In the south were the nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples of the steppes, dominated until the 1030s by the Pechenegs, and from the 1060s by the Polovtsy (also known as Cumans, also known as Qipchaks).[62] Many of the chronicle narratives, and a fair proportion of subsequent historical writings, imply a state of permanent irreconcilable opposition between the Rus' and the steppe nomads. This is too crude. Certainly there were major clashes, raids and skirmishes in both directions. Yet relations could also be amicable, and on the whole the frontier zones were quite stable. Very rarely did either side have serious territorial designs on the other. There was a limited amount of colonisation by proxy, such as the recruitment and settlement of 'Torks' (Oghuz) in the specially created town of Torchesk as a kind of buffer. Overall, however, it would be hard to show that any Rus' prince spent much more time campaigning against the Pechenegs or the Polovtsy than against his own kin within the dynastic lands.
Relations between the steppe and Chernigov were generally more cordial than those between the steppe and Kiev or Pereiaslavl'. Chernigov had traditional links with the lower Don and the Azov region. When Mstislav of Tmu- torokan' and Iaroslav of Novgorod agreed to their division of the lands in 1024, Mstislav settled in Chernigov, and there is no suggestion that he had the worst of the deal. In the decade between 1024 and Mstislav's death, Chernigov looks to have been the dominant power in the middle Dnieper region, and it may be no coincidence that one of Iaroslav's first actions on assuming 'sole rule' was to reassert the pre-eminence of Kiev by undermining Chernigov's relations with the steppe, through mounting what turned out to be the decisive campaign against the Pechenegs. Similarly in 1094 Oleg Sviatoslavich of Chernigov marched from Tmutorokan' with Polovtsian allies to recapture his patrimonial city from his cousin Vladimir Monomakh.[63] In 1096 Oleg refused, under intense pressure from Monomakh and his (Monomakh's) father Vsevolod of Kiev, to join them on a campaign against the Polovtsy, and he even sheltered the son of a Polovtsian leader who had been killed on Monomakh's orders.[64]Monomakh did organise a series of highly successful expeditions against the Polovtsy in the 1100s and 1110s,[65] yet even he mixed military victory with political alliance, marrying two of his sons (including Iurii Dolgorukii) to Polovtsian
brides.[66]
Further south, beyond the steppes, beyond the Black Sea, lay Constantinople. Here we come up against a paradox. In a sense, relations between Kiev and Constantinople ought to have been close and constant. Constantinople was the traditional lure for the Rus' merchants and there is strong documentary evidence of intense (if not always friendly) military, economic, diplomatic and cultural dealings with Constantinople in the tenth century, culminating in the conversion to Christianity which - inter alia - should have smoothed the way for ever closer links on all levels. Yet over the course of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, while ecclesiastical and cultural contacts were of course important, political and diplomatic relations seem to have become more sporadic, and even trade apparently declined after the middle of the century, particularly in manufactured goods, as the Rus' began to acquire some of the skills to switch from import to local production. Finds of Byzantine coins in Rus' become notably rare after c. 1050.[67] In 1043 Iaroslav sent his eldest son Vladimir on a military campaign against Constantinople, the last of its kind in the sequence that had started nearly 150 years previously. The cause is not entirely clear (the conflict is supposed to have escalated from the death of a Rus' merchant in an altercation in a Constantinopolitan market). The result was total defeat for the Rus', but the consequences do not seem to have been severe: in the late 1040s Byzantine artists and craftsmen were putting the finishing touches to Iaroslav's main prestige public project, the cathedral of St Sophia, and by the early 1050s Iaroslav's son Vsevolod was married into the family ofthe reigning Byzantine emperor, Constantine IX Monomachos. The offspring of this union, Vladimir Monomakh, himself impinged on Byzantine authority in 1116-18 by aiding an opponent of Alexios I Komnenos, but this was a minor episode. In 1122 Monomakh's granddaughter married into the ruling Komnenos family.[68]
Perhaps surprisingly, given their Byzantine religious and cultural orientation, political relations between Rus' princes and various parts of Western Europe were more persistent and diverse than political relations with Byzantium. As a crude index one might note the substantially longer list of dynastic marriages, ranging from the elite union of Iaroslav's daughter Anna with Henry I of France, to lower-level unions such as Monomakh's marriage, in the early 1070s, to Gytha, daughter of Harald of England (he who was killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066). Perhaps, however, the imbalance is not so surprising. In the first place, the comparison is uneven. 'Western Europe' is not a single or homogeneous place, despite its habitual labelling as such. One cannot properly compare the plurality of polities in 'Western Europe' with the unitary polity of Byzantium. Secondly, Byzantium was geographically remote, very rarely did any Rus' prince come face to face with Byzantium by necessity, and no Byzantine military force ever entered or contested Rus' lands. In contrast, more trade routes linked the lands of the Rus' with different parts of Western Europe than with Byzantium, and several Western European peoples and polities shared substantial and periodically contested border zones with the Rus' dynasty. For many of the dynasty political dealings with Byzantium were an option, political dealings with one or more lands of Western Europe were a necessity. Nor did the 1054 schism between Constantinople and Rome (unresolved to the present day) appear to have had much effect on diplomatic and even personal dealings with 'Latin' countries and peoples. Senior churchmen - notably some of those who came to Rus' from Constantinople - might write stern tracts warning about the errors of the 'Latins' and of the dangers of contact with them,[69] but dynastic marriages continued, and a Rus' monk visiting the Holy Land around 1106-8 could be on perfectly amicable terms with its 'Latin' crusader rulers.[70]
Those princes whose own interests were most directly dependent on relations with one or other of their Western neighbours tended - not surprisingly - to pay the most attention to those neighbours, whether the interest was expressed through friendship or through hostility. Among princes or would- be princes of Kiev this applies particularly to those who were also princes of Turov, on one of the main routes westwards. The first of these was Sviatopolk Vladimirovich, who, as we saw, persuaded Boleslaw I of Poland (who happened to be his father-in-law) to put together a force to help him take Kiev in 1018. The second was Iziaslav Iaroslavich, who also persuaded a Polish force, under Boleslaw II (who happened to be his wife's nephew) to help him retake Kiev in 1069. After he was ousted again by his younger brother Sviatoslav in 1073, Iziaslav fled westwards again and spent three years trying (unsuccessfully) to solicit material support from Boleslaw, the German Emperor Henry IV and the Pope. By the end of the century, however, Turov had been, so to speak, outflanked, as rival clusters of the proliferating and land-hungry junior princes squabbled for the right to install themselves in the territories still closer to the western border zones, such as Vladimir-in-Volynia, Peremyshl' and Terebovl'. In a particularly vicious and convoluted phase of the conflicts in the late 1090s both Wladyslaw of Poland and Kalman of Hungary were sucked into the dynastic in-fighting which revolved round three descendants of Iaroslav whose fathers had not succeeded to Kiev: Vasilko and Volodar Ros- tislavichi (grandsons of Iaroslav's eldest son Vladimir, who had died before his father) and David Igorevich (whose father Igor' Iaroslavich had died before his older brothers).[71] This was a prelude to the close involvement of Hungary in the political life of Galich which grew over the first half of the twelfth century.
62
See R. M. Mavrodina,
67
T. S. Noonan, 'The Monetary History of Kiev in the Pre-Mongol Period',
68
On these and other reported marriages see Alexander Kazhdan, 'Rus'-Byzantine Princely Marriages in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries',
69
See the works attributed to Leo of Pereiaslavl', Ioann II and Nikofor I: Sophia Senyk,
70
On the pilgrimage of Daniil in this respect see Senyk,