Russian history is iconic, whether it is the rise of Stalin, the doom of the Romanovs,
or the tyranny of Ivan the Terrible.
Despite this, the earliest origins of this massive nation are often neglected.
In this series, we will go back to a time before the Soviets and Tsars.
A time of mighty Viking Princes, hardy Slavic tribesmen, nomadic hordes from the steppe.
Welcome to our documentary on where it all started: The Medieval Empire of the Kievan
Rus.
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For millennia, the grassy plains of the Ukraine and Southern Russia - the Ponto-Caspian Steppe
had been inhabited by a diverse cast of hardy nomadic people thriving along the Don, Dnieper
and Volga rivers.
The first written accounts of this land dates back to classical antiquity of the 7th century
BC.
During this time, the Steppe was dominated by various tribes of Iranian origin, the most
prominent being the Scythians and Sarmatians.
The Ancient Greeks, who had a smattering of cities along the shore of the Black Sea, recorded
stories about the nomads lived to the north.
Herodotus relates a tale that the Scythians were born of a union of the demigod Hercules
and a Serpent-Woman.
Meanwhile, the Sarmatians were known for the legendary strength of their women, and therefore
were considered a product of a mixing between the Scythians and mythical Amazonian warriors.
More historically reliable accounts describe these Iranic pastoralists as a sturdy people,
who lived and died upon the backs of their steeds, subsisting on horse milk and meat,
while enjoying the pleasures of psychoactive herbs and undiluted wines.
For centuries, their domination of the steppe would be near unchallenged, but further to
the north, a young and ambitious tribe was finding its bearings.
These, of course, were the Slavs.
The true origins of the Slavs are shrouded in mystery.
The earliest written accounts of their existence come from Roman sources.
In the first century AD, the Senator and Historian Tacitus described a tribe he called the “Venedi”,
a people who lived primarily along the Vistula river.
Tacitus noted that they built homes, carried shields, and fought unmounted, distinguishing
them from their nomadic Sarmatian neighbours.
Dismissed as yet another barbarian people by the classical civilizations, the Venedi
were most likely the progenitors of all of today’s Slavic nations.
For centuries these Proto-Slavs were hemmed in by their powerful Celtic and Germanic neighbours
to the West, and Scytho-Sarmatians to the South.
This changed between the 4th and 6th centuries as great migration took place, with the Huns
and various Germanic peoples migrating into the borders of the collapsing Western Roman
Empire.
Broadly speaking, this enormous shift migration allowed the early Slavs to expand beyond their
original homeland in all directions.
By then the Venedi had diffused into numerous distinct branching tribes.
Some tribes crossed the Danube into Eastern Roman territory, seizing lands for themselves
in the Balkans and becoming the forebears of the South Slavs.
Some tribes ventured westward into the domain of the Avars.
There they carved a home for themselves and became the eventual predecessors of the Western
Slavs.
Most important to our story are the tribes whose went eastwards into modern Ukraine.
The Scythians and Sarmatians, who for centuries had dominated the steppe, were weakened by
centuries of war with the Goths, Romans and Huns.
The Proto-Slavs sunk their roots into this unstable region, eventually assimilating the
last remnants of these ancient peoples.
While we know little of this eastern migration, it is evident that in the following decades,
Slavic peoples would continue to expand across much of modern Ukraine, Belarus and central-western
Russia, intermixing with various clans of indigenous Finno-Ugrics and Baltic peoples,
the ancestral cousins of Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and Finns.
By 750AD, the Eastern Slavs occupied land from Lake Ladoga in the North, to the coast
of the Black Sea.
While they shared a common language and culture, the Eastern Slavs were not politically united,
divided into many tribes that operated on complex kinship ties.
They tended to avoid the high ground, settling along rivers and lakes where water was abundant.
There they built Strongholds with enclosed earth and timber ramparts, wooden walls and
an external ditch.
These bastions were often surrounded by various peripheral villages which provided grain and
livestock.
Not much is known about the native religion of the early Slavs, other than that they held
to a pantheon of Gods resembling those of their Indo-European cousins.
The most well attested to of these is Perun, their God supreme, wielder of thunder and
lord of the sky.
His eternal foe was Veles, ruler of the underworld, associated with magic, shamanism and sorcery.
There were of course many other deities, embodying fertility, fire, and the passing seasons,
among other things.
Pagan Slavs saw their Gods as tied intrinsically with the untamed wilderness in which they
lived, and built their shrines in Oaken groves.
It should be noted that early Slavic society is reconstructed primarily through later Christian
writers, who looked upon their pagan forebears with disdain.
Nevertheless, some information can be parsed from the sources available to us.
For example, the law of hospitality was the most sacred of rites to tribal Slavs.
All guests were cherished without exception, and any tribe who mistreated an itinerant
traveler would be attacked by neighbouring tribes for their dishonour.
War was not uncommon, both with the Balts and Finns and amongst the Slavs.
They avoided pitched battles, instead fighting in dense woodlands with ample cover, while
using short iron spears, heavy wooden shields, and bows nocked with poison-tipped arrows.
The lives of the early eastern Slavs was decentralized and chaotic, yet there was order and harmony
through the shared customs.
Nonetheless, things were soon to change, as new arrivals came from the north, on the decks
of dragon-headed longboats.
At the turn of the 9th century, the Scandinavian peninsula had a burgeoning population.
In a cold, mountainous climate, good farmland was a rarity.
This pushed the Norsemen to sail from their homes seeking new lands.
Generally speaking, the Danes went westwards, where they became known to the English and
French as Vikings.
The Swedes, however, ventured to the east, where they quickly discovered the mighty rivers
spanning down the continental mainland.
By sailing down the crucial waterways of Eastern Europe, the Norsemen became deeply engaged
in the trade networks that had existed in the region for centuries.
At the confluence of the Kama and Volga they encountered Bulgars, with whom they traded
furs, wax and honey in exchange for silver.
Occasionally they rowed further upriver and traded with the Khazars, whose control over
the steppe had granted them rule over an incredibly wealthy land of diverse peoples, including
many Slavic tribes.
Meanwhile, those who sailed up the Dnieper soon found themselves in the Black Sea, and
before long, the Eastern Roman capital of Constantinople.
They called this splendorous place “Miklagard”, literally meaning “the Great City”.
In early June of 860, the Byzantine Emperor Michael III moved out with his army from Constantinople
towards the frontline with the Abbasid Caliphate.
The mighty Byzantine fleet also followed and the capital was left almost defenseless with
only a small garrison remaining in Constantinople as the Byzantine leadership did not expect
any attack.
Chronicles describing the following events generally agree that the Rus fleet under the
leadership of Varangian warlords Askold and Dir entered the Bosphorus on 18 June 860.
Modern historians argue that the Rus knew how defenseless Constantinople was, as they
already had developed relations with the Arab Caliphate and as the time frame and distance
since the day of the departure of the emperor Michael III from the capital was sufficient
for the Arab intelligence to inform the Rus.
The Greek sources mention 200 Rus ships, while the Venetian John the Deacon claims 360 ships.
The sources do not state the exact number of land troops the Rus had, but since the
average Viking ships of the era had the capacity to between 30 and 80 men comfortably on its
board, depending on size, the conservative estimate of 40 men per ship leads to the estimate
of 8000 men.
Askold and Dir’s men met no resistance as they landed on the shore and started pillaging
the unprotected suburbs of Constantinople.
Many were killed and taken as hostages.
Then the Rus fleet moved to the Marmara Sea and attacked the Princes’ Islands.
Again the residents were slaughtered, monasteries, palaces, and other places carrying riches
were plundered.
The residents inside the walls were in fear as they had nobody to defend them.
There is no definitive conclusion regarding whether the Rus attempted to take the city
walls and capture Constantinople.
As the Byzantine lacked forces to offer any effective resistance the Patriarch Photius
called the city dwellers to pray to Holy Mary, the protector of the city and ordered to hang
her banner on the city walls.
On 4 August 860, the Rus ended the siege, boarded their ships and left the area with
major spoils.
The latter part of the description of the Rus attack on Constantinople has another version
glorifying the emperor and the divine intervention, which saved the city from the barbarians.
According to this version, Michael III quickly returned to the city after receiving information
on the Rus attack and joined Patriarch Photius in prayers and after hanging off the Holy
Mary banner, the storm which scattered the Rus fleet took place eventually leading to
the withdrawal of Askald and Dir in panic.
Photius does not mention anything regarding Michael’s arrival and a miracle saving in
his writings, as these details were added later by the chronicle of Simeon Logophet.
The Romans were made to accept the Varangians as partners in commerce, making them wealthy
with silks and wine.
War and trade helped the Norsemen prosper, and that wealth meant they were there to stay.
Of course, plying down the great rivers meant that the Norsemen inevitably passed through
the Slavic territory.
The Slavs called them “Varangians” or “Rus”, terms likely derived from the old
Norse words meaning “pledged companions” and “the people who row”.
Initial interactions between them were hostile, as the Norsemen often raided Slavic villages,
exacting tribute and taking slaves to trade in southern markets.
Within a few decades, the Scandinavians dominated not only the Slavs, but Finns and Balts as
well.
It would be this intersection of cultures that would give rise to the first united ruling
dynasty in Russian History, the Rurikids.
Before we explain the rise of the Rurikids, we should note that much of early Russian
history is known through The Primary Chronicle, written in the year 1113 AD by a monk Nestor.
While his works are considered the most valuable source of knowledge on this era, the legitimacy
of his work is often called into question by modern historians.
Still, the Primary Chronicle presents the only complete story moving forward, and its
tale will be the one presented by us.
According to Nestor, the Slavs, Finns and Balts revolted against their Scandinavian
masters at some point before 860AD, driving them back across the northern sea.
Evidently, the Norsemen had been something of a stabilizing force in the region, for
once they had been expelled, the Slavic tribes quickly devolved back into habitual warfare
with themselves and their neighbours.
The chronicle had this to say: “There was no law among them, but tribe rose against
tribe.
Discord thus ensued among them, and they began to war against one another.
They said to themselves: ‘let us seek a prince who may rule over us and judge us according
to the law’.
They went overseas to the Varangian Russes, and said to the people of Rus: ‘Our whole
land is great and rich, but there is no order in it.
Come to reign and rule over us.”
The Prince invited by the Slavs was named Rurik.
Promptly accepting their offer, he settled amongst his new people in 862.
Rurik established his capital on the Volkhov river, likely on the site of an older Slavic
stronghold.
His city soon grew to become a prosperous hub of river-bound trade, and became known
to the Slavs as Novgorod.
For seventeen years, Prince Rurik worked to stabilize his realm, establishing laws and
formal tributary rulership over the many native tribes of the region.
He died in 879, leaving his realm to his kinsman Oleg.
By all accounts, Oleg was the classic embodiment of a Viking warrior, an ambitious Prince who
sought to expand his lands through conquest.
To that end, he turned his gaze upon the great Khaganate to the south.
Ruling the crossroads of an international trading hub, the Khazars were naturally tolerant
of the many tribes and religions in their domain.
In one of history’s more peculiar twists, the Turkic rulers had even converted to Judaism.
Among their tributary subjects were the majority of the Eastern Slavic tribes in the South.
For centuries the Khazars prospered in their steppe land.
Oleg, however, was not a foe to be trifled with.
He had all the tribes of the north united under him, and commanded a vast army comprised
of Norse, Finnic and Slavic warriors.
According to Nestor, Oleg sailed his army up the Dnieper river in 882, seizing the towns
of Smolensk and Lyubech en route.
