Russia. A History

According to a legend in the Primary Chronicle (compiled during the eleventh and early twelfth centuries) one of the first Rus princes was called Riurik. The legend states that Riurik and his brothers were ‘invited’ by Slav tribes to rule their lands. Tribes that dwelled in the general vicinity of the Lovat and Volkhov rivers and the lands to their east had ejected previous Scandinavian protectors, but then became embroiled in warfare among themselves. Unable to reconcile their differences, the chronicler explained, they called upon Riurik in 862 to restore peace and rule over them.

Riurik, the legend continued, survived his two brothers to become sole ruler until his own death in 879 or 882. A regent, Oleg, then ruled on behalf of Riurik’s young son Igor. After Oleg’s death (912) Igor reigned until 945; a tribe called the Drevliane killed him after he attempted to collect more than its standard tribute payment. Igor’s wife, Olga, assumed the regency and took cunning revenge upon her husband’s murderers. Their son, Sviatoslav, claimed his father’s place in 962.

By that time the realm of the Riurikid clan had expanded substantially. According to the Chronicle, the tribes subject to the Riurikids had increased to include the Krivichi (in the region of the Valdai hills), the Poliane (around Kiev on the Dnieper river), and the Drevliane (south of the Pripiat river, a tributary of the Dnieper). The Riurikids, furthermore, had taken command of the Dnieper, a major commercial artery. From the vantage-point of Kiev they could control all traffic moving down towards the Black Sea, the Byzantine colony of Kherson, and towards the sea route to the Don river and the Khazar Empire. Oleg in 907 and Igor, less successfully in 944, conducted military campaigns against Constantinople, which resulted in treaties permitting the Rus to trade not only at Kherson, but at the rich markets of Constantinople itself, where they mingled with merchants and had access to goods from virtually every corner of the known world.

Sviatoslav (962–72) continued to expand his forefathers’ domain. He first subdued the Viatichi, who inhabited lands along the Oka and Volga rivers and had previously paid tribute to the Khazars, and in 965 he launched a campaign against the Khazars themselves. His venture led to the collapse of their empire and, subsequently, the destabilization of the lower Volga and the steppe, a region of grasslands south of the Slav territories. Although he did rescue Kiev from the Pechenegs (a nomadic Turkic population that occupied the steppe) in 968, Sviatoslav devoted most of his attention to establishing control over lands on the Danube river. Forced to abandon that project by the Byzantines, he was returning to Kiev when he was killed by the Pechenegs in 972.

Shortly after Sviatoslav’s death his son Iaropolk became prince of Kiev, but conflict erupted between him and his brothers. After one died in battle against him, another brother, Vladimir, fled from Novgorod, the city that he governed, to raise an army in Scandinavia. Upon his return in 980, he first engaged the prince of Polotsk, one of the last non-Riurikid rulers of the East Slav tribes. Victorious, Vladimir married the prince’s daughter and added the prince’s military retinue to his own army, with which he then defeated Iaropolk and seized the throne of Kiev. Vladimir also subjugated the Radimichi (east of the upper Dnieper river), and in 985 attacked the Volga Bulgars; the agreement he subsequently reached with the latter was the basis for peaceful relations that lasted for a century. Vladimir’s triumphs over competing rulers and neighbouring powers established him as the sole ruler of the East Slav tribes and gave his heirs a monopoly over the right to succeed him. His family, which traced its lineage to Riurik, the progenitor of the dynasty, ruled the lands of Rus until 1598.

Over the next generations Vladimir and his successors continued to extend their domain and to create an apparatus to govern it. The political structure they devised for Kievan Rus was based on the concept that its lands were the possession of the dynasty. Thus, as his father had done, Vladimir assigned a portion of his realm to each of his principal sons. Thereafter, the Riurikid princes continued to share the lands of Kievan Rus and the responsibilities for administering and defending them.