Sviatoslav I of Kiev ¹

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Sviatoslav I of Kiev (Old East Slavic : ([1] (Sventoslav Igorevich), Russian : Ukrainian : Bulgarian : Greek : (Sfendoslavos) ) (c. 942 - March 972) was a warrior prince of Kievan Rus' . The son of Igor of Kiev and Olga , Sviatoslav is famous for his incessant campaigns in the east and south, which precipitated the collapse of two great powers of Eastern Europe-Khazaria and the First Bulgarian Empire ; he also subdued the Volga Bulgars , the Alans , and numerous East Slavic tribes, and at times was allied with the Pechenegs and Magyars . His decade-long reign over Rus' was marked by rapid expansion into the Volga River valley, the Pontic steppe and the Balkans . By the end of his short life, Sviatoslav carved out for himself the largest state in Europe , eventually moving his capital from Kiev to Pereyaslavets on the Danube in 969. In contrast with his mother's conversion to Christianity , Sviatoslav remained a staunch pagan all of his life. Due to his abrupt death in combat, Sviatoslav's conquests, for the most part, were not consolidated into a functioning empire, while his failure to establish a stable succession led to civil war among his successors.

Sviatoslav was the first ruler of Kievan Rus' whose name is indisputably Slavic in origin (as opposed to his predecessors, whose names are ultimately derived from Old Norse ). This name is not recorded in other medieval Slavic countries. Even in Rus', it was attested only among the members of the house of Rurik , as were the names of Sviatoslav's immediate successors: Vladimir , Yaroslav , Mstislav ).[2] Some scholars speculate that the name of Sviatoslav, composed of the Slavic roots for "holy" and "glory", was an artificial derivation combining those of his predecessors Oleg and Rurik (they mean "holy" and "glorious" in Old Norse, respectively).[3]

Virtually nothing is known about his childhood and youth, which he spent reigning in Novgorod . Sviatoslav's father, Igor , was killed by the Drevlians around 942 and his mother, Olga , ruled as regent in Kiev until Sviatoslav's majority (ca. 963).[4] His tutor was a Varangian named Asmud . "Quick as a leopard,"[5] Sviatoslav appears to have had little patience for administration. His life was spent with his druzhina (roughly, "troops") in permanent warfare against neighboring states. According to the Primary Chronicle .

" Upon his expeditions he carried with him neither wagons nor kettles, and boiled no meat, but cut off small strips of horseflesh, game or beef, and ate it after roasting it on the coals. Nor did he have a tent, but he spread out a horse-blanket under him, and set his saddle under his head, and all his retinue did likewise.[6] " Sviatoslav was noted by Leo the Deacon to be of average height and build. He shaved his head and his beard (or possibly just had a wispy beard) but wore a bushy mustache and a one or two sidelocks as a sign of his nobility. He preferred to dress in white, and it was noted that his garments were much cleaner than those of his men. He wore a single large gold earring bearing a ruby and two pearls .[7] [8]

His mother converted to Christianity at the court of Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in 945 or 957. However,[9] Sviatoslav continued to worship Perun , Veles , Svarog and the other gods and goddesses of the Slavic pantheon . He remained a stubborn pagan for all of his life; according to the Primary Chronicle, he believed that his warriors would lose respect for him and mock him if he became a Christian.[10] The allegiance of his warriors was of paramount importance in his conquest of an empire that stretched from the Volga to the Danube.

Family

Very little is known of Sviatoslav's family life. It is possible that Sviatoslav was not the only (and the eldest) son of his parents. The Russo-Byzantine treaty of 945 mentions a certain Predslava, Volodislav's wife, as the noblest of the Rus' women after Olga. George Vernadsky was among many historians to speculate that Volodislav was Igor's eldest son and heir who died at some point during Olga's regency. At the time of Igor's death, Sviatoslav was still a child and he was raised by his mother or at her instructions. Her influence, however, did not extend to his religious observance.

Sviatoslav, had several children, but the origin of his wives is not specified in the chronicle. By his wives, he had Yaropolk and Oleg .[11] By Malusha , a woman of indeterminate origins,[12] Sviatoslav had Vladimir , who would ultimately break with his father's paganism and convert Rus to Christianity . John Skylitzes reported that Vladimir had a brother named Sfengus ; whether this Sfengus was a son of Sviatoslav, a son of Malusha by a prior or subsequent husband, or an unrelated Rus' nobleman is unclear.[13]
When Sviatoslav went on campaign he left his various relations as regents in the main cities of his realm: his mother Olga and later Yaropolk in Kiev, Vladimir in Novgorod, and Oleg over the Drevlians...

