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ATT
VARA RYSKA I SVERIGE
(Gymnasium)
KIEVIAN
RUS
(
Gymansium)
(Mellanstadiet)
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| Livet
utomlands är ett skäl för avundsjuka i Ryssland.
Jag har redan bott i Sverige i 6 år och vet att ett sådan avundsjuka kan förstöra vänskap. Tyvärr, så är det inte så många som förstår att livet utomlands inte alltid är så perfekt och kul som man tror. När
man bor här, så tror jag att det är viktigt att man bevarar
sin kultur och sitt språk.
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In this work I will describe how a state, called Kievan Rus emerged, how it developed and then collapsed. Kievan Rus is an important part of history of such countries as Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Today, Russia is the largest state in the world. It is also one of the most politically and militarily powerful nations on Earth. Ukraine and Belarus are also considerable states in Europe today. Kievan Rus is a relatively unknown period in Russian history, that is why I think it is interesting to find out more about it.
Kievan Rus was the first state of the Eastern Slavs, which were an Indo-European folk group. There are several different theories of how Rus was created. One is that Varangians, a Scandinavian folk, conquered Slavic territories along rivers called Dnieper and Volga and around a town called Novgorod and established a state there. Another theory is that Rus was a result of unification of various Slavic tribes. The reason that nobody knows for sure how Kievan Rus was born is probably a lack of written sources among Slavs. The first historic book in Rus appeared in XI century, more than two hundred years after this state emerged. And an oral way of storing information (when one generation tells the other one about various events) is not really a reliable historic source, from my point of view, because real events are often mixed with legends and fiction by people. One more theory is that in IXth century Slavic tribes who lived around Novgorod asked a Varangian leader if he wanted to govern over them.
In V-VII centuries many Slavic tribes started to settle themselves along the Dnieper river. A tribe named Polyanians established a town called Kiev on the bank of Dnieper. Many tribes were often at war with each other. There were no written laws and no fixed governing systems among Slavs at that time. The tribes didn’t succeed to get along with each other so they decided to invite someone from "outside" , who would unite them and rule over them in a just way. In 862AD, several Slavic tribes in the North asked Vikings if they wanted to set law and order among Slavs. A Varangian man, called Rurik became the ruler of Novgorod and the territories around it. He was successful in uniting various Slavic, Finnish and Varangian tribes. He forced all nationalities living on his territories to pay tribute to him. At the same time, a strong Slavic state was established around Kiev by Polyanians. Two men from Rurik’s armed force went to Constantinople. During their trip they came to Kiev, where they decided to stay. Oskold and Dir (so were Rurik’s men called) conquered the city and started to rule there. In 879, prince Rurik died, leaving a small son Igor. A relative of Rurik, called Oleg became a new ruler of Novgorod. When Oleg found out that Kiev became a flourishing city he decided to make a raid on it. In 882, Oleg cheated Kievan princes Oskold and Dir, killed them and conquered Kiev. Thus prince Oleg unified two Slavic states. He chose Kiev as a capital and called it "mother of Russian cities", because it was one of the oldest and biggest settlements among the Slavs. A new, powerful country called Kievan Rus was born. Historians still don’t know exactly where the word "rus" comes from. Anyway, since the end of IX th century inhabitants of Kievan Rus were also called ruses.
Kievan Rus flourished during the three following centuries. There were several reasons for that: strong leaders, who defended and expanded Rus, big territory which contributed to large variety of goods for export, a very important trade route called "from Varangians to Greeks" which began in Scandinavia, went through Novgorod, then along the Dnieper river and over Black sea to Constantinople. Kiev stood in the middle of this root and thus benefited from it greatly. Gathering of tribute was also important because it was a kind of proof that a state existed . New religion and new, own alphabet helped Rus to develop contacts with Western Europe and understand the European culture. But at the same time, Rus had a lot of problems, both internal and external. Rus had always been a multinational state (Russia is still a country with many folk groups today), which contributed to many riots of tribes, which were unsatisfied or oppressed by centralised power of Kievan princes. There were several hostile countries which were bordering Rus. These were for example Khazars, a Turkic folk group which had their state south-east of Rus. During his reign, prince Oleg made several raids on Khazars and defeated them. Then Oleg was successful in defending Rus from Hungarians, another nomadic tribe. In 907, Oleg gathered a huge troop and went to Constantinople, capital of powerful Byzantine Empire. He was a good military leader and had almost conquered the city. The Greeks had to make a peace treaty in order to stop ruses from destroying Constantinople. In 911, first diplomatic contacts between Byzantine Empire and Kievan rus were established. According to a commercial treaty merchants from Rus were allowed to trade at Constantinople’s markets without paying any fees. Rus exported furs, wax, honey, forest products and slaves and imported silks, spices and gold. Prince Oleg died in 913.
