Characteristics and legacy of Kievan Rus

¶ … Baltic Sea, through Novgorod and Kiev, to Constantinople, a major Viking trade route ran through the heart of what would one day become Russia. A prime commodity traded was slaves, and many of them were Slavs resident to that same area. But before long, the Viking raiders and traders soon intermixed with the native Slavs to create the stock that would populate the Kievan Rus' State.

Then, around the year 860, a Viking by the name of Rurik, a feudal lord from Denmark, established his presence in the northern reaches of that land area. He gained control and eventually ruled as far south as Kiev, in present-day Ukraine, a city he eventually conquered with the aid of his military leader, Oleg. There, in that city, about 880, he set up his throne and fathered a dynasty, Kievan Rus', that would extend throughout Eastern Europe and last 700 years. Oleg, from that time on, would be known as Oleg of Kiev.

Upon Riurik's death, his son, Prince Igor, normally would have succeeded to the throne, but he was but a child, easily pushed aside by Oleg. Oleg led Viking and Slavic troops in attacking Constantinople, his victory leading to a treaty with the Byzantine Empire in which they shared control of trade from the Baltic in the north to the Black Sea in the south and the Carpathian Mountains in the east.

Olga, his wife, succeeded him to the throne after he was murdered. Her conversion to Christianity set the stage for Prince Vladimir (ca. 978-1015) to later introduce the Orthodox Church to Kievan Rus', a move which was solidified by his marriage to the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor. The Eastern Orthodox religious ties served to somewhat alienate Kiev Rus' from Roman Catholic Western Europe. (it also led Kiev Rus' to adopt the Cyrillic alphabet, similar to Greek.) However, Kiev remained a trading partner for the West and never came under the influence of the Greeks as the West had come under the influence of the Romans.

Prince Yaroslav the Wise (ca. 1019-1054) further expanded the borders of Kievan Rus' and, through his arranged marriages of one sister and three daughters to the kings of Poland, France, Hungary, and Norway, extended the influence of Kievan Rus' far beyond the frontiers he inherited. He set up the first set of laws in his part of the world (the Russkaya Pravda or Pravda Yaroslavichey -- the Russian Justice), built great cathedrals, built schools and libraries, and allowed artistic expression and scholarship to flourish. This proved to be the Golden Age of Kievan Rus'.

His great mistake, however, was to divide his empire into pieces, granting control of each piece by one of his sons. When the princes began quarreling among themselves, they weakened the political unity of the empire.

Dynastic princes and their cronies dominated Kievan Rus' society throughout the 11th and 12th Centuries. They distributed income and land to followers in return for the followers' political and military support. It was tribute-paying peasants who paid these expenses.

Over time, the power of Kievan Rus' nosedived, having been particularly weakened by disputes among the various princes and by Tatar attacks. It was almost terminally weakened by Andrei Boglyubsky, prince of a rival Slavic clan, who attacked and plundered Kiev in 1169; he then took on the title of Grand Prince. He chose not to rule from Kiev, however. His decision marked the beginning of the end of Kievan Rus' and the city of Kiev's influence.

Starting in 1223, large armies of Mongols began invading the region, further weakening the power of Kiev. As that city's power waned, Moscow's grew. By 1308, the Metropolitan of the Church chose to move his see to Moscow, furthering the transference of power from Kievan Rus' to Russia.

It was during Ivan III's reign that Kiev was finally liberated from the menace of the Tatars. Since Byzantium had fallen to the Turks in 1453, Ivan proclaimed Russia to be the successor state to Byzantium, a claim that was enhanced by Ivan III's 1472 marriage to Sophia Palaeologus, the niece of the last Byzantine Emperor.

The Church is one of Kiev Rus's legacies to present-day Russia, another being the cozy relationship between church and state (except during the Communist period), which comes from the practice of the Kievan princes of keeping the Church dependent on them for its financial welfare.

Since Kievan Rus' conversion to Christianity in the 10th century, the Eastern Orthodox Church has been a primary influence in Russian life to the present day. Because icons are an important part of Orthodox rites, the tradition of iconography was born in Kievan Rus' and handed down to Russia. From the beginning, it was not just a way of expressing one's faith and a tool for instructing the faithful; it was also the major expression of the visual arts in Russia. As Kies put it, the information represented by the images made them excellent instructional aids in the tenets of the faith for even the illiterate members of congregations. In addition, the beauty of the art encourages contemplation of the Divine Mysteries represented.