In the year 980, an obscure prince landed on the northern shores of a land that became known as Rus' and, later, Russia. Almost a decade earlier his father, the ruler of this land, had placed him in charge of the area surrounding one of its towns, the recently founded Novgorod. But after his father died (972) and one of his elder brothers killed the other (977), this prince, Vladimir (Volodimer) Sviatoslavich, fled abroad. After several years of exile he now led a band of Varangians (Norsemen) across the Baltic from Scandinavia. His intention was to depose his half-brother Iaropolk and assume the throne of Kiev.
Vladimir s seizure of the kievan throne
Upon landing in Rus', Prince Vladimir immediately sought allies to join him against Iaropolk. He turned to the prince of Polotsk (Polatsk), Rogvolod, a fellow Varangian but unrelated to Vladimir and his family, and requested the hand of his daughter Rogneda in marriage. But she haughtily refused him, calling him the “son of a slave” and indicating a preference for Iaropolk. Vladimir responded by leading his Varangian force, along with Slovenes, Chud', and Krivichi from his former domain of Novgorod, against Polotsk. He defeated and killed Rogvolod and his sons, captured Rogneda, and forced her to become his bride. Polotsk was attached to the realm of Vladimir’s family, the Riurikid dynasty.
Vladimir then marched toward his brother’s capital, the city of Kiev. Growing out of settlements established in the sixth and seventh
Centuries, Kiev was located far to the south of Novgorod on hills overlooking the west or right bank of the Dnieper River. By 980 it had become the political center of a domain, known as Kievan Rus', that extended from Novgorod on the Volkhov River southward across the divide where the Volga, the West Dvina, and the Dnieper Rivers all had their origins, and down the Dnieper just past Kiev. It also included the lower reaches of the main tributaries of the Dnieper. Arriving at the city, Vladimir entered into negotiations with his brother. But in the midst of their talks two of Vladimir’s Varangians murdered Iaropolk. Vladimir Sviatoslavich became the sole prince of Kievan Rus'.
Prince Vladimir’s claim to the Kievan throne rested only in part on the military force he used to secure it. It was also based on heritage. Vladimir was one of the sons of Sviatoslav, prince of Kiev from 962 to 972. The Russian Primary Chronicle traces Sviatoslav’s lineage back through his father Igor' and mother Olga to a Norseman named Riurik. The legend of Riurik claims that in the ninth century a group of quarreling eastern Slav and Finnic tribes that had dwelled in what is now northwestern Russia invited Riurik and his brothers to come to their lands, rule over them, and bring peace and order to their peoples.
While the chronicle account incorporates myth and cannot be taken literally, it does reflect the fact that Scandinavian Vikings, called Rus',1 Were present in the territories of the eastern Slav and Finnic tribes by the ninth century and that they eventually became rulers or princes over the native population. Vladimir’s ancestors, founders of the dynasty that was later named after Riurik, led one of those Viking bands. Vladimir’s victory over Rogvolod signaled the completion of the process pursued by Igor' and Sviatoslav to eliminate rival bands and establish exclusive ascendancy over enough ofthe native tribes to fashion a cohesive principality out of their territories. Although the Slav tribes shared a common language and there is some evidence of
The origin ofthe term “Rus'” and the populations and territories to which it refers have been the subjects of lengthy and intense debate. For the sake of simplicity the term will be used in this chapter to refer to the Scandinavians, including the members of the Riurikid dynasty, who imposed their rule over the eastern Slavs. In subsequent chapters the distinction between the Scandinavian Rus' and the Slavs will be dropped and the term will be applied to the rulers and population of Kievan Rus'. That term will be used broadly to mean those lands subject to the Riurikid princes.
A federation among them prior to the establishment of Scandinavian rule, it was their common recognition of the Riurikid dynasty that bound them into the state that became known as Kievan Rus'.
Consolidation of power
The lands of Vladimir’s realm were populated primarily by eastern Slav tribes. To the north were the Slovenes of the Novgorod region and the neighboring Krivichi, who occupied the territories surrounding the headwaters of the West Dvina, Dnieper, and Volga Rivers. To the south in the area around Kiev were the Poliane, a group of Slavicized tribes with Iranian origins. To their north the Derevliane inhabited the lands west of the Dnieper extending to its right tributary, the Pripiat' River (Pripet). On the other side of the Pripiat' were the Dregovichi. West of the Derevliane dwelled the Volynians; south of them, i. e., southwest of Kiev, were the Ulichi and Tivertsy tribes. East of the Dnieper along its left tributary, the Desna River, were Severiane tribes; the Viatichi lived to their north and east along the upper Oka River. Kievan Rus' was fringed in the north by the Finnic Chud', and in the northeast by the Muroma and Merya tribes that occupied the lands on the Oka and Volga Rivers. To the south its forested lands settled by Slav agriculturalists gave way to steppelands populated by nomadic herdsmen.
