The Meaning of Rus'
Whereas controversy continues to rage over the origin of the term Rus’, there is some consensus as to how the term came to be applied to the territory and inhabitants of the Kievan realm.
Initially, the term Rus' was associated with the ruling Varangian princes and the lands under their control. This meant, in particular, the cities of Kiev, Chernihiv, and Pereiaslav together with the surrounding countryside. The lands within this larger Kiev-Chernihiv-Pereiaslav triangle became the Rus' land par excellence.Beginning with Volodymyr the Great in the late tenth century and, especially, laroslav the Wise in the eleventh century, there was a conscious effort to associate the term with all the lands under the hegemony of Kiev’s grand princes. To the concept of Rus' as the territory of Kievan Rus' was added another dimension by the Christian inhabitants’ description of themselves collectively as Rus' (the singular of which term was rusyn, sometimes rusyc/i). Nevertheless, while political and cultural leaders from the various principalities (Galicia-Volhynia, Novgorod, Suzdal', etc.) may have spoken of their patrimonies as part of the land of Rus', they often referred to Rus' as simply a roughly triangular area east of the middle Dnieper River surrounding the cities of Chernihiv, Kiev, and Pereiaslav.
Following the end of Kievan Rus' in the second half of the fourteenth century, the successor states which fought for control of the old realm often used the term Rus' to describe all the lands that had once been under Kiev’s hegemony. The Lithuanians claimed for themselves and conquered what they described as the Rus' lands from Polatsk and Smolensk in the north, to Vol- hynia and Turau-Pinsk in the center, to Kiev, Chernihiv, Pereiaslav, and beyond in the south. Analogously, the Poles designated Galicia, their mid- fifteenth-century acquisition, as the Rus' land or Rus' palatinate (ZJetnia Rusia or Wojewodz-two Rusiie).
By the late sixteenth century, Rus' had come to mean all the Orthodox faithful and the lands they inhabited in the Belarusan and Ukrainian palatinates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Finally, the rulers of the principality of Vladimir-Suzdal' and then Muscovy fused the idea of the Rus' land with the idea of their own Riuryk dynasty (ostensibly descended from the ninth-century leader Riuryk). For them, Rus' meant not only all the lands under Muscovy’s control, but also other parts of the Kievan heritage that awaited acquisition in the future. In short, by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the idea that Rus' coincided with all the lands of the former Kievan realm of laroslav the Wise and his descendants had become firmly entrenched in the political mind-set of eastern Europe.Another perspective was that of the Orthodox church and the Byzantine world, of which Kievan Rus' was a part. From the time of the first appearance of Christianity among the Rus', the Byzantine Orthodox church recognized the office of the Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus', by which title was meant all the lands of Kievan Rus'. When, in the fourteenth century, Byzantium agreed to the establishment of a second Rus' metropolitanate, the Metropolitanate of Halych, in Galicia, to complement that of the Kiev metropolitan, by then resident in Moscow, terms were needed to distinguish the two jurisdictions. The region closest to Constantinople, the Galician metropolitanate, with its six eparchies on the southern Rus' or Ukrainian lands, was called in Byzantine Greek Mikra Rosita - inner or Little Rus'; the more distant Muscovite jurisdiction, with its twelve eparchies, became Megale Rosiia - outer or Great Rus'.
These distinctions were maintained during the political expansion of Muscovy. Beginning in the early fourteenth century, Muscovite rulers styled themselves grand princes, then tsars, of all Rus' (vseia Rusii\ and after the mid-seventeenth century their title was reformulated as Tsar of All Great, Little, and White Rus' (vseia Velikiia i Malyia i Belyia Rusii).
