Igor
▪ Russian prince
also called Ingvar
born c. 877
died 945, Dereva region [Russia]
grand prince of Kiev and presumably the son of Rurik, prince of Novgorod, who is considered the founder of the dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus and, later, Muscovy until 1598. Igor, successor to the great warrior and diplomat Oleg (reigned c. 879–912), assumed the throne of Kiev in 912.
Depicted as a greedy, rapacious, and unsuccessful prince by the 12th-century The Russian Primary Chronicle (Russian Primary Chronicle, The), Igor in 913–914 led an expedition into Transcaucasia that ended in total disaster for his forces. He also conducted two expeditions against Byzantium (941 and 944), but many of his ships were destroyed by “Greek fire,” and the treaty that he finally concluded in 944 was less advantageous to Kiev than the one obtained by Oleg in 911. Igor did manage to extend the authority of Kiev over the Pechenegs, a Turkic people inhabiting the steppes north of the Black Sea, as well as over the East Slavic tribe of Drevlyane. When he went to Dereva (the land of the Drevlyane located in the region of the Pripet River) to collect tribute (945), however, his attempt to extort more than the customary amount provoked the Drevlyane into rebelling and killing him.
Vladimir I
▪ grand prince of Kiev
in full Vladimir Svyatoslavich, byname Saint Vladimir, or Vladimir The Great, Russian Svyatoy Vladimir, or Vladimir Veliky
born c. 956, , Kiev, Kievan Rus [now in Ukraine]
died July 15, 1015, Berestova, near Kiev; feast day July 15
grand prince of Kiev and first Christian ruler in Kievan Rus, whose military conquests consolidated the provinces of Kiev and Novgorod into a single state, and whose Byzantine baptism determined the course of Christianity in the region.
Vladimir was the son of the Norman-Rus prince Svyatoslav of Kiev by one of his courtesans and was a member of the Rurik lineage dominant from the 10th to the 13th century. He was made prince of Novgorod in 970. On the death of his father in 972, he was forced to flee to Scandinavia, where he enlisted help from an uncle and overcame Yaropolk, another son of Svyatoslav, who attempted to seize the duchy of Novgorod as well as Kiev. By 980 Vladimir had consolidated the Kievan realm from Ukraine to the Baltic Sea and had solidified the frontiers against incursions of Bulgarian, Baltic, and Eastern nomads.
Although Christianity in Kiev existed before Vladimir's time, he had remained a pagan, accumulated about seven wives, established temples, and, it is said, taken part in idolatrous rites involving human sacrifice. With insurrections troubling Byzantium (Byzantine Empire), the emperor Basil II (976–1025) sought military aid from Vladimir, who agreed, in exchange for Basil's sister Anne in marriage. A pact was reached about 987, when Vladimir also consented to the condition that he become a Christian. Having undergone baptism, assuming the Christian patronal name Basil, he stormed the Byzantine area of Chersonesus (Korsun, now part of Sevastopol) to eliminate Constantinople's final reluctance. Vladimir then ordered the Christian conversion of Kiev and Novgorod, where idols were cast into the Dnieper River after local resistance had been suppressed. The new Rus Christian worship adopted the Byzantine rite in the Old Church Slavonic language. The story (deriving from the 11th-century monk Jacob) that Vladimir chose the Byzantine rite over the liturgies of German Christendom, Judaism, and Islām because of its transcendent beauty is apparently mythically symbolic of his determination to remain independent of external political control, particularly of the Germans. The Byzantines, however, maintained ecclesiastical control over the new Rus church, appointing a Greek metropolitan, or archbishop, for Kiev, who functioned both as legate of the patriarch of Constantinople and of the emperor. The Rus-Byzantine religio-political integration checked the influence of the Roman Latin church in the Slavic East and determined the course of Russian Christianity, although Kiev exchanged legates with the papacy. Among the churches erected by Vladimir was the Desyatinnaya in Kiev (designed by Byzantine architects and dedicated about 996) that became the symbol of the Rus conversion. The Christian Vladimir also expanded education, judicial institutions, and aid to the poor.
Another marriage, following the death of Anne (1011), affiliated Vladimir with the Holy Roman emperors of the German Ottonian dynasty and produced a daughter, who became the consort of Casimir I the Restorer of Poland (1016–58). Vladimir's memory was kept alive by innumerable folk ballads and legends.
Vladimir II Monomakh
▪ grand prince of Kiev
in full Vladimir Vsevolodovich Monomakh
born 1053
died May 19, 1125, near Kiev [now in Ukraine]
grand prince of Kiev from 1113 to 1125.
Vladimir was the son of Grand Prince Vsevolod I Yaroslavich (ruled Kiev 1078–93) and Irina, the daughter of the Byzantine emperor Constantine IX Monomachus. He became active in the politics of Kievan Rus, helping his father and uncle Izyaslav I (ruled at Kiev intermittently 1054–78) defeat his cousins Oleg Svyatoslavich and Boris Vyacheslavich at Chernigov (1078; modern Chernihiv, Ukraine) and succeeding his father as prince of Chernigov when Vsevolod became grand prince of Kiev. Vladimir ruled Chernigov from 1078 to 1094, restoring order among his cousins in Volhynia (1084–86) and assuming a leading role among princes of Rus at the conferences held to avert perpetual warfare among themselves (1097 and 1100). When his cousin Grand Prince Svyatopolk II (ruled Kiev 1093–1113) died, the veche (city council) of Kiev named him successor.
During his reign, as prior to it, Vladimir was almost constantly involved in wars, fighting primarily the Polovtsy (Kipchak), who had settled in the steppe region southeast of the Kievan state and had been raiding the lands of Rus since 1061. In his “Testament,” which he wrote for his sons and which constitutes the earliest known example of Old Russian literature written by a layman, Vladimir recounted participating in 83 noteworthy military campaigns and recorded killing 200 Polovtsy princes. In addition to his martial qualities, Vladimir Monomakh was known as an adept administrator, whose ability to curtail the internecine warfare among his princely relatives revived, if only temporarily, the declining strength of Kievan Rus. He was also noted as a builder; he founded the city of Vladimir on the Klyazma River in northeastern Russia, which by the end of the 12th century replaced Kiev as the seat of the grand prince.
Andrew I
▪ Russian prince
Russian in full Andrey Yuryevich Bogolyubsky
born c. 1111
died June 1174, Bogolyubovo, near Vladimir, Russia
prince of Rostov-Suzdal (1157) and grand prince of Vladimir (1169), who increased the importance of the northeastern Russian lands and contributed to the development of government in that forest region.
Having accompanied his father, Yury Dolgoruky, on his conquest of Kiev, Andrew refused to remain in the ancient capital of Rus and returned to Vladimir, a town in his father's principality of Rostov-Suzdal in northeastern Russia. When his father died (1157), the cities of Rostov and Suzdal elected Andrew their prince, and he transferred the capital of the entire principality to Vladimir. Subsequently, he encouraged colonists to settle in his principality, fortified and enlarged Vladimir, and built many churches.
In addition to strengthening his own lands, Andrew strove to extend his authority over other principalities of Rus. In 1169 he and his allies sacked Kiev, and Andrew acquired the title grand prince. But rather than move his seat to Kiev, as his father had done, Andrew made Vladimir the centre of the grand principality and placed a series of his relatives on the now secondary princely throne of Kiev. Later he also compelled Novgorod to accept a prince of his choice. In governing his realm, Andrew not only demanded that the subordinate princes obey him but also tried to reduce the traditional political powers of the boyars (i.e., the upper nobility) within his hereditary lands. In response, his embittered courtiers formed a conspiracy and killed him.