The scanty written records tell little of the processes that ensued, but archaeological evidence - notably, the Middle Eastern coins found in eastern Europe - indicates that the development of the East Slavs passed through several stages.
From about 770 to about 830, commercial explorers began an intensive penetration of the Volga region. From early bases in the estuaries of the rivers of the eastern Baltic region, Germanic commercial-military bands, probably in search of new routes to the east, began to penetrate territory populated by Finnic and Slavic tribes, where they found amber, furs, honey, wax, and timber products. The indigenous population offered little resistance to their incursions, and there was no significant local authority to negotiate the balance among trade, tribute, and plunder. From the south, trading organizations based in northern Iran and North Africa, seeking the same products, and particularly slaves, became active in the lower Volga, the Don, and, to a lesser extent, the Dnieper region. The history of the Khazar state is intimately connected with these activities.
About 830 commerce appears to have declined in the Don and Dnieper regions. There was increased activity in the north Volga, where Scandinavian traders who had previously operated from bases on Lakes Ladoga and Onega established a new center, near present-day Ryazan. Here, in this period, the first nominal ruler of Rus (called, like the Khazar emperor, khagan) is mentioned by Islamic and Western sources. This Volga Rus khagan state may be considered the first direct political antecedent of the Kievan state.
Within a few decades these Rus, together with other Scandinavian groups operating farther west, extended their raiding activities down the main river routes toward Baghdad and Constantinople, reaching the latter in 860. The Scandinavians involved in these exploits are known as Varangians; they were adventurers of diverse origins, often led by princes of warring dynastic clans. One of these princes, Rurik of Jutland, is considered the progenitor of the dynasty that ruled in various portions of East Slavic territory until 1598. Evidences of the Varangian expansion are particularly clear in the coin hoards of 900-930. The number of Middle Eastern coins reaching northern regions, especially Scandinavia, indicates a flourishing trade. Written records tell of Rus raids upon Constantinople and the northern Caucasus in the early 10th century.
In the period from about 930 to 1000, the region came under complete control by Varangians from Novgorod. This period saw the development of the trade route from the Baltic to the Black Sea, which established the basis of the economic life of the Kievan principality and determined its political and cultural development.
The degree to which the Varangians may be considered the founders of the Kievan state has been hotly debated since the 18th century. The debate has from the beginning borne nationalistic overtones. Recent works by Russians have generally minimized or ignored the role of the Varangians, while non-Russians have occasionally exaggerated it. Whatever the case, the lifeblood of the sprawling Kievan organism was the commerce organized by the princes. To be sure, these early princes were not "Swedes" or "Norwegians" or "Danes"; they thought in categories not of nation but of clan. But they certainly were not East Slavs. There is little reason to doubt the predominant role of the Varangian Rus in the creation of the state to which they gave their name.
The consecutive history of the first East Slavic state begins with Prince Svyatoslav (d. 972). His victorious campaigns against other Varangian centers, the Khazars, and the Volga Bulgars and his intervention in theByzantine-Danube Bulgar conflicts of 968-971 mark the full hegemony of his clan in Rus and the emergence of a new political force in eastern Europe. But Svyatoslav was neither a lawgiver nor an organizer; the role of architect of the Kievan state fell to his son Vladimir (c. 980-1015), who established the dynastic seniority system of his clan as the political structure by which the scattered territories of Rus were to be ruled. He invited or permitted the patriarch of Constantinople to establish an episcopal see in Rus.
Vladimir extended the realm (to include the watersheds of the Don, Dnieper, Dniester, Neman, Western Dvina, and upper Volga), destroyed or incorporated the remnants of competing Varangian organizations, and established relations with neighbouring dynasties. The successes of his long reign made it possible for the reign of his son Yaroslav (ruled 1019-54) to produce a flowering of cultural life. But neither Yaroslav, who gained control of Kiev only after a bitter struggle against his brother Svyatopolk (1015-19), nor his successors in Kiev were able to provide lasting political stability within the enormous realm. The political history of Rus is one of clashing separatist and centralizing trends inherent in the contradiction between local settlement and colonization, on the one hand, and the hegemony of the clan elder, ruling from Kiev, on the other. As Vladimir's 12 sons and innumerable grandsons prospered in the rapidly developing territories they inherited, they and their retainers acquired settled interests that conflicted both with one another and with the interests of unity.