Within Kievan Rus' there were several noteworthy towns by the late tenth century. Kiev and Novgorod, its southern and northern focal points, were the most important. In addition, Kievan Rus' contained Smolensk, a center of the Krivichi, located on the upper Dnieper. West of Smolensk was the town of Polotsk, which Vladimir had seized from Rogvolod; it was located on the Polota River which flows into the West Dvina. South of Polotsk, on the Pripiat' River, was the Dregovich center of Turov (Turau). On the east side of the Dnieper Chernigov (Chernihiv), the major center of the Severiane tribes, commanded the Desna River. Pereiaslavl' , situated southeast of Kiev on the Trubezh River, another tributary of the Dnieper, was the town nearest the steppe frontier. Rostov, located on Lake Nero in Merya country, had also been founded by the era of Prince Vladimir.
Kievan Rus' was coalescing amidst other organized states. To the east was Bulgar, located on the mid-Volga River near its juncture with the Kama. South of Bulgar and southeast of Kievan Rus' were the
Map i. i The tribes of early Rus'
Remnants of a once powerful empire, Khazaria. Before the formation of Kievan Rus' Khazaria had claimed some of the eastern Slav tribes as its tributaries. And until the reign ofVladimir’s father, Sviatoslav, who delivered the final blow that destroyed it, Khazaria had dominated the region of the lower Volga and the Northern Caucasus and had maintained stability on the steppe. West of Kiev were Poland and Hungary, which were also organizing into kingdoms and expanding in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. And to the south, beyond the steppe, was the greatest empire of the age, Byzantium, whose control extended over the northern coast ofthe Black Sea and influence into the Balkans.
Once established in Kiev, Vladimir faced the task of consolidating his personal position and the monopoly on power he had attained for his family or dynasty over all the lands of Kievan Rus'. After displacing Iaropolk, no relatives were available to challenge him. But he nevertheless had to ensure that all the tribes within his realm would continue to recognize him as their prince and neither withdraw their allegiance nor transfer it to a neighboring power. Their loyalty was symbolized by their payment of tribute or taxes.
Vladimir’s most pressing problem in this respect was posed by the Viatichi, who had rebelled when Sviatoslav died in 972. One of Vladimir’s first acts (981-82), therefore, was to suppress their rebellion and reestablish Kievan authority over them. In 984, he also expanded Kievan Rus' by subordinating the Radimichi, another Slav tribe that inhabited the lands north of the Severiane and east of the upper Dnieper.
In 985, Vladimir and his uncle Dobrynia also conducted a military campaign against the Volga Bulgars, who dominated the mid-Volga region and exercised some influence over the tribes dwelling to the north and west oftheir own territories. After the demise ofKhazaria, Bulgar was the chief potential rival to Kievan Rus' authority over the peoples, like the Muroma and the Merya, who occupied the lands along the upper Volga and Oka Rivers well to the east of Kiev and the Dnieper. Vladimir’s campaign was militarily successful. Yet significantly, Vladimir, heeding his uncle’s advice, did not attempt to reduce the Volga Bulgars to tributary status. Rather, he concluded a treaty with Bulgar that served as the basis for the peaceful relations that lasted between the two states until the late eleventh century. The Rus' victory also removed Bulgar as a potential rival for suzerainty over the tribes on the eastern and northeastern frontiers of Kievan
Rus'; in this way it also helped to secure their allegiance to Kiev and the Riurikid dynasty.
Conversion to Christianity
In addition to using force to consolidate his ruling position over the tribes of his realm, Vladimir adopted another policy that served twin goals ofintegrating the diverse tribes into a single society and ofintro-ducing an ideology that would legitimize his rule. That policy was the introduction of a uniform common religion for his heterogeneous population. In so doing Vladimir began a process of associating secular political authority with religious institutions and clergy, whose authority and advice were eventually popularly respected. Conversely, pagan priests and tribal leaders, who clung to their local gods, lost their positions, prestige, and power.
Vladimir’s first attempt at providing a single faith was undertaken shortly after he assumed the throne in Kiev; it was based on the pagan religions of his subjects. Having witnessed the recent collapse of Khazaria, which had lacked religious unity, and evidently appreciating the political advantages of identifying himself with the broad spectrum of gods worshipped by his diverse subjects, Vladimir sponsored the erection of a pagan temple on a hill at the very heights of the city. The temple was dedicated to six gods; the idols represented several groups within the Kievan population. Perun, the god of thunder and war, was a Norse god favored by members of the prince’s druzhina (military retinue). Others in the pantheon were the Slav gods of the sky (Stribog) and of light and fertility (Dazhd' bog or Dazhboh); Mokosh', a goddess representing Mother Nature, was worshipped also by Finnish tribes. In addition, Khors, a sun god, and Simargl, another fertility god, both of which had Iranian origins, were included, probably to appeal to the Poliane. For reasons not explained in the chronicles, Vladimir became dissatisfied with this religious arrangement. The alternative he found provided the same unifying advantages and ideological support for his political position. He adopted Christianity.