Before long, they arrived upon the wooded hills of Kiev, an ancient outpost most likely
founded by Eastern Slavic migrants as early as the 5th century.
By the time of Oleg’s arrival, Kiev was a vassal of the Khazars, and ruled by the
Norse Warlords Askold and Dir, who evidently were the ones behind the Varangian attack
on Byzantium back in 860.
Oleg is said to have confronted his fellow Norse rulers, decrying them boldly, saying
“You are not princes, nor even of princely stock, but I am of princely birth!”
Askold and Dir were promptly slain, and Oleg took firm control of Kiev.
He was quick to see the value of this town, Kiev was surrounded by fertile soil, and its
position along the Dnieper River gave it the potential to be a heart of trade and commerce.
Oleg declared himself the Prince of Kiev, and decided it would be from there he would
rule the rest of his realm.
Soon he ventured on, wresting more Slavic tribes from Khazar control.
By 885, the Prince had united the vast majority of the Eastern Slavs under his rule.
It is here that the Kievan Rus was born, a nation that would survive for three centuries
and grow to become among the most prosperous in Medieval Europe.
Kiev was its grand capital, from which the descendants of Rurik and Oleg ruled as Princes
of the Rurikid dynasty.
While ‘Rus’ originally referred to the nation’s ruling Scandinavian elite, in time,
all the tribes of the Kievan realm, whether Slavic or Nordic, simply came to be known
as people of the Rus.
Through fate and conquest, the Rurikid Princes had given their names to the land, which Russia,
the land of the Rus, retains to this day.
The early Kievan Rus was in function a tributary Empire, comprised of internally autonomous
tribes and towns, all under the suzerainty of the Grand Prince of the Rurikid dynasty,
who was based in the prosperous trading city of Kiev.
Each tribe within was ruled independently, paying a tribute to Kiev, and joined their
armies to the Grand Prince in times of war.
The tribes received protection from the Grand Prince’s druzhina, an elite retinue of warriors
who kept order across the realm.
Culturally, the Early Kievan state was an ethnic and linguistic smorgasbord.
The Rurikid Princes and their druzhina were most likely predominantly Scandinavian, although
a skilled warrior from any origin could join the Princes’ retinue.
The majority of peoples in Rus lands were the Eastern Slavs, who spoke Old East Slavic
language, from which modern Russian, Ukrainian and Belarussian stem.
Other peoples in the Kievan Rus included the Finno-Ugric and Baltic speaking tribes in
the North, and likely some Turkic peoples from former Khazaria.
Religion across the realm was a diverse spectrum: The Pagan Slavs continued to worship Perun
and Volos in their oaken groves, while the Scandinavian elites retained aspects of their
own pantheons of Thor, Odin and Loki.
One of the most famous living accounts of Norse religious rites comes from the Arab
traveller Ibn Fadlan, whose journey up the Volga River in 922 brought him into an encounter
with a boisterous tribe of Varangian Norsemen.
Fadlan watched in fascination and horror as the body of a great Viking chieftain was laid
in his longship alongside a slave girl, who had volunteered to be ritually sacrificed.
The boat and all the precious personal belongings it carried were thus set alight in a great
bonfire, and the souls within committed to Valhalla.
This funerary practice was probably unique to the Kievan Vikings, and deviated from the
Scandinavian rites.
However, it is a testament that some form of Norse paganism thrived among the warrior-caste
of the Kievan realm.
The Rurikid Princes remained fiercely warlike throughout most of their early history, seeking
to become rich through plunder and tribute.
To them, the ultimate prize would always be the most splendorous land on the far end of
the Black Sea.
To that end, they turned the dragonhead prows of their longboats towards Constantinople,
the place they simply called “The Great City” - Miklagard.
Norse raiders had failed to take Constantinople in 860, but now they were unified under the
Rurikids, they could muster a larger and more organized invasion force.
The second Rus attack on Constantinople also has dubious details, since the Byzantine sources
do not directly mention anything regarding the event and all descriptions of the attack
are in the early Russian sources, including the Russian primary chronicle.
According to the Laurentian and Hypatian redactions of the Chronicle, in 907 the Varangian prince,
Oleg of Novgorod, who had been able to put several Slavic, Turkic, Finnish-Ugric peoples
including Chuds, Polyanians, Croats, Merians, Tivercians under his control, moved towards
Constantinople.
Oleg’s army consisted of 2000 ships each containing 40 men, which sailed from the Dnieper
into the Black Sea, and an unknown number of horsemen, who traveled on horseback from
the Rus territories towards Constantinople.
Thus, according to the Russian Primary Chronicle, Oleg had 80k men in his army, excluding the
cavalry.
This is a truly astonishingly high number for its era, especially for the Rus, who were
just consolidating at the time as a state and the regional force.
The Novgorod Chronicle mentions 100-200 ships, which would make the army size 4000-8000 men,
a much more plausible figure.
Then the Russian Primary Chronicle describes Oleg’s army reaching Constantinople.
The Byzantine locked the Golden Horn strait with the chain preventing the Rus fleet from
passing into the Marmara Sea.
Instead, Oleg and his men disembarked on the shore and proceeded to loot and pillage the
suburbs of the city, murdering and capturing the Byzantine subjects in the process without
any resistance from the imperial forces.
The reason for lack of resistance is not described and it is peculiar that one of the strongest
naval forces of the time, the Byzantine fleet did not oppose Oleg’s ships.
After looting and pillaging, Oleg commanded his men to make wheels which they attached
to the ships, and ordered them to be moved against the city.
The Byzantine became worried and asked Oleg to cease hostilities and offered tribute in
exchange.
Oleg accepted and his troops stopped.
During the negotiations, the Byzantines offered Oleg wine, but the latter refused to drink
fearing the poison.
This certainly flared the tempers, and eventually, the Byzantines accepted Oleg’s demand to
pay 12 gold pieces per each Rus soldier as an annual tribute.
Oleg’s attack was concluded by a treaty between the Rus and the Byzantine, which is
reflected in the Byzantine sources.
With that, Oleg returned home.
Additionally, the Rus had won trading concessions with the Roman Emperor, which boded well for
the long term economic prosperity of the Kievan realm.
It is notable that the Rus ambassadors, who bore Scandinavian names such as Farulf, Hrollaf,
and Stemir, swore to uphold this agreement by swearing upon the Slavic Gods, which suggests
that Slavic and Norse customs had already begun to blend.
Oleg died in 912, succeeded by Igor, the son of Rurik himself.
The Young Prince was met with adversity at the very beginning of his reign.
Troublesome Slavic Drevlians, refused to pay him tribute.
Igor, however, possessed the iron will of his Rurikid bloodline, and was able to crush
them in battle, imposing a harsher annual tribute upon them.
Having proven himself, Igor kept the peace in his realm for a time.
Like his predecessors before him, he began to dream about the Byzantine wealth.
In May of 941, Igor embarked on yet another campaign against the Byzantine Empire, as,
according to the Russian historians, the Byzantines stopped paying the annual tribute agreed upon
following the victorious raid of Oleg in 907 and because Igor wanted personal glory akin
to that gained Oleg.
The Khazar sources also mention that the Kievan Rus was forced to attack the Byzantine Empire
as a clause of their agreement following the Khazar victory over the Rus, but it is disputed.
Sources differ on how big Igor’s army and fleet were.
Russian chronicles refer to the Byzantine sources of Theophanes Continuatus and George
Hamartolos and mention a fantastic number of 10000 ships.
Since the ordinary ships used by the Rus could have 40 persons aboard, then the Kievan Rus
army could have had 400k men, which is an absurdly high number for the age.
The bishop Luitprand of Cremona, who visited Constantinople a few years after the Kievan
Rus raid, wrote that the Rus had more than 1000 ships during their raid, based on the
words of the witnesses.
The Byzantine historian Leon Grammatikos writes about a 10000 strong Rus army, which is more
plausible given the previous Rus raids and the size of armies in the Medieval period.
10k army would fit in 250 Rus vessels, which is also a more plausible number.
Igor’s fleet moved from Kyiv and in three weeks it was on the shores of Bulgaria, where
it was joined by the fleet of the Rus, which traveled from the Eastern Crimea or Tavrida,
as it was called by the Byzantines.
Just like in the previous raids, the Kievan Rus chose the time when the Byzantine fleet
was fighting the Arab attacks against its Mediterranean islands.
But this time the Byzantine Empire was aware of the attack.
According to Basil the Younger, the Byzantine vassals in Kherson in modern day South Ukraine
and Bulgarians, who enjoyed peaceful relations with Constantinople, informed them of an imminent
Rus raid.
On the 11th of June the Rus reached the shores of Constantinople and set camp near the city.
The sources do not mention any incidents of looting, pillaging of the outskirts of the
city, which happened during the previous raids.
Some historians claim that it might be due to Igor hoping that a mere sight of his army
might be enough for Emperor Romanus I to agree to his terms.
But instead Romanus I ordered to repair the out-of-order dromons remaining in the harbour
and arm them with siphons, weapons spewing fire.
The command of some 15 old dromons was given to the court chamberlain Theophanes.
He ordered his fleet to move to the Golden Horn harbour and wait for the Rus fleet.
Igor ordered the Kievan fleet to advance towards the Byzantine fleet, since the sight of 15
old ships did not cause any concern to him.
Once the Rus fleet was close to the Faros Lighthouse, Theophanes ordered an attack.
According to Luitprand, Igor ordered his men not to kill his foes and capture them alive,
which might have been an attempt to use the Byzantine prisoners as a bargaining chip.
Theophanes' ship continued to advance towards the Rus with his other ships coming close
behind him.
Rus' ships surrounded Theophanes and it was then, when he ordered to use the Greek fire
on them.
Chaos ensued.
Numerous Rus ships caught fire and Kievan warriors threw themselves out to save themselves
from fire, but their heavy armour drowned them.
The rest of Theophanes’s fleet joined and further devastated Igor’s fleet.
While the majority of the Kievan fleet was destroyed, the Tavric Rus fleet remained in
the shallow waters on the shore of Anatolia, where large dromons could not move.
Captured Rus soldiers were publicly beheaded.
From then on the remainder of the Rus army was divided into two independent parts.
The Kievan army under Igor’s command landed on the European side of the Bosphorus and
destroyed the village called Stenon.
But Igor did not have enough men to develop his advance and retreated to Crimea by July.
The second part of the Rus army, the Tavric Rus fleet was pinned down by Theophanes fleet
in the shallow waters on the shore of Bithynia.
In the summer they landed and proceeded to loot, pillage and murder in retribution for
the Greek fire attack.
The Empire did not have an army in the region and was hastily gathering one to defeat the
Tavric Rus.
The Tavric Rus were able to move as far as Nicomedia and Paphlagonia in the East, but
were harassed by the units of Bardas Phocas until a larger Byzantine army under John Kurkas
pushed the Rus to the shore inflicting heavy damage.
The sources are quiet regarding the strength of the army.
By September the Rus were running low on provisions and in the act of desperation boarded their
ships and tried to escape the fleet of Theophanes.
But again the Greek fire was too much for the Tavric Rus fleet and the majority of it
was destroyed.
That would be the last Kievan Rus attack on Constantinople.
Igor returned home and began mustering a far larger army than before, made up of the combined
tribes of the Rus, and by 944 was ready to attack the Imperial city.
Hearing of the imminent arrival of this armada, Emperor Romanos I capitulated, giving up yet
more precious gifts in tribute, while offering more concessions to Rus merchants.
It should be noted that both Rus-Byzantine treaties are full of very specific trading
stipulations, tariffs and customs laws.
This emphasizes that the Rus Princes were also merchants at heart.