Death and aftermath

Fearing that the peace with Sviatoslav would not endure, the Byzantine emperor induced the Pecheneg khan Kurya to kill Sviatoslav before he reached Kiev. This was in line with the policy outlined by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in De Administrando Imperio of fomenting strife between the Rus' and the Pechenegs.[35] According to the Slavic chronicle, Sveneld attempted to warn Sviatoslav to avoid the Dnieper cataracts , but the prince slighted his wise advice and was ambushed and slain by the Pechenegs when he tried to cross the cataracts near Khortitsa early in 972. The Primary Chronicle reports that his skull was made into a chalice by the Pecheneg khan, Kurya.[36]

Following Sviatoslav's death, tensions between his sons grew. A war broke out between Sviatoslav's legitimate sons, Oleg and Yaropolk , in 976, at the conclusion of which Oleg was killed. In 977 Vladimir fled Novgorod to escape Oleg's fate and went to Scandinavia , where he raised an army of Varangians and returned in 980. Yaropolk was killed and Vladimir became the sole ruler of Kievan Rus'.

Notes
^ E.g. in the Primary Chronicle under year 970
^ X-XVI [Choice of personal names for the Russian princes of the 10th-16th centuries.] Moscow: Indrik, 2006. ISBN 5-85759-339-5 . Page 43.
^ See in (Moscow, 1970).
^ If Olga was indeed born in 879, as the Primary Chronicle seems to imply, she should have been about 65 at the time of Svyatoslav's birth. There are clearly some problems with chronology.
^ Primary Chronicle entry for 968
^ Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor, Primary Chronicle, p. 84.
^ Vernadsky 276-277. The sidelock is reminiscent of Turkic hairstyles and practices and was later mimicked by Cossacks .
^ For the alternative translations of the same passage of the Greek original that say that Sviatoslav may have not shaven but wispy beard and not one but two sidelocks on each side of his head, see eg. Ian Heath "The Vikings (Elite 3)", Osprey Publishing 1985; ISBN: 9780850455656, p.60 or David Nicolle "Armies of Medieval Russia 750-1250 (Men-at-Arms 333)" Osprey Publishing 1999; ISBN: 9781855328488, p.44
^ Based on his analysis of De Ceremoniis Alexander Nazarenko hypothesizes that Olga hoped to orchestrate a marriage between Svyatoslav and a Byzantine princess. If her proposal was peremptorily declined (as it most certainly would have been), it is hardly surprising that Sviatoslav would look at Byzantium and her Christian culture with suspicion. Nazarenko 302.
^ Primary Chronicle _____.
^ Whether Yaropolk and Oleg were whole or half brothers, and who their mother or mothers were, is a matter hotly debated by historians.
^ She is traditionally identified in Russian historiography as Dobrynya 's sister; for other theories on her identity, see here .
^ Indeed, Franklin and Shepard advanced the hypothesis that Sfengus was identical with Mstislav of Tmutarakan . Franklin and Shepard 200-201.
^ "Rus", Encyclopaedia of Islam
^ Christian 345. It is disputed whether Svyatoslav invaded the land of Vyatichs that year. The only campaign against the Vyatichs explicitly mentioned in the Primary Chronicle is dated to 966.
^ Russian Primary Chronicle ( - 2. - 1908, ) for year 6472. The chronicler may have wished to contrast Sviatoslav's open declaration of war to stealthy tactics employed by many other early medieval conquerors.
^ For Sviatoslav's reliance on nomad cavalry, see, e.g., Franklin and Shepard 149; Christian 298; Pletneva 18.
^ Christian 298. The Primary Chronicle is very succinct about the whole campaign against Khazars, saying only that Sviatoslav "took their city and Belaya Vezha".
^ The town was an important trade center located near the portage between the Volga and Don Rivers . By the early 12th century, however, it had been destroyed by the Kipchaks .
^ See, generally Christian 297-298; Dunlop passim.
^ Logan (1992), p. 202
^ Artamonov 428; Christian 298.
^ The campaign against Ossetians is attested in the Primary Chronicle. The Novgorod First Chronicle specifies that Sviatoslav resettled the Ossetians near Kiev, but Sakharov finds this claim dubitable.