Christianity had been known in Kievan Rus' for at least a century. Vladimir’s grandmother, Olga, had been a Christian, and a Christian church, the Cathedral of St. Elias (Il'ya) had been functioning since at least 944, when Christian retainers of Vladimir’s grandfather, Igor', were said to have sworn oaths there. Nevertheless, the selection of
Christianity was not a foregone conclusion. Kievan Rus' was familiar not only with Christianity as practiced both in Byzantium and Europe, but with the other monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam. A chronicle tale relates that Vladimir sent representatives to investigate all the options available to the Rus'. The tale reflects not only the wide range of cultural influences to which Kievan Rus' was exposed, but also the culturally receptive, yet selective character of this emerging state. It explains that Vladimir and his advisers rejected Islam because, among other factors, Muslims were prohibited from drinking alcoholic beverages. They considered Judaism unacceptable because they found it inexplicable that the God of the Jews, if He were truly powerful and favored His people, would have allowed them to be deprived of a country of their own. When comparing the two versions of Christianity, Vladimir’s emissaries reported they found no glory in the ceremonies in the “German” or European churches. But when they went to Constantinople and were led by the emperor into “the edifices where they worship their God,” they were overcome with awe: “we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth,” they informed their prince and his court. “For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations.”2
A continuation of the chronicle tale, however, indicates that the process of adopting Christianity was more mundane and immersed in politics and war. It describes how Vladimir led a campaign against Cherson, a Byzantine commercial outpost on the Crimean peninsula. He laid siege to the town, which surrendered after its water supply had been cut off. Vladimir then held it as ransom while he demanded Emperor Basil’s sister Anna in marriage. Despite her declaration that she would prefer to die than wed Vladimir, the emperor agreed to the prince’s conditions. Anna reluctantly arrived in Cherson, whereupon Vladimir was baptized, married the Byzantine princess, and returned Cherson to Basil as his bridegroom’s gift. Then, accompanied by his wife and Byzantine Christian clergy, he returned to Kiev. Prince Vladimir destroyed the pagan idols that overlooked the city, conducted a mass baptism of the Kievan population in the
The Russian Primary Chronicle, Laurentian Text, trans. and ed. by Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1953), pp. iio—iii.
Dnieper River, and began the process of baptizing the rest of his subjects.
The chronicle tale, an amalgam of legend and fact compiled approximately a century after the events, contains numerous lapses and inconsistencies that have compelled historians, drawing upon supplementary sources, to compose coherent narratives around the events associated with the conversion. Standard descriptions have clung to the chronicle’s outline. They add, however, that at the time of these events the Byzantine emperor Basil II (976-1025) had recently suffered a defeat in Bulgaria and was losing control over Anatolia to rebels. Desperate for military support, he sent a delegation to Vladimir with a request for assistance. His need for a Varangian detachment to confront the dangers facing him was so great that the emperor agreed to arrange a marriage between his sister Anna and the Kievan prince. The only conditions were that Vladimir send the troops, convert to Christianity, and forsake his other wives.
As a result of these negotiations, Vladimir did send reinforcements with whose aid Emperor Basil successfully defended Constantinople from the rebels. By spring of 989, the Varangians had finally crushed Basil’s opponents. But the emperor seemed to renege on his agreement. Marriage into the ruling house of the Byzantine Empire was a singular honor, rarely granted, and therefore strikingly significant in that it would bestow such high stature on a new addition to the Christian world. The bride herself apparently balked at the idea of marrying a northern barbarian. It was at this point that Vladimir, impatient at the delays, attacked Cherson.1
Some scholars have offered variant scenarios. Andrzej Poppe, for example, proposed that Emperor Basil and his sister Anna, motivated by political and military necessity, honored their commitment to Vladimir in a timely manner. Anna and Vladimir, according to this reconstruction of the events, had already married when the Rus' prince undertook his campaign against Cherson. The objective of the campaign was then not to force the Byzantine emperor to fulfill his pledge, but to assist him, once again, by suppressing rebels in the town who supported his enemies. Poppe justified his revision of the chronicle account by describing it as “a legend ‘vested in historical garments’” that had been compiled “over one hundred years after the conversion” not with the intention of accurately recording a chronology of facts, but of “present[ing] ... a significant religious occurrence” that required no “logical sequence of events” and therefore lacked one.2
Although the sources do not provide a consistent set of dates for all the events, the year 988 has been accepted as the traditional date of the formal conversion of Kievan Rus' to Christianity. It marked a triumph for Byzantium and its Church, which acquired potential access to the peoples dwelling as far north as the Gulf of Finland. The achievement was even more dramatic against the background of the recent expansion of the Roman Christian Church into northern, central, and eastern Europe and Islam to the mid-Volga region, where it had been adopted by the Bulgars in 922.
Although written later by Christian monks, the chronicles contain curiously scant information on the history of the Church from 988, the time of the conversion, to 1036, when Vladimir’s son laroslav gained full authority over the Rus' lands and renewed efforts to spread and fortify the faith in his realm. The lack of information has led to some speculation about the status of the Church during its early years. It is generally accepted, however, that from the time of its inception the Orthodox Church in Kievan Rus' had the status of a metropolitanate, whose chief prelate was appointed by the patriarch of Constantinople. It is also widely acknowledged that the seat of the metropolitan was Kiev itself, although other possibilities have been suggested.
The adoption of Christianity had a major impact on Kievan Rus'. The Church became a second institution, along with the Riurikid dynasty, that gave shape and definition to the emerging state. It turned the face of Kievan Rus' from the Muslim East, whose wealth had originally drawn the Rus' to the lands of the eastern Slavs, toward
Byzantium and served as a vehicle for the influx of a range of cultural influences associated with Christianity into Kievan Rus'.
