Russia (8 page)

According to this, Sviatoslav was a man of medium height, broad shouldered, blue-eyed, bushy-browed and snub-nosed. He had a thick neck,
long moustachios and a shaven head — except for a lock of hair on one side, the mark of his nobility. In one ear he wore a gold ring set with two pearls and a ruby, and he wore a suit of golden armour. Yet he seemed ‘gloomy and savage’, no doubt because his imperial hopes had been dashed.
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Sviatoslav would not adopt an appropriate mien of humility, however, and this did not please the Emperor, whose agents soon arranged for the Pechenegs to ambush Sviatoslav and kill him. In this way, glittering ambition met a mean and dusty end.

Politics continued in its bloody tradition. Sviatoslav’s three sons, who had been acting as his viceroys in Kiev, Novgorod and Derevliania, fell out with one another, and two of them lost their lives. The survivor was Vladimir, the ruler who brought Russia into the Christian fold and became its founding saint. His image, created by a grateful Church, gives a misleading impression of the man, however. The real Vladimir was visibly his father’s son: a commercial slave-owner who became the proud possessor of several hundred concubines; a ruthless politico, little moved by considerations of brotherly love. With the help of a band of Viking mercenaries he had disposed of his brother Iaropolk of Kiev, who favoured Christianity, and promised to maintain the cause of paganism. Many years were to pass before he recanted, and then only for compelling political reasons.

Vladimir had sent a contingent of warriors to help Emperor Basil II defeat a rebellion, and the grateful Basil had offered his own sister Anna to Vladimir in marriage — an alliance which would confer considerable prestige. No princess born in the purple had ever before been offered in marriage to a foreigner, however useful, however powerful. The price was conversion, but it seemed a price worth paying. Then the Emperor and his entourage began to have second thoughts about the merits of the match. This hitch led Vladimir to launch a campaign against Byzantine holdings in the Crimea. Only when Anna was finally delivered did Vladimir fulfil his side of the bargain.

The statue of Perun the Thunderer and the other idols he had had erected on a hill that dominated Kiev were now pulled down. They were then subjected to a humiliating ritual flogging by twelve men as they were dragged to the river Dnieper and then hurled into it.
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The entire population of the city is said to have been driven into the river too — to be baptized. Russia now was part of Christendom.

A splendid monument celebrating the conversion still stands in Kiev: the cathedral church now known as St Sophia, though the original foundation had been dedicated to Kiev’s carefully chosen patron saint, Elias. Vladimir’s sponsor, the Emperor Basil, was, after all, a devotee of St Elias.
Moreover, the saint was associated with thunder and lightning, which made his cult particularly attractive to worshippers of Perun.
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The choice was calculated both to ingratiate Russia’s ruler with the great Emperor and to help wean pagan subjects from their addiction to Perun. The pressing need for St Elias eventually passed, however, and so when a new cathedral was built it was dedicated to Santa Sophia, the Holy Wisdom.

It was not Vladimir who built it, however, but his son laroslav the Wise, who lies buried in it still, in a white stone sarcophagus. Begun in 1017 and dedicated in 1037, a year after laroslav inflicted a decisive defeat on the Pechenegs, the cathedral in Kiev has thirteen domes — one for Christ, and one for each of the Apostles. Its impressive massing recalls Justinian’s basilica of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople, and Byzantine masons, engineers and artists were undoubtedly involved in its creation, as they were in the cathedral of Santa Sophia which laroslav built in Novgorod. Aspects of the Kiev structure, indeed, recall Novgorod rather than Byzantium, and are said to represent something distinctively Russian in style.
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The building, on which so many nameless craftsmen lavished their skills, symbolized both Russia’s coming of age as an independent state and its membership of what has been called ‘the Byzantine Commonwealth’ of Christian Orthodoxy. The first priests there had been Greek, but now that more Russians were becoming literate and ordained priests a Russian church hierarchy was being formed. Indeed some of the more able of them were to serve the Grand Prince and help him build an efficient administration for his far-flung realm. The new cathedral symbolized Russia’s membership of Christian civilization, just as it reflected the state’s considerable wealth.

