Kievan Rus'
State in Europe, c. 880 to 1240 / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Kievan Rus',[lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 2] also known as Kyivan Rus',[lower-alpha 3][8][9] was a state and later an amalgam of principalities[10] in Eastern and Northern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century.[11] The name was coined by Russian historians in the 19th century. Encompassing a variety of polities and peoples, including East Slavic, Norse,[12][13] and Finnic, it was ruled by the Rurik dynasty, founded by the Varangian prince Rurik.[14] The modern nations of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine all claim Kievan Rus' as their cultural ancestor,[lower-alpha 4] with Belarus and Russia deriving their names from it, and the name Kievan Rus' derived from what is now the capital of Ukraine.[13][8] At its greatest extent in the mid-11th century, Kievan Rus' stretched from the White Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south and from the headwaters of the Vistula in the west to the Taman Peninsula in the east,[16][17] uniting the East Slavic tribes.[11]
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According to the Primary Chronicle, the first ruler to unite East Slavic lands into what would become Kievan Rus' was Oleg the Wise (r. 879–912). He extended his control from Novgorod south along the Dnieper river valley to protect trade from Khazar incursions from the east,[11] and took control of the city. Sviatoslav I (r. 943–972) achieved the first major territorial expansion of the state, fighting a war of conquest against the Khazars. Vladimir the Great (r. 980–1015) spread Christianity with his own baptism and, by decree, extended it to all inhabitants of Kiev and beyond. Kievan Rus' reached its greatest extent under Yaroslav the Wise (r. 1019–1054); his sons assembled and issued its first written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda, shortly after his death.[2]
The state began to decline in the late 11th century, gradually disintegrating into various rival regional powers throughout the 12th century.[18] It was further weakened by external factors, such as the decline of the Byzantine Empire, its major economic partner, and the accompanying diminution of trade routes through its territory.[19] It finally fell to the Mongol invasion in the mid-13th century, though the Rurik dynasty would continue to rule until the death of Feodor I of Russia in 1598.[20]
During its existence, Kievan Rus' was known as the "Rus' land" (Old East Slavic: ро́усьскаѧ землѧ́, romanized: rusĭskaę zemlę, from the ethnonym Роусь, Rusĭ; Medieval Greek: Ῥῶς, romanized: Rhos; Arabic: الروس, romanized: ar-Rūs), in Greek as Ῥωσία, Rhosia, in Old French as Russie, Rossie, in Latin as Rusia or Russia (with local German spelling variants Ruscia and Ruzzia), and from the 12th century also as Ruthenia or Rutenia.[21][22] Various etymologies have been proposed, including Ruotsi, the Finnish designation for Sweden or Ros, a tribe from the middle Dnieper valley region.[23]
According to the prevalent theory, the name Rus', like the Proto-Finnic name for Sweden (*rootsi), is derived from an Old Norse term for 'men who row' (rods-) because rowing was the main method of navigating the rivers of Eastern Europe, and could be linked to the Swedish coastal area of Roslagen (Rus-law) or Roden.[24][25] The name Rus' would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden: Ruotsi and Rootsi.[25][26]
When the Varangian princes arrived, the name Rus' was associated with them and came to be associated with the territories they controlled. Initially the cities of Kiev, Chernihiv, and Pereiaslav and their surroundings came under Varangian control.[28][29]: 697 From the late tenth century, Vladimir the Great and Yaroslav the Wise tried to associate the name with all of the extended princely domains. Both meanings persisted in sources until the Mongol conquest: the narrower one, referring to the triangular territory east of the middle Dnieper, and the broader one, encompassing all the lands under the hegemony of Kiev's grand princes.[28][30]
The Russian term Kiyevskaya Rus (Russian: Ки́евская Русь) was coined in the 19th century in Russian historiography to refer to the period when the centre was in Kiev.[31] In the 19th century it also appeared in Ukrainian as Kyivska Rus (Ukrainian: Ки́ївська Русь).[32] Later, the Russian term was rendered into Belarusian as Kiyewskaya Rus' or Kijeŭskaja Ruś (Belarusian: Кіеўская Русь) and into Rusyn as Kyïvska Rus' (Rusyn: Київска Русь).[citation needed]
In English, the term was introduced in the early 20th century, when it was found in the 1913 English translation of Vasily Klyuchevsky's A History of Russia,[33] to distinguish the early polity from successor states, which were also named Rus'. The variant Kyivan Rus' appeared in English-language scholarship by the 1950s.[34]
A rare spelling Kyevan Rus', based on Old East Slavic Kyjevŭ (Kыѥвъ)[dubious – discuss] 'Kyiv', is also occasionally seen.[35][36]
The Varangian Rus' from Scandinavia used the Old Norse name Garðaríki, which, according to a common interpretation, means "land of towns".