The most immediately dramatic and obvious impact of the adoption of Christianity was the transformation of Kiev’s architectural landscape. Vladimir smashed the pagan idols and hilltop temple he had built just a few years before; in their place arose a church dedicated to St. Basil. Even more spectacular, however, was his construction of an ensemble of buildings set on the central hill of Kiev, outside the old fortifications. Vladimir ordered the grounds of a cemetery that had occupied the place of honor leveled. In a location visible to all inhabitants of the city and with unmistakable symbolism, he built the stone Church of the Holy Virgin, more commonly known as the Church of the Tithe, on the desecrated remains of the pagan dead. The foundations of the church were laid in 989 or 991; it was completed and dedicated in the year 996. The Church of the Tithe has been considered by scholars to have been either the prince’s royal cathedral or the first residence of the metropolitan.3 In either case the grand stone edifice with its elegant interior, including its tile and mosaic floors, its slate and marble detailing, and its vestries, icons, and other religious symbols, was unique among the city’s growing number ofwooden churches. Vladimir, as an additional confirmation of his commitment to Orthodoxy, pledged a tithe or one-tenth of his revenue to support his new church.
Flanking the Church of the Tithe and completing the ensemble were two palatial structures, which served as Vladimir’s court buildings. To surround this area that became known as “Vladimir’s city,” the prince also built new fortifications, consisting of high ramparts and a deep moat that intertwined with the natural ravines cutting into the hillside. These and other construction projects were of such magnitude that within decades of the adoption of Christianity Thietmar, bishop of Merseberg and a contemporary of Vladimir I, recorded a description of Kiev that proclaimed it to be an impressive city, endowed with no fewer than forty churches and eight marketplaces.
The clergy who organized the Church and ministered to the newly converted population were Greeks, sent from Byzantium. The architects and artisans who designed and built the structures, symbolizing the glory of Christian Kievan Rus', were also Byzantine. Thus, not only was the city’s skyline reshaped, but its population received an infusion of Greeks, who introduced their concepts and designs, applied their teachings and technology, and began to transmit them to native apprentices.
Christian culture also influenced Kievan Rus' literature. Written language and literacy existed in the Rus' lands during the tenth century. East Slavonic, which was the main spoken language of the region, was also preferred for practical, administrative, and personal written applications. Church Slavonic (Old Church Slavonic before c. iioo), which had earlier been adopted as a vehicle for translating religious texts from Greek into Slavic for the Slav populations of the Balkans, became the liturgical as well as the formal literary language of Kievan Rus'. In Kievan Rus' both used, primarily, the Cyrillic alphabet, which was also borrowed from Bulgaria. Church Slavonic, which drew upon Slavic words and grammar but cast them into Byzantine styles, was readily intelligible to speakers of East Slavonic.
Adoption of Christianity gave Kievan Rus' access to an array of ecclesiastical literature in a variety of genres. The new Church borrowed earlier translations of some religious literature from the Bulgarians. Clergymen who came from Cherson and other Byzantine centers also brought with them copies of the Gospels, Psalms of the Old Testament, various Byzantine liturgical texts, sermons and saints’ lives, and other ecclesiastical and secular literature, which they translated from Greek into Church Slavonic. Kievan Rus' also gained access to Byzantine chronicles. From the middle of the eleventh century, when literacy and the use of written texts appear to have become more widespread, clerics in Rus' were using the Greek forms of literature as models for their own compositions, including chronicles that recorded the first written histories of the realm of Vladimir and his heirs.
Although Christian culture spread and penetrated Slav society slowly, when it did, it gave all the tribes within Kievan Rus' a common cultural background. It also furnished the Riurikid dynasty with an ideological foundation for its exclusive rule over Kievan Rus'. The descendants of Vladimir were depicted as God’s anointed princes, and Vladimir himself was canonized, although not until the thirteenth century.
Domestic political organization
Although Vladimir had formally adopted Christianity for all the lands he ruled and in some circles of society it served to bolster his own legitimacy, among some tribes there was reluctance to accept the new religion and even violent resistance to its introduction. In Novgorod the arrival of Christian clergy, who removed the idol of Perun and threw it into the Volkhov River, provoked a popular rebellion. The rebellion was quelled and a stately cathedral, made of oak, surmounted by thirteen domes, and dedicated to St. Sophia, was built under the guidance of the city’s first bishop. Nevertheless, the populace remained stubbornly pagan; only gradually through the eleventh century did Novgorodian women, for example, replace the pendants and amulets they wore on their breasts to ward off evil spirits with crucifixes and small icons.
To facilitate the introduction of Christianity around his lands, Vladimir reportedly placed his sons, each with his own druzhina, in towns on the frontiers of Kievan Rus'. He thus assigned Novgorod to Vysheslav, Polotsk to Iziaslav, Turov to Sviatopolk, and Rostov to laroslav. When Vysheslav, the eldest, died, the chronicle entry indicates that Iaroslav was transferred to Novgorod and their younger brother Boris took his place in Rostov. At that time Gleb was also seated in Murom, Sviatoslav ruled the Derevliane, Vsevolod was the prince in Vladimir (in Volynia), and Mstislav in Tmutorokan'. Another chronicle version adds that bishops, priests, and deacons accompanied each prince. The implication of this notation is that Orthodoxy was formally established in each of the named districts. Some of the towns, such as Novgorod, Polotsk, and Belgorod (an alternate princely seat located just south of Kiev), became the centers of dioceses during Vladimir’s reign. Elsewhere the Christian presence was probably little more than a small mission supplemented by the prince, his retainers, and a few converts.