However, the Prince’s druzhina had long been dissatisfied with their pay, and beseeched
Igor to take more wealth from his subjects, saying: “Come with us, prince, to collect
tribute, and you will gain and so will we!”
Igor agreed, and to that end, rode to the land of his least favourite subjects, the
ever troublesome Drevlians.
The Grand Prince had already collected tribute from the Drevlians once that year already,
and his return for more made evident that the Drevlians had had enough of Rurikid tyranny.
They poured out of their city, killed the Princes’ retinue and took him captive.
Igor was then executed in a gruesome fashion.
The Kievan Princes’ unceremonious death would lead to the rise of his widow - Princess
Olga.
Despite being around 25 years old, Olga had a Varangian spirit, iron-willed and cunning
as a fox.
Her revenge, recorded in the Primary Chronicle, has since become the stuff of legend.
The Drevlians now had their own designs on the Kievan throne, emboldened by their murder
of the Grand Prince, they sent envoys to Kiev, with a proposal to Olga: We slew your husband
because he plundered us like a wolf.
Our Princes are good and have preserved the land of the Drevlians.
So we come to you, requesting you to marry our prince Mal”.
The Princess knew that marrying the Drevlian prince wasn’t an option, firstly because
he would surely murder her infant son Sviatoslav, and secondly because the vengeance burned
in her heart.
Nevertheless, playing the role of the timid maiden, she feigned eagerness to accept the
offer.
The next day, she had the Drevlian emissaries carried to her Palace in their boat under
the guise of honouring them, only to have the boat thrown into a ditch, and the emissaries
buried alive.
Olga followed up this ruthless deception with another, sending a messenger to Drevlians,
she claimed she would happily marry their Prince Mal, if only they would send her an
honour guard of their best soldiers, so she could be escorted in a manner befitting a
princess.
A contingent of elite warriors were sent to Kiev and once more, Olga welcomed them with
feigned hospitality, allowing them the honour of using her own bathhouse.
When the honour guard entered the sauna to wash, Olga had the doors barred and the building
set aflame.
Olga then travelled to Drevlian lands with a small retinue of loyal warriors.
Upon arrival, she managed to convince the Drevlians that their emissaries and honour
guard were on their way and were not not in fact dead.
A great feast was held in her honour.
As the sun set and the crowd grew drunk with mead, Olga gave her cue and her warriors massacred
over 5,000 Drevlian.
Soon, Olga returned with a massive army to finish the job, town after town in Drevlian
lands fell, until she reached their capital in Korosten.
Knowing that cunning, not brute strength, was the key into the city, Olga offered an
olive branch of mercy:“At this time you have neither honey nor furs, so I have a small
request to make.
Give me three pigeons and three sparrows from each household.
I do not wish to lay a heavy tribute on you as my husband did.”
The people of Korosten were overjoyed and eagerly fulfilled the Princess’ will.
Unfortunately for them, the fires of Olgas’ vengeance had not dimmed.
She had her soldiers attach to each bird a small piece of sulfur wrapped in cloth and
tied to a fuse.
When night fell, she ordered the fuses to be lit, and the birds to be set free.
Flying back over Korosten with their tailfeathers alight, the sparrows and pigeons set the entire
town aflame.
Panicked and broken, the people of Korosten fled their city, only to be captured beyond
the walls by Olgas’ soldiers, slaughtered or enslaved.
Princess Olga proved to be more than just a mass murderer.
For many years after her annihilation of the Drevlians she proved to be an effective, well
respected head of state, ruling the Kievan Rus as regent on behalf of her young son Sviatoslav.
She proactively built settlements in the northern regions of her realm, while ending the ever-hated
tribute system, replacing it with a better regulated system of taxation.
An adept diplomat, she cultivated good relations with trading partners, the most important
of all being Eastern Rome.
In the year 957, she sent off for Constantinople on a diplomatic mission to treat with Emperor
Constantine VII.
There, she accepted the Christian Orthodox faith and was baptised.
We don’t know what Olgas’ motivation was, but it probably was done for political and
economic gain.
She made a piecemeal attempt to encourage Christianity in her realm, having churches
built throughout her realm, but her subjects largely clung to their polytheistic faiths.
Whatever gains Christianity made were further rolled back in 964, when Olgas’ regency
ended, and the young firebrand Prince Sviatoslav took the Kievan throne.
In mannerism and dress, Sviatoslav resembled more his Slavic and Turkic subjects than his
Scandinavian ancestors, the legacy of a hundred years of Norse assimilation into the culture
of their subjects.
By all accounts, Sviatoslav’s violent childhood had made him cold and ruthless.
He rejected his mother’s faith, believing that converting to Christianity would lose
him the respect of the pagan warriors he rode with, and remained devout to the Slavic pantheon.
Sviatoslavs’ reign would be defined by constant, unending conquests.
While his mother continued to run the realm’s bureaucratic matters, the young Prince spent
his days riding with his loyal Druzhina, raiding and pillaging neighbouring nations.
Sviatoslav and his warriors travelled without tents, wagons or kettles.
They lived rough off the land, taking what they needed to survive by right of pillage,
or by hunting wild game.
In popular legend, he was compared to a snow leopard, for he moved lightly, and struck
quickly.
The Young Prince’s first target of major conquest was the land of the Jewish Turkic
Lords.
He and his warriors fanned out over the Eurasian steppe, town by town, tribe by tribe, forcing
the peoples of Khazaria submit themselves to the rule of the Rus, or be annihilated.
Sviatoslav employed Turkic mercenaries from other tribes using their mastery of mounted
combat to counter the equally skilled Khazar horse archers.
In 965, Rus warriors stormed and annihilated the incredibly prosperous trading cities of
Sarkel and Kirch.
This was functionally the end of the Khazars, crippled beyond repair, and their Empire would
never recover.
The final death blow came in 969, when their capital at Atil was destroyed.
A year prior to this, Eastern Roman envoys had approached the Rus Prince with an offer.
In return for a hefty tribute of 15,000 pounds of Gold, Sviatoslav was asked to participate
in a joint invasion of the enemy of the Romans, the mighty Danubian Bulgars.
Seeing an opportunity for wealth, war and glory, Sviatoslav eagerly accepted the Roman
tribute and mustered a 60,000 strong army of Norsemen, Slavs, and Pecheneg mercenaries.
Like his ancestors, he struck like a lightning bolt from heaven, annihilating the armies
of Bulgar Khan Boris II, and quickly conquering the entirety of Northern Bulgaria.
Emperor John Tzimiskes now realized he’d made a deal with the devil.
Sviatoslav was becoming far too powerful, and his marauding army would likely not stop
in Bulgaria, but could pillage its way to the very gates of Constantinople itself.
Knowing that Kiev was largely undefended, the Romans bribed the Pechenegs to betray
Sviatoslav and lay siege to the city.
The Pechenegs proved unscrupulous in the face of Roman gold, and promptly thundered into
the Kievan heartland, laying siege to the Rurikid capital.
Now an elderly woman, Olga was nonetheless able to lead her men and hold out against
the Turkic horde until Sviatoslav could return with his army, driving the Pechenegs back
to their steppe homeland.
Olga died of illness soon after the siege, and was buried quietly on consecrated ground
as Christian tradition demanded.
In death, she was canonised as St. Olga, with the epithet: “equal to the Apostles”.
To this day, she is revered by the Orthodox Church.
Meanwhile, the Romans, not content with poking the bear only once, demanded that all territory
won by the Rus in Bulgaria had to be surrendered to the Emperor in Constantinople, as Sviatoslav
had invaded Bulgaria on their behalf.
Sviatoslav refused and launched an invasion of Byzantium with a massive army of Norsemen,
Slavs, Magyars, and contingents of loyal Pechenegs and Bulgars.
The Rus coalition smashed against the gates of Adrianople, but were defeated by a Roman
counteroffensive at the battle of Arcadiopolis in 970.
The Rurikid Prince was forced to retreat to Dorostolon, where he held out against the
Romans for 65 days, but cut off and surrounded, was eventually forced to make peace with them,
relinquishing his conquests.
Fearing that the truce with Sviatoslav would not endure, the Byzantine emperor induced
the Pecheneg Khan, Kurya, to kill the Rus Prince before he reached Kiev.
Sure enough, while attempting to cross the cataphracts on the isle of Khortitsa, he and
his retinue were beset upon by a hail of Turkic arrows.
Sviatoslav was killed in the ambush, and according to legend, his skull was turned into a drinking
vessel for the Pecheneg Khan.
Upon Prince Sviatoslav’s demise in 972, Rus was divided between his sons.
The eldest - Yaropolk, ruled from the traditional capital of Kiev.
The middle child, Oleg, ruled the rich land of the Drevlians, a tribe that had been thoroughly
brought to heel by his grandmother Olga.
Finally, the youngest of the three, Vladimir, ruled from the northern capital of Novgorod.
The bastard son of a slave, he was overshadowed by his two half-brothers.
Each of them were under the influence of the lesser lords - the Boyars.
For instance, Vladimir’s domain was administered by his maternal uncle, the ambitious Dobrynya,
while Yaropolk’s realm was run by one of Sviatoslav’s veterans, the Norse warlord
Sveinaldr.
With three puppeteered by ambitious men, the Kievan state was a powder keg just waiting
to be lit.
According to legend, that spark came sometime in 974, when the son of Sveinaldr, Lyut wandered
into the land of the Drevlians on a hunting trip and was discovered by Oleg, who demanded
to know who had the nerve to poach game from his forest.
Lyut introduced himself as the son of Sveinaldr, and was promptly executed by Oleg.
We can assume this was done at the behest of his own scheming boyars.
Back in Kiev, Sveinaldr was furious about the death of his son, and put immense pressure
upon Yaropolk to make war upon Oleg.
The Norse Regent was motivated both by vengeance, and the prospect of controlling the rich Drevlian
forest.
Initially hesitant, Yaropolk was eventually cowed to Sveinaldr’s will, and in 976 marched
his armies into Drevlian territory.
Oleg’s forces were handily crushed by Sveinaldr.
The prince fled with his army to the town of Ovruch, where in a frantic panic they trampled
one another to get over the narrow drawbridge and behind the safety of the town walls.
Yaropolk and Sveinaldr arrived a day later and demanded that Ovrush surrender Prince
Oleg.
Instead, the townsfolk pointed to their external moat.
It was revealed that in the panic, Oleg, like many of his men, had been pushed off the drawbridge,
where he had drowned in the muddy waters below.
According to legend, Yaropolk, ordered his brother’s corpse to be dragged from the
mire and laid atop a clean rug.
Weeping heavily, he addressed Sveinaldr.
“Rejoice now, your wish is fulfilled.”
In Novgorod, Prince Vladimir received the news of what had transpired.
Advised that Yaropolk would likely attack him next, he fled to Norway to seek refuge
with his relative, King Haakon Sigurdsson.
Taking advantage of this flight, Yaropolk installed loyal boyars in Novgorod, effectively
seizing control of the entire Kievan Rus.
Vladimir, however, was not idle in his exile.
Proving charismatic, the youth recruited an army of warriors in Norway and sailed back
to Novgorod with his Vikings, kicking out Yaropolk’s boyars and sending a message:
“Vladimir is marching against you.
Prepare for war.”
Before his southward march, Vladimir wanted to secure an alliance with the powerful Ragnvald,
the Viking ruler of the Polotsk tribe, who lived in modern Belarus.
The Prince sought a marriage with Ragnvald’s daughter, Ragnhild, but was rebuked with disgust,
as the latter claimed that she would never marry the bastard son of a slave.