Riurik may be the legendary progenitor of Russia’s ruling house; Vladimir may have brought Russia into Christendom; laroslav the Wise has a good claim to be regarded as a founding father of the Russian state. He issued its first code of laws, and he created a family cult that was to have political as well as spiritual value: the cult of Boris and Gleb. The youngest sons of Vladimir, they had been murdered in 1015 by their older brother, Sviatopolk, in a bid to gain his father’s throne; they were already regarded as saints by many people for having, as they supposed, faced death with Christ-like submissiveness. laroslav now ordained the celebration of their feast day, and arranged for them to be commemorated no fewer than six times a year.
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In this way the blood
of
the innocents came to sanctify the men of power related to them, and the Byzantine concept of divinely sanctioned, albeit sinful, rulers set the seal on the ruling family’s authority.

With the missionary priests who had been moving into Russia came books — Bibles, psalters, compilations of civil as well as canon law — and
literacy. These introduced elements of a distinct political philosophy which was to infuse Russian political life down the generations. The views of the great law-giver Justinian on the divine origin of political authority and relations between state and Church lay at its foundation: ‘God’s greatest gifts to men …’he wrote, ‘are the priesthood and state authority
(imperium).
The former serves the divine interest, the latter controls and cares for human interests.’ A legitimate ruler was given by ‘Christ, our God, who directs this great vessel of the present world … [as] a wise priest and pious tsar, a true leader giving the right words in judgement, guarding the truth for eternity … If anybody should upbraid … a pious prince without justification may he be punished. If a cleric he may be deposed, if a layman excommunicated.’ The ruler was appointed by God, and represented Christ on earth. He carried out priestly functions, promoted the Church’s interests, and supervised the clergy. Many such ideas, promoting symbiosis of Church and state, concludes one expert, ‘were merged into the political structure of the State of Kiev, and … became the basis for Russia’s further evolution’.
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More than that, Russian rulers sought legitimation by presenting themselves ceremonially in the manner of Byzantine emperors, as well as by virtue of their Christianity. Ilarion, whom Iaroslav had appointed metropolitan of Kiev in 1051, made the connection in a treatise on law and grace which contains a remarkable paeon of praise for Vladimir and by implication for his son Iaroslav: ‘You are similar to Constantine the Great, you are equally wise, and you love God as much, and therefore you equally deserve respect from his servants [the Church] … Let us praise … our leader and instructor, the great khagan of our land, Vladimir.’
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Iaroslav not only ordered the compilation of Russia’s first code of law
(Russkaia pravda)
, he issued his own coinage (presenting an image of himself enthroned in majesty) rather than continuing to use imported currency like Byzantine drachmas or oriental dirhams, and he was recognized as the peer of most other European rulers. Iaroslav had married a daughter of the King of Sweden; his son Vsevolod married into the Byzantine imperial family; his daughters married the kings of France, Hungary and Norway Magnus the Good, the future king of Denmark, was raised at his court; so was Harald Hardrada, who had been a mercenary commander in Russia and Byzantium, and was to be Harold Godwinson’s challenger for the crown of England in 1066.
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The wealth, power and influence that Russia enjoyed in the time of Iaroslav held out every prospect of an even greater future. Russia’s territory was immense, its population had burgeoned, its commerce thrived, its
ruler had European stature. Almost every augury pointed to a brilliant future. And yet this first Russian Empire was to shrivel and collapse within 200 years, and laroslav bears some responsibility for it. There was a flaw in the succession system which was serious enough to undermine the state, and laroslav was aware of it.

The fatal flaw was the ‘apanage’ system, the practice by which an estate was divided between one’s offspring. The eldest might get more than his brothers, but the others also inherited portions. This was the custom of the Slavs as it was of the Irish - princes and peasants alike. It seemed to carry some advantages in Russia, where both commercial and political success depended on unitary control of the immense river system from Novgorod in the north to Kiev in the south and from Polotsk in the west to Tmutorakhan (present-day Taman) in the east. Family interdependence implied trust, while also providing sufficient devolution of authority to facilitate effective regional control. Even the practice laroslav initiated of lateral succession, from brother to brother, rather than vertical succession, from father to son, had the advantage of entrusting the most important cities with their hinterlands to the most senior, and therefore most experienced, members of the ruler’s immediate family. However, as time passed and the family tree ramified, it became increasing difficult to determine the right pecking order, and the succession eventually became the object of almost perpetual dispute and feuding.
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Common blood does not necessarily imply harmony. Family members can fall out, especially when power is at stake.