One effect of this policy was to provide the missionaries representing the Church with the protection they would need when they attempted to introduce the new religion, found their churches, and convince local populations and their leaders to reject their traditional gods in favor of the Christian Trinity. But the distribution of princes around the country was probably more successful as a measure to establish direct secular administrative control over the diverse districts of the realm than it was to convert the population within them. Although the two were linked, secular Riurikid authority was more readily accepted than Christianity, which the Slav tribes adopted at a slow pace.
In each of their districts Vladimir’s sons not only protected the Christian clerics. They also served as military leaders, as defenders of the frontier, and local administrators. One of their basic functions in the last capacity was to raise revenue. Tribute from the tribes that recognized their suzerainty was the princes’ primary source of revenue. When Vladimir’s legendary ancestors initially appeared in the Slav and Finnic territories, they, like their Viking cousins who ravaged western Europe, had conducted raids on the native populations. They took captives and robbed the populations of their most valuable goods, including furs, wax, and swords, as they made their way down the Volga and Dnieper Rivers to sell their booty at the market centers of Bulgar (on the Volga), Itil' (in Khazaria), and Cherson. In return, they received treasures of the great empires of the era, Arab, Persian, and Byzantine: silks and brocades, glassware and jewelry, spices and wine, and silver.
Although the precise stages of the transformation are not clear, some of the Scandinavian raiders, represented by Riurik in the legend, eventually regularized their relations with the Slav tribal society. They became the princes or rulers over the Slavs and substituted an annual collection of regular amounts of tribute for sporadic and destructive raids. In return for those payments and recognition of his suzerainty, a prince protected his subjects from other raiders or competing princes, including other Varangians as well as rulers of neighboring organized states, such as the Khazar Empire, that had previously claimed tribute from the Slavs. Within that framework the tribal societies had generally continued to conduct their internal affairs according to their own customs, laws, and religious ethical codes, guided by their traditional tribal elders or officials.
The method used by the Rus' to collect tribute was described by the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in De Adminis-trando Imperio, written in the middle of the tenth century. According to his account, the prince with his druzhina annually made rounds (poliudie) through the subordinated lands and collected tribute.4 The Primary Chronicle suggests that Vladimir’s grandmother Olga may have altered that method. According to the chronicle, her husband Igor' had been killed in 945 by the Derevliane, who were angered when he attempted to collect more than the designated amount of tribute from them. Olga, demonstrating a rare capacity for cunning, exacted a terrible revenge as she resubjugated the tribe. Afterward, she apparently reformed the method of tribute collection. Rather than rely on local chiefs and the system of poliudie, she appointed her own officials to gather and deliver it from at least some regions in her domain.
Prince Sviatoslav certainly did appoint his own agents, his sons, to oversee portions of his domain. Shortly before his death in 972, he had designated laropolk to rule in Kiev, Oleg among the Derevliane, and Vladimir in Novgorod. That apportionment, however, did not prove to be stable. As noted above, the brothers quarreled after their father’s death. laropolk went to war first against Oleg, who fled from his brother’s advancing forces. As the chronicle graphically describes, he and his forces retreated across a moat to gain the safety of a fortified town called Vruchii; Oleg fell from the bridge and died. It was when Vladimir heard about Oleg’s fate that he fled from Novgorod to Scandinavia. Iaropolk appointed his own governor for Novgorod and, as the chronicle notes, ruled the lands of Rus' alone.
When Vladimir took laropolk’s place, he also ruled alone. But with the assignment of his sons to various parts of his realm, he restored and expanded the administrative arrangement introduced by his grandmother and father. His sons became responsible for maintaining their family’s authority over their districts and tribes and for collecting tribute from them. They used a portion of their revenues to support their own druzhiny and meet other local expenses, and turned the remainder over to their father in Kiev. But Vladimir’s distribution of administrative responsibility was also unstable. His son, laroslav, prince in Novgorod, became dissatisfied with the division of revenue. In 1014, he refused to send the required two-thirds of his collections to Kiev; war with his father was imminent and was avoided only by Vladimir’s death in 1015.
Kievan commerce and foreign relations
Collection of tribute was not the only duty Vladimir assigned to his sons. They were also responsible for maintaining order among their subjects, defending the Orthodox missions, and protecting their borders. These functions as well as military engagements for conquest required each prince to have a military force at his disposal. As had their forefathers, Vladimir and his sons each relied on a druzhina, which they supported and maintained in permanent service. By dispersing his sons around the country Vladimir also ensured that their military forces would be stationed at some distance from one another where they could defend the frontiers of Kievan Rus' and also be less likely to fight each other. By keeping his sons in positions subordinate to himself, however, he also maintained a capacity to combine his sons’ forces with his own if and when it became necessary to assemble a large army. In pressing circumstances any one of the princes could supplement his military force with auxiliary troops, drafted from among the Slav population or hired from abroad.
Although Varangians were originally foot soldiers, the armed forces of the Kievan Rus' princes increasingly became horsemen. Their armor included helmets, cuirasses, and shields; their weapons consisted of swords and spears, maces and battle-axes. Bows and arrows were also used, usually by auxiliary troops. Horses, weapons, and equipment as well as general maintenance were costly. A prince’s ability to support his retainers and to hire other troops when necessary depended on more than the tribute or taxes he was able to collect from his subjects.