This rejection infuriated Vladimir and his uncle Dobrynya, whose sister was the very
slave in question.
The prince gathered his Viking mercenaries and all the Slavic tribes of the north, conquered
Polotsk, slew Ragnvald and took Ragnhild by right of conquest.
Vladimir then commenced his southwards campaign upon Yaropolk.
His armies soon overran the tribes of the south, forcing the Prince of Kiev to flee
to the town of Rodnia, pursued doggedly by his vengeful younger brother.
On June 11th of 978, Yaropolk gave up the fight, emerging from the city gates to make
peace with his brother.
Instead, he was cut down by Vladimir’s Norse soldiers.
The interregnum was over, and Vladimir now entered Kiev as the Grand Prince of Rus.
Vladimir chose to commemorate his triumph over his older brother by reinforcing polytheism
in his realm, uniting his followers by erecting not only Slavic, but also Norse, Finnic and
even Iranian gods on the hilltop above Kiev.
Reportedly, the new Grand Prince was the archetypal heathen warlord.
He feasted and feuded freely, while indulging in the company of five wives and over 800
concubines, many of whom he’d seized forcefully and enslaved.
He was even known to engage in bloody rituals involving human sacrifice.
Whether this portrait of a ruthless barbarian king is true, or the biased invention of later
Christian chroniclers we may never know.
Like his father, Vladimir spent a good chunk of his early reign making war.
In 981, his armies seized much of Red Ruthenia, forming a borderland between the Rus and the
powerful Piast Kings of Poland.
This would be the first conflict of significance between the proto-Russians and their western
Slavic cousins, but as many are aware, far from the last.
In the following years, Vladimir would suppress rebellions of his subject tribes, the Vyatichi
and the Radimichians.
He then turned his armies eastwards to the Volga Bulgars, defeating them in battle and
making them subservient to him.
Still somewhat under the influence of his uncle, Vladimir had grown into a ruler to
be reckoned with.
Yet throughout his early successes, the specter of faith hung over him.
We must now jump back in time, and discuss the spread of monotheism in the east.
The conversion of Olga in the 950s had been the Rus peoples’ first real introduction
to Christianity.
However, the influence of the monotheistic faiths had been making gains in the states
surrounding Rus for decades before that.
The Latins and Greeks of the Frankish and Byzantine Empires, along with the Muslims
of the Persianized Abbasid Caliphate, were wealthy, powerful bearers of noble cultural
legacies.
As such, formerly animist and pagan peoples from central Europe to the eastern Steppe
began converting to their monotheistic faiths to earn themselves a legitimate place in the
political world of these economic and cultural heavyweights.
The Khazars had been among the first to follow this trend.
Before their destruction at the hands of Prince Sviatoslav, their ruling elite had adopted
Judaism, the oldest of the Abrahamic faiths.
Meanwhile their neighbours, the Volga Bulgar tribes, had converted to Islam in 922, seeking
closer ties to their crucial trading partners in Abbasid Baghdad.
Christianity had begun making headway in the 860s, when two missionary brothers, Cyril
and Methodius, set out from their native Byzantium to spread the Orthodox Christian rite to the
Slavic peoples.
They travelled to the lands of Great Moravia, where they learned the local western Slavic
language, and created for it a written script based on Greek letters, known as Glagolitic.
Using their new alphabet as a cornerstone, they standardized many western Slavic dialects
into old Church Slavonic, which became their new liturgical language.
Now able to attend Church services in a tongue familiar to them, the Western Slavs were Christianized.
The Catholic rite eventually prevailed in Moravia, but Slavonic Christianity found success
elsewhere.
The Danubian Bulgars had converted to Greek Orthodox Christianity in 864 but didn’t
want to become too culturally dependent on their long-time Byzantine rivals.
As a result, they welcomed the disciples of Cyril and Methodius into their lands, adopting
the Slavonic church tongue over Byzantine Greek as the official language of their people,
which is one of the reasons why arguably Turkic Bulgarians speak a Slavic tongue today.
Furthermore, the Bulgars streamlined the unwieldy Glagolitic into something easier - this Cyrillic
alphabet named posthumously after Cyril.
Prince Vladimir was slowly realizing that when his Grandmother Olga had converted decades
earlier, it had not been an admission of weakness, but an act of cunning.
War brought glory to the Rus, but trade and commerce was the lifeblood of the realm.
The Princes of Kiev had maintained trade relations with their neighbours, but in order to deepen
their ties with the wealthiest realms of Eurasia, they needed monotheism.
Once more, it is Nestor’s chronicle that tells the legend of Vladimir’s conversion.
In 987, the Grand Prince had envoys sent to learn about Judaism, Islam, Latin Christianity
and Greek Christianity, to choose which faith would be the best fit for his people.
Vladimir was unimpressed by Judaism, pithily asking why a people exiled from their homeland
could be a model to follow.
Islam did not make a great impression either, as rather than venturing to the splenderous
city of Baghdad, the Rus envoys learned about the faith from the Muslims of Volga Bulgaria,
remarking: “there is no gladness among them; only sorrow and a great stench; their religion
is not a good one.”
Upon learning that Islam prohibited the consumption of alcohol, Vladimir remarked: “Drinking
is the joy of the Rus, we cannot exist without that pleasure”.
Meanwhile, the Rus emissaries who had travelled to the western lands of the Franks proclaimed
that their Churches were unimpressive, and that their Latin rites were ‘without beauty’.
Only in the Eastern Roman Empire did the envoys find joy.
In Constantinople, they bore witness to the full splendor of Orthodox ritual within the
opulence of the Hagia Sophia.
Upon their return, they said to their Prince: “We no longer knew whether we were in heaven
or on earth, nor such beauty, and we know not how to tell of it.”
Vladimir was sold upon the path of Byzantine Christianity, and the future of the Rus people
was decided.
Despite these colourful anecdotes, the real reason for Vladimir’s choice was most likely
a matter of pragmatism.
Of all the lands his envoys went to, Eastern Rome was the closest and richest, and furthermore,
the expeditions of Igor and Oleg had already secured them a working, if rocky, relationship
with the Greeks.
Therefore, Vladimir stood to gain more politically and economically by choosing Eastern Orthodox
Christianity over Islam, Judaism, or the Latin rite.
The Grand Prince was still a warrior at heart, and wanted to convert on his own terms.
To that end, he marched southwards with his army and took the Byzantine city of Chersonesus
on the tip of the Crimea.
From that position of power, he made a bold offer to Byzantine Emperor Basil II: “I
have learned that you have an unmarried sister, if you will not give her to me, I shall do
to Constantinople the very same as with Chersonesus.”
To the Eastern Romans, it was nigh unheard of for a Byzantine Princess to be married
off to some marauding northern Barbarian.
However, Basil was busy dealing with insurrection in his Empire, fighting the rebellious general
Bardas Phokas.
He was in no position to open another front against the Rus.
It was a decidedly better option to make an ally of them.
Thus, the Roman Emperor agreed to give up his sister on two caveats.
First, that Vladimir would send military aid to help him crush Phokas’ rebellion, and
second, that the Rus Prince would convert to Orthodox Christianity, which he wanted
to do anyway.
In 988, the deal was struck.
Vladimir was baptized in Chersonesus, renouncing his many consorts and marrying Princess Anna.
He then went home, returning the town to the Greeks.
True to his word, Vladimir sent a force of 6,000 Norse warriors across the Bosphorus,
where they crushed Phokas’ insurrection.
So impressed were the Byzantines by these northern warriors, that Varangian mercenaries
would become the principal honour guard of the Eastern Roman Emperors for centuries to
come.
Meanwhile, Vladimir’s first order of business was to have his sons and Boyars baptized,
and he managed that with little difficulty.
Next, he smashed the idols upon the hills above Kiev, which he himself had erected barely
ten years prior.
On every street of the capital, town criers declared that by decree of the Prince, every
man, woman and child was to come to the banks of the river, where they would all be christened
in a mass baptism.
Some went willingly, while some were coerced by threats of violence.
Whatever the method, the people of Kiev were all baptized in the waters of the Dnieper.
Originally distressed at being forced to marry a violent, barbarian brute, Princess Anna
came to see in herself a holy duty.
Throughout her reign as Grand Princess, she served as the principal religious advisor
for her husband, and founded several churches.
The Slavs called her “Czarina,” due to her Imperial heritage, and she soon became
beloved among them.
Indeed, Christianity soon spread beyond the heartlands of Kiev and into every corner of
the Rus realm.
The Greeks loaned Vladimir many architects, who built Byzantine-style churches where shrines
to Perun, Veles and Stribog once stood.
Meanwhile, the Danuabian Bulgars sent their clergymen north as well.
The peoples of the Rus soon came to favour the liturgy of the Bulgarians, whose Old Church
Slavonic was much more closely related to their old East Slavic tongue than new testament
Greek.
Along with Church Slavonic came the spread of the Cyrillic alphabet, which remains in
use in Russia and beyond today.
This mass conversion was not entirely peaceful, as many still clung to the old gods.
In Novgorod, the elderly Dobrynya spread the Christian faith, as per his nephew’s will.
However, he was attacked by a violent pagan mob, which set fire to his home and killed
his wife.
In the end, the old regent forced the city to convert by fire and sword.
Pockets of the Rus undoubtedly clung on to the old ways for a time, but by the end of
Vladimir’s reign, all major cities and centers of commerce became Christian by persuasion
or force.
The rest of Prince Vladimir’s reign passed relatively uneventfully.
For nearly two decades, the Rus maintained a stable peace with all their neighbours.
The lone exception being the Turkic Pechenegs, whose horse archers semi-regularly raided
Kievan lands.
In response, Vladimir had a network of fortresses built upon the rivers bordering the eastern
steppes to fend off their incursions.
This would simply be the latest chapter of a long struggle between Rus and the steppe
peoples on their periphery.
In his later years, Vladimir was said to be a kindly ruler.
In accordance with Christian precepts, he provided charity to the poor and sick, and
made efforts to travel to the more isolated areas in his realm, listening to the petitions
of those who otherwise would never have gotten to meet him.
He passed away from natural causes in 1015 leaving behind a massively different country
to the one he had inherited 30 years earlier.
No longer was the Rus a land of warlords and tribesmen.
It was now a veritable Christian Empire, competing toe to toe with the successors of Greeks and
Romans in economic and cultural influence.
The Grand Prince Vladimir had had many wives, and through them, many sons - some more beloved
than others.
The most ambitious of these sons was Sviatopolk, the product of a forced union between Vladimir
and a Greek Nun.
Sviatopolk had never felt his father’s love, having been married off to the daughter of
a Polish Duke Bolesław as a youth, and sent off to vegetate in backwater Turov.
He had attempted to rebel against Vladimir as a young man, only to end up in prison.
However, he was soon released, and upon hearing about his fathers’ death, immediately bee-lined
it to Kiev to claim the throne, which he did in late 1015.
Sviatopolk soon found that he did not have the support of the Kievites, who preferred
his half-brothers, Boris and Gleb, who ruled the towns of Rostov and Murom respectively,
had always been the favourite children of Vladimir - likely to Sviatopolk’s bubbling
resentment.
Boris had always been assumed to be the heir apparent of the Kievan Rus, thus when Sviatopolk
took the capital, his boyars urged him to expel the usurper and take his rightful place
on the Kievan throne.
The Prince of Rostov declined, and replied benignly: "If any man say, I love God, and
hateth his brother, he is a liar, be it not for me to raise my hand against him.
Now that my father has passed away, let him take the place of my father in my heart."
One would imagine that this would soothe the usurpers’ paranoia, but Sviatopolk sent
his boyars, who caught Boris, brutally stabbing him and all his servants to death.