Belatedly, laroslav himself recognized the danger and tried to avert it. According to a chronicler, before he died in 1054 he summoned his sons and begged them, much as Shakespeare has the dying Edward IV beg his courtiers, to love each other and his heir. If they did so, said laroslav, God would vanquish their enemies and peace would prevail. But, he warned, ‘If you live in hatred and dissention, quarrelling with one another, then you will ruin the country your ancestors won with so much effort, and you yourselves will perish.’

Though laroslav had had the authority to create a more centralized administration, he had failed to challenge the apanage principle. Perhaps he was too much of a traditionalist; perhaps it was politically impossible for him to do so. At any rate, his will was set in the traditional mould. He bequeathed the throne of Kiev to Iziaslav, his first-born, and four other cities to his other sons, Sviatoslav, Vsevolod, Igor and Viacheslav. If any of them violated the boundaries of another’s territory or tried to oust him,
the others were to join together to help the brother who had been wronged.
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Beyond that, Iaroslav had only exhortations for them. It was not enough. The falling-out was not long delayed.

The masters of the steppe, which ran eastward
of
the Kievan frontier, were now the Polovtsians, otherwise known as Cumans or the Kipchak horde. Anxious to break into the profitable slave trade and to filch such plunder as they could from Russian territory, their raiding parties were becoming a nuisance, and to the more exposed cities even a danger. In 1068 these Polovtsians succeeded in routing a Russian army trying to keep them out, and this precipitated a revolt against Grand Prince Iziaslav of Kiev. The rebels evidently thought Iziaslav was failing them over the issue of defence. The invaders were turned back by Sviatoslav’s forces and order was restored to Kiev. However, the divisive issue of the succession remained. Iziaslav’s three brothers joined forces to remove him, and Sviatoslav gained control of Kiev. But he died in 1077, at which Iziaslav returned from refuge in Poland and took over again.

When he was killed in the following year, a chaotic period of family infighting followed — only briefly interrupted by war against the Polovtsians. The premier city passed into the hands of Iaroslav’s last surviving son, Vsevolod, but he died in 1094, and from then on the crisis deepened. Attempts were made to find an accommodation between rival members of the family, and it was agreed to abide by Iaroslav’s will by giving Kiev to Iziaslav’s son Sviatopolk as a patrimony, Chernigov to the sons of Sviatoslav, and so on. But, as generation succeeded generation and the lines of precedence among Iaroslav’s numerous descendants became more and more blurred, the spirit of family solidarity withered, and the tendency to civil strife grew.

Apanages became patrimonies, and the Rus state came to resemble a ramshackle collection of little independent duchies. Pressure from the Polovtsians increased, and some of them joined in the Russians’ family fights. Fear of the steppe people and a sense of the common interest sometimes made for co-operation, but family conflict always flared up again and the fear of civil war was pervasive even in quiet times. ‘Why’, wailed a chronicler, ‘do we ruin the land of Russia by continual strife against each other?’
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The answer was ambition, aggressive individualism, resentments enshrined in family memories, the prevailing sense of honour — familiar enough in western Europe at that time, where they also led to rebellion and civil war. Then in 1113 Vladimir Monomakh became grand prince of Kiev, and the old sense of family solidarity briefly reasserted itself.

Vladimir was born in 1053, a year before the death of Iaroslav, his grandfather. The offspring of Vsevolod of Chernigov and a Byzantine princess, he liked to boast of his toughness and prowess. In his autobiographical testament he wrote that

I [have] captured ten or twenty wild horses with my own hand … Two bison tossed me and my horse on their horns, a stag gored me, an elk trampled me underfoot, another gored me with his horns, a wild boar tore my sword from my thigh, a bear bit my saddle-cloth next to my knee, and another wild beast jumped on to my flank and threw [down] my horse with me … [Yet] God preserved me unharmed. I often fell from my horse, fractured my skull twice, and in my youth injured my arms and legs, not sparing my head or my life.
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