The conflicts were not confined to Slavic lands: the Turkic nomads who moved into the southern steppe during the 11th century (first the Torks, later the Kipchaks--also known as the Polovtsy, or Cumans) became involved in the constant internecine rivalries, and Rurikid and Turkic princes often fought on both sides. In 1097 representatives of the leading branches of the dynasty, together with their Turkic allies, met at Liubech, north of Kiev, and agreed to divide the Kievan territory among themselves and their descendants, although, later, Vladimir Monomakh made a briefly successful attempt (1113-25) to reunite the land of Rus.
The hegemony of the prince of Kiev depended on the cohesion of the clan of Rurik and the relative importance of the southern trade, both of which began to decline in the late 11th century. This decline seems to have been part of a general shift of trade routes that can for convenience be associated with the First Crusade (1096-99) and that made the route from the Black Sea to the Baltic less attractive to commerce. At the same time, conflicts among the Rurikid princes acquired a more pronounced regional and separatist nature, reflecting new patterns in export trade along the northern and western periphery. Novgorod, in particular, began to gravitate toward closer relations with the cities of the Hanseatic League, which controlled the Baltic trade. Smolensk, Polotsk, and Pskov became increasingly involved in trade along western land routes, while Galicia and Volhynia established closer links with Poland and Hungary. The princes of these areas still contested the crown of the "grand prince of Kiev and all of Rus," but the title became an empty one; when Andrew Bogolyubsky of Suzdal won Kiev and the title in 1169, he sacked the city and returned to the upper Volga, apparently seeing no advantage in establishing himself in the erstwhile capital. (Roman Mstislavich of Galicia and Volhynia repeated these actions in 1203.) By the middle of the 12th century, the major principalities, owing to the prosperity and colonization of the Kievan period, had developed into independent political and economic units.
The paucity of evidence about social and political institutions in Kievan Rus suggests that they were rudimentary. The East Slavs had no significant tradition of supratribal political organization before the coming of the Varangians, who themselves, until well into the 10th century, had little interest in institutions more elaborate than those necessary for the exploitation of their rich, new territory. The territory of Rus, moreover, was immense and sparsely settled. The scattered towns, some probably little more than trading posts, were separated by large primeval forests and swamps.
Thus, although the campaigns of Svyatoslav indicate the extent of the political vacuum that his clan filled, he construed his domains as a clan possession rather than as a territorial or national state. His successor Vladimir, however, seems to have been conscious of one political element--organized religion--that distinguished both the contemporary empires and the newly established principalities in Poland and Hungary from his own. The church provided the concepts of territorial and hierarchical organization that helped to make states out of tribal territories; its teachings transformed a charismatic prince into a king possessing the attributes and responsibilities of a national leader, judge, and first Christian of the realm.
Once Vladimir had adopted Christianity in 988, his rule was supported by the propagation of Byzantine notions of imperial authority. The political traditions and conditions of Rus, however, required that the actual workings of the political system and some of its style be derived from other sources. The succession system, probably a vestige of the experience of the Rus khaganate in the upper Volga, was based upon two principles: the indivisibility of the basic territory of Rus (the principalities of Kiev, Chernigov, and Pereyaslavl) and the shared sovereignty of a whole generation. Seniority passed through an ascension by stages from elder brother to younger and from the youngest eligible uncle to the eldest eligible nephew. Such a system was admirably suited to the needs of the dynasty, because, by providing a rotating advancement of members of the clan through apprenticeships in the various territories of the realm, it assured control of the key points of the far-flung trading network by princes who were subject to traditional sanctions, and it gave them experience in lands over which they could someday expect to rule from Kiev. This system served well for a century after it was given final form by Vladimir and was revived by Monomakh (Vladimir II, ruled 1113-25), but it could not survive the decline of Kiev's importance.