According to legend, Boris knew his murderers were coming, but had sent his soldiers away,
accepting his fate to prevent bloodshed.
The executors then caught up with Prince Gleb on the River Smyadyn.
It would be Gleb’s own cook, bribed heavily, who would slit his throat.
For these murders, Sviatopolk would earn himself the chilling epithet: The Accursed.
Like his uncle Yaropolk before him, Sviatopolk had eliminated his brothers and seized control
over the Kievan Realm.
But just like Yaropolk, he had not accounted for the old capital of Novgorod, and the young
Prince who reigned there.
Prince Yaroslav was one of the youngest children of the late Vladimir, probably born of Ragnhild
- the Polotsk Princess who Vladimir had taken at the beginning of his reign.
The young Prince spent his early years cultivating the skills needed to be a decisive leader,
maintaining relations with his relatives in Scandinavia, whose sagas referred to him as
Jarisleif the Lame, likely due to permanent limp he had received from an arrow wound in
his youth, an indication that he was experienced in battle.
Indeed, Yaroslav wasn’t afraid to assert himself: during the tail end of Vladimir’s
reign, he had refused to pay tribute, and a war between father and son was only subverted
by Vladimir’s death.
Yaroslav was shrewd enough to realize that he too would soon be under threat.
In a turn of events eerily similar to his father’s rise to power 35 years earlier,
the young Prince of Novgorod marched against his kinslaying brother with a force of northern
Slavic levies and Viking mercenaries.
Sviatopolk rallied his forces and hired a mercenary army of Pecheneg riders.
The two armies met near Lyubech.
Neither side dared to cross the Dnieper, and for weeks they stared at one another.
At some point during the stand-off, Sviatopolk’s men began taunting Yaropolk for his disability,
and calling his men carpenters, not warriors: “when we defeat you, we will make you build
us a mansion!”
Deeply angered, Yaroslavs’ soldiers poured across the river and crushed the southerners
in a vicious melee.
Yaroslav then marched into Kiev, declaring himself the new Grand Prince of all the Rus,
while Sviatopolk fled west.
Sviatopolk had powerful allies in Poland, and his father-in-law was now the King.
With Bolesław’ support, and German and Hungarian mercenaries, the Accursed Prince
returned, seizing Kiev and forcing Yaroslav back into Novgorod.
A brutal civil war would continue for another year, before Yaroslav finally defeated Sviatopolk
in a battle at the Alta River in 1019.
Sviatopolk died of illness while retreating back to Poland, and Yaroslav re-entered Kiev,
declaring himself the Grand Prince The Kievan Rus that Yaroslav had taken control
of was a vastly different land to the one his father had inherited.
Gone was the loose tributary confederacy of old, replaced by a centralized Christian Empire.
Yaroslav knew he could not rule his realm as a Rurikid warlord, so he set about becoming
a just monarch, ruling upon the pillars of theology, learning, and law.
The old ways of rugged pagan justice were no longer suited for a Christian ruler, so
Yaroslav oversaw the composition of the first codex of Rus laws.
The death penalty became rarer, and punishments became grounded in standardized fines, imprisonment,
and confiscation.
The legal groundwork laid by Yaroslav would become known as the Russkaya Pravda - the
Russian Justice - and served as the basis of Rus law for centuries.
Yaroslav also promoted literacy among his boyars, educating their children to read,
write, and appreciate the finer points of Biblical scripture.
He built schools across his realm, and allocated large funds for the copying of manuscripts,
which was an extremely costly endeavor at the time.
His reign saw the opening of the first Rus monasteries, while Kiev soon became one of
the largest cities in Europe, a hub of international trade and higher learning rivaling the powerhouses
of Constantinople and Baghdad.
Despite this, Yaroslav’s reign was still defined by civil war and external conquests.
In 1024, his half-brother, Prince Mstislav of Tmutarakan, took advantage of his absence
to launch an invasion.
While Mstislav was unable to breach the walls of the capital, he managed to subjugate the
hinterlands around it, moving his power base to Chernigov, a prosperous town right on Kiev’s
doorstep.
The Grand Prince retaliated, assisted by Norsemen sent by King Anund Jakob of Sweden: he struck
fiercely at Chernigov, but was decisively beaten by Mstislav’s army.
As a result, Yaroslav was forced to relinquish a good chunk of his realm left of the Dnieper
to his Half-Brother.
Thankfully, Yaroslav was soon able to turn his fortunes around by establishing a working
relationship with Mstislav despite their recent conflict.
Together, they launched a campaign against the Poles in 1030, retaking the Cherven cities,
which had been conquered by King Bolesław during his alliance with Sviatopolk.
Yaroslav would later establish peace with King Casimir the Restorer by marrying off
his sister, Maria Dobroniega, to the Polish Monarch in 1043.
Relations between the most powerful nations of Eastern and Western Slavs would remain
stable for a time.
Back in 1036, Mstislav had fallen sick while on a hunting trip, and died.
Taking advantage of his untimely demise, Yaroslav was able to reinstate control over the entirety
of the Rus realm; not that he had much time to rest on his laurels, as the Rus capital
of Kiev stood as a monument of opulence, tempting any war-like peoples to try and seize its
riches.
In 1036, it would be the traditional frenemies of the Rus, the Pecheneg horde, that galloped
out of their steppelands to besiege the grand capital, just as they had a half a century
earlier.
Yaroslav was in Novgorod when he heard the news.
One can only imagine the fury he must have felt.
Enough was enough - the Pechenegs had been a thorn in the side of the Rus for too long.
Yaroslav immediately rode south, forming an army made up of the men of Novgorod, Kiev,
and a large contingent of Varangians, meeting the foe outside the walls of Kiev, the where
two armies clashed.
After a grueling struggle, the Turkic horde was crushed and routed.
So decisive was this victory that from this point forward, the Pechenegs never again appeared
as a significant player in Rus history.
To commemorate his triumph, Prince Yaroslav commissioned the construction of the crown
jewel of Kiev: St. Sophia’s cathedral.
Yaroslav also undertook many outwards campaigns at the expense of the Lithuanians, Estonians,
and Karelian Finns.
At the end of his conquests, he had expanded the borders of the Kievan Rus significantly,
turning it into a true Empire.
On top of his military triumphs, the Grand Prince had also expanded the diplomatic reach
of the Kievan Rus further than ever before through a series of marriage pacts.
On top of marrying his sister to the King of Poland, his son Vsevolod was married to
Emperor Constantine IX’s daughter Anastasia, and he bequeathed his three daughters respectively
to Henry I of France, Andrew I of Hungary, and the famous adventurer King: Harald Hardrada
of Norway.
These alliances enriched the Rus by deepening their trading ties to Western Europe, integrating
the Kievan Realm into the wider Christian world.
However, as the Grand Prince grew old and weak, he began to fear for the future of his
realm.
The elderly Yaroslav had seven sons, and he soon realized that upon his death, they would
fight an endless string of civil wars.
In an attempt to prevent this, Yaroslav divided the Kievan Rus among his sons, giving each
one a piece of his realm to rule autonomously.
In practice, his eldest son Iziaslav Yaroslavich was the heir apparent to the throne of the
Grand Prince, but in practice, he was equal in power to his brothers, the Princes of Chernigov,
Pereyaslav Novgorod, Volhyn, Smolensk and Turov.
Yaroslav begged his sons to get along, and act in the common interest of the realm.
In 1054, he passed away, and the golden age of the Kievan Rus came to an end.
The first existential threat to Rus unity came in the form of thundering hooves from
the steppe.
Yaroslav had crushed the Pechenegs, but all this had accomplished was to leave their southern
grasslands open for their fiercer, more numerous cousins.
The Cumans were much like other Turkic peoples - excellent horse-archers, bellicose to a
fault.
The Rus called them Polovtsy, from the Slavic “Pole” - “field”, although there are
other etymological explanations.
They called themselves Kipchaks, and the land they took over Desht-i Kipchak.
By 1061 the Cumans had entered the Ponto-Caspian steppe and seven years later they decisively
crushed the Rus armies of Kiev, Chernigov and Pereyaslavl at the Alta River.
This allowed them to establish dominion over much of the Southern Grasslands, choking off
the Rus’ access to the upper Don, Volga, and Dnieper rivers, crucial trade routes they
had relied on for generations.
After the battle, rebellions and civil wars erupted across the realm, and a popular uprising
forced Iziaslav to flee to Poland.
A year later, he returned to Kiev with the help of the Polish army, but in 1078 he was
finally killed in battle by his nephews.
In theory, this shouldn’t have crippled the realm.
Turkic raiders and civil war were nothing new to the Rus.
Vladimir and Yaroslav had dealt with both in their time, and preserved the integrity
of their realm.
This time, however, there would be no great Prince to lead the Rus back to glory.
Other external factors led to the political and economic stagnation of the Kievan realm.
Back in 1054, the Christian World was divided by the Great Schism, when the Orthodox Patriarch
of Constantinople officially cut ties with the Catholic Pope in Rome and as fellow Orthodox
the Rus sided with the patriarch.
As a result, the trading ties that Yaroslav had once cultivated with Western Europe declined
- the Latin World came to see the Rus as heretics.
Byzantium was not the powerful ally it once was either.
In 1071, the Eastern Romans found themselves rocked to their core, when a series of civil
wars following a devastating invasion of Seljuk Turks saw them lose most of their territory.
Between that, and the Cumans cutting off the most prosperous river trade routes, the flow
of wealth into Rus lands decreased significantly.
Overall, Rus was becoming increasingly isolated.
The branches of the Rurikid family became more numerous, and since Kiev was not nearly
the hub of international trade it once was, these lesser Princes began to identify themselves
with regional interests rather than with the Rus state as a whole.
As Kiev declined, the functionally autonomous Principalities and Republics of Vladimir-Suzdal,
Novgorod, and Halych-Volhynia became the main powerhouses in the East Slavic world.
This tide of fragmentation would be stymied by Vladimir Monomakh, the last truly great
Prince of the Kievan Rus.
He managed to somewhat unite the increasingly disparate Rus Princes back under Kievan primacy
in 1095, and even managed to briefly turn the tide against the Cumans in a pair of victories
against one of their most powerful Khans, Boniak, in 1107 and 1114.
Monomakh’s reign would prove the exception to the rule, however.
The reign of his son, Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich, would be a grim return to form, seeing constant
wars with Cumans, Estonians, Lithuanians, and rebellious Rurikid Princedoms.
By the time of his death in 1132, people still paid lip service to Kiev, but the reality
was that the unity of the Rus was dead.
Despite all their troubles, their darkest days were yet to come.
It is the spring of the year 1223, in a small wooded village of Zarub, by the banks of the
lower Dnieper.
There, surrounded by his retainers, sits the haughty Mstislav III, Grand Prince of Kiev:
a title that had long since ceased to have any real meaning.
He looks upon a group of ten envoys, hardy, irritable men- not unlike the other heathen
nomads in appearance.
They demand the swift extradition of Cumans that had fled into his lands.
Mstislav scoffs.
Who are these men to make demands of him, the Grand Prince of Kiev?
If these ‘Mongols’ wished to make trouble, then so be it.
With a flick of his hand, his Druzhina steps forth, and cuts down the envoys.
It was a dark time for the Rus, but little did they know, it was about to get much, much
darker.
The early stories of the Kievan Rus are almost always overshadowed by what came afterwards:
the arrival of the Mongols.
By the year 1223, the great horde of Genghis Khan, a man who needs no introduction, had
exploded out across central Asia, northern China, and Iran.
