10 Historic Government Systems That Shaped Russia

The Kievan Rus

After Rurik the Viking’s death in 879, his successor Prince Oleg (reigned 879 – 912) began conquering and uniting the Eastern Slavic lands in earnest. From Novgorod, he expanded Rurik’s realm southward along the Dnieper, and in 882, he seized Smolensk and Kiev. Oleg then relocated his capital to Kiev, which lay astride an important waterborne trade route from northern Russia, down the Dnieper until it empties into the Black Sea, and thence to Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire and beyond. It was from Oleg’s new capital that the Kievan Rus state and civilization got its name.

The new entity – a Slavic state with a Viking ruling class – would reach its peak in the early to the mid-10th century. Oleg was succeeded in 912 by Rurik’s son, Igor, who founded the Rurik Dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus until its demise. Igor’s descendants would also found and rule the Tsardom of Russia until its collapse into anarchy in the early 1600s, after which they were succeeded by the Romanovs.

At the height of its power and prosperity, Kievan Rus controlled Eastern Europe’s main trade routes. Trade from the Baltic moved through a network of rivers and portages down the Dnieper, the Black Sea, and thence to Constantinople. Baltic trade also moved down the Volga, the Caspian Sea, and thence to Baghdad, Persia, and Central Asia. Additionally, Kiev was a trade hub for the east-west land routes between Central Europe to Kiev’s west, and the Khazars and other Steppe inhabitants to the east.

Igor’s son Sviatoslav I (circa 942 – 972) greatly expanded the Rus borders along and down the Volga River, into the Balkans, and into the Steppe. At his death, after a short but extremely active life, Kievan Rus was Europe’s largest state. A power struggle erupted between Sviatoslav’s sons after his demise. The victor was Sviatoslav’s son Vladimir the Great (circa 958 – 1015), who seized power with armed help from his Viking relatives in Norway.

By 980, Vladimir had consolidated his control over the realm from Ukraine up to the Baltic. In 988, he converted to Christianity and Christianized his realm with him. That eventually got him canonized as Saint Vladimir of Kiev, whose feast day is celebrated on July 15th by both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. To this day, he is one of the greatest saints of the Eastern Orthodox faith.

In an attempt to avert future fratricidal strife such as the one he had experienced, Vladimir set up a succession hierarchy known as the Rota System, whereby power passed not from father to son, but to the oldest member of the ruling dynasty. Thus, power passed from brother to brother, from oldest to youngest, thence to nephews in the next generation by age.

Vladimir’s succession system proved problematic, and resulted in members of the Rurik dynasty hurrying up their turn or securing succession for their sons by murdering each other. It went bad soon as Vladimir died in 1015, when his eldest son began his reign by murdering three of his siblings, before he in turn was defeated and killed by one of his younger brothers in 1019. That kind of instability eventually fragmented Kievan Rus into de facto independent statelets, owing only nominal fealty to Kiev. Kievan Rus went into decline, until it was wiped out by the Mongols in the 13th century.