Kyiv 1

 Kyiv 1

Kyiv lies in a gentle bend of the river Dnipro (or Dnieper), on the hilly west bank, roughly half way between the Baltic and the Black sea. It has a long and important history, allegedly going back to a Slavic or Turkic foundation in A.D. 482, though various people undoubtedly lived there for 25 centuries before that. However, in A.D. 880 Kyiv fell to the Swedish Varangians (Vikings) and formed, for the next 360 years, a flourishing economic, military and cultural centre on that important trade route between Scandinavia and Byzantium.  

Around the time that the Danish Vikings started raiding the coasts of England, and pressing up the navigable rivers (overwintering in London in A.D. 871), and the Norwegian Vikings sailed out across the Atlantic to harry the west coast of Scotland, Ireland, France and Italy, and eventually to colonise Iceland (A.D. 874), the Swedish Varangians pushed eastwards across the Baltic and southwards up the Neva and Volkov rivers to the position of present day Novgorod. From there, some travelled east to the headwaters of the Volga, whence to the Islamic countries of the middle east, while others portaged to the headwaters of the Dnipro near Smolensk (founded A.D. 863) and, via the Black sea, to Constantinople.  It is said that a Varangian nobleman called Rurik founded Novgorod in A.D. 862, and started a royal dynasty that lasted till the Romanovs (A.D. 1598).

In A.D. 882 Oleg of Novgorod captured Kyiv, probably off fellow Vikings. Thus began the Golden age of Kyiv, the wealthy and favoured capital of a polity known as  Kyivan Rus. Under the reigns of 3 great Rurik Princes the state prospered,  expanded, converted to Christianity, acquired an alphabet, and a book of laws. And undoubtedly assimilated wholesale with the pre-existing Slavic population. Thus: under Sviatoslav (943–972) the state expanded south against the Khazars, then Vladimir the Great (980–1015) introduced Christianity, by example (988) and with it the Glagolitic (c.f. Cyrillic [1]) alphabet. Under Yaroslav the Wise (1019–1054) the state reached from the White sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. 

Then decline began, with fratricidal successions, and internecine warfare between neighbouring cities, and states. As Byzantium declined, so did the economic value of the trade passing up and down the Dnipro. Power shifted from Kyiv to Novgorod. In 1169 Kyiv was sacked by fellow Rus; and in 1240 it fell to the Mongols in the form of The Golden Horde under the leadership of Batu Kahn.[2]

However, that was not the end of history as far as Kyiv and the Rus were concerned. (Look out for the proposed Kyiv2.)

Footnotes:

[1] Cyril and his older brother Methodius translated (c. A.D. 850) parts of the Bible into Slavonic to help them bring Christianity to the Byzantine Bulgars. For this, they modified the Greek alphabet to accommodate the phonemes important to the Slav languages. The Volga Bulars adopted Islam and offered it to Vladimir of Kyiv, but he said the Varangians could not give up alcohol and so chose Christianity. 

[2] It is said that the Mongol commander offered terms, but his envoys were murdered and thrown over the walls, whereupon the Mongols attacked, the walls were breached, and 95% of the population executed. Novgorod paid tribute and was spared.