Brilliant generals Subutai and Jebe made the Cumans the latest victims of the Mongol advance,
forcing them to flee into the lands of the Rus.
Ignoring the Mongol warning not to interfere in an affair that was not theirs, the Grand
Prince made the fateful decision to side with his Cuman allies, arrogantly ordering the
execution of the envoys, changing the course of Russian history forever.
The Cumans under Khan Khoten and the Rus host led by Prince of Kiev Mstislav, Prince of
Chernigov Mstislav, Prince of Galicia Mstislav, and Prince of Volhynia Danilo united their
forces and marched against the Mongols.
On the 15th of May 1223 they arrived on Khortytsia Island on the River Dnieper.
Other sources find it tactically illogical to gather so many people on a small island
and argue that the actual rallying point was on the western bank of the river.
The sources drastically differ on the number of men which the coalition forces had, ranging
from 8 thousand to 80 thousand.
The Mongols knew about the whereabouts of the opposing force and sent three envoys to
deliver the message that the Mongols did not seek to fight the Rus and were only after
the Cumans, who had inflicted so much suffering on the Rus too.
The Rus princes decided to kill the Mongol envoys, which was a grave violation of Mongol
Yasa.
Soon another group of Mongol envoys were sent, who just communicated to the Rus that now
the sides would have to fight and it was not the Mongols’ fault.
Soon the coalition forces became aware of the Mongol outposts on the eastern bank of
Dnieper.
Young prince Danilo rushed to view the Mongol horse archers, who he thought were poorly
armed and equipped and were relatively small in numbers.
Danilo informed the council of princes about this and urged to attack.
The decision was made and the Prince of Galicia Mstislav the Bold crossed the river to attack
the Mongol outpost together with the Cuman forces.
The surprise attack completely overwhelmed the Mongol forces on the spot, majority were
massacred, while a small group together with the commander of the group fled eastwards
towards the main group of the Mongol army.
The leader of this group was a commander named Gemya Beg and his men tried to save him from
being slain by hiding him in a Cuman kurgan.
Historian Stephen Pow suggests based on circumstantial and linguistic arguments that Gemya Beg was
actually Jebe.
The Cumans were able to find him and killed him afterwards.
Rus were able to capture some of the Mongol supplies, including cattle, while following
them.
At the time the Rus princes did not have any centralized command and the military decisions
were made by a council.
Despite the reservations of the Prince Mstislav of Kiev, the decision was to pursue the fleeing
Mongols.
This pursuit went on for 8 or 9 days with the Cumans together with Galicians and Volhynians
leading it with the rest of the Galicians under the command of Mstislav the Bold behind
them, followed by the army of Chernigov and finally the Kievan troops commanded by Mstislav
Mstislavovich in the rear.
Finally the Mongol forces turned around and made a stand at the Kalka River.
It is not known whether this was fleeing from numerically overwhelming force or a masterful
bait to deceive the Rus-Cuman coalition into pursuing them to ground more favourable for
Mongols and creating an illusion of weakness of the Mongol army.
It is also not entirely clear where the river Kalka is, but it is thought to be the river
Kalmius which flows into the Sea of Azov near the modern-day Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
For a few days the council of princes argued about the battle plan, but lacking central
command they failed to come to an agreement and each prince would decide what to do, which
would prove to be a serious blow for the Rus-Cuman coalition.
The Mongol Army consisted of three groups with Subutai leading the center, Jebe heading
the right flank, while Tsugir Khan and Teshi Khan were on the left flank together with
Brodniki.
Brodnik means either “people of the ford” or “vagabonds” in Russian, and probably
refers to the warriors that joined Subutai during his campaign, possibly in the North
Caucasus.
The Mongol soldiers were all cavalry with Brodniki and other auxiliary units possibly
infantry.
Subutai’s cavalry units had 500 men with 5 rows of 100 riders in all of the units.
The first two rows consisted of heavy cavalryman armed with swords.
The rear three rows consisted of light cavalry armed with bows.
The Cuman army was made of almost entirely light horse archers.
The Rus army also employed horse archers due to its experience of steppe warfare, along
with having heavily armoured cavalry akin to the Western European armies.
The most elite troops would be separate bodyguard detachments.
The Battle of Kalka river took place on 31 May 1223.
At first in the morning the Rus-Cuman emerged victorious against the vanguard of the Mongol
Army, which was significantly ahead of the bulk of the Mongol forces, after Mstislav
the Bold and Danilo of Galicia and the Cumans under Khan Khotan crossed the river and attacked
it, while the Chernigov forces were still crossing the river and the Kievan army camping
on the western shore of the river.
Khan Khotan continued the pursuit forming the vanguard with Volhynian and Galicians
forces right behind them.
Mongol heavy cavalry attacked the Cuman army and defeated them very quickly.
After that they attacked the Volhynians with a heavy barrage of bows followed by the heavy
cavalry attack.
Prince Mstislav of Lutsk tried to help, but this was not enough as the Volhynians were
also defeated.
Cumans and Volhynians had to flee the battlefield and ran towards the river, where Mstislav
of Galicia was preparing his troops for the battle at the time when the Chernigov army
was still in the process of crossing Kalka.
The fleeing coalition troops were followed by Mongol cavalry archers.
The panic of the fleeing soldiers who ran through the rest of the coalition troops caused
panic among their midst.
Mstislav of Galicians tried to offer resistance, but since the battle formations were already
disrupted, he was soon surrounded by the Mongol group having a significant numerical advantage.
Soon they started fleeing under the furious barrage of Mongol bows.
Seeing the collapse of the Rus-Cuman army Mstislav of Kiev ordered his men inside the
camp, which was hastily fortified with carts and other objects suitable for this.
Tsugir Khan and Teshi Khan were ordered to siege the Kievan camp, while the rest of the
Mongol army pursued the fleeing Rus princes and inflicted heavy damage on them too.
Kievans were in a dire situation as the Mongols constantly shot bows at them leading to heavy
losses.
They resisted until running out of drinking water, when the Brodniki leader Polskinia
negotiated surrender with Mstislav of Kiev in exchange for ransom.
Kievans accepted, the siege was over, but Mongols went against their promise, massacred
many men, while imprisoning the princes and later executing them during the Mongol feast
as a reprisal for killing their envoys.
The exact number of losses on the sides is unclear, but sources tell about how only 1
out of 10 of the Rus men returned from the war.
Afterwards, Subutai returned back east.
However, now the Mongols had intimate information on the lands, politics, and armies of the
Slavs, and as such, the disunited Principalities of the Rus were living on borrowed time.
In 1227, the great Khan Genghis died and was succeeded by his son, Ögedei.
Reinvigorated by new leadership, the Mongols spent the next few years finishing off the
Khwarazmian and Jin Empires.
In 1235, Khan Ögedei convoked a quriltai of his princes and generals and determined
that their next theatre of expansion was in the lands of the Cuman Kipchaks, Volga Bulgars,
and of course- the Rus.
The invasion force that was mustered was led by Subutai, the mastermind behind the victory
at Kalka River 12 years earlier, and the up and coming Batu, the grandson of Genghis.
By their side were many other grandsons of Genghis, including Guyuk and Mongke.
The reason for such a star-studded invasion force was simple, as Khan Ogedei’s brother,
Chagatai had warned: “There, at the end of the world, they are hard people.
They are people who, when they become angry, would rather die by their own swords.”
The Mongols refused to underestimate the people of the west.
In the autumn of 1236, a 100,000 man army was assembled in the Mongolian heartland,
consisting of an ethnic Mongolian core, and contingents from Uyghurs, Tanguts, Khitans,
and Jurchens.
This force was composed predominantly of nomadic horsemen, but also included elements of Chinese
siege engineers to bring the walled cities of Rus to heel.
The great horde of Batu and Subutai set forth and the traditional enemies of the Kievan
Rus - the Volga Bulgars and the Cumans, with whom the Rurikid Princes struggled for centuries
- were put beneath the Mongol boot in less than a month.
The Rus principalities were in a terrible position.
As we covered in the last episode, they were notoriously disunited.
Prince Mstislav III of Kiev had been influential enough to stitch together a coalition of Princedoms
to fight Subutai’s initial expedition in 1223.
But even this army had fought as separate units loyal to their various Princes, a drawback
that had cost him the battle.
Thus, when Batu entered Rus lands, he saw not a united people standing against him,
but a row of dominoes, ready to fall one by one.
In December of 1237, the Mongol horde reached the city of Ryazan, which although direly
outnumbered, resolved to mount resistance against the invaders.
It took only 5 days for the city walls’ to be breached by Chinese catapults.
The slaughter that followed was recorded in the contemporary Chronicle of Novgorod in
prose that reflects the horror of the age: “they likewise killed men, women and children,
monks, nuns and priests, some by fire, some by the sword.
They violated nuns and priests’ wives, good women and girls in the presence of their mothers
and sisters’.
It should be noted that Yuri Vsevolodovich, Grand Prince of the great city of Vladimir-Suzdal,
stood by and did nothing while Ryazan burned.
While the ruling Prince of Ryazan was killed in the massacre, his brother, Roman Igorevich
managed to escape, fleeing with his Druzhina along the Oka River, doggedly pursued by a
contingent of the Mongol army led by Kolgen, the son of Genghis.
It was here that Prince Yuri of Vladimir finally intervened, deploying a contingent of troops
to rescue the fleeing Rus Noble.
They made their stand at the town of Kolomna, where they were defeated and killed.
However, in the fighting, Kolgen was struck down.
His death would mark a watershed moment in the Mongol invasion.
Some historians postulate that Grand Prince Yuri had planned to submit to the Great Khan
and his surrender might have inspired other Princes to do the same, sparing them death
and destruction.
Now that option was off the table, as the death of a Genghisid was something that couldn’t
go unpunished.
During early 1238, the Mongols campaigned across much of the northern heartland of the
Kievan Rus, committing numerous atrocities across multiple settlements, including the
sacking of an irrelevant little town known as Moscow.
The great city of Vladimir-Suzdal was attacked in February, only to fall 3 days later.
Yuri fled north, but was run down by a tumen of Mongol vassals at the Sit river in an engagement
more akin to a slaughter than a pitched battle.
With his death, so too died the hope of any united Russian resistance against the enemy.
Realizing that, Batu Khan split his army up into contingents, ordering each to wreak havoc
across the northern Rus.
Over the next few months, fourteen cities fell and were subsequently subjected to mass
murder and destruction.
There were a few key components to the Mongols’ success: firstly, the eastern Slavs had avoided
building their settlements on high ground for centuries, and the flat terrain surrounding
their sedentary cities made them easy targets for Mongol siege weapons.
Secondly, Chinese siege engineers used advanced catapults which were extremely effective in
bringing down the timber and earthwork walls of a typical Rus city.
Thirdly, and most importantly, was the constant disunity of the Rus people.
So entangled were they by their rivalries, that they were happy to watch their neighbour
destroyed by the Mongols, only to be surprised when they were struck next.
To cope with this utter destruction, the Rus came to see the Mongols not as just another
foe from the steppe, but as a supernatural punishment from God.
Thusly said in the Chronicle of Novgorod: “God let the pagans on us for our sins.
We always turn to evil, like swine ever wallowing in the filth of sin.
And for this we receive every kind of punishment from God, and the invasion of armed men, too,
we accept at God’s command, as punishment for our sins.”
That is not to say that every living Slavic soul in Northern Russia stopped resisting.