The fur, wax, and honey that the princes collected from the Slav tribes had limited domestic use. They could, however, be converted into valuable items through trade. Commercial opportunities had been one of the most compelling features that had initially attracted the Varangians to the Slavic lands. As Thomas Noonan observed, it was silver that originally drew Norsemen eastward through the Slav lands and motivated them to take the captives and steal the fur pelts and other products that they could exchange at the markets of Bulgar and Itil'.5 Although they conducted their business in a more orderly manner, Vladimir and his sons essentially followed the same pattern. They sold local products as well as prisoners taken in battle for silver and for commodities that were more useful or valuable to them for military purposes, as status symbols, or, after 988, in the conduct of religious services and ceremonies. Vladimir and his sons were thus vitally concerned with commerce and with the protection of the trade routes that ran through their lands.
The vast river system that stretched across Kievan Rus' formed two main trade routes that connected the Baltic Sea in the north with the Black and Caspian Seas in the south. Both were demarcated and dominated by the major towns of Kievan Rus', whose positions along those routes explain the importance the Rus' princes placed on controlling them. Novgorod regulated traffic to and from the Baltic through the Gulf of Finland and a series of rivers leading to the city; in a parallel manner Polotsk guarded access to and from the Baltic along the West Dvina. Smolensk, situated on the upper Dnieper, controlled access from Novgorod or Polotsk to that river and to Kiev, located downstream. Kiev itself commanded the Dnieper and, correspondingly, all traffic that descended that river on its way across the steppe to the Black Sea and to the Byzantine capital and commercial emporium, Constantinople. The river system that encompassed those centers and linked the Baltic and Black Seas via the Dnieper River was known as the route “from the Varangians to the Greeks.”
A second route, one of the most important in eastern Europe, followed the Volga River. Long used by the Rus' but well traveled even before their appearance in the region, it connected the forested northlands with the Caspian Sea; by extension it linked the Scandinavian peoples of the Baltic through the Rus' lands with the Muslim empires of the Middle East and Central Asia, located beyond the Caspian. Novgorod controlled transport between the Baltic and the upper Volga, which then flowed through the lands of Rostov toward Bulgar, the main market center on the mid-Volga. From Bulgar the route extended southward to the Caspian; an alternative land route led from Bulgar to the bazaars of Central Asia.
Given their critical importance to commerce, it is not surprising that the Rus' paid serious attention to relations with the Volga states, with Byzantium and the steppe populations, and with Scandinavia. Commercial interests also defined many of the goals of Rus' foreign policy. Vladimir, like his forefathers, sought to subordinate tribes that would deliver goods in tribute, to keep trade routes open and secure, and to attain and preserve trading rights and privileges at foreign markets.
One of the main objects of Rus' concern was the Khazar Empire, which had disintegrated by the beginning of Vladimir’s reign. Until the middle of the tenth century, however, it had dominated southeastern Europe. Centered north of the Caspian Sea, the Khazar state had consisted of a largely Muslim and Turkic-speaking population; in contrast, its ruling class, including its ruler or kagan, was Jewish. In the ninth and tenth centuries Khazaria controlled territories extending from the North Caucasus to the mid-Volga. But the empire’s significance was only partially based on the range of its domain and the tribute collected from its subject peoples. Its location also gave it strategic importance: it preserved stability on the steppe. No traffic of any note, be it river pirates trying to enter the Caspian and raid its shores or mass migrations of nomads seeking fresh pastures west of the Volga River, could cross the Khazar realm or disrupt the region.
Khazaria’s geographic position also provided it with commercial advantages. Its capital, Itil', located on one branch of the Volga delta, was the point at which the Volga route leading to the Caspian Sea intersected with a major east-west land route that ran across the steppe. Merchants coming from both the Muslim and Christian worlds followed these routes from north and south, east and west to reach Itil', which became a flourishing commercial center. By the ninth century the Rus' were also coming to its bazaars. Blocked by the Bulgars, who would not allow them to sail down the Volga beyond their own markets, the Rus' reached Itil' by a circuitous route. They traveled down the Dnieper River to the Black Sea, then sailed eastward along its northern coast, where they stopped to trade at Cherson. Resuming their journey, they reached the Sea of Azov and the mouth of the Don River. They then proceeded up the Don to a point where it and the Volga were in closest proximity, crossed over to the Volga, and sailed down the river to Itil'.
The formation and development of Kievan Rus' constituted a direct challenge to Khazaria. The Poliane and the area of Kiev itself had, before the advent of the Rus', formed Khazaria’s western frontier. Some of the other Slav tribes that entered Kievan Rus', e. g., the Viatichi whom Sviatoslav conquered in 966, had also been Khazar tributaries. Furthermore, Khazaria controlled all access to the Caspian Sea from the north, and in most instances denied that access to Rus' merchants, adventurers, and pirates alike. Thus, despite their commercial accommodation to one another, the Rus' and the Khazars were rivals. In 965, Prince Sviatoslav conducted an attack on Sarkel, a Khazar fortress that stood on the Don River guarding the approaches to the Khazar Empire from the Black Sea, and on Khazar territories in the Northern Caucasus. His victory is considered to have delivered a fatal blow to Khazaria, which subsequently collapsed. Its demise, recorded in both the Primary Chronicle and Islamic sources, shocked and destabilized the entire region of the lower Volga, Caspian, and North Caucasus.
