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7 results

  • 19 - The Rus′ Principalities

  • from Volume I Part 3 - Views from the Edges
  • Edited by Michal Biran, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Hodong Kim, Seoul National University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire
    Published online:
    01 January 2024
    Print publication:
    17 August 2023, pp 753-776

  • Summary

    Mongol rule in Rus′ was profound, especially in the administration of taxes and tribute, which were adapted to the traditions of Rus′ian princely governance. The thirteenth century was a “dark age” when Rus′ was subjected to severe Mongol attacks and tribute was imposed under the supervision of basqaqs. The Rus′ian church, however, was exempted from paying tribute. Through the bestowal of a yarligh, the Mongols designated the rulers of Rus′ian principalities, including the grand prince of Vladimir, titular head of the Rus′. The fourteenth century saw the rise of Moscow, as its princes gradually monopolized the collection of the tribute. By the first quarter of the fifteenth century, Mongol rule had weakened as the effects of plague, civil wars within the Golden Horde, Tamerlane’s attacks, and the fracturing of the Golden Horde into separate khanates took their toll. By 1480 and the Battle of the Ugra River, Mongol rule was effectively over.

  • Chapter 1 - Liturgy and History in Early Rus

  • Sean Griffin, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
  • Book:
    The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus
    Published online:
    09 August 2019
    Print publication:
    15 August 2019, pp 15-34

  • Summary

    Chapter 1 begins with a historical account of the origins of the land of Rus, aimed at non-specialist readers. It describes the trading expeditions of the Viking Rus southwards—along the famed ‘Route from the Varangians to the Greeks’—and their eventual settlement in Kiev, a multi-ethnic and multilingual trading outpost on the banks of the Dnieper River. In the year 988, or thereabouts, Prince Vladimir of Kiev accepted baptism from the church in Constantinople, and over the next several decades a massive Byzantine-style liturgical infrastructure was erected in Kiev. The rest of the chapter considers the political motivations behind this decision, while drawing extensively on theoretical approaches developed by western medievalists. The princes in Kiev spent vast sums to instal a very real, very material imperial Roman technology throughout their realm. But what, exactly, was the purpose of this technology? What did the rites actually do that made the princes of Rus willing to invest and keep investing in them? I argue that the liturgical rites of the church were in fact powerful ideological tools, forms of mass propaganda, which gave rulers control over their subjects by giving them control over the sacred past.

The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus
  • Sean Griffin
  • Published online:
    09 August 2019
    Print publication:
    15 August 2019
  • The chroniclers of medieval Rus were monks, who celebrated the divine services of the Byzantine church throughout every day. This study is the first to analyze how these rituals shaped their writing of the Rus Primary Chronicle, the first written history of the East Slavs. During the eleventh century, chroniclers in Kiev learned about the conversion of the Roman Empire by celebrating a series of distinctively Byzantine liturgical feasts. When the services concluded, and the clerics sought to compose a native history for their own people, they instinctively drew on the sacred stories that they sang at church. The result was a myth of Christian origins for Rus - a myth promulgated even today by the Russian government - which reproduced the Christian origins myth of the Byzantine Empire. The book uncovers this ritual subtext and reconstructs the intricate web of liturgical narratives that underlie this foundational text of pre-modern Slavic civilization.

  • 4 - Kievan Rus’ (1015–1125)

  • from Part I - Early Rus’ and the Rise of Muscovy (c. 900–1462)
  • Edited by Maureen Perrie, University of Birmingham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Russia
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 September 2006, pp 73-97

  • Summary

    Political legitimacy in Kievan Rus' resided in the dynasty. The ruling family managed to create an ideological framework for its own pre-eminence which was maintained without serious challenge for over half a millennium. To this extent the political structure was simple: the lands of the Rus' were, more or less by definition, the lands claimed or controlled by the descendants of Vladimir Sviatoslavich. Like Vladimir, Iaroslav allocated regional possessions to his sons. Unlike Vladimir, he specified a hierarchy of seniority both within the dynasty and between the regional allocations, and he laid down some principles of inter-princely relations. The princes of Rus' were warlords, heading a military elite. Since prince of Kiev, Vladimir Vsevolodovich Monomakh wrote an 'Instruction' for his sons, a kind of brief curriculum vitae presenting as exemplary his own credentials and achievements. In the three generations after Vladimir the main implications of the official conversion to Christianity were made manifest.

  • 3 - The origins of Rus’ (c.900–1015)

  • from Part I - Early Rus’ and the Rise of Muscovy (c. 900–1462)
  • Edited by Maureen Perrie, University of Birmingham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Russia
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 September 2006, pp 45-72

  • Summary

    The vicissitudes of one leading family are treated as virtually synonymous with the emergence and extent of the land of Rus'. Yet in addressing the question of the origins of Rus', the chroniclers did not play fast and loose with facts. The Primary Chronicle registers actual political change and population movement under way in the late ninth century. In the mid-tenth century a Khazar ruler regarded the Severians, Slavs near the middle Dnieper, as owing him tribute, while Kiev had an alternative, apparently Khazar, name, Sambatas. It is significant that the politico-military locus of Rus' shifted south little more than a generation after northerners first arrived in force on the middle Dnieper. This registers the rapid development and allure of the 'Byzantine connection', in terms of trading and the wealth it could yield. Sometime in the mid-960s Sviatoslav forged an alliance with a group of nomads, the Oghuz, and launched a joint attack on the Khazars.

  • 9 - Kievan Rus’, the Bulgars and the southern Slavs, c. 1020 – c. 1200

  • Edited by David Luscombe, University of Sheffield, Jonathan Riley-Smith, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 October 2004, pp 254-276

  • Summary

    This chapter shows that during the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Croats were never unified under a strong central government. They lived in different areas: Pannonian Croatia, Dalmatian Croatia, and Bosnia, which were more frequently controlled by agents of Byzantium, Venice and Hungary. In 1036, Jaroslav's victory over the Petcheneks secured safe passage for merchants travelling from Kiev to Constantinople. Jaroslav's reign was one of the high points in the history of Rus' and his achievements earned for him the sobriquet the Wise'. He helped to lay the foundation for a codified law by issuing 'The Russian Law. During most of the eleventh and twelfth centuries Bulgaria experienced the period of Byzantine rule. In 1018 when Basil II conquered Bulgaria a number of Serbian principalities also fell under Byzantine rule. Although the Latin Christians were affiliated to Rome they continued to celebrate the liturgy in the Slavonic language even after its use had been condemned by the synod.

  • (c) - Rus′

  • from 24 - Eastern Europe
  • David Abulafia, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    21 October 1999, pp 796-808

  • Summary

    In the thirteenth century Rus was various polities and places which had less and less relationship with one another. The idea of a thirteenth-century Rus is a modern chronological and geographical convenience, not a coherent historical entity. The Kiev-Novgorod axis was the main artery of Kievan Rus in its Golden Age from the late tenth to the early twelfth century. In 1203 Roman lost Kiev, which was taken and sacked by Riurik Rostislavich of Smolensk with help from the Chernigovan Olgovichi and the Polovtsians. The true Riurikid traditionalists were the princes of Smolensk and Chernigov in the centre and the south. Mikhail of Chernigov had fled in 1240 and tried to organise resistance from abroad. By 1246, isolated and outflanked by the rival families, he too made the trip to Sarai. By contrast with Galician prevarication and Chernigovan gesticulation, the north-eastern princes of Vladimir and Suzdal co-operated fully with the Mongols from the very beginning.