How Kyivan Rus' Got Fat―and Fell 1054-1242
Kyivan Rus’ was where both Ukraine, and then Russia, began. Dictators create and use myths of history and the future, making it look like they have some sort of divine right and historical mandate to justify and glorify their territorial ambitions.
To understand the current Ukrainian conflict, we have to explore how Putin looks at history and appeals to a certain viewpoint to give his actions the appearance of justice—what historians call his “historical mythology.”Kyivan Rus’ prospered after the alliance with Constantinople. By the 1000s, the Empire covered an area from the White Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, and from Central Poland in the west to the eastern Crimean Peninsula. Slaves, honey, and furs flowed into southern markets, and silver and metalwork flowed the other way. Trade-route taxation fattened the Varangian warriors and slowly weakened their will to fight. From there, Kyivan Rus’ slowly fragmented and faded until it was swallowed up entirely by Mongols in the mid-1200s, as they pressed westward with deadly force to expand their energetic new empire.
The Kyivan Rus’ fortunes followed the usual rise-and-fall pattern of dynasties. The foundational stage was driven by enormous energy. Ad hoc solutions were put in place to control conquered people, and keep their newly acquired territories in sufficient peace, so as to not disrupt trade. For Kyivan Rus’, that was the period from the first longboats to the reign of Vladimir the Great (∼650-1015).
The second phase in a dynasty is the enrichment phase, often called its “golden age.” For Kyivan Rus’, that started with the Constantinople agreement of 988, followed by two centuries of unchallengeable power. Kyiv raked in huge profits, and prospered alongside Constantinople’s dominance. The ruler of Constantinople had a standing army of Varangian bodyguards, exactly like the Swiss guard in the Vatican.
Internal power struggles were still an issue for Kyivan Rus’, however, and it was not until 1036 that Yaroslav “the Wise” gained total control. He produced a legal framework for his kingdom, the Russkaya Pravda (Russian Truth!), the first legal code for the Eastern Slavs, and the precursor of contemporary Russian law. By the end of the 1100s, the Norse had completely assimilated with the Slavs.The decline and fall phase happens as the state becomes more concerned with tradition than expansion, and starts to breed inner competition. Yaroslav the Wise was a famous builder of churches, enhancing his prestige and control by co-opting the Church. He died in 1054, and was buried in one of the cathedrals he had built, St Sophia’s. Then the princelings squabbled over the throne. Murder, war, and mayhem engulfed the state as province fought against province. At the same time, Constantinople’s power was failing. The western Roman Catholic Church was launching repeated quasi-religious military expeditions—known as “crusades”—to try and wrest control of the Eastern Mediterranean from the Muslims. The crusades brought calamitous shifts in Mediterranean trade routes, and Constantinople lost its control of the movement of wealth.
In a series of decisive seasonal wars between 1237-1242, the Mongols broke the old Norse Empire, and that was the end of Ukrainian sovereignty for eight centuries.