Russia

Recovering from the surprise, the government took action to forestall any similar attempt. Imperial diplomats were dispatched to the Khazars. Presumably it was assumed that these Rus were subject to them. It is not clear if this was the case or not, though Vikings did contract themselves out as mercenaries as well as trading and plundering on their own account. Nor do we know if Khazar intervention had anything to do with it but in 882, nine years after Riurik’s death, his grandson, Oleg, gathered and took his war bands south against Askold and Dir and killed the two ‘renegades’, as they were to be called henceforth. ⁵ We cannot be sure that these ‘renegades’ were the same people as those who had taken possession of Kiev in 858, but we can infer that the victory of 882 secured Oleg effective control of the entire commercial network from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and since he now had access to Kiev, over which the Khazars still claimed sovereignty, he was able to operate over much more extensive territory than formerly, collecting honey, furs and slaves to trade with Constantinople, albeit under Khazar tutelage.

From the later 800s Rus were selling furs, especially black fox and beaver, swords and slaves to distant Baghdad. Using the Volga route to the Caspian Sea, they negotiated their way past the Khazar customs posts or else traded their merchandise there for resale to the realm of the Caliph. They brought back beads and oriental cloths, double-headed axes, buttons, and coins — chiefly dirhams, the currency of the caliphs of Baghdad, which Russian merchants, lacking a coinage of their own, were to adopt. Over the next fifty years or so shortage of labour and a surplus of cash generated a steady demand for slaves, especially female slaves, from both the Caliphate and the Byzantine Empire, which the Rus were happy to meet. They were not alone however. Chains and neck shackles have been found in archaeological digs along all the more important Mediterranean and European routes. Not only Constantinople but papal Rome had a thriving slave market, and Spain was a major supplier as well as Rus. ⁶

Then the Russians fell out with the Khazars who claimed lordship over them. Constantinople sided with the Khazars, but when Oleg led a suc-cesful Rus’ assault on the city in 907 it thought again. The upshot was an agreement of 911, by which the Emperor agreed to pay a money tribute both to those Rus who took part in the expedition and to the princes who had sent them. Oleg also obtained permission for Rus merchants to stay for up to six months at a house, or fondaco, set aside for them at the St Mamas quarter of Constantinople, and won agreement that they would be fed at the imperial expense when they visited the city. Yet the Khazars, who had married into the local Rus elite, still reigned as kagans of Kievan Rus, and they were to keep control of Kiev itself till about 930. ⁷

The exact nature of Oleg’s relationship with them in this period is not yet clear. He may have been their partner or their tributary, but whatever the relationship it must have been tense. And so long as the situation held it seems that many unfortunate tribesmen had to pay tribute both to the Rus and to the Khazars. Eventually, however, Oleg’s son Igor was to displace his former overlords and rule Kiev as kagan.

Igor proved to be no less rapacious than his forebears and predecessors. In 914 he decided to increase the tribute he demanded of the Rus tribes known as Derevlians. Thirty years later he raised it again — only this time the Derevlians resisted. As Russia’s first chronicle recalled, Igor

attacked the Derevlians in search of tribute, and to the old tribute he added a new tribute and collected it by violence from the people … On his way home … he said to his followers, ‘Take the tribute home. I shall turn back and collect more.’ … Hearing of his return the Derevlians consulted with Mal, their prince, saying ‘If a wolf comes among sheep it will take the whole flock one by one, unless it is killed … If we do not kill [Igor] now, he will destroy us all. ⁸

And so they killed him.

But the Derevlians had not reckoned with Igor’s widow, Olga. Prince Mal offered to marry her, but Olga refused, determined to take personal charge, to rule on behalf of Sviatoslav her baby son, and to take vengeance on the Derevlians. A call went out to her warriors, and they were soon moving against Mal’s stronghold, Ikorosan, about 100 miles upstream from Kiev. They burned the place and rounded up the Derevlian leaders. The vengeance Olga exacted was a model of how to discourage resistance. She had some of them tortured, slaughtered many, and enslaved the rest.