Sailing from Byzantium (25 page)

If Byzantinists liked the old interpretation for the role it gave Byzantium in influencing Kievan Rus after the city's foundation, how much more reason they have to like the new one. Our new picture of Kiev's early days gives Byzantium a far more prominent role even than before. Byzantium, it now seems clear, was a decisive factor in Kiev's very origins— which turn out to be later, more sudden, and more dramatic than had earlier been suspected.

It's an open question whether Askold, Dir, and Oleg were actually historical figures. By the decade of the 940s, the evidence is firmer. In 941, the first clearly identifiable Kievan ruler, Igor, led a huge fleet—though the Byzantine reports of ten thousand ships obviously exaggerated its size—down from the Black Sea and terrorized the coastal areas around Constantinople for several months. Only when the Byzantines
brought some old ships out of retirement and armed them with Greek fire were the Russian ships driven away. Historians differ on what to make of this raid, but it was followed by a reaffirmation of commercial ties under a new and still more extensive treaty in 945, whose text is also given in the
Primary Chronicle.

Igor died leading a small force against rebels in nearby Dereva soon after the new treaty was signed, and power in Kiev passed smoothly to his widow, Olga, who acted as regent for their small son, Svyatoslav. Olga's first act was to wipe out the Derevlian rebels to a man—at least as the
Primary Chronicle
tells it, dwelling lovingly on every gruesome detail of Olga's relentless quest to avenge her husband's death. In what can be taken as literary foreshadowing, the little boy Svyatoslav gamely tries to hurl a spear against his father's killers, barely clearing his horse's ears.

The
Primary Chronicle
then depicts Olga as going on to further consolidate Kiev's control over other cities as far distant as Novgorod, power that was mainly exercised by the collection of tribute in the form of valuable goods such as furs, wax, honey, slaves, and feathers. These raw goods could be traded for cash and manufactured luxury items such as silk, which is prominently mentioned in the 945 treaty. Like her predecessors Olga looked first and foremost to Byzantium for such ventures, not to other markets, though she later flirted briefly with the Germans.

In 957, right between Liudprand of Cremona's two journeys to Constantinople, Olga herself visited the Byzantine capital with a large retinue. The primary purpose of her visit was trade, but Olga also had something else on her mind. Nearly a century earlier, Photius had reportedly sent Christian missionaries to the Rus. They disappeared without
a trace, but as contacts between Byzantium and the Rus grew closer with the rise of Kiev and the Dnieper trade, Christianity inevitably began winning converts among the Rus. Olga herself now asked to be baptized into Christianity. The ceremony was performed by the patriarch of Constantinople, presumably in Hagia Sophia. With the emperor Constan-tine VII Porphyrogenitus standing as her baptismal father, Olga was christened in state under the name Helena, after the mother of Constantine the Great.

This sort of intimate symbolic acceptance into the imperial family was taken very seriously. It was a rare honor, and it shows the importance that the Byzantines accorded their new ally to the north. But there may also have been a human element to the story, for the
Primary Chronicle
records Constantine VII—who seems genuinely to have been rather smitten with the remarkable Olga—as proposing marriage to the Rus ruler. She nimbly evades his advances, remarking that as her baptismal father he has called her his daughter, and so any union between them would be inappropriate under Christian law. His response is charmed but rueful: “Olga, you have outwitted me.”

We might expect the conversion of a strong-willed ruler like Olga to have resulted in the final Christianization of her people, but that step was to be deferred just a bit longer. No matter how she tried, the devout Olga could never shake the firm paganism of her equally strong-willed son and heir, Svyatoslav.

Svyatoslav was the first Russian ruler to have a Slavic name, which suggests that the Varangian Rus had now, like the Bulgars before them, been largely absorbed by their more numerous Slavic subjects. A restless and hard-charging warrior, gray-eyed and snub-nosed, Svyatoslav modeled himself
on the nomadic horsemen of the steppes, right down to hairstyle (shaved head with single side sprig of hair, barbarian style):

Stepping light as a leopard, he undertook many campaigns. Upon his expeditions he carried with him neither wagons nor kettles, and boiled no meat, but cut off small strips of horseflesh, game, or beef, and ate it after roasting it on the coals. Nor did he have a tent, but he spread out a horse-blanket under him, and set his saddle under his head; and all his retinue did likewise.

Leaving the formidable Olga to run things in Kiev, Svyatoslav at first devoted himself to further expanding Kievan power to the east. In the early 960s he undertook a series of expeditions against the Khazars, sacking their capital, Itil, and finally putting an end to the limping Khazar state. He then subjugated other tribes whose names the chronicle preserves—Kasogians, Yasians, Vyatichians—as well as attacking the Volga Bulgars. His objective seems to have been to gain access to the still lucrative Don and Volga trade routes, but if so, he was only partly successful.

