Russia (7 page)

Having become surrounded by the Rus’, the Greeks [that is, the subjects of the Emperor] hurled their fire all around them. When the Rus’ saw this, they at once threw themselves from their ships into the sea, choosing to be drowned by the waves rather than cremated by the fire. Some, weighed down by their breastplates and helmets … sank to the bottom … Others were burned as they swam on the waves.

No one could escape except by sailing into the shallow inshore waters where the deep-draughted imperial ships could not follow.
¹²

An apparently earlier source, a Viking saga, records the same traumatic event from the raiders’ point of view, and with some convincing detail. It tells, for example, of a brass tube from which a great spark flew to reduce one of the ships of its pagan hero Yngvar to ashes within seconds. This story, however, was to be changed under Christian influence to put Yngvar on the right side and cast the Emperor as a villainous creature. In this version Greek fire assumes the form of Jakulus, a terrifying flying dragon which spits venom, to which Yngvar has an antidote: arrows bearing ‘consecrated flame’.
¹³

Byzantine diplomats eventually persuaded Igor/Yngvar and the Rus that they could gain more from negotiation and trade than from naked force. Certainly, by the time the Emperor Constantine VII wrote his account of the Russians in the middle of the tenth century a regular commercial relationship had been established between them. Cargoes of slaves would be brought in for sale in Constantinople’s market, and, once their summer’s venturing was over, the Russian traders would return to Kiev until November, when they would disperse in various directions upstream to the regions they had come from.

The severe manner of life of these same Russians in winter-time is as follows. When the month of November begins, their chiefs together with all the Russians [that is, the Vikings and the Russian tribal chiefs associated with them] go off on … [their] ‘rounds’, that is to the Slavonic regions of the Vervians and Drugovichians and Krivichians and Serverians and the rest of the Slavs who pay … [them] tribute. There they are maintained throughout the winter, but then once more, starting in the month of April, when the ice on the Dnieper river melts, they come back to Kiev…
¹⁴

And the cycle would begin again.

The organizational centre had moved from Novgorod to Kiev. Even so the frontiers were too stretched and the strategic points too scattered for one man to control the entire operation effectively.
¹⁵
Kings of England would take their courts on tour round their domains, but in Russia this was impracticable - the distances too great, the climate too difficult. To overcome this difficulty, the first Russian state devised a working system more like a family business. Riurik’s successors ruled in Kiev, their heirs apparent in Novgorod, while younger brothers and other close relatives ruled centres like Smolensk or Chernigov, according to their seniority and the town’s relative importance. Family could be trusted, and the system (often termed ‘apanage’) had the advantage of giving future rulers experience of governing an important region before acceding to the top position. However, though the system had advantages in co-ordinating commercial operations on a basis of trust, it had disadvantages in respect of the integrity of a state. In Russia the system was to break down in the twelfth century, largely, as we shall see, because of its inherent weaknesses. This has led some historians to argue that Kievan Rus was not a state at all.
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However, the subjects of Kievan Rus paid taxes, they were defended from outside enemies, and they were subject to common laws. These characteristics qualify Kievan Rus as no less a state than some other imperfect political structures of that age. The particular problem of Kievan Rus was
that, though imperial in territorial extent, it lacked appropriate imperial institutions. But it soon began to import models and ideals to remedy these deficiencies. The source was the city of Constantinople, and one of the chief carriers of this late Roman influence to Russia was the same Princess Olga who had massacred the Derevlian elite and imposed a semblance of administrative order on the Rus.

Olga travelled to Constantinople in 955 or 957 (the sources differ on the date), and the imperial authorities there, impressed with Russia’s potential, laid down a red carpet for her. She was taken to view the many wonders of the imperial city - the three fortified walls which guarded it; the great cistern which could supply the large population with water in the event of a long siege; the hippodrome, which was used for imperial ceremonies as well as for games and racing. The city’s central market sold every imaginable commodity from every corner of the world. This scene of plenty was presided over by a great column surmounted by the gilded head of the city’s founder, the first Christian emperor, Constantine I. The city’s fine marble buildings and statues, wonderfully carved, and the extraordinary variety of peoples and dress amazed all who saw them for the first time. But only special guests entered the imperial palace. Olga was so privileged.

