Kievan Rus’: A Visual History

Kievan Rus was the East Slavic state ruled by the Rurikid dynasty from the late ninth century, when the Varangian prince Oleg made Kiev his capital, until the Mongol destruction of Kiev in 1240. Vladimir the Great adopted Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium in 988 and Yaroslav the Wise codified law and built St Sophia. It traded furs, slaves and wax down the Dnieper to Constantinople and controlled the largest territory in Europe, but fragmented into rival principalities after the eleventh century.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Kievan Rus. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Territory of Kievan Rus

After 1054 the figure represents the loosely federated principalities.

Timeline of the Kievan Rus

1. 862
   Rurik at NovgorodTraditional date.
2. 882
   Oleg takes Kiev
3. 911
   Treaty with Byzantium
4. 965
   Sviatoslav destroys the Khazars
5. 988
   Vladimir's baptism
6. 1037
   St Sophia of Kiev
7. 1054
   Yaroslav diesThe realm divided.
8. 1223
   Battle of the Kalka
9. 1240
   Mongols destroy Kiev

Varangians and Slavs

According to the Primary Chronicle, Slavic and Finnic tribes invited the Varangian Rurik to rule Novgorod in 862; his kinsman Oleg took Kiev in 882 and made it the capital of a river-trading realm. Oleg and Igor raided Constantinople and won trade treaties. Sviatoslav destroyed the Khazars around 965 and fought in Bulgaria until killed by Pechenegs, who made his skull into a cup.

Christian Rus

Vladimir, after (according to legend) rejecting Islam because of its ban on alcohol, accepted baptism from Byzantium in 988, married the emperor's sister and had Kiev's people baptised in the Dnieper. Yaroslav the Wise (1019-1054) built St Sophia cathedral, issued the Russkaya Pravda law code and married his daughters to the kings of France, Hungary and Norway.

Fragmentation and the Mongols

Yaroslav divided the realm among his sons and a rotating succession produced endless feuds. Vladimir Monomakh briefly reunited it, but by the twelfth century Novgorod, Vladimir-Suzdal, Galicia-Volhynia and others were effectively independent; Andrei Bogolyubsky sacked Kiev in 1169. The Mongols crushed a Rus coalition at the Kalka in 1223 and Batu destroyed Kiev in December 1240, leaving the principalities as tributaries of the Golden Horde.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Byzantine Empire (395 to 1453)
• Khazar Khanate (650 to 969)
• Golden Horde (Jochi Khanate) (1242 to 1502)
• Russian Empire (1721 to 1917)
• Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569 to 1795)
• Bulgarian Empire (681 to 1396)

Wars of the same era and region

• Mongol invasions and conquests (1206 to 1368)
• Russo-Ukrainian War (2014 to present)

8 surprising things about the Kievan Rus

1. The Primary Chronicle says Vladimir rejected Islam with the words 'drinking is the joy of the Rus, we cannot exist without it'.
2. Sviatoslav's skull was reportedly gilded and used as a drinking cup by the Pecheneg khan.
3. Yaroslav's daughter Anna became queen of France and signed documents in Cyrillic when the king could only make a mark.
4. The name 'Rus' probably comes from a Finnic word for Swedes, 'rowers'.
5. Kiev's Golden Gate and St Sophia were modelled on Constantinople's.
6. The Varangian route 'from the Varangians to the Greeks' linked the Baltic to the Black Sea via the Dnieper rapids.
7. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus all trace their statehood to Kievan Rus, and the dispute over its heritage is bitterly political today.
8. The Kalka defeat of 1223 was followed by a Mongol victory banquet held on a platform placed on top of the captured Rus princes.

Sources

• Kievan Rus Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Kievan Rus' Wikipedia
• Kievan Rus World History Encyclopedia
• Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of Rus 750-1200 (1996) Longman

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