^ The Mandgelis Document refers to a Khazar potentate in the Taman Peninsula around 985, long after Sviatoslav's death. Kedrenos reported that the Byzantines and Rus' collaborated in the conquest of a Khazar kingdom in the Crimea in 1016 and still later, Ibn al-Athir reported an unsuccessful attack by al-Fadl ibn Muhammad against the Khazars in the Caucasus in 1030. For more information on these and other references, see Khazars#Late references to the Khazars .
^ Christian 298.
^ Most historians believe the Greeks were interested in the destruction of Khazaria. Another school of thought essentializes Yahya of Antioch 's report that, prior to the Danube campaign, the Byzantines and the Rus' were at war. See Sakharov, chapter I.
^ The exact date of Sviatoslav's Bulgarian campaign, which likely did not commence until the conclusion of his Khazar campaign, is unknown.
^ Mikhail Tikhomirov and Vladimir Pashuto, among others, assume that the Emperor was interested primarily in diverting Sviatoslav's attention from Chersonesos , a Byzantine possession in the Crimea . Indeed, Leo the Deacon three times mentions that Svyatoslav and his father Igor controlled Cimmerian Bosporus . If so, a conflict of interests in the Crimea was inevitable. The Suzdal Chronicle, though a rather late source, also mentions Sviatoslav's war against Chersonesos. In the peace treaty of 971 , Sviatoslav promised not to wage wars against either Constantinople or Chersonesos. Byzantine sources also report that Kalokyros attempted to persuade Sviatoslav to support Kalokyros in a coup against the reigning Byzantine emperor. As a remuneration for his help, Sviatoslav was supposed to retain a permanent hold on Bulgaria. Modern historians, however, assign little historical importance to this story. Kendrick 157.
^ All figures in this article, including the numbers of Svyatoslav's troops, are based on the reports of Byzantine sources, which may differ from those of the Slavonic chronicles. Greek sources report Khazars and "Turks" in Sviatoslav's army as well as Pechenegs. As used in such Byzantine writings as Constantine Porphyrogenitus' De Administrando Imperio , "Turks" refers to Magyars . The Rus'-Magyar alliance resulted in the Hungarian expedition against the second largest city of the empire, Thessalonika , in 968.
^ Boris II was captured by the Byzantines in 971 and carried off to Constantinople as a prisoner.
^ Kendrick 158
^ Simultaneously, Otto I attacked Byzantine possessions in the south of Italy. This remarkable coincidence may be interpreted as an evidence of the anti-Byzantine German-Russian alliance. See: Manteuffel 41.
^ Grekov 445-446. The Byzantine sources report the enemy casualties to be as high as 20,000, the figure modern historians find to be highly improbable.
^ Franklin and Shepard 149-150
^ Constantine VII pointed out that, by virtue of their controlling the Dnieper cataracts, the Pechenegs may easily attack and destroy the Rus' vessels sailing along the river.
^ The use of a defeated enemy's skull as a drinking vessel is reported by numerous authors through history among various steppe peoples, such as the Scythians . Kurya likely intended this as a compliment to Sviatoslav; sources report that Kurya and his wife drank from the skull and prayed for a son as brave as the deceased Rus' warlord. Christian 344; Pletneva 19; Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor 90.
^ E. A Lanceray. "Svyatoslav on the way to Tsargrad .", The Russian History in the Mirror of the Fine Arts (Russian)
^ Cooke, Raymond Cooke. Velimir Khlebnikov: A Critical Study. Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pages 122-123
^ London: Shapiro, Vallentine, 1926
^ (Moscow: Det. lit., 1989).
^
^ "The Federation of Jewish Communities protests against the presence of a Star of David in a new sculpture in Belgorod" , Interfax, November 21, 2005; Kozhevnikova, Galina, "Radical nationalism and efforts to oppose it in Russia in 2005" ; "FJC Russia Appeal Clarifies Situation Over Potentially Anti-Semitic Monument" (Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS Press Release), November 23, 2005; Dahan, David, "Jews protest trampled Star of David statue", European Jewish Press, November 22, 2005

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Sviatoslav married Malusha.