Inside the palace, plume-helmeted guardsmen punctuated the spaces, and there were astonishing things to see: clockwork metal songbirds that sang like real birds; a pair of gilded lions which rolled their eyes and roared; a throne harnessed to hydraulic power which could lift the Emperor to the ceiling of his audience chamber, making him appear godlike to people beneath. The court protocol was elaborate, with much pomp and many formalities. Some 400 years earlier the wife of the Emperor Justinian — Theodora — had been both influential and visible, but subsequently the Christian Church had whittled away much of the women’s former privileges and freedom. As a result, women were less visible and less powerful than they had once been - even well-regarded women whom the Emperor was wooing. Empresses were still important, but their formal engagements proceeded for the most part separately from those of the men. And so Olga was entertained by the Empress to a separate dinner, though held at the same time as the Emperor’s, and only met the Emperor informally, when he visited the Empress and the imperial children in their quarters.

But the grandeur and exotic unfamiliarity of court life could hardly have been lost on Olga. Even informal meals would be taken at a golden table, though diners reclined on couches in the old Roman style. The food served was wonderfully different. The cooking - based on olive oil - featured not only familiar fish, meats and fowl, mushrooms, apples and honey,
but unfamiliar aubergines, figs and pomegranates, anchovies and calamari. Ingredients were transformed by unfamiliar spices, wine marinades, exotic stuffings and amazing creations of filo pastry. And Olga would have learned to cope with small unfamiliar eating implements made of ivory and precious metal rather than tearing the meats placed before her with her fingers or her teeth.
¹⁷

Most impressive of all, though, was the Church of the Holy Wisdom, or Santa Sophia. Inside this splendid pile with its immense dome, built by Justinian four centuries or so before, were mosaic portraits of emperors, saints and archangels attending the figure of Jesus and, high above this, a magisterial depiction of God the Father. Through this huge space, crowded with worshippers, came black-cowled deacons swinging censers of pungent incense. Priests and bishops in richly patterned vestments followed — and then choirs struck up, echoing each other’s ethereal music from all directions. Like so many other newcomers to the experience, even the hard-headed Olga must have wondered for some moments whether she was in heaven or on earth.
¹⁸

The chronicles present Olga as a pious candidate for sainthood. Yet, amazed though she must have been by the unimaginable wealth and strange beauty of it all, her actions suggest that she remained a calculating, political woman. To understand the Russians’ conversion one must discount the tales about Olga’s piety and recognize the deeply political nature of her choice. She knew the Byzantine Church had competitors, and she was to use the German Church as a lever to get what she wanted. She well understood the implications conversion would have for Russian princely power. She learned that the Christian Church, administered by the Patriarch of Constantinople (who also received her), worked ‘in symphony’ with the emperor and helped the secular authorities in many ways — as spiritual arm, moral authority, provider of social services, and mobilizer of the Christian populations. She also observed the effectiveness of Christianity in holding the people in thrall.

Olga is reckoned to have become a Christian before going to Constantinople, indeed to have had a priest in her retinue when she went. Nevertheless, she decided to be baptized there again, this time in a more political way, with the Emperor himself serving as her godfather at a carefully orchestrated ceremony which gave her a new name: Helen. Helen had been the mother of the first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great, so an analogy was suggested: Olga/Helen as mother of a new Russian state. And the memory of Olga was later to suggest a link between ancient Rome and the no less extensive Russian Empire of the future.