Bulgar-on-the-Volga was among the states that, shaken by Khaz-aria’s collapse, competed among themselves even as they tried to establish a new equilibrium. Subordinate to Khazaria until its disintegration, the Volga Bulgars, acting with some local leaders of the North Caucasus, partially restored order along the lower Volga and in the northern Caspian region. They were, however, unable to reestablish the control over the steppe that had been maintained by the Khazars or prevent piracy on the Caspian. But Bulgar did continue to provide Rus' merchants access to its markets. There the Rus' sold their goods for silver coin (until c. 1015) and other Oriental and native products. Bulgar’s good relations with the Rus', built upon a mutually favorable pattern oftrade, remained consistent from its early encounters with the Varangian pirates through the first centuries of Kievan Rus' existence. Even Vladimir’s campaign of 985 resulted in a treaty that outlined mutual trading rights and served as the foundation of stable, peaceful relations until the late eleventh century.
Commercial interests also influenced Rus' relations with Byzantium and with the peoples that occupied the steppe separating them. The steppe is the term given to the grassy expanse located directly south of the forested zones settled by the Slav peoples of Kievan Rus'. As Khazar power diminished, the Pechenegs (known to the Byzantines as Patzinaks and to the Arabs and Persians as Bajanaks) moved into the steppe from the east and occupied the area from the Danube to the Don. A Turkic-speaking people that, although exposed to both Islam and Christianity, clung to their pagan gods, they were divided into two wings, each of which was further subdivided to form a total ofeight hordes. The Pechenegs were nomads. Their basic occupation was animal husbandry, and they easily packed up and moved their felt tents when it became necessary to move their herds of cattle, horses, and sheep from summer to winter grazing areas and back again.
By the tenth century the Pechenegs were dominating the steppe. Rus' relations with them were complex. On the one hand, trade relations developed between these two peoples, whose economic activities complemented one another. The Rus' found the horned cattle, horses, sheep, and other livestock raised by the nomads useful for food and clothing, for hauling and transport, and for a variety of secondary products such as leather goods. Horses were also particularly important as mounts for warriors. The grain raised by Slav agriculturalists, on the other hand, provided a desirable supplement to the Pecheneg diet of meat and dairy products. The mutual benefit to be derived from trade provided a basis for peaceful relations. From the early tenth century the Primary Chronicle presents an image of relatively tranquil relations between the two peoples; the Pechenegs even joined the Rus' in 944 in a campaign against Byzantium.
Peaceful relations with the Pechenegs were important to the Rus' not just for the opportunity to exchange their goods directly. They were also essential for the princes to conduct their trade with the Byzantines. Initially, the Norsemen had exchanged their booty at the Byzantine colony of Cherson. Rus' offensives against Constantinople in 911 and 944 resulted in treaties that gave Rus' merchants the right to trade in Constantinople as well, and also outlined their commercial rights and privileges. But to reach either Cherson or Constantinople the Rus' had to cross the steppe controlled by the Pechenegs. Emperor Constantine recorded that after the Kievan prince made his rounds to collect tribute from the Slav tribes, he assembled a fleet of river boats, manufactured in Novgorod, Smolensk, Chernigov, and other towns, loaded his goods into them, and conducted this flotilla down the Dnieper River and along the western coast of the Black Sea to sell the products in Constantinople. Emperor Constantine emphasized that this practice depended upon peaceful relations between the Rus' and the Pechenegs. Well aware of the potential dangers posed by the Pechenegs, who had on occasion attacked Cherson, he observed that these nomads had similarly raided Kievan Rus' and were quite capable of inflicting considerable damage on it. He went on to note:
Nor can the Russians come at this imperial city [Constantinople] . . . either for war or for trade, unless they are at peace with the Pechenegs, because when the Russians come with their ships to the barrages [rapids] of the [Dnieper] river, and cannot pass through them unless they lift their ships off the river and carry them past by porting them on their shoulders, then the men of this nation of the Pechenegs set upon them, and, as they [the Rus'] cannot do two things at once, they are easily routed and cut to pieces.6
Shortly after the disintegration of Khazaria in the second half of the century, Rus'-Pecheneg relations became more hostile. Pechenegs raided the frontier of Kievan Rus', seizing crops and captives who were then sold as slaves. They also, as Emperor Constantine had worried, attacked Rus' commercial caravans descending the Dnieper or crossing the steppe on their way to and from Byzantine markets. In 968, Pechenegs attacked the Rus' interior for the first time and laid siege to Kiev. Vladimir’s father Sviatoslav, who had not been in Kiev at the time, was later killed during another encounter with the Pechenegs, who “made a cup out of his skull, overlaying it with gold, and. . . drank from it.”7
The deterioration of Rus'-Pecheneg relations became even more critical after Vladimir adopted Christianity. The consequent establishment of closer ties with Byzantium put a premium on the maintenance of security along the transportation routes that crossed the steppe and gave priority to a policy of neutralizing the Pechenegs, who were becoming more aggressive. In response, Prince Vladimir constructed a series of forts on the tributaries of the Dnieper, near and below Kiev, to guard the southern frontier; they were defended by Slovenes, Krivichi, and Chud' transferred from the north. Almost immediately afterward, just as communication and interaction between Byzantium and Rus' took on heightened importance, war broke out; it was highlighted by a series of Pecheneg attacks on Rus' territory (992, 995, and 997). In one battle (996), which ended in a humiliating defeat, Vladimir personally avoided capture or death only by hiding under a bridge. Afterward, again relying on interregional cooperation, he collected another army in
Novgorod and brought it south to continue the war, which persisted through the remainder of his reign. Just before his own death (1015), Vladimir sent his son Boris to lead a campaign against the Pechenegs; on his return Boris was killed by his brother Sviatopolk, who thereby launched a bloody succession struggle, which will be discussed in the Next chapter.