One such example is the tale of the 12-year-old Boy-Prince Vasily of Chernigov, who against
all the odds managed to hold out in his capital city of Kozelsk for nearly two months with
only citizen militia, even managing to lead a successful sortie outside of their walls,
where they slaughtered thousands of Mongol troops, destroyed siege equipment, and cut
down the sons of three Mongol commanders.
But they could not delay the inevitable.
Kozelsk soon fell, and Vasily was slaughtered alongside every single one of his subjects.
Nevertheless, the child Princes’ valiant defense left such an impact on the Mongols
that they came to call Kozelsk “the evil city,” and none dared mention it in their
presence.
Furthermore, Russian folktales are full of defiant, but ultimately doomed attempts to
stymie the Mongol advance.
One figure whose story emerged out of the Mongol campaign is Evpaty Kolovrat, a Rus
Bogatyr whose story is the archetypal Rus tale of honourable vengeance.
Evpaty was visiting Chernigov when his hometown of Ryazan was put to the torch in the winter
of 1237.
Returning home to see his home a charred husk, and his people dead, he swore bloody revenge
against Batu Khan.
Scrounging up a small army of 1,700 survivors, he pursued the Khan, attacking the hordes’
rearguard and annihilating thousands of Mongol troops.
In response, Batu Khan sent his relative Khostovrul to hunt this mysterious enemy.
Evpaty killed Khostovrul in single combat and then began cutting down the dead generals’
entire retinue in a blood-drunk fury, before finally being slain from afar by siege-weaponry.
As the tale goes, Batu Khan showed a begrudging admiration for Evpaty’s bravery, and as
a sign of respect, returned the warriors’ bodies to his soldiers and allowed them to
return to their homes.
In truth, stories like that of Prince Vasily and Evpaty are romanticized to varying degrees.
Nevertheless, there is at least a kernel of reality in these tales of Russian resistance
against Mongol domination.
After all, Kievan Rus was a nation founded by warriors, so it is not unreasonable to
believe that there were brave souls among the eastern Slavs who were willing to make
the Mongols bleed for every inch of land they took.
In the autumn of 1238, Batu withdrew to rest his army, leaving behind the ruined northern
Rus.
The grasslands of southern Russia, Ukraine, and the fertile northern coasts along the
Black and Caspian seas remained untrampled for now.
Along the Dnieper’s banks stood Kiev, the cultural heart of the Eastern Slavic world,
the mother of cities, an opulent memory of a golden age long past.
After a brief rest Batu Khan’s campaign continued, thundering across the Pontic Steppe.
After subjugating the diverse peoples of the Crimea and campaigning against the Circassians
in the Caucasus, they turned towards the Rus.
In March of 1239, the city of Pereyaslavl was put to the torch.
Chernigov was next.
Unlike many others, the men of this city rallied outside the walls to bravely face the Mongols
in a pitched battle.
Predictably, they were slaughtered.
After this, the walls were breached, and the general citizenry were subjected to wholesale
massacre.
Thus, the gateway to Kiev was opened.
The Mongols were fully aware of the cultural significance of Kiev, and the power and prestige
it had radiated for centuries.
By this point, Kiev’s Prince, Mikhail of Chernigov had fled to Hungary, leaving his
Voivode, Dmytro, in charge of the defense.
The Mongols had sent envoys demanding submission, but Dmytro had those envoys executed, and,
of course, by now, we all know what that meant.
After a brief detour to subdue the Iranian Alani, the Mongols returned to Kiev in the
winter of 1240, crossing the frozen Dnieper and laying siege to the city.
The city’s walls were quickly rendered into rubble by Chinese catapults, and the invaders
poured into the city.
Brutal hand-to-hand street fighting occurred and Dmytro was eventually forced to fall back
with his defenders to the Church of the Blessed Virgin, while the civilians took refuge in
its walls.
As scores of terrified Kievans climbed onto the Church’s upper balcony to shield themselves
from Mongol arrows, their collective weight strained its infrastructure, causing the roof
to collapse and crush countless souls under its weight.
By December 6th, the struggle was over, and Kiev was in Mongol hands.
In a rare act of clemency, Voivoide Dmytro was spared his life in recognition of his
bravery, but the rest of his city was not so lucky.
Of a total population of 50,000, all but 2,000 were massacred.
The city itself was put to the torch.
Of some 40 significant landmarks in Kiev, only 6 remained standing after the wrath of
Batu.
For centuries since the reign of Prince Yaroslav, the peoples of the Kievan Rus had been divided,
but the idea of a common culture and a common empire remained.
Now, with the mother of Rus cities a smoldering ruin, the nation founded by Rurik was dead.
Kievan Rus was no more.
After Batu Khan’s campaign, the northern Rus lands were completely and utterly devastated,
and while the South was not hit as hard, its major power-centers, most notably Kiev, had
been destroyed.
Pockets of independent eastern Slavic resistance would struggle on for the better part of a
decade, particularly in the westernmost region of Galicia-Volhynia, but by 1250, the entire
former Kievan Rus was completely under Mongol domination.
The socio-cultural impact that the Mongol Invasion had on the Russian and greater Eastern
Slavic worlds cannot be understated.
It would not be inaccurate to equate it to the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the
Germanic tribes.
Before the Mongols, the cities of the Kievan Rus had been a land of Saints and Scholars,
the heirs of a once-united Empire rivaling other civilizations of Europe.
Afterwards, it had all been reduced to smoldering rubble, a pale shadow of the glory that had
once been, a conquered people living under the yoke of foreign warlords they considered
to be the scourge of God.
However, among all the wreckage and ruin, a certain settlement remained untouched by
Mongol wrath.
It was the oldest of the great Rus cities.
We must rewind the clock a few centuries to contextualize the city of Novgorod’s rise
to prominence as an autonomous power in the pre-Mongol era.
As you may recall from our previous episodes, Novgorod was the original capital of the Rus,
founded by the Rurik around 860.
Even after Rurik’s successor Oleg moved the capital to Kiev, Novgorod remained influential.
The people of Novgorod had always been free-willed, so when the Kievan Rus began splintering in
the early 12th century, the old Northern Capital emerged as one of the most dynamic independent
powers.
Novgorod ruled over a prosperous trading Empire, with the city itself serving as a central
hub of international commerce This Novgorodian state had a unique system
of government as it was not a hereditary monarchy, but a republic since 1136, when the powerful
merchant-lords of Novgorod, backed by the general citizenry, overthrew Prince Vsevolod
of Pskov.
Legislative power in Novgorod was controlled by the veche, a form of public assembly consisting
of nobles, clergy, merchants, and commoners.
Novgorod still had a Prince, but he had to be elected by the council, and could be fired,
if necessary.
That is not to say that the Novgorodian Princes became meaningless figureheads.
In fact, a particular Prince would soon emerge as one of Medieval Rus’ greatest military
leaders, and to many, the saviour of the Rus culture and faith.
In the year 1220, a boy known as Alexander was born to the Vsevolodovich dynasty, who
ruled Pereslavl and later, Vladimir.
The young princeling likely spent his childhood years learning to fight and lead men.
It was probably due to this pedigree that in 1236, his father dropped him off in Novgorod,
and the city council elected him to be their Prince, beseeching the young noble to take
charge of the city’s military affairs.
This was an incredibly tall order for a 16-year-old, as the city was in crisis.
To the east, the unstoppable horde of Batu Khan was thundering across the Rus heartland
and it would only be a matter of time before the Mongols would come to Novgorod.
In the west, the situation was just as volatile, as starting in the 12th century, various Latin
Christian powers had made headways into Northern Europe.
The Vikings of Scandinavia abandoned their old gods by the mid-1100s, and became more
or less Christianized, which allowed them to expand under the pretext of holy crusade.
The Kingdom of Sweden, in particular, began making ingresses into Finland claiming it
is converting the pagans of the region to Christianity, and by 1216, the Pope had recognized
Swedish suzerainty over Finland.
This expansion put Sweden on a collision course with Novgorod, who had economic and territorial
interests in Karelia.
The Catholic and Orthodox Churches had finally begun to overlap in the north.
Both sides desired land and power, and considered the other to be heretics, so the potential
for war was brewing.
According to the Chronicle of Novgorod, in the summer of 1240, a Swedish army led by
Bishop of Finland Thomas sailed up the Gulf of Finland in their longboats.
They then proceeded into Neva river with the aim of seizing control over Lake Ladoga, and
from there, striking at the city of Novgorod itself.
As the story goes, Prince Alexander wasted no time in rallying his druzhina and confronting
the Swedish host on the Neva, decisively routing the western invaders.
It should be noted that the battle at the Neva is never described in Swedish sources
and this has led some scholars to question if the battle at the Neva even happened in
the first place.
However, most agree, it was likely an impromptu border skirmish, rather than a full-scale
invasion.
Whatever the case, the young Prince Alexander had won his first military victory at the
age of 19 and received his sobriquet: Nevsky.
Alexander's success had made him some enemies as well, particularly the Boyars and Merchants
of Novgorod, who believed that his war jeopardized the delicate trade relations in the region.
Soon, the political situation deteriorated to the point where Nevsky and his soldiers
left the city.
This was bad timing indeed, for the Swedes were not the only Catholics who had ambitions
to take Novgorod territory.
It is now we move our focus south to the dense forests of the Baltic rim.
Much like Finland and Karelia, this region was one of the last holdouts of Paganism in
Europe.
The ancestors of the modern Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians had been fighting a losing war
against German and Danish invaders, who sought to convert them to Latin Christianity by force.
By 1228, much of the Baltic shore had been subdued by German Catholics, except for the
Estonian coast, which became Danish.
This land became known as Terra Mariana, the land of the virgin Mary.
It was an unstable colonial frontier, divided into several bishoprics directly sworn to
the Pope in Rome, but still inhabited by Baltic peoples who continued to resist Catholic overlordship
through guerilla warfare.
Throughout all this turmoil, a pair of Knightly orders rose as the apex predators of the northeast.
In Latvia and its environs, the Livonian Brothers of the Sword were dominant.
At the same time, directly to their south, the Teutonic Order waged a bloody crusade
against the Pagans of Old Prussia, establishing control over the region.
However, the balance of power was soon to shift.
In 1236, with the backing of the Papacy, the Brothers of the Sword launched an expedition
across the Daugava river to subdue and convert the Lithuanians.
However, Lithuanian tribes took advantage of the swampy forests of their homeland, ambushed
the Knights, and annihilated their invasion force.
So crushing was this defeat to the Brothers of the Sword, that their remaining members
had to join the Teutonic Order.
Now rebranded as the Livonian Order, they quickly rebuilt themselves into a powerful
autonomous chapter of the Teutons and this allowed them to wage a more effective war
upon the indigenous pagans.
By 1240, the Livonian Knights had established firm control on land as far east as Lake Peipus
and now they neighbored the Novgorod Republic.
Once more, Catholic and Orthodox spheres of influence crashed together in northern Europe.
The council of Novgorod was initially divided on how to deal with the ever-encroaching Crusaders.
Initially, Slavic merchants prospered as trading partners with the Germans and Scandinavians,
and intermarriage between the Rus and newcomer nobility was not uncommon.
These ties to the west had been why Nevsky was forced into exile after his victory at
the Neva.
After all, what merchant would allow a glory-seeking Prince to chase off their best customers?
However, relations between east and west had begun to sour from 1224 when the Livonian
Knights took Tartu, a city that Novgorod considered to be within its political orbit.
The Crusaders also ramped up their efforts to convince the Novgorod aristocracy to convert
to Latin Christianity, which irritated the Slavs, for whom their Orthodoxy was the heart
of their society.
As diplomacy deteriorated, the German Knights began to gaze greedily at the wealth of Novgorod,
which, in their eyes, was a fair target as non-Catholics.