Then, in 967, the Byzantine emperor Nicephorus II Phocas asked Svyatoslav to lead an army against the Bulgarians. This was a standard sort of request for the Byzantines to make of an ally, and it was accompanied by the usual bribe, or in this case perhaps slightly larger than usual, 1,500 pounds of gold. Svyatoslav duly crossed the Danube, easily defeated the Bulgarians, and occupied Little Preslav (Pereslavyets) in the Dobrudja, where he spent the winter.

While he was there, the Petchenegs seized the opportunity to attack Kiev, which they blockaded and besieged with a large force. Svyatoslav rushed back north and relieved the
city, driving the Petchenegs back out into the steppes. But his time in prosperous Bulgaria had given him ideas, and after rescuing Olga he had a surprise for her, announcing his intention to transfer the seat of Rus power to Bulgaria. Already ill, Olga died a few days after numbly receiving the news that her son and heir wished to move their capital south. Svyatoslav marched back to Bulgaria and again captured Little Preslav. It took the Byzantine emperor John Tzimisces (who had murdered and replaced Nicephorus II Phocas) three bloody defeats of Svyatoslav, and a long blockade on the Danube, to get him to agree to leave Bulgaria.

On their way back to Kiev via the Dnieper, laden with booty, Svyatoslav and his small retinue were set upon at the rapids by the Petchenegs. Svyatoslav was killed, and the Petchenegs (perhaps to show who the real barbarians were) gave his carefully shaved skull the now familiar Dixie-cup treatment. Svyatoslav had specifically asked the Byzantines to negotiate a safe passage. Either they had not bothered, or their request had been less compelling than the rich Bulgarian loot that Syatoslav and his men carried with them.

There is no indication that Svyatoslav's misbehavior in the Balkans did anything much to disrupt Kiev's close relationship with Byzantium. That relationship was based on trade, although that was about to change, and business is business. Both the Byzantines and, after Svyatoslav's death, the Russians were caught up in domestic tensions that would have blurred the lines of any antagonism.

In Byzantium, John Tzimisces replaced Nicephorus Phocas (whom he had killed) as regent for Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus’ young grandson Basil II until Tzimisces’ death in 976. At that point, the eighteen-year-old Basil II, Byzantium's rightful emperor, faced more than a decade of civil war in his struggle to rule the empire in his own name.

In Russia, where Svyatoslav had left several of his sons in charge of different cities, the 970s were similarly taken up in a succession struggle among those sons, with the youngest, Vladimir, finally emerging as victor in 980.

Basil II and Vladimir both faced daunting challenges in their respective struggles for power, and as it turned out, each had crucial support to offer the other just where and when it was needed most. These two outstanding rulers helped each other bring their countries, medieval Byzantium and Kievan Rus, to their respective peaks of prosperity and strength. In doing so, they firmly and finally cemented the unique partnership between Byzantine civilization and the emerging civilization of Russia.

he ruler known variously as Vladimir the Great and St. Vladimir had been born to one of Svyatoslav's peasant concubines around 956. His two older brothers, Yaropolk and Oleg, therefore had breeding and legitimacy as well as seniority on their sides. Svyatoslav had put Yaropolk in charge of Kiev and Oleg in charge of nearby Dereva (whose inhabitants had earlier rebelled against Igor), sending Vladimir to be prince of distant Novgorod. Trouble soon broke out between the two older brothers. Yaropolk defeated Oleg, who was killed in battle, and Vladimir fled to Sweden, leaving Yaropolk in sole control of Kievan Rus.

But if Vladimir had nothing else, he had nerve. As the
Primary Chronicle
relates, he gathered together a band of adventurers in Sweden, returned to Novgorod, and easily expelled Yaropolk's lieutenants there. Wasting no time, he marched on Kiev with a large army of mixed northerners, where he induced Yaropolk to flee by suborning his key general. Inviting Yaropolk to negotiations, Vladimir then had him stabbed by two Varangians as he came in the door.

Upon winning power Vladimir faced a potentially crippling lack of political legitimacy. He turned immediately to religion to solve that problem—but not to Christianity. Not at first, anyway. In the
Primary Chronicle,
Vladimir's very first act as ruler is to identify himself publicly with the pagan gods of traditional Slavic worship, headed by the thunder god, Perun: “Vladimir then began to rule alone in Kiev, and he set up idols on the hills outside the castle with the hall: one of Perun, made of wood with a head of silver and a mustache of gold, and others of Khors, Dazh'bog, Stribog, Simarg'l, and Mokosh.” Many of these gods reflect the local deities of communities over which Kiev now exercised control. A brother-killing bastard who was identified with Kiev's distant rival Novgorod, Vladimir desperately needed a way to establish himself with his still-heterogeneous subject population, and conspicuously adopting their gods was an obvious way to do that.