Individual Rurikid princes maintained military retinues led by boyars. The princes and boyars drew their most significant revenues from the tribute or taxes collected annually in kind from territories under their control and disposed of in the export trade. The bulk of the population, apparently free peasants living in traditional agricultural communes, had little other connection with the dynasty and its trading cities.
Little is known of law in this period; it may be assumed that juridical institutions had not developed on a broad scale. The earliest law code (1016), called the "Russian Law," was one of the "Barbarian" law codes common throughout Germanic Europe. It dealt primarily with princely law--that is, with the fines to be imposed by the prince or his representative in the case of specified offenses.
Some scholars have held that, since land was in the hands of the boyar class, who exploited the labor of slaves and peasants, Kievan society should be termed feudal. The meager sources indicate, however, that Kiev experienced nothing like the complex and highly regulated legal and economic relationships associated with feudalism in western Europe. Kiev's political system existed primarily for and by international trade in forest products and depended on a money economy in which the bulk of the population scarcely participated. The subsistence agriculture of the forest regions was not the source of Kiev's wealth, nor was it the matrix within which law and politics and history were made.
Formal culture came to Rus, along with Christianity, from Byzantium, primarily through South Slavic intermediaries. A native culture, expressed in a now lost pagan ritual folklore and traditions in the arts and crafts, existed before the Kievan period and then persisted alongside the formal culture, but its influence on the latter is conjectural.
No single one of the regional (or, later, national) cultures, perhaps least of all that of Muscovy, can be called the heir of Kiev, although all shared the inheritance. The strands of continuity were everywhere strained, if not broken, in the period after Kiev's decline. But "Golden Kiev" was always present, in lore and bookish tradition, as a source of emulation and renascence.
The decline of Kiev led to regional developments so striking that the subsequent period has often been called the Period of Feudal Partition. This phrase is misleading: "feudal" is hardly more applicable to the widely varying institutions of this time than to those of the Kievan period. "Partition" implies a former unity of which there is insufficient evidence. The distinctiveness of the character and historical fortunes of each of the major East Slavic regions is clear even in the Kievan period.
Novgorod arose in the 9th century as one of the earliest centers of the exploitation of the forest hinterland and remained the most important commercial center of the Kievan period. The changes of the latter Kievan period did not diminish the town's importance, for it benefitted both from the increased activity of the Hanseatic League and from the development of the upper Volga region, for which it was a major trade outlet. Although Novgorod was an early base for the Rurikids, the princely traditions characteristic of Kiev and other post-Kievan centers never developed there. When Kiev declined, Novgorod soon (1136) declared its independence from princely power, and, although it accepted princely protectors from various neighboring dynasties, it remained, until conquered by Muscovy (Moscow), a sovereign city.
During the 13th century, Novgorod's burghers easily found an accommodation with the invading Mongols. In the Mongol period, its energetic river pirates pushed farther north and east toward the Urals and even down the Volga, and Novgorod's prosperity was generally unbroken.
Novgorod was governed by an oligarchy of great trading boyar families who controlled the exploitation of the hinterland. They chose (from among themselves) a mayor, a military commander, and a council of aldermen, who controlled the affairs of the city and its territories. The town itself was divided into five "ends," which seem to have corresponded to the "fifths" into which the hinterland was divided. There was, in addition, a veche ("council"), apparently a kind of town meeting of broad but indeterminate composition, whose decisions, it would appear, were most often controlled by the oligarchy. A major role in politics was played by the archbishop, who after 1156 controlled the lands and incomes previously owned by the Kievan princes and who appears throughout Novgorod's history as a powerful, often independent figure.
During this period, much of the territory of the principalities of Smolensk, Polotsk, Turov, and Pinsk was controlled by the grand principality of Lithuania, which was essentially an international or nonnational formation, led by a foreign dynasty (of eastern Lithuanian pagan origins) ruling over predominantly Belorussian and Ukrainian populations.