During the first half of the eighteenth century, the old term Rus' was transformed into Russia (Rossiia), when Tsar Peter I transformed the tsardom of Muscovy into the Russian Empire. Henceforth, the terms Little Russia (Maiorossiia) and Litt/e Russians were used to describe Ukraine and its inhabitants under Russian imperial rule.As for the original term Rus', it was really maintained only in the western Ukrainian lands of Galicia, Bukovina, and Transcarpathia, all of which after 1772 were under Austrian rule. The Greek Catholic church used the term in the title of the restored Metropolitanate of Halych and Rus' (1808). Even more widespread was the use of the term by the East Slavic inhabitants of Galicia, Bukovina, and Transcarpathia, who until well into the twentieth century continued to call themselves the people of Rus', or of the Rus' faith, that is, Rusyns (rusyny, rusnatsi).
Besides the Greco-Byzantine term Rosia to describe Rus', Latin documents used several related terms - Ruseia, Russia, Ruzzia — for Kievan Rus' as a whole. Subsequently, the terms Ruteni and Rutheni were used to describe Ukrainian and Belarusan Eastern Christians (especially members of the Uniate, later Greek Catholic, church) residing in the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The German, French, and English versions of those terms - Ruthenen, ruthene, Ruthenian - generally were applied only to the inhabitants of Austrian Galicia and Bukovina and of Hungarian Transcarpathia. For the longest time, English-language writings did not distinguish the name Rus' from Russia, with the result that in descriptions of the pre-fourteenth century Kievan realm the conceptually distorted formulation Kievan Russia was used. In recent years, however, the correct terms Rus' and Kievan Rus' have appeared more frequently in English-language publications, although the corresponding adjective Rus'/Rusyn has been avoided in favor of either the incorrect term Russian or the correct but visually confusing Rus'ian/Rusian.
Volodymyr’s ability to demand and obtain the respect of his sons, Kievan Rus' experienced a marked degree of political unity for most of his reign.
The efforts toward political unity based on familial ties to the Kievan grand prince were complemented on the ideological front as well. In contrast to his predecessors, who seemed to show only a passive allegiance to their traditional paganism and therefore a general tolerance of differing religions, Volodymyr decided to make religion an affair of state and, by means of it, he hoped, to make his subjects ideologically united and therefore more loyal to Kievan rule. Such a policy was adopted early in his reign, when he established an animistic pantheon based on gods already familiar to the East Slavs (headed by Perun and including Khors, Dazhboh, Striboh, and Mokosh) which he intended to serve as the official state religion. Simultaneously with this development, Kiev witnessed religious discrimination, as Christians and others who were not loyal pagans became subject to persecution.
While the idea of a state religion seemed politically wise, the choice of paganism proved inappropriate. All the surrounding powers with which Volodymyr was familiar had more advanced systems of religious belief and ritual, whether Christianity among the Byzantine Greeks in the southwest and Poles in the west, Islam among the Volga Bulgars in the east, or Judaism among the Khazars in the southeast. The existence of these faiths among neighboring and often militarily strong entities could not help but have an influence on the politically ambitious and astute Volodymyr.
Christianity and the baptism of Rus'
Of the three systems of belief, Christianity was perhaps best known. There was already a strong Christian presence on Ukrainian lands (especially in the Crimea) going back to the fourth century, and in Kiev, Christianity struck roots during the rule of the first Varangians, Askol'd and Dir, in the second half of the ninth century.
After a lull in its development, Christianity was revived a century later by Ol'ha/Helena and her immediate entourage, but it was her grandson Volodymyr who was to establish the new religion permanently in Kievan Rus'.Notwithstanding the medieval chronicles, whose clerical authors emphasized the spiritual conversion of Volodymyr, politics as much as personal inclinations prompted him to reject the recently established pagan pantheon in favor of the relatively more complex Eastern Christianity from Byzantium. At issue for Volodymyr was the possibility of raising the international prestige of Kievan Rus', of developing further commercial and diplomatic links with Byzantium, and of consolidating his own rule over a Slavic-Varangian realm through common loyalty to a church of which he would be the secular guardian. The decision to accept Christianity occurred sometime in the late 980s, following a complex series of events over which there is still disagreement regarding the exact timing and sequence.
In late 987, Volodymyr agreed to come to the aid of the Byzantine emperor, whose throne was being threatened by internal revolt. In return for Rus' military assistance, the Kievan grand prince was to receive a singular honor, the hand in