Yet, such a course also had pitfalls. Local gods evoke local ties, not loyalty to a central government. And like his father and grandparents, Vladimir made the expansion of Kievan authority his overriding concern, constantly campaigning against outlying towns, attacking, conquering, subjugating, exacting tribute.

Many of the inhabitants of these towns were Christians, as indeed were many in Kiev by now, and they objected to making mandatory sacrifices to pagan gods. There were also Muslims and Jews living under Kievan rule, indeed almost certainly within Kiev itself. The Khazars had been Jewish,
and the Volga Bulgars were Muslim, so that any Rus ruler possessed at least a passing familiarity with both of those faiths as well as with Christianity. From an early stage Vladimir also seems to have begun exploring the possibility of adopting one of these more prestigious, scripture-based monotheistic religions.

The famous set piece of Vladimir's conversion in the
Primary Chronicle
has been accepted by most historians as plausible at least in its broad outlines. Vladimir was entertaining some envoys from the Volga Bulgars, and he asked them about their faith. “They replied that they believed in God, and that Mahomet instructed them to practice circumcision, to eat no pork, to drink no wine, and, after death, promised them complete fulfillment of their carnal desires.” The last part sounded good to Vladimir, but not so the prohibition of pork and especially wine. “ ‘Drinking,’ said he, ‘is the joy of the Russes. We cannot exist without that pleasure.’ ” This last passage, it seems, is commonly cited as especially strong evidence of the chronicle's plausibility.

There followed similar visits from the Germans, representing the Latin church, and the Khazars, representing Judaism, both of whom also failed to win Vladimir's allegiance. The Germans prompted his rejection by revealing that their faith called for fasting, while the Khazars derailed themselves by bringing up the Diaspora. This led Vladimir to expostulate, “If God loved you and your faith, you would not be thus dispersed in foreign lands. Do you expect us to accept that fate also?”

Each of these episodes gets a paragraph in the
Primary Chronicle.
But then from Byzantium comes “a scholar” who gets more than ten pages, giving a long summary of world history à la the Old and New Testaments, which is moved
along in the text by periodic questions from the obviously rapt Vladimir. The “scholar” introduces his lengthy disquisition by saying that the Byzantine version of Christianity is similar to that of the Germans, but that the Germans “have modified the faith” by introducing novelties such as unleavened bread in the Eucharist.

After consulting his boyars, Vladimir then sent out emissaries to visit in turn the Volga Bulgars, the Germans, and the Byzantines and report on how they worshiped. The Bulgars and Germans received the envoys cordially enough, but couldn't compete with Hagia Sophia, where the emperor and patriarch invited the Russians to join a service. On entering the great church, the envoys later reported, “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that God dwells there among men.” Vladimir and his boyars, the
Primary Chronicle
says, now resolved to be baptized into the Byzantine version of the Christian faith.

That's the story from the Russian sources, looking back. The Byzantine sources have their own perspective on the conversion of the Rus, one that may be better grounded in reality.

During much of the tenth century, during Basil's minority and that of his grandfather Constantine VII Porphy-rogenitus before him, the Byzantine government had been controlled by powerful generals acting as regents and co-emperors. These figures have intruded themselves into our narrative more than once. Such men were the scions of the great military families in the provinces, especially in Asia Minor, families who were in large part responsible for the victories over the Arabs that expanded imperial territory
eastward over the course of the century. As the great families jockeyed for influence at court, rivalries developed among them, and it was such a rivalry that had led to the murder of Nicephorus Phocas by John Tzimisces in 969.

Over the next two decades of civil strife, the feud between the Phocas family and its enemies dominated Byzantine politics. Basil hung on, patiently working to reclaim power from the feuding generals, who commanded what were essentially private armies, imperial in name only, and larger than anything Basil could muster. Finally, after dispatching his rivals, Nicephorus Phocas’ nephew Bardas rebelled openly against Basil in 987, and was proclaimed emperor by his troops. He controlled virtually the whole empire, while Basil had only Constantinople itself, where he was surrounded and cut off.

But in Byzantine politics, whoever ruled in Constantinople retained the aura of legitimate power, no matter how bad things were elsewhere. And they were bad. Basil was challenged not only by Bardas Phocas but by a rebellion in Bulgaria, where the tsar Samuel had taken advantage of Byzantine confusion to throw off imperial rule. This had been imposed directly on Bulgaria by John Tzimisces, as part of the campaigns in which Svyatoslav had participated. In 986, the Bulgarians had caught Basil's army unawares and wiped it out in ambush as the Byzantines retreated through a steep mountain pass. From this point on, Basil would be grimly obsessed with Bulgaria's utter reduction, and his bloody fulfillment ofthat goal would ultimately win him the epithet Bulgaroctonos, “Bulgar-slayer.”