The region bounded by the Oka and Volga rivers, later to be the heartland of the grand principality of Moscow, was settled before the arrival of Slavs from Novgorod and the Baltic area by a Finnic tribe. Rostov, the earliest princely center, was from Vladimir's time included in the princely rotation system. In the 12th century, it became the patrimony of the younger branch of Vladimir II Monomakh's family (who founded the new princely center Vladimir in 1108). Under his son Yury Dolgoruky (1125-57) and grandson Andrew I (1157-74), the principality reached a high political and cultural development, which it retained through much of the succeeding century. Early in the 13th century, the principality of Moscow was created as an appanage (royal grant) within the grand principality of Vladimir, and this new seat grew in importance when Michael Khorobrit, brother of Alexander Nevsky, conquered Vladimir (1248) and made himself prince of both centers.
The lands of Galicia and Volhynia were always ethnically and economically distinct from the Kievan region proper, as well as from more distant regions. Agriculture was highly developed, and trade, particularly in the valuable local salt, tended to take westward and overland routes. Galicia, already a separate principality by 1100, grew as Kiev declined. Later, Roman Mstislavich of Volhynia (ruled 1199-1205) conquered Galicia and united the two principalities. Under his son Daniel (1201-64), difficulties with the Galician landed magnates and the interference of the Hungarians weakened the principality, and it was subjugated in 1240 by the Mongol invasion. Eventually, this region came under the domination of Lithuania (Volhynia) and Poland (Galicia).
In 1223, when the first Mongol reconnaissance into former Kievan territory led to the disastrous defeat of a Volhynian-Galician-Polovtsian army on the Kalka River, the Rurikid principalities had for generations been intermittently at war. Kiev was in ruins, Novgorod was preoccupied with commerce and with its northern neighbours, Galicia was being torn internally and drawn increasingly into Polish and Hungarian dynastic affairs, and Vladimir-Suzdal, apparently the leading principality, was unable to resist the finely organized and skillful mounted bowmen of the steppe, the greatest military force of the age.
Pious tradition, born of the works of monkish annalists and court panegyrists, has exaggerated both the destructiveness of the first Mongol conquests and the strength of the resistance. The Mongols aimed to revive, under a unified political system, the trade that had traditionally crossed the Central Asian steppe and vitalized the economy of the pastoral nomads. As they moved westward, they gained the collaboration of groups of Turkic nomads and the predominantly Iranian and Muslim traders in the towns of the old Silk Road; they encountered the greatest resistance in sedentary political centers and among landowning elites. The lands of the Rus presented numerous similarities with the Central Asian areas that the Mongols had already conquered. Here, too, a former commercial empire had fallen apart into an aggregation of warring principalities. Here, too, ready recruits were to be found in the Polovtsians, who controlled the lower Dnieper and Volga and Don, and in the Muslim merchants, who dealt in the towns of the Crimea and the upper Volga. These merchants showed the way, first (1223) to the Crimea and up the Volga to the old center of Bulgar, later to Ryazan, Rostov, and the Suzdalian towns, and still later (1240) to Kiev and Galicia.
Many of the conquered cities made a striking recovery and adjustment to the new relationships. Some towns, such as Kiev, never fully recovered in Mongol times, but the cities of the Vladimir-Suzdal region clearly prospered. New centers, such as Moscow and Tver, hardly mentioned in any source before the Mongol period, arose and flourished in Mongol times.
Thus, the Mongol invasion was not everywhere a catastrophe. The local princely dynasties continued unchanged in their traditional seats; some princes resisted the new authority and were killed in battle, but no alien princes ever became established in Slavic territory. Few Mongols remained west of the Urals after the conquest; political and fiscal administration was entrusted to the same Turkic clan leaders and Islamic merchants who had for generations operated in the area. The whole of the Novgorodian north remained outside the sphere of direct Tatar control, although the perspicacious burghers maintained correct relations with the khans.
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