Around the year 1240, Pope Gregory IX finally authorized a crusade against Novgorod.
Hoping that the Republic would be too preoccupied dealing with the Mongols to the east to defend.
That same year, the Livonian knights stormed the outpost of Koporye, conquering it with
little resistance.
They established a permanent garrison and began the construction of a stone castle,
which made it evident to the people of Novgorod that the Knights had come to conquer.
Now in crisis mode, the veche of Novgorod turned back to the prince they had just exiled,
begging him to return.
Nevsky obliged, making haste for the northern capital.
By the time he arrived, the Crusaders had taken Novgorod’s sister-city and breadbasket
Pskov.
In the hands of an occupying force, it was a dagger pointed at the heart of the capital
itself.
Alexander knew that he had not a moment to waste and, in the autumn of 1241, he struck
back, storming Koporye’s brand new castle and capturing it swiftly.
In the spring of 1242, he joined with the forces of his brother Andrey and thundered
into Pskov, retaking the city with little effort, likely because the Teutonic Knights
were preoccupied fighting the Mongols in Hungary at the time.
Nevsky’s swift military successes can likely be attributed to his druzhina, the archetypal
elite warrior retinue that had been a staple of Rus Princes for centuries.
Nevsky’s force traveled light, taking towns and castles before their Crusader enemy had
a chance to respond, a manner of warfare akin to his pagan ancestor Sviatoslav the Snow
Leopard, three centuries prior.
Following these successes, Nevsky mustered up a citizen militia to supplement his Druzhina’s
limited numbers, and launched an offensive raid into Catholic Estonia, breaking his army
off into contingents to raid and pillage the countryside.
This was a mistake, for he had overextended his forces, and the Teutons and their Estonian
allies managed to ambush and destroy one of the Rus raiding parties in an ambush on a
river crossing southwest of Tartu.
Nevsky decided to cut his losses, and orchestrated a careful retreat.
Meanwhile, the Crusaders had been hastily assembling an army for a second invasion into
Rus lands.
Led by Bishop Hermann of Dorpat, it consisted of a core of Knights, alongside an allied
contingent of Danish soldiers and native Baltic auxiliaries, mostly Estonians, and by spring
they began pursuing Aleksandr Nevsky northwards.
The latter found out about this and retreated to the Lake Peipus, or Chud as it is called
in Russian, waiting for the coalition forces to arrive at the battle scene.
Here we need to make a disclaimer about significant differences in the sources about the battle
in connection with such essential issues as the numbers, the place of the battle, the
battle formations, and whether the ice played any role in the battle at all.
We know that the battle between Novgorod and the Livonian Order took place on 5 April 1242,
however, historians still dispute whether it actually happened on the ice of Lake Peipus
or not.
We will describe the most popular and accepted account of the battle, which is especially
propagated by mainstream Russian historiography.
We will also describe the accounts of primary sources, which dispute these claims.
According to the generally accepted account of the events in Russian historiography, Aleksandr
Nevsky was able to lure the overconfident Livonian Army, which also consisted of heavily
armoured knights, onto the frozen surface of Lake Peipus.
Based on the expedition conducted by G.Karavayev in 1958-66 it was determined that the battle
took place near the modern Teploe Lake and the Raven Rock, which was the intersection
of the old road to Pskov (via ice) and Novgorod on 5 April 1242.
The I Novgorod Chronicle also mentions the Raven Rock as the place of the battle.
Here is the first point of dispute.
Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, which was written in the late 13th century, some 50 years after
the battle, by a German author can be considered as one of the primary sources for the description
of the battle.
According to it, “many from both sides fell dead on the grass” and there is no mention
of ice.
Historian Igor Kleinenberg claims the grass to be a turn of phrase while Karavayev argues
that it refers to reeds in the shallow waters of the lake, where the battle took place.
The Laurentian Chronicle by the Orthodox monk Laurentius, written 130 years after the battle
states that the battle took place on the Lake, but there is no mention of ice.
The second point of dispute is the numbers the sides had.
The problem is that the primary sources provide only numbers of the fallen, which we are going
to discuss later, but nothing regarding the numbers at the start of the battle.
Hence, even Russian historians dispute the numbers.
According to the Big Russian Encyclopedia, the Livonian Order and its allies had 7k cavalrymen,
including 1000 knights and numerous Estonian and knecht infantrymen.
Russian historians Scherbakov and Dzys claim a very small number - 700-750 for Livonians
and 1700-2000 for the Russians.
A military historian Razin estimated 10-12k for the Livonian Order and 15-17k for the
Novgorodian side.
Strokov and Kirpichnikov propose around 30-35k combined men.
Based on medieval warfare and battles where the sides took part around the same time period,
the British historian David Nicolle estimates that 2600 men fought on the Livonian side
and 5000 on the Novgorodian side.
The third point of contention is the battle formation and the course of the battle itself.
According to the accepted Russian historiography, the Crusader army used the variation of the
board snout tactic.
This tactic had the most experienced heavy armoured knights in the vanguard in an arrow
formation, while the infantry consisting of Estonians and knechts was behind them.
The width of each row would be 10-12 cavalrymen or infantrymen.
Each row had cavalrymen protecting the flanks.
This tactic aimed to attack the very center of the enemy with force and cause the disruption
of the central ranks eventually leading to a victory.
Nevsky’s army had a more traditional formation with the army divided into the left flank,
center, and right flanks with archers in the vanguard.
Cavalry was placed in the flanks, while the Novgorodian militia was in the center.
The biggest difference is that cavalry was usually placed in the center, but since Aleksandr
Nevsky somehow knew about the Crusader’s tactic he placed the cavalry to the flanks
with an aim to later encircle the narrow formation of the Livonian Order.
Nevsky himself waited in an ambush with a group of his elite bodyguard forces somewhere
to the left flank of his army.
The battle started with a barrage of arrows made by the Rus archers on the Livonian knights.
Livonian knights charged forward onto the Rus center.
It managed to push back the center consisting of relatively inexperienced Novgorodian militia,
but ultimately it was able to keep its formation and held up its own for almost two hours,
when Nevsky ordered his left and right flanks to attack the Livonian flanks, while his group
came out of the ambush and attacked the Crusaders’ rear.
The Rus emerged victorious and chased the fleeing enemy for 8 kilometers throughout
the frozen lake.
Let us look at the primary sources again to see if their details corroborate what was
described above.
Livonian Rhymed Chronicle does not mention much in connection with the battle formation
and the battle itself.
It claims that the Novgorodians had many archers and had a 60 to 1 advantage.
They attacked the Crusaders, who valiantly resisted, but in the end, the numerical superiority
of the Rus proved to be decisive as they were able to surround the Livonians.
The number is probably an exaggeration to whitewash the defeat suffered by the Crusaders.
Livonian Rhymed Chronicle mentions that “Twenty Brothers lay dead and six were captured”
The Laurentian chronicle does not provide much detail about the battle, merely implying
the Rus victory and capture of “many prisoners”.
The same with the Suzdal Chronicle, which mentions the victory of Alexander and the
chase across the ice for 8 kilometers.
The I Novgorod Chronicle mentions that “the Germans and Chuds (Estonians) rode at the
Rus driving themselves like a wedge through their army”, which might be a reference
to the boar snout tactic.
It also states that the Rus won the victory and chased the Livonians for 8 kilometers
until the Subol shore of he Lake Peipus.
In connection with the casualties, the chronicle states the following: “There fell a countless
number of Chuds, and of the Germans 400.
They captured 50 and brought to Novgorod”.
None of the primary sources state anything regarding the Rus losses.
And it is necessary to note that the information provided by Livonian Rhymed Chronicle and
the Novgorod chronicle regarding the Crusader losses do not necessarily contradict each
other, as it is possible that the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle provided the information
only on the losses of Livonian knights, while the Novgorod chronicle could have described
all of the losses suffered by the whole enemy host, albeit with an exaggeration.
The rest of the battle details had been added later by the Russian historians, as some claim
that the details of the Battle of Wesenberg of 1268, which was also fought between Novgorod
and the Livonian Order, were later incorporated into the description of the Battle on the
Ice.
This conflict, later immortalized as “the battle on the ice”, was a watershed moment
in the relationship between Medieval Rus and Catholic Europe.
A permanent border between Novgorod and the Crusader states was established along Lake
Peipus and the Narva River, and never again would the Teutons or their allies make serious
ingress into Rus territories.
For his victory, Alexander Nevsky earned immortality, known by all future generations of East Slavs
as a saint who saved the Orthodox Christianity.
Now, let us move back to the east, and address the Chingisid shaped elephant in the room.
While all this Crusader business had been happening, the Mongols had been ravaging their
way through the Northeastern Rus Principalities.
Nevsky’s solution for the Mongol problem was simple: Surrender.
While other Rus cities mounted futile resistance against Batu Khan, Nevsky instead sent envoys,
preemptively capitulating before the Mongols even reached his city, and accepting the Chingisid
Khans as his lawful overlords.
Because Novgorod had surrendered so quickly and willingly, it was spared the destruction
that other influential Rus cities were subjected to.
Why was Nevsky so willing to capitulate to the Mongols, but so insistent on fighting
the Crusaders tooth and nail?
The answer was simple.
To those who showed proper obedience, the Mongols ruled with a light touch.
They had no interest in influencing their subjects' religion, culture, or prevailing
system of government, so long as they paid tribute without issue, and allowed the Mongol
Khans to confirm their leaders.
Contrast this to the Crusaders, who had every intention of forcefully eradicating Orthodox
Christianity, and one can begin to see why the Novgorodians preferred a Steppe Warlord
to a German Bishop.
Nevsky spent the rest of his life as a loyal vassal of the Great Khan, making many trips
to the Mongol capitals of Sarai and Karakorum to pay his respects.
The ruler of Novgorod used his submission to the Mongols as a key to political advancement.
Indeed, the Mongol Khan bestowed upon him the title of Grand Prince of Kiev in 1246.
Of course, in the aftermath of the Mongol conquests, Kiev was a shell of its former
self, but the title itself still held significant symbolic power and gave him an edge over other
Rus princes who now competed for the Khan’s favour.
Alexander would only continue to grow more and more influential under the Mongol wing.
In 1252, his brother Andrey reigned as the Prince of Vladimir.
However, when Khan Mongke ascended as ruler of the Mongol Empire, Andrey refused to travel
to Karakorum to have his Princeship confirmed.
As a result, the Golden Horde launched a punitive expedition into Vladimir, chasing Andrey out
of his lands and forcing him into exile in Sweden.
In his place, Nevsky was confirmed as the Mongol-appointed Prince of Vladimir, as a
reward for his continued loyalty.
Nevsky paid off the confidence the Mongols showed him in dividends, defending their authority
whenever the need arose.
In 1259, when the citizenry of Novgorod revolted and refused to pay tribute to the Khans, Nevsky
marched into the city with soldiers, forcing his own people to obey their Mongol masters
by force of arms.
Nevsky died in 1263, taken by illness while journeying home from one of his trips to pay
homage to the Khan in Sarai.
The Rus he left behind was a complex one.
On one hand, invaders from the west were defeated, their religion saved in the process.
On the other, it had been utterly ravaged by Mongols, becoming subjects of a foreign
Empire.
The legacies of St. Olga, Vladimir the Great, and Yaroslav the Wise remained in the form
of their faith, culture, and identity they had helped build.
But as the various Rus Princes slowly reconsolidated their lands and power under the watchful eye
of Mongol overlordship, it became clear that the age of the Kievan Rus was long behind
them, and a new era had begun in what would become Russia.
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