In 988, Basil's victory over Bulgaria lay far in the future. His most urgent priority was simple survival. Most importantly, to meet the armies of Bardas Phocas, Basil needed soldiers, and for that there was really only one place to turn.

Basil sent a delegation to Vladimir asking for a large detachment of troops, and in the negotiations that followed, the Byzantine emperor showed exactly how desperate the situation was by offering Vladimir his own sister Anna—a born-in-the-purple Byzantine princess, no less—in marriage.

This was a great opportunity for Vladimir, and an unheard-of concession to a barbarian ruler from the north. It would have absolutely scandalized Basil's grandfather, Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, who in his voluminous writings on imperial comportment was very clear that sullying the royal bloodline with such an alliance was out of the question.

Aside from the troops, Basil's only conditions in making this unprecedented offer were that Vladimir be baptized into Christianity and renounce his other wives. Vladimir accepted the offer, sent a reported six thousand troops to Basil, and was duly baptized. With the Russian troops Basil defeated the rebels and won sole control of the empire. The Russians stayed, eventually forming the famous crack unit known as the Varangian Guard, the emperor's elite, distinctive, and highly loyal personal guard at the Great Palace in Constantinople.

Back in Kiev, Vladimir instituted Christian worship with the same zeal he had earlier shown for the pagan gods, which he now publicly spurned:

When the Prince arrived at his capital, he directed that the idols should be overthrown, and that some should be cut to pieces and others burned with fire. He thus ordered that Perun should be bound to a horse's tail and dragged down … to the stream. He appointed twelve men to beat the idol with sticks…. After they had thus dragged the idol along, they cast it into the Dnieper.

He ordered the Kievans to undergo baptism as well, an order they received with exemplary good cheer and trust, saying (at least according to the monks who wrote the
Primary Chronicle),
“If this were not good, the Prince and his boyars would not have accepted it.” Surely not.

Vladimir also took steps to spread the new faith throughout Kiev's growing empire. “He began to found churches and to assign priests throughout the cities, and to invite the people to accept baptism in all the towns and cities.” But the most impressive churches were erected in the capital itself, with Byzantine help and inspired by Byzantine models. Where he had stood and uprooted the pagan idols Vladimir built a large church dedicated to his patron saint, Basil. On an even grander scale, he brought in Byzantine artists and craftsmen to construct a great church dedicated to the Holy Virgin, as part of a new, richly appointed royal palace complex on Old Kiev Hill, where he lived with his
porphyrogenita
bride.

From Byzantium came not only clerics to spread the gospel and man the new churches but also architects, artists, and craftsmen to decorate them, and to pass on their knowledge to Slavic apprentices. Within just a few years, the skyline of Kiev was completely altered; a visitor from the West, one Thietmar, bishop of Merseberg and a contemporary of Vladimir's, reported Kiev to be a magnificent city with some forty churches and eight marketplaces.

This transformation was nonetheless dwarfed by cultural changes that proceeded in tandem with the material ones. Vladimir's prestigious marriage alliance and his conversion to Christianity helped him secure his own position in Kiev. He was soon minting Byzantine-style gold and silver coins showing his royal self enthroned on one side, and the Byzantine Christ Pantocrator (“ruler of all”) on the other.

Most of all, in converting his people Vladimir gave them a collective identity—as Christians and, before long, as Russians.

Immediately after “inviting” his people to convert, Vladimir took steps to see that they had at least some idea of what they were converting to. In addition to sending out priests to the towns and cities, he initiated an educational program that targeted the children of his most influential subjects: “He took the children of the best families,” the
Primary Chronicle
tells us, “and sent them for instruction in book-learning. The mothers of these children,” the chronicler continues blandly, “wept bitterly over them, for they were not yet strong in faith, but mourned as for the dead.”

What Vladimir was doing here was more than just cleverly if coldheartedly indoctrinating his future ruling class. Since, like the Bulgarians before them, the Russians had had no alphabet before becoming Christians, Vladimir was also founding what would turn out to be one of the world's greatest literary traditions.

The “book-learning” with which these young students were inculcated was nothing other than the by now substantial body of Old Church Slavonic writings that constituted the legacy of saints Cyril and Methodius. That same Slavonic heritage, still flourishing in Bulgaria, found an even more momentous incarnation in Russia, where it became the dominant factor in the shaping of early Russian civilization.

The
Primary Chronicle
clearly recognizes this. The unknown chronicler prominently covers the missions to
Moravia and Bulgaria, pointing out the Russians’ cultural debt and proudly celebrating the common Slavic heritage as shaped by the Cyrillo-Methodian legacy. “It was for these Moravians that Slavic books were first written, and this writing prevails also in Rus and among the Danubian Bulgarians.”