However, Olga had gone to Constantinople to negotiate better trading terms, and in this she was evidently disappointed, because shortly after her return to Kiev she sent an embassy to the German king, Otto I, asking him to send her a bishop and priests. She knew very well that, though Christendom was formally united, there were three competing Christian organizations, each with its own traditions, and that the German Church, though under the Pope, was effectively owned by the prince who had power of ecclesiastical appointments. Such power was an attractive option, but Olga used her flirtation with the Germans as a warning to Byzantium. When the Emperor became more accommodating, the German bishop was sent away.
¹⁹

Olga’s visit inspired a desire to re-create in her own land some of the wonders she had seen. It also encouraged an expansion of Byzantine missionary activity among the Russians, and established a conduit through which cultural influences began to flow. Byzantine designs and Byzantine artisans penetrated Russia in increasing numbers, and some Russians even began to hanker after literacy — for missionaries had invented an alphabet to represent the sounds that Slavonic-speaking peoples made when they spoke. Invented for the Balkan Slavs, it was to serve the Russians equally well, for, as Constantine VII recorded, all Slavs, whether in the east, west or south, spoke the same language at that time.

Yet Olga/Helen’s personal commitment to Christianity did not imply the Christianizatio of Russia. The opposition was far too strong for that. Most Rus were addicted to their own gods — gods who represented the forces of nature. Christianity, with its faith in the Son of God, who suffered to save the whole community and was resurrected every year, had undoubted attractions. But it could not easily replace the familiar sprites that had power over woods and streams. And was the Christian god as powerful as, say, Perun, the god of thunder, bringer of rain and of prosperity, by whom Russians swore their most solemn oaths? How could the memory of a crucifixion be as effective as the sacrifice of human beings in propitiating a god? And would these chanting black-garbed foreign priests be as effective as the Rus shamans in their magic clothes sewn with tinkling bells? Whatever their personal preferences, Olga and her successors had to take account of their subjects’ feeling if they were to survive.

The Christian priests who came to Russia were persuasive missionaries. They intoned the liturgy in fine voices, learned the local vernacular, and were able to relate and explain the stories of the Bible, the significance of every feast and fast day, and the merits of every saint in their calendar with reference to powerful and captivating visual aids called icons. Above all,
they spread a vision of hell and the prospect of bliss through salvation. They also exploited the advantages
of
superior technology, bringing bigger, more resounding bells with them, and incense that smelled stronger and more interesting than the shamans’ concoctions. The number of Christian converts increased steadily. Yet, as more Rus became Christians, divisions and conflicts arose.

Resistance to the new religion was fed by interest as well as by affection for the familiar. Christianity threatened the shamans with loss of power and social standing, and also loss of income. Moreover, many members of the ruling elite were themselves pagans or were cautious enough not to alienate the people of their district by challenging their gods. Olga/Helen, though a Christian herself, dared not proclaim Christianity to be the religion of her people. That fateful step was to be taken by her grandson Vladimir some twenty years after Olga’s death. Meanwhile her son Sviatoslav ruled, a determined warrior and a pagan.

It was Sviatoslav who finally eliminated the Khazars, who had for so long controlled the commercial networks of the south. He drove them from their strong-points on the Sea of Azov and then from Itil, their strategic trading centre on the Volga. At the same time he overcame the Volga Bulgar tribes. Then, presumably in return for a favour or in expection of one, he answered a call from the Emperor to campaign against the Bulgars of the Balkans. The experience evidently whetted his ambition to control the delta of the river Danube, so great was its commercial value. There, in the words of an early Russian chronicler, ‘all the good things of the world converge: gold, precious silks, wine and fruit from Byzantium, silver and horses from Bohemia and Hungary, furs, wax, honey and slaves from Russia.’
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Indeed, in 971 Sviatoslav decided to establish his capital in the delta. From that point on the Danube seems to have been embedded in the Russians’ collective imagination as a source of fascination. Long afterwards, popular folk songs were to reflect a yearning to possess it.
²¹
But, though Sviatoslav was at first succesful, he soon ran foul of Byzantine interests. The Emperor John Tzimisces, a former general who had killed his predecessor in a palace coup, found Sviatoslav’s initiative intolerable and resolved to drive him out. Sviatoslav proved to be no match for him in strategy. John led his army in a dramatically fast march which trapped the Russians in the stronghold they called Pereiaslavets
on
the Danube. Despite frantic resistance, Sviatoslav was forced to concede. The parley that ended the fight occasioned a pen-portrait of him by a Byzantine observer.