The net result of Vladimir’s defensive policies, however, was a success. The Pechenegs were driven deeper into the steppe away from Kievan Rus' settlements; the width of the “neutral zone” was doubled from the distance covered in one day’s travel to two. Pecheneg auxiliary forces, which began to be regarded as more effective than Varangian foot soldiers, participated in the war of succession fought by Vladimir’s sons after his death. But independent Pecheneg attacks on the Rus' lands relaxed.
As a result of his foreign policies, Vladimir secured his borders as well as the trade routes running through his lands. He was thus able to sell the products he and his sons had collected as tribute from the Slav tribes to the Pechenegs and to merchants at Bulgar and Constantinople. At the other end point of the Rus' trading network were the Scandinavian markets on the Baltic coast. The Rus' retained close ties with their Scandinavian compatriots. Vladimir had sought refuge among them when he felt threatened by laropolk. He had been able to raise a Varangian force to assist him when he returned to overthrow his brother. Kievan Rus' similarly offered sanctuary to exiled Scandinavians. One example of this reciprocal arrangement is reflected in the legend of the great Viking, Olaf Trygveson. After his father had been murdered, Olaf was trying to escape to the safety of Vladimir’s court, where his uncle held high rank; while en route, however, he was captured by pirates. In addition to exchanging exiled princes, the lands of Rus' and Scandinavia also traded a variety of goods. By the time of Vladimir’s reign, silver coins, silks, glassware, and jewelry from Muslim and Byzantine lands as well as native Slav products were reaching Scandinavian market towns via the lands of Rus' . Some of these items were brought back by Varangian mercenaries, who had been hired by the Rus' princes. But much of it arrived as the result ofcommercial exchanges that took place, mainly at Novgorod, for a variety of European goods, including woolen cloth, pottery, and weapons.
The achievements of Prince Vladimir, who died in 1015, were notable. He overcame competing Varangian dynasties (Polotsk) and thus secured the right of his dynasty to rule exclusively in the lands of the eastern Slavs, Kievan Rus'. He also adopted Christianity for the peoples dwelling in those lands. He thus established the two enduring institutions, dynasty and Church, that would give definition not only to Kievan Rus', but also to its successor states.
Vladimir prevented rival neighboring states from encroaching on his realm, and he gained recognition and legitimacy for his dynasty from the powerful Byzantines and European Christian powers. With the latter he maintained generally cordial relations. The main exceptions had occurred early in his reign when he directed campaigns against the Poles for control of Cherven, located southwest of Kiev (981), and against the Lithuanian tribe of Iativigians on the Neman (Niemen) River to the northwest (983). After that, his relations with the central European states of Poland and Hungary as well as his Scandinavian neighbors were peaceful. They demonstrated their respect and acceptance of the Riurikids by intermarrying with Vladimir’s children. Sviatopolk married the daughter of King Boleslaw of Poland, while his half-brother laroslav wed the daughter of the Swedish king Olaf.
In conjunction with consolidating his personal and his dynasty’s position in Kievan Rus', Vladimir also successfully defended his realm from external aggression. He placed his sons with their retinues on the borders, he built forts to defend the southern frontier, and he forced the most aggressive foe of the Rus', the Pechenegs, to retreat. By the end of his reign transit across the steppe was safer and the Pecheneg threat to Kievan Rus' was reduced. Vladimir’s administrative and defensive measures also enabled him and his sons to collect the revenue necessary to maintain the armed forces, required for both internal stability and external defense, and to continue commercial exchanges with the great empires of the region.
Vladimir’s policies accomplished more than the minimum necessary for his immediate political goals. The distribution of his sons around the country displaced tribal leaders and laid the groundwork for the formation of a political organization based on joint dynastic rule. The adoption of Christianity and dissemination of clerics who accompanied his sons focused the entire population of his country on a single set ofreligious principles, which also lent ideological support to his political authority, while the establishment of closer ties to Byzantium and simultaneous maintenance of trade relations with the Muslim East kept Kievan Rus' open to a diverse array of cultural influences and material goods. The transfer of personnel from the north to man the southern forts protecting Kiev reflected an ability to mobilize resources from all over his lands for a single purpose and thereby encouraged a process of social integration. Vladimir’s policies thus laid the foundation for the transformation of his domain from a conglomeration of tribes, each of which separately paid tribute to him, into an integrated realm bound by a common religion and cultural ties as well as the political structure provided by a shared dynasty.
World History
