23 Facts About Kievan Rus

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, uniting the East Slavic tribes.

Kievan Rus extended his control from Novgorod south along the Dnieper river valley to protect trade from Khazar incursions from the east, and took control of the city of Kiev.

Kievan Rus' reached its greatest extent under Yaroslav the Wise ; his sons assembled and issued its first written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda, shortly after his death.

Term Kievan Rus was coined in the 19th century in Russian historiography to refer to the period when the centre was in Kiev.

The variant Kyivan Kievan Rus appeared in English-language scholarship by the 1950s.

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The Kievan Rus' turned back before attacking the city itself, due either to a storm dispersing their boats, the return of the Emperor, or in a later account, due to a miracle after a ceremonial appeal by the Patriarch and the Emperor to the Virgin.

New Kievan Rus state prospered due to its abundant supply of furs, beeswax, honey and slaves for export, and because it controlled three main trade routes of Eastern Europe.

Expansion of the Kievan Rus' put further military and economic pressure on the Khazars, depriving them of territory, tributaries and trade.

The Kievan Rus' were raiding and plundering into the Caspian Sea region from 864, with the first large-scale expedition in 913, when they extensively raided Baku, Gilan, Mazandaran and penetrated into the Caucasus.

The Primary Chronicle reports that the Kievan Rus' attacked Constantinople again in 907, probably to secure trade access.

The Kievan Rus' burned towns, churches and monasteries, butchering the people and amassing booty.

Kievan Rus was forced to flee to Scandinavia in 976 after his half-brother Yaropolk had murdered his other brother Oleg and taken control of Rus.

That being said, unlike other parts of the Greek world, Kievan Rus' did not have a strong hostility to the Western world.

Gradual disintegration of the Kievan Rus' began in the 11th century, after the death of Yaroslav the Wise.

Concurrently with it, the Ruthenian Federation of Kievan Rus' started to disintegrate into smaller principalities as the Rurik dynasty grew.

Kievan Rus accepted a crown as a "Rex Rusiae" from the Roman papacy, apparently doing so without breaking with Constantinople.

Peoples of Kievan Rus' experienced a period of great economic expansion, opening trade routes with the Vikings to the north and west and with the Byzantine Greeks to the south and west; traders began to travel south and east, eventually making contact with Persia and the peoples of Central Asia.

Kievan Rus society lacked the class institutions and autonomous towns that were typical of Western European feudalism.

Soviet scholar Mikhail Tikhomirov calculated that Kievan Rus' had around 300 urban centres on the eve of the Mongol invasion.

Kievan Rus' played an important genealogical role in European politics.

Kievan Rus's daughters became queens of Hungary, France and Norway; his sons married the daughters of a Polish king and Byzantine emperor, and a niece of the Pope; and his granddaughters were a German empress and the queen of Scotland.

Kievan Rus was defeated in 1107 by Vladimir Monomakh, Oleg, Sviatopolk and other Rus' princes.

In 988, the Christian Church in Kievan Rus' territorially fell under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople after it was officially adopted as the state religion.