient that mollified Iurii. He invited his uncle Viacheslav, Iurii's elder brother, to be co-ruler.[100] After Iziaslav died on 14 November 1154, his brother Rostislav of Smolensk replaced him as co-ruler with Viacheslav. But the latter died soon after, leaving Rostislav as the sole prince of Kiev.[101]

On 20 March 1155 Iurii deposed him.[102] He consolidated his rule by giving his sons the towns of the Mstislavichi. He sent Andrei to Vyshgorod, Gleb to

Table 5.3. The House ofSuzdalia

Iurii Dolgorukii d. 1157

Andrei Bogoliubskii d. 1174

Aleksandr Nevskii d. 1263

Nevertheless, the town seemingly flourished as a cultural centre. This is testi­fied to by the writings of Kirill (Cyril), Bishop of Turov.[103]

Following Iurii's death the princes of Chernigov briefly reasserted their supremacy. Iziaslav Davidovich seized Kiev.[104] Even though his father David had never ruled the town, he justified his usurpation on the grounds that he was the senior prince of his family and prince of Chernigov. But his rule was short. In 1159 an alliance of princes led by Mstislav Iziaslavich of Volyn' deposed him. Two years later, on 6 April, he was killed while trying to recapture Kiev.[105] After that the Davidovichi died out and the Ol'govichi became the sole dynasty of Chernigov. In II64, after Sviatoslav Ol'govich died, the Ol'govichi bifurcated into the senior branch descended from Vsevolod Ol'govich, and the junior or cadet branch descended from Sviatoslav Ol'govich.

The Mstislavichi

The system of succession to Kiev that Iaroslav the Wise had envisioned may have been doomed from the start, as some have claimed, but over time it evolved into one forged by political and genealogical vicissitudes. By the middle of the twelfth century, therefore, it once again constituted three families: the senior branch of Ol'govichi in Chernigov, the descendants of Monomakh's eldest son Mstislav in Volyn' and Smolensk, and the family of Monomakh's son Iurii in Suzdalia.[106]

In 1159, after Iziaslav Davidovich fled from Kiev, Mstislav Iziaslavich ofVolyn' and his allies invited his uncle Rostislav Mstislavich of Smolensk to rule Kiev.[107]By that time he had secured the political independence of Smolensk from Pereiaslavl'. The town, which lay on the Greek route from Novgorod to Constantinople, enjoyed profitable trade relations. Moreover, despite opposi­tion from Klim Smoliatich to whose appointment as metropolitan Rostislav objected, he established an autonomous eparchy in Smolensk. He issued a char­ter (gramota) stipulating its privileges and those of its bishop. The document is also a valuable source of commercial, geographic and social information.

Moreover, the 'Life' (Zhitie) of Avramii of Smolensk provides valuable data on the social conditions of the time.[108]

Two genealogical considerations were pivotal for Rostislav's successful occupation of Kiev: after the death of his brother Iziaslav he became the eldest surviving Mstislavich; and after the death of his uncle Iurii he became the eldest prince in the entire House of Monomakh. He was therefore the legitimate claimant from both camps. Since all the princes in the House of Monomakh accepted his candidacy, his reign witnessed fewer internecine wars. The Polovtsy, however, intensified their attacks. They raided caravans travel­ling by river and by land from the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov regions. Rostislav organised campaigns against the nomads but failed to curb their forays.

He died on 14 March 1167.[109] After that, the Mstislavichi split into two dynasties: the one in Volyn' descended from Iziaslav who had made that region his family possession, and the one in Smolensk descended from Ros- tislav.[110] (See Table 5.4: The House of Volyn', and Table 5.5: The House of Smolensk.) Following the latter's death, his nephew Mstislav Iziaslavich of Vladimir-in-Volynia pre-empted the right of his uncle Vladimir Mstislavich of Dorogobuzh to rule Kiev.[111]

At first, Mstislav had the support of the other Mstislavichi because they expected to manipulate him. They discovered that he was no man's lackey, however, after he refused to grant them the towns they demanded. He also antagonised Andrei Bogoliubskii, who had replaced his father Iurii Dolgorukii in Suzdalia. Andrei saw Mstislav's accession as a violation of the traditional order of succession to Kiev. Moreover, Mstislav appointed his son Roman to Novgorod, where Andrei was seekingto assert his influence. Despite Mstislav's unpopularity, he successfully assembled the princes of Rus' against the Polovtsy. While in the field, however, he antagonised them further. Without informing them, he allowed his men to plunder the camps of the nomads. After that, we are told, the princes plotted against him.[112]

The Rus' principalities (II25-I246) Table 5.4. The House of Volyn'

Iziaslav d. 1154

Daniil Vasil'ko

d. 1264 d. 1269

Table 5.5. The House of Smolensk

Rostislav d. 1167

Mstislav Vladimir Mstislav

d. 1223 d. 1239 the Bold

d. 1228

Andrei Bogoliubskii

In 1169 Andrei Bogoliubskii organised a coalition to evict Mstislav from Kiev. Princes from Suzdalia, Smolensk, Volyn' and Chernigov joined the campaign led by Andrei's son Mstislav.[113] Many tookpart not only because they acknowl­edged Andrei's prior claim to Kiev, but also because they resented Mstislav for cheating them out of booty. Historians are not agreed on Andrei's objective in attacking Kiev or on the significance of its capture on 8 March. Some claim that his aim was to recover the Kievan throne for the rightful Monomashichi claimants because Kiev was the capital ofthe land. Others, however, argue that Andrei attempted to subordinate it to Vladimir and that its capture signalled its decline. [114]

Perhaps there is an element of truth in each view. In forcing the usurper Mstislav to flee to Volyn', Andrei, the rightful claimant for the House of Suzdalia, was able to seize control of Kiev. Surprisingly, after his forces captured the town, they sacked it.[115] Their action obviously did not penalise Mstislav in any way. Rather, the attackers vented their spleen against the Kievans. They seemingly ransacked the capital out of envy for its prosperity and out of fury at the arrogance of its citizens. Andrei, of course, had his own reason for condoning the pillaging. He wished to see Kiev wane in magnificence because he was striving to build up his capital of Vladimir as its rival. But his scheme failed. The plundering did not lead to Kiev's decline. It recovered and flourished to suffer even more debilitating sacks in 1203 and in 1240. The evidence that the dynasties which were eligible to rule it continued to covet it as the most cherished plum in Rus' testifies to its continued prosperity.

Meanwhile, Novgorod also remained a bone of contention. Since Suzdalia served as the conduit through which Baltic trade passed from Novgorod to the Caspian Sea, Andrei sought to wrest control of the town from the prince of Kiev and assert his jurisdiction over it. Two years after expelling Mstislav from Kiev, he finally forced the Novgorodians to capitulate by laying an embargo on all grain shipments to their town. [116]

Although historians disagree on Andrei's objectives and achievements, it is safe to assert that he defended the order of succession to Kiev championed by his father. Unlike Iurii, however, he chose to live in Suzdalia. The fate of his father was one deterrent. Moreover, if he occupied Kiev he would remove himself dangerously far from his centre of power in Suzdalia. As Iaroslav the Wise had foreseen, a prince whose patrimony abutted on Kiev had the best chance of ruling it successfully because he could summon auxiliary forces quickly from his patrimony. Nevertheless, realising that ruling Kiev gave its prince a great moral advantage, Andrei could not allow it to fall into a rival's hands. Adhering to the system of genealogical seniority, he gave it to his younger brothers, who also had the right to sit on the throne of their father. First, he sent Gleb from Pereiaslavl', but the Kievanspoisoned him, or so Andrei believed. Gleb's alleged murder would have confirmed Andrei's suspicion that the Kievans despised the sons just as vehemently as they had hated Iurii. Next, he appointed Mikhalko. But the latter declined the dubious honour by handing over the town to his brother Vsevolod.[117]

After Mstislav Iziaslavich died in Volyn' in 1170, the Rostislavichi of Smolensk took up the battle for Kiev. They evicted Vsevolod and gave the town to Riurik Rostislavich.[118] Three years later, Andrei formed a coalition with Sviatoslav Vsevolodovich of Chernigov. He was determined to avenge Gleb's death and to punish the Rostislavichi for their insubordination by expelling Riurik. Svi­atoslav, for his part, intended to occupy Kiev. Thus, Andrei conceded that Sviatoslav's claim to the capital was as legitimate as his was. He also tacitly admitted his failure to maintain puppets in Kiev. Sviatoslav, the commander-in- chief of the coalition, evicted Riurik and occupied the town. Later, however, Iaroslav Iziaslavich of Lutsk, the younger brother of the deceased Mstislav, brought reinforcements from Volyn', helped Riurik to expel Sviatoslav, and occupied Kiev.[119]

In his patrimony, one of Andrei's main objectives was to raise the political, economic, cultural and ecclesiastical status of Vladimir above that of Kiev. Accordingly, he completed his father's buildingprojects and initiated new ones. He built the Assumption cathedral in Vladimir, its Golden Gates in imitation of those in Kiev, his court at the nearby village of Bogoliubovo (from which he received the sobriquet Bogoliubskii), and the church of the Intercession of Our Lady on the River Nerl. Since he hired artisans from all lands, his churches reflected Romanesque, Byzantine and Trans-Caucasian styles. In striving to create an aura ofholiness in Vladimir, he enshrined the relics ofBishop Leontii of Rostov and brought the so-called Vladimir icon of the Mother of God from

Vyshgorod. Hoping to equate the Christian heritage of his capital with that of Kiev, he propagated the pious myth that St Vladimir founded Vladimir. He also attempted, in vain, to create a new metropolitan see.

Andrei adopted autocratic practices in relation to his neighbours. He expanded his domains into the lands of the Volga Bulgars and imposed his will over the princes of Murom and Riazan'. At home he sought to undermine the authority of his subjects in their local assembly (veche); he expelled three of his brothers, two nephews and his father's senior boyars; and he spurned the magnates of Rostov and Suzdal' by making the smaller town of Vladimir his capital. After that the region was also referred to as Vladimir-Suzdal'. His overbearing policies evoked great resentment. Finally, on 29 June 1174, while he was waiting for Sviatoslav Vsevolodovich in Chernigov to approve his appoint­ment of Roman Rostislavich of Smolensk to Kiev, his boyars assassinated him.[120]

Sviatoslav Vsevolodovich

After that, Sviatoslav acted as kingmaker in Vladimir-Suzdal'. Earlier, after Andrei had evicted his brothers and nephews from Suzdalia, Sviatoslav had given them sanctuary in Chernigov. Following Andrei's death he helped the refugees to fight for their inheritance. After a bitter rivalry between the uncles and the nephews, Vsevolod, laterto be known as 'Big Nest' (Bol'shoe Gnezdo) because of his many offspring, seized Vladimir on the Kliaz'ma.[121]He was indebted for his success, in part, to Sviatoslav's backing. He would rule Vladimir for almost forty years and become the most powerful prince in the land.

After Andrei's death, Roman, the senior prince of the Rostislavichi, replaced Iaroslav Iziaslavich in Kiev.[122] In 1176, however, Sviatoslav found a pretext for attacking Roman with the Polovtsy. Not wishing to expose the Christians of Rus' to carnage, Roman ceded control of the town to Sviatoslav.[123] Soon after, the Novgorodians invited the latter to send his son to them.

In the meantime, to strengthen the power of his son-in-law Roman Glebovich of Riazan' against Vsevolod Big Nest, Sviatoslav sent troops

The Rus' principalities (1125-1246) Table 5.6. The House of Chernigov

Oleg David

d. 1115 d. 1123

Sviatoslav Iziaslav (Sviatosha) d. 1161 d. 1143

Mikhail d. 1246

were making merry across the Dnieper from Kiev, Riurik's men routed the revellers. His rival's victory forced Sviatoslav to accept Riurik as his co-ruler.[124]

Duumvirs had administered Kiev in the past. As we have seen, Iziaslav Mstislavich and his uncle Viacheslav Vladimirovich had shared authority over Kiev and all its lands. The partnership between Sviatoslav and Riurik was different. The former was the senior partner and the commander-in-chief, but he ruled only Kiev. Riurik controlled the surrounding Kievan domains and lived in the nearby outpost of Belgorod. His patrimony, however, was Vruchii north-west of Kiev. His control of the towns surrounding Kiev significantly curtailed Sviatoslav's power.

On i October 1187, Iaroslav Osmomysl of Galich died.[125] During his reign he had maintained political relations with the Hungarians (his mother was a Hungarian princess), Poles, Bulgarians and Greeks. According to the chroni­cles, he fortified towns and promoted agriculture and crafts. Commerce pros­pered, especially in the lower Prut and Danube regions. Galicia also supplied the Kievan lands with much of their salt. Despite his great power, however, Iaroslav never claimed Kiev because he did not belong to a family of the inner circle. Unfortunately for Galicia, on his deathbed he committed a serious politi­cal blunder, perhaps at the insistence ofboyars who had become more powerful towards the end ofhis reign. He designated his younger son Oleg, the offspring of his concubine, rather than the elder Vladimir, the offspring of his wife Ol'ga the daughter of Iurii Dolgorukii, his successor.[126] Vladimir challenged Oleg and initiated a general rivalry for Galich.[127] In 1188, taking advantage of the strife, Sviatoslav Vsevolodovich sought to consolidate his control over all the Kievan lands. As he and Riurik rode against Bela III of Hungary who had seized Galich, Sviatoslav proposed to take the town and give it to Riurik in exchange for his Kievan domains and his patrimony of Vruchii. Riurik refused the offer.[128]

The following year Vladimir escaped from Hungary, where the king was holding him captive. After the Galicians reinstated him, he requested Vsevolod Big Nest in Vladimir-Suzdal' to support his rule. In return, he promised to be subservient to his uncle. Vsevolod agreed and demanded that all the princes, notably Roman Mstislavich of Vladimir-in-Volynia, Riurik and

Sviatoslav pledge not to challenge his nephew's rule. They acquiesced in def­erence to his military might.[129] Moreover, when making their promises, it appears that all the princes in the House of Monomakh pledged to acknowl­edge Vsevolod as the senior prince of their dynasty. Sviatoslav, although an Ol'govich, also agreed to obey Vsevolod's directive not to attack Vladimir. In doing so, however, he lost face as the prince of Kiev.[130]

One of Sviatoslav's most important duties as commander-in-chief was to defend Rus' against the Polovtsy. In the past, princes like Iurii had used the nomads as their auxiliaries, and they would do so again around the turn of the thirteenth century. For some two decades after the reign of Rostislav Mstislavich, however, relations between the princes and the tribesmen were extremely hostile. The horsemen from the east bank of the Dnieper and those north of the Black Sea raided Pereiaslavl' and the River Ros' region south of Kiev. The tribes living in the Donets basin pillaged, in the main, the Ol'govichi domains in the Zadesen'e and Posem'e regions.[131]

Sviatoslav, Riurikand their allies led many campaigns against the marauders. In 1184 they scored one of their greatest victories at the River Erel' south of the Pereiaslavl' lands, where they took many khans captive.[132] The following year, however, Sviatoslav's cousin Igor' Sviatoslavich of Novgorod Severskii suffered a catastrophic defeat in the Donets river basin (for chronicle illustrations of the battle, see Plate 7).[133] It became the subject of the most famous epic poem of Rus', 'The Lay of Igor''s Campaign' (Slovo o polku Igoreve)[134] Despite his valiant efforts, however, Sviatoslav failed to defeat the enemy or to negotiate a lasting peace.

At the peak of his power, Sviatoslav was the dominant political figure in Rus'. In addition to enjoying the loyalty of all the princes, he also maintained diplomatic and commercial relations with the Hungarians, the Poles and the imperial family in Constantinople.[135] Moreover, he was one of the most avid builders of his day. In Kiev he erected a new court, the church of St Vasilii, and restored the damaged St Sophia. In Chernigov, he built a second prince's court and the churches of St Michael and the Annunciation. Vsevolod Big Nest of Vladimir-Suzdal', David Rostislavich of Smolensk and Iaroslav Osmomysl of Galich used the Annunciation as the model for expanding their existing cathedrals and for building new ones.[136] During his reign, it seems, Chernigov grew to its maximum area to match if not to surpass Kiev in size.[137] Sviatoslav died in 1194 during the last week of July and was succeeded, according to their agreement, by Riurik.[138]

Riurik Rostislavich

The following year, Riurik invited David from Smolensk to help him distribute Kievan towns to their relatives. He demonstrated this deference towards his elder brother because, even as prince of Kiev, he was subordinate to David, the senior prince of the Rostislavichi. To his regret, in allocating the towns Riurik neglected Vsevolod Big Nest, whom the Rostislavichi had acknowledged as their senior prince. After Vsevolod threatened Riurik, he gave Vsevolod the towns that he had allotted to his son-in-law Roman Mstislavich of Volyn'. The latter was furious at the turn of events and formed a pact with Iaroslav Vsevolodovich of Chernigov.

Riurik, fearing that Iaroslav would depose him, asked Vsevolod to make Iaroslav pledge not to seize Kiev. What is more, he demanded that the Ol'govichi renounce the claims of their descendants. Iaroslav, proclaiming it to be a preposterous demand, refused to renounce the rights of future Ol'govichi to Kiev. He and Riurik therefore waged war until Vsevolod and David invaded the Chernigov lands. In 1197, Vsevolod, David and Iaroslav reached a settlement. The latter promised not to usurp Kiev from Riurik, but refused to forswear the future claims of his dynasty. While negotiating their agreement, the three senior princes also affirmed the Novgorodians' right to select a prince from whichever dynasty they chose. Moreover, they evidently granted the princes of Riazan' permission to create an autonomous eparchy independent of Chernigov. Riurik was not present at the deliberations and his demands, in particular that Iaroslav sever his pact with Roman, were largely ignored. Vsevolod's objective was to keep the Rostislavichi dependent on him for military assistance. After Iaroslav Vsevolodovich died in 1198,[139] however, Riurik formed an alliance with his successor Oleg Sviatoslavich.

The following year Roman seized Galich with Polish help. He therewith became one of the most powerful princes in the land. In 1202, he demonstrated his might by inflicting a crushing defeat on the Polovtsy and by evicting his father-in-law Riurik from Kiev. He gave it to his cousin Ingvar' Iaroslavich of Lutsk, whose father had ruled the town.[140] Roman himself was not a rightful claimant, even though he was of Mstislav's line, because he belonged to a younger generation than Riurik and Vsevolod Big Nest. The latter, however, learning from the fate of his father Iurii and the example of his brother Andrei, did not occupy Kiev. The Rostislavichi of Smolensk therefore remained the only claimants from the House of Monomakh. Nevertheless, Vsevolod, Roman and their sons would keep a watchful eye on the princes of Kiev and at times try to manipulate their appointments.

In 1203 Riurik, with Oleg of Chernigov and the Polovtsy, retaliated by attack­ing Kiev. Although he would capture it later on several more occasions, his sack of the town is of special significance. The chronicler claims it was the most horrendous devastation that Kiev had experienced since the Christiani- sation of Rus'.[141] That is, contrary to the views of many historians, it was greater than the havoc inflicted by Andrei Bogoliubskii's coalition. The following year, however, Roman gained the upper hand once again by forcing Riurik to enter a monastery.[142] Then, in 1205, after Roman was killed fighting with the Poles, Riurik reinstated himself in Kiev. [143]

Roman had maintained close ties with the Poles (his mother was a Pole) and Byzantium. After repudiating his first wife Predslava, Riurik's daughter, he married Anna, probably the daughter of Emperor Isaac II Angelus.[144] He also pursued an aggressive policy towards Galich, where he was the first prince to depose the sons of Iaroslav Osmomysl. This gave his own sons, Daniil and Vasil'ko, a claim to Galich because they had the right to sit on the throne of their father.[145] Significantly, he captured Galich with the help of boyars many of whom transferred their loyalties to his sons after his death. Unfortunately for the boys, however, they were still minors so that their father's untimely death created a political vacuum in south-western Rus'. They were challenged by princes from Volyn', Smolensk, Chernigov and by the Hungarians.

Vsevolod Big Nest and Vsevolod the Red

When Roman died Vsevolod Big Nest was at the zenith of his power. He avoided meddling in southern affairs and devoted his energies to consolidating his rule over the north-east. He was determined to subjugate the princes of Riazan' who, if allowed to join forces with their relatives in Chernigov, could pose a serious threat to his authority. To secure control of the trade coming from the Caspian Sea, he waged war against the Volga-Kama Bulgars and the Mordva tribes. He destroyed Polovtsian camps along the River Don and strengthened his defences along the middle Volga and the Northern Dvina rivers. Although he seized Novgorodian lands along the upper Volga, he failed to occupy Novgorod itself, where Mstislav Mstislavich 'the Bold' (Udaloi), a Rostislavich, was ensconced. Like Andrei, he pursued a centralising policy in his patrimony by stifling local opposition and by fortifying towns. He also built churches. One of the most striking was that of St Dmitrii in Vladimir, famous for its relief decorations. Finally, the existence of chronicle compilations, like those of his father Iurii and brother Andrei, testifies to flourishing literary activity during his reign.[146]

In 1204, the year before Roman's death, Oleg Sviatoslavich of Chernigov died and was succeeded by his brother Vsevolod 'the Red' (Chermnyi). Unlike most senior princes of Chernigov before him, he tried to seize Galich, but a family from the cadet branch foiled his plan. Igor' Sviatoslavich's sons (the Igorevichi), whose mother was the daughter of Iaroslav Osmomysl, accepted the Galicians' invitation to be their princes. After failing to seize Galich for his own family, but content that his relatives ruled it, Vsevolod expelled Riurik from Kiev. Later, he also evicted Iaroslav, the son of Vsevolod Big Nest, from Pereiaslavl'.[147] For the first time, therefore, an Ol'govich controlled, even if fleetingly, Chernigov, Kiev, Galich and Pereiaslavl'.

Pereiaslavl' had been the patrimony of Vladimir Monomakh. As noted above, his younger sons and grandsons (Mstislavichi) fought for possession of the town to use it as a stepping-stone to the capital of Rus'. After Iurii Dolgorukii occupied Kiev his descendants gained possession of Pereiaslavl'. During the last quarter of the twelfth century, however, the town and its outposts became favourite targets of Polovtsian raids. Consequently, it declined in importance so that, by the turn of the thirteenth century, it was without a prince for a number ofyears. Vsevolod expressed greater interest in Pereiaslavl' and sent his son Iaroslav, albeit a minor, to administer it.[148]

Vsevolod the Red's initial success in Kiev was short-lived. Riurik retaliated by driving him out. After that, the town changed hands between them on several occasions. Meanwhile, Vsevolod Big Nest, incensed at Vsevolod the Red for evicting his son Iaroslav from Pereiaslavl', marched against Chernigov. En route, the princes of Riazan'joined him. On learningthat they had betrayed him by forming a pact with Vsevolod the Red, Vsevolod attacked Riazan'. He took the princes, their wives and their boyars captive to Vladimir, where many remained until after his death. In 1208 Riurik died and Vsevolod the Red finally occupied Kiev uncontested.[149] Two years later, he formed a pact followed by a marriage bond with Vsevolod Big Nest.[150] Their alliance was the most powerful in the land.

Vsevolod the Red's relatives in Galicia were less fortunate. In 1211 the boyars rebelled against the Igorevichi and hanged three of them.[151] Vsevolod accused the Rostislavichi of complicity in the crime and expelled them from their Kievan domains. He therewith successfully appropriated the lands that his father Sviatoslav had failed to take from Riurik. The evicted princelings, however, turned to Mstislav Romanovich of Smolensk and Mstislav Mstislavich the Bold of Novgorod for help. Meanwhile, on 13 April 1212, Vsevolod Big Nest died depriving Vsevolod the Red of his powerful ally.[152] Taking advantage of this shift in the balance of power, the Rostislavichi attacked Kiev and drove out Vsevolod. They pursued him to Chernigov where he evidently fell in battle.⁸²

Defeat at the River Kalka

The reign of Mstislav Romanovich, who replaced Vsevolod in Kiev, was peace­ful, but the north-east was thrown into turmoil. Before his death, Vsevolod Big Nest weakened the power of the senior prince in Vladimir-Suzdal' by dividing up his lands among all his sons. He made matters worse by designating his second son Iurii, rather than the eldest Konstantin, his successor.⁸³ He there­with antagonised the latter. Meanwhile, Mstislav the Bold ruled Novgorod but Iaroslav of Pereiaslavl'-Zalesskii was determined to evict him. Konstantin joined Mstislav while Iurii backed his brother Iaroslav. The two sides clashed on 21 April 1216 near the River Lipitsa, where Mstislav and Konstantin were vic­torious.⁸⁴ Consequently, Mstislav retained Novgorod and Konstantin replaced Iurii as senior prince.

Two years later, Mstislav the Bold abandoned Novgorod. Soon after, it fell into the hands of Iurii, who became senior prince in 1218 after Konstantin died. Thus, the princes of Vladimir-Suzdal' finally acquired Novgorod, not because they were more powerful than Mstislav the Bold, but because he sought greener pastures in the south-west.⁸⁵ Accompanied by his cousin Vladimir Riurikovich of Smolensk and the Ol'govichi, he captured Galich from the Hungarians.⁸⁶ After that the Rostislavichi, who controlled Smolensk, Kiev and Galich, were the most powerful dynasty.

In I223 the Tatars (Mongols) removed the Polovtsy as a military power. On receiving this news, Mstislav Romanovich summoned the princes of Rus' to Kiev where they agreed to confront the new enemy on foreign soil. Their forces included contingents from Kiev, Smolensk, Chernigov, Galicia, Volyn' and probably Turov. Vladimir-Suzdal', Riazan', Polotsk and Novgorod sent no men. After the troops set out, Mstislav the Bold quarrelled with his cousin Mstislav of Kiev. Their disagreement was responsible, in part, for the annihi­lation of their forces on 31 May at the River Kalka.⁸⁷

82 PSRL, vol. xxv, p. 109. For Vsevolod the Red's reign, see Dimnik, The Dynasty of Chernigov 1146-1246, pp. 249-87.

83 PSRL, vol. xxv, p. 108. For Vsevolod's descendants, see Baumgarten, Genealogies et mariages, table x.

84 PSRL, vol. xxv, pp. 111-14; Fennell, Crisis, pp. 48-9.

85 For the controversies in Novgorod, see Fennell, Crisis, pp. 51-8; V L. Ianin, Novgorodskie posadniki (Moscow: MGU, 1962).

86 Novgorodskaiapervaialetopis', pp. 59, 260-1.

87 PSRL, vol. ii, cols. 740-5. For a discussion of the campaign, see Fennell, Crisis, pp. 63-8.

Mstislav the Bold escaped with his life. Mstislav Romanovich of Kiev and Mstislav Sviatoslavich of Chernigov, however, fell in the fray and their deaths necessitated the installation of new senior princes. Vladimir, Riurik's son, occupied Kiev; Mikhail, the son of Vsevolod the Red, occupied Chernigov.[153]The transitions of power worked smoothly according to the system of lateral succession. Given the heavy losses of life that the Ol'govichi had incurred, Mikhail made no attempt to usurp Kiev. Elsewhere, oblivious to or ignoring the threat that the Tatars presented, princes renewed their rivalries: Mstislav the Bold, Daniil Romanovich of Volyn' and the Hungarians fought for Galicia, while in Novgorod the townsmen struggled to win greater privileges from the princes of Vladimir-Suzdal'.

Mikhail Vsevolodovich

In I224, while Mikhail was visiting his brother-in-law Iurii in the north-east, the latter asked him to act as mediator in Novgorod. Iurii and the townsmen could not agree on the terms of rule because his brother Iaroslav had imposed debilitating taxes on the Novgorodians and appointed his officials over them. As Iurii's agent, Mikhail abrogated many ofIaroslav's stringent measures but in doing so incurred his wrath. Nevertheless, while in Novgorod Mikhail derived benefit for Chernigov by negotiating favourable trade agreements. In the early I230s, after Iaroslav pillaged his patrimonial domain and because he became involved in southern affairs, Mikhail terminated his involvement in Novgorod.

After that, Iaroslav reasserted his authority over the town through his sons, notably, Aleksandr, later nicknamed Nevskii. Mikhail's withdrawal from the northern emporium also enabled Iurii to restore unity among his brothers and nephews. Just the same, the fragmentation of Vladimir-Suzdal' that Vsevolod Big Nest had initiated by dividing up his lands among his sons, accelerated. Hereditary domains were partitioned even further among new sons.

In the late 1220s, Mikhail's brother-in-law Daniil had initiated an expansion­ist policy in Volyn' and Galicia. His success in appropriating domains forced Vladimir Riurikovich of Kiev and Mikhail to join forces. In 1228, however, they failed to defeat him at Kamenets and he remained free to pursue his aggression.[154] Meanwhile, the fortunes of the Rostislavichi had waned owing to their manpower losses at the Kalka, to the death of Mstislav the Bold, to succession crises that split the dynasty asunder, to famine in Smolensk and to Lithuanian incursions. Despite these setbacks, commerce evidently pros­pered in Smolensk. In 1229 its prince negotiated a trade agreement with the Germans of Riga and designated a special suburb in Smolensk for quarter­ing their merchants.⁹⁰ Nevertheless, two years later, in light of his dynasty's declining fortunes, Vladimir summoned the princes of Rus' to Kiev to solicit new pledges of loyalty.

Soon after, Mikhail besieged Vladimir forcing him to join Daniil, who by then had captured Galich. In 1235, when they invaded Chernigov, Mikhail defeated them with the Polovtsy. He evicted Vladimir from Kiev, but later reinstated the Rostislavich as his lieutenant. He therewith imitated Andrei Bogoliubskii who, in 1171, had appointed Roman Rostislavich, the then senior prince of the Rostislavichi, as his puppet in Kiev. After that, Mikhail seized Galich from Daniil. But unlike his father Vsevolod the Red, who had let the Igorevichi rule the town, Mikhail occupied it in person.⁹¹

His reasons for seeking control of both towns and for occupying Galich in preference to Kiev were, in the main, commercial. Merchants brought lux­ury goods from Lower Lotharingia, the Rhine region, Westphalia, and Lower Saxony via Galich and Kiev to Chernigov.⁹² Ten years later, the Franciscan monk John de Plano Carpini reported that merchants from Bratislava, Con­stantinople, Genoa, Venice, Pisa, Acre, Austria and the Poles were also visiting Kiev.⁹³ While Daniil controlled Galich, he could obstruct the flow of mer­chandise coming through that town to Chernigov. Moreover, after forming his alliance with Vladimir, Daniil probably persuaded him to stem the flow of goods passing through Kiev to Chernigov. Mikhail could ensure that for­eign wares reached Chernigov by replacing Daniil in Galich and by making Vladimir his lieutenant in Kiev.

With the support of the local boyars, bishops, the Hungarians, and the Poles, Mikhail retained control of Galich until around 1237. At that time the townsmen invited Daniil to replace Mikhail's son Rostislav while the latter was fighting the Lithuanians.⁹⁴ Mikhail had returned to Kiev in the previous year

90 On the Smolensk trade agreement, see R. I. Avanesov (ed.), Smolenskiegramoty XIII-XIV vekov (Moscow: AN SSSR 1963), pp. 18-62.

91 PSRL, vol. II, cols. 773-4; Novgorodskaiapervaialetopis', pp. 74, 284-5.

92 V P. Darkevich and 1.1. Edomakha, 'Pamiatnikzapadnoevropeiskoi torevtiki XII veka', Sovetskaiaarkheologiia 3 (1964): 247-55; V P. Darkevich, 'Kistoriitorgovykh sviazeiDrevnei Rusi', Kratkie soobshcheniia o dokladakh i polevykh issledovaniiakh Instituta arkheologii 138 (1974): 93-103.

93 G. Vernadsky, The Mongols andRussia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), pp. 62-4; C. Dawson (ed.), The Mongol Mission: Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), pp. 70-1; Dimnik, Mikhail, pp. 76-7.

94 PSRL, vol. II, cols. 777-8.

because Iurii and Daniil had joined forces. Fearing that Mikhail had become too powerful, they sought to deprive him of Kiev by evicting Vladimir. The task was made easier following a vicious succession war in Smolensk after which the Rostislavichi became, in effect, the vassals of Vladimir-Suzdal'. Iaroslav, Iurii's brother, left his son Aleksandr in charge of Novgorod and occupied Kiev. After the townsmen refused to support him, however, he returned to Vladimir-Suzdal'.[155] To secure his hold over Kiev, Mikhail occupied it in person.

The Tatars invaded in two phases. First, in December I237 they overran the lands of Riazan', and in the spring they devastated Vladimir-Suzdal'. Sig­nificantly, they spared Novgorod and Smolensk. Second, in I239 they razed Pereiaslavl' and Chernigov; on 6 December I240 they captured Kiev and, after that, laid waste to Galicia and Volyn'.[156]

After Baty established Sarai as the capital of the Golden Horde, he com­manded every prince to visit him and obtain a patent (iarlyk) to rule his domain. In 1243 Iaroslav of Vladimir-Suzdal', who had replaced Iurii as senior prince after the Tatars killed him, was the first to kowtow to Baty. For his reward, the khan named him the senior prince of Rus' and appointed him to Kiev in place of Mikhail.[157] In 1245 Daniil obtained the iarlyk for Volyn' and Galicia.[158]The following year Mikhail journeyed to Sarai, but Baty had him put to death because he refused to worship an idol.[159] During the so-called period of the Mongol yoke that followed, the centre of power shifted from Kiev to Muscovy where the descendants of Vsevolod Big Nest, by becoming subservient vassals of the Tatars, attained supremacy.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we have seen that the years 1125 to 1246 gave birth to new principalities (Smolensk, Suzdalia, Murom and Riazan') and new eparchies (Smolensk and Riazan'). They saw the political ascendancy of a number of principalities (Chernigov, Smolensk, Volyn' and Suzdalia) and the decline of others (Turov, Galich, Polotsk, Pereiaslavl', Murom and Riazan') (Map 5.1 shows the Rus'ian principalities around 1246). The princes who shared borders with the Hungarians, the Poles and the Greeks developed political, personal and cultural relations with them. Moreover, dynasties formed commercial ties

with France, Bohemia, Hungary, the Poles, the Germans, the Baltic region, the Near East and Byzantium. They also had dealings, frequently hostile, with the Kama-Bulgars, the Mordva, the Polovtsy and the Lithuanians.

These years witnessed the flowering of culture, especially in ambitious building projects. Princes imported artisans from the Greeks, the West and from beyond the Caucasus. The proliferation of churches was accompanied by the growth in the number of native saints, with the concomitant growth in shrines, devotional literature, icons and other religious objects. The period also saw two singular ecclesiastical initiatives. Andrei Bogoliubskii attempted to create a metropolitan see in Vladimir, and a synod of bishops consecrated Klim Smoliatich as the second native metropolitan. Andrei's project failed and Klim's appointment was an isolated instance. Neither had a lasting effect on the organisation of the Church.

During this period Rus' witnessed fierce rivalries as dynasties fought to increase the size of their territories. The principalities of Galicia, Polotsk, Turov, Murom and Riazan' became the main victims of such appropriation. Novgorod was especially desirable for its commercial wealth and because, like Kiev, it had no resident dynasty. But winning Kiev, which enjoyed polit­ical and moral supremacy in Rus', was the main object of internecine wars. The princes descended from the powerful dynasties of the inner circle con­ceived by Iaroslav the Wise were the chief contenders. In their intra-dynastic and inter-dynastic rivalries they acknowledged and, for the most part, faith­fully adhered to the system of genealogical seniority that dictated lateral succession.

Disagreements within a dynasty occurred when one prince attempted to debar another from succession or sought to pre-empt his claim (e.g. the Mstislavichi against their uncles). In like manner, two dynasties would go to war when one sought to deprive the other of its right to rule Kiev (e.g. Riurik Rostislavich against Iaroslav of Chernigov). When the senior princes of two dynasties challenged each other's claims, a challenger's suc­cess was usually determined by the greater manpower resources of his own dynasty, or by the greater military strength of the alliance that he had forged (e.g. Vsevolod Ol'govich against Viacheslav Vladimirovich; Iurii Dolgorukii against Rostislav Mstislavich; Andrei Bogoliubskii against Mstislav Iziaslavich; Mikhail Vsevolodovich against Vladimir Riurikovich). At times claimants from rival dynasties resolved their disputes by ruling Kiev as duumvirs (e.g. Iziaslav Mstislavich and Viacheslav Vladimirovich; Sviatoslav Vsevolodovich and Riurik Rostislavich). The instances when victorious claimants appointed their puppets to Kiev were failures (e.g. Andrei Bogoliubskii and Mikhail

Vsevolodovich). Finally, on occasion, princes succeeded one another peace­fully (e.g. Mstislav Vladimirovich after Vladimir Monomakh; Vsevolod the Red after Riurik Rostislavich; Vladimir Riurikovich after Mstislav Romanovich).

During these years the inner circle created by Iaroslav the Wise evolved into one forged by political realities. Vladimir Monomakh debarred the dynasties of Turov and Chernigov thus making his heirs the only rightful claimants to Kiev. When, however, his younger sons and grandsons (Mstislavichi) both championed their right of succession, they divided the dynasty into two lines of rival contenders. By usurping Kiev from the House of Monomakh, Vsevolod Ol'govich also won the right of succession for his heirs. He therewith raised to three the number of dynasties with legitimate claims. The number increased to four when the Mstislavichi bifurcated into the Volyn' and Smolensk lines. By the beginning of the thirteenth century, however, only two dynasties remained as viable candidates, namely, those of Smolensk (Mstislav Romanovich and Vladimir Riurikovich) and Chernigov (Mikhail Vsevolodovich). The princes of Volyn' had become debarred because they had fallen too low on the genealog­ical ladder of seniority, and the princes of Suzdalia had found the hostility of the Kievans and the distance that separated them from Kiev to be too great. Finally, in the 1240s, the Tatars terminated the established order of succession to Kiev.

His authority, like that of Monomakh and Mstislav, was supreme. He appropriated Turov and Vladimir-in-Volynia. He sent his brother Sviatoslav to Novgorod where the latter issued a statute (ustav) regulating the rela­tionship between the prince and the Church.¹⁶ After the Novgorodians expelled Sviatoslav, Vsevolod replaced him with Mstislav's son Sviatopolk, one of his brothers-in-law. To another, Iziaslav, he gave Pereiaslavl'. Except for Volodimerko of Galich, who attempted to seize Vladimir-in-Volynia, Vsevolod encountered no serious opposition. (For Volodimerko, see Table 5.2: The House of Galicia.) On one occasion he reconciled his disgruntled brothers and cousins by asking his cousin Sviatosha Davidovich, who had become a monk in the Caves monastery and would later be canonised, to mediate on his behalf. He patronised the Church by building the monastery of St Cyril in Kiev and the church of St George in Kanev.

Before he died on 1 August 1146,¹⁷ Vsevolod also took a page out of Mono- makh's book by attempting to make Kiev the patrimony of the Ol'govichi.

16 DanielH. Kaiser, TheGrowthoftheLawinMedievalRussia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 58-9.

17 PSRL, vol. 11, cols. 320-1.

Pereiaslavl', Boris to Turov, and Vasil'ko to the River Ros' region. (See Table 5.3: The House of Suzdalia.) He also returned to Sviatoslav the Ol'govichi domains that Iziaslav had appropriated. Moreover, he permitted Sviatoslav to translate Igor''s body to Chernigov where the latter was canonised.²⁷ Iurii's reign, how­ever, was short-lived because the Kievans despised him. On I5 May II57 he died after evidently being poisoned at a feast.²⁸

After the prince of Kiev died, his allies lost the towns he had allocated to them from the Kievan lands or from debarred families. The towns were seized either by his replacement in Kiev or by the rightful owners. This happened with Turov. Vladimir Monomakh had seized the domain from the sons of Sviatopolk Iziaslavich (d. 1113) and made it the possession of the prince of Kiev. Following the death of Iurii Dolgorukii, however, Sviatopolk's descendant Iurii Iaroslavich recaptured it.²⁹ After that Turov's politically insignificant princes came increasingly under the influence of Volyn', Galicia and the Lithuanians.

27 PSRL, vol. ii, col. 408.

28 PSRL, vol. ii, col. 489.

29 PSRL, vol. xxv, p. 63. For Sviatopolk's family, see Baumgarten, Genealogies et manages, table II, 3.