After Oleg’s death, Igor (son of Rurik) became the ruler of Kievan Rus. He ordered his troops to conquer lands around Black sea and at a peninsula Crimea. I think that the territories near Black sea were strategically important for Rus. This expansion resulted in a war between Byzantine Empire and Rus in 941-944, because Constantinople also had its colonies at Crimea. One year after the war’s end, during gathering of the tribute, Igor was murdered by a tribe called Drevlianians. The reason for this was perhaps an unfair way of collecting tribute - there were no fixed values or limitations in it. Igor’s wife Olga became the next ruler of Rus. Firstly, she made a revenge on Drevlianians, destroying many of their settlements. Then she introduced the first fixed tax system in Kievan Rus. This was a big step towards an organised state. In 957, Olga went to Constantinople and baptised herself. Five years later, her son Svyatoslav took over the rule. He continued expanding Rus by conquering a tribe called Vyatichians, which lived along Volga. Then he exterminated the state of Khazars and after that he tried to establish a colony at the bank of Dunai, which involved him in war with Byzantians. In 972, Svyatoslav was murdered by a Nomadic tribe. Svyatoslav’s son Vladimir I (Saint Vladimir) became the next prince of Kievan Rus after winning the struggle for power with his brothers. To enhance his power, Vladimir married the sister of the Byzantine emperor. Vladimir's greatest achievement dealt with religion. Until the end of the Xth century almost all Slavic tribes were pagans and believed in many different gods. In 988, Vladimir was converted to Christianity from Byzantium and proceeded quickly to "Christianise" the Kievan state and the Eastern Slavs. Vladimir's choice of Eastern Catholicism or Orthodoxy ("True Faith") had long-range political, cultural, and religious consequences. His decision also reflected his close personal ties with Constantinople, which controlled trade regions in the Black Sea. Christianity soon spread to other Russian principalities, and since 988, the Eastern Orthodox faith has been the dominant religion in Russia. Two monks, Cyril and Methodius, who a century earlier had translated the scriptures into the Slavic tongue, gave the Slavs their alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet, which was a sort of mixture of the Greek and Latin alphabets. This liturgical alphabet facilitated the conversion to Christianity and introduced Eastern Slavs to rudimentary Greek philosophy, science, and historiography. But the Slavs were not so eager to learn Greek or Latin languages, which limited their understanding of European culture.
Vladimir's death in 1015 precipitated a civil war among his sons to decide the successor. For example, an older son, Sviatopolk I (the Damned), seized Kiev and murdered three of his brothers who might have contested his action. Vladimir's eldest son, Yaroslav I (the Wise), brought in mercenaries from Scandinavia and drove Sviatopolk from Kiev. After driving out Sviatopolk, Yaroslav and Mstislav, his only remaining brother, divided Kievan Rus between them and through a variety of actions began to shift the political focus away from Kiev. The people inhabiting the regional centres evolved into several nationalities: Ukrainians in the Southeast and Southwest; Belorussians in the Northwest; and Russians in the north and Northeast. During the rule of Yaroslav the Wise, Kievan Rus was at zenith of its power. Yaroslav’s most valuable contribution to the development of Rus was his "Russian Truth", the first book of laws among the Eastern Slavs. I consider that "Russian Truth" was important for modernising the Kievan state. After Yaroslav’s death in 1054, a new bloody struggle started among his sons. Kievan Rus didn’t have a strong leader until 1113, when Vladimir II Monomach, a grandson of Yaroslav, began to rule. Monomach became famous for his successful warfare against various nomadic tribes, which lived to the East and South of Rus. He was also trying to introduce some reforms in Rus, which would protect the rights of the peasants (Rus became a feudal society by that time). From the moment of his death in 1132, the power of Kievan Rus began to decline.
The reasons for that are: the self-serving interests of the descendants of Rurik, their internecine feuding, and the shift in European trade routes resulting from the Crusades, which marginalized the Dnieper River trade routes. The was no strong ruler in Rus any more and princes of all the small states inside Rus were not able to unite in order to defend Rus from powerful Mongols. That is why a huge Mongol force under Batu Khan overran much of Kievan Rus in 1237-1238, ultimately sacking the city of Kiev in 1240 and destroying the Kievan state. Kievan Rus became a part of the empire of the Mongol-Tatar Golden Horde, which ruled indirectly through Sarai through loyal emissaries and tax collectors. From that time on, for almost three centuries, Kievan Rus lived under Mongol domination. The subsequent separation of the Eastern Slavs by the Tatar conquest is believed to have led to the development of the distinct Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian languages.
By: Anatoliy S., NV1A
Reference list:
*World History - Patterns
of Civilisation by Burton F. Beers (p.228-229)
* "History of Ukraine" by
V. Krushinskiy and U. Levenets (p.6-12) - in Ukrainian
* "Ukraine: A History" by
Orest Subtelny (p-30-60) - in Ukrainian
* "History of Russia" by
A. Sakharov and V. Buganov (p.34-117) - in Russian
* "History of Russia in
VIII-XV centuries" by L. Katsva and A. Yurganov (